University of Adelaide Theatre Guild. Little Theatre. 13Aug 22
Sir Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia has been classified as one of the great contemporary plays of the English language. Indeed, now that it is over thirty years old, one looks upon it in this latter era of short and sweet and scaled-down theatre as one of the wordiest and most complex of popular contemporary plays being, as it is, presented as a contemporaneous duopoly of time.
In the same old English house there exist characters from 1809 hashing out the fine points of mathematics, landscape gardening and literature interspersed with characters of 1993 doing much the same retrospectively. The audience must pay close attention to the two periods and the assorted concepts and opinions as must the actors master a highly complex and prolix script.
It’s not a play for the faint-of-heart.
But UATG is far from faint-hearted. It braves works of erudition and packs its little theatre in so doing. For Arcadia, Matthew Chapman has stepped away from acting to take on the role of a solo director for the first time. It is a sterling start.
This production rockets along on a sleek and simple one-table set against a pleasant pale blue facade which represents the grand old Sidley Park mansion in Dorset. A subtle festoon of flowers signifies its verdant setting; a great landscaped garden which is subject to the aesthetic upheaval of the latest trends in landscape gardening. This is just one of the fascinating themes which threads through the plot, introducing the character of Noakes (Rohan Cassidy), the Capability Brown of the moment, whose “modernisation” of the glorious formal vista landscape seeks to make, if wild and dense, a suitable abode for a hermit. Thomasina Coverly, (Pari Nehvi) teenage daughter of the house and under the tuition of the handsome Septimus Hodge (Robert Baulderstone) is fascinated by this possibility and draws a hermit into the landscape architect’s sketch where it remains for the misinformation of future historians. They are the other aspect of the play and very ably embodied indeed.
Two time periods are enacted, first with clever young Thomasina challenging her tutor with concepts of physics beginning with why, once stirred, jam cannot be unstirred from rice pudding. Subjects such as determinism, iteration and chaos theory wind around sex education, gardening and poetry, salient since the second-rate poet Ezra Chater (Maxwell Whigham) is a regular guest in the house and the unseen presence of Lord Byron lingers everywhere, he having been a friend of tutor Septimus.
Also in the 19th Century household is the chatelaine, Lady Croom, (Kate Anolak), a very firm and sensible Matriarch with a wee flirtatious edge. It is a big and busy household and this is a big and busy play.
And in come the contemporaries, at the same table at Sidley Park, hashing over the history. There’s Hannah Jarvis (Alison Scharber) and Valentine Coverly (Guy Henderson) and, most significantly, Bernard Nightingale, the Oxford don who masquerades under the alternative avian name of Peacock, and who is obsessing on Lord Byron theories. John Rosen makes a delicious meal of this character.
The transitions between the present and the past slip to and fro very nicely with the occasional moveable prop and, of course, changing period costumes. All of which, importantly, is illuminated by the excellent Stephen Dean, late of the beloved Bakehouse Theatre.
Rebecca Kemp pops into the production credits as an “intimacy co-ordinator” which is very on-trend but de trop when the intimacies in this play, while integral, also are hardly lusty or intimate. There’s also Nicholas Clippingdale in the credits as “mathematics advisor”; it seems more logical, albeit oddly obscure. As is the need for a “classics advisor”. ’Tis a much-advised production.
One wonders what the playwright might be making of these further offstage loads to a production team when, already, the play calls for a large cast and some very niftily co-ordinated switchings of time and players.
Indeed, Arcadia is an ambitions production which embraces a fecund swathe of academic erudition, ideal perhaps in a university context.
It is also a play inclusive of seasoned and young players in its cast, which it the perfect combination in an educational environment - and which worked so very well in the balance of performances, not always even, but not bad at all.
For those interested in the rules of physics, there is some grist to an ancient mill. For those caring about the egocentric bastardry of landscape gardeners, there is an ongoing agenda over which to fume.
For those seeking an intellectually busy night of theatre, here it is.
Samela Harris
When: 13 to 21 Aug
Where: Little Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
The Genesian Theatre Company. Genesian Theatre, Sydney. 13 Aug 2022
It’s widely acknowledged that Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll changed Australian theatre forever when it premiered in Melbourne in 1955. It’s the first play – or the first popular play - to put working-class Australians and their sturdy vernacular centre stage for an exploration of the search for happiness in unconventional domestic arrangements.
While presently a time capsule of social norms of the ’50s – feminism hadn’t reached Carlton yet – forgive him this trespass as the emotional quotient of misunderstood love and nostalgic yearning in the play is as relevant today as it ever was. The Doll is far deeper than any one theme and compels endlessly debatable questions for the trip home. After opening in Melbourne to critical acclaim in 1955, productions in the UK and New York commenced before the end of the decade. Ray Lawlor is still collecting royalty cheques at the rare age of 101.
Canecutters Roo and Barney return to Melbourne for the seventeenth layoff from the season up north. Olive, happy with love only five months a year and eschewing conventional domestication, anticipates the boys breathlessly but, this time, with some agitation. Her beau is Roo, but Barney’s Nancy has married elsewhere. Olive sets up a blind date between Barney and her fellow barmaid at the local pub, Pearl. Pearl’s primness and uncertainty around the arrangement foreshadows the fading of the romantic mirage.
Olive’s shabby home is well-conveyed by Tom Fahy’s set design and Barry Neilson’s decoration. But this veracity is shattered by Grace Swadling’s bitchy and unpleasant Pearl. Who could stay in a room five minutes with this person, let alone work with them? A viewable nuance of trepidation mixed with vulnerability went wanting. Jodine Muir’s Olive has hard work dealing with this deadweight and what could have been an empathetic but challenging encounter was delivered as unattractive anger. Director John Grinston here employs a technique repeated through the production – characters on opposite sides of the stage delivering out front. This heightens disengagement where a dialogue simmering in subtext could be more interesting. I don’t think people say what they mean in the 1950s any more than they do now.
All was forgiven when the boys arrive. Lawlor has Olive build them into demi-gods and like “a couple of eagles descending out of the sky” – to paraphrase a line from the play – their entrance signals the game is on. The boisterous boys bounce around the tiny room and the relationships are realised with alacrity. Harley Connor has the best role as the robust larrikin Barney. No wonder Lawlor himself played Barney in the initial Melbourne, Sydney, UK and New York productions. Barney’s seduction in the Taming-of-the-Pearl scene is masterful, as are Pearl’s subtle and self-surprising hot flushes in reaction. Bravo! Martin Grelis is a formidable Roo, hulking, sulking, and coming to grips with this challenging layoff. Grace Swadling develops her Pearl into a far more complex and interesting persona as the play progresses and Jodine Muir excels in Olive’s climactic outburst.
The nostalgic routines of the seventeenth layoff are falling apart and Lawlor has given us three observers to the tragedy, each with a unique viewpoint. Heather Tleige’s Bubba was five at the first layoff and is now confronted with losing the magic and the need to rekindle it elsewhere as Kathy, her real name. Liz Grindley as Olive’s sardonic mum provides comic relief and caps the proceedings with bouts of wisdom. Her contumelious Emma, however, is more caricature than authentic. Johnnie Dowd is a young cane ganger who worked with the fellas up North, and now intruding on the foursome, reflects on the unreality of their situation. Hamish MacDonald gives a sweet performance.
Besides the aforementioned physical/emotional distancing, director John Grinston needs to pay more attention to detail. Like the lack of festive decorations on New Year’s Eve and the pre-mature fireworks. Roo apparently was looking for a job in the Financial Review and wears tennis shoes when he should be putting his boots on. And would it be that hard to have labels on the beer bottles, like Carlton? Small beer, but details do matter. On the other side of the ledger, the physical business is very good, and Susan Carveth’s costume design (and hair?) distinguishes the period. Bravo!
Ray Lawlor has constructed a near perfect play in which all the characters realise they have to change. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a dynamic rendering of its time yet crammed with modern emotions. Highly recommended for both.
P.S. Saint Genesius is the patron saint of actors.
David Grybowski
When: 16 Jul to 20 Aug
Where: Genesian Theatre, Sydney
Bookings: genesiantheatre.com.au
Photography Credit: Craig O'Regan
Patch Theatre/Restless Dance Theatre. The Space Theatre. 13 Aug 2022
Remember playtime when you were a kid? Your imagination made new worlds. If you were jumping over crocodiles, you really were!
Home takes this experience to the next level in a fashion that is totally and magically immersive.
Even before the show starts it has won over its audience of 4-10 year olds. A few discover a flat table that projects hands, objects and faces on a screen; a horde of little tackers surge forward to have a go!
That surging, playful horde of amazed kids is the very essence of the spirit of Home.
Co-Director/Designer Geoff Cobham and Designer Michelle Delaney’s set is gloriously colourful. Bright synthetic green grass floor, bright yellow door smack bang centre upstage, and pretty metallic flower structures dotted about. Composer Jason Sweeny graces the work with terrifically upbeat pop music as you take your seat, and you notice there’s a little house sitting on a brightly lit little mushroom shape stool.
It is a very important little house! It comes to life! It speaks! It introduces us to Zoë (Zoë Dunwoodie) and Charlie (Charlie Wilkins,) our new friends who share some wild adventures with us, guided by the little house.
The little house likes to be passed about the audience. If you are lucky, you might be invited onstage to play games! Discover what’s behind the yellow door!
What magical worlds that yellow door hides and reveals. Co-Director Daisy Brown along with Cobham successfully gives the production the true feel of anarchic mystery that playtime is made of. We bounce from one wild world of magic to another, barely noticing where we were, let alone going next. That’s sharp, very aware direction.
Jimmy Dodd, Artist in Residence, Elias Ppiros and Wendy Todd’s props are the stuff childhood magic forgot. Renate Henschke’s costumes are just right kid-stuff. Sound Designer Sascha Budimski’s superb work makes one particular game an outstanding top kid moment.
Home is an experiment founded on immense technical skill which manages to hide itself brilliantly and instead make live and present a magical feeling during and after the show.
David O’Brien
Where: The Space Theatre
When: 13 and 20 Aug
Where: Hopgood Theatre Noarlunga – regional tour 23 August – 8 September
When: 27 Aug
Bookings: patchtheatre.org.au
Dunstan Playhouse. State Theatre Company South Australian and Sydney Theatre Company. 9 Aug 2022
Post-covid and in an era of funding cuts and bureaucratic bungling, most of the teachers of West Vale Primary hang out in the parking lot, leaving just a ragged core to frequent the run-down old staff room.
Returning from school holidays, the jaded veteran teacher Pat Novitsky shakes a cockroach out of the kettle before hammering loose the contents of a jumbo Nescafe can and heaping five spoonful’s of granules into a cup. She sighs as if its nectar on the first sip. The audience is already laughing because fey fellow teacher Denise Hart has preceded her by doing a horrified once-over of the room before disappearing into the Ladies. Catherine McClements and Susan Prior respectively have broken the comic ice with some lovely mime setting the scene and the mood for this Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company SA co-production of Angela Betzein’s Chalkface.
The title, one discovers, references the “coal face” of teaching as opposed to makeup.
While there is a lot to laugh at in this play, loaded as it is with cornball clichés of the trials and tribulations of long-suffering but ever dedicated state school teachers, it is, in fact, a sad and disturbing portrait of a disintegrating system.
Novitsly’s best friend Sue, a fellow veteran teacher, dropped dead as they began their dream trip to Hawaii. Her funeral in school holidays was ignored by colleagues. Novitsky brings memorial ritual to the staff room along with Sue’s ashes. Playwright Betzein has fun with this - and so does the audience.
The play rolls through all manner of tropes, especially in introducing the new millennial teacher, Anna Park, bright and cocky with her Masters degrees in neuroplasticity and child behaviour. She is embodied and well developed by Stephanie Somerville. The headmaster is more of an administrator. He’s nick-named “Thatcher” for his economic rationalist policies and, played by Nathan O’Keefe with a wee trendy man-bun, he’s buck-passing and hands-off. His staffroom offsider is the over-aptly named Cheryl Filch, played by Michelle Ny. She commands the supplies, the shredder, and the school PA over which she loves to issue exquisitely inept pronouncements. She is the tight-fisted school villain.
The sports teacher Steve, played by Ezra Juanta, has been on compo following an injury caused by the school’s pupil nemesis, Hurricane Little. He now suffers from paranoia.
No one wants Hurricane and his perilous pranks in their class, so the smug newbie offers to take him. And so the school year rolls on, its tides and terms marked by flags and bunting strung across the staff room and also, by zany little dance vignettes from Denise, the kindie teacher. She is pregnant, so her growing stomach also shows the passage of time.
The play's funny/nightmarish denouement is in Book Week when everyone is themed up, Denise as the many-armed Hungry Caterpillar. To this end, designer Ailsa Paterson has had lots of fun with costumes and, indeed, overall with a scrupulously detailed archetypal old-school staffroom complete with labelled pigeon holes, an ideas box, broken hot water system, and a flotsam of old furniture. Mark Shelton brings this all to vivid life with a gorgeous lighting plot, complete with inefficiencies and blackouts while Jessica Dunn’s sound and music taps right into the spirit of primary schools and is a delight in its own right. Indeed, it’s an altogether good production team and director Jessica Arthur sustains the cast’s timing and interaction to a school bell tee.
Chalkface is not a great play. But, it is a nice play. Its one hour and 45 minutes passes swiftly and its portrayal of the ravaged education system gives serious pause for thought. It dares a spot of didacticism and labours the word “pedagogy” to underscore today’s decline in depths of teaching of language and critical thinking.
While the performances all are pretty shmick, it is Catherine McClements as the world-weary doyen who steals the show and our hearts.
Samela Harris
When: 10 to 20 Aug
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
Blue Sky Theatre. Domain Theatre. Marion Cultural Centre. 30 Jul 2022
Blue Sky Theatre company has a very devoted following. Dave Sims knows how to mount real audience-pleasers. They have been mainly classic old school costume farces performed out of doors in wonderful garden settings aligned with the fabulous opengardens.org.au . Hence the name “Blue Sky”, one supposes, albeit the performances progress into the evenings under lights. Blue Sky picnic outings have achieved an almost cult-like return of audiences to see lavish and hilarious productions of the likes of She Stoops to Conquer, One Man Two Guvnors, The School for Scandal, and Present Laughter. Some of us are still laughing. And raving about the impeccable costumes. It has been a five-star path for this company. It is scheduling The Scarlet Pimpernel in the garden when 2022 becomes more clement.
Winter and common sense have driven the company indoors for some productions which, brilliantly, are timed as 4pm matinees at the fabulous Marion Culture Centre’s Domain Theatre.
But, for some unfathomable reason, our man Sims has abandoned the comical costumed fun and games and mounted a very earnest play indeed.
Too Much Sun was written by London-based American Nicky Silver, and one reads in the program notes that his writing has been compared with that of Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde.
That is not going to be happening from this critic.
If ever there was a case of incredibly tedious overwriting, this play is it. Not much sun at all. It is a pretentious, unsubtle, and didactic work which one feels actually does a disservice to gay theatre. The dialogue? Oh, save us from reiterated clichés and predictable outcomes.
Luckily for Blue Sky, ingenuous new theatregoers are loving it. Their foyer talk was describing it as “deep”.
It tells of a vain and ageing actress imposing herself on her alienated daughter’s holiday house when things are going badly for her in a production of Medea at Wagga Wagga. Yes, this, in itself, is gorgeously funny. Sadly, not so via the Silver script which could use a mile of kindly blue pencil to soften its abstruse reiterative verbiage.
So, selfish old actress skews the seaside social world while her awful writers-blocked son-in-law ignores his marriage and the sweet surfie dope dealer seeks panacea from the trauma of losing his mother. Everyone has issues and, in case the audience is not recognising them, the dialogue labours them. Attempts to balance the plot with humour are clumsy. Despite their best efforts, the actors are pushing the proverbial uphill.
Yet, they manage to achieve some decent performances, particularly Celine O’Leary as the old prima donna mum who delivers a very substantial and credible character development. Jackson Barnard has a lovely languor as the weed-selling surfie and it is incredibly refreshing to see a handsome young actor whose body is unmarked by tattoos. Lee Cook is a consistently capable actor and holds his own easily as the lousy writer while Emily Currie, is surly and impassive as his comfort-eating miserable wife. Reuben Fernee, as the quivering production messenger, works hard to make things funny and there are moments. Meanwhile Stuart Pearce is solid as the nice but troubled man next door.
Dave Sims is a great director but one is simply baffled by his choice of such a leaden play.
Never seeing it again would be too soon.
Samela Harris
When: 30 Jul to 5 Aug
Where: Domain Theatre
Bookings: blueskytheatre.com.au