Theatre: Giving Up the Ghosts and 3 Seeds

Giving Up the Ghosts 
By Sarah Young
Owl Productions
Directed by Joe Lui
Designer Sara Chirichilli
Performed by Georgia King and Paul Grabovac

3 Seeds
By Afeif Ismail
Transcreated by Vivienne Glance and Afeif Ismail
Always Working Artists
Directed by Jeremy Rice
Designed by Cherie Hewson
Performed by Violette Ayad, Michelle Endersbee, Paul Grabovac, Janice Lim, Verity Softly, Kevin Mararo Wangai, Brianna Williams

For most of us, suicide is inexplicable. Perhaps, for our own safety, it needs to be. The great strength of Giving Up the Ghosts, the playwriting debut of Sarah Young, is that she doesn’t try to explain the suicidal impulse, or impose insights upon it. Her play, as deceptively powerful as it is deceptively simple, builds a platform for us to attempt to grasp a meaning, or at least some understanding, from suicide’s opaque horror.

Theatre: Second Hands

Little y Theatre
Written and directed by Jeffrey Jay Fowler
Developed and performed by Austin Castiglione, Nick Maclaine, Holly Garvey, Georgia King and Renee Newman-Storen
For Fringe World
PICA until Feb 22

I suggested to some people who had just seen Jeffrey Jay Fowler’s ghoulish suburban comedy, Second Hands, that he could be the next David Williamson.
They were horrified that I would consign such an adventurous young writer to the remainder bin of Australian theatre, trotting out middlebrow current affairs dramas to pad out the subscription brochures of the state theatre companies, but they rather missed the point.
Which is that Fowler has the rare gift of writing genuinely funny, genuinely sharp dinner-table dialogue, and the ability to ratchet it up and down the emotional scale from banter to desperation at will. Only time will tell how Fowler chooses to use his ability; what’s indisputable is that he’s got it, and in spades.

Theatre: The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid

Houston Sinclair

Directed by Ian Sinclair

Devised and performed by Georgia King, Jacinta Larcombe and Ben Gill

The Blue Room Theatre

Until September 7

The earlier of the Blue Room’s Scandinavian double feature is a tricky, erotically charged inversion of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Little Mermaid.

In this version, the mermaid (Jacinta Larcombe) is a teenage girl in an Australian coastal town. She’s a castaway in the small society around her. Her only company, apart from her mother (Georgia King), is the picture of Leonardo DiCaprio above her bed. Then she meets a boy (Ben Gill) who befriends her and invites her to his party. In return, she takes him down to the sea.

Her mother wants to relive her belle-of-the-ball youth vicariously through her daughter, but when reminiscence becomes too too solid flesh, the consequences are heartbreaking and tragic.

Link here to my complete review of The Little Mermaid in The West Australian.

Theatre: Glengarry Glen Ross

By David Mamet

Little y Theatre

Directed by Mark Storen

Designed by Fiona Bruce

Featuring Georgia King, Ella Hetherington, Caris Eves, Holly Garvey, Leanne Curran, Alexandra Nell and Verity Softly

Music by Andrew Weir and Ben Collins

Blue Room Theatre

Until December 8

Leanne Curran and Georgia King

There’s a reason Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s Pulitzer, Olivier and Tony award-winning 1984 drama, is having major revivals all across the US.

It can be found in the forsaken suburban tracts and vacated foreclosures that have hollowed out many American cities, so much like the worthless developments that Mamet’s salesman are hawking to their unsuspecting clients.

Little y Theatre’s production at the Blue Room has an all-female cast (although it’s required to use the script’s male character names and pronouns). Even if you’re not a devotee of gender-swapping theatre, a revival of a play about real estate is as appropriate a place as any to do it.

Theatre: Scent Tales

Little y Theatre

Written by the cast, director, Corrine Davies and Alexis Davis

Directed by Joanne Foley

Designed by Monique Wajon

Music by Sian Brown

Featuring Georgia King, Mischa Ipp and Rhoda Lopez

Blue Room Theatre

Until July 16

Georgia King

Scent Tales, a parable of the passing on of knowledge, of love and forgiveness, is a little miracle and the best show to emerge from the Perth theatre so far this year.

This is a perfectly realized production, its power rising like dough turning into bread in the hands of its cast and creative team.

The story of two sisters Bea (Rhoda Lopez) and Sanji (Michelle Ipp) is narrated by their granddaughter and grand-niece (Georgia King), who at various times also plays their mother and grandmother. The grandmother’s legacy to the two girls – an extravagant string of pearls for pretty, adorable Sanji and a tiny slip of paper with the recipe for her wonderful “love bread” for intense, diligent Bea – causes a rift between the sisters that takes time and the ties that bind to heal.

Link here  for the complete review in The West Australian