Isolde & Tristan

9 May

If you’re familiar with the legend, you’ll know it’s usually told as a tale of passionate romantic or sexual love. You’ll also know that the names in the title are usually presented in the reverse order. It’s a clue.

In this version by Esther Vilar, Tristan transports Isolde by boat to the man she will marry, Marke, King of Cornwall. The marriage is political; it will supposedly cement peace between warring Britain and Ireland. Trouble is, the conflict’s been long and dirty, and apart from anything else, Tristan has killed Isolde’s previous betrothed.

But isn’t desire wild and irrepressible? That’s the usual point of the legend. Tristan and Isolde become lovers. Don’t tell Marke.

Vilar’s version of the story is the most satisfying dramaturgically I’ve seen, and her carefully structured script forefronts the politics.

It fits: the two islands off the European mainland have had a long, horrible history.

And, though love is universal, so are cruelty and revenge and hate and resentment and fury and retaliation and retribution. Director Damien Ryan and designer Bernadette Ryan highlight the perpetuity of these human experiences by an inspired use of costumes and props; the play begins grounded in what appears a medieval world but, gradually, modern anachronisms slip in, and by the conclusion we can’t pretend this is merely a barbarism we’ve outgrown.

All the action occurs on the boat, and set designer Tom Bannerman has achieved the extraordinary by making this work in the Old Fitz space.

Opera singer Octavia Barron Martin and pianist Justin Leong accompany the performance, creating a theatrical world of magic, emotion and true grandeur.

Ryan’s cast are magnificent.

Tom Wilson as Tristan plays his character’s arc with wonderful subtlety; it’s fascinating to watch the incremental movement from distant superiority to passionate engagement.

Sean O’Shea’s Marke is brilliant. Pompous, ineffectual, self-conscious, it’s an hilarious and painfully insightful portrait of the privileged middle-aged man.

Isolde is the toughest part. Both boldness and reflection, impetuosity and calculation must exist simultaneously, and these tensions must be suggested to the audience while believably going unnoticed or disregarded by the other characters. Emma Wright is absolutely superb as she navigates the complexities of this role.

So, that reversal of the names in the title? What sort of subversion is going on there? I wish I could write more, but the spoiler rule is so named because it always spoils my argument. (Reviewers might have the last word, but we don’t really get to write about the last scene.) Does the title hint at a subversion of the patriarchy? Or does it, in effect, suggest that and even more – a subversion of a bigger, better, more beautiful dream? I think so; after all, that’s what great drama does.

Paul Gilchrist

Isolde & Tristan by Esther Vilar

at Old Fitzroy theatre until June 1

oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by Kate Williams

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Switzerland

8 May

This is an extraordinarily intriguing, extraordinarily odd play.

Written by Joanna Murray-Smith, and first produced in 2014 by the Sydney Theatre Company, it’s since been produced around the world.

It presents the novelist Patricia Highsmith as she is visited in her Swiss home by an emissary from her American publisher.

Highsmith was a real person, the writer of many novels, including those featuring the protagonist Tom Ripley. (Admission: If it hadn’t been for the Matt Damon film, I probably would know nothing about either the real person or the fictional one.)

Ripley – as even myopic theatre reviewers like myself know – is talented. He is a master of deceit, seduction and, most of all, murder. In creating Ripley, Highsmith was on to a winner – or so the critics and the sales suggest. (To me, it all seems simply bizarre. Or untruthful. But the challenging of parochial assumptions about human nature is what this piece is all about.)

Anyway, in Murray-Smith’s invented meeting between writer and messenger, the bone of contention is whether Highsmith can be convinced to write one more Ripley novel before she dies. It’s a beautiful example of how clarity of motivation can keep us utterly hooked, while also providing the playwright with the most delicious opportunities for subversion.

The play is set late last century, and part of its fascination is how quickly the assumptions of the literary world Highsmith inhabited have come to seem so distant from those of the present.

In juxtaposition to our contemporary literary focus on bearing witness to what’s been done to us, here are at least three ideas the play provocatively throws forth:

  1. Writers are, or can be, neutral. (Like Switzerland.) Their job is not to tell us what is morally wrong. They simply present the truth of human nature. And they can do so in a way that renders our moral compass irrelevant. (Highsmith, apparently, makes us root for Ripley.)
  2. Writers have the ability to do what they do because of the horrible things that have happened to them. (Francis Bacon supposedly was locked in a cupboard as a child, and that’s why he became a great painter.) Our personal suffering does not position us to bear witness to injustice, but rather to see into the human heart, and to portray powerfully what we find there.
  3. The human heart is dark. Civilization is a veneer and, in truth, we are violent beasts. This idea has long be in stock, but our current focus on sociology rather than psychology has hidden it way at the back of the shelf.  

Just these three ideas should send any audience out into the night burning with questions. (There’s a fourth idea I’d like to talk about, but I’ll get back to it at the end.) It’s a privilege to see such a rich, sophisticated, utterly engaging work.

Captivated by the play, I’ve said nothing about the production. Under Shaun Rennie’s direction, it’s brilliant.

Toni Scanlan as Highsmith is glorious: snappy, curmudgeonly, hilariously acerbic until a certain familiarity about her visitor encourages a pathos-inducing vulnerability.

Laurence Boxhall as Edward is magnificent. Initially playing a terrific comic balance between the awkwardness and confidence of youth, Boxhall gradually, and mesmerizingly, morphs the character into something grippingly different.

It’s a joy to watch two consummate actors do such masterful work.

Now, the end. Don’t worry, there’ll be no spoilers – because I didn’t really understand the end. (Or, at least, it sent me out into the darkness alight with questions.)

But that fourth idea? Teasingly offered for our consideration is the relation between the writer’s created world and their reality. By extension, it’s a tantalising invitation to ask ourselves Does our vision of the world actually create our world?  

Paul Gilchrist

Switzerland by Joanna Murray-Smith

At Ensemble until 8 June

ensemble.com.au

Image by Brett Boardman

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Nayika (A Dancing Girl)

6 May

In this one actor show, a Sydney-sider tells us of her youth in Chennai. Her Indian family are working abroad and, as a teenager, the protagonist is sent to the city to study dance. She learns to present the eight heroines, all of whom are lovers. (Can a whole artistic tradition fail the Bechdel test? The answer is obviously yes, though I claim no expertise regarding this one.)

A catch-up with an old school friend and a phone call with her mother bring back memories of her youth.

As teenager, a clandestine relationship with a boy turns from romance to fear as he increasingly exhibits controlling, violent behaviour. The adults are absent – even the ones she asks for help – and our protagonist has no idea what to do.

Co-created and co-directed by Nithya Nagarajan and Liv Satchell, this is a brilliantly crafted work. Its fluid movement from the present to the past highlights how an individual’s personal history can underpin their now. The motif of the dance lessons operates on multiple levels, creating a counterpoint to the passing of time, but also hinting at attempts to bring order to a universe slipping into chaos. The script’s many references to Hindu myth further this conceit: these seemingly timeless representations portray a world both grand and frighteningly wild. (The fact that the Hindu pantheon includes Kali, the goddess of death and destruction, is one of the reasons that religious tradition is a pinnacle of human culture. It’s tempting to try to bury misery, to pretend it can’t touch us, but it takes courage, of the transformative kind, to acknowledge with clear eyes the existence of violence.)  

Vaishnavi Suryaprakash performs this piece beautifully, moving between characters and time periods with a masterful ease. Musicians Bhairavi Raman and Marco Cher-Gibard provide a magnificent soundscape for both the dances and the emotional growth of the character.  

It’s difficult to discuss what this play does without breaking the spoiler rule (which is a tribute to its superbly tight construction.) But if the eight heroines fail to serve as models, and if the past is not forever to determine the present, a new vision must be found – and, here, gloriously, it is.

Paul Gilchrist

Nayika (A Dancing Girl) co-created by Nithya Nagarajan and Liv Satchell

at Belvoir until 19 May

belvoir.com.au

Image by Brett Boardman

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Lose to Win

3 May

Mandela Mathia has an extraordinary stage presence – warm and generous spirited.

Lose to Win is his autobiographical sharing. It tells of being born in South Sudan in the midst of conflict, moving to Egypt in the hope of making real the dream of coming to Australia, and the final arrival in the so-called Promised Land.

The journey is difficult. When the average Australian has never gone hungry, it’s a soul expanding wake-up call to be told We went to funerals because there was food.

Director Jessica Arthur allows the tale to be told with suitable simplicity, an appreciation that truth needs no ornamentation.

