Review: Cosi

Cosi
Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company 
4 May 2019
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner
to 8 June
mtc.com.au

Cosi. Photo by Jeff Busby

My review is in Time Out.

Opinion: #IStillStandWithEJ. Rush wins defamation case

Make some noise. Let women know that they are believed and that their safety and wellbeing are far more important than the reputation of a powerful man who can afford good lawyers.

Eryn Jean Norvill outside of court. Source: AAP

I wrote this during the trial.

The judge released his verdict on 11 April. There was some outrage, but a lot of silence.

I wrote this for ArtsHub about the verdict.

Review: Muriel's Wedding

Muriel's Wedding: The Musical
Global Creatures in association with Sydney Theatre Company
23 March 2019
Her Majesty's Theatre
to 16 June
murielsweddingthemusical.com

"Muriel's Wedding". Melbourne. Photo by Jeff Busby

A new Australian musical. A phrase full of so much hope and an equal amount of fear; goodness, we've seen some duds. A musical adaption of a film. A phrase full of ... yep, we've seen them, too.  Muriel's Wedding: The Musical is both and, as Muriel and Rhonda would say, it's fucking amazing, and, legit, one of the coolest shows I've seen.

And it's ours. It feels like us, looks like us, bloody sounds like us and might be the show that runs all over the world.

In 1994, PJ Hogan's film Muriel's Wedding was an unexpected hit. If you haven't seen it, you should because a lot of the love for this musical comes from knowing, loving and referencing the film. Future productions may be able to step away from the source, but not yet.

With Hogan adapting his film script and working closely with director Simon Phillips and all the collaborators, it's far from a stage version of the film. It updates the story – you know it – to today with sad and lonely Sunshine-coaster millennial Muriel being as obsessed with social media as she is with ABBA. It expands some characters, especially Betty (Muriel's mum) and Brice (Muriel's first pash) and changes enough to make it a story about now; although, it would be even cooler to lose the 1990's race jokes and have a few less fat jokes.

Most importantly, it takes the story off the subtle screen, where silence, close ups and subtext bring us into character's heads, and into a world that lets us in with song and theatricality. Here, ABBA are out of Muriel's imagination and in her life as guardian angels, who don't always know what's best for her; Brice climbs to the top of Sydney to send a text; and Betty can dance as she makes her heart breaking choice.

"Muriel's Wedding". Melbourne. Photo by Jeff Busby

The first welcome into the world is Gabriela Tylesova's design. The stage is solid-block bright colours that let the action focus to a bedroom and expand to a city – the Sydney Harbour Bridge has never looked better on a stage. And it's framed with a proscenium of fuchsia-pink leaves and petals that could be tongues, scattered with mobile phones to share Insta pics.

While the stage is blocks of colour, the costumes are full of detail so intricate that the only the person who can see it all is the person wearing it. Each design – there are about 360 costumes – starts with character and immediately lets the audience know everything about them. You might not be able to see the detail of her unique shoes  – her shoe designs! –, but you'll never be distracted because everyone is wearing scuffed black show shoes.

Every costume is perfectly a bit too much. Think 1980s Ken Done tea towels and 2010s Lisa Gorman dresses – but with much cooler detail and the colour and pattern turned up. The bridal frocks all have two, or 20, too many frills; the florals are a bit too floral; the boardies would look too much on an end-of-year team trip to Bali – even the 1970s ABBA jump suits are a bit too white. They are all magnificent.

The genius choice though was Kate Miller-Heidke (I loved her music for The Rabbits and let's not forget that she's the representing Australia in this year's Eurovision) and Keir Nuttall for the music and lyrics. (They are also partners in real life and their first baby was born during the workshop process).

Their music doesn't try to to sound like a musical. Here, music and songs don't tell the story, they take us into the hearts of the characters. In theatre, in life, in our showers and cars, we sing what we can't say, and in great musicals, every song brings us closer to the characters' truths. The Porpoise Spit girls sound like the commercial pop they love, Muriel is the heightened emotion of 80s ABBA without the succinctness of their lyrics, Nuttall describes Muriel's father Bill as sounding like a "Rolling Stones tribute act playing in the Twin Towns casino" – and he does! Because the songs start with character, it always feels natural when they sing and the music never pulls the show away from the story.

