Review: How To Train Your Dragon

How To Train Your  Dragon: The Arena Spectacular
Global Creatures and Dreamworks
8 March 2012
Hisense Arena

It's impossible to not love a life-sized, fire-breathing, doe-eyed dragon. Surely I could have a small one as a pet?

How To Train Your  Dragon: The Arena Spectacular is based on the Dreamworks 2010 film. Created in Melbourne by the same team who made Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular, its home town is first to see the new spectacle that will spend the next years travelling the world.

If you haven't seen the super-gorgeous computer-animated Dreamworks film, Hiccup the Viking doesn't live up to his dragon-slayer dad's expectations and wants to impress the village by slaughtering a scaly critter, but when he captures his first dragon, he can't bring himself to make the kill and begins to realise that his new friend Toothless and all dragons aren't as monstrous as they believed. When he wins the right to kill a dragon at a festival (and impress his rival slayer and love interest Amber), he's faced with choosing between his smoking new friends or his family and village.

Unlike Dinosaurs, humans clearly cohabit with dragons and the giants are joined by a large cast whose circus skills and flying impress even the most jaded tweens. And who prove that old-school puppetry is as wonderful as any animatronic as an extraordinarily beautiful shadow puppets nearly outshines the giants and some of the most loved critters were hand puppets.

But the stars remain the dragons.  Created by Sonny Tilders and his Creature Technology Company team, the animatronic and puppet creatures are nothing less than sensational, with details like hand-painted skins and blinking and moving eyes that instantly make you ignore any visible technology, and movement so fluid that it's easy to forget that they can't follow you home.

What takes this show beyond a circus ring of spectacular creatures, is the incredible animation by Dan Porta and production design by Peter England. The animation is not like the film, with a hand-drawn and darker feel to it. Projected onto a wall bigger than any screen, the animation creates movement that feels like a whizz-bang computer game rather than a film and works to make the huge audience feel more a part of the action.

Feeling close to the characters and having any subtlety of story is a tough call in spaces made for sport and with such how-do-they-do-that co-stars.  Director Nigel Jamieson is no stranger to massive events, having directed several Commonwealth and Olympic ceremonies, and he uses technology to tell remarkably intimate stories on our main stages (Honour Bound). The How To Train Your Dragon film is a story about Hiccup and his family, the Arena Spectacular, almost by definition, needs to be a story about Toothless and the dragons. Much of the emotion of the story still relies on knowing the film, but it works without that back up and I suspect that changes will continue to be made, so when they saddle up the dragons to leave Melbourne, there won't be any moments when the technology is more interesting than the story.

 How To Train Your Dragon: The Arena Spectacular is as spectacular as it claims to be. If you know little fans of the film, it's worth it. My favourite moment was watching a bank of children waving as Toothless flew to them.  But be warned that the merchandise is ridiculously cute, so be prepared for sulking if you're not willing to buy $30+ toys.

Honour Bound

Honour Bound
Malthouse Theatre
15 Septembr 2006
Merlyn Theatre, CUB Malthouse

Honour Bound is a powerful work of art and an impassioned exploration of the ongoing incarceration of David Hicks in the US detainment camp in Guantanamo Bay. Fuelled by anger, frustration and an overwhelming sense of injustice; its harrowing and brutal images express the unimaginable emotion, fear and horror experienced by David and his family.

Nigel Jamieson (direction, writing and co-design) and Garry Stewart (choreography) have approached the controversial subject with honesty and a determination to explore our community reaction to the removal of the human rights we value.

Honour Bound explores the art of storytelling by using digital media and pure physicality to create unforgettable images about the limits of human endurance. Its strength and horror build by dehumanising the performers, whist humanising David and his family.

David Hicks has been in Guantanamo Bay for five years. For 18 months he was kept in solitary confinement in a 6x9x7 foot metal cell. The cell was within a shed, so he never saw sunlight, and cameras eventually replaced his human guard. The production design is based on David’s reality in Guantanamo. A small cage sits within a larger one, family are unreachable images, words bring hope from the outside - but they are also an uncontrollable power that accuse, betray and lie. It is a world with no natural light, where touch is feared, where beliefs are shattered and hope is lost.

There is no conventional script; every word seen and heard is a published document, a transcript, a letter or a recording of a real person. We never hear David’s voice, but we hear his words, see photos of him and meet his father (Terry) and stepmother (Bev). The real Terry and Bev appear on film. They are the dignity, the soul and the reality of this story. The image of Terry Hicks projected on the cell that holds his son is not easy to forget, nor is his matter of fact description of the torture his son has endured.

This story is about physical and emotional limits. Stewart takes his six performers to their own physical limits. Through extremely demanding choreography he says, “their struggle becomes real rather than illustrated”. This isn’t pretty dance. It is movement as a physical expression of emotional and psychological reactions. They move like humans who cannot control their own bodies or caged animals prepared to do anything to escape. The extra element of aerial work and use of the climbable caged walls creates a further dimension of unnatural space and movement.

Honour Bound is an exceptional piece of theatre that should be seen, regardless of its subject matter. It is also theatre that should be seen, regardless of its artistry.

Supporting the production is a screening Curtis Levy’s award-winning documentary, "The President versus David Hicks" followed by the filmmaker’s personal reflections on the making of his film.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.