Once on this Island, Curveball Creative in association with Hayes Theatre Company, Hayes, 2-31 Aug

 

This is an odd one-  a musical version of a Caribbean retelling of "The Little Mermaid", with emphasis drawn on elements of Caribbean social politics and religious practice. It premiered on Broadway 35 years ago and in this production there's a lot of pacific-island references in the design and some of the choreography. The darker tone of the Hans Christian Andersen original is maintained here - a young woman sacrificing all for the sake of a man who's not worthy of her, while the gods around her make dark bets on her fate. The production does bring across the power of the material, which is Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's score and Ahrens's smooth script, incorporating magic, dance, and tradition. In Brittanie Shipway's production it uses the intimate Hayes stage to create a community and two different worlds of the island, both the small village where heroine Ti Moune grows up, and the grand hotel where the richer side of the island indulges themselves - Nick Pollard's set design uses the tightness of the Hayes to make the set up from what look like found objects, incorporating small elements like slatted windows and a grand gate in as the location gets more sophisticated. Choreographer Leah Howard makes sure the show moves with a mix of pacific islander movement and more traditional dance vocabularly, and absolutely belongs to the cast members. 

There's a great set of performances here too - Thalia Oseceda Santos is a powerhouse as the innocent Ti Moune, passionate and sweet and so fragile we fear for what the world has in store for her - and the quartet of god performers, Godgoorewon Knox's water god Agwe, Paula Parore's bountiful earth goddess Asaka, Cyprinana Singh's romantic goddess Erzuilie and Rebecca Verrier's intimidating god of death Papa Ge, contribute strongly to the storytelling as they impose their will on the world below them. 

There's a warmth to this folk tale even as it pushes the darkness in under the warmth, and we see the legacy of colonialism on a culture in ways that are painful to us as the darker ending emerges out of old divides. It's a gorgeously compiled production and well worth seeing.  

Circle Mirror Transformation, Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1, 12 Jul-7 Sep

 

We observe a small class in the middle of the US doing a six-week drama course, consisting entirely of drama exercises- we can tell it's not that successful as the four students include the co-ordinator's husband as a ring-in - and slowly we get insight into them through small moments. Annie Baker's play is precise and builds from the smallest parts - you may think nothing has happened, then suddenly you realise how much you know and have warmed to these people over the course of watching them struggling - through a small view we see the bigger world that these characters bring with them into the class and where they may take it afterwards. 

Rebecca Gibney and Cameron Daddo as the husband-and-wife team may feel like stunt casting from the outside but both absorb well into their characters - Gibney having the right slightly-smug, hippyish vibe, satisfied that her program can help the group even as her exercises wander closer to misguided psychological experimentations, and Daddo as the dropout lawyer who's realising maybe his rebellions never really set him up for the family connections that he craves. Solid also are Nicholas Brown as a lovelorn carpenter clearly looking for a connection, Ahunim Abebe as the resistant teen looking for something more substantial than this class appears to be shows a gentle warming as the time proceeds, and Jessie Lawrence as the somewhat flamboyant Theresa who realises just how much she needs to bring herself back in. 

In a moment like now when all the views from America are huge and impactful, something this small and human-scaled may feel underwhelming - but it's exactly when we need something on a personal scale . Annie Baker's a master of finding truth in small surprising moments and in making lived-in worlds for her characters, and it's the kind of thing that can easily be overlooked but shouldn't be. 

Grief is the thing with feathers, Belvoir St Theatre and Andrew Henry Presents, Belvoir St Theatre, 26 July-24 Aug

 

This is virtuso theatre - Toby Schmitz making his comeback to Belvoir after quite a while away, in a piece he's co-adapter of (along with director/co-designer Simon Phillips and lighting/co-set-designer Nick Schlieper, both of whom are showing similar virtuoisity in their own ways), offering him the role both of a father dealing with his two sons in the wake of his wife's death, and the chaotic crow that comes into their lives and provokes them with its raw, basic needs and unpitying stare.

It's an irresistable role for an actor, and Schmitz devours it whole -morphing between the introspective, bookish father and the force-of-nature Crow. The two boys are also great roles for adult performers Phillip Lynch and Fraser Morrison, both bringing a childish innocence and glee into their performances as they rebel, explore the world around them and stretch against the limitations of their lives. 

Schlieper's lighting gets a chance to bring all the bells and whistles, from a spectacular arrival for the Crow to projections taking us into the worlds of the characters, sharply shifting from intimacy to broad open spaces. Cellist Freya Schack-Arnott gives it a driving energy underneath, pushing things along with oomph and power. 

For all this virtuosity, I did feel like the spectacle at times was slightly overwhelming the meaning -  I don't feel like I came out thinking about much that was said so much as the sounds and the visions - for an adaptation of a literary work I didn't come away with many words. But it's definately worthwhile seeing a powerhouse actor in a role he absolutely barnstorms with. 

Waltzing the Wilarra, The Q and Hit Productions, 15-16 Aug (and touring around NSW, Qld and NT til October)

 

David Milroy's 2011 musical in some ways definitely resembles last year's touring The Sunshine Club - set post-world war 2 and looking at the clubs that mixed white and indigenous audiences and participants in song, dance and comedy. But Milroy's aims are wider than mere nostalgia - there's a complicated love quadrangle at the centre and the second act picks up threads several decades later and looks at the issues that block reconciliation. There's a strong thread integrating the vaudville-based-radio comedy of Roy Rene in an indigenous context, using puns and innuendo to tell the wider historical context of the state of play of indigenous treatment in the period of the show. It's quite the rich show with a touring cast of 8 plus a band of two on piano and drums,  and is smoothly directed by Brittanie Shipway with charm and skill.

As the central trio, Shaka Cook, Lorinda May Merrypor and Clancy Enchelmaier show a strong push-and-pull between the three of mutual love and respect, along with the conflicts that arise over the course of the story. Juliette Coates as the one who picks at the edges of the trio plays an entitled child well, even in the later era where she's lost none of the blatant selfishness. As club-runner Mr Mac, Jalen Sutcliffe sings like a dream and, as the memories turn more bitter in the second act, provides honesty and resentment in equal measure. As mother/carer/conflicted by her role and her soul, Lisa Maza is a strong solid presence. Hannah Underwood does double duty as both half of the double-act in act one and as an inept well-meaning co-ordinator in act two, performing both roles solidly. And Leonard Mickelo as the lead part of the double act is at once charming and incisive, delivering his jokes with a tight barb while wooing us into the story. 

This is important work, and I'm glad I got to catch it, and that it's getting a chance to reach a wider audience on its extensive Australian tour.  

M’ap Boulé, The Q and Performing Lines, 8 August

 

M'ap Boulé is Haitian Creole for "I'm on fire", and performer/writer Nancy Denis is indeed a firey powerhouse of a performer - punchy, physical, moving with beauty and wit as she tells of her background as a child of Hatian imigrants, raised in Australia and confronting the society in front of her with no apologies and no quarter given. With the assistance of songs written by the late Carl St Jaques, rap performer Kween G Kibone and musicians Victoria Falconer and Jarrad Payne, she brings us into her story, along with a quick lesson on the history of Haiti, some light choreography, a few costume changes and even some non-threatening audience interaction. She's a charming presence and her show is a fine vehicle for her skills as a performer. 

There's some strong use of Maitê Inaê's set, an intimate circle full of candles and with a dominant rough-cloth-full moon circle at the back for projections, bring us into the space with Denis and her team - it's a show that cuts deeper than it might because of Denis's charm, meaning she can bring in quite confronting topics of race, culture and the effects it has on a young woman while keeping the connnection with the audience and bringing us along on her journey.   

Spider's Web, Canberra Repertory, 24 July-9 August

 

Agatha Christie has a simple appeal to readers and theatre audiences - pure plot and puzzles with a mystery to be solved by the finale. "Spider's Web" falls into the more obscure part of her theatrical repertoire - it doesn't have the hook that her top rank plays like "Witness for the Prosecution" or "And then There Were None" have, but there are its own compensations - it plays with the whodunnit form in interesting ways, not taking itself terribly seriously without ever activley spoofing the whole thing.

The formula is so well known at this point (last spoofed at Rep with the energetic "Bloody Murder" last year) that playing it somewhat straight can be challenging, but this production plays it pretty down the line. The tone is mostly reasonably light but the characters are taken seriously - we believe in them enough to be engaged in the story. For most of the length of the show, the question isn't "whodunnit", it's "will we be able to fool the police so the wrong person isn't arrested", and us being on the side of the wrongly-accused helps the tone be a mixture of tense and comic. Director Ylaria Rogers has pitched the show just right - it's just the right side of the gap between cozily familiar and cliche. 

Sian Harrington leads the cast as Clarissa, the genteel hostess of the evening - creative, compassionate, we always wonder just what she's thinking and are usually surprised by the answer. We're mostly carried along the plot by her and she's always a watchable enjoyable lead. Adele Lewin as the bluntly-spoken gardener Mildred Peake is a delight- forthright, opinionated and a strong presence. Therese Maguire at my performance played Pippa, the stepdaughter, as an enthusiastic teenager with just the right amount of hints at her troubled past. Terry Johnson, Anthony Mayne and John Winfield as three golf-club types dragged in to assist in the mayhem are a delightfully posh set of 1950s gentlemen, helpful and slightly dufferish. David Bennett has poise and sternness as Elgin, the Butler who may know a little more than he's telling, Robert Weardon as the sinister Oliver Costello gives us good reasons to dislike him early, Leo Amadeus is suitably bemused as the inquisitive Inspector Lord, and Sophia Bate looms impressively as Constable Jones.

Sarea Coate's set design has all the charm of a mid 50s country house complete with visible garden through the french windows, and Ange Fewtell dresses the cast well, between Clarissa's bright red cocktail dress, the men's formal suit and Mildred's casual garden wear. David Brown lights smoothly with a couple of mood moments for the more thrilling bits, and Neville Pye keeps the sounds right in period.

In short, this is a delightful distracting charmer - absolutely something to take with the Rep Bar's warm Glühwein as a winter comforter.  

Zach Ruane & Alexei Toliopoulos - Refused Classification, The Street Theatre, 24-25 July

 

A tribute to early 2000s film culture and Margaret Pomeranz in particular, this two-handed comedy documentary show combines history, improv, recreations, infodumps and the dramatic reading of an Office of Film and Literature Classification report in a show that is hilarious, informative, emotionally heartwarming and politically provocative. It's a look at Australian Film Censorship history, at the changing nature of how we consume media, and at once intricately researched and completely ridiculous. 

Alexei Toliopolous and Zach Ruane at various times play Margaret and David, both in slightly cheesy grey wigs, before switching to narrate and to play other roles in the narrative - in particular, the dark nemisis of the show, the Reverend Fred Nile. The start of the show contextualises the controversy over the film "Ken Park" that Margaret involved herself in, by using the Movie Show review before she started talking about the topic (2 Fast, 2 Furious) - with Ruane a delightfully snobbish Stratton, relishing the joy of saying the word "Tyrese", and Toliopolous giving all of Margaret's passion and enthusiasm, beffore we dive into the main meat of the show - looking at how two seemingly very mainstream cultural pillars became clear forces of radical action in defence of civil liberties. Both Ruane and Toliopolous bring a lot of themselves into the show, and they're both very engaging personalities - able to both go very broad but also to respect the heart of the show, and the political point it's making even as it makes us double over with laughter. There's a very Australian sense of daggy charm and anything-can-happen in a show which is several months into a tour post Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne International Comedy Festival - for a show that has a strong technical component with video and lighting, it still feels very loose and playful, with both performers conveying a passion for their subject. 

In short, for anyone who ever watched David and Margaret in any of their TV forms, anybody who likes cultural history played out with enthusiasm, and anyone who likes a bodgy wig.