Theatre: National Interest

Black Swan State Theatre Company

Written and directed by Aiden Fennessy

Designed by Christina Smith

With James Bell, Julia Blake, Grant Cartwright, Michelle Fornasier, Stuart Halusz and Polly Low

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

5 – 20 May, 2012

Grant Cartwright, James Bell, Stuart Halusz and Julia Blake (pic Gary Marsh)

1975 is a great swirl in the minds of Australians who lived through it. It’s unsurprising that an obscure post-colonial fracas, albeit one close by in Portuguese Timor, wasn’t high on anyone’s agenda. Or that reports that five journalists working for Australian TV networks there were unaccounted for didn’t impinge greatly on our congested consciousnesses.

Even when their deaths, in the village of Balibo, were confirmed on November 12, it was low priority news. 

In one ordinary suburban house in Melbourne, though, and for one ordinary Australian wife and mother, it was the day a world ended. The day she knew her son Tony had died.

Thirty-two years later, in Aiden Fennessy’s elegiac National Interest, that mother, June Stewart (Julia Blake) defies her own diminishing strengths and, surrounded by the shades of her 21 year old son Tony (James Bell) and his mates in the Seven Network crew who died alongside him, reaches out for peace. 

For Fennessy, who also directs the play, this must have been a voyage deep into his own heart. All these people exist, or once existed, and Fennessy is June Stewart’s nephew, and Tony Stewart’s cousin. He manages this potent mix of real life and theatre with great intuition and impeccable sympathy.

National Interest is by a great margin the most significant new play Black Swan have premiered in the Heath Ledger Theatre, and the most complete, moving and satisfying production they have mounted on its stage. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian           

Theatre: Private Lives

By Noël Coward

Onward Production

Directed by Marcelle Schmitz

Set design by Brian Woltjen

Costume design by Steve Nolan

Featuring Kirsty Hillhouse, Michael Loney, James Helm, Michelle Fornasier and Rosemarie Lenzo

Subiaco Arts Centre

Until December 10

Michael Loney and Kirsty Hillhouse (pic: Jon Green)

Noël Coward’s Private Lives is given a glittering, unsettling revival by Sally Burton’s Onward Production at the Subiaco Arts Centre in a sumptuous production marked by bravura performances by its stars, Kirsty Hillhouse and Michael Loney, and an expertly paced reading by director Marcelle Schmitz.

Schmitz is a considered and talented director, and she is neither spooked by the domestic violence that haunts the play nor bogged down in it. She gives the play’s sharp glamour and wit a full head of steam, and her cast take glorious advantage of the license given them. 

Private Lives is like a dazzling stranger at a glamorous party; impossible not to admire, hard to resist, but dangerous to love. If you do, though (I did), be wary of the dark place behind those lovely, sparkling eyes.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian               

Theatre: The Modern International Dead

Deckchair Theatre

Written by Damien Millar

Directed by Chris Bendall

Featuring Steve Turner, Michelle Fornasier and Stuart Halusz

Victoria Hall, Fremantle

March 17  - April 2, 2011

Steve Turner and Michelle Fornasier

We woke the morning after the opening of Deckchair Theatre’s production of Damien Millar’s The Modern International Dead to yet another country in flames. Like Somalia, like Kosovo, Iraq, Cambodia, Rwanda and East Timor before it, Libya joins the nightmare list of countries whose people endure torture and execution, disease and starvation, incursion and insurgency, ethnic violence and the deadly infection of the minefield. They are the modern international dead of the play’s very apt title.

Miller’s play centres on the stories of three Australians dealing with these seemingly endless agonies. 

The closer the play stayed to the real stories of real people plainly told, the more effective it was. Two monologues describing the terrible consequences of a land mine explosion in Cambodia and a car hijacking in Somalia were its emotional and dramatic high points. 

During these scenes, and in others where the characters bore plain, direct witness to actual events, the production had a similar impact to the powerful and illuminating Aftermath, recently seen at the Perth Festival.

The Modern International Dead isn’t everything it could be, but it still deserves praise for bringing a terrible darkness to the light, and for a performance from Steve Turner that alone is worth the price of admission.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Footnote: I’ve had a brief email exchange with Chris Bendall about the extent to which Damien Millar is transcribing stories told to him, especially the Somalia carjacking story told by the Rod Barton character in the play, which relates to some of my comments in the full review in The West.
 Bendall tells me that, while that story is not a transcription, “the incident, reactions and actions are all factual”.
“The same incident is described in the book Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures). In Damien’s interviews apparently Rod spoke of the story but not nearly to the same length, so Damien has re-constructed (it) using his voice. 
“I guess the interesting thing about the play is it feels like verbatim theatre, and nothing is made up so it's all based on the extensive interviews Damien conducted, but he has gotten inside the voices of each of the actual people and recrafted their words for dramatic purposes –which is why he uses the tag ‘witness theatre’ more than ‘verbatim”, Bendall says.