Theatre: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

By Ray Lawler

Directed by Marcelle Schmitz

Set designer Lauren Ross

Performed by WAAPA 3^rd Year acting students Abbie-Lee Lewis, Emily Kennedy, Renae Small, Travis Jeffery, Andrew Hearle, Arabella Mason and Mathew Cooper

Roundhouse Theatre, WAAPA

15 – 23 June, 2012

Renae Small and Andrew Hearle

Ray Lawler’s 1955 play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, occupies a formidable place in the history of the Australian stage, rather like Patrick White’s novels of the same vintage do in its literature. It bears the weight of comparison to the gigantic American and British naturalist dramas of the mid-20th century: Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof premiered the same year; John Osborne’s Look back in Anger the year after.

It also suffered a bowdlerised, Americanised film version in 1959, happy ending and all, that did its reputation no good at all.

For all these reasons, “The Doll” has long been a play admired from a distance. In the WA of 2012, though, it offers something much more immediate.

Theatre: Private Lives

By Noël Coward

Onward Production

Directed by Marcelle Schmitz

Set design by Brian Woltjen

Costume design by Steve Nolan

Featuring Kirsty Hillhouse, Michael Loney, James Helm, Michelle Fornasier and Rosemarie Lenzo

Subiaco Arts Centre

Until December 10

Michael Loney and Kirsty Hillhouse (pic: Jon Green)

Noël Coward’s Private Lives is given a glittering, unsettling revival by Sally Burton’s Onward Production at the Subiaco Arts Centre in a sumptuous production marked by bravura performances by its stars, Kirsty Hillhouse and Michael Loney, and an expertly paced reading by director Marcelle Schmitz.

Schmitz is a considered and talented director, and she is neither spooked by the domestic violence that haunts the play nor bogged down in it. She gives the play’s sharp glamour and wit a full head of steam, and her cast take glorious advantage of the license given them. 

Private Lives is like a dazzling stranger at a glamorous party; impossible not to admire, hard to resist, but dangerous to love. If you do, though (I did), be wary of the dark place behind those lovely, sparkling eyes.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian               

Theatre: Ninety

Black Swan State Theatre Company
Written by Joanna Murray-Smith

Directed by Marcelle Schmitz

Featuring Paul English and Kirsty Hillhouse

The Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre

July 1-17, 2011

Joanna Murray-Smith

A man has agreed to spend 90 minutes with his former wife three days before he is to marry his much younger girlfriend. The former wife intends to use the time to persuade him to come back to her.

They met when he was her drama tutor, had an affair and married. Some years later he deserted her. He has become an internationally successful, award-winning actor and she an art restorer.

This is a very specific frame upon which to build a drama, full of possibilities but with very little margin for error. You have to be convinced by these two people, you have to come to want them to succeed or fail; and the working out of their situation needs to be clearly charted and reach a genuine and explicable conclusion.