The Sidespace Gallery proves a
surprisingly cosy venue for two theatrical performances developed
through the HyPe initiative, a program facilitated by the Salamanca
Arts Centre for the development of theatre with experimental and
cross-disciplinary tendencies.
Bijou's Secret,
written and performed by Fiona Stewart, is an arresting one-hander
exploring lost intimacies between three generations of women - an
immigrant French woman, Bijou, her alcoholic, academic daughter and
artistic granddaughter. Stewart is a compelling performer,
confidently inhabiting the three roles and switching between them
with ease; a slight adjustment of the hair serving as sufficient cue.
The Backspace Theatre, Hobart .
As part of the Tasmanian Theatre Company’s Associate Program
Grief and the death of a small child are not easy subjects to broach at any time, and I must admit to sometimes feeling uncomfortable during the performance of Ross Muellers award winning play Construction of the Human Heart at the Backspace Theatre last Friday night (June 13). But while it was a brave choice of subject for this new Hobart-based ensemble it was also a delight to experience such a skilfully-directed and subtly-performed version of this cleverly-constructed very modern play.
Mainstage Theatre Company Peacock Theatre February 9-12
Ever wondered what would happen if you took a giant cauliflower, a confessional, a CWA band, feet that kiss, a rooftop gift of love, and a selectively handicapped electro-funk keyboardist, and tossed them all together with a dash of funny and a pinch of poignant?
First-time writer Sarah Hodgetts manages to pack an awful lot into this script – it is consistently funny, frequently sweet, and enthusiastically wacky – and in this production for Mainstage, she also takes on the roles of actor and director. While her performance is amusing, sincere, and poised, and the direction sound, it is in the text that Hodgetts excels.
The script is well-structured and paced; for a first work, plot twists and complexities, comic timing, and dialogue are all handled with unexpected grace and confidence.
Peacock Theatre
Salamanca Arts Centre
As part of the Taste of Tasmania
December 29th 2010
Great potential, but in need of more cooking
It is wonderful to see Salamanca Arts Centre supporting the creation of local theatre for inclusion in the Taste of Tasmania – a festival which offers such a huge potential audience.
Writer/performer Marisa Mastrocola’s re-enactment of an Italian family dinner, as the backdrop for the telling of her own family stories, is a great and fitting choice to offer within this annual food extravaganza.
The Golden Age Old Nick The Peacock Theatre 15 – 30 October
This production is disturbing on a number of levels – many of them just as they should be, but some the fault of an imperfect script.
On one hand, I wholeheartedly recommend that you get along to the show. It deserves support: it is challenging and worthwhile, and performed with strength and commitment. Set primarily in Tasmania during the Second World War, the play has at its heart the fate of an isolated, perhaps genetically compromised, tribe discovered in the wilderness by two young men struggling with their own place in Australia at this point in history; Louis Nowra’s preoccupation with ‘otherness’ is evident.
Despite its powerful choices and intentions, I find the script profoundly problematic.
The Tasmanian Theatre Company The Backspace 2-25 September
By Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
This program comprises Sue Smith’s The Seagull, Debra Oswald’s Bull Kelp, Adam Grossetti’s Sex, Death and Fly Fishing and Finegan Kruckemeyer’s The Exceptional Beauty of the First and the Last. The playwrights were commissioned for a week’s residence in remote Tasmanian towns, producing four plays describing (sometimes circumscribing) place as a way of framing narrative.
Australian Shakespeare Festival (A collaboration between Michael Campbell, Helen Noonan, Alison Bauld and William Shakespeare)
Peacock Theatre
August 19 & 21, 2010 By Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
This is an ambitious and challenging work for both performers and audience. It combines dense text (largely, but not exclusively, Shakespearean), a sparse contemporary operatic score, and a relentless live video projection of the action on stage. It also demands an intense engagement with the most emotionally and dramatically extreme points in the lives of five Shakespearean women – moments usually embedded in the full length of a production. It’s a lot to ask in an hour.
‘It’s not about how old you are, but how you are old.’
At twenty-five I panic! I fret! I should have done this, been there, seen that and have one of those. Age is intrinsic to our perceptions of one another. We impose a different set of expectations on someone who is thirteen than on someone who is thirty. Age alters our bodies. It is physical. It is ephemeral. It is definitive. But as The Age I’m In illustrates: it is also meaningless.
Force Majeure
Theatre Royal June 3 & 4, 2010 By Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
I’m linguistically opposed to the word ‘vignette’ – it is nonchalantly overused and often carries negative connotations of being superficial or somehow nominal.
However, vignette should also carry connotations of embellishment, elegance, delicacy, and evocative detail. My beloved Oxford dictionary defines photographic portrait vignettes as images with ‘...the edges of the print shading off into the background’. How poetic.
It is with conscious allusion to both the superficiality and the lovely poetry of the word, then, that I say The Age I’m In comprises a series of vignettes which are each a melange of voice-over, soundscape, dance, theatre, gesture, humour, digital illustration, intimacy, and humanity. The cast of ten navigate their way through a series of relationships, narratives, and encounters, encompassing topics as diverse as religion, cancer, adolescence, disability, and motherhood.
A Double Bill: Partly It’s About Love... Partly It’s About Massacre (Fiona Sprott) and Andrew Corder Thinks Twice (Finegan Kruckemeyer) Tasmanian Theatre Company Backspace Theatre May 27, 2010 by Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
If you think you can’t make fantastic theatre out of one actor in one small theatre, then think again. Think twice, if you will excuse the cheap pun.
As a rule, I don’t adore one-person shows. I find them hard work, and I get lonely: I crave interactions on stage. But with the Tasmanian Theatre Company’s latest offering, I am reminded that restriction is not always a negative, but rather can be the generator of great beauty and surprising moments.
She loves me. She likes me. He is my son. She is my sister. He is my enemy. He catches the same bus as me. She has our mother’s eyes. She is our mother.- Finegan Kruckemeyer
Despite our many differences we all experience the same breadth of emotion and nurse the same desire to be loved. Although our relationships may be unique, complex and varied, we each form the nucleus of the ever-evolving company we keep. At the same time, we all experience times when we have no company at all.
Albedo Productions (toured by Critical Stages); Theatre Royal, Hobart, September 22-23
When I last played poker, there were one-cent pieces around to bet with. That’s how long ago it was. Even then, I barely knew what I was doing (I think I was eleven).
Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice is a play entirely built on a bedrock of poker: the game, the habit, the parallels with life, the adrenaline, the strategies, the jargon. It’s also about the compulsion of poker; these six men play the game to fill absences of other passion in their lives.
Did I mention that I know nothing about poker? But on balance, it didn’t matter. Sure, there were minutes at a time when I hadn’t a clue what any of the dialogue meant: five card high-low, the wheel’s in, call, call, I’m out, you can’t have had trip four, call... (forgive me if you’re a poker player; that’s how I heard it!). But – and Marber and director Craig Ilott understand this implicitly – any ignorance of this dialogue’s surface meaning only serves to focus attention on the fine dynamics between actors, and the nuances of mood and characterisation.
I adore The West Wing: I don’t understand the first thing about the American political system, but the characters, the pace and rhythm of dialogue, the humour, and ultimately the moments of deep, genuine dramatic intensity are the real treats. I felt the same way about Dealer’s Choice.
Dealer’s Choice is a little slow to begin, although a strong atmosphere is there even as the audience enter; a chef goes quietly about his business in the split stage (kitchen/dining room), and a perfectly compiled soundtrack situates us immediately in the London restaurant where the play is set.
The first half is so self-conscious about establishing characters that many become caricatures instead: both obvious and stilted. The humour to begin with is, similarly, a little predictable, and a little too reminiscent of a dated British sitcom. Some of the motivations and developments of narrative are also forced, as the group of guys who work in the restaurant prepare for their regular poker game that evening.
It is in the second half that Marber’s writing shines, and gives this production the opportunity to do the same. We’re still in the restaurant, but downstairs where the game is. It’s hard work for an audience to get in to this world. Lights are dim, the round poker table is exclusive and the staging obscures actors’ faces -- and then there is that impenetrably jargonistic table-talk. But these obstacles are neither careless nor preclusive; the strength of both writing and ensemble performance connect with an audience despite the physical and practical barriers they must cross.
I’ve got no interest in gambling, but the play briefly made me want to be a part of that world: the adrenaline, the almost-seediness, the insularity, the intimacy of it. For a play to stimulate that level of unwilling desire in an audience member is credit to the writing, the direction, and the performances.
The casting is strong; the script is dependent on a tight ensemble of contrasting and complementary performances, and this production delivers. The characters balance each other for both the humour and the dramatic tension of the work. Christopher Stollery as Ash (an interloper into the restaurant game, and a professional player with his own debts to recoup from games elsewhere) and Sam North as Carl (the restaurant owner’s prodigal son) both excel.
Critical Stages, a non-profit touring body, should be commended for giving this production a wider audience than its original 2004 Sydney season. But it is a pity that it had such a short, mid-week run here in Hobart – perhaps an intrinsic challenge of mounting a wide tour without high commercial funding...
For their second subscription show in 2009, the Tasmanian Theatre Company renew their acquaintance with Griffin Theatre Company (who last collaborated with TTC on the compelling production of Don’t Say the Words in 2008), and together with MTC, the companies present Peter Evans’ production of Steve Rodgers’ Savage River.
While the script could be shorter, Savage River has a strength and a sense of place and time at its heart that will surely see it become a familiar work in the Australian contemporary repetoire: it seems to capture a cultural moment a bit like Michael Gow’s Away did in the 1980s. The script is still raw, and at times could do with some refining. For example, the humour which provides welcome relief from the intensity of the central narrative is sometimes overstated – one go at a punchline should be enough. But the characters and their relationships are more than engaging enough to sustain the work, and the dialogue has a heightened sense of rythm to its urban mundanity which is absorbing (if occasionally self-conscious).
Peter Evans’ production is accentuated by a tense and pervasive score and soundscape, and also a set capable of locating the world of the play. These elements layer the work with a richness to support the text and performance, and recall the outstanding production values of last year’s Don’t Say the Words. Evans should be commended for harnessing the skills of Kelly Ryall (sound design) and Jed Kurzel (composer). The soundscape becomes the space – a constant shifting sound like sands, or echoes, or whispers, or handfulls of shells, infuses the experience of the show and leaves you feeling like you are still in that world. These sounds echo the mounds of black sand and shale which lie below the performance and in front of the shack which sets the scene.
Savage River is a claustrophobic narrative of place, with Jude (Peta Sergeant) arriving to unsettle the equillibrium of Kingsley (Ian Bliss) and his son Tiger (Travis Cardona) who live in Kingsley’s self-enforced isolation in their shack by the river. The triangle is a negotiation of sexual attraction, blackmail, lies, and loneliness, and all against the backdrop of this windblown, remote riverside. While the first half of the show is clever about its narrative progression, managing to keep us always on the right side of expectation, the second half becomes a little predictable, seeming to take the ‘easy’ option when it comes to plot choices, and not entirely living up to the promise of the first half.
As Tiger, Cardona is charmingly innocent (though not naieve or saccharine – just fresh and undefensive about the world, his world) and his earnest and honest characterisation is a delight. He might be anywhere between ten and eighteen – the script refuses to say – but he is settled all the time.
Sergeant is frustrating as Jude, though it is not always her fault. The character is required to spend the entire first half in a distinctly unattractive and rather unlikeable semi-intoxicated state, and it is hard to recover. While there are some very grounded and moving moments between Jude and Tiger in the second half, primarily Sergeant does too much, and makes Jude a character we struggle to relax with.
Filling out the trio, Bliss is somewhat uneven, mostly nailing the strong and rough yet introspective Kingsley, but sometimes not fully finding an ‘authenticity’ in the characterisation.
Some of these issues of characterisation might not be quite so distracting in a larger space – this venue just isn’t quite large enough to accommodate the style and scope of Evans’ interpretation. The characters are too close to the audience in the Backspace, and the restriction created by the physical space is not quite the right sense of constraint for the emotional limitations the characters are experiencing. A little more ‘distance’ (or an alteration to the ‘size’ of the performances) might have been welcome.
Cross (Mudlark Theatre) Thursday August 6th, Peacock Theatre, Hobart Also touring 7 regional locations with Tasmania Performs Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
The perils of reviewing are numerous. Infinite, even. A reviewer can misinterpret. Mis-describe. Misjudge. Misrepresent. Miss the point. Or, any number of other sins. But one that concerns me particularly in this instance is the fact that sometimes the most wonderful thing that can happen to you as an audience member is to be completely taken by surprise. I mean completely. And a reviewer can obliterate the chances of this happening. Already, by mentioning this issue, I am influencing audience expectations – just as Cross’s publicity information does by calling it a ‘new Australian story with some unexpected twists’. Well, already you’re expecting the twists, because they told you to. You just don’t know what they are yet. And you won’t find out from me, either. You should go and see the show. And if it’s already passed your town by the time you read this, then you’d better hope someone invites Mudlark to tour this show again sometime, because I’m sorry you missed it; it really is worth seeing.
I won’t make any more fuss about what took me by surprise in this show – the ‘twist’ was only one element of a satisfying show, and I don’t want that element to overshadow anything else. But let me just say that the integrity of the production as a whole was such that I spontaneously felt a powerful, emotional, and even physiological response to a particular and unexpected turning point in the narrative, and I immediately wished I could go back and experience it again (which, of course, is, by definition, impossible). That the show stimulated such a response is a credit not only to the writing, the direction, and the performance of Cross, but also to each of the technical elements (design, soundscape) which contribute to the development of the narrative, allowing this one moment to be so strong.
Cross is the latest production by Mudlark Theatre, a young, Launceston-based company, and it exemplifies their commitment to producing contemporary Australian theatre and making it available to regional audiences. The new script by Stephanie Briarwood is affecting, entertaining, rich, and despite being a little raw (it could still benefit from some tightening and editing), it forms a solid basis upon which Carrie McLean builds a very engaging night in the theatre. Cross is the story of a sisterly road trip: Regina, on a funded project to photograph roadside memorials, is accompanied by her younger sister Erica – a puppeteer with an unsquashable vigor and a determination to force Regina to confront her past. It is also a story of grief, and of how we learn to live with loss.
Mudlark’s production augments Briarwood’s text with an efficient, versatile, and equally rich technical ‘performance’ (although the puppetry element is under-utilised). The lighting is complex and suggestive but never intrusive, the soundscape evocative and effective, and the car unassuming and yet dominant at the same time. The car – neatly packed with props and objects which always seem to pop out of the right place at the right moment -- fluctuates between literal and symbolic representation. One moment it is a vehicle on a highway; the next it becomes a memory of the sisters’ childhood; and the next it transforms into a cabaret theatre. This reflects the show’s ability to blend the poetic and the literal.
Both technical and textual elements support two strong performances from Jane Johnson and Emma Hardy. The sisters have a familial history that is almost tangible and, although sometimes the script encourages uncomfortably self-conscious attempts to construct and illustrate this history, for the most part the sibling relationship is easy and convincing. Johnson is particularly watchable as Regina, and her final monologue is filled with a gentle, uncomplicated compassion which elicits the same in her audience. Hardy, a more recent theatre graduate, is a little more uneven (and perhaps some of her monologues needed more refined directorial attention), but the two have an appealing energy together on stage, and it is a pleasure to join Reg and Erica on their journey.
This is a production of consummate theatricality – not a perfect show, but one which takes risks, exploits the opportunities offered by the medium, and rewards audiences for their time in the theatre. A wonderful antidote to the horrific and frightening trends towards reality television and non-narrative entertainment. I look forward to more of Mudlark’s offerings in the future.
Anica Asks Herself a Few Broad Questions, and Ponders the Answers, with reference to Thursday’s Child, Theatre Royal, Hobart, 30th July
Thursday’s Child is an adaptation of Sonya Hartnett’s novel of the same name, presented by the Sydney-based company Monkey Baa, who are renowned for their theatre programs for young people. It is the story of Harper Flute and her strange, almost non-human younger brother Tin, who digs tunnels under the Flute family’s lives and home. Harper and her siblings are growing up on their parents’ struggling farm during the great depression, and Harper frequently steps out of the action to narrate from her adult perspective, guiding us through the summers of her childhood.
Who is it for?
This is always a valid question to ask of a production. But in this case, the show has been advertised as a production for young audiences, specifically 12 years +. But it is running a public tour, not a schools tour, and therefore must be intended to satisfy “adult” audiences too.
Thursday’s Child walks a restless, wobbly line between the two, never quite fitting on one side or the other. Parts of it are too confronting for a child of upper-primary age. And yet for an adult audience, it is too obvious, too didactic, too “telling” in style. The performances (and indeed the adapted script) lack nuance and layering – emotions are black and white, and shifts between them are sudden and unsupported. I felt frequently patronised, and I think young audiences would too. An audience member at age twelve is old enough to not need special concessions to their understanding of theatrical conventions. They don’t need constant reminders that this is A Performance. But I think this production offers those constant reminders – the characterisations are simplistic and ungrounded, and the interactions lack genuine connection.
There is a mismatch here between the content and the delivery – while the novel (and therefore this adaptation) may be directed at young adults, the performance style seems to be more directed towards a lower to middle primary school age group. This discrepancy is frustrating and infuses the whole production.
How should audiences approach adaptations?
There’s a reason that a book is a book and is not a poem, or a song, or a painting, or a dance piece. Or a play.
More often than not, film and stage adaptations fail to satisfy an audience. If you’ve read the book, you’re generally disinclined to think the stage version did it justice, no matter how strong a production it was. It will rarely live up to the images you’d already created in your own mind. And if you haven’t read the book, then you often find yourself lost – it is so easy for adaptations to inadvertently excise vital (or at least reasonably significant) details, relationships, moments... the dangers are endless.
In fact, though, Thursday’s Child stands up remarkably well. As someone who hadn’t read the book (and chose not to beforehand), the narrative still flowed quite satisfyingly for me. And I don’t now feel the need to read the book, to follow up on anything.
But the problems of adaptation remain. For a start, the dialogue and the narration in this production is sometimes awkward and unconvincing: I suspect this is because parts of it are directly lifted from the novel. And what works on the page doesn’t always work on the stage. The two require different kinds of poetry. Similarly, the six-year time frame is difficult to pull off in the theatre, and this production didn’t quite have me suspending disbelief. The “children” of the family weren’t any different at (for example) 12 than they’d been at 7. I think I would have preferred not to know the details; I would have been satisfied to understand that time was passing, without knowing exactly how much. Why couldn’t the narrative have taken place over an endless, elastic, dream-like summer: a summer of the kind Harper remembers from her youth?
What’s wrong with humming the set?
A director once advised me “you don’t want to go away from the theatre humming the set design”. A clever phrase (he may have borrowed it from somewhere). Translation: the technical elements of a show should never subsume the show itself. It was good advice – in an ideal world, a show works seamlessly as a whole, and nothing trumps anything else. But if one element does just happen to shine, then why shouldn’t it be a “technical” element just as much as an “artistic” element (and let’s not even get started on the problems of delineation there...)?
In Thursday’s Child it was Jeremy Silver’s superb sound design which I came away humming. I don’t mean humming the music itself – Silver’s lovely compositions. I mean humming the sound design, feeling it resonate and stay with me in the cold winter night as I left the theatre. The intangible menace, the sounds of Tin digging, the calm bush-scape, and the incidental wisps of music or effects: all were so extremely capable of finely nuancing the mood. A delight. However, it is a little concerning to find the sound design more memorable than the performances... I think I understand that old advice a little better now...
(Also touring extensively in Tas, Vic, NSW, and Qld until September)
I’m not an Australian by birth. I didn’t grow up with the ANZAC spirit in my veins. So my connection to the war story at the heart of this production might be a little different to that of many other Australians. But then, it isn’t a story of nationalism, or even of political stance for or against war. It is a story of humanity (or inhumanity), and stamina, and of the importance of song in the lives of a group of POWs in Changi during the Second World War.
Richard Davey’s script (which he also directs) is based on his research into the lives of many Australian soldiers held captive during WW2. While the play is firmly rooted in historical fact, it does not stumble over that too-often fatal line between truth and drama. The characters are drawn with care and performed with sensitivity although some occasionally, in the service of comic relief, border on the silly.
From the opening moment when the soldiers enter the space individually and then begin to sing together, there is a tangible sense of ensemble which moves beyond those ubiquitous Australian war-story tropes of camaraderie and mateship. This is a cast who trust each other, have worked tightly together in rehearsal, and have been well-directed as an ensemble and not a collection of solo actors. (Indeed, several of the cast were involved in the play’s first production, seventeen years ago in Hobart, so one would expect a certain degree of comfort.)
I can’t recall seeing an all male cast deliver such consistently strong dramatic performances – and they can all sing too! Particularly engaging performances come from Matt Wilson, Tim Priest, and Don Bridges – although the latter has a tendency to overplay the comedy. The play is emotionally and physically challenging: some of the extended scenes depicting the physical labour on the Burma rail project are harrowing just to watch, let alone perform (or indeed, undergo the original experience). And the cast are mostly equal to the challenge. There are weak moments – and not always from the younger members of the cast, as might be expected. For example, in some particularly complex physical scenes, dialogue was completely lost under sound effects and a lack of awareness of the dynamics of the stage in the Theatre Royal. Perhaps some of these difficulties will be ironed out with a few more runs of the show. (The same may be true of some technical distractions – the Japanese soldier’s voice-overs are too loud, abrasive, and irritating to bear, despite this being part of the purpose of their presence; and a series of archival images projected against the scrim are almost invisible and completely wasted.)
Aside from a strong cast, the other “character” in this narrative is the choir. Music is omnipresent in the show, whether in the soundtrack, onstage with the boys, or with the choir who, in this performance, occupied a large section of the stalls. This is somewhat disconcerting, particularly if you find yourself seated right beside them. Which is a pity, because the choir’s contribution is moving and necessary. It gives the audience a sense of the importance of song and performance to these men: their concerts in the camps really might have been what got them through the horrors of POW life. The Hobart chorus was the Tasmanian Song Company, and the touring production will be supported by community choirs at each of its locations – an example of The Round Earth Company’s ability to connect to and embrace its audiences.
Although there is much to commend this production, the second half lost momentum (and not simply in the sense that the men themselves were waiting and waiting for the war to end). The original ran nearly five hours, and although several hours have been removed, I think the script could still benefit from some editing. I would particularly like to see a red pen wielded vigorously around the closing scene, where the truisms and caricatures resisted in the rest of the production broke through with a vengeance. I’m afraid the line “not saints and heroes ... just men who stuck it out” went right off the scale in my cliche-ometer, and it seemed a pity to end such a strong show in this way.
