What Melbourne Loved in 2021 (and 2020), part 3

Daniel Lammin and Ash Flanders are total SM favourites and have told us what they love since it began. Today one asks:" What’s the fucking point?". The other asks: "Can chronic narcissists be grateful?". Both answer beautifully. 

Ash Flanders
40

Ash Flanders
(Easier than the Zoom button that makes you look pretty.)

What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most 2021 (or 2020)?
Oh, Lord, what is time? I can’t remember this morning let alone the year. I really enjoyed seeing Fuck Fabulous at Arts Centre Melbourne. I’m a major fangurl of Sarah Ward so it was a thrill to come out of lockdown and see the beautiful, trashy, super-smart, incredibly entertaining, political world she created. But it was the offstage world that stuck with me. The night I attended had such a weird mix of an audience and it felt like none of us knew how to even be in a theatre. But I’ve never felt a crowd so connected to each other as when a performer peed in a glass and held it out to the audience. As soon as one person yelled out DRINK IT – in my mind, a freaked-out guy in a suit who couldn’t believe the words had leapt out of his mouth – we all joined in. We were one puerile collective mind. You’ve never felt the collapse of gatekeeping more than hearing 200+ people in the arts centre chanting for someone to drink their own piss. It was infantile and joyous and when the performer skulled the whole thing it was like Jesus with the loaves and fishes: one jar of piss quenched all our thirst.

Selfishly, I have also loved being able to present SS Metaphor at Malthouse. I’ve always appreciated the production side of things but seeing a whole team of people come together to help execute this thing I wrote was very, very moving. Which begs a larger question – can chronic narcissists be grateful? Yes, yes we can.

What surprised you about finding new ways to make art in locked-down worlds?
I went long on the last question so I’ll just say that I never knew I could write a play from my own wardrobe, but I sure can! I wasn’t surprised that as artists we all found ways to continue our work and problem-solve, but, sadly, I also wasn’t surprised by the lack of government support. Personally, I was most surprised to learn that I really can’t live without writing. And that at 40 I’m still happy to rehearse out of Stephen Nicolazzo’s apartment and use a TV remote as a mic.

What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
Almost everyone I’m friends with is part of the arts community so a lot of it was just checking in and hanging out whenever we could, either virtually or on long walks. Those long walks were actually my favorite thing about lockdown. Conversation flows so well on a walk, especially if it’s with Richard Higgins and you have a whole graveyard to explore. I also have to say I was lucky enough to get two shows up this year which sounds amazing until you realise Ash Flanders is Nothing only ran for two nights and SS Metaphor could still be sunk by killer bees, another cheeky earthquake, or, I dunno, an asteroid?

What are you looking forward to in 2022?
(Hopefully) Finally getting to do a full season of my show End Of. at Griffin Theatre in Sydney. It might even mean I get to go on a plane, see some friends I haven’t seen in two years and tell a whole new city about my favourite monster, Heather Flanders. I’m also looking forward to getting to see more theatre, doing a little mentoring and hopefully writing more stuff. I think lockdown has really taught me to appreciate any chance I get to do this theatre stuff, so it’s all gravy, baby (ewwww).

SM: My favourite memory of Heather Flanders was 2020 opening night of End Of. It was the day before the Comedy Festival cancelled. A day when we didn't know if theatre kissies would kill us. Heather came in for a hug and, "Well, we've gotta die from something." I so hope Sydney gets to see End Of. END OF.

I've seen less than usual of Ash this year (he didn't ask me to go for a long walk in a graveyard with Richard Higgins), but I went to a preview of SS Metaphor last night the Malthouse. As it's was a preview, it will be different by opening night. But, think "Carry On The Poseidon Adventure" with queer heroes and Ash playing the straight captain in a moustache, and a wannabe who thinks they can save the never-ending cruise with entertainment – and tap dancing, which is now is etched in my soul. 

Daniel Lammin
Director, writer, Disney fanatic, film critic

Daniel Lammin.

