Review: The River

The River
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
1 May 2016
Red Stitch
to 28 May
redstitch.net

Ngaire Dawn Fair & Dion Mills. The River. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Award-winning UK writer Jez Butterworth (Mojo, Jerusalem) continues to explore men and masculinity in The River, which has its Australian premiere at Red Stitch.

A man (Dion Mills) has brought his girlfriend (Ngaire Dawn Fair) to his cabin by a lake and convinces her to come fishing on a moonless night.On his return, he frantically tries to call the police because he can't find her, but she comes back and is different woman (Christina O'Neil). The night continues with the women  – who are seen how the man remembers them – alternating in each scene, creating a mystery that questions time and identity but may have its answer in a much baser reality.

Director John Kachyon returns to Red Stitch (his last show was Midsummer in 2012) and again creates an intimacy that is often missing in the small theatre that can leave its audience feeling distanced from the stage. With a realism design by Chloe Greaves, the performance space is moved to the centre of the room with four rows of seating on either side. This creates interrupted views and others so close that it'd be easy to touch the actors.

The intimate realism is continued with contained and honest performances that let the characters, rather than the actors, control the action. There are still moments of the actors being too aware of being watched, but Butterworth's elongated scenes of moving furniture or gutting a fish create space where the acting disappears and the audience feel like invisible voyeurs.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.au.

Mini review: Herding Cats

Herding Cats
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
7 June 2013
Red Stitch
to 7 July
redstitch.net

Herding Cats slipped through my review net. I enjoyed it and will always say "see Red Stitch" no matter what a review says. But I couldn't put my finger on what bugged me about it.

UK writer Lucinda Coxon's very funny and very dark play about isolated 20-somethings taps into the loneliness of living in a society that lets us interact at superficial levels and the dangers of disregarding the superficial as harmless. I loved how she drew us into a confrontation that would never happen and how she took her characters much further and into a much darker place than I imagined it would.

The balance between black humour and social commentary was teetering a bit, but the direction and performances were great, with all finding a personal connection to the story. The design was a bit dull, but didn't distract from the work.

One of the accents annoyed me because I could hear the actor behind the accent and it hadn't settled yet. And I don't always understand the choice to use an accent.

Begin rant.

We do Asian plays without Asian accents and the last show at Red Stitch, About Tommy, was done without accents and still set in Zagreb. I haven't seen a Chekov done with a Russian accent or a Pirandello with a Kingswood-Country-style bloody-wog accent. European opera is sung without accents. Maybe – I mean, of course – it's because they'd sound offensively racist. So why are our theatres so attached to performing UK and American plays with accents? Unless it's intrinsic to the meaning of the text, they distract and put the focus on the actor, rather than the work. (And, no matter how good they are, I suspect they make native speakers cringe. Remember Meryl Streep's Aussie accent in Evil Angels? Few are better than she is, and she still got it wrong.)

End rant.

But this accent would easily settle in a day or two and it didn't take anything away from the work or the character.

I've finally figured out what it was. I could see the actors judging the characters. It's a tiny and very subtle thing, but it's up to the audience to judge the characters. In this style of realistic theatre, if the actors are agreeing with us about their characters, the characters don't live. They have to be seen to be doing what they believe is best. No one wakes up and thinks, "I'm going to make a very stupid choice today".

But my advice is to read the raves about this show or ignore us all, see it anyway and make up your own mind.

Chat: Ngaire Dawn Fair

Herding Cats

Red Stitch

to 6 July

redstitch.net

Red Stitch present the Australian premiere of Herding Cats by UK writer Lucinda Coxon. Opening this week, it’s 2010–11 UK productions won the acclaim of critics and it was shortlisted for writing awards.  It’s described as bleak with shards of black humour and The Guardian said “see it and shudder”.

Ngaire Dawn Fair graduated from the National Theatre in 2008 and made her Red Stitch debut in 2011 in My Romantic History. She has performed in with ITCH productions and Hoy Polloy and been in television shows including Rush, Satisfaction, Neighbours, Killing Time, The Slap and Winners and Losers. She chats  about being in a show that initially made her feel very odd.

What three words best describe Herding Cats? 

Fast, dense, surprising

What do you love most about this show? 

The way it keeps you guessing. I love how unusual it is. Some people will love it, some will hate it and everyone will have different ideas on the how the characters are interconnected.

What is one of your favourite shows you've seen at Red Stitch? 

The Aliens. 

What do you love about being a Red Stitch ensemble member? 

I love the people. There’s a lot of trust; I don’t work well under supervision. There’s a real sense of freedom and equality, everyone just does their jobs and there’s always support if you need it. 

What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced preparing for this show? 

If Justine (my character) was a cartoon character she would be Taz Devil, she’s a whirlwind. She rarely takes a breath, so just maintaining the energy to keep up with her is a challenge.

What was your reaction when you first read this Lucinda Coxon’s script? 

I felt very odd, I had to tell my partner about about it. And in the retelling, I decided it was special. 

Who would you love to see in the audience one night? 

Richard Gere. That would be excellent.

Is there anyone you don't want to see in the audience? 

My dear grandparents, they would be horrified.

When did you know you wanted to be an actor? 

I don’t think I ever really wanted to be an actor but I always loved playing characters. In high school I performed a monologue to my class from Educating Rita and that was the first time I felt an audience engrossed in a story I was telling. That was a special moment. That might have been the beginning.  

Apart from this one, what was the last play you read?

Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp.

Do you believe in any theatre superstitions? What are they? 

No, I say good luck. 

What's some great theatre advice you've used? Who was it from? 

“Be bold, be big hearted.” My grandfather said that, for theatre and life (different grandfather from above, if he was still with us, he would love this show, I think). 

In your wildest dreams, who would you love to work with on a show?

I would like to be in a play with James Dean please.

Do you read your reviews?

I fantasise about not reading them, but I do.

Convince a stubborn north-sider to head over the river to St Kilda. 

The train to Flinders from Windsor only takes 9 flipping minutes!

Tell us about your fellow cast Paul Ashcroft and Dion Mills and director Suzanne Chaundy. 

We have had so much fun working on this show.  The play is much funnier than I anticipated, so rehearsals have been a hoot.  Suzanne is open, honest and clear with a wickedly encouraging laugh. And Paul and Dion are perfectly cast (although they might not like me saying that). It’s just like a weird little family. 

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Good People

Good People
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
5 February 2012
Red Stitch
to 3 March
redstitch.net

Good People was nominated for Best Play at the 2011 Tony's.  It's damn good writing by David Lindsay-Abaire, and the Australian premiere by Red Stitch made me remember why this company is so damn good.

Margie (Andrea Swifte) lives in "Southie", a poor Boston neighbourhood where she's just been fired from her job at a dollar store by the son of an old friend (Rory Kelly). With a disabled adult daughter, a cow of landlady (Olga Makeeva) and no jobs around because of the recession, she's running out of choices, until she meets her teenage boyfriend (Dion Mills), who's now a wealthy doctor and married to a younger woman. He got out of Southie, so maybe he can help.

Lindsay-Abaire's script is full of screaming subtext and as allegiances change, it surprises as it holds onto its secrets. His characters are not nice people. Each struggles with happiness and is faced with wondering if life really could have been different.

Director Kaarin Fairfax grasps the tone perfectly by ensuring that the dark humour hurts. It's too easy to laugh at people who are answer "How's the wine?" with "How the fuck should I know", but the success of this production is that we're allowed to the see her desperation and understand why Margie behaves in ways that may be unthinkable to someone who can afford a theatre ticket and the time to indulge in such a middle-class pastime. There's a moment when a cheap trinket is broken and she yells, "I paid for that" and at once there's nothing funny about breaking something ugly and worthless. Fairfax ensures that the story and characters are more important than the performances, which allows us to be in this world without judgement.

Nonetheless, Good People is peopled by exceptionally good people. Andrea Swifte never lets us feel sorry for Margie, and Jane Montgomery Griffiths as Margie's mutton-as-lamb mate and Alexandria Steffensen as the new young wife bring understanding and complexity to characters that could easily be jokes.


Good People is a terrific start to Red Stitch's 2012 season.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Day One. A Hotel, Evening

Day One. A Hotel, Evening
Red Stitch
20 November 2011
Red Stitch
to 17 December

The only thing that over shadows Joanna Murray-Smith's complex plot and labyrinth structure is her delicious and quotable wit. Back in a small theatre and with Red Stitch's boutique creators, the world premiere of Day One. A Hotel, Evening delivers a world so familiar that it could hurt to watch, if it weren't so damn funny.

There are two 40-something couples (Kate Cole, Dion Mills, Sarah Sutherland and John Adam) who are attempting to "build a postcode" and develop an outer-city suburb that they would never visit. They're wealthy enough to still need to be good looking, bored enough to drift from any middle class notions of fidelity and hurt enough to contemplate revenge. Throw in a promiscuous and pretty 22-year-old actor (Anna Sampson) and her philosophising hit-man husband, and there's a made-in-Melbourne farce that's guaranteed to please – unless it's meant to be a dark comedy.

In farce, we can laugh 'til we cry at hurting characters because we don't love them enough to care (like Basil Fawlty or anyone in The Importance of Being Earnest), but in dark comedy, we see their broken souls and the laughter comes at the cost of feeling their pain (like David Brent or the likes of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolf ). All are as witty as a wit in a wit competition with a superior wit, but the freedom of farce allows the pain and confusion to create bigger and heartier laughs without the cost of empathy.

Murray-Smith's clever jokes, satire and mirror recognition bring easy laughs, made easier by the gorgeous performances, but the tone skates and slips without control. Sutherland's aggressive aggressive (it's easier than passive aggressive) Stella delights in her over-the-topness, then Hayward's Ray makes us want a happy ending, and for all the brilliant banter between Mills and Adam (can "fuck plagiarist" please enter our vernacular), I have no idea what they were hoping we would feel or if we were meant to feel anything other than admiration.

I'll remember "Love is not a guinea pig", but I've already forgotten the names of the characters and, I suspect that I'll quickly forget the ending because I didn't know if I was meant to fall off my chair in crying shock about the cost of love, or laughingly wet myself at its inevitability.

Photo by Jodie Hutcinson

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: The Creditors

The Creditors
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
19 November 2010
Red Stitch
to 18 December

Is love always a competition? Would we really rather that our exes thought we were happy than to actually be happy? August Strindberg had three wives and if his art is any reflection of his life, then there's no wonder that a long quiet monogamous life wasn't for him.

This new version of Strinberg's The Creditors by UK playwright David Grieg was commissioned by the Donmar Warehouse in 2008. The adaption maintains the formality a of Strindberg's language, but ensures that we can't dismiss the behaviour and emotional impact as a reflection of its time. Couples still hide behind decorum to rip shreds off each other and no one fights as dirty as someone trying to ruin love, apart from someone trying to make their lover love them better.

Whilst waiting for his beloved wife Telka (Kat Stewart) to return, crippled artist Adolph (Brett Cousins) takes counsel from the older and wiser Gustav (Dion Mills). Gustav insists that Adolph has been emasculated by his wife's independence and her writing career and can only regain his masculinity through sexual abstinence. It all makes complete sense to the sensitive artist, especially as the gorgeous Telka still flirts with no regard to his manhood. On her return Telka isn't keen on the idea and wonders why her husband wants to know too much about her ex.

In Strindberg's world, relationships are about personal gain and his characters show the side of love that is governed by ego, jealousy and control; where winning is far more important than how they play the game.  We all like to think that we're better than that – but I dare anyone to not recognise a moment or a motivation with regret.

The Creditors is an actors play. Each role is a gift for the cast who relish every syllable. This results in three different performances and as each character is so unaware of the feelings of other people this strengthens their isolation and leaves little room for authentic connection. If we felt too sorry for any of them or believed they could be happy, The Creditors might be too painful to laugh at . 

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The City

The City
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
3 September  2010
Red Stitch Theatre
to 25 September
redstitch.net

Fortunately there's still time to see The City at Red Stitch before the Melbourne Fringe takes all our free nights away.

If you haven't experienced a world created by UK playwright Martin Crimp, Red Stitch defty grasp the threatening tone, the unsettling humour and unnatural naturalistic style that make Crimp one of the most talked about writers, who is either loved or loathed.

Director Adena Jacobs says "I wouldn't dare attempt to explain The City. It is a puzzle not meant to be solved - entirely."

The puzzling mood begins with Dayna Morrissey's design and Danny Pettingill's lighting that brings dimension and scope to the tiny stage making it contradict itself by looking huge and feeling claustraphobic.

Clair (Fiona Macleod) works as a translator and has a comfortable life with office worker husband Christopher (Dion Mills) and her children (we see the daughter in a role shared by Fantine Banulski and Georgie Hawkins).  Living in an apartment over looking their garden is Jenny (Meredith Penman), a nurse whose husband is away at a secret war where he sees people cling to life. Jenny doesn't like hearing the noisy kids during the day and she looks remarkably like a woman Clair described from her morning where she met a famous writer at the train station.

Crimp never lets his world balance.  His not-right world is less obvious than rhinoceroses running around the streets, but just as perfectly confusing.  (Crimp is also known for his translations of Absurd king Ionesco's work, including Rhinoceros.) From the way his characters talk over each other with dialogue that indulges in repetition, or the audience trying to figure out how many kids are locked in the room without a key,  The City continually draws attention to its artifice and makes its audience re-think, re-interpret and re-remember everything they thought they understood.

The game pays off beautifully, but the satisfaction of finishing the puzzle is slightly soured by the realisation that the story was a game that didn't have all the love and self-reflection that we adore in theatre.

However, this production is such a winner, because Jacobs and her actors bring the heart back to the work. Each time I see Macdonald on a stage, she captures the essence of her characters and brings a depth and connection that makes me forget that I'm watching an actor. As Crimp's world reminds us that it's not real, Macdonald brings an emotional grounding to Clair that lets her sit in the centre of the whirlpool. Her scenes with Penman are riveting. They are one with Crimp's world, making every oddness and contradiction seem as natural breathing. There's a subtle difference in Mills performance, which is bloody good, but it doesn't feel part of the world. It's like Christopher, as a character, is in on the solution with Crimp, leaving Mills playing the end from the beginning, which feels more comfortable as the story progresses and his behaviour becomes more extreme.

The City is on for another week and might sell out, so it's best to book rather than waiting to see if you're in the mood.


This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Here is Theatre Notes' terrific discussion about the The City.

Review: That Face

That Face 
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
30 April 2010
Red Stitch

That Face is the show I'm going to be comparing everything else to for the rest of the year.

UK writer Polly Stenham was 19 when she wrote That Face. Within a year it was leaving Royal Court audiences gob smacked and transferred to The Duke of York Theatre in the West End. It's appearing in major company programs all over the world and Melbourne can thank our theatre gods that Red Stitch secured it for us.

With a balance of black comedy and gut-kick emotion, Strenham's world sits on a precipice of uncomfortable familiarity letting its audience fall into its depths and crawl out reeling.

Teenage Mia turns to her brother Henry for help after an incident with Valium and an initiation at her boarding school, but Henry has already dropped out of school to look after their alcoholic mother and only the thought of their wealthy and absent father returning can kick him into action, or the attention of Mia's friend Izzy.

With unfair choices and impossible dilemmas, Strenham's debut work belies her age dramatically and emotionally. Her adults are seen through the eyes of her teenagers, which reveals the raw impact of their behaviour on their children without forcing blame. Mother Martha nods to her Whose Afraid of Virgina Wolf namesake and surpasses Albee's Martha with her out of control controlling behaviour. And Strenham brings a refreshing authenticity to her teenage characters that lets them feel deeply and irrationally without the condescending tone often implied by more "mature" writers.

The Red Stitch creative team capture the truth and heart of this remarkable script. Sarah Giles direction sustains a propelling tension that allows moments of relief without ever letting the underlying questions fade or allowing the extreme characters to control the pace or focus.  Claude Marcos's design feels at one with the direction and uses the small Red Stitch stage to it's full advantage by making the dominating bed a sunken level and adding a carpet wall that brings its own welcome wit.

Tim Potter as Henry was selected for Red Stitch's first Graduate Programme in 2008 and is already one of Melbourne's most astonishing actors. Matt Smith (the new Dr Who) was the original Henry and Potter should soon be as well known and respected. Lauren Henderson (Mia) and Lucy Honigan (Izzy) bring a rare clarity and depth to their teen girls.  Dion Mills (Hugh) gives the strongest performance I've seen from him and Sarah Sutherland's Martha is as complex as the character's addiction and her scenes with Potter are reason enough to see That Face.

Red Stitch quietly put our larger companies to shame. See That Face for an an adrenaline shot to remind you that theatre can and should be this bloody brilliant.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.