Author: Kate Foy

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A note from the front lines or Is Winter Brisbane’s theatre ‘season’

Greenroom’s interviews and reviews have been on hold for a bit – as you may have noticed if you are a regular reader here. I’ve been in the trenches known as ‘production week’ for Umber’s production of Water Wars by Elaine Acworth, which played up here on the Darling Downs at Oakey on Wednesday and Thursday. Oh, by the by, there’s nothing quite like an out-of-town opening on a cold winter’s night to bring out theatre’s true believers and supporters – just saying!

The entire company appreciated enormously the effort our stalwart first audiences made to complete the theatre-making circle for us before we head to Brisbane to be part of La Boite’s Indie season next month. Anyway, this post is not about Water Wars but, If you do want to read up on what’s going on, you could check out Umber’s blog or their Facebook page where you will find videos and pictures, and interviews as well as comments on the tech side of things for Water Wars – which are just plain amazing, by the way – definitely more on that to come.

So, the tyranny of distance being what it is, I’ve missed some of the plethora of good things happening on Brisbane’s main stages and in indie theatre this month: Dead Puppet Society’s The Harbinger – sold out much to the glee of La Boite Theatre’s marketing department (good on ’em); some of the Queensland Music Festival‘s offerings including Drag Queensland (where I would have paid anything for a ticket to see a glittery Lucas Stibbard don falsies); the new-in-town-Antix company’s Speaking In Tongues by Andrew Bovell – a chance to see this next week, maybe; Secret Bridesmaids’ Business at the Brisbane Powerhouse; and the 40th anniversary celebration performance of The Removalists at QTC (though I will get to a day-time showing next week). Aside: I got married in the week my husband directed QTC’s first production of this in 1975 – talk about theatre getting in the way of more important life matters – but that’s another post.

Next month rolls out more and more theatre so I’m wondering whether Winter really is Brisbane’s theatre ‘season’. I guess it is.

Oh, and don’t be misled by my use of the word ‘trenches’ above. The experience of working on a new play with everyone involved in the Water Wars production company has been thrilling – hard work, yes – but also a huge buzz. And I got to meet and get to know that lighting genius David Walters. Aside: David is another USQ Theatre graduate from the first year – 1975 – the year QTC first produced The Removalists and my life changed. Loving being back …

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Review: Rabbit – The Good Room at !Metro Arts Theatre

Bella is entering her 30th year – a dangerous age we used to be told. For the members of Gen-Y (look it up) portrayed in British writer Nina Raine‘s realistic comedy of manners Rabbit (2006), Time’s wingéd chariot is rumbling along all too loudly on the bumpy road. It’s time to take stock, socialise the hell out of the opportunity and, inevitably, get really ugly with your friends. It’s mostly uncomfortable veritas that emerges as the vino flows and vodka and reputations get slammed in what turns out to be a BLOCK CAPS WITH LOTS OF !!!! kind of party for those who turn up.

Bella’s joined by a handful of friends at her small though positively exuberant 29th birthday celebration in a hotel bar somewhere in Brisbane. Director Daniel Evans has relocated the play to the city, and it works well. Guests include Bella’s good friend Emily, a doctor; former lover #1 Richard, a barrister but wannabe writer; former lover #2 Tom, who works in the city – in Brit parlance a stockbroker or banker; and Sandy, a writer.

On the night of the party Bella’s father, played with intelligence and subtlety by Norman Doyle, is hospitalised and dying from a tumor that is gradually wiping away his seat of emotions and memories; he has refused treatment. Bella is angry with her father for his decision, and guilty for not being at his bedside. We learn it’s been a rocky relationship in a series of flashbacks – heartfelt duets between father and daughter.

Designed by Tara Hobbs, with lighting design by Daniel Anderson and sound design from Anthony Ack Kinmouth, Daniel Evans‘ production of Rabbit for the indie company The Good Room is a sharp, witty, fast-paced interpretation that draws terrific performances from the cast of six, who are just about perfect for their roles. They are as slick and excellent an ensemble as you could want.

The cast is headed by Amy Ingram as Bella, a successful publicist, in a performance that is as robust as it is gentle and nuanced. It’s also in perfect sync with Raine’s shrewd take on friendship and contemporary society. The performances by Sam Clark, Kevin Spink, Belinda Raisin, and Penny Harpham as Bella’s friends are individually and collectively proof of the depth and quality of acting talent we are experiencing right now in this country. Raine writes terrific characters in this – what was her first and an award-winning work for the stage – and the dialogue is hugely enjoyable; I bet the actors loved working on their roles.

Yes, Bella’s Friends are all a whiny, self-indulgent, privileged bunch and, at times, as nasty as they come; with cynical friends like these etc.  At times you want to slap them all in turn and, sometimes, all at once. I went for an interval drink (YES!! THERE IS AN INTERVAL!! AMAZE!!) loathing the lot of them but, as Raine develops the play throughout the second act, we experience its real strength – the development of characters whose directness and brutal honesty are, perhaps, their saving grace. You actually do end up ‘caring’ for them – and I count this as one of the markers of a good play/production.

So, whilst opening night saw a lot of first-night adrenalin pumping on both sides of the fence – there were a lot of friends in the house – and there was probably a little too much SHOUTING AND LOUD, I have no doubt this fine company will continue developing and finessing across its season. The tiny Sue Benner Theatre will get full houses, so get in quick.

Rabbit by Nina Raine for the indie company The Good Room as part of !Metro Arts Allies program plays until July 28th. Get details from the website.

Like to read more Greenroom reviews? You can right here.

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Review: Orphans – Queensland Theatre Company (Studio) @ Bille Brown Studio

It’s a cool and drizzly Brisbane winter night, the wind is blowing off the river and I’ve scooted back in quick time from my current-neighbourhood playhouse – the Bille Brown Studio at 78 Montague Road. I’ve been disturbed rather more than I would have thought possible by Dennis Kelly’s Orphans, a play out of contemporary Britain that lays bare another part of the barbaric underbelly of the carefully manicured middle class. I wanted to get home, turn the lights on and clear my head.

Orphans‘ action is relentless, and it doesn’t let go for its 105 or so minutes’ playing time. It hooks you from the get-go as the blood-stained figure of Liam bursts in on his sister Helen at home and eating dinner with her husband Danny. Their young son Shane is away – being baby-sat, and they’re having a quiet night at home – a ‘celebratory dinner’ cooked by Danny. We learn Helen is pregnant. The couple appear to be reasonably well-off; they live in a tasteful, beige on beige apartment which is interpreted with spot-on minimalist restraint in Sam Paxton‘s design.

Kat Henry directs this production for Queensland Theatre Company’s Studio with pace and flair. The starkness of Ben Hughes‘ lighting design and the cinematic atmosphere of Guy Webster’s sound composition create a stage world that beautifully complements the play’s dialogue – fragmented, naturalistic sounding yet meticulously crafted to reflect all the tempo-rhythms, poetry and ambiguities of everyday speech. Continue reading “Review: Orphans – Queensland Theatre Company (Studio) @ Bille Brown Studio”

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Review: Colder – La Boite Indie & Michelle Miall at The Roundhouse

Images: Al Caeiro

The first of the La Boite 2011 Indie season productions, Colder by Lachlan Philpott, opened at Brisbane’s Roundhouse Theatre last week. Directed by Michelle Miall and performed by a cast of six actors, this play is a tonal poem of melancholy. Like slow, sad rain falling on the heart, Colder washes its audience in a threnody of loss.

You’ve got to love the range and confidence of independent theatre in Brisbane right now. Sure, there are hits and misses – as there must be – but, as someone said a while back, it’s indie work with its daring and devilry that’s the life-blood of the wider theatre culture in this country. The indie voice heard in productions around town can be raucous and potty-mouthed, silly or serious. Sometimes the voice is delicate and challenging – as it is in this one.

I’m a sucker for poetic theatre – the theatre of poetry – whatever you want to call it. I fell for the poetry – the beauty and un-selfconscious lyricism – of Philpott’s text in Colder. Having said that and, despite the buzz of the play’s language, the work feels too long in the playing – is this the production’s pacing or the length and structure – even the nature – of the text itself? I wondered at the number of characters in the work and the inclusion of incidental interludes and monologues. Was it these which seemed to be holding up the core narrative?

The play revolves around David (Chris Vernon) the enigmatic central character who disappeared first (and for a few hours) as a child on a visit to Disneyland, and then, never to return, as an adult in Sydney. The play’s action is contextualised within the gay community of Sydney, and was inspired by one of the writer’s friends who went missing some years ago.

The cause of David’s disappearances comes late in Colder. In direct audience address he speaks of being haunted throughout his life in pursuit of the figures of a man and a boy – the father he knew only briefly and the confident boy he could never be. It only hints – but that is enough – at how and why David remains missing.

In any case, Colder is less of a mystery than a psychological exploration of the effect David’s disappearances have had upon his friends and acquaintances (Kevin Spink and Kerith Atkinson in multiple roles), his lover Ed (Tony Brockman) – but especially upon his mother, Robyn, who is played by Alison McGirr and Helen Howard in younger and older versions of the same character. We walk in their shoes wondering why and how for much of the play. The ensemble of six are in fine form and, under Myall’s direction, handle Philpott’s lovely text very well indeed.

Colder is a play that may have some asking how a text which relies more on voice than on embodiment can be improved by staging. Is it better suited for the vocal orchestration of radio where ‘the pictures are better’ for example? Michelle Miall’s production is far from static, but characters give witness, they narrate, and they describe more often than they interact. The play is not particularly dramatic but that’s no burden. This is the nature of Lachlan Philpott’s script, of course and, anyway, hoorah for poetic theatre.

What is gained in its staging – in breathing the same air together in the same room – is the embodied experience of grief and its effects which are as uneasy to watch as any forensic investigation must be. This is what the actors’ physical presence adds.

Design by Amanda Karo, lighting by Daniel Anderson and composition and sound design by Phil Slade mesh beautifully, as they should, for Michelle Miall’s most satisfying production of the difficult and cold road of the grief-stricken.

Colder plays at The Roundhouse Theatre as part of La Boite’s Indie 2011 season until 9 July. Check the La Boite website for session times and booking details.

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Review: Gaijin at QUT Gardens Theatre

The word Yakuza written in Hiragana
Image via Wikipedia

Gaijin, currently playing in a very short (3 day) season is the brainchild and production of Director/Designer Ben Knapton and Rock and Roll Musical/Stand-Up Performer/Sound Designer Dave Eastgate.

The play is essentially a series of snapshot episodes played out by various characters involved in the story of a young Australian gaijin (foreigner), Chris Thompson, who has gone to Japan to work in a theme park. He falls in with a Yakuza family member and, after a series of brushes with the underworld, is jailed for possession of drugs. Chris ends up in a notorious Japanese prison where, he is told, he will ‘cry every day.’

The play begins with a long monologue by a young Japanese man, Akira. He explains that he has grown up in a Yakuza family – the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia in other cultures. Although of Yakuza, he has not followed their ‘way.’ Chris Thompson’s one hope is the friendship of Akira who has befriended him and for whom Chris has apparently done favours. We see Akira on his knees at the play’s end pleading before a Yakuza prisoner ‘boss’ (Father) – a wonderful tattooed torso projection – to have Chris spared some of the prison’s horrors.

The play is built from a series of monologues accompanied by some pretty impressive multi-media and lighting and sound effects. The design and manipulation of the production’s projection technology with its live action is most impressive and, arguably, Gaijin’s strength. The big design team credited in the program is testament to the production’s focus. Lighting Design is by Jason Glenwright, whose work is gracing lots of Brisbane stages at the moment. Multimedia Design is by Nathan Sibthorpe and Ben Knapton

Dave Eastgate’s characterisation – the suite of Japanese and gaijin characters who weave in and out of Chris’ story – is strong and assured. His Japanese choreographer and the American theme park manager are particular delights. However, I did have some difficulty simply understanding a couple of his other thickly-accented Japanese English characters and, as a result, suspect I missed a few key plot points as they went by. Loved his musical ‘interludes’ as the drugged-out ‘Chris’ struts the stage howling into a microphone at a concert and, as himself in the closing ‘Epilogue’ moments of the play.

Direct audience address is far more satisfying in Gaijin than a couple of awkward-feeling scenes between one character and an invisible ‘other’ on stage, and when off-stage action is presented through sound effects and disembodied speech whilst the stage remains empty. Empty stages make me nervous.

Gaijin is a good-looking, smart piece of theatre-creation and a vehicle for the undoubted talents of Dave Eastgate and some pretty hot audio-visual designers. It is well worth a visit down to the QUT Gardens Point Theatre.