Review: Big Bad Wolf

Big Bad Wolf
Windmill Theatre, MTC
11 January 2014
Southbank Theatre, The Lawler
to 25 January
mtc.com.au

On the way to Big Bad Wolf, five-year-old Ella and I talked about what we thought it was going to be about. She thought there'd be huffing and puffing and little pigs, I thought there'd be nannas and little red hoods, and we were both worried that it might be a little bit scary.

Turns out that we were both a bit right and wrong. Wolfy (Patrick Graham) loves peoples, doesn't eat other animals and would really like some friends. He meets a friendly flea, but there's over achiever Heidi Hood (Emma Hawkins) and her wolf alarm to contend with and his wolf mum (Kate Cheel, who's also the narrator, a TV and the puppeteer) isn't keen on her boy's love of making up poems and befriending wolf-hating peoples.

With twists on traditional tales, this new story about friendship (by Matthew Whittet and Adelaide's Windmill Theatre) is utterly enchanting and the grown ups loved it as much as the kids who let them come with them.

Or, as Ella said to me when we finished clapping, "Actually, that was a very good movie. No, story. What is it?" "A play." Big Bad Wolf is a perfect first play. It's even a teeny tiny bit scary, but only for a moment.

And to read the best reviews, there's a tree in the foyer with lots of blank leaves for little critics to write and draw on. There are drawings of Wolfy and the likes of "thanks for the show", "awesome", "Wolftastic" and "I thingk Wolfy was the best". I thingk so, too.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Conversation Piece

Conversation Piece
Lucy Guerin Inc, Belvoir and Arts House
19 March 2013
Meat Market, Arts House
to 24 March 2013

Conversation Piece is the only show in the Dance Massive festival that I’ve managed to see and it left me wanting to talk and rave and see it again.


Lucy Guerin’s work makes me understand contemporary dance; her choreography has a visceral effect that goes beyond the physical, lets me know what she and her dancers were thinking and leaves me cursing that words can be a useless form of expression.  And this is so much more than dance. To say it’s part-impro, part-dance, past-performance doesn’t do justice to any form as it becomes something original and is created from a premise that you will relate to if you read internet reviews.

If you’re reading this on your phone, book your ticket NOW. It’s on until the weekend.

Rarely do I sit in a theatre and have no idea what’s going to happen next. Conversation Piece had me for every moment because I had no idea what is was going to do. Developed with Belvoir and first performed last year (Melbourne has two new cast members), it’s had time to develop, but still feels fresh and new.

Three performers (dancers) walk onto the stage and talk, while recording themselves on a pair of iPhones. With no rehearsal, topic or brief, each performance is unique and a second visit is almost mandatory. And if you see someone laughing as they drink granulated ginger tea or a Ural sachet, you’ll know they were at the Melbourne opening night.

Despite being very public, the initial conversation feels as awkwardly delightful as overhearing a group of strangers chatting. Unlike dialogue, it sounds like people talking with interruptions, unfinished thoughts, genuine laughs and the illogical logic that few writers master but we all understand.

At eight minutes, three new performers (actors) come onto the stage, take an iPhone from the talkers, put in earphones and repeat the conversation as they hear it. So a conversation about wasabi, parenting and UTIs becomes the soundtrack to the rest of the performance and is re-visited in the most unexpected forms.

From conversations with themselves to competitions between performers and their craft, it becomes much more than an exercise in form as it confronts our so-quickly-adapted-to smartphone culture. I’ve only had one for 18-months and I don’t take books on the train anymore, I tweet in intervals and let people know if I’m going to a show via Facey. We stare at tiny screens instead of interacting with our friends or strangers. (Please look up from your screen and smile at someone nearby; even if it’s just yourself.)

Don’t think for a moment that this premise of isolation makes boring theatre because we’re watching what the isolated do – and I can say that at the end of this show, there wasn’t the usual rush to check phones in the foyer.

Throw in a cast who I can’t say enough good about (Megan Holloway, Stephanie Lake, Alisdair Macindow, Byron Perry, Katherine Tonkin, Matthew Whittet) and this is dance that springs over any limitations or fears of dance being a world away from theatre.

If you haven’t been to much or any of Dance Massive, cancel your weekend plans and get to the Meat Market to see what they are going to talk about.


This appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Moving Target

Moving Target
Malthouse Theatre, Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts, Sydney Opera House
13 March 2008
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse

Last week I despaired at seeing banality on Melbourne’s professional stages and began to wonder if I was being too harsh. Last night I saw Moving Target at the Malthouse. To Benedict Andrews and everyone involved in the creation of this work – may I say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Moving Target has come to Melbourne after a season at the Adelaide Festival of Arts. They also brought the Adelaide heat wave with them, but this show was worth sitting in a very hot room for two hours. Direction, performance, writing and design blend to create original, moving, addictive theatre.

The final script is a melding of Marius Von Mayenburg’s words (ably translated by Maja Zade) with an improvised ensemble rehearsal process. What seems chaotic and spontaneous is structured intricately and intelligently to build tension and gradually reveal story and character. The language gives us incredible images like a stubble-covered palm, a half-eaten bird and a green package that is never on the stage, but we never stop seeing it. The final scenes are all exposition. In the show-don’t-tell world of visual story telling, this isn’t recommended, but in the hands of such a team – all I can say is WOW. And this is regardless of content; which is as stunning as its telling. Children and terrorism are highly emotive subjects. This story embraces arch types, avoids clichés and lets its audience feel every genuine emotion.

The ensemble of Alison Bell, Julie Forsyth, Rita Kalnejais, Robert Menzies, Hamish Michael and Matthew Whittet are perfectly cast. It’s a tough job to get the balance right in this show. It takes exceptional skill and craft to make well-rehearsed and detailed staging look random and improvised, let alone to reveal complex characters from what initially appears to be the “real” actors on the stage. All worked as an ensemble, but I have to say that Alison’s subtlety was beautifully powerful and Hamish could pitch his performance just a squidge lower.

All elements of the design fuse to tell this story. The unexpected brilliance of Robert Cousins’ set becomes apparent as the hide and seek games begin. Fiona Crombie’s costumes look like a quick grab from the op shop, but show us the core of these characters. Performer Hamish Michael also designed the sound. The introduction of amplified sound and noise mirrors and supports every moment on the stage. Finally, there is Paul Jackson’s lighting. His Malthouse designs are consistently excellent, but this is sublime. The clean white, the coloured shadows, the transformation to black and white and the seconds of red show the emotion of this story. It is the best lighting I’ve seen since Robert Wilson was last in town.

This whole box of irresistible goodness was brought together by director Benedict Andrews. What an original and powerful theatrical voice. He uses the uniqueness of theatre to tell a story that burrows into the hearts and souls of its audience. The pacing is superb and the release genuinely cathartic. Sometimes the humour and gag were played too hard. The hoodie joke was very, very funny, but it took us away from the world on that stage and reminded us that we were watching an actor on a stage. Even if it’s the best joke ever seen – if it distracts from the story telling, it isn’t worth it.

Audiences deserve to see original, cliché free, astonishing theatre on our main stages. Malthouse’s focus on ensemble creation and original voices is proving that we don’t have to settle for boring. Moving Target might not instantly engage or move you – just go with the journey and you may be amazed where you end up.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com.