Writer/Performer Sam Wang. Director Aileen Huynh. Riverside Theatres Parramatta. June 29 – July 1, 2023

Reviewed : 30 June, 2023*

Advertised as “Think Chinese Top Gun meets 007 with a J-Pop backing track!”, Skyduck is not your usual comedy. In fact, there is little that is ‘usual’ about this production – except for the fact that it is ‘theatre’ in the very broadest sense of the word. It uses a multitude of old and new theatrical devices, from puppets to projections, and plot, described as “a rollicking tale of international espionage”, mixes features of theatre of the absurd with commedia dell’arte and musical theatre.

As he takes his audience on the mission to steal the Skyhawk X-93, America’s “most prized flight simulation software”, writer and performer Sam Wang becomes a variety of characters speaking in variously accented English … and Mandarin … with sub-titles!

Wang establishes the characters deftly, skilfully using changes of tone and pitch and facial expressions to differentiate each of the many characters he portrays – whether they be Chinese spies, an American agent or an Australian Aerobatics Squadron Leader.

A multi-talented artist, Wang writes, builds his own props, acts, sings and dances. He uses movement to augment the differences in his characters – and includes some comedic choreography! In the course of the performance he uses machines, ping pong balls, video images, suspensions … and a glitter ball! All add to the bizarre story he has concocted, which includes a plethora of references … including Pine Gap, the barrel roll from Top Gun”, an AFL Grand Final and the 2000 Olympics! It’s laugh-out-loud funny – but also incredibly clever!

Wang is lithe, nimble and dexterous – all of which are essential to sustain the pace and energy of this ingenious example of contemporary theatre.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening performance

Playwright: Jacob Parker. Legit Theatre Company in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Co. Director Sophia Bryant. KXT on Broadway. June 23 – July 8, 2023.

Reviewed  June 26, 2023*

There is a wealth of fine new young voices in the arts. Whether in words or music, they are making themselves heard. They are open, intelligent, articulate, talented and courageous – because they break boundaries, lift taboos. They don’t preach, or moralise! They say, “This is how it is. This is how we are dealing with it. We want to share it.”

Jacob Parker’s characters says all of that in this cleverly crafted play. They are, however, not the Dumb Kids written off by older generations. They are real. They work hard at expressing and negotiating all the perplexing complexities of who they are and how they feel. Director Sophia Bryant saw this when she first read the play.

“The writing style thrilled me,” she says, “the content mattered, and the characters genuinely felt like my friends. This show was about young people having agency in the stories they wanted to tell about themselves.”

Ten young actors transform into a group Year 11 students who meet in a local park to plan their formal. They’re away from school so they can be themselves, be free. Some of them are straight, some of them aren’t. But they work together, caring, compassionate, helpful – sometimes a little too helpful, even manipulative.

The park, designed by Benedict Janeczko-Taylor gives them space to move. He uses the full KXT stage, and four entrances to it to establish a playground area in the park. The ‘props’ – a balance beam, a monkey bar, a slatted bridge, a wooden seat – are cunningly minimised to provide varying levels and places to confide. Painted in bright green paint, they imply the freedom of open air – a feeling heightened by intermittent birdsong, part of Christine Pan’s perceptive sound design, and reinforced by Thomas Doyle’s subtly suggestive lighting.

Bryant and her cast understand the characters Jacobs has created. The have found their individual qualities and vulnerabilities in ten very intimate and convincing performances. They find the humour Jacobs has woven into his carefully worded and punctuated dialogue. They see the importance of his short sentences, interspersed with familiar idiom and quotes. They understand his self-conscious hesitancies and uncomfortable pauses.

From this they have developed young people that are maturing, questioning, increasingly open, but because of that, susceptible, sensitive to criticism or tactless humour – or unconsidered manipulation. They relate as close friend in a hierarchy that Jacobs has established skilfully in the dialogue and Bryant has reinforced in astute blocking and canny use of the “playground props”. They look up to others on the monkey bar. Hesitate beside another on the balance bar. Or watch from behind a pole. At times, guided by movement co-ordinator Emma Van Veen, they group together in slow motion choreography to retreat from something difficult; or dance exuberantly to share something more exciting.

Every actor makes the character they play real and, heart-breakingly at times, believable. They use specific gestures and expressions that are intrinsic to each – and that show their strength or frailty, their sense of fun … or their fear. To single them out would take far too many words – and risk the chance of missing something important in their characterisation – or giving away too much of the of Jacob’s carefully developed plot. But their names are important. They are … Fraser Crane, Ryan Hodson, Mym Kwa, Oli McGavock, Lou McInnes, Dominique Purdue, Connor Reilly, Rachel Seeto, Kate Wilkins and Angharad Wise. Together they are Jacob Parker’s not-so-dumb Dumb Kids.

A play such as this needs discerning direction. It needs consideration and care. It needs space and time, especially in the final days of production. So often independent theatre companies have only a few days to move into a theatre, build their set – and re-establish their blocking, movement, sound and sight cues. bAKEHOUSE and KXT give them that time. Time to feel at home in the space and with the set; time to feel comfortable and in command. Time to ensure that opening night sees a production that is polished and refined … as Dumb Kids certainly is.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening Performance

Composed and arranged by Felix Riebl and Ollie McGill. Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. 21 June, 202

Reviewed : 21 June, 2023

Spinifex Gum is music with a message. Composed and arranged by Felix Riebl, it has been sung around the country since 2018 by Marliya, an all-female choir of seventeen young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island singers led by conductor Lyn Williams.

The message of the songs they sing is strong. It is about country and family, about social inequality, land rights, disproportionate incarceration, deaths in custody. They sing in both English and First Nation languages, with an energy and passion that is beguiling and moving and inspiring. They work in perfect harmony, moving together to Deborah Brown’s understated choreography. Some have contributed material to the choir’s latest album, Ganalili.

They have taken the message of Spinifex Grass to festivals and concert halls across the country since 2018. This new symphonic version was premiered in 2022 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In Sydney on Wednesday night, they sang with the Sydney Symphony conducted by Aaron Wyatt.

They were joined by the Sydney Children’s Choir, Gondwana Voices and one hundred students from Ascham School, Newtown High School of the Performing Arts and SCEGGS Darlinghurst. 186 voices in all. Clear and strong, poignantly powerful.

Composer Felix Riebl is a singer, songwriter and composer who, with Ollie McGill, created the over fifteen musical stories that make up Spinifex Grass. The music has universal appeal – the titles suggesting the emotional implications of the words. “Mine Steal Tender Ore”, “Battle Cry”, “Take This Silence”, “Dream Baby Dream” – and “Voice, Treaty, Truth Now”. The thunderous applause that followed the rousing message in this song left no doubt of the voting intentions of this audience.

With the orchestra behind Marliya, and 151 singers surrounding the orchestra, this distinctive performance in the Sydney Symphony’s 2023 season was very special. It was a privilege to be part of such a singular performance.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine.

Book: Andy Leonard and Irving Gregory. Score: Ryley Gillen. Director Isaac Broadbent. Flight Path Theatre. 7-24 June, 2023

Reviewed : 18 June, 2023

A musical satire that mixes science fiction, space travel, politics, undercover activists, a self-centred multi-millionaire, and giant mutant rabbits? A little ambitious perhaps? Mmmm …

There are moments of clever writing and acting in this production, and some interesting music, but eventually it all becomes a bit too much. Unfortunately, the many themes get confused in overcrowded lyrics and too-loud harmonies that reverberate in a space that is not particularly acoustically friendly.

Director Isaac Broadbent does use the space effectively, especially in the opening scenes, giving the five actors – Andy  Leonard, Isabelle Kohout, James Burchett, Sara Camara and Jenna Woolley – a chance to introduce the different groups of characters they represent, but later, when three of them are stuck in a space pod on an interminable trip to Mars, the production is bogged down in bored dialogue and long, self-indulgent solos by the wealthy, over-confident entrepreneur, Rob Muskas.

Andy Leonard plays Muskas, Isabelle Kohout his reticent head scientist, and James Burchett the interested observer who hitches a ride on this first trip to Mars – where they find a desolate planet and some Martian survivors who impatiently await a form of messiah who will save the few of them who remain.

Sara Camara plays a variety of roles including the leader of the underground activists, and Ami, one of the surviving Martians. Jenna Woolley too, plays a range of roles, using her movement skills effectively, especially as a Martian elder communicating through exaggerated gestures.

Alli Sebastian Wolf has designed some interesting costumes, especially the gold and orange headdresses worn by the Martian elders. The space suits also add some brightness and authenticity.

This production seems longer than it probably is! A little boy in the audience expressed this graphically as he left his seat: “That was ten hours!” he exclaimed …

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Stephen Schwartz with David Stern and Michael Scheman; directed by Kerrie Hartin;  Arcadians Theatre Group, Miner’s Lamp Theatre Corrimal, NSW. 9-24 June.

Reviewed : 17 June, 2023

What a coup for the Arcadians to premiere this enchanting musical! Who would have thought that songs from twelve different musicals could be brought together to frame such a thoughtful, sad, lovely story – and how fortuitous that someone as sensitive and perceptive as Kerrie Hartin should direct its first Australian production!

Because Hartin’s production is captivating. She has approached it with the deft touch of, as she admits, “an enthusiastic scrapbooker”, layering the production with texture and colour and gentle humour as her six very talented performers tell the story of a failing marriage through old photos hidden away in a box in the attic – through the words of twenty-nine songs written by Stephen Schwartz.

From Pippin and Godspell to Wicked and Enchanted, songs have been lifted, and with their lyrics slightly changed, used to tell a different story, one that Schwartz himself doubted would work when first approached by writers David Stern and Martin Scheman. But he “became increasingly enticed by the cleverness of the book David Stern was developing”, so much so that he was drawn into the writing process of this unique ‘musical scrapbook’.

Hartin and set designer Glenn McMahon have used the full possibility of the Miner’s Lamp stage to take the characters of Sue and Dan from their attic back in memory to their school days, their graduation, their first apartment, their wedding and the birth of their son.. The mixture of colours, fabrics and levels links the thirty plus years the story covers and allows for some sneaky surprises.

Hartin is an imaginative director, sensitive to the emotional implications of the plot, and with her cast, finds in action and in song, the poignancy of loneliness, rejection, first love, envy … and gradual growing apart. With musical director Valerie Hull, and choreographer Pauline Young, she takes her six performers on an emotional journey shaded by a little sadness but highlighted by happy memories and gentle humour.

All six performers have exciting voices that can find the variation in tempo, tone and pitch that the many songs demand – and the harmonies that are so intrinsic to the tenor and complexity of the production. By bringing characters and their voices together in specific songs, on different levels, Hartin and Hull have created sensual images that are subtly highlighted by lighting designer Peter Cleaves.

The play opens late at night as Sue (Nicole Coakes) comes to the attic to collect the bag she has packed and secreted away in preparation for leaving her husband Dan (Rik McCann), but she is distracted by a box of photos. When Dan comes home unexpectedly, she pretends to be looking at the photos and they recall the day they first met, when Dan was the “New Kid in the Neighbourhood”.

Jaiden Thomas and Holly Sears become the young Danny and Susie of early memories, taking them through school and college – until Jennifer Bond and Michael Zelvis take over as they eventually become a couple and marry. All six performers interact, as memories come to life in song, interspersed with some simple but effective  choreography  (Pauline Young) – and some excellent characterisation.

Coakes sustains the protective “shell” Sue has built around herself despite the moments of joy some of the memories evoke. She shows Sue’s strength and determination as well as her insightfulness as she reacts to images of the past – and sings about some of them. Coakes is a constant presence on the stage, watching, reacting, joining the harmonies – but always slightly isolated in the “Code of Silence” that she feels her marriage has become.

McCann shows Dan’s lack of awareness and self-obsession, even as he watches images of the past that exemplify those very characteristics and the effect they had on Susie/Susan. He too is on stage watching constantly. It is clever writing – and direction – that allows the couple to see images from their past from different perspectives.

Holly Sears is charmingly bright as the teenage Susie making her outgoing, accepting, aware – and just a little introspective, especially as she sings “Lion Tamer” – which ‘echoes’ at various times in Sue’s recollections. Sears moves as fluently as she sings, and uses comic timing well, especially in the second act.

Jennifer Bond moves from teenage friend to the older Susie/Susan in a clever scene change that introduces a more mature, settled Susan, a wife and mother, always supportive but becoming increasingly lonely. Bond also has a strong, clear voice that combines beautifully with that of Sears and Coakes as they sing, especially in “Meadowlark” – another song that is used to reprise the past.

Jaiden Thomas is appealingly awkward as the young Danny, aging his character to a more confident teenager and college graduate, who, unfortunately for Susie, still sees her as a buddy.  In the second act he takes on a variety of roles – and harmonises beautifully in the many songs that bring the characters up to the present.

Michael Zelvis plays the more mature Daniel, at work and play in New York and still totally unaware of Susie as a woman rather than a friend. Zelvis makes Daniel fun but self-centred, using his infectious smile to charm the girls, and his powerful voice to charm the audience. His comic timing is effective, especially when he plays Roger, Susie’s unwanted, persistent beau.

As they bring the characters in the “snapshots” to life – and sing the songs that cleverly decode the emotions of each scene – these four performers eventually take Sue and Dan back to the attic where they face one of the “Hardest Parts of Love”.

There are some lovely touches in Hartin’s direction. Funny asides where characters ‘chip’ each from the past. Clever freezes. Smart choreography as the ensemble sings “All for the Best”. Passing birthdays. The sneaky surprises mentioned earlier. The loveliest touch of all is her gentle development of the emotional journey the six characters take, her realisation of how that emotion is fused so ingeniously in the music and Schwartz’s evocative lyrics.

This premiere production is a fine new feather in the Arcadians’ cap – and a tribute to a very discerning and intuitive director.

By David Williamson. Club Ryde, Hunters Hill Theatre. Director Catherine Potter Club Ryde. 16 June – 2 July, 2023

Reviewed : 16 June, 2023*

This isn’t really your usual David Williamson! Sure the barbs are there and some good one-liners, but the characters are a little more real – and the social satire a lot more cutting. Why? Because this play is about money! Money made by ruthless financial advisers, money lost by trusting investors, money anticipated by hopeful heirs.

Set in the aftermath of the GFC, the play centres on septuagenarian Alan, a multi-millionaire who has returned to Australia with his new, young American wife Fury – much to the consternation of his sons, Ian and Ben, because Fury has refused to sign a pre-nuptial agreement! What will happen to their father’s millions? Will Fury get it all? And what will Alan say about Ben’s father-in-law, who committed suicide after losing all the money he trusted Alan to invest?

The plot even gets a little stickier as the play unfolds, with religion, politics and gender issues further confusing the already fraught family. Fury is a lot more than the money digger they expected. Alan is a lot less than the man than he led Fury to believe. And that’s not all … but to say anymore would spoil Williamson’s clever manipulation of expectation, ethics and eventualities.

Catherine Potter uses a spare set carefully designed to suggest affluence without the complication of too many props. This gives her room to concentrate her direction on the characters and their reactions rather than where they are or when. Interaction is key to Williamson’s writing, especially when there are seven actors working together on a relatively small stage – and Potter has given her cast space to develop their characters and relate effectively.

David Kirkham plays Alan, finding all the pride and arrogance with which Williamson has endowed this unscrupulous character. He keeps the character tall and smug, self-righteous even when confronted with the wife of one of his suicidal victims. Kirkham gives depth and conviction to his portrayal of this mostly unlikable character.

Michael Richmond plays his engineer son Ian, who, with his lawyer wife Sue (Julie Mathers), is determined to salvage his share of his father’s money. Richmond and Mathers work well as a couple, supporting each other, picking up clues from each other, reacting ‘in harness’, whether to Alan’s accusations – or to Fury’s revelations.

Dave Went plays Ben, the second son, an associate professor of literature, who, with his politically and socially aware wife Laura, lives on the north coast “closer to Lismore” than Byron Bay. Went shows multiple sides of Ben’s character – the academic with strong ideals, the envious brother who’d like the expensive holidays Ian can afford, the son who really craved his father’s affection.

Laura, on the other hand, is mourning her father and the effect of his death and the loss of his savings on her mother. Melissa Jones finds the depth of Laura’s bitterness in a quiet but watchful performance that simmers in her accusing eyes and smouldering cynicism. Only with her mother, played with realistic confusion and resentment by Jan Johnson, does Jones show the softer side of Laura’s character.

And then there is Fury! Former beauty queen, successful business-woman, Tea Party American “girl next door”. Laura Stead is all of this in a carefully judged performance that takes Fury from nervous new bride through a range of much more complex and unexpected reactions.

Catherine Potter’s production balances these characters and the complications of their personalities in this play in which David Williamson looks at the darker side of human greed and unethical behaviour.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening Night

Writer and Director Chris Bendall. Critical Stages Touring. Parramatta Riverside. June 7-8, 2023

Reviewed : 7 June, 2023 *

Black Sun Blood Moon was first performed in Wagga Wagg in 2022. Its 2023 tour has been on the road since April, beginning in Cairns. From Parramatta it will move on to Western Australia, taking its message about climate change, activism, juvenile justice and hope.

Writer and director Chris Bendall was inspired to write the play based on his own daughter’s reaction to the fact that scientists have been concerned about climate change for 40 years and yet little has been done to stall it.

Bendall spent 9 years as the CEO of Critical Stages Touring and has ensured his play has all the necessities of a touring production. It has universal appeal, its messages are strong but optimistic and the characters are identifiable. Because it is directed at a family audience, he has also included fantasy, puppetry and humour. His creative team has devised a colourful set that can be adapted to most stages.

Two stories interconnect. One involves twelve year old Maddy, who becomes very actively involved in school strikes for climate change and is eventually arrested and faces a court case. In the second Katie “originally a climate change denier”, who Bendall takes on a flight of fancy “in an attempt to imagine a magical solution to the crisis”.

A cast of four carry the story. In this production Bendall’s daughter Eloise plays Maddy, the strong-willed twelve-year-old who is determined to make governments listen and act. She shows the conviction of the character strongly and relates well with Matthew Whittet who plays her understanding father, Paul. Whittet gives the role depth and belief and makes the most of the humour the playwright has injected into the role.

Adelaide Kennedy plays Katie in this production, making the change from prissy office assistant to convinced believer as she “flies” on the wings of a huge puppet eagle and sees the need to save endangered species.

Lani Tupu plays four roles, including a police officer – and the lawyer who convinces Paul to sue the government, leading to insights into juvenile justice which has been so much in the news of late.

Black Sun Blood Moon, in the style of theatre-in-education, uses theatrical devices that create and sustain interest and add extra impact to the messages at the heart of the play.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum and Ronda Spinak. Moira Blumenthal Productions. Director: Moira Blumenthal. Bondi Pavilion Theatre. 31 May – 18 June, 2023

Reviewed : 4 June, 2023

Imagine a workshop in Tel Aviv where Moshe Weinstein and his son Amnon make and repair violins. Imagine a collection of violins they have received from Jews who refused to play them because of their German origin but took them with them as they went into hiding or to camps or to face hazardous journeys.  Imagine the stories those violins might tell. Stories of family celebrations and grand concerts. Stories of daring escapes … or months hiding in forests.

Laurence Coy becomes Moshe Weinstein and tells of his journey with his Zionist wife to Warsaw to learn how to make and repair violins – then to Palestine to set up his workshop. Barry French continues the story as his son, Amnon, telling of his decision to join his father in the workshop rather than continue his career in music – and how the Violins of Hope they repair eventually become part of a wonderful orchestra that takes their stories to the world.

With Sophie Gregg, Kate Bookallil and Lloyd Allison-Young, Coy and French tell this remarkable story via a sensitively written script that is evocative of the time as well as the personalities of the Weinstein family, the people who bring their violins to the workshop and the folk whose stories the violins reveal. There has been much care and understanding taken in the choice of words and how they are arranged.

Similar care has been taken by Moira Blumenthal in her astute direction of this gentle, revealing play. She and her cast have grown to know the characters intimately. Their gestures, their accents, their inflections, just how long they might pause, how quickly they might turn away, how effectively they might contain their anger … or their fear.

There is not one character they portray that isn’t believable, whose words and actions aren’t convincing, whose emotion isn’t real. Whether it is Coy happily watching the sheriff mete out justice in cowboy movie, the light from the screen flickering on his animated face. Or French beside him, happy to have this special time with his father. Or Gregg, face alight with optimism, persuasively urging Moshe to move to Palestine; or Allison-Young as a courageous twelve-year-old spy stealthily stuffing explosives into the wall of a restaurant frequented by Nazi soldiers to avenge the savage death of his parents and sister.

Or Bookallil, as Amnon’s beguiling wife convincing him that he must let the world know of his violins, because he ‘has restored not only the violins but the dignity of their owners”.

That same real emotion echoes in the music played by Dr Noreen Green on the piano – and violinists Ben Adler or Leo Novikov. Green has chosen the music perceptively – twenty-six excerpts that perfectly augment the tone and tenor of each scene. In this performance , Novikov makes the violin speak its stories in a plethora of voices, leaning into the action at times so that he and the music become an intricate part of the scene, playing watchfully in the background at others. In one scene he sits beside French, his violin giving voice to each small action as Amnon deftly repairs an instrument.

Tom Bannerman has designed a set that uses the full width of the Pavilion stage, adding levels that extend the depth of the action. Martin Kinnane lights its muted colours with creative sensitivity.

This production brings together some very skilled and experienced artists whose perception and empathy highlight the tender passion and moral significance of this very special piece of theatre.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine