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| Merlene Hutt on the cyr wheel |
Upon arrival to Zaffé, we are greeted by a host who tells us to take a seat inside. There are six long tables on either side of the room and there is plenty of conversation and chatter taking place. Once all the guests have settled, we are officially welcomed to the zaffé with a chorus of Arabic call and responses.
Stemming from the Muslim culture, zaffé is traditionally a procession at a wedding that is filled with love, warmth and energy. Except tonight's wedding has no bride or groom. The people in this room are the bride and groom and we celebrate this community and the love, warmth and energy that is present here.
Presented by Small Ripples Theatre, 弦外之影 Hidden Tunes is a Mandarin language pop musical focusing on the #MeToo movement at a prestigious music university. Exploring the themes of sexual assault and violence against women within a musical setting comes with its own challenges and sensitivities, and for the most part, this production does an admirable job at presenting entertainment through pain.
A group of students are ready to take on the new year at university under the tutelage of the revered and influential Professor Yang. When Xiao Qian (Lansy Feng) is assaulted by the Professor, rumours spread like wildfire across the campus, with even her friends uncertain as to who or what to believe. The story is predominantly told through the eyes of A Jia (Yujia Du) a new student and friend to Xiao Qian who strongly suspects something terrible has happened, but where acknowledging it would cause problems for her.
Writer Holly Childs and choreographer Angela Goh have spent the last five years examining the idea of a cliffhanger, both in its literal sense as well as its storytelling device that keeps people hooked in and wanting more. Cliffhanger is the culmination of that collaboration and while the commitment is there, the result is a mixed bag of impact and exploration.
We are provided with a copy of the script to the production, so we know ahead of time Goh's lines. In some ways, this plays with the concept of the cliffhanger, of knowing what's going to come but not knowing how it's going to be delivered or when exactly.
Written in 1901 by Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career follows a young woman living in country Australia in the late 19th century who desires something other than marriage and domesticity. Fast forward 120 odd years and this has been reimagined into a wonderful musical with book by Sheridan Harbridge and Dean Bryant, music by Matthew Frank and lyrics by Bryant.
Actors and musicians perform as one, with the cast adopting both roles. Kala Gare possesses an effervescent defiance as Sybylla, the teenager who wants more than to live happily ever after with a husband. Her changing moods and conflicting aspirations and uncertainties are superbly presented by Gare. She delivers many show-stopping songs that pull you out of your seat and right into the moment where nothing else exists except seeing her belting out a tune.
Adapted to the stage in 2011 by Rick Elice, after the 2004 novel, Peter and the Starcatcher serves as an origin story for Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Hook and Mrs Darling from Peter Pan. Two ships are bound for the kingdom of Rundoon tasked with delivering precious cargo. An assortment of characters find themselves onboard and through a series of circumstances and choices, end up stranded on a strange and seemingly uninhabited land. And so begins the whimsical tale of The Boy who doesn't want to grow up.
There is a wonderful ensemble in this production including Paul Capsis and Alison Whyte, who are always a delight to watch. Otis Dhanji as The Boy portrays a sensitivity and yearning for the apparently unachievable that is evident the instant he appears. Olivia Deeble shows great skill in displaying the deep fire and conviction that lies inside the stubborn yet fearless Molly. The scenes between Dhanji and Deeble present a touching and blossoming relationship, and their closing moments, while slightly rushed, are treated with considerable emotion and affection.
In Golden Blood, a 14-year-old girl is left under the care of her 21-year-old brother, whom she hasn't seen for seven years, after the death of her mother. Through him, she is introduced to the world of gangs, drugs and violence, and it isn't long until this begins to enter the sanctuary of her home and changes the way she remembers her life before she became an orphan.
Merlynn Tong's performance as Girl is quite impressive given that we first see the character at 14 and watch as she grows into a 21-year-old woman. Her physicality, facial expressions and language is authentic and she perfectly captures the innocence of a child and the gradual erosion of that as she faces the harsh realities of life. Charles Wu as Boy delivers an equally remarkable turn as he presents himself with youthful bravado while allowing flashes of vulnerability to emerge as the trauma of his childhood becomes impossible to hide. The two make an exceptional pair and the brother-sister bond (or lack off) is easily established and deepened during the show.
In their latest production, Ghostlight League bring the worlds of William Shakespeare and Quentin Tarantino together with William Shakespeare's Reservoir Dogs. It's not a combination you would normally expect, but this retelling of one of Tarantino's best movies moved into the Victorian era is thoughtfully composed with a few surprises along the way.
Steven Hopley has done wonderful work in "translating" Tarantino's script, with notable scenes cleverly but accurately recreated to great effect. The opening scene where the group discuss Madonna and "Like A Virgin" appropriately sets the tone and the accompaniment of a live band playing period specific covers of the film's soundtrack enhances both genres.
Prune has such an absurd premise that it makes for the perfect Fringe Festival fodder. Written and directed by Isabelle Carney and Pat Mooney, Prune tells the story of a woman called Prune, who one day takes a bath and decides to not leave. Despite her family’s best efforts to get her out of the water, she refuses to budge. She likes it there.
Cue squabbling siblings, each with their own secrets, a husband who’s not sure what to do and a fumbling doctor with questionable skills and morals and suddenly Prune seems like the sane one. Maybe she knows something we don’t?
The casting is top tier with Hannah Camilleri, Oliver Coleman, Jason Geary and Jennifer Vuletic playing this highly dysfunctional family. Camilleri and Coleman bring excellent physicality, particularly Coleman as the anxious milk-drinking Chip. Camilleri is the easily agitated daughter who doesn’t appreciate being kept in the dark about her family’s issues while doing the same to them. She’s not necessarily an unlikeable character but Camilleri allows her to be more than just angry and shouting.
The three performers present various sketches on the male douche bags out there. It's a strong feminist show but with a sharp eye for comedy value and cleverly conveying just how impossibly foolish - and dangerous - men can be.
Even with audience participation, they create a safe environment for all. Their engagement, responsiveness and re-activeness to what is said and done in the crowd - even when they're not seeking anything - is very impressive. And it's the small things that make a huge difference. When someone awkwardly mumbles "oh my god I hate this", Pohl lets it hang in the air and plays with the silence and what has been said.
It's been almost ten years since Rebecca Church debuted Seen & Heard - a variety show which gives voices to performers who do not have the opportunity to often speak due to their chosen careers. Think circus and burlesque performers, drag queens and sex workers. In this format, these people share personal stories that surprise, entertain and inform us as to who the person behind the persona is. After a six-year gap, the show returns to Melbourne Fringe for a new season, new storytellers and new stories under the direction of Church.
Wes Snelling is our host for the evening and he does a wonderful job of making sure this mixed bag of misfits stay on track. Of course, Snelling's alter ego Tina del Twist is a different story, causing a ruckus in the audience with her fishbowl of wine. Snelling's recount of his Rock Eisteddfod dreams is quite affecting and a reminder that no one puts Wes in the corner and there is no such thing as a small role.
Lazy Susan, recently announced as a cast member in the upcoming season of Drag Race Down Under, is a sheer delight as she discusses the reality of getting old and whether Botox is the way to go. This has Lazy Susan recalling how much she has pushed herself to achieve drag success and how her mother's cancer diagnosis impacted one of the biggest successes of her career. These performers are always so fierce and in control on stage and you can be caught off guard seeing them be genuinely vulnerable and emotional.
Where do men go to become better men? Camping of course. In circus show A Scary Thing Happened By The CAMPFIRE, two mates go bush not knowing they are being stalked by a forest dwelling creature. Escaping the beast proves more difficult than it sounds, as it may involve them talking to each other about ... their feelings.
The show is co-created by Alonso Pineda, Samuel Boyd, Louis Green and Griffin Hooper, with Pineda and Boyd serving as directors and Green and Hooper as performers. As circus, it is very entertaining and recent NICA graduates Green and Hooper display great skill in their paired acrobatics as well as their solo routines. There are a few wobbles here and there, but seeing them work through them and eventually execute them is where the excitement of circus comes from.
The idea of two men going
camping and having to deal with their emotions and talk to each other
through horror circus is an extremely interesting one but unfortunately
this is where the show misses the mark. A stronger narrative is needed
to bring this together as it is too abstract and vague in its current
form, especially the conclusion which is quite muddled and confusing as
to how we've reached this ending.
Written,
developed and performed by Delta Brooks, Rebekah Carton, Thomas Richards and
Henry Kelly, the quartet present their analysis in three parts: Nostalgia,
Growing Up and Dreams vs Reality. Themes, characters and passages are utilised
from the text liberally and loosely that allows Hot Lunch to place their
own interpretation of how we can come to understand such an influential
text.
I Hope This Means Something is Patrick Livesey's latest solo performance and boy, have they come a long way since their debut solo work, The Boy, George, from all the way back in 2018. Livesey plays a young activist Corinthian whose move to Melbourne for a job with an environmental NGO sets in motion their downward spiral into saving the planet from its biggest threat, climate change.
Livesey delivers a fantastic performance as Corinthian. Their gradual transformation into a zealous climate activist is evident and you can see how their physicality, facial expressions and speech begin to change, begin to be more frenetic and impassioned. Further to this, Livesey takes on the roles of all the other people in Corinthian's life, including their mother, work colleagues and grindr hook ups, and for the most part, they give equally authentic portrayals to these people as they do to Corinthian.
Victory Lap
is a semi-autobiographical one-person show by Mashaka Gunnulson that gently and
sensitively explores mental health and suicide with a nostalgic look at
friendships gone by, and what saying goodbye feels like.
Twiner makes a monster of an entrance as she rides atop a bedazzled child’s toy excavator. She performs a number of sketches from “Gina Rhinestone’s” life, including baby Gina’s first words to the valuable “daddy thoughts” she has been raised on, with some incredibly racist comments about Indigenous people made by her father, comments that Rinehart has never publicly condemned.
We are also treated to the more adult events in her life, such as being named Telstra’s Businesswoman of the Year, where she shares her own “me too” ordeal, and the debacle over her demands that a portrait of her hung at the National Gallery of Australia be taken down. Twiner finds marvellous humour in these sketches, sometimes exaggerated and sometimes subtle, but mostly cleverly highlighting the power and influence that Rhinestone’s wealth has afforded her. Some toilet and bodily function gags undermine the thoughtfulness and consideration that Twiner has put into the show and perhaps there's a need to reconsider those moments.
Saxon Evans is a 29-year-old dental assistant who is hurtling towards gay death... he is turning 30. But does his depression run deeper than just getting older? Written and performed by Evans, I'm Fine is a one-man play that explores millennial mental health and navigating self-acceptance and belonging.
Performing as a character based on himself, Evans has a pleasing presence on stage that is evident from the moment he appears. His pace, tone and delivery of lines highlight his personality and perspective of how he sees and understands the world around him, and in turn, establishes a strong connection with the audience.
Even as he deals with mental health, suicide and self-harm, Evans finds good doses of humour to scatter throughout I’m Fine, ensuring that we are never left overwhelmed with what we are learning and comprehending the gravity of the circumstances he is in.
While Evans is an engaging performer and the narrative is entertaining, the
structure remains a little rough, particularly with its ending. Evans provides
great insight into the mind of this angry dental assistant, but the final act
feels hurried and concludes quite abruptly. Some re-working of this would
ensure this part of the play is afforded the same care and consideration as the
rest of the show.
In Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, a
family tries to move forward after the death of its patriarch, but there are
secrets and scandals, that unlike the recently deceased, will not stay buried
for long. This recent adaptation by writer Jodi Gallagher adds an Australian
atmosphere to the proceedings allowing the drama unfolding to feel more urgent
and sordid.
The design elements all support
this Australian environment particularly with Steven Mitchell Wright's set
design, with events taking place within the skeleton of a two-storey house that
still manages to symbolise wealth and privilege. It is utilised well by Wright, who
also serves as director, in the way the characters interact with it, climbing through it, peering through windows and even standing on its roof. Ben
Hughes' subdued lighting and Leahannah Ceff's hypnotic composition and sound
provide highly successful methods in drawing us into the narrative.
With much anticipation, Broad Encounters' new immersive experience is coming to Melbourne next month. After the record-breaking and award-winning production of A Midnight Visit and the recent, equally captivating Love Lust Lost, Broad Encounters are back with something different, something wilder, and something more rousing than ever before.
We spoke with the minds behind this upcoming theatrical adventure with co-creators and directors, Kirsten Siddle, Mike Finch and Scott Maidment.
When Night Comes appears to be Broad Encounters' most ambitious and exciting project to date. Promising a unique, multi-sensory and intoxicating performance with theatre and cocktails, When Night Comes invites people into a tempting, intimate soiree with visions, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings to be met via its cast of sublime characters.
When Night Comes was born from an earlier work by Broad Encounters over two years ago, A Journey Most Unusual. "This was also for small groups only where they journeyed within a fantastical world where the senses were indulged and ignited," Siddle tells me. "I’ve often contemplated Hedonist and Dionysian philosophies and wanted to explore this more deeply in something that argued for sensorial pleasure and delight, both physiological and those of a magical and intuitive nature. Like much of our former work, When Night Comes, aims to be an escape from the ordinary, and an evening of marvellous extraordinary."
If anyone was going to become a librarian, it would be Ian. I mean, his name is in the word librarian after all. Written and performed by Lochie Laffin Vines, The Librar(IAN) is a sweet, light-hearted look at Vines' own experience of working in a library without being saccharine.
Vines does a wonderful job in conveying the importance that libraries play in the community, one of the rare places where money is not needed to enjoy your time there. From the close-knit family that is formed within staff to the regular visitors who are sometimes there just for a chat and a sense of belonging instead of looking to grab a book and leave. Vines is an engaging storyteller who brings the world of libraries to life through his affection for his characters, who are no doubt drawn from his five years as a librarian.
He commences with a man crawling out of the ocean and onto a beach. He looks frayed and exhausted. He has returned to a small town in El Salvador, a place he swore he's never set foot in again. Written by Rodrigo Calderón, He is a heartbreaking love story of a man growing up in a community run by toxic masculinity and homophobia.
Calderón gives a captivating performance as a man grappling with the trauma he has experienced. While the story veers into some serious melodrama and improbable twists, Calderón is able to keep the work grounded and allow for genuine emotions to be released and expressed. Calderón also brings great physicality to the role and transfers the man's emotional turmoil into a striking physical representation.
There isn't much new to say about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was the second ever woman - and first Jewish woman - to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, where she spent her time as an advocate for women's right and gender equality. In RBG: Of Many, One, playwright Suzie Miller traces Ginsburg's life from her Brooklyn-based childhood in the 30s through to her death in 2020, at the age of 87.
Miller covers many of the milestones in Ginsburg's life, whether they be personal or professional, negative or positive. Telling the life of a person whom most people know can result in a paint-by-numbers structure as we move towards their death but in this play, Miller has Ginsburg constantly moving from the past to the present and swapping emotions and storytelling devices without notice. It builds tension and surprise, where even though we know what happens to Ginsburg, we don't know how it is going to unfold and how it will be presented in this instance.
Living in the suburbs of Adelaide, the Price family appear to be leading a pretty charmed life. Home owners, good careers, marriage and children and going on holidays. But beneath all this deemed success lies frustrations and fears that gradually reach the surface and threaten the foundation of everything this family holds tight in Andrew Bovell's Things I Know To Be True.
Written in 2016, Bovell's script remains a powerful punch to the gut in its exploration of how love can heal and hurt us, and the generational changes of what the Australian dream is. Bovell takes the time to establish the relationships between the parents and their four children, which each child given hefty scenes of confession, either through monologues or conversations with their parents. Kitan Petkovski allows these varying degrees of strained relationships to develop through his astute direction and guiding authentic and sincere performances that tackle some challenging topics.
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How do you describe Alex Hines' new show Putting On A Show? It's about the trauma of being locked in a McDonalds freezer as a child, but it's also not. It's about being a millennial with ADHD, but it's also not. It's about the ethical and moral issues about fast fashion and online stores like Shein, but it's also not. It's everything you'd expect from Alex Hines, but guess what... it's also not. Perhaps the best way to describe it, is part stand-up, part sketch, part confessional but fully twisted and totally fucked up. And it's absolutely brilliant.
Hines has always had a magnetic presence, particularly as alter ego Juniper Wilde, but here, she pulls us further into her world. As Juniper she can lean into the bat-shit crazy and looseness and run with it, but in Putting On A Show, Hines is herself, and while she is still outlandish and over-the-top, there is a vulnerability present that's not been seen before. References to her ADHD diagnosis, childhood experiences and her family, while not exactly of a personal nature, strike a chord with the room and strengthens the connection between her and her audience.
What happens when four drag divas try to put on a show together? With such big egos and big hair, there can only be one answer: murder. She Slayed: A Drag Murder Mystery is a deliciously camp, uproarious whodunnit of a drag queen who is viciously murdered - but in a fashionable way.
Created by Nicholas Reynolds, She Slayed feels like it's a drag show pretending to be a comedy show instead of a comedy show pretending to be a drag show, and this is partly because of the four cast members and the confidence and experience they have as performers. The script, while allowing for plenty of ad-libbing and improv, is full of great one liners and sassy retorts between the characters. Reynolds has played to the individual strengths of the cast and so the concern here is not about finding the truth of their character but to go out there and have fun, which spills out into the audience.
