State Theatre Company of SA. The Bakehouse Thaetre. State Umbrella. 11 Oct 2014
The latest word in agit prop theatre, Ian Meadows' Between Two Waves expounds, extrapolates and exhorts on the issues of climate change. There's nothing subtle about it. It is a full throttle anxiety play. It is not just the scientific issues of climate change but the characters who are cracking up under the fear and frustration of it all.
The principal character is a scientist who goes to work for the government's climate change department hoping to make a difference. But politics has corporate interests at heart. The more you say , the more impenetrable the brick wall. Perhaps.
One hopes that Meadows' doomsday scenario will not be realised in real life. After all, Daniel, the scientist of the piece, has problems other than climate change. He is severely dysfunctional in almost every way; some may see him as having Asperger’s syndrome. He is work obsessed and has family issues, childhood guilts, acute anxiety and science-nerd ineptitude in dealing with women. On top of all this, his view of climate change is apocalyptic.
And there it is all around him - flooding rains which bring the insurance agent to catalogue the damage in his world. Of course, she is also the enemy - a front for corporate exploitation and legal clauses contrived to evade payouts.
Enter Elena Carapetis with sheath dress, stilettos, clipboard and mobile phone as the evil claims stooge. And what a lovely performance of corporate doublespeak. She doesn't miss a trick - and she is pretty tricky. It is a character which develops as the plot evolves and we meet her heart and vulnerability as the weather closes in. It's a Carapetis coup.
But she is not alone in powerful performance because Matt Crook is there on stage beside her - an exceptional young actor. He is all angst and uncertainty in the role of Daniel, strong only when trying to explain the science to the media. But Daniel has no common touch so Crook spends a lot of the play as a bit of a shuddering mess, from time to time having massive panic attacks which are exhausting to watch. It is not an easy role but Crook, under Corey McMahon's direction, makes him something of a tragic hero, weighed down by his belief in the imminence of climatic apocalypse.
This and his general nerdiness hamper his ability to forge relationships with women - until Fiona comes along. She plays by her own rules and, as it happens, works for the very climate department in which Daniel goes to work. They strike up a relationship. Ellen Steele steps into her skin and gives it intense vibrancy. She is more than engaging. There is something luminous about her, and it is not just the red hair.
James Edwards plays the one other character, the university professor for whom Daniel had worked before getting his PhD and heading out to work for the government. It's a simpatico performance, ably complementing the senior actors in the pivotal roles.
It's a complex play with simultaneous timelines which are quite effective. It also is wordy and didactic but with lots of passion and expressions of human vulnerability. It's a tragedy but it is not without hope.
McMahon gives it a strong, punchy pace, making it tight and intense.
The set helps. Olivia Zanchetta has designed a tropical-style room with long, louvred windows and a ceiling which one feels coming in on one. The walls are cunningly created to be semitransparent and, at the play's climax, to be pelted by water which pours in torrential rivulets down its panels. Throw in Nic Mollison's usual standard of perceptive lighting and Jason Sweeney's smart sound design, and one has a terrific production.
The play, however, still seems to have some teething pains. It has been long in the making and, thought provoking as it is, it niggles with the odd logistical perturbation.
The bandage on Dan's hand is plain annoying. It is perhaps symbolic of injuries to the world, but it is also purportedly covering an injury to the character and it remains upon his person through the thick and thin of the play's timeline, becoming a puzzling distraction - which is unworthy of a play with a serious message.
Samela Harris
When: 9 to 25 Oct
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Promise Adelaide. Burnside Ballroom. 1 Oct 2014
Promise Adelaide presented it's first 'outing' on Wednesday October 1, 'Songs from Stage & Screen'. Self-described as an exciting new 'Not For Profit' organisation the purpose of this new production company is multi-faceted; to promote and give exposure to Youth Theatre in South Australia by creating opportunities for young adults to perform and to raise funds for a wide range of charities. This performance raised funds for Breast Cancer research through the Cancer Council.
It is hard not to applaud loudly their endeavour, initiative and tenacity.
Many of these young men and women already have impressive CV's, (Sadler’s Wells Theatre and Royal Albert Hall performances for starters!) so it was no mistake that the audience came with heightened expectations.
It was an expectation that was met and then some!
These young men and women presented a two hour feast of music that would have softened the hardened music theatre critic. To think the average age of these youngsters was around 15 year’s old, and that they took on this project, its direction, music and choreography on their own is nothing short of mind blowing.
My only criticism; they would have been better served with a live band/pianist rather than the occasional rough sounding 'midi' track - these performers all deserve better.
