Every Second

9 Jul

There are a lot of angry and envious people in this play.

Ok, there are only four characters, but they’re all in the same situation; they desperately want children.

I’m the worst possible audience for this.

I don’t understand the basic motivation of the characters. I want a child about as much as I want a rhinoceros.

Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage

Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage

So, on one level, I found the whole thing rather frustrating. There’s a grand secret but I wasn’t let in on it. The only explanation offered for the character’s desires was that everyone else had children – which, of course, wasn’t meant as an explanation at all.

The characters are middle class Australians. In one sequence, Georgina Symes’ character says she can control everything except her own uterus, which is a statement of staggering self delusion. It’s a pity this incredible power is not being used to slow climate change or solve third world poverty.

Vanessa Bates’ play is cleverly constructed with plenty of good laugh lines. Shannon Murphy elicits from her cast strong performances. But I couldn’t like any of the characters. (Yes, I’m a bad person – the weirdo who doesn’t want children.)

The set by Andy McDonell is intriguing. It suggests the lake in the park. It suggests a woman’s reproductive organs. It suggests a vortex, dragging the characters down.  This is not a play about finding, or sharing, joy.

Veronica Kaye

 

Every Second by Vanessa Bates

Eternity Playhouse until 27 July

http://www.darlinghursttheatre.com/

 

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La Ronde

6 Jul

Written in the late nineteenth century, the question any current production of this play asks is its relevance.

This production contemporises costume and place names.  It’s happening now.

Foucault threw out an extraordinary challenge when he published The History of Sexuality.  Excluding the deep time of evolution, what history can sex possibly have? Isn’t sexuality just biological, not cultural? Isn’t it a timeless universal?

This production of Arthur Schnitzler’s play is fascinating because it makes an audience question whether a clear-eyed look at a supposed universal can, in fact, be historically specific. Forward looking in its time, is the play backward looking now? (It’s worth noting that the play is decidedly heterosexual. And, one would hope, the dynamic of class has changed.)

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But the play is certainly about sex. Each of the scenes has a similar structure: pre-coital discussion, blackout for the act, then post-coital discussion. (The fact we don’t see the act itself is a powerful comment about its ineffable nature.)

The other aspect of the structure that’s intriguing is the suggestion of frequent infidelity. Perhaps not every one of the ten characters is actually being unfaithful, but each appears in two scenes, with a different lover. This highlights the strangeness of sexuality, so personal yet so ubiquitous.

The performances are good, both touching and funny (an achievement considering the tricky acoustics of the venue). Brendon Taylor as the Writer, Amanda Maple-Brown as the Actress and Emilia Stubbs Grigoriou as the Sweet Girl are particularly engaging.

Steven Hopley’s direction is simple and highly effective. He presents the play in the round and this evokes the dance of the title, and intensifies the oddity I referred to earlier: we watch beautiful young couples navigate the most private of moments and at the same time are aware of the social gaze of other audience members.

Is sex the place where the particular and the universal collide? (Or perhaps more accurately, rub up against each other?) And, if so, is this why sex is so crucial to both our sense of identity and our sense of connection?

Veronica Kaye

 

La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler

til July 12

Coronation Hall, 95 Lennox St Newtown

Performances – July 9, 11, 12 – 8pm

Book Now at www.stickytickets.com.au/enigma

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The Mercy Seat

30 Jun

Two mean spirited people with American accents remain in a room and argue about their relationship for 100 mins (including a 15 minute interval).

For many people, this would be the archetypal modern play. Which is why they stay at home.

But, in this case, context is all.  Our couple are arguing about their future while the rest of America, and much of the world, is in shock.

It is New York. It is September 12, 2001.

What to many was an unfathomable tragedy is to our couple an opportunity. They’re having an affair. He is married with children. Perhaps yesterday morning he was in one of the towers when the planes struck, instead of at his mistress’ place having his penis sucked. Is it their chance to just disappear and start again?

photo by Katy Green Loughrey

photo by Katy Green Loughrey

This production of Neil LaBute’s play is both funny and confronting. The performances by Rebecca Martin and Patrick Magee are powerful and intriguing.

Are we meant to take the characters as real people? Is this play gritty naturalism? If it is, it’s a vision of humanity so bleak that it approaches the immoral. (There’s a school of theatre that equates negativity with truthfulness. It’s the philosophy of those who wish to grant themselves moral holidays. If it’s just human nature to act dreadfully, how can my behaviour be at fault?)

The challenge of this play is the context. Presumably none of us have been in the situation represented.

Or have we?

Many of us are tempted to think the world is screwed, that it’s a chaotic mess, and that we’re all going to hell in a hand cart. I call it a temptation because it allows us to believe that it’s justifiable to be entirely self seeking. After all, in extremis, the call goes out “Every man for himself”.

The Mercy Seat is an intelligent and thought provoking production, a timely reminder that we must not use the magnitude of our society’s problems as an excuse to grant ourselves moral holidays.

Veronica Kaye

 

The Mercy Seat by Neil LaBute

Old Fitzroy Theatre til 5 July

http://www.sitco.net.au/

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My Name is Truda Vitz

27 Jun

My Name is Truda Vitz, written and performed by Olivia Satchell, and directed by Pierce Wilcox, is a moving exploration of personal ties and the power of imagination. With stunning visual images and Satchell’s performance on the cello, it’s also a treat for the senses.

Satchell tells the story of three generations; herself, her father Paul, and her grandmother Truda. She slips between the characters with an unadorned simplicity. She forces nothing. These characters – these people – are granted dignity.

The most fascinating aspect of this personal history is that Satchell never met her grandmother. The closest she will ever get to her is in this play, she says.

Her grandmother’s personal history is therefore imagined. There are ‘facts’: the date Truda fled Vienna as a seventeen year old in order to escape persecution as a Jew; the date she was married; the date she was finally accepted as a British citizen after years of being an ‘illegal alien’. But the majority of Truda’s story is invented. As Satchell says, even if it didn’t happen to Truda, it probably happened to someone.

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One of the greatest tensions in life, and one that fuels the dramatic impulse, is that between otherness and empathy.

I sometimes suspect that every dramatist is a solipsist is denial. After all, how can we really know other people? I can never see through someone else’s eyes or walk around in their body. In fact, one of the most important gifts we can give someone else is an acknowledgement of our own limitations. I don’t know you. I can’t predict your behaviour. You can surprise me. I accept your otherness.

The other side of the coin is that we must make assumptions about people. If we don’t, our ethical systems falter. I have to be able to predict what causes you pain or gives you joy. And since I can’t know these things infallibly, or even contingently, it’s up to my imagination to make the human connection.

Ignorance and imagination. I don’t know you but I’ll try to guess.

It’s this gentle, warm balance that makes My Name is Truda Vitz such a beautiful piece of theatre.

Veronica Kaye

 

My Name is Truda Vitz by Olivia Satchell

Somersault Theatre Company

at TAP Gallery til July 6

http://somersaulttheatre.com/my-name-is-truda-vitz/

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The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You

25 Jun

Why do people keep telling me what to do with my life?

Finegan Kruckemeyer’s play is an intriguing exploration of teenage anger, positing both causes and solutions.

And Kate Gaul’s production of The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You is extremely engaging theatre.

It’s visually exciting, with snappy dialogue and high energy performances (yes, I’m obviously holding down the cliché key on my keyboard).

Kruckemeyer’s script is a brilliant blend of both imitation and parody of teenage language – which is exactly what teenagers do. (How many adults parody their own language use?* Or, indeed, themselves?) And the cast do great work with Kruckemeyer’s words, finding their zing and mining their spirited humour.

PHOTO BY HEIDRUN LOHAR


PHOTO BY HEIDRUN LOHAR

Michael Cutrupi is terrific as Connor, the angry teen.

Connor has difficulties at both home and school. Emily Ayoub and Anthony Weir give top portraits of dull-but-caring parents. Renee Heys produces a wonderfully vibrant school girl. Natalia Ladyko’s endlessly patient but smart-mouthed teacher is superb.

In an attempt to solve his difficulties, Connor is sent ‘into the woods’ to find himself. (Which is a little different from the way most teenage boys find themselves.) There he meets Lotte, another teenager with anger issues. She’s played by the three female members of the cast and it’s a device which effectively suggests the personality shattering effect of anger. It also helps push this sequence of the play into a sort of magical realism, and prevents the play’s conclusion from feeling too neat.

For our vision of the world is coloured by our emotions, and it is in our teenage years that this frightening and thrilling discovery is made.

Veronica Kaye

*The exception, of course, is theatre reviewers.

 

The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You by Finegan Kruckemeyer

SBW Stables Theatre (Griffin) til 12 July

http://www.griffintheatre.com.au/

 

 

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What is wrong with Australian Theatre?

18 Jun

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them

10 Jun

Firstly, Why Torture is Wrong, and The People who Love Them is  ‘good’ theatre.

Now a digression:

A while back, standing in a crowded foyer, a friend of a friend shocked me by saying “Bad theatre is like being tortured”.

My heart went out to her.

I felt awful. I had thought she was just another complacent, comfortable, middle-class theatre goer.

But no. Perhaps, I thought, she’s a recovering victim of some deranged sociopath. Or, possibly, she’s an escaped dissident from a brutally repressive regime.

Or most likely, like myself, she was just another complacent comfortable middle class theatre goer who enjoyed indulging in absurdly hyperbolic language simply because her life of unparalleled privilege supplied her with everything she needed – except the occasional jolt of excitement to remind her she was alive.

This might be wild speculation, but I suspect sitting through an hour or so of less-than-engaging theatre bears very little resemblance to having electrodes attached to your genitals.

But if you choose to dumbly divide the entirety of existence into the simple categories of the good and the bad, with everything either on one side or the other of that enormous world-dominating watershed, then I guess torture and ‘bad’ theatre might sit on the same side, the very same side as suffering a terminal illness and having dandruff.

Digression over.

Photographs © Bob Seary

Photographs © Bob Seary

Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them is a very funny and fabulously performed satire.

Director Melita Rowston does a fantastic job with Christopher Durang’s script. The performances are joyfully hyperbolic.

Terry Karabelas and Peter Astridge present perfectly pitched in-your-face alpha males.

The female characters are fascinating responses to the male absurdity. Ainslie McGlynn gives us a wonderfully flighty small ‘l’ liberal. Romy Bartz gives us Hildegarde, painfully and hilariously in love with a right wing lunatic. (What’s Sylvia Plath’s line about every woman adoring a fascist?*) And Luella is my comic favourite, played brilliantly by Alice Livingstone. Luella retreats from her domineering husband, and reality in general, through an obsession with theatre. (Yes, lets worry about theatre. There’s nothing else important going on in the world. Like torture.)

And while having terrific fun with these over-the-top characters, the final scene is thought-provoking, and an acknowledgement that satire is not the solution to the great world-dominating watershed between left and right.

It’s a brave move, laying down your greatest weapon, but it’s probably the way forward.

Veronica Kaye

* The line is “Every woman adores a Fascist”.

 

Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them By Christopher Durang

at New Theatre til 28 June

http://newtheatre.org.au/

 

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It’s Dark Outside

28 May

I don’t read the program before a show. Or after.

So I sat down in the theatre knowing nothing about It’s Dark Outside. What I experienced was bewildering, beautiful and sad.

Afterwards I broke my rule and had a peek. According to the program, dementia was the starting idea of the artists’ process – in particular, a phenomena called Sundowning Syndrome, which is a “confusion and restlessness” experienced by some patients.

Phot by Richard Jefferson

Photo by Richard Jefferson

So that’s what I saw. I could blame my lack of awareness on my own parochial nature, but I prefer to blame society. This disease affects so many, but we often ignore it.

Creators Arielle Gray, Chris Isaacs and Tim Watts have produced some magical melancholy.  Built fundamentally from puppetry and projection, it’s visually stunning. Wordless, its power comes from the brilliant performances of the creators and the evocative musical composition of Rachael Dease.

An old man is being chased. Or is he doing the chasing?

Pursuing or being pursued; these are fundamental aspects of the human experience. They’re a direct function of the dimension of space. Unfortunately, they’re not a function of that other dimension we live in – time. It allows movement in only one direction. And that’s the sorrow.

Veronica Kaye

 

It’s Dark Outside by Arielle Gray, Chris Isaacs and Tim Watts

Riverside Theatre til 29 May

http://riversideparramatta.com.au/show/its-dark-outside/

It’s Dark Outside is currently on a national tour.

http://www.perththeatre.com.au/show/its-dark-outside/

 

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The Young Tycoons

22 May

It’s obvious who The Young Tycoons is about. And some of the best laughs of the show come from this cheekiness.

This is the third outing for C J Johnson’s play and it’s a lot of fun.

Director Michael Pigott elicits good comic performances from all his cast. Edmund Lembke-Hogan and Laurence Coy both offer an amusing take on the volatile mix of privilege and stupidity. Terry Serio shines as the gruff commonsense right-hand man. Paige Gardiner, as the model girlfriend of a young mogul, is charming and ditsy in all the right places. James Lugton is articulate, intelligent and charismatic as a “Ferguson” journalist. (I think it was “Ferguson”. Definitely some F surname. Definitely not Fairfax.)

Photo by Noni Carroll

Photo by Noni Carroll

The Young Tycoons is witty and engaging, though the large number of scene changes proves a challenge.

This is a very precise satire. (Some might think my choice of adjective euphemistic.) The play doesn’t expose, or explore, all the dreadful ramifications of concentrating immense power in the hands of an oligarchy. It focuses more on the personal lives of the two billionaire media families. The characters come across as reasonably likeable, and only minor injuries are sustained as they clumsily stumble on the discarded remnants of a whole lot of broken moral compasses.

So, is this satire without bite? Just a sort of celebrity gossip piece?

No, I think it draws attention to an extraordinary fault line in our society. The dramatic tension of this play is the divisive concept of ‘dynasty’. Are you really going to get to run the business just because Daddy did?

It’s truly bizarre, that in a heartless capitalist society driven solely by profits, we would still consider passing on power through bloodlines.

For me, the play is not just a gentle taunting of privileged rich kids. Rather, it’s a forceful reminder that an all-consuming materialism simply will not meet our human needs. Not even the needs of those, who drowning in excess, have lost their way.

Veronica Kaye

 

The Young Tycoons by C J Johnson

Eternity Playhouse til 15 Jun

http://www.darlinghursttheatre.com/

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Ghosts

20 May

On Saturday night, I went along to the Sydney University Drama Society production of Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, and very much enjoyed it.

In the 1880’s, when it was first produced, Ghosts caused quite a scandal because of its discussion of sexually transmitted infections. To our standards, the discussion might appear subtle to the point of non-existence, but then again, a lot of modern theatre makers would feel the need to present the audience with a scene showing precisely how the characters got the STI in the first place.

Ghosts

This production, directed by Finn Davis, plays to the strengths of student theatre. Despite the characters ranging in age from early twenties to at least mid forties, all the actors are young. And they do good work. Diana Reid’s vocal work is particularly impressive. (However, the production as a whole would benefit from a more textured pace.) The set by Kryssa Karavolas is a beautifully simple white box, with an impressive (but suitably understated) mural on the upstage wall, exorcising the production of any alienating naturalism. The nineteenth century is evoked only gently by costuming.

The impact of all this is to prevent the play becoming trapped in its original context.

The characters talk a lot about ‘reputation’ and ‘duty’, and the easy way to deal with this challenge might be to dismiss such stuff as rather quaint. But a stripped back production like this makes that a difficult avoidance strategy to implement. Admittedly, reputation in the nineteenth century often hinged on one’s sexual behaviour, but an obsession with how we’re perceived by others is hardly a demon we’ve slain. And the renaming of vices as virtues (in the play ‘cowardice’ is rebranded as ‘duty’) is a life-denying habit that still haunts us.

Veronica Kaye

Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Monisha Rudhran  

Studio B,  Sydney University, til 24 May

http://sudsusyd.com/whats-on/ghosts/

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