Steel Magnolias, Canberra Rep

Robert Harling's comedy/drama is a gift to actresses. It's incredibly funny (the number of highly quotable one-liners would fill up multiple pages) but also strongly emotional, and manages to capture six rich characters living wildly different and intriguing lives over four scenes located in one Louisiana Beauty Salon. It's no wonder the play went from first production in 1987 to a much-beloved film two years later, and just as obvious why it'd be revived frequently all over the world.

Jordan Best directs a production that does honour to the text. There's a couple of shaky points, which I'll get to, but by and large this is a show that brings the laughs and the tears in equal measure, and keeps an audience engrossed for two-and-a-half hours.

The heart of the show is the sometimes testy, but ultimately loving, relationship between Shelby (Nell Sipley) and her mother, M'Lynn (Karen Vickery). And this heart beats strongly. Shipley is warm, impetous, determined and brave, and it is impossible not to take her to your heart. And Vickery delivers a goddamn powerhouse performance - I've not seen her on Canberra stages before and now I want to see her frequently. She brings heart, soul, style, wit, charm, and devastating passion as required.

The best lines of the show go to Clairee (Liz Bradley) and Ouiser (Judi Crane) - and both bring their best one-liners out hilariously - Bradley as the ex-lady-mayoress finding new joy in a new career later in life, Crane bringing her curmodgeonly best as the ever-cantankerous Ouiser. There is a slight case of wobbly accents and wobbly lines here and there with both, but hopefully this was opening night nerves and will settle down shortly.

As the two employees of the salon, Truvy (Rose Braybook) and Annelle (Amy Dunham) are slightly backgrounded in this production - Dunham as the newcomer gets a bit more to do with hilarious naivety and social ineptitude (she's even that rare thing, an endearing born-again-Christian) while Braybook is likeable and charming.

Michael Sparks' set is a beauty, with plenty of clever little details (the back window, for instance, isn't in the text but adds humour and style to the show). Emma Sekuless' costumes are mostly smart and stylish (although the costumes in the final scene for Bradley and Dunham seem to be slightly out-of-kilter - they're a little too "ridiculous fashions of the 80s" for a production that's otherwise in-period but not in-your-face about it). In a show where hair is vital, Charles Oliver and Penny Vaile's work is spot-on and makes Truvy's work look great.

In short, this is a great launch to Rep's 2014 season, combining lots of laughs and just a few tears for a charmingly loveable production.

Oedipus Schmoepidus, Belvoir

Back for another year ... and it's with a bit of a conundrum. Because advance notice from the various critics was that this was a horrible, self indulgent wank of a piece that would have me despairing of my choice to take up another Belvoir subscription for the year.

And certainly, there's the potential for wank in abundance here. The setup is that this is an attempt to examine death through the examples of the major works of the western canon of great writers - Aeschylus to Wilde, Chekhov to Voltaire. And to see what great truths these works can reveal to us. The writers are a collective called post, made up of Zoe Coombs Marr, Mish Grigor and Natalie Rose, who describe themselves in the second line of their bio as "straddling live art, theatre and contemporary performance practices". I can practically hear rat in the ranks screaming "shoot me now".

Which, by coincidence, is exactly how the show begins - with Marr and Grigor both shooting themselves in the head (with appropriate amount of splatter). And then getting up, to repeat the process of death with daggers, swords, poisons, neck-cracking, hand amputation and other brutal methods, over and over again. It very quickly gets ridiculous, like a live-action warner brothers cartoon - repeating patterns of mutilation over and over again. Ending with a bang, we move on to a long, slow cleanup - then we meet the volunteer performers.

An ensemble of somewhere around 20 performers, the volunteers have had three hours worth of prep and are reading their lines from screens stuck up above the audience - sometimes in unison, sometimes solo. They act initially as a greek chorus as Marr and Grigor discuss the insights that might be able to be gleaned from the great works of the western canon - except they never get around to providing any acutal insights, instead being bogged down in increasingly ludicrous similes and diversions. Meanwhile the chorus get to do all manner of odd things - from walking through reciting a line, to demonstrating what death might look like, to wearing silly costumes, to dancing.

Needless to say this is a very odd evening. But it's not unproductive - the general spirit is a sort of larrakin absurdism. And of course, nobody can really tell you what death is like - the very point of death is its finality, that nobody can report the exact experience from the inside, even the greatest and wisest men of the western canon. But in the meanwhile ... it's possible to extract enjoyment, silliness, and moments of delight, even in the face of our impending demise.

I found this sorta inspring, entertaining and diverting. And it delivered something that I doubt I'll see much like any time soon. If you were going into this for any greater depth ... you were going to be disappointed,and perhaps this accounts for the hostile reviews elsewhere. But, dammit, I liked it.

The 2013 "Well I Liked It" awards

Yep, it's another year of theatre-watching gone, so it's time to write the wrap-up. It's been an interesting year, with some widely-admired-shows that I didn't connect to ("Under Milk Wood" being perhaps the biggest example) and other shows that I loved that didn't always find a huge audience. It's also the first year that the That Guy reviews went international (meaning, yep, "watches Canberra Theatre" is probably a misnomer or at the very least an understatement", but, I'm stuck with it now).

For those of you who didn't read last year's, the "Well I Liked It" awards (or WILIs for short) are, of course, tremendously partisan, selective and ill-informed as to what actually went on backstage to produce the effect I saw at the time. So with that in mind, let's get to the awarding:

SHOWS

There's two local shows that stand out for me. First in my affections this year is "The Book of Everything" which just nailed everything I wanted to see in a production. Inventive, heartfelt, funny and intense, everything in this one worked. How much did I love it? I went to see it a second time and paid for friends  to see it with me, that's how much I loved it.

The other is "Home at the End". Was it flawed? Yes, there's a little bit of over-writing here and there (but such is the nature of premieres, you don't always know what you have til you face an audience), but by and large this was an excellent piece, excellently achieved as it delved into deeply challenging material creatively, with an astoundingly talented cast expertly directed.

Inter-state, the two I loved were "Angels In America" (an intimate production of Kushner's epic bringing broad, bold themes and exploring them unflaggingly) and "The Cherry Orchard" (which gave Chekhov a fresh lick of paint but kept all the human drama of missed-connections, failed hopes and crushed souls).

Internationally, "Fun Home" stood out as a major achievement in the American Musical -   something simultaneously personal and universal about familial dysfunction and personal liberation, and "Twelfth Night" as something at the same time deeply retro (15th century performance practices) and utterly modern in its ability to directly connect ot the audience.

PEOPLE

Duncan Driver - A longtime presence on Canberra stages, I think this may be the best single year I've seen of performances for Dr. Driver - I had issues with the text of "Under Milk Wood" but the decision to concentrate a lot of the production on the quality of his voice was amply rewarded, similarly his caddish Demetrius in "Midsummer Night's Dream" was a witty highlight and his Tramp in "Home at the End" centred the story wonderfully. If Driver is the quieter achiever of the three Everymen, he made a bit more noise this year.

I only saw Jenna Roberts in one play this year, "Midsummer Night's Dream", but it was enough to establish that she's still a force to be reckoned with in Canberra acting circles. Her witty, angsty, tightly-wound Helena was great fun to behold.

Helen Vaughan-Roberts is a staple of Canberra stages. And the one-two punch of her Jenny in "Don Parties On" and her Mrs. Van Amerhorst in "The Book of Everything" shows why - she's a force to be reckoned with and can be imperious or warm, hearbreaking or hilarious, and always, always watchable.

(edited to add because I had an idle brain moment) Chris Ellyard's lighting has to be mentioned for the year as adding massive levels of impact to two shows - "Under Milk Wood"s entire production premise would not have worked without his skillful lighting, and "The Book of Everything" was immeasurably enhanced by his careful selective beautiful highlights.

And Lachlan Ruffy was, as usual, everywhere and excellent almost wherever he was (I'm sure he was even brilliant in a teensy role in Les Mis, where I didn't see him, and I'm not going to talk about Jazz Garters because I'm trying to be nice about things). As sleazy Sergei in Eurobeat, as the goofy lion-performing Snug in Midsummer Night's Dream, and most spelndiferously as the innocently questing, quietly heroic, romantic, adorable Thomas in Book of Everything, he shone. His upcoming departure to WAAPA is Canberra theatre's loss, but it's Australian theatre's gain.

The Musical of Musicals, Everyman, Courtyard Studio

I recently mentioned I haven't seen a lot of Canberra musicals this year, between a fair chunk of recycling shows I've seen before, me disappearing for a month, and just plain not being interested in seeing Phantom. And ... in some ways Everyman's "Musical of Musicals" is the eptitome of recycling - it's the same show, the same cast, with a few polishes here and there. 

It's effective recycling, though - I suspect the four key performers, Louiza Blomfield, Adrian Flor, Hannah Ley and Jarrad West have only got stronger as performers in the four years since they last hit the courtyard. And all the memorable moments are back, from the goofy pleasures of "Corn!" to the sleazy dive of "Speakeasy". It's still a fast and frenetic frenzy through five different musical styles, with Joanne Bogart's lyrics and Eric Rockwell's music delivered to maximum effect (though neither are mentioned at all in the program, a bit of a critical oversight...) There is a bit of satire-through-reference (just playing "oh, I spotted what they referred to" isn't the same as a joke, dammit), and some pretty cheap jokes here and there (Flor's introduction as "Big Willy" is pretty much an indication that no easy gag will go un-used), but there's a lot of wit in the performances and it's put over very stylishly. If it's still a little flat at the end of act one, it's mostly that "Dear Abby" is probably the least-funny of the five mini-musicals with not much to say about Jerry Herman beyond "he's a bit cheesy and likes divas". The rest skewer their targets in fine style, with the pianistic assistance of Nick Griffin and some clever choreography from Ley and West.

If there are any concerns, it's ... the recycling thing. Yes, I know, companies like a hit. And this plays like a hit. I just wish it was a little bit ... more. Everyman are, as I've mentioned before, one of my favourite companies. And this is them playing safe. Now that may be an economic necessity, but I hope it doesn't become a force of habit. 

The Fox on the Fairway, Canberra Rep, Theatre 3

The end-of-year knees up at Rep is a regular tradition - it's been going on at least as long as I've been going to Rep stuff (back with 2001's production of "Black Comedy"). They haven't always been farces (one of the bigger end-of-year hits was Duncan Ley's "And then there Were None" which was pure Agatha Christie Thriller), but there's always been a sense of fun, of running off the leash a bit.

However, that running-off-the-leash is a little deceptive -  particularly with farce, that most tightly-controlled of genres, where the threat of discovery and disaster lurks just around every corner and part of the fun is in seeing how it is avoided at the last minute (it's like watching car-racing expecting to see people nearly-crash).

"Fox on the Fairway" doesn't quite get there - it's partially that Ken Ludwig is a fairly gentle farceur as they go (his characters are never particuarly punished for their transgressions, and he's very fond of his deus-ex-machina happy endings for everybody), but I think it's production-related - much of the staging feels a bit ... undetermined. There isn't the speed, the promptness, the purpose-of-movement that gives farce its energy.

Jim Adamick, Rachael Clapham and Bridgette Black are capable, skilled, charming, familiar actors and they're amusing in their roles. Martin Hoggart is less familiar but seizes his fresh-faced role with gusto and skill. Andrew Price perhaps over-emphasises the stuck-up villain side of Dickie and underemphasies the stupidity, leading to a slightly awkwardly-angled performance, while Natalie Waldron's performance doesn't quite get the tone right - playing two-dimensional characters larger than life so that they fill all the space that would otherwise be occupied by the third dimension.

I don't know whether Andrew Kay's set is too large or Liz Bradley's direction is just unable to manouvre the actors around the stage effectively, but in the wide-open spaces characters sometimes felt lost on their way to the next exit.

I don't want to sound like "Fox on the Fairway" is a waste of the audience's time - it's often fairly amusing. But it could have been riotous. And instead... it's a gentle giggle. A pity.

Hamlet, Belvoir

There's a sense of anticipation to this one. Simon Stone is at the top of his game, Toby Schmitz similarly. And this is the first Shakespeare at Belvoir for a fair while - not since 2010's "Measure for Measure". And Hamlet is one of those roles that defines an actor as "the real thing" - it's a marathon part with lots of solid soliloquies, and has plenty of space for someone to show off their talents.

This is a particularly Hamlet-centric Hamlet - the cast has been chopped down to Hamlet's family and Orphelia's Family plus one courtier (with some lines reshuffled between characters to keep the play moving). And as the bodies pile up, the actors playing the recently-deceased (or, in the case of Hamlet's father, before-the-beginning-of-the-play-deceased) remain on stage as mute ghosts observing the remainder of the action. This can be creepy (Greg Stone's Polonius in particular) or surprisingly moving (as Polonius and Orphelia are re-united post-mortem) - and it makes it very clear exactly how many of the bodies on stage Hamlet is responsible for.

So while being Hamlet-centric, it's by no means sympathetic to him - it's quite bracingly unsentimental, in fact. Schmitz brings his soliloquies right into the face of the audience ... it's quote confronting to have Hamlet stare at you asking whether he should kill Claudius or not (and reacting sarcastically when you can't give him an easy answer). Hamlet is the quintessential angry young man, questioning all the certainties and striking out at the hypocrisies he sees around him - this production, though, doesn't let him off the hook for his own crimes and hyporisies, but instead leaves them very visible around him (in the shape of the bleeding and dripping bodies).

I don't know that all the artifice works. In particular, the funereal laments sung by Maximillian Reibel and played on piano by Luke Byrne give this a classicist feeling that I'm not entirely sure the rest of the production works in (it also leads to the finale, which is played semi-abstractly around Hamlet as a pile of corpses, death and pain - it works in the moment but it lends a lot of distance to the production). In some ways, this has the same "museum piece" feeling as Stone's 2011 production of "Thysestes" did - making us more observer than involved participant by the end. It's a deliberate choice and ... I'm not saying it's a wrong choice, but I'm saying it's a deliberately distancing choice that can make a play of hot, impulsive, dangerous passions come across as somewhat cold.

It's a production that engaged me, that made me think, anticipate, laugh, feel terrified, moved, and disturbed me. And in that sense, it's a great production.

Annie Get Your Gun, Queanbeyan Players, The Q

Yes, this is the first Canberran show I've seen since Broadway. So, yes, possibly standards are going to be tricky when judging what comes next in the firing line (see, that's funny cause this is a musical about people shooting a lot).

Still... this was not an enjoyable evening in the theatre. Irving Berlin's 1940's musical has a strong song-stack of standards including "There's No Business Like Show Business", and "Anything You can Do I can Do Bettter", and a script that I remember thinking was pretty good when I first saw it when someone else's high school did it in Armidale when I was 12. And Annie Oakley is one of the great female leads in a musical - written for the legendary Ethel Merman, the role's bounced around since then being performed by everybody from Debbie Reynolds and Bernadette Peters to Suzi Quatro and Reba McIntyre.

There are, however, key problems with the show that any production needs to deal with in any contemporary production - first, the sexism (the basic conflict of the show is that the male lead can't accept being outclassed by his love interest, and that's a fine thing to deal with, but not if you're going to think his reaction is perfectly acceptable); and second, the racism (there's material about indians which is pretty much on the level of "gosh, they have silly names and speak silly"). This 1999 rewrite vaguely attempts to address both, but really fails to engage either on a fundamental level, at least in this production - the indians are still largely joke characters, and the sexism thing isn't really engaged either as Frank remains a bland character who whines a bit (cutting his character-establishing song, "I'm a Bad Bad Man" probably doesn't help, as it might at least have given him a little bit of roguish charm to be getting on with. It's also bad history, as the real life Frank Butler doesn't seem to have had any problems with his wife being more capable than him.

The device of framing the entire show as a "wild West show" is intriguing (for historical reference, the events of the show are taking place at about the same time as the events in the TV series "Deadwood", which means there's something that can be said about how the Wild West was being mythologised even as it was dying off, so a bit more use of the idea that what we're being told is nothing like the whole truth would be handy ..) but instead  all we really get is a few pre-announced scene changes and a chance for the stage crew to be visible. Which is disappointing.

Very nearly redeeming the whole exercise is Anita Davenport, whose Annie is reckless, charming, sings well and supremely self-confident. Elsewhere the cast isn't as good - a reluctance to embrace Frank's slightly caddish nature instead leaves Richard Block largely playing a peevish blank of a character, Pat Gallagher is fine but doesn't have a lot to do as Buffalo Bill Cody, Greg Sollis and Sophie Hawkins are charming but their subplot remains so massively inessential (it was cut in the 1966 revival in favour of giving Merman an extra song) that they mostly keep contributing to running time rather than anything else. A lot of the supporting cast plays some very average jokes very very broadly, with the result looking like bad high-school drama. Oddly enough, the best acting apart from Davenport seems to come from 8-year-old Jake Keen, who's performance avoids the ick associated with child actors and who instead lands all his jokes and is rather effortlessly charming with it.

The orchestra put together by John Yoon is perfectly fine once they work their way in (I suspect a little pre-tuning up would have been handy as the overture had a couple of wildly off-key notes). Kathyrn Jones' choreography varies from the bland to the "what the hell are you thinking" during "My Defences are Down" (I assume she's going for laughs, but ... god knows why, it has nothing to do with the characters, the song or the show).

So... no, this wasn't a great night out in the theatre - instead it's an evening where I kept on wishing I could be watching the Davenport-sings-the-Merman-catalogue-with-an-8-year-olds-assistance show instead. Which is a pity.