Arabian Nights

Thursday, 19 March 2009

As a child I was captivated by the stories from the Arabian Nights - they were right there next to my copies of Grimms Fairy Tales, Enid Blyton and the fabled legends of Greek, Roman and Norse mythology.

It's been a while since I've indulged in reading fantasy (though author Mercedes Lackey has coaxed me back to the fold by respinning the fairytale genre with her Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms and Elemental Masters series); but there was still enough of a pull that when I saw that WAAPA was putting on a dramatic production of this classic I had to buy a ticket to check it out.

Dominic Cooke's TMA/Equity award winning Young Vic Theatre adaptation introduces us to a heartbroken and consequently cruel King who having been betrayed by his Queen, resorts to wed a new bride every evening and then execute her at dawn. Many women die by this edict, and one day clever and brave Shahrazad, the daughter of the Vizier comes up with a plan to save the remaining women and ultimately her kingdom by offering herself as the next bride. She asks for her sister to stay with her after her marriage and just before dawn, as secretly instructed earlier, young Dinarzad asks her elder sister to tell her a story...

Most of us know that Shahrazad then proceeds to weave tale after tale of magical, humourous, dramatic and thought-provoking adventures involving Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor and many others, day by day gaining a stay of execution as the King goes from indifferent to entranced by her storytelling skills.

Finally, Shahrazad decides to test his heart - after 1001 nights she refuses to tell him a tale and prays that she has managed to heal the pain of betrayal through her love, as it soon becomes evident that it's not just her life that is on the line...

This was a wonderful production, I had no idea what to expect from the 2nd year Acting students at WAAPA's Enright Studio, and the surprise and joy at such a imaginative performance made me feel like I was a child, discovering these fantastical stories again for the first time.

The ensemble worked together seamlessly under the expert and inspired direction of Lisa Scott-Murphy and the audience could tell that the company was having just as much fun bringing us this show as we were having watching it.

Special mention must be given to the following: costume designer, Katie Christie for her simple yet adaptable pieces for the many multiple characters the actors portrayed; lighting designer Tom Stoney for transporting us, not unlike a magic carpet ride, into the heart of all the adventures and within the King's memory and mind; and the invisible and very effective props crew of Dean Gibbs, Jorja Christensen and Nicolas Horne who supported and anticipated all the actors needs.

An enchanting evening.

Shane Warne - the Musical

Wednesday, 18 March 2009

I am a huge fan of Casey Bennetto's previous satirical cabaret hit Keating! so when I heard that he was part of the team bringing us the life and times of one of our best known and tabloid mugging cricket stars, it was a no-brainer to buy a ticket to see the show.

A lot of my friends sniggered at the idea of a musical theatre rendition of Warney's fiobles, from his diet pills fracas to the 'gotcha!' SMS headlines screaming of his extracurricular activities on the England tour, but the show is a fantastic night out and actually humanizes the man somewhat.

Eddie Perfect, who also wrote and composed the music for the production, is fantastic as the titular character, his shambolic demeanour and boyish charm making Shane likable and somehow almost innocent, a man-child who is given an easy life due to talent and who indulges in booze, pills, cigarettes and women because they are available.

Dream sequences involving a giant cigarette, worry about hair loss and baby doll dressed bedmates skewer the protagonist while the rest of the numbers consistently reveal sharp writing, current takes of these very real people's lives (Shane on meeting Simone waxes that she should be "Dancing with the Stars") and Australia's own tall poppy syndrome.

The professional ensemble were all superbly voiced and it was great to see Mike McLeish (star of Keating!) in the line-up. Amy Lehpamer as Simone was also suitable sympathetic and Sally Bourne as Shane's mother was both comforting and fussily bossy - you could see that Shane, at the crux of it all might still be a little bit of a mama's boy.

I loved how the show opened with the band playing "Fanfare for the Common Man" which has been used as a television theme for many sports shows, this version was reminiscent of the rock kick it was given headlining Channel 9's sporting shows at the height of cricket tragicdom.

We also got an announcement at the start to leave our mobile phones ON...'cos you never know when an important SMS might be coming through!

Rent

Saturday, 14 March 2009

I confess, while I liked certain portions of this musical and I know that it is well-lauded and has won a cache of awards... maybe I'm viewing it from a 2009 sensibility - which would make Jonathan Larsen's posthumous Broadway triumph almost a generation removed from it's zeitgeist era of late 1980's Lower East Side New York.

One of the first original American rock operas to reinvent the genre of musical theatre, Rent is loud, smart, rude and defiant - very much like it's youth quake MTV inducted creators and cast, and it's energy, confrontational subject matter and sometimes comedic characters and scenarios mark it as a worthy recipient of not just a Tony Award for best musical, but also the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1996.

This production was staged at WAAPA's Roundhouse Theatre, the audience very much up close and personal, right into the trials and tribulations of this AIDS and HIV-positive soap, dealing with hook-ups, AZT programs, relationship and commitment issues, debauchery and death.

Mitch Roberts played the central character of Mark, who through his candid camera and pontification introduces us to his merry band of mayflies, "No day but today!"

He was spot-on with his accent and it never wavered even in song, a difficult thing to pull off for the long period of time a majority of characters were on stage for. His lone status as being the only one not afflicted gravitated the audience somewhat; he was the viewer, trying to empathize with his creative friends, but ultimately selling out to escape the poverty and despair.

There seemed to be some sound issues on the night I went, a number of the singers were overpowered by the small but loud band, and pertinent lyrics and dialogue were lost to the newbies yet to class themselves as "Rent-heads".

Francine Cain as sexy and scandalous Maureen rocked the house in her opening number and played cute as both irresistible and pain-in-the-ass, the most memorable of ex-girlfriends.

Other romances swirled and slipped away but love seemed to still breathe as Mimi reclaimed enough in the closing scenes to not die in the arms of tortured Roger.

Does Rent now look a little self-indulgent in today's pared back world, where New York though not necessarily sombre is now far more aware of where it and America's excesses have taken it? Maybe. I would say more that the very contemporary vein that brought it acclaim over a decade ago might now be what marks it a epochal piece of the post Reaganite years.

Tales of King Arthur

Friday, 13 March 2009

I've been seeing shows on and off at WAAPA for the better part of a year now - ever since I discovered their Performance Program - but tonight was the first time I got a chance to be part of the audience at their Amphitheatre, an outdoor location close to the main studios and Building 1.

The saliva-inducing scent of a fundraising sausage sizzle drew the medium sized crowd to the location and the seating was most definitely on the casual side, blankets and throws to soften the functional sitting areas and tickets unreserved.

Cane hoops sturdily bound together served as a backdrop for the stage and they were scored here and there with fairy lights, cloth and pulleys. An open floor was the stage and found objects like modified garbage bins were turned over and reused to transform between the stone which held Arthur's sword to thrones and lookout points.

The legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have fascinated scholars and the public alike for generations with their tales of gallantry and romance; trials, sacrifice and reward and at the centre of it all the doomed love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.

This production however, did not hold to the Middle Ages conceit of castles and courtly refinement, the actors were in a much coarser garb, almost Stone Age - with wild hair and bare chests for the boys and neutral dresses and heavy eye shadow for the girls.

Various roles were co-opted throughout the show; Merlin was played by no less than four different actors, his cape passed on and signifying his new incarnation Doctor Who-like; and various Knights of the Round Table also became opposing evil knights, kings or demons.

A character that I have not seen extensively in many representations of King Arthur was that of Kay, Arthur's often bossy older brother, a preening fop of a man played by Reece Budin who provided a lot of the comedy for the production.

Jamie Ward as Arthur was scrappy and keen - the King as a hormonally charged teenager; Luana Farina was pretty as the dutiful but secretly torn Guinevere, and Benjamin Hoetjes impressed the crowd not just with his fire-breathing skills (take that dragon!) but with his rough hewn romance and sensitivity in the role guilt-ridden Lancelot.

One of the funniest aspects of the show was the random use of regional accents. There was even a note in the program to allay the confusion with the caveat that "some accents are used to indicate a character's traits rather than region". I guess that explains the thick Russian burr that Morgana Le Fey sported and then lost!

A fun show, exuberant and well-told.

A Flowering Tree

Saturday, 7 March 2009

I had amazing seats to this production courtesy of a friend who sings with the WA Symphony Chorus, and it was quite a change to see the orchestra dominating the stage at the Perth Concert Hall while the pared back and rather muted (costume wise anyway) WA Opera Chorus were regaled to standing behind the musicians.

This was to be a semi-staged production of John Adams' contemporary opera based on a folktale from Southern India. The story focuses on a girl who can miraculously transform into a beautiful tree thus providing a way for her poor family to gain a modest income from the flowers that blossom upon her branches. The symbolism of a girl transforming into a woman is at the heart of this story, as Kumudha's simple life is ultimately taken over with more adult concerns, such as a prince who demands her as his bride and then only seems to want her when she metamorphosizes into the tree(!); and a jealous sister-in-law who talks the lovely Kumudha into showing her courtly friends her magical transmutation, only to grow bored and careless and subjecting her sister-in-law to pain and deformity as Kumudha is left in the rain. Unable to complete her tree-to-human transformation, Kumudha becomes a misshapen stump of flesh and wood. She crawls away and hides herself in the gutter, ashamed of how she looks.

The Prince, unable to find her, thinks she has run away from him and is overcome with grief and remorse. He gives up his royalty to wander aimlessly in the wilderness.

After many years almost by accident, he enters a distant kingdom that his sister now reigns and to cheer him, she finds a band a minstrels who unbeknownst to either of them have taken in Kumudha. As Kumudha sings to him, The Prince recognizes her and tenderly bathes her malformed figure; a miracle of pure transformation occurs and Kumudha become wholly human again for the lovers to be reunited.

Rachelle Durkin as the lovely Kumudha was beauteous in form and voice, her face as expressive in person as on the large screen which projected selected views of the leads, chorus and musicians, interspersed with images of ancient Indian art and montages of water with falling flowers.

I found Russell Thomas was reasonable enough in his initially unsympathetic role of The Prince, however he seemed a little stiff and to have hardly any chemistry with his leading lady.

Sanford Sylvan as the Storyteller was our anchor into this fantastical world, and his voice, stance and acting was impressive, expertly weaving a spell over the audience with his resonant and controlled baritone, dominating the orchestra even through some very loud arrangements in the opera.

The WA Opera Chorus were charged along with the WA Symphony Orchestra with bringing forth all the remaining characters in the piece; from Kumudha's disciplinary mother to the cacophony of The Princess' careless and spiteful friends. For some reason, the chorus sections were sung in Spanish (the majority of the libretto is in English) which made you have to seek out the surtitles set on relatively small screens either side of the stage (I pity those who would have had to squint to see them if they were much further back than the middle of the audience), but maybe vowel-heavy Spanish is more suited to what Adams wanted to skim over his almost film scoric production.

Enjoyable, but maybe more so for fans of classical music.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Thursday, 19 February 2009

UWA was abuzz with activity this evening, filled not with students ardent to earn their degrees, but with the general public, effervescent with choice for the large array of offerings from the Perth International Arts festival.

Walking past audiences heading towards the Sommerville Auditorium and the Octogon Theatre, I thought again what a beautiful evening it was, warm and calm, with just enough humidity to make it comfortable to leave your jacket at home.

I was visiting the campus to see Joan Didion's Pulitzer prize winning memoir brought to life at the Dolphin Theatre; and what was originally staged as a one woman tour de force in New York is now experimentally being brought to a Perth audience with two people on the stage.

A few weeks ago the Black Swan State Theatre and PIAF had invited their subscribers to an 'artists meet the audience' talk about how their production was progressing, and I had been intrigued by director Kate Cherry's concept of having not just the character of Joan Didion on stage, but of utilizing cellist and composer Iain Grandage to provide an internal soundtrack of sorts for Didion's monologue.

At the session the music Grandage previewed was dreamy, at times passive and then fervent and I thought how wonderful it would be coupled with this monologue detailing a woman's journey to understand how life could have taken away two of the things she most held dear.

But at that session Helen Morse did not speak overmuch, preferring to defer to her director for most of the questions.

At the performance last night she was incandescent, her grey-white hair haloed around her face, her bird-like features almost pushing into skeletal, and her eyes at turns defiant and despairing.

There was a slight jar when she first began to speak, for of course Didion is American and that accent in Australia will always stand out, but within minutes our ears warmed to the familiar cadences and the conversational tone of the piece made you feel as if you were right there with her in the hospital room, at her home in Malibu, in Paris with her husband, and at her side at his funeral.

The stage revealed two islands of white sand built up and surrounded by clear water. It was mostly still, but the subtle lighting design by Matt Scott would at times play up the ripples across the surface which was then reflected onto the back of the stage wall.

To be honest, I have to say that I found the soundscape improvised by Grandage rather distracting; while at times the words and the music seemed to work synergistically, overall I felt that Morse as an actress was much more compelling with just her face, her voice and Didion's powerful quixotic dialogue. I also felt that the sense of loneliness that Didion was attempting to control but at the same time impart upon her audience was belied by the fact that there was another person on stage.

Overall, well worth seeing for Helen Morse's rich and transformative performance and the evocative memory stagescape.

Questions Without Notice

Wednesday, 4 February 2009

Contemporary dance performances can be interesting, ephemeral and make me want to learn how to navigate a whole new language simply so I have more adjectives at my disposal.

Attending a preview performance of Questions Without Notice, a new work by Performing Lines WA at the Playhouse; I was stunned to see how stripped back the theatre was. The audience could see the bricks all the way to the back and you realise what an open and immediate feel you can get from this most compact and immediate of stages.

The eight dancers arrived at the sidelines of the stage at differing intervals, there were no wings to mask them and they looked like they had just walked off the street. They took turns to follow and sit on the various benches littered across the stage and these items were the main props used throughout the performance.

While obviously utilizing dance, in variations and incarnations (there's a particularly hilarious moment when someone is asked what scares him and he replies 'The Spice Girls' and then their anthem is blasted through for the women on stage to zigazig aye!); there was extensive use made of the video cameras and projection facilities as the dancers spoke to us, commented on each other, strutted, raged, flirted, translated and then invited the audience to join them on stage!

I'll admit it - I was there! It was fun and hilarious and kind of surreal to look out and see the seat you had just abandoned, but who can resist a groovy MC (embodied with smarmy charm by Michael Whaites, a standout all rounder) urging you to 'find a partner!' 'go necking!' and grinning like a Cheshire cat over the dancers demonstrating the 'advanced roll in the hay!'

Spontaneous, eclectic, mischievous and surprising, Questions Without Notice made you live in the moment; wonder whether you could think on your feet or were more comfortable to fall back on the familiar; and realise how unplanned responses can sometime deliver reflective insights.

Carpe diem, huh?