Review: Eat, Pray, Love

Eat Pray Love
Barry Humphries Farewell tour
Dainty Group
19 July
Her  Majesty's Theatre
to 4 August
dameednafarewell.com

I have to let go one of my ongoing theatre dreams.

For years, I've fantasised about being picked on by Dame Edna. I've got purple hair, I'm from Adelaide, I lean towards mutton-dressed-as-lamb, go to the theatre and read  Eat Pray Love* before a trip to Ubud in Bali: I'm perfect Edna fodder.

But I wasn't what she was after (and I wasn't up the front).  And she's on her last tour. Unless Barry forces her back.

Barry Humphries is a unique mind who thankfully decided to use his genius for satire.

Since a meek and patriotic housewife called Edna appeared in 1955, his characters have left us cringing with embarrassed joy as we've recognised our relatives and friends and maybe refused to see ourselves in his astute grasp of Australia's culturally vapid middle class.

The night opens with Sir Les Patterson and a poo joke. And that's as classy as it gets. Sir Les welcomes us to his backyard in an Hawian shirt, a pair of Crocs and the familiar bulge that used to make my grandmother blush.  He's no longer our Cultural Attache and thinks he'll try life as a celebrity chef, so he squishes some Aussie rissoles, makes a good stiff Pavlova sound filthy, sings about how he can live without tumeric but won't say no to cumin, and there is no one else who can rhyme snow peas with slopies.

Sir Les really is the last who can do it. He's from a time when racism was funny. It was. I die a little bit every time I remember the jokes I laughed at as a child. We used to laughed with Les and what better farewell than to laugh at an attitude that deserves to be flushed away with his ongoing diarrhoea. And that's before the jokes about vagina decliners and a son-in-law joke that I thankfully wouldn't have understood as a child.

As we farewell Les, Barry introduces Gerry, a pervy priest who is entranced with Les's young Balinese pianist, but he's forgotten as Sandy Stone arrives. I was never a fan of Sandy, but his poignant and unexpectedly moving farewell has left him one of my favourites, who I'll think of every time I visit friends in Glen Iris or drive past the Essendon airport.

But it's Edna everyone wants to see.

She always has us at "Hello Possums" and it's impossible to be disappointed.

She's gloriously mean, wonderfully self involved and still quicker and sharper than anyone I can think of. No one else could make the colour neutral a highlight of the evening.

Eat, Pray, Love is a book by a middle class woman who travels to countries starting with I to eat and find herself a better shag than the one she left. Its self-indulgence is worthy of our Dame, who had to learn to love herself as much as we love her and brings images like the Dali Lama getting a back, crack and sack and jokes about unfashionable East Ubud. It was nearly worth reading the book to get the jokes.

If you haven't seen Barry live, you will regret it if you don't. He's been one of our greatest for over 50 years. Part of the fun of the live show is that patrons up the front will end up on the stage and if you're one of the lucky ones, you'll have a dinner story for life and a polaroid pic to take home and frame. The rest of the plebs just get to wave gladdies.

Eat, Pray, Laugh has nearly finished in home town Melbourne, then it's off to New Zealand and the Gold Coast before resting up for Adelaide and Perth early next year.

*And yes I am ashamed and refused to see the film.

Review: Blood Wedding

Blood Wedding
Malthouse Theatre
26 July 2012
Merlyn Theatre, The Malthouse
to 19 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

I wonder what Federico García Lorca would think about Blood Wedding being performed in Australia 80 years after he wrote it.

His work is so connected to Spain before the 1936–39 Civil War (it is believed he was assassinated by right wing forces days before the war broke out), but great writing comes from truth, and truth is what makes the personal universal. His writing doesn't need an understanding of the politics or the society it came from to tell its story.

Blood Wedding is summarised in its title. Young lovers want to marry, but there are old family issues and unresolved loves; it never offers hope that it's going to end well. For all its politics and anger, Lorca writes about suffering and grief and the utter absurdity of fighting over things that ultimately mean nothing when a love (partner/child/sibling/parent/friend) is destroyed. No wonder Lorca still reaches us.

Director Marion Potts connects the story to Spain with a bilingual adaption, by Ranters Theatre's Raimondo Cortese.  Even though this leaves most not understanding all the words of text and loses a fair chunk of the symbolism and poetry, it's a story that is easy to follow and the dual language gives a beautiful connection with the original writing that is rarely achieved with translation.

This duality of connection and contradiction is continued with a cast including prominent Spanish actors (Irene Del Pilar Gomez, Mariola Fuentes, Ruth Sanco Huerga) and locals (Silvia Colloca, Nicole De Silva, Ivan Donato, Matias Stevens, Greg Ulfan, David Valencia). There's an inconsistency in the overall performances, but it's endearing rather than distracting. Potts's direction seems to always start with character and by letting her cast find their unique connection to the character, the uneven passions always belong to characters.

The Sisters Hayes create the tone by bringing the languages and experiences together with a design that manages to be kitschly fun and dramatically epic. It somehow evokes the closeness of backyard urban Australia and the empty distance of rural Spain with vast wall of patterned bricks (made for Paul Jackson's always exquisite lighting), a row of fridges, a floor of dirt and the universal old-person floral recliner chair covered in protective plastic. Its intricacy draws the audience close and it contradiction instantly allows for the breathing space of laughs amongst the angst and inevitable grief.

I think Lorca would be astonished and proud and excited to see this production (and he'd love Melbourne). It's a production that shows the soul of Lorca and, even if it doesn't emotionally reach as strongly as it could, it's one to see for its understanding and connection and wholeness.

This review was on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

Review: Triangle

Triangle
MKA
25 July
MKA Pop Up Theatre, North Melbourne
to 4 August
mka.org.au

Lesbian vampires. Do I need to say more?

Lesbian vampires in North Fitzroy.

A play with lesbian vampires, set in North Fitzroy, performed in an empty North Melbourne (really Kensington) warehouse by MKA. What more could you want?

And there is more. There's Piedimontes (the greatest worst supermarket), Chopper, Vince Colosimo, 4WDs that have never been as far as St Kilda, the guy who sells The Big Issue, the gardens where many a virginity has been lost and a soy-latte-addicted baby called Finnigan.

I love that theatre like this exists.

I love that its writing has been workshopped and developed and tightened,  and that it's creepy and beautiful and blood thirsty, and that its humour lets us laugh at our selves and inner-city community.  (Even if I transposed it to the Carlisle Street Coles in East St Kilda.)

I love that director Tanya Dickson (JATO) finds the theatre in the story's structure and works so closely with the design team.

I love that designer Eugyeene Teh has made another corner of this warehouse inseparable from this work and that he uses carpet squares. I love that Rob Sowinski's lighting and Russell Goldsmith's sound are such a part of the story telling.

I love that actors Elizabeth Nabben and Janine Watson found the dead hearts and bleeding souls of their characters and didn't let us dismiss their recognisable cliched outer selves.

Triangle is not going to be the work that takes writer Glyn Roberts (Horror Face) to the world (yet), but who cares when the world for many is that North Fitzroy triangle and it's captured with a mixture of cynicism and love that's as welcome as a marked-down fruit bun wrapped in plastic from Piedi's when you're really hungry and want to save your change for a pear cider later in the evening.

I love that Melbourne theatre is so much more than the ongoing big-worded tiff about Queen Lear and that The Triangle was so much better than staying in with a pizza and watching the Masterchef final, which is what I so nearly did.

You may now go and re-watch The Hunger and wonder why straight men think so much about lesbian vampires.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Sarah Walker

Must for THIS weekend

This is a Door
Pop up Playground, Theatre Works
27 July 2012
Theatre Works
to 29 July

There are rumours that Cameron Woodhead and I tried to exchange a pash last night.

I'm not confirming or denying anything because what happens at Play Club, stays at Play Club.

But I know that it was the most fun I've had in a theatre and I want to go back and do it all again.

Pop Up Playground are Robert Reid (serious playwright), Sayraphim Lothian (public art guru) and  Ben McKenzie (uber geek). They've been playing about town for the last few months and This is a Door is an unmissable chance to join in with a weekend of games and play at Theatre Works.

It's time to run away from the computer and play with real people. Turn off your phone and play with real friends. Just join in and play.

The playground is Theatre Works space that's decked out as a carnival. Games Master Ben welcomed everyone in a top hat, tails and Dr-Who-as-owls t-shirt and introduced the Game Runners who will guide and help and tickle you if you're not laughing*.

Some games are easy, some involve thinking and strategising, some are cooperative and us competitive types are well catered for.

And if you need a break or just want to watch, there are craft tables. Craft tables!

I want craft tables at every theatre now.  We could make stuff while waiting for friends to arrive, craft is more fun than drinking at interval and how better to express your true feelings about a show than through craft. In fact, no more wordy dull reviews. Can someone just sit us down at a craft table at the end of an opening night (with a glass of wine, of course) and let our inner-children show what we really think. Forget the blog, maybe I should just have a theatre scrapbook.

But back to the games. Last night I got to ruin a gay wedding, pitched a big watermelon tourist attraction, was second runner-up for Prom Queen (and if I'd listened more carefully to the rules, I would have made it!), was turned into a zombie and ingeniously initiated into a cult.

And that was only a taste of the games on offer. I missed the intrigue of London's Burning (I was at the craft table) and so wanted to play the one with glow sticks and fluro vests and the one with balloons.

Today's 11.00 session has already started,
But there's 1.30, 6.30 and 9.00
Or tomorrow (Sunday)  there are 11.00, 1.30 sessions and Playful Salon (arty discussion of games and playing) at 3.30.

As grown ups, we sometimes forget how much fun it is to play and how much better we feel when we have real fun with real people.

All the details are here. I promise you'll love it. And if you know someone who really needs to smile and laugh, buy them a a ticket as well.

* This also may or may not be true.

Chat: Xavier O’Shannessy, La Mama

Unaustralia

La Mama Courthouse

1 August – 19 September 2012

review

“I see their faces. They don’t care if ya surf. They don’t care if ya work with them. To them, you’re a stinkin’ terrorist.”

Unaustralia by Reg Cribb is a story about a devout Muslim teenager who loves to surf. When his brother fights with life guards, a too-familiar racial battle begins on an Australian-dream beach.

Cribb won the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award in 2001 and was shortlisted for the QLD Premier’s Literary Award for his play The Return, which he adapted into the AFI nominated film, Last Train to Freo. His 2003 play Last Cab to Darwin won the QLD Premier’s Literary Award, the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, the WA Premier’s Award and the WA Equity Award for Best New Script.

Melbourne actor Xavier O’Shannessy is making his La Mama debut in Unaustralia. He says, “I wonder when we, as a country, will wake up and accept that – like every modern nation built on the displacement of an indigenous population and subsequent waves of migration – we face complex and ever present racial tensions. When will we stop sweeping our racism, bigotry and discontent under the carpet at every opportunity and covering it with half-truths about our so called tolerant, welcoming and progressive past?”

Do you remember the first show you saw at La Mama?
No but I do remember being blown away by the intimacy of the experience.

What is one of your favourite shows you’ve seen at La Mama?
The Hamlet Machine.

What La Mama show do you wish you’d seen?
Most of the ones that I’ve missed.

What do you love about working at La Mama?
This is my first time.

What do you love most about this show?
Playing a second-generation seventeen-year-old Lebanese-Australian rapper. It’s a huge adjustment and really bloody fun.

Where is the best coffee in Carlton?
Carlton Esspresso, or is it called DOC? Or are they two different places?

Who would you love to see in your audience one night?
Full houses would be nice.

Is there anyone you don’t want to see in the audience?
It would be pretty intimidating to look out and see any second-generation Lebanese-Australian rappers in the audience.

What do you like to do after a performance?
I don’t like feeling too full on stage so I don’t eat a lot leading up to a show. But I’m constantly hungry, it’s a catch 22. So, after a show, I get home, curl up in bed and gorge. Probably not very healthy.

What was your first time on a stage?
I’m pretty sure it was my primary school concert called Frame, from what I can remember, it was a redux of Fame the Musical but with lots of picture frames.

Do you have any pre-show rituals?
It depends on the show. Some times I just rock up, do my vocal warm up and head on stage. Other times I spend ages preparing. I try not to get too neurotic though.

What’s some great theatre advice you’ve used?
Don’t try. Either do it, or don’t do it.

What punishment do you think is fit for audience members who don’t turn their phones off during performances?
They should have to sit through every terrible school musical ever made, end to end.

What’s your favourite gelati flavour?
Please don’t make me choose. I can’t deal with choice.

What role/character do you really want to play one day?
One that gives me cause to quit my day job.

Matinees: love or loathe?
Eh, they’re not so bad.

Do you read reviews?
I’ve not had any. Are you offering to write one? Thanks!

Do you know of any secret parking spots near the theatres (although it’s such a short walk from the Melbourne uni tram stop on Swanston Street, so driving isn’t necessary)?
I suppose I should point out just how accessible La Mama is via public transport. This was the point of the question, right?

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?
You know, I’ve picked some real lemons lately. But I have this compulsive thing where I have to finish every book that I start. It can make bed time pretty frustrating. That said, Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson was interesting.

What question do you wish I’d asked?
Would you like me to give you $1415?

How would you answer it?
Yes, but don’t give it to me directly, donate it to our Pozible campaign. Here is the link.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

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: Almost With You

Almost With You
La Mama and Little Theatre Company
9 July 2012
La Mama Theatre
to 22 July
lamama.com.au

Almost With You opens with music from The Clash and a 40-something-chick having to change her sex position because her knees hurt and the two of them end up talking about tax, back pain and pilates instead of doing it. I was so there.

Lisa (Fiona Macleod) is 45. She's a successful journalist writing a feature about older first-time parents, including her best friend (Helen Hopkins) who became a mum at 46 and her accountant (Raj Sidhu) who became a dad at 48. Lisa hasn't joined the baby or marriage club and knows she has to face what she lost when she was 20 if she's ever going to stop feeling empty and broken.

Elizabeth Colmen's play about grief and survival is clearly very personal and her story is honest and affecting, but the writer is so close to the material that there are few moments of the objective distance that turns a complex and real experience into a moving and embracing stage story.

The characters are a bit too good to ring true and speak to each other without subtext. This honesty from characters creates dialogue that feels unnatural because it leaves no room for the audience to interpret and create meaning – and no one is ever that honest when they speak to people they love and/or are trying to impress.  Meanwhile, the secret/twist and every implication for Lisa is clear from the scene when we meet her brother (Luke O'Sullivan) and so much of what follows tells what's already known.

Kaarin Fairfax's direction respects and loves Coleman's story but, like the writing, this doesn't leave enough space for the audience. Moments of dark humour are lost and everyone is just too damn likeable. The cast are all as lovely as their characters, and Macleod especially brings the missing complexity into her engaging performance, which is what draws us through the story and makes the awkward ending almost moving.

And then there's the nostalgic music from the 80s and I automatically love anything that references The Go-Betweens. There's a terrific scene with 80s punk dancing that works so much to show character and attitude, but the nostalgia mostly serves to mark the time and too many of the jokes and reference are meaningless to anyone who didn't have great taste in music in the 80s. If you don't know that Steve Kilby wrote "Almost With You" in 1982 and the video was set at a seance,  how can the connections be made?

Almost With You is created from the kind of grief that reaches our hearts and the sort of healing that creates hope, but these emotions are having trouble resonating because the work is so close to the writer that there's no room for anyone else.






This review was on AussieTheatre.com

Fiona Macleod had a chat about the show.

Review: sex.violence.blood.gore

sex.violence.blood.gore

MKA

30 June 2012

MKA Pop Up Theatre, North Melbourne

to 14 July

mka.org.au

sex.violence.blood.gore is all flushed-flesh pink and delicate ivory lace, which makes it even sexier and gorier and gorgeous. First performed in Singapore in 1999 in a basement in secret, Melbourne's first production is in a secret warehouse in North Melbourne and, like all wonderful Melbourne secrets, you need a map to find it and may miss out because the word has already got around.

Malay-Muslim writer Alfian bin Sa'at was born in in Singapore in 1977 and with likes of the giraffe spot, Whitney-singing angels with plastic-covered wings, the problems of organ-donation racism and tiger blow jobs, it's easy to know why he's referred to as Singapore's "enfant terrible".

sex.violence.blood.gore is five short works connected by content that's sexy, violent, bloody and/or gorey, but start with sexual repression and are firmly placed in a country that deals with conflicts about religion, the aftermath of being a British colony and invaded by Japan, and defining its own identity between Malaysia and Indonesia. (I admit that my first reaction to Singapore was to look up the recipe for a Singapore Sling.)

With content so connected to the writer and his home, it could so easily be a curious, worthy and distancing work about queer South East Asia, but director Stephen Nicolazzo  (Home Economics, Two by Two, Negative Energy Inc) would never allow that.

He breaks down any sense of "them" with a glorious young cast of five women (Genevieve Giuffre, Catherine Davies, Whitney Boyd, Amy-Scott Smith, Zoe Boesen and Caitlin Adams) and one man (Matt Furlani) who freely play against their gender and ethnicity.  And Eugyeene Teh (designer) puts them in a pink world framed by body parts and net curtains and clads them in off-white underwear that teeters between repressive uncomfortable and irresistibly hot.

By taking it so out of its context, Nicolazzo lets the heart of this work speak and ensures that it's for and about everyone who sees it. This is what theatre is about. I see so many wonderfully written, beautifully performed works that are so terribly dull because they don't make this kind of connection with their audience.

And, of course, there's only one company in town that would bring us this type of theatre. sex.violence.blood.gore is the second show of MKA's winter season. Miss it and you'll regret it. And to ensure that you don't miss it, BOOK.

And, if you missed MKA's The Economist last year, there are TWO more shows before they go to Edinburgh on 20 and 21 July.

Photos by Sarah Walker

This review was on AussieTheatre.com

Read Cameron's wordgasm review that left me impotent.

Chat: Fiona Macleod, La Mama

Almost With You
La Mama
4 – 22 July 2012

review

Almost With You is a story of love and loss from Elizabeth Coleman (Secret Bridesmaids’ Business) from The Little Theatre Company. With an 80s soundtrack including The Church, The Jam and Simple Minds, it opens at La Mama on 4 July.

Director Kaarin Fairfax (Good People) says, “It’s not often I read a play and feel so moved by the characters and the journey on which they travel… Almost With You is for me a highly creative and sensitive piece of writing that will join ranks with Elizabeth’s earlier successes to become part of Australian theatre history and a great classic work.”

Actor Fiona Macleod (Construction of the Human Heart, The City) talks to Anne-Marie Peard about working at La Mama and performing Almost with You.

What three words best describe your show?
Intriguing, funny, affecting.

Do you remember the first show you saw at La Mama?
I don’t remember the show, but I remember the experience.  Sitting there, amongst the brick and near the open fire, thinking “what have I been DOING all these years??”

What is one of your favourite shows you’ve seen at La Mama?
Angus Cerini’s play Save for Crying.

What La Mama show do you wish you’d seen?
So, so many…

What do you love about working at La Mama?
The cosiness of the entire space – the theatre, courtyard, upstairs, the support of the team there, the sense of being a part of Melbourne’s theatre history, the sense of community and integrity that permeates the brick walls.

What do you love most about this show? 
The rollercoaster journey that my character goes on – I won’t have a second to stop and think.  The story propels me forward, with force.  And the fact that it’s funny, as well as heart-wrenchingly sad.

Where is the best coffee in Carlton?
I’d hate to play favourites, but Brunetti’s is just so close.

Who would you love to see in your audience one night?
My extended family who live in Scotland.

Is there anyone you don’t want to see in the audience?
Yes, but I’m not going to say as it would spark controversy.

What do you like to do after a performance?
Drink red wine and talk to friends.

What was your first time on a stage?
It was either the school play in first form where I played Jane in Pride and Prejudice, or in a church hall doing a dance to “Downunder’ by  Men at Work.

Do you have any pre-show rituals?
I try not to have too many as I think they can become compulsive, but I do like to do a physical and vocal warm up – sing perhaps, breathe, and do something to connect with my co-actors.

What’s some great theatre advice you’ve used? 
Trust yourself, don’t forget to listen, and a new one from my director on this show, Kaarin Fairfax – get the thought right and the behaviour will look after itself.

What punishment do you think is fit for audience members who don’t turn their phones off during performances?
The psychic wrath of the other audience members is usually punishment enough, but perhaps they should be made to buy the cast a drink after the show?

What’s your favourite gelati flavour?
Probably lemon.

What role/character do you really want to play one day?
I’m not sure but I’ll know it when it comes.

Matinees: love or loathe?
Loathe, generally.

Do you read reviews?
I do as curiosity gets the better of me, but I think if you are going to believe the good, you have to believe the bad, or take all of them with a grain of salt.  It’s probably best not to though, until after the season.

Do you know of any secret parking spots near the theatres (although it’s such a short walk from the Melbourne uni tram stop on Swanston Street, so driving isn’t necessary)? 
I always have luck in the four hour ones down on that square (don’t know the address sorry – McCarthur Place?)

What’s the best book you’ve read recently? 
The Privileges by Jonathan Dee.

What question do you wish I’d asked?
What are your hopes for this show?

How would you answer it?
That it affects people, and that it has many more lives.

This was on AussieTheatre.com