Review - My Life in the Nude

Maude Davey

in

My Life in the Nude

Maude Davey – Performer/Writer

Anni Davey – Director

Deborah Eldred – Stage Manager

fortyfive downstairs – 45 Flinders Lane

15 - 27   July 2014

Wicked?  Goddess?

Whatever - Maude Davey is a legend!

Maude Davey
Photo by Ponch Hawkes

This rich, curious, beguiling, camp and fun show is a memorable night of Melbourne Theatre History.  Don’t hesitate to book a ticket because you think you might feel awkward – everyone is probably thinking the same thing.  Davies unites the house by confidently asserting some ground rules, most particularly, she is to be the only one getting her gear off.  And with the disarming intimacy of her nudity, keen sensitivity and performed sincerity, bonds of shared experience are formed amongst the audience.  You can comfortably leave all prudery at home, relax and enjoy being, thought provokingly, entertained.

Fascinatingly Maude reenacts her famous Ms. Wicked ‘strawberry’ number.  The heat of youthful sexuality is remembered and portrayed, with just the right touch of irony, in an older less volatile body.  This one, I was there for, at the Club, at the ACT UP Benefit - Shed The Underworld.  I remember the astonishment and my own prudish shock at catching a glimpse of Ms. Davey mascaraing her pubes in the dressing room. 

With honorable mentions to other extraordinary performers such as Jeannie Little and of course Moira Finucane, Davey, mostly barely clothed, portrays a variety of wonderful larger than life characters from Liz Taylor to the disturbing, gender-bending, man who is beautiful - Agent Cleve.  (Is he a hermaphrodite?)  There are heaps of character and costume changes.  On stage Davey is supported by a very dour Stage Manager, (played by?), Deborah Eldred.

A man who is beautiful - Agent Cleve
Photo by Ponch Hawkes

I heard Maude discuss My Life in the Nude with Emma Ayres on Radio National and realized I was about to fit the standard audience demographic of a middle-aged woman with her two gay male companions. But bring anybody who is prepared to have their ‘cage’ rattled a little.

The concern Davey expressed, on air and in the show, that performing naked could be considered the territory of youthful bodies, bodies that talk of the future, is understandable.   But could she be underestimating the ethereal beauty of the more fragile aging (and yes decaying) body and the myriad of ideas that could be expressed with and through it?

There is such a fog of invisibility surrounding older and elderly women in our community.  We seem to be able to completely forget that they too once had sexual appetites in a way that dispossess them of their histories and legitimacy.   Surely Maude Davey’s nude shows will hold even more currency as she matures and only enhance our Cabaret and broader Culture.

Maude Davey
Photo by Ponch Hawkes

Audience members are called upon – have your glasses on hand, (if you are also aging), incase you need to read something in the generous spirit of spontaneity – ‘and oh what the hell’.   

A night you are unlikely to forget and a night that is liable to leave you campaigning for Maude Davey to keep performing without her clothes.

Marvelous!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Cordelia, Mein Kind

La Mama

Presents

Cordelia, Mein Kind

July 16 – July 20 2014

Concept/Co-Creator/Film and Performer: Debroah Leiser-Moore

Co-Creator/Director Meredith Rogers

Choreographer: Sally Smith

Stage manager and lighting by Hayley Fox

Cordelia, Mein Kind is a well-honed, tightly woven, one-woman performance that responds to the subjective questioning most women surely do, as daughters, when watching or thinking about the Father/Daughter relationship in Shakespeare’s King Lear.  As such it is very moving and satisfying amalgam of skilled performer working with multi –media to touch on some poignant and elusive truths about many things including identity and culture that relate to heritage.

The work has several ‘frames’ one being extensive film footage of Debroah’s father, another a Yiddish film adaption of King Lear, as well as a glorious audio recording of Paul Scofield performing excerpts from the text of the play. 

Nothing is out of place and Debroah’s Suzuki trained, fit and strong body serves this work beautifully as does Meredith Rogers’s perceptive and acute Direction.

Cordelia’s reticence to vehemently express her love for her father, as her sisters’ had done when questioned by him, is explored. And at the very heart of this work are some of Leiser-Moore’s reasons for not speaking to her own father of her love for him.  At least I this is partially how I perceived what I was experiencing as I was also dwelling on my own relationship to my father.

Both as a journey about the experience of being a very loving daughter and a gutsy expression by a wonderfully seasoned Theatre Maker this work is unique, empowering and totally worth catching.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Good Person of Szechuan

Malthouse Presents

The Good Person of Szechuan

By Bertold Brecht

Direction - Meng Jinghui

New translation by Tom Wright

Set and Costume Design – Marg Horwell

Lighting Design – Richard Vabre

Composition and Sound THE SWEATS

Cast:  Aljin Abella, Moira Finucane, Daniel Frederiksen, Genevieve Giuffre, Bert LaBonte, Emily Milledge, Genevieve Morris, Josh Price and Richard Pyros

Merlyn Theatre

27 June – 20 July 2014

Brecht as current and relevant as ever! 

As touted in the media release this production: ‘In the hands of avant-garde Chinese theatre-maker Meng Jinghui, Bertold Brecht’s morality play about the exploitative power of capitalism will erupt as a cross-cultural, entirely contemporary, theatre experience.’  And yes riddled with Brechtian irony and highlighting his wisdom this production is set to fulfill expectations and more.  It is one of those rare shifts in Theatre that supersedes much of the rest, a unique and potent show, the type as audience, we are perpetually on the look out for.  All creative aspects come together fittingly in the hands of Director Meng Jinghui.

To purge some adjectives first - energetic, invigorating, exciting, vital, relevant, probing, punchy, edgy, visceral, loud and in-your-face.  Whatever! This production of The Good Person of Szechuan is a long, but highly charged, classy piece of solid and impressive, smartly produced Theatre.  It is full of ‘eye candy’ and keeps one engaged and thinking.

Good Person of Szechuan is about Shen Te (Moira Finucane) a prostitute whom, although given a leg up by ‘The Gods’, is perpetually in danger of being exploited by the unscrupulous in an underworld of seething poverty.  To protect herself and her unborn child, and ultimately, to thrive she takes on a second persona of a male cousin Shui Ta who manages to flourish in a grimy cruel world of rancid poverty and drug trafficking.

This production clearly poses the focal question - is it possible to be wholly good in cultures that are, at heart or perhaps heartlessly, driven by economics?  At the same time we are reminded that lives in a community intertwine and influence outcomes for all.

And yes Brecht’s ‘alienation affect’ is honored.  Also, paradoxically is his perceptive eye for sentimentality and our tendency to yearn for a happy ending.  We are denied catharsis, but its possibility is signposted, a number of times throughout.   And this serves to heighten the desire to be embroiled in, of all things, a Cinderella Story.

The casting is nothing short of inspired the actors work evenly as a swift and smooth team on a vast set (Meg Horwell).  Moira Finucaine plays the male and female sides of the same coin to a T without being superfluous to depict gender distinction.  Aljin Abella delights with his endearing characterization of Shu Fu through feisty physicality and light humorous touches.  The three, sharp, idiosyncratic, yet lazy gods are played by Genevieve Giuffre, Emily Milledge and Genevieve Morris who also double as characters in the community.  Daniel Frederiksen embodies a self-serving sleaze Yang Sun with convincing credibility.

The finely integrated musical score is adroitly pitched (pardon the pun).  It is partly DJ’ed and partly played live from a booth on the floor by THE SWEATS/Pete Goodwin.  Thus, it, underpins a sense of immediacy and innovative freshness - complementing the radical imagery and wacky buffoonery throughout.

Get a ticket now – you will kick yourself if you miss it!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers) 

Review - Hypertext

MKA’s

Hypertext

Upstairs at Tuxedo Cat

17 Wills Street Melbourne - 14 – 28 June 2014

‘Keen as Mustard and Sharp as Paint’ MKA’s Hypertext is a great chance to engage with some complex contemporary writing for theatre.  If you are after polished flawless production values - don’t even think about it.  However if you are prepared to take the risk of being confronted and challenged by energetic, passionate totally underfunded but eternally courageous gifted theatre makers - get to the Tuxedo Cat in the next couple of days and be inspired and soak up the ambiance.

On The Grace of Officials by Emilia Poyhonen

(Presented especially for Refugee Week)

7pm

On the Grace of Officials, a Finnish play by Emilia Poyhonen, struck me as a work based on, what one feels should be a contradictory premise, that, old world explorers and colonialists would intrinsically support the notion of embracing Asylum Seekers in our modern world.   

It tries to cover a lot of territory, (pardon the pun).  It feels a bit like a University Review that is part history lesson, part expose of small-minded contemporary bureaucratic maneuvers around an asylum seeker whose life reads like a fable.  

The writing could do with some culling and focus to fully hit the mark and the staging would be significantly enhanced with the practicality of more lights so the lighting designer (Clare Springett) could achieve more atmosphere.  However it is currently nothing short of engaging, funny and a bit moving as well. 

The soundscape (Tom Backhaus) is affecting and there are some strong performances particularly from the actors who played Professor Fridtjof Nansen and the Asylum Seeker.  Emerging Director Rohan Maloy appears to have managed the material, and his cast, well on a shoestring budget.

Affirming and thought provoking.

The Defence by Chris Dunstan

8pm

The Defense not only looks at Strindberg the man.  But perhaps more importantly it decisively describes a fraught director/actor relationship between a male director (Brett Johnson), with huge issues, and a competent cooperative actress (Catherine McNamara).  It cuts to the bone – touches on a very raw nerve where the interaction between director, actor and material has unhinged the director who has, subsequently, lurched into a kind of psychotic megalomaniacal misogynistic tirade.  His abusive behaviour is endorsed throughout by his male co-workers.  It’s alarming to watch, frighteningly real and skillfully drawn by writer/director Chris Dunstan and performed with flawless conviction by Brett Johnson, Catherine McNamara and Douglas Niebling.

Catherine McNamara plays the Actress playing Strindberg superbly. 

The nudity and sexual references have the potential to be shocking and shockingly funny.

Very acute. 

Thank You, Thank You Love by Tobias Manderson-Galvin

9.30 pm

Surely every performer knows the fear of dying on stage.  Maybe dying in performance could be sort of masochistically addictive as it seems it must have been for Tommy Cooper a stage Magician who’s sad demise is quoted as inspiration by Manderson-Galvin for this work of five short plays about dying on stage or, one could say, that die on stage.

Initially seated in a huge haze of fog it is certainly not always clear what is going on or why and that is a good part of the overall charm. It is pretty much up to you to glean meaning where you find it.   Some things stand out - but often things don’t seem to match or link up.  As the evening progresses not only the fog but everything seems to spill out off the stage.

The suspended state one feels held in could be likened to a type of disjointed arbitrary chaos that creativity can be born/emerge from.

Thank You, Thank You Love is messy, kooky and embracing – funny and fun and actually a great chance for the creator and performers to connect toy and play with an audience.   This they do with generosity.  It is complex and ambiguous and full of glitches that sometimes seem completely real and unrehearsed or at the very least under-rehearsed.  This work is an orgy of chaotic, sometimes realized and sometimes semi realized, ideas with a healthy dash of self-deprecation staged in front of wine soaked curtains.

Whatever.  Once one has died on stage and felt the heavy weight of failure surely things can only get better from there.

Performances by Tobias Manderson-Galvin, his sister, Sam Young and Becky Lou Church are all well pitched.

Disarming and highly enjoyable.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Note on this response to Hypertext:  My response was fairly blurry as I saw all three works in on evening and tried to write up a response in less than 48 hours which is way less than I really need for a comprehensive effort  Blah!