Review: Mag and Bag

Mag and Bag
La Mama
7 November 2010
La Mama Courthouse

Mag and Bag live in a suburb that's still so working class that the tins are home brand, the Herald Scum St Mary poster has pride of place on the bar fridge and being called a Liberal is far worse than be called a cunt.

Barry Dickens wrote Mag and Bag in the late 70s and, even with some hip Latham and Abbot jokes, it's comforting to to see that little changes. There still nothing as good as cup of tea, curlers still create the best hair dos and bloody nature strips always have to be mowed. And I for one am looking forward to being a nutty old lady whose language will make the neighbours blush.

In a gorgeously designed house of chicken wire and op shop paintings, are two old women who have no one left to fight with. Like grotesque panto dames, they bicker, fight and abuse each other with a verbal dexterity only outweighed by their love. If it's true that we can really only be total cows to the people who love us, then Mag and Bag are BFFs... or they they believe that fighting is better than being old and forgotten. It's easy to laugh at swearing old ladies, but Camelina Di Gulglielmo and Maria Portsi let us see the regret behind the laughs.

Director Laurence Strangio (who directed Jackie Smith's The Flood last year) again captures the playwright's voice with an authenticity that lets us see the characters with the love Dickens had creating these two old horrors. So even if we might not want them as neighbours, watching them is a laugh-out-loud joy.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

Guest Review: Foxholes of the Mind

Foxholes of the Mind

Larrikin Ensemble

La Mama Courthouse Theatre

10 November 2010 


Review by Karla Dondio


Foxholes in the Mind is a heart-wrenching account of the loss suffered by men and women who return home from war and the families they return home to. 

The setting is present day where Frank (Peter Finlay), a Vietnam War veteran, is struggling to keep his marriage to the long-suffering Trish (Joanne Davis) together. What’s clear from the outset is that Frank’s drinking and outbursts have marred family life leading to everyone being estranged from him. Frank starts a therapy group for veterans and nurses suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and, as the characters unravel, we see to the tragic extent to which war scars those that serve.

While watching this play, it struck me that what men and women lose at war is an innocence and morality that propels most of us forward everyday and makes us feel okay about ourselves. Imagine waking up every morning knowing you had killed another human being and witnessed your mates dying. As this candid piece demonstrates, it’s an unbearable weight that manifests in mental disorders, abusive relationships and, for some, suicide.

Bernard Clancy has written a bold and confident narrative featuring strong characters and a moving story of loss and redemption. The script is eloquent and Clancy is courageous enough to avoid political correctness without losing his key message: why do we send men and women off to war when we know the aftermath destroys not just the lives of those that served but families and communities? The script is probably 5–10 minutes too long with some of the conversations with Frank and Trish at the end sounding repetitive; nonetheless, for the most part, this piece has you on the edge of your seat.

Peter Finlay is fearless in this role as Frank. He plays Frank with both a toughness and fragility that exudes a sense that Frank is a bomb about to detonate. His performance is pitch perfect. He is supported by an able cast featuring Joanne Davis, Adrian Mulraney and Mauren Hartley who all give rounded performances and brings heart to this beautiful and tragic piece.

Rememberance Day on 11 November usually passes me by without stopping for a minute’s silence, but after seeing this play it was hard not stop this week to remember that innocent lives are lost in war, on both sides, both those that do not return and those that do. Lest we forget. Unfortunately, we have and governments still send men and women off to war.

Review: My Name is Rachel Corrie

My Name is Rachel Corrie
Daniel Clarke
4 November 2010
fortyfivedownstairs
to 14 November
fortyfivedowmstairs.com

My Name is Rachel Corrie opens with a recording of a young woman screaming for her life. Even through static, it's a sound no one wants to hear and no one should ever have to make. This is the story of a young woman, told in her own words that overpower any political opinions brought to the theatre.

I remember Rachel Corrie's death in 2003. Well, I remember reading that an American student was killed by a bulldozer while protesting in Gaza. I felt for her family and suspected that youth and ignorance may have played a part. My Name is Rachel Corrie has ensured that I will never forget her name and I know her for much more than a headline about a conflict that – no matter how much I read about – I struggle to understand.

Rachel was 23 when she went to Palestine. Like so many well-educated, well-loved students from affluent cities and neo-liberal (her phrase) parents, she was involved in student activism and wanted to see the people at the other end of their tax dollars that support Israel. Rachel joined the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent direction action group, in Rafah on the Gaza strip where she lived with locals and actively protested the destruction of civilian homes by the Israeli military.

