Pride in Prejudice: the Wharf Revue

13 Nov

Satire has street cred. It sticks it to the Man.

Written by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott, and performed by Mandy Bishop, David Whitney, Andrew Warboys, Biggins and Forsythe, what gives this production countless giggles is its clever caricatures of well-known people. Standouts are mischievous portraits of Anthony Albanese, Jacqui Lambie, Caroline Kennedy, Joe Biden and Peter Dutton.  

It’s a satire aimed at the famous and the supposedly powerful (though I don’t believe any of the above mentioned people were in the audience on opening night. It must be admitted, however, I do avoid all chit chat in the foyer.)

Satire always faces one huge dilemma: directly address your audience, make their lives your target, and you offend them. And, alas, the offended stop listening, and what’s worse, they don’t tell their offendable friends to buy tickets. So satire, despite good intentions, is often reduced to little more than the shadows in Plato’s cave; something that distracts us from reality, or secures us in our illusions.

One such illusion is that people who act on a political level are flawed. But isn’t that the Truth? Indubitably, but a lot of things are true that no one delights in repeating. This particular truism has the advantage that it justifies political passivity: I care, but engagement entails compromise at best, or corruption at worse, so I’ll merely watch. And, if this is my choice, then being informed must be valorised, and the consumption of media products must be conflated with genuine political engagement.  

Two skits seem to me to particularly suggest this disdain for authentic engagement. One is a series of video projections of Lidia Thorpe. I don’t admire Thorpe’s politics, and the sight of her in a “No” t-shirt filled me, once again, with dismay – but an attack on her that consisted of merely a rhyming ditty left me with a previously unexperienced empathy for the woman. Similarly, a skit in which three French people are lampooned for rioting for seemingly trivial political objectives left me reflecting that at least they weren’t sitting comfortably on their couches watching the ABC.

Another way satire gains street cred is by its flirtation with bad taste. This show has its share of such naughtiness: an animation of the Titanic mini-sub accident; an operatic assassination of Putin; and a passing reference to the current horrors in Gaza with the suggestion the problems are perennial. I’m not certain if this type of naughtiness is a challenge to conventions or a suspension of empathy.  

Subject matter aside, there are also challenges of a creative nature in a work like this. Video projection, though facilitating costume changes, might leave an audience wondering why they left home (especially an audience that it seems to be assumed watches a whole lot of TV.) Sung ditties, which made up a fair percentage of the evening, can be an inefficient and ineffectual way of making a satirical point; their critique being more rhyme than reason. And, if you perform a well loved song with altered, satirical lyrics, the prime victim is often the song.

And finally, a structural point: satire can be sharp like a scalpel, or detailed like the T & C’s for online banking, and anywhere in between risks losing either the bite or the complexity. The concluding skit, a terrific appropriation of South Pacific that explores Australian, American and Chinese diplomatic relations, gets the mix hilariously right.

Paul Gilchrist

The Wharf Revue: Pride in Prejudice by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott

At Seymour Centre until Dec 17

www.seymourcentre.com

Image by Vishal Pandey

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The Lives of Eve

2 Nov

The future is our home country; we’ll do things differently there. (Apologies to LP Hartley*, but more so to my readers who might have to wade through the entirety of this review in order to make sense of what I’m getting at.)

One of the greatest cultural revolutions of the last millennium was that lead by Freud. Because of he and his followers, we look to our personal past to explain our present. I am like this because I was treated like that. Maybe it’s true. Whatever the case, it’s a perspective that greatly impacts the modern world, even trivialities like theatre.

It’s extremely common for modern plays to look backwards. The heroine eventually realises (or remembers!) something about her past (that is before the events depicted in the play) and this motivates her to either accept that something or to transcend it. If you want a point of difference, consider Shakespeare. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have pasts (who doesn’t?) but the Bard doesn’t dwell on their back history to explain their actions. These are explained, in so far as they’re explained at all, by current desires and influences. (I’ve deliberately chosen the Macbeths as my example because modern directors love to read Lady Macbeth’s line “I have given suck and know how tender tis to love the babe that milks me” as an explanation for her extraordinary behaviour. Lady Macbeth has obviously lost a child and that has driven her to this – which might make sense if it wasn’t for the fact that the premodern infant mortality rate was so high that virtually every woman had lost a child, and yet only a small percentage of women went on to become regicides.)

