Finishing this weekend: The Witches and Photographs of A

The Witches
Malthouse Theatre
Last show tonight
malthousetheatre.com.au

Roald Dahl's children's stories are dark and naughty and let children get into all sorts of trouble without bothersome grown ups ruining the fun or trying to help. The Witches is about what happens when a group of children-hating witches meet at a hotel and come across an orphaned boy.

Having missed chunk of the beginning (I should have known there is no right turn onto Sturt Street from Kings Way during peak hour), I didn't review but I loved what I saw.

Guy Edmonds plays everyone in this stage version of the story, which is based on a play by David Wood. His instant transformations from horrible hag to squeaky fast mouse are magic. There's little on the stage except the performer and the imagination of his audience – it's pretty close to the experience of reading – and together they create a show that's more spectacular, far scarier and more loving than anything made from special effects.

Here's what Keith Gow thought after seeing it earlier this week.

NEON
Photographs of A
Antechamber and Daniel Keene
Last show tomorrow
mtc.com.au

Until this show, I didn't know anything about 15-year-old Louise Augustine Gleizes. Known as "A", she was a celebrity hysteric in Paris in the late 1870s whose hysterias were photographed and the young woman was exhibited by her doctor, the influential neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Photographs of A by Daniel Keene explores the young woman's illness and experiences in the Salpetriere sanitarium from inside A's head.

If only the public display of ill and sexually traumatised young women didn't feel so familiar.

Sixty-something Helen Morse is Augustine and, even though Ben Grant and Anouk Gleeson-Mead appear on stage with her, the script is nearly all hers. Her performance is as beautiful as it is disturbing.

Having seen the photos (they are in the free program), we know A was as gorgeous as any teenage girl is and the key to this work is hearing the teenage voice – one that's still full of hope and doesn't understand the consequences of her experiences – come from an old, ugly and near broken woman. The power of Keene's script comes from what's unspoken.

However the production, directed and designed by Brian Lipson, is so aware of its theatricality that it never escapes the falseness of being in a theatre and feels so obvious that there's little surprise or space for unexpected wonder. When the design starts with rows of tea-light candles, the expectation of their lighting and snuffing takes away from the beauty of the candlelight.

The NEON festival is about the new and the daring. Photographs of A is a lovely piece that's worth seeing for Morse, but it feels out of place in NEON.

Review: Sunglasses at night

MELBOURNE CABARET FESTIVAL
Sunglasses at night: The 80s apocalypse sing along cabaret
Geraldine Quinn
27 June 2014
Chapel off Chapel
to 28 June
melbournecabaret.com

"We are young

Heartache to heartache 

we stand"

If you're now singing and frightened that you remember those dance moves but can't remember how to unlock your phone, you need to get to Geraldine Quinn's Sunglasses at night: The 80s apocalypse sing along cabaret. Sadly, she's only doing two performances at the Melbourne Cabaret Festival – last one TONIGHT – but it will be back. It has to be back because there are too many people who were teenagers in the 1980s who need to see this and sing along.

SING ALONG! Not sing under your breath and annoy the people near you, but loudly and proudly and in fear of a microphone being put in your face if you don't.

In an 80s shoulder-padded dress, which could only be improved if it were colbolt blue, and patterned tights that flatter no leg, Geraldine sings the songs I know. I think I could have done most of it without the words on the screen. And it's not karaoke I-can't-read-that tiny type. It's neatishly hand written, I-can-read-that-without-my-glasses PowerPoint slides, decorated with coloured pens and doodles, and scattered with mondegreens that pose a genuine sing-or-laugh dilemma.

Born in 1975 (it's ok, she says that in the show), Geraldine's view of 80s pop is different from that of us born earlier. I remember intense and pretty singers with their social conscience on their sleeve, a huge brooch on their lapel, beautiful make up, gel sculptured hair, and hips that wore a jacket perfectly – and if anyone thinks for a second that I'm talking about woman, you weren't there.

Geraldine saw these artists and their music as intense, poncy and overly concerned with the cold war and nuclear destruction. And with a couple pics of Midge Ure for reference, it all comes flooding back.

