Theatre: Jesus No Ordinary Life (★★½)

Written and directed by Damon Lockwood
Featuring Andrea Gibbs, Brendan Hanson, Nick Pages-Oliver, Sean Walsh, Shane Adamczak and Talei Howell-Price
Designed by Cherie Hewson
Blue Room Theatre
Until July 4

The release of Monty Python’s Life of Brian in 1979 drew howls of outrage and demonstrations outside cinemas from religious groups accusing it of blasphemy and worse.
I doubt that we’ll be seeing earnest people with crucifixes and placards picketing the Blue Room season of Damon Lockwood’s Jesus: No Ordinary Life (even though it’s much more scurrilous than Brian ever was).
Which is a pity, because it would be a diverting way to start a night at the theatre – and it means I’ll have to do the complaining for them.
It’s not that this Jesus offends my wafer-thin religious sensitivities; I just struggle to see what it achieves. 
Towards the end, Lockwood has a character say: “Reviewers, make of this what you will.” That, I’m afraid, is leading with your chin.

Go to the complete review in The West Australian 

Theatre: Horsehead (★★★)

Longley is the tall one (not horse)

Written and directed by Damon Lockwood
Performed by Damon Lockwood and Sam Longley
Independent Theatre Festival
Subiaco Arts Centre Studio
Until June 6  

The trick with a great idea is knowing how far you can take it. In Horsehead, the writer, director and performer Damon Lockwood had the first, and gets the second, and the result is a proposition that’s impossible to resist – or words to that effect.
Lockwood’s great idea is like Tom Stoppard’s in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; take two minor characters from a great work and flesh them out, see their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene in the mighty drama sweeping past them from the inside looking out.
It’s a device that’s driven some eminent artistic ideas: it’s the theme of WH Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts, and Breugal’s The Fall of Icarus that inspired it. It’s a recurring undercurrent in T.S Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.
But that’s all way too hifalutin’, which is something you could never accuse Horsehead of.

Theatre: Gasp!

Black Swan State Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company
by Ben Elton
Directed by Wesley Enoch
Designed by Christina Smith
With Damon Lockwood, Caroline Brazier, Lucy Goleby, Greg McNeill and Steven Rooke
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Until November 9

Nothing to get steamed up about: Damon Lockwood (r), Greg McNeill and Steven Rooke (pic: Gary Marsh)

Black Swan wraps up its 2014 season with revivals of two all but contemporaneous comedies; the first was Neil Simon’s 1993 Laughter on the 23rd Floor; now we have Ben Elton’s Gasp!, an update of his Gasping from 1990.
The Neil Simon was a delight; genuinely funny, and a platform for some bravura performances. The Ben Elton? Meh.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Midsummer (a play with songs)

Georgina Gayler (pic Gary Marsh)

Black Swan State Theatre Company
Written by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre
Directed by Damon Lockwood
Set and costume design by Fiona Bruce
Lighting designer Trent Suidgeest
Musical director and sound designer Ben Collins
Starring Georgina Gayler and Brendan Hansen, with musicians Ben Collins, Andrew Weir, Harry Oliff and Elliot Smith
Heath Ledger Theatre until Nov 24

Don’t you love that Scottish brogue? Wouldn’t life be interesting if it were narrated by Peter Capaldi and starred Billy Connolly?
Over the last few Perth festivals, we’ve seen it work its gruff magic in the National Theatre of Scotland productions Black Watch and Beautiful Burnout, and now David Greig, the writer of the most recent festival’s audacious, hilarious hit, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, returns, courtesy of Black Swan’s revival of his 2008 black rom-com hit, Midsummer (a play with songs).
While Midsummer doesn’t quite have the imaginative pyrotechnics of Prudencia, it’s got some exquisite screw tightening, some hilarious set pieces (watch out for Puppetry of the Cock, coming to the Regal sometime soon), and a deus ex machina that’s as inevitable as it is necessary.
If I have a problem with Midsummer, it’s that the piece suits a smaller stage in a smaller theatre. It debuted in a space quite like the Blue Room’s larger room next door, and I’d love to see it mounted there, or in the STC’s own studio.
That aside, it’s hard to find fault with a show that delivers the most and best laughs in Black Swan’s 2013 season.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian              

