State Theatre Company of South Australia. Dunstan Playhouse. 4 Jul 2017
It is a play about love-hate and it is a production which evokes love-hate.
Modern adaptations are fraught with risk in threatening a playwright’s creative impulse and cultural integrity. To fully appreciate them, it is wise to know the original work which often lives under the dismissive label of “museum theatre”.
This State Theatre production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House has been given the modern-day touch by South Australia’s most promising new playwright, Elena Carapetis. She has brought characters out of 1870s Norway and into the bright lights of modern-day somewhere-nowhere wherein the production has placed them upon an unadorned raised platform in the centre of a stage surrounded on three sides by walls of headlights. This is a set created by a lighting designer and it looks like it. It is not Geoff Cobham’s subtlest design and, while a lot of the production’s fierce and stark lighting has its own good aesthetic, it is peculiarly aggressive, confronting the audience with blinders and, in fact, one flash of such bedazzling brightness that the audience almost goes into shock.
In this ultra-modern minimalist concept, cast members sit upon orange plastic cafe chairs on the sidelines onstage. The banks of headlights are dimmed to put them in the shadows while they are not performing.
To represent the family living room, characters carry their own chairs up onto the dais. In the final scene of the play, the chairs are lined up around the dais as if it has become a doctor’s waiting room.
There are no creature comforts. A child is put to bed by being placed on the floor.
In her adaptation, Carapetis has killed off one of the two children in the play but elevated the presence of the remaining child who is very nicely played on opening night by Clio Tinsley. She symbolises the family unit and also the fate of the female. She’s the little doll in the doll’s house.
Carapetis has stayed fastidiously true to Ibsen’s portrait of Nora as a victim of patriarchal society. Famously, Nora says that she is now wife and before that she was daughter. But, once upon a time, she was born a “person". The play is about this sentiment. It is about an oppressed woman’s urge to free herself to be her own person, not the coerced object of societal expectations.
Nora is a woman who has everything. She had an affluent upbringing and she married well. Her adoring husband, Torvald, has just had a promotion in the bank. She has a nanny. She has spending money.
But there are underlying complications and terrible secrets in her seemingly superficial world. These unfold and the world gradually unravels.
Carapetis has overlaid the script with modern idiom. She has made Torvald younger, sexier and more fun that Ibsen’s straight-laced version. And director Geordie Brookman has picked a superb actor in Dale March to establish the dark and light of the loving but controlling husband. This Torvald is likeable. One feels more empathy in realising that he, too, is a victim of gender expectations.
The modern characters use mobile phones and iPads. They throw the f-word about. They wear torn jeans. They’re obsessed with kale.
They sing pop songs and they dance to raucous rap music.
It is not even the badly-done Tarantella for this Nora when it comes to distracting her husband by rehearsing her party dance. It’s a writhing, twitching, undulating epic of desperate eroticism. It is extraordinarily ugly, but it comes as a theatrical underscoring of the fear and loathing Nora feels for her male-placating predicament in life.
And she’s surrounded by headlights polka-dotting the stage walls. She’s the deer in the headlights of the patriarchy. She’s the out-of-control dancing toy of the men. She’s loved for what she represents but not for who she is.
All of this the young Miranda Daughtry performs with absolute skill and commitment. She connects with the audience from the word go. She is a wonderful Nora and an exciting find for the new State Theatre ensemble.
The Congolese actor Rashidi Edward makes interesting new chemistry. His casting as the awful Krogstad adds the dimension of racism to this version of A Doll’s House. Krogstad is the unpopular outsider, the crook, the loser. Comments about discrimination against him in the workplace suddenly seem colour-coded.
Edward embodies this and his romantic elements with calm panache, albeit sometimes inaudibly. Rachel Burke plays Kristine, Nora’s old friend who turns up as a penniless widow looking for work. It’s a lovely meaty supporting role and Burke devours it with style; similarly Anna Steen as Anna, the family retainer and nanny. In today’s A Doll’s House, she is strong and athletic, darting about the stage like the wind.
And then there is Nathan O’Keefe as poor Lars, the doctor who is an ever-present family friend. This character usually is cast as an older man but O’Keefe is one of this country’s wonderful actors and he nails poignantly the pathos of the lonely man who is not only physically sick but love sick, too. He quietly breaks the audience’s heart.
Altogether, the Carapetis and Brookman modern A Doll’s House is something of a wild ride.
It blares and glares. It ends with a bellow which impudently marries it to a tradition of theatrical tragedies.
But the play’s the thing. And there it is.
I liked it.
Samela Harris
When: 4 to 22 July
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
Photography by Andy Rasheed
Vika & Linda Bull. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 24 Jun 2017
Yes, Carole King is still alive and kicking and living in Idaho. No, she never married "the tear ducts of America," James Taylor. Yes, Neil Sedaka dated her when she was in high school - I'm not sure if he was still in high school, though. Yes, Tapestry, released in 1971, was the top US album for 15 weeks and was on the charts for six years! No, her records sales were not less than 10 million, how about north of 75 million.
Unfortunately, Debra Byrne had the gall to not make it to her own show. The gall bladder, that is, unscheduled removal thereof. So co-star Vika Bull did what any big sister would - make your younger sister (Linda Bull) help you out. With only 2 days of rehearsals and a few bits of paper on a music stand, you would never know.
Do I even need to say this was a great show and got a standing O? The Bull sisters channeled the iconic singer/songwriter to perfection. Generally tag-teaming, the hits just kept on coming. There's a favourite, there's another one. OMG, that one, boy, that brings back memories maybe I'd rather not have (eg. It's Too Late). Are they going to do? ... yep, there it is. Beautiful. They even did other artists interpretations of King's songs. Vika Bull blasted out (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman with nearly the same gusto as Arethra Franklin (she's not yet deceased either). The band was hot. The girls had a lot of fun, and so did everyone else. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 23 to 24 June
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 22 Jun 2017
Director Erik Strauts has taken a gamble in mounting an unknown new American play as part of The Rep’s 2017 season. The Psychic is written by long-time TV comedy writer Sam Bobrick and in 2011 it won the prestigious Edgar award for the Mystery Writers of America Best Play. The hook that lured Strauts to direct it was the sense that he could not, on first read, see where the play was taking him.
That is why the play is fun and it is why no self-respecting critic ever would give away a plot spoiler.
The play is set in present-day New York wherein outrageous gangsters and molls still roam the back streets where struggling playwright Adam Webster lives. He has a sprawling basement apartment with high arched windows which show the lower parts of people passing in the street outside. This set, designed by Patrick Beagan and superbly lit by Richard Parkhill and Jason Groves, is simply star of the show. Complete with electricity switch box, pipes and metal beams it sings with a sense of authenticity.
On hard times, the playwright not only hands out business cards handwritten in pencil but has popped a crude home-made sign in the window advertising himself as a $25 psychic. And thus does the passing parade come to his door.
Adam is played in an exaggerated vocabulary of shoulder shrugs, wide eyes and raised eyebrows by Josh van’t Padje. He’s a phoney psychic and quickly caught out. But then again, does he have a streak of the old prescience after all?
He meets gorgeous Laura Benson, the surprisingly elegant wife of nasty underworld figure, Roy Benson. He meets the ravishingly brassy moll, Rita Malone, and the crafty crook Johnny Bubbles, who wears an ostentatious diamond tie pin. And finally, as news of murdered characters gets around, he meets Detective Norris Coslow, a stereotypical whodunnit dick, absurdly clad in a bright yellow hat and coat. They are all players linked in a convoluted tale.
As the characters reveal themselves and the plot weaves its way forth, it is clear that all is unclear and nothing may be what it could or should be. Herein, it all becomes pleasantly funny.
Strauts brings out the best in his classy cast: Anita Pipprell, James Whitrow, Jessica McGaffin, James Black, and Malcolm Walton. They look classically cornball in their Beverly George costumes and they all work with ease in strong ‘Noo Yawker’ accents.
It’s a beaut production and a welcome source of laughs on a winter's night.
Samela Harris
When: 22 Jun to 1 Jul
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Cameron Goodall. Smartartists. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 22 Jun 2017
Almost forty years ago, Robyn Archer penned and performed her tribute to female vocalists who died too young, A Star Is Torn. But now it's the guys’ turn, requiring a hell of a guy to perform it. And it is fellow somewhat Adelaidean Cameron Goodall who got the nod. Goodall is a favourite of the square city, thanks to his collaboration with his brother, Tristan, in The Audreys (three ARIAs) and his many performances with State Theatre in the Adam Cook days, including his production of Hamlet. More recently was his Zazu in The Lion King, but everybody has to earn a crust.
Archer created a chronicle of the tragic, beginning with Hank Williams and cataloguing toward Kurt Cobain's vintage, with Elvis and Sid Vicious having recurrent roles. Ghoulish details of stabbings, gunshot, plane crashes, drownings, drug overdoses, and dubious diagnoses abound. Suicides and murders and accidents. A forty-year-old is a stayer in this crowd. Archer calls on a performer to change in a blink - to not simply play a plethora of musical styles but switch personalities while explaining a few home truths of life on the road and stage rapture.
Cameron Goodall delivered an astounding tour de force performance. These are not polished impersonations but multiple - a dozen or so - character sketches, where masterful observation and replication of key behaviours and vocal patterns conjure an astonishing verisimilitude. The width and breadth of musical style from country and western to rock and opera and folk were all on show. In a lightning change, it's no longer Mario Lanza, it's Bobby Darin! And it's everything - body stance, facial gestures, guitar style and vocal patterns. I had to gasp. The sleazy smoulder of Jim Morrison, the irreverent logic and abuse of Sid V, the laid-back rhythm of Otis Redding, it's all there and much, much more. Sam Cooke, Phil Ochs, Ricky Nelson, Jeff and Tim Buckley, Nick Drake. His Highway To Hell was demonic and precise.
Goodall was musically, vocally and mischievously supported by accordionist George Butrumlis and keyboard player Enio Pozzebon. Goodall, musos and vicariously Archer got the standing O. Double Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 21 to 22 June
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
The Swinging Songbook of Cy Coleman. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 21 Jun 2017
Can you believe Cy Coleman garnered 19 Tony award nominations and won five between 1963 and 1997? Really incredible. His most successful partnership was with Carolyn Leigh which produced The Best Is Yet To Come.
The sirens (CYrens - get it?) open with a playful rendition of Hey Big Spender which he wrote with Dorothy Fields for the musical Sweet Charity in 1966, and a year later sung to obscene popularity in a recording by Shirley Bassey. It is belted out with formidable gusto which is a hallmark of this lively and fetching hour long show. The girls' banter seems a bit strained at the start but their notation and clarity never falters and microphones may not have been needed; and, boy, can they sing.
The ladies have come together for this show from various previous engagements, drawn by their mutual love of New York jazz and Broadway musicals. Amanda Harrison took a cab straight from the set of Wicked. Chelsea Renton-Gibb performed in Chicago and Cabaret while Melissa Langton is one of The Fabulous Singlettes, but that's only a few samples of engagements. Cy Coleman seems to have written plenty of songs for women and a great variety from bolshie women to missing-my-man songs. Everybody Today Is Turnin' On is a highlight, introduced as arising from Cy's palling around with Hugh Hefner and all that goes with it, and a wry number from a worn-out twenty-seven-year-old hooker doing the math on how many times she's been doing it. Renton-Gibb's bare legs did an act all on their own for most the show but they were great props for this little number.
Never a dull moment, fantastic singing and a great song catalog. Vat else do you vant?
David Grybowski
When: 21 to 22 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed