Runt
Dee/Cornelius/Wilks
2 March 2021
fortyfivedownstairs
to 7 March
 |
| Nicci Wilks 'Runt' Photo by Pier Carthew |
This is a something special.
Mostly Melbourne theatre reviews
Showing posts with label Romanie Harper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romanie Harper. Show all posts
04 March 2021
18 February 2021
Review: Single Ladies
Single Ladies
Red Stitch
10 February 2021
Red Stitch Theatre
to 14 March
redstitch.net
 | |
| "Single Ladies" Red Stitch. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson |
There was a lockdown and sharing reviews didn't seem like the thing to do. And today we face a world where our federal government think information, news sharing and discussion isn't what we want. Sigh ... dependence on social media.
So, go to the theatre. I really enjoyed Single Ladies. Here's my review in Time Out.
24 August 2019
Review: Australian Realness
Australian Realness
Malthouse Theatre
22 August 2019
Merlyn Theatre
to 8 September
In 2011, someone* told me to see a play in a terrace in Fitzroy during the Melbourne Fringe and I was blown away at the original voices and capture of what it was like to be 20ish woman. One of the creators of I know there's a lot of noise outside but you have to close your eyes was Zoey Dawson. I think I've seen all of her significant plays since then; some (like Conviction and The Unspoken Word is Joe) have blown me away at their original voice and capture of what it's like to a theatre person in Melbourne.
Australian Realness is Dawson's first mainstage show at Malthouse. It begins as the kind of lets-laugh-very-gently-at-our-middle-class-selves-without-being-mean naturalistic comedy. It's set in 1997 and the blue-checked couch, Country Road dress, box of Moet, artichokes and hand-made wind chimes (design by Romanie Harper) are so recognisable that many of the audience will be pricing it in their heads and don't need the references to know it's in North Fitzroy. Goodness, it's so silly-us-in-the-90s-with-our-lovely-houses-reading-that-Tim-Winton-book-about-the-disabled-boy that it could be in that bigger theatre down the road.
But it's not that kind of play.
The family are mum, Linda Cropper; dad, Greg Stone; pregnant daughter, Emily Goddard; coke-head investor son, Andre De Vanny; and daughter's girlfriend from Coburg who is about to lose her job at the wharfs, Chanella Marci. The constant sound (James Paul sound design) of building new apartments next door threatens to ruin family Christmas, but there are secrets that are more dangerous.
It's really not this kind of play.
One secret is that the family money is running out, because no one is buying books or seeing puppet shows any more, and that the shed has been leased to a family of people from the suburbs; doubled by three of the cast. This fag-smoking mum wears a glitter reindeer t-shirt from K-Mart and this dad bonds with wharfy girlfriend because they are the only people who get that the blissful "I can hear the cockies at Merri Creek" silence from the building work stopping next door means that people have lost their jobs.
Bogans V what-Yuppies-grew-into. Australian cities and class. Did people living in huge-houses-near-good-schools know what was happening at the Melbourne wharfs in the late 90s and early 2000s?
When the classes clash, the so-familiar comedy twists into an Aussie sitcom complete with laugh track, talking to the audience and characters that are easy to laugh at because they are not us. And "they" don't go to the theatre, so they won't see it. It's easier to laugh than admit to fear.
And it's not that play either.
It's a what-if terrified imagining that the working class revolution happened. Or a dystopic time-shifting fantasy. Or a blood-soaked urban gothic horror dream. Or a jolt into now with a consensual live-art exhibition and cereal-milk pannacotta Masterchef jokes.
Last week, I was unsure about another play by a young writer on a mainstage because it tried to be too many things at one. This is similar, but is more successful because it changes tones tightly and every genre within the genre would be great by itself. Director Janice Muller ensures that the absurdly outrageous shifts in tone and story are surprising but feel so right in the theatre. The walls can come down in the theatre; we never have to imagine that we are really there. And Goddard remains the same character who was asleep on the couch at the beginning, ensuring there's always someone to consistently care about.
Australian Realness is far more than a safe poke at those who go to the theatre and make fun of bogans. It's a far sharper poke and no one knows the safe word to make it stop.
* Possibly Declan Greene, who has since worked with Zoey as a director and as dramaturg on Australian Realness. UPDATE: Yep, it was Dec.
Malthouse Theatre
22 August 2019
Merlyn Theatre
to 8 September
 |
| "Australian Realness" Photo by Pia Johnson |
In 2011, someone* told me to see a play in a terrace in Fitzroy during the Melbourne Fringe and I was blown away at the original voices and capture of what it was like to be 20ish woman. One of the creators of I know there's a lot of noise outside but you have to close your eyes was Zoey Dawson. I think I've seen all of her significant plays since then; some (like Conviction and The Unspoken Word is Joe) have blown me away at their original voice and capture of what it's like to a theatre person in Melbourne.
Australian Realness is Dawson's first mainstage show at Malthouse. It begins as the kind of lets-laugh-very-gently-at-our-middle-class-selves-without-being-mean naturalistic comedy. It's set in 1997 and the blue-checked couch, Country Road dress, box of Moet, artichokes and hand-made wind chimes (design by Romanie Harper) are so recognisable that many of the audience will be pricing it in their heads and don't need the references to know it's in North Fitzroy. Goodness, it's so silly-us-in-the-90s-with-our-lovely-houses-reading-that-Tim-Winton-book-about-the-disabled-boy that it could be in that bigger theatre down the road.
But it's not that kind of play.
The family are mum, Linda Cropper; dad, Greg Stone; pregnant daughter, Emily Goddard; coke-head investor son, Andre De Vanny; and daughter's girlfriend from Coburg who is about to lose her job at the wharfs, Chanella Marci. The constant sound (James Paul sound design) of building new apartments next door threatens to ruin family Christmas, but there are secrets that are more dangerous.
It's really not this kind of play.
One secret is that the family money is running out, because no one is buying books or seeing puppet shows any more, and that the shed has been leased to a family of people from the suburbs; doubled by three of the cast. This fag-smoking mum wears a glitter reindeer t-shirt from K-Mart and this dad bonds with wharfy girlfriend because they are the only people who get that the blissful "I can hear the cockies at Merri Creek" silence from the building work stopping next door means that people have lost their jobs.
Bogans V what-Yuppies-grew-into. Australian cities and class. Did people living in huge-houses-near-good-schools know what was happening at the Melbourne wharfs in the late 90s and early 2000s?
When the classes clash, the so-familiar comedy twists into an Aussie sitcom complete with laugh track, talking to the audience and characters that are easy to laugh at because they are not us. And "they" don't go to the theatre, so they won't see it. It's easier to laugh than admit to fear.
And it's not that play either.
It's a what-if terrified imagining that the working class revolution happened. Or a dystopic time-shifting fantasy. Or a blood-soaked urban gothic horror dream. Or a jolt into now with a consensual live-art exhibition and cereal-milk pannacotta Masterchef jokes.
Last week, I was unsure about another play by a young writer on a mainstage because it tried to be too many things at one. This is similar, but is more successful because it changes tones tightly and every genre within the genre would be great by itself. Director Janice Muller ensures that the absurdly outrageous shifts in tone and story are surprising but feel so right in the theatre. The walls can come down in the theatre; we never have to imagine that we are really there. And Goddard remains the same character who was asleep on the couch at the beginning, ensuring there's always someone to consistently care about.
Australian Realness is far more than a safe poke at those who go to the theatre and make fun of bogans. It's a far sharper poke and no one knows the safe word to make it stop.
* Possibly Declan Greene, who has since worked with Zoey as a director and as dramaturg on Australian Realness. UPDATE: Yep, it was Dec.
16 February 2017
Review: Little Emperors
Little Emperors
Malthouse Theatre for Asia TOPA
15 February 2017
Beckett Theatre
to 26 February
Little Emperors was commissioned and developed by Malthouse Theatre for the Asia TOPA festival. Australian writer Lachlan Philpott (The Trouble With Harry) was flown to Beijing to work with director Wang Chong (founder and director of the Beijing-based experimental company Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental) to create "a piece about the connection between China and Australia ... appealing to both English and Mandarin speaking audiences."
Starting with the idea of exploring the cultural impact of China's one-child policy, a Chinese university-student (Yuchen Wang) is in Melbourne where he can live with a boyfriend, explore theatre making (it gets meta with Liam Maguire), chat with his older sister (Alice Qin) in Beijing on Skype, continue to ignore his mother (Diana [Xiaojie] Lin) and move on from being the second child who was ignored in public and sent to boarding school when he was too young. When he doesn't come "home" to Beijing for his mother's 60th birthday, mum and sis plan a surprise visit to Melbourne.
With an exceptional design (Romanie Harper, set and costume; Emma Valente, lighting and video), it's easy to get involved in the story as the design creates distance and/or intimacy between the characters and/or the audience. Set in a large pool of water that makes the simplest of movements difficult, a curtain of hand-written signs (maybe letters?) separates the onstage world from the backstage one that's seen through a live video projected onto the curtain. This allows for moments when you can see a character next to a close up of themselves; concurrently showing us so little and so much of the world.
The strongest parts of the work are the complex relationships between the family, especially between mother and daughter, but, while it touches on many issues – from expensive dumplings in Melbourne to the shame of having no grandchildren – it doesn't explore any of them in depth. It feels like the Chinese and Australian creative voices are being so polite to each other than no one dared mention the non-polite issues the work could explore or question whose voice was ultimately telling the story.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
Malthouse Theatre for Asia TOPA
15 February 2017
Beckett Theatre
to 26 February
 |
| Little Emperors. Photo by Tim Grey |
Little Emperors was commissioned and developed by Malthouse Theatre for the Asia TOPA festival. Australian writer Lachlan Philpott (The Trouble With Harry) was flown to Beijing to work with director Wang Chong (founder and director of the Beijing-based experimental company Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental) to create "a piece about the connection between China and Australia ... appealing to both English and Mandarin speaking audiences."
Starting with the idea of exploring the cultural impact of China's one-child policy, a Chinese university-student (Yuchen Wang) is in Melbourne where he can live with a boyfriend, explore theatre making (it gets meta with Liam Maguire), chat with his older sister (Alice Qin) in Beijing on Skype, continue to ignore his mother (Diana [Xiaojie] Lin) and move on from being the second child who was ignored in public and sent to boarding school when he was too young. When he doesn't come "home" to Beijing for his mother's 60th birthday, mum and sis plan a surprise visit to Melbourne.
With an exceptional design (Romanie Harper, set and costume; Emma Valente, lighting and video), it's easy to get involved in the story as the design creates distance and/or intimacy between the characters and/or the audience. Set in a large pool of water that makes the simplest of movements difficult, a curtain of hand-written signs (maybe letters?) separates the onstage world from the backstage one that's seen through a live video projected onto the curtain. This allows for moments when you can see a character next to a close up of themselves; concurrently showing us so little and so much of the world.
The strongest parts of the work are the complex relationships between the family, especially between mother and daughter, but, while it touches on many issues – from expensive dumplings in Melbourne to the shame of having no grandchildren – it doesn't explore any of them in depth. It feels like the Chinese and Australian creative voices are being so polite to each other than no one dared mention the non-polite issues the work could explore or question whose voice was ultimately telling the story.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
24 February 2016
Mini review: Triumph
Triumph
New Working Group, supported by fortyfive downstairs
19 February 2016
fortyfive downstairs
to 28 February
fortyfivedownstairs.com
I became a Louris van de Geer fan when MKA presented her Tuesday in 2012. Her writing lets her audience continually question and re-evaluate what they are seeing as they are drawn deeper, and more personally, into her stories.
Inspired by true stories, Triumph's three parts are set in a survivor support group following a 911-type horror, a hospital where doctors can't diagnose a teenager, and a forest where two men are almost cheerfully digging two graves. The veracity of their stories change as new perspectives to the situation are revealed, but the truth at the heart of the characters stays the same. Is it harder or easier to be on someone's side when you realise their lie but know the lie comes from a wound that's far deeper and more painful?
Her writing also lets creatives bring themselves to the work to create a richness to the characters and worlds that expands on the text without taking anything away from it.
Director Mark Pritchard and design team Romanie Harper (set and costume), Amelia Lever-Davidson (lighting) and Chris Wenn (sound) use the vast fortyfive downstairs space to move from the uncomfortable light of a community hall to the darkness of a forest. And the cast (Aljin Abella, Syd Brisbane, Anouk Gleeson-Mead, Emma Hall, Leone White) ensure that there's always more to question, and that what we think we see is never what's really motivating the characters.
The result is a theatre that's engaging and fascinating and so complex that it's impossible to consciously take all of it in.
Don't forget that van de Greer's latest work, The Son is part of the MTC's Cybec Electric Reading program on March 4 and 5. And what a cast!
New Working Group, supported by fortyfive downstairs
19 February 2016
fortyfive downstairs
to 28 February
fortyfivedownstairs.com
 |
| Triumph. Photo by Sarah Walker |
I became a Louris van de Geer fan when MKA presented her Tuesday in 2012. Her writing lets her audience continually question and re-evaluate what they are seeing as they are drawn deeper, and more personally, into her stories.
Inspired by true stories, Triumph's three parts are set in a survivor support group following a 911-type horror, a hospital where doctors can't diagnose a teenager, and a forest where two men are almost cheerfully digging two graves. The veracity of their stories change as new perspectives to the situation are revealed, but the truth at the heart of the characters stays the same. Is it harder or easier to be on someone's side when you realise their lie but know the lie comes from a wound that's far deeper and more painful?
Her writing also lets creatives bring themselves to the work to create a richness to the characters and worlds that expands on the text without taking anything away from it.
Director Mark Pritchard and design team Romanie Harper (set and costume), Amelia Lever-Davidson (lighting) and Chris Wenn (sound) use the vast fortyfive downstairs space to move from the uncomfortable light of a community hall to the darkness of a forest. And the cast (Aljin Abella, Syd Brisbane, Anouk Gleeson-Mead, Emma Hall, Leone White) ensure that there's always more to question, and that what we think we see is never what's really motivating the characters.
The result is a theatre that's engaging and fascinating and so complex that it's impossible to consciously take all of it in.
Don't forget that van de Greer's latest work, The Son is part of the MTC's Cybec Electric Reading program on March 4 and 5. And what a cast!
03 February 2014
MIDSUMMA: The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
MIDSUMMA
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Dirty Pretty Theatre and Theatre Works
31 January 2014
Theatre Works
to 8 February
theatreworks.org.au
If The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is glimpse at how filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder saw women, well, let's just say he was a dick. But Dirty Pretty Theatre have re-imangined Fassbinder's 1972 cult-favourite film, transporting the translated film script to now and bringing a new level of camp and understanding (and shoe porn) to what's often known as "that German lesbian S&M film".
Petra Van Kant (Luisa Hastings Edge) is a mid-30s successful fashion designer who's recently divorced, again, and is living in an expensive apartment with her assistant Marlene (Joanne Trentini), who silently dotes on Petra and is rewarded with atrocious treatment, the worse the better. When friend Sidonie (Nikki Shields) introduces Petra to 20-something Karin (Anna May Samson), Petra is instantly besotted and offers to create a modelling career for the very beautiful young woman – if she moves into Petra's flat and bed. And when Petra's at her lowest, Gabi, her teenage daughter (Fantine Banulski), and Valerie, her mother (Uschi Felix), come to celebrate Petra's birthday.
It's a ridiculous story about picture-perfect women who act on every whim of emotion, change their empty little minds in seconds, care only for personal satisfaction, and value themselves based on their sexual attractiveness and the power it gives them.
But this production isn't a copy of the film.
Director Gary Abrahams has turned up the camp and the melodrama to off-the-scale levels, but pulled away far enough to find a focus and distance that highlights the extremity while creating a genuine and disconcerting emotional connection to the characters.
There's little to connect to in the script – Fassbinder's women are as dimensional as a ripped out page of a fashion mag – but it's amazing what happens when the insubstantial is put into the hands of very good actors. For all their histrionics and external selfishness, the cast find a truth and honesty in their characters. By bringing them to the stage with so much more than was written – and never playing them as clowns – it's easier to laugh, or despair, at their emptiness because we know there's a world of hurt and frustration behind the behaviour.
But Abrahams has not gone so far as asking us to feel sorry for the rich beautiful white women, just to see them as more than the world they inhabit and to see this story as a reflection of how women and this world are often still seen.
And the stage creation of this world is something indeed. Romanie Harper's design – which creates even more space in Theatre Works by running diagonally – nods to the film and creates a locked-in apartment for Petra, where objects are chosen for their beauty/value rather than if they belong.
But it's Chloe Greeves's costumes that define the world of high fashion, endless money and mirror-fed narcissism. There were times when the frocks made me feel very fat and old, but I gently slapped myself for thinking so and went back to drooling at the unattainable pretty.
From Sidone's off-white, wide legged, bottom-defining pants with an emerald green silk shirt with three-quarter sleeves and peek of breast, to the ribboned-laced back of Karin's floral cocktail dress, to Valerie's over-jewed handbag and body-hiding sweeps of velvet, the detail of this design makes this world real – cheap knock-offs would have made it a joke. As all tower in glorious and very expensive shoes that force them to turn sideways as they step into the sunken living room, it's a world of accepted, welcome and chosen pain and restriction.
And who care's if you get to wear those shoes! Sure, I was wearing mock-Birk slip ons that make walking a breeze, but I felt the toe-bleeding, arch-aching, misshapen-foot joy of every step Petra and her women took.
Photo by Sarah Walker
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Dirty Pretty Theatre and Theatre Works
31 January 2014
Theatre Works
to 8 February
theatreworks.org.au
If The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is glimpse at how filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder saw women, well, let's just say he was a dick. But Dirty Pretty Theatre have re-imangined Fassbinder's 1972 cult-favourite film, transporting the translated film script to now and bringing a new level of camp and understanding (and shoe porn) to what's often known as "that German lesbian S&M film".
Petra Van Kant (Luisa Hastings Edge) is a mid-30s successful fashion designer who's recently divorced, again, and is living in an expensive apartment with her assistant Marlene (Joanne Trentini), who silently dotes on Petra and is rewarded with atrocious treatment, the worse the better. When friend Sidonie (Nikki Shields) introduces Petra to 20-something Karin (Anna May Samson), Petra is instantly besotted and offers to create a modelling career for the very beautiful young woman – if she moves into Petra's flat and bed. And when Petra's at her lowest, Gabi, her teenage daughter (Fantine Banulski), and Valerie, her mother (Uschi Felix), come to celebrate Petra's birthday.
It's a ridiculous story about picture-perfect women who act on every whim of emotion, change their empty little minds in seconds, care only for personal satisfaction, and value themselves based on their sexual attractiveness and the power it gives them.
But this production isn't a copy of the film.
Director Gary Abrahams has turned up the camp and the melodrama to off-the-scale levels, but pulled away far enough to find a focus and distance that highlights the extremity while creating a genuine and disconcerting emotional connection to the characters.
There's little to connect to in the script – Fassbinder's women are as dimensional as a ripped out page of a fashion mag – but it's amazing what happens when the insubstantial is put into the hands of very good actors. For all their histrionics and external selfishness, the cast find a truth and honesty in their characters. By bringing them to the stage with so much more than was written – and never playing them as clowns – it's easier to laugh, or despair, at their emptiness because we know there's a world of hurt and frustration behind the behaviour.
But Abrahams has not gone so far as asking us to feel sorry for the rich beautiful white women, just to see them as more than the world they inhabit and to see this story as a reflection of how women and this world are often still seen.
And the stage creation of this world is something indeed. Romanie Harper's design – which creates even more space in Theatre Works by running diagonally – nods to the film and creates a locked-in apartment for Petra, where objects are chosen for their beauty/value rather than if they belong.
But it's Chloe Greeves's costumes that define the world of high fashion, endless money and mirror-fed narcissism. There were times when the frocks made me feel very fat and old, but I gently slapped myself for thinking so and went back to drooling at the unattainable pretty.
From Sidone's off-white, wide legged, bottom-defining pants with an emerald green silk shirt with three-quarter sleeves and peek of breast, to the ribboned-laced back of Karin's floral cocktail dress, to Valerie's over-jewed handbag and body-hiding sweeps of velvet, the detail of this design makes this world real – cheap knock-offs would have made it a joke. As all tower in glorious and very expensive shoes that force them to turn sideways as they step into the sunken living room, it's a world of accepted, welcome and chosen pain and restriction.
And who care's if you get to wear those shoes! Sure, I was wearing mock-Birk slip ons that make walking a breeze, but I felt the toe-bleeding, arch-aching, misshapen-foot joy of every step Petra and her women took.
Photo by Sarah Walker
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