University of Adelaide Theatre Guild. Little Theatre. 4 Aug 2019 Matinee
If ever a play came with a hurrah of hype, this is it. “Unarguably one of the best plays of the twenty-first century”, enthused a 2009 London review; one which stirred Theatre Guild director Nick Fagan to cite Jezz Butterworth’s Jerusalem as his “all-time favourite play”.
Hence comes this intense production transforming the Little Theatre into an extremely squalid glade of the woods in Wiltshire. It is a sensational set dominated by a battered caravan surrounded by messy domestica and post-party detritus.
It’s the long-term home of Johnny “Rooster” Byron, a one-time stunt rider and a generally dissolute and damaged character. The local council is hell-bent on evicting him from this piece of England’s green and pleasant land. They call him a “Diddicoy maggot” but he claims to be true Romany and asserts a defiant sense of entitlement. He passes his days peddling drugs, drinking himself to oblivion at any pub which will still have him and concocting ever-more fanciful stories to impress his drug-addled acolytes.
In stained singlet and massive workman’s boots, Brant Eustice gives a gruff obnoxiousness to Byron’s character. He seizes the audience’s admiration in his opening scene, downing in a gulp a raw egg and milk hangover breakfast. For the next three hours, he clomps and limps restlessly around the creaking little stage in an exhausting, explosive tour-de-force performance. Despite humanising moments when Byron interacts with his hapless little son, it is an irredeemably unpleasant character Eustice evokes.
There are moments of levity and craziness in the production but the promise that Jerusalem is a comic play is not fulfilled. It is, in fact, a somewhat turgid study of rural no-hopers.
Director Nick Fagan has rounded up a marvellous cast to embody the odd bods of Byron’s world on this St George’s Day when the Flintock Fair is revving up nearby. Council employee Wesley, played by Peter Davies, rocks up as a reluctant Morris dancer. He tries haplessly to forewarn Byron of the Council’s imminent actions against him.
Adrian Barnes presents a character of complete incongruity, the “professor”, a fading relic of erudition who is away with the Shakespearean pixies, or is he? The elegant resonance of Barnes’ voice is dramatic cultural contrast to the hoarse bellowing of poor Byron, not to mention the strident exuberances of the girls. In itself, the Professor is a puzzling character. A lost soul of sentience in a hellhole of gullible boors? He is not particularly likeable, albeit his hypnotic stoned scene is clever and one of the more humorous snatches.
But this is not a play about likeable people. It is about “dark Satanic mills” on England’s green and pleasant land; an underworld in the woods. There are plenty of them in real life and the expansion of trendy housing estates does shine a light on them just as this play asserts. A drunken down-and-out’s chaotic campsite is not compatible with a developer’s vision.
Among the good performances in Fagan’s production shines Robert Bell who is a newly risen star on the Adelaide stage. Ashley Penny is utterly arresting as the underage hanger-on, along with her rather less shrill but ever more tarty companion played by Harper Robb. Benjamin Quick, Jonathan Pole, Georgia Stockham, and Oliver Reschke adorn the stage with good characterisations along with Allison Scharber, Curtis Shipley and Alan Fitzpatrick.
The play’s symbol of beauty and damaged hope is Phaedra, the missing teenager who manifests like a dream in angel wings. In this role, Eloise Quinn Valentine opens the play singing Jerusalem in unaccompanied perfection.
And, by the way, in this era of ubiquitous Americana upon our stages, there is something deeply refreshing about hearing a cast of Australian actors seeming quite at home in the lilting intonations of the English Wiltshire accent.
It is a long play and the Little Theatre is not very warm. Rug up.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 17 Aug
Where: Little Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
State Opera Of South Australia. State Opera Studio. 2 Aug 2019
Christina’s World is the second of three chamber opera productions by the State Opera of South Australia in its Lost Operas of Oz series. (The first was Boojum! and the third will be Madeline Lee.) The premise of the series is simple: opportunity to hear more opera composed by Australians, even if not on the main stage, and revival of works that for whatever reason have been infrequently performed. For some, the very existence of the series has been somewhat contentious, but for others, Boojum! and now Christina’s World have opened a whole new domain.
Composed in the early 1980s by iconic and much loved Australian Composer Ross Edwards, with libretto by Dorothy Hewett, the opera takes its inspiration from Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting of the same name, but the connection is rather slight. Knowing anything about the enigmatic painting, and this reviewer has admired it at the New York MOMA where it proudly hangs, doesn’t really give one real insight into the opera. The storyline is rather bleak and touches on a number of disturbing themes, including infanticide. In fact there is likely too much happening, and in barely an hour and with four of the five cast doubling roles, there is insufficient time to explore any of the themes in any great detail. There is no expansive narrative in which to luxuriate, there is no detailed character development to contemplate, but there is Ross Edwards’ wonderful music and there is some superb singing, particularly from (mezzo) soprano Charlotte Kelso and tenor Nicholas Jones
The plot focusses on the central character Christina and looks at key aspects of her life (and of her family) as they play out in and around the family home. It is almost a case of “if these walls could talk”, and this is perhaps the most obvious connection with Wyeth’s painting – a house that has seen much but obscures its secrets. Christina has a degenerative disease that impacts her physical mobility but she is beautiful and generous in spirit. Christina (Charlotte Kelso) has a brief relationship with and falls pregnant to Tom (Nicholas Jones). He is long gone by the time the child is born and Christina desperately ‘commits’ the child to the embrace of the ocean. (Her own mother had committed suicide by drowning herself in the sea.) Later Tom’s dead body is found – we don’t know the circumstances of his death, but we can easily imagine that Christina’s mentally ill Uncle Harry (Adam Goodburn) might have been responsible, or her father (Joshua Rowe), or even herself? The narrative darts backwards and forward between the present and when the events took place. We see it all from the perspective of the young Christina and also the middle age Christina played by the impeccable Elizabeth Campbell whose character starts and ends the play.
Edwards’ score is episodic and suits the busy segmented nature of the plot, and conductor Warwick Stengårds’ describes it in his programme notes as “dance-like” and “lyrical”. Indeed, the lyricism of the arias sung by Kelso and Jones are a highlight of the composition.
Christina Logan-Bell’s set design evoked the very essence of Wyeth’s famous painting (especially the grassy plants in the foreground which draw their inspiration from the painting’s filamentous brush strokes), and Ben Lett’s lighting design effectively includes several projections onto the walls of the house and outbuildings to underline the drama.
The twelve piece orchestra was excellent, Mitchell Berick’s work on clarinet was exceptional and Sami Butler’s percussion was precise. At times, the ensemble risked obscuring the vocalists, but this is perhaps inevitable in the tight confines of the Opera Studio.
Nicholas Cannon’s direction with an awkward story line was tight and effective.
This is a production of which State Opera can be justly proud, and the capacity audience was rightly generous in its applause and very much appreciated that Ross Edwards himself was in attendance.
Kym Clayton
When: 2 & 3 Aug
Where: State Opera Studio
Bookings: Closed
Patch Theatre. Space Theatre. 27 Jul 2019
“Take care of the light and the light will take care of you.”
That is the mysterious advice given to audience members as they file into the Space to see Zoom.
They now are in possession of strange round clear plastic objects which glow bright with dots of blue light.
As the lights dim in the theatre, the audience glows in the dark.
Expectation is palpable.
Softly lit onstage are a bed and a hanging lightshade.
Temeka Lawlor appears. This is her bedroom. She has one of those blue lights, just as the audience does.
She caresses her light and waves it in greeting to the audience. Instinctively, the audience of four to eight year-old children and their parents reciprocate with mimicked action, and the auditorium is alive with a joy of little blue lights - and curiosity.
The ensuing entertainment is a voyage of surprise and wonderment.