 

What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most and how did you stay connected?
I didn’t see a lot of live performance this year. I could use the lockdowns as an excuse, but the truth was that I just... didn’t want to. With the precariousness of the world at the moment, I turned to cinema for artistic need and comfort rather than theatre. As much as nothing gives me greater joy than sitting in the dark and watching a piece of live performance burst into life before my eyes, I find the moments beforehand (congregating in the foyer, small talk, those gross bits of networking we inevitably end up doing) almost too difficult to bear, and that was before we were locked in our houses and both my sense of myself as an introvert and my social anxiety increased. In a year when so much was distressing or confronting, I just didn’t have the nerve or the energy to return to the community again in the same capacity. Frankly, I was too scared, as scared as I always have been, but now all the more aware of how anxiety-inducing the world of a theatre foyer can be for me.

Maybe that’s why I had a great time wandering around Because The Night. I didn’t particularly enjoy it as a piece of theatre, but what I loved was the complete anonymity it gave me. I could fully engage with this work, be part of a collective in the act of experiencing it, and no-one had a fucking clue who I was and I didn’t have a fucking clue who they were. I could be present without any sense of anxiety, and allow myself full permission to observe and to play.

That sense of engagement without the terror of the theatre foyer reached its sublime peak for me
with St Martins’s flat-out wonderful online production Us, created by Katrina Cornwall and Morgan
Rose, who are pretty much my favourite theatre makers in Melbourne. It wasn’t an online work made out of necessity, but one that was actually fucking interested in the digital form. We’ve seen far too many artists treat this form as second-rate, but Kat and Morgan and this remarkable group of young people and their parents fully engaged with its possibilities, looked into every nook and cranny for what could be done and made something so alive and generous and moving and communal. I felt more seen by and connected to these performers than most in-person work I’d seen, and they couldn’t even see that I was there. It gave me that giddy feeling I used to get in the old world before Covid of seeing something special – and god I loved it. There was a generosity of spirit, a joy in the act of creating and sharing, all aspects that are indicative of Kat and Morgan’s work together.

The same can be said of their gorgeous Riot Stage work this year, Everyone is Famous, which was another act of theatrical generosity. That one had the extra power of having seen these young people grow as theatre makers through the many years of Riot Stage work, see their ideas sharpen and their voices get louder. There was no separation of us-and-them, no sense of watching young people as if they were animals in a zoo. In that instance, my agony in the foyer beforehand was worth it for the
magic I saw in the theatre itself.

As well as discovering how much of an introvert I really am through the many lockdowns, the other
unnerving discovery I made was this: I didn’t miss theatre. I didn’t miss making it, and I didn’t miss watching it. As the days ticked on, this didn’t change, and I began to wonder whether I actually really wanted to stick with it. It wasn’t just that it didn’t seem a viable option at the moment, it was the realisation that my career, while it had given me so much, had also taken an awful lot from me, and I wasn’t sure it was worth it. And then I stepped into the tumultuous rehearsal room of Bloomshed’s production of Animal Farm, and it all came flooding back – the chaos, the fights, the blood, the sweat, the fear, the tears, the joy, the insanity, that taste in your mouth and that shiver all over your skin when something special happens. I found it again and I was hungry for it, and I realised I wasn’t ready to give it up. Maybe one day I will, and certainly when it happens, it will be on my own terms and I will be fully at peace with it. But not yet.

So if I have to say what creative experience meant the most to me in 2021, it was making a show
that almost no-one got to see. It breaks my heart that we never got to see it through, but, my god,
there was magic happening in those rehearsals; theatre that was true and honest and passionate. And connected, just as works like Us and Everyone is Famous and even the wandering journey of the audience through Because The Night. Because if theatre isn’t about people and connection and being with one another in a time and a space fashioned from magic and dreams and passion, then what’s the fucking point? 

What are you looking forward to in 2022?
And what of 2022? Who knows. It feels foolish to put too much stock in it. I’m very excited for the projects I have lined up, and really hope they don’t end up as unfulfilled dreams like Animal Farm. I can only hope. But maybe it’s time for something new. Something isn’t working, and I don’t know whether that’s to do with me or to do with the industry or maybe a bit of both. There’s a pull at my leg, that restless need for movement. Maybe it’s time to find a new adventure somewhere else. Who knows! But I’m excited to find out.

