What Melbourne Loved in 2017, part 4

Part 4 is artists to keep a keep eye on.


Jean Tong
Writer/director

Jean Tong selfie.
(Send me pet pics and I will always use them.)

Favourite moments in 2017
So many people are going to say this (as they should, too), but Hannah Gadsby's Nanette tops any performance experience I've had this year. I sat by myself in a packed room and wept for an hour at MICF. Never before and not since have I felt myself so thoroughly torn apart, seen and loved at the same time in a work. I was a wreck for the next week; it's an astonishing work for its truths and the skill with which it presents those truths. It was incredible to see comedy opened up in that way and sweep the floor of... basically any work ever made.

The only other show that came close to being as intelligent, as well-made, and as heart-crushing was Joel Bray's Biladurang at Melbourne Fringe. The performance was gorgeous, and the gentleness with which it opened up the space between audience, performer, city and story was just so absolutely stunning. The extremely limited capacity meant not many people managed to get to it, but fingers crossed it returns because I want everyone to see it.

Looking forward to in 2018
post's Ich Nibber Dibber at Malthouse. They're so funny and irreverent and clever and I love everything they do solo/together.

Not a specific show, but I'm very excited to see what MTC Next Stage program will bring. Benjamin Law, Leah Purcell and Patricia Cornelius all on commission at the same time? Local fave Natesha Somasundaram a resident? It's all too much good at the same time, the industry might break.

SM: Every moment of Jean's Romeo is Not the Only Fruit. This new work has just finished it's Poppyseed Festival run at The Butterfly Club. Can someone please make sure that Jean and this show get some serious development money and another huge season (with the same cast). It's the subversive satirical lesbian musical we need. So many new works disappear; this one has to be helped only bigger stages. And I'm really looking forward to seeing her Hungry Ghosts at MTC next year.

Bradley Storer
Cabaret performer/future DILF

Bradley Storer

Favourite moments in 2017
In terms of sheer shock, one of my favourite moments from theatre this year was the now infamous opening night of Cabaret where during the title number Chelsea Gibb’s microphone cut out and she was forced to leave and re-enter the stage – chaos with the director of the show Gale Edwards yelling instructions from the audience and Paul Capsis forced to vamp until microphone adjustments could be made. Only for Gibb to re-enter and have the microphone start cutting out again! The audience was on its feet roaring and cheering in full support, and it was one of those rare moments where the entire audience was deeply, viscerally connected to a performer valiantly struggling onstage. Gibb not only rose above but knocked it out of the park, and I don’t think I’ll ever hear that song the same way ever again.

I’m sure so many will mention the incredible 24-Decade History of Popular Music with Taylor Mac, and there were too many mind-blowing moments to recount here. Although bursting into unexpected tears after 40 minutes of being forced to wear a blindfold was a highlight, the moment I cling to came in the very last chapter at the edge of the seventies. After we’d survived an orgasmic Cold War between two gigantic phalluses, and celebrated with a joyful and rapturous backroom orgy to Prince’s "Purple Rain", we were called to imagine us all collapsed in post-coital bliss on the floor of the backroom, our exhausted breaths climbing into the air to create the opening strains of Laurie Anderson’s classic "O Superman" – a post-modern jumble of images and confusion, strange voices calling out prophecies in the darkness of planes coming, tender and pained cries to be held by a mechanized and distant mother with "petrochemical arms". A giant spot light seared through the audience as though it was piercing directly into our souls. And I started crying so uncontrollably hard I had the poor unfortunate people around me asking if I was alright.

Looking forward to in 2018
All I’m hoping to see in theatre next year is things that surprise me!

SM: I saw Bradley every night at Taylor Mac and we've talk about it every time we've seen each other since.  One day, we may be able to explain all the tears; if we ever really undersatnd them ourselves.

John Collopy
Lighting designer 

John Collopy. Photo by Stephen Amos

Favourite moments in 2017
This is hard as a lot of them have been shows I have been lucky enough to be working and learning on. I loved The Rabble's Joan even more for being privy to such a fulfilling and exciting creative process, and Little Ones Theatre's Merciless Gods consistently broke me, even though I would have seen it dozens of times. Learning from designers and creatives at the top of their game was a personal highlight and a great privilege.

That said, the standout moment for me was watching Away at Malthouse. When the massive transition began, the Year 12 Drama students around me gasped, turned to each other, and collectively went “faaarrrkkkkk”, and then giggled with pure excitement as the stage was completely transformed (which was, I think, a ‘faaarrrkkkkk-worthy’ moment). I think it’s such a key moment in a creative’s life, to be awed by something; and it was wonderful to know that they had just had that moment.

Looking forward to in 2018
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, at MTC, for its telling of neurodiverse stories (even if the author won’t admit or label it). Melancholia, at Malthouse, because the film is so beautifully cinematic and seeing how that will happen on stage fills me with many feelings, but mostly those events that will happen which haven’t been announced yet, that are urgent responses to other events which haven’t happened yet.

SM: My favourite moment was getting a favourite from someone I didn't know, but it took me a moment realise that I do know John and have seen his lighting at MUST shows and his beautiful and sharp light for The Nose at this year's Fringe.

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part 2
part 1
2016
2014
2013
2012

Review: Cabaret

Cabaret
David M Hawkins
1 May 2017
The Athenaeum
to 27 May
cometothecabaret.com.au

David M Hawkins's production of Cabaret may be as pretty as Sally Bowles's green nail polish, but the only person who loved the green was Sally* and we know her manicure was cheap and chipped.

After a mixed reaction to the Sydney season (now referred to as the preview season), Hawkins brought in director Gale Edwards to sort out the Melbourne run. With Paul Capsis as the Emcee, Kate Fitzpatrick as Fraulein Schneider and Chelsea Gibb as Sally, hopes were high.

Based on a short story Christopher Isherwood wrote in Berlin in the 1930s, Cabaret is seen through the eyes of American Clifford Bradshaw who arrives in Berlin and meets English cabaret singer Sally. The stage version surprises those who expect the 1972 film adaption by Bob Fosse, but the different characters and songs are always a welcome surprise.

Set in and around the seedy Kit Kat Klub as the truth of the Nazi's power is being realised, any new Cabaret defines itself with its design. And while the stage design with a wooden floor with footlights suggests a trip to Weimar Berlin – and is gorgeously accentuated by the plush velvet and fading decadence of the nineteenth-century Athenaeum theatre – the costume design doesn't declare a time or place. Spotlessly clean and very sequinny (and, oddly, not sexy), they don't seem to have been developed from or for character and stress that the approaching hell, that we know this world is about to descend into, is a facade that's as authentic as a Cabaret-themed dinner party.

The likes of a giant Hitler mask, some slick swastikas and goose-stepping chorey (which might be trying to be a nod to Fosse) remove the strength of the work's moral ambiguity and the direction doesn't let the dramatic tension of the loss of hope lead the story.

The direction seems focussed on scenes rather than the bigger picture and story. Choices like bringing Cliff into Kit Kat Klub numbers take away his strength as the observer who can see that it's about to collapse and that he has to leave. Making Jewish shop keeper Herr Shultz the Jewish gorilla in "If you could see her" takes away any hope for his fate. And giving Sally an "I will listen" line in Frauline Schneider's "What would you do" diminishes the older woman's desperate plea to find any way to let herself marry and be happy – let alone that Sally's story is that she doesn't listen.

Capsis is, of course, the ideal choice as the Emcee, but his role on the stage is confusing. Neither benevolent or indulgent, he's left side stage as observer more than a participant. Gibb lets Sally's fear and vulnerability show but, like Capsis, is restricted by the production that doesn't seem to want to be more than pretty. I'd love to see them both – and the rest of the cast – in a different production.

And enough has already been said about the technical difficulties on opening night.

* and me; I still wear emerald green nail polish thanks to Liza.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Carrie, The Musical

Carrie: The Musical
Ghost Light in association with Moving Light
25 September 2014
Chapel off Chapel
to 12 October
chapeloffchapel.com.au

New Melbourne company Ghost Light have made a loud and proud declaration by debuting with the infamous flop Carrie: The Musical. And given that we haven't seen a production of it in Melbourne, it's a clever choice. Who doesn't want to see a show that's known as one of the worst musicals to open on Broadway?

The Royal Shakespeare Company premiered Carrie: The Musical in 1988; Les Miserables had been such a success for them that another musical was an obvious choice. It didn't do well. But it was Carrie and being based on the well-known 1976 film, which was based on Stephen King's runaway success debut novel, it got a lot of financial support and opened on Broadway in 1988. It didn't do well, closing after five performances. However, it has gone on to earn a cult status for being atrocious.

Carrie is a teenager who has been abused by her over-loving and god-fearing mother. She's an outsider at high school and her school life goes to hell when she freaks out about getting her first period and thinking that she's dying. Her mum makes things worse, but a teacher helps out and Carrie finds out that she has a friend among the mean girls. But she doesn't count on one particularly mean girl's need for revenge and the mean girl doesn't know about Carrie's trauma-induced telekinesis.

It's known as a horror story that explores the damage caused by fundamentalist religion and questions the power of young women and the existence of the fundamentalist god.

The musical's about finding friends, standing up to bullies and being yourself. Which is great – in High School Musical.

It's a dud. Musically dull, lyrically bland, Carrie feels like it was created by people who have seen musicals and replicated the outline without any detail. It's superficial and doesn't try to explore the guts and horror that created the story.

No wonder it's so popular! It's fun to watch something really bad and laugh at it.

But this production doesn't invite the laughs. It's played so straight that the opening night audience didn't have permission to laugh. It opens with earnest performances and cheesy choreography, which nails the tone that would free up the giggles, but the earnestness seems genuine. I hope that the floating Jesus picture on a string and the magical slamming locker doors are meant to be funny in their tacky obviousness, but I'm more afraid that they are serious.

But don't stop yourself from seeing it. After all, how often do you get the chance to see of Carrie: The Musical. And it has Chelsea Gibb as Carrie's mum and Emily Milledge as Carrie.

When these two are on the stage, the story comes alive.

Gibb plays the mother as a deeply traumatised women and creates an empathy and genuine feeling that overcomes her inane lyrics and the past images of the mother as a one-dimensional sadistic bitch.

And there's Emily Milledge. In an astonishing performance, she finds more in Carrie than this musical deserves. From the moment she opens her mouth, there's no doubt that she's going to bring us through the horror. As she's shown in her work with independent theatre The Rabble (Story of O, Room of Regret and Frankenstein), a can't-stop-watching performance comes from within the performer and has little to do with the words and story they are given. She shows us Carrie's inner hell and makes us dread the pig blood rather than looking forward to the most famous and gruesome scene in the story.

Without these two, it's just a confusingly straight production of an outrageously bad work, but the combination ensures that it's going to do well.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.