Under Milk Wood, Canberra Rep

I hate reviews that blame the play for the fact that the evening didn't work. I understand the impulse, the cast and crew are locals and you're probably going to socialise with them at some point, while the writer is probably dead, overseas or at the very least interstate, so may as well pick on the guy who isn't nearby.

Which is annoying, because I'm about to blame the 60-years-dead Dylan Thomas for me not enjoying this production. Now, this is a production that had a heap of great reviews all over the place with critical hoo-has, and Dylan Thomas has a fairly solid position in the cultural firmament, as does Milk Wood. The problem is, I can't quite tell why.

I think it's to do with the lack of plot. I like things with plots. It can even have many plots (I really like Robert Altman's films like "Short Cuts" and "Nashville" where huge bunches of plots bunch up against one another), but there must be action where people do something and are changed by it. Milk Wood doesn't do that - instead we get glimpses and portraits, but no actual change taking place. And Dylan Thomas is a hell of a wordsmith, but ... fine words only get you so far. It can't cover for a lack of action.

Anyway, that's me, and that's my blockage on this.

Which is a pity, becuase I do greatly esteem the cast and crew of this production, and in many ways they're doing superlative work here. Duncan Driver's melifulous tones make even the most rambling Thomas sentance sound intriguing, and the rest of the cast is equally skilled, switching between mutiple roles skillfully, inhabiting various characters heart and soul (yes, Virginina, apparently Peter Holland can do accents other than plummy-English!). Anne Kay's set design is gorgeous, Chris Ellyard's lighting is spectacular (the things that man can do with a small array of bulbs and a bit of smoke astound). There's also very skilful crew work under the guiding eyes of Stage Manager Carmen King and Assistant Stage Manager Darren Cullerne as the various set elements shift around almost silently and invisibly.

And I've written before of how much I love Duncan Ley's work as a director - and this is a visually fascinating production, that gives all these elements their space to play.

But the fact remains - I kinda left the whole experience wondering "what's the point of all this?" If it 's a reasonable portrayal of small-time-life in a Welsh Fishing Village, all I can say is I'm glad I don't live in a Welsh Fishing Village

(incidentally, if you loved this and you want to tell me why I'm wrong, I do have a comments field)

Eurobeat, Supa Productions

Let's get the serious bitching out of the way first ... the program states that "Eurobeat" originated at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993 - however, my online research suggests it was 2003, which makes far more sense as the Bosnian war for Independence ended in 1995, and the Coors first album also came out in 1995 (both referenced in the script in ways that seem likely to have been permanently there).  So, Supa President, I expect a full apology and a complementary Tim Tam, okay?

ANYWAY.

Eurovision is a love-it-or-hate-it-or-possibly-love-to-make-fun-of-it annual event that many Australians take dear to their heart. The pure daggyness of it all does seem to resonate in our hearts, with some bubbly dance pop, over-intense performances, very dubious Television Presenting skills and blatant padding during the voting all combining to deliver an annual dose of fun. Eurobeat is a 50% parody 50% tribute to Eurovision, with 15 acts performing representing various countries, and the audience getting to pick the winner - with the byplay of hosts Sergei (who reacts to the entire affair by getting increasingly drunk throughout the evening) and Boyka (who smiles a lot and attempts to keep things on track). A fairly busy cast of 19 bounce between various outfits performing double-triple-quadruple duties as representatives of multiple countries, and the show ends with the audience favourite number getting a reprise.

Inevitably, some of the songs are stronger than others - the spoofs are at least nicely varied between parodying the nationality, parodying the genre, parodying a particular performer from that country and just making a lot of sex jokes. Jordan Kelly's choreography particularly shines here - it's nice to see dance that is truly funny and creative - cheesy as hell in many places, but entertainingly so (even managing to choreograph a giant strawberry at one point). And even the more blah numbers only last around 3 minutes, there's always a new song around the corner.

Of the performances, local light-entertainment phenomenon  (and previous WILI winner) Lachlan Ruffy shines as the sleazy, dopey and somewhat argumentative Sergei, garnering a ridiculous number of laughs. Sarah Golding's Boyka is similarly hilarious (and similarly dopey), while delivering the bulk of the malopropisms and a truly gorgeous "I'm Sarajevo, Taste Me" - both give the show whatever throughline it has and keep the evening tight, together and on track.

I also have to give a hoy to the other WILI winner in the cast, Max Gambale - who shines in his three numbers, as the remarkably-physically-inept German entry, as an increasingly-bothered-by-the-rest-of-his-group Estonian, and as one of Norway's impressive bunch of Vikings. Also deserving an individual mention is Eliza Shepherd, who's hilarious both as the completely out-of-her-tree Iceland entry and the not-at-all-sublty-lyric-ed Ukranian. Cameron Gill's Irish entry is a masterpiece of overly-dramatic looks, posing, intensity and surviving-the-fog-machine (although his invitation to sing along does lead me to remember that my Irish accent always comes out sounding Pirate). And Tim Stiles is a charming delight in four different nationalities (most of which do have the same accent, but ... meh).

I also need to give a shoutout to the fine Lichtenstein dancers for one truly impressive display of gobsmacking movement, and to the female crew member, either Temyka or Rachel, who gives Sergei one wonderfully dirty look.

It's nice to see another first time director in Canberra (I've noticed the musical companies seem a bit more willing to shake things up than the play companies locally - I'm not sure why, but it's good). Emma Tattum shows a tight hand on a show that could easily get overly-self-indulgent or turn into a concert, and that's appreciated (though I think the reading of the votes is a bit of a dead spot, I'm not entrirely sure there's anything you can do with that beyond cutting it - I must admit I'm a "turn it off at half time and look up the results online" person for Eurovision). I'm not entirely sure how the musical side of things are handled - whether everybody's performing to a backing tape or whether Emma White is going wild on a keyboard backstage, but either way, the backing sorta falls into the category of "adequate to the task" rather than "greatest use of music ever".

Anyway, the key word to this show is "Fun". It's a show where the audience gets to have a great time without having to consider anything much deeper than "do I want to taste Sarajevo or bang Ukraine"?

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Belvoir

When I finished watching "Death of a Salesman" last year, one of the things I thought about was the use of the Australian accent in an American play. And I said to myself, it's an interesting approach, and it works here, but I can't really see how it'd work with Tennessee Williams.

So Belvoir obviously decided to show me how it'd work. Or ... not. Or ... sorta.

Oddly enough, I don't think much of the problem with this production has to do with accents. Far more has to do with period. For me, "Cat on A Hot Tin Roof" is a play about people who can't quite speak the truth about what's happened to them - the big conversation in the closet being precisely what was going on between Brick and Skipper, and why this has caused Brick to retreat into self-disgust and alcoholism.

And, due to this being a 1950's play, it's never quite said. And there are two, to my mind, equally valid interpretations. Either Brick genuinely did harbour a sexual passion for Skipper that he's unable to face, or, to my mind more interestingly, that maintaining the rules of the closet around that relationship by never talking about what was going on between them, Brick blames himself for killing his best friend.

But the largescale avoidance of talking about the topic feels very 1950s rather than contemporary - it doesn't really ring true as something contemporary characters would do or how they'd behave.

I'm not sure to what extent this is part of what's going on in the script - Williams' structure is a little odd - act one is basically a monologue for Maggie with interruptions from Brick, Act two largely consists of a long conversation between Brick and Big Daddy, and Act Three has most of the cast gathering for Brick's brother-and-sister-in-law to drop the truth about Big Daddy's medical condition on Big Momma. And Acts Two and Three work - in particular, the Brick and Big Daddy conversation plays like gangbusters,  because it's the closest anybody gets to having an honest conversation. Act Three's a little odd as Big Momma's been skirted the edges of caricature during Act Two, and therefore suddenly having her as the solid voice of logic and determination causes a bit of mental whiplash. And "Cat" is a particularly odd script in the first place, with Williams rewriting Act three repeatedly for different productions (we get what appears to be roughly his first draft, with no Big Daddy appearance).

This does feel more like an exercise for Simon Stone than something he's genuinely passionate about (the way that "Salesman" felt drawn from the heart) - there's a lot of production bells and whistles (including some quite spectacular use of the revolve) going on that doesn't  conceal that it isn't always hitting the emotions right. On one very shallow note, Ewan Leslie's hair as Brick is attrocious - for a character who's meant to inspire great loyalty from several people around him, making him a Jason Schwartzman-looking dweeb doesn't exactly indicate natural charisma.

The other thing to note is that this production makes clear the intense loyalty the female characters feel towards their fairly unworthy partners - Maggie towards the distant Brick, and Big Momma towards the verbally abusive Big Daddy. If the word didn't carry unfortunate connotations towards women, I'd almost say they're more dogs than cats - loyal to people irregardless of whether that loyalty is earned.

So it's an interesting night in the theatre that only really grabbed me by the heart once, rather than a completely successful one. I don't think it's by any means a failure, and there's a lot worth watching, but I don't think it's the triumph that it should be either.

Irresponsible - Civic Pub, Canberra Comedy Festival

Due to one thing and another, I got to see precisely... ONE show during the entire Canberra comedy festival (which had twenty-odd shows going). Fortunately, it had four very talented young comedians giving them all (plus one reasonable support act),

The one issue with the shared bill of four young men in their late-teens-early-twenties is that they do share a little bit of similarity of approach and subject matter - each tends towards shorter jokes, with a penchant for darker material, often about sex. There's not a lot of diversity - only the halftime song shared between Tim Noon and Harris Stuckey really breaks the rhythm of the show.

However, all four are skilled in their material. Simon Bower's the youngest, and still has a certain amount of nervous energy onstage, but comes across pretty well (he's also the only one to start aiming towards longer stories). Harris Stuckey's short one-or-two-liner pieces flow pretty nicely. Shahed Sharify gets a decent energy going, although, really, dude, claiming to not know what Argo is about really sounds weird after it won the goddamn oscar. Tim Noon is placed in the headline spot, and he deserves it. He does own the stage in a way the rest just don't quite - there's a very original comic mind going on there, and it'll be a pleasure to see how that develops in the next few months.

In short, very definately worth the $15 to see some promising young performers deliver some pretty damn good material.

Calendar Girls - Canberra Rep

Let us now praise populist entertainment. It's not necessarily deep, it's not innovative, and it doesn't change perceptions of theatre as an art form. But what it does is entertain, it keeps the audience engaged, it gives casts fun things to play and it hopefully brings nice amounts of box office to a theatre company.

Such is "Calendar Girls", which... yes, is basically a movie on stage (although it brings the scope back to one hall and a hill, rather than the international shenanigans that showed up in the film). But it's a friendly, funny piece with plenty of great roles for women of a range of ages and sizes, and just a spice of sauciness. There are plenty of laughs, just a few sad bits, and of course the nude calendar shoot centerpiece which tips it over the edge into hysteria.

Director Catherine Hill pulls together a tight company, played out on Russell Brown's adaptable set. Central are Elaine Noon as Annie, the heart of so much of the piece, and Naone Carrel as Chris, who gets a lot of the more outrageous comedy and is the source of at least two of the bigger dramatic moments. Jon Garland's  role is to incite the action, which he does gorgeously sympathetically - he and Noon have that lived-in-feel of a real couple. Of the rest of the Calendar girls, most get at least part of a subplot each, although Anne Yuille's Jessie doesn't, and therefore seems to steal the show frequently by just getting all the best lines instead and delivering them devilishly well (I've not seen Yuille before, her last gig was around 20 years ago - I'm hoping she'll be snaffled up into the Canberra Theatrical regulars quick smart). The rest feel like their subplots are a tad tacked on - Megs Skillicorn's gormlessness would shine just as brightly without the tacked on straying husband, similarly Liz deTotth's Cora doesn't really need the departed daughter to bring her strength and humour, and Nikki-Lynn Hunter's monologue about unhappiness in the world of golfing clubs also feels kinda superflous.

Elsewhere in the cast - Paul Jackson's ability as a physical comedian are getting better and better - as the photographer Lawrence, his reactions are 50% of what makes the calendar shoot hilarious. Judi Crane's Marie is wonderfully imperious, with some wonderful layering, particularly in her act two showdown with Chris. Rob deFries seems to be going through an experiment where his love interests are getting older, which ... is nice, but otherwise there isn't much to his part - he's fine for what it demands, but it demands very little. Sam Hannan-Morrow's cameo is quite delightfully amoral - he's really quite brutal in a few short words, particularly "it's what you do, isn't it?"

Again, this is not theatre that reinvents the form, but it's a solidly craftsmanlike piece speckled with moments of extreme joy (the end of act one in particular) and occasional sadness.

The Secret River - Sydney Theatre Company

This review should not have happened. A sold out show I hadn't booked suddenly, through great providence and the generosity of a friendly fellow-critic, opened up the chance to see this. A vitally necessary story of the horror that lives at the beginning of white Australian history and colours our past to this day, "The Secret River" brings theatrical life to a popular novel (that I've never read) and is essential theatre for anybody whether you're watching for the politics, the emotional journey or for something visually fascinating.

The story is about Will Thornhill, a recently freed convict who takes his family to establish a home on the Hawkesbury river, and what happens when he comes face to face with the Dharug people who've been living there, is a story where we can see what's going to go wrong from fairly early on (the line "he realised how easy it was for a man to have land just by standing on it and claiming it" (paraphrased as I don't have the script) perfectly expresses that grand hope that often leads to disastrous ends).

Yet this is never just  lecture theatre, telling us "what our ancestors did wrong". It's engaging throughout, in that we can see the tragedy coming, but we can also see the joyous life that is under peril - the chance to live together that was lost through fear of the other. There's brilliance and intelligence at every turn here - Iain Grandage's music drives the show emotionally, Stephen Curtis' open space reveals surprsing ranges of creativity as it changes from bare land to the titular river (and is wonderfully capable of being slippery when required, while also being steady-under-the-feet for the rest of the show).

In the performances, there's some brilliant use of language, accent and design in letting us into the characters world. The Dharug speak in their own language throughout, with the audience to interpret their meanings through gesture and intonation only - but the white characters are just as distanced, both through performing in English accents (it's a mark of how thoroughly Belvoir's approach of "actors accents only" has sunk in with me that it took me a minute or two to adjust to the performer's use of english accents) and through white makeup on the white characters - it's not a blatant alienation effect, but it's enough to be noticeable and to present a slight stylisation. Similarly, the Dharug's outfits are not historically accurate either - there's a blending towards modern clothing in the design that makes it harder to treat them as "the other". The two characters who veer closest to "modernity" are Ursula Yovich's narrator and Colin Moody's Blackwood, who stand as a case where black and white are living together without fear or conflict.

Performances across the board are excellent - from familiar veterans like Yovich, Moody, Trevor Jamieson, Jeremy Sims,  Bruce Spence and Judith McGrath, to the young performers like Callum McManis, James Slee, Bailey Doomadgee, and, in shared roles, Bailey Doomadgee and Kamil Ellis as Garraway/Dulla Djin's child and Rory Potter and Tom Usher as Dick Thornhill. It's very few productions that would be confident enough in its child actors to have them perform at the start of Act two as the audience came in, and ... this show was that confident, and fulfilled that confidence spectacularly.

I haven't said anything about the work of writer Andrew Bovell and Neil Armfield, except the obvious, which is to say that it sits under and makes everything that I've praised above possible. Armfield's professional career goes back  almost 35 years at this point, and this is a perfect blending of his mastery of stagecraft, his deep engagement with performance and his constantly surprising vision. Bovell is one of Australia's great writers and his adaptation works to distill a complex novel into a clear, illuminating, direct and powerful show.

Standup comedy - Dave O'Neil, 33 Things I should have Said No To, Civic Pub

Canberra Standup comedy has a pretty good repuation round town, and one of the best gigs for a while has been the Civic Pub's first Wednesday gig. Good enough that, in warmup for appearances at the Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne Comedy Festival, Dave O'Neil (he's been on telly repeatedly!) brought his current show to canberra for a tryout night there. Surprisingly, this wasn't one of the Civic pub's best nights - the venue, which has usually been good for a quiet night that supports the standup, let a little too much bar-noise and downstairs rattles through. Also slightly underattended, which was disappointing.

Anyway, on to the actual standup. On MC and warmup duties were Canberra stalwarts The Stevenson Experience, a musical twin-brother duo who I've been seeing on-and-off for the last couple of years. It was good to see them with a bunch of fairly new material (I only recognised one song from previous gigs), even including a bit of character acting and choreography (or at least marching in one place) in an attempted mini-musical. The Stevenson's are very polished (even when they slide off-script, they keep good solid momentum going), and kicked off and held the evening together well.

Of the support act gigs, Harris Stuckey kicked off his gig by apologising for using his notes (never a good look) and dropped a series of amusing but unstructured one-liners. Craig Harvey used his physicality and a nice set of running gags in some good suburban-dad material. Simon Bower seems improved from last time I reviewed him (as part of Kale Bogdanov's gig) but his last joke was not his best joke.

Dave O'Neil was exactly what you expect from him on telly - a nice ramble through material about Devo, bogans, a reasonable sideline in the occasionally-risky-territory of Queanbeyan jokes, being a dad, the perils of being a breakfast radio host or Tonight show location-guy and boy-scouting. It was maybe a little over-extended as a 50 minute gig (I get the feeling he's still getting the kinks out) but, for $12 a pop, it's not a bad feeling to be experimented on a bit with someone as skilled as Dave is.

As noted, Dave will be touring this all over the place (Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne comedy Festival, many other places). Harris Stuckey and Simon Bower are 50% of the Canberra Comedy Festival's "Irresponsible" which you can read more about or buy tickets to here. The Stevenson Experience will also be featuring in their show "How I met your brother" which you can read more about or just buy tickets to here.