Theatre: Henry V

By William Shakespeare

Propeller

Directed by Edward Hall

Designed by Michael Pavelka

His Majesty’s Theatre

Until February 25

I’ll keep this brief. This is the best Henry V I’m ever likely to see; Propeller give the story of the Hero King of Agincourt an adrenal, turbo-charged energy that would be nigh-on impossible to improve on. In return, nothing in Shakespeare or elsewhere is better suited to the company’s rambunctious, open style; I’d love to see them do Macbeth or, especially, Julius Caesar, but if I had to choose, this is the play for them.

Theatre: Raoul

Designed, directed and performed by James Thiérrée

Regal Theatre

Until February 26

 He was lithe, charming, physically articulate, delectably funny and achingly sad-eyed. His wordless imagination knew no limits. He remains the performer nonpareil of our times. He was Charlie Chaplin.

James Thiérrée, whose Raoul is here for PIAF until February 26, is Chaplin’s grandson, and he’s inherited – perhaps it’s fairer to say has – many of pop’s skills and qualities.

Thiérrée has consummate skills as an acrobat, a dancer and an aerialist – his flying, on different apparatus, is joyfully beautiful to behold. He moves in slow motion as well as I’ve ever seen, his mime is rapid, loose-limbed and accurate. The sight gags are marvellously concocted, the out-sized animal puppets (designed and made by Thiérrée’s mother, Victoria) ingenious, the production elements tasteful and spectacularly executed.    

I enjoyed it all, and I greatly admired his skill, but at one hour 40 minutes, Raoul is too long for its frame, maybe half an hour too long. Thiérrée got a spontaneous standing ovation at the end, and I don’t begrudge him the accolade. For all its undoubted qualities, though, Raoul couldn’t quite get me to my feet.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian 

Theatre: Pollyanna

Weeping Spoon Productions

Directed by Wyatt Nixon-Lloyd and Tim Watts

Designed by Poppy Van Oorde-Grainger and Alissa Jane Claessens

Created by the cast and crew

The Treasury 

16 - 19 February, 2012

Tim Watts and crew

I don’t normally take instructions from the producers before reviewing a show, but in the case of Pollyanna, the latest project of the Tim Watts/ Arielle Gray (Alvin Sputnik) clan, it seemed the only appropriate thing to do.

So, with their permission, I can tell you that lovely Pollyanna Smith never makes it to her sixteenth birthday party. Dead. Murdered. The police come to the door with the terrible news. Then, to the horror of all and sundry, they arrest the son of Mayor Arthur Dobson and haul him away for questioning.

I went with them, because I’m a cop too. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: The Winter's Tale

By William Shakespeare

Propeller

Directed by Edward Hall

Designed by Michael Pavelka

His Majesty’s Theatre

Until February 25

It’s a bonus, this late tale of William Shakespeare, here in a gorgeous looking, beautifully spoken and often riotously staged production by the English company, Propeller.

The bonus is perhaps also the reason The Winter’s Tale doesn’t rank higher among Shakespeare’s plays, despite containing some of his finest writing and most vivid characters: it’s really two short plays yoked together, worlds apart in style and substance. The good news is that Propeller revels in their differences, and does both more than justice.

Theatre: Persians

by Aeschylus, translated by Aaron Poochigian

Happy Dagger and Little y theatre companies

Directed by Andrew Hale

Performed by Christie Sistrunk, Austin Castiglione, Maitland Schnaars, Leon Osborn, Helen Angell, Lynsey Trench, Megan Moir, Ellen O’Connor and Laura Hopwood

Designed by Sarah Affleck

Lighting designed by Joe Lui

Music by Adam Burges, performed by The Men from Another Place

PICA

15 - 19 February, 2012

Aeschylus

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of The Persians, the tragedy of the rout of the navy and army of Xerxes the Great by the Greeks at Salamis. The oldest surviving play, it gives us the first insight into the consciousness of mankind as expressed by theatre. Told by an exact contemporary (Aeschylus fought at both Salamis and, some years earlier, the epochal battle of Marathon) it is also the first surviving example of drama’s unique ability to frame events and personalities. It may also be the first surviving example of propaganda.

There’s no denying, too, that as the eyes of the world turn anxiously to the most recent inheritors of Xerxes’ domain – and, ironically and for different reasons, to his Greek enemies – the chroniclers and dramatisers of ancient empires and the conduct of their affairs hold a distant mirror to us and our times.

Persians, a new translation by the American scholar and poet Aaron Poochigian, does a fine job maintaining the gravitas of Greek tragedy with just enough contemporary rhythm and idiom to allow the ancient work to work for a modern audience.

Link here  to the complete review in The West Australian 

Theatre: …miskien

Written by Tara Louise Notcutt, Albert Pretorius and Gideon Lombard

Directed by Tara Louise Notcutt

Performed by Albert Pretorius and Gideon Lombard

PICA

15 - 19 February 19

Gideon Lombard

A little way into this powerful drama of dead-end lives and male bonding in modern South Africa, I realised that I had never heard Afrikaans spoken in conversation. There is much about ordinary lives in that great country, our neighbour but for 8000 kms of ocean, that are hidden from us by the enormous events that have swirled around it.

We know Mandela, but do we know Layton (Gideon Lombard) and Cormac (Albert Pretorius) the two Capetown 25-year-old office workers whose workaday world and relationship is the story of the play? As it turns out, we know them very well, because they are our lives as well.

Hilarious and awfully sad, …miskien is one of the highlights of the Fringe.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Concert: Faustian Pact

Silver Alert and Micki Pellerano

The Festival Gardens

February 14, 2012

Hey! What's Lenny doing here?

A technical hitch delayed the start of Faustian Pact, leading the Breath of Fresh Air that is new PIAF artistic director Jonathan Holloway to bound down the line reassuring us that all would be well and that “twenty years from now we’ll look back on this and laugh”. Well. It’s only the next morning, and I’ve already got the giggles.

Not since the infamous Motorhead gig at the White Sands back in the '80s that had the crowd’s jeans flapping* has such a noise been directed at a paying audience in Perth.

When it was over, there was embarrassed silence, punctuated only by that strange yelping sound made, I assume in approbation, by people who know members of the cast.

An unforgettable evening.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian.

*On the unimpeachable authority of  the immortal Johnny Leopard, who flapped a few jeans himself.