Month: July 2010

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This Week in Queensland theatre: July 5-11

For more details check company websites

It’s a quieter week – maybe because it’s School holiday time.  If you haven’t gone away don’t miss Tender and The Clean House.
School holidays also mean workshops.  Check out what’s happening with the Shake and Stir crowd and at La Boite Theatre. Click their logos over there on the right.

Continuing:

Tashi created for children 4-10 and their families adapted from Anna Fienberg’s Tashi series. Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, Tues – Friday 9:30 and 12:30, Saturday 11:30

Tender by Nikki Bloom Dir Andrea Moor for !Metro Arts Independents 2010 at !Metro Arts

The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl Dir Kate Cherry Queensland Theatre Company, Cremorne Theatre, QPAC

Other:

Leon Cain’s daily videocasts of his rehearsals for the upcoming I Love You Bro’ are worth a look.  Check them out on La Boite’s You Tube channel

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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”