Theatre: Rabbithead and Werewolf Priest

Rabbithead
Little y Theatre Company and whatshesaid
Devised and performed by Holly Garvey and Violette Ayad
Narrated by Humphrey Bower
Director Ian Sinclair
Designer Tessa Darcey
The Blue Room
Until July 14

Werewolf Priest
By Levon J Polinelli
Composer Ash Gibson Greig
Designer Reece J Scott,
Performed by Sven Ironside, Siobhan Dow-Hall, Magnus Danger Magnus, Stephen Lee, AJ Lowe and Daniel Buckle
The Blue Room
Until July 7

A few years ago the Blue Room went through a purple patch of domestic comedy/dramas by young, rising artists. House of Fun, Jack + Jill and, in particular, Pride, perfectly suited the precocious talents of their writers, directors and actors, and found inventive ways of saying something genuine about the lives of 20-somethings.
The devisers and performers Holly Garvey and Violette Ayad, working with director Ian Sinclair and Georgia King’s Little y Theatre Company, have returned to that territory with Rabbithead, and it shares many of those earlier productions’ strengths.

Link here to the complete review of both shows in The West Australian

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: 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: Persians

by Aeschylus, translated by Aaron Poochigian

Happy Dagger and Little y theatre companies

Directed by Andrew Hale

Performed by Christie Sistrunk, Austin Castiglione, Maitland Schnaars, Leon Osborn, Helen Angell, Lynsey Trench, Megan Moir, Ellen O’Connor and Laura Hopwood

Designed by Sarah Affleck

Lighting designed by Joe Lui

Music by Adam Burges, performed by The Men from Another Place

PICA

15 - 19 February, 2012

Aeschylus

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of The Persians, the tragedy of the rout of the navy and army of Xerxes the Great by the Greeks at Salamis. The oldest surviving play, it gives us the first insight into the consciousness of mankind as expressed by theatre. Told by an exact contemporary (Aeschylus fought at both Salamis and, some years earlier, the epochal battle of Marathon) it is also the first surviving example of drama’s unique ability to frame events and personalities. It may also be the first surviving example of propaganda.

There’s no denying, too, that as the eyes of the world turn anxiously to the most recent inheritors of Xerxes’ domain – and, ironically and for different reasons, to his Greek enemies – the chroniclers and dramatisers of ancient empires and the conduct of their affairs hold a distant mirror to us and our times.

Persians, a new translation by the American scholar and poet Aaron Poochigian, does a fine job maintaining the gravitas of Greek tragedy with just enough contemporary rhythm and idiom to allow the ancient work to work for a modern audience.

Link here  to the complete review in The West Australian 

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