Oresteia

June 9th 2010 3:04 pm | | Review - By Diana Simmonds

ORESTEIA, Wharf 1, Sydney theatre Company, 1 June-4 July, 2010. Images: Brett Boardman.

COMPARISONS are supposed to be odious and you may think so in this instance but it's difficult not to think about Women of Troy, the 2008 collaboration between writer-adapter Tom Wright and director Barrie Kosky, in relation to Wright's Oresteia; and the comparison is not a happy one.

For instance, it's impossible to imagine Kosky permitting a savage act of matricide by means of a litre bottle of Farmer's Best; not unless he actually intended to turn Aeschylus's tragedy into a rather inane comedy, that is. There might be an argument for Freudian symbolism as son does in mummy in great gouts of spurting white liquid, but again, not really - when the end effect is risible rather than appalling.

The production is beset with misfiring imagery and text; power and poetry are notably missing in action. The night I was there (not opening night) there were many instances of out-of-place laughter, giggles and snorts of disbelief. The laughter wasn't the nervous kind - stirred by horror or distaste, but simply the response of a human being to the unintentionally ridiculous and hilarious.

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THE SEAGULL

June 6th 2010 4:19 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

THE SEAGULL Sidetrack Theatre, Marrickville; Tuesday - Saturday 8pm, Sunday 5pm; tickets: $30/$24 (includes $2 booking fee per ticket) www.seatadvisor.com.au or (02) 9020 6900. www.sirentheatreco.com<.b>

THE NEW version, by Christopher Hampton, of The Seagull restores wit and humour to a play that has, over the 100+ years since its first staging, often been encrusted with dolour and reverence. In choosing it, director Kate Gaul sets a tone and path for the production that carries Anton Chekhov's great play successfully through to a tragically triumphant conclusion.

From the opening moments, the setting for the play-within-a-play signals the director's intent. With sly wit and imagination she and designer Andy McDonell take the play's themes of symbolism and subtext and make them physical. The rear of the stage is hung with a huge sheet of crumpled paper; under Luis Pampolha's lighting plot it shimmers like the lake it sometimes represents and finally it tells of the ultimate despair of the writer. A giant picture frame dominates the downstage area of Sidetrack's bare, black-painted space. But instead of a landscape of bourgeois bucolic fantasy the frame is filled with draped white curtains, making it an empty canvas on which private dreams and desires might be projected - or concealed.

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11 and 12

June 5th 2010 5:16 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

11 AND 12, Sydney Theatre, June 3-13 2010; Sydney Theatre Company by arrangement with Arts Projects Australia, co-produced by barbicanbite10, London; C.I.C.T. / Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris; Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw and presented in association with William Wilkinson for Millbrook Productions Ltd

A LONG TIME in the making and a long time getting to Sydney, Peter Brook's much anticipated new work (made with long-time collaborator Marie Helene Estienne) 11 and 12 is exquisite to watch and to listen to.

Adapted by Estienne from Amadou Hampate Ba's The Life and Education of Tierno Bokar - the Sage of Bandiagara, it tells of Bokar's experience as a Muslim, Sufi, thinker and teacher in French colonial west Africa in the late 1930s. Part of that experience was the divisive and deadly consequence of a local holy war over whether a certain prayer should be recited 11 or 12 times. If this sounds absurd and even comical, it is; but wait - there's more.

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Kate Gaul - The Seagull

June 3rd 2010 3:50 pm | Theatre | Feature - By Diana Simmonds

KATE GAUL'S production of The Seagull opens this week, for Siren Theatre Co, at Sidetrack in Marrickville. It's a long way from Moscow - the city longed for and dreamed of by most Chekhov characters - but it's a perfect distance from the sillier side of Sydney to put the classic play in some perspective. So why has Gaul - one of Sydney's more thoughtful directors - chosen to do the 100+ year-old play-within-a-play?

She laughs, "Lots of answers, simple and complicated, but um, I have a yearning to do this kind of work." Gaul has done a lot of work of all kinds in recent years. Lumbered for some while with the irritating (patronising?) labels "up-and-coming", "emerging" and "rising star", she has managed to come, emerge and rise beyond ingenue status and now has a proper grown-up CV of triumphs and failures to her name. There are many questions - and some delicious answers - in her love affair with Chekhov's symbolically dead bird. Read on!

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Rain Man

May 22nd 2010 3:38 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

RAIN MAN Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, May 18-July 3, 2010; tours to Canberra Theatre Centre (July 13 - July 17), Q Theatre Penrith (July 20 - July 24), Glen St Theatre Belrose (Sept 7 - Sept 18) and IPAC Wollongong (Sept 21 - Sept 25).

THE OSCAR-WINNING movie Rain Man was a huge hit for Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman; but it happened so long ago - 1988 - there's a generation at least that has never seen it. That includes Alex Dimitriades, who stars in the stage adaptation. And it means he has no idea quite how brilliantly he transcends the narcissistic limitations of Cruise - his predecessor in the role of Charlie Babbitt, wide boy younger brother of Raymond, the institutionalised "idiot savant" - as the condition was termed in the 1980s.

The screenplay was written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass and was adapted for the stage by Dan Gordon, a couple of years ago. What was in many ways a road movie with added intellectual gimmickry works surprisingly well on stage because it's revealed as a journey of emotions, internal discovery and human relations; and the physical journey - from Cincinnati to LA via a Las Vegas casino - turns out to be incidental.

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A QUESTION FOR PRODUCERS

May 15th 2010 11:15 am | Theatre | Feature - By Diana Simmonds

THE BEGINNING OF THE END: In Melbourne, the Herald Sun has just sacked its arts editor and arts journalist. Just like that. Gone.

In Sydney, the Sun Herald has cut back its (excellent) theatre critic to two small reviews per week and increased its (moronic) gossip writers from three to five.

Now answer me this: how much advertising in newspapers' shrinking share of the ad pool is generated by gossip and how much by entertainment and the arts?