Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image.  Sydney Festival.  Riverside Theatres Parramatta.  January 18 – 27, 2019.

Using music, dance, projections and snatches of dialogue, Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image emphasises the visuality of theatre as it explores one of the most famous and vibrant Australian art stories. Brett Whiteley and Wendy Julius met and fell in love as teenagers at a time when social and artistic boundaries were being challenged and broken. Together they embraced a new era of excitement and risk-taking … in life and art.

Images of Whiteley’s work inform the production and the story: bird’s eggs; the swiftly drawn lines of the birds themselves; the 18-part installation American Dream American Nightmare; glimpses of the iconic blue of the Lavender Bay paintings.  Interior with Time Past is recreated in one scene, complete with the original vase and filled with bright orange blooms.

Based on a raft of research and conversations, Carpenter reveals brief images of Whiteley as curious child, mischievous brother, lover, husband, father … an artist that made an impact on the world and was lost too soon through an addiction that he found too hard to conquer.

The production is short – just over an hour – and disappointingly short on depth and detail. Characters flit in and out, sometimes momentarily, sometimes unnecessarily, belying “the love story bound by art” that the title promises. Characters tease us with glimpses of narrative that are whipped away too quickly.

With such a talented cast of performers and creatives, it is sad that this legendary story is reduced to such fragmented images.

Whiteley is portrayed by dancer Dean Elliott and actor Paul Gleeson, who together suggest the curiosity, intelligent wonder and innate creativity that drove the man and the artist. Both performers are lithe and agile, moving in and out of moments with the nimbleness that expresses the mercurial complexity of his character.

Leeanna Walsman does not disappoint in her portrayal of Wendy Whiteley. With sinuous movement and mellow voice, Walsman finds the intricacy of a woman who could love, inspire and empathise, offer wisdom and strength, but eventually and reluctantly admit the need to stop and walk away.

Jeanette Cronin captures the naïve sibling admiration of Whiteley’s sister Frannie Hopkirk. Olivia Brown plays their mother. Tony Llewellyn-Jones plays their father and the artist Lloyd Rees who was so influential in Whiteley’s life. Yasmin Polley appears in brief moments as a young Arkie Whitely.

Dancers Elliot, Robbie Curtis and Naomi Hibberd weave through and around the actors in graceful choreography designed by Lucas Jennings to link segments and imply added dimensions of the characters.

Despite all of this, the images of the Whiteleys and the way that Carpenter has chosen to portray them, tells their story too ephemerally and ends it too abruptly.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine.

By S. Shakthidharan.  Belvoir and Co-Curious.  Sydney Festival. Sydney Town Hall,  Jan 11 – Feb 2, 2019 and Ridley Centre,  Adelaide Showgrounds, Mar 2 – 9.

Sydney Town Hall has been transformed into a long, thrust stage surrounded by wooden tiered seating spread with brightly covered foam cushions. Colourful peaked gables arch above the lighting loom. Expectant patrons savour delicately flavoured lamb biryani before making their way to their seats for Belvoir and Co-Curious’ mammoth undertaking of S. Shakthidharan’s family saga, Counting and Cracking.

Sixteen actors play 50 characters in a new Australian story that traces four generations of a family from Colombo to Pendle Hill; from Australia, a land of refuge, to Sri Lanka a land trying to stay united. It’s a story “about reconciliation within families, across countries, across generations.” It’s a story about symbols and memories, traditions and change, adaptation and acceptance, fragility and strength.

In his program notes, Shakthidharan contextualises the back story to the production. “Ten years ago I was hungry. Hungry to learn about my mother’s homeland. To know my history. So I started on a journey that had no clear end”.

Ten years of reading, travelling, enquiring and listening led him to a story “… about parents and children. About coming together and breaking apart and coming together again … a story that had the power to help my mother reconcile with her homeland. To connect people across deep divides … to collapse time and join continents”.

I lean on Shakthidharan’s own words because of their clarity and translucence, qualities that are equally impressive in his script and the complex characters that people the many scenes that connect past, present, and hopeful future. This is a chronicle that could be about any of the families who have sought refuge in Australia, leaving behind ravaged homelands, cruel regimes, lost loved ones. Its appeal is universally touching – but it is written in a way that emphasises the resilience and humour that are so important in the process of change.

The production is a work of collaborative creativity. Director Eamon Flack describes it as “an almighty effort by a great coalition of people” over almost six years of travel and discussion and organisation. Shakthidharan, Flack and their enormous imaginative team have envisaged and realised a production that is vibrant and innovative. Designer Dale Ferguson has used simplicity and symbolism to establish changes in time and place. Flack has backed this with fast scene changes and carefully . . .

Review continued in Stage Whispers magazine.

Strut and Fret; Sydney Opera House Studio.  January 4 – March 9, 2019

“Not recommended for persons under 18 years, this performance contains adult concepts, nudity and references to alcohol consumption”. Of course it does! It’s local production company Strut and Fret’s Blanc de Blanc returning to the harbour city to add some saucy circus cabaret pizazz to the summer festival buzz!

Directed by Scott Maidment and led by outrageous ‘comperes’ Spencer Novich and Remi Martin Lenz, the show is bold and loud, a sort of Cirque du Soleil for adults with lots of glitz, glam and cheeky, risqué innuendo. An extravaganza of dance, clowning, song and aerial stunts performed by an international cast of audacious, multi-talented entertainers, Blanc de Blanc, like the dry champagne after which it’s named, is full of intoxicating bubbles and fizz.

Songster Ashley Straud joins this new show, along with aerial artist and sexy mover Reed Kelly, and aerial hoop duo Caitlin Tomson-Moylan and Spencer Craig. There’s Australian dancer Lauren New, burlesque artiste Skylar Benton and contortionist Uugantuya Otgonbayar (The Greatest Showman).

In a smoky haze and radiating light show, the Opera House Studio becomes a twenty-first century art deco cabaret cavern, where cast and audience merge in a frenzy of Kevin Maher’s suggestive, undulating choreography, a sound track that blasts and rebounds and a show that moves fast and furiously from segment to sexy, surprising segment …

Such as Novich and the cast, naked but for white towels, writhing suggestively in a dance routine that demands judicious timing and brazen flair. Or a huge parachute-like sheet that spreads across the space and slips away to the balcony, which, later, becomes the focus of a long plastic tube of flowing champagne that spirals through the audience to Lenz’ glass on the stage below. And that’s just a taste of the of the many acts that flow precipitously from comedy to circus to seductive song.

Infused by champagne and sparkles, energy and effusion, Blanc de Blanc Encore is everything the original was, and more. It’s a deftly-directed, tightly-performed production full of cheeky fun and flippant frivolity.

Review originally published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Geoff Sobelle.  Sydney Festival.  Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay.  Jan 9 – 18, 2019.

Home is a ’grand scale’ theatrical experience that both astonishes and amuses. Whilst it makes one think about what makes a home, it also makes one think about just what makes theatre.

Conceived by Geoff Sobelle, after discovering different layers of floor covering in the kitchen of his one hundred-year- old Philadelphian house, the production is a tribute to innovative contemporary stagecraft, meticulous choreography and timing and the creative inspiration of collaborative theatre-making.

Sobelle: “I work in collaborative theatre because I believe that the really good stuff doesn’t come from the writer’s room – it comes from the space. It comes from the designers and performers leaning into each other.”

Thus, in the ‘space’ – a bare stage – a house is precisely constructed (the ‘designers’), by seven builders and tradesmen (the ‘performers’), who erect walls, fit doors, install, furnish and equip a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom, a study and a living room. Then, over the course of one hundred minutes, transform into a myriad of characters who make the house their home.

Their stories are told in non-verbal, visual, physical theatre. To the audience, it is a carefully planned on-going narrative that runs seamlessly from one scene to another, chronicling passing years and changing inhabitants, their differing relationships and rituals. From collecting the laundry to sharing a bathroom, the actors weave a magical vision of the intimacy demanded of a home, and the joys and tribulations this can bring.

From the beginning, the performance is interactive. At first the audience is welcomed into the household by gestures and unspoken ‘asides – like an open hand that invites the admiration of a building triumph. They are intrigued by different techniques that show the passing of time: measuring the years by recording the height of a child on the kitchen door frame. They are titillated by a bathroom scene that involves naked bodies moving in and out of the shower and on and off the lavatory!

Later, while party lights are erected across the theatre with the help of the audience, other members of the audience are invited into the house, and, via whispered instructions and gestures become part of ritual celebrations that are intrinsic to family life: a birthday party, a graduation, a gay wedding. Some don fancy dress, others have a pillow fight. Some are taken on stage in a conga line. All dance to the music of a four-piece band that materialises. Eventually they are gathered together by the cast to become part of a funeral service. They surround the body, and to the eerie voice of troubadour Elvis Perkins, and further whispered direction, mourn, turn to face the audience, look to the right and sway gently together in perfect time.

Two then become narrators talking, unprepared, into a microphone about their memories of their first home. As their voices play over each other, the remaining ‘cast’ begin the process of moving house. Photos are taken from walls and packed into boxes that are stacked, with in front of the set. Chairs are piled on top of them, whilst stair bannisters and bedroom furniture are removed from the upper storey, and plastic sheeting, used in the very early moments of the production, is re-stapled to wooden frames. All happens in perfect time, and, as the audience members are skilfully escorted from the stage, the light fades and fans blow the plastic sheeting in a ghostly illusion of times that have passed.

These final interactive scenes are a miraculous piece of planning – and trust. It is a credit to the poise and sang froid of the actors that so many realistic characters, so much action and such confident participation can be inspired by so few words and such brief directions.

This production is awe-inspiring in so many ways. Apart from the construction itself – the co-ordination of fitting the pieces fit together, the stability of the structure, the timing and concentrated pace that is constantly sustained – there are atmospheric moments that, though theatrical, are movingly real, like the light of dawn creeping softly and gently across a sleeping house, or a moth fluttering against the glass panel of a lighted doorway.

There are, as well, so many little ‘events’ that are easy to miss, but define the real-ness of family life, like, for instance, a child climbing out his bedroom window and being brought home by the police! Such is the prodigious value of the collaborative process – ideas and experiences are shared, considered, workshopped, and whether rejected or incorporated, bring “the really good stuff” that makes this production so real, so entertaining and such an absorbing piece of theatre.

This review was written for Stage Whispers magazine

It’s always daunting to adapt a novel for young people to the stage – especially one of a series of 19 about an intrepid archaeologist-cum-poet like Cairo Jim and his companions, Doris the Macaw and Brenda the Wonder Camel. It has to capture the tenor of the prose, the imagination of the author – and his outrageous puns and poems – as well as sustaining the belief of Geoffrey McSkimming’s faithful readers.

Undaunted, Emilia Stubbs Grigoriou took on the awesome task. With the blessing and support of McSkimmings, and the ingenuity of puppet maker Katherine Hannaford, she has captured all melodrama of the plot including Cairo Jim’s derring-do … his arch rival Captain Neptune Bone’s nastiness … explosions … and assorted pieces of luggage falling out of the sky!

Hannaford’s puppets – Doris, Brenda and Bone’s wicked raven, Desdemona – are skilfully manipulated by Shabnam Tavakol, Tim Ressos and Benjamin Kuryo, and are hits with young Cairo Jim fans in the audience.

As Cairo Jim, Logan McArthur uses the ploys of melodramatic heroes to bring McSkimming’s hero, Cairo Jim, to life. He declaims as he tells of his search for the lost tomb of Martenarten; poses as he dreams of his airborne heroine; despairs as he is seized by Bones and his henchmen. All are effective devices, but they do seem to slow the production down a little too much at times.

Brendan Layton is a looming presence as the scheming villain, Captain Bones, especially in his disguise as a walking mummy – but is effectively ‘foiled’ by Joecelyn Osgood and the afore-mentioned objects falling from the sky.

Kristiann Dingas brings some needed pace and humour to the production as café proprietor, Mrs Amun Rue, as do the slapstick antics of Diego AR Melo and James Stubbs Grigoriou as Bones’ silly offsiders, Kevin and Abdullah Rhampsinites. Emma Wright also brings a little humour doubling as the dust-and-sun-affected Pyrella Frith.

All the characters of the Cairo Jim series come to life in this ambitious production. It’s fun – and funny – and way over the top, just as the fans of McSkimming’s popular, poetic hero would rightly expect it to be.

Review first published in Stage Whispers magazine

Midnight Feast. Sydney Opera House. Nov 29 & 30, 2018

In the battle for inclusion, no group has to fight more strongly than those who are challenged physically, intellectually and emotionally – and the people who love them. Two weeks in a row I have seen that that ‘fight’ manifested gloriously in two of the biggest performance spaces in Sydney.

Last night in the Studio at the Opera House twenty-six excited and diversely ‘challenged’ performers from the inclusive company, Midnight Feast, combined their funny and beautiful stories and dreams in a performance entitled Fireside. The buzz from the stage was exhilarating as they celebrated “abilities rather than limitations”. The buzz from the audience of proud parents and supporters was just as uplifting.

Last week, at the Qudos Bank Arena, the Sydney Schools Spectacular’s D’Arts Ensemble of 171 students from 29 schools across the state, four of them in remote areas, ‘wowed’ the thousands strong audiences with their performance to I Wanna Go Out Dancin’. I sat beside parents, who had travelled all the way from Forbes with their son, and watched their smiles mix with tears as he danced proudly in yet another Spectacular.

The struggle to be included across all aspects of society is hard enough. In the Arts it is even harder. Kylie Harris, founder and artistic director of Midnight Feast, explains that:

… some communities are left out of our main stages and screens. If they are represented it is tokenism or an off-handed reference for diversity’s sake, but the lived experience of any human being is equally valid and equally worthy of celebration …

‘Celebrate’ was the key word of Midnight Feast’s performance last night as Fireside took its performers on a journey to find a Willy Wonka-style ‘Golden Ticket’ to see their dreams come true.

By sharing those dreams and their stories – with Harris, Drs Stephen Sewell (Head of Writing for Performance, NIDA) and Suzanne Osmond (Acting Head of Cultural Leadership, NIDA) and a dedicated team of carers and creatives – these enthusiastic and committed performers developed a production that told of their different journeys, the things they hate, the mistakes they made, and the many things they want to do.

They did so as they were ‘abducted’ by a group of Aliens in a spaceship that eventually broke down and no one knew how to fix. Lights flashed, doors opened and shut on a screen above them. Escape seemed impossible until Heath Ramsey, as Edward St John, suggested they escape to their Happy Places – one of which involved a group of Brazilian Fantasy Dancers.

From those Happy Places they found the key to escape was … INCLUSION … and the stimulation and invigoration it can bring. They celebrated accordingly.

The excitement and elation of this proud group of performers – and their opening night audience – was inspiring, as was their confidence, dignity and honesty as they answered questions from the audience.

Kylie Harris’ face shone with pride as she passed the microphone from one excited performer to another – and as she announced that NIDA is investing in fully inclusive facilities, so that the company can keep working there as it “explores humanity in all its diversity and challenges assumptions”.

This is a production that shows just what can be achieved when kindness and respect, confidence and conviction, belief and hope overcome prejudices and preconceptions, injustices and intolerance. As Miss First Nation Drag Queen, Josie Baker (alias Joseph Cardona) exalted the cast in the rousing finale “The future, my darlings, is bright and inclusive”.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Rachael Coopes. Riverside and Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre in association with Australian Theatre for Young People. Riverside Theatres, Parramatta. Nov 22 – 24, 2018.

Bathurst was the first ‘inland city’ established by the white settlers who followed Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth and their Aboriginal guides over the Blue Mountains in 1813. On the land of the Wiradyuri people, they established a settlement that would become a beacon to the west. But in this process, they ‘highjacked’ and destroyed aboriginal sacred sites and burial grounds.

In The Climbing Tree, Rachael Coopes has documented four years of workshops and research into a play that gathers together what director Stephen Champion describes as “the thematic threads and heart” that tell the “essential stories of Bathurst”. It is a moving history that tells of ancient legends and old tragedies alongside contemporary issues and protests. In the hands of four gifted performers, a multi-talented musician and an empathetic director, it is a story that reveals not only “the essence of Bathurst” but of Australia itself.

The set, the “climbing tree”, designed by Kari Shead, symbolises the place where four high school students escape the many issues that colour their lives – problem parents, exams, racism, discrimination, curfews, drugs, their indignation about the demeaning statue of an aboriginal man kneeling at the feet of an explorer and the use of  the sacred mountain, Wahluu, as The Mount Panorama race circuit.

With the sound of the 35 bells of the Carillon punctuating the dialogue, their modern-day problems echo issues of the past – a convict servant’s concern about falling in love with her master’s son; the public flogging of the convict Ralph Entwhistle for skinny dipping in 1839; his subsequent hanging with nine other bushrangers in 1830; and the mistreatment of European migrants.

The stories transition via sound effects and the voice of “authority” operated and performed by Tim Hanson, who influences the changes in pace and atmosphere of the performance. Lighting by Bannon Rees helps shift time, place and prevailing mood.

There is a certain type of energy required to portray teenagers and all four actors find it convincingly. Peppered with the idiom and humour that Coopes has injected into the dialogue and the variation in pace Champion has directed, their appeal to both young and old audience members is electric.

Madelaine Osborn is beautifully believable as the rebellious but bright Rayleen, who, despite carrying the burden of an addicted mother, a young sister and unsympathetic schoolteachers, is lively, cheeky, funny and caring.

Jayla-Shae Davey plays her best friend, but complete opposite, Kylie. Davey portrays the different dimensions in Kylie’s character – her desire or justice and reconciliation, her ambition to lead but lack of belief in herself and the calming effect she usually has on. . . .

Review continued in Stage Whispers magazine.

 

 

 

Noëlle Janaczewska is an Australian playwright, poet and essayist who specialises in writing about people and events that “have been overlooked or marginalised in official records”. In this play she has taken as her inspiration the history of Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest and through it “traces the roots of Sydney’s early Modernist thinking and offers a fresh take on Emu Plains in the 1950s”.

In the 1940s, Gerald and Margot Lewers, leading artists in the development of modernism in Australia, bought a property at the foot of the Blue Mountains. Their home became a mecca for the creative cohort of the time. Patrick White described it as a place where “ideas hurtled, argument flared, voices shouted, sparks flew”. After Margot’s death in 1978, the house, gardens and many of the artworks were bequeathed to the local community. Thus, the Penrith Regional Gallery was born.

Janaczewska sets the play in the kitchen of the artists’ home, where the ‘hired help’, Iris and Leo, prepare food for a party that occurs off stage. As guests arrive they collect coats and serve hors d oeuvres – their own lives and conversations a stark contrast to the more bohemian visitors and their heady discussions. Janaczewska accentuates the time with quotations on the food and etiquette of the time that appear on the ‘kitchen’ wall – much to the quiet amusement of the audience.

Katja Handt’s set places the play perfectly. Food is prepared at a scrubbed table, curtains cover some of the cupboards, a large washing up basin dominates the bench space. My grandmothers’ kitchens have been recreated on the stage! With walls, furniture and appliances etched in charcoal-like shading, the kitchen is like the set of a 1950s black and white TV program.

As is Nick Atkins’ direction. There is a sense of the past in the blocking, a past where people knew their place but were aware of changes that were coming. Actions are precisely modulated, the characters obviously discussed and developed with care and the cadences of Janaczewska’s poetic dialogue skilfully rehearsed.

Kate Worsley is beguiling as Iris, a twenty-year-old finding her place in a society that is still affected by post war economies and definite ideas about ‘a woman’s place’. She cleverly finds the suggestion of questioning and awareness of new ideas that Janaczewska has woven into the script, making her Iris a little bit bold and forward thinking.

As Leo, a Biology teacher new to Australia from Hungary, Adam Booth is convincingly reticent, but also direct. He chops and fries field mushrooms as precisely as he avoids giving away too much of his opinions or his real feelings about Australia’s failure to recognise his teaching qualification.

On the stage beside them, cellist Me-Lee Hay deftly accompanies the action, sometimes subtly, at others more obtrusively as scenes become more agitated, dialogue more intense.

There is much in this play that inspires thought and discussion. Hopefully it will be one that goes on to reach a larger audience.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine.