MELBOURNE FESTIVAL: War and Peace

Melbourne Festival
War and Peace 
Gob Squad
19 October 2016
Merlyn Theatre
to 20 October 2016
www.festival.melbourne
malthousetheatre.com.au

War and Peace in Berlin. Photo by David Baltzer

War and Peace: I know people who've read it. Only about 20 members of the audience had read it. I've thought about reading it. Gob Squad's production hasn't got me any closer.

Gob Squad were last in Melbourne in 2012 at the Melbourne Festival with the their remarkable co-production with Campo Before Your Very Eyes. Formed in 1994, the seven-member company are based in Berlin and say that they work "where theatre meets art, media and read life".

Gob Squad

War and Peace doesn't try to explain Tolstoy's 1869 novel, about Russia during the Napoleonic Wars from 1805 to 1812. They know that it's something that you need to experience for yourself in order to understand it – which might well be the point of Tolstoy's novel about war.

With three screens, a table set with delicate snacks and wine, and a gazebo (or war tent) that looks like it belongs in a backyard wedding, the show begins as the audience trickle in and the performers – Tatiana Saphir, Sharon Smith, Bastian Trost and Simon, who are dressed in beige-gold 19th century frocks without skirts, contemporary chunky-soled boots and supportive tights – meet and introduce members of the audience from the stage.

Three willing audience members remain to take part in an on-stage salon where they talk non-confrontational politics and art. Our three were Pier Cathew, Iain Grandage and Sarah (who was reviewing and I'll link it here as soon as I find it). The salon members talk with the performers and sections of each chat are broadcast on the screens, while the others are kept secret.

Watching people think on the spot is fascinating, but the conversations are controlled enough by the performers to be easily forgotten.

As the performance develops away from the salon, the likeable ensemble get deeper into the ideas of the novel by becoming more ridiculously flippant, like Tolstoy's history of dance with a rainbow ribbon. As they can't begin to understand living in world always at war, they explore the ideas of identifying with something – anything or anyone – in the book.

They get closer to being reflective when they talk about their grandparents who lived through the Second World War, but then pull further away because it still doesn't get close to understanding. Maybe a fashion parade of characters is more respectful than trying to reflect on the magnitude of War and Peace.

Being in the theatre with Gob Squad is an absolute pleasure – the parts that make up War an Peace are delightfully funny – but I don't think that's what they are trying to do. Or perhaps the sum of the parts isn't meant to be stronger as a whole. Perhaps I need to read War and Peace.

Review: Meme Girls

Meme Girls
Malthouse Theatre
9 April 2015
Beckett Theatre
to 2 May
malthousetheatre.com.au

Meme Girls. Art Simone & Ash Flanders. Photo by Pia Johnson

YouTube is only ten years old. Like Facebook and Twitter, it's already hard to imagine life without it. And enough people have now grown up thinking that opening your life and your secrets to the world isn't strange. Meme Girls at Malthouse Theatre is about searching for identity by confiding to strangers on the internet.

Created by Stephen Nicolazzo, Ash Flanders and Marion Potts, the idea came from Flanders's 2011–12 solo show that was directed by Nicolazzo, Negative Energy Inc. For all its self-questioning and stories about his mum, Heather, and boyfriend, Daniel, the piece was unexpectedly defined by his performance of the Horse Woman from the tv show Judge Judy.

It was astonishing. Flanders captured the heartbreak of the woman and found the pin-head spot of balance where poignancy and parody meet to create something that transcends both.

This was a drag verbatim performance of a nobody talking to a camera that doesn't care about the death of her horses!

Meme Girls is more of this and then far more.

While it's not easy to distract from Flanders when he's on a stage, the design by Eugyeene Teh (set and costume) and Katie Sfetkidis (lighting) is equally as captivating and beautiful. Part–rabbit hole, part Bond-film opening sequence, part–da Vinci Vitruvian Man, it's pure theatre and nothing like a tiny YouTube screen.

And Teh continues his exquisite use of monochrome design: this year, it's aqua. Except Flanders who wears a white pair of tails, and his assistant, drag queen stage kitty Art Simon, in nose-bleed heels and a black corset that shows off an enviable chest.  

All with a re-mixed pop soundtrack by THE SWEATS where Flanders uses those years of fronting an 80s cover band to great use; his "Confide in Me" puts Kylie to utter shame.

But in this world, Flanders isn't Kylie, he's women from You Tube.

Meme Girls.  Ash Flanders & Art Simone. Photo by Pia Johnson 

He's women who have used this anonymous-not-anonymous platform to confide in the comfort of strangers and open themselves to endless abuse. From an atrocious singer who didn't make it though the American Idol auditions to a 68-year-old woman who's about to become homeless, their confessions and their genuine pain are fascinating. And even if we don't actively troll them, we've shared their videos and laughed at them. 

And this is where Meme Girls is unique. Whereby in Negative Energy, Flanders used the Horse Woman to talk about himself, in Meme Girls it's more like the woman are using him. Even though it's a showcase work, it's not about Ash. And even while it's far more about Nicolazzo and his vision, aesthetic and obsessions, the woman still control the mood and heart of the piece.

It's easy to laugh at the Meme Girls and it's easy to bask in the glorious camp-cum-high-art vision on the stage (and Ash), but it's impossible to forget the world where it comes from and to be left wondering if we're the mean girls.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Book of Loco

The Book of Loco
Malthouse Theatre
17 July 2014
Beckett Theatre
to 2 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

Photo by Pia Johnson

Among walls of tape-sealed cardboard boxes stands a middle-aged man in a suit. He has a beard, an accent and looks like he's going to sweat a lot. And he might be mad and/or mad because he's being searched before boarding an international flight. Boom?

Aliro Zavarce's The Book of Loco won Best Theatre Production at the 2013 Adelaide Fringe. Zavarce was born in Venezuela and moved to Adelaide in the early 90s where he studied drama at Flinders University and has become well known and rightly loved on Adelaide's stages. The Book is an exploration of grief and madness that started when his wife left him on the September 11 2001 and his mother, in South America, became terminally ill.

He kept journals and, working with director Sasha Zahra, created a piece that looks for the lines where grief becomes identity and then moves towards something irrational, and, in turn, sees the rational madness that's everywhere. His own pain and loss is enough to drive anyone loco but what's the excuse of a world that so easily accepts and explains the most crazy of acts, ideas and attitudes?

The trip from the personal to the universal is made even smoother with Jonathon Oxlade's box of boxes design that shows endless hidden and collapsing secrets, truths and lies, and Chris More's animations and graphics that restrict themselves to the edges of the boxes and make it seem like we're looking into the hidden space.

Zavarce is warm and delightfully affable and his story's at its most engaging and moving when he's talking about his personal experiences, especially the end of his marriage and being made to feel like an outsider on a flight home to Australia (in a scene that makes Steve Kilbey singing "Under the Milky Way" sound so ocker). These easy-to-connect-with moments make it easy to accept the earnest madness of explaining the rational madness of a clearly mad world.

But don't get fooled by the earnest rants of a madman, The Book of Loco is funny and loving and ultimately lets the craziness of grief hurt a little less.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber
Malthouse Theatre
6 August 2013
Merlyn Theatre
to 10 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

Alison Whyte's irresistible performance of The Bloody Chamber is reason enough to see it before it finishes on the weekend. It's like being tucked into bed and read a fairytale that lulls you into wanting to sleep with the lights on forever, but finally leaves you safe and comfortable in its blood-soaked darkness.

Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is a re-telling of French Bluebeard story where a new young wife discovers the fate of her much older husband's former wives. It's from her 1979 collection of re-told fairy tales where women and girls don't end up as dead or eaten as they are in traditional tales, have and want sex, and are capable of being their own heroes.

Van Badham – who might be my favourite Tweep (@vanbadham) – has adapted this text from Carter's novella.  It's still told by the young wife (who's now an older woman) and glories in Carter's graphic and bloody imagery that's guided by an under current of sexuality and power that's belies any dull gender stereotypes.

Director Matthew Lutton creates a curious balance between telling and showing a story. The stage has a delightfully eerie atmosphere with three live harpists and a water-stained space where three huge black chambers hide secrets. And Anna Cordingley's design of black boxes, a bed and just enough red reveals little, but forces the audience to imagine the shining jewels, turning tide and bloody horrors. (However, I was sitting at the back and couldn't see all of the early revelations.)

But it's all about Whyte, whose telling (with some help by Shelly Lauman) evokes the story's ghosts in all of the stage's empty spaces. She may not be the innocent narrator imagined by some readers, but it's still like she strode out of the pages to make us really understand what she went through, rather than leave it to the unreliable imaginations of the readers.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

It's a Last Tuesday Tuesday!

Pimp my play: Don's Party
The Last Tuesday Society
30 July 2103 ONLY
Malthouse theatre
malthousetheatre.com.au
Facebook page

Melbourne's Last Tuesday Society are everything that is wonderful and insane about independent theatre in our town.

It's weird, but this month, they are in a grown up theatre, at the Beckett at the Malthouse, for the next in their Pimp My Play series.

How do you pimp a play?

1. Take a play.
2. Divide up the scenes amongst the collaborating artists.
3. Put all the pieces back together in order.
4. Present theatrical equivalent of Frankenstein to horrified/delighted audience.

And the play is Don's Party.

Don's freaking Party! The play David Williamson wrote in 1971 when he wasn't boring. The play about an election night in 1969 where there was a tiny chance that Labor would win. The play with 70s decor and moustaches before they became retro chic. The play that became a film at a time where nuding up was compulsory and gender politics meant voting like your husband and getting back into the kitchen to put some kabana and Coon on a toothpick and poking it into half a pineapple.

Hosted by Richard Higgins and with performers including Bron Battern, Telia Nevile, Matt Kelly and glorious folk from from The Sister's Grimm, post, The Suitcase Royale and I'm trying to kiss you, it may be the best production of a David Williamson play ever.

And if I were David Williamson, I'd hire a private jet to ensure that I didn't miss it.

Buy your tickets HERE. I've bought mine. There may be some at the door, but is it worth the risk?

Mini review: Persona

Persona
Fraught Outfit and Malthouse Theatre
5 July 2013
Beckett Theatre
to 14 July
malthousetheatre.com.au

I missed Persona last year. I came to regret this, but a consistent rule of reviewing is that you will miss the show you should see. It sold out its Theatre Works season, won a pile of Green Room Awards and I heard, "Did you see Persona?" too many times to dare miss its return at Malthouse.

I hadn't seen the Ingmar Bergman film that it's based on, but YouTube shows me how much it honours the film while being something that could only be told in a theatre. It's one of those works where direction (Adena Jacobs), design (Dayna Morrissey, set and costume; Danny Pettingill, lighting; Russell Goldsmith, sound) and performance (Meredith Penman, Karen Sibbing and Daniel Schlusser) are inseparable and the audience are as immersed in the process as the creators

It's bloody good.

And it deserves much more than a hurried response, so please read Alison Croggon's Theatre Notes review. She's since seen this season as well and says it's just as wonderful.

Review: Wild Surmise

Wild Surmise
Malthouse Theatre
Beckett Theatre, Malthouse
15 November
to 2 December
malthousetheatre.com.au

Jane Montgomery Griffiths says her adaption of Dorothy Porter's 2004 verse novel Wild Surmise "is an enactment of the act of love that is reading". Until now, I hadn't read Dorothy Porter. I'm nervous of verse novels; I think they're a bit pretentious. How great to be so wrong. This Malthouse production celebrates Porter and compels a reading of the novel, while relishing being told on a stage.

Alex is an astrobiologist and minor science celebrity. She's engulfed in an affair with Phoebe, an older American scientist, and married to poetry professor Daniel, who's had enough of corporate universities, dreams of getting back at pretentious students and is diagnosed with cancer. There's no comforting romance or confessional resolution in a story that hurts with the honesty that Alex and Daniel can never share.

The first thing seen on the stage is Humphrey Bower (Daniel) reading pages of verse; all the pages of his story that are stuck on the walls/window/mirror of his world. Designer Anna Tregloan and lighting designer Paul Jackson have created an exquisite double-mirrored world with reflections that distort and confuse like a Vegas magician but so beautifully open what feels like a new dimension on the stage where Alex and Daniel can simultaneously be in the same and different worlds.

Director Marion Potts captures why Porter's poetry is so loved, but brings a life and interpretation to the story that lets the theatre own this telling. Porter's words fly with their surprising rhythm and cosmic comparisons, ground with metaphors of terrible Elvis movies and unflusable big black turds, and comfort with the familiarity of St Kilda beach and Mario's coffee. Pott's encapsulates Alex being a Sydney girl with her fumbling with a red expresso machine and never lets the characters become as heroic or honest as their raw thoughts.

In a conventional narrative we hear conversations and imagine the unspoken; in verse we hear the unspoken and are left to imagine the awkward conversations that never share the emotional truth and poetry in their hearts and heads.

Montgomery Griffith and Bower speak verse like it's their only language and there's not a syllable uttered without understanding and intent. Their powerful and painfully truthful performances love the text but show what Alex and Daniel feel about each other beyond the words. They don't speak to each other, but are so aware of the other that they react when the other thinks or speaks about them. It's this detail that adds the heart that creates people we care about, even if their behaviour and thoughts are not what we'd chose.

When we read, we add the detail that makes a story ours.  This production adds the character detail for us, which leaves us free to really listen to Porter's words. It's not like reading, but it captures the passion of falling in love with a book and a writer because its damaged people are so clear that we feel like we're in their world with them.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Pia Johnson

And please read Chris Boyd's review.

Melbourne Festival review: Orlando

Melbourne Festival 2012
Orlando
The Rabble, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Festival
12 October 2012
Tower Theatre
to 27 October
melbournefestival.com.au

Tell me a story. Tell me in a way that it's not been told before. This is the bliss of theatre. The Rabble's Orlando is so far from the experience of reading Virgina Woolf's book, but as close to knowing its essence (I want to say soul) as possible.

Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando was a love letter to Vita Sackville West about a young man who never grew old, became a woman and lived through the 16th to 19th centuries. This Orlando is a lusty and passionate response to Virgina Woolf (and to great women writers and to all writers and poets) that's as gentle and beautiful, as cruel and painful, as liberating and celebratory, and as embarrassing and shameful as love.

Artistic directors, Emma Valente and Kate Davis, have collaborated for six years with a group of artists (in Melbourne and Sydney) to examine familiar stories, and re-imagine and re-tell them in a new context with an unexpected aesthetic.  Their work is so dense and layered that it guarantees a different experience for everyone watching – and response ranges from "this is why I go to theatre" to "this is why I don't go to theatre". If you don't understand what's going on in one of their shows, don't worry. Find what you enjoy and know that no one else will see the show quite like you do.

Orlando's re-imagined world is milky/semeny white, with crunchy pebbles, billowy tulle, soft fox fur, crisp cotton, smooth pearls and a creamy pool that flows and stagnates though the centuries. It's a world that begs us to touch and feel and roll naked in it; it's almost cruel to make us just watch. And that's before we want to taste.

Dana Miltins performance as Orlando is exquisite, almost hypnotic. For most of the night Orlando says little. Great acting is rarely the words said, it's reacting to what's being said and done, and her reactions pull us into Orlando's heart to see and feel his/her world like she/he does. 

The only thing that rips our attention away from her are Orlando's loves, who are Syd Brisbane and Mary Helen Sassman. If Orlando is all heart and emotion, they are the baser parts.  Sassman's hilarious discussion of our lusty bits is unforgettable. And there's Brisbane in a sporran with a kabana, which may come back the next time you see a Shakespeare. 

Each are so watchable in themselves, but the balance and contrast of the three performers is the sweet, salt and spice that makes this work so finger-licking delicious. 

If you own a falling-apart copy of Woolf's book, this Orlando will be as precious as a first edition. If you haven't read it, don't worry.  I thought I'd read it, but according to the receipt/bookmark in my copy – bought at the Murphy Sister's feminist bookstore in Adelaide in 1993, must have been after seeing the 1992 film – I didn't get past p.49. The joy of The Rabble's work is that there's so much more to indulge in than a mere appreciation of the source.  And, like me, you may be inspired to pop the book on your must-read pile.

At the Festival Hub at a full panel discussion about identity, drag and self, Boy George (who I love more now than I did in the 80s) said, "Sometimes the most political thing you can do is just be yourself." How often are we simply ourselves? Orlando is that search for self through gender and time and relationships and it's more honest and gutsy than anything currently being screamed about gender, identity and feminism.

Photo by Sarah Walker

This appeared on AussieTheatre.com

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: The Histrionic

The Histrionic
Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company
15 April
Merlyn Theatre
to 5 May
malthouse.com.au

Until I hit Google, I didn't  know about Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. A quote from the New York Times that his works are "the most significant literary achievement since World War II" crops up a lot. As an over-educated reader, I guess I should know him, but The Histrionic hasn't encouraged me to seek out more Bernhard.

In 1982 Bernhard had a super-hissy when a Saltzburg Festival theatre wouldn't turn off emergency EXIT signs and he cancelled the season because "A society that can't deal with two minutes of darkness can do without my play". He then went all meta and returned to the same theatre with a dark comedy about a living-treasure genius artist performing his greatest work in a town that's more interested in its pigs and sausages – complete with ironic rants about EXIT signs.

I love little more than art and writing, but I care little for self-important art and writers. Even with its satirical guise, The Histrionic is still so close to reality that I didn't care.

Billie Brown joyfully embodies Bruscon, the self-obsessed genius who has to perform even if his cast/ family and audiences don't live up to his standards. In a career-highlight performance, the work is mostly a one-sided conversation with Bruscon and for all its insight and genuine wit, I didn't care if he succeeded, failed or was eaten by the pigs.

I didn't care about the writer or his art because there's nothing he's saying that we don't know.  I know people like Bruscon and his cast and, even with their lost souls and broken hearts, I'm happy to light the way out and live without him.

But what makes this production so intriguing and enjoyable is that director Daniel Schlusser and his wonderful cast make us care for everyone else on the stage. The good-hearted landlord (Barry Otto), his wife (Kelly Butler) and daughter (Katherine Tobkin) and Bruscon's wife (Jennifer Vuletic) and children (Josh Price and Edwina Wren), say little, but great theatre and irresistible performance isn't really about getting the most lines.

As Bruscon pontificates, they accept and suffer in a marvellous backstage void filled with saw dust and old props that have been left to decay (designed by Marg Horwell and lit by Paul Jackson). With the likes of huge fruit and veg, a giant hand and massive moose, you can't not laugh at and love the artifice of theatre – and there's the bonus game of "what show is that prop from" (hooray for another appearance of the bi-polar bear).

Schlusser's voice is by far the more interesting one in The Histrionic and he balances the line between self-indulgence and art so deftly that even the likes of Bruscon are forgiven, if not loved.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

MICF review: Tina C

MICF 2012

Tina C: Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word

Malthouse, Christopher Green, Julia Holt, MICF

22 March 2012

Beckett Theatre

to 14 April

An Englishman dresses an American woman to present a lecture-cum-corroboree-cum-sing-a-long to white middle class theatre goers.  She doesn't understand that we celebrate the battles we lost, but she knows that Mabo isn'a a dance and thinks it's time she explained Indigenous reconciliation to us. With so many levels of wrong, Tina C may well be the most right thing in town

Melbourne met Tina C in the Speigeltent in 2006 and welcomes her back with open everything. Tina C: Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word is created by the UK's Christopher Green (who we've also seen in Finucane and Smith's Salon De Dance),  but I still have trouble accepting that Tina's not from North America's south.

Gal singer superstar (in her head) Tina loves the soft power of middle-of-the-road country pop, so naturally found an affinity with some of Australia's best country singers and musicians, like Jimmy Little and Bob Randell, and even with the rock of Yothu Yindi. Following Kate Bush's dance steps (remember The Dreaming album), she knows that pretty singers with awesome legs can change the world, and while Rolf Harris played with Kate, Tina is joined by musican James Henry (Deadly Award nominee) and her almost-twin singer Auriel Andrew (Deadly Lifetime Achievement Award winner and a 2011 OAM).

As Andrew sings Randell's "Brown Skin Baby" and tells her own story, Tina rightly cannot understand why our little nation hasn't grasped that white folk are the original boat people. She doesn't care about increasing our white-middle-class guilt; she just wants us to see the bleeding obvious.

Many an academic and drunken dinner party conversation has offered reasons for our blocks in logic, but Tina wonders is it's because Australian Indigenous art isn't easy-to-wear jewellery (like that lovely turquoise Native American stuff) or because they don't make delicious snacks we can buy in specialist delis.

She may have a point. I'm wearing earrings from Indonesia and a scarf from Vietnam as I snack on falafel. Yep, us white folk love indigenous accessories and foreign snacks. So perhaps it's time to follow Tina's example. After all, she wears dot-print hot pants and a knock-off Acubra with as much class as Dame Edna wears sequins.

I can start with my dot-painting handbag.  It was a gift and, even though I love a colourful accessory, it stayed in my cupboard as I was unsure if it's an offensive and condescending appropriation of ancient art or a celebratory integration of culture. Thanks to Tina, it'll be on my arm this week in celebration. I wonder if I can find matching hot pants...

This is the genius of Tina C. Her arguments are so naively off that she unbalances logic and makes us look at something we think we understand from a new angle. There's room for more of Tina's story and a stronger narrative in the show, but nothing can take away from her sparklie heart and the sharp intelligence of her creator.

Phtoto by Lachlan Woods

Appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: The Wild Duck

The Wild Duck
Malthouse presents a Belvoir production
21 February 2012
Merlyn Theatre
to 17 March

Melbourne's Hayloft Project gang flew their The Wild Duck back to the Malthouse from Belvoir Street with a swag of 2011 awards and the opening night anticipation was palpable.  Riveting in its intimacy, this is the kind of theatre that will ruin lesser productions for you. So book now and read the reviews later, because tickets are disappearing by the minute.

While Ibsen's 19th century naturalism and tragedy is often rejected for its obvious metaphor and an unnatural coincidental melodrama worthy of a daytime soap, re-workings (and re-readings) continue to reveal the genius of his storytelling. In a society where we demand to know the truth, this story asks if it's better to keep truth hidden and leaves its character knowing that if they could make even tiny decisions again, they wouldn't chose the truth.

Writers Simon Stone and Chris Ryan and dramaturg Eamon Flack have tightened it into three acts, stripped it back to reveal its soul and re-worked it to expose the web-like frailty of its world. Writers may cringe, but this re-writing of stories allows us to see that a writer's original words are not what makes us love them; it's story and the reflection of ourselves that takes a work from the admiration of our minds to the illogical love of our hearts.

Stone also directs. The duck and attic forrest metaphors are incorporated so delicately that all we can see is their beauty, and he builds a tension that is almost as unbearable as the truth that's revealed. There's a stop-breathing second when the audience know more than the characters and can see the inevitable end, yet Stone guides the story so we're still left shocked and hoping that someone will make a choice that fixes everything.

Ralph Myers's fish bowl design is initially disconcerting as we watch the glassed-in void like a huge screen TV. But, not only supplying a fourth wall, this remarkable design distances us from the inevitability of the story so much that we're drawn to its emotion, and the use of microphones brings us even closer with the sound of breath between sobs and the squelch of a kiss that makes you reach for tissues.

And none of this would mean much without an astonishing cast.  John Gaden, Anita Hegh, Ewen Leslie, Eloise Mignon, Anthony Phelan and Toby Schmitz's performances start with their on-stage relationships. They let us feel the unspoken actions between them and grasp the thoughts and feelings behind the words they use to hide their truths from each other. This creates an intimacy that makes you almost want to turn away to give them privacy.

This is the kind of performance that draws you in so deeply that even a live duck doesn't distract – a very cute live duck swimming in a perspex pond.

This is my benchmark production for 2012. If you're not creating work with this much passion, intelligence and understanding, why even bother.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Pia Johnson

Review: The Story of Mary Maclane By Herself

The Story of Mary Maclane By Herself
Malthouse Theatre and Ride on Theatre
1 December 2011
Beckett Theatre, The Malthouse
to 11 December

Mary Maclane would be the kind of Facebook friend you'd be tempted to block in case she tried to chat, but you couldn't do it because her bi-hourly updates about her cleverness and despair were too funny.

Born in 1881, teenage Maclane moved from Canada to New York and at 19 she'd sold over 100,000 copies of her first memoir, The Story of Mary Maclane. It was mostly read by young women, who also wanted to marry the Devil, and was criticised by those who were not. She continued writing, but worked in advertising as her dreams of literary fame were shattered as her subsequent works were not as popular.

When Bojana Novakovic discovered this writing, which wasn't republished until 1993, she fell a bit in love with a lost voice that wouldn't feel out of time were she were an angry young blogger in the fallout of instant fame. And as her company, Ride On Theatre, were the Malthouse company in residence, she and director Tanya Goldberg saddled up You Am I's Tim Rogers as Mary's gentleman musician and composer and harnessed Mary's passion.

The Story of Mary Maclane By Herself is fashioned from Maclane's writings and her musings are musically embellished by Rogers with Andy Baylor and Dan Witton in Anna Cordingly's lush saloon-bar-cum-empty-courtroom design.  Here Mary's pretence of self belief is immediately recogniseable, especially by anyone who also begs to understand why someone as clever and emotionally empathetic as they are cannot touch the happiness that stupid and ugly people find so easily.

Mary's appeal is her conceit of genius and Novakovic lets her be confident but approaches her with a compassion that makes her unlikeability likeable. And with a meta nod to the miserable genius of young artists, she even lets Mary finds her portrayer's diary. There was room for more blurring of character and actor, but it's doubtful that Mary would have allowed her creators such an indulgence.

Ride On Theatre refuse to be dull and have created a unique and compelling story that Maclane herself might even have found a moment of happiness in watching it.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

For bonus reading, please head to Cameron and Alison's wonderful discussion on Theatre Notes.

Photo by Jeff Busby.

Review: Little Match Girl

Little Match Girl
Malthouse Theatre and Meow Meow Revolution
16 November 2011
Merlyn Theatre, The Malthouse
to 4 December
www.malthousetheatre.com.au

What haven't I already said about absolute wonderfulness of Meow Meow? She's at the Malthouse this month with Little Match Girl and her hoards of international fans are squirming with jealousy that Melbourne (and then Sydney) have such access to this must-be-experienced diva who shreds perceptions of performance art.

Meow has recently graced shows like The Burlesque Hour with her glitter-lipped self, but her last full-length local cabaret was Vamp at The Malthouse in 2008. That show was based on Wilde's Salome, while Little Match Girl starts with Hans Christian Anderson's 1845 story of a little girl who freezes to death rather than return penniless to a violent home. Yet even as Meow reminds us that little has changed in civilised society, she still craves a fairy tale ending and looks for her perfect match as her flames fade and burn.

Like any fine cat, she's aloof, rightfully sure of her exquisite beauty (from the right angle), has remarkably flexile legs and appears contentedly independent until she pounces and demands immediate attention and physical love. But never believe those purrs are for you, as there's always a more enticing lap, and she may have found her flame in just-as-sensational Mitchell Butel, her saviour and handbag.

Working again with the delightful Iain Grandage (musical director and composition), it's bliss to hear Meow with a band and there are super new songs by Grandage and Megan Washington, and a too-delightful Noel Coward number, a "The Book of Love" to bring tears and touches of Richard Wagner, Cole Porter and Laurie Anderson for bonus perfection.

Meow resents attention flowing from her, but Marion Potts (director), Anna Cordingley (design) and Paul Jackson (lighting) create a shiny world worthy of her presence – Jackson's creative lighting is especially stunning – although it's doubtful that Meow will ever let us applaud Melissa Madden Gray.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

MIAF review: Half-Real

MIAF 2011
Half-Real
Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Festival and The Border Project
29 September 2011
The Tower Theatre, The Malthouse
Sold Out

Drugs or pink pyjamas? Nervous tick or dead wife? It's your choice in The Border Project's  Half-Real, a whodunnit choose-your-own-adventure.

The Border Project are from Adelaide and if you haven't hear of them, pretend that you have because they're getting talked about, in the good way.

With the help of a rather cool Wii-like controller and a whizz-bang, just-like-a-real-computer-game-but-bigger-and-smoother video projection, the audience vote about what happens next and who we think did the deed.

Performers David Heinrich, Alirio Zavarce and Amber McMahon present us with three intriguing suspects and the most frustrating element is choosing whose story we don't hear.

The premise of handing control over to the audience is too tempting to miss, but it doesn't take long to realise that our choice is as limited as the choose-your-own-adventure books the idea is based on, rather than on a narrative as sophisticated as a contemporary computer game. (As I once happily play Pong on a black and white telly, today's games continue to leave my jaw on the ground.)

Interacting with a controller is fun (and how I wish I had one for other shows*), but it was clear that our choices weren't based on the evidence presented, and post-show chat wasn't about the results of our choices, but about the choices made for us and if indeed there was any real choice.

Half-Real looks like a game with it's drop-dead design and super (non-pixillated) cast, but it feels like being a child playing a board game with an adult who's letting you keep up, even if they don't let you win.

* Should this 50ish couple written by David Williamson a) discuss how horrible their view of the harbour is, b) moan about their adult children or c) jump into the harbour?

Photo by Steve Tilling


This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

MIAF review: Ganesh Versus the Third Reich

MIAF 2011
Ganesh Versus the Third Reich
Malthouse There and Melbourne Festival and Back to Back Theatre
29 September 2011
Merlyn Theatre
to 9 October

Should we only tell our stories? Is it possible to balance the line between respect and offence? With a hullaballoo playing out in the media about how this show is offending some "Melbourne taxpayers", it's probably best to see Ganesh Versus the Third Reich to make up your own mind.

When the Back to Back ensemble conceived the "great conceit" of Ganesh travelling to nazi Germany to reclaim the swastika,  they knew it was "morally fraught ... and too dangerous for a little theatre company from Geelong to appropriate Hindu gods and create a fairytale within the Holocaust."

Thankfully, they re-thought and created a story within a story that blurs reality and fiction as it confronts itself and manipulates its audience's assumptions.

Devised by Mark Deans, Marcia Ferguson, Bruce Gladwin, Simon Laherty, Sarah Mainwaring, Scott Price, Kate Sulan, Brian Tilley and David Woods,  the telling takes us into the rehearsal room as the cast (Deans, Laherty, Price and Tilley) deal with a difficult director (Woods) and argue dilemmas like if it's ok to play a Jew if you're not a Jew or an Indian deity if you're not an India deity. And there's the issue of who's going to play the "good part" of Hitler.

Meanwhile, Ganesh arrives in a concentration camp in 1943, where his elephant-head draws the attention of Mengele, and he meets Levi, whose mental retardation has kept him alive.

If you're going to be offended this work, be offended by yourself as you realise that you came into the theatre with some pre-conceptions and ideas that are offensive to others.

Ganesh Versus the Third Reich is theatre that grabs us by our hearts, gives us permission to laugh, makes us cry, shakes some sense into us, then starts the process again. What an astonishing start to MIAF 2011.

Photo by Jeff Busby

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Namatjira

Namatjira 
Malthouse Thearte and Big hART
12 August 2011
Merlyn Theatre
to 28 August

Grandchildren of Albert Namatjira asked Big hART to share the story of their grandfather.

Big hART created Ngapartji Ngapartji, one of my highlights of MIAF 2007, the story of Pitjantjatara performer Trevor Jamieson's family and the devastating impact of the Maralinga bomb tests on Arrernte country in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). For such a horrendous story, the telling overflowed with the kind of love, understanding, joy, pain and sharing that defines amazing theatre.

Namatjira is as wonderful and is by far my favourite show this year.

Most of us recognise Namatjira's unique watercolours of the MacDonnell Ranges. By painting how country looked, instead of its meaning, Namatjira's windows into country adorned many suburban walls in the 1940s and 50s, are gallery protected today and decorate as many Aussie, Aussie, Aussie place mats as Ken Done's. But Done still gets cheques for his designs; Namatjira desperately sold the copyright to his because he needed money.

