Review: John

John
Melbourne Theatre Company
16 February 2017
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 25 March
mtc.com.au

MTC. John. Photo by Jeff Busby

American playwright Annie Baker won a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for The Flick (seen at Red Stitch) when she was 33. Her writing's won Off-Broadway Obie awards and rightly declares a new Baker as a show to see. The MTC have the Australian premier of her 2015 play, John, and director Sarah Goodes guides a must-see production that revels in the ambiguity, mystery and too-close-for-comfort humour in the writing.

Jenny (Ursula Mills) and Elias (Johnny Carr) are as much trying to stay together as they are trying to break up when they weekend at a B&B in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, run by Mertis (Helen Morse), who wears a fanny pack and a doggy apron when she's working. The tourist area offers Civil War ghost tours, but the real unease come from the gaze of personal ghosts and gods, collectable American Dolls, and, sometimes, Mertis's blind friend Genevieve (Melita Jurisic), who's happy to explain that she's no longer clinically insane.

The heart of Annie Baker's writing is in the subtext: the white space on the page that creates the silences on the stage, the time between scenes, how characters listen and reacts, and the surprises in the design and sound.

Designers Elizabeth Gadsby (set and costume) and Richard Vabre (lighting) make the homely and welcoming B&B feel creepy. At a glance, it looks super naturalistic – in a world where floral carpet, chintz and kitch figurines are expected – but the detail reveals an out-of-time oddness that hints of the supernatural, or an ageing house with quirks. There are too many lights, the grandfather clock ticks but doesn't measure time without help, the flying ducks on the wall light up, the radio is a mini juke box that plays Bach and Vivaldi, and the pianola can't be trusted. The atmosphere is perfected with Russell Goldsmith's sound design of ticking, rustling and music that's as implied as it is heard

Morse and Jurisic perform like Metris and Genevieve  – oh, Genevieve – were written for them. With timing and pacing that define their years of experience and an ability to create character from the centre of their beings, they are as heartbreaking as they are hilarious. Mills and Carr use the silences to show more than "what yelling looks like", and let Jenny and Elias be so unlikeable that the moments when they show their true feelings change everything. All four hold onto the their secrets and let the audience keep guessing, filling in the unsaid through the two intervals, and talking about their own Johns late into the night.

John isn't theatre that explains itself and the temperamental room that Metris talks about might be the one you're sitting in. Baker's writing is as complex as life but she never wants her audience to forget that they are in a theatre. Goode's production lets this conceit pay off again and again, and, as the stories unravel and tangle, we're reminded how theatre can get inside our minds and stay with us like ghosts.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Night on Bald Mountain

Night on Bald Mountain
Malthouse Theatre
8 May 2014
Merlyn Theatre
to 25 May
malthousetheatre.com.au

There's the moment when you walk into a theatre and get the first look of the world you're going to be playing in. And all fear of the play that Patrick White himself called "a dishonest play" flew when faced with a real bald mountain.

Dale Ferguson's design for Night on Bald Mountain is a roof-to-floor and wall-to-wall terraced mountain made of plywood with secret doors opening into endless black and secret goats for instant joy. With Paul Jackson's always-glorious lighting, we're taken from dawn to dawn on the mountain and into a house that wants to be part of a landscape that it doesn't belong in.

Neil Armfield, a close friend of White who directed many of his plays, once said in Meanjin that White's plays "only work in wonderful productions. Patrick knew this, and that is why he was so selective about his directors. And it’s not a case of bad writing needing to be rescued, or papered over; rather the plays present great challenges that need to be overcome."

Photo by Pia Johnson

Matthw Lutton directs this Mountain. He was a child when White died in 1990, so never saw the author-approved productions, yet his vision of this 50-year-old work finds a completeness in the difficult-to-perform play.

With its goat-lady chorus of one, an older couple who never found each other, a young couple who never have a chance to find each other, and outsiders who want to but can't escape the mountain, it's a psychological piece about character. But Lutton doesn't let this constant exploration dominate and his movement around and through the imposing mountain creates a pace that drives the story, lets the comedy come freely, and creates a tension that lets us hope for an ending that isn't pre-destined by the mountain's slippery paths and crevices.

Actors love White because there is so much in discover in his characters and his language. This cast – and it's worth seeing if only for the cast – approach their characters in ways that result in different styles of performance, and this somehow adds to the complexity without ruining the overall flavour. Nikki Sheils's sunny naturalism, Julie Forsyth's Brechtian distance and Melita Jurisic's anguished almost-expressionism should clash, but the combination of unique performer and character bring a closeness to the characters while still maintaining the distance that allows us to see the wholeness of the work.

This push-and-pull is supported by David Franzke's sound that mixes amplified and natural sound – and Ida Duelund Hansen's live music – to bring us into mountain and its people or leave us safely watching from afar.

It's a production that brings a very-now theatre aesthetic to a work that could easily get stuck in the 60s, and ultimately lets us see the writing of Patrick White though fresh eyes.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

The tribute piece by Neil Armfield in Meanjin.

The Women of Troy

The Women of Troy
Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company
13 November 2008
Merlyn Theatre, CUB Malthouse

Barrie Kosky never wants his audiences to feel too comfortable and The Women of Troy is a relentless reminder that wars continue to strip women of power, dignity and hope.

Of course, he does it in true Kosky fashion; with blood, music and a mixture of discomfort, unexpected beauty and unsettling humour. It starts with confronting violence and never lowers its intensity. By the end, we accept the constant gore, gun shots and pain as normal. I initially thought this was a pacing problem, then I realised that it was probably the point – and it was a point made damn well.

Kosky describes Euripides’s ancient work as, “one of the most searing and moving antiwar plays ever written.” With Tom Wright he adapted and condensed the script to its core, telling of a post-war time after the city of Troy has been overrun by the Greeks (with a cunning plan involving a big horse) and those left alive can only see a future of humiliation, pain and violence.

For a director who loves words, sounds and music, the impact of a Kosky show is always the visual. The music and three-person chorus (Natalie Gamsu, Queenie Van De Zandt and Jennifer Vuletic) were stunning at the time, but I’ve forgotten what they sung, and I can barely remember the script.  But the images have remained.

The direction draws on unforgettable horrific images from our current wars, supported by Alice Babidge’s design of an endless warehouse of lockers and cabinets, where blood trickles and pools, and we don’t want to see what’s behind the closed doors. Here the bloodied and bruised women are treated as carcasses, ready to be shipped off to their new owners in boxes bound with packing tape.

Robyn Nevin (as Queen Hecuba) and Melita Jurisic (as Cassandra, Andromache and Helen of Troy) are riveting. Kosky directs his performers in a way that breaks down all public personas and shows us the uncensored thoughts of the person’s inner voices and unconscious. As classical works were written without thoughts of naturalism, it’s no wonder Barrie presents them so vividly.

The choice to cast Jurisic in the three roles continues to split opinions. If you know the work, each character is clear, but it is confusing if you don’t, or haven’t read the program notes. Either way, it distracts by focussing the show on her performance (which is superb), rather than the piece as a whole.

I’m never quite sure how to read a Kosky work – which is what I love about them. He understands his own intricate interpretation and directs with a detail that supports his every thought. So, to avoid confusion, I think its best to just sit back, let the experience flow and see how you feel at the end.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com