Review - An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls

By J B Priestley

Presented by The Mount Players

Director          Julie Wade

Producers      Yasna Blandin de Chalain

                        Julie Wade

Set Design      Margaret Muehlheim

Mr Arthur Birling      Christopher Haddon

Mrs Sybil Birling        Ingrid Gang

Sheila Birling             Leigh Tangee

Eric Birling                 Ryan Vanderzweep

Gerald Croft               Bradley Chivell

Inspector Goole         Frank O’Connor

Enda the Maid           Zoe Shepherd

By J B Priestley

Mount View Theatre:  August – September 2015

An Inspector Calls a theatre classic or ‘piece preserved in aspic’?  I am grateful to The Mount Players for bring us, what is, I guess, ostensibly a ‘museum piece’.   In this way they have reminded us of just how pertinent and relevant theatre classics can be.  This is a very interesting, worthwhile and well managed production – a must to see for any lover of classic theatre.

To set the mood of the era for Christina Finch has gathered together a delightful sextet to play music of the 1912 in the foyer.  This is when J B Priestly set this work he wrote in 1945.  Ms. Finch makes some excellent music choices for absorbing the ambiance whilst sipping sherry.

On entering the theatre one notices that the set is painted the same color as the auditorium - which has a subliminal affect of including the audience in the follies of the characters.

The story is about a manufacturing family and their social standing, self-importance, ambitions and the societal structures that endorse secrecy, deception and unforgivable cruelty.  And that is all I am going to give away.

Directed with comfortable competence by Julie Wade it is a production in which all actors excel.  Mr. Arthur Birling is presented to us with just the right presence imbued with power and determination by Christopher Haddon.  Mr Haddon has a wonderfully booming voice that he uses to great effect at appropriate times.  Ingrid Gang is very impressive and imposing as Mrs Sybil Burling who in her cruel actions epitomizes the double standards of a not so distant era.  It is always a pleasure to watch Ms Gang in action.  Inspector Goole is played in a very clear and level headed manner by Frank O’Connor.  Gerald Croft cuts a stylish figure and shows much promise, as an actor, as young buck and suitor Bradley Chivell.  Ryan Vandersweep truly comes into character (Eric Birling) in the third act of the play where he elicits sympathy and understanding.  Leigh Tangee shines as the smart quick witted and kind hearted Shelia Birling.   And Zoe Shepard makes an appropriate and sweet maid Edna.

A rich and rewarding night of thought provoking Theatre.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Reviews - Grief and the Lullaby and Virgins and Cowboys - FLIGHT - Festival of New Writing

Grief and the Lullaby

By Patrick McCarthy

Director: Patrick McCarthy

Dramaturg(text): Raimond Cortese

Creative Producer & Dramaturg (performance): Mark Rogers

Set Design: Andrew Bailey

Lighting Design: Lisa Mibus

Sound Design: Tommy Spender

Costume Design: Zoe Rouse

Performers:  Rebecca Bower, Dean Cartmel, Ryan Forbes and Ben Pfeiffer

Theatre Works

14 – 23 August

Greif and the Lullaby is a very moving and insightful work that slowly unfolds to make perfect sense.  All four actors embody complex individual characters with considerable skill.  The relationships portrayed are very believable; at times robust and at times delicate, perhaps even fragile.   There is an ebb and flow between them and numerous naturalistic shifts of status that feel particularly real and go a long way towards sustaining curiosity.

It is a work where, in the reviewing, telling the story would completely negate its charm and destroy the inherent suspense of the magic of the story clarifying and the integrity of what is being experienced as it is discerningly revealed bit by bit.  So the less said the better.

Set and lighting (Andrew Bailey and Lisa Mibus – respectively) work well towards exposition particularly with the use of a kind of light-box that is the interior of a house and perhaps symbolic of the intrinsic core of the narrative.  And Bailey has created a fabulous side drop of a tempestuous sky that heralds a wonderfully moody atmosphere.

 

I usually find that I am not a fan of writers directing their own work.  However in this instance Patrick McCarthy is very successful in preserving the appropriate distance from his own material to be able to maintain and uphold objectivity.  This could of course also be due to the caliber of his two dramaturges; Raymond Cortese – text and Mark Rogers – performance.

Exquisite Theatre.

Images: Ben Pfeiffer, Ryan Forbes & Dean Cartmel and Ryan Forbes & Dean Cartmel - Photographer: Deryk McAlpin.

(For Stage Whispers)

Virgins and Cowboys

By Morgan Rose

Director and Set Co-Designer: Dave Sleswick

Assistant Director: Katy Maudlin

Choreographer: Dale Thorburn

Set Co-Designer: Yvette Turnbull

Sound Design Liam Barton

Lighting Design Lisa Mimbus

Cast: Katrina Cornwell, James Deeth, Penelope Harpham, George Lingard and Kieran Law

Virgins and Cowboys is a surreal journey through the days of young adult friendships and romances.  As a fascinating piece of writing that is way too long and drops into a vague unfocused rant in this production.  Maybe the creative team just couldn’t find the text’s full measure and do it the justice it deserved.  

A very challenging work all round.

The more I think about the writing the more I think of Lally Katz’s early work and I am wondering if in the Direction, as well a kind of dreamscape it requires heaps more theatricality and changes of focus and pace to pull off something that an audience could be substantially entertained by.

I so hope I am not being too harsh?

I might have caught this show on a bad night, for me, or the show or both.  I had so much trouble keeping focused on a work that wasn’t making any particularly evident points.  Oh except maybe that wanting to have sex with virgins can seem a bit misogynistic and sometimes maintaining friendships can feel a bit like treading water or bouncing and catching balls.  The actors seemed unclear about what they were doing and why. 

I question myself what was I missing?  And I did have very vivid dreams about one of my very early relationships so for me I will admit being totally touched on a subliminal level.

I loved the standout performance of Penelope Harpham who played Lane.   Thank heavens for that!

So all in all, for me, the experience of watching Virgins and Cowboys was the messy and sometimes confused experiences of young adulthood presented in a messy confused way by actors who kind of knew they were at ‘sea in a leaky boat’ – maybe?  It didn’t look like they were having fun to me.

That is not to say it wasn’t a totally worthwhile experience for everyone involved as a process in learning what to improve upon next time.  And maybe that is just a matter of having enough time to fully explore a text and its possibilities.

Suzanne Sandow

(Not published in Stage Whispers)

Review - The Dead Twin - FLIGHT - Festival of New Writing

The Dead Twin

By Chi Vu

Director: Deborah Leiser-Moore 
 


Visual Artist: Naomi Ota 


Sound Designer: Jacques Soddell 


Costume Designer: Ross de Winter 


Performers: Deborah Leiser-Moore, Alex Pinder, Harry Tseng, Daniel Han and Davina Wright

Footscray Community Arts Centre

August 12-22

The Dead Twin is a mysterious and haunting experience that ebbs and flows into the genre of horror.  This immersive journey starts from a secret place and is quiet magically enhanced by an amazing haunting sound scape.  It is the very type of work that is satisfying for theatre literate audience with rewards coming from active engagement, remaining focused, observing nuance and piecing inference together.

The Dead Twin explores the all pervading grief of two gentle and tortured souls Barbara (Deborah Leiser Moore) and Harold (Alex Pinder) who are the well meaning parents of the remaining, also grieving, twin Steve (Harry Tseng).  Both Leiser-Moore and Pinder movingly and sensitively embody the devastating grief resulting from war related trauma.  Steve their son seems to be masking his distress by attempting to convince his parents that he is living productively in the here and now.  And yet amongst all characters attempts to put on best appearances, everybody, including the audience, are haunted by the dead twin played in an eerie and creepily ghostly manner by Daniel Han. 

As the desperation of traumatic grief turns in on the family things go more and more awry.  Ultimately the surviving twin is forced to make deals with the underworld as personified by a beautiful young sex-worker/sooth-sayer Lola portrayed by Davina April Wright.

Chi Vu’s courageous writing highlights the deep scaring of losing loved ones to violent death.  It touches on the carnage of war that somehow, over generations, as a nation, we seem to have been able to ‘sweep under the carpet’. 

This production is masterfully choreographed by Deborah Leiser-Moore, as Director, who as well as interpreting and managing the work has taken the challenge of performing in it, apparently with the aide of a body double in rehearsals.

 

The audience’s attention is being continually focused and refocused and there are surprises aplenty.  Ms Leiser-Moore’s courageous and refreshing approach to directing has moments of luminescence.  There are instances in this work when visceral poignancy pulls at ones very being as we witness the desperate rawness of grief.  And there are other moments where it depends on one’s own placement in the space as to how the work is received.  This is usually the case with, the at times unpredictable beast that is, site-specific work.

Inspiring theatre makers to keep a very close eye on.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Reviews - Kindness and Yours The Face - FLIGHT: Festival of New Writing

FLIGHT:  Festival of New Writing

Kindness

By Bridget Mackey

Directors: Kate Shearman and Alice Darling

Designer: Yvette Turnbull

Lighting Designer: Sarah Walker

Sound Designer: Andrew Dalziell

Cast:  Maggie Brown, Tom Heath, Emily Tomlins, Rachel Perks

Kindness is a kind of absurdist, pretty ridiculous and at times hilarious look at the down side of the effects of the modern working environment.

In this slick production, on a smart and stylish set by Designer Yvette Turnbull, that feels like an office foyer, four individuals come and go and interact or barely interact through talking to/at each other.    Throughout they all seem to exposing hang-ups, quirks and fixations in a bland environment where everything even their wacky ticks of behavior become monotonous. 

There is the boss who is cold and disinterested, the strange very old unwashed woman who quietly creeps in and out and the co-workers who finally hook up.  Generally interaction appears restrained and pretty much hit-and-miss and has the musicality of an almost agitating repetitive rhythm.  

Nothing is fully explained for example what positions the workers have or what they are doing.  People come and go and hook into fairly meaningless conversations and then exit.  One assumes that all characters except the old woman do actually do a days turn of work.

And why the old woman is there at all?  Perhaps she is homeless and creeps in for warmth and safety and comfort. 

None of the characters are particularly likable.  They all seem to have dropped any guise of being personable and cheerful.  And they are all pretty much glibly expressing their pent up neuroses in the ‘liminal space’ of the office foyer.  They are mostly niggling and evasive in their communication and too caught up in themselves to be interested in each other.  

A clear clean work generally that did suffer from some garbled dialogue on the first night but one that is bound to grow in meaning, depth and expressiveness through its run, for what is guaranteed to be an appreciative audience.

Images:  Emily Tomlins, Maggie Brown, Rachel Perks & Tom Heath and Rachel Perks & Tom Heath - (photographer: Sarah Walker). 

Footnote:  There seems to be a fairly contemporary new style in programs that lists actors as performers without indication of exactly which character they play.  This can be frustrating for those of us who are writing about Theatre.   I have not discussed the work of individual Actors on this occasion due to the lack of listing.

Yours The Face

By Fleur Kilpatrick

Director & Designer:  Sarah Walker

Artistic Consultant:  Robert Reid

Performer: Roderick Cairns

Lighting Consultant: Robert Sowinski

Sound Designer:  Tom Pits

Dramaturg: Raimondo Cortese

This surprising piece has been written by Fleur Kilpatrick for one actor to play all characters.  Actually Kilpatrick’s play displays the perception and insight that leads one to think both main characters could be played by either a female or male actor. 

In this production Roderick Cairns is a very commanding tour de force.  He is quite mesmerizing and extraordinarily convincing in both the two contrasting as well as the subsidiary roles.  Androgyny can be so seductive!

Cairns’s characterization is beautifully interpreted and managed and very skillfully integrated into his body both physically and vocally.  His character transformations are handled without a missed beat. 

As realized here Yours The Face is a very strong work based on a narrative that travels, unfolds and surprises and has been extremely competently managed by some outstanding theatre practitioners.    

I don’t think it is giving too much away to say that writer Fleur Kilpatrick explores the relationship between a photographer and model that twists and turns.  It is partly love story and partly sad indictment of a glossy glamorous narcissistic world with many pitfalls.    

The set, a photographer’s studio is perfect and the lighting (Robert Sowinski) is used to great effect changing mood and environment.   There is an unnecessary and way to literal set change at towards the end - but this is a small consideration in an otherwise excellent work.

If nudity is going to offend definitely don’t buy a ticket to this one. 

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)