Review: Australian Realness

Australian Realness
Malthouse Theatre
22 August 2019
Merlyn Theatre
to 8 September

"Australian Realness" Photo by Pia Johnson

In 2011, someone* told me to see a play in a terrace in Fitzroy during the Melbourne Fringe and I was blown away at the original voices and capture of what it was like to be 20ish woman. One of the creators of I know there's a lot of noise outside but you have to close your eyes was Zoey Dawson. I think I've seen all of her significant plays since then; some (like Conviction and The Unspoken Word is Joe) have blown me away at their original voice and capture of what it's like to a theatre person in Melbourne.

Australian Realness is Dawson's first mainstage show at Malthouse. It begins as the kind of lets-laugh-very-gently-at-our-middle-class-selves-without-being-mean naturalistic comedy. It's set in 1997 and the blue-checked couch, Country Road dress, box of Moet, artichokes and hand-made wind chimes (design by Romanie Harper) are so recognisable that many of the audience will be pricing it in their heads and don't need the references to know it's in North Fitzroy. Goodness, it's so silly-us-in-the-90s-with-our-lovely-houses-reading-that-Tim-Winton-book-about-the-disabled-boy that it could be in that bigger theatre down the road.

But it's not that kind of play.

The family are mum, Linda Cropper; dad, Greg Stone; pregnant daughter, Emily Goddard; coke-head investor son, Andre De Vanny; and daughter's girlfriend from Coburg who is about to lose her job at the wharfs, Chanella Marci. The constant sound (James Paul sound design) of building new apartments next door threatens to ruin family Christmas, but there are secrets that are more dangerous.

It's really not this kind of play.

One secret is that the family money is running out, because no one is buying books or seeing puppet shows any more, and that the shed has been leased to a family of people from the suburbs; doubled by three of the cast. This fag-smoking mum wears a glitter reindeer t-shirt from K-Mart and this dad bonds with wharfy girlfriend because they are the only people who get that the blissful "I can hear the cockies at Merri Creek" silence from the building work stopping next door means that people have lost their jobs.

Bogans V what-Yuppies-grew-into. Australian cities and class. Did people living in huge-houses-near-good-schools know what was happening at the Melbourne wharfs in the late 90s and early 2000s?

When the classes clash, the so-familiar comedy twists into an Aussie sitcom complete with laugh track, talking to the audience and characters that are easy to laugh at because they are not us. And "they" don't go to the theatre, so they won't see it. It's easier to laugh than admit to fear.

And it's not that play either.

It's a what-if terrified imagining that the working class revolution happened. Or a dystopic time-shifting fantasy. Or a blood-soaked urban gothic horror dream. Or a jolt into now with a consensual live-art exhibition and cereal-milk pannacotta Masterchef jokes.

Last week, I was unsure about another play by a young writer on a mainstage because it tried to be too many things at one. This is similar, but is more successful because it changes tones tightly and every genre within the genre would be great by itself. Director Janice Muller ensures that the absurdly outrageous shifts in tone and story are surprising but feel so right in the theatre. The walls can come down in the theatre; we never have to imagine that we are really there. And Goddard remains the same character who was asleep on the couch at the beginning, ensuring there's always someone to consistently care about.

Australian Realness is far more than a safe poke at those who go to the theatre and make fun of bogans. It's a far sharper poke and no one knows the safe word to make it stop.

* Possibly Declan Greene, who has since worked with Zoey as a director and as dramaturg on Australian Realness. UPDATE: Yep, it was Dec.

Review: Cloudstreet

Cloudstreet
Malthouse Theatre
11 May 2019
Merlyn Theatre
19 June
malthousetheatre.com.au

Cloudstreet. Malthouse. Photo by Pia Johnson

The 1991 novel Cloudstreet won WA writer Tim Winton his second of four Miles Franklin Awards. It's a book that's easy to find in op shops as it's studied at high school, has been a telly mini-series and is one of those books that needs to be seen in bookcases.

The 1988 Black Swan and Company B Belvoir stage adaption by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo brought a new generation to the story as it toured Australia and went to London.

Matt Lutton directs the new Malthouse production. He's from Perth and says how reading the book helped him "understand what it meant to be growing up on Perth". Now, he lives in Melbourne and this Cloudstreet is more about its far-reaching themes than a reflection on living in the most isolated capital city in the world.

In the early 1940s, circumstance, luck or God bring the Pickles and the Lamb families to share a sprawling house in suburban Perth: 1 Cloud Street. Each family have challenges, successes and tragedies – and the threat of a serial killer – over the 20 years it takes for their stories to become one. It can be seen all on one night or split into two.

The stage adaption naturally cuts and condenses the novel. The pig doesn’t make the cut, but the third person narration does and is given directly to the characters. Talking about themselves in the third person creates intimacy as the audience become confessor and are allowed to know more than we see. But Lutton's new production brings the story even further into now. The most powerful changes are the introduction of Noongar language – the house is on Noongar land – and the "Black Man" character has become a male and a female storyteller. This helps to honour the story of the women who once lived, and now haunt, the house and, supported by a racially diverse, makes the story less about the people who lived there in the mid-20th century.

Cloudstreet. Malthouse. Photo by Pia Johnson

This is supported by having a small cast playing multiple roles. The bigger picture is evident, but it doesn't help make the story clear. There are times when it's confusing as to who are Pickles, Lambs, storytellers or new characters. Even something as simple as a cast list and synopsis in the program would help.

The actors with one character are much stronger. Natasha Herbert and Bert LaBonte are Dolly and Sam Pickles. Alison Whyte and Greg Stone are Oriel and Lester Lamb. Each bring a compelling understanding of the characters and the added complexity of seeing them with an empathy that can be missed in the book. Herbert lets Dolly be loved far more than she ever allows her herself to be loved; Whyte shows how Oriel hides her broken soul; and LaBonte and Stone each find a different kind of acceptance, determination and lovability in Sam and Lester.

As the story moves into the latter years, it becomes that of Rose Pickles (Brenna Harding), Quick Lamb (Guy Simon) and ultimately Fish Lamb (Benjamin Oakes), the favourite child who nearly drowns and suffers brain damage. Harding also brings a complexity to Rose and lets her make decisions rather than face consequences; Simon captures Quicks constant guilt; and Oakes lets Fish always react with a mix of wonder and patient acceptance that one day he will go back to the water.

Cloudstreet. Malthouse. Photo by Pia Johnson

At first view, Zoe Atkison's design looks like it's embodied the themes and motifs of the story with dark waves and hints of ghosts on its three sides. The stage floor of old thick floorboards and hidden walls that slide in and out, like the lift doors on Star Trek, hint at the old house and its many rooms. But as the rooms are indistinguishable, the design doesn't capture the house as the titular character that wants the families gone as much as it wants them to stay.

While there are some mighty powerful moments with complete black outs and a flooding stage, the story often feels too literal. Its magical realism of rowing through fields, swimming through stars, and Quick Lamb glowing is told far more than is seen. This ultimately makes it feel like a family-saga-cum-soap-opera, which seems to flow against the bigger Dreaming story that’s also being told.

This Cloudstreet isn’t the same as the book, the mini-series or of the first famous production. Its version is very much one seen through a contemporary point of view. This is its strength and part of the reason it doesn’t resonate as strongly as it could. None of which should will stop Cloudstreet lovers from seeing and loving it.

And if you don’t know what the fuss is about, grab a copy from an op shop for a couple of gold coins. For what it's worth, I like the book.

Review: Once

Once
Melbourne Theatre Company &
John Frost, Barbara Broccoli, John N Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo
4 October 2014
Princess Theatre
oncemusical.com.au

Photo by Jeff Busby

In 2006, Once was a tiny indie movie that went on to win an Oscar for best song and became a Broadway musical that won a pile of Tonys, including Best Musical, a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, and some Oliviers. The Australian version of this production opened in Melbourne on Saturday and, as the ovation still echoes through the city, it's on track to being the musical of the year.

