Review: I, Malvolio

I, Malvolio
Tim Crouch, presented by Arts Centre Melbourne
7 January 2015
Fairfax Studio
to 11 January
artscentremelbourne.com.au

I saw Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree at the 2008 Melbourne Festival. It assured me that I'd see anything he created and I Malvolio has confirmed my commitment.

Crouch is from Brighton in the UK and he makes theatre that embraces and confronts the assumptions that audiences and performers take into a theatre.

This is the fourth work he's created in which he re-tells a Shakespeare story from the perspective of one character.  I, Peaseblossom, I, Caliban and I, Banquo were part of a project for children and young people to discover Shakespeare in different and accessible ways. Although certainly welcoming for young audiences, I, Malvolio was devised for everyone and its 2014 Sydney and Brisbane seasons sold out.

Malvolio is the duped pompous servant in Twelfth Night who's easy to laugh at, in his yellow cross-gartered stockings, and easy to forget, when everyone else dances off to a happy-ever-after.

By unpacking the story as Malvolio sees it, Crouch invites us to see the clown as a man who glimpsed the one hope of love in his sad life and had it viciously ripped away. This re-telling alone is fascinating – almost like looking at the backstory preparation of an obsessive method actor – but it's not the brilliance of the work.

This Malvolio, who begins the show in fly-ridden underwear after the humiliating jest has been discovered, drops the convention that a performer is a character. As the friendly performer who loves his audience and the contemptuous character who wishes ill to all who watch him, he talks with the audience and makes even the reluctant a willing part of the story. He encourages humiliating laughter, dares anyone to trick him and, literally, invites a kick in the arse, but turns it all back on those by asking why we did it.

Why do we laugh at the duped, the ugly and the stupid? While Crouch is far from any of these, as the house lights never dim to the safely of darkness, each show becomes a one-off conversation about the strange cruelty of theatre audiences who are willing and eager to watch people suffer.

The good-looking and wealthy people in Twelfth Night are horrible to Malvolio, but they are the ones cheered for. Shakespeare knew why. So does Crouch. And we know we'll keep on cheering and laughing.

I, Malvolio is on at Arts Centre Melbourne until Sunday. Be warned that you might want to see it again.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

5 Pounds of Rep starts this week

5 Pounds of Rep
Owl and the Pussycat
to 14 December
5pound.com.au

Last year, 5 Pound Theatre transformed themselves into Australia's only working repertory theatre for 5 weeks and presented 5 shows in 5 weeks with 5 actors and 5 directors. It was mad and exciting and produced some incredible theatre in a very short time.

And they're doing it again this year with actors Tim Wotherspoon, Freya Pragt, Brendan Hawke, Lelda Kapsis and Keith Brockett.

Week 1:  13–16 November. Noises Off by Michael Frayne, directed by Jason Cavanagh

Week 2: 20–23  November 20-23rd. Because of Reasons by Robert Reid, directed by Petra Kalive

Week 3:  26–31November. Gilbert and Sullivan Cabaret Review, directed by Fiona Scott-Norman with musical director Karin Muizneiks

Week 4: 3–7 December. The Tempest by William Shakespeare, directed by Daniel Lammin

Week 5: 11–14 December. Sex Diary of an Infidel by Michael Gurr, directed by Marcel Dorney

You can book tickets at 5pound.com.au

FESTIVAL: The Shadow King

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL 2013
The Shadow King
Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Festival
16 October 2013
Merlyn Theatre, The Coopers Malthouse
to 27 October
melbournefestival.com.au

We're here to tell you one of your Dreamtime stories and make it one of ours.

Kamahi Djordon King's Fool had me from those words.  The Shadow King is the King Lear story re-told as an Australian Indigenous story.

Even if you haven't read it or seen a production, it's a story that existed before Shakespeare's version and it's hard not to know about the King who divides his land based on his daughters professed love for him.

This version is co-created by Tom E Lewis (who also plays Lear and is best known from The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith) and Michael Kantor. With live music, five spoken languages and an understanding of the story that's so much deeper than the text, this is the first Lear that made me care and wish for a happier ending.

Maybe because its a Lear that's all about telling "our" story, rather than one that focuses on the actor playing Lear and the sacrosanct language.

With a floor of red earth – which cries to be walked on in bare feet – a rusty moving stage, and projections of outback houses (complete with dogs and kids) and the land that surrounds them, it's a world that's instantly recognisable to Australians, even if we've never been beyond our cities and beaches.

There are tweaks to the known story, but it's still about a greedy powerful man who divides and gives away his land, with its mineral riches, only to realise that it was never his. This Lear also does what the Bard wasn't terrific at: recognising the power and position of women in society. Here Gloucester is a mother (Frances Djulibing) and her a dilly bag is as significant as Lear's crown.

Performances were nervous on opening night, but it took nothing away from the heart of The Shadow King. And with many cities and festivals to tour to, it's going to develop into something unforgettable.

In his welcome us to country, Uncle Jack Charles said that this is theatre that should be seen all over the world. I can't agree more. After all it's a story that continues to be told all over the world in countless languages and forms; so, maybe our Dreamtimes aren't as different as we think they are.

Photo by Jeff Busby

This was on AussieTheatre.comaussietheatre.com.au.

Review: Queen Lear

Queen Lear
MTC
12 July 2012
Sumner Theatre
to 18 August
mtc.com.au

Queen Lear was always going to be a bitch to review.

Men and women are different beasts who adore and loathe each other because we see the world in slightly different ways. Shakespeare's women aren't as richly fascinating as his men, so the gender swap isn't that unusual (Kate Mulvany's recent Cassius comes to mind), but to do so successfully means that every relationship to Lear has to change in subtle ways that together change the story.

It's here that Rachel McDonald, as dramaturg and director, is most successful. Too often the on-stage relationships in Shakespeare are ignored for the sake of original character, but McDonald's Lear is led by the changing status and relationships that are often much clearer that her story.

The relationship between mother Lear (Robyn Nevin) and daughters Reagan (Belinda McClory) and Goneril (Genevieve Picot) starts with the bitter angry resentment that comes from not being loved enough by the person who's meant to love you the most. It's personal and touching and a father could not make Goneril cry in quite the same way. (I haven't mentioned youngest daughter Cordelia because I have no idea what was going on with her and gave up trying to understand.) The most unexpectedly moving relationship is between Kent (Robert Menzies) and Lear as Kent tries to protect and respect his Queen, and Greg Stone brings a surprising depth to his wheelchair-bound Albany by focussing on how his relationship with his wife Goneril changes.

Niklas Pajanti's lighting is exquisite in its creation of the void-like world and its momentary glimpses of characters as they came in and out of the dark. It made the stage look beautiful and intriguing and helps make sense of a design (Tracy Grant Lord) that baffles.

The stage has depth and levels that are beautiful to look at, but offer a confusing world. Maybe the hanging chains bound them to the gods; perhaps Edgar's bike and naked shower were his last hints of freedom – but why was there a giant phallus that grew and shrank and ejaculated pretty fools in white nighties?

McDonald's program notes say, "It is like a science-fiction world ... simultaneously ancient, contemporary and retro." This explains why the costumes were a bit Bride of Frankenstein meets Blake's Seven and Mad Men, but by drawing on so many aesthetics, Lear's world is merely a mish-mash of ideas that distract – often comically – from the telling of the story. It may be a stronger telling with just the costumes and the lighting.

But no matter what, it's Lear we go to see.

Robyn Nevin was always going to be Lear like no other. And she is. The night opens magnificently with a woman with undisputed power. She loves being Queen and the accompanying parties and gorgeous frocks; she never considers that her power will change when she splits the property between the kids. As the two elder daughters learnt how to behave from their mum,  everything is taken from mum and her anger mixes with dementia as she fights to maintain her mask and keep the hurting old lady hidden.  Her fool is placed in her head and appears as versions of her daughters who help create her lucidity in the madness; if only they didn't keep popping out of the giant penis.

For all the oddness of Queen Lear, when Queen Robyn is on stage, the rest makes more sense.

Photo by Jeff Busby

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

NOW, head to TheatreNotes to read what everyone else has to say.

And Alison's reaction to Julian Meyrick's rant about the evils of the blogosphere.

(If the links hit paywall: Google.)

Review: The Scottish one

Macbeth
Bell Shakespeare
8 June 2012
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 23 June
bellshakespeare.com.au

I have a confession to make: I've never read the Scottish play and, somehow, I've never seen a production. Shame on me, but it left me in an unusual position of being able to see if the Bell Shakespeare production really tells the story. All I knew was it's the one about the power mad couple and witches, and, being a Shakespeare tragedy, most people die.

It's unusual to see a professional telling of Shakespeare that doesn't assume a basic knowledge of the text and focuses its telling on interpretation and originality.

The most comprehensive interpretation of the text is Anna Cordingly's design that feels like a slab of cold rough Scottish highlands, where cardigans are a must, with a mirror ceiling that brings the magic and threat into the world the Macbeths think they can control. And Kate Mulvany's lady Macbeth is the most complex and fascinating person in it.

Peter Evans direction brings some original moments (I'm not THAT unfamiliar with it), but it's almost monotone, even Dan Speilman's Macbeth. Our beloved Bard wrote the best stories ever, but if he were writing today, it'd be suggested that he get more of the action onstage and maybe spend a bit less time in the character's heads. Shakespeare tellings that sing are directed like a piece of music is conducted. The dense and difficult text is beautiful to read, but it can't be relied on to tell the story on a stage. Shakespeare is about tone and rhythm and dissonance; it's like opera without the music.

It's clear that the terrific cast have worked on the nitty gritty of their characters (and probably improvised Macbeth and Banquo at the pub toasting Fleance's birth at the pub), but this production loses the vastness of the overall picture and the telling of the story is flat.

Come interval, I had to read the synopsis and ask who was the dude in the blue jumper with the beard. It was Malcolm, and I thought Fleance was a witch.

Review: The Most Excellent and Lamentable...

The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of  Romeo and Juliet
The Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson Shakespeare Company
2 March 2012
45downstairs
to 11 March

Is there anything as all-consuming as first teenage love? We may smile with gooey nostalgia, but remember what that first heart break felt like and how no one understood because no one could love as strongly as you did? Romeo and Juliet is about that kind of teenage love and Zoey Dawson's all-female version lets us see the story from the heart of a teenage girl.

Dawson creates theatre from an authentic and positive female perspective, and her work continues to remind me of what love was, is and always will be like.

As a teenager, I adored Juliet's suicide because it proved the power of great love. As an adult (possibly older than her parents), it's almost impossible to see any romance in such a devastating choice. By telling it from Juliet's perspective, Dawson and her remarkable and delightfully surprising cast (Brigid Gallacher, Carolyn Butler , Devon Lang Wilton, Laura Maitland, Naomi Rukavina and Nikki Shiels) ensure that it can't be seen as a social tragedy out of the young lovers' control.

Gallacher's Juliet is a 13-year-old who still wears flat shoes and has a pastel bedroom decorated with teddy bears. Her vision of sex is sweet kissing and her idea of romance is so absorbing that she can't see beyond her boy in his blue flannel shirt (played by the five other members of the cast). Gallacher's performance creeps into your heart and reminds us that children have the passion to make decisions that can't be un-made and don't always have the experience to know that it will get better. The stunning final scene takes some liberties with the script, but they are such that they may leave the ghost of Shakespeare wishing he could re-write.

While it highlights the teen suicide, violence and sexualization of children aspects of the story (remember that Juliet is 13 and being forced to marry an older man), it doesn't neglect the joy and fun with characterisations that I've not seen and the best wedding scene ever.

Shakespeare didn't write his women with the same complexity as his men, so it's wonderful to see young women rejecting any concepts that woman are virgins/lovers/wives/hags/witches. The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of  Romeo and Juliet is indeed most excellent and I so hope that Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson gets her creative teeth into Shakespeare's comedies.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

MIAF review: The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane

MIAF 2011

The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane

Pan Pan Theatre, APA, Melbourne Festival

18 October 2011

Merlyn Theatre, The Malthouse

to 22 October

Loving Hamlet, difficulties with language and dogs, The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane had me from Monash Uni's Sue Twegg's opening discussion about the instability of Shakespeare's language, accompanied by a very beautiful Great Dane.

However, if you don't know Hamlet – really know it, not just know that it's the Shakespeare one with the skull and "To be or not to be" – I have no idea if there's anything to connect to.

Ireland's Pan Pan Thearte perfectly describe it as "an irrelevant riff on Hamlet".  Reveling in its meta-ness, the first half has academia, a live pun and an audition process that lets the audience get out of their seats to choose their Prince of Denmark.

Like a favourite album, the second half plays the sing-along choruses and well-known singles with highlights performed by Pan Pan and local Drama students from Trinity Grammar School. And the dog comes back.  And a knowledge of Beckett lets you enjoy it even more.

With a Danish flag floor, Dane curtain and pillows, and silver garbage bins, its visual gorgeousness is easily mistaken for a sober symbolic design – if it didn't delight in its punny symbolism. The text too is treated with a fascinating mix of love and disdain, with moments of nerdy solemnity and audacious hilarity that were intriguing, if not engaging.

The emotional connection of the show is the understanding between the creators and the audience. We don't care for Hamlet and his family's sorid/solid/sallid tale, and don't care too much who gets cast, but we love them because we share the understanding of the play and the text and we get the jokes. Would Ophelia crawling out of a bin with garbage for remembrance be anything but odd without knowing the context?

This is theatre for theatre nerds and there's not much better than being in full theatre with the nerdiest.

This review first appeared on Aussietheatre.com

Review: Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar
Bell Shakespeare
7 September 2011
Fairfax Studio, the Arts Centre
to 17 September, and touring
www.bellshakespeare.com.au

Julius Caesar isn't the sexist of Shakespeare's writings. It's one of the politics and togas plays that's favoured in high schools for its large cast, relative shortness and the "lend me your rears" pun. Bell Shakespeare brave this neglected history play and bring it into a recognisable world of factions and power suits with many shades of grey.

JC is a wordy play about the power of words. Most of the action takes place off, so its success lies in making the on stage story about the decisions and dilemmas facing those reporting and those hearing.

This adaption, by director Peter Evans and dramaturge Kate Mulvany (who also plays Cassius), is about the group of conspirators and is structured to ensure it's about people dealing with the consequences of their choices, rather than reacting to the changing will of the masses. And the masses have been reduced to voices.

This lets it become a personal story that soars towards the end as Brutus (Colin Moody) is left alone to face the new world he created. (Purists be damned, the choice to bring the ending back is brilliant.)  This would be even stronger if we were with Brutus from the beginning. Act one suffers from not choosing a side. Breaking to interval as Caska (Gareth Reeves) declares, "Speak hands for me!” I wasn't sure if we were meant to be scared for Caesar (Alex Mengelet channeling a Godfather-like Brando) or excited that the faction looked likely to succeed in toppling their leader. We love Shakespeare's stories because they explore so many perspectives, but none of this complexity is lost by the choice to interpret and focus on a hero.

It's also a play known for its wishy washy chicks. Mulvany's Cassius obviously addresses the balance, but Calphurnia (Rebecca Bower) and Portia (Katie-Jean Harding) are far more persuasive than often seen and leave us wishing that Caesar and Brutus listened to their wives.

As this Rome believes in omens and gods Evans' direction allows for a fluidity that allows for "strange and wonderful signs", but some choices felt more style than substance, especially when the slow-mo entrance/exits took focus off the story action and on to the mechanics of getting actors on and off the stage.

Julius Caesar is touring, so each venue will adapt to the staging in different ways and it's a minor quibble for a production that lets heart, dilemma and regrets drive its history.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com

Review: Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Bell Shakespeare

School version

9 August 2011

The National Theatre

Romeo and Juliet is a story about horny teenagers who make stupid decisions and the adults around them who don't realise that teenagers will make stupid decisions. It's an awesome story that would earn an "it's complicated" as a Facebook relationship status.

One of the many wonderful things about Bell Shakespeare is that they bring these glorious and complex stories to as many people as possible. Their schools program continues to excite young Bard fans and their web site is filled with resources, links and opportunities for teachers to create as much enthusiasm and love for Shakespeare as teens have for writers like JK Rowling and John Marsden.  But, unlike novels, plays are just words if they're not performed and Bell's young school troupe are show what all those words mean.

Directed by Damien Ryan, this abridged version is performed by a delightful cast of eight who bring fun, enthusiasm and understanding to the text, but the cutting decisions seem to have been based on retaining well-known scenes and showing language, rather than focusing on story and creating teenagers that teenagers care about.

The cutting is vital for time (and usually does no harm), but by losing some of the final scenes when characters could make choices that would make everything work out, the momentum and the hope is lost, which leaves the ending flat.  R&J should always end in silence or blubbing, even when we know the outcome.

I saw R&J with a few hundred well-behaved teens; I know what they thought of it. I've sat in cinemas with  teen audiences gripped by Harry Potter; I've seen teen audiences hang on every word that John Marsden says. If a teen audience (or any audience) is displaying signs of boredom, something isn't working.

I was a teenager when I first read R&J, saw it performed (thank you SA STC) and watched a couple movie versions. It's a play about teenagers in love. In the 80s, I loved it like I loved John Hughes films. There's no reason for any audience to not get it, unless the story isn't clear and the characters are not like teenagers.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing
Bell Shakespeare 
10 June 2011
Playhouse, the Arts Centre
to 25 June
bellshakespeare.com.au

Ring the bells and make much ado about this Much Ado because nothing is better than a pun-filled night of cruel deeds, fake death and unrequited lust.

Big Willy loved a double meaning and if he'd been in London in the 1960s, I'm sure he would have moonlighted as a Carry On writer. If you've ever thought that the old Bill is a bit stuffy, Bell Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing will set you straight, and leave you suitably bent.

Much Ado is one of the comedies. It's the one where the reluctant lovers Benedick (Toby Schmitz) and Betrice (Blazey Best) are duped into fancying the hell out of each other, as schmaltzy lovers Claudio (Sean Hawkins) and Hero (Alexandra Fisher) nearly break up when a really mean deception goes to plan. It's about ladies sighing no more because men are deceivers ever and reminds us that a hey nonny nonny will always feel better than a sulk.

The cast mix of experienced and less experienced actors creates a fresh and authentic balance of endless energy that will ensure that anyone not in love with Shakespeare will be by the final applause.

Schmitz lets the audience be Bendick's best friend with soliloquies that make you want to share a flagon of cider with him and talk all night, and he's matched by Best's firey and compassionate Beatrice.  Bell Shakespeare favourites Arky Michael and Robert Alexander delight every moment they are on stage, while Sean O'Shea's Don John re-defines the nasty jealous uncle and Max Gilles's malaproping Dogberry shows just how much life is left in the old dog and ensures that auspicious persons will always suspect his age and place.

Then there's Stephen Curtis's design, which is part-Fellini, part-Brunswick-end-of-Lygon-Street and leaves you wanting to hug your lover from the back of a Vespa before an endless night of home made antipasto, Chianti and exhausting passion. Or at least re-embrace high-waisted pants, hair curlers and swirly net petticoats.

Directed by John Bell, this Much Ado About Nothing is an utter joy that brings every joke and every dilemma and tear out of this complex and very funny story. It left me wanting more and I think that I want "Press me to death with wit" on my gravestone.


This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com

PS: If you're in London, David Tennant and Catherine Tate are up to  Much Ado

Review: King Lear

King Lear
Bell Shakespeare
28 May 2010
Playhouse, The Arts Centre

Walking across Prince's Bridge after King Lear, I overheard a couple discussing Edgar and Edmund. How brilliant is that? Bell Shakespeare's production told the story so well that people were leaving the theatre talking about the characters, not the actors.

It's hard to believe that it was 20 years since John Bell established a company dedicated to our Bard and are celebrating with a national tour of King Lear, with the company's namesake playing the king for the third time in his career.

Director Marion Potts (soon to be Artistic Director of Malthouse Theatre) makes character a priority and ensures that every heightened syllable brings the audience closer to the truth and madness  by allowing each performer to develop a very personal interpretation of their character. Jane Montgomery Griffiths's Goneril is especially fascinating, Peter Carroll's Fool is how I will think of this Fool from now on and Bell's Lear is clearly the from-the-heart interpretation Bell has always wanted to show.

Supporting the cast, story flows from Dale Ferguson's understated stage design and his "robes and furred gowns" unashamedly declare power and status.  Act One is accompanied by Bree van Reyk's on-stage percussion punctuating the language, building the tension and becoming such an integral guide in the world that characters freely add their own emphasis and beats; it's removal in Act Two leaves a world searching for guidance.

Bell Shakespeare grace our main stages and also work consistently to bring the Bard's tales to "all Australians, no matter who or where they are". With school programs,  a regional teacher's scholarship and remarkable programs like the Hearts in a Row (HIAR) partnership with The Big Issue, this company refuse to think that Shakepeare is just for fizz-swilling toffs.

Edgar closes King Lear with a reminder to bloggers and reviewers:  "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say." I say that this is the kind of Shakespeare that I love.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

Review: Richard III

Richard III

Melbourne Theatre Company
29 April 2010
Sumner Theatre

If you don't love Shakespeare...well you probably won't admit it cos he's the greatest playwright ever and it's on par with saying you think The Beatles and Beethoven are crap. So the MTC crowd will toast Richard III with a bottle of Grange they've had since the 70s, even if it tastes like mould and vinegar.

I love our favourite Bard because his stories are brilliant. He writes about damaged souls facing impossible choices, tells some delightfully crude jokes and has a fine way with Queen Elizabeth 1's English. But let's not forget that his writing is dense and bloody difficult to read. Who didn't groan when they had to wade though a Shakespeare at high school and just read the Cliffs notes? I still go straight to Wiki for a plot summary when I see a bard tale because it's rare to really understand what's going on up on that stage (even in the plays I know well).

I don't give a hoot how good the individual performances are (at this professional level, I expect every performance to be awesome) or how clever the design is or how witty the contemporary references are if the story on that stage is muddled.

Richard III doesn't have an especially complicated plot: Bloke with short-man/cripple complex wants respect/fear/love/power, so he bumps off everyone standing between him and the crown. The story comes alive with a curse from his mum and the unescapable and hideous propositions he offers to the women in his life. 

Simon Phillips's  Richard  is chock full of original moments and bonus funny stage business. The West Wing corridors of power are instantly recognisable, the multiple death penalty chamber and the Guantanamo orange suits are poignant, the Messenger/text message joke is champagne worthy, and I don't mind that bad-guy Richard looks a bit like Hitler and good-guy Richmond could be a Barak Obama stand in.  But none of this helps tell the story.

With Shakespeare the story has to be the most important thing. No words were spoken in the best  Hamlet I've seen. My favourite Romeo and Juliet wasn't in English. The creators have studied the text and know it well, but they have to assume that each audience is coming to it fresh. The glorious words are the body and guts of the script, but they are a gross mess without a spine to keep them in order.

Richard III is about power and this version was set in a centre of contemporary power, but doesn't play with the appeal of power. (Something done perfectly in The West Wing). Men (in this story they are men) gain an aura of fear/allure/appeal when they are in positions of extreme power.  Even their immediate underlings and once-equal friends fall under this spell. How many young women washed their dresses after a visit with Clinton? In what world would Little Johnny have respect if he didn't have power? Even the mad monk is getting it. But Richard didn't. It's not like Shakespeare didn't put it in the script. This change of status and power has to be seen in the reaction of every person who comes near him. We shouldn't need the limp and hump to know who the most powerful bloke on that stage is.

Not to say it wasn't a fine limp – Ewen Leslie will be rightly remembered for this Richard, but I'll remember this production for its mass of be-suited middle-aged, middle-class sameness. 


This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

The Hamlet Apocalypse

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
The Hamlet Apocalypse
The Danger Ensemble and Anniene Stockton
26 September 2009
La Mama Theatre

I don’t want to call favourites on the opening weekend of the Fringe, but The Hamlet Apocalypse proves that the experience of theatre can be something we can’t explain and something that defies mere words.

Six actors are spending the night before the end if their world rehearsing a play. There could be no other choice than that one with a play within the play, where everyone dies and that forces the cast to contemplate that they are soon not to be.

Under the taut direction of Steven Mitchell Wright, The Danger Ensemble (who have been gallivanting the globe with Amanda Palmer) have devised a telling of Hamlet that captures the soul of this greatest of great works and intertwines it with a story so personal and intense that I had to remind myself to breathe.

Developed using a disciplined mix of the Japanese Butho and Suzuki (Tadashi) techniques, this telling is about emotion and essence. Although we hear moments of Shakespeare’s perfect text (yes I love Hamlet), the words are almost meaningless, as the emotion and the heart of the story is expressed physically. I’ve seen many Hamlets, but this is the first time I’ve gasped at the finality of ‘To be or not to be’. These storytelling techniques let us feel the emotion of a story in our hearts before our brains catch up and think about the words. Shakespeare might well have abandoned words had there been a Butoh troupe in Stratford.

As the evening heads towards its climax, the line between their Denmark and their reality blurs and melds. Hamlet has to reject Ophelia, but Lloyd loves Tora; Polonius has lost a daughter, but Peta knows that she will never have children.

The six face their end together but alone and perhaps they hope that there is a Horatio in the audience to tell their tale and a Fortinbras to bear them away with honour.

The intimacy of La Mama intensifies experience of The Hamlet Apocalypse, so make the most of this season before this contemplative and shiny find is grabbed by festivals everywhere.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet
Eagle’s Nest Theatre
16 May 2009
Northcote Town Hall

Eagle’s Nest Theatre give inexperienced and emerging actors the opportunity to get their teeth into some significant works and substantial roles, they bring new experimental works to the stage, and they perform VCE texts so that students get the chance to experience a a real play. Naturally, Shakespeare always gets a run and Romeo and Juliet is the Nest’s current hatchling.

For all that is great about this company, for their support of local artists, their passion and their determination, this Romeo and Juliet falls short.

Shakespeare is still performed today because his stories are some of the best every told. His reflection of human nature, of dilemma and of consequences is what all storytellers strive for. Each day there are experienced professionals destroying Shakespeare, because it’s so hard to get right. Productions with, generally, young and inexperienced casts, deserve a lot of forgiveness but this type of casting only works when there is a clear and shared vision for the production and a very strong director to guide them.

This Verona is Mod V Rockers 60s UK, but the interpretation went no further than costume and some fun-for-the-cast dances. The 60s culture and attitude didn’t permeate any other aspect of the production and I didn’t believe that their different music choices embodied any ancient and bitter rivalries. It may have been more authentic to have a more neutral setting in order to focus on the story.

There were many Direction 101 hints that could tighten the story and create the pace that was missing. Entrances and exits were sloppy and Act 2 lost tension simply because each scene started too early and ended too late. The drama is there, slowing the pace and extending the moments is what loses it.

Performance wise, everyone needed help with where to address soliloquies (the spot on the floor technique didn’t work), and the miming gestures should have been tempered, because we know what thrust, teat and even vessel mean, and “love’s light wings” – one of the most beautiful phrases ever written – never deserves little arm flaps.

I saw this show on what may have been their worst performance, as there was a very loud drag show next door. Every soul on that stage deserves a big hug and an even bigger drink for just getting though. Juliet especially, for, as she poisoned herself, we heard a queen singing (I swear this is true), “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby”. However, Romeo and Juliet is such a story that nothing should be able to distract us and this production needs to stop trying to be so original in order to concentrate on understanding and telling the story.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Romeo and Juliet

MIAF 2008

Romeo and Juliet  
OKT and Melbourne International Arts Festival
23 October 2008
Playhouse, The Arts Centre

With so many Romeo and Juliets out there, is it necessary to bring a three and a half hour contemporary Lithuanian production to Melbourne?

OKT was formed by Oskarus Koršunovas in 1999 and was awarded the status of Vilnius City Theatre in 2004. With a determination to find a new way to communicate with audiences, the company aims to "stage classics as if they were modern dramaturgy and modern dramaturgy as if they were classics".

Koršunovas said in the post-show Q and A that we are limited in what we can express with just words, and I really don’t have the words to adequately describe the complexity, depth and perfection of this Romeo and Juliet.

Layered and original, there isn’t a wasted moment in this production filled with the kind of imagery, metaphor and symbolism that prove the unrivalled power of theatre. As the stylised and highly choreographed direction swings from hilarious and crude to delicate and personal, the pure physicality of the performance is astonishing. Words and expression oppose each other, revealing the depths of the story and the hatred and difference that created their world.

The Shakespeare stereotypes are rejected for whole and surprising characters. This is a production where you feel as much for Mercutio, Tybalt and Paris, as you do for the young lovers, and see the tradition, the love and the hate that motivates every action.

This Verona is placed in two opposing but similar family pizza kitchens. This domestic, but public and familiar scene is a source of humour that gradually becomes the frame for the inevitable tragic events. The pain of life takes place in the everyday and familiar, as the bread and flour that sustain life become the symbol of poison and death.

I think the genius of Shakespeare is his complex and intertwining stories, not his iambic pentameter, and seeing a production in another language lets us focus more on story than language. The surtitles are there to be read, but they are an English translation of the Lithuanian translation, so the words become a reference, rather than the focus.

Arts festivals let us see and be inspired by the absolute best. OKS have set the bar pretty high and I now want to see theatre this good from our local companies.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Venus & Adonis

Venus & Adonis
Malthouse Theatre Company and  Bell Shakespeare
20 April 2008
CUB Malthouse, Beckett Theatre

“She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not loved.” When Shakespeare wrote his poetic interpretation of the Venus & Adonis myth, he knew that thousands of years had not changed the dilemma of being a woman who loves. Malthouse Theatre and Bell Shakespeare continue to explore the nature of this myth in an original, complex and resonating production.

As humans, we are forever drawn to myth and tales that have existed since the first stories were told. How we tell them changes, but the eternal nature of human emotion and experience repeats though each generation of storytellers. Director Marion Potts and dramaturge Maryanne Lynch use the Bard’s interpretation to re-tell the Venus myth. What they have brought into our contemporary theatre is an intricate and powerful exploration of women and love. In a timeless hotel room, in the forest of a city, woman remains an untouchable goddess, a filthy whore and every powerful and powerless incarnation in between.

There is no Adonis on the stage. We, as audience, take on this role. We watch, are seduced by and reject the advances of Venus, played by, the perfectly cast, Susan Prior and Melissa Madden Grey. Our rejection is figurative as both are outstanding and it’s only theatrical convention that stops the audience from leaping up to join them. I’d watch Melissa Madden Grey cross the road. The amazing Meow Meow aside, Madden Grey’s range has taken her effortlessly from The Production Company to Pina Bausch Tanztheater. Can she do Shakespeare? Of course she can, and does it in a way that makes us want to keep watching and listening. Susan Prior contrasts and complements Madden Grey. Their performances seamlessly merge and separate as each new level of Venus is exposed.

In fear of repeating myself, the Malthouse design team keep getting everything right. Anna Tregloan’s set and costume encapsulate the complexity and timelessness of the myth, and the conflicting restriction and freedom of the women. Paul Jackson’s lighting continues to support and emphasise every emotion on the stage and David Franzke’s sound brings a remarkable element to the production, as the amplification almost turns us into voyeurs, rather than invited watchers. And he lets us hear Andrée Greenwell’s equally perfect composition.

Each element of this production is stunning, but as a whole there seems to be something missing. I found myself admiring the micro, because I wasn’t completely engaged by the macro. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I was trying too hard to interpret and understand, rather than just enjoy.

Venus & Adonis is original and captivating. Like all myth, we don’t really need to consciously understand it to get the full emotional benefit. Enjoy this work by letting the images seep into your unconscious and see what feelings and memories or your own appear.
 
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Malthouse Theatre

27 February 2008  

Tower Thearte, CUB Malthouse 

Director Oscar Redding aptly says, “If a play has continued to be extraordinary for four hundred years and you fuck it up you only have yourself to blame”.  So Oscar, I guess I’m blaming you.

Malthouse Theatre chose to include a film in their 2008 season. I was so looking forward to seeing this. Poor Theatre’s original production of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark was performed in 2004 in a shopfront to a maximum audience of 15. Looking at the actors, the design and the interpretation of Shakespeare’s work, I’m sure it would have been stunning and I wish I’d seen it.

This is the film version. It was shot in 38 hours, at night over nine days. The effort and dedication of everyone involved is clearly evident. It’s shot in some of Melbourne’s identifiable seedy spots, including Bourke Street Mall, the Degraves Street underpass (where the cast use to rehearse, because it was dry and free) and The Waiters Club.

This is a film, so it has to be viewed and reviewed as a film. I don’t want to use the word atrocious – as I really respect and admire what these folk did to make this film – but it is not a good film.

The whole thing is seen from the POV of whoever is holding a camera. Some googling revealed that it is Osic and he’s the wedding cameraman for Gertrude and Claudius wedding. I spent most of the film trying to figure out who he was. I thought it might be Hortatio and that Hamlet’s little hand puppet was a joke, rather than an indication of madness. Why all of these people continue to trust Osic with their secrets is never clear.

I know Hamlet – it’s one of the best damn stories ever written. If I didn’t know that story, I would have had no idea what was going on on that screen. Nothing was done to establish who the characters were and what their relationships were with each other. So much was hidden in darkness and shadow, that it wasn’t clear what was happening. I get that it’s meant to be hidden and dirty – but isn’t the whole point of film that we see what is going on? It looked like Hamlet pulled back the shower curtain to find Polonius having a drunken nap in the bath.  Ophelia’s death and even her burial were even more mysterious. Gertrude runs into the Waiters Club and says she has drowned. Who drowned? You have to show on the screen, telling doesn’t work. Seriously, please show this film to someone who doesn’t know Hamlet and ask them to summarise the story for you.

Then there was the actual filming. I can see that you were trying to emulate the Dogme 95 declaration. However the Dogme directors knew what rules they were breaking and some did it stunningly (I’m by no means a Lars Van Triers fan, but he could shoot a film). This had unfocussed and wobbly close ups and two shots with lots of language – but rarely did we see what was going on and the quality of the film was so distracting that it was even harder to concentrate on the slabs of language.

The nauseating shaky camera makes the screen almost unbearable to look at. The individual shot composition went from dodgy to bad to “have you ever actually sat in a cinema and watched a film?” I’d love to see the storyboard – if there was one. I really do not understand how a film can look so bad on a screen.

I don’t care about the lack of resources and the roughness. That had nothing to do with this film. It has some admirable ambitions, but was shot badly and failed to show an understanding of film, action and visual story telling. 

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

European House

MIAF 2007
European House: Hamlet’s Prologue Without Words
24 October 2007
Playhouse, the Arts Centre

At first it’s a bit like watching a Big Brother on stage. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like the voyeuristic nature of reality television. However this work is nothing like exploitative telly. It gently unfolds into a complex, mesmerising and thoroughly original piece of theatre. Teatre Lliure’s European House: Hamlet’s Prologue Without Words must be one of the highlights of the last week of this amazing Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Teatre Lliure was formed in Spain in 1976 by a group of independent theatre professionals and has become one of their countries leading companies. European House is exactly that; a prologue to Hamlet, performed without words, set in a European house.

If you read the program (which the festival are giving out this week - I liked downloading mine before I went out, but understand why people were missing them), you know who appears from Shakespeare’s great work. If you know Hamlet well, don’t read the character names, because it’s much more fun to recognize each as they appear. If you don’t know Hamlet, knowing their names means little.

Two maids are working in a large, modern house when a young man and his mother arrive home after a funeral. We do know his name is Hamlet. Soon an older male relative appears. He acts like an uncle. Then Hamlet’s best friend joins them. Then a neighbour and his two children ring the bell. This young man and woman are also friends of Hamlet. Then two more of Hamlet’s mates join the grieving household. The last two are the only ones who are not immediately recognisable, but only because Guildenstern has undergone a sex change. Throughout their interactions, an older man wanders unseen and takes notes. He just might be the ghost of Hamlet’s recently deceased father. How he choses to finally reveal himself to Horatio is one of the funniest and most original moments I’ve seen in any interpretation or working of this play.

We see seven rooms. We watch the characters as they move through the house. There are no words. None are needed. Their relationships are clear. Knowing the story and the tragedy that is about to unfold heightens the enjoyment and admiration of the work, but it isn’t necessary to know everything you need to know about them. All amateur - and professional - Shakespeare performers should see this production, just to understand how to portray complex status and relationships without relying on dialogue.

European House gently and seamlessly develops its complexity. It’s as perfectly structured and paced as, well - a Shakespearean tragedy. At first we watch the very mundane act of making coffee in one room. By the end we are looking in all seven rooms as each of the characters experience their own inner grief and turmoil. It’s like a wordless version of the soliloquy. We are clearly seeing what is going on in their heads when they are alone. It’s intimate and voyeuristic. Hamlet takes a shower and makes a large soap question mark on the glass. Guildenstern has a wee. Their acts are private and hidden from each other, but can see the seeds being sown for future problems.

Director Alex Regula says, “In order to maintain this sense of realism the actors and therefore the characters were unaware of what was happening in the other rooms during the entire development process.” This process created some outstanding moments, such as Hamlet and Ophelia gently holding hands in his bedroom, whist in the bedroom below Claudius has stripped Gertrude and has his face buried deep between her legs.

Watching European House is like peering through your neighbour’s window. There is something so fascinating about watching people go about their own life unnoticed. To achieve such natural performances is an astounding feat by the cast. There is no sense of audience or performance. And they all give totally recognisable, but unique interpretations of Shakespeare’s famous characters. Gertrude is especially complex and intriguing and Guildenstern is highly original and pivotal to the theatricality of the piece.

For a work so reliant upon realism, it is directed with an astonishing sense of theatricality. The house draws you into every hidden corner. The design is a cutaway of the whole house, but there is a glass wall installed, not just a fourth wall removed. The glass is important theatrically and dramatically. The sound inside is amplified so we are drawn closer into each room. We hear the turning of pages, the coughing and clinking of plates. When each room is lit, we can see every detail. When not lit, they are in complete black.

After the prologue, I would have been more than happy to watch the rest of the play unfold, but it is unnecessary, as we have already seen everything we need to know. And they didn’t utter a word.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.