Review: The Golden Dragon

The Golden Dragon
Melbourne Theatre
22 June
MTC Theatre, Lawler Studio
to 7 July
www.mtc.com.au

Another reason to love theatre in Melbourne: just when you think you've seen your favourite production of the year, a week later there's one that's even better. With The Golden Dragon, the MTC's Lawler Studio Season continues to have the bold and exciting voice that is so often missing from main-stage productions.

The story is based around a Thai Chinese Vietnamese restaurant called The Golden Dragon and the people who live in the flats above. Far from the sitcom is sounds like, it tells its story in seemingly unrelated snippets and hints. German writer Roland Schimmelpfennic (translated by David Tushingham) embraces a Brechtian distance that combines third-person narratives and speaks its pauses and directions. This is magnified as the cast play multiple characters who are further alienated from expectations as men play women, Caucasians play Asians, old play young and Ash Flanders plays a sexually abused cricket.

This style of writing leaves the cast with no option but to find the human essence of the character, the stuff that should never be defined by age, gender, or ethnicity.

And what an ensemble. At first Rodney Afif, Ash Flanders (Sisters Grimm, Negative Energy Inc, I Love You Bro), Jan Friedl, Dana Miltins (The Rabble) and Roger Oakley (Beyond The Neck) seem so out of place as five Asians in a tiny restaurant,  but this lasts for a few moments and it isn't long until Afif's Woman in the Dress, Miltins's Asian Man with a Toothache, Friedel's Grandaughter, Oakley's Stewardess and Flanders's Cricket are as natural and affecting as anyone cast to type.

Director Daniel Clarke (The Event, My Name is Rachel Corrie) lets the distance intrigue his audience by focussing on details, like a broken stiletto, and lets his performers hint about so much more than they show and revel in the visceral, like the taste of blood and Thai coconut soup or a wooden skewer in a tooth (in scenes that put Marathon Man to shame; best to look away of you have tooth issues). This detail is also supported by Andrew Bailey's design that treats with coloured bowls and a carpet of light. So fascinating are these details that when the climax and the secret is revealed, it's a shock to realise how close we've come to this world and to discover how much we care about these people.

The Golden Dragon almost demands a second viewing, even if just to watch the cast without worrying about the story or to dissect the writing to see where it hides its secrets and how it builds its love. This is theatre that makes you work, but it's worth it; it isn't one to miss.

This review was on AussieTheatre.com

I really like Chris Boyd's review.

And Heather's.

Review: Do not go gentle...

Do not go gentle…
fortyfivedownstairs
11 August 2010
fortyfivedownstairs
to 29 August
www.fortyfivedownstairs.com

In 2006, Melbourne playwright Patricia Cornelius won the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award and the RE Ross Trust Playwrights award for Do not go gentle… Finally, we get to see a production (thank you fortyfivedownstairs) and the full theatre, longish run and sold out nights are proving that award-winning plays aren’t real until they are produced and shared with an audience.

Cornelius uses the metaphor of Scott’s Antarctic expedition (yep, the one that didn’t end well) to tell the story of six people dealing with the consequences of aging. They trudge through the frozen world and are in a “home”. Some fight their pasts and disappointments at not having fulfilled a single dream, others find happiness and total acceptance, and some struggle with their own brains and memories that won’t let them understand.

Told with delicious humour, Do not go gentle… takes the rage that Dylan Thomas speaks of in his famous poem and makes it palpable. The experienced cast (Paul English, Jan Friedl, Rhys McConnochie, Terry Norris, Anne Phelan, Pamela Rabe and Malcolm Robertson) prove the value of experience and bring a personal element to their characters. Rabe is especially powerful as a woman facing early onset Alzheimer's and Phelan wins every heart as she loses her inhibitions and finally feels loved.

Marg Horwell’s design, Irine Vela's sound and Richard Vabre’s lighting use the vastness of fortyfivedownstairs beautifully, letting the emptiness and the collapsed roof infuse the world with unspoken emotion and gave the script room to fill in the spaces with humour or poignancy. And, under Julian Meyrick’s clear direction, this is the production that Cornelius must have dreamt about.

But for all it’s goodness, I was left as cold as Scott’s team – and I so wanted to warm to it. Cornelius language brings stunning images to the stage, but I felt that the metaphors were overused and that issues were leading the story rather than the characters. With so much time spent telling us about each character’s old-age problem, there was little space to start loving the person. Instead of dispelling myths about age, they almost confirmed the stereotypes they were trying to liberate from assumptions.

But this show is enthralling and talking to its audience, who will happily rage, rage against any dissenting opinions.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com