Theatre: Tale of Tales ★★★★½

Written, directed and performed by Clare Testoni
with Paul Grabovac
Sound design by Joe Lui
Lighting design by Rhiannon Peterson
Blue Room Theatre until May 9

Tale of Tales is a small, brilliant gem of storytelling, and a breakout achievement for its deviser and performer, Clare Testoni.

Testoni’s previous work, including The Beast and the Bride and West of the Moon, has explored her interest in fairy tales, but any concern that her imagination and talents are confined to and by them is quickly dispelled in Tale of Tales. 
She uses the fairy tales collected by Giambattista Basile in the 17^th century (which include the earliest known versions of Rapunzel and Cinderella) as a jumping off point for a wider and deeper story of four generations of her own family, the rise of Fascism in Italy and the resistance to it, the flight of many Italians to Australia and their fate here.

It’s a passionate statement against fear and prejudice, and especially the practice of interment that is often its consequence. The parallels to the same practices in our own times are clearly and powerfully made.

It’s also the true love story of her great-grandparents, Sante and Antoinetta, and their strange, sad parting and estrangement. Their story is paired with Basile’s The Princess Who Couldn’t Laugh or Cry, The Crystal Tunnel, The Dragon and the Flea and others. The narrative technique give Basile’s stories new life and meaning – it’s a lesson in the purpose and power of fairy tales as well as a wonderful device for the telling of her own story.    

Testoni is a shadow puppeteer, and she takes her craft to a new level. Working alongside the excellent actor Paul Grabovac, shining torches on tiny cutout figures on tables, she throws silhouettes of people and places – villages and cities, internment camps – onto the white-papered walls of the stage.

The images have a magical three-dimensionality, and move with an almost cinematic quality. They are interspersed with family photos and archival material, some very shocking, of Mussolini’s Italy and internment camps.

Tale of Tales is an honest show, and a heartfelt one; as Basile says in The Sun, the Moon and Talia, “a story left untold is destined to repeat itself.”

It’s a good thing, then, that Clare Testoni has told hers – and that she’s done it so very well.

This review has been archived by The Press Reader (link here)

Theatre: Tamagotchi Reset & Other Doomsdays (★★★½)

Written by Finn O’Branagain and Scott Sandwich
Directed by Joe Lui
Designed by Sara Chirichilli
Performed by Paul Grabovac and Izzy McDonald
Blue Room Theatre
Until July 8

Programmes are useful things, but they can give the game away.
So, for example, if I’d read mine before watching Finn O’Branagain and Scott Sandwich’s Tamagotchi Reset & Other Doomsdays I would have realized much earlier than I did that the characters being played by the actors Paul Grabovac and Izzy McDonald were the playwrights themselves.
It would quite likely also have dawned on me that the play it appeared we were watching wasn’t a play at all, rather, in the writers’ own words, a “Secretly-Educational Devised Performance Lecture”, and that the play, the actual play, was about their relationship, their artistic conflicts and divergent concerns, and the process (including their interactions with the dramaturg and director Joe Lui) by which their work arrived on the stage.

Theatre: Selkie (★★★½)

by Finn O’Branagain
Directed by Joe Lui
Choreography by Laura Boynes
Designed by Cherish Marrington
Sound and lighting designed by Joe Lui
Featuring Paul Grabovac, Ella Hetherington, Kynan Hughes and Yilin Kong
The Blue Room
Until April 30

Yilin Kong (pic Cameron Etchells)

The legend of the selkie, seal-like creatures who shed their skins to live on dry land among humans, is part of the folklore of the islands and coasts of the remote North Atlantic.
It’s easy to see why the playwright Finn O’Branagáin, whose interest in legend and myth was manifest in last year’s The Epic, would be drawn to the selkie, and its no surprise that Joe Lui should leap at the chance to direct the result.
They are a formidable team, and Selkie is a provocative and disquieting work.The story might have both more complexity and clarity (at 45 minutes, it has the time to deliver both), and, for all its quality, the design could use more depth and intricacy.
Even as it stands, though, Selkie is a noteworthy start to a Blue Room season of increasing importance to Perth theatre.

Read the complete review in The West Australian 

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: The Tribe

Written and directed by Joe Lui
Designed by India Caitlin Mehta
Performed by Ella Hetherington, Paul Grabovac and Mikala Westall
The Blue Room Theatre
Until November 2

I play a little game with the writer, director, musician and lighting and sound designer Joe Lui. It comprises using more and more extravagant superlatives to describe the polymathematical Lui (whoops! I’ve done it again) who sometimes seems the mortar without which the entire edifice of alternative theatre in Perth would collapse.
It’s hard, though, to imagine an adjective that would do Lui’s epic, The Tribe, justice. “Ambitious” hardly suffices to describe a play that re-jigs Paradise Lost before interval, before moving on to six million years of evolutionary theory after drinks.

Theatre: The Book of Death

Renegade Productions

Written by Joe Lui and the cast

Directed by Joe Lui

Designed by Sara Chirichilli

Featuring Paul Grabovac, Ella Hetherington and Moana Lutton

Blue Room Theatre

7 – 25 August, 2011

Paul Grabovac, Ella Hetherington and Moanna Lutton

Life as a theatre professional in this town is tough. You’ve got to be adaptable to survive.

The best survivor I know is Joe Lui, the creator, co-writer and composer, director and lighting designer of the The Book of Death at the Blue Room. Even more impressive than his skills and work ethic is that he is always prepared to challenge and confront, often quite brutally.

He’s also a natural collaborator, and he’s gathered some fine and brave artists for this show. Together, they’ve produced a work that, while often uncomfortable and elusive, is constantly thought provoking and committed.

Theatre: A Germ of an Idea, Laryngectomy

A Germ of an Idea

Written and performed by Monica Main

Directed by Helen Doig with Fran Tinley

Blue Room Theatre

7 – 25 June, 2011

Laryngectomy

Renegade Productions

Written by Demelza Rogers and Joe Lui

Directed by Joe Lui

Featuring Paul Grabovac, Jessica Rawnsley, Demelza Rogers and Jessica Allen Jones

Blue Room Theatre

7 – 18 June, 2011

When I arrived at the Blue Room to see two shows I was warned were “like chalk and cheese”, there were two people stuck in the lift between floors (who even knew the Blue Room had a lift). Had to be an omen.

The cheesy part was A Germ of an Idea, Monica Main’s take on all things dirty, grimy and malodorous, a nice idea that only comes off in parts.

Laryngectomy proved, quite literally, to be the chalky bit of the evening, but presented with such skill, ferocity and courage that you had to take stock and take notice.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian