Review - Hir

Hir – Review – SSandow

Red Stitch Presents:

HIR

By Taylor Mac

Directed by Daniel Clarke

Assistant Director – Thomas Quirk

Set and Costume Design – Adrienne Chisholm

Lighting Design – Richard Vabre

Sound Design - Ian Moorhead

Cast:

Belinda McClory – Paige

Ben Grant  - Arnold

Jordan Fraser-Trumble – Isaac

Harvey Zaska-Zielinski – Max

30 January to 4 March 2018

Hir is a real shocker.  It is hugely entertaining, hysterical, disturbing, bewilderingly, disorientating, yet, satisfyingly orientating - all at the same time.  It is a timely immersion into a kitchen sink dramatization (pardon the pun) of changing social sexual mores and, as such, offers a cathartic journey for the audience. 

This play by the iconic Taylor Mac is like a hot potato – risky to handle.   It is ultra immediate and addresses the changes in gender politics and lived changes in gender that are all around us.   The personal is still political and perhaps even more so then in the early 70s.

Chaos reigns on a marvelous wacky colourful set by Adrienne Chisholm. 

Instead of maintaining the status quo and nurturing her husband Arnold (Ben Grant) after his debilitating stroke, Paige (Belinda McClory) inverts expectations of a caring wife.   She takes a frenzied ‘quasi-feminist’ route in unleashing upheaval in her family’s home.  In conjunction with this her adolescent daughter Max (Harvey Zaska-Zielinski) is swapping her gender requiring the use of hormones, the growth of facial hair and the adopting of new personal pronouns.  And Paige’s dishonorably discharged soldier son Isaac (Jordan Fraser-Trumble) returns from war, presumably in search of solace and healing, to an unrecognizable home.

Though out this romp are heaps of metaphorical rabbit holes and a number of hand grenades; some of which are thrown and some, unexpectedly, are not.  Every now and again there is a pervading sense of doom - then suddenly everything is back on track and kind of ok or a bit less ok - but making more sense.  As audience we are totally engaged with the excellent acting and twists and turns in the expose of the characters, unfolding of complications and nuances of the predicament.

Director Daniel Clarke’s casting is excellent. One can sense he and his actors have just ‘bitten the bullet’ and run with this vital volatile work.  A masterpiece of our times classily presented?  I think so!

McClory is masterful.  Her Paige subversively defies convention with, at times, the playful unreasonableness of a petulant child.   This contrasts with the weighty seriousness of old social patriarchal conventions and expectations.  We know what they are - only too well.  And we know the real and or implied violence intrinsic to maintaining these precepts.  The stakes are pretty high and at any point things could get nasty.   

Ben Grant, as the long-suffering Arnold, perceptively conveys an intellectually damaged man who is at the mercy of his pugnacious wife.   Delightfully contrasting this, at times, with a sparkle in his eye, he conveys an acute awareness of his predicament.  Moments when Grant quietly expresses Arnold’s elusive thoughts are wicked magic.

In his initial entrance Jordan Fraser-Trumble’s meth addicted damaged soldier son Isaac maybe needs to bring more of the military in with him.   However this is a bit of a quibble from me and could seem petty.   Especially because as Isaac he claims his territory beautifully in the second act.

Harvey Zaska-Zielinski’s Max is very true to type as a transgender actor in the title role.  Another quibble - I would be really interested in seeing a little more of the teenage girl in his interpretation.

There are many memorable moments in this production that suggest how we support, effect and motivate each other is central to our wellbeing.  On the whole Hir is full of compassion.  I left the auditorium with a spring in my gait and a renewed fascination with what it is, and will be, to be human.

Expect this show to sell out quickly.

Delightfully, the opening night evening commenced with Mama Alto singing sultry love songs in the Red Stitch courtyard.  Very special!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Song for a Weary Throat

Song for a Weary Throat

By Rawcus

Director – Kate Sulan

Designer – Emily Barrie

Lighting Designer – Richard Vabre

Musical Direction & Composition – Jethro Woodward and Gain Slater

Sound Designer – Jethro Woodward

Director Invenio Singers – Gian Slater

Devised and Performed by The Rawcus Ensemble and Invenio Singers

Theatre Works

29 November – 10 December 2017

Rawcus’ work brings together talented dancers/performers of various abilities is so seamlessly it is marvelous. 

