Caress/Ache

I reviewed Caress/Ache at Griffin Theatre Company. Check out what I thought here.

Emerald City

I reviewed Griffin Theatre Company's production of Emerald City over at Australian Stage. You can check out what I thought here.

(Reminder that I'm in the final throes of my PhD and thus mostly confined to a study cave right now, so not reviewing as much as normal. Regular programming will recommence in 2015!)

Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography

I reviewed Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography at Griffin Theatre. Check out what I thought here. (Spoilers: I thought it was boss.)

Music

My review of Music (Stories Like These and Griffin Independent) is now up. Check out what I thought here. (Sadly, it wasn't my favourite.)

Jump For Jordan

I reviewed Jump For Jordan at Griffin Theatre Company over at Australian Stage. YOU NEED TO GO AND SEE THIS PLAY. Here are the reasons why.

On The Shore Of The Wide World

I reviewed On The Shore Of The Wide World (pantsguys and Griffin Independent) over at Australian Stage. Check it out here.

Summertime in the Garden of Eden

I reviewed Sisters Grimm's production of Summertime in the Garden of Eden at Griffin Theatre over at Australian Stage. Check out what I thought here.

The Floating World

I reviewed The Floating World at Griffin Theatre over at Australian Stage. You can check out what I thought here. (Spoilers: the show is spectacular.)

Beached

I reviewed Griffin Theatre Company's Beached over at Australian Stage - you can check out what I thought here.

This Is Where We Live

I went along to Griffin Theatre and saw the latest from their indie season, 2012 Griffin Award winner This Is Where We Live. You can read all my thoughts about it here at Australian Stage.

The Bull, The Moon, and the Coronet of Stars

The Bull, The Moon, and the Coronet of Stars runs at Merrigong from April 19-27, Griffin Theatre from May 2-June 8, and Hothouse Theatre from June 13-22. By Van Badham, directed by Lee Lewis.

In 2005, the first titles in the Canongate Myth Series were published. In these books, contemporary authors took ancient myths and reimagined them for modern audiences. Margaret Atwood took the Odyssey and created the Penelopiad, which focused on Odysseus’s wife Penelope as she waited faithfully for him for twenty years. Jeanette Winterson revised the story of Atlas and Heracles in Weight. Michael Faber retold the story of Prometheus in The Fire Gospel. I could go on – there are a bunch of titles.

I’m not sure if the series is still ongoing, but regardless, Van Badham’s play The Bull, The Moon, and the Coronet of Stars would fit right in. A retelling of the story of Ariadne, her relationship with and eventual abandonment by Theseus, and her eventual union with Dionysus, it is ambitious, lyrical, fierce, and beautiful.

I am an absolute sucker for shows with small casts and romantic plots. Shows that number among my favourites from the last couple of years include Midsummer (a play with songs) and This Year’s Ashes, as well as the most recent show I wrote about, Once. However, this is not a formula to ensure I’ll automatically like a show, as my somewhat vitriolic reaction to Sex With Strangers demonstrates. In this genre, The Bull, The Moon, and the Coronet of Stars is an absolute standout for me. It does what all good romantic stories should do: it tells a small story, because what smaller, more intimate story is there than one of a connection between two people? and then it makes that small story universal. In this show, this is particularly pronounced, because that small story becomes myth, the characters at once modern, relatable people, and kings and gods and princesses.

(Because the story of Ariadne, Theseus, and Dionysus is a relatively well known myth, I’m going to assume some degree of familiarity with the story here. I don’t think this is hugely spoiler-y, but if you really, really don’t want any, you might want to stop reading now.)

Our Ariadne is Marion (Silvia Colloca), an artist, who meets her Theseus, Michael (Matt Zeremes) when she works in a museum. Their love is hidden, so hidden neither is really aware of it, but it is still powerful, passionate, and transgressive enough to manifest in the form of a Minotaur. From an academic-history-of-love perspective, the love story told here is like one you find in pre-modern romances, before love was domesticated: love, passion, and desire are dangerous, destructive, devastating. Love is a wild force that destroys rather than creates. This is mirrored in the language. It is so easy to get swept away on the tide of words that Badham unleashes, just like Marion and Michael get swept away by their passion. This is an incredibly difficult script – the diegetic form, as well as the fact that the dialogue of both characters overlaps, particularly in one very memorable section between Marion and Michael in the museum, requires incredible precision and cooperation. Colloca and Zeremes are absolutely masterful. Director Lee Lewis has managed to ensure that neither actor is overwhelmed by the other: in this piece, where getting swept away is so easy, she has maintained a truly remarkable balance.

This is true both of the section with Marion and Michael and the section with Marion and Mark (also played by Zeremes). (The structure of The Bull, The Moon, and the Coronet of Stars is a little like To The Lighthouse: two long sections separated by one short, transitional section in the middle.) Mark is a very different character to Michael – he is much funnier, much freer, far less repressed – and it would be easy for Marion and her pain to get a little lost in the wake of his shiny-brightness, but the balance is maintained beautifully. After the overwhelming passion Marion felt for Michael, it seems almost impossible not only to us but to Marion that she will ever love again. In technical terms, her relationship with Mark faces its point of ritual death, the moment where it seems like it can never happen, before it even begins. But theirs is a different kind of love, and a different kind of story. This is not the destructive passion of pre-modern romance. This is a more modern love. It grows slowly, warmly. There is no explosive eruption of passion like there was with Marion and Michael. Instead, there is just a moment of tenderness: a small moment, with mythological proportions.

If it’s not obvious, I not only really, really liked this play but found it incredibly interesting from an academic perspective, what with love, romance and all that jazz kind of being my thing. I’m fascinated by the way romance is represented on the stage. I have an academic piece about this percolating in my mind in which I think this play is going to feature, so if you’re like, “Jodes! tell me more about how The Bull, The Moon, and the Coronet of Stars is located in the literary history of love!” you might get your wish. But I’ll stop talking about that now and talk a little about the actual production values before I finish. I’ve already mentioned what a superb job director Lee Lewis and actors Silvia Colloca and Matt Zeremes have done, but I’d like to reiterate it. Van Badham has created an absolutely exquisite script, but it’s also an incredibly difficult one, and it is staged with such restraint and such respect for the poetic, luxuriant language. Colloca is at her best when she shows us the rawness of Marion’s heartbreak. Zeremes’s transformation from intense, repressed Michael to wild, open Mark is amazing. The set is simple and functional (I’ll be really interested to see how it translates between spaces, actually) and Lewis has used it to create a rich imaginary world in which this small-but-universal story takes place.

The Bull, The Moon, and the Coronet of Stars is simply a beautiful piece of theatre. Its layers of language are lyrical and lush. It is a little story that becomes a large one not just because of its connection to myth but because that small moment – that small moment of connection with another person – is something that is universally relatable. It is tragic and funny, sad and uplifting, raw and hopeful, heartbreaking and heartwarming. Go and see it. You won’t regret it.

Dreams in White

I reviewed Griffin Theatre's Dreams in White over at Australian Stage. You can read my thoughts here. (Spoilers: I liked it A LOT.)

Rust and Bone

I reviewed Rust and Bone (Griffin Independent and Stories Like These) for Australian Stage - check out what I thought here. (Spoilers - I thought it was awesome.)

Hollywood Ending

I reviewed Griffin Independent's Hollywood Ending over at Australian Stage - check it out here. (This play is part of the Rapid Write scheme - from zero to opening in eight weeks - and it's proof that good theatre can be made really fast!)

Between Two Waves

I went along to Between Two Waves at Griffin Theatre and reviewed it over at Australian Stage - you can read my thoughts here. Catch this one before the world ends.

The Sea Project

I reviewed Arthur & Griffin Theatre Company's The Sea Project over at Australian Stage Online - you can read all my thoughts on it here.

Porn.Cake

My review of Griffin Theatre Company's Porn.Cake is now up at Australian Stage - you can check it out here. (Reveals, as I realised later, that I know quite a lot about the way porn is structured. IT'S ACADEMIC I SWEAR.)

Lovely Ugly

Lovely Ugly was a one-night-only event on 13 June 2012 at the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross, as part of Griffin Theatre Company's Festival of New Writing.


Lovely Ugly takes place in the dark places, the small places, the places where you would not think to look. It is the story of a murder, but it is not a murder mystery. If anything, it is a journey to the underworld: a journey through a woman’s death and what comes after, a journey below the surface. In a way, it’s also a journey through the underworld of the theatre itself. There is no stage. There is no backstage. The boundaries between the real and the performed waver, flicker, and finally expire, as a room full of people, no longer an audience, sing ‘Space Oddity’ at a wake for a woman they do not know.

I loved Griffin Theatre Company’s immersive experience Heartbreak Hotel last year (you can read what I thought here), so I had high expectations of Lovely Ugly. It did not disappoint. This kind of theatre is certainly not for everyone. It is not the kind of theatre that can be resisted, as one disgruntled audience member in my group discovered when he tried to resist being a ‘witness’ at the chalk outline in the Stables theatre. This isn’t audience participation. I’ve had to do some pretty weird audience participation in my time (most memorably, sock puppet fighting), but there’s still a line that isn’t crossed, a fifth wall unbroken. Immersive theatre like this has no walls. It requires participation, full stop. There is no watching. I defy anyone who got pulled into the men’s bathroom on the third floor of the Kings’ Cross Hotel and interrogated while three people loomed over them menacingly to just ‘watch’. There is only participating, becoming, being.

