Review: Single Ladies

Single Ladies
Red Stitch
10 February 2021
Red Stitch Theatre
to 14 March
redstitch.net

"Single Ladies" Red Stitch. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

There was a lockdown and sharing reviews didn't seem like the thing to do.  And today we face a world where our federal government think information, news sharing and discussion isn't what we want. Sigh ... dependence on social media.

So, go to the theatre. I really enjoyed Single Ladies. Here's my review in Time Out.

Review: Dance Nation

Dance Nation
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
17 March 2019
Red Stitch
to 14 April
redstitch.net

"Dance Nation". Red Stitch. Photo by Teresa Noble

You'll probably never hear a 10-, 11-, 12-, 13-year-old call themselves "prepubescent". It's a word so distant from the experience of being that age that it rarely escapes from text books. It's a time when you feel like a child and look like an adult or feel like an adult and look like a child. And get treated in ways that are embarrassing, inappropriate or ick either way. Dance Nation is about girls in this in-between age, as seen through the memories of women in their 20s to 60s.

USA playwright and actor Clare Barron had her first play produced in 2013 and has since won some significant awards. Dance Nation is her seventh work and this Red Stitch production is its Australian premiere.

It's set in a local USA dance school that's desperate to get to nationals (finals). Their dance teacher (Brett Cousins) knows that their sailor routine isn't up to scratch, so he's developing a work for his six-girl- one-boy troupe about Gandhi. Oh, yes, it's as ridiculous a dance as it sounds, and is made even more wonderful with Holly Durant's choreography, which solves the problem of the tiny stage, and Adrienne Chisholm's glitz-on-a-pocket-money budget gold design and ballet-mom costumes.

All the pre-teens are played by adults (Caroline Lee, Zoe Boesen, Casey Filips, Hannah Fredericksen, Natalie Samsu, Tario Manvondo, Georgina Naidu and Shayne Francis, who also plays all the moms) and all bring the experience of knowing that the adult life you imagine at 12 isn't the life you live. None of which makes the confusion of personal competition contradicting personal friendship less confusing. Or makes the realisation that your body's changing in ways that will keep you on stages or get you off stages, and that your choice may be irrelevant. Or that you will be sexualised or not sexualised no matter what. And that doesn't stop once you're a teenager, adult, older adult or older-still adult.

Maude Davey's direction has the style of a daggy suburban dance competition with a core of sophistication and experience that's inspired by the emerging power girls find at that age. This is power that girls are often told to suppress, but we'd all rather learn the routine that lets all women hold onto that power and ignore anyone who says it's wrong.

Review: Conviction

Conviction
The Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson Shakespeare Company
Darebin Arts Speakeasy
24 July 2016
Northcote Town Hall
to 6 August
darebinarts.com.au

Ruby Hughes, Caroline Lee, Troy Reid. Conviction. Photo by Pia Johnson

There's a point in self indulgence that's so personal that is becomes universal.

Writer (often director) Zoey Dawson and director (often writer) Declan Greene (The Unspoken Word is "Joe") are back together for Conviction.

Dawson said in her writer's notes:

"When I went to VCA to do my Masters, I was genuinely ready to embrace the real play and stop writing plays about myself. Partly out of concern for my financial future, partly because I thought I was doing theatre "wrong". But mainly because every time I wrote a play about myself, it really seemed to piss people off."

Fortunately, she didn't listen to herself. And has hopefully stopped listening to the pissed-off voices because there are a lot of voices who want to hear her voice – even when it's raw and indulgent, and especially when she's mouthy about women being pushed into the background.

Ruby Hughes. Conviction. Photo by Pia Johnson

Dawson's work is personal and it's the connection to the writer that's the pumping heart of her work. I remember seeing I know there's a lot of noise outside but you have to close your eyes in 2011 with another no-where-near-20-something friend, and we spent the rest of the night talking about how much the show made us remember being in our 20s and having a lot of sex.

Conviction was mostly funded by a Pozible campaign with donations – mostly reflections of how much theatre makers earn – from some of those not-pissed-off voices.

Funded by Melbourne's indie theatre community, Conviction's meta is meta.

Which means...

If you know what it means, I don't need to explain it. If you don't know what it means, it doesn't matter; it's still hilarious – except when it's confronting or scary. If you miss the theatre in-jokes or dark feminist satire, there are plenty of back-up laughs.

In an attempt to not write about herself, Dawson writes an Aussie settler drama-mystery with Caroline Lee, Dushan Phillips and Troy Reid and Ruby Hughes, who's a young woman who thinks she can write a story about herself as a young woman.

It doesn't work: the not writing about herself or the settler drama-mystery. Neither does the contemporary drama or the dystopian future horror. Is there any time when young women write about themselves?

Conviction. Photo by Pia Johnson

As genres smash into each other like some fringe theatre nightmare – made more real by the design by Romanie Harper (design) and Amelia Lever-Davidson (lighting) that reveals its own jokes and surprises – , we get closer to Dawson. Or maybe to Lee, Hughes, Phillips and Reid. We know she's over being expected to write "real" theatre, and also that she has a Gorman top that she never wears and that she once only slept with men with girlfriends.

And as it spirals into being more about Dawson, Conviction gets closer to its audience. Somewhere in her confessions there must be something everyone has done or felt, even if it's just having an endless inner-voice that we wish would shut up.

Greene's direction lets the inner voices run wild, until he yanks them back. The tone-perfect control in the chaos shapes the work into something that reflects the community and city that it made in and promises to reach beyond.

Sounds like real theatre.

Review: Jurassica

Jurassica
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
11 October 2015
Red Stitch
to 7 November
redstitch.net

Red Stitch. Jurassica. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

My review is in The Age.

Review: Far Away

Far Away
SaySix Theatre and Lil Artists
25 April
45 Downstairs
to 13 May
fortyfivedownstairs.com

If I need Wikipedia to explain ANYTHING, I suspect that there's something wrong – especially when it's a piece of theatre.

SaySix Theatre and Lil Artists are presenting Caryl Churchill's Far Away at 45 Downstairs. Written in 1999, this is its first Melbourne production and takes it from a rolling English countryside to a thick and expansive Aussie rainforest.

Young Joan (in an honest and natural performance by 10-year-old Skylah Cox) is staying with her aunt (Caroline Lee) and uncle. After being woken by a human scream and investigating, her aunt tries to hide the truth before bringing the child into their secret.  Next Joan is an adult (Suzannah MacDonald) and starting her first job as a milliner, where she wins the attention of fellow-worker Todd (Paul Ashcroft) and begins to question why the hats are destroyed after the parades.

Churchill's a writer whose personal and political politics are embodied in her writing, so don't expect a clear and compelling story to pull you through. Her off-kilter world rejects logic and everything is at war; even nature is at war with itself. This is where Wiki helped me. I thought she was absurdly playing with language by using animal names; nup, the elephants are elephants. I liked it when I thought they were metaphorical word play...

The internet tells me this is an astonishing play, but this production isn't sharing the astonishing. Dystopian absurdist post-modern writing is cool, but theatrical story-telling has to get out of the intellectual heads of its creators and into the hearts of its audience. The design is evocative, the hats are gorgeous and the performances bring us so close to caring and being involved, but it doesn't take us into its own unique world.  I can see what Churchill was saying about the apathy of society and nightmare of war, but I don't know what SaySix and Lil Artists are saying about us, our society, now or me.

This review was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Stripped

Stripped
La Mama
7 March 2012
La Mama Theatre
to 18 March

Writer, actor and creator Caroline Lee remains an unmissable force in independent theatre.  Stripped is a solo performance about the nakedness and exposure of death that strips away the pretence of performance to its core of raw emotion.

Working with her long-time collaborator and director Laurence Strangio and lighting designer Paul Jackson, this is Lee's stage adaption of the novel she started when studying Professional Writing at RMIT, and which was serialised in Meanjin and supported by the Marion Eldridge Award and City of Melbourne's arts grants.

Told through interconnecting first-person narratives, it starts as Lillian, a lawyer, is dying from cancer and her sister Sophie, a stripper, faces her own trauma. It's a fascinating adaption that left me wanting to read the novel.

As the writer, Lee's performance comes from such a closeness to her characters that she can concentrate on the subtleties that let her share this deep understanding with the audience, and Strangio shapes the story and brings a physicality that embodies the driving emotion of each scene.

On a coffin-sized light box stage, Lee evokes Melbourne from an inner-city strip club to Chadstone (where no one wants to die). Lit mostly from below, Jackson's lighting exposes the human without the niceties of make up and flattering light (think what you look like with a torch under your face) which continues to bring the internal to the surface.

Yet, for all its heartfelt intelligence and emotional rawness, the text is distracting. Eyes and ears process language so differently and what is exquisite on a page can seem forced on the stage, as we don't need the descriptive adverbs and gorgeous metaphors to create the world or show reaction. There's a moment when a character says "I walked gingerly" and my inner editor grabbed her red pen; telling what we can see takes away from the character and brings too much attention back to the words.

Lee writes stunning words, but stage stories are driven by emotion, and another edit to tighten will free its characters even more, while the words will still shine in print.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Pia Johnson

Review: The Flood

The Flood
Finucane & Smith and La Mama
6 December 2009
La Mama Theatre

A trip to La Mama can be a long hour where you look forward to browsing the Readings sale table and choosing a pastry at Brunetti. The Flood isn’t one of those shows. It is the best piece of new theatre I’ve seen this year.

Jackie Smith is best known for her divine direction of Finucane & Smith's The Burlesque Hour and other wonders, but she has written a script that puts many writers to shame and I’m wondering if she was hanging out with the Shelleys and their friends in Geneva in 1816.

Gothic is more than old Cure albums and spider web tattoos or even knowing when Mary Shelley conceived the idea for Frankenstein. Gothic literature explores the horror within ourselves and society. It has spawned many a B grade monster, but the authentic stuff really makes your soul shudder. Finucane & Smith’s Gotharama helped me past my false conceptions of Gothic, but The Flood makes me want to start wearing copious amounts of eyeliner and abandon my habit of wearing bright colours.

Two estranged sisters and their demented mother spend a night on their family property. They are isolated, spooked and full of secrets. It’s an Australian Gothic horror that defines the genre.

The story surprises, shocks and still keeps its secrets. It lets us laugh, but never undermines the characters, who are those rare fictional beings so real you know them. They evoke love and hate in equal parts, as you want to stand up and slap them, but can’t because you understand everything they are doing.

The script is remarkable, but it shines with Laurence Strangio’s contained direction; Bronwyn Pringle’s lighting and the Sisters Hayes’s design that creates the most space ever seen in La Mama, while still making us feel cramped; and Natasha Anderson’s sound design makes you want someone brave to go outside and check the rising river.

Which leaves the cast: Shirley Cattunar, Caroline Lee and Maude Davey. I’m at a loss for words. They never let us see the acting.

The Flood will move to bigger theatres, but none will have you in the living room with them or capture the cramped and spooked atmosphere of La Mama. So see it now. It’s sad and oppressive and holds your heart in your throat as you beg to know truth, but know the truth will hurt too much to know. See it. See it. See it.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Care Instructions

Care Instructions
Malthouse Theatre and Aphids
11 July 2009
Tower Theatre, CUB Malthouse

You know that annoying moment when you’re watching a play, movie or even reading a book and you realise you have no idea what’s going on because your brain wandered off?

I loved watching and listening to Care Instuctions. As someone who hates washing, it was almost cathartic to see the white sheets, the pink knickers and the black t-shirts cast aside with an intriguing mix of love and irreverence. The design is beautiful, the performer trio (Jane Bayly, Liz Jones and Caroline Lee) are divine and the language flows, splashes and meanders like creek made of music – but I wasn’t listening to the words and could not have told you what this show was about had I not read the program – and even then, I still missed the Sleeping Beauty references.

I know if I read Cynthia Troup’s script, I’d probably love it and could pontificate about the perfection of every metaphor, archetype and myth reference. This is a “writerly” script, which begs to be read. The words might be perfect on paper, but they become just sound on the stage. It was like listening to someone speak a language you don’t speak fluently, so that all you do is recognise the phrases and words that you understand, but you struggle to put them into context.

I kept trying to bring myself back to the script and the words (after all, I am rather fond of words and people who put them together well) but I kept getting lost. I didn’t mind being lost, as it was delightful to just watch – and I was vividly taken back to being a four-years-old and watching my teddy bear in the giant spin dryer at the laundromat – but I was felt like I was missing the essence of what was going on.

Writers, directors and all creators can never see their own work with the innocence and freshness of new eyes. It’s hard to see that other people have no idea what we are trying to say when it’s so clear in our heads. But maybe the enjoyment of Care Instructions isn’t in the understanding; perhaps we’re just meant to enjoy it.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Black

Black
Malthouse Theatre
17 March 2007
The Tower Theatre, CUB Malthouse

A post-avant-garde-performance-art-installation is never going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Well, I drink coffee and Anna Tregolan’s Black is as welcome and satisfying as the first strong, aromatic and lovingly-made expresso on a slow Sunday morning.

There is a mixed sense of anticipation and apprehension as we are gradually let into the Tower Theatre. All we know is that the performance runs for three hours, but we can come and go as we please.

Walking down a dark corridor, a small screen with a changing collage is our first clue. Sounds of muffled voices and dropped cutlery begin to filter in as we round the corner and find ourselves above the space we will enter and, perhaps unwittingly, merge with.

Black is the stories of Elizabeth Short, a young Hollywood starlet, whose severed body was found in an empty lot in 1947. Her unsolved murder has created many fictitious, semi-factual and imagined accounts of her demise on screens and in novels, newspapers and gossip mills.

Each performer (Caroline Lee, Moira Finucane, James Wardlaw and Martyn Coutes) represent a facet of the multiple stories. They could be witness, media, detective, victim, friend, family or stranger. All spin web of movement and text that fills the space and draws the audience closer.

The text is designed to be listened to like music, with a four part vocal score of monologue. It’s quite meditative, but separating the parts reveals a poetic and evocative language that was almost unexpected. “The collaging of a body” with “postage stamps of flesh removed”.

The performers are separated by a zigzag wall of perspex. They move through and around the walls, forever changing their position. What makes this work remarkable is that each wall acts as a transparent mirror – we can see through it, and it reflects multiple images around the space.

One performer looks like a conjoined twin from a carnival freak show, whilst simultaneously standing in the audience, looking at another performer, holding her own hand and watching herself. The performers don’t touch or interact but their multiple reflections touch and merge, some morphing like a 90s music video, others walking through each other like ghosts. The effect is stunning, as there are so many versions of the same scene to look at.

As an audience we are allowed to choose if we sit, stand or move. We think we are controlling what we witness and who we see it with. However the reflective walls and changing light take away our control and bring our images into the performance space and the story.

The creation, rehearsal and performance of this complex work is precise and perfect. Design, direction and performance blend to create an experience that is genuinely original, creative, intelligent and brave.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.