Review: 1989

1989
St Martins
9 December 2009
Irene Mitchell Studio, St Martins Theatre Complex

In 1989, I used a hair dryer diffuser, a handful of mousse and a huge bow to do my hair; I wore stirrup pants everywhere and spent a lot of money on my first portable compact disc system. Some of The St Martin’s Performer’s Ensemble hadn’t been born yet and are now part of the generation who think that ra-ra skirts need to come back, but have used this far gone year to inspire their showcase performance.

St Martin’s Performer’s Ensemble is an audition-based program for 18 to 25 year olds, who spend an intense year collaborating and developing. For 1989 they worked closely with The Emerging Writers’ Studio, which gives four writers the chance to create a new work under the guidance of a professional dramaturge (Melanie Beddie).

Michelle Lee and Dan Giovannoni (who both stood out at the 2008 Short and Sweet festival) Samantha Hill, Christopher Summers (writer of theatargh blog) may not have captured the essence of 1989 (or needed to), but they showed us the originality of their voices. All need to trust that less can be more and to dig deep and trust that their personal stories will be the ones that audiences will love, but they shared a specific and at times revealing view of being 20-something today.

And they all wrote specifically and beautifully for the actors. Their scripts allowed each member of the ensemble to really show us what they are made of and why we will be seeing much more or Danielle Asciak , Danny Ball, Darcy Hegz , Juliet Hindmarsh , Melissa Kahraman, Douglas Lyons, Ruby Mathers ,Angelique Murray and Xavier O'Shannessy in the very near future.

The review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Trio

Trio
Larrikin Ensemble Theatre
10 November 2009
fortyfivedownstairs

Sometimes it is hard to understand why a beautifully written script by a proven and accomplished writer doesn’t leap off the stage as well as it jumps off the page.

Dina Ross wrote Trio as a response to a series of coincidental encounters with the work of three ‘genius’ artists who took their own lives. Her story is the death of fictional virtuoso Australian violinist Karl Munch, as told by his lover, his agent and his brother as they get dressed for Munch’s memorial service. It’s an honest reflection on the existence of artist as superstar and why it’s perhaps not a dream to aspire to.

In a mighty performance, Chris Bunworth (fluidly directed by Yvonne Virsik) is all three characters and brings a different response to the grief of each man. As each talk directly to the audience, the performance is at times confronting and confusing because it’s not clear, to the audience or the performer, who these men are talking to. As long as it is an actor talking to an audience, the audience are watching Chris ‘perform’, rather than being drawn into the grief and anger of these men.

However, this type of theatre starts and ends with the script. Trio is original and intriguing; the characters are complex, the craft is terrific and Ross creates some unforgettable images, like teenage Karl cutting himself to make the gift go away. But for all its goodness, I didn’t care about the men whose souls were aching, let alone why Karl died.

I could see plot, but I couldn’t see story. I couldn’t see the goals and motivations of the characters, didn’t know what drove them through each scene and I didn’t know what I was meant to wonder about. I appreciate that Ross wants the audience to make up their own minds about what happened, but the core of any great story is a question to draws us forward (Will Hamlet kill himself? Will Dorothy get home? Will Matt Preston drool?) Were we meant to wonder if it was suicide/murder/accident, if Karl was happy, or if he did it so the men he loved to use the ‘currency’ of his death?

Or maybe there just wasn’t room for the audience’s empathy. We love great stories because of how they make us feel, not because of how the characters feel.

Writers love writing words and actors love saying them, but audiences like stories told with as few words as possible. Every word has to earn its place in a script and audiences don’t need to be told what they already know. We knew that Karl shut his eyes when he played and didn’t need to be told again; each character showed us how they felt, but then went and told us anyway – we knew Robbie “was too proud to let him see how upset I was”. No matter how beautiful the words or how good the performance, it’s frustrating to be told what we already know and it stalls the story.

Trio is on its way to the USA. It’s a good show, but could be great with some brave editing that would leave fewer words, but would leave space for the audience to create their own emotional response.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Short and Sweet 08 Week 3 Wildcards

Short and Sweet 2008 Week 3 Wildcards
20 December 2008
The Arts Centre, Fairfax Theatre

The final ten Short and Sweet Wildcards concluded the annual three-week 10 minute theatre fest. As with week three’s Top 20, they were undercooked and left a slightly bitter aftertaste.

Unready scripts aside, relationship is my issue de jour. To some extent, every piece suffered from this fundamental problem. In his must-read book 'Audition' Michael Shurtleff says, “Creating relationship is the heart of acting. It is basic. It is essential.” Relationship is also the heart of great writing. If there is no emotional, meaningful relationship with the people on the stage, the scene will always feel false and fall flat. Too many times, I had no idea what the relationships were between the characters. Without a sense of relationship, there’s no reason for characters to talk to each other, let alone a reason for us to care what happens to them. It doesn’t need to be explicit on the stage, but it needs to be in the writing and in the performances.

The Bullfrog was one of the better pieces, with a terrific ending, but needed to develop the characters further and develop a relationship between them. Did she fancy him? Did he fancy her? Did they even know the others names?

Little Star, Ticking Clock, Thankyou My Pongpat, Facing Away and even To Let all suffered from the same problem. These were all plays about couples, so there was plenty of material to work with.

The Russian Bride told an exposition story well, but I think it would have been more powerful if the guard had his own journey and character arc within the piece. As it was, it may have worked better as a monologue.

Genre Bender must have started life as an impro exercise and didn’t develop much further. Funny costumes do not create purpose or character.

The Mercy Kitchen was written well, but let down with the direction. We all know that if a gun appears on a stage, it’s going to be shot. Well, this is a play about swallowing poison and there were many props and a lot of action about cups of tea... We knew what was going to happen far too early, and it was too easy to predict the cup swapping.

The Cellar Children started life at the 48 Hour Play Generator and is still delightfully creepy.

Maybe Short and Sweet needs a year off to re-invigorate. The independent companies were fabulous, but the competition didn’t do justice to the theatrical talent of this town.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Short and Sweet 08 Week 3 Top 20

Short and Sweet 2008 Week 3 Top 20
17 December 2008
The Arts Centre, Fairfax Theatre

The opportunity and support given to theatre makers by the Short and Sweet festival is incomparable and over the last four years, the festival has offered some of the most memorable moments on the Fairfax stage. So I’m not sure what’s going on this year.

With the exception of the independent companies last week, it’s clear that the more experienced level of local writers, actors and directors aren’t involved to the extent they have been in the past. This is opening the door for many people, but the lack of experience is really showing, and I really don’t understand how nine out of the ten short plays presented this week made it to the top 20.

Ernest Hemingway famously said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Too many of these works felt like first drafts. The ideas were great, their synopses were tempting, and the words-in-a-good-order writing was there, but they didn’t tell engaging, authentic stories. They just weren’t ready. It felt like a painting by numbers, but half of the colours were missing in the pallet and replaced with beige.

A script (short, long, stage or screen) isn’t an opportunity for a writer to rant or detail their opinion. It’s up to a writer to demonstrate their views by showing us what complex characters do when their world changes.

A character who is just expressing the writer’s opinion sounds like a badly written pamphlet. Black Eyed Susan was an exceptionally well directed and original breast cancer brochure, but it didn’t sound or feel like a story.

Some began or ended in the wrong spot. Falling, Praying would have been fabulous if it started as they jumped; the back story wasn’t necessary. Blue was beautifully structured and had a moment where it could have ended with emotion and left us wondering, but it kept going. Audiences are clever beasts who don’t need to be led to the very end.

Birdmonster and Permanently Engaged were tight and hilarious short sketches that were stretched out to ten minutes without adding more to the joke.

Legends and the Fall needed some sense of legend/myth/hero to give it the oomph and complexity it seemed to be aiming for. As Love and Light could have followed through with its metaphysical themes and used the ideas of ‘love’ and ‘light’ as more than just a joke.

