Adelaide Theatre Academy. Goodwood Institute Hall. Sea Cast. 7 Oct 2020
For this generation, there’s been an uplift in the number of strong independent role models for young girls and women. To be fair, most of them are fictional and animated, but at least they’re there! Brave featured Merida who refused to be married off, Mulan followed her warrior heart (albeit having to disguise herself as a man) and the sisters of Frozen were an inspiration to legions of young girls.
The story of Moana is of this ilk, with the young daughter of the chieftain setting off on her own path, and eventually saving her people and their island home.
The students of the Adelaide Theatre Academy (Theatre Bugs) do themselves proud with this stage adaptation. There’s a bit of an issue with sound production which shows up early with a slightly muffled narration but otherwise all goes smoothly for these young actors.
With two productions a day, there are two full casts alternating; by the standard displayed by the ‘Sea Cast’, one assumes the ‘Land Cast’ performances are equally captivating. The triple threats are well evidenced with a number of cast members displaying outstanding singing, dancing and acting skills.
This production allows individual cast members to shine, but not at the expense of the ensemble, with many members taking turns at main character roles before melding back into the polished chorus. Some very well timed comedy provides good laughs for the audience.
The set is simple, with minimal use of props, but the production is so alive and so well paced that the characters themselves are all that is required. As Moana (Maddie Nunn) journeys across the seas in her wooden canoe, well placed lighting by Ben Francis conveys moods and scenes, as does his equally subtle soundscape. Costumes are simple, with coloured T-shirts defining human characters as well as land and sea (characters in their own right) and a fabulous Tamatoa (the crab), complete with Left Claw and Right Claw!
While there are some wonderful individual singing performances, it is the ensemble work that really stands out, with strong vocal harmonies and rollicking dance moves. Most memorable however, is the sheer enjoyment on the faces of the cast, smiling fit to burst!
The nine year old companion, who loves the Disney animation, proclaimed this production “fabulous!”. Quite right.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 7 to 10 Oct
Where: Goodwood Institute Hall
Bookings: trybooking.com
State Theatre Company. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 8 Sep 2020
There's a delicious, loving buzz surrounding our new Her Majesty’s as she opens her doors for live performance, the spacious new auditorium now in Covid mode with audiences strictly allocated to alternative seats only. Interestingly, on their first experience, the people seemed to love this restriction and yearn for its permanency; not an expected outcome.
In lieu of the deferred glittering song-and-dance, new-theatre, razzle-dazzle opening, Her Majesty’s is staging a serious play, and a classic proscenium-period theatre production to boot.
It is an extremely tall logistical order for director Catherine Fitzgerald, the State Theatre team, and the Festival Centre administration.
But, Adelaide’s theatre people have shown themselves to be glad, simply glad, to have a show at last and they trust in the pre-planned season choices of State Theatre.
By serendipity, this Patrick Hamilton play provides a nod to Her Majesty’s vaudevillian past, there being references to London theatre of the day and actresses out of work.
Fitzgerald has embraced these links absolutely beautifully, bookending the play quite literally with some artful period shtick.
Gaslight is a Victorian psychological thriller, the tale of a hapless young wife whose sinister spouse cajoles and bullies her into thinking she is going mad. It is a play with arguably the best ending in the world, especially as manifested in this production.
For this extra special presentation on this huge new stage, there is a lush and towering set. It is in hues of green and brown with an affluent clutter of art and family possessions, including, one notes, peacock feathers for good luck in the theatre. The principal character, Bella Manningham, wears a prepossessing deep blue and black heavy Victorian bustled frock designed, as is the set, by Alisa Paterson. If there is any fault in the set design, it is that it is so comfortable-looking that one wouldn’t mind moving in.
Nic Mollison’s lighting is a particular triumph. There are sconces of gas lights all around the room and they play their own vital role, not only in day-and-night interior illuminations but in being an eerie part of the plot.
Perhaps because of the scale of the new Her Maj, all the cast members wear microphones, perhaps a less perfect enhancement to the production and one wonders how essential.
Fitzgerald has taken the giant step of blind casting, having Eileen Darley playing the part of the male detective, Inspector Rough. Always a fine actress, Darley seems to have come to a peak of splendid in her skills. She devours the role, adding, as the director intended, the undercurrent idea of women’s roles in supporting women who silently suffer domestic violence. Darley looks wonderful in the layers of male attire, partly comical and party heroic, Indeed, the streaks of comedy through the play are welcome because the plot has one gritting one’s teeth with resentful fury, such a devious creep of patriarchal arrogance is the dominant character, Jack Manningham.
As one would expect, the lead performances by Ksenja Logos as Bella and Nathan O’Keefe as Jack are highly groomed and attuned, Logos desperately pitiable in her growing confusion and O’Keefe slimy and cruel in his psychological manipulations. They are well supported by Katherine Sortini and Ellen Freeman’s engaging characterisations as the two house servants. They offer light and dark embellishment to the conspiratorial prison of the Manningham marriage.
The Andrew Howard soundscape is subtle and apt for this production although there are periods when the play’s muted vocal tones and soothing hues set the mind wandering.
Gaslight is a long, wordy, old-school piece of very trad theatre. It is whence the term “gaslighting” emerged as a definition of making another person fear for their sanity. In this context, it has contemporary currency since there is Donald Trump out there making us all feel as if our world axis has skewed.
So, it comes to pass that happenstance has happened and that this first chapter of the new Her Majesty’s history is a fascinating story in its own right.
Here’s to the next many and varied chapters.
Samela Harris
When: 4 to 19 Sep
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Mystic Dr Drake Radio Plays! A 3-part series. YouTube
Here comes the trusty old Rep joining the line-up of companies which have mastered the art of entertaining their audiences while under the constraints of the Covid pandemic.
And, it is a bravura confection it has devised.
The list of companies who have worked this covid-era theatrical miracle is short. State Theatre of SA with ActNow heads the bill with their sensational, groundbreaking Decameron series, Zoom Theatre of the UK, The Project in the US, and Cancelled, the FB mini-series have led the way into the history books.
And now The Rep.
The Rep has done its own thing.
Reminiscent of its annual stage melodramas, it has produced a wild piece of absolutely cornball retro murder mystery.
Adelaide playwrights Warren McKenzie and Carli Stasinopoulos are the co-creators of Dr Blake, an heroic crime-fighter who is a paediatric surgeon by day and by night a detective with supernatural powers. His colleague, sort-of assistant and would-be love interest is a newspaper reporter called Lois Hanley. In each episode they are confronted with a murder most foul with villains hell-bent on stealing secret weapons, inheritance, or even love. They are as utterly dastardly as the good doctor is mystical and pure.
The tales are presented as radio plays with a row of microphones on a stage and, beside them, two sound effects operators, Mikayla Bishop and Kaityn McKenzie, along with musical accompanist, the inimitable Sandi McMenamin. There are special FX sounds of footsteps, pouring champagne, fire, rustling papers, and you-name-it. McMenamin heightens the suspense with melodramatic overtones or plays tinkling carousel-style backgrounds for the regular "sponsorship intermissions", funny old faux ads that they are.
As director, Warren McKenzie has assembled an extremely able ensemble for these plays. Brenton Whittle, Joshua Caldwell, and Nicole Rutty are the best known names with James Black, Brittany Daw, Laura Antoniazzi, Leighton Vogt, and Aled Proeve. In each episode they play different roles, keeping the whole thing bright and fresh and fun. Scripts in hand, they take one back to the days when repertory radio drama was the mainstream thing, when directors like Stafford Dyson were feared and revered in the ABC radio studio in Hindmarsh Square, when actors such as Ron Haddrick, Iris Hart, Myra Noblett, Margery Irving, Yvonne Hutton, Les Dayman, Len Sweeney, Thelma Baulderstone, and even the young Don Dunstan and John Bannon regularly stood behind the mikes.
From McKenzie’s 2020 cast, there are some delicious performances. Indeed it is good humour, lively characterisations, and fulsome nostalgic aptitude all-round. The actors seem to be loving every moment. Overacting and American accents are de rigeur. And, while it is not a formally-costumed production, the cast members all wear attire suited to the character of the moment. It all works rather well. In fact, the whole exercise, lighting, camera, and sound included, works very well indeed.
It is a gloriously zany and imaginative romp. It also is a gently satirical nod to theatre history and, as such, it is a credit to The Rep.
Samela Harris
Find it here: youtube.com
Since The Rep’s future is core to the intent of the Virtual Theatre, one is encouraged to make donations for the theatre’s much-needed upgrades here: adelaiderep.com/support-the-rep
Episode Two: Those Who Find Happiness After Suffering
Boccaccio’s The Decameron was 100 tales long and, it seems, our State Theatre/ActNow Theatre counterpart promises the equivalent. This means we have just got going. There is a lot more hiding-from-the-plague storytelling to go, and suddenly, one is overcome by the incredible ambitiousness of this plan.
One also thrills at the audaciously generous spirit it asserts. It is a showcase, a playground, and a challenge for a strong cohort of South Australian creatives: from Edwin Kemp Atrill directing the photography of this stream of professional online vignettes to a string of writers stretching their wings, as well as actors and directors.
This is historic stuff. Brave enterprise. The positive out of the negative. The covid collateral.
This week’s chain of tales is a little more up and down than the first set.
Where it is good it is superb.
Of course, there are horses for courses. Each item reaches out from a different soul to a different audience appreciation so generalisations are a bit dangerous.
From this critic’s perspective, the stand-out pieces of the ten include Sally Hardy’s Von, performed by Caroline Mignone and directed by Yasmin Gurreeboo. Von holds a cup of tea at an abstracted funeral gathering while she reflects over loss and the expectations of others. She dares to confide that she feels more relief than grief at this death. She should feel otherwise but, secretly, she just feels release. And so it is for many oppressed and dominated women. Mignone delivers both the character and the message with her usual professional aplomb. Voice and delivery are spot-on, as is Hardy’s brave script, capturing a decidedly tricky subject, and ending it with a simply delicious punch-line.
Most of these Decameron pieces so far have been meditative monologues but Jamie Hornsby’s Michelle has a proper plot. Michelle, played all in white by Miranda Daughtry, tells the tale of a stolen story. It is not unknown for writers to use the experiences of others but, here, it is pain which has become the literary commodity and Michelle expresses the sense of betrayal seeing the writer soaking up the spoils of success. Clara Solly-Slade has given this work rather distracting direction, setting the character in a bed on the floor and allowing an assortment of camera angles. But Daughtry’s performance and the strength of the narrative surmount the distractions to make a potent and memorable piece.
One cannot and does not have to like all the characters in The Decameron.
For instance, J’Maine, written by Alexis West and performed by Jack Buckskin, is a man in jail for an act of appalling domestic violence. He’s First Nation and speaks in a torrent of coarse argot as he contemplates the importance of being connected to Country. He knows he is in for a long incarceration and will have to live with the image of what he did, but he hopes to stay clean and healthy in the future. It is a harsh little piece on a sadly familiar theme. Buckskin plays it strong and straight. Even though it strives valiantly for optimism, it leaves one sad.
Indeed, there is a lot of sadness running through these pieces. The old woman, Anja, written by Alex Vickery-How and performed by Carmel Johnson and directed by Mitchell Butel, reflects and philosophises on love and hate and the horrors of Europe during WWII. Her description of Hitler’s followers and the silenced media is chilling and, of course, one sees the Trumpian parallel. The staging is a bit stodgy and the softly accented delivery is very measured. But the ending, oh, the ending; the strange ways that beauty finds its way into the darkest places.
Saba is perhaps the most animated character in this set. She is written by Nelya Valamanesh, performed by Manal Younus and directed, again, by Butel. She’s a here and now character and she has caught not Covid-19 but the perverse conspiracy-minded fake-news disease. To which end, she is played blithely smug and sensibly unlikeable.
Ellie by Kiara Milera is an odd piece and a hard performance challenge for wonderful Elaine Crombie. She plays an old chook in a dressing gown having a party post-mortem on the phone. It is filled with such everyday minutiae that one is relieved when the phone goes flat.
One is not sure that Rhys Stewart is the right person to play Ben Brooker’s Josip. Then again, it is a tough piece to play as dialogue. It strikes one more as a prose poem; lyrical, eloquent and full of richly beautiful turns of phrase, but not credible from a young person in a hoodie. Anna-Paula Jettick, written and performed by Arran Beattie is another oddity. It is a melange of interviews with drag queens. Valerie Berry has written and performed Lucy with direction from Edwin Kemp Atrill. The direction is strong, less static than many, but the character is not. Finally, there is Matt, written by Emily Steel and performed by James Smith. He’s an Aussie actor in New York, definitely a failed actor but full of a desperation of undying optimism. It is about audition pieces and Smith gives his performance very much the spirit of that very thing.
And there ends this week's ride of the ten. The whole project is laudable and very challenging as monologue for the actors. State and ActNow have well used their time hiding from the plague.
If anything is lacking so far, it is levity.
The original The Decameron stories tended to be rather raunchy, heretical, daring, and funny.
We shall see if any of these characteristics emerge in the ensuing chapters.
Samela Harris
Covid online theatre
Access: statetheatre.com.au
Those Who Make Sacrifices. State Theatre of SA and ActNow Theatre. YouTube. Jul 2020
Hiding from the Black Death in the 14th Century, a group of ten killed time by telling each other stories; ten stories each. This, famously, was the conceit of the Italian writer Boccaccio, and his ensuing book, The Decameron, was heralded as one of the finest works of Italian prose of its time.
In my time, it was a very naughty tome indeed, full of very ribald tales. It was even banned for a while. And then, ever so quietly, it drifted onto the back pages of literary history.
Until now.
Now it is us hiding from a pandemic. It is us trying to entertain each other to pass the long, uncertain time during sequestration. And, the arts is reviving The Decameron concept with a vengeance.
Early on as we hibernated, there was a wonderful Zoom production called What Do We Need to Talk About from Richard Nelson’s Zoom Theatre in the US, for example.
But our own Mitchell Butel and State Theatre, with ActNow, have taken the idea to a higher level and made it a major, multi-faceted arts exercise devoted to the theme of life in a time of plague.
The first section of the South Australian Decameron was released on YouTube this week and there are more to follow. There are ten vignettes, each created by a different writer and performed, accordingly, with appropriately cast actors and directors. They each are aesthetically minimalist and filmed with expert production values. Each represents a solitary soul ruminating or perhaps fulminating over the status quo. They are, of course, as diverse as humankind and, between them, they tap into some of the most pertinent issues of our time: ageing, loneliness, race, and gender. There is something for everyone and more to come.
These self-contained cameo works each require a special “all” from the actors since they are not mere monologues but intense, closely focused solo pieces requiring absolute focus, characterisation, and outreach. They stretch a performer in the same way, perhaps, as audition pieces need to do, showcasing the nuances of expression and intonation. And, by the new nature of solitary audience members focused on solitary players, they evoke an unprecedented scrutiny and intimacy.
To which cause, each brave actor has the support of a professional director from the two production companies.
It is unfair to single out pieces but one, of course, finds favourites.
Elaine Crombie, for example, in Alexis West’s Teahrnah, simply ravages the soul in a powerful, beautiful, and brilliantly balanced performance. She presents as an ordinary woman, a First Nations mum juggling the logistics of being nanna, managing kids, and going out from iso for the essential shopping. It is a heavenly characterisation and a heavenly performance. One falls in love with her. And so very understated, so very fatalistically, as directed by the playwright, she tells the story. Mask on, careful driver. And, oh dear, she really hadn’t thought about it. Disaster, as the cops pull her over. And here comes the phrase “I can’t breathe”. It is a perfect ending to the ten beautiful pieces.
It bookends nicely with Grace, the Decameron 2 opener written by Emily Steel. The inimitable Carmel Johnson plays Grace, a grandmother talking on Zoom to her granddaughter. It is a bit of a pep talk for the pandemic, a bit of grandma philosophy and positivity, and the story of her life, which turns out to be like the disappointing tales of so many women whose lives have been dedicated to making everyone around them happy. It is very well told by Johnson and directed by Mitchel Butel and it has a stunning ending.
Created by Sally Hardy is Wren, portrayed by Miranda Daughtry, a wonderful actress who, very nicely directed by Clara Solly-Slade, shines as the disillusioned vegan who has not managed to keep up with the fertile world around her. It is a bitterly funny piece, a hymn for and against veganism and performed with delicious ironic panache.
Another notable is Ben Brooker’s June which is performed by the elegant Caroline Mignone in warm black coat leaning against a wall in a particularly grotty warehouse setting. The prop on the scene is a bottle of hand sanitiser. June reflects on what’s left in life while her little city shop struggles against the emptiness of Covid retreat as the days crawl by. She misses the pavement population, Mary the mad evangelist, and ponders the place of faith in a pandemic. Brooker has made her exceptionally articulate and, although one can’t imagine a troubled shopkeeper saying it, it pleases the literary soul to hear the phrase “words which sluiced through her arteries”.
Among the other fine works, there are thoughtful tributes to gender dysphoria, Islam, racism, and health, as well as to the issues which surround us. Jack Buckskin delivers a riveting Welcome to Country and later performs a piece by Kyron Weetra.
Writers include Matcho Cassidy, Alex Vickery-Howe. Manal Younos, Penn O’Brien, and Sarah Peters.
There’s a swag of directors and a wealth of talent. Out of the plague, it’s a starburst of creative excellence. And there’s more to come.
Samela Harris
Covid Online Theatre
Access: statetheatrecompany.com.au