Review: Rock Bang

Rock Bang: A Circus Rock Opera
Circus Oz in collaboration with Otto & Astrid
15 November
Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse
circusoz.com
to 25 November

Rock Bang: A Circus ROck Opera. Otto & Astrid. Circus Oz

A version of this was in The Age.


Rock-huge speakers. A rock-black stage. A tiny rock-red drum kit. Get ready to “Make some noise, Mel-BAWN!” because Rock Bang is the circus rock opera we’ve been waiting for.

Otto are Astrid are a brother and sister indie punk-rock duo from 1990’s Berlin. They’ve toured as Die Roten Punkte (The Red Dots) since 2006 and are in Australia so much that it’s rumoured they are as Melbourne as Circus Oz.

Their fans don’t believe any such rumours and understand that, this time, the true story is they when they were performing in Azerbaijan – where the 2012 Eurovision party is still happening – they met the Circus Oz tour, fell asleep in some crates and woke up in Wagga Wagga. With a new circus family, there was only one thing to do: write some more songs and tell their epic story with a circus show within a rock concert. If only there were a double album to go along with it!

Their fairy-tale begins in rural Germany. They keep their rock make up and red lip stick but Otto wears shorts and Astrid has pony tails. And they have six acrobats and four musicians (including music-theatre-rock-wonder Casey Bennetto) to create their world and bring their songs to life.

As their tale fractures when Otto and Astrid’s parents are killed in an accident – there was a train, or maybe a lion – unicycles ride tracks, punk acrobats become relatives and friends, stunt Astrids tumble, and a gold angel straight out of that 1987 Wim Wenders’ film flies.

Their clowning and satire is so rock, so punk and so real that it’s impossible to even think that Otto and Astrid didn’t see the Berlin wall fall in 1989 or form the band after seeing Bowie in 1990 and finding toy instruments at a primary school.

With earworm hits like "Ich Bin Nicht Ein Roboter (I Am A Lion)" – now with a troupe of silver dancing robot lions! – success was easy. But Otto doesn’t understand Astrid’s love of sex and drugs because he just wants rock and roll, stability, and a straight edge vegan girl who’s into hard-core punk.

Otto and Astrid could win Eurovision, make CBGB re-open, and inspire a real an-arch-y. Or keep reminding us that rock’s really about love, red lipstick and flying in silver spaceship above a crowd of fans. And banging with a circus who know how to rock.

What Melbourne Loved in 2017, part 6

More Taylor Mac tears, more Nanette love and more new writing.

Declan Greene
Playwright, director
Sisters Grimm
Resident Artist, Malthouse Theatre

Declan Green, Taylor Mac, Matthew Lutton. Photo by Sarah Walker

Favourite moments in 2017
It was a pretty bloody amazing year, hey? Like everyone else I couldn't just pick one moment, and Taylor Mac stands on a plinth of judy's own. I'll get that out of the way first.  In 24 Decades of Popular Music, my favourite moment was judy solo with ukelele singing "World Peace, or who in the room to screw?" Written there in black and white, it's a dumb and unwieldy little question, but in performance it encapsulated the human tension between our glorious idealism and the frailty of our flesh – but also the glorious hunger of our flesh and the frailty of our idealism – and it made me bawl my eyes out.

Aaaaand also:

The moment the giant smashed avocado dick appeared in Natesha Somasundaram's Jeremy and Lucas Buy A Fucking House, confirming the promise made by the previous 60 minutes: that Natesha is indeed a dementedly talented and dementedly demented comic prodigy.

The genuine surprise of Matt Lutton's production of Away, which stripped away all the layers of sentiment and nostalgia and showed the raw, uncomfortable human desperation at the heart of that play.

Pretty much everything about Janice Muller's production of Alice Birch's Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again, but especially that hysterical broken-farce of a third act and Ming Zhu Hii's terrifying performance as the Grandmother.

Ash Flanders's quiet and devastating vision of himself as high school drama teacher delivering a retirement speech in Playing To Win.

Betty Grumble's Love & Anger. I'm cheating because I saw it in Edinburgh but it's in Melbourne in a couple of days time and it's start-to-finish PHENOMENAL and doesn't let you take a breath. (SM: It's on NOW at The Butterfly Club.)

Looking forward to in 2018
I'm hopelessly biased, but there's so much in Malthouse's 2018 season I can't wait to see: Tom Wright and Matt Lutton's Bliss, Osamah Sami and Janice Muller's Good Muslim Boy, Jada Alberts directing her Brothers Wreck – one of the most incredible Australian plays of the last few decades, IMHO. And like other people on here I'm also very curious to see how the fuck I adapt Melancholia to the stage... 😂

Outside Malty, I'm very excited for Jean Tong's Hungry Ghosts and Nicola Gunn's Working With Children and The House of Bernarda Alda at MTC (that cast!!!), Embittered Swish's Estrogenesis at Next Wave, and the secret stuff The Rabble are cooking up for next year...

SM: Look at that photo! Audience members Declan and Matt Lutton on stage with Taylor Mac in Chapter III. Dec asked me to use it and there was no other one that I had even considered using this year.  But that wasn't even my favourite Declan–Taylor Mac moment. In my turn on stage in Chapter 1, I spent a lot of time looking at the audience. Declan was one of the first faces I recognised – smiling with no idea that he was being watched. There's something about seeing friends and strangers genuinely happy that is indescribable. 

Otto and Astrid Rot
Best band in the world

Astrid & Otto with Circus Oz team. Photo by Rob Blackburn

Favourite moments in 2017
We were both blown away by Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette. The timing of it is so crucial at the moment with the debate around marriage equality. Come on Australia. Get it together! We also loved Ghost Party and Casting Off (at Sidesault at the Melba) and This is Eden (at fortyfivedownstairs and there's a return season in 2018.)

Looking forward to in 2018
We love the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It’s the best time to be in Melbourne. Can’t wait to see Laura Davis and David Quirk.

SM: I took a friend who had never seen them to their pre-tour performance of Eurosmash and watching her reaction was as wonderful as the show. But my favourite performance, so far, was at Andi's fundraiser. I suspect that I'm also going to totally love their collaboration with Circus Oz in December: The Strange and Spektaculär Lives of Otto & Astrid.

Myf Clark
Reviewer, arts administrator
Co-director, Girls on Film

Myf Clark

Favourite moments in 2017
Three words: Hannah freaking Gadsby. I was lucky enough to see her at MICF this year, thanks to the wonderful Anne-Marie taking me as her plus one, and it didn't take long for the tears to start coming out. I left the show feeling raw, vulnerable, inspired and every other emotion under the sun and I'm so glad more people have had the chance to experience this powerful and poignant show both here and overseas.

Honourable mentions: Seeing Cull by The Very Good Looking Initiative for the third time within a year, witnessing Christos Tsiolkas's words bought to the stage in Little One's Merciless Gods and experiencing The Rabble's one-off performance of Sick Sick at La Mama Theatre.

Honourable overseas mention: Dreamgirls at the Savoy Theatre in London. While Amber Riley, who was meant to play Effie, was sick, Marisha Wallace (her understudy) blew me away and I was bawling my eyes out while she sang "And I Am Telling You". Thank goodness interval was straight after and I could retreat to the private fancy lounge with free ice cream and a giant glass of gin!

Looking forward to in 2018
I'm hoping to get back into reviewing again this year (co-directing a film festival pretty much became my main focus this year, so I didn't see as much theatre as I would've liked). As always, I love seeing what La Mama has on offer each year and their dedication to supporting youth arts rocks my world.

I'm also really excited to see some bold and exciting women take over the main stage theatre companies, including Patricia Cornelius, Jean Tong and Michele Lee, as well as seeing Angus Cerini's The Bleeding Tree.

SM: I'm also hoping that Myf gets back into reviewing next year. We need more young exciting voices writing about theatre. My favourite moment was a few weeks after getting my Girls on Film crowd-sourcing reward bag. I'd been using the bag for shopping and finally found the pink "Feminist" badge that was in it!

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part 2
part 1
2016
2014
2013
2012

Give: Andi's Lyme Light

Andi Snelling is a Melbourne actor. She's great. She's also dealing with chronic illness and needs some help.

If every SM reader gave $1 (or $10), it would help get her closer to her goal. Here's the link to her MyCause page.





Here are some pics (by Sarah Walker) from her not-a-spare-seat-in-the-house fundraiser at the Wesley Ann.

Andi Snelling with Tash York. Photo by Sarah Walker

Astrid & Otto. Photo by Sarah Walker

Alia Vryens & Colin Craig. Photo by Sarah Walker

Dolly Diamond. Photo by Sarah Walker

Andi Snelling with Charlotte Strantzen & raffle prizes. Photo by Sarah Walker

What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 15

All that's left is me. Tomorrow I'll publish my 2016 list of the shows I loved, but it's time for some moments.

This year marked 10 years of me reviewing. I had a month off to breathe.

I only saw 165 (or 20+ more if I count events with multiple performances) shows this year. There were also less reviews but a lot more tweets. And I was teaching arts journalism; meeting and reading young writers who want to write about the arts is as good as it gets. It's been a shitty year for arts writers, but there are plenty of voices who are going to be there and demand that they are heard. And I love teaching.

Selfie. Not giving a single fuck in Ubud in November.

Plus a special thanks to Faster Pussycat Productions for the new logo.

SM's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Having this series welcomed back after a year off was awesome. Getting the emails and messages and talking to people about it IRL reminded me that we are a strong and active community.

Like so many others, I was a bit over it this year: funding cuts, Fairfax cuts, creative and writing tertiary courses being branded "lifestyle choices", far too many people still excluded from having a voice on main stages, boring conservative mainstage programs, and criticism of that dullness being ignored. The arguments I began to have in the 1980s are still happening; it's fucking depressing.

Then in the last couple of weeks I saw:

• Blaque Showgirls at Malthouse. An Indigenous fuck you to every condescending, well-meaning and earnest statement about acceptance and respect. Laughed until I cried.
• Burning Doors by Belarus Free Theatre at Arts Centre Melbourne. Some people are using theatre to save lives and change their world. Some people risk so much more than a couple of dull hours to go to the theatre.
• Hot Brown Honey at Arts Centre Melbourne. Standing screaming ovation for rejecting everything that denies women and especially women of colour a voice. 
• Briefs at Arts Centre Melbourne. The other side of the Hot Brown Honey coin. What this show said about gender and masculinity needs to be bottled and drunk by everyone who tells someone to "man up".

Maybe there's a lot of hope for our main stages in 2017.

And throw in Moira Finucane telling a room of cheering people that "Art does change culture and it does change lives", at a fundraiser where Finucane and Smith raised enough money to create the kind of art that does change lives.

Going to Coranderrk to see Coranderrk and hearing the voices that spoke there 135 years ago.

Being totally relaxed lying in bath in the Embiggen Books window for Between Two Lines at Melbourne Fringe (Anna Nalpantidis with Elizabeth Brennan).

Coranderrk at Coranderrk

Between Two  Lines

iOTA singing "Life on Mars" at the Melbourne Festival Bowie concert.

Watching children cut Cameron Woodhead's hair at Haircuts by Children at Melbourne Festival.

Cameron Woodhead at Haircuts by Kids

Having no idea what was funny at Two Dogs at the Melbourne Festival.

The moment when Joshua Ladgrove decided that Neal Portenza couldn't do his scripted show when there were only nine people in the audience and The Age reviewer was in the front row. 

Watching a stage of naked women dancing in Nic Green's Trilogy at Arts House.

The Harry Potter and the Cursed Child reading that wasn't a reading because it was just a group of friends hanging out and reading out loud. (Thanks Ben McKenzie.)

Getting a bag of "FUCK YOU" candy hearts at Dion in the Melbourne Fringe.

Dion

The best way to read a play

The whole audience breathing in together when the black world became white, and again when the white world dropped to reveal Hamer Hall in Back to Back's Lady Eats Apple at Melbourne Festival.

Dancing in an industrial fridge in a hotel dressing gown as Otto and Astrid sang "Ich Bin Nicht Ein Roboter" at the Finucane and Smith Christmas Cocktail party.

Otto and Astrid

Robbing a bank with Richard Watts and Fleur Kilpatrick at Pop up Playground's Small Time Criminals.

Fleur Kilpatrick, me, Kevin Turner, Richard Watts at Small Time Criminals

Running late to see Pound It, walking down the stairs and wondering who that amazing voice could be coming out of – then seeing Bridget Everett and knowing that I was going to love every second of her show.

Every tweet from Candy Bowers.

Hanging out in Ai Weiwei's cat room for kids at the National Gallery of Victoria at 6.30 am during White Night.

Ai Weiwei's cats at NGV

What SM is looking forward to in 2017: Whatever it brings, everything else that everyone else has said, and The Book of Mormon.

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MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 4: But I'm Poor

"The best things in life are free" is  usually a crock, except during Fringe time.

The Melbourne Fringe program is filled with free performances. You can see some of the best stuff around and not have to spend a cent, unless you want a drink.

Fringe Club

14 nights of FREE entertainment in North Melbourne.

And every night seems rather brilliant including many SM favourites including Sister's Grimm's art-drag armageddon FUGLY!, Die Roten Punkte's Rock und Roll Circus, The Last Tuesday Society, and The Town Bikes Shut up and Dance...3!.

And a loud discussion about Arts Criticism

A Second of Pleasure

I have no idea who this company is, but it's compulsory that a Fringe festival has a piece by writer Neil LaBute. These guys are letting you see if for FREE in the Degraves Subway  (Melbourne's most under rated spot) and it's only 15 minutes.