Theatre: Trampoline

By Shane Adamczak
Directed by Damon Lockwood
Performed by Shane Adamczak, Amanda Woodhams and Ben Russell
The Blue Room Theatre
Until October 26

Matt (Shane Adamczak) is a young man with a problem - he dreams too much. His therapist, Dr Vangillies, explains that he spends 85 per cent of his slumber in REM sleep, the time of dreams. It dominates his nights, and waking dreams wreck his days.
A girl - with trampoline - moves in across the street. Kelly (Amanda Woodhams, who also plays Vangillies) is also troubled, but the reasons for her distress are much more obvious. She's lost her mother to cancer and her father's grief has turned to violent anger.
It's not unusual to have sympathy for a play's characters but Adamczak makes us really feel these damaged kids are entitled to a happy ending. 
In the end, Kelly cures Matt as he frees her. But Adamczak sows a last seed of doubt when, in the play's final line, Kelly tells Matt: "I'm your dream come true, baby."
And maybe she is. Or maybe that's all she is.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Robots Vs. Art

By Travis Cotton

Directed by Phil Moilin

Performed by Damon Lockwood, Sean Walsh, Renee Newman Storen and Ben Mortley

The Blue Room

Until June 1

The pivot of Travis Cotton’s futurist fable of a world run by robots comes when Giles (Damon Lockwood), a former playwright and director now a slave worker in the conqueror’s zinc mines, has to decide whether to stage a play for his psychopathic overlord Master Bot (Sean Walsh) or be chain-whipped to death. Chances are, given his hideous lifestyle and complete absence of hope, he’d choose the latter, but for one complication: he’s the last living human.

Giles ultimately has a victory of sorts, but it’s a pyrrhic one. Mankind has forfeited its rights and betrayed its stewardship of the Earth, and the robots have no interest in being like him.

Robots will never rule the world, but the message of Cotton’s provocative play is that things very like them have tried, and will try again, to do so. 

Link here to the complete version of this review in The West Australian       

Theatre: I (Honestly) Love You/ Les Affreux

 I (Honestly) Love You

Written and directed by Damon Lockwood

Designed by Cherie Hewson

With Jimmie James Eaton, George Gayfer, Talie Howell-Price and Damon Lockwood

Blue Room Theatre

17 May – 2 June

Les Affreux

Written and directed by Wade K Savage

Designed by Alana Starcevich

With Ethan Thomas, Caris Eves, Rina Frieberg, Nick Pages-Oliver and Nina Deasley

Blue Room Theatre

24 May – 9 June

Damon Lockwood

Damon Lockwood is a clever, funny guy, and his little rom-com, I (Honestly Love You), is him all over.

Two people meet and fall in love, but have a congenital inability to lie. Comic complications ensue. It’s a good idea – so good it’s been used in various permutations in scripts, especially very popular film scripts, since Bob Hope’s Nothing But the Truth in 1941. The similarity diminishes and dates this production.

For all that, I (Honestly Love You) is a witty and often audacious piece. It’s performed well by Jimmie James Eaton and George Gayfer as the candour-crossed lovers, with Lockwood and Talie Howell-Price supporting them as an assortment of parents and mates. Lockwood, who also directs, cleverly gives Eaton and Gayfer's Lloyd and Belle a three-dimensional treatment that sets them apart from the others, who are played more as types than characters.

Les Affreux, the earlier show at the Blue Room, is the stage debut of filmmaker Wade K Savage.

Savage approaches his writing and direction like a filmmaker, but on the stage, without editing suites and instant scene changes, he founders in the attempt. To be fair, there have been plenty of theatre writers and directors who’ve hit similar rocks going the other way.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Comedy: The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)

By Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield

Featuring Damon Lockwood, Sam Longley and Sean Walsh

Subiaco Arts Centre

10 – 18 June, 2011

Walsh, Longley and Lockwood

This sharp, bubbly parody of the Shakespeare canon has been doing the rounds now for nigh on a quarter of a century, getting a run whenever three suitably quick witted and sure-footed performers – generally with a strong background in improv – pop up in the same place and time.

It was probably inevitable that Damon Lockwood and Sam Longley would give it a whirl along the way, and now, in company with Sean Walsh, that time has come.

I’ve reviewed a few of Lockwood and Longley’s performances over the past six months or so, and I hope I’ve given them their just desserts; they’re both terrifically confident, self-possessed performers and a mightily funny double act. Shakespeare Abridged is a perfect vehicle for their talents, and Sean Walsh is a splendid foil for their antics.

As always with this show, the core script – the Romeo and Juliet skit, Titus Andronicus as a cooking show, the Othello Rap – is spiced with lots of by-play, local and topical references and a dash of improvisation. The adapted material is well pitched, in particular the history-plays-as-a-game-of-footy which had the great advantage – not always the case – of being performed by guys who know their Aussie Rules as well as their comedy.

Things built up in great good humour to the chaotic end of Act One, with the cast at comic loggerheads and all but one play covered.

Theatre: D.I.Y. Disaster Movie

Blue Room Theatre and Longwood Productions

Featuring Damon Lockwood, Sam Longley and Aaron McCann

Blue Room Theatre

November 30 – December 11, 2010

There's Lava Coming Down the Hill, Mommy!

As the Moon, adrift from its orbit, plummets toward the helpless Earth, the discredited scientist Derwent Silverman and his nemesis Sheldon Monsanto are holed up in the magnetic crater. The bodies of Silverman's high school sweetheart Chardonnay, his old friend Brett Baguette, the ominous Colonel Ivan Nokabolokov, little Alice and the Mexican amigos Pablo and Lupé lie broken around them.

Only they, and the faithful mutt Rufus, can save the world, and then only if Silverman can hurl a block of parmesan cheese at the approaching satellite. He swings a giant kitchen spoon, the cheese crashes into the lunar surface and the gigantic threat is averted.

We are saved! Rufus barks happily.

Sadly, you’ll never see this story told again, but Sam Longley and Damon Lockwood, who concocted it, contend you’ve seen it all before – every time you watch that most mongrel of Hollywood genres, the disaster movie.

And they go about proving their point cleverly, first improvising a story based on a disaster movie theme selected by the spin of a chocolate wheel from 20 published in the program. Ours – you guessed it – was “Falling Moon”; not so lucky audiences might get “Dugong v Panda” or that hoary old staple “Thinking, Flying, Heat Resistant Hail”.

The story unfolds, with characters named by the audience and consistent with what Longley and Lockwood claim are the Seven Rules of a Disaster Movie, which range from “everything can be fixed with dodgy science” to “the dog never dies” (good boy, Rufus).

While this is happening, the third member of the crew, director of photography Aaron McCann, is filming the scenes and inserting cut-aways and close ups of action on improbable miniature sets. The purpose of all this activity becomes clear when we return after interval and watch the movie we’ve just seen made. It’s a clever and original touch, and ticks a lot of good comedic boxes without overstaying its welcome.

Both Longley and Lockwood are charismatic and engaging comedians very much in the Chaser mould, and the tiny Blue Room space is perfect for a show that’s not far removed from a party piece.

It is, after all, summer in Perth and this sort of neo-panto is well suited to nights when you’re probably more inclined to be thinking of the bar than the Bard.

I’m not for a minute suggesting that D.I.Y. Disaster Movie is either great art or even great comedy; like a lot of full-length improv, it’s too scratchy and adolescent for that. And I’m certainly not suggesting it’s going to change the world.

Unless, of course, Derwent Silverman’s piece of cheese misses the Moon!

An edited version of this review appeared in The West Australian 3.12.10