Cabaret Fringe Festival. La Boehme. 1 June 2014
One should never review a work in progress. So this is not a review. It is reflections.
Price Check is in its second incarnation - being aired as a reading for the Cabaret Fringe Festival.
Is it on its way to being "the great Australian musical"?
Maybe.
Certainly it is one of the treats of the CabFringe, the truly intimate arts experience of being part of a work in development.
As the rain drizzled and dripped outside, the privileged audiences crammed into La Boehme to share what one could describe as a thrill of skill, courage and optimism. If playwriting is the hardest of the literary arts, then musicals are the hardest of the genres in which to score a win. The fails are many.
The idea of a musical about the prosaicism of life in the supermarket is daring - but Sean Weatherly has done deep research on the subject with no less than 14 years in dairy/frozen departments as he supported his way through university and into an entertainment career.
With playwright Cerise de Gelder pitching in on lyrics and libretto, Weatherly has composed a 15-song strong musical about Narelle, the veteran checkout chick, Mr Butler, the mean-spirited store manager, Zayeeb, the clever Indian who loves working in the fruit and veg department plus David, the supermarket stacker with a university arts degree and a young family to support.
Zayeeb's arrival on the scene is catalyst for changes in dynamics among the staff, spurring a little frisson of romance and some challenges of loyalty and ethics. Their world of customers is represented by just one garrulous little old Jewish lady who is a very regular and demanding shopper and a bit of a busy-body.
Weatherly has assembled a fabulous cast of professionals to bring this venture to life, not the least of them being Michael Fuller as director and Peter Johns on piano.
The fabulous Jacqy Philips plays old Mrs Zimmerman, heavily accented and amusingly needy. She gets to sing one song, which is the most difficult song in the show, one which perhaps still needs revision.
Catherine Campbell assumes a veil of utter jadedness as Narelle, the long-term check-out chick. She gives great voice to the theme song, ‘Price Check’, which is catchy enough to have one singing it long after leaving the performance. Campbell not only has a wonderful vocal range but is also an expressive actor so, even in the artifice of a reading, she brings a depth of emotion to her character. She is quite a strength in this presentation. Then again, so is Don Bridges as the small-minded boss and Fahad Farooque is utterly adorable as the very peculiar fruit and veggie fellow. He's the folly character, played up as an Indian cliche and even a song with a Bollywood bent. He's brings some comic banter about language and a little edge on racism which add further layers to the script.
Weatherly has fleshed out the characters quite effectively. Mr Butler has a secret life as a ballroom dancer while Narelle is not a loser but a victim of life. Weatherly plays David who one assumes to be the autobiographical link. He's something of an anti-hero who represents the too-common modern-day predicament of uni grads who get stuck with banal jobs. There's a deep frustration under the skin and Weatherly brings it forth. He is an immensely personable performer and a voice which is a pleasure to the ear, so he is no hardship starring in his own show. One hopes, when it hits the big time, that he will continue to do so along with the rest of this terrific reading cast.
And the show is coming on nicely. The performers, who sit on chairs on the stage when not doing their bits, interject during the scene changes and explain where dance routines are planned when the show gets to full production. At this point, it is one long first act and, after interval, a shorter second act.
The music is pleasant and, for the most part, not too Sondheim tricky for the singing. It swings along as an easy modern musical with the proper range of light and dark. The characters each have a special song. There are some big songs. There's a bit of philosophy, a bit of humour, a touch of love, and even a voyage-of-the-damned song when David contemplates working the Night Fill shift. Who would have thought there were so many dimensions to life behind the scenes in the supermarket?
What it needs is yet more blue pencil, a bit more nip and tuck. Some of the songs have so many verses that they just get tired. There could be a tad more toe tap, too.
It's a great concept for a musical. Weatherly hits the nerve for universality. Who doesn't come across world-weary checkout chicks? Who hasn't asked an aisle stacker for help? Who doesn't get peeved when there are too many Home Brands on the shelves? The supermarket is pretty much the navel of the consumer world.
So, Mr Weatherly, here's one shopper who'll be ready to join the queue to check out your show when it's up on the big stage.
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: La Boehme
Bookings: Closed
Marie Clark Musical Theatre Company. The Arts Theatre. 28 May 2014
There actually was a Calamity Jane who actually lived in Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1876. She palled around with and eventually married Wild Bill Hickok in a drunken fit. And as Wild Bill says about Calam (as she's called in the show), there is a lot of fantasticatin' about her wild west life, but if half of it were true, she was an exceptional gal in a man's world.
Calamity Jane (A Musical Western) is the 1961 adaptation of the 1953 Hollywood movie. I can't see that it won any awards, but don't let that throw you off your Palomino, it's a good night out.
At the opening, a cowboy milling around with others outside the Golden Garter Saloon announces that "the stage is here." Like I didn't know where the stage was, and I was in the third row. Oh, he meant the stage coach! D'oh! This revelation is followed by one of many vigorous, melodic country hoedown numbers full of bright costumes and happy faces, swishing frocks and boisterous interaction amongst the supernumeraries.
There is a comic story about a woman that Lucille Ball might have modelled Lucy Ricardo after, a love quadrangle, and another tale of self-realisation or maybe conformity or gender, take your pick. There are a lot of anachronisms to play with in the '50s script, and director Ben Stefanoff might have explored them more. For example, Tegan Gully's Calamity sat somewhere between character and caricature with a shade of corn in her cowpoke. Nonetheless, Calam was vivacious and complex. But why was her side piece in front like a codpiece - looked weird.
Doug Phillips's Francis Fryer's I-can-show-you dance certainly tested his ability and determination, and wound up sort of cute. The best voice in the house was Andrew Crispe's Wild Bill Hickok. He possesses a rare and clear resonance that you could just listen to for hours. Bravo! His Wild Bill was a necessary cool and composed foil to Calam's hyperactivity and bravado. There love duet was warm hearted. Leah Potter did a poor impersonation of Adelaide Adams (I loved hearing the word Adelaide sung in a song) but a great representation of a show girl. The newbies in the chorus were augmented by sharp performers who otherwise do lead parts, like Tanya Grabis and Buddy Dawson.
Deadwood's Golden Garter Saloon was the plainest saloon this side of the Black Hills, and the other side, too. And Calam's cabin ain't much better - log chinking sat uncomfortably next to a rendered fire surround with scroll shelf brackets. The only decent set was the saloon exterior and we only saw that for five minutes (set design - Ben Stefanoff and Rodney Bates). Choreographer Rachel Dow got everyone with their best foot forward and arranged some rousing show numbers. Kristin Stefanoff's Calamity Jane Orchestra was gallop apace right to the finish.
In a musical, it's the music - I loved the big voices and melodies, the big band sound, and the liveliness of this energetic and happy production. So saddle up your pardner and mosey on into The Arts Theatre for a rootin' tootin' hoot nanny of a musical.
David Grybowski
When: 23 to 31 may
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
State Theatre Company of South Australia. Space Theatre. 27 May 2014
The modern obsession with living our lives online, either through social media or via streaming video and music sites such as You Tube could be described as an epidemic. This unnatural fixation forms the central theme for the State Theatre Companies ‘State R & D’ commissioned work written by both Patrick White Award and Young Playwrights Award winner, Phillip Kavanagh. That theme, however, seems a little unfocussed, and what we get instead is a broader, far more deeply concerning, look at one particularly unhinged adolescent female with more issues than just a web obsession.
Directed by Nescha Jelk, with design by Olivia Zanchetta, the look and feel of this play was simple, clean and very effective. Will Spartalis’s sound lent a particular realness to an otherwise plain setting.
In the title role, Kate Cheel delivers a graphic account of her selfish, egocentric life as she manipulates, lies, bribes and self-harms in a vain, deluded attempt to become famous. Cheel is reminiscent of today’s You Tube stars as she updates her video blog, live for the audience, simultaneously projected onto the cyclorama behind her. She is believably awkward, painfully attention seeking, and prone to outbursts of rage and angst. Her Jesikah is brilliant; modern and realistic she has us believe she is truly unhinged.
Cheel’s co-star and best-friend/mother/teacher – yes, three different characters – is played by Elizabeth Hay. In a triumphant performance, Hay gives us three starkly different characterisations, all believable in their own right, which aid in drawing out the almost psychotic tendencies in Jesikah. Both players are spectacular and together they create a dynamic and evolving production.
The flaws for me though where all in the writing. On the promise of a witty, exciting and scathing look at our fame obsessed culture where a schoolgirl develops an unhealthy obsession with You Tube, I expected a story about every teen. A play which would stand as a comment on the mania linked to living life via the web. But I ended up watching a character I didn’t want to know. The type of person I would just as easily give up on in the real world as I did in the play. At the halfway mark Jesikah had taken a turn for the worse and her manipulative and ever desperate actions pushed me away. The penultimate ending, already reaching for believability, was cold rather than poignant. The final scene sealed the deal.
I left the theatre confused about what the play was trying to say – if anything at all. Misled by its pretences and frustrated by its conclusion. Perhaps there was no point to miss. It is worth a look if only to see the fantastic performances and interpretations of the actresses.
Paul Rodda
When: 27 to 31 May
Where: The Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Photography by Sia Duff
Independent Theatre Inc. The Goodwood Institute. 27 May 2014
The show will go on. And it did.
William Mude may have had the smallest part but he was hero of Independent Theatre, taking on the role just a week before opening night after another actor had simply dropped out of the rehearsal process and vanished.
Mude played with the script in hand - sometimes his lines lost in a rush of African accent but always his winning personality simply shining through.
For lack of African actors, this Athol Fugard play, 'Master Harold... and the boys' has never before been performed in Adelaide.
It is set in the South Africa of the 1950s wherein racial enlightenment was a very wobbly creature. With a strongly autobiographical bent, it tells of a white teenage boy's relationship with two black servants who have worked for his family since he was little.
The action takes place in one lunchtime in the tearoom which is staffed by the servants while the mother and owner is away dealing with the needs of her crippled husband. The boy, Hally, comes to the tearoom for lunch and to do his homework, attended particularly by Sam who has been his mainstay through a rocky and dysfunctional family history.
It's a beautifully crafted, albeit densely wordy play.
The mood is set by the servants' banter about their passion for dancing competitions as they languidly do chores in the tearoom. When Hally aka Harold arrives, the black-white status is immediately apparent, even though there are stories told and knowledge shared. Phone calls from mother intrude upon the mood and the true complexities of relationships begins to emerge.
Benji Riggs plays the teen Hally with a well-honed South African accent and a moveable feast of moods which are to carry the play on a psychological roller coaster to its denouement. Riggs gives the character both vulnerability and arrogance. When it comes to the point, he also conveys a power of believable nastiness. A lost line or two on the historic opening night could not undermine what was a sterling performance from a very able young actor.
As Hally's friend and foil, Sam, Shedric Yarkpai is well-nuanced and somewhat elegant. His character embodies the strengths and suppressions of the black South African in service and Yarkpai's performance walks a veritable tightrope between subservience and familiarity.
The set, designed by Rob Croser and David Roach, is a detailed recreation of the diner-style 50s tea room from Fugard's youth, complete with glowing juke box. Indeed, as Hally helps himself to cakes, sodas and sweeties, it is invitingly realistic and would seem to be a very welcoming set for Independent's first production in the beautifully-renovated Goodwood Institute building.
Then again, its polished warmth can be interpreted as adding a stroke of irony to the heart-wrenching drama which unfolds upon it.
Croser's direction keeps the point of the play always in sight, underscoring the heart and heartlessness of the playwright's intent.
It is a poignantly potent play and even an actor with script in hand does not distract from its emotional intensity.
Samela Harris
When: 27 to 31 May
Where: Goodwood Institute
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Festival Centre. Space Theatre. 24 May 2014
While the flyer for A Delicate Situation describes the theme of this emotionally charged dance work, I would have enjoyed going in stone cold and working it out myself. But since you have already missed the Adelaide season, I hope you don't mind if I partly give the game away.
Regarding the flyer, you would have been hooked by Chris Herzfeld's dramatic photo of creator Lina Limosani's imaginations of Pontianak, a tragic figure of Malaysian mythology. The dance opens with pools of white silk in a jet black matrix. With masterful illusion, a hallmark of this production, one silk comes to shimmering life and is inhabited and animated by a demonic and thrashing form that later transmogrifies into the image in the photo. But next is a more domestic scene. An elegant woman, past middle age, obsessed with her bright red nails and the back of her hands and lipstick, is stylishly attired in a dress and matching short coat. Perhaps an expatriate banker's wife in southeast Asia, back from the hairdresser's, she is attended to by an Oriental servant with enough of the characteristics of Pontianak to create the menace and suspense in the narrative that gives this production its delicious intrigue. Comically, I am reminded of the inscrutable and uncontrollable Cato in the service of Inspector Clouseau - a situation promising a chaotic conflagration to upset the domestic applecart.
And the stakes are high. Director and choreographer Limosani has Carol Wellman Kelly and Suhaili Micheline Ahmad Kamil entwining in a dance that will - must - end with one victor and one supplicant. Limosani achieves all her objectives stated in the program. A Delicate Situation is an accomplished synthesis of narrative and contemporary dance. She has ably played on our primordial desire to personify death and our well dressed lady gets glimpses of her nemesis in the mirror. Suhaili is a disciplined and highly accomplished physical performer with every sinew in commanded service, no matter how rapid or jagged her movements might be in her inimitable style. Puppetry and illusion play a strongly supporting role. Canadian designer Eve Lambert's billowing silks are ethereal and beautiful to behold, while Malaysian Hardesh Singh's score is menacing and driving. All members of the creative come to Adelaide with a swag of international credentials.
At only fifty minutes duration, this is a lustrous gem of dance and a reminder of our mortality. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: Closed
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed