Review: My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady
Opera Australia and John Frost
16 May 2017
Regent Theatre
to 27 July
myfairladymusical.com.au

My Fair Lady. Photo by Belinda Strodder

"Words, words, words!

I'm so sick of words

I get words all day through."

This was always my favourite song from Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady. Even with misguided teen romance-goggles, I appreciated Eliza's frustration with being told what to do, think and say. Show her! Show me! Show us!

Which is hard to do in a theatre that doesn't let most of the audience connect with the show.

Opera Australia and John Frost have re-creacted the original 60-year-old iconic Broadway production. To bring some relevance (and bonus music-theatre nerd squee points), it was directed by Dame Julie Andrews, the first Eliza Doolittle.

And it is a glorious re-creation of a magnificent production. Those Cecil Beaton costumes! That Oliver Smith set! The Ascott Opening Race!

Based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, the story of the flower seller Eliza being taught how to be a "lady" by the pompous Professor Henry Higgins is well known. And as long as those romance-goggles don't interfere with the idea of the very young woman falling for the much older man who treats her like scum and really doesn't respect or like the women in his life, it's an insightful reflection of the gender, class and social power that, sadly, rings as true today as it did 100 years ago.

What makes this production more than a re-creation is that contemporary opinions have shaped the performances.

Robyn Nevin as Mrs Higgins, Henry's mother, and Deirdre Rubenstein as Mrs Pearce, Henry's housekeeper, bring strength and power to the women who know how their social positions are controlled by others. Reg Livermore's Alfred Doolittle and Tony Llewellyn-Jones's Colonel Pickering balance of clowning with the understanding of men who are beginning to lose their social power with age.

Charles Edwards (my Downton Abbey fan-heart smiled) lets Henry see his own absurdity, even if he refuses to budge. Edwards performance is excellent, but it is strange that there isn't a middle aged, English-speaking actor in Australia who would have been just as terrific.

Which leaves Anna O'Byrne as Eliza. She's wonderful. She ensures that Eliza's choice to go to Higgins is far more than an attempt to escape poverty, and lets her heart break when she realises that her education may have left her with less than what she started with.

But if you're sitting anywhere other than the first  rows of this huge theatre, it's difficult to appreciate what makes this more than a re-creation. It wasn't designed or directed for the Regent Theatre. It's visually magnificent and grand but its emotional power relies on performances and people. Even with such strong performances, I don't know how  Eliza feels in the final scene – I was too far away; even in good seats – which is the moment that makes or breaks a contemporary My Fair Lady.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Wicked

Wicked
Matt Platt, David Stone, Universal Pictures, The Araca Group, John B Platt, John Frost
10 May 2014
The Regent
to October
wickedthemusical.com.au

Photo by Belinda Strodder

Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman's phenomenally successful Wicked opened on Broadway in 2003 and is still running. This production has won piles of awards, has been reproduced all over the world, including Australia in 2008–11, and is back in Melbourne, before touring to Sydney and Brisbane.

With 11 years of international reviews, there's nothing that hasn't been said about the story of the friendship between the Glinda and Elphaba. If you somehow don't know, Wicked is the Wizard of Oz story told from a different perspective and based on a book by Gregory Maguire.

It opens with Glinda the Good Witch descending into Oz in her bubble and confirming that green Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, has been melted by some human throwing water on her. Then someone asks Glinda if it's true that she was once friends with the wicked one. Of course they were, and the next couple of glorious hours is their story, which starts way before Dorothy and Toto arrive in Oz and continues until after the ruby slippers have been clicked.

It's full of Wizard of Oz references (book and film) and ensures that you can't see or read it again without this extra knowledge.

This production is superb. It's as fresh and exciting as if it's brand new and is impossible to fault. If I'd seen this show as a child, I think I would have self-combused with a combination of heart-break and utter joy. If you know children who like theatre, music and stories, Wicked is an experience like they haven't imagined yet.

And there were still plenty of grown ups crying and cheering and telling me how many times they'd seen it.

Then there's the Australian cast. The energy and excitement of the ensemble fill the enormous Regent (it is a huge theatre); Emily Cascarino (Nessarose), Edward Grey (Boq), Maggie Kirkpatrick (Madame Morrible) and Steve Danielsen (Fiyero) bring enough of themselves to the roles to make them unique and heartfelt; and Reg Livermore as the Wizard captures the greed and broken heart of the man behind the gold mask and makes him so human that his villainy is understood.

But Wicked can only fly if its witches take off. And they soar. Jemma Rix (Elphaba) and Lucy Durack (Glinda) are superstars. Rix's voice goes straight to your heart and Durack's has a clarity and tone that brings emotion to every note, but what makes them so unforgettable is that they make Elphaba and Glinda totally their own and ensure that every choice that they make is supported, clear and real. In a story of magic and unknown powers, it's this reality that brings us into the hearts of the characters and lets us feel for them, no matter how unreal their world is.

Commercial producers don't always get it right in Australia when they bring us the big shows, but Wicked is as glorious, funny and heart-pumping as any theatre I've seen.

Now, if they can just find a way and the will to give people and families who can't afford hundreds of dollars the chance to see this show.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Turns

Turns
Christine Dunstan Productions
29 July 2011
Playhouse, the Arts Centre
to 9 July
then to Qld and WA
www.turnstheshow.com.au

The chance to see legends Reg Livermore or Nancye Hayes is a good enough excuse to see anything, so having them both on stage  is more than enough reason to see Turns, especially as it is also written and directed by Reg.

I first saw Reg in one of the Betty Blokk Buster shows in the 1980s. I'm pretty sure this was my first taste of satirical and off-colour drag and, even if I really was too young to get most of it, it pretty much set my standard and my taste. For that, and for Barnum, he will always be one of my favourites. And the always-wonderful Nancye is a performer who loves and respects her audiences so much that she never has a moment on the stage when you're not completely with her.

Described as a music hall of the mind, Turns blends a nostalgic and loving look at vaudeville and "he's behind you" panto with a dark understanding of how our minds create new truths to deal with our realities.

Marjorie (Hayes) tells us how she was once the belle of the Sydney stage, but she now lives in a lonely North Sydney flat with her long-suffering son Alistair (Livermore) and dreams of having her coffin drawn by two dozen pantomine horses. Their tale is told through two monologues as each tell us their stories, as they see them.

Marjorie's language of non-stop malapropisms and puns is worthy of The Bard himself, whose spirit must be jealous that he wrote too early to use the likes of FJ Holden Uteruses and "as God is my wireless." And her complex and heart-breakingly demented mind is realised in Matthew Aberline's exquisite costumes that are full of humour and colour and confusion.

Gently guided by director Tom Healy, both performers show us the pain and frustrations of these unforgettable characters, and they temper the sadness with the type of humour that lets us cope with anything that life unfairly throws at us. If we can't laugh, what hope do we have?

Their story is beautiful and sad and so needs to be told, but its telling lacks the dramatic momentum so needed on a stage. By telling their stories separately, we miss the opportunities to see the tension and painful drama between them.  So much of what Alistair confesses to us was already clear from Marjorie's story, so there aren't enough of those heart-dropping moments of revelation.

Turns is an original, darkly funny and brave work that lets two of our greatest stars remind us why that are so great, but I'd so love to see it with a re-write that brings the two of them together so we could see more of the painful memories of the love that keeps them together.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com

The Pirates of Penzance

The Pirates of Penzance
Opera Australia
17 May 2007
The State Theatre, The Arts Centre

There were cat calls, hollers and whoops of joy from the audience.  Most knew every lyric, were humming in the foyer and just itching to sing along. It wasn’t a midnight performance of Rocky Horror – this was Australian Opera presenting The Pirates of Penzance.

A Gilbert and Sullivan opera is as English as a white bread sandwich or egg and chips. By no means sophisticated or original, but an enjoyable favourite, that many like to orphan indulge in.

The plot resolution is shocking, the characters lack substance and there are no surprises. Nonetheless, the paradox is that 75, 000 people have seen this production since it opened last year.

Opera Australia’s new production of Pirates is simply perfect for their audience. It’s not an especially creative re-interpretation of a classic work. I’m sure it could be an intelligent musing about rejection and the impermanence of beauty, or even a sensible exploration of sense of duty. However, it wouldn’t be filling the State Theatre. G&S fans know what they like and this production serves it up in great big splendid bucketfuls.

It is all a bit of joke, but it really doesn’t matter, because the audience are not only complicit in the joke, but would be horrified if anyone really took it too seriously.

As expected from a company of this calibre, the casting in excellent. Reg Livermore was born to be a G&S comic and his Modern Major General is the very model. Suzanne Johnston’s Ruth is a balance between crone and emancipated, hot 40 something and Taryn Fiebig brings a subtle, and appreciated, depth to Mabel. The chorus is cast with some of the best young singers, who I’m sure we will see as principals in years to come.

It is, it is a glorious thing to be Johnny Depp. Tradition asks directors to follow Gilbert’s lead and have characters as parodies of prominent public figures. So, I suppose the Pirate King being based on Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean is fair. But it isn’t really a parody, as much as an impersonation. Anthony Warlow does it rather wonderfully, yet it is also a glorious thing to be Anthony Warlow, and I would have liked to see a touch more originality.

Richard Roberts design is simple, iconic and delightfully ironic. With a rake, a proscenium of light globes and cartoon ships that wheel on and off the billowy waters, this design shows how to have a lot of fun with tradition and still create something of beauty in its own right.

If you like G& S, this is unmissable. If you’re hesitant about opera, but like a good musical, you’ll probably love Pirates and want to see more and more. Sullivan’s melodies are memorable and Gilbert’s eloquent diction creates a delightful fiction. The best thing about having surtitles was being able to read the wit and wordplay (and look out for the surtitle joke in ACT 2).

At the end of the night, everyone had a lot of fun. Pirates is G&S designed, directed and performed very, very well and the audience loved it. Hurrah for Opera Australia.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.