Review - A Sonatina

The Victorian Arts Centre Presents

A Sonatina

By

A Teatret Gruppe 38 production

Cast: Bodil Alling, Christian Glahn, Søren Søndberg

Directors: Bodil Alling, Ole Sørensen


Set designer: Claus Helbo


Composer: Søren Søndberg

Arts Centre

12 and 13 November 2016

This marvelous show is full of surprises, the first one being, where we are taken to, to become an audience. Like going down a rabbit hole both physically and metaphorically, down, down we go into the bowels of the Arts Centre to a rehearsal room.  This disorientation surely helps the viewer to be more available and receptive.  

Once the audience is settled after our very physical decent - the work opens with the narrator/storyteller Bodil Alling (an older woman with lovely messed up grey hair) getting things ready for a chicken to welcome the audience.  This is so funny and ridiculous, but also kind of believable as Alling is working with a particularly chatty chook who is comfortable and obviously very well cared for.

A Sonatina is set in and around a glorious little truck with a sort of olden-day trades person’s tray.   This is a very clever arrangement that houses not only the chook, particularly for egg laying, but other props as well, including, a double barreled shot gun.  Well the gun is - fortunately only a figment of imagination that never actually appears.  However through its absence it speaks volumes about the created relationships of the performer’s characters.

The crux of the show is the telling of the Little Red Riding-Hood Fairy Tale with rustic quirky props and musical accompaniment on a double base and trumpet. 

It is a delightful, deep, funny and sometimes dark offering.  Like the good telling of a Fairytale the whole performance holds secrets and inexplicable logic and a weird sort of darkness the feels dream like.  Then of course - it all comes out all right in the end.  And it is presented with a dry wry sense of humour and irony that enriches.  At the same time this ensures children are not talked down to or patronized but rather taken on an unexpected adventure.

Full marks to the Arts Centre for bringing us this rich inspirational cultural exchange from a world class Danish Children’s Theatre Company.

And I have to say this fabulous children’s show took me back to a time when there was interesting Street Theatre being presented in Melbourne –particularly around at the time of the Melbourne Festival when it was called Spoletto.  Culturally we could surely do with more of this.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Blaque Showgirls

Blaque Showgirls

By Nakkiah Lui

Directed by Sarah Giles

Cast:

Molly – Emi Canavan

Chandon Connors – Elaine Connors

Ginny Jones – Bessie Holland

Kyle MacLachlan/True Love Interest – Guy Simon

Dramaturg – Declan Greene

Contributing Dramaturg – Louise Gough

Set and Costume Design - Eugueene Teh

Lighting Design – Paul Jackson

Composition and Sound Design - Jed Palmer

Merlyn Theatre – Malthouse

11November to 4 December 2016

Blaque Showgirls is a unique, timely, riveting work that is not for the faint hearted.  It is raucous, lewd, crude and ridiculously funny, politically very dodgy and out there.  Depending on one’s sensibility, it is perhaps a little destabilizing and disconcerting. 

Nakkiah Lui, who is also a writer on Black Comedy  or the ABC, writes a satire that is based in the fluid social milieu in which we live.  It plays with notions of performativity and constructs.  For example; if sex is performed and gender a construct could race also be seen as a construct.  Are all three constructs?   Have we commodified them, all three?

The whole is like a big narrative skit with loads of smaller skits that leave one with the feeling that ‘whities’ in our community will never really let minorities and particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders reach and maintain unfettered independent agency.

It talks about exploitation and appropriation and comes to surprising conclusions. 

All performers are impressive.  As Ginny Jones, Bessie Holland, a girl on a quest to be come a Show Girl like she believed her mother once was, presents a delightful mix of girlish determination, ruthlessness and vulnerability.   She is as controlling and manipulative but innocent and righteous.

Guy Simon impresses as Kyle MacLachlan and True Love Interest.  As with his work as the title role in MTC’s recent production of Jasper Jones Simon brings clean focus and a lovely fresh energy.

Direction seems to be totally appropriate to the material.  However it needs to be said, looking at the names of the extremely accomplished production crew, it is a pity that more aboriginal creatives are not part of this team.

If you have been engaged or fascinated by or enjoying Black Comedy on the ABC this is a main stage theatre performance for you.  Or if you want to keep up to date with changing mores from a ‘black’ pen

on contemporary racial politics and the commodification of culture it is well worth catching.

Warning it is provocative - you could be offended - my plus one was.

Suzanne Sandow
(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Deceptive Threads

Bowerbird Theatre presents

Deceptive Threads

Devisor/Performer – David Joseph

Devisor/Director – Karen Berger

Projections Design – Joe Scoglio and Hisham Twfiqi

Lighting Design – Bronwyn Pringle

Set Consultant – David Murphy

Sound Design – David Joseph and Karen Berger

45 Downstairs

9 to 20 November 2016

Deceptive Threads depicts aspects of the comprehensively researched family, and lived personal, history of David Joseph.  It is an exquisitely crafted piece of theatre made by a number of exceptionally skilled practitioners and seamlessly linked with insightful direction by Karen Berger.   

As a sincere, genuine, moving work, full of heart and integrity, it brings with it strong and timely messages about attitudes to migrants and refugees.

David Joseph, a delightfully personable performer, executes short vignettes of several characters from his heritage, most particularly his paternal and maternal grandfathers.  The first of whom was a Lebanese refugee and the second a Tivoli artiste and ASIO spy.

It is not so much a narrative as a collaged collection of memories, facts and emotional responses.  As Joseph slips from one character or scenario to another, the telling is continued with beautifully orchestrated multi-media.  This is masterfully realized through the projecting of historical ephemera, by Zoe Scoglio and Hisham Tawfiqi, onto a wonderful variety of objects on the set.   Sound design by Joseph and Berger fits ‘hand in glove’ with visuals. 

This show is expressive, even-handed, well tuned, tightly timed, oozes humanity and integrates a light humorous touch. 

The whole culminates in some masterful drumming by David Joseph.

As a self devised work is engaging and satisfying and would be particularly useful and interesting for VCE Drama Students and as inspiration for those who create their own work.

As this production settles in and timing becomes more relaxed it will doubtless gain in nuance.

Suzanne Sandow
(For Stage Whispers)

Review - White Day Dream

White Day Dream

Presented by

Weave Movement Theatre  

& Yumi Umiumare

Direction and Choreography – Yumi Umiumare

Composition and Sound Design – Dan West

Stage Design – Jennifer Tran

Lighting Design – Richard Vabre

Media Art – Bambang N Karim

Co-devised and performed by:

David Baker, Willow J Conway, Tim Crafti, Trevor Dunn, Janice Florence, Emma J Hawkins, Melanie Keely, Greg Muir, Ryan New, Emma Norton, Leisa Prowd, Anthony Riddell

Weave Artistic Director – Janice Florence

Production Manager – Rose Godde

45 Downstairs

27 October to 6 November 2016

Intrinsic to White Day Dream is a whimsical set by Jennifer Tran made almost entirely of white plastic shopping bags, in fact the plastic bags extend to the auditorium.  They are a marvelous canvas and make great props. 

Photo by Paul Dunn

Throughout there is a pervading atmosphere of magic realism that owes much to masterfully lighting by Richard Vabre.  One feels suspended in a dream that ebbs and flows through a variety of visceral changing realities.  Sound design and composition by Dan West adroitly assists the audience to move with the shifting themes.  And Media Art by Bambang N Karim enhances with special magic, meanings and vivid colour. 

Performers, who are all very obviously finding deep joy and satisfaction in entertaining, are totally focused, and work as a supportive team.  ‘Weave Movement Theatre’ members wow the audience with their courage and commitment.  Performers in wheelchairs play their parts beautifully and fluidly without self-consciousness.

 

Wonderful combinations of shapes and sizes and abilities are mixed seamlessly to make very moving comments, most memorably, about connection and acceptance.

Photo by Paul Dunn

Trevor Dunn mellifluously voices an intriguing poem, of the same name as the shows title, by Anthony Riddell.

The three guest artists are stunning and bring unique artistry.  Willow J Conway’s presence is cheeky, jaunty, delightfully wistful and deeply imbued with sincerity.  Tim Crafti’s dancing is a fluid and pivotal glue.  His sinuously twisting extensions are fascinating to watch.  Emma J Hawkings charms her audience with her lithe graceful athleticism and engaging warm expressiveness.   

Yumi Umiumare with her own special brand of Butoh as Director/Chorographer is very even-handed and, I would suggest, liberating for her cast.  She is an inspiring Artist.  White Day Dream is at times deeply affecting and moving and often funny and jubilant.   There are also contrasting motifs imbued with a sense of pending danger and troubling darkness – a hallmark of Butoh. 

In all, it flows and floats like an ambiguous yet affecting dream.  Part satirical cabaret, part wacky Russian Ballet, sideshow, mime show and surreal painting – a riveting and gloriously successful show in combining artists who have a wide-ranging variety of abilities with sensitivity and unerring dignity.  It is an acutely joyful and affirming work - full of wonder.  And yes there is a lot you can do with a white shopping bag.

Photo by Paul Dunn

Don’t miss this one it is a treat! 

The show to book for would be the last one on Sunday the 6^th as it is to be Auslan interpreted (Auslan Stage Left) and Audio described.  There will also be a Tactile Tour prior to this show at 4pm.

There is wheelchair access at 45 Downstairs but it does require entering round be back of the building and a bit of a journey down laneways.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)