Marcus Graham in Angels In America | Belvoir St Theatre (Pic: Heidrun Lohr)

It’s hard to know where to begin with seven hours of theatre. So let’s begin with reputation. In 1993, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes won a Pulitzer. A Tony, for best play. The New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, for same. The Drama Desk? Ditto. And a list of others as long as King Kong’s arm.

To the best of my knowledge, there have been relatively few dissenters from this propensity towards acclaim. And I’m not about to be one, either. It’s not that these works (part one is entitled Millennium Approaches; part two, Perestroika) are flawless. For my money, the first instalment is much more successful than the second. And there is a demanding quotient of grandiloquent indulgence, in the form of fire and brimstone, not to mention ebony and ivory angels. (Well, maybe not brimstone.) There is a degree of high camp that seems just for fun, too. Or maybe it’s there to confront and challenge the homophobic.

But Tony Kushner’s writing is, on the whole, plump and propitious. His dialogue is crisp, pointed and at all times advances something, whether that something be the plot (if this work can be spoken of in such conventional terms, which is doubtful), an idea, or an emotion. And there are salutary moments of penetrating insight and arresting philosophy in which time seems to slow, Dick Tracy-style, as if to allow us to absorb and savour them. Even throwaway lines can stop you in your cognitive tracks. For example, a character named Mr Lies, a veritable embodiment of way he’s talking about, challenges us to “respect the delicate ecology of your delusions”. The lies we tell ourselves often get us through, enable us to survive and become our truth and, as such, tantamount to the truth. Who can know this better than, say, holocaust survivors?

In another scene, Prior Walter, a key protagonist, proclaims: “I usually say fuck the truth, but mostly, the truth fucks you.” This wrestling with truth and reality, as intimated in the overarching title itself, calls on the story of Jacob wrestling with his conscience, or God, or whatever one choose to believe; a story universally and perennially emblematic of human struggle. Kushner is healthily obsessed with interrogating the nature of truth and reality and finds most of the virtue of both to be found in love. Even characters endowed with heinous traits, like the ruthless lawyer Roy Cohn, are afforded generous, heartrending opportunities for redemption, which can come through the smallest of gestures, no matter how big the trespass. Punishment may aways fit the crime, but forgiveness would seem to fit all crimes.

This was my first exposure to this epic work (on stage) and it’s virtually impossible for me to imagine any production, before or after, surpassing Eamon Flack’s investment of talent, for Belvoir. That talents aren’t just his own (as a director he brings none of the stylistic conceits, watermarks and signatures certain other fashionable peers attach), but emanate from a sidereal cast and crew.

Michael Hankin’s sterile, tiled set is a bold, reflective, slippery surface, much like the mirrors held up to the characters and, by implication, ourselves. It successfully represents hospital rooms, morgues, bathrooms and heaven. Mel Page’s costumes are imaginative and just as daring. Alan John’s composition and Steve Francis’ sound design work in seamless aural synergy to, at times, overwhelm that sense.

Paula Arundell is commanding as The Angel and accessible as Emily, the nurse cheerfully and compassionately attending AIDS patients. The versatile Mitchell Butel ads another finely-tuned string to his bow with his portrayal of Louis Ironson, Prior’s conflicted lover. Marcus Graham towers as Roy M Cohn, the Reagan administration’s best friend and a power-mad, closeted, millefeuille of a man. Amber McMahon has climbed several rungs at once as Valium-popping, lapsed Mormon, Harper Amaty Pitt. She also gives a good turn as a homeless, schizophrenic woman. Luke Mullins is completely absorbing as Prior, a man as much afflicted by the disappearing act of his lover as news of HIV positivity.

Deobia Oparei is thoroughly entertaining and, as required, affecting as ex-ex-drag queen Belize and the ebullient Mr Lies. Ashley Zukerman, as the tormented Joseph Porter Pitt, wrestling with the truth of his sexual identity, versus the ‘reality’ of life as he’s constructed it, paints a perfect picture of fresh-faced decency. Topping the bill is the always extraordinary Robyn Nevin, playing Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz, Hannah Porter Pitt (Joseph’s mother) and the fearless Ethel Rosenberg, among others.

When you got to see Angels in America, you won’t be seeing a play. Or two. You’ll be having an experience. Note I say when, not if. You really must.

The details: Angels In America plays Belvoir St’s Upstairs Theatre until July 14, and opens at the Theatre Royal on July 18 — tickets on the company website.

The Page brothers, it seems, are aptly named. With every work, the seem to turn over a new leaf, revealing something we haven’t seen before. They and the company, Bangarra, draw on cultural practice handed down across countless millennia to unfold something utterly contemporary. And so it is with their new work, Blak. In fact, Blak appears to look back through that prism of ancient traditions to examine what’s changed.

All this in eight weeks, woe to go and seventy-five intense minutes on stage. What they find, I suppose, in looking back, is everything’s changed. And nothing. What has survived the dark chronicles of time intact, at least for indigenous Australians, is community. Bangarra’s executive director, Catherine Baldwin, thoughtfully expounds the notion that the community is extended to embrace the company’s audiences, at each and every performance, creating ‘an intangible web of fellow travellers’.

It’s reconciliation in a poetic notion. And motion. In this way, a Bangarra work is not only more comprehensive than the sum of its parts, but endowed with and empowered by songlines still being drawn.

The first ‘movement’, Scar, depicts a group of young, urban men, a hip hop generation, clad in hoodies, dancing around each other. It’s a testosterone-fuelled atmosphere that anticipates confrontation. And it comes. Stephen Page has handed the reins to Daniel Riley McKinley on the strength of Bangarra’s youngest choreographer’s contribution, a few years ago, to earth and sky.

Emergence into adulthood is tough enough for young men, let alone indigenous men, who are often caught, and torn, between two cultures and, in certain circumstances, not fully welcome in either. This purgatory, no-man’s-land, spiritual terra nullius, is the jumping-off point, conceptually, for Scar. There’s something intrinsically masculine about McKinley’s direction for the men of the company: not violent, but latent. When I say masculine, I’m not just talking about muscularity, tending towards violent, kinesis. Implicit is the fear and vulnerability all men feel. It’s the ‘unspoken’, that which isn’t acted out, that makes this, anachronistically, most obvious. Much of the scene-setting is effected through Matt Cox’ lighting. Often, this means the lack of it. His stated objective is to enhance storytelling through abstraction. He certainly has a knack for making a relatively small space seem like a vast, mysterious void; or a back alley of the block. The other essential ingredient is David Page, who has found a sympathetic collaborator in Paul Mac. Together, they’ve created a soundtrack for Scar which is, at first, disquieting. It hovers like a big, black bat, helping to create the pervasive sense of menace being played out on stage.

By all accounts (including his own), this work is deeply personal for McKinley. He has conceived and directed the piece, but has joined with the six other dancers to choreograph it. The shared ownership is palpable: there’s recognition between the performers. And why wouldn’t there be? If they’re not going through it, they’ve been through it. Out of the darkness, come voices of the past, echoing wisdom, that lure them to reconnect with culture: language, traditions, the spirit of the land. The message here is that modern life and those connections aren’t necessarily incompatible. Difficult to negotiate and balance? Definitely. Becoming and being a man in white and black society are two very different things and the danger is, of course, that by sheer weight and frequency of exposure, the rites of passage to manhood recognised traditionally will be obfuscated. McKinley and dancers address something close to their hearts and experience with a sincerity and authenticity that’s transmitted movingly, even to whitefellas. If we needed any confirmation that the long spells Bangarra has spent and continues to spend in NE Arnhemland bear fruit, here it is. No doubt cultural consultant Djakapurra Munyarryun has been an instrumental inspiration to McKinley. In fact, he concedes as much.

Scar is powerful. Just as McKinley pays respect to traditional rituals and practices strengthening, educating, empowering and ‘giving rise to new generations’, Scar will too, I think; especially, but not only, in urban communities.

Having unleashed McKinley to work with the males in the company, Stephen Page took it upon himself to work with the women, resulting in Yearning. Just as McKinley has found and is still finding his own dance language, which almost magically integrates the traditional with the contemporary, in a way which keeps the work grounded, Page has this time lent towards an almost balletic style; this choreography is lifted up, as if from the earth, the source of spirit.

It’s high time I made mention of Jacob Nash’s set, too. For the men, a motif which looked like a pointed bone hovered above them. In the context of the bone-shaking music and tenebrous lighting, it carried connotations of foreboding and fatefulness but, at some point, Cox transformed it from the organic and mystical to the sharp, metallic aesthetic of a rustic nail, as if to symbolise the nexus between traditional and urban. In both cases, of course, it’s an undeniably phallic emblem which, in the case of the women’s dance business, is counterpointed by a silvery-white circle of light, a ring around the moon; soft and receptive. Brilliant. A substantial part of Bangarra’s artistic success, it seems to me, lies in the relationships it forges between contributors, such that these overlap and merge, one becoming inextricable from the other. Nash, Cox, Page and Mac function as an wholistic, audiovisual ‘wizard of Aus’.

Stephen Page doesn’t resole from the tough stuff. Yearning takes us on a journey through life, beginning with Birth, which celebrates indigenous women and the female earth spirit, before plunging us into despair and grief, with Loss, charting, topically, a young girl’s suicide and her grandmother’s incredulity, torment and auto-interrogation. From despair to repair, with Native Tongue, which portrays the umbilical cord that connects language to culture and selfhood. Broken looks at domestic violence and, finally, Unearthed looks at the not altogether painless catharsis of an initiation. These delineations are not necessarily obvious; nor do they need to be, as the piece works on a more subliminal plane, fusing all these concerns into an operatic entirety. It might be seen as emblematic of the parts that make up a strong indigenous woman, as much as about the externals that act upon her. She is the moon, undergoing phases. The movements are correspondingly soft, elegant and curvaceous, with an aspiration upwards, to soar. It’s Venusian to McKinley’s Mars.

With Keepers, Page and McKinley join forces with the full ensemble to kneel before the custodians of this wide, brown (or black) land. Again in near darkness, Cox and Nash lead us to believe we’re in limestone cave, reverberating with the knowledge of the ages. In it and through the dancers, as media for legions of spirits, we can feel the presence of the past, as if it were present. Of course, at least for some of us, it is.

The details: Blak plays the Sydney Opera House until June 29, the Canberra Theatre Centre from July 11 to 13 and QPAC from July 18 to 27. Tickets at the venue website.

Shamed as I am to admit it, this is the first time (at least that I recall) I’ve seen Catherine McClements on stage and, from foyer chitchat, I gather I’m probably not that only one. this means my key reference point for her acting talents is her role as Goldie in Water Rats; a number of women I’ve spoken with seem to regard highly, as a strong, positive, aspirational one for their gender. The role of Phedre, in Jean Racine’s racy take on the corresponding Greek myth, is quite different.

Phedre isn’t an upstanding, determined woman hellbent on prosecuting bad eggs, she’s a self-serving, overindulged trophy wife (of the cloyingly heroic King Theseus, a legend in his own mind and everyone else’s) who’s fuelled her own infatuation with her Greek godlike stepson, Hippolytus. Like an upper north shore post-yummy mummy who still feels restless, even after running the dalmatian ’round leafy streets and kicking back with cappuccinos with Prue & Trude at Le Froth, Phedre’s self-talk rivals Ron Barassi’s team revups. Mrs T is indeed in a lather of sexual anticipation, her brow fevered by unbridled lust, which holier-than-thou Hippo can’t abide. Mind you, it does seem to leave him quaking in his low-cut buskins.

Phedre is suffering from a mystery illness which is, at least according to her and her steadfast nurse (Oenone), killing her. The illness might simply be her rapacity. I certainly don’t think it’s any kind of cancer, other than the kind that afflicts the empty lives of privileged people: a kind of hypochondriacal malaise, brought on by boredom and an attention deficit (towards them). Meanwhile, her stepson, Hippolytus, is planning a dutiful mission to recover his father, MIA for half a year. His obligation, however, is felt more ardently thanks to his very privately declared affection for Alicia; a love which seems almost platonic in nature. The contrast between the rabid Phedre and chaste Hippolytus is one of the puzzles and fascinations of the play. Is she irresponsible, openly passionate, or both? Is he soberingly self-disciplined, or repressed?

This is very much McClements’ play: it’s as if, between her and director Peter Evans, every sinew has been co-opted for characterisation; there isn’t a single squandered expression or gesticulation. The performance is big, but so is the role. In Racine (at least as interpreted here, via the prism of Ted Hughes’ translation), Phedre is the epitome of self-absorption; a woman who only ever see herself in the mirror, but, even then, never penetrates below the epidermis. Naturally, this proves much more tragic and tormenting for those around her, who, no matter how loyal, serve as mere excuses and scapegoats for her own failings. Poetic justice would make Phedre her own worst enemy and ensure an unhappy demise, but, on the contrary, Phedre swerves to avoid the wheel of karma every time it looks like flattening her, like Wily Coyote, against the tarmacadam. She is highly-strung and histrionic and it’s for us to judge whether her disingenuousness and cruelty, especially to Oenone (played to pitiable perfection by Julie Forsyth), her devoted handmaiden, is unwitting and genetically embedded oblivion, or deliberate, calculating cold-bloodedness, which she manifests in a high-stakes game where the risks are all at the other players’ expense.

As Evans has pointed out, it’s quite astonishing we don’t see more of Phedre here, given that, in terms of reverence accorded and frequency of production, it’s the French Hamlet. There is so much meat on the bones, it’s like the world’s tastiest rib restaurant, in dramatic terms. So many intrigues. First of all, there’s the almost asexual disposition of Hippolytus, tempered only be a professed love for the prisoner, Aricia. Is he gay? Sexually confused? Merely, hypolibinous? Misogynistic? Gynophopic? Edmund Lembke-Hogan captures what can only be described as a kind of eunuch-like unidimensionality that seems to be implicit to the role. Interestingly, there’s a kind of parallel between Hippolytus outward sexual nonchalance and Oenone’s. Of course, in the case of the last, there’s the spectre, too, of possible homosexual leanings: her crushing end is arguably the work of more than a disillusioned servant. The alignments of character don’t end there: both Hippolytus and Oenone, though under the thumb of different masters, are almost masochistic in their compliance; their obedience reaches beyond asceticism and even self-sacrifice to an almost pathological need to succumb, rather than succeed. They are bucklers, sans swash.

Marco Chiappi’s Theseus is as honed, in its way, as McClement’s Phedre, though he seems to betray an aspiration to two things: to play a definitive Richard III and be Geoffrey Rush, whose style, it appears, on this evidence, isn’t entirely inimitable. Then again, if you’re going to make off with someone else’s dramatic shtick, there are precious few better to pillage. The Richard reference is in light of the stooped deportment so often applied. Clearly, the implausibly heroic, demigod-like Theseus doesn’t possess the Hitlerian charisma of the Shakespearean character. But, in a way, (this) Theseus is an inversion of Dick 3: rather than a plotting despot, however, his legendary deeds are noble, yet so voluminous and exaggerated his reputation makes him smell, ironically, like fish; his evil, if it exists, is an undercurrent that runs between and tickles our toes, like the first kiss of a box jellyfish.

Abby Earl’s Aricia is innocent enough; all that she needs to be, since hers is a rather simplistic, almost incidental character. There was a sense in which she was rather junior to her peers, however. Caroline Lee’s Panope (wife of Poseidon and daughter of Thespius) is effective enough but, again, there isn’t much room in the role for her to strut her stuff. Bert La Bont plies a profitable trade in classical understatement, if you will: there’s a very attractive naturalness to his delivery. As Theramene, Hippolytus tutor, confidante and surrogate father, he exudes a quiet, reserved wisdom that makes the key protagonists look reckless and their own worst counsel. In many ways, he stands as the conscience of the play.

The early minutes of this production troubled me, inasmuch as it was unusually static. While, on paper, this might’ve been conceived as a device to forge focus and escalate tension, it proved rather aggravating in practice. In surrendering to an intensively art-directed, slightly avant-garde idea, insofar as having non-participatory players standing, like statues, at angles, on stage and almost off, Evans has left me conflicted. I like the thought, which presumably wants us to feel the imminence of these either characters. but, again, in practice, it proves rather distracting.

I needn’t have worried. At least not about the stasis. For this, while not entirely mitigated, is overcome by the quality of performance, especially McClements’, which is worth double the price of admission in its own right. I do worry, in the final analysis, however, that this production may’ve leaned just a little too heavily in the direction comedy, bordering on parody. While this serves to leaven what might otherwise prove, in the modern day, a tale too, too tragic, by half, to sustain credibility, it also risks obscuring nuance and trivialising the work. For example, do we really sense equivocation in Phedre, over her pseudo-incestuous infatuation, when Theseus is supposed dead?

There are tributes due for craft. Paul Jackson’s lighting design casts an entirely appropriate sombreness over the entire, sordid proceedings.

Anna Cordingley’s costumes seemed a little also-ran, for mine, but her set was a work of a savant: a palatial residence, lent an aura of permanence and indestructibility by stout Doric columns, counterpointed by a gaping hole one ceiling, rendering the royal household akin to a WW2 ruin. For all their divine invocations, however, none of the protagonists seems to see, or acknowledge, this portent of doom, anymore than the rubble gathered in corners.

Kelly Ryall’s composition is magnificent; as powerful and awe-inspiring as Zeus. Not so much because of the almighty, aurally assaulting swells that pertained, here and there; no, the most striking aspect was the subtle, barely detectable, haunting, ominous breath of sound that permeated much of the action.

And let’s not forget Ted Hughes’ translation, or adaptation, or both, which, one intuits, is rather robustly ratifies and stratifies Racine’s somewhat softer text.

While I feel a few of Evans’ notions may be lost in translation, even collectively, they represent but a scintilla of doubt. All in all, Bell’s co-artistic director’s fingerprints ensure provocative interest (not to mention a number of diverting performances from a boldly diverse cast). The very fact questions are inspired bears witness to that. Bell tolls for Phedre. And thee.

The details: Phedre plays the Sydney Opera House, Sydney, until June 29. Tickets at the venue website.

Oh, Benedict, Benedict. You’ve defiled The Maids. Well, with a little bit of help from Andrew Upton, as co-translator. Then again, there’s only so much damage even you can do. I’m being flippant, of course. Nonetheless, the return of Benedict Andrews from no man’s land (or was it Iceland?) seems to me less than triumphant, on this evidence.

What was, of course, anticipated and touted as one of the highlights of Sydney’s 2013 theatre calendar failed to engage, on the whole. Not for want of trying. Maybe trying, too hard, was the problem.

A colleague of mine spoke recently of the ‘transparency’ of Eamon Flack’s direction of Angels In America, an ambitious undertaking if ever there was one. He was referring to the fact Flack seems to feel no need to impose his stamp, or ego, on his work, other than by doing his job as well as he possibly can. There are no conceits, affectations or eccentricities superimposed on the work which shout the director’s name. No overt branding strategies. Andrews, if you ask me, could learn from this. Oh sure, I admire his chutzpah, coming back from the dead and resurrecting his toolbox, but the implements are hardly shiny or new anymore. They’re looking more than a little tarnished.

Striking as it is on first entering (largely by dint of dozens of faux flowers), Alice Babidge’s set looks like a chillingly sterile funeral parlour, rather than a wealthy woman’s apartment. Well, somewhere between a mortician’s and Madonna’s bedroom. There’s an elongated, superbly art directed rack of sumptuous clothes at the back of the stage which afford that association. It’s very compressed, too, this set, with precious little of the vertical dimension being exploited. Yes, there’s a point to the undertaking (if you’ll pardon the pun): The Maids, after all, is loosely based on the true story of the Papin sisters, who cold-bloodedly murdered their employer, in Le Mans, in 1933; but it’s too clinical and there are too many hard surfaces, an impression exacerbated by the wholesale use of mirrored panels. Again, yes, granted, this has a thematic relationship, since The Maids is very much concerned with selfhood and self-delusion, the myriad of personae that can inhabit but one human being. Still and all, I found it rather overwhelming, distracting; imposing on Genet’s plot and central ideas in a rather heavyhanded fashion, even if the rationale was to have us gaze fixedly upon them.

Nick Schlieper’s lighting, too, was for the most part starkly illuminating: LED-level brightness where incandescence would’ve been, I would’ve thought, de rigueur; as this play, surely, is more about illuminating shadows. After all, Genet ‘liked the darkness, even as a child’.

There’s no denying the luminosity of the stars. Catherine Elise Blanchett. Isabelle Huppert. And Great Gatsby principal, Elizabeth Debicki. Who wouldn’t be there? And, it seemed, almost everyone who’s anyone was, on opening night. But Cate and Isabelle are playing sisters. Cate has been directed, apparently, to apply a very proper, almost English way of speaking when her mistress is present and a coarser, broader, Aussie accent in private. Isabelle, however, is (inevitably, I suppose) stuck in her heavy, French onion soupy accent, which only but thickens when she’s speaking quickly or heat is applied to a scene. She’s a great actor, brimming with confidence, charisma and comedic skill, in particular, but much of her speech was entirely lost on me; it’s a good thing she was so physically expressive. She might as well have performed in French and, if Benedict was as anxious to be, or appear, ‘out there’, as I suppose, the whole play could’ve been in French.

