Art Smitten: Reviews - 2016

Come Away with Me to the End of the World by Ranters theatre was a series of conversations between nameless characters on stage. The actors seemed to be playing nobody or themselves - they talked of seemingly random things like their trip to Japan or the Italian dance classes they were taking, or meeting someone while going for a morning jog. Some of these conversations were mundane or even boring, some were absurd and surreal, some were long and winding, some were very short, and some conversations ended in song. These conversations were spoken over a soft backing track of ambient instruments and sometimes bird noises, which I found calming and it made the conversations easier to listen to. To my understanding, Come Away with Me to the End of the World was at least partly an one dimensional exploration of culture and/or travel seen though a white lens, most conversations centered around travel and experiences with other cultures while abroad, or experiences with other cultures that happened locally. Of course I felt like that was only one element of the piece, since there was many other conversations centered around things that did not involve travel and other cultures.

The set was confusing and abstract, it began de-constructed and bare – it was made of a purposefully small and simple back drop of a forest, and card board cut outs of something that was indistinguishable and other objects and set pieces on the perimeters of the stage. The set was then built by the performers during a conversation, the cardboard cut outs were small mountains and they scattered the stage, the set design was interesting but I found myself struggling to find meaning from it, I felt similarly to the whole play, although it was entertaining and a lot of the time amusing and funny, I found myself a points bored and my mind wondering off thinking about other things. I did not find a clear or strong message or meaning within the play and I found myself constantly having to fight for it in the beginning. In the end, I just sat back and let it be what it was and had a fun time laughing along with the performers telling their kooky stories.

Come Away with Me to the End of the World by Ranters Theatre is showing from the 5th to the 24th of July at The Malthouse Theatre, Southbank.

Review written by Ebony Beaton

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Our Kind of Traitor may well be the least confusing film adaptation of a John le Carré novel that we are ever going to see. If you enjoy political thrillers but don't exactly the have the head for real, convoluted espionage, Susanna White's film is sure to be the thing for you. Unlike the rather cold and brittle Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, this story of a man about to inform on the Russian mafia has a much stronger human element, one that often even takes precedence over the political machinations, which are explored in unusually sparse detail. Dima (the always brilliant Stellan Skarsgard) wants to defect to Britain, using the central intelligence he has been privy to in order to gain safe passage from the British Secret service for himself, but also, more importantly, his family, whose lives have been threatened by the vengeful new mafia boss, "The Prince" (Grigoriy Dobrygin). MI6 won't officially go anywhere near Dima, but an agent named Hector (a perfectly British Damien Lewis) reaches out to him without official sanction and offers to get him sanctuary, provided the man can give him enough information to bargain with. Dima doesn't want to give the secret service everything he has, everything they need in order to take down The Prince and the treacherous Aubrey Longrigg (Jeremy Northam), only to be left for dead. Hector won't be able to put a strong enough case to the service unless Dima gives him everything he has.

To get things past this standstill, Dima reaches out to the holidaying English couple Perry (Ewan McGregor) and Gail (Naomie Harris), who he's only just met but who have already shown themselves to be trustworthy, principled people. He asks them to be present for all the negotiations, to put their safety on the line to ensure the safety of Dima's family.

Dima's wife and children, and the thorny question of who should be responsible for their survival, is ultimately the heart of this story. The family themselves all look to Dima, who is not just the self-proclaimed patriarch but also the instigator of all this, to protect them all, and put him down whenever he looks to be failing to fulfil this duty. Dima, and indeed Hector, look to the secret service to fulfil their duty to those who are giving them information at great personal risk, to be better than the criminal organisations they are working to bring down and the oppressive political regimes that they fight against. On the other hand, the service, embodied here by the character of Billy Matlock (Mark Gatiss) is looking to Dima and Hector to give them enough to go on that will ensure that this operation doesn't ruin them. Meanwhile, all of these parties are looking to Perry and Gail to offer the independent assistance they so desperately need. At first the couple echoes the words of the service, that they are not the ones who put Dima's family in this dangerous situation and that it is not their responsiblity to get them out of it, until Hector shows them photos of The Prince's terrible handiwork and cunningly triggers their empathy. The lowly agent is certainly very well versed in the power of personal motivation. Much of his determination to finally bring down Longrigg is personal vendetta after his last attempt to expose the big shark saw his son imprisoned.

