Runt
Dee/Cornelius/Wilks
2 March 2021
fortyfivedownstairs
to 7 March
 |
| Nicci Wilks 'Runt' Photo by Pier Carthew |
This is a something special.
Mostly Melbourne theatre reviews
Showing posts with label Nicci Wilks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nicci Wilks. Show all posts
04 March 2021
27 December 2017
What Melbourne Loved in 2017, part 11
Because last minute.
Andrew Westle
Finished his Phd
Delving into Dance podcast
Favourite moments in 2017
A year that was tarnished by the inauguration of DT (SM: He self-googles; we don't want him here by searching for his name) and the divisiveness of his politics of hate. The same year we saw the expensive and divisive postal vote and the increased focus of gender inequities in the creative industries, alongside the increased reporting of sexual abuse. 2017 is the year that appears to mark a precipice. A call for action; what is the trajectory we have set ourselves?
There were three works that answered the call, all significant departures from the path our political leaders appear to want to take us and complicating the status quo. They have marked me in distinct and significant ways. They have all changed me!
Hannah Gadsby, Nanette.
What the fuck! This was just a phenomenal performance. I was blessed to see the return season. One microphone and one enormous Hamer Hall stage, a stage too often reserved for "high art". A stunning juxtaposition for the critique of high art outlined during the show. Ask Hannah what she thinks of Picasso… and rightly so. The show was perfectly structured and bravely performed. The unresolved tension at the end was palpable. A call for action. I turned to Bec Reid with the knot in my chest as we looked for the words: “WHOW!” What else can be said?
Taylor Mac, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music
24-Decade, like Nanette, was a provocation and a call to action. The audience were implicated as part of the mode of delivery. Generally, I loath audience participation and seek to hide from any invitation to participate. But for a radical faerie realness ritual sacrifice, I was there! The audience participation felt so natural as inclusion as part of the mode of performance and the nature of its creation.
Vote one Taylor for President. The performance models what it would be like if we had a leader that valued the diversity of voices, including queers, women and people of colour.
It was unapologetically queer in its politics. A protest. A celebration. A radical faerie realness ritual sacrifice. It was everything and more. A temporary community that reflected my politics and my love of what and who humans can be.
Jonathan Holloway said to me on the first night that the work would change the city (a huge call, I though at the time). BUT YES! Not a single person couldn’t have been changed. Personally, Taylor gave value to my queer politic in a way that doesn’t often feature in theatre of a generic LGBTIQ nature.
Not a day that has passed without reflection upon Taylor’s show. From slow dancing with strangers to the validation of anonymous cock sucking! Machine Dazzle, Tiger and the whole crew! Incredible!
All the Queens Men, The Coming Back Out Ball
The vision of Tristan Meecham, The Coming Back Out Ball paid homage to our LGBTI Elders. While involved in the ball as the maître d', I can say without bias this was the best night of my life. An artistic intervention based on research that literally changed peoples lives. The project embraced and celebrated our elders, with a room of over 500 people full of love and joy.
I was embraced by a lesbian who was in tears of joy saying, “This is the best night of my life". It is the first time I have been recognised as a lesbian and an elder.” I spoke to a 68-year-old trans woman who used the ball as her post-op debutante. Then there was a couple who were celebrating their 26th Anniversary. This was a truly safe and celebratory space, with a three course meal for all the Elders and amazinging performances from the likes of Robyn Archer, Deborah Cheetham and Toni Lalich.
The Ball embraced everything wonderful about inclusion and community!
Honorable mentions: Attractor at Asia TOPA; Angels in America; Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster, Nicola Gunn; Do Not Collect $200; Gabrielle Nankivell’s Wildebeest for Sydney Dance Company; All the Sex I've Ever Had; Melanie Lane’s Nightdance; and Wild Bore.
Looking forward to in 2018
In 2018 I will be spending significant time in the UK, so really looking forward to the experience the new and unknown. Seeking works that profile a diversity of voices, the queer, the unique and works that engage their audiences in re-imagining the world we could inhabit.
Cathy Hunt
Director, dramaturg
Favourite moments in 2017
The Happy Prince Little Ones Theatre, La Mama. In this almost unbearably delicate production, the series of encounters and gradual entwining of the hopelessly selfish prince even in her compassion and the beautiful reckless generous obliviousness of the roller-skating swallow with his tiny strength which he gives up accidentally. As they began to see each other they disintegrate and that love was devastating.
The Encounter, Complicite, Malthouse. It stopped, shifted and altered time when I was within it, a huge feat and one that made the world sit differently afterwards. Despite the vastly British framing, familiar if effective storytelling tricks to make us trust, a huge interior journey became possible.
Free Admission, Ursula Martinez, Arts Centre Melbourne. Ursula brought in and broke down (by constructing) a wall! She freely admitted through a "Sometimes I..." structure drawing from the free association much that isn’t usually allowed to enter into theatrical or our mental space. Potent, unique and challenging.
Passenger, Footscray Community Arts Centre and Arts Centre. Not so much for what happened on the bus, but for the incremental inroads this work made into the real world beyond. How the uninspiring Docklands we drove through became part of the audience’s imaginative terrain. The pleasure of spotting strange characters, a Clint Eastwood-esque figure on horseback, and the way it shifted our relation to overlooked, ordinary over-developed urban spaces, has stayed with me.
Book of Exodus part 1 and part 2, Fraught Outfit, Theatre Works. Navigated the weight of time, of history, of cultural destiny with first two children then a whole band trying to find their way through the dark desert. From a slow journey through (part 1) a white world of futile foam with discoveries like a gingerbread house through (part 2) into a shadowy black space shining with gold and a lamplike sun in which childhood objects like sleeping bags and scooters alternated with displays of power and detachment that were never held onto too tightly, but slipped through young fingers like uncomprehended ash. The final moment of the babies having a bacchanal, suckling and the deus ex machina descent of Euygeene Teh’s incredible gold-breasted milk-dispensing contraption was unparalleled.
Queen of Wolves, Nick Coyle, Hares and Hyenas. An Act of indomitable mental and imaginative fortitude in which Nick Coyle embodies Frances Glass, a determined governess-type charged to restore a haunted house to a semblance of order. I marvelled as I felt so many things. The Hares and Hyenas wallpaper became the peeling veneer of a cobwebby mansion. The cello-playing frenzy and channelling of a louche Southern former mistress of the house was unfathomably funny. A seriously glorious work of theatre with crazy high production values. Must see! Crying out for another season.
Merciless Gods, Little Ones Theatre, Darebin Speakeasy. This work transported me into the dark subterranean places of our unbridled uncensored feelings and was so intense and violent in parts, yet terribly tender in others. The drive to display and dramatise what surges underneath even apparently ordinary moments and relationships masquerading as familial, the unabashed blatancy of the project and its incredible realisation by the ensemble and the whole team made for compelling theatre. The palette of reds and the spatial design like a tongue sticking out between the seating banks seemed like the only possible setting for this act of collective calling up of the spirit of a whole decade.
One of the Good Ones, Cope St Indigenous Arts Collective, Metanoia. I delighted in this ambivalently nostalgic retro-ridiculous offering with a set made from outmoded technology, that asked the audience to read the work on multiple levels. With their child self believing a hairdryer was a blaster, with their adult self who was nostalgic for the time when it was possible to believe a hairdryer was a blaster and with their current self noticing colonial triggers (such as music from the bicentennial) while being made aware of the racist tropes invoked (like "one of the good ones"). Smart writing and hilarious performances. By setting this struggle in space, in the future, the audience drew their own parallels about Aboriginal heroism in the struggle for sovereignty in a hostile (solar) system.
The Chairs, Jenny Kemp, designed by Dale Ferguson, La Mama. Like dwelling at the bottom of the sea, living in a lighthouse, being part of an elaborate ritual in which a couple attempt to work out how to extricate themselves from life, re-capture and experience each other’s affection, by instituting space between them, in preparation for saying goodbye to everything. That moment of Jillian Murray and Robert Meldrum progressing up separate staircases nearly obliterated me. Unbearably powerful!
Ash Flanders is Nothing, Hares and Hyenas. Kaleidoscopic collision nigh impossible to encapsulate. A bit like dwelling within a cabana made of Muriel’s Wedding, your childhood sense of The Neverending Story as tragedy and a reflux-like experiencing of Ash Flanders’/one’s own less than ideal life. All generously given to you on a slightly chipped but really lavish platter with full flourish. Consummate performance by an ascerbically insightful marvel making a Christmas sacrifice of his own bravado for your delight.
Looking forward to in 2018
Good Muslim Boy, Melancholia, Blasted (Australian premiere!) at Malthouse, and the return of Belarus Free Theatre.
The Nightingale and the Rose by Little Ones and Dybbuks by Samara Hersch and Chambermade - both at Theatreworks
Hungry Ghosts by Jean Tong at MTC and much much more on and off stages.
Yvonne Virsik
Director
Artsistic Director, MUST
Favourite moments in 2017
Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks doing their best to adjust to a sudden (devlishly angular) rainstorm during a performance of Caravan – adjusting their caravan/set, trying to stay in character but not– gloriously entertainingly live.
Brilliant, hilarious and insightful women taking about where we are at in The Festival of Questions, especially "The Handmaid's Tale WTF", Wheeler Centre, Melbourne Festival.
Bizarrely serendipitous programming one night at The MUST Cabaret Festival: a dramatic duet of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" performed in German followed a few minutes later by an equally dramatic solo version in Russian, then the hosts joining in with their English version and...
Great sport Tim enduring black goo poured over his head again and again in pursuit of the "great promo shot" for Frankensteinxx at MUST.
The razor-sharp choreographic flourishes in How to Kill the Queen of Pop, Hotel Now.
Turning around suddenly in response to the 360 degree soundscape of The Encounter at Malthouse.
The moments of humble, shared humanity between those on the stage, those in the audience and those on and off in All the Sex I've Ever Had, Melbourne Festival.
People's unreserved joy at experiencing Taylor Mac, of whom I only got a little first hand, but an enormous amount vicariously.
The incredibly dramatic, fiery, epic-action-movie-like scene changes in MTC's Macbeth.
The wondrous final image of Angels in America Part 1: the inventive canvas-curtained set dropped down to reveal a beautifully glowing hand-painted stained glass effect.
The stunning images of Exodus, Part I and Part II, Fraught Outfit at Theatre Works.
Glimpses of Joan, just caught by light, The Rabble at Theatre Works.
The focused fleeting images of In Plan, Melbourne Festival.
The Nose in The Nose, Bloomshed at Melbourne Fringe.
Some surprises:
The shifts in tone in Hannah Gadsby's Nanette and Kaitlyn Rogers's Can I Get an Amen. They both totally succeeded in keeping us with them, through all their heart wrenching terrain. (Ok, so by the time I saw Nanette, it wasn't a surprise, but the power of the experience of was.)
Realising it wasn't just a genius marketing ploy in Wild Bore at Malthouse.
Realising it wasn't just my niece enjoying As You Like It at the Pop Up Globe from The Groundlings area.
The sometimes jarring, sometimes fluid relationship between movement and text in Nicola Gun's incredible work Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster.
Discoveries – why have some of these taken me so long?
Trygve Wakenshaw in Nautilus – A fluid rubbery joy.
The Travelling Sisters – looking forward to more.
Rama Nichols – she's just so good.
Seeing Joe Fisher juggle for the first time at The MUST Cabaret Festival– not a form I generally go crazy over, but the electric tension he brings to his performances is something else.
Show I loved (but, as always, there are so many):
Angels in America at fortyfivedownstairs, directed by Gary Abrahams I think has affected me the most. I've always loved the texts but what a privilege to experience them brought to life with such theatrical ingenuity, extraordinary performances and searing humanity. One of my favourite moments of the whole year is returning for Part Two, scanning the audience and catching the eyes of familiar faces from the night before, full of excitement at continuing our epic journey together.
What I'm looking forward to in 2018
Melancholia at Malthouse. The film has stayed just under my skin since I saw it and I've always thought it would make a fascinating piece of theatre. With Declan Greene and Matt Lutton as creators, I tingle at the possibilities.
I only saw a bit of Taylor Mac, but will be keeping an eye out for judy's work all over the world. Determined to also check Mac out as a playwright, I bought a copy of Hir afterwards and am now looking forward to Daniel Clarke's Production at Red Stitch very soon.
Generally, I'm looking forward to more surprises, more diversity in programming and in the breadth of artists engaged, which does seem to be growing. Bring on the surprises, the discoveries and the sheer theatrical joy!
part 10
part 9
part 8
part 7
part 6
part 5
part 4
part 3
part 2
part 1
2016
2014
2013
2012
Andrew Westle
Finished his Phd
Delving into Dance podcast
 |
| Andrew Westle |
Favourite moments in 2017
A year that was tarnished by the inauguration of DT (SM: He self-googles; we don't want him here by searching for his name) and the divisiveness of his politics of hate. The same year we saw the expensive and divisive postal vote and the increased focus of gender inequities in the creative industries, alongside the increased reporting of sexual abuse. 2017 is the year that appears to mark a precipice. A call for action; what is the trajectory we have set ourselves?
There were three works that answered the call, all significant departures from the path our political leaders appear to want to take us and complicating the status quo. They have marked me in distinct and significant ways. They have all changed me!
Hannah Gadsby, Nanette.
What the fuck! This was just a phenomenal performance. I was blessed to see the return season. One microphone and one enormous Hamer Hall stage, a stage too often reserved for "high art". A stunning juxtaposition for the critique of high art outlined during the show. Ask Hannah what she thinks of Picasso… and rightly so. The show was perfectly structured and bravely performed. The unresolved tension at the end was palpable. A call for action. I turned to Bec Reid with the knot in my chest as we looked for the words: “WHOW!” What else can be said?
Taylor Mac, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music
24-Decade, like Nanette, was a provocation and a call to action. The audience were implicated as part of the mode of delivery. Generally, I loath audience participation and seek to hide from any invitation to participate. But for a radical faerie realness ritual sacrifice, I was there! The audience participation felt so natural as inclusion as part of the mode of performance and the nature of its creation.
Vote one Taylor for President. The performance models what it would be like if we had a leader that valued the diversity of voices, including queers, women and people of colour.
It was unapologetically queer in its politics. A protest. A celebration. A radical faerie realness ritual sacrifice. It was everything and more. A temporary community that reflected my politics and my love of what and who humans can be.
Jonathan Holloway said to me on the first night that the work would change the city (a huge call, I though at the time). BUT YES! Not a single person couldn’t have been changed. Personally, Taylor gave value to my queer politic in a way that doesn’t often feature in theatre of a generic LGBTIQ nature.
Not a day that has passed without reflection upon Taylor’s show. From slow dancing with strangers to the validation of anonymous cock sucking! Machine Dazzle, Tiger and the whole crew! Incredible!
All the Queens Men, The Coming Back Out Ball
The vision of Tristan Meecham, The Coming Back Out Ball paid homage to our LGBTI Elders. While involved in the ball as the maître d', I can say without bias this was the best night of my life. An artistic intervention based on research that literally changed peoples lives. The project embraced and celebrated our elders, with a room of over 500 people full of love and joy.
I was embraced by a lesbian who was in tears of joy saying, “This is the best night of my life". It is the first time I have been recognised as a lesbian and an elder.” I spoke to a 68-year-old trans woman who used the ball as her post-op debutante. Then there was a couple who were celebrating their 26th Anniversary. This was a truly safe and celebratory space, with a three course meal for all the Elders and amazinging performances from the likes of Robyn Archer, Deborah Cheetham and Toni Lalich.
The Ball embraced everything wonderful about inclusion and community!
Honorable mentions: Attractor at Asia TOPA; Angels in America; Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster, Nicola Gunn; Do Not Collect $200; Gabrielle Nankivell’s Wildebeest for Sydney Dance Company; All the Sex I've Ever Had; Melanie Lane’s Nightdance; and Wild Bore.
Looking forward to in 2018
In 2018 I will be spending significant time in the UK, so really looking forward to the experience the new and unknown. Seeking works that profile a diversity of voices, the queer, the unique and works that engage their audiences in re-imagining the world we could inhabit.
Cathy Hunt
Director, dramaturg
 |
| Cathy Hunt |
The Happy Prince Little Ones Theatre, La Mama. In this almost unbearably delicate production, the series of encounters and gradual entwining of the hopelessly selfish prince even in her compassion and the beautiful reckless generous obliviousness of the roller-skating swallow with his tiny strength which he gives up accidentally. As they began to see each other they disintegrate and that love was devastating.
The Encounter, Complicite, Malthouse. It stopped, shifted and altered time when I was within it, a huge feat and one that made the world sit differently afterwards. Despite the vastly British framing, familiar if effective storytelling tricks to make us trust, a huge interior journey became possible.
Free Admission, Ursula Martinez, Arts Centre Melbourne. Ursula brought in and broke down (by constructing) a wall! She freely admitted through a "Sometimes I..." structure drawing from the free association much that isn’t usually allowed to enter into theatrical or our mental space. Potent, unique and challenging.
Passenger, Footscray Community Arts Centre and Arts Centre. Not so much for what happened on the bus, but for the incremental inroads this work made into the real world beyond. How the uninspiring Docklands we drove through became part of the audience’s imaginative terrain. The pleasure of spotting strange characters, a Clint Eastwood-esque figure on horseback, and the way it shifted our relation to overlooked, ordinary over-developed urban spaces, has stayed with me.
Book of Exodus part 1 and part 2, Fraught Outfit, Theatre Works. Navigated the weight of time, of history, of cultural destiny with first two children then a whole band trying to find their way through the dark desert. From a slow journey through (part 1) a white world of futile foam with discoveries like a gingerbread house through (part 2) into a shadowy black space shining with gold and a lamplike sun in which childhood objects like sleeping bags and scooters alternated with displays of power and detachment that were never held onto too tightly, but slipped through young fingers like uncomprehended ash. The final moment of the babies having a bacchanal, suckling and the deus ex machina descent of Euygeene Teh’s incredible gold-breasted milk-dispensing contraption was unparalleled.
Queen of Wolves, Nick Coyle, Hares and Hyenas. An Act of indomitable mental and imaginative fortitude in which Nick Coyle embodies Frances Glass, a determined governess-type charged to restore a haunted house to a semblance of order. I marvelled as I felt so many things. The Hares and Hyenas wallpaper became the peeling veneer of a cobwebby mansion. The cello-playing frenzy and channelling of a louche Southern former mistress of the house was unfathomably funny. A seriously glorious work of theatre with crazy high production values. Must see! Crying out for another season.
Merciless Gods, Little Ones Theatre, Darebin Speakeasy. This work transported me into the dark subterranean places of our unbridled uncensored feelings and was so intense and violent in parts, yet terribly tender in others. The drive to display and dramatise what surges underneath even apparently ordinary moments and relationships masquerading as familial, the unabashed blatancy of the project and its incredible realisation by the ensemble and the whole team made for compelling theatre. The palette of reds and the spatial design like a tongue sticking out between the seating banks seemed like the only possible setting for this act of collective calling up of the spirit of a whole decade.
One of the Good Ones, Cope St Indigenous Arts Collective, Metanoia. I delighted in this ambivalently nostalgic retro-ridiculous offering with a set made from outmoded technology, that asked the audience to read the work on multiple levels. With their child self believing a hairdryer was a blaster, with their adult self who was nostalgic for the time when it was possible to believe a hairdryer was a blaster and with their current self noticing colonial triggers (such as music from the bicentennial) while being made aware of the racist tropes invoked (like "one of the good ones"). Smart writing and hilarious performances. By setting this struggle in space, in the future, the audience drew their own parallels about Aboriginal heroism in the struggle for sovereignty in a hostile (solar) system.
The Chairs, Jenny Kemp, designed by Dale Ferguson, La Mama. Like dwelling at the bottom of the sea, living in a lighthouse, being part of an elaborate ritual in which a couple attempt to work out how to extricate themselves from life, re-capture and experience each other’s affection, by instituting space between them, in preparation for saying goodbye to everything. That moment of Jillian Murray and Robert Meldrum progressing up separate staircases nearly obliterated me. Unbearably powerful!
Ash Flanders is Nothing, Hares and Hyenas. Kaleidoscopic collision nigh impossible to encapsulate. A bit like dwelling within a cabana made of Muriel’s Wedding, your childhood sense of The Neverending Story as tragedy and a reflux-like experiencing of Ash Flanders’/one’s own less than ideal life. All generously given to you on a slightly chipped but really lavish platter with full flourish. Consummate performance by an ascerbically insightful marvel making a Christmas sacrifice of his own bravado for your delight.
Looking forward to in 2018
Good Muslim Boy, Melancholia, Blasted (Australian premiere!) at Malthouse, and the return of Belarus Free Theatre.
The Nightingale and the Rose by Little Ones and Dybbuks by Samara Hersch and Chambermade - both at Theatreworks
Hungry Ghosts by Jean Tong at MTC and much much more on and off stages.
Yvonne Virsik
Director
Artsistic Director, MUST
 |
| Yvonne Virsik |
Favourite moments in 2017
Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks doing their best to adjust to a sudden (devlishly angular) rainstorm during a performance of Caravan – adjusting their caravan/set, trying to stay in character but not– gloriously entertainingly live.
Brilliant, hilarious and insightful women taking about where we are at in The Festival of Questions, especially "The Handmaid's Tale WTF", Wheeler Centre, Melbourne Festival.
Bizarrely serendipitous programming one night at The MUST Cabaret Festival: a dramatic duet of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" performed in German followed a few minutes later by an equally dramatic solo version in Russian, then the hosts joining in with their English version and...
Great sport Tim enduring black goo poured over his head again and again in pursuit of the "great promo shot" for Frankensteinxx at MUST.
The razor-sharp choreographic flourishes in How to Kill the Queen of Pop, Hotel Now.
Turning around suddenly in response to the 360 degree soundscape of The Encounter at Malthouse.
The moments of humble, shared humanity between those on the stage, those in the audience and those on and off in All the Sex I've Ever Had, Melbourne Festival.
People's unreserved joy at experiencing Taylor Mac, of whom I only got a little first hand, but an enormous amount vicariously.
The incredibly dramatic, fiery, epic-action-movie-like scene changes in MTC's Macbeth.
The wondrous final image of Angels in America Part 1: the inventive canvas-curtained set dropped down to reveal a beautifully glowing hand-painted stained glass effect.
The stunning images of Exodus, Part I and Part II, Fraught Outfit at Theatre Works.
Glimpses of Joan, just caught by light, The Rabble at Theatre Works.
The focused fleeting images of In Plan, Melbourne Festival.
The Nose in The Nose, Bloomshed at Melbourne Fringe.
Some surprises:
The shifts in tone in Hannah Gadsby's Nanette and Kaitlyn Rogers's Can I Get an Amen. They both totally succeeded in keeping us with them, through all their heart wrenching terrain. (Ok, so by the time I saw Nanette, it wasn't a surprise, but the power of the experience of was.)
Realising it wasn't just a genius marketing ploy in Wild Bore at Malthouse.
Realising it wasn't just my niece enjoying As You Like It at the Pop Up Globe from The Groundlings area.
The sometimes jarring, sometimes fluid relationship between movement and text in Nicola Gun's incredible work Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster.
Discoveries – why have some of these taken me so long?
Trygve Wakenshaw in Nautilus – A fluid rubbery joy.
The Travelling Sisters – looking forward to more.
Rama Nichols – she's just so good.
Seeing Joe Fisher juggle for the first time at The MUST Cabaret Festival– not a form I generally go crazy over, but the electric tension he brings to his performances is something else.
Show I loved (but, as always, there are so many):
Angels in America at fortyfivedownstairs, directed by Gary Abrahams I think has affected me the most. I've always loved the texts but what a privilege to experience them brought to life with such theatrical ingenuity, extraordinary performances and searing humanity. One of my favourite moments of the whole year is returning for Part Two, scanning the audience and catching the eyes of familiar faces from the night before, full of excitement at continuing our epic journey together.
What I'm looking forward to in 2018
Melancholia at Malthouse. The film has stayed just under my skin since I saw it and I've always thought it would make a fascinating piece of theatre. With Declan Greene and Matt Lutton as creators, I tingle at the possibilities.
I only saw a bit of Taylor Mac, but will be keeping an eye out for judy's work all over the world. Determined to also check Mac out as a playwright, I bought a copy of Hir afterwards and am now looking forward to Daniel Clarke's Production at Red Stitch very soon.
Generally, I'm looking forward to more surprises, more diversity in programming and in the breadth of artists engaged, which does seem to be growing. Bring on the surprises, the discoveries and the sheer theatrical joy!
part 10
part 9
part 8
part 7
part 6
part 5
part 4
part 3
part 2
part 1
2016
2014
2013
2012
20 October 2017
MELBOURNE FESTIVAL: Caravan
MELBOURNE FESTIVAL 2017
Caravan
Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Festival
14 October 2017
Malthouse Forecourt
to 22 October
www.festival.melbourne/2017
Caravan is ready to hitch itself to the nearest tow-bar and visit festivals around the world, but it's not worth waiting to see if it finds a park at the Malthouse again.
Judy (Susie Dee) and her daughter Donna (Nicci Wilks) live in a caravan. They've stayed in places with views of power lines and bins but home is home and there's hope for 30-something Donna to get an ending that's happier than the ones she gives her Tinder dates. And hope for an ending that isn't her being as happy as Judy is – Judy sees the positive – about spending her last night on earth (again) in the same caravan.
With a bitterly dark humour and fearlessly hilarious performances, their clownish extremes are initially very easy to watch, but clowns are holders of truth. The mother–daughter relationship becomes more uncomfortable – and personal – as it explores the complications of assumed love. There's always love, and the expectation of love, but competitiveness and resentment can distort love and leave it unrecognisable, even when it's as tender as the liver Donna fries up for dinner or as obvious as the enlarged liver that Judy is so very proud of.
Written by Angus Cerini, Patricia Cornelius, Wayne Macauley and Melissa Reeves – srsly, what a team – and co-created by Dee and Wilks, it's development began with four scripts about body organs in a caravan in a Collingwood carpark – when it was 40 degrees.
Outside in the Malthouse Forecourt, it's still October-chilly at night but op shop blankets ensure that the audience are cosy while looking into the too-cosy-for-comfort van.
Their new view of Melbourne still feels like the outer suburbs in the new van that's been re-fitted and designed by Marg Horwell. Starting with a 1970s orange bedspread that's so loud it might start a new retro bedspread trend, every original fitting is filled with details from medications to toy horses, and secrets are hidden in every storage nook and cranny.
While the individual contributions are felt, none outshine the other and create a consistent voice that's been developed by years of artistic collaboration and friendship. Book a blankie now because some of the last shows have booked out.
Caravan
Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Festival
14 October 2017
Malthouse Forecourt
to 22 October
www.festival.melbourne/2017
 |
| Susie Dee & Nicci Wilks. Photo by Tim Grey |
Caravan is ready to hitch itself to the nearest tow-bar and visit festivals around the world, but it's not worth waiting to see if it finds a park at the Malthouse again.
Judy (Susie Dee) and her daughter Donna (Nicci Wilks) live in a caravan. They've stayed in places with views of power lines and bins but home is home and there's hope for 30-something Donna to get an ending that's happier than the ones she gives her Tinder dates. And hope for an ending that isn't her being as happy as Judy is – Judy sees the positive – about spending her last night on earth (again) in the same caravan.
With a bitterly dark humour and fearlessly hilarious performances, their clownish extremes are initially very easy to watch, but clowns are holders of truth. The mother–daughter relationship becomes more uncomfortable – and personal – as it explores the complications of assumed love. There's always love, and the expectation of love, but competitiveness and resentment can distort love and leave it unrecognisable, even when it's as tender as the liver Donna fries up for dinner or as obvious as the enlarged liver that Judy is so very proud of.
Written by Angus Cerini, Patricia Cornelius, Wayne Macauley and Melissa Reeves – srsly, what a team – and co-created by Dee and Wilks, it's development began with four scripts about body organs in a caravan in a Collingwood carpark – when it was 40 degrees.
Outside in the Malthouse Forecourt, it's still October-chilly at night but op shop blankets ensure that the audience are cosy while looking into the too-cosy-for-comfort van.
Their new view of Melbourne still feels like the outer suburbs in the new van that's been re-fitted and designed by Marg Horwell. Starting with a 1970s orange bedspread that's so loud it might start a new retro bedspread trend, every original fitting is filled with details from medications to toy horses, and secrets are hidden in every storage nook and cranny.
While the individual contributions are felt, none outshine the other and create a consistent voice that's been developed by years of artistic collaboration and friendship. Book a blankie now because some of the last shows have booked out.
30 June 2015
Review: Shit
Shit
Dee & Cornelius
26 June 2015
Southbank Theatre, The Lawler
to 5 July
Shit is the shit. The fourth show of the 2015 MTC Neon Festival of Independent Theatre screams louder and stronger than the women it's about and inspires us to make our support for independent theatre as louder than possible.
Writer Patricia Cornelius says, "Really good independent theatre is radical. It is actually going to shock you. It is actually going to make you think differently." Shit is astonishing independent theatre.
I don't understand why every theatre company in the country (and beyond) isn't competing to get the next Patricia Cornelius and Susie Dee play. From their days with the Melbourne Workers Theatre to their 2103 award-winning and independently-produced Savages, their consistent accolades somehow don't translate to commercial demand.
Shit is about three women who have been arrested and are locked up. Their crime isn't revealed until later – and shown remarkably with Marg Horwell's design – but the act isn't what the work's about.
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| Nicci Wilkes, Peta Brady, Sara Ward |
Sam, Bobby and Billy are women whose stories are rarely told on our don't-upset-the-subscribers or our let's-talk-about-me stages. If we do see them, they are characters to laugh at; they are not "us" who go to the nice theatre. They are women who punch and fight. They are women who have never felt safe and joke about having a bed room door with a lock, wanting a bed with sheets and a doona cover, or remembering if someone ever hugged them as a child.
Their stories are confronting and raw, but not because of who they are. They confront who the audience are. The talk about being on public transport and knowing that all it takes to make someone get off is to yell at them. I would, and if I saw them at the train station, I'd get in the safe and crowded front carriage. This is theatre that lets us see ourselves through someone else's eyes; eyes we may never have thought of looking through.
Cornelius's writing leaves me shaking. Her dialogue sounds natural but it isn't like spoken language. She makes the profane poetic and lets language be so much more than words with assumed meaning. Her text has shape and rhythm and feels like it's beating to the heartbeats of her characters. It makes us listen to every "fuck" and "cunt" – and there are many – and really hear what they mean. And she only tells what needs to be told, leaving the subtext and the untold as the voice on stage that sneaks into your guts and doesn't let go.
This text is given life by Susie Dee's direction. Dee lets the actors be everything their character asks, while still working as one. She finds ways to make the shape of Cornelius's words become visible. She take us from violent gutter back to the stage and reminds us that we are watching theatre and, as such, are complicit in creating the world and the lives we see.
All of which is nothing without Peta Brady, Sarah Ward and Nicci Wilks as Sam, Billy and Bobby. Each embody the pain and anger that fuel these broken women while never letting the audience feel pity. They put up walls but the truth seeps out as they show us why we're laughing at the type of darkness and violence that can only be laughed at to save yourself from despair.
This Shit is why we go to theatre. This Shit is real. It's what can happen when a creative ensemble are given the resources to work together and not be concerned with pleasing or fitting criteria. It's astonishing theatre that needs to be presented as far as it can be seen. It's unmissable.
This was on AussieTheatre.com .
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