The Dictionary of Imaginary Places

MIAF 2009
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
The Store Room and Melbourne International Arts Festival
16 October 2009
Meat Market

Tonight’s television news showed the CCTV footage of a child’s pram blowing under a Melbourne train, with the baby still inside. The baby wasn’t hurt, but anyone who saw the footage will never let a child out of their grasp at a train station again. Melbourne may be known for its iconic trams, but more of us catch trains.

Director Anna Tregloan and sound designer J David Franze spent over a year sitting on trains recording conversations and the resulting The Dictionary of Imaginary Places uses the direct transcripts of these overheard conversations and turns them into something remarkably surprising, unexpectedly funny and curiously beautiful.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places has been created through The Store Room Theatre’s Artistic Associate program, which allows artists a three-year tenure to develop work. If is the first result of this process, I’m looking forward to more.

Tregloan is best known for her stunning theatre design (it’s no secret that I think her designs are wonderful), but when she creates her own work, she shows us the core artist that controls her.

Like Black (2007), The Dictionary of Imaginary Places combines performance art with design, but this time she doesn’t deconstruct an existing narrative, but starts with the most disparate mass of words.

The conversations people have on trains are mundane. They are filtered because they can be heard, but unfiltered because people assume that no one is listening. In this dictionary, these stolen words mean nothing or everything. The words are just sounds and glimpses of what could be. They don’t belong to the characters or the space and tell their own stories away from what we are witnessing, and Franze’s sound design ensures that we also hear them in unexpected ways.

Rows of train-like seats fill the tunnel-like cavern of the Meat Market and four passengers (Heather Bolton, Christopher Brown, Rita Kalnejais and James Wardlow) recreate what the overheard conversations could have been like. Well, make that what you could never have imagined them to be like. Unless you close your eyes and imagine a red-gowned women stuffing MX’s in her dress to give her a large arse or a jazz hands dancer in a blue sequined jacket prancing among the old coffee cups.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places is a view of Melbourne that could be imagined by none other that the creators, but still resonates with us who live on train lines, and even those who can only imagine the joys of public transport.

And Anna continues to put the most glorious of gorgeous shoes on display, but that’s just my obsession.


This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Home Economics

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Home Economics
Little Ones Theatre
30 September 2009
The Storeroom

I’m consulting my gay-o-meter to confirm, but I think that Home Economics, Declan Greene's second Fringe work, may be gayer than his wrong and black wonder A Black Joy. Dec is taking a very big bite of the Fringe this year and making us open up wide to fit all of his writerly goodness in.

Home Economics is as gross as theatre can get. And, even though I did watch quite a bit of it through squinted eyes (I have a strange phobia regarding runny food), I loved its spluttered chocolate, meat smeared, onion biting, cock-sucking indulgence.

Inspired by a series of photographs, Home Economics is a series of explorations that presents all carnal desires as food. Real food. There’s metaphor in the writing, but a full Coles trolley is dripped, spat, thrown and squirted over the actors (who are all pretty amazing) and the stage.

From a gay private school teacher who knows he has to hate boys to keep his job, to the fellatio-giving lesbian novelist who finds intimacy with a telemarketer, or the girl not sure if she’s enjoying the group sex or being pack raped, Greene refuse to shy away from the baser, confronting elements of our society and our psyches. And it poses the age-old question of whether sperm is indeed vegan friendly.

Home Economics isn’t as finely crafted as A Black Joy, and I can hear Greene’s own voice coming through some of his characters, but if you’ve seen one you have to see the other. Together they show the depth, the development and the depravity of this remarkably sick young writer.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com.

A Narrow Time For Angels

A Narrow Time For Angels
Lucy Freeman, Walking into Bars and The Store Room
7 July 2009
The Store Room

The Store Room has been presenting some of our most innovative and original independent theatre for ten years and opens its five-show 2009 season with A Narrow Time For Angels by Melbourne playwright Cerise De Gelder.

Apart from having one of the best titles ever, De Gelder’s script presents unexpected characters, creates comedy with situation and plot and sprinkles the absurdity with plenty of jokes. Structurally there are some questionable flashbacks and awkward exposition, but it’s pacy and funny enough to overcome any minor issues that may disappear in any re-writes.

