Rumpus. 23 Nov 2022
Medieval Morality plays. Renaissance humanism-infused drama reflecting new worlds through the lens of the older.
Both ground Coldhands implacably, whatever one may think.
The clear throws to fictional fantasy and science fiction cannot hide this intriguing work’s double entwining threads of didacticism and mystical yearning.
Coldhands declares, nay teaches, a truth to our world about climate change and human connection which it needs to know before it even knows it, let alone how to follow it.
Dora Abraham’s text is set in a world where gold has disappeared. There is a force eradicating it and any opposing its power.
Three characters inhabit Ellanna Murphy’s stripped back set with clear allusions to dry, bony dessert featuring sky-reaching bone white claw-hand sculptures and ochre sands. They are a mother (Bonet Leate), hand gloved daughter ((Danielle Lim) and a boy hunter (Sam Lau.)
Mother and daughter are constantly on the run, spiritually sustained by tales she reads from a book. Stories of hope.
When the malevolent force they run from captures the mother and leaves the child, the child is unexpectedly rescued, reluctantly, by the boy hunter.
It’s the relationship between this reluctant hunter and the girl with a mystery to reveal which forges the heart of Abraham’s script.
The allegory of gold / balanced environment / human interconnection is utterly clear. Boy hunter’s ambivalence to direct involvement in the girl’s plight is a clear defence mechanism.
Abraham’s dialogue is beautiful and given great service by the cast.
It is a dialogue encouraging connection to stories; hopes that can be real.
Zola Allen’s direction is focused on ensuring the allegoric poeticism of Abraham’s dialogue lands where it should, through the medium of Danielle Lim’s fervent, warm performance, which drives Coldhands start to finish. The one who can make gold. One whose hands grow colder every time she does.
David O’Brien
When: 22 Nov to 4 Dec
Where: Rumpus 100 Sixth Street Bowden
Bookings: eventbrite.com.au
University of Adelaide Theatre Guild. Little Theatre. 20 Nov 2022
Assumptions about the name of this play are cast to the winds when one discovers that American playwright Robert Askins has written about a manic hand puppet created in a church hobby group.
It is an unlikely subject for a play, entirely preposterous and absurdist - which, of course, is the point.
It could be awful, but director Nick Fagan has cast the incomparable Matt Houston in the lead role of Jason, the loser kid who creates Tyrone, a hand puppet which has his own agenda.
This role requires Houston to swing in and out of the two characters, forlorn Jason gradually becoming more and more in the thrall of the Sesame Street-style creation on his hand. Houston not only has to assert and interplay the two characters but also to manipulate the puppet’s arms and evolving actions. If ever there was a challenging role, this is it.
Matt Houston has it right in hand, so to speak.
His performance is bravura and then some. Not that he gets to play likeable. He’s twice despicable and, as it happens, so are all the other characters in the play. Nasty self-interested Bible Belt Christians, the lot of them. Their language alone is repulsive. This play may hold a theatre record for use of the word “fuck”. And, while the interaction between the recently-widowed puppet-making teacher and her hulking boy admirer is quite funny, it is also grotesque - as is she, a duplicitous grimacing mockery of an exploitative mother.
If one had hoped for redemption from the quiet girl, Jessica, forget it. And as for the pastor, well he carries a bible and is pitiable. So, Hand to God is a pretty repugnant play one way or another. It is just Nick Fagan’s directing skills which keep the audience captivated and looking for resolution. It does not resolve very effectively but, the action has been a very wild ride indeed and no one is going to forget this production in a hurry.
Of course, the Little Theatre makes it intensely proximate and Tom Clancy’s marvellous church design on the upper level has sardonic splendour while the Church hall classroom below is as cheap and tacky, as one may expect.
Good sound, good lighting. Good Southern accents from the cast. All the ingredients are there.
The wonderful Brendan Cooney recently of stunning Stones in His Pockets, gives Pastor Greg a goodly serve of suave smug servant of God while Emily Branford takes the ghastly, strident mother/teacher right over the top and into hapless comedic hinterland. One laughs despite oneself. Tom Tassone embodies the big boy, easy to do as a big boy, but his characterisation is exquisitely nuanced and he gives a stand-out performance. Laura Antoniazzi sweetly depicts the sleeper character, the innocent little girl - or is she? She brings down the house when it comes to the no-spoilers-here climactic scene with Houston. By this time the audience is simply agog.
But, this is Matt Houston’s time to shine. He’s one of the finest actors in town and his talent devours and delivers this show. Applause. Applause.
Samela Harris
When: 20 Nov to 17 Dec
Where: The Little Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Flying Penguin Productions. The Space Theatre. 18 Nov 2022
Basis of play:
Carol: “I’m gonna fail. My course. I’m gonna fail. My degree is gone. Professor, help?”
Professor John: “I need this new house. I need tenure approval. I need to… who is this student?”
Within this conundrum of pain and need, between student failing her course and Professor hanging on to the future, playwright David Mamet plays savagely yet subtly with politics and humanity of higher education and more.
30 years since Oleanna was first produced, it has been attached to many socio-political controversies, greatest of recent time being the #metoo movement.
Director David Mealor’s production certainly addresses it, but is not confined to it.
With excoriating precision, Mealor has crafted a production spinning and turning in such a way that both characters’ needy, angry questioning of the other to understand and see where they’re at (or believe they are) is constantly frustrated by barriers, both put up and of misunderstandings, in what they say.
The three part structure offered is revelatory. It is electrifyingly and utterly brutal in performance. How deftly, sudden and sharply words progress from lazy expressions of entitlement. Sound bites of trite efforts to ‘explain’ the self, ultimately imprisoning and destroying, leaving neither person involved any better off.
Carol is in genuine turmoil. Her pain is crystal clear. John is initially too remote from this. Both are looking for a way to navigate the turbulence of Carol’s desperate enquiry for comprehension. Instead, it becomes a bitter battle between two - at the core - not terribly nice people.
The bare and savage emotion fuelling this production is perfectly served by Designer Kathryn Sproul’s white, slightly raised, square dais, on which is an office desk chair and guest chair.
This dais turns three times. Reflecting the shifting relations between John and Carol; mirroring their demand of the other to ‘see’ and ‘understand’.
Composer Quentin (Quincy) Grant’s score for strings is brilliantly structured and deployed so subtly. It sits, unexpectedly, just beneath the surface tension of the unravelling drama onstage and makes one almost momentarily jump as it kicks in.
Chris Petridis’s lighting comprises sophisticated, granular gradations of white from a whopping bank of lights high upstage, only noticeable after the moment.
These elements greatly support the performers’ work in expressing the unspoken, a key element to any Mamet work.
Renato Musolino as John and Georgia Laity as Carol are greatness onstage. They play off each other with complete confidence and control. The see-saw like rise and falls in their relationship is articulated with precision and clarity, matching the equal divide of incomprehension and ensuring bitterness.
David O’Brien
When: 17 to 26 Nov
Where: The Space Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
State Opera South Australia. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 11 Nov 2022
What a great idea! “Bright lights and big dreams” is the siren song for theatrical types in the never never that urges them to migrate to the big smoke to make their talent bright and big. In this review of songs from major American musicals, State Opera South Australia’s Artistic Director and director of this production, Stuart Maunder AM, pays homage to Stephen Sondheim and his mentors Leonard Bernstein and Oscar Hammerstein II by choosing songs exclusively from their canon. This was a project Maunder wanted for Sondheim’s 90th birthday in 2020, but you-know-what cancelled anything good that year.
The performers had only the length of Her Majesty’s apron to move on; the rest of the stage was taken by the ever-spot-on Adelaide Symphony Orchestra – the men in comfortable open shirts - under the commanding baton of Anthony Hunt. The starring pairing was of Ben Mingay and Antoinette Halloran. Halloran is all lioness sensuality and bearing. When opposite baritone Ben Mingay, well, [insert lion roar here]. Halloran excels throughout the selections from Sweeny Todd, but it is their duet of A Little Priest that is scintillating. Bravo! Mind you, they have form in reprising their roles from State Opera’s 2021 retelling of the murderous musical. Complementing the razor-sharp performances were their costumes retrieved from Wardrobe; you could drift away into last year’s production.
Alas, this was a missing element of the production. The opening gambit of Comedy Tonight from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum has an over-formal air in tuxedoes. Perhaps a toga or two? Contextualising costumes or at least accoutrements would have been a big help to the imagination. In the West Side Story offering, the Jets and the Sharks look like they took time out from a wedding reception for a little street fighting. Sailor caps in South Pacific? Something? And if tux is the go, make sure it fits. Director Stuart Maunder missed out on a lot of fun by eschewing the thematic dress-ups. Yet the women’s frequent changes into fetching evening frocks is eye candy. Antoinette Halloran is wearing stunning sparkling starlight in one song.
Of course, cossies aren’t the main game and the main game went very well indeed. Love is in the air in the numerous star-crossed lover duets, eg; Jessica Dean and Mat Verevis in West Side Story’s One Hand, One Heart. This was followed and counterpoised with the street gang braggadocio to thrilling effect in Tonight. Bravo! Desiree Frahn in Carousel’s If I Loved You delivers an awesome transition from insouciance to love-struck that melted the lights. And again from Sweeny Todd, Nothin’s Gonna Harm You between Mat Verevis and Antoinette Halloran is full of warmth and love undercut by menacing innuendo. This was where Mat’s underplayed vocals hit the right level.
Rosie Hosking, Rachel McCall, Jessica Mills, Mark Oates, Nicholas Cannon, James Nicholson and Jeremy Tatchell all have star-turns and/or fulsome featured numbers, and they mug and move and sing marvelously in chorus work. Jessica Mills, one of the younger cast members, certainly deserves more airtime to air her voice and watchable gestures. Mark Oates is a dependable tenor in musical theatre and always draws attention. Perhaps you saw him in Adelaide Festival’s world premiere production of Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan in which he sensitively played both Ian Duncan and Don Dunstan.
The whole shebang ended with a bang with a corny and rousing Oklahoma, followed by an encore – the famous You’ll Never Walk Alone from 1945’s Carousel. You leave the theatre with goosebumps.
Unfortunately, the online program contained no biographies of the performers or creatives so despite the bright lights, the punter is in the dark about the big dreams of these talented Australians.
Director Stuart Maunder’s love letter to Sondheim and his progenitors is a delightful night out of songs from some of America’s best last-century musicals performed by outstanding Australian talent. A shame it’s only on for two nights. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 11 and 12 Nov
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Therry Theatre. Arts Theatre. 11 Nov 2022
Tearing in at the end of a show’s run is an unfair way to give it a review. Sometimes circumstances cannot be helped. But, oh what a downright pity it is that the theatre-going public cannot be warned that missing out on this show is to miss out on a belly full of laughs and giggles.
So, unless you can speed down to the arts this very night, November 12, you’ve missed it.
Bedside Manners is a British farce by Derek Benfield. It centres around a hapless fellow standing in for his sister as receptionist at an English countryside hotel. The room phones are out of order and the guests are both devious and needy. They are having naughty weekends. There are lots of doors and cross-purposes in a wonderfully complicated but efficient and good-looking set designed by Gary Anderson.
There’s a cast of five, two couples and the aforementioned stand-in receptionist, Ferris. David Sinclair gets a workout which leaves the audience exhausted just watching him as he thunders up and down the stairs between the reception desk and the two guest rooms, dealing with the ever accruing shambles which the guests bring upon themselves. It is ridiculously silly and cumulatively hilarious. The upstairs bedrooms are very small and there is a lot of footwork for the actors, all very artfully directed by Jude Hines.
Between the direction, the set, and the tight focus of the actors, it is really quite a physical masterpiece.
David Sinclair embodies poor old, long-suffering, over-tipped Ferris with nice comic nuance while Steven Bills and Patrick Clements deliver a couple of smarmily devious infidels losing themselves and the kitchen sink on the world’s worst lost weekend in the country. Their targets of desire are very pukkah County women, colourfully stereotyped by Rose Harvey and, with extra bells on for exquisite impeccability, Leah Lowe.
The whole show is just a jolly good giggle tonic.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 12 Nov
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: Closed