Theatre: Glengarry Glenn Ross (★★★★)

Will O'Mahony and Peter Rowsthorn

by David Mamet
Black Swan State Theatre Company
Directed by Kate Cherry

Designed by Richard Roberts
With Luke Hewitt, Ben Mortley, Will O’Mahony, Kenneth Ransom, Peter Rowsthorn, Steve Turner and Damian Walshe-Howling

Heath Ledger Theatre
Until June 14

Once again Kate Cherry and Black Swan show the appetite and aptitude for the late 20th Century American theatre canon that made Laughter on the 23rd Floor the hit of their 2014 season.
Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s hugely influential drama of venality and the despairing criminality it breeds, might not have the irresistible exuberance of Neil Simon’s memoir, but it shares its energy and masterful use of language. Cherry’s vigorous, uncomplicated staging, supported by a talented, finely balanced cast, does justice to it in this impressive production at the Heath Ledger.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian 

Theatre: Laughter on the 23rd Floor

Peter Rowsthorn (pic: Gary Marsh)

Black Swan State Theatre Company
by Neil Simon
Directed by Kate Cherry
Designed by Lauren Ross
With Humphrey Bower, Stuart Halusz, Damon Lockwood, Jo Morris, Ben Mortley, Peter Rowsthorn, Igor Sas, Lara Schwerdt and James Sweeny

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Until September 21

We live in a golden age of television comedy, but there was another. And Sid Caesar, as his name suggests, was its king. Caesar, who died early this year, was a masterful comedian with superb comic ideas who gathered around him a pack of talented, ambitious, mainly Jewish, writers to generate a weekly, 90-minute live show, Your Show of Show, that ran over 139 episodes from 1950 to 1954. It dominated the ratings and set many of the parameters for television comedy that still apply today.
You don’t have to spend long on the writer’s floor at NBC in Rockefeller Plaza to hear laughter from other rooms, echoing back down the decades from Seinfeld and 30 Rock.
Neil Simon was one of Caesar’s writers, and this is his love letter to his colleagues, and especially to the unpredictable genius who paid his bills and forged his talent.
For a writer with Simon’s prolific brilliance and life story, the play is a cinch. Put eight comedians in a room, sketch out the times—Joseph McCarthy is shaming the US Senate, Josef Stalin dying in the Kremlin—give them remembered or invented punch lines and let them rip.
You can legitimately accuse Simon of laziness: most of the external storylines peter out, there’s little personal consequence in the central action and there’s a downy sentimental mist over the characters and proceedings. But when everyone’s having this much fun, it’s hard to care very much about it.