Circus: La Cucina dell'Arte

Circus Ronaldo

David and Danny Ronaldo

Russell Square, Northbridge

Until February 24

As the name suggests, La Cucina dell’Arte takes place in a restaurant, in this case a pizzeria where the chef (David) battles it out with his ditzy assistant (Danny).

There was much breaking of plates and cocking of snooks in the set-up, but things came to a head when the two boys chose different women from the audience to be their guest for dinner on stage.

Things start flying about, and, in the process, Danny shows his considerable talent at plate-spinning, balancing, a bit of juggling and, especially, the wild and wonderful things you can do with pizza dough.

After a cute, albeit predictable, denouement, and a gracious rapprochement between performers and audience members, we filed back out into the dragon-infested night.

That’s all good, as far as it goes, but even at a smart 70 minutes, the show felt a little long, and, while Danny’s routines were skilful and funny, there just wasn’t enough of them, and a bit too much incidental business.

Just down the other end of James Street there are other tents, and inside them there are performers with history and a venerable performance tradition of their own, and they are going hell-for-leather to entertain at half the ticket price.

It’s shaping up to be a long, hot summer in Perth.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian.

Theatre: Duck, Death and the Tulip

By Wolf Erlbruch

Barking Gecko Theatre Company

For the Perth Festival

Directed by John Sheedy

Designed by Alicia Clements and Chris More

Performed by Ella Hetherington and George Shevtsov

Subiaco Arts Centre

Until February 16

George Shetsov

How does a six-year-old stare Death in the face? A nine-year-old? An eleven-year-old?

The answer is: very differently. That seemed the case at the Subiaco Arts Centre at least, when kids of all those ages, along with their parents and grandparents, watched a wizened, wizardly (dare I say Gandalfian or Dumbledorian) George Shevtsov playing it in Barking Gecko’s Duck, Death and the Tulip.

Shevtsov is a superb actor. His long, etched face displays the whole range of emotion with economy and deadly accuracy, and his mature voice is a beautiful instrument.

Hetherington is clearly Sheedy’s first choice actor, and, as she showed in last year’s The Red Tree and This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing, she is an exemplary performer for children. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: The Threepenny Opera

By Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill

The Berliner Ensemble

Directed and designed by Robert Wilson

His Majesty’s Theatre

Until February 11

For Robert Wilson, the celebrated American director and polymath, The Threepenny Opera is a canvas of unparalleled potential upon which to paint huge expanses of history, politics, thought and culture, and the result is a thrilling, beautifully defined piece of theatrical high art.

Wilson’s techniques arise from his belief that each element of theatre is equally important, so a prop or a lighting change, the movement of scenery or an actor’s finger is as significant as the narrative; a tiny sound effect as vital as a song.

This demands a phenomenal attention to detail, and the painstaking creation of space and hierarchies of sensation, so everything that happens or can be experienced is defined and able to register clearly.

It’s a process that needs time to deliver, and time for an audience to decipher; the rewards don’t come immediately, but they are very great indeed.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Love in the Key of Britpop

Emily Andersen

The Cheeky Sparrow

For Fringe World

Until Feb 13

Emily Andersen is an unprepossessing, 30-something Melbourne girl who’s affection for Britpop, Britain and a boy therefrom got her in and out of love and marriage a few years back.

She’s also a poet, and her witty and touching autobiographical verse play, Love in the Key of Britpop, is the product of that time, that romance and that affection.

Don’t be off put by the verse. Many playwrights, one from the 15^th century in particular, have employed it with great success. Anyone who saw last year’s Fringe standout, Neil Watkins’ The Year of Magical Wanking, will remember how brilliantly the form can be used in a contemporary setting. Andersen has achieved a similar success this time around.

Britpop, for those unfamiliar with its specifics, was the genre of alternative rock music led by bands like Oasis, Blur and Pulp that reached its zenith in the mid-1990s. Ten years later, our Emily, still a fan, hangs out in indie clubs around Melbourne to drink, dance and cavort. It’s there she meets a British backpacker, and it’s casual sex at first sight. Love, anchored by their shared passion for the music, follows soon after, and marriage, necessitated by the visa requirements of both their home countries, soon after that.

The light “Aussie chick meets and marries spunky pom” tone of the first half is fun, tasty and carefree, but when harsh reality and heartbreak bring a sadder, wiser tone, Andersen’s writing effortlessly changes gear to accommodate it.

By then you find yourself engrossed in her character, intrigued by her narrative and moving to the pulse of her words. It’s a wonderful effect, more than flexible enough to take you from humour to wretchedness and, finally, resolution without missing a beat.

By their nature, fringe festivals are hydra-headed beasts. You have razor sharp entertainments like The Wau Wau Sisters and Frisky and Mannish, but there's another side to them, small, independent alternative productions for which the fringe offers much needed oxygen. Love in the Key of Britpop is a fine example, and I hope its short season gets the audience it richly deserves.

This review appeared in The West Australian 9.2.13

Theatre: the Motherfucker with the Hat

Black Swan State Theatre Company

for Fringe World

Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Directed by Adam Mitchell

Designed by Bryan Woltjen

Lighting design by Trent Suidgeest

Sound design by James Luscombe

Featuring Rhoda Lopez, Austin Castiglione, Kenneth Ransome, Fayssal Bazzi and Alison van Reeken

The Studio, State Theatre Centre

Until February 3

It’s a delicious irony that Black Swan’s first productions for 2013 are the staple crowd-puller, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Stephen Adly Guirgis’s incendiary The Motherfucker with the Hat.

They seem as far apart as two plays can get, yet, at their heart, they share the joy of language beautifully crafted and a fascination with human duplicity and its unraveling.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

John Milson

I was very sorry to hear of the death of John Milson yesterday. John directed me (and scores of vastly more promising student actors) in three huge UDS/ Festival of Perth shows in the mid '70s, and he (with his superb memory) remained a friend and mentor to us all.
I last saw John at Meow Meow's Astor concert a couple of months ago, but we had one other last contact. I wrote in my review of the terrific Eve at the Blue Room that I hoped Milson would get to see it because it reminded me of the sort of brave Australian theatre he championed back in the Southport St Hole in the Wall days. 
He went, and I was right. He wrote me  a short letter praising the production and Margi Brown Ash's performance, and closed with "the health is fading but I've no intention of retiring and hope we meet up some time soon".
We'll have to save that one for the sweet by-and-by, Milson.

Comedy: Stephen Merchant

Hello Ladies

Astor Theatre

December 6, 2012

It’s a fair assumption that most of the audience at Stephen Merchant’s three sold-out Astor shows were hard-core fans of the vertically unchallenged British comedian and his collaborator Ricky Gervais.

Gervais has had comedy superstar status for years – I remember seeing him gigantically reproduced on a whole-side-of-building billboard on Sunset Boulevard ­as far back as 2008. Merchant may be Larry David to Gervais’s Jerry Seinfeld, but he’s steadily emerging in his own right.

On the strength of this poised, neatly calibrated, and very, very funny solo show, it’s easy to see why.