I love this kind of theatre. I wouldn’t want all my theatre to be like this – intense is too weak a word for this kind of experience – but the rarity of it makes it that much more exciting. For Griffin, located as they are in Kings’ Cross, this tour of the seedy underbelly of a woman’s death worked wonderfully. What began like any other theatrical experience in the foyer of the theatre (though I’ve never put on lipstick and kissed a wall in any other foyer!) turned into a journey down, down, down through the nine circles of Kings’ Cross. There was no Virgil to guide us – rather, there was a series of guides, some mysterious, some ordinary, some implacable, some spectacular. From the chalk outline of the woman’s body in the theatre, through the labyrinthine backstage of the theatre, to a terrace where two men beat up another with a phone book taped to his stomach (so it doesn’t leave bruises, I found out), we followed them. They led us to the Altamont Hotel, where a woman emerged from a pile of clothes, where every room had a different story, and one held the scene of her murder. We saw her funeral arranged, travelled to her wake at the Kings’ Cross Hotel, were pulled aside for lapdances and cups of tea and interrogations and to watch people source kidneys over the phone. People that saw these groups of people wandering around the Cross with their little lipstick badges must have thought we were the weirdest Contiki group ever.

The intensity of theatre like Lovely Ugly comes primarily from the situation. There was some gripping writing and performances along the way (I’m not going to forget some of those fights in the Altamont Hotel any time soon, nor any scene that took place in a bathroom), but in some of the numerous monologues, I confess I tuned out, more in awe of the setting than anything else. There were so many pieces of the puzzle that I couldn’t possibly fit them together (though I was able to remember a random name dropped in the terrace scene when I was being interrogated – perhaps it had something to do with the baseball bat?) However, I don’t think I was supposed to put them together. This wasn’t a murder mystery – not for me, anyway. It was a journey – exciting, terrifying, and gripping, completely in the spirit of Griffin’s Festival of New Writing. I didn’t get the cathartic feeling with Lovely Ugly that I did coming out of Heartbreak Hotel last year, but it was thrilling in a new, different, and exciting way. And I am officially putting ‘Space Oddity’ on my list of ‘Good Songs to be Sung at Wakes’.

The Story of Mary Maclane By Herself

I reviewed Griffin Theatre/Ride On Theatre's production of The Story of Mary Maclane By Herself over at Australian Stage - you can read my review here.

The New Electric Ballroom

The New Electric Ballroom runs at the SBW Stables until 31 March 2012. By Enda Walsh, directed by Kate Gaul.

The New Electric Ballroom is a play that relies heavily on rhythm: the rhythm of narrative, the rhythm of the sea, the rhythm of day to day life, the rhythm of the Irish language. It is a piece that has its own internal rhythm, one that I don’t know if I entirely managed to move with. It is a strange piece of theatre – not strange as in bizarre, but strange as in weird or eerie or uncanny. There is a sense that the boundary between times is thin. One night, twenty years ago, is still as close as if it were yesterday - and somehow, despite all the time that has passed, it was just yesterday.

Sisters Clara (Genevieve Mooy), Breda (Odile LeClezio) and Ada (Jane Phegan) live together in a little house. Only Ada, the youngest sister, ever leaves, and the only visitor is local fishmonger Patsy (Justin Smith), bound to them in ways that none of them understand. Twenty years ago, Clara and Breda shared a night at the New Electric Ballroom that traumatised them both so deeply that it rendered them unable to leave the house. Ada has relived that night over and over again through the constantly told and retold story, and in many ways, the scars it has carved upon her are deeper than those of her sisters.

The weakest part of The New Electric Ballroom was the premise. I found it hard to believe that this one night could have so deeply scarred Clara and Breda that it essentially became the moment they stopped living. However, if you can suspend your disbelief, the deeper meanings about what it means to be part of a story and the mythic nature of narrative are very powerful. It took me a while to settle into the play, to relax into the rhythm and let it wash over me. I found myself trying to psychoanalyse it too much, to try and understand more about why Clara and Breda were as agoraphobic and fixated on this one night as they were. I don’t think it’s a particularly flexible text in that sense, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If nothing else, it was interesting, trying to think in a different way synchronise with the piece’s internal rhythms. I do think it made The New Electric Ballroom a bit of a slow starter, but once the patterns became established, it became a lot clearer.

...that is quite a bit of confused highly subjective philosophising right there. (That’s kind of what I do. Sorry.) I certainly think that it’s possible simply to enjoy The New Electric Ballroom simply as beautiful, lyrical language, because hot damn does writer Enda Walsh have a turn of phrase about him. There were some gorgeous performances – I especially enjoyed the work of Justin Smith as Patsy, but all four actors were stellar. I found the soundscape a little intrusive at times, particularly for such a claustrophic, aggressively domestic play. One of the most poignant moments in the play is when Ada stares at a kettle, waiting for it to boil, and I think a little more of this and a little less seascape probably would have been better. Despite this, it was overall a great show from a technical standpoint, and director Kate Gaul deserves high praise.

The idea of the power of narrative to transform and to consume is one that really resonated with me deeply. The New Electric Ballroom has some great funny moments, but its four characters were quietly tragic, doomed by this ravenous, insatiable story, this ouroboros of a tale, unable to escape it even as it eats them alive. It’s a play I liked but I found quite difficult to grasp. I don’t really know how to describe the thinking, the rhythm, innate in it, but suffice it to say it’s not a way of thinking I’m particularly attuned to. What The New Electric Ballroom is is a thought-provoking piece of theatre, and a haunting one. The uncanniness of it is certainly going to stay with me for a while.