Prime Angus Buttock and Alchemy relied on funny performances, rather than funny situations. A silly walk or a kooky voice only works when you’re a master of your craft and genre.

Luckily, Religion Shop saved the night. It began as a racially offensive and disrespectful piece of crap (and was I ready to rant myself) – then it turned on itself brilliantly. (And it included a metatheatre joke that made sense.) This is the kind of theatre that we expect from Short and Sweet.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Shane Warne: The Musical

Shane Warne: The Musical
Token Events and TrafficLight
11 December 2008
Athenaeum Theatre

I didn’t care for or about Shane Warne before the musical, and I still don’t, but Eddie Perfect can SMS me any time.

Perfect wrote this great Aussie musical and stars as its fallen hero. Being as Aussie as beetroot on a burger, Shane Warne: The Musical might not make a Broadway away tour, and it’s no good taking it to the West End, cos the poms will just whinge about it – but every Australian state, city and medium-sized country town deserves a leg of the tour.

We all know Warnie – he’s either the greatest spin bowler Australia’s yet to produce (don’t worry if you’re cricket illiterate, there’s a scene that explains that stuff) or he’s that twat who cheated on his missus, couldn’t give up smoking and was tempted by Indian bribes. Shane eventually grasps that these two parts of himself are connected, and is forced to accept, “I’ll never be captain, so I guess that’s that then”. He helped bring back the ashes, but his personal life ruined any chance he had of being a real hero.

Warnie’s the archetypal anti-hero, with his larrikin faults and inability to say no to temptation.  If Perfect and Co had pulverised him, it wouldn’t be fair to Shane; if they’d ignored his foibles, it wouldn’t be fair to us. Shane Warne: The Musical keeps hitting sixes with a remarkable balance of satire and celebration.

And, to be fair, it also takes the piss out of musical theatre, with numbers reminiscent of stage and screen favourites from Fame to Godspell to Sweeney Todd (it was “fucking beautiful” ) – and who knew AIS was even more fan to dance-spell than YMCA.

Warnie in song works so well because ultimately the jokes on us. Perfect makes us look at ourselves and how we all supported and created the spin around the spin. As the marketing chorus sing, “Everyone’s a little bit like Shane”. We can’t blame him for being just like us.

With a such an impressive creative team around Perfect – director Neil Armfield (demi-god of Australian directing), dramaturge Casey Benneto (Keating), choreographer Gideon Obarzanek (Chunky Move) and designer Brian Thomson (shows too numerous to mention, but this the design is reminiscent of his original Rocky Horror set) –  it would have been disappointing if Shane Warne: The Musical wasn’t this good. It proves that sometimes it’s a damn good idea to let those arty-farty types loose on a commercial show.

Perfect lives up to his name as Warne and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when he’s had enough, as the show is very dependent on his appeal. The rest of the on-stage team are bonza, with Rosemarie Harris a standout as Simone.

Shane Warne: The Musical will become as legendary as its namesake. It’s not a celebration of Warne the cricketer or a gut-punch to Shane the man. It lets you laugh at him, laugh with him and ultimately cack yourself because his ridiculous, media-controlled, fame-driven life led to a Melbourne-based cabaret performer writing a musical all about it.


A note for patrons more used to stadiums
Last night there were a number of Warnie fans in the audience who didn’t get the concept of live theatre. It’s not like the MCG. Getting up in the middle of the first half (or “act”) and coming back into the theatre with beer for your mates isn’t acceptable “theatre” behaviour – and it just encouraged other blokes to do the same. Please wait for half time (or “interval”) and don’t do it again in the second half. Or, at least, come back with enough beers for the people sitting near you!



 This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Short and Sweet 08 Week 2 Indepedendent Theatre Ensembles

Short and Sweet 2008 Week 2 Indepedendent Theatre Ensembles
10 December 2008
The Arts Centre, Fairfax Theatre

After a week of stewed tea and too much supermarket White Christmas, Short and Sweet Week Two is like a fresh espresso and a homemade chocolate ganache tart.
 
There’s a rumour floating around that the Independent Theatre section of Short and Sweet is going to be removed. NO! This week’s selection sent the program flying back up to inspiring, dizzying heights.
 
This selection of short plays was not about writers proving their vocab, but about using theatre to tell us wonderful tales. They filled the whole space with movement, dance, music, sound and design to tell their dramatic, intriguing and unique stories. Words are one of the greatest things ever invented, but theatre is not just about words.
 
After the Tower
The Town Bikes are always super-fab, and it would seem that they’ve found the ideal director in Maude Davey. From their arse-talking entry to the collapsing of the Rapunzel’s long hair, the Brothers Grimm would be thrilled to see such a delightfully-dark telling of this story.
 
Grimm
The brothers G may well be dancing an after-life jig, because Company 13 were also inspired by a fairy tale - the one about Snow White and her mum. With pig noses, an accordion and song, this was a most original telling and interpretation.
 
Bodybag
The afterlife is always a very popular Short and Sweet theme. Itch Productions explored the celebrity death, with Marilyn Monroe visiting a nearly-famous actor who is “dying to be an icon”. Does he choose a posthumous Oscar or a sad career?
 
Last Drinks
Telia Neville (interior theatre) continues her fascinating exploration of the everyday. Without words or sound, five characters repeat what looks like a meeting at a bar. As the audience find their own meaning in the repetition, words and sound are added to give us a better picture - but all we hear are their thoughts. Telling it from a different perspective makes the most mundane situation an irresistible tale.
 
Morbid Porn
Sexy and just a little bit morbid, Skite Vikingr tell a story of love, lust, desire and rejection that fluidly links performer and puppet.
 
6 Hours Later
Hilarious, engaging, beautiful - watching Born in a Taxi is as wonderful as watching a litter of excited kittens explore a new room.
 
Tinsel Town
Split Second’s murder, mystery and horror story started funny and got funnier. From the Shelley’s chatting after dinner to Dracula floating on skates - and all with live sound FX. Why use a digital file when you can have a bloke breaking plates and blowing bubbles in a glass.
 
Tea for Two
Dislocate’s story is black, funny and brilliant. From stillness to did-they-really-just-do-that acrobatics, this is the kind of theatre you can’t look away from.
 
Finding Your Place
The Hounds kept us laughing (so that’s how a dishwasher moves), but the telling wasn’t clear. Now I’ve read the program, I see that it’s about Alzheimer’s – which I didn’t get when I watching it. I thought it was about writers who love the safety of their own fiction.
 
Match
Penelope Bartlau’s Barking Spider Visual Theatre wonderfully and literally construct a malleable universe. The two characters try to sort out their own relationship, while creating a small and messy parallel world from lumps of clay. This is great stuff.

This review originally appeard on AussieTheatre.com.

The Santaland Diaries

The Santaland Diaries
Auspicious Arts Incubator
5 December 2008

Wikipedia says that David Sedaris has sold over 7 million books. More impressively, he’s number 25 at stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. White people love Sedaris. “They” also love plays, coffee, sushi, microbreweries, writing workshops, non-profit organisations, breakfast places, apple products, famers markets, organic food, apologies and irony. So it’s safe to say that Melbourne theatre goers will love The Santaland Diaries.

Before being embraced by white folk, Sedaris was poor and pathetic enough to be a Christmas elf at Macy’s department store in New York. The bloke with the big white beard must have been paying attention because David wrote an essay about his experience, and reading it on the radio in 1992 lead to that elusive break that so many of his fellow acting/dancing/prancing elves had hoped for.  Never say the American Dream isn’t alive, kicking and wrapped in a big red ironic bow!

In 1996 Joe Mantello adapted The Santaland Diaries into a one act play, which the Auspicious Arts Incubator team are presenting to Melbourne. It doesn’t take long to translate the American store to our own Magic Cave and Myers windows. And we know that Santa’s real name is Father Christmas.

Russell Fletcher (host of Spontaneous Broadway) is Crumpet. Fortunately, he doesn’t mimic Sedaris, but gives us the delightfully-fruity Fletcher version of the dismayed elf. However, I wonder why director John Paul Fischbach gave Crumpet an American accent, as it added unnecessary distance between the story and the audience. The tale is so middle-class universal that it doesn’t need a voice to place it in US culture. It’s loved because the Macy’s experience is the same as sitting on Father Christmas’s knee at Fountain Gate.

The Santaland Diaries is a must if your Christmas spirit is refusing to hang its stockings with care and considering conversion to any faith or culture that doesn’t force you to purchase secret-santa gifts, be polite to distant relatives or look thrilled when you open your fifth box of Roses chocolates.

After I saw the play, I enjoyed a Little Creatures ale, and went home early so I could be up in time for my pick of the organic food at the St Kilda Farmers Market before enjoying a coffee at a really nice breakfast place, while listening to my iPod. I’m also sorry if I’ve offended anyone.

This review appeared on AussieThearte.com

Short and Sweet 08 Week 1 Top 20

Short and Sweet 2008 Week 1 Top 20
3 December 2008
The Arts Centre, Fairfax Theatre

It must be nearly Christmas - there’s reindeer shaped chocolate at the supermarket, fizz on special at the bottle-o and the Short and Sweet festival is on at the Fairfax.

Now in its fourth year, Short and Sweet continues to unearth unforgettable, damn good and not bad playwrights; whilst harnessing the wild herds of actors and directors that flock to the fertile theatrical plains of Melbourne.

Week one varied, with scripts generally seeming to grab one good idea and extending it to ten minutes of dialogue. The most memorable past entrants were those that told complex tales in their allotted time. There can be a lot of change, conflict and good old story in ten minutes.

Six Minutes and Counting - we knew the set up, the telling and punch line before the first minute was up, so everything in between was lost.

Tumbletots is an honest observation of contrasting new mums. There wasn’t any change or much of a story, but it came to life through lovely performances and included a very "special” joke. I would have liked to see the posh mum directed with a bit more love though, rather than having us always laugh at her. Surely, it’s a good thing that she loves her child.

Mandragora won my vote of the night. The character was immediately engaging and empathetic, and the story used mystery and tension to go to a completely different place from where it started. Great scripts aside, moving up the stairs “quietly” is just as distracting as tap dancing up them in a spotlight.

Drive is beautifully written, powerfully directed and lovingly performed. It would have been the stand out of the night, if we didn’t figure out what happened so early. In order to have the heartbreaking final impact, we need to think it’s about their relationship, not what happened to the child. The “subtle” clues in the script became bold, underlined, and highlighted on stage.

Kanat and the Red Army will come close in the audience’s pick of the season. Original, funny, poignant and epic; it covers 20 years, without missing any vital thread. The combination of direct to the audience and “live” action is a treat, and I even liked the turning point event happening off stage. Although the Beatles music is familiar to most audiences, the emotional impact on stage would benefit from more music, rather than discussion.

Cheesebuger and Fries used mystery so well that I still have no idea where they were, who they were or why we were watching them.

The Celine Dion Scrapbook should win something for original direction. I’m guessing that the author didn’t see the script in quite this way, but the outrageous style took what could have been quite a mundane story to somewhere unique and engaging – without losing its emotional intent.

Tipping Point is a gorgeous analysis of a break up from the perspectives of each lover. This type of story is always popular at Short and Sweet because, for all out arty pretentiousness, we really are big romantic softies at heart. And how could anyone resist the metaphor of a man trying to understand a woman’s feelings being like a dog trying to use the internet.

Bliss went somewhere very interesting by the end, but was so caught up in trying to be funny and clever that the story became irrelevant. We needed to know more about both of them, and why she made the decision to act.

Polygamy was well performed and well written, but was just one joke. A bit of research about the various forms of multiple relationships (polyamory or polyandry, in this case) would also help get the title and expectations out of a Utah compound.

This review originally appeard on AussieTheatre.com.