SM: Animal Farm being cancelled upset me more than losing other shows. It wasn't just because I wouldn't see it; it was everything. It was the goddamedness of going back into lockdown, it was knowing that they'd rehearsed in lockdown and previewed in Geelong. It was ready. It was so the story that was for now. And it was created by some of my favourite makers. Losing this one really really sucked.

Daniel watches film and the two of us must never see films together because our critical reactions to them are so often on opposing ends of the scale. But TV is different. Not long ago, I watched Ted Lasso and saw that Daniel loved it more than I did – and that was saying something. I loved Daniel's love of Ted Lasso.

The Bloomshed. "Animal Farm". We will see it one day.

What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 9

Last call to have your voice heard and share your love for shows and artists who may not have got meaninless stars this year.

Today we hear from SM favourite Ash, and Eugyeene and Cathy.

Ash Flanders
Theatrical annoyance

Ash Flanders. Photo by Pia Johnson, defaced by FaceApp

Favourite moments of 2019.
 I've been in hiding most of the year due to an ongoing legal skirmish with Anthony Callea's people (those people have no sense of humour) but the first thing that jumped to mind was watching Ellen Burstyn go rogue in 33 Variations, directed by Gary Abrahams.

Ok, let me take you there. Ellen has just noticed her daughter's (Lisa McCune) skirt is unzipping itself onstage and calls her over – by her character name, obvs – and says something like, "Your skirt, darling," and then the Comedy Theatre is SILENT as she wrangles the zip back into place. Ellen knows we'll wait – and we do. Lisa's a total pro, casually moving her hair out of the way, waiting calmly as if this is something they've done a thousand times in rehearsal, something deliberately placed to suggest something about the mother-daughter relationship. But then Ellen, this Broadway ICON, struggles for a second to remember what she was meant to be talking about. So Lisa asks her a leading question, in character of course, and suddenly Ellen's back on track again. It was a very small thing – 15 seconds tops – and besides the sheer gay drama of it all (OMG, first she had to deal with Regan MacNeil and now THIS?!). I loved seeing the solidarity between the performers and the way both of these people were taking care of each other. Actors being kind to other actors is my new favourite thing; I'll have to try it sometime.

And in the opposite camp I of course loved watching the entirely solo Zahra Newman (certainly not helped by those clumsy stage managers dropping water bottles carelessly every night) skillfully create the nightmare we call home in DG's Wake In Fright. The performance was so considered and arch and nasty and perfect. Of course it's boring for me to like Declan's work – especially because everyone does and I'm a contrary piece of shit – but that guy really does make stuff I enjoy...for now.

But, all in all, this was a quiet year for me and theatre. I loved what I saw but I didn't see nearly enough. I loved doing The Temple with some of my all time favourite performers and my new favourite Irish theatre company, Pan Pan. I also had a blast teaching some performance writing skills to students back at my old uni – and watching them take their own work onto the stage almost melted my heart.

Oh, I also saw a stunning piece of live art where my niece married Christ out in Keysborough; I think the work was called Layla's Confirmation.

Looking forward to in 2020.
I feel like everyone I know is even busier next year and I'm thrilled about it. Stoked for the Malthouse season,  especially Stephen Nicolazzo directing Loaded, my one true love Paul Capsis in Go To Hell and the verbatim show Is This A Room has me really excited. I'm also hoping to somehow see Anthem and The Rabble's Unwoman in 2020 (PLEASE LET THESE HAPPEN AGAIN*) as life got in the way this year. Side note: go listen to Emma Valente's story in Maeve Marsden's Queerstories podcast (not stage related, but damn it's good). Selfishly I'm really looking forward to presenting a bunch of new things that I've been spending this year writing.

SM: I too love Emma's Queerstory. Queerstories is one of my favourite car podcasts. But this is about Ash. I totally dug The Temple, especially when people in the audience had no idea what was going on and tried to find an easy story. But my moment with Ash was convincing him that he had enjoyed some theatre this year.

*Anthem is at Perth and Sydney festivals. Why The Rabble are not at every international festivsal is beyond my understanding.

Eugyeene Teh
Theatre maker and designer

Eugyeene Teh. Photo by Antoine Debrill

Favourite moments of 2019.
The Rabble’s Unwoman: timely, meditative and important work that needs to be experienced by everyone. Emma Valente and Kate Davis’s confidently composed images were searing. Yumi Umiumare’s solo performance of suffering in part 3 was a hard watch, but visceral and sensational, and, though wordless, speaks volumes and for me, was the moment (albeit 45 minutes worth of a moment) of 2019.

