Crikey's theatre blog

REVIEW: An Officer And A Gentleman | Lyric Theatre, Sydney

May 20, 2012 – 10:22 pm, by Lloyd Bradford Syke
   

Amanda Harrison and Ben Mingay in An Officer And A Gentleman | Lyric Theatre

A confession: I’ve never seen An Officer and a Gentleman. As in the 1982 film, starring Richard Gere, Debra Winger and Lousi Gossett Jr., directed by Taylor Hackford. You’ll, of course, make up your own minds as to whether this is a good, bad, or neutral thing, in terms of my qualification to review the world premier musical, just opened at The Star’s Lyric Theatre.

With a book by Douglas Day Stewart and Sharleen Cooper Cohen (who’s also presenting the production, in association with John Frost and others), it’s the kissing cousin of the flick, as it was Stewart who penned the screenplay. It’s a little surprising, then, Stewart didn’t intuit that the transition from screen to stage takes a little more than breaking down key scenes from the movie and building some scenery. Mind you, that observation assumes artistic integrity as being to the fore in the mind of the musical’s creators, which may or may not be the case.

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REVIEW: What I Did For Love | El Rocco, Sydney

May 20, 2012 – 10:20 pm, by Lloyd Bradford Syke
   

Anne Wilson in What I Did For Love | El Rocco

Anne Wilson premiered cabaret act What I Did For Love at the 2010 Sydney Fringe Festival. That was at Notes, a rather expansive, impersonal setting for an intimate show, so, dingy and dilapidated as Kings Cross’ El Rocco now is, it was arguably a more conducive space for such. Frankly, it still deserves better, but finding a room for any cabaret, in Sydney, these days, is no mean feat.

Wilson and boy genius musical director Steven Kreamer have clearly been honing, waxing and polishing the script, so that the latest incarnation, while not a reinvention, reflects much more confidence and conviction. Thus, it’s a surer thing we’ll be seduced by the pastiche of songs which has been deftly woven into a tale of desperation and love addiction, embarked upon by way of a particularly anxious and urgent version of Queen’s (Find Me) Somebody To Love, the chorus of which Wilson veritably chants, in the manner of a neurotic incantation.

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REVIEW: Onegin | Opera Theatre, Sydney

May 17, 2012 – 3:04 pm, by Lloyd Bradford Syke
   

Onegin | Opera Theatre (Pic: Branco Gaica)

The story of Yevgeny (Eugene) Onegin started, of course, with master-poet Alexander Pushkin’s verse-novel (389 stanzas, no less of iambic tetrameter; so-called Onegin stanzas, or Pushkin sonnet), a classic of Russian literature which began to be serialised in 1825. Onegin, the character, has since served as a ‘role model’ for numerous Russian men of fiction.

Perhaps Pushkin’s virtuosity (which, as would-be narrator, he self-deprecatingly escrowed as ‘the careless fruit of playful thought’), the clarity and simplicity of his narrative, not to mention the rich complexity of his characters are at least part of the reason the ballet of same is so cohesive and coherent. The social milieu of the book is painted so vividly that it’s easy fro the drama, passion and romance of the ballet to emerge, wordlessly. John Cranko, who choreographed it, hasn’t had, by any means, an easy task. Nonetheless, Pushkin has served his cause, as has the score by Tchaikovsky (in the main excerpted from The Seasons), arranged by Kurt-Heinz Stolze.

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REVIEW: When Dad Married Fury | Ensemble Theatre, Sydney

May 17, 2012 – 3:00 pm, by Lloyd Bradford Syke
   

Warren Jones, Nick Tate and Jamie Oxenbould in When Dad Married Fury

David Williamson seems to think Crikey has it in for him. But his latest play, When Dad Married Fury, shows sparks and flashes of the classic Williamson of old, his kiln fired by sociopolitical fury; yes, when David was married to fury. Not the white-haired, wilting Willo who has so much been in our midst of late, with inconsequential dramatic contrivances and finger-wagging didactics. These are, however, mere sparks. The play still short-circuits, despite its topicality, zeroing-in, as it does on the GFC, its callous perpetrators and their hapless victims.

In theory, I, for one, might find it affecting, having fallen prey to a sophisticated white-collar criminal who has stolen my financial viability. And yet, DW still doesn’t manage to convince me of his sincerity. He makes all the right noises, but by now observations about the lack of consequences for the wonderful bankers who brought us the recession, teetering on depression, we really didn’t have to have, are passé and the stuff of cliche. The subject is a worthy one but, already, surely, almost done to death.

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REVIEW: Strange Interlude | Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney

May 13, 2012 – 12:04 pm, by Lloyd Bradford Syke
   

Strange Interlude | Belvoir St Theatre

Benedict Andrews’ recent, desperately ill-fated foray into the esteemed space of Belvoir Upstairs came replete with extensive programmatic director’s notes which were better than the actual script. Simon Stone, another of our theatre’s fashionable, youngish things, has indulged the same privilege, justifying, at length, his contemporary take on Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, which draws upon the structure, characters, essence, cadence and rhythm of the original, but which subverts the style, idiom and dialogue to bring it into a contemporary, nominally Australian frame, to the extent possible.

I say to the extent possible, because, for example, Anthony Phelan’s Professor Leeds, despite a local accent (and some dodgy diction) still tends to put one in mind of a New England academic, for some reason. Some of the situations, too, don’t ring quite true of our direct experience, but of a more exotic one, harking back several decades. So, it’s all very well, in theory, to argue that the theatre space is made for a ‘conflation of time’, a kind of temporal as well as geographical rootlessness, as Stone cogently, articulately and persuasively does. But in the end, in practice, there may be a great deal of pretence and conceit, despite the philosophical correctness.

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REVIEW: Food | Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney

May 10, 2012 – 2:57 pm, by Lloyd Bradford Syke
   

Food | Belvoir St Theatre

Force Majeure, as the name implies, is a force, in theatre, to be reckoned with. Food is a co-production with Belvoir St Theatre in its downstairs space, which serves to mitigate against the travesty still running upstairs and redeem the theatre.

Written by Steve Rodgers and co-directed by same, alongside resident director (and choreographer) Kate Champion, it boasts a terrific set, designed by Anna Tregloan; a galley kitchen with island bench is festooned with well-used pots, of differing sizes, which hang on the wall like so many gongs, or mirrors. These are lit, wonderfully, by Martin Langthorne; by turns, they imbue a coppery glow and hearth-like warmth, brutal blue, steely cold and onto which are also projected mesmerising patterns, taking us back, Dr Who-style, into the shadowy lands of memory.

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REVIEW: Animal Farm | The Wharf, Sydney

May 10, 2012 – 2:12 pm, by Lloyd Bradford Syke
   

The cast of Animal Farm | The Wharf

What a relief. It was grave sense of foreboding I approached the Australian Theatre For Young People for the opening of its second production of the season.

The first, Cockroach, recommended itself only for extermination. I needn’t have feared. The prolific, energetic Netta Yashchin’s adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm turned things right ’round. Distinguished, in person, by her explosion of flaming red hair, she’s got most things very right with this production, which she also directs.

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REVIEW: The Plague Dances | Tower Theatre, Melbourne

May 6, 2012 – 4:53 pm, by Ben Packer
   

The Plague Dances | Tower Theatre

Independent theatre company Four Larks have been flitting around the warehouses of Melbourne for some time now. The Malthouse Theatre has given the company a temporary nest in the Tower Theatre and an opportunity to spread their wings. Their production The Plague Dances looks and sounds beautiful but fails to fly.

With playwright Marcel Dorney, the Four Larks (Mat Diafos Sweeney, Sebastian Peters-Lazaro and Jesse Rasmussen) have created an original story set in an insular and religious community in the Middle Ages. An outsider arrives in town and soon the community is gripped by a strange and uncontrollable outbreak of wild dancing.

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REVIEW: Australia Day | Playhouse, Melbourne

May 3, 2012 – 2:55 pm, by Crikey
   

Geoff Morrell and David James in Australia Day | Playhouse

by Matthew Raggatt

Coming immediately after the more sombre remembrance of Anzac Day, Jonathan Biggins’ Australia Day – a Melbourne Theatre Company/Sydney Theatre Company co-production — challenges audiences to consider what in fact, beyond our soldiers, it is that brings us all together.

We are thrown into the Coriole Shire’s committee meeting for the country town’s upcoming January 26th celebration. Here we find a humorous, flawed but largely likeable microcosm of Australian society: the ambitious Liberal Mayor and hardware store owner Brian (Geoff Morrell), loyal deputy Robert (David James), CWA community champion Marie (Valerie Bader) and crude, Green-hating builder Wally (Peter Kowitz).

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REVIEW: Lord Of The Flies | New Theatre, Sydney

May 3, 2012 – 2:38 pm, by Lloyd Bradford Syke
   

The cast of Lord Of The Flies | New Theatre

Like so many of the retro crop of plays that’s been surfacing lately, for many, if not most of us, our primary association and reference-point is likely to be through Nobel prize-winning novelist William Golding’s 1954 debut novel, the film that followed about a decade after or, perhaps, both.

It wasn’t until circa 1995, as I have it, that Nigel Williams’ adaptation was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The concept and text has something of the dark, bitter-tasting flavour of Orwell’s dystopian classic, Animal Farm. I’m sure you know the basic plot: a group of English schoolboys crash-landed on a deserted island face ‘The Beast’, as they attempt to form a functional society, from scratch.

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