Archive | July, 2024

Karim

29 Jul

There aren’t enough plays entitled Karim in Australian theatre. (And, of course, there are far too many called Gavin or Ian or Kylie or Kevin.)

It’s intriguing that James Elazzi’s play is named after the one character: it feels a lot like an ensemble piece. Karim (played with an easy watchable stage presence by Youssef Sabet) doesn’t dominate the production in the way, say, Macbeth or Hamlet or even Miss Julie dominate theirs. In fact, Karim’s plot line is balanced with Beth’s (played with an engaging mix of energy and fragility by Alex Malone). Both are trying to break free from the dominance of their parents.

Beth’s mum (Jane Phegan) is an addict. Karim’s dad (Andrew Cutcliffe) just seems unreasonably determined his son sticks around. Both Phegan and Cutcliffe give performances of focussed intensity.

They all live in Tahmoor (97 kms down the highway from the CBD) and both families are doing it tough. The play begins with Karim and his father garbage picking, and we soon learn they make most of their cash working on market garden farms. They’re behind in their rent and when evicted, fall back on the generosity of neighbour Abdul (George Kanaan).

Abdul is also of Lebanese heritage. Unlike Karim – who was born here, as was his father, and his grandfather before him – Abdul fled the civil war. Before calamity engulfed his nation, he played the oud in the Lebanese Symphony Orchestra.  

Karim becomes fascinated with the man and his instrument. I would’ve like to know more about both these fascinations. Is Karim’s obsession with the instrument to be explained by his Lebanese heritage? And, as Abdul begins teaching him, is blood also sufficient to explain his unexpectedly mercurial proficiency? I’d also like to know why a 23 year old gay man wouldn’t avail himself of the $7.23 Opal ticket to the city, the gay capital of the Southern Hemisphere, instead of falling for a much, much older man. (Yes, reasons are offered, but I was left unconvinced – which I acknowledge is a standard of dramatic criticism that will leave many dissatisfied.)

By portraying what are commonly termed marginalised characters, a play like this seems to ask to be valued in terms of its authenticity. (Of course, you could people a play with such characters and be aiming for something entirely different.)

But this is a simple story, a gentle invitation to spend time with characters whose humanity urges us, softly but firmly, to consider the very nature of that experience.  

Paul Gilchrist

Karim by James Elazzi

At Riverside until Aug 3

riversideparramatta.com.au

Image by Philip Erbacher

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Tick, Tick… Boom!

23 Jul

We pursue personal success until we find something of actual value to do with our lives.

In Tick, Tick… Boom! by Jonathan Larson, the protagonist wants to be a successful Broadway composer. The tick, tick he hears is time ticking away until the boom of his 30th birthday. With the stakes so very low, only certain audiences will find this set-up emotionally engaging.

But it’s a musical, so the story’s not really why we’re here. And it’s a micro-musical: cast of three, band of three, all in the cosy environment of the Old Fitz. The fact that such a genre even exists is a delight, and this production, directed by Kurtis Laing, does serious hardcore delight.

Larson’s music is good fun and, under the musical direction of Iris Wu, the band is super tight. (Volume issues meant that occasionally I couldn’t make out the lyrics. But, extrapolating from my earlier comments about the show’s thematic concerns, I’m not sure that’s much of a problem.)   

Performances by Brodie Masini, Tessa Olsson, Hamish Wells are wonderful, both vocally and physically. With the aid of movement director Juliette Coleman, Laing’s use of space is superb – it’s both beautiful and bubbling with energy. Accidentally open the door to the theatre from the pub outside and it’d seem as though you’d sprung the lid of a jack-in-the-box; unexpectedly jumping out at you would be a deliberate, orchestrated exuberance.

I try to respond to theatre in a way that suggests the producing company hasn’t simply outsourced the writing of their marketing copy to me. I try to look at dramatic structure and consider the overall meaning of the piece. It’s not an approach particularly suited to a show like this. It’d be the equivalent of attempting a dramaturgical analysis of sunlight on sea spray. (Excepting, of course, that this particular evanescent sparkle is the result of considerable artistic talent.)

Paul Gilchrist

Tick, Tick… Boom! by Jonathan Larson

At Old Fitz until 26 July, as a late night show

oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by Robert Miniter  

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Blood Wedding

20 Jul

The play is a modern classic.

Written by Federico García Lorca in the early 1930’s, it’s a foregrounding of the earthy elements of Life.

Set in rural Spain, the characters incessantly speak of bloodlines, family, violence, desire, land – and do so in extraordinarily high modality with little or no subtext. At other times, the script rises to symbolism, with characters who are personifications of inescapable aspects of the human condition. Think Death.

It’s a form that claims veracity because of its intensity, yet it also entertains a sentimental rock and roll sensibility. In some ways, Sam Shepherd is a more recent proponent of the genre. It’s a vision of Life that clearly resonates with some. And for those for whom it doesn’t resonate – the more airy of us, the more cerebral, or the more privileged – why else do we go to the theatre but to learn about the experience of others?

I should make clear the play does not celebrate brutality: the dangers of this ferocious earthiness are apparent. The Groom (Sam Walter) is marrying the Bride (Emilia Kriketos), but she still holds a candle for Leonardo (Denis Troncoso). My quaint choice of phrase belies the vehemence of everyone’s feelings. All three characters make decisions counter to sober reason. The Groom’s mother (Chloë Schwank) wears around her neck a crucifix; I suspect it’s an acknowledgement of universal suffering rather than salvation – there’s little light or grace in a world so heavy with blood.

Director Diana Paola Alvarado presents a bold theatrical vision. She elicits from the cast passionate, high-energy performances. Beautiful stylised movement and live music invite us into a provocative realm of exalted poetic force.

Paul Gilchrist

Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca

at Flight Path Theatre until Aug 3

flightpaththeatre.org

Image Signature Photography by Kirsty Semaan

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The Past is a Wild Party

16 Jul

This is an extraordinary piece of theatre.

Written by Noëlle Janaczewska and directed by Kate Gaul, it has performer Jules Billington present a persona who shares the story of “re-queering” herself.

The Covid years give the persona both the impetus and the time to re-investigate lesbian voices in fiction, and she juxtaposes her discoveries with her own romantic and sexual history.

The work is remarkable on many levels.

Firstly, it’s a delight to see on stage a persona with an intellectual life. (It’s standard for Australian playwrights to create characters less intelligent than themselves. Why?) The persona discusses the joy she’s found in lesbian writers like Sappho, Amy Levy, Radclyffe Hall and Virginia Woolf. (Though not specifically mentioned in this production, Clarissa Dalloway’s ecstatic response to Sally Seton – “She is beneath this roof….she is beneath this roof!” – is surely one of the most thrilling lines in 20th century fiction.) And the persona, excited by literature, is naturally also excited by language. She kissed her she quotes from a novel, and then savours that In most sentences it’s the verbs that do the heavy lifting; here, it’s the pronouns. She muses mischievously on the changing meaning and connotations of the word queer, and plays punning linguistic games with its spelling. Janaczewska gives this persona language that’s playful, precise and poetic.

Secondly, the work is magnificently transgressive in its form. Annoyingly, no doubt, I keep referring to the persona, rather than the character. I’ve done this because we’re not being offered the regulation artistic facsimile of a person, a created character that we’re invited to comprehend in terms of motivation and to judge in terms of competency of execution. There’s not the slightest whiff of dramatic irony; we know nothing more than the speaker herself. The literary antecedents of this type of thing are the great humanist essays of the likes of Montaigne, but when I say essay, I don’t mean the dull academic sort. The humanist essay has always gloried in sharing the personal in order to facilitate a discussion of the universal, but it also reminds us that, regardless of which grand narrative we choose to lose ourselves in, Life is always lived from the inside, in the particular place and time you find yourself. The magic of Janaczewska’s approach is that she takes this very literary tradition and gives it theatrical form, and so further highlights the individual – the wonder of human Life as it is actually lived. The concrete, the particular, the specific, suggested in the written essay form by only language, is beautifully enhanced here by the performer’s voice and movement. There’s no sloppy abstraction, only marvellous multifaceted reality.

Which leads me to my third point – Jules Billington’s splendid performance. Guided by Gaul, they give a performance that is (to the very syllable, the very glance) exact, crisp and yet still utterly natural. It’s a joy to witness an actor use all the tools in the box with such consummate skill.

With the aid of lighting designer Benjamin Brockman’s hanging globes, Gaul gives Billington a space that evokes the inner world, the liminal, the perpetual becoming, rather than being, which is the hallmark of the life of the intellect.

And, finally, let me consider the work thematically. On the simplest level, it’s about the silencing of lesbian voices.

An analogy (not Janaczewska’s): What we can say is analogous to What we can see. The electromagnetic spectrum consists of a middle ground – all the light we can see – which is bordered on either side by wave lengths beyond human perception. What we can say inhabits a similar spectrum. The middle consists of what can be easily shared and discussed, but this common ground is bookended by two great silences.

On one side is all the things we’re not permitted to talk about. One of these was, and is, the queer sexual experience. We live in a censorious age. Book bannings are increasing. And, with the fear of being cancelled, comes the even more insidious censorship of self.  

The past is a wild party because, if you explore literary history, it becomes apparent there’ve been times queer sexuality has been celebrated. Perhaps we’re experiencing a blip, an aberration that was most pronounced with Victorian prudery but still cankers in contemporary conservatism. But there’s hope in looking both into the past and into the future.

But what about the other end of my imagined spectrum of speech? If one border designates the limit of what it is permitted, what does the other border designate? What it is possible. There’ll always be the ineffable, those human experiences which seem beyond artistic representation, where silence reigns supreme.

But, with its gloriously innovative form, The Past is a Wild Party pushes back that boundary as well.

Paul Gilchrist

The Past is a Wild Party by Noëlle Janaczewska

At Loading Dock Theatre until 27 July

qtopiasydney.com.au/

Image by Alex Vaughan

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Too Human

12 Jul

This is remarkably silly fun, with a truly timely message.

Monty (Rhiaan Marquez) is in Year 8.

This is the second KXT production in a row that’s set in a junior high school (fortunately, for me, that educational experience is still a very recent memory.)

But Monty’s school is different from most: the students and staff are mythological creatures, of the half-human half-beast variety (so maybe it’s not that different from your average high school.)

Monty’s problem is that she is all human. From her minotaur dad (Mason Phoumirath) she got the human half, and from her mermaid mum (Luisa Galloway) she got … we’ll you guessed it.

But if she remains her uncool self, and therefore an inevitable victim of bullying, how will she ever get to pash Harry the Sphinx (Lachie Pringle)?

Michael McStay’s script is delightfully funny, full of terrific one liners and outrageous puns. Director Sammy Jing elicits from his entire cast performances that are big, bold and gloriously audacious.

Except for the sexual innuendos, it’s the sort of script that could be made into a sassy TV show aimed at an audience of the same age (if not genetic makeup) as the characters.

Except for its deceptive depth.

You could read Too Human as a play about high school bullying and the need to be yourself… but that seems a little too easy.

In our age of cancel culture, the pressure to cohere to the group has a wider relevance than the horrors of high school.

And, in contrast to the mythological beasts who are intersectional exemplars (clearly half this, obviously half that), humans are described throughout the play as complex, complicated and contradictory. It’s an insight that gets less airplay than it might. In our age of incessant sociological labelling, we can forget that what’s on the label ain’t necessarily what’s in the jar. And what’s in the jar today may be very different tomorrow. Humans (all of us!) are defined by biology – but we’re also fired by possibility. We’re not so much things as happenings. (There’s something beautifully Renaissance humanist about it all.)

It’s an inspiring, joyful, restorative vision.  

Paul Gilchrist

Too Human by Michael McStay

At KXT on Broadway until 20 July

kingsxtheatre.com

Image by Phil Erbacher

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Cut Chilli

12 Jul

Despite its serious theme, this has a sitcom structure and depth.

Jamie (Ariyan Sharma) was born in Sri Lanka and was adopted by a white Australian couple. Now, prompted by his girlfriend, he wonders whether he was stolen rather than saved.

The play works on some very clear dichotomies: young versus old; global majority versus white. However, there are unities: everyone’s comfortably middle class, and everyone’s subject to the same mercilessly shallow characterisation.

Writer Chenturan Aran has thrown the cast an extraordinary challenge – which they gleefully accept.

Let me consider two examples.

Noel Hodda plays Jeff, Jamie’s adopted uncle. Jeff’s the sort of jovial middle-aged man who is casually racist and who invariably bores or offends by riding hard his hobby horse that political correctness has gone too far. To find a watchable humanity in this character is quite an achievement.

Kelsey Jeanell plays Zahra, Jamie’s girlfriend. Zahra has a podcast called Decolonialise (?) and studies Critical Race Theory (CRT). She offers a wildly misleading definition of CRT – race is a social construct that deliberately perpetuates oppression. This assertion about the plague of racism is undeniably correct, but the form of CRT that Zahra acts out left me feeling it was, in fact, the disease it purports to diagnose. Zahra constantly tells everyone else that what they say and do is wrong. It’s breathtakingly self-righteous. (Perhaps I’m just pretending it’s parody – but it’s such a tragically impoverished vision of an ethical life that I can’t help myself.) It’s a feat to keep an audience onboard with a character like this and Jeanell is to be commended.

The play hinges on the question Who am I? It’s a question that currently predominates in our theatres. (I’m guessing the question What is to be done? has been made redundant by the superhuman apolitical certainty of characters like Zahra.)

In some ways, there’s an intriguing conservativism about the whole thing. It focuses on an origin story and it’s deeply conscious of the past. But, as Zahra reminds us, one reason we can’t be oblivious to the past is that trauma is handed down through the generations. And dismissals of history are appropriately given short shrift. Jamie’s adoption mother (played with a terrific unsettling ethereal facileness by Susie Lindeman) says You can’t change the past – and it’s a statement which impresses with both its obvious truth and its disturbing glibness. Similarly, her spiritual practice of radical presence (presentness?) is little more than an euphemism for moral irresponsibility.

The script could do with a trim. However, as an invitation to consider how we might build a better world, it’s wonderfully provocative.

Paul Gilchrist

Cut Chilli by Chenturan Aran

at Old Fitzroy until 27 July

oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by Phil Erbacher

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Blue: The Songs of Joni Mitchell 

7 Jul

There’s talk Joni Mitchell should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She’s an extraordinary lyricist and writes beautiful melodies. Some people suggest – that when the time comes – Mitchell should be made the patron saint of melancholy.

However, I think her metier is simply honesty. Her songs are deeply personal – but not in the contemporary fashion of My story must be told – rather in the more generous-hearted sense of This is where it hurts for me; perhaps it’s the same for you?

This seems to be Queenie van de Zandt’s experience of Mitchell. And, just as Dante had Virgil to guide him through Hell and Purgatory, and Beatrice to escort him through Heaven, we’ve been blessed with the best of all guides in our journey through Mitchell’s utterly divine catalogue.

van de Zandt has the most exquisite voice and her interpretation of the songs is so clear and so genuine that it transcends mere performance and becomes a soul-expanding sharing.

Under the musical direction of Max Lambert, her band is utterly superb.

There are songs from the album Blue, but also some of Mitchell’s popular hits like Big Yellow Taxi, Woodstock and Both Sides Now. Written by van de Zandt and Lambert, the show places each song within a biographical context, either Mitchell’s or our guides’.

This splendid evening of cabaret is both the perfect introduction to Mitchell’s work and a priceless celebration for long-time fans.

Paul Gilchrist

Blue: The Songs of Joni Mitchell 

Starring Queenie van de Zandt

At Hayes Theatre until July 7

hayestheatre.com.au

Image by Maria Alzate

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Counting and Cracking

3 Jul

This is theatrically exciting and dramatically thrilling.

Written by S. Shakthidharan with Eamon Flack, and directed by Eamon Flack with S. Shakthidharan, it spans two continents and several generations. It’s grand storytelling at its best.

In the early 2000’s in Sydney, Siddhartha lives with his mother, Radha. (Siddhartha is played by Shiv Palekar with delicious charm. Nadie Kammallaweera as Radha is the backbone of the production, and she’s suitably spiky and magnificently strong.) Siddhartha was born here, but his mother fled Sri Lanka during its time of civil conflict. The play jumps between the past in Sri Lanka and the turn of the century both there and here.

Three ideas explored in this production make it extraordinarily vital.

The first of these ideas is encapsulated in a line delivered by Radha’s grandmother (played with engaging verve by Sukania Venugopal). She repeatedly asserts “Weddings are more important than politics!” We’re now so accustomed to the mantra that the personal is the political that we blur the difference between the two spheres of life, potentially to the detriment of both. Here’s a working definition: the political is what can only be done with others, and the personal is what can only be done alone (or, at least, in the intimacy of what we call personal relations.) A full life requires acknowledgement of the separate existence of both of these spheres. If you don’t, you run the risk of living a personal life that’s selfish and parochial or a political life that’s shallow and inhumane.

The second idea that makes the production so timely is this: Don’t court division. Apah (played superbly by Prakash Belawadi) is the only Tamil in a Sinhalese dominated cabinet. He believes in unity and equality, and he distrusts tribalism. When escalating violence challenges his convictions, his granddaughter, the young Radha (played wonderfully by Radhika Mudaliyar), urges him to keep his nerve – and it’s an electrifying scene. “There’ll never be another Gandhi ji!” he cries, and it’s the intensity that the dramatic form facilitates that turns this despairing lament into a direct challenge to us. Currently, our culture is tempted to conflate assertions of difference with the attainment of justice. It’s also being seduced into valorising anger and justifying violence. There are several reasons for these disturbing trends, but a key one is the sheer historical ignorance born of privilege. This production gives a frightening glimpse into the hell of civic disorder – and is a powerful cautionary tale. 

The third idea is implied in the play’s title, and gains clarification in the scene I’ve just referred to. What exactly does the political sphere consist of? Is it always either the counting of heads that is voting OR the cracking of skulls that is physical coercion? Does the political reduce solely to the various manifestations of brute power? Or are there other things at work? Perhaps too late, young Radha urges those fearful of the imminent violence to seek refuge with the people they can trust. A just and peaceful civic society is dependent on the building of relationships.

I began by suggesting the production was theatrically exciting. This is thanks to Belvoir’s trade mark rough magic house-style. Actors become a clothes line. A beach is represented in the most delightfully nostalgic way. Scene changes are fast, fluid and gloriously energetic. Perhaps a quarter of the text is in languages other than English and this is translated “live”, with a gleeful awareness of translation’s tricksy nature. All this adds up to a production that constantly reminds us that it is telling a story – this story.  Not too long ago, this particular story was unlikely to appear on our main stages, and we’re being cordially invited to celebrate that change.

I also suggested the play is dramatically thrilling. It makes the most of the multi-voiced nature of the artform. I don’t mean there’s explicit tension between characters (that’s just the bread and butter of drama). What I mean is that there’s also grand unspoken tensions, the ones that explain why Life’s big problems are so notoriously difficult to solve.

Take this as an example: In the Sri Lanka of last century, we’re presented characters who warn of the dangers of tribalism. Meanwhile, in 21st century Australia, Siddhartha and his girlfriend Lily (played with an enchanting stage presence by Abbie-lee Lewis) are embracing their tribal identity. We assume it’s the right thing for these generous-hearted young people to do. But when does the positive form of tribalism start to become the other, more hazardous, form? The play doesn’t explicitly offer an answer; it doesn’t even explicitly acknowledge the possible danger. It simply places the two forms side by side with beautiful honesty.

Paul Gilchrist

Counting and Cracking by S. Shakthidharan with Eamon Flack

a Belvoir production at Carriageworks until 21 July

belvoir.com.au

Image by Pia Johnson

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