At least in this adaptation, that particular element of backstory feels a little haphazardly thrown in to humanise his character at the last minute. It's talked about but never really felt. On the other hand, the conflict between Perry and Gail, while very clichéd, is evident visually as well as verbally. White places her two best directed scenes in the first ten minutes of the film. The first is of a grizzly, politically motivated murder by The Prince that perfectly sets up the impetus for the rest of the story, the terrible danger that Dima is fleeing from. The second is a painfully poetic scene of intimacy interrupted by an old wound that Gail is still healing from. It is later revealed that Perry slept with one of his students, and that this trip to Russia was meant to help repair their marriage. There's no denying that this is an overused plot line, but it works because, as with the cruelty of The Prince, we can see it as well as hear about it, and seeing is believing.

Hector's grief might not have the space to be shown, but his rage is palpable, both politically and personally. His only scene with the nefarious Longrigg managed to do the most with the least, and his rant to his peers about the world's complacency in running on black market economies is the flm's great dialogue centrepiece.

Fans of the more cerebral le Carré adaptations will probably be put off by this one's more emotional bent, but ultimately it makes for a stronger and more memorable cinematic experience.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

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Emma is fascinated with the haunting Australian story Picnic at Hanging Rock, originally a book published in 1967 by Joan Lindsay.  She had the opportunity to speak to Tom Wright, the playwright of Malthouse Theatre’s production of Picnic at Hanging Rock, and to visit the Macedon Ranges, the home of Picnic at Hanging Rock, to experience where the mystery all began. 

Picnic at Hanging Rock is on at the Malthouse Theatre until 20th March. 

Picture: Sourced from Malthouse Theatre website

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Super low-budget and full of charm, the Melbourne-made film Pawno, released in 2015 at the Melbourne International Film Festival to sell-out crowds, is the first feature from director John Ireland and scriptwriter Damian Hill, who also stars in the film.

Pawno takes place over one whole day, and is largely centred around a Footscray pawn shop, referenced in the title. The shop is inhabited by Les, the kind-hearted grouch of an owner (played by John Brumpton) and his youthful dogsbody assistant Danny (played by Hill). As well as these two characters, the film is populated by an assortment of locals who add an offbeat vibrancy to the day's proceedings. There's two women who work in a bookstore, one of whom Danny has a crush on, there's a pair of smart-arse layabouts, there's a violent thug, there's a woman whose son is missing, there’s a trans woman whose visits to the shop are a form of solace from the harsh outside world, there's an Indian taxi driver who was a dentist in his home country... the list goes on. It's not an outright comedy, nor is it an outright drama. There's a healthy combination of both, often at the same time, and there's a sympathetic, unjudging tone that seeps through the entire film.

In a world where so many films are overly preoccupied with a rigid narrative, the film has a refreshingly loose plot structure that nevertheless pushes the drama forward, even if it is sometimes a bit too loose for its own good. It doesn't always concern itself with tying off arcs, which in itself is not a bad thing, but the resulting mix of finished and unfinished storylines does feel somewhat disjointed. While it's nice to see so many characters on screen, the film does sometimes struggle to keep them all corralled in. The main handful of characters get most of the screentime and the rest don't really get enough time to breathe so it does feels like an extended sitcom episode rather than a feature film. That said, however much screen time particular characters get is taken full advantage of, with all cast members giving exemplary performances.

All in all, director Ireland and screenwriter Hill have created a sweet and simple film that's full of life and shows a promising start to their respective careers. Plus, it's always great to see film content come out of Melbourne.

Review written by Ben Volchok

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Talisse gave a live review of The Wheeler Centre’s election one-night special event - Stand Up...and be Counted. 

Comedians at the event included: Toby Halligan (MC), Denise Scott, Zoe Coombs-Marr, Sammy J, Aamer Rahman, Mathew Kenneally, Claire Hooper, and Gerard McCulloch.

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Albert Einstein is the latest scientific genius to have lured a scriptwriter into the trap of biography. Jess Newman was clearly intrigued by the mind of the famous theoretical physicist when she started to write the sung-through musical Einstein: Master of the Universe. Watching it, you can feel her yearning to see the world as he saw it, if even for a moment, and to understand what he saw. Her audience, I’m sure, is after the same thing, but it quickly becomes apparent that this is something she either cannot, will not or has lost interest in delivering.

This is one of those biopics that gravitates more towards the “man behind the science” than the work itself. The bulk of the story is taken up by Einstein’s younger years at university, starting just after the turn of the century, until he travelled to America in the early 30s. His two marriages are used as a frame for his journey from patent office clerk to Nobel-prize-winning physicist. Mileva Marić, his long-suffering first wife, can only stand his obsession with his theories for so long, and his affair with Elsa Löwenthal is the last straw. Elsa marries the famous man whose mind mystifies her, but the mystery soon loses its novelty as it did with Mileva. There’s only so far you can go with someone who always keeps you on the outer.

Ironically, and perhaps even intentionally, the audience feels the same way. Despite the beautiful projection art and animation from Jack Crosby, and Newman’s impassioned tunes and lyrics, Einstein’s inner world remains inaccessible, and its highlighted connections to our human world are just a little too trite, even for a musical. We understand that this is an underdog story, one about an ambitious young man hoping to prove everyone wrong, because we’ve seen those kinds of stories before. The young academic’s contemporaries and rivals are amusing villains in their own right, but the substance of his conflicts with them, the science itself, is not given the space to be understood and appreciated. Much of it is stuffed into the throwaway lines of babble that fill up the more light-hearted comedic songs.

Most of the big pathos numbers are set aside for an equally expected story, that of the man who was a great genius but a failure of a husband and father. The more refreshing aspect of this subplot is Mileva, who, as a mathematics student, has much more to offer than Albert gives her credit for. Again, rather like the audience, she wants to be treated as an equal, and is tired of being shut out. She can see that her husband’s head is buzzing with thoughts, but, as she tells him repeatedly, her family cannot live on thoughts.

It is not enough just to watch a man sit at his desk and rave about his epiphanies in the vaguest of terms. We need something to take away from it. We want to hear something that we haven’t heard before, or at least something that we haven’t heard so many times before.

In this regard, it seems as though Newman simply made the mistake of picking the wrong years to focus on. While Einstein’s early career might not have offered much original material to work with, his time in America as a refugee, his involvement in the Second World War and in the civil rights movement, his religious writings, and the many other chapters in his later years may well have been theatrical dynamite.

Newman’s compositions, the talents of the triple-threat cast and the skill of the production team are all top notch, all impressively assembled and ready to deliver a fascinating, remarkable story. Unfortunately, it looks like the timeline was being held the wrong way up in the script development process, leading to the expansion of the years that play out more like celebrity gossip than historical biography, and the baffling omission of the meatier material.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

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On Thursday the 23rd of June, I went to see Melbourne Playback perform 'On Ours Shores' at the Footscray Arts Centre. The troupe are a many things, or rather, become many different things over the course of one night, being one of Melbourne's leading improvisation theatre companies.

The team consists of actors, organisers and musicians, with the roles interchangeable between the variously skilled artists. As with improv, you can expect that an evening with Melbourne Playback will direct the spotlight from the stage and into the audience at times. However, the theatre group conspires to engage audience participation to a degree I have never before experienced.

You might encounter any selection of their actors on a given night. On Thursday, Ernie Gruner and Karen Berger provided a two piece band. Throughout the show they accompanied the actors with violin, percussion and xylophone. The core cast consisted of Alex Sangster, Allen Laverty, Diana Nguyen, Mike Mc Kevoy, Michelle Hussey and Ananth Gopal, who all conducted themselves with the wit, foresight and perfect timing of improvisation-veterans.

You could expect the duration of the performance to be around two hours.

But it is not time for the actors yet. The evening began with four fifteen minute talks by guest speakers tackling a major issue effecting contemporary Australia, the refugee crisis, and our speakers were refugee and author Mariam Issa, CEO of Asylum Seekers Resource Center Kon Karappanyotiddis, refugee and advocate Mohammed Ali Baqiri, and representative from the Refugee Action Collective and St Albans teacher, Lucy Honin.

They were each eloquent, compelling, brave and shared some painful things while displaying a hope for the future that had survived the incredible test of their pasts. I encourage every listener to go and give them a google - they are an excellent source of highly educated information on the topic of the refugee. In the greater plot of the evening, their function was to grab the absolute attention of the audience and force them, both with kindness and a certain emotional brutality, to engage not only their intellect to the issue at hand, but their senses, memories, emotions - essentially, bringing deeper parts of our humanity to bear on the refugee crisis.

As the final speaker finished their speech, the audience left the theatre for intermission. We staggered around like shell shocked soldiers, surprised at how emotionally exhausted we had become. I had been turning over in my mind refugee or immigrant children I had known in primary school and high school, having grown in the course of an hour closer to understanding the magnitude of their experiences than I had ever had before.

But - it wasn't over yet.

Returning to the theatre, we were met by five actors dressed in black and shoeless, arranged in a single horizontal rank, seated on milk crates, were occupying the space in which the speakers had been. There was nothing else on stage. As the final audience members took their seats, the MC jogged energetically to the crowd and asked for people to call out a word the summarised how they were feeling after hearing the speeches.

After a brief self-conscious pause, he was answered.

'Tearful', 'ashamed', 'sad', 'empowered' came the calls from the crowd.

The MC bounded up the stairs to a woman. 'Tell me' he said into the mic, 'what makes you feel tearful, and why?'

The woman attempted to explain herself, to explain a feeling that was obviously more complex than a single word. After a minute or so of interview, the MC turned to the actors who were still seated silently on stage and asked them to perform a song based on what the woman had just said.

The lights dimmed. A green spotlight switched on, hitting the middle of the stage. One of the actresses danced into the middle of the spotlight and began to sing, joined gradually by the rest, which compounded into a symphony of voices. The cast had picked up on a few key phrases: 'open heart', 'clear mind', 'come here', which they sung layered over each other, creating a tumult of straining voices or calm voices, differing in cadence and strength. It lasted perhaps three minutes.

I was initially confused and embarrassed by the performance, until I realised that they had hit upon something in the audience members words. It wasn't just her words they were examining, it was her tone, her confusion, her sadness. They had interpreted this as best they could, and were reflecting it back to her and the rest of us through performance, creating it again outside her and in a way that was different but the same, to understand again in a new way.

Over the course of the evening, the audience was asked for their feelings, stories and thoughts, inspired by the initial speakers or by their own history with the refugee issue. With this deeply personal information, they made us at times giddy with amusement, then angry, then euphoric, then quiet with sadness. Song and music were not the only weapons of expression they deployed, utilising dance, mime, language and light to perform the things which the audience conveyed. Each act was around 3 to 10 minutes long. We left the theatre that night having examined and gained insight into some human parts of ourselves and our fellow audience members that are not so often brought into the public or the conscious eye.

Melbourne Playback's next show deals with climate change and will be in August this year. Tickets and dates are not yet announced, but head over to melbourneplayback.com.au for more information.

Review written by Jim Thomas

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On Thursday I went to see The Addams Family Musical, a performance by Federation University’s 2016 graduating Musical Theatre class. The musical comedy was written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and based on Charles Addams’ iconic characters in his comic strip The Addams Family. It was performed at Theatre Works on Acland St in St Kilda and its closing night was on Saturday.

As soon as the orchestra began playing the overture you knew this play would be a crowd pleaser. Rainer Pollard conducted a talented group of musicians, who were both expressive and controlled, and their performance suggested a strong connection between the conductor and musicians. The play then began with the Addams family gathered around the family tree in the graveyard, a yearly ritual to celebrate life and death, and honour their ancestors. The ensemble of ancestors, portraying figures like Marie Antoinette, a WW1 soldier and a suffragette, were summoned out of their graves for the first number; When You’re an Addams. What a spectacular start to the show. The entire cast were charismatic and the blocking of the dancing was inspired and well planned. Adrienne Chisholm’s set and costume design was fantastic, notably the ancestors looked like spooky spectres as they swanned across the stage.

As the family return to the house, Uncle Fester (Liam Dodds) stayed behind and closed off the gates to the underworld, enlisting the help of his ancestors to ensure a dinner scheduled for that night went smoothly. Wednesday Addams, (Tess Walsh) had suddenly fallen in love with a preppy young man from Ohio, Lucas Beineke (Jack Saunders) and invited him around for dinner so their two families could meet. Two worlds were about to collide, and the couple needed all the help they could get for One Normal Night, the name of another musical number which was spellbinding.

Many of the family members struggled to understand Wednesday’s new found feelings, as she began to favour bursting into song over torturing her brother Pugsley (Mackenzie Pinder). Her parents, Gomez and Morticia Addams (Andrew Thomas, Bridget Mylecharane) are gravely concerned by her new attitude but try to set aside their differences for the sake of their daughter’s happiness. However, Pugsley fears he will lose his sister to the light side and plots to break up her relationship during the dinner. The prim parents of Lucas, Mal and Alice Beineke (Shaune Davis, Cathryn McDonald) arrive and are seated for supper. They end the meal with a game called Full Disclosure, where you slip from a chalice and tell the absolute truth. Pugsley pours a potion into the cup, a concoction which is designed to bring out one’s dark side, and it is intended for Wednesday but is instead intercepted by Alice and she transforms into her less inhibited self.

A special mention goes to Patrick Schnur, who played the butler, Lurch, and to Emma Austin who played Grandma Addams. They were delightful to watch for their comedic timing in particular. A highlight of the night was when the Beineke’s had arrived and the family was trying to be as ordinary as possible. Grandma, returning from the cemetery of ancestors, suddenly bursts through the front door, and seeing them exclaims, “Boy, is it normal out there!” Another highlight was the expressions on all performers faces during the scene where Alice asks whether they have a little girls room, and Gomez replies “We used to but we let them all out.” Liam Dodds should be commended for his convincing and expressive performance of Uncle Fester, a character who is in love with the moon. My only criticism would be concerning the Tango De Amor towards the end of the Act Two, which felt a bit underwhelming on the technique side in comparison to the other dance numbers. However, it was an extremely strong performance by all cast and crew. The director, David Wynen, Musical Director, Rainer Pollard and Production Manager, Jim Austin, should be pleased with their show.

Review written by Erin Connellan

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On Friday night I danced to the rhythmic genius of Quarter Street, one of Melbourne’s hottest Salsa bands, as they performed in the first of three “House Parties” at the heritage-listed Kew Court House. Spoilt with a dance floor rather than a seated concert, the audience took full advantage of the space in the former courthouse and police station.

Quarter Street champion the gritty sounds typical of the Salsa Dura, a style developed in 1970s New York by the Puerto Rican migrants. Unlike its brother, Salsa Romántica, the Salsa Dura is less polished and demands a more darling sound, especially from its brass section. Quarter Street did not disappoint in that respect. Lazaro Pompa, on trumpet, along with Ben Gillespie and Jimmy Bowman, on trombones, commanded the stage with their explosive fanfare. They jolted the party to life with quick bursts of notes, bending them around the beat.

The boys melted these vibrant melodies with their dynamic rhythms, charming the audience into swaying along with the music. Leo Salvo, on the güiro, Luis Poblete, on the congas, Cris Saavedra, on the bongos and cow bell and Sebastian Orellana on the drums, maintained a tight beat. However, this wasn’t the end of the rhythm section. Cesar Saavedra, on double base, along with a mysterious pianoman reinforced the beat through their melodic instruments and created that distinctive salsa sound. Together, they formed a smooth unit which balanced instrumental breaks and vocal sections.

With that, who could forget the vocals of Sergio Botero, along with Salvo and Poblete. Their deeper tones cut through the higher pitches of the brass section, giving the songs a richness. To suggest they are simply singers would be selling them short; they are best described as entertainers. Botero’s spirited dancing was infectious and drew the crowd from the comfort of the walls to the open dance floor.

Quarter Street closed their two-hour performance with Tumba la Caña Jibarito, or Grave, Beer, Sandwich. They called for the audience to revel in the hedonistic pleasures given to you in the moment, especially due to the inevitability of death. Both the sound and sentiment resonated with the audience, and a majority of the crowd tossed away their insecurities and dared to dance for the final song. The way I moved could only be described as a balter; an archaic English word which means to dance without art or skill, but with great joy and enthusiasm. However, it is important to note for those of you who also balter around the dancefloor, that this did not affect the quality of the night. Whether you are a seasoned salsa dancer or owner of two left feet, Quarter street will persuade you to shake off your inhibitions and allow their beat to flow through you.

The Kew Court House will be having two more House Parties, starring the 8-piece Melbourne band, Papa Chango, who merge together afrobeat and psychedelic guitar, and Melbourne based Mariachi Los Romanticos, who blend Mexican folk and pop with Spanish lyrics and Latin rhythm. Papa Chango will perform on the 29th of July and Mariachi Los Romanticos will perform on the 26th of August, with doors opening at 7pm. Tickets are available online at the Hawthorne Arts Centre website. However, if you’re interested in catching Quarter Street, check out their next gig at Open Studio in Northcote, on the 22nd of July at 9pm or find them playing at The Night Cat in Fitzroy.

Review written by Erin Connellan

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Rachel reviews Nic Green's Trilogy at Arts House in Melbourne.

Triology was performed for a limited season at Arts House in Melbourne. Trilogy was presented across the UK to wide acclaim. 

"Trilogy begins by celebrating women in today’s world – with all their complexities, in their skins and as they are. Honest and adventurous, Trilogy deftly weaves performance, participation, discussion, music and archival material; carving out new space for feminism and rallying the power and strength in women together." - City of Melbourne.

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