Review: Minnie and Liraz

Minnie and Liraz
Melbourne Theatre Company
22 May 2017
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 24 June
mtc.com.au

Minnie & Liraz. Virginia Gay, Rhys McConnochie, Nancye Hayes. Photo by Jeff Busby

One of the many things I love about Lally Katz's writing is that it really doesn't matter when a new show doesn't quite hit the mark. Often new writing needs to get on a stage and be seen before it really finds what it's meant to be and Minnie and Liraz, MTC, needs some time on (and off) the stage to find its stride.

The 90-something Cohens, Minnie (Nancye Hayes) and Morris (Rhys McConnochie), have been married for 70ish years and are living in an expensive, bland and peach-coloured retirement home in Caulfield (that doesn't feel like Caulfield). When Minnie's bridge partner dies, Liraz (Sue Jones) is  determined to take her place. The Cohens don't like aggressively loud Liraz, but she does have a single 36-year-old grandson (Peter Paltos) who might be perfect for their single 38-year-old granddaughter (Virginia Gay) – grandchildren would be worth the price of Liraz in the family. And for a lot of the night, the story plays out how it's expected to – but this is a Lally Katz play, so it's easy to reject the peach-coloured view of the world before getting too comfortable.

Katz writes from her life and the Cohens are based on her own grandparents and, perhaps, her own experience of finding someone who's your-kind-of-awesome in your late 30s. At her best, Katz's characters are created from such a place of love and understanding that it's impossible to see them as fiction.

Minnie and Liraz is at its most delightful when it explores character. With loving and detailed performances and direction (Anne-Louise Sarks) that focus on character, the love for these people  drive it far more than its story.

However, as the romance trajectory and the death of at least one oldies is inevitable, the plot and climax feel forced – no matter how funny – and there's a lot of awkward exposition that bring us back to watching the construct of the play rather than being in the world with these people. Much of the exposition is through Norma (Georgina Naidu). She's the staff member who knows her residents too well but always feels like the outsider or a convenience, like her running a memoir class that lets Morris tells the story that  tells everything about him but doesn't sit in the narrative.

Minnie and Liraz often feels as peachy safe as its decor and design. But does anybody really like peach? Lets hope we get the chance to see the much darker and tighter work that it will become.

Review: Endgame

Endgame
MTC
26 March 2015
The Sumner
to 25 April
mtc.com.au

Julie Forsyth & Rhys McConnochie. Photo by Jeff Busby

There's a double page in the program for the MTC's Endgame titled "explantion". It's about modernism, Absurdism and finding meaning in Samuel Beckett's writing. It's great for post-show conversations but it doesn't talk about the possibility of losing yourself in Beckett's world and not giving a toss about meaning.

For me, the joy of a Beckett stage is being lost in a WTF time and space with people for whom this is every day. There's a rhythm – a music – to his writing that moves his audiences through the text without having to stop to understand and interpret. This rhythm is easy to see in a script and it's a loss to anyone who doesn't let it beat on the stage.

The Endgame world is described as "grey light". Here Clov (Luke Mullins), who can't sit, is servant to Hamm (Colin Friels), who can't walk or see, and spends every day in a chair in the centre of the space. To his right are two large cans or bins where Nagg (Rhys McConnochie) and Nell (Julie Forsyth), Hamm's parents who have no legs, live. They talk about death and endings while knowing that the inevitable release may be too far away to offer much hope.

But it's not bleak, and being free to laugh is what makes it light and fun.

The essential grey light is created by designer Callum Mortum and lighting designer Paul Jackson (and not forgetting Eugyeene Teh's costumes). There's a literal fourth wall of grey cement slabs that disappears in the opening of perfect black out (and may those who chose that moment to deal with their phones, get parking tickets before the week is out); there's nothing like velvet of pure dark to guide us into the unknown.

The bare world is a bunker made of concrete slabs, and, even as it asks questions and offers answers from future apocalypse to last century's wars, we never know why or how or when. The passing of a day is in the lighting that's only black and white. The changes are imperceptible until the grey is darker or a shadow has moved. As the night draws in, the stage looks like it's pulling away from the audience and could be turned off with the flick of a remote control.

Sam Strong directs a cast who know Beckett and, at their best, bring a complex understanding to their characters that lets the audience find that rhythm. Mullins and Forsyth especially find the humanity and loss in the subtext, while still letting Clov and Nell be clowns.

But there are moments of indulgence that makes it all about the actors. This breaks the rhythm and takes us back to looking for an explanation rather being happily lost in the pulse of grey light.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Last chance: Thérèse Raquin

Thérèse Raquin
Dirty Pretty Theatre & Theatreworks
sometimes last week
to 30 August
theatreworks.org.au

Photo by Lachlan Woods

With a raised stage, red velvetish curtain and promise of an interval, Thérèse Raquin makes Theatre Works feel as old-school proscenium-arch (without the arch) theatre as it can. As the curtain opens, the sense of occasion and the mixed expectations of hooped-frock theatre are immediate.

Thérèse Raquin was the first major novel (1867) by the Paris-based Émile Zola. Zola later wrote a play version and the story has been adapted for many films. Gary Abrahams wrote and directed this adaption of the novel.

Not-long-gone-20 Thérèse (Elizabeth Nabben) is married to her sickly and self-obsessed cousin Camille (Paul Blenheim) after living with him and his aunt (Marta Kaczmarek) since she was a child. They've moved to Paris where old friends (Rhys McConnochie, Edwina Samuels and Oliver Coleman) are found and Camille's friend Laurent (Aaron Walton) becomes Thérèse's special friend. When social and economic circumstances don't allow you to flee, there's only one option for the lovers: kill Camille.

Very influenced by Darwin, Zola's called his writing Naturalism because it's about the control and impact of social and environmental conditions. He said he wrote about temperaments rather than characters and asks if his characters could really choose how they behave given their circumstances.

It's easy to see his stories as unearned and predictable melodrama but remember that when Zola wrote, this type of story was new; we seen it so many times since because these tipping-over-the-top stories reflect a truth that continues to connect.

What makes this production so watchable and enthralling is that Abrahams's writing and direction find the wafter-thin balance in tone that lets the characters be real and recognisable enough to make their own choices (sorry Zola) while still being caught in a world they can't escape from. If the tone slipped even a semi-tone the wrong way, it'd be too much melodrama or too much documentary re-inactment. (It's not really comparable, but it reminded me of the first season of Downton Abbey: pure soap but riveting.)

The note-perfect cast maintain Zola's goal of not making any character stand out and each approach their performance with enough of now and themselves to ensure that their stories feel as real as they can. They're not showing us 1860s Paris, they're taking us to an 1860's Paris that shares our knowledge and sensibilities.

All are supported by a design (Jacob Battista: set, Katie Sfetkidis: lighting) that create a claustrophobic Paris flat that feels both light and gloomy and transforms to a water-filled lake with a touch of simple genius. There's just enough room for Chloe Greaves's hooped skirts, which also ensure that we know it's a production about today. And all are led emotionally by live original music from Christopher De Groot.

Thérèse Raquin is big-story, big-skirted, historical naturalism that never feels caught in the conventions or expectations of big-story, big-skirted, historical naturalism. It finishes on Saturday.