The House of Bernarda Alba, Chaika Theatre, ACT Hub, 19-29 Mar

Photo from Jane Duong Photography

Frederico Garcia Lorca's 1936 Spanish tragedy of five sisters trapped together under a domineering mother where their own desires tear them apart is a masterpiece of tension and dramatic release - set during a long hot summer, the emotions are palpable and the tensions can be cut like a knife. As oldest sister (and inheritor of the family fortune) Angustius prepares for her wedding day, the other sisters develop their own plans, building to a crashing climax. Karen Vickery's production embodies this tension, makes it palpable in the glances, in the tones of voice and in the movements of the actresses. 

Leading the cast is the dominating Zsuzsi Soboslay, imperious and upright as Bernarda - a stiff reed in the changing winds. Sophie Bernassi as Angustius sells the frustration, the release and the crashing loss as she tries to mould herself to her mother's expectations and comes against her sisters' own needs. Karina Hudson as Adela, rhapsodic in her lusts, is so wonderfully selfish and possessed by her ambitions that you can see the disaster ahead without being able to stop it. Yanina Clifton as Martirio has a great, scheming undercurrent of rage and demand for her own satisfaction, hoarding her hidden knowledge of what's going on to release it at a time when it'll cause the most damage. Amy Kowalckzuk is beautifully able to sublimate her own desires with emphatic embroidery, sudden glances or an inappropriate snort as Magdalena. Christina Falsone as the housekeeper Poncia watches and attempts to advise, knowing she can't stop the disaster that is coming down the line towards all of them. And Alice Ferguson's Maria Josefa falls into revelries of her own desire for freedom, now long gone with her youth. 

Vickery's production uses the in-the-round stage as an arena for us to examine these women's struggles, on Marc Hetu's simple red-brick stage. Fiona Leach's costumes capture the mood and the heat as the women move from confining mourning wear to lounging slips and sleepwear. It's a true steam-train of a prodction, relentlessly moving to its inevitable conclusion, a sultry, tense evening of tragedy and power. This is a classic given form and power in a strong, intimate production driven by its actresses. It should be seen and savoured. 

The Pirates of Penzance or The Slave of Duty, Hayes Theatre Co in association with the Art House Wyong, Hayes Theatre, 14 Feb-16 Mar (and subsequent tours to Wollongong and Canberra)

 

photography John McCrae

For a show that's 145 years old, "Pirates of Penzance" certainly has held pretty solidly in the repertoire. Of course since Gilbert and Sullivan's work went out of copyright it's had a few strategic revisions (the 1980 Public Theatre adaptation starring Linda Rondstadt and Kevin Kline was the model for a lot of changes, some of which got ported across into the popular Essgee version with John English and Simon Gallagher, though the Australian Opera's last go-around also imported a lot of design elements from "Pirates of the Caribbean"). For this version, the second Gilbert and Sullivan done by the Hayes (following the HMS Pinafore which toured to Queanbeyan in 2020), it's cut down to a cast of five, letting everybody double all over the place as well as playing instruments throughout to bump up the sound. To allow for this, director Richard Caroll has indulged in the post-copyright tradition of fiddling with the lyrics and the script, doing some slight streamlining of some elements of the plot while also throwing in some bonus extraneous gags. 

For the most part the storytelling is left pretty much intact, as are most of the songs (with one interpolation from "Patience"). A simple small stage area with some wandering allowed into some of the audience gives our cast plenty of room to manouvre, with Jay Laga'aia a boisterous Pirate King, a suitably humble Chief of Police and a titteringly charming daughter of Major General Stanley; Brittanie Shipway enjoying both the innocent virgin soprano Mabel and the somewhat more bitter (particularly in a Brecht-Weill-inspired "When Frederic Was a Little Lad") contralto Ruth, in fine voice in both of them. Maxwell Simon is our slightly-dimwitted hero Frederic, who beams innocent charm throughout, and Billie Palin fills in as everything else like a troubadour. And Musical Director Trevor Jones also covers as Major General Stanley taking his patter song at a rate of knots and filing in mutliple other roles with gentle skill . The cast members are rarely off-stage for long before charging back on in a different persona (or occasionally switching mid-scene without exiting) and it's a very lively production.

There are a couple of points where the rewrites do bow a little more to modern sensabilities than they really need to (the ending, in particular, is a little shaky, dragging out the ending to give justice to one of G&S's much abused contralto roles), and it's all very rompy - I do feel fortunate that Queanbeyan Players is bringing in a full-orchestra version of the show in a few months so I can get a proper Pirates alongside this somewhat sillier version - but Pirates in any version is always going to be a light piece of nonsense, and this keeps the spirits up nicely. 

Song of First Desire, Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir Street Theatre, 13 Feb-23 Mar

Photo: Brett Boardman
 

Andrew Bovell's latest play was written on commission for the Spanish theatre collective Numero Uno, after two of his previous works had been hits in Madrid - "When the Rain Stops Falling" and "Things I know to be true". Two years after its premiere there, he gets his Australian debut at Belvoir, in a beautifully simple production. 

Some of Bovell's usual techniques are here again - the strategic bending of time and character (as all four actors play double roles across two different time schemes) and the unburdening of personal traumas - in this case, connected to the wider national trauma of Spain's emergence from forty years of fascist rule, and the damages it left behind on two families across years. The quartet of actors is gathered from two men from the original Madrid production and two New Zealand actresses who have both worked in Australia before - the set a mound of earth with a little bit of a garden on the edges, suggestive of buried secrets and the wastage they leave behind. There's strength in all four performers - Sarah Pierce as the damaged elderly Carmelia and the more immediately active Margerita - Kerry Fox as both the bitter sister and the wife of a senior facist leader - Borje Maeste as a migrant carer and as a young man about to be sent overseas - and Jorge Muriel as two men ultimately driven by lusts they barely understand. 

Morgan Maroney's lighting design is precision-close, creating corridors and shadows that suggest the locked-down world that these characters exist in, bringing to mind the ghosts of the past that underlie the play.  Mel Page's muddy, adapatable design is probably pure hell for the crew (the footprints having to be raked back out again after every performance) but it's a powerfully real location. It's a raw, emotional piece, delving deep into unpleasant truths in a way that feels uncomfortably familiar as we see history seeming to arc back towards this kind of darkness again. It's a play that's far more topical than anybody in the play wants it to be, and it's absolutely worth experiencing. 

4000 Miles, Wharf 1 Theatre, Sydney Theater Company, 17 Feb-23 Mar

 

(photography Daniel Boud)

Amy Herzog's 2011 play tells the story of a grandson and his grandmother -of him coming to her apartment in desperation after a personal disaster and the weeks that follow which map out the nature of the relationship between them. It's a prickly relationship with the somewhat-deaf and prickly Vera and her reticent grandson Leo resolving some but not all of their issues over the course of a hundred minutes in stage time - for the boy, a first encounter with mortality, the dissolution of a relationship and his choice of a path ahead, for Vera, a reflection on her own past relationships and what mattered in her life. Along the way we meet two young women Leo's connected with - his long term girlfriend Bec and a one night stand, Amanda - both of which bring fresh perspectives on the pair. 

A lot of the narrative drives from Leo - we're given an arc of his escape from responsibility into an emerging sense of him accepting new ones - Vera comes across as a little underwritten (which is ironic given 90% of Herzog's writers note is about how the character is based on her own grandma) - we get elements of her past and present but I don't sense that Herzog has fully thought through how a woman in her senior years finds purpose outside of family. There are some intriguing thoughts on the complacency of the comfortably well-off leftists who imagine themselves better people because they've been standing up against bad behaviour in their own country, never reflecting on how leftist policies have damaged people in other countries - but again, this examination never gets particularly deep. It's largely an attempt at comfortable warm vibes rather than a lot of thought on the issues it produces, and Kenneth Morelada's production largely produces those vibes well, with Jeremy Allen's comfortable West Village apartment giving us a stylish, intellectual retreat. 

Nancye Hayes as Vera anchors the evening well - giving Vera a lot of sharp, cantankerous edges combined with vulnerability. Shiv Palekar as Leo gives the combination of youthful enthusiasm and sudden damage from recent traumatic events palpable power - we know immediately something's going on behind his actions and the unravelling as it proceeds is powerful. Ariadne Sgouros relies a little bit too much on a self-protective smile to barely conceal the concerns Bec has underneath - she should have been assisted to find other ways of expressing the uneasy relationship she has with Leo than just one facial expression. Shirong Wu has one scene but makes it count, giving her character variety and life and presenting a strong contrasting viewpoint into the otherwise cosy environment. 

Kelsey Lee's lighting design shifts moods well, giving a sense of different times in the same room - and Jessica Dunn's composition and sound design adds to the mood as we transition between times.

This isn't the strongest season opener of STC's recent seasons - it's a little too eager to be gently ingratiating for that - but it's a good opportunity to see a theatrical legend like Hayes and to observe a human connection across the footlights.