MELBOURNE FESTIVAL: Song For A Weary Throat

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL 2018
Song For A Weary Throat
Rawcus
Presented with Arts Centre Melbourne
13 October 2018
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 14 October
www.festival.melbourne
rawcus.org.au

"Song For a Weary Throat". Rawcus

Rawcus Theatre’s Song For A Weary Throat was missed by too many of us last year and it's wonderful to have indie theatre like this brought back for us by Arts Centre Melbourne and Melbourne Festival. Too many amazing indie shows are never seen again after short runs.

People gather in what looks like the post-apocalyptic remains of a country-town community hall that was once set up for a dance (design, Emily Barrie; lighting, Richard Vabre). The chairs are breaking and the room is filled with dust and crunchy dead leaves, but everyone still comes. It’s what people do.

There’s noise (sound designer Jethro Woodward) but rarely voices, except for the remarkable Invenio Singers (Gian Slater, Josh Kyle and Louisa Rankin). The three voices create a live soundtrack that  feels like pure emotion. Like the weary throats that can’t speak anymore because no one listened, their singing isn’t what we expect from songs of joy or despair, but are sounds that are trying anything to be heard again.

It’s never clear – and doesn’t matter – when or where we are; what matters is that this group of people are together after a traumatic even. Some don’t want to be there, some don’t know what to do and some keep hoping because, even if no one will dance with you, when people are together, there’s always a way forward and dancing alone isn’t so bad.

Led by artistic director Kate Sulan, Song For A Weary Throat was developed and performed by an ensemble of 15 performers with and without disabilities.  Its exploration of trauma is personal without ever being specific, which makes it easy to put our experiences onto the stage and to feel the effects of trauma and to ultimately find hope and joy among the chaos.

Rawcas were formed in 2001 and continue to be supported by the Port Phillip Council – never forget how much local councils fund and support the creation of art.

Review: John

John
Melbourne Theatre Company
16 February 2017
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 25 March
mtc.com.au

MTC. John. Photo by Jeff Busby

American playwright Annie Baker won a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for The Flick (seen at Red Stitch) when she was 33. Her writing's won Off-Broadway Obie awards and rightly declares a new Baker as a show to see. The MTC have the Australian premier of her 2015 play, John, and director Sarah Goodes guides a must-see production that revels in the ambiguity, mystery and too-close-for-comfort humour in the writing.

Jenny (Ursula Mills) and Elias (Johnny Carr) are as much trying to stay together as they are trying to break up when they weekend at a B&B in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, run by Mertis (Helen Morse), who wears a fanny pack and a doggy apron when she's working. The tourist area offers Civil War ghost tours, but the real unease come from the gaze of personal ghosts and gods, collectable American Dolls, and, sometimes, Mertis's blind friend Genevieve (Melita Jurisic), who's happy to explain that she's no longer clinically insane.

The heart of Annie Baker's writing is in the subtext: the white space on the page that creates the silences on the stage, the time between scenes, how characters listen and reacts, and the surprises in the design and sound.

Designers Elizabeth Gadsby (set and costume) and Richard Vabre (lighting) make the homely and welcoming B&B feel creepy. At a glance, it looks super naturalistic – in a world where floral carpet, chintz and kitch figurines are expected – but the detail reveals an out-of-time oddness that hints of the supernatural, or an ageing house with quirks. There are too many lights, the grandfather clock ticks but doesn't measure time without help, the flying ducks on the wall light up, the radio is a mini juke box that plays Bach and Vivaldi, and the pianola can't be trusted. The atmosphere is perfected with Russell Goldsmith's sound design of ticking, rustling and music that's as implied as it is heard

Morse and Jurisic perform like Metris and Genevieve  – oh, Genevieve – were written for them. With timing and pacing that define their years of experience and an ability to create character from the centre of their beings, they are as heartbreaking as they are hilarious. Mills and Carr use the silences to show more than "what yelling looks like", and let Jenny and Elias be so unlikeable that the moments when they show their true feelings change everything. All four hold onto the their secrets and let the audience keep guessing, filling in the unsaid through the two intervals, and talking about their own Johns late into the night.

John isn't theatre that explains itself and the temperamental room that Metris talks about might be the one you're sitting in. Baker's writing is as complex as life but she never wants her audience to forget that they are in a theatre. Goode's production lets this conceit pay off again and again, and, as the stories unravel and tangle, we're reminded how theatre can get inside our minds and stay with us like ghosts.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Lungs

Lungs
MTC
11 February 2016
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 19 March
mtc.com.au

MTC. Lungs. Bert LaBonte & Kate Atkinson

Duncan Macmillan’s 2011 Lungs opens with a young woman–man couple in Ikea talking about having a baby, and a feeling of safe, well-made-play-for-those-who-live in Windsor/Yarraville/Northcote predictability settles. Settles for a few breaths! This new MTC production brings a life, tension and emotional rhythm to the text that’s like breathing in the first warm air of a beachside spring and ignoring the hint of rotting fish.

There’s little unexpected in the story. The “Shall we have a baby?” not-talking-about-it talk continues for 80 minutes, but covers years without a break or change of costume or place. Once Clare Watson’s super-tight direction brings the couple out of the box into the empty space, they can be anywhere. And with Kate Davis’s neutral costumes, which say everything and suit bath sex to polite coffee in Starbucks, it’s so easy to see the world and the people though our own experiences.

Kate Atkinson and Bert La Bonte bring an honesty and warmth to their character’s imperfections. Despite their inevitable trajectory and heard-before conversations about carbon footprints versus the capacity to love, they take their performances beyond the words into the empty space of what’s hiding in the words. Under Watson’s lead, Lungs finds its truth in the subtext, which let’s us want them to work it out and live in impossible Ikea-nice world where everything fits.

And all of this happens as the set dictates the tension and rhythm of the text, without the actors ever acknowledging what’s going on behind them.

Andrew Bailey’s design (with Richard Vabre’s lighting and Russell Goldsmith’s sound) is a literal metaphor for the emotional upheaval of the characters and for the structure of the text. It seems so obvious that there had to be a moment of genius in its inspiration. Beginning in a showroom-perfect apartment that looks like every other white-box apartment loudly appearing in Melbourne’s suburbs – like the one I live in – its square and surrounding circle hints at the dimensions of Michelangelo’s too-perfect Vitruvian Man, but its perfection is brief.

At first, you notice that it’s not really square. Then books begin to lean on their shelves. With imperceptible movement, the tension of wondering how far it can rotate before it’s too far underscores the tension of a relationship where there has to be a too-far moment and going back is impossible.

With inseparable design, performance and direction, Lungs is a reminder that a well-made middle class play can be far from safe.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: night maybe

night maybe
Stuck Pigs Squealing, Theatre Works
17 August 2013
Theatre Works
to 1 September
theatreworks.org.au

There's no maybe about it; night maybe is a must. Stuck Pig's Squealing are consistently a bit awesome and this new work by writer Kit Brookman is as beautiful as it is disturbing and leaves its audience happily lost somewhere between unknown and certain.

On a dark night, Sasha and her brother Tom are in park. She has torches and Nutella sandwiches, but he still abandons her. As she heads into the darkness where others are hiding, each new encounter brings her dangerously closer to safety.

Like in his recent work Heaven, Brookman writes about young adults without forcing the judgment, logic or fear of adults-who-know-better onto them. His night world hides the unknown, embraces the supernatural, but is never clear what, if anything, is real.

Sarah Ogden, Tom Conroy, Marcus McKenzie and Brian Lipson perform like it was written for them. They let each character keep their truths to themselves and never share what they saw in the darkness. This deepens the mystery with every moment and brings us closer to characters who we want to be safe, but still want them to stay in dark until they let us in on the truth.

And all is made more astonishing with the exquisite design by Mel Page (set and costume), Richard Vabre (lighting) and James Brown (sound). From its black and foggy opening, the sight of real grass and trees offers hope of a picnic-perfect conclusion in the sun, but it gets darker and colder as the light creeps into the menacing shadows.

Director Luke Mullins brings all together in a work that's impossible to look away from and difficult to stop thinking about.. By holding back, it never screams its meaning and whatever you walk away with believing is right for you. Just don't miss it.

Photo by Sarah Walker

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Stockholm

Stockholm
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
29 April 2012
Red Stitch
to 26 May

Stockholm continues Red Stitch's not-to-be-missed 2012 season. Why I know that it's is bloody great theatre: After the show, I sat with my friend and we talked about how it related to our lives.

We didn't talk about the quality of the post-show wine or about the performances or the design (all great). We talked personally and exposed issues in our own relationships that we'd normally hide. The ability to  reflect on your own life may be the line between entertainment and art; it's certainly the line between being glad I went to the theatre rather than staying home to watch The Voice.

Todd and Kali are young and gorgeous and have enviable sex . They gutted their house to create a love nest that they never have to leave and ignore phone calls from Todd's mother. Loving Ingmar Bergman films, they are planning a trip to Stockholm and are practicing their Ikea-Sweedish, as Todd prepares a perfect dinner and Kali checks his phone for messages.

Blending third person description with naturalism, UK writer Bryony Lavery's beautiful script creates the distance and denial that exists in a destructive co-dependent relationship. The desire to be in the relationship and to be happy overwhelms that voice that knows it has to end but wonders if perhaps the awful bits are the price for the wonderful parts and is silenced by the "attraction of true remorse".

Director Tanya Gerstle understands the eponymous syndrome and creates an uneasy mood as intense as their sex life.  With levels and spaces created by Peter Mumford (design) and Richard Vabre (lighting), the tiny stage feels both isolated and cavernous, and allows Todd and Kali to move and hide what they need to from the other.

Gerstle also lets Brett Cousins and Lusia Hastings-Edge find their own truth in their characters. It's this kind of honest acting that lets an audience find their own truths on the stage. The relationship they create stage is erotic and natural and fearful, which comes from a remarkable trust between the performers. They let us understand why they behave like they do, don't let us take sides and almost draw us into the destruction by wanting them to be work it out.

I'm so over leaving theatres and not caring about what I just saw, but I keep going back because once in a while, you get a show like this.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Review: Beyond the Neck

Beyond the Neck: A Quartet on Loss and Violence
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
15 March 2012
Red Stitch
to 14 April

April 28 1996 may seem a long time ago, but for some it will always be yesterday. We may remember reading their stories and swore we'd remember the names of the 35 people who died so cruelly at Port Arthur, but asked now, only one name comes to mind. Tom Holloway's exquisite and harrowing Beyond the Neck: A Quartet on Loss and Violence is a personal reflection on his visiting Port Arthur and a delicate exploration of the lonely suffering following violent trauma.

Four fictional people visit Port Arthur today. There's a teenager who lost her father in the massacre (Philippa Spicer), a tour guide who was there (Roger Oakley), a young mother on a bus trip (Emmaline Carroll) and a boy on a family drive (Marcus McKenzie). This brave and exciting writing and captures the communal pain of Port Arthur by moving away from the unfathomable enormity of the horror and telling four personal stories that started with violent trauma.

They narrate their stories in a four-part choral-like structure that deceptively offers safe distance, but really allows the hidden emotions to drive the work and seep into our hearts. Like a soprano, alto, tenor, bass score, each have solos and their moments of harmony soar, but it's the disruption of their dissonant notes and changing rhythms that create the tension that demands the pain and relief of resolution.

Director Suzanne Chaundy conducts like a maestro. It's a challenging text that could collapse into sentiment in the wrong hands, but by guiding the cast to hold their emotions close, Chaundy lets the grace notes of humour offer light and understanding without the easy comfort hope or the overwhelming fear of hopelessness.  And the astonishing cast maintain this balance.  Each suffer alone with their secrets, but it's their constant awareness of each other and work as a quartet that makes it so powerful.

The chamber piece is completed with a design trio who create the world and underscore and highlight each story. Dayna Morrissey's set looks like a gallery but makes us see deep into the Tasmanian wilderness, while Philip Mcleod's sound and Richard Vabre's lighting are so integrated with the emotion of the stories that it's easy not to notice how good they are.

Beyond the Neck is beautiful and unmissable theatre told by artists who understand the responsibility of telling such resonating stories and it's so wonderful to see Red Stitch working with Australian writers.

Appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Review: Do not go gentle...

Do not go gentle…
fortyfivedownstairs
11 August 2010
fortyfivedownstairs
to 29 August
www.fortyfivedownstairs.com

In 2006, Melbourne playwright Patricia Cornelius won the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award and the RE Ross Trust Playwrights award for Do not go gentle… Finally, we get to see a production (thank you fortyfivedownstairs) and the full theatre, longish run and sold out nights are proving that award-winning plays aren’t real until they are produced and shared with an audience.

Cornelius uses the metaphor of Scott’s Antarctic expedition (yep, the one that didn’t end well) to tell the story of six people dealing with the consequences of aging. They trudge through the frozen world and are in a “home”. Some fight their pasts and disappointments at not having fulfilled a single dream, others find happiness and total acceptance, and some struggle with their own brains and memories that won’t let them understand.

Told with delicious humour, Do not go gentle… takes the rage that Dylan Thomas speaks of in his famous poem and makes it palpable. The experienced cast (Paul English, Jan Friedl, Rhys McConnochie, Terry Norris, Anne Phelan, Pamela Rabe and Malcolm Robertson) prove the value of experience and bring a personal element to their characters. Rabe is especially powerful as a woman facing early onset Alzheimer's and Phelan wins every heart as she loses her inhibitions and finally feels loved.

Marg Horwell’s design, Irine Vela's sound and Richard Vabre’s lighting use the vastness of fortyfivedownstairs beautifully, letting the emptiness and the collapsed roof infuse the world with unspoken emotion and gave the script room to fill in the spaces with humour or poignancy. And, under Julian Meyrick’s clear direction, this is the production that Cornelius must have dreamt about.

But for all it’s goodness, I was left as cold as Scott’s team – and I so wanted to warm to it. Cornelius language brings stunning images to the stage, but I felt that the metaphors were overused and that issues were leading the story rather than the characters. With so much time spent telling us about each character’s old-age problem, there was little space to start loving the person. Instead of dispelling myths about age, they almost confirmed the stereotypes they were trying to liberate from assumptions.

But this show is enthralling and talking to its audience, who will happily rage, rage against any dissenting opinions.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Apocalypse Bear Trilogy

MIAF 2009
Apocalypse Bear Trilogy
MTC and Melbourne International Arts Festival
Friday 9 October 2009
The MTC Theatre, Lawler Studio

If there is any reason why open access festivals, like the Fringe, and independent companies and venues need as much support as we can muster, it is the Apocalypse Bear Trilogy.

Stuck Pigs Squealing have become one of independent Melbourne’s favourite companies and have worked to be presentd by our biggest professional company and earn their much-deserved place in our International Arts Festival.

Lally Katz’s Apocalypse Bear emerged from the woods as a commission for White Whale’s 2007 Melburnalia. The short piece started as a tale about living in far Kew and the congenial and terrifying bear instantly became one of my favourite bears (alongside Pooh, Paddington, the sneezing baby panda on YouTube and friends of mine who drink at the Laird).

Katz is also on my list of bloody-amazing-writers-who-every-other-writer-needs-to-see. The trilogy (The Fag of Zagreb, Back to the Cafeteria and At Last) is about instincts and emotion and the dark, dangerous woods that are as close as one tram stop away, and is so well written that you can’t see the skill for the words. Katz knows that people never say what they mean and creates world of subtext so powerful and raw that a conversation about putting the bins out is as menacing and moving as theatre can be.

It’s not just the writing, the design team of Mel Page (set and costume), Richard Vabre (lighting) and Jethro Woodward (sound) bring this script into the theatre and with co-directors (and performers) Luke Mullins and Brian Lipson, they build tension so gently that we’re only aware of it when it’s released and we realise we’ve been holding our breath.

Mullins and Katherine Tonkin (who were astonishing in SPS’s The Eisteddfod) grasp Katz’s writing like it comes from their hearts. It would be so easy to miss the darkness or the hope that is hidden in Lally’s strange world, but they capture every nuance and never let Sonia or Jeremy act like anything isn’t exactly how it should be. And, for all the wonderful characters Lipson has brought us, he was born to be The Apocalypse Bear.

Reviewing is nothing but subjective opinion, but in mine, The Apocalypse Bear Trilogy is best piece of theatre I’ve seen this year.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.


More adventures of The Apocalypse Bear:
Episode # 1 and Episode # 2.

You’re Not The Boss of Me

You’re Not The Boss of Me
La Mama
7 July 2009
La Mama Courthouse

You’re Not The Boss Of Me opens with two children playing Bonka in a red cage. Bonka is everything. We don’t know what it is, we don’t know why they are there, but we fear the worst and hope for the best.

Director Adam J A Cass says in his program notes that he’s sucked in by theatre that surprises, stays one step ahead and doesn’t spoon feed. No wonder he jumped at the chance to direct Natasha Jacobs’ script.

You’re Not The Boss Of Me plays with playing and we hope the physical cage is a metaphor. We try to find the truth amongst the tricks, teases, games and dreams, then try to avoid it when we see it. Jacobs excels at creating unease and discomfort by only letting us glimpse the truth as it plays hide and seek in the story and in our understanding. She knows that what we imagine is so much more powerful than what we are told.

Jacobs knows every nuance of her script and her performance as the girl is riveting. This girl doesn’t want to drop her mask of control, not even to her only friend and hope, and it’s a rare performer that let’s the character keep her control, while letting the audience see the horror and fear that created the mask. Sam Hall, as her friend, equals Jacobs’ energy and gently reveals his character’s reality as his innocence slips away and he is forced to take control.

Cass’ direction is paced perfectly. The first act is full of movement, fun and hope that it’s all just a game, while the second act almost stills to a halt, as the hints of truth can no longer be hidden and the tension becomes beautifully uncomfortable. Directing actors to perform as children can be more difficult than directing children. If either performer were allowed to fall into the unforgiveable cliché of a comic child, the impact would be lost. He lets the children play, while bringing an adult understanding that the reasons for their play are complex and hidden.

The design team (Luke Stokes – set, Richard Vabre – lighting, Camilla McKewan – costume and Brooke Taylor – sound) create the unsettling caged world the children play in. The design lets the audience feel slightly confused, but, like the script, is open to many interpretations.

Unfortunately, the season has ended, but this is a work that deserves to be seen again.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Eisteddfod

The Eisteddfod
Malthouse Theatre
20 July 2007
The Tower, CUB MAlthouse

The Eisteddfod is another one of those amazing works that emerged from Melbourne’s independent theatre world and was given a new audience through the Malthouse’s Tower Theatre program. (I’m almost getting bored of saying how good The Tower Theatre program is.)

Stuck Pigs Squealing describe themselves as a collective of artists “dedicated to the creation of dynamic, imaginative and disturbing theatre events.” The Eisteddfod fits the criteria like a dominatrix’s leather glove and continues to prove what original and incredible theatre can be produced when the creative team are not tied to the researched wants of a demographically sorted audience.

Brother and sister Abalone and Gerture are introduced to us by the voice of Lally Katz. She is the traditional voice of god/narrator, the mother/protector and the playwright. It’s nice to really hear a playwright’s voice.
Abalone and Gerture have always liked to play make believe and since their parents tragic death in a pruning accident, agoraphobia has kept them living in the same room. Luckily Abalone has his acting Eisteddfod to rehearse for and Gerture can escape to her classroom, when Abalone isn’t pretending to be her totally unpleasant boyfriend Ian.

Lally Katz’s writing is astounding. She knows how this strange custom, where people go into dark rooms and watch other people pretend to be other people, works. She takes the absurd, makes it stranger, but makes it real. The Eisteddfod runs from parody (the meeting of the Macbeths improvisation) to uncomfortable reality (Ian asking Gerture “do you fuck me” after he has been sexually and physically humiliated). I had no idea where each scene was going to take us and was continually surprised and , strangely, satisfied.

Chris Kohn’s direction lets the audience grow into and with the nature of the work, without every letting us become complacent or too comfortable.

The design team of Adam Gardnir (set and costume), Jethro Woodward (sound) and Richard Vabre (lighting) were equally astounding. It is refreshing to see all the design elements work so intricatly and perfectly with the script and direction.

Gardnir’s design is designed for every odd need and practicality of the work. It’s intricate and delicate; filled with teddies and sewing boxes and secrets. The unexpected detail and whimsy are intriuiging and beautiful. I just loved the tiny giraffe, jaguar and tree on the record player.

Finally a work does rest on the shoulders of the people pretending to be other people. Luke Mullins and Katherine Tonkin never let Abolone and Gerture be as absurd or unreal as their situation. We believed, understood and cared for these characters. They never let us laugh AT them. The strength of their performances and the humanity they brought to the brother and sister is what makes The Eisteddfod resonate and connect with the audience.

This is theatre that questions the nature of theatre and forces its audience to engage their brains. Even if you don’t fully understand every moment, just go with the experience and see how you feel afterwards.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.