Sounds like a perfect start to a night at the Fringe and too easy to get to by public transport.

Fringe Hints 1: Brand New

Fringe Hints 2: Shows for Nerds

Fringe Hints 3: Families are the Best Material

Fringe Hints 5: Cartwheel to the Circus

Fringe Hints 6: Musicals

Fringe Hints 7: Well Made Plays

Fringe Hints 8: Puppets and Letters

Fringe Hints 9: Music and Film

Fringe Hints 10: Church or Laundromat

What I loved 2010 (best of...)

Sometimes we all need a break and for the first time in a long time I avoided the theatre for a month.

Already there are shows I wish I'd seen and I didn't make 100 reviews for the year, but there's 2011 to reach that goal.

So before 2011 reminds us how we're all a year older, thank you to everyone who reads Sometimes Melbourne. Google Analytics shows me that there are a lot of you and I'm thrilled every time you drop by or chat to me in real life.

I also want to thank the lovely Jo,  John, Karla and James for their guest reviews during the year and everyone who reviews for AussieTheatre.com.

And thanks to everyone else who reviews, blogs, tweets, comments or joins in wine-fuelled post-show conversations. It's not always easy to put your name to your honest opinion, so I especially love people like Alison, Chris, John, Richard and Cameron, who all see over 100 shows a year and – even when there's bickering and name calling (only sometimes by me) – they all love and support Melbourne's theatre and art.

Sure reviewers certainly don't always agree with each other, and their readers are rarely shy to express their own disagreement, but even when we see the same shows, we all see something different. That's the joy of art. If it were objective and clinical, it wouldn't touch our hearts and we would never care enough to spend such chunks of our lives creating it, sharing it and indulging in as much of it as we can.

So it's time to remember another year of amazing theatre in Melbourne and those shows that made me so glad that I went out instead of staying home to watch Masterchef. 

Outstanding Artists 2010

WRITING
Raimondo Cortese for Intimacy
and 
Declan Greene for Moth
with bonus points, to be shared with Ash Flanders, for Little Mercy and ... Gingo.

DESIGN
Anna Cordingley (set and costumes) and Paul Jackson (lighting) for Sappho... in 9 Fragments

PERFORMANCE
Hannah Norris for My Name is Rachel Corrie 
and
Phil Zachariah for Charles Dickens performs A Christmas Carol

I'm sorry that I didn't write a review for this bloody gorgeous show. After years of taking it to country towns and suburban town halls (with a visit to the Carlton Courthouse and the Famous Speigeltent), Phil Zachiriah and director James Adler made it to the centre of Melbourne and the gold-leaf splendour of The Athenaeum theatre. And this tiny show had standing ovations and teary-eyed cheers each night of its short run. Not only does it remind us what a master storyteller Dickens was (really, if you're a writer and anyone has ever mentioned that you need to think about your story... read this bloke), but it lets Phil be Charles Dickens – the role he was born to play. Dickens staged readings of his stories and, as he's no longer around, he's passed the spirit to Phil.  From Scrooge to Tiny Tim, Phil inhabits every character with the kind of love that makes them as real as our own mad families at Christmas time and it's the kind of holiday tradition that transcends faith-based celebrations to sit as one of the great stories of love and redemption that should be an end-of-year tradition for everyone.

Outstanding Productions 2010 

CABARET

Kunst Rock: Die Roten Punkte – Button Eye Productions and Full Tilt
and
Carnival of Mysteries – Finucane & Smith

Special mention
Miles O'Neil's World Around Us

COMMERCIAL
Boston Marriage – MTC

CIRCUS
Dos or Duo – Stuart Christie and Kane Petersen

MUSICAL
[title of show] –  Magnormos

Special mention
Another Opening, Another Show –  Manilla Street Productions 

and I really enjoyed Mary Poppins

DANCE

Human Interest Story –  Malthouse Theatre, Lucy Guerin and Perth International Arts Festival 

COMEDY

Sammy J and Randy in Ricketts Lane

Special mention

Monster of the Deep 3D –  Claudia O'Doherty

Best of the Best

Bare Witness – La Mama and fortyfivedownstairs 

and

That Face – Red Stitch Actors Theatre

and

Intimacy – Ranters Theatre, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne International Arts Festival

Special mention

Happily Ever After – La Mama

My Favourite of 2010

Tomorrow, in a year – Hotel Pro Forma, Melbourne International Arts Festival

2009 Favourites
2008 Favourites