Comedy: Paul Foot

Perth International Comedy Festival

Mt Lawley Bowling Club

Until May 4

My first encounter with Paul Foot, at the Opening Gala of last year’s Perth International Comedy Festival, left me quite literally helpless with laughter. On that occasion, his magnificent, surreal diatribe about sinister vans, and glasses that can make them disappear, quite did me in.

He’s not for everyone. Sometimes his physical comedy is more convulsive than compulsive, once in a while his humour is so deep rooted that it’s hard to get at. There were some at his sold out show who sat stony-faced as he careered way over their heads.

But, and much more often, you’d suddenly hear defenceless, almost whimpering, laughter as this singular comedian got someone, like me, right between the eyes. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian       

Theatre: Uncle Jack

By Ross Lonnie
Directed by Soseh Yekanians
Performed by Quintin George and Ben Hall
The Blue Room Theatre
Until May 10

Coming soon after the powerful, theatrically innovative The Long Way Home, Ross Lonnie’s Uncle Jack (directed by Soseh Yekanians at the Blue Room) continues the heightened interest in soldiers, and soldiering, we can expect through WWI centenary observances over the next five years.
Lonnie’s work is much more traditional, but contemplates the same brutal equation: If men are changed by war – and how could they not be – then how can we expect them to return unchanged, as if nothing had happened?

Theatre: The Pillowman

by Martin McDonagh
Endless Theatre Company
Directed by Rebecca Virginia Williams
Performed by Jordan Gallagher, Kiefer Moriarty-Short, Bryn Coldrick and Garreth Bradshaw
State Theatre Centre Rehearsal Room until Feb 22

The Pillowman, tweaked slightly, could pop up as a telemovie on the ABC or Showtime.
It’s got obsessed detectives, a perhaps-not-so-innocent suspect with freak-out brother, bad behaviour in the interview room, that sort of thing. Think those grey-and-white Scandinavian crime stories; think The Fall or Top of the Lake.
But that’s not what makes the play, which cut a swathe trough the London and New York theatre awards a decade go, sing. Its writer, Martin McDonagh, has a trick or two up his sleeve, and the result, while enjoyably unpleasant, is more Grimm than merely grim.

Hail, Hail Rock and Roll

It was 60 years ago today,
Bill Haley taught the band to play,
It's been going in and out of style,
But it's guaranteed to raise a smile...

(Curiously, April 11, 1954, the day before Mr Haley and his sidekicks changed the world forever, has been determined to be the most boring day in the 20th century link here. Even more co-incidentally, the day before that, April 10, 1954, has a great deal of significance, especially for your humble correspondent...)

Theatre: A Streetcar Named Desire

Written by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Kate Cherry
Designed by Christina Smith
Sound designer and composer Ben Collins
With Ben D’Addario, Nathaniel Dean, Callum Fletcher, Luke Hewitt, Michael Loney, Rhoda Lopez, Jo Morris, Sigrid Thornton, Steve Turner, Alison van Reeken and Irma Woods

Black Swan State Theatre Company 
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Extended to April 11

There’s no doubt about A Streetcar Named Desire. Its impact on the American stage and its cinema, and the consequences of its writing and performance are still with us 67 years after its debut.
Its tumultuous reception, the famous opening-night standing ovation, the huge critical and popular success that followed it, and the 1951 film version, suggest audiences were ready to see real life, its violence, its sexuality and the savagery with which it tears down anachronism, pretention and delusion, played as it is for what it is.
Which all makes Streetcar a tricky conveyance for its director and stars.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: WAAPA class of 2014

Hair
Book/ lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado
Music by Galt MacDermot
Director and choreographer Tanya Mitford
Music director David King
Set designer Hannah Metternick-Jones
Costume designer Georgia Metternick-Jones
Performed by WAAPA 3rd Year Music Theatre students
Geoff Gibbs Theatre, WAAPA
 
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
By Bertolt Brecht
Director Michael Jenn
Set designer Sarah Olivia Tartaglia
Costume designer Sarah Duyvestyn
Performed by WAAPA 3rd Year Acting students
Roundhouse Theatre, WAAPA
 
March 14 - 22 2014
 
The first round of productions at the WA Academy of Performing Arts is like the first round of the footy season. What will the new kids be like? Who’ll be the stars?
WAAPA unveiled its 2014 graduating classes in acting and music theatre in two sprawling, messy and entertaining productions.
The messiness, I hasten to add, was not the fault of the young performers or their mentors. Both Hair and Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui were written on the run, and it shows. 


Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: The Guys

By Anne Nelson
Directed by Paula Coops
Performed by Anna Bennetts and Adam T Perkins
Subiaco Arts Centre Studio
March 12 – 15, 2014

The images are frozen in time; the planes, the burning towers, the awful collapse. Twelve years on, we still see the world through the prism of that terrible morning, that desperately empty skyline.
Anne Nelson’s The Guys was an almost immediate response to the tragedy of 9/11, debuting less than three months later, with Bill Murray as Nick, a New York Fire Department captain who lost eight men in the collapse, and Sigourney Weaver as Joan, the writer helping him compose the eulogies he must give at their memorial services.