State Theatre Company of South Australia. Space Theatre. 27 May 2014
The modern obsession with living our lives online, either through social media or via streaming video and music sites such as You Tube could be described as an epidemic. This unnatural fixation forms the central theme for the State Theatre Companies ‘State R & D’ commissioned work written by both Patrick White Award and Young Playwrights Award winner, Phillip Kavanagh. That theme, however, seems a little unfocussed, and what we get instead is a broader, far more deeply concerning, look at one particularly unhinged adolescent female with more issues than just a web obsession.
Directed by Nescha Jelk, with design by Olivia Zanchetta, the look and feel of this play was simple, clean and very effective. Will Spartalis’s sound lent a particular realness to an otherwise plain setting.
In the title role, Kate Cheel delivers a graphic account of her selfish, egocentric life as she manipulates, lies, bribes and self-harms in a vain, deluded attempt to become famous. Cheel is reminiscent of today’s You Tube stars as she updates her video blog, live for the audience, simultaneously projected onto the cyclorama behind her. She is believably awkward, painfully attention seeking, and prone to outbursts of rage and angst. Her Jesikah is brilliant; modern and realistic she has us believe she is truly unhinged.
Cheel’s co-star and best-friend/mother/teacher – yes, three different characters – is played by Elizabeth Hay. In a triumphant performance, Hay gives us three starkly different characterisations, all believable in their own right, which aid in drawing out the almost psychotic tendencies in Jesikah. Both players are spectacular and together they create a dynamic and evolving production.
The flaws for me though where all in the writing. On the promise of a witty, exciting and scathing look at our fame obsessed culture where a schoolgirl develops an unhealthy obsession with You Tube, I expected a story about every teen. A play which would stand as a comment on the mania linked to living life via the web. But I ended up watching a character I didn’t want to know. The type of person I would just as easily give up on in the real world as I did in the play. At the halfway mark Jesikah had taken a turn for the worse and her manipulative and ever desperate actions pushed me away. The penultimate ending, already reaching for believability, was cold rather than poignant. The final scene sealed the deal.
I left the theatre confused about what the play was trying to say – if anything at all. Misled by its pretences and frustrated by its conclusion. Perhaps there was no point to miss. It is worth a look if only to see the fantastic performances and interpretations of the actresses.
Paul Rodda
When: 27 to 31 May
Where: The Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Photography by Sia Duff
Independent Theatre Inc. The Goodwood Institute. 27 May 2014
The show will go on. And it did.
William Mude may have had the smallest part but he was hero of Independent Theatre, taking on the role just a week before opening night after another actor had simply dropped out of the rehearsal process and vanished.
Mude played with the script in hand - sometimes his lines lost in a rush of African accent but always his winning personality simply shining through.
For lack of African actors, this Athol Fugard play, 'Master Harold... and the boys' has never before been performed in Adelaide.
It is set in the South Africa of the 1950s wherein racial enlightenment was a very wobbly creature. With a strongly autobiographical bent, it tells of a white teenage boy's relationship with two black servants who have worked for his family since he was little.
The action takes place in one lunchtime in the tearoom which is staffed by the servants while the mother and owner is away dealing with the needs of her crippled husband. The boy, Hally, comes to the tearoom for lunch and to do his homework, attended particularly by Sam who has been his mainstay through a rocky and dysfunctional family history.
It's a beautifully crafted, albeit densely wordy play.
The mood is set by the servants' banter about their passion for dancing competitions as they languidly do chores in the tearoom. When Hally aka Harold arrives, the black-white status is immediately apparent, even though there are stories told and knowledge shared. Phone calls from mother intrude upon the mood and the true complexities of relationships begins to emerge.
Benji Riggs plays the teen Hally with a well-honed South African accent and a moveable feast of moods which are to carry the play on a psychological roller coaster to its denouement. Riggs gives the character both vulnerability and arrogance. When it comes to the point, he also conveys a power of believable nastiness. A lost line or two on the historic opening night could not undermine what was a sterling performance from a very able young actor.
As Hally's friend and foil, Sam, Shedric Yarkpai is well-nuanced and somewhat elegant. His character embodies the strengths and suppressions of the black South African in service and Yarkpai's performance walks a veritable tightrope between subservience and familiarity.
The set, designed by Rob Croser and David Roach, is a detailed recreation of the diner-style 50s tea room from Fugard's youth, complete with glowing juke box. Indeed, as Hally helps himself to cakes, sodas and sweeties, it is invitingly realistic and would seem to be a very welcoming set for Independent's first production in the beautifully-renovated Goodwood Institute building.
Then again, its polished warmth can be interpreted as adding a stroke of irony to the heart-wrenching drama which unfolds upon it.
Croser's direction keeps the point of the play always in sight, underscoring the heart and heartlessness of the playwright's intent.
It is a poignantly potent play and even an actor with script in hand does not distract from its emotional intensity.
Samela Harris
When: 27 to 31 May
Where: Goodwood Institute
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Festival Centre. Space Theatre. 24 May 2014
While the flyer for A Delicate Situation describes the theme of this emotionally charged dance work, I would have enjoyed going in stone cold and working it out myself. But since you have already missed the Adelaide season, I hope you don't mind if I partly give the game away.
Regarding the flyer, you would have been hooked by Chris Herzfeld's dramatic photo of creator Lina Limosani's imaginations of Pontianak, a tragic figure of Malaysian mythology. The dance opens with pools of white silk in a jet black matrix. With masterful illusion, a hallmark of this production, one silk comes to shimmering life and is inhabited and animated by a demonic and thrashing form that later transmogrifies into the image in the photo. But next is a more domestic scene. An elegant woman, past middle age, obsessed with her bright red nails and the back of her hands and lipstick, is stylishly attired in a dress and matching short coat. Perhaps an expatriate banker's wife in southeast Asia, back from the hairdresser's, she is attended to by an Oriental servant with enough of the characteristics of Pontianak to create the menace and suspense in the narrative that gives this production its delicious intrigue. Comically, I am reminded of the inscrutable and uncontrollable Cato in the service of Inspector Clouseau - a situation promising a chaotic conflagration to upset the domestic applecart.
And the stakes are high. Director and choreographer Limosani has Carol Wellman Kelly and Suhaili Micheline Ahmad Kamil entwining in a dance that will - must - end with one victor and one supplicant. Limosani achieves all her objectives stated in the program. A Delicate Situation is an accomplished synthesis of narrative and contemporary dance. She has ably played on our primordial desire to personify death and our well dressed lady gets glimpses of her nemesis in the mirror. Suhaili is a disciplined and highly accomplished physical performer with every sinew in commanded service, no matter how rapid or jagged her movements might be in her inimitable style. Puppetry and illusion play a strongly supporting role. Canadian designer Eve Lambert's billowing silks are ethereal and beautiful to behold, while Malaysian Hardesh Singh's score is menacing and driving. All members of the creative come to Adelaide with a swag of international credentials.
At only fifty minutes duration, this is a lustrous gem of dance and a reminder of our mortality. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: Closed
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Presented by Andrew McKinnon and Phil Bathols in association with Adelaide Festival Centre. Festival Theatre. 23 May 2014
Out of the rubble and debris of wartime London rose the beauty of music. Dame Myra Hess was to alleviate the grim spirits through six years of chamber concerts - almost 1700 of them - most in London's National Gallery where only the empty picture frames remained on the walls.
Hess had intended to stop playing as a response to the war but, prompted by the suggestion of friends and what was intended as her last recital, she was to turn around and play the first of a series of wartime lunchtime concerts - with admission of one shilling.
They were a profound hit, and among the thousands who packed the Gallery's octagonal room over the years was the Queen Mother. Myra Hess was later to be made a Dame for this uplifting service to the British people.
Patricial Routledge, with an OBE and a CBE for services to the performing arts, embodies the spirit of Dame Myra in this gentle touring production.
Eighty-five years has not diminished the power and clarity of the
rich, lilting voice which has charmed audiences as Hetty Wainthrop and amused them as Hyacinth Bucket. Its plummy authority rings right through to the gods of the Festival Theatre.
The production is simple. The face of Myra Hess looks down from black and white photos projected onto the back of the stage.
Routledge makes her entrance exquisitely dressed in loose black embossed lace, a strand of pearls and sensible shoes. She sits and reads from a large folder a script written by Hess's great nephew Nigel Hess. It's a nicely unfettered narrative in the first person, modest, sometimes droll, always succinct and pleasantly phrased. Routledge delivers it with consummate ease.
Piers Lane at the grand piano brings the Hess concerts to life playing the music she performed - Schubert German Dances, some Brahms and Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and Scarlatti. They are delicate pieces, sweet and pretty, and he fingers them lightly.
He finishes up with Hess's own special arrangement of Bach's ‘Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring’.
It's all very smooth and professional. Two masters of their arts recreating the mastery of another. It makes for a soothing and civilized evening's entertainment.
Samela Harris
When: 23 to 24 May 2014
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
The Metropolitan Musical Theatre Co. Arts Theatre. 9 May 2014
Move over, Todd McKenney! Step aside, Hugh Jackman! You'll need to, to make room for the latest, mid-Elvis-sized Peter Allen reincarnation, David Salter. More on him later, but let me tell you about this production. In a word - stunning.
In case you have been stranded Douglas Mawson-like in Antarctica for the last fifteen years - and were not one of the 1.2 million Australians who saw the original production in 1998-99, or the reprise in 2006 - The Boy From Oz musical is Nick Enright's love letter to one of Australia's greatest songwriters and entertainers, who passed away in 1992. Enright links Allen's country town upbringing, his childhood performances at the local pub, and his mother's unwavering support, with the swings and roundabouts of his concert and songwriting career. Allen's improbable encounter with Judy Garland in an Asian night club led to his marriage to Lisa Minnelli, which ended amicably after seven years in 1974, as his homosexuality came to the fore with the changing times. No, I'm not making this stuff up. Enright seamlessly weaves this narrative with Allen's songs and this is where David Salter comes in. But more on him later.
This is a high octane production that does not stop for a breath. While Leonie Osborn had to take over direction, the panache of original director Max Rayner and his casting choices remain side-by-side with Osborn's re-imaginings. It's a fast-paced dancing and singing extravaganza designed to exemplify the showmanship and hard work of Peter Allen. Carmel Vistoli's choreography has the hoofers working with springs on their feet while Jillian Gulliver's orchestra is absolutely first class. The costumes (Osborn and Vistoli) have the wow factor. ‘I Still Call Australia Home’ and the finale ‘I Go To Rio’ were big passionate numbers.
There was a lady on stage. Bronwen James's Judy Garland was absolutely magnificent in her imagineering of the aging and fragile star. Bravo! And the lady's progeny was also on stage. I did not see anything but Liza Minnelli in Selena Britz's impersonation. Everything was there - the brash voice, the killer vibrato, the gestures. Britz's feature song was an absolute show stopper. Bravo! Both of them inhabited the professionalism and sense of destiny we sensed in the originals. While never really in the same room on stage, these two were impeccably mother and daughter. Angus Smith, one of the best character actors on the scene, was called upon to generate a number of individuals with great skill.
David Salter has gone from strength to strength with Chorus Line in 2012, the cheeky Hispanic in Altar Boyz last year, and now Peter Allen. You needed a real sweetheart for this role - someone who connects with an audience, can hold a rapport, and shows them the razzle-dazzle. Who can bang away at the 88s singing into the mike, and then next second shimmy that shiny shirt dancing across the stage. Who can look crestfallen at the demise of his mother-in-law and then his lover, and show you Peter Allen's love of life and conquer his larger-than-life personality. Here David Salter does it all. Bravo!
There are two other performers of worthy note. Post-toddler/pre-adolescent Joshua Spiniello was inspirational as the young Tenterfield progeny Peter Allen (you may see Ned Baulderstone on another night). Only ten, he already has seven years’ experience and I'm sure we'll see more of him. And last, but sadly not least, is the robotic piano, slithering across the stage like a giant sea slug, intent on nudging the actors out of the spotlight.
Well, there you have it. Bravo to the Met!
David Grybowski
When: 8 to 17 May
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au