Last chance for Theatre Exchange program

Watching something in a different language can be alienating or liberating.

Local company Eagle's Nest Theatre have been collaborating with Theater in der Westentasche from Ulm in Germany and are presenting the company in Melbourne this weekend.

Last night I saw the astonishing Thomas Dentler perform Heinrich Böll's 1963 novel Ansichten eines Clowns (The Clown).

With no more German than counting to 10 (make that 5...), I was hesitant (even with the promise of some translation), but us writers have to let go of our dependence on words.

With a stunning use of the warehouse space at Revolt, it was a performance I won't forget. Without language, the emotional tone of a performance is all there is – and it was more than enough to bring me through his story. Based on the reaction of the German speakers around me, the words were pretty good too.

Without the language, I feel inadequate to comment, but this is what Eagle's Nests James Adler had to say late last night on Facebook.

"Today was one of the greatest experiences of my short creative life – watching Herr Dentler perform tonight was the first timeI have ever imagined wanting to apprentice myself to someone – and I mean in the real old fahion way where you learn the form your master has performed and don't change it – you perfect the form as it was exactly and then one day maybe you add the tinniest detail before passing it on to the next generation."

Sadly, this was a one-night-only chance BUT, tonight they are presenting two world premieres:

Dialog with Buñuel by Federico Garcia Lorca. The text is a homage to Lorca´s friends like  Dalí, Buñuel, Centeno and Alberti.

Chernobyl  by Annette Neulist, a German writer and senator. The reading will include live music by Nela Trifovic.

There's more info here.

A version of this appears on AussieTheatre.com

A good Dickens

Eagles Nest Theatre's production of Charles Dickens performs 'A Christmas Carol' is back at the Atheneum in December.

Here's the new promo vid or go to charlesdickensperforms.com.



2006 review
2010 favourite award

Review: An Actor Prepares

An Actor Prepares: The Songs of Love and Grief
Eagle's Nest Theatre
21 August 2011
Broken Mirror Studio
27 and 28 August

Nela Trifkovic has created a musical adaption of Eagles Nest's An Actor Prepares. Now subtitled The Songs of Love and Grief, the adapted work is an emotional reflection of the original that discovers new depths of sorrow and grief and more moments of lightness and humour.

Nela Trifkovic has performed the piece with its writer James Adler. She also performed it by herself in New York and has now made a musical adaption of the work, which Adler wrote in 2001 as a very personal response to Australia's sending of troupes to Afghanistan. Adler has freely let go of his script to direct this fascinating new version.

With the familiar white costumes and empty stage of previous versions, the new text uses poems by Garcia Lorca and Trifkovic's own challenging, haunting and ultimately beautiful compositions. The actor preparing is now a musician, Trifkovic, who is joined by singer David Howell.  His soft falsetto and gentle stillness and her guttural depths and striking kaberet-style bitter humour contrast so vividly that the unusual combination of voices and styles becomes so much more exciting than any predictable and blandly safe harmony.

With images like "children with guns doing what a child cannot do" to thoughts contemplating "the presence of god in pirate movies", it hypnotically takes the audiences to unexpected emotional extremes which creates diverse individual responses. While the original scripted version is about sharing in the actor/bomber's horror, this one lets the audience find their own personal journey in the music.

Although ultimately reminding us that people use bombs to be heard, The Songs of Love and Grief leaves us images of love that rouse our hearts and a sense of hope that we must be more than a world that's "painting nightmares in our children's dreams".

There are two more performances of An Actor Prepares: The Songs of Love and Grief this weekend. If you liked any of the previous versions, this is something so different that you really should compare, and if you didn't like the previous versions (Samela Harris, I'm talking to you), this may change your mind.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

OFFER: Eagle's Nest Theatre

Local independent company Eagle's Nest Theatre  have three shows running at the Northcote Town Hall.

M.The Scottish Play finishes on the 25 August. There's a review on their Facebook page.

Outlaw by Michael Healy and directed by James Adler is prophetically about a Greens party leader and asks an outlaw is a criminal or a hero. It runs until 3 September.

TruthMachine is a devised piece from emerging theatre company, Grounded Astronaut,  and presented in association with Eagle’s Nest. It runs until 1 September.

TICKET OFFER
Eagle's Nest would like to offer Sometimes Melbourne readers discount tickets to any show for $22 and $15. Just mention Sometimes Melbourne when you reserve  on bookings@eaglesnesttheatre.com or call or SMS 0415 183 824. 

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet
Eagle’s Nest Theatre
16 May 2009
Northcote Town Hall

Eagle’s Nest Theatre give inexperienced and emerging actors the opportunity to get their teeth into some significant works and substantial roles, they bring new experimental works to the stage, and they perform VCE texts so that students get the chance to experience a a real play. Naturally, Shakespeare always gets a run and Romeo and Juliet is the Nest’s current hatchling.

For all that is great about this company, for their support of local artists, their passion and their determination, this Romeo and Juliet falls short.

Shakespeare is still performed today because his stories are some of the best every told. His reflection of human nature, of dilemma and of consequences is what all storytellers strive for. Each day there are experienced professionals destroying Shakespeare, because it’s so hard to get right. Productions with, generally, young and inexperienced casts, deserve a lot of forgiveness but this type of casting only works when there is a clear and shared vision for the production and a very strong director to guide them.

This Verona is Mod V Rockers 60s UK, but the interpretation went no further than costume and some fun-for-the-cast dances. The 60s culture and attitude didn’t permeate any other aspect of the production and I didn’t believe that their different music choices embodied any ancient and bitter rivalries. It may have been more authentic to have a more neutral setting in order to focus on the story.

There were many Direction 101 hints that could tighten the story and create the pace that was missing. Entrances and exits were sloppy and Act 2 lost tension simply because each scene started too early and ended too late. The drama is there, slowing the pace and extending the moments is what loses it.

Performance wise, everyone needed help with where to address soliloquies (the spot on the floor technique didn’t work), and the miming gestures should have been tempered, because we know what thrust, teat and even vessel mean, and “love’s light wings” – one of the most beautiful phrases ever written – never deserves little arm flaps.

I saw this show on what may have been their worst performance, as there was a very loud drag show next door. Every soul on that stage deserves a big hug and an even bigger drink for just getting though. Juliet especially, for, as she poisoned herself, we heard a queen singing (I swear this is true), “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby”. However, Romeo and Juliet is such a story that nothing should be able to distract us and this production needs to stop trying to be so original in order to concentrate on understanding and telling the story.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Constance Yorkshire

Constance Yorkshire
Eagle’s Nest Theatre
23 May 2009
Northcote Town Hall

In a week where even I actively watched an A Current Affair interview (thank you Tracy Grimshaw), a work like Constance Yorkshire is a curious reflection of our obsession with watching crims, freaks and bogans and hearing their side of the story.

Local playwright Graham Downey has set his story in an 1890 Melbourne theatre, where entrepreneur Mr George Risley (Phil Roberts) is presenting an evening in conversation with Miss Constance Yorkshire (Jess Hackett), recently acquitted of murdering the Lamb family. As interviewer and narrator, Riseley mixes questions with exposition to tell Miss Yorkshire’s tale. With her (recently deceased) father’s unstable four-storey house, her dad’s quirky inventions, a nail in Mr Lamb’s head and an unescapable fire, there’s plenty to wonder about.

The whodunit mystery of the evening is played well with an Agatha Christie deduction style of clues. However, it’s clear that Risley knows the truth and is going to tell us, which takes away one of the cornerstones of great mystery story telling. The best mysteries are a three-way race between the audience (reader/viewer), the protagonist and the writer to reveal the truth. A red herring, a credible alternative theory or reasonable doubt about Risley might help to keep the narrative moving forward and the audience on the edge of their seats.

However, the heart of this story is the parallel mystery of why Risley is presenting Miss Yorkshire. Is he doing it to prove the court wrong, expose the true culprit or cash in on Yorkshire’s celebrity? As he knows the truth of the deaths, we wonder if it’s really about Charlotte, and, as she is consistently indignant, argumentative and stubborn (she reminds me of Shane Paxton), we really have to wonder why.

Unfortunately, this part of the story isn’t clear until the end and, by then, it feels a bit too deus ex machina-convenient. With a script that is so dialogue and exposition heavy, the characters need to tell and show us their story – not expecting us to listen to all of the words. So, if Risley’s motives are in then text, it’s too easy to miss them, which leaves the performers and directors (Roberts co-directed the work with Shannon Woollard) with a world of subtext to play with. There was a noticeable and well-directed change of status between Risley and Yorkshire that helped to tweak our curiosity, but not enough of the subtle status and power shifts to make us really begin to question what was going on.

The relationship between George and Charlotte needs to be the core of the story, leaving the mystery as the subplot and comic diversion of the evening. Roberts is a compelling performer, but sometimes needed to be a detached narrator by stepping back and letting the story belong to Charlotte, especially early in the work when the audience are deciding if they care about her and want to discover the truth. Hackett’s Yorkshire had some lovely moments, but needed more light and shade. Her sustained anger wasn’t credible, as it didn’t show us why she decided to be there in the first place, if she cared what the audience believed or what she thought about the man letting her tell her tale. And both performers needed to react to the each other. Too often, it felt like they were listening for their cue, rather than letting the characters listen to what the other was saying and reacting to what they heard.

These issues usually iron our over time, but short seasons and short rehearsals too often leave terrific shows faltering before they take off. I hope that Eagle’s Nest Theatre are able to let Constance Yorkshire have another run, as it could soar.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

An Actor Prepares

An Actor Prepares

Eagles Nest Theatre

La Mama Theatre

18 October 2007

Review by Christina Cass

Walking into and through the set of An Actor Prepares by James Adler, is a trip through time.  With the ferryman (in this case ferrywoman) musically guiding the audience’s urban raft.  Where you are, you don’t exactly know, but the set by Magdalena Romanuik is heartbreakingly simple and heavy with memory.  Burning sage scenting the air immediately transports the viewer to a mystical time:  hanging Druidic runes; shorn tree stumps; and a white-robed and bearded Mr. Adler all summon up a mystical, religious experience.  I couldn’t help but feel witchcraft – in all its earth-honesty – hanging in the air.  What would Jesus (whom Mr. Adler bears a striking resemblance to) be doing in the middle of a wiccan warren?  Where ancient primal music composed and performed by Nela Trifkovic resonates through the space.

We soon understand the subtitle, “When Does Peace Mean War?” of this new Eagle’s Nest Theatre production at La Mama, has on one level much to do with a struggle against the terrorism of creativity but I came out with more of a, ‘Heck, when does anything mean anything?’  feeling. The imagery and essence of this play are stunning:  simple and heartbreaking. They challenge the audience to trust their senses. Do I see floating runes or shrapnel hanging in the air? Is it a trumpet, a musical instrument of joy (and reveille) or a carefully deconstructed machine gun?  A cradle or a deathbed?  These images beg timeless questions of who are we if we are not what we seem.  None of us are.

That said, the script makes much more sense than in a stand alone context.  It is intentionally fractured, weaving tales through time and, as a work in progress, the performances by Ms. Trifkovic and Mr. Adler are courageous.

They really have something very special, very personal and still accessible here and I hope they take this further because I do think that very personal work needs an outside eye to help take the next step toward a mature piece of theatre.

It’ll be hard to find a director as sensitive and absorbing as Ms. Trifkovic and trust him or her with this piece, but they must to get to the next level.  Once relieved of wearing two hats, I am quite sure that the talent in the room will leap up and continue to punt through these deep waters of the story without fear.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com

Hamlet

Hamlet
Eagle’s Nest Theatre
20 May 2007
Northcote Town Hall

There is no denying that Hamlet is a fabulous story. Eagle's Nest Theatre’s version has been pared down to a tale about a royal family whose shenanigans rival the tabloid stories of our contemporary royals.

Eagle’s Next Theatre is one of Melbourne’s many independent companies. This one was formed with the goal to produce professional independent theatre and ensure schools and communities beyond the central city area have access to the work. Their program of VCE scripts, classics and original works has created a broad and appreciative audience.

This Hamlet concentrates on the family. Fortinbras has been let go, which has created a slightly different, yet beautifully strong ending. There are some original character interpretations. Bruce Woolley's Claudius is forever drunk, and Phil Zachariah’s Polonius is comical and dithery (oh dear, Ophelia/ Oh, Dear Ophelia).

James Adler knows Hamlet. His regular performances of the Danish prince have given him the insight that allows for multiple interpretations. This time his Hamlet is very controlled and constrained. There is method to his feigned madness and Hamlet can clearly see the consequences of his actions. We so wish he could make his world right. I would, however, have liked to see more of Hamlet’s internal struggle made external. Soliloquies were written to show our internal thoughts. These are the thoughts that aren’t constrained by relationships and people watching. They don’t need to be held so close.

The less experienced members of the cast struggled with the language and in consistency. This is the nature of a company that offers opportunity to all performers. It is the director’s decision about how to temper and present performers of vastly different level skill levels.

The direction was uneven. The story was told well, but seemed to have been directed scene by scene, rather than as a whole. Act Two needed much more pace and tension and the staging needed more attention to detail (Claudius could have stopped Gertrude drinking because he was so close to her).

Hamlet is about status and power; within the country, the court and the family. When the design uses velvet, crowns and pewter goblets – it is acknowledging the role of royalty and the hierarchy at play. A travelling player would not touch a prince; a daughter would not sit when her king and father stood. Using character status as an acting/rehearsal technique may have significantly helped the lesser experienced performers. We needed to see the relationships between the characters and how their status and power motivated their actions.

The relationships between some characters were also unclear. I knew Gertrude was fond of Ophelia, but had no idea if she even liked Hamlet, or if she enjoyed being regularly groped by Claudius. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seemed to have a different motivation in each scene. Were they there because their best mate Hamlet needed them, because Claudius would kill them if they weren’t there, or because Gertrude had offered them reward? This is all in the text, but was not clear on the stage.

This isn’t a perfect Hamlet, but it tells the story with intelligence and clarity. As such, it is an ideal introduction to anyone who doesn’t know the tale and twists in some original character and plot interpretations for those who can quote along with the cast.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Charles Dickens performs A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens performs A Christmas Carol
Eagles Nest Theatre
December 2006
Carlton Courthouse

‘Twas the week before Christmas and all through The Courthouse
There was room for no more, not even a mouse.
The people had gathered for a great Christmas tale
Zachariah’s Dickens proved too good to fail.

The Eagle’s Nest Theatre’s production of Charles Dickens performs A Christmas Carol should be on everyone’s holiday list next year.
I admit I was hesitant to see a solo reading of a clichéd tale. However I stand totally corrected and could not have been more wrong. The night was as perfect as Mrs Cratchett’s pudding.

Over 150 years ago Charles Dickens gave solo readings of his own works. Accounts of the time attest that they were theatrical events with Dickens performing every role to perfection. Under the strong direction of James Adler, Phil Zachariah has channelled the spirit of Dickens and created one of the most engaging, powerful and suspenseful nights of theatrical story telling.

The audience were not the usual La Mama/Courthouse crowd. These were people who wanted to see this play and this story. When I arrived, there were already disappointed people being turned away. Those who made it in were more used to the comfort of The Arts Centre and quite disturbed by the crowded and hot Courthouse. However within five minutes of starting, every member of the audience was transfixed.

This was due to the outstanding performance of Zachariah, and the outstanding writing of Dickens. There is a reason this is one of the most re-told tales. The original story is filled with surprises and complexities that are missing from most modern versions. It’s so much more than a parable about the value of people over money. Scrooge is forced to see his on life from an outside perspective. This is, of course, an irresistible yet terrifying prospect. Dickens tells us that own lives and experiences contain the answer to all our questions– if we look in the right places.

Hopefully this crowd may be brave enough to return to the Courthouse to see more independent productions, and hopefully, the venues that this crowd usually visit will grab this unforgettable production for next December and allow it to be seen by many more people.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com.