Review: Neighbourhood Watch

Neighbourhood Watch
MTC presents the Belvoir production
20 March 2014
The Sumner
to 26 April
mtc.com.aud-watch/

Any one who saw Lally Katz's super-gorgeous Stories I Want to Tell You in Person heard about her writing of Neighbourhood Watch, and will be thrilled that the MTC have brought us that Belvoir production. Like most of Lally's work, it's personal, dreamy and so dark that that you're never sure if you're wiping away tears of heartaching recognition or life-affirming love.

Neighbourhood Watch is about neighbours, friends and death and all the things we do to avoid or confront both.

It's set in the year of Kevin 07: a far-too-quickly-lost time of hope. Howard lost his seat and his government, a woman was Deputy PM, a rock star was Minister for the Environment, Kyoto was signed, our Indigenous people were finally apologised to, and we all got $1000 to buy some treats to keep the economy going. Today, such hope feels like fiction.

It was also the year that Lally moved to Far Kew and met Anna, her 80+ Hungarian neighbour who became her best friend, and the year that Robyn Nevin asked Lally to write her a "tough and funny" character. When the Nevin asks, you write – and result is the story of grieving Catherine (Megan Holloway) meeting her neighbour Ana (Nevin), whose lifetime of grief is as guarded as her big-dog protected front gate.

The combination of Robyn and Ana is as good as it gets. Katz captures the unique second-language rhythm and Nevin perfects it in a performance that lets you love Ana in an instant. Ana's Englishisms and missing social niceties are hilarious, but Nevin assures that we are always on her side, even when she is making painful choices, and that Ana is never made fun of. It's such a remarkable performance that it might be impossible to see the play and not consider real-life Anna a friend.

Simon Stone's confident direction is an enhancing and comfortable fit with the writing; he's able to bring Katz's work to a commercial stage without losing her delightfully awkward tone or any of the love that she pours into her characters, while letting them find their place in the world beyond the text.

With Dale Ferguson's almost bare stage design, made intimate with Damien Cooper's lighting, there's enough space to feel the reach of the drama, but Kew is missing. It's easy for a Melbourne audience to understand the subtleties of the suburb – so much of Katz's work starts with and evokes a sense of place that leaves residents homesick –  but its greyness doesn't share the green of the trees, the manicured lawns, Leo's, the High Street tram or getting stuck on Princess Street trying to cut across to the Eastern Freeway. Having said that, I could see it all, so perhaps the wheelie bins were more than enough.

Lally Katz's writing grabbed me from the first time I saw a short play about the Apocalypse Bear in Kew. There have been ups and downs, but at her best her writing is felt in our hearts before our brains have time to think it all through. Neighbourhood Watch is Katz at her absolute best.

But the real world isn't at its best.  Lally wrote a piece for The Age on 1 March: Anna has cut her off and isn't speaking to her. In Stories, Lally talked about real-life Anna seeing the play in Sydney and the thought of it being in Melbourne without her being there is unthinkable – and, more importantly, it's too sad to think that she might not know how much this play has made us love her.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Government Inspector

The Government Inspector
Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir
5 March 2014
Merlyn Theatre
to 23 March
malthousetheatre.com.au

Robert Menzies nervously faces the audience dressed as a priest. He explains how the night's performance of The Government Inspector was meant to be The Philadelphia Story but it's not and it's also not The Government Inspector. Confusing? Nah.

When Malthouse and Belvoir announced their 2014 seasons, Simon Stone was going to direct The Philadelphia Story. Woo hoo! Wonderful play re-created by the guy who made Chekov and Ibsen rock and who can do no wrong (and was even forgiven the hiccough with the rights over Death of a Salesman).

Then just as everything was ready to roll, the Philly rights were refused. What! It's out of copyright; it's way more than 70 years since writer Philip Barry wrote it. But it turns out that Ellen Barry was the co-author and retains the copyright. But how the heck can anyone know that if she's not credited as a co-author on the scripts or any writing about the play? This debarcle is all made very clear over the night.

Google, can I see a pdf of The Philadelphia Story play script, please? Ellen Barry is not credited as the author – anywhere!  But it's clear on the imprint page that Ellen S. Barry owns the copyright until 2039 and there's the the usual licensing fees blah blah blah.

Oh copyright blah blah blah is just rich people getting richer off poor artists. Until someone uses your work and doesn't pay you.

If it was a publicity stunt, it's brave and brilliant. If it's a stuff up, the result is insane and brilliant.

So back to Rob trying to explain what happened, but it's easier to just go back three weeks and see what happened when the Philly cast (Rob, Fayssal Bazzi, Mitchell Butel, Gareth Davies, Zarah Newman, Eryn-Jean Norvill and Greg Stone) were backstage and heard the news. Zarah didn't want to take the dress off, Mitchell was on the phone to Play School, Gareth wanted a snack and Simon buggered off.

But of course he didn't, and with Emily Barclay at the ready to write and Ralph Myers ready to create a set to reveal laughs, Simon and his cast went mighty meta and created a play that plays with the absurdity and reality about faking it in the theatre – while riffing off The Government Inspector by Gogol (totally public domain), which is about a stranger being mistaken for someone important and the stranger making the most of his impostering.

The actors are all exaggerated versions of the worst bits of themselves – which shows how wonderful each one of them is – and as genres are thrown into the farce, it gets more farcical and more hilarious by the minute.

Unless you think too hard. It's best not to and to enjoy every in-joke and laugh at ourselves as theatre goers, rather than wondering if the indulgence on the stage is laughing at us.

There's nothing at all wrong with self indulgence. Who doesn't love getting expensive ice cream rather than home brand. But here Simon's bought every flavour of the best stuff, added freshly whipped cream, chocolate sauce, salted caramel praline, edible gold leaf and hand-crafted sugar sprinkles carved in his likeness.

It's so outrageously full on and delicious that it can't be resisted.

But you know that you can only get away with such a creation once.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Pia Johnson

Review: The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard
Melbourne Theatre Company
15 August 2013
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner
to 25 September
mtc.com.au

So that young hipster Simon Stone has gone and had his wicked way with another work of theatrical literary genius. Hooray! If you're reading all the hoo ha about Adaptors V Playwrights and the snooty comments about the laziness of adapting, stop wasting your reading time and get along to The Cherry Orchard.

The Cherry Orchard is awesome theatre. It's funny (if you didn't know that Chekhov is hilarious,  you've been reading him wrong), it's about us, it's surprising, it's moving and it's almost too easy to sit though its four acts.

Stone hasn't re-translated the text, rather he's re-told the story and told it in a way that's as close to what Chekhov wrote in 1903 as it gets (or as close to my Penguin translation). Structurally it's as-written and the dynamic and rhythm Stone's re-worked language is glorious proof of how much Stone adores Chekhov. There are new bits that are very liberally translated, but it's more like he's making the subtext and subtlety clear: of course young Lopkhin kept Ranevskaya's blood and snot covered hanky, and surely it had to take a bit more than a hug to make Dunyasha break a saucer.

Orchard's the story of a wealthy family losing their land because they didn't want to cut down an orchard for the newly emancipated to holiday at, or, in this case, for the newly cashed-up bogans to build McVillas. It's set in the 1970s, but with a language and tone that's now, so the 70s are seen more as a time of societal change rather than a time-specific analogy – and are much easier to relate to than revolution-cuspy Russia. And the era lets designer Alice Babidge go wild with character-perfect costumes and furniture that everyone who lived through the 70s is regretting not keeping.

And it all takes place in a stark white box where the astro turf may be lush and inviting in its plastic, bindi-free falseness but it's impossible to hide. (Unless, you want to hide from people sitting on the end of rows; but, let's leave the "design and direct from the worst seat in the house" discussion for another time because this show's too good to waste time on quibbles.)

Pamela Rabe is Ranevskaya, the matriarch who knows she's not old enough to be so and who's lost so much that moving on in life isn't an option. If everything else in this show wasn't as beautiful as it is, it would still be worth seeing for Rabe's performance. But to notice her above the rest of the cast is unfair as there's not an out-of-tune or -tone note on the stage.

Stone's style is naturalism turned to 11. Chekhov's director was Stanislavski – the dude who gave us method acting – so there's no surprise in style, but this director turns up the intensity just enough to make us aware of how exquisite each performance is. Each actor brings the complexity and honesty of each character to the stage and lets us see their whole lives in a moment. It's so subtle, but this is the difference between laudable acting and being captivated by the characters and their stories.

I don't care if a work's an adaption or brand new; I want to care about the story I'm seeing, and know that being in the theatre is better than anything else I could be doing. This is the first time I've seen a Chekov on stage and wanted to re-read his work so I can re-see it with such a fresh eye. Isn't isn't that what adaption should do?

(As theatre is expensive to produce, tickets to see The Cherry Orchard cost more than going to a movie, but if price is an issue the MTC have discounts available.)

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: The Wild Duck

The Wild Duck
Malthouse presents a Belvoir production
21 February 2012
Merlyn Theatre
to 17 March

Melbourne's Hayloft Project gang flew their The Wild Duck back to the Malthouse from Belvoir Street with a swag of 2011 awards and the opening night anticipation was palpable.  Riveting in its intimacy, this is the kind of theatre that will ruin lesser productions for you. So book now and read the reviews later, because tickets are disappearing by the minute.

While Ibsen's 19th century naturalism and tragedy is often rejected for its obvious metaphor and an unnatural coincidental melodrama worthy of a daytime soap, re-workings (and re-readings) continue to reveal the genius of his storytelling. In a society where we demand to know the truth, this story asks if it's better to keep truth hidden and leaves its character knowing that if they could make even tiny decisions again, they wouldn't chose the truth.

Writers Simon Stone and Chris Ryan and dramaturg Eamon Flack have tightened it into three acts, stripped it back to reveal its soul and re-worked it to expose the web-like frailty of its world. Writers may cringe, but this re-writing of stories allows us to see that a writer's original words are not what makes us love them; it's story and the reflection of ourselves that takes a work from the admiration of our minds to the illogical love of our hearts.

Stone also directs. The duck and attic forrest metaphors are incorporated so delicately that all we can see is their beauty, and he builds a tension that is almost as unbearable as the truth that's revealed. There's a stop-breathing second when the audience know more than the characters and can see the inevitable end, yet Stone guides the story so we're still left shocked and hoping that someone will make a choice that fixes everything.

Ralph Myers's fish bowl design is initially disconcerting as we watch the glassed-in void like a huge screen TV. But, not only supplying a fourth wall, this remarkable design distances us from the inevitability of the story so much that we're drawn to its emotion, and the use of microphones brings us even closer with the sound of breath between sobs and the squelch of a kiss that makes you reach for tissues.

And none of this would mean much without an astonishing cast.  John Gaden, Anita Hegh, Ewen Leslie, Eloise Mignon, Anthony Phelan and Toby Schmitz's performances start with their on-stage relationships. They let us feel the unspoken actions between them and grasp the thoughts and feelings behind the words they use to hide their truths from each other. This creates an intimacy that makes you almost want to turn away to give them privacy.

This is the kind of performance that draws you in so deeply that even a live duck doesn't distract – a very cute live duck swimming in a perspex pond.

This is my benchmark production for 2012. If you're not creating work with this much passion, intelligence and understanding, why even bother.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Pia Johnson