Half-light. Two people sit in two wooden chairs. On the black screen, lights move in and out of view, in and out of focus. They are but reflections, lights’ movement captured in passing. Through the electronica score, we hear the murmur of water.  A voice cuts through.

These are the stories of the people who knew, or who once knew, the people now lost. Missing. Disappeared. Weeks, years, decades. Those left behind wait in limbo. Neither coming nor going.  For those left, a person erased with no method of leaving, a gap in knowledge, an incomplete history begetting an incomplete present, an unimaginable future.

Performers Irving Gregory and Yana Taylor drive us through this verbatim theatre work, through the words of the parents and the children, the friends, the acquaintances who passed for just a moment to share a lipstick. In The Disappearances Project we share a different view of the missing, concentric circles of the people they once knew. Stories that overlap and are undifferentiated. And at their centre: nothing. Disappeared.

We hear stories of the fears and hopes and bureaucracy. Where does the right to disappear and for a new self-determination end, and the rights of a family begin? Will those who wait be okay if the gone don’t return? Will they be okay if they do?

Impeccably timed, Gregory and Taylor’s characterisations build and relax through the hour, as the show alternately builds to intensity before easing down. They sit, almost unmoving, for the whole performance, as behind them we watch a film by Taylor: un-named, nearly empty Australian streets driven by under light of dusk and dawn.  The very occasional person becomes a surprise; in a show about disappearance, we come to expect the empty.  On the edge of unemotional, Gregory and Taylor’s characters are wearied by the word, it seems it might be all they have left are these stories.

Frank Mainoo’s lighting holds in the production, Gregory and Taylor often sitting in just a square of light, at other times lighting changing with the changing tensions of the piece: faces obscured in shadow; stage awash in light.  Paul Prestipino’s sound blends a moulding electronica – also building off and with Gregory and Taylor’s changing intensity – with referential sounds to the piece. As someone tries to recall as they tried to recall the identity of keys in the background we hear a slight jingle; we hear snatches of traffic in the background; the mundane parts of the world taking over.

Then Prestipino’s sound falls away, and sitting in the quiet I found myself oddly aware of my nerves watching this piece.  It’s a piece that demands your concentration, and I felt like I was almost relaxed in the concentration, in the quiet focus requested by the play. Then, as the elements which I was focusing fell away, I became more away of my body, my heart thudding, the tension which I was carrying as I heard these stories.

We share with our performers their space in the void; they drive us through with the stories and voices overlapping; harrowing stories which aren’t quite hopeless, but often are not far off.   In the final moments, we share with our performers the silence, and the near dark. The Disappearances Project is about those who are gone, certainly. But more than that, it is about those who are left behind, and about saving their lives and their stories. Maybe if they’re shared something more can be done.

Version 1.0 presents The Disappearances Project, concept and research by Yana Taylor and David Williams, devisers Irving Gregory, Paul Prestipino, Yana Taylor and David Williams.  Performers Irving Gregory and Yana Taylor, co-directors Yana Taylor and David Williams, composer Paul Prestipino, original lighting designer Frank Mainoo, film director Yana Taylor, editor Dan Jameison, camera Sean Bacon. At AC Arts Main Theatre with the Adelaide Fringe, until 3/3/2012. More information and tickets.

The concept of falling in love with a place is an interesting one. A connection to a land or a people, or just that city down the road, which comes as a beautiful and unexpected thing. Love of a person, I think, is easier to intellectualise, easier to convey. It’s always expected that people we fall in love with will be met, are still to be met, while place is a less emphatic thing: it’s expected we’ll posses a connection to a place you grew up, or a place where your family comes from. What is it about a place that can be so taking?

Kym Vercoe, the devisor and performer of seven kilometres north-east found herself taken by Bosnia, and here we are invited in on her bright and happy exploration.

