An Evening With Max Gillies. Wander Productions. The Canberra Theatre Centre. 23 Oct 2014
With the recent passing of Gough Whitlam, it was quite timely that veteran political satirist and impersonator Max Gillies came to town with his one-man show ‘Once Were Leaders’ – in fact he dedicated the evening to the former Prime Minister, whom he clearly had much affection for.
Gillies essentially had one mission, and that was to answer the question, ‘Is Australia currently suffering a leadership deficit, or have our politicians always been pretty ordinary?’ The answer it seems (although somewhat opaque), with the exception of Whitlam, is that we’ve been looking at the past through slightly rose coloured glasses. However, this came with the caveat that we’re entering especially dismal territory of late.
An intimate and relaxed production with a meandering narrative, Gillies starts off the night with a keynote speech at the podium setting the agenda. Standing firmly on his soapbox, he provides an absolutely scathing review of the current state of politics that, in his words, are barely worthy of satire.
While he wouldn’t be donning the make up and prosthetics on this particular occasion, what we did get was a retrospective on some of his most popular impersonations via stills on the screen behind him (that also featured demonstrative videos of actual political figures), with Gillies performing some of his favourite speeches in the flesh.
The fact that he was visually not in character had no impact on the authenticity of his performance, as his immense talent at embodying the essence of a subject transcended the need for any of the usual painstaking preparation. But though his many collaborators over the years, including his make up artists but also his speechwriters (Don Watson, Patrick Cook, Guy Rundle and Heathcote Williams), were absent that night, many mentions of them and demonstrations of their work were made in appreciative tributes.
Billy McMahon, Bob Hawke, Kevin Rudd: these were some of our former Australian leaders who got the Gillies treatment. Also in the mix was a brilliant speech ‘featuring’ former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson, and going further afield, the likes of none other than the Queen, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Through his deft analysis and infamous scripts, Gillies strips back, exposes and distils these leaders beyond the heroes or villains that Australians have relegated them to in the national imagination, and puts into perspective their place in leadership history.
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard an audience laughing so jubilantly hard during a night out at the Playhouse, with a large portion of those in attendance politically savvy baby boomers who have clearly enjoyed Gillies’ work for some time. The great thing about his style is that the laughs he draws from people come from an understated nuance and subtlety – his long, winding yet flawless monologues assume your knowledge and intelligence and refrain from eliciting cheap, moronic laughs.
The second half of ‘Once Were Leaders’ was devoted to a Q & A section, with the crowd surprisingly reticent when it came to questioning Gillies. However, to fill the gaps while people got over their shyness, we were told stories of the costuming mishaps and experiments over the years. After a few brave souls offered up their queries, the show landed with a relentlessly funny take on John Howard – ending with a question mark hanging over our heads in terms of Australia’s political future.
‘Once Were Leaders’ was a refreshingly blunt and fearless commentary on the state of the nation and those that attempt to shepherd it from one election to the next. For young and old it’s a good reminder that often what we think is a new and untrodden direction is simply back to the future – but maybe just a little bit worse.
Deborah Hawke
When: Closed
Where: The Canberra Theatre Centre
Bookings: Closed
By Cathy Petocz. The Street Theatre. 18 Oct 2014
It’s a rare feat to develop a storyline featuring ideas that are intensely abstract and surreal, and succeed in getting any sort meaningful investment from the audience. David Lynch comes to mind as a shining example of how to accomplish this, as does Stanley Kubrick and Andy and Lana Wachowski with their cult hit ‘The Matrix’.
In her attempts at creating a play in the ball park of this genre, it would certainly not be reasonable to compare up-and-coming writer Cathy Petocz’s first full length play ‘Where I End and You Begin’ with these entertainment industry heavyweights. However, I think it’s fair to say that Petocz has a ways to go in capturing the imagination of theatregoers.
Walking into the theatre I was somewhat intrigued at the approach to the sparse and ethereal set design that featured a furry white catwalk, with the audience sitting on both sides, as a centrepiece, but that also utilised the space around it. About 10 minutes into the production this intrigue gave way to irritation, cascaded into mental fatigue and then finally settled into utter disinterest.
The navel gazing storyline, from what I could cobble together, centred around two private detectives living in alternate universes; Polly (Kate Hosking), is a mercurial, femme fatale type assisting her client Timothy (Dylan van den Berg) to uncover the reasons behind his mysterious blackouts. Whatshisname (Raoul Craemer) is alternatively a frantic “deep space” private detective from the future, looking for someone in the cosmos. Thrown in the mix was Timothy’s new love interest Hazel (Ylaria Rogers) and the superfluous mystery man, Emmanuel (Kabu-Okai Davies). They all interconnect, but don’t ask me how exactly.
With the characters engaging in multiple disjointed and often unintelligible conversations at once (that also overlapped), it was incredibly difficult to get any real sense of what was unfolding. It took so much concentration just to keep up that it felt entirely futile to bother once you realised the story wasn’t really going anywhere, and hence would offer no real reward for your effort.
Sometimes to appreciate complex artistic expression it helps to get some insight into the concept behind it, but without this insider perspective to sustain my interest it all just seemed incredibly self-indulgent. Experimentation is the lifeblood of what keeps theatre fresh and alive, but experimentation for its own sake should be kept in rehearsal rooms and not performed on the unwitting public.
The issue with ‘Where I End and You Begin’ is that both the concept and the characters were sorely underdeveloped and seemed to have been created in a bubble with not a lot of consideration given to what the audience might glean from the end result. In this respect, the talent of the five performers felt somewhat wasted. As committed to the project as they clearly were, the lack of substance in the script’s content meant that it was very difficult to connect with their cold, one-dimensional characters and their seemingly pointless existences.
While I had high expectations for ‘Where I End and You Begin’, sadly it would be difficult to recommend it – even to a particular niche. I do have faith though that Petocz as a playwright will continue to evolve her craft and create some very interesting and unique theatre in the coming years. And with such an ambitious debut, you have to admire her courage and vision.
Deborah Hawke
When: 18 to 26 Oct
Where: The Street Theatre
Bookings: thestreet.org.au
By Alirio Zavarce. No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability. The Q Theatre. 13 Sep 2014
As a mighty South Aussie girl living in the ACT, it’s not often that I get to see the theatrical offerings of my hometown anymore. So when I got the invitation to review the No Strings Attached production of Sons and Mothers at The Q, I was thrilled to go see what this Adelaide-based theatre company had on offer. And I have to say, this beautifully crafted and delightfully quirky work made me proud as punch to hail from the Festival State.
First premiering in 2012 to rave reviews, the No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability is again taking Sons and Mothers on the road in 2014. Written and co-performed by the multi-talented Venezuelan-Australian, Alirio Zavarce, the play is a sweet, yet powerful ode to the mothers of the accomplished men that make up the theatre company – Duncan Luke, Kym Mackenzie, Ryan Rowland, Ricky Samai, Damien Turbin and Ben Wishart.
Utilising a vast range of media, each man performs their own unique tribute to the women who brought them into the world and loved them, with an incredible range of diversity in both their style of presentation and their personal stories. Miming, guitar solos, live collage, voiceover and interpretive dance; you name a mode of creative output and there was a fair chance it would have appeared at some stage over the course of the production. However, this is not to say the show was chaotic – far from it; it was executed with impeccable timing and restraint.
In turn, each of the performers’ mothers either appear on the projected screen in an intimate pre-recorded interview about their sons with Zavarce, or via photographs for those women who have passed on. But while there was tremendous expression of love and tenderness on both sides of the equation, this was not an exercise in maudlin sentimentality. There was also a great deal of humour, honesty and of course plenty of foibles – a warts and all look at the complex and crucial relationship between not only a mother and her son, but a mother and a child born with a disability.
While briefly telling his own story of his mother and disabled brother at the outset of Sons and Mothers, Zavarce predominantly plays the role of facilitator. Providing spirited musical segues along the way, his passion and energy served to coax and stir up that special something within each of the six outstanding performers. The pacing between each piece was also buoyant, spending just enough time on a subject to make it meaningful but without pushing the point.
In summary, Sons and Mothers really has it all, providing as many giggles as it does heartfelt tears. And best of all, it makes you think and appreciate things profoundly differently. Think about people living with a disability and their capacities and inner worlds. Think about the special roles of mothers, especially your own and those who love their children no matter what. If the show is coming to a theatre near you, put it in the diary as a must-see.
Deborah Hawke
When: 13 to 17 Sep
Where: The Q Theatre
Bookings: theq.net.au
By Duncan Ley. Everyman Theatre. The Q Theatre. 31 July 2014
Move over John Grisham, there’s a new courtroom drama in town and it’s come to retrospectively kick the arse of religious dogma and corruption. Written by Duncan Ley, ‘The Burning’ is set during the German witch trials of the 1600s, when hysteria was high and reason at an all time low.
Francis Schiller (Jack Parker) is a carefree budding lawyer and son of Catholic Church Commissioner, Phillip (Jarrad West), who makes the mistake of marrying the woman (Madeline Couillart played by Amy Dunham) of his best friend Frederick’s (Will Huang) dreams.
Frederick Vasolt also happens to be the son of a Church Commissioner named Ernst (Duncan Ley), and is assigned as the head torturer of suspected witches; a position which he exploits to take his revenge on Francis and Madeline by accusing them of witchcraft.
Being a lawyer, Francis represents himself at his unsurprisingly farcical trial with the support of his father and friend Benedict (Bradley McDowell), but with a few tricks up his sleeve that catch the Vasolt’s, as the prosecution, by surprise.
Although the gravitas-soaked dialogue of ‘The Burning’ started off a little pompous and convoluted, you could certainly not criticise Ley for a lack of historical research and detail. In any case it was worth the wait as the final scenes elicited a response from the audience that I’ve never seen at the theatre before.
As the gripping intellectual battle ensued in the courtroom, the arguments against Ernst and the behaviour of the church was so lucidly reasonable and compelling that the audience (or makeshift jury it would seem) at one point actually broke into applause for Francis – at which point I half expected to see rotten tomatoes hurled at the Vasolts. However, this was no ‘smart goodies versus dumb baddies’ scenario, with Ernst an equally cunning fox who did his fair share of outmanoeuvring to keep people on the edge of their seats.
And while the script was exploding into the brilliance you would expect from a playwright with such an articulate way with words and depth of thought, each performer really dug deep to do it justice. The passion of the leads for the project was especially stirring and, despite the intellectual rigour, it was an intensely visceral experience to behold.
The utilitarian set was as appropriately desolate and as bleak as the actual events occurring at the time, with no real need for frills given the stand-alone power of the storyline and performances.
Given the latest atrocities occurring in the name of religion, that are topping news headlines at present, this run of ‘The Burning’ is a very timely reminder that we humans still have a long way to go in terms of our behaviour towards our fellow man. This production makes a very good case for heeding the lessons from our past and for refraining from twisting doctrine that is past its use-by date to justify inhumanity.
Deborah Hawke
When: 31 Jul to 10 Aug
Where: The Q Theatre
Bookings: theq.net.au
By Vanessa Bates. The Street Theatre. 4 July 2014
Speaking as a child of the eighties, no one did creepy retellings of Grimm’s Fairy Tales like Shelley Duvall in Fairy Tale Theatre – until the creation of ‘The Magic Hour’, that is.
Written by playwright Vanessa Bates and performed by Ursula Yovich (The Gods of Wheat Street) as a one woman show, this gritty production takes the thoroughly flogged stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk, and shifts the focus from the heroines to the minor, but infinitely more interesting, female characters.
As well as this departure from tradition, ‘The Magic Hour’ also gets the Aussie treatment, but portrays the very specific world of the marginalised and disadvantaged, giving it some serious edge.
With her whimsical gypsy caravan as her quaint backdrop (by Alicia Clements), Yovich as the barefoot storyteller takes us on a journey though the lives of those such as Jane – the single mother of Jack (of the Beanstalk) and recovering heroin addict; Collette – the late blooming, self harming stepsister to Cinderella; Hannah – the elderly legal guardian of Rapunzel who lives in a housing trust tower with the long haired beauty and – well, you get my point.
Grimm’s Fairy Tales are very aptly named, however, after much Disneyfying over the years they have become quite sanitised. ‘The Magic Hour’ puts them right back into the gutter, with all the crassness and cynicism one could hope for, and then some. But there’s heart there too – each socially insightful story ends with its own sweet and haunting song (with music by Joe Lui), made all the more mesmerising by the dulcet tones of Yovich’s lovely voice.
Yovich’s delivery of the show overall was impressive, showcasing her chameleon-like ability to transform from one character to another in the blink of an eye and bringing depth and authenticity to each portrayal. She was an incredibly engaging and generous performer, bringing a down to earth and charmingly facetious quality to the production that had the audience leaping to their feet for a standing ovation at the conclusion of the show.
The humour, wit and prose poetry written into the script is also enchanting. It subtly weaves in hilariously apt pop references and pushes the limits in terms of its dark and confronting themes, but easily avoids going over the edge to Wrongtown.
Winter is the perfect time to be bringing these kind of plays to Canberra; the invitation to gather around at a warm theatre and listen to strange and quirky adaptations of ancient tales is a very appealing and season appropriate proposition to encourage one out of hibernation, and I reckon ‘The Magic Hour’ is absolutely worth leaving the cave for.
Deborah Hawke
When: 4 to 6 Jul
Where: The Street Theatre
Bookings: thestreet.org.au