What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 4

Today we go to indie, funded and opera stages with three SM regulars.

To share your love, all you have to do is fill in this form. The trend this year is long; be free to buck the trend if you want. If you've sent me one and it hasn't been published,  please let me know because there are gremlins in the internet.


Fleur Kilpatrick
Playwright, librettist, director, pot plant parent and person who chats about theatre on the radio

Fleur Kilpatrick. Photo by Sarah Walker

Favourite moments in 2019.
Robot Song’s (Theatre Works) warm tenderness and compassion was theatre at its best. It met its audience where they were, be they children or adults. I think back in particular to the parent characters, who spent most of the play as back up musicians to their child, watching her struggle with the cruelties of the world and unable to make it all right. The gentle ways in which they tried to make magic for and around her as she stood in the centre of the stage will stay with me. I learnt a lot about love watching it.

The beautiful, dreamlike way in which Love/Chamberlain’s (also Theatre Works) script and set spoke to each other still gives me a little shudder. The audience were so still, tipping forward in their seats, leaning into this gentle grief world where two blamed and shamed women – Courtney Love and Lindy Chamberlain – met and shared a moment in a dream desert.

Emma Hall’s World Problems use of past tense, dragging us through time and the gorgeous image of her labouring away to create a trampoline. The sight of her bouncing gently up and down brought back so many memories of childhood hours spent in airborne storytelling. To go straight from this play into a practical response – the night I saw it, a workshop on energy saving in your home – was such a beautiful way to make her imagined world part of our real one.

Looking forward to in 2020.
I don't know. But I hope everyone is nice to each other and we all get some rest.

SM: I recently asked someone "What was the name of Fleur's play about whales that had a whale in it?". "You mean Whale." Yes I did. I loved it. I might not remember names and titles but I remember how I felt during Whale and how I felt after and that Fleur and her team of amazing creators trusted that an audience of strangers would step up every night to make this piece of theatre.


Katie Purvis
Theatregoer, comedy and cabaret lover, sometime critic, radio presenter

Katie Purvis. Photo by Betty Sujecki

Favourite moments in 2019.
In theatres: Barbara and the Camp Dogs at Malthouse broke my heart into tiny pieces; I was thrilled by MTC's A View From A Bridge; Come From Away at the Comedy Theatre made me leap to my feet to applaud and cheer; and I laughed till my face hurt at Nakkiah Lui's Black is the New White at MTC.

At the Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Larry Dean's Bampot was face-achingly funny and unexpectedly poignant; Jude Perl's I Have a Face was seriously great; and I literally laughed till I cried at Lano and Woodley's brilliantly silly Fly.

Musical highlights: It was a privilege to be at Hamer Hall for Deborah Cheetham's Eumeralla : A Requiem for Peace, sung entirely in dialects of the Gunditjmara people and featuring a huge cast of performers (including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Dhungala Children’s Choir); the prolonged standing ovation was hugely deserved. And it was a joy to see piano man Trevor Jones doing his thing at the 2019 Melbourne Cabaret Festival Closing Party – simply superb, and the best night I had in a performance space all year.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Haus of Hans:Disco Spektaculär at MICF; Grey Arias at Malthouse, featuring Le Gateau Chocolat and Adrienne Truscott; Conchita Wurst and Trevor Ashley in concert at Hamer Hall; and Fun Home at MTC.


SM: Katie is my go-to editor and reader. She understands why I despair because program notes almost never seem to be proofed and are usually filled with grammar mistakes that change the meaning of what the writer is trying to say. Katie also hosts Miss Chatelaine on Joy 94.9 on Sunday mornings; she knows me well enough to know that I am never awake to listen live, but I do listen to some of the on-demand recordings. Yay for on demand.


Paul Selar
Opera critic, the Opera Chaser

Paul Selar. Selfie

Favourite moments in 2019.
Melbourne has generally supported a rather good balance of opera on a variety of scales. The year produced many highlights; however, from the all-important small independent players, it didn’t feel like it was buzzing with the same kind of optimism of recent years. Apart from a sympathetic re-staging of Australian composer Barry Conyngham's 1984 Fly, Lyric Opera of Melbourne have been unaccustomedly quiet and BK Opera seem to epitomise what living hand to mouth from one show to the next is like.

