Review - When the Mountain Changed its Clothing

When The Mountain Changed Its Clothing

By

Heiner Goebbels

Featuring the Vocal Theatre Carmina Slovencia

State Theatre – Arts Centre Melbourne

Until Sunday 26 October

This is a marvelous chance to hear some extraordinary choral work that is moving, mysterious and other-worldly.  From a simple start of an almost empty stage When The Mountain Changed Its Clothing leaves a beautiful expanding and flourishing rich sense of spring full of promise.  Perhaps ambiguously it is the promise in the life of women or a woman, perhaps a simple homage to womanhood or just a homage to spring and the life-cycle.

As the performance progresses we watch forty young women enter the performance space, set up the stage, change their drab costumes into something more feminine and bright and perform some texts in front of some simply designed projected imagery.  All of this they do mostly in unison as they sing like angels. 

Creator/Director Heiner Goebbels uses a combination of unexpected texts that in being presented in this context undergo a kind of deconstruction.  Being put into the context of such a streamlined seemingly unrelated bold theatrical piece endows what is being spoken with a sense of irony or at the very least allows for discrete interpretation. Two of these resonant texts are printed in the program; Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile Or on Education and Gertrude Stein’s My Last about Money.

Much of the music is traditional and very old including a textural Indian piece all presented with such glorious finesse by this very large a cappella choir. 

An unusual and unique experience – a true festival piece.

Highly recommended – but only a couple more shows – just go!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Hipbone Sticking Out

Hipbone Sticking Out

Written with and for the Roebourne community & directed by Scott Rankin. Big hART production at Melbourne Festival. Arts Centre Melbourne, 

Playhouse. 17 – 21 October 2014 

Hipbone Sticking Out s a beautifully polished will funded/supported/backed work a stunning opportunity to see what Community Theatre can be – at its best. 

Having taken three years to develop by Big hArt with the community of Roebourne in the Pilbara Hipbone Sticking Out takes it inspiration from the death in custody of a 16 year old boy John Pat.  It is a sort of retrospective look at the damage done to Australia’s beautiful sensitive indigenous communities from the beginning of brutal imperialistic colonization.

Trevor Jamison and Nelson Coppin

Very movingly it focuses on the boy John Pat as an adult through the strong and thoroughly engaging stage presence of Trevor Jamison who is a continual presence with his sixteen year old younger self played by Nelson Coppin.

Trevor Jamison

Boasting some wonderfully strong performers and a whole troupe of glorious singers the work just bursts to life with a splendid audio of exquisite voices.

Lex Marinos is a beautiful strong presence and his voice is rich and mellifluous.  He plays a wonderful Pluto as things get rolling and narrates throughout.

Although it does have a very persuasive didactic core there is much humour throughout and a sense of irony often comes to the fore.  

How Australia’s Indigenous Mobs were forced into the untenable position that was and is now unrelentingly debilitating is clearly described.  It is a timely work a clear and through overview, a background that we can move forward from.

Having recently read Kate Grenville’s moving Novel The Secret River noted some similarities and that text is fairly soon to hit our small screens.

The concluding positive and proactive emphasis is on the young people and how to support them and help facilitate burgeoning futures. 

  

The set designed by Genevieve Dugard is versatile and interesting.  The stage that is raked to one side and offers considerable flexibility.  The use of projections is simply stunning. 

In interval I found myself thinking of all the people I would love to be able to take to this show – hopefully there will be other chances.

Really tremendous Theatre - so worth catching.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Dark Light

Dark Light

Presented by Melbourne Writer’s Theatre

Carlton Courthouse

Until Saturday 25 October

Melbourne Writers Theatre presents work from emerging, developing and aspiring writers for performance.

Dark Light is a group of five short plays the first two are very dark and focus seem to be exploring misogynistic brutality and after interval the evening lightens up. 

Silas James

Ragdoll

By Paul Mitchell

The longest of the five works explores from a number or angles the type of misogyny that would lead to domestic violence at its extreme.    Silas James once warmed into the piece gives a compelling performance as a man trapped in his own angst as well as the subsidiary characters of his own father and son.  The Direction by Debra Low is effective - keeping the work fluid and well focused.  However I found this work to be long and believe with some clever editing the text could say the same thing in half the time.  What I do find interesting and very courageous is that so many playwrights are exploring devastating real life dramas of shocking family violence.

Departures

By Christine Croyden

Justin Moore and Amy Bradney-George

As Lars, Justin Moore has made some strong and successful decisions to present a very unpleasant character.  Amy Bradney-George as the female characters makes a great foil.  Director David F Passmore chooses to have the audience repulsed by Lars through time dwelling on the ‘evil’ character as he slowly does up his tie initially, and at other times later in the staging.  However it all moves a bit too slowly for an emotional connection to be made and relief felt at the lucky outcome for the young woman.  To achieve this the script may need to be teased out more comprehensively and production values enhanced.

Win Win

By Jeannie Haughton

Win Win is Directed with aplomb and liveliness by Bridgette Burton the actors work beautifully together and there nothing is wasted or unnecessary in this brisk entertaining production.  It is witty and clever and owes much to the fabulous and convincing rendition of a Frog by Matthew Dorning.  The play makes sense, the writer’s point is made and the actors (Dan Walls and Marissa Bennett) as two Council workers perform very efficiently and effectively together.

Keith Hutton and Cathy Kohlen

Ghost Dad

By Amanda Miha and Jill Moylan

This is a sweet warm piece about a benevolent ghost it is sentimental and kind and full or cliché.  Chris Boek as Psychiatrist, Cathy Kohlen as bemused daughter and Keith Hutton as indulgent old Dad all do a great job. Direction by Justin Stephens is smooth.

And Cathy Kohlen has a voice that is very easy on the ear. However there is an urgency missing in the writing that the stakes could be lifted and the visitations of the Fathers Ghost could be more disturbing and really require alleviation. As it is - it plods a bit.

Church Bells

By Joshua Fisher

Is a funny, enjoyable situation comedy that requires tightening up in the Writing, Direction and Acting.  The script contradicts itself a bit and the conceit of the Bridegroom and his Best Man and other mate standing up the front of a Catholic Church under the scrutiny of the wedding attendees is not convincingly maintained through the Directing or the Acting.  Although the audience enjoys it and the three main characters worked well as a team - over all this play seems to be lacking in adequate rehearsal time.  Cameos by Chris Boek and Keith Hutton are amusing.

All and any of these works would be great on the One Act Play circuit across Victoria.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Since I Suppose

Since I Suppose

A Melbourne Festival Show

Commissioned & Produced by Chicago Shakespeare Theater & Richard Jordon Productions Created by one step at a time like this / Suzanne Kersten, Clair Korobacz, Paul Moir, Julian Rickert Project Manager Kara Ward Developed by Arts House CultureLAB

Season Wed 15 – Sun 26 October 2014

Photo - Ponch Hawkes

Since I Suppose is quite some journey - a solid two and a half hours roam around Melbourne starting at the top end and being ejected as interlopers in the North.  It is exciting but daunting at first - being presented with the earphones and mini screen and sent out onto the streets.   It is great to have a companion for the passage.

It looks, perhaps a little sparsely at the main themes of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure with some site-specific focus on Melbourne itself.  If you are lucky enough to be going to see this work and have time read Shakespeare’s text (again) as it could help enrich an experience.  

Not one of the Bard’s most popular plays as a younger woman, for me, it was about unyielding pride and the kind of stubbornness that can make irreversible decisions.  But as with most things it has become richer and more complex with aging sensibilities and a greatly changed social milieu.

Photo - Ponch Hawkes

One does start to look at things differently when a fictional narrative is imposed on one own city.  It opens one’s mind to probable subcultures at the very least. 

There are a number of surprises on the way, even the positioning each audience member as one of the characters, unexpectedly.  However over all it feels safe and mostly a bit too tame.  In fact where there is the potential for things to become more challenging it would only be at an audience members behest.  

If you do get stuck there will be assistance as I, and my travel partner, discovered when we were standing for way too long in chalk footprints on a busy street corner. 

It would be a shame to give much away as much of the fun is in just allowing things to unfold.

Overall there is a sense that this work has been put together for Melbourne a little too hastily and could do with more fineness and some more smoke and mirrors.  Never the less it is a memorable and enjoyable event. 

And can be confronting at times!

Suzanne Sandow