In Song for a Weary Throat, proceedings commence with a chalk inscription being written on the blackboard of the set.  A dark, desperate and overwhelming precedent is set.  What ensues as sound is initially quite shocking (warning – loud noise).  This morphs into an amazing music featuring the exquisite voices of Invenio Singers. 

I would so love to have this celestial music as a re-playable sound track by artisans Jethro Woodward and Gain Slater.

An evocative liminal space is established in Theatre Works.  An atmospheric dark brooding neo-classical design with a bacchanalian feel and a rubbish heap is design by Emily Barry and lit by Richard Vabre.

Like a difficult, dogged and slowly stifling dream, individuals and groups of, performers suddenly change positioning again.  Then - they dance or don’t dance as mood or attitude takes them.  Exquisitely touching and undeniably sad and tormented relationships and tableaux are shifted and danced in and out of.  Timing is of the essence and often stunningly split second.  

Although presented with generosity and wonder this work talks of self-obsession, exhaustion and mean spiritedness.  However it is apparently about hope and this sentence, that speaks volumes, from the insightful Rebecca Solnit is quoted by director Kate Sulan in the program:  “Power comes from the shadows and the margins…Hope is the dark around the edges.”

The 6o minutes of Song for a Weary Throat is a deep and entrancing cathartic journey through an all-enveloping all too human lethargy.   And yet everyone does dance, and, for the audience there is the intrinsic delight of watching many and varied styles of individual self -expression. 

A rich and haunting work.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - For The Ones Who Walk Away

St Martins Presents

For the Ones Who Walk Away

Concept and Direction – Nadja Kostich

Text – Ursula K.LeGuin, Daniel Keene and the St Martins ensemble

Associate Director – Luke Kerridge

Dramaturgy and Video Design – Michael Carmody

Composition and Sound Design - Jethro Woodward

Set and Costume Design – Emily Barry

Lighting Design – Richard Vabre

Associate Artists:  Stefan Bramble, Kat Cornwell, Harriet Devlin, Lyndsay Marsden, Katy Maudlin, Joana Pires, Ahmarnya Price, Gabriel Collie and Jo Dunbar

This work is for an active audience – one that is thoughtful and keen to find and make meaning. 

All the child participants work sublimely as a team. An extraordinary sense interconnected community is created through the amalgam of a big group of kids with varying skill and abilities, working together as small groups with strong messages, then as a huge cooperative where there is minimal digression – a neutrality. 

Symbols such as flower petals, rocks, strips of newspaper and feathers encourage thought processes to drift to subliminal levels.  These simple objects also act to interlink the individual stories and the driving ideas that are communicated in a number of classroom size performance spaces. 

My plus one and I only really experienced four spaces fully.  (I think there might be ten or more.)   It is not a theatrical experience that can be rushed through.  The only way to see it all would be to go twice or more.  I’m tempted but perhaps part of its charm is this illusory quality.

In our first room the offering was beautiful crystal clear storytelling from a young female performer dressed in flower petals and lit through a sort of birdcage grid.  She talked of a dark space were a child is detained in fear.  Our initial guide was one of three young women who sang beautifully as they restricted the narrator with restraints attached to her costume.

As it was the first work I saw it felt very pivotal to the whole.   However I there is an interconnectivity linking all of the separate works that surely render them all pivotal to some degree.  This is a huge testament to Artistic Director Nadja Kostich and her production team and particularly design by Emily Barrie where costume morphs into set and visa versa and holds integrated and essential meaning.

Our second room was about choices and particularly choices that require some examination of ethical thought.   As with St Martin’s most recent show Banjos, Boots & Beyonce we the audience are encouraged to participate -to find ourselves cooperating and engaging in a prescribed exercise.  This is fun and absorbing.  And I believe Associate Artist Stefan Bramble is to be complimented for this engaging, thought provoking, experience.

I am reminded of the writing of Isobelle Carmody - specifically her book of plays Way Out.  And in a room with talented musicians playing as stones were placed on a girl’s body the story ‘Singing my Sister Down’ by Margo Lanagan from her short story collection Black Juice.

One of the scenes/stories is seemingly about a child being pushed (by her mother) to public objectification.  This portrayal of ‘child as art’ turns the performance on itself and creates a kind of Meta thinking about the whole.  All that we are experiencing is, from a Youth Arts Centre, that, on it’s web home page states: Art by children for adult audiences.

For the Ones Who Walk Away is a haunting experience.  Perhaps, partly, because it is presented from the perspective of a the assumed innocence with which we endow children.  One of the things that stayed with me is searching looks from performers that questioned what I, as audience, was gleaning or understanding.

A heightened poetic language is particularly evident in the third and final section where we are all gathered together as spectators.  Ursula Le Guin’s poetic truncated language permeates the whole with a sense of struggle to create meaning from what has come before.

In the last ten minutes I could imagine myself in a hive of bees and the building of Siteworks a beehive.

All in all exciting and challenging contemporary Theatre.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - John

Melbourne Theatre Company Presents

John

By Annie Barker

Directed by Sarah Goodes

Set and Costume Designer - Elizabeth Gadsby

Lighting Designer - Richard Vabre

Composer and Sound – Russell Goldsmith

Cast

Elias Schreiber-Hoffman – Johnny Carr

Genevieve Marduck  - Melita Jurisic

Jenny Chung – Ursula Mills

Mertis Katherine Graven – Helen Morse

Art Centre -Fairfax Theatre

10 February – 25 March 2017

Ursula Mills, Johnny Carr and Helen Morse - photo Jeff Busby

The Fairfax Theatre opens out to embrace the audience and bring them into the intimate workings of four complex individuals.  It is a great venue for this fascinating, intriguing and enigmatic work. 

The domestic setting by designer Elizabeth Gadsby, of an all-purpose living room for guests, is busy with clashing yet strangely simpatico décor.  Like a fifth idiosyncratic character the set is acutely integral to the unfolding of the story.  At times it is also used to add dashes of magic realism.

A young unmarried couple, Jenny (Ursula Mills) and Elias (Johnny Carr) come to stay at a Bed and Breakfast in Gettysburg Pennsylvania.  It would appear the reason they’re there is because Elias had a great interest in the American Civil War as a lad.  There is considerable stress in the couple’s relationship and things aren’t running smoothly for them. 

The environment is quaint and quirky and their mature and delicate hostess, Mertis played by Helen Morse a little odd.  She seems to have an uncanny control of eventualities – but does she?

Annie Barker is a much-lauded playwright.  To date she has written and had produced seven highly regarded works.  Melbourne audiences may remember Circle Mirror Transformation, with which, Melbourne Theatre Company introduced us to her.  Then fast on it’s heals Red Stitch produced Aliens directed most skillfully by Nadia Tass.  Red Stitch also produced her more recent play Flick to considerable acclaim.

Ursula Mills, Helen Morse and Johnny Carr - Photo Jeff Busby

John takes naturalism to an extreme.  It’s characters function in as close to real time as possible.  Although it is slow the audience is perpetually on ‘tender hooks’ searching for and making meaning.  In all, it generates a rich sense of humanity, compassion and kindheartedness.

What is this play ultimately about?   It is a work about living and about intimacy, sticky interactions, tolerance, acceptance, patience and self-reflection - to name the most obvious things. It looks at varying degrees of deception, self-deception and collusions and it confronts the niggling and uncomfortable.  It also touches on the mysticism and superstition we use to frame and understand the day-to-day mysteries and uncertainties in our lives.

Over all the characterization is glorious.  Johnny Carr is virtually unrecognizable as Elias.   His Elias has a big, almost uncontainable, presence.  He has masses of hair and a slightly uneasy and irritated demeanor.  As actor he masterfully renders himself unrecognizable. 

Helen Morse creates a wonderful quizzical and wholly believable Mertis Katherine Craven or Kitty - so down to earth and yet bemusingly evanescent.  Morse is so deeply ‘in the moment’ that Mertis is marvelously convincing.

Melita Jurisic brings her own unique magic and ages by at least twenty years to delight us with the blind but wise Genevieve Marduck.

Ursula Mills play the seemingly straight -forward Jenny beautifully.  The lack of artifice in her characterization seems to render her the pivotal character.  This tends me toward the feeling that John is at its heart a young woman’s story.

Mysterious and subtle and not so subtle light changes (Richard Vavre) accentuate some of the strange and weird atmospheres and eventualities.

Johnny Carr, Helen Morse, and Melita Jurisic - Photo Jeff Busby

The sound (Russell Goldsmith) is mostly constituted of upbeat classical music that I suspect is heavily prescribed by Ms. Barker.

They (whoever they are) say it is the sign of an artist to be able to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.  This is definitely what Annie Barker achieves and she finds joy and a kind of redemption in the troubled and troubling minutia of life.

Four and a half stars.

Suzanne Sandow