What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 8

Declan, Joshua and Rohan would make for strange dinner party, but I wouldn't miss it. Today we go from tiny Fringe venues to opera stages, and three more great pics.

Declan Greene
Half o' Sisters Grimm + Resident Artist at Malthouse Theatre

Declan Greene in Hills Hoist and fake Birkenstocks

Favourite moments in 2018
This year was crazy, and I didn’t get to see as much stuff as I normally do – totally missed most of Midsumma, Melbourne Fringe, MIAF. But these three shows below stuck with me, in a really peculiar way, because I’m a playwright and they’re all nearly wordless. IDK why. Maybe it was the glut of contradictory think-pieces in my newsfeed or politicians skull-fucking us with doublespeak, but at some point this year I think I started feeling exhausted by language and its limitations.

Carrion – Justin Shoulder at Arts House.
The visual and sonic design of this piece of post-human performance on evolution and adaption was fucking astounding start to finish, with an incredible performance by Justin Shoulder.

The Howling Girls – Damien Ricketson and Adena Jacobs at Carriage Works.
Mind-blowing contemporary opera about the effect of trauma on language, performed for the first 20 minutes in near total darkness – and then midway it suddenly detonated into explosive light and non-verbal vocal scoring. When it ended I realised I’d been tensing my whole body for its entire 50-minute duration.

friendships at Hugs&Kisses.
OK this was a music gig so not technically a piece of theatre, but it still felt more complete as a work of live art than a lot of stuff I saw this year. No single moment I can remember as a stand-out. It was one set of unbroken sound and live video-mixing that journeyed from soundscapes of cyborg voices struggling to speak into crushing, mind-melting beats, with fragments of language rising to the surface: ‘was i good’, ‘are u still there’ ‘i forgot where i am’. Video of mutating children in a digital soup giving way to rushing 3-D landscapes. I can’t explain it properly but it took me out of my body, totally transporting.

Also loved Vic Opera's Lorelei a lot, as well as the Next Move double-bill – Nether and Dharawungara – at Chunky Move. Incred.

Looking forward to in 2019
The whole Malthouse 2019 season but especially Zoey Dawson’s amazingly cooked mainstage debut Australian Realness. Krishna Istha’s Beast for Midsumma. Melanie Lane’s Nightdance for Dance Massive. The Very Good Looking Initiative’s incredibly named Poopy Tum Tums at the Comedy Festival. And Ivo Van Hoove’s queer All About Eve on the West End with Gillian Anderson and PJ Harvey, after I find a wealthy benefactor who will fly me over to see it (just putting it into the ether thnxxxxxx). (SM: as long as you bring me as your chaperone.)

SM: Dec directed Blackie Blackie Brown: it's one of those shows that people are going to talk about in the years to come and a lot of us can say, "Yeah, I saw it". It's back next year.


Joshua Ladgrove
Neal Portenza

Joshua Ladgrove

Favourite moments in 2018
Born Prepared: 1980s Brownie Guide – Megan McKay at Melbourne Fringe.

Looking forward to in 2019
I'm not sure. I tend to not look too far into the future. I'm hoping for the complete downfall of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the subsequent musical that follows.

SM: I don't like the star-rating system for shows – read the words – but I take it seriously when I give stars. If I add them up, Josh/Neal have had the most stars from me. Fafenefenoiby II: Return of the Ghost Boy was his last show. But, last shows don't stick for the good ones. As for a moment: I saw Fafenefenoiby twice and it was every time he guessed the names of the audience. Fuck his sophisticated, heart-breaking, fuck-yeah comedy, give me a mind-reading trick every time!


Rohan Shearn
Managing Editor, Australian Arts Review

Rohan Peron

Favourite moments in 2018
Once again, we were spoilt for choice this year as the commercial and independent sector delivered a mixed bag of delights. But three shows have resonated with me this year:

Calamity Jane
Big, bold, brash and brassy, Richard Carroll’s exuberant re-imagining of the 1950’s cult film hits its target in every department. Central to its success is Virginia Gay’s brilliant performance as Calamity Jane. A gift that keeps on giving, it is currently playing a sold out encore season at Arts Centre Melbourne before transferring to the Comedy Theatre in January.

Colossus
Commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne as part of the Melbourne Fringe Take Over! initiative, Colossus was excitingly compelling and mesmerising as 50 dancers converged on the Fairfax stage. A surprise hit of the Melbourne Fringe, Stephanie Lake’s work was worthy of a main-stage festival offering.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
A co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opera Australia’s new production by celebrated director Kasper Holten was a grand and extravagant night in the State Theatre. Wagner aficionados were not disappointed with an all-star cast and Mia Stensgaard’s set – that was one of the largest ever seen in Melbourne.

Looking forward to in 2019
Muriel’s Wedding the Musical
Directed by Simon Phillips, a theatrical version of PJ Hogan’s iconic hit film features music and lyrics by Australian award winning songwriters Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall. I was lucky to see MW during its premiere Sydney run in late 2017. With a new cast, it will look absolutely gorgeous in Melbourne’s Her Majesty’s Theatre.

Come From Away
This Tony Award–winning musical tells the true story of the 38 planes and more than 6500 passengers who were unexpectedly forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland in Canada after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. Writers David Hein and Irene Sankoff used hundreds of interviews taken from the community in Gander to deliver a powerful message about the kindness of strangers. A terrific all-Australian cast will bring this show to life at the Comedy Theatre in July.