It really does answer a lot about us who grew up with this music. But, to be fair, it wasn't all ponce and destruction; there was the positivity of Wham and their Choose Life t-shirts – who am I kidding, they were poncier than Ultravox and Spandau Ballet.

If you remember injuring yourself trying to Kohl pencil a perfect Cleopatra eye and bought blue mascara from the Body Shop, make sure the silicon chip inside your head's not switched to overload, turn around (bright eyes) and sing for Gold (gold) with Geraldine.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Last chance

What to see on the weekend? Here's Friday, Saturday and Sunday night covered.

The Von Muiznieks Family Hoedown
The Butterfly Club
Facebook
Last show tonight

The Melbourne Cabaret Festival is in it's second week and The Butterfly Club is always a favourite place for a show and a drink at the hoarders-dream bar; clutter can be art.

Karin, Simon and Emma (von) Muiznieks are from Essendon, the heart of bluegrass. And as Lativan sibling bluegrass and country pop-cover bands go, there's no one like them.

If you missed that, they're a Lativan sibling bluegrass and country pop-cover band from Essendon. For reals. Beat that von Trapps, Osmonds, Jacksons and von Brady Bunch singers, who aren't real siblings so they don't count.

Singing bluegrass and country classics by the likes of Lorde, Brittney, Adele, Rhianna and Tom (Jones) with mandolin, autoharp and bass ukulele, their hoedown is so much more fun than prancing around a fountain in clothes made from curtains.  Yee-ha!

The von Muiznieks have created a niche that only they can fill and are filling it with great singing, terrific playing and stories that I'd never imagined.

There's development to go but the von Muiznieks are on their way to being something that will sell out Spiegeltents. I loved them so much that I'm ready to chew me some hay, call myself a hoe and wear gingham.


Orphans
Q44
Q44 theatre in Burnley
q44.com.au
Last show on Sunday

Q44 are a new company working in an amazing converted warehouse in Richmond, which is also home to visual artists and a very old white cat.

Like Red Stitch the early years, they are an ensemble of actors working to produce the plays they want to perform.

Their second production is the 1983 play Orphans by American playwright/director/actor Lyle Kessler. The orphans are adult brothers, Phillip and Treat, living in an abandoned council flat in Philadelphia. Treat is a petty criminal and Phillip is housebound due to allergies and trusting that his brother. The fairy Godfather is Harold, a drunk with a briefcase full of stocks and bonds, who's kidnapped by Treat.

It's a bit Freud 101, but the three characters make up for any obviousness in the plot. And see it for the exceptional performances.

With a realism technique that fits the work, Ashley McKenzie (Treat), Mark Davis (Phillip) and Gareth Reeves (Harold) immerse themselves so deeply in the characters that the technique all but disappears. Engaging and real, they each create genuine fear for their character and overcome the awareness of being watched.

Keep an eye on this company.

Kevin Turner's review.

Hypertxt Festival
MKA
On the grace of officials
The defence
Sugar, sugar
Thank you, thank you love
The Tuxedo Cat
mka.org.au
last shows on Saturday

Maverick favourites MKA have taken over the Tuxedo Cat in the city and four new shows finish on Saturday.

All are a bit angry and are preaching to the converted, but if you're not angry about how we're treating refugees, how women are portrayed on stage and screen, and how young women can't see their own beauty then you need to see more theatre made by people who are.

I haven't seen Thank you, thank you yet, but will take an hour off from a party on Saturday night to see it.

James Jackson's reviews.

The defence

Thank you, thank you love

Sugar, sugar

Review: Grounded

Grounded

Red Stitch Actors Theatre

15 June 2014

Red Stitch

to 12 July

redstitch.net

See Grounded for Kate Cole's performance or for the writing or to be reminded how theatre can creep into your heart with a mixture of hurt and happiness that makes you feel a little bit more alive.

Grounded is a monologue about an American fighter pilot who is already far away and thinking about drinking with the boys when the bombs she drops explode. For her it's about the speed and the blue, and when pregnancy, love and marriage intervene, she isn't put back in the sky and her blue is replaced by the grey of a screen as she flies a drone from a box in a desert base not far from Las Vegas.

George Brant’s script was first seen in 2013 in Scotland and by 2015 will have had 22 productions in the UK, USA, Europe and Australia. It’s won awards and generally been raved about. And rightly so. It’s an astonishing piece of writing that successfully questions the political, moral and global by telling a personal story.

I want to say it’s heartbreaking, but if it were told from a different angle, we might celebrate its ending. What’s so powerful is how it personalises modern warfare so much that it’s impossible to distance ourselves from it. And it’s beautiful writing that takes us from endless blue to empty Pepsi cans on an dark desert road as its strands reach and curl back to their starting point like a spirograph.

And it’s performed by Kate Cole.

Under Kirsten Von Bibra’s direction, she stands in a khaki flight suit in a box design (Matthew Adey) that curves its concrete and hides its secret in the open. Cole’s performance is so grippingly real that the actor disappears.

In a stage world that’s all technique, lighting and manipulation, she takes us into the sky and desert and even though they are never described, the audience can see her husband and child and those in the grey on the screen. It’s a performance that has so much supporting it that it looks easy and natural. She lets the pilot be unlikable and do the unthinkable, while letting us understand and love her so much that the audience is almost breathing in time with her by the final moments.

It’s on until mid-July, but the space is small so it’s best to book and be safe.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: But wait ... there's more

But wait ... there's more
Circus Oz
19 June 2014
Circus Oz Big Top, Birrarung Marr
to 13 July, then touring
circusoz.com

It's impossible not to love a night in the heated Circus Oz tent, and if seeing them in winter in Melbourne with a bag of hot doughnuts isn't a tradition for your family and friends, start it now.

The Melbourne-based, world-adored company have a new permanent home in Collingwood and But wait ... there's more is the first show created in the space.

With the ever-lovely hip-hopping Candy Bowers as MC, this year's mob are a mix of new and old(er) faces who all start with their own skills, bring new twists to some favourite tricks and ensure that expectations and assumptions about the likes of gender, attitude, background and ability are always challenged.

And remember that there never has and never will be any non-human animals in a Circus Oz show. But there's always a live band.

Founding member and costume designer Laurel Frank has created barcode costumes for the clowning, and with velvet, tartan and sequins, every vaudeville-inspired costume is an extension of the performer's personality.

So with positive politics and love to share, the show's about how we want stuff that we don't need, how we want to be things (like rich and thin) that we're not, and how we judge without seeing the whole picture.

As it's the first time out for But wait ... there's more, it's still a bit raw but nothing can take away from the passion that's created Circus Oz shows for the last 36 years and will hopefully continue to do so until we're not around to see them.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The King and I

The King and I

Opera Australia and John Frost

12 June 2014

Princess Theatre

to August 2014

thekingandimusical.com.au

Photo by Oliver Toth

This production of The King and I was first seen in 1991 in Adelaide. It toured Australia and found its way to New York in 1996, where it won some Tonys, and to London in 2000. It was a lavish, extravagant re-working of the Rogers and Hammerstein's 1950s Broadway hit – and still is.

There's not much that hasn't been said about the Brian Thomson's set and Roger Kirk's costumes, which won a couple of those Tonys. The Thai-influenced, outrageously sparklie, elephants-on-the-stage, hoop-skirted, bare-chested, gold, gold and gold stage is magnificent. It's an impression of 1860s Bangkok that could only exist on a music theatre stage.

As this story might only be able to exist on a music theatre stage. Based on a book that's based on a semblance of truth, the "I" is a colonial English woman (Anna) brought to Bangkok by the King of Siam (Thailand)) to teach English to his many wives and children. She's very fish-out-of-water in her massively-hooped frocks and educated ways, but loves the bare-footed women and children she teaches and somehow earns the respect of the King, who is determined to bring his country into the Western world without sacrificing his absolute power.

Jason Scott Lee joyfully embraces the clown and the confused heart of the King, if not the fear connected to his power, and Lisa McCune ensures that Mrs Anna is his match and equal. McCune brings a subtlety and contemporary understanding that creates depth to the more thinly-written moments and her scenes with Shu-Cheen Yu (first wife, Lady Thiang), especially, acknowledge and challenge the perception of the world that created this work.

No matter how exquisite the design, talented the cast or adorable the children, it's impossible not to look at this The King and I from a 2014 Australian perspective and ask the unavoidable: "Why here, why now?".

The work still presents the Thai people with a 1950s mix of exoticism and barbarism; the dialogue's still generic Asian, can't-pronounce-R, broken English; and the laughs come from the Thai people mis-understanding the British/American culture. Despite its intent, The King and I still has some awkward moments that feel a bit like politely listening to Grandpa tell an off joke because he doesn't know better.

If the book and story were presented without the song and dance, would it be applauded or even accepted? And could this production tour to South East Asia and open in Bangkok? I think no and no. So, of all the works that could have been produced, why this one?

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Resplendence

NEON
Respelendence
Angus Cerini/Doubletap
13 June 2014
The Lawler
to 22 June
mtc.com.au

Photo by Sebastian Bourges  

Angus Cerini scares me.

In a good way.

In a way that I know his work is likely to disturb and confront me and make me want a glass of wine and some alone time after a show.

His company, Doubletap, are next in this year's NEON Festival of Independent Theatre with a piece written and performed by Cereni, with dramturgy by Susie Dee, where it's impossible to take you're eyes away from him.

Resplendence is ostensibly about a man who goes down to the shops for something to eat and sees an accident. But its story, although powerful, is only there to show us the man.

Cereni's work shows me parts of the male psyche that I don't understand; those parts that I see and want to run from rather than try to understand.

He's supported by a design so integral to the experience that the work couldn't exist if one element were missing. Marg Horwell's design, Jethro Woodward's sound and Andy Turner's lighting put him on a raised catwalk where his walk and turn take us into his thoughts and away from a performer  on a stage.

The language of the text is so inner voice that it's easy to forget when it's recorded sound or live voice. He's never speaking to us, always to himself in his re-telling of his story. And in doing so, his language has found a space that's neither poetic nor natural, but something that shows us his thoughts in ways that language sometimes misses because we censor and control thoughts when we make them words.

And this language is connected to a physicality that's so linked to the psyche that it almost doesn't need the words.

Resplendence is a man who's impotent anger and fear comes from a loneliness that comes from an impotent anger and fear that craves violence or connection or understanding or just a shared laugh from a world that he's already too lost to. It's extraordinary theatre.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Mini review: May and Alia do Pirates

May and Alia do Pirates (of Penzance)
La Mama
18 June 2014
La Mama Courthouse
to 29 June
lamama.com.au

It's taken me three seasons to finally see May and Alia do Pirates (of Penzance). And now that the La Mama Courthouse is in cabaret setting with tables and drinks, it's a perfect time for G&S fans to take heart and tarantara along.

The premise is simple: the only people who turn up to perform Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance are best friends May Jasper (from Not a very good story) and Alia Vryens. They decide to do the show anyway.

Well, most of it. The bits they can sing anyway (Mabel has to be played by a ladle because they can't reach those high notes). And they have to do the fun songs that involve moustaches, pirate hats and boaters. And the songs that can be played by sock puppets. And, naturally, some of those songs are begging to be sung in a very non-Sullivan way.

Mabel the ladle and sock puppets; what could possibly go wrong?

Nothing really. Apart from Alia busting the best boom box ever seen on a stage.

With Eva Johansen (Caravan of Love) directing, the comedy is tight and the clowning is allowed to reveal some heart.

It's assumed that the audience known their Pirates – which is a pretty safe assumption – but there's room to share more of the story, and maybe make their own stage story run parallel to a ridiculous Gilbert plot or tell us more about why they love G&S. And they don't need to be scared about filling the room with sound; those Courtroom rafters can suck away a lot of voice.

It's a hoot for G&S fans (yes, there's a sing-along bit), but fun enough for those who don't get the paradox joke. (Although, "pair of Docs" was pretty funny.)