What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 5

So today, our federal government dumped the arts ministry.

I'm running out of positive today, then I get this contribution: "A lot of the works that stayed with me explored post-humanism, native peoples self-determination or the post apocalypse; further cementing that theatre is dangerous, vital, conversational and provocative. No wonder funding is drying up, like the creek beds of our planet."

It's easy to give up at the moment, so we need to let artists and theatre makers know that their work makes a difference. Have your say here.

Joshua Ladgrove
Joshua Ladgrove The Wise

Joshua Ladgrove and Frobert selfie

Favourite moments in 2019.
Someone in the front row of my show using their iPhone torch to loudly search through their bag for a lolly, and then try to quietly unwrap said lolly while I stopped the show and watched them the whole time unbeknownst to them; it was very funny.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Creating a new show.

SM: I saw his seminar about bilge pumps (its name changes) at MICF and Melbourne Fringe; it's the only show I saw twice this year. And that wasn't enough. Even when I knew what was coming, he still surprised me. Watching this show is fear clashing with the joy of complete trust that he's going to make everything pay off. And he does. If the world were fair, he'd have his own tv show and be so fucking famous by now that he wouldn't give a toss what bloggers think.

There's a final 2019 showing of Joshua Ladgrove's Award Winning Bilge Pump Show TOMORROW (Friday 6 December).

It's a fundraiser. In order to create new shows, artists need money. It's not like there's funding.

It's at Docklands. This is the ideal place for a bilge pump seminar. (It's at the library, which is actually really groovy.)

You can book here. It may be the best seminar yet.


Carla Donnelly
Broadcaster and critic

Carla Donnelly selfie

Favourite moments in 2019.
2019 has been a year of incredible art for me. Music, film and my beloved theatre. There have  been so many amazing performances that my memories become nested into moments that had my jaw unhinge with tears of disbelief that life could be so beautiful. A lot of the works that stayed with me explored post-humanism, native peoples self-determination or the post apocalypse; further cementing that theatre is dangerous, vital, conversational and provocative. No wonder funding is drying up, like the creek beds of our planet.

Sarah Ward’s alien/rock/monkey space rock opera The Legend of Queen Kong: opera singing MOTHER FUCKER to a baroque harpsichord psychedelic freak out.

Ursula Yovich’s defiant, heartbreaking and vulnerable rock musical Barbara and the Camp Dogs: too many moments to list that had me in tears.

Mr Burns, a post-electric play was an absolute miracle of production, the amount of moving pieces to get right would have been back breaking. Its message of the way humans make meaning and connect, how memory works, and our utter compulsion to tell ourselves and each other through story completely blew me away. The pop medley was the prestige in an already inconceivably incredible independent theatre production.

Emma Hall’s World Problems. A simple conceit – a woman builds a trampoline on stage, with a monologue projected at/to the audience. Emma tells us the story of how ‘you’ let the world die. The mental gymnastics I went through to avoid complicity took me to at least half way through the show before my heart sank and I started to cry realising that it *was* us. We did let the world die.

The Honouring (during Yirramboi) was a work of such tenderness and pain; I am crying now thinking about it. Jack Sheppard’s physical rendering of Indigenous suicide through text, movement and puppetry was staggering. A work that didn’t get enough attention. Nor the festival really; Yirramboi is extraordinary.

Joel Bray’s Daddy (also at Yirramboi) a was another incredible work featuring dance, text and tableaus presented to the audience by following Bray around the room. Joel Bray is filled with rage and hope and love and desire and this was beautifully rendered. It was electrifying.

The Patricia Cornelius/Susie Dee power combo continued to slay with Love: stories, faces and bodies I never see on Melbourne stages. Working class people. Drug dependent people. The traumatised. The vulgar. The aberrant. All lovingly and respectfully brought into focus. I walk away from their shows thinking why do I never see these kinds of stories? Who has the keys?

Them (La Mama) was one of the most profound plays of the year. Mystical in its realisation the perfection of casting, time, place and script. It is truly gifted to make a drama about war deeply funny in places. It had me laughing and sobbing and believing the best in humanity that plays like this can find a stage.

