Hew Parham. Brink Productions. Space Theatre. 17 Jan 2023
‘The Symphony of the Bicycle’ is in some ways Hew Parham’s one man tribute to the Italian cycle racer Gino Bartoli, but it is much more than that.
Context.
Opening night for this theatre show was scheduled midweek during the Tour Downunder, so you can assume the full house was partisan, on board and understanding. Parham reveals an understanding of the life and times of Bartoli (known as ‘the Pious’ for his faith and dedication) and as an Italian champion who gave his efforts for Italy, and was lauded in his own country yet perhaps not so highly rated elsewhere, even though he won the Tour de France.
Clearly Parham is a fan of cycling and of Bartoli in particular, but two points need be made: Fausto Coppi is better known and the better cyclist, though Bartoli had a peasant’s heroic back-story. His career was halted by the Second World War, and many years later it was discovered that Bartoli had kept cycling on training rides through the war years as cover for his activities saving Jews from the Nazi’s as he rode across northern Italy with documents secreted within his bike frame.
In telling the story of his hero worship, Parham introduces other characters into the performance narrative, and it on this point things seem to become a little hazy for me. If there is to be a hero it is usual that there be an anti-hero, and this role is filled by the unlikable fitness guru Gavin Chestnutt. In his attempt to become a cyclist of note Parham also butts heads with a childhood friend (perhaps not a friend), the boofheaded athlete Jake Johnson, who steals the girl and becomes a cycling champion. We do therefore have in these protagonists the foils to Parham’s success, but herein lies my confusion.
I am not sure whether Parham’s story here is about achievement or conquest. Whether ‘tis better to suffer for one’s great triumphs (sporting glory in this narrative) or to pursue the goal of being a better person? Bartoli himself was beset by doubts and anxiety, and in many ways I felt the telling of the story Symphonie de la Bicyclette would be much strengthened by simplicity.
The performance by the way was excellent; Parham is accomplished and organised in his character reveal. An accent is adjusted, the timing is altered slightly and he, at times, overplays his hand and tips in pathos. It is an excellent performance but my mind had wandered as I contemplated the provenance of the only major prop on stage, a gleaming gold bicycle on an indoor training stand. I later discovered many other cyclists in the audience had similarly wandered in their thoughts, but by the end of the show I felt I knew little more than I had discovered by around about minute 20 (I shall not give away the ending because it seemed a little anticlimactic, in any case).
“I was so busy trying to be someone else I forgot to be me,” Parham says at one point. It seems a perfectly apposite reflection.
Alex Wheaton
When: Closed
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Red Phoenix Theatre. Holden Street Theatres. 12 Jan 23
The gift that Covid gave.
It was devised as a way to engage the city’s theatre people while audience numbers were limited to just 30. A Promenade of Shorts was the 2020 canny solution - three audiences of 30 people each changing places in three proximate venues. It could only work at Holden Street. It did work. The first production was a triumph and now, reiterated as Red Phoenix’s opening presentation of 2023, it is a sizzling, unmissable, often hilarious winner.
Nine short plays are spread through the evening with two pleasant intervals. Chairs and tables are spread out around the venue and a fabulous outdoor bar keeps endless options of libations flowing to the accompaniment of live musicians. It is a world unto itself and a positively juicy night of entertainment.
The plays are offbeat, wildly dissimilar and superbly performed by a veritable showcase of stellar talent.
Colour-coded to the blue group, my first shows are in the Box Bar and the first wee play set a very high bar indeed.
It is The Last Time I Saw Her, written by Jane Anderson in 1995, directed expertly by Joh Hartog and featuring Lyn Wilson and Geoff Revell in an intense, often viciously funny dispute between a boss and an executive about privacy and when is sharing over-sharing. Wilson is good. Revell is sublime. Every nuance! Every responsive flutter of an eyelid. He’s one of the city's finest actors, a joy to watch and a very hard act to follow.
Emily Branford is she who follows with a classic Joyce Grenfell vignette. She plays a harried primary teacher trying to impress a visitor while keeping control over an unruly Free Activity Period. It’s a wee bravura piece well executed. Finally, A Hot Brick requires Petra Schulenberg to stand sternly as a seasoned suffragette while young Finty McBain portrays the ingenuous keen bean would-be apprentice. It’s a nice piece of story-telling, again, well delivered.
After interval, audiences move venues and the blue group is off to the Studio for the next tranche of plays, the first two directed by the much-admired Nick Fagan and the third with Fagan performing as directed by Hayley Horton. The Processional is a totally off-the-wall playlet about a pastor rehearsing a wedding. With Jackson Barnard, Laura Antoniazzi, Tom Tassone and Brittany Gallasch as the wedding party, it soars as pièce de résistance for Rebecca Kemp as the pastor. Applause. Applause.
Confession is a tense police interrogation morsel with Stuart Pearce in a fine American accent as the suspect, displaying the skills of stillness against the ferocity of John Rosen’s detective and Joanne St Clair’s inexperienced stenographer.
The Chip comes as a zany contrast with Nick Fagan as the nice bloke, Vander, looking for a follow-up date with Rebissa, an artist. Here, Fagan takes an artful back seat enabling Claire Keen to give a sensationally interesting, funny, and committed performance - and, oh, the beauty of that actress’s voice.
Finally, after another easy interval, our blue group is moved, under the steady guidance of our “governess”, to The Arch for three more mini shows, these directed by Libby Drake who, indeed, is responsible for the casting throughout.
Captain Rockets Versus the Inter-Galactic Brain Eaters is a very silly yet quite pertinent piece about conspiracy and reality, media, and the message. Pin-up actor Brant Eustice is a funny and scary Captain Rockets but it is Cheryl Douglas who steals the show as his TV-show offsider, Luna, miming her way through attempted cover-ups of his ever-more inappropriate and outrageous hypotheses, she’s hilarious.
Breakout, of course another off-the-waller, this one about corporate integrity, is yet another chance for Sharon Malujlo to shine in a cast of five while at the tail end of it all, Jack Robins and Jenny Allan present a tender morsel called Brian’s Got Talent.
It is enough. The audience has been challenged, amused and impressed. It is an eloquent sufficiency.
The Eustice Red Phoenix and Holden Street team has delivered a laudable quality product, complete with top techs, musicians, artwork, and all-round delicious creativity.
What a Happy New Year offering.
Samela Harris
When: 12 to 21 Jan
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
John Frost for Crossroads Live. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 3 Jan 2022
In what is rather a coup for South Australian, and indeed Australian audiences the 70th anniversary of the world’s longest running play sees it performed professionally outside of London’s West End for the first time!
Although not the first production on Australian shores (Therry Theatre – then Therry Dramatic Society – mounted a production at Adelaide’s Arts Theatre in 2011, amongst others), it will be the first professional touring production and with an all Australian cast.
The appeal is easy to spot. Forget your woes and leave your troubles at the door. The delightfully simple and altogether too predictable characters of Agatha Christie’s play are sure to entertain. Think you know who did it? Spot the obvious set up? The twists have twists of their own and even if you see one of them coming you are unlikely to spot the next.
Of course audiences are also required to maintain the mystery, so you won’t find any clues here – suffice to say it not one of the servants, there aren’t any!
The assembled cast including Anna O’Byrne, Alex Rathgeber, Laurence Boxhall, Geraldine Turner, Adam Murphy, Charlotte Friels, Gerry Connolly, and Tom Conroy are simply splendid. All of the characters are larger than life and yet representation seems remarkably ahead of its time. Penned in the early 1950s it manages subtle references to class, politics and socialism, homosexuality, bullying, conscription, and the enduring effects of trauma. Not what one might expect from a crime fiction bordering on farce.
The eccentric 19th century English interior stylings of the box set by Isabel Hudson are deliciously pleasing. With crackling embers in the hearth and a light fall of snow beyond the stained glass windows, the many doors make for some delightful fun with all the coming and going of characters. The beautiful set and wonderful costumes – including no less than 6 dark overcoats, light scarves, and soft felt hats – is sensitively lit by Trudy Dalgleish’s warm and enriching lighting design.
As hosts and housekeepers Mollie and Giles Ralston, O’Byrne and Rathgeber are suitably naïve. O’Byrne gets to show off her acting chops in the third act when details of her past come to bear, and Rathgeber is every bit her jealous and protective husband. Prudish guest Mrs Boyle, played by Turner is absolutely caustic in her belligerence and has audience members cheering her demise, while Murphy’s Major Metcalf is all austerity and gentlemanly propriety. Charlotte Friels’ burgeoning feminist Miss Casewell is strangely intense yet peculiarly circumspect and Connolly’s Paravicini suitably flamboyant with an undercurrent of suspicion and intrigue. Tom Conroy’s Sergeant Trotter provides the perfect level of inquiry with some beautifully executed character work at the denouement. But it is Boxhall’s Christopher Wren that quite rightly steals the show with his overflowing neuroticism, strange sense of humour, and crazy mop of unkempt hair. All of this action perfectly paced by Director Robyn Nevin.
Really The Mousetrap is a play for everyone. And perhaps that goes someway to explaining the long term success of the production. There is much to be enjoyed on stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre; you’d have to be one of three blind mice not to!
Paul Rodda
When: 31 Dec 22 to 15 Jan 23
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Continuing: Comedy Theatre Melbourne, 17 Feb to 26 Mar
John Frost for Crossroads Live. Adelaide Festival Centre. Festival Theatre. 31 Dec 2022
Psssssssst! Psst! Psst! Daw-ling! You look lurv-ly in this new doo! Just a bit more of this Hairspray to hold it all together. Psst! Psst! Oh! Don’t you look absolutely fabulous!
And indeed they did. Opening night of Hairspray on New Year's Eve at the Festival Theatre was the way to get things started in 2023. And why not? It’s the 20th anniversary of the Broadway production which ran for 2642 performances and won 8 Tony awards including Best Musical. Hairspray first Psst! as a John Waters film in 1988 and Psst! again in a 2007 film based on the musical. It must be fun to do because the films featured fetching talent like Divine, Sonny Bono, Debby Harry, John Travolta and Michelle Pfeiffer.
We forget what the world was like in 1962. Maryland, specifically Baltimore, a long way from the Deep South, but a Union slave state during the Civil War, had its problems. Hairspray manages to tackle the big issues of racism, obesity, body image, and gender bending with vacuity, frolic and fun. Fish-out-of-water misshapen Tracy Turnblad wants to make it on the TV dance show, which she does, and applies her new fame to the cause of de-segregation. This is done by enrolling an eclectic band of supporting characters sporting colourful costumes and whacky hairdos. In rom-com tradition, love is in the air.
Producer John Frost for Crossroads Live has assembled a celebrated clutch of Australian and overseas talent for touring this year. Carmel Rodrigues was made for the role of Tracy. She’s only 23 and still remembers her lines from when she played Tracy in a high school show. Her resume shows nothing but hard work to make her professional debut in this production. Brassy tacky, her Tracy is a dynamo of shimmy and song. No cliché about energy could possibly describe her love of performance. Bravo!
The other main cast members are Australian musical theatre majesty. Straight man Shane Jacobson brings his vast experience to bear in the vast girth of the traditionally cross-gender casted role of Tracy’s mum. The 1000 times he played the role of Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz made Todd McKenney a household name. On the other side of prime, McKenney is sweet-as, and his goofing around with Jacobson in the song Timeless to Me was a smash with the audience. Bobby Fox is all of Franki Valli - which he played over 850 times – and four times World Irish Dance Champion. Here he also channels Teen Angel from Grease in his portrayal of Corny Collins. Bravo! Rhonda Burchmore’s stunning career still has legs in the most literal sense. Black American, now Queenslander, Asabi Goodman brings huge dignity to her role as spiritual leader of the numerous black American characters. Her impressive gravitas may stem from her other job as a chemical engineer and her roles in the actors’s alliance. And boy, can she belt out a note! Definitely an exothermic reaction. Those playing the next generation down with Tracy are terrific. A stand-out were the dance moves and voice vibe of New Yorker Javon King. Bravo!
No expense was spared to physicalise the humour in all departments – colour, costumes, wigs, sets, lights, more lights, more costumes, props, big props, ridiculous gimmickry, satirical asides, all singing all dancing non-stop not much light and shade just full throttle energy and over-the-top sixties pop. What’s not to like? Director Matt Lenz did all this according to the script and with his own inventions. The orchestra under musical director Dave Skelton kept it all in sync. The audience returned the love with an instantaneous standing O. Bravo!
PS The program is big on bio and full of photos but omits the song list.
David Grybowski
When: 31 Dec 2022 to 28 Jan 2023
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Mathew Briggs/Under The Microscope. The Space. 8 Dec 2022
A torch flashes onstage. It reveals the silhouette of a figure clearly crashing this way, then that way, then this way on roller skates.
Lights up! Who is this French accented young women clad in ancient flying goggles, vest, shorts and flying scarf?
Lucky! Better. An Angel! An Angel who has arrived in a world of brown paper clouds high in the sky and brown paper little hills dotted about the stage, with a tale to tell.
Andi Snelling’s solo show Happy-Go-Wrong is the most extraordinary, brilliant midi clown physical theatre act filled with very real, very serious life threatening content.
What does cheeky Lucky mean when she says an accident befalling Andi is a ‘happy’ thing?
The constant flipping to and from upbeat Lucky to Andi - struggling to comprehend and survive a viciously uncaring, politicised medical system, presenting as ‘well’ to the world despite being near death - is frankly as confronting as it is spectacularly funny.
Snelling’s command of her audience from start to finish is absolute. Her cuts from Lucky to herself and back are so arresting, so discombobulating one barely has a chance to settle into the next moment of laughter as a follow up experience of suffering is swiftly upon you.
The journey Lucky and Andi take the audience on towards understanding Andi’s predicament is mediated so powerfully in motion. Every action, every slide, turn, fall, tells us so much and reaches deep within us, to recognise something of ourselves in these tense scenes.
Snelling is wickedly gifted in confronting an audience with the most difficult of subjects in the most endearing, kind, warm and compelling manner. That she has done so through her very real personal experience is testament to the greatness within her and deserving of many a repeat season.
This is the play a very wrong world desperately needs.
David O’Brien
When: 8 to 10 Dec
Where: The Space
Bookings: ticketek.com.au