Highlights of the evening included Lachlan Williams' ‘Snoopy' from ‘You're a Good Man Charlie Brown' and Serena Martino-Williams’s performance of 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' from 'Evita'.
But let’s face it, to select just those two would be splitting hairs as one could easily list every performer and their pieces, such was the level of excellence attainted.
I particularly liked the full cast numbers and hope to see some more of the smaller ensemble numbers in future endeavours.
Hats off to Ben Francis for an initiative that will undoubtedly see the rise of a number of new Stars in Adelaide.
David Gauci
When: Closed
Where: Burnside Ballroom
Bookings: Closed
Peter Brook. State Theatre Company of SA in association with Arts Projects Australia, the SA Tourism Commission, Adina Apartment Hotels and the Adelaide Festival Centre. Dunstan Playhouse. 3 Oct 2014
Philemon can't help himself. His retribution may be non-violent but it is more agonising than satisfying in the end of the day. In punishing another, one risks punishing oneself.
Philemon had such a perfect life that even living in Sophiatown, one of South Africa's most deprived townships, did not depress him. He adored his beautiful wife, Matilda, making her breakfast each morning before catching the bus to work. Then a friend tipped him off that Matilda had a gentleman caller. He rushed home and surprised them. The lover ran off in his undies leaving his suit behind. Philemon punishes Matilda by insisting that the suit is now an honoured guest. He orders her to serve it dinner at the table, to sit it up in the bedroom and to give it permanence as the star of what is to become a very strange ménage à trois.
This play began in the 1950s as a short story by Can Themba and has since gone through several incarnations as a stage play; this latest English version is now circling the globe as a Peter Brook production of rather sweet simplicity. It is presented here by the State Theatre Company in association with Arts Projects Australia, the SA Tourism Commission, Adina Apartment Hotels and the Adelaide Festival Centre.
The set is dominated by brightly-coloured chairs which are moved about in various permutations along with several mobile frames and tables. It is the three-man band, its versatile musicians joining in as characters, which dresses the stage most effectively, not only adding life and humour but a soundscape of rich diversity. The musicians also accompany Nonhlanhla Kheswa who, as the oppressed wife Matilda, craves to express herself through song. Her lovely voice is a strong element of the production. Her songs echo Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, and Zap Mama.
Ery Nzaramba completes the cast as friend, lover and narrator. He facilitates some of the political commentary which anchors the play in the oppressive era of South Africa's history. These black workers did not care for their white employers. But in their own society, they were rich in community, stories and music.
The direction, attributed not only to Peter Brook but also to Marie-Helene Estienne and Frank Krawczyk, keeps the pace of the play unhurried - an easy township tempo. For a while, it becomes almost painfully slow. Then it lifts dramatically as Philemon throws a party. Nzaramba leaps into the auditorium and charms audience members to come onstage and join the behatted musicians as guests. It all works well until The Suit arrives.
This precedes the play's touching denouement which is quietly profound and quite unforgettable - as is the whole production.
The Suit is essentially a sad play but its delivery is deliciously imaginative.
In the Sophiatown simplicity of the set, the only props are The Suit and a couple of blankets. The actors very skilfully mime all other embellishments such as meals and travel. Here, William Nadylam, as the hurt husband-cum-cool tormentor is simply a joy to watch. It is a good cast, but he is an exceptionally engaging, star-quality actor.
And so it comes to pass that opening night audience members clapped until their hands hurt.
Samela Harris
When: 1 to 12 October
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
OzAsia Festival. The Space Theatre. 16 Sep 2014
The point of our magnificent OzAsia Festival is that it opens a curtain on dramatic arts and cultural expressions which perhaps are little known to the outside world. Did we know that the Chinese are passionate exponents of Ibsen? The Norwegians certainly do. The works of Heinrich Ibsen have been a force in Chinese spoken theatre for over a century and are considered the foundation of modernism on the Chinese stage.
The work, 'Ibsen in One Take', is China's cutting edge in the expression of Ibsen.
As in the extraordinary Roman Tragedies presented by the Adelaide Festival earlier this year, it is a work simultaneously performed and filmed onstage in a foreign language. Ibsen is as short as Tragedies was epic. But one could say it has a kindred spirit of sorts - certainly in the way in which it instantly carves a vivid and indelible image in mind's eye.
Ibsen in One Take is not an Ibsen play. It is a Beijing-based Norwegian playwright's impressionistic overview of Ibsen. Oda Fiskum has taken strands from plays such as The Masterbuilder and A Doll's House and woven them into a reflection on age, family and death in modern China.
Her central character is the old man who is on his death bed in hospital under the care of a fairly unsympathetic young nurse. Instantly, one is presented with the cultural parallel - the nursing home power of the young over the aged and incapacitated. Kindness is a lottery among the dependent. Pyjama-clad Tan Zongyuan fleshes out the old man, slow-moving, quiet, fatalistic, heartbreaking...
And around him on the darkened stage, the camera team quietly moving among the actors, the images of their one-take film screened aloft with the subtitles, the old man's past plays out. He is depicted as child and young man in family and work contexts. There are marital conflicts. There are tensions of father-son relationship - very strongly portrayed. There are the ambivalences of the masculine role in life alongside the emancipation of exasperated women. Shades of Nora?
There are several very moving scenes between husband and wife - and the double exposure of live performance and well-composed filmic image above serves to emphasise how accomplished are these Chinese actors.
The play is only an hour long but seems longer. It is unhurried. Director Wang Chong stretches it out both in pace and aesthetic, using every inch of the broad expanse of stage - and even beyond, to portray "the room where one doesn't go". Therein, through the camera lens, is played out a profoundly touching scene of father and son in hospital. And all the fragilities of imperfect family relationships and the impacts they have on our lives reaches forth as a human commonality.
Throughout the production, there are the tinkles and twangs of Li Yangfan's evocative score reminding us that this Ibsen is in China. And there are small special moments, encounters with cigarette, girl with umbrella, the rain from a spray bottle, keeping up appearances for the boss...
One has to pay attention, to watch the actors, to read the subtitles and to draw the associations. But it is a rewarding experience, albeit a bleak one for, in the end, as the old man reluctantly lets go, it is with the knowledge that all the efforts of understanding life are fruitless. It just is what it is.
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: The Space Theatre
Bookings: CLosed
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Arts Theatre. 12 Sep 2014
In a thinly populated Arts Theatre, the opening act of the first night of George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance went on....and on....and on. Written in 1910 - a time ripe with post-Victorian, new-fangled machines and ideas - Shaw subtitled his comedy, A Debate in One Sitting. The rather dense Shavian gabfest is set outdoors - or was it indoors? - of the grand country home of a hard-working and self-made underwear manufacturer and merchant, Mr Tarleton, and involves his family, potential in-laws, and some guests who drop in.
Generally, director Brian Knott's cast heroically struggles with making the material clear in the first act, but one can discern amusing witticisms, sarcastic remarks on the strictures of the age, and ironic takes on social life. This is not to say that any of Anna Bee, Peter Bleby, Lindsay Dunn, Simon Lancione, Mark Drury, or Julie Quick didn't do their duty, but that the exchanges of lines didn't gel into a conversation. Indeed, Julie Quick was possessed with a poise that stole every scene she was in. Lindsay Dunn was quietly madcap as the talkative Mr Tarleton. Peter Bleby's brilliantly hesitant line delivery would almost make you think he was on the brink of forgetting his lines if you didn't know better.
Just when I was checking my watch at what turned out to be near the end of the first act, Shaw parachutes two fresh characters into the play; a pair very unlike the by now stultifying existing; with a reveal twist for the audience to ponder over their two dollar coffees and teas during intermission!
The second act nearly redeemed the sins of the first. Adam Tuominen and Leah Craig were great as the nattily dressed aviating newcomers. The always good Tuominen Errol Flynned his way - cutting a swathe through the Tarleton household. I don't know if Leah Craig's accent was authentically Polish but it was amusing and it worked for me completely. Her Lina's dominatrix demeanor made every weak willed male character ask for more, as well as a few in the audience. That was amusing, too. In fact, the entire play blossomed like a rosebud in the second act thanks to the aviators helping to create a semblance of a plot, Shaw opening up the dialogue, and the cast handling it with aplomb.
Oh, I nearly forgot. There was another character in the play who suddenly intrudes and debates with Mr Tarleton on things Shaw wanted to say - this time, mostly about socialism - performed rather strangely by Leighlan Doe.
The set was a bit squashed (set design: Alex Strickland) and all the action was mundanely in a line at the stage curtain. The costumes were fantastic (wardrobe: Aubade). While Shaw covers an enormous range of topics, his insights into the relationship between parents and near adult children ring as true today as it did over a hundred years ago, so it's not just Apple and Foxtel causing the brink.
Now you may well ask, am I advising you to see this play, or what? What's the scoop? Let me put it this way. I think the whole shebang will mesh better later in the season than it did on opening night, and if you are a Shaw fan, you should see it. If you are not familiar with Shaw, you should see it.
David Grybowski
When: 11 to 20 Sept
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com