Musician Yacou Mbaye supports Mathia, providing evocative rhythms that help transport a fortunate audience to distant lands.

Mathia tells us there were several forks in the road, moments where a poor decision could lead to moral collapse. This is an especially powerful assertion when it is apparent his tale is one of Little People being caught in Big History, ordinary people facing forces so overwhelming that individuals can seem robbed of all choice.

On several occasions, Mathia suggests the choice was between Anger and Love. (Perhaps this is THE CHOICE in Life.)

I’ve written a lot about the preponderance of sharings on our stages. I think it’s odd that we’ve come to think that theatre is about telling our stories in the autobiographical sense. One thing I haven’t mentioned previously is the challenge that autobiography creates for the theatre maker. Get it wrong and the audience response is Why am I hearing just about you? Get it right and the audience response is I want to hear more! This is not how it works with fiction. Awkward and potentially confusing analogy: make a beautiful vase and its joy is in its containment, its completeness. Its beauty doesn’t make you want the vase to be bigger. (Though it may make you want there to be more vases.)

Because Mathia’s story is wonderfully told we want to know more – but he has to stop somewhere! By the time the story gets to Australia, concrete details become fewer. Mathia talks about racism, but we hear more about the media and Peter Dutton than his own experience. It might be hard for the audience to hear, and hard for the performer, but …

But, I did refer earlier to THE CHOICE. Anger versus Love. What makes this show such a beautiful gift is that it forefronts this choice, and is gloriously clear which side must win.          

Paul Gilchrist

Lose to Win by Mandela Mathia

at Belvoir until 19 May

belvoir.com.au/productions/lose-to-win/

Image by Brett Boardman

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A Case for the Existence of God

2 May

This is a magnificent piece of theatre.

However, I suspect the title might put off an Australian audience.

Australians like to believe we’re less literal than our American cousins. Case in point: we often joke that they don’t get irony. But, ironically, when it comes to religious language, we’re the ones reluctant to use it in any way other than literally. In many other cultures, writers comfortably evoke God without fear that it automatically commits them to the theological tenets of some religion. Religious language is employed to suggest or symbolise the grand, the awe inspiring, the universal. Sometimes, it can feel like the only discourse big enough for these things. An honorary American, Albert Einstein, was famous for using religious language in this way. His oft quoted comment, expressing his objection to quantum theory, that God does not play dice, was simply an assertion that mere chance could not be fundamental to the fabric of the universe. He was saying nothing that we unsophisticated Australians would interpret as religious.

The title of Samuel D. Hunter’s play uses religious language in a similarly evocative way. In this superbly crafted two hander, no one says a word about religion. Not a word. The two male characters discuss money, work and most of all, their children. They build an unlikely friendship. The title simply implies hope, that despite problems, things might work out OK. (I know I’m getting awfully close to spoiler territory here, but the final scene, which is a theatrical surprise and an utter delight, reminds me of the conclusion of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, only more secular. Wilder himself borrowed the idea from Dante, that towering poet who spoke of the human heart via religious language – because only it had the grandeur to do justice to his topic.)

Director Craig Baldwin’s production is wisely pared back so that the focus is on the two splendid performances by Elijah Williams and Anthony Gooley.

Keith is an educated musicologist, working as a mortgage broker. As a single gay man, his dream of adoption is proving difficult, so he fosters a new born in the hope that the relationship might be allowed to become more permanent. Surviving a divorce, working class Ryan seeks a mortgage to help give his baby daughter a real home. Out of a similar sadness, the friendship between the men grows.

Williams’ Keith is brilliant: prickly, vulnerable, articulate and lightning fast. Gooley’s Ryan is marvellous: slow, awkward and inarticulate. Both characters are beautifully generous-hearted. It was pure pleasure to spend ninety minutes in their company.  

A case for the existence of God? Amongst other things, it’s their friendship that suggests the possibility. (See above. God is love is not marketing hyperbole; it will reward deep reflection in a way that Coke is It cannot.)

In a play jam-packed with scorchingly truthful moments, one of my favourites is when the two men, sharing a bottle of scotch, begin to discuss the history of Western music (as you do.) Keith mentions the invention of polyphony, a term which is, of course, meaningless to Ryan. And then the penny drops: harmony! Ryan can’t believe there was a time before harmony. The symbolism is not overplayed, the scene does what drama excels at: concrete moments played so honestly they intimate something universal.

Paul Gilchrist

A Case for the Existence of God by Samuel D. Hunter

At Seymour Centre until 4 May

www.seymourcentre.com/event/a-case-for-the-existence-of-god/

Image by Phil Erbacher

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The Front Page

28 Apr

This is fast-talking, wise-cracking American comedy, of the style brought to a world audience during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

First produced in 1928, The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur is the play that became the film His Girl Friday, starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant.

Set in a Chicago courthouse newsroom at the eve of an execution, it’s satire of cynical journalists, police officers and politicians is nothing new now (though still it rings true.)

This production, directed and adapted by Nicholas Papademetriou, has a beautiful bouncy, brassy spirit. Except for the opening scene, which on the night I attended lost necessary pace because of line stumbles and awkward props, the show honours the grand comic tradition of which it is part.

Papademetriou follows the lead of the writers of His Girl Friday and makes the play’s protagonist a woman. Hildy has worked for The Examiner for years, and though it’s a man’s world, she is clearly their ace reporter.  However, with the offer of marriage to a respectable man, she’s tempted by the quiet of domesticity.

Can she leave the game behind? Her boss, Walter, wants her to stay, for more reasons than one.

Rose Treloar as Hildy is extraordinary. Rosalind Russell would be proud. From the moment she enters, Treloar’s energy is stellar, and she drives the production with a gloriously assured exuberance.

Andrew Waldin as Walter is brisk and nimble, and achieves that most difficult of comic tasks: the portrayal of a charming con-man.

The large supporting cast generally does good work. Let me cherry pick just a few favourite performances. Diego Retamales as the man on death row is superb, his physical comedy top class.  Callum Stephen slips into the shoes of the ex-gangster with such laughter-inducing ease that we readily believe the character has helped many a chump slip on shoes of the concrete variety. Braydon May, as a messenger in the Governor’s employ, works the classic trope of the pedant in a world of action with hilarious effect. Georgia Nicholas as the only other female reporter in the newsroom has a wonderful stage presence, positioned perfectly in regard to Hildy’s energy, and establishing with tight rope precision the competing needs created by a patriarchal environment, the requirement for both female feistiness and sisterly support.      

Brash, buoyant, confident, this is comic theatre with old school swagger.

Paul Gilchrist

The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur (adapted by Nicholas Papademetriou)

at New Theatre until 18 May

newtheatre.org.au/

Image by Chris Lundie

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Do You Mind?

26 Apr

Wittgenstein suggested a work of philosophy could consist entirely of jokes.

Can a piece of theatre consist entirely of questions?

Written and performed by Shay Debney, Do You Mind? is such an attempt.

The script is beautifully whimsical and very funny. It allows Debney to showcase his extraordinary linguistic and vocal skills and his delightful physical comedy.

Recently I wrote, that to be left with questions is exactly what I want from a piece of theatre … so how can I not be satisfied with this?

Some of the questions Debney poses to the audience are simply about our personal tastes or experiences. Other questions are the equivalent of a Zen koan, joyful little puzzles that tease us out of complacency. (They’re of the family of – but not including – What is the sound of one hand clapping?)

We live in the Age of Assertion and Grand Theory. Everyone seems to know the answer to everything. Certainty is now equated with commitment.  A piece of theatre that reminds us of the value of the question is a rejuvenating antidote to this dullness of mind.

Questions help us dig deeper, to see that things may not be as simple and flat as we’d lazily like them to be. We reanimate our world through questions. Questions are how we unwrap the gift that is Life.

Not that Debney’s questions are what most people would call political: they’re impishly playful.

Since we’re on the topic of questions, you might ask this question: Can a show like this – one that doesn’t construct a traditional character and which eschews a traditional narrative arc – is this a show capable of retaining my attention? At just under an hour, the experiment is exactly the right length. Director Julia Robertson masterfully creates changes of pace and pleasing variations of texture. And, anyway, Debney has such a warm, vibrant stage presence that we’re keen to stay for the ride.

(I’ve got to note that it’s refreshing to see a one-person show that’s not autobiographical. In shows in which an actor talks about themselves, I often have to fight the temptation to suggest that the size of the cast directly correlates with the level of interest the play is capable of generating.)

For theatre nerds, Do You Mind? also poses intriguing questions about form.

Peppered with questions delivered in direct address, the audience of which I was a part seemed uncertain when (or whether) they were expected to provide answers. (In conventional question/answer format: Q. Is there audience participation? A. Only if you want there to be.)

But what this mischievous little show does is illuminate the strange miracle that is art. Every single piece of theatre ever made is created by both the artist and the audience. However, we tend to privilege the first of these two. If you think my choice of the word privilege is perverse, just try putting on a show in your room by yourself and see if you don’t come to feel that the audience is every bit as important as you. A show like this spotlights the agency of those who attend.

By focussing on the magic of the question – questions of all types – this little show is a glorious gift, a reminder of the childlike wonder to be found in the choice to be forever unwrapping.

Paul Gilchrist

Do You Mind? by Shay Debney

at the Old Fitz, as a late show, until April 27

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/

Image by Julia Robertson

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Uncle Vanya

25 Apr

I’ve always loved the play and, directed by Charlotte De Wit, this production is utterly mesmerising.

It’s simple and extraordinarily beautiful. Chekhov and Stanislavski (who directed the first production in 1899) were part of the great reaction against the hyperbole of 19th century melodrama. They valued truthfulness above all things.

And this production is gloriously faithful to that vision.

The cast inhabit their roles with a naturalness that’s a joy to witness and which, even now, remains a challenge to complacent assumptions about what it is to act.

Mike Booth is magnificent as Vanya. It’s a performance I’d happily see again and again. Vanya feels he has swallowed a lie and wasted his life, and Booth’s portrayal is so deeply moving because he makes it appear so honest.

Similarly, Marigold Pazar is brilliant as Yelena. The young wife of an aged academic, Yelena finds her life boring, and Pazar presents the role perfectly because she does not push. Indolence infuses both her voice and her movements, and so her character does not so much claim boredom, as embody it – ironically making Pazar’s performance absolutely scintillating.

Mikhail is in love with the married Yelena. Tristan Mckinnon plays beautifully the tension between desire and despair. The triumph of Chekhov, and of this production and this particular performance, is that we can judge the characters if we wish, but the invitation is simply to observe.   

Sonya is in love with Mikhail. Her love both enriches her and pains her. (Chekhov looks at life unflinchingly.) Maike Strichow’s portrait wonderfully captures both Sonya’s joy and her suffering.

Chekhov called his plays comedies, and without straining for laughs, this production is very funny. It’s the humour of recognition.

Annie Baker’s adaptation of the original wisely retains the traditional setting but allows the characters to speak in a modern vernacular, making that recognition inescapable.

I’ve yet to discuss the meaning of the play (unusual for an armchair philosopher like myself.) This reticence is partly because the method (yes, that method) employed to convey the play’s meaning is so persuasive that it becomes the meaning. Of course, the play is a meditation on being “infected by uselessness”. Chekhov’s comedy follows the traditional trope of an ordered world disrupted by interlopers, but he turns this trope on its head by having the newcomers represent not action and vibrancy but rather inaction and indolence. Our heroes and heroines must strive to cure themselves of this infection.

But it’s the sheer truthfulness of the portrayal that makes this such a rich, intensely humane piece of the theatre.

Paul Gilchrist

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Annie Baker

produced by HER Productions

at Flow Studios until April 27

www.herproductions.com.au

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Toy Symphony

22 Apr

The Loading Dock Theatre is a brilliant addition to the Sydney scene.

I was privileged to see the first show produced there, Michael Gow’s Toy Symphony, presented by Ad Astra.

The play was first produced in 2007 at Belvoir. It tells the story of Roland, a famous playwright suffering writer’s block (though don’t you dare use that phrase in front of him.)

There are three curious aspects to the play.

The first is that it’s almost theatre in the first person. I’m not suggesting it’s autobiographical (who knows?) but it’s fascinating that the focus is so firmly on one central character. And this is highlighted by the fact that good chunks of the play appear to be this protagonist’s personal memories. Furthermore, the protagonist’s problem is quite particular: can he continue to write theatre? (Admittedly, anything of concern to any individual should be of interest to a truly cosmopolitan person. That Gow assumes his audience consists of such broadminded people is a beautifully generous-hearted vision.)

