Review - The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie

By Tennessee Williams

Directed by Eamon Flack

Jim O’Connor – Harry Greenwood

Tom Wingfield – Luke Mullins

Amanda Wingfield – Pamela Rabe

Laura Wingfield – Rose Riley

Video Design Consultant – Sean Bacon

Lighting Designer – Damien Cooper

Composer and Sound Design – Stefan Gregory

Set Designer – Michael Hankin

Costume Designer – Mel Page

Merlyn Theatre – Malthouse

18 May to 5 June 2016

This Belvoir Street production of The Glass Menagerie is not for the faint hearted it is long and robust, contemporary and acutely perceptive.

As the quasi-autobiographical ‘Memory Play,’ of Tennessee Williams’s early adult life in a small apartment with his deluded mother and vulnerable fragile sister, with whom he felt a deep connection, is especially revealing. 

Although Tom, the Williams character, is able to walk away into another life it is an era when women had limited options.  So the only respectable way out of a dysfunctional family setting for daughter Laura is through marriage.   However due to social isolation and desperate shyness and a mild disability she has no mobility and is doomed to spinsterhood.   And yet there is a poignant glimmer of hope.

Interesting choices have been made around characterization.  Rose Riley plays Laura in a lovely open way - using a natural voice and unapologetic physical presence.  Riley’s Laura exhibits some startling, deeply disturbing and telling behavioral traits.

Harry Greenwood plays Jim O’Connor, the gentleman visitor, with sympathetic self-awareness.  He doesn’t overtly express any sense of repulsion that his character might be feeling towards Amanda and Laura and the smothering situation in which he finds himself.  This adds a rich dimension to the second act and the touching scene between Laura and the gentleman caller that is delightful staged and enhanced by marvelous lighting  (Damien Cooper).

As Tom Wingfield Luke Mullins shines.  He brings the audience in to his world with the seemingly effortless charm of Tennessee Williams.  He moves fluidly in and around the apartment through windows, doors and curtains, documenting all the while - particularly through the setting of cameras. 

Pamela Rabe’s characterization of the stifling, disturbed Mother Amanda is inescapably larger than life.  She is a grand puppet master – with invisible strings jerking at her children’s emotional well being.  There is an uncanny sense that the set (Michael Hankin) is a little smaller than a real life apartment and has something of a dolls house about it.   Rabe’s Amanda fills and dominates this space.  Sometimes what she mutters seems almost indistinguishable as though she is not fully expecting her children to be listening to her. 

Desperation and insecurity imbues this archetypal ‘Southern Bell’ who has been rejected and escaped by a philandering husband.   She is left with two very sensitive adult children with whom a dance of crippling codependency takes hold.  Ambivalence reigns and emotional blackmail abounds.  It has the potential to touch any raw nerve of familial dysfunction in the viewer.

As director Eamon Flack has elicited very strong choices from his cast and creatives that allows for a truly insightful production highlighting isolation, vulnerability and replacing some of the pathos usually emphasized with a contemporary sense of angst, even anger.   

One could be forgiven for thinking that Flack has imposed a contemporary post –modern sensibility on this staging through a use of multi media.  However nothing could be further from the truth as a great many of the stage directions and particularly the use of filmic projections are specified in the text.

Beautiful rich melodies transport the audience from scene to scene thanks to sound designer Stefan Gregory.

Mel Page’s costuming is great including having Amanda wear a man’s dressing gown and a dress that she has definitely grown out of  - with a zip on the back that doesn’t fully do up.

Tennessee Williams is truly honoured through this insightful production.

Suzanne Sandow
(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Tales of a City by the Sea

Tales of a City by the Sea

By Samah Sabawi

Original Direction – Lech Mackiewicz

Remount Direction – Wahibe Moussa

Set Design Lara Week

Lighting Design – Shane Grant

Sound Design - Khaled Sabsabi

Producer - Daniel Clarke

 

Cast

Jomana – Helana Sawires

Rami - Osamah Sami

Lama/Relative at Hospital – Emina Ashman

Ali – Reece Valla

Abu Ahamad/Relative at Hospital – Alex Pinder

Samira/Relative at Hospital/Wedding Guest – Rebecca Morton

Nurse/Um Ahmad/Security/Mother – Cara Whitehouse

Singer – Asell Tayah

Mohanad/Security/Father/Wedding Guest – Ubaldino Mantelli

La Mama Courthouse

May 11 – 29, 2016

(Part of the 2016 VCE Drama Playlist)

An excellent ensemble of multicultural performers work closely together to draw together and express the story of star crossed lovers who are both, perhaps a little surprisingly, Palestinian.

He, Rami (Osamah Sami) is a doctor who runs a medical clinic in the USA and she, Jomana (Helana Sawires) a journalist who was born and raised in the Shanti (beach) Refugee Camp in Gaza.  He comes and goes into this volatile site of the bitter struggle of the siege of Gaza that took place in 2008.  They are just like young lovers from anywhere and any culture. 

It is not a story of conflict, of brutal ingrained enmity between Israeli and Palestinian but a story of romantic love with a backdrop of engrained enmity that’s conflict extends into every nook and cranny of life. 

This poetic production is framed with the glorious haunting Arabic songs sung by Aseel Tayah who is dressed in traditional costume.   And staged on a set (Lara Week) of curtains (apparently made of sheets) that allow for a flow of expressive imagery and the creation of potentially unlimited environments.  The sea is a very strong motif as emphasized through sound as designed by Khaled Sabsabi.

As a piece of theatre it has an engaging and engrossing through its linear narrative and all performances honor the writing that is glistening poetry at times.

Generous nurturing direction by debuting director Wahibe Moussa, with an emphasis on emotional sincerity that is at times frustratingly static, supports the poetic nature of Samah Sabawi’s writing and endorses clarity.  Perhaps with some more time, inventive and adventurous, risks in staging could have been played with and incorporated.

This is a work that all creative artists, cast and La Mama should feel great pride in bringing to a Melbourne audience - particularly in view of any controversy drawn from where the story is set and the wonderful mix of multicultural performers.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Bad Jews

Bad Jews

By Joshua Harmon

Aleksandar Vass - Producer

Helen Ellis – Executive Producer

Director – Gary Abrahams

Set Designer – Jacob Battista

Lighting Designer – Rob Sowinski

Sound Designer – Dave Ellis

Costume Designer Kelsey Henderson

Cast

Maria Angelico – Daphna

Simon Corfield – Liam

Anna Burgess – Melody

Matt Whitty – Jonah

Alex Theatre until Sunday 14^th May

Sydney Seymour Centre May 18th to June 4th

Brisbane QPAC Cremorne Theatre July 12th to 31st

Regal Theatre Perth - August 9th to 14^th

2016

This engrossing production of Bad Jews is played out on a charming set, designed by Jacob Battista, of a tiny apartment that feels part pressure cooker part fish bowl.  It is a studio apartment in New York, New York with a bathroom that overlooks the Hudson River.  Four characters, three of whom who have been rendered emotionally raw from the grief of their grandfathers recent demise, interact through the malaise of a kind of fraught cabin fever. 

This production by the Vass Theatre Group is stunning.   And it is the perfect chance to catch a great show at the inspiring Alex Theatre -Fitzroy Street in St Kilda.

Who would have thought that Cinemas could be such spectacularly acoustically successful and comfortable venues for live Theatre!

Bad Jews is marvelously successful work from American writer Joshua Harmon.  It has received many productions on both sides of the Atlantic.  But this lauded script is not without its flaws.  As a situation comedy the set up is credible and the insights sharp and often hysterically funny in their truthfulness.

All characters have issues.  Two of the grandchildren are highly competitive and the other inclined to put his head in the sand to avoid conflict.  The granddaughter, Daphna, played with acute cultural insight by Maria Angelico is a difficult, domineering and manipulative character, apparently not unlike her grandmother.   Harmon has drawn her as such a harridan that delight is inspired in the audience when her cousin Liam, played by Simon Cornfield mercilessly attempts to bring her down.  There is a brutality in this area of the script, towards a female character, that is disconcerting.  

  

I didn’t locate an ultimate take home message in the story.  The Grandfather who had experienced devastating loss in his life and achieved an amazing feat of survival in the death camps sadly did not pass on a sense unifying generosity to his grandchildren who compete hysterically for his very precious and religiously significant ‘chai’ pendent. 

Although the situation of losing a Grandfather is universal and not culturally specific this work is very Jewish and fascinatingly so.  I wonder if a bi-lingual approach in the writing could offer the audience to a richer sense of inclusion into a rarefied culture.  (I realize that I am thinking this because of the fluid use of Yiddish in Malthouse’s recent discussion/production on the Dybbuk that made no apologies for expecting the audience to find ways into the pervading ethos.)   

 

Garry Abrahams draws unique and robust work out of his uniformly capable actors.  Though every now and again there seems to be a bit of divergence in styles and at times a slight clash between naturalism and a more heightened (possibly American) theatrical style.   I wish he would give Matt Whitty’s character Jonah a guitar to a least strum a few chords on to further define his character as evasive observer.

Engaging and absorbing Theatre that should tour brilliantly – totally worth catching if it comes to Theatre near you!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)