"Muriel's Wedding". Melbourne. Photo by Jeff Busby

Throw in lyrics that are better than over hearing conversations on trains, ABBA songs by ABBA,  Miller-Heidke bringing in extra for sopranos to shine, and the bonus of Andrew Hallsworth's choreography that's equally as school disco as it is slick, and, well, I'm happy that my current ear worm is a song called "Sydney".

There's plenty being written about the awesomeness of the cast and they are all spot on. With a mostly new cast from the original Sydney Theatre Company show, the production is open to personal interpretations. Our new Muriel (Natalie Abbott) and Rhonda (Stefanie Jones) are already so different from the original cast (the soundtrack is free on Spotify) that it's going to be easy to want to see every cast change over the years. Everyone is bonza, but highlights include Pippa Grandison (who was Porpoise Spit Nicole in the film) as Betty, and Christie Whelan Brown as wonderful queen bitch Tania.

Muriel's Wedding is spectacular but never relies on spectacle. It's as daggy as a backyard engagement party, but as complex as trying to describe the perfect pavlova. It's as Aussie as pineapple on pizza (the best), beetroot in a burger (also the best) and hot chips eaten at sunset at the beach with seagulls stalking you for left overs.

What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 5

One of the many things I love about this series is making headshots optional. I love a bit of Photoshop, but photos that look like you rather than a silicone RealDoll are always better. Today's were chosen by the writers; they are perfect.

Scott Gooding
Renaissance Man

Scott Gooding trying to look like a middle aged white bloke.
Photo by Hotel - Underground Cinema

Favourite moments in 2018
First and foremost this year was Trustees at Malthouse as part of Melbourne Festival. Honest, brutal, thought provoking and funny as fuck. There are few times that theatre stops me in my tracks and I must remember to breathe, but, boy howdy, was this the show. The dissection of class, race and gender in current Australia was always handled with honesty and a daring that I rarely see now days. Also that the cast were of an age to be angry and articulate gave me hope that we all don't start to get old and complacent as theatre makers in this country. There was a true outlandish laugh at Natasha Herbert unpacking her white privilege – "I some time feel like I'm part of the problem" – and with perfect timing Tammy Anderson responded deadpan with "You are".

Fucking glorious!!! Honorable shout outs to Next Wave and the mad, joyous festival that it was. Angus Cerini's Bleeding Tree; MTC's Abigail's Party, House of Bernardo Alba and The Children; La Mama with Four Larks and Essential Theatre's Enter Ophelia, Blasted at Malthouse, and La Mama at BMI with Bachelor S17 E5. Looking at that list, some might think I have issues...

Looking forward to in 2019
Am keen on Malthouse's program for next year. Especially as I will get a chance to see Blackie Blackie Brown, which I missed this year.

23 December 2018

SM: I really really thought I'd written this. I'm so  sorry.
I loved the return of Eric, Eric the Third, at Melbourne Fringe; it was an absolute highlight. Middle-aged white straight men can do amazing comedy about middle-aged straight white men. And he wrote and performed Robert in Crisis at La Mama. This is genre writing at its best and I still don't want to give anything about this away because it really needs to be developed and seen again.

Katie Purvis
Book editor, radio presenter, theatre-goer

Katie Purvis.

Favourite moments in 2018
I saw Calamity Jane at the Fairfax in March, and nothing surpassed it for the rest of the year. I was enchanted by the playing with gender roles, the fabulous performances (both the acting and the music), the intimate staging, the whole-hearted embrace of the audience by the performers (and vice versa), the side-splitting hilarity of it all, and above all the performance of Virginia Gay in the title role.

Honourable mentions to Muriel's Wedding (in Sydney, with the original cast); Queen + Adam Lambert for the best arena concert I have ever seen; The Children by Lucy Kirkwood at MTC, which stayed in my head for weeks; Magda Szubanski's mock funeral at Melbourne Writers' Festival, an event that was stuffed full of love; and the city embracing my footy team with art and other celebrations when they made the AFL finals for the first time in 12 years.

Looking forward to in 2019
I'm looking forward to seeing Melbourne Theatre Company continue to showcase strong women on stage and behind the scenes; to catching Barbara and the Camp Dogs at the Malthouse; and to discovering more great local musicians to play on my radio show and go see live.

SM: Listen to Miss Chatelaine on Joy on Sunday mornings. Katie's a terrific interviewer. I usually only hear the end of the show, which is why I love that it's also a podcast.

Katie always finds a typo that I've missed. I love this. She's a great editor. She was the editor and outside-eye reader for the #IStandWithEJ piece I did for ArtsHub. Once she'd had a look, took out one sentence and made me fix some clarity, I knew it was ready to be filed. When writers work with other people, our writing gets better.

Sarah Collins 
Writer/performer 

Sarah Collins. Photo by Christopher Downs. 

Favourite moments in 2018
STC’s Muriel’s Wedding. I haven’t seen an entire audience jump in their collective seats the moment a show opens like we did here. The force from stage, my god. Then I cried so much in the second song in, "The Bouquet", that I could not make out the stage. Like, SOLD dudes. You’re totally blurry! You win! But then we need to talk about Christie Whelan Browne as Tania Degano. What witchcraft casting. The friend I saw the show with called me yesterday -– we’re now 11 months on from seeing it – and we were still talking about her performance. Then, of course ,the musical genius of Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall, whose collective years of people-watching in Queensland have contributed to some of the most memorable lines ever sung in an Australian musical. “The men, are men, we dress like proper men ... they can do a heap of push ups”. YOU ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE. And Maggie McKenna’s Muriel? Forget Gaga. This was my Star Is Born moment for 2018.

Looking forward to in 2019
Muriel’s Wedding in Melbourne. Duh!

SM: We haven't seen a new work from Sarah for a while – kids take up time – but I had many favourite moments when she and her family discovered Japan. My late-night Facebooking was filled with photos that made me want to get on a plane. Then I just got jealous. Many great stories, but the Hello Kitty Shinkansen not turning up is my favourite. It was like she'd written it herself. Ask her to tell the story.

Interview: Imara Savage, Top Girls

Top Girls
Sydney Theatre Company
12 Feb –24 March
sydneytheatre.com.au

STC "Top Girls"

My interview with director Imara Savage in The Music.

GUEST REVIEW: The Secret River

The Secret River
Arts Centre Melbourne presents a Sydney Theatre Company production
10 March 2015
Playhouse
to 19 March
artscentremelbourne.com.au

Review by Byron Bache

 The Secret River. Trevor Jameison.

BB: This is the review I was commissioned to write for the Herald Sun. It's not running either in print or online. Neither the paper nor my editor censored me or my views. Once you read it, you'll see it's really not a very Herald Sun approach to reviewing mainstage theatre, so its non-publication is on me. If I'd filed it earlier, there might have been time to refashion it into something more conventional. But there wasn't, so it's here. I'm glad it's here.

For 228 years, we've been killing Indigenous Australians. We've done it with guns, knives, smallpox blankets, even our bare hands. We're still at it, but now our weapons are regulatory, systemic, silent. Institutionalised discrimination doesn't kill quite as fast as a musket, but in the end it's statistically just as efficient.

Kate Grenville's 2005 novel, The Secret River, a brilliant and deliberately myopic tale of emancipated convict William Thornhill, ends with the violent murder of an entire Dharug family group. At the culmination of an impossible land dispute, fuelled by fear and an insurmountable language barrier, these men, women and children, who Grenville never even gives names, are left dead, as the white man contemplates his own crippling ennui. It's the kind of mirror that should be held up more often; a gut-twisting reminder of the colonists' disregard for human life.

After staking his claim on a seemingly unoccupied stretch of the Hawkesbury River, Thornhill (Nathaniel Dean) sets about building a life for his young family. But the land is far from unoccupied, and soon enough he's face to face with Ngalamalum (Trevor Jamieson) and the Dharug people, neither man able to communicate with the other.

In his adaptation, playwright Andrew Bovell gives the Dharug names, routines, relationships. They're people, instead of just "the other". But in striving for a certain brand of authenticity, Bovell and director Neil Armfield make the same mistake as the fictional Thornhill. What's intended as tolerance, compassion and understanding is literally lost in translation. Speaking only in un-surtitled Dharug, it's tough to shake the feeling that we're being presented with that icky narrative trope: the magical other. Armfield's production is slick, moving and beautiful, and the cast manage to telegraph plenty of what's going on, but something's off-kilter the whole way through.

When the historical note in your program does a better job of telling the story of the Dharug than your show does, you might be doing something wrong.

As the story of a white man and his family, The Secret River works. As a morality tale, a warning, a sober reflection, it works too. But inescapable in its engineering and execution is the fact that this is a white man's adaptation of a novel by a white woman, directed by a white man. The Indigenous voices ring loud and clear, but they're denied the agency, the immediacy and the basic humanity of being understood.

Bovell and Armfield's vision isn't insensitive. It's not racist. It doesn't apologise for unforgivable atrocities. It's a lesson – one we should all hear. But it's not the subversive, illuminating thing that it could be.

The ending will make you weep. The aftermath will leave you speechless. But being forced to observe the Dharug like the subjects of a nature documentary carries far less power than it might if they were given language the audience could understand. A version of this play in which the Dharug speak English, and the Thornhills speak an unintelligible dialect is one that illuminates. One that doesn't just prod at hearts and minds, but alters them. Imagine if The Secret River didn't fetishise otherness as a storytelling device. If instead of detailing how things were lost, it showed us what was lost.

As an unexamined piece of entertainment, it's a triumph. As a political act, it's a mess. And as a lesson in the inescapable common ground of humanity, it's token at best.

This is black theatre made by white people. Are we okay with that?

The Secret River

And a bit from me

SM: The Secret River is a wonderful piece of theatre. I loved it from the smell of burning gum in the theatre to hearing an audience member cry.

Every review and rave about the performances are spot on. As are the raves about Stephen Curtis's endless gum backdrop that makes us feel insignificant, Iain Grandage's live score and his interaction with the story, and Tess Schofield's not-now-not-then costumes with everyone in some form of white make up

This is theatre that lets Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists tell OUR story with empathy and understanding and the hope, and belief, that our current and  future selves really will learn from our past.

But I wasn't completely in that world; I always felt like I was watching.

At first I thought it was because I knew the story, but I cry every time I watch the last minutes of Six Feet Under or Terms of Endearment.

And it's not like the moments of gut-dropping horror, with no humanity on the stage, aren't there.

I wanted the moment of being so in another person's skin that you understand their world as they see it. The moment that makes you realise that you could be that person – or are that person. That confronting moment when a quiet part of your brain says, "Yep, I think I'd have done the same if that were my world."

Because even with all our hope and understanding, there's still far too much that hasn't changed.

Poor Boy

Poor Boy
Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company
27 February 2009
Sumner Theatre

The Melbourne Theatre Company opened the shiny, brand-spanking-new Sumner Theatre this very-hot week with a shiny, new, very hot Australian work.
 
Poor Boy is described as “a play with songs”. Matt Cameron’s script weaves with Tim Finn’s music from over the last 30 years, including songs from Spit Enz and his solo work.
 
This highly original work is not a piece of musical theatre. The songs are not part of the plot and used like an emotional commentary. The story stands by itself without the music and the music tells its own story without the play. As neither is dependent upon the other, they support and strengthen each other to create something surprisingly powerful and unexpectedly moving.
 
‘Poor Boy’ is also the title of a song from Split Enz’s album ‘True Colours’. (Remember, “My love is alien” with lots of dated swishy synth.)This was my favourite album of 1980 (constant playing of “I hope I never” got me though much tween-heartbreak) and still makes it onto my iPod. Ian McDonald’s arrangements make the music feel like it was written for the story, while Cameron’s script captures Finn’s recurring natural motifs and recreates the mood of each song through a completely different story.
 
When Jem turns seven, he claims to be adult Danny who died several years ago. Truths are and secrets are revealed as both families cope with the loss of a son. Cameron places the supernatural and the extraordinary well within the ordinary and recognisable world of the two families, while developing a sense of wonder and a dreamlike detachment. The MTCS’s companion piece Grace deals with similar themes, but Poor Boy is so much more powerful because the playwright never questions the truth of the situation and lets the beliefs of the characters guide the audience to their own conclusions.
 
Cameron’s perfectly crafted writing surprises at each turn and concludes so perfectly that you could never imagine it being anything else. Each character had their own complete and engaging story and balance within the overall plot. His complex imagery of water, digging, biblical heroes and zebras seems ridiculous as I write it, but beautiful on the stage and forms the lyrical base of the script. The dialogue sounds slightly unnatural, but it clearly comes from the unspoken and unconscious thoughts of the characters and conversations that are more fluid would break the haunting atmosphere.
 
The star-power of Guy Pearce as Danny will bring many people to Poor Boy – and rightly so. Pearce on stage is as enigmatic and addictive as he is on film. He puts the character before his performance and makes you completely forget you are watching an actor.
 
The rest of the cast (Greg Stone, Linda Cropper, Matt Dykrunski, Sara Gleeson, Abi Tucker, Sarah Peirse and a rotating cast of three boys) are equally as outstanding, and Simon Phillips’s direction steps back to let the script and music speak for themselves while discretely helping when a little more is needed.
 
The love that the creative team have for this work spills from the stage. There is never a moment when it doesn’t feel like this is something very special and it’s wonderful to sit amongst an audience who can feel and share this sense of pride and wonder.
 
This time last year I was saying how consistently disappointed I was with the MTC. Perhaps the move to the terrific new theatre has released some demons. Poor Boy is setting the bar high for what this company should always producing and I hope I never have to see a lesser production again.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

The Year of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking
Melbourne Theatre Company presents Sydney Theatre Company’s production
27 February 2009
Fairfax Studio, the Arts Centre

Joan Didion had a blessed life. She married the man she loved, had a much-adored child and enjoyed an envious writing career among the New York and LA literati. In an unfair matter of months her husband and daughter died, leaving Didion with only her writing. The Year of Magical Thinking is her memoir of that unimaginable time. She wasn’t convinced she should re-write it as a play. Fortunately, she took that risk.
 
Cate Blanchett directed Robin Nevin in the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of the 90-minute monologue in 2008 and Melbourne Theatre Company are letting us share this memorable work. The sound and lighting design didn’t cohesively make the trip, but this awkwardness did little to lessen the impact of this remarkable production.
 
In the US, Didion isn’t a tabloid-worthy celebrity, but is faced with recognition from most memoir-reading and theatre-going audiences. Blanchett knows well the joys and curses of being a celebrity persona, and her direction purposefully takes the work away from Didion as a character and reveals the raw story. The balance struck between emotion and story is where this piece shines.
 
For some, Didion’s exploration of her own grief seems distant, as she created a metaphorical world of water around her grief and structured it for “easy” reading. For others her restraint and control is natural and a relief to recognise that all heartbroken widows and mothers don’t collapse in a cliché of screaming tears to prove that their very essence is hurting.
 
The Year of Magical Thinking is about extreme emotion, but Blanchett and Nevin let the story guide the audience. It would have been easy to play the emotion – and it would have struck all the right chords – but by restraining the character, the audience infuse the story with their own experiences of grief and love – which makes the experience so much more powerful and personal.
 
None of which can take away from Nevin’s performance. It’s not just that she creates a character who lets us forget that she’s Nevin, but that she enables a full audience to empathise with a woman who is so unlike most people watching. Nevin may have an odd reputation in our gossipy world of theatre, but there are few actors who equal this level of skill and understanding. Her performance is about letting us feel our own grief and love, not about us watching her fine performance.
 
“Magical thinking” is described as tribal thinking, such as sacrificing to ensure a good harvest - but it’s not unknown to anyone. As children we try not to step on cracks; Didion chose her actions secretly believing that her behaviour would bring her loved ones back. There’s no logic or sense in the reasoning, but maybe the magic of this thinking is that lets our hearts keep beating when loss and grief are trying to overwhelm us.
 
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com