Loaded Productions. Bakehouse Theatre. 10 Jul 2016
Good musical theatre should be about fun in very large part. That’s why it has songs and wit.
Sean Weatherly’s Price Check! The Musical is fun, unpretentiously so.
Supermarket comic sketches and characters are aplenty in the Australian lexicon. Weatherly doesn’t labour the point by seeking to emulate what’s been done before, or straining it to match Broadway.
Instead, we’re offered a delightful couple of days in the life style musical, of a funny little supermarket, its staff and a crazy regular.
It’s not so much the political goings on - as David (Sean Weatherly) and Zayeeb (Fahad Farooque) battle to convince the boss Mr Butler (Rory Walker) to promote them to Fruit and Veg Manager, or the lovelorn flirting of check out chick Narelle, (Catherine Campbell) let alone the fussing old Mrs Zimmerman (Jacqy Phillips) - that makes the show buzz. It’s the songs expressing their lives and battles that hold much of the magic and humour, as much as the characterisations.
Listen carefully beyond the obvious humour that comes with a song called I’m Just Nuts about Fruit, and you will catch comic allusions related to Australian music culture and start to really love this production.
Each performer is having a ball, thoroughly caught up in comedy of the character. Rory Walker’s Mr Butler fits him like a cosy sweater; Butler is a perpetually cranky middle aged career supermarket cartoon, but with real heart. Jacqy Phillips is adorable as the resident bargain hunting aged fussbudget. Catherine Campbell’s Narelle is sweetly droll, while Sean Weatherly and Fahad Farooque are perfect foils to each other, Farooque the one to steal the show.
Supported by a very on point chorus ensemble in Celeste Barone, Selena Britz, Barbara Nutchey and Ali Walsh, Price Check! The Musical had all the bounce needed for a fun twilight Sunday afternoon out.
David O’Brien
When: 6 to 16 July
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
Australian Dance Theatre. Adelaide College of the Arts. 9 Jul 2016
History, time, and the flow of human obsessions are given the most thoroughly intelligent and fun-packed going over by choreographers Matte Roffe, Katrina Lazaroffe, Erin Fowler, Thomas Fonua and Lina Limosani.
Ignition, in its return to the ADT dance calendar, is just as exciting and valuable a means of showing off the choreographic caliber within the company, as it was always a means of belting out new ideas to think on.
Roffe’s Woolf! strips down Edward Albee’s 1962 play into 15 minutes of blazing choreography, managing to encapsulate gesturally all the restrained social and political norms of ‘50s relationships and of its two academic couples, the younger and older one.
Using a wall mirror on wheels allows this piece to go for speed, for hiding mysteries, revealing desire unburdened as it turns again and again. It’s full on stuff, injected with a 21st Century edge of awareness and urgency hinted at in the brilliant cheer leader rap delivered earlier in the work, “who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf?!”
Lazaroffe’s Caught in Past Tense really does physicalise that sense we’ve all had of being ‘stuck’ in past actions or words and trying to escape them. What makes it really work, beyond the supremely sharp choreography, is that ‘bang’ moment. That invisible, thousandth-of-a-microsecond moment, dividing what you did or said from the next moment you’re meant to do or say something else, but repeat yourself instead.
The dancers are constantly expressing this series of wildly frustrating moments that don’t move on properly at wonderfully graduated speed; be it stuffing a speech up, repacking a case that’s fallen open, asking a question of someone. There seems no escape from the ‘past’.
Fowler’s Epoch, in choreography and design, takes the most minimalist approach to that grand span of history the word epoch encompasses.
The lighting’s everything. White on black, muted shadows revealing a gently evolving series of gestures and acts we associate with historic moments of success and failure throughout history.
Fowler attempts to simultaneously show these things as separate to a specific ‘time’ as much as they are also a continuum ever unfolding. As separate white columns dividing dancers and actions slowly blend into a shared circle, separate gestures become points of interaction.
Fonua’s The Village is an excerpt of his MALAGA, performed at Tempo Dance Festival, New Zealand, in 2015.
Colonialism in history is dealt with to extraordinary effect in this piece. Fonua speaks of the top down power of colonisation, the human zoo, in his choreographer’s note.
The dancers spend much of the time close to the ground, on their knees.
They function in tightly organised physical subservience which suppresses everything of them; colour and character of their native dress, natural expressiveness of the body and interaction with others. They are very much on show, living as orchestrated beings, not human beings.
Yet within this suppression, Fonua realises a strength and a vibrancy in balance against the confinement enforced. With supreme grace, dancers glide across the floor with sweeping movements at the knees, colonisation cannot totally break down the cultural life that exists.
Limosani’s One’s Wicked Ways, a full length work commissioned for this season of Ignition, brilliantly gathers all the thematic strands of the four works preceding it in a fantastic, gloriously pleasing way.
One’s Wicked Ways liberates in dance the full emotive and dark comic force found in Frances’s greatest writers of farce, Moliere. There are many actors who would jealously wish they could dance, as to perform Limosani’s creation, it’s so good.
The social, moral and political decadence of Moliere’s time has many parallels with the behaviour of 21st Century elites. Complete debauchery, mockery of moral institutions, corruption of public institutions, and lip service paid to the law as it suits.
It’s a wild romp dressed in regal white.
With precise timing, Limosani has the ensemble play out wicked thrills and spills of excess to thralls of tittering laughter from the debauchees as they flit from one naughty act to the next. The appearance of the purple robed Cardinal/nobleman, the bogeyman of the self serving elite, sets up Limosani’s piece for its sharpest commentary. As he is seduced and flayed to near nothing, so he also rises in attack.
The playful choreography of debauchery gives way to a searing fury of symbolised violence. Limosani’s careful work becomes a brilliant exploration of two sides of history’s coin. Oppression, and being oppressed.
David O’Brien
When: 9 to 16 July
Where: Adelaide College of the Arts, Main Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Matt Byrne Media. Arts Theatre. 8 Jul 2016
The South Australian amateur premiere of Wicked is currently playing at the Arts Theatre, and Director/Producer Matt Byrne has assembled a great cast, and designed a beautiful production, to tackle this mammoth show.
Adelaide amateur theatre producers aren’t blessed with the enormous budgets of the professionals, and so with that in mind, what Byrne has managed to achieve is very impressive. However, despite the success in the areas where money has been spent, there are directorial choices and issues with pace that can, at times, make the visually spectacular show laborious to watch. One certainly feels the full 3 hours 10 minutes running time, a good 20 minutes longer than usual.
It has long been my opinion that some of Wicked’s content is superfluous to driving the core messages in the story; one feels it could greatly benefit from a fastidious edit with a red pen. Unfortunately Byrne’s production does nothing to alleviate this feeling, and rather, serves to highlight how much of the story could be cut with little to no effect on the narrative. One can hardly hold Byrne responsible for the choices of Schwartz and Holzman, however.
That being said this production is, for the most part, excellent. Moreover, Byrne’s lead performers are spectacular. Individually they are gorgeous singers and talented actors; together, a force to be reckoned with.
As Elphaba, Dianne k. Lang brings a very measured performance. Her Elphaba is strong and vulnerable, forthright yet respectful. Elphaba’s incorruptible nature is the cause of all her woes, and Lang imbues her with tragic honesty. Vocally, Lang boldly attacks the score and subtly finds the character’s nuances with professional ease.
Kat Jade is the perfect foil to Lang. Her Glinda begins in stark contrast to Elphaba and together they make the transition to best friends through a believably executed character arc. Jade is extremely talented; both in voice and comedic timing. She regularly steals her scenes with a great onstage presence. With a vocal belt like Katy Perry and the comic stylings of Rebel Wilson, Jade truly owns this performance.
Michael Bates brings beautiful voice to Fiyero and, along with Lisa Simonetti as Madam Morrible, Rick Williams as The Wizard, Sophia Bubner as Nessarose, Neville Phillis as Dr. Dillamond and Zak Vasiliou as Boq, rounds out a great lead ensemble. The chorus ably support in strong voice, movement and colour.
The costume design by Sue Winston, Anne Williams, Renee Brice and a team of assistants is a real highlight that delivers a professional edge. Byrne’s set design overall is well considered and wonderfully effective, though scene changes are occasionally slow and black curtains are brought in far too often. Sue Pole’s choreography is effective and musical direction by Paul Sinkinson is tight. The orchestra play beautifully and the sound mix is good. Mike Phillips’ and Ian Barge’s lighting is clever, vibrant, and effective but could have been improved with tighter and more deliberate focus.
The first amateur Adelaide performance of a show known for its theatrical grandeur is undoubtedly an impressive one. The performances are top notch and the production team has clearly invested a lot of time and money for a very professional look and feel. Congratulations to everyone involved.
Paul Rodda
When: 7 to 30 Jul
Where: Arts Theatre, moving to the Shedley Theatre.
Bookings: wickedsa.com, mattbyrnemedia.com.au, 8262 4906, BASS or dramatix.com.au
State Theatre Company and La Boite Theatre Company. Space Theatre. 6 Jul 2016
First of all, I have to make a disclaimer: I am a straight white male, and according to New York playwright Young Jean Lee (Asian-American female of sexual orientation unknown to me), I come from a privileged background, and I think she wants to make my type feel pretty uncomfortable through watching this play, which I did. The Young Jean Lee Theatre Company's motto is "destroy the audience." After dealing with some of the issues of the play in my own life over a few days prior to opening night, and then watching this unraveling of a broken family of straight white men, I came out of the theatre feeling worse than when I went in, so tick, the play is a success.
Straight White Men is an excellent import product; an unadulterated example brought right to our door of the issues bearing on contemporary theatrical playwrights in that centre of English-language drama, the Big Apple. Young Jean Lee has been described as "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by the New York Times, and in a bigger pond, was touted as "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by Time Out New York.
The contrast of the beige living room of the comfortably well-off, where the action takes place, with blaring female rap music certainly gets you off balance from the start. We see three brothers approaching middle age, evidently gathered for Christmas cheer at Dad's house. Actors Chris Pitman, Lucas Stibbard and Hugh Parker present exuberant siblings used to shaming and rough housing each other without taking it too seriously. However, the potential for damage is so much greater when large male adults are doing the horsing around instead of kids, and this adds to the menace and tension in the setup of the narrative. They are pretty good dancers, to boot. Dad, played by veteran performer Roger Newcombe, seems to take it all in stride, and even when it goes to far, he simply goes to bed. Christmas is in name only.
After the fore play, when we are laughing at the strangeness and silliness of it all, but still disturbed with what is lacking - like Mom, table manners, and any real communication amongst the men - we get that something is really not right with one of the brothers, and Young Jean Lee has each of the others trying to fix him or explain it in their unique way. In doing so, themes of masculinity, socially advantaged privilege, not succeeding in life and what constitutes a good life are all explored. The saddest thing for me, though, was I saw a play about depression - what it's like to have it, and how people react to it, especially people who have no idea of what it feels like.
Director Nescha Jelk infused the production with plenty of energy and drive, and helped create distinct stereotypes with the players. The show began with a lengthy welcome to country by assistant director and stagehand-in-charge Alexis West - it is NAIDOC Week after all. Her ostentatious flare in resetting props for each act slowed things down, and her contribution to the production was confusing.
The Young Jean Lee Theatre Company's goal "is to find ways to get past our audience's defenses against uncomfortable subjects and open people up to confronting difficult questions by keeping them disoriented and laughing." Mission accomplished.
David Grybowski
When: 1 to 23 July
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 25 June 2016
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, they say, was Tennessee Williams's favourite creation, and for it he won the Pulitzer Prize For Drama in 1955. He wrote The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire in the decade before, so he had some good practice. Like these plays, and amongst the most famous by his contemporary, Arthur Miller - Death Of A Salesman, and All My Sons - the playwrights force family members to confront a heap of issues in a short period of time, making for excruciating tension.
Set in a sweltering Southern mansion near the banks of the Mississippi, patriarch Big Daddy's two sons and their families gather for his 65th birthday. Amongst his presents, but hidden from him and Big Mama, is a terminal cancer diagnosis. While the kids are feuding over the legacy, favourite son, Brick, and wife Maggie struggle with life after Skipper, an unseen character in this drama with whom Brick denies having a homosexual relation. Big Daddy and Brick have a lengthy heart-to-heart. The play is a huge challenge to actors given the raw emotions generated by crass denigration and emotional surprise that must be sustained through lengthy dialogues, some of which apparently were pared back.
Southern hospitality abounds in the delightful bedroom of Brick and Maggie imagined by set designer and director Barry Hill. You can feel the oppressive heat only relieved by slight breezes through the French doors opening onto the balcony. Maggie is frustrated by Brick's rejection of her sexuality and is like a cat on a hot tin roof, and the success of any production largely, and certainly early in the piece, depends on achieving a near unbearable sense of sexual frustration through unrequited desire. Anita Pipprell and Director Hill didn't quite have the train pull into the station on that one. Brick, as Joshua Coldwell played him, was an impenetrable brick. While Coldwell looked every inch the ex-footballer, Brick's scowl and sullenness was unbroken from curtain rise to fall, even after downing most of a bottle of bourbon. A more difficult role is that of Big Mama, whose ceaseless excoriation by Big Daddy ought to generate waves of sympathy, but Jude Brennan was not able to lead us there. Russell Starke's Big Daddy commanded the stage as he provided a master class in the actor's tools of voice, bearing and gesture, showing, for example, that a flick of the hand could be as effectively dismissive as a slurry of words, once the characterisation has been firmly established. But that was not enough - this production largely unfulfilled the promise of the play.
David Grybowski
When: 23 Jun to 2 Jul
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: www.adelaiderep.com