She's Not Performing

By Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

Alison Mann’s first full-length play, She’s Not Performing, weaves a handful of lives around its central issue: the long-term impacts and aftermaths of forced adoption. The play broils with the anger and loss which is a daily part of life for Margarite (Sara Pensalfini), decades after giving up her daughter for adoption. Her unresolved pain ricochets and reverberates violently into her relationships with both her current boyfriend Ian (Campbell McKenzie), and also Hamish (Joe Clements), a connection from her past. Bryony Geeves completes the quartet as Annie, a young stripper Margarite becomes preoccupied with (thinking perhaps Annie could be her daughter).

Image courtesy Theatre Royal website

Director Belinda Bradley has handled some of the most sensitive scenes gently, allowing the story to bleed from its characters at just the right pace, and integrating a sometimes addictively claustrophobic and suitably nightmarish soundscape by Matt Warren. In other places, however, the actors don’t yet seem to feel comfortable in their roles, and a certain hesitance and lack of connection to the text occasionally forms a barrier to audience empathy. The minimalist design and moody yet unpretentious lighting serve effectively as each of the different settings, but also leave the actors quite naked (sometimes literally) in the moments where they are not yet at ease.

The production is at its strongest during the scenes that depart from reality in one way or other: in dreams, memories, flashbacks, fantasies. During these sections the cast seem more willing to take risks, the dialogue – perhaps ironically – sounds more real, and all the production elements come together powerfully.

The season should bring more cohesion to the relationships and allow the actors to fully embody their roles, as well as develop the moments of humour in the script which cautiously poked their way through the fury in this opening-night performance.

She’s Not Performing is presented by Tasmanian Theatre Company and will continue at the Theatre Royal Backspace until November 29, 2013. 

PIP and POOCH

Terrapin Puppet Theatre 

Theatre Royal Hobart 

Wednesday July 10th

Gai Anderson

Pip and Pooch, the fun new primary schools touring show from Terrapin Puppet Theatre, is a wonderful child’s-view story about friendships and man’s – or, in this case, girl’s – best friend. For Pip, life is not easy as she negotiates the difficulties thrown up by a bizarre array of family and foe as her birthday party approaches. But when Pooch arrives things begin to improve.

The energetic engagement of actors Bryony Geeves (Pip) and Matt Wilson (Pooch) had the children in the audience enthralled and laughing right from the start, with their clever silliness, heartfelt real-life reflections and crazy puppet characters. I particularly loved the two-dimensional cut-out puppets with their simple choreography of arms and legs, and smiling / frowning magnetised faces which were removed like layers to reveal their changing emotions. It’s amazing how engaging a talking puppet without a moving mouth can be!

Expertly designed and realised, this visually beautiful show has a quirky aesthetic which 

seamlessly combines the two- and three-dimensional worlds of photorealism, live characters and magazine cutout animation, to create a somewhat surreal yet warmly familiar visual world. The horizontally layered set skillfully allows for the various perspectives and elements of the story to blend smoothly on stage, moving from mini street scape with characters at front, through Pip’s cut-out full-scale girly bedroom, to a projected streetscape at back of the mini set at the front ( as well as doubling as an animation screen). Its quite a treat to see.

This technically complex show is full of delights and enormously engaging.
Terrapin’s new Artistic Director Sam Routledge has managed to strike a beautiful balance between the multimedia gadgetry, live action and much wonder-filled puppetry .
I look forward to seeing more of his shows. 

Sleeping Horses Lie

By Gai Anderson
Terrapin Puppet Theatre
Theatre Royal Hobart

Sleeping Horses Lie is Terrapin Puppet Theatres’ new school show, directed by Frank Newman and written by Maxine Mellor. An action-packed delight, this quirkily told tale, tells of the young girl Sally Saber, whose greatest desire is to be strong and brave like a tiger. But there is nothing to fear in Sally's house until late one night when her fantasy world begins to come to life.

Told in classic story-book fashion, but with generous lashings of pantomime, clown, slapstick, character puppetry and digital animation, the performers Bryony Geeves and Kai Raisbeck, as brother and sister Wilbur and Wilma, tell this complex but rollicking  tale with great vigor. Punctuated by moments of heightened physical theatre and delightful song the show is visually complex, with the feel of an old world nursery rhyme come-alive.