Jo Lloyd’s Overture for busting the male-dominated lens that has established our stage culture, particularly in the world of dance. It blatantly mocks the male gaze and belittles their conventions in a lighthearted, unrestricted reframing and celebration of women’s bodies.

Zoey Dawson’s Australian Realness at Malthouse. Having worked on her deliciously surreal plays before, I was looking forward to this one and it still managed to surprise and unhinge me, and really made me think about perceptions of reality.

Emma Hall’s World Problems: a beautifully crafted and gentle reflection on who we are among a generational existential crisis.

Anchuli Felicia King’s The Golden Shield at MTC: a rare piece of writing presented by a mainstage company that doesn’t portray China and its people as a force to be feared, but ingeniously flips the frame to reveal real, multi-dimensional Chinese people and their reckoning with a couple of American jerks. It is a play that decolonizes through subtexts. For me, it isn’t just a clever, fast-paced legal thriller. It is all about communicating and understanding a cultural language – something this country gravely lacks

Balit Liwurruk: Strong Girl at St Martins: a powerful and emotional declaration by 12 young Indigenous women on what it is to be a "strong girl".

Finucane and Smith’s The Rapture, Part II: an impassioned cry for help on behalf of our dying planet, and a genuine and urgent beckoning for real action, delivered by the iconic Moira Finucane, who just returned from watching the ice melt in Antartica.

The Very Good Looking Initiative’s Batmania at Melbourne Fringe: a very weird and hallucinatory show that really fucked with conventional theatrical form and offered an exciting glimpse into the future of theatre.

Jean Tong and Lou Wall’s Oh No! Satan Stole my Pineal Gland, from another company that is changing the idea of theatre. Apart from an extremely enjoyable night of ridiculousness, it’s also the winner of the "best title" award.

Andi Snelling’s Happy-Go-Wrong was an incredibly moving and beautiful celebration of life!

Looking forward to in 2020.
Susie Dee and Patricia Cornelius’s Do Not Go Gentle...  I missed the original season and always wished I didn’t.

Kim Ho’s The Great Australian Play, because Kim Ho and a horse. And what it means to be "Australian" and "Great".

Ra Chapman’s K-Box, obvs.

I was very fortunate to hear Stephen Armstrong (creative director of Asia TOPA) speak, in a small room at Tokyo Festival, very clearly about why Australia needs to connect with its Asian neighbours and why it is so important re-balance its cultural identity away from a dominant white identity. Therefore, all things Asia TOPA, particularly Double Delicious, Sipat Lawin’s Are You Ready to Take the Law into Your Own Hands?, post and Hong Kong Repertory Theatre’s Oedipus Schmoedipus, Akira Kasai’s Pollen Revolution and Mallika Sarabhai’s SVA Kranti: The Revolution Within.

SM: I remember the first show I saw that Eugeeyne designed; he takes every bit of subtext and theme and creates a physical world that lets you understand so much in a glance, while always bringing his own remarkable and distinct aesthetic. He's been doing amazing things away from Melbourne this year, so my best moments are easily talking to him before and after shows.


Cathy Hunt
Director, dramaturg

Cathy Hunt

Favourite moments of 2019.
Counting and Cracking, Belvoir at Sydney Town Hall, Sydney Festival: the epic scale of the storytelling knocked my socks off; the way each strand was woven in and the whole festival experience of it. This is a Sydney I recognise, where almost everybody has a strong tie to someplace else, with Coogee Beach and people who don’t understand their own family’s whole story yet because all they have known is this place. The moment before the end of Act 2 when one character was about to get on a refugee boat bound for Australia, and the whole audience was taut, you could feel extreme anxiety on his behalf, knowing what might happen. Beautiful and big and somehow still simple.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I queued with my friend Shannon one Sunday morning in January for free tickets to final dress rehearsals, we were numbers 500 and 501 in the snaking queue. Melbourne provided and it did not disappoint. I particularly loved the immersiveness of the staging, Paula Arundell as Hermione and Gillian Cosgriff, who was supreme in an unnamed role. But I say no more…

Barbara and The Camp Dogs, Malthouse and Belvoir directed by Leticia Cáceres written by Ursula Yovich and Alana Valentine. Truly stunning, raw, roughly beautiful and incredibly brave production that broke through defences and spoke straight to the heart about how simultaneously destructive and creative we can be as human beings. Powerful piece claiming the space to get angry and not shying away from the underlying reasons that keep producing that anger, underlining First Nations sovereignty while cranking out superb tunes and putting the audience on saggy couches like in any run down pub. Loved this!!

You’re Safe Till 2024, by David Finnigan. ventured to Bunjil Place on a stormy night to see David freak out a small and select audience with his theatre science presentation of the "Great Acceleration", which has occurred since mid-last century, including a truly terrifying visual explanation using water bottles and a Coles "recyclable plastic" bag of how chickens have stacked it on since 1945.

Wake in Fright at Malthouse. Declan Greene and Zahra Newman's nightmare journey through an Australia that felt all too horribly recognisable. Stunning technically and with a virtuosic flexible performance by Zahra as the narrator desperate for a drink of water who keeps having booze chucked unwittingly down their throat. Incredible collaboration from all involved.

View from a Bridge at MTC directed stunningly, sparely by Iain Sinclair with the heart-rendingly genuine performance of Zoe Terakes as Catherine.

World Problems by Emma Hall at fortyfivedownstairs, especially the moment when the memories tumbled over into the future and things started going awry, the fantastical imaginings of that whilst the effort of putting together a trampoline was enacted. (The night I went we got to go to a sustainable food workshop after, with permaculturist Kat Lavers and I took home her mum’s lime pickle: big highlight)

The Other Place by Christopher Bryant at Theatre Works directed surprisingly by Jess Dick and performed with precision and energy by the ensemble of five women. This play took so many circular routes towards tracing, mapping and imagining the different destinies of Betty Burstall and Buzz Goodbody. The way it kept not explaining, never being able to explain but just making another pass at exploring one possibility as to why some of us go one way, step out of the room and others are able to flourish despite every adversity, moved me so much. As did the writing in its choice of the stories told and the multiple modes of representation, even just the attempt to forge a connection and the focus on these two particular women’s inner and outer lives. Design in the large space was innovative and entertaining but I can imagine another incarnation of the play in a smaller space, like the rebuilt La Mama…

Pomona at Red Stitch directed by Gary Abrahams: a strange, potent production in which the choice to range the cast around the side of the space to bear witness intensified the exploration of violence. Such a stellar cast and great to see Jessica Clarke, Julia Grace and Artemis Ioannides be differently brilliant on that stage.

Control by Keziah Warner directed so intelligently by Julian Meyrick at Red Stitch. Brilliant writing exploring the ways we shape and structure each other and are unavoidably shaped and structured by our situations. Each of three parts so different from each other but gorgeous interrelationships in each, particularly in the last part where Esta (Naomi Rukavina) and Isabelle (Christine O’Neill) inhabit and subvert the pupil/teacher and servant/master power dynamics.

Thigh Gap at La Mama written by Jamaica Zuanetti directed by Alice Darling. Afrenetic fever dream looking at unattainable body standards self-imposed and friend-policed, performed excellently by Veronica Thomas and Lauren Mass. It went beyond issues and became performatively extreme. The physical comedy around the sudden serendipity of drunkly discovering a baguette is a moment I won’t forget.

UnWoman by The Rabble at The Substation: a work so entirely dramaturgically complete, supremely satisfying and symbolically resonant as if carved out of the stones that Yumi Umimare birthed in the final part of the triptych. Also very funny on the way through, thanks to Dana Miltins and Mary Helen Sussman in the second part, waiting for their unnamed procedure ,and the strange soporific forest of the pregnant women in their round containment.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Red Stitch: A new production of Feather in the Web by the brilliant and hilarious Nick Coyle directed by Declan Greene. I saw it in Sydney when it opened and need to see this incarnation happening as part of Midsumma. Orlando by Sarah Ruhl directed by Stephen Nicolazzo. Anatomy of a Suicide by Alice Birch directed by the inimitable and wonderful Jenny Kemp,.

Asia TOPA: The Seen and Unseen – a collaboration by Melbourne based and Balinese theatre makers designed by Euygeene Teh lighting by Jenny Hector and dramaturgy by Adena Jacobs.

What Every Girl Should Know a new play by Monica Byrne set in 1914 in a Catholic reformatory,  at Brunswick Mechanics in February. Produced by Between the Buildings, directed by me, designed by Eloise Kent and sound designed by Jess Keeffe.

SM: Cathy's measured and help back direction of Love/Chamberlain at Theatre Works got into the hearts of its creators, on and off the stage, and  misjudged women it was written about. She removed the tabloid sensationalist lens and explored how and why women who dare step away from expectations are judged and hounded until they break.

Review: Lone

Lone
The Rabble and St Martins
8 June 2018
Arts House
to 17 June
artshouse.com.au

Lone. The Rabble and St Martins. Photo by Pier Carthew

My review is on ArtsHub.

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL: The Bacchae

The Bacchae
St Martins, Fraught Outfit, Melbourne Festival, Theatre Works
14 October 2015
Theatre Works
to 24 October 2015
www.festival.melbourne

The Bacchae. Melbourne Festival. Photo by Pia Johnson

I didn't take my eyes off the stage and am still trying to fully understand the astonishingly beautiful, often disturbing and totally unapologetic adaption of The Bacchae created by Adena Jacobs, Aaron Orzech and a cast of teenage women from St Martin's youth theatre.

Euripides's The Bacchae is about the god Dionysus coming to Thebes disguised as a human and generally wreaking havoc with the women of the city who head to the hills and get up to all sorts of drunken, sensual and violent mischief. An angry, and pervy, king dresses as a woman, heads are torn off and most of the action can only be described because it's too much for moral and sensitive audiences.

If you know the Euripides play, it's all on the stage, even though it's told  through live music and dream-cum-nightmare visions with a blow up pool, an inflatable Luna Park smile and blood the colour of gold. There's only a page of the text, and after Dionysus's birth from Zeus's thigh, it's told from the women's point of view. The whole story is re-imagined with young women as all the characters. Dionysus – the god so often envisioned with a huge cock and women at his feet – is a teenage girl who slept in and doesn't have time to straighten her hair.

Let that sink in: young women are the gods and rulers. Not only are they the possessed and riotous mob, they are the people who cause and punish the violence and chaos. And when they become drunk and out of control, they become young men – with long fluffy phallus.  If you're a young man who wonders how young women see you, please see this.

The night I went, there was a school group in the audience. They were silent, in a can't-stop-watching way. Do I even need to say more about the power of this production?

If you don't know the play – and why should you?; embrace every re-telling as a new story – it's a world where young women are the storytellers, the exploiters and the exploited.

It lets us see how they see themselves compared to how they think the world sees them. We meet them as their unique selves wearing denim and t-shirts but they become faceless, oiled bodies in identical bikinis. It's uncomfortable to make the connections between the identifiable teenagers talking about Vegemite toast to the unidentifiable objectified bodies. Which is what makes it so brilliant.

Yesterday I was driving along Warrigal Road and stopped at the North Road intersection. There's a place called Kittens Car Wash where young women in bikinis wash cars. A blow up sex doll holds balloons at the entrance. It's a busy intersection in the semi-industrial suburbs and thousands and thousands of cars stop and see young women in bikinis washing cars.

This is why we need to see young women in our theatres saying how this isn't the world they want to live in. The Bacchae shows us what they think we see when we look at them. They see the objectification, the reduction to sexual pleasure giver (not takers) and a world where they might have to wash cars in a bikini to pay their rent, uni fees or childcare.

And they're saying no.

This is also on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Cockroach

Cockroach

St Martins Youth Arts Centre presents Canberra Youth Theatre

10 March 2012

St Martins

to 10 March

Developed by emerging artists at Canberra Youth Theatre in 2011, Cockroach by Sam Holcroft is a confronting and uncensored look into the hearts and minds of young people reaching towards adulthood.

A city very like ours has been at war for a long time and a group of high school students and their young teacher face a future where young men are conscripted (and dying) and women are valued for their reproductive worth. Stuck in biology class detention, they're meant to be learning about evolution and question who is really the fittest to survive.  

With honest performances, a stunning white design made for blood and Sharpie scribblings, and a script written from the heart, what struck me most was its bleak view of the future. We all know that being a grown up doesn't mean that we act grown up or make better choices, but I was surprised to see so little hope.

But this is what drives the story. How does anyone face a future when they don't have hope?

It's disappointing that in a three-night season, the second night had such a small audience. Youth theatre may not have the polish of experience, but it's one of the few ways to really see how young people see the world (and us).

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: 1989

1989
St Martins
9 December 2009
Irene Mitchell Studio, St Martins Theatre Complex

In 1989, I used a hair dryer diffuser, a handful of mousse and a huge bow to do my hair; I wore stirrup pants everywhere and spent a lot of money on my first portable compact disc system. Some of The St Martin’s Performer’s Ensemble hadn’t been born yet and are now part of the generation who think that ra-ra skirts need to come back, but have used this far gone year to inspire their showcase performance.

St Martin’s Performer’s Ensemble is an audition-based program for 18 to 25 year olds, who spend an intense year collaborating and developing. For 1989 they worked closely with The Emerging Writers’ Studio, which gives four writers the chance to create a new work under the guidance of a professional dramaturge (Melanie Beddie).

Michelle Lee and Dan Giovannoni (who both stood out at the 2008 Short and Sweet festival) Samantha Hill, Christopher Summers (writer of theatargh blog) may not have captured the essence of 1989 (or needed to), but they showed us the originality of their voices. All need to trust that less can be more and to dig deep and trust that their personal stories will be the ones that audiences will love, but they shared a specific and at times revealing view of being 20-something today.

And they all wrote specifically and beautifully for the actors. Their scripts allowed each member of the ensemble to really show us what they are made of and why we will be seeing much more or Danielle Asciak , Danny Ball, Darcy Hegz , Juliet Hindmarsh , Melissa Kahraman, Douglas Lyons, Ruby Mathers ,Angelique Murray and Xavier O'Shannessy in the very near future.

The review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Re tale

Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2009
Re tale
22 April 2009
St Martins

They evoke a universal sense of fear and force us to stay at home, but we know we cannot avoid them or block out their squealing of, “Hi Babe, ya looking for something for a particular special occasion?”

Re Tale introduces gen Y retail assistants D’Bree, the penis flytrap, and Dash, who is happy to wait for mannequin-perfect love. They work in Faux Bo Ho, but their over-dressed, self-involved and falsely enthusiastic clonettes lurk in most retail stores. Yesterday, I was accosted by one in a health food store and, no, I didn’t need any help picking out my packet of tofu!

Katrina Mroz and Hayley Butcher’s creations are on their way to being household names. Already creating gales of genuine laughter, it’s hard not to compare them to fellow St Martins’ alumni Gina Riley and Jane Turner. Like Kath and Kim, D’Bree and Dash are everything loud, bright and crass that inhabits suburban shopping malls. We instantly recognize the perfectly captured language and attitude and love to laugh at them – because we are beyond such pettiness. What is missing is the touch that lets us recognise ourselves in them. We laugh at Kath and Kim, but we also laugh with them, because we reluctantly glimpse our own frizzy perm or jewelled g-string. D’Bree and Dash are superficial and stupid, but we need more hope of seeing their decent, caring and normal side. Of course, they must never fulfil our hope – but a touch of reality would bring us closer to loving them even more.

Re Tale has already been tightened and well-shaped by director Anniene Stockton, but will continue to improve with some work on the actual tale. At this stage the piece is mainly character and joke with a predictable story tacked around it. The complication and trouble comes in too late and is solved too easily and quickly. To get Re-Tale to the next stage (sold out shows, telly series and classrooms full of tween fans squealing, “I’m a cock magnet”) it needs a story that is as good as the characters. I would have loved to see the painful consequences from their previous nights antics, and know why the threat of losing their job is so significant - couldn’t they just move to Supre?.

There’s only a couple more performances of Re Tale left and it’s well worth getting away from the city venues and jumping on a tram to St Martins in South Yarra. I really hope this isn’t the last we see of the Ds, because they are well on the road to becoming unforgettable.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.