Review: And the Birds Fell from the Sky

And the Birds Fell from the Sky

Arts House and Il Pixel Rosso

29 February 2012

North Melbourne Town Hall

to 18 March 2012

Only two people at a time and experience Il Pixel Rosso's And the Birds Fell from the Sky. It's described as an immersive video-goggle performance but it feels like dreaming.

In the newly opened (and wonderful) warehouse space at the back of the North Melbourne Town Hall, you're taken to a small room and given new ears and eyes. With ear buds, black-out goggles with their own screen and a voice telling you what to do, there's no choice but complete trust as you become the lead character in a 20-minute trip with three clowns, who may or may not be on your side.

Il Pixel Rosso (Simon Wilkinson and Silvia Mercuriali) are from the UK and Birds is brought to Melbourne as part of the Arts House program run by the City of Melbourne. Local performers are guiding audiences and must have terrific stories about the reactions of people who can't see or hear them.

The experience is both disconcerting and utterly delightful. Like a dream, it jumps to times and places that are unknown yet familiar, and there's an undercurrent of danger, but you know you're totally safe having a personal guide in the unseen space around you. It's remarkably intimate but almost totally anonymous.

Even with performances every 15 minutes, only two people can see this at a time (and don't worry if you're by yourself), so be among the lucky few to experience this unforgettable world and book.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Tower Suites

Tower Suites 
Arts House and Ros Warby
25 February 2012
North Melbourne Town Hall
to 26 February

The Arts House 2012 season begins with Tower Suites, the new work by Ros Warby, Margie Medlin and Helen Mountfort.

Arts House is the City of Melbourne's contemporary arts initiative, which "values arts and culture that help create a world where people are actively engaged, aware and empowered to participate, politically and culturally, to make positive change". This results in a supported program of local and international art that encourages risk taking and can too easily be missed in Melbourne's never-stop arts calendar. Rule of thumb, if it's in the Arts House program, it's worth giving a go.


Despite awards and critical love, dancer Warby is better known overseas than in her home town of Melbourne. She's been working for 20 years with designer/film maker Medlin and composer/cellist Montfort (best known for her work with the unforgettable Not Drowning Waving and My Friend the Chocolate Cake).

Their interplay between disciplines continues to create work that makes it almost impossible to separate one from the other. For Tower Suites, they're joined by vocalist Ria Soemardjo with the the balanced trio becoming a stable quartet in a piece, possibly, about finding balance and stability in our relationships with each other and our worlds.

It's not open to an easy reading, but its fluidity and delicate humour reflect the trust and subtlety that develops over such long-time creative relationship.  And it's a simple joy to watch a work that it beautiful for and in itself, without reason or reading, and to be part of an experience that comes from the hearts and minds of its creators without compromise or any sense of censorship.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Summertime in the Garden of Eden

Summertime in the Garden of Eden
Sisters Grimm
23 February 2012
a shed in Thornbury
to 3 March
facey page

So, as we raved about the wonderfulness of The Wild Duck, the Sisters Grimm were busy in a Thornbury shed and now all I can say about the Duck is that it's OK, but it ain't no Summertime in the Garden of Eden.

Sisters Declan Greene and Ash Flanders are the sparkle and poppers for independent theatre. Joyously atrocious, their creations are so far from the good taste of nice middle class theatre that David Williamson would implode if he ever came to Sisters show.

Flanders isn't able to perform (who knew a Sisters show could survive without his ball acting), leaving Agent Cleave and Mummy Complex free to prove that a lady should always pair a tiny waist with body hair. They are joined by the perfectly cast Genevieve Giuffre, Peter Paltos and Mzz Erin Tasmania and award-winning playwright Declan proves his lighting design is as fine as his direction.

This Eden is a Thornbury shed – no euphamism; it's a corrugated iron shed in a Thornbury backyard complete with a VB promotional fridge, undies on the line, a hideous 70s chaise lounge, a deflated paddling pool and a couple of chooks (who I love as much as Duck's ducks). The atmosphere is so share-house uni party that I wondered why no one was handing me a bong made from a plastic lemonade bottle and was concerned that I'd worn a Laura Ashley dress with a suitable irony.

In a tale of slavery, secrets and sucking, the once-deep (now almost inner-city) north has been transported to a Gone With the Wind-ish deep south with hooped emerald dresses, bearded belles, breasted daddies, fisting, a homage to Buck Angel (don't Google if you're in an open office) and mammy dolls that have been banned from shops since the 80s.

They start with a liberating fuck-you attitude to gender, and grab every fear about political correctness to reveal the dull, hate and ignorance underlying any attitude that refers to "them" and claims "some of my best friends are ...".

To quote new-Melbourneite Amanda Fucking Palmer, "Stop pretending art is hard". The Sisters created this show in three weeks using what they found in a shed. That ain't hard. But art this good is smart, so smart that it hurts to watch.

The sisters are so loved that Summertime was nearly booked out before it opened, but there might be room. If you want to understand why I rant when theatre is dull: see the Sisters.

A version of this review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: The Seed

The Seed
Melbourne Theatre Company
22 February 2012
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 4 April

As a writer takes the "tell your story" advice literally and writes about being a writer, I wonder how much of the abundant dialogue about stories and half-written stories that are looking for a beginning and have no end is a writer trying to tell people what she does or is it begging for another writer to write about their writing.

Actor and writer Kate Mulvany was most recently seen in Melbourne in Bell Shakspeare's wonderful Julius Caesar, where she was as Cassius and the dramaturg; she knows how to tell a story. The Seed is her semi-auto-biographical work that was developed through the 2004 Phillip Parson's Award and has seen productions at Belvoir and in her home town of Geraldton.

This production is the mainstage direction debut of Hayloft's Anne-Louise Sarks (who was also assistant director for the remarkable The Wild Duck currently at Malthouse) and pops local favourites Tony Martin and Max Gilles on stage for us.

Thirty-year-old Rose (Sara Gleeson; played by Mulvany in previous productions) has arrived in Nottingham, UK, with her father (Martin) to see his childhood home and meet his formidable father (Gilles). With a shared birthday, the balloons, mystery boxes and Guy Fawkes night fireworks, help Rose to burst, unwrap and explode the stories of her IRA-supporting grandfather,  her ten-pound-pom and Vietnam conscript father and her childhood cancer.

It's a deeply personal piece about guilt and betrayal and trying to connect to family through secrets and silence, but it seems to be so personal that there isn't enough distance (writing, direction and performance) to take it from a great family tale to a story that will outlive its characters. The story is gentle and loving, but its black humour and inherent humanity are cocooned in a kind of writing that is loved in a novel, but feels over-written and self-indulgent on a stage.  

For a production having everything going for it, the result is disappointing and it might be best to grab a  new Seed from this crop and give it some time in the loving goodness of a dark compost heap before it sprouts again.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

Review: The Wild Duck

The Wild Duck
Malthouse presents a Belvoir production
21 February 2012
Merlyn Theatre
to 17 March

Melbourne's Hayloft Project gang flew their The Wild Duck back to the Malthouse from Belvoir Street with a swag of 2011 awards and the opening night anticipation was palpable.  Riveting in its intimacy, this is the kind of theatre that will ruin lesser productions for you. So book now and read the reviews later, because tickets are disappearing by the minute.

While Ibsen's 19th century naturalism and tragedy is often rejected for its obvious metaphor and an unnatural coincidental melodrama worthy of a daytime soap, re-workings (and re-readings) continue to reveal the genius of his storytelling. In a society where we demand to know the truth, this story asks if it's better to keep truth hidden and leaves its character knowing that if they could make even tiny decisions again, they wouldn't chose the truth.

Writers Simon Stone and Chris Ryan and dramaturg Eamon Flack have tightened it into three acts, stripped it back to reveal its soul and re-worked it to expose the web-like frailty of its world. Writers may cringe, but this re-writing of stories allows us to see that a writer's original words are not what makes us love them; it's story and the reflection of ourselves that takes a work from the admiration of our minds to the illogical love of our hearts.

Stone also directs. The duck and attic forrest metaphors are incorporated so delicately that all we can see is their beauty, and he builds a tension that is almost as unbearable as the truth that's revealed. There's a stop-breathing second when the audience know more than the characters and can see the inevitable end, yet Stone guides the story so we're still left shocked and hoping that someone will make a choice that fixes everything.

Ralph Myers's fish bowl design is initially disconcerting as we watch the glassed-in void like a huge screen TV. But, not only supplying a fourth wall, this remarkable design distances us from the inevitability of the story so much that we're drawn to its emotion, and the use of microphones brings us even closer with the sound of breath between sobs and the squelch of a kiss that makes you reach for tissues.

And none of this would mean much without an astonishing cast.  John Gaden, Anita Hegh, Ewen Leslie, Eloise Mignon, Anthony Phelan and Toby Schmitz's performances start with their on-stage relationships. They let us feel the unspoken actions between them and grasp the thoughts and feelings behind the words they use to hide their truths from each other. This creates an intimacy that makes you almost want to turn away to give them privacy.

