There are currently two (at least) productions of The Importance of Being Earnest running in Sydney. To wildly misquote a famous playwright: “To have one production may be regarded as good fortune; to have two is a godsend.”
One of these productions is by the Sydney Theatre Company at the Roslyn Packer Theatre. That show runs 2 hours 20 mins (with interval) and tickets are $117. The other is in The Bordello Room at the Kings Cross Hotel. This show runs 65 mins and tickets are $35.
I saw the one at the top of the pub.
Wilde’s script has been shortened (as the more discerning may have guessed from the word ‘expedited’ in the title.) The play is an absolute classic of comedy, and in this version all its wit and mischief shine through.
Three actors play all nine characters, and this doubling, tripling, quadrupling beautifully enhances the madcap fun. Under the direction of Keith Bosler, David Woodland, Lib Campbell and Tai Scrivener are magnificent, playing each character with a total commitment to their crazy comic potential. The deliciously absurd costuming by Tanya Woodland is icing on the cake.
The show gallops through at a cracking pace, and is given a suitably playful sound track by musician Courtney Powell.
For some time now, it’s been the fashion to view The Importance of Being Earnest as a type of queer piece, a coded exploration of the necessity for complex and duplicitous identities in a heteronormative society. This reading is no doubt encouraged by Wilde’s miserable fate. However, this production privileges audacity and exuberance, and so joyfully resists any single reading; it both delights and indicts, in myriad ways, with Wilde’s gloriously subversive humour.
Paul Gilchrist
The Importance of Being Earnest Expedited
at The Bordello Room, Kings Cross Hotel, as part of the Sydney Fringe
This is a 90 minute evening of three short plays written by Hilary Bell and directed by Francesca Savige.
Each playlet is delightful. (As is the word ‘playlet’, if you think about it. Like ‘spiderling’, it’s a diminutive that manages to only partially hide the thrilling, ferocious potential of the thing it labels.)
Summer of Harold opens the night. It’s a monologue, delivered beautifully by Hannah Waterman. Her character recalls when she and a friend spent a summer housekeeping for Harold Pinter. The acclaimed playwright is portrayed as daunting, at least to the young protagonist. It’s a charming piece about the passing of time and where we direct our fears.
Enfant Terrible is performed by Berynn Schwerdt. Gareth has just returned from an award night honouring his long-time friend, a world renowned ceramicist. It’s a terrifically amusing portrait of smallminded envy.
Lookout is a two hander. Jonathan is about to set off on a life changing road trip with his new love. Waterman and Schwerdt combine wonderfully to tell a tale of the need to grow, even in age.
So what do the three pieces have in common? They’re all told with a captivating humour. They’re all superbly performed. And they’re all tightly constructed; each is like a little mousetrap (though without the ghastly consequences.) This sort of clever tightness is so valued by the production that I was warned by the publicists not to write spoilers. Such a warning might seem unnecessary, but if the snap of the trap is both satisfyingly and sufficiently loud, there are some of my oh so noble profession who can’t but help let the echo sound in their review.
Another connection between the pieces is that each is about our relationship with what might be called size. Two of the playlets are clearly fascinated with fame and our response to it. (And here I’ll point out that Summer Of Harold references Pinter’s cricket team, the Gaieties, and it’s important for everyone to know that I am personally acquainted with someone who played in that team.) The closing piece alludes not to fame, to those of us who appear larger than Life, but is instead an exhortation to acknowledge Life is larger than us, and to embrace it, regardlessly.
Betty is a Butcher is his debut as a playwright. Presenting this one-man show himself, Campbell offers a fascinating series of vignettes. A grand old actress talks of love. An online sex worker growls and complains. A child tasked with giving a speech at school finds unexpected help. A man submits to counselling for abuse of his boyfriend. And there’s the delightful surprise of the final number.
Are these scenes connected? I’m not sure. Two motifs bubble and crackle through: unicorns and the heart. It’s an intriguing jigsaw, a teasing meditation on dreams, desires, and deep dissatisfactions.
Campbell is eminently watchable, displaying a glorious range.
Director Kate Gaul creates a simple but beautiful theatrical space for Campbell to play. Lit wonderfully by Victor Kalka (wait for the disco ball) and buoyed by Nate Edmondson’s sound design and composition, PACT looks and sounds terrific.
Alan has started to forget things. Just little things, but his wife is concerned. His doctor asks him to remember three words. They become the title of this piece.
Alan has early onset dementia. This one-man show portrays the development of the disease.
Written by David Hendon, it’s a work both beautifully crafted and searingly truthful. Alan does not want to accept this is happening. He desperately holds on to the belief that his memory lapses are mere aberrations. He interprets the concern of his loved ones as a desire to prove him wrong. As his forgetfulness deepens, we see how it’s the ability to maintain a coherent vision of the past that grants us a place in the present.
As Alan, CJ de Mooi is magnificent. He presents such a wonderfully rich portrayal – the denial, the anger, the warmth, the fear – that it feels utterly real, that it seems unbelievable that it’s a just performance. A gushingly naïve evaluation? Such is the power of this show.
It’s an empathy maker: we feel for Alan and – this is a testament to the writing and the performance – we feel for those who care for him, though we never meet them. Alan’s story, their story, is silently repeated in many homes, unnoticed by the rest of us, or deliberately forgotten.
I’ve suggested before that the best theatre either reminds the miserable of happiness or the happy of misery. On the strength of such a production, I would add this: from darkness, theatre makes beauty. Hearts are softened by the honest telling of hard truths.
Paul Gilchrist
Banana Crabtree Simon by David Hendon
Emerging Artists Sharehouse, as part of the Sydney Fringe
The concept of the “great actor” functions as a type of myth. Great actors are like Greek gods. They have human desires and flaws, but they remain above us, always, visitors from some wondrous realm.
Perhaps it’s an accurate description of certain gifted individuals, like Bernhardt. Or perhaps it’s suggestive of the role these individuals fill in popular culture. (It’s curious that we’re only allowed one or two great actors per generation. Too many gods is equivalent to having no gods. The currency must not be debased.)
Susie Lindeman’s Sarah Quand Même presents Bernhardt’s life. Bernhardt recalls to her granddaughter key events. Lindeman performs both roles, and if you were to cast someone as a great actor, she’s your choice. Lindeman’s vocal performance and physicality are superb.
Lindeman has also written the piece (for the anniversary of Bernhardt’s death). She tells a fascinating tale of Bernhardt’s glorious resilience. Quand Même means “despite all” or “no matter what”. Bernhardt was a superstar, and like anyone who mounts the monster of fame, the ride has its moments.
In a particularly poignant choice, Lindeman uses as a motif Bernhardt’s description of the audience as “the monster”. If you have gods, there will be monsters; and perhaps it’s only the gods who can tame them. I would’ve loved to have seen more of Bernhardt the actor, the god who tamed the monster, perhaps a speech or two from the great classics, a sample of her extraordinary ability. Lindeman could do it. Instead, we must be satisfied with review quotes that expound Bernhardt’s talent, and we all know what the opinion of reviewers is worth.
What would you call this? A reportage play? A recent history play? Whatever you call it, it’s a happening genre. Recent events, covered by the media, become a work of theatre.
The reasoning is simple: what the media provides is problematic. The media throws information at us helter skelter, bit by bit, hour by hour, and then moves on. The media isn’t trying to help us make sense of the world; it’s simply trying to get our attention. It treats us like children; it shakes a rattle, it plays peek a boo. For those of us who have achieved object permanence, this can feel a little dissatisfying. I’m informed that such and such happened, but I often don’t know what happened before such and such, and I rarely find out what happens after. A lack of understanding of how motivations, actions and consequences interconnect is a recipe for disempowerment. The media purports to offer information, but often is only selling passivity and impotence.
Dramatists, and writers of other forms, have realised there’s a place for an extended narrative that makes sense of the helter skelter of the media, joining the before and after of an event into a coherent whole.
In 2017, Luke Harding wrote A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia’s War with the West. In 2019, dramatist Lucy Prebble adapted it, presenting the story of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by Russian agents in London in 2006.
Of course, the challenge of this type of writing for theatre is that some of it will naturally be invention. Did Putin really say that? Fiction can be taken as fact. Prebble guards against this through the use of a playful meta-theatricality, reminding us to remain alert, that the passivity endemic to television viewing is no option.
The point of all this – apart from entertainment, and this play and this production are hugely entertaining – is to impart political insight. Sure, some of these insights may appear too obvious to earn that title. That expediency often trumps justice, that determination is necessary if justice is to be ultimately achieved, are assertions unlikely to enlighten anyone – but in any seriously engaged political life they bear repetition.
Other insights offered are more drama-ish. (Yes, a made up word.) By it I mean the insights that drama is particularly suited to give. These are often of the giving-voice-to-the-devil type. Several men whose ethics we might find reprehensible are given voice in this piece. One tells of Russia’s history of suffering, suggesting that our moral objections might, from another perspective, seem merely irrelevant self-indulgent scruples. Not for a moment does Prebble suggest that Litvinenko deserved to be murdered; her intention is clearly to indict a Russian regime capable of such an atrocity, and to critique Britain’s reluctance to seek justice. But it remains a valid point, that despite our deepest wishes, moral systems are not universal. To successfully live with others (other countries, other individuals) and to retain the hope that we might nudge the world a little closer to the ideal we desire, we need to know this.
Have I made all this seem rather heavy? It’s not. Prebble’s script is brilliant, and director Margaret Thanos’ production allows it to shine. With movement director Diana Paola Alvarado, Thanos gives a show brimming with pace, energy and pizazz.
Performances are excellent. Richard Cox as Alexander Litvinenko gives a moving portrait of the relationship between moral exertion and woe. Chloe Schwank as Marina Litvinenko beautifully portrays a journey from fear and frustration to strength and resoluteness. Tasha O’Brien as Putin is absolutely marvellous; she gloriously embraces the comic possibilities of the role while simultaneously presenting a character whose personal awkwardness and deep mistrust make a truly dangerous enemy.
Written by Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe, and first produced in 2018, The Approach is about relationships. This might seem an absurdly naïve thing to say; after all, isn’t that what all drama is about, it being the artform best suited to exploring how we relate to each other?
But this work is fascinating in its seeming simplicity and focus. Through only a series of tete-a-tete conversations between friends, it forefronts our desire for human connections, despite the pathetic inadequacy of so many of these connections. It’s La Rochefoucauld, without the exuberance he derived from cynicism. The relationships portrayed in The Approach are filled with grievances, resentments, dishonesties and envies, and are maintained by characters who struggle for self-awareness, and who would probably choose to live without these relationships if they could.
Some people might suggest this is simple Truth; theatre at its most beautifully realistic. Perhaps. I’m not sure calling it Truth isn’t merely the romanticisation of garden variety misery. But, if it is, who am I to complain about how others cope?
It’s a finely wrought play, eighty minutes of tight, engaging writing. Director Deborah Jones keeps the production splendidly sparse, allowing her excellent cast to shine. It’s a joy to witness Linda Nicholls-Gidley, Lindsey Chapman and Sarah Jane Starr present these characters, like watching sunlight glimmer through the discarded pieces of a broken stained glass window. I use this ostentatious simile deliberately: the play presents a world in which individuals have seemingly lost the ability to look up. There’s one particularly poignant motif: a fourth character, who we never meet, who climbed a nearby mountain and lit a fire. In rich ambiguity, this serves as both a powerful image of troubled flight, and of the desperate need to go beyond.
Ghost stories are not about ghosts; they’re about fear. They ask what makes us frightened and what type of safety we crave. They also ask when is fear natural and beneficial, and when is it irrational and dangerous.
Richard Hilliar’s adaptation of Henry James’ classic novella is funny, fascinating, frightening, and entirely engaging.
Ostensibly, it’s a ghost story and, as director, Hilliar works multiple theatrical elements to create a deeply creepy atmosphere. Set, sound, lighting, costume and performance all combine together brilliantly to establish this mood. (Set designer Hamish Eliot deserves special mention: the creation of the late 19th century house and its surrounds is extraordinarily rich.)
Adaptation is a tricky business. The audience will always slot into two distinct categories: those familiar with the original text and those who are not. Though there have been dramatizations before, I would think James’ novella stubbornly resists the form, being so dependent on the subjective psychological experience of the protagonist. The original novella is in first person and the protagonist is the archetypal unreliable narrator. (Here she is played by Lucy Lock with affecting horrified bewilderment.) The achievement of the original text relies on silences, both deliberate and contextually determined. James’ narrator doesn’t tell us certain things, either out of self-interest or from lack of self-knowledge. And James himself, working at the end of the Victorian era, was presumably reluctant to spell out the more confronting possibilities latent in his tale. Hilliar’s version is much more explicit.
It could be argued that James’ novella is the culmination of the gothic, a tale in which the external supernatural and the internal psychological collapse into one. After The Turn of the Screw, modern horror developed because the genre had nowhere else to go.
But Hilliar creates a play and a production that engages in a fascinating conversation with the original, as well as being a deeply intriguing work in its own right.
Paul Gilchrist
The Turn of the Screw by Richard Hilliar (after Henry James)
The myth of a vagina equipped with teeth has been with us for quite a while. The myth functions in several ways. It expresses the male fear of women, their dangerous allure, their power, the fact that the sexual act radically changes the participants. It also expresses the female desire for safety, the longing to secure themselves from sexual assault.
I don’t want to oversimplify; if the meaning of the myth was obvious and indubitable it wouldn’t be a myth, but merely a parable or fable, or even a truism. Myth works well in drama because it invites reflection rather than reduces to sermon.
And Erica J Brennan’s take on the myth of vagina dentata warmly invites reflection. Brennan reworks it as speculative fiction, imagining the phenomena to have occurred to most contemporary women. How we would navigate this concrete physicalization of our subconscious fears and desires?
Brennan sets the action in a dinner party, the archetype of privileged normalcy, and lets the characters attempt to make sense of it all. Their dialogue is stilted and sparse, evocative of the challenges of the new world in which together they find themselves, but also of the deep troubling internal darkness that alone they’ve always inhabited. Director Cam Turnbull effectively ramps up the sense of dislocation by slowing the pace. Lighting designer Jasmin Borsovszky also powerfully disrupts any illusions of a comfortable reality with unexpected and haunting variations. The addition of clever, catchy songs by Jake Nielsen further subverts complacency.
The cast do some good work. A highlight is Kira-che Heelan, as Neeve, offering an engaging performance that marvellously mixes the horror, the despair, the anger and the hope. Claudia Shnier’s Sasha is beautifully and provocatively part conniving minx and part feminist warrior, and all vulnerable human being, as she attempts to cope with forces much larger and more ancient than herself. David Woodland’s Mark, in his desperate, bumbling attempts to make connections despite the world’s brutality, is a splendidly sympathetic everyman.
The Hero Leaves One Tooth is like a gem dragged up from the underworld; deliberately only half-polished, it glimmers and shines while still suggesting the darkness from where it came.
Paul Gilchrist
The Hero Leaves One Tooth by Erica J Brennan
Presented by Ratcatch Theatre in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company
Fun and endlessly fascinating, this play deliberately resists easy interpretation.
A descendant of the absurdist comedies of Beckett, Philip Ridley’s Pitchfork Disney takes a simple scenario and posits it as a symbol of the human condition.
Presley and Haley, brother and sister, live alone. Perhaps they’ve been abandoned by their parents? They’re fearful of the outside world and their diet consists exclusively of chocolate. But Presley and Haley are not children; they’re adults, reduced to a childlike state by the absence of an authoritative world view. In a pathetic attempt to establish some sort of meaningful vision of Life, they tell each other their nightmares, retell outlandish stories, and recall a past when Mum and Dad provided a secure centre to their existence. Ridley’s genius is the conscious use of cliché and allusions to consumer pop culture to evoke the malaise of modern meaninglessness.
Into this closed world comes Cosmo Disney, a two bit entertainer who makes a living by supplying his audience with a “daily dose of disgust.” In a world devoid of higher purpose, at least fear and repulsion are constant.
Director Victor Kalka does wonderful work with this classic of modern theatre, creating a space in which imminent threat and comic exuberance play chicken.
The cast is exceptionally strong. Jane Angharad as Haley is magnificently vulnerable, her childlike physicality and her delivery of Ridley’s evocative monologues a delight. James Smithers as Presley, onstage through virtually the entire production, gives a virtuoso performance; doubt, bravado, terror, reluctance, desire, wonder, all brilliantly brought to life. Harry Winsome’s Cosmo is a beautifully disturbing portrait of self-serving confidence, operating both as a foil to the two adult children he impinges upon, and granting insight into the unexpected ways in which moral emptiness manifests itself. James Hartley provides a terrific cameo – of which the spoiler rule reduces me to silence – except to say it’s both powerful and hilarious.
Theatre Red 