Wherever She Wanders, Grifin Theatre, Stables - 5 Nov-11 Dec 21

 

If you've wanted to outrage people, "what's going on in our university campuses" has been a go-to target for centuries - the places where young people start to experiment with new ideas and each other, where theories start to become horrendously  practical, where teenagers become adults and where those in charge find themselves questioned by those supposedly there to learn. And for elite universities where young mem and women go from being hothoused in single-sex private schools to suddenly engaging each other and alcohol away from family and control, things get heated very quickly.

Kendall Feaver takes these circumstances and brings them into a world where instant social media commentary serves to inflame things and get outrage to speed ahead of any attempts to deal with the real-world issues, where brutal things happen in the names of real justice and when people can find themselves in over their head before they're ready. It's a play full of ideas, without easy answers, heated and thoughtful and about the penalties everybody suffers when they let their actions get ahead of care and intention. 

Leading as two key combatants are Emily Halvea and Fiona Press - Halvea the young activist full of passion and unsure what should happen, just that someone should do something, Press as the older member of the system who finds herself trapped between an institutional role and her own human integrity. Both give passionate engaging performances that force the audience to understand them even as they both make choices that cause more trouble for them. Julia Robertson as the centre of their arguments, the victim who's being further victimised as her life becomes a cause of contention, keeps focus as a character whose marginalisation is almost the point. Jane Phegan plays two different mothers with emotional truth and Mark Parugio and Tony Cogan play two different men from different eras both caught up in the course of events. 

Director Tessa Long uses the small Stables stage well in moving the story forward with speed and clarity, using some creative stylisation for a few moments to bring the wider world into a simple room with two chairs, and gives the play suitable scope. It's an engrossing thought provoking ride into the frontlines of feminist debate that manages to deal with hot topics in a way that never lets rage take over from thought. Kendall Feaver's debut play "the Almighty Sometimes" a few years ago was an accomplished debut - this is a development of skill that's surprising but very much appreciated.

Happy Days, Red Line Productions, Old Fitz Theatre - 5 Nov-30 Nov 21

 

This is only the second Samuel Beckett I've seen on stage (after seeing a "Godot" sometime in the 2000s) - which is probably enough to write me off as a theatrical dilettante if by some reason you hadn't done so already (I have at least read "Endgame" at some point).  He's one of those playwrights who's a bit of a monolith and an epitome of a certain kind of tragi-comic-life-in-the-time-of-apocalyptic-despair-type of play. In this case, it's an almost-monologue (one bonus performer makes brief appearances and unrevealing grunts from time to time) of a woman stuck in a mound of, in this production, black slag and detritus, trying to keep going through days that seem from the outside increasingly purposeless and doomed. We're confronted with the shallow rituals and the choice to survive just a bit longer, and how these rituals serve her or don't serve her, and her just-over-the-slag-heap-partner.

It's an ambiguous text which partially feels like a tribute to resistance and partially feels like a pure exploration of surviving in hellish circumstances, and this production plays into the ambiguity, Belinda Giblin a shiny positive face who only occasionally lets the stresses blink through and who maintains strength even with half, then later, almost of her body language eliminated.  In the intimate location of the Old Fitz you can feel every breath, see every glance, and it's an exposing piece of drama. all the way thorough to the unsurprisingly grim ending. For obvious reasons, it's not necessarily going to be many people's idea of a good night out, but as an experience of a major writer's work it's a very strong example of how it works.

The Boomkak Panto, Belvoir Street Theatre - 20 Nov-23 Dec 21

 

A big goofy piece of crowd-pleasing nonsense for the end-of year slot, this is at the same a lot of good fun and a little bit of a monstrous elephantine empty creature of self-indulgence, depending on how you look at it. Simultaneously a spoof of panto-values and a celebration of them, while telling an old-as-the-hills tale of small-town people standing up to a big out-of-town-developer and discovering their own values while that happens, taking all this all on has meant this stretches to around two-and-a-half-hours, while probably having about half that time worth of workeable content. Admittedly this is a show that admits all its flaws as it goes, but somehow it seems some of this stuff really should have been dropped during rehearsals to give a tighter show rather than a bundle of loose-ends that only manages to be as delightful as it thinks it's being about 50% of the time. 

Virginia Gay has certainly written herself a hell of a role as the weary stage-manager and person-who-actually-knows-about-pantos-but-fears-them. And in her two set pieces, one per act, she goes to town and makes them work. What comes between them, though, is a lot of loose plotting that doesn't quite distract -would-be-charming-fumbling ends up feeling a bit strained. Around her is a varied mix of performers far too often having to do the heavy-work of carrying the over-familiar plotting only occasionally getting to reach moments of transcendance (the act two performance of a familiar Tina Arena classic being one of those). There are also a few too many jokes that are going for a big audience "woo" of "we agree with the sentiment behind this joke", rather than, you know, the think a joke is meant to go for, which is "ha". 

I'm being probably a little grinchy about this-  there is some very good fun in here. There's also stuff that goes on way too long for too little effect and could have been trimmed in week 2 of rehearsals. I think light-entertainment deserves more care and precision than this has. 

Julius Caesar, Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf Theatre - 15 Nov - 23 Dec 21

 

Julius Caesar was, for me, like most people, one of the first Shakespeare plays I studied at high school. I must admit it's still not one of my favourite Shakespeares, largely because it's got messy structural issues - the play peaks in Act III (out of 5), with the ending being a series of battles largely lead by a character who only shows up in Act IV (Octavian) - the kind of annoying lack-of-dramatic-development-of-key-characters thing that actual history tends to hand playwrights but  which can be massaged out more stylishly than Shakespeare particularly manages. As it happens, this is the first time I'd seen a production of it, in Kip Williams' somewhat bells-and-whistles filled production (with a cast of three playing multiple roles, in the round with a box of video screens projecting a lot of the action in close up, filmed largely by the cast). 

Surprisingly, this is a production that brought me closer to the play and made me love it more. The actors do stirling work, swapping between multiple roles smoothly and effectively giving performances scaled to both close-up and opposite-side of the stage, with clever transitions and choices defining when the screens will take precedence versus when the actor-on-stage is the focus. The costumes move between period and style in clever ways, with different sections having different emphasis. The central forum speeches of Brutus and Antony are a particular highlight, with the play very much pivoting on this point, but the show doesn't lose momentum after these moments, springing creative choices that keep the action constantly engaging.

Standing out in the centre of much of the action is Zahra Newman, largely playing Brutus. the moral centre of the play, as the one caught between family history, personal loyalties and honour as he chooses to buy into a murderous conspiracy to prevent tyranny and lives to see the results. She has the intensity right where it should be, emotionally true and engrossing (she also seems to be required to do a pretty large piece of crew-work that is, as all good big-scale-crew-work should be, completely invisible and looks like magic). In the showy trio of Caesar, Cassius and Octavian, Ewan Leslie knows just how to individuate all three with a voice, a piece of body language and a change of the angle of the sweater hanging over his shoulders. Geraldine Hakewill has Mark Antony's killer setpiece of a speech in the centre of the play and absolutely makes it her own, even at the slightly extended length it gets here (as she begins to channel other pieces of familiar rhetoric and drag them into the increasingly demagogic speech, as we see how political gamesmanship is played. 

It's a production that makes big bold choices and commits to them strongly, knowing just when to use a particular device and when to let it go. There's distinct transitions between design aesthetics here that know just when they have to happen and makes them appear smooth and effortless, such that you arrive at a point thinking "how did we get here" rather than anything feeling laboured or rough. This is a production that feels speedy and loaded with ideas yet never feels overwhelming or incomprehensible. It's a major achievement that serves performers and audiences well. It opened my eyes to a play I used to consider the safe choice for high school students because it was the Shakesperare play wit the fewest obvious sexual references. I'm deeply happy I made time for this.