Art Smitten: Reviews - 2016

It was fantastic to hear that The Arts Centre’s season of Sugarland is being targeted at VCE students, but don’t let that make you think that the play itself is mostly for high school students. Fraser Corfiel and David Page’s debut production of Rachel Coopes and Wayne Blair‘s latest theatrical work is one of those stories of adolescence that engages teenagers both past and present.

Lately, Melbourne has seen quite a few ensemble pieces set in remote regions of Australia, usually ones like this year’s Meeka that have used this type of setting as a source of claustrophobia, dread and potent danger. One of the characters in Sugarland, Erica (played by Xanthe Paige) describes the Northern Territory town of Katherine as a kind of Disneyland, a peaceful place where no one is a stranger and everyone can be trusted. However, Erica has just moved here from Canberra, while our narrator, Nina (Dubs Yunupingu), and her friend, Jimmy (Calen Tassone), have lived here their entire lives. They are two aboriginal teenagers, who both express a strong spiritual connection to their land and their ancestry in some beautifully lyrical monologues, but who would both leave this town in a heartbeat if they could. Nina lives in a single share house with 12 other people, one of them being her mother’s abusive auntie. She wants to live in her own house, where she won’t have to be dodging blows and following orders. She wants to go to a school where she won’t have to suppress her academic skill so she can stay in a class with people who understand her. Jimmy isn’t sure what he wants, he just doesn’t want to be living in Katherine. Since he is currently lacking the attendance to finish school and the work ethic to get into a trade, this seems like an impossible dream, but for Nina, there is the shining prospect of winning the town’s Sing Search competition and the grand prize of $5000. She certainly has the vocal talent to take this contest out, but so might Erica. She already has the means to leave, but unlike Nina, Jimmy, and their naïve young schoolmate, Aaron (Narek Arman), she has also already been to the outside world. She has lived where they all dream of living and has had to move many times throughout her life. She knows that a change of place can only do so much, and that childhood neglect takes its toll no matter how much money you have thrown at you. One of the play’s most powerful scenes shows how Jimmy and Erica, two characters from such vastly different backgrounds, have both ended up in this same damaged, dangerous place in their lives.

This is the tone of about half of the show’s total duration, the remainder is just as affecting but a lot more fun. Every member of the cast, which also features Jonas Thomson as their hapless schoolmate, Charles and Eliza Logan as the long-suffering social worker, all have excellent comedic and timing and dramatic skill, and some even get a chance to show some impressive singing skills. The lighter scenes do well to endear us towards these wonderfully drawn characters whose plights, though they are of many different shapes and sizes, are all very compelling and uniquely revealing. Charles is another hopeful entrant in the competition. He has chosen to sing, of all things, Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby,’ and has no desire to tell this to his sport-obsessed father, unless he wins. He is a simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking example of the pressures placed on young white Australian men, just as Aaron, Jimmy and Nina show us what happens to young Indigenous men and women who have no pressures and no expectations placed on them at all. The singing competition, with all of its pitfalls and inequities, is an excellent narrative device for encapsulating the high hopes and crushing realities of these five young people who all want and deserve the same things, love and freedom, but who, for various reasons, may never come to know them.

Sugarland is truly a theatrical marvel, having managed to engage, educate and consistently entertain young audiences without pandering to them or misrepresenting them. It is an authentic, insightful, and artistically precise piece of storytelling.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

Review read aloud by Lauren Klein

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When I heard Renee Geyer was a famous international jazz singer I was thrilled to get the chance to go and see her sing. As I am an amateur singer with jazzy vocals myself it felt like it was a match made to be.

