By Jub Clerc
Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company
Directed Kyle J Morrison
Set and costume Designer Matt McVeigh
Sound designer Joe Lui
Lighting designer Chloe Ogilvie
Performed by Kelton Pell, Irma Woods and Ebony McGuire
Subiaco Arts Centre
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
John Keats Ode to a Nightingale
Many plays have their moment on the stage and are gone, but some remain and grow in thought and memory. It’s early days yet, but The Fever and the Fret will surely be among the latter.
A long (one two-hour act), sad story of three good people, it explores loss, memory and regret with care, compassion and attention to detail. It tells you a great deal about its people, and makes you care a great deal about them.
One of the strengths of the play is that while the Aboriginality of its characters is central, the lives we see here happen everywhere, and are common to all of us.
Kelton Pell is a mighty presence on stage, and a skilled and intelligent performer. He is one of those rare actors who could play Lear. And if he did, Ebony McGuire, whose journey from awkward schoolgirl to confident, caring young woman is superbly achieved, would be the perfect Cordelia.
Read the complete review in The West Australian
By Robert J Merritt
Yirra Yaakin and Belvoir
Directed Kyle J Morrison
Designed by Stephen Curtis
Performed by Luke Carroll, Oscar Redding, George Shevtsov, James Slee, Tim Solly and Irma Woods
State Theatre Centre Studio
Until November 9
 |
| Irma Woods |
It's tempting to think of The Cake Man primarily as a political
milestone rather than art but that would be doing it an injustice.
Written
by Robert J. Merritt in Bathurst Prison in 1974 and smuggled out of
jail to the newly formed Black Theatre in Redfern, it was the first
professional, full-length drama to arise from the growing Aboriginal
performing arts community in inner-city Sydney.
The following
year, Merritt was taken to its opening night by prison guards and the
cast refused to perform until his handcuffs were removed. In the shadowy half-world between paternalism and oppression, and (admittedly far from complete) acceptance and reconciliation, life has strange ways of imitating art.
For Yirra Yaakin, this co-production
with Sydney's Belvoir is an important step for an important company and
the result is an impressive revival of an equally important landmark in
this country's theatrical history.
Link here to the complete review in The West Australian
