By Jessica Swale. Castle Hill Players. Pavilion Theatre, Castle Hill Showgrounds. Nov 15 – Dec 7, 2019.

Reviewed : November 11, 2019

Theatre stages see many transformations, but surely there are few more different than that which has occurred at the Pavilion Theatre over the past few weeks. From Anne Frank’s crowded, dimly lit garret in war-time Amsterdam, it is transformed to 17^th century England and the reign of the “Merry Monarch”, King Charles II.

It’s a time of change. Oliver Cromwell is dead, and with him the austerity of his governance. Charles has returned from exile in France, has reopened the taverns and theatres and, in the royal circles, extravagance and debauchery rule.

Designer Maureen Cartledge has set the royal throne between marble pillars surrounded by shimmering red velvet curtains. A series of steps leads down to the wide stage where players rehearse under the guidance of Thomas Killigrew, and John Dryden desperately pens the missing scenes of his next play.  Ribbon sellers ply their wares and stage-hand Nancy organises costumes and wigs.

Anthea Brown’s costumes are fashioned in rich brocades, lace cuffs, gold braid and long curling wigs … and that’s just the men! Skirts swish, fans flutter and elegant hats bob.

From the stalls in the theatre, prostitute turned orange seller Nell Gwynn cheekily heckles stammering Prologue Ned Spiggett, drawing the attention of the King’s Company’s leading actor, Charles Hart.

So begins her story. Under the tutelage of Hart, Nell becomes the first female actor in the company – and attracts the roving eye of the lascivious King, who sets her up as his latest mistress. It’s a tale told in words and song, with minstrels strumming and piping, and a cast of over twenty performers proving that they “can dance and sing”.

Tiffany Hoy leads the merriment as Nell, taking her character boldly from cheeky strumpet to popular thespian to loving mistress to devastated ‘widow’. Hoy finds the different dimensions of the character – sassily disrespectful, openly ambitious, unsophisticatedly lovestruck and wickedly satirical. It is not an easy role and Hoy carries it well.

Dan Ferris plays actor Charles Hart, confident, much revered and intriguingly taken in by Nell’s impudent confidence and charm. Ferris takes Hart from actor to tutor to rejected lover with seeming ease.

As does Richard Littlehales as Edward Kynaston, the actor displaced by Nell as the company’s leading ‘lady’! Littlehales pouts and poses, his fake breasts jiggling as he sulkily bemoans his loss of stature in the company. Dan Byron plays the nervous Ned Spiggett, Marilyn Parsons the busy dresser Nancy, and Kimberlea Smith is Nell’s sister and confidante, Rose.

Murray Fane is Thomas Killigrew, director of the King’s Company and Jason Spindlow plays the near-sighted, idea-blocked playwright, John Dryden.

The folk at Whitehall Palace are far more sophisticated and worldly. Paul Sztelma reigns benevolently as King Charles – and wears his brocade and lace with stylish ease. Sztelma moves elegantly in true ‘Restoration-mode’, stepping lightly and posing gracefully – as does Stephen Snars as his prudent and pretentious equerry, Lord Arlington.

Michelle Masefield delights with a rant in Portuguese as Queen Catherine, and Madeleine Dart and Samantha Camilleri are fashionably condescending as the King’s other mistresses, Lady Castlemaine and Louise de Keroualle. Both wear their elaborate costumes with as much style as their elevated positions grants them! Kate Foote and Cody Brown are palace retainers and Zac and Jayden Bishop make brief appearances as Nell’s children to the king.

Michelle Masefield also plays Nell’s proud but drunken mother, who has brought Nell and Rose up on her earnings as a madam.

This play depicts a little slice of theatrical and social history in an entertaining way. Though it’s not a musical, it requires a cast that can sing – and in this production, dance – as well as depicting a host of different characters. It’s not an easy play to undertake, but director Jennifer Willison had a vision and the determination to make it happen.

With musicians Geoff Jones, Murray Fane and George Trippis, choreographer Jan Mahoney and a talented and dedicated cast and crew, Willison’s production is colourful historical cavalcade to bring the Pavilion’s busy 2019 to a close.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

The Studio, Sydney Opera House. Nov 6 – Dec 1, 2019

Seen : November 10, 2019

Not reviewed in this production, but reviewed on first tour in March 2019

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. Richmond Players (NSW). November 2 – 23, 2019

Reviewed : November 9, 2011

First produced in New York in 1962 and London in 1963, this musical based on a comedy written by the Roman playwright Plautus some time in the second century BC, has graced many stages – if ‘graced’ is the correct word for a musical that is full of puns, naughty innuendo and pratfalls! Whatever, it’s been around for a long time and it still makes people laugh!

