Review: The Trial

The Trial

Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company and Thinice
18 August 2010
Merlyn Thearte, CUB Malthouse
to 4 September 2010
www.malthousetheatre.com.au

Director Mattew Lutton says, "The writings of Kafka create an addictive riddle of the soul that has no solution." I am shamed to admit that I haven't read Kafka, so I'm not sure if this stage version of The Trial is indeed Kafkaesque.

With a script by Louise Fox, sound by Kelly Ryall, lighting by Paul Jackson and wonderful actors like Ewen Leslie, Peter Houghton, John Gaden and Rita Kalnejais on the stage, there's a whole heap of consistent greatness to enjoy in this production. And Lutton's direction balances threat and comedy, while maintaining a sometimes manic pace that should be keeping us on the edges of our seat.

Kafta readers tell me that this pace pushed away the threat and tension that make his writing so addictive. I found that the pace kept me interested, but not engaged. Each scene was exactly what it should be, but as a whole the work felt fragmented, despite the terrific scene transitions with the best use of a revolve I've seen in a long time.

But for me, the ending was on the stage from the beginning and no one in this world had any belief or hope of a happy or even mediocre ending. Even if dreams are futile for Kafka, it is our hope and the possibility of a better life that makes every one of us get out of bed each day. We need a glimpse of hope to draw us through a story. From the moment Josef K wakes up to find thugs in his room, he knows where he's going to be in a year's time. There's no riddle because everyone knows the answer. If he doesn't have hope and no one he meets has hope, what hope does an audience have to care?

photo by Jeff Busby

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Furious Mattress

Furious Mattress
Malthouse Theatre
27 February 2010
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse

In her program notes, writer Melissa Reeves says that the drafts of Furious Mattress took it “from farce to tragedy”. And it would seem that every real and imagined genre in between got a look in. No wonder I have no idea what this play is trying to be or what it wants its audience to feel.

Forget what reviews say, the best feedback comes from sitting with the audience in interval and casually standing around after the curtain closes. “Can we run?” “That’s a shocker.” “I can’t believe it was reviewed well.” Perhaps I just heard the ignorant souls who didn’t get it. Well, I declare myself with them.

I have no idea what Furious Mattress is. Farce abounds with multiple entrances/exits, obviously bad stage continuity (please be done on purpose), non-connecting face slaps and a giant rat masturbating an albino exorcist who is clad in short shorts. But it’s about a woman who is slowly tortured and violently killed by her husband and her church mates. That’s not intrinsically funny, especially as it’s based on a true story.

At times it explores the pure faith and religion that brings these normal people to act so far from themselves and their faith. But then, it indicates that the possession is real with a circus trick levitation, the giant rat and the angry bedding. If the possession is real, are we meant to cheer when they vanquish the devil and all its life force from her?

By trying to be everything and then some, Furious Mattress ends up as nothing. The opening scenes (which are mysterious and beautifully written) tell us the whole story and the subsequent 90 minutes tells us again. The story is: a woman dies after an attempted exorcism, which we know from the opening moments. The story urged us to go forward, but it took us back – when we’d rather have been taken for a drink.

The cast (Rita Kalnejais, Kate Kendall, Robert Menzies and Tom Wright) make us care as much as is possible with such contradictory material, but even wonderful actors can’t invent substance and truth that isn’t in the writing.

The exorcism stories that scare the bejesus out of us and make us reassess our own faith are those that put the possibility of evil and the redemption of faith at the centre. Furious Mattress seems to laugh at both, but never gets into the heart of why loving people could believe that killing was saving.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.
Photo by Jeff Busby.

Theatrenotes's Alison Croggin thought very differently about this show. I love her analysis, even though I had such a different reaction.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places

MIAF 2009
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
The Store Room and Melbourne International Arts Festival
16 October 2009
Meat Market

Tonight’s television news showed the CCTV footage of a child’s pram blowing under a Melbourne train, with the baby still inside. The baby wasn’t hurt, but anyone who saw the footage will never let a child out of their grasp at a train station again. Melbourne may be known for its iconic trams, but more of us catch trains.

Director Anna Tregloan and sound designer J David Franze spent over a year sitting on trains recording conversations and the resulting The Dictionary of Imaginary Places uses the direct transcripts of these overheard conversations and turns them into something remarkably surprising, unexpectedly funny and curiously beautiful.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places has been created through The Store Room Theatre’s Artistic Associate program, which allows artists a three-year tenure to develop work. If is the first result of this process, I’m looking forward to more.

Tregloan is best known for her stunning theatre design (it’s no secret that I think her designs are wonderful), but when she creates her own work, she shows us the core artist that controls her.

Like Black (2007), The Dictionary of Imaginary Places combines performance art with design, but this time she doesn’t deconstruct an existing narrative, but starts with the most disparate mass of words.

The conversations people have on trains are mundane. They are filtered because they can be heard, but unfiltered because people assume that no one is listening. In this dictionary, these stolen words mean nothing or everything. The words are just sounds and glimpses of what could be. They don’t belong to the characters or the space and tell their own stories away from what we are witnessing, and Franze’s sound design ensures that we also hear them in unexpected ways.

Rows of train-like seats fill the tunnel-like cavern of the Meat Market and four passengers (Heather Bolton, Christopher Brown, Rita Kalnejais and James Wardlow) recreate what the overheard conversations could have been like. Well, make that what you could never have imagined them to be like. Unless you close your eyes and imagine a red-gowned women stuffing MX’s in her dress to give her a large arse or a jazz hands dancer in a blue sequined jacket prancing among the old coffee cups.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places is a view of Melbourne that could be imagined by none other that the creators, but still resonates with us who live on train lines, and even those who can only imagine the joys of public transport.

And Anna continues to put the most glorious of gorgeous shoes on display, but that’s just my obsession.


This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Moving Target

Moving Target
Malthouse Theatre, Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts, Sydney Opera House
13 March 2008
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse

Last week I despaired at seeing banality on Melbourne’s professional stages and began to wonder if I was being too harsh. Last night I saw Moving Target at the Malthouse. To Benedict Andrews and everyone involved in the creation of this work – may I say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Moving Target has come to Melbourne after a season at the Adelaide Festival of Arts. They also brought the Adelaide heat wave with them, but this show was worth sitting in a very hot room for two hours. Direction, performance, writing and design blend to create original, moving, addictive theatre.

The final script is a melding of Marius Von Mayenburg’s words (ably translated by Maja Zade) with an improvised ensemble rehearsal process. What seems chaotic and spontaneous is structured intricately and intelligently to build tension and gradually reveal story and character. The language gives us incredible images like a stubble-covered palm, a half-eaten bird and a green package that is never on the stage, but we never stop seeing it. The final scenes are all exposition. In the show-don’t-tell world of visual story telling, this isn’t recommended, but in the hands of such a team – all I can say is WOW. And this is regardless of content; which is as stunning as its telling. Children and terrorism are highly emotive subjects. This story embraces arch types, avoids clichés and lets its audience feel every genuine emotion.

The ensemble of Alison Bell, Julie Forsyth, Rita Kalnejais, Robert Menzies, Hamish Michael and Matthew Whittet are perfectly cast. It’s a tough job to get the balance right in this show. It takes exceptional skill and craft to make well-rehearsed and detailed staging look random and improvised, let alone to reveal complex characters from what initially appears to be the “real” actors on the stage. All worked as an ensemble, but I have to say that Alison’s subtlety was beautifully powerful and Hamish could pitch his performance just a squidge lower.

All elements of the design fuse to tell this story. The unexpected brilliance of Robert Cousins’ set becomes apparent as the hide and seek games begin. Fiona Crombie’s costumes look like a quick grab from the op shop, but show us the core of these characters. Performer Hamish Michael also designed the sound. The introduction of amplified sound and noise mirrors and supports every moment on the stage. Finally, there is Paul Jackson’s lighting. His Malthouse designs are consistently excellent, but this is sublime. The clean white, the coloured shadows, the transformation to black and white and the seconds of red show the emotion of this story. It is the best lighting I’ve seen since Robert Wilson was last in town.

This whole box of irresistible goodness was brought together by director Benedict Andrews. What an original and powerful theatrical voice. He uses the uniqueness of theatre to tell a story that burrows into the hearts and souls of its audience. The pacing is superb and the release genuinely cathartic. Sometimes the humour and gag were played too hard. The hoodie joke was very, very funny, but it took us away from the world on that stage and reminded us that we were watching an actor on a stage. Even if it’s the best joke ever seen – if it distracts from the story telling, it isn’t worth it.

Audiences deserve to see original, cliché free, astonishing theatre on our main stages. Malthouse’s focus on ensemble creation and original voices is proving that we don’t have to settle for boring. Moving Target might not instantly engage or move you – just go with the journey and you may be amazed where you end up.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com.