The Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Arts Theatre. 8 Apr 2021
It is some time in the 1950s in steamy small town Mississippi when three sisters reunite under difficult circumstances. They’ve grown up under dysfunctional circumstances, raised by their granddaddy after their mother died in a double suicide with her cat. Lenny has stayed at home caring for the old man who is now at death’s doorstep in hospital. Babe married but is now in deep trouble having shot her husband in the stomach. Meg, having fled town after abandoning her boyfriend in the ruins of a hurricane, returns from a failed showbiz career in Los Angeles. They already carry a lot of emotional baggage and now are plunged into fresh crises fraught by revealed secrets and the general spite of Chick, their meddlesome cousin who lives nearby. It’s one helluva kitchen-sink drama by American playwright Beth Henley and she has surely loaded that sink with dirty dishes. The play is distinguished by a string of top US awards quite clearly deserved by its artful layering of characters, its evocative setting, and its intense tangle of humour and emotions.
The Rep’s very skilled set designer Ole Wiebkin brings the American Deep South onto the Arts Theatre’s stage with a masterpiece of sprawling domesticity complete with a squeaky-hinged fly-wire door, running water, and misty windows looking onto a suggested world of fecund old fruit trees.
It is Lenny’s domain and it is her birthday when the play opens. Georgia Stockham embodies this seemingly tragic character, a refugee from her secret infertility, bullied by her cousin and fearful for the fates of her family members. Her stay-at-home life had become drearily solitary until the cataclysm of the family reunion.
A stridency of sisterly squeals and laughter and frequent phone calls fill the stage as the sisters gather. Bottles of coke are consumed endlessly and protagonists come and go: principally Meg’s old boyfriend, Doc; and Babe’s new lawyer, Barnette Lloyd.
The cast does well overall with their Mississippi accents.
While Allison Schraber brings a ditsy emotional big dipper to life as Babe, who has shot her husband in the stomach and keeps a secret black lover, it is somehow Cheryl Douglas as the self-centred failed singer, Meg, whose arresting stage presence really sparks the sisterly chemistry. Damaged souls all, they rile and reconcile, jest and protest, accuse and confess in a wild ride of emotional extremes. These are juicy roles for actresses and, with Deborah Proeve as nasty Chick Boyle, the Rep has found a good set. Similarly the two Mississippi males are nicely cast. Adam Schultz, looking like Tom Wolfe in his straw hat and plantation suit, asserts an aura of suave dependability with just a streak of slippery hidden agenda. Of course, it is hard to find Steve Marvanek giving anything other than a fine performance. Here, as Meg's once-abandoned lover, he achieves a power of understated poignancy with almost copybook use of dramatic restraint. He is just a jewel in this production.
Pandemic lockdown threw a huge spanner in director Geoff Brittain’s original plans for this show and it had to be put on hold for the covid year of darkened theatres. Now, with a partially altered cast and most of The Rep’s tried and true production team, it has risen to be the first full onstage Rep production for 2021, albeit still with covid seating.
As for many complex, multi-character plays, Crimes of the Heart takes its time in filling out the strands which will weave the plot together. Hence, the production may seem slow-developing initially. In the second act its intensity has developed, the cast has relaxed into fully-fledged and now familiar characters, and by curtain time it has proven to be a rather satisfying experience.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 17 Apr
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Woodville Town Hall. 21 Mar 2021
Video games trace their history way back to the 1950s but did not really become ‘mainstream’ until the 1970s. With the advances of computing technology video games have developed into a global entertainment industry worth big, big bucks. According to some estimates it will be worth over $200 billion by next year. A really interesting aspect of video games is the music underscore that many (most? all?) games come with. We all know the music is there but relatively few of us pause to contemplate it for what it is: quality, interesting and serious music. The Best of Music in Motion addresses this fact and presents the music behind many of the world’s favourite video games.
A fascinating thing about video game music is that it needs to be responsive to the player’s actions: as a player navigates their way through the game and responds to all the diabolical challenges put before them, the music needs to quickly morph into something that is appropriate to the player’s status within the game. Theoretically, the underscore one experiences can be different every time one plays the game. Consequently, video game music composers need to structure the music so that it is amenable to rapid evolution (achieved through electronic wizardry).
In a nutshell, writing the underscore for a sophisticated video game is as difficult as it is to write a conventional score, perhaps more so. One such musical wizard is Nathan Cummins, a local award-winning composer and music academic who is currently undertaking PhD work to create software to perform music in virtual reality.
Cummins has prepared original arrangements of the scores from many video games and the Woodville Concert Band performs them in The Best of Music in Motion. Video footage drawn from the various games accompanies the music and the result is a toe-tapping family-friendly audio visual spectacular. The featured games include Tetris, Super Mario, Super Smash Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Botanic Panic, and more.
The Woodville Town Hall hosts the event, and this graceful old building is packed to the rafters with an enthusiastic audience. They are there in numbers that most Fringe events can only dream about!
The show is compered by two enthusiastic young guys who together whip the audience up into a frenzy. Interestingly, one of them speaks more about the nature of the music – which instruments are featured in solos, changes of musical key, musical structures etc – but this seems to be lost on much of the audience. For example, when locally developed 'Hollow Knight' was introduced and it was remarked that its composer (Adelaide-based, Christopher Larkin) was actually in the house, this was not acknowledged by the audience. If this was a concert performed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in the Adelaide Town Hall and a featured composer was in attendance, a big deal would be made of it. But not so at The Best of Music in Motion. Curious.
This concert is the fifth consecutive year that the Woodville Concert Band together with their Artistic Director have presented 'Music With Motion'. Make sure you put it on your list next Fringe, especially if you are a music lover. The Woodville Concert Band is a class outfit.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Woodville Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. The Lark, Gluttony. 18 Mar 2021
The all-female Boss Squad (four out of an advertised six?) sports members from Wildhouse Circus and Point & Flex Circus. This offshoot has been flexing its literal muscle at the Fringe for a few years, and in this female-run venue at Gluttony, the vibe of the sisterhood radiates proudly from the open air stage.
These women start off unabashedly proclaiming their pride at their physical muscularity and one agrees they look damn fine. They put those muscles to work in spectacular fashion; lifting, heaving, bouncing and hurling themselves through the air.
Many of the moves you expect to see, you do see. On the gymnastic seesaw they bounce towards, on top of and over each other, swapping positions with consummate ease. Bedded by a soundtrack of great songs (including Lorde’s Team and Little Mix’s fantastic Shout Out to My Ex), the women take on each other literally, balancing each other on shoulders, hips and heads.
These unabashed feminists don’t leave the delicate stuff alone; some calisthenic workouts show that grace and poise go along with the exhibition of bodily robustness and the juggling (with odd drop) is always a crowd pleaser. And the fantastic performance of the ubiquitous hula hoops, that quite female of objects, was contrasted brilliantly by the stapling (literally!) of labels on their bodies; there nothing quite the sight of blood dribbling down an arm as the label is removed to make a chilling point.
In such a small area, the German wheel (rhönrad) wasn’t the most successful piece of equipment; it barely got rolling before it hit the edges of the stage and was difficult to control once it was turned off its axis. The skipping rope however, despite the small space, delighted and impressed the crowd; double ropes, single ropes, skipping ropes inside ropes, just wow.
There were drops and mis-timings a bit too often to consider this a professional production; one assumes that rehearsal time is at a minimum for the troupe, but they just got on with it, either repeating the move or passing it by, and the whooping and hollering crowd forgave them readily.
The girls were lined up outside for the photo op, and who can blame them. Empowering role models; bring them on, and when they’re this entertaining, bring them on again!
Arna Eyers-White
When: 18 to 21 Mar
Where: The Lark, Gluttony
Booking: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. Bakehouse Theatre. 17 Mar 2021
The Ides of March is about time travel, treachery, and togas!
Its basic premise is that William Shakespeare travels back in time to 44BC to ancient Rome to undertake research for his play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. How does he manage this feat? With a TARDIS by any other name, and with time travel there follows any number of existential issues associated with the Time Travel paradox that are ripe for humorous exploration. If one interferes and prevents Caesar’s assassination, to what extent will history from then on be changed? If Shakespeare gets caught up in the events and is killed himself, will he be the only writer to live and tell the story etc etc ? It’s fertile ground and rich with comic possibilities but the humour is often forced, and resorts to cliché.
The cast of four work like navvies all playing multiple characters with many costume changes all performed at near light speed. Jennifer Ashley performs strongly as Cassius and Detectivus (yes, it’s a detective story as well!), Paul Brown is hysterical – literally - as Casca and Cardenio, James Rosier is calculating and luckless as Brutus and Pomodoro, and Kieran Bullock as Caesar and Shakespeare delights in trotting out iconic quotations. In typical Fringe style, the set is minimalist but with just enough surprises (such as an anachronistic pop up toaster!) to keep it interesting. The simple but well executed lighting plot enhances the pace of the show.
In addition to the ‘birth’ of various quotes from the Bard, another enjoyable aspect of the show is the mimicking of well-known TV shows, and the regular breaking of the so-called fourth wall between the audience and cast.
The whole thing is very much tongue-in-cheek, and even though the cast throw their hearts and souls into this madcap show, it has now been around for three years and has perhaps lost a little of the sparkle it once had.
Kym Clayton
When: 17 to 20 Mar
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. SA Children’s Ballet Company. 14 Mar 2021
The Little Mermaid is a favourite of SACBC, having produced it in previous Fringes, and well it should be. It delights audiences of all ages, and this year’s iteration was no exception.
Telling the story of Ariel, the mermaid who exchanges her beautiful voice and tail for mortality (legs) when she falls in love with a human Prince, the action is narrated by the Spirit of The Sea (Erihana Windsor) who floats ethereally on and off the stage.
The ballet opens with the sea creatures partying, in a dizzying splash of colour. The costumes are quite stunning and Paul Boyd’s choreography doesn’t push this young company too far, but plays on their skills; a few timing glitches don’t distract from the sheer energy of the dancers.
There are alternate casts for both Ariel (Heather Benn and Leila Revell) and Ursula, the Sea Witch (Amelia Bey and Lexi Hopkins). One assumes that each is as good as the other, which is very good indeed, exhibiting some lovely pointe work, particularly from mean girl Ursula. Thomas Hall cuts a fine figure as Prince Eric, the hapless sailor who is rescued from drowning by our heroine Ariel. Special mention must also be made here of young Gideon Millar as First Mate; he’ll be dancing principal roles in future years. Here again, the sailor costumes were just charming.
It’s tempting to consider works by children’s companies as ‘developmental’ in terms of both skills and production; neither is the case here. There’s little to forgive as the cast move through the classical and contemporary choreography with an ease that belies their years. With well timed and imaginative lighting and projection (Lorraine Irving, Brendon Maidment), we follow Ariel and Ursula’s struggle for superiority to the end; that kiss takes so long to happen!
The energy in this production just doesn’t let up and it’s a credit to the young ensemble and Boyd’s choreography. Cast and crew should be rightly proud.
Arna Eyers-White
When: Season closed but will be performed again Sept. 17 & 18, 2021.
Where: Star Theatre (Sept season @Arts Theatre)
Booking: www.sacbc.com