In the middle of the 19th century, five women embark on a journey from Belfast to Sydney, escaping impoverished Ireland in the hope of a new life where they can leave behind the horrors of their past. But it becomes increasingly apparent that those horrors have left its scars on all of them - old hatreds and traumas resurface and their hopes for a second chance rub up against their knowledge of what they have been through.
This is a strong debut for Echo theatre - a chance for five actresses to show their skills both comic and dramatic as the women's small fights and squabbles escalate alarmingly into something brutal. Jaki McCarrick's script is maybe a little lackadaisical in the first act, easing our way into getting to know the dynamics of these five women (from Isabel Burton's eminently practical organiser, Judith, to the push-me-pull-you relationship between Joanna Richards' earthy Ellen and Natasha Vickery's more hopefully dreamy Hannah, and the two outsiders, Phoebe Heath's slightly snobby country girl Sarah and Eliza Jennings' inquisitive Molly), but the second act builds to a fairly brutal climax before sending the women off the ship to an uncertain future.
The physical production is rich and absorbing, from Chris Zuber's evocative set to the personalised costumes of Anna Senior and the carefully chosen props of Yanina Clifton. Director Jordan Best builds in a strong sense of time and place, juggling the dynamics as the women vary between hope and trauma, finding ways to speak their truths. This is an engrossing, gorgeous looking production with strong performances and demands your attention.
Thursday 29 August 2019
Monday 26 August 2019
City of Gold, Griffin and Queensland Theatre Company, Stables Theatre
"City of Gold" is a play definitely drawn from writer/lead actor Meyne Wyatt's personal experience - he plays an actor who's been in "Home and Away" and played the Bastard in "King Lear" (King Lear is on Wyatt's resume, though it's Neighbours he's shown up in), who reconnects with his family when his father dies in the town of Kalgoorlie. And it's at its best when it's drawn, almost unreconstructed, straight from his life (there's a ten minute monologue near the top of act two which is Wyatt, alone and unleashed, leting loose on the contradictions and challenges of being Aboriginal in Australia). The problem is, there's six other actors in the play, and I don't know Wyatt the playwright has served them nearly as well as he's served himself.
In particular, Shari Sebbens has more than proved she's a strong capable actress. But this offers her very little to play that's interesting, and being left on the sidelines to play sympathetic sister is, frankly, at this point a disservice. I haven't seen as much of Mathew Cooper, Maitland Schnaars and Jeremy Ambrum, but they need more than the thin gruel that's left for them here. This is a play that desperately needs either to become the monologue it's eagerly looking to be, or to actually flesh out the rest of the people on stage. I really got caught up in Wyatt's monologue. but it either needed to be the whole play, or to be part of a show that let other actors get the chance to carry the action as well.
It's hard to criticise something as obviously drawn from the soul as this is. And this does have the raw material to be something great and interesting. But while Wyatt is one of Australia's great actors, he's not yet shown himself a great playwright. He has something to say, but here, he either needs to learn how to get that expressed by a number of characters, or to embrace his inner monologue and let it take over.
In particular, Shari Sebbens has more than proved she's a strong capable actress. But this offers her very little to play that's interesting, and being left on the sidelines to play sympathetic sister is, frankly, at this point a disservice. I haven't seen as much of Mathew Cooper, Maitland Schnaars and Jeremy Ambrum, but they need more than the thin gruel that's left for them here. This is a play that desperately needs either to become the monologue it's eagerly looking to be, or to actually flesh out the rest of the people on stage. I really got caught up in Wyatt's monologue. but it either needed to be the whole play, or to be part of a show that let other actors get the chance to carry the action as well.
It's hard to criticise something as obviously drawn from the soul as this is. And this does have the raw material to be something great and interesting. But while Wyatt is one of Australia's great actors, he's not yet shown himself a great playwright. He has something to say, but here, he either needs to learn how to get that expressed by a number of characters, or to embrace his inner monologue and let it take over.
Sunday 25 August 2019
Life of Galileo, Belvoir
I'll be honest, this was the one I was most marginal on in this year's Belvoir Subscription. The combination of the director of one of my least liked productions of last year and the adapter of another of my least liked production last year (both, incidentally, have left those shows off their bios for this year) uniting, on a play I've seen already (albeit 23 years ago in a very glossy Richard Wherrett production at the STC)? Still, it's a play I remember liking, an oddly intimate epic covering the emergence of Galileo as a scientific mind at the same time as it looks at his struggles against the church to continue his work. It's by no means an easy hagiography - Galileo is no science-for-science's-sake genius, he's always looking for ways to sell his ideas (from the military application of the telescope to see the enemy before they see you, to the financial benefits of starcharts that can allow navigation further from shore) - and he's not above a little chicanery (in particular in stealing the idea of the telescope from a young student's report of seeing it developed in Holland).
Eamon Flack directs this in the round, using a simple wooden stage with the occasional assistance of a cosmological model flown in from the roof and a chair. Tom Wright's adaptation is a tight distillation, occasionally a little too much so (there's one or two scenes that feel chopped off at the end), and a little too keen to signal the contemporary resonances with a key phrase or two. But dammit, this does move pretty well.
Colin Friels as the lead has the shifty, inquisitive wheeler-dealer type to a T - he's pragmatic, cunning, and just about smart enough to get away with his beliefs until the inquisition catches up with him. The supporting roles have a fine mix of performers, from Vaishnavi Suryaprakash as his closest follower Andrea, almost more dedicated to his cause than he is himself, to Peter Carrol shifting through a range of roles up to and including the pope, as imprisoned by his role as Galileo is by his. Some of the roles feel slightly squeezed in the trimming (Laura McDonald as Galileo's daughter, Virginia, in particular - I do remember her case for living an undisturbed life getting slightly more prominent presentation in the STC version) - and there's a few instances of fourth-wall breaking that feel like they should be building to more than they actually do. But in general, this is a solid rather than a remarkable presentation of an interesting text - but at least it'ts still interesting.
Eamon Flack directs this in the round, using a simple wooden stage with the occasional assistance of a cosmological model flown in from the roof and a chair. Tom Wright's adaptation is a tight distillation, occasionally a little too much so (there's one or two scenes that feel chopped off at the end), and a little too keen to signal the contemporary resonances with a key phrase or two. But dammit, this does move pretty well.
Colin Friels as the lead has the shifty, inquisitive wheeler-dealer type to a T - he's pragmatic, cunning, and just about smart enough to get away with his beliefs until the inquisition catches up with him. The supporting roles have a fine mix of performers, from Vaishnavi Suryaprakash as his closest follower Andrea, almost more dedicated to his cause than he is himself, to Peter Carrol shifting through a range of roles up to and including the pope, as imprisoned by his role as Galileo is by his. Some of the roles feel slightly squeezed in the trimming (Laura McDonald as Galileo's daughter, Virginia, in particular - I do remember her case for living an undisturbed life getting slightly more prominent presentation in the STC version) - and there's a few instances of fourth-wall breaking that feel like they should be building to more than they actually do. But in general, this is a solid rather than a remarkable presentation of an interesting text - but at least it'ts still interesting.
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