I flew to Sydney to see Adena Jacob’s Titus Andronicus and it did not disappoint. Jane Montgomery-Griffiths was clearly having the time of her life in this role. My moment of the year was Catherine Davies ‘comic relief’ clown smearing shit all up the back of her legs whilst doing a sexy dance. Just when you think things can’t get worse, that happens to you and you wonder how life can get any better?

My last three are the most creative and original of the year. Yay for Canetoads! at Melbourne Fringe  was one of those word-of-mouths gems that I would never have known about. So skillfully wrought with colonialism succinctly expressed through the “white death” of the sugar cane industry. Ordinarily this pun could have been one note or on the nose, but Kendra Keller’s tremendous skill and commitment makes our complicity and embeddedness in this horror felt.

Subliminal Massage at Melbourne Fringe was truly one of the most left field and surreal works I’ve ever experienced. A post (post?) human exploration/celebration/exhibition of the trash bag of western “culture”. Puns, portmanteaus, wellness, white cubes, black screens… This AI hasn’t been updated in a century and his database has festered. Glitched out, hilarious, touching, terrifying… just absolutely fucking mind blowing.

And finally Unwoman by The Rabble. From the fecund idealisation of the function of femininity to Yumi Umiumare's butoh – 50 minutes of screaming and giving birth to rocks in a concrete prison reality. This work truly communicated the female experience. Funny, paternalistic, objectifying, non-agentic, tedious, primal – you name it it was in there. The design was also exceptional.

A deep gratitude to all these artists (and the 60+ other performances I saw this year). The  diversity of skill and talent in this country is staggering, and your work, minds, hearts and bodies make my life worth living.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Seeing Daddy again at Midsumma; Fun Home and Slap.Bang.Kiss at MTC; Grey Arias, Do Not Go Gentle and Loaded at Malthouse;  Asia TOPA.

SM: Carla is another critic who keeps going even when everything seems bleak. And, those earrings!

Review: Barbara and the Camp Dogs

Barbara and the Camp Dogs
Malthouse presents a Belvoir production
9 February 2019
Merlyn Theatre
to 3 March
malthousetheatre.com.au/

Elaine Crombie and Ursula Yovic. Photo by Brett Boardman

The back wall of the theatre is a huge board with "The Camp Dogs" chalked over partially rubbed-out memories of bands past. The floor is covered with the kind of carpet only found in pub band rooms and old hotels; its waves of bright orange could look like song lines after a few beers. Singers Barbara and Rene are older than their three-piece band and are still rocking their looks from the 80s. Welcome to Barbara and the Camp Dogs. Prepare to dance. Or cry.

Barbara (Ursula Yovich) and her cousin Rene (Elaine Crombie) were brought up by the same mum in Katherine in the Northern Territory. They're older than they want to think they are, frustrate the hell out of each other, and live in Sydney doing whatever gigs they can. Pub sessions don't pay the rent, neither does busking. Barbara doesn't approve of Rene doing girl-band covers at the casino and is still angry that an Aboriginal woman singing is considered "world music",  but is happy to be dodgy when they really need money. When their mum's in hospital in Darwin, Rene convinces Barbara that it's time to go back home.

Crossing the red desert from southern city to the top-end is a well-used Aussie story trope; crossing our continent is impossible to forget. Watching from a plane, Barbara knows that her unwanted journey home is going to be longer and more personal and painful than she fears.

The comfort and easy early laughs of the pub band room fade in the top-end heat where the wound that Barbara tries to hide begins to bleed. Abandonment and being treated like you don't matter doesn't heal with a Band Aid and some Dettol. And she knows it's far more than just her soul that's breaking as cops, lonely roads and cheap wine casks remind her that she lives in a country founded on theft.

Leticia Caceres's direction lets the story about Barbara and Rene move from one about watching strangers to one that it's easy to see your own life in, even if your life is so distant from Barbara and Rene's that you don't know anyone like them.

The use of song – there's a whole other rave review about the music and Yovich and Crombie's singing) – can seem like a break in the action, but music and song make us feel before we realise it. The music (Yovich, Alana Valentine, who co-wrote the script with Yovich, and Adm Ventoura) creates the emotion that starts with the whooping fun of the pub and moves deep into our shared stories, which hurt as much as they celebrate.

