Wild Thing, Di Smith in association with Arts on Tour, The Q, 28-29 April (and other tour dates to 14 May at Goulburn, Glenn Street, Cessnock and Port Macquarie)

 

"Wild Thing" is a new play that feels somewhat like an older play - it's the story of four female friends, all born in the years of World War 2, brought back together when one of them is in crisis, only for it to turn out that all four are in separate individual crisis. It's a lightly dramatic story with a few jokes, a few tear-jerking moments and a tight 90 minute running time, and largely survives on the strengths of the four central performances.

Luckily, Suzanne Hawley has this cast to bring her four archetypes to individual life - Di Smith as the lively artistic one, Katrina Foster as the therapeutic earth mother, Di Adams as the most seemingly conventional one and Helen O'Connor as the vibrant writer of bonkbusters and recreational pole-dancer. The joy of the play is seeing these four personalities bounce off each other as the story flashes between the current crisis and elements of the characters' backstories over the last fifty-something years of friendship. Lewis Fitz-Gerald and Tony Poli fill in as the two token men filling in smaller roles, Poli as a love interest and a son and Fitz-Gerald as a range of characters including a quiet-spoken neighbor, a grumpy teacher and a kindly train conductor. 

Director Kim Hardwick gives this a tight production on a largely simple set with a few surprises in store - letting the performers be the focus. The lighting by Martin Kinnane is precisely placed to focus our attention and give the scenes a sense of time and place, together with some nice sound design elements from Patrick Howard. 

This is basically the stage equivalent of a chick-flick, with four skilled performers telling a simple emotional story well - it's good to hang out with these friends and to feel comfortable among them. It's a nice set of vibes.

Fences, Sydney Theatre Company, 25 Mar-6 May

 August Wilson's 1987 drama is one of those pivotal American plays that have never previously been performed in Australia - much like last year's "Raisin in the Sun", largely because the cast is entirely African American. It's a continuation of the project director Shari Sebbens began when she launched that show - to open up Australian audiences to a broader range of work, again using Zhara Newman and Bert LaBonte as the central couple in a large-cast story dwelling on the social trends that built American history. 

In this case, it's a personal story focussing on LaBonte's Troy Maxon, a Pittsburgh garbage man who comes into conflict with those around him largely due to what we'd now call inherited trauma - applying his history of struggle and barriers to his son and curtailing his opportunities while pushing his own desires further. until he finds himself isolated in his own little backyard kingdom. It's a personal tragedy driven by responses to the American dream - just as Arthur Miller's Willy Loman was driven to push outside the house for success, so Troy is driven into himself more by expectations of oppression. It's an engrossing character study giving us a full understanding of how a personality can be created and how it can damage those around it.

Shari Sebbens gives the production a strong realist focus  - the strongly detailed set by Jeremy Allen gives our character's time and place reality that is reflected in the performances. LaBonte takes Troy's grand arias of self-justification into the stratosphere, making him a compelling figure even as we know he's lying to himself about his motivations. Zahra Newman matches him when Troy goes outside her bounds but spends much of act one gently trying to work Troy back to reason before he crosses a line too far. Darius Williams as their son Cory gets the brunt of Troy's restrictions but pushes back masterfully. Dorian Nkono has a role that could fall into cliche as Troy's damaged brother but remains a figure of sweet innocence and hope. Damon Manns as Troy's older estranged son has a slightly underwritten role but brings a sense of a wider life outside the backyard, and Markus Hamilton as Troy's friend Jim banters effectively with him until a final squabble brings them estranged.

This is a modern classic given a stylish, skillful production, presenting these performers at their best in a thought-provoking play that takes the audience on an emotional journey. It's compelling and skillful and makes you hope for more in the continuing project to bring a richer variety of modern classics to the local stage.

Into the Woods, Belvoir Street Theatre, 18 Mar-30 Apr

 "Into the Woods" is one of those shows that have developed classic status in the last 35 years - a mashup of four different fairy tales with a wraparound story tying them all together, it takes a slightly more Grimm fairy tale approach to the stories rather than the usual Disney approach, with all the gory bits kept in - Rapunzel's prince and both ugly stepsisters get blinded, the Big Bad Wolf is chopped open to rescue Red Ridinghood, and some of the Freudian undercurrents get drawn out. Act two looks at what happens after happy-ever-after, as consequences and betrayals and issues that haven't been so much dealt with as wished away come back to haunt everybody. 

Eamon Flack's production is, as suits the Belvoir space, full of clever surprises to bring the sprawling stories within the space allowed, using simple theatre techniques to flick between multiple locations and to emphasise the fun and playfulness of the show for as long as it can possibly be playful, and to bring the truth when the games are over. I've not seen a production of the show get quite this many laughs out of Sondheim's complexly witty lyrics - all the performers are game and committed to selling their various quests and desires. There's slightly more extensive doubling than is conventional for this show (with six of the thirteen cast members swapping in and out of roles, occasionally with bits of the other costume on while they're performing one of the roles in a split-second-change) and the orchestration is brought down to one-and-a-half pianos (with one of the piano players also enlisted as cast). The re-orchestrations and choral work of Guy Simpson ensures this is still a sonically rich evening where the music feels as essential as the performances. 

There are great performances across the ensemble, too, from Justin Smith's Baker, solid, emotive, a little pigheaded, Esther Hannaford's effortlessly practical Baker's Wife, buying into the romanticism and enjoying a casual gossip with Cinderella but able to keep her focus on her own goals, Tamsin Carrol's persnickety Eastern-European Witch next door, Ava Madon's yearningly sweet Cindarella learning her own practicalness, Mo Lovegrove's vionently-inclined Red Riding Hood, Marty Alix's endearingly dim Jack (and the snobbish steward), Tim Draxl applying the two sides of charm as the slaverig Wolf and the self-satisfied Cindarella's Prince, Peter Carroll's stenorian narrator and his cantankerous Mysterious Man, Stephanie Caccamo embodies her triple roles of Rapunzel, one of the ugly stepsisters and Red Ridinghood's grandmother with ease to the extent that it's only at the end you realise she's been disappearing into all three roles so well, Andrew Coshnan as the other ugly sister and Rapunzel's prince doesn't so much disappear into the roles as enjoys sticking his own cheeky personality through both of them and Pamela Rabe's stenorian tones as the Giant's Wife are a welcome sound to hear.

The set design by Michael Hankin and the costumes by Micka Agosta blend to bring out the fantasy and charm of the piece, with simple but effective choices embodying the characters well. 

This is a contempoary classic in a lively production with a few clever creative choices bringing it to life fabulously, and is entirely built to delight audiences whether familiar with the show or coming to it for the first time. And it succeeds in those aims well. 

On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, Squabbalogic, Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, 17 March-15 April

 

1960's musical "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" is a case of an older-school music theatre team (Alan Jay Lerner of "My Fair Lady" and "Brigadoon" fame, with Burton Lane of "Finian's Rainbow" attempting some distinctly unconventional material, using past lives, ESP, precognition, psychiatry, and hypnotism to tell a story that is ultimately a love triangle between two living people and the past life of one of them. Even in its original season, it was never a runaway success, running under a year in 1965, but it was definitely a passion project of Lerner's (having worked on the subject matter with Richard Rogers in early drafts), and it combined a somewhat messy script (the show takes a very easy-going attitude to the somewhat manipulative behaviour of a psychiatrist over his patient) - in many ways, the original is another story of a man who tries to create the woman he loves, a la "My Fair Lady" and can't reckon with the object of his affection having their own personality - it doesn't take a lot to reflect on how this might map to Lerner's history of being married eight times over his lifetime. Still it's a great score and Lerner's sense of wit in his lyrics and the unusual romantic triangle at the centre of the story compels revisitation to try to resolve this problem-piece into something that coheres.

Director Jay James-Moody has adapted the script, taking elements of the original Broadway run, the subsequent tour rewrite, the 1970 Barbra Streisand movie, and a recent Broadway revival to try to resolve this into something more coherent. There's a lot of strong work here and it feels about one more rewrite clarifying what's really going on. The main twist that has been applied in the Broadway revival and in this one is that the role, previously combined in one actress, of modern-day-quirky anxiety-ridden heroine and past-life-independent woman who compels the shrink, is now split between a male modern-day persona and a female past life, complicating the sexualities of the show in ways that are never quite resolved. James-Moody seems aware that a conventional coupling at the end can't entirely be satisfactory, but can't really shape a clear future direction for David/Daisy either - just indicate that they shouldn't be held down by anybody else's expectations of what other people want them to be, which is a good start but it's not an ending. It does the job of complementing the existing score and presenting it well, though - building in passion from whimsical intro of "Hurry it's lovely up here" (sung to some plants), to the intense yearning "Melinda", the unwindingly romantic title song, the intensely introspective "What did I have that I don't have" and the desperate "Come back to Me". 

There's strength in the performances - James-Moody gives David a cheerful goofyness and enthusiasm, Blake Bowden sells the passion he feels and the melancholy about his former lost love, and Madelaine Jones makes Melinda a woman compelling enough to want to traverse a century for. James Haxby plays two different somewhat-despicable romantic interests with power, and Billie Palin, Natalie Abbott and Lincoln Elliot fill out the cast in smallish roles as sympathetic advisers, disapproving parents, generous friends and sultry lovers entertainingly. 

Michael Hankin and Bella Rose Saltearn's set jumps us across time and space stylishly, using simple shelves with expanding floral embellishments to capture the worlds of David, Mark and Melinda. Natayla Aynsley's four-piece band arrangements manage to still make the show feel big and lush, and Leslie Bell's choreography is witty and charming. 

In short, this is an oddity - one of those shows from the past where you can see why it didn't work then, and it doesn't quite work now, but you can also see just how close it is to getting there. Perhaps a future incarnation of Lerner and Lane can come up with a song for David/Daisy to Want Something properly so the show can resolve itself off properly rather than drift off ethereally, but as it is, this is a thinking man's entertainment done well.