This is the kind of performance that draws you in so deeply that even a live duck doesn't distract – a very cute live duck swimming in a perspex pond.

This is my benchmark production for 2012. If you're not creating work with this much passion, intelligence and understanding, why even bother.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Pia Johnson

Review: The Fallen Tree

The Fallen Tree
La Mama
15 February
La Mama Theatre
to 4 March

I heard about the 2009 Black Saturday fires from Facebook while enjoying coconut pie in green and rainy Ubud, Bali. I couldn't have be more removed from the winds and oven-hot dryness, but was back in Canberra on a similar day in 2003 when I had packed a box of photos, wasn't letting the cats outside and was ringing friends who lived near the suburb of Duffy. Everyone I know survived, but a few evacuated, one had the fire stop at his front door and one family watched their house disappear in minutes. The stories from bush fires strike the spot in our soul that knows fear and integrating these stories into our culture is such a part of our community recovery.

Christine Croyden wrote The Fallen Tree in response to Black Saturday as "an attempt to make sense of something that made no sense". Director Wayne Pearn and designer Alice Bishop use the tiny black space of La Mama to evoke a visceral sense of a destroyed and blackened world.  The green isn't there yet, but the smell of eucalyptus promises that recovery is slow, but inevitable.

It's the story of Hannah (Libby Gott), whose world was gutted before the recent fire, and her neighbour Claire (Bridgette Burton), who needed the searing heat to reveal a truth she'd refused to see about Hannah's step father (Jonathon Dyer).  As the fire becomes metaphor, it becomes a story of trauma and abuse and possible revenge.

What I love about Croyden is that she writes directly from her heart with an undiluted passion and anger; however, this passion can get in the way of her stories. Wanting to explain the whole picture leaves characters speaking so honestly that there's no sense of subtext and, as an audience, we're left without doubt or question.

When I think about great stories, the ones I remember are those that lead to discussions or arguments about what really happened.. More doubt could make the climax of The Fallen Tree much stronger. Doubt about who is right and even about what happened would force the audiences to question, discuss and argue about what each is certain is the truth.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Tribes

Tribes
Melbourne Theatre Company
9 February 2012
Sumner Theatre
to 14 March

Heartfelt and honest performances from a wonderful cast are reason enough to see the MTC's Tribes.

With three extravert, attention-seeking adult children living with their over-achieving parents, there's rarely a quiet moment in this house. Dad (Brian Lipson) is a writer and a never-wrong academic, Mum (Sarah Peirse) is trying to write a detective novel, daughter (Julia Grace) is trying to be an opera singer and son 1 (David Paterson) is working on a thesis. It'd be a bohemian middle class paradise, if it weren't for the constant arguing. The only one who misses out on a daily tiff is son 2, Billy, (Luke Watts), who's deaf.

When Billy meets Sylvia (Alison Bell), his view of his family and his place in our hearing-centric society changes. Sylvia has deaf parents and was brought up with Sign as her first language. She works for a deaf events company and is gradually losing her hearing and her connection to the non-deaf world. As Billy learns Sign and meets a community he'd avoid in an attempt to be normal, he sees how much he has missed and how much his deafness is seen as the centre of his personality.

The dynamic and internal-rules of family life are captured perfectly and it's an awkward joy to watch them argue over the likes of orange juice or if it's Wagner or Terry Pratchett. Lipson and Peirse are especially irresistible as a couple who show their deep love through fighting, and Bell brings the inner hell and dilemma of her character into every moment of Sylvia's smiling politeness.

British writer Nina Raine's script soars when we're caught in the emotions and dilemmas of these complex people, but, as Billy and Sylvia force change, the metaphorical and literal deafness begins to dominate and the author's voice butts in to lecture.

Sign is as complex as any other language, the Deaf community is as hierarchical and inbred as the thearte community and society generally isn't brilliant at dealing with people with different abilities. While loving that often un-spoken issues are the base of a story, but they'd be as clear without the rhetoric and ongoing metaphors, which would let the story and its characters more free to grab us by our hearts.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Jeff Busby

Review: Two by Two

Two by Two
Litte Ones Theatre
11 February 2011
fortyfive downstairs
to 19 February

As it's Saint Valentine's Day week, it's a commercial glut of glittery hearts and factory roses as we're told to face the future as the gods intended: as a wholesome twosome. Blah to that; celebrate instead by going to fortyfive downstairs to see Little One's Theatre's  Two by Two.

