Theatre: Dinner (★★½)

Black Swan State Theatre Company
Written by Moira Buffini
Directed by Kate Cherry
Set and lighting designed by Trent Suidgeest
Sound designer and composer Ash Gibson Greig
With Rebecca Davis, Stuart Halusz, Greg McNeill, Kenneth Ransom, Steve Turner, Alison van Reeken and Tasma Walton
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Until 29 March 

There’s a line in Moira Buffini’s 2002 play, Dinner, when a woman, overhearing an ex-soldier’s stories of his violent exploits in Liberia, exclaims “You killed a LIBRARIAN??”. Boom-Tish!
Make of that gag what you will, but we can assume those involved in Dinner aren’t approaching the undertaking too seriously. Or at least they shouldn’t be.
Dinner is professionally prepared and well served. It’s just hard to fathom why anyone bothered to reheat it.


Link here to the complete review in The West Australian
  

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: Managing Carmen

Black Swan State Theatre Company/ QTC

Written by David Williamson

Directed by Wesley Enoch

Designed by Richard Roberts

Lighting design by Trent Suidgeest

Sound design by Tony Brumpton

Audio Visual design by Declan McMonagle

Featuring John Batchelor, Tim Dashwood, Claire Lovering, Anna McGahan and Greg McNeill

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

Until December 2

At 201cm tall, David Williamson could have been an AFL ruckman. Instead, he used his 1970s heyday to establish himself as Australia’s pre-eminent, and most bankable, playwright.

With Managing Carmen, Williamson returns to footy 35 years after The Club, his signature hit about shenanigans at a barely-disguised Collingwood.

We’re back at the Pies, but this time it’s conniving managers and their precious players – rather than coaches and board members – who take centre-stage.
As an exposé of big-time sport, it’s 30 years out of date; as an argument for tolerance and honesty, it’s wafer-thin and unmemorable, and, in a gobsmackingly horrible first half, it reduces its actors to the grossest of caricatures.

But here’s the thing. Like a battered old champ having a bad day, Williamson demands to be taken on his own terms, and treated with caution if not respect.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian 

Theatre: The Deep Blue Sea

By Terence Rattigan

Onward Production

Directed by Michael McCall

Featuring Alison Van Reeken, Tom O’Sullivan, Michael Loney, Greg McNeill, Will O’Mahony, James Helm, Julia Moody and Amanda Woodhams

Playhouse Theatre

November 19 - 28, 2010

Not waving, drowning
The early 50s in England have left us a pervading memory of grimness; the certainty and glamour of its old social order shattered by 40 years of violence, and Carnaby Street and the Beatles still an age away.

In the theatre of this grey, transitional world, an established group of playwrights and an emerging cadre of vivid young actors both sought to keep and find their audience.

It would be a few years yet before the latter found the writers they were looking for; it would be decades before the artistic reputations (and box office bankability) of the former recovered from the shock of the new world that was coming.

Foremost among these established writers was the prolific, systematic Terence Rattigan, while among the new breed of actor was the powerhouse Welshman Richard Burton. It’s a happy coincidence that these two very different figures are the genesis of this fine production of Rattigan’s 1952 drama The Deep Blue Sea by Sally Burton’s Onward Production company.

The play opens where many end: worried by the odour of gas coming from a room in a frayed old boarding house, the landlady, Mrs Elton (Julia Moody), and a tenant, Philip Welch (Will O’Mahony), burst in to find Hester Page (Alison van Reeken) unconscious in front of the heater.

An empty pill bottle lies on the table. A note sits on the mantelpiece. Her husband, Freddie (Tom O’Sullivan), is away, golfing with his RAF pal Jackie (James Helm).

Another tenant, Dr Miller, is summoned, and he revives Hester. Welch’s young wife Ann (Amanda Woodhams) arrives, and they try to work out whom to call.

Then Mrs Elton drops her bombshell: they should contact her real husband, the eminent magistrate Sir William Collyer (Michael Loney). Sir William arrives, Freddie returns, and Hester’s protestation that what had occurred was just an accident falls apart when he finds the note.

It’s a good, standard set-up to the story, and it takes maybe half an hour of not especially gripping action to get there.

Alison van Reekin 

And then the play takes off, courtesy of Michael McCall’s sure-footed direction and van Reekin’s astounding performance. Her Hester burns through the remaining acts of her downfall and redemption, and she nails both the fragile insouciance masking her rising hysteria, and the sheer, physical passion that has thrown down the life she led, and her life itself. There’s a moment when Freddie leaves her embrace for the last time and she stands perfectly still, clutching the ghost of him, that is acting of transfixing quality. 

She’s supported admirably by Michael Loney, whose stock-in-trade impishness adds real charm to the deserted husband, and Greg McNeill, who handles the tricky character of the shady but acute Dr Miller with aplomb.

Even more difficult is the role of Freddie, who has to be attractive enough to besot an accomplished, mature woman and creepy enough not to deserve her. O’Sullivan is more than handsome enough to deliver the first and makes a good fist of the second. The rest of the cast – and it’s great to see eight actors in a local, professional production – have good moments that they deliver well. The show is accurately designed (Lawrie Cullen Tait) and lit (Andrew Portwine), and Hester is beautifully dressed by Steve Nolan. Stage managers don’t often make it to reviews, but this show is a minefield of potentially deadly entrances, exits and props, and Sue Fenty disarms them all with her customary skill.

Sally Burton has already earned our thanks for giving Perth a well-resourced independent production house, and The Deep Blue Sea will win her more. I wonder if she has in mind producing more shows related in some way to her husband’s career and the theatre (and cinema) in which he thrived? If this is the case, it will be a fascinating and unique development of more than just local interest.

An edited version of this review appeared in The West Australian of 22.11.10 read here