ETIQUETTE - AS YOU LIKE IT

November 26th 2011 4:55 pm | Theatre | Feature - By Diana Simmonds

On Wednesday evening, November 23, Belvoirs last main-stage production of 2011 had its official opening night. As You Like It is one of Shakespeares favourite flummeries: glorious nonsense thats one of his (or the Earl of Oxfords) most popular comedies.

It was a much-anticipated opening and I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately the man sitting next to me anticipated it even more. He was one of those insiders (aka actors with a pal in the cast) whose main aim in life is to laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and let everyone within a 10m radius know that the production is really really really FUNNY; that he absolutely GETS IT and that he wants us all to know this and keep on knowing it, until the final curtain.

These people have a lot in common with hyenas. First of all, they are oblivious to their personally generated cacophony and second, if they are, they hear nothing wrong with it. Au contraire, the Theatre Hyena actually sets out to make as much noise as possible and share it far and wide.

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GROSS UND KLEIN (BIG AND SMALL)

November 21st 2011 3:32 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

GROSS UND KLEIN (BIG AND SMALL); Sydney Theatre Company @ Sydney Theatre; 19 November-23 December 2011, then touring to Europe in 2012. Photos: Lisa Tomasetti.

There were a lot of puzzled punters wandering the levels of the Sydney Theatre on opening night. The question marks were flashing like little neon squiggles in their eyes. It didn't stop a huge ovation and multiple curtain calls for Cate Blanchett and the rest of the company of 14 of our finest: it was one helluva performance. But the air buzzed with metaphorical (and whispered) "WTFs???"

Possible clues to meaning and reason? You'd not get them from the subtitle: "A journey across contemporary Germany by Botho Strauss", unless you take "contemporary" literally and think about when it was contemporary; that is: its context.

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THE WHARF REVUE â€“ DEBT DEFYING ACTS!

November 19th 2011 4:46 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

THE WHARF REVUE – DEBT DEFYING ACTS! Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company; 17 November 30 December 2011. Photos: Tracey Schramm. Main pic: Jonathan Biggins, Amanda Bishop, Phillip Scott and Drew Forsythe. Right: Amanda Bishop and Phil Scott

The Wharf Revue creative team of Biggins, Scott and Forsythe has excelled this year. It's possible I said that last year, perhaps the year before and probably the year before that too. Memory gets a bit hazy over eleven years, except it's perfectly clear that pleasurable anticipation of "the new Revue" has rarely been in vain. These gents have Hill of Grace running in their veins: they get better year by year.

And, of course, they're turned into a foursome on stage with the death-defying Amanda Bishop (it takes a particular kind of reckless bravery to set out to measure up to these inspired clowns). Her background should tell you why she has it. They latched on to her last year and she was terrific, but very much the junior partner. Her turn back then as Julia Gillard led to a TV series and you may recall she was given 15 rounds of the ring for her temerity. (Depending on your POV it was funny or not funny; tasteless and uncalled for, or an invasion of the PM's bedroom; or a threat to national security and she should have been strung up – can't recall which, right now.) Either way, Bishop took a right old whacking, but she's bounced right back as a fully realized quarter of the troupe. Revenge is a dish better eaten cold and on stage, perhaps.

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NO MAN'S LAND

November 17th 2011 3:56 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

NO MAN'S LAND, Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, STC and QTC co-production. 1 November-11 December 2011. Photos Rob Maccoll; main pic: Steven Rooke (top), John Gaden, Peter Carroll and Andrew Buchanan.

The name Harold Pinter is one of those uttered in hushed and wondering tones by many theatre-goers. His elliptical approach to drama is famously inscrutable and no more so than in No Man's Land. If you want clear meanings and carefully tied and snipped loose ends, this is not the play, nor the playwright, for you. However, it's the absence of the neat and pat that makes the play and its characters interesting.

Is Hirst (John Gaden) merely a demented old literary queen who's brought Spooner (Peter Carroll) home from the pub near Hampstead Heath out of habit, or some distant echo of his youth? Is Spooner just a mediocre poet down on his luck who's enjoying the hospitality and liquor of his much more successful companion? Or are his reminiscences about their shared Cambridge youth part of an elaborate con on his part to ingratiate himself with a man whose house is big enough for both of them?

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THE DARK ROOM

November 6th 2011 7:11 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

THE DARK ROOM, Downstairs Belvoir, 3 November-11 December 2011. Photos by Heidrun Lohr; Billie Rose Prichard, Brendan Cowell and Leah Purcell; right: Billie Rose Prichard.

If, like me, you take a pathetic delight in checking in to anonymous, out-of-the-way motels and savouring the delights of clean sheets, a telly, a neat little bathroom and then ticking the boxes on the breakfast menu, playwright Angela Betzien and her collaborator/director Leticia Cáceres will have ruined that childlike pleasure forever with The Dark Room.

Not that I hold this against them: it's a fair return – well, almost fair – for one of the most gripping nights spent in a theatre this, or any, year. The Dark Room is uncommonly well written and structured in the most ambitiously difficult way. The only other playwright who immediately comes to mind who can really nail the complexity of multiple characters occupying a single space in different times is Alan Ayckbourn. And his dark social comedies of the English middle class are quite literally in another world. (It's easy to snigger at the comparison, but Ayckbourn is a master of structure and few writers could come near him, even if they tried.)

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JULIUS CAESAR

November 5th 2011 11:56 am | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

JULIUS CAESAR, Bell Shakespeare Company, Playhouse Theatre, Sydney Opera House. October 27-November 26, 2011. Photos: Joe Sabljak: Kate Mulvany; and right: Colin Moody.

This stripped back version of Shakespeare's meditation on power, friendship and ambition alchemically distills the essence of conspiracy theory into practice. Adapted by Kate Mulvany, who also plays Cassius, it's saturated in unease, false smiles, treachery and other echoes of contemporary political events. Julius Caesar may be the title and the catalyst, but the central players and focus are his friends and allies, Cassius and Brutus.

Such an emphasis reveals the core of the play, and incidentally, the strength of the two actors – Colin Moody is a magnificent Brutus – as well as the restrained response to that shifted focus from Alex Menglet as Caesar. Little if anything is made of Cassius's gender switch, by the way, Cassius simply is. S/he is a febrile, Machiavellian presence, not precisely androgynous, nor exactly female or male, so that within minutes such questions of "who s/he?" become irrelevant and quickly forgotten.

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