Vercoe is generous of heart, spirit, and performance.  We quickly make friends with this character as she shares with her audience jokes and knowing glances. We follow her through her heartfelt love for Bosnia, before following her through her heartbreak as, half-a-generation after their occurrence, Vercoe is second-hand witnesses to an unimaginable, insurmountable tragedy of the Bosnian War befallen on the people of a land she has loved.

How do we face a reality so awful? How connected are we to people of a place we love, or loved? When these people are no longer living, have not lived for many years, their people not a part of the landscape ever since? How much are we as women, connected to all women?

Most of our line of view is filled with a large screen, images Vercoe captured on her trips: her first camera, $200 off ebay.  There is a freeing stillness in Vercoe’s videography and the editing work of video artist Sean Bacon, capturing moments of quiet and of space.

The advent of digital technology has allowed documentation of much more than the “big events”: every moment can become an event. When we witness something, experience something new, there is little easier now than whipping out the camera: point and shoot, recorded for prosperity, recorded to let the world know I was there.

A moment to be captured shared – fingers quickly flick over the phone or ipad, the mouse skirts its way through the facebook album: My Melbourne Trip. Day Two. 168 Photographs.

The event is now many events, but they are sparse: important in quantity, not in quality. Look at all the places I have been! Look at all the sights I have experienced! Isn’t your life better now you know how fast I move?

But from the footage we are shown of Vercoe’s work, she has captured not the hustle and bustle, but the stillness. More passive, perhaps: point the camera, press record, sit. Stay still on a frame, on a place. On a moment not to be scrolled by to view the next image. On the small shake of a tripod-less camera. On waiting to be surprised by a duck.

Through this stillness, Vercoe is more a study of her place than a million shots and angles. She breathes in the stillness, and in it we sit.

This stillness is paired with moments of high-energy: a frustrated, manic pace across the stage as Vercoe becomes suspicious of every man she meets; or three minutes and twenty-one seconds of release, of happiness.

Always, in the still and in the noise, Vercoe exudes her own energy. An Australian girl travelling and growing on subsequent trips to Bosnia. Falling in and out of and in love with a country, a place, a people.

The rest of the set is sparse, a small bookshelf, two small plinths. Vercoe pulls out travel books, beer, a small collection of items and a small burner to make a small cup of coffee, which she shares with me.

Much of seven kilometres north-east is about ritual and repetition. Vercoe repeatedly returning to the Balkans; the bridge which has stood for hundreds of years, and will stand for hundreds still; the process of making a Bosnian coffee. We consider what rituals and moments of our past are carried on, traditions formed or celebrated, and then what terrible parts are hidden and ignored?

seven kilometres north-east is awful, and heart-breaking, and beautiful, and delicate. We left the theatre with our hands on our faces. We tried to talk about what we had just seen, but we couldn’t. Not really. The gaps between our words were too big. The gaps between our worlds were too big. We felt like we had experienced something huge, but we hadn’t. Not really.  Just the edges of a blur of it. The tiniest peak into something we will never comprehend.

There are many more words to say: of the live singing, of counting flowers, of dancing, of coffee cups, of mundane requests to come out of massacres as they interfere with hydroelectric plants, of ground coffee, of lightness and of darkness. But I don’t have these words.

Even now as I sit and I write, I open Wikipedia to look up the Bosnian War and my hand goes to my face. It’s too much. seven kilometres north-east is in this way unflinching. It’s hard. I suspect it will be sitting with us, hard, for a long time. But it’s hard in the way that perhaps the best theatre is hard. It’s a satisfying difficulty. We should know about these things, we should hear about these things, Vercoe should share these things. And when it is shared through a wonderful piece of art, we get to see something wonderful, even if it is to hear something awful.

Version 1.0 Presents seven kilometers north-east devised and performed by Kym Vercoe. Video artist Sean Bacon, dramaturgy Deborah Pollard, musical director and singer Slajana Hodžić, original lighting design Emma Lockheart-Wilson, associate lighting designer/realiser Christopher Page, set and prop construction Erth Visual and Physical Inc. At AC Arts Main Theatre with the Adelaide Fringe, until 4/3/12. More information and tickets.

