Review - In Between Two

In Between Two

Writers/Composers - Joel Ma and James Mangohig

Director - Suzanne Chaundy

Dramaturges - William Yang and Annette Shun Wah

Visual Designer - Jean Poole

Stage/costume Designer - Euygeene The

Lighting Designer - Lucy Birkinshaw

Performers - Joel Ma and James Mangohig

Melbourne Festival and Arts Centre Melbourne. Fairfax Studio –Arts Centre Melbourne. 11 – 15 October, 2017 

It is the generosity of spirit this work is imbued with that reaches out to us all.   In Between Two is two stories of how two young ‘hip hop’ artists - Joel Ma who is half Chinese and half Pilipino James Mangohig - grew and developed into the charismatic men they are today.

The audience is kept on its toes as each story unfolds in turns, starting with the rarefied history of Joel Ma’s extraordinary Grandmother Edith.

The bighearted openhandedness of these two performers; their capacity to understand, honor and support each other’s stories with music is brilliant.  All the while visual images are projected on two background screens.

Individual narratives of eventualities, achievements, mishaps and disappointments are related with humor and insight.  Both growing boys somehow forged on regardless, even though surrounded by a hostile and unyielding racist Australian culture.

At times, family tensions and difficulties and risky transgressions of adolescence threatened to completely derail them, yet both managed to develop, grow and thrive, most particularly through their music.

Suzanne Chaundy’s direction is pitch perfect.  Everything moves at a beautiful poetic pace and there is nothing extraneous or unnecessary.  Both performers appear totally comfortable in their skins, rendering us relaxed, open and available as audience. 

William Yang and Annette Shan Wah’s dramaturgy is flawless.  Not surprisingly the extraordinary is brought to the fore but nothing is excessive or unnecessarily labored and spelt out.  The touch is light. Moments of acceptance and observation offer the opportunity to commingle with ones own understandings and fuse into something that feels like growing wisdom.

What stays with us is the sense of joy, purpose and integrity that imbue these artists with vital valuable creative spirit.

Suzanne Sandow
(For Stage Whispers)

Photographer: William Yang.

Review - Salome

Salome

By Oscar Wilde

Presented by Little Ones Theatre and Malthouse Theatre

Directed by Stephen Nicolazzo

Dramaturgy - Natalia Savvides

Set and Costume – Eugyeene Teh

Cast:

Paul Blenheim – Salome

Genevieve Giuffre – John the Baptist

Alexandra Aldrich – Herod

Peter Paltos – The Young Syrian

Zoe Boesen – The Page of Herodias

Tom Dent – Namann the Executioner

Nick Pelomis - Herodias

Little Ones Theatre’s slick and flippant production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome is lively, loud, lighthearted and wickedly profane.  It’s an ‘in-your-face’ cabaret performance with loads of well-dressed and undressed ‘eye-candy’ and more than just a hint of Jean Genet.

Little Ones Theatre has made a fascinatingly provocative reworking of Wilde’s reworking of a Biblical Story.  

In their ‘take’ we are introduced to the concept of Salome as a beautiful desirable male Princess through the homosexual proclivities of The Young Syrian played with forthright lascivious humor by Peter Paltos. However this is one of those examples where the universal swapping of gender roles detracts from the meanings intrinsic to the story, though, it does not detract from the visual aspects of casting and set/costume design by Eugyeene Teh.   Most successful in playing against gender is Alexandra Aldrich who presents a pretty crazed Herod with aplomb. And Nick Pelomis as Herodias is fascinating to watch.

Salome is indeed beautiful and Paul Blenheim dances her dance of the seven veils with lithe elegance, but then curiously, vaguely and without intent, gloats over the dead body of the Baptist as if it means nothing to have had her cruel intent realized.

Some diligent research by Director Stephen Nicolazzo and Dramaturge Natalia Savvides is perhaps missing from the making of this work.  If my memory serves me adequately the flaw in Salome’s nature that turned her so sour on John the Baptist was her unyielding pride fueled by biting resentment at being rejected by the disciple.  The reason for Salome’s destructive intent is not adequately explored here and therefore the reworking of the story doesn’t make complete sense. 

In all, Salome is a satisfying as a spectacle that is light on meaning – but is well work catching as a showcase of some of Melbourne’s youthful and courageous theatre making talent.  The tickets are only $25 each and it is on till 14 September.

(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