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

hedgehog

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Matilda leaving Melbourne

Matilda
matildathemusical.com


Matilda’s last Melbourne performance is November 11. If you haven’t seen it, well that’s not right. And as Matilda says, “If that’s not right. You have to put it right!”.

And do it soon because there aren’t many seats left.

Royal Shakespeare Company. Matilda The Musical. Photo by Manuel Harlan

Update: it's sold out, but try for singles.

It’s a gloriously wonderful piece of theatre that left me in tears on its opening night in March. I’m going to try and see it again (tickets now bought), even if just because I’ve only seen one of the four casts of children.

This award-winning show is what happens when everything in the development of a show and everything on the stage is about telling a story, rather than about selling tickets with razzle dazzle and assumptions about what audiences want.

Dennis Kelly’s book captures the tone of Roald Dahl’s book and makes it live on the stage, without feeling like a book. It’s honest to the source, but is totally original and always lets the extreme and outrageous characters be seen as real people who make choices and aren’t just evil and wrong or good and right.

Rob Horwell’s design of books and blocks makes the stage world as imaginative as any world a child creates when they play, and his costumes evoke memories for the audience without forcing the story into a specific time.

Peter Darlin’s choreography is like a re-invention of play and dance; it’s how we dance and play in our heads when we think no one is watching.

Matthew Warchus’s direction ensures that every part of this amazing show is telling the same story.

And a guy from Western Australia wrote the music and lyrics.

Tim Minchin is as close to genius as Stephen Sondheim is. He finds rhyme where it shouldn’t exist without letting the word-fun distract from the meaning of the songs. His music’s full of joy without hiding the melancholy that underscores all feelings all happiness. A consistent audience favourite  is “When I grow up”. It’s about the excitement of growing up, the frustration of not being grown up, and the understanding that being grown up isn’t as wonderful as we imagine it to be. It’s the kind of song that wrings your heart as it makes you  smile.

The cast and ensemble are simply brilliant and everyone ensures that even the smallest role is as important as Matilda, the little girl who lets kids know that even when they don’t get the love they deserve that they can change their stories and be heroes.

Matilda is everything great musical theatre can be.

And if you do miss it in Melbourne, there are short seasons in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Tim Minchin's latest

If you are offended by language...you don't have to press play. Our Tim thinks there are far worse things to be offended by.

Review: Tim Minchin: Ready For This

Ready For This:Tim Minchin
Paul Mcintyre Entertainment
4 December 2009
The Palais

If you don’t already have a crush on Tim Minchin, what’s wrong with you?

As nearly 3000 people screamed their love for Tim at The Palais on Friday night, it was hard to believe that is wasn’t that long ago that I heard about this guy who plays the piano and checked out his comedy festival show – and fell a little bit in love.

Tim may be from Perth, but he started doing gigs in Melbourne, so we claim him as ours. Today he tweeted ‘I heart the fuck out of this place’ -  and we heart the fuck out of you Tim.

Some discovered him early at the Butterfly Club, but the rest of us found this barefoot, affable, kind of nerdy, kind of genius at the Hi Fi Bar and, as he won some Green Room Awards, we looked forward to intimate shows every year where we would buy his CDs and despair over our cheap merlots why only us super-intelligent, arty, lefty theatre goers can see how great he is.

Then he went to the UK and they refused to let him go. He sold out The Forum last comedy festival, but came home again to play The Palais. His name was up there in plastic letters right next to Glen Campbell’s! The only difference was that Tim’s also had a red SOLD OUT sign.

Our Tim sold out the The Palais! He sold out the huge and wonderful deco palace of faded elegance filled with the memories of sweating international rock stars. (The Palais is where you go when you’re too big for the Prince and not yet miming with a fake circus at a sports stadium.) Our Tim is an international star!

Nearly 3000 people came in from the suburbs or dared to venture from the north side of the river to see our Tim, have cake in Acland Street, remember throwing up on the Luna Park roller coaster, and swear when they get a parking ticket because they really do have inspectors checking until midnight in St Kilda.

The noise of those nearly 3000 fans screaming from stalls, lounge and balcony is something that Tim deserves.

He hasn’t changed. His shows are tighter and he’s much more comfortable in a big space, but he still makes a huge room feel intimate, makes his most rehearsed moments feel fresh and still sings, beats and chats about the things he cares about. When work comes from passion and heart, it doesn’t matter if anyone disagrees. Of the sold out Palais crowd, I’m sure that a few folk wanted to share their faith with him or read his palm and calm him down with some Reiki – but differences of opinion mean nothing when we all want to drink white wine in the sun with Tim and his family.

I’ve been humming ‘Canvas Bags’ every time I go to a supermarket for over three years now and my heart still goes out to Guardian reviewer Phil Daoust every time I hear Tim’s ditty to the journ-a-loust who must have been having a really shitty day and just didn’t get our Tim (but, as my surname rhymes with weird, I’m glad that the definitive anti-reviewer song has already been penned.)

