Review - 100 Reasons for War

La Mama Presents

100 Reasons for War

(War, What is it Good For?)

By Tom Holloway

Directed by Bob Pavlich

Lighting Designer – Tom Willis

Lighting and Sound Operator – Julian Adams

Stage Manager – Rebecca Bassett

Costume co-ordinator – Bethany Tweedale

Set co-ordinator – Elysia Janssen

Photography – Matthew Howat

Videos made by Bethany Tweedale (Beginning of the Universe)

And Elysia Janssen (Bliss Symbolics)

Performed by Joshua Brodrick, Meghalee Bose, Walter Dyson, Marnie Henderson, Elysia Janssen, Karanvir Malhotra, Simon Nixon, David Peters, Lucy Rees, Jessica Sterck and Bethany Tweedale

La Mama

June 21 to June 25 - 2017

This production by La Trobe’s Student Theatre is most impressive and completely engaging.  Performed by eleven young adults with clarity and poise.  This is a testament to the skills of Director Bob Pavlich as a very experienced director of Student Theatre having been the Artistic Director of Student Theatre and Film at Latrobe University for 21 years. 

All performers present a lovely fresh clear presence and deliver their dialogue with lucid conviction in a comfortable uncluttered manner.  Each of these individuals is either a consummate theatre maker or very successful academic students or both. 

Eveningwear is worn as a kind of ‘blacks’ – highlighting individuality and yet fashioning a sort of uniformity at the same time.  Doubtless each audience member picks favorite players but everybody ‘stands out’ to a similar degree.

The focus flows from one featured person to another.  This allows the audience to be comfortably positioned to think about the text.  Much of which is Australian playwright Tom Holloway’s but there are some excerpts from other sources.

There is an ambiguity about how this text connects directly to war - although discord is often expressed.   Many of the duologues that follow swiftly on the heels of each other speak of self-interest and disconnectedness, disruption and pending violence.

The choice of music by Director Bob Pavlich is great and there is an extraordinary piece of animation by Bliss Symbolics that works as a kind of bookend with the initial video about to brutal beginning of the universe.  In a way it is this initial video that introduces the hypothesis that we come from a mercilessly ferocious beginning  - violence begets violence.

This season has ended and was fully booked out.

Excellent Student Theatre from La Trobe University – congratulations!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review: Beyond the Neck: A Quartet on Loss and Violence

Beyond the Neck: A Quartet on Loss and Violence by Tom Holloway. Directed by Suzanne Chaundy. Designer – Dayna Morrissey, Lighting Designer – Richard Vabre, Sound Designer – Philip McLeod. Cast: Marcus McKenzie, Philippa Spicer, Emmaline Carroll and Roger Oakley. Red Stitch until 14 April.

  

There can be no doubt that significant courage is required to work with material as deeply disturbing as the Port Arthur Massacre. And yes perhaps “To acknowledge grief is to acknowledge love.” (Director’s program notes.)

Four actors as actors frame and, as assumed characters, re-enact in disjointed monologues form incidents, in individual lives, surrounding this profoundly traumatic event. A sense of dread and danger underlies the telling that is presented as a montage, not a narrative.

We know the basic outline of what happened at Port Arthur – it is assumed knowledge. Some would have followed it intensely and have considerable insights. Some would have been touched personally to varying degrees and some touched profoundly due to experiencing traumatic life changing events.  It is volatile material that each audience member will receive uniquely.

 

Roger Oakley, a consummate actor, shines as the Old Man. He portrays a strongly crafted archetypal character with crystal clear clarity. The Old Man, true to type, finds it extremely difficult to access his subterranean emotions. Oakley is well supported by, and supportive of, the younger cast members. Philippa Spicer presents a beautiful young wife and mother with unmitigated focus. Emmaline Carroll embraces the nuances of a petulant teenager to great effect. Marcus McKenzie valiantly bridges the difficult characters of a troubled child with an imaginary friend and the somewhat ambiguously penned character of a psychopath.

The set designed by Dayna Morrissey is stunning. With its transparent, scroll like, paintings of cliff reliefs in the foreground of a mural of the coast, and the stage areas all colours of the sea. The whole suggests dark power and timelessness. Richard Vabre’s lighting is finely tuned to enhance Ms Morrissey’s work as does the initial chilling soundscape created by Philip McLeod.

All aspects of this production meld seamlessly into a whole and towards a focused culmination that still needs some delicate fine-tuning to offer the inferred release through catharsis. As the climax is approached and themes of torture and cold blooded murder converge, the counterpoint of string music does not entirely compliment and support the rhythms and intentions of the actors. It seems to negate and distract from them, undermining their potential to affect as profoundly as they could.

This rich work has much to recommend it and on opening night was received with loud affirming enthusiasm.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)