MICF: Adrienne, Stella and Zoe

MICF

Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! 

Adrienne Truscott
28 March 2014
comedyfestival.com.au

Tales from the Crip
Stella Young
2 April 2014
comedyfestival.com.au/

FOMO
Zoe McDonald
2 April 2014
comedyfestival.com.au

As I sat down to write about Adrienne, Stella and Zoe, a fellow-writer posted this on Facebook: "A guy at work just said to me, 'Not to be sexist but I don't like female comedians. They're not funny and all tell jokes about their periods.'"

He said it outloud, to another person.

Anyone want his contact details for a comedy festival date? Unless you're a girl and Aunt Flo's in town,  because you'll just be a bitch.

As a silly girl who only laughs at tampon jokes and doesn't understand proper jokes about beer and blow jobs, I saw some female comedians this week and none talked about getting the painters in. They did talk about rape and discrimination and sex and unequal standards. And still managed to make their audiences laugh.

Adrienne Truscott is best known as a Wau Wau sister. Performing at lots of festivals, she's seen a lot of shows and heard a lot of rape jokes. And she's been told why they are funny.

In many shows I've seen, I've remember laughing at two rape jokes (one by Eddie Perfect and one by The Sisters Grimm). The rest haven't been funny.

Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! is Adreienne's take on rape jokes. It was the most talked about show at the Edinburgh Fringe last year.

With wonderful goatee-adding projections, she names those who have made rape jokes and shares their commentary about why people should think they are funny. Because if you have to explain it, it's the audience's fault for being dim, never your fault for not being funny. They also seem to assume that it's only women who don't get the joke.

Based on the joke she starts with, I wonder which performer has already said that it'd be ironic (meaning funny) if Adrienne were raped during her run? And I don't mean "if"; I have no doubt that someone has said this and that people have laughed. I dare you to say it to her. And to me.

It's one thing for my friends to see Adrienne's show – do, she's wonderful and it's painfully hilarious – but this is the show to see if you've ever made or laughed at a rape joke. It's also the show for  comedians who blame their audience when they don't laugh.

And it's for writer Keith's mate, maybe we should just tell him that he'll see naked snatch?

Next I headed north to the Northcote Town Hall where the tampons must be overflowing from the dressing rooms with the amount of women performing .

There's Stella Young's Tales from the Crip. Stella's the crip.

After years of writing, being on tv and compering, she's finally doing her first stand up show.  (A-M, how dare you be so insensitive; Stella can't stand.) But no one can beat her story of a someone asking her to stand up for a bit during sex.

Stella shares stories about the earnest awkwardness she faces every day from well-meaning strangers and total idiots who see difference as an opportunity to show how much they don't notice difference, or to show how down-with-the crips they are. Here's a rule: if you don't like the idea of a stranger asking you the same question or offering you help when you haven't asked, then don't do it to a stranger. And if you have to read a pamphlet with rules about how to treat people, best that you be quiet.

Stella's show is personal with enough distance for her to keep some secrets and is guaranteed to make everyone shudder and laugh with embarrassing recognition. And I will never have guilt about not giving my spare change to Riding for the Disabled collectors; apparently it's not like The Saddle Club!

Also at Northcote is Zoe McDonald in FOMO: Fear of Missing Out. Zoe's multi-character solo show won the Tour Ready award at the Melbourne Fringe and went to the Adelaide Fringe. FOMO has come back to Melbourne as a different show.

It's still about the fear of hitting 30 and wondering why life isn't perfect, but it's tighter, has new characters and has become much more a show about Zoe and her understanding of why she has the FOMO and is terrified of becoming a cat lady. In the first run, the characters were the most memorable (being bloody hilarious), but this time, you leave remembering Zoe.

I nearly didn't go because I had seen its first season, but never underestimate how long runs can influence a show –  and Twitter let me known that I'm not the only person who has the FOMO about not having a Thermomix or an iPad.

So that's three women who didn't make menstrual cycle jokes. Neither did Bryony Kimmings, Hannah Gadsby, Isabel and Rachel or Kate McLennan. In fact, I haven't heard a period joke all festival.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

MICF: The Boy with Tape on His Face

MICF
More Tape
The Boy With Tape On His Face
28 March 2014
The Forum, upstairs
to 20 April
comedyfestival.com.au

I know it's a brave call, but if you can only see one show at the Comedy Festival, make it More Tape from The Boy With Tape on His Face.

It's pure joy; like mainlining a rainbow.

It's the show you go to when you're feeling so down that kittens on the internet can't make you smile.

It's the show you go to on a date when you really like the person and really want the date to last long into the night and maybe forever.

It's the show you take someone to if it's been too long since they laughed.

It's the show you go to if you've seen a couple duds and need to be reminded just how brilliant the Comedy Festival can be.

It's the show you go to and want to be chosen for audience participation.

It's the show you go to because everyone who's seen it has told you to see it.

It's a guy, Sam Wills, with gaffer tape on his mouth so he can't or won't speak. He gets people from the audience and makes a stage full of absolute happy. It's clowning, magic and puppetry with a touch of genius and no description can do it justice.

It's also a brand new show if you saw him at MICF a few years ago.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

MICF: Bryony Kimmings

Sex Idiot
Byrony Kimmings and Theatre Works
27 March 2014
Melb Town Hall, Mini Main
to 5 April
comedyfestival.com.au

The delightfully wonderful Bryony Kimmings flys out of Melbourne later today. Boo. Come back soon - please.

Meanwhile, Melbourne was delighted by six performances of her wonderful show Sex Idiot.

When she was 29, Bryony had a sexual health check and found out she had a common STI. Her doctor offered to send anonymous letters to everyone she’d been in sexual contact with warning that they should have a sexual health check, but Bryony decided to contact her past lovers herself – and make a show about it.

The Comedy Festival set a ridiculous tone when they took down her promotional video of “The Fanny Song”.  The song lists words used for vagina and includes cunt. Given it’s hard to find a stand up in the festival who doesn’t abuse someone by calling them that, what can you say when they censor the rare time it’s used in a non-abusive and positive context.

But Sex Idiot is a fearless, hilarious and heart-touching look back at her loves, lovers and others. (And a reminder to use condoms and barrier methods to keep you healthy.) Of course, hearts can’t be as easily protected and the most powerful moments are those when she reflects on those that she knows she hurt along the way.

I was thrilled to give her my pubes.

And here's "The Fanny Song"

I also wrote about this on AussieTheatre.com. 

Review: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

FOLA
Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model
Bryony Kimmings and Taylor Hourchen
26 March 2014
Theatre Works
to 6 April
theatreworks.org.au

Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model had me in tears at the beginning and at the end and in the middle. All good tears; it's a work that doesn't just talk about optimism and alternatives, it creates them.

Bryony Kimmings is a performance artist from the UK. She adores her niece and when she started seeing the world through the eyes of 9-year-old Taylor, anger turned her protective switch turned on.

She talks about typing words that a 9-year-old might want to know about into Google and seeing what a child can see on even a secured family-secured and monitored iPad. She talks about the pop stars and a media whose main market is girls who are presented as sexualised and sexual before they are even teenagers. She talks about what these girls say they want to be.

Yep, it's easy to turn that switch on.

So, what Aunty Bryony did was work with Taylor on making two art projects. And, yes, there were lots of family meetings about them.

One was to create a pop star role model who really is a role model and is credible, likeable and a superstar. The result is Catherine Bennett, who is played by Bryony and based on what Taylor wanted and still wants in a credible likeable superstar role model.

Catherine is a palaeontologist and a singer. Bryony and Taylor are going to make her world famous. She already has film clips and a web site and has become friends with Yoko Ono, Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman. Taylor wants to get her on the Ellen show, so that millions can see how much songs about friendship and a future with self-painting nails, equality and polar bears rock.

The second project is the show Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, which is about creating the show Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model. It's performed by Bryony and Taylor, but it's for adults; Taylor's offstage or in sound-blocking headphones for parts.

It opens in a fairy-world landscape where Taylor dances on a lead held by her aunt (she's looking after her niece while she's away from home and the lead is handy). It's about Bryony seeing what Taylor and her friends were exposed to, how this is different from what non-internet and instant communication generations grew up with and what she can do to try and empower her niece, and all girls, to be themselves a world that doesn't seem to even want them to be kids.

With women knights ready to fight or go so far as to wear a naff princess dress, it's made from a love that has stakes so high that winning is the only option. Even if Bryony thinks Catherine is a bit weird, she's what Taylor wants, and it's this love that exposes and shares its vulnerability. A vulnerability that's always Bryony's, because this show and world is a place where Taylor is loved and safe. And my tears were from wanting my very happy and loved niece to always feel this safe and loved.

My niece is six. She lives interstate and I don't see her anywhere near as much as I'd like to, but she's still one of my absolute favourite people ever, and she draws me pictures of cats. I hope that if there's ever a time when she needs someone to be completely on her side, or she needs to feel safe, or needs someone to tell her an uncomfortable truth that she'll trust her Aunty A. And I hope that I can continue to be as cool an aunt as Aunty Bry.

Bryony is also doing a show at the Comedy Festival called Sex Idiot. She thinks Taylor doesn't know, but there's a part of Superstar when Taylor makes Bryony put on the headphones...

Sex Idiot is a fearless, hilarious and heart-touching look back at her loves, lovers and others and it started when she had a sexual health check that revealed a common STI. It's also absolutely brilliant and Byrony Kimmings may as well book her tickets back to Melbourne because we want to see everything that she makes.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Frankenstein

Frankenstein
The Rabble and Malthouse Theatre
25 March 2014
Beckett Theatre
to 5 April
malthousetheatre.com.au

My uterus is still reacting to The Rabble's Frankenstein.

I say it every time, but no one makes theatre like The Rabble does and Frankenstein is stretching their own boundaries far enough for Malthouse to include content warnings. Read them and you'll know if you should give it a miss.

Working with their actors, co-creators Kate Davis and Emma Valente devise work based on well-know texts. Hours of improvisation and development never get near the stage (and they kept cutting after the previews). What's left is distilled, clear and so potent that it's not safe to take in more than sips.

The novel Frankenstein was written by an 18-year-old woman. In 1816 Mary Shelley was on holiday in Geneva with her new husband Percy (whose first wife had recently suicided), and writers Lord Byron and John Polidori. They had a competition to write the best horror story. Mary won with the beginnings of the novel that was first published anonymously in 1818 and in her name in 1823.  It's about a doctor who creates life: a monster who doesn't want to be alone.

The Rabble tell it as a story about fertility and birth, knowing that between 1815 and 1818 Shelley lost three children at birth. Finally, one baby survived.

In this story, an infertile doctor (Mary Helen Sassman) wants to be a mummy so much that she's going to fight until she makes a baby by any means possible, helped by her assistant (Dana Miltins) and adopted blind daughter (Emily Milledge). The return of her brother (David Paterson) makes for awkwardness, but not as awkward as the fact that she creates a monster (Jane Montgomery Griffiths). 

With the horror-film monster often better known than the book, there's as much reference to horror films as to the novel – especially those made to squeal and look away from and those that treat women atrociously. 

The orange stage is alien and uncomfortably beautiful, and filled with hundreds of black water-filled balloons.

Like monster eggs, they are slippery and wobbly and range in size from a mensturating to a first-trimester uterus, which becomes squeal-and-look-away clear when the first is ripped open into a bucket.

This is reproduction that's bleeding, empty, ripped, violent, invasive, torturous, stinking, screaming, agonising, helpless, stitched, scarred, violated, stretched and exhausted.

And it's beautiful.

Blood and pain are such a part of making, or trying to make, new life and finding the exquisite love that's swaddled in a soft bunny rug.

With an infertile naked mutant-breasted monster, a womb that never forgives its emptiness and one ripped out before it had a chance, Frankenstein's honesty is confronting and Valente and Davis never hold back when a visual choice has to be made. Yes, it has to be a coat hanger and it has to be red globby jelly and it's impossible to not see the difference between the naked flesh of a woman in her 20s and one in her 50s.

