Review: They Saw a Thylacine

They Saw a Thylacine
Human Animal Exchange
Malthouse Theatre
16 September 2015
Beckett Theatre
to October 4
malthousetheatre.com.au

Sarah Hamilton & Justine Campell. Photo by Pia Johnson

I saw They Saw a Thylacine at the 2013 Fringe, at its first show. It won Best of the Fringe (performance) and other awards because it was gorgeous and powerful and it's written is off-the-chart wonderful. The audience barely breathed in case they missed any of it.

The cage, skulls and glitter from the first  tiny-venue production are gone, but the new design and tighter script are perfect for the big stage. It's still everything that it was and more.

And I still have to believe that somewhere in the deep forests of Tasmania there are some thylacines who know that they must never be seen.

My review is here on The Age/SMH.

Review: Dead Centre & Sea Wall

Dead Centre & Sea Wall
Red Stitch Actors Thearte
18 July 2015
Red Stitch
to 15 August
redstitch.net

Ben Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Dead Centre is a new piece by Tom Holloway that reflects on and adds a new dimension to the 2008 work Sea Wall by Simon Stephens. Both are solo short plays told from the hurt of emptiness, and this combination of new/local writing with a known-but-not-seen-here work has created an exceptional piece of compelling and affecting theatre.

In this style of monologue, the character's connection to the audience is intimate. There's no fourth  wall as the audience are the person – friend, doctor, priest, judge or stranger – being confessed to. As the characters reveal more and get closer to, or run from, the moment they have to face, the audience becomes an integral character in the story, because without our willing listening there'd be no need for the character to talk.

Australia's Tom Holloway was commissioned to write a companion piece to the UK's Simon Stephens  Sea Wall, written in 2008. With works like Pornography, about the 2005 London bombings, and Birdland, about the destruction of fame (and just finished at MTC), Stephens has become one of the best known and in-demand contemporary theatrical voices – and his adaption of Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has won Oilver awards and most recently a Tony Award for its Broadway production.

Sea Wall is based on Stephens's family and experiences and comes from a fictional "what if?" that leaves 30-something Alex (Ben Prendergast) trying to describe how he saw the life he knew end in a careless and blameless moment, and how this led to the act he's most ashamed of.

Holloway's Dead Centre starts with this story but is told first. Here 30-something Helen (Rosie Lockhart) tells us about leaving the UK for Australia and the lead up to her breakdown as the sun rises at Uluru and her world becomes red. The style's a step more distant that Stephens's, but the distance makes her final breaking more personal, as the audience imagine what left such pain.

With some background action and a digital projection (by Katie Cavanah onto Matthew Adey's design), Julian Meyrick's direction asks and answers more questions than are directly addressed in the text, while he lets the actors find the exposing balance between self and character that makes Alex and Helen far more then Prendergast and Lockhart. 

There's room to hold back more, as the on-stage extras create breathing space away from the stories, but the space is welcome and could be the comfort that creates the only hope that they'll not fall so far.

And it is hope that drives these stories; hope that their story isn't what we imagine because Helen and Alex have chosen us to confess to and, willingly or unwillingly, become our friends.

This was on aussietheatre.com.

Review: Grounded

Grounded

Red Stitch Actors Theatre

15 June 2014

Red Stitch

to 12 July

redstitch.net

See Grounded for Kate Cole's performance or for the writing or to be reminded how theatre can creep into your heart with a mixture of hurt and happiness that makes you feel a little bit more alive.

Grounded is a monologue about an American fighter pilot who is already far away and thinking about drinking with the boys when the bombs she drops explode. For her it's about the speed and the blue, and when pregnancy, love and marriage intervene, she isn't put back in the sky and her blue is replaced by the grey of a screen as she flies a drone from a box in a desert base not far from Las Vegas.

George Brant’s script was first seen in 2013 in Scotland and by 2015 will have had 22 productions in the UK, USA, Europe and Australia. It’s won awards and generally been raved about. And rightly so. It’s an astonishing piece of writing that successfully questions the political, moral and global by telling a personal story.

I want to say it’s heartbreaking, but if it were told from a different angle, we might celebrate its ending. What’s so powerful is how it personalises modern warfare so much that it’s impossible to distance ourselves from it. And it’s beautiful writing that takes us from endless blue to empty Pepsi cans on an dark desert road as its strands reach and curl back to their starting point like a spirograph.

And it’s performed by Kate Cole.

Under Kirsten Von Bibra’s direction, she stands in a khaki flight suit in a box design (Matthew Adey) that curves its concrete and hides its secret in the open. Cole’s performance is so grippingly real that the actor disappears.

In a stage world that’s all technique, lighting and manipulation, she takes us into the sky and desert and even though they are never described, the audience can see her husband and child and those in the grey on the screen. It’s a performance that has so much supporting it that it looks easy and natural. She lets the pilot be unlikable and do the unthinkable, while letting us understand and love her so much that the audience is almost breathing in time with her by the final moments.

It’s on until mid-July, but the space is small so it’s best to book and be safe.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.