Review - Passenger

The Arts Centre Melbourne and Footscray Community Arts Centre Present

PASSENGER

A Production by Jessica Wilson

Devised by Jessica Wilson, Ian Pidd and Nicola Gunn

Text by Nicola Gunn

Directed by Ian Pidd and Jessica Wilson

Composition by Tom Fitzgerald

Conceptual and Devising Contributions by Bec Reid Jeff Blake and the performers

Performers

Woman on bus – Beth Buchanan

Man on bus – Jim Russel

Cowboy – Neil Thomas

Horse rider – Jamie Crichton

March 23 to 26 – 2017 - several journeys a day leaving from Footscray Arts Centre

Marvelously Melbourne Arts Centre has teamed up with the Footscray Arts Centre to get passenger realized.  It is unique and intriguing endeavor.

It is usually almost impossible to get to see mobile work like this presented in a bus - as seats are limited.  I was delighted to be able to catch this immersive performance.

As a bus journey that started at dusk it was designed to be a filmic experience, with a great sound track (Tom Fitzgerald), as such it is quite magic.   Created, written and designed by several of our most prolific community based/community responsive theatre makers.  Passenger looks at some of our social inequities through the interaction of characters on the bus in the relation to the environment we are passing through.

When the man on the bus (Jim Russel) starts talking to seemingly sympathetic female character (Beth Buchanan) about the tricky family situation he is in - it is very moving.  This suggests that throughout  the journey he will tap into and open out his emotional world to us.  But then is rhetoric becomes less and less personal and we sense he is just a cog in a wheel, making strong political points.  However I was left thinking a string of lost opportunities for the audience to be moved and feel empathetic towards this character who is really powerlessly caught in a destructive cycle.  

As a challenging revelation of selfishness, greed and disempowerment this work that has the potential to enlighten through pathos.  I don’t understand why Passenger doesn’t attempt to do that.

Although what is intentionally staged for the audience is quirky and strong it is perhaps a little thin.  The way ‘the tables turn between the characters, is unexpected and surprising.’ 

Over all for me despite the very strong acting by Russel and Buchanan - in this instance less is just not more. 

Finally at the risk of sounding contradictory despite my disappointed response I did enjoy the evening and am very glad that I was able to catch Passenger.

Note:  I was sent as a reviewer by Stage Whispers.  On this occasion I didn’t send this material on to the magazine to be published.   I felt that I had to work pretty hard as audience and would have liked more links with the world outside the bus that I was observing throughout.  

Review - The Dead Twin - FLIGHT - Festival of New Writing

The Dead Twin

By Chi Vu

Director: Deborah Leiser-Moore 
 


Visual Artist: Naomi Ota 


Sound Designer: Jacques Soddell 


Costume Designer: Ross de Winter 


Performers: Deborah Leiser-Moore, Alex Pinder, Harry Tseng, Daniel Han and Davina Wright

Footscray Community Arts Centre

August 12-22

The Dead Twin is a mysterious and haunting experience that ebbs and flows into the genre of horror.  This immersive journey starts from a secret place and is quiet magically enhanced by an amazing haunting sound scape.  It is the very type of work that is satisfying for theatre literate audience with rewards coming from active engagement, remaining focused, observing nuance and piecing inference together.

The Dead Twin explores the all pervading grief of two gentle and tortured souls Barbara (Deborah Leiser Moore) and Harold (Alex Pinder) who are the well meaning parents of the remaining, also grieving, twin Steve (Harry Tseng).  Both Leiser-Moore and Pinder movingly and sensitively embody the devastating grief resulting from war related trauma.  Steve their son seems to be masking his distress by attempting to convince his parents that he is living productively in the here and now.  And yet amongst all characters attempts to put on best appearances, everybody, including the audience, are haunted by the dead twin played in an eerie and creepily ghostly manner by Daniel Han. 

As the desperation of traumatic grief turns in on the family things go more and more awry.  Ultimately the surviving twin is forced to make deals with the underworld as personified by a beautiful young sex-worker/sooth-sayer Lola portrayed by Davina April Wright.

Chi Vu’s courageous writing highlights the deep scaring of losing loved ones to violent death.  It touches on the carnage of war that somehow, over generations, as a nation, we seem to have been able to ‘sweep under the carpet’. 

This production is masterfully choreographed by Deborah Leiser-Moore, as Director, who as well as interpreting and managing the work has taken the challenge of performing in it, apparently with the aide of a body double in rehearsals.

 

The audience’s attention is being continually focused and refocused and there are surprises aplenty.  Ms Leiser-Moore’s courageous and refreshing approach to directing has moments of luminescence.  There are instances in this work when visceral poignancy pulls at ones very being as we witness the desperate rawness of grief.  And there are other moments where it depends on one’s own placement in the space as to how the work is received.  This is usually the case with, the at times unpredictable beast that is, site-specific work.

Inspiring theatre makers to keep a very close eye on.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - My Lovers' Bones

My Lovers’ Bones

Brown Cab Productions

Melbourne Festival

From a story by Cameron Costello

Margaret Harvey – Director/ Performer/Devisor

Kirk Page – Performer/Devisor

Alison Ross – Production Designer/Devisor

Anna Liebzeit - Composer/Sound Design

Lisa Mibus – Lighting Designer/Devisor

Alexandra Harrison – Choreography/Devisor

Ainsley Kerr – Video Design/Devisor

Footscray Community Arts Centre – 45 Moreland Street Footscray

14 – 18 October

My Lover’s Bones is a contemporary interpretation of a very old story of an Aboriginal youth trapped by his own sorry misadventure.  It is a haunting tale of a young hunter leaving the comfortable intimacy of his lover’s embrace when lured by the call of the hunt.   

 

Kirk Page by Deryk McAlpin

As a darkly fascinating reinterpretation of a retelling of a Bunyip story, by Cameron Costello a Ouandamooka man, it reverberates with the mystery of an absorbing multi-layered tale, mesmerizing, dark and rewarding.  

Throughout is an ominous sense that something is dreadfully wrong – a pervading sense of evil.   This, along with an ambiguity in some of the imagery, satisfyingly, allows for an individual interpretation.

A very skilled group or artisans have collaborated to craft this work with Production Design attributed to Alison Ross.  Much of its magic is generated through various forms of media overlapping and enriching each-other.  Projected visuals (Ainsley Kerr) are many and varied and often disjointed.  They are at times bemusing such as small projections on the body.  The use of electronic sound (Anna Liebzeit) to convincingly portray vast natural landscapes is inspired and otherworldly when permeated with the sound of a human voice.  Light (Lisa Mibus) is used to enhance, craft, express distress and create tension.  The set design is versatile though a little crowded together somehow, perhaps with a view to leaving space for the performers.

Clearly displayed is the physical skill of Dancer Kirk Page and the beautiful subtleties of emotion and feeling that he is able to express with sometimes very small movements of groups of isolated muscles.  Much of the Choreography (Alexandra Harrison) is restrained and understated often exuding with an earthy feel.

Bewitching, mysterious and mesmerizing.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)