For all its harrowing revelations about the struggle for existence in Rafah, it isn't an anti-Israel piece of polemic theatre. It's simply the story of one young woman's experience of the Gaza strip.

Created by Alan Rickman and Katharine Vine in 2005, the script is created from Rachel's diary entries and emails. These personal thoughts and opinions were meant for no one beyond herself or her family and reveal a subjective view so honest that she reveals her soul. Without the pressure and self-censorship imposed by a judgemental audience, Rachel wrote about dealing with international white person privilege, the difficulty of criticising Israel without sounding anti-semitic and ultimately questioned her belief in human nature. If great writing is all about honesty, great writers should learn from Rachel Corrie.

Director Daniel Clarke (The Event at this year's Melbourne Fringe) and designer Cassandra Backler find the theatrical in a text not written to be performed. The pain of watching Rachel packing boxes knowing her parents will unpack them underlies the joy of meeting her, children's shoes mix with the rubble of destroyed homes and toy-sized military bulldozers show how small a human can be.

Hannah Norris (who was wonderful in Justin Hamilton's Goodbye Ruby Tuesday) is Rachel. No more needs to be said. In a remarkably honest performance, Hannah ensures that Rachel is not noble or heroic and never lets Rachel forsee the death that awaits her. Rachel never set out to change the world, she just wanted to understand one small part of it and found herself in a situation that defies understanding.

My Name is Rachel Corrie is the kind of theatre that can change the way we see the world.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

What the...MKA closed?!

Days after opening an incredible season of play readings, new group MKA Theatre have been forced out of their venue by the City of Yarra.

John Bailey has the media release and all the info here.

Guest Review: Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher

Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher
The William May Corporation
24 October 2010
Atheneum
carriefisher.com

Review by Josephine Giles

Tell your friends you have seen Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking and chances are they will want to know about the piles of cocaine that reputedly dotted the Star Wars trilogy sets. But Fisher, who will forever be defined by her portrayal of Princess Leia in those block-buster movies, offers much more in this show than a string of sordid anecdotes of celebrity drug abuse.

By the end of Wishful Drinking you will probably not know a lot more detail about the life your new besty Carrie than you have read in the tabloids or seen on talk shows.  We all know she was born of Hollywood royalty Debby Reynolds and Eddy Fisher; that she struggled with addictions to various substances after her early stardom in the Star Wars movies; that she was in a tumultuous relationship with, then married, then divorced the singer-songwriter Paul Simon; that she wrote a number of bestselling novels - one of which, Postcards From The Edge was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley Maclaine; and that she has become somewhat of a pin-up girl for bi-polar disorder, the illness she has wrestled with for many years, but that has provided the fodder for some of her best writing.

What you will come away with, however, is an appreciation of Carrie’s significant talent as an actress and writer as she fleshes out the above in a highly entertaining oral memoir / slide night.  Arriving on stage singing “Happy Days Are Here Again”, tossing glitter into the audience, Carrie kicks off her shoes and settles into her cosy lounge room of a set which is dominated by a centrally placed large screen.   Demonstrating skills borrowed from the best stand-ups, she establishes an early intimacy with her audience with a hilarious question and answer session about sudden death and she soon has us well and truly warmed upped. 

Once it’s established that we’re all best friends, Carrie, with the assistance of projections, leads us through the story of her life, loves and illness.  From her statement “If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable”, we learn that Carrie has not just the capacity, but the necessity to laugh at her life. So for all the considerable wit with numerous LOL moments - plus the pleasure of being entertained by someone we have all known for so long - we end up with admiration for Carrie’s capacity to endure, and create some sort of sense out of, a chaotic life lived out under the spotlight.

Carrie’s delivery is conversational and seemingly off the cuff, but this is merely evidence of her understated virtuosity. This is a tightly scripted show, polished through productions across America since 2006. The recipient of various awards for solo performance, Wishful Drinking is the work of a gifted storyteller.

At one point Fisher describes her show as narcissistic and audience pleasing, which it is, but I hate to think of where our entertainment industry would be if that description were grounds for disqualification. Carrie Fisher’s intense self-awareness adds a depth to the traditional comedic style of self-deprecation, and her intelligence and warmth shine and engage. 

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

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: Tomorrow, in a year

MIAF 2010

Tomorrow, in a year

Hotel Pro Forma

Melbourne International Arts Festival

20 October 2010

the Arts Centre, State Theatre

to 23 October

www.melbournefestival.com.au

I hated the first 20 or so minutes of Tomorrow, in a year. Hate is a strong word, but I just didn't get why I was there. Not long after, I didn't want this extraordinary and beautiful art to end. Somewhere along the way it all made complete sense and my brain and my heart worked together to be captivated in a way that will make me resent theatre that doesn't leave me feeling so alive and inspired.

There's been little controversy at this year's festival. Sure, people have liked and disliked shows, but none have provoked such extremes as the first two performances of Tomorrow, in a year. Words like pretentious, banal and "like a Monty Python satire" have been tweeted with abandon; while at the bar after the show all I heard were superlatives like astonishing and sublime. My own tweet was: Fuck me wow.

Danish company Hotel Pro Forma worked with Swedish electronic music wonders The Knife to create what's being called electro pop opera. I know how influential and amazing The Knife are because I talked with a self-confessed entertain-me-now, young and gorgeous gen Y after the show. The Knife's music brought her to her first opera and her fifth theatre experience. She got it. It's not just for the pretentious types who have seen hundreds of theatre shows.

Atmospheric electronic sounds and recorded natural sounds combine with three disparate voices – remarkable operatic soprano (Kristina Wahlin), electro-pop (Jonathon Johansson) and actor/singer (Laerke Winther) – that are enhanced, manipulated and allowed to sound like themselves. As the music develops its complexity and structure, the effect is like the first time you realise that caramel and salt belong together or you fall in love with someone who's not your type.

Inspired by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, Hotel Pro Forma explore his wonder, confusion and awe of the natural world that us humans had barely begun to appreciate. This wonder changed the way humanity sees itself. At a time when creationism is still being taught to children and climate change skeptics are slowing our political and personal reactions (and taking up far too much of our media space), perhaps we need to be reminded of the complexity, indescribable beauty and adaptive qualities of our world.

But Darwin was just a man and suffered loss and experienced love like the rest of us. Humanity is brought into the world with a gentle narrative about the death of his daughter. When the libretto changes from it's poetic descriptions of nature to "We have lost the joy of the household", the work moves from an exploration of beauty to something human and emotional and reminds us how we too can and will adapt when our lives change without our consent. 

The design of a giant light box, back projections and laser light at first seems at odds with the descriptions of entombed animal carcasses and the costumes reminded me far too much of Blakes 7 (80s BBC sci fi), but it didn't take long to understand the contradictions. The dancers, who looked like they belong at a rave dedicated to The Knife, moved like seaweed dancing "upon the moving mountain of foam" or like plant cells multiplying and reaching to the sunlight, and the design moved to reveal its workings (and satisfy our curiosity) and become something new.

If the music had been live, the experience would be lifted to a new level – that's me just wanting more icing on the cake – but it's frustrating that the design didn't incorporate the surtitles  (that were always going to be there) into the stage picture. After The Blue Dragon's recent mid-titles, I never want sur- or sub-titles to pull my attention away from the stage again.

There's two more performances or Tomorrow, in a year. It's probably best that you don't trust to us who write, tweet or drunkenly slur our opinions at the Curve bar and discover for yourself what you think about it.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com 

Photo by Claudi Thyrrestrup


If you've bought your ticket, don't watch this as it gives away some wonderful moments (Hotel Pro Forma put it on YouTube, so it's not filmed by some twat in an audience) – but if you're umming and erring, it might help you decide if it's your kind of show.

If you're like me, you'll want to go here and get the soundtrack.

GBGV are in town

At the 2009 Fringe I developed a healthy crush on everyone in Brisbane-based Ghost Boy With Golden Virtues.

I saw Exit and swore I'd see them every chance I could. It was one of my favourite shows of the year.

And here's the review from Inpress.

Well, they are in Melbourne on Friday and Saturday. I'm at MIAF shows both nights...can't complain, but I know they won't be anywhere near as sexy.

If you missed them last year...here's all the info. Take someone you fancy.

MIAF highlight

Tomorrow in a Year

Finally a show that made me want to buy drinks and talk to strangers about such an exquisite piece of art.

Review will come, but it's hands down my MIAF highlight and I'd see it again if I didn't have shows on every other night this week.

I hated the first 20–30 minutes – really hated it – then it all made sense and I didn't want it to end.

Booking details here. It's on until Saturday.

Review: The Beckett Trilogy

MIAF 2010

The Beckett Trilogy

Gare St Lazare Players Ireland

Melbourne International Arts Festival

15 October 2010

the Arts Centre, Playhouse

www.melbournefestival.com.au

Three hours, one man, one writer – Go! Some people didn't make it, but so what; everyone else was spellbound.

I am embarassed to admit that The Beckett Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable has sat unread in my bookshelf for many years. Some of Beckett's plays sit nearby, but this trilogy of novels with their long dense text that rarely gives the breath of paragraph break, sat untouched with its unbroken virgin spine. Within a few moments of Coner Lovett walking onto the stage, I knew I was going to read Samuel Beckett's novels.

Coner Lovett has performed 19 Beckett roles in 24 Beckett productions in theatres all over the world and my raving opinion can only agree with every rave review that I've read. He has performed in the plays, but found his reason to be on stage when he developed performances of the novels.

Guided by director Judy Hegarty Lovett, he brings voice to these novels; a voice so authentic that I heard it again as soon as I opened a page of Malloy. He brings the space and hesitation and nuance to the text and gives it a life so vivid that his will be Beckett's voice in my head from now on.

The performance is an empty stage, where a baldish man in variations of a black overcoat with brown scuffed shoes stands, with his feet turned out, in three spotlight variations. With nothing to distract, the details of how he stands or the mirrored hand gestures in each piece become vital and beautiful. And the text...I had no idea Beckett was so funny and so bleak (and I thought I loved Beckett before.) I left with images like a parrot saying "Fuck the son of a bitch" and green tea with saccharine and powdered milk, and the voice of a man hoping that he finds death a change.

There were times in Malone Dies where I drifted (possibly because it was in the third person, so not quite as personal), but it didn't matter, as it was so easy to just watch Coner perform, and even coming back to the text half way, it's so rich and evocative that missing a bit of plot didn't hurt.

I've seen some terrific shows this festival, but I think The Beckett Trilogy is the one I'll remember.


This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Roz Kavanagh

Review: Jack Charles V The Crown

MIAF 2010

Jack Charles V The Crown

Ilbijerri Theatre Company

Melbourne International Arts Festival

13 October 2010

the Arts Centre, Fairfax Studio

to 17 October

www.melbournefestival.com.au

Jack Charles V The Crown opens with a film of Jack injecting himself with heroin. His isn't a story with secrets.  Nor is it about addiction and relief. It's a story about hope and understanding told with heart and cheekiness. It's Jack's story, and now it's ours.

As the film is shown, Jack sits at pottery wheel making a vase. He ran the pottery shop at the Castlemaine Gaol, where he learnt to teach, and he reminds us that clay is land and that Bunjil the eagle made humanity from clay. It's also a story about identity and belonging.

Although he appeared on our screens and stages in the 70s, Jack Charles become best known after the documentary Bastardy was released in cinemas and shown on the ABC. I was at the first Melbourne International Film Festival screening in 2008 and where I was reminded how that medium of storytelling can change lives and attitudes. 

With director Rachael Maza Long and writer John Romeril helping to bring his story into the personal world of the theatre, Jack tells stories not included in Bastardy and the impact of being in the public eye. After the film, people talked to him on the streets and photos and friends appeared from his childhood, including the daughter of workers from the Box Hill Boys Home who was Jack's inseparable friend 56 years ago.

In the boys home, Jack grew up thinking that the Queen was his mum and had no link with his Aboriginal family until, as a teenager, he took a tram to the corner of Gertrude and Brunswick streets, was recognised and sat in a pub talking to people who knew where he was from. This act led to his first incarceration as his foster mother didn't approve and Jack was sent to the young offenders home.

Jack reminds his audience that to feel vulnerable is a terrible thing and, as a stolen person, he apologises to the people he stole from.  Jack was stolen from his mother when he was four months old. As a society we talk about the stolen generation with reverent tones, but it doesn't take long to hear voices saying that that it's time we got over it. Babies were ripped from arms of their mothers. I don't know how that pain can ever heal. Many of those babies are still with us and maybe the tiny way we can help is by listening to their stories and making their stories part of all our lives.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Bindi Cole

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

Kunst is back

If you're not MIAFing tonight or you're suffering from Fringe festival withdrawals, you might need some Kunst.

Kunst ist Scheisse puts on its stilettos and kicks off its new monthly program at 24 Moons in ACDC Lane.

The cocktails are scrumptious and you'll see some of Melbourne's best cabaret/burlesque/comedy/bizarre/wonderful artists doing stuff you might not see anywhere else.

Tonight's line up includes Matt Kelly, David Quirk, The Caravan of Love, Miss Elleneous and Magic Tony.  All you need to know is on their Facebook page.

Review.

Photo by Max Milne