It's extreme, but no more than the horror films inspired by Frankenstein. In comparison to some, it's mild. And, as we laugh as much as squeal at horror films, it's more than ok to laugh if it gets too much, too graphic or too close.

The Rabble's monster story dares us to find beauty and laughter – and perhaps even comfort – in the horror of reproduction.

I just wish I'd had some ibuprofen with me.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

MICF: EDGE!

MICF 2014
EDGE!
Isabel and Rachel
27 March 2014
Tuxedo Cat
to 8 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Isabel and Rachel's EDGE! won Best Comedy at the 2013 Melbourne Fringe and they won Audience Favourite at Melbourne's 2013 Short and Sweet Theatre. EDGE! has since been to the Perth and Adelaide Fringes and is back home at the Tuxedo Cat so that everyone who couldn't get a ticket at the Fringe can see what the fuss was about.

Just book now, in case it sells out again.

Stella is 11. She had a viral hit on YouTube when she was 8 and her mum is trying to make her a star – even if she's in LA and talking to her daughter on the phone. It's one thing to sing about clouds and marshmallows, but it's time Stella grows up and becomes like other famous internet stars.

It was strange to see it the day after seeing a real life Stella in Bryony Kimmings's Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model performed with her real-life 11-year-old niece and addressing the reality of everything about Stella.

Isabel and Rachel are a fresh, original and adorable new voice who are sprinkling glitter and light on the frustrations and ironies of girls and young women aspiring to be famous for being famous.

I also wrote about this show on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Neighbourhood Watch

Neighbourhood Watch
MTC presents the Belvoir production
20 March 2014
The Sumner
to 26 April
mtc.com.aud-watch/

Any one who saw Lally Katz's super-gorgeous Stories I Want to Tell You in Person heard about her writing of Neighbourhood Watch, and will be thrilled that the MTC have brought us that Belvoir production. Like most of Lally's work, it's personal, dreamy and so dark that that you're never sure if you're wiping away tears of heartaching recognition or life-affirming love.

Neighbourhood Watch is about neighbours, friends and death and all the things we do to avoid or confront both.

It's set in the year of Kevin 07: a far-too-quickly-lost time of hope. Howard lost his seat and his government, a woman was Deputy PM, a rock star was Minister for the Environment, Kyoto was signed, our Indigenous people were finally apologised to, and we all got $1000 to buy some treats to keep the economy going. Today, such hope feels like fiction.

It was also the year that Lally moved to Far Kew and met Anna, her 80+ Hungarian neighbour who became her best friend, and the year that Robyn Nevin asked Lally to write her a "tough and funny" character. When the Nevin asks, you write – and result is the story of grieving Catherine (Megan Holloway) meeting her neighbour Ana (Nevin), whose lifetime of grief is as guarded as her big-dog protected front gate.

The combination of Robyn and Ana is as good as it gets. Katz captures the unique second-language rhythm and Nevin perfects it in a performance that lets you love Ana in an instant. Ana's Englishisms and missing social niceties are hilarious, but Nevin assures that we are always on her side, even when she is making painful choices, and that Ana is never made fun of. It's such a remarkable performance that it might be impossible to see the play and not consider real-life Anna a friend.

Simon Stone's confident direction is an enhancing and comfortable fit with the writing; he's able to bring Katz's work to a commercial stage without losing her delightfully awkward tone or any of the love that she pours into her characters, while letting them find their place in the world beyond the text.

With Dale Ferguson's almost bare stage design, made intimate with Damien Cooper's lighting, there's enough space to feel the reach of the drama, but Kew is missing. It's easy for a Melbourne audience to understand the subtleties of the suburb – so much of Katz's work starts with and evokes a sense of place that leaves residents homesick –  but its greyness doesn't share the green of the trees, the manicured lawns, Leo's, the High Street tram or getting stuck on Princess Street trying to cut across to the Eastern Freeway. Having said that, I could see it all, so perhaps the wheelie bins were more than enough.

Lally Katz's writing grabbed me from the first time I saw a short play about the Apocalypse Bear in Kew. There have been ups and downs, but at her best her writing is felt in our hearts before our brains have time to think it all through. Neighbourhood Watch is Katz at her absolute best.

But the real world isn't at its best.  Lally wrote a piece for The Age on 1 March: Anna has cut her off and isn't speaking to her. In Stories, Lally talked about real-life Anna seeing the play in Sydney and the thought of it being in Melbourne without her being there is unthinkable – and, more importantly, it's too sad to think that she might not know how much this play has made us love her.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

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.

Review: The Long Pigs

The Long Pigs
14 March 2014
fortyfive downstairs
to 23 March
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Coulrophobia: fear of clowns. If you've never been scared of clowns and their silly red noses, you will be by the end of The Long Pigs.

Rejected and broken by their own kind, the three long pigs (from the Melanesian Pidgin for "human flesh") are so bitterly dark and absurdly hilarious that you'll never be able to look at a fake red nose again without breaking out in a sweat or gagging.

Clare Bartholomew (Circus Oz, Die Roten Punkte and lots more), Derek Ives (Rock 'n' Roll Circus, The Candy Butchers and lots more) and Nicci Wilks (La Fura Del Baus, CIRCA and lots more) are the three pigs: This, That and The Other Pig. They're filthy and play in a rank mire of intimidation, mistrust and can't-wash-it-off evil.

With ever-wonderful director Susie Dee, these traditionally-trained clowns put their hands down the throats of glittery-rainbow red-nosed clowns, turn them inside out and cut their guts out from the outside – with a blunt rusty knife.

And with the design team of Anna Tregloan (set and costumes), Andy Turner (lights) and Jethro Wooward (composition and sound) turning fortyfive downstairs into the cesspit factory where the clowns-gone-bad prepare and perform, the only thing more frightening than the clowns is the temptation to join them and roll around with them in the blood.

Be tempted. The macabre doesn't get more gloriously funny.

This was on AussieTheatre.

Photo by Ponch Hawkes

Review: Empire

Empire
Spiegelworld
13 March 2014
Rooftop, Crown Casino
closing TBC
empireaustralia.com

ANOTHER circus show in a Speigeltent... Surely we've seen it all? Hell, no! Empire captures everything that makes the intimacy of these mirrored tents so special and combines it with acts so originally dazzling, jaw-dropping dangerous and blush-inducing hilarious that it re-ignights the most jaded love for circus and burlesque.

Empire originated in New York and remains a love song to the city. It's been touring Australia for over a year and is back in Melbourne for a second run. It's slick and rehearsed to a milli-second, but still feels as fresh and exciting as an opening week.

How it really stands out from similar shows is that each act is choreographed and created for its three-metre diameter circular stage. The stage is teeny, but that's merely a challenge for the likes of roller skaters Denis Petaov and Mariia Beseimbetova, who are so swear-out-loud fast and dangerous that the front rows prepare to flee the impending crash – that never happens.

From host's Oscar and Fanny (Jonathan Taylor and Anne Goldmann) V I Penis to Memet Bilgin's room-silencing driftwood balance, the mix of music, spectacle, sex and how-is-that-even-possible athleticism never allows for a moment of distraction. Throw in a drink and rooftop views over the city and Empire is as shiny and brilliant as a night out can be.

My only disappointment is the forced extended exit through the casino (complete with 'free' $10 to bet with). The only way to avoid it is to be under 18. Choice is a fine thing and there's no secret that the Crown is a casino, but to go from genuine joy and sparkle to false hope and glaring fluorescence isn't a choice I'd make.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Government Inspector

The Government Inspector
Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir
5 March 2014
Merlyn Theatre
to 23 March
malthousetheatre.com.au

Robert Menzies nervously faces the audience dressed as a priest. He explains how the night's performance of The Government Inspector was meant to be The Philadelphia Story but it's not and it's also not The Government Inspector. Confusing? Nah.

When Malthouse and Belvoir announced their 2014 seasons, Simon Stone was going to direct The Philadelphia Story. Woo hoo! Wonderful play re-created by the guy who made Chekov and Ibsen rock and who can do no wrong (and was even forgiven the hiccough with the rights over Death of a Salesman).

Then just as everything was ready to roll, the Philly rights were refused. What! It's out of copyright; it's way more than 70 years since writer Philip Barry wrote it. But it turns out that Ellen Barry was the co-author and retains the copyright. But how the heck can anyone know that if she's not credited as a co-author on the scripts or any writing about the play? This debarcle is all made very clear over the night.

Google, can I see a pdf of The Philadelphia Story play script, please? Ellen Barry is not credited as the author – anywhere!  But it's clear on the imprint page that Ellen S. Barry owns the copyright until 2039 and there's the the usual licensing fees blah blah blah.

Oh copyright blah blah blah is just rich people getting richer off poor artists. Until someone uses your work and doesn't pay you.

If it was a publicity stunt, it's brave and brilliant. If it's a stuff up, the result is insane and brilliant.

So back to Rob trying to explain what happened, but it's easier to just go back three weeks and see what happened when the Philly cast (Rob, Fayssal Bazzi, Mitchell Butel, Gareth Davies, Zarah Newman, Eryn-Jean Norvill and Greg Stone) were backstage and heard the news. Zarah didn't want to take the dress off, Mitchell was on the phone to Play School, Gareth wanted a snack and Simon buggered off.

But of course he didn't, and with Emily Barclay at the ready to write and Ralph Myers ready to create a set to reveal laughs, Simon and his cast went mighty meta and created a play that plays with the absurdity and reality about faking it in the theatre – while riffing off The Government Inspector by Gogol (totally public domain), which is about a stranger being mistaken for someone important and the stranger making the most of his impostering.

The actors are all exaggerated versions of the worst bits of themselves – which shows how wonderful each one of them is – and as genres are thrown into the farce, it gets more farcical and more hilarious by the minute.

Unless you think too hard. It's best not to and to enjoy every in-joke and laugh at ourselves as theatre goers, rather than wondering if the indulgence on the stage is laughing at us.

There's nothing at all wrong with self indulgence. Who doesn't love getting expensive ice cream rather than home brand. But here Simon's bought every flavour of the best stuff, added freshly whipped cream, chocolate sauce, salted caramel praline, edible gold leaf and hand-crafted sugar sprinkles carved in his likeness.

It's so outrageously full on and delicious that it can't be resisted.

But you know that you can only get away with such a creation once.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Pia Johnson

Mini review: Orphanage of the Animals

Orphanage of the Animals
La Mama
9 March 2014
La Mama Theatre
to 16 March

I found Orphanage of the Animals an alienating experience and I know that my reaction is far from what the creators intended.

It started because I don't read programs before seeing a show. If a show needs to explain itself to its audience, it's not working on the stage. Orphanage is an exploration of style that's more emotional dreamscape than narrative, and it made more sense after I read the program.

It's about child abuse in different forms and uses older adult actors to play the ghosts of the abused children who jump from scene to scene, from memory to memory, and retreat into animal personas when the memories are too intense and painful.

The writer/director, Karen Corbett (co-directed by Catherine Samsury), says that she combined "Australian Expressionism and political Magic Realist theatre of Latin America" and is inspired by the Holocaust research of Bracha Ettinger. I don't know about Ettinger's work (Google tells me she's a visual artists concerned with gender and psychoanalysis) and can see the influence of Magic Realism and Expression (Australian or not) but, as a whole, it remains a work 'influenced by' rather than something of its own.

There are moments of fascinating beauty – especially those with the onstage chorus of three, music composed by Nela Trifkovic, who control the mood and tension – and all the performances (Corbett, Jasper Bagg, Susan Bracewell, Russell Walsh and Francesca Waters) are heartfelt and honest, but it felt so concerned with creating a style that it didn't fully consider what the work feels like from the outside looking in.

I love shows where the audience have to work to find their own meaning and resonance, but we need clues. Audiences first look for story, for connections and relationships, and how all the pieces on the stage fit together to make a whole. Orphanage of the Animals makes complete sense to its creators, but the rules of the world aren't shared with the audience, which leaves it a frustrating experience if you don't know what's going on before the going into the theatre.

If you're seeing it this weekend, read the program and don't try to find a bigger story for the five people on the stage; knowing this might make it a very different experience from mine.