However Renee Geyer was different to my initial assumptions. If I were to liken the whole experience to dating a person you met online, Renee Geyer would be a date you hade hopes for, only to have the actual date be considerably different to your expectations. Renee’s actuality contrasts considerably to the young pictures you see of her in the programs. They boast she is a proud Australian jazz talent. When I think of jazz, I think of swanky bars, dim lights and a commitment to seriousness to music as a vehicle for creative expression. Therefor, I’d constructed a vague conclusion that she was going to be refined, musically precise and like she looked in the picture. Malvern Town hall was dimmed, with fancy cheese platters on the tables to boot. It felt like the show was going to live up to expectations…But

When Renee finally walked on stage I thought “Is this lady her mother?”.
The lady started to sing and a raspy, low tenor voice filled the room. It was undeniably Renee Geyer, reminding me of female version of Tom Waits.

The first song was a slow song. An odd choice, but it caught the audience’s attention. Then the show really began.

A faster, rockier song was played, and Renee’s real experience as a performer shone through. Her vocal techniques began to pulse into the songs, she started to move round the stage, and the room came alive. People left their drinks and cheese platters and started dancing. It was from there on I began to see the real Renee Geyer.

Renee Geyer’s songs are not particularly special. They’re simple, catchy and don’t try to hard to be anything other than a good song to dance or sing along to. If you were to pick up album of her songs, chances are you’d like the album, but you probably just like it. It lacks the prestige people associate with jazz.

Maybe this is why seeing Renee perform is so much fun. Renee breaks the rules, get people to let their hair down and coerces them into having a great time. She is both a performer and a conductor, bringing in her band member’s parts with both dance and sharp movements. She becomes so playful with this technique, she turns it into a hilarious gag, signalling the ban by adjusting her clothing, swishing her hair and other movements that appear to have nothing to do with the music, then looks at the band like they’ve been spying on her. She milks the pauses and silences in her songs to great dramatic effect, and even plays the other band member’s instruments. The look of confusion on the pianist as Renee does a Glissando (The move where you run your finger down the piano), is priceless, yet the professional performer continues the song as nothing happened.

Renee’s own singing technique is obviously honed through years of performing. She trills with ease. She belts with clarity and confidence, even with a clearly aged voice. Her dry, aged vocals suits some of her songs but the songs she sung when she was young she isn’t able to craft like she was once was. She whistles in parts of her songs to reach high clear pitches, which changes the tone of the piece slightly, but this adds to her music in a refreshing way. Undeniably, Renee’s experience and creativity allows her to convincingly convey meaning and emotion in her music. She expresses a diverse array of life experiences through tone, timing, crescendo and other simple musical quirks and techniques effectively, which (to me) is what proves her abilities as a musician.

If you’re looking for a night of tip top jazz, then perhaps you should look for different performers, as Renee’s songs are more like Rock n roll, with Jazz and reggae influences. Though, if you’re looking for a fun night out and an opportunity to dance, Renee and her band will deliver in many wonderful ways. I would highly recommend this show to anyone who enjoys singing and dancing like no one is watching and who doesn’t mind that most of the other people dancing along side you could be old enough to be your parents.

Review written by Jonathan Calleja

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Rachel attended the opening night of Malthouse Theatre’s production of Tennessee Williams' classic 'memory play', The Glass Menagerie. 

The Glass Menagerie is being performed on 18th May to 5th June at the Merlyn Theatre in Melbourne.

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Recently I got to visit the Linden New Art Gallery. The current exhibition that is being held at the moment is the ‘Wild Lands’ exhibition with two sections following different artists and there particular styles of different wild life.

When walking into the gallery on the left side is the ‘Wild Lands’ exhibition, featuring the artists: Chris Mason, Bronwyn Hack, Dionne Cazano, Michael Camakaris, Mathew Grove, and Ruth Howard. This section was particularly interesting especially when looking upon the works of Bronwyn Hack. I was immediately drawn to these pieces because of the rawness that they seemed to have. The first thought that came to mind was “why did this person only want to portray wolves?” The closer and longer I looked at the pieces, the information I gathered from each individual work was that it was telling a story of a lone wolf. The pieces may not be extremely detailed, but the pieces themselves express an emotion that can connect too many people.

Another artist that caught my eye within this section was Michael Camakaris. What I found intriguing about Michael’s was the fact it was in black and white, but it had not only detail, but expressed an emotion within each piece. The pieces stood out to me, because they were quite striking in that I genuinely could not look away from the work. Something about each piece made me feel the need to stand there and stare for a while. Out of the five pieces he had on display my favourite would have to be the owl trying to cover up its face with its wings. The reason why this is my favourite is simply because I didn’t know it was an owl when I first glanced at it. It actually looked like a dinosaur with something in its mouth, just the way it is shaped got me thinking it was something different.

An artist that had work within both sections of the gallery was Chris Mason. Chris Mason did sculptures of different animals such as: Buffalo, a parrot, a snake, and a hippo. What I found extraordinary about his work was the amount of detail that each sculpture had. The, I believe it to be a Python, was the largest one. It looked like it was to scale, although I have never seen a python, thank goodness but none the less it was magnificent to see.

The second section on the right side of coming into the gallery was dedicated to Leith Maguire in his ‘Heads or Tails?’ exhibition, connecting to ‘Wild Lands’. Leith Maguire’s work was stunning. It was simplistic and full of detail. When I walked into the room and saw the work, I felt a sense of comfort almost. The gentle lines and the delicate placing of the animals on the paper was so well thought out, that I felt at ease. When seeing the pieces, there is an emotional aspect to them, but instead of portraying the animals in a dimmer light, Maguire illustrates these animals in a way that made me feel like they were not something to be feared. Nothing within this section was my favourite, because I genuinely loved everything in the room.

 The exhibition is an arts project Australia exhibition and is curated by Sim Luttin and Melissa Petty, and runs from May 7th up until the 17th of July on 26 Acland Street, Saint Kilda. This exhibition is definitely worth seeing and doesn’t close until July, so you should go check it out.

Wild Lands exhibition is on at the Linden New Art Gallery until July 17th.

Review written by Vanessa Gail Gustilo

Review read aloud by Lauren Klein

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Adalya joins Lauren in the studio to share her thoughts about the Tinnalley String Quartet & Lior concert she attended earlier this month.

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Green Room is the latest film by Jeremy Saulnier, an American filmmaker whose two previous films, Murder Party (2007) and Blue Ruin (2013), both explore and analyse violence in various forms and settings. And now Green Room, which premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2015, extends this obsession to even darker territory. It centres on a punk band who goes to play at a small concert venue in the backwoods of Oregon, witnesses a murder, and is immediately taken hostage in the green room of the film's title and not allowed to leave. From then on, things only get worse. We start to find out more and more about the concert venue and the people behind it, the vice-like tension grows and grows and grows, and the blood of many a character is unceremoniously spilled.

The cast includes Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat as members of the band, as well as Macon Blair, who's acted in and co-produced all of Saulnier's films. And, in an out-of-type casting, we have Patrick Stewart who excels as the owner of the venue, the main villain of the film. His performance is sinister and sociopathic, and is slightly reminiscent of Ben Kingsley's Don Logan from Sexy Beast, in manner and appearance. It's the type of performance where it's the reserved and contained nature of the character that provides the fear and intimidation, and not the explicit violence. Importantly, he's the type of villain who is never directly violent, but rather manipulates everyone around him into violence.

And yes, the film is violent, but it's the same kind of sad and brutal violence that Saulnier has exhibited in his previous films, the kind of violence that really makes a strong point against it. The film takes no pleasure in its violence - not once in the film is the violence glorified or even shown as something for the audience to enjoy, whether it's being doled out by the "good guys" or the "bad guys", a distinction that in itself becomes increasingly blurred as the film goes on and everyone is forced into a situation of kill or be killed. In this way Saulnier raises many questions about the nature of the violence displayed by the characters, delving into the human psyche and finding out just what they're capable of. (I'm reminded of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1972) where an ordinary teacher, a self-avowed pacifist, played by Dustin Hoffman, is put into an extreme situation and has no choice but to react very violently - and indeed Peckinpah in general is perhaps an apt comparison to Saulnier's work to date - both are directors whose films examine violence and attitudes to violence in impressively intricate detail.)

Green Room is one of those rare films that is able to captivate you and capture that captivation, not letting go for the entirety of the film. It's gripping, horrifying and has just the right doses of very dark humour to tide you through the terror. Not for the faint of heart, but if you want to be taken for an intense, gory thrill-ride, then this is just the film for you.

Green Room is out now exclusive to Cinema Nova.

Review written by Ben Volchok

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Earlier this month, Andrew had the opportunity to speak with Michael Williams, head of The Wheeler Centre, about the event: Paul Kelly does Shakespeare.

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Australia's first production of The River, by Jez Butterworth, called for a complete revamp of the Red Stitch Actors Theatre. To make a small fishing cabin by the river feel like an arena, the audience is seated on two sides of the stage as they watch a devout fisherman entertain his novice fisherwomen guests. Sometimes you are getting a monologue delivered straight to you, at other times the actor with all the lines is facing away from you, so you're watching much more of the reacting than the acting, as it were.

The action and setting of this play are so markedly mundane that every tiny detail comes under the microscope. At one point, we are simply watching the fisherman clean and cook the fish that his current housemate has caught for a good few minutes. The music playing from his radio hells to lull the audience into an easy, meditative state that is far from boredom. If anything, these quiet and sometimes completely silent moments are a welcome relief in between the deep-and-meaningfuls about life out in the wilderness.

Specifically, much of the conversation being had is about fish, and the sport of fishing. Butterworth, and his characters, are among the countless writers and thinkers to marvel at how spiritual and sensual an act it is, especially in the dark with only the moonlight to guide you. The River features speeches about how quickly such creatures can be pulled from their world into ours; how brown trout are born but sea trout are made; how fleeting, deceiving and humbling that electric tug of the line can truly be. They might have felt self-indulgent if they were not so exotically entrancing, and even so, he indulges his audiences as much as he might be indulging himself.

No doubt during these monologues we are expected to draw parallels between the scene playing out in our mind’s eye and the scene being played out on stage, between both the fish and the women that the fisherman reels in and routinely consumes. The playwright, and arguably the director, John Kachoyan, give us many invitations to follow this line of interpretation, sometimes just short of having a character say “there are plenty more fish in the sea,” but I much preferred to follow the gaze of the characters, to look out at something larger and more ethereal than the oft-portrayed search for that special someone. The strength of the familiar characters and setting lies in their relatability, achieved by the cast – Ngaire Dawn Fair, Dion Mills and Christina O’Neill – the set designer, Chloe Greaves, and the lighting designer, Clare Springett, who bathes the scene in a multitude of gentle, cosy hues. On the other hand, the value of the extended poetic dialogue lies in its novelty, in its distance from the confines of the cabin, the play’s one, unchanging set. While the two worlds certainly take turns at being the entry point to each other at various points in the show, to peer into the wonders of the aquatic world and think only of ourselves and our own world feels like a wasted opportunity. Of course, it is important to see ourselves onstage, but it is also important to step outside of ourselves. Not everything has to be about us. Sometimes a speech about fish can actually be about fish.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

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Saturday April 23, 2016 marked 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare, and exactly 452 years since his birth. You have to appreciate the perfect symmetry of being born and being taken on the same day of the year, apparently due to some overzealous celebrating at his favourite pub. It also gives his global fanbase a reason to have two big celebrations each century. The latest of these, held at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, is now being screened at Cinema Nova up until Wednesday May 18, accompanied by a short film about the history of these celebrations, which announces an intention to be more than just a collection of the bard's best known couplets and soliloquies. This gala is also a showcase of his extraordinary influence across so many different artforms.

For instance, it was no surprise to get a performance of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, with Mariah Gale as a particularly histrionic Juliet, but what I wasn't expecting was to see that same scene then danced by the Royal Ballet, with a powerful final tableau of both the dancers and the actors locked in a loving embrace. There's also a Shakespeare-inspired hip-hop performance, but not of the forced variety. As we are reminded by our delightful hosts, David Tennant and Catherine Tate, these works were the mainstream popular entertainment of their time, and were performed to much rowdier crowds than they tend to draw in today. The song ‘This gives life to thee’ by Akala, founder of the Hiphop Shakespeare company, is arguably just as lyrical and hard-hitting as the Elizabethan poetry that inspired it, and to have this sitting alongside performances from English National Opera made quite a statement about the equal value of all forms of art.

The other musicals highlights were mostly jazz and blues renditions of some of the ballads from the comedies. All of them struck the right balance between true musicality whilst also supporting the poetry, rather than distracting from it. Whilst almost all of these were pre-recorded, Rufus Wainwright’s electric performance of Sonnet 29 proved to be the strong live vocal performance that the night needed. Fortunately, there was more than enough live acting, especially on the comedic front. A mixture of young, fresh faces and game old faces such as John Lithgow and Dame Judi Dench brought us some of the writer’s best scenes of farcical misunderstandings and absurd declarations of love. All of the numerous big names, which also include Roger Allam, Sir Ian McKellen, David Suchet and Helen Mirren, get brilliant chances to show off their comedic and their dramatic skills, except perhaps for Benedict Cumberbatch, who still felt rather underused.

On the flip side though, the opening act, ‘Tonight’ from West Side Story performed by 19 of the UK’s top performing arts students, got off to a wobbly start as the cast and the orchestra were out of time, although it did eventually manage to pick itself up, especially as Maria’s part began. Henry Goodman and Rufus Hound didn’t fare so well either with the three-part, one-joke song ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ from Kiss Me Kate. There is only so long one can listen to Shakespeare puns and still be amused, and the fluffed line towards the end certainly didn’t help matters. It is curious that while both the music and theatre acts were so strong, the musical theatre pieces were this far off the mark.

There is also a series of short biographical films scattered throughout the acts, presented quite fittingly by Joseph Fiennes, who of course played the man himself in Shakespeare in Love nearly 20 years ago. While some of them are a bit on-the-nose educational, they do serve well to remind us of the humble origins of the legendary wordsmith, and also to contextualize the shift from the comedies to the tragedies, which seemed to occur after the death of his son, Hamnet, who was only 11 years old. At this point, we transition from the cheerful ditties and the comic misdemeanors to the deep, dark tragedies. Most notably, Othello is performed in a magical mixture of jazz and ballet, and, just in case anyone thought proceedings were going to stray too far from all the laughs and smiles, a star-studded comedy sketch surrounding the most overthought and overused line that Shakespeare ever wrote, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” is easily the highlight of the night. Just as predictably, but very fittingly, the final two acts feature the bittersweet final verses of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, two very poignant reminders of the immortality of a good story, despite the sad mortality of those who tell it, and where they tell it.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

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A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay written by Virginia Woolf. It is based on a series of lectures Woolf gave at two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in 1928. The lectures employ a fictional narrator and narrative and they explore the idea of ‘women and fiction’. It argues space for women writers, both figuratively and literally, in the world of literature that is often dominated by men.

 Sentient Theatre’s inaugural performance of A Room of One's Own is directed by, and translated and to stage, by Peta Hanranhan. Virginia Woolf's essay was beautifully bought to the stage in this production performed by Anna Kennedy, Jackson Trickett, Carolyn Bock and Marissa O’Reilly

The ideas and arguments were successfully portrayed and it was amazing to see how relevant Virginia Woolf's writings are still today. However, I felt it often delved too deeply into the intellectual and the academic in an attempt to make it more accessible to people unfamiliar with the ideas and arguments of Woolf's work.

It was extremely wordy, visually quite still and unchanging, and I often found myself drifting off into my own thoughts. I would have loved to see a change in mood and energy in this piece to keep the audience drawn into the world of the play.

Overall this play was very thought provoking and explored a very beautiful and important text.  

A Room of One’s Own is showing at La Mama Court House in Carlton until May 8th.

Review written by Ebony Beaton

Review read aloud by Janet Kelso

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