It's raining; it's been raining for so long that Carl (Gary Abrahams) and Jack (Paul Blenheim) can see the huge boat from their high-rise city apartment window. Jack's packing supplies and listening to the radio for unlikely evacuation news.  As a painter, Jack's ticket to board is at the end of the queue, but Carl's a doctor – someone with useful post-ammageddon skills. Both know why they're not staring in this episode of The Love Boat,  especially as their boy/girl couple neighbours went days ago. But there's hope when Duckie (Zahra Newman), a patient of Carl's, turns up with a baby and is desperate to board.

Darkly funny and unexpectedly confronting,  Two by Two was developed at NIDA and won the 2011 Malcolm Robertson Prize (for awesome writing).

Although clearly a very personal piece, writer Dan Giovannoni puts story and character first and seasons with the personal, political and metaphorical. There's no waving the garish equality flag (no one's questioning their legal and social coupling); instead, his writing forces us to go beyond the superficial question and ask what we'd really do in the same situation. Would we, as a society and as individuals, let a same-sex couple onto the last boat instead of a mummy, daddy and baby? When it comes down to survival, how many flag-wavers would stop saying "yes"and abandon the rainbow until the storm was over. And who else would be left behind? I'm 40-something, single and a writer; so, I'd be in my swimmers and dog-paddling to meet some of my friends at the floating cocktail bar.

Working with a design that leaves us craving sun and fluffy towels (Emma Kingsbury, set and costume; Nate Edmondson, sound) and a cast who let us love their characters through their faults, director Stephen Nicolazzo (Negative Energy Inc) creates a mood that spatters hope among the inevitable despair. It's a story about making impossible choices, what we have to lose to be safe, and he ensures that we're always asking if there is a better or at least another choice.

Nicolazzo's Little Ones Theatre develops and presents new Australian plays and "work that allows you to love ferociously, abandon yourself and let your heart explode".  Working in Melbourne and Sydney, they premiered the likes of Declan Greene's Home Economics and promise to keep questioning and confronting with the kind of passion and intelligence that wakes up our hearts and makes us thrilled to go the theatre.

This review appeared 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: Yes, Prime Minister

Yes, Prime Minister
Andrew Guild, Simon Bryce and Tim Woods
2 February 2011
Comedy Theatre
to 4 March
www.yesprimeminister.com.au

As a QandA watcher, of course I love the terribly witty and glorious British telly series Yes Minister and Yes PM. And now we have of the new stage version by the series writers Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, with Philip Quast (one of my favourites). Could this be commercial theatre with intelligence and guts?

PM Jim Hacker (Mark Owen-Taylor) is still in office, civil servants Sir Humphrey (Quast) and Bernard (John Lloyd Fillinghan) are still with him and there's a new woman on board to be the voice of compassion and reason if the blokes get a bit too fuddy duddy – and she wears short skirts and must be a genius to have reached such a position at her age.

It's late night and the PM is hoping to sign an oil pipeline deal with Kumranistan (don't want to offend a real country) that'll please Europe and leave Hacker a politcial legend and Sir Humphrey with an even better-paid job. But there's a problem, the Kumranistan Foreign Minister has asked Bernard for a deal-breaker favour.

So it's hi-jinks, one-liners and long clever speeches that get applause (good actoring is learning lines; I feel so bad for not applauding every time I hear a Shakespeare soliloquy), as our heros solve the problem about how to find an underage-looking school girl who's willing to have sex with the Foreign Minister.

There's some loose discussion around age of consent that makes it non-pedo and it's assured that he wants a non-virgin so that he does't ruin her life. However, I'm a prude and think that procuring a child to have sex with an adult isn't OK, even with jokes about horizontal diplomacy and 'debate' about the girl's life already being miserable and by doing this she at least gets paid and all of Europe benefits.

Putting aside the pimping and mild racism (he's a foreigner with different standards), our gang's dilemma is naughtier than that allowed on the box, but written to be inoffensive, leaving its audience without a side to cheer for. Story without hero or real choice; I've done more interesting tax returns. If the Foreign Minister wanted something more benign (maybe a safe illegal drug), we would be free to cheer them on and want a complex and absurd plan to make it work out. Or if he'd asked for something so offensive (I'll leave that up to you) that every member of the audience says, "NO", we'd have an issue to cheer for and there'd be an opportunity for genuine satire.

Perhaps if the production and direction did more than reflect the idea that commercial audiences are happy with a slip on a banana peel and a funny face, we'd have a better view of the script and even feel the dilemma and guilt of realising your own hypocrisy.

If you're thinking of going, might be better to buy the box set of the series and say No to this Prime Minister.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com