State Theatre Company and La Boite Theatre Company. Space Theatre. 6 Jul 2016
First of all, I have to make a disclaimer: I am a straight white male, and according to New York playwright Young Jean Lee (Asian-American female of sexual orientation unknown to me), I come from a privileged background, and I think she wants to make my type feel pretty uncomfortable through watching this play, which I did. The Young Jean Lee Theatre Company's motto is "destroy the audience." After dealing with some of the issues of the play in my own life over a few days prior to opening night, and then watching this unraveling of a broken family of straight white men, I came out of the theatre feeling worse than when I went in, so tick, the play is a success.
Straight White Men is an excellent import product; an unadulterated example brought right to our door of the issues bearing on contemporary theatrical playwrights in that centre of English-language drama, the Big Apple. Young Jean Lee has been described as "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by the New York Times, and in a bigger pond, was touted as "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by Time Out New York.
The contrast of the beige living room of the comfortably well-off, where the action takes place, with blaring female rap music certainly gets you off balance from the start. We see three brothers approaching middle age, evidently gathered for Christmas cheer at Dad's house. Actors Chris Pitman, Lucas Stibbard and Hugh Parker present exuberant siblings used to shaming and rough housing each other without taking it too seriously. However, the potential for damage is so much greater when large male adults are doing the horsing around instead of kids, and this adds to the menace and tension in the setup of the narrative. They are pretty good dancers, to boot. Dad, played by veteran performer Roger Newcombe, seems to take it all in stride, and even when it goes to far, he simply goes to bed. Christmas is in name only.
After the fore play, when we are laughing at the strangeness and silliness of it all, but still disturbed with what is lacking - like Mom, table manners, and any real communication amongst the men - we get that something is really not right with one of the brothers, and Young Jean Lee has each of the others trying to fix him or explain it in their unique way. In doing so, themes of masculinity, socially advantaged privilege, not succeeding in life and what constitutes a good life are all explored. The saddest thing for me, though, was I saw a play about depression - what it's like to have it, and how people react to it, especially people who have no idea of what it feels like.
Director Nescha Jelk infused the production with plenty of energy and drive, and helped create distinct stereotypes with the players. The show began with a lengthy welcome to country by assistant director and stagehand-in-charge Alexis West - it is NAIDOC Week after all. Her ostentatious flare in resetting props for each act slowed things down, and her contribution to the production was confusing.
The Young Jean Lee Theatre Company's goal "is to find ways to get past our audience's defenses against uncomfortable subjects and open people up to confronting difficult questions by keeping them disoriented and laughing." Mission accomplished.
David Grybowski
When: 1 to 23 July
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 25 June 2016
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, they say, was Tennessee Williams's favourite creation, and for it he won the Pulitzer Prize For Drama in 1955. He wrote The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire in the decade before, so he had some good practice. Like these plays, and amongst the most famous by his contemporary, Arthur Miller - Death Of A Salesman, and All My Sons - the playwrights force family members to confront a heap of issues in a short period of time, making for excruciating tension.
Set in a sweltering Southern mansion near the banks of the Mississippi, patriarch Big Daddy's two sons and their families gather for his 65th birthday. Amongst his presents, but hidden from him and Big Mama, is a terminal cancer diagnosis. While the kids are feuding over the legacy, favourite son, Brick, and wife Maggie struggle with life after Skipper, an unseen character in this drama with whom Brick denies having a homosexual relation. Big Daddy and Brick have a lengthy heart-to-heart. The play is a huge challenge to actors given the raw emotions generated by crass denigration and emotional surprise that must be sustained through lengthy dialogues, some of which apparently were pared back.
Southern hospitality abounds in the delightful bedroom of Brick and Maggie imagined by set designer and director Barry Hill. You can feel the oppressive heat only relieved by slight breezes through the French doors opening onto the balcony. Maggie is frustrated by Brick's rejection of her sexuality and is like a cat on a hot tin roof, and the success of any production largely, and certainly early in the piece, depends on achieving a near unbearable sense of sexual frustration through unrequited desire. Anita Pipprell and Director Hill didn't quite have the train pull into the station on that one. Brick, as Joshua Coldwell played him, was an impenetrable brick. While Coldwell looked every inch the ex-footballer, Brick's scowl and sullenness was unbroken from curtain rise to fall, even after downing most of a bottle of bourbon. A more difficult role is that of Big Mama, whose ceaseless excoriation by Big Daddy ought to generate waves of sympathy, but Jude Brennan was not able to lead us there. Russell Starke's Big Daddy commanded the stage as he provided a master class in the actor's tools of voice, bearing and gesture, showing, for example, that a flick of the hand could be as effectively dismissive as a slurry of words, once the characterisation has been firmly established. But that was not enough - this production largely unfulfilled the promise of the play.
David Grybowski
When: 23 Jun to 2 Jul
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: www.adelaiderep.com
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 25 Jun 2016
The first Cabaret Festival for Artistic Director’s Ali McGregor and Eddie Perfect closed in fine form with some lovely performances & covers of Australian songs by Festival artists.
The evening opens with a sultry and rousing performance of Can’t Get You Out Of My Head originally recorded by Kylie Minogue for her 2001 album Fever. McGregor oozes over the lyric with back up from Perfect and galah-esque dance provided by the cast of The Birds.
McGregor is clad in a shimmering outfit, reminiscent of the colours of a galah, whilst Perfect leaves nothing to the imagination in his singlet and stubbies; dressing his outfit up with the later addition of a white tux suit jacket.
Kate Ceberano and renown pianist Paul Grabowsky pair up for the second song of the evening. Ceberano wears a beautiful black evening gown and glows as she sings a gorgeous cover of the Divinyls’ I Touch Myself, a song she performed for breast cancer awareness; “I don’t want anybody else / When I think I about you I touch myself / I love myself, I want you to love me”. Ceberano continues to demonstrate why she is one of Australia’s greatest singers and performers.
Adelaide’s own Deborah Krizac takes to the stage next with a sweet rendition of Olivia Newton-John’s 1974 hit I Honestly Love You, ably backed by the onstage band for the evening ‘The Budgie Smugglers’ lead by Vanessa Scammell.
Writer of Keating! The Musical, Casey Bennetto is up next with a hilarious rendition of his own creation titled Show, Don’t Tell; “But if life were just a cabaret extended / Then what would be the point of cabaret? / The day is where our efforts are expended / The night is for escaping from the day..” a perfectly apt song choice for the evening.
Next into the fray is Australian, Carla Lippis backed by the Class of Cabaret Graduates spinning a sexy rhythm around Australian alternative rock band The Church’s Under The Milky Way. The Graduates - Naomi Crosby, Benji Riggs, Mellie Tantalos, Harry Nguyen and Jemma Allen – groove along with Lippis, creating delicious harmonies and rhythmic support.
The comedy lifts with McGregor’s return to the stage as she tells an amusing story of the best and worst cover songs of all time. The winner was of course, a cover of Leonard Cohen’s Halleluja by Jeff Buckley, but the loser is where McGregor sought to make amends - Celine Dion and Anastacia’s duet of the AC DC hit You Shook Me All Night Long.
Shunning The Budgie Smugglers, McGregor pulls out a Suzuki Omnichord from the 80s and takes back the AC DC hit singlehandedly, providing her own backing as well as the soaring lyric. She truly is a spectacular performer, even lending some seriously high pitched opera squeals to the number!
Host of the second week of the Backstage Club and Class of Cabaret mentor Libby O’Donovan takes to the piano next and tells a heart rending story about how music has the power to awaken memories from the darkest depths of patients with advanced dementia.
She goes on to sing a beautiful number titled Songs Remember Me; “I still know all the words to Danny Boy / And all at once I know just who I am / When they play Amazing Grace I am a young girl once again / In the church hall in my mother’s loving hand / Once again my yesterdays have clarity / Songs remember me…”. It is a wonderfully moving piece.
Dash Kruck returns the smiles to our faces with a politically reimagined version of John Paul Young’s Love Is In The Air with the lyrics changed to “The election's in the air”. The audience lap up both the energy and the humour, grooving in their seats and singing along. His performance manages to bring supporters from both camps together – particularly “those who believe in climate change, and those who don’t understand science!”
Australian singer and actress Naomi Price is up next with John Farnham’s Burn For You from the 90s album Chain Reaction. This Australian icon is always touching, and Price’s rendition is no exception; her voice has gorgeous timbre that sits beautifully on the lyric.
Eddie Perfect sits his lily-white legs at the grand piano with a rendition of best friend Casey Bennetto’s song about the well-known Aussie landmark, the Big Banana; Tom Burlinson – aka The Man from Snowy River – croons his way through the 1981 Billy Field hit, Bad Habits with a sexy sax solo in the break; and Yana Alana sets off into an Italian Aria before swiftly changing direction and ripping into Russell Morris’s The Real Thing clad in all the colours of the rainbow.
Sven Ratzke absolutely steals the stage, opening with a bit of stand-up about his stay in Adelaide that really gets the audience going before launching into David Bowie’s Lets Dance. But before you decry “that’s not an Aussie song”, McGregor joins Ratzke for a duet, overlaying a tribal harmonisation of Yothu Yindi’s Treaty, beautifully layered with the sounds of live didgeridoo from The Budgie Smugglers.
As the end of the evening approaches, McGregor and Perfect give a spoken tribute to Tim Minchin (who sadly couldn’t be present to perform), and announce that Matilda the Musical will be coming to Adelaide for an 8 week season as part of their 2017 Adelaide Cabaret Festival. With that, James Millar – currently performing as part of the Melbourne Matilda cast – takes the stage with When I Grow Up.
Fittingly the 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival Last Galah closes with a performance of Paul Kelly’s From Little Things Big Things Grow, with verses shared by each of the evening performers, before a rousing finish with the entire cast and backstage crew.
The Last Galah is a stylish and generous way to close The Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and gave many of the second week performers a chance to share their talents with Adelaide audiences in a collaborative event. Let’s hope the idea is reprised in years to come.
Paul Rodda
When: 25 Jun
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Festival Centre. Artspace. 24 June 2016
Debora Krizak is certainly a hard worker. She was not-long-ago nominated for a Helpmann award for her role of Sheila in A Chorus Line, was in Opera Australia's Anything Goes last year, and co-wrote and starred in her ABBA bioshow, CABBARET, for the Sydney Theatre Cabaret Festival in 2014. But what really keeps her busy is her twins, born in 2008!
So Debora really knows what it takes to be a lady in show business - a funny lady - and therefore is eminently qualified to explore comediennes, and female comedic actors and singers in her new show, Laugh Be A Lady, in this world premiere production at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
On the set is a projected montage of cartoon renderings of the greats: Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Whoopi Goldberg, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers maybe, Lily Tomlin, I think, and of course, her in the middle, I guess. If only this show was five hours long so they all could have gotten the Krizak treatment! With her model's good looks - did I mention that she was in the Harris Scarfe catalogue - and was that before or after her Performing Arts degree at the University of Adelaide? Do you remember her in Chunky Custard?
The show opens with a gloriously ridiculous Christopher Hitchens explaining with a straight face in a filmed interview how women do not need to be funny for their role in mating, and that men must be; so women are genetically not predisposed to comedy. Ha ha ha! That got the ball rolling, and the next thing you know we see Krizak channeling legendary model-turned-comedic performer, Lucille Ball, in the latter's signature burlesque musical movie number, Jitterbug Bite. Krizak later rendered The Yelling Singer skit from The Carol Burnett Show. How about an outlandish Phyllis Diller, with her zinger lines and zany hair. And why is it, Krizak posits, that female comedians have to mask their beauty with silly voices or whacky hair-dos? Good questions aside, these impersonations were awesomely amusing. Krizak also tried her hand at stand-up, but looking drop-dead gorgeous in a chorus line corset most the show, I was faintly distracted. Homage is paid to American Betty White, the first woman to produce a sit-com. However, the show stoppers were her songs. Debora has an incredibly clear voice and is a terrific interpreter of lyrics. Accompanied by musical director Andrew Worboys, she can blast a room with the sweetest notes. After tragicomically playing a composite of her show biz comics in a chorus line character, reminiscent of Lucy Ricardo in one of the I Love Lucy episodes, her Send In The Clowns was the most poignant version of this song I have ever heard. But coming as it did at the end of her show, after all the terribly funny business, and personal banter about her life in the stage lights, and the nostalgia around these great women - after an hour of thorough and thoughtful amusement - I was putty in her hands. And the standing ovation she so deserved at her world premiere opening showed that I wasn't the only one who felt like this. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 24 to 25 June
Where: Artspace
Bookings: Closed
Sven Ratzke. A show with the music of David Bowie. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 22 Jun 2016
You'll have to skip reading this review and go straight to the box office; there were only 3 seats left as of Thursday morning for the remaining 3 shows, so get on your pogo stick.
In his return to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, direct from Bendigo, Sven Ratzke is the eponymous Starman, the extra-terrestrial who was afraid to blow our minds in the David Bowie song. Starman opened with his band comprising bass guitar, drums and keyboard/effects in a startling outfit, looking like a black pitcher plant in ill-fitting tights. While all his costumes were exotic, they lacked the panache of Bowie's threads.
The Starman connected the Bowie songs with a wonderfully wandering and bizarre narrative; a peripatetic sojourn from earthly cities and distant stars. The songs and the prose had a distinctly celestial theme and Ratzke's nuclear-fueled rocket energy took us amongst the spheres. Ratzke and his musical director Charly Zastrau shone Bowie through a particular type of jazzy prism, where the familiar melodies mixed with fascinating arrangements. After the round of applause following a nostalgic number, the Starman temporarily transformed into an appreciative Sven the showman, which was very sweet. Sven harked back to his Dutch/German base with amusing mimicry. The Starman is a wonderful invention from a Bowie song and a touching homage to the great man.
P.S. In August, Sven is doing an incredible 27 shows at the Edinburgh Festival, so get in your spaceship and blast off with Starman.
David Grybowski
When: 22 to 25 June
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au