If you've never fallen in love with a musical, Once could be the one to charm your pants off.

With a story that starts and leads with characters as real as your friends and family, it ignores music theatre expectations of expensive spectacle, glittery sets and predictable story to create a show made from guts, heart and passion.

Set in Dublin, a "guy" is ready to give up on his music and fix vacuums when a "girl" hears him play and spends the next five days reminding him of the love and feelings that created his music in the first place. Gathering friends and a bank manager with a heart, a band is formed and the recording studio is booked.

Led by Tom Parsons and Madeleine Jones, the cast is a mix of well-known and on-their-way-to-being-well-known faces. Greg Stone and Susan-Ann Walker ground the story as a still-grieving dad and a mum wanting her daughter to be happy, Amy Lehpamer and Brent Hill bring lightness and laughs, and there isn't anyone in the cast who isn't unforgettable.

The Tony-winning design (Bob Crowley, who also designed the Mary Poppins that toured Australia) is an Irish bar decorated with framed mirrors that catch faces and bodies to make any part of the stage its own framable moment. None of the story takes place in a bar, but it's the traditional home of craic and music, and the audience are welcome on stage before the show and during interval. If you've ever wondered what a theatre looks like from up there, this is your chance.

The original music (by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, from the film) is the kind of gentle-sad-indie pop-rock that's best enjoyed with a pint of the black stuff on a date, and is played by the cast of 12 who rarely leave the stage. With no separation between musicians, singers and actors, director John Tiffany (who also won a Tony) ensures that there's no chance for the music, lyrics and action to be separated from the characters and their story (John Carney wrote the film; Enda Walsh wrote the book and won a Tony).

And while the music's endlessly singable and the cast are captivating, it's the story that catches your heart unaware.

Once isn't enough.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Government Inspector

The Government Inspector
Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir
5 March 2014
Merlyn Theatre
to 23 March
malthousetheatre.com.au

Robert Menzies nervously faces the audience dressed as a priest. He explains how the night's performance of The Government Inspector was meant to be The Philadelphia Story but it's not and it's also not The Government Inspector. Confusing? Nah.

When Malthouse and Belvoir announced their 2014 seasons, Simon Stone was going to direct The Philadelphia Story. Woo hoo! Wonderful play re-created by the guy who made Chekov and Ibsen rock and who can do no wrong (and was even forgiven the hiccough with the rights over Death of a Salesman).

Then just as everything was ready to roll, the Philly rights were refused. What! It's out of copyright; it's way more than 70 years since writer Philip Barry wrote it. But it turns out that Ellen Barry was the co-author and retains the copyright. But how the heck can anyone know that if she's not credited as a co-author on the scripts or any writing about the play? This debarcle is all made very clear over the night.

Google, can I see a pdf of The Philadelphia Story play script, please? Ellen Barry is not credited as the author – anywhere!  But it's clear on the imprint page that Ellen S. Barry owns the copyright until 2039 and there's the the usual licensing fees blah blah blah.

Oh copyright blah blah blah is just rich people getting richer off poor artists. Until someone uses your work and doesn't pay you.

If it was a publicity stunt, it's brave and brilliant. If it's a stuff up, the result is insane and brilliant.

So back to Rob trying to explain what happened, but it's easier to just go back three weeks and see what happened when the Philly cast (Rob, Fayssal Bazzi, Mitchell Butel, Gareth Davies, Zarah Newman, Eryn-Jean Norvill and Greg Stone) were backstage and heard the news. Zarah didn't want to take the dress off, Mitchell was on the phone to Play School, Gareth wanted a snack and Simon buggered off.

But of course he didn't, and with Emily Barclay at the ready to write and Ralph Myers ready to create a set to reveal laughs, Simon and his cast went mighty meta and created a play that plays with the absurdity and reality about faking it in the theatre – while riffing off The Government Inspector by Gogol (totally public domain), which is about a stranger being mistaken for someone important and the stranger making the most of his impostering.

The actors are all exaggerated versions of the worst bits of themselves – which shows how wonderful each one of them is – and as genres are thrown into the farce, it gets more farcical and more hilarious by the minute.

Unless you think too hard. It's best not to and to enjoy every in-joke and laugh at ourselves as theatre goers, rather than wondering if the indulgence on the stage is laughing at us.

There's nothing at all wrong with self indulgence. Who doesn't love getting expensive ice cream rather than home brand. But here Simon's bought every flavour of the best stuff, added freshly whipped cream, chocolate sauce, salted caramel praline, edible gold leaf and hand-crafted sugar sprinkles carved in his likeness.

It's so outrageously full on and delicious that it can't be resisted.

But you know that you can only get away with such a creation once.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Pia Johnson

Review: Queen Lear

Queen Lear
MTC
12 July 2012
Sumner Theatre
to 18 August
mtc.com.au

Queen Lear was always going to be a bitch to review.

Men and women are different beasts who adore and loathe each other because we see the world in slightly different ways. Shakespeare's women aren't as richly fascinating as his men, so the gender swap isn't that unusual (Kate Mulvany's recent Cassius comes to mind), but to do so successfully means that every relationship to Lear has to change in subtle ways that together change the story.

It's here that Rachel McDonald, as dramaturg and director, is most successful. Too often the on-stage relationships in Shakespeare are ignored for the sake of original character, but McDonald's Lear is led by the changing status and relationships that are often much clearer that her story.

The relationship between mother Lear (Robyn Nevin) and daughters Reagan (Belinda McClory) and Goneril (Genevieve Picot) starts with the bitter angry resentment that comes from not being loved enough by the person who's meant to love you the most. It's personal and touching and a father could not make Goneril cry in quite the same way. (I haven't mentioned youngest daughter Cordelia because I have no idea what was going on with her and gave up trying to understand.) The most unexpectedly moving relationship is between Kent (Robert Menzies) and Lear as Kent tries to protect and respect his Queen, and Greg Stone brings a surprising depth to his wheelchair-bound Albany by focussing on how his relationship with his wife Goneril changes.

Niklas Pajanti's lighting is exquisite in its creation of the void-like world and its momentary glimpses of characters as they came in and out of the dark. It made the stage look beautiful and intriguing and helps make sense of a design (Tracy Grant Lord) that baffles.

The stage has depth and levels that are beautiful to look at, but offer a confusing world. Maybe the hanging chains bound them to the gods; perhaps Edgar's bike and naked shower were his last hints of freedom – but why was there a giant phallus that grew and shrank and ejaculated pretty fools in white nighties?

McDonald's program notes say, "It is like a science-fiction world ... simultaneously ancient, contemporary and retro." This explains why the costumes were a bit Bride of Frankenstein meets Blake's Seven and Mad Men, but by drawing on so many aesthetics, Lear's world is merely a mish-mash of ideas that distract – often comically – from the telling of the story. It may be a stronger telling with just the costumes and the lighting.

But no matter what, it's Lear we go to see.

Robyn Nevin was always going to be Lear like no other. And she is. The night opens magnificently with a woman with undisputed power. She loves being Queen and the accompanying parties and gorgeous frocks; she never considers that her power will change when she splits the property between the kids. As the two elder daughters learnt how to behave from their mum,  everything is taken from mum and her anger mixes with dementia as she fights to maintain her mask and keep the hurting old lady hidden.  Her fool is placed in her head and appears as versions of her daughters who help create her lucidity in the madness; if only they didn't keep popping out of the giant penis.

For all the oddness of Queen Lear, when Queen Robyn is on stage, the rest makes more sense.

Photo by Jeff Busby

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

NOW, head to TheatreNotes to read what everyone else has to say.

And Alison's reaction to Julian Meyrick's rant about the evils of the blogosphere.

(If the links hit paywall: Google.)

Review: Clybourne Park

Clybourne Park 

Melbourne Theatre Company

22 September

Sumner Theatre

to 26 October

www.mtc.com.au

Let's get it out in the open. Let's just be honest and talk about what Clybourne Park at the MTC is really talking about. It's an issue I feel very strongly about, something I won't change my mind about, and something that makes too many Melbournians behave like selfish knobs. It's about property development.

And it's about racism and about stuck up, white cunts.

As the MTC continues to explore how tough it is to be a middle class property owner, along comes American playwright Bruce Norris, who won the Pulitzer for this little beauty set in a family home in a white Chicago neighbourhood in 1959 and in the same house in 2009 as the now-black neighbourhood is being gentrified.

At first, it feels like the ultimate white-do-gooder, racism-and-sexism are-bad rant. It's like a competition to see who can resist sniggering the longest, and the first laughs are like watching Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with your Indigenous Australian pal while your dad makes monkey noises each time Sidney Poitier appears and yells at your mum to open his beer. We DO NOT laugh at such things.

Of course we don't, and no one coming to see a show by a posh university-run theatre company with the likes of Greg Stone, Alison Whyte and Berte La Bonte in it is going to expect a hooray-for-segregation story.  So there's no need for director (Peter Evans) to hold back and stress the social commentary in act one. My date for the evening compared the first half to The Help and didn't believe that it was meant to be funny.

It is funny. It's nails-down-the-blackboard satire filled with ridiculous people that is written to be laughed at as loudly as possible.

Act two is much freer with the comedy. Perhaps because it's easier to laugh at conversations we've had or heard. When an argument (Norris writes very fine arguments) develops about whether a joke is funny/offensive because it's about a black man, anal sex or rape, the delicious pain is not in the joke but in the squirming embarrassment and huffy indignation as each person the tries to explain, justify or deny the intent of their harmless words.

Norris says that too many people think "that my plays are about exposing hypocritical liberals...and what's missing from that assessment ... is that I'm something of a hypocritical liberal too." Writing, programming, being in or seeing Clybourne Park should never be about tut-tutting at the ignorant and misguided, but about cringing at our own blatant hypocritical attitudes.

The suburb cast (Stone, Whyte, La Bonte and Patrick Brammall, Laura Gordon, Zahra Newman, Luke Ryan) grasp this tone and relish in Norris's exquisite parallel structure. Each present the worst of their character, but finds their wholeness and their humanity, leaving them so real that the tipping point between laughing and crying is so precarious that's it's easy to slide down the other side without noticing.

Don’t wait for permission to laugh in Clybourne Park. Laugh because it’s so wrong and because it’s so true. Laugh because we know better and because we never learn. Laugh to prove you’re not uptight and because you know you really are.

Photo by Jeff Busby

Review: A Golem Story

A Golem Story
Malthouse Theatre
17 June 2011
Merlyn Theatre
www.malthousetheatre.com.au

I don't want a year without a new play by Lally Katz. Until now, her addictive black writing has usually left me in tears of laughter, but she has bounded into new ground with A Golem Story: an exquisite exploration about the place of God and the sacred in our lives.

In Prague in 1580, Ahava (Yael Stone) wakes up in a Synagogue with a disjointed memory of her dead husband and believes his Dybbuk (spirit) has passed into her. The Rabbi  (Katz favourite, Brian Lipson) invites her to stay, but his student Amos (Dan Speilman) fears her, especially when the Rabbi asks her to help make a Golem that can protect the local Jews and stop local children from being killed.  Meanwhile, the Christian guard (Greg Stone) will go to any length to prove that the blood of Christ is enough for him, but his Emperor (Mark Jones) is willing to share an apple with Jew.

Drawing on Jewish culture and with live music led by Cantor Michel Laloum, director Michael Kantor reveals his heart and soul in this work. I've often felt distanced by Kantor's work, where I could see the intent and the creativity, but never felt for the world or the characters. God sits in the heart of this world. Each character sees him/her/it as something different, but each yearns for the deep comfort that sacred beliefs bring. It's not a Jew versus Christian tale, but it uses these two great faiths to let us examine where we'd be if the space filled by what we hold scared became empty.

The outstanding cast clearly draw on their own beliefs to bring the contractions of fear and faith, secular and sacred, and God and human to each character, who are all struggling to make decisions that will bring God closer to their lives.

Designers Anna Cordingley (costume and set) and Paul Jackson (lighting) create this world with a combination of the warm darkness of 16th century Prague and the coldness of clean contemporary light. I've found Cordingley's designs distracting in the past, but her distinct sense of detail and remarkable aesthetic support every element of the script and I can't imagine one without the other. Jackson's use of burning candles and electric light is stunning and his light-only Golem evokes a fascinating contradiction of fear and love. I know I say it every time, but there isn't a lighting designer in this town who comes near to Jackson.

A Golem Story retains Katz's gorgeously unique voice, but it doesn't rely on humour to create emotion. By losing the comfortable buffer of laughs, her characters are left more emotionally vulnerable and we have no choice but to feel with them. This is beautiful, emotive writing and evidence that this wonderful writer is going to be one of our unforgettable playwrights.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Poor Boy

Poor Boy
Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company
27 February 2009
Sumner Theatre

The Melbourne Theatre Company opened the shiny, brand-spanking-new Sumner Theatre this very-hot week with a shiny, new, very hot Australian work.
 
Poor Boy is described as “a play with songs”. Matt Cameron’s script weaves with Tim Finn’s music from over the last 30 years, including songs from Spit Enz and his solo work.
 
This highly original work is not a piece of musical theatre. The songs are not part of the plot and used like an emotional commentary. The story stands by itself without the music and the music tells its own story without the play. As neither is dependent upon the other, they support and strengthen each other to create something surprisingly powerful and unexpectedly moving.
 
‘Poor Boy’ is also the title of a song from Split Enz’s album ‘True Colours’. (Remember, “My love is alien” with lots of dated swishy synth.)This was my favourite album of 1980 (constant playing of “I hope I never” got me though much tween-heartbreak) and still makes it onto my iPod. Ian McDonald’s arrangements make the music feel like it was written for the story, while Cameron’s script captures Finn’s recurring natural motifs and recreates the mood of each song through a completely different story.
 
When Jem turns seven, he claims to be adult Danny who died several years ago. Truths are and secrets are revealed as both families cope with the loss of a son. Cameron places the supernatural and the extraordinary well within the ordinary and recognisable world of the two families, while developing a sense of wonder and a dreamlike detachment. The MTCS’s companion piece Grace deals with similar themes, but Poor Boy is so much more powerful because the playwright never questions the truth of the situation and lets the beliefs of the characters guide the audience to their own conclusions.
 
Cameron’s perfectly crafted writing surprises at each turn and concludes so perfectly that you could never imagine it being anything else. Each character had their own complete and engaging story and balance within the overall plot. His complex imagery of water, digging, biblical heroes and zebras seems ridiculous as I write it, but beautiful on the stage and forms the lyrical base of the script. The dialogue sounds slightly unnatural, but it clearly comes from the unspoken and unconscious thoughts of the characters and conversations that are more fluid would break the haunting atmosphere.
 
The star-power of Guy Pearce as Danny will bring many people to Poor Boy – and rightly so. Pearce on stage is as enigmatic and addictive as he is on film. He puts the character before his performance and makes you completely forget you are watching an actor.
 
The rest of the cast (Greg Stone, Linda Cropper, Matt Dykrunski, Sara Gleeson, Abi Tucker, Sarah Peirse and a rotating cast of three boys) are equally as outstanding, and Simon Phillips’s direction steps back to let the script and music speak for themselves while discretely helping when a little more is needed.
 
The love that the creative team have for this work spills from the stage. There is never a moment when it doesn’t feel like this is something very special and it’s wonderful to sit amongst an audience who can feel and share this sense of pride and wonder.
 
This time last year I was saying how consistently disappointed I was with the MTC. Perhaps the move to the terrific new theatre has released some demons. Poor Boy is setting the bar high for what this company should always producing and I hope I never have to see a lesser production again.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com