Meryl Tankard. Adelaide Festival Centre. Dunstan Playhouse. 20 Aug 2014
Meryl Tankard is best known to Adelaide audiences for her works as Creative Director of the Australian Dance Theatre in the 1990s. During this time, she devised such memorable dances as Furioso, Aurora and Possessed. I still have the haunting Aurora poster of a little girl dressed in a fairy costume holding a wand hanging on my wall. Yet Adelaide was but a stop in a long, productive and awarded international career propelled by a peripatetic life as mobile as her childhood as an army brat (born in Darwin, her father was in the RAAF).
The Oracle is a love letter to Paul White and has been touring since 2009 - I suppose Tankard was in no rush to bring it to Adelaide. White has had a no less, albeit shorter, career performing, devising, choreographing and collaborating in dance, and has rubbed up against Tankard in the past. Set somewhat to Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, White is the sole performer in Tankard's version of this famous ballet and orchestral piece first performed in Paris in 1913 by the Ballets Russes and choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky.
Armed as I was with only the knowledge that the original 1913 production was about - briefly, as the title suggests - the rites of passage with a sinister sacrificial dance thrown in, and that this production is entitled The Oracle, I could make no sensible interpretation of the narrative except my own imprint. And it didn't matter because...
...Paul White is a force of nature. Tankard, with her designers, Régis Lansac and Ben Hughes, chose a dark stage on which to highlight every sinew of White's impressive physique. Or as my father would say, "He's built like a brick shit house." And there was a lot on show. When he wasn't simply in his underdaks, he wore nothing whatsoever. His ample strength contributed to a gymnastic performance, his body moving fluidly over the music's complexity, athletics convolved with ballet with modern dance. Tankard often deliberately slowed the action so your eyes may feast.
She also made you wait. The show opened with a kaleidoscope moving image of Paul White's appendages set to various sounds and chords, and the audience eagerly anticipated the real thing.
The Oracle is an entrancing anatomical celebration of the body beautiful, gracefully in perpetual motion.
David Grybowski
When: 20 to 23 Aug
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
Patch Theatre. The Odeon Theatre. 9 Aug 2014
"In the Jingle Jangle Jungle on a wet and windy day, Four little friends found a cosy place to play. Moose had marvellous antlers, and Lion, a golden mane. Zebra had fantastic stripes and Sheep . . . well, Sheep was plain."
Patch Theatre's 'Cranky Bear' adapts Nick Bland's much-loved children's book 'The Very Cranky Bear' to the stage. The picture book is a simple but sweet story of four friends – Moose, Lion, Zebra and Sheep – and what happens when they seek shelter in a cave of a rainy day. Each attempt to cheer up the cave's very cranky resident, but it's the quiet and thoughtful Sheep who wins him over.
The fantastic cast of Tim Overton (Zebra/Bear), Jude Henshall (Lion/Sheep) and Stephen Sheehan (Moose) do a stellar job bringing each character and their personalities to life. In particular, Sheehan and Henshall (as Sheep) are wonderfully funny and endearing. The catchy closing dance number is a lot of fun and leaves the audience on an upbeat note.
Unfortunately, the adaption isn't as impressive. The play, drawn out over 6 scenes, is based a little too loosely on the book and the story is too often side-tracked by interludes and out-of-story dialog.
Despite the poignancy of Bear and Sheep in the story, these characters feature too infrequently and the ultimate gift from Sheep to Bear feels like an afterthought rushed into the last scene. The persistent questioning of 'When is the Cranky Bear coming?' from the girl behind me summed up how we were all feeling.
The musical numbers are fun but the souped-up "cave" (equipped with neon lights and streamer curtain) felt misplaced.
The costuming for Zebra, Lion, Moose and in particular Sheep is simple but clever. Whilst this simplicity works perfectly for the four friends, the Bear, when he finally appeared, was underwhelming. This character needed to appear bigger, more imposing and generally more bear-like.
Patch Theatre Company are a wonderful company making theatre for children that delights and encourages creativity and imagination. This is a fun and professional production with a fantastic cast, but unfortunately it doesn't do the story justice.
Nicole Russo
When: 9 to 23 Aug
Where: The Odeon Theatre, Norwood
Bookings: Sold Out
Adelaide Festival Theatre. 7 Aug 2014
With over 300 performances under its belt, the 2014 Australian touring production of Grease is incredibly sharp. Straying from the original 1971 version this production uses the 2007 revival score and includes songs from the 1993 revival such as ‘Grease’, ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ and ‘Sandy’.
This production really showcases some great Australian Talent, as well as a few well-known names and faces for good measure.
Every aspect of the show is as sharp as a tack. The lighting, sound, choreography and voices of the cast are virtually faultless.
Gretel Scarlett plays Sandy with a very ocker Australian accent, she is a perfect Sandy with strong vibrato; her voice soars on the lyric. As her love interest Danny, Rob Mills certainly looks the part and avoids copying other famous portrayals of the well-known character. Mills is refreshingly less caricature and more character. He is well balanced by his over-the-top T-Bird posse, particularly Sonny played by Sam Ludeman who is wonderfully larger than life.
Other standouts in the cast include Eli Cooper as Eugene, Antoniette Iesue as Patty, Duane McGregor as Roger and Karla Tonkich as Marty. However, the ensemble has great unity and the standouts don’t standout by much; all of the performers are exceptional.
The casting of John Paul Young for the role of Johnny Casino and Bert Newton as Vince Fontaine was curious. Perhaps the aim was to bring in audiences, but in both cases they seemed miscast. Fontaine famously sleazes over the girls at the high school dance and even the hugely toned-down performance by 76 year old Newton felt awkward. He also struggled to maintain his accent throughout.
John Paul Young’s cameo as Johnny Casino was well sung, but fell short of the fast paced, high energy expectations of ‘Hand Jive’. Casino is usually one of the greasers and a student at Rydell High, so again the age difference didn’t seem right.
Todd McKenney’s Teen Angel was quite the opposite. McKenney was hilarious, managing to slip in a reference to The Boy from OZ and even being heckled by the audience. Like a pro, he played up the moment and the audience were in stitches.
The show is great fun and well worth a look for Grease tragics and regular theatre goers alike. Time flies and the show is over before you know it, a sure sign it’s a winner.
Paul Rodda
When: 3 to 31 Aug
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
University of Adelaide Theatre Guild. The Little Theatre. 2 Aug 2014
A rare production of a 70s Pinter play with some of the landmark names of South Australian theatre behind it. This Theatre Guild show is a hot ticket.
‘No Man's Land’, most particularly, is a vehicle for two very strong mature actors - to which end Michael Baldwin and John Edge come into their own. They are Adelaide's Gielgud and Richardson.
Director Warwick Cooper cast Baldwin as the parasitic lost soul of a poet, Spooner and Edge as the liquor-sodden celebrated man of letters, Hirst. Hirst, one believes, has brought Spooner to his Hampstead home for a drink after meeting at a local pub.
Garrulous Spooner is sycophantically grateful for Hirst's hospitality and the two men solidly hit the bottle. Spooner indulges in egocentric banter and Hirst steadily drinks until, taunted, he stands, throws his glass, falls down drunk and crawls off stage - in this case, right up the stairs of the little Theatre. It is quite a scene and, one is tempted to applaud as Edge makes it to the top.
The delicious contrasts and tensions of the play devolve from Hirst's caretakers - two very dubious Cockney retainers. Foster is his "secretary", educated, well-travelled and rather highly strung. Briggs is the tough guy manservant. Both are dedicated to their employer's wellbeing but also bristle with an implicit relationship of their own. They not only add a sense of threat to the play but a new degree of humour which Warwick Cooper has upped to the hilt.
He has Matt Houston play Foster not just as the "neurotic poof" Briggs namecalls him but as a screaming, off-the-wall nutcase. Foster enters dressed as a pseudo hippie and swiftly hits the decibels with high-camp histrionics. In the confines of The Little Theatre, it's enough to waken the dead. One can't imagine the distinguished old writer living with such a loon. When he rocks up in Act II, dressed in billowing plus-fours and a cap so strident that it dominates the stage, one just wonders why.
Perhaps it is for added laughs.
The actors play for laughs - none getting more than Jonathan Pheasant as Briggs. He is a joy. A wonderful performance.
As for the two oldies, one can just tip the proverbial. Baldwin is pathos and bathos as the conniving and needy Spooner. Edge is dissolute elegance as Hirst.
Between them, as the play evolves through the booze-haze night and into the strange next morning, there are verbal thrusts and parries which spark - and moments of immense sorrow and puzzlement. We are never to be quite sure if Hirst is fully on the amnesiac alcoholic skids or if, perhaps, the two men have a history.
The play intends to confuse, as it intends to amuse.
And, of course, it is a wonderment of words and timing - an actors' play. In the Guild's hands, it is utterly engrossing and surprisingly funny.
Also, with the deft skills of designer Max Mastrosavas, it is exquisitely aesthetic. From floor to ceiling, The Little Theatre become a Hampstead literary den, long red bordello curtains stretching to the floor, flanked by massive portraits of great playwrights which obscure the mezzanine completely. The proscenium is blocked by many bookcases full of old books. There is handsome wooden chest for the liquor and glasses and well-placed writing desk, chairs and lamps creating a cosy sense of affluence.
With good lighting from Joe Sperenini and sound from Gavin O'Loughlen, ‘No Man's Land’ goes down as another vivid feather in the UATG's very well-adorned cap.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 16 Aug
Where: The Little Theatre
Bookings: adelaide.edu.au/theatreguild
State Theatre Company of SA. Dunstan Playhouse. 30 July 2014
The audience erupts from the theatre in a haze of happiness. A good Earnest is a delicious experience - the theatrical equivalent to the perfect cucumber sandwich. Well, maybe this one is not quite of that traditional custom. Cucumber and rocket, perhaps, since Geordie Brookman has pushed the conventions, as is his wont. He's a young director who likes to put a dash of the fresh in the classics.
Thus is this production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ set upon a circular pedestal of richly polished red wood and enclosed by giant shower curtains which, dragged to and fro by human hand, serves as backdrops to the scenes. Ailsa Patterson is the clever designer who has produced this talking point of a set which turns the expanse of the Dunstan Playhouse's proscenium stage into a more intimate space: the drawing room with its quaintly minimalist furniture, surrounded by silvery, gossamer layers, and the country garden swathed in a wall of roses. Gavin Norris's lighting emphasises its bold aesthetic statements and while reigning large upon the eye, falls short of stealing the show.
As it should be, Oscar Wilde's script is the real star here, with some skilled assistance from the cast and with an impish eye from the director.
The play required no explanation for much of the audience. One of the challenging things about it is how well people know it and how many of its lines have such a place in popular reference that audience members are just hanging out to hear how they are delivered this time.
The action opens in a London drawing room where foppish Algernon and his visiting friend Earnest, gentlemen of class and manners, discuss the double lives they have created as escapes from the constraints of their parlour lives of gentility. One calls himself Earnest in the city and Jack in the country. The other weekends in the country for the sport of "Bunburying" whereupon he creates out-of-character adventures for himself.
These odd indulgences become both spurred and hampered by affairs of the heart.
Brookman has re-imagined some of the characters. Most pointedly and absolutely brilliantly, there is the new Gwendolyn who is not just coquettish but also dripping with innuendo and bursting with highly-corsetted lust. She has never been funnier than as portrayed here by Anna Steen who delivers the Wildean wit with wickedly well-placed emphases. "Little Cecily" who, at 18, is the product of a sheltered private education in the country, is less ingenuous in this interpretation of the play. Instead she is petulant, wilful, and knowing. Lovely young Lucy Fry hams her up with non-stop mugging and a death-defying totter in her very tight long frock.
Brookman's casting of Earnest is bold. In Yalin Ozucelik he brings an almost Groucho Marx element - dark, balding, moustachioed, an outsider in a black tail coat. Set beside the height and evidently Celtic genes of Nathan O'Keefe as Algernon, he adds another element of the ridiculous.
O'Keefe swaggers and flops, whines and connives in a perfectly-pitched over-the-top characterisation as Algie. He has Wilde down to a tee, or should one say cup of tea and plate of muffins. It is a glorious performance, an enunciational triumph.
And then there is Nancye Hayes. There's a round of applause as she enters the stage in the most eye-blastingly violent orange outfit topped by an extra-planetary eruption of ostrich feather haberdashery. Oh, it is a big and fussy frock. It would swallow a lesser actress. But Hayes, as Lady Bracknell, is all presence and composure, timing, and eloquence. She is lynchpin to the plot and conveyor of the greatest lines. She does it all with consummate expertise, the "handbag" line emerging not as an indignant exclamation but as a glorious gasp which visibly resonates through her torso. In the country scene she is not so much frocked as upholstered. The costumes are their own comic statements.
Caroline Mignone may be disadvantaged by her good looks as Miss Prism, but not by her acting. She emotes very sweetly and one rejoices for her relationship with the Reverend Chasuble. He is one of three characters played by the inimitable Rory Walker whose expressions and timing are responsible for some of the funniest moments of the production.
And an eminently amusing production it is. Brookman has delivered a proper comedy of manners, a Wilde with a wild streak. He has dared to add a smatter of shtick and some visual assaults to heighten some of the silliness. He has pushed it, but stopped short of offending Wilde purists.
And thus does The Dunstan Playhouse resound with titters, giggles, guffaws and belly laughs - and enthusiastic applause.
Samela Harris
When: 25 Jul to 16 Aug
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au