Adelaide Festival. Her Majesty's Theatre. 28Feb 2015
When Tommy was created, it was into sheer adoration and admiration as a seminal rock opera, borne of the late psychedelic-era.
It was a musical achievement which lifted Pete Townshend and The Who to an alternative iconic status in which they have remained, certainly in the minds of the Baby Boomers, if not in ensuing generations.
Thus it is a Boomer-powered audience who are packing out Her Majesty's to see this new incarnation of Tommy, an audacious re-working with a heavy jazz foundation.
Eric Mingus, jazz musician son of the jazz legend Charlie Mingus, laid claim to Tommy as a youth and reached out to Townshend who became his friend and also gave him carte blanche with the rock opera.
Now it is a jazz fusion opera - presented in concert mode.
Audience reactions to its Adelaide Festival World Premiere have been mixed. The unversed young say the story is impossible to understand. Some of the old decry the jazz as indulgent and intrusive. Certainly this critic was to find the riffing improvisational dissonances of the jazz overture an ironic companion to an opera which was famous for melody.
Herein Eric Mingus is the focal figure, bearded, rotund and possessed of a rich, sometimes piercing voice from which he favours Satchmo-esque rolling gutturals.
At first, despite the huge band onstage, it seems as if this may be his show as he shrills lamentations at the death of Captain Walker.
Then the characters appear and with them, the Mingus reworking of the rock opera songs.
Camille O'Sullivan is breathtaking in black, glitter cocktail dress, as the child mother, the sodden mother, and the fraught mother. Her voice is rock and jazz and blues; it is heart and passion; it is guts and glory; it is wide-ranging and simply sublime. She steals and saves the show from the moment she opens her mouth.
The songs roll on: ‘It's a Boy’, ‘1921’, ‘Amazing Journey’, ‘Christmas’, ‘Cousin Kevin’, ‘The Acide Queen’, ‘So You Think It's Alright’, ‘Pinball Wizard’, ‘Tommy Can You Hear Me’.
All the songs are arranged to a very different beat to that recalled from the original score. The melodies are there, however, still arresting, still beautiful. They are slower. Sometimes their percussive bases seem almost calypso, sometimes they take the horse-riding tempo of the east, sometimes they wax folksy, sometimes a tad hard rock.
Other stars emerge. Harper Simon, so sweet of voice, delivers a truly chilling ‘Cousin Kevin’, the sadistic babysitting relly who, by accident, is to introduce that blind, deaf and dumb boy to the salvation of pinball.
Poor little Tommy had become blind, deaf, and dumb after witnessing his father murdering his step-father. The rock opera describes the sad state of his isolated world, the things that befell him and the suffering of his mother.
Gavin Friday plays the other bad guys - the Acid Queen and Uncle Ernie. It's debatable as to whether the Acid Queen should be performed by a woman. Mingus has chosen otherwise as, indeed, he has for Tommy, who is performed by Yael Stone, very much a woman.
In a red feather boa with the song paced right back, Friday wins the audience over as a deeply ominous Acid Queen. He wins acclaim again as he sings ‘Fiddle About’, embodying the awful paedophile, Uncle Ernie.
To one's utter horror, there was laughter from a woman in the audience at this performance and this song. Inappropriate is just not the word.
Tommy was always outrageous to some but it never was a comedy.
Robert Forster plays Tommy's ineffectual father. He is beautifully cast and has a simpatico stage presence, as well as a good voice.
Accordion-player Elana Stone does backup vocals from the orchestra and in a solo, oh so beautifully. And then there is the other Stone as Tommy who finds her voice at the end of the work. Unfortunately, Mingus has her do a spot of rather feral jazz screeching before she is liberated to the lovely denouement song, ‘I'm Free’.
The new Tommy is most certainly defiantly different.
For Mingus, it is a vehicle for assorted jazz and self-expression. He even throws some Baptist Deep South preacher business into it.
But, with musical director Giancarlo Vulcano, he turns on one helluva multi-genre concert and, bless him, he keeps Tommy alive and well at the core of it.
There are some directorial weaknesses. There could be some more use of spotlights. The light is good but not exciting. Lead singers could come further downstage.
But, this old superannuated hippie just loved it.
Samela Harris
When: 27 Feb to 1 Mar. 15
Where: Her Majesty's Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Compagnie 111 - Aurélien Bory & Le groupe acrobatique de Tanger. Festival Theatre. 27 Feb 2015
Some leapt to their feet in acclaim. Some sat and scratched their heads as the huge cast of ‘Azimut’ took its curtain call.
‘Azimut’ was the big Adelaide Festival of Arts 2015 opener. It was preceded by a ritzy everyone-who-is-anyone cocktail party in the Banquet Room and followed by the 9pm switching on of the Blink light display in Elder Park.
The timing was perfect. Indeed, as it happened, there was time to spare.
‘Azimut’ is a short show. Maybe 45 minutes.
It is also a dark show - not in theme but in illumination.
From woe to go, the performers are shown in various degrees of half-light or darkness. The brightest moment is when they are back-lit in silhouette to climb up and down a massive grid. This is highly aesthetic and, like much of the show, somewhat meditative.
It is, after all, about a legendary Sufi teacher's quest to climb to heaven whence he realises that things may have been better back on earth.
The show opens with performers hidden in big bags which dangle over the stage. They seem to be cocoons and they rise and fall and move to atmospheric music. It is very slow and mesmeric. Eventually, they land and give forth life.
Darkness is a good mask for illusion and gives a strange and ghostly look to the tall, writhing people tower formed by the acrobats.
The show is not "acrobatic" in the sense that we usually expect in the vein of Shandong or Circus Oz. There is a scene of performers cartwheeling in turns, faster and faster across the stage. But athleticism is muted in favour of the sense of spiritual quest with wonderful ancient songs further evoking the mystical mood.
There are some very sweet moments of physical theatre. There is a very pregnant woman and then there is the birth, whence all the performers and hence symbolically, all of humanity, comes squeezing through her loins. This is presented as miraculous with a humorous bent. Conversely, there is also the giant bag into which, one way or another, all the performers must somehow fit. This is done with endearing whimsy. Of course, its suggestion is that we are all in this world together.
There are some lovely moments with billowing curtains and textural reveals. But, when a performer walks upside down on the ceiling, Adelaide goes ho-hum. It's a nice trick, but an old one.
There's a rattle of excitement when arrays of metal poles are revealed and shudder in response to thunderous sounds. This may refer to forces of war or nature - those things so big and scary, making man so small and vulnerable.
Thus is it in ‘Azimut’. From Tangiers via France, a show which is short, dark and esoteric.
Samela Harris
When: 27 Feb to 1 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
State Theatre Company. Space Theatre and Scenic Workshop and Rehearsal Room. 26 Feb 2015
Irishman Samuel Beckett is said to be one of the last modernists, and because he is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of last century, he also is considered one of the first post-modernists. Isn't that absurd? Not really - he picked up the 1969 Nobel Prize for literature. He is thus famous for redefining the theatrical event.
On offer by the State Theatre Company are three short plays. 'Krapp's Last Tape' was written in 1958 - five years after his most famous play, 'Waiting For Godot,' established his reputation. 'Eh, Joe' comes ten years later, and 'Footfalls' fourteen years before his death in 1989. The Beckett machine prescribes strict adherence to the stage notes and consequently one may think of these plays as museum pieces. So this becomes your opportunity to see for yourself authentic productions perhaps similar to those that caused all the fuss almost 50 years ago.
What Beckett is famous for is stripping away the noisy trappings of theatre and exploring the essence of our consciousness, or what it is to be human. In each play is a single character on stage, who, I would say, is interacting or reacting with their inner voice. Eckhart Tolle calls it the voice in your head. Landmark Education calls it the all-ready always listening. Imagine, if while you were talking to someone, your arm at your elbow started to swing wildly. You're quite used to this and explain, "Oh, just ignore that. I can't control it. It just happens." Your companion would rightly think you have a serious affliction. Yet nearly everybody has an inner voice that seems to happen all by itself and sometimes won't stop. We have conversations with it - it's so common, we think it's normal. But it frequently dwells on the past - some lost relationship, or old grief or missed opportunity. While no-one sees your inner voice, unlike your out-of-control arm, if you act on figments of your inner voice in dangerous ways, you would be diagnosed with a psychosis.
It's very easy to see ourselves in these plays. Pamela Rabe plays with world weariness a haggard woman in conversation with the disambiguated voice of her mother, who recognises the problem when she says, "..will you never have done revolving it all [in your mind]?" And like a lot of us today, the woman is dealing with the issues of old aged care and wondering when enough is enough. She walks a line, back and forth, afflicted, with heavy footfalls.
'Eh, Joe' was actually a play written for television, the new medium of the time. Poor Joe locks himself up in a bedroom which is physically further confined by the utilisation of a false perspective (this is a perspective where size actually recedes in the distance). He simply sits on the bed. The room is behind a screen and we see increasing close-ups of Joe's face projected on the screen - each element of the projection specified in the script. Joe is moved to tears listening to what seems like an ex-wife's voice tormenting him about his past relational tragedies with women. Paul Blackwell's slow disintegration was extremely moving and this was my favourite play for its technical virtuosity and Pamela Rabe's sophisticated voice work.
Some humour creeps into ‘Krapp's Last Tape’. Krapp, played with similarity to a grumpy old engineer by Peter Carroll, is surrounded by mountains of his life's debris as he sits at a tightly lit desk. After some funny business with bananas, Krapp will torment his mind with Spool 5 from Box 3 - an audio tape he made some thirty years ago, when he recorded himself as saying he was at the height of his powers but also we learn he is in the last throws of a dying relationship. It didn't look like anything good happened since. Regrets, I had a few.
Geordie Brookman (Footfalls), Corey McMahon (Eh, Joe) and Nescha Jelk (Krapp's Last Tape) direct and co-design (with Alisa Paterson) their plays with clarity and simplicity, as they were told to do by Beckett and his estate. They give terrific explanations of their aims in their director's notes so don't even enter the theatre without a program. Chris Petridis and Jason Sweeney heighten the mood with their light and sound contributions using modern technology in a way I'm sure Beckett would be pleased.
In the plays, a single character struggles with only their anguishing voice, which can make for soporific theatre if you don't know what you are looking for, so it would be best to bone up. But this is likely a once in a lifetime opportunity to see these three plays, together, and observe a genius's work just as he intended, by a loving and thoughtful creative team. Bravo!
P.S. By the way, who's that listening to the voice? It's you. The voice is just some rubbish your mind makes up and you can stop it.
David Grybowski
When: 20 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
by Van Badham. Ayers House Museum. 25 Feb 2015
It was a Van Badham play, ‘Notoriously Yours’, which won the 2014 Adelaide Critics Circle IAF Award for Innovation, it being a terrific thriller presented by five.point.one with ground-breaking originality involving lots of iPhones and high-tech.
Van Badham is back with a play which could not be of more dramatic contrast.
Late Night Story is a spooky old ghost story.
It is also a ghost story with a fresh feel and a real zinger of a twist.
It is classic for its genre but original a la Van Badham whose rise in the theatre world has etched her out as one of the most able and exciting playwrights in the land.
As the title suggests, ‘Late Night Story’ is a late-night production. It is most aptly and, indeed, superbly presented in the ample bay window space of the Ayers House Museum. It seems made-to-order for the play's grand old Adelaide estate setting. The audience finds itself in a sumptuous room, albeit sitting on particularly hard white chairs with very dubious sightlines. The lighting is dim and exquisitely eerie. Long pink curtains dress the windows through which the external shutters are seen in stark silhouette. An iron cot and a pile of books furnish the stage. There is a table with two chairs and a lamp. A grand piano is attended by an enigmatic bearded pianist. He is Richard Wise and his score for the show could not be more evocative and aesthetic. A metronome ticks loudly.
Xaviera Grace begins her story. She needs a job desperately. She is interviewed by a strange woman stooped over a walking stick. The woman does not reveal her name or anything other than a governess is needed and there are two children in a house with a strict routine. The governess may not touch anything in the house and must remain in her room throughout the nights.
Xaviera is played by Claire Glenn, fresh-faced with rich caramel hair in a 30s bob. She "is" the hapless heroine and the audience takes to her straight away. Glenn is a glorious actor to watch and hear. Her skill and focus are key to the thrill and tension of the play for, out of the entirely unbelievable, her character must deliver innocence and credibility. Tamara Lee looms, large and angular as the potential employer. She gives away little except the job.
What ensues through the days and nights in that strange place cannot be revealed. There is another character potently embodied by John Maurice. He's the man of the house. He may or may not be who and what he says he is. Indeed, nothing may be what it appears to be. Or it may.
Badham, writer, director and designer, does not attempt to make the story logical or believable. It is a ghost story. It is a story about fear and superstition and about meddling with minds.
It is a story well told and wondrous to behold. A five-star show.
Samela Harris
When: 24 Feb to Mar 1
Where: Ayers House Museum
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Gobsmacked Theatre Company. Holden Street Theatres – The Studio. 25 Feb 2015
There's nothing upmarket about the name Gobsmacked for a theatre company, so keep expectations low for its Fringe production of ‘Anna Robi and the House of Dogs’.
This play, written by Queenslander Maxine Mellor, is vulgar, gross, over-the-top and somewhere way out there.
It opens with the fairly graphic sounds of a man masturbating over phone sex and then takes us into the world of the woman on the other end of the line - Anna of the House of Dogs.
She is a very annoying young woman hell-bent on losing her virginity.
The problem is that she shares a bed with her sick and nasty old mother and the rest of the house is a sea of squalor dominated by faeces and fecund dogs. Housekeeping consists of adding layers of newspaper to cover the last layer of newspaper.
Hence there is a wonderful set designed by director David McVicar. It is dominated by a double bed with ugh-beige sheets. The floor, of course, is a mass of newspapers which have their own aesthetic. Fake dog turds lie here and there. The backdrop is a wall of cardboard cartons labelled "Catalog". The horrid old mother is addicted to catalogues and home shopping.
That vile old bitch is played by Emily Branford who milks the laughs by taking the character as far as she can. She uglies up and does a lot of grimacing - almost to the gurning point. She is loud and mean and generally repulsive. She is a nightmare version of the bedridden grandparents of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.
Then comes the dream sequence and Branford transforms to a 50s Home Beautiful mother complete with birthday cake. There's music and mime, and a bit of a dance. It breaks the ugliness and shows another side of Branford's comic spirit.
But all too soon, it's back to bed and torrents of sexual fury - much talk of lipstick penises and stinking vaginas.
If one is supposed to have any sympathy for the frustrated daughter, played to gawping and gawking excess by Hannah Nicholson, it fails. She comes across as shudderingly deranged.
There is humour, however - quite a few titters and one or two laughs. It is, after all, so absurdly crass. One might call it a "grotesquerie".
The arrival of the fantasy man is a high spot. The arrival of the phone sex fellow is not. Both characters are versions of Roger and he is colourfully played by Phil Marker-Smith.
If you are into the possibly humorous depths of pissing in the bed, dog-mating and squalor, this is your show.
Samela Harris
When: 23 Feb to 8 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Studio
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au