Boop, Statera Circus, The Q, 30-31 March

 (cast pictured is not quite the current touring cast, but close enough)

Statera Circus comes from a fine tradition of Australian Acrobatics - long-running companies like the Flying Fruit Flies in Albury and the recently-folded Circus Oz have combined tumbling, juggling, and a certain irreverent sense of humour into a high standard of performance. Statera works on a smaller canvas - only three performers on this tour with a juggling-capable stage manager also appearing onstage, but have the same mix of balancing, tumbling, throwing stuff around, and gently goofing themselves in a delightful one-hour show. 

This is a charmingly rough, gentle show, showing three characters over the course of roughly-a-day at an abstract supermarket - juggling , throwing themselves around the fixtures, fittings and trolley, and generally letting time pass to avoid the boredom or, even worse, the customers. Each performer forms a strong comedic persona - Aleshannee Kelso as the one in charge, Tomas Correia as the new guy just started on the job and somewhat out of his depth, and, scene stealingly, Karina Schiller as an ever-eating- agent of chaos. It's a delightful exercise in anarchy that engages the audience, as the performers show off their skill in a way that delights even more in its seeming-effortlessness. After the glitz and glamour that's accumluated to a lot of the genere of a simple acrobatic show, it's a delight to get back to the basics of humour and human bodies doing astounding things, and Statera delivers that in a fun 1 hour package.

Love Letters, Canberra Rep, 15-26 March

 

AR Gurney's "Love Letters" has been in constant rotation on stages around the world since it premiered in 1989, due partially to a compelling story to perform covering two American children of privilege as they age from childhood to their late 50s, following them as they write (or don't write) letters back and forth. A carefully contained work that focuses on the two actors and their storytelling as they grow back and forth, the simple setup belies complex emotions - Andrew and Melissa are clearly drawn to each other but their individual personalities, shaped in childhood, as he strives to achieve more and she rankles with the expectations put upon her, push them apart. Melissa even rankles with the storytelling medium we have - pushing Andrew for a genuine personal connection rather than just his preferred approach, the calm, considered, written word. It's a story of two people that also acts as an indictment of their entire world - the unwritten social rules that trap both of them, the upbringings that set both up so poorly for adulthood, and the way their passions bring both undone. 

There's a risk that a production of this could feel overly static or staid, with the two performers locked to their desks reading missive after missive, never interacting face to face but instead recapping recent events every time they send another letter. That risk is successfully avoided by Kate Blackhurst's production, letting the two performers use their individual spaces in a mobile kind of way - kiddishly climbing over tables and chairs in the early stages, pacing nervously as things get more overwhelming in their adulthood, and drawing away from the writing desk when a more considered response is required. 

Of course, this production effort would be nothing without two superlative actors in the roles, and we are fortunate to get a reunion of Michael Sparks and Adrea Close incarnating their roles - with Sparks you see the good intentions and earnest striving and also the piggheadedness as he refuses to understand the damage his slow, careful consideration is causing Melissa. With Close you get the joy and the recklessness and the sorrow as the consequences of that recklessness land on her, as the story moves at a pace to its inevitable ending. 

On a beautifully simple set by Andrew Kay, lit gorgeously by Stephen Still, we see the closeness and the distance between these two people as their passions push and pull them back and forth over around 50 years worth of stage time in a little under 120 minutes. It's an enriching, powerful production that should be relished by anyone who relishes a strong story well told. 

Holding the Man, Everyman Theatre, ACT Hub, 22 Mar-1 April

 Tommy Murphy's 2006 adaptation of Timothy Conigrave's 1995 posthumous memoir has been a theatrically engaging delight since its first production at the Stables theatre in Kings Cross (where parts of act two are set)- playing all around Australia, and with runs in the West End and the US. But this is the first time it's played on Murphy's home turf, where he got his start growing up in Queanbeyan and studying at St Edmunds - we can probably blame the complications of performance rights and the somewhat conservative programming tendencies of a lot of Canberra's theatres (plus possibly the flatter-than-they-should-have-been ticket sales for his earlier work "Strangers In Between" in its season at the Q).    

Murphy's adaptation takes the memoir and brings out the latent theatrical qualities in it - Conigrave's emergence as a performer and a writer is an ongoing background in the story and here it's given full life, with elements of his life blurring into performances, auditions, drama classes, and rehearsals. But the meat of the story is the beautiful, engaging story of two young men who discover each other in high school and can't bear to be parted until death hits in brutally - the unlikely-yet-true story of love found between two very different young men in a catholic school and maintained over 15 years, surviving through parental bigotry, youthful experimentation, different career goals, and HIV diagnosis, only parting at a hospital bed with John's final breath. It's an honest love story, and Conigrave is brutal in his honesty about himself - his infidelties, inconstancies and sometimes unbearable precociousness, not ever able to stop himself from hurting the man he loves, equally honest about the effects on the mental state of both John and Tim as HIV develops into full-blown AIDS. Murphy's adaptation takes delight in giving this a strongly era-specific background as Tim emerges from high school into the undergraduate gay societies and then the wider gay communities, blundering through the politics, the emotional landmines, and the self-justifying arguments that the infidelity isn't really hurting anyone. 

This project is clearly a director's dream for Jarrad West - having been involved in local productions of four of the great gay plays of the last 40 years - "Angels in America", "Laramie Project", "Normal Heart" and "Beautiful Thing" - and with a strong theatrical style that's made multiple use of puppets - "Home at the End", "Avenue Q" and last year's "Hand to God", this is absolutely slap bang in his wheelhouse. And he does not disappoint, giving the show theatrical verve and focus, as Tim and John's love story is backgrounded by four skilled performers slipping between roles across genders at reckless speed as everything from grotesque teenage boys to campus radicals to parents to fellow-NIDA-students to nightclub dwellers to friends and lovers.  There's an assured knowledge that just having an actor stand a certain way,  wear a scarf at a particular length and angle, and speak with specific elocution will instantly scream "Acting Teacher at NIDA" and an avoidance of any additional complications that could get in between the audience and the story - a pure service of the text. 

The cast is strong throughout - Joel Horwood drives the story as narrator and protagonist Tim, letting him be brash, foolish, open-hearted, and ultimately unforgettably moving in his final monologue. Lewis McDonald as the more reticent John has the strength to make every word, every sound that comes from him count - it's never in doubt that his love for Tim is deep and strong even as he criticises Tim's choices. Joe Dinn commits to every character, from harassed shopping-centre entertainer to two very different fathers to campus radical in full-bodied joy. Amy Kowalczuk similarly commits, whether as sympathetic friend Juliet realising her crush on a gay boy is not going to get reciprocated, a grotty teen boy, an anguished new-romantic or the aforementioned round-vowelled-NIDA teacher. Grayson Woodham is this productions surprise package for me - I've not seen him in anything else before and after this I want to see him in a whole heap of things - everything he does, from playing a primary-school acquaintance to a free-thinking mother to a carer friend of Johns is deeply considered, real and strong. Tracy Noble rounds out the cast with strong compassionate performances as a mix of mothers, friends, therapists and one-particularly-intimidating-lesbian.

To wrap up, this is a major Australian piece of work finally getting its Canberra premiere by one of Canberra's best directors using some of Canberra's best actors. It's an emotional ride that will take you through joy, anger, heartbreak, hilarity and sober brutal truth. It's a triumph. 

Anita Wigl'it - Funny Gurl, The Kingfisher at Gluttony, Rymill Park, Adelaide Fringe Festival, 14-19 Mar

 Anita Wigl'it was one of three New Zealanders on the first series of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under and one of the two who had already hosted her own drag competition on New Zealand TV, "Haus of Drag". Despite this, she got bumped pretty early, and after coming back for "Drag Race: Canada vs The World" she got bumped from that pretty early too. And now she's got a solo tour where she tells her background and her future.

Unfortunately, there isn't much to her background beyond a fairly regular childhood interrupted by occasional fashion faux pas, an increasing taste for crossdressing, and one traumatic personal incident. Despite shooehorning in a couple of lipsyncs there's not quite enough there to make for a show that's compelling all the way through - Wigl'it has a certain charm but draws a few too many jokes from the bitter side of the pile in a show that falls flatter than it should. 

Velvet Rewired, The Moa at Gluttony, Rymill Park, Adeliade Fringe Festival, 5-19 Mar (and touring subsequently to Hobart, Townsville, Newcastle and Melbourne)

 So I've managed to miss this cross between Circus and Disco in the last 8 years of its on-and-off touring (including the run in Canberra in February) but finally, in the middle of a busy Adelaide Fringe, I managed to catch it. It's an energetic celebration of the music, the lights, and the attitude of the 1970s, starring Genuine Australian Disco Diva Marcia Hines as our diva, delivering a whole heap of classics, closing up with her 1977 classic, "You". There's strong efforts all round, from Tom Sharrah as a wandering disco visitor slowly brought into the musical ecstasy, the high energy support work of DJ Joe Accria and his multiple rhythms, the gorgeous support work of sirens Jacinta Gulisano and Sascha Lee Saunders, the stunning routines of aerealists Beau Seargeant and Hayey Timmermans, the astonishing rollerskating acrobatics of Sven and Jan, or the dancing styles of the aptly named Marc "Fullout" Royale.

Director Craig Ilott has created a tempting 70 minutes of pure joy, as act flows into act with rhythm, style and verve,  stunningly lit by Matt Marshall in a style that perfectly distills disco style with clarity and beauty, costumed and designed by James Browne in a variety of glittery spectacles. It's sultry, it's fun, it's ridiculous and it's pure enjoyment that will leave you grinning. Particularly up close in the big Moa tent at the fringe, the "acrobatics with a theme" show has been a staple of fringe festivals for the last decade or show, but seldom as well as this one is. 

Paul McDermott Plus One, Adelaied Fringe Festival, Rhino Room Upstairs, 7-12 Mar

 

McDermott has been giving his own style of aggressive, assertive cabaret since the mid-eighties, and astonishingly for anyone with over thirty-five years of career behind him, he still maintains the same level of rage and attack, with a set of politically leaning songs about the royal family, US politics and women, glorying in the grotesque, the unpleasant and the rage-inducing. It's an invigorating hour in his company, followed shortly after by a 20-minute busking set just up the road outside a block of apartments up the road from the Rhino Room (interrupting any residents who may want to just get home) with a rousing set that gets the audience involved in singing along to an engaging set of songs, including just one really sentimental one to close up the night. For those of us who weren't around when McDermott was husting for change outside David Jones just down from the merry-go-round in civic, it's a chance to catch what you missed out on - for those who didn't (and judging from the age of much of McDermott's audience, many of them possibly didn't), it's a chance to reindulge with a performer who's just as sharp and engaged as ever he was. 

A star is torn, Adelaide fringe Festival, The Arch at Holden St Theatres, 4-18 March

 

Greg Fleet is a stand-up of some 30 years standing who has recently been turning his skills to playwrighting of a more or less autobiographical nature. This show has the same undercurrent of autobiography while also imposing the much-filmed "star is born" narrative, with a rising female performer eclipsing the fading male star - this time not in a romantic relationship, but the other stations of the cross are familiar... her meeting him on a bender, helping launch her career and then seeing himself left behind to a pitiable end. 

The autobiography is obvious, for those who know Fleet's career, his appearance on Neighbours gets a mention along with a thinly disguised Stewart Lee quote about him - but this never quite cuts quite as deep as you might hope. It starts perhaps with Fleet declaring his character is 48 (I'm 49 and am well aware Fleet is a good decade my senior) and continues with him never quite being as confessional about his own flaws as he might be- there are some well-documented ones which are never honestly dealt with here, so it still feels very much like he's being fully honest with his audience, so much as wallowing in self-pity a little. Also, technically, as a writer the short scenes often have flat endings, fading away into a blackout, and key details start to go missing - we see the two start to build a podcast together but then we hear nothing of it until suddenly we're told they haven't produced an episode in a few months - what happened to keep them away from it?

As the female standup on the rise, Krutika Halale has charm and assertiveness but the script is inevitably built on her letting this man into her life far more than is sensible, and the removal of the romantic subtext of other versions of this story hasn't really been replaced by anything else that could explain why she agrees to take this much pity on him. I'd happily keep an eye out for her if she does a standup solo show at some point but here there's too much of the familiar narrative here for her to really get a chance to build a strong storyline on her own. 

In short, this falls somewhere between the two stools - not original enough to really be a good original drama, not funny enough to be a parody, and not honest enough to be a confessional. It's a disappointment from two performers who clearly have skills but also haven't found the right vehicle to explore them. 

Downtown - The Mod Musical, Queanbeyan Players, Belconnen Theatre, 24 Feb-5 Mar

 

Queanbeyan Players have kicked off the last two years with a perfectly framed smaller musical at the Belconnen Community theatre- last year with Keating, this year with Downtown. It's a nice vibe to see something intimate and fun from one of the region's longest-lasting theatre companies, and it gives us a chance to see performers in a more intimate environment, carrying on the spirit of Supa, which QP has absorbed along with the life members and the history. It's a valuable separate string to QP's bow and I hope it continues.

In this case, it's a show billed as "a celebration of the 60s", made up of British hits of the era. Often jukebox musicals get a bad rap, taking advantage of a song catalogue to shoehorn them into a half-formed biography or an all-new plot that doesn't accommodate them very well - but this one uses the songs as an insight into how the era felt.  - as an era of shifting trends affects five archetypical women, all colour coded for audience convenience. The script takes a keen eye on the era - mocking its naivities as much as it celebrates the liberation, using the device of new issues of a 60s pop magazine, "Shout", and its nitpickingly conventional advice columnist, Gwendolyn Holmes, to comment on the feelings, dramas and pressures felt by young women of the time. 

It's cast with a strong quintet of actresses, whether singing together in tight harmonies (including vocalising the brass parts that the two-keyboards-and-drums band can't cover), or taking centre stage in solos. As Orange girl, the young wife finding 60s marriage conventions too limiting, Anna Tully is the alternate performing for this night only, but based on how she seizes the role you'd think she'd been playing it for the full run - she's got a great sense of poise, charm and strength as she finds a way to stand up for herself. As the naive Red Girl, Kay Liddiard has a great sense of enthusiasm and crash-through-it-ness, goofy, charming and ever-ready for more. Emily Pogson as the Blue girl is drop-dead gorgeous, statuesque and able to drop that all when more complex emotions start to kick in later in the snow. Hannah Lance as the easygoing Green Girl has a great sense of fun, suggestiveness and just-plain-enjoyment of her material. Sarah Hull brings her experience as one of our most regularly-appearing-character actresses to the Paul-McCartney Crazy American, and also a strong soul voice we haven't heard out of her in a while, letting loose on staples like "Shout" and "Son of a Preacher man" in ways that are incredibly delightful. And Tina Meir makes great cameos both in voice-over reading the magazine articles, and as the increasingly batty advice columnist, finally appearing on stage in full crazy-eyed-ness to add to the fun. There's a great four-piece ensemble behind the leads too which adds to the fun.

Anita Davenport directs in a way that keeps the action flowing constantly, giving attention to all the leads in a well-balanced ensemble. Laurenzy Chapman's choreography is perfectly of the era, throwing in the monkey, the frug, and the twist in stylish combinations. Tara Davidson's music direction uses the cast's harmonies as a strong part of the overall sonic palate, and Helen McIntyre's costumes and Steve Galinec's set both capture the sense of the era stunningly. 

In short, this is a fun look back at an era with great tunes and great performers showcased well. It's a triumph of the form and a great night out.