Mini review: The Family Tree

The Family Tree
La Mama
8 March 2014
La Mama Theatre
to 16 March
lamama.com.au

I saw The Family Tree by accident. By incompetence really. I turned up at 8.30 for a 6.30 show. And one of the many wonderful things about La Mama is that there's usually something to see if you just turn up.

Alicia Easteal is a performer, director, creator and genuine delight. Her solo show is her story about growing up as a member of The Family (not THAT one, the other hippy one), and she has her audience from the moment she takes off her jacket to reveal a t-shirt with Cult Member written on it.

From there, she simply tells her story, shows some photos and shares the likes of school reports. And who doesn't want to hear about the life of baby born in a 70s hippy commune (in Camberwell) where men were called gods, women were called goddesses and marijuana was the pain relief of choice for birth.

She's honest with the downsides of a community afflicted with addiction problems, but refuses to shy away from the positives and joy of being brought up with a non-blood family who still welcome her all over the world and were there for her when she needed them.

It's also a reminder that the hippy movement was something so much more than the fashions it created.

Theatrically, the outside eye of a director could help to shape the drama, but that's for the future. Right now, The Family Tree is fascinating and Alicia's telling is open and engaging and continues to prove that the best stories are true.


Alicia's pitching trailer for My Family's Cult Reunion. From her website, aliciaeasteal.com.

Review: Cherry, Cherry

Cherry, Cherry: A Dining Room Tale
A is for Atlas
28 February 2014
Neda's house in Northcote
to 16 March 2014
aisforatlas.org.au

Neda Rahmani tells stories about her family. Her stories aren't extraordinary. Good stories rarely are. But they are honest and open and share the good times and the bad.

What is extraordinary is that she tells her stories in her home around a dinner table that's filled with strangers and friends who have come along for a night of theatre. Cherry, Cherry was first experienced in 2011 and if, like me, you missed it and heard that it was unmissable, book today and hope there's a a spare seat or two.

Neda was born in Iran and grew up in Melbourne. Her father is Persian and her mother is Maritian. She asks her guests if her voice sounds Australian. It does. She's a performer and percussionist and lives in the Northcote house her parents bought. It's a great home with a kitchen made for having guests and a garden that grows a lot of the food she shares with guests. The last time she held this dinner in Melbourne, she lived in a loft in Thornbury. She's also hosted dinners in other suburbs and in Sydney, Canberra and Perth.

The guests (there's no audience here) are welcomed by the A is for Atlas team, who conceived this experience, help cook, serve drinks and ensure that no one is left awkwardly in a corner. From pre-dinner drinks to a delicious meal of lentils, rice, vegies and salad (the only animal is prawn, which is easily refused), and after dinner coffee and biscuits, Neda talks to her guests.

She talks about having a father who wasn't able to be close to his children, she shares a recipe for lemon chilli (that left me tearing up in all the good ways), she says how she was scared to wear her usual short costume at the Speigeltent because she was meeting a cousin, she talks about some of her relative's reactions to her not being married to her partner, she shows us Iranian and Mauritian drums that look identical but in one country women can't touch them, she shows us what she does with sick bags on planes, she hands around photos and a knitted alligator puppet, and she sings, plays and dances.

Her stories are not extraordinary. They are as ordinary as yours or mine, and that's what makes the night such an extraordinary experience.

The barriers are dismantled and any concept of theatre or performance disappears as easily as the first drink. It's about sharing and talking and finding connections that we didn't know existed.

Being an opening night, I recognised faces but I sat next to a retired couple who had read about Cherry, Cherry in The Age and booked their tickets because it looked different and fun. They told me that they hate going to the theatre if they know what it's going to be like and don't see the point if you don't want to talk about it afterwards, and tell your friends to go so that you can talk about it with them. They also drove from the coast for the experience and were thrilled that they'd done so.

Who needs reviews when you have an audience like this.

Come to dinner. You will feel welcome and you will meet and talk to people you didn't know. How often do you leave a theatre foyer having made new friends?

There are dinners next weekend and, if you're in Sydney, Neda's coming to the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in August.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.