Nothing pleases me more than to have my ideas of what constitutes good theatre challenged, and the talented and immensely clever cast and crew of True Logic of the Future have done just that. This is a creative and intricately constructed performance that presents many challenges for the reviewer, not least of which is the question of whether it should be reviewed at all…
The rest of this post is published on Australian Stage.
Every now and then a play comes along that leaves you feeling like you’ve just witnessed something important, but you’re not sure what. Winter’s Discontent is one of them. It is coherent, intelligent, demanding of its audience and at times funny, but I still feel like I missed something. Like there was something substantial, important, that the writer was trying to communicate, and I’m a bit of a goose for missing it…
The rest of this post is published on Australian Stage.
Well, I’ve finally done it. More than twelve years after moving to Canberra, I have finally been to one of Rep’s winter variety shows. I recall that it was originally recommended to me in 1998 as an undergraduate beginning a Theatre Studies major at the ANU, as an excellent example of the music hall tradition, so there’s something bittersweet in having finally attended in the same week that the ANU’s Theatre Studies major met its demise.
The cast certainly delivers. After a slightly flat first half, which could be put down to opening night, the second was quite magical. Ian Croker’s rendition of Minnie the Moocher got the audience engaged, and Christine Forbes followed this with a beautifully theatrical The Girl from 14G, about which she bragged that she was overjoyed to be able to wear her pyjamas on stage!
I felt my personal cringe factor rise when we were informed that the finale was to be a rendition of Peter Allen‘s perfectly horrid canticle I Still Call Australia Home, but it dissipated completely with the cast’s magnificent send-up of the song’s overwrought history.
A variety show stands or falls on the energy of its cast, and this cast certainly works hard for their applause. After a flat start, the energy flowed and made Jazz Garters a fun and entertaining show, well worth a night out.
Before going along to see Every Single Saturday I must admit to a little apprehension. It is the same fear I face every time a conversation turns to sport or someone makes a comment vaguely sports-related and then looks at me as if I am expected to make a certain type of comment. That’s right, I’m a member of Australia’s smallest minority group: the Sports-Ignorant. Thankfully, although it really is all about soccer mums and dads, Every Single Saturday makes life easy even for the Sports-Ignorant. There’s even one of us amongst the characters!
The rest of this post is published on Australian Stage.
Love Cupboard can be neatly summarised as the story of an adolescent girl who isolates herself from the rest of her life to live with her boyfriend (hence the love); and to avoid discovery, hides in a cupboard in his lounge room (hence the cupboard). The story is as quaint as its title…
The rest of this post is published on Australian Stage.
Henry Lawson’s legacy is not an easy one to identify. It is wrapped up in the mystery of the Australian identity, which is now, as it was in Lawson’s day, straddled across the divides between urban and rural, between civilised and free, and of course between global and local. Max Cullen’s play, Faces in the Street, somehow manages to explore these weighty notions while remaining firmly grounded in the story of Lawson’s life…
The rest of this post is published on Australian Stage.
Well it’s time for another first… but this is scary!
I have just handed over a show to my assistant director, Seth Robinson, before the last two dress rehearsals! Now, I can’t complain too much. I’ve done this because I’m off to Fiji to attend my nephew’s wedding, but it really is scary to think that this show will go on without me. Even at opening night!
It’s not that I don’t think the cast is ready; they could open tomorrow and be fine, I’m sure, but I’m not ready to let it go! I mean, I’ve slogged away for the last two months with them, and they’re about to step up and perform, and I won’t be there to enjoy it!
Still, that doesn’t mean the rest of Canberra shouldn’t; so if you haven’t booked your tickets yet, call the Tuggeranong Arts Centreand tell them you’re coming!
In Richard III, Shakespeare has left us one of the greatest challenges to the willing suspension of disbelief ever created; Richard is a foul and loathsome character, and yet every time I see the play, I am amazed at how much sympathy I have for the detestable excuse for a human being I am presented with. Everyman Theatre has left me in this state yet again.
The rest of this post is published on Australian Stage.
While it might be an exaggeration to say that Parkes scooped the 2009 CAT Awards, their achievements were certainly the main highlight of the night. The town of 10,000 may be one of the smaller in the Canberra Area Theatre (CAT) Awards’ broad catchment, but it is certainly punching above its weight in impressing the judges…
For the rest of this article, go to Australian Stage
I have learned an awful lot from the experience of directing a sacred cow. Having only directed new, or relatively new, works before, I’ve never had to deal with strongly-established and conflicting interpretations of character before. The principles are the same: you look for various interpretations and pick the one that best suits your needs, but when there is such a wide range of varying interpretations, and when some of those interpretations are so firmly entrenched from centuries of analysis, it can be a tough call to pick the one that best suits our purposes.
All directors say it, but it really has been a pleasure to work with such a talented cast. They’ve amazed me at times with their capacity to take an idea I’ve had about how a character should act or respond, and incorporate that into a holistic expression of a character, which essentially is nothing more than a concept. I have found it quite humbling to watch those characters emerge from vague and shadowy ideas in my head into characters who stand and walk about and interact as if they’re real people.
So next stop is opening night, when we turn Shakespeare’s sacred cow into a profane one. I hope people enjoy it, but really, the best part of the experience of profaning a sacred cow is over, and after nine months in development, I am both breathing a sigh of relief, and beginning to fret about letting it go.
Chookas, cast.
I am getting a little bored with the whole “let’s say nasty things about the Catholic church” thing that our culture seems to have going on these last few years. Being an older play, Ron Blair’s The Christian Brothers doesn’t suffer from the same simplistic and one-dimensional depiction of Catholicism as its more modern counterparts. It’s refreshing.
How the magnificent Nina Stevenson manages to harness the enthusiasm of more than 30 youngsters to fill a stage and tell a comprehensible story is beyond me, but with Puss in Boots, she has done this and more, because the show is a delight.
Jane Austen’s novels don’t appeal to me greatly, but the quality of her wit is superb. Although Sense and Sensibilityis not a novel that readily lends itself to a dramatic adaptation, Canberra’s own Jodi McAlister has done a fine job of condensing Austen’s story into two hours of engaging stagework.
I really must come up with a good reason why I don’t like follow spots and smoke. Normally my dislike of them doesn’t matter, but in the case of Chess, they use them right at the beginning, and they use them well! Why is this a problem? Well, if you don’t like follow spots and you don’t like smoke, but the first thing in the show is a follow spot and smoke, it distracts you from the show. It’s not a problem with a poor show, but unfortunately, The Q’s production of Chess is not a poor show, so I feel I need to justify my dislike of follow spots and smoke. One day, my prejudice will have a justification, but this is not that day. Chessis just too good.
Opening at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, Krapp’s Last Tapeis one of Samuel Beckett’s more well-known plays.
I would like to describe this play as an amusing double-autopsy of capitalism and socialism, but that hardly does the play justice. Williamson’s superb play demonstrates the inability of these two-dimensional political ideologies to deliver what they promise their adherents, through characters who, despite being built on one or the other of these ideologies, are forced to grapple with humanity in three dimensions.
Anyone who’s ever spoken to me about authors knows that the author I loathe most is Tolkein. I hate Tolkein’s work because I can’t understand how someone who fails entirely to grasp the idea of interworking exposition with climax can sell a single book! These people may also realise that I have a double standard insofar as my hatred of Tolkein for this reason has not caused me to dismiss the playwrights of Ancient Greece. The fact is, the Ancients wrote for a different purpose and a different audience, but Tolkein was just a babbling fool. Aeschylus, of course, was a master playwright, who had a justifiable reason to write an enormous quantity of vaguely interesting, but largely confusing, expository matter and interspersing it between some good dialogue and interesting plot. What I like most about Rachel Hogan’s adaptation of Agamemnon is that she has managed to distil the essence of Aeschylus’ tale into a performance that is widely accessible.
In doing this, the focus is drawn carefully onto Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, particularly her interpretation of Agamemnon’s actions, and her primal response to his slaughter of their child. These characters are portrayed exquisitely by the performers in this production, who balance the intensity of their emotions well with the need to edify the audience, as was the tradition of the Ancients.
The interplay between what we can control and what we can’t control is one of the things we humans find most difficult to get a grip on. For the most part, we get the things we can control confused with the things we can’t; and even when we do know which one is which, we still instinctively try to control the things we can’t, ignoring the things we can. In some ways, Agamemnon’s story is that of a king who spent ten years doing something about what was out of his control, while unwittingly losing his grip on what he could have had. But then again, Agamemnon was never really about Agamemnon.
Although I may have retitled it Clytemnestra, I love what Rachel Hogan has done with Aeschylus’ play, perhaps enough to hail her as the anti-Tolkein. Of course, she may take offence at that (I don’t know how she feels about Tolkein) but it is intended to be the compliment of compliments!
Another uncomfortable trip to the theatre tonight. I am not entirely sure why I didn’t enjoy this play, because on one level, it has all the things I love; a good story, great performances, and a novel approach to storytelling. And yet, it just didn’t engage me.
Foyer Talk 