Gilbert and Sullivant Society of SA. Arts Theatre. 28 Sep 2018
Wow.
One is tempted to leave it at that, one giant, breathless exclamation as a response to this show.
G&S, under the direction of David Sinclair, has turned on a mega musical production of extraordinary excellence. The Phantom of the Opera is simply sensational.
The Arts Theatre is almost bursting at the seams with the scale of the thing. It is big. The sets are huge and tucked in behind them on the stage is nothing less than an excellent 22-piece orchestra. The resulting sound is mighty. Then there is the ensemble cast of thousands with endless costume changes, big numbers, dance routines and crowd scenes. And they’re all good.
As for the principals and support performers, they’re downright classy; good voices and good characterisations.
Adam Goodburn's Phantom is up there with the big names. He is simply magnetic. It’s a tour-de-force performance with the range of that rich tenor voice complemented by Goodburn’s accomplished acting skills. He’s everything the Phantom is meant to be and then some. And he’s working with Serena Martino-Williams who is pitch-perfect as Christine, a divine soprano who also brings the deeper expressions of acting ability to a performance. Everyone falls in love with her. Jared Frost as Raoul is perfectly cast also, and seems born for the role. He has a lovely stage presence.
Then there are the character players bringing the strange old love story to life. David Visentin is an entertaining delight as Monsieur Gilles Andre, with Rod Schultz strong as Monsieur Firmin. Jessica Muenchow is a heavenly Meg with Kaylene Graham an impressive Madam Giry and Jamie Jewell, also the show’s choreographer, delightful as Don Atillo. Monique Hapgood, James Nicholson, Nicholas Munday, Lance Jones, Brad Martin - applause, applause.
Then there’s the speed and discipline of the production crew which clearly goes like the hammers behind the scenes to make all the scene and costume changes, the smoke and spectacular special effects in this renowned old Lloyd Webber musical.
G&S has a long record of fine productions, always gleaning impressive musical talent, but here it has outdone itself and the resulting thunderous standing ovation from the packed house is absolutely its due.
Samela Harris
When: 27 Sep to 6 Oct
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: gandssa.com.au or 8447 7239
A Belvoir production presented by State Theatre Company. Space Theatre. 28 Sep 2018
Directed by Australian stage luminary Judy Davis, this production has been highly anticipated, coming as it does with a wake of glowing reviews from its runs in the Eastern States.
It stars Davis’s husband, the very distinguished Colin Friels, along with award-winning actress Alison Whyte and Adelaide’s most beloved actor, Paul Blackwell, an impressive line-up.
The play, written by the late Irish playwright Brian Friel, is a tough call for actors and audiences because it consists of a series of intense monologues through which three characters tell of the same experiences from their different perspectives.
It is presented in The Space on a raised corner stage wrapped in a splendour of clouds by way of Brian Thompson’s very elegant set. Light in the clouds changes according to the dynamics of the narrative. It is a beautiful, subtle and effective device.
Friels appears as Frank Hardy, an Irish conman, who travels Ireland, Scotland and Wales performing miracle cures. Squeezed into a scruffy and ill-fitting old suit, he tells of his travels, of the country halls and highways, the hopeful believers and the towns, the towns, the towns. He rolls endless inscrutable Celtic place names off the tongue as his traveller’s mantra.
His accent is an Irish meld with a hint of the north.
Friels is a joy to watch. Director Davis would seem to be keeping this character constrained to underplay, but Friels’ every physical movement has extraordinary timing and finesse.
Whyte, with a shock of unruly red hair, depicts his wife Grace looking back on the Faith Healer’s travelling heydays from a grim little London flat years later. She’s a broken woman, drinking herself to death and reminiscing about her fall from an educated background, disgraced by marrying this “mountebank”. She loved him so and tied herself to his crooked path. He had such charm and charisma, but often it was not for her. She did as he bade, even when it meant never mentioning the gut-wrenching stillbirth of their premature child out in the fields somewhere.
Teddy, the faith-healer show’s dogsbody promoter and factotum, describes this tragedy in harrowing detail. Paul Blackwell, with his impeccable eye for comic nuance, brings Teddy to vivid, loveable life. He’s slugging down beers, philosophising about “talent" and telling of the good old travelling-showbiz days: the woman with 200 performing pigeons, and his own wonderful bagpipe-playing whippet. Teddy’s third-party account puts into context the story versions as told by the oft-quarrelling husband and wife. He’s both entertaining and, in the end of the day, oh, so heartbreaking.
This production is very sleek and aesthetic but in the proportions of The Space, one wishes that the action could come down stage a little more. Perhaps it would be good to see the play in a more intimate space.
But it is a powerful and brave piece of theatre about the different ways people share the same experiences and the svelte professionalism of its presentation was met with serious approbation by its Adelaide opening night audience.
Samela Harris
When: 28 Sep to 13 Oct
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
House of Sand in association with State Theatre Company of SA. Old Queen’s Theatre. 21 Sep 2018
From time to time the term “tour de force” leaps forth in the theatre.
And, here it comes again to describe Terrence Crawford’s performance in the revival of Stephen Sewell’s 1980s play, Welcome the Bright World.
For all the fine work surrounding this production, it is Crawford’s triumph in a role he is re-inhabiting after a NIDA student production some 35 years ago.
Welcome the Bright World is a fierce foray into science and politics set in an era when computers were still clunky and office-based, and print-outs emerged as great sheafs of perforated sheets. Here we have two physicists desperately chalking out mathematical equations in the quest for the truth quark, now known as the “bottom" quark. The play is set in Germany between Wiesbaden and Berlin. The senior professor is a German Jew. The academic for whom he comes to work is a former Nazi. Around these principal protagonists are family and authority. The family descends into despair as the daughter’s beliefs swing towards anarchy and the physicists have trouble keeping their fidelities in line.
The play’s content sprawls through science, politics, religion, philosophy, culture and history, a great sweeping swathe of Sewell as we so well recall him from the 80s heyday. And, we may reflect, many things remain much the same in the ethical carnage we have come to know as politics.
It is a good thing that director Charles Sanders and his House of Sand company are magnets for bright young audiences since such samples of serious Australian theatre are wholesome grist for the cultural-future mill.
And being young probably helps audience members when it comes to sitting in the Old Queens. For all the loving attention to its restoration and use as a vibrant venue, it remains cold and physically hard going. House of Sand has supplied knee rugs which help, but beware of the nice little wedding chairs moving backwards and their rear legs slipping into the tier gaps. There were a few distracting moments for audience members discovering an awkward sinking feeling on opening night.
But, the play’s the thing and Sanders has embraced the great white cavern of Queens with a brilliant spectacle of production effects. Black and white projections bring heavy rain to great high windows accompanied by a clever omnipresence of rainy sound. It feels soothing, moody and strangely prescient. Indeed, Mario Spate’s overall soundscape for this production is nothing less than stellar. Owen McCarthy’s lighting plot, similarly, is vivid and thrilling, albeit occasionally erratic on opening night.
With the backing of State Theatre’s set and costume expertise, the production sings finesse born both of practicality and ingenious use of venue. Family living area, office and student apartments are represented on two dais stages which flank the centre opening of the Old Queen’s performance space, the back wall of which has been pleasantly transformed into a garden patio setting. The gaping high window is illuminated to frame actors for dramatic moments, particularly in the opening and closing scenes. Large clear perspex screens, cleverly edged by lights, are rolled onto the stage for the mathematical calculations of the two scientists. They work brilliantly, the actors’ faces clear and close as they dash out their symbols on the faux blackboard surface. Calculations are reiterated by projector on the back wall from time to time. The performance area is always busy with visual enhancements of the action. It even works as an art gallery as one of the characters’ has an exhibition. She is Anat Lewin, a photo artist, much conflicted and wife of the principal scientist Max, and she is portrayed with admirable emotional balance by Jo Stone. Her best friend is beautiful Fay of the stiletto heels and compassionate presence, aptly embodied by Anna Cheney. Their relationship is strained by the dubious mores of their spouses and the hormonal attachments of the Lewin daughter, Rebekah. In her first professional role, Georgia Stanley gives powerful presence to the character of Rebekah and also that of Max Lewin’s young mistress. Roman Vaculik depicts the younger scientist, Sebastian, with a certain degree of European panache, fleshing him out into states of desperate ambivalence when required. It is a strong characterisation and it is a strong cast. Patrick Frost delivers the ominous ex-Nazi bureaucrat, Dr Mencken, with a core of ice, contrasting this role dramatically in the cameo role of the dying dad with dementia. Last in the lineup, Max Garcia-Underwood is sleek and slick as the sinister factotum Herr Heintz.
Sewell writes epic plays with meaty roles for actors and in this case, the part of Max Lewin is nothing less than an entire herd of Charolais for Terrence Crawford. He soars from gentle soul to shattered madman. And, even if it’s not one’s favourite play, it brings towering performances in a very snazzy, professional production from the talented Charles Sanders and his House of Sand team.
We can only look forward to what they bring us next.
Samela Harris
When: 21 Sep to 6 Oct
Where: Queens Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Flying Penguin Productions. Goodwood Theatre. 6 September 2018
Flying Penguin is airborne again with this shining night of two one-hour, one-act, one-actor plays under the title Solo – it’s a format of theatre that we are used to seeing during the Fringe that doesn't get much of a look-in the rest of the year.
Bitch Boxer
Bitch Boxer was big box office during the 2014 Adelaide Fringe when artistic director Martha Lott of Holden Street Theatres brought the show from Edinburgh, and it has the same punch in Jordan Cowan's performance under David Mealor's direction. Bitch Boxer was British performer and playwright Charlotte Josephine's first play for which she won the Soho Theatre Young Writers Award in 2012, while the Adelaide production won the Fringe Award in 2014. It's a high octane, heart-warping story of the resilience and gumption of a young lady from Leytonstone aiming to be one the first female boxing Olympians. Her trainer, her coach, her mentor, her guiding light - her father - passes away early in the proceedings and Josephine, channeling through Cowan, reveals to us a doubly determined Chloe with all her flaws warping and weaving her way to winning.
Mealor and set designer Kathryn Sproul arrange the tiny studio space at the Goodwood Theatres with the audience sitting in bleachers around a boxing ring. But Cowan left me behind as she rushed through the opening scene with unfocussed energy and blurred speech. However, she shook this off and settled into the business of having Chloe box her way out of grieving. Movement director Toblah Booth-Remmers and boxing coach Robart Rijkelijkhulzan aided Cowan in matching a boxer's moves, but the more poignant moments - found in the rituals of boxing: wrapping on the knuckle tape, strapping on the gloves and the excruciatingly tense minutes before the match - really connect. Cowan was magnificently matched against herself in a whirling fight so exciting I wanted to cheer. I miss my father too.
Sea Wall
Actor Renato Musolino is an Adelaide treasure and very likely you have already seen him in a Flying Penguin or State Theatre production. (He'll be in State's The Gods of Strangers in November.) In Sea Wall, British playwright Simon Stephens takes a simple tale of a mishap and transforms it into an ethereal and heart-breaking exploration through metaphor and meaning. And Musolino is your man to perform it. Looking diminutive and vulnerable from the onset, character Alex lets us into his life, a life with his wife and daughter so perfect that there is no need to have another child. They even holiday at his father-in-law's seaside villa in France. But something is going to happen...me thinks. Brace yourself. Musolino conveys the necessaries with direct and frank exchanges with the audience and it feels like he's talking only to you. He is wholly in the moment and drags you right down in there with him. Dramatic tension and mood expression are beautifully heightened with Quentin Grant's composition and sound design, and Chris Petridis's lighting. Director David Mealor keeps it so simple and so beautiful, focusing on Musolino's rendition. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 5 to 16 September 2018
Where: Goodwood Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Arts Theatre. 1 Sep 2018
What on earth possessed The Rep, let alone respected director Megan Dansie, to mount a production of this play?
One could ask the same of the UKs National Theatre which premiered the work in 2015.
It is a funny idea, all right. The nightmarish dysfunctional family Christmas lunch to end all nightmarish dysfunctional family Christmas lunches. And, it is embellished by a quirky comic device by which each protagonist is given a behavioural rule, Rules for Living. For example, one must keep cleaning and self-medicate to stay calm, another must sit down and eat to tell lies, and another must stand up and dance to tell jokes. The rules, supposedly some form of cognitive therapy instruction which come and go throughout the play, are crudely projected onto a screen on stage so the audience might know that they exist.
These odd requirements have their funny moments, but not enough to sustain the audience for two solid hours. The play seems very long and these behavioural games become tedious, as does the play which contains a gob-smacking overdose of trivial, quibbling dialogue. It lives somewhere between Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party on steroids and Edward Albee’s Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on speed.
The characters, two lawyer brothers who would rather have been an actor and a cricketer respectively, the harried and alienated wife of one and the ga-ga girlfriend of the other are all having relationship issues while the long-suffering obsessive old mum tries to keep the show on the road while the turkey is in the oven and, oh yes, pervy old dad comes home from hospital after a stroke. There is a lot of drinking and cross-purposes which might have worked up to farce but only makes it to chaos. Indeed, the whole play by Sam Holcroft is a work which tries too hard to do too much and ends up simply exhausting the audience.
The sad thing is that there is a fabulous cast of actors playing this dire play for The Rep. They seem to be word-perfect in the torrents of dialogue and well-rehearsed in the blocking of their crazed action. Penni Hamilton-Smith is at her character-actress best as the hapless, drug-slugging old mum, sometimes hilarious while conducting her obsessive dusting. Jaye Gordon is an outstandingly fine actress up there slurping the wine and having neurotic marital tantrums. Chris Eaton is marvellous as the repressed younger brother and Steven Marvanek also stars as his acrimonious sibling. Norm Caddick has it easy. He just has to sit in a wheelchair and leer.
But what must he be thinking of all this repetitive verbosity and mounting hysterics?
The play builds up to a frenzy of luncheon lunacy with a series of denouements. And there’s the rub. There are so many finalising punch lines which makes one think the curtain is about to come down that, when, eventually, the cast leaves the stage and the stage lights go dark, making a quick exit is a mistake. It seems that the end of this seemingly endless ordeal is not the end. What? Oh, no. There is yet another scene laugh the ushers who have clearly seen this play before.
Having made a break for it, this critic did not turn around and return. So sorry. She simply could not see those terrific actors wasted for a moment longer.
Samela Harris
When: 30 Aug to 8 Sep
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: 8212 5777 or adelaiderep.com