If you saw Ready for This earlier in the year, this return show is extended and more cohesive (and the bit about his daughter and the pennies has gone – it was inspired, but I can see that it’s not a joke for everyone). Tim’s off to Adelaide, Auckland and Perth in the next week and there are more shows in February for Adelaide, Melbourne, Newcastle and Sydney. All his venues have red plastic SOLD OUT signs, so you’re going to have to book – and get tickets for everyone you know.



Photo by Dan Dion

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Tim Minchin – Ready for This

Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Ready for This
Tim Minchin
15 April 2009
The Forum

Melbourne is more than ready to welcome Tim Minchin home. With more ushers at the Forum than audience at his early Butterfly Club gigs, Ready For This sees Minchin return a super star

I’ve had a bit of a crush on Tim since I first saw him at the Hi Fi Bar. Combining an intelligent wit, with a love of wordiness and virtuosic piano tinkling, this bare-footed, wild-haired, mascara wearing rock ‘n’ roll nerd parodied rock wankers, comedy tossers and all sorts of self-gratifiers, as he intimately shared his slightly-dorky life with his proudly-geekish audience.

After a handful of Green Room awards, a couple of MICF awards and some little thing called the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, Minchin moved to the UK to collect even more adoring minions.

His popularity has forced him on to bigger stages, so the new show lacks intimacy, while Minchin’s material has become more observational and less personal. As the uber-cool, the theatre-snobs and the I-saw-him-on-Spicks-and-Specks crowd are now buying tickets, it’s natural that he develops a show with broad appeal. Don’t get me wrong – his material is as good as ever, but it’s still evolving to adapt to his growing super stardom. Ready For This would benefit from a tighter structure and more consistently themed content, but it’s not stopping anyone enjoying it.

Minchin is still frustrated about religion and new-agers (or is that anyone with faith?) and “Bears Don’t’ Dig On Dancing” is as fab as his earlier activist hit “Canvas Bags”, but his unsure and nerdy persona doesn’t seem quite right as hundreds of cheering fans welcome him to the stage, and it’s harder to satirise rock stars when you too are selling t-shirts and CDs in the foyer.

One person unlikely to wear a Minchin t-shirt is Guardian reviewer Phil Daoust. Daoust didn’t fancy Minchin’s 2005 Edinburgh Fringe show (the Perrier winning one) and went so far as to suggest that our Tim should be tarred and feathered. Tim’s musical response sent many fellow-reviewing pens scribbling in the dark, as it takes the anger performers feel about negative feedback to a level that is sure to have many artists inserting the name of their most hated reviewer – even if it ruins the rhyme. In fairness to Daoust, his is an honest review and he justifies his opinion, but Minchin’s reply is much wittier and more ironic – well I hope it’s ironic.

With sold out shows, audiences wanting more and gigs booked for the rest of the year, Tim doesn’t need to worry what any reviewer thinks. But I still think he’s great – and being a pale and freckly red head with great boobs - I reckon Tim thinks I’m OK as well.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Green Room Awards 2007

Green Room Awards 2007
1 April 2007

I’ve just come from an afternoon of Green Room Awards. Congratulations to everyone. The ceremony was fun, Julia Zemiro was a much better host that Ellen at the Oscars, Suzanne Johnson and Helen Noonan showed us that opera singers are much wittier and funnier than often thought and everyone paid tribute to the outstanding plethora of artists and companies in this amazing city of Melbourne.

“It really is just an honour to be nominated”...but it’s true. The list of Green Room award nominations show how even the most dedicated of theatre, dance, music, cabaret, opera or musical theatre devotees can barely skim the surface of the arts scene in this town. I see more my fair share of shows, but there were nominated names, companies and shows that I hadn’t seen, some I hadn’t heard of. Debt was the tied winner of Best New Australian Play, but was only seen by 270 people. I think the lesson is – see as much as you can, because you never know when a gem is going to appear.

Dance was an especially strong category this year. Lucy Guerin summed up the feeling among Melbourne’s dancers, by acknowledging the strong sense of community and the involvement of everyone. This was supported by Ros Warby, whose award for Monumental was especially welcomed.

Tim Minchin was my favourite winner of the day. Not only did he win Original Songs, beat a phenomenal group of nominees for Cabaret Artiste, but then scored the award for Outstanding Cabaret Show, beating the Famous Speigeltent and the Melbourne Theatre Company. This continues to prove that the best shows are often created by independent artists and found in non-commercial venues. Tim is “so fucking rock” and so fucking deserved each and every award.

“If you get a job you like – you never have to work a day on your life. Maria Frendo from, the fabulous venue, Dantes reminded everyone of this when she collected her award for her Contribution to Cabaret. When you do what you love, it will always shine through in your work. Every nominee and winner today has proven that they love what they do.

This originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.