Review: Jumpy

Jumpy
Melbourne Theatre Company
5 February 2015
The Sumner
to 14 March
mtc.com.au

Jane Turner and Dylan Watson. Photo by Jeff Busby

At least Jumpy is a play about 50-something women who have sex. There's not that much written about the middle-aged years when women discover a new type of social invisibility, and a time when female actors can disappear until they can play crones and clowns.

Written by UK writer April De Angelis, the MTC season opener is as Aussie as Prince Phillip's knighthood. It begins with Hilary (Jane Turner) despairing as her 15-year-old daughter, Tilly (Brenna Harding), stomps up the stairs of their very lovely house. Hilary knows she's still a feminist but is frustrated because 50 seems to offer more loss than gain. She drinks wine and discusses it all with bff Frances (Marina Prior) – who's still husband looking, still wearing bikinis and now heading to burlesque classes – but there's not so much discussion with husband, Mark (David Tredinnick), as her bedtime offering reading Great Expectations to him. Meanwhile Tilly and her friends are doing it like teenagers, with the expected consequence.

With behaviour and observations as complex and photo-shopped as a Women's Weekly (without the bonus of a recipe to try), I waited for the moment when the veneer of expected was torn away to show the real people and the reality of feeling 30 while seeing an old stranger in the mirror.

I don't like seeing dull middle aged woman on a stage because it scares me that THAT's what I look like to the world. I known people who slip easily into the expected, but I don't know anyone who isn't self aware enough to know if they are living a beige-nude-coloured one-piece bathing costume cliche.

There's plenty of jumping about in the plot but most is so obvious that it may as well not happen. Daughter didn't use birth control; daughter shags older boy, mum feeling unsexy; separated couples go away together. The spoilers are built in.

None of which is made any more compelling on the stage. The early awkward accents – why?  – and conscious blocking relaxed, but the relationships – the frustration, passion and despair – in the subtext of the script were lost in the empty space of the stage. Director Pamela Rabe is an actor who makes empty space and subtext scream louder than the words spoken; as a director, she gets the script on the stage and seems to miss the exploration of what those words are really trying to say.

Which leaves us theatre that's as feisty as an old cat asleep in the sun. But regardless of what grumpy critics say, it will also sell well because of it's well-known cast, Marina's burlesque dance and the easy jokes about teenagers and their parents. And it's the box office from these shows that helps the MTC commission new works. Perhaps the price of every MTC independent NEON show is a Jumpy?

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Song of the Bleeding Throat

Song of the Bleeding Throat
The Eleventh Hour
28 January 2011
The Eleventh Hour Theatre
to 12 February
www.theeleventhhour.com.au

David Tredinnick (writer), Brian Lipson (director) and Neil Pigot (actor) are some of my favourite Melbourne theatre creators. I'm adding actors Ann Browning, Richard Bligh and James Saunders to the list as their performances in Song of the Bleeding Throat were remarkable, but I have no idea what this show is trying to say.

In his program notes Lipson says that when he first read the play he could "barely comprehend it" and eventually understood that it was written to be performed. As someone watching it performed, I could barely comprehend it and wouldn't mind a read so I might begin to understand it.

The tsunami of text, which includes quotes from Marx (Karl) to Barnum, is so overwhelming that it  becomes noise. The creators familiarity and understanding of it is clear, but as an audience we are coming to it for the first time and it's a struggle to keep up.

The opening scenes mimimally replicate Tait's Chealsea Interior painting of Thomas and Jane Carlyle with their dog, and with Pigot as the most delightfully dry Absurd-like stage manager of sorts, a mood of comic anticipation is set. There are wonderfully original and funny moments throughout, but its completeness drowns in the words – even with the welcome catch up space of drugs and farts.

The second half turns literally turns the theatre around and Pigot is Abraham Lincoln, Bligh is Walt Whitman, Saunders is John Wilkes Booth and Browning is the statue of Liberty. Again, the performances are superb, the staging and design are immaculate and the final "I sing the body electric" moment (the Fame, not the Whitman version) made my heart glow with ironic nostalgic joy, but I still had no idea what it was about or who it was talking to and was glad that it was over.

For all it's exquisite technique, intelligence and super well-read cleverness that rightly deserves to be admired (and maybe envied), this is the kind of theatre that makes you feel like an uneducated twat if you don't understand it. It reminded me of going to a Walt Whitman lecture in 1987 from a professor determined to show how much he knew and how little smart arse undergrads knew. I only chose American Lit because Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was on the reading list ... although part of me must have listened because I recognised Whitman quoting Whitman and had a burst of over-educated smugness. But I had to Google Tait and the Carlyles.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

(The Pilot Version of…) Something to Die For

(The Pilot Version of…) Something to Die For
Store Room Theatre Workshop
28 October 2007
The Store Room

“This is a risk”, declares The Author midway though (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For. I am thrilled that the Store Room Theatre Workshop (SRTW) program gives its artists the opportunity and freedom to take these risks to explore and create original, complex and relevant theatre.
 
(The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For is written by SRTW associate artist Ross Mueller. It’s is a monologue by the playwright, who has written himself as the character – but it will always be performed by an actor. In this case David Tredinnick is playing Ross Mueller.

You can see this simply for Tredinnick’s superb performance, which is ably guided by director Aiden Fennessy. Tredinnick has a difficult script to work with, but continually keeps the audience personally engaged and fascinated. He demonstrates the difference between a good actor and someone who knows his craft so well that we can no longer see the work and the skill.

The structure of this work references David Hare’s Via Dolorosa. Don’t know it? Sir David himself performed it at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2004. Patrick Dickson presented the Australian premiere at the Festival of Contemporary Arts in Canberra in 2001. Missed it? Hare wrote The Blue Room (that play where our Nicole and then our Sigrid got their kit off) and Stuff Happens (that play about American politicians). What about his screenplays? Plenty (Meryl was in it) or The Hours (the one where our Nicole won the Oscar for having the big nose – and Meryl was in it). Come on – Sir David Hare. If you go to the theatre, you must know him.

If you know Hare, the premise of the work is Mueller meeting Hare at a workshop in London.

If you don’t and you’re wondering why on earth I’m raving on about David Hare, I’m guessing this is how you’d will feel watching (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For.

It’s no secret that I love Ross Mueller’s writing. He understands theatre and why we keep going back. He writes personal, honest and heart moving works that resonate way beyond their intended audience. I reckon he’s as good as David Hare.

Very early in the piece, Mueller tells us that he believes that anyone who goes to the theatre is intelligent and that he’s openly prejudice towards the intelligent. Kind of makes you feel special and much more inclined to admire and laugh along with the jokes. I admit that I caught myself laughing at a reference I didn’t understand, because I didn’t want to appear ignorant. (Thanks to Google I now know about playwright Martin Crimp – and will read his work.)

I understood (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For. I was intrigued and laughed out loud, because I know Via Dolorosa. I know it very well. I’ve read it, saw Dickson’s performance, Hare’s performance, heard Hare discuss it and even have a copy of Acting Up – Hare’s book about writing and performing it – which I’ve read.

I know this play isn’t really about David Hare or Ross Mueller. It sensitively, accurately and creatively deals with issues of depression and male identity. It delightfully and over-intelligently satirises and references its own form, theatre writing, Melbourne independent theatre and the playwright. The emotional core and structure of the work is so strong, but it is getting obscured by its own intelligence. It’s trying too hard to be clever, searching too hard for metaphors and trying so hard to connect with its audience that it may be pushing them away. The excellent writing is getting in the way of the story telling.

I’m afraid I have to quote myself here. This is what I wrote on this site about Mueller’s astonishing Construction of the Human Heart.

“Mueller does write for a very specific demographic. Mid-30s to early-40s / living in inner city Melbourne (preferably north) / over educated / know too much about theatre (please laugh at the “it’s David Hare, not Williamson” joke) / struggling with your own creative career while trying to earn an income / loath the concept of Ikea, but have too many Ikea items in your house / and have experienced the kind of love that leaves you empty and broken at its loss. Fortunately that is most people I know (except some of us live on the south side of the river). Construction of the Human Heart is written for now and written for us. In doing so, Mueller shows how honest, personal writing can connect with universal themes. Even if you don’t get every cultural reference and joke, the emotion of the work sustains it.”

My concern with his recent work The Ghost Writer (MTC 2007) was that Mueller was writing to such a broad audience that the work was losing the personal emotional resonances. My concern with (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For is that he is writing to such a sub-section of his audience that it’s losing the universal emotional resonances.

If I had to review this review I’d say. “It is over wordy, far too long, needs a ruthless edit, loses itself in its own structure and seems so intent on proving the author’s own credibility, intelligence and knowledge that it forgets about its intent and its audience.” I guess I’m trying to create the same sense of frustration I felt with Mueller.

I enjoyed (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For and am sure it will grow and change from this season into an amazing work. However, in its current state I’m hesitant to recommend it.

This reveiw originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.