Hayley Butcher
13 September 2016
The Butterfly Club
to 18 September
melbournefringe.com.au
 |
| Hayley Butcher in Pressure Down |
My review is on The Age/SMH.
Mostly Melbourne theatre reviews
Showing posts with label Hayley Butcher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hayley Butcher. Show all posts
16 September 2016
Review: Pressure Down
Pressure Down
Hayley Butcher
13 September 2016
The Butterfly Club
to 18 September
melbournefringe.com.au
My review is on The Age/SMH.
Hayley Butcher
13 September 2016
The Butterfly Club
to 18 September
melbournefringe.com.au
My review is on The Age/SMH.
22 September 2015
MELBOURNE FRINGE: Dash and D'Bree: DEMO
Dash and D'Bree: DEMO
18 September 2015
Fringe Hub, Upstairs at Errol's
to 25 September
melbournefringe.com.au
I don't know how gen-Y Melbourne chicks Dash & D'Bree, didn't win Australia's Got Talent. Clearly Australia isn't ready for their amazingness, but they're finally out of retail and back in a cabaret about being fierce.
Being fierce is more than outfits made from animal print or Julie Bishop’s stare. Fierce is doing what your terrified of, knowing how to wear a huge cock, and being each other’s best selfies.
Dash and D’Bree (Hayley Butcher and Karina Mroz) is character comedy at it’s best. They find the heart and vulnerability in the ridiculously grotesque, and ensure that getting older doesn’t mean growing up.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
Meanwhile, the have a web series.
18 September 2015
Fringe Hub, Upstairs at Errol's
to 25 September
melbournefringe.com.au
I don't know how gen-Y Melbourne chicks Dash & D'Bree, didn't win Australia's Got Talent. Clearly Australia isn't ready for their amazingness, but they're finally out of retail and back in a cabaret about being fierce.
Being fierce is more than outfits made from animal print or Julie Bishop’s stare. Fierce is doing what your terrified of, knowing how to wear a huge cock, and being each other’s best selfies.
Dash and D’Bree (Hayley Butcher and Karina Mroz) is character comedy at it’s best. They find the heart and vulnerability in the ridiculously grotesque, and ensure that getting older doesn’t mean growing up.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
Meanwhile, the have a web series.
06 September 2011
MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 8: Puppets and Letters
Apparently the cool puppet-based shows just use letters as titles. And now there are only 24 titles left.
Terrible Comfort
Promising zombie pirates, steampunk robots, monsters of the deep and an epic skeleton army sword battle, X is already far more interesting than many Fringe shows. And there are fluffy critters and its about a pirate battling with rum.
Presented by experimental puppet company Terrible Comfort, the artistic collaboration of MTC playwright Robert Reid and visual artist Sayraphim Lothian, and Barking Spider Theatre X features more SM favourites like Penelope Bartlau and Hayley Butcher, so it's gotta be cool.
Peepshow Inc at Signal
Peepshow Inc have created some of the most gorgeous puppet theatre I've seen.
U is an opportunity for 13 to 18-year olds to create and work with Peepshow in a series of workshops and interactive performances at the City of Melbourne's Signal space.
Workshop and performance info is here. If you don't book, you'll miss out.
26 August 2011
Melbourne Fringe Launch
You have 19 days to see 230 shows.
I think we should have a reality TV show that challenges contestants to see everything in a Fringe program.
I'd watch it.
The Melbourne Fringe program is launched. The guide's on the streets, the web page is live and the app is downloadable.
This year's feast of independent arts runs from 21 September to 9 October, which means that there's less than a month to choose what you're going to see or to get your show ready.
I haven't chosen my shows yet*, so suggestions are welcome.
*Except for FUGLY, cos I am beautiful and Who Me, cos I'm a nerd.
Hayley Butcher and Telia Nevile at the Fringe Program Launch
(pic courtesy Melbourne Fringe)
I think we should have a reality TV show that challenges contestants to see everything in a Fringe program.
I'd watch it.
The Melbourne Fringe program is launched. The guide's on the streets, the web page is live and the app is downloadable.
This year's feast of independent arts runs from 21 September to 9 October, which means that there's less than a month to choose what you're going to see or to get your show ready.
