Review - Triangle

Triangle by Glyn Roberts

Presented by MKA (Winter Season)

Director – Tanya Dickson, Dramaturg – Jane E. Thompson, Set Designer Eugyeene Teh, Costume Designer – Chloe Greaves, Lighting Designer - Rob Sowinski, Sound Designer – Russell Goldsmith, Co-Sound Designer – Chris Wenn, Stage Manager/Operator – Hayley Ricketson, Voice Coach  - Leslie Cartwright, Movement Consultant – Janine Watson 

Cast: Elizabeth Nabben and Janine Watson

Sutton Street North Melbourne - Season July 25 to August 4

Like an old haunting fairytale Triangle seduces with the familiar, then commences a journey traversing the realms of passion, violence and the supernatural in a in a perfectly unexpected yet strangely anticipated manner.   

It is set in and around a supermarket like Tuesday another terrific work presented by MKA in June.  However unlike its predecessor Triangle veers into fanciful, lyrical subliminal territory.

It commences with the student (Elizabeth Nabbin) addressing the audience about her response to and experiences at Piedemonte’s supermarket in Fitzroy. Then disconcertingly and without warning realities start to shift from the mention of eating unprepared couscous.  Similarly the situation of a young wife and mother (Janine Watson), presented in a rational - factual manner, slightly slips a cog and becomes hilariously and outrageously funny from the suggestion of the affects of caffeine on a toddler.

Triangle has been refined through input from an inspired and inspiring team.  There is hardly a hair out of place.  Sound (Russell Goldsmith and Chris Wenn) underpins the atmosphere and light (Rob Sowinski) mostly elucidates but some times endows the whole with a sense of question.  Set by Eugyeene Teh and costumes by Chloe Greaves define and enhance from a ‘less is more’ perspective.

Both actors are exemplary in their roles.  Their work, although subtle, is clear, forthright and strong.  Some actions, sudden changes and dialogue, that appear to be wholly embraced by the actors, make no immediate sense, and yet, are oddly just so right. 

The direction by Tanya Dickson displays foresight and immaculate attention to detail.

Engrossed by the hilarious weirdness of it all I looked at my watch, craving more – not wanting it to end knowing the short fifty minutes must almost be up.  How often can one say that about theatre? 

I wanted to be wowed by Triangle and, so was. 

Go and see this innovative yet grounded production from fascinating pen of writer Glyn Roberts, but not, if you prefer the unshakable comfort of the literal. 

It is the type of art that highlights and questions through collapsing preconceptions.

For Stage Whispers

Review - Shifting Ground

Shifting Ground

by Zoe Scoglio

Presented by Arts House

Concept/Performer/Videographer – Zoe Scoglio,Sound Designer – Nigel Brown, Set and Prop Designer – Zoe Stuart, Interaction Designer – Chris Heywood, Producer – Briony Galligan

Meat Market 19 to 22 July

This refined work requires a receptive open mind from its audience, who is ushered into a small reception room to receive a piquant glass of tea and choose an industrial or natural rock of their own, to then enter the small gallery of a performance space. 

In the intense, short but highly immersive forty-five minutes Zoe Scoglio engages, discovers, explores and plays with natural and constructed images of the forming, formations, and constructions of geological terrain.  Not a word is spoken and the audience is free to read into it what they will.

Performer, lighting, sound, image and projections are honed and melded to explore shifting interactions with the universe, earth and manmade construction. 

Throughout, it is the interactive mechanisms of sound and movement that are particularly intriguing and affecting.

Shifting Ground is a beautifully managed, sensitive and finely tuned collaboration of considerable artistic merit.

Highly recommended for those into, or wanting to experience, performance art.

Suzanne Sandow 

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - McNeil Project

The McNeil Project:

The Chocolate Frog

The Old Familiar Juice

Presented by Wattle We Do Next Productions

In association with Stable Productions & Auspicious Arts Projects

Writer Jim McNeil, Director Malcolm Robertson, Actors: Will Ewing, Luke McKenzie, Cain Thompson and Richard Bligh

45 Downstairs:  6-29 July – Tuesday to Saturday 8pm, Sunday 5pm

The McNeil Project offers the chance to revisit a significant era of Australian Theatre History, in presenting two enlightening short plays that are set in prison cells of the 1970s.  These works are written by Jim McNeil who himself was a convicted prisoner.  

Production values are crisp and clean and the acting sincere and focused.  Both plays are well written, intriguing depictions of destabilized and volatile power relationships.

In The Chocolate Frog two inmates deal with the introduction to their cell of a ‘new chum’ Kevin (Will Ewing) a young University Student.  As Kevin becomes progressively more threatened by Shirker (Luke McKenzie) he becomes more opinionated and patronizing, risking life and limb.

The Old Familiar Juice, a more complicated and nuanced work, shows three prisoners imbibe in an illicit alcoholic concoction that triggers complex and destructive behaviors and unleashes the predatory sexual appetites of Bull (Kevin McKenzie).  All three actors McKenzie, Cain Thompson as Stanley and Richard Bligh as the shrewd Dadda have moments of riveting excellence.

Times have changed and I realized I was viewing these plays I had seen many years before, through a psyche heavily affected by more recent works, such as films like The Boys, Animal Kingdom and Snowtown, that portray blood-curdling intimidation and inability to break patterns of behaviors of the type Jim McNeil wrote about. Which, I am ashamed to have to admit, left me wanting to experience more sense of imminent danger.

On the night I attended there were some initial issues with vocal projection in Chocolate Frog, where all three actors seemed to be bouncing sound around in a way that made it difficult to catch exactly what was been said. Too much dialogue was being declaimed.  Fortunately this problem did not bleed into the second play. 

As the acting grows in subtlety and more subtext is discovered throughout the run this production should peak into very satisfying theatre.

Suzanne Sandow

For Stage Whispers

Review - sex.violence.blood.gore

sex.violence.blood.gore

By Alfian bin Sa’at

(co-writted with Chong Tze Chien)

Director – Stephen Nicolazzo, Set and Costume Designer – Eugyeene The, Costume Maker – Tessa Leigh Wolfenbuttel Pitt, Lighting – Yasmin Santoso, Sound – Claudio Tocco

Cast – Genevieve Giuffre, Catherine Davies, Matt Furlani, Whitney Boyd, Amy-Scott Smith, Zoe Boesen, Caitlin Adams.

sex.violence.blood.gore is an unexpectedly fascinating political satire.   However it must be said, that without historical knowledge and experience of Singapore, its messages can be a little cryptic and confusing at times.  Regardless, it is an engaging, absorbing, often highly amusing work beautifully presented by gifted, articulate, eloquent actors playing with restraint and irony.  

Due to the title and the discussion in The Age (26 June) of the author being inspired by Marquis de Sade and Foucault I was expecting a jarring and disturbing piece of theatre, with provocative aspects of ‘Theatre of Cruelty.’  However the visceral implications of the title are more often realized through dialogue than action. 

Director Stephen Nicolazzo capably and perceptively orchestrates the whole.

On a set (designed by Eugyeene Teh) inferring ageless civilization - with make-shift Grecian columns supporting an arch decorated by an extravagant freeze of torsos, limbs and body parts, behind gauzy curtains scantily clad performers, wait as though in a bordello, for their turn to be on stage.

Costumed throughout in exquisite, extravagant and redolent undergarments, designed by Eugyeene Teh and made by Tessa Leigh Wolffenbuttel Pitt, five females and one male actor, all in stylized ‘oriental’ make-up, present a number confronting scenes of various degrees of nihilism.

 

For me there was a twinge of – ‘is this cultural exchange or appropriation?’  Perhaps for this fabulous adventurous theatre company such concerns would appear petti and ‘old hat’.  And ultimately it is liberating and refreshing to watch theatre that questions notions of the ‘politically correct' with sharp and subtle acumen.

Go MKA!

Suzanne Sandow

For Stage Whispers

Review - Bindjereb Pinjarra

Bindjareb Pinjarra

Presented by The Pinjarra Project, Deckchair Theatre, ILBIJERRI Theatre Company and Footscray Community Arts Centre, Created and Performed by Isaac Drandic, Geoff Kelso, Sam Longley, Frank Nannup, Kelton Pell and Phil Thomson 

Footscray Community Arts Centre

45 Mooreland Road

Jume 13 - 17

Bindjareb Pinjarra is the very essence of a stunning touring show.  It is particularly accessible because of its down to earth ‘boysey’ humour and totally worth catching for a number of reasons I hope I make clear in the following.

Part of its very considerable charm is that in relation to contemporary race relations in Australia it walks an excruciatingly fine line, between both the potentially sanctimonious and the awkwardly self-effacingly, politically incorrect with surprising and uplifting success.  It never becomes ‘cringe worthy’!

It is a vital, engaging, partly improvised and often very funny, highly tuned physical theatre piece that borders on Theatre In Education.  I would like to say it is also timely.  However truthfully it is way over due and would have been timely if it had been brought to us ten years ago when it was first conceived.  But, better late than never!

Bindjareb Pinjarra explores black/white relations in south-west Western Australia, with a focus on the early days of settlement and it culminates in the retelling of the Massacre at Pinjarra that was lead by Governor James Stirling in 1834.

However, on another level, it is the story of how some white blokes and some Noongar blokes  are taking on the mission of sharing shameful and baffling truths from violent pasts that  - hidden in a kind of half-life - are haunting us.  In doing this they are making some sense of it all, by liberating knowledge and sharing it with audiences and ancestral spirits alike.  It contains a wonderful haunting, mystical element, that is reinforced, not only by an exquisitely painted and beautifully lit backdrop, a live and recorded soundscape that doesn’t miss a beat, but also, with a concluding question and answer session.

As a piece that does not have a single writer or a director it is a testament to what can be achieved by a group of talented dedicated men, with lashings of integrity and purpose, working and creating together.  

Inspirational!

Suzanne Sandow 

For Stage Whispers