Theatre: Jesus No Ordinary Life (★★½)

Written and directed by Damon Lockwood
Featuring Andrea Gibbs, Brendan Hanson, Nick Pages-Oliver, Sean Walsh, Shane Adamczak and Talei Howell-Price
Designed by Cherie Hewson
Blue Room Theatre
Until July 4

The release of Monty Python’s Life of Brian in 1979 drew howls of outrage and demonstrations outside cinemas from religious groups accusing it of blasphemy and worse.
I doubt that we’ll be seeing earnest people with crucifixes and placards picketing the Blue Room season of Damon Lockwood’s Jesus: No Ordinary Life (even though it’s much more scurrilous than Brian ever was).
Which is a pity, because it would be a diverting way to start a night at the theatre – and it means I’ll have to do the complaining for them.
It’s not that this Jesus offends my wafer-thin religious sensitivities; I just struggle to see what it achieves. 
Towards the end, Lockwood has a character say: “Reviewers, make of this what you will.” That, I’m afraid, is leading with your chin.

Go to the complete review in The West Australian 

Theatre: Robots Vs. Art

By Travis Cotton

Directed by Phil Moilin

Performed by Damon Lockwood, Sean Walsh, Renee Newman Storen and Ben Mortley

The Blue Room

Until June 1

The pivot of Travis Cotton’s futurist fable of a world run by robots comes when Giles (Damon Lockwood), a former playwright and director now a slave worker in the conqueror’s zinc mines, has to decide whether to stage a play for his psychopathic overlord Master Bot (Sean Walsh) or be chain-whipped to death. Chances are, given his hideous lifestyle and complete absence of hope, he’d choose the latter, but for one complication: he’s the last living human.

Giles ultimately has a victory of sorts, but it’s a pyrrhic one. Mankind has forfeited its rights and betrayed its stewardship of the Earth, and the robots have no interest in being like him.

Robots will never rule the world, but the message of Cotton’s provocative play is that things very like them have tried, and will try again, to do so. 

Link here to the complete version of this review in The West Australian       

Comedy: The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)

By Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield

Featuring Damon Lockwood, Sam Longley and Sean Walsh

Subiaco Arts Centre

10 – 18 June, 2011

Walsh, Longley and Lockwood

This sharp, bubbly parody of the Shakespeare canon has been doing the rounds now for nigh on a quarter of a century, getting a run whenever three suitably quick witted and sure-footed performers – generally with a strong background in improv – pop up in the same place and time.

It was probably inevitable that Damon Lockwood and Sam Longley would give it a whirl along the way, and now, in company with Sean Walsh, that time has come.

I’ve reviewed a few of Lockwood and Longley’s performances over the past six months or so, and I hope I’ve given them their just desserts; they’re both terrifically confident, self-possessed performers and a mightily funny double act. Shakespeare Abridged is a perfect vehicle for their talents, and Sean Walsh is a splendid foil for their antics.

As always with this show, the core script – the Romeo and Juliet skit, Titus Andronicus as a cooking show, the Othello Rap – is spiced with lots of by-play, local and topical references and a dash of improvisation. The adapted material is well pitched, in particular the history-plays-as-a-game-of-footy which had the great advantage – not always the case – of being performed by guys who know their Aussie Rules as well as their comedy.

Things built up in great good humour to the chaotic end of Act One, with the cast at comic loggerheads and all but one play covered.