The Paperboats. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 17 Sep 2021
Guiding children onto a stage brings a mix of emotions; some bounce up the stairs quickly, eager to be part of the action, others are more diffident, concerned that they may have to participate more than they feel comfortable with. And by placing the audience upon the Goodwood Theatre and Studios stage in this way, the central thrust of Especially On Birthdays is immediately referenced, with the young audience reflecting the central theme of the different reactions children can have to the same situation.
Especially On Birthdays is the story of twins; Tanika (Katrina Lazaroff) is loud, happy and outgoing, while her brother Tim (Stephen Noonan) who is two minutes younger, is quieter, reflective and not so keen to be the centre of attention. They are about to celebrate their sixth birthday, and for the first time, they will be separated, going into different classes at school. How they deal with this within their relationship is the basis for this minimalist language production; the twins’ dilemma is shared and reflected, with some audience members invited to join in and share the experience.
That this production is almost entirely without words is of itself quite intuitive. This is the way that many children operate; what is not said, but intimated, forms a large part of their communication. For the children in this audience, it allowed them to fill in the spaces with their own experience, their own desires, their own dreams. And they were not backwards in coming forwards with their thoughts; even the shy ones managed to make their feelings known, albeit in subtle nuance. The recorded narrative was almost for the adults’ sake, just so that we could understand what was actually going on!
Directed by Dave Brown (who spent 20+ years as Artistic Director of the iconic Patch Theatre) and Roz Hervey (Force Majeure, Patch, Restless Dance Company et al), Especially On Birthdays is a work by the international partnership Paper Boats, a “platform for theatre-makers creating performances for early childhood audiences”, conceived by Brown post retirement from Patch. Brown explained, before the show, that Paper Boats seeks to create works utilising the skills and shared vision of an international community without having to carry the financial weight of formal infrastructures, utilising instead existing infrastructures of partner companies. The show has already been produced internationally; such collaborations, tapping into common experience, can only auger well for children’s theatre.
Especially On Birthdays is a result of this shared vision, developed by artistic communities from Australia, USA, Singapore and New Zealand. With an evocative music score for the Australian production from ZephyrROM (no introduction needed for the Zephyr Quartet!), this production taps into childhood fears, joys, expectations and disappointments, and ultimately confirms the bonds of shared sibling childhood. For the audience to be able to share in the experience (rolling around in mountains of paper chain was a bonus) is an acknowledgement that the growing up is hard, and sharing makes it that little bit easier. And big sisters can be a pain!
The show is featured as part of ‘Come Back’, a selection of productions playing at the Goodwood venue (now under the stewardship of industry stalwarts Chris Iley and Simone Avrimidis). This limited season deserves a return; more young audiences should be exposed to quality theatre such as this. Brava to The Paperboats from my little ones.
Arna Eyers-White
When: Closed
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: Closed
Australian Dance Theatre. Dunstan Playhouse. 18 Sep 2021
Adelaide’s Australian Dance Theatre’s Artistic Director Garry Stewart is an international champion of dance. The Centenary Medalist began choreographing his own new works in 1990 and famously had six dancers abseiling down the sails of the Sydney Opera House for the billion viewers of the International Millennium Broadcast. He has led ADT since 1999 while also creating new dance abroad, and Objekt is one of them. This work was commissioned in Germany (as you might guess from the German title) in 2016 and is remounted currently by ADT’s Associate Artistic Director Sarah-Jayne Howard.
Objekt is a work with a dark outlook and if Stewart has this warning to his audience in 2016 in the wake of cruel American renditions post-9/11, it’s certainly even more appropriate today in our COVID-stressed social cesspool, and incidentally, the 20th anniversary of the former. Perhaps playfully incorporating an Australian element at the beginning, the dancers are dressed in anonymity via head-to-toe outfits bearing a pattern resembling the broad arrows borne by NSW convicts. These characters perform meaningless mechanical activity seemingly without end. In this scene and ongoing, while the compelling costumes imply androgenous forms, most of the action is masculine and some of that is troublesomely violent – all sense of feminine balance is absent. Objectification increases and empathy decreases. Street fights, beatings, and people carried about like chattel are wonderfully inventive and evocative. I can’t see how a German audience would not mistake a scene - where Stewart has dancers proudly waving banners hosting a bland symbol while several others completely dominate another few by kicking, punching and dragging them on the ground - for SS guards beating Jews and Communists in the ghetto.
Having said that, Objekt is technically masterful. Brendan Woithe’s edgy score and soundscape keeps you anxious and tense and never lets up with its deep bass and moody changes. Chris Petridis’s enveloping lighting utilises plenty of mauve perhaps signaling furtive night. Stewart’s choreography is demanding on Howard’s dancing team in its fluctuating rapidity and teamwork. The focus on precision in performance is palpable. Stewart’s use of symbolism and messaging through the dance medium – the sheer inventiveness of it – is thrilling.
Bravo!
PS - Garry Stewart is set to step down from ADT at the end of this year and it would be foolish not to see his next production - due November - with the provocatively blunt and titillating headline, "Love, Sex, Jealousy & Explosive Dance". Entitled G, the ballet Giselle, will never be the same.
David Grybowski
When: 13 to 19 Sep
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
James Watson & Paper Mouth Theatre. RUMPUS Theatre. 16 Sep 2021
The Triumph of Man is a new play written by local playwright James Watson who is honing his craft through a Masters in Writing for Performance at NIDA. In his short career he has been quite active with a number of works already under his belt that have been aired by University of Adelaide Theatre Guild and at the Adelaide Fringe. James is the recipient of a State Theatre Company of South Australia young playwrights award and has several works published on Australian Plays Transform.
The Triumph of Man is essentially a farce in two acts, with each coming in at around one hour. It is expansive in its conception and addresses a number of uncomfortable ‘truths’. The story focusses on how the fictional dictator of a fictional nation keeps his regime intact through the secretive suppression of dissenters and by spreading his propaganda through performances of a play he has written. He kidnaps two foreign actors to lead the performances, which may sound absurd but is in-fact, informed by real events surrounding South Korean filmmakers Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee who were kidnapped by Kim Jong in 1978 and forced to make propaganda movies for the North Korean regime. There are of course less dramatic examples in history of artists being used for political purposes such as Guy Sebastian being paraded by PM Morrison to help spruik the federal government’s bungled arts rescue package. Sebastian later expressed his embarrassment at being used “as a prop”.
The Triumph of Man explores how the arts and particularly the performing arts can be (and are) exploited for political purposes. This of course is not a novel idea and has been explored many times before, and this play doesn’t really add to that canon. The particular story line about the kidnapped actors is however new and fertile territory for exploration, but Watson doesn’t perhaps make as much of this as he might. The story line frequently crosses over into previously travelled territory and becomes cliché. This has the effect of reducing the potential impact of the narrative and slows it down.
Director Mary Angley identifies the absurdist aspects of the script and capitalises on the manifest abilities of the acting ensemble to milk these moments for what they are worth, but the sprawling text doesn’t easily assist in identifying reasonable bounds. Interestingly, Reggie Parker’s (mostly) excellent soundscape occasionally juxtaposes quite dark and foreboding sound sequences with lighter moments in the play. This has the effect of leaving the audience responding to questions that the music perhaps should not be asking. The lighting plot and set are simple and never distract from the play itself.
Arran Beattie is excellent as one of the kidnapped actors. His portrayal includes a carefully balanced mix of humour, fear, hesitancy, and resignation. Christian Best plays the other actor in a more naturalistic and underplayed manner, and as such demands to be listened to in a different way. Grace Boyle plays the dual roles of Ivana and Erasmus with much energy and expression, but frequently becomes ‘shouty’ as Erasmus, which is uncomfortable in the RUMPUS performance space. Ellen Graham as Axelle crafts a compelling character. We feel her rage, anguish, and pain. Poppy Mee also plays dual roles, and as Artemon she oozes authority and foreboding. Yoz Mensch also essays dual roles, and clearly delights in playing the role of the dictator giving a balanced mix of menace and unhinged mania.
The Triumph of Man is a wild ride, with twists and turns that both please and irk.
Kym Clayton
When: 14 to 26 Sep
Where: RUMPUS Theatre
Bookings: rumpustheatre.org
Flying Penguin Productions with Brink. Bakehouse Theatre. 17 Sep 2021
A thrill runs through the theatre as the lights rise on David Mealor’s production of Glengarry Glen Ross.
It’s an impeccable opening moment set in a booth in a Chinese restaurant with a backdrop of aptly symbolic red curtains. It is downstage, close to the audience in the Bakehouse Theatre. Two men occupy the booth. One drinks Scotch. The other eats noodles. And, almost before the first breath, the power games begin, not just from the David Mamet plot but because of powerhouse performances.
Rory Walker plays salesman Shelly Levene, and he’s on a downward spiral in a very dodgy real estate company. Desperate and dishevelled, his huge tie loose and awry, he is running off at the mouth and scrambling for support from the sleek new boss. From his first rushed utterances, it is clear that Walker is inhabiting this character to the depths of his contemptible essence. He is so credible that watching him feels quite voyeuristic. It takes less than a moment to recognise that this is a superlative performance; one which is sustained and developed as the play evolves.
Across the table, the boss who clearly gained his position from some form of nepotism, responds to Shelly’s pleas with smug superiority. Bill Allert portrays this ugly manager with an aura of supreme self-satisfaction and an impressive repertoire of quince-faced expressions.
Mamet sets up the characters with three of these across-the-table interactions so that one understands the tensions - the business principle of salesmen competing for top sales and a Cadillac prize, with the hapless losers facing dismissal. It’s a cruel field, counted out on an office blackboard and controlled by the boss who provides precious “leads” to the prospective sales. It is all based on the playwright’s own experience in this predatory world of dodgy real estate dealers.
Hence the shameless wheeler dealing of the characters and the charming duplicity of the top dogs, notably Richard Roma who gains a larger-than-life embodiment from the remarkable Mark Saturno who devours the stage in a tour-de-force performance.
He is one of the layers of excellence David Mealor has achieved in this splendid production. He has audience eyes glued to Christopher Pitman, sad and funny as the over-the-top conspiratorial agent, Dave Moss, against the frightening despair of his colleague George, as so vividly portrayed by Nicholas Garsden. James Wardlaw plays the hapless sucker, James Lingk, who has fallen for the fast-talking real estate dealers. Poor Lingk is trying to weasel out of the deal. As smarmy Richard plays swings and roundabouts with him, the audience cringes in recognition at the entire phenomenon of the power of smooth-talking conmen. It hits a raw and universal nerve - one of the reasons that this 1980s play has maintained its relevance.
Desperate measures by frustrated salesmen result in the police being called in to the business, in which capacity Chris Asimos plays the one blameless outsider, a policeman investigating a break in at the office. The power of good carries a gun, of course. This is America, in which context the cast uniformly do their raging and moaning in impeccable American accents. And, to their ghastly tan plaid socks, they are besuited to the period.
The slick professionalism of this Brink and Flying Penguin productions presentation is completed by the finesse of Tom Kitney’s lighting and Quentin Grant’s soundscape. Not for a moment forgetting Kathryn Sproul’s set design which not only recreates a classic Chinese restaurant scene but, with astonishing flurries of movement in the shadows and masked spectres of US presidents of yore, transforms the stage into a smoky 1970s downmarket office complete with slow-moving ceiling fan and, of course, the crucial chalk board on which the destinies of the real estate agents is marked out.
One way and another, David Mealor and his team have achieved the complete package in this production.
One might give it five stars and then some.
Samela Harris
When: 17 to 25 Sep
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com (Season Sold Out)
The Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 3 Sep 2021
It’s a highly “Americana” play. Indeed David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People is a highly “Bawsten” play set, as it is in Boston’s rough old Southie district and playing class divides with posh Chestnut Hill. It’s also a play about racism, homophobia, and disability, so it ticks lots of boxes.
Hence its acclaim when it hit Broadway with Frances McDormand earning a Tony Award in the lead role of Margaret.
Of course, that is a hard act to follow for a non-professional theatre company in Australia, but under Nick Fagan’s determined directorship, The Rep has pulled off a more than adequate production.
It requires just a bit of patience from the audience since the play opens with a scene-setting interaction in which single mum, Margaret, played by Rachel Burfield, is sacked from her Dollar-Store job by her old friend’s son, played by Curtis Shipley. This scene occurs in the un-arresting OP corner of the stage and, while it forms a broad socio-economic introduction to the story, it is very wordy and its performance needs a bit of pace and punch.
Thence, Richard Parkhill’s lighting moves on to the next of the several Brittiany Daw's sets lined up across the stage.
This one is a kitchen. Therein, Margaret and her Southie girlfriends, played by Lyn Crowther and Cate Rogers, are laying further gossipy foundation for the plot. But, again, the anchor drags. The audience begins to worry. This is slow.
Then, as the lights move right to the last of the sets, an unassuming little medical office, the play leaps into life, and it does not look back.
Nicholas Bishop is onstage. He is playing Mike Dillon, the old Southie boy made good, Margaret’s old boyfriend who, say her friends, may be able to open doors to give her the job she so sorely needs to pay her rent and take care of her retarded daughter. That Mike is now a paediatric endocrinologist who has specialised in early births passes neither by, albeit the significance is laid gently upon the audience. It is all about class distinction. The privileges of family and support are ping-ponged between the characters. Margaret, a feisty voice for the underclass, plays passive aggressive games with the formerly smug specialist eventually eliciting an invitation to his birthday party, to be hosted by his young wife at their salubrious Chestnut Hill address. The play then moves through displays of abrasive class inferiority and insecure class superiority. When Michael cancels the party, Margaret decides that this was just his way of uninviting her to the party. She turns up to crash it - to find, not only a quiet couple with a sick child and a cancelled party, but her old boyfriend now married to an upper crust black woman. Furthermore, the black woman is open-hearted and charming. Thus ensues the most interesting and exquisitely tense of domestic scenes, played out upon a fairly bland multi-level bourgeois set, but reaching somewhere towards the ilk of Virginia Wolf and then veering elsewhere. Plot threads draw together. Tensions are released. Performances rise to the occasion.
Nicholas Bishop delivers a masterly underplay of the Boston boy-made-good - his subtle expertise lifting the rest of the cast and the entire feel of the play. Enter Rhoda Sylvester, playing the doctor’s black wife, and the production lifts yet further with a compelling swing of the pendulum.
So, from an underwhelming beginning, this Nick Fagan Rep production, delivers as a rather thrilling and satisfying night.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 11 Sep
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com