After Dinner

State Theatre Company of SA. Dunstan Playhouse. 11 Apr 2018

Andrew Bovell’s first play.

Methinks the boy has a future.

After Dinner is a beautifully crafted play which falls somewhere between farce, comedy drama and tragic comedy.

Every which way, it is gorgeously funny while at the same time it is piercingly and memorably poignant.

It is a study of classic Aussie characters drawn by the playwright as stereotypical but not clichéd. The play is set in 1988 in a suburban pub or club wherein dinner is only served to tables at the back of a room where a band plays Friday night gigs. Designer Jonathon Oxlade ruthlessly creates a classically bland hospitality wasteland. Just one lacklustre quasi-Pro-Hart print relieves the big, boring wall. The room is fitted with utility tables and chairs. These were the drab venues in which singles made their desperate search for partnerships in the days before online dating.  Blokes went to chase a bit of skirt. Lonely girls went in hope.  

Dympie is a bit on the OCD side and she is keen to be early to secure a favoured table not too near the bar and the band. She likes to ensure that everything, including her work friend Paula, fits into her neat, tidy and judgemental comfort zone. The well-known actor, Jude Henshall, is unrecognisable within the guise of twitchy, bitchy Dympie.  She is a mass of well-observed mannerisms; sour, smug and manipulative. Her friend, Paula, is a would-be free spirit who always ends up succumbing to Dympie’s passive-aggressive bullying tactics.  As Paula, Ellen Steele somehow makes her eyes seem eternally startled. In itself, this is funny. Indeed, Steele shows very fine form as a physical comedienne and evokes a character one comes to cherish. 

On this Friday night, the two girls have invited their recently widowed friend Monica to join them. She’s late.

At a nearby table Gordon waits alone, toying with the table setting, drinking water, reading the absurdly large menu, failing to get the waiter’s attention and killing what seems to be a lot of time. He is a very beige man. He is played immaculately by Rory Walker and as the play opens, he is positively Tati-esque in his uncomfortable relationship with his surroundings.

The characters emerge through banter and small personal outpourings. In Monica’s case, it is right over the top and into suspend-your-disbelief territory as she throws off the weeping widow image. Elena Carapetis is delicious in this wild ride of a role. Then again, under Corey McMahon’s astute direction, comic timing is right on the spot throughout the production and all cast members are bloody funny.  There’s lots of physical comedy with lovely old suggestive shtick. Then there are the misunderstandings and cross purposes in which the hilarity escalates to produce rewards of rib-aching laughter. 

Bovell clearly watched carefully that life of the lonely-hearts losers in the 80s.  He has drawn them with a pen that is both cruel and compassionate.

Patient menu-gazing Gordon is finally joined by his mate Stephen - to which end Nathan Page, the TV heartthrob of Miss Fisher fame, bursts upon the stage all tousle-haired and louche. If all Gordon wants to talk about is his failed marriage, Stephen just wants to suck down the booze and engineer a one-night stand. Unmarried and in his 40s, such brief encounters are all he knows of relationships. Page’s performance as Stephen is sublime.  He makes one love that eternal predator and, by play’s end…

Ah, let’s not give away some of the twists and turns of this beaut Aussie play.

Let’s just be glad that Bovell wrote it and sad that it is not produced more often.

Samela Harris

When: 11 to 29 Apr

Where: Dunstan Playhouse

Bookings: bass.net.au

Private Peaceful

Promise Adelaide. Bakehouse Theatre. 7 Apr 2018

Ben Francis. His is a name to remember. Not only did this eighteen year-old Scotch graduate render an outstanding performance in this one-hander, one-act play, but he also produced it. Not only that, his production company, Promise Adelaide, has raised a significant amount of dough for charity and has provided a creative outlet for over a hundred young people. But wait, there's more! He is the lead vocalist of The 60 Four, and an acquaintance of mine was amazed at his crystalline falsetto applied to the personage of Frankie Valli. He's been in a Gale Edwards's musical. I think the sky is the limit for this talented hard worker with a heart in the right place.

Private Peaceful began life as a novel by Michael Morpurgo (War Horse, no less) in 2004, and was adapted for stage by Simon Reade (Pride & Prejudice, Midnight's Children) in 2008. It's a British project concerning poor Peaceful in a WWI bunker in France during a single long night. Something not good is going to happen in the morning. Poor Peaceful reflects on his short sixteen year-long life via a sequence of scenes where Francis narrates and performs Peaceful's recollections. He takes us from primary school right through to the terror of the trenches.

Francis in his youth is already a consummate actor and under director Rob Croser, the cream rises to the top. Francis performed Peaceful's bucolic innocence to perfection. There is a plethora of other characters to flesh out and these were done distinctively. He made the terror of the artillery bombing so palpable that you want to reach out and give him a reassuring hug. Director Croser had him blasting across the stage, and Croser's and David Roach's set is Spartan and evocative. Sounds of sustained explosions and machine gun fire are nerve-wracking.

I was exhausted and sad after the show. Private Peaceful represents the 306 soldiers executed by the British high command during the war (Australia did not execute deserters). This project sprung from Ben's invitation - from winning an essay-writing contest - to attend the centennial services at Gallipoli. I have been there myself and it is a profoundly moving experience like this play. Double bravo!

David Grybowski

When: 4 to 14 April

Where: Bakehouse Theatre

Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com

Frankenstein

Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 5 April 2018

You would have to be brain-dead to not have seen the handmade humanoid in some media form or another. Mary Shelley wrote the short story - which became her novel - to pass the time on some dark and stormy nights in Switzerland in the company of holiday makers that included her lover, and Lord Byron.

Director Kerrin White claims to have read the novel several times and says that the play is far more true to the book than the 1931 Boris Karloff movie that most older people are familiar with. So forget the hunchback, the criminal brain conundrum and all that electricity. Also delete Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein black comedy starring Gene Wilder from 1974. English playwright Nick Dear's adaptation was first produced by the Royal National Theatre in 2011 and White is proud to never have seen that. So the design of White's production has blossomed from his theatrical brain without that encumbrance.

Dear imbues the script with a modern vernacular that is most amusing against the pre-Victorian anachronisms. The monster is abandoned by its creator rather flippantly and his journey of failed and frustrated personal growth becomes another version of one of the world's greatest stories - the son searching for the father, just like in Star Wars. Along the way, the thought-provoking questions the monster asks of the society he find himself in, and the violent reactions towards him, suggested the white/Aboriginal cultural gulf of perpetual misunderstanding, but I may have been reading too much into it.

And the star of the show is...Steve Parker! I was fortunate to see Parker's Captain Kirk in a Star Trek spoof back in 2006, where he displayed virulent audacity and comedic virtuosity. Here his corpulent monster (often asking for food, of course) is physically powerful and erratically dangerous as he tries to subdue a brutishness caused by rejection, with the liberal arts lessons received from a blind benefactor; he is manic, curious, unpredictable and bloody watchable. Bravo! Empathy for the monster fades, though, in this play where the Rep has broken new ground in nudity, sex and violence (quelle horreur!).

Patrick Clements's Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the creature, has a very complex personae populated with Asbergian agendas, that is foiled by his fiance's fetching simplicity (played with consistency by Rosie Williams). "If you want to create life, here I am!" she says. Of great interest is the psychological battle between creator/father and son, which might also be happening this very moment in your household. You would never guess the ending - every parent's nightmare.

The rather filmic style of the play presents challenges for the stage and budget, which Kerrin White's design copes with most the time, but not always. A few scene changes were off putting with all the commotion. Highlights, though, were the opening tableau (shocking!) and an ethereal vignette where young William Frankenstein (played beautifully by child actor Charlie Zorkovik) appears out of nowhere to torment Victor in a dream scene. White also utilised moving image backdrops to extend mood or interpretation.

Director Kerrin White has skillfully stitched together and breathed life into his creature. Go for the philosophical questions that are thrown up, and for the fascinating monster Parker provides.

PS White is working his way through the monster catalogue, having directed Dracula in 2014. So I guess the next monster show will be about Trump?

David Grybowski

When: 5 to 14 Apr

Where: Arts Theatre

Bookings: trybooking.com

The Wizard of Oz

Presented by John Frost & Suzanne Jones. Adelaide Festival Theatre. 5 Apr 2018

There is a wonderful sense of returning to one’s childhood when watching The Wizard of Oz.

A youthful innocence is rediscovered; long forgotten by the responsibility and busyness of life. At almost 120 years old The Wizard of Oz is easily one of the most universally recognised tales; it has “worked its way into the public consciousness completely”.

But there is something about the nature of a memory that always seems to outperform truth. It is as if our memories exist on pedestals, from where they can only fall when confronted with the harsh light of reality. This reworked production of The Wizard of Oz falls somewhere in between.

The show is visually stunning, yet it feels tentative; the cast is well drilled and sound wonderful, but appears to be holding back; the story has a knack for making one's soul smile, yet the plot holes are left unplugged and the old girl is showing her age. In its own right, this is a delightful little musical. Held up to modern offerings like Matilda it feels shallow and leaves us wanting. Yet one must remain faithful the 1900s tale, and so this dilemma.

The original L Frank Baum story has been adapted for multiple mediums hundreds of times over the years, but the most memorable and commercially successful has always been the 1939 film starring Judy Garland as Dorothy. For this latest incarnation, director Jeremy Sams identified the ‘gaps’ in the original Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg score and, with the permission of Warner Bros., engaged Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice to write some new lyrics and musical numbers that would help to flesh out the existing narrative. For the most part, these additions and adaptations are a wonderful success.

With the assistance of choreographer, Arlene Phillips, set and costume designer, Rob Jones, sound designer, Mick Potter, lighting designer, Hugh Vanstone and orchestrator David Cullen, Sams set about recreating the wonder of the film and the beauty of the story on a modern stage for both young and old. Technology has done it a huge favour.

Most impressive amongst the big budget effects are spectacular projections (Jon Driscoll) and lighting techniques which elevate the story through a stunning lightning storm, earth shattering twister, imposing Wizard sequence, and a flying-monkey kidnapping. Film truly meets stage when the clever sets are layered with these projections and live action interacts to add both physical and emotional depth.

Of the performers, Anthony Warlow brings the goods in his dual role of Professor Marvel and the Wizard; particularly in his performance of Bring Me a Broomstick where his gorgeous tonal qualities are abundant, but also though his stunning characterisations. Lucy Durack and Jemma Rix, as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West respectively, both deliver measured performances with the content available to them; their potential feels a tad underutilised in this production however. Rix’s rendition of the new number Red Shoes Blues is definitely a highlight. Newcomer Samantha Dodemaide, who takes on the pivotal role of Dorothy, looks and acts the part wonderfully, but doesn’t reach the vocal heights of her fellow cast mates. Overall vocal sound levels were too low on opening night, particularly in the first half.

Eli Cooper as Scarecrow, Alex Rathgeber as Tin Man, and John Xintavelonis as Lion, are all incredibly funny and take every opportunity to ham it up. The exceptionally tight ensemble delivers sharp chorography that elevates the visual spectacle of the show.

The original production is faithfully intact, and the new songs such as Home Is a Place in Your Heart tidy up the ‘why’ that originally felt under-explored. This, combined with the technological modernisation of the production, and its new translation to the stage, have elevated The Wizard of Oz to a new level.

Whether or not that level sustains the production for the next generation of musical theatre audiences who have the likes of Book of Mormon, Wicked, or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time to compare it too, remains to be seen.

Paul Rodda

When: 1 to 29 Apr
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: wizardofozthemusical.com