Theatre: Concussion

By Ross Mueller
Ellander Productions
Directed by Sarah McKellar
Designed by Iona McAuley
Performed by Richard Mellick, Nichola Renton, Ian Bolgia, Paul Grabovac, Russya Connor and Danen Engelenberg

Much of the ambitious Australia/UK multi-arts company Ellander Productions’ theatrical output since they launched in 2010 has been decidedly underwhelming.
Concussion (at the Blue Room, directed by Sarah McKellar), though, is much more like it.
They’ve been wise to secure Ross Mueller’s nasty, opportunity-laden play, winner of the 2009 New York New Dramatists award. His story of a cop, Caesar (Richard Mellick), recovering from a savage beating and struggling to remember what happened before, during and after it, could be straightforward enough, but Mueller sets its narrative adrift in time and peoples it with some decidedly unsavoury types. While the result is often gobsmackingly obscene and morally bankrupt, work through all that and there’s quite a bit of wicked fun to be had and something to be said about the human condition in a world hotwired to the net and drowning in pornography.

Theatre: When Dad Married Fury

by David Williamson

Directed and designed by John Senczuk

Featuring Jay Walsh, Alinta Carroll, Corinne Davies, Richard Mellick, Alison van Reeken, Lauren Lloyd Williams, Casey Edwards and Edgar Metcalfe

The Metcalfe Playhouse

Until 21 August

David Williamson has had a lucky break.

Love him or loathe him – and there are plenty in each camp – it’s Williamson’s ability to generate the pleasurable sensation of recognition for his audience that has kept him at the forefront of Australia’s playwrights for 40 years.

Alinta Carroll and Edgar Metcalfe

In his best work, that recognition comes from the universality, in particular the universal Australian-ness, of his characters; even in his lesser plays – and When Dad Married Fury is decidedly one of those – he maintains his touch for topicality.

For that, though, a little luck goes a long way: if you could choose a week to premiere a play about a wilful old man, his feisty, much younger, second wife, his dubious offspring and a loose email that brings them all undone, surely this would be it.

Theatre: The Enchanters

By John Aitken

Directed and designed by John Senczuk

Lighting design by Trent Suidgeest

Sound design by James Luscombe

Featuring Richard Mellick, Nick Maclaine, Ethan Tomas, Ian Toyne, David McLeod, Sam Tye, Edgar Metcalfe, Cody Fern, Andrew Hale, John Pratt, Nick Candy and John Aitken.  

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

June 1 – 4, 2011

Veteran WA playwright John Aitken has seized the opportunity presented by the opening of the State Theatre Centre to imagine the watershed year of William Shakespeare’s career in The Enchanters, and he and director/designer John Senczuk have fashioned a likeable, albeit patchy, entertainment from it.

It’s a ripping yarn, with cloak-and-daggery at court and lawyers, swords and money in the streets. Aitken has drawn assiduously from his sources, most notably, I suspect, James Shapiro’s terrific 1599, to tell the story of Richard Burbage’s company, the Chamberlain’s Men, and the opening of their new theatre, the Globe.

Aitken can’t resist airing some of the more contentious speculations about Shakespeare, his sexuality and religious and political loyalties among them. Personally, I’m averse to the idea of Shakespeare as a high-class rent boy for the Earl of Southhampton and some of the other detritus of Shakespeariana given credence by the play, but you can be the judge of that.

Link here  to the complete review in The West Australian