Theatre: Signifying Nothing (★★★★)

Written and directed by Greg Fleet
Designed by Joe Lui
Performed by Nicola Bartlett and Greg Fleet
with Luke Hewett, Roz Hammond, Matt Dyktnski, Sarah McNeill, Russya Connor, Summer Williams, Katie Keady and Matt Penny
Blue Room Theatre
Until December 3

Paul and Lanie Macbeth (Greg Fleet and Nicol Bartlett) are a power couple of big fish in the very small pond of WA politics. She’s a lawyer, he’s the new Member for Cannington and a Man Who Would Be King.
Which doesn’t bode well for Premier Byron Duncan, or even the Macbeth’s good mate James Banquo (the terrific Luke Hewitt).
But while Fleet  may be a celebrated stand-up comedian, he’s no fool. He’s adroitly dodged the traps lying in wait for this production; it’s not a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and neither is it a parody of WA politics.
I’ve no doubt that there’ll be people who find Signifying Nothing far from their liking, but, for me, it’s another highlight in a Blue Room season that’s had a bundle of them.
 
Read the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Old Love (★★★½)

By Chris Isaacs
Directed by Jeffrey Jay Fowler
Performed by Nicola Bartlett, Arielle Gray, Nick Maclaine and Tim Watts
Blue Room Theatre
Until May 2

The Last Great Hunt, Perth’s hyperactive little theatre company that can, is back with a sharp, twisted domestic comedy for, and about, all ages.
Meet cool 30-ish couple Jim (Nick Maclaine) and Gabby (Arielle Gray) – he’s a work-from-home software maven, she’s a work-the-phones property developer.
They’re having a dinner party, but there’s tension. He’s been babysitting his niece, and hasn’t tidied up the debris; she’s struggling to choose between all but identical little black dresses. He’s way too relaxed about it; she’s way too uptight.
We know these people well. Let’s see what they get up to.

Theatre: Moving On Inc. (★ ★ ★ ★)

Written and directed by Mikala Westall
Lighting and sound designer Joe Lui
Performed by Nicola Bartlett, Harriet Gordon-Anderson and Barnaby Pollock
Until February 21

The actor Mikala Westall impressed in her recent performances in Will O’Mahoney’s Great White and Joe Lui’s The Tribe. Now she has a play of her own, Moving On Inc., and has come up trumps first time.
Westall’s jumping off point is the little known profession of cleaning up the effects of the deceased. What interested her in particular is the idea of tidying up all those memories, allowing everything that people were to move on into their eternity.
Abby (Harriet Gordon-Anderson) and her boyfriend Sam (Barnaby Pollock) are taking her late dad’s effects into the bush to burn them. There’s something – or someone – on the road, and Sam can’t get the car started again after he swerves to avoid a collision.
An older woman, Ruth (Nicola Bartlett) appears, and seems to be more interested in what the couple are planning, and know more about the effects they plan to do it to, than makes for a relaxing evening.

Theatre: Titus Andronicus

William Shakespeare

Her Infinite Variety Ensemble

Directed by Jenny De Reuck

Designed by Sarah Duyvestan

Featuring Nicola Bartlett, Helen Doig, Tiffany Barton, Angelique Malcolm, Natalie Ryan-Brand, Olivia Hogan, Shirley Van Sanden, Mikala Westall, Emma Jermy, Sarah Courtis, Claire Munday and Rhoda Lopez  

Subiaco Arts Centre Studio

Until May 21

The William Shakespeare of the early 1590s was a young man in a big hurry. He’d had some success with a couple of comedies and histories but aimed for a stake in the prestige market for tragedies, which was dominated by Thomas Kyd and the firebrand Christopher Marlowe.

His first foray into tragedy was Titus Andronicus, a messy, ill-formed piece of Ovidian and Senecan bloodbathery that wanted for nothing in energy, for all it lacked in artistic merit. Think of the Saw movie franchise.

So now, 350-odd years later, we’ve got an all-female Titus Andronicus produced by a mono-gender (its description) theatre company aiming to redress the imbalance in male/female opportunities in the acting profession.

That’s a noble enough intention. I just wish it had chosen a more likely vehicle in which to make its debut.