Art Smitten: Reviews - 2016

To anyone who's been holding out for a good theatrical sequel, Roberto Aguire Sacasa's Abigail/1702 is the latest member of that rare species. Picking up 10 years from the ending of its predecessor, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Sacasa plucks out Miller's two-faced antagonist, Abigail Williams, and turns her into a very successful protagonist. The past decade has transformed the jealous young girl into a desperately puritanical young woman. Once a fierce denouncer in the Salem witch trials who sent 20 people to their deaths over a tumultuous affair with John Proctor, the married man she once worked for, she now lives on a farm in Boston. She has abandoned her now infamous name and adopted the new identity of a god-fearing farmer and nurse, which she hopes will drive away Satan's hold on her.

So far she has been successful. After all these years of living in a modest little hut, surrounded by dense forest and countless iron crosses, the Devil has not come to reclaim her. However, the arrival of a handsome wounded sailor, who is ironically named John Brown, is enough to stir up feelings that she has thus far been able to suppress. Their attraction to each other is palpable, as much as Abigail might deny it, but she certainly hasn't forgotten the last time she gave in to a man's insistence on bedding her, and not least because both men share the same first name.

Abigail/1702 reveals that John Proctor, the protagonist of The Crucible, forced himself upon Abigal the first time that they slept together, even though their later encounters were apparently consensual. While John Brown never physically violates her, he is not about to take no for answer. He scoffs at her choice of chastity, and declares, to the shock of the audience, that "a woman who is not a wife or a mother is only half a woman." Although, thanks to Abigail, John's wife, Elizabeth Proctor, is now a widow with no surviving children, and looks at most like half a woman when Abigail comes to see her in a desperate attempt to set things right.

The Crucible's account of the absurd Salem witch-hunt was famously allegorical, with its real target being the anti-communist paranoia that Senator McCarthy was still stirring up when it was first performed. However, Sacasa's sequel does not continue this focus. Its social commentary is much more visible at the surface, but arguably just as contemporary. While it is remarkable how seamlessly our old spiteful villain has transitioned into a sympathetic tragic heroine, there is no denying that she is still up to her old tricks. She is still doing selfish things for purportedly selfless and pious reasons. Her intentions are good, but they are nowhere near as pure as she tells herself. Her interest in redeeming herself, in healing the sick and in caring for orphans only started when she found out that the Devil was in hot pursuit of her.

Swinging between extremes is the only way she knows how to survive. When she is not destroying every life in sight, she is trying to save them all. When she is not entering into abusive love affairs, she is abstaining from all sexual acts. Whatever she tries, it never works for long.

Boutique Theatre has added their own special touch to the play's premier Australian production. At the bottom of the staircase leading up to the theatre, each guest is offered a small wheat biscuit. At the top of the stairs, they are offered a thimble cup full of either wine or blackcurrant juice. As they go through the big double doors to take their seats, the usher collects their empty cup and warns them that this 'communion' "may not save your soul." Just like this play's depiction of the Devil, who surprisingly is present as a character here, this elaborate welcome strikes the right balance between campy and caustic. Abigail/1702 feels just as cruel as its predecessor, but it is also much more playful. Abigail's sins might have been forgiven, but they certainly have not been forgotten. There is a sadistic sense of inevitability to Abigail's great punishment, as it would seem that not only circumstance but also her nature have always been against her.

Under Elizabeth's excellent direction, the cast of this production do a fine job of creating either complex or more cartoonish characters well called upon, just as the special effects team have a good sense of when to make things stylised and certainly know when and how to make things look realistic. Emma Caldwell is particularly impressive as Abigail and Jessica Tanner leaves an especially strong impression as the wounded Elizabeth. Nick Casey's forest-inspired set design is the perfect landscape for these haunting figures to prowl about in and the thrust theatre staging literally gives every audience member a different perspective on the action. Depending on where they are seated, some character reactions may be obscured while others happen in plain view. There is no level playing field for these characters as they each receive their judgement.

Sacasa has also written a fair bit for the screen, which shows here in the way he takes his cues from some of the best cinematic sequels as he crafts this follow-up to Arthur Miller's classic play. He draws on the most interesting story points of The Crucible while still having his own story to tell and his own messages to send. As such, Abigail/1702 is not only a fitting continuation of the original story, but it also works solidly as a standalone piece.

Written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Theatre company 'Make a Scene' alongside the La Mama Learning Company are currently presenting their interpretation of Carlo Goldoni's masterpiece 'The Servant of Two Master's. It is showing at Australia La mama theatre in Carlton until July 31st.

The cast includes Christian Bagin, Sharon Davis, Roby Favretto, Irene del Pilar, Freya Pragt, Lelda Kapsis and Darcy Kent. Many actors play both a primary and a secondary or extra character, and the lightning quick costume changes became just as fun as the play itself, as I tried to keep track of everybody, the frequent use of masks as props making this an even greater and more interesting challenge.

Goldoni's 18th century play has been translated and directed by Rosa Campagnaro, who has studied in depth the nuances of commedia dell'arte, or the Italian tradition of comedic improvisation. While 'The Servant of Two Masters' is not necessarily part of commedia dell'arte canon, given that it is scripted in depth, in her version Rosa has encouraged her actors into acts of improvisation which in my opinion gel wonderfully with the feeling of the play and add exponentially to the wild silliness of the whole affair. 

For example, the night I attended (the 17th of June), Brighella the innkeeper began to recite a menu to the audience, but got his mains mixed up with his entree. Truffaldino the servant, who was sharing the stage, leapt in using his outrageously coy Italian accent, 'come on man, you're a professional. You can't even get this right? Let's start the scene again'. After a quick argument in character, Brighella walked off stage left and reappeared, completely composed, and the scene continued, this time getting the dishes in the correct order.

 I can't stress the fact that everyone is in their own roles perform excellently, and throughout the play every character made me laugh out loud with wordplay, physical slapstick comedy, hugely exaggerated ego's, excellently crafted accents and the obvious chemistry the exhibit in their on stage relationships with each other.

 For me, the pinnacle of the comedy in the play was Campagnaro's plotting and the actors execution of the famous dining scene, in which Truffaldino is simultaneously serving his two masters unbeknownst to the masters themselves. The direction was ambitiously high, demanding perfect timing, high energy and on the momentum of the scene. That is, if one performer drops the ball, the whole thing loses all its power, but, the quicker, louder and riskier the scene is, the more hilarious it can be. It was perfectly  executed. The audience did not stop laughing for the full five minutes of the scene.

While every performer in this play did a brilliant job, the star of the show was Christian Bagen as Trufaldino , the eccentric, rude, hilarious and endearing Servant. Bagen presented his character as he is meant to be, and stole the spotlight with perfect  comedic timing, improvisation, maturity and charm.

It is a light hearted, entertaining play as a whole. However Campagnaro has  emphasised themes of sexuality and feminism in her version of the play, themes that are partially addressed in the original given a large part of the plot being devoted to a woman, dressed as a man, searching for her lost lover incognito, and the gender-based power she comes to control in her camouflage

The themes have been drawn out gradually over the course of the play, and they include women's sexual libertarianism, the ridiculousness of gender stereotypes, and the sad cruelty of these stereotypes being enforced. Furthermore, the fact that so many of the antiquated social codes designed to oppress women are present in Goldoni's 18th Century play live on in our modern society is another well deserved and well calculated jab.   

So, Campagnaro's 'The Servant of Two Masters' champions the women and condemns the fact that their qualities and capabilities, their power, is negated by a social code that when broken by the women in the play, seems bizarre that it had ever existed. And yet, none of these characters are white-washed. Both the men and women of the play have very real, repulsive human flaws, which somehow makes them that much more sympathetic.   

And indeed, this play opens a discourse on feminism that is based largely in laughter - in the ridiculous, the silly, which can so often help us examine and access serious matters with an open mind.

Once again, The Servant of Two Masters is running until the 31st of July, so not much time left. Head to lamama.com.au for more info and booking details.

Written by Jim Thomas

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Retro Futurismus is a sci-fi cabert, created by Anni and Maude Davey along with Anna Lumb, Gabi Barton and Teresa Blake, with new special guest stars performing every week. Retro Futurismus as been shown all over Australia to much acclaim and is now performing a new season at 45 Downstairs this month.

Retro Futurismus transformed 45 down stairs into a feminie sci-fi wonderland. It was a beautiful, welcoming atmosphere, I was greeted by one of the performers and directed to a great seat where I waited and listened to a fabulous soundtrack of songs before the show begun.

Retro Futurismus was a series of sort performances, ranging for dance, circus, and song to avant-garde visual acts, which explored the performers own experience of womanhood.

During the interval we were entertained very sweetly by puppetry, which later in the show was revived and was so beautiful people in the audience began to cry.

It was wonderfully self-aware and at times meta, and also very extravagant and glamorous. It was defiant and strong and tender and sweet. It gave me a beautiful mix of emotions, it was vulnerable while also being playful and fierce was intensely powerful and empowering.

Retro Futurismus is showing Wednesday-Sunday at 45 Downstairs until the 31st of July

Written by Ebony Beaton

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’ve ever felt that your office was one hoop short of a circus, Scott Hollingsworth’s Performance management is the cabaret that will speak to your funny bone. Hollingsworth’s one-man show is an outrageous, unapologetically offensive performance, that highlights the ridiculous in the mundane.

The show came back for one night last Sunday, with minor alterations to last year’s performance. Set at the Southern star observation wheel in docklands, Scotts own SHHH Productions presented Performance management in cabaret for a 90-minute erotic extravaganza. 

Hollingsworth plays the Ringmaster, opening the show with a re-scripted cover of Britney Spears’ “Circus”, the audience is welcomed by an incredible areal hoop act by Jessica Robbins, the scantily clad muscle man, Murat Yilmaz and Joshua Fielding as the larrikin lion.

Scott draws inspiration from his real life day job as an office manager and the employees he faces during the daily grind. The cabaret explores everything from job interviews, to unfair dismissal to the ridiculous white lies on a CV, all of which are topics that will speak to the everyday office monkey.

The creative rescripting paired with costuming and lighting pulled the audience in for a night of laughs and performance interaction.

Although Scott Hollingsworth is joined by his stage “minions” the performance really is a one man show, as the ringmaster manages to switch it up with simple costume changes, voice alterations and cheeky quips that almost make you forget that there simply is one fantastic human holding the piece together.

Scott is a NIDA trained actor who has toured internationally with huge productions such as Oklahoma, West Side Story and Cats and although quite a different production, Scott’s experience shines through with performance management, as he cracks the whip in a killer performance.

Hollingsworth doesn’t shy away from mixing themes either as he appropriates tunes from the little mermaid, Frozen, Mary poppin’s and Chicago, bringing his own cheeky twists that although questionable are wonderfully catchy.

With bits such as “everyone’s a little bit racist” to making jokes about killing co-workers. Though maybe not for everyone, the ringmaster’s colourful charisma had the audience giggling and holding their cheeks.
All in all Scott Hollingsworth’s Performance management in Cabaret definitely earned its slot as the Monday morning office gossip.

Written by Ta-lisse Corinne

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Never underestimate the power of a child's imagination. Children often understand much more than we think about our adult world. When confronted with something complex and scary, they seize upon what they do know and invent like crazy to fill in what they don't know. This is something every great children's storyteller understands, and something that I certainly hope first-time feature director Simon Rouby never loses sight of. His debut, Adama, takes on the task of showing the horrors of the battle at Verdun, one of the worst of the entire First World War, to a primary school audience. What helps enormously is that his titular protagonist is the same age as the people who will be watching him. Adama (voiced by Azize Diabaté Abdoulaye) is the plucky adventure-loving hero of this particular kids’ animation. He and his family live in a village in West Africa that is surrounded by lush vegetation, freshwater rivers and towering cliffs. His older brother, Samba (Jack Mba), has been his best friend and playmate for as long as he can remember, but now the time has come for Samba to become a man, with the heavy responsibility of putting food on the family table. However, his initiation ceremony is interrupted by the appearance of a seagull flying overhead, a bad omen. The ritual is halted, and this dark sign turns out to be very prophetic. Samba is offered a bag of cold coins by the recruiting "Nassaras," to travel to France and fight in the army. He accepts, determined to be his own man instead of the man his father has always told him he has to be. He tells Adama, on the night that he runs away, that he'll understand when it's his turn to leave childhood behind, and gives him the bag of gold.

Right now, Adama doesn't understand in the slightest. He hears his parents talking about the terrible fate that awaits all those travelling to the front, but refuses to believe that his brother can't be saved. He too runs away from the village, taking the gold so he can return it to the Nassaras and have his brother back.

An adult audience might view this as a cute but tragic story of a naive boy on a well-intentioned fool's errand, but a child probably has no reason to think his plan won't work. The genius of Rouby's direction of Julien Lilti's original story, co-written for the screen by Bénédicte Galup is that, on Adama's long journey, some of his wonderment will be shared with the young audience while other parts of it will seem very strange to them at first. After he has been walking for some time and arrives at the coast near his village, he thirstily slurps up a mouthful of seawater that he of course very quickly spits back out. This is the very first time that he has seen the ocean, a scene that really drives home to a Western audience how different his life has been from theirs, and yet also how similarly they both would react to seeing something for the first time. The same goes for Adama's first look at a White person, a mirthless military official on board a ship just like the one that would have taken Samba away, a faceless spectre looking more like a mannequin than a man.

This figure is also rendered in 2D animation, along with the backgrounds and the crowds, while the characters in the foreground are animated in 3D. Any character that emerges from the nameless throng sheds their watercolour texture and gains a striking definition that also highlights their facial imperfections. The digital imaging, combined with the skilful clay sculpting by Michel Lauricella,, gives these characters a sharp yet jerky appearance, one that's lifelike without trying to be photorealistic.

By the time we, and Adama, get to Verdun, and start seeing bombs, horrific injuries and lethal gas, the adults and teenagers in the room will definitely know that this storyworld is partly a fantasy, but one that rings true on an emotional level. Young children may not necessarily find the story as fanciful, in fact this may well be the most intense film they will have ever seen, but the animation is certainly a good cue for them not to take this at face value. Whilst they will surely identify with Adama, share his frustration with the adults in his life, feel the urgency of his quest and be just as afraid of its many dangers, I think they will also have a sense that everything is going to be alright in the end. They'll recognise staple kids film characters, like the streetwise sidekick, the eccentric wise old homeless man who is vaguely magical (Pascal N'Zonzi), and that one stuffy grownup that eventually comes around to helping our young hero (Oxmo Puccino, who also writes and performs a beautiful piece of slam poetry that is heard during the end credits). Together, all of them will reassure younger viewers that this is a fable, one where courage and kindness are rewarded, war or no war.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I had never been to the Mailbox Art Space prior to their current exhibition, Heathen. Of 'Heathen', the promotional shots of the works gave me the impression of huge canvases filled with extravagant, thought provoking watercolours.

After getting mildly lost in my own city looking for a gallery space on flinders lane, myself and a friend realised that we had to go up a flight of stairs tucked away at the 141-143 Flinders Lane Pawson House heritage building. 

The stairs were choked with people talking and drinking wine. We were late - I figured that people must have already gone in and come back out to discuss the exhibition.

Pushing up the stairs apologising, looking for the door to the gallery, jostling almost everyone, we began to get funny looks. We followed the eyes of a few patrons, turned and beheld a set of 18 1930's mailboxes, the kind you have in an apartment building - lots of about 15x10cm boxes, crammed next to each other, with glass fronts.

Within these tiny boxes were not the vast canvases of traditional galleries that I had expected, but miniature works by Belle Bassin, Valentina Palonen and Anna Parry, with work from the curator, Mitchel Brannan's, private collection, interspersed. It is one of Melbourne's smallest gallery spaces.

To quote the exhibition's description, the theme of 'Heathen'  is 'mysticism, the numinous and the unknowable', the goal 'to explore ways of knowing that are beyond rationality and empiricism'.

Parry has included the watercolours, Palonen the intricately detailed sculptures, and Bassin the photography and digital media.

Parry's watercolours are a kaleidoscope of colour, which with inspection seems to shift like sand in the wind before your eyes, solidifying after moments into new forms. Acorns turn into hearts which turn into crystals, pomegranate seeds are in fact perhaps precious jewels, seaweed like tendrils lurk blue like veins. Organism meets mineral meets the abstract, in which a darkness of spirit and light comedy of visual play meet.

Palonin's contributions take the form of mixed media sculptures. Her works that that drew me the most were a series of disembodied hands holding objects. To call these sculptures intricate would be an understatement - the detail is so incredible, accurate down to the fingerprints and tiny creases of the skin.

The hands are painted green on the fingernails, yellow on the fingers, and purple on the palms, implying that each hand might belong to the same owner. Each hand interacts with an object - one holds an acorn, another a seashell, another a rock, another a crystal. As I interrogated the pieces, I began to mime the hand gestures the sculptures were set in. 

Some have the knuckles facing away from where the face would be, delicately holding the object, indicating that they had perhaps just picked the object up and were observing it, curiously. Other hands gripped their objects hard, possessively, tightly, so that it was obscured from view. I began to see the hand less as a dumb tool, but as of extensions of our mind, of our curiosity, able to display love, hate, ownership and fear as clearly as if these emotions had been yelled.

Bassin's digital photography and one minute video installation are perhaps the most difficult to interpret in the exhibition. She employs seemingly simple patterns of undulating line in black and white, which spiral and throb the longer one observes it into a headache inducing maze of complexity. It is not an optical illusion, it is more interesting than that, but I can't help but compare the effect of Bassin's use of shape and time in her still images with the Penrose infinite staircase.

Fascinatingly, the artists were not given the theme of the exhibition - 'mysticism, the numinous and the unknowable' to work to - the pieces were curated by Mitchel Brannan, picked from artists who had, prior to the exhibition, pushed their work to answer the questions of 'Heathen's theme. This is intriguing, as there are some startling similarities and parallels in the works, all the more interesting due to the fact they were not established by communication between the artists. The motif a heart, acorn, shell or crystal shape appear in each artists work. Each holds significance to the unconscious.

The shell, indented with the infinite spiral pattern, which surfaces from deep beneath the ocean to be viewed by the person. The ocean has over time consistently been used as a metaphor for the unconscious mind in art and literature. 

The acorn, symbolic of rebirth, or the circle of life. It is also suspended oddly in time, a snapshot of what might one day be a mighty tree, it also stands in for the child or the embryo from which we all began, either within our parents or our ancestors at the dawn of time.

Finally, the crystal, brewed deep below the ground by forces untold, becoming something wonderfully, staggeringly beautiful, but is for the most part likely never to see the light of day. It is highly symbolic of the innermost workings of the human mind, and perhaps hints at why so many crystals in the images the artists provided oscillate between seeming both organic and mineral, heightening the metaphoric tie between object and abstract.

All said, I had a brilliant time at the Mailbox Art Space, and I can highly recommend the 'Heathen' Exhibition. It's running until the 30th of July. Check out extra details at www.mailboxartspace.com.au, which will also treat you to a digital copy of Anna Parry's watercolour 'Sacred Geometry'.

Review written by Jim Thomas

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christian and Andrew review The Wheeler Centre’s one night only event Revolting and Ridiculous: A Roald Dahl Retrospective. The event took place at the Athenaeum Theatre on July 7th. 

"This year marks the 100th anniversary of Roald Dahl’s birth – so the Wheeler Centre will get revolting and ridiculous on stage with guests including Andy Griffiths, Jess McGuire, Kate McLennan, Tim Rogers, Anna Burke and more. They’ll wax nostalgic, perform extracts from Dahl’s vast body of work, delve into the recurring themes of his stories and discuss the life of this incomparable, sometimes controversial, author." - The Wheeler Centre website.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 1966 book Hitchcock/Truffaut was as intriguing and exciting a read as its title suggested. Based on Francois Truffaut's 8-day interview with Alfred Hitchcock, it offered readers the chance to feel like a fly on the wall for the meeting of two of the most avant-garde film directors of the decade. At the time of their meeting at Hitchcock's Universal Studios office in 1962, the British auteur had recently released his fortieth feature, the hugely successful Psycho, while the young man from across the chanel had completed his directorial debut, The 400 blows, only 3 years ago. Hitchcock was arguably more open and generous with Truffaut than he was with any of his press interviewers, which was surely a testament to the depth of their shared love and understanding of the art form they were both dedicating their lives to.

Present day filmmaker Kent Jones is evidently on this same level of cinematic appreciation. His documentary, which shares the same title as Truffaut's book, is much more than just a companion piece. This is partly because it is one thing to read a transcript of this mysterious conversation, but it is quite another thing to hear a recording of the exchange, to absorb the nuances of the interaction that took place through a French-English interpreter. This coupled with the pictures that were taken from the meeting almost make you feel that you are in that office with them.

More importantly though, Jones has invited some of the most interesting, influential working filmmakers of the day to discuss how the “Master of Suspense" has inspired them and what they have admired most about his work. Bringing on board the likes of David Fincher, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and Martin Scorsese is no small feat. It is unfortunately a very homogeneous group, an all-white, all-male ensemble cast, sometimes saying very similar things. The lack of diversity is certainly felt strongly towards the end, when the conversation turns towards Psycho and Vertigo. As interesting and insightful as these men are, there are some perspectives they simply don't have. French director Olivier Assayas has plenty to say about the New Wave cinema of Truffaut's time, Scorsese is the ideal person to comment on on the history of the crime genre and on the nature of a directing career that spans several decades, but no one seems very well equipped to discuss the characters played by Janet Leigh or Kim Novak. It feels very strange for there to be no thorough discussion of the director's trademark casting of blonde actresses in roles that were much more femme fatale than ingenue. When it comes to Vertigo, the interviewees excel at describing how it harks back to the pure cinema of the silent era and how its impact extends far beyond its mediocre opening weekend, but their examination of the lead female is very a much a male perspective on Hitchcock's male perspective on the Jimmy Stewart character's male perspective of her character. An informed critique of the Hitchcockian blondes should really be sitting alongside this documentary's great sections on the man's famous fear of police and his often quoted belief that "actors are cattle." This documentary is excellent at providing the context surrounding this statement and the background to that very recurrent theme of false criminal suspicion.

Cinema Nova will be screening Hitchcock/Truffaut from July 14, a week before the beginning of their upcoming festival featuring most of the highlights from Hitchcock's filmography. It will be opening with the 1954 drawing room thriller Dial M For Murder, in 3D funnily enough. When this little tidbit was announced at the critics screening I attended, the fellow next to me cried "oh Fuck off!" I wonder if that was Hitchcock's response when Warner Brothers told him to shoot it in 3D, or when he found out that they actually released it that way, or even when they asked him to make it. This wasn't a project he chose, he was under contract, and indeed, it is difficult to imagine him choosing this one for himself, despite it having the word "murder" in the title. Hitchcock/Truffaut purported that you could watch any Hitchcock film with the sound on mute and still understand 90% of what was happening. This film might just be the exception to that rule. It's definitely one of the most dialogue-heavy and dialogue-driven films that he made, with suitable theatrical performances from every member of the cast. It was quite obviously an adaptation of a play, in this case written by Frederick Knott. It follows the diabolical plot of a jealous husband (Ray Milland) to murder his wealthy adulterous wife (Grace Kelly) in order to get her money, a plan that of course goes terribly wrong. As tends to happen with plays, this one takes place almost entirely in one room, inside the couple's apartment. However, rather than being restricted creatively by the setting, Hitchcock of course knew how to work with this claustrophobia rather than against it in this very different medium.

This film is also a prime example of another of his great skills that the documentary points out, his knowledge of when to draw out a moment that would normally fly by an instant, and when to contract an event we are used to seeing being played long. A devastating murder trial is one such moment, naturally because it is this film's centrepiece of the staple false conviction theme, the perfect opportunity to fully demonise the character of Chief Inspector Hubbard (John Williams), before it is shown that me might not actually be all that bad as far as policemen in Hitchcock films go. The conviction scene appears more like a psychedelic dream than a reality. As such it is one of the few dated parts of this now 62 year old film. As is also observed in the documentary, his films really haven't dated at all since they're very much human stories that aren't focused on any particular time period. Meanwhile, the scene of the pivotal telephone call of the title is markedly extended, to the point where we even see the lines being connected in the control room. The murder scene that immediately follows is naturally of the high standard that you would expect from this director, and was clearly the scene that was most important to him. However, the rest of the film is also well-paced and absolutely engrossing, even as Knott's writing becomes more gleefully convoluted by the second.

This detailed documentary and uproarious crime thriller are both perfect for whetting your appetite before seeing North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window and all the others on the big screen.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

La Mama Theatre is an ideal place to host the Australian premiere production of Lars Noren’s Courage to Kill. This tense two-hander, sometimes three-hander, from Sweden’s most celebrated playwright definitely works best in an intimate venue. It is one of those many plays that take place entirely in a domestic setting, in this case inside a young man’s apartment that he is forced to share with his father. While in some plays this makes the home seem like a bigger, grander place for having been the site of so much drama, Noren, and indeed set designer Charlotte Lane make it feel as though the walls are closing in on its inhabitants, largely because those walls are covered in sticky-taped newspaper clippings that keep being added to. As the audience takes their seats, director Richard Murphet places the son, Eric (Luke Mulquiney) at his desk and has him sort through the clippings while smoking a cigarette, in the manner of the classic film noir detective. He might have the jaded look, the unhealthy lifestyle and the rotating roster of young female lovers, but he’s a self-confessed coward, and a waiter, though a very attentive one apparently. However, none of this hospitality is afforded to his new housemate. His usually absent father, Ernst (Stephen House) has fallen on hard times. With nowhere else to go, Eric takes him in, more as his prisoner than anything else. While Ernst tries to make up for lost time, Eric tries to heal himself by punishing his father for what those years of parental neglect have done to him. Much of the play is a dance between pointing fingers and self-blame, between hurling insults and self-loathing, as the pair of them are sickened by the weakness they see in each other, and even more so when they see that same weakness in themselves.

After the interval, Eric’s new exotic young lover, Radka (Tamara Natt), comes to have dinner with them, an event that Ernst has long been looking forward to. With fresh eyes, she witnesses how harsh Eric is with his father, and how manipulative Ernst is with his son. She hears how quickly calm words turn into snarls, which then turn into barking shouts, which then turn into a silence that is finally broken by more calm but wounded words. Their similarities are what strikes Radka the most. In the heat of the moment, Eric struggles to muster the courage, or the nerve, to do the right thing, while Ernst often can’t, or won’t, control his urge to do the wrong thing. Eric couldn’t save a woman he saw being violated because he hesitated before delivering that punch to the head to the man who was attacking her. On the other hand, Ernst, as Radka finds out, would have more likely been the violator. Either way, the same damage is done. She ultimately realises that she is not safe with either of the two sides of this terrible coin.

All three cast members do an outstanding job. House is perfect as the ageing failure of a parent who invites both pity and scorn. Natt gives an entertainingly exaggerated performance as the siren-like voice of reason who drives the true selves of these two men right out of their self-righteous exteriors. Malquiney seems also a few steps removed from realism in his portrayal of the unhinged son tormented by the need to make his father proud, even one as flawed and wretched as Ernst is.

However, despite the efforts of these fine actors, and the ominous sound design by Adam Casey, this production is inbuilt with a highly melodramatic ending that runs more on poetic logic than character believability, unlike the rest of the play, which is largely realistic. Perhaps it is a fault in Marita Lindholm Gochman’s otherwise solid translation of the original Swedish text, but this play’s abrupt conclusion just doesn’t feel earned. However, if Noren hadn’t forcibly accelerated the proceedings at the end there this production may well have outstayed its welcome. Courage to Kill finishes more or less after it’s said everything it has to say, which is a hell of a lot, and all of it is richly engrossing.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cut The Sky is a dance theatre work by Marrugeku Theatre. It is in interdisciplinary work combining dance, video, poetry and song. Cut The Sky is part of the ‘Performing Climates’ for the Performance Studies International Conference or PSI hosted by Arts House. This year PSI is in Melbourne and it focus is on making conversations and exploring climate change though the lens of performance.

Cut The Sky is an intercultural exploration of how climate change is affecting the earth. It explores what climate change means for the indigenous Australians and its impact on traditional stories and customs, and it also explores what it means to be a ‘climate change refugee’. The structure of this piece is abstract and chaotic - it flings us forward and back in time. It opens with an apocalyptic version of Australia in the future ravaged by climate change and sends us into a cyclone imagined by the dancers wearing makeshift clothes of plastic and storage bags.

Cut The Sky is highly provocative and emotional. It screams and weeps over the earth and how we are damaging it and asks us "What are we going to about it?!". It’s a beautiful, complex exploration over something all Australians should be concerned about.

Marrugeku have toured this work all over the world, performing in outdoor and indoor venues. It has played at the Sydney opera house and remote communities in rural Australia, as well as being shown in multiple venues across Europe.

Cut The Sky is showing at Arts House Meat Market from Wednesday 6th till the 10th of July. It runs for 75 minutes with no internal. It is part of Performing Climates, an arts program designed and curated for the public by Arts House for the 2016 Performance Studies International Conference.

Review written by Ebony Beaton

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.