I haven't chosen my shows yet*, so suggestions are welcome.
*Except for FUGLY, cos I am beautiful and Who Me, cos I'm a nerd.
FUGLY: Sixxters Grimm will make you beautiful, if it kills you.
Who, Me.
03 April 2011
Review: Dash and D'Bree Take It...
MICF 2011
Dash and D'Bree Take It...
1 April 2011
Portland Hotel
to 10 April
www.comedyfestival.com.au
As a middle-aged spunk rat who likes to browse the Laura Ashley sales rack at my leisure, Dash and D'Bree are everything I despise about shopping and gen Y; no wonder I adore them.
I first wandered into a mall where they worked in 2009. They've since been fired from every off-the-rack fash boot in the suburb, but the Dotti Girl Clearance Outlet has two vacancies and the girls might have matured enough to last a whole day.
Katrina Mroz and Hayley Butcher created their grotesquely gorgeous duo after meeting at St Martins Youth Arts Centre. Self-involved, ridiculously dressed and dreaming about their totes orig song for Australia's Got Talent, their diet of Aero bars and UDLs keeps them in shape for any karaoke bar, and work would be perfs if the customers wouldn't bother them.
Satire that doesn't totes come from understanding is a waste of time. Like the only really funny Adelaide jokes are from people who live(d) in Adelaide, the only peeps who can satirise gen Y with enough love to make it rib-aching funny are those who don't believe that anyone could live without an iPhone and think it's cool (people still say cool, right?) to live with your parents in your 20s.
And it's the twenty-somethings who can't get enough of Dash and D'Bree. They recognise themselves and are laughing with them. Oldies may still be laughing at, but we can see Rod Quantock (over 40s) or Eddie Perfect (over 30s) for our generational in-jokes.
With Wes Snelling at the directorial reins, Take It... is more sketch than story, but this is perfect for an early-evening Comedy Festival show in the bar of a hotel. And there are divine new atrocious song and dance numbers (go just to find out what UDL stands for) and new characters. When they make their tv show (I still think they're heading towards Kath and Kim status), there will be room for story and for the hint of vulnerability and that is going to take them into everyone's hearts.
And if you see me pulling my sequined hot pants out of my camel toe, well you'd better go to Dash and D'Bree's show and blame them in person.
This review appears on AussieTheate.com
Dash and D'Bree Take It...
1 April 2011
Portland Hotel
to 10 April
www.comedyfestival.com.au
As a middle-aged spunk rat who likes to browse the Laura Ashley sales rack at my leisure, Dash and D'Bree are everything I despise about shopping and gen Y; no wonder I adore them.
I first wandered into a mall where they worked in 2009. They've since been fired from every off-the-rack fash boot in the suburb, but the Dotti Girl Clearance Outlet has two vacancies and the girls might have matured enough to last a whole day.
Katrina Mroz and Hayley Butcher created their grotesquely gorgeous duo after meeting at St Martins Youth Arts Centre. Self-involved, ridiculously dressed and dreaming about their totes orig song for Australia's Got Talent, their diet of Aero bars and UDLs keeps them in shape for any karaoke bar, and work would be perfs if the customers wouldn't bother them.
Satire that doesn't totes come from understanding is a waste of time. Like the only really funny Adelaide jokes are from people who live(d) in Adelaide, the only peeps who can satirise gen Y with enough love to make it rib-aching funny are those who don't believe that anyone could live without an iPhone and think it's cool (people still say cool, right?) to live with your parents in your 20s.
And it's the twenty-somethings who can't get enough of Dash and D'Bree. They recognise themselves and are laughing with them. Oldies may still be laughing at, but we can see Rod Quantock (over 40s) or Eddie Perfect (over 30s) for our generational in-jokes.
With Wes Snelling at the directorial reins, Take It... is more sketch than story, but this is perfect for an early-evening Comedy Festival show in the bar of a hotel. And there are divine new atrocious song and dance numbers (go just to find out what UDL stands for) and new characters. When they make their tv show (I still think they're heading towards Kath and Kim status), there will be room for story and for the hint of vulnerability and that is going to take them into everyone's hearts.
And if you see me pulling my sequined hot pants out of my camel toe, well you'd better go to Dash and D'Bree's show and blame them in person.
This review appears on AussieTheate.com
30 July 2009
A Narrow Time For Angels
A Narrow Time For Angels
Lucy Freeman, Walking into Bars and The Store Room
7 July 2009
The Store Room
The Store Room has been presenting some of our most innovative and original independent theatre for ten years and opens its five-show 2009 season with A Narrow Time For Angels by Melbourne playwright Cerise De Gelder.
Apart from having one of the best titles ever, De Gelder’s script presents unexpected characters, creates comedy with situation and plot and sprinkles the absurdity with plenty of jokes. Structurally there are some questionable flashbacks and awkward exposition, but it’s pacy and funny enough to overcome any minor issues that may disappear in any re-writes.
However, the humour isn’t quite working on the stage yet. Lucy Freeman’s direction brings too much drama and reality into the ridiculous world. Maggie breaks into the morgue so she can find her dead ex-girlfriend’s body, but is interrupted by a ghost and a cute forensic mortician, and proceeds to tell a rambling tale of gambling, revenge, politicians and questions of fidelity when your ex-hooker girlfriend knows you need a lot of money quickly. There’s no room for soul searching and understanding; the success of this script depends on a non-stop build of joke and farcical plot. When the pace drops for the serious moments of character revelation, it gives the audience too much space and time to wonder if it’s all meant to be serious. If the comedy consistently leads everything, the empathy, understanding and the heartbreak will come much more effectively through laughter.
Marcella Russo, Hayley Butcher and Georgina Naidu are ideally cast, but each bring a different type of comedy to the stage. Naidu brings a clownish caricature to her multiple roles (we laugh at the performance), Russo lets Maggie see only the drama (we laugh at the situation) and Butcher lets Sam’s internal conflict make her choices (we laugh at the character). Each performance is equally as funny, but the different styles don’t always on the stage.
The joy of theatre is that every performance is different and A Narrow Time For Angels will settle and change as the season continues. Under the artistic direction of Todd Macdonald, The Store Room has presented the first performances of some the most remarkable scripts created in Melbourne and, as works need that first production to iron out the creases, it’s always worth a trip to North Fitzroy to see what’s being uncovered.
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.
Lucy Freeman, Walking into Bars and The Store Room
7 July 2009
The Store Room
The Store Room has been presenting some of our most innovative and original independent theatre for ten years and opens its five-show 2009 season with A Narrow Time For Angels by Melbourne playwright Cerise De Gelder.
Apart from having one of the best titles ever, De Gelder’s script presents unexpected characters, creates comedy with situation and plot and sprinkles the absurdity with plenty of jokes. Structurally there are some questionable flashbacks and awkward exposition, but it’s pacy and funny enough to overcome any minor issues that may disappear in any re-writes.
However, the humour isn’t quite working on the stage yet. Lucy Freeman’s direction brings too much drama and reality into the ridiculous world. Maggie breaks into the morgue so she can find her dead ex-girlfriend’s body, but is interrupted by a ghost and a cute forensic mortician, and proceeds to tell a rambling tale of gambling, revenge, politicians and questions of fidelity when your ex-hooker girlfriend knows you need a lot of money quickly. There’s no room for soul searching and understanding; the success of this script depends on a non-stop build of joke and farcical plot. When the pace drops for the serious moments of character revelation, it gives the audience too much space and time to wonder if it’s all meant to be serious. If the comedy consistently leads everything, the empathy, understanding and the heartbreak will come much more effectively through laughter.
Marcella Russo, Hayley Butcher and Georgina Naidu are ideally cast, but each bring a different type of comedy to the stage. Naidu brings a clownish caricature to her multiple roles (we laugh at the performance), Russo lets Maggie see only the drama (we laugh at the situation) and Butcher lets Sam’s internal conflict make her choices (we laugh at the character). Each performance is equally as funny, but the different styles don’t always on the stage.
The joy of theatre is that every performance is different and A Narrow Time For Angels will settle and change as the season continues. Under the artistic direction of Todd Macdonald, The Store Room has presented the first performances of some the most remarkable scripts created in Melbourne and, as works need that first production to iron out the creases, it’s always worth a trip to North Fitzroy to see what’s being uncovered.
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.
30 April 2009
Re tale
Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2009
Re tale
22 April 2009
St Martins
They evoke a universal sense of fear and force us to stay at home, but we know we cannot avoid them or block out their squealing of, “Hi Babe, ya looking for something for a particular special occasion?”
Re Tale introduces gen Y retail assistants D’Bree, the penis flytrap, and Dash, who is happy to wait for mannequin-perfect love. They work in Faux Bo Ho, but their over-dressed, self-involved and falsely enthusiastic clonettes lurk in most retail stores. Yesterday, I was accosted by one in a health food store and, no, I didn’t need any help picking out my packet of tofu!
Katrina Mroz and Hayley Butcher’s creations are on their way to being household names. Already creating gales of genuine laughter, it’s hard not to compare them to fellow St Martins’ alumni Gina Riley and Jane Turner. Like Kath and Kim, D’Bree and Dash are everything loud, bright and crass that inhabits suburban shopping malls. We instantly recognize the perfectly captured language and attitude and love to laugh at them – because we are beyond such pettiness. What is missing is the touch that lets us recognise ourselves in them. We laugh at Kath and Kim, but we also laugh with them, because we reluctantly glimpse our own frizzy perm or jewelled g-string. D’Bree and Dash are superficial and stupid, but we need more hope of seeing their decent, caring and normal side. Of course, they must never fulfil our hope – but a touch of reality would bring us closer to loving them even more.
Re Tale has already been tightened and well-shaped by director Anniene Stockton, but will continue to improve with some work on the actual tale. At this stage the piece is mainly character and joke with a predictable story tacked around it. The complication and trouble comes in too late and is solved too easily and quickly. To get Re-Tale to the next stage (sold out shows, telly series and classrooms full of tween fans squealing, “I’m a cock magnet”) it needs a story that is as good as the characters. I would have loved to see the painful consequences from their previous nights antics, and know why the threat of losing their job is so significant - couldn’t they just move to Supre?.
There’s only a couple more performances of Re Tale left and it’s well worth getting away from the city venues and jumping on a tram to St Martins in South Yarra. I really hope this isn’t the last we see of the Ds, because they are well on the road to becoming unforgettable.
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.
Re tale
22 April 2009
St Martins
They evoke a universal sense of fear and force us to stay at home, but we know we cannot avoid them or block out their squealing of, “Hi Babe, ya looking for something for a particular special occasion?”
Re Tale introduces gen Y retail assistants D’Bree, the penis flytrap, and Dash, who is happy to wait for mannequin-perfect love. They work in Faux Bo Ho, but their over-dressed, self-involved and falsely enthusiastic clonettes lurk in most retail stores. Yesterday, I was accosted by one in a health food store and, no, I didn’t need any help picking out my packet of tofu!
Katrina Mroz and Hayley Butcher’s creations are on their way to being household names. Already creating gales of genuine laughter, it’s hard not to compare them to fellow St Martins’ alumni Gina Riley and Jane Turner. Like Kath and Kim, D’Bree and Dash are everything loud, bright and crass that inhabits suburban shopping malls. We instantly recognize the perfectly captured language and attitude and love to laugh at them – because we are beyond such pettiness. What is missing is the touch that lets us recognise ourselves in them. We laugh at Kath and Kim, but we also laugh with them, because we reluctantly glimpse our own frizzy perm or jewelled g-string. D’Bree and Dash are superficial and stupid, but we need more hope of seeing their decent, caring and normal side. Of course, they must never fulfil our hope – but a touch of reality would bring us closer to loving them even more.
Re Tale has already been tightened and well-shaped by director Anniene Stockton, but will continue to improve with some work on the actual tale. At this stage the piece is mainly character and joke with a predictable story tacked around it. The complication and trouble comes in too late and is solved too easily and quickly. To get Re-Tale to the next stage (sold out shows, telly series and classrooms full of tween fans squealing, “I’m a cock magnet”) it needs a story that is as good as the characters. I would have loved to see the painful consequences from their previous nights antics, and know why the threat of losing their job is so significant - couldn’t they just move to Supre?.
There’s only a couple more performances of Re Tale left and it’s well worth getting away from the city venues and jumping on a tram to St Martins in South Yarra. I really hope this isn’t the last we see of the Ds, because they are well on the road to becoming unforgettable.
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.
20 December 2008
This is set in the future
This is set in the future
La Mama
December 2008
This is set in the future is a traditional Christmas tale of blood, cum and karma, complete with a pseudo Santa resplendent in a tight frock contemplating an even tighter noose. The publicity did say it was more festy than festive…
Glyn Roberts’s not-so-cheery tale explores the not-too-distant future where we could live forever. Will folk get up to acts of selfless good and create heartfelt joy? Not with Robert Reid directing.
As always, director Reid (theatre in decay) hides his hope behind a large wall of cynicism. He despairs in his program notes that Melbourne theatre has “gotten ever so samey”. Melbourne’s independent theatre would be a duller place without Reid and I’m not alone in my gladness that he is determined to produce original work.
With Sayraphim Lothian’s spot-on design and a cast of competitive alphas (Scott Gooding, Rachel Baring, Hayley Butcher, Joshua Cameron and writer Glyn Roberts), Reid guides the delightfully-dark script into a place where even the Christmas-cracker jokes would need a PGR rating.
There’s not much left in this future world beyond “fuck or punch”. It sets out to shock and this is where I think it just missed the mark. There were some moments where it could have gone somewhere very nasty and interesting, or somewhere even more outrageously, hilariously obscene – but I felt that the brakes were applied and what could have been jaw-dropping black was simply taken back to joke. They were good jokes, but didn’t have the expected effect.
It might have just been final night excitement, but the cast were enjoying the fun a little bit too much. The impact of having the crap beaten out of you is dulled if the actors make it clear that it’s meant to be funny. There’s no shock in “incest is the new gay” if it’s being said to create a nervous audience titter. The comic book style of performance was perfect for the script, but we needed to see more of the fascinating characters, rather than the terrific actors, because the telling of their story was lost. We were watching to see what the performers would do next, rather than what would happen next.
Reid declares that we shouldn’t “expect meaning from people paid to fake it”. It was clear that everyone involved in This is set in the future understood every nuance of meaning, but they could have shared their meaning just a little bit more with the audience.
This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com
La Mama
December 2008
This is set in the future is a traditional Christmas tale of blood, cum and karma, complete with a pseudo Santa resplendent in a tight frock contemplating an even tighter noose. The publicity did say it was more festy than festive…
Glyn Roberts’s not-so-cheery tale explores the not-too-distant future where we could live forever. Will folk get up to acts of selfless good and create heartfelt joy? Not with Robert Reid directing.
As always, director Reid (theatre in decay) hides his hope behind a large wall of cynicism. He despairs in his program notes that Melbourne theatre has “gotten ever so samey”. Melbourne’s independent theatre would be a duller place without Reid and I’m not alone in my gladness that he is determined to produce original work.
With Sayraphim Lothian’s spot-on design and a cast of competitive alphas (Scott Gooding, Rachel Baring, Hayley Butcher, Joshua Cameron and writer Glyn Roberts), Reid guides the delightfully-dark script into a place where even the Christmas-cracker jokes would need a PGR rating.
There’s not much left in this future world beyond “fuck or punch”. It sets out to shock and this is where I think it just missed the mark. There were some moments where it could have gone somewhere very nasty and interesting, or somewhere even more outrageously, hilariously obscene – but I felt that the brakes were applied and what could have been jaw-dropping black was simply taken back to joke. They were good jokes, but didn’t have the expected effect.
It might have just been final night excitement, but the cast were enjoying the fun a little bit too much. The impact of having the crap beaten out of you is dulled if the actors make it clear that it’s meant to be funny. There’s no shock in “incest is the new gay” if it’s being said to create a nervous audience titter. The comic book style of performance was perfect for the script, but we needed to see more of the fascinating characters, rather than the terrific actors, because the telling of their story was lost. We were watching to see what the performers would do next, rather than what would happen next.
Reid declares that we shouldn’t “expect meaning from people paid to fake it”. It was clear that everyone involved in This is set in the future understood every nuance of meaning, but they could have shared their meaning just a little bit more with the audience.
This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com
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