Theatre: Storm Boy

By Tom Holloway
from the novel by Colin Thiele
Barking Gecko and Sydney Theatre Company
Directed by John Sheedy
Designed by Michael Scott-Mitchell
Lighting design by Damien Cooper
Sound design by Kingsley Reeve
Puppetry directed by Peter Wilson
Performed by Joshua Challenor (alternating with Rory Potter), Trevor Jamieson, Peter O’Brien, Michael Smith and Shaka Cook
Heath Ledger Theatre
Until October 5

Mr Percival with Michael Smith

It's all but instinctive to insert "the much-loved" before the title, Storm Boy. Colin Thiele's novel of loneliness, love and the hard truths of growing up is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and is constantly being rediscovered by new generations of kids, in classrooms and libraries (it has never been out of print), on film and the stage.

This ambitious, heartfelt co-production will do nothing but enhance its popularity and reputation.
This paper has described Barking Gecko as Perth's most exciting theatre company; it is, and it is also our most ambitious. Their work over the past couple of years has gone to a new level of creativity and production quality, thrilling for their young audiences, and fulfilling for their parents (and grandparents). The scope of the productions it has in the pipeline, in partnership with the Sydney Opera House, Opera Australia and the world's premiere stage company, Britain's National Theatre, is astonishing. 
It's like the Dockers making the grand final.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Broken Colour and The Boat Goes Over the Mountain

At the Blue Room:

Broken Colour
By Nina Pearce
Directed by Mike McCall
Designed by Iona McAuley
Lighting designed by Andrew Portwine
Sound design by The Men from Another Place
Performed by Caris Eves, Hannah Day, James Helm and Nina Pearce
Until October 5

The Boat Goes Over the Mountain
Written, directed and performed by Andrew Hale
with Dave Richardson
Designed by India Mehta
Until September 28

Caris Eves and James Helm

Mental illness is a difficult subject for the theatre, because finding a dramatic path between impenetrability and over-clarification requires delicate tightrope walking. That's why Equus, with its wretched psychoanalytical recapitulations of everything that happens in it, is among the worst of plays. No such danger here. Nina Pearce's Broken Colour, a drama of anxiety and ecstasy, is a considerable achievement.

 The Boat Goes over the Mountain is a dramatic monologue by Andrew Hale about his journey to South America with the sole intention of ingesting ayahuasca, a psychedelic concoction reputed to be a path to self- knowledge. 
Hale is a considerable theatre artist; however, the spasmodic narrative and lack of interaction with the play's location are serious shortcomings here.

Link here to the complete review of both productions in The West Australian

Arena: Michael Jackson - The Immortal

Cirque Du Soleil
Perth Arena
Until September 22

Baaska Enkhbaatar

Of the 19 Cirque Du Soleil productions playing around the world, nine are permanently in Las Vegas; the Canadian troupe has hit treacherous paydirt in the Nevada desert.
It's hard to know whether its shows ever really "say" anything, but this one, a shameless, thematically shambolic tribute to the late King of Pop Michael Jackson says a lot about both its production values (very high), and its artistic sensibility (not so much).

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

 Class Act

Directed by Stephen Lee

With Nick Maclaine, Rhoda Lopez, Angelique Malcolm, Shirley Van Sanden, Kyle Sargon, Daniel Buckle, Stephen Lee and Patrick Whitelaw

Subiaco Arts Centre Studio

Until September 14; then in schools

When you watch Shakespeare performed for students, the immortal power of his language most impresses you: “one fell swoop”, “the milk of human kindness” and the “poison’d chalice”, everything that follows that “damned spot” and “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” all come from Macbeth.

Class Act has produced an unpatronising, economical Macbeth for high school students. If its audience (which, by the way, was immaculately attentive throughout the performance I saw) can take these words and ideas away with it, and know from whence they came, that’s a treasure beyond reckoning.

Bear with me!

I know a lot of people are having trouble accessing posts on this blog via Internet Explorer. It seems the problem is to do with cutting and pasting from Word documents into the blog - it makes HTML go to the Bahamas or something.
I'm working on it, and hopefully it will get well soon. All being well the Shrine review and Turnstile Awards stories should now be readable. Please keep checking in!

Music: Amanda Palmer and Grand Theft Orchestra

Astor Theatre
September 8 2013

I was unforgivably late to American punk cabaret diva Amanda Palmer’s Astor show, and caught only the last song by the support act, Die Roten Punkte.
By then, Palmer and her Grand Theft Orchestra, Jherek Bischoff (bass) Chad Raines (guitar) and Michael McQuiken (drums) were on stage themselves, enthusiastically backing up the Aussie comedy-rock duo’s rambunctious magnum opus, Ich Bin Nicht Ein Roboter (I Am a Lion).
Bischoff remained on stage for two solo numbers, and blew the evening away.
His first, Kule Kule, by the Congolese band, Konono No1, was an irresistible attack of solo bass rhythm. It was followed by the most beautiful ukulele playing I’ve ever heard, on A Semiperfect Number, which he wrote for the Kronos Quartet’s 40th birthday.
Like fellow Amanda Palmer alumna, the cellist Zoe Keating, Bischoff used live electronic sampling to create dense sound patterns underneath the uke, which he played like a classical guitarist. Simply amazing.
Palmer will never be an anti-climax, though.

Theatre: Shrine

Whitney Richards

Tim Winton
Directed by Kate Cherry
Designed by Trent Suidgeest

With Paul Ashcroft, John Howard, Luke McMahon, Sarah McNeill, Will McNeill and Whitney Richards
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
August 31 – Sept 15, 2013

Shrine, the third of Tim Winton’s annual forays with Black Swan into writing for the stage, leaves unanswered the question posed by his earlier Rising Water (2011) and Signs of Life (2012).
There’s no doubting his quality as a writer, the impact of his language and his instinct for character. He also has a wonderful knack for the transcendent, especially when his characters find themselves alone and exposed to nature.
Is this, though, enough to make him a playwright? Is the poet in Winton also a songwriter?

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian