What I loved in 2016, The best of Melbourne theatre

Tenth list and still no trophy, cheque or print-at-home certificate for the winners.

I sit on judging panels that have very specific criteria, but the criteria for this list remains simple: What did I love the most? And I've now added: Would I (did I) see it again?

The most popular show on from the What Melbourne Loved series was Backstage in Biscuitland. Tourettes Hero, we'd love you to visit us again.

Outstanding Artists 2016

WRITING

The Listies: Prince of Skidmark. Photo by Prudence Upton

Declan Greene and The Listies for Hamlet: Prince of Skidmark, Sydney Theatre Company
(Melbourne season please.)

Special mentions

David Finnigan for Kill Climate Deniers at Melbourne Fringe and the script

Sammy J for Hero Complex at Melbourne International Comedy Festival

DESIGN

Blaque Showgirls. Photo by Pia Johnson

Andrew Bailey (set) for Lungs at MTC

Paul Jackson (lighting) for Picnic at Hanging Rock at Malthouse

Eugyeene Teh (set and costume) for Blaque Showgirls at Malthouse

Special mentions

The Making Space team (Bronwyn Pringle, Melanie Liertz, Pippa Bainbridge,
Jack Beeby, Chris Molyneux and Rachel Edward )(whole space) for Beneath and Beyond at La Mama

Kate Davis (design) and Emma Valente (lighting) for Cain and Abel by The Rabble at The Substation


PERFORMANCE

Wit. Photo by Pia Johnson

Jane Montomery Griffiths in Wit by The Artisan Collective in conjunction with fortyfivedownstairs

Special mentions

Awakening. Photo by Nura Sheidaee

The cast of Awakening by MUST: Nicola Dupree, Samantha Hafey-Bagg, Eamonn Johnson, James Malcher, Sam Porter and Imogen Walsh.

The cast of Lilith, the Jungle Girl by Sisters Grimm at MTC: Ash Flanders, Candy Bowers, Genevieve Giuffre.


DIRECTION

Straight White Men.  Photo by Jeff Busby

Sarah Giles for Straight White Men at MTC and Blaque Showgirls at Malthouse

Special mentions

Daniel Lammin for Awakening by MUST

Daniel Clarke for Rust and Bone at La Mama


BEST FESTIVAL

FOLA: the Festival of Live Art

including Arts House ticket, Hotel Obsucura, and Portraits in Motion at Theatre Works.


EVERYTHING THEY DO ROCKS

Jason Lehane and Yvonne Virsik

MUST: Monash University Student Theatre

Every time I see a MUST production, I'm thrilled that I went. Yvonne Virsik (Artistic Director) and Jason Lehane (Technical Manager) help students to create the kind of theatre that blows me away every time. It's work made with an intelligence and a freedom that doesn't restrict ideas and regularly creates work so original and unique that I wonder why it hasn't been done before.

I only saw three shows this year – Noises Off, Slaughterhouse Five and Awakening. Each explored form and told story in ways that made the exploration of form invisible.

If you're one of those people who I tell to see shows, you know that MUST comes up a lot. So, what about making 2017 the year that you get out to Clayton? (It's really not that far.)

And so many artists and creators who are making their mark on Melbourne (a few have contributed moments) are from Monash and got their start at MUST.  Fleur Kilpatrick, Sarah Walker, Daniel Lammin, Mark Wilson, Mama Alto, Jack Beeby, Sarah Collins, Danny Delahunty, James Jackson, Kevin Turner, Anna Nalpantidis, Elizabeth Brennan, Tom Halls, Trelawney Edgar, Jake Stewart, Mark Crees, Bek Berger, Piper Huynh, Hayley Toth, Andrew Westle, Tom Middleditch. (I'm going to add to this list as more names are given to me.)

Slaughterhouse Five

Outstanding Productions 2016

CABARET

Leah Shelton in Terror Australis

Terror Australis by Leah Shelton (Polytoxic) at Melbourne Fringe

Special mentions

Mother's Ruin. Maeve Marsden & Libby Wood

Mothers Ruin: A Cabaret about Gin by Maeve Marsden and Libby Wood at the Butterfly Club

Briefs by The Briefs Factory at Arts Centre Melbourne

Princesstuous by Isabella Valette at the Butterfly Club, Melbourne International Comedy Festival


COMMERCIAL SHOW

Matilda, Royal Shakespeare Company and all the producers listed here


MUSICAL

Matilda, Royal Shakespeare Company and all the producers listed here


COMEDY

Dave and Zoe Coombs Marr. Trigger Warning

Trigger Warning by Zoe Coombs Marr at Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Special mentions

Rama Nichols. Mary Weather's Monsters

Mary Weather's Monsters by Rama Nichols at Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Marco. Polo. by Laura Davis at Melbourne International Comedy Festival (and Melbourne Fringe)

CIRCUS

Notorious Strumpet and Dangerous Girl by Jess Love at Melbourne Fringe


OPERA

Il Signor Bruschino. Lyric Opera

Il Signor Bruschino by Lyric Opera

LIVE ART

Small Time Criminals players

Small Time Criminals by Pop up Playground

There's still time to play this live action game that closes (after a year) in February. It was so much fun. But it's not easy.

Listen to my co-robbers Richard and Fleur on RRR discussing our perfectly brilliant night. It starts at 2.34. (Fleur, I was giggling cos I was having so much fun! And because I was really shit at turning off my torch and had to hide my light from the terrifying guard, who never found me hiding under the table.)

Between Two Lines by Anna Nalpantidis with Elizabeth Brennan at Melbourne Fringe 


BEST OF THE BEST

Awakening by MUST

Every Brilliant Thing

Every Brilliant Thing by Paines Plough and Pentabus at Malthouse

Matilda, Royal Shakespeare Company and all the producers listed here

Trigger Warning by Zoe Coombs Marr at MICF


MY FAVOURITE SHOW OF 2016

Backstage in Biscuit Land. Jess Mabel Jones and Jessica Thom. . Photo by Jonathan Birch

Backstage in Biscuitland by Tourettes Hero at Melbourne Festival

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Review & PS: Straight White Men

TheStraight White Men
MTC
12 May 2016
Fairfax Studio
to 18 June
mtc.com.au

Straight White Men. John Gaden and Hamish Michael. Photo by Jeff Busby

There's a PS after the clip.

"What would you be willing to give up to make a difference in the world?"

Young Jean Lee wrote Straight White Men because a three-act naturalistic play about straight white men was the last thing the Korean-American, New York–based, avant-garde playwright and theatre maker wanted to write.

The result is an extraordinary exploration of privilege that starts with four men who are so self aware of their privilege that they question their own self awareness of their privilege.

The "last show" motivation has been a relative constant in Lee's work. In 2012, the Melbourne Festival brought us her We're All Going to Die, in which the non-singer, inexperienced performer fronted a band in a cabaret show about personal loss and death. She had the audience clapping along in a crying and smiling mess as we sang "We're all gonna die". Last year's festival screened a filmed performance of her work The Shipment about being black in the USA, in which some audience members huffed out of the cinema without trying to understand why some of us were laughing so much that it hurt.

In Straight White Men, brothers Jake (Luke Ryan) and Drew (Hamish Michael) are back home for Christmas with their older brother Matt (Gareth Reeves) and dad, Ed, (John Gaden). Their mum is dead, but her presence remains in the likes of Monopoly game re-made as Privilege – donate $50 to the local gay and lesbian support group.

Jake knows that his success at work is because he's a SWM, Matt insists he's happy being a temp at community centre because he's useful, and Drew knows how much therapy and talking have helped him. They sing satirical racist show tunes, want to wear Christmas eve pjs, and stop to ask the brother who's crying if he's sick, hurt or wants to talk.

What lovely men.

So why is their behaviour so funny?

They are what so many people say they/we want our straight white men to be. Yet when we're given men like that, we laugh at them.

Director Sarah Giles, designer Eugyeene Teh – who includes touches like the home-made clay phallic sculpture and Jake's full-compression running clothes coordinated with multi-pocketted running shorts – and the cast nail Lee's tone. The best satire is played as straight as it can be, without any self-aware winks to the audience.

Those winks are left to the glorious Candy Bowers, who welcomes the audience as a DJ – listen to what she plays – and is the woman of colour who watches and tweaks the men's world. Her constant presence reminds us that it's not about the men on stage; it's about everything that they are expected to be and about every one who laughs when they are not what we expect.

Like the playwright, she reminds us that we should be laughing at this world because we're part of it. We laugh because maybe we should feel as conflicted as they do when they're faced with giving up anything to help smash the system that has given them so much.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.au.

