Review: The Temple

The Temple
Malthouse Theatre and Pan Pan
8 May 2019
Beckett Theatre
to 26 May
\malthousetheatre.com.au

The Temple. Photo by Pia Johnson

I went into The Temple knowing as little as I could about it. I left not knowing much more.

But I know a theatre reviewer having a week when they couldn't write would fit in very well on that stage.

The Malthouse co-production with Ireland's Pan Pan theatre ( Playing The Dane, 2011) was developed in rehearsals by director Gavin Quinn and the cast – Aljin Abella, Ash Flanders, Mish Grigor, Marcus McKenzie and Genevieve Giuffre. Guiffre replaced Nicola Gunn who worked on the development.

There's a line where process and on-stage look-at-me indulgence smash together and create art. The Temple does this, but it's far more successful when it fails and collapses into almost incomprehensible chaos.

The Temple is whatever it needs to be. With yellow walls, cheap chairs and a table filled with too-bright cordials to drink (designer Aedín Cosgrove), it could be a church, an addiction meeting, a reality game show or a residential therapy centre. Or whatever you want it to be.

It's every work training session I've been forced to go to, every conference, every bloody yoga retreat I chose to go to, every hope that maybe some intense time with strangers will be fun or enlightening or bearable. They're not. Strangers are the worst. Strangers who know they can be whatever and whoever they want to be without consequences are more the worst.

Each character is a version of the actor. Maybe turned up a lot. Maybe nudged down a smidge. Maybe just without their off switch. Their stories are as likely to be true as they are fiction created by someone else. Their behaviour is at best frustrating, which is often harder to deal with than when they are mean.

It's selfish behaviours without the fear of being cruel. Imagine being able to do what you want and say exactly what you think without the fear of consequence or repercussion? Maybe a reviewer doesn't fit in on that stage.

Drink The Temple Kool-Aid. Even if you don't know the reference. Even if you don't like it or have any idea what it's all about.

Review: night maybe

night maybe
Stuck Pigs Squealing, Theatre Works
17 August 2013
Theatre Works
to 1 September
theatreworks.org.au

There's no maybe about it; night maybe is a must. Stuck Pig's Squealing are consistently a bit awesome and this new work by writer Kit Brookman is as beautiful as it is disturbing and leaves its audience happily lost somewhere between unknown and certain.

On a dark night, Sasha and her brother Tom are in park. She has torches and Nutella sandwiches, but he still abandons her. As she heads into the darkness where others are hiding, each new encounter brings her dangerously closer to safety.

Like in his recent work Heaven, Brookman writes about young adults without forcing the judgment, logic or fear of adults-who-know-better onto them. His night world hides the unknown, embraces the supernatural, but is never clear what, if anything, is real.

Sarah Ogden, Tom Conroy, Marcus McKenzie and Brian Lipson perform like it was written for them. They let each character keep their truths to themselves and never share what they saw in the darkness. This deepens the mystery with every moment and brings us closer to characters who we want to be safe, but still want them to stay in dark until they let us in on the truth.

And all is made more astonishing with the exquisite design by Mel Page (set and costume), Richard Vabre (lighting) and James Brown (sound). From its black and foggy opening, the sight of real grass and trees offers hope of a picnic-perfect conclusion in the sun, but it gets darker and colder as the light creeps into the menacing shadows.

Director Luke Mullins brings all together in a work that's impossible to look away from and difficult to stop thinking about.. By holding back, it never screams its meaning and whatever you walk away with believing is right for you. Just don't miss it.

Photo by Sarah Walker

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Beyond the Neck

Beyond the Neck: A Quartet on Loss and Violence
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
15 March 2012
Red Stitch
to 14 April

April 28 1996 may seem a long time ago, but for some it will always be yesterday. We may remember reading their stories and swore we'd remember the names of the 35 people who died so cruelly at Port Arthur, but asked now, only one name comes to mind. Tom Holloway's exquisite and harrowing Beyond the Neck: A Quartet on Loss and Violence is a personal reflection on his visiting Port Arthur and a delicate exploration of the lonely suffering following violent trauma.

Four fictional people visit Port Arthur today. There's a teenager who lost her father in the massacre (Philippa Spicer), a tour guide who was there (Roger Oakley), a young mother on a bus trip (Emmaline Carroll) and a boy on a family drive (Marcus McKenzie). This brave and exciting writing and captures the communal pain of Port Arthur by moving away from the unfathomable enormity of the horror and telling four personal stories that started with violent trauma.

They narrate their stories in a four-part choral-like structure that deceptively offers safe distance, but really allows the hidden emotions to drive the work and seep into our hearts. Like a soprano, alto, tenor, bass score, each have solos and their moments of harmony soar, but it's the disruption of their dissonant notes and changing rhythms that create the tension that demands the pain and relief of resolution.

Director Suzanne Chaundy conducts like a maestro. It's a challenging text that could collapse into sentiment in the wrong hands, but by guiding the cast to hold their emotions close, Chaundy lets the grace notes of humour offer light and understanding without the easy comfort hope or the overwhelming fear of hopelessness.  And the astonishing cast maintain this balance.  Each suffer alone with their secrets, but it's their constant awareness of each other and work as a quartet that makes it so powerful.

The chamber piece is completed with a design trio who create the world and underscore and highlight each story. Dayna Morrissey's set looks like a gallery but makes us see deep into the Tasmanian wilderness, while Philip Mcleod's sound and Richard Vabre's lighting are so integrated with the emotion of the stories that it's easy not to notice how good they are.

Beyond the Neck is beautiful and unmissable theatre told by artists who understand the responsibility of telling such resonating stories and it's so wonderful to see Red Stitch working with Australian writers.

Appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Review: Honey Bunny's Sagittarian Full Moon Finale

MIDSUMMA
Honey Bunny's Sagittarian Full Moon Finale
3 February 2011
Northcote Town Hall

Writer and director Julian Hobba says that Honey Bunny's Saggitarian Full Moon was inspired by a night with friends in 2002. The resulting work captures the energy and mood of a 20-something party, but is far more than a glimpse of a gen Y gathering.

A group of friends gather in an empty backyard for a housewarming. With a gift of gilded bunny, they find something to pay homage to as they try to avoid the truths and secrets that they know they have to face.

Just as Ys distant themselves from Xs, generations will always claim to be unique – I'm sure the first kids to move out of the family cave to live in a bark hut scoffed at the dated Cavers. Honey Bunny's characters (and cast) broadly represent their generation, but are based on more than generalisations and it's easy to see, and feel, that their selfishness, pain and hope are no different from anyone else's. With such an understanding of archetypes, and a quote from Jungian scholar and legend Marie Louise Von Franz in the show, it's a work also influenced by Jung.

Hobba's writing freely uses moon, tide and blood imagery and plays with language without letting it get in the way of his story.  Directing his own work, he is supported by his totally watchable cast (Brendan Barnett, Alicia Beckhurst, Emma Breech, Marcus McKenzie, Ben Andrew Pfeiffer, Michael Wahr and Drew Wilson) and a design team (David Samuel, Lucy Birkinshaw and Chloe Greaves) who all ensure a balance between the drama and the gentle surreal beauty and horror that their full moon brings.

Near the end, characters wonder if they can see moonlight tears or water, and with such lovely writing, I have no doubt that we'll soon see more of Hobba and everyone who bowed before Honey Bunny.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

photo by Pia Johnson


PS: Some reviews that disappeared in the weekend of flooding are now floating to the surface...