By Ross Lonnie
Directed by Soseh Yekanians
Performed by Quintin George and Ben Hall
The Blue Room Theatre
Until May 10
Coming soon after the powerful, theatrically innovative The Long Way Home, Ross Lonnie’s Uncle Jack (directed by Soseh Yekanians at the Blue Room) continues the heightened interest in soldiers, and soldiering, we can expect through WWI centenary observances over the next five years.
Lonnie’s work is much more traditional, but contemplates the same brutal equation: If men are changed by war – and how could they not be – then how can we expect them to return unchanged, as if nothing had happened?
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Theatre: The Pillowman
by Martin McDonagh
Endless Theatre Company
Directed by Rebecca Virginia Williams
Performed by Jordan Gallagher, Kiefer Moriarty-Short, Bryn Coldrick and Garreth Bradshaw
State Theatre Centre Rehearsal Room until Feb 22
The Pillowman, tweaked slightly, could pop up as a telemovie on the ABC or Showtime.
It’s got obsessed detectives, a perhaps-not-so-innocent suspect with freak-out brother, bad behaviour in the interview room, that sort of thing. Think those grey-and-white Scandinavian crime stories; think The Fall or Top of the Lake.
But that’s not what makes the play, which cut a swathe trough the London and New York theatre awards a decade go, sing. Its writer, Martin McDonagh, has a trick or two up his sleeve, and the result, while enjoyably unpleasant, is more Grimm than merely grim.
Endless Theatre Company
Directed by Rebecca Virginia Williams
Performed by Jordan Gallagher, Kiefer Moriarty-Short, Bryn Coldrick and Garreth Bradshaw
State Theatre Centre Rehearsal Room until Feb 22
The Pillowman, tweaked slightly, could pop up as a telemovie on the ABC or Showtime.
It’s got obsessed detectives, a perhaps-not-so-innocent suspect with freak-out brother, bad behaviour in the interview room, that sort of thing. Think those grey-and-white Scandinavian crime stories; think The Fall or Top of the Lake.
But that’s not what makes the play, which cut a swathe trough the London and New York theatre awards a decade go, sing. Its writer, Martin McDonagh, has a trick or two up his sleeve, and the result, while enjoyably unpleasant, is more Grimm than merely grim.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Hail, Hail Rock and Roll
It was 60 years ago today,
Bill Haley taught the band to play,
It's been going in and out of style,
But it's guaranteed to raise a smile...
(Curiously, April 11, 1954, the day before Mr Haley and his sidekicks changed the world forever, has been determined to be the most boring day in the 20th century link here. Even more co-incidentally, the day before that, April 10, 1954, has a great deal of significance, especially for your humble correspondent...)
Bill Haley taught the band to play,
It's been going in and out of style,
But it's guaranteed to raise a smile...
(Curiously, April 11, 1954, the day before Mr Haley and his sidekicks changed the world forever, has been determined to be the most boring day in the 20th century link here. Even more co-incidentally, the day before that, April 10, 1954, has a great deal of significance, especially for your humble correspondent...)
Monday, March 24, 2014
Theatre: A Streetcar Named Desire
Written by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Kate Cherry
Designed by Christina Smith
Sound designer and composer Ben Collins
With Ben D’Addario, Nathaniel Dean, Callum Fletcher, Luke Hewitt, Michael Loney, Rhoda Lopez, Jo Morris, Sigrid Thornton, Steve Turner, Alison van Reeken and Irma Woods
Black Swan State Theatre Company
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Extended to April 11
There’s no doubt about A Streetcar Named Desire. Its impact on the American stage and its cinema, and the consequences of its writing and performance are still with us 67 years after its debut.
Its tumultuous reception, the famous opening-night standing ovation, the huge critical and popular success that followed it, and the 1951 film version, suggest audiences were ready to see real life, its violence, its sexuality and the savagery with which it tears down anachronism, pretention and delusion, played as it is for what it is.
Which all makes Streetcar a tricky conveyance for its director and stars.
Link here to the complete review in The West Australian
Directed by Kate Cherry
Designed by Christina Smith
Sound designer and composer Ben Collins
With Ben D’Addario, Nathaniel Dean, Callum Fletcher, Luke Hewitt, Michael Loney, Rhoda Lopez, Jo Morris, Sigrid Thornton, Steve Turner, Alison van Reeken and Irma Woods
Black Swan State Theatre Company
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Extended to April 11
There’s no doubt about A Streetcar Named Desire. Its impact on the American stage and its cinema, and the consequences of its writing and performance are still with us 67 years after its debut.
Its tumultuous reception, the famous opening-night standing ovation, the huge critical and popular success that followed it, and the 1951 film version, suggest audiences were ready to see real life, its violence, its sexuality and the savagery with which it tears down anachronism, pretention and delusion, played as it is for what it is.
Which all makes Streetcar a tricky conveyance for its director and stars.
Link here to the complete review in The West Australian
Theatre: WAAPA class of 2014
Hair
Book/ lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado
Music by Galt MacDermot
Director and choreographer Tanya Mitford
Music director David King
Set designer Hannah Metternick-Jones
Costume designer Georgia Metternick-Jones
Performed by WAAPA 3rd Year Music Theatre students
Geoff Gibbs Theatre, WAAPA
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
By Bertolt Brecht
Director Michael Jenn
Set designer Sarah Olivia Tartaglia
Costume designer Sarah Duyvestyn
Performed by WAAPA 3rd Year Acting students
Roundhouse Theatre, WAAPA
March 14 - 22 2014
The first round of productions at the WA Academy of Performing Arts is like the first round of the footy season. What will the new kids be like? Who’ll be the stars?
WAAPA unveiled its 2014 graduating classes in acting and music theatre in two sprawling, messy and entertaining productions.
The messiness, I hasten to add, was not the fault of the young performers or their mentors. Both Hair and Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui were written on the run, and it shows.
Link here to the complete review in The West Australian
Book/ lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado
Music by Galt MacDermot
Director and choreographer Tanya Mitford
Music director David King
Set designer Hannah Metternick-Jones
Costume designer Georgia Metternick-Jones
Performed by WAAPA 3rd Year Music Theatre students
Geoff Gibbs Theatre, WAAPA
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
By Bertolt Brecht
Director Michael Jenn
Set designer Sarah Olivia Tartaglia
Costume designer Sarah Duyvestyn
Performed by WAAPA 3rd Year Acting students
Roundhouse Theatre, WAAPA
March 14 - 22 2014
The first round of productions at the WA Academy of Performing Arts is like the first round of the footy season. What will the new kids be like? Who’ll be the stars?
WAAPA unveiled its 2014 graduating classes in acting and music theatre in two sprawling, messy and entertaining productions.
The messiness, I hasten to add, was not the fault of the young performers or their mentors. Both Hair and Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui were written on the run, and it shows.
Link here to the complete review in The West Australian
Theatre: The Guys
By Anne Nelson
Directed by Paula Coops
Performed by Anna Bennetts and Adam T Perkins
Subiaco Arts Centre Studio
March 12 – 15, 2014
The images are frozen in time; the planes, the burning towers, the awful collapse. Twelve years on, we still see the world through the prism of that terrible morning, that desperately empty skyline.
Anne Nelson’s The Guys was an almost immediate response to the tragedy of 9/11, debuting less than three months later, with Bill Murray as Nick, a New York Fire Department captain who lost eight men in the collapse, and Sigourney Weaver as Joan, the writer helping him compose the eulogies he must give at their memorial services.
Directed by Paula Coops
Performed by Anna Bennetts and Adam T Perkins
Subiaco Arts Centre Studio
March 12 – 15, 2014
The images are frozen in time; the planes, the burning towers, the awful collapse. Twelve years on, we still see the world through the prism of that terrible morning, that desperately empty skyline.
Anne Nelson’s The Guys was an almost immediate response to the tragedy of 9/11, debuting less than three months later, with Bill Murray as Nick, a New York Fire Department captain who lost eight men in the collapse, and Sigourney Weaver as Joan, the writer helping him compose the eulogies he must give at their memorial services.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Theatre: The Shadow King
William Shakespeare's King Lear adapted by Michael Kantor and Tom E Lewis
Malthouse Theatre
Directed by Michael Kantor
Designed by Paul Jackson, Michael Kantor and David Miller
Musical direction John Rodgers
Performed by Jada Alberts, Jimi Bani, Frances Djulibing, Rarriwuy Hick, Damion Hunter, Kamahi Djordon King, Tom E. Lewis and Natasha Wanganeen, with musicians Selwyn Burns, Djakapurra Munyarryun and Bart Willoughby
Heath Ledger Theatre until 1 March
Let’s be clear: despite its title, its language and its setting, The Shadow King is King Lear, Shakespeare’s, and all theatre’s, supreme drama.
In a remarkable achievement, Michael Kantor and Tom E. Lewis (who also plays the king) have stripped half its length, all but eight of its 21 characters (no sadistic Cornwall, no grasping Albany, no loyal Kent), changed the gender of one of them (Gloucester), presented a radically altered text in five indigenous languages as well as English, and delivered an always satisfying and sometimes transcendent version of the play.
As Djakapurra Munyarryun’s phenomenal, keening voice sings all the sorrow of tens of thousands of years, signed, date stamped and filed; as Frances Djulibing falls to the ground from the cliff her son imagines for her; as Tom E. Lewis dances, distracted, in the dust, the unsurpassable art that lies at the heart of Shakespeare’s greatest play, and this memorable, iconic, imagining of it, rises up from the red dirt and takes us in.
Link here to the complete review in The West Australian
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