Part of the Prelude in Tea program;  Independent Theatre North Sydney; 25^th August 2019

Reviewed : August 25, 2019

A Prelude in Tea is a series of musical events presented in the Independent Theatre – ‘preluded’ by a decadent afternoon tea! Cream cakes, gateaux, tea, coffee and fresh orange juice! A delicious entrée to any concert, but particularly to this one. The Streeton Trio’s name pays tribute to Australian artists Arthur Streeton. Fire’s On  cites his famous painting smoke rising from a mineshaft.

With an image of the painting projected as a backdrop, the trio – violinist Emma Jardine, cellist Eliza Sdraulig and pianist Benjamin Kopp – presented very different works by Russian composers Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Arensky.

Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque No.1 In G Minor, Kopp told us, was unpublished for some time because of its similarities to the work of Tchaikovsky, but Rachmaninoff’s  injection of  “love into the piece” was evident in the energy and expressiveness of all three musicians as they played.

Kopp’s explanation of each of the movements in Shostakovich’s Piano Trio in E Minor cleverly prepared the way for the changing moods and tempos of the music, which was then skilfully and sensitively presented by the trio. The high pitched “artificial harmonies” of the cello in the first movement were a stark contrast to the instrument’s usual mellowness. It was interesting, but strange, to hear the tautness of those notes in contrast to the lower notes of the violin and piano.

The second movement was more melodic – though Kopp described it as “sarcastically joyful” – the third and fourth movements brighter and more emotionally pleasing. Each movement showed the skill and energy of the performers, their perfect synchronisation and their evocative reaction to the music as they played.

Arensky’s Piano Trio No 1 in D Minor was brighter and more lilting, evoking a more complex emotion, trills merging to more powerful repetitions of the motifs as fingers flew and bows swept, making this final segment of the program excitingly memorable.

By Zhu Yi.  USU & Flying House Assembly.  Chippen Street Theatre, Chippendale.  Aug 22 – 31, 2019.

Reviewed : August 24, 2019

A Deal brings the work of two creative Chinese women to the Sydney theatre scene.

Billed as “China’s leading playwright”, Zhu Yi is an internationally acclaimed writer. Born in Shanghai, she moved to New York to study playwriting at Columbia State University. Her many works have been presented in Canada, Norway, China, Mexico, Italy, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A Deal was first produced in New York in 2017.

Director Shiya Lu is a producer, director and stage manager, founder of the Sydney-based artist collective Flying House Assembly, dedicated to promoting Chinese contemporary performance and cross-cultural collaboration in theatre and visual arts. Born in China, Lu has lived and worked in different countries in Europe and Asia, but now calls Sydney home.

Lu, with USU Bright Ideas and Flying House Assembly, has assembled an enthusiastic band of performers and creatives to bring this very topical play to the stage. It tells the story of a young actress from China whose parents have funded her fees and accommodation to study Arts in America. Anxious to win the leading role in a play that actually has a Chinese heroine and Chinese storyline, she invents a similar background for herself, namely an orphan and human rights victim. Unbeknown to her, her parents have smuggled one million dollars in cash from Shanghai to buy her an apartment in Manhattan.

The play uses humour and pathos to tell of the clash of values between Chinese parents and their more-worldly children. It touches lightly and comically, but nevertheless seriously, on past struggles, present success, nostalgia about things given up and lost, trust in ‘the system’ – where ever and whatever it may be – and the difficulty of “letting go”.

Katherine Nheu plays the young actor, Li Su. Shi-Kai Zhang and Susan Young play her doting parents. Together they establish a believable, tangible family bond that is, unfortunately ill-fated. Both Zhang and Young used comic timing well, exemplifying how Yi has used humour to temper the themes. Edric Hong, as a real estate agent – and Mrs Li’s former acting partner and boyfriend – also uses comedic skills effectively, suggesting his reactions with his eyes as effectively as his voice.

Simon Lee plays Josh, in whose play Li Su is performing and Abigail Coffey, Paul Chambers, Suzanne James and Sally Williams play a variety of supporting roles, including eager Chinese investors being ‘conned’ by a slippery sales person.

Zhu Yi’s play presents a multitude of opinions – at a time when all of them are even more in the public forum than when the play was first written.

Shiya Lu’s inclusive production makes a compelling point about the ‘politics’ of the Sydney theatre scene. Hopefully it will reach out to a wider audience than the intimate theatre in which it sees its Sydney premiere.

Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra. City Recital Hall.  August 18, 2019

Reviewed : 18 August, 2019

In the beautiful setting – and wonderful acoustics – of the City Recital Centre, the orchestra warmed a wintery afternoon with the music of Mendelssohn and Brahms. It was a pity that there were not more in the audience to share music composed in a time when romance and the emotions were so much more important in the arts and literature.

Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, written when he was only sixteen years old, seems far too complex and allusive a composition for one so young, suggesting as it does a more mature appreciation of sensations and beauty – and the depth and variation of both that can be conjured by the strings. Nothing really describes this composition better than Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny who wrote: “The whole piece is to be played pianissimo … the trills passing away with the quickness of lightning … so near to the world of spirits, carried away in the air …”

Under the fine touch and deft control of visiting Berlin-based violinist Jakob Lehman, the musicians skilfully brought those “trills” and “spirits” from the Romanticism of the late 1800s into the less light and sensitive world of the twenty-first century. The tempo of each of the four pieces invoked subtle emotional responses from each of the instruments, their voices echoing the sensitivity of the composer … and that of the perceptive performers who were interpreting the work.

Serenade NO 1 in D Major for Nonet, written in 1858 by Johannes Brahms, is no less quixotic, invoking images of a times past where horses cantered through cultivated forests and nature blossomed exotically around them. Here the triumphant notes of the horn blended with strings and winds as motifs were picked up, repeated and thrown back in a kaleidoscope of musical imagery. The mellow notes of the bassoon and bass tempered the thrilling changes of tempo and emotion, the clear notes of the flute adding piquant purity.

It is always inspiring to watch the expressive faces and sustained physicality of musicians as they respond to the lure of the music – and these perceptive performers never disappoint. Their passion and talent were especially evident in these romantic idylls, their poignant touch and emotive responses to the music, and to each other as they worked as individuals in harmony, made the performance more personal and persuasive.

Also published in Stage Whispers Magazine

By Neil Simon.  Castle Hill Players.  Pavilion Theatre, Castle Hill. July 26 – Aug 17, 2019.

Reviewed : 14 August, 2019

When he died last year, Neil Simon left a legacy of 49 plays, many of which he adapted for the screen. Funny, heart-warming, just a little flawed, his characters and their stories were a perceptive insight into Twentieth Century America – and won him more Tony and Oscar nominations than any other writer. His plays have been called “painful comedies” because of Simon’s ability to find something funny in serious situations.

Biloxi Bluesis no exception. First performed in 1984, it is the second play in The Eugene Trilogy, three semi-autobiographical plays about growing up in a Jewish family in New York in the 1930s and 40s.

Biloxi Bluessees Simon’s young ‘alter ego’ – Eugene Morris Jerome– conscripted into the US Army and on his way south to Biloxi, Mississippi for basic training. There, along with five other rookies, he faces the discipline of hard-talking, hard-drinking platoon leader Sergeant Merwin J. Toomey.

The play is demanding in many ways. The set requires a railway carriage, the army barracks, a mess hall, latrines, a brothel, a U.S.O. dance hall and a park. Yet director-cum-Commanding Officer Meredith Jacobs, with her army architect, Trevor Chaise, and a trusty battalion of non-commissioned theatre tradies have recreated a 1943 American army barracks, complete with bunks, wash stands and running water!

Authenticity is crucial in a play such as this. Accents. Uniforms. Both have to be right. The multiple push ups demanded by the script means fitness is imperative. The individual complexities and eccentricities of the characters require careful analysis and direction. The dialogue must run as seamlessly as the scene changes.

