Review - Dead Air

Bitten By Productions presents:

Dead Air

By Tom Reed

Directed by John Steven Erasmus and Ashley Tardy

Lighting Designer: Megz Evans

Cast:

Clay Carter: Justin Anderson

August Mulholland: Gregory Caine

Molly Wilde: Rebecca Cullinan

Imogen Swoop: Rose Flanagan

Daniel ‘Duck’ Daffie: Jonathon Lawrence

Bluestone Arts Space – 8A Hyde Street Footscray

14 – 23 June 2018

Appealing to a smart young and vibrant audience Dead Air, presented at the Bluestone Arts Space by Bitten By Productions, has all the hallmarks of an engrossing story that has been put together with clever care and precision by some inspired, up and coming Theatre makers.  It was certainly worth catching.  (Apologies for not being able to get this response online sooner due to extenuating personal circumstances.)

Written by Tom Reed its pretty much a horror movie script for Theatre.  Containing many witty lines and touches - it seduces its audience into total believability and then packs an unexpected, dare I say supernatural, punch.

At the commencement of the show radio jock Daniel “Duck” Daffie (Jonathon Lawrence) is playing listeners, to his show ‘Duck Hunt’, the best songs to ‘wank to’.  Amongst his choices are: “I Touch Myself”, “Everybody Hurts”, and “Turning Japanese” – go figure.  The sound is almost as low as background radio and audience members feel the license to just chat amongst them selves as latecomers are admitted.  This is a slightly bemusing and refreshingly novel way to start proceedings.

The set up and premise is convincing, as is the set of a radio station – without the glass parts.

Like a film – the acting is controlled and contained and directed to a T.  This is not surprising as the team of John Steven Erasmus and Ashley Tardy direct assumedly in tandem.

Lawrence’s Daniel “Duck” has all the energy and loaded insincerity one would expect of a shock jock with a uniquely styled sleazy show.   His pretty hilarious masculine expression of lust, and most particularly the name of his show, is on the misogynistic side.  This left me wondering if a female version of the same would be less offensive but also less funny.

The female producer, of the following program - Carter’s Shadow World, is Molly played by Rebecca Cullinan as a strong erect, straight down the line, type of woman.   Her sense of control and responsibility is palpable.

There is something insidious and creepy about Justin Anderson’s character Clay Carter.  And Gregory Cain’s guest scientist August Mulholland has all the hallmarks of sincerity, of a man, wholly, deeply and fanatically committed to his area of study.

Rose Flanagan plays a lovely, fairly neutral - contemporary young woman Imogen Swoop who sadly becomes the guest victim.

Through the ether of the airways something very frightening, ghastly and powerful is unleashed.   Sound, as one would anticipate, with the work being about what happens through and because of radio, is very strong.  In fact all production qualities are strong.

Keep your eye on this troupe they are making some very impressive contemporary Theatre.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Lone

Lone

Presented by The Rabble and St Martins

Creators - Emma Valente & Kate Davis
Set & Costume Designer - Kate Davis
Lighting & Sound Designer - Emma Valente
Artistic Associate - Katrina Cornwell
Producer - Tahni Froudist
Production Managers - Rebecca Etchell &Gwen Gilchrist
Stage Manager - Cassandra Fumi
Performers, Creators & Designers
Clea Carney, Abigail Fisher, Ashanti Joy, Remy Lawlor, Ave Maui, Lola Morgan, Griffin Murray-Johnston, Raven Okello, Jackson Reid, Thomas Taylor & Frankie Wilcox

Arts House – North Melbourne Town Hall

8 – 17 June 2018

Due to its unique and somewhat provocative nature and very limited number of tickets Lone is likely to be a difficult to catch during its short season at Arts House.   

This work is partly a legacy of Clare Watson, the previous artistic director of St Martins, who commissioned The Rabble (Emma Valente and Kate Davis) to create and develop it in conjunction with young theatre makers from St Martins Youth Theatre.  Lone is about being alone/lonely that is clearly described as work for an adult audience and is part of St Martins thrust to create ‘Art.’

In each of eleven small rooms, the size of a garden shed, one of eleven child performers and one audience member experience around 30 minutes together. 

When I entered the small space, as the light within in went on, I wondered where to place myself - feeling cumbersome and awkward and wanting what would be most conducive for the young actor lying, as if asleep, on the floor.  I sat on the stool by the door not wanting to create discomfort by invading personal space.  I hoped I was being an appropriately supportive audience and was close enough to engage.  I had been told all the girls, (and hopefully boys as well), had a whistle around their necks and a healthy number of support persons were hovering around the performance spaces - in the unlikely event of assistance being required. 

Everything is white.  The child is surrounded by white flowers – both on the floor and hanging around the small space.  Delicately with committed focused concentration she works with the flowers and other accouterments and finally makes a spell to work magic that invokes colour.   Subsequently she talks about individual taste and her sense of isolation due to contrasting preferences. 

We communicate on a small note pad with a black texta partly, I guess, because I’m wearing headphones which envelope me in ambient sound.  It is a lovely light interaction.  Ultimately the child leaves me ‘a-lone’ in the room - to meditate on the experience?  Charmingly and politely she utters;  “It was nice to meet you,” as she departs.

The gentle sensory aspects of the experienced remind me of the workshop I had done last year with the UK troupe Bamboozle at the Melbourne Arts Centre.  They work with children who have disabilities so there performances are intimate, sensory and tactile. 

This comparison leaves me thinking - I would love to know how, children would enjoy being entertained by their contemporaries.  And having worked extensively with children and drama I am very aware of just how clever and fascinating they can be as creators and performers.  When encouraged they can have this marvelous sense of self and self-assurance.  Often the trickiest thing is getting them to forget their own fabulous ideas and engage genuinely with the ideas of others and be critical and supportive audiences to each other.

Lone is an exhilarating, heady and heartening work that portends well for St Martins current exciting trajectory.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - The House of Bernarda Alba

Melbourne Theatre Company presents

The House of Bernarda Alba

Adapted by Patricia Cornelius

After Frederico Garcia Lorca

Director – Leticia Caceres

Set and Costume Designer – Marg Horwell

Lighting Designer – Rachel Burke

Composer - Irene Vela

Sound Designer – Jethro Woodward

Stage Manager – Jess Keepence

Cast

Marti – Candy Bowers,

Angela – Peta Brady

Penelope – Julie Forsyth

Magda – Bessie Holland

Maria – Sue Jones

Bernadette – Melita Jurisic

Adele - Emily Milledge

Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio

25 May – 7 July 2018

Adapting this work to a contemporary Australian environment is brave and ambitious.  The result is a challenging, absorbing and resonant offering - though not without dissonance. 

Poet Frederico Garcia Lorca’s classic play The House of Bernarda Alba set in rural Spain of the 1930s is adapted for the Australian stage by Patricia Cornelius as commissioned by Melbourne Theatre Company and director, then Associate Artistic Director, Leticia Caceres.

Cornelius sets her version in Western Australia; one assumes the Pilbara, with all this implies.  This is not an austere stylized piece of Museum Theatre but a vital, robust, demanding, entertaining and at times amusing work.

Although the narrative runs along Lorca’s original trajectory the perspective is altered by the contemporary setting.  Here the grieving wife of a deceased mining mogul, bails her four daughters up in the family home for eight untenable weeks of mourning, as opposed to eight years.  

Cornelius’s Bernarda, Bernadette (Melita Jurisic), unflinchingly with passionless brutality demands complete control of her empire.  She will not tolerate insurgence.  The result is acutely relatable to, and very thorny - though not without incongruities and inconsistencies.  Often, it is these rifts that generate shifts in interpretation and elucidate more complex understandings of the violence of the repressive oppression we are witnessing. 

The set, by Marg Horwell, suggests breezeways that are open to the elements of the vast ancient landscape beyond.   Sound by Jethro Woodward enhances the environment and brings connection to the exterior world.  And Musical Composition by Irene Vela augments, with the impressive functionality of, assisting the forward motion of the story.

A lengthy hour and forty-five minutes passes remarkably quickly.  

A contemporary casting, in that the mix of contrasting physicality, further amplifies the individuality of the feisty albeit suppressed women that are Bernadette’s daughters.  This amalgam of inspired performers that don’t completely match is indicative of large family of strong and unique individuals.

Peta Brady plays the eldest daughter, Angela.   With a small tense body she physicalizes Angela’s vulnerability and sensitivity to having her self-esteem wracked by circumstances and the mercilessness of her mother.   And then, visa versa, she responds to flattery and support by, tangibly, opening out and gaining physical status.

Marti the middle child played by Candy Bowers appears more padded by siblings on either side and less at immediate risk of her mother’s ire and more of a conduit for the wellbeing of her sisters.  The glowing Magda (Bessie Holland) carries a secret of epic proportions that engenders hope but horrifies her mother.  Sue Jones as the failing, victimized grandmother Maria releases some of the oppressive tension with her marvelously realized senile seer.

Emily Milledge fashions the youngest and most defiant daughter Adele with a dangerous soupcon of shamelessness.

As cold-blooded matriarch Bernadette, Jurisic, conveys a woman with a life underpinned by fear and ambivalence.  She is determined that her household will remain respectable. But her brand of respectability lacks heart or compassion.   She has an inflated sense of her own importance that begets isolation.  Respectability demands repression.  No one is safe in this environment where deception lurks everywhere because too much is suppressed.  Ironically forcing her daughters to deny their carnal natures backfires horribly within and without the house.   

Julie Forsyth with her impeccable comic timing opens proceedings and sets the scene as a kind or chorus commenting on the funeral with liberal dashing of lurid lascivious gluttony.  She shines throughout.

In the ‘land of plenty’ where this family lives - arrogance, greed and dominion assures there is not enough ‘to go around.’

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)