Review: Merrily We Roll Along

Merrily We Roll Along
Watch This
30 June 2017
The Lawler, Southbank Theatre
to 15 July
watchthis.net.au

Nelson Gardner, Nicole Melloy & Lyall Brooks. Merrily We Roll Along. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

My review is on The Music.

Review: Sexercise

Sexercise
Aleksander Vass & Malcolm C Cooke
27 February 2015
Alex Theatre
to 29 March
sexercisethemusical.com

Lyall Brooks, Nicole Milloy, Fem Belling. Sexercise

Sexercise could be a ripper of a show if it toned up and got rid of the flab.

Sexercise is a new Australian musical. Yay. It's opening in a great new theatre venue, the Alex Theatre in St Kilda (used to be the George cinema). Yay. But putting on a show at this stage of its development. Boo.

30-somethings Sam (Nicole Melloy) and Joe (Lyall Brooks) are married with a child are finding more time for exercising with their bffs (LuLu McClatchy, Cameron McDonald, Kristin Holland) than for each other or for sex. Their couple's counsellor (Fem Belling) suggests they try "Sexercise", which "loses" more calories than yoga. It does, and they get fit enough to set the iPad to record.

The super-brilliant cast make this show work. Each one bring more than the script and music offer and each deserve more than they're given. See it to see these six give everything they have to make the show work.

There's so much this story could explore: the demise of sex in long-term relationships, the impossible quest of body perfection, how porn affects perceptions of bodies and sex, forgiveness and understanding when someone really fucks up... But it's mostly easy jokes that everyone is thinking before they happen.

Great comedy relies on a core of great drama – make those stakes high, give them impossible choices, make them fail.  Sexercise fails with the too-obvious comedy and the never-really-care drama.

But there is something there that could be hilarious, shocking and real. Not long before the interval, the couple sing "Is it over yet?", about feeling obliged to have sex, and the show finally begins. Everything we needed to know about that couple is in that song. It's funny and honest – who hasn't been there! – and everything before is unnecessary back story. Act 2 is much better because things happen. They are still predictable and make serious issues trivial, but there's story and problems to be solved.

Successful and popular shows develop and grow. This is at workshop stage, not expensive ticket stage. At least cut the songs where the audience don't clap. But keep the McClatchy's "Vagina or penis" song; it's numbers like this that show how cool Sexercise could be.

And then there's the LED-screen design stolen from a 1995 screen saver and the Big-W-sales-rack costumes; Belling's baggy beige pantsuit is the highlight of costumes try for joke rather than reflecting character.

I really hope that this isn't the end of Sexercise. But it's still at kissing and downstairs outside grope stage of sex and not ready to move on.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Spike Heels

Spike Heels
Q44 and Crazy Chair
29 August 2014
Chapel off Chapel
to 14 September
q44.com.au

Q44 launched as a company earlier in the year and Theresa Rebeck's 1992 play Spike Heels is their third production, this time in conjunction with Crazy Chair Productions and at Chapel off Chapel instead of their cosy home in a Richmond warehouse.

As a company of actors, they produce the plays they want to perform – kind of like Red Stitch. And so far, they love late 20th century North American naturalism where there are lots of terrific works to choose from.

Spike Heels was Rebeck's first full-length play and she's gone on to write many more and establish a career as a successful television and film writer. Set in an upper east-cost US city in the late 1980s, the story starts with the friendship between 20/30-something uni professor Andrew (Anthony Scundi) and  his 20-something upstairs neighbour, Georgie (Nicole Melloy), who is as rough and loud as her Bronx accent. He gives her books to read, found her a job with a lawyer friend of his, Edward (Michael Robins), and wants her to meet his posh girlfriend, Lydia (Lelda Kapis). But Edward's intentions towards Georgie are less than pure, Lydia used to date Edward, and why would Andrew be learning-up the hot woman if he didn't fancy her.

Directed by company founder Gabriella Rose-Carter, it's tight and real and reflects on how too little  changes in sexual politics. The four actors bring honesty and technique to the stage, but I'd love to see them bring a bit more of themselves to the characters. All are memorable and exciting actors, but there's a shadow of distance between actors and characters – especially in the comedy – that reminds us that we're watching a game of make believe.

Q44 have already made confident ripples in Melbourne's independent theatre scene and are finding their unique niche and a loyal and happy audience, and showing us wonderful plays that we may never have otherwise seen.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Last chance: The Safe House and Dolores

I caught a couple of late-season shows this week that finish this weekend. You can still see both: The Safe House tonight and Dolores tomorrow afternoon.

Dolores
Q44 Theatre Company
14 May 2014
550 Swan Street, Burnley
to 18 May
q44.com.au

Dolores is from new company Q44, an ensemble of nine actors.

They've created a wonderful new theatre space on Swan Street in Burnley and are letting Melbourne know they are here with a work by New York writer Edward Allan Baker.

Set in Brooklyn in the 1970s, it's the story of two sisters whose lives have always been controlled by violence. It's an actor's dream to play parts like this, and Nicole Melloy and Gabriella Rose-Carter embrace its intense naturalism with the kind of understanding and heart that let's us be flies on the wall in the kitchen.

The Safe House
3rd Room Theatrical
16 May 2014
Owl and the Pussycat
to 17 May
3rdroomtheatrical.com

Another newish company is 3rd Room Theatrical who are performing The Safe House, down the road from Dolores, at the gorgeous Owl and the Pussycat in Richmond.

This new work by Tim Wotherspoon, who performs it with Lily Constantine and Rhys McConnochie, is a low-tech sci fi, lost-in-time mystery-comedy that makes it's audience think and re-think their theories and conclusions every minute.

We're in a room with Josie, Alan and Sid. They might be spies or time travellers or sick. Sid might be or might have been a her. It might be the 1980s or the future or today. And no one knows if it's safe. With tone-perfect performances, The Safe House is mind-fuckingly funny and always a step ahead of its audience.

They've had some intimate audiences, so it would be amazing to see them adding in extra seats and filling up tonight.