Have a listen to Candy Bowers and Hamish Michael talking to Richard Watts on RRR Smart Arts. They start about 1:40. 

PS

I've read the tweets and the reviews about the plot and I don't understand why so many people can't see what this play is about.

It's not about straight white men.

If David Williamson wrote a piece called Queer Coloured Women, would anyone think it was really about queer coloured women?

Yet when a woman of colour writes a show called Straight White Men, so many people assume she's written a play about SWM. They don't see the very obvious clues on the stage – or even ask the even more obvious questions.

Excuse me while I attempt to mansplain.

The plot – the one that doesn't tie up nicely or feel quite right – is a complicated and genius joke. It's satirising the three-act psychoanalytic American plays, which tend to be about SWM.

The characters are part of the satire; they'd bleed irony if they were cut open.

When straight white men (or any variation of) write queer coloured women (or any variation of), the characters/situations/resolutions don't always feel real. At the extremes there's the black maid with a heart of gold (who isn't far from the noble savage), the Asian stranger who offers spiritual advice, the sassy gay best friend, the woman who sacrifices everything for her man.

We see these characters all the time. We hate them.

They are idealised and too perfect, or drawn from ignorance and not bothering to understand, or too afraid to show fault. They are "other".

Young Jean Lee wrote her straight white men like this.

They are idealised. They care about their Christmas tree, they ask each other about their feelings, they wear clothes that match. They may pretend to be SWM, but they aren't like any SWM I know.

She's written SWM as ridiculously as SWM write QCW.

Maybe it's hard to notice the huge cock on the mantle piece, but it's impossible to miss that a queer black woman welcomes you to the theatre, watches the show, interacts with the performers, and controls the scene changes. How are so many people missing that this is HER world? It's her perspective. She's in charge. She has the authority.

Is this idea that a QCW is in control of the SWM so out of the understanding of our theatre conventions that even when it's obvious, it's rejected?

Review: That Face

That Face 
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
30 April 2010
Red Stitch

That Face is the show I'm going to be comparing everything else to for the rest of the year.

UK writer Polly Stenham was 19 when she wrote That Face. Within a year it was leaving Royal Court audiences gob smacked and transferred to The Duke of York Theatre in the West End. It's appearing in major company programs all over the world and Melbourne can thank our theatre gods that Red Stitch secured it for us.

With a balance of black comedy and gut-kick emotion, Strenham's world sits on a precipice of uncomfortable familiarity letting its audience fall into its depths and crawl out reeling.

Teenage Mia turns to her brother Henry for help after an incident with Valium and an initiation at her boarding school, but Henry has already dropped out of school to look after their alcoholic mother and only the thought of their wealthy and absent father returning can kick him into action, or the attention of Mia's friend Izzy.

With unfair choices and impossible dilemmas, Strenham's debut work belies her age dramatically and emotionally. Her adults are seen through the eyes of her teenagers, which reveals the raw impact of their behaviour on their children without forcing blame. Mother Martha nods to her Whose Afraid of Virgina Wolf namesake and surpasses Albee's Martha with her out of control controlling behaviour. And Strenham brings a refreshing authenticity to her teenage characters that lets them feel deeply and irrationally without the condescending tone often implied by more "mature" writers.

The Red Stitch creative team capture the truth and heart of this remarkable script. Sarah Giles direction sustains a propelling tension that allows moments of relief without ever letting the underlying questions fade or allowing the extreme characters to control the pace or focus.  Claude Marcos's design feels at one with the direction and uses the small Red Stitch stage to it's full advantage by making the dominating bed a sunken level and adding a carpet wall that brings its own welcome wit.

Tim Potter as Henry was selected for Red Stitch's first Graduate Programme in 2008 and is already one of Melbourne's most astonishing actors. Matt Smith (the new Dr Who) was the original Henry and Potter should soon be as well known and respected. Lauren Henderson (Mia) and Lucy Honigan (Izzy) bring a rare clarity and depth to their teen girls.  Dion Mills (Hugh) gives the strongest performance I've seen from him and Sarah Sutherland's Martha is as complex as the character's addiction and her scenes with Potter are reason enough to see That Face.

Red Stitch quietly put our larger companies to shame. See That Face for an an adrenaline shot to remind you that theatre can and should be this bloody brilliant.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.