Review: Glory Box Paradise

Glory Box Paradise
Finucane and Smith
13 July 2013
fortyfivedownstairs
to 11 August
fortyfivedownstairs

"Art is fueled by passion, liquor and unrealistic expectations." Welcome to Glory Box Paradise and the ninth year of Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith's subversive and celebratory burlesque where the passion is as potent as any cocktail and unrealistic expectations are turned into exquisite beauty.

Is there anything left to be said about Finucane and Smith's Burlesque Hour shows? I've run out of passionate adjectives to shout about how damn amazing this work continues to be.

Nine years ago, the first Burlesque Hour performed to an in-the-know audience at fortyfivedownstairs and later in the Speigeltent. I'd heard about it and bought a ticket for the tent. Here was something we hadn't seen before and so wanted to see so much more of.

Over 125,000 people have seen versions of The Burlesque Hour – that's more than a full MCG. Artists have come and gone and come back, it's had 50 sell-out seasons all over the world, won awards and collected multi-wordgasm reviews from critics who only disagree about the the degree of superlative.

There's a lot of burlesque in theatres and clubs, but no one is doing anything like this. So what makes this burlesque so different?

Rarely do naked women on display make other women feel good about themselves. Whether it's designed to attract a straight male gaze (that really doesn't attract all straight men) or simply because it's rare for women to publicly de-robe unless they fit an image that was created by applying good lighting, a flattering position and Photoshop.

In her current show, My Life in the Nude at La Mama (finishing this weekend), Maude Davey, who has appeared in many Burlesque Hour shows, talks about her realisation that burlesque is about declaring that you are beautiful are worthy of the audience's gaze.

"I am beautiful and worthy of your gaze" is a magnificent beginning for the many women (and men) doing weekend burlesque classes and sewing sequins on undies for their graduation show, but Glory Box Paradise leaps beyond this premise.

On a Finucane and Smith stage, nakedness has nothing to do with a boring flash of boob. With bodies that don't conform to young, spray-tanned, waxed, enhanced and starved images of female naked perfection, there's never doubt that the women performing know their own beauty – and they don't give a hoot if anyone thinks differently.

There are well over 20, 30 and 40. They have body fat and muscle and scars and marks that declare their bodies as so much more than something to gaze upon. (Moira even refuses to uses a hair straightener and goes frizzy!) And they perform work that's as sexy and powerful as it gets.

These are women who are sexual but are never sexualised. Women whose sexual power has nothing to do with control. Women whose sex lives are shameless. Women who don't support any image or idea that going to repress, disapprove or hurt.  And this may be why every act is greeted with cheers.

The gaze of anyone is welcome, but this is performance that's not about earning the approval of the watcher, but about celebrating the performer and her view of the world. A view that's positive instead of critical and one that joyfully leans to the queer side of the spectrum while welcoming anyone who sits anywhere else.

And if you think you've seen it all before, this year is mostly new material, with a couple of old favourites.

Yumi Umiumare is back with genre re-defining punk Butoh, and dancer Holly Durant joined by new performer Lily Paskas. Melbourne favourite Jess Love (The Candy Butchers) is living in London these days, but is back home with some amazing and hilariously off-centre hoop and skipping routines. She also comes with Ursula Martinez. Ursula continues to treat with her disappearing red hanky and her sex change quick change number with Jess is pure joy (with a hint of raunchy goodness).

New to the Box is Sarah Ward and her alter ego Yana Alana. Yana's naked blue real-women-look-like-this gorgeousness thrilled audiences last week in her own show Between the Cracks, but Yana's lets Sarah out to play. In a mesmerising hologram silver corset, her duet of "Candy" with Moira's drag king is a highlight. The only one who nearly overshadows Sarah is Yana, whose cat-suited song about cats has left me singing "pussy wussy wussy" to my cat.

And there's Moira. There's no one like her. As an artist she creates work that is so from her heart and self that no one will ever be able to recreate it. It's gutsy and lusty and masculine and feminine and  refuses to be anything that isn't Moira Finucane.

Photos by Carla Gottgens.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Mini review: This is beautiful

HELIUM
This is beautiful
The Public Studio
19 July 2013
Tower Theatre, Malthouse Theatre
to 3 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

This is beautiful is the second work in Malthouse's independent theatre program, Helium. As performance art, it never claims to be theatre.

There are three screens, a large fruit and flower display, and three black lumps from which three dress-clad performers appear and ask questions about beauty.

I describe theatre and art as beautiful a lot. This work made me want to define what I think is beautiful.

Beautiful art:

• is created from your heart more than your head
• tells me something I didn't know about you
• reveals something that lets me connect with you and your view of the world
• is created by people who know their audience is smarter than they are
• asks questions beyond the obvious
• shares and celebrates.

Beauty has little connection with aesthetic choice.

This is beautiful is many things, but I didn't think it was beautiful.

Review: Gypsy

Gypsy
The Production Company
10 July 2013
State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 14 July
theproductioncompany.com.au

Caroline O'Connor stars as Rose in Gypsy. Is there anything else you need to know! If you've seen Connor perform, you know you have to see her; if you haven't seen her, you've probably been told that you have to see her; if you have no idea who she is, have a google and you'll know you have to see her.

Caroline O'Connor is an old-style, belt it out with heart and guts super star and the State Theatre erupted for her last night.

Gypsy is the story of stage mother Rose, whose life is managing and creating the vaudeville act performed by her daughters Baby June and Louise. Abandoned by her own mother and three husbands, Rose holds on to what she loves most, refusing to marry the man who adores her (Herbie) and not noticing how much June wants to leave. When June abandons her family, Rose focuses on the less-talented Louise, finally convincing her to perform in a burlesque show. It's loosely based on the memoir of the 30s famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee (called Louise).

Gypsy (Jule Styne, music; Arthur Laurents, book; Stephen Sondheim, lyrics) was first seen on Broadway from 1959 to 1961 with Ethel Merman as Rose. It was nominated for a pile of Tonys, but didn't win any. Revivals made up for this. Other famous Roses include Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti Lupone, and not to forget Rosalind Russell and Bette Midler in screen versions. Rose is the role that women of a certain age look forward to playing, written in a time when women of a certain age were loved and adored and written for.

O'Connor might have her name above the title, but the rest of the cast as just as super and starry. Matt Hetherington nearly grounds Rose as sensible and love-struck Herbie, Gemma-Ashley Kaplan brings guts to Baby June and Christina Tan transforms from downtrodden Louise to powerful Gypsy. And not to forget the scene-stealing cast of young performers, and Chloe Dallimore, Nicki Wendt and Ann Wood as the three strippers who show Louise that you gotta have a gimmick.

And the design team of Adam Gardnir (set), Tim Chappel (costume) and, Paul Jackson and Robert Cuddon (lights) create a stage that feels and looks as great as a multi-billion dollar show with a background of twinkling stars for the nostalgia-inspired back drops and the gorgeous, extra fun era-inspired costumes.

Now in their 15th year, The Production Company continue to produce the musicals that we'd never see from commercial or professional companies. With limited resources and rehearsal time, they give us the old-style shows we've only ever seen on film or ones that haven't been produced in Australia. They are more than concert versions, but less than a full production, but always made with a love of the work that makes them soar.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Belinda Strodder

Mini review: The Sovereign Wife

NEON Festival of Independent Theatre
The Sovereign Wife
Sisters Grimm
12 July 2013
The Lawler
to 21 July
mtc.com.au

Australian epic theatre? Cloudstreet, When the rain stops falling and Secret River can get fucked because The Sovereign Wife is the definitive piece of Australian theatre.

It's about an Irish woman's struggle to find herself and a community in gold-rush Victoria. If it were an 80s epic tv mini series, it would star Sigrid Thornton. It doesn't.

On 12 July 2013, the Sisters Grimm opened at the Melbourne Theatre Company. It was already selling well, but was sold out by lunchtime on 13 July. When too much of our world is trying to pull us back to conservative, straight, repressive and vanilla-essence boring, this is a sign that the world IS changing for the better.

Declan Greene and Ash Flander's Sisters Grimm have sold out their debut MTC season!

The most middle-class, middle-aged elitist company in town have a sold out a show by the queerest, trashiest, filthiest, camp-punk company in town.

Even if the Sydney Theatre Company grabbed them earlier this year, the last time Melbourne saw a Sister's show, it was in a backyard shed (Summertime in the Garden of Eden) and the ones before that were in the freezing cement car park of the Collingwood public housing flats (Little Mercy, Cellblock Booty). It felt wrong going to a Sisters' show in theatre clothes and knowing that the interval wine was going to come in a glass.

And last night, while the nice theatre goers politely clapped The Crucible in the big MTC theatre, the downstairs studio erupted in a standing, stomping and squealing ovation for a show that insults everyone and subverts so many genders, races, sexualities, body shapes, cultures, sub-cultures and bloody Aussie icons that I'm not going to ruin a second of it for those lucky enough to have tickets.

Greene, Flanders and their glorious company's fingers are so on the zeitgeist that the zeitgeist is screaming in multi-orgasmic bliss and begging to have a moment to recompose itself.

 The Sovereign Wife is beautiful, and atrocious, and sexy as all fuck. It's almost too smart for it's own good and the cast need a new lot of adjectives to describe their fuck-you-aussie-aussie-aussie awesomeness. So put the MTC box office number on your phone now because there might be an extra show and when the announcement comes, the MTC switchboard will explode.

PS: I loved When the rain stops falling and will never forget the look Declan Greene gave me when he realised that I wasn't joking when I said so.


Photo by Theresa K Harrison

This won't be on AT, but I hope to write a complex and arty discussion some time this week.

Magic Festival reviews

In 2008, The Australian Institute of Magic founded The Melbourne Magic Festival. There are 40 shows at this year's festival, at the Northcote Town Hall, and many are sold out.

Who doesn't love magic and I've never seen this town hall so crowded with happy punters.

During the day, there are plenty of school-holiday shows and at night there are family shows and ones just for adults.

The full program is at melbournemagicfestival.com.

(And yes, some serious wand waving needs to be done to make the website easier to use.)


Beat the Cheat
Nicholas J Johnson and Ben McKenzie
11 July
Northcote Town Hall
to 13 July



Giant dice, a community chest full of secrets and a board game big enough to walk on! Cool.

BUT to win, you have to beat Nicholas J Johnson, Australia's honest conman, magician and self-confessed dirty rotten cheat. It's not as impossible as it seems, especially as host Ben Mackenzie (who can quote the Dungeon and Dragons rule books) might be on your side.

The audience is split into two (I was on the Not Red team) and individuals play for the team (I would have volunteered if Scrabble, Mastermind or Mousetrap had come up). There are dozens of games that are chosen by the air toss of giant dice and Nick knows the rules for every one – and how to bend them.

With magic, games and nerdiness, Beat the Cheat is more fun than Star Wars Angry Birds or a Hungry Hungry Hippos marathon. And it reminds us that games are so much better when you play with real people instead of a screen. Who wants to come around and play Monopoly?

PS. The Not Red team lost by one point because a Red team member realised that it would be ridiculous to not cheat.


In Dreams
Tim Ellis
11 July
Northcote Town Hall
to 13 July

Magic shows are often put in their own category that brings up images of RSL clubs, kids parties and men in capes with awkward young women in sequins. A trip to the Melbourne Magic Festival will banish such regressive and dull thoughts (or at least restricted them to RSL clubs), because this festival is full of magicians and artists who are letting the hat rabbits run free and taking illusion to far more interesting places.

Tim Ellis is the Artistic Director of the Melbourne Magic Festival, he's won prestigious magic awards and is presenting two of his own shows at the festival.

If you're s a grown up who's stopped believing in magic, his 9 pm show, In Dreams, could change your mind.

In Dreams is about unrequited love and never giving up. Ellis is silent and bare foot as he tells a simple and heartwarming story about being in love and losing that love. He uses the same tricks that are seen in most shows, but adds original twists and their place in the story is more important than the illusion.

The result is a personal and moving story of heartbreak and hope told though flawless magic and the kind of love that defies illusion.

Make your parents disappear

Luke Hocking and Alex da la Rambelje

9 July 2013

Northcote Town Hall

to 12 July

It's tough to argue with a 5-year-old, but I have no reason to disagree with my theatre companion, Ella, who thought the best bit of Make your parents disappear was when they "went outside for no reason", but generally thought it was "really good".

So good that she convinced her mum that she needed their magic book so she could learn some tricks at home and impressed me all afternoon by pulling a plastic pink ring out of my ear.

Magic rocks! Luke and Alex are best-known for their adult shows as two thirds of A Modern Deception, but once they were in grade 5 and grade 3 at magic school and didn't want to go to bed when their mum told them to. They know some tricks, but need something spectacular to keep them out of bed. Luckily the audience suggest that they could make their parents disappear!

As the kids (3–10) sit on the ground and the groan ups sit on chairs, Alex and Luke need help from the audience to do their tricks – and they tend to attract an extremely talented audience – without forgetting that those up the back need to be entertained and are usually determined to see how a trick is done. With these two, they might start believing that it really is magic.

Make your parents disappear is super fun and magictacular. I'd go so far to disagree with Ella and say that it's "really, really good".

The Lucian Swift Chronicles: A tale of magic in Melbourne
Barking Spider Visual Theatre
6 July 2013
Northcote Town Hall
to 6 July

The Flinders Street Station lost and found room used to be in the clock tower. Here collected bags, boxes, brollies and cases that were lost by travellers coming to and leaving Melbourne. Some were united with their owners and some were left to collect dust, unable to tell their story because their person was missing.

A young woman looks through the lost and found treaures. We don't know if she's looking for something she lost, but she finds an old case that belonged to Lucian Swift, the Gentleman Trickster. Trying on his tails and top hat, she discovers his secrets and releases some of his stories that were lost and hidden for so many years.

With alchemy akin to ice cream and sprinkles, magician Jo Clyne worked with director Penelope Bartlau and members of Barking Spider to create this captivating show that combines magic with story and sends love back though Melbourne's history.

It's festival run was short, but let's hope that we see it again – and how amazing would it be to see it performed in Flinders Street Station.

PS. Until seeing this show, it hadn't occurred to me just how many magicians are men and was told how difficult it is to buy magic props for women. Hmmm.  To help fix this balance, I've already taken a 5-year-old girl to see a show and she's promised to show me a trick the next time I see her.

Lucien photos by Sarah Walker

Review: Everybody's got something to hide

MELBOURNE CABARET FESTIVAL
Everybody's got something to hide (except for me and my monkey)
Melissa Langton, Libby O'Donovan and Mark Jones
5 July 2013
Village Melbourne, Ormond Hall
to 5 July

An art deco dance hall, red wine, hot chips and music by The Beatles performed by three uber-delightful cabaret performers: it doesn't get much better. And I finally got to some of Melbourne's Cabaret Festival.

Melissa Langton, Libby O'Donovan and Mark Jones are three of Australia's favourites with a diversity of experience between them that ranges from innumerable sold-out shows to music theatre stages and composing and musical direction. They're pretty cool.

Melbourne only got one chance to see the show they've been touring around they country: Everybody's got something to hide (except for me and my monkey): The Lennon & McCartney Songbook.

And got to see it in the divine deco Ormond Hall with its iron lace balcony railing, gold and lush brown velvet curtains and a mood that makes it feel like it's 1946 and we're about to start booming some babies. Shame that it's not used for more shows.

Their show's all music by The Beatles, so it's pretty hard to go wrong and there's no one in the audience who doesn't know every song they perform and every song in the huge (and read by Libby) list of missed ones. Although in a remote town they upset a local who stormed out declaring "this isn't rock and roll!". It's not. It's a cabaret-style medley of the songs arranged in unexpected, witty and just-plain-gorgeous ways – and a yodelling version of "Ob la di, Ob la da".

All of which is still a bit odd for music that was pure anti-establishment rebellion from young men in their 20s. Their 20s! John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote music that's still loved, covered and worshipped 50-odd years later when they in their 20s! (And I look forward to the Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails cabaret lounge shows.)

There was a year in the 70s when ABBA were the most popular thing in Australia. I was 8–9 and nothing could convince me that they weren't the best band in the history of all bands and of all future bands. And given my record collection consisted of some stories on tape, Mark Holden, ONJ and some nursery rhymes, who could dare argue with me. So my father gave me his double cassettes (in a cardboard box case) of the Blue and Red albums (I wasn't allowed to touch the records). I listened to these tapes endlessly and changed my mind about ABBA. My father didn't give me much, but he gave me The Beatles and that's pretty cool.

What's missing from Everybody's got something to hide is personal connections to the music and the band. The closest it gets is Mark saying that they wrote great music, but none tell us why they love this music, why they chose the songs, who their favourite Beatle is (better than any psyc test for explaining personality: I'm John) or why they've loved taking this show and this music to venues all over Australia – and do they care that it's not rock and roll. The show's as adorable as a labradoodle and a kitten snoozing in the sun, but there's an empty space begging for their stories about The Beatles; otherwise – for all its musical prowess – it's kind of reducing this music to the lounge music that it was never written to be.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Mini review: Lord of the Flies

HELIUM
Lord of the Flies
US-A-UM and Malthouse Theatre
7 July 2013
The Tower, Malthouse Theatre
to 14 July
malthousetheatre.com.au

An adaption of William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies open's Malthouse Theatre's Helium program: five new works by independent artists. Flies is the debut for US-A-UM, who are based in Sydney and founded by director Kip Williams and producers Samuel J Hagen and Kate McBride.

The season's sold out, so hold tight to your tickets or kill a beast to secure one.

Set in a private boarding school, genteel furniture (design by Michael Hankin) becomes the island the children are stranded on and is soon as menacing and unknown as the dark forest and as exposed as the open beach.

The boys are played by young women, who keep the male names and behave like young teenagers who have been torn away from their homes and believe they might be the only people left alive. It's not women playing men and any assumptions about gender disappear in moments. And having gone to a private girls school, I recognised everything.

It's a stunning reading of the book. It grasps Golding's tone and turns it up to deafening, while bringing a sense of right-now attitudes and questions, and telling it in ways that only theatre can.

And the cast are sensational: Alexandra Aldrich, Zoe Boesen, Cat Davies, Michele Durman, Stacey Duckworth, Emma Griffin, Fiona Pepper, Contessa Treffone and Eloise Winestock.  It's impossible to name one above the other as their performances are so consistent and they work as an ensemble who wouldn't consider elevating one performance above an other.

If you can't find a ticket, best to book for the four other Helium shows, and there are only a handful of tickets left for the final MTC NEON show, Sisters Grimm's The Sovereign Wife.

Mini review: Persona

Persona
Fraught Outfit and Malthouse Theatre
5 July 2013
Beckett Theatre
to 14 July
malthousetheatre.com.au

I missed Persona last year. I came to regret this, but a consistent rule of reviewing is that you will miss the show you should see. It sold out its Theatre Works season, won a pile of Green Room Awards and I heard, "Did you see Persona?" too many times to dare miss its return at Malthouse.

I hadn't seen the Ingmar Bergman film that it's based on, but YouTube shows me how much it honours the film while being something that could only be told in a theatre. It's one of those works where direction (Adena Jacobs), design (Dayna Morrissey, set and costume; Danny Pettingill, lighting; Russell Goldsmith, sound) and performance (Meredith Penman, Karen Sibbing and Daniel Schlusser) are inseparable and the audience are as immersed in the process as the creators

It's bloody good.

And it deserves much more than a hurried response, so please read Alison Croggon's Theatre Notes review. She's since seen this season as well and says it's just as wonderful.

Review: The Crucible

The Crucible
MTC
27 June 2013
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner
to 3 August
mtc.com.au1

Arthur Miller's The Crucible was my favourite play when I was 17 and, along with Lillian Hellman, Miller was my favourite playwright. This play made me read the rest of his work and so many more by mid-twentieth-century American writers. It opened the door to an astonishing and powerful library. But it's been over a quarter of a century since I read it, so, yesterday, I grabbed my high school copy (which tells me I wrote an essay about its fire symbolism) and read it again.

It's definitely a product of his time. First performed in 1954, Miller wrote a play about the seventeenth century witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, as a response to US Senator Mcarthy's communist trials in the 1950s, which were especially devastating to writers, performers and anyone connected to the evil liberal arts. In high school, we learnt that this was an allegory, a damn fine one.

Still, as I read it, I was struck by just how relevant and powerful a production could be today in Australia. It's a world where women (and their supporters) are attacked, trialled and killed for no reason other than their gender. They are trialled by middle-aged men who base their findings on a belief in a big male god and on their certain belief that young women must be possessed by the big male devil because they surely couldn't be behaving like scared children. The Crucible or Ditch the Witch or Grow up Lindsay. Or, it's a world where women – especially young women – are harlots or angels; a world where a middle-aged man possibly rapes his teenage servant (subtextually, it can go rape or consent) in a barn, who is then fired by the man's wife (ensuring she can't get work) and later declared a whore by the man who certainly took her virginity and treated her like crap.  Maybe the MTC's production isn't just a star vehicle for Diver Dan from Seachange?

With the text still very fresh in my mind, I was excited about this production.

My excitement lasted seconds.

I think director Sam Strong made a bad sit com about the Salem witch hunts (as a star vehicle for Diver Dan in the worst wig ever put on a stage) by ensuring that any faith, belief or hope is a joke.

But that's just me hazarding a guess. So, what about some facts? Well, there were a lot of giggles on opening night – and some guffaws. There are some jokes in the play, but it's not funny. On the page, the scene where Diver Dan declares "whore" and the teenage girls ensure his arrest are chilling; they got the biggest laughs of the night.

Why?

No one in that stage world believes in the god they profess to believe in. Every character in The Crucible acts from their belief in God AND Satan and their fear of eternal suffering. Even the non-believers believe to some extent; belief is the rule that governs this world. They believe in the same way that Senator McCarthy believed that communists were real and could destroy America. They believe it like we believe the sun will set tonight and that Myki is a force of evil.

A play about god and belief can never make sense in a stage world that's godless. I think that's why we laughed so much.

Or it could be the odd acting choices. Act 1 takes place in a girl's bedroom. Depending on the charaters' knowledge, this child is either very ill, terrified or possessed by the devil, but the unconscious child is ignored by everyone around her, unless she's being spoken to or examined. Eleven people pass through the room and 10 of them treat the child – who is either very ill, terrified or possessed by the devil – like she's a beige rug on the bed. No wonder we laughed when the good Reverend Hale asked for help in case she flew away. The eleventh character, Rebecca Nurse, was the only one who looked at the child with any semblance of care and tried to cover the girl's naked legs.

But would I have liked this production when I was 17? Maybe.

After all, Dale Ferguson's design of a pure white building in a hostile black world is stunning and made more so with Paul Jackson's lighting that creates a parallel shadow play. And Julia Blake (Rebecca Nurse), Sarah Ogden (Mary Warren), Anita Hegh (Elizabeth Proctor), John McTernan (Giles Corey) and Grant Cartwright (Reverand Hale and only after the interval) get close to overcoming their direction and bringing real life and pain to their characters. And Diver Dan? David Wenham's as authentic and engaging as his wig.

If this were part of an education season, I would have said it's a dull and oddly literal interpretation of a play that deserves better, but this is a $59 for under 30s and a $99 tickets for students on Saturday night ($115 for people not continuing or having completed their education) and you can see the kick-arse dancing monkey for that or take your family to Circus Oz or see the MTC's other work, Solomon and Marion. If I'd spent $59 to see this as a 17-year-old (or around $100 as a grown up), I would have hated the MTC for letting me down so much.

Photo by Jeff Busby.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Mini review: The Penelopiad

The Penelopiad
Stork Theatre
30 June 2013
La Mama Courthouse
to 7 July
lamama.com.au

Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale and so much more) wrote The Penelopiad as a novel in 2005 and it was soon adapted for theatre.

Homer's Odessy tells the tale from Odysseus point of view and Penelope is the pretty little thing waiting at home. Attwood tells it from Penelope's point of view, with the bonus of telling it from after death, when she has the benefit of hindsight. It retains its "read me" origins, but seeing it performed is almost like having the author read it to you, in all the voices that she imagined.

Stork Theatre's production is selling out because it's terrific.

They've decreased the 12 maids to three and it's set in a spirit world cabaret club where the maids (Andi Snelling, Mia Landgren, Jane Barry) play all the parts as Penelope (Carolyn Bock) tells us what it was really like back in Ithaca while her husband went to save Helen, built a big wooden horse and was tempted by all sorts on the way home.

Review: My Life in the Nude

My Life in The Nude
La Mama
3 July 2013
La Mama Theatre
to 21 July
lamama.com.au

Maude Davey's My Life in the Nude is beautiful, moving and affirming and I'm thrilled to see her cunt any time.

And I love that she says cunt and uses "cunt" as a positive, gorgeous and sexy word, not the worst thing you can call anyone.

Maude's 50 this year and has spent the last 25 years performing naked, among many other wonderful things. It started when she won a Ms Wicked (lesbian BDSM) competition in the the late 80s and continued creating subversive and exciting acts that eventually moved from the queer clubs (I remember wearing tights in the 90s to hide the fact that I DID shave my legs) to travelling the world with Finucane & Smith's The Burlesque Hour.

How I'd love to see the face of 25-year-old Maude being told that she'd still be pulling a strawberry out of her cunt in her 40s to tables full of very nice middle-class people from Toorak, who paid a nice chunk of cash to see her and toast her with posh fizz. I took a friend to The Burlesque Hour one year and she hated it for that exact reason. She said she'd seen the Ms Wicked shows and to see the same act in a nice theatre being politely applauded by the same people who it was created to diss was too wrong.

I didn't see Ms Wicked (I was in Perth in the early 90s), so The Burlesque Hour has been the closest I can get – and I've loved every naked moment.

This show is all about Maude's naked moments, most of which have nothing to do with being nude.

In the intimacy of La Mama, on a vagina-inspired stage, she performs her favourite and best-known pieces, and talks about what it's been like to appear naked on stage.  The "You're so brave" comments used to be greeted with the inner response of "Am I that hideous?" and some of her stories (and those from other people who perform naked) are as sad as they are positive. No matter how much we intellectualise and believe that "Every one is beautiful and worthy of our gaze", the "Am I that hideous?" negative voice is very strong.

Maude's retiring her naked pieces and this show is the last chance to see them again, or for the first time. If you haven't seen them: this is Melbourne theatre, queer and burlesque history, so you really have to see her cunt. And it's a chance to cheer everything positive and exciting that subversive burlesque has given us, everything that's beautiful about naked bodies (especially those of middle-aged women; we don't look like we did at 20, but we're so much more interesting and fun now), the joy of looking at naked people and to give a well-deserved ovation to every exciting and positive cunt.

And each night is a special guest. Last night, it was the super-delightful and hooptastic Anna Lumb.

The show's directed by Maude's sister Anni, and for the best nude double you may ever see, she's also directing Yana Alana's Between the Cracks at 45downstairs until Sunday. Book here.

And one more thing I love about Maude.

A few years ago, I took a 20-something writer to see The Burlesque Hour. This young woman was, and always is, very happy to see naked women and has enjoyed the naked company of many women. During one of Maude's pieces, she tapped me on the arm and whispered, "bush". It took me a couple more "bushes" to get it. This is someone who has seen and adored many vaginas, but was genuinely shocked at Maude's pubic hair. I knew that there were plenty of women removing their down-there hair, but until that moment had no idea that people in their 20s are disgusted by pubes – even the radical leftie feminist lesbians!

So, on behalf of all of us who refuse to submit and prefer a bit of softness and mystery, thank you for your bush.

Mini review: Light Within Darkness

Light Within Darkness
La Mama
30 June 2013
La Mama Theatre
to 30 June
lamama.com.au

Sitting in the always-welcoming La Mama courtyard before the show, a seemingly grumpy dude in an orange shirt and well-grown grey beard tells two people off for talking when he is. Once he has everyone's attention, he asks if any of us "feel sad, politically impotent or the world is not working for you".

Yep.

He goes on to tell us that this is normal and reminds us there are remedies outside of the pharmaceutical industry.

This is Lloyd Jones and he devised, designed and directed Light Within Darkness in collaboration with a 20-member ensemble and the contribution of many more in a process that began last year.

This isn't neat and tidy scripted narrative theatre. It's an experience that changes each night and for every member of the audience.

Starting with a frustrated anger about the medicalisation of normal (if troubled) emotional and physical conditions and the quick-fix diagnoses and dispensing of anti-depressants and the like, it's a show that starts in a far-too- familiar waiting room with numbers and magazines, slides into a Last-Supper tableau of frightening normality and continues to play with and stress that it's ok to not feel perky every day; that it's ok to feel, even if the feeling isn't nice.

As someone who received a quick fix diagnosis of depression and didn't believe it, I was with this show from its premise. Turned out, my diagnosis was incorrect; I had most of the symptoms of "here's a script to make your brain better", but they indicated a different illness. I now take one of those drugs, but am so glad that I refused the initial script because it would have made me feel worse.

Photo by Rick Evertsz

Review: Story of O

NEON Festival of Independent Theatre
Story of O
The Rabble
28 June 2013
The Lawler
to 7 July
mtc.com.au

Carousel ponies, huffy walk-outs and a personal trigger warning when you pick up your ticket: The Rabble have adapted the Story of O for the MTC's sensational Neon season.  It's confronting and confirming and I loved it so much that it hurt a bit to watch.

I love The Rabble's work with the kind of love that defies any attempt at a star rating. In preparation for their version of Story of O by Pauline Réage, I read the book; the reading was less painful than O's preparation at Roissy, but I didn't enjoy it and had no idea what to expect on the stage.

In 1954, Anne Declos was a successful 47-year-old journalist and novelist when she wrote this tale as a gift to her boss and male lover, who fancied the writing of the Marquis de Sade. Despite winning the prestigious French literary prize, Prix des Deux Magots, she didn't publicly reveal herself as the author until 40 years after it was published.

It's ostensibly about a young woman's complete submission to secure her lover. A submission that includes being unable to cross her legs, multiple penetration by anonymous men (without any hint of lube, condoms or a moment to catch a breath to scream a non-existent safe word), whipping, branding and her ultimate exposure (considered almost too shocking at the time) is the waxing off of her pubic hair. And that's before it gets really de-humanising.

Without beginning an argument about BDSM, O gets no sexual pleasure from her submission. It's not about her; it's about her doing it for him, even when he's not around to witness and even when she realises that he doesn't want her. And it's narrated by a distanced and anonymous voice, whose gentle – almost prudish – prose leaves it as erotic as a Jehovah's Witness magazine. If pornography is meant to arouse, there's something much more to this book than its reputation, and its popularity may rest on how its distanced narration and calm description puts responsibility on the reader to imagine what O feels.

Co-creators Kate Davis and Emma Valente make us see how O feels.

And see it in ways far removed from the novel – but this doesn't matter as they only use a handful of words from the text, which it is as accurate as it needs to be and as creative as it should be.

As co-artistic directors of The Rabble, Davis designed and Valente directed, but it's difficult to sense a clear differentiation. With exquisite beauty and understanding, they've taken this fantasy tale about submission out of the imagination of its readers, queered it up, reversed some genders, whirled it around, put it in close up and thrust it back at us with such bold confidence that we understand how it's impossible to say no.

Aesthetically, the 60s French polo necks, jaunty stripes and elastic garters are given a nod, but O's world isn't wealthy Parisian chateaus. At first, it's a girly dream with merry-go-round ponies and pink flowers scattered on the floor. But horses are beasts to ride and poles are used to tie horses up. And even with its flung ribbons, party hats and ice cream, all is not as pretty as it looks.

The cast are as desirous and pleasing as the world they play in. Gary Abrahams is Rene (O's lover), Jane Montgomery Griffiths is Sir Stephen (who is given O by Rene), Pier Cathew is Anne-Marie (the older lesbian who brands O for Sir Stephen), Dana Miltins is Jacqueline (loved by O and wanted by Rene) and Emily Milledge is Nathalie (Jaqueline's teenage sister who just wants to be like O). None of these relationships are spoken on the stage, but each take their character from the book and let them live in this through-the-looking glass world where everything about their book behaviour is questioned.

Milledge's Nathalie is especially moving and as Miltin's seven-month pregnant belly is ignored by Jacqueline, it's gold-clad roundness says more about the sexual portrayal of pregnant women than words could dare.

Which leaves Mary Helen Sassman as O. Her performance transcends any depiction of O that has gone before. She's scared, hurt, excited and – this is the twist – lets O say "No" and choose to keep going. She keeps going towards boredom, acceptance and far more hurt without ever revealing if O's own desires are met. Sassman's performance is already being described as fearless, but I say it's honest. It's so uncompromisingly honest that I think the walk-outs are because she makes them feel everything that O feels, which is far more confronting than the sex and violence shown.

So far, people have walked out. This is wonderful. How often does theatre create a response so powerful that people are brave enough to walk out when their exit is seen by the audience and the performers? On the night I went, the walk-outs were men and I wanted to run after them and tell them to go back in and really look at the stage, because this is how women are seen. If it's so shocking or offensive to leave when everyone on stage is fully clothed, the sex and violence are clearly faked and when kitchen and domestic appliances are the offending objects, perhaps a sense of the true offence can be felt.

If you want to run, ask why and remember the gift is for those who stay and laugh or cringe or cry or wonder if they should be feeling as good as they do.

Story of O is theatre like no one else dares to make.

Photos by Guy Little

This will also appear on AussieTheatre.com in a couple of days