In other words, I’d say, beyond the marketing muscle a name such as Huppert’s on the marquee lends, she is miscast, as Solange. Rapport born of an apres-show dinner (with Andrews, Blanchett and Huppert at table) while touring Gross und Klein in Europe seems to have been the audition, an admission Upton makes in his programnotes which, while frank, seems ill-advised in light of tongues wagging about town with respect to a publicly-funded arts organisation never countenancing open auditions. But nepotism in theatre is a big subject, for another day.

Presumably, Andrews is alluding to the differing roles we all play (if not psychosis) in having Cate put on one face (and voice) for her taskmistress and quite another for her sister. But again, what may be underpinned by a sound rationale doesn’t always work, in practice. Cate, of course, as Claire, outdoes herself, as always. I’ve said it before. And I’ll say it again. She is, for mine, the Sarah Bernhardt of our time and place. Her versatility knows no bounds, on stage, nor screen, gross or klein. From Elizabeth 1 to Bob Dylan; Ophelia to Blanche DuBois; Kate Hepburn to Hedda Gabler. Her every role materially underscores my contention.

Like Huppert, she’s always in consummate control and, even when flowers won’t go back in a vase, she improvises (I take it) seamlessly. It appears she subscribes to the Larry Olivier school, at least insofar as doing the very best one can with what one’s got; no matter the role. Cate, however, has arguably made far better decisions than Larry, as to scripts and productions. To say her resume reads very respectably exhibits considerable reserve and this latest role, needless to say, can do her no harm, even if the context for her performance has question marks hovering menacingly over it. Cate endows the young maid multidimensionally, sliding effortlessly from reticence to rage; contempt to tender affection. It’s Mr Andrews we must look to should we harbour any doubts about the way in which Claire is depicted.

Debicki, at twenty-two, as the mistress, isn’t outclassed by the maids. Astonishingly. She may well be a Cate Blanchett in waiting. Of course, some suspension of disbelief is required as regards relative ages. But, otherwise, Debicki does a delicious turn as the cruel, narcissistic prize bitch.

A lot of my aggravation, frustration and disappointment with this production goes back to the translation. I’m no Genet scholar (apparently, Benedict is, to an extent), but this interpretation seems overwritten, with too much textual and especially dramatic emphasis on largely superfluous expletives. It’s not as if we haven’t heard the word cunt before, or that it’s repetition is likely to deeply shock us, in the sense that seems intended. It is shocking though, when it suffices for something that might be more pithily expressed. The density of the text presents the aforementioned problems for Huppert and, by corollary, the audience, but problems for the play overall, which is exhausting for the fact it’s practically always talking.

But perhaps the biggest offence is the large screen and live editing of video. Even Spielberg wouldn’t take this on as, from a technical standpoint, the chances of the actors hitting precise marks, even if in place, especially in such a physically active play, are slim and, if they don’t, one ends up with hit-and-miss shots. On the up side, a few presented closeups which were revealing, not least of the actors’ finesse. If it had been left at this, there might’ve been an argument for it. But, as it is, it proved an intrusive gimmick. I’ve seen a number of multimedia productions that get it right, but this didn’t look like those. They’ve been candid about deploying cameras, whereas Andrews is clandestine.

What we end up with is a large screen hanging over a theatrical stage. It looks like Hillsong, a stadium Stones show, or a symposium on widgets. Half the time, I don’t know whether I should be watching Days Of Our Lives, above the set, or the flesh-and-bones actors, in it. It’s not radical (well, maybe it is). It’s not reinvention. It’s just rude.

If a director, Andrews or otherwise, wants to stamp a production of The Maids with something ‘radical’ and memorable, it might be best to go back to square one. Genet, a true radical, originally wanted men to play all the roles. To the best of my knowledge, it’s never happened. Then, we would’ve had something attention-getting that was relative to the work itself; instead of some things that are attention-getting that appear relative only to raising the reputation, or notoriety, of the director, not necessarily through the vehicle of the work and probably at its expense.

We still got a strong sense of the sexual ambiguities: incestuous stolen kisses and allusions to mutual masturbation; furtive touching. But male players would engender thought about oppression of women and socialisation, which would complement the play’s obvious concerns with class, money, power and authority. In the last regard, Andrews’ casting decisions succeed and prove inspired: having the young, beautiful, willowy mistress place the stiletto heel of deemed superiority sharply on the back of the not quite as young, but equally beautiful and willowy servant, in Claire, points vividly to the arbitrariness of who and what is ascribed attractive in a vastly inequitable social contract.

I applaud Andrews for his determination to experiment, but I question his motives. It seems he has a noisy propensity for ‘me, me, me!’ self-aggrandisement. Were he a little wiser, he’d realise the best way of attracting attention and holding it is to make the production famous. The rest will follow and the reverse rarely works, in any positive sense. I recall a better indie production at one of Sydney’s hole-in-the-wall theatres, not long ago, that probably would’ve cost, all in, less than Cate, Isabelle and Benedict’s fateful dinner.

But none of this matters. Mine is a voice in the wilderness. As I understand it, the season has sold out and the overseas tour already booked. It’s the names on the tent that matter. Not what’s inside it.

The details: The Maids plays the Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney, until July 20. Tickets at the venue website.

“Plucked from my mother’s breast, I grew up absolutely ignorant of my Aboriginal heritage.” In a single, almost glib phrase, Jack Charles sums up the his tragic young life and, in so doing, the tragic young lives of countless Aboriginal people. Happily for him, he found a new kind of family that, in many ways, may’ve been his salvation. “I do find a tribe of sorts: I luck across the new theatre mob.”

As a reviewer, critic, call me what you will, one tries to remain detached; to at least delude oneself and, with a little luck, others, by way of this apparent concession to objectivity. It’s an almost mandatory conceit. But I couldn’t help myself. A latecomer to the production, having missed it, a while back, at Belvoir, I was so taken by Jack Charles v The Crown, or, more particularly by Jack himself, I felt moved to give him a hug. I stopped short of such intimacy, but I did shake his hand and tell him what I earnestly feel: that he is one of the most charismatic performers I’ve ever seen on a stage.

Jack Charles the quintessential loveable rogue. The septuagenarian has been or is still an actor, musician, heroin addict, cat burglar, prisoner, elder and activist, born at Cummeragunja Station, on the Murray. What started as a communal utopia for Yorta Yorta people was turned into a virtual concentration camp, once the so-called Aboriginal Protection Board took over, in 1915. Being born September 5, 1943, Charles entered the fray at about the worst possible time. Residents had no freedom of movement. In fact, they were confined to the station. More distressing still, many of their relatives were sent away, Charles included.

Jack ended up at a boys’ home, in Box Hill, where he was the only Aboriginal. I say ended up, but this happened at just six months of age. “Plucked from my mother’s breast” is no poetic indulgence. But he wore his invidious status as a stolen generations child and years of abuse with incredible resilience, forgiveness and grace, co-founding Nindethana, Australia’s first-ever indigenous theatre group, at The Pram Factory, in 1971. The first production was Jack Charles Is Up And Fighting, so it seems as if a large circle was closed with the advent of Ilbijerri Theatre Company’s Jack Charles v The Crown, in 2010.

The show, written by Charles and John Romeril, is currently at the leading edge of a large-scale regional tour, and I caught it at Glen Street. Emily Barrie’s sharply angular set symbolises, I suppose, a sharply angular life. Off to one side is the band: Phil Collings, percussion; Malcolm Beveridge, bass; Nigel Maclean, keys, guitar, violin and musical direction. Off to the other is a potter’s wheel, at which Jack is seated, much of the time, as he relates his story of fame and infamy, always in a good-natured, benign way. When one considers what he’s been through (to which he only but alludes) and the lingering effects it’s had (PTSD), his disposition stands as a triumph of equanimity over brutal reality. But any man who can find release in prison is, surely, no ordinary man.

The show begins with Charles potting, while scenes from the documentary Bastardy are projected above. It’s confronting seeing this incisive, lucid man shooting up, but none can argue with his contention he know what he’s doing and is no threat to anyone other than himself. And Charles appears so sanguine, on screen and off, it’s easy to forget the tragedy of a life no less lived, but not enriched in the way it might’ve been. After all, despite a heroin habit, Jack’s acting career is distinguished. In 1974, just a couple of years after Nindethana’s seminal startup, he played Bennelong, alongside a nascent Gulpilil, in Cradle of Hercules, for the Sydney Opera House’s opening season. (It was a better outcome than a couple of years before, when he auditioned for an indigenous role on television, but was rejected in favour of a Sri Lankan, because he didn’t have blue eyes.) And he’s been a part of other cultural landmarks. On screen, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Bedevil, Blackfellas and Tom White. On stage, Jack Davis’ No Sugar, for Black Swan Theatre, Perth. Just last year, Sydney Festival’s I Am Eora. 

On the strength of his resume during stretches out of jail, one can only but imagine what he might’ve done, had he not spent so much time doing time. Then again, perhaps we wouldn’t have had Jack as he is now, for which we, if not he, would be very much the poorer. JC v The Crown doesn’t sting as much as Bastardy. It’s a more poetic telling, that merely alludes to Charles’ systematic looting of wealthy Melburnian homes, his sexual disposition, early abuses and life in prison. Perhaps this is the way Jack needs to tell it. Perhaps it’s the way he needs it told. Or at least wants it told. Perhaps it’s the only way this man, or any man, can psychologically survive his past.

Danny Pettingill’s lighting is kept low, as if to emulate the fragile, if warm candle of a life that might have burned incandescently had circumstances been different.

The musical one is a vital ingredient in Charles’ idiosyncratic, multi-mediated chronicle. The trio of musicians plays with subtlety and respect. They provide hauntingly beautiful segues, but ramp it up to become Jack’s backing band. When Jack sings, it’s with with an admixture of affection and irony. It comes with the territory: a black man steeped in white music. His voice is deep and as gravelly as loose bitumen in a cul-de-sac; (but with an unapologetically Aussie drawl attached). His clear baritone well suits a number like Deep River Blues, a traditional tune which could easily be the story of his life: ‘let it rain, let it pour, let it rain a whole lot more; Lord, I got them deep river blues’. The song Connie Francis made her own, Who’s Sorry Now?, may or may not be a bitter parody of our tardiness in apologising to the Stolen Generations. It may be purely personal. Or pointedly political.

In The Pines is, most probably, a southern Appalachian (no one knows for certain) folk song that dates back at least as far as the 1870s, made famous by Leadbelly. It might be about a black girl shivering the whole night through, but I’ll warrant the odd black man has felt similarly cold, alone and afraid. Vagabond Lover isn’t political. it’s personal. Rudy Vallee’s 1929 hit may’ve lamented girls he once knew and loved, but the sentiment knows no gender.

Son Of Mine is a bluesy folk setting for an Oodgeroo Noonuccal poem and seems to be a call to Jack’s own mother.

My son, your troubled eyes search mine,

Puzzled and hurt by colour line.

Your black skin, soft as velvet shines;

What can I tell you, son of mine?

I could tell you of heartbreak, hatred blind;

I could tell you of crimes that shame mankind;

Of brutal wrong and deeds malign;

Of rape and murder, son of mine.

But I’ll tell you instead of brave and fine,

When lives of black and white entwine;

And men in brotherhood combine.

This would I tell you, son of mine.

His incongruous finale is Love Letters (In The Sand), a song inseparable from Pat Boone, a man who, among other priceless political postures, has asserted Barack Obama is ineligible to be president. It may be more innocent (after all, there’s no reason to have anything against songwriters, J. Fred Coots or (lyricists) Nick and Charles Kenny. But I can’t help but feel sharp pangs when I hear this proud Aboriginal man sing a song so much, through context, a symbol of that dirty word beginning with ‘a’, assimilation. Perhaps it’s the point. Or perhaps it’s just generic, whitefella, middle-class guilt. When one looks at what we’ve done to Jack Charles and what he, as a consequence, has done to himself, that’s entirely appropriate.

“I live in the hope that we’re all in works in progress: that things can change, as I’ve changed.” Jack Charles exceptionally engaging, well-told story is all his own. He has us spellbound as we sit around his campfire. In many ways, too, it’s the story of Australia. Just not the one we’re used to hearing.

The details: Jack Charles v The Crown will play on a national tour until August 18. Tickets on the venue website.

Who knew Griffin, of all theatre companies, would go for the stage equivalent of a chick flick? I’m being flippant, of course, but Van Badham’s The Bull, The Moon & The Coronet of Stars is a kind of romcom. Kind of. It finds its roots and inspiration in Greek mythology. She isn’t pretentious about it, though: even her characters are candid about the symbology.

Michael and Marion wander on stage, making casual conversation. Michael (Matt Zeremes) is attired in a pinstriped light grey suit, albeit sans tie. He could’ve come straight from the office. Marion (Silvia Colloca) is in jeans and a pretty, brocaded top. She could’ve come straight from home.

The pair begin talking about Michael and Marion in third person narrative, but quickly become them, taking us from outside to inside the story. It’s a device that serves to concentrate the mind and spark one’s imagination. These are required responses for the relatively short duration of eighty minutes: as set (Anne Tregloan’s, clever in its use of empty timber display cabinets, moved around to define different places and spaces), props and costumes are minimal, tending towards non-existent and many actions, settings and events are implied, only obliquely portrayed, or merely described.

Michael is a married publications manager at a museum; Marion, an artist-in-residence in a de facto relationship. Their fatal, if slow-burning attraction (we’re talking sparkler, to begin with, not bunger) begins with stolen moments in the office kitchen and culminates in a tempestuous, urgent romp during a nocturnal vigil at work. But as is so common with office affairs, or used to be, Michael returns to the comfy, familiar sanctuary of his lacklustre marital bed, leaving Marion, whose fallen heavily, emotionally destitute and suffering the pangs, slings and arrows of outrageous guilt over her faithlessness.

Director Lee Lewis has her actors draw the parallel with King Minos’ false promise to Poseidon to do in his prize bull in the sea god’s honour. In Michael and Marion’s case, the bull isn’t slain, but parades around the ring proudly, before being rough-ridden well enough to set a sexual rodeo record. (At times, it’s hard to find exact lineups between the ancient labyrinth and Harry Met Sally retelling: I take it Badham and Lewis have opted for an unapologetically amorphous draw down; a sketch, rather than photoreality.) Not even Marion seems to realise, or be capable of admitting, her ‘love’ is really for the ‘bull’, the beast with two backs, not the man.

While Badham-Lewis (I see the partnership and influence on the production as empathic and equal) play mainly for comedy (lending the piece a refreshing, but hardly ever trivial, breeziness), they wittingly or unwittingly shine a light on good, old-fashioned sexual inhibition; a passé, but still pervasive tendency to punish oneself for succumbing to overwhelmingly powerful, natural urges. Many of us don’t like to so much as acknowledge the ‘animal’ in ourselves, let alone unleash it.

Thus, Marion responds to this frightening unbridling of the bull by stepping into an ascetic state of self-denial, escorting elderly amateur artists to a coastal retreat, supposedly oblivious to the possibilities of holiday romance. How we delude ourselves! Inevitably, she happens upon Mark, a sleazy sommelier and wellspring of all things hedonistic and self-serving. As before, with Michael, there is no immediate force of attraction; it’s by erosion, not explosion, that it comes to the fore. Mark isn’t her type and she’s not his, but they find salvation and redemption in each other’s arms. Um, that sounds a little Mills & Boon mythological. It’s much better, in the flesh.

Zeremes and Colloca are neat fits for these roles as they come across as relatable human beings, rather than actors, or gods. Zeremes can launch from deceptively static, softly-spoken and mild-mannered to roaring physical rampage. Colloca has a knack for nuance communicated through a gestural vocabulary that’s liable to include tweaked eyebrows, curled lips, stares and looks askance. Her hint of Italian accent, overlaid with plum-in-mouth hyper-Britishness, is at once distracting and alluring.

This tight-knit team is a winner. Badham’s writing is well-sustained and Lee Lewis brings her quirky, allusive vision of rapacious romance vividly to life. Not only is a minotaur slain. So is an audience.

The details: The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars will play at the Griffin Theatre, Darlinghurst, until June 8. Tickets on the venue website.

How does it happen? All of a sudden, or so it seems, a slew of homages to Greek mythology. First, there was Seymour’s abominable Trapped in Mykonos. Then, Griffin’s highly creditable The Bull, The Moon & The Coronet. Tomorrow evening, I look forward to Bell’s Phedre. Meanwhile, there was No White Elephant’s Electra at Tap Gallery Theatre (upstairs), directed by erstwhile actor, Richard Hilliar. Hilliar has just been announced as the new director of Sydney Shakespeare Festival and, on the strength of his Electra, I anticipate productions from that company enthusiastically.

Hilliar’s Electra is full of bright ideas, despite the rather darker themes of the play. As we enter and negotiate the narrow vestibule, overpopulated with crude artworks, which leads to the airless, eerily tomblike, Tap Gallery theatre, women clad in black robes face the walls and wail. On emerging into the tiny black box, we find that scenic painter Andrea Espinoza has rendered the walls rustically grey. As such, they resemble those one might encounter in a mausoleum, or the concrete canyons of an uninspired CBD. Either way, the effect is demoralising. As well it might be, for we are entering a time and place of wretchedness.

Electra is in a crabby mood. She’s a bit one-eyed when it comes to her late father, Agamemnon, choosing to see his brutal dispatch of her sister as a matter in which he had no option and for the greater good; in other words, she tends to look it as a noble act of statesmanship, rather than filthy deed of filicide. It’s put her at odds with her mother, who has been unable to forgive what she, instead, sees as the malicious act of a mouse of a man too easily influenced by his brother. Electra’s dim view of her mother has been hardened by her hasty marriage to her cynical and opportunistic, if not downright sinister, stepfather. As with most family squabbles, it’s complicated and historical; clouded by pronounced attachments and the lack of them to ideas, feelings and people. It’s really Neighbours on steroids (which sound like Greek drugs to me).

Hilliar has innovated on the concept of the Greek chorus, so that, sometimes, an offstage voice will join in stereophonic synchronicity with an onstage one. As well, the whole drama is like a dance, thanks to the poetry-in-motion developed by movement consultant, Amanda Laing. Costumes are simple and effective. Nothing is overwrought. The entire cast is outstandingly good, with Amy Scott-Smith, nonetheless, standing head and shoulders above the rest, as Electra. Her exquisitely modulated voice and exemplary elocution are matched, physically, by a meticulously nuanced gestures, such that every emotion and expression is fully imbued with authenticity and believability.

Rose Maher, Emily Livingstone and Emily Elise are much tastier than chopped liver, too, as the women of Argos, Electra’s collegiate confidantes. Nicole Wineberg impresses, too, as Chrysothemis (not recommended for people with lisps), the weak-willed sister of Electra. Cat Martin is Electra’s murderous mother, Clytemnestra. As such, her expertise enables her to tread the notoriously difficult line between engendering sympathy and contempt. Dominic McDonald, however, is effortlessly contemptible as the opportunistic Aegisthus. He’s Australia’s answer to John Hurt. Any resemblance isn’t totally coincidental. His gruffly seasoned vocal timbre is the quintessence of evil. Nathaniel Scotcher’s Orestes (Electra’s brother, thought and announced dead, but returned) also captures a Shakespearean complexity of character which makes him relatable, as against the remoteness that can arise when mythological figures are understood and drawn rather more literally, simplistically and unidimensionally.

There are moments (or there were, on opening night) when the women of Argos seem not to know what face to pull, but these are few. On the whole, NWE’s Electra is a tiny tour de force, raising more questions than it answers, which, surely, is the way both ancient Greek and modern Australian drama ought to be.

The details: Electra will play at the Tap Gallery, Darlinghurst, until June 15. Tickets on the venue website.

Laurence Coy, Justin Stewart Cotta and Sam O’Sullivan in The Removalists (Pic: Zak Kaczmarek)

Tamarama Rock Surfers’ production of David Williamson’s heyday play, The Removalists, came as a shock. I was incredulous to learn that a company touting itself as “committed to the development of new Australian writing” was to stage a work from 1971, iconic as it may be.

But perhaps the clue lies in the second part of TRS’ mission statement, which relates its commitment to “contemporary performance practice”, for this production couldn’t be earthier, grittier or more in-your-face in pursuing Williamson’s key themes, built around violence, authority, power, corruption, moral bankruptcy, hypocrisy and male chauvinist piggery.

Word has it that director (and TRS artistic director) Leland Kean knuckled down with Williamson to reanimate his up-close-and-personal study of Australian society in the 1970s. The result is something I’d argue is at least as harrowing as earlier productions. Much of the punch hinges on the teeth-grinding realisation that the more things change, the more they stay the same. We may now be more sophisticated (or at least flatter ourselves as such) that in the ’70s, but does refraining from Coolabah and fat snags on the barbie really, truly make us so? We may’ve graduated to MasterChef-dom, but are we yet masters of our own destiny?

It turns out a re-run of The Removalists, apart from being a timely cash-in on the appetite for Underbelly, is a timely opportunity to promote another good, hard look at ourselves and, the fact remains, there are few, if any better than Williamson to enable this. In the flesh, I sighed personal relief: I’ve been a trenchant (if reluctantly so) critic of numerous of David’s recent forays into theatre, so it’s good to be able to point, directly, to work of his that’s not only admirable, but valuable. And not just theatrically. This is Williamson at his very best, as social critic and provocateur. He isn’t postulating answers to big questions here; a temptation to which he’s succumbed and which has run him into trouble over recent years, not so much by way of the validity or otherwise of the answers, but the patronising didacticism and stating of the bellying obvious which has accompanied them. In over words, David has been boring. This play, by contrast, isn’t one of the finest Australian plays but, for my money, one of the best plays ever written. Full stop.

I know. Big call. But I look up to it for its call-a-spade-a-shovel, jab in the ribs of our lucky country complacency, which still pertains. (I mean, hello, what comes after the mining boom and Ford’s withdrawal from the country?) It’s as penetrating, bare-laying an exposition of this nation as, say, Death Of A Salesman is of the elusiveness, for most of the American dream. Unlike Miller though, Williamson brings a particular, razor-edged, dirt-dry, blackly humorous sensibility to the piece, playing comedy against tragedy like a voodoo doll-maker. This not knowing when to laugh, wince or cry is what makes the for so unsettling, effective, compelling and powerful.

Kean has harnessed all of this energy, by way of both cast and crew. You can almost taste the rapport between him and the writer. It’s so good, there’s an argument for Kean stagings of other classic Williamsons. Nuggety Laurence Coy is Sergeant Dan Simmons, a hardbitten, old school (of hard knocks) cop, whose carved out a comfortable niche for himself at a two-man police station, providing back-up to the main station in a shady (and I don’t mean treelined) Melbourne suburb. He’s about to lambaste academy-fresh (Constable Neville) Ross from every possible angle; it fills in time, between the crossword and midday movie. Even with Ross, Simmons crosses boundaries that, in principle and on paper at least, wouldn’t be countenanced now, even in the force, as he unapologetically pries into Ross’ background. He pushes the young recruit to finally admit his father isn’t a carpenter, as Ross initially indicates, but a coffin-maker. This mischievous dramatic foreshadowing is darkly delicious.

Coy is cast with exactness (he has the look and cultivates the disposition so well he could be a copper) and this precision is seen right across the cast. As the uncertain Ross, Sam O’Sullivan has naivety written all over him. But there’s also a pervasive sense of uncomfortable containment; a judicious detail of character that comes into its own, explosively, a little later. Caroline Brazier, as the calculating, mercenary and worldly proto-feminist. (One can only speculate on whether Williamson is showing something of his own chauvinism in the way this character is drawn, or whether he’s deliberately written her as a reactionary portrait of the ilk that pervaded the media of the ’70s.) Brazier fits the bill with statuesque intensity, thanks to her particular brand of brazen schtick. Just as Ross counterpoints Simmons, Sophie Hensser’s Fiona Carter is the nervous, bullied foil to her older sister.

Williamson has plenty to say about authority and where it was vested in this era. Ross and Mrs Carter defer to their elders in a way that no longer pertains. That they’re older is enough; that they’ve lived their lives foolishly is of no consequence. “Experience” counts more than expertise or training. Knowing the ropes. The university of life was still the revered institution; academia regarded with suspicion. Perhaps this was something of an expression of Williamson’s own frustration and internal dilemma: one which moved him from mechanical engineering to writing.

The lecherous Simmonds, seeing an opportunity to get a leg over, proceeds to detail Mrs Carter’s assault, by her husband, Kenny (Justin Stewart Cotta). He has her remove clothing as part of his inspection. Hensser projects humiliation such that we feel it, too. Kean micro-manages the dynamics here superbly. Mrs Mason seems to look on with a sense of vicarious, sadistic pleasure: she’s used to manipulating her sister and doesn’t seem to mind seeing Simmonds do similar. There’s something of a kindred, malignant spirit between them. Meanwhile, Ross feels empathy for Mrs Carter, but is too paralysed to protest; symptomatic of the camaraderie, enforced by bastardry, that was (and maybe still is) police culture.

Cotta, as the seething, drunken, footy-lovin’ pub crawler, Kenny, exudes menace. The threat to his young wife is palpable and always present. Yet our contempt for him, unbelievably, transmutes to sympathy during events that ensue. Finally, Sam Atwell is almost anachronistically comical as the removalist, come to collect Mrs Carter’s furniture on the sly. We come to know, only too well, he’s got ‘ten-thousand dollars worth of machinery ticking over outside’.

Like his vehicle, Kean’s production vehicle is finely-tuned, well-oiled, reliable and performs accordingly. Kean and Williamson haven’t only given this play a new lease of life. They appear to have given it an even better life that its previous ones.

The Removalists isn’t for the squeamish, in any sense. It’s violent, bloody and deeply disturbing. Just like our past, present and, probably, future.

The details: The Removalists plays the Bondi Pavilion Theatre until June 15. Tickets on the company website.

Paul Holmes and Sarah Robinson in Educating Rita | Reginald Theatre

From the first beat, this production of Willy Russell’s Educating Rita chugs along, like the little train that thought it could. The legendary Cypriot goldsmith, Pygmalion, has come a long way since Ovid’s Metamorphoses. But the statue carved here may give pause for deeper reflection.

This joint venture between Seymour and Paul Holmes Productions is a damn sight more difficult to fall in love with than Pygmalion’s carved-in-stone woman. So much is this the case that it raises serious questions about any semblance of quality assurance one might rely upon where Seymour is concerned, at east in its downstairs theatre. The last production in The Reginald was appalling. This would struggle to match the pointy end of amateur.

Russell’s take on ancient myth came in 1980 and, while his characters are exceptionally well-drawn, they do have something of that decade hanging about them. Regular readers might know of my hobbyhorse as regards accents: when and when not to use them. While one can’t really imagine, for example, My Fair Lady without the very particular dialects sported by Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, there’s no reason why Dr Frank Bryant couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be a professor in an Australian university; nor why Susan (Rita) isn’t a hairdresser from, say, Sydney’s outer western suburbs. Instead we have to endure the creditable but, nonetheless, less than perfect put-ons of Paul Holmes and Sarah Robinson. Holmes sounds only passably, or notionally, British and we get the message more from context than any particular success on his part. Robinson makes a much more convincing fist of it, but still drifts in and out of her Liverpudlian brogue.

There are stumbles and fluffed lines: not the stuff of opening nights. This isn’t to say Holmes or Robinson are poor actors. Far from it. But they did seem somewhat under-rehearsed. And the production never really gets up to speed. It’s as flat as the Nullarbor and, as a result, seems almost as endless, despite a reasonable running time. I lay most of the blame for lack of momentum at the feet of the director.

The set, too, while mining the general aesthetic of the stuffy professor’s airless, old school office, as well as mirroring his personal dishevelment, wasn’t well-crafted; it seemed as if the designer was hoping (in vain) we wouldn’t spot the devil in the details.

Despite lack-lustrousness, thankfully, there’s still a fine play on which to focus. Taken right back to its ancient genesis, this work is most interesting not only for its older-man-falls-for-much-younger-woman vanity, but for the even greater vanity of this man whose egocentricity is so unbridled he acts, albeit unwittingly, as a veritable god, (re)creating this woman in his own image. Or so he thinks. But like all children of gods, she goes in an unbidden direction.

It’s this tension between what they both know about themselves (and each other) and what they don’t, as well as what they discover about themselves and each other, that is the underlying, unuttered erudition of Russell’s recapitulation of age-old themes. Its understatement is its sophistication.

What a pity, then, it couldn’t have been dealt with more sensitivity and skill.

The details: Educating Rita plays the Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre until June 8. Tickets on the venue website.

Annette Shun Wah and William Yang’s Stories Then And Now revives the intention of their earlier work, Stories East & West, under the auspices of Performance 4A, a company dedicated to “producing inspiring Asian-Australian theatre”. In both works, the company’s objective has been richly realised. The latest has curated and nurtured six personal journeys, related by the very people who’ve taken them. These have been broken down into Then & Now segments, to lend a gentle kind of suspense. The only ‘props’ are evocative family photos, projected on two huge screens behind the storytellers.

The first journey is Jenevieve Chang’s. It’s one that begins with her characterful great grandmother and an aristocratic upbringing in Hunan, south central China; the spicy province, if you want to pinpoint it in culinary parlance. And the birthplace of Mao, at whose hands Chang’s grandmother suffered. Mao might’ve thought it poetic political justice she be incarcerated in one of her own wheat silos. Politics weighed heavily on the Chang family, who were forced into decisions they mightn’t have otherwise made. Chang’s story is imbued with so much sadness, it’s almost a ready-made, tearjerking screenplay and, were it not true, it’d take the most gifted writer to contrive it. Chang’s grandparents journey to relative freedom meant leaving a daughter behind. Another died soon after. But their ‘little emperor’ and only son, Sam, survived. Happily for Jenevieve, who wouldn’t be here to tell the tale, otherwise.

Chang is cool, confident and natural, perhaps, as we learn, because she has a background in performance, albeit of quite a different kind; as a dancer (and actor, to boot). Sometimes, an “exotic” one. Her story makes for a beautiful bookend.

Ien Ang doesn’t come across as having any kind of theatrical training or experience, as such, but she exudes warmth, personality and seems to have performative instincts. More than is usual, arguably for a professor. What’s not unusual is for a young girl to fall in love with her father and, inasmuch, Ang wasn’t unusual. But her handsome father was Chinese-Indonesian, at a time when that populous nation to our north was ruled by the Dutch. And though his family had been Javanese for generations, the colonial masters saw fit to segregate ‘Chinese’ from Javanese, as colonial masters are wont to do. Ien’s father became a pawn for the Japanese invaders, too. They also underscored his ancestral origins by pressing him into service as leader of a Chinese militia with the objective of suppressing resistance. There was a rock. And a hard place. Mr Ang was between them. After the war, Mr Ang forgave, even if he couldn’t forget and enthusiastically set about pulling his weight in rebuilding his beloved nation. But anti-Chinese sentiment reared it’s ugly head yet again and an almost broken man scooped up his family and took them to the Netherlands.

Ang’s story is as sobering as Chang’s and reminds us the tide can quickly turn against us. Without warning. And without justice.

Michael C. S. Park is of Korean extraction and has worked as an actor, editor, video journalist, screenwriter, director, business analyst and academic. (One thing’s for sure, he’s a charmer.) Perhaps his parents’ early misfortunes have kept him unsettled and seeking. After all, both experienced crushingly cruel abandonments. But despite aching tragedy, Park chooses to leaven the telling with playful humour. I wasn’t close enough to see the twinkle in his eye, but I’m sure it was there. The result is irresistibly engaging and not even a momentary “dry” could dissuade the big love being sent his way.

Willa Zheng’s story afforded an insight into the nascent Chinese communist state to which we haven’t necessarily previously been privy. Who would’ve thought notions of class would still have pervaded the implied egalitarianism of its underpinning philosophy? Too naive? By half? Maybe. This was, of course, a kind of class revenge. An inversion which afflicted her bourgeois grandparents, who were barred for the party and, as such, remained ineligible for promotion. But her family kept a low profile, kowtowed to the powers that be and bided their time, which finally came. The comic treasure embedded in Zheng’s yarn is her grandmother’s unauthorised, secretive alteration of her father’s uni application. From accounting, to hospitality management.

As a performer, Zheng isn’t quite in the same class as, say, Chang, but it doesn’t diminish or tarnish her story in the slightest. Besides, she’s not really a performer, so can’t, perhaps, be judged against the same criteria one would apply to other theatrical ventures. One of the uplifting effects of narratives like Zheng’s is they foster forgiveness.

Sheila Pham’s grandfather loved French and, fittingly, worked as a court interpreter in French colonial South Vietnam. Despite a well-to-do background, through a series of almost unbelievably catastrophic events, her father ended up orphaned and homeless. However, his eldest sister eventually took him in, but more as servant than sibling and a photo of him as the only shoeless child in a family portrait is heartbreaking. That was just the beginning of his woes. And hard labours. But Pham’s courageous father  was master of his own destiny; captain of his own boat which, as it happens, took him, indirectly, to Australia.

A little like Zheng, Pham’s performative appeal is an endearing shyness. And, again, it’s another utterly compelling saga.

Paul Van Reyk, like Chang, has a disarming naturalness about him, peppered with some put-on panache. His spiel is built around his jingle; his mantra. “Burgher buggers make better bastards!” I’m sure you know what a bastard is. And a bugger. He elaborates, of course. A burgher is a Sri Lankan ‘born of the dalliances and marriages between Portuguese, French and Dutch spice merchants and military on one side of the bed and Singhalese and Tamils on the other’. In his case, however remarkable his ‘then’ is, his “now” will have you agape and aghast. Suffice to say, if the kooky Christian lobby’s offensive and hyperbolic outburst of recent days is any guide, he’s its public enemy number one. And loving it, I expect. For Van Reyk seems to have enough room in his heart to love everything. And everybody. Without fear, favour, or prejudice.

Stories Then And Now is not only nourishing theatrically, but socially. It’s important work. Vital, in every sense. Go and get a heapin’ helpin’ of unbelievable truth.

The details: Stories Then And Now played CarriageWorks on May 22-25.