How to Vote! or, the repercussions of political ambition and personal rivaries within student leadership and media organisations in the context of the Post-Covid-19 Liberal University Institution, Canberra Youth Theatre, Playhouse, Canberra Theatre, Sept 7-10

 

For Canberra Youth Theatre's older student piece, this year they've picked an epic, in staging and cast size, featuring 26 cast members taking the Playhouse stage for a two-hours-fourty-five minute comedy about student politics (featuring sidelines taking in student journalism and student theatre). As part of their 50th anniversary celebrations, it's a little indulgent, a little rambling but very funny and reasonably insightful in showing how the demographics of a simple student election may play out.

We see the election from various angles -the ex-president who is clearly playing some kind of angle but keeps her cards close to her chest, the journalists chasing a scoop and the potential for a career afterward, the exhausted vice-chancellor, and the three candidates and their teams and friends. There's a lot to cover (maybe a little too much, leading to that two hour forty-five minute running time) and Luke Roger's production does it with reasonable speed, playing with the resources of the playhouse including video elements, parallel scenes, interactive elements and a couple of jokes about certain popular European directors.

I will say that the sprawling nature of the narrative does mean that it inevitably gets a little shallow - none of the characters really goes particularly beyond two dimensions for very long, and the plot does tend to rely a little too much on people being led or bullied into choices that they wouldn't naturally have made, and by setting up an obvious manipulator figure then having her disappear for about an hour of stage time only to come back at the end doesn't make the fact she's been manipulating all that we've seen in the missing bunch of time particularly more surprising - Joanna Richards is great in the role but I feel like it'd be more surprising if the show had more confidence in keeping her offstage for as long as possible so we get surprised by how much she's gotten done, rather than "oh, she just did a little bit more than you were told" at the end. It does get a little bit fond of its montages which don't always have a short sharp gag delivery system to justify their length - there's a certain fondness for generalised cast movements around the stage that don't hit as precisely as they should. 

Still, this is a great chunk of raw material that is relevant, funny, cynical, and fairly strongly performed

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, Free Rain Theatre Company, 2-17 Spetember

 

If there's a fundamental rule in Canberra theatre, it's that you Do Not Miss A Chance To See Andrea Close On Stage. It took me a while to realise this, which is why I was rudely out of the country when Andrea Close and Michael Sparks performed "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" in 2010 at the Courtyard Studio. Fortunately, time sometimes allows second chances, and I wasn't going to miss this one as soon as the casting was announced. 

This is not my first time around with this play - I previously saw the 2007 West end production with Kathleen Turner, Bill Irwin, David Harbor, and Michelle Enos, in which Turner's husky vocals, Irwin's physical skills, Harbour's all-American square-jawed determination and Enos's confusion brought Albee's drama across in a skilled production that hit all the notes brutally. Albee's play is a close-up view of an American marriage circa 1962, pre-feminism when wives determined their status by the status or lack thereof of their husbands, and in private marriages were battles of attrition as the disappointments were given full air. It was controversial at the time (being selected for the Pulitzer prize by the drama jury board but overruled by the awards advisory board due to the obscene language and sexual references), and it's still startling to see characters be this vicious with one another. It's a surprisingly balanced four-hander too - Nick and Honey are not just the victims set up to be baited, mocked, and discarded by George and Martha - they're independent players with their own complexities in their relationship emerging over the course of the show. 

Close is, of course, perfection - able to turn on a dime from angry sarcasm to genuine hurt, boozily sarcastic but still able to aim her quips so caustic you could scour a pan with them with precision. You feel every inch of her frustration at living in the shadow of her father, at being trapped with her professionally disappointing husband, at her possible liberation with the hunky new biology teacher, and eventually her shattering in the finale. Sparks is every bit her equal, building from his initial exhaustion and mild-mannered nature to a truly demonic smile at the end of act one, very much willing to join battle and play the game to its only possible finish. Josh Wiseman gives a Nick who starts as a slightly off-centred guest before proving himself arrogant enough to think he's able to match with George and Martha, only to realise just how far they're willing to go. Karina Hudson's Honey is a delight with a Disney Princess voice (it's almost Snow White, sunny and optimistic), drunk out of her mind most of the time but with occasional hints that she's not quite as naive as the world's led her to appear. 

Cate Clelland directs on a 3 sided thrust (along the lines of the Ensemble stage in Sydney), bringing the audience ringside for the battle, allowing an intimacy which allows every breath and eye-glance to register. It's a shattering long-night-of-the-soul for the cast and audience, and one where, well, you should not miss a chance to see Andrea Close, Michael Sparks, Karina Hudson, and Josh Wiseman, playing at this level of intensity in a classic that feels immediate and intense.