Adelaide Festival. Grainger Studio. 16 Mar 2018
Art comes in many forms. This, our history of festivals has shown us. And no “show” emphasises this more than Freeze! - an event whereby a young Dutchman does nothing but balance rocks one upon the other.
Rock balancing has been emerging as a rather elegant phenomenon by creeks and rivers around the USA.
There was and may be still be a rock artist one could watch at Sausalito. And, amid the rushing currents of the Chattahoochee River in the Appalachians, there are little islands adorned with miraculous towers of perfectly balanced rocks, simply left there for the beauty of it.
Hence, the arrival of Nick Steur delivering rock balancing as performance art in Adelaide is just a lovely, lovely thing.
At the Grainger Studio, he greets his audience before their admission, requesting that they turn their phones off and not only silent. A vibrating phone is not good for the rocks. He asks that everyone be utterly silent, also. But, he recommends that they walk around a bit to see the works from different angles.
No chairs are supplied in the studio. People sit on the floor around a stage which is lined with rocks of various shapes, sizes and mineral composition. There is a lot of granite, quartz and serpentine. There are metamorphic rocks and feldspar.
What there aren’t are smooth water-worn rocks. Steur likes rough, angular rocks. The more acute, the better.
A series of posts are arranged upon his stage area and, one by one, he adorns them with perilous balances of rocks.
He dispels any suspicions the audience may have about prepared rocks by silently indicating that audience members choose and hand him a rock. Sometimes he requests three rocks at once. He rests one on his shoulder, puts one in his pocket and then concentrates on settling the other one atop the hollow pole. This is very slow, considered, patient.
It may take many attempts until the rock rests comfortably. Then he introduces the next rock, turning it in all directions, fondling its peaks and corners before choosing which challenging angle to balance. He seems to choose the most unlikely point and then hold the rock in place, gently, gently resettling it, holding it, focusing intently on it, meditating upon it, willing it to stay.
Gently, gently, he removes one hand, watching the rock carefully. Then, the other hand, withdrawn softly, softly, softly. And he steps back and scrutinises the balance. Once satisfied, he moves on to the next pole and the next rocks.
He walks around his square of stage with one hand extended awaiting the gift of a rock.
The audience is mesmerised. Respectful. Silent. Some are keen to choose rocks. Some have brought rocks. Some are happy just to sit and gaze. Some tiptoe steadily around the room smiling at the wonder of it all.
After about 45 minutes, when all the rock poles are occupied by a wonderment of perilous rockery, Steur stands back and bows.
No photos, please. And don’t go near the rocks. They are simply balanced there and could fall at any time.
Respect is paid.
The audience is well pleased with the gentleness of this experience.
Samela Harris
When: 15 to 22 Mar
Where: Grainger Studio 15, 16 Mar;
Botanic Gardens 17, 18 Mar;
Kangaroo Island 20 to 22 Mar
Bookings: bass.net.au
Kotryna Gesait. Adina Apartment Hotel Adelaide Treasury Tunnels. 15 Mar 2018
Descending the steps into the bowels of the Treasury, one is cocooned by the narrow and brilliant whitewashed corridors. The players - dressed in white - greet us with warm and welcoming smiles; I thought maybe I'd gone to heaven.
The play comprises a number of emotionally charged vignettes of tangled love, and if not one of them sounds familiar to you, then you have never got in over your head with another person and probably think that's a good thing.
In the first, Phoebe Taylor's character loses control at first sight and suffers palpable disappointment and humiliation over unrequited love.
Beckoned to the next chamber, actors Jacinda McLaughlin and William Servinis (in his triumphant live theatre debut), play adolescent lovers so completely misunderstanding each other that one is sent immediately back to high school recollecting similar frustrating and awkward stand-offs.
Roy Barker's The Relover just got comfortable exalting in his "homo-normal" relationship when the rules change and he tells us how he copes. Having The Relover's partner on stage - instead of just hearing the story - would have been an improvement.
But the best is saved for last, in the furthest subterranean chamber where there is nowhere else to go, when we witness Cindel Waddington and Claire Sara's infatuants wrestle with their feelings the morning after the first night together. Here Gesait's writing reaches crescendo in the hands of these two actors who, when they are not expressing their awe of each other, expose their characters' insecurities with their Beckettian inner voice.
Indeed, all performances are similarly successful thanks to Gesait's direction in the use of body language and non-visual communication, coupled to a welcoming vulnerability. One is entirely convinced that the stakes are very high in these arenas of love in all its forms.
For me, this show is a profoundly moving experience, compelling me to recall love affairs, to conjure feelings forgotten, and to make me think how terribly comfortable and smug I've become in my older age and my marriage. The players invite a little playful interaction and this breaks down the fourth wall barrier fast, facilitating emotional involvement.
With willing and deep engagement, it's not possible to come out of the tunnels without considerable self-reflection. Bravo!
David Grybowski
5 stars
When: 14 to 17 Mar
Where: Adina Treasury Tunnels
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Bangarra Dance Theatre. 15 Mar 2018
Beauty followed by jolting, soul rendering disturbances forms the choreographic flow of Bennelong’s narrative.
Stephen Page’s careful management of very powerful, incisively direct movement, in partnership with Jacob Nash’s set and Steve Francis’s score achieves more in expressing the tragedy at the heart of the history of Woollarawarre Bennelong than any conventional history lesson.
Page and the ensemble have dug deep within themselves to create a work focused on the inner emotional workings of a traditional Eora man finding himself caught between two cultures, and responsibility to his people. Through their research they have surrendered themselves to finding and articulating in dance things within the heart and mind of Bennelong suggested in the historical record.
The end result is a work as much a celebration of a life and culture as it is a profoundly discerning, piercing investigation into what it costs to build bridges between two extremely apposite cultures, in which one of them has a significant advantage.
Beau Dean Riley Smith dances the role of Bennelong with extraordinary insight, layered with finely attuned, gripping psychological depth. He is powerfully supported by the ensemble in rich choreographic exposition of culture and community.
Bennelong’s story is one of negotiated conquest. In choreographic expression it’s made totally clear in subtly fused elements of First Nation dance with Europeans, as Bennelong and his people come under European influence. This engenders so many moments of powerful introspection between two cultures as they circle each other, interact, engage then reject things each cannot accept.
Bennelong’s stressed inner self and identity is always at the fore. The gradual tearing down of his self-worth, and allegiance to land and people, is a deeply sorrowful thing, but not one of meek submission in Smith’s bravura performance.
It is a loss for all, felt through the centuries since 1789.
Bangarra Dance Theatre has done a great and profoundly important service through their art by creating this work, which does more to reach into the heart of suffering in history, and offer a pathway to understanding and compassion through spirit in history, than dry words.
David O’Brien
When: 15 to 18 Mar
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
By Amer Hlehel. Directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi. Adelaide Festival. Space Theatre. 15 Mar 2018
A square of white in a vast open black stage. A small bench. A black briefcase. One nondescript ageing man.
This is Taha in his speck of existence. He is a man the world did not want. He is Palestinian. He is a poet.
Amer Hlehel embodies Taha Muhammed Ali in 75 minutes of riveting monologue. Hlehel is a Palestinian actor, a man not only with the soul of the Palestinian predicament but with the training and technical artistry of a supreme story teller.
Thus does the poet take the audience from his extraordinarily ill-starred birth, to his relationship with a stoic mother and a crippled father, through his boyhood as a backyard entrepreneur, and through the fall of Palestine and the ensuing years in Lebanese camps.
He depicts a sweet and vulnerable lad who is driven to be a bread-winner and who is ever desperately seeking his father’s approval. He tells of Taha’s first exposure to the big wide world in a visit to Haifa where, away from his little strict Islamic village, he hears the voices and languages of an emancipated society. His excitement is infectious. He tells also of the Palestinian tradition of betrothal and how from boyhood onwards Taha loved that baby cousin who had been chosen for him. He tells of how it was for those who returned to their homeland from the refugee camp. His heartbreak is our heartbreak. Hlehel stands before us, a trembling old man recalling all the joys, disappointments, furies and ironies which lead to Taha’s evolution as one of the great poets of his people. The audience has fallen in love with this performance and rises to its feet in acclaim as Taha leaves the stage and Hlehel, suddenly fit and vigorous, the consummate actor, comes forth to take his bow.
Samela Harris
When: 15 to 18 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Written and performed by Joanne Hartstone. Holden Street Theatres. 11 Mar 2018
She was born in Bowden to become one of history’s most colourful suffragettes. She is reborn in Hindmarsh to become one of the Fringe’s most celebrated figures - and clearly, with a long performance life ahead of her. Muriel Matters would be incredibly happy with this turn of events, for she has become the subject of the brilliant Joanne Hartstone’s latest one-woman show.
Hartstone, already one of the most lauded and awarded Fringe performers Adelaide has produced, has researched deep into Matters achievements with help from Frances Bedford, Adelaide’s doyen of all things Muriel Matters. While Bedford has kept Muriel Matters’ history alive, Hartstone has brought Muriel Matters to life.
It’s a huge and exhilarating performance.
Since Matters was, among her many accomplishments, an elocutionist, it takes an actress with serious vocal skills to take on her talents. Hartstone has the training and the vocal range to depict her with ease. Not only but also, Hartstone has the modulation range to take her subject through a lifespan from shrill girlish excitement through eloquent narration and into speechifying to the masses.
Muriel Matters (1877 - 1969) was also a journalist, a lecturer, a teacher and an actress. Most famously, she was to chain herself to the grille of the Ladies’ Gallery in the British House of Commons in a spectacularly successful stunt to gain attention for the Women’s Freedom League which protested against the oppression of women in a male-dominated society and which called for female suffrage. Matters' background as an Adelaide girl gave her the added oomph of early female suffrage in her home town.
Joanne Hartstone traces Matters’ life through this and all her other outstanding exploits, including her down times and her rather strange, ever-postponed romantic life. It’s a nice, thorough piece of bio theatre.
It’s also a high-energy performance. Hartstone, dressed in well-tailored period garb and with the Matters talismanic cameo at her throat, performs this work with an interesting set, carefully cluttered with desk and coat rack and books and suitcase. A big shipping trunk symbolises her travel between Australia and England. When opened, it rather surprisingly puffs up clouds of smoke which emphasise major historic points as well as giving the stage a lovely, soft, smoky aesthetic.
A little stand rolling silent movie-style captions cleverly supplies dates and dot points to the Matters career.
Hartstone is something of a darling Australian girl in her own right. She has evolved into one of the major figures of the Fringe world both as an entrepreneur curating her own mini Fringe in the city and Botanic Gardens, producing shows as well as creating outstanding solo pieces. Her The Girl Who Jumped Off The Hollywood Sign was showered with five-star reviews and “Best of” awards where ever it was presented in Australia and overseas.
That Daring Australian Girl is destined for the same path of acclaim.
Samela Harris
5 stars
When: 11 to 18 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres, The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au