Review - Lone

Lone

Presented by The Rabble and St Martins

Creators - Emma Valente & Kate Davis
Set & Costume Designer - Kate Davis
Lighting & Sound Designer - Emma Valente
Artistic Associate - Katrina Cornwell
Producer - Tahni Froudist
Production Managers - Rebecca Etchell &Gwen Gilchrist
Stage Manager - Cassandra Fumi
Performers, Creators & Designers
Clea Carney, Abigail Fisher, Ashanti Joy, Remy Lawlor, Ave Maui, Lola Morgan, Griffin Murray-Johnston, Raven Okello, Jackson Reid, Thomas Taylor & Frankie Wilcox

Arts House – North Melbourne Town Hall

8 – 17 June 2018

Due to its unique and somewhat provocative nature and very limited number of tickets Lone is likely to be a difficult to catch during its short season at Arts House.   

This work is partly a legacy of Clare Watson, the previous artistic director of St Martins, who commissioned The Rabble (Emma Valente and Kate Davis) to create and develop it in conjunction with young theatre makers from St Martins Youth Theatre.  Lone is about being alone/lonely that is clearly described as work for an adult audience and is part of St Martins thrust to create ‘Art.’

In each of eleven small rooms, the size of a garden shed, one of eleven child performers and one audience member experience around 30 minutes together. 

When I entered the small space, as the light within in went on, I wondered where to place myself - feeling cumbersome and awkward and wanting what would be most conducive for the young actor lying, as if asleep, on the floor.  I sat on the stool by the door not wanting to create discomfort by invading personal space.  I hoped I was being an appropriately supportive audience and was close enough to engage.  I had been told all the girls, (and hopefully boys as well), had a whistle around their necks and a healthy number of support persons were hovering around the performance spaces - in the unlikely event of assistance being required. 

Everything is white.  The child is surrounded by white flowers – both on the floor and hanging around the small space.  Delicately with committed focused concentration she works with the flowers and other accouterments and finally makes a spell to work magic that invokes colour.   Subsequently she talks about individual taste and her sense of isolation due to contrasting preferences. 

We communicate on a small note pad with a black texta partly, I guess, because I’m wearing headphones which envelope me in ambient sound.  It is a lovely light interaction.  Ultimately the child leaves me ‘a-lone’ in the room - to meditate on the experience?  Charmingly and politely she utters;  “It was nice to meet you,” as she departs.

The gentle sensory aspects of the experienced remind me of the workshop I had done last year with the UK troupe Bamboozle at the Melbourne Arts Centre.  They work with children who have disabilities so there performances are intimate, sensory and tactile. 

This comparison leaves me thinking - I would love to know how, children would enjoy being entertained by their contemporaries.  And having worked extensively with children and drama I am very aware of just how clever and fascinating they can be as creators and performers.  When encouraged they can have this marvelous sense of self and self-assurance.  Often the trickiest thing is getting them to forget their own fabulous ideas and engage genuinely with the ideas of others and be critical and supportive audiences to each other.

Lone is an exhilarating, heady and heartening work that portends well for St Martins current exciting trajectory.

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 - De Stroyed

De Stroyed

Based on a number of books and writings by Simone de Beauvoir including La Femme rompue/The Woman Destroyed.

Director/Co-creator – Suzanne Chaundy

Performer/Co-creator – Jillian Murray

Video Artist – Zoe Scoglio

Composer – Christopher de Groot

Production Manager/Lighting Designer – Andy Turner

Stage Manager – Lachlan O’Connor

AV Technician – Andre Vanderwert

45 Downstairs

16 – 27^th May 2018

Jillian Murray and Suzanne Chaundy have created a beautifully refined work based on their personal responses to some of the acute realizations of Simone de Beauvoir as expressed through her writing.   The themes seem, most pertinently, about the deep pain of betrayal in a marriage and some shifts in sense of personal power and vulnerability experienced through aging.   

Video Artist Zoe Scoglio and Composer Christopher de Groot sensitively and expertly support Murray’s delivery of the text.  Through video Murray’s face is penetratingly examined again and again.  This metaphorically mirrors the way Beauvoir examined her own thoughts, emotions and understandings. 

De Stroyed is staged as a static work dependent on the beautifully modulated and very clear vocal skills of Murray and the projected images on the simple white screens that surround her.  These could be viewed as the empty white pages of a book.

De Stroyed will probably be best appreciated by audiences who have some knowledge of Beauvoir, arguably one of the most brilliant Philosophers of the 20^th century.  However my plus one thoroughly enjoyed this production as a tantalizing introduction to her writing and is now very keen to read more.

At the very least this engrossing work pays rich homage to Simone de Beauvoir and her life examined.  It offers devotees of, and those interested in, this extraordinary woman, a very fine opportunity to reflect on some of her profound and illuminating insights.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - The Bleeding Tree

The Bleeding Tree

Written by

Angus Cerini

Director - Lee Lewis

Composer - Steve Toulmin

Designer - Renée Mulder

Lighting Designer - Verity Hampson

Cast

Paula Arundell, Brenna Harding, Sophie Ross

Fairfax Studio

15 – 19 May 2018

At the heart of The Bleeding Tree is the question of why, as neighbours and friends, do we turn a blind eye to the perpetration of domestic violence.  It is an extraordinary work of ‘high art,’ with rich integrity.  Superb craftsmanship is skillfully fused together by Director Lee Lewis.

The Bleeding Tree commences with an abrupt change of atmosphere, brutally, bringing the audience into the pitiless world of a desperate story.

I’m not giving away any secrets by quoting the press release:  “The only issue now is disposing of the body.”  This tells us there has been a death, but what happens next is pretty wild, wacky and unexpected.  The production is darkly imbued with an Australian Gothic sensibility. 

Three women portray, a Mother (Paula Arundell), and, her two daughters (Brenna Harding and Sophie Ross) who live on a desolate and fairly isolated country property.  We witness a grim and gruesome incident perpetrated by the Mother.   Subsequently as events unfold we better understand the cause and the overall situation.   We are perhaps not inclined to judge, as there seems to be, little room, or need, for remorse or regret.

The story is told partly through the stilted personal language of the three women and partly through the voices of visiting neighbours.   The girl’s responses to, and sharp asides about, these intrusions, are very telling.

Writer Angus Cerini’s poetic language, that at times even rhymes, does much to create atmosphere and convey the intimacy of the relationship between the three.  When just talking amongst themselves they use a kind of stilted abbreviated language.   This also suggests isolation.   Indeed, these three women have been isolated by a powerful, controlling man.

The acting is superb and all three actors are deeply convincing as they represent the essence of what it is to be relentlessly tormented and afraid of ferocious violence. 

Each also takes on personas of visiting men to startling effect.  Paula Arundell most particularly displays extraordinary vocal versatility in speaking as a rough but caring bloke.  It is easy to she why she is a Helpmann recipient for this performance.  She shines but so do Harding and Ross as they very convincingly embody young girls.

Cerini’s words paint strikingly vivid and memorable visual imagery.

Lighting (Verity Hampson) at times bright and at others shadowy endows the story with added dimension.

Designer Renee Mulder has stripped everything back.   The three actors work on a bare stage, which is partially raised in tiers and painted with a floral carpet like design.  The costuming feels timeless and is perhaps indicative of the 1950s or 60s or 80s.   The two young girls have that grubby look of neglected or indeed abused children.

Sound (Steve Toulmin), at first deeply disturbing and insidious white noise, is later used in various ways to assist in creating assorted atmospheres and imagery.

As I watched I was continually referring to my memories of Cerini’s work Animals, Directed by Susie Dee and presented in November 2016 at Theatre Works.  Both are extraordinary pieces of Theatre that very bravely explore issues around the social problem of domestic abuse.

An extraordinary work for six voices - or three voices, six characters that are richly embodied in this marvelous production. 

Strong and timely.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)