It’s all to do with money. Isn’t it always? Gertrude Opera’s much appreciated hard work behind the scenes is paying off with simple, effective and increasingly impressive production quality. Every opera-loving soul should’ve clogged the roads to get to the company’s Yarra Valley Opera Festival, now in its second year. Two of the year’s best small independent works could have been seen on one day! Jonathan Dove’s, The Enchanted Pig, in its Australian premiere, was a gorgeously slick, infectiously entertaining and superbly sung work. Monteverdi’s almost 370 year-old early baroque opera, Poppea, looked, felt and sounded as fresh as any new theatre. Both were directed with an acute eye for drawing meaningful characters by Gale Edwards.

On a far larger scale, a Rossini rarity got masterpiece treatment, literally, in Opera Australia’s Il Viaggio a Reims from director Damiano Michieletto, whose ingeniously devised production and inventive angle came with a long list of radiant performances. The company also stood out on top in a concert performance of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, a work often criticised for its thin plot but more than compensated for by splendid musicality. It helped that international star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who deserves every glowing superlative showered upon him, was there giving layers of magnificently coloured and carved vocals.

Melbourne’s continuing love affair with Wagner resulted in two memorable outings. In Victorian Opera’s Parsifal, director Roger Hodgman brought clarity to every character and subtlety to its strong symbolic and religious overtones and Melbourne Opera, without a penny of taxpayer funding, got the year off to a brilliant start with The Flying Dutchman. Darren Jeffery’s performance as the Dutchman had thunderous heft and stature and the large chorus of sailors and weavers won’t be forgotten. It’ll be hard to forget the company’s production of Bellini’s Norma as well. I saw it three times. Anyone who knows how precious an experience it is to hear soprano Helena Dix sing her proud and glorious high notes would count themselves lucky. And she’s a devilishly good gestural magnet.

Looking forward to in 2020
More Wagner! I feel enormously lucky to live in a city that is up to the challenge of staging Wagner’s sprawling works. We’ll be getting Opera Australia’s Lohengrin, a co-production with Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, with English heldon tenor David Butt Philip making his company debut in the title role. And Melbourne Opera, who have been instrumental in presenting Wagner’s works, have a new production of Das Rheingold up their sleeves. My prediction (it’s already a year old) is that this will be the start of another Ring Cycle for Melbourne. There’s also Victorian Opera’s Salome, Gertrude Opera’s Yarra Valley Festival and news from Lyric  that they haven’t fallen by the wayside.

You can also join me for my 5th Annual OperaChaser Awards on Twitter party to celebrate and honour the exceptional work of opera companies and individuals. It starts at 5 pm on 28 December.

SM: Paul has a job that lets him fly all over the world and see the kind of opera that leaves many of us seething with jealousy. There are so few opera critics in Australia. Without people who know an art form inside out, it's so hard to share why we love it to new audiences and to people who think of opera as stuffy and boring. Some of it IS stuffy and boring, but so much of is isn't. You can read Paul's reviews at operachaser.blogspot.com.

What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 9

Today we move from the comedy festival to the the Fringe and celebrate all the opera that's made in Melbourne.

Lou Wall
Lou (lol)

Favourite moments in 2018
Witnessing Natalie Palamides live swallow 17 raw eggs dressed as a chicken in Laid at MICF was probably the best and filthiest piece of theatre I have ever seen – a life highlight. Honourable mentions go to Nakkiah Lui's fierce as fuck Blackie Blackie Brown at Malty, a mind-blowing production of The Fall at Arts Centre Melbourne  and I Wanna Know What Love Is at Chapel off Chapel. And, obv, Virginia Gay as Calamity Jane was everything.

Looking forward to in 2019
Alberto Di Troia's Truly Madly Britney at Theatre Works is 100% going to be the gay christmas my January needs. After seeing a reading of it at MTC's Cybec this year I can't wait for the full production. (Tbh I am in it, but I'm still damn excited to see it from the wings lol). Also keen to see Golden Shields at MTC and finally catch Muriel's Wedding when it makes its way to the superior city.

SM: 2018 has been a pretty amazing year for Lou Wall. I saw her in the return seasons of Romeo is not the only fruit and It's not me, it's Lou at MICF –  she did two different shows most nights! – and the wonderful Lou Wall's Drag Race at Melbourne Fringe. This, too, has to come back; it was the show where she found her voice as an artist – while showing us how some fucked attitudes to gender are going to disappear as the next generations take over our stages. My favourite moment was talking with her about Betty Grumble and her telling me how she took her mum to the show. As I walked away, I realised that I am possibly older than her mum.


Danny Delahunty
Festival Producer, Melbourne Fringe

Danny Delahunty. Photo by Sarah Walker

Favourite moments in 2018
So hard to choose just one! So here are my two. Break Up [We Need To Talk] by New Zealand ensemble Binge Culture. It was a five hour (improvised) durational performance, with five actors playing out an argument that ends a long-term relationship. They rotated between playing either the protagonist, or as part of a four-person chorus of their partner. Beautiful, funny, touching, and very very moreish.

Just as much a standout moment in my year was Bighouse Dreaming. Technically excellent – writing (Declan Furber Gillick), direction (Mark Wilson), performances, vision, execution – it all had it for me. But more than that it was such an incredibly powerful work that knocked me down for days.

Looking forward to in 2019
Ah, it's so early! But from things I've already got tickets to, I'm super looking forward to The Legend of Queen Kong at Arts Centre Melbourne! Oh, and finding out why they had to rip out and rebuild the whole Princess Theatre stage to accommodate special effects in Harry Potter and The Cursed Child! I have tix in the middle of Row E for the second week that cost me as much as a house deposit, so I don't have long to wait!

SM: I sat with Danny for the end of Break Up [We Need To Talk]; I wish I'd seen more of it.

Paul Selar
Opera critic

Paul Selar

Favourite moments in 2018
As far as opera went, a rather well-balanced season of works fired up the local scene. I’m not giving too much away right now because all will be revealed in my humble Twitter evening on 27 December in the Fouth Annual OperaChaser Awards, my fun way of acknowledging the production achievements and breadth of talent across the medium.

Of the government-funded companies, Opera Australia pulled off a riveting little masterpiece for its first foot in the door with Malthouse Theatre for Brian Howard’s Metamorphosis. I haven’t ever experienced the Malthouse feel so capacious and director Tama Matheson brought together an insightful fusion of disturbing drama and discordant soundscape and transformed it into an extraordinary and inquiring theatrical experience.

I also loved director Kasper Holten’s wildly imaginative interpretation of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Opera Australia’s big-budget co-production with London’s Royal Opera. What was so rewarding about this production was how Holten’s hybrid storytelling mixed theatrical illusion with characters reinterpreted as part of the theatre and it still leaves so much to ponder.

As state company Victorian Opera’s appearances on the calendar in Melbourne were thin, it seemed so wasteful that such a seductive and ethereal quality that was created for Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande was all but over in just two performances. A superlative cast, creatives and young musicians from ANAM worked marvellously together to produce a work of exceptionally high standard.

On the independent scene, Melbourne Opera continued to pull off some ambitious and exquisitely staged hard-hitting work. In particular, there’ll be mentions for Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.

Smaller independent players were less prominent but Gertrude Opera made history in bringing Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale to the stage in its Australian premiere. Ruders’s score is a spectacular conglomeration of sonic form and director Linda Thompson gave its disturbing story an absolutely thrilling account in a knockout simple production as part of her inaugural Yarra Valley Opera Festival.

For more, come join me with champagne on Twitter @OperaChaser at 5 pm 27 December for the enjoyment it gives me to announce all.

Looking forward to in 2019
I’m looking forward to everything Melbourne can do in showcasing the art of opera. At least the year will be starting well with more Wagner in February with not one, but two fully staged productions: Melbourne Opera’s The Flying Dutchman and Victorian Opera’s Parsifal. It’s 2020 I’m concerned about. After so much gorgeously produced Wagner works Melbourne has been treated to in the last few years, what will it be like without him?

SM: I see shows vicariously though Paul. He sees work I'll never have the chance to see (os) but I feel like I have when I read his reviews.

What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 3

It's time to hear from regulars Ash and Daniel L. And a first time visit from Jane Miller, who's been written about on SM from the very early days.

Ash Flanders
a festival of dangerous ideas dressed in stained pyjamas

Ash Flanders/Norman Bates. Selfie. 

Favourite moments in 2018
Getting to see Abigail's Party on the mainstage – the biggest stage MTC has – was my favourite night at the theatre this year. Stephen Nicolazzo took an older (although to me, it's canon) play now largely associated with community theatre and reminded me why it was still relevant. There's nothing more timeless than people trying to impress each other in order to feel more than what they are (but enough about the arts scene, LOLZ). Getting to hear lines I know off by heart was one kind of thrill, but hearing something new in them – as well as crafting detailed relationships between these seemingly broad characters – left me gobsmacked. That lady is anything but Nicolazy.

Other non-lazy ladies who blew my mind were POST with Ich Nibber Dibber. I don't envy the task of studying and transcribing your younger self, but the result was captivating. On a structural level the piece was a damn impressive feat of storytelling, but while it made me laugh (probably the most of any show this year), it also made me feel a lot of feeeeelings, none of which I'll share because I don't know you. I think like a lot of work I really dig it took something seemingly disposable – the offcuts of unstructured chats over ten years – and made something incredibly HIGH ART BUT ALSO CLOWNY from it.

I also got to witness an unforgettable moment at the end of the Malthouse season of Blackie Blackie Brown. Seconds before the show concluded, an audience member took a turn and was sick in the seating bank forcing the whole show to stop, because those are the sort of happy accidents that tended to happen with this show. I also cut my hand open with a machete in Sydney. We were determined to say goodbye to this beast properly, so Dalara Williams delivered her final monologue from the foyer. But the timing worked out so that midway through her monologue audiences began coming out of Melancholia... because. of course. Dalara's voice managed to silence the entire Malthouse foyer, and both audiences stood silently to witness it. The words Nakkiah had written – about a brighter Aboriginal future and the struggles still ahead – never felt more powerful than in that moment. I had the distinct feeling of being in a 'star-making' moment and I'm sure everyone else felt the same about me seeing as I'd set Dalara up for her monologue by playing a seven-year-old boy – a role I'd been gunning for since day one of rehearsal.

Looking forward to in 2019
Naturally I'm looking forward to working with a bunch of talented folks in The Temple at Malthouse (join usssssss....). I'm also a little thrilled we have Ellen Burstyn to gawk at when she acts her pants off in 33 Variations – which I assume is about the many TIGHT POLITE SMILES she has for homosexuals bothering her incessantly about The Exorcist. I'm also crossing my fingers for more plays from the GONE WRONG universe.

SM: Sure Blackie Blackie Brown was just the best, but then came PELICANette: the link should take you to the Google doc.


Daniel Lammin
Director

Engaged means presents!

Favourite moments in 2018
For me, it has to be The Bachelor S17 E5. I think I may have gotten the last ticket because I kept putting it off. The idea of staging an episode of a reality TV show sounded trite to me, and I had no desire to watch a bunch of self-satisfied artists put an episode on stage just for us to laugh knowingly at it and feel superior to it. But when I realised it was the work of Morgan Rose and Katrina Cornwell, I leapt at my computer and frantically booked. Morgan and Kat are maybe my favourite theatre makers in Melbourne. Their work is always so stirring and thrilling and presented with such generosity (especially their Riot Stage work), but The Bachelor surpassed my suddenly high expectations. It was beyond a clever concept, beyond parody. It was profound, hilarious, disturbing, moving, infuriating and epic. It treated its subject with such respect as it pulled its gender and racial politics apart, and in the process the gender and racial politics of our own world. This was theatre immediate and vital, insanely imaginative and rigorous in a way so little work is anymore. Morgan, Kat and their team presented a series of questions, provocations and conundrums, but you didn’t hear the questions, you felt them deeply, and Kat’s direction is some of the best I’ve seen in Melbourne in a long time. I left afterwards giddy at its audacity and generosity. Anyone else would have made it a joke, but they made it something bigger, deeper and grander than anyone on that show would ever have imagined their pursuit of Love could be.

Looking forward to in 2019
Obviously anything that Kat and Morgan do, which is also linked to the work of another artist I love. We finally get to see a staging of Fleur Kilpatrick’s Whale thanks to MAPA with Kat directing, and it just sounds so incredibly audacious! I’m also very excited for Fleur’s production of Slaughterhouse Five coming back, a co-pro with Monash Uni Student Theatre (MUST) and Theatre Works. The original production was incredible, and the work Fleur created with the students was often extraordinary. I can’t wait to see it again!

SM: I love Daniel's ongoing exploration of men and violence and where we go so wrong to create societies where violence develops: Sneakyville at fortyfivedownstairs (written by Christopher Bryant) started with Charles Manson, but was so much more.

But my favourite show of his this year was After Hero by the Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance at Malthouse. He works with emerging actors (students makes it sound like they aren't ready; they are) to create performances that come from places that mean something to the performers. This creates a passion on the stage that is so easy to connect to.

And it's very exciting that he's going to be continuing to work with students in his new position as producer at Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance.

I also use a film review he wrote when I teach film criticism. It's an example of personal subjective writing and it ALWAYS gets students talking and thinking about how to be more personal in their own writing.

Jane Miller
Playwright
15 Minutes from Anywhere

Jane Miller

Favourite moments in 2018
I didn’t see as much theatre in 2018 as I would like to have. Highlights for me were Blasted at Malthouse. It’s obviously not an easy text but Sarah Kane’s writing is stunning, confronting and visceral. Everything about Anne-Louise Sarks’s production was pitched perfectly. Blasted forced me to appreciate the privilege inherent in my own discomfort.

Something completely different was Puffs at The Alexander Theatre. I’ve only read three Harry Potter novels  – SM: What!? – so I probably didn’t get as much from the humour as true aficionados, but it was fun, clever and the performances were excellent.

The evocative and intelligent Fallen by She Said Theatre at fortyfivedownstairs made me acutely aware of the powder keg of frustration underneath an incredibly repressed façade. I love She Said Theatre’s work.

Perhaps my favourite show of the year was Morgan Rose and Katrina Cornwell’s The Bachelor S17 E5. By using the transcript of an episode of The Bachelor, they made a show that was both hilarious and disturbing. Their production choices and beautiful cast revealed the darker subtext at the underbelly of reality television. It was brilliant and I’d love to see it have another run.

Looking forward to in 2019
Solaris at he Malthouse and Arbus and West at the MTC. I will be keeping my eyes open for the exciting things coming up a Red Stitch, Darebin, fortyfivedownstairs, Theatre Works and from my favourite independent artists.

My creative partner-in-crime Beng Oh has a return of his excellent production of Mike Bartlett’s play Cock coming to fortyfivedownstairs for Midsumma, which is very exciting.

Perhaps the thing I’m most looking forward to is seeing the amazing team at La Mama continue to thrive and renew despite the heartbreak they experienced during 2018. Their determination and support of artists is a wonderful thing to experience any year.

SM: Jane has been one of my favourite local writers since she stood out in Short and Sweets many years ago. Her plays grasp how characters have to make choices and that those choices should be impossible. Her characters are us; we know these people and she always ensures that we remember them because we're making those impossible choices with them. Her Just A Boy Standing in Front of a Girl  at La Mama in October surprised me at every turn. It began by ensuring that the audience had to think about gender and perspective from the moment we sat in our gender-specific seats, and continued to question what decisions in the story were based on gender. Great stuff.

What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 10

Remember that you don't have to write a lot – a sentence can say as much as an essay – and that your reflections, memories and wishes don't have to be about a specific show or performance. It could be an overheard comment in an interval, a thought the next day or anything that gave you that jolt that says "this is why we do this".

Maxim Boon
arts writer, reviewer

Maxim Boon

MB's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Doing a (not so) little audit of all the bloody wonderful things I've had the good fortune to see this year has been a real tonic. 2016 is a year many people will be happy to see the back of, myself included, but this exercise has definitely added a silver lining to the big, black, intolerant, fact-free clouds that the past 12 months have stirred up.

Witling down a list of favourites has been hard, so forgive the indulgence of citing so many top moments.

As I’ve scanned my memory for the shows that touched me the most this year, one stands head and shoulders above the rest: Wit at fortyfivedownstairs. Margaret Edson's Pulitzer-worthy text about an academic dying of cancer is, of course, an excellent springboard, but the triumph of the Artisan Collective’s production is predominantly thanks to the utterly transcendent performance of Jane Montgomery Griffiths. Words feel inadequate to properly summarise the power of that extraordinary night of theatre, but suffice to say, I have rarely felt as profoundly altered as I did walking out after this show. I was with my husband Toby and as we stepped out onto Flinders Street, neither one of us could talk,because we knew if either of us uttered a single syllable we would both have broken and unravelled. We hugged for a minute or two and summoned an Uber. Even thinking about it now is pushing me dangerously close to sobbing onto my keyboard. Jane, if you ever happen to read this, I cannot thank you enough.

I’m a passionate believer that Indigenous narratives must be a vital presence in our theatres, as it brings First Nation stories into an environment that is largely skewed white and socioeconomically privileged. Three shows this year were particularly striking for the way in which they galvanised the duality of the contemporary Indigenous experience, which simultaneously reacts to the zeitgeist while anchored to historical injustice. Ilbijerri Theatre's presentation of Jacob Boehme’s frank yet affirming exploration of being black, gay and HIV-positive in Australia, Blood On The Dance Floor, offered a view of Aboriginal life that is rarely seen, articulated in a way that was powerfully and beautifully realised. Nakkiah Lui’s Blaque Showgirls and hip-hop cabaret Hot Brown Honey both told defiant and gloriously shameless stories of what it means to be a woman of colour in a society that still clings to colonial ideals.

On the smallest scale, some great solo shows graced Melbourne's stages this year. Lab Kelpie's production of Douglas Rintoul's Elegy, based on interviews of gay men living in insurgency held Iraq, was not only a slick and resourceful staging (especially the excellent sound design by Russell Goldsmith), but also a potently affecting performance by Nick Simpson-Deeks; I left feeling shaken and ashamed and enlightened. The always masterful Susie Dee’s production of Harry Melling's Peddling, featuring an astonishingly committed performance by Darcy Brown, was a gut-punch of a show; superb storytelling executed fearlessly. Brilliant Brit playwright Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing, co-written and performed by Jonny Donahoe, made me laugh all the way through and sob all the way home, the kind of production that busts you open with that bittersweet joyful sorrow that only theatre can tap.

Feminist theatre, another area of the art form I feel passionately protective of, also enjoyed some excellent turns this year. Nic Green and Laura Bradshaw's Trilogy, offered probing, eccentric, gloriously irascible and occasionally naked perspectives on feminist philosophies in a show that is as potent and relevant today as it was when the pair first staged it ten years ago. Patricia Cornelius’s Shit, revived at fortyfivedownstairs following its sold-out debut season, was a brutal, bold, touching, confronting and thought provoking instigation. That Cornelius's work is so rarely recognised by Australia's major state theatre companies is, for lack of better words, fucking maddening.

Finally, this year’s Poppy Seed Theatre Festival showed why emerging theatre-makers must be championed in a space where they can flex their creative muscles, make mistakes, try things out and hone their craft. From this year’s excellent quartet of works, Three Birds Theatre's LadyCake and Riot Stage's F. were impressively accomplished in their thinking and execution, despite being fledgling works made on shoestring budgets.

Honourable Mentions

Paul Capsis in Resident Alien: a superbly observed study of Quentin while retaining the ineffable fabulousness of Capsis.
Belarus Free Theatre, Burning Doors: a model for any and all political theatre-makers.
Dance North, If____Was____ :  a nifty concept with genuinely breathtaking results.
Malthouse Theatre, Picnic At Hanging Rock: Matt Lutton may not always be the theatre-maker we want, but he is definitely the theatre-maker we need.
Vic Theatre Company, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: face-aching grins guaranteed.
NTS/Melbourne Festival, Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour: Cum-filled submarine; need I say more?

PS: Maxim forgot this one.
On the smallest scale, some great solo shows graced Melbourne’s stages this year. Leading the pack was the world premiere season of Katy Warner’s incisively observed A Prudent Man, at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Featuring a faultless Lyall Brooks as a right-wing politician negotiating a public scandal, both the writing and the performance were nothing short of forensic in capturing this political archetype with such pin-sharp accuracy.

What MB is looking forward to in 2017: Malthouse Theatre's 2017 season makes me feel physically giddy. It's innovative, it's unapologetic in its motives, it's bolshy and it's proudly nonconformist. While MTC cements its reputation as the most cynically pandering presenter in Victoria, Malthouse continues to ensure Melbourne's more discerning theatre lovers are sated. I am especially excited about Lutton's new adaptation of The Elephant Man, as I am, to be blunt, a big ol' Matt Lutton fan boy and have adored both adaptations from this year’' season.

Fortyfivedownstairs will also present plenty to get excited about next season, especially Trainspotting Live and Ben Gerrard in I Am My Own Wife, both early on in the year.

SM: Reviewers often deal with restricted word counts, so it's nice to write as much has you want. And Maxim generally writes longer reviewers that are detailed discussion rather than a pull quote and star rating. This great discussion reminded me of a few brilliant shows that I saw but didn't review and made me regret missing a couple more.

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
part 9
2014
2013
2012

Review: Group Show

Group Show
MKA
21 March 2013
Northcote Town Hall
to 30 March 2013
Facebook event 

MKA have to have a dud; it’s natural that their streak of you-remind-me-why-I-love-theatre shows ends eventually, but it isn’t with Group Show.


Now in their third year, this company – who still have no funding or formal financial support – have consistently been critically raved about and developed an audience who wouldn’t give a toss if they read a negative word about the company. There’s no one around like them and I try not to miss anything they do because I don’t want to miss the writers, directors, designers and performers who are reminding us why we get so frustrated with boring shows.

Group Show is a series of short plays by new writers. It’s six performers, five writers, two directors and a designer who I’d not heard of. Every one of them is now on my see-what-they-do-next list.

The writers were commissioned for Group Show because MKA “felt that Melbourne needed to know about these writers now, right now.” It’s a bold statement, but, yep, we need to know about them because each one wrote something unexpected and interesting. Interesting is a catch-all-and-nothing word that means so little, but think of it as the opposite of boring. Some of the writing could benefit from a polish, but none were dull and all five writers left me wanting to see a full work from them.

Nakkiah Lui is already making herself known in Sydney as associate playwright in residence at Belvoir and as an Emerging Culture Leader at Griffin. Her work is sexually and racially confronting and bloody hilarious. She’s dramaturging for the Sisters Grimm’s MTC show later this year and I can’t think of anyone better for the task.

Leila Rodgers is a graduate actor from VCA and her play marks her debut as a writer. She writes beautifully for actors and if this is her first piece, I can’t wait to see her twentieth.

Bridget Mackey is competing her Masters in Writing for Performance at VCA and has worked a lot in Adelaide. Her ghost story was genuinely creepy and reminded me so much of living in a haunted house in Adelaide that I wonder if she also lived there.

Chloe Martin studied writing in Melbourne and is currently at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Her writing comes from a place that’s difficult to settle into, but it’s so very funny that its oddness quickly becomes a wonderful new normal.

Maxine Mellor, from Queensland, is the most experienced of the writers with over 20 plays. She recently won a Queensland Premier’s Drama Award and a residency with Edward Albee in New York in 2012. If Albee likes her, who am I to say that anything different? Her writing draws on the absurd and is infused with the kind of heart that makes you need her characters to win.

And that’s just the writers!

Directors Prue Clark and Luke Kerridge have studied directing at VCA and I suspect that they’ve sat through a lot of very boring short-play seasons (I know I have). Their direction of Group Show is, without doubt, the best direction of a short-play season that I’ve seen. They created a world that seemed made for each of the very-different works and is so funny and fascinating that the change-over moments between each play are as good as the plays.

And the direction worked perfectly with the multi-door design by Lucy Thornett (another VCA student) whose use of colour and shape made the square Northcote Town Hall room as exciting as any of the pop-up spaces MKA have used.

Finally there are the six actors: Aaron Walton, Annabel Marshall-Roth, Amy Jones, Alex McQueen, Devon Lang Wilton and Ryan Jones. They all grasped the different tones of each work and of the night overall, and let us into the hearts of characters who could have easily been dismissed or disliked. I have no doubt that each will earn their own rave sometime in the near future.

Group Show is on at the Northcote Town Hall until 30 March. See it to get to know a bunch of creators who are going to be filling our stages in the coming years, or to be reminded that short plays can, and should, be wonderful.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.