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: The Crucible

The Crucible
MTC
27 June 2013
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner
to 3 August
mtc.com.au1

Arthur Miller's The Crucible was my favourite play when I was 17 and, along with Lillian Hellman, Miller was my favourite playwright. This play made me read the rest of his work and so many more by mid-twentieth-century American writers. It opened the door to an astonishing and powerful library. But it's been over a quarter of a century since I read it, so, yesterday, I grabbed my high school copy (which tells me I wrote an essay about its fire symbolism) and read it again.

It's definitely a product of his time. First performed in 1954, Miller wrote a play about the seventeenth century witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, as a response to US Senator Mcarthy's communist trials in the 1950s, which were especially devastating to writers, performers and anyone connected to the evil liberal arts. In high school, we learnt that this was an allegory, a damn fine one.

Still, as I read it, I was struck by just how relevant and powerful a production could be today in Australia. It's a world where women (and their supporters) are attacked, trialled and killed for no reason other than their gender. They are trialled by middle-aged men who base their findings on a belief in a big male god and on their certain belief that young women must be possessed by the big male devil because they surely couldn't be behaving like scared children. The Crucible or Ditch the Witch or Grow up Lindsay. Or, it's a world where women – especially young women – are harlots or angels; a world where a middle-aged man possibly rapes his teenage servant (subtextually, it can go rape or consent) in a barn, who is then fired by the man's wife (ensuring she can't get work) and later declared a whore by the man who certainly took her virginity and treated her like crap.  Maybe the MTC's production isn't just a star vehicle for Diver Dan from Seachange?

With the text still very fresh in my mind, I was excited about this production.

My excitement lasted seconds.

I think director Sam Strong made a bad sit com about the Salem witch hunts (as a star vehicle for Diver Dan in the worst wig ever put on a stage) by ensuring that any faith, belief or hope is a joke.

But that's just me hazarding a guess. So, what about some facts? Well, there were a lot of giggles on opening night – and some guffaws. There are some jokes in the play, but it's not funny. On the page, the scene where Diver Dan declares "whore" and the teenage girls ensure his arrest are chilling; they got the biggest laughs of the night.

Why?

No one in that stage world believes in the god they profess to believe in. Every character in The Crucible acts from their belief in God AND Satan and their fear of eternal suffering. Even the non-believers believe to some extent; belief is the rule that governs this world. They believe in the same way that Senator McCarthy believed that communists were real and could destroy America. They believe it like we believe the sun will set tonight and that Myki is a force of evil.

A play about god and belief can never make sense in a stage world that's godless. I think that's why we laughed so much.

Or it could be the odd acting choices. Act 1 takes place in a girl's bedroom. Depending on the charaters' knowledge, this child is either very ill, terrified or possessed by the devil, but the unconscious child is ignored by everyone around her, unless she's being spoken to or examined. Eleven people pass through the room and 10 of them treat the child – who is either very ill, terrified or possessed by the devil – like she's a beige rug on the bed. No wonder we laughed when the good Reverend Hale asked for help in case she flew away. The eleventh character, Rebecca Nurse, was the only one who looked at the child with any semblance of care and tried to cover the girl's naked legs.

But would I have liked this production when I was 17? Maybe.

After all, Dale Ferguson's design of a pure white building in a hostile black world is stunning and made more so with Paul Jackson's lighting that creates a parallel shadow play. And Julia Blake (Rebecca Nurse), Sarah Ogden (Mary Warren), Anita Hegh (Elizabeth Proctor), John McTernan (Giles Corey) and Grant Cartwright (Reverand Hale and only after the interval) get close to overcoming their direction and bringing real life and pain to their characters. And Diver Dan? David Wenham's as authentic and engaging as his wig.

If this were part of an education season, I would have said it's a dull and oddly literal interpretation of a play that deserves better, but this is a $59 for under 30s and a $99 tickets for students on Saturday night ($115 for people not continuing or having completed their education) and you can see the kick-arse dancing monkey for that or take your family to Circus Oz or see the MTC's other work, Solomon and Marion. If I'd spent $59 to see this as a 17-year-old (or around $100 as a grown up), I would have hated the MTC for letting me down so much.

Photo by Jeff Busby.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Mini review: Heaven

Heaven
La Mama
29 May 2013
La Mama Theatre
to 30 May
lamama.com.au

Heaven won writer/director Kit Brookman the Phillip Parson's Young Playwright's Award in 2012 and this production proves that he's a young writer to keep an eye on.

With an uneasy tone that forces questions of what is real, Heaven is the story of a group of teenage friends who try to bring a classmate back from her recent death. Although maybe a bit over done at times, his writing captures a teen voice and his story has them making choices and behaving like teenagers.

And the cast – Jessica Clarke, Andre Jewson, Lachlan Woods and Sarah Ogden – grasp the tone and mood perfectly; each bringing enough extra to the script to make the characters theirs.

Heaven did so well that extra performances were added. Next time, I'd like to see what a different director finds in the work, but the good news is that we'll see a new Kit Brookman play (with Sarah Ogden) later in the year (I don't think I can say where yet).

Review: Ruby Moon

Ruby Moon
Steam Productions
31 May 2012
The Owl and the Pussycat
to 17 June
steamproductions.com.au

Ruby Moon put on her favourite red dress and went to visit her grandma at the end of her cul de sac. She never made it and hasn't been seen since. Her parents are still in the same house and spend every day lost in the unbearable grief of trying to find their little girl.

Sydney-formed Steam Productions chose Matt Cameron's 2003 play for their first Melbourne show.
Cameron's script starts with a fairy tale and enjoys the macabre horror of these traditional stories. It's been on state company stages and schools programs and,  like Poor Boy, which opened the MTC's Sumner Theatre, it's a story that keeps its audience uneasy by never really answering its own questions and its final act reveal leaves us re-interpreting everything that's gone before and wanting a rewind button to see it all again.

The Owl and the Pussycat in Richmond have a tiny theatre space in what was once the front room of a single front cottage. It's an ideal choice of venue for this story as it brings its audience almost into the living room with them, allowing for no hiding beyond or behind the fourth wall.

Director Rachel Baring (Short and Sweet) is back in Melbourne after completing a graduate year studying Directing at NIDA. She places the story firmly into the broken minds and hearts of the parents and only hints at the super natural and fairy tale elements. This lets it feel more like a mystery that could find an answer in the packages of broken dolls and strangely unhelpful neighbours, and creates the freedom to indulge in the dark comedy. But it also leaves a slightly uneven tone, especially as she ultimately ensures that it's a work about grief.

Sarah Ogden (Moth) and Scott Gooding (Eric, Faust) are the parents and everyone on their street who were there the day Ruby disappeared. Their honest and heartfelt performances start with guilt and they let their characters fight the hurt that they know has probably already drowned them. Both bring the internal to the surface, but maybe in such a small venue, leaving more of it hidden will create an even greater intimacy with the audience. In such a close and closed room, hints of "acting" create safety barriers, and one of this show's many strengths is its uncomfortable atmosphere .

I also wonder if there's meant to be hope for the parents. As their grief is so unfair that there may never be a moment of comfort or rest again, more of a hint of the life that created Ruby could give the audience a touch of hope and comfort that can draw them deeper into the story and intensify the ongoing dread.

As is Annie, Ruby Moon is about a little girl in a red dress, but it's the dark and sobering antithesis to the life-is-fair musical. (Or maybe it's the real story of Annie's lost parents.) Without safety nets, its raw pain draws us into unimaginable grief as its mystery leaves us re-thinking what we believed and our hearts hope for the impossible.

Just book, because there's no room for extra seats. It's engagement isn't easy, but there's beauty in the pain and it'll remind you why watching passive theatre can be so dull.

Photo by Sarah Walker

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

And here are some writing tips from Matt Cameron, from Snodger Media's What I Wrote series, seen on the ABC and available on DVD.

Review: Moth

Moth
Malthouse Theatre and Arena Theatre
16 May 2010
The Tower, CUB Malthouse

If the teenagers on Glee leave you wondering why your high school memories aren't so perky and choreographed, Malthouse and Arena theatre's Moth is the perfect antidote.

Declan Greene continues to fascinate and seduce Melbourne theatre goers by consistently surprising us with unexpected stories. Moth is far removed from his uber-high-camp Sisters Grimm work, darker than his 2009 Fringe hit A Black Joy and more grounded in reality than his 2009 MTC Young Artist commission  Pretty Baby.  But it's still filled with authentic characters dragged in from the limits of social acceptability,  gooey visceral imagery,  odd pop culture references, absurd reality bluring and a dark dark humour that leaves you almost hating yourself for laughing.

Sebastian (the perfect Dylan Young) is too weird to ever be accepted and clinging onto the equally-desparate friendship of Claryssa (the equally-perfect Sarah Ogden), the emo wicca chick who has let herself become too weird to ever be accepted. These are the kids who no one ever sat next to at school, whose parents have no idea that their babies are in so much pain that they won't recover, and who leave me so glad that I was a teenager before the internet and its mass humiliation.

With a story of bullying too familiar to teens on the outer and too vile for many grown ups to even comprehend, Greene plunges into the fractured minds and perceptions of these souls and takes us to a surreal world where Jesus and Saint Sebastian have chosen a misfit to warn the world of its pending destruction and two young people scream for rescue and forgiveness.

Greene writes difficult material that could easily be lost in a moosh of preachy compassion or over-arty pretence, but the Arena creative team of Chris Kohn (director), Jonathon Oxlade (design), Rachel Burke (lighting) and Jethro Woodward (composition) are at one with their writer and create a world where the morphing of time, space and character is natural, expected and so beautiful that you understand why moths fly to blinding light.

Like young writer Polly Strenham's teens in That Face, currently at Red Stitch, Greene (who is an old fart compared to Strenham) writes teenagers who aren't silly or pretty or full of impossible dreams, and force their audience to understand their extreme, illogical and exaggerated reactions and feelings to the world they are growing into. Greene leaves us relieved to have grown up and embarrassed to know that we still don't want to be friends with a Sebastian or a Claryssa.

Moth is rightly selling out, so book now so that your not among those who wish they had seen it

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.


Photo: Jeff Busby