David Venn Enterprises. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 10 Apr 2021
Adelaide’s Her Majesty’s is host to the opening of an Australian tour of an all-new showing of The Wedding Singer. The romantic comedy first sang as a movie in 1998 with Adam Sandler in the eponymous role and the theatre version premiered on Broadway in 2006. The South Australian premiere was at the Arts Theatre in 2008. The current offering is a cracker whiz-bang all-Australian professional production out of Melbourne.
Robbie Hart (had his heart robbed) is a happy singer at weddings in the 1980s in New Jersey across the river from New York. The vamp he was going to marry dumps him at the alter and he is supported by his two band members, his Grandma, and most importantly, a very cute waitress at the wedding venue named Julia. She is supposed to marry a Wall Street wolf but blind Freddy could see it’s not solid and Robbie and Julia fall in love without them knowing it. All these characters and more, except the wayward wolf and Robbie’s ex-, help Robbie and Julia get to where they need to be. It’s a boy-meets-girl tale under a canopy of loud guitars and wailing synths.
Christian Charisiou and Teagan Wouters absolutely smash it as our adorable heroes. They beautifully play Robbie and Julia’s small-town honesty and raw emotions. They are just so comical-tragical and sweet! It’s hard not to cheer at the finale as you so much want this couple to connect.
Robbie’s band members, played with goofy earnestness by Ed Deganos and Haydan Hawkins, make an unlikely and humourous hook-up. Deganos does a lovely lady boy of the Filipino flavour and Hawkins does a hard rock bass player feeling trapped in but committed to this unremarkable trio. Nadia Komazec makes Julia’s cousin and co-worker a chewing gum chopping party girl extraordinaire, and Stephen Mahy’s Wall Street junk bond trader looks impeccable and impregnable. His booming vocals in All About The Green would scare any lefty. Kirby Burgess was a knock out as the aforementioned vamp. While everyone dances with flare and precision, Burgess’s number in Act II is a lesson in athleticism. Bravo! Grandma in the hands of Susan-Ann Walker foils the shenanigans of the younger generation with some apple tea wisdom, and Walker’s interpretation of rap is a hoot.
The ’80s dress code and hair-dos take you back if you have ever been there, or maybe it looks like a fancy dress party if you are too young. The staging is brash, bright and kinetic, and the rock/pop/heavy metal music when featured is loud. The women have high emotional quotients, and the men are affable buffoons. Some would say nothing has changed.
Director Alister Smith has unleashed a dazzling revival that is funny and engaging from beginning to end. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 10 to 24 Apr
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: theatresonline.com.au
Windmill Theatre Company. Space Theatre. 10 Apr 2021
Not a word has been spoken and the children have already started giggling. Standing in front of them, Eddie (Nathan O’Keefe) peers into the gloom. He’s wearing fluoro running shorts, a silver reflective vest, leggings and sandals. A white teddy in matching vest, who turns out be Lucky, is strapped to his backpack. Yes, he looks ridiculous, and the kids love it.
Eddie is clearly a city guy, and he’s very unhappy about the fact that the city is big and noisy, and he desperately needs some sleep, so he’s come bush to get a good night’s sleep. Will he get it?
Hiccup! was written and directed by Jude Henshall and Ellen Steele, and they have succeeded brilliantly in producing a contemporary Australian puppet show for children. Tamara Rewse’s muppet-like characters are immediately endearing, and the audience is captivated from the get go, initially by Eddie, and then by Quokka, Koala and Emu.
Quokka (animated by Chiara Gabrielli) wants to go the city. He loves shiny, shiny things and there is lots of them in the city. He wants Emu (Nathan O’Keefe) to go with him, but Emu is an inventor, and he’s right in the middle of something right now…
Which turns out to be quite useful, as the peaceful bush idyll is suddenly punctuated by Hiccup! as Koala (Lachlan Micklethwait) frightens the trio on his 273rd (give or take) day of extremely loud hiccups. There follows a series of attempts to rid Koala of his hiccups so they can all get on with, respectively, collecting shiny things, building inventions and getting some sleep.
Jonathan Oxlade has designed a stunning set, all ochres, pale greens and greys; trees and shrubs with fan blades, rocks with candy stripes and far off hills. Eddies ochre tent is tucked into the rocks and the clever use of internal lighting allows Eddie (O’Keefe) to seamlessly duck in and out of the tent and reappear as Emu.
A bit of a wobble with the follow spot is soon forgotten as the Chris Petridis lighting design brings us the outback stars and the crisp moonlight. And are they fireflies at the end?
The cast has the timing down pat as they bounce off each other, and they’re clearly having fun as they put their puppets through their paces. Perhaps sometimes a little much, as occasionally the focus is pulled from the characters onto the puppeteers, but for the most part it works well.
There’s some nice audience participation with some call and response rock and roll – all in the name of medical intervention, of course! The cast get to show off the fact that they can sing, and sing well, with songs by Ross McHenry.
Windmill has worked hard over the past year with their Windmill At Home program as a response to COVID-19, but it’s just so lovely to be back in the theatre seeing these fabulous children’s works first hand. And the kids thought so too.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 7 to 18 Apr
Where: Space Theatre
Tickets: bass.net.au
Northern Light Theatre Company. Shedley Theatre – Playford Civic Centre. 9 Apr 2021
Hankering already for a winter holiday? How about an island in the Cyclades? Santorini blue domes squat on white walls high above the rocky coves of azure swims. Feel the sun’s warmth as you ouzo away the afternoon by the pool. But what? Looks like a wedding happening at the boutique resort high up on the hill run by that feisty Englishwoman and her gorgeous daughter. Could it be that Pommie mob in that matrimonial musical on a Greek island written by Swedes with the Italian title?
You’ve been in Covid isolation all your life if you haven’t seen the movie or sang along with the melodious score that musical theatre was made for. Theatre producer Judy Craymer had great trouble convincing the two male Bs of ABBA, Benny Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus, to combine their catchy pop-disco canon with Catherine Johnson’s nuptial narrative. And the result is the 1999 musical, the 2008 film, and finally, this latest incarnation in Elizabeth.
Northern Light Theatre has a great hit on their hands! Gordon Combes’ and Russell Ford’s set captures the Greek idyll. Chris Golding bathes it in bright Mediterranean sun and switches on the party lights at night, and along with Ann Humphries’s costumes, the kaleidoscope of colour is psychedelic.
The wedding guests and resort crew are choreographed with precision, fun and hard work by Shenayde Wilkinson-Sarti. Peter Johns’ orchestra doesn’t miss a disco beat as they pump out the hits. Director Ceri Hutton has had a lingering year to fret as the production was closed down about 12 months ago due to Covid (and only two days before opening) and she has had to recast a bunch of roles. Her mantra of colour and movement and excitement is eye candy!
Hutton’s excellent casting seems to channel the film and there’s nothing wrong with that. New York-trained Alana Shepherdson is a spunky and lively bride-to-be exuding enthusiasm. Her dancing is crisp and shows the way. One fetching thing about Mama Mia! is the love story of two generations. Robyn Brookes is masterful in conveying Donna’s wild past in her performance. Her The Winner Takes It All brings the house down, no kidding. Bravo! However it isn’t a good time for crew to rearrange furniture. The three potential fathers played by Gavin Cianci, Gus Smith and Ben Kempster are wonderfully distinguishable and affable. Each could charm the pants off a snake. Donna’s pals played by Paula Cooney and Michelle Davy have delectable comedic songs, and Davy’s Take A Chance On Me is a lesson in physical comedy while singing. Bravo! Mike Lapot’s soft shoe in snorkelling fins is a remarkable feat.
The only complaint is sound levels. The more softly voiced singers are sometimes AWOL. But all is forgiven after the three encore numbers, accompanied by riotous applause. Bravo!
You don’t even need to get on a plane for this exotic holiday wedding in the sun! Get along to enjoy the romantic tensions and some of the best pop songs ever written in the world’s greatest romantic comedy musical. What are you waiting for?
David Grybowski
When: 9 Ap to 1 May
Where: Shedley Theatre – Playford Civic Centre
Bookings: shedley.sales.ticketsearch.com
The Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Arts Theatre. 8 Apr 2021
It is some time in the 1950s in steamy small town Mississippi when three sisters reunite under difficult circumstances. They’ve grown up under dysfunctional circumstances, raised by their granddaddy after their mother died in a double suicide with her cat. Lenny has stayed at home caring for the old man who is now at death’s doorstep in hospital. Babe married but is now in deep trouble having shot her husband in the stomach. Meg, having fled town after abandoning her boyfriend in the ruins of a hurricane, returns from a failed showbiz career in Los Angeles. They already carry a lot of emotional baggage and now are plunged into fresh crises fraught by revealed secrets and the general spite of Chick, their meddlesome cousin who lives nearby. It’s one helluva kitchen-sink drama by American playwright Beth Henley and she has surely loaded that sink with dirty dishes. The play is distinguished by a string of top US awards quite clearly deserved by its artful layering of characters, its evocative setting, and its intense tangle of humour and emotions.
The Rep’s very skilled set designer Ole Wiebkin brings the American Deep South onto the Arts Theatre’s stage with a masterpiece of sprawling domesticity complete with a squeaky-hinged fly-wire door, running water, and misty windows looking onto a suggested world of fecund old fruit trees.
It is Lenny’s domain and it is her birthday when the play opens. Georgia Stockham embodies this seemingly tragic character, a refugee from her secret infertility, bullied by her cousin and fearful for the fates of her family members. Her stay-at-home life had become drearily solitary until the cataclysm of the family reunion.
A stridency of sisterly squeals and laughter and frequent phone calls fill the stage as the sisters gather. Bottles of coke are consumed endlessly and protagonists come and go: principally Meg’s old boyfriend, Doc; and Babe’s new lawyer, Barnette Lloyd.
The cast does well overall with their Mississippi accents.
While Allison Schraber brings a ditsy emotional big dipper to life as Babe, who has shot her husband in the stomach and keeps a secret black lover, it is somehow Cheryl Douglas as the self-centred failed singer, Meg, whose arresting stage presence really sparks the sisterly chemistry. Damaged souls all, they rile and reconcile, jest and protest, accuse and confess in a wild ride of emotional extremes. These are juicy roles for actresses and, with Deborah Proeve as nasty Chick Boyle, the Rep has found a good set. Similarly the two Mississippi males are nicely cast. Adam Schultz, looking like Tom Wolfe in his straw hat and plantation suit, asserts an aura of suave dependability with just a streak of slippery hidden agenda. Of course, it is hard to find Steve Marvanek giving anything other than a fine performance. Here, as Meg's once-abandoned lover, he achieves a power of understated poignancy with almost copybook use of dramatic restraint. He is just a jewel in this production.
Pandemic lockdown threw a huge spanner in director Geoff Brittain’s original plans for this show and it had to be put on hold for the covid year of darkened theatres. Now, with a partially altered cast and most of The Rep’s tried and true production team, it has risen to be the first full onstage Rep production for 2021, albeit still with covid seating.
As for many complex, multi-character plays, Crimes of the Heart takes its time in filling out the strands which will weave the plot together. Hence, the production may seem slow-developing initially. In the second act its intensity has developed, the cast has relaxed into fully-fledged and now familiar characters, and by curtain time it has proven to be a rather satisfying experience.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 17 Apr
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Woodville Town Hall. 21 Mar 2021
Video games trace their history way back to the 1950s but did not really become ‘mainstream’ until the 1970s. With the advances of computing technology video games have developed into a global entertainment industry worth big, big bucks. According to some estimates it will be worth over $200 billion by next year. A really interesting aspect of video games is the music underscore that many (most? all?) games come with. We all know the music is there but relatively few of us pause to contemplate it for what it is: quality, interesting and serious music. The Best of Music in Motion addresses this fact and presents the music behind many of the world’s favourite video games.
A fascinating thing about video game music is that it needs to be responsive to the player’s actions: as a player navigates their way through the game and responds to all the diabolical challenges put before them, the music needs to quickly morph into something that is appropriate to the player’s status within the game. Theoretically, the underscore one experiences can be different every time one plays the game. Consequently, video game music composers need to structure the music so that it is amenable to rapid evolution (achieved through electronic wizardry).
In a nutshell, writing the underscore for a sophisticated video game is as difficult as it is to write a conventional score, perhaps more so. One such musical wizard is Nathan Cummins, a local award-winning composer and music academic who is currently undertaking PhD work to create software to perform music in virtual reality.
Cummins has prepared original arrangements of the scores from many video games and the Woodville Concert Band performs them in The Best of Music in Motion. Video footage drawn from the various games accompanies the music and the result is a toe-tapping family-friendly audio visual spectacular. The featured games include Tetris, Super Mario, Super Smash Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Botanic Panic, and more.
The Woodville Town Hall hosts the event, and this graceful old building is packed to the rafters with an enthusiastic audience. They are there in numbers that most Fringe events can only dream about!
The show is compered by two enthusiastic young guys who together whip the audience up into a frenzy. Interestingly, one of them speaks more about the nature of the music – which instruments are featured in solos, changes of musical key, musical structures etc – but this seems to be lost on much of the audience. For example, when locally developed 'Hollow Knight' was introduced and it was remarked that its composer (Adelaide-based, Christopher Larkin) was actually in the house, this was not acknowledged by the audience. If this was a concert performed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in the Adelaide Town Hall and a featured composer was in attendance, a big deal would be made of it. But not so at The Best of Music in Motion. Curious.
This concert is the fifth consecutive year that the Woodville Concert Band together with their Artistic Director have presented 'Music With Motion'. Make sure you put it on your list next Fringe, especially if you are a music lover. The Woodville Concert Band is a class outfit.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Woodville Town Hall
Bookings: Closed