Bakehouse Theatre Company. Bakehouse Theatre. 8 Jul 2017
Stepping into the Bakehouse Theatre, the senses are surprised by the subtle and wonderful fragrance of ginger and lemongrass. Good heavens, the cramped little Chinese restaurant kitchen set is near-as-dammit, a functioning kitchen complete with fresh herbs and tossed noodles.
But there is not an Asian face to be seen in its busy staff of five.
This is a play in which all the rules are bent. It is not a case of blind casting. Playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig intended Caucasian actors to play the parts: Asians, Europeans, and even anthropomorphic insects.
It is a wild ride of drama skills.
Consequently, it is a short and intense play with narrative and character threads weaving all over the place. Central is the kitchen of the Golden Dragon, a Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese restaurant with a huge menu. The cooks go like the hammers, calling out the ingredients while working over woks and loading take-away containers. Above the restaurant live two air hostesses who come in to eat after a long flight home. Also in the building lives the owner of a convenience store in a clutter of stockpiled goods, an older couple on an emotional downward spiral and a young couple dealing with an unexpected pregnancy.
The primary storyline takes place in the kitchen wherein the newest worker is a young illegal immigrant in agony with toothache. His pain is shared with the audience through the grating volume and intensity of his howling and yowling. Oh, is it so strident. The audience gets the message. The busy kitchen staff does, too, since they can’t hush him. The illegality of the poor lad denies him rights to formal treatment, so the cooks take it upon themselves to identify the tooth and, eventually, extract it, all the while keeping the furious cooking and serving going on around him. It is painfully funny. The force of the improvised extraction by spanner throws tooth high into the air. The world waits in dread. Yes, into the wok it goes. But the cook flicks it out and it flies again. Oh, no! It plops into the hot soup being carried out to one of the beautiful air hostesses.
Her response to it is surprising. But so are most elements of this intriguing little play. The beautiful blonde hostess has an older lover who calls her Barbie Doll. She seems fine with this. Meanwhile, further dramas play out between the other characters in the building. They are vignettes of real life and yet one must suspend disbelief. The building is a hothouse not only of humble humanity but of insects. Like allegorical creatures from Monkey Magic, there also lives an ant with her bountiful stockpile of stored food and a beautiful cricket who has no provisions because she has frittered away her life singing. She begs the ant to share. The ant enslaves her and humiliates her in a downward spiral of unthinkable cruelty.
These two creatures pop in and out of the action with their own episodic narrative. They are beautifully rendered simply with chopstick props as antennae.
Indeed, the presentation and performances of this quirky theatrical experience are uniformly good - as one may expect under Joh Hartog’s direction. Jo Pugh, Brendan Cooney, Mark Healy, Clare Mansfield and Robbie Greenwell complete the able and versatile cast, darting seamlessly from role to role.
Tech and lighting are good, but if there is a star in the show, it is Tammy Boden’s sweaty and claustrophobic little kitchen set with its wafts of food fragrance.
The audience emerges from the theatre, heads spinning with ways in which to interpret what they have seen.
Like a fine Chinese meal, there are many interesting ingredients and, left to digest them for a while, one realises that it has been surprisingly satisfying. So long as one does not worry about the tooth, it leaves a rather pleasant taste in the mouth.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 22 Jul
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
Matt Byrne Media. Arts Theatre. 6 Jul 2017
Matt Byrne never does anything by halves. This show has a very long run. It moves from The Arts to the Shedley at Elizabeth where it will run until the end of the month. This is good.
Perchance this South Australian premiere of Robert Stigwood and the Bee Gees' Saturday Night Fever opened a bit prematurely.
On opening night there was a sense that it was not quite ready. Harmonies were adrift. It was as if one had stepped into late rehearsals.
The show is there. The talent is there. As always, Byrne can assemble some splendid performers.
To play Tony Manero, the dancing spunk made famous by John Travolta, he has cast Sebastian Cooper, a very handsome and engaging performer. He certainly holds the eye whenever he is onstage. Cooper has the classic Travolta dance moves down pat and he can touch at the heartstrings with his acting skills. His voice is good, but along with others in the cast, he seemed on opening night to be pretty much left to his own musical devices which meant for one crucial song that he set out in the wrong key.
The choral work also was loose and not up to the usual Matt Byrne five-star standard.
Byrne, on the other hand, steals from the show in his character roles, especially as the DJ in his boofy blond Afro wig. He is strident both in voice and costume.
Amber Platten is vocally strong as Stephanie although the dancing still needs work and there is lovely support from the rest of the cast, especially Matthew Pugsley, Brad Butvila, Iman Saleh, Lauren Noble and the boys. It is a large cast and everyone shows commitment and a sense of enjoyment in the process.
One of the top scenes in the show is the superbly-choreographed fight with Heimata Triponel as Juan, and his Latino Barracuda gang.
It’s a great musical with famous Bee Gees songs and some snazzy dance numbers. There are some very good dancers in the ensemble, too. And the dance is a strong plus in the production. So are the sets. The use of photo backgrounds with foreground additions is outstandingly effective and professional. Sound quality also is good and the orchestra generally sounds good, albeit there are some issues with pace. But, once the show is snappier and the singing wrinkles have been ironed out, it promises a cheery night of good songs, disco dances and bad wigs.
Samela Harris
When: 5 to 15 Jul – Arts Theatre
When: 20 to 29 Jul – Shedley Theatre
Bookings: mattbyrnemedia.com.au, 8262 4906, BASS or dramatix.com.au
State Theatre Company of South Australia. Dunstan Playhouse. 4 Jul 2017
It is a play about love-hate and it is a production which evokes love-hate.
Modern adaptations are fraught with risk in threatening a playwright’s creative impulse and cultural integrity. To fully appreciate them, it is wise to know the original work which often lives under the dismissive label of “museum theatre”.
This State Theatre production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House has been given the modern-day touch by South Australia’s most promising new playwright, Elena Carapetis. She has brought characters out of 1870s Norway and into the bright lights of modern-day somewhere-nowhere wherein the production has placed them upon an unadorned raised platform in the centre of a stage surrounded on three sides by walls of headlights. This is a set created by a lighting designer and it looks like it. It is not Geoff Cobham’s subtlest design and, while a lot of the production’s fierce and stark lighting has its own good aesthetic, it is peculiarly aggressive, confronting the audience with blinders and, in fact, one flash of such bedazzling brightness that the audience almost goes into shock.
In this ultra-modern minimalist concept, cast members sit upon orange plastic cafe chairs on the sidelines onstage. The banks of headlights are dimmed to put them in the shadows while they are not performing.
To represent the family living room, characters carry their own chairs up onto the dais. In the final scene of the play, the chairs are lined up around the dais as if it has become a doctor’s waiting room.
There are no creature comforts. A child is put to bed by being placed on the floor.
In her adaptation, Carapetis has killed off one of the two children in the play but elevated the presence of the remaining child who is very nicely played on opening night by Clio Tinsley. She symbolises the family unit and also the fate of the female. She’s the little doll in the doll’s house.
Carapetis has stayed fastidiously true to Ibsen’s portrait of Nora as a victim of patriarchal society. Famously, Nora says that she is now wife and before that she was daughter. But, once upon a time, she was born a “person". The play is about this sentiment. It is about an oppressed woman’s urge to free herself to be her own person, not the coerced object of societal expectations.
Nora is a woman who has everything. She had an affluent upbringing and she married well. Her adoring husband, Torvald, has just had a promotion in the bank. She has a nanny. She has spending money.
But there are underlying complications and terrible secrets in her seemingly superficial world. These unfold and the world gradually unravels.
Carapetis has overlaid the script with modern idiom. She has made Torvald younger, sexier and more fun that Ibsen’s straight-laced version. And director Geordie Brookman has picked a superb actor in Dale March to establish the dark and light of the loving but controlling husband. This Torvald is likeable. One feels more empathy in realising that he, too, is a victim of gender expectations.
The modern characters use mobile phones and iPads. They throw the f-word about. They wear torn jeans. They’re obsessed with kale.
They sing pop songs and they dance to raucous rap music.
It is not even the badly-done Tarantella for this Nora when it comes to distracting her husband by rehearsing her party dance. It’s a writhing, twitching, undulating epic of desperate eroticism. It is extraordinarily ugly, but it comes as a theatrical underscoring of the fear and loathing Nora feels for her male-placating predicament in life.
And she’s surrounded by headlights polka-dotting the stage walls. She’s the deer in the headlights of the patriarchy. She’s the out-of-control dancing toy of the men. She’s loved for what she represents but not for who she is.
All of this the young Miranda Daughtry performs with absolute skill and commitment. She connects with the audience from the word go. She is a wonderful Nora and an exciting find for the new State Theatre ensemble.
The Congolese actor Rashidi Edward makes interesting new chemistry. His casting as the awful Krogstad adds the dimension of racism to this version of A Doll’s House. Krogstad is the unpopular outsider, the crook, the loser. Comments about discrimination against him in the workplace suddenly seem colour-coded.
Edward embodies this and his romantic elements with calm panache, albeit sometimes inaudibly. Rachel Burke plays Kristine, Nora’s old friend who turns up as a penniless widow looking for work. It’s a lovely meaty supporting role and Burke devours it with style; similarly Anna Steen as Anna, the family retainer and nanny. In today’s A Doll’s House, she is strong and athletic, darting about the stage like the wind.
And then there is Nathan O’Keefe as poor Lars, the doctor who is an ever-present family friend. This character usually is cast as an older man but O’Keefe is one of this country’s wonderful actors and he nails poignantly the pathos of the lonely man who is not only physically sick but love sick, too. He quietly breaks the audience’s heart.
Altogether, the Carapetis and Brookman modern A Doll’s House is something of a wild ride.
It blares and glares. It ends with a bellow which impudently marries it to a tradition of theatrical tragedies.
But the play’s the thing. And there it is.
I liked it.
Samela Harris
When: 4 to 22 July
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
Photography by Andy Rasheed
Vika & Linda Bull. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 24 Jun 2017
Yes, Carole King is still alive and kicking and living in Idaho. No, she never married "the tear ducts of America," James Taylor. Yes, Neil Sedaka dated her when she was in high school - I'm not sure if he was still in high school, though. Yes, Tapestry, released in 1971, was the top US album for 15 weeks and was on the charts for six years! No, her records sales were not less than 10 million, how about north of 75 million.
Unfortunately, Debra Byrne had the gall to not make it to her own show. The gall bladder, that is, unscheduled removal thereof. So co-star Vika Bull did what any big sister would - make your younger sister (Linda Bull) help you out. With only 2 days of rehearsals and a few bits of paper on a music stand, you would never know.
Do I even need to say this was a great show and got a standing O? The Bull sisters channeled the iconic singer/songwriter to perfection. Generally tag-teaming, the hits just kept on coming. There's a favourite, there's another one. OMG, that one, boy, that brings back memories maybe I'd rather not have (eg. It's Too Late). Are they going to do? ... yep, there it is. Beautiful. They even did other artists interpretations of King's songs. Vika Bull blasted out (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman with nearly the same gusto as Arethra Franklin (she's not yet deceased either). The band was hot. The girls had a lot of fun, and so did everyone else. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 23 to 24 June
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 22 Jun 2017
Director Erik Strauts has taken a gamble in mounting an unknown new American play as part of The Rep’s 2017 season. The Psychic is written by long-time TV comedy writer Sam Bobrick and in 2011 it won the prestigious Edgar award for the Mystery Writers of America Best Play. The hook that lured Strauts to direct it was the sense that he could not, on first read, see where the play was taking him.
That is why the play is fun and it is why no self-respecting critic ever would give away a plot spoiler.
The play is set in present-day New York wherein outrageous gangsters and molls still roam the back streets where struggling playwright Adam Webster lives. He has a sprawling basement apartment with high arched windows which show the lower parts of people passing in the street outside. This set, designed by Patrick Beagan and superbly lit by Richard Parkhill and Jason Groves, is simply star of the show. Complete with electricity switch box, pipes and metal beams it sings with a sense of authenticity.
On hard times, the playwright not only hands out business cards handwritten in pencil but has popped a crude home-made sign in the window advertising himself as a $25 psychic. And thus does the passing parade come to his door.
Adam is played in an exaggerated vocabulary of shoulder shrugs, wide eyes and raised eyebrows by Josh van’t Padje. He’s a phoney psychic and quickly caught out. But then again, does he have a streak of the old prescience after all?
He meets gorgeous Laura Benson, the surprisingly elegant wife of nasty underworld figure, Roy Benson. He meets the ravishingly brassy moll, Rita Malone, and the crafty crook Johnny Bubbles, who wears an ostentatious diamond tie pin. And finally, as news of murdered characters gets around, he meets Detective Norris Coslow, a stereotypical whodunnit dick, absurdly clad in a bright yellow hat and coat. They are all players linked in a convoluted tale.
As the characters reveal themselves and the plot weaves its way forth, it is clear that all is unclear and nothing may be what it could or should be. Herein, it all becomes pleasantly funny.
Strauts brings out the best in his classy cast: Anita Pipprell, James Whitrow, Jessica McGaffin, James Black, and Malcolm Walton. They look classically cornball in their Beverly George costumes and they all work with ease in strong ‘Noo Yawker’ accents.
It’s a beaut production and a welcome source of laughs on a winter's night.
Samela Harris
When: 22 Jun to 1 Jul
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com