The witty Latin names, Sondheim’s clever lyrics and the crazy plot, lets A Funny Thing Happened compete with the ‘darker’ more ‘meaningful’ plots of modern musicals. But it needs to be fast, and at the same time clear, so that the humour of the script isn’t lost. Much of that depends on the narrative charm and charisma of Pseudolus, played in this production with enthusiastic style by Matthew Barry. Under the practised direction of Diane Wilson, Barry carries the weight of this role with admirable ease, his chatty banter coaxing the audience into relaxed acceptance and expectant laughs.

Barry moves energetically around the stage, singing, dancing, introducing characters and manipulating them through the bizarre plot with the help of the busy Proteans, played by Nelle Grimshaw and Catherine Gregory, who take on a multiplicity of roles and responsibilities. Roles such as these are essential to sustaining the pace of the production, and Grimshaw and Gregory not only achieve this, but do it with comedic pizazz. Their expressive faces, absurd poses and split-second costume changes are highlights of the production.

Ethan Fitzpatrick, too, uses comic timing well as the ‘top’ slave, Hysterium. Fitzpatrick finds all the possible dimensions of this ‘straight’ character, matching Barry’s energy and commitment. They play off each other well, especially in the comic final scenes of the production.

Senex and Domina, their master and mistress, are played by Ben Wilson-Hill and Catherine Simpson, both performers delivering their suggestive lines with eccentric poses that show off their patrician costumes. Hero (James Warren-Smith) and his virginal lover, Philia (Jaqueline Attard) are righteously virtuous and innocent, singing their love songs with youthful joy despite the fact that Philia has been bought by Miles Gloriosis, the self-absorbed military captain, a role shared over the run by Nick Noel and Peter Gollop.

Sean Duff limps up and down the hills of Rome as Erronius, an aging father in search of his missing children, and Aurel Vasilescu plays Marcus Lycus, the dodgy procurer and seller of courtesans. The courtesans themselves – Madz O’Hare, Paige Peters, Ashleigh Grimshaw, Irene Toro and Anwen Gregory – pose, dance and sing in costumes that add extra zing to the production.

Dianne Wilson and musical director Greg Crease bring their usual momentum and polish to this production. With Dianne McKenzie’s colourful costumes on Andrew McMaster’s set, the cast make the most of this zany, Roman romp and its many songs, funny asides and crazy characters.

It’s playing in theatre-restaurant style on Saturday afternoons and Saturday nights through November.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine.

By John Patrick Shanley.  The Theatre on Chester, Epping, NSW. November 1 – 22, 2019

Reviewed : November 1, 2019

John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play is set in 1964 in America, but it could have been set here or in the UK, or anywhere in Europe, because the ‘doubts’ it exposes about child abuse had been whispered about and covered up by families and churches and other institutions long before 1964.

Director Carla Moore suggests that the year is symbolic because it marks the introduction of the American Civil Rights Act and Vatican II’s more relaxed image of the Catholic Church – both symbolic of the fact that the 1960s was a time of political and social change.

Doubt is set St. Nicholas Church School in The Bronx. Sister Aloysius is hard, ultra-conservative head nun, a rigid disciplinarian,who doesn’t even approve of the Christmas pageant. Young Sister James is trusting and gentle, but begins to doubt herself when Aloysiusquestions her caring classroom manner. Father Flynn, the young priest, is trying to bring more liberal ideas to the parish.

When Aloysius learns from James that Flynn has had a one-to-one meeting with Donald Muller, the first African-American student to be enrolled in the school, her doubts about him are raised. When she confronts Flynn in the presence of Sister James, he denies anything wrong about his actions. Yet doubts are sown in all three, because, in words from Flynn’s sermon: “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty”.

Carla Moore’s direction reflects the spikes and stings in the script. The pervasive power of suggestion, accusation and denial is suggested in tight dialogue, uneasy pauses, anxious expressions and stilted gestures. Tension builds, yet does so insidiously, as happens in an institution that always deals with conflict behind closed doors.

Melanie Robinson wears the formidable power of Sister Aloysius with authoritative ease: pursed lips, forbidding frowns, and gestures as controlled as the regime she imposes on her staff. Robinson finds the subtle dimensions Shanley has given this this character, all of them coalescing in her final line: “I have doubts, Sister”.

Ben Brighton is youthfully confident as Father Flynn. From the pulpit, his Flynn preaches with lively fervour and assertive eye contact. That assertiveness that changes to defensive defiance as he faces Aloysius’s barbed insinuations, and boyish self-doubt in a moving scene with Sister James.

Sudanese HSC student Susan Sogora transforms to a forty-year old mother in the role of Mrs Muller, whom Aloysius confronts about her son’s relationship with Flynn. Sogora shows her understanding of Muller’s rising indignation in a performance beyond her years and experience.

Moore’s set focuses her production in front of two stained glass windows that back-light the stage. Sister Aloysius’s desk forms a barricade that intimidates James but encourages Flynn. The ‘cloisters’ of the schoolgrounds are cloaked in ivy, and a rose garden tended by Aloysius suggests a softer side to her disposition, where doubts about her actions may haunt her.

Doubt has lost none of the award-winning potency that took it from the stage to the screen – and to this thought-provoking production.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine.

By Anchuli Felicia King. Riverside’s National Theatre of Parramatta and Sydney Theatre Company.  Lennox Theatre, Riverside, Parramatta.  Oct 24 – Nov 9, 2019

Reviewed : October 26, 2019

The cast of White Pearl seizes the stage in a rush of words, energy andattitude in a ‘go girls’ performance that they sustain for 90 fast-paced minutes. There is no room for laxity in Anchuli Felicia King’s fiercely modern play. Her dialogue, that director Priscilla Jackman describes as “razor sharp idiomatic specificity” and the slick “spellbinding tempo and rhythms” (Jackman again)  keep the six actors at peak pace, their characters bouncing off and at each other in a dark comedy that subversively challenges what Jackman terms “the irrefutable complexities of PC culture”.

Jeremy Allen’s set is just as sharp and cutting edge as King’s writing. Long horizontal lines are emphasised in an extended boardroom table. Tall windows mirror the audience then become transparent. Chairs are replaced by lime-coloured stools on pale blue carpet. Damien Cooper’s lighting is bright and stark. This is no place to relax, no place to show weakness. The only escape is the toilet, skilfully hidden behind a flat that elevates in specific scenes.

Stretching above the stage a screen of changing advertisements is replaced in quick scene breaks by figures indicating the escalating number of hits on a leaked racist ad that has gone viral. Another projection shows an ever-increasing number of tweets.

The ad itself, about the supposed ill-effects of a skin whitening cream, is the trigger for the dilemma that faces the six characters. It provokes the power plays between them as they connect and disconnect, accuse and denounce. In so doing, it raises issues about different cultural perspectives, what people see as funny, what lies consumers believe, the fallout that comes of global exposure.

It is hard to differentiate between the performers in this tightly directed, blatantly contentious, crisply funny production. Each exposes their character with equal energy and boldness.

Perhaps Vaishnavi Suryaprakash deserves special mention for the robust physical manifestation of her rising anger and frustration, and Merlynn Tong for her laid-back nonchalance and comedic timing.

But Deborah An, Mayu Iwasaki, Catherine Van Davies and Shirong Wu’s performances were equally forceful and compelling. Matthew Pearce, as the sole male character, found the delicate balance between misogyny, machismo and humour with which King infused his character.

Though the language may shock, this play reflects contemporary issues in contemporary language with a cast that show the diversity of talent that abounds in multicultural Australia – talent that is not often enough evident in the plays that are chosen for production. See it with an open mind, but see it! It hopefully heralds a new, “New Age” theatre.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Rossini. Opera Australia. Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. October 24 – November 2, 2019

Reviewed : 24 October 2019

Composed by Rossini in 1825 to celebrate the coronation of King Charles X of France, Il Viaggio a Reims (The Journey to Reims), contains some of Rossini’s most impressive music. Though the plot is simple, the music is difficult and challenging for the orchestra and the cast of ten soloists and eight smaller roles. Yet after four performances, Rossini pulled the score apart and the manuscript was lost until various pieces of it were reconstructed by American musicologists Philip Gossett and Janet Johnson in 1983.

Since the first revival performance in 1984, Il Viaggio a Reims has been produced by opera companies around the world despite the challenges it presents.

This production, in association with the Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam and the Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen, meets those challenges with a creative aplomb that combines the arts in a most unexpected and delightful way.

Taking the story of a party of VIPs who, stranded on their way to Reims when their luggage is lost, celebrate the coronation on their own, director Damiano Michieletto moves the setting to an art gallery of masterpieces from the history of art. In doing so he brings the arts together in a quirkily humorous production that has at its base the idea of marrying the opera with Francois Gerard’s massive 10 by 5 metre painting of the coronation of Charles X.

Michieletto then extended the theme to include representations of some modern masterpieces by artists such as Picasso, Magritte, Van Gogh, Goya, Kahlo, Haring and Fernando Botero, whose subjects come to life. Lost in the museum, they search stiffly for their paintings, while the music soars around them, sung by the nineteenth century aristocrats from the Gerard painting, who are bemused by these strange characters from the future – and the contemporary visitors to the gallery.

There are many similar instances where Michieletto’s creative imagination matches Rossini’s extravagant score, none more so than the enormous frame that fills the stage to encompass a physical and artistic representation of the Gerard painting. To say more about how this is achieved would spoil the incredible finale of the production. Suffice to say, it is breathtaking.

Italian designer Carla Teti’s costumes mirror the artworks, yet pick up on Michieletto’s quirky ideas. They are works of art in themselves, especially the detail in the costumes of the courtiers in the Gerard painting. The rich fabric and colour in the final scene contrasts beautifully with the stark walls of the art gallery in the earlier acts, and the more contemporary colours of the later artworks.

Dressed in those costumes, a host of talented performers bring Michieletto’s characters and Rossini’s music to life. On the stage, Irina Lungu, Emma Pearson, Julie Lea Goodwin, Sian Sharp, Juan de Dios Mateos, Shanul Sharma and Teddy Tahu Rhodes are joined by Warwick Fyfe, Giorgi Caoduro, Jennifer Black, Luke Gabbedy, Conal Coad, John Longmuir, Christopher Hillier, Kathryn Radcliffe, Agnes Sarkis and Stuart Haycock. They meet the challenge Rossini’s exultant music as well as the eccentric and comedic action of Michieletto’s direction.

In the orchestra pit, the OA orchestra, led for the first time by the energetic baton of charismatic conductor Daniel Smith, revels in the difficult but exultant score.

It’s not often that an opera is as delightfully quirky as this. It’s different. It is a tribute to Rossini himself, the wonderful imaginations of Damiano Michieletto and Carla Teti, realised by revival director Constantine Costi, lighting designer Alessandro Carletti, and the construction crew who realised Paolo Fantin’s enormous set on the new, modernistic Joan Sutherland stage.

First published in Stage Whispers Magazine.

Music by Marvin Hamlisch;  Lyrics by Edward Kleban;  Book by James Kirkwood & Nicholas Dante. Blackout Theatre Company. Pioneer Theatre, Castle Hill.  October 18 – 26, 2019.

Reviewed : October 19, 2019

Director Angela Hanna speaks glowingly of the commitment her cast and creative team have given to this production – and so she should. It is a well-directed production that does credit to the musical. Managing a cast of twenty-five is not easy, especially when they have to sing, act and dance – a lot – is not easy. It requires time and patience, encouragement and organisation and a clear vision. It requires close collaboration between director, choreographer, musical director and cast members, especially in a show such A Chorus Line that is all about dance and dancers – and the effect their commitment to their art has upon their lives.

Hanna’s cast members bring that to life in their performances, and many of the monologues that explain the backgrounds of their characters, the time and energy they have devoted to dance and the competition for jobs in the profession.

Despite the fact that that competition, via an audition, is the theme of the musical, there is a strong sense of ensemble in this cast, especially when they are dancing – so much so that it would be wrong to single out any one dancer, though the script does give Stephanie Bellchambers, as Cassie, a chance to show her talent in a long solo spot.

The monologues, and the dialogue with the ‘out of sight’ director, give the performers a chance to show their acting skills, and find emotional response to the very real “dancer stories” that writers James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante have created for the characters. Luke Quinn’s interpretation of Paul’s story was especially moving. It is not easy to sustain and build emotion over such a complex piece of writing.

Choreographer Tamara Scamporlino has used a range of routines that complement the skills of the cast and the pace and timbre of the music – and make the best use of the performance space.

Musical Director James McLanders leads a 16 strong band in another room, his only connection with the cast his image beamed to them from above the audience. Yet music and performers work completely in sync, as does Daniel Conway as the controlling director who must make the ‘cut’ to select the 8 dancers who will “get this job”.

A Chorus Line is a musical for dancers, about dancers – yet the singing is important too. Many of the songs have become audition and eisteddfod pieces.” I can Do That”, “At the Ballet”, “Nothing” and, of course, “What I Did For Love” are central to the theme. All are sung resoundingly by this enthusiastic and happy cast. I wish them a good run.

Also published in Stage Whispers Magazine

Music by Elton John; Book and lyrics by Lee Hall. Sydney Lyric Theatre, The Star. 18 Oct 2019  to 15 Dec 2019

Reviewed : 18 October 2019

Billy Elliot The Musical returns to Sydney in a creatively designed production that captures the hope and ambition of a twelve-year old boy caught up in a political situation that almost brought Britain to civil war.

When Margaret Thatcher won power in 1983, she was determined to privatise the coal mining industry and bring down the powerful National Union of Mine Workers. The result of her policies led to a year-long strike and horrific clashes between miners and police – and a despair that spread across the nation.

Screen writer Lee Hall experienced that despair and encapsulated it in the movie Billy Elliot. When it premiered in Cannes in 2000, Elton John was in the audience and was so moved that he approached Stephen Daldry about the idea of a musical. Daldry took the idea to Hall who thought the idea was “rubbish”. But the suggestion came from Elton John! And “there was a tradition of musical theatre that embraced all the things that Billy Elliot was about. They made a pact to do the musical “so long as we would not short-change the material emotionally or physically”.

Unlike many musicals, the dialogue drives the action, giving greater dimension to the characters and sustaining the sense of reality and the emotional core that Hall worried might be lost. John’s music picks up the rhythm of protest, and choreographer Peter Darling uses it to create a “celebration” of all kinds of dance, especially tap, which infuses the show with an element of immediacy and anger. Nowhere is this more evident than in “The Angry Dance”, when Billy responds to his father’s order to give up dancing.

Darling’s choreography is creative and emphasises the emotionally charged motifs in the music. For example, the slick, repeated gestures of the stiff, regimented “Bobbies” as they stand at attention; the horror of police shields advancing on the miners; the poignant use of empty space between Billy and a vision of his dead mother in “The Letter”; and the sheer joy of movement in “Born to Boogie”.

Darling breaks with tradition in his ballet choreography, infusing it with hip hop movements, acrobatics and discordant angles, especially when Billy dances to “Electricity” in his Royal Ballet audition.

All of this must be exhilarating for the cast. There is a sense of urgency in their performances, enhanced by the realness of their characters and the story. Even the ballet school is an integral part of the story, the young dancers required to be “real” students.

Billy, as the central character, must be actor, dancer and singer. Jamie Rogers got the chance to show his talent in all three areas on Opening Night, but Omar Abiad, River Mardesic and Wade Neilsen will charm audiences just as thrillingly in future performances. It was good to see all four boys take a bow together in the Opening Night finale.

Justin Smith finds emotional turmoil in the role of Billy’s dad, single father, striking miner, battling provider, torn by traditional values and his realisation that his son might have a different future.

Kelley Abbey shines as the encouraging but flinty Mrs Wilkinson. Vivien Davies uses comedic timing to create a knowing Grandma. Drew Livingston, as Tony, symbolises the righteous indignation and anger of the striking miners, and Robert Grubb brings humour to the role of boxing instructor George.

The company works as a united ensemble, raising the tension in song and movement as the action accelerates and tempers rise. There are some beautifully executed scenes, where police and miners act and interact in carefully fused choreography. Especially moving are the miners retreating to the pit, their backs to the audience, their despair in defeat such a contrast to their solidarity in protest.

The orchestra, led by Michael Azzopardi, finds both the rage and rebellion Elton John has infused into the score – and the naivety and hope of Billy and those who believe in him.

The political situation that Billy Elliot revisits is one that could well happen again. Billy’s dilemma is one that is still faced by many young male dancers. Every reprise of both stories may help change the world.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine