Material GrrrrrrlNot that are many, but Boston Marriage is one of the funniest male authored imaginings of lesbian sexuality since Frank Marcus’s The Killing of Sister George.Countering the charge that he could write only for and about men, American playwright David Mamet concocted a play featuring only women. A ‘Boston Marriage’ is a 19th century American term for a domestic arrangement between two unmarried women. Whether a Boston Marriage has a sexual dimension or open to quiet speculation. In Mamet’s play it is rampagingly obvious.To secure a house and income to support herself and her estranged lover, Anna (Pamela ...
Archives for “Melbourne Theatre Company”
...Your'e Sure Of A Big Surprise ...Lally Katz's transitional object from Hell, the Apocalypse Bear, began 'bruin' (sorry brewing) in her mind after seeing a shelf of motley teddy bears in a suburban chemist shop. The beast that emerged, a spectral figure clad in the dodgiest-looking of panto teddy bear costumes, began it's reign of subtle terror in miniature films where the Bear made nocturnal visits to suburbia, interrupting a woman's late night call from a public phone box and a young man's post-fellatory hallucinations in a public toilet. The Apocalypse Bear seems to enjoy traumatising gay boys the most ...
A Friend of Dorothy'sI first saw The Man from Mukinupin when it was new in the late 1970s and everyone in the cast was white. Since then I don't recall seeing another play by Dorothy Hewett and, like so many other playwrites whose names are not David or Williamson, her work seems to vanished from the boards. Hewett’s 1979 musical play was an unlikely way of celebrating Western Australia’s 150th birthday. Set around the time of the First World War it shows the ugly side of the Anzac legacy, with the local war hero Harry Tuesday (Craig Annis) becoming ...
I can recall the last time the MTC did something that excited me. It was Copenhagen and it was too long ago. If you want safe, professional theatre the MTC’s the place. If you want something that will excite you like you haven’t been excited since your first ever visit to the theatre, go to Red Stitch. The amazing thing is that Red Stitch, despite being brave, has almost no duds. Still, the MTC has to come up with something special now and then and Realism by Paul Galloway is just that. I don’t want to describe it in detail as ...
Eschewing Mother-in-law jokes, in his autobiography Ben Hecht quoted his in making an interesting observation about the disposable nature of theatre. "My mother-in-law," he wrote, "will sit in a theatre, laugh, and deeply enjoy herself. But she comes out of the theatre usually with a shrug and a sigh. 'What did it give you to take away?' she asks. 'Nothing. It leaves you nothing in your mind or spirit. An evening wasted'".Moonlight and Magnolias is a curious piece. A few weeks into the shoot of Gone With the Wind the producer David O Selznick (Patrick Brammall) halts production, hires a ...
A Doll(boy)'s House“For the majority,” said Jean Cocteau, “a work of art cannot be beautiful without a plot involving mysticism or love”. Matt Cameron’s Poor Boy has a bob each way by including both and, like one of Cocteau’s elegant films (like the voice from the other side coming from the radio which was a feature of Cocteau's Orphée), creates a spirit world alongside the real world where mysticism and love are intrinsically bound together.Daniel (Guy Pearce) has been killed by a hit a run driver whilst on a Zebra crossing. He was studiously keeping to the black lines, it ...
Mother, Son and Holy Ghost"Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see."C S Lewis The Screwtape LettersFor a jointly written play (by theatre boffin Mick Gordon and “the public face of British atheism” philosopher A C Grayling), Grace is a well devised piece of theatre. Grace (Noni Hazlehurst) is a science professor, eloquently demolishing Intelligent Design in her lectures as succinctly as she demolishes, albeit less eloquently and 'graciously', all trace of religious belief amongst her ...
The rich but foolish Orgon (Gary McDonald) and his mother Madame Pernelle (Kerry Walker) have fallen for the religious zealot Tartuffe (Kim Gyngell), who nearly seduces Orgon’s wife Elmire (Marina Prior) and robs him of his estate before he is unmasked. Justin Fleming’s translation is faithful to Moliere’s original, even to the improbable final scene where the King intervenes to apprehend Tartuffe (the widely known Richard Wilbur translation morphs the character into a bailiff's officer who is revealed to be acting on the King's order). The verse, with its short, deliberately rhymed phrases, is retained too creating an artificiality that, ...
Brief EncounterJoanna Murray-Smith's 90 minute two-hander makes a virtue out of the trend for 90 minute, de-intervaled plays by being a story about that takes exactly 90 minutes in real-time . William (Kim Gyngell) is now a celebrity actor with a bulging schedule that includes his imminent marriage to a German celebrity actress more appropriate to his new status. He makes a flying visit to his ex-wife Isabel (Melinda Butel) who has begged some time to meet with him. She is an art restorer, currently working on a look-alike of Van Eyck's wedding portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his bride ...
Delta SkelterTo celebrate the 65th birthday and negative cancer test of 'Big Daddy' Pollitt (Chris Haywood), the richest man on the Mississippi Delta, his sons Gooper (Grant Piro) and Brick (Martin Henderson) gather at the family home with their wives Mae (Rebekah Stone) and Margaret (Essie Davis) for the party. Mae is pregnant with their sixth child while Brick and Maggie are childless and their marriage is on the rocks. Brick is an alcoholic, his leg in plaster from a drunken prank the night before, and indifferent to his beautiful wife. Despite that Maggie is crazy for love of him. ...
Now We Are SexAt just under the fashionable ninety minutes Blackbird is little more than an extended conversation between two people. Now an adult Una (Alison Bell) confronts Ray (Greg Stone), the man who sexually abused her when she was twelve. Set in the inexplicably messy lunch room of the factory where Ray works they lay bare the equally messy state of their lives since that incident. Like Love Lies Bleeding the drama is the consequences of the act and like the early scenes of Love Lies Bleeding the author of Blackbird, David Harrower, fills the first ten minutes with ...
David and GoliathIn Washington in 1972, a break-in was intercepted at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel. The ‘thieves’ were not your average 'breakers & enterers' and had links to the secret services and before long a connection had been made between the thieves and the President’s staff and ultimately the President himself. The investigation leading up to Nixon’s resignation to avoid impeachment is still one of the greatest scandals in modern political history and his pardon by the succeeding president, Gerald Ford, only increased the public outrage. Peter Morgan has written a nice line ...
Talking of steps, the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) is one very significant step closer to opening their new theatres in the Southbank Arts Precinct. MTC Artistic Director Simon Phillips has announced today that the two theatres will be named in honour of John Sumner and Ray Lawler. The complex designed by architects Ashton, Raggat, McDougall and funded in part by the State Government will open in 2009.In 1953 Sumner was the founding director of the Union Theatre Repertory Company, which was renamed the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1968. The Sumner Theatre will be the main stage at the new premises. ...
In(step)JokesThe 39 Steps could be the Melbourne Theatre Company's entry in this year's Comedy Festival as a high energy spoof of John Buchan's famous spy story of the same name. The version more spoofed here, however, is Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film version. Hitchcock's script added the now famous, train sequences, the Music Hall performer and fellow spy Mr 'Am I right Sir?' Memory (one of my favorite movie characters) as well as some unrelieved sexual tension. This take on a classic book and film is by Patrick Barlow who acts, directs, produces and writes plays, his speciality is improbable farce, ...
A chi più debb’io mai l’intensa vogliaSfogar con pianti o con parole mester,Se d ital sorte ‘l ciel, che l’ame veste,Tard’o per tempo alcun mai non ne spoglia?[To what purpose do I express my intense desirewith tears and sorrowful words when heaven, which clothes my soul, neither sooner or later relieves me of it?]Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) Holding the Man is a double tribute. Timothy Conigrave's tribute to the man he loved for more than half of his short life and a tribute by the Griffin Theatre Company to Conigrave himself who was an early member of the company working with ...
Oh Brother!This play comes a quite a surprise. Love Song by John Kolvenbach was originally written for Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company which we normally associate with harder hitting programmes. The story of a mildly schizophrenic man and his protective sister, Love Song has all the makings of a middlebrow Hollywood tearjerker (in my own schizophrenic way I kept seeing Tom Hanks and Sally Field on stage). The song Heartstopper by Emiliana Torrini floods the theatre before and after the play letting you know that will be a sentimental drama. Beane (Thomas Wright) is a sad sack living alone in ...
Brno BrainerIt' been a long time coming but finally a new play by Tom Stoppard has arrived here. Since Arcadia (1993, which incidentally is currently being staged modestly but coherently at Chapel of Chapel) the plays Indian Ink (1995) and The Invention of Love (1997) an adaptation of The Seagull (1997) and a trilogy The Coast of Utopia (2002) seem to have passed without interest. Rock 'N' Roll, on the other hand was greeted with the enthusiasm of his best work from the 1970s and 1980s. In this current production it feels like a very loose piece of writing indeed.The ...
She's Gotta Have ItI agree with Harry Kippax's estimation (Nation, 1 June 1963*) that The Season at Sarsaparilla is a "rich, relevant, accessible play ... None who cares for drama, Australian or otherwise should miss it". White's story of adultery in complacent suburbia is designed to provoke. A character Roy (Eden Falk) is introduced to act as chorus/participant constantly criticising that complacency while the adultery is pre-empted by another chorus, this time of dogs baying for a bitch on heat while the soon to be adulterous wife Nola (Pamela Rabe) soaks up the sexual atmosphere like a sponge. The louchness ...
Juan Good Turn Deserves AnotherThe year of Moliere adaptations #1Last year Red Stitch staged Patrick Marber's adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie. It was brought forward to the immediate post war period and, like this adaptation of Moliere's Don Juan, transferred to England. At the time there was still enough class and sexual prejudice for the tragedy of Julie's randiness to cut deeply. Moliere's Don Juan is a dangerous comedy about a swaggering atheist. Mozart's Don Giovanni, was equally scandalous presenting as it did (and in a court theatre) a corrupt aristocrat blaspheming in a cemetery and literally defying God. Creating ...
For consistency in presenting a range of interesting repertoire I would have to nominate Red Stitch [again]. Red Stitch have mostly presented drama and strong drama at that. They wrapped their year with a scalding British play Motortown that took no prisoners. When they present comedy it is not usually light. Wild East by a writer that keeps defying the mainstream, April de Angelis, was a case of Red Stitch's 'funny peculiar' as opposed to 'funny ha-ha' comedy. Jack Goes Boating as a near exception. It felt like it was an offshoot of the Seinfeld school but in presenting it ...
Night of the Long WivesEdward Albee’s famous alcohol fuelled, all night psycho-battle between husbands and wives is a modern classic. After a college drinks party, professor George (Gary McDonald) and his wife Martha (Wendy Hughes) invite the new biology teacher Nick (Stephen Phillips) and his wife Honey (Alison Bell) back for a nightcap that becomes a nightmare. Nick and Honey watch as George and Martha indulge in a battle of wits, minds and souls developed over twenty plus years of marriage. Soon Nick and Honey, nicely soused with bourbon and brandy and not so unassuming as we thought, become part ...
Through a Dark GlasslyHannie Rayson’s play, like the enormously popular adaptation of A B Facey’s A Fortunate Life that played to over 30,000 people back in 1984, is one of those plays about the Great War told through the eyes of an ‘everyman’ rather than an official hero. In this case it is told through eyes that were clouded for half a century.Nelson Ferguson was a promising artist who served on the Western Front. Mustard gas robbed him of his full sight but he struggled on, raising a family and making a career in art none the less.Rayson adapts his ...
Evil Under the SonIn her earlier play The Memory of Water Shelagh Stephenson set up an intriguing story about three daughters dealing with the recent loss of their far from perfect mother. Although not intended to be ghost like the ghost in Hamlet, their mother appears as a kind of living flashback. It was a lot of plays ago but The Memory of Water still sticks in my head.Enlightenment had a similar theme and a similar combination of grief, loss and the supernatural and will also have a similar effect on me. Lia (Sarah Peirse) and Nick's (Nicholas Bell) 20-year-old ...
Evil Under the SonIn her earlier play The Memory of Water Shelagh Stephenson set up an intriguing story about three daughters dealing with the recent loss of their far from perfect mother. Although not intended to be ghost like the ghost in Hamlet, their mother appears as a kind of living flashback. It was a lot of plays ago but The Memory of Water still sticks in my head.Enlightenment had a similar theme and a similar combination of grief, loss and the supernatural and will also have a similar effect on me. Lia (Sarah Peirse) and Nick's (Nicholas Bell) 20-year-old ...
Goon But Not ForgottenAnyone who called Prince Charles a "grovelling little bastard" is OK in my books. And when you see this play along with a genuine audience who genuinely want to see a play about Milligan and the Goons, Ying Tong a Walk with the Goons by Roy Smiles is an OK play where you laugh at what's on stage while laughing at the remembered Goon Shows it carefully evokes. It’s not a great work of art and it has some patchy patches but it is eager to please its audience and balances that eagerness with a fairly tough ...
