Review: Detroit

Detroit
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
28 August 2015
Red Stitch
to 26 September
redstitch.net

Sarah Sutherland. Detroit. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Detroit never says it's about Detroit. It's about suburbs where communities are falling apart and the hope of the hard-work way to an easy happy-ever-after is disintegrating in a world where the only real trickle down is insecurity and crisis. Directed by Tanya Dickson, the Red Stitch production keeps its feet in America but feels like it's made for the suburbs that many of us abandoned in our 20s and find ourselves heading back to in our 30s and 40s.

Writer Lisa D'Amour is from New Orleans, studied playwriting in Texas, and is also known for co-creating site-specific interdisciplinary works. Her play Detroit was first presented by Steppenwolf in Chicago in 2010 and on Off-Broadway in 2012. It was a Pulitzer finalist and won the Obie Award for Best New American play in 2013.

Ben (Brett Cousins) and Mary (Sarah Sutherland) had nice safe jobs, then Ben was laid off and is on his computer starting his own financial planning business. The house next door is a mirror image of theirs, except it's falling apart. It was also empty until Kenny (Paul Ashcroft) and Sharon (Ngaire Dawn Fair) move in and come over for a barbecue and talk about how they met in rehab and are trying to buy the house by working in a warehouse and a call centre. In a place where neighbours no longer talk to each other, everyone welcomes a convenient friendship that doesn't ask too many questions or notice just how broken their new friends are.

The tiny stage at Red Stitch isn't made for sprawling backyards and at first Matt Adey's set of two white dollhouse-esque houses and mini yards feels like it's being squished into the space. The the first scene ends and the white becomes a screen for images moving down the unchanging-but-constantly-changing suburban streets. This makes the mini houses defy the space and brings us into the hugeness and unexpected beauty of the suburbs, which some of us drove from to enjoy to the inner-city theatre.

The writing's bitterly funny and sprinkled with symbolism like a planters wart eating into the soul/sole of the community and touches of magical realism as the characters describe their dreams. The pitch-perfect performances revel in its comedy but are grounded in its gritty truth, and the direction finds an uncomfortable truth that's as much part of Melbourne as it is Detroit.

I wonder if I'd have laughed so much if I didn't live in Highett.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Mini review: Herding Cats

Herding Cats
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
7 June 2013
Red Stitch
to 7 July
redstitch.net

Herding Cats slipped through my review net. I enjoyed it and will always say "see Red Stitch" no matter what a review says. But I couldn't put my finger on what bugged me about it.

UK writer Lucinda Coxon's very funny and very dark play about isolated 20-somethings taps into the loneliness of living in a society that lets us interact at superficial levels and the dangers of disregarding the superficial as harmless. I loved how she drew us into a confrontation that would never happen and how she took her characters much further and into a much darker place than I imagined it would.

The balance between black humour and social commentary was teetering a bit, but the direction and performances were great, with all finding a personal connection to the story. The design was a bit dull, but didn't distract from the work.

One of the accents annoyed me because I could hear the actor behind the accent and it hadn't settled yet. And I don't always understand the choice to use an accent.

Begin rant.

We do Asian plays without Asian accents and the last show at Red Stitch, About Tommy, was done without accents and still set in Zagreb. I haven't seen a Chekov done with a Russian accent or a Pirandello with a Kingswood-Country-style bloody-wog accent. European opera is sung without accents. Maybe – I mean, of course – it's because they'd sound offensively racist. So why are our theatres so attached to performing UK and American plays with accents? Unless it's intrinsic to the meaning of the text, they distract and put the focus on the actor, rather than the work. (And, no matter how good they are, I suspect they make native speakers cringe. Remember Meryl Streep's Aussie accent in Evil Angels? Few are better than she is, and she still got it wrong.)

End rant.

But this accent would easily settle in a day or two and it didn't take anything away from the work or the character.

I've finally figured out what it was. I could see the actors judging the characters. It's a tiny and very subtle thing, but it's up to the audience to judge the characters. In this style of realistic theatre, if the actors are agreeing with us about their characters, the characters don't live. They have to be seen to be doing what they believe is best. No one wakes up and thinks, "I'm going to make a very stupid choice today".

But my advice is to read the raves about this show or ignore us all, see it anyway and make up your own mind.

Chat: Ngaire Dawn Fair

Herding Cats

Red Stitch

to 6 July

redstitch.net

Red Stitch present the Australian premiere of Herding Cats by UK writer Lucinda Coxon. Opening this week, it’s 2010–11 UK productions won the acclaim of critics and it was shortlisted for writing awards.  It’s described as bleak with shards of black humour and The Guardian said “see it and shudder”.

Ngaire Dawn Fair graduated from the National Theatre in 2008 and made her Red Stitch debut in 2011 in My Romantic History. She has performed in with ITCH productions and Hoy Polloy and been in television shows including Rush, Satisfaction, Neighbours, Killing Time, The Slap and Winners and Losers. She chats  about being in a show that initially made her feel very odd.

What three words best describe Herding Cats? 

Fast, dense, surprising

What do you love most about this show? 

The way it keeps you guessing. I love how unusual it is. Some people will love it, some will hate it and everyone will have different ideas on the how the characters are interconnected.

What is one of your favourite shows you've seen at Red Stitch? 

The Aliens. 

What do you love about being a Red Stitch ensemble member? 

I love the people. There’s a lot of trust; I don’t work well under supervision. There’s a real sense of freedom and equality, everyone just does their jobs and there’s always support if you need it. 

What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced preparing for this show? 

If Justine (my character) was a cartoon character she would be Taz Devil, she’s a whirlwind. She rarely takes a breath, so just maintaining the energy to keep up with her is a challenge.

What was your reaction when you first read this Lucinda Coxon’s script? 

I felt very odd, I had to tell my partner about about it. And in the retelling, I decided it was special. 

Who would you love to see in the audience one night? 

Richard Gere. That would be excellent.

Is there anyone you don't want to see in the audience? 

My dear grandparents, they would be horrified.

When did you know you wanted to be an actor? 

I don’t think I ever really wanted to be an actor but I always loved playing characters. In high school I performed a monologue to my class from Educating Rita and that was the first time I felt an audience engrossed in a story I was telling. That was a special moment. That might have been the beginning.  

Apart from this one, what was the last play you read?

Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp.

Do you believe in any theatre superstitions? What are they? 

No, I say good luck. 

What's some great theatre advice you've used? Who was it from? 

“Be bold, be big hearted.” My grandfather said that, for theatre and life (different grandfather from above, if he was still with us, he would love this show, I think). 

In your wildest dreams, who would you love to work with on a show?

I would like to be in a play with James Dean please.

Do you read your reviews?

I fantasise about not reading them, but I do.

Convince a stubborn north-sider to head over the river to St Kilda. 

The train to Flinders from Windsor only takes 9 flipping minutes!

Tell us about your fellow cast Paul Ashcroft and Dion Mills and director Suzanne Chaundy. 

We have had so much fun working on this show.  The play is much funnier than I anticipated, so rehearsals have been a hoot.  Suzanne is open, honest and clear with a wickedly encouraging laugh. And Paul and Dion are perfectly cast (although they might not like me saying that). It’s just like a weird little family. 

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: The Laramie Project – 10 Years Later

The Laramie Project – 10 Years Later
Arts Centre Melbourne presents a Red Stitch Theatre production
16 May 2012
Fairfax studio, Arts Centre Melbourne

I have family who used to live in Snowtown; they don't tell people that anymore. Truro, Port Arthur, Colombine; it only takes one word to recall the horrific violence associated with these places.

In 1998, Laramie in Wyoming, USA, made headlines when Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence, repeatedly beaten and left to die on the outskirts of the town. He died six days later and the media descended on this small town, once best-known for its university, but remembered for being nothing exciting.

People are killed daily in the US from robberies gone wrong and domestic violence; however, Laramie struck a chord because Matthew's was targeted and tortured because he was gay. Matthew's family are still lobbying to have the Hate Crimes Prevention Act accepted by the US government.

In November 1998, Tectonic Theater Project from New York travelled to Laramie and conducted interviews that were used to create The Laramie Project, a play and later an HBO film. It's become one of the most performed plays in America and continues as an active online community. In 2009, the company returned to Laramie to see what had happened over the last 10 years and the epilogue work premiered simultaneously in 100 US venues.

Red Stitch presented The Laramie Project – 10 Years Later in 2011 and were invited by The Arts Centre to re-stage this fascinating and important work.

Director Gary Abrahams guides an exceptional cast (Paul Ashcroft, Roderick Cairns, Ella Caldwell, Terry Camilleri, Kate Cole, Chris Connely, Brett Luderman, Rosie Traynor and Hester Van Der Vyer) in a telling that places it firmly in the US, but ensures that Laramie isn't far from our own homes. The company's passion for the project and their anger about the crime flows off the stage, but it's ultimately a performance that leaves us with hope.

It's almost impossible to discuss the work without discussing the crime, but there is an abundance of information and commentary easily available, and this style of verbatim or documentary theatre is created to be close to its subject. Still much of its success lies in its creation of distance.  By making the process a part of its story,  with the interviewees as characters alongside the people of Laramie, it's able to comment and bring strangers, who are like us, into the town.

Ten years later, Matthew's friends are still hurting (ten years really is nothing),  many involved in the case are still suffering, while others, including the respected current affairs show 20/20, are re-writing the story as a robbery gone wrong, and younger people don't even know who Matthew Shepard was. With a spine exploring stories and ownership and truth, this second work continues to tap directly into our lives, but its guts is the inclusion of the voices of the young men who killed Matthew.

It's too easy to leave out this voice and demonise these two men, but to do so would leave it without hope. They weren't freaks or psychopaths. They were two men who lived in a community that didn't question their belief that poofs are freaks. I know people who think like that: "I spose you must know a lot of THEM working in the arts." These are not bad people; they just live in a very different bubble to mine – and no one likes having their bubble burst.

As Matthew's father requested that the death penalty not be applied to their sentence and Father Roger Schmit befriended the killer,  10 Years Later leaves us with no choice but to listen with as much respect as possible and to find the understanding that is going to help us to continue to try and create a world where everyone is safe and respected.

Review: Far Away

Far Away
SaySix Theatre and Lil Artists
25 April
45 Downstairs
to 13 May
fortyfivedownstairs.com

If I need Wikipedia to explain ANYTHING, I suspect that there's something wrong – especially when it's a piece of theatre.

SaySix Theatre and Lil Artists are presenting Caryl Churchill's Far Away at 45 Downstairs. Written in 1999, this is its first Melbourne production and takes it from a rolling English countryside to a thick and expansive Aussie rainforest.

Young Joan (in an honest and natural performance by 10-year-old Skylah Cox) is staying with her aunt (Caroline Lee) and uncle. After being woken by a human scream and investigating, her aunt tries to hide the truth before bringing the child into their secret.  Next Joan is an adult (Suzannah MacDonald) and starting her first job as a milliner, where she wins the attention of fellow-worker Todd (Paul Ashcroft) and begins to question why the hats are destroyed after the parades.

Churchill's a writer whose personal and political politics are embodied in her writing, so don't expect a clear and compelling story to pull you through. Her off-kilter world rejects logic and everything is at war; even nature is at war with itself. This is where Wiki helped me. I thought she was absurdly playing with language by using animal names; nup, the elephants are elephants. I liked it when I thought they were metaphorical word play...

The internet tells me this is an astonishing play, but this production isn't sharing the astonishing. Dystopian absurdist post-modern writing is cool, but theatrical story-telling has to get out of the intellectual heads of its creators and into the hearts of its audience. The design is evocative, the hats are gorgeous and the performances bring us so close to caring and being involved, but it doesn't take us into its own unique world.  I can see what Churchill was saying about the apathy of society and nightmare of war, but I don't know what SaySix and Lil Artists are saying about us, our society, now or me.

This review was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Howie the Rookie

Howie The Rookie
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
18 March 2011
Red Stitch Theatre
to 16 April
www.redstitch.net

Red Stitch first brought the bloody incredible Howie The Rookie to Melbourne in 2002. I wasn't here, but am among the many who are thrilled to see this new production, which is part of a program celebrating the tenth anniversary of the independent company that regularly puts our funded companies to shame and brings us the scripts and the performances that Melbourne audiences deserve to see.

Mark O'Rowe's an Irish writer rightly won a stack of for his 1999 epic of redemption and loss. With language scooped from filthy Dublin gutters, it's told through two monologues with a present tense immediacy that drags us into a world so violent, devastating and fucking funny that we can't imagine how we ever thought that bashed boys with scabies or obese scrags in white leggings could be anything but beautiful. It's the kind of writing that makes me hurt because it's so good.

Paul Ashcroft (The Howie) and Tim Ross (The Rookie) attack each half with the kind of guts and energy that would let them win a Dublin pub fight. Ashcroft's physicality is frighteningly confronting, while Ross brings out the humour that could so easily get lost in the mess of piss, blood and scabies cream.

Greg Carroll's direction lets his actors draw deep and fill the stage with an energy that sparks. But I would have loved to see him trust the text a bit more, as there were moments that felt like they were underlining what was already bolded and hightlighted. It's so well written that the audience don't need to have it drawn so clearly; especially at the end of part one, which was given away too early. Don't warn us with mood; kick us in the guts as hard as Howie has been.

Even if our lives will never reflect the world of this play, the story has so much heart and goddam humanity that we have no choice but to know their rough and damaged souls. And this is where I get frustrated with Red Stitch. Some shows are so caught up with creating an authentic "them" (and showing the astonishing skill it takes to create "them") that the story struggles to be ours. We're so busy watching and admiring that we don't get lost in the world and have that inexpressible connection and understanding that every artist and audience longs for.

If it sounds like I'm being excessively picky about a company that I love, it's because sometimes they are so close to brilliant that the tiniest distractions can seem huge.

And don't you dare let it stop you seeing Howie The Rookie; it's a night of theatre that drags you into those filthy gutters, stabs your heart and leaves you breathless.



Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

Review: Let the Sunshine

Let the Sunshine
Melbourne Theatre Company
31 July 2010
Playhouse, the Arts Centre
to 4 September
www.mtc.com.au

Let the Sunshine opens with a scruffy, but still attractive, 50-something trying to put an IKEA-like book shelf together. The audience are instantly his. We all know how hard it is to put those shelves in place. When his still-looking-good-but-not-denying-her-age wife comes in and jokes about his Richard Dawkins book and that he buys books that he never reads...well let's just all go home and make sure we have a spot in our Billy bookcases for unread plays by Australian playwrights and famous atheists.

I watched Dawkins on QandA (that's the same as reading isn't it?) and I have a shelf full of plays in my IKEA bookcase (that I assembled all by myself!); I've even read some of them. Ones I read in the 80s, like Don's Party, The Club and The Removalists, still inspire me. David Williamson is one of the reasons I learnt to love theatre. With astute observation and wit, he gave Australian theatre a voice that... Yeah, yeah we all know that Williamson is a national treasure and that his plays are as popular today as they ever were and ensure good box office.

Why? I don't know.

Let the Sunshine (co-produced by the Melbourne and Queensland theatre companies) is the theatrical equivalent of the great Gillard/Abbot political debate on the telly.

Academy Award– nominated documentary maker Toby (Robert Coleby) and his successful lefty-book publisher wife Ros (Jackie Weaver) have moved to Noosa. They are 'friends' with fat (sorry John), racist, homophobic, obscenely wealthy property developer Ron (John Wood) and his wife Natasha (Andrea Moor), who ran a successful fashion boutique for three years until she got bored.  Toby and Ron don't get along! And if that isn't enough, their Sydney-living, 30-something offspring come to visit. Emma (Rachel Gordon) is nearly a partner in her law firm (daddy Ron is impressed) but she finds it difficult to be a woman in such a tough environment. Rick (Paul Ashcroft) is a musician but works in a bar because the world hasn't noticed his talent (Toby and Ros think he's a genius).  Emma and Rick don't get along either...or do they?

Astute play-goers will recognise the subtle satire about the left and right politics in Australia. They may even understand the joke about Ron and Natasha's John Olsen painting and the follow up Jeffrey Smart joke in Act 2 (when everyone goes back to pretentious old Sydney).  Olsen's paintings are wild and organic – like Noosa – and Smart's are all clean and ordered – like Sydney. But everyone who goes to the theatre knows that. These are people who read Crikey and New Matilda (just like Toby) and nudge each other with recognition when silly old Natasha tells Ros that the book club doesn't want to read Geraldine Brooks. I mean who would even go to a book club that doesn't love our Geraldine? And then there's the jibes about Maggie Thatcher editing The Australian and a good lefty can't get through the day without bagging Janet Albrechtsen.

Or there are plenty of jokes about "horrible right wing journalist thugs" and "nanny-state lefties" for people who have trouble putting part A into slot B and don't know the difference between a flat- and a  phillips- head screwdriver.

Tell your own story is wonderful advice to any writer – but David, please stop telling us your story. If you don't want to live with the disillusioned ex-hippies and soul-less developers on the Sunshine Coast and you hate Sydney so much, move back to Melbourne. We'll have a bowl of pasta at Ti Amo and head across to La Mama, then you can come over the river to see a Red Stitch show. Probably best that you avoid some of the inner-city suburbs because the developers are destroying them and you'll have to wear thermals if you want to go down the coast... Adelaide maybe? They love you there. Or Perth? It's warm and surely those miners are crying out for a bit of well-crafted wit.

But come on Anne-Marie – it's satire! That thing that makes fun of extremists and the middle class.  David is laughing at these people. Perhaps if you read more plays and less Geraldine Brooks, you'd understand.

David may be laughing at, but the audience are laughing with him. The jokes about a monkey in a turban (an Indian cricketer) and "at least it was a bloke" (Emma shagging no-hoper Rick is better than her nuding-up with a woman) get more laughs than the Al Gore joke. These throw away giggles could be removed from the script and make no impact on the story. So why are they there?

This is writing that supports and boosts the status quo. If old Ron is really a good guy at heart, surely there's nothing wrong with a harmless joke about hating Indians and him not wanting his daughter to go carpet munching?

This is the attitude that gives us an election campaign where the left and the right are fighting so hard for the bland middle ground that the debate between our 'leaders' was telecast at 6.30 because they knew it didn't stand a chance against the Masterchef final. And the theatre crowd prefer Masterchef because they laughed at the Tetsuya joke more than the sub-prime one.

And, it was directed by Michael Gow,  the man who wrote Away.

This review appeared on AussieTheartre.com.