Review: Sammy J and Randy in Ricketts Lane

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL COMEDY FESTIVAL 2010
Sammy J and Randy in Ricketts Lane
27 March 2010
Victoria Hotel

Even though Damo really proposed to Donna this week, Sammy J and Randy in Ricketts Lane affirms that Sammy J and Randy are still my favourite Comedy Festival couple.

Sammy J and Randy (puppeteer wonder Heath McIvor) are always terrific in their solo shows but like sparklie foil and chocolate eggs (not Nestle because of that baby thing in Africa – thanks for reminding us Sammy J) they belong together.

In Ricketts Lane, they are best friends and housemates . Sammy is a lowly underpaid shit-kicking lawyer-cum-pole dancer and Randy is divorced and in need of some quick money. When Sammy finally has a career-making tax fraud case...you know the rest.

But you will be always be surprised. J and McIvor are the most original duo on our comedy stage, who deserve every whoop and squeal that comes from their ever-growing young and gorgeous audience (and the rest of us who won’t miss anything they do).

I’d rave more, but John Richards was also throwing his underwear at the stage and had this to say about the boys:

Sammy J is amazing. Randy is amazing. Heath McIvor is amazing. The songs? Amazing. And the comedy! Amazing. In a word – amazing.

If you liked Sammy J In The Forest Of Dreams you must see this. If you like puppets you must see this. If you like songs about sleep, jokes about scrabble or Barack Obama audio cookery books, you must see this.

Honestly, JUST GO.

Ditto.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Dispatch

Dispatch
Barking Spider Visual Theatre
7 February 2010
fortyfive downstairs

'To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.' Freud, Jung and countless others have tried, but that old playwright still said it best. Storytellers feed on dreams.

Shakespeare knew Hamlet welcomed and feared the state where our unconscious makes us feel what we most fear or most desire, while our logical consciousness tries to break through and make us feel safe. Dreams may be gone when we wake, but their pure emotion stays with us long after we’ve tried to make sense of them and the memory had faded.

Dream sequences abound in our published and filmed stories, but they rarely feel right; there’s too much logic and they make far too much sense. For all our analysis and dream interpretation, the horror and comfort of our dreams fails to fall into the step by step progression of our waking lives.

But storytellers still love dreams. The world of Barking Spider’s Dispatch is heightened and secret, hidden and intimate. It seems to make sense, even if logic and sense insist that it shouldn’t. A blue silk sea drowns and protects, a cradle of bones sooths, the suitcases of the lost reveal hope, a child near death creates a new world to resists the influence of her gods, her protectors, her demons and her puppeteers.

The meeting of puppet and controller/creator is fraught with clashes of logic, but in the Dispatch dreamscape, it makes complete sense and the meeting of tiny Sorrel and the giant Mama Brigitte and Gheda is both heartbreaking and beautiful, as they gently offer comfort and peace, as well as the secrets and pain of death.

Penelope Bartlau openly used her own dreams and the memories of her near death experiences as a child to create Dispatch. Her work continues to create delicate, intricate worlds where puppets reach our hearts and remind us what the great psychoanalysers, dream interpreters and bards keep trying to tell us – that we may all be connected by a world within our being that is forever out of our control.

Sleep tight.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Keeper

The Keeper
La Mama

9 May 2009, season
La Mama Theatre

Never doubt the power of simple, evocative story telling. Like the best bedtime story or campfire yarn, The Keeper gently lulls us into a beautiful, mysterious world and never leaves out the scary or the sad bits.

Chrissie Shaw and Penelope Bartlau developed a tale about the desolate life endured by families on Australian lighthouse islands. This life is viscerally created with a bath of white sea-salt rocks, found objects, undecorated Matryoshka (Russian nesting) dolls and Connie.

As the trusted narrator, Shaw tells us Connie’s story, with tales of loss, hope, danger, despair and acceptance. Shaw is the only person on the stage, who never asks or expects us to watch her perform; but helps us to travel to the islands and discover their secrets for ourselves. The skill of amazing narration is to be forgotten, and it’s Shaw’s strength and consistency that let us care about a non-descript wooden doll.

Director Bartlau creates depth and impact through the simplicity of the objects and puppets. The Keeper is never about re-creating a storm or death, but about giving us the essence of each experience, so that we can create the emotion for ourselves. The striking poignancy of a handful of red rocks is enough to create a silence that is only worn away by the wave-like sound of the moving salt rocks.

This is theatre that respects its audience and trusts in the power and originality of the watchers’ imaginations.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Randy’s Postcards from Purgatory

Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2009
Randy’s Postcards from Purgatory
5 April 2009
Portland Hotel

As his recent pairings with Sammy J have proven, if Heath McIvor has his hand it, it’s worth checking out. Sammy and Heath’s close friend Randy may be the greatest heterosexual male couple on stage, but have parted ways to give us Comedy Festival solo shows. Sammy has regressed to1999 and Randy is sending us Postcards from Purgatory.

Randy is more foul-mouthed, drunken, and animated than most stand ups. His tale of dismal love is augmented with treats like the divinely absurd Flashback Yeti, a really creepy kids TV show (done with shadow puppets), and Randy’s own hand puppetry – but it’s still just an A to B to “now I SEE that I just need to take charge of my own life” tale – and – we’ve heard it all before.

The monologues that captivate us are filled with dilemmas and choices and the teller creates enough detail to bring every element of their semi-fictional world to life. It’s hard not to have a bit of a crush on someone as purple and irresistible as Randy, but it’s hard to care about Randy and Polly, when we don’t know much about her. Compared to the complexity of Randy, his vital offstage characters felt too much like...puppets.

Of course it’s easy to get a giggle by calling Keanu Reeves a cunt, but so is just saying “cunt”. To make it more than a lazy joke, we need to know about Keanu‘s cuntish behaviour. Plot jumps like “Before I knew it I was a Private Detective” gave us rip snorting prop gags, but instantly sacrificed the authenticity of the story. We believe in Randy – so we need to believe in his world as well.

Great story isn’t just good plot. The same night I saw Denise Scott make community circus sound fascinating, and Sam Simmons bring Adelaide’s most bogan-filled Westfield to vivid, almost fit-inducing life. Randy’s story is more interesting, but Denise and Sam made their worlds and their unseen characters live. Postcards from Purgatory is perfectly told by Randy, and worth going just for the telling, but the story needs more detail to make it soar.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Sammy J in The Forest of Dreams

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2008

Sammy J and the Forest of Dreams
October 2008
Fringe Hub

Is it wrong to have a crush on a squirrel? Terry’s a lovely squirrel. He’s fuzzy, soft, has a great sense of humour, is easily manipulated, and appears in Sammy J in the Forest of Dreams.

If you have heard that Sammy J In The Forest Of Dreams is the must-see show of the Fringe - trust what you’ve heard.

Its ephemeral images delicately explore the role of fairy tales and childhood dreams in our contemporary existence...NOT! It’s an arse-raping, puppet-snogging, king-fisting hoot, that’ll have you snorting with laughter.

Local comedian Sammy J and puppeteer Heath McIvor made this show from the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All jokes aside, it demonstrates a solid knowledge of genre, incorporates original, authentic characters and is tied together with a well-told, complex and interesting story.

And it is funny. Very, very, very funny. Just don’t let the puppets fool you into thinking it’s a kid’s show. The opening “Fuck You Disney” song sets the tone – and it’s all down hill from there.

The Fringe season is sold out. So, sucked in if you missed out!

GOOD NEWS
The season is now extended. October 16 to November 9 at the Lithuanian Club.

PS: If you want to see a terrific interview with Terry the Squirrel,  John Richards had a chat with him for The Outland Institute.
 
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Arrival

The Arrival
Spare Parts Thearte
30 April 2008
Fairfax Studio, the Arts Centre

Spare Parts Puppet Theatre began developing their adaptation of Sean Tan’s The Arrival at the same time as Tan was finishing his award-winning graphic novel of the same name. This parallel production is mesmerising and beautiful. The complexity of the book is simplified, but it stays true to Tan’s remarkable story about immigration.  

The emotions and confusion surrounding immigration resonate deeply when we live in a country where so many of us came from somewhere else. What makes this story so powerful is its universal emotional reach. The Arrival is not just about coming to a new strange land; it’s about being an outsider, learning to communicate and searching for friendship and acceptance.

Like the book, Spare Parts’ production communicates without words. Three puppeteers/performers work with the puppet characters. At first it feels strange to see blue, yellow and any colour after the blacks, whites, greys and sepias of Tan’s illustrations, but the colour brings a new level of characterisation, communication and interpretation to the incredible creatures.

The most unique and astonishing aspect of this production is Michael Barlow’s animation. Still and moving images are projected onto the white set. Tan’s still illustration is already so alive that even the thought of movement is superfluous. Barlow chose few images and simplified them to make them move. His animation evokes the mood, intensity and ultimate freedom of the book, and makes the movement feel fluid and natural. We see the dragon tails undulating though the city and the animated time passing flower is stunning.

The Arrival was developed for schools and school groups are the ones lucky enough to see it. As the reach of its emotion is so wide, it is disappointing that there weren’t public sessions, so that the many Shaun Tan fans, and lovers of theatre, could share this gorgeous work.
This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Some Faces You Know

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2006
Some Faces You Know
Ozanam House
14 October 2006
Festival Hub

Some Faces You Know is an outdoor puppet show presented in a cold back alley. This is relevant theatre, sharing authentic and moving stories about people we tend to ignore.

The production is presented by residents at Ozanam House, a crisis accommodation service, and participants of Ozanam Community Centre, a drop in centre for homeless and marginalised people.

They have been involved in a Community Cultural Development (CCD) project, supported by funding from the City Of Melbourne and Arts Victoria. CCD is what used to be called community arts, a practice where the creative process is as important as the final product. Working with artists over four months, the Ozanam House community have created a show that lets us share their stories, their hopes and their dreams. Using a combination of statistics and real stories, it successfully challenges stereotypes and misconceptions about the homeless.

The chosen format of shadow, suit and banner puppets allows participation regardless of previous skill and enables stories to be shared without being put under the personal and direct gaze of the audience.

The choice of venue is perfect. This cold dark alley would normally be actively avoided by the Fringe audience, but we are led in to see that is has been transformed into a welcoming and beautiful space. The extreme Melbourne weather continually reminding us that this is not always such a nice place to hang out.

The joy of open access fringe programs is that this type of show is as valued as the most refined professional production. Presenting it as part of the Fringe has brought a new and welcome audience to this style of project. Some Faces You Know is a genuinely creative, engaging and moving work of theatre that deserves to be seen.