What Melbourne Loved in 2017, part 1

Sometime after the comedy festival, I stopped writing the list of shows I'd seen; I regret that. But it's been a quiet year for me; at best count I'm at around 160 shows so far. No doubt that this series is going to remind of some of the amazing ones and make me regret missing at least another 160.

Remember that everyone is welcome to contribute and that the best way to hear from an artist that you love is to ask them to get writing.

Stephen Nicolazzo 
Director
Little Ones Theatre

Stephen Nicolazzo

Favourite moments in 2017
My favourite moment of Melbourne theatre in 2017 was the breathtaking opening segment of The Rabble's Joan. The light, sound and bodies gloriously choreographed – it was thrilling, completely alive and completely made on its own terms. All that followed it, too, was stupendous. Each visual sequence an example of sumptuous, elegant and inspiring theatrical practice.

Also adored Fraught Outfit’s The Book of Exodus Part 1; Malthouse Theatre’s The Real and Imagined History of The Elephant Man; Lucy Guerin’s Split, Susie Dee, Patricia Cornelius etc's Caravan; Melanie Lane’s Nightdance; Tangi Wai as part of Dance Massive; Fringe Wives Club’s Gliitery Clittery; and the emotional and vulnerable ride that was All The Sex I’ve Ever Had as part of Melbourne Festival.

Standout theatre moment of the year, though, happened at Dark Mofo when I finally got to see The Second Woman by Nat Randall. Fuck. That is just the best piece of theatre I think I have ever experienced. Truly brilliant and addictive.

Looking forward to in 2018
I am desperately excited to see Patricia Cornelius’s House of Bernarda Alba at MTC and everything and anything that plays at Theatre Works and Arts House in 2018.

SM: It's been an amazing year for Little Ones Theatre with The Happy Prince, The Moors (as part of the Red Stitch season), and Merciless Gods (which has sold out it's current Sydney season and become the highest-selling Griffin indie show!). Find the artists who see the world like you do and the ones who will challenge you, make the work you want to make, don't listen to the voices that don't get it, and you will find an audience who love you and share your vision of the world. I loved all three Little Ones shows this year, but The Happy Prince at La Mama, with it's tiny proscenium and roller skates, was my favourite favourite. I can't wait for Abigail's Party at MTC next year.

I also saw The Scarlet Pimpernel by the all-female Takarazuka Revue in Tokyo because I knew they were Stephen's favourite company. It was totally sold out and I missed out on returns. Then a women who didn't speak English gave me a ticket and she will be getting theatre karma for ever because I am so grateful that I saw this incredible company. It was like being in his head. I still don't know if it was the queerest or the straightest piece of theatre I've seen, and I would go back to Japan for 24 hours just to see them again.


Tim Byrne
Critic, writer, interviewer

Tim Byrne

Favourite moments in 2017
I missed some heavy hitters this year – was overseas during the festival and I know, Taylor Yakkity Mac, shut up already! – but my favourite moment in a Melbourne theatre was the two nights I spent at fortyfivedownstairs being pounded and broken and remade by the glorious ensemble of Gary Abrahams’s production of Angels in America. It was sublime and searing and reminded me of where I’d been as a gay man on the fringes of our own destruction, back in that dark time we old people like to call the ’90s.

Looking forward to in 2018
The thing I most look forward to next year is any work by director Stephen Nicolazzo. He’s finally getting a gig on MTC’s main stage, and I suspect we will only see more and more from this extremely talented man. I adored his The Moors for Red Stitch, was impressed but not as moved as everyone else by his Merciless Gods, and cannot wait for him to direct for Opera Australia in the near future. He has Barrie Kosky’s brazenness but his aesthetic is far more sophisticated and nuanced. As long as he takes his spirit animal along with him – designer extraordinaire Eugyeene Teh – he can’t fail to impress.

SM: Every disagreement Tim and I have about a show is a favourite moment. If you don't read all of Tim's reviews in Time Out, you're missing out on some of the best critical writing around.

Sayraphim Lothian
Craftivist

Sayraphim Lothian

Favourite moments in 2017
In a way, this was a bad and excellent year for art for me. I'm not sure I went to see anything this year ... apart from one of my fabourite bands doing a caberet on one of my favourite topics. Idiot Magnet did The Big Book of Conspiracies at Fringe and I was there every night to see it and I fricken LOVED it. Disclaimer: I may be married to one of them.

But apart from that, I've had my head down working all year and recovering from an exhausting year last year. And then when things started to clear, the Marriage Equality postal nonsence was looming and I spent time doing and sharing the hell out of the YES side and their awesome, creative activism.

And then i got a book deal. HOLY GODS I GOT A BOOK DEAL to write about Craftivism and Creative Resistance. (It's called Guerrilla Kindness and Other Acts of Creative Resistance – Making the World a Better Place Through Craftivism and it's out in April! EEEEE!!) So I slowed everything else to work on that.

So I saw the inside of my house a lot. I stared at my computer screen and sewing machine a lot. I researched a bunch of amazing activism from around the world a lot. And I made a bunch of cool stuff and wrote a lot of words.

I'm sorry Melbs Art Scene, I didn't see you much this year. But I'll be back next year, I promise.

SM: Sayra thought that she hadn't seen enough this year to take part, but she inspired me so much this year that I didn't give her a choice. I spent a lot of time channeling frustration and anger and ultimately a lot of love into yarn this year. There were #pussyhats in the first half of the year and then came #QueerGrannySquares. I've had so much joy from seeing these out in the world.

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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: Menagerie and Bodily Education

NEON: Festival of Independent Theatre
Menagerie
Daniel Schlusser Ensemble
17 May 2013

On the bodily education of young girls
Fraught Outfit
31 May 2013

The Lawler
mtc.com.au

The MTC's NEON Festival of Independent Theatre is letting five of Melbourne's best independent companies create and present a new work without the stress of finding a venue and an audeince. It's exciting knowing that these amazing and very-loved companies will be seen by a broader audience, but that doesn't mean they are going to be loved by new eyes.

The season opened with the Daniel Schlusser Ensemble's Menagerie.

They tried to get the rights to Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menangerie, but thankfully they weren't granted because what they created was far more fascinating.

I thought Menagerie was beautiful. The cast were faultless and I was so engulfed in the experience that it left me a bit wordless. So, please read what Chris Boyd said in The Australian.

Others didn't love it, like Cameron Woodhead. I've read whinges along the lines of "how could he have misread it?", but all reviewers can do it read what they see on the stage and his review makes it very clear that he didn't see a work about love.

I was less worried about interpretation, which could be because I like and admire, rather than love Tennessee's writing (and my feminist reading of him never left me feeling comfortable or seeing the love), but this work did inspire me to re-read The Glass Menangerie. 

However, Schlusser's work isn't so much about interpreting text. He creates worlds for characters to live in and it's up to the audience to decide who and what they watch. In this case, it's still William's New Orleans, but in a trailer park after Cyclone Katrina, where there's a plastic paddling pool, a hot tin roof to play on and people from William's life and work.

It's nothing like a Williams play, but it's the essence of Williams and if it doesn't bring you closer to his work, it sure brings you closer to something about the man who wrote some of the more important theatrical works of the twentieth century.

The next NEON work (finishing this week) is Fraught Outfit's On the bodily education of young girls. 

It's inspired by a 1903 novella by Frank Wedekind and director Adena Jacobs has worked with ten young women (13 to 16) from St Martin's Youth theatre.

It's another remarkably beautiful work to watch with a very different, but utterly delightful cast.  But, unlike Menagerie, I didn't leave inspired to read the text. In fact, my reading of the summary of the text left me re-interpreting what I saw on the stage.

Sitting in the theatre, I gave up looking for story and meaning and was happy to watch the young women stretch and dance and play. Does that sound pervy? It didn't feel so watching it, but reading that it was about a group of young girls in a boarding institution being groomed for an unknown future made me feel awkward.

I initially saw a gorgeous and heartfelt reflection on ageing and the difference in seeing teenagers as women or girls – and especially how teenagers see themselves as one or the other. But as a place that was training them up for something "unknown", I saw it as a reflection on the performance world these young women want to work in.

Already they have been cast based on how they are going to look on the stage and the world of performance can be wonderful, but often cruel and judgemental. Is this their bodily education? Instead of watching them as young women being themselves, I saw the process that created the work and any onstage awkwardness as misunderstanding.

I wish I hadn't read the program and could only see it as something that was beautiful.

And we still have Hayloft, The Rabble and Sisters Grimm to come!

(And I am currently reading The Story of O in preparation for The Rabble's work. At this stage, all I can say is Oh...)

Menagerie photo by Sarah Walker.

Bodily Education photo by Lachlan Woods.