The cast of Vanguard | Joan Sutherland Theatre (Pic: Branco Gaica)

There was no dilemma is foregoing the tap-dancing of the federal treasurer’s budget speech for Vanguard, which proves to be a fitting name for The Australian Ballet’s latest, as it spearheads new movements in dance and new directions for the company.

When I say new, the first of the three works presented — George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments — harks back to 1946, but still glistens with a fresh modernity. This, despite humble origins: its premiere was at the Central High School of Needle Trades, of New York City, on November 20 of that year, with music commissioned from Paul Hindemith. (Hindemith had, in fact, written a score of the same name six years earlier, for string orchestra and piano.)

The premiere was performed in practice clothes and sans scenery, so artistic director David McAllister has chosen to stay true to this spirit and provenance, opting for a visual minimalism (a parabolic curvature of luminous blue behind the dancers) that echoes the ballet’s elegant, assertive, choreographic simplicity. For mine, this work, physically, is all about attitude, posture, deportment and carriage. Balanchine was experimenting with such long before voguing. Thematically, Balanchine (and, before him, Hindemith) draws upon the ancient Greek notion of temperaments, or humours; something we might now call moods and dissociate from the bodily fluids the Greeks correlated.

With this work as much as any other from his canon, Balanchine demonstrates how and why he rose to be co-founder and ballet master of the New York City Ballet and one of the most gifted and influential artists of all time. The music is arranged into three themes and four variations and the dance follows suit. Distinctions of energy and mood are rendered with precision, clarity and all-round excellence and it’s capricious and arbitrary in the extreme to pick favourites but, if pressed, I might opt for the opening ‘movement’ which brings Amy Harris and Andrew Killian together.

The beauty of this piece (or these pieces) is it can be appreciated as visual and performance art, but also as a work of philosophy: the Greeks’ notion of keeping emotions in balance and legitimising the full range of such surely holds no less wisdom today. By George, it’s fine work! As I write, it’s been presented 87 times by The AB and I’m hoping for at least another 87 before I kick the bucket.

As usual, I can’t let an AB review go by without making mention of the versatile, collective genius of Nicolette Fraillon and The Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. Nothing seems too much of a challenge for them and this night certainly presented what must be considered exceedingly challenging music. Indeed, the orchestra and soloists faced degrees of difficulty not too far removed from those confronted and surmounted by the dancers. Hindemith’s score, for example, was impeccably rich, with its strings by turns melancholic, peacefully pastoral and wildly optimistic. Stuart Macklin’s piano exhibited a faithfully confounding balance between attack and delicacy, too.

It was an inspirational moment in Sydney’s artistic life, appropriately celebrated with a glass of sparkling wine at interval, before returning for Jiri Kylian’s Bella Figura which, if anything and if at all possible, upped the ante. It certainly proved, literally and figuratively, for me, the centrepiece of an incredibly robust and refined program: robust in selection; refined in execution.

Kylian’s work, from 1995, is as much about production design as choreography. Almost. He uses curtains to great effect, framing scenes and dancers like Renaissance artworks. Kees Tjebbes lighting only but adds. Joke Visser’s costume design is exquisite, not least his fantastically overstated scarlet pantaloons. The work moves deviously and mischievously from the sublime to the ridiculous, a transition flagged first, on my reading, by a female foot appearing ‘tween and ‘twixt a male dancer’s legs (I can’t quite recall whose).

The dance is to many a tune, from Lukas Foss’ Salomon Rossie Suite to Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. Foss’ Lento is incredibly moving and this is part of what deludes us as to the character of the work. In practice, Kylian traverses as many humours as Balanchine, as well as the laugh-out-loud kind. If you admire Chaplin, I expect you’ll revel in what Kylian does here. But, like a deft film or theatremaker, he has the dexterity to transport us, from laughter; to tears, likely of jouissance.

Again, it’s practically impossible to single out performances. There’s plenty to go awry, what with controlled slides and physical missions impossible for the merely mortal, yet nothing does. A no added cost bonus are the voices of Janet Todd, Celeste Lazarenko and Margaret Trubiano, which take the whole work heavenward.

I only wish I could as enthusiastic about Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929, from (confusingly) 2009. At first glance, it’s striking, for its itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow polka-dot bikini stage garb. Aurally, too, Steve Reich’s Double Sextet is an awakening departure; ‘though even this becomes a little irritating, as the dance seems to go nowhere discernible: thematically, narratively, dramatically, or emotionally. Worse, given the lucidity, intelligence, wit, innovations (Kylian takes vocabularies from myriad forms of modern dance, boldly reapplying such in anachronistic classical contexts) and aesthetic transcendence of the first two works, it comes across as dense, directionless and, dare I say, a little ugly.

But even this couldn’t dampen, let alone dilute, an otherwise sparkling evening of ballet.

The details: Vanguard plays the Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House until May 18. The show plays Melbourne’s State Theatre June 6-17 — tickets on the company website.

Jacek Koman, Belinda McClory and David Paterson in Dance Of Death | Malthouse Theatre

The blackest of comedies, Friedrich Durrenmatt’s Dance of Death is a complex and absurdist piece of literature. Adapted from August Strindberg’s 1900 play about a marriage gone psychotically wrong, this bleakly hilarious play is currently being hosted by the Malthouse Theatre, under the skillful direction of Matthew Lutton.

The first thing that the audience member will be struck by is the intriguing mise en scene. Tony Award-nominated designer Dale Ferguson has conceived of something truly remarkable with this set, constructing it entirely in a glass box with the audience members arranged on each side. All three actors — Jacek Koman, Belinda McClory and David Paterson — remain on stage the entire time, even while they are not involved in the current scene. This is strategic: it adds to the claustrophobic feel of the script and the overall entrapment the characters suffer from.

Durrenmatt condensed Strindberg’s original text into a series of boxing rounds; each scene change signalled by the ringing of a bell and McClory shouting the round number. And indeed, this play is a brutal match, with no holds barred and no punches pulled. It may in fact be the most creative abuse you have ever heard.

Alice (McClory) and Edgar (Koman) are an ageing couple with an undisguised contempt for each other. Isolated on an island, their surrounds reflect their desolate lifestyles. Trapped with only each other and the memories of two children who died and two who no longer love them. They are visited one day by Alice’s cousin (and former lover) Kurt (Paterson), who at first is a welcome distraction but gradually unveils the homicidal truth lurking behind the couple’s intense relationship.

What begins as a potentially happily-ever-after love triangle soon unravels as each character reveals their true personalities. Paterson is impeccable as the well-to-do, but secretly heartbroken Kurt, whose crisp dress and cultured manner reflects his proper breeding. He is the only one on stage with any manners, and his deep affection for Alice is touching — almost.

Alice herself is something to behold. Hostile and snakelike, she has lived her life “swindled away in Bluebeard’s Castle”, with a man she settled for and grew to hate with every passing year. Indulging in fantasies about her “success” as an actress from the old days, Alice’s wasted life has slowly passed her by in a manner that is “as crazy as a bag of cocks”. McClory’s primitive and unpredictable rage pierces the dialogue sporadically, as she shifts from a sophisticated lady of the house to a furious woman scorned.

And then there is Edgar, the antagonist and unapologetic villain of the piece. Jacek Koman is utterly brutal in his portrayal of a violent, drunken, contemptuous man who is every bit as disenchanted with his wife as she with him. Edgar’s health is waning, but he is not about to let that stop him from tormenting Alice, who miserably anticipates his death. Koman dominates the stage with his abuse, arrogance and vulgarity. He is easy to hate, until act three, when the reasons for his cruel nature begin to emerge.

Dance of Death will not be for everyone. It uses frequent and over-the-top coarse language, and simulates a grotesque, incestuous sexual performance. It is a difficult show to sit through, but is worth doing so if you are not easily offended. Dance of Death has plenty to say about society, love, and the sanctity/imprisonment of the marital vow.

The details: Dance Of Death plays Malthouse’s Merlyn Theatre until May 19. Tickets on the company website.

Colin Moody in Forget Me Not | Belvoir St Theatre (Pic: Lisa Tomasetti)

Sometimes things go awry. Sometimes, in the thick of an exceptionally frantic week of theatregoing and writing about theatregoing, a reviewer doesn’t prove as thoroughgoing as he might. Ought. But anyone can make mistakes. Right? And so it was that, before scooting off to southern Thailand for a much needed, long overdue holiday, right in the thick of things, amid the fog of war fought valiantly with the beast of literary burden, I forgot to write up Forget Me Not. I know. Forgot. The irony is almost too chuckle-worthy; which can only but add to the extremity and profanity of my embarrassment.

Of course, there’s nothing much chuckle-worthy about Belvoir’s soon-to-end, current, Upstairs co-production (with The Liverpool Everyman), written by Tom Holloway and dedicated to The Child Migrants Trust, directed by Anthea Williams and featuring Mandy McElhinney, Colin Moody, Eileen O’Brien and Oscar Redding.

It begins with an awkward encounter and silence, between Mary and Gerry. Mary is the elderly mother who came home to find her son kidnapped by the powers-that-be, a routine practice at the time. For all she knew, he was sent to a “better” family which, given the poverty of single motherhood, was something she could rationally, if not emotionally, reconcile. Gerry is the son, a man in his 60s who has long believed his mother to be dead. His grief around his lack of identity and family has tainted (or ruined, or completely capsized) his entire life and poisoned his relationships, not least with himself and the bottle.

While the silence I describe is, within the play, awkward, from the outside, peering in, it’s revitalising and intensifying. While the likes of Shakespeare can make language glorious, the sound of silence, one’s reminded, can be most eloquent. Neither playwright nor director has lived in fear of it: they embrace and exploit its expressive possibilities in the fullest. This silence not only concentrates the drama, but one’s own focus. For example, it afforded space-time ‘nough to reflect this is one of Belvoir’s finest productions in a while. (And that’s saying something, right?) In fact, it’s probably one of Belvoir’s best-ever, even given the notoriety of memory as the key tool in calibrating such judgements.

Eileen O’Brien is Mary who, as the underclass must, has battled on, doing the best she can, trying to content herself with a myth: that the government-sanctioned abduction of her child provided him with a life of relative privilege she couldn’t have. In the first scene, which charts an encounter never realised (as becomes tragically clear later in the play), we find ourselves inside Mary’s humble home, in her quaint, quiet living room, almost a museum; the kind, like one’s grandparents’, where about all that can heard is the loud ticking of a mantle clock, which seems to mark more time more slowly and deliberately. But we’re not only inside Mary’s living room, but her cobwebbed heart, thanks to O’Brien’s immersion in her character, which so completely embraces us.

Colin Moody is Gerry and one of that exclusive coterie of actors Belvoir seems to keep locked-up in a small bureau (notwithstanding the scale of the man), along with a handful of others, young and older. I’ve complained of this nepotism, I think, before, but none can complain about the casting on this occasion: while he by no means has it to himself, it’s very much Moody’s play. He fills Gerry’s shuffling, world-weary, worn-and-torn slippers with a lumbering smoulder, for here is a man whose fire has all but burned out. And yet, there’s something incendiary about him. He’s a time-bomb, set to explode at any moment. It’s probably the best stage vehicle Moody’s ever had, the one in which he’s been least typecast and for which Williams deserves great credit in recognising what Moody, specifically, could bring to this role, which is a latent, seething moodiness, as well as sheer Moodiness.

He’s estranged from his daughter Sally (McElhinney), who he’s treated shabbily. His key relationship is with the aforementioned bottle, but neither has it treated him well and even that nexus has become fraught, as he battles to beat it; albeit, perhaps, not hard enough. Certainly not hard enough from Sally’s standpoint. Her faith, hope and tolerance is running as dry as a cask of Gerry’s goon. Despite this and herself, she accommodates and supports her long, lost father in every possible way, including extending her home to him. She owes him nothing, but gives him everything, because she sees the man that might’ve been, that might yet be, behind the sad mask. McElhinney wavers, waxes and wanes, rollercoasting from tenderness to frustration; anger to compassion. It’s been the lot of women, whether lovers, wives, or daughters, for a long time and she wears it such that we recognise the generality as much as the particularity.

Williams and cast bring a rare, collective empathy to Holloway’s play. They’re all on the same page. All the time. It’s almost as if they’d written it. It lingers and pauses. It hovers and hangs. It menaces and agitates. Resisting the seeming fashion among young directors to fill every space with an effect, trick or technological gimmick, this director stakes everything on the audience’s capacity to think and feel, as much as the playwright’s. She deploys a feather, where some might’ve wielded a sledgehammer. It shows faith in herself. And her audience.

Forget Me Not reminds us of yet another unfortunate chapter in our recent history. In accepting Britain’s “orphans”, we were complicit and culpable, criminal associates. The parallels with our own stolen generations are chilling. Lest we forget.

The details: Forget Me Not plays Belvoir’s Upstairs Theatre until May 19. Tickets on the company website.

The cast of A Tender Thing | Visy Theatre

Let me say immediately that this is a lovely, intensely moving, intelligent piece of theatre. It was first staged in 2009 by the Royal Shakespeare Company and later in 2012 at the World Shakespeare Conference in Stratford. Its writer, or perhaps I should say creator, Ben Power, is apparently a wunderkind, skilled at presenting “rewrites” for modern audiences. Here he has rearranged and put Shakespeare’s words into the minds and mouths of an elderly Romeo and Juliet, as they dream and remember a shared past of love, companionship and mutual dependence.

The set is spare, but absolutely suggestive. It appears to be either a retirement village or a small unit with its neat outdoor patio, with real flowers growing neatly in well-tended mulch. This is no mere idle touch, however; Romeo is a gentle gardener who turns the soil and plants small flowers for his Juliet, and then, with a red rose between his teeth, becomes a Latin lover dancing for her delight. Flloyd Kennedy’s laugh was that of a young girl, not a giggle, not a guffaw, but a genuinely loving embrace of her lover’s performance.

Upstage there is just a double bed, the centre of some of the most tender moments and, closer to the patio, a white wicker settee, Juliet’s refuge in her sickness when she can no longer dance with her “husband”. The emphasis on that word, which the young Juliet delights in after the Friar’s ceremony, is a marker of how Power has swooped on and through the text, adapting it to the ebb and flow of memory and dream in a way that peoples this modern play with the world of its original source. So Juliet speaks some of Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech which is all about dreaming, and we hear of her birth during the earthquake and of her weaning through the Nurse’s original words incorporated in their dialogue. Even more interconnections are made with some of the sonnets, so “bare ruined choirs” and “love is not love” and a song from Twelfth Night slip seamlessly into their loving exchanges. They are lovers who celebrate their union with some of the greatest expressions of love we have in the language.

