Dirty Dancing

John Frost, Karl Sydow, Martin McCallum and Joye Entertainment in association with Lionsgate and Magic Hour Productions. 4 Oct 2015

The buzz in the foyer before the sell-out performance I attended was incredible. Some, like me, missed the 1987 hit film starring Patrick Swayze (tragically dead at age 57 by pancreatic cancer) and Jennifer Grey, or the world premiere stage production in Australia in 2004, and were there because of the huge reputation of this work. The low budget, independently produced movie had no major stars (no, Patrick was not yet a star) but grossed skyward of $200 million. It was the first film to sell more than a million home copies; the hit song, (I've Had) The Time of My Life, and the soundtrack won Grammy, Academy and Golden Globe awards. All this started with the boy-meets-girl story that writer Eleanor Bergstein could not sell.

The action takes place in the summer of 1963 in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. Wealthy Manhattanites would retreat to woodsy resorts - like the Kellerman's as presented in the show - where the management organise skittles, talents contests and most pertinently, dance lessons for families. While it all seems a bit corny now, and the resorts lost their popularity in the 1980s, this sort of action has shifted to the cruise ships, as well as all the hanky-panky between the male staff and wide-eyed teenagers or bored housewives.

Basically, a nice girl in her gap summer falls in love with the dance instructor and has the time of her life. Some of the dramatic elements were later borrowed by Baz Luhrmann and his co-writers for the 1992 film, Strictly Ballroom. Due to partner problems, the top dog dancer reluctantly teaches a novice for a big number under the duress of a deadline. Baz even replicated the emphasis on Spanish rhythms and how to learn them - "leesin to yur 'art."

The design team created a filmic background for the stage production with motion imagery of lake water, rain, and scenic hills. Plantation shutters dropped periodically to help transit scene changes. The ambience of a high quality, old-school resort was there, meeting Bergstein's objective of placing you into the three dimensional present, as opposed to film's sense of two dimensional memory, as she put it.

The dancing is unbelievably good - exciting, visceral and sexy - the dirty dancing of the title. Maddie Peat and Kurt Phelan playing the top instructors at Kellerman's opened the dance numbers in an awesome display of virtuosity. The chorus choreography is highly individualised. It is in the relationship between Kirby Burgess's Baby Houseman and Phelan's Johnny Castle that Strictly Ballroom meets Grease (1978), for here we have a Sandy Olsson type falling for a Johnny Zuko type. The audience cheered for their success in seduction and choreography. And weren't those the biggest melons you have ever seen?

While a lot of the music was sixties soundtrack, James D Smith - who as Billy Kostecki introduced Baby to the debauchery of the staff quarters - sang In The Still of The Night with the clarity of a Herkimer diamond, and shone with Anna Freeland in the inspirational theme song of the finale. Unfortunately, director James Powell kept them in theatrical twilight in opposite corners of front stage, as this is a dance show after all. The other original songs are also left to the ensemble as the leads do not actually sing. Fans of the early sixties will enjoy all the contextual information - the Mississippi bus protest, Kennedy's Peace Corps and the liberal idealism that that president fostered - but also parental conservatism and illegal abortion, new stuff in addition to the romantic narrative of the film, I am told.

There was a standing ovation when I attended. Dirty Dancing is a terrific night out, sticking to the winning formulae of the film, and fulfilling a wish to re-engage with this love story by the immediacy of a stage performance.

David Grybowski

When: 4 October to 1 November

Where: Festival Theatre

Bookings: bass.net.au

Superposition

Oz Asia Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 30 Sep 2015

Artists often take their inspiration from nature, but it is usually from what is seen or heard and rarely from what is un-sensed. Superposition is an artist’s attempt to make tangible what is essentially the ultimate in intangibility – the quantum world.

Superposition is a fusion of synthesized sound and computer generated imagery that assaults your senses. It is not an enjoyable experience, and nor is it un-enjoyable. It is provoking and arresting – it demands and commands your attention and if you can’t give it you have but one option, and that is to leave the ‘event’. That is exactly what some did, but only a few.

At its heart is science and mathematics, and it’s confusing. If you know nothing of quantum physics or informatics your enjoyment would be diminished, and seeing it several times would, I suspect, not fill in the gaps. The program notes aren’t of too much use either. I’m fortunate (or not) to have some training in mathematical physics and I could appreciate what creator Ryoji Ikeda was trying to say, but it’s dangerous to overstate your case. Ikeda’s Artist Statement in the programme notes concludes by saying that “Superposition is … foolhardily and quixotically aiming to explore the new kind of information through art.” Maybe foolhardily, because the quantum world defies common sense.

Suffice to say, Ikeda drew inspiration for his ‘event’ from the ambiguity and confusion that plagues a mere mortal’s attempt to explain and describe the quantum world.

The event comprised a perplexing and stunning array of graphic images projected onto multiple screens, sometimes with expositions of the underpinning data, and always accompanied by seemingly chaotic signal generated sounds. It was loud. Your body felt the ‘music’ – your sinuses vibrated. At times two actors manipulated electronic and mechanical equipment on stage and we saw graphical and mathematical representations of what they were doing. The pace was relentless, and each spectacular electronic display was outdone by the next.

Can our lives be expressed in mathematics? Is reality deterministic? Who knows? Philosophy aside, the audience loved it.

Kym Clayton

When: 29 to 30 Sep

Where: Dunstan Playhouse

Bookings: Closed

Dear John

Oz Asia Festival. M.O.V.E. Theatre. Nexus Arts. 2 Oct 2015

Dear Taiwan,

Who would have thought to mount a celebration of John Cage's 101st birthday? Cage is not the first composer one might have imagined would turn on the Taiwanese creative juices. 

Cage was the American who delivered the music of silence, who deconstructed instruments, created "indeterminacy" as a musical concept. He was the great avant-garde original of the 20th Century. And it seems, you, Taiwan's M.O.V.E. Theatre, have fallen in love with his sounds, his philosophies and created both visual art and science around his themes. You have called it "sound immersion experimental" and turned him into experiential theatre for millennials. 

Here in Adelaide for OzAsia, you have made the Nexus performance space dark and uncomfortable, so the people must stand, sit on the floor or perch uncertainly on the edge of the stage or the odd rough pine box. You allow them to move around but warn them not to touch the "instruments" in the blackout darkness. Then you play lights here and there as sonic effects are brought into use. Sometimes audience members help by pulling a string or two on some chime suspended aloft.

You add a dancer in white who shrugs on a suspended jacket connected by wires to an opened piano frame and then elicits certain notes as she strains invisible elements. There is a musician to play at this raw piano belly.  She pounds and strokes the strings with soft sticks and mallets.

Upon the stage boxes contain clear plastic tubes which, when activated, rise and fall under pneumatic pressure,  a laboratory pipe organ of some sort, squeezing out pipe whistles some soft and some so strident they assault the senses.

The dancer moves through the audience, adding percussive complements. White lines create a box in which the dancer struggles with a wooden box and it drums and thumps and then, as she leaps upon it, rattles wild staccato like a human castanet. Piece by piece, light falls upon the boxes around the room and new sounds are released. Is that rain on the roof or the shimmer of a shamanistic tube rattle? As one listens in the darkness, the sounds become layered and build into what is often a pleasant Cage-style sort of tune. Or not.

The random aspects of Cage philosophy are thrown into the mix, most exquisitely when a child in the audience is invited to follow a light through the room and then help to switch on and off and off and on a line of hanging light globes. The child innately understands the expectation of the piece and it is beautiful.

From the beginning and the one constant through the hour-long show is a pleasurable metranomic sound.

Finally, under a shaft of blinding light, it is illuminated as water droplets making controlled splashes into a glass beaker. 

And thus, dear Taiwan, you bring us a night of strangeness and auditory adventure. Very serious and mysterious. Science and art and history and love in a big, dark wonderland.

Thank you.

Samela Harris

When: 2 to 3 Oct

Where: Nexus Arts

Bookings: Closed

Guys and Dolls

Gilbert and Sullivan Society of SA. Arts Theatre. 1 Oct 2015

The magic of theatre. When it happens, when one realises that, within the big black box, one has become part of one great big single organism bonded in the shared pleasure of the moment, it is profoundly good. It is what theatre is all about.

This sensation was extraordinarily intense on the opening night of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society's production of Guys and Dolls. The audience responded to the performance like a big beating heart, responsive to each nuance.

G&S has an excellent reputation for mounting lots of slick and professional musicals, especially the light opera of its eponymous composers. But this show in The Arts Theatre steps it up a Broadway notch.

The teamwork between director Karen Sheldon, choreographer Kerry Hauber, and musical director Martin Cheney reflects both understanding and generosity of spirit as well as expertise. Interestingly, all three have honed skills with Northern Light Theatre Company.

Of course, Guys and Dolls is one of the great musicals of all time. Based on a Damon Runyon story scripted by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, it is rich in classic characters, love and fun, humour and satire, absurdity and redemption, all gift-wrapped in Frank Loesser's score of evergreen hits.

The director says her first participation in Guys and Dolls was a catalyst to her making theatre her life path and it is still her favourite show. This shows. But, of course, you can't make a hit production without some pretty talented performers. Sheldon has found a full complement. Her principals are stunning. Then again, any show that his Nicholas Bishop in a minor role has to have a creamy cast. Bishop plays the constantly-snacking gambler Nicely Nicely Johnson and when he sings Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat, it is nothing less than a wild show-stopper.  The audience applauds and hollers itself into exhaustion.

Jason Bensen is the official star of the show, playing the inveterate gambler Sky Masterson who accepts a bet that he can convince a Salvation Army girl to go on a date to Cuba with him. Bensen is suave and handsome with good acting skills and a voice which can carry the Sinatra-famous songs such as I've Never Been in Love Before, albeit that no-one can actually match Old Blue Eyes. What Bensen does is create a strong, romantic character and a real sense of chemistry with the female lead, Sophia Bubner playing Sister Sarah Brown, the missionary girl. She is copybook perfect in her part. She has to carry some fairly tricky songs with treacherous high notes, but she does so with sweetness and charm, going on to belt out some big ones like If I was a Bell. She has the most beautiful and interesting qualities to her voice.

Ever-loving Adelaide is the other female lead; the showgirl in love with the gangster Nathan Detroit.  And here's one Jeri Williams, an American with a stunning, big Broadway voice, masses of chutzpah and comic presence and, on top of it all, dancing skills. She's breathtaking. And partnered by a peer in the form of Brendan Cooney who has a splendid, distinctive voice along with all the stage skills upon which a comic-musicals player needs to call. These two performers seem almost born to play these renowned roles.  All around them are good players giving their all: Ian Brown, Raymond Cullen, Nathan Quadrio, and Lauren Noble.

This is all done with good sets and costumes and wonderfully spirited and atmospheric choreography which makes all dancers look good. This is a big, blockbuster stage show with a large male ensemble as the New York gamblers and a large female troupe as the Hot Box showgirls. They not only have to turn on a diverse array of dance numbers, but some important choral work. Oh, how beautiful it is to hear the harmonies of these singers. Martin Cheney has them rehearsed to perfection, all the while accompanied by what feels like a massive, powerful orchestra down there in the pit. It is eleven-strong. Its string section is just dreamy. In toto, it has found its balance with the miked voices and it spreads the joy. A lovely feeling of enthusiasm and engagement seems to rise from that invisible underworld and connect itself with the audience. It is not a common phenomenon and it is part of what makes this show so very special.

Buy a ticket to this one - even if you have to sell your children to do so.

Samela Harris

When: 1 to 10 Oct

Where: Arts Theatre

Bookings: gandssa.com.au

Photography by Timeless Event Photography