Another curious aspect of the play is its structure. This production was two and a half hours (including intermission) and there are scenes which left me wondering why they were there. They’re interesting in themselves, but I was uncertain of their purpose or value in the play as a whole. Why do we get a scene explaining copyright law? Why are the childhood memories of Como Primary School so thorough? Why do we get a lengthy monologue in which Roland tells an unseen character what he said at his mother’s funeral? These vignettes further suggest the play’s affinity with autobiography, a form which acknowledges that the entire truth of a life can never be told, but that certain select moments will be its best intimation. The truth is clearly outside the text, not inside. This is probably true of all theatre, but to vastly varying degrees. Some plays seem to deliberately ask us to judge whether they’re a fair representation of reality (or, increasingly, they simply assert they are.) Other plays focus instead on drawing us into their world, inviting us to go for the ride. Toy Symphony is the first type, because the vignette form means the world of the play is inherently fractured and incomplete, but the challenge for us is that the truth being represented seems so especially precise, and potentially personal, that it’s difficult for us to judge the representation’s success.

The final intriguing aspect of the play is a recurring conceit. As a child, Roland can conjure people. He thinks of them, and they appear – but not to his mind’s eye alone, to everyone else as well. On one level, this is a literalisation of what playwrights do when they create characters … but the conceit resists such easy interpretation. If it’s meant to suggest the potential creative power of playwrights, you might respond that surely the play itself is an attempt to display this power, and so the conceit begs the fundamental question of realist theatre. (It’s as though a carpenter made a table out of little tables in order to clarify what she can do.) As a result, the play feels like a shot fired in a very Australian culture war, part of that battle in which artists desperately feel they must justify their own existence.

Clearly, this play sent me off into the night with a bundle of questions – exactly what I want from theatre.

Director Michelle Carey deals with this provocative play by presenting it with boundless energy.  Gregory J Wilken as Roland gives a performance that’s vibrant and always engaging; juxtaposing the wide-eyed child with the jaded artist. The supporting cast matches his energy, bouncing between realistic portrayals of adult professionals to theatrically enthusiastic children. Let me cherry pick some favourites. Wendi Lanham is eminently watchable as Roland’s therapist. Felix Jarvis as Daniel, an actor in training, gives a wonderful portrait of that youthful mix of confidence and insecurity. Bernadette Pryde is mesmerising in her evocation of the gentle, good humoured primary school teacher. Sam Webb as the school yard bully is suitably both intense and dense, and John Michael Narres’ school principal is deliciously meanspirited.

It was a pleasure to see this piece in an exciting new venue.

Paul Gilchrist

Toy Symphony by Michael Gow

at the Loading Dock Theatre, Qtopia, until 27 April

qtopiasydney.com.au/performances/  

Image by Bojan Bozic 

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Sotoba Komachi 

13 Apr

This is a beautiful play, wonderfully presented.

Despite being only 45 mins in length, it’s fantastically rich.

Written in the early 1950’s by Yukio Mishima, and inspired by traditional Japanese Noh theatre, it’s a meditation on time, ageing and beauty.

A young poet meets a 99 year old woman in a park, late at night. The opening sequence, which juxtaposes the ancient woman collecting cigarette butts with young lovers seeking the ephemeral pleasures of sexuality, brilliantly introduces the play’s concerns.

Though sourced from the Japanese, the play reminds me of Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial, and all those artists of the European late medieval and renaissance eras who knew that Death underpins Life, that Change grants meaning to Constancy. Think those shadowy still life paintings juxtaposing flowers and skulls. It’s not morbidity, but honesty … and the Truth will set us free. It’s a privilege to see a piece like this in our anglophile Australian theatre, to be shown how another culture has discovered similar treasures.

Susan Ling Young is magnificent, in one instant an aged woman, in another the young woman of eighty years earlier.

Wern Mak is utterly compelling, delicately balancing the cynicism of the disappointed young man with the wonder of the poet learning to see unexpected beauty.

Director Jeremi Campese pitches the piece perfectly between humour and suspense, and aided by choreographer Artemis Alfonzetti, complements the simple lucid language with heartbreakingly graceful movement. The scene in which the entire cast dance – at a ball eighty years gone but eternally present – is theatrical gold.

Paul Gilchrist

Sotoba Komachi by Yukio Mishima

at Old Fitz, as a late night show, until 13 April

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by Karl Elbourne

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