For me, the perfection of the last moments of the play when Romeo and Juliet come downstage, one on either side, and speak out to the audience the first words of love exchanged at the first meeting in Shakespeare’s play, where they tease each other with a real two-part sonnet with “hand to hand is holy palmer’s kiss”,  is hard to beat. It’s both about the impetuosity of first love in the original and the continuity of shared memories and dreams that’s possible to celebrate in a long union, which Power has explored.

Both Michael Croome and Flloyd Kennedy range easily over the rather wide space, Kennedy sometimes coquettishly, sometimes painfully, Croome more purposeful as he gardens, tends to his Juliet in the big wide bed and helps her towards her last breaths. The slow dance to one of their favourite tunes from the Great American Songbook is almost a Hollywood cliché, but it is so beautifully managed that it is a memorable highlight.

Which brings me to that sudden emergence in the cinema of all those movies about older people having fun, whether it be in an Indian hotel, an old people’s home (or should I say an aged care facility), a French kitchen (not so much fun), or a concert hall (and Performance was truly worth seeing). All I can say is that this production has a truth that is missing in many of those generic slices of so-called geriatric life. This combination of Shakespeare’s words, a new take on a very old story, two fine actors, and sensitive and imaginative direction really works.

It’s moving, emotionally and linguistically exhilarating, and really does fulfil Full Circle’s aim of “seeing the familiar from a new perspective”. I look forward to their next production.

The details: A Tender Thing plays the Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse until May 18. Tickets on the venue website.

Martin McCreadie in A Clockwork Orange | York Theatre (Pic: Simon Kane)

Our screens were all hijacked by real horror show ultra-violence: creeches and flames in the nochy, red flowing krovvy and keeshkas all out, malchicks and devotchkas on moloko, crasting pretty polly, droogs waving britvas, waving pooshkas at the millicents then loveted, off to sodding staja to have their yarbles shived. Not two years since the arson, the looting, the violent clashes of London’s riots, Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange ought to be as relevant as ever.

Ought. Ought but ain’t with this latest all-male incarnation from the UK’s Action to the Word. Disappointing, to say the least, because there are some elements of genuine brilliance in this production. However, confused as to whether it wanted to be a hyper-camp and over-stylised West Side Story or an underground contemporary anti-Hamlet, this production suffered from a lack of identity, and with it, the lack of something pretty indispensable to the story; that is, punch.

Alex (Martin McCreadie) and his droogs (mates) rule the streets of this near-future UK dystopia, doing drugs and indulging in rape and random acts of violence for kicks. Sentenced to prison for murder, Alex volunteers for the experimental Ludovico treatment which will “kill the criminal reflex” and therefore expedite his release. What he doesn’t anticipate is that the treatment will leave him crippled by nausea at the tones of his beloved classical music, culminating in his attempt at suicide while being forcibly subjected to what was once his greatest love, Beethoven’s Ninth.

McCreadie’s performance as Alex is reason enough to see this show. He is perfection. Cool, charming and frighteningly explosive, he leads from the crotch, seducing us into his depraved world and rendering violence glamourous. He toys, he titters, he growls the book’s purpose-built language, Nadsat, owning it, tossing it, milking its poeticism; commanding its authority like the greatest of Shakespearean performances.

Physically, he does the impossible, conveying the out-of-control through the greatest bodily control, convincing us beyond all doubt of the fight of his body and will against this foreign Ludovico force — never “acting” a push-pull dynamic, but internalising the simultaneity of clashing tensions. The man seems to have command of each muscle and each pulsing vein in isolation, like an elite acting athlete. And he is menacing. Yet he is vulnerable. Terrifying yet terrified. Despicable yet sexy. A man, but very much a boy. Never before have I seen such a matching of technical wizardry with emotional intensity. McCreadie is of a rare breed.

The ensemble, on the other hand, was mostly unremarkable, and not just because of the shadow cast by this acting goliath. Voices weren’t clear. Characters were thinly drawn and two-dimensional, often cheaply gimmicky and at times inappropriately parodied. Performances were never horrendous, but they were mostly just OK, with the odd triumph of one character (the mother, the lodger, the preacher in sermon) never carrying over to that actor’s next, nor characterising that actor’s show overall.

This was not helped by Alexandra Spencer-Jones’ direction. And I don’t mean the overall vision for the show (which, like root canal therapy, I’ll necessarily arrive at), but the internal logic, the tone being played in each scene. I repeatedly felt like I was watching the intense dramatic moments of human struggle unfold in a room of pantomimic buffoons. It felt kind of insulting, particularly to the bravery and stakes of the foreground performance, as well as undermining the danger of Burgess’ hyper-real underworld.

Which brings me roundly to this question of vision, or lack thereof: most notably, the entirely incongruous dance-breaks which punctuated the production, which perforated the production, destroying all sense of gravity and knifing the flow like an inexperienced writer with an over-enthusiastic and unwieldy command of the semi-colon: why?!

I get the ideas behind using dance to tell this story. In fact, I love the ideas behind using dance to tell this story: to increase menace by implying violence rather than showing it, to reek with this testosterone-charged, hyper-masculine aggression (not just figuratively), to interrogate this notion of gender and play with the fluidity of sexuality. Yep, all good. All great, in fact. So why do we suddenly have boys doing ballet?! What possible place do pretty pointed toes and posés en tournant, yes, a string of graceful pirouettes across the stage, have in this savage, chaotic, gritty dystopia?

The dance, which might have manifested in any one of a million other more than mildly successful ways, just wasn’t of the world. When it was not ballet, it was a slutty music video or Oxford Street on a Saturday night, neither of which is problematic in and of itself, but in this context served only to break with all sense of character, threat, aggression and buyable gang culture previously established through good work. It served only to trivialise the text, and to shatter my genuinely suspended disbelief. And again, and again.

Fight choreography that had been good in the “acting scenes” descended in the dance breaks into laughable bad mute mime compounded by the utterly painful experience of waiting for punches to land on the oonts-oonts electro beat. Dance battles might be OK in Rock Eisteddfod, but for a professional, internationally touring production? ‘Nuff said.

Conversely, the “acting scenes” had some really great imagery. Interesting shapes and arrangements and structures that served the drama more than enough without the naffness. It left me wondering, what is the style of this thing? Does the director know?

A Clockwork Orange is a story about the individual versus society; about the right to freewill versus the collective good. Positing gang culture, masculinity, racism, classism, unemployment, criminal opportunism and moral decay alongside the equally corrupt state, the failed penal system and the defunct church; it is the story of humans as animals. Not of humans who shake their animalism routine for vapid pop-dance interludes. Unfortunately, the director quite didn’t get that.

The details: A Clockwork Orange played the York Theatre, Seymour Centre on April 23 to May 5. The national tour includes Perth (May 7-19), Canberra (May 22-25) and Brisbane (May 28 to June 9) — more information on the show’s website.

The cast of Frakenstein | Brisbane Arts Theatre (Pic: Geoff Squires)

The idea of Frankenstein or, rather, the creature he created by electrifying a corpse,  has been with us for so long that it sometimes comes as a surprise to learn that he’s only been in existence for 200, appearing in a ghost novel by Mary Shelley, the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, in 1813.

We think of the monster, here called simply The Creature, as a mythic beast, often in a cartoon version like Lurch, with nuts and bolts sticking out of his neck, staggering around like a drunkard and acting irrationally and brutally.  But the real Creature is a more subtle creation than that, and Shelley’s story is more than just a Gothic horror. There’s a serious moral message here, about the dangers of trying to play God, and about the potentially destructive results that can occur when a creation becomes more powerful than its creator.

This is the angle that Brenna Lee-Cooney has taken in this intense yet colourful adaptation, where she uses the resources of all kinds of theatre practices from mime to Butoh techniques and contemporary dance. She has called on the skills of some of Brisbane’s masters of stagecraft in the form of Eugene Gilfedder, who wrote the music as well as taking a number of roles; Brian Lucas, the inspired dancer and choreographer; Geoff Squires, who achieves spectacular lighting effects; Guy Webster for sound; and Lee-Cooney herself for a glorious conglomeration of everything in a busy, multiple-purpose set.  She also designed and made the costumes (the Gilfedder/Lee-Cooney team between them seem to be able to achieve anything) which reflect the early 19th century setting of the novel, with touches of weird fantasy.

So, to begin with, it’s a good-looking and skilfully realised production. But the cast help to bring the macabre fantasy alive. Cameron Hurry as The Creature makes a painful evolution from deformed monster to a tortured full human being, and as his physical movements strengthen and his scars disappear, he becomes, as Shelley intended, a thing to be pitied more than shunned, because Frankenstein has made the huge mistake of giving him a heart, and so he longs for love, which in his case can only be destructive.

Andrew Lowe as Frankenstein is a weak troubled man, torn between vengeance and pity for this thing that he has created, and he has little to do except bewail what he has done and fear for his soul. This weakness makes perfect sense, and we can have no pity for this foolish man who, like so many aspirational creators, never thinks through the possible results of his work. Eugene Gilfedder makes swift and always believable costume and character changes, giving each separate role enough authenticity to enable us to make the mental shifts necessary, while Zoe de Plevitz and Johancee Theron as the hapless women victims bring a depth that we might not have expected into their vapid Regency womanhood.

But more than anything, it’s the concept behind this production that gives it a compelling power, especially the use of the wheel to suggest all kinds of ethical comparisons. Leonardo’s huge Vitruvian wheel is the focus of the set as it hangs at the back of the stage, providing often ironic variations on the people who inhabit it, so far from Leonardo’s perfect creation. Another more mobile wheel is that used in German acrobatics, and it becomes the Catherine Wheel in its original state as an instrument of torture. Everything in the set has some symbolic meaning if you want to take it, but you can also sit back (or, more likely, perch on the edge of your seat) and be fascinated, terrified, sometimes amused but never bored by this truly impressive adaptation of a tale that has held the Western world in awe for 200 years.

And it’s not just another piece of Gothic horror, this myth of the creator losing control of the thing created — Australian physicist and science writer Margaret Wertheim, author of Pythagoras’ Trousers,  has documented the true story of an living American inventor who has created a computer so advanced that it now has a mind of its own and often refuses to obey its creator. A sobering thought indeed, so don’t write Frankenstein’s monster off as the product of an over-vivid imagination spurred on by a drunken midnight party — as the old saying goes, anything imaginable is possible, and there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of in our philosophy.

The details: Frankenstein plays the Brisbane Arts Theatre until May 18. Tickets on the venue website.

The cast of Blak | Playhouse (Pic: Greg Barrett)

Boys in hoodies fight under street lights, sirens sound, drum and bass reverberates and the stage is lit by the glow of phone booths and television screens. A world away, men and women dance together harmoniously against a backdrop of rock formations, mist, rain, and sand.

The brilliance of Blak, the latest production by indigenous dance company Bangarra, is the way it explores both these worlds, showing them to be intertwined.

In the show’s liner notes, dancer and choreographer Daniel Riley McKinley discusses the divide between a life defined by tradition and one which takes place in a starkly contemporary context:

“Rites of passage and initiation ceremonies are a continued living practice throughout indigenous Australia … these practices strengthen, educate, empower and give rise to the new generations coming through. But what about the boys and men living an urban life?”

Scar, the show’s first act, explores this question. Choreographed by McKinley, it has the male dancers shifting between ritualised combat, and a more chaotic kind of violent movement. It’s an electrifying opening to the show, as familiar at times as a Saturday night pub fight and yet elegant and otherworldly.

To research the show, the troupe spent time in North East Arnhem Land learning from local communities. The next act, Yearning, explores some of the women’s stories. Luke Ede’s costume design suggests the contrast between different categories of female experience; from vulnerable, doll-like nighties, to flowing deep blue dresses and Boudiccea-like silver skirts; part armor, part ornament. Women appear in many guises throughout, but the most striking scene is also the most disturbing; Broken features female dancers lit only by a beam of light emitted from a video camera. Their images appear alongside them in real time, projected voyeuristically onto a television screen through which they appear as tiny, objectified bodies without agency.

By contrast the final act, Keepers, presents a more unified vision, with male and female performers coming together in increasingly reciprocal movements. Referencing the role of dancers as cultural caretakers, Bangarra artistic director Stephen Page describes it as a homage to traditional knowledge. Imbued with a sense of balance and togetherness, its quietly moving conclusion is aided by fantastical set design including rain and sand, smoke which is also mist and a huge rock-like metallic backdrop.

Jacob Nash’s sets impress throughout, frequently placing man-made structures in the foreground — milk crates, a phone box — whilst huge, more organic forms hover in the background. There is the sense that the dancers’ journeys are taking place against a larger backdrop which transcends their urban surrounds. Matt Cox’s light design is at its most atmospheric when nocturnal; in Scar, the men dance under a street-light like glow, in Yearning the women are bathed in neon. By comparison, the more gentle and naturalistic light of the final act is calming, but lacks the same visual punch.

David Page and Paul Mac’s music — amazingly Mac’s first foray into composing for contemporary dance — is stunning at every turn, artfully blending folk song with electronic sounds.

The details: Blak is at The Arts Centre’s Playhouse until May 11 — tickets on the venue website. The show travels to Wollongong (May 17-18), Sydney (June 7-22), Canberra (July 11-13) and Brisbane (July 18-27) — more information on the company website.

The cast of Henry 4 | Drama Theatre

Bell really knows Bill. Yes, the company’s called Bell Shakespeare, but what’s in a name? It might proclaim the overwhelming direction of its programming, but it can’t communicate the depth of affinity it has with the bard. Or so I fancy, when I imagine the character of the man who wrote plays which have informed and infiltrated the English language more than the Bible. Anyone who’s seen a Bell production will know quality is to be expected, but with Henry 4, the company has exceeded itself.

If there was ever a production designed to cure theatre novices of their aversion (to Shakespeare in particular, probably developed at high school), it’s John Bell’s deft adaptation of ye olde Bill’s history plays, Henry IV, parts one and two. Stephen Curtis’ design is probably the first thing that opens one’s eyes a little wider. A shipping container serves as an entrance and exit, as well as emulating a bloke’s shed. There, on the door, hangs an assortment of swords, daggers and, amusingly, a chainsaw. This wit extends to costume, with Bell, as a kind of ocker Falstaff, looking like the homeless man you’ve tried to avoid on the bus. (You know you have.)

When one considers that Shakespeare never published any of his plays and that we’ve ever relied upon unauthorised versions transcribed posthumously (not by him, obviously), it seems fitting to transcend the falsely sacrosanct approach to his work and make it sensible for a contemporary audience. John Bell’s accomplishment in distilling and vivifying the text is extraordinary. Even for him. From the get go, it’s electric with with energy; the stage populated by sharply-drawn and defined characters, played by a fine ensemble of imaginatively cast actors.

The opening scene could be a Friday night at your local. Homeboys and bogans, out for a beer. But very much at the centre of this action and throughout this production is its co-director (with Damien Ryan) as Falstaff. There are, of course, many fascinating characters in this work but, despite surrounding himself with outstanding actors, Bell steals the show. In many ways, he’s turned the play into a more concentrated study of Falstaff.

Like many a political aspirant, it’s safe to say Henry has bent a few rules, kicked a few heads and stepped on a few toes as he climbed to the top. Oh, and deposed the odd king. David Whitney certainly makes him a desiccated, distant fellow: little wonder his son, Prince Hal (Matthew Moore), prefers other company. Like ineffectual thieves and whores. Singling out the drunken, dissembling Falstaff as a father figure is a mark of his desperation.

Hal, of course, gradually gather his resources and when his glorious moment finally comes, he makes his father look like a pussy. In this production, it’s made all the more striking by the fact that, up until that point, Moore conceals his black, treacherous heart, for the most part, under a cloak of easygoing camaraderie. Save for the odd outburst which serves as a clue as to what’s to come, he paints Hal as almost wishy-washy. In this way, Moore slyly captures an off-putting ambiguity: Hal is, by turns, noble and deceitful.

Jason Klarwein is Hotspur, fierce warrior and disenfranchised former ally of Henry. But, as in the ALP, he doesn’t feel he’s been commensurately rewarded for his victories on the king’s behalf. Klarwein exudes this stewing inner conflict. Both his torment and impetuousness are palpable.

Tony Llewellyn-Jones finds a good home for his distinctive style in Westmoreland, Henry’s chief of staff. Wendy Strehlow is hilariously shrew-like as Mistress Quickly, the head barmaid at the Boar’s Head. She has to put up with a lot and she, in return, is a lot to put up with. (The only quibble would be that her “diatribal” delivery risks sacrificing clarity, at times.) Matilda Ridgway is exceptional as Doll Tearsheet (you’ve got to love the names); a more pathetic practitioner of the oldest profession there could not be.

Kelly Ryall’s heavy-duty score (much of it rendered live by two of the actors) is also notable for its contribution to the feeling of grunge that permeates the setting and action. Afterward, you’ll want to shower.

But again, this is, above all Falstaff’s play. Bell’s. Literally, of course. But materially, as well. Bell really knows Bill.

The details: Henry 4 plays the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House until May 26. Tickets on the venue website.

Anthony Ahern, Susie Dee and Damien Sunners in Beached | Southbank Theatre (Pic: Jeff Busby)

Victorian writer Melissa Bubnic has plenty to show for a short career. The VCE high achiever has gone on to win several prestigious writing prizes from Arts Victoria, La Mama, Ian Potter Cultural Trust and The Children’s Literature Board of Australia. Her most recent project, Beached, won the 2010 Patrick White Award. It’s not hard to see why.

Arty is the world’s fattest teenager. At 18 years old, he tips the scales at a whopping 400kg, confined to the couch in his bedroom where he is cared for by his mother JoJo, a chronic feeder and Freudian nightmare. In order to qualify for a life-saving gastric bypass operation, Arty needs to shed 50kg, and while doing so, submit to documentation on the humiliating reality TV series Shocking Fat Stories. He also has a youth worker to contend with, Louise, whose no-nonsense approach to life conflicts with not only his mother, but also Arty’s paralysing sense of self worth.

Damien Sunners is perfect as Arty. Wearing a repulsively accurate fat suit, Sunners appears to have grown roots to the couch he sits on. He captures Arty’s sweet demeanour with a shy, apologetic manner and soft spoken phrases. The quiet determination Sunners shows battles fiercely with Susie Dee’s domineering portrayal of JoJo, who does everything in her power to dissuade Arty from losing weight. Dee’s performance is flawless as the insecure and lonely woman who can’t bear to lose her child to his own independence, but whose stubborn “mother knows best attitude” sees her refuse to admit it to herself.

Fanny Hanusin plays uptight Louise with aplomb; her brisk, professional manner slowly melts away to show a softer, multi-layered human being, more compassionate than most. Hanusin does a great job switching from businesslike to sympathetic, and ultimately brings the house down with a show-stealing temper tantrum. Working alongside Louise is shape-shifter Anthony Ahern. A theatrical gem, Ahern plays the producer of Shocking Fat Stories primarily, and weaves in and out of support characters like Amy Schusser, author of Lay Off The Gravy, and other gastric band survivors.

In the face of shows like The Biggest Loser, and the growing obesity crisis, Beached is not your average story. Weight loss is as topical as reality TV is exploitative — Beached explores both.

The root of the problem seems to lie in JoJo, a woman who chose her life partner even though he was no prize, because “neither was I”. Her poor self image has been reflected on her son, who confuses her emotional abuse with unconditional love. Then there is Louise, the single woman in her late 30s who lives for her career and has no time for excuses and time wasters. Why is she so tough on everyone? Letting her guard down proves dangerous, as she crosses professional boundaries and enters into an inappropriate relationship with Arty, who again confuses affection and in turn builds his entire concept of self esteem on the fact that she is willing to be with him. And the producer, with no sense of shame, who asks all the offensive questions and has no regard for the people around him. His judgemental and potentially sinister personality binds the characters to each other, and ruthlessly breaks them apart. The fragile human psyche is displayed in all its grotesque glory.

Yet Beached, as a play, is an absolute delight. Warm and funny, it takes dark moments and turns them light, with a richly Australian script and loveable, sympathetic characters. Rebecca Hayes and Robert Jordan have done a fantastic job with animation and multimedia, and Andrew Bailey has created a cosy home atmosphere with a basic, bogan décor. The actors have a lot of fun with their roles, and the occasional breaking of diegetic lightens the sombre mood.

Beached is for the voyeur in us all.

The details: Beached plays the Lawler, Southbank Theatre until May 10. Tickets on the company website.

Nikki Shiels, Matthew McFarlane and Adam Murphy in True Minds (Pic: Jeff Busby)

There’s never really been a great Australian sitcom, but maybe that’s because Joanna Murray-Smith’s never written one. True Minds, which opened at Melbourne Theatre Company’s Southbank Theatre last night, is television gold. Problem is, it’s two hours long, it’s happening on a stage, and there’s no way to change the channel.

Our heroine, Daisy (Nikki Shiels), is fresh from an appearance plugging her new book on The Today Show. Daisy’s mother Tracey (Genevieve Morris), a dippy new-ager in purple tie-dye, is on hand to quote from the book — “the smartest, most confident man in the world crumbles in the face of maternal opposition” — helpfully telegraphing the evening’s hijinks. Daisy’s taken up the He’s Just Not That Into You mantle with her he-won’t-marry-you-if-his-mother-doesn’t-like-you bestseller, and her book hangs there, stinking up the place like some Elizabeth Gilbert version of Chekhov’s gun. Daisy Lucille Balls her way around her apartment hiding rubbish in the oven, books under the couch and panties in the freezer in a panic; she’s about to meet her fiancé’s mother for the first time.

Before dreaded future mother-in-law Vivienne Fairfax (Louise Siverson) — a sort-of lipsticked and pantyhosed Andrew Bolt, complete with her own radio show — knocks at the door, there’s a spanner or three lined up to be jammed into the works. Daisy’s just-out-of-rehab ex Mitch (Adam Murphy) turns up, a storm leaves fiancé Benedict (Matthew McFarlane) stranded on the tarmac, and her father Maxim (Alex Menglet), lefty intellectual and Vivienne’s arch rival, arrives. Hilarity ensues.

True Minds is very funny. Farce isn’t easy, but Murray-Smith makes it look like a public holiday sleep-in. But that’s kind of all there is; none of these incredibly broad characters has anything new or profound to say, even when the piece briefly descends into nature-of-love monologuing in its second half. It’s fluff. The jokes, the premise and the physical comedy would sing at 24-frames-per-second for 22 minutes, but on stage they’re pat. The arch-conservative mother’s an irredeemable bitch, the trust-fund fiancé’s an unloveable control freak, and the lefty intellectual’s always right. It’s boring and we’ve seen it all before.

Director Peter Houghton has the cast shouting and manically over-delivering lines like they’re paid by the laugh. The whole thing is arch and ridiculous. It’s tonally consistent, but the tone’s all wrong. Choreographed to within a millimetre of the life it does have, the play tumbles on at a wild, madcap tempo that would work if the cast were periwigged and powdered. Weirdly, the whole pantomime caper takes place on a quite good ultra-realistic apartment set by Tracy Grant Lord.

The elastic-faced Shiel as Daisy is fantastic, juggling physical comedy and vulnerability with ease. The whole cast is great, though McFarlane as Benedict is maybe the broadest of all, mugging, arching his eyebrows and locking his jaw in a boxy three-piece suit.

If you came across True Minds while flicking channels during a My Kitchen Rules commercial break, you’d stick with it. You’d probably even buy the DVD. On stage, it’s like a Krispy Kreme donut — immensely satisfying until you swallow.

The details: True Minds plays the Southbank Theatre until June 8. Tickets on the company website.