Theatre: She Dances in the Dark/When We Wake

She Dances in the Dark

The Blue Room Theatre and Natural Wings

Produced and performed by Dawn Pascoe

Musical Director and musician Nikki Dagostino

Directed by Laura Motherway

Lighting design by Joe Lui

Blue Room Theatre

Until September 24

When We Wake

The Blue Room Theatre and The Clap Your Hands Collective

Written by Emma D’Orazio, Jordan Nix, Michael Collins, Holly Garvey and Louise Cocks

with additional performers Caris Eves, Alex Brittan, Chris Hill, Charles Wu, Thomas Vowles and Andrew Dawson

Directed by Michael Collins

Animation by Rohan Harnett

Blue Room Theatre

Until October 1

The short shows that run for much of their seasons in tandem at the Blue Room Theatre may not be designed as double bills, but seeing both in one night, as I did, is an interesting way to go about it.

While neither the aerialist Dawn Pascoe’s She Dances in the Dark nor the Clap Your Hands Collective’s When We Wake reaches the brilliant heights of the theatre’s recent productions of Scent Tales and Laryngectomy, both have their rewards.


Link here for the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

By Tennessee Williams
Black Swan State Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company
Directed by Kate Cherry

Designed by Bruce McKinven

Featuring Cheree Cassidy, Tom O’Sullivan, John Stanton, Carol Burns, Caitlin Beresford-Ord, Hugh Parker, Damon Lockwood, Daniel Murphy and Gina Williams

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

Sept 10 – Oct 2, 2011

John Stanton and Carol Burns

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an audacious, free-spirited American masterpiece given a clearly struck and handsome revival by director Kate Cherry in the centenary of its playwright’s birth. 

Its audacity lies in the almost complete elimination of plot and dramatic tension. The play takes place in real time in one room and, for almost all of its length, nothing consequential actually happens.

Even the one surprising thing that happens, Maggie’s startling announcement toward the play’s end, is unlikely to change these people or their lives, whether it is true or not.

Stripped of action and artifice, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a universal human drama of need and repulsion, love, hatred and, above all, lies and truth.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: The Sugar Mother

by John Senczuk

adapted from Woman in a Lampshade and The Sugar Mother

by Elizabeth Jolley

Directed and designed by John Senczuk

Featuring Ian Toyne, Christie Sistrunk, Val Riches, Sophie Kesteven, Anna Brockway and David McLeod

The Metcalfe Playhouse

Season ended

Val Riches and Sophie Kesteven

A couple, both of a certain age, find themselves feeling their oats at the same time with persons young enough to be their offspring during a mutually-agreed marital sabbatical.

University lecturer Edwin (Ian Toyne) stays at home while his doctor wife Cecilia (Christie Sistrunk) drives to their holiday house to work on the novel she’s always wanted to write.

Along the way, Cecilia picks up a dishevelled hitch-hiker (David McLeod) and, shortly enough, retires to a mattress with him for the duration. Meanwhile, Edwin’s home is invaded by his neighbours, the nubile Leila (Sophie Kesteven) and her manipulative and malapropative mother (Val Riches), and he is immediately struck with a severe case of the Humbert Humberts. Despite the best efforts – albeit with her own, dubious, motives – of the couple’s friend Daphne (Anna Brockway), Edwin and Leila are also soon in the sack.

Cabaret: Truly, Madly, Deeply

Performed by Ashley Arbuckle, Sue Bluck and Pamela Jansson

Downstairs at the Maj

7 – 10 September, 2011

The Cabaret and Comedy Carnivale Downstairs at the Maj returns to safer waters this week with a pastiche of popular romantic songs showcasing the lyric soprano voice of Pamela Jansson accompanied by veteran Perth players Ashley Arbuckle (violin) and Sue Bluck (piano).

The great charm of the programme, an otherwise unsurprising collection of standards including Someone to Watch Over Me, The Man I Love, Cheek to Cheek, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Embraceable You and Begin the Beguine (a small prize for anyone who can give me a scientific explanation for why I hate that song so much) was Jansson’s faithfully anachronistic delivery.

Theatre: The Turnstile Awards 2011

I’m as susceptible as anyone to the lure of awards, ratings, polls and all the other paraphernalia of opinion by which we measure those two imposters, popularity and success.

So, here’s my humble contribution: the Turnstile Award for excellence in theatre in Perth.

Rhoda Lopez and Mischa Ipp in Scent Tales

In the past year, I reviewed 34 productions for either or, most often, both The West Australian and this blog. It’s not a completely exhaustive list, and I apologise for the absences. I didn't consider cabaret or comedy, or improv theatre, which, by its nature, is impossible to judge on one night’s viewing.

Looking back over the year, the good news is that shows I thought well worth seeing (23) vastly outnumbered those I’d have strongly encouraged you to avoid (six) – and I’m well aware that at least two of those might feature in other people’s “best of” lists.

Theatre: Tender Napalm

Perth Theatre Company

Written by Philip Ridley

Directed by Melissa Cantwell

Featuring Joshua Brennan and Anna Houston

The prodigious British playwright, novelist and artist Philip Ridley divides his output fairly equally between works for children and adults. Ridley’s ability to explore the imaginary worlds of young people, their cruelties, courage and capacity for love is a vital strength of Perth Theatre Company’s Australian premiere production of Tender Napalm.

While this is most decidedly a play for adults (all the usual warnings apply), it has the bravery of youth. Its two, un-named, characters (Joshua Brennan and Ann Houston) inhabit a non-specific place and time and more often than not speak in parables and fantasies. Somehow, through stories of tsunamis and armies of monkeys, we get glimpses of something terrible that has happened to these people that has unhinged them and their relationship.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: The Yellow Wallpaper/ Sud Stories

The Yellow Wallpaper
Movementworks

Adapted by Silvia Lehmann and Teresa Izzard

From the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Directed by Teresa Izzard

Designed by Laura Heffernan

Featuring Jo Morris, Sarah Nelson and Sean Walsh

Blue Room Theatre

Until September 3

Jo Morris

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote the semi-autobiographical The Yellow Wallpaper in 1890 in California, where she lived with her daughter Katherine after separating from her husband.

While it may not have had the spectacular effect of her aunt Harriet’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which Abraham Lincoln credited with bringing on the American Civil War, it was an influential early example of feminist literature.

Writers Silvia Lehmann and Teresa Izzard have given Gilman’s short story a challenging dramatic interpretation with a strong flavour of Ibsen that remains true to the 19^th century literary and theatrical sensitivity from which it springs.