Last chance: Green Screen and Purgatorio

What really must end this weekend is my time with a gastrointestinal virus. I'm excited that I can now get out of bed, but am leaving myself in quarantine until there is no sign of it. It doesn't needs sharing and I'm on my way to becoming an obsessive hand washer.

As I don't write well in the bathroom, some great shows missed out on reviews and they finish this weekend. There's time to see them both. Unless you are sick. Then stay home.

NEON
Green Screen
Sans Hotel
Lawler
finishes Sunday
mtc.com.au

Nicola Gunn's Green Screen ends the second NEON Festival of Independent Theatre. I can't compare her theatre to anything because Gunn creates work that is like her unconscious explaining her soul.

The more of her work that I see, the less I understand it. And I never want to. I'm scared that if I begin to see how her creations work,  I'll begin to see the trick. Meanwhile, I have no idea how something that begins with a line of toy animals, hummus pasta, a green monster blow-up mattress and gold body paint can say so much and be so personal to someone who has never eaten hummus pasta.

And she's joined by Nat Cursio, Tom Davies, Jonno Katz and Kerith Manderson-Galvin who meet, talk and sing in a community centre that tries to calm with beach-scene wall paper. They are a complete joy.

Green Screen is bitingly cynical but deeply loving and, in a breath, the final moments bring the work's disparate events together to let us know what it's all been about. It's beautiful.


Purgatorio
5Pound and Attic Erratic
The Owl and the Pussycat
finishes Saturday
facebook.com

Well, you might not be able to see this because it's sold out. But it can't hurt to call and check.

Melbourne audiences generally like to let a show run for a bit until they see it. This often means that people miss out on great shows by being cautious and waiting to hear if it's worth seeing. Lesson: go early and be among the people making the word of mouth.

Purgatorio is by Chilien-American playwright Ariel Dorfman, who's best known for Death and the Maiden. Here Purgatory is the soulless empty between Heaven and Hell where a Man interrogates a Woman over the murder of her children, and a Woman interrogates a Man about his guilt over his wife's death. It doesn't take long to recognise the Greek myth the stories are from, but it's far more than a reflection on Medea and Jason as Dorfman continues to explore what it takes for humans to do the unthinkable and if there's hope for redemption in a world set on revenge.

Director Celeste Cody finds the endless layers in the script without giving away its secrets, and she uses the tiny space of the Owl and the Pussycat to create a dark and empty world that's neither hellish nor real. And by placing the audience on either side of the room, each side naturally align themselves with Man or Woman.

But Freya Pragt and Jason Cavanagh ensure that the audience's allegiances are never firm. Both performances are riveting, but it's how they work together that makes this script so frighteningly real.

Review: The Judas Kiss

The Judas Kiss
Mockingbird Theatre
15 March 2014
Theatre Works
to 22 March
theatreworks.org.au

Mockingbird Theatre continue to give us memorable text-on-stage productions of the plays that we wish we'd seen the original productions of, and give performers the chance to play roles that they've dreamed of. At Theatre Works this week, they're giving us The Judas Kiss: David Hare's imagining of the behind-doors conversations in a hotel before Wilde's arrest for gross indecency and in Naples after his release from gaol and not long before his impoverised death.

The first production, 1998, Sir David (The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, The Hours) described as "deeply unsatisfactory" in a 2013 interview in The Guardian. He said it went "off kilter " as he "wanted to smash every cliche about Wilde" and by casting "Ireland's most famous heterosexual as Wilde, we were possibly trying to sail away from stereotypes a little too far". Liam Neeson was Wilde and Tom Hollander was his lover and downfall Bosie, Sir Alfred Douglas.  No matter how off kilter, I wish I'd seen it.

In 1999, Belvoir toured Neil Armfield's production in Australia (with Billie Brown as Wilde) and Armfield went to London in 2012 to direct a much more successful UK version (with Rupert Everett as Wilde).

