Love Bites

Thursday, 24 June 2010

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

A fun date of a cabaret show, Love Bites takes you on a quirky romantic journey from the initial meet cute to the flipside towards mating, matrimony or malaisionship.

Original and (mostly) Australian but with nods to existing musical theatre standards (and one hilarious homage), the entertaining foursome of Amelia Cormack (a busty diva with opera vocals and sitcom timing); David Harris (telegenic and appealingly adaptable); Sophia Ragavelas (Venus as a pocket rocket with a Shirley Bassey belt); and James Millar (leading man postured with a comedian wink), were amorous and ardent.
Portraying love in its many coupled permutations, we glimpse vignettes into the lives of seven couples in Act 1, and in Act 2 find out what happened in the ever after.

With affecting and at times breathtakingly complex music and harmonies written and performed by Peter Rutherford on the baby grand unobtrusively tucked to the side of the stage, the musical gave it’s body, heart and hope to you and captured your brain as well with smart, funny, poignant and yes, sometimes political lyrics crafted by James Millar.

I loved A Plastic Bag, An Urban Legend and it’s equally hilarious sequel but all the chapters were gems in a myriad hue, and the performers gave them lustre with flexible, freewheeling and assured showcases of their skills in aspect.

With Nathan M Wright’s cheeky choreography and direction courtesy of Neil Gooding accommodating an adaptable set by James Browne and sensational lighting and AV backdrop design from Ross Graham and Mandylights respectively, you couldn’t help but buzz it up as you bop your way out of the theatre (don’t forget to buy a CD of the show at the box office!)

Go on; risk the hickey and head to the Playhouse Theatre for a little love bite.

Anything Goes

Saturday, 12 June 2010

WAAPA’s 30th anniversary musical treat is a cheeky Cole Porter farce from the scandalous 1930s, a show where gangsters are celebrities; sexy, sassy dames are ballsy enough to chase the men and cocaine makes it as part of one of the most well-known songs in musical theatre!

While not quite topping last year’s stupendous 42nd Street (I’m still blown away just remembering the massive tap routine that opened up that show when the curtain revealed the stage); Anything Goes is a bright and breezy showcase for the many talented performers and artists both on and off the stage and a fantastic chance to enjoy a Great White Way classic right in the comfort of your home town.

Amazonian Stephanie Grigg had the vocal chops of a Broadway belter and her over the top expressions as cabaret star Reno in a role made famous by the indomintable Ethel Merman were tempered by deft comic timing and an aggressive/ assertive likeability. What a voice!

Jamie Bell was almost unnoticed as first as soft spoken effete Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, but throughout the course of the show emerged as an audience favourite, delighting with his accent-idental mispronunciations of American idioms, and gradually revealing himself to be a hilarious and fun character – more than a match for an unlikely tryst with Reno.

Billy (James Bryers) and Hope (Danae Stewart) were a sweet and earnest couple, the conventional hero and heroine around which other more interesting and outrageous personalities circled.

Moonface (Benjamin Hoetjes) a 13th rate gangster on the lam was a hoot, grabbing with gusto (and relish) any scene he could steal and almost outdone by just-wanna-have-fun bad girl Erma (Gillian Cosgriff), a big eyed dollface keen to advertise her availability to the admiring at-ten-hun! of all red-blooded sailors on board ship.

The orchestrations were delightful, delicious, de-lovely; musical director David King working seamlessly with director Crispin Taylor and choreographer Jenny Lynnd to give us a flawless musical theatre experience.

The sets and costumes were evocative of both the era and its nautical inspiration with the fantastic lower set inside the boat transforming into a multitude of bedrooms, brigs or sing it! stages, very clever indeed.

With mistaken identities and deceptions, wackiness and ultimate happy endings all round, Anything Goes is a joyous kick (no cocaine required!)

Waiting for Godot

Sunday, 6 June 2010

There is something otherworldly about seeing A Great Actor on stage. The charisma, their character and yes, the sheer grace of their ability is enough to lift any text to a sigh-inducing masterclass. The performed work becomes a piece of admiration and delight…despite its difficult reputation for density and confounding profundity.

Waiting for Godot is not a play for the rookie theatregoer. Its famous one line critique of a production in which nothing happens, twice – is well deserved and there are long tracts, especially in the first act where I found myself taking rather long blinks (I confess during the annoyingly absurdist Pozzo/ Lucky section).

However, Estragon aka Gogo (Ian McKellen) and Vladimir (Roger Rees) as erstwhile Chaplinesque tramps were humming along, and any scenes where they played, pondered, laughed and ranted were sections where I had my eyes wide open; drinking in their robust comic timing, their expressive faces and forms, and most of all, the words, words, words of their creations at once pathetic and proud.

Lovable Gogo, with touches of dementia nipping at his heels (that’s an interesting take on Lucky!); and delusional Vladimir, a soul looking for some purpose in the purposelessness of his life are anchored by his fixation to this purgatory; Vladimir determined to outwait Godot, no matter how many pint sized messengers turn up delivering cyclical messages from the procrastinating title character.
(Amusing side note: spot the star usher tasked with making sure Ian McKellen’s boots left at the far front of the stage at the end of Act 1 did not go walkabout with a fan or eBay entrepreneur.)

It is part of the disappointment that Godot (spoiler alert!) never turns up, and instead the main visitations are from arrogant rube Pozzo (Matthew Kelly) and his hapless but disturbingly creepy indentured servant Lucky (Brendan O’Hea), which I guess pushes the action along somewhat and gives Gogo and Vladimir something to talk about (or run from, rescue or beat up). But I felt as if we were just putting up with their intrusions while we waited patiently (some of us with our eyes shut, partially conscious – yes, patron to the left of me, nodding off throughout the second act!) for the show to return to the far more interesting G&V two-hander interchanges.

Stephen Brimson Lewis’ set design however, was stunning - a starkly beautiful mirror world, with the sides whispering to a dilapidated theatre, a raked and broken stage, and a far wall high and grey, it’s flat a perfect backdrop for spotlights and silhouettes. A lone barren tree was the only significant entity on the stage, and yet… Act 2 opened and small leaves had bloomed upon its branches - it was as if a miracle had occurred during intermission, tiny green shoots of hope amidst the bleak terrain.

Paul Pyant’s lighting was controlled and significant. Working in orchestration with Paul Groothuis’ sound design, the start of the play was a white noise vacuum of indeterminate city/ transport resonance, it’s strip back to an almost murmuring bass having the effect of dropping audience chatter to silence as the stage became dappled and magical.

I love that about theatre. How illusions created by creative lighting can take you to another reality. Spotlights hinted at the vaudevillian past of the main characters as smiles and applause would erupt during various soft shoe shuffles and hat play swaps; and the cold stark rapture beaming like lasers through a previously nondescript door (seriously, it could almost have recalled an X-Files moment) was archly cool and terrifying.

Afterwards, my fan moment, a signature on my program from the visiting knight; a hint of sonorous Gandalf, no sign of steely Magneto, just a friendly man who also, without a doubt, is A Great Actor.