God of Carnage, Echo Theatre, The Q, 23-26 Nov

 Image credit: Photox - Canberra Photography Services

Yasmina Reza's 2006 comedy is a challenging piece - it's a real-time one-act comedy with no obvious jokes in any of the dialogue, which seems to go out of its way to start after the most obviously dramatic events of its premise have passed (two couples meet after the son of one has injured the son of another in a fight - by the time we meet them, they've already come to an agreement and are fine tuning the final wording on a joint statement). What follows is coffee, Clafoutis and a degeneration into chaos as small differences escalate into major battles and the seemingly sophisticated parents are reduce to their most savage instincts. There's all varieties of bad behaviour, from incessent mobile phone interruptions through petty snobbery to a few violent interractions, as the veneer of civilization is shown to be perilously thin.

Jordan Best directs this in a fine manner, managing the pace between the slow builds up of tension and the sudden explosions into violent outbursts. All four performers are at the top of their game - Lainie Hart as the wife nursing long-held grudges, Jim Adamik as the one preoccupied with his mobile phone, sublimely dismissive and arrogant, Carolyn Eccles as the most precious of the group, self-confessedly utterly humourless (and all the funnier for it), and Josh Wiseman as the solicitously friendly one, infuriatingly capable of seeing all sides of the argument. There's not a wrong note in the under 90 minute running time - the quartet plays this material to perfection, bringing out the character's foibles, agressions, defensiveness and pretentiouns in full glorious display. 

This is a great wrapup to the year, seeing a quartet of great actors getting a chance to play with material that allows them to play the full gamut from genteel politeness to mind-boggling rage, and it's a capstone on a great year of local theatre. Catch it while you can!

Sense and Sensibility, Canberra Rep Theatre, 17 Nov-3 Dec

 Kate Hammill's adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility" uses most of its cast as a gossipy-greek-chorus, forever commenting on the romantic trials and travails of the Dashwood sisters, the rational, restrained Elinor and the more emotional Marianne. It's an interesting approach, situating the characters very much in a society where everyone has too much time on their hands and concerns themselves with other people's peccadillos, as the sisters struggle to find an eligible match among the various single gentlemen around them - whether it be the bashful Edaward, the stoic Colonel Brandon or the dashing Willoghby. 

There's a charm and verve in the story, particularly in the second act as the women face increasing challenges to their happily-ever-after and the stoic Elinor comes closer and closer to breaking point, in the face of the ruthlessly chatty Lucy Steele, though the production doesn't always take advantage of the fleet-of-footness that the script provides -there's a lot of setting-and-resetting of the minimal furniture rather than prsenting a seamless rush of story which would enable us to be driven forward and caught up in the narrative. There's a fine sense of period style in the costumes, the set, and the country dancing, and the entire production has a romping energy to it which is interrupted by those set changes dragging the energy down. 

Still, there's a lot of skill in the performances. Karina Hudson as Elinor keeps us clear on what's going on underneath the stiff-upper-lip demeanor, as we can see the buried passions become more and more not-at-all buried. Anabelle Segler as the more demonstrative Marianne certainly enjoys her chances to demonstrate, and is suitably chastened near the end when the chickens return to roost. Elsewhere, the three love interests are suitably bashful, stoic and dashing respectively,  Kayler Ciceran gives wicked sister-in-law Fanny a ruthless bitterness, Kate Garrow is stupendously slappable as you constantly wish Lucy would put a sock in it, and Sienna Curnow as her brash sister is similarly sock-worthy. 

In short, this is a romp that I slightly wish was a little tidier around the edges than it is - but a romp it remains, leaving us with a super-happy ending and an expression of pleasure at the end. 

Chalkface, Sydney Theatre Company, Playhouse, Canberra Theatre, 9-12 Nov

 

Angela Beitzen has been working fairly consistently n Australian theatre over the last few years - plays like "Mortido" and "The Dark Room" exploring the darker sides of human nature. This year she's apparently flipped the switch to something lighter, with a comedy set in staff room of a public primary school, taking place over a school year as the teachers battle with overly sensative parents, officious admin staff, the overly-enthusiastic new staff member and the still-developing brains they're meant to be instructing. It's a slightly exagerated farce with runs speedily throgh triumps, disasters and an eventual explosive ending (with a slightly overly-long denoument) - fortunately it moves fast enough that you can't think too much about some of the more absurd contrivances (including a 12 year old who develops nuclear fusion in class). I'm usually a little bit of a nitpicker about writers who don't normaly write farce dabbling in it (it's a challenging form to get right) but this didn't trigger my nerves too badly. 

The cast of six mesh well into an ensemble. Ana Maria Bello (stepping in for an unwell Catherine McClements) is our point-of-view character, combining cynicism with engagement in a way that helps her grow on us thorughout the show. Stephanie Somerville as the newbie is suitably suniny and goofy up until the point where she inevitably cracks - she manages to avoid the risk of making her character appear too dumb to live. Ezra Juanta and Susan Prior are sorta playing one-joke characters but they play those one jokes well. As the two nemeses, Nathan O'Keefe and Michelle Ny provide suitably uptight prickliness for the rest of the cast to push against. 

Jessica Arthur directs with pace and clarity, giving the show a good running energy. Alisa Paterson's set is suitably grotty and run-down, whle her costumes give her lots of room to manouvre, from the teacher's regular daily gear to the explosion of ridiculou Book-week outfits. All in all this is a good solid Australian comedy to see out the year.

Sunshine Super Girl, Performing Lines, The Q, Nov 2 - 5

(photo provided by the Q- Credit: Paz Tassone)

 Andrea James' interpretation of the career of Evonne Goolagong, from her youth in a small country town to touring the world as a wildly successful tennis player, is visiting Queanbeyan towards the tag end of a yearlong tour that's seen it play everywhere from Adelaide to Brisbane (with a run at the Melbourne Theatre Company yet to come). Using a cast of five to tell the story (one actress playing Goolagong, everybody else playing multiple roles, from family to mentors to rivals), it plays out on an apparently simple set (designed by Romanie Harper, it's laid out like a tennis court with net, umpires chair and benches surrounding the stage, performing multiple duties with the assistance of the beautiful projections of Mic Gruchy). It's a beautiful production celebrating one of our most skilled athletes and is absolutely worth watching - it's charming, expertly summarising a long career into a 90-odd minute runtime, and contains great evocative choreography from Vicki Van Hout and Katina Olsen stylising the tennis matches into pieces that grab the eye. 

It also left me feeling a little disconnected - as a biography, it's definitely at the "respectful" end of the spectrum, which means that James has elected not to get particularly intrusive into Goolagong's feelings and motivations beyond what's clearly visible. And while I respect that's a good and generous impulse, it does mean that I did miss much of a sense of Goolagong's inner life - she does come across as almost an enthusiastic bystander to her own life, curiously detached. And while there's something to be said for that - the alienating way that fame and the media feels like it's creating a public figure who isn't quite you - the overall effect is that, though Goolagong is presented as narrating the story throughout, I don't emerge feeling like I know her more than I did when I entered the theatre. James stages a great play but she's written a somewhat distanced one - though it brings up all kinds of intriguing angles (the flat-out racist and sexist media coverage of much of her career, the distancing effect that her career has on her family, the exploitative nature of her mentor and coach), in the desire not to be exploitative it feels, instead, a little underwritten. 

I do recommend seeing this - Ella Ferris as Goolagong gives a bright, charming performance as Goolagong, and the support work by Jax Compton, Lincoln Elliot, Katina Olson and  Sermsah Bin Saad is funny, beautiful, emotional and generous. As a demonstration of theatrical and choreographic skill, it's astonishingly good work. I just wish the writing hit me harder. 

Collected Stories, Chaika Theatre, Act Hub, 27 Oct-12 Nov

 This two hander is skilled at creating a small world with big implications- examining the push and pull between mentor and mentee as over the years a young writer and her tutor undergo changes as insecurities emerge and secrets are betrayed. Donald Marguiles script is very much of its era and it's location - the 1990s New York news bleeds off its every pore, and there's certainly some limitations in its slightly condescending writing of the younger woman (I'll be honest and say this is a fairly common trait of baby-boomer writers, shallow writing of anybody not in their generation). It also doesn't really examine the fundamental contradiction that it seems to suggest writers should not appropriate other people's stories as their own, except that Donald Marguiles is very much a male writer telling the stories of two women (and as such he tends to fall into traps like suggesting that most important experience of a woman's life would be her relationship with a man). 

However it's a great vehicle for Karen Vickery to have long monologues about literature, about love, about betrayal and about life. She siezes the chance that a wide-ranging role has to take the forefront of our sympathies, without ever obviously begging for them, as an opinionated, wise but surprisingly vulnerable mentor seeing her young protoge push away from her as the years go by, She also plays very well with Natasha Vickery as the protoge - while the role isn't quite as developed (and to a certain extent is hung out to dry - I'm never quite sure whether Marguiles believes she has any signifiant talent or not), she gives the character slightly more dimension as a young woman seeking to find her place in the world with a little bit of essential writerly ruthlessness about herself and others. 

The simple design, using the traverse style with the audience on two sides of the action makes the stage a laboratory interrogating these two people, drawing out every scripted nuance plus finding a couple that sit between the lines. Luke Rogers directs a tight production that finds both the laughs and the drama. Stephen Still's lighting design has some clever shifts in focus to bring the show together, 

In short this is a strong production of a play that isn't quite as strong, but is worth it primarily for a really great Karen Vickery performance. 

School of Rock, Dramatic Productions, Gunghalin College theatre, 7-22 Oct

 In signs that I'm getting older, it's now 19 years since Jack Black starred in Richard Linklater's film of Mike White's script, "School of Rock". A simple family friendly comedy and the perfect use of Jack Black's skills as a leading man, it turned out to be Andrew Lloyd Webber's return to writing popular musicals after about two decades in the wilderness (unless you're a huge fan of "Whistle Down the Wind", "Woman in White", "The Beautiful Game", "Love Never Dies" or "Steven Ward"), and his first largely Rock musical in roughly 45 years (since "Jesus Christ Superstar"). The combo of flat out comedy, showing off talented children in roles that require singing, dancing, acting AND playing instruments has proved broadly appealing to a fairly wide audience. If, yes, giving this American-set high school comedy to two members of the House of Lords (Lloyd-Webber and book writer, Julian "Downtown Abbey" Fellowes) does sound a little nuts, it seems partially like a product of the same insane logic that got Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein writing a Northampton-based industrial-shoe-manufacturing musical, and that decision worked out pretty well. 

In all honesty, the success of the material owes far more to the stuff transferred from the film than it does to any of the embelishments by the two noblemen and the not-a-noble lyricist Glenn Slater - Lloyd Webber's tunes rarely stretch beyond the familiar (occaisonally borrowing, acknowleged from Mozart's "Queen of the Night" aria from "The Magic Flute", unacknowledged from the bit in "If Only You Would Listen" that sounds like "Someone Else's Story" from "Chess"). The performers give it guts and energy in ensemble numbers like "Stick it to the Man", "When I climb to the top of Mount Rock" and the title song, but the deeper delvings into the teen-and-pre-teen angst here are never really given anything more than the most cursory of treatment. You can kind of smell the old-straight-white-man-ness off the show too from the treatment of women and homosexuals in the show who are both broad-brush caricatures (the two gay parents dash on and off stage screaming, the young gay kid is into Vogue and Barbra Streisand and wants to be a stylist, the women are either shrewish (Dewey's nemesis Patti) or mother figures (principal Rosalie)). 

Fortunately, Marty King's directed one hell of sttrong, constantly-flowing show, with clever use of an adaptable set - well built under the supervision of John Nicholls to adapt from rock stage to apartment to classhroom to dive bar, flowing back and forth easily and standing up to some fairly vigorous performer interraction. Katrina Tang gets great sounds out of the 7-piece band plus the onstage cast, including five musician-actors. Nathan Rutrups also gets great simple rock choreography which adds spectacle when it's needed without ever feeling like dancing-for-the-sake-of-dancing.

There's strength too in the cast - Max Gambale would seem the most obvious casting ever for the role (having previously played a great Jack Black role in "High Fidelity", plus having demonstrated his rock vocal credentials in everything from "War of the Worlds" to "Jesus Christ Superstar") but here is another chance to show off just how skilled he is in a role that has him centrestage pretty much continuously, constantly energetic as the somewhat-selfish-but-still-somehow-loveable Dewey. Taylor Paliaga as principal Rosalie is given some of the bigger singing burden, carrying both the aforementioned Mozart Aria and the sentimental "Where Did The Rock Go", as well as being a somewhat sensible straightwoman to Dewey's antics. The rest of the adult and kid cast have great energy dashing around as parents, rock musicians, bar patrons and faculty or as members of the class, with special mention to Edith Baggeley's officiousness as Summer and Hester McDonald's fine rock voice as Tomika.  

In short this is a surprisingly fun show, built on thinnish material but making great use of it to show off an entertaingly stacked cast. It's a straightforward crowdpleaser that did its job of pleasing a crowd well.

Let the Right One in, Darlinghurst Theatre, 12 Oct-20 Nov 2022

 John Ajveide's novel has been around the adaptation route a few times - filmed, adapted to a US context, currently a TV series and this stage adaptation originally written in 2013. It's a simple story of a child meeting something strange but protective, about a bond formed in harsh conditions, about alienation and acceptance. It's also, in this production, tense and terrifying. 

On a simple industrial looking set (designed by Isabel Hudson), we get the slowly warming relationship between bullied Oskar and the unusually confident Eli, interspersed with scenes of Oskar being bullied at school, dealing with his distant parents, and the background of a series of mysterious deaths being enacted by Eli's guardian. The revelation of Eli's true nature comes slowly but surprisingly, with a few intriguing departures from popular lore, and the true horror turns out to be social rather than an individual monster. 

There are a few inconsistencies in the production - in particular, the choice to use Swedish accents throghout does distance the production more than is strictly necessary - and at least one early murder feels a little under-bloody. But in the core, as it tells the blossoming relationship between Will McDonald's freshfaced Oskar and Sebrina Thorton-Walker's disconcertingly calm Eli, it blooms as a very unconventional love story of enforced co-dependence.

Alexander Berlage's production is full of sudden blackouts and large industrian rock noises throughout transitions,throwing us off-centre and building audience tension to explode when necessary. I do feel it meanders a little when the attention is off Oskar and Eli, but part of that is the nature of the material - the story is intent on isolating them as much as possible to strengthen their bond, and anything that moves away from them does feel like a distraction. But all in all this is a successful, intriguing thriller.