Review: Black is the Colour

Melbourne Fringe
Black is the Colour
Deafferent Theatre
25 September 2016
Meeting Room, Arts House
to 1 October
melbournefringe.com.au

My review is on The Age/SMH.

Review: Dreamers

Dreamers
fortyfivedownstairs
8 November 2014
fortyfivedownstairs
to 30 November
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

I wasn't in Melbourne when the Keene/Taylor project was the darling of this city's independent theatre scene (1997–2002), so it's a joy to see Mary Lou Jelbart's fortyfivedownstairs brings writer Daniel Keene and director Ariette Taylor back together with Dreamers.

Originally written by Keene for French company Tabula Rasa (Keene is loved in France),  Dreamers is about loneliness and the hope that can be found even when the isolation seems impenetrable.

Set in a low-income block of flats in any city, widow Anne (Helen Morse) lives alone and earns her living from sewing consignment garments. She's rarely interrupted, except when she catches the bus to babysit her grandson. At the bus stop she meets fellow residents including building foreman (Marco Chiappi), a former bus driver now ticket inspector (Paul English) and younger new-comer to the city Majid (Yomal Rajasinghe) who's looking for work.

Majid knows that people ignore him and move away because he's black, but Anne doesn't and when he's turned away at their local cafe by the waiter (Jonathan Taylor), she buys him a coffee. When their friendship develops, locals (Natasha Herbert and Nicholas Bell) are disgusted and her daughter (Brigid Gallacher) doesn't understand.

While it's a clear reflection on the many ways people hate each other for no reason, Taylor's direction – and an impeccable cast – never forgets that everyone is a likeable and loved person in their own way. With songs around a pianola and dances around garbage bins, the gentle humour makes it easy to see how hate can surface in the most everyday of places and in the most unsuspecting people.

The design uses the long an difficult fortyfivedownstairs space beautifully. Adrienne Chisholm's design incorporates the supporting poles and lets us see into tiny rooms and the whole block at once, with Andy Turner's lighting defining space.

While there are many angry plays about all the isms and how they are wrong, Dreamers is a gentle work about people; people who can always change how they see the world.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Finishing this weekend: The Witches and Photographs of A

The Witches
Malthouse Theatre
Last show tonight
malthousetheatre.com.au

Roald Dahl's children's stories are dark and naughty and let children get into all sorts of trouble without bothersome grown ups ruining the fun or trying to help. The Witches is about what happens when a group of children-hating witches meet at a hotel and come across an orphaned boy.

Having missed chunk of the beginning (I should have known there is no right turn onto Sturt Street from Kings Way during peak hour), I didn't review but I loved what I saw.

Guy Edmonds plays everyone in this stage version of the story, which is based on a play by David Wood. His instant transformations from horrible hag to squeaky fast mouse are magic. There's little on the stage except the performer and the imagination of his audience – it's pretty close to the experience of reading – and together they create a show that's more spectacular, far scarier and more loving than anything made from special effects.

Here's what Keith Gow thought after seeing it earlier this week.

NEON
Photographs of A
Antechamber and Daniel Keene
Last show tomorrow
mtc.com.au

Until this show, I didn't know anything about 15-year-old Louise Augustine Gleizes. Known as "A", she was a celebrity hysteric in Paris in the late 1870s whose hysterias were photographed and the young woman was exhibited by her doctor, the influential neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Photographs of A by Daniel Keene explores the young woman's illness and experiences in the Salpetriere sanitarium from inside A's head.

If only the public display of ill and sexually traumatised young women didn't feel so familiar.

Sixty-something Helen Morse is Augustine and, even though Ben Grant and Anouk Gleeson-Mead appear on stage with her, the script is nearly all hers. Her performance is as beautiful as it is disturbing.

Having seen the photos (they are in the free program), we know A was as gorgeous as any teenage girl is and the key to this work is hearing the teenage voice – one that's still full of hope and doesn't understand the consequences of her experiences – come from an old, ugly and near broken woman. The power of Keene's script comes from what's unspoken.

However the production, directed and designed by Brian Lipson, is so aware of its theatricality that it never escapes the falseness of being in a theatre and feels so obvious that there's little surprise or space for unexpected wonder. When the design starts with rows of tea-light candles, the expectation of their lighting and snuffing takes away from the beauty of the candlelight.

The NEON festival is about the new and the daring. Photographs of A is a lovely piece that's worth seeing for Morse, but it feels out of place in NEON.