Mockingbird's founder, Chris Baldock, is our Wilde. At first, I wanted him to stop being an idealised impression of witty Wilde – to be more off kilter – but as Wilde let his public persona drop behind the closed hotel doors, Baldock's performance developed into something far more complex and fascinating. It's clearly a role he's always wanted to play and his years of preparation are felt on the stage.

The rest of the cast (Nigel Langley, Oliver Coleman, Zak Zavod, Laurent Murtagh, Soren Jensen and Nores Cerfeda) all bring a personal understanding and empathy to their characters, which makes for heartfelt – if, at times, uneven – performances. And all occasionally stumble over the naturalism problem of how to stand and listen or disappear into the background.

Also not helping is a set that looks like a suburban amateur company's period-drama set used since the 1950s and finally left out for hard rubbish. Resources, demands of the text and the spacious Theatre Works stage are all understood, but it's a distraction and undermines the quality of the rest of the production.

Still, director Jason Cavanagh, with assistant director Celeste Cody, bring a world that's true to the (long) text while creating a curiosity about Wilde and a wish that he'd made different choices. I'd like to have seen more of the love between Wilde and Bosie as, in this play, it's this love (destructive, obsessive or unseen by anyone but the two of them) that governs all of Wilde's decisions and it would help to support his choices rather than wanting him to slap Bosie and run off with Robbie. And given the play opens with a nude and lusty boy-girl sex scene, there's an expectation that sex is going to play a much bigger part in the story.

The Judas Kiss has its off kilter moments, but they don't knock it too far off balance and, as the chances of seeing this play in the near future are slim, it's well worth seeing.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

What Melbourne loved in 2103, part 9

After a day off to talk about NEON, here's Keith Gow talking more about NEON. And Jason Cavanagh talks about how a moment of crisis got him acting again, and Kathryn Goldie talks about taking the plunge into unemployment.

Jason Cavanagh

artistic director, 5pound theatre

JASON: Half way through acting in 5pounds of Repertory Theatre last year, I had a bit of a crisis.  I remember sitting outside the theatre, literally with my head in my hands thinking, "I've lost it, I can't act anymore". But that program moves so fast you just don't have time for that sort of nonsense so I just had to get on with it. By the end of the five weeks, I'd resolved that I needed to focus more of my attention on my acting.  I couldn't let it go.

One thing lead to another and I ended up in a Mockingbird Theatre show, as the peodophilic rapist Uncle Peck in How I Learned to Drive.

It was such a juicy character and such a rewarding experience. I really had a great time playing that role (as bad as that sounds). It felt nice to be doing what I felt to be a good job, it was warmly received which makes me happier than I like to admit, it was amazing to be able to tread the boards without having to also produce the show and, just generally finding the spark again was… a great relief…. Cause what else would I do?

And I beating you by one show in the fringe-a-thon ;)

SM: He had more Fringe stamina than I did! To make great theatre, you have to see a lot of theatre. Jason sees a lot of theatre.

I loved his performance in How I Learned to Drive, but my moment with him was his performance in The Joy Of Text (Robert Reid's play at La Mama earlier in the year). I thought I'd written about it, but I didn't. It was around house move time; I'm impressed that I even remember seeing it.

There's more with Jason at issimomag.com.

Kathryn Goldie
writer, director

KATHRYN: 2013 saw me become unemployed and, although that was my own choice, it meant I wasn’t going to be buying a lot of theatre tickets. But I did volunteer at Fringe because although I didn’t have a whole lot of cash but had a whole lot of time—and a volunteer pass means free tickets to Fringe shows. While I don’t believe in scamming freebies and/or ripping off fellow artists, getting some free tickets was fantastic because it allowed me to see a range of performances I wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise, and it added another audience member to shows that weren’t sold out. (For the record, I did buy a few tickets as well.)

My excellent Fringe viewing consisted of Edge! (which deservedly won Best Comedy), Laika and Wills, Songs for Europe, Kids Killing Kids, A Chekhov Triptych, and some others I won’t mention. Festivals are always a mixed bag, which is part of the fun.

I’m a fan of well-written, well-acted narratives that make me feel something, and the plays I mentioned did just that, each in under an hour. Each had something to say and said it—no bells and whistles, no self-reflexive “Look at what I’m doing here! Get it? Aren’t I clever?” posturing. Some surprised me; all entertained me.

Of course, volunteering at Fringe is an experience in itself, by turns performative, meditative and simply random: explaining to visiting Perth teenagers that the questions on the survey are about Melbourne Fringe, not Perth Fringe; guessing which of the hungover Sunday morning Chapel Street crowd would fall over when playing the immersive virtual reality game; predicting which fellow volunteers would pronounce “homage” with a fake French accent or an ocker twang; reading about Lithuania’s history while waiting for latecomers; and finishing an admin shift early to find myself stacking cartons of beer for the vollies party.

In a year where I didn’t see much theatre, Melbourne Fringe was an accessible, entertaining and thought-provoking godsend.

A second highlight would be Baggage Production’s Madwomen Monologues, now in its third year. I’ve been lucky enough to have two of my monologues performed by these folk, and their shows are going from strength to strength, with a pool of terrific actors and directors.

SM: I haven't seen or read anything of Kathryn's this year. That's not good. But I was so impressed by her giving up her job to make the time to write. Sometimes you have to take that plunge if it's what you really want to do. You can't be a full-time writer if you have a full-time job.

Keith Gow
playwright, blogger

KEITH: After spending most of the first half of this year being disappointed or frustrated with the theatre I was seeing, both on the main stages and from independent companies, the turning point came almost exactly at the half-way point of the year - coinciding with my trip to Sydney to see Angels in America (Belvoir) and The Maids (STC).

In Melbourne, though, the turning point was an entire festival: MTC's Neon Festival. Five shows from Melbourne's most exciting indy companies on the Lawler stage, sold out for ten weeks, bringing in audiences – many of whom had never stepped foot in the Southbank Theatre complex before.

And it wasn't just the shows,  it was the supporting discussion panels, the Theatre Network Victoria meet-and-greet, the Writers' and Directors' workshops. It was the Neon Bar inside Script for a discounted drink and a natter with other theatre-goers, theatre-makers and the creatives whose shows we'd just seen.

Many of the great theatre experiences I had this year embraced the community aspect of going into the theatre together. Whether it be the epic marathons of Angels in America or The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma's Life and Times - or a show like The Rabble's Room of Regret, we were drawn together to have a collective experience while also having our own intimate reactions in that same space.

SM: I first met Keith on Twitter and finally in real life and we were part of the Life and Times crowd.  I was also nearly at his Dr Who play (Who are you supposed to be?) play reading earlier in the year, but the people I was with thought it started two hours before it did. They waited, I went home. But writing Dr Who plays is cool.

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Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

2012 part 1, with links to the rest

Mini review: Noises Off

5 Pounds of Repertory
Noises Off
5 Pound Theatre
14 November
The Owl and the Pussycat
to 16 November
5pound.com.au

It should take weeks of dedicated rehearsal to nail the tightly choreographed farce of Noises Off, the 1982 play by Michael Frayn that ran for years in the UK. For the first show of the second 5 Pounds of Repertory season, the company had a week, as they do for every play in this season.

And they nailed it.

Noises Off is a who's-that-at-the-door farce about a knickers-down farce that's seen from its frighteningly-real dress rehearsal, then from backstage on a country tour and is finally presented to the audience on its closing night.

It's fucking hilarious and how they did it in a week is astounding. As last year's first five-plays-in-five-weeks experiment proved, the stress of such short rehearsal periods forces creativity and solutions that may never have come up were there time to ponder.

Director Jason Cavanagh has also turned this very British piece into something very local and very about making theatre in Melbourne. Sometimes, there's nothing wrong with a joke for the in crowd. He also jokes about the tour to Nunawading, but the Nunawading audiences are large and appreciative and would go mad for this play.

As is everyone who's seen it. There wasn't a spare seat tonight and there are only a few left for tomorrow and Saturday night. So book for the Saturday matinee now or miss out.

5 Pounds of Rep starts this week

5 Pounds of Rep
Owl and the Pussycat
to 14 December
5pound.com.au

Last year, 5 Pound Theatre transformed themselves into Australia's only working repertory theatre for 5 weeks and presented 5 shows in 5 weeks with 5 actors and 5 directors. It was mad and exciting and produced some incredible theatre in a very short time.

And they're doing it again this year with actors Tim Wotherspoon, Freya Pragt, Brendan Hawke, Lelda Kapsis and Keith Brockett.

Week 1:  13–16 November. Noises Off by Michael Frayne, directed by Jason Cavanagh

Week 2: 20–23  November 20-23rd. Because of Reasons by Robert Reid, directed by Petra Kalive

Week 3:  26–31November. Gilbert and Sullivan Cabaret Review, directed by Fiona Scott-Norman with musical director Karin Muizneiks

Week 4: 3–7 December. The Tempest by William Shakespeare, directed by Daniel Lammin

Week 5: 11–14 December. Sex Diary of an Infidel by Michael Gurr, directed by Marcel Dorney

You can book tickets at 5pound.com.au

Mini review: Fewer Emergencies

Fewer Emergencies
Elbow Room
23 August 2013
The Owl and the Pussycat
to 31 August
owlandcat.com.au

Elbow Room are a company that I've somehow managed to miss, until now. And hopefully I won't miss them any more.

Fewer Emergencies is three 20-minute plays that are told in a disconcerting mix of third person narrative (she said) told by the characters themselves, who are in turn being questioned by others. The script lists the characters as numbers and it takes time and re-reads to discover what it's trying to do and say. It also leaves all interpretation and sense of narrative (or not) up to those who perform it; no wonder the company are declaring it "Elbow Room vs Martin Crimp".

Crimp's plays tend to feel like a confrontation with the writer, and as an audience there's rarely a moment to sit back and enjoy the story, which leaves it up to the performers to find the compassion and empathy that draws an audience into the world.

But this work not a fight, it's more a challenge to see what they can create from this mass of words in the tiny box theatre at The Owl and the Pussycat.

And what they've done is make an hour of intimately intense theatre that's so sharp you should check for bleeding when you leave. And if you feel lost looking for the story, don't worry because you'll walk out remembering what you need to; it's one of those scripts where it's best to put your trust in the performers (Dean Cartmel, Emily Tomlins, Edwina Samuels and the company's artistic director Marcel Dorne) and enjoy the experience. And if you're lucky, someone might even hold your hand.

Their design is the wooden boxes supplied by the venue and a red cloth, but it's the lighting (by the company and Jason Cavanagh) that creates the atmosphere and makes the room feel like we're trapped in a world that's out of our control. It's also some of the most evocative (read: best) lighting I've seen in a small venue.

Fewer Emergencies is on for another week. If you love Martin Crimp, you've probably already gone. But, love Crimp or not, see it to be reminded that the best resource to make great theatre is terrific people

Review: Ubu Roi

Ubu Roi
5 Pound Theatre
18 July 2013
The Owl and the Pussycat
to 27 July
owlandcat.com.au

Ubu Roi is a mess. A filthy, mud-spluttered, cover-me-with-plastic glorious mess.

Founded in late 2010, the 5Pound theatre ensemble are making their mark in Melbourne. Based at The Owl and the Pussycat in Richmond – once a single front workers cottage – they present plays that they love, which have so far ranged from The Blue Room to Pygmalion.

Director and Co-Artistic Director of 5 Pound, Jason Cavanagh, loves Absurdism.  He directed Ionesco's Rhinoceros last year and was thrilled to get into the 1896 script by Alfred Jarry that's said to be the inspiration of the mid-20th century style and had it's French audience rioting at its first performance.

Papa Ubu (let's call him Kevin) wants to be King. He's a greedy man whose childish behaviour destroys everything he tries to control in a world with snot and poo jokes that would put a poo-obsessed four-year-old to shame.

So Cavanagh fills the stage with reeking mud and with Mattea Davies's faded grotesque glory design, Tim Wotherspoon's dripping sound and Doug Montgomery's lighting the space is so viserally vile that I was glad I'd worn wellies. Mud is flung as underwear and excess body hair turn to brown and the front row pull their plastic covers over their to protect themselves from political shit fight that's played out before them.

Ubu Roi is a text that's read (or read about) more than it's performed, but seeing it is much more fun than reading it. Cavanagh grasps the wholeness of the story (it's very loosely based on the Scottish play), but the ending feels empty. And, while he lets his delightfully hilarious cast (Nicholas Dubberley, Amy Jones, Susannah Frith, Andi Snelling, Colin Craig and Antony Okill) revel in the mucky humour, there are times when they seem to be enjoying it a bit too much. The moments when they step away from charater and the ridiculous world to pull the plastic safety curtain across are perfect, but they need to decide if the world they are slipping and sliding in is real and dangerous or a playground for buffoonery.

As the mire gets stinkier by the day, Ubu Roi is going to fester until its grossness is squirmingly irresistible. So cover up and watch safely as 5Pound refuse to be safe and dull.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: How I Learned to Drive

How I Learned to Drive
Mockingbird Theatre
3 May 2013
Mechanics Institute Performing Arts Centre
to 18 May
mockingbirdtheatre.com.au

How I Learned to Drive won writer Paula Vogel the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1988. If you want to learn about American theatre, the list of Pulitzer winners is a fine place to start. This is a beautifully written work about a harrowing subject that finds a sympathy and forgiveness that's as uncomfortable as its subject.

Director Chris Baldock's new independent company Mockingbird Theatre are continuing to bring famous contemporary scripts to audiences who already love the works and introducing some incredible writers to new audiences. Last year we saw The Laramie Project and can look forward to Equus and Kiss of the Spiderwoman later this year.

One of my regular theatre cohorts at the opening of How I Learned to Drive started a convesation about whether shows should have trigger warnings. It's an argument that can't be answered easily and perhaps the poster shouldn't be running with "wildly funny" as its lead. I'm not a fan of the trigger warning trend; I think they encourage more people to read/watch something because it's juicy than save people from content they would rather miss. If you don't know, this play's about the sexual abuse of a child by her uncle.

Set in the 60s and 70s, L'il Bit (Sarah Reuben, who was also in The Laramie Project) remembers her relationship with Uncle Peck (Jason Cavanagh). It would be comfortable to see her as all innocence and him as all evil, but what makes this work so disturbing is its gut-wrenching honest exploration of a man who believes he's in love with a child and a child who believes she's helping her uncle. As we ask what her life would have been like without Uncle Peck, the moral lines are blurred and re-established and for all its uncomfortable honesty, it's its forgiveness that stays with you.

Cavanagh's Uncle Peck is the character you can't take your attention away from. It would be easy to play him as a pervy creep. It would also be easier to watch. But Uncle Peck is a likable, ordinary man. We know his behaviour is despicable, but Cavanagh lets us into Peck's mind and the most disturbing part of this work is feeling sympathy for a man who we think deserves no sympathy. After his performance in The Joy of Text at La Mama earlier in the year (heaps better that the MTC version) and his ongoing work in making The Owl and the Pussycat a new favourite indie venue, 2013 is looking to be a terrific year for him.

Reuben's L'il Bit is emotionally spot on in her relationship with Peck – he is the only person who treats her as an adult worth listening to, but it's only as an adult that she begins to understand the relationship – but her performance felt too memorised and I could see a bit of the adult actor stopping L'il But from feeling in control. The power of this work is in letting go of our understanding of the situation and in letting all of the characters feel in control, and I suspect that with a few shows over that Reuben's performance is now soaring.

Andrea McCannon, Juliet Hindmarsh and Sebastian Bertoli play the rest of the family and society who turn a blind eye (McCannon as Peck's wife and L'il Bit's mum is especially good). They are a kind of chorus, but their strength comes from their not seeing what the audience sees; through them we see how easy it is to miss or avoid seeing the obvious.

I've seen How I Learned to Drive before and I'll see it again. It's a stunning work that's uncomfortable  and uncomfortably liberating to watch and Baldock's production is one that'll stay with you long after you've left the theatre.

This production is supporting Child Wise, Australia’s leading international child protection charity committed to the prevention and reduction of sexual abuse and exploitation of children around the world.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

What Melbourne loved in 2012, part 9

Today it's Jackie Smith, Anniene Stockton and Jason Cavanagh.

Jackie Smith

co-artistic director of Finucane & Smith, playwright

JACKIE: My favourite theatre experience this year has to be Yumi Umiumare and Theatre Gumbo's DasSHOKU Shake at fortfivedownstairs.

It was wild and funny, sometimes deeply chilling, scary, touching, and completely bonkers. It was one of those fantastic theatre shows that happen with the confluence of hard work, passion and dedication, and will never happen in that same way again. Not to say the show won’t go on and have a life, but it will never be that season again. It had an impossibly large cast, and an explosive set, and a galaxy of hand made and found props to rival a Snuff Puppet Garage sale. And it had Yumi Umiumare. Her performance and genius left me stunned. Always does. And we are very lucky to have her in Melbourne.

SM: It's no secret that I adore everything Jackie has a hand in creating, but 2012 was the year that I missed most her stuff. I was crook for this year's The Burlesque Hour and was so incompetent at reading a phone map that I missed most of the return season of her play The Flood. Acts 2 and 3 were still bloody good (but not the same as the cramped intimacy of the La Mama season), but the best bit was the post-show conversations with Jackie, Moira and co.

22/12. Opps. I DID see The Burlesque Hour. Just found my notes.  I went on the last night. I loved it, but I was sick and my brain had forgotten. It's come flooding back now. 

Anniene Stockton
producer, performer, arts addict

ANNIENE: Last week I went to the HotHouse Theatre season launch in Wodonga. I took my cousin, Tennile, as  she lives in the area and is fabulous company.

When we arrived, Tennile said that she had never been inside the HotHouse before and couldn't explain more than, "Just hadn't gotten around to it".

As we enjoyed the food and drinks before the official proceedings, she was asking loads of questions about the company and what happens there, so by the time we hit the "official" bit she was keen to hear what the Artistic Director had to say.

He started with the good news that Arts NSW had returned its funding and that Hothouse could continue its work. This was greeted with cheers and woops. He went on to share the dire stats around the steep decline of regional companies presenting Australian work. They are an endangered species.

Next came the season info and my cousin sat silently.  I wasn't sure if she was listening or bored out of her gord.  Had I done the right thing dragging her along? She might never wast to hang out with me again...

I gave a gleeful yelp when I saw that the season includes a work by the overly talented wordsmith Van Badham. Tennile smiled, leaned over and asked “do you know him?” I whispered back. “Her. Know her. Van is short for Vanessa and yes. Dear friend, exceedingly talented. Makes me the best cups of tea.”

At least she was listening. But, once the last work is announced, she turned to be and said, “Well I'm going to buy a subscription.”

It's very nice to introduce someone else to your passion and be there at that very moment when they become passionate too.

SM: I was also crook for Anniene's only performance this year (it hasn't been my best year), but Club Tristen will be back in 2013 and I will be there. As for a favourite moment with Anniene, well that's  too difficult, so I'm setting for every time she laughs louder than anyone else in the theatre.

Jason Cavanagh
actor, The Owl, co-founder of 5Pound Theatre

JASON: It was week two of the 5pounds of Repertory season.  I was walking out of the theatre, after having choreographed one of the musical numbers for Sally: A Musical, which I had only learnt to sing that morning. Leaving the theatre, I had to step over the little army of set makers, sourced from the Celeste’s first year Monash students, cutting and creating our cardboard sets and props.

Up the stairs I went to cook something quick, easy and healthy so we had time to get ready for the performance of Pygmalion that night. Whilst I cooked, I had the sheet music on the bench and was going over my melodies. As Dave (music director) passed, packing his gear away in the dressing room, he joined in for a second and then stopped in to help me with a specific bit I was having trouble with. He then left the room saying I shouldn’t do too much on it until he has sent me the mp3 of him singing it, so I don’t get into any bad habits.

So I continued to sing the bits I was slightly more confident in. I used the song to jokingly serenade Celeste as she passed the kitchen and she started singing it to herself, changing the lyrics slightly.

Then Sebastian bounded up the stairs asking if he could use my computer to email the script to someone or other for a reason that is still unclear to me. I said ‘fine’ and pointed him towards my room.

A short while later, as I had gone through the song a little more and the soup was on the boil, I went to my room to find Seb on my computer and Susannah sitting on my bed singing to herself. I flopped onto the mattress next to her and lay for a second.  I could vaguely hear Freya and Tom singing in the theatre downstairs.

In this moment those last five minutes came flooding through my mind – of course, what I haven’t been able to capture is the details, the multitudes of little things that was adding to the chaos of that five-minute period, the ambient noises, the other people in the building and beyond – and I thought, "If it could only always be like this".

SM: Finally getting to The Owl and the Pussycat space (founded and managed by Jason) was a highlight in itself. Once a single-front cottage in once working-class Richmond, it's now an intimate theatre with a super-gorgeous bar that's established itself as an independent theatre venue that assures something worth seeing. And it's so easy to get to. Get a train to Richmond, walk out of the Swan St exit and cross the road.

As this is a day of missing shows, I missed two of the five 5Pounds of Repertory shows, but three was  enough to see the impact this process had on the creators involved and I so hope Jason and 5Pounds do it again.

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After Hamlet: last week of 5pounds of Rep

The 5Pounds of Repertory Theatre troupe are in their last week. For the last five weeks, they rehearsed a play during the day and performed the play they rehearsed last week at night. It's fucking mad, but what a process and what an experience for everyone involved, including the audiences who have made sure that The Owl and the Pussycat has been full each night.

The idea was to create a repertory theatre experience: same cast and very different works created with the pressure that an audience is going to be seeing them in a few days.

I admit that my first reaction was that this is going to be great for the performers, but not so much for the audiences. I love being wrong.

Watching how actors Jason Cavanagh, Susannah Frith, Sebastian Gunner, Tom Molyneux and Freya Praget have adapted and changed each week has been fascinating. Back in week one, there was still a layer of "acting" around their performances. When we can see the acting, the characters are always hidden by the actor. This protective layer has fallen off more each week and, even though they are performing as well as they were in week one, their performances are so different.

The ingredient that's taken this process to such a delicious level is bringing a fresh director in each week. This has freed up the performers, who have to trust where they are being led, to focus on character, and freed the directors, who have to trust that their actors can find the characters, to focus on story.

Most theatre is story and too often the telling of the story gets lost in the theatre making. With only a few days, no nights and a budget that extends to what's in the wardrobe or the back alley, each director has found their tone, trusted their cast and and told the audience the story.

Director Daniel Lammin cut Pgymalion into an intimate tale about Henry and Eliza, and he put the audience around them so it felt like we were eavesdropping. It was as far from My Fair Lady as it could be, which let them create a new telling of JB Shaws's famous story.

Photo by Sarah Walker

Celeste Cody let everyone have a hell of a lot of fun with the 1920s musical Sally. She created a space that let the non-singers feel safe enough to sing, and let everyone adore the cardboard and paint props.

I sadly couldn't get to Danny Delahunty's week three developed piece (mostly because I was at the Short and Sweet theatre festival, directed by Celeste Cody), but I've heard all good about it.

But I wasn't going to miss Robert Reid directing Ben Ellis's play Falling Petals. Geelong-born and Melbourne indi-theatre bred, Ben's been living in London for many years and this production has already created a new mob of fans. I saw its Playbox production and this was just as good. Good writing tells good story. So, we'd love to see a new Ben Ellis play in Melbourne, please Ben.

There's one week left to be a part of this experiment and they're going out with an easy task: Hamlet. Rehearsed in a week by very tired actors who were performing their guts out each night. What could possibly go wrong?

I know that it's been cut by director Trent Baker and I've heard there will be songs. I recently watched Trent at Simon Callow's Shakespeare masterclass. It took him a while to drop the acting and tell the story, but he did. I'm looking forward to if this experience has changed his approach to Shakespeare.

A day out from their final opening night, I asked Jason Cavanagh, 5 Pound co-founder, how he felt about being in the last week.

 "It’s still hard to see the bigger picture because while the light at the end is getting tantalisingly bright, we are still very much in the guts of this project. The oh-so modest task of putting Hamlet on the stage tomorrow night is casting quite an impressive shadow.  But the thought of an opening night without 9 am rehearsals, not to mention the wider ambition of having an actual closing night – don't get me wrong, the whole thing has been absolutely amazing – but there will be quite the party when that last curtain falls."

After Hamlet (cos it's not the whole work) opens tomorrow (Tuesday) night and runs until Saturday, including a matinee.

Book here. It's a tiny space, so worth booking instead of trying for door tickets. And the easiest way to get to the thearte is to get a train to Richmond. Walk out the Swan Street entrance, cross the road and you're there.

5Pounds of Rep opens tonight

Five different directors and a group of five actors rehearse and present five very different plays over five weeks.

Tonight, 5pound theatre open 5Pounds of Repertory Theatre at The Owl and the Pussycat (opposite Richmond train station on Swan Street).

Founded in 2010 by Jason Cavanagh and Susannah Frith, 5Pound aim to make theatre that challenges and inspires audiences and actors.  And the short rehearsal periods ( while performing at night) are sure to challenge and energise everyone, especially as it's hoped that many discoveries will be made on the stage in front of the audiences.

Cananah says, "I have an incredibly romantic idea of the old theatres.  I picture the high pressure, high stakes world of working rep’s.  The round the clock intense pleasure of squeezing every drop of creative juice you can muster to get that show up there stomping the boards.  The close relationship with the audience, the backstage mayhem, the full pelt, full time creative outpour, and a well earned applause at the end.  If we can capture just a small taste of that… it will be a dream come true."


Jumping into the maelstrom of creativity are some of Melbourne's favourite independent directors, inlcuding Robert Reid (The Well) directing Ben Ellis's Falling Petals (last seen at the Malthouse, about 10 years ago) and Celetse Cody (Choir Girl) directing a musical that I know nothing about.

Week 1. November 6–10. Pygmalion, directed by Daniel Lammin

Week 2. November 13–17. Sally… A Musical, directed by Celeste Cody

Week 3. November 20–24. The Unnamed, directed by Danny Delahunty

Week 4. Nov 26 – Dec 1. Falling Petals by Ben Ellis, directed by Rob Reid

Week 5. December 3–8. After Hamlet, directed by Trent Baker

Book here