Flesh and Bone

Unpolished Theatre in assoc. with the Pleasance Theatre Trust. Holden Street Theatres. 14 Feb 2018

Behind the decaying concrete walls of those hideous London tower blocks, there’s thwarted lowlife festering in cramped quarters. Life is tough. The people are tougher. Or so their facades must make the world think.

They’re muscly and aggro Cockneys . They pick fights in the pub and never have enough dosh. They’re strutting, angry and bent on crime. This world as depicted in Elliot Warren's play Flesh and Bone is latter day Kray Brothers territory albeit that only Terry is the thug. Brother Reiss is gay and afraid to come out to Terry. Girlfriend Kel is hard-bitten and crass. She works the phone sex lines for cash. Granddad is a squalid old loser in his dressing gown, a nasty old thing. They’re all rather nasty. They are loud and vulgar. And, of course, so is the play. 

It is high-energy and bellowing high volume.

It is not for everyone. People with sensitive ears or delicate sensibilities are hereby warned.  And a fairly graphic masturbation scene is not the go for children.

But the message this new and award-winning play is conveying is that urban lowlife is just as much a timeless constant in poor communities as are the rats that share their slums. 

Warren elevates this sense by alternating the play’s torrents of profanity with Shakespearean eloquence.

Most strikingly of all, betwixt and between the choreographed violence and domestic vulgarity, he gives each character a mighty soliloquy. 

Therein, Alessandro Babalola playing Jamal, the huge black neighbour, presents a couple of performance vignettes of breathtaking power and beauty. Showstoppers. Here is a magnificent actor working with a terrific piece of scripting. As the stereotypically intimidating chip-on-the-shoulder criminal, he unveils a depth of vulnerability and innocence which is as beautiful as it is deeply moving. For this actor’s performance alone, Flesh and Bone is a must for serious theatre goers.

The rest of the cast also is adept and powerful and, throughout this play, right in your face. “In your face” is the description from many audience members. Olivia Brady as Kel looks a bit like a new gen Lulu and, indeed, has a lot of the heart and edge of that beloved English star. Kel is the classic used female in a male domain. It is such a coarse household, but she holds her own in the cup of tea territory and, with a cute bedroom sex scene, shows that in there somewhere there is a kernel of love with the rough and tough Terry, played to the cunning Cockney hilt by the playwright. The yearnings of the gay brother are classic and perfectly expressed in the performance of Michael Jinks. As for Grandad, played by Nick T. Frost, he is the product of a life of hard core underworld. He makes us shudder.

It is not entirely new to assert that even the lousiest hoodlums have hearts and hopes beneath their crude and cruddy lifestyles. But the way in which Warren has used the language in its highest and lowest forms gives this idea a potent foundation and this work a brave originality.

Samela Harris

5 stars

When: 16 Feb to 18 Mar

Where: Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

Glorious!

Therry Dramatic Society. Arts Theatre. 8 Feb 2018

One can only marvel at the work Sue Wylie must have put in to sing appallingly with such absolute skill and acuity.

She’s a good and experienced singer but for this role she has to become expertly tone deaf. 

She is portraying the world’s worst opera singer, Florence Foster Jenkins.

Foster Jenkins’s terrible singing generated a cult following in America in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Everyone wanted to hear her jarring off-key stridency, so much so that thousands were turned away from her 1940 Carnegie Hall concert. While people jeered and sneered at her operatic ineptitude, she remained blissfully confident of her talent.

She’s a wonderful true life story, complete with handsome actor boyfriend and loyal accompanist. 

Peter Quilter’s bio script presents a sweetly sympathetic picture of the singer though it's overwritten and at times the dialogue is leaden. 

But the main character is tailor-made for Wylie at this stage of her career. 

She plays it proud, unhurried and sublimely obtuse, and, when she sings, she truly hits those wrong notes. She gives it her ear-piercing all. She hams it up just enough to make it funny. But as one is laughing, one is wondering how on earth she can do it and still keep a voice for talking. 

She gets to make some spectacular entrances in well-wrought replicas of Foster Jenkins’ fanciful costumes, not least of them the white angel with working wings.

The first night audience did not need encouragement to get into the spirit of the performance and every terrible aria was met with whoops of cheering acclaim.

Wylie is very well supported by Stuart Pearce as her handsome English actor partner/manager. He’s charming and simpatico. Jock Dunbar hits all the right notes as Foster Jenkins’s patient pianist. It’s a sterling performance with a good American accent. Jenny Penny plays Foster Jenkin’s darling dippy friend, Dorothy. She has a lovely voice and manner and does a very good line in whirlwind dithering. Laura Antoniazzi’s specialty is rampant tantrums in Italian. She plays the maid to the hilt and then some. Last but not least, Therry stalwart Julia Whittle storms the stage representing American musical appreciation standards to call for a stop to the rampant success of the world’s worst opera singer. It is always good to see Whittle onstage and she makes a nice meaty meal of a small role.

There are some elaborate and ingenious Olie Wiebkin sets in this offbeat show. Lighting and look is good although it is imperative that director Geoff Brittain tightens up or trims some of the tediously slow dialogue segments.

The tale of Florence Foster Jenkins is gloriously unlikely. It makes an audience marvel as well as laugh. As presented by Therry, it is strangely touching. It mocks and moves at the same time.  And as for its star, Sue Wylie, she is very good at being very bad.

Samela Harris

When: 8 to 17 Feb

Where: Arts Theatre

Bookings: trybooking.com or 8294 7907

Wicked

Zest Theatre Group. Victor Harbor Town Hall. 2 Feb 2018

It couldn’t be more ambitious. A major modern Broadway musical produced by a regional amateur theatrical society.

