Ruben Guthrie, Wander Theatre and National University Theatre Society, Act Hub, Causeway Hall, 25-27 May 2023

 

Brendan Cowell's 2008 comedy, developed from his own experiences after he stopped drinking, is probably his best known play - it's the peak of what was a very promising writing career in the late 2000s, when Cowell had written a series of smart, modern comedy-dramas for indie theatres and the indie-wings of the more established theatres (this was originally a B-Sharp downstairs piece at Belvoir street and graduated to the main stages). I've previously reviewed the last NUTS production in 2013 (linked here) - now, a further decade since its premiere, Cowell's shining spotlight as the next great Australian playwright has mostly slipped away as he's leaned towards his alternate career as an actor (recently onstage in England at the National Theatre's "The Crucible", the Young Vic's "Yerma" and on film in "Avatar The Way of Water"), occasionally also issuing a novel or two. In many ways it's an angry young man's play, for good and bad - it's very good at getting the intensity of emotion out of the situations Ruben finds himself in, but not so great at reflecting on the damage that anger causes to those around him (much like John Osborne's original Angry Young Man play, "Look back in Anger"). 

Ruben is a golden boy of the advertising industry - we meet him just after he's won a major industry award for the fourth time running - but dramatic circumstances have led him to his first addiction recovery meeting. The play develops as Ruben's solo monologues at these recovery meetings alternate with scenes with his partner, his parents, and his employer - and as he integrates recovery into his life, how each of them push back against his recovery and how the give and take between him and a member of his recovery group starts to turn into a relationship. It's a great opportunity for Cowell to show his skill for sharp brutal dialogue and to paint a semi-self-portrait that is not entirely flattering while reflecting on Australian culture's relationship with alcohol causes significant damage. 

Wander theatre's inaugural production plays this in traverse, in a fairly minimal staging with the cast on stage the entire time (serving as recovery-group members and stage crew during the frequent shifts of location) - using nine wooden boxes and four wine-racks to cover Ruben's travels from office to apartments to hospitals. In all honesty, I do wish the staging was a little bit more minimal - there's a lot of reconfiguring of the boxes between scenes which slows the pace - but the wine racks form good oppressive walls around Ruben as they close in around him, locking him off from easy escapes. This may also be a good spot to point out the ACT Hub's continual mild problem with sightlines - the raking of the seating means that anybody in an even-numbered row is probably directly behind someone who's blocking off their view, so if you're going to see this, get in early to get in one of the odd-numbered rows.

Sam Collingwood gives Ruben a certain amount of ruthless charm and lets the charm pall as Ruben spirals out of control. Maxine Eayrs as recovery partner Virginia is very much her own independent woman, not just a tool in Ruben's recovery box (though the character does suffer from some inconsistent writing - the only significant moment she shares with another female character is a scene of both women fighting over Ruben - it's a sudden sign of Cowell's limitations that apparently he can't conceive of women doing anything more interesting together than fighting over a guy). Mischa Rippon as friend/tempter/agent-of-chaos Damian is delightfully twisted and engaging. Grace Fletcher plays Ruben's fiance with her own independent strength, though is only used sparingly in the writing. Richard Manning as employer Ray has the soulless advertising surface charm and inner ruthlessness just right. Adele Lewin as Ruben's mum has surprising depths as we see her own issues emerge through the story, and Anthony Mayne as Ruben's straying dad shows just the right side of carefully strategic selective-deafness to his son's needs. 

In short, this is a strong launch piece for Wander Theatre, showcasing a number of actors I've not seen this much of before in a play of depth and integrity. Recommended for those looking for something with a little meat on its bones. 

The Trials, Canberra Youth Theatre, Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre, 19-26 May 2023

 

Canberra Youth Theatre has been reaching out for more provocative, modern, interesting writing for the last few years now - using their youth casts to tell contemporary stories that tie into themes that are absolutely worthy of adult interest. In this case, it's a recent English drama, about the climate crisis and the almost inevitable judgment that will be laid down on our behaviour during the current era - when the science is known, the solutions are available and we're still living as if it's not going to happen. Three adult performers (Michael Sparks, Zsusi Soboslav, and Elaine Noon) play the defendants in a story where, after the cataclysm, those deemed Climate Criminals are judged by a jury of people in their early-to-late-teens. The format is simple - each have a five-or-so-minute speech justifying themselves, then the twelve deliberate guilty or not guilty. The debates are not simple or one sided, and the participants are passionate - some enraged and full of vengeance, some unwilling to judge people by the standards of another era, and the dynamics of each debate turn on those personalities. 

Dawn King has written a dark piece that most adult audiences will find confronting - it's inevitable you will put yourself in the hot seat and wonder how future generations would judge you (yes, I would probably be guilty). Luke Rogers production gives it intensity and power from the second you enter the theatre - there's a tense atmosphere that only grows with the assistance of Patrick Haaesler's tense soundscape and Ethan Hamill's sharp lighting. But it's not all grimness - there's light and shade in the interactions of the jurors, as some engage deeply in the task, some have a terrifying relish for vengeance, others try to find space for compassion, and the stakes inevitably get more and more personal as we go on. The jury scenes have some resemblance to "Twelve Angry Men", without the amateur detective elements and with more balance across the cast (there isn't really a central character the way that "Twelve Angry" revolves largely around Juror number 8), and the chance to see the accused removes this from simple abstraction to something tougher. 

It's a play that reflects both ways - both looking at the guilt of my contemporaries, and the limitations of the vengeance sought by the next generation. It's confronting, thoughtful, emotionally powerful and absolutely worth seeing.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore, NUTS, Kambri Drama Theatre, 10-13 May

Martin McDonagh hit the world's stages in the late 90s - one of the "In-Yer-Face" generation of the late 90s like Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, and Jez Butterworth - plays that put sex and violence back on stage in a modern Jacobean era of excess. The fifth of his plays, "Lieutenant of Inishmore", hit the stage in 2001, like the first four, set in Ireland, in this case, during the then-recent era of 1993 (five years before the 1998 Good Friday agreement), and deals directly with the IRA's history of terrorism in the country, treating it as a product of individual ego and stupidity in a blackly comic extravaganza featuring a lot of carnage, both human and feline. Mocking both sentimentality and brutality in equal measure, it's heartless and hilarious. 

McDonagh has been criticised by many native-Irish writers as using Irish stereotypes to get ahead (he's of Irish parentage but has never lived there) at the expense of their community, and certainly, this isn't the play you'd go to for a nuanced political view of the situation - it's a fast-paced gorey spoof featuring hot-headed men (and one woman) making impulsive decisions that can only really end one way. Director Liat Granot plays it with Over the Top Enery, all the performances primed for maximum comedy. It's not a subtle production, but it's not a subtle play. If there's a little too much floor-acting for the limited sightlines of the Kanbri Drama Theatre, the storytelling is still clear and it makes the carnage slightly easier to take if it's just very slightly out of view.

Toby Griffiths as the titular lieutenant has surface charm and the right kind of intensity to be a true psychopath. Zara Hashmi as the immature Mairead plays the role perhaps a little quiet and non-committed - she's a little too concerned with looking nice rather than suiting the role. Jamie Grey and Wyatt Raynal as Donny and Davey are a double-act in equal stupidity as two-almost-close-to-normal-but-still-insane figures trying to escape a very likely fate. Adam Gottshalk, Paris Scharkie and Anna Kelley as a terrorist trio show self-righteiousness and egomania well. And Eli Powles in his one scene as torture victim James steals every moment he can, even down to dealing with an increasingly malfunctioning chair with aplomb. 

This is by no means the most polished or smooth work that I've seen, not even in the last 48 hours or so. But there's a reckless energy that suits the play here, a wild eccentric power that gives us McDonagh's twisted world straght between the eyes, and lets it hit home. 

Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic, Echo Youth, The Q, May 11-20 May 2023

  At its heart, Matt Cox's "Puffs" is a work of fanfiction - that subgenre where fans of a piece of work take the concepts of someone else's work and transform it into an alternative retelling that can look at underexamined elements of the original, tell different stories using the building blocks they've fallen in love with, and maybe even do a few small repairs on the plotholes or dodgy worldbuilding that come from a story that's designed to centre two or three heroic central characters, not be an all encompassing thoroughly consistent mythos for people to live their entire lives in. And like all fanfiction, if you're not aware of the work it's building from or don't know the details it's using, it can feel a bit shallow or like a lot of confusing references thrown at you at great speed. For those who've dabbled in the obsession, though, it can be a complete delight as you get a chance to dive deeper into the thing that you love - or, in the case of the increasingly-jaded-in-retrospect-largely-due-to-the-Author's-public-actions-Harry-Potter-Fandom, used to love but now have mixed thoughts about.

Of course, presenting a world that's been previously the domain of seven novels, seven very expensive movie adaptations, one (or two, depending on the version) very expensive theatrical spin-off, and three still-expensive-but-not-very-financially-successful-spin-off-movies on a Canberra Local Theatre budget, is a choice only the brave, the ingenious or the foolish would attempt. Fortunately, Jordan Best (with the assistance of Callum Docherty and their many props, costume, performers, and technical boffins) is indeed the first two of those things.  Her production is a triumph of creativity, imagination, and pure theatrical skill as she and her cast use John Nicholl's set of five doors-attached-to-bookcases and a mindbogglingly large set of props, costumes, wigs, and the occasional puppet to cover the story of a couple of thousand pages of popular children's literature from the alternate angle of those kinda left off to the side of the main heroic narrative - the background characters who normally get a namecheck and not much more in someone else's story. 

There's strong ensemble work from the entire team, building the Puffs as a bunch of confused but sweet-natured  types - subject to other people's bullying, never quite on top of their schoolwork, often left behind while the focus is on the more obviously heroic-or-villainous characters draw the attention of everyone around them. There's a real warmth and bond between them, and as most of the cast slip into and out of multiple characters they are delightfully unified, whether indulging in running gags, spoofing very-specific-performance-choices from the movies the sense of communal play reaches across the footlights, and embraces the audience - it's a romp that demands the audience join in and play along with them, and the ensemble are a great bunch of playmates. 

For anybody who ever liked those seven increasingly-lengthy tomes, watched the movies, did an online quiz to find out which house you were in, or has simply spent a little time shopping in Quizzic Alley in Fyshwick, this will be a delightful chance to indulge in your continuing-or-former-obsession, full of charm, humour and the occasional slightly serious bit. 

Steel Magnolias, Free Rain, ACT Hub, 10-20 May

 Robert Harling's 36-year old comedy-drama is a constant candidate for revival - well remembered from the 1989 film and with an all-female cast with not a dud role among them, it's an appealingly quotable combination of hilarious comedy and emotional punchy drama as six Louisiana women in a beauty parlour look at the challenges of family, friendship, aging, marriage, parenthood and religion with the aid of a fresh set of nail polish and an ungodly amount of hairspray. It's been 9 years since it was last seen in Canberra (previous review here) but given the show's nature as a modern classic, a return visit is always welcome-  particularly with a cast as strong as this one.

Director Anne Soames gives a very presentational production (with the audience being the beauty-parlour's mirror that the cast reflect and check out their new looks as various numbers of the cast get made over repeatedly). It's focused on telling the story cleanly and with charm, giving the cast plenty of room to embody their characters and give these archetypes a few bonus dimensions. The cast are moved into and out of focus on the two-level set, clumping into supportive groups around each other as characters face their various crises, kept busy as they flick through magazines, get in and out of various wigs and costumes which are 1980s-appropriate without making a fetish of the era's ridiculousness. I also appreciated the hanging-feature of hairdryers at the back of the stage, giving it a bit of bonus decoration.

Helen McFarlane as salon-owner Truvy is the charming mother-bear of a hostess, constantly solicitous of her clients, drawing out their stories and engaging in their dramas with charm and sweetness. Katy Larkin as new-girl Annelle projects an endearing sense of nerves and crisis, even as the plot pushes her into some slightly offputting religious proletysing. Janie Lawson embraces the glee of gossip as Clairee, delighting in everybody's stories and enjoying sharing her own. Jess Waterhouse is an incredibly endearing, independent and strong-minded Shelby, Victoria Tyrrell Dixon plays into M'Lynn's ongoing clashes with her daughter with a professional calm that, when it breaks, it breaks hard. And Lanie Hart is clearly having the time of her life as the obstreporous Ouiser, constantly persnickety about whatever one of the hive of bees that is in her bonnett is taking precedence at the moment. 

This is a fun, intimate production of a classic play that is always welcome, with a stunning cast of some of Canberra's best actresses. So why wouldn't you rush to see it? My fear this would pale in comparison to previous productions was, to say the least, not borne out - this is a production that holds its own with integrity and strength. Much appreciated.