Universal Theatrick Group, Working Title Films, Greene Light Stage, Michael Coppel Entertainment and Louise Withers Presents. Festival Theatre. 4 Jan 2019
No one wants to miss it and nor should they. They say that Billy Elliot the Musical has been seen by 12 million people already and its enduring popularity is evidenced by audiences packing out the Festival Theatre in Adelaide.
It is a cracker of a modern musical. It follows all the conventions of the classic stage musical tradition: big dance numbers, good songs, large ensemble, goodies and baddies, tears and laughter. But it has something more, something which grounds it in substance. It is a true story with a significant historic and cultural message. It is as much about politics as it is about dancing; as much about cultural tolerance as it is about hope.
Billy Elliot is a motherless kid from Durham, a blighted northern English coal mining town. There’s a touch of the Willy Wonka in his deprived home wherein the little warmth there is comes from his dotty old grandmother. Dad is a hard-drinking man’s man enveloped in the massive crisis of the 1980 miners’ strike wherein iron-fisted Maggie Thatcher was determined to break the union. Durham was a union town. Hence, like Les Miserables, the narrative embraces barricades and violence. And, literally in the middle of it all, there is a 9-year-old boy who is not like the others. He doesn’t fit in with the boxing school. He is drawn to the ballet class held in the same community hall. And thus does the unlikely transition take place, thanks to the chain-smoking dance teacher who recognises the boy’s aptitude.
The show’s success rests on the skill and star quality of an unknown child performer for which countless auditions and tuition must be invested by production companies. For this production, four Billies have been discovered along with a terrific troupe of ballet-student girls. Adelaide’s first Saturday matinee Billy was one Omar Abiad, a 12-year-old Queenslander. He’s a mighty dancer, especially when it comes to tap. He can hold a tune and, with a shrill boyish voice, deliver a torrent of glottal stops by way of a broad Pitmatic accent.
For some that regional accent is hard to decipher and, for the nature of the show, it is unselfconsciously embellished with working class vulgarities.
Abiad is a diligent Billy and he accomplishes some very challenging solo scenes; exhausting just to watch. Pinnacle of the show is his duet with his grown-up self, eloquently danced by Aaron Smyth. This is the flying scene and it is hard to recall seeing a more spectacular and accomplished flying scene. It is breathtaking.
Indeed, while Lee Hall did both the book and lyrics of this blockbuster show with Elton John composing the music it is Peter Darling’s exquisite choreography under the direction of Stephen Daldry that makes it the visual glory that it is. One cannot omit the name of Ian MacNeil who is set designer. The sets are lavish, albeit while illustrating the world of a rough, poverty-stricken community. The show opens with the miners lined up in the community hall and the grim and angry spirit of the work is immediately established. Scene changes are trucked to and fro and the world of Billy Elliot becomes vivid and complete, from grinding poverty to the utterly beautiful.
This is a show of sleek, five-star professionalism. It is hard to fault the production values. One just has to sit back and bliss out; be grateful that we can still see touring shows of this quality.
As for the rest of the cast, well, it’s all that one would expect, from clever kids such as James Sonneman, simply adorable as cross-dressing Michael, and Ella Tebbut as the hilariously irritating Debbie, along with Tall Boy Oscar Mulcahy and the squealing swarm of tu-tu girls. Lisa Sontag evokes tears and giggles in her apt portrayal of the tough old dance mistress and Dean Vince delights as her geeky offsider, Mr Braithwaite. He’s quite a hoofer! It is always a delight to see Robert Grubb at work and he does not disappoint as gruff old George. Indeed, the ensemble of rough and ready miners in their grimy working coats are a power of good work and, when it comes to the crunch of a sublime piece of choral work, they can do it par-excellence. The miners also can be policemen and the scenes of conflict between the two are most effective, as is the comical police chorus line.
Justin Smith artfully brings the audience onside in his portrayal of Billy’s unsympathetic dad but if any of the adult players steals the show, it is Vivien Davies as Grandma. Her big song, an anti-love song to a shit of a husband, brings the house down. Also notable in overall excellence of support are Drew Livingston and Damien Bermingham.
And, of course, there is a fantastic orchestra conducted by Hayden Barltrop down there in the pit.
Thus does it all add up to a classy show, a pleasure to behold, a history lesson to remember, a piece of politics to respect, and a display of showmanship and stage talent to applaud.
Samela Harris
When: 29 Dec to 26 Jan
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Vitalstatistix in association with the South Australian Maritime Museum. Aboard the Archie Badenoch, Port Adelaide. 11 Dec 2019
The mild and partly cloudy late afternoon on the day of the opening performances for this short season of Waterborne promised a beautiful sunset. At 7:30 sharp, the gathered audience moved on from the Port Adelaide Lighthouse to board the diesel-perfumed Archie Badenoch. Gentleman Skipper Brian gave instructions on how to board his brightly painted vessel by going down a short ladder to engage with its comfortable seating and generous viewing areas. Once inside, Alexis West of Birra Gubba-Wakka Wakka-South Sea Islander-Caucasian decent acknowledged that we were on Kaurna land, and one can imagine what a paradise of habitation and food source the banks of the Port River estuary would have been before settlement.
After steaming down the port estuary for about 20 minutes passing the gigantic gantried ghosts of industry past and present, we slung our rope around a mooring post off to the side of the shipping channel. Here Alexis assisted us with our headphones and invited us to move around the boat and focus on the sparkly rippling water already dancing with rosy hues. There was indeed a fabulous sunset in the west while the Adelaide Hills were glowering with purple under a rising full moon.
In these pleasant and for all but mariners, unusual, conditions, we listen to a compelling narration read by Queensland actor Sarah Kants. Over the past 18 years, UK artists Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead have specialised in writing site-specific work using (to quote the program notes) “performance, video, photography, sound and digital installation. Their work makes use of detailed social and scientific research to expand the viewer’s relationship to site. Often working with experts, they undertake rigorous investigations into the ways we connect with the environment, architecture and public space, and create a particular context to examine the flows of feeling they generate.” Given their stated objectives, Waterborne is certainly a perfect example of achievement.
By writing in second person, French and Mottershead create a thoroughly intimate and personal journey where what’s happening is happening to you. And what’s happened is you have drowned. What follows is a detailed chronology marked by lunar cycles of your flotation and decomposition down the river to the sea until your bones are ground to ephemeral grains of sand. At first shockingly macabre, Kants’ articulate rendering of French and Mottershead’s forensically detailed documentation of decomposition transcends some rather icky fact and science to poetry and meditative seduction. Personally, I also felt self-pity as I imagined this thing happening to me. Yet there seemed justice in becoming the sustenance for so many creatures in the afterlife. This examination of decay is ultimately life-affirming because the alternative is rather grim and final. A complementary gin and tonic, or soda if you prefer, settled the nerves on the way back to the wharf.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget this experience – this ferry trip across the River Styx – not only to remind myself of how precious life is, but for all the other contemplations it provoked. Not to be missed. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 11 to 15 Dec
Where: Aboard the Archie Badenoch, Port Adelaide
Bookings: vitalstatistix.com.au
Stephen House. Bakehouse Theatre. 4 Dec 2019
When Stephen House describes himself as “an old man”, there is a realisation that, indeed, decades have rolled past since the writer/performer first brought his words to the Adelaide stage. His audiences have shared his life story as he wrote and travelled and agonised over his identity, It could sound terribly self-indulgent but the thing is that House is good at what he does and, despite the decidedly and sometimes shockingly seamy side of his path, he has been a stayer with heart and style.
So here he is, back at the Bakehouse looking leathery and wrinkled albeit strong and fit. He is back from an Australia Council literary residency in Ireland whence he tells the tale of Miss Big, a woman so obese she is destined never to leave her tiny upstairs apartment because she cannot fit out the door. Hence she can simply witness from her window the outside world, with drunks and derelicts and passers-by along the city paths of the Liffey, and give sexual favours to gentleman callers who venture upstairs.
She gives extraordinary succour to our writer, becoming his comfort and anchor as he grapples with alcohol and drug withdrawals and self-loathing. House has written an intense depiction of this sweet, sad woman and her predicament and, although he strides alone on a stage adorned only by one white bentwood chair, Miss Big’s little world is so intensely drawn that one can almost see and smell it.
Similarly graphic and immediate are our anti-hero’s accounts of his forays into the outside world of twosomes and wishful threesomes, of ice parties, love, pity, and repulsion. It’s a gritty, gruelling, degenerate world into which House breathes a life both furious and poignant. His stage presence now is confident, practised, and expert. With seaming ease, he leads his audience through darkest landscapes of emotion and depravity on a river of simply wonderful prose. Over and over, one finds oneself pausing to admire a turn of phrase or expression of House’s thought.
This is not a show for prudes or the unworldly. But, with Stephen Dean’s fine lighting and House’s stage skills perhaps at their zenith, it is a powerful piece of theatre.
Samela Harris
When: 4 to 14 Dec
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
chaser.com.au and theshovel.com.au. Arts Theatre. 30 Nov 2019
Adelaide doesn’t always get a stop on the tour by this mob, and Saturday night’s one-off was sold out. Warm anticipatory applause at the opening betrayed a seasoned audience who would be familiar with urbane James Schloeffel’s satirical fake news website theshovel.com.au and disheveled Charles Firth’s The Chaser range of products. Or maybe some have already attended the wars waged and won in 2017 and 2018. Egads! When the dynamic duo review the shenanigans of 2019, month by month, you realise there is a lot of shit to shovel.
Firth and Schloeffel are like-minded liberals with a similar aching ear for the absurd behaviour taking place in our right-facing world. Their huge experience in political commentary results is an onslaught of razor-sharp insights and sardonic satire that is returned with laughter and applause.
And what a year it was. Using moving image as a backdrop, they jog our memory on wobbly Bill Shorten out for his morning runs. There was only one election poll that was consistently correct for two years – Bill Shorten was not the preferred prime minister. Meanwhile, our coal-cuddling koala preferred PM was lampooned for his baseball caps and his “she’ll be right, I’m one of you” attitude. Peter Dutton was mercilessly and personally attacked for the shape of his head, which was symbolic of his well-honed hard line as Minister for Immigration 2014-17. Cruel but funny. Looped footage of a media-savvy teenager smashing as egg on Queensland MP Fraser Anning’s head said a lot about them and therefore us. My highlight of the show is the ten questions of advice sought from Israel Folau along the lines of, “I cut off my wife’s right hand in accordance with provisions in the Old Testament and I’m entitled to enslave her, but she only has one hand. What should I do?” Also in the religious vein, Cardinal Pell was particularly pilloried. Firth showed us doing some The Chaser-type mischief in attaching a brass addition to a bronze plague of Pell’s achievements, labelled, “and convicted pedophile (sic).” Sticking to Australia, Morrison’s like-minded leaders, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, make only cameo appearances, but Justin Trudeau is black-faced with embarrassment.
It is a little daunting to witness such a hefty catalogue of blatant misbehaviour, misinformation, misuse of power and phony missives, so Firth and Schloeffel spliced their monthly catalogue with relief skits from some additional talent. Mark Humphries is a handsome television personality who got his TV start hosting ABC’s The Roast, and he has continued his satirical political commentary on SBS Viceland’s The Feed and on Thursday’s 7:30 current affairs show, as well as contributing to The Chaser’s Australia. He was wonderfully ebullient and off-kilter playing several roles including himself as a quiz master with three contestants shanghaied from the audience - a highlight of the night. Victoria Zerbst and Jenna Owen are comedians and satirists who also contribute to SBS’s The Feed and many other programs on TV and radio. They spiked the show with some serious froth and bubble. All presenters wrote their own material. If you’re accustomed to Fringe stand-up comedy acts, you’ll be tone deaf to the f word; if not, one might say go Folau yourself.
The War on 2019 – Live! is a horribly amusing night out. While not having the class of Jonathan Biggins’s, Drew Forsythe’s and Phillip Scott’s The Wharf Review with its songs, dance, impersonations and 15 years of experience, The War sensibly only charges half as much. You couldn’t get a better deal.
PS - Do not despair missing out on The War… You can always try next year, but also, Firth and Schloeffel will be returning for the Adelaide Fringe 2020 from February 18 to 23 with The Anti-Expert’s Guide To Everything - a butt-kicking diatribe on flip-flop science, vaccine-deniers, regurgitated fad diets and all the other dangerous rubbish we don’t take enough time to de-bunk. Their websites are 24/7.
David Grybowski
When: 30 Nov 2019
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: Closed
BB Group Production presented by Opera Australia and CWB Entertainment. Adelaide Festival Theatre. 30 Nov 2019
It’s a well-known tale; unrequited love, fear, hate, tragedy. Whether told through the guise of the Montagues and Capulets, Catherine and Heathcliff or, as in this case, the Sharks and the Jets, it is undoubtedly emotionally charged.
This BB Group production of West Side Story is as traditional as it gets. In fact, one might be forgiven for thinking one had seen this set before (Design, Paul Gallis). The costumes are lavish and winsome (Design, Renate Schmitzer), the songs are reliable and would satisfy the expectations of a die-hard fan (Musical Supervisor, Donald Chan), and the storyline doesn’t deviate from its original Broadway big brother. But the wonderful young Australian cast, of which many are making their professional debut, doesn’t quite have the emotional chops to fully render this heart-breaking tragedy.
Of the performers there is nary a bad dancer. The cast is brimming with lithe movers and shakers, all relishing the hectic choreography (Director/Choreographer, Joey McKneely). It is edge-of-your-seat stuff and the highlight of the show by a long shot. McKneely’s production is more stylistic than naturalistic, and moments of poignancy are often at risk of slipping into melodrama. Despite being visually stunning, at times it is emotionally vapid.
Of the top billed performers it is Sophie Salvesani as Maria and Chloe Zuel as Anita who steal the show. Salvesani has a beautiful operatic tone that just devours the Sondheim and Bernstein music and lyrics. Zuel has an electric presence whenever she graces the stage and one cannot take one's eyes off her. She has an emotional maturity that really grounds her delivery. America, led by Zuel, is a show-stopping highlight. Tod Jacobsson grapples with the difficult role of Tony, and does admirably. Vocally he has an interesting tone and he sings beautifully, though not always blending with Salvesani, and much to his own detriment.
Opening night suffers from a low overall volume. The orchestra is in fine form and sounds sublime, but vocals are often lost and words gabbled amongst the Puerto Rican accents or low microphone levels.
It is a promising young cast brimming with Australia’s most promising professional musical theatre performers. They deserve our support, and one hopes their effort and energy earns them healthy houses every night.
Paul Rodda
When: 29 Nov to 8 Dec
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au