The Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 1 Sep 2023
Make ‘em laugh. It’s a showbiz catch-cry. For comedic actors, audience laughter is a veritable drug.
But, high comedy is the hardest of the arts, not only in the need for extremely skilful writing but in the timing, timing, timing of the actors.
Noises Off may be the ultimate test case. Written by the master of English farce, Michael Frayn, it is an insanely busy play with an awful lot of doors and props plus a complex reversible set.
In three acts, it depicts a comedy called Nothing On in rehearsal and in production with one act devoted to that same show on tour as seen from backstage.
Escalating mayhem is the shortest description. The characters are classic old school thespians complete with offstage relationships and quirks. There’s lots of luvvie and darling and ego massaging; quite close to the bone, really.
As an unfunded non-professional company with a small crew, the Rep has been wildly ambitious in staging this monster of theatrical silliness, but David Sinclair is a seasoned and seemingly fearless director who has designed the English country house set with its two floors of doors and its very important garden window. It all sort of works and even if it doesn’t, it is grist for the mill of a play about everything going wrong.
There are some lovely performances in this production in which bad performances are good. Outstandingly terrible and utterly adorable is Cassie Gaiter as Brook, the shrill and wooden ingenue. Wide-eyed with big batting eyelashes and wearing high white boots and sexy black undergarments, she stands out like a traffic light. Her character is there for a naughty weekend with the handsome young letting agent who thinks the house is empty. But, of course, it already contains the trusty, crusty factotum, Mrs Clackett, who, aptly embodied by Julie Quick, is being played by an old darling of the stage who has endless trouble remembering her cues and props. Sardines will never be the same again.
So, because each actor is playing an actor, there are double cast names and even a program within the program. And the “empty” country house is a scene of double trysts and lots of twists.
Thomas Filsell gives a breathtaking performance in the shoes of the romantic rental agent. Heart-in-your-mouth prat fall department. Truly.
Peter Davis gives authority to the role of the exhausted director with Brad Martin properly a complete pain as the complete pain, Freddie Fellows, and Robyn Brooks hilarious as the stereotypical over-informed, over-helpful cast member. Then there’s beloved old stalwart Ian Rigney playing the beloved old stalwart with a drinking problem who, in turn, is playing the burglar. He has some of the best lines in the play.
Last but never least are Maxine Grubel as the actress playing the assistant stage manager, Polly, and Jamie Wright as her hapless senior - both called upon to go far beyond the line of duty.
If all of this is not quite clear, bad luck.
The play itself is there to be seen in The Arts. Complete with awful wigs and a character wearing unlucky green onstage.
Whatever wasn’t working on the first night is sure to be working on the next night. If one can work out what is meant and not meant to work.
It can only get faster and funnier as the season runs in.
Samela Harris
When: 1 to 9 Sep
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Therry Theatre. Arts Theatre. 18 Aug 2023
The play’s title only really makes sense after one has seen the play. And it is unlikely anyone has bought a ticket on account of it.
But the company and director Jude Hines believed enough in the play to put it up there and, indeed, lavish an extravaganza of production details upon it.
Because it is worth it.
Home, I’m Darling is a spiffingly good piece of contemporary theatre.
Playwright Laura Wade is swiftly emerging as a “someone” on the British drama scene and the adventurous cultural layering of this play signals why. It intermeshes a wealth of rather serious themes while retaining a bright, satirical spirit. The characters are interesting and likeable. There are surprise plot twists. There are meaty arguments. And, oh, my dear, the frocks are lovely.
The play depicts the odd domestic life of a retrenched finance executive fulfilling a lifelong little girl dream of living in the 1950s. Her hapless real estate agent husband goes along with it and, fastidiously, they recreate a 1950s house complete with 60-year-old refrigerator, bread crock, and housekeeping manual. Thus, with cocktails and hot dinner there to greet her husband as he comes home from work, does Judy recreate the lifestyle of yore. She has the most gorgeous vintage wardrobe to go with it. Theirs is picture book marital bliss. For years.
A potential promotion and a new boss at Johnny’s work slowly nibble at the edges of this carefully confected lifestyle along with friends who are a bit over it. Judy’s zeal, determination, and feminine ingenuity inevitably are challenged.
Alicia Zorkovic is a compelling Judy. It’s a lithe and nuanced performance. Similarly, Stephen Bills as Johnny makes a meal of milquetoast as he finds his way towards some semblance of normality. What with their best friends, divertingly characterised by Jessica Corrie and Adam Schultz, they roll forth the full catastrophe of the old sexist mores of yore, bringing the audience to gasps and cheers.
The action rolls along and the audience rolls with it, clearly having a good time. Everyone soon is singing along to the well-chosen fifties musical timepieces which disguise the perhaps overly long scene changes.
They meet Johnny’s new boss, Alex, very smoothly embodied by Lani Geri, and also, most significantly, there’s Judy's long-suffering mother, Sylvia, from whom there is an utterly memorable performance by Deborah Walsh. She delivers the defining moment of the show drawing together all the questions and pointers that the plot has been eliciting. Nostalgia. What’s it all about?
It’s tour-de-force stuff but not over the top. Director Hines has embraced an easy naturalistic style for the dialogue. It works. The whole production works. It is clever, pithy, pertinent, engrossing - and fun.
The only element that perhaps upstages the story and the acting is the set. It is a huge, two-storey lifesized doll’s house with bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and very busy 50s kitchen downstairs. From the hand painted wallpaper to the shining taps, no detail is omitted. It is 1950s Good Housekeeping Magazine in technicolour 3D.
And, talking of loving husbands and wives and the 1950s, this marvel of a retro dream home was the creation of none other than the director’s own husband, Gary Anderson.
Samela Harris
When: 18 to 26 Aug
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Watercooler Talent & The Harbour Agency. Dunstan Playhouse – Adelaide Festival Centre. 12 Aug 2023
The show was just about to start and you could cut the tension with a knife! Many audience members – in eager anticipation - donned colourful Hans-like costumes topped with Tyrolean hats. But Hans had to wait a wee moment. People were on the edge of their seats, clustered in groups around mobile phones, thrilled by the sudden death penalty shot round of the Matildas vs France quarter-final game. Then a cheer rang through the theatre; people stood up and hugged with joy and relief. This was the best possible mood for Hans to continue the celebrations with an energetic and highly entertaining disco party.
Hans is an Adelaide cabaret stalwart, and he has broken through the Fringe barrier, this weekend playing two sold-out nights in the big tent. The theatre was full of Hansophiles accumulated from a 25-year career. And Hans has something to celebrate besides the Matildas. About a year ago, he drifted off the stage during a show on a cruise ship in the Aegean and fell four metres into the orchestra pit thereby fracturing five vertebrae and a foot. Aside from singing a couple of songs in the Adelaide Cabaret Festival Gala and receiving the festival’s Icon Award, this is his comeback show which will tour SA and Queensland (he may need a safety net) after this weekend.
Hans is Hans and Hans is great fun. He’s a strange brew of a transvestite-looking act with self-parody, stand-up comic, terrific audience rapport, self-promotion and chutzpah - all backed by multiple musical talents.
He wears a girdle to protect his broken and healing spine, but it tops off mid-chest and creates an unflattering misshape highlighted by his trademark show-all skin-tight jumpsuits. Best to consult the costume department.
Definitely a disco theme with whacky psychedelic and constantly whizzing graphic lighting coeval with the ‘80s pop covers with terrific new disco-ised arrangements. Hans is helped by a couple of dancers in costumes from the last century who double as chorus and also sing admirable duets during Hans’s costumes changes. The choreography is not special though the bass guitarist and drummer seemed an orchestra.
The disco fever was interspersed with tales of Hans’s tribulations suitably told with nautically inspired songs, eg: Rock The Boat, sound and lights, as well as lovely banter with the audience. Anticipating his audience anticipating some Hans favourites, he indeed brings out the accordion, tickles the piano, and conducts a few singalongs including Edelweiss. Hans works an audience with gusto, and he picks on a lucky six whom he refers to for the duration of the whole show - they eventually seem like old friends. Two lucky men got pulled on stage, then off into the wings presumably for a bit of coaching. They reemerged in tutus and were compelled to dance in the most wildly successful audience participation schtick I have ever seen! That says a lot for Hans’s camaraderie and for creating a safe, yet still highly volatile situation.
The show’s energy constantly increases, culminating in a crescendo of dance, disco and balloons. You have to hail Hans as unstoppable. There is a familiarity that breeds mutual admiration. He’s self-labelled, “the Taylor Swift of the 5AA audience.” He loves that audience and they love him. I wish I could be in north Queensland when he is unleashed there with all his flamboyance.
Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: Touring 16 Aug to 2 Dec
Where: Various Locations around Australia
Bookings: hansofficial.com
Bangarra Dance Theatre / Adelaide Festival Centre. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 10 Aug 2023
Dispossession is the dark heart of indigenous Australian history.
Yuldea is a story of vast long term dispossession in which the Agnagu of Great Victorian Desert and Nunga people of far West Regional South Australia where displaced and a living environment which sustained their peoples, was decimated by industrialisation and the Maralinga atomic bomb tests.
Choreographer Frances Rings and creative team evoke this story in a three-act structure. Every creative element of expressing land, people, culture, and struggle is focused expressly through creation on the bodies of the ensemble as a living, moving set design by Elizabeth Gadsby, Costume Designer Jennifer Irwin, and Lighting Designer Karen Norris.
Composer Leon Rodgers’ and Guest Composer Electric Fields’ score, while seemingly modernist electro, holds at its heart the beat and spirit of ancient song and sound.
Rings is telling a tale in a form a Western eye and ear can grasp the significant essentials of. A growing sense of unease, with deep felt horror of the destruction occurring, is blended with wonder in awe at the beauty of choreography filled with expressive strength and pride. Work capable of absorbing contemporary dance form and one dust mite’s worth of classical form.
A story truly told, as Yalata Cultural Consultant Maureen Smart noted on stage before the performance. One told in a visual form capable of saying things unsaid, hidden, and misunderstood when considered from a Western perspective with no access to the lived history.
Yuldea is a magnificent, beautiful message and testament of a surviving culture in the face of so much cruelty. A creative gift shared with all people, shared in joy and communal earnestness rather than despondency and negativity.
David O’Brien
When: 10 to 12 Aug
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Pelican Productions. Arts Theatre. 5 Aug 2023
One doesn't know how Jen Frith and Kylie Green do it. Year after year Pelican Productions presents massive alternating junior cast after massive alternating cast of juniors. Blockbuster show after blockbuster show. I’ve never seen them do a bad show. And, I’ve never seen a kid onstage who is not pulling his, her or their weight and giving out, right down through the ensemble members.
And, quite frankly, the Disney organisation can stand proud to have their shows delivered with this degree of finesse.
For Adelaide, the reward comes not only in the quality of the entertainment but in the professional training to which the young casts are exposed. Hence, with “Summer” and "Winter” alternating casts, under the musical direction of Ben Francis, powerful voices belt out Broadway style from nascent talent. And the older hands in the casts already have a professional sheen.
Disney’s Frozen Jnr at The Arts is not just a winner because of these factors but also because of the startlingly good production values. The projections of snowstorms are so effective one thinks snow is actually flying out from the stage. And the pace of the show is stunningly snappy, tapping in just about on the quick-fire hour. If flaw there is any, it is in that fraught technology of body mikes and a big cast. And, perchance, vocalists occasionally over-compensating for soundtracks.
There are some big, big voices in this company of which this critic could see only its “summer" cast. Therein there were Annas young and old. In fact, there was an infant Anna in the opening number appearing alongside an infant Elsa, played by Hazel and Edie Frith, twin daughters of the producer Jen Frith. Just a heart-melting first which rather challenged the showbiz records of theatre baby stage debuts. If those gals don’t end up treading the boards…
Subsequent ages of Anna were well sung by Lila Messenger, Vegas Nikolitsis and, as the adult, Abigail Sharp, while baby Elsa’s role was followed by young Elsa with Mia Ricciardelli, then Tahlia Sabatino before Lluka Wadley as big Elsa, the famous Frozen queen. Well done all round.
There were some outstanding characterisations, Aiden Salmon as Olaf and Ava Sirico dancing Snowflake among them.
But, with such a plenitude of fine young talent, it seems unfair to pick and choose. Just smile and applaud.
Pelican is furnishing our future and among its summer and winter ensembles, and from its Music Theatre camps and tuition “nests”, along with its old school rehearsal processes, it is creating a solid foundation for the arts of tomorrow.
Of course, we live in hope of a government willing to recognise the importance for South Australia of the arts for both state economy and reputation. It feels decidedly gloomy at the moment.
Not that Pelican leans on funding. It is a thriving independent operation, its momentum driven by investments of parental love and belief in enablement.
So, three cheers all around, with a fourth for the substance Pelican offers to the future of Australia’s performing arts.
Samela Harris
What: Frozen Jr.
When: 3 to 6 Aug. 23
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: Closed
NB: Next week, August 10- 12 it is presenting the second part of a blockbuster double with Legally Blonde also at The Arts Theatre.
What: Legally Blonde
When: 10 to 12 Aug
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com