Blasted - Review

Blasted

by Sarah Kane

Direction – Anne-Louise Sarks

Cast:  Fayssal Bazzi, Eloise Mignon and David Woods

Set and Costume – Marg Horwell

Lighting Design – Paul Jackson

Sound Design and Composition – Jethro Woodward

Design Associate – Romanie Harper

Cinematography – Sky Davies

Gaffer – Jared Fish

Colourist – Nicholas Hower

Stage Manager – Lyndie Li Wan Po

Malthouse Theatre – The Merlyn

24 August to 16 September

If you love or hate or are completely overwhelmed by it there is no doubting that Blastedis an astonishing production of an extraordinary play.  The text by once ‘enfant terrible’ of British Theatre Sarah Kane had its first production at the Royal Court Theatre in 1995.   

This particular rendition boasts a stunning set by Marg Horwell and is directed with exquisite finesse by Anne Marie Sarks 

On opening night it took a while for the ‘shell shocked’ audience to clap - but once we started we did so with great enthusiasm.  What amazed me was that no one walked out during the show shouting ‘depraved.’  Blasted‘takes no prisoners!’  It is very powerful and pervading theatre.  It is the type of work that one mulls over for days and days because it offers rich perceptions and startling insights.

Opening as a two hander, seemingly based in naturalism. We watch a tortured dysfunctional relationship that activates concerns about abuse and domestic violence.   Two helplessly mismatched individuals, a young woman played by Eloise Mignon and older man by David Woods, spend time together in an upmarket hotel room.  There is little joy and considerable miscommunication.  It would seem that the relationship really only exists due to the neediness of the bloke (David Wood) who appears to be more like a hit man than a jaded and ill journalist.  Emotional blackmail, psychological manipulation and violence reign.  And we, as audience, just want to better understand why these two are actually together in the ‘tinderbox’ of a generic hotel room.

As the work progresses it becomes a vastly more extensive study of ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’   Nothing is sacred and it speaks of deep primitive masculine drives towards brutal sexual violence.  

Kane seems to be trying to investigate the masculine need (of some men) to sexually abuse.  Through this play we see just how perceptive she was and how she is able to shed light on dark and irrevocably entangled behavior.  She was extraordinary in her capacity to delve into the deep and subliminal and bring it up, into the light, to be examined.

One must pay homage to Eloise Mignon, David Wood and Fayssal Bazzi.  Their capacity and courage, as actors, to work with the intimacy and trust required to truthfully communicate their characters experiences is astonishing.

Sound by Jethro Woodward is superb, particularly in the very early stages when it is melodic and bell like and when silenced; it leaves in its wake an aching sense of palpable yearning. 

This is one of those gems of theatre that we so often hope to find but very seldom do.

Five stars from me!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - The House of Bernarda Alba

Melbourne Theatre Company presents

The House of Bernarda Alba

Adapted by Patricia Cornelius

After Frederico Garcia Lorca

Director – Leticia Caceres

Set and Costume Designer – Marg Horwell

Lighting Designer – Rachel Burke

Composer - Irene Vela

Sound Designer – Jethro Woodward

Stage Manager – Jess Keepence

Cast

Marti – Candy Bowers,

Angela – Peta Brady

Penelope – Julie Forsyth

Magda – Bessie Holland

Maria – Sue Jones

Bernadette – Melita Jurisic

Adele - Emily Milledge

Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio

25 May – 7 July 2018

Adapting this work to a contemporary Australian environment is brave and ambitious.  The result is a challenging, absorbing and resonant offering - though not without dissonance. 

Poet Frederico Garcia Lorca’s classic play The House of Bernarda Alba set in rural Spain of the 1930s is adapted for the Australian stage by Patricia Cornelius as commissioned by Melbourne Theatre Company and director, then Associate Artistic Director, Leticia Caceres.

Cornelius sets her version in Western Australia; one assumes the Pilbara, with all this implies.  This is not an austere stylized piece of Museum Theatre but a vital, robust, demanding, entertaining and at times amusing work.

Although the narrative runs along Lorca’s original trajectory the perspective is altered by the contemporary setting.  Here the grieving wife of a deceased mining mogul, bails her four daughters up in the family home for eight untenable weeks of mourning, as opposed to eight years.  

Cornelius’s Bernarda, Bernadette (Melita Jurisic), unflinchingly with passionless brutality demands complete control of her empire.  She will not tolerate insurgence.  The result is acutely relatable to, and very thorny - though not without incongruities and inconsistencies.  Often, it is these rifts that generate shifts in interpretation and elucidate more complex understandings of the violence of the repressive oppression we are witnessing. 

The set, by Marg Horwell, suggests breezeways that are open to the elements of the vast ancient landscape beyond.   Sound by Jethro Woodward enhances the environment and brings connection to the exterior world.  And Musical Composition by Irene Vela augments, with the impressive functionality of, assisting the forward motion of the story.

A lengthy hour and forty-five minutes passes remarkably quickly.  

A contemporary casting, in that the mix of contrasting physicality, further amplifies the individuality of the feisty albeit suppressed women that are Bernadette’s daughters.  This amalgam of inspired performers that don’t completely match is indicative of large family of strong and unique individuals.

Peta Brady plays the eldest daughter, Angela.   With a small tense body she physicalizes Angela’s vulnerability and sensitivity to having her self-esteem wracked by circumstances and the mercilessness of her mother.   And then, visa versa, she responds to flattery and support by, tangibly, opening out and gaining physical status.

Marti the middle child played by Candy Bowers appears more padded by siblings on either side and less at immediate risk of her mother’s ire and more of a conduit for the wellbeing of her sisters.  The glowing Magda (Bessie Holland) carries a secret of epic proportions that engenders hope but horrifies her mother.  Sue Jones as the failing, victimized grandmother Maria releases some of the oppressive tension with her marvelously realized senile seer.

Emily Milledge fashions the youngest and most defiant daughter Adele with a dangerous soupcon of shamelessness.

As cold-blooded matriarch Bernadette, Jurisic, conveys a woman with a life underpinned by fear and ambivalence.  She is determined that her household will remain respectable. But her brand of respectability lacks heart or compassion.   She has an inflated sense of her own importance that begets isolation.  Respectability demands repression.  No one is safe in this environment where deception lurks everywhere because too much is suppressed.  Ironically forcing her daughters to deny their carnal natures backfires horribly within and without the house.   

Julie Forsyth with her impeccable comic timing opens proceedings and sets the scene as a kind or chorus commenting on the funeral with liberal dashing of lurid lascivious gluttony.  She shines throughout.

In the ‘land of plenty’ where this family lives - arrogance, greed and dominion assures there is not enough ‘to go around.’

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again

Image by Pia Johnson

Revolt.  She Said.  Revolt Again.

By Alice Birch

Directed by Janice Muller

Set and Costume Design - Marg Horwell

Lighting Design - Emma Valente

Sound, Composition and AV Design - James Brown

Stage Manager – Tia Clarke

Cast:  Elizabeth Esguerra, Ming-Zhu Hii, Belinda McClory, Gareth Reeves and Sophie Ross.

Malthouse

Merlyn Theatre

16 June – 9 July

This is vital Theatre - the type that demands you think and feel at the same time. 

The first three scenes are staged in a box that is neat and contained and used to denote several indoor settings.  There is much to laugh about in each of these incidents.  In all three we get to witness a perfectly rational and charming young woman speaking from a perspective that completely destabilizes very deep-rooted social moors around sex, marriage and work.  Words are used to describe what is generally unspoken and, in fact, largely unacknowledged. 

Image by Pia Johnson

Later this box-like space is disrupted, one could even say violated.  It ultimately becomes troublesome and even aggressively hostile itself in the chaotic and large space of the whole stage of the Merlyn. 

Director Janice Muller’s management of the material is marvelously effective and Marg Horwell’s intuitive design of set and costumes complementary and enhancing.  Everything moves quickly and effectively with great energy.

What starts out as a clear coherent disruption of the sex act (Sophie Ross and Gareth Reeves), a marriage proposal (Gareth Reeves and Ming-Zhu Hii)  and a boss - worker relationship (Belinda McCory and Elizabeth Esguerra) becomes a masterfully managed crazy collage of ideas and allusions.   Although I am not sure how many of these are consciously graspable.  

Then comes a description of a woman stripping in a supermarket isle  and lying on the floor amongst a messy slather of destroyed watermelons, ready to willingly accept any violation.   Things feel as though they have gone too far – as though we as women have accepted/allowed too much.

Stunning performances from actors who touch emotional chords in us even in the crazy messiest moments of the staging of the most anarchic parts of this work.

Belinda McCory gives a very striking performance as the brittle character of the female boss who just cannot make it easier for the young worker (Elizabeth Esguerra) to live a more balanced life.  She is also curiously disturbing as the inadequately mothered, inadequate mother of a desperately troubled child.  This scene looks at the tragedy of unhappy and unsuccessful mothering, disrupting any notion that all women are cut out to be mothers.

As audience I laughed a lot but also felt a cliff hanging sense of futility and experienced a distress akin to being plunged into a bottomless pit of desperation.  But all is not in vein and somehow after feeling that one has been pulled backwards through a bramble bush and left out to dry there is a highly cathartic reward of recognition. 

It feels like another step on the journey to find and connect with a truly ‘feminine’ voice.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Animal

Animal

Created by Susie Dee, Kate Sherman and Nicci Wilks

Director - Susie Dee

Performers – Kate Sherman and Nicci Wilks

Composer – Kelly Ryall

Designer – Marg Horwell

Lighting Designer – Andy Turner

Projected Text and Dramaturgy – Angus Cerini

Producer – Adam Fawcett

Theatre Works – St Kilda

17 to 27 November 2016

Susie Dee, Kate Sherman and Nicci Wilks, with the assistance of Angus Cerini, have had the courage to delve into the murky depths, and usually hidden experience, of the insidious damage of abuse.  Marvelously they have extracted a poignant poetic essence.  And with the help of an exemplary production team are sublimely communicating this to audiences.  

Designer Marg Howell has created what looks like a found space and made Theatre Works feel cavernous.  It is fitted out, like a huge shed, with metal encased water tanks.  There is a sense of being in the country feathers are littered and float about and a kind of angel bell is ringing.  Two young barely clad women are perched near the rafters like featherless birds with clipped wings who are unable to escape and destined to an existence of ‘acting out’.  Imagery abounds and so do semiotics.

Composed sound (Kelly Ryall) is often effectively loud at times, and at some points appropriately disturbingly overwhelming.

Animal interprets the tragic effects of the internalized response to abuse.   It is not the experience of being violated we witness.  It is the resulting carnage that is expressed through the exceptional work of performers/co-creators Kate Sherman and Nicci Wilks.  The ordeal is relived again and again.   A huge energetic expression of trauma is exhibited through their strong vigorous physical performances.

Wilks is extraordinary in her capacity to morph into an innocent child.  Evidently the abuse, this work is most particularly looking at, is the sexual abuse of young girls.  This aspect of victimization is depicted as children dancing in a ‘sexy’ way for someone.  There is a weary desperation in this dance, a sense of fretful apprehension.  It is evident that their aim to please is marked with a deep fear and a kind of defeated resignation.

The perpetrator is absent, but his presence is palpable.  He is rendered an absent shadowy figure – a larger than life specter that will always haunt.  His victims may have murdered him, however if this is the case, it is to no or very little avail.  His dark presence looms larger than life.

All roads seem to lead to a bottomless pit of psychological pain.  This devastation is expressed with amazing clarity in a kind of helpless, hapless stillness.

The abstracted roles these two women play interchange between victim and bystander, inferring an unavoidable situation.   They take on dresses – guises.  There are two distinctly different costumes one indicates more kudos the other outright victim status.  Although throughout there is a shared victimhood and a strong sense of sisterhood even when they attack each other.   They express an extraordinary intimacy through shared experience.

One discussion I had in the foyer likened the work to The Boys (the film adaptation by Stephen Sewell).  However it is not so much the horrifying edge of threat we witness, as audience, but the overwhelmingly demoralizing results of violation.  It is not frightening but enlightening.

Also in the foyer while I was half listening in to someone telling me it didn’t make them feel anything, I was observing a woman struggle with her tears.  Responses will by mixed.

This is such a gutsy challenging work – so worth catching – we will be talking about it for years.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Shit

Dee & Cornelius Presents

SHIT

By Patricia Cornelius

25 June – 5 July 2015

Southbank Theatre, The Lawler

Director Susie Dee

Set and Costume Designer - Marg Horwell

Lighting Designer – Rachel Burke

Sound Designer - Anna Liebzeit

Producer – Ebony Bott

Performed by – Peta Brady, Sarah Ward, Nicci Wilks

Shit is a vivid and vital work.  A vivid and vital work that is almost uncanny in its capacity to reveal the perpetuating triggers that activate generational carnage in our growing underclass.  It is as though the essence of naturalism has been distilled and refined to highlight the plights of three characters who are very ‘close to the wire’.  And in turn it is presented with a clarity that allows us to touch on the roots of emotion and motivation.  It is like a sharp knife scraping the flesh off the bone and exposing something that is too raw to be fully comprehended.  Cornelius’s insights offer a rarefied satisfaction akin to reveling in the abject. 

Peta Brady, Nicci Wilks and Sarah Ward
Photo -  Sebastian Bourges

Shit is about three ‘forsaken’ women.  Three women who have been brutalized from the onset who have only seen glimmering moments of kindness who support and antagonize each other in their shared wretchedness and viciously defensive vulnerability. 

For the broader community it presents a very sad indictment on what we tacitly accept what is happening in the ever-growing underbelly of our communities.  It is also, at times, heartwarming and poignant as it signposts avenues for healing through consistent caring for the very young at least. 

The raw emotion expressed by the actors seems to be barely modified from what one would witness on the streets – but we are watching a refined work of art.

The writing is poetic and vital and is matched so skillfully with beautifully choreographed Physical Theatre and a dash of instinctive magic and insight from Director Susie Dee.

 Peta Brady, Nicci Wilks and Sarah Ward
Photo -  Sebastian Bourges

Something Dickensian is brought out through Dee’s in the direction and a conveyance of how the brutality of surviving has created/modified character.  All three actors (Peta Brady, Sarah Ward, Nicci Wilks) express their characters emotional damage through a kind of stunted physicality and posture as well as in grotesque facial expressions and Cornelius’s carefully chosen words.  Arms are held threatening out from the body and muscles are continually being flexed.   We are engaged on kinesthetic and emotional levels in the desperation and turmoil that each character feels.  Watching these convincing characters on stage offers a remove and a chance to think a bit and try to understand.  And perhaps whisper ‘but for the grace of God?’

The set by Marg Horwell could be some underground tunnel such as the old tunnels at the once Spencer Street Station, they could be street windows and they could be restrictive prison cells.  And featured there is one of those huge round convex magnifying mirrors, that suggests the threat of what could be laying in wait, round the next corner.

Peta Brady, Nicci Wilks and Sarah WardPhoto -  Sebastian Bourges

Anna Leibzeit underpins with a subtly entwined soundscape that is edgy and provocative – at times sharp and disturbing.

Generally people seem to be raving about this very satisfying work.

Suzanne Sandow