In 1834 in Pinjarra south of Perth, white Mounted Police carried out a deliberate and well planned attack on the local Nyoongar people. Armed with guns and with no warning, the white men easily outmatched the Indigenous people. This was seen to have been necessary action for the protection and claiming of the land for the white settlers. Bindjareb Pinjarra brings this story, often not spoken about, or whitewashed to the point of being explained away as a minor battle, to the stage.

The work spins together three stories – of the white European generals who instigated the massacre, a young man in contemporary Perth coming up against racism before finding out about his familial connections to Pinjarra, and a slightly confused story about a white man Daniel and two indigenous men presumably set in the 1800s – mostly confused because I couldn’t tell if Daniel was supposed to be a child or mentally impaired.

It’s most compelling, though, when the cast speak directly to the audience: of the white performers who weren’t taught about Indigenous history; of the Aboriginal performer who was told by his mother he could just tell people he was Greek; and an extract from A Short History of Western Australia – a book I sincerely hope has been pulled from school library bookshelves.

The company promotes the work as being “a comedy about a massacre” – and it is an interesting technique to tell a horrific story. The company does an admirable job of keeping the work connecting to the young audience through humour, while also carefully detailing the massacre, but too often the humour feels as if it is sitting apart from the work. It sits on top of the rest of the story; this uneven layer of humour to defuse the audience rarely feels integrated with the narrative.

In the Q&A, we were told how the story has impacted the narrative of the massacre when it is taught in Western Australian schools – there is the acknowledgment it was, indeed, a massacre and not a “battle”. For South Australian audiences, too, this is an important story from our history that we should be acknowledging; not least of all because it is only one example in hundreds of appalling acts that were committed against this country’s Indigenous people. The show also teaches wider lessons, talking about harmful stereotypes and racism, and in the need to be vigilant when looking at a whitewashing of Australian history.

The work is very much embedded in an old tradition of theatre-in-education: with the emphasis on the education, rather than the theatre. As such, it does a utilitarian job of telling the story and delivering the message, but it falls short of what we should be asking and expecting from companies artistically in 2013. In the Q&A after the work, I wasn’t at all surprised to learn the company has been presenting this production for twenty-odd years.

The audience I saw it with was mostly high school students, and the company carried them well with laughter and with lessons through the production. But still, I can’t help but feel disappointed in a performance style that feels dated, and feel we should ask for more.

Come Out Festival 2013 in association with the Adelaide Festival Centre presents The Pinjarra Project’s Bindjareb Pinjarra. Created and performed by Isaac Drandic, Sam Longley, Kelton Pell, Craig Williams and Nigel Wilkes. At the Hewitson Theatre, Gawler, season closed. Continues at the Dunstan Playhouse, May 25-28, and the Chaffey Theatre, Renmark May 31. More information and tickets.

The propensity for children to believe in magic is marvelous. They watch theatre with a sense of wonderment, not trying to figure out the trickery or catch the misdirection, but content with a belief that what they’re watching is real. To create a sense of wonder and mysticism in The Moon’s a Balloon, though, Patch Theatre Company uses something better than magic: they use science.

In its most compelling scene, dancer Rob Griffin moves around a solitary balloon, with just enough helium that it lightly skims on the top of the ground. Griffin deftly moves his body around the balloon, and his manipulation of the air surrounding it causes the balloon to move and appear sentient, creating a enchanting duet.

With dancer Katrina Lazaroff, the pair play with balloons that have been weighted and would sit in the palm of your hand, and balloons that extend meters in diameter and softly repel against the ground before falling back to earth. They run with helium balloons, their strings pulled taught to appear solid. Strings are dislodged and balloons fly up into the rafters; weighted balloons fall back down to earth.

Firmly embedded in dance theatre, this textless physical work feels like significant new territory for the company, while still feeling very much of the repertoire. The work was collaboratively created by the dancers and the rest of the creative team, and Lazaroff has previously created dance work for children in Skip – also being featured in this year’s Come Out Festival – and it’s exciting to see this audience for the form being engaged in Adelaide.

While the work sometimes explores a friendship between Lazaroff and Griffin, the young audience responds the most to the work while the pair are teasing each other. It’s the tension in the work the audience has the most joy in: one dancer refusing to share a balloon with the other; the possibility a balloon will fly up and away.

With white costumes and white balloons, designer Morag Cook creates a simple palate which lighting by David Gadsden washes the stage in solid colours, or spots and highlights the balloons. Josh Bennett’s score is a mixture of pre-recording and live solo performance keeps proceedings moving along nicely. But through the show, the balloon’s the thing. It’s the centre of the work and the creativity, and from big to small it creates something big with simple joy.

Unfortunately, in the final moments of the work the stage is entirely taken over by projection art, and The Moon’s a Balloon loses its way.

For a show that is so invested in the complexity and the beauty that can be found in the simple and a show that finds power in the physical interplay between performer and balloon, it’s disappointing for the final moments to be invested purely in technology. While well mapped with modern technology, the graphics themselves feel from the eighties, and the scene only detracts from the physicality that came before it.

The Moon’s a Balloon shows the perception of magic that can be created from the real: there is no need to obscure that with what can be found in the digital.

Patch Theatre Company and the Come Out Festival present The Moon’s a Balloon. Collaboratively created by Josh Bennett (composer), Dave Brown (director), Morag Cook (designer), David Gadsden (lighting designer), Rob Griffin (performer), Roz Hervey (provocateur) and Katrina Lazaroff (performer).  At the Odeon Theatre until June 1st. More information and tickets. 

Serena Moorghen, Brad Williams and Claire Glenn. Photo by Olivia Zanchetta.

Muff, the latest production from independent Adelaide theatre company five.point.one, is heavy, hard hitting theatre that leaves its audience with no easy to digest emotions. Written by Van Badham and directed here by Alison Howard, the work explores women, sex and relationships; a horrific, random rape of a young woman and the threads from this event that continue to wrap and bind their way into lives years after the physical injuries have healed.

Eve (Claire Glenn) has moved back to London from China, a country she moved to in order to reclaim herself, and has moved into the spare room in the flat of her ex-boyfriend, Tom (Brad Williams). There, she has to negotiate how to return home and meeting Tom’s new girlfriend Manpreet (Serena Moorghen), while Tom must come to grips with a relationship that fell apart after Eve was raped.

Myf Cadwallader’s set casts a sterility over the proceedings: furnishings of white against walls of opaque white plastic and steel frames, in corners lie discarded limbs of mannequins  The walls are repositioned to create different spaces: opening up one half of the stage or the other for the bedroom or lounge, or closing off the space to create the bathroom seen only in shadows. The cast move these walls slowly and calmly. Despite the tension in the work, Howard paces the actors to a steady and slow beat. In this environment, her direction frequently casts a clinical eye over the proceedings. These people, it feels, are there to be watched, their pasts and presents there to be analysed, but empathy or connection is a step too far.

Through this clinical lens, Badham’s text brings up interesting questions in relationships and sex: Eve and Manpreet discuss, or rather argue over, radically different views of the sexualisation of women: on pornography, of waxing, of violence and sexual games. Badham’s characters experience violence that is real, and a game of violence that exists invited and within boundaries in a relationship. These different strands compliment and fight against each other, creating a world that is messy and complex, representing the multiplicities of people and the way they each see the world.

Her text is at its most compelling when time starts to fracture and we spin out of the linear structure that binds much of the work. In these scenes Eve and Tom relive the nightmarish realities of that night through monologue; or a scene splinters and we return to its start, this new reality different than the one that came before it. It’s here that the work has its most ferocious energy: both Glenn and Willams given the opportunities to explode in exploring their characters, Badham creating a level of dizziness and confusion in these heightened realities that catches the audience up in the heart-pounding tension. It’s here, too, that Howard’s direction allows the audience to get caught up: when there is less that can be scientifically analysed, the work loses some of its clinical edge.

At first, it feels slightly jarring for a world premiere by an Australian playwright to be set in London, even with the knowledge Badham lived and worked there for ten years. This soon settles, though, with a big city reality of London that could never be replicated in a town like Adelaide.

All three characters have traits that are somewhat chaotic and unlikable, but we’re never asked to like them: just to watch them. We see Glenn’s Eve both on the edge of breakdown in her most vulnerable moments, and in moments of rediscovering herself and her power. Glenn gives her character the most light and shade of the cast; her performance at its strongest when Eve is at her weakest.

Of all the characters, Tom has the least agency over his life, never being able to move on from what happened to his then girlfriend. Williams’ performance of a character that tries to remain steadfast is strongest when it is understated in its struggle of a character trying to live in the present yet unable to leave his past. Moorghen’s Manpreet asks the most out of the audience: she is headstrong and acidic, and Moorghen has not quite found enough balance in the character to pair against the other cast members.

Chris Petridis’ lights and Tristan Louth-Robins’ sound add to Cadwallader’s harsh industrial tinged set. The lighting rig is heavy with ultra-violent lights that crackle on and off, harsh shadows appear, a single drip of light spills down the back wall. It’s strongly evocative, and often uncomfortable. Louth-Robin’s sound is often muted, sounding like it is coming through walls and other lives. This, too, creates discomfort: there is an undercurrent always running thought this production which is is impossible to place a finger on.

In the end, Badham leaves the play with no resolution. She doesn’t ask her audience to come away with a simple message, a feeling, or action. If anything, the audience leaves shocked and stunned. The splintering which made the work so interesting affects the way we view all the scenes, and calls into question the reliability of the story we are being told: can we take any of the subsequent events Badham shows us at face value? Or is this, perhaps, reading too much into the structure? In the final moments of the work I waited to be shown the alternate reality, and instead all that came was the blackout and an emotional thud.

Until the end of 2011, Corey McMahon was the primary name associated with five.point.one. Established in 2009 as an ensemble based company, with McMahon taking on most of the directorial roles it is him that the company has most closely been associated with in the eyes of the audience. The plays he directed for the company were contemporary works that frequently asked a lot out of the audience, and the world that McMahon explored on stage was rarely a happy one. When McMahon left the company in a move to Sydney their future seemed in limbo. With no productions staged by the company in 2012, many questioned where they would end up.

Now without a director in the ensemble, the company’s new approach is to bring in outside directors, such as Howard. How this will shape the future aesthetics of the company remains to be seen, but for now Muff sits comfortably in the five.point.one we know while also moving the company forward. It’s difficult, it pulls no punches, it’s something no one else in Adelaide is showing.

After the down year of 2012, they seem poised as a company to reclaim their position as one of the strongest independent theatre companies in Adelaide. It will be interesting to watch where the future takes them.

five.point.one presents Muff by Van Badham. Directed by Alison Howard, designed by Myf Cadwallader, lighting design by Chris Petridis, sound design by Tristan Louth-Robins. With Claire Glenn, Serena Moorghen and Brad Williams. At the Bakehouse Theatre until May 25. More information and tickets.

Disclosure: I worked with designer Myf Cadwallader on the Melbourne season of Sepia. Alison Howard is of no relation. 

Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal performs Opal Vapour entirely on top of a rectangular plinth. Through playing with the layer of sand this is reveled to be a lightbox, glowing in tones of blue, purple and red. Through projection and lighting (lighting image and design by Paula van Beck) our eyes are drawn through the work to different images: to the physicality of Tyas Tunggal’s performance, to Ria Soemarjo’s deft fingers are work on the viola or a drum, to a shadowed projection lifting the image of Tyas Tunggal from above.

