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

By Anya Tate-Manning and Isobel MacKinnon. Zanetti Productions. Riverside Theatres Parramatta. October 11 & 12, 2019.

Reviewed : 11 October, 2019

The stage is bare. The backdrop looks like a chalkboard – because it is! Attached to it are five small slates. One is blank. On the bottom of each of the others the names Ali, Dougal, Tessa and Emma are printed in thick white chalk. They are the characters in the story that Anya Tate-Manning is about to tell.

Barefoot, casually dressed in brown cut-offs and a Backstreet Boys T-shirt (a relevant prop!), Tate-Manning walks casually on to the stage and begins to chat. And that’s the crux of this most unusual and entirely captivating performance. There is no drum roll, no fancy props. Just her laid-back, seemingly unrehearsed manner, the chalkboard and some chalk.

She greets the audience like old friends. Introduces herself. She’s a Kiwi from Dunedin, the southernmost city in New Zealand, cold, very male-oriented, wrapped in a history of whaling and gold, not a very exciting place to grow up.  But she and her friends find ways to cope, especially as Ali’s father has a cottage on the hill above his farm.

The story she tells begins in 1998 as they are finishing high school, and takes them to part-time work, further study, the night they decide to bring revolutionary enlightenment to their city, marriage, children … and how they manage when one of them dies. She tells it easily, her sentences running into each other, her speech patterns changing with the tenor of each anecdote.

But first she has to introduce her friends.

As she does so, she takes each slate from the board and offers it – with some chalk – to members of the audience, asking them to sketch the faces as she describes them.. Her descriptions are simple, yet graphic, their personalities illuminated as much by her face as she describes them as the words she uses. This is typical of her performance. Everything is very natural, a little off-hand, funny, uninhibited, and when she describes herself, Anya, self-deprecating.

Whilst the drawings are being completed, she uses another stick of chalk to set the scene. Ali’s cottage on the hill appears, along with sheep and a two-hole drop toilet. Once again, simply, deftly and amusingly described. The drawings of her friends are collected and placed around the cottage – with the addition of another ‘character’, the possum that disturbs their nights.

That being done, Tate-Manning begins her narrative, using chalk to establish the rolling hills above the city and the city itself. This is her set, this, and the sound track of The Backstreet Boys and The Verlaines – and the names of some of the poets the young ‘revolutionaries’ hoped would bring Dunedin into the present.

Humour and pathos walk hand-in-hand in this tale about ordinary people doing ordinary things, sometimes in extra-ordinary ways. Tate-Manning sets a pace that demands to be followed carefully. She uses light to move from one part of the story to another, chalk in hand all the time, in order to exemplify another scene, another moment. A square, filled in with wide sweeps of the chalk becomes a TV screen where a projected segment of Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes her back to the moment her friends call her to begin their ‘rebellion’.

But it is her words, the way she uses them, her almost soft asides, her gentle smile, wide eyes and honest emotion that draw you in – and make the words of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne a fitting tribute to her performance – And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind, And you know that she will trust you …

Congratulations Riverside Theatres for giving your audiences the chance to see this remarkable performance. But what a shame it is only for such a short run.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

Writer/Director : Michel Laprise; Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park; 2 Oct – 24 Nov 2019.

Reviewed : Oct 2, 2019

Every time I’ve seen Cirque du Soleil – here, in Canada, in Las Vegas – it’s the total theatricality of the whole that has most impressed. Sure, the acts are world class and the skill and exactitude of the performers stuns every time, just as they do in other circus-style events. But Cirque du Soleil is different. It isn’t just circus, it’s theatre – where the ‘circus’ is tied to a central theme that infuses the whole.

Every new program is a lesson in imaginative innovation, scrupulous planning and meticulous direction. Costumes, colour, choreography, continuity – and live music – are part of the on-going motif that pervades the performance, which is meticulously directed and precisely timed.

For Kurios, writer/director, Michel Laprise gone to the motif of Steampunk, the 1980s ‘science fantasy’ genre based on writers such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and the steam-powered machinery of the industrial revolution. The possibilities for a director with a creative imagination are endless, and Laprise makes the very most of them in his Cabinet of Curiosities.

The ring and big top become a modern museum of steam powered artefacts and machines. Clocks similar to Tim Wetherill’s Clockwork Universe at Questacon shimmering in glass covers move around the outskirts of the ring. Enormous industrial-style constructions frame the entrance to the stage. A steam train chugs in and disgorges suitcases carrying performers who deftly introduce the next sequence. An airship hovers above the stage in one scene; an open bi-plane delivers a performer in another. A top-hatted Wonderland figure’s huge bronze skirt opens to reveal a diminutive Edwardian lady who emerges with a miniscule watering can. Banks of lights pick up and sustain the electro-futuristic Steampunk theme. Funky musicians and a trilling soprano standing high above the ring set the ticking pace of the action.

As they arrive, some audience members accept the offer to cross a shiny, wobbly, metallic suspension bridge for a guided tour back stage. Dismantling that bridge prior to the beginning of the show is a perfect example of the organisation and timing needed for a performance such as this.

Victorian costumes – bustiers, corsets, gowns, waistcoats, braces, top hats, bowler hats, tailcoats – are contemporised in multiple shades of mustard, brown, cerise and varied blues and greens. Timepieces, chains, parasols and driving goggles abound. All are carefully coordinated, harmonised. Old-fashioned yellow raincoats and hats are shed to reveal multicoloured leotards and tights, some decorated with colourful cogs and wheels. Every costume, whether worn by an acrobat flying on a bicycle or ladder high above the ring, or a clown scrutinising the safety of a performer, is ‘geared’ to the theme. Gold and brass sparkle on the leggings of athletes swinging on elastic arm bands; ruffles are fluttered of the fish-like head pieces of daring trampolinists.

That theatricality is what makes Cirque du Soleil different. Every performer is part of the theme. There is a sense of ensemble rather than individual acts framed by a ringmaster or a clown. Don’t get me wrong, the individual performers are the best in their field. Their acts are first class. They are highly trained, superbly fit, daringly brave. Their timing is exquisite, their skills incredible. But they are also required to be actors, dancers, comedians, every one of them an intricate part of the theatre that is the trademark of a Cirque du Soleil program.

Even the ‘clowns’ give more than tricks and pratfalls. One of the most memorable ‘curiosities’ in this program that involved everything from finger puppets enlarged through a curved airship screen, to extraordinary balancing, to impressive yo-yo twirling, was that of the clown who became the ‘confidant’ of the audience. Lithe, quirky and a master of the art of mime, his depiction of a cat making up to a member of the audience hijacked on to the stage was a brilliant example of his art.

Kurios has all the intrepid, breathtaking acrobatic and balancing feats you expect of a circus. It has all the fun of clowning. The spectacle of the big top. But it is so much more.

Nick Russoniello and The Golden Age Quartet. The Independent Theatre, North Sydney. September 29, 2019

Reviewed : September 28, 2019

Back in the early 1900s, the Independent Theatre at North Sydney was the Coliseum Picture Hall, screening the black and white silent movies of the era. What better setting to present Nick Russoniello’s tribute to the creative musicians who provided the atmosphere for the action on the silent screen? And who better to present it than Russoniello himself?

Accomplished composer and performer – and gifted raconteur – Russoniello begins the program playing Rudy Wiedoeft’s Sax-o-fun on a 1920s saxophone that beautifully conjures the smoky, flickering atmosphere of the early days of cinema. Joined by violinist Julia Russoniello, pianist Daniel Rojas, and cellist Paul Slender, he presents a potted history of early ‘movie music’, including L’assassinat du duc de Guiseby Camille Saint-Saëns, excerpts from Motion Picture Moods, a collection of pieces scored especially to ‘enhance’ specific scenes – the sinister, the grotesque, western, love and, strangely, firefighting – and an example of Charles Chaplin’s own compositions, Falling Star.

A special treat is the screening of the very first piece of movie footage shot in Australia – a skilled comedic roller skater filmed in Sydney by the famed Lumièrebrothers at the end of the nineteenth century. Russoniello returns to his 100 year-old saxophone to complete the first part of the program with Stephen Cronin’s foot-tapping Perihelion Rag.

Daniel Rojas preludes the ‘main event’ of the program with a virtuoso performance that invokes a myriad of emotions. His energy and faithfulness to the mood and timbre of the music is spellbinding – and a fitting preamble to the screening of Charles Chaplin in The Immigrant with music specifically composed by Russoniello himself. Every hilarious and superbly timed scene is skilfully accompanied by deftly devised phrases that followed the zany pratfalls – and the gentle pathos that Chaplin used to compliment his comedy.

This is a concert with a wealth of appeal, compiled and presented by talented performers who know how to amuse, inform and entertain. What a lovely way to end the first month of spring!

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

Lane Cove Theatre Company. The Performance Space @ St Aidan’s, Longueville. September 27 – 29, 2019

Reviewed : Sept 29, 2019

Putting together a program of short plays – each approximately 10 minutes long – is ambitious, daunting and perhaps a bit risky. Finding the plays for a start. Ensuring their entertainment value. Shaping them into a program … to say nothing of finding directors, cast members and a crew to change sets and organise multiple sound and lighting cues. It takes time, consideration, imagination, organisation … and even a little ruthlessness!

In their ‘inaugural 10-minute play competition’ – part of the Lane Cove Festival – this resolute and courageous little theatre company, that has faced two completely unwarranted setbacks in the last two years, has taken to the task with its usual grit and determination.

With producer Rachel Ashley, they have devised a program that is original, varied, entertaining … and offers new creative opportunities for its membership. Imagine plays by 10 different playwrights, supervised by10 different directors, played by over 20 actors and managed by a crew of four! That’s pretty amazing when one considers the behind-the-scenes organisation and commitment required.

The topics/themes of the plays selected are remarkably diverse. A theatre haunted by a dead Shakespearean actor; a rookie police constable infatuated by CSI; a ‘new’ technology that enables one to reconstitute one’s dead spouse! A dead woman re-visiting the cliff where her husband met his death; an elderly woman who finds a heartbreaking revelation during speed dating; a job interview that isn’t really what it seems! A young couple that meet at a bus stop and manage to connect despite the guy’s dependence on 350 apps on his phone!

The imaginative directors use the space and props sparingly – as is necessary to ensure speedy transitions and audience attention. Cast members – all with varying levels of experience – are well-rehearsed and committed, bringing appropriate characterisation, energy, humour … and in one instance, touching pathos to their performances. To name anyone specifically would detract from the inclusiveness that Ashley and her directors have achieved in the production.

LCTC is to be congratulated on this first foray into a venture that involves so much organisation, time and so many people. Perhaps a little commentary between items could have been used to break the blackouts between items, or even some dim light to allow the program to be read easily, but, that’s something to think about for the next In a Nutshell – and I’m sure there’ll be another.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Castle Hill Players. The Pavilion Theatre, Castle Hill. September 20 to October 12, 2019

Reviewed : September 20, 2019

Few World War II stories are more touching than schoolgirl Anne Frank’s naïve description of the three years she and her family spent hiding with others from Nazi occupation above her father’s factory in Amsterdam.

Her guileless words tell the story of eight people crowded together in a makeshift hideout, keeping silent by day lest the factory hands grow suspicious. How they shared meagre rations scrounged on the black market by two trusted friends. How they lived in fear every moment of being informed upon by ruthless Nazi sympathisers.

Goodrich and Hackett’s play, based on her diary, captures the anxiety, the crowding, the claustrophobia, the petty disagreement, the fear … and the artless naivety of a thirteen-year old’s impressions. But it needs an intuitive director, sensitive actors and imaginative creatives to bring the oppressive atmosphere of the play to the stage.

Fortunately, director Faith Jessel never does anything by halves. This is a play that requires research, understanding and empathy from everyone involved. From the very start, Jessel immersed the cast in Jewish traditions, the enormity of the holocaust and the minutiae of Anne’s descriptions. Her enthusiasm and energy are infectious. Her commitment compelling. “It’s been such an experience,” a cast member recalls. “From the start, we all loved being involved.”

The many creatives were similarly committed. Armed with the play, the diary and photos of the original rooms, Jessel and designer Steve Wimmer recreated the cramped congestion of the rudimentary three level ‘apartment’, with its hidden door, kitchen, table, chairs, stove, beds … and the tiny attic through which Anne sometimes caught a glimpse of the sky. Lighting designers Andrew Kinch and Heidi Brosnan produced the sombre ambience of lives lived in shadows. George Cartledge and Jack Woodford conceived the music and frightening sound effects.

Genevieve Papadopoulos leads the cast as Anne Frank, finding in her interpretation the innocence, curiosity and optimism that the diary revealed – as well as the normal frustrations of growing up. Papadopoulos moves lightly and surely on the stage, confident in her characterisation and her relationship with her family – and the other characters.

Especially appealing is her relationship with her father, Otto Frank, played with gentle understanding and compassion by Dave Kirkham. Kirkham shows the weight of Frank’s plight and those he has pledged to protect in a sensitive performance that captures his generosity and fairness as well as his fear of inevitable discovery.

Judy Jankovics plays his wife, Edith, kind, protective, equally generous. Jankovics realises this with a busy-ness and a warmth that encompasses her own family – as well as those with whom she shares space, food and responsibility. Though her relationship with Anne is fraught, she is accepting and constant.

Her relationship with Margot, Anne’s older sister, played by Brittany Macchetta, is more adult and amenable. They share the workload companionably, with Macchetta depicting Margot’s quiet acquiescence and watchful awareness. Like her mother and father, Margot realise the fragility of the situation and the need to be ever vigilant.

Not so the Van Daans, the family who shares their congested space. They are much more highly strung and volatile – and as such raise the tenor and mood of the play.

Kim Schad plays Mrs van Daan with an edgy energy that captures the real vivacity of the character – and how hard it is for her to be so confined. Schad finds both the humour and pathos of this larger-than-life character and brings a genial zest to the play.

David Schad plays her grumpy, intolerant husband. Unlike Otto Frank, Mr van Daan is easily irritated, selfish rather than self-effacing, and Schad’s depiction of him is suitably tetchy, impatient and often insensitive.

Their withdrawn teenage son, Peter, is played with quiet reserve by Yarno Rohling, who finds the initial gangly, self-consciousness of the character and his gradual maturity. His growing acceptance of Anne’s bid for friendship and their eventual closeness is sensitively directed – and convincingly portrayed.

David Hill is Mr Dussel, the reluctant latecomer to their hideout. Unused to children or family life, Dussel is touchy and irritable and Hill makes fittingly stand-offish and brusque.

Miep Gies and Mr Kraler, the loyal Dutch friends who bring supplies and news to succour their refugees, are played by Kristina Ulich and Nick Hoschke. Both show the dedication and constancy of those who braved the “Green Police” and their Nazi controllers.

Stories such as this need to be told and re-told, especially in a world that has become increasingly de-sensitised to the effects of war and aggression. Faith Jessel and her cast are doing so with insightful perception and sensitive characterisation. They are to be congratulated on such a compassionate production.

Also published in Stage Whispers Magazine

By Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phil Scott. Sydney Theatre Company. Riverside Theatre Parramatta. September 18 – 21, 2019 and touring.

Reviewed : Sept 18, 2019

2019 has given the Wharf Revue creators – Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phil Scott – a wealth of material with which to work. Their sharp eyes and mischievous minds have crafted a revue that maintains the trademark of their brand: cutting satire interspersed with a few serious moments. Politics and parity loom large this year – and nothing is redacted!

Revue is exacting. It’s got to be fast as well as funny. Characters and costumes change constantly. Voices must be clear to stress the bite of the satire. It takes talent and timing to get it right. This year’s cast has all of this in spades!

Forsythe and musical director Andrew Worboys are back, with Simon Burke, Helen Dallimore and Lena Cruz. All have extensive experience across the theatrical spectrum – and the energy and ‘zing’ that make satire work.

As prime ministers, presidents, politicians and presenters they make a satirical journey through a year of big events and bigger blunders. Burke is Boris on Brexit; Forsythe is Hanson rationalising the Al Jazeera hoax. All lampoon Trump’s rise to power in a clever parody of Hamilton.

Sketches merge seamlessly. Burke querks as Clive Palmer explaining how his campaign gave Scomo the edge: “there’s nothing like a scare campaign to terrify the mob”. Cruz and Dallimore sweat in a sauna as Penny Wong and Jacqui Lambie. Dallimore, Forsythe and Burke are entertainingly wicked as Germaine Greer, Bob Carr and Tony Abbott. Burke excels in equally wicked impersonations of Alan Jones and Mark Latham.

Reviews of revues are hard to write. One wants to share but is loathe to give too much away. Nevertheless, watch for a superb piece of theatre where Dallimore ingeniously ‘takes on’ some of the gifted girls of the ABC.

The more serious moments? Two are special. Forsythe as a nostalgic Bob Hawke, accompanied by Warboys, uses “Thanks for the Memory” to reminisce inside the Pearly Gates. The jokes are gentle, the tribute tender. Less tender is Cruz as a cold-hearted Aung San Suu vindicating the Rohingya persecutions with an ingenious parody of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”.

Backed by Worboys’ music and the inevitable projections that set the diverse range of scenes, this “unredacted” look at politics, parity and policies is deviously devised and artfully entertaining. It’s on tour before opening at the STC in November, so check if it’s coming to somewhere near you.

Also published in Stage Whispers Magazine.