Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 4 Dec 2020
It seems the old Rep is old no more.
Throughout the lockup, The Rep bravely experimented in online productions, including a really delightful series of staged radio plays. Now with its first live audiences limited to only 54 and carefully covid-distanced, it has re-opened the doors of the Arts Theatre with a very old play and given it a whoosh of youthful vigour.
It is a humble, very low budget scratch production which is offbeat for a Sheridan period piece. Those old post-Restoration comedies of manners usually have flamboyant costumes and lavish sets. Here, there is just a plain curtain and a door with the players carrying chairs, sofas, and assorted set pieces on and off stage. Even the costumes are a bit all over the place, albeit they are colourful and suggestive of the characters. If there is to be a big tick in the appearance department, it goes to Annie Smith, the production hair stylist. In some ways she is star of the show. The women, uniformly, have aptly fanciful period hair styles with Mrs Malaprop as piece de resistance, especially when she appears with, of all things, a model yacht as a jaunty fascinator.
The Rivals is a beloved old Richard Brinsley Sheridan play, much performed since it first hit the stage the 1700s and much celebrated for its creation of the aforementioned character, Mrs Malaprop, whence comes the word “malapropism” for her incessant use of just the wrong word. Since she prattles this deceptively sensible nonsense, she is a demanding character to portray and The Rep did well in casting Kate Anolak who carries off with glorious authority the woman’s torrents of pretentiously almost-eloquent banter.
There are many delicious performances in this production directed by Matthew Chapman. Standout is Guy Henderson as Acres, a well delivered and refreshingly comic portrayal. He’s a joy to watch. A dandy dandy! Patrick Clements, also, delivers some lovely reactive comic moments in the ambivalent romantic lead as Sir Anthony Absolute. Don O’Donnell as poor Faulkland, the other romantic protagonist, has an earnest studiousness about him and a good stage presence in his quest for the heart of the lovely Julie. As sweet Julie, Emily Currie provides a strong and agreeable characterisation and a good, well-modulated voice. Alison Sharber, complete with gorgeous tiny poodle, utterly smothers the stage in glamour as Lydia Languish while the inimitable Matt Houston makes the complete contrast as the oddball rustic, Sir Lucious O’Trigger. Lindsay Dunn gives Sir Anthony Absolute a sense of perplexed earnestness and, indeed, the play’s cast is generally a pretty well-honed machine against the odds of no budget and minimal preparation time. It is colourfully completed by Jess Wolfendale, Rebecca Kemp, Philip Lineton, and AJ Bartley.
Director Chapman might have a word with some of the cast members, the women particularly, to control a tendency to shrillness.
But, the overall spirit that this cast engenders is one of zeal and youth and it is good to see such a young audience at a Rep production. Truly, there seems to be a new broom and, out of the plague, a spirit of ebullient positivity - which augurs well for 2021.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 6 Dec
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: Season Sold Out
State Theatre Company of SA. Dunstan Playhouse 28 Nov 2020
Ripcord director Mitchell Butel stated to the Saturday night “preview” audience that if the chequerboard seating at the first play in Her Majesty's was first class, tonight’s audience may consider itself “platinum”, so incredibly distanced was one audience member from another. The director’s words were under laid by theatrical anxiety that engendering laughter to far-distanced people was famously difficult. Laughter itself is infectious. To make things even more uphill, 99 per cent of audience members had the supplied surgical masks over their faces, this being a prerequisite of attending live performance in the time of covid.
Well, you may be able to muffle a laugh but you can’t suppress it. When the silly business of Ripcord gets up and running, the laughs and guffaws find their way forth.
Ripcord is a rather sweet play of redemption by David Lindsay-Abaire. It’s a well-worn classic theme of Grinch versus Pollyana, but depicted in the shared room of an American retirement home with two actresses of the calibre of Nancye Hayes and Carmel Johnson, it can’t really miss the mark.
Certainly not with Butel’s direction and Ailsa Paterson’s designs. This is a show with dazzling production values. The basic set is an expansive room for two, really airy and elegant with a picture window onto a verdant world at one end. This handsome set splits for scene changes and the revolve transforms the stage into the other-worlds which distinguish the life perspectives of the two old gals. There’s a wild and fanciful house of horrors and, hilariously, an aircraft and scene of plummeting sky divers, key to the play’s title, of course. Oh, my, funny is an understatement.
The scene changes are accompanied by Andrew Howard’s stupendous music and some snazzy lighting from Gavin Norris, expert embellishments which envelop the audience in a sense of spectacle.
Nancye Hayes is one of the great stars of the Australian stage and a mistress of song and dance. Here she plays an almost Dickensian sour-patch called Abby. She is as unpopular as she is antisocial. Hayes plays her with extreme restraint, using her dancer’s loose-armed posture to assert a faint hauteur. For the first half of the show, she’s just a pastel personality. Johnson, on the other hand, is larger than life, boisterous and utterly adorable. She eats the stage, balancing bursts of comic ham with the portrayal of a complex human being. She is complemented by Chris Asimos, athletic and compassionate in a laudable performance as Scotty the carer and aspiring actor. And, she has further over-the-top foils in her rather ga-ga, ever-loving daughter and son-in-law played by Jennifer Innes and Ezra Juanta. Completing the multi-tasking cast is the inimitable Nathan Page, at one minute manic and intimidating and, at the next, oh, so heart-rending.
Hayes comes into her own in Act II wherein the calculated conflicts of the two women reach crescendo, folly meets cruelty, and malice meets kindness. Here, one enjoys not only the play’s dramatic denouement but the phenomenon of two wonderful actresses in performances both giving to the audience and to each other.
Ripcord has not gone down in theatre history as one of the world’s greatest plays. However, it is a gift to older actresses and in this time of plague and concern for our oldies, it turns out to be an extremely timely choice by Butel as artistic director of State. It also showcases his directorial skills which are such that we can’t wait for whatever he does next.
Samela Harris
When: 28 Nov to 13 Dec
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability & Diverse Abilities Dance Collective, DADC (Singapore). Adelaide Festival Centre. 13 Nov 2020
There’s live performance and there’s live Zoom performance. No Strings and DADC have just pulled off both in an absolutely delightful international coup. Each company had a live performance group in situ, one in Singapore and one in Adelaide. But they merged as one interactive body via a Zoom collaboration.
Here in Adelaide, a live audience gathered covid-style in the Festival Centre’s Quartet Bar with the No Strings performers sitting beneath the giant screen whereupon they were joined by the Singapore performers. The theme of the event, apart from being a ground-breaking piece of new-tech international theatre, was an exploration of how performers with disability in two worlds have been coping with covid-19.
The show’s title is the answer. Same Same. Everyone, no matter where, has been going through the same weird and worrying experience of pandemic life.
The show’s creative director and host, Jeffrey Tan, interviewed the diversity of performers one by one, establishing their differences. They have different abilities, different interests, different family groupings, different cultures, even different colour preferences. But they all share new living conditions, particularly the hand-washing rituals. And there were 20 characters on the big Zoom grid, all miming hand-washing at once; quite an artwork if one looks at sheer aesthetics. But it was saying much more.
Tan and Adelaide’s Emma Beech liaise and direct from their venues, Beech guiding the likes of Zoe to perform a lithe, hair-flicking dance of liberation while Tan offers Jasprin in a bright red dress doing something of a lively Bollywood routine. At the end of the show, the Singapore crew is shown as a dance group while in Adelaide, performers swayed in harmony.
Tan has an exceptionally agreeable voice and demeanour. He is utterly inclusive and everyone shows loving patience with those who need a moment longer to get their words out. By the end of the Zoom hour, the strengths, skills, and characters of all the performers have been elicited and an extremely pleasing spirit of conviviality has presided.
And one feels one has come to know a bunch of interesting people from near and afar.
Tan said he devised this performance concept while brooding on the limitations that covid had inflicted on the theatre world. Partnering with No Strings’ Emma Beech brought forth the support of Arts South Australia and the Adelaide Festival Centre and, at his end, Maya Dance Theatre, the Singapore International Foundation, and Singapore Repertory Theatre. Also melded were the professional peers, Subastian Tan over there and Michaela Cantwell here. The whole endeavour grew in substance, strength, and authority; all of which showed when it came to the first of four public performances.
Sightlines in the Quartet Bar are nothing to write home about. Even in covid chequerboard configuration, sitting at the back of a large, flat room, one can’t see the protagonists at the front except via the Zoom screens. So there is a little bit of loss of involvement. Those at the front, however, joined in with the warm-up exercises and there was lots of arm waving. So, it speaks well of the spirit of the production and the hosting of Tan and Beech that such a warm sense of covid-era kinship is communicated.
This is a brave and beautiful use of the tools of the moment with a very positive and beautiful outcome.
Three cheers.
Samela Harris
When: 13 and 14 Nov
Where: Adelaide Festival Centre, Quarter Bar
Bookings: Closed
Matt Byrne Media. Holden Street Theatres. 6 Nov 2020
What a tonic.
Matt Byrne is giving us just what we need after the fraught, homebody months - a fraught, homebody belly laugh.
The Odd Couple is an oldie but, what a goodie it turns out to be under the skills of Byrne and David Grybowski in the roles of Oscar and Felix, the world’s most gloriously ill-suited house mates. These are the roles memorably forged by Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 60s movie and Jack Klugman with Tony Randall on TV. They are hard acts to follow. Then again, the sports writer slob and the domestic-diva news writer have a certain classic comedic substance especially as written by the great Neil Simon. And as Byrne and Grybowski prove, they can be carried off by a couple of capable character actors, even, as in this case, actors decidedly older than the characters they are playing.
In other words, this odd couple carries the show very well indeed and, as always seems the case in MBM shows, they are surrounded by fine support actors.
This is not to say one does not have to be forgiving at times. The American accents are a bit uneven and some of the lines get a bit botched, but the show rolls on in such good spirit that one can’t help just going with it for the laughs.
The New York poker-playing buddies are depicted by seasoned players gleaned from assorted amateur theatre companies around the town. They are very nicely cast with Timothy Cousins giving endearing embodiment to the food-loving cop, Murray, and Russel Ford, colourful as the other hungry player, Vinnie. Gavin Cianci has sleek mobster magic as the cigar smoking Speed and, as ever, Frank Cwiertniak, playing Roy, is a pleasure to see on stage. Their banter and generally anarchically blokey pack behaviour makes a strong contextual backdrop to the unholy domestic partnership of Oscar and Felix.
Of course, it is a period piece. There’s a pesky home telephone on the other side of the room and lots of not terribly PC backchat about wives and divorce. Then again, when it comes to Oscar and Felix, it is a satirical study of myriad universal facets of domestic behaviour and expectations. One suspends disbelief and laughs.
Byrne plays Oscar with strident voice and as many Matthau moments as he can rally. Grybowski grows and grows into the skin of Felix, a complex character, big-hearted and irritating, a man with the thickest of thin skins, or is it the thinnest of thick skins? Ironically, while the play is redemptive for slobby Oscar, perchance Felix is doomed to OCD peskiness for ever.
Bec Mason and Lauren Weber fill out the cast as the two giggly Pigeon sisters from upstairs. They are English girls, both secretaries, living in New York and looking for fun. Wigs maketh their stereotypes and the actresses play the parts for laughs, and get them.
Co-directing with Byrne. Rose Vallen has tapped into the comic quirks of the characters and added the Vallen choreographic touch to some of the chaos scenes and, one notes, the occasional skip in the step of grouchy Oscar.
The show ticks along very efficiently with a diligent production and tech crew right on the ball, and the set is one of the best this critic has seen on The Studio stage at Holden Street. It is an expansive wall-to-wall design with windows looking over an illuminated NYC skyline. Its scale gives an impressive sense of space to the theatre which, at the same time, allows for a benign sense of intimacy. Win win.
Of course, there is no intimacy in the seating, It is all covid-chequerboard. Audience members sign covid-tracking sheets and have their temps taken upon entry and, in the cashless bar, they queue with impeccable social distancing. It is the new way of the world and, to make up for the lower numbers, the performance season of this most amusing production runs right to the end of the month.
There’s lots of time to gin up and enjoy the tonic.
It’s a much-needed laugh.
Samela Harris
When: 6 to 28 Nov
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
Red Phoenix Theatre and Holden Street Theatres. 22 Oct 2020.
How to get a full audience when faced with covid live theatre restrictions, you ask?
Take one small covid-quantity audience and then multiply it by three in three separate covid-safe performance spaces complete with three separate covid-safe bars. Ta-da! Financially viable and epically ingenious.
Clever Red Phoenix. Holden Street Theatre’s resident company ever was a savvy outfit and Holden Street Theatres just happens to have the requisite separate performance spaces along with lots of glorious open air.
So Michael Eustice and Libby Drake devised a mini festival of short plays around which audiences could safely be rotated. And, because covid-safe requires that venues be cleaned between performances, they assembled some off-the-wall amusements to keep the audiences properly corralled and entertained between entertainments, to whit, “tour guides”: Jean Walker as fierce school ma’m with devilishly long ruler; Nicole Rutty with a tray of diversions; Michael Eustice in adorable Goldfish Suit; and the living legend Wayne Anthoney with his repertoire of magic tricks and a very handsome marionette.
Then, there are the soapbox orators who later take to the stage inside the Box Bar theatre in the very arresting Words That Matter performance: Sharon Malujlo doing the Julia Gillard Misogyny speech artfully with that awful flat timbre and drawling ’strine vowels; Anthony Vawser delivering well, Robert Kennedy’s 1968 speech on the death of Martin Luther King; and Stephen Tongun presenting Martin Luther King’s I’ve got a Dream speech which is, in itself, worth the price of the show.
The audiences are ticketed with colour-coded stickers for this evening of multiple mini-plays and herded thus in socially-distanced groups of 20.
The short plays are pretty much hit and miss. In all, the evening is like an elaborate revue, albeit most of the pieces are on the serious side. Only one, Auto Incorrect, written by Bridgette Dutta Portman and directed by Libby Drake, is rib-cracker funny. Tim Williams shows some lovely comic timing.
Director Brant Eustice has elicited a certain ingenuous charm from Driving Mr Diddy written by Mandy Bannon. Certainly performers Brian Godfrey, Joanne St Clair, and Nick Fagen achieve a quirky interaction as the criminal and the accidental getaway drivers.
There is something for everyone to love to loathe in the odd array of wee plays. With lots of bars and lots of breaks, not to mention the joy of coming back after a long hiatus from living theatre, the thirsty audiences seem highly responsive and, in some cases, keen to be part of the action.
There’s some delicious character work by actors, Kate van der Horst notably in Intermission and Ruby Faith in The Book of Leviticus Show. John Rosen, Kyn Wilson, Petra Schulenberg, Kyla Booth, and Tom Tassmon also, but in this cast of thousands, too many to name.
The main thing about the production is that it is.
It is chutzpah and defiant good spirit in the face of a pandemic.
It is a welcome night out with friends. It is actors, techs, directors and venues back at work. It is imagination and initiative.
It is Red Phoenix rising once again.
Samela Harris
When: 22 to 31 Oct
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com