Theatre: Horsehead (★★★)

Longley is the tall one (not horse)

Written and directed by Damon Lockwood
Performed by Damon Lockwood and Sam Longley
Independent Theatre Festival
Subiaco Arts Centre Studio
Until June 6  

The trick with a great idea is knowing how far you can take it. In Horsehead, the writer, director and performer Damon Lockwood had the first, and gets the second, and the result is a proposition that’s impossible to resist – or words to that effect.
Lockwood’s great idea is like Tom Stoppard’s in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; take two minor characters from a great work and flesh them out, see their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene in the mighty drama sweeping past them from the inside looking out.
It’s a device that’s driven some eminent artistic ideas: it’s the theme of WH Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts, and Breugal’s The Fall of Icarus that inspired it. It’s a recurring undercurrent in T.S Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.
But that’s all way too hifalutin’, which is something you could never accuse Horsehead of.

Theatre: Under This Sun (★★★★½)

Directed by Warwick Doddrell
Featuring Maja Liwszyc, Tristan McInnes and Peter Lane Townsend
Until June 6
 
In Under This Sun, the writer and director Warwick Doddrell and his collaborators Maja Liwszyc, Tristan McInnes and Peter Lane Townsend have devised a story with a persuasive narrative arc, created three memorable characters to people it, and given them a fine, very often poetic, text to express themselves with.

Theatre: Once We Were Kings (★★½)

Written by Dure Khan
Directed by Mustafa Al Mahdi and Alex Kannis
Featuring Angela Mahlatjie, Solayman Belmihoub and Naomi Denny
Until May 30

Dure Khan’s story of young gay Australian Muslims caught between worlds, Once We Were Kings, burns with the heat of stories that need to be told. It’s impossible to ignore the intensity and sincerity Khan brings to her undertaking, and her writing is steeped in the hard beauty of Islam, the rustle of silk, the tastes of pomegranate and almonds, the call to prayer.   
But it also has to be said that she and her directors, Mustafa Al Mahdi and Alex Kannis, haven’t fashioned this message, and these images, into an effective drama.


Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Vale: BB King

Whenever I'm asked my favourite ever gig, BB King's concert at The Maj in 1974 is my most usual response. Mainly because it was so happy, from the great opener by our own, legendary, Roadband to the final bows (BB's concerts were, as The Blues go, quite formal affairs!).
The man had such a warm presence to go with that all-grown-up voice and unsurpassed guitar playing.  Listen in:

His closer, I'd Like to Live the Life I Sing About, might be mawkish in less skilled or genuine hands, but BB made it joyous and unforgettable. Here it is - may he rest in peace:

 

Footy: A Superhero For The Age Of Freo!

Nathan Skywalker

Theatre: Wicked (★★★½)

Suzie Mathers is good

By Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holtzman
Directed by Lisa Leguillou
Original Direction Joe Mantello
Musical Staging Wayne Cilento
Burswood Theatre
On sale until June 28

Wicked, the world’s biggest commercial musical, returns to Perth with its mix of the very good and the less than overwhelming pretty much intact.
One thing doesn’t change: it’s a very clever story, based on the novel Gregory Maguire spun from L Frank Baum’s timeless masterpiece of American heartland fantasy, The Wizard of Oz, in a way that both expands and undercuts it.
It gives the two witches – Glinda and Elphaba, the wicked witch of the title – a back story, and the personalities to drive it.
The story precedes, and then parallels, the adventures of Dorothy in the original Oz. It’s an ingenious, expertly crafted book (by Winnie Holzman), with effective messages about intolerance, oppression and the manipulation of public perception, that remains the best thing about the show.
 
Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Comedy: Lawrence Mooney (★★★½)

Perth Comedy Festival
Downstairs at the Maj
May 8
 
No doubt the last thing Lawrence Mooney would appreciate being called is reliable, but it’s the truth.  
If Asher Treleaven is the Barry Humphries of contemporary Aussie comedy, Mooney is its Bert Newton (and before you say anything, the Bert Newton of In Melbourne Tonight and The Don Lane show was a comedian of phenomenal touch and self-awareness). Mooney may not make you gasp in amazement, as Treleaven sometimes can, but he never loosens his grip on your laughing bits.
One day I’ll take a stopwatch to a Lawrence Mooney show and time when the audience isn’t laughing. It won’t be for long. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian