This is not the one by Chekhov. Though it is, sort of. Gary Owen has taken the bones of the story and buried them in Thatcher’s Britain.
It’s odd (though enjoyable) that we’ll put on a century old Russian play in contemporary Sydney. And the odd (though enjoyable) dial is ramped up further when we put on a British adaptation of an old Russian play. (And even more so when you consider that this particular adaptation is actually a historical drama, set forty years earlier than the time it was written. And then add the fact that this is the second modern British play informed by Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard presented by this particular producing company in the last two years.)
It’s mirror reflecting on mirror, endlessly fascinating.
As I suggested, the bones of the story are the same: a privileged family in the process of disintegration. With the matriarchy asleep at the wheel, will they get to keep their estate?
Owen’s version keeps the pre-story of the death of the matriarch’s son, but soaks her grief in alcohol. The result is that the play seems smaller than Chekhov’s, haunted by a dead child and highlighting substance abuse. The sense of social change enervating an entire class is weakened, though perhaps it’s my historical ignorance that makes it difficult to find connections between Thatcher’s anti-working class revolution and the malaise of the landed gentry in fin de siècle Russia.
Under the direction of Anthony Skuse, performances are marvellous. Deborah Galanos as Rainey the matriarch has a tough job – the script rarely has her without a drink in hand – but she beautifully balances bullying charisma and vulnerability. Jane Angharad as her adopted daughter, struggling to keep her home and navigating a precarious romantic relationship, is deeply moving. Charles Mayer as Rainey’s twitty brother is great fun. James Smithers as the young would-be-radical is excellent, combining a boasting bravado with the ominous sense he might sell out. He’s having a fling (or is it?) with Rainey’s daughter, played with a glorious vibrant intelligence by Amelia Parsonson, and their scenes together are electric.
Written by Olivia Clement and directed by Lucinda Gleeson, it’s an exemplar of the grand tradition of drama.
(Perhaps there aretwo grand traditions. One’s the Theatre of Audacity, the type that asks to be valued because it surprises, shocks and delights. It has us say of the actors I can’t believe you stood in front of people and did that! The other grand tradition is the Theatre of Authenticity, the type that asks to be valued because of its universality, veracity and honesty. It has us say of the actors You made me believe it was true.)
The Arrogance is of the second of these traditions. On the simplest level, it presents the relationship between parents and children; a relationship as close to universal as you’ll get. Amber (Whitney Richard) reflects on her relationship with her father (Alan Glover), a man she’s beginning to acknowledge verbally and physically abused her when she was little. She’s also making friends with her new neighbour (Linden Wilkinson) and learns that she too has had a problematic relationship with her child. But, true to the Janus-like visage of the human condition, as we look into the past, we must still look to the future. Amber is pregnant. That most fundamental, most fractious, of relationships is about to begin once again.
When I praise the Theatre of Authenticity, and this most marvellous example of it, what most impresses me is its unflinching gaze. It refuses to polish to unrecognizability the crooked timber of humanity: it records what’s messed up, what’s contradictory, what’s irresolvable. Philip Larkin famously wrote “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” Adrian Mitchell replied with his playful parody “They tuck you up.” Drama of authenticity shows how both experiences can happen simultaneously.
And there’s another tension portrayed brilliantly in this piece. It’s about the contingency of judgement. We’ve all been told you shouldn’t judge people. And we’ve all been told there are times you most definitely should. Amber has to make such a judgement, but once she’s begun she has difficulty knowing when to stop. She falls into the error of lumping people together (an error endemic to our sociologically obsessed age.) There are few cries more tragic, more wrong-headed and more wrong-hearted, than You are all the same!
To suit the play’s commitment to both truth and its complexity, designer Soham Apte gives us a simple playing area, one evoking a garden, but soaked in dark hues, a place symbolic of the contradictory connotations of digging – it’s both a place to plant, and a place to bury.
Gleeson draws from her cast performances of glorious, unadorned honesty. At a mere 70 minutes, nothing is hurried, nothing forced – and truth is laid bare.
This is great fun and seriously thought-provoking.
It’s also incredibly difficult to write about without breaking the spoiler rule.
Freddy is finishing his HSC and is about to turn eighteen. Liv, his sibling, has come home from overseas to help him celebrate. But his parents, Beth and Jim, are worried about Freddy’s behaviour – though it’s not like they have everything worked out themselves.
None of that is spoiler material, but the very kernel of the piece is dependent on the withholding of information. The nature of Freddy’s problem is only fully clarified at the play’s resolution. Stories that withhold information have dangers: some audience members clock what’s going on immediately and lose interest, others only understand in the final moments and so become frustrated long before that.
Written by Daniel Cottier and directed by Benjamin Brockman, this piece avoids these pitfalls by its humour, deeply humane vision and wonderful performances.
Nicholas Cradock’s Freddy is a moving portrait of a troubled soul. Nyx Calder as Liv delivers sharp one liners marvellously, but also gives a rich characterisation of caring sibling and angry child. Hester van der Vyveras Beth and Richard Hillair as Jim are hilarious as they work the satire of early middle-aged myopia, but when things get genuinely confronting, they subtlety move to truthful performances of perplexed but heartfelt concern. When the full extent of Freddy’s pain is revealed, van der Vyver’s reaction of bewildered vulnerability is absolutely magnificent
I don’t think I’m giving away too much to say Freddy has mental health issues.
Voice over is used to suggest Freddy suffers from intrusive thoughts. It’s a bold decision. Drama always struggles to present the inner experience of its characters. We guess at a character’s inner world from their words and actions, but as in Life, we can’t really get inside. The Elizabethans invented the soliloquy to try to solve the problem – but it’s only a partial solution, privileging a character’s deliberate, articulated thoughts rather than the ever-changing whirlwind of interiority. The VO powerfully underlines that Freddy is a victim of thoughts he can’t control, but each time it’s used it threatens to pull us out of the world of the play. Why can we hear his voices while his Mum, Dad and sibling can’t? (Yes, I know, the characters don’t hear the soundscape either – but then none of them do.) This VO technique has been used in other productions to create humour – it sets up that expectation – but I was glad it wasn’t employed that way here. What Cottier is exploring is too important for that.
Freddy can’t control his thoughts – and control is a theme that weaves through the piece.
Consider his parents. Mum wants to control Freddy’s study habits and places unneeded pressure on him by repeatedly asserting he will be school dux. Dad wants Freddy to leave his room, to get out and do stereotypical-straight-male-teenager-sort-of-things. Like Mum’s demands, it’s good-natured, but it highlights that teenagers must perpetually navigate parental expectations.
And the younger generation don’t get off unscathed. There’s a poke at their desire to control in the quip They care about everything, that’s why they’re all so depressed.
Chilled Liv seems able to transcend the temptation of control, but even they, in the inevitable argument with Mum about personal pronouns, falls back on But I want you to call me that!
So, what about the focus of the piece? Freddy’s condition? Is this also ultimately about seeking control? His cure obviously is; he needs to get back control of his own thoughts.
But what about the condition itself? Is there an element of control-seeking in his behaviour? On the simplest level, I don’t think this play says so; it’s too beautifully empathetic. But its presentation of poor teenage Freddy’s suffering is so powerful that it becomes apparent that his desire to keep it all to himself is part of what prevents him finding relief.
The piece is a gorgeously gentle, generous-spirited reminder to talk about it, to seek help.
This is a classic play; it’s very funny and deeply humane.
Directed by Mark Kilmurry, this is the second production of the play I’ve seen this year. I’d happily see it again.
Chekhov follows the usual comic trope of outsiders disrupting the stable world of convention. (Think Benedict and Don John arriving in Messina in Much Ado.) Chekhov’s twist is that the interlopers don’t energise the original inhabitants, they enervate them.
Professor Serebryakov and his young wife, Yelena, have come to live at the family estate, and they bring with them indolence. Vanya realises it’s contagious, but can’t remain immune.
Though written in late 19th century Russia, the play is provocatively relevant. It juxtaposes two questions our society continues to wrestle with: Who am I? versus What is to be done? Vanya thinks he’s a failure, that his life has been a waste. Understandably, he’d like to blame others. But is this really the way forward?
Joanna Murray-Smith’s adaption retains the original setting (there’s a samovar, there are peasants) but the language is our modern vernacular, allowing Chekhov’s brilliance to shine.
Under Kilmurry’s direction, a terrific cast honour Chekhov’s famed honesty and truthfulness.
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, Chekhov creates a confronting beauty. Everyone is unfortunate, flawed and foolish – and still utterly lovable. (Even the pompous old professor, played wonderfully by David Lynch; his awkward, explanation-requiring, Gogol joke is comic gold.) Everyone’s in love with the wrong person. No one’s advice is quite right for anyone else. I don’t think this is a spoiler, but proceed with this paragraph at your own risk. Sonya’s beautiful final speech might be right for her, but can it really mean that much for her Uncle Vanya? But he accepts it, in silence; it’s what his niece can bring to the table, and if he has grown at all through the events of the play, he’s learnt to listen without criticism.
Yalin Ozucelik as Vanya offers an irresistible figure of both hilarity and pathos. Chantelle Jamieson as Yelena initially plays indolence in the key of annoyance, a surprising choice, but one which pays off magnificently, delivering a second act of intensely moving vulnerability. Tim Walter, the visiting doctor who sets the women’s hearts afire, beautifully balances charm and dissolution. Abbey Morgan as Sonya offers a performance that is gloriously natural, an encapsulation of the Chekhovian genius; humanity in its unadorned simplicity, in its labyrinthine complexity, in its troubled passage through the sea of time, guided by hope and threatened by despair.
Paul Gilchrist
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.)
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.
Theatre Red 