It is the new Patch director Geoff Cobham making his mark on children’s theatre. Cobham’s claim to fame is lighting design and here is a show about light, the beauty of light in the black box world of the theatre.
Lawlor mimes with her wee light and with lines of light and with walls of illuminated illustrations. Wild, zany linear creatures emerge and animate in a thrill of black light artistry. Lawlor, with her mostly invisible black-clad onstage partner Angus Leighton, wields light sabres and flashlights and lasers. A black and white world produces rainbows. The human being turns into a line drawing.
Ironically, for this work of sophisticated modern technology, Cobham has used the old-school picture book of Harold and the Purple Crayon for inspiration. Harold created his own world in line drawings and so does Lawlor, only speaking aloud towards the end of the show when the audience’s mass of little blue lights are called into interactive action. With Jason Sweeney’s simply wonderful music - soothing, evocative, exciting, exuberant and illustrative in its own way - she brings the 45-minute show to a disco wonderment of a climax. "How did you do it,” she asks the children as their lights all change colour. How, indeed. Impeccable technical expertise, is how.
Zoom is a simple story of a child in the dark, of imagination in a bedroom. It is an eloquence of mime and a bravura performance of computer wizardry.
Credited along with Cobham for its creation are the two performers, along with Dave Brown and Roz Hervey. The technical design is by Alex Hatchard and Chris Petridis with animation by Luku.
Applause all round.
Samela Harris
When: 3 and 10 Aug, 11am and 2 pm
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
STARC productions. Bakehouse Theatre. 18 Jul 2019
The absurdist plays of American, David Ives are little known in Australia, says director Tony Knight in his eccentric onstage role as breathless drama lecturer and, er, bell-ringer.
STARC is presenting five of Ives' short plays from his collection All in The Timing. And, indeed, for the two performers, Stefanie Rossi and Marc Clement, it is all in the timing. It is fast and furious and lateral and stopwatch. It is machine gun fire, reactive, nonsensical, wise, witty, imaginative and generally fairly unexpected. Thank dog for performers of the calibre of Rossi and Clement. The whole thing would struggle without such timing and dramatic agility. They are a dauntingly brilliant team.
The Bakehouse stage is dressed with lines of folding screens, several tables and chairs and is snappily lit by Stephen Dean. Knight occupies one table for the first play, Sure Thing, which is a zany, quick reflex exercise in alternative reactions. Knight pings the shop bell to cue the segues in the evolving alternative conversations between a couple meeting in a cafe. It is quick and clever and lots of fun.
In Variations on the Death of Trotsky, Clement appears with a comic false nose and a wig embedded with a mountaineering axe and proceeds to demonstrate imagined variations on the theme of Trotsky’s death the day after the axe attack. Nasturtiums and pratfalls. Rossi, with a lovely clipped Russian accent, is a fine foil as his wife. Again, fast, funny and eccentric.
English Made Simple played games with pickup lines at parties, the potency and potential prescience of first impressions. Rossi and Clement throw introductory lies at each other like spit-balls. What’s in a name? Names rattle rapier-like off the tongue and one wonders.
Long Ago and Far Away is a deeply existential and rather dark and longer piece. The audience, used to the verbal acrobatics of the earlier pieces, grows restless, and then thrills at the artistry of the ending. Director Knight, rushing around onstage to set up the next playlet, suggests that audience members talk among themselves about it. “We don’t understand it, either,” he jests.
The Universal Language is the grand and gorgeous finale. A stutterer seeks fluency in a new language. Rossi stutters, with the same expertise with which she does everything else and Clement as teacher in red fez talks in a complicated zany gibberish in which all manner of bizarre words and names may or may not be elicited. It is a very funny, clever, and touching little work - and a tour de force by the two wonderful actors.
This torrent of entertaining absurdity is over in only 75 intense minutes, and the audience erupts out to the bar to drink to the pleasure of the experience.
Samela Harris
When: 18 to 27 Jul
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
State Theatre Company of SA. Dunstan Playhouse. 16 Jul 2019
There are those nights in the theatre when one feels greatness in the room. Special nights.
The opening night of State Theatre’s A View from the Bridge was one such. Not only is Arthur Miller’s play a superbly written work which endures the decades almost flawlessly but also because this is one helluva production in which Mark Saturno gives one of those breathtaking once-in-a-lifetime performances. He is pure, passionate, focused and connected.
While his years in America may have honed a nigh-perfect Brooklyn accent, there is only heart and the insight of human otherness which could underscore Saturno’s devastating bravura performance as Eddie Carbone, the complex anti-hero of this now-classic tragedy. Saturno is Eddie and his frustrations and fixations sear into the audience's emotional core.
After their positive storm of applause, opening night audience members were turning to each other to further share the wow factor, pausing on the stairs, unready to let it go. They had just experienced a grand melodramatic climax, one which could be looked upon as an aged narrative cliché. Everyone knew it had to be coming. And yet their hearts had been in their mouths. They were, as one, gripped by the unbearable inevitability of it all.
Director Kate Champion may now preen her feathers at delivering this fabulous piece of theatre with such intensity and freshness. Supporting her vision, Jason Sweeney’s skills provide a masterful soundscape, just there insightfully highlighting moments and never ever showing off. As for Victoria Lamb's set: it is utterly brutalistic. One could not call it likeable at all. It is a towering maze of marine ropes and pulleys with box frames of assorted sizes which can lift and lower, but are grouped together not only for the impression of a harsh working waterfront but also as the play's claustrophobic slum tenement in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Champion has allowed nothing to soften its austerity, not even Beatrice’s tablecloth or coffee pot. There are no props apart from one chair’s brief but pertinent appearance; just the effects of Chris Petridis’s moody lighting which provides a misty depth of field to that hulking great set. The actors have to clamber through and over it, hanging off the ropes and dragging bits of it here and there to suggest seating. It seems perilous hard work at times and yet one finds oneself accepting its heartless aesthetic. The conviction of the characterisations has captured the imagination.
Superb performances emerge from all the cast members as they deliver Miller's story of illegal immigrants, family, Italian cultural mores, love, and emotional fixations. The play may have been written and set in the 1950s, but the themes remain apposite. Indeed, (spoiler alert) the once-controversial homosexual moment is actually quite electric as delivered in this stunner of an interpretation.
Elena Carapetis continues to thrill as a consummate actor, here playing Eddie’s wife, a loving, welcoming, and stoic soul playing host to her cousins from Italy. She suffers in the shadow of her husband’s mawkish preoccupation with her orphaned niece, Catherine. Where the script does not give words to her plight, Carapetis’ face communicates riven private emotions. She adorns the stage with exquisite nuance and, at the play’s most terrible ending, she is the power of human grief. She’s a worthy foil to the dramatic might of Mark Saturno and vice versa.
The only muted presence onstage is Bill Allert as Alieri, the lawyer. He lurks in the shadows among the ropes and boxes, coming sometimes front of stage as chorus to extrapolate and sometimes being sage to rein in the emotional turmoil of Eddie Carbone.
Antoine Jelk has been well cast as the blond Italian pretty boy Rodolfo who steals the heart of his ingenuous cousin Catherine. He has come illegally to the US with his brother Marco, to find a better life. Jelk develops the character effortlessly albeit his accent is just a tad unspecific. Dale March plays the dark horse of the cast, his desperate brother Marco, who slaves to send money to his wife and sickly starving children. March plays Marco as a gaunt powerhouse, credible and pitiable. Meanwhile, Maiah Stewardson bounces blithely as Catherine, the impressionable teenage fly in the ointment of psycho-sexual family tensions. She delivers a character of naiveté and wilfulness, skittish and sweet. Arthur Miller could have asked for no more.
And nor could Adelaide.
This production is simply breathtaking, a Champion's winner.
Samela Harris
When: 16 Jul to 3 Aug
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au