MELBOURNE FESTIVAL: Masquerade

Masquerade
Griffin Theatre Company & State Theatre Company of South Australia
Presented by Melbourne Festival
24 October 2015
The Sumner
to 25 October
www.festival.melbourne

Masquerade. Nathan O'Keeefe Photo by Brett Boardman

Kate Mulvany’s gorgeous adaption of Kit Williams's picture book Masquerade celebrates why picture books and stories are so important to children and why whenever a child asks you to read them a book, you stop what you are doing and read them a book. You’ll never regret that choice.

At today's post-show Q and A, Mulvany talked about how Masquerade was the distraction she needed when she was in hospital with cancer as a child.  She want on to explain how when, as an adult, she finally contacted Williams, she flew to his UK home where he served her rabbit pie and gave her the rights to his book – on the condition that her story be a part of the new story.

Published in 1979, his book is about the Moon (Kate Cheel) sending Jack Hare (Nathan O’Keefe) on a quest to deliver a gold amulet to her love, the Sun (Mikelangelo, in the dazzling role he was born to play). But what made this book insanely popular is that each page is filled with riddles and clues that identify the spot where the real gold amulet was buried. It was found in the early 1980s, but possibly by accident. And the lack of amulet doesn’t make the riddles and clues any more fascinating today.

At the heart of this adaption is the story about Joe (Louis Fontain), a child with cancer, and Tessa (Helen Dalimore), his mum who needs hope  – "Mum, why do you let them do that to me?" – as she shares the book with her son. With original music by Mikelangleo and Pip Branson, performed by the ever-divine Black Sea Gentlemen, their story continues after the last page with an adventure that lets Joe and Tessa help Jack Hare to revist Penny Pockets (Zindzi Okenyo) and the book characters and learn why The Man Who Plays The Music That Makes The World Go Around (Branson) sometimes stops.

With a design by Anna Cordingly that’s inspired by the book but created for the mood and complex delight of this version, direction by Sam Strong and Lee Lewis that never lets the story drop and always keeps hope, this is the sort of theatre that promises children that theatre is wonderful and reminds grown ups that a story about love is always the right choice.

Today (Sunday) is the last day of the Melbourne Festival. It’s been amazing and I can’t think of a better way to end it than to see one of the last two performances of Masquerade.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Betrayal

Betrayal
MTC presents the State Theatre Company of SA production
29 August 2015
The Sumner
to 3 October
mtc.com.au

Betrayal. MTC. Photo by Shane Reid

Following seasons in Adelaide and Canberra, Geordie Brookman’s production of Harold Pinter’s 1978 play Betrayal has opened at the MTC. Inspired by the writer’s own relationships, it’s a remarkable exploration of betrayal from the irrelevant to the heartbreaking, and the personal to the professional.

It opens with Emma (Alison Bell) and Jerry (Nathan O’Keefe) meeting at a bar after their extra marital relationship had ended and she reveals that her marriage to Jerry’s best friend Robert (Mark Saturno) is over. Told in reverse chronological order (mostly), it leaves the audience knowing more than the characters do, so instead of asking “what happens next?”, they can ask “why did they behave like that?”. And without the need for exposition, the writer and characters are able to be completely in the moment and free to be silent.

The transfer to the bigger Sumner Theatre results in a loss of the intimacy that magnifies the relationships on the stage (go for the closer seats) – and makes Geoff Cobham’s clothes-rack revolve design feel more contrived than natural – but the power of the held back performances still reaches the back corners.

The gut kick of Betrayal lies in understanding people who never say what they mean and whose need for control and appearance is more driving than any real love that might be there. This isn’t a wild romance about heartbreak and selfless love, it’s about the far-easier selfish choices that feel uncomfortably familiar.

As the truth of Pinter’s writing is in the subtext of his in-the-text pauses, it becomes clearer when the performances are pulled back and the emotion lives in the emptiness between the characters.

Brookman’s direction ensures that this empty space is wide and clear. Touch – and the emotion connection it represents – is kept to the ritual of a handshake or an hello kiss, or the necessity of sexual desire. And as each scene answers questions to the one that came before, the cast show the moments that set up new barriers and closed down moments of connection.

O’Keefe’s Jerry starts closed and bitter and becomes more open and relatively innocent as time moves backwards, as Saturno’s Robert starts closed and angry and becomes more trusting and content. But it’s Bell’s Emma who holds the heart of the work.

Bell’s contained performance is staggering in its depth and quiet power. She holds back every emotion and reaction that Emma wants to scream but never will. She lets Emma know her weaknesses and accept that she will betray and be betrayed to keep the appearance of happiness, even if no one is happy.

The adultery in Betrayal is never what really hurts the characters or breaks them apart. It’s the little moments about table clothes or broken down speedboats that build into a silence that lets people choose to betray themselves and everything they’ve worked for and wanted rather than acknowledge every betrayal they’ve faced and committed. If Pinter tells us anything, it’s listen to the moments of silence.

This was on AussieTheatre.com