Adelaide Theatre Guild Student Society. Little Theatre. 12 Oct 2023
British playwright James Graham specialises in political and socially charged subject matter with titles like: Brexit: An Uncivil War, Best of Enemies (debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.), Privacy (data surveillance culture), This House (shenanigans in the House of Commons), and Labour of Love (you guessed it). What Robert Bell and Rebecca Kemp chose to direct from his canon is something more relevant to antipodeans – the epic battle in 1969-70 between the biggest selling newspaper in the world, The Mirror, and that impudent and audacious Aussie upstart, Rupert Murdoch, competing with a makeover of his newly purchased paper, The Sun. This is the stuff of legend.
It's a big, dramatic story to tell. Graham’s script is well-researched and if you knew nothing of the times, or how a newspaper is actually made, you will after this play. The playwright did his best to condense the events of about a single year, but the word-work still weighs in at 3 hours 50 including interval, but don’t let that deter you; there is not a dull moment.
The creative team, led by directors Bell and Kemp, generates the vibrant verisimilitude of the excitement, the moods, and the energy of the times and a newsroom so vivid you can smell the ink. Displaying Normajeane Ohlsson’s set model in the lobby - created months before rehearsals began - and then seeing the real thing faithfully rendered in the theatre demonstrates her skill and professionalism. Bravo! The walls are decorated with a collage of headlines (my favourite is “Elton Takes David Up The Aisle”), and forlorn filing cabinets, typewriters and newspaper presses authenticate the stage. The closest the program gets to crediting costume design is director Kemp’s contribution as Wardrobe Manager, which is a stunning achievement. Bravo! Original music by Phil Short contributed a drumbeat to pace the action as well as sounds of the times. Lighting design by Stephen Dean was a bit of the sun and a bit of the moon with an eclipse thrown in here and there.
Bravo to Joshua Caldwell! If you didn’t know Rupert Murdoch before, you know him now. Dressed very nattily indeed, Caldwell evinces corporate muscle, enthusiasm, leadership and drive. You witness how naked ambition manifested in shock and awe tactics revolutionised the failings of Fleet Street. Rupert is teamed up with his indefatigable editor, Larry Lamb, played by Bart Csorba. This is a complex part of a hard-working lefty agonisingly uncertain of the new Murdoch paradigm whilst he leads its implementation. Csorba is a bundle of energy and nerves and conveys these conflicts with aplomb although somewhat unrelentingly. Playwright James Graham wrote a showcase for the Murdoch-Lamb team but also a battle history. Murdoch’s nemesis at The Mirror – who also sold him The Sun – was Hugh Cudlipp. Steve Marvanek does him righteous justice playing a stuffed shirt on the wrong side of history in a great performance. The large cast - many of whom had several roles – mastered multiple accents and quirky personalities that added colour and gloss to the political struggle and the bewilderment caused by the audacity of Murdoch’s ideas. Gary George conjures his best John Cleese for great comic effect but also evokes empathy when the chips are down, but Sarika Young and Charlie Milne out-quirked them all.
You’ll see all the drama of that incredible year – the Muriel McKay abduction, the origin of the Page 3 nudie, perfecting the tabloid, the triangular tangle of Murdoch, Lamb and Cudlipp – in a fast-paced, energetic, authentic and well performed exposition. Bravo!
David Grybowski
13 October 2023
When: 12-22 October 2023
Bookings: trybooking.com
David Gauci and Davine Productions. Start Theatres. 13 Oct 2023
Director/Set Designer David Gauci’s production of William Finn and James Lapine’s A New Brain is a 60s paranoia-fuelled, hallucinatory, high-octane, acid trip filled with high-glam, sharp choreography by Shenayde Wilkinson-Sarti.
Finn and Lapine’s tale of Gordon Schwinn (Daniel Hamilton), a composer for a kids TV show suddenly faced with possibly dying from brain surgery, features two conflicting levels in its structure.
At its surface, it’s a show stopping high camp romp featuring Schwinn’s nemesis, Mr Bungee, (Adam Goodburn) the frog-costumed artist he’s writing for, along with assorted eccentric characters including his mother Mimi (Catherine Campbell), business manager Rhoda (Dee Farnell), and homeless lady Lisa (Lisa Simonetti).
Beneath this is a much more subtle dig at neuroses of mother son relationships, serious art, how to really effect change, and good relationships.
Stringing that together in balance and effectively is a huge challenge. In a sense, the work is overwritten towards the feel-good, high-camp, trippy end of the scale, meaning there’s a sense of incompleteness about the sharper undertones.
No matter, Gauci and cast plough on anyway, undeterred by this sense of textual incompleteness. It’s as if there was no choice really.
The romp through Gordon’s addled mind as he seeks to clarify his spectacularly disordered life is spellbindingly played by a perfectly cast ensemble in voice and performance.
Hamilton’s pedantic Gordon parries superbly against Goodburn’s mesmerisingly acidic, evil, Kermit gone bad, Mr Bungee. Catherine Campbell’s, Mimi Schwinn is the perfect showbiz mother who probably needs a therapist. Dee Farnell’s, Rhoda is wonderfully taut, organised alpha neurotic, while Lindsay Prodea as Gordon’s lover, Roger Delli-Bovi and Mark DeLaine as nurse Richard provide much camp satire and lightness.
David O’Brien
When: 13 to 21 Oct
Where: Star Theatres
Bookings: trybooking.com
Bonython Park. 29 Sep 2023
Every year, the circus comes to town. Travelling groups of performers pitch a massive tent in Adelaide’s Bonython Park and welcome kids of all ages to witness the age-old wonder. Long gone are the days of the animal circus, now banned in over 40 countries with good reason.
These days it’s up to the talent of human performers to bring the circus to life, and the skills that used to be the exclusive domain of these travelling performers are now a dime-a-dozen! Who doesn’t know someone that recreationally participates in a pole, trapeze, ribbon, or circus class? As the skills of the circus performer have become more mainstream, the circuses have had to take their craft to all new levels. Enter the ‘Extreme’ circus.
This type of circus has been the staple of the last decade. Standard fare tends to include the trapeze, wheel of death, and globe of death. Notably, a lot of death potential. If you’ve seen these tricks more than a few times, you might be wondering if Moscow’s Extreme circus has much variation on the theme. Pleasingly it has, and a lot more. And it is the more that really makes this tour worth your while.
Given the current political climate, it’s worth noting that the Great Moscow Circus is actually Australian owned and operated and has been since 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The circus has also officially distanced themselves from Russia and says it does not support the country’s invasion of the Ukraine.
One of the show’s most impressive acts is three trampolining Ukrainians, one of whom was, until 18 months ago, living in the Ukrainian city of Kherson before the Russian invasion really took hold. This trio are a highlight, with their wall-walking antics take the extreme lineup to new heights.
Overall, this travelling show is seriously good fun. It gets off to a concerningly slow start, with vocalist Diana Holt singing the opening number to The Greatest Showman supported by a lacklustre dance performance. This live enactment will never live up to the emotional power of the film, but the group work hard. The first act to perform is Hewinson Lyezkosky on the wheel of death, and on this opening night we are almost witness to the worst possible outcome as Lyezkosky momentarily trips whilst attempting to skip atop the rotating wheel. Our hearts are in our throat as he carries out a second attempt – spoiler alert, he lived to dance with death another day.
Follow up acts include pro scooter and BMX riders, aerial hoop, trapeze, Russian swing flips, the globe of death, and LED lit Hula-hooping, but the show is completely stolen by its clown, Gagik Avetisyan. Joining the Great Moscow Circus when he arrived in Australia in 2021, Avetisyan brings with him some 30 years of clowning and performance experience, and it shows. The small statured Charlie Chaplin look-a-like is hilarious. Appearing 4 or 5 times throughout the performance, the only thing funnier than his slapstick are the faces of the unsuspecting audience members he drags into the ring to assist him carry out his crazy mimetics! No one is safe, front row or back, when Avetisyan catches your eye, look out!
It's all good fun, and the family will love it. The circus is a childhood memory every adult deserves to have, so wrangle the kids together and head down to Bonython Park by the 15th of October. The circus continues in Elizabeth at Ridley Reserve from October 19 to 29 and then the Mount Barker Summit Sports and Recreation Club from November 2 to 5.
Paul Rodda
When: 29 Sep to 5 Nov
Where: Bonython Park - Adelaide,
Ridley Reserve - Elizabeth,
Summit Sports and Recreation Club - Mount Barker
Bookings: moscow.sales.ticketsearch.com
Deus Ex Femina. Matthew Flinders Theatre – Flinders University. 27 Sep 2023
The title says it, doesn’t it? We immediately conjure all the things we didn’t say. To our lovers, our life partners, our parents, our friends, even ourselves. With regret, perhaps we suffered while we procrastinated in saying, or the other is now gone to God - or just Melbourne - and now beyond reach. But this is not a show about what didn’t happen from not saying, but what if we make it happen.
This season of All The Things I Couldn’t Say is Deus Ex Femina’s second bite of the cherry. The inaugural production was well-received in the 2022 Adelaide Fringe and the troupe earned the Adelaide Festival Centre’s InSpace Fringe Award, which translates into development funding. Lead writer/story & director Katherine Sortini has fashioned her script and conceptual design on the snippets of unsaid opportunities submitted to www.theunsentproject.com and like those submissions, Sortini focusses her scenarios on lovers and close friends.
The actors perform with barely any accoutrements save the skills of lighting designer Mark Oakley, lightning design realiser Nic Mollison, sound designer Sascha Budimski and design consultant Kathryn Sproul. There are boatloads of brilliance in a sea of low budget. Each scene is pre-ambled with the relevant inspirational unsent project contribution, looming large in a projected paragraph. Performers Arran Beattie, Caithlin O’Loghlen, Kate Bonney, Zola Allen, Eddie Morrison and Tumelo Nthupi tag-team the satisfactory to sublime vignettes of intimate encounters where the unsaid is sensitively scripted and imagined. The performances burst with the intensity and spontaneity - the risk-taking and danger - of Theatre-sports.
We all identify with this stuff - obfuscation, heart-to-hearts, SMS conversations where life-changing information is offered then erased before sending. Sortini has given the actors much of the creative input to building characters we are, or know of. Most fetching for me was one unseen lonely voice seeking solace with a Phone Sex Chat girl. His desperation was lovingly reflected in the girl’s grimaced empathy which was performed onstage; the whole shebang resembling a Samuel Beckett play. Sortini chose as a linking theme an unbearable declaration of falling out of love which is replayed with various versions of ugly and rancorous outcomes until a nice one finishes off the evening. Curiously, the actors-in-waiting - seated just offstage when off duty – are seen furiously working their mobile phones, which made me think; if they aren’t watching the show, why should I?
All The Things I Couldn’t Say does not comprise the scope of inter-generational unsaids as I opined in my opening paragraph; it focuses on Millennials, as I suppose the unsent project does by default of its submissions. It’s very sweet to witness the raw emotions revealed in the struggles with what’s the right thing to say and it is thought-provoking for one’s own unsaids.
David Grybowski
When: 26 Sep to 1 Oct
Where: Matthew Flinders Theatre
Bookings: eventbrite.com.au
Gilbert and Sullivan Society of South Australia. The Arts Theatre. 21 Sep 2023
It felt as if the rafters might come down, so wild were the raucous whoops and whistles of the standing ovation opening night audience at the dear old Arts Theatre.
The G&S production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Musical is a hit.
It is a triumph of love and good spirit, of theatrical cunning and chutzpah. Oh, and of costumes, costumes, costumes. Did I say costumes?
Through its considerable history this zany Aussie juke box musical has been dazzling audiences worldwide with its spectacular audaciousness. The movie was one thing. The Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott musical, up and out there since 2006 when it was first developed, groomed, and directed by that legendary talent Simon Phillips, has been a global phenomenon of utter drag-liciousness. It is still on the zeitgeist, all the more so now with, for the first time, a genuine transgender former Les Girls star, playing the transgender former Les Girls star lead role of Bernadette. Vonni Brit was lured onto the stage on the Gold Coast to carve her path in this role and now, with G&S and a fragment of the budget, she reprises it with delicious panache. She is glamour incarnate, exuding the sweet and generous spirit which has made her such an icon in the LGBTQI+ community of Adelaide.
Like most of this cast, ironically, neither singing nor dancing is her forte. It is all about stage presence and giving. She still has that showgirl poise, glorious deportment and, of course, old-school beauty - despite some of the iffy costumes she has to don.
She “sells” her songs, as do the other principals Billy St John and Benjamin Johnson as Tick and Felicia respectively. The divas are there to support and cover for them, and what sublime shimmering divas they are: Charissa McCluskey Garcia, Danielle Greaves, Bec Pryor, and Vanessa Lee Shirley.
It is a story of love and self-discovery, and with the three principals travelling from Sydney to Alice Springs in their costume-packed showbiz bus dubbed "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", interacting for good or bad with the locals along the way. They meet homophobia and they meet love. And there is always music with a great big song and dance cast turning on breathtakingly spectacular routines from butch Thank God I’m a Country Boy hoe-down knee slappers to big showgirl floorshow promenades in luminous green cupcake costumes.
The show is cheekily risqué and throws gay terms of reference out from Kylie, Kylie, Kylie to Barbara Cartland.
The first night audience devoured it all, cheering and clapping from end to end. And, rightly so.
Director Gordon Combes with his production team of musical director Jillian Gulliver and choreographer Sarah Williams have rallied and worked the whole cast to resounding co-ordination and good spirit. Repetiteur Daniel Brunet and production manager Alicia McCluskey have been no slouches, either. There is immense work in this bedazzling feelgood show with its true-blue Aussie corrugated iron sets,
St John and Johnson deliver fine performances as the touring two drag queens with their own personal problems while Lance Jones is just a sweetie as the straight guy and Damien Ralphs does our First Nations performers proud as Jimmy, the outback Aboriginal with his troupe of tourists.
Sean Wright, Nadine Wood, Trish Hendrick, and Chany Hoffmann merit special mention and, emphatically, so does young Sam Schroeter. Look out for his name in musical theatre credits as the years roll on.
Then there is the rest of the diligent, disciplined, oh, so quick-change cast.
And, Priscilla, of course. She’s a cleverly devised stage bus pivoted by manpower and bragging simply gorgeous eyelashes.
Run and book for this G&S production. It is cheerful, uplifting and just plain good for whatever ails you.
It might be rough around the edges, but it has a solid heart of gold.
Samela Harris
When: 21 to 30 Sep
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com