The work has a unique choreographic vocabulary, a meeting of contemporary dance and traditional practices, primarily from Indonesia. Throughout the work, Tyas Tunggal plays with a duality of images. Paired with the soft flow as the wrists circle and the fingers glide over unseen surfaces is a face held taut. Her eyes look out beyond the performance; out into some nether space that we can’t view. She often appears to be unavoidably responding to an external stimulus, not entirely in control of her own body.

In another scene, above the stage we see only her the shadow against a background of blue. In this space she seems to be floating weightless in water, her limbs only responding to the flow of the liquid: her body calm and relinquished into the quiet control of the sea. Look down at Tyas Tunggal as she lies on the block and performs these movements, though, you see the physical precision that this imagery demands. Her limbs, far from being weightless, are tense: muscles held in rigidity as she tightly controls their movement. We are simultaneously given images of the tranquil and the tense, a manufactured image and the effort gone in to create it.

Ria Soemarjo’s voice is haunting, it plays against the bowed and plucked strings of the viola in a way that doesn’t quite feel real: the music feels foreign but grounded in something innately comfortable. Perhaps it is the blending of the familiar viola, or the melding of this vocal style with English lyrics.

Over the course of the work the wooden floor of the Waterside Workers Hall is blanketed in a fine layer of sand. As Tyas Tunggal kicks and throws the sand off her platform with force, the small particles only go on to quietly fall back to earth in a soft cover.

From the audience, the work in many ways feels meditative. With only two performers, it is easy for your mind to wander and mine frequently did. But the work remains there open for you to come back in and seamlessly join back in. Tyas Tunggal’s choreography powerful and enticing, she swirls your mind up into worlds and images, before dropping you back to earth.

Opal Vapour has come to Adelaide through Performing Lines’ Mobile States tour, a national touring program that allows independent practitioners to be seen in capital cities and regional centres. These productions were previously shown in Adelaide at the Adelaide Festival Centre, but when they dropped the presentation arm of their inSPACE program not only did we lose a performance space for local practitioners, we also lost the tours of these works from interstate. Vitalstatistix has now taken over the program, and it isn’t without some oddities. A Table of Knowledge is being presented with Vitals and Country Arts SA’s arrangement with Performing Lines’ Road Work,  in Noarlunga but not in Port Adelaide (that’s twice as far away from the city, in the opposite direction); Jack Charles vs The Crown is also being presented in Noarlunga by Country Arts SA and Road Work, but not by Vitals in Port Adelaide.

This aside, however, it’s good to see this work back in Adelaide, and primarily being presented in a space that is much more flexible and responsive to the work that the AFC could be. Opal Vapour could have been swallowed by the Space Theatre. It’s critically important for Adelaide’s artists that these works are coming to our city: to both expand the types of performance they are seeing, but to build audiences that are also understanding of national trends and practitioners. Opal Vapour is only a drop in the hat of the national landscape; let’s all hope it leads to more.

Vitalstatistix and Mobile States presents Opal Vapour, directed, choreographed and performed by Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal. Live and recorded music composition / music performance Ria Soemardjo, light and image design / operation Paula van Beck, production manager / sound operator Amy Bagshaw. At Waterside Workers Hall until May 12. More information and tickets.

Then Perth, Hobart, Cairns, Mackay, Brisbane, Canberra and Blacktown. More information.

Kate Cheel and Alison Bell, photo by Shane Reid.

The house lights drop. The music rises, thumping through the auditorium. Half-light on stage. Hedda Gabler (Alison Bell) stands in the doorway. Stressed. Out of place. She moves the couch. It’s in the wrong place. Sits. Rubs her eyes. Stressed. Blackout.

Considered one of the greatest female roles of the repertoire, Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler comes roaring into the 21^st Century in this contemporary adaptation by Joanna Murray-Smith, directed by Geordie Brookman. The dialogue is contemporary, formalities and the maid have been dispensed with, the characters wield iPhones, yet this faithful adaptation leaves the structure and major beats of Ibsen’s text intact.

While the characters keep their Norwegian names and the location is never explicitly stated, the spirit of Murray-Smith’s text is that of Australia, perhaps almost chiefly for Hedda’s relationship with guns. Murray-Smith’s Hedda is an anomaly in this society for owning guns at all, not simply for being a woman who owns them. Here, inherited and never registered, “you should have turned then in”, says Brack (Terence Crawford), a reference to Australia’s 1996 gun reforms. Indeed, because of this, it’s almost impossible to see this work having the same relevancy in contemporary America.

Perhaps one of the dangers in adapting Hedda Gabler to a contemporary context is the way that women’s place in society has changed in 120 years. Ibsen’s women, his Hedda and his Nora in particular, were revolutionary in their portraits of middle-class women unhappy with their lives, questioning society, and, ultimately, taking control of their own destinies – in radically different fashions. It would be all too easy for a contemporary Hedda to not ring true: while women are still under many pressures and societal expectations, today’s women are, on the whole, more activated both inside and outside the home. Yet, Murray-Smith’s adaptation brings with it startling relevancy, none more so in the ever-prevailing expectation and tension on women to become mothers: here, this conversation feels shocking but in no way false.

When we meet Hedda she has assumed the name of Hedda Tessman. And indeed, in 2009 Indiana University associate professor Laura Hamilton said only 5-10% of American women keep their name on marriage. ‘Choice!’, yells that ever catch-cry of feminism, but it’s impossible to ignore the historic connotations that come along with the name change: those of ownership and assuming your partners identity for the good of society and the family unit. Those who choose to not change their name are still the minority, that choice, therefore, holding within it much more power and refusal against the norm.

In a 2013 context, Hedda’s choice – made under whatever such pressures – feels even more so about the need to play the part of the loving wife. Is her life, then, a game she is trying to escape, or is this just another move in that game? Ibsen, however, refused to submerge his Hedda under the identity of her husband. In Ibsen’s eyes, and therefore ours, she remains defiantly Hedda Gabler.

Yet, still, despite the strands that ring true, so much has changed there is the very real possibility Murray-Smith’s Hedda could still strike false. And under a lesser actor, there is still a danger of this happening. Bell, however, brings depth and weight to this woman so that her plight feels true even today. Asked why she choose to marry Jorgan (Cameron Goodall), she succinctly replies, “my time was up”, and behind Bell’s eyes swim years of a story we are not told, but which the weight of Hedda lies upon. She feels like a woman exhausted, worn down and out by the world. Hurt, perhaps, in ways we never know.

Refreshingly relaxed, Bell’s Hedda has a droll earthiness. A ruffling of the hair, a smirk on the lips, a darting of the eyes; her life a game and the rest merely pawns. Bell is ever present on the stage, constantly calculating. At any stage during the production, even when half obscured by curtains, you can watch her thinking, reacting, being. Her energy is addictive, and it is in her that the audience invests their energy. Her ruinous spirit is fun, and, somehow, still calls for compassion.

Unfortunately, the rest of the cast never quite relax into their positions the same way Bell has. Nathan O’Keefe’s Lovborg comes closest. His baggy, stretched woolen jumper and oversized pants (costumes by Ailsa Patterson), overwhelm him into a jittering mess. Hedda and Lovborg circle each other, skirting the outside of the stage, Brookman’s tight choreography pairing them off in a taut dance against each other: where Hedda uses her intellect for her own amusement, Lovborg is consumed by his. O’Keefe’s struggle with this, and with Hedda, give some of the strengths of this production. Similarly, Crawford’s Brack is largely solid, and strongest when he and Hedda are left to play off against each other.

Kate Cheel appears too young to have been “in the year below” Hedda at school, and doesn’t give a strong enough performance to overcome this incongruity. Her Thea is too performative: Cheel holds within her great tension, you can see the process of acting in a way you can never observe in Bell, and she never relaxes into Thea to make her real – or sympathetic.

Goodall, too, feels like he is pushing his characteriation and performance too far. The opening dialogue of the work between Goodall and Carmel Johnson as Aunt Julle is stilted, veering into farce. Paterson’s costuming pairs Hedda’s effortless comfort in fashion against a slightly comic Jorgan, and this costuming seems to push Goodall’s characterisation. There are moments when he relaxes into the world, most often in moments of silence, and hopefully he will find more of these through the run. After the opening scene, too, Johnson seems to relax more into her character and the scenario, but rarely feels truly present.

One wall of glass windows overlooks a burnt out shell of a garden, the other wall exposed bricks of limestone: Geoff Cobham’s house brings together the images of the contemporary and the traditional in a reflection of the script. His lighting is both used practically and evocatively: from a simple warm yellow glow illuminating the house will grow strange sharp shadows and harsh white lights, a beast of discomfort consuming their lives.

The deep base of the dubstep reverberates through the theatre and the auditorium in DJ TR!P’s sound design physically felt by the audience. There is room, though, it feels, for this to have been truly pushed further and create a true sense of tension and discomfort to build the anxiety of the work. From this submerging sound design, Brookman builds stark silences into the work. There is breathing room in which he gives his characters time to think, to wordlessly play with each other, to play with the emotions of the audience as we watch them think and contemplate. It’s in these moments, particularly, he best uses Cobham’s set and Bell’s power as an actor, placing her downstage front and centre: as life goes on behind her, she is in front of us as we just watch her tick.

Hedda Gabler remains under Bell’s power resolutely to the end. While Ibsen had his final moments played off-stage, Murray-Smith and Brookman bring these moments to the fore in front of the audience: their Hedda is performing until the very end.

State Theatre Company of South Australia presents Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith. Directed by Geordie Brookman, set and lighting design by Geoff Cobham, costume design and associate set design by Ailsa Paterson, associate lighting design by Ben Flett, composition by DJ TR!P. With Alison Bell, Kate Cheel, Terence Crawford, Cameron Goodall, Carmel Johnson and Nathan O’Keefe. At the Dunstan Playhouse until May 18. More information and tickets.

Nicholas Lester and cast. Photo by Andy Rasheed.

Previous to seeing and reviewing the show, I spent a significant amount of time with the company in rehearsal. You can read my documentation of that in parts one, two, and three. This experience undoubtedly coloured the way I saw the work, so take from this what you will.

Edward Lear (1812 – 1888) was one of the first writers to create work specifically for the entertainment of children. His nonsense drawings and writings have lived on, endearing themselves to many new generations of children, while his paintings and illustrations of wildlife and landscapes command ongoing respect from a whole different audience. Ode to Nonsense is an ode to the life of Lear, from Adelaide theatre company Slingby, in conjunction with the State Opera of South Australia.

A significant departure for the company, this work moves from the intimate work Slingsby are known for – both in terms of performers and audience – into a production with a cast of eighteen and an audience of 1000.

Walking into the old Her Majesty’s Theatre under a garland of green flags and fairy lights, director Andy Packer and designer Geoff Cobham have created a world that speaks from the same world of their previous works. With much of the usual suspects in the creative team, including Quincy Grant as the composer, visually and aurally the work seems to capture the spirit of Slingsby that has brought the company such acclaim. In Ode to Nonsense though, there is something that doesn’t quite gel, and we are left with a work that is curiously flat.

Lear (Nicholas Lester) has returned to his adopted home of San Remo with his perennial servant Giorgio (Adam Goldburn) to see his love Gussie (Johanna Allen) – not that he could ever admit to that. While Jane Goldney’s libretto has found moments of great heart in these scenes, and moments of joyous frivolity in the embracing of Lear’s nonsense, the gap between these moments is never truly bridged, and so audience members are never truly immersed in either world: Ode to Nonsense never reaches beyond the proscenium.

It’s a work that perhaps is captured in nearly-theres. In exploring the world of Lear and his friends, Goldney’s work alternately suffers from under-exposition, requiring a solid knowledge of Lear’s life and work, then over-exposition with too much stake in explanation placed in a single song. Taken in isolation, Goldney’s scenes under Packer’s careful touch of direction paint insightful snapshots of old friendships, of never embraced romance, of the triumph of embracing worlds and words that cannot be truly grasped or explained. Built up into a narrative, though, neither Goldney nor Packer have solved how to stop the strands unraveling.

The centrepiece of Cobham’s set is a large hedge, which reveals itself as a giant puppet, transforming above the stage, and energy that does ripple out into the auditorium. This transformation, however, happens late into the production, and before this point the large wall of greenery is overwhelming to the playing space.

Grant’s composition has a deft and light touch, the singers lightly skipping over notes in happiness and in grief. Paradoxically, though, when paired with the orchestration the voices aren’t carried out into the auditorium but, rather, a wall seems to be built up from the pit, defeating the voices and leaving them behind.

The three principles give solid performances, in character and in voice: they each have a time to shine in overt presentation to the audience in their solos, and in careful understatement of quiet emotion. The three have an ease of camaraderie, allowing a glance into decades spent together. And still, they feel swallowed.

The work finds itself in some of its lightest moments – in simple transformations of Cobham’s set pieces of suitcases into a train or Lear’s house, in subtle glances between Lester and Allen – and when the work is most built around its youth chorus. Projection by Illuminart brings the most to the production when it is faithfully bringing to life the sketches of Lear. There is something magical in the direct connection between Lear’s pen on paper and the projections that dance across the stage.

There is always something delightfully left of centre here in Ailsa Paterson’s costumes. Lear’s striped spats, Giorgio’s pocket of cutlery; Gussie’s long fur stole creating illusions to a cat; the motley children of a London fair with stars coming out of their bonnets, bow ties, and chiffon collars that could almost be tutus. The costumes of the youth chorus then goes on to explode in the creatures of Lear’s imagination: vests of strips of coloured and patterned material off-set by masks in black and white, changing the children into everything from an elephant to a narwhal to a dong with a luminous nose.

As Ode to Nonsense begins to bid us farewell, the Owl and the Pussycat dance by the light of the moon, just married by the Turkey who lives on the hill. Allen’s clear soprano voice circles above the chorus of young singers and out into Her Majesty’s auditorium. The stage is awash with the grand nonsense of Lear, and the joy of performers young and old. A pea green boat sits before us made out of suitcases; costumes loudly yell as children move with young abandon. Yet, still here something thwarts a true connection.

Leaving us in a true ode to Lear’s nonsense, the joy in these final moments feels the closest to the sharing of the Lear he perhaps would want us to remember. More’s the pity, then, that so much of the show doesn’t extend out to the audience the way Lear’s and Slingsby’s work truly can.

Slingsby and the State Opera of South Australia, in association with the Adelaide Festival Centre, presents Ode to Nonsense, composed by Quincy Grant, libretto by Jane Goldney, scenario by Andy Packer. Directed by Andy Packer, musical direction by Timothy Sexton, set and lighting design by Geoff Cobham, costume design by Ailsa Paterson, projection design by Cindi Drennan/Illuminart, animation by Luku Trembath, choreography by Larissa McGowan. With Nicholas Lester, Johanna Allen, Adam Goodburn, chorus, and members of the Adelaide Art Orchestra. At Her Majesty’s Theatre until May 4. More information and tickets. 

“This is a very fast process,” he tells me. “Normally you would have four weeks before you go into the theatre, but then you probably only have a week in the theatre, so this is slightly back to front.”

While the company originally wanted three weeks in the rehearsal room, we spoke about how opera can be quicker to put together on the floor. “With non-musical theatre,” he says, “what you’re trying do in those four weeks is find the sense of the thing – which we’re trying to do as well – but you’re also trying to find the rhythm that makes the piece. And with music theatre, with opera, that’s already set for you. The rhythm and pace, the dynamic, is in the music, so it fast tracks that process for you.”

At this half-way point, Andy was feeling “really good” about the work. “I feel like the first week was really about ‘is the story there and is it clear.’ […] I feel very happy with the flow of the piece and that’s in terms of energy levels on stage, size, variation, I feel like I’m being lead through it by the story, which is great.”

The second week, then was about blocking the work: “which, as you could see, we didn’t quite get there.” Indeed, on the Thursday in the theatre, Andy and choreographer Larissa McGowan sat down to discuss the choreography of the final number The Owl and the Pussycat, Andy’s score covered with notes.

Speaking about my rehearsal room blog, Andy said he appreciated the perspective of allowing an outsider to “observe some element of the rigour that we go through and the process that we go through to find a moment that lasts two seconds on stage – it might actually be five hours work.”

Indeed, in the theatre this balance seems to take even longer. Now it isn’t just the performances that need to be balanced: lights, flight elements, projections all need to be carefully calibrated and slipped within the tight scoring of the work. Transitions between scenes are tried and tried again, it’s discussed if the order of elements moving can be changed, how clear the story will be, is this creating too much of a lull? Composer Quincy Grant is asked to write four extra bars of music to save a transition that won’t work over the current stretch of music. Even then, Andy adds, they’ll need to wait for a proper run to see how it all flows.

In the theatre and out of the rehearsal room, for the first time I’m realising how much the projection work is threaded through the show. At the same time, though, I love watching the elements of old stage magic: knowing there is a large crew backstage on the fly system, lights and crowds used to divert from the tricks the audience shouldn’t see.

One of the things we discuss about the work is the relationships between all of the creatives. Of working with designer Geoff Cobham, he says “it’s just really beautiful.”

“Geoff doesn’t need to come and ask me ‘is this okay’ and I don’t go ‘what are you doing?’ – we’re making the show together, and that’s just incredibly freeing to know that I have that 100% confidence in what he’s doing, even though I’m not aware of all of it all the time.”

Working with all of the designers, Andy says, is a simple process of introducing them to the work “and then they’re artists so I just let them do their stuff. I’m not controlling everything. My job isn’t to make all the decisions; my job is to make sure everything is heading in the same direction.”

“And the more they’re passionate about their work – our work collectively – the greater refinement happens,” he says. “So it really is a collective that is making this piece. So it’s a really beautiful surprise when Ailsa [Patterson, costume designer] comes back with these incredible drawings.”

There is an easy camaraderie in the theatre. Everyone has a job to do, but the protracted timing of tech means not everyone is working at once. Family members come and visit, sitting for a while to watch; jokes are thrown about; every great artistic influence from Brum to Total Eclipse of the Heart (Literal Video Version) is discussed; a vector computer game is developed and becomes an increasingly complex joke.

The desks for the creatives are set about three quarters of the way down the stalls back from the stage. Andy frequently moves around the space: checking sightlines, sound levels, and design elements from the front rows or the back of the balcony. Sometimes Andy asks questions of his cast from the auditorium, at other times he is up on stage, quietly working things out.

Just as an observer of the process, the day is long. The planned run never happens, too much is left to be tweaked and fixed. And yet there is something so compelling that when I say I’ll stay a couple of hours into the evening I stay the rest of the night.

Slingsby is a unique company in Adelaide in that they burst onto the scene and immediately started touring: their work known for its commitment to life after Adelaide.  So how much is Andy thinking about this future life while creating the first production? “Not at all,” he answers.

“You have to completely put aside any ambitions for the work beyond what you’re currently doing, because otherwise it’s really disrespectful to the audience. The only way and the only reason it would travel is if it connects to its audience.”

Through this whole process of conversations with me, Andy has been very upfront and unabashed in acknowledging he doesn’t know what will truly end up on the stage in front of an audience. This spirit clearly extends to talking about work to producers and presenters. “I’m very honest with people,” he says. “I say we’ve made this show, we’re really excited about it, I’d love for you to come and have a look, it might be a dog.”

As we are about to part on Monday, I ask if there is anything else we haven’t spoken about. “It’s still a great adventure,” he says.

“I still have no clear idea of what it’s going to look like in the end, even though I know what all the components are. I know we’re going to have more discoveries […] and the things that weren’t planned that are discoveries are the most exciting bits. And as we put all of the pieces together there are choices to be made about when certain images begin to form on stage, and when a sound comes and goes, that dramatically changes the meaning and the sense of things, and that’s really exciting”

“And maybe because I have a production background, as well, I just really love that side of things, and I love that palette and getting to play with those elements. So this week is going to be one big lolly shop for me.”

A rehearsal room for an opera without a pianist. It’s perhaps not the most auspicious start for me in observing the process.

But on the rehearsals must go, and so I sit at a table at the back of the room – covered with books about Lear, collections of his nonsense and his paintings – with notebook and pen, ready to watch and learn. Without the use of the piano, the company focuses on the small sections of unsung text from Jane Goldney’s libretto. Perhaps never more than a dozen or so lines, the space without the piano is giving Andy and the cast the space to focus in on these sections: on intent, tone, and character.

Working with the three principles – Nicholas Lester as Lear, Johanna Allen as Gussie, and Adam Goodburn as Giorgio – Andy constantly asks questions: “I wonder if …”, “There could be … ” “Perhaps …” The process feels like a constant conversation between him and the performers, his suggestions through words, their suggestions back through performance. As he explains things, he tells the cast he is using this time to develop a shorthand language with them, so when they’re in the theatre it will only take a few words to remind them the ideas they found in the rehearsal room.

I get a kick out of watching Stage Manager Stephanie Fisher and ASM Marie Docking take reference photographs of the prop arrangements with their iPhones – the future is now – but then problem solve in delightfully low tech ways. A letterbox is mocked up from an old box and some paperclips. When the letters won’t stay put, a bit of gaffa tape over the front solves that.

I feel somewhat awkward sitting in the back of the room, not quite sure of my place or what I’m doing or if anything I scribble down in my notebook makes sense. But everyone in the room is endlessly welcoming. During lunch, the cast sit and talk about operas - particularly contemporary performers, composers, and directors – and when I’m back at my table I write down a list to go home and listen to. Listening to passionate people talk makes me want to find out more, in a way I hadn’t been interested in before. I end up downloading Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee at the suggestion of Andy, and then find myself singing the songs. Completely unexpected.

Lines and scenes are repeated dozens of times, end on end. On the tenth time or so I find my mind drifting away without even realising. If I hadn’t seen the scene already, I would have never known I’d drifted off. I wonder if I do this when I watch plays in theatres: loosing lines without knowing.

But watching lines again and again is such a wonderful way to observe the craft of these actors. So often, it’s hard to grasp a full perspective of this craft while sitting in a theatre. Here, though, I watch the cast try lines again and again, slipping in and out of character as the scenes are discussed, problems are solved. We all laugh as the actors purposefully push too far into slapstick for fun; I find myself tearing up in the tender moments. The repetition allows me to catch quiet moments that perhaps I would loose on only one viewing. Johanna quickly catches Gussie’s sadness through her hands to her stomach; I catch my breath in my throat. And for me, watching the quiet moments of introspective process were sometimes more interesting than watching the result.

In the late afternoon, we’re joined by the Musical Director for Ode to Nonsense and AD of State Opera, Timothy Sexton, and for the first time I get to hear a bit of Quincey Grant’s music and the lightness feels instantly recognisable from all the theatre I’ve heard him compose before.

***

The room is busier the next time I enter a week later. Teepees are now here; where once stood a milk crate taped to a stool stands gold birdcage.

Today, Andrew Georg sits at the piano. Again, I’m stuck at my luck at getting to watch the actors so intensely, to sit mere metres away from the piano. As I wrote before, Ode to Nonsense is by far the biggest scaled work Slingsby has done – yet here I get to sit so close to the action.

With choreographer Larissa McGowan, the cast and Andy are working on capturing childlike play for the song Nonsense. Larissa instructs everyone to play, and then there will be a process of “cut and paste”, finding the jolting and constant refocusing you often see as children jump from one activity to another. The cast embrace this easily, playing with a paper hat and hi-vis orange safety bunting – Andy assures that this will be replaced by “Wes Anderson bunting.” 

On this second day, I’m even more aware of how I’m only seeing half and quarter pictures of the work. I feel like I’m trying to put together a puzzle in my mind. But of course, it’s not my job to put the puzzle together. I’m watching other people put it together for me. I think about how I enjoy watching people and wonder how much of my love of theatre is just that it’s an acceptable social construct for this? Or do I enjoy watching people because I enjoy theatre?

***

It’s the last day in the rehearsal room, the show starts bump in at Her Majesty’s on Monday. There is a different energy to the room, the air has a different buzz to it. But that’s probably the presence of the youth chorus.

Andy works with them on the blocking of one of the final scenes, where through a few small movements, a major set piece is built out of suitcases. “Through the magic of nonsense, magic can happen” he explains. “Just through slightly altering our perspective of things, magic can happen.”

Thinking about nonsense, I think about how much more familiar I am with the nonsense words and worlds of Lear than I am with the world of the rehearsal room. The show starting to form in front of me reminds me in ways of Play School, but I can’t be sure how much of that is just because that’s possibly the place I first heard Lear.

Today is the most packed the rehearsal room has been: not only the performers, but also in terms of the design and production team sitting and watching, planning, discussing. Sitting there gives me a really obvious and beautiful reminder not so much of how many people it takes to make theatre, but how endlessly fascinating I find all these people. Being in the same space while they’re working ignites a want to sit down with each of them with a notebook and dictaphone and talk and steal their thoughts.

While the energy of the room might be slightly different, Andy’s directorial style feels the same. Today, I’m watching more precise blocking than I did on other days and he is asking less of the questions I’ve seen him use before, giving more direct instructions. The youth chorus and the acrobats are in their element.

Before the cast do a full run, Andy talks to the youth chorus, reminding them again that this is work. But, he says “I do a job every day, and I just happen to love my job. So you can work, and love your work.” This time, he says, isn’t about seeing the show – this is only the process of two weeks work. And much more work is going to come in the theatre before opening. He invokes images of Lear going out and sketching landscapes: he still needed to return to the studio, to add colour and shade and detail.

Even just on the piano, you can feel the emotional manipulation in Quincy’s work, and I try to pick out how it will sound with the seven musicians. I can’t. I smile seeing images that were developed one day when I was in the rehearsal room picked up and repeated in other scenes.

I use the time to watch the production team as much as the performers. Tim sits at the front, conducting Andrew and the performers. Larissa and Andy have ways of conducting, too, motioning action through to the cast.

Watching the work in full for the first time, I’m stuck at how short it feels – although it must have run over the eventual 70 minute playing time. After seeing small scenes repeated so much, after spending hours with the work, seeing it in full goes by in a flash.

I pack up my notebook and my pens, still not certain how I’m going to write about this process, but armed with a long list of questions to talk about with Andy on Monday. Many questions so I can write more about the show; many more just for me so I can get a bigger perspective, fill in the gaps that I didn’t previously realise were there.

***

The original plan was to write after each day I spent in the Ode To Nonsense rehearsal room. What fast became apparent, though, was with no real perspective on rehearsal rooms, how was I supposed to write about this one? What are the interesting strands to be picked up on, what would people be interested in reading about, what was worth commenting on? To even begin to find the answers to these questions I needed space. Have I been successful? I don’t know. I suppose there is much much more that I could have said. So much more I could have observed if only I knew to look for it. But then this is what first times are all about.

While Andy has been working on the show for twelve years, it all started to come together this week in the rehearsal room. I spoke to Andy last Thursday, and will speak to him again before opening, as well as writing about spending time in the rehearsal room, before seeing the show and writing a review with all this perspective.

I know very little about opera, and have spent very little time in rehearsal rooms outside of student productions. I’m not sure what will come out of this process yet, for me or for him, but I think we’re both curious and excited to see what will result.

Andy is an artist it is always wonderful to speak with. His energy and passion is infectious, his joy for his work delightful to witness. Slingsby premiered in 2008, its premier performance The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy going on to tour internationally “220 times in 40 venues in 25 cities on 5 continents”. While still young, it is greatly respected and an important piece of the puzzle that makes Adelaide a leader in the creation of work for young people.

An Ode To Nonsense is the fourth work for the company, and is based on the work and life of Edward Lear, perhaps most well known for The Owl and the Pussycat. Lear has always been a presence in Slingsby, though, with the company taking their name from his The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Round The World:

Once upon a time, a long while ago, there were four little people whose names were Violet, Slingsby, Guy, and Lionel; and they all thought they should like to see the world. So they bought a large boat to sail quite round the world by sea, and then they were to come back on the other side by land.

It was twelve years ago – before Slingsby as a company even existed – that Andy “fell in love with Lear’s work.” It was from that point, he described, he’s been “working away, trying to find the right way to celebrate both his work but also his life, and what I think maybe we can all glean from his existence.”

Andy originally conceived this as a small cabaret show based on The Story of the Four Little Children … with a development showing in 2005. From this showing, though, Andy realised “it was a bigger story.”

It was while directing Motzart’s Bastien and Bastienne that he decided opera was the right form for the story.

For me, as someone who doesn’t have an education in opera, this striked me as an interesting choice. So much of opera is caught up in the heritage features of the art form – it’s not at all surprising the opera Andy was directing for State Opera was by Motzart.

“The thing that is great about opera,” he told me, “the thing that I fell in love with, is there is no other artform where you can change gears emotionally quite so quickly, because the music is driving the story.”

“There is a moment in Ode to Nonsense where Lear is being teased by Gussie and Giorgio: they’re teasing him about one of his nonsense recipes. In the recipe it says take the ingredients and place them in another room, then bring them back and then throw the whole lot out of the window, and they’re singing that and being cheeky, and he’s singing that and repeats the same text and basically talking about throwing himself out the window. And only music can make that clear to you. It’s the same words, seconds later, but because of the music it has a much deeper and quicker emotional resonance. What opera’s particularly good at is taking the personal and making it epic. Making it a big philosophical story as well as being a personal story.”

And as for the perceptions of opera as a heritage artform? Andy describes that stigma as being “completely unnecessary.”

“I understand where it comes from, and it makes sense for that stigma if all we keep doing is the same twenty-five operas [...] and it is the same twenty-five operas being performed everywhere.”

He continued: “I personally have no problem with the amount of money spent on opera, because that is an enormous amount of artists being employed, that’s why it costs so much money, because any time you’ve got 150 or 200 people on stage that’s going to cost a lot of money.”

“But I think we all need to work harder to produce new work that is creating opportunities for contemporary storytellers and contemporary theatre makers.” While Nonsense is based on Lear “it speaks to a contemporary audience and it’s a new work, written from a contemporary perspective.”

While Andy talks about casts of 150 or 200, Nonsense is considerably smaller. Three principles, seven musicians in the pit, a youth chorus of twelve, and three acrobats.

The youth chorus, aged 10 to 14, are the same age the audience will start at. For Andy, “they really do personify that childish energy dramatically within the piece; they represent that inspired innocence that we all grow out of, unfortunately.”

Before going into rehearsals, he told me one of the things he is looking forward to about the rehearsal process is working with these young artists at the beginning of their professional careers. They may be young, but Andy will be working with them in the rehearsal room as professionals. In a pre-rehearsal get together, he told me, he told the chorus “this will this will inevitably be part of your career development, and development as an artist, but we’re not bringing you in to develop you, we’re bringing you in because you’re brilliant at what you’re doing.”

Still, a cast this size, and a theatre that sits 1000 is a far cry from the more intimate work Slingsby is known for. For Andy, taking what worked for Slingby on the small scale and trying to make it work on a big scale is key. This will mean a show that begins the moment the doors to the theatre open, with cast members inviting the audience into the space, and the whole theatre taking on the world of Nonsense.

“Geoff [Cobham, the designer] and Quincy [Grant, the composer] and I are very interested in making theatre as live as it can be,” he said. “That’s what theatre does that no other artform can do: that human interaction. So it seems to us redundant to pretend it’s film. So the more we can get in amongst the audience and have a personal interaction with them the greater the experience becomes.”

“There’s not many companies in the world that would be trying to take what works on a very small scale and trying to make it work on a big scale but that’s what we’re particularly interested in, so if we can crack it then it will be awesome.”

As we wrapped up our first conversation – one I’m sure I will reference again over the next month – we spoke about me coming into the rehearsal room, what I described as an “interesting generosity of you and the company to invite someone into what is usually a closed space.”

In response, Andy spoke about the clarity he often finds in what he is thinking about when asked to talk about it: “it helps to distill things for myself.”

“But also we are adventurous,” he continued. “We don’t know. I’m absolutely open to the idea that as prepared as we are, we don’t know what the outcome is going to be. And I’m really happy with that openness.”

Part of the process through this, for both of us, is acknowledgement that I am in the room as a critic. This doesn’t mean I’m going to be reviewing the process or what is going on in the rehearsal space, but it does inform the way I view work.

“I think the more as artists we’re all open to scrutiny and questioning, the more I’m going to improve as an artist,” said Andy. “That’s part of self-refection, and reflection and feedback is part of improvement. So I guess this is us as company and me acknowledging that this is another step towards making a better show. This one, but also the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one.”

Me being there is perhaps just part of a much larger picture, feeding in just a part of the responses back to the show – responses that will come from other critics, but audience members, too. “I think if you invite criticism, if you invite feedback, you have to be genuinely ready for it,” he said, “and this is perhaps also part of me really preparing myself for whatever that feedback is from an audience as well.”

So perhaps the two of us aren’t quite sure where this will take us. I’m very excited to find out.

Their coverage was far and beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed for the arts in this country, and to be part of it was a thrill. If you missed it – or want to relive it – you can catch up on the live blogs for week one and week two; go through the archive here; and read what I wrote about the nature of criticism and The Kreutzer Sonata controversy, a review of What The Body Does Not Remember, and an interview with a company member of Hotel Modern’s Kamp.

On the beautiful new ABC Arts Online website you can also read my reviews of Sylvie Guillem in 3000 Miles Away and Larissa McGowan’s Skeleton, and thoughts about the theatre program in the first ten days of the Festival.

In my other life, I was delighted to see the stunning Symphony of Strange come to life – I couldn’t have asked for a better creative team or a better presentation space, and I am very thankful to Gareth for inviting me in to produce. The show received five stars from The Advertiser and a nomination for Best Dance – so huge congratulations to the team.

There are a few Fringe shows that I should craft my notes into reviews but now the real world is back knocking on my door, to be completely honest I don’t know when you’ll see them. I’ve spent the last two weeks since it all ended in recovery mode: illness has followed illness, all minor but draining. I think it’s just my body’s way of telling me I’m heart-broken about the Festival season leaving us. Or, maybe, that I just need to get more sleep.