It’s a trade-off. As a theater community, we put a lot of our resources and talent into the Fringe and a lot of our annual audience goes there to see what’s new, but that means that many of those artists depend on the Fringe instead of starting their own companies. They aren’t creating full seasons, or doing shows longer than an hour, and they aren’t concerned with theatrical design, and so the work isn’t rigorous. To be fair, there are Fringe shows every year that are simply, beautifully and elegantly crafted, and work perfectly within the Fringe’s constraints. But not every show, every play, and every idea is right for the Fringe Festival. So then where do these plays, shows, and ideas get done?

They should be getting done at the small theater companies started by bands of young artists who have bonded together to produce their own vision of what theater should be. And that vision needs to include new plays. Why? Because what is new brings the whole field of theater forward, and if the Twin Cities is creating what is new, we are a part of that national conversation, but if we cling to what is old and tested, we are part of the status quo. And isn’t it just a lot more exciting to do something new? Creating and producing new work is infectious and it infuses a theater scene with an excitement that is often lacking here.

Artists in the Twin Cities need to take more risks and put up new plays. Artists here should take initiative, start their own companies, make new work, self-produce their own plays, cultivate freelance directors and relationships between directors, playwrights, and designers. We desperately need more theater companies who are willing to be the actual fringe to the Fringe Festival and the Guthrie.

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul have a population of  3.3 million, in a state with a population of 5.3 million – Adelaide, by comparison has a population of 1.2 million in a state of 1.6 million. This article from Howl Round, however, throws up some striking similarities in theatrical issues and communities in our cities – in many more ways than large Fringe festivals – some interesting differences, and some really fantastic ideas about theatre creation and support. Well worth a read; and a contemplate about the other cities facing similar issues we often find ourselves facing.

Adelaide’s “cultural boulevard”, North Terrace is home to heritage institutions the State Library of South Australia, the South Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of South Australia but the 2012 Fringe will add pop up venues to North Terrace’s list of must see destinations.

Greg Clarke and Jennifer Layther at the first walkthrough of the new Tuxedo Cat. Photo Gary Cockburn.

This festival season a new cultural venue will open on the southern side of North Terrace, the latest incarnation of the Tuxedo Cat. Since 2008, the Tuxedo Cat has established a reputation as one of the most loved Fringe hubs for independent performing
arts work.

Established and run by Bryan Lynagh and Cassandra Tombs, the Cat, as they affectionately call it, started as a rooftop venue in Synagogue Place off Rundle Street, running for three Fringes before the building underwent development. For the 2011 Fringe they opened in Electra House opposite Town Hall, also sitting empty in preparation of development. In 2012, they will be operating in Club 199 and the iconic 200 North Terrace.

“We feel like it’s our best address yet,” says Lynagh over a drink. “I think it’s a good mix having the Art Gallery and Library and Museum just across the road from a grassroots arts venue.”

Working with Renew Adelaide, the Cat’s access to the buildings is supported by Le Cordon Bleu, Maras Group, and Commercial and General. Renew Adelaide’s CEO Ianto Ware estimates this support could amount to in excess of $100,000 for nothing more than the recognition of the contribution of these organisations to Adelaide’s cultural revival.

At the time of the interview, Tombs and Lynagh have only had access to the space for a few weeks, and Lynagh has been “inhaling concrete dust all day” while working on the venue. While this is their fifth Fringe under the Tuxedo Cat banner, the pair still struggle with red tape.

“In some ways it feels like year one,” says Lynagh.

“Everyone talks about ‘activating spaces’ and governments wanting to help,” says Tombs, “but this is a pretty mega project. It’s two buildings side-by-side; we’re going to be out the front and in an alley way with five theatres. There are no clear steps, as yet, to start this project.

“We do like using disused spaces, or unusual spaces, non-traditional spaces. Having said that, though, they always come with a handful of problems: building code compliancy; acoustic problems; traffic management regarding human movement and security. I actually quite like the puzzle of trying to sort that all out.

“It’s not the easiest way to run a business,” she concedes.

This new, large-scale venue echoes similar reclaimed spaces for artists established interstate. Melbourne’s River Street Studios, and Sydney’s Queen Street Studios and Firstdraft Depot have been established through ties between artists, arts workers, developers, city councils and arts funding organisations. These spaces are not-for-profit ventures where experimentation, work in development, and low-scale production is encouraged and supported by low rent or venue hire fees.

Lynagh and Tombs also run a second Cat in Melbourne, borne out of frustrations with the Adelaide City Council and Liquor Licensing. After the second year in Synagogue Place, Tombs didn’t believe Adelaide would be ongoing.

“I thought, we’re not going to be able to do this here, we need to change this right up, so we just did Melbourne. A year later, we just kept pushing and pushing and pushing in Adelaide and made some headway, so now we’re doing both.”

Word of these venues has travelled far. Next year, the pair will be opening a venue at the Cairns Festival at the invitation of the local council: “Tuxedo Cat goes troppo,” laughs Tombs.

In Adelaide, for Club 199 at least, Lynagh and Tombs will be leasing the building on six-month guarantee. The pair is excited about this space continuing beyond the Fringe in an ongoing contribution to Adelaide’s art scene. “People ask during Fringe, ‘Are you going to be here afterwards?’ and now we can say, ‘Yes’,” Lynagh explains excitedly.

At the heart of the Cat is the community of artists and audiences it engages. “The Tuxedo Cat community is great,” says Lynagh.  “There is a lot of love for the Cat. People just want to be involved.”

While the community support is fantastic, creating these spaces comes with a financial burden. “It’s all on a shoestring budget; well, it’s all on our credit card,” he remarks. “This is what council and government talk about all the time, and we’re actually going to do it.”

Despite this, the pair holds a strong commitment to placing the needs of the artists at the centre of the venue.

“When you’re a creative person, you’ve got an idea for a show and you’re going to put a show on, you need to do a show in front of an audience,” says Tombs.  “You need feedback from an audience, to see if it’s funny, see if it all works, see if it ties together. Is it even a show?

“But what was starting to happen was unless you were prepared to sell your car or go into debt, you weren’t getting a chance to get those ideas out into the public domain. So we tried to keep our venue hire as low as functionally possible, and it includes your tech and your lighting. It’s really basic stuff. We are catering for artists that are trying out new ideas.”

During the 2012 Fringe, the venue will house more than 40 artists completing 450 performances. “We’re positive, we have a purpose, we work our guts out,” says Lynagh. “I’ll tell you what, if I wasn’t running Tuxedo Cat I would be going there all the time and drinking and checking out shows, definitely.”

Laughing, he shakes his head, “It’s such a shame.”

Other Fringe and Festival season pop-up venues

Arcade Lane
For the third year running, Ross Stanley will be running his pop-up venue Arcade Lane off Grenfell Street. Adjacent to the former Regent Cinema, Stanley uses the abandoned cinema spaces to create two indoor theatres off a laneway filled with bands, DJs and roving performances.

Over the years, Stanley has observed a broad group of Fringe goers discovering the lane.  “You’ve got 20-year-olds rubbing shoulders with advertising executives rubbing shoulders with 60-year-old theatre-goers,” he says.  “Generally speaking, everyone’s a little bit creative or a little bit on the arty tip, and they’re looking for that alternative experience.”

Barrio
In 2012, the Adelaide Festival’s night hub is moving off the riverbank and onto the plaza behind Parliament House. Festival designer Geoff Cobham describes the new space as a “scaffolding shantytown”, a maze incorporating music performances and eight themed bars.

While Barrio will begin construction on the plaza less than two weeks before the opening on March 2, Cobham says the trick to the venue is, “trying to keep it looking like it’s something that’s just grown organically, rather than something we’ve constructed. It should look like something that’s been there for years, and it’s slowly been built over the years by the people who live there”.

The Queen’s Theatre
The Queen’s Theatre was a theatre in its short life from inception in 1840, to closure in 1842. It has since been used for everything from law courts to horse yards, with the now gutted frame often a performance warehouse space during festivals.

For the 2012 Fringe it has come under the management of local company No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability, who are transforming the space into a three-theatre, two-bar performance hub.

Venue manager Kathryn Sproul is excited by “the charm, the challenge, and its unexpectedness. How we set up will be unique to this experience, and it won’t be how anyone else has set it up before”.

This also calls into question the interesting timing of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton announcing they won’t be extending their term at the Sydney Theatre Company. Is there a move to Adelaide in their future?

But today on the National Play Festival website, in an interview with Sydney raised, SA based playwright Nicki Bloom, a similar question came up:

Adelaide is a great cultural producer, what is it like working in a city that is outside of the traditional cultural hubs of Sydney and Melbourne?

These days (back to that postmodern, globalised society you spoke of) where you live has less of an impact on where you work. Sure, there’s still plenty of state-based parochialism, but I’ve worked as much in Sydney as I have in Adelaide, and have as broad networks in cities around the world as I do in Adelaide. I think that’s the same for most playwrights these days.

So, should the question be: can you be a playwright in Adelaide as long as you’re working elsewhere?  I believe Bloom’s Land & Sea is the only text-based theatre work by a South Australian playwright presented by a fully funded company in SA in 2012.  I don’t think this statistic would prove to be unusual.

We are waiting for the articles, for the photographs, for the coverage of this event which we see as unlike any other. We are waiting for our press to celebrate this great thing that we make: that the staff make, that the artists make, that the audiences make, that the city makes.  We are waiting for the street press, for the walls of posters, for pens to circle the new guide after the last one fell apart from being read too many times.

We are waiting, unfortunately, for exhaustion, for bad shows, to pay too much for a bottle of beer.  We are waiting to not hear about the best show until it is too late, to find a show runs two hours instead of the advertised one, to realise your skirt doesn’t cover all of the faux-leather seat in the un-air-conditioned venue.  We are all desperately hoping we are not waiting for another locust plague.  We are waiting for those inevitable articles: there is too much art; there is too much competition; how can anyone survive in such a glut?

But, you know and I know, art is not a zero-sum game. If I go to one play, that in itself isn’t going to stop me going to another.

Perhaps, we could consider, the primary property of good art is to drive the want for more good art.

Art begets more art.

Audiences beget larger audiences.

We don’t suffer from too much art – we suffer from too little of it.

The Fringe has increased ticket sales every year since it went annual. It is easy to bemoan but it’s just a pseudo-comedy festival now! It’s not art! But who are you, imaginary blog reader, to say that comedy is not real art?  Art is a big, wonderful salad, with fruits and vegetables and grains and meats and dressing in every form you can imagine – and oh, the combinations you can find if you try just once to step away from the Garden Salad.

This year, whether you are in Adelaide in March or in July, or off in your theatre-going corner of the world somewhere: pay it forward.

Every time you find yourself bemoaning there is not a large enough audience, buy yourself a ticket to another show.

Find out what people in your local area are creating – and buy a ticket to an independent co-op.

Find out what people in your country are creating – and buy a ticket to the next touring show, or throw cation to the wind and buy a plane ticket to another city.

Find out what people in another country are creating – and buy a ticket to the next festival which blows them into town.

Find out what makes you tick: because it might be what makes your audience tick.

Every time you find yourself bemoaning there is not enough funding, don’t have that next coffee and donate $5 to the general funds of your favourite company, or to a new group crowd-sourcing the $500 they need to create a whole production.

Read all that you can – blogs, newspapers, books, twitter – and find out what people are creating or thinking about or are worried about; find out what the people in your shoes did forty-years ago, or are doing on the other-side of the world.  Share all that you read that excites you, that inspires you, or scares you.  Find out what your friends and colleagues think: agree with them, argue with them; question them and yourself and your art.

And if someone is only going to buy one ticket all year? Then you need to be the best, and make them buy yours.

But don’t be that person that is only going to buy one ticket all year.

Find your way around the theatres of your city, and around the theatres of whatever other cities you visit. Watch the plays, and then watch the audience in the foyer. Be a fixture of a foyer or of a theatre bar, so you no longer need to be told how much a drink costs and you’re already holding the exact change. Go to forums and panels, and absorb what you hear – and if you disagree, challenge it.

When you see a work you love, shout it from the rooftops. And when you see a work you don’t like? Then be honest about that, too.

Buy tickets to the opening nights of new works – just so you can say I saw it first.  Wish for it to be brilliant, but take the terrible over the mediocre: shun the mediocracy.

Stretch yourself. Find where you are comfortable, and then force yourself into a completely new position.

If you’re an audience member, never stop believing the next show will be better.  If you’re a creator, never stop believing the next show will be better.

If you’re a marketer, never stop believing that when you’ve got someone you can get them for life.  If you’re an administrator, never stop believing a half-price under-30 ticket now will lead to many full-priced tickets in the future.

Don’t let yourself get pulled down by the fear and negativity: move past them. Don’t let yourself get pulled down by the challenges and the competition: embrace them and find a new ally.  Don’t let yourself be disheartened by work which makes your heart ache for something better: fight for that something better.

In 2012, let’s all pay it forward.

My love of art begets your love of art.

Your love of art begets your friends love of art.

Their love of art begets their friends love of art.

The world really isn’t that big a place.

It is very difficult to talk about children as a certain group of people.  They are very very different.  Even children six years old is not a group, they are very very different.  And that’s the same when you talk about adults, you would never say that ‘this is the same group of adults that understands an experience in the same way’.  And I think that when you talk about children it is like they are one group of certain people, and I think they are not.

So I think the way of talking to and with your audience is to start by realising you never know who they are, you can never guess who gets in, so you have to find a way of talking to the people who enter.  So for me it’s very important that when I tell stories and I do performances that you have the space where you can really watch and see and understand ‘where are we now, who is there, who am I, who are you?’ And I hate when I leave the theatre, and the audience leave, and I understand I don’t know what happened.  We never meet.

They watch me and I watch them: it’s very important.

- Bodil Alling, ‘the queen of Dutch children’s theatre’
speaking to ArtWorks

But, what I’m asking from you now is what do you want from a review of an existing, commercial musical?  If that’s a thirty-seven year old production of A Chorus Line or if that’s, say, a replica of a current mega-musical such as Wicked - what do you want a review to tell you about the locally playing production, when you can just as easily google dozens from NYC or around the world?

I want specific answers. In the comments on the first post Keith said:

pointing out sound problems is a big deal and mentioning current actors in the cast is important, too. (The cast will use ACL reviews like an indepedent theatre company would, for pull-quotes and to build their reputations.) But you’re just a different part of the conversation with a show like this; you’re speaking to people who will see this cast on that stage – and probably not to any future readers with interests in ACL.

So is it these things: execution of production qualities, more detail of individual performances?  Is it more background and context, or is it less?  Does it matter that it’s been running for forty-odd years?

What do you dear reader of this blog – you audience member, you artist, you marketer – read a review of such a show for?  What didn’t I talk about in my first review which I should have?  What did I talk about which you wish I’d left out?  What do you want to know, or want to discuss with me, or discuss with anyone when you leave a show like this?

You help me, and I might learn to be a better writer.  I might even try and write you another review.

On Jan 1st, the Adelaide Festival Centre’s twitter asked tweeters what they thought of “opening night”:

Well done to all for opening night of #achorusline in #Adelaide did you attend? Give us a #showreview and Happy New Year.—
  (@AdelaideFesCent) December 31, 2011

before getting well and truly in the act, tweeting Watkins article as their “first review”, to which I replied:

@AdelaideFesCent this isn't a review though, is it? It's a feature reporting opening: a very different beast. @adelaidenow—
Jane (@noplain) December 31, 2011

To which I got no response.

So not only do we have the local newspaper conflating a first performance with an opening night, we have the Adelaide Festival Centre also ignoring this distinction, and then calling an article a review.

I mainly thought no more of it, until down to the Festival Theatre I went on January 3rd to pick up my tickets and watch the show to write my review.  And it wasn’t until I sat down in my seat that I fully comprehended that critics had been invited to see and respond to a production which is a replica of a production which first played Broadway in 1975, where it continued for fifteen years. Which first played the West End in 1976; Sydney in 1977.  Which won nine Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, became the longest running show on Broadway, and played to 6.5 million people on that stage alone. These are all facts which could leave someone in awe, but I was left with just one thought:

What am I doing here?  What are any of us critics doing here?

What will any of us have to say about a production which has been kicking around the globe for 37 years?  What is that going to offer to theatrical discussion?

And when I came out of the performance, all I wanted to say about the show was “A Chorus Line is A Chorus Line”.  Because that’s it: that’s your review.  If you know the show, you’re going to get what you expect.  If you don’t, Wikipedia is going to tell you more than me. Better yet, read Clive Barnes’ review of the original Public Theatre production in 1975′s New York Times - that will do more for your understanding of the production than any of us in Adelaide are going to be able to do.

Sure, there is a certain cultural barometer writers from Adelaide can apply – does it work here, does it work now?  And yes, there are comments to be made on the execution of the replication.  But then again, is anyone going to listen?  This is A Chorus Line, we’re talking about.  Hardly an unknown entity.

The more I wrote my review, the more uncomfortable I became.  Never before have I felt so much like an extension of a publicity department: given tickets to put bums on seats.  ”Dazzled the opening night crowd!”

So then, what’s in a review?  I think a review can be many things, but I’m interested in it as a craft when it lends itself to a discussion of art in reference to a time and place; I’m intrigued by the singular powers it has as a recorded chronicle of a transient art form, capturing context and relevant history in a way recordings, publicity, and other arts journalism will never be able to match; I love what it does in Australia with our small population and tiny theatrical community in a country that is large and often untraversable by shortening the distance between cities through sharing stories of stories.

And yes, there is always that self-centred, self-important part of you that feels your words can make a difference: showing the creative where their work didn’t quite translate to the audience; showing the audience a piece of the puzzle they missed.  On the flip side of that, there is the fear and the heartache of whom you could hurt when you write a negative review; or who of these people will come back to hurt you.

But what I don’t want to be as a critic is a ticket-seller.  I’m not your publicist.  I’m not your marketing department.  Being quoted from or linked to by a company is a perk, but I don’t write reviews for pull-quotes to be found.  If I can influence people to buy a ticket to your show with my words, that is wonderful, that’s an even bigger perk.  But my task is always to first find the words; I’m not in control of their flow on effect.

Writing about A Chorus Line, it felt like the only thing I had been asked to do was to sell tickets.  “Here, respond to this work which has been playing as is for fourteen more years than you’ve been alive.  Let a few more people recognise the name in a headline; the name is what will sell us tickets.”  There was nothing new to talk about, it’s all been said before.  There was no connection to be made between a creative team and 2012 and Adelaide, not least of all because half of the creative team has passed away in the intervening 37 years since they created the work half-a-world-away.

Especially when you consider some companies based here only quote interstate and international reviews on their website - regardless of if they were for a completely different production – what is the place of the Adelaide-based critic today?  Do we receive tickets only in the everlasting hope of a good review, of an excited reader who might stumble across it of their own accord or through a quickly lost link on social media, of a few more tickets sold?  Are we part of the marketing strategy?  Are we to blame, then, when it all goes wrong?

Because I want to be more that that.  I want to be part of the conversation: I don’t want to be on the sidelines of it, I don’t want to be the end of it.  I want to let people in Sydney and Melbourne and Lisbon and Boston know what we are creating in Adelaide; I want to tell Adelaide about work which this city hasn’t seen before.  I want you to be able to go back through my work in one year or five years or twenty years and get a view of our city and our artists, and I want there to be other critics here with whom you can do the same.

But if all I am is another publicist, I’m not sure that I want to do this at all.

Update: A follow-up post.

This review originally appeared on www.australianstage.com.au

A Chorus Line is a Broadway classic. With the original production opening in 1975 and running until 1990, at its closing A Chorus Line was the longest running production on Broadway. Winning nine Tony Awards, it was only the fifth musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Thirty-seven years after the original production, little has changed, with the new Australian tour a reproduction of the work of original director/choreographer Michael Bennett by original cast member Baayork Lee. Here, we are given an assertive and confident production of a piece which fills an essential place in the musical theatre canon. A Chorus Line is the production you would expect to see.

On a bare stage we watch as hopefuls audition for a place in the chorus line of a Broadway musical. In addition to knowing his cast can dance and sing, director Zach (Joshua Horner) also wants to know a little bit about the people behind the performers. We meet seventeen performers, and from them four boys and four girls will be selected for Broadway.

For his portrayal of director Zach, constantly telling those auditioning to stop performing, Horner never does. While he isn’t helped by the construct that sees his voice literally booming over the theatre, on stage and off Horner’s Zach is mannered, affected, and theatrical, with Horner never settling down into his part.

The auditioning company subsequently fare better. A Chorus Line ultimately has a bittersweet ending: the individuals who are selected have reached their goal, however their goal is to form a part of a homogenous line. ‘One Singular Sensation’: not a note, kick, head or hair out of place.

With a few notable exceptions, however it is unfortunate the cast of this production largely reaches its greatest heights as an ensemble. As individuals the players have their strengths but also their weaknesses; when they work as a group the power of the shared music and choreography elevates the performers and the production.

The night, however, is stolen by Euan Doidge as Paul, in a monologue on his acceptance of himself, and his parents’ acceptance of the man he would choose to be. In a subtle performance, Doidge nonetheless managed to hold the house in silence, his years of hidden ache spilling out into the theatre.

The text of the show (book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante) was built on conversations with actors working in New York City, and many of the actors who shared their stories went on to perform in the original 1975 production. Unusually for a musical, is in these book scenes where there is the greatest opportunity to connect to the characters, as you feel these are the closest to the true stories.

Time has dated the music very little. Marvin Hamlisch’s brassy composition flies well under Musical Director Paul White and the Adelaide Art Orchestra, and Edward Kleban’s lyrics are carried well by the cast, although some have stronger voices than others. Bennett’s recreated choreography is one of the best keys we have to the company as individuals, as he uses both their individual movement, grasp and interpretation within the 1930s-styled ”traditional” movement, and the “modern” choreographed solos and group numbers to give us a foundation to the characters and the plot.

On opening night, the production’s biggest downfall was in the execution of the sound design (Simon Gregory). Individual microphones were not always turned on at the correct moment, and in large ensemble book scenes volumes were often pitched at different levels, an element which distracted from the text. During One, microphones were constantly knocked by the performers hats, the repeated scratching over the speaker system overriding music and voices.

In a production of this scale, amplification should preferably be unnoticeable and naturalistic (which this production is a long way off achieving), and at the very least it certainly shouldn’t detract from the play. Work is needed to ensure that when characters are speaking or singing they are always heard, that audiences are allowed to read the nuance in conversations through consistency in levels, and if the cast are to wear head mounted microphones their hats do not touch their heads.

Thirty-seven years on from its original production, A Chorus Line faithfully remains an eye into the Broadway ‘gypsies’ of the 1970s, people looking for another production to get them through. While it occasionally has moments of great heart, this production is largely a fun, light-hearted, and traditional night of musical theatre.

Adelaide Festival Centre in Association with Tim Lawson presents A Chorus Line.  At the Festival Theatre until January 28, then Her Majesty’s Theatre Melbourne from February 4.   More information and tickets.