Avenue Q

Avenue Q
Arts Asia Pacific
4 June 2009
The Comedy Theatre

Strip down to your felt, put your finger “there” and be as loud as the hell you want, as you joyously scream for Avenue Q. Or at least click away from the porn for a minute.

We’ve been waiting, we’ve been hoping and now Melbourne has seen Australia’s first Avenue Q - and it was worth the wait. Too often the big shows have had the life and soul McDisneyfied out of them, but this Avenue is as fresh Lucy T Slut, as original Brian’s joke and as nasty as Mrs Thisletwat.

If you haven’t heard “It sux to be me”, “If you were gay”,  "The internet is for porn" or “Everyone’s a little bit racist”, Avenue Q is Sesame St for grown ups, with people and puppets, monsters and humans all living on a less-than-posh New York street.

As the Street is about learning about life, so is the Avenue. And there are still plenty of lessons to be learnt once you’ve left college, be it about unemployment, homelessness, racism, swine flu or what you’d do if you were the cutest little black kid on TV and became a broke has-been by the time you hit puberty.

The Q subversively exposes the layer of our lives that suck (suck as in “bad”, not as in suck like Rod’s girlfriend from Canada – who sucks like a Hoover). But schadenfreude (don’t worry you’ll learn all about it) always makes us feel better, and there’s plenty of misfortune to laugh at on the Avenue, as love can go wrong, you’ll have no purpose in life, be worried about being a homo-whatever and or be stuck with a fucking BA in English – and I’m not talking about the audience..

Under the mighty fine direction of Jonathan Biggins, the Australian cast are a dream, all following the lead of Mitchel Butel as Rod and Princeton. Every time I see Butel on a stage, I want to join the Mitchel fan club and force lesser performers to sit and watch him until they too begin to get what being on a stage is all about. Even with his hand up a puppet, you forget about the performer and only see the character.

Avenue Q will let you laugh til you cry and cry til you laugh. I’m still singing “Fine, Fine Line” and think I want to stop shaving and grow a layer of all over fur, just so I can hang out with the Bad Idea Bears and surf the net with Trekkie.

Or just see it for the sex. And yes, now you can click back to the porn.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

A Commercial Farce

A Commercial Farce
Malthouse Theatre
14 June 2009
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse

I was a bit worried when A Commercial Farce opened with a “you being perfect and me being crap” phone call between a husband and wife, but then came the banana skin, the whack in the nuts and the breaking of the number one comedy rule.

I keep missing Peter Houghton’s plays. I don’t mean to and I will make sure that I don’t miss another one, because A Commercial Farce is the best piece of theatre comic writing I’ve seen in a long time. What bliss to sit in a theatre and just laugh and laugh and laugh.

It’s the night before opening night and director Bill (Houghton) is trying to force-rehearse TV stud Jules (Luke Ryan) into his first stage role, a “pay by the laugh” commercial farce by Crackburn.

Anyone who has ever worked with a cocky, young telly actor will wiggle in their seat with recognition, if only for the moment when Bill explains the innuendo. Ryan’s Jules is a horror. He’s everything cringeable about celebrity, good looks and no real talent. And to create such a perfect monster, reveals the Luke as the Jules’ antithesis. Only the very best actors can create credible bad acting.

On stage, Houghton is just as perfect as Bill, who is over the thrill of theatre, but knows too much to get out. Houghton wrote Jules and Bill as the two sides of himself. There’s a slab of “Oh my God I’m middle aged” indulgence in Bill, but it’s balanced by the youthful smugness of Jules, leaving quite a balanced playwright in the middle!

Bill screams at Jules that audiences don’t care about theme and form - they care about character and story. I want to snog Houghton for the observation, but even more so because A Commercial Farce is a never-ending joke about theme and form that never forgets the story or the characters. Under Aidan Fennessy’s meticulous (so good it’s almost invisible) direction, the timing, the expectation and the jokes are never allowed to overpower the two men. The heart of this work is the two people at the centre of the whirlpool of jokes, and we don’t want either of them to be sucked in and drown.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Birthday Party

The Birthday Party
Melbourne Theatre Company
24 June 2009
Fairfax Studio, The Arts Centre

Once a creator’s name has become an adjective, it’s difficult to approach their work without falling into a pit of cliché or frustrating audiences by avoiding expectations – but MTCs The Birthday Party successfully avoids being Pinteresque, whilst capturing the essence of this unforgettable work.

Some folk don’t like Pinter. I’m not one of them, but I am wary of approaching new productions. With well known, and over-studied plays (from Shakespeare to Brecht to Miller), it’s rare to see a production that doesn’t try so hard to re-interpret, over analyse or completely re-think the intent and purpose of its writing that it gets lost in it’s own quest for originality.

As this Party has re-located from generic-UK to generic-NSW coast, there is a degree of Australianising and tweaking of Pinter’s script, which includes The Canberra Times (an odd, but quite funny choice for a seaside community to read), wonderful souvenir tea towels, town names changed, the inclusion of an Indigenous language poem and an Australian cast.

There are new layers explored and revealed, but its gift to us is its simplicity. Without obvious over work and comparison, this Birthday Party feels like no one else has done it before. Julian Meyrick’s direction masters a pace and tempo that feels natural, but is always under his precise control, allowing him to create the all-important sense of unease.

The cast show us their characters if they were written just for them. Their on stage relationships are intimate and complex, their world is real and we care about every one of them. Gregory Fryer and Pauline Whyman bring an often missed likeability to Petey and Meg – I could have watched these two talk about breakfast for hours. As Goldberg and McCann, Marshall Napier and Glenn Shea balance humour and mystery with menace and threat, and Jada Albert's (Lulu) is on her way to being one of our best performers. Which leaves Stanley. Isaac Drandic’s performance is good but, compared to the rest of the cast, it felt too “acted” and too controlled. Stanley kept jolting us back to the play and away from the story.

The uniqueness of this production brings a freshness to Pinter’s work, without losing the truth that lies in its confusion. It’s a wonderful introduction to one of the most influential western playwrights of the late twentieth century, a production you dare not miss if you love the work, and one that may even convince detractors to re-think their opinion.



This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Burlesque Hour Legends

Burlesque Hour Legends
Finucane and Smith
25 June 2009
forty five downstairs

I’m searching for a superlative that hasn’t been used to describe The Burlesque Hour. Reviewers from all over the world rave every time this show appears. Created in Melbourne, it’s back home as The Burlesque Hour Legends and I’m trawling my thesaurus for any word that comes near to grasping the wildness, the sassiness, the spectacle, the irony and the understanding behind the show that continues to leave my brain wet and wanting more.

The term burlesque is readily applied to anything that shows a bit of nude and, too often, this results in moments that leave some of the audience feeling uncomfortable, inadequate or just sad that women continue to let themselves be seen as something less than a whole person. It’s not easy to take the exploitation and the wank factor away from strip.

This is where director Jackie Smith and performer Moira Finucane stepped in and, with other like-minded performers, perfected a style that has re-defined burlesque as political, inspirational and liberating. Strip is, of course, about exposure, but the exposure of bodies doesn’t compare to the exposure of secrets, of longings and of the unexpected. It’s still also totally hot and squeal-out-loud hilarious.

Don’t give it a miss this year because you’ve seen this show before. Legends is mostly new material and has an overall more rounded and complete feel about it. The regular performers explore some of their favourite themes from new perspectives and new guests try out their ideas. This does mean that some of the most loved moments are missing, but the new compensates for the loss of the old.

Yumi Umiumare’s new pieces are extraordinary. With characters including a lost and manic Tokyo pop singer and an office worker (or an executive) trapped in a suit of regret and longing, her Butoh inspired choreography is unsettling in its ability to grasp the essence of a character and expand it to a point that it’s almost overwhelming. I’m looking forward to her solo show at Malthouse in August.

Maude Davey changes the pace with dancing words, discussing her grandmother’s cunt, and her faded showgirl’s “Say Goodbye” must be what Mark Seymour’s unconscious was thinking when he wrote the urban anthem.

Then there’s Moira Finucane, whose new Veil act may well be responsible for making smoking an acceptable social habit again. With Jackie Smith, she continues to create work that challenges every boring and clichéd notion of femininity and sexuality. Her electrifying grotesques are powerful, terrifying and disturbing, but they affirm that the real grotesques are those who want women to look like 20-year-old size 0s, cook like their mums and fuck like blow up dolls.

And that’s just week one and two! The Burlesque Hour Legends changes every two weeks. The incredible Azaria Universe returns on July 12, as the marvellous Maude leaves, along with swinging Jess Love. But plan for at least three Burlesque trips in order to see the special guests. The blissful Paul Capsis joins the girls from 9 to 19 July, then Toni Lamond (yes Toni Lamond!) will be confirming her own legendary status from 23 July to 2 August. Which only leaves until July 11 to see Ursula Martinez. Ursula has been seen at La Clique with her nearly-ethnic dilemma and her perfected the red hanky strip, but she brings more to Legends, with an opening act that sets the room on fire.

Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.