Anna Goldsworthy. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 7 Jun 2015
Festival Artistic Director Barrie Humphries trumpets that as far as cabaret is concerned “there are no rules”, and Piano Lessons attests to that. Whatever cabaret is, Piano Lessons is not that. It is cerebral high art; it is sophisticated comedy; it is beautiful music making; it is deeply affecting and immensely satisfying. It is a play about the special relationship between a gifted piano student and her inspiring teacher, and it is underscored with superb piano artistry.
Piano Lessons is the stage adaptation of Anna Goldsworthy’s successful memoir of the same name published in 2009, in which she recounts her musical ‘growing up’ and metamorphosis into an internationally acclaimed concert pianist under the expert tutelage and critical eye of renowned Russian-born teacher Eleonora Sivan who resides in Adelaide.
For more than two hours Goldsworthy holds us spellbound in her hands as she traces her musical journey from the age of nine through to early adulthood. We witness her fumbling efforts as a child who can play the notes but lacks the soul and understanding to bring the music to life. How hard it must have been for Goldsworthy to wind the years back and actually play badly! Always looking over her shoulder or lurking in the shadows is Sivan, who was perceptively played by professional actor Helen Howard.
The written memoir struck a chord with many, but the stage version has brought the writing to life in quite unexpected ways. Not only is the music mentioned in the book brought to life, we are given a glimpse into the psyche of the composer and into the world of the teacher whose job it is to assist the student to make the music their own and to live it, rather than just play it.
Goldsworthy interpolates finely balanced wit and humor into her role as she plays herself. We see her as concert pianist and as a competent actress. We see her as an awkward girl, and as a confident artist who has ‘arrived’. Goldsworthy’s rapport with Howard is tangible – they are student and teacher. The staging and the lighting were well designed, and Michael Futcher’s dramaturgy and direction allowed Goldsworthy and Howard to make excellent use of the performance space and to convincingly portray both time and locations. Howard’s voice-overs of Goldsworthy’s family members also injected a bit of spice, it tarted the performance up somewhat and kept the audience grounded.
Goldsworthy played just enough ‘near-complete’ extracts from the music of Mozart, Bach, Liszt and Chopin to keep the audience spell-bound and believing they were in the concert hall and not at a cabaret.
Great stuff!
Kym Clayton
When: 6 to 8 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Cabaret Fringe Festival. Kevin Crease Studios (Channel 9). Hannah Bennett. 5 Jun 2015
Grand psychological dramas, exemplified by Shakespeare’s King Lear and Hamlet, tend to be foundations upon which emotive understandings of mental break down or dysfunction, and cultural cues for expressing such understanding, is based.
Early 21st century society is gripped by intense focus on mental health issues and services as numbers suffering depression and associated mental conditions rise.
There is nothing grand about the gradual inability to get out of bed. Self-esteem pushed constantly into the ground; pushing one’s self to exhaustion searching for approval and success in fighting this ‘thing’; the fear of social interaction tackled with self-worth raising exercises that lead nowhere - or becoming one way tickets to addiction, insolvency or both – all different parts of many varied experiences and consequences of depression.
Hannah Bennett’s Myriad is her personal experience; trustingly handed to Director/Writer Suzannah Kennett Lister that she might write a work so that Bennett could offer her experience through performance and song to an audience in a manner comfortably understood, even identifiable with.
A trust Lister has honoured. The script’s blend of anecdote and song is simple, personable and direct without holding back from expressing dark things, nor giving full vent to truly bright moments. While Lister’s sea metaphor on which much of the work is based is somewhat laboured, Designer Ben Roberts’ use of pine single bed with white sheeting, encircled by sand with concentric grooves and Alexander Ramsay’s sparse but atmospheric lighting provide a perfect space in which struggling to get up, get on, and get out of this trap is played out.
Lister’s direction is crisp. Truly beautiful in the manner she utilises every element of the production to eke out, directly and metaphorically as much meaning and context from Bennett’s performance as possible. Accompanist Carol Young’s deft and gentle piano perfectly pairs Bennett’s range, most particularly with songs Sounds of Silence and an upbeat rendition of Tricky.
Bennett’s relaxed physicality onstage and smooth transition from anecdote to song successfully belies much of the real darkness being spoken of, because Bennett is able to use Roberts’ minimal in-the-round set to establish comfortable, loving intimacy with her audience.
Importantly, as Bennett says “it’s all in your head. Well that may be, but that doesn’t make it go away,” and proceeds to make the point one’s head is a real thing, as many thoughts and emotions it contains; it’s something we all share.
Just as every audience and individual perceives a production differently, so will those who have had some experience alike to Bennett’s. For some, this might be too much. For others, a moment of recognition how far they’ve travelled. For all, realisation that, that moment we don’t want to get out of bed can lead everyone somewhere they didn’t want to go.
David O’Brien
When: 5 to 20 Jun
Where: Kevin Crease Studios, Channel 9
Bookings: cabaretfringefestival.com
The Therry Dramatic Society. Arts Theatre. 6 Jun 2015
A single mother and child find themselves forced to share their apartment with a stranger. The woman’s vanished lover has sublet it without notice. It’s a little “precious” as one blog commented on the musical version of Neil Simon’s 1977 film The Goodbye Girl.
However “precious”, Bernadette Peters and Martin Short were nominated for Tony awards for performances as Paula and Elliot, the mother and an actor pushed into an unusual relationship beginning with fights at first sight, and developing into love.
What tends to be overlooked is the true focus of the piece which lies in the title. How can this wonderful girl break the curse of men leaving her for ‘better things’?
There is no slack in Director Pam O’Grady’s masterful shifting tableaux of epic scene to scene moments. Brian Budgen’s smartly constructed mobile set pieces and Musical Director Mark DeLaine’s orchestra ensure capacity to deliver highlight moments is fiercely maximised.
The cast have what it takes to deliver O’Grady’s grand production. Leads Fiona DeLaine (Paula McFadden), Lindsay Prodea (Elliot Garfield) and Henny Walters (Lucy McFadden) form a riveting trio as feisty ‘take no prisoners’ Mother Paula; eccentric, well-meaning actor Elliott; and smart as a button daughter Lucy.
If the premise bringing Paula and Elliot together is “precious”, the catalyst taking them to a serious relationship is brilliant in its outlandishness. The hilarious concept of Elliott playing Richard III as flamboyantly effeminate in a doomed production offers genuine emotional gravitas, not to mention fantastic opportunity for brilliant stock comic characters played by Prodea and Paul Rodda as Mark, the director.
DeLaine and Prodea own the stage with gusto in each appearance together. They work hard finding means of expressing the gentle growth of attraction between their characters - the robust score they work with tends to militate against - yet they manage to find the moments both comic and tender.
Walters holds her own with singular confidence, as Lucy. Her ability to play the middle line between Paula and Elliot is exceptional, ensuring moments Lucy actually takes control have real dramatic impact on the unfolding relationships between them.
O’Grady’s bright, sharp paced, smooth Broadway production is worth a peek.
David O’Brien
When: 4 to 13 Jun
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com or 8410 5515
Here we go. I’m pinch hitting for my dearest friend and mentor the doyenne of theatre critics Samela Harris who has notifiable influenza and is in bed with the doctor and sadly and unusually since she's an indefatigable critic could not leave her bed of pain to review, so this is from her poor understudy whose last notices where nearly 20 years ago in the "Istanbul Daily News" and sometime shmick mick school shows for the "Southern Cross". So…
Cabaret Festival Gala
Adelaide Festival Centre. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. 5 Jun 2015
Well, it was Weimar and Pa Kettle! Fan me with a George Grosz sketch, hard to believe but it's taken 15 years but there is actually cabaret in the Cabaret Festival! Mercy! The fullest full house in the Festival Theatre's history rejoiced in cabaret and extraneous variety entertainment.
Festival Artistic Director Barry Humphries is one of the four greatest living Australians - t'others are Edna, Les and Sandy. He is our greatest theatrical genius and he lends his ingenious, impressive imprimatur of the great, good and grotesque to this fest. He cheekily quipped after an elegant early entrance; "I'm looking forward to the show tonight so I can finally see all the acts I've been recommending". He also asked the merry, messy Mistress of Ceremonies (and his protégé) Meow Meow if he could call her by her first name. Ha!
Miss Meow Meow is cabaret. She is to cabaret what Fanny Brice was to vaudeville - simultaneously superbly fulfilling, deconstructing and bloody funny! She owns the stage. Her audience participation shtick turns a French cabaret number into a three act farce. Glorious.
Tap Pack is old chorus boys gainfully redeployed. Lovely. There's lots of glamourous edginess from The Clover Club, Marney McQueen (with great voice and ripper Julia Gillard gag), My Vagabond Boat and Strange Bedfellows. All comely, cutting cabaret.
Jazz legend Karrin Allyson is juneful and very classy and the Paris Combo is similarly all that jazz. Adelaide's own larger than life David Gauci is splendid and Michael Griffiths runs hot and Cole with "You're The Top" but isn't quite yet.
Glamorous Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Greta Bradman (grand children of Kiri Te Kanawa and Merv Hughes) were very nice in a duet by Australian composer of yore Jack O'Hagan.
Rueben Kaye has to be seen to be disbelieved. He's kinda Peter Allen on acid and chews the scenery in sheer killer theatrical outrageousness.
The rightly celebrated comedian, nice chap and unidexter Adam Hills almost stole the show with a great Adelaide gag and his patented and tremendously rousing version of our hideous national anthem to the tune of "Working Class Man".
The old vaudeville hook was needed for the curious John O'Hara who, despite talent, sang a pornographic number about being sodomised by a total stranger and ended in a crucifixion. Hopefully this experience is not autobiographical and won't be repeated... Rocker Christa Hughes sang "Bad" and was. Much-hyped local boy Daniel Koek, who made "Les Miserables" in London recently, is chockful of vibrato in the less than cabaretesque "Gethsemane" strangely supported by the sadly uninspiring Class Of Cabaret. The latter proved dismal in an inept version of a number from the local and over-hyped musical "The Front".
Vanessa Scammell led the customarily excellent Adelaide Art Orchestra beautifully and lighting and sound and set design were at the world best Festival Centre standard. Director Andy Packer an under-rated, quiet achiever, understands the style and pace and energy required and it's to his great credit the show triumphs. Onya Andy.
And, the finale is the greatest Australian export since penicillin and loads more fun, the gigastar Dame Edna Everage - the juicy cherry on this delicious cabaret cake. This gala and galah prelude presages great cabaret (at last) in the great, highly popular cabaret fest. Onya Bazz!
Peter Goers
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Presented as part of the 2015 Come Out Children's Festival.
Circa and QPAC's Out of the Box Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 30 May 2015
With a thud of the Ring Master's staff, tent wings rise, music starts and performers gather. The carnival begins.
This unspoken, physical theatre performance is part-pantomime, part-circus, featuring acrobatics, juggling, mime and dance. Led by Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz, production company Circa have a well-deserved reputation for defining new works. Rising to meet this challenge,The Carnival of Animals is glorious.
The cast are superb both in acrobatics and dance. Set to classical music by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, they leap and creep about the stage as a multitude of animals, each more marvelous than the last.
Combined with a colourful set and gorgeous cinematography, it's a heady and riveting result. The digital backdrop is matched with both movement and music to brilliant effect. As heavy rain falls on the screen behind the performers, the sound of raindrops envelops us and one can almost feel them hitting your face and shoulders.
The ultimate in an array of highlights comes almost at the close. As we zoom from a barking dog on a hill down to the fleas in it's hair, performers appear armed with red balloons. Super-sized spheres launch into the crowd and meet cheers as they bounce from stall to stall. The child-like delight that bubbles up as the balloons dance high over our heads is unexpected and quite wonderful.
The Carnival of Animals is genuinely exceptional; if you get the opportunity, don't hesitate to see it.
Nicole Russo
When: Closed
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed