Review: Richard III

Richard 3
Bell Shakespeare
21 April 2017
Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio
to 7 May
bellshakespeare.com.au

Richard 3. Kate Mulvany & Meredith Penman. Photo by Prudence Upton.

Being in the depths of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, I was calling Richard 3, by Bell Shakespeare, Chick Dick 3 because Kate Mulvany plays Richard. But no more throw away jokes about having seen a lot of Dicks because this production’s found so much that’s new, relevant and fascinating.

Yes it’s ANOTHER work about white men and power and what they do attain and keep power. But Peter Evans direction and Mulvany’s dramaturgy have shaped it to give the women a presence that’s rare in this story. Having the cast always on the stage, the constant gaze of the women ­– who are often no more than wife, mother, womb or irrelevant – is always felt.

And they know they live in a world where Richard knows that his power over them is unquestioned.

Anna Cordingley’s design of too-shiny golds with brown and orange brocades could be a Toorak mansion or an inner city restricted-entry club, but left me feeling like we were in London in the 1930s and Edward VIII was about to abdicate and change the power dynamic in his society because the woman he loved was considered scum.

It’s a production that explores gender, but Mulvany’s gender is irrelevant from the moment she turns around on the stage and we see Richard. In a black suit with short hair and dark eyebrows, he’s small and looks younger than he is. His scoliosis (and hers) is a constant source of pain that he tries to dismiss as irrelevant but he can’t sit or move without being forced to feel his difference.

With his soliloquies, Richard brings the audience into his confidence and makes us complicit in his choices. He keeps us in his gaze when no one else on stage is aware they are being watched. He needs us to know that he chose to be the villain, but every interaction shows us that his villainy comes from far more than his conscious choice.

It’s impossible to stop watching him and Mulvany’s remarkable and powerful performance keeps us with Richard so we see the world through his pain and anger. She makes us care about this man whose behaviour is abhorrent.

So yeah, see Kate’s Dick.


This review is on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Scottish one

Macbeth
Bell Shakespeare
8 June 2012
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 23 June
bellshakespeare.com.au

I have a confession to make: I've never read the Scottish play and, somehow, I've never seen a production. Shame on me, but it left me in an unusual position of being able to see if the Bell Shakespeare production really tells the story. All I knew was it's the one about the power mad couple and witches, and, being a Shakespeare tragedy, most people die.

It's unusual to see a professional telling of Shakespeare that doesn't assume a basic knowledge of the text and focuses its telling on interpretation and originality.

The most comprehensive interpretation of the text is Anna Cordingly's design that feels like a slab of cold rough Scottish highlands, where cardigans are a must, with a mirror ceiling that brings the magic and threat into the world the Macbeths think they can control. And Kate Mulvany's lady Macbeth is the most complex and fascinating person in it.

Peter Evans direction brings some original moments (I'm not THAT unfamiliar with it), but it's almost monotone, even Dan Speilman's Macbeth. Our beloved Bard wrote the best stories ever, but if he were writing today, it'd be suggested that he get more of the action onstage and maybe spend a bit less time in the character's heads. Shakespeare tellings that sing are directed like a piece of music is conducted. The dense and difficult text is beautiful to read, but it can't be relied on to tell the story on a stage. Shakespeare is about tone and rhythm and dissonance; it's like opera without the music.

It's clear that the terrific cast have worked on the nitty gritty of their characters (and probably improvised Macbeth and Banquo at the pub toasting Fleance's birth at the pub), but this production loses the vastness of the overall picture and the telling of the story is flat.

Come interval, I had to read the synopsis and ask who was the dude in the blue jumper with the beard. It was Malcolm, and I thought Fleance was a witch.

Review: Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar
Bell Shakespeare
7 September 2011
Fairfax Studio, the Arts Centre
to 17 September, and touring
www.bellshakespeare.com.au

Julius Caesar isn't the sexist of Shakespeare's writings. It's one of the politics and togas plays that's favoured in high schools for its large cast, relative shortness and the "lend me your rears" pun. Bell Shakespeare brave this neglected history play and bring it into a recognisable world of factions and power suits with many shades of grey.

JC is a wordy play about the power of words. Most of the action takes place off, so its success lies in making the on stage story about the decisions and dilemmas facing those reporting and those hearing.

This adaption, by director Peter Evans and dramaturge Kate Mulvany (who also plays Cassius), is about the group of conspirators and is structured to ensure it's about people dealing with the consequences of their choices, rather than reacting to the changing will of the masses. And the masses have been reduced to voices.

This lets it become a personal story that soars towards the end as Brutus (Colin Moody) is left alone to face the new world he created. (Purists be damned, the choice to bring the ending back is brilliant.)  This would be even stronger if we were with Brutus from the beginning. Act one suffers from not choosing a side. Breaking to interval as Caska (Gareth Reeves) declares, "Speak hands for me!” I wasn't sure if we were meant to be scared for Caesar (Alex Mengelet channeling a Godfather-like Brando) or excited that the faction looked likely to succeed in toppling their leader. We love Shakespeare's stories because they explore so many perspectives, but none of this complexity is lost by the choice to interpret and focus on a hero.

It's also a play known for its wishy washy chicks. Mulvany's Cassius obviously addresses the balance, but Calphurnia (Rebecca Bower) and Portia (Katie-Jean Harding) are far more persuasive than often seen and leave us wishing that Caesar and Brutus listened to their wives.

As this Rome believes in omens and gods Evans' direction allows for a fluidity that allows for "strange and wonderful signs", but some choices felt more style than substance, especially when the slow-mo entrance/exits took focus off the story action and on to the mechanics of getting actors on and off the stage.

Julius Caesar is touring, so each venue will adapt to the staging in different ways and it's a minor quibble for a production that lets heart, dilemma and regrets drive its history.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com

Review: Dead Man's Cell Phone

Dead Man's Cell Phone
Melbourne Theatre Company
1 July 2010
Sumner Theatre
to 7 August 2010
www.mtc.com.au

If you were at a cafe and a mobile phone kept ringing, would you answer it? Would you answer it if the man who owned it had died at the table? And do you believe that audience members who don't turn off their phones should be publicly shamed and forced to buy everyone drinks at interval?

The MTC have a phone-turn-off title with Dead Man's Cell Phone and in it sweet and mousy Jean (Lisa McCune) answers a dead man's phone, falls in love with the dead guy, meets his family, resolves his familial relationships and contributes to his human organ trafficking business.

American playwright Sarah Ruhl's script is a gorgeous foray into magic realism that delights in taking its audience to unexpected places and filled with wordy delights about the comfort of small casseroles and heaven being like an embossed wedding invitation.

Director Peter Evans takes full advantage of the script's humour but loses the joy of the magic realism. The extreme characters are never real enough to be natural and the fantasy elements are too real to let the fantasy fly, which leaves it in a no-folks land that is little more than the text.

Sound and lighting designers Kelly Ryall and Paul Jackson create a dreamy, magical atmosphere (Ryall's soundscape is especially gorgeous) and McCune brings enough vulnerability and genuine likability to Jean to let us love her enough to travel to her heaven, but too much of the production feels awkward once it's out of the comfort of cafes, posh houses and jokes about people who wear black.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Ugly One

The Ugly One
MTC
27 May 2010
The MTC Theatre, Lawler

What would you do if you were told you were ugly? Not homely or plain or "not my type", but so unacceptably ugly that even your beloved can only look at your left eye.

Marius von Mayenburg's The Ugly One is far more than a deliciously dark glance at superficiality, but draws its audience close with the shared fear of being rejected for our exterior. Who hasn't glanced in a mirror wishing that the face/body/clothes of someone else would wink back? No matter how much we know that real beauty is on the inside, we don't want to be ugly.

Lette (Patrick Brammel) had no idea that he was ugly, until his boss, Scheffler (Kim Gyngell), wants to send the hotter Karlmann (Luke Ryan) to a conference and Lette's wife, Fanny (Alison Bell), confesses that she always admired her husband for coping so well with his ugliness.  Now knowing he is socially unacceptable, Lette finds help from surgeon Scheffler and is transformed into a total spunk rat.  Business for the good looking can only get better and new friends like wealthy surgery addict Fanny and her son Karlmann offer new paths. Until everyone wants to look like Lette, and surgeon Scheffler owns the template.

Berlin-based von Mayenburg's work was last seen here in 2008 in Moving Target, directed by Benedict Andrews.  Mayenburg's style joyfully exploits all that is unique about theatre and gives its creative team the freedom to inject their own staging solutions.  From Moliere to McNamara, director Peter Evans lets his playwright's voices lead, yet the The Ugly One doesn't allow for an uninstrusive director; and it's a welcome surprise to see a sense of Evan's own style and choices.

The in the round stage contains office chairs, a microphone and buckets filled with crunchy, dribbly apples that provide a gruesome soundscape for the surgery. The couldn't-be-better cast morph between same-named characters as sharply as the surgeon's knife and the moments of doubt in between provide an unexpected rhythm to the text – and even more laughs.

Like recent gems Moth (Malthouse/Arena) and That Face (Red Stitch) and even MTCs Richard III (that didn't tickle me under the chin and make me smile), getting a ticket to The Ugly One is a challenge, but extra 9.30pm shows have been added so you don't have to miss out.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Grenade

The Grenade

Melbourne Theatre Company
15 April 2010
Playhouse, the Arts Centre

What does a wealthy middle class family do when a grenade appears in their open plan living space? Luckily, the dad is a lobbyist who specialises in crisis management and it turns out to be more of a metaphorical grenade that ignites deeper fears about family love and security being in danger. If The Grenade were an episode of Packed to the Rafters, it’d rate through the roof.

Tony McNamara’s work is about fear, especially the fears invented by the comfortable middle class. We read forwarded emails about plastic water bottles causing breast cancer, but don’t think twice about the impact of driving to the supermarket to buy water in a bottle.  The easier our lives, the more we worry. 

The script is shaped to perfection, filled with tippity-top wit ("Broken eggs: you've raped chickens"), winning crowd pleasers ("Hi, I'm Randy") and a plot that jogs along like an Olympic pace setter. McNamara's original characters are plucked from the southern bank of the Yarra and have funny names like Busby (who is nothing like Berkely) and Wheat (who favours an "Abe Lincoln meets Gatsby" look). There's even a hot ex-nun who is writing a romantic erotic novel with a muscle-bound spunk called Randy, a sardonic and judgmental baby who may be evil and a teenage girl who wants to lose her virginity.

And with a cast like Garry McDonald and Mitchell Butel, giggles are unavoidable...and these are all the sort of things we say when we were bored.

The MTC rightly love a good play that it's subscribers can relate to. The Grenade is bit like a Melbourne God Of Carnage (by Yasmina Reza) from their 2009 program, and they share director Peter Evans. Both are about the same tribe, set in an expensive apartment and have jokes about posh imported food. But where God of Carnage laughed with "us", The Grenade is laughing at "them" with humour that is is approaching (but not reaching) parody. By putting a mocking wedge between the audience and the stage, it feels unauthentic (a stainless steel fridge does not equal authenticity) and misses the opportunity for the audience to attach emotionally and feel anything for this family.


This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

God of Carnage

God of Carnage
Melbourne Theatre Company
15 September 2009
Playhouse, The Arts Centre

God of Carnage holds an IKEA mirror up to the MTC audience and leaves them squirming with recognition and wetting themselves with laughter – or was that just me?

St Martin’s protagonists are in their teens and 20s, Red Stitch’s in their 20s and 30s, Malthouse’s in their 30s and 40s and the Melbourne Theatre Company will always have theatre for people who are surprised when they realise how old they really are.

Two couples meet to resolve a playground incident involving their respective sons, a stick and some dental damage. Naturally, the women wear shoes that cost as much as the dentist bill in question, and espresso and clafoutis are served.

Making fun of the upper-middle class, middle age, marriage, men versus women, and what parents really think of their children is easy. God of Carnage does all of this; however, satire without recognition is as bad as making fun of a deaf kid behind her back – it’s easy, nasty and likely to lose you friends. Playwright Yasmina Reza has an international hit because she ensures that she never makes fun of ‘them’; it’s always ‘us’ and it’s always the stuff we hate to admit!

Reza is France’s best-known playwright who, like Moliere before her, uses farce to show the masks, the absurdity and the humanity of the people who love her work. Structurally it is a blue print for a perfect farce, with ever-changing allegiances, status and opinions, but it’s her grasp of character and her observation of society that is winning this work awards and fans on Broadway, the West End and state-supported theatre companies all over the place.

As it’s difficult to imagine that Reza didn’t write this on a laptop in Church Street, Brighton, much must also be said of the English translation by Christopher Hampton (whose credits include the screenplays for The Quiet American and Atonement), as well as the universality of Raza’s themes.

With a faultless cast (Pamela Rabe, Geoff Morrell, Hugo Weaving and Natasha Herbert), director Peter Evans (who also directed Moliere’s The Hypocrite for the MTC last year) ensures that we are never distanced enough to make fun of these people. It would easy to laugh at this world, but it wouldn’t hurt so much (in the good way) if we didn’t see ourselves, our friends and our families up there.

My inner voice drooled over Annette’s shoes, wondered if I could wear a fringe as well as Veronique, knew I would have taken the clafoutis out of the fridge in time and wanted to offer advice about how to remove vomit from books (I don’t want to explain). I’m far from being a Toorak ‘wealth manager’, but I knew every person, every opinion and every passive and blatant aggressive reaction on that stage.

There’s much written about God of Carnage being an astute reflection about changing attitudes towards violence in society, especially towards children (hands up who hasn’t read The Slap). Of course, there is a serious side to the work, but if that’s what you’re raving about, perhaps you need to glace at the mirror.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Earl Carter.