Reviews

Mr Bailey’s Minder

By Debra Oswald. Melville Theatre, WA. Directed by Vanessa Jensen. 26 Apr - 12 May, 2018

Mr Bailey is a cantankerous, unlikeable alcoholic, who also happens to be a great artist and an Australian living treasure. Only one of his many children is willing to help him, and then only at arm’s length. She hires Therese, a girl with a checkered background, to be Leo Bailey’s live-in minder.

Born Yesterday

By Garson Kanin. Independent Theatre. Goodwood Theatre. April 27 to May 5, 2018

Whilst the stage play and later film, Born Yesterday, were written and set in post war America in 1946, Independent Theatre’s latest production reminds us how up to date the concept of questionable political and business partnerships remains. In the era of the “Me Too” campaign the misogyny and mobster-style brutality of the story is also poignant and highly relevant.

After Miss Julie

By Patrick Marber, based on Miss Julie by August Strindberg. Act 1 Theatre, Strathpine, Qld. Director: Lilian Harrington. 20 April – 5 May, 2018

The electoral euphoria of Britain’s historic Labour landslide in July 1945 following Germany’s Second World War surrender on May 8th is the background for Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie, an English reworking of Strindberg’s 1889 classic. Originally written for BBC television in 1995, the story relocates the Swedish setting of Strindberg’s original to a country house outside London, with the central character the daughter of a Labour peer who clearly loathes the lower-classes he represents.

Burning Rose

Directed by Ellis Pearson. The Actors Hub Studios, East Perth, WA. 10-14 April, 2018

Thirteen appears to be a fortunate number for The Actors’ Hub’s Gap II students. The thirteen students in the program form a tight ensemble and work organically as a team to present this engaging devised work. 

Burning Rose, developed under the leadership of director Ellis Pearson, is an anthology of two stories, From the Ashes and beauty. Half the cohort presents each story, while the remaining students provide well-developed musical accompaniment on drums and other percussion, guitar and vuvuzela.

Still Point Turning: The Catherine McGregor Story

By Priscilla Jackman. Based on interviews with Catherine McGregor. Sydney Theatre Company. Wharf 1 Theatre. April 21 to May 26, 2018.

If you pitched this story as a piece of fiction it might be rejected as not plausible. The incongruity of a heterosexual man with a very healthy sex life, who works and excels in the most masculine of fields – the army, cricket commentary, and political speech writing – yet is being torn apart by acute gender dysphoria.

Piccadilly Olde Time Music Hall

Conceived and Directed by Kate Peters. Top Hat Productions. Gold Coast Little Theatre, Southport. April 27th – May 6th, 2018

The Olde Time Music Hall was a popular form of British entertainment of yesteryear, originating around the middle of the 19th century and lasting well into the 20th century. 

It featured many of the popular songs of the day, like “The Pheasant Plucker”, performed by the well-loved entertainers of the period, interspersed with the witty patter from the convivial Master of Ceremonies, Mr Martin Jennings. 

Personal

By Jodee Mundy. Jodee Mundy Collaborations. Arts House – North Melbourne. April 24 to 29, 2018 (and touring - see end of review)

Personal by Jodee Mundy is an acute insight into some of the strains and joys of being a ‘CODA’ – a hearing child born to a deaf adult / parents / into a deaf family.

As a short but intense 60 minutes of theatre, it frames, elucidates and distills this experience on a very personal, yet totally relatable to level, for a mixed audience of deaf and hearing.  This rewarding, compelling work brings deaf and hearing a little closer together both literally and through its delicate and sharp insights - crisply and clearly presented.

Tosca

By Puccini. Opera Australia. Director: John Bell. Conductor: Andrea Battistoni. State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne. April 24 – May 10, 2018.

I’d seen this lavish production before, and it still wears well. In Act 1 the church of Sant' Andrea della Valle looked magnificent with layers of gold on the walls, and in the gaol of Act 3 a guard patrolled the upper level as some frightened Jews try to sleep below.

Setting the opera in Nazi Germany worked well. I particularly liked the “shepherd boy” being a young Jewish lad inside the gaol, with an uncertain future. In the second act Scarpia molests an embarrassed female officer in front of the other soldiers.

 

The Time Machine

By Frank Gauntlett, based on the novella by H. G. Wells. Strange Duck Productions. Directed by Gareth Boylan. The Playhouse, NIDA Theatres, Kensington. April 11 – May 2, 2018.

Playwright Frank Gauntlett’s adaptation of H. G . Wells’ novella The Time Machine is based on the 1960s version of Wells’ original storyline for the film. Gauntlett’s play brings the themes of both H.G. Wells’ film and novella from the setting of the 1900s to present day issues of climate change and extinction.

Mark Lee, as the scientist and inventor of a time machine, discovers going into a future, 802,701 AD precisely, that there are no animal life present.

 

Hold Your Breath (Count to Ten)

By Daley King. Antifragile. Directed by Susie Conte. The Studio, The Blue Room, Northbridge, WA. April 23 - May 12, 2018

Daley King, writer of Hold Your Breath (Count to Ten), has issues. Fed up with the inability of theatre to tackle some issues, he is determined to make a theatre piece that deals with his own emotional, mental and physical debilities.

This doesn’t sound like the most uplifting premise for a play, and regular theatre-goers have all seen sagas of the depressed or broken artist before, but Hold Your Breath (Count to Ten) has a wonderfully fresh approach and this World Premiere from Antifragile is thoroughly engaging from start to finish.

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