Jacobs has been meticulous in ‘commanding’ all of this. She and her cast have taken the time and commitment to make Simon’s characters, and their relationships, believable – then added the energy, tempo and “Ho” that marches the play on to the parade ground in uniforms requisitioned by Annette Snars, PT store officer-in-charge.

Julian Floriano is engagingly naïve as Eugene M. Jerome – soldier and story teller – who artlessly takes the audience into his confidence between scenes, whether to describe his fellow soldiers, or share the thoughts and aspirations that he is recording in his memoirs. Floriano gives Eugene the innocent optimism and belief in others that is key to all of Neil Simon’s work.

Agustin Lamas plays the gentle and intelligent Arnold Epstein, caught in a struggle of minds with middle-aged, battle scarred Sergeant Toomey. Lamas finds the inner strength and self-belief that drives Epstein in a moving performance.

Jason Spindlow and Chris Butel face off against each other as Wykowski and Selridge, competitive, brash, boastful, each is a sharp contrast to the thoughtful Eugene and perceptive Epstein. Both actors sustain the lively macho energy and aggression that bubbles through their roles.

The indecisive, but approachable Don Carney is played with hesitant restraint by Daniel Vavasour, and Ben Freeman gives a very sensitive performance as quiet, reticent James Hennessey.

Chris Lundie whips this diverse squad into shape as gruff, confrontational – but flawed – Sergeant Toomey, who takes no nonsense, and gives no quarter, especially to Epstein, whom he harasses unmercifully.

In Act Two we meet Rowena (Michelle Murphy) and Daisy Hannigan (Kate Gandy), who bring a different dimension to Eugene’s life. Simon created his female characters with a respect and perception unusual for male playwrights of his time, and though these women appear briefly, Murphy and Gandy find the gentleness and sensitive strength that Simon infused into their characters.

The play is marshalled by the carefully drilled, camouflage-clad crew who move trucks, pull curtains, lower lights – and a moon – to the parade ground beat created by composer Joshua McNulty and recorded by Bernard Teuben. Lighting engineer James Winters highlights the changing moods.

Biloxi Blues is fast, funny – and serious. It recreates the mixture of apprehension, excitement and rivalry of young recruits and conscripts going off to war – and the officers who had to train them. It does so with understanding, compassion … and laughter. Meredith Jacobs and her cast and crew have made it a poignant tribute to a playwright who is sadly missed.

First published in Stage Whispers Magazine

By P.G. Wodehouse,  adapted by David and Robert Goodale. Richmond Players.  Richmond School of Arts. August 10 – 24, 2019.

Reviewed : 10 August, 2019

Sir Pelham Grenville (P.G.) Wodehouse (1881-1975) created the character of dithering English gentlemen Bertie Wooster and his impeccable valet, Jeeves in 1915. They made their hilarious way from 1915 to 1974 in a series of books, then through two TV series – one with Ian Carmichael and Dennis Price in the 1970s, the other with Stephen Fry and Hugh Lawrie in the 1990s. This charming adaptation by the Goodale Brothers is based on the novel The Code of the Woosters, first published in 1938.

In the adaptation, Wooster, in his usual role as narrator, stages a re-enactment of a “perfectly frightful” weekend in the country, requiring Jeeves and his Aunt Dahlia’s butler, Seppings, to play the roles of all the other characters in the story and establish the various settings, from Bertie’s bedroom to an auction house to a car trip to the country, a country residence – and in one scene, Bertie’s bath! Consequently, they are kept very busy while Bertie, who once described himself as having “half the amount of brain as a normal bloke might possess” hems and haws his way through telling the story.

With lots of entrances, exits, wigs, hats, an umbrella, a policemen’s helmet, a silver collectable and a hidden notebook, comedy ensues. As in all comedies, pace is important. So too is sustaining the satiric stereotype of each of the characters.  Director Kyle Lowe, a long-time fan of Wodehouse’s “witty prose, crazy plots and delightful characters”, pays tribute to the way her “committed and talented cast have worked so hard” to bring the production to life.

Joel Baltaks is amiably affable as Wooster, chatting congenially with the audience as he introduces the characters and the scene changes. He establishes the vacuous naivety and biddability that is so typical of Wooster’s personality, whilst still sustaining the timing needed for the various changes in place and pace – much of which is dependent on the ever-reliable Jeeves, played with sardonic disdain, and artfully expressive looks, by Robert Hall.

“Directed” by Wooster as narrator, Hall moves various pieces of the set on and off – and takes on the roles of a blustering magistrate, a bespectacled blatherer and a simpering socialite. He moves easily in and out of these roles, always returning to the virtuous valet whose ingenious solutions to Bertie’s problems are intrinsic to Wodehouse’s plots.

Ethan Patrick, who plays Seppings, also takes on a collection of roles, playing Aunt Dalia herself (with a cunningly used fur-trimmed fan), a cynical shop attendant, a clumsy constable, and an anti-hero whose growth in height results in some increasingly funny exits. Patrick uses silent, expressive asides to the audience as cleverly as he changes his voice, gesture and stance to establish the different characters.

Under Lowe’s guidance, these three talented performers, supported by a busy backstage crew, bring P.G. Wodehouse’s much-loved characters from 1920s London to the stage of the heritage-listed and carefully maintained Richmond School of Arts. What could be a more appropriate setting for Bertie Wooster and his ever-vigilant valet to materialise!

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Tanya Ronder; White Box Theatre; The Reginald, Seymour Centre; 25 July – 17 August 2019; Directed by Kim Hardwick.

Reviewed : July 30, 2019

Table is a family saga that stretches over 115 years as it moves succeeding generations of the Best family from Litchfield in 1898, to a mission in Tanganyika and a commune in Herefordshire, before leaving them in South London in 2013. Written by British actor, adapter and translator, Tanya Ronder, the play was first performed at the National Theatre in 2013, directed by Ronder’s husband, Rufus Norris. Its twenty-three characters take the family on a journey of learning what belonging and identity can mean.

The thing that centres the story is a table, made in 1898 by Staffordshire craftsman David Best to celebrate his marriage, a table that is passed from one generation to the next, its stains and scratches recording the event and situations that have shaped the family’s history – and linking the multiple strands of the plot.  “Go on then table, speak”, one of the characters urges. “You tell us, you were there, you’ve always been there.”

Ronder’s characters are deftly created, their stories skillfully inter-twined. There is no fat in their dialogue, nor in the scenes in which they relate. Kim Hardwick’s direction is just as deft. There is nothing about this production that isn’t scrupulously planned and meticulously rehearsed. From the purpose-made table (built by Feather Edge), that is the centerpiece of each scene, to the spotlight that shines unerringly above it, to the carefully schooled accents and precisely timed choreography, this is a production that pays homage to a play that was cleverly conceived and extensively workshopped.

It is hard to single out any one performance. In a truly ensemble piece, where the cast of nine take on twenty-three characters, their varying accents and the style that depicts the time in which they lived – hesitant and formal in the late nineteenth century, more assured and outspoken as the years pass. Ronder has added English hymns and African songs to the play, eerily punctuating some scenes, raising the pace of others. Moments of suspense punctuate the tension that builds steadily – the shooting of a leopard in the bedroom of the mission; Sister Sarah Best offering herself to the hunter who rescued her from the leopard; the sad expulsion of Sarah and her illegitimate son from the mission.

With only the table – and six chairs that are moved only when essential to the action – designers Isabel Hudson (set and costume) Martin Kinnane (lighting) and Nate Edmonson (music and sound) have made the maximum of minimalism, providing a background on which the cast can take five generations of the Best family cunningly through over a hundred years of historical events and social change. They artfully take the characters from young husband to stroke stricken grandfather; game hunter to grandfather trying to re-connect with the granddaughter he’s never met; gentle English women to nuns working in far-away missions to idealists holding the ‘speaking stone’ in a 1970s group home. Every character is clear once the shift in time and place is defined – and that is achieved relatively seamlessly by an astute director and her skilful interpretation of a well-written play.

By Neil Simon.  Castle Hill Players.  Pavilion Theatre, Castle Hill.  July 26 – Aug 17, 2019.

Reviewed : 22 July, 2019

When he died last year, Neil Simon left a legacy of 49 plays, many of which he adapted for the screen. Funny, heart-warming, just a little flawed, his characters and their stories were a perceptive insight into Twentieth Century America – and won him more Tony and Oscar nominations than any other writer. His plays have been called “painful comedies” because of Simon’s ability to find something funny in serious situations.

Biloxi Bluesis no exception. First performed in 1984, it is the second play in The Eugene Trilogy, three semi-autobiographical plays about growing up in a Jewish family in New York in the 1930s and 40s.

Biloxi Bluessees Simon’s young ‘alter ego’ – Eugene Morris Jerome– conscripted into the US Army and on his way south to Biloxi, Mississippi for basic training. There, along with five other rookies, he faces the discipline of hard-talking, hard-drinking platoon leader Sergeant Merwin J. Toomey.

The play is demanding in many ways. The set requires a railway carriage, the army barracks, a mess hall, latrines, a brothel, a U.S.O. dance hall and a park. Yet director-cum-Commanding Officer Meredith Jacobs, with her army architect, Trevor Chaise, and a trusty battalion of non-commissioned theatre tradies have recreated a 1943 American army barracks, complete with bunks, wash stands and running water!

Authenticity is crucial in a play such as this. Accents. Uniforms. Both have to be right. The multiple push ups demanded by the script means fitness is imperative. The individual complexities and eccentricities of the characters require careful analysis and direction. The dialogue must run as seamlessly as the scene changes.

Jacobs has been meticulous in ‘commanding’ all of this. She and her cast have taken the time and commitment to make Simon’s characters, and their relationships, believable – then added the energy, tempo and “Ho” that marches the play on to the parade ground in uniforms requisitioned by Annette Snars, PT store officer-in-charge.

Julian Floriano is engagingly naïve as Eugene M. Jerome – soldier and story teller – who artlessly takes the audience into his confidence between scenes, whether to describe his fellow soldiers, or share the thoughts and aspirations that he is recording in his memoirs. Floriano gives Eugene the innocent optimism and belief in others that is key to all of Neil Simon’s work.

Agustin Lamas plays the gentle and intelligent Arnold Epstein, caught in a struggle of minds with middle-aged, battle scarred Sergeant Toomey. Lamas finds the inner strength and self-belief that drives Epstein in a moving performance.

Jason Spindlow and Chris Butel face off against each other as Wykowski and Selridge, competitive, brash, boastful, each is a sharp contrast to the thoughtful Eugene and perceptive Epstein. Both actors sustain the lively macho energy and aggression that bubbles through their roles.

The indecisive, but approachable Don Carney is played with hesitant restraint by Daniel Vavasour, and Ben Freeman gives a very sensitive performance as quiet, reticent James Hennessey.

Chris Lundie whips this diverse squad into shape as gruff, confrontational – but flawed – Sergeant Toomey, who takes no nonsense, and gives no quarter, especially to Epstein, whom he harasses unmercifully.

In Act Two we meet Rowena (Michelle Murphy) and Daisy Hannigan (Kate Gandy), who bring a different dimension to Eugene’s life. Simon created his female characters with a respect and perception unusual for male playwrights of his time, and though these women appear briefly, Murphy and Gandy find the gentleness and sensitive strength that Simon infused into their characters.

The play is marshalled by the carefully drilled, camouflage-clad crew who move trucks, pull curtains, lower lights – and a moon – to the parade ground beat created by composer Joshua McNulty and recorded by Bernard Teuben. Lighting engineer James Winters highlights the changing moods.

Biloxi Bluesis fast, funny – and serious. It recreates the mixture of apprehension, excitement and rivalry of young recruits and conscripts going off to war – and the officers who had to train them. It does so with understanding, compassion … and laughter. Meredith Jacobs and her cast and crew have made it a poignant tribute to a playwright who is sadly missed.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine