Review: Pornography

There have been three major terrorism attacks in the past decade which significantly cut through to the Australian media, and thus our own dialogues about terrorism. The first, the 9/11 attacks in the USA. The second, the Bali Bombings, targeting Australian tourists. And the third, the London Bombings.

Each year, we notice their anniversaries. Eleven years after 9/11, much of the currency around the discussion of the remembrance focused on the choice of major US newspapers to no longer carry the anniversary as front page news. Ten years on from the Bali Bombings, the event was carried with significance.

The London Bombings perhaps though, held the most currency looking back from 2012. Occurring the day after the announcement the 2012 Olympics would be held in London, the two events would be inextricably linked.

Simon Stephens wrote Pornography in the aftermath of the bombings, in a city which was very much in repair and recovery. His work distills the event down into stories of a handful of people in the week leading up to the event, at the same time almost makes a point of the fact that this bombing was just one day in the lives of people which are frequently full, and complicated, and messy.

The impact of the bombings, the immediacy of the event, the knowledge that these characters lives will now forever be tied up in a narrative of what occurred that day is at the forefront throughout Pornography. Directing the work for the State Theatre Company, Daniel Clarke holds tension throughout the work: relief in humour is short lived, as audience members we are privileged in knowing where the work is taking us. Jason Sweeney’s composition, too, weaved throughout the production, holds the audience on teter-edge.

And yet, the bombing is almost the least important part of the work and the stories. While these characters stories culminate in this event, more pertinently Stephens writes about a fractured England.

Review: Top Girls, or, why I’m happy to be a young feminist

In 1982, the New York Times described Top Girls as “intent on breaking rules.” Thirty years later, Top Girls feels rather a lot like a Well Made Play. Playwright Caryl Churchill has been so influential on the current crop of playwrights that seeing her work on stage now as part of the canon it feels simply that – part of the canon, no longer radical.

And in that tradition, Catherine Fitzgerald’s production for the State Theatre Company is a well made production. Maintaining the eighties setting with shoulder pads intact, and with solid performances from the cast the show rips along much faster than you would suspect of its nearly three hours running time.

Mary Moore’s set keeps it mainly simple: a curved dining table in the first scene, several (computer-less, even for 1982) desks and a office percolator, a small wall for Kit (Carissa Lee) and Angie (Antje Guenther)’s hideaway, a couch and table in Joyce’s home; location settings somewhat unnecessarily indicated by large stagnant projections. The simplicity of Moore’s set – which places the characters and text at the centre of the production, is overshadowed though, by a confusingly literal interpretation of the “glass ceiling” metaphor.

At the dinner party the glass ceiling has been broken – although it is very clear that most of these women just managed to survive within the patriarchy, not beyond it: being stoned to death, giving up their children at the test of their partners, living as a concubine and a nun. At the office, too, the glass ceiling is broken – Marlene (Ulli Birvé) receiving a top job at Top Girls, this is clear enough. In Suffolk, at the home of Marlene’s working class sister Joyce (Eileen Darley), the ceiling remains intact and unbroken. Most confusingly, though, is when the glass ceiling descends during the last scene of the play (the first scene chronologically), as Marlene and Joyce talk. Saying what, exactly? The more time you spend in a lower class area the lower your ceiling becomes? The act of women talking to each other causes the ceiling to drop? The restrictions on the  working class Joyce are certainly greater than her now middle class sister, but why the lowering?

Festival Review: Proximity

Film and performance implicitly train our eyes in different ways. While a cinematographer has the power of framing and depth of focus to train our eyes to a particular moment or person, on stage everything is in frame at the same time. Through the use of lighting, blocking, and/or choreography the director can help guide where to look, what moments of a scene or movement should be capturing to our eye, but ultimately the theatre audience has choice: are they watching the primary performer, are they studying detail in the design, are they watching members of the ensemble?

Garry Stewart’s Proximity for the Australian Dance Theatre combines live dance work from an ensemble of nine, with live video art and manipulation by Thomas Pachoud. With a combination of stagnant cameras and cameras manipulated by the cast, a live feed of the dancers is projected onto screens taking up the back of the stage. Pachoud manipulates these images, creating looping and overlap of sections of video, creating the illusion of a moving performance space, or with lines that play and intersect with the dancers’ bodies.

Review: Buried Child

And so begins David Mealor’s director’s statement, showing us that Buried Child can be summed up with the same plot as 90% of plays set in rural Midwest and Southern America.

The ideal or criticism of the Great American Dream runs through much of that country’s literature.  Written in the late 1970s, Buried Child came off the back of a nation recovering from the Watergate scandal, deep in recession and high in inflation, a country unhappy with the war in Vietnam. In his script Shepard is extremely critical of the mythology a country burying its past, looking forward to a new day.

In a gothic farm-house in Illinois, rain pours down.  Matriarch Halie (Jacqy Phillips) yells down the stairway onto the largely un-listening ears of patriarch Dodge (Ron Haddrick), as he sits and coughs on the couch, watching the television and swigging from a hidden bottle of whisky.  Their son, the lumbering and slow Tilden (Nicholas Garsden) appears, in his arms an old sack, bushels of corn plucked from the depths of the yard.

Over years, the family has become destroyed, fortunes trapped in a rural farm-house, dreaming of what has been lost and hiding away from what can never be regained.  Their other remaining son, Bradley (Patrick Graham), is an abusive lout, and Halie pains for the now dead son who was her great hope.  Halie and Dodge have for many years lived in separate rooms; her dreaming of a happier life that was and escaping the house for a happier life in town; he alive perhaps only by a stubbornness to not leave the house to anyone in his family.

Review: Worldhood (And: On the fallibility of being a critic)

Worldhood. Photo Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions 2011

This review was originally published at Australian Stage Online

Darkness. Silence. Through the dim, white. A large blank page, several meters high by nearly the stage wide. In front, sits the stage. Empty.

Enter visual artist Thom Buchanan. To the white, he brings fast and furious strokes of charcoal. The theatre fills with the scratch and scrape of charcoal against paper, the breath of Buchanan, amplified, echoing around and around the space. The page fills with vertical lines, Buchanan swiftly crafting a forced perspective, the audience finding themselves peering down a city street.

As Buchanan draws he ducks and rises, his whole body mimicking the geometry of his hand and the charcoal he draws with.

Dancer Tara Soh walks on to the stage, watching with intent the rapid creation of a black backdrop, as she begins to follow Buchanan. As he drops, she drops. As he shifts up, right, down, right, left, she shifts up, right, down, right, left.

As she moves out of this holding pattern, Soh continues to create patterns and forms in response to the heightening intensity of sound, as the strike of charcoal and the sharpness of breath continues to intensify in the space. Her body moves in sharp lines and angles.

Other dancers begin to join and fill the space, their bodies too moving and bending with sharp cracks along lines, moving angles and moving planes. Hands grab, arms interlock, bodies in a mass move across the space.

The sound of Buchanan drops away, and as if the voice over to a documentary, we are told about the history of marks, of the precursors to image. Of angles, of composition, of the eventual discovery of how to create a perception of depth on a two dimensional plane.

And that’s just the first fifteen minutes.

Review: Pie

Pie by Gabrielle Griffin. Photo Heath Britton.

In the house of a purple gauze tent, a woman (Gabrielle Griffin, who conceived, devised and performs the work) counts money and squirrels it away in a box.  Under the ticking of a clock, she pulls out a pastry dish from a draw in a wooden cabinet, its glass cupboards filled with eggs, and proceeds to make a pie.  Out comes a puppet (designed and constructed by Rid Primrose) who checks the money in what is her box, and administers Griffin for the few coins she has taken.

What follows is Pie: a play I don’t quite know how to explain.  Structurally, there is little in ways of plot.  In fact, I am still not certain if the show was essentially following a structured plot, or if the scenes were simply thematically linked rather than lineally. Either way would be justifiable and fine in the context of the production, but it is the ambiguity that is not resolved, an uncertainness of time framing which has left me puzzled.

A word-less performance by Griffin is supported by her tender, skillful and considerate use of puppetry (there was one particular moment where the puppet climbs a ladder, and the swing of her leg up a step, a slight reverb and then rebalance in the hip struck me with such humanity it would be mundane in any other situation), but without a narrative or a history to the characters or their relationship most scenes threw up more questions than they answered.  I couldn’t explain to myself what a Ferris wheel was supposed to represent; I was confused if pills were fertility pills or The Pill; I didn’t know if scenes were dreams or reality within this world.

I thought perhaps it could be the fact that reproduction isn’t a thought or an issue in my life at the moment.  But I don’t think that precludes me from the understanding of the subject matter.  It’s a work that would certainly be easy to have a response to if reproductive issues were front and centre of your life, but I don’t think that goes hand in hand with it being inscrutable if they are not.

Letting these issues go, though, the production sits within a attractive design, changing to create new interesting surrounds throughout the production.  Through the gauzed tent design (Gaelle Mellis and Wendy Todd), the lighting (Mark Penningon) refracts in such a way to create rainbows of light glittering through the walls.  The use of shadows, while sometimes enigmatic within the narrative, formed compelling images.  Black and white animated projections (animation by Luku Kuku, projection design by Cindi Drennan) are at times clear in their intent and purpose to the show (sands through an hour glass), and at times not.

Composition and sound design (Catherine Oates and Belinda Gehlert) used a variety of styles, from the ticking of a clock, to the tango, to fairground music, to differentiae each scene.  This sound aids in the movement and responses between Griffin and her puppet, and gently pushes the pace along.

At just under an hour, Pie doesn’t outstay its welcome: there is enough in the design elements and Griffin’s work with the puppet that the production is a gentile divertissement.  Yet, I came away with the pressing question: if I didn’t know it was about reproduction, how long would it have taken me to have worked that out?  In the scenes and the structure I unfortunately lost too much to really comprehend the story Pie was trying to tell.

Vitalstatistix presents Pie, conceived, devised and performed by Gabrielle Griffin.  Design by Gaelle Mellis and Wendy Todd; lighting design by Mark Pennington; projection design by Cindi Drennan; composition and sound design by Catherine Oates and Belinda Gehlert; rehearsal director and dramaturgy by Kat Worth; puppet design, construction and consultancy by Rod Primrose; animation by Luku Kuku; outside eye and dramaturgy consultant Maude Davey.  At the Waterside Workers Hall until August 6.  More information and tickets.

Review: The Give and Take

limbing the cooperate ladder of the Sydney sprinkler industry, somewhere along the line Don (George Kapiniaris) has neglected his family, and his family have neglected him.  Just as Don finds out he is among the top choices to take over as CEO, his three children have driven their mother to the airport, so she can fly to Tuscany to find herself (having sex with those sexy Italian men).  In almost a modern Australian take on King Lear (here I am thinking I’m so bright for coming up with that comparison, and Catherine Fitzgerald mentions it in her Notes From The Director!), Don then asks his children – body builder Damien (Chris Asimos), “anarchist” Neil (Matthew Crook), and corporate climber Julie (Rihannon Owen)-  to prove they love him for more than his money.  The problem is: they don’t.   That’s just the give and take.

The very model of a picture perfect family. I'm pretty sure Asimos stole Crook's arms, slapped toothpicks on Crook, and then tied the arms together to make his own giant arms. Science! Photo by Shane Reid.

Review: Blackbird

isaligned expectations?  Perhaps.  After True West blew me away last year, so I was telling everyone with ears they must go and see it at the Fringe, and then running back to see it myself, Blackbird was always on my list of shows I was most excited to see this year.  It was disappointing.  I believe this team is better than this production shows, and therein lies the rub: this production doesn’t show it.

Looking at other reviews now, I don’t even understand what Peter Burdon from The Advertiser is saying in his review: miscast, yet must-see?  A very bizarre read.

In other news, I saw Ruby Bruise again, brought more people to share her with, and loved it even more.   Can’t get it out of my head.  If you want to treat yourself, go and see it.

Both of these play until Saturday.

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

David Harrower’s Blackbird is a script intended to be inflammatory, confusing, filled with heightened and varying emotions on behalf of the characters and audience members. Fifteen years after forty-year-old Ray abandons twelve-year-old Una in a boarding house, she returns into his life to find out: was it a malicious act of pedophilia, or was it more, was there a real connection?

Playing around within this, within the questions of can a grown man truly have feelings for a girl, regardless of questions about legality and morality, the play is intended to make the audience question themselves, to question their reaction to being told this was a true relationship.

It is a curious thing, being able to hear these beats in the script as written, but not being able to see them as performed in this production directed by David Mealor. As Terrence Crawfordplays Ray as the nervous, shuffling, pedophilic character with constantly halting language from the outset, the production does not have an opportunity to travel anywhere.

In Una, Ksenja Logos takes more opportunities to show variance in character: in moments a tough exterior briefly gives way to show a traumatized young woman, but a true connection between Una and Ray is never felt. In Crawford’sinterpretation, Ray has nowhere to grow and change over the course of the production, and so emotion of the piece is essentially flat. This is not helped by Mealor’s direction that has monologues, moments of extreme emotion in the text, delivered to the audience.

The simple lunchroom designed by Mary Moore, bound in realism from the ugly institutional colours and cheap furniture down to the gratifying stick and squelch made of shoes in contact with spilled sugary drinks on the floor, is bordered by an external space of strewn garbage bags and rubbish.

For the first half of the play, it appears the fourth wall exists between the boundary of the stage proper and this border, until Logos steps out of the main space for her monologue. After this wall is broken, it is never mended, as the characters move freely between the lunchroom and the garbage, creating a confused stage.

Sound design by Andrew Howard and composition by Quentin Grant is overwrought, as the entry and exit of synthesized notes are jolting, detracting from the story and highlighting a theatricality which in this play perhaps shouldn’t be seen. Choices in sound are also confusing: twice the characters reference the clock striking midnight, as a clock strikes three times.

Ultimately, it is not that Blackbird is a particularly bad production; it’s just that it is particularly monotonous. To buy into the conceit that Harrower tries to set up the play needs to show the audience the raw connection of characters. Unfortunately, this ineffectual production misses the mark.

Flying Penguin Productions present Blackbird by David Harrower.  Directed by David Mealor,  set and costume design by Mary Moore, lighting design by Mark Pennington, sound design by Andrew Howard, composition by Quentin Grant.  With Terence Crawford, Ksenja Logos and Scarlett Groom-Ransom

Review: Ruby Bruise

here are times when I wish I still existed in the anonymity of the internet.  Where I could write something, and no-one could connect it to a name, or a face, or a person they actually know.  Where I could share the fullness of my brain, and the thoughts that are swimming, and the deepest nerve that a piece of art just hit, and still have it be a secret.

Writing my review of Ruby Bruise was one of those moments. I tried to capture what it was, but in no way did I capture the way it captured me.

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

When Ruby Bruise was born, she developed at 10,000 times the normal rate, and this production, devised by director Daisy Brown and playwright Finnegan Kruckemeyer, invites us in on the journey of Ruby’sgrowing old.

The constructed set in the Waterside Workers Hall of billowing sheets, designed by Amy Milhinch and Wendy Todd, is reminiscent of your childhood cubby house: literally in the cubby of stolen sheets behind the lounge or under the porch chairs, and figuratively in the comfort, home, and wonder it brings. And along with that is the childlike wonder that Ruby Bruise pulls us into.

Starting almost as a children’s story, we are invited in to the wonder and escapism of childhood and Ruby’schildhood, as Ruby tells us the story of her growing up.Kruckemeyer’s emotive lyrical narrative, primarily spoken in the third person as Ruby’s life is narrated with an air of reflection, is sweeping and beautiful in its exploration of ageing: in finding yourself and your talents, and in periods and sex and sexuality.

Written with shades of dark and light, Kruckemeyer explores into a deeper darkness than your children’s stories aught, as in the dark the pains and heartaches of Ruby’s life are lain out before us. But in the light, if you look around at the faces of your fellow audience members, you look into the faces of pure unadulterated joy.

The part of Ruby is shared by four: Sarah Brokensha, Elena Carapetis, Nathan O’Keefe, and Ellen Steele. It would be wrong to call them “the Rubies” because they are one Ruby, and together they make a whole person.Ruby Bruise reflects how, just as all of us are made up of different facets of our personality, different parts of our lives affect different parts of us in different ways.

To pretend we are all complete in oneself is silly: we are complete in ourselves, just as Ruby is complete in these four actors. While in shared lines the timing was occasionally off, the strong cast work together to create a wonderful and complete character.

Under Brown’s direction, Ruby doesn’t so much walk through life as dance and play on her advanced journey from childhood to adulthood. Crafting the overflowing facets of Ruby’s personality in the four actors, Brown has created a magic world in which we are privy to the deeply interesting life of Ruby Bruise. Integrating a variety of theatrical styles, including dance sequences, the sometimes heightened theatricality of the piece serves to highlight the extremities of Ruby’s intense personality.

Unfortunately, there were moments where progression of the character and narrative (and accents) were lost, as the play took long diversions into exploring these theatrical styles and the pace stalled. While an extended magic scene was funny and clever, I was itching to find out what happened to Ruby next.

Mark Pennington paints the white canvas of a set by Milhinch and Todd with brilliant lights: the white, sweeping, and cosy tent is coloured with enveloping radiance, of blues, of yellows. Pennington also plays with shadows, as our first and last meeting with Ruby is through silhouette, and as Ruby’s childhood toy grows into a life-sized beast we are again introduced through shadow.

Music by Mario Spate wraps around Kruckemeyer’s prose and Brown’s direction with fluidity which emphasise and highlights the important moments, without ever being overbearing or unwelcome. Sound and lights are operated off to the corner of the stage, and the tapping of the musician’s foot as he plays the piano is just another way in which this play echoes strains of a childhood freedom.

On opening night Spate’s sound design was accompanied by the heavy pounding of the Adelaide rain on the roof, and although it meant some lines were lost, it was the perfect accompaniment to the intimacy of the play. In our cubby house, we were safe, in the light and even in the heartache.

A play in many ways about loneliness and the ways we try to comfort ourselves (or harm ourselves) to stop feeling the pain, Ruby Bruise is ultimately hopeful in that one day you will find comfort and companion: in your self and in others. It is a sweeping story which is in fact a personal exploration of an individual, albeit one whose personality and thoughts are too big to be contained in the body of one.

As Ruby Bruise would say to herself, I say to her: I like you being here.

Vitalstatistix and The Misery Children present Ruby Bruise, devised by Finegan Kruckemeyer and Daisy Brown.  Written by Finegan Kruckemeyer, directed by Daisy Brown, design by Amy Milhinch and Wendy Todd, composition by Mario Spate, lighting by Mark Pennington.  With Sarah Brokensha, Elena Carapetis, Nathan O’Keefe, and Ellen Steele.