Verendus Theatre with Red Phoenix and Holden Street Theatres. The Studio, Holden Street Theatres. 14 Jan 2021
The years have been kind to David Hare’s play, Skylight. Kyra, its principal character, has chosen a life of austerity in an unheated London slum flat. Her decision to reject newspapers, television, and the comforts of the modern world are central to the plot-line which is a timeless evocation of political extremes. So the lack of computers and cellphones is not jarring.
She is visited unexpectedly by Tom, her former lover, a wealthy older man from whose family she fled when his late wife discovered their long-term love affair. While Kyra grew up on the right side of the tracks and has chosen the idealistic path, travelling distances by bus to teach disadvantaged children, Tom came up from a working class background to acquire a string of successful London restaurants, a trophy wife, a holiday house in the sun, and a chauffeur-driven limousine.
Tom’s visit is prompted by his yearning to rekindle that old illicit love, now that his wife has died. And, he is appalled to find that Kyra swapped the luxury of living as part of his family for this life of principled poverty. And thus, just short of agitprop didacticism, the play devolves into a class war.
Hare’s skill has been both the credibility of the characters’ backgrounds and his sublimely astute mastery of dialogue. This is a wordy, intense play. But, the barrages of opposing logic emerge as a transfixing domestic drama; literally kitchen sink insofar as it is set in a kitchen and, indeed, Kyra cooks (and ruins) a spaghetti dinner right there on stage.
It is a superb set, with large windows showing treetops and falling snow, and long kitchen benches at which Kyra busies herself making pots of tea and chopping vegetables as she confronts the emotional landmines of Tom’s expectations.
The audience is swiftly enfolded within the tensions of their reunion.
From the moment he steps in the door, Brant Eustice's presence as Tom consumes the stage. He prowls around as a needy, vulnerable bully and the audience quickly falls into his thrall. The role could have been written for Eustice, so potently does he embody it. This puts him into pretty laudable company since Michael Gambon, Bill Nighy, and Matthew Beard earned Tony Awards in the role of Tom and, indeed, the 1995 play won a best revival Olivier Award when it was remounted in 2015. It is that sort of a play: a ripper; dense theatre for serious actors.
And therein does Alicia Zorkovic belong. Her Kyra is the perfectly underplayed counterpoint to Tom’s bombasticism. She is quite riveting with her beautiful voice, well accented to reveal her character’s breeding. As the play develops, so does she bring forth the quiet strength and integrity of Kyra.
Towards the end of Act I, there is a moment when chemistry between the two characters brings not only the actors to tears but also the audience. It is quite exquisite.
Bravo both actors and also director Tim Williams.
Can two former lovers reignite what they once had under different circumstances when one has chosen a life of idealistic, socialist, materialism denial, while the other is thriving on the cream of capitalist confidence? Each has strong arguments for their lifestyle and valid criticisms of the other. It’s an engrossing and still relevant debate.
The play is oddly bookended by a third character, Tom’s son, Edward, pleasantly played by Jackson Barnard. He appears uninvited at Kyra’s flat to beg her support for Tom’s shortcomings as a widower. This cameo gives context for what is to follow, but his return at the end of the play is perplexing enough for audience members to wander out into the night discussing it.
Indeed, Skylight is one of those eloquently-penned British plays which provide nourishing food for thought on several fronts and probably should be in the syllabus for secondary students.
It is what we call a “must-see”.
Samela Harris
When: 14 to 23 Jan
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
Blue Sky Theatre and Open Gardens SA. In the Garden. Crozier Hill, Victor Harbor. 8 Jan 2021
All hail to Robert Bell, the new funny man of Adelaide theatre.
There’s no element of comic performance this young actor does not embrace in his portrayal of Francis Henshall in Richard Bean’s One Man Two Guvnors. He channels the gauche physicality of a Michael Crawford in his prime and adds to it his own whip-swift timing, his boundless energy, and quick-witted improvisational skills.
James Corden won a Tony Award for his National Theatre portrayal of Francis Henshall in the West End. Our Bell is pretty hot on his heels. For which Blue Sky director Dave Simms must take some kudos since he mounts and casts these brave outdoor theatre shows and, year after year, stocks them with first class performers giving strenuous over-the-top characterisations. When performing in front of an audience spread across an expanse of park-like lawn, staunch and powerful projection also must be part of an actor’s box of tricks.
Simms has the genre down to a tee, even providing Blue Sky knee rugs for audience members after the sun goes down. And the audiences return in droves, these picnic party nights having become ritual social events.
Similarly, with most cast members on return engagements, Blue Sky is as near to an ensemble company as a huge operation can get in these lean days of the arts.
Hence, there are regular names such as Lee Cook who has played not only in Blue Sky shows but also in Simms’ Mixed Salad Productions. Here, with sizzling panache, Cook plays the arrogant upper-crustish Stanley Stubbers, one of the Two Guvnors, while Blue Sky regular Miriam Keane plays Rachel the other Guvnor with androgynous alacrity.
Leighton Vogt is a glory of strutting thespian vanity as Alan, playing suitor to the darling dunce Pauline. Ashley Penny is delicious in the role and, oh, kudos for her wonderful 1960s frock. Another of the hallmarks of Blue Sky are the bespoke tailored costumes. Five stars again.
This play, based on Carlo Goldini’s A Servant of Two Masters, is ridiculously, rib-achingly funny, so long as it has the calibre of performance to deliver the absurdity of it all.
And so it goes that Gary George clearly is having a wonderful twinkle-toed romp as the scary heavyweight Cockney dad, with Steve Marvanek as the hopelessly staid lawyer, and the inimitable Nicole Rutty as the whacky hotel landlady with a past. Georgia Stockham is great fun as useful love interest Dolly, while Simon Barnett brings the house down over and over again with his nimble nonagenarian shtick. Joshua Coldwell, Angela Short, and four skiffle band musicians round out the wild night on the lovely lawns.
And everyone does their bit betwixt and between the scenes with silly song and vaudevillian show-pony routines. Oh, and they even play the spoons.
Seamlessly organised between Blue Sky and Open Gardens SA, this presentation is just an all-round joy.
One leaves, exhausted not only by watching the fast and furious athleticism of the cast but also from having laughed so loudly and so often for so long.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 24 Jan
Where: In the Garden - Crozier Park, Victor Harbor
Bookings: Season Sold Out
CDP Kids. Dunstan Playhouse. 20 Dec 2020
Julia Donaldson’s books are familiar to most parents and grandparents, and loved by all who know them. Along with illustrator Axel Scheffler, Donaldson has tapped into that mysterious place where children connect with their imaginations, where anything is possible and even more, believable. The Gruffalo (1999), Stick Man (2008) and Zog (2010+) are amongst the most popular of her books; and then of course, there is Room on the Broom (2001).
It’s a simple story of kindness and friendship, and the adventures to be had in a magical world. There is of course a witch, for no self-respecting broom would be without one, and a cat, as no self-respecting witch would be without one of those! And just to be very clear where we’re going here, there’s also a dragon.
The story itself is a fairly quick read, and the plot is liberally expanded to create a 55 minute show. It opens with four friends finding a camping spot, and coming across the Witch. There’s a bit of humour here that goes over the kids’ heads, and this opening goes on a bit long before the storyline is really acknowledged, with some laboured padding to the scene. Nothing seems to happen without interruption, and when we finally get airborne there’s some relief from the short ones.
In this production, Witch isn’t the brightest; her spells don’t work, she’s not a very good listener (as pointed out by Mr Four), she has real trouble starting her broom, and Cat keeps her distracted by feeding her jelly babies. Essentially, Witch is off to give the Dragon a bit of a dressing down about his penchant for witch and chips (although he apparently quite likes kids on a stick as well). She and Cat set off on the broom into the high wind, and she promptly loses her hat. It’s found by a dog, who returns it to her and asks to ride on the broom to the moon. Well, there’s room on the broom and a grateful Witch says yes, much to the chagrin of Cat.
When Witch also loses her bow and then her wand, which are returned by Bird and Frog respectively, the broom gets very crowded indeed!
Dog, Bird and Frog are puppets, and beautifully realised. Songs (music and lyrics by Jon Fiber, Andy Shaw and Robin Price) have been added to the production and each character gets a go round, with Frog’s number the standout. A rollicking southern US twang delights the children and parents alike – who can resist a down home frog?
Of course, the broom just gets too heavy with all these people on board and breaks, leaving Witch on her own to battle the dragon. But alls well that ends well, and the friends turn up in the nick of time to rescue Witch and banish the dragon.
Unfortunately, there’s no program or cast notes distributed with this production and an internet search didn’t clarify the cast in this performance.
While the energy was a bit lacking, it was their third performance of the day and once the storyline kicked in, the audience was more than happy to listen to the unfamiliar parts. A bit more audience interaction would have helped them relate; what little there was seemed almost an afterthought, with minor reaction from the kids.
Overall, an enjoyable show; with music, puppets and witches, what’s not to like?
Arna Eyers-White
When: 19 to 23 Dec
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
Theatre Republic. Ngunyawayiti Theatre, Tandanya. 12 Dec 2020
There is no outside world. There is no covid, albeit covid seating in the darkness of the Tandanya Theatre.
There is only one reality and it is ghastly, ghostly, grotesque, and yet sublime.
The Bleeding Tree is a sensationally brilliant piece of contemporary Australian theatre and its creator, playwright Angus Cerini, sits up there in genius territory.
This is a work unlike anything one has ever seen in the vast diversity of theatre.
It is a huge black poem.
It is exquisitely penned, deeply complex, rich and yet voiced from the coarse tongue of the underclass.
It is a tale of the last straw. A mother and two daughters dwelling somewhere, nowhere in a parched, remote Australian flyspeck town, have lived their lives beaten and abused under the brutal thumb of a violent drunk. One night, he rolls home in yet another thuggish and vindictive rage and the three women rise up and kill him. One daughter “knocked his knees out”. One “conked him on the head”. And, the mother “shot that house clown through the neck” with a shotgun. “I think your father’s dead,” quoth she.
And then, the psychological and social reverberations of this justified crime all are expressed through the three women, either in the voices and characters of visiting outsiders or in their own troubled triumph.
Thus do the actors segue with seeming ease through the transitions of time and character, voicing the contrasts with striking credibility. While Corey McMahon’s excellent Theatre Republic cast carries the interchanges of characters with artful conviction, in the end of the day it is the script they are “gifting” to the audience.
Therein, Cerini articulates the characters in wild and wayward rustic tense and grammar and in literary lyricism which does not compete with the country culture he is depicting. It is potent, poetic, profound, and yet devoid of pretension. One is immersed in wonderment at the nightmarish black beauty of it all. One even sheds a tear or two at moments of surprising poignancy.
There is no playwright to whom Cerini can be compared. This play is something unique and it deserves the many awards it so far has attracted, and then some.
Cory McMahon has taken this extraordinary literary phenomenon and given it the calculated unhurried pace it needs to liberate the beauty of its macabre poetry.
The audience barely moves a muscle, so stilled is it in focus on such an unusual experience.
It emerges from the tight 55 minutes bursting with commentary on the ugly wheres and hows of domestic violence and why is it that so often, especially in Australia, the rationalisation that it is not one’s business means the no one intervenes until it is too late.
This production is a triumph for director Corey McMahon and also for the cast: Elena Carapetis as the exhausted mother with Miranda Daughtry and Annabel Mattheson as her haplessly complicit daughters.
Not only but also, composer Jason Sweeney taps into the ether of pure excellence with a soundscape which is beautiful, subtle, and apposite.
This has been a much interrupted production thanks to the perversities of Covid19 but it now emerges not only as worth waiting for but as an award-worthy and unforgettable theatrical sensation.
Samela Harris
When: 9 to 19 Dec
Where: Ngunyawayiti Theatre, Tandanya
Bookings: trybooking.com
Adelaide College of the Arts Acting, Design and Technical Students Stables Theatre, TAFE, Light Square. 4 Dec 2020
It is exceptional that The Barefoot Review reviews student productions, but this was an exceptional production.
Hence, this brief notice to salute the 2020 graduating students and alert the world to a shining new batch of theatre makers. Their production has emerged against the odds of broken rehearsal times and covid restrictions and delays. In so many ways, it is sad it does not have a longer run for not only does it showcase the graduates but it introduces the work of the rising star among American playwrights, Samual D. Hunter. He is Idaho-born and this play is set in Idaho, albeit in a stereotypical American chainstore, this one called the Hobby Lobby, one of those vast box stores selling eye-watering arrays of paints and craft nicknacks. Interestingly, it is owned by a family of far-right Christian conservative Trump supporters.
The play is a dark comedy of sorts. The plot concerns a man who has fled from northern Idaho and association with a murder scandal in the evangelical church to which he belonged. He sought this particular store in a quest to meet and to create a relationship with his teenage son.
The action takes place in the store’s staff room, recreated to low-budget perfection by the student design team. It could be any staff room, anywhere, but not so much the staff or the high-stress, high-expectation store manager, Pauline. She’s a chip off the American cultural block and Juanita Navas-Nguyen embodies her with utter conviction and buckets of talent. She brings the stage to life and credibility to the character.
With superb focus, Josh Barkley plays Will, the on-the-run super-Christian whose beliefs gradually are revealed through extracts of the so-called novel he is writing as a blog. It is about The Rapture.
The phenomena of extreme religion, retail ruthlessness, mental health, hopes and dreams, and family relationships all devolve from the interactions in this bland staffroom. It is a very taut and clever 85-minute play.
Mikayla Rudd’s character, Anna, a bookish and dysfunctional retail worker, is catalyst to many of these extrapolations with Rudd delivering her as a wide-eyed, ingenuous enthusiast, battle-scarred by an unsympathetic society. It is a wonderful performance.
The adopted-out son , Alex, is a seriously disturbed teenager whose piques and fits are an acting challenge well achieved by Benjamin Tamba, while Clement Rukundo makes a very strong and spirit meal of the anarchical and arty ‘brother’, Leroy.
All of the above were directed with expertise by Chris Pitman, assisted by Taylor Nobes with lighting designed by Kultha Hier. And, all of the above produced an absolute treat as a piece of well-wrought, relevant, contemporary theatre.
Adelaide’s theatre future is in good hands.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 4 Dec
Where: Adelaide College of the Arts
Bookings: Closed