Yet Zest has pulled off a triumph.

Not for the first time, this Victor Harbor-based company has found talent resources of sufficiently high calibre to carry such a major production.

Lily Van Rhoda is a mere schoolgirl - and yet she has the goods to give the great Kristin Chenoweth a run for her money in the role of Galinda, the good witch.  Van Rhode is a pitch-perfect petite powerhouse. With a big Broadway voice, she charms, she can act and she is funny. She will go far. Far.

Then there is Bec Pynor as Elphaba, the wicked witch. Pynor is a music graduate now doing a teaching masters at Flinders. Not even the gruesome greenface can impede the strength and emotional integrity of her characterisation let alone the artistry of her singing. She’s superb.

Naturally, Zest does not have the budget and facilities of the big musicals' world but with a wealth of hard work, talent, determination and the backstage sophistication of Graeme Mountstephen it has embellished this production with good costumes and some sterling effects. Elphaba’s elevation to the gods is breathtakingly spectacular.

The plot is Gregory Maguire's Wizard of Oz prequel idea of the two witches going to school together and becoming friends. There’s lots of back story, love interest and characters familiar and new - from the Wizard of Oz himself to a powerful sorceress called Madam Morrible. Stephen Schwartz has written the music and lyrics from the Winnie Holzman book. It is not the easiest music in the world. 

While most of the supporting cast has a good handle on its complexity, cues and scene changes are the weak spot in the show and there are a few pregnant pauses. 

Zest producer and mainstay Terry Mountstephen plays the prominent role of Morrible and brings not only seasoned maturity to the cast but also the pleasure of her fine stage voice.  Michael Harris as the old Wizard is sometimes less audible but a good presence.  Molly Peier develops nicely as Nessarose, the wicked witch’s crippled sister with Josh Harvey and Tom Richardson providing good support as the two main male love interests.

Then, under Peta Bowey’s efficient direction, there is the cast of thousands - a terrific chorus and dance troupe.

All told they’re a keen and hard-working cast. 

Put together with the star quality of the principals, the show is quite an accomplished treat.

Samela Harris

When: 2 to 11 Feb

Where: Victor Harbor Town Hall

Bookings: trybooking.com

Green Day's American Idiot

shake & stir theatre co and Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Her Majesty's Theatre. 21 Jan 2018

If it's kept you up at night wondering what ever happened to Danny Zuko and some of his Burger Palace mates after their appearances in Grease, this is the ticket for you.

The show should more precisely be entitled, (Don't Wanna Be An) American Idiot, although the trio of malcontented suburbanite protagonists come very close to it. American Idiot is the opening number and the title song of California's Green Day's seventh studio album which was released in 2004. The album, billed as a "punk rock opera" by band members Billie Joe Armstrong, Michael Dirnt (as in dirnt, dirnt, dirnt...dirnt-dirnt, d-dirnt), and Tre Cool, focused on Gen X's "disillusionment and dissent with the Iraq War" and other notable mistakes by the Bush administration. But as there is still more and yet again much disillusionment and dissent, the version you must absolutely see in the final week of January includes visual and verbal slings and arrows thrown at Trump. American Idiot was adapted for stage by its first director Michael Mayer and the band, played Broadway for a year starting 2010. It had its Australian premiere in Brisbane in February 2017, and Adelaide is the first stop on a national tour this year.

The production plays through breathlessly and continuously for one and three-quarter hours. While there is much to recognise from rock musicals and anthems of rock songs gone by (Springsteen and The Who come to mind), the music is enthusiastic and current, and charged with plenty of energy. Three suburban mugs (ostensibly living with unseen parents and motivated with malcontent modeled on the band members themselves) plan to break out to the big city - only two of them escape domesticity. Will (Alex Jeans) is willed to stay at home by pregnant Heather (Ashleigh Taylor). Tunny (Connor Crawford) is further disenfranchised by the daily news and ironically his way out is to join the Marines.

You will never forget his dream scene with Kaylah Attard's aerially outstanding acrobatics as the nurse trying to bring him back from the brink. Bravo! However, Johnny, furiously played by Linden Furnell, is our main tragic. Not long in the big smoke, he gets mixed up with two things: a gorgeous acolyte named Whatshername (Phoebe Panaretos garnered a Helpmann Award nomination from the Brisbane production), and heroin, absolutely awesomely personified by 2014 ARIA nominee Adalita. Bravo! (Billed as Johnny's alter ego, but I didn't buy that). The story is chronologically recorded by the date, which preface letters Johnny the junky writes home, so they are not really bad kids, just mixed up and dealing with their angst. The chorus is flawless and Dance Captain Kyla Bartholomeusz is personality plus (Lucas Newland - choreography). Ladies, you will love the gutsy female characters that put their men on notice with notable alacrity.

American Idiot didn't win Tony Awards for Best Scenic and Best Lighting Design for nothing. While you have everything to look at and hear from the cast, the colourful and sonically coordinated visual images, and the functional two-storey inner city slum set (Westside Story comes to mind) ultra-enhance the action (Craig Wilkinson and Josh McIntosh - video and set respectively). Glenn Moorhouse led a driving band of two guitars, bass, drums and keys. iOTA makes a video appearance. Although largely down-and-out, the characters wear the hippest in grunge (Melanie Knight - costume design).

You don't hand out roles like this to just anyone and Director Craig Ilott has assembled a highly talented and motivated cast. If you have punk in your veins, do not miss this show. If you don't, wear earplugs and see it anyway. Standing ovation on opening night. Bravo!

David Grybowski

When: 19 to 28 January

Where: Her Majesty's Theatre

Bookings: bass.net.au