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

Theatre: A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare

Black Swan State Theatre Company

Directed by Kate Cherry

Set design by Christina Smith

Costume design by Alicia Clements

Lighting design by Trent Suidgeest

Sound design by Ash Gibson Greig

Featuring James Beck, Elizabeth Blackmore, Benj D’Addario, Adriane Daff, Arielle Gray, Stuart Halusz, Brendan Hanson, Luke Hewitt, Natalie Holmwood, Michael Loney, Sam Longley, Kelton Pell, Myles Pollard, Kenneth Ransom, Scott Sheridan, Alison van Reeken and Shubhadra Young  

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

May 11 ­– 22, 2011

There’s no mystery to the enduring popularity of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or its allure for directors and actors. The earliest of Shakespeare’s very greatest plays, its poetry – the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations selects 63 separate passages from it – and sheer sexiness, its bravura set pieces and memorable characters are an irresistible mix.

Alison van Reeken and Luke Hewitt 

Director Kate Cherry wisely lets the text, rather than any real or imagined sub-text, do the talking, and by and large it works for her.

Luke Hewitt’s turn as the immortal Bottom is a great success. Hewitt is a big, funny man, which makes Bottom the figure of fun meat and drink for him, but he’s got the sensitivity to deliver the character’s humanity and essential goodness. We can laugh at Bottom, but we need to respect him as well, and Hewitt makes us do both.

Alison van Reeken’s Titania is armed and dangerous, with weapons both human and supernatural at her disposal, even when lost in love or lust. She’s a knockout.

Theatre: Romeo and Juliet

by William Shakespeare

Directed by Paige Newmark

Designed by Jake Newby and Ingrid Proos

Featuring Rose Riley and Cody Fern, Kristian Barron, Anna Brockway, Nick Candy, James Hagan, Glenn Hall, Stephen Lee, Sam Longley, Claire Munday, Will O’Mahoney and Nick Pages Oliver

King’s Park

7 January – 5 March 2011

There seems to be a prevailing notion that West Australians lose all interest in the theatre from November until the Festival rolls into town in mid-February.

We should be grateful, then, that a succession of production houses has given us a summertime Shakespeare in King’s Park. And it’s more the pity that this year’s is such a disappointment.

In part it’s the fault of the play selection. Much of Shakespeare is well suited to a summer night in a park, but in such a setting Romeo and Juliet loses the intimacy of its lovers and the sickening pallor of the death of the young that lie at its poetic heart. Lost, too, is the claustrophobia of the close streets and walled gardens of Verona, where every chance encounter can easily end with taunts and blades, until one leads to love and disaster.

None of this is necessarily fatal, but director Paige Newmark doesn’t solve any of these problems, and creates many more besides.

There are times, most excruciatingly during Capulet’s (Stephen Lee) weird North Country ranting at Juliet’s refusal to marry Paris (Kristian Barron) when the urge for flight all but overcame me. It’s unfair to single him out, though; other seasoned members of the cast had similar over-the-top episodes that surely would have been tempered by more sure-handed and sensitive direction.

Of the supporting performances, only Will O’Mahoney’s fiery Mercutio delivered the sort of surprise and humanity that are the great strengths of Shakespeare’s characterisation. His death, after one of Andy Fraser’s excellently staged swordfights, had a fey courage as gripping as you’d see anywhere.

Romeo and Juliet belongs to its heroine, and Rose Riley, who is only a couple of years older than the girl she plays, brought impressive beauty and strength to the work. She doesn’t yet have the range to fully realise the massive complexities of this great character, but there’s little doubt it will come, and soon.

 A lot more work remains ahead of Cody Fern. Romeo may not have to be as boundless as the sea, as is Juliet, but Fern still has a mighty mountain of poetry to climb, and at times the challenge pretty much overcame him.

None of their efforts were helped by some misguided interpretations, most disconcertingly in the justly famous scene where the lovely and heartbreaking realisation by the young lovers that their one (and, as the audience knows, only) night together is over was reduced from high poetic drama to something akin to an exchange on Facebook after lights out.

An edited version of this review appeared in The West Australian 12.1.11 here