However, the humour isn’t quite working on the stage yet. Lucy Freeman’s direction brings too much drama and reality into the ridiculous world. Maggie breaks into the morgue so she can find her dead ex-girlfriend’s body, but is interrupted by a ghost and a cute forensic mortician, and proceeds to tell a rambling tale of gambling, revenge, politicians and questions of fidelity when your ex-hooker girlfriend knows you need a lot of money quickly. There’s no room for soul searching and understanding; the success of this script depends on a non-stop build of joke and farcical plot. When the pace drops for the serious moments of character revelation, it gives the audience too much space and time to wonder if it’s all meant to be serious. If the comedy consistently leads everything, the empathy, understanding and the heartbreak will come much more effectively through laughter.

Marcella Russo, Hayley Butcher and Georgina Naidu are ideally cast, but each bring a different type of comedy to the stage. Naidu brings a clownish caricature to her multiple roles (we laugh at the performance), Russo lets Maggie see only the drama (we laugh at the situation) and Butcher lets Sam’s internal conflict make her choices (we laugh at the character). Each performance is equally as funny, but the different styles don’t always on the stage.

The joy of theatre is that every performance is different and A Narrow Time For Angels will settle and change as the season continues. Under the artistic direction of Todd Macdonald, The Store Room has presented the first performances of some the most remarkable scripts created in Melbourne and, as works need that first production to iron out the creases, it’s always worth a trip to North Fitzroy to see what’s being uncovered.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

(The Pilot Version of…) Something to Die For

(The Pilot Version of…) Something to Die For
Store Room Theatre Workshop
28 October 2007
The Store Room

“This is a risk”, declares The Author midway though (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For. I am thrilled that the Store Room Theatre Workshop (SRTW) program gives its artists the opportunity and freedom to take these risks to explore and create original, complex and relevant theatre.
 
(The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For is written by SRTW associate artist Ross Mueller. It’s is a monologue by the playwright, who has written himself as the character – but it will always be performed by an actor. In this case David Tredinnick is playing Ross Mueller.

You can see this simply for Tredinnick’s superb performance, which is ably guided by director Aiden Fennessy. Tredinnick has a difficult script to work with, but continually keeps the audience personally engaged and fascinated. He demonstrates the difference between a good actor and someone who knows his craft so well that we can no longer see the work and the skill.

The structure of this work references David Hare’s Via Dolorosa. Don’t know it? Sir David himself performed it at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2004. Patrick Dickson presented the Australian premiere at the Festival of Contemporary Arts in Canberra in 2001. Missed it? Hare wrote The Blue Room (that play where our Nicole and then our Sigrid got their kit off) and Stuff Happens (that play about American politicians). What about his screenplays? Plenty (Meryl was in it) or The Hours (the one where our Nicole won the Oscar for having the big nose – and Meryl was in it). Come on – Sir David Hare. If you go to the theatre, you must know him.

If you know Hare, the premise of the work is Mueller meeting Hare at a workshop in London.

If you don’t and you’re wondering why on earth I’m raving on about David Hare, I’m guessing this is how you’d will feel watching (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For.

It’s no secret that I love Ross Mueller’s writing. He understands theatre and why we keep going back. He writes personal, honest and heart moving works that resonate way beyond their intended audience. I reckon he’s as good as David Hare.

Very early in the piece, Mueller tells us that he believes that anyone who goes to the theatre is intelligent and that he’s openly prejudice towards the intelligent. Kind of makes you feel special and much more inclined to admire and laugh along with the jokes. I admit that I caught myself laughing at a reference I didn’t understand, because I didn’t want to appear ignorant. (Thanks to Google I now know about playwright Martin Crimp – and will read his work.)

I understood (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For. I was intrigued and laughed out loud, because I know Via Dolorosa. I know it very well. I’ve read it, saw Dickson’s performance, Hare’s performance, heard Hare discuss it and even have a copy of Acting Up – Hare’s book about writing and performing it – which I’ve read.

I know this play isn’t really about David Hare or Ross Mueller. It sensitively, accurately and creatively deals with issues of depression and male identity. It delightfully and over-intelligently satirises and references its own form, theatre writing, Melbourne independent theatre and the playwright. The emotional core and structure of the work is so strong, but it is getting obscured by its own intelligence. It’s trying too hard to be clever, searching too hard for metaphors and trying so hard to connect with its audience that it may be pushing them away. The excellent writing is getting in the way of the story telling.

I’m afraid I have to quote myself here. This is what I wrote on this site about Mueller’s astonishing Construction of the Human Heart.

“Mueller does write for a very specific demographic. Mid-30s to early-40s / living in inner city Melbourne (preferably north) / over educated / know too much about theatre (please laugh at the “it’s David Hare, not Williamson” joke) / struggling with your own creative career while trying to earn an income / loath the concept of Ikea, but have too many Ikea items in your house / and have experienced the kind of love that leaves you empty and broken at its loss. Fortunately that is most people I know (except some of us live on the south side of the river). Construction of the Human Heart is written for now and written for us. In doing so, Mueller shows how honest, personal writing can connect with universal themes. Even if you don’t get every cultural reference and joke, the emotion of the work sustains it.”

My concern with his recent work The Ghost Writer (MTC 2007) was that Mueller was writing to such a broad audience that the work was losing the personal emotional resonances. My concern with (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For is that he is writing to such a sub-section of his audience that it’s losing the universal emotional resonances.

If I had to review this review I’d say. “It is over wordy, far too long, needs a ruthless edit, loses itself in its own structure and seems so intent on proving the author’s own credibility, intelligence and knowledge that it forgets about its intent and its audience.” I guess I’m trying to create the same sense of frustration I felt with Mueller.

I enjoyed (The Pilot Version of….) Something to Die For and am sure it will grow and change from this season into an amazing work. However, in its current state I’m hesitant to recommend it.

This reveiw originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Construction of the Human Heart

Construction of the Human Heart
Malthouse Theatre
Melbourne Writers Festival
August 17 2006
Tower Theatre, CUB Malthouse

A white box, two chairs, two actors and a courageous script create some of the most evocative and beautiful images I have seen in a theatre. Construction of the Human Heart proves the exceptional quality and originality that emanates from Melbourne’s independent theatre artists.

Under the direction of Brett Adam, every element of this production reflects an understanding and ownership of the text. The artists used a positive collaborative process to create. The result is moving, intimate, confronting, honest and emotionally engaging.

Playwright Ross Mueller wrote in his programme notes that Construction of the Human Heart is:

“For all of us who want to sit in the dark with other people and experience something that cannot be replicated beyond this night. I wanted to tell a story that could only be told in the theatre.”

This is a production for people who love and understand theatre. It would not work in any other medium. It demonstrates how to use, twist and break every rule about form and structure.

Mueller does write for a very specific demographic. Mid 30s to early 40s / living in inner city Melbourne (preferably north) / over educated / know too much about theatre (please laugh at the “it’s David Hare, not Williamson” joke) / struggling with your own creative career while trying to earn an income / loath the concept of IKEA, but have too many Ikea items in your house / and have experienced the kind of love that leaves you empty and broken at its loss.

Fortunately that is most people I know (except some of us live on the south side of the river). Construction of the Human Heart is written for now and written for us. In doing so, Mueller shows how honest, personal writing can connect with universal themes. Even if you don’t get every cultural reference and joke, the emotion of the work sustains it.

Fiona Macleod (as Her) and Todd MacDonald (as Him) deliver two of the most honest and real performances I have seen on a stage. Neither dominated and both gave more to the other actor than they took for themselves. I wanted to see this production having seen them perform Jane Bodie’s Ride. Playwrights like Mueller and Bodie, please keep writing for these two.

Ron Irwin’s lighting design accentuates the text, empowers the performances and creates mood using nothing but light and dark - no colours, no specials. Construction of the Human Heart is all about the greys between our black and whites. The joy of this production is the integration of every element, so Casey Bennetto’s sound design (and voice over) must also be mentioned.

Thank you to the Malthouse’s Tower Theatre Program and the Melbourne Writers’ Festival for enabling independent work like this to be re-staged and seen by a wider audience. This was originally produced in the INSTORAGE season at The Store Room, so keep an eye the next season. If, like me, you missed the first production of Construction of the Human Heart, do not miss it this time around.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.