FRINGE review: Fourplay

Fourplay

Vicious Fish

2 October 2011

fortyfivedownstairs

to 9 October

As the fortyfivedownstairs program continues to bring us companies who know how important it is to tell our stories and are willing to take the kind of risks that create amazing theatre, Scott Gooding's happy ending for Vicious Fish's Belbel Project is a satisfying hour of Fourplay.

A long-term couple wanting change have a remarkably cool new bed.  With crisp purple sheets and geek-perfect proportions, it's ready to break in – but they don't want to fuck with destiny, so he invites a hot young man and she invites a hot young woman...

Now, before anyone gets excited about watching bored middle-class swingers, know that Fourplay's far more interesting and that the only writer resorting to cheap puns is me.

Catalan-Spanish playwright Sergei Belbel wrote his first plays in the 80s and has been Artistic Director of The National Theatre of Catalonia since 2005. Vicious Fish is the champion of his work in Australia, having presented four of his translated works.

Form and structure are as much a part of Belbel's storytelling as character and plot.  Fourplay's time line alternates and scenes repeat from different perspectives with new information. This forces the audience to actively play in the onstage games and to continually re-think what they believe is happening. There's no passive watching with Belbel.

And while I love how this makes us really engage with the text, the brilliance of the Jenga-winning structure can create distance from the stories of the characters (Gooding, Michael Argus, Kaitlyn Clare, Liza Dennis) and distract from the humour that pumps the heart of the work.

With four people wanting to use the bed for more than a nanna nap, there's potential for farce, but Belbel is far darker and tempers their play time with uncomfortable laughs that feel really good once you get used to them and accept just how reactionary tits can be.

I've recently seen a lot of very funny shows where audiences seem afraid to laugh in case it isn't meant to be funny. If you think it's funny, the people creating it probably do as well; so, please have a glass of wine if it helps and enjoy Fourplay.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

The last FRINGE review previews

Yep, the full versions are on AussieTheatre.com and will be  here soon.

The Things I Learned in High School
Daniel Kilby with Trevor Jones
5 October 2011
Long Play
to 8 October

I was running late for Daniel's show (damn you daylight savings), but running down the corridor I heard a lot of laughing and a song about fucking. Apparently, it's what everything is all about.

So I knew I was going to like it.

Daniel made it through catholic high school as the only gay boy, but getting through a conservatorium education when he was into show tunes and art songs was another challenge altogether. It's taken him a few more years to kill those damn self-doubt vampires – thank you [title of show] –  and realise that he so has a story to tell and that the best way to tell it is through slightly obscure show tunes.

Like the best, Daniel opens up his heart and tells some tales that he probably thought he'd keep quiet. This is the stuff that bonds performers and audiences. In those moments we know that most of our differences are meaningless, because we all did things in year 10 that we didn't tell our families ... until our solo cabaret shows.

The Things I Learned in High School is on at Longplay in North Fitzroy until Saturday. Forget the Fringe hub for a night, grab a drink and a meal and share your love of song (and fucking) with Daniel.







No Matter Where You Go, There You Are
RSVP, Jennifer Williams, Cathie Clinton, Yvonne Coughlan
2 October 2011
Clifton Creative Arts Centre, 314 Church St, Richmond
to 9 October

I just got in from this show and had the kind-of-brilliant and kind-of-disappointing experience of being in an audience of three. But I'm stressing the brilliant, because it's a night of storytelling that I really can't compare to anything else and I'm so glad that I went. (Watching Doctor Who so nearly won...)

So no matter what you're hoping to see this week, please make time for this.

I'll give it some more words tomorrow.

Spring Awakening

Monash Uni Student Theatre and Monash University Academy of Performing Arts

1 October 2011

Alexander Theatre, Monash University

to 8 October

www.monash.edu/mapa/

With over 60 Monash Uni students and recent graduates involved in every element of this production, it would be tedious to mention everyone who helps make this Spring Awakening so memorable; so, you'll have to read the program – and the only way to do that is to see this show.

.....

Spring Awakening is one of my favourite musicals from recent years and MUST's production is – I have to say it – a must. You might see versions with slicker dance and more mature voices, but you won't catch one with more heart.

And, really, the Clayton campus is a 20-minute drive from the city and there's parking at the door. Don't use its distance as an excuse.


the rest


And here's director Yvonne Virsik talking about directing it.

Fourplay

Vicious Fish

2 October 2011

fortyfivedownstairs

to 9 October

As the fortyfivedownstairs program continues to bring us companies and writers who know how important it is to tell our stories and are willing to take the kind of risks that create amazing theatre, Scott Gooding's happy ending for Vicious Fish's Belbel Project is a satisfying hour of Fourplay.

A long-term couple wanting change have a remarkably cool new bed.  With crisp purple sheets and geek-perfect proportions,  it's ready to break in – but they don't want to fuck with destiny, so he invites a hot young man and she invites a hot young woman...

Now, before anyone gets excited about watching bored middle-class swingers, know that Fourplay's far more interesting and the only writer resorting to cheap puns is me.

the rest

FRINGE review: Who, Me

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2011
Who, Me
Vicious Fish and MILKE
23 September 2011
Fringe Hub, Meeting Room
to 8 October 2011

In 1999, Rob Lloyd saw THAT Star Wars film more than once. This kind of honesty deserves admiration, but can I still respect him? (Even if he does look like David Tennant.)

David Tennant is MY Doctor. Jon Pertwee is Rob's. Who, Me is about Rob's obsession with sci fi, particularly Doctor Who (which is the name of the TV show; never the name of the character – except that once).

Directed and co-created by Scott Gooding (still going with Peter Davison?), it takes us into the-bigger-on-the inside mind of a passionate obsessive as his alter ego fracks with the wibbly wobbly and forces Rob to put his love on trial. Would Rob have a better life had he not donned a velvet jacket in the 90s and put his devious-and-too-honest VHS-stealing plans to more a more productive purpose?

The uber-meta time-travel/brain/trial story is the structure, but the double-heart of the night is Rob's story.  His confessions of his fan behaviour create wonderful squirming recognition, including a moment when you can pick how many people in the audience had their first kiss when they were well out of high school.

Still, by trying to find a balance between in-jokes and references for the fans and still making it fun for the non-fans (although I don't understand how anyone could NOT love Doctor Who*), the show’s spending some time in the void between the 'verses.

I'd love to see the references turned up to 11. Name those companions, show us the tower of Target books, throw in the really obscure stuff and go as close to the copyright breach as you dare. At the same time, the less-nerdy viewers need a clearer peek into the uber-nerd world they don't understand. The description of the Trek V Wars 90s is as good as stealing a vortex manipulator and mixing at a 90's sci fi party with your theory that Starbuck would have been much better as a woman.  But pics from a convention are not enough to even hint at the jaw-dropping nerdiness of these events**.

But fan or not, it's impossible not to adore Rob as he unzips his normal suit and lets his nerd out to frolic with an atrocious stand up routine and a final vignette that hurts to watch (it makes Wesley's unaired dance in "Waiting in the Wings" – I know you have the DVDs and have watched the extras – seem cool), but it hurts even more to realise that you understand it.

For all its meta wankiness and TARDIS/penis jokes, Who, Me is a love story.  The genuine passion and embarrassingly affectionate love we have for these fictional creations has got so many of us through bad times. And, like all loves, it's so much better when it's shared.

Rob and Scott share their passion to assure us that there's nothing wrong with knowing more about a tv show than our own family. And would Rob's life have been better with the Doctor? I'll leave that answer to a TARDIS birthday cake.

Doctor Who fans, don’t you dare miss Who, Me. Non-fans – what’s wrong with you!? See it anyway and you can catch up with the box sets after the Fringe.


* On Sundays, I gather in a secret location with a group of people old enough to have watched it on the ABC every week night and old enough to not be embarrassed when someone brings along a new dolly for show and tell. The tiny Jammie Dodger with the first Matt Smith doctor action figure was my favourite.

** Of course I know that from experience.  I went a Buffy etc convention. There was a Firefly preview leaflet, I saw Spike and Giles and discovered that my fandom barely rated on the geek scale. Mixing with these nerds, I felt cooler than Pinky Tuscadero when she was dating Fonzie.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 7: Well Made Plays

With all the cutting edge, quirkiness and contemporary cliches applied to Fringe shows, there are still old school plays based on scripts that believe in structure.

Fourplay

Vicious Fish Theatre

A couple have a new bed and each will invite a stranger to inaugurate it.

Fourplay by Catalan-Spanish playwright Sergi Belbel is the fourth play in Vicious Fish's four-play Bebel Project and director Scott Gooding continues to bring us work that challenges traditional structures.

Like architects, writers who reject structure likely to fail. Those who experiment with it can soar above the throng or splat to earth when their story and characters get lost in the cleverness of the telling.

Fourplay has 38 scenes that alternate between advancing the action and taking it back, and each is played twice to force the audience to challenge their perceptions. It could be fascinating.

The Dollhouse

Since we're talking about structure, Ibsen has to come into the conversation about well-made plays.

If you haven't read Ibsen, what are you doing reading a theatre blog? Get ye to the library or the book section of any op shop now.

Director Daniel Schlusser is recreating this Dollhouse as a contemporary domestic horror and describes is as "a daring theatricalisation of Nora's mental landscape".

I've missed Schlusser's recent re-imaginings of classic plays, but reviewers I trust and respect have raved about them. That's enough to get me along.

Fringe Hints 1: Brand New

Fringe Hints 2: Shows for Nerds

Fringe Hints 3: Families are the Best Material

Fringe Hints 4: But I'm Poor

Fringe Hints 5: Cartwheel to the Circus

Fringe Hints 6: Musicals

Fringe Hints 8: Puppets and Letters

Fringe Hints 9: Music and Film

Fringe Hints 10: Church or Laundromat

Melbourne Fringe Launch

You have 19 days to see 230 shows.

Hayley Butcher and Telia Nevile at the Fringe Program Launch 

(pic courtesy Melbourne Fringe)

I think we should have a reality TV show that challenges contestants to see everything in a Fringe program.

I'd watch it.

The Melbourne Fringe program is launched. The guide's on the streets, the web page is live and the app is downloadable.

This year's feast of independent arts runs from 21 September to 9 October, which means that there's less than a month to choose what you're going to see or to get your show ready.

I haven't chosen my shows yet*, so suggestions are welcome.

*Except for FUGLY, cos I am beautiful and Who Me, cos I'm a nerd.

FUGLY: Sixxters Grimm will make you beautiful, if it kills you.

Who, Me.  

Fringe 2010 reviews

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Fringe 2006 reviews

Review: A Study in Scarlet (A Study of)

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2010

A Study in Scarlet (A Study of)

Vicious Fish Theatre

1 October 2010
Son of Loft, Fringe Hub
season finished

www.melbournefringe.com.au

Before driving, comedy, sex and even before Dr Who,  Robert Lloyd discovered Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Scarlet (A Study of) is the story of his obsession. As someone prone to nerdy obsession, I had to love it.

Twelve-year-old Robert fell in love with Sherlock Holmes in Dubbo. He was the first person in ten years to borrow Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book from the local library and still hasn't recovered from his school production of a Holmes parody (with young Mr L in the lead) losing to an excerpt from The Crucible.

He intersperses his nerdy confessions, with an abridged telling of A Study in Scarlet, Doyle's first Holmes story. I admit that I haven't read any of the books – at 12, I was obsessed with Louisa May Alcott (Little Women) and KM Peyton (Flambards) and I'd discovered Dr Who on the telly – but wasn't surprised to see how much I already knew about the famous detective. Amazing fictional characters are so loved that they creep into our popular culture. And now I'm inspired to read about him. But I might go straight to book two, as I feel like I know Scarlet now.

Being alone on the stage, Lloyd is every character.  His Holmes is hot. He's suave and irresistible (and looks a bit like David Tennant). This is where this study gets really interesting, we get our deductive hats on and co-creator and director Scott Gooding steps in.

Gooding (who hadn't read Holmes but is familiar with nerdy obsession) not only saved the show from being called The Me in Holmes, but ensures that it's really a study of Lloyd.

Lloyd tells us how much he, as a lanky big-nosed kid, wanted to be like his tall, lean, sharp-nosed hero – but we are allowed to read deeper. We see how much his Holmes is the man he still wants to be, even when he admits that he's not smart enough to be Holmes and is only good at creating facades. Gooding makes sure that the man on stage is still revealing more than he intended.

More of this personal study and confession will add extra guts to the next season. There's still a hint of Robert playing a character when he's being himself. Watching a performer open themselves up personally on a stage – and become a person – is what makes good storytelling astonishing. It's what catches our hearts instead of our heads.

Study in Scarlet (A Study of) is an intriguing, honest and funny exploration of why we obsess with fictional creations. As a boy, Robert aspired to be Holmes. As a man we wonder if he still thinks Holmes (for all his depression and faults) is a better man than he is. Holmes was created by a man who probably felt the same. It's the recognition of the self doubt that audiences – including people who don't give a toss about Holmes – will love because we all want to hide behind a mask that makes us look better than we think we are.


This review appears on AussieThearte.com.

Review: Blood

Blood
Vicious Fish Theatre
25 June 2010
Theatre Works

Sergei Belbel's Blood asks what are the limits of a common morality and tests them with exposure to torture. It's an uncomfortable night in the theatre that leaves its audience shellshocked. But, like going on a roller coaster, the experience is worth the fear.

This production continues Scott Gooding and Vicious Fish Theatre's commitment to the works of Catalan playwright Sergi Belbel. Blood follows productions of Caresses and After The Rain. If reviews are to be believed, one was amazing and the other got a bit lost.

In Blood, a woman is kidnapped and told that over the next 40 hours she will lose a finger, an ear, a foot and her head unless her husband pays up. Her torturers try to ease her physical pain, but consider her life a necessary loss for their (unknown) cause. In a circular structure, filled with literal and metaphorical images of blood, we are taken from the torture room to the discoveries of her body parts, and returned to see the results.

Director Gooding quickly makes his audience uneasy with a flash of blinding light followed by a room that's uncomfortably dark, but light enough to see what we don't want to see. The text describes the importance of a clean amputation, but the visceral reactions come from the sound of an electric saw and the fearless performance of Janine Watson.

The sickening anticipation of pain and fear in the opening scene creates a physical reaction that draws the audience through to the conclusion, and the comedy that immediately follows offers some respite, but the relief is slightly frustrating.

Comedy isn't jokes and wit; it's how we get through every day. We laugh at ourselves and the world, so we can cope with the tedious and the unbearable. It's why we hear great jokes at funerals and why there's always some humour in great art. There is a lot of humour in Blood, but the laughs are sometimes misplaced and take us away from the story by reminding us that it's all a game of pretend, rather than giving us the breathing space to cope with the anticipation of the horror that's to come. This style of humour works best when we are laughing only to stop ourselves from running or puking and the  comedy could be toned down in order to make the laughs awkward and uncomfortable.

Watson, Alison Adriano, Chloé Boreham, Jon Peck, James Tresise and Kassandra Whitson are all strong performers who understand the nuances and guts of Blood, but they are not always compelling because they are bringing us the text and the plot, rather than letting us see the stories about people discovering the unimaginable.

One of the strengths of the script is that is brings the hidden blood of the torture room to our everyday world.  As the audience know what's in the appendage-sized packages, the middle scenes have to be about the people who discover the packages. To sustain the gut-churning emotion of the opening, we have to care as much about every character as we do about the woman being tortured. Complete and complex people need to be on the stage, so that instead of asking why on earth the woman doesn't just walk away from the world's most annoying man, we're wanting two damaged souls to find love on that park bench and wondering how the discovery of an amputated finger is going to change their chances.

Theatre is moments of change. Each character is a different person at the end of their scene and showing more of that change, and more of the lightness before the dark, will bring the empathy and closeness that will leave the audience unable to breathe.

The Blood text also suffers from a very literal English translation, to the point that words and phrases received giggles simply because they didn't sound right to the audience or feel right to the actors. Stage language by its nature is contrived and it's up to the actors to make it sound like it is the most natural and only logical way that people talk in this world. The language shouldn't get in the way of what the playwright and creators are saying.

Shows as unnerving as Blood need to settle and change as audiences react. Having survived its first week, the time to see Blood is this week; not only because the season ends, but because it will be so much closer to being something you're unlikely to forget.


This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

Eric

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2008

Eric

Vicious Fish Theatre

10 October 2008

Dancing Dog Cafe

Eric is one of those Fringe shows that was over before people began to hear about it.

With  content as diverse as reality TV pitches (Are you sexier than a fifth grader?), a speed dater who brings his own semen sample, and a Bond villain despairing that his minons dipped his echidnas in poison, Eric is sure to tickle most funny bones – while finding some unexpected new ticklish spots.

Eric is an experiment in form that started when Scott Gooding wanted to do a character comedy, but couldn’t come up with a solid idea for one character. Fortunately, he forged ahead by asking his favourite playwrights to contribute scenes, and the one person sketch show emerged.

Fortunately, he also called upon the directing talent of Scott Brennan. Best known for his work on television sketch shows, Brennan combines the tightness of TV sketch with the freedom, spontaneity and intimacy of theatre. With some clever structuring and measured pacing, he reins in Gooding’s excessive tendencies and knows when to let him loose.

Gooding’s comfortable physicality and genuine likability makes for a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and his performance demonstrates a mightily impressive comic range. All of his characters are unique, authentic and recognisable, and at times it was easy to forget that there was only one person performing. His uncanny channelling of a blow up doll is almost haunting and no one who sees Eric will ever be able to book a brothel appointment without picturing him in a blonde wig.

With ten different playwrights (including Adam J A Cass, Robert Reid and Ben McKenzie), the comedy includes physical, joke, character, commentary, word play and a sobering dash of absurdist black. The Scotts successfully maintain and balance the different voices, without ever letting the differing styles and forms distract from the overall experience.

The Dancing Dog Café in Footscray is a terrific space for a show, but it meant that Eric missed the spontaneous ticket purchases at the Fringe hub or a better known venue. Hopefully Eric will return, because he deserves to be widely seen and welcome some adoring minions of his own.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com