Review - This is Beautiful

This is Beautiful

Presented by Public Studio

For the Malthouse Helium series

Tower Theatre

19 July – 3 August 2013

Ming-Zhu Hii: Director, Producer, Co-Creator, Text wrangler, Design Co-Concept, Cinematographer, Post-Production

Nicholas Coghlan: Assistant Director, Co-Creator, Cinematographer, Post-Production, Stage & Production Management

Anabelle Lacroix: Associate Producer/Epilogue Curator

Glyn Roberts: Dramaturg

Melanie Liertz: Design Co-Concept, Stet Design Realisation, Costume Designer

Damien McLean: Lighting Designer

Russell Goldsmith: Sound Designer

Raya Slavin: Associate Sound Designer

Performers: Jang-Xuan Chan, Pier Carthew, Terry Yeboah

This is Beautiful is a hauntingly rich, sensual and fascinating new hybrid performance art/multi media piece.

It is a precise and skillfully crafted, highly collaborative work that, on one level, questions perceptions of beauty, love and narcissism and on another, perhaps more primal visual level, is about those old profundities - sex, life and death.

The audience enters into the Tower space to sits in front of what could be a table or a coffin that is beautifully and lavishly decorated with vegetation and fruit.  The light is very low and objects such as huge shards of stone, are hazy silhouettes.

Three screens light up with images of plastic sheeting, from which eventually emerges a human face. Although the same projection is on each screen there is a variation of impression due to perspective.  Images of skin, flesh, bodies and faces are variously projected.  A fairly low-pitched sound scape (Russell Goldsmith), with an industrial edge, exquisitely accompanies images to significant and surprising effect.  Light is manipulated masterfully by Damien McLean.

Early on, from statues like stone sphinxes the three actors, Jing-Xuan Dhan, Pier Carthew and Terry Yeboah, emerge and speak.  If there is a weakness in the presentation it is that at times Actors voices are not properly taken into consideration and other sound levels are not always suitably moderated to accommodate the human voice.  Though I imagine this would have been picked up and ironed out since opening night by the expert production team.

At each performance an epilogue from a selection of various artists is an additional treat.  Zoe Scoglio’s highly complimentary Rock Bodies 2 was presented on opening night and will be repeated on closing night.

This is Beautiful is a short weighty, ponderous and intense experience that positions humans in an infinite timelessness and wonders from a youthful perspective. 

The conjecture of meaning will be a personal response.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)