Theatre: Ubu and the Truth Commission (★★★)

Handspring Puppet Company
Conceived and directed by William Kentridge
Written by Jane Taylor
Puppets and sets designed by Adrian Kohler
Cast: Dawid Minnaar and Busi Zokufa
Puppeteers: Gabriel Marchand, Mandiseli Maseti and Mongi Mthombeni
Heath Ledger Theatre
24 – 28 February

Ubu and the Truth Commission was an important marker in both South Africa’s theatre and its wider history.
It was a cry of outrage at the ease with which many of the perpetrators of the worst crimes of Apartheid were allowed to use edited versions of the truth and smooth, practiced contrition to sidestep the consequences of their vile activities.
It reminded us that generals fight from behind; that, more often than not, the hand that signs the paper escapes the manacles that ultimately shackle those of the instruments of its policies. 
The difficulty in approaching Ubu now, almost two decades later, is that its historical context theatrically, Alfred Jarry’s nineteenth century proto-absurdist Ubu plays, honed by their surrealist and Brechtian successors, now blurs its actual historical context, making it hard to know exactly what we are watching, and to what purpose.

Theatre: The Paper Architect ★★★★

Created by Davy and Kristin McGuire
Performed by John Cording
CIA Studios
Until March 7

Two of PIAF’s biggest hits tell of a man and a girl searching for each other. One attracted a huge audience, the other sold out instantly after a frenzied demand for tickets.
The main difference between The Giants and The Paper Architect is the little matter of their characters’ scale – 11m tall on the one hand, 8cm on the other.
And, like Circa’s Paul O’Keeffe, spinning a cigarette paper propeller on his finger last week, The Paper Architect shows that the very best things in a festival can come in its tiniest packages.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian.   

Theatre: I Wish I Was Lonely (★★★)

Written and performed by Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe
STC Rehearsal Room
Until February 28

Whether you’re amazed by the sea of pedestrians glued to their tiny screens as they walk down a street in Hong Kong, or find yourself fuming at an intersection in Perth as the person in the car ahead of you texts away, oblivious to the green light they’re wasting, there’s no escaping the mobile phone.
It’s hard to believe that they took hold only twenty years or so ago, and that smart phones have been with us for less than a decade, such is their impact on our lives.
In their I Wish I Was Lonely, the British writers and performers Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe ask us to contemplate that impact, and the way our human interactions have been channeled and changed by them.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Fringe World 2015 wrap

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Theatre: A Circle of Buzzards (★★★)

Written by Nathaniel Moncrieff
Directed by Joe Lui
Performed by Austin Castiglione, Jeremy Mitchell and Ella Hetherington
PICA
Until 21 Feb

In Steve Earle’s song, A Gringo’s Tale, two American men strike up a conversation at a bar in an out-of-the-way Mexican town. One is a tourist; the other is a fugitive, hiding from some shadowy CIA operatives.
Substitute Australians for Americans, Spain for Mexico and an Australian mining company called The Saetón Group for the CIA and you’ve got the set-up for Nathaniel Moncrieff’s tidy little thriller, A Circle of Buzzards.
What Earle neglected, and Moncrieff has made the engine of his narrative, is the identity of the tourist, and his reasons for being in the bar plying his companion with drinks.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Moving On Inc. (★ ★ ★ ★)

Written and directed by Mikala Westall
Lighting and sound designer Joe Lui
Performed by Nicola Bartlett, Harriet Gordon-Anderson and Barnaby Pollock
Until February 21

The actor Mikala Westall impressed in her recent performances in Will O’Mahoney’s Great White and Joe Lui’s The Tribe. Now she has a play of her own, Moving On Inc., and has come up trumps first time.
Westall’s jumping off point is the little known profession of cleaning up the effects of the deceased. What interested her in particular is the idea of tidying up all those memories, allowing everything that people were to move on into their eternity.
Abby (Harriet Gordon-Anderson) and her boyfriend Sam (Barnaby Pollock) are taking her late dad’s effects into the bush to burn them. There’s something – or someone – on the road, and Sam can’t get the car started again after he swerves to avoid a collision.
An older woman, Ruth (Nicola Bartlett) appears, and seems to be more interested in what the couple are planning, and know more about the effects they plan to do it to, than makes for a relaxing evening.

Theatre: The Defence

Baste the Bagel
Written and directed by Chris Dunstan
AV designer Alex Perritt
Sound designer Kirby Medway
Performed by Catherine McNamara, Brett Johnson and Douglas Niebling
Until February 21

(★ ★ ★ ★)

The bizarre, sometimes shocking, aspects of Chris Dunstan’s The Defence, shouldn’t obscure that it is an extremely well made, disciplined play with an impressive degree of cultural literacy and some important points about gender, power, and the theatre, to make.
In it, the boy’s club mentality of the rehearsal room is paralleled with wider issues of gender indignities and the pervasive undertow of sexual violence. Dunstan manages to make his play both pornographic and hilarious (though, I must warn you, not everyone in the audience saw the humour, and I can’t criticise them for that).
I got an urgent text from someone telling me not to miss this “surprise Fringe hit” after its opening night. It was good advice – you should take it too.



Link here to the complete review in The West Australian