By George Frideric Handel. Words John Milton and Newburgh Hamilton. Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Saturday 8 April, 2023

Reviewed : April 8, 2023

Handel’s Samson! In the Concert Hall of the Opera House! On Easter Saturday! Wow!

It’s aways a thrill to see and hear the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs – as anyone of the audience of the 1250 ardent Philharmonia followers will testify. But this one was special, and it’s hard to find the appropriate adjectives! Stunning? Magnificent? Superb? Dramatic? All of those and more. And yet the music was written by Handel in 1741 to words written by the poet John Milton from 1671 – and they were based on words from the book of Judges in the Old Testament of the Bible written between 1200-165 BCE! That’s remarkable! As was yesterday’s performance.

In his 20^th year as Artistic and Music Director of the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Brett Weymark led his choir, the orchestra and seven very talented soloists in Handel’s musical re-telling of Samson’s final days … and his last triumphant act of strength.

Who was Samson? Samson was the last judge named in the Book of Judges. He died in 1051 BCE when David was the king of the Israelites. He was celebrated for his feats of strength but ended up blind and in chains, betrayed by his wife Dalila to whom he disclosed the secret that his strength lay in his long hair. One night, as he slept, Dalia cut off his hair and betrayed him to her Philistine compatriots, who captured Samson, put out his eyes, and imprisoned him.

Handel’s oratorio tells of Samson’s regret at falling for Dalila’s wiles, giving away his secret and letting down the Israelites. It tells of his rejection of Dalila’s apology, of his reckless challenge to fight the giant Philistine soldier, Harapha, and concludes with Samson regaining his strength enough to destroy the Philistine temple – and, alas, himself.

Unwounded of his enemies he fell,
At once he did destroy and was destroy’d;
The edifice where all were met to see,
Upon their heads, and on his own he pull’d!

It’s a story characterised by betrayal, loss of self-esteem, despair, and death … but eventual triumph. Milton portrayed that in words, Handel transformed them into music that took them to more complex dimensions –  all of which resounded superbly in the Concert Hall yesterday.

Particularly superb was the performance of Alexander Lewis as Samson. Lewis sang heart-wrenchingly of the despair of the man, bereft of his power and his sight, languishing in prison – but he also became the man and his anguish when he was not singing. His eyes stared into a lonely space; his body seemed to carry the weight of suffering. It was a memorable performance that was deeply moving. (He will sing with the Philharmonia in the Concert Hall again in The Golden Age of Broadway on Saturday 6^th May at 7pm).

Samson’s friend Micah was invented by librettist Newburgh Hamilton to narrate the story as a sort of Greek Chorus, and countertenor Russell Harcourt performed this long and exacting role with aplomb, finding Handel’s musical perception of the poet’s words in lines such as …

Ye sons of Israel now lament …
Your glory’s fled
Amongst the dead
Great Samson lies
For ever, ever, clos’d his eyes!

Soprano Celeste Lazarenko, as Dalila, charmed the audience as she sang (and played) the shamed, apologetic wife, rather than the “hyena” Samson described whose “charms to ruin led the way”.

Manoa, Samson’s proud but devasted father, was performed by bass-baritone Christopher Richardson, who found a father’s anguish in his carefully modulated notes.

Perth-born Andrew O’Connor made his debut at the Sydney Opera House singing the boasting Philistine “giant” Harapha. O’Connor’s powerful bass voice taunted Samson in his “chains” but met his own fate at Samson’s hands when Samson felled the Philistine temple.

T

enor Matthew Flood was the messenger describing Samson’s death – and introducing the beautifully sombre dirge with which Handel heralded Samson’s hearse. Here, Lazarenko returned to the stage as an Israelite woman, calling the Virgin Choristers – and Irish-Australian soprano Stephanie Mooney – as they brought the “laurels” to strew on the hearse.

Behind the soloists, supporting them constantly, was Weymark, the orchestra and the watchful, wonderful one hundred and five singers of the Philharmonia Chorus. Together their voices rang out in praise at times, in sadness at others – and joyfully as they “let their celestial concerts all unite” in the final moments of the oratorio.

It’s always special to watch Brett Weymark at work. His love of the music is evident in vibrant enthusiasm and his extraordinary relationship with each part of orchestra and every member of the choir. This performance was no exception. Together with the soloists, they made this interpretation of Handel’s musical characterisation of the bible story much more than a ‘performance’.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine.

By Joanna Murray-Smith. Sydney Theatre Company. Director Sarah Goodes. Drama Theatre Sydney Opera House. 4 April – 13 May, 2023

Reviewed : April 5, 2023

Joanna Murray-Smith took on some heavy responsibilities when agreeing to write this play – responsibilities to the subject, the theme, the nation – and to herself as a writer. It is never easy to create a piece of theatre about someone who is living, especially when that ‘someone’ is now so well-known on the ‘world stage’, someone whose words have resounded internationally. Someone like Australia’s first, and, unfortunately, only, female Prime Minister. Someone like Julia Gillard.

But Murray-Smith is a wise, astute playwright. She knows how to manipulate words and characters. She does her research thoroughly – and always finds an ingenious “way in”. As she has done in this clever theatrical insight into the woman whose remarkable personal and political achievements were overshadowed by ingrained chauvinism, sexism, and misogyny.

Murray-Smith’s play pinpoints events and experiences that shaped her subject’s interest in injustice and the law. Stories her father told of badly planned mining operations and their effect on the community – like the loss of 45 miners in the fiery underground explosion of the Six Bells colliery in Abertillery in 1960, just a year before Gillard was born. It brings her to Australia as a five-year-old and touches on her schooling in Adelaide, her growing political awareness, and her gritty determination to stick to her personal decisions. Then it takes her into the law, and politics – and a male dominated parliament.

Yet the play has a lightness that belies the political and social weight that it carries. That’s the skill of a good playwright. To take the research – and the characters – and shape them into a theatrical experience that’s engaging but still lands a strong punch. The strong punch was always going to be Gillard’s misogyny speech – getting to it creatively with truth and sincerity and humour took special skill, which Murray-Smith has demonstrated time and time again.

Putting it onto the stage was another thing – and who better to do it than other women! Enter intuitive director Sarah Goodes and talented performer Justine Clarke. Together they bring Murray-Smith’s interpretation of “Julia” to the stage – a big stage, made to appear even larger and more introspective by designer Renee Mulder, who wraps it in a high diagonal of glass that frames at times, mirrors at others, or merges reflections with ghosted videoed images (Susie Henderson) of grassland or flowers or people.

At first it almost dwarfs Clarke, but as she moves, and Alexander Berlage’s lights cunningly follow her, the glass encompasses the action, the reflections inferring the complexity of the character she is portraying, the intensity of her beliefs … and her feisty fortitude. Clarke presents a character who is contained and disarming, especially when she transforms to the very young Julia telling her mother she isn’t interested in growing up to be a mother, or the high school Julia passionately refuting arguments in a debate.

Where Murray-Smith has used actual quotations, especially from Julia the politician, Clarke changes her accent, cleverly implying the real Julia without actually impersonating. It’s a difficult device, but one she handles most effectively.

Clarke also maintains an energy that implies the drive and momentum of her character – an energy that sustains her through ninety minutes on stage, and a stirring delivery of the famous “not now, not ever’ speech. The lead into that celebrated ‘ten minute’ response to Tony Abbott’s goading is another effective piece of writing and direction.

Clarke’s Julia ‘chats’ to the audience as she sits in front of a mirror and carefully pins up her hair in preparation for putting on an auburn wig. Each twist of the hair and placement of the hairpin becomes a step toward that legendary moment in question time.

As she puts on the wig, and slips into a blue jacket, she also slips smoothly into the woman who at last responded to the disrespect and derision that had dogged her through three years as Prime Minister – criticism to which she had refrained from reacting until that moment.

Clarke delivers the speech with all the right pauses, all the right changes in timbre, all the right, tight control. It’s a fitting end to the play – except that the play goes on for a few minutes more. Perhaps to give some in the audience time to recall their original response. Perhaps to give others, hearing it in its entirety for the first time, a chance to realise its full impact.

Perhaps to give Jessica Bentley who has been Clarke’s silent companion on the stage – changing small props, handing Clarke a hand towel or a bottle of water, appearing as one of the ghostly figures in the glass – a chance to reach out to the audience with a gentle, challenging question.

This is a play that was carefully and sensitively conceived. Goodes has directed with similar care and sensitivity, for both the actor … and the person she portrays.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine.

By James McManus. Crisscross Productions. Director Charlie Vaux. KXT on Broadway. 24 March – 8 April, 2023

Reviewed : March 30, 2023*

Many industrial centres in the United States floundered at the end of the 20^th century. In Pittsburgh, for example, after the steelworks closed in 1978, 300,000 people lost their jobs. By 2021 the U.S. Census Bureau declared that one in five citizens – over 56,000 people – in that once thriving city lived in poverty.

Playwright James McManus grew up in a dying steel mill town near Pittsburgh. In Cherry Smoke he paints a vivid picture of what can happen when families are thrown into that sort of despair and hopelessness. Of the effect it has upon their children, left to fend for themselves. Of their scramble to find refuge, security, dignity … even love.

Cherry Smoke is a tough play, but one that finds beauty and a sort of splendour in the strength and tenacity of its characters. McManus has an uncanny ability to create characters who grow and mature; who develop tenuous relationships that give them courage, and hope, and faith.

Charlie Vaux directs this play on the intimate, stage of the new KXT theatre, using the close proximity of the audience to encase the action and giving designer Soham Apte the opportunity to create the shadowy, decaying outskirts of a dying city. A place that confines and yet sequesters; a place of refuge or sanctuary … perhaps a place to dream.

It’s a place where Cherry (Meg Hyeronimus), alone and homeless, has survived on the bank of a river, fending for herself. A place where she first sees Fish (Tom Dawson), edgy, tense, fighting to please an absent, abusive father. Where she meets his more stable, thoughtful brother Duffy (Fraser Cane) and his gentle, reticent girlfriend Bug (Alice Birbara).

cManus takes them backwards and forward in time, explaining their present through scenes from their past and carefully developing their characters without losing the continuity of their stories – or the frailties of their developing relationships. Skilful use of language defines the age of the characters clearly. Faltering, tentative dialogue in childhood scenes contrasts with the more confident, circumspect language as they mature and relate more intimately.

Charlie Vaux pays homage to the playwright’s skill in very tight and carefully judged direction. Conflict and tension tie together both time and characters in the play, and Vaux uses those elements to drive the action. Conflict draws the characters to each other originally, giving them a strange sort of bond. Conflict also comes between at times, creating a tension that reaches from them into to the audience.

Hyeronimus establishes that tension in the feisty but anxious Cherry, a tension that she never really loses. As the young Cherry she is watchful, alert, moving cautiously with nervy awareness of the inherent danger of her lonely, riverbank existence. She sustains that caution as she becomes the older, slightly more secure Cherry, waiting patiently for Fish, the boy she fell in love with as a child. Hyeronimus uses movements and gestures that are tightly controlled, carefully metred; eyes that stare apprehensively, almost scarily at times, but strangely soften when Fish is there, filling the space she keeps for him.

Tom Dawson’s Fish does not always fill that space happily. Driven by a boxer’s urge to keep moving, he is jumpy, skittish, hard to hold down despite Cherry’s devotion and his growing dependence on her loyal constancy. Dawson’s Tom sustains a hard, aggressive energy – fuelled by failure and lost battles with the law – but he also finds a softness as he grows to accept his attraction to Cherry and reaches beyond his hard childhood to try and find the man Cherry sees in him – and the man his brother Duffy hopes he can become.

The contrast between Tom and Duffy is played with calm strength and humour by Fraser Cane. Cane has a quiet but distinctive stage presence which he uses to show Duffy’s steadfastness and dependability, whether in his loyalty to Tom – or his love for Bug, as a youngster meeting her tentatively, or in the strong, tender relationship that develops as they mature.

Alice Birbara’s Bug is a gentle presence that hovers in the tawdry atmosphere of the dying town, bring a sweetness that inspires both Duffy and Cherry – and even reaches out to Tom. Birbara is a consummate performer, who uses restrained gesture and movement to infuse her young Bug with shy tenderness; and her older Bug with understanding and compassion for others despite an emptiness that she finds it hard to suppress.

Each of these performers takes their characters, both vocally and physically, from youthful past to more pressured, adult present. The transitions are clear and distinct, based on Vaux’s precise but sensitive direction. Each scene change has been carefully considered and staged,  enhanced by lighting and sound effectively perceived by Jasmin Borsovszky and Johnny Yang.

This play is harrowing at times, but the characters get into your heart and stay with you as they show that love can be found even in places where hope seems to have been abandoned.

With Cherry Smoke, Charlie Vaux and his cast are giving Crisscross Productions a strong introduction to the Sydney theatre scene – and are reaffirming  KXT’s continuing support and faith in indie companies in this new, exciting theatre space on Broadway.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening Night

By Richard Bean. Directed by Angus Evans. New Theatre, Newtown, NSW. 22 Mar – 15 April, 2023

Reviewed : March 26, 2023

Richard Bean’s whacky adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 commedia dell’arte play, Servant of Two Masters, has been doing the rounds since 2011. And no wonder! It’s funny, suggestive and gives contemporary commedia buffs a chance to do their zany stuff – pratfalls, acrobatics, chases, falls, poses, banter and some judicious over-acting!

Director Angus Evans describes it as “one of the most brilliantly stupid plays ever written” and his production at the New lives up to his description, despite the fact that it’s been a hard row for Evans to hoe. The play was beset by the latest Covid wave and opening night had to be delayed for a week. Then, at the last minute, Evans himself had to step into one of the roles. He attributes the eventual realisation of the play to “a group of volunteers working tirelessly and a cast of naturally gifted clowns that have brought pure joy to every rehearsal”.

Those ‘clowns’ and that ‘joy’ is certainly evident in the production. The cast – and the musicians who strum and sing between acts – enjoy every one-hundred and thirty minutes of this play that Evans describes as a “Britcom of the 60’s …  laced with the bigotry and exclusion of that era”. An apt description – but he feels they have “unravelled” the stereotypes with a cast that is “made up of people of different gender, race, sexuality and ability” that might be “a glimpse of a future (or a present) where the marginalised are part of these comedies where they once weren’t”.

That diverse “group of people” are led by Tristan Black who plays Francis Henshall, the hungry, harried ‘batman’ trying to serve ‘two gun’nors’.

Black is a ball of energy. He talks quickly, moves quickly, somersaults, cartwheels, trips, jumps and falls, yet never misses the beat of the comedy nor the integration with the other cast members that is so necessary in a play such as this. If it’s not fast, the action and the dialogue just don’t work – and Black sustains that speed, whether racing in and out of doors with plates of food, soft-talking each of his masters, or throwing cheeky asides to the audience. This is a hard, busy role on which much of the action depends, and Black’s energy and focus never fail.

Eleanor Ryan and Patrick Cullen are his “guv’nors”.  Ryan is Rachel, disguised as her twin brother, Roscoe, a gangster who was murdered by Stanley (Cullen) an upper-class poser, who is also Rachel’s lover. Both are trying to find each other. Both are staying at the same hotel. Both employ Francis, who runs between them, carrying messages, ironing shirts, ordering food … and desperately trying to keep them apart.

Tying the two together are brash con man Charlie (Joe Clements), his ditzy daughter Pauline (Angharad Wise) and his sexy accountant Dolly (Anna Dooley).  Pauline had been ‘betrothed’ to Roscoe – for a sum! – but is now in love with aspiring actor Alan (Angus Evans), son of Charlie’s lawyer, Harry (Amy Victoria Brooks. When Rachel appears impersonating Roscoe, Pauline’s new romance is blighted.

Obviously the plot doesn’t thicken! It just gets sillier. That’s what commedia is all about – a simple plot around which a lot of silly things happen.

Those ‘silly things’ can only happen on a set that can accommodate slamming doors, falls down invisible stairs and 3 or 4 different venues. Jess Zlotnick ‘s set manages to do all of this very efficiently – with the help of another comic routine and a very efficient stage crew. The sets are as colourful as the characters. They are a credit to Zlotnick’s vision – and the team of volunteers who constructed them.

One Man, Two Guv’nors is fast and funny and Evans and his cast and crew certainly seem to enjoy making it so.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane. Adaptor / Director: Jay James-Moody. Squabbalogic Independent Music Theatre. Seymour Centre. 17 March – 15 April, 2023

Reviewed : March 22, 2023*

This cleverly adapted and skilfully directed production zooms along at a tightly controlled pace. It takes the ideas of the original 1960s musical fantasy and brings them cunningly into the 21^st century without losing the any of the romantic whimsy and music of the original book and score or the 1970s movie.

Inspired by the idea of Michael Mayer’s 2011 Broadway adaptation, Jay James-Moody has split the original female lead, Daisy, into a male and female character, then contemporised the production in order to “to explore themes more relevant to our present times”. Daisy in his adaptation becomes David, a gay thirty-year-old engaged to a Warren who hides his sexuality.

The idea works – probably because the plot is so implausible …

Psychiatrist Dr Mark Bruckner becomes interested in David Gamble when he accidentally hypnotises him in a demonstration lecture. Further ‘sessions’ reveal not only David’s (sometimes called Daisy) strange abilities, like making flowers grow quickly or predicting when a phone is about to ring … but the fact that the spirit of Melinda Welles, who died in the 1920s, inhabits David when he is under hypnosis. Still mourning his recently lost wife, Bruckner falls for the beautiful Melinda, just as David begins to fall for Bruckner.

There are other parallels too. David’s strained relationship with his fiancé Warren is similar to Melinda’s relationship with her controlling husband Edward. David’s search for himself compares with Melinda’s determination to retain her individuality. And behind it all is the inherent danger of hypnosis and using psychoanalysis to explore repressed memories.

There is also some comedy … and the delight of Burton’s music (played by a four piece combo of keyboard, drums, cello and double bass led by Natasha Aynsley), a surprising and colourful set (Michael Hankin) that blooms with ever-increasing window boxes of flowers, and a lighting design in which James Wallis ingeniously matches the whimsy and fantasy of the plot.

And, of course, there’s the busy, hard-working cast.

Adaptor/director James-Moody himself takes on the role of David Gamble. James-Moody brings a vast experience across musical theatre to this role – and indeed the whole production. Perhaps it is that experience and his perceptive vision that makes the contemporary context work.

His performance as David is understated and beguiling. He creates a character who is unassuming, perplexed, and just a little gauche, who stands on the brink of relationships, unsure of himself, but always anxious to do the right thing. He uses comic timing – in a reaction, a quizzical smile, a tilt of the chin – to enrich the character. And he sings and harmonises beautifully.

As does Madeleine Jones as Melinda Welles, especially in the finale of the first act, where she sings with Mark and David in a cunningly directed threesome. Jones finds all the grace and style of the 1920s as she creates a feminist femme fatale who is anxious to live again in a time that is more liberated. She moves elegantly on the stage, appearing almost ghost-like at first, then finding other dimensions, especially when she expounds the expectations of women of her time when she sings Don’t Tamper with My Sister…

“don’t stab at her, don’t grab at her.
Don’t tamper with my sister
On a public walke”.

Blake Bowden plays Mark Bruckner as a clinician whose usual confidence and pragmatism has been skewed by his recent loss. Bowden finds that juxtaposition in a performance that moves between reality and wistfulness, logic and illogic, assurance and yearning, each of which are exemplified in – and influenced by – his relationship with David, and his fixation with Melinda. Bowden is a confident performer – and his duets with James-Moody and Jones, especially in the title song, are well executed.

James Haxby plays David’s gender-unsure fiancé Warren and Melinda’s arrogant, 1920s chauvinist husband Edward. Billie Palin, Natalie Abbott and Lincoln Elliot take on a variety of smaller roles that amplify the scenes. They are especially appealing as David’s friends Muriel, Millie and Flora who, along with Haxby, bring moments of fun as they sing, dance … and change the scenes and the set. The choreography (Leslie Bell) seems simple, but it is expertly tied to the lilt of the music and the caprice of the fantasy.

The production sits remarkably well on the stage of the Reginald Theatre. It is a small theatre, but its deep stage allows for imaginative sets and carefully concealed entrances. Its height provides a lofty orchestra space and allows for imaginative lighting and effects. This production takes advantage of both. It’s well directed, well acted , well staged … and if it’s also a bit quirky, isn’t that something we all need just now?

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

* Opening night

By C J Johnson. Hunters Hill Theatre Company. Directed by Maggie Scott. Club Ryde. 17 March – 2 April, 2023

Reviewed : March 17, 2023 *

Oh. My. Dog! (or  O.M.D.) Hunters Hill Theatre have “Let the Dogs Out” onto the stage at Club Ryde and they are doing their doggie best to tell their doggie tales!

All the dog stories you have heard – or told – have been compiled by playwright CJ Jonson in a series of ‘doggie diaries’ re-told by hounds of various breed, gender, size, age … and social class. From an impatient Rottweiler to an aging Labrador, a rabbit-chasing Greyhound to a peppy little Chihuahua … their stories are told by a cast of four actors who take on the different attributes and voices of fifteen very different canine characters.

The simple set, projections and lighting, designed by Wayne Chee give director Maggie Scott’s canine cast the space to strut, cavort, chase and cajole. Each is identified and introduced by their names projected on to a backyard paling fence – the bane of Borys, the aforesaid Rottweiler – and a grab of a dog-appropriate pop songs compiled by musical director Peter Tucker.

Anthony Slaven, Kirit Chaudhary, Ross Alexander and Brooke Davidson ‘collar-up’ to present these sometimes cute, sometimes funny, sometimes sad dog stories – many based on or inspired by true tales. All dressed in basic black, apart from the obligatory collar and one or two suggestive garments – a walkie-talkie carried by Sherlock the airport sniffer Beagle; a gold chain and a dollar sign for Scarface the American Pit Bull Terrier – the actors introduce their characters with a jaunty walk, a mangy scratch, a proud swagger, a sassy sashay … or a raucous bark.

It would be impossible to describe how each is created by the actor involved. And it would spoil the work they have done with Scott to bring their doggie selves to life. Suffice to say that it’s not just the words and ‘doggie voices’ but the expressions and movements and gestures that make the ‘dogginess’ of the characters believable.

Slaven’s Jack Russell, for instance, is seldom still on the stage. He runs, wriggles, somersaults, jumps, rolls and begs for food or a tummy scratch. Davidson’s Toy Poodle Polly executes a graceful ballet, and exits twitching her behind! Blackie, the mongrel, played by Alexander, lolls indulgently in his dusty space as he describes the mange that irritates him and the big bone he and his mate Cobber (Chaudhary) have buried for another day.

There are countless dog stories Johnson could have included – but those he has told cover pet dogs, working dogs, guard dogs, neglected dogs … even a wild Australian dog. And Maggie Scott’s hard-working cast portray them inventively.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

* Opening Night

By David Williamson. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Directed by Mark Kilmurry. 10 March – 28 April 2023

Reviewed : 15 March, 2023 *

This is one of David Williamson’s best plays. It’s a two hander, and that has given him more time to flesh out the characters and make his one-liners extend into clever repartee. Like all good comedy, it’s best played fast with the occasional pithy pause and short, telling silence. It’s an actor’s play, first performed at the Ensemble in 2010 by Georgie Parker and Glen Hazeldine. Director Mark Kilmurry has enticed them back to reintroduce the unlikely duo of Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica, but, from their pacy, animated performance on opening night, I don’t think they needed much enticing!

Parker is Monica. Once a classical violinist with the Sydney Symphony orchestra, she’s been unable to play for thirteen years due to RSI in her left shoulder. She’s intelligent, attractive and very astute. She lives alone in in a stylish one-bedroom apartment (designed with meticulous eye to detail by Veronique Benett). It’s small, compact, but the kitchen needs renovating and she’s seeking quotes.

Enter Hazeldine as Rex. He’s a wannabe country and western singer and guitarist who once almost made it on the Tamworth scene.  He’s loud, jovial, a bit too confident, a fast talker – and Monica has, reluctantly, accepted his quote.

When work commences and she comes home to a blast of country music, she draws the battlelines. It’s her house. She hates country and western music, and she won’t have it played. Then she tries to introduce Rex to Mahler …

Williamson has taken the age-old ‘opposites attract’ theme and made it into a classic comedy and framed it with music – and hammering and drilling from the off-stage kitchen. The play needs to move quickly, and, with these two clever, experienced performers, Kilmurry pushes the action with a practised hand.

Georgie Parker reaches inside Monica to find the disappointed concert performer who lost not only her proud place as second violinist, but her marriage to the conductor. She also finds her strengths – assurance, tenacity perception. She’s not going to let this country music tradesman get at her … until she they meet for dinner and her drinking problem is revealed! Parker says as much with words as she does with gestures and looks – a tilt of the chin, raised eyebrows, a flash of her blue eyes … and perfectly timed pauses.

Pauses in which Hazeldine reacts with knowing smirks or quizzical disbelief or even a bit of bluster. There is not much that can break the confidence of the Rex he plays – and what’s more he is determined to win over this striking woman.

Things begin to come to a head as Rex takes off a week from the renovation to look after his intellectually challenged son during the school holidays. Except he’s really going to Tamworth to take over a vacant spot on the local radio station as DJ Rhinestone Rex. That ‘spot’ is usually a classical music program … a favourite with Monica. Unfortunately she’s tuned in – and is not happy when Rhinestone tells the audience about the ice lady he’s met recently.

Thus Williamson sets the scene for a love affair that ‘beat shifts’ between country and classics – between Dolly Parton and Gustav Mahler, Tammy Wynette and JS Bach – and a snatch of Casey Chambers. The music sets the tempo … and sound designer Daryl Wallace and lighting designer Trudy Dalgleish play along, catching the twin atmospheres and the quirky changes in mood and emotion.

Parker and Hazeldine are exciting to watch in this tight, carefully blocked and skilfully executed production – and it’s a lot of fun!

* Opening Night

By Margaret Perry. Red Line Productions and essential workers. Directed By Zoë Hollyoak & Morgan Moroney. Old Fitz Theatre. 9 March – 1 April, 2023

Reviewed : 12 March, 2023

Essie has lost her high-profile job, and her girlfriend has left her. Her life is suddenly telescoping in on itself – and it makes her “feel more like a chair than a person. One of those folding chairs”. You know the ones she means. The collapsible ones that are hard to manipulate, tip over easily or fold in on themselves.

It’s a fair description of how Essie is feeling – and Janet Anderson explains why in this award-winning play by Irish playwright Margaret Perry. Perry writes tightly, her sentences slicing in on each other in this long but fast-moving monologue that Anderson attacks tenaciously. There are many characters in Essie’s life. All of them ready to help, advise, counsel, direct … confuse. And we meet all of them as Anderson takes Essie on a search for herself.

Anderson is a forceful presence on the stage. She moves with confident assurance, using the space judiciously, so that it appears wide at one moment, confining at another. Her timing is immaculate – especially in this multi-discipline production that mixes action and close-up camera shots, off stage videos and passed props that require split second timing. Anderson never falters – and her comedic timing is just as faultless.

As Essie she is open, sharing her confusion and uncertainty as her world becomes increasingly … collapsible. She makes the audience her sounding board, her confidant. Gives them her trust – and in so doing introduces them to her sister and her husband, her father, girlfriends and takes them with her to some infuriatingly condescending and snooty interviews. Anderson finds the right voice and tone for each character … and the lack of understanding and compassion they show.

At the same time, she exposes Essie’s vulnerability as interviews fail and her savings dwindle and the list of positive words people use to describe her – or those she uses to describe herself at interviews – make her feel even less secure

Set designer Hayden Relf has created a set that is as ‘fold away’ as Essie’s description of herself. There’s a lift that opens to reveal a claustrophobic silver space. A bathroom where a camera projects Essie’s face like a mirror. The back of the bathroom door has a low table at which Essie sits on the floor describing dinner with her father. Cameras and videos feature intricately in this production and lighting and video designer Morgan Moroney has ensured they add to the intimacy of Essie’s narrative, and the frailty of her loss of self-esteem.

There is humour in this play – and Anderson does it very well – but there is also an undertow in Perry’s message, a message about unemployment and loss of confidence and the effect of condescension.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Tarell Alvin McCraney. National Theatre of Parramatta. Directors Dino Dimitriadis and Zindzi Okenyo. Riverside Theatre Parramatta. 18 Feb – 11 March, 2023

Reviewed : February 18, 2023 *

Congratulations Dino Dimitriadis and Zindzi Okenyo! Your production of this touching, funny, sad, serious play is special in every way. You have reached into the heart of this very beautiful writing and allowed its messages – and your talented cast – to shine. That they shine so brightly as part of WorldPride makes this production even more special.

Choir Boy comes from the pen – and memories – of American playwright/academic Tarell Alvin McCraney, written in 2007, in the final year of his degree. As he reflected on the powerfully legible lessons” of 20 years of education, he realised that “the most valuable lessons came from my classmates. The bullying and isolation in school fed the fire to be close, to hold friends, true friends, tight.”

Choir Boy grew from that realisation. It’s about “young Black people dealing with the very real world issues of homophobia, classism and gender expectations” but its messages reach beyond that, and this production finds all of those messages. It finds them clearly but sensitively through humour and timing and music – and the characters that Dimitiadis and Okenyo have developed so carefully with their intuitive cast.

The play is set in the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys, a Catholic boarding school that aimed for its students to grow into “strong, ethical black men”. The boys wear their uniform with pride. Their shoes are as highly polished as their ambitions, the most immediate being a place in the “legendary’ school choir.

The seven students we meet have made it! One of the two tenors will lead them as they sing the school song for graduation. Will it be homophobic bully Bobby, the Headmaster’s nephew, or Pharus, a talented student who has suffered homophobic slurs for years? Will either of them find support from their fellow choristers? Junior, Bobby’s dutiful sidekick; AJ Pharus’s empathetic roommate; or David, the scholarship boy who aspires to being a pastor. Each character is complex. Each carries ‘baggage’ that is hidden behind their aspiration to be good “Drew Boys”.

Dimitriadis and Okenyo are sensitive to all of this, and to the humour which McCraney has infused into the dialogue, humour that takes the edge off the gravity of the themes, without losing their seriousness. Add the singing, the smart choreography, the creative use of light and shade – and the intensity of the direction – and this production does McCraney’s play, and his characters, proud. The boys, Headmaster Marrow and gloopy Mr Pendleton are real and amazingly tangible.

Pharus is happy at Drew: “Until I got to Drew, everybody didn’t like me but I had … I had space to let me be. That was what was good about being here.” Even though he feels secure, he still realises the need to hide his sexuality behind over-confidence and caution.

Darron Hayes finds that aware self-discipline in a stunning performance that reaches into the hearts of the audience. His timing – especially as he pulls himself together to overcome Pharus’s insecurity and cover it with smart, sassy repartee – is immaculate. So too is his beautiful rendition of the gospel music – and his canny delivery of the idea that the gospel songs held coded clues to help runaway slaves escape their oppressors. Hayes inhabits every aspect of this talented, ambitious young man struggling not to be who he really is.

Bobby is played by Zarif with a tightness of control that is both physical and expressive. It’s there in the way Bobby waits for just the right moment to break Pharus’s concentration with a racist slur; in the way Bobby watches … and quietly gloats. But there is more to Bobby than this – and Zarif shows his vulnerability as well, and, in the final moments of the play, a little of his shame.

Abu Kebe is Junior, Bobby’s follower, sometimes a little reluctant, but always ‘on side’. Kebe is a gifted performer who uses his eyes and body to say more than the words he thinks very carefully about uttering. The Junior he portrays know where it’s best to appear loyal – and how to let go enthusiastcally!

Theo Williams plays the ‘gentle giant’ David, acutely aware of how his scholarship depends on his grades and his behaviour. Williams makes him diffident, a little reclusive, anxious not to stand out, but acutely aware all the time of the precariousness of his position at Drew.

Quinton Rofail Rich is “AJ”, Pharus’s roommate and confidant. Rich is an astute performer who realises the importance of being in every moment. He watches, follows, uses tiny pauses to show the depth of his thinking, and the weight his words have in the context of the play.

Gareth Dutlow is the seventh member of the choir. He doesn’t speak often, but he too watches every moment, reacting with a slight frown, a knowing smile, an understanding touch. As the ‘swing’ in this production, every character is important to him, and he identifies with each them subtly throughout the production.

The two ‘educators’ in this special school are played by American actor Robert Harrell and one of Australian theatre’s National Treasures, Tony Sheldon.

Harrell brings the weight of command to his portrayal of Headmaster Marrow. He stands straight, hands controlled, voice stern. It is only when he is flummoxed by Pharus’s impudent remarks, or by his familial support for Bobby, that we see the chinks in his personality.

Mr Pendleton could be a combination of every dotty, fumbling, eager-to-be loved, easily mocked teacher McCraney remembers and Tony Sheldon finds all of that and more in a performance that is hilarious but totally restrained and beautifully controlled.

The two directors bring these characters together on an open stage where space is used skilfully, where choreography is tight and creative, where humour and the joy of music intervene judiciously to lessen the pain of resentment and the hurt of racism and homophobia.

Choir Boy comes from America but its message is universal. It reaches out to those who have suffered – or continue to suffer – because of their race or colour or gender or religion. And this production does so gently but with strength and compassion and Pride.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine.

* Opening Night

Bass Fam Creative. Director Bass G Fam. Riverside Theatre Parramatta. 16 -26 Feb, 2023

Reviewed : February 17, 2022 *

Bass Fam created Matador to celebrate “a great love”. That he decided to do so through dance – and burlesque and circus – gave him great freedom to explore the physicality of love, as well its complexity, its darkness, volatility and destruction as well as the passion, intensity and nurturing.

Six choreographers and fourteen performers bring his vision to life in this production based loosely around a bull, a matador and a love affair. They tell the story through dance, raunchy burlesque, some pole dancing and some aerial thrills. And they tell it fast, and colourfully!

Themes such as love at first sight, flirting, secrets and chaos infuse the choreography of the first act. These themes suggest the joy and inhibition of youth – vitality, naivety, even gullibility. All this shines through in creative, contemporary choreography –slick, snappy routines and impressive single and double aerial displays. The audience takes up the invitation to share the joy, clapping in time to the music, applauding the circus feats.

The second act takes them to a more mature, erotic view of love, a view that incorporates lust, hurt, cheating, rejection, revenge and wrath. Here Bas and his choreographers move to more classical dance including several beautifully executed ballet sequences. The love portrayed is inclusive, leading to some very touching and expressive double aerial routines. This part of the program is more varied, the choreography requiring greater precision, sensitivity, passion and expression.

Bas realises the visual and emotive effect of colour, and the costumes, backdrop and lighting feed into that effect. Red, yellow, gold, black and bright white fabrics; leather, lace, filmy chiffon and embroidery; sparkling jewels and feathers; high heels and shiny, platformed boots – all bring what Bas calls “an element of depravity” to the production.

The energy of these performers – sustained for two hours of complex dancing, daring circus feats and ultra-quick changes of costume and style – is extraordinary. The joy of their craft shines in their faces. They love what they do, and they do it well!

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine.

*Opening Night