Friday, November 23, 2012

Theatre: Glengarry Glen Ross


By David Mamet
Little y Theatre
Directed by Mark Storen
Designed by Fiona Bruce
Featuring Georgia King, Ella Hetherington, Caris Eves, Holly Garvey, Leanne Curran, Alexandra Nell and Verity Softly
Music by Andrew Weir and Ben Collins
Blue Room Theatre
Until December 8
Leanne Curran and Georgia King
There’s a reason Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s Pulitzer, Olivier and Tony award-winning 1984 drama, is having major revivals all across the US.
It can be found in the forsaken suburban tracts and vacated foreclosures that have hollowed out many American cities, so much like the worthless developments that Mamet’s salesman are hawking to their unsuspecting clients.
Little y Theatre’s production at the Blue Room has an all-female cast (although it’s required to use the script’s male character names and pronouns). Even if you’re not a devotee of gender-swapping theatre, a revival of a play about real estate is as appropriate a place as any to do it.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Cabaret: Meow Meow

Astor Theatre

November 16, 2012

I had a diverting conversation with my wife on Friday night about the allure of the extraordinary Melissa Madden Gray, the artist known as Meow Meow.
She briefly wondered whether the boundlessly pneumatic cabaret artist appealed more to blokes. And as I helped Meow crowd surf over our heads while she sang Come Dance with Me, I confess I was reminded of Bob Menzies’ famous “I did but see her passing by …”
But Meow is much more clever than that. Her full-frontal attack on glamour, her insurgency in the war of the sexes never says “come hither”. “Come over here and do what you’re told” is more like it. Whatever empowerment is, that’s what Meow Meow is peddling. She’s got a joke about what boys like and guys want – and the women are in on it.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Monday, November 19, 2012

Theatre: Managing Carmen

Black Swan State Theatre Company/ QTC
Written by David Williamson
Directed by Wesley Enoch
Designed by Richard Roberts
Lighting design by Trent Suidgeest
Sound design by Tony Brumpton
Audio Visual design by Declan McMonagle
Featuring John Batchelor, Tim Dashwood, Claire Lovering, Anna McGahan and Greg McNeill

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Until December 2

At 201cm tall, David Williamson could have been an AFL ruckman. Instead, he used his 1970s heyday to establish himself as Australia’s pre-eminent, and most bankable, playwright.
With Managing Carmen, Williamson returns to footy 35 years after The Club, his signature hit about shenanigans at a barely-disguised Collingwood.
We’re back at the Pies, but this time it’s conniving managers and their precious players – rather than coaches and board members – who take centre-stage.
As an exposé of big-time sport, it’s 30 years out of date; as an argument for tolerance and honesty, it’s wafer-thin and unmemorable, and, in a gobsmackingly horrible first half, it reduces its actors to the grossest of caricatures.

But here’s the thing. Like a battered old champ having a bad day, Williamson demands to be taken on his own terms, and treated with caution if not respect.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian 

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Theatre: One Night Echo


The Duck House
Written by Gita Bezard
Directed by Kathryn Osborne
Performed and devised by Alissa Claessens, Brendan Ewing, Fran Middleton, Will O’Mahoney and Tyrone Robinson, with Tim Watts
PICA
November 8 - 17, 2012
Fran Middleton, Brendan Ewing and Alissa Claessens
For students of Greek mythology (and, after a quick refresher course on Wikipedia, us mere mortals), the central conceit of The Duck House’s stylish, brittle party piece at PICA is a delicious game of spot the nymphs and satyrs.
The party in question has been thrown by Theo (Will O’Mahoney), whose unrelenting narcissism gives his eponymous alter-identity away immediately. He’s hired a chick named Echo (google “Echo, Greek mythology”) to serve drinks. The guests arrive; his diffident, intelligent mate Eddie (Brendan Ewing), the magnetic, luminous Celeste (Alissa Claessens) and a lithe, shadowy young man (Tyrone Robinson) with hair swept over like horns. She is Selene, goddess of the moon; they are her lovers Endymion, the astronomer, and Pan, the goat, the god of the wild. This is no safe place for either Echo the nymph or Echo the girl, and, as in the myth, it tears her apart.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian 

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Theatre: Picasso's Goldfinch


Written by Tom Jeffcote
Directed and designed by Lawrie Cullen-Tait
Performed by Andrew Hale and Tiffany Barton
The Blue Room
Until November 17

“They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches, in order that they can sing better.” The famous, if a little woolly-headed, quote from Picasso is the reference point for Tom Jeffcote’s story of a painter and the women who shape his life.