Category: Reviews

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Boy Girl Wall (Review): The Escapists @ !Metro Arts (2010)

Spring is just round the corner; love is in the air – along with deadly magpies – so it’s a perfect time for a new, one-man show all about romance and other local hazards, natural or man-made. With no more than a stick of chalk, a couple of puppet socks, a few props and an overhead projector, Lucas Stibbard creates and embodies the entire world of Boy Girl Wall in the bare, black-walled box of the !Metro Art’s Sue Benner Theatre.  It’s a sweet, very funny and touching confection, and a quite splendid night in the theatre from The Escapists.  This is the same creative collective that brought you The Attack of the Attacking Attackers a year or so back. The Escapists’ manifesto: imagination, theatricality and the joy of play are all joyously present in Boy Girl Wall.

Floppy haired, chalk-stained-suited and bare-footed, Stibbard, like his quirky imagination, takes flight through the tiny space of the inner city’s favorite theatre haunt. Stibbard’s is a wonderfully original and intelligent voice, and he leaps and whirls in a non stop, dazzling performance in the best Aussie tradition of yarn spinning. Flicking and switching between characters with the ease of someone totally in charge and on top of his game, it’s a 70 minute delight which flies by at full tilt and as nimbly as the story teller himself.  Continue reading “Boy Girl Wall (Review): The Escapists @ !Metro Arts (2010)”

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Review: Domestic Violence in the Chatroom – I Love You Bro’ at La Boite Theatre

I’ve often found myself using the caveat about something outrageous from real life … mostly behaviour … you know how it goes, ‘If they put that on stage, no one would believe it!’ Well, someone did. Adam J Cass, in fact. The writer of I Love You Bro‘ La Boite’s latest, directed by David Berthold takes the real-life extraordinary circumstances of a 14 year old from Manchester in the UK who conspired to kill himself.  He and his dupe, an online chat friend ‘MarkyMark’ were eventually arrested and charged with attempted murder and incitement to murder. Yes indeed, an unbelievable (almost) real story and another in the ‘troubled teen’ genre, one that’s absurd, tragic and hints at that bogeyman of the ‘dangerous web.’ I thought in passing as I left the building after the performance that La Boite could quite easily have sub-titled their 2010 season as ‘People behaving crazily at full stretch.’ It’s been one of those years at the Roundhouse so far. Continue reading “Review: Domestic Violence in the Chatroom – I Love You Bro’ at La Boite Theatre”

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Review: ‘Forensic poetry’ Tender – and moor theatre and !Metro Arts Independents 2010

I’m sure Nicki Bloom, like that other playwrighting wunderkind Polly Stenham (That Face), is tired of hearing how marvellous it must be to write so well at such a young age. We tend not to gush quite so much over absurdly talented young musicians and sports stars but, somehow when it comes to writing plays, you’re not supposed to hit all the marks until you’re much older.  Just why you can’t be as prodigiously clever with imagination and words as you can with bat, ball or musical notes certainly escapes me.

Having got that off my chest, I have to say that Nicki Bloom’s first play Tender, currently playing at !Metro Arts for the Independents 2010 season really does demonstrate an impressive mastery of dialogue (I understand she also writes poetry) and, with this work at least, an equally striking command of dramatic form – not bad for someone aged 22 when she wrote it, had it performed by Belvoir Street’s B-Sharp and then Hothouse Theatre (Albury-Wodonga) and back to Griffin in Sydney. Continue reading “Review: ‘Forensic poetry’ Tender – and moor theatre and !Metro Arts Independents 2010”

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Review: The Chairs – La Boite Theatre

You could infer that the show must truly be something if it’s memorable weeks later in this age of disposable entertainment. You could infer that I have avoided writing this for as long as I could. You could infer a lot of things. Fact is I was asked to write this because I had seen the show and Greenroom was having difficulty finding time to attend La Boite’s latest production of The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco. So what does that mean?

Firstly, it means I hadn’t intended to put my thoughts forward so they have become fractious and disordered in my head in the weeks since I saw the show. Secondly, it means I am looking at the work with the benefit of hindsight and the handicap of its being most of a month ago. There is much to be said for the school of thought that there are two worlds, things as they are and our ideal versions of them. Finally, it means that I have had quite a few discussions with people about their experiences of the work.  As such, I have had to try and find my way back to what I saw and how I felt about it.

I’ll try now.

When it was announced that Brian Lucas would be directing Eugene Gilfedder and Jennifer Flowers in Martin Crimp’s translation of Ionesco’s The Chairs my ears pricked up; there is a lot to like about that sentence. Brian Lucas’ work as a performer, choreographer and dancer is sublime and singular: an idiosyncratic and brilliant mind coupled with a masterful sense of physical performance. Eugene Gilfedder has, in recent years enjoyed a thoroughly deserved resurgence in his work, best described as brilliant and idiosyncratic, and intense. Jennifer Flowers has been a presence in Australian Theatre for decades, recently as tour director on The Year of Magical Thinking and notably in her Helpmann Award nominated turn in Doubt. Martin Crimp is a fine writer – his Attempts On Her Life is a truly great play, and Ionesco is responsible for some of the most memorable plays of the Absurdist movement. So from the outset there was a lot of excitement and anticipation.

Actually, it wasn’t just me, everyone I spoke to beforehand was the same. Maybe that’s why I have waited to write this, taking time to remove the play I wanted from the play I got – there is nothing worse than a review that spends its time talking about what should have been done.

So here’s what I saw. Continue reading “Review: The Chairs – La Boite Theatre”

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The Works: Queensland Theatre Company @ Bille Brown Studio

Bull by Matthew Ryan (2 July)

Matthew Ryan’s Bull is a comedic and bloodthirsty exploration of love, sex and invention based on Greek mythology. Daedalus is an out-of-favour inventor, and must solve King Minos’ problem – his wife Queen Pasiphaë is in love with a bull. Solutions are thin on the ground and a mechanical animal may just be the answer King Minos is looking for…

Director: Michael Gow
Cast includes: Jason Klarwein, Nick Newth, Bryan Probets, Melanie Zanetti

The Dark Room by Angela Betzien (3 July)

Angela Betzien’s The Dark Room is a haunting psychological thriller set at a run-down motel on the edge of a military town. Six unlikely characters converge – Anni, a government youth worker is accompanied by a withdrawn fourteen year-old girl, pregnant Emma awaiting her husband, a drunken country cop and a teenage boy lurks on the perimeter of the motel, watching the man in room 6.

Director: Melanie Wild
Cast includes: Kerith Atkinson, Jason Klarwein, Nick Newth, Bryan Probets, Belinda Raisin, Melanie Zanetti