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 

Theatre: Music from the Whirlwind

by John Aitken

Directed and designed by Lawrie Cullen-Tait

Performed by Brendan Ewing

The Metcalfe Playhouse

3 – 5 November, 2011

Theatre should give us entertainment, emotion and education. Whatever else you say about the revival of Music from the Whirlwind, WA playwright John Aitken’s powerful exposé of the dangerous relationship between Dmitri Shostakovich and the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, it certainly delivers on the last of these. Brendan Ewing, the edgy, distinctive actor who plays the Russian composer in this single hander, provides plenty of the others.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Her Holiness

Written by Justin Fleming and Melvyn Morrow

Directed by John Senczuk
Featuring Caitlin Beresford-Ord, Jay Walsh, Brendan Ewing, Alinta Carroll, Alysha McGreevy, Charlotte Westrip, Corinne Davies, Richard Mellick and John Aitken
Metcalfe Playhouse

April 16 - 18, 2011

The Mary MacKillop that emerges from Justin Fleming and Melvyn Morrow’s Her Holiness is far removed from the St Mary of recent hagiographic pop nationalism, but not so far that we can’t understand the love and loyalty she has inspired in the century since her death.

This isn’t the great play about Mary McKillop that waits to be staged; when it is, it will contain many of this one’s strengths.

As played with obstinate strength and real warmth by Caitlin Beresford-Ord, Mary may have had a heavenly calling, but her cares and ambitions were for the far-flung, backward settlements of colonial Australia. God may have forsaken them, but sure as hell Mary wasn’t going to.

Starting with literally nothing, and blessed by wanting nothing more, she and her order, the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, founded schools and orphanages from Ceduna to Mackay, along the way attracting the enmity of many in the fiercely patriarchal Irish hierarchy of the Australian Catholic church.

Much of the action revolves around their repeated attempts to bring Mary down, and her just as determined efforts to keep doing things her way. It’s a great story, and Her Holiness rattles along well while it’s being told.

Other parts of the play are much less interesting. In particular, some long scenes between a contemporary Australian journalist (also played by Beresford-Ord) and the current Pope Benedict XVI (John Aitken) are flimsily constructed and tediously discursive. They do serve a purpose, but they are a dramatic weight the show struggles to carry.

Caitlin Beresford-Ord as Mary MacKillop

By and large, though, Her Holiness is a worthwhile insight into the life and career of our newly-minted saint. Director John Senczuk deals with the text sensitively and efficiently. He’s assisted by solid and engaging performances from the women in his supporting cast, Alinta Carroll, Alysha McGreevy and Charlotte Westrip as Mary’s very human and spirited acolytes and Corinne Davies as a wealthy supporter with all of Mary’s determination and forcefulness.

Brendan Ewing, as the feverish Father Julian Woods and Richard Mellick, in a number of smaller parts, make the most of their opportunities. The venerable John Aitken and Jay Walsh, as the various popes and bishops in Mary’s life and afterlife, are burdened with much of the play’s more awkward text, and in all fairness they often make hard going of it.

Her Holiness is the first production in the Metcalfe Playhouse, a 280-seat auditorium inside the Empyrean function centre in Lake Street, Northbridge. The space – formerly an IMAX cinema – needs a bit of fine tuning, but is a welcome and, it’s claimed, reasonably affordable addition to Perth’s theatre stocks.

With, I’m delighted to report, the most comfortable seats, a legacy of its former life, I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a play from. 

An edited version of this notice appeared in The West Australian of 18.4.11 link here  

Theatre: The Ugly One

Perth Theatre Company

Written by Marius Von Mayenburg

Directed by Melissa Cantwell

Featuring Benj D’Addario, Brendan Ewing, Geoff Kelso and Gemma Ward

Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre

March 22 - April 9, 2011 

Geoff Kelso (l) and Benj D'Addario

The Ugly One is the first of German playwright Marius Von Mayenburg’s work to be staged in Perth, though like his Eldorado and Moving Target, it has had success in other capitals.

On the strength of this elegant, economic production directed by Melissa Cantwell in the Studio Underground at the new State Theatre Centre, it’s easy to see why.

It’s a beautiful production to look at (and not for the obvious, somewhat over-publicised reason you may be thinking of) and the cast deal effectively with the challenges Von Mayenberg’s text throws them: Benj D'Addario tracks Lette’s descent from solid citizen to outcast to degenerate with clarity while Geoff Kelso, a very funny man right in his element here, and the provocative Brendan Ewing both inject just the right amount of over-the-toppery to keep things from getting too Germanic.

It’s impossible to ignore Gemma Ward's international celebrity as a beauty, but while this perhaps adds an unintended extra layer to Von Mayenburg’s text, it does it no harm.

The Ugly One is a flying start for the Perth Theatre Company in a space that is likely to be more important for WA theatre than its grander sibling upstairs.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian