Showing posts with label Anna Cordingley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anna Cordingley. Show all posts

24 January 2023

Review: Sunday

Sunday
Melbourne Theatre Company

20 January 2023
The Sumner, Southbank Theatre
To 18 February 2023
mtc.com.au

 

"Sunday". Photo by Pia- ohnson

 

 My review is on Australian Arts Review.

28 March 2018

Review: Abigail's Party

Abigail's Party
MTC 
22 March 2018
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner
to 21April
mtc.com.au

Katherine Tonkin, Dan Frederiksen, Pip Edwards, Benjamin Rigby, Zoe Boesen Photo by Jeff Busby

What happens when the intense character-led  naturalism of writer-director Mike Leigh meets the stylisation and aesthetic-led inspiration of director Stephen Nicolazzo? How do you queer Leigh?

Leigh's works are developed through intense improvisation and research by the actors and creative team. In some of his films, the actors don't meet each other until they the camera is there. Abigail's Party was developed over ten weeks in 1977; it was meant to be a short and forgotten season at Hamstead Theatre because Leigh had moved onto making films. (Life is Sweet is my favourite.) The short run was extended and the only reason it was subsequently made for BBC television rather than transferring to the West End was because Alison Steadman (who played central-character Beverly) and Leigh were expecting their first baby and there was no way that anyone else as going to step into the role.

Thirty-something Beverly and her husband, Laurence, are having their new younger neighbours Angela and Tony over for after-dinner drinks. Divorced single mum Susan also lives on the street and has been invited  because her teenager daughter, Abigail, is having a party. It's nice to have the neighbours around for a G&T with ice and lemon, a cheesey-pineapple nibble, and a bit of Demis Roussos on the record player.

The MTC loves a play about middle-class middle-aged suburbia and it's easy to find the connection to 1977 suburban Essex where Thatcher's conservatism is about to be welcomed and despised. Here, it's more important that your neighbours see that you're doing well, with posh beer and a new car, than actually getting to know you. Does that ever change?

Leigh's work is all about what's hidden and what we don't say to each other, even though it controls every thought and action.

It's so ready for a queer makeover and to be explored from a very different perspective.

So why does this production feel stifled?

The first thing that strikes about Anna Cordingley's design is that it looks like a Eugyeene Teh design – he designed the costumes – with it's monochromatic spaces and curtains. The central living room is magnificently orange with shag pile carpet, impossibly-large sunken steps, an over-sized room divider (which I'd love for my living room) and a magnificent array of 1970s op-shop finds. It's surrounded by three other hints of rooms that are perfect in the opening scene and sit almost begging to be used for the rest of the night. By placing the world in a box – a world best known as a boxed TV version –  the fourth wall is dropped so firmly that it's difficult to reach in and feel a part of it.

Teh's costumes are more complex. They are a redesign of the late 70s with a sequinned jumpsuit, tiny mini Cheongsam (cultural appropriation isn't new), a whiter than white suit, hide-everything black pants, facial hair that came back, hot-roller curls, and slept-in-plaits-to-get-this-amazing crimpy frizz. It's not a recreation of the time, but an idea of what it looks like through today's eyes and ideas.

As the 70s-cum-now look is turned up to wow and seen at from the outside, the performances and direction start with style and brings the characters into the aesthetic. This technique has been gloriously effective in Little Ones's works like Psycho Beach Party, Dracula and Dangerous Liaisons, but Abigail feels stuck between styles.

Behind the naturalism wall, the camped-up style seems forced with its drink spilling and slipping off couches. While it's clearly beginning to question and subvert the manners and repression of the time, it's not bringing the audience into the world and letting us see it though new eyes. It's laughing at them, not at us.

So much of what we've come to expect from this company (although it's not a Little Ones Theatre show) feels like it's been held back. It has the aesthetic without the gutsy camp structure to support it. We're at Beverly's when we expected to be at Abigail's where everything is rejected, questioned and recreated.

22 April 2017

Review: Richard III

Richard 3
Bell Shakespeare
21 April 2017
Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio
to 7 May
bellshakespeare.com.au

Richard 3. Kate Mulvany & Meredith Penman. Photo by Prudence Upton.

Being in the depths of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, I was calling Richard 3, by Bell Shakespeare, Chick Dick 3 because Kate Mulvany plays Richard. But no more throw away jokes about having seen a lot of Dicks because this production’s found so much that’s new, relevant and fascinating.

Yes it’s ANOTHER work about white men and power and what they do attain and keep power. But Peter Evans direction and Mulvany’s dramaturgy have shaped it to give the women a presence that’s rare in this story. Having the cast always on the stage, the constant gaze of the women ­– who are often no more than wife, mother, womb or irrelevant – is always felt.

And they know they live in a world where Richard knows that his power over them is unquestioned.

Anna Cordingley’s design of too-shiny golds with brown and orange brocades could be a Toorak mansion or an inner city restricted-entry club, but left me feeling like we were in London in the 1930s and Edward VIII was about to abdicate and change the power dynamic in his society because the woman he loved was considered scum.

It’s a production that explores gender, but Mulvany’s gender is irrelevant from the moment she turns around on the stage and we see Richard. In a black suit with short hair and dark eyebrows, he’s small and looks younger than he is. His scoliosis (and hers) is a constant source of pain that he tries to dismiss as irrelevant but he can’t sit or move without being forced to feel his difference.

With his soliloquies, Richard brings the audience into his confidence and makes us complicit in his choices. He keeps us in his gaze when no one else on stage is aware they are being watched. He needs us to know that he chose to be the villain, but every interaction shows us that his villainy comes from far more than his conscious choice.

It’s impossible to stop watching him and Mulvany’s remarkable and powerful performance keeps us with Richard so we see the world through his pain and anger. She makes us care about this man whose behaviour is abhorrent.

So yeah, see Kate’s Dick.


This review is on AussieTheatre.com.

12 August 2013

Review: The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber
Malthouse Theatre
6 August 2013
Merlyn Theatre
to 10 August
malthousetheatre.com.au


Alison Whyte's irresistible performance of The Bloody Chamber is reason enough to see it before it finishes on the weekend. It's like being tucked into bed and read a fairytale that lulls you into wanting to sleep with the lights on forever, but finally leaves you safe and comfortable in its blood-soaked darkness.

Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is a re-telling of French Bluebeard story where a new young wife discovers the fate of her much older husband's former wives. It's from her 1979 collection of re-told fairy tales where women and girls don't end up as dead or eaten as they are in traditional tales, have and want sex, and are capable of being their own heroes.

Van Badham – who might be my favourite Tweep (@vanbadham) – has adapted this text from Carter's novella.  It's still told by the young wife (who's now an older woman) and glories in Carter's graphic and bloody imagery that's guided by an under current of sexuality and power that's belies any dull gender stereotypes.

Director Matthew Lutton creates a curious balance between telling and showing a story. The stage has a delightfully eerie atmosphere with three live harpists and a water-stained space where three huge black chambers hide secrets. And Anna Cordingley's design of black boxes, a bed and just enough red reveals little, but forces the audience to imagine the shining jewels, turning tide and bloody horrors. (However, I was sitting at the back and couldn't see all of the early revelations.)

But it's all about Whyte, whose telling (with some help by Shelly Lauman) evokes the story's ghosts in all of the stage's empty spaces. She may not be the innocent narrator imagined by some readers, but it's still like she strode out of the pages to make us really understand what she went through, rather than leave it to the unreliable imaginations of the readers.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

26 July 2013

Review: Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday in the Park with George
Victorian Opera
20 July 2013
The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 27 July
victorianopera.com.au


Victorian Opera's Sunday in the Park with George is exquisite, and it's heartbreaking that it can only run for a week as so many people will miss this emotionally-perfect production of Stephen Sondheim's most personal work.

Sondheim wrote Sunday in the Park with George after his Merrily We Roll Along (1981) was booed by critics and closed after 16 Broadway performances. Urban legend says that he was ready to quit music theatre to write mystery novels, but writer and director James Lapine persuaded him to return and they were both inspired by a painting by George Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884).

The resulting work by Sondheim and Lapine (who directed the first production) is a passionate and deeply personal exploration about being an artist and the sacrifices that accompany the choice to make art. It won Tonys for its design and the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the London production won Oliviers, including Best Actor in a Musical for Australia's Philip Quast.

The first act is set in 1884, as George sketches in the park and develops his new style of painting (pointillism or neo-impressionism, that creates its images and colours from the human eye merging its dots of colour). The fictional story is about the people in the painting, including George's mother and his lover, who are both rejected by George in favour of his art. The second act is in the 1980s in America where George's great grandchild, also George, is trying to create and fund his digital work in a world of snobby art critics, and planning to show his interpretation of Seruat's work in Paris on the island depicted in the famous painting.

Alexander Lewis (who studied at WAPPA and is currently in his second year of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at The Metropolitan Opera in New York) is outstanding as the Georges. Musically, it's like Sondheim wrote for him and emotionally he grasps the conceit of a man who gives up love for art, without ever losing the empathy of his audience. Christina O'Neil (who was also at WAPPA and a new Red Stitch ensemble member in 2013) is his counterpoint as lover Dot (and his grandmother in Act 2). She, too, sings the music like it's hers, but it's the heart and understanding that she brings to Dot that is so engaging.

And they are supported by an ensemble who are each memorable, none lesser than Nancye Hayes, as George's mother, and an Act 2 art critic, whose Act 1 song to George is a masterclass in how to perform Sondheim (warning: bring a tissue).

Conductor Phoebe Briggs understands how Sondheim applied pointillism to music and ensures that the musicians and voices never let one outshine the other. While director Stuart Maunder (whose direction of Sondheim's A Little Night Music for Opera Australia left me cold) ensures that the story is led by the powerful emotions that created it.

But even for nothing else, see it for Anna Cordingley's design. The most famous productions of George won awards for design. Victoria Opera doesn't have a Broadway budget, but Cordingley has created something that's as creative and original as Seruat and Sondheim. The costumes are made with material that's digitally printed with Seraut's colour palettes. This makes them look like they walked out of a new version of the painting and visually unite the two acts in ways that past designs haven't. Her detail is intricate and, even from the circle, it's easy to see that every hat is a finished work of art and her parasols are as beautiful as the music that sings about them. Meanwhile the set uses all of Seraut's known works and her cascade of falling colours is such a simple idea, but genius in how it supports the story and George's art.

After the success of Nixon in China, Victorian Opera are continuing to put Opera Australia to shame with a production that deserves to run for months, if only to show everyone who sees expensive opera and commercial music theatre why reviewers like me complain when they miss the mark.

It finishes on Saturday and its nearly sold out. So book now. And full time students and under 30s can get $30 tickets.

This review is on AussieTheatre.com.

25 June 2012

Review: The Scottish one

Macbeth
Bell Shakespeare
8 June 2012
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 23 June
bellshakespeare.com.au


I have a confession to make: I've never read the Scottish play and, somehow, I've never seen a production. Shame on me, but it left me in an unusual position of being able to see if the Bell Shakespeare production really tells the story. All I knew was it's the one about the power mad couple and witches, and, being a Shakespeare tragedy, most people die.

It's unusual to see a professional telling of Shakespeare that doesn't assume a basic knowledge of the text and focuses its telling on interpretation and originality.

The most comprehensive interpretation of the text is Anna Cordingly's design that feels like a slab of cold rough Scottish highlands, where cardigans are a must, with a mirror ceiling that brings the magic and threat into the world the Macbeths think they can control. And Kate Mulvany's lady Macbeth is the most complex and fascinating person in it.

Peter Evans direction brings some original moments (I'm not THAT unfamiliar with it), but it's almost monotone, even Dan Speilman's Macbeth. Our beloved Bard wrote the best stories ever, but if he were writing today, it'd be suggested that he get more of the action onstage and maybe spend a bit less time in the character's heads. Shakespeare tellings that sing are directed like a piece of music is conducted. The dense and difficult text is beautiful to read, but it can't be relied on to tell the story on a stage. Shakespeare is about tone and rhythm and dissonance; it's like opera without the music.

It's clear that the terrific cast have worked on the nitty gritty of their characters (and probably improvised Macbeth and Banquo at the pub toasting Fleance's birth at the pub), but this production loses the vastness of the overall picture and the telling of the story is flat.

Come interval, I had to read the synopsis and ask who was the dude in the blue jumper with the beard. It was Malcolm, and I thought Fleance was a witch.

22 November 2011

Review: Little Match Girl

Little Match Girl
Malthouse Theatre and Meow Meow Revolution
16 November 2011
Merlyn Theatre, The Malthouse
to 4 December
www.malthousetheatre.com.au


What haven't I already said about absolute wonderfulness of Meow Meow? She's at the Malthouse this month with Little Match Girl and her hoards of international fans are squirming with jealousy that Melbourne (and then Sydney) have such access to this must-be-experienced diva who shreds perceptions of performance art.

Meow has recently graced shows like The Burlesque Hour with her glitter-lipped self, but her last full-length local cabaret was Vamp at The Malthouse in 2008. That show was based on Wilde's Salome, while Little Match Girl starts with Hans Christian Anderson's 1845 story of a little girl who freezes to death rather than return penniless to a violent home. Yet even as Meow reminds us that little has changed in civilised society, she still craves a fairy tale ending and looks for her perfect match as her flames fade and burn.

Like any fine cat, she's aloof, rightfully sure of her exquisite beauty (from the right angle), has remarkably flexile legs and appears contentedly independent until she pounces and demands immediate attention and physical love. But never believe those purrs are for you, as there's always a more enticing lap, and she may have found her flame in just-as-sensational Mitchell Butel, her saviour and handbag.

Working again with the delightful Iain Grandage (musical director and composition), it's bliss to hear Meow with a band and there are super new songs by Grandage and Megan Washington, and a too-delightful Noel Coward number, a "The Book of Love" to bring tears and touches of Richard Wagner, Cole Porter and Laurie Anderson for bonus perfection.

Meow resents attention flowing from her, but Marion Potts (director), Anna Cordingley (design) and Paul Jackson (lighting) create a shiny world worthy of her presence – Jackson's creative lighting is especially stunning – although it's doubtful that Meow will ever let us applaud Melissa Madden Gray.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

21 July 2011

Review: A Golem Story

A Golem Story
Malthouse Theatre
17 June 2011
Merlyn Theatre
www.malthousetheatre.com.au


I don't want a year without a new play by Lally Katz. Until now, her addictive black writing has usually left me in tears of laughter, but she has bounded into new ground with A Golem Story: an exquisite exploration about the place of God and the sacred in our lives.

In Prague in 1580, Ahava (Yael Stone) wakes up in a Synagogue with a disjointed memory of her dead husband and believes his Dybbuk (spirit) has passed into her. The Rabbi  (Katz favourite, Brian Lipson) invites her to stay, but his student Amos (Dan Speilman) fears her, especially when the Rabbi asks her to help make a Golem that can protect the local Jews and stop local children from being killed.  Meanwhile, the Christian guard (Greg Stone) will go to any length to prove that the blood of Christ is enough for him, but his Emperor (Mark Jones) is willing to share an apple with Jew.

Drawing on Jewish culture and with live music led by Cantor Michel Laloum, director Michael Kantor reveals his heart and soul in this work. I've often felt distanced by Kantor's work, where I could see the intent and the creativity, but never felt for the world or the characters. God sits in the heart of this world. Each character sees him/her/it as something different, but each yearns for the deep comfort that sacred beliefs bring. It's not a Jew versus Christian tale, but it uses these two great faiths to let us examine where we'd be if the space filled by what we hold scared became empty.

The outstanding cast clearly draw on their own beliefs to bring the contractions of fear and faith, secular and sacred, and God and human to each character, who are all struggling to make decisions that will bring God closer to their lives.

Designers Anna Cordingley (costume and set) and Paul Jackson (lighting) create this world with a combination of the warm darkness of 16th century Prague and the coldness of clean contemporary light. I've found Cordingley's designs distracting in the past, but her distinct sense of detail and remarkable aesthetic support every element of the script and I can't imagine one without the other. Jackson's use of burning candles and electric light is stunning and his light-only Golem evokes a fascinating contradiction of fear and love. I know I say it every time, but there isn't a lighting designer in this town who comes near to Jackson.

A Golem Story retains Katz's gorgeously unique voice, but it doesn't rely on humour to create emotion. By losing the comfortable buffer of laughs, her characters are left more emotionally vulnerable and we have no choice but to feel with them. This is beautiful, emotive writing and evidence that this wonderful writer is going to be one of our unforgettable playwrights.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.



28 December 2010

What I loved 2010 (best of...)

Sometimes we all need a break and for the first time in a long time I avoided the theatre for a month.

Already there are shows I wish I'd seen and I didn't make 100 reviews for the year, but there's 2011 to reach that goal.

So before 2011 reminds us how we're all a year older, thank you to everyone who reads Sometimes Melbourne. Google Analytics shows me that there are a lot of you and I'm thrilled every time you drop by or chat to me in real life.

I also want to thank the lovely JoJohn, Karla and James for their guest reviews during the year and everyone who reviews for AussieTheatre.com.

And thanks to everyone else who reviews, blogs, tweets, comments or joins in wine-fuelled post-show conversations. It's not always easy to put your name to your honest opinion, so I especially love people like Alison, Chris, John, Richard and Cameron, who all see over 100 shows a year and – even when there's bickering and name calling (only sometimes by me) – they all love and support Melbourne's theatre and art.

Sure reviewers certainly don't always agree with each other, and their readers are rarely shy to express their own disagreement, but even when we see the same shows, we all see something different. That's the joy of art. If it were objective and clinical, it wouldn't touch our hearts and we would never care enough to spend such chunks of our lives creating it, sharing it and indulging in as much of it as we can.

So it's time to remember another year of amazing theatre in Melbourne and those shows that made me so glad that I went out instead of staying home to watch Masterchef. 

Outstanding Artists 2010


WRITING
Raimondo Cortese for Intimacy
and 

Declan Greene for Moth
with bonus points, to be shared with Ash Flanders, for
 Little Mercy
and ... Gingo.

DESIGN
Anna Cordingle
y (set and costumes) and Paul Jackson (lighting) for Sappho... in 9 Fragments


PERFORMANCE

Hannah Norris
for 
My Name is Rachel Corrie
 
and
Phil Zachariah for Charles Dickens performs A Christmas Carol


I'm sorry that I didn't write a review for this bloody gorgeous show. After years of taking it to country towns and suburban town halls (with a visit to the Carlton Courthouse and the Famous Speigeltent), Phil Zachiriah and director James Adler made it to the centre of Melbourne and the gold-leaf splendour of The Athenaeum theatre. And this tiny show had standing ovations and teary-eyed cheers each night of its short run. Not only does it remind us what a master storyteller Dickens was (really, if you're a writer and anyone has ever mentioned that you need to think about your story... read this bloke), but it lets Phil be Charles Dickens – the role he was born to play. Dickens staged readings of his stories and, as he's no longer around, he's passed the spirit to Phil.  From Scrooge to Tiny Tim, Phil inhabits every character with the kind of love that makes them as real as our own mad families at Christmas time and it's the kind of holiday tradition that transcends faith-based celebrations to sit as one of the great stories of love and redemption that should be an end-of-year tradition for everyone.



Outstanding Productions 2010 

CABARET

Kunst Rock: Die Roten Punkte – Button Eye Productions and Full Tilt
and
Carnival of Mysteries – Finucane & Smith

Special mention

Miles O'Neil's World Around Us

COMMERCIAL
Boston Marriage – MTC

CIRCUS
Dos or Duo – Stuart Christie and Kane Petersen




MUSICAL
[title of show] –  Magnormos


Special mention

Another Opening, Another Show –  Manilla Street Productions
 


and I really enjoyed Mary Poppins

DANCE
Human Interest Story –  Malthouse Theatre, Lucy Guerin and Perth International Arts Festival 

COMEDY

Special mention

Monster of the Deep 3D –  Claudia O'Doherty

Best of the Best

Bare Witness  La Mama and fortyfivedownstairs 
and
That Face  Red Stitch Actors Theatre
and
Intimacy – 
Ranters TheatreMalthouse TheatreMelbourne International Arts Festival


Special mention
Happily Ever After – La Mama

My Favourite of 2010

Tomorrow, in a year  Hotel Pro Forma, Melbourne International Arts Festival