Stephen Curtis's design is every inner-city pub we've drunk in while the script takes us to places inner-city pub drinkers rarely visit. And, as always, Chloe Greaves's costumes let us know so much about the characters who are stuck in a time when perhaps they felt best about themselves.

Barbara and the Camp Dogs is urgent and vital theatre. It's about the deep personal loss that screams for family and belonging, and about understanding that our contemporary Australian stories all begin with that theft and the intergenerational trauma that too many people think is in the past.

Review: Seven Songs to Leave Behind

MIAF 2010

Seven Songs to Leave Behind

Melbourne International Arts Festival

23 October 2010

Sidney Myer Music Bowl

www.melbournefestival.com.au

I've been to my share of festival closings, but MIAF have set a new benchmark with Seven Songs to Leave Behind. What a concept and what a night!

Each artist was invited to think about what what songs they want to leave behind and offered the song that made them go "this is what I am", one they wish they'd written, one from Leonard Cohen (it saved them trying to pick which one his they could fit into another category), a song to share, two of their own and one to leave behind. And they had Orchestra Victoria, the Black Arm Band and their fellow artists waiting to join them.

The unforgettable velvety roughness of Gurrumul Yunupingu opened a night of joy and unexpected treats where everyone on the stage was as thrilled to be part of it as the audience were to be there, and  this festival finally felt like it was made to be shared and enjoyed.

Coveted songs brought surprises like Sinead O'Connor screaming L7's "Shit List", Leah Flanagan, Ursula Yovich and the Black Arm Band pouring their hearts into Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble" and  Ricky Lee Jones (in an Orchestra Victoria beanie) belting out Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise".

Other unforgettable moments include Ricky Lee singing "Somewhere" (from West Side Story) with the recorded voice of Archie Roach, who couldn't be there because he's in hospital, the amazing Lou Bennet singing with her "niece" Sinead, Shellie Morris's "Swept Away", every moment of Meshell Ndegeocello and John Cale closing the night with Cohen's "Halleluja" – with everyone joining in.

And I only went so I could see John Cale, who continues to redefine cool.

Seven Songs to Leave Behind is one of those concerts that will stay with everyone who was there. It was a night where art overthrew entertainment, where collaboration created moments that will never be repeated and 8500 people stood and cheered because they knew that they were part of something amazing.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

Review: Magpie Blues

MIAF 2010

Magpie Blues

Ursula Yovich

Melbourne International Arts Festival

12 October 2010

the Forum Theatre

to 13 October

www.melbournefestival.com.au

In Magpie Blues, singer and storyteller Ursula Yovich fills the Forum theatre with her voice and her heart.

With a four-piece band, her smooth soul voice and open soul bring life to song choices that are a bit classic fm radio, but it does mean that her audience (including myself) know them and can safely hum along. There's safety and comfort in her song choices, but she doesn't hold back with her story.

A magpie is a black and white gorgeous singing bird and Ursula's totem animal. Brought up in Darwin, she's a self-proclaimed Serborigine with an Arnhem Land mother and Serbian father. Ursula didn't think there was anything different about this until she was placed in an ESL class in primary school because she spoke English with a Serbian accent. Between songs she tells evocative stories like fossicking for gold in Humpty Doo and only finding old Coke cans, singing Bony M songs with her mum in Burada, one of the Maningrida family of languages, and receiving letters from her Serbian grandmother with the handprints of her cousins.

It wasn't a straight road from singing in her bedroom to winning Helpmann Awards. Her mum left when she and her siblings were young and much of the second half of the show is about Ursula's re-connection with her Aboriginal culture, prompted when she was called a white fella in Maningrida, where she was born.  Speaking three languages, Ursuala knows how quickly connection to language can be lost and how this is connected to loss of culture.

Having experienced far too many young deaths in her immediate family, Ursula openly and bravely talks about the suicide of her young niece and how there is no stronger sign of damaged culture than young people killing themselves. An old Maningrida aunty told her that is didn't used to be like this, that young people used to be proud of their strong culture.

Guided by director Wesley Enoch, Ursula reminds us how important it is to tell our stories; those from our childhood living rooms and those of our most far-reaching families. Without these real and lived stories, memories and cultures will continue to disappear and we become a much lesser society for that.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

Photo by Peter Collie