Namatjira is the story beyond the history book declaration of Australia's first official Aboriginal citizen, the highway naming in Canberra and the commemorative stamps. From a Lutheran mission, where translations of hymns left Jesus being tracked to kill, to meeting a girl called The Queen, Albert changed his name, fell in love, had children, learned to paint with digger Rex Battarbee, supported an extended family of 600 and faced frustrations that his citizenship and fame couldn't overcome.

Directed by Scott Rankin and Wayne Blair, the collaborative telling involves Namatjira's grandchildren and relatives, composer Genevieve Lacy and Big hART's master storyteller Jameison is joined by the too delightful (and ridiculously funny) Derik Lynch.

In a world where we continually define ourselves by our social groups and standings, it's a joy to laugh at our attempts to not define ourselves and share a story that should be far better known. Namatjira is not to be missed; your heart will thank you for going.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Die Winterreise

Die Winterreise
Malthouse Theatre and Thinice
22 July 2011
Merlyn Thearte, CUB Malthouse
to 31 July 2011

I understand why Schubert purists are not enamored by Die Winterreise, but I'm a Schubert virgin, so was more than happy to go with the flow and the snow of this gorgeous meditation about the loneliness, guilt and sorrow of ageing.

Malthouse Theatre has again paired with Matthew Lutton's Thinice company from Perth  (The Trial) and bring together a creative dream-team to re-imagine the song cycle that Franz Schubert wrote a year before he died at 31 (in 1828).

Die Winterreise was based around the poems of Wilhelm Müller, who also died in his early 30s (in 1827). He and Schubert achieved their fame posthumously. Director Lutton, who has yet to hit the 30s danger zone and already enjoying artistic recognition, says that when he first listened to the cycle "the music aroused recollections in me I found difficult and painful to articulate". His finished work is a glimpse into the thoughts of a young man sharing the angst of his fellow-artists.

An old man (George Shevtsov) cooks a meal alone in his one-roomed flat. Listening to a Shubert recording, he faces his memories and his younger selves as they appear as a singer (Paul Capsis), dancer (James O'Hara) and pianist (Alistair Spence).

It's at times obvious, but its artistry turns even the more clichéd moments into something genuine, painful and beautiful. Chrissie Parrot's choreography, Adam Gardnir's design and Paul Jackson's lighting bring the multiple layers of this work out of the music and onto the stage. With such visceral visuals, the emotional impact of Die Winterreise is there without the music.

But this is a piece of music and it's far from a Schubert chamber concert. Sound designer Kelly Ryall and arranger Spence have deconstructed the music so that isn't so much an arrangement of Die Winterreise, but a complex sampling that lets us hear the beauty of the music, but forces the focus onto the stage story rather than the story in the score.

As a piece for voice, cabaret-favourite Paul Capsis was a curious choice, and a wonderful one.  With the help of music supervisor Iain Grandage, Capsis has let go of his show mask and by being more subtle in his performance, he's found a rounder and fuller voice that brings him so much closer to the hearts of his audience. I'm looking forward to seeing how he brings this into his cabaret shows.

The work ends with a monologue, written by Tom Holloway, which gives it an unexpected and defining narrative. Although it's beautifully sad, and Shevtsov's performance is heart breaking, it takes away the personal images and stories the audience were creating for themselves.

Die Winterreise is already dividing opinion, which is always a good reason to see something and decide for yourself.

This review appeared on  AussieTheatre.com

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.

Review: The End

The End
Malthouse Theatre presents a Belvoir production
25 February 2011
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse
to 11 March
www.malthousetheatre.com.au

Samuel Beckett said that "Words are all we have." I'm a word lover and if it weren't for theatre makers, I would have missed too much of Beckett's astonishing writing.

As Coner and Judy Hegarty Lovett showed me the painful bliss of the Beckett's Molloy novels at the 2010 Melbourne International Arts Festival, performer Robert Menzies and director Eamon Flack have convinced me that Beckett's plays are just a hint of his genius.

The novella The End was written in 1946 (originally in French), before Waiting for Godot (1953) and Beckett's Nobel Prize for Literature (1969). His first person storyteller is kicked out of an institution and back on the streets he knows too well. Conned out of his rent money, he heads to the country and finally returns to the suburbs "... beyond the stupid hope of rest or less pain". Beckett's characters are usually in despair, but they show us a light so dim that it's often uncomfortable to laugh – and Beckett wanted us to laugh.

On a bare wooden floor with a cross to mark his place, it's performed as written. Beckett's language is so compelling that the story, for all its drama, can become secondary. Reading Beckett is about the words and language and I don't hear the narrative voice when I read him.  What Menzies's remarkable performance does is turn the wordy narrator in to a character so unforgettable that the words become the music to his story.

Menzies and Flack have created a telling of The End that surpasses the words and creates an experience where the emotion overwhelms the admiration – and the admiration floods in after. This isn't a show to miss.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

The End is in this book