By Bob Booker. Bondi Theatre Company. Director Ruth Fingret. Bondi Pavilion Theatre. 25 Oct – 5 Nov, 2023 and Emanuel Synagogue 15 – 19 Nov.

Reviewed : 28 October, 2023

The 1960s was a special time for comedy albums. Comedians like Wayne and Shuster, Stan Freberg, Bob Newhart, Victor Borge, The Goons, Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore, The Goodies and Monty Python made LPs that entertained families around the world. Some of us remember them well, even still quote them!

Radio broadcaster Bob Booker was one of them. His album The First Family, a satire on President JFK and the Kennedy family, sold over 7.5 million copies and won multiple Grammy Awards. A demand for more resulted in another twenty-two albums, among them You Don’t Have to be Jewish, which was launched in 1965 and sold millions of copies.

The sketches and songs on the album have been quoted for years. With the permission of Booker, now 92 years old, they have been collected and published in Australia by DSPress. They are still very funny to read. Some are very short; others are put to music. But all were written to be recorded on an album, not performed live, on stage! So the decision to do so required some courage, as director Ruth Fingret explains:

“Directing it for stage has many challenges not the least being that we have forty scenes changes … we’ve had to honour the original recording, while also aiming to provide a satisfying theatrical presentation of a script that was originally written simply to be heard”.

Forty scene changes! Imagine the changes of character and costume! This can lead to a backstage nightmare – especially when some of the sketches are only a page in length. But Fingret and her stalwart cast and crew have attacked the task with typical thespian fervour – and Jewish humour!

They move from sketches of two characters to sketches of six. They change characters constantly. They sing and move to modest choreography. They make mischievous eye contact with the audience. Most of all they make people laugh.

They laugh because the scripts are funny. They laugh because the cast understands and captures the right intonations and timing. They laugh because the characters depicted are universal so ‘you don’t have to be Jewish’ to recognise them.

The six actors work with speed and diligence to present over a hundred characters. Just remembering the order of their character changes must be difficult, let alone making so many costumes changes. But they work well together, establishing each character with a stance, a walk, a gesture or an accent. Geoff Sirmai, James Burchett and producer David Spicer (who slipped into the cast with seven days’ notice), play fathers, sons, husbands, lawyers, doctors, husbands even cowboys. Christine Greenough, Liz Hovey and Andrea Ginsberg play different mothers and daughters, brides, wives, gossips, even a gypsy.

They play these characters with energy, good timing, and obvious enjoyment.

This is especially so in some of the longer sketches. In The Ballad of Irving (the hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the west), Spicer leads with the others doing backing vocals and doing fancy footwork. The Reading of the Will is one of the best known of Booker’s scripts and those in the audience who knew it well weren’t disappointed by Sirmai’s expectant face as he waited to hear whether his brother-in-law would remember him in his will.

Greenough and Ginsberg’s timing in A Call from Greenwich Village makes the scene especially funny. Liz Hovey uses her Theatresports experiences to good effect, especially as The Gypsy Fortune Teller. James Burchett plays all the younger men and a very effective teacher of Yiddish!

Linking forty different scripts is difficult, especially as the content and contexts change as quickly in this production. Here the production team have come to the fore. Musical director and choreographer Aaron Robuck, design consultant Parish Stapleton and lighting designer Mehran Mortezaei work cleverly together to give the production needed continuity and colour. The set is utilitarian, with some quirky hand props. Live on keyboard, Robuck skilfully uses musical interludes to link or introduce scenes and Mortezaei picks up changes in ambience with subtle lighting effects. Mazel Tov!

The production pays homage to Booker and his clever, much-loved scripts – and introduces them to new audiences. The publication by DSPress also makes them available for future productions, and the possibility of linking them in different ways.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine.

Sadler’s Wells and Universal Music UK, Directed and choreographed by Kate Prince. Based on the songs of Sting. Joan Sutherland Theatre Sydney Opera House. 25-29 November, 2023.

Reviewed : 26 October, 2023

Message in a Bottle comes from the UK to make its Australian premiere as part of the 50^th birthday celebrations of the Opera House. Based on the music of iconic singer-songwriter Sting and choreographed by Kate Prince, it is an incredibly moving piece of dance theatre that pays homage to the millions of displaced people in the world today, refugees from harsh rule and devasting war seeking shelter and solace and a new, safe place to re-start their lives.

Choreographed and directed by Kate Prince, the twenty performers tell in interpretative dance the story of a family of four living in a gentle, happy community that is beset by civil war. Forced to flee, they wander for a time ultimately finding shelter in a refugee camp, before risking a perilous journey in an open boat where their “anxious eyes, search in darkness, with the rising of the sea. Incarcerated in a detention camp, watched over by heartless guards, they wait for years hoping “one day we’ll sing our freedom”. Time and loneliness haunt them, until, finally they are given a new chance in a safer land to “lie in fields of gold ”.

Their saga of fear, loss, survival, hope and love is told clearly through the simple clarity of Sting’s beautiful lyrics, with his music providing the various tempos for choreography that includes contemporary hip hop/street dance styles with breaking, locking and popping. Produced by ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company, it is fast, powerful, mesmerising and emotionally expressive.

Though the themes of interpretative dance are clear, it is sometimes a little difficult to follow the intricacies of the story. Not so with Message in a Bottle. Each song introduces a new chapter to the story, with the dancers adding graphic imagery and emotion through movement and dramatic, descriptive physicality. Using columns of side lights, fixed spots and some moving spots, rather than lighting from the front, designer Natasha Chivers highlights the complex sophistication of the movement and the transition from one scene to the next.

Set designer Ben Stone is similarly subtle, realising that the suggestion of a scene is sufficient – but making those suggestions perceptively poignant.  A circular mat is centred for a wedding celebration, then moved, as war rages to receive the sand that bleeds from “a little black hole in the sun”. Bed rolls carried by the asylum seekers become the sides of their crowded boat, and a live wall with images of increasingly large waves crashes behind them. Moveable frames become their detention ‘prison’ backed by images of barbed wire on high walls.

The twenty dancers –  Oliver Andrews, Lindon Barr, David Cottle, Deavion Brown, Harrison Dowzell, Nestor Garcia Gonzalez, Natasha Gooden, Lizzie Gough, Anna Holström, Megan Ingram, Ajani Johnson-Goffe, Daniella May, Dylan Mayoral, Lukas McFarlane, Robbie Ordona, Lara Renaud, Hannah Sandilands, Jessey Stol, Steven Thompson and Malachi Welch – bring Kate Prince’s production to Sydney for four short days. If you love dance, especially contemporary dance, try and see this production.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Shelagh Stephenson. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Directed by Rachel Chant. 20 October – 25 November, 2023

Reviewed : 25 October. 2023*

The title of this play by Shelagh Stephenson is based on the premise that no matter how much a water solution is diluted, the water will retain the ‘memory’ of the substance that has run through it. In some ways our memories are similar – but, as director Rachel Chant explains: “Memories are an act of subjective re-creation, altered and reconstructed to aid our own survival. No two recollections will be the same”.

In The Memory of Water Stephenson brings three sisters together to organise their mother Vi’s funeral. Naturally they begin to reminisce, and Stephenson uses their different perceptions of the past to show “the slipperiness of memory and the heightened, contradictory emotions that are released when you lose a parent”.

That it is a comedy is testament to the fact that families are funny, that even in difficult situations, memories evoke a host of nostalgic reactions, some of them sad, some of them contentious, some of them hilarious. It is the latter on which Stephenson – and Chant – concentrate, but not at the expense of poignancy nor tenderness.

The play takes place in the mother’s bedroom and designer Veronique Benett establishes the tone of the production with a set that is painstakingly pink, and plush, and prissy! The cupboards above the bed are stacked with paraphernalia – boxes, make up cases, a set of hot rollers! Trinkets clutter every surface, the satin quilt cover shimmers pinkly and a green velvet curtain covers the window and keeps out the cold, wintery Yorkshire night. The detail is fastidious and the changes in mood are fittingly intensified by Kelsey Lee’s mellow lighting.

The set reflects Vi’s personality and Chant uses it effectively, symbolically centring on and around the bed which is set on a double plinth.

Under the satin cover, the eldest sister, Mary (Michala Banas), wakes to ‘a visitation’ from a younger Vi (Nicole Da Silva) dressed in vibrant green satin, and sitting elegantly at the dressing table. Their hallucinatory conversation suggests that things were not always happy and this sets the tenor for the rest of the play as Mary and her sister Teresa (Jo Downing) and Catherine (Madeleine Jones) talk, argue, cry … and laugh.

Mary is a doctor who is deeply concerned about her patients – and deeply involved in a 5year relationship with Mike (Johnny Nasser) a celebrity doctor who is married with three children. Banas finds the acumen of the professional, the affectionate tolerance of the ‘big sister’ and the vulnerability of ‘the other woman’ in carefully judged and layered performance. Her immaculately timed pauses and the expressions that accompany them augment both the humour in her lines – and the devastating anguish she feels when a hope she has been clinging to for twenty-five years is cruelly crushed.

Teresa, the middle sister, who has spent more time with their mother runs an alternative well-being business with her second husband Frank (Thomas Campbell).  She is down-to-earth, organised, in control – except when she’s had a drink – and Jo Downing makes her busily caring and dependable – except when she’s had a drink! Then she becomes verbose, accusative, loud and wobbly. Her ‘wobbly’ is played very effectively by Downing who takes her there gradually through a slight slur, gradual increases in volume, more thoughtless reactions – and a delightfully natural slip off the end of the bed.

The youngest of the sisters, Catherine lacks the self-esteem of her older siblings – and Madeleine Jones plays her perfectly. Jones finds all of Catherine’s insecurities and attention seeking in a performance that is both funny and empathetic. Willowy and flexible, she gives Catherine an awkward but fluid grace as she paces sulkily, flings her arms expressively, as she wails about another failed romance, throws herself at the mercy of her sisters (who have obviously “heard it all before”), and turns for comfort to her brother-in-law Frank, who flees from her affection seeking approach!

It would be easy to believe that these three are sisters! Physically they are similar – and under Chant’s direction they have achieved that similarity of expression and gesture and reaction that is so often noted of female siblings, as well as the togetherness that comes from shared experiences and family jokes. Nowhere was this more evident than in a raucous scene that began with sorting their mother’s wardrobe – and ended with them parading on and around the bed in an array of colourful clothes and outrageous hats. The energy and pace of this scene was so carefully choreographed and meticulously rehearsed that it seemed spontaneous and absurdly natural.

Chant’s concentration on timing and pace ensured that naturalness and the depth that made the women – and Mike and Frank – so convincing.

As the ‘intimate observers’ in the play, Johnny Vasser and Thomas Campbell provide foils the sisters and deliver some delicious one-liners.

After an unexpected of entry, Vasser establishes both the intimacy and strained secrecy  of Mike’s relationship with Mary – and his wariness of her sisters, and though they voice their distrust clearly, he retains calm and taciturn, watching and always aware.

Campbell on the other hand, is one of the family, and hence the brunt of sisterly criticism and banter which he bears steadfastly and stolidly. Campbell has excellent comic timing and uses pause and pace to humorous effect – especially in his struggle to stop Theresa’s drinking, and in extricating himself from Catherine’s amorous attack.

Nicole Da Silva ‘s Vi ‘appears’ only for brief moments, almost drifting onto the stage, and wryly observing the effect of her demise … and highlighting her influence on her daughters.

The drawling vowels and missed consonants of the Yorkshire accent have been carefully schooled by dialect coach Linda Nicholls-Gidley and add to the veracity of the production, especially as the snowy winter is an intrinsic character in the play!

Rachel Chant has brought Stephenson’s play – first produced 27 years ago – to renewed, vibrant, funny, poignant life on a memorable set at the Ensemble. Sister siblings should see it together! (As one of four sisters, I know you’ll see yourselves!)

*Opening Night

By Felicity Castagna. Adapted and directed by Priscilla Jackman. National Theatre of Parramatta. Riverside Theatres Parramatta. 25 Oct – 3 Nov, 2023

Reviewed : 21 October, 2023*

Felicity Castagna writes about aspects of life that resound with ordinary people, especially ordinary young people growing up in the suburbs, away from the rarefied atmosphere of the CBD. Her characters come from different backgrounds, different cultures, from the Australia that is busy and varied, bubbling with hopes and expectations – and the strength that comes from overcoming disillusion and disappointment.

In Girls in Boys’ Cars, Castagna take her characters Rosa and Asheeka on a road trip in the style of Sal and Dean in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The girls ‘borrow’ Asheeka’s boyfriend’s car and take off from Parramatta to explore New South Wales. They are young and brave – and brazen. They end up in the sorts of predicaments you might expect, but approach them with strength, determination … and grit.

Their backgrounds are different – culturally, socially, economically. Director Priscilla Jackman describes the complexity of their friendship as … “simultaneously toxic yet ferociously loyal, naïve yet ferociously courageous, co-dependent yet deeply liberating”.

In fact, like many friendships! Rosa is a reader, a thinker. Boys ignore her. Asheeka is more open, flirtatious. Her boyfriend Dan is macho, one of ‘the boys’ who hang out with them in the parking area at Maccas!

Jackman translates Castagna’s book into a play that captures the girls, the ups and downs of their journey, their excitement, and their problems. Production designer Melanie Lierty has created a set that suggests the momentum of the journey. Moveable screens, an adjustable table and stairs giving differing levels, cover changes of scene and place. Lighting designer Moran Moroney and sound designer Zac Saric add variations in mood and tone that blend with multimedia designer Mark Bolotin graphic images – huge maps, blurred photos, changing skies.

The production moves quickly, bolstered by busy cast members who move props and screens with speedy, practised choreography whilst also depicting the range of characters the girls meet along the way – and those they leave behind.

Ziggy Resnik and Nikita Waldron play Rosa and Asheeka. Their portrayals are strong and convincing, both finding the strengths of the characters, and the impact of their differences.

Resnik makes Rosa thoughtful and wistful, reticent but open to suggestion, with an energy that is tightly controlled, and comic timing that shows her sense of humour and insightfulness.  The Rosa they portray wants more, but needs the confidence of someone like Asheeka to take the lead. Once ‘on the road’, Resnik shows Rosa’s growing self-assurance to make decisions (some of them wrong), and the strength to face the challenges that result.

Expressive and intuitive, Resnik shows the little changes in Rosa as she learns more about herself.

Asheeka is a little more worldly wise and Waldron shows that in Asheeka’s physicality.. Nonchalantly leaning against a post in the car park, she seems almost insolent, but still a little unsure of the effect she is having on her boyfriend Dan. She covers any lack of assurance with a tilt of her chin or a flick of her hip. Asheeka is seen as a leader, but Waldron finds her underlying anxieties. There is much baggage that Asheeka carries – her culture, parental expectations – and Waldron shows that in secret moments of despair.

Together they travel the road of self-discovery, a point that Jackman makes poignantly final scene of the play, where the girls are alone, strong enough to be making their own way to find their true self.

The characters that people their journey – and establish each pace they visit or are ‘delayed’ – are played by Suz Mawer, Ella Prince and Alex Stamell, all of whom show remarkable energy as they move from character to character and manipulate the ever-changing scenery. Whether playing parents, or boys in the carpark, or police or corrective service officers, they find just the right stance, tone and expression that makes each character immediately recognisable and real. Managing the physical demands made on them by the director – and   the designer – is credit to their fitness and concentrated rehearsal.

Priscilla Jackman has stayed true to Felicity Castagna’s characters and the Parramatta that she writes about so clearly and lovingly.  Rosa and Asheeka show how places like Parramatta are full of thousands of “complicated and contradictory stories” that are rich and exhilarating. Jackman’s and her creative cast and crew show how theatre can bring those complications and contradictions to the stage in a “pulsating and contemporary Australian work”.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening Night

By Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe, based on the film by Daniel Waters. Blackout Theatre Company. Director Jordan Anderson. Pioneer Theatre Castle Hill. 20 – 29 October, 2023

Reviewed : 20 October, 2023*

Coming to this production ‘cold’ but having been advised of the ‘cult following’ of the movie on which it is based, I was still surprised by the exhilaration of the audience and their exuberant reaction to the characters and the music. The theatre vibrated with an air of expectation as the house lights faded. It was clear that most of the audience was there to greet the production with enthusiastic joy – and Jordan Anderson and his cast and choreographers didn’t let them down.

The characters from the 1988 movie, transported to the musical stage by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe, were there live on stage and ready to bring the dark themes and black humour of the story to strident, energetic, brutal life. The eagerness of the audience was reflected in the vibrance of the performers, who hit the notes of “Beautiful” with professional pace and power – to the unbridled joy of the audience!

Anderson has approached the production with entertainment as the ‘sugar coated’ key that opens the door to the nastiness that gnaws at the heart of Westerberg High, nastiness engendered by the Heathers, a triumvirate of tartan-clad tartars who wield the power of ridicule and denigration. Boys bow to their beck and call; girls long to belong rather than being belittled. Only one of them – Veronica Sawyer – dares to break her way into the clique, admitting it’s just to get through high school without being demeaned!

Jenna Woolley plays Veronica with a cool spite that is tempered by innate intelligence and common sense. She approaches the Heathers with subservient charm – and the ability to copy others’ handwriting – all the while sharing her disdain with them and herself in her diary – and thus the audience. Woolley brings all the attributes of triple threat training to this role. She creates a Veronica that is believable but can also dance and sing, holding the long notes of some of her songs, for example “Fight for Me” with seeming ease and remarkable power.

It is not until she is attacked by Heather Chandler’s “henchmen” Ram and Kurt and turns to dark newcomer Jason Dean (“JD”) that she turns her back on her conscience and becomes part of his plan to eradicate Westerberg of the tyranny of the tartans.

JD is played with cruel charm by Aleks Justin. In a long black trench coat he steals into the high school scene from a murky life following his “de-construction” worker father in explosive jobs around America. He’s calm, cool, insightful and attractive – and Veronica is taken in by his ‘maturity’ and confidence. Unfortunately he is also vicious and sadistic and has no qualms about involving her in his plan to ‘cleanse’ the tenor of the school. Justin too has a great voice and their duet segments in “Our Love is God” are very moving.

As Heather Chandler, Katie Staddon strides powerfully on to the stage, much to the delight of the audience, who greet the character with cheers. In red tartan (of course) red knee boots and lots of swagger and sneers, Staddon epitomises the ‘girl gang’ leader’s queen status perfectly. With her off-siders, envious (green tartan!) wannabe leader Heather Duke (Claire Hutchison) and less assured (yellow tartan!) Heather McNamara (Haley McCudden), she lays down the law in “Candy Store”.

Tim Drummond and Will Smith have a ball playing Chandler’s (not so) heavy henchmen Ram and Kurt. Both have fine voices and also relish the suggestive, snaky dance moves devised for them by choreographers Daniella Giles and Lauren McKinnon.

Giles and McKinnon have chosen choreography to augment the darkness and mood of the music, stretching the performers with quick freezes and fast twists and turns in keeping with the malevolence of the story – and effectively raising the excitement of the audience. A piece of choreography that lingers with me for its planning and direction is a slow-motion fight between Drummond, Smith and Justin. Those three and the whole cast, arranged at different levels around the stage, move with perfect precision and control, keeping long, difficult freezes in a routine that creates stunning tension and tenseness.

Breaking the darkness of Heathers along with Drummond and Smith, are flamboyant teacher Ms Fleming, played with lovely comedic skill by Fiona Brennan, and the various Dads of the teenagers played by Simon Buchner and Tim Walsh. Their rendition of “My Dead Gay Son” is poignant as well as funny.

The themes in Heathers cover many of the problems that teenagers might face – bullying, homophobia, sexual assault, teen suicide, eating disorders, even murder. That they are covered in a way that makes them real but unacceptable is a credit to the writers. That they are tempered with black humour, loud, strong music and fast dancing takes some of the edge off the malice. That there is a suggestion of optimism doesn’t take away from the fact that the problems imagined by Daniel Waters back in 1988 continue and escalate … 30 years after the movie opened, and over 10 years after the musical was first performed.

Jordan Anderson’s production will meet every hope of Heathers fans – as well as keeping strong the messages about teenage angst, anger, anxiety … and fear.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening Nigght

By Roger Hall. Director Tui Clark. Genesian Theatre. 14 Oct – 4 Nov, 2023

Reviewed : 15 October, 2023

The ‘four flat whites’ in the title are two retired couples, recently acquainted, who are, inadvertently, travelling through Italy together. Written by prolific New Zealand playwright Roger Hall, the journey begins with a game of bridge in New Zealand and ends in a balmy night in Tuscany. What happens in between – disagreements, compromises, lost credit cards, finances and fun – is cleverly manipulated by Hall and the very identifiable characters he has created.

But … it’s not easy to transport a theatre audience from an apartment in Aotearoa to a pensione in Venice, or take them on a road trip to Rome and Tuscany. Yet … director Tui Clark has achieved this skilfully, by concentrating on the characters and the clever script –and using the original ecclesiastical architecture of the Genesian theatre to suggest the historical romance Italy.

The stage is open, the stained-glass windows and brick walls of the old church building suggesting past eras. Tui and scenic designer Gregory George have used the full width of the stage, adding archways and columns in pastel shades that suggest age, grandeur, and space – and provide a backdrop for Cian Byrne’s thoughtful and creative lighting. A table, four stools and a cunningly designed set of steps manipulated by two busy stage crew are the only props.

The scenario is introduced by Adrian, a retired university librarian, who acts as a sort of narrator, introducing the other characters and chronicling the stages of the journey. Hall has used this device to move the story smoothly – and to add humour via Adrian’s witty asides to the audience.

Stewart-Hunter carries this role with professional aplomb, establishing a warm, on-going relationship with the audience through his excellent understanding of and connection to the rhythm and timbre of Hall’s writing – especially the asides which he delivers with perfect timing and wry expressions. The Adrian he portrays is affable, intelligent and socially perceptive but just a little diffident and reserved in the face of his wife Alison’s parsimony and seeming lack of affection.

Alison, also a retired librarian, is played intuitively by Penny Church. Church portrays a reticence in Alison that infers a want of empathy and trust – the reason for which eventually emerges. She makes Alison edgy, unable to relax, prickly and controlling – yet still allows the seasoned travellers in the audience to sympathise with her enthusiasm and knowledge. Church is a perspicacious actor who uses the inferences in the dialogue to define the different dimensions of Alison’s character – especially her fragility.

Harry and Judy are the antithesis of Adrian and Alison. Harry, a divorcee, has retired early from his plumbing business and married Judy, his slightly younger secretary. “I am not a trophy wife” she announces sassily across the bridge table. Still in a “honeymoon” glow, they are suggestively affectionate and a little ‘indelicate’ in Alison’s eyes.

Christopher Pali plays Harry. Wealthy, a seasoned traveller and conservative voter, Harry is very self-assured, and Pali finds all of that in his performance, as well as a little arrogance that irks both Adrian and Alison – but is often ‘charmed’ away by Judy.

Judy is a bit of an enigma. She seems a little brazen and flirtatious – but she is also observant and compassionate, and Karen Pattison manages to portray all of that in a very energetic and engaging performance. She is mindful of the tension between the other couple, is sensitive to Adrian’s unhappiness and Alison’s touchiness – and finds ways to ease the tension and raise the ‘fun barometer” of the holiday, despite lost bookings, cramped cars and an insistent gondolier.

The nine Italians they meet along the way are played by Kimberlea Smith and Imran Khaliqi. Smith moves easily from petulant pensione proprietor to bored barista, and from keen dress salesperson to elegant English Italian Countess.

Khaliqi has fun playing a waiter, a persuasive gondolier, a pushy gladiator and an elegant Italian count. That he makes such an impact in each of these roles gives credence to Stanislavski’s oft’ repeated comment about “small parts” and “small actors”.

Tui Clark’s canny and discerning direction takes the cast through a range of funny experiences … and some past grief, that is, happily, resolved. She ensures the depth and dimension that Roger Hall builds in the dialogue is strong and that the understanding between the characters grows as their real personalities are revealed.

This is an elegant production that relies on the actors, their director and a clever playwright to transport the audience into situations many of them recognise and with which they will identify.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine