Theatre: The Caucasian Chalk Circle (★★★★)

by Bertolt Brecht
translated by Ralph Manheim
Black Swan State Theatre Company and The National Theatre of China
Directed by Dr Wang Xiaoying
Designed by Richard Roberts
Costume Designer Zhao Yan
Mask designer Prof Zhang Huaxiang
Lighting design by Mark Howett
Composer/sound designer Clint Bracknell
With Caitlin Beresford-Ord, Adam Booth, Kylie Farmer, Luke Hewitt, Geoff Kelso, Alex Malone, Felicity McKay, Lynette Narkle, Kenneth Ransom, James Sweeny, Steve Turner and Alison Van Reeken
Music performed by Clint Bracknell and Arunachala

Heath Ledger Theatre
Until August 14

The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Bertolt Brecht’s 1944 parable of tyranny and the “terrible temptation to do good”, is based on an ancient Chinese folk story dramatized eight centuries ago as The Circle of Chalk.
The fulcrum of the story, though, is told in many forms in many cultures dating back as far as the legend of the judgment of Solomon.
So there’s a fine sense of closing another circle in this cooperative production of a German play set in the USSR, translated by an American, staged by an eminent Chinese director with a creative team from both China and Australia, performed by an Australian cast, with a deliberate and significant contribution from the inheritors of a living culture with stories that date back tens of thousands of years.
It’s an ambitious culmination of the tenure of Black Swan’s departing artistic director Kate Cherry and the signature piece of the company’s 25th anniversary season.
Happily, the result is a clear and persuasive staging of Brecht’s tale, and a rollicking entertainment to boot.


Read the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: The Fremantle Candidate

Deckchair Theatre

Written by Ingle Knight

Directed by Chris Bendall

Designed by Fiona Bruce

Featuring Steve Turner, Geoff Kelso, Ben D’Addario, Igor Sas, Christie Sistrunk and James Hagen

PICA

Until August 5

John Curtin

I hope the teaching of Australian history has improved since my schooldays. Back then, after laborious lists of the early explorers and governors and hoary tales of squatters, shearers and swaggies (all the better for making sense of Waltzing Matilda, I suppose), the narrative all but collapsed.

Apart from the disgraceful marginalisation of Aboriginal history and the lives of women, perhaps the greatest tragedy was the paucity of our Twentieth Century political history. The mighty battles over free trade, the franchise and industrial relations, conscription, the banks and the communist party were a passing blur, and the great figures who fought them, Deakin, Barton, Fisher and Hughes, Theodore and Lang, Lyons, Chifley, Evatt and even the never-ending Menzies were derelict sketches without personality or insight.

With so little to spark our imagination, it’s hardly surprising that political biographies other than those of current or recent figures are so rare in print, on film or on stage. All the more reason to welcome Ingle Knight’s examination of the pivotal years in the career of perhaps our greatest, certainly our most intriguing, leader, John Curtin.

Theatre: Rising Water

Black Swan State Theatre Company
Written by Tim Winton

Music by Ian Grandage

Directed by Kate Cherry

Designed by Christina Smith

Featuring Alison White, Claire Lovering, Geoff Kelso, John Howard, Stuart Halutz and Kai Arbuckle and Callum Fletcher (alternating)

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

June 25 – July 17, 2011

Rising Water marks the arrival of the Heath Ledger Theatre, and Black Swan as its resident company. It’s a big-hearted entertainment with some striking assets, the most important of which hits you the moment you take your seat.

Christina Smith has done the play, and the theatre space, a great service with her set; three boats bobbing – actually bobbing ­– in their pens, with deep blue gleaming water below and a transmuting Indian Ocean sky above.

It’s brilliant to look at, and a perfect platform on which director Cate Cherry can manage the story and her cast. Significantly, it's the first design that solves the problems of visual focus in the space and makes the great curving wood surfaces of the auditorium look right at home.

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