The Lady in the Van
Alan Bennett’s mostly true story of the fascinating relationship between the award-winning British writer and his long-term guest. Starring the effervescent Miriam Margolyes as the eccentric and cantankerous Miss Shepherd – The Lady in the Van will be a great opener for MTC in 2019.

Cloudstreet
It has been 20 years since the stage adaptation of Tim Winton’s award-winning novel, Cloudstreet has been presented on the Merlyn Stage. Matthew Lutton directs an all-star cast in this epic production that chronicles the lives of two working class families in Perth in –World War II Australia.

SM: Rohan and I don't agree about a lot of shows, but he's still the person I totally trust if I'm not sure if I should see a musical. Or if I need to know anything about any show that's been on in the last 30 to 40 years.  Australian Arts Review is another independent arts media site that keeps covering more shows and artists than any of the mastheads. Maybe 2019 needs to be the year when indie arts media gets the love it deserves.

FESTIVAL: Complexity of Belonging

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL 2014
Complexity of Belonging
Melbourne Festival, Chunky Move, Melbourne Theatre Company & Brisbane Festival
9 October 2014
Sumner Theatre
to 25 October
melbournefestival.com.au

Photo by Jeff Busby

Melbourne Festival, the Brisbane Festival and Melbourne Theatre Company have coordinated to support the creation of Complexity of Belonging. It's the type of work that international arts festivals are terrific at developing.


Falk Richter, writer and director from Schaubühne Berlin (a favourite at recent Melbourne Festivals) and Anouk van Dijk, now the Artistic Director of Melbourne's Chunky Move, have previously worked together in the Europe and have developed this piece with an Australian cast that's premiered in Melbourne and will tour Europe next year.

Working with nine actors and dancers, it's a collaboration where the performers contributed stories that result in semi-fictional hyper-real versions of themselves on stage. The stories are about finding a way to belong when you're not feeling a part of your tribe. Looking at Australian culture from an outside – mostly European – eye they include the aesthetics of being a performer, looking or not looking white, not understanding Aussie culture, finding a perfect man, keeping love alive, coming out, religion, Indigenous identification and the despair of having a partner who doesn't go down on you.

A magnificent seamless curved cyc of an Australian desert makes the stage feels vast. With live projections onto a screen happening concurrently with dance and monologues, this vastness makes the stories feel somehow connected to a greater whole and isolated.

This contradiction continues throughout the production and varies in its success.

At times everything works together and results in the kind of emotional and technical mind-meld that we hope for every time we sit in a theatre. As performers speak, van Dijk's mesmerising choreography is like the uncontrolled always-falling-or-climbing inner-chatter that we try to keep hidden from the world, and the screen captures and magnifies the emotions and reactions that are rarely spoken.

Then there are times when the content and the text verges on the banal and #middleclasswhine, especially when the hyper-realised personas are clearly in fictional worlds, and the authenticity is strained. The joy of this piece depends on how the stories are so believable and connectable. They are allowed to fly with the support of the dance, design and great performances, but when the momentum gives out, there's too much room to crash.

And still, I wonder if this in itself isn't part of what makes the rest of it work. There is a lot of banality in finding ways to feel like you belong. I want to see what Complexity of Belonging becomes with feedback of stage time. It may already be a very different show from opening night.


This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Two Faced Bastard

MIAF 2008

Two Faced Bastard

Chunky Move and Melbourne International Arts Festival

11 October 2008
Arts House

What can you say when a performer declares that they don’t like reviews that describe the experience of a show and that there’s no room for flippancy in reviews, because the artists are too highly invested in the work?  “Umm…you are really good looking and I liked the beer I had at the bar…” Surely, if there is room for flippancy on the stage, there is room for flippancy in a review?

Chunky Move’s Two Faced Bastard is about duality. It’s directed and choreographed by Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzank, and explores the on and off stage aspects of theatre and the “Jekyll and Hyde” nature of performance – seriously and flippantly.

The stage is split down the middle with the equally split audience on either side. Each side only see half of the show, whilst glimpsing and hearing the other. Stage and backstage become one, as the exit to one is the entrance to the other. (Sorry to ruin the experience – but even the program guide gave that away.)

Audiences appear as equally split in their opinions about its success. I really liked the mystery of what was going on beyond the curtain, but in the Q&A after the show, nearly half of the remaining audience indicated that they thought they missed out on something.

Two Faced Bastard was created though workshops and a series of development performances. The process is still very clear on the stage, especially as and performers (actors and dancers) discuss their opinions and fears.

The questions are fascinating and this festival is the ideal place to ask them. However, I felt that the concepts weren’t explored beyond an almost obvious level. I don’t think it’s a revelation that performers are scared of stuffing up on a stage or that artists continually ask if they are creating to please themselves or an audience.  I would have liked to see the creators express a firmer opinion, rather than just offer the questions. I'd love to know your answers.

Being on the non-dance side of the room, I didn’t see much of the dance, until the final scene when the curtain is withdrawn. These final moments were stunning, and expressed the concept of the show more simply, succinctly and easily than what went before.

The process seemed like a lot of fun, but the final product still seems to be finding itself. After the performance, Obarzank said, “It’s searching for itself and I’m quite happy about that.” Perhaps that is the answer I’m looking for.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com