Archives for posts with tag: gasworks

Everynight, Everynight; All I Will Ever Be: Review

May 14, 12 //  

Our independent theatre scene continues apace. Apologies to those whose shows I have not had time to attend, or have attended but have not yet reviewed. Can’t do everything. Here are two productions I have seen and written about: they’re both worth checking out.

Everynight Everynight, by Ray Mooney, Frank Theatre Company, Gasworks Arts Park, Until May 27.

Poster for Ray Mooney's Everynight, Everynight at Gasworks

I’m not sure why, or what it says about us, but realistic Australian drama based on criminality and masculine violence tends to draw out our best male acting.

My pick this year – Josh McConville’s terrifying portrayal of a murderer in Gordon Graham’s The Boys, at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre – was a tour de force we can only hope comes to Melbourne. Bravura performances also distinguish this revival of Ray Mooney’s Everynight Everynight.

Mooney’s grim interrogation of institutionalised brutality in Pentridge Prison’s H Division is based loosely on the early life of infamous hit-man Christopher Dale Flannery. It’s gruelling and repulsive viewing: a gang of prison wardens or ‘screws’ (Adrian Mulraney, Paul Ireland, Tony Rickards) attempts to break new inmates through humiliation. Appalling scenes of rape, bashing, and ritual psychological and verbal abuse accumulate.

Prisoners are locked in to a cycle of degrading treatment, partly by their own code of silence, which demands no one snitches to the authorities, not even on screws. Driven to desperate measures, the Flannery-figure (Damian Hill) “resigns from the human race” and leads a prison revolt. The code of silence is broken; a Royal Commission ensues. The play leaves us with the grotesque disparity between the official account and the reality of life in jail.

It’s a very strong ensemble performance with little to fault. Highlights include Hill’s perfectly observed descent from cunning boy to uncontrollable, violent monster, and Steve Bastoni’s superficially attractive but profoundly menacing career crim.

Matthew Adey’s ghostly lighting and the echo chamber of Robert Jordan’s sound design create a desolating and impersonal atmosphere. Stuart Grant’s direction ensures first-rate performances, but needs to address the technical limitations of the space: some action is pitched too low for comfortable sightlines, for instance.

It remains a must-see for true crime fans – an intense, compelling production that forces us to confront a world most people ignore.

 *

All That I Will Ever Be, By Allan Ball, Fly-on-the-Wall Theatre, Chapel Off Chapel, Until May 20.

Allan Ball is better known for his screenplays – American Beauty, Six Feet Under, True Blood – but he began his career as a playwright. Fly-on-the-Wall has tracked down All That I Will Ever Be, a play stippled by Ball’s swift wit, and a shot in the arm to anyone who thinks – not without reason – that America can’t portray gay men without resorting to sentimentality or stereotype.

Omar (Francisco Lopez) is an outsider: Arab-American, comfortably bisexual, a hustler. He’s many things to many people, but lingers over one client – Dwight (Christian Heath), a young, rich boy scarred by loss. But do Dwight’s privileged eyes see Omar for who he really is, and will their romance survive Omar’s rootlessness and endless lies, the very things that allow him to work as prostitute?

Ball’s provocative humour and sharp, complex characterisation are matched by an empathic imagination and a willingness to embrace diversity. How refreshing it is to find a play that reflects the cultural melting-pot of contemporary America without tokenism or well-intentioned artifice. How novel to witness gay relationships as fraught, hard-won things, driven as much by emotion as sex.

A large, talented cast, stylish production values, and Robert Chuter’s swift and assured direction make this an unusually accomplished offering. Lopez’s Omar possesses a rehearsed masculine aura, with flashes of vulnerability shining through cracks in his armour of affectlessness and resentment; Heath’s turn as a damaged rich kid running from privilege and pain proves an intricately tuned counterpoint.

The sole female actor, Sarah Roberts, has two brilliant cameos (as a Valley Girl fag-hag, and Omar’s deluded and ambitious girlfriend) that ring true to the last gesture, with Phil Roberts’ ageing gay man a sensitive and serene presence.

All I Will Ever Be blends outrageous humour and intimate drama. Under all the laughs and raunch and tortured romance though, it’s a penetrating satire of identity politics and unconscious bias, and a thoughtful search for emotional truth in an age slathered with oh-so-hip irony.

Midsumma Reviews: Rigor Mortis, Road Movie, Girls Do Gertrude

January 27, 12 //  

Midsumma continues apace. Here are three more reviews from the queer indie scene.

Rigor Mortis, By Christopher Bryant, Theatre on a Horse, Owl & Pussycat, 34 Swan St Richmond, Until Jan 29

Queer trash zombie fun @ Rigor Mortis. Photo: Sarah Walker.

When Bruce LaBruce’s L.A. Zombie was banned from the Melbourne Film Festival in 2010, it gave queer zombie art a cachet it didn’t necessarily deserve. The flick was bad and boring. Rigor Mortis is bad and funny: trashmeisters will glory in its camp excesses, and there’s a rabid commitment to kitsch in the acting that might impress even serious-minded theatregoers.

The show is billed as a loose adaptation of that weirdest of ancient Greek plays, Euripides’ Alcestis, mashed into the cult bible of crap Hollywood parenting, Mommie Dearest. For once, it is what it says on the box.

A Z-grade horror actress (Kristina Benton) is murdered by her scheming director (Trelawney Edgar) and a jealous co-star (Jack Beeby), leaving behind a bereft husband (Christopher Bryant) and a seriously hormonal daughter (Emma Palackic). When the husband turns to a Slavic carnie with supernatural powers (Christina Woodford), his wife returns from the grave.

Benton’s self-obsessed bitch-mother is a hoot, and only gets funnier as she lurches ditzily through undeath. Palackic’s performance as the homely, psychopathic teen brims with physical humour and mock-sinister camp. Bryant’s gormless dad inhabits his formulaic role with assurance; Edgar and Beeby as the villainous drag king and queen act terribly, but have their moments too.

The plot might be the lowest form of pastiche – a schlocky Frankenstein of a show stitched together from well-known horror-flicks (the show references everything from The Exorcist to Pet Sematary and the Scream movies), but it’s performed with tasteless glee. Glitter! Braaiiinnnns! What more could you want?

***

Road Movie, By Godfrey Hamilton, Gasworks Arts Park, Until Jan 28.

This one-man show is a poetic and moving tour of AIDS-era America. The disease decimated the gay population in the US in the 80s, thanks to the Reagan administration’s indifference and its failure to promote condom use, but despite the enormity of the show’s grief, the script never stoops to mere sentiment. The tragedy is leavened by brilliantly observed caricature that retains the human shape beneath it, and Godfrey Hamilton has an unusual gift for strong metaphor and precise visual imagery that carries the weight of suppressed emotion.

Dirk Hoult gives a bravura performance as Joel, a gay man from New York who winds up in a San Fransisco gutter, meets a kind stranger and falls in love. The West Coast sojourn ends as quickly as it began, but Joel is drawn back to his lover, and embarks on a road trip across America to see him again.

Along the way, he meets a motley cast of eccentrics: a big black mama handing out rubbers at a beat in Atlanta, Georgia, spurred to action by her son’s grim death; a lonely waitress at a desert diner whose daughter committed suicide; an unreconstructed Californian hippie resolving (or perhaps avoiding) her grief through psychoactive pursuits.

Joel also visits the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington – that black snake of a monument with dead men’s names for scales – and compares it to those who have fallen to AIDS, feared and forgotten while they were alive.

Road Movie might seem a period piece in the West in the age of effective anti-AIDS medication, but Hoult’s acting – his pitch-perfect accents, lightning character switches, and easy command of the stage – makes it soar.

 ***

Girls Do Gertrude!, by Gertrude Stein, Northcote Town Hall, Black Apple, High St Northcote, Until Jan 29.

Perhaps no writer lends themselves to parody in quite the way Gertrude Stein does. Beyond her mastery of cadence and epigrammatic wit, a lot of her work can seem whimsical nonsense – the kind of writing that sharply prefers style over sense. To appreciate Stein, you often have to stop wondering what she means and let the words wash over you.

That is certainly true of A Circular Play (1920).

Cheyney Caddy’s production deploys a large, all-female ensemble in summery 20s fashions, many sporting hairdos of the time, including the then ubiquitous Marcel Wave. The stage design embraces a nostalgic profusion of period references, centred on an antique typewriter, although the staging isn’t beyond criticism. Given the unraked seating at Northcote Town Hall, the circularity of the text, and the enclosed world the show creates, it should have been played in the round. Sitting toward the back, the view is as obscure as Stein’s writing.

The atmosphere is enhanced by period songs (beginning with the popular foxtrot Ain’t We Got Fun?), jauntily accompanied by piano, guitar, percussion and melodica. Together with skilfully choreographed physical performance, it helps the actors surf the disintegrating involutions of the speech, which runs from demotic dialogue to incantantory repetition, illuminating unlit corners of the mind, grasping in parts towards poetic manifesto. There’s also a live bunny. Make of that what you will.

I was more exercised by the second play, Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters, a children’s game played three times over using almost exactly the same script. It was written during WWII, while Stein was hiding out in Vichy France, and within the immature canvas – the cliched murder mystery and inane melodrama – lurk bleak textures of violence and complicity and the curse of history repeated.

Overall, Black Apple’s theatrical engagement with Stein can be hard going, but remains a boon to those curious to see her plays performed.

Tell Them That It Rained Too Hard: Review

September 6, 11 //  

Tell Them That It Rained Too Hard, By Tom Pitts, Attic Erratic, Gasworks Arts Park, cnr Graham and Pickles Sts, Albert Park. Until September 10.

Attic Erratic’s last show left me wanting something meatier. This one fits the bill. It’s a complex exploration of the beauties and tensions of contemporary sexuality.

Like Michel Foucault, the promiscuous Helen (Kaitlyn Clare) is intoxicated by the purity of sexual encounters with strangers. The play begins with her long, quixotic monologue, describing a dream where harlots take to the streets and start a spontaneous bacchanal.

Alan (James Deeth) disagrees. He believes the heart secretly rebels against sexual license: it settles on one person, and that’s why the free love counterculture fell apart. Amiably, he offers to test his theory in Helen’s bedroom.

Elizabeth (Vivienne Garnett) is more on Alan’s side than her old friend Helen’s. She’s engaged to a bore (Sam Lund), despite repressing feelings for another. Helen and Elizabeth are soon at loggerheads, when Helen hooks up with Elizabeth’s incurably romantic brother Michael (Nick Bendall). And Helen herself – in confronting her secretive, judgemental mother – comes to question the way she consumes lovers and casts them aside.

Though the play eventually squashes and simplifies its sophisticated journey into post-industrial sex, it’s a stimulating and talented work. Celeste Cody’s direction nurtures convincing lead performances.

Clare builds an imposing presence as a woman whose devotion to the transience of erotic pleasure can’t be easily reduced to a defence against other forms of commitment. Garnett gives an attractive, nuanced portrayal of a straight-edge suppressing glimmers of uncertainty and regret. And Deeth’s Alan has an easygoing charm, with a hint of sadness in his eye.

Against the gently wrought naturalism of the leads, the large supporting cast employs a range of techniques to mould a social context. It’s involving but doesn’t always work: the extreme parody of happily-ever-after, white picket-fence types, for a start.

Design is minimal but effective. Pitts’ music is soothing and repetitive: the insistent wash of rain and repeated chord progressions. The set is two beds and some milk crates, all in near constant motion.

The main drawcard is the acting. The show features several young stars waiting to be discovered. Playwright Tom Pitts deserves and could benefit from a mentorship. His play makes naïve mistakes, but there’s a disarming curiosity and honesty in the way it shows us how the world of the heart can be just as disorienting as the one outside.