Stephen Sewell’s The Lives of Eve is a fully conscious exploration of the tradition of the unconscious (or at least our focus on our personal histories.) His protagonist, Eve, is a Lacanian analyst. We are shown her sessions with patient, Sylvia. There’s even a couch. Sylvia suffers from sexual disfunction. (I’m prevaricating: She can’t come.) It’s a brave male dramatist who writes about the female orgasm. (No doubt, if I was to do so, some wag would gleefully quip that not only had I never had one, I have probably never been in the room when one was happening.) In addition to the challenges of Sylvia, Eve has trouble at home; she and husband Paul are drifting apart, driven by unequal sexual desires. Fortunately, Eve gets support from her dead mother. Yes, the past, again. There’s a lot of talk about the past.

Directed by Kim Hardwick, the cast are eminently watchable. Helen O’Connor as Eve offers a powerful portrait of strength seeking depth. Louisa Panucci effectively presents Sylvia as the swirling whirlpool that is the growing soul: attraction competes with repulsion, inhibition with bluntness, doubt with certainty. Noel Hodda as Paul superbly depicts affability and affection in their oh so painful collision with a hostility that’s incomprehensible. Annie Byron as Eve’s departed mother, Madeline, is charmingly nonchalant and ethereal.

Sewell’s characters are extremely erudite. They quote or reference Lacan, Freud, Augustine, Plato, Aristotle, Sappho, Donne, Shakespeare, Einstein, Badiou and Grieg (though, admittedly, the composer just happens to share his name with one of Eve’s friends.) I think it’s absolutely wonderful when dramatists present Australians as educated and intelligent. (It’s like watching a Marvel movie: sure, the suit couldn’t actually help Iron Man to fly, but it’s a fun fact to forget.)

A lot of top shelf ideas are shared. Marvel fans might suggest it’s merely psycho-babble vs socio-babble. (Lacan on language vs gender generalisations.) If it takes a brave male playwright to write about the female orgasm, you’d have to be a superhero to take on philosophy in Australian theatre.

But Sewell knows what he’s doing: it’s rich and provocative, and I’ll enjoy thinking about this work for some time to come.

I want to mention two moments that stood out for me. At one stage Eve suggests (something like) we are both mysteries and disappointments to ourselves – and to other people. It’s a beautiful, deeply humane encapsulation of what it is to be alive. Similarly, in argument with Sylvia, Eve asserts that some problems might simply not have solutions; our politics can take us only so far; being conflicted and confused is the human condition.

So, despite being a play interested in how our personal past informs our present, Eve becomes a model for maturity, for both acceptance and transcendence. The future is our home country, because our dearest dream is that we’ll do things differently there.

Paul Gilchrist

The Lives of Eve by Stephen Sewell

at KXT on Broadway until 11 Nov

www.kingsxtheatre.com

Image by Danielle Lyonne

* Hartley’s original line from The Go-Between was “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

   

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Dazza & Horse Play

31 Oct

This evening of two short plays is part of the Everything But The Kitchen Sink Festival.

The first show, Dazza, written and performed by Frankie Fearce, is seriously top class satire. It’s a beautiful, measured criticism of the parochial Australian male, focusing especially on his attitudes to gender identity. “You’re one of those pronoun people, aren’t ya?” Dazza says to an unexpected visitor to his local. Fearce’s writing is wonderfully sharp, and the rhythms of the vernacular are spot on.

Like all top rate satire, there’s little hyperbole, just a commitment to truth. Garden variety satire criticises. Great satire portrays. If the artist tells us the character is flawed we might choose to read it all as a comment about the artist themselves. However, if it’s we who decide the character is flawed, the criticism appears indubitable.

The beauty of the portrait is that Dazza refuses to consider that he might be closed-minded, which is, of course, the epitome of closed-mindedness. Dazza is a good bloke in a world that’s certain he is one, and that’s the very problem.

The change from the introductory scene where Fearce plays themselves (I guess) to where they play Dazza is a piece of theatrical magic. It was also a feast for thought: the change in the audience was utterly electrifying. We had been witnessing a person give testimony of their lived experience and the vibe was definitely supportive. Then came the change, and suddenly we were confronted with the delicious, dangerous lie that is fiction and, in addition to abundant laughter, there was a shifting in seats, an intake of breathe, a palpable uncertainty.  It was as though we had been in a church and now we were in a theatre. The experience clarified for me why I prefer performance to personal testimony: when someone genuinely shares, only a dickhead (such as Dazza) is not supportive; when someone performs we feel little moral necessity to respond to the character in any fixed way, and so it is we who are encouraged to be genuine.   

The second show of the evening is Horse Play. It’s a clever title for a clever show. Zoe Tomaras directs a fun sitcom, devised and written by the team (Nat Knowles, Sophea Op, Angela Johnston, Linda Chong, Georgia Drewe and Tomaras.) Five soldiers (men, of course) wait inside the Trojan horse. Sometime in the night they will slip out and open the city gates … and the rest is known. (And told in its full horror by Euripides in his The Women of Troy.)

In this tale, the men just wait. It’s Waiting for Godot in togas. (Ok, not togas, but you get the point.) It’s a wonderful set up which the team doesn’t so much use to discuss war as masculinity. The very gifted comic cast present the male characters as being unable to transcend the puerility of teenagers (a criticism which dovetails well with who is often left to do the fighting of wars.) There are dick and masturbation jokes aplenty and homosexual curiosity masquerades unconvincingly as homophobia.  There’s also a playful exploration of how we attempt to fill time until the big moment, whatever that big moment might be (which is the family connection to Godot.) To portray characters who are bored is always risky, but Tomaras deals with it astutely. The piece is not presented in real time but is offered in multiple brief scenes, moreish slices of experience, cute skits cut and served to us by the dimming and raising of lights, a directorial choice which functions as an effective laugh track.  

If I’ve made it all seem merely wacky fun, the concluding scene of Horse Play throws down the gauntlet. It powerfully reminds us that those we find most laughable might be just that because of the infantilizing impact of the trauma that they face, and that we ignore. Euripides followed a tragedy with satyr; here we have something that poignantly approximates the reverse.    

These two short shows exhibit the inspiring wildness that makes the Everything but the Kitchen Sink Festival a terrific addition to the Sydney theatre scene.

Paul Gilchrist

Dazza by Frankie Fearce

Horse Play by Nat Knowles, Sophea Op, Angela Johnston, Linda Chong, Georgia Drewe and Zoe Tomaras

Part of the Everything But The Kitchen Sink Festival at Flight Path Theatre until Nov 4

www.flightpaththeatre.org

Images by Toby Blome

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The Memory of Water

26 Oct

The Memory of Water follows some familiar tropes. Members of a dysfunctional family gather for a loved ones’ funeral. Forced to be in the same room, they argue their conflicting perceptions of family history. Though hard to imagine, if any of my reviewing colleagues were ever tempted to petty mindedness they might dub this piece The Memory of Other Plays. However, the seeming familiarity of the plot has no doubt been enhanced by the presentation of other similar stories in the twenty seven years since this play was originally written.  

But the plot is not the play, and it’s certainly not the production. Playwright Shelagh Stephenson’s take on family differences is hilarious and director Rachel Chant elicits from her cast brilliant comic performances. Madeleine Jones as Catherine is especially engaging, presenting a personality whose enormous energy knows no matching purpose. Jones’ portrayal of this lost soul is both terrifically funny and deeply poignant. Thomas Campbell’s Frank is also extremely amusing, as he desperately tries to maintain distance from the family craziness. Michala Banas as Mary is the emotional heart of the piece, with sarcasm balancing beautifully with vulnerability she attempts to understand her relationships, both with the living and with the dead.

Designer Veronique Benett deserves special mention; her vibrant set and costuming create the perfect space for comic fun.

Not that it’s just frivolity; one of the tropes of modern theatre (and one I don’t grow tired of) is that it has philosophical ideas. The title invites us to consider memory. I’m not sure if the play’s observation that memories are neither objective nor deliberate will strike many audience members as particularly insightful – however, eighteen hours after seeing it, my memory of the play is neither entirely objective nor entirely deliberate.

But the glory of the philosophical in theatre is that it provokes reflection. Rather than being told what to think, we’re teased into thought.

Paul Gilchrist

The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stephenson

at Ensemble Theatre until 25 Nov

www.ensemble.com.au

Image by Prudence Upton

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Venus and Adonis

6 Oct

Written and directed by Damien Ryan, this is big, bold, and delightfully ambitious. It’s also very entertaining (but more on that later.)

It is not a dramatization of Shakespeare’s poem but rather follows a growing tradition of fictionalising aspects of the poet’s life.

It’s not a surprising tradition; Shakespeare’s influence on the language and theatre is overarching (and I will admit somewhere in the first act, for just a moment, I understood why some people call for the total erasure of everything to do with the Bard so we could all just start again.)

Several Elizabethan stories are layered together here: the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet; the possibility that poet Aemilia Lanier was the Dark Lady of the sonnets; the performance by Shakespeare’s company of Venus and Adonis before the monarch herself (which I guess is completely fictional??)

The play is a musing on love, and love may be a many splendored thing, but it’s certainly a thing of enormous semantic diversity. Sparked by the poem Venus and Adonis we are offered love as desire, but the play also explores sexual love beyond physicality, and friendship and familial love. In one provoking moment, lust is juxtaposed with grief, the little death lying side by side with its stronger sibling.

Though moving and provocative, the production forefronts entertainment. There’s excellent physical humour aplenty, theatre jokes abound, and there are constant allusions to Shakespeare’s work (which might be either diverting or distracting, depending on whether you buy into the theory Shakespeare was less a creator of enormous vitality and more of a sponge absorbing nutrients from the ocean of language in which he swam.)

Performances are magical. Anthony Gooley as Will is both poignant in his pain and funny in his frustrations, a very human take on a man we have diminished by raising to an icon. Aemilia Lanier is Will’s lover and one of the earliest published female poets, and possibly the first explicitly feminist one. Adele Querol is glorious in the role: fire and strength; at one moment a lightning bolt falling mercilessly on the earthly patriarchy, and at the next, that even more miraculous phenomena, a bolt shot back heavenwards, lighting the way to a brighter future. Jerome Meyer as Nathaniel Field, who plays Adonis to Amelia’s Venus, is brilliantly comic as he navigates some truly teasing tensions: in Shakespeare’s company he plays the women, but before the Queen he is asked to play a man, a gorgeous man, who as the target of Venus’ unrelenting desire might feel somewhat reduced to passivity…. like that projected on women by the male gaze. Belinda Giblin as Queen Elizabeth is magnificent, perfectly regal and (as the script demands) unexpectedly sage. Perhaps the character operates as a coda. Certainly she is a deus ex machina, arriving from the beyond and offering …. But perhaps all fictional histories function as such, offering a solution, of a certain type, to our problems: assuring us they are eternal.

Paul Gilchrist

Venus and Adonis by Damien Ryan

at Seymour Centre until 21st October

www.seymourcentre.com/event/venus-and-adonis/

Image by Kate Williams

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Home Country & The One

2 Oct

New work is always exciting, and here we have two original, distinct pieces.

Home Country, written by Stephanie Reeves and directed by Glen Hamilton and Romney Hamilton, is a gentle but sophisticated tale about loss and belonging. Dot, played by Reeves, has migrated to Australia from Britain. She feels the distance from the home country and from family members she left physically behind and who seem to have left her emotionally behind. Dot visits Uluru, where she must camp with a stranger, Jane played by Susan Jordan. In the very watchable growth of their friendship, the thematic concerns of loss and belonging are further teased out: the indigenous connection with the land, the evaporation of pride in what it is to be British; the dislocation that results when cultural discourse moves to a certainty that jettisons subtlety; the personal grief of bereavement.  

The One, written and directed by Mel Jensen, feels almost like two plays. It begins as a satire on dating via the apps. The female protagonist (Jensen) tells her friend (Emily Shaddick) of the absurd and disgusting behaviour of some of the men she has communicated with or met. An interesting theatrical gimmick is to have the friend play out scenes that the protagonist has already lived; this creates humour but also distance, with focus being on the evaluation of the lived experiences, rather than the actual experiences themselves. (More on this phenomena later.) There are some great one liners delivered by both Jensen and Shaddick, and the male actors (Oliver Harcourt-Ham, Enoch Li and Matthew Van Den Berg) playing the victims of this satire display wonderful comic commitment. There’s a provocative ambiguity to the satire; the female characters are hardly presented as flawless. You’ll struggle to find a play in which both the words “feminist” and “dick” are repeated more often, and said by the same character the logical incoherence is stark. Similarly, there is much talk of “love”, of the I-want-someone-to-love-me or the I-deserve-someone-worthy-of-my-love types; so it all falls into that horrible trap of validation or evaluation (a reminder that romance is the stupidest of the serious things.) One way out of this trap is to focus on the physical mechanics of sex, which is what both the men and women do.

In the last third of the piece we get something much more dark and confronting, with John Michael Narres giving a terrific performance of both vulnerability and frightening volatility. It’s difficult to write about the end without spoilers, but the shift in genre and tone is so very large in the final scenes that I’m not sure the piece doesn’t inadvertently sabotage itself. What I guess is meant to be a warning that dehumanising dating apps and immature, entitled masculinity inevitably culminate in violence ends up potentially implying something rather different, and sinister: that any sensible woman simply should know better than to get herself in such a situation.  

But, of course, good theatre often sends you out into the darkness feeling the darkness to be deeper than when you arrived.

Paul Gilchrist

Home Country by Stephanie Reeves

The One by Mel Jensen

at Darlo Drama Studio Theatre as part of the Sydney Fringe

These productions closed on Oct 1

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Wolves are coming for you

30 Sep

Are they? Really? In these modern times?

But howling has been heard in the wind. And there have been sightings, admittedly in half light, and from witnesses less than reliable. But now a girl has gone missing. The people of the village barricade themselves in the local hall.

This is a terrifyingly good play about fear, about that greatest of tensions in the human experience: how much of Life can we manage or control, and how much of it must we leave wild, to grow and flourish in gloriously unpredictable ways?

Joel Horwood’s script was first produced in the UK in 2017, and it’s both evocatively poetic and entirely truthful to the nuances of everyday speech.

This production directed by Georgia Britt is magnificent. Britt, Riley McNamara and Cameron Hutt play all the roles, and their performances are utterly enthralling. I love this sort of fringe production because it spotlights what I think are the things about theatre that really matter: fine writing and fine acting.

It’s probably beyond my skill to give a complete description of these virtuoso performances, so I’ll cherry pick.

Hutt gives us a splendid portrait of an adult son overwhelmed by the responsibility of managing his aging mother, and then slips effortlessly into the role of local teacher, calm and almost, almost, almost in control, and then off into the local councillor, a hilarious combination of self-importance and paranoid hysteria.

McNamara masterfully presents an uncertain but wonderfully sane small town policeman and then, living in the nearby forest in a dilapidated caravan, an almost mythically self-aware outlier, only to offer a thrilling contrast to these characterisations of male pragmatism, that of an aging farm woman whose failing mind is being overcome by the bestial anger that is the natural child of fear.

Britt gives two superb portraits of young people: one a teenage girl refusing to be defined by her physicality, and the other a small child – perhaps the boy who cries wolf, except with the insight born of innocence that stories actually do matter. And then to top this off, Britt plays the local vicar, and it’s a deeply moving portrait of a soul on a journey to understand the true nature of Good. The epiphany she presents is powerfully provocative, a Life affirming response to the coming of the wolves, in whatever shape they may take.   

Paul Gilchrist

Wolves are coming for you by Joel Horwood

at the Emerging Artist Sharehouse, Erskineville, as part of the Sydney Fringe

until 30 September

sydneyfringe.com/events/wolves-are-coming-for-you/

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Shadow Boxing

29 Sep

This show is a knockout!

It packs quite a punch!

It floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee!

Some of my reviewing colleagues, those who’ve spent more time in the ring than me and have suffered the resultant brain trauma, will probably rely on such clichés.

But they’re all entirely accurate (and I expect to be quoted on them.)

In a snappy, totally engaging 45 minutes, Flynn tells of his career as a boxer. The rub is that he’s gay and no one knows. His plan is to come out – after he wins the national title. The piece worries away wonderfully at the concept of respect: why it’s desired, how it’s measured, how it’s achieved, and what is its value.

Written originally in 1989, James Gaddas’ script is beautifully rich. It takes its rhythms from the world of boxing, its vigorous muscular language in a glorious dance with pace and poetry.

Samuel Addison as Flynn is superb. Under the guidance of director Teresa Izzard, he delivers a performance that is high energy and tremendously physical while simultaneously utterly at one with Gaddas’ brilliant words.

Simple staging, a terrific script and a sensational performance – if boxing were this good I’d be at every bout.

(Did I prove victorious in my fight against cliche? No, I suspect I have lost on points. The reigning champion of reviews remains undefeated. But….)

With productions like this, theatre is the true winner.

Paul Gilchrist

Shadow Boxing by James Gaddas

at the Emerging Artist Sharehouse, Erskineville, as part of the Sydney Fringe

until September 30

sydneyfringe.com/events/shadow-boxing/

Image by Hannah Oliver

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Whale

28 Sep

Fringe festivals often have a lot of shows where performers talk about themselves. The theatre of personal testimony seems to suit the usual parameters of fringe: low tech, minimal set, short running time, niche audiences.

Theatre of personal testimony is also indicative of our current cultural focus on untold stories, of our belief that there are demographics within our population who have been silenced and now must be allowed a voice.

Whale, written and performed by Courtney McManus, speaks of fatness. She tells of the prejudices faced by people larger than average: supposed friends who unnecessarily and patronisingly compare her to Rebel Wilson; shop assistants who give unwanted advice; doctors who fail to listen and see only the issue of weight.

I say ‘tell’, but the first two thirds of this production is definitely ‘show’. McManus interacts with recorded voiceovers. Sometimes these encounters are sadly amusing. At other times they are damning evidence of the lack of empathy we have for those who differ from some supposed norm. McManus’s performance is always engaging (though some of the voiceover performances are a little flat; though perhaps that’s the point.)

In the last third, we get less showing and more telling as McManus claims her own identity. I wish the focus had remained on showing (though I acknowledge this is perhaps an illogical wish when the piece is about the performer finding her own voice.)

Identity is a funny concept. It clearly serves the purpose of giving individuals a sense of stability and certainty in the vast, tumultuous ocean of humanity. (McManus evocatively compares suffering prejudice to being dumped over and over by the surf.) But, in so far as identity offers stability and certainty, it is a denial of complexity and change.

This sort of first person theatre is fascinating for its silences; its truth-telling is narrative-building. The story you need to tell yourself will not necessarily satisfy me. I wanted to know more: more about the impact of intergenerational trauma; more about the health consequences of weight; more about body acceptance and sexuality. This is a powerful and provocative piece, and my curiosity is one proof of that.

The sharing of personal experiences was once the province of churches and self-help groups. It’s fun to theorise why this particular form is growing in popularity in theatre. But sociological interpretation aside, this show, standing alone, is a generous-hearted invitation to empathy and understanding, and an inspiring paean to resilience.

Paul Gilchrist

Whale by Courtney McManus

at the Emerging Artist Sharehouse, Erskineville, as part of the Sydney Fringe

until 30 September

sydneyfringe.com/events/whale/

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Good Grief

27 Sep

I’m a huge fan of the one-person show.

But I do feel it’s odd that the actor often tells their own story. (It does make for an experience rather different to watching an actor play Macbeth.)

Truth telling creates an intriguing frisson in theatre. Such pieces are performative, ingenious, theatrical, yet not fiction. And as the performer shares their feelings (which we take as genuine) we know they will do it all again tomorrow night, which is teasingly intriguing, because such personal Truth is notoriously fickle and resistant to repetition.

And all this fascinating oddness is increased when the topic is something as personal and poignant as grief.

Writer and performer Georgina Pender tells us of the death of her mother and of her response. We are told her mother was an alcoholic who died early of throat cancer.

Grief is a ubiquitous thing, perhaps the most so: who is there among us without loss? How do you say anything original? Is there really any requirement to do so? Perhaps Pender comes from a place of sufficient difference: her relationship with her mother was frightening and fractious. How do we grieve someone for whom our feelings are so complex?

It’s a truism that people grieve in different ways, and it’s become one because it’s had to be repeated so often. We judge grief. It’s stupid and narrow-minded to do so, but that’s never stopped anyone. That she stares down this demon is what makes Pender’s performance so very admirable. Sharings like this broaden our world.

Directed by Lauren Bennett, this show is especially theatrically rich. Georgia Wilkinson has created clever projections with voice over with which Pender interacts. Oliver Close has composed and plays live a beautiful soundtrack, and Pender reveals a gorgeous singing voice. She also presents some powerful movement pieces and a gift for finding unexpected humour in the darkness. All this makes for a stimulating and compelling production, one that dares to both share and explore that everyday mystery, our eternal connection with the eternally absent.

Paul Gilchrist

Good Grief by Georgina Pender

at the Emerging Actors Sharehouse, Erskineville, as part of the Sydney Fringe

until 30 September

sydneyfringe.com/events/good-grief/

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