Thursday, August 30, 2012

At The Q: Chasing the Lollyman

Mark Sheppard opens his one man show with an aside to the audience that he might need a lift home. By the end of the show, there wasn't a person in the theatre who wouldn't gladly have offered him a place to stay, as well.

Sheppard, a self-described "thin, camp Murri man" strings together some whimsical childhood reminiscences with comic sketches and a bit of audience-participation-slash-cultural-awareness-training in a show that, if not fall-down funny, is deeply endearing.  He's actually not all that camp, though he does stop periodically between sketches to open a cupboard containing a mirror ball and disco a bit. And he gives us a broad perspective on his experiences as a Murri man (though not, to my disappointment, as a gay Murri man, which I hope is a show still to come).

There's a very nifty set of large rectangular boxes decorated in different block colours and panels of indigenous art, which turn out to be cupboards containing various props and bits of costume. There's one song and quite a bit of purely joyful dancing. And a blackboard (they offered him a whiteboard, but...) for a seminar on Aboriginality which, as funny as it was when delivered by Sheppard, might have been taken word for word from an APS training module.

There's a naievete and artlessness around much of the show which is truly charming; though I suspect I must have been conned a bit given Sheppard's professional CV, including as a graduate of WAPA.  But there's such unrestrained glee in his performance that even when it wasn't particularly funny I still found myself smiling broadly. It's just tremendously likeable.

And that serves Sheppard very well when it comes to his last piece - a straight-faced and moving speech as Australia's first Aboriginal Prime Minister. It's heartfelt, and generous, and optimistic - and I, for one, would vote for that.


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Certified Male

I'm in Perth at the moment, missing "What A Man's Gotta Do" at the Q tonight and pretty cranky about it, too, having read the reviews and worked out it won't be showing anywhere nearer than Griffith for the rest of the tour.

Fortunately, or so I thought, on the night I arrived Perth was boasting the last performance of another Manly comedy, Certified Male, and there was a single seat remaining in the middle of Row G of the old Regal Theatre in Subiaco, a venue for which I have a residual fondness based on my love of art deco and a happy memory of seeing Lano & Woodley's The Island there quite some years ago.

As it happens, I nearly passed on this because I had seen the ads for it coming to Canberra - I may even have entered a competition for tickets - but on having another look, the Canberra tour seems to have completely disappeared from the Canberra Theatre website, and everywhere else, too. Anyone know what the story is there?

So, I took myself off to the Regal, and as it turns out, men are hilarious!

Whereas women, apparently, are contemptible, grasping, parasitic soul-destroying harridans, who use their cup-size to hypnotise men and then ruin their lives by breeding, refusing to work for a living*, and demanding their men put in 65 hour weeks to keep them in the style to which they've become accustomed.

I'm not sure why this piece has garnered the rave reviews it has; it's not much more than Menopause the Musical for blokes (or perhaps Breast Wishes, as the songs are originals), and that's not a compliment. The inadequate wisp of plot that runs through the series of sketches revolves around four executives who spend a weekend at a Peruvian resort on the pretext of a corporate brainstorming exercise. Of course, at the end all come away with changed lives, as so often happens after 48 hours of sucking down beer on a beach and bitching about women. (Women they chose, let's not forget. And who apparently reproduce parthenogenically, out of spite).

The cast, it must be said, is very good, although Glyn Nicholas, as patriarch Jared, seemed strangely disengaged, and stumbled over his lines on a few occasions. Still, his physical comedy was impeccable as always, and even seemed to have become something of an in-joke for the rest of the cast, who were clearly competing for the title of next-best mime as he perched on non-existent bar stools or grappled with fictional fishing rods. Mike McLeish, best known as Keating! , was top of his game as the harried and henpecked Alex. Canberra boy made good, David "Frosty" Callan, was easily funniest of the night as crass, angry and thrice-married Geoff, and Cameron Knight, to my surprise and delight, turned out to be much more than just a pretty face, as schmick and cynical Josh (lots more fourth-wall humour).

It is a tribute to the talent of these perfomers that they managed to wring as many laughs as they did out of this cliched, obvious, mean-spirited and misogynistic script. It's also a piece that doesn't seem to know exactly what to do with itself.  There are perhaps six songs, not making it a revue; none of them really advance the plot, not making it a musical. The songs themselves are utterly unmemorable. 

Possibly the weirdest thing, though, is that between scenes, presumably in an effort to thread them together more effectively (fail!), Nicholas comes out and tells the audience stories about the Raft of the Medusa. Except instead of dying horribly, committing suicide, or slaughtering and eating each other, in this version the men form committees or some such. It's misguided and bizarre and callous, and eventually just peters out without ever making a point. For those unfamiliar with the raft of the Medusa (there was, in fact, one woman aboard it, conveniently forgotten here), it is one of those tragic episodes of human horror and degradation that ranks to my mind with the Holocaust and Rwandan massacre, in that it will always be Too Soon.  Or, if you subscribe to the philosophy that there's no such thing, any jokes about it need to be pretty bloody damn funny (yes, even 200 years later, or you have no soul.)  These aren't.

The ending is trite and thoroughly telegraphed; although at least the unseen children of these troglodytes have progressed from being devices women use to ruin men's lives to being devices women use to punish men who leave them. Yay!  Perhaps I've answered my own question about why the Canberra dates seem to have been pulled.

Wish I'd got to Andrew Horobin at the Q.  



* because looking after kids and keeping house is just a latte-swilling book-clubbing doddle, as any fule kno. 

Street Theatre: Boy Girl Wall

Ah, theatre has always been fond of lovers separated by walls, from The Fantasticks to second-most-famous-ever play-within-a-play Pyramus and Thisbe.*

Usually, however, the lovers know they're lovers. (And that they're separated by a wall.)

In Boy, Girl, Wall, our lovers are Thom (yes, he knows that "h" is a bit pretentious, but he's basically OK) and Alethea (don't pronounce it "Althea", she really hates that), and they remain completely unaware of each other's existence until the last few minutes of the play.  The Wall, on the other hand...

This was 70 minutes of sheer pleasure.  Boy, Girl, Wall, currently showing in Street One across the hall from The Flood, is about as big a contrast from the latter as it would be possible to find - except that both were shamefully undersubscribed on the nights I went.  I had the feeling that there was a lot of buzz about this show, so was surprised by the small audience, which didn't fill three rows ("Come on, there's only about f***ing 40 of you!" exhorted a despairing Lucas Stibbard as he tried to rouse a bit of audience response.  Which, once we realised this was actually happening to us, in a respectable Canberra theatre, the audience was only to happy to provide.)

In this tightly scripted, directed and choreographed piece, the fantastically flexible Stibbard plunges headlong into an innovative, whimsical, fast and very funny narrative, playing everything from anthromorphised days of the week to the Boy, the Girl and the Wall. And because the set - including floor - is one giant blackboard, he draws most of the props as well (supplemented by an overhead projector, a couple of sock puppets, and incidental music and sound effects provided by Neridah Waters). It's charming, and engaging, and it doesn't let up for a second until the optimistic end.

You'll laugh a lot, and leave happy.  Hard to think of a better way to spend an evening, really!



* The most famous, of course, is Nothing On.**

** I mean,  Springtime for Hitler. +

+ Fine, have it your way, The Murder of Gonzago. Happy now?

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Philo: Hairspray

(Caveat: This is not my best review - it's too long, and full, and still doesn't say everything I wanted it to, or as neatly as I'd like to have said it.  But better to post than polish, I think, if I can get it out while the show's still running.)

In brief - I defy anyone not to love this production.

Yes, there were a few technical glitches on opening night (including one potentially disastrous wardrobe malfunction handled with the sort of aplomb that makes one want to rush on to stage and shake the performer's hand).  But the energy, colour, and sheer joy of Jarrad West's vision of Hairspray is irresistible.

Really, there is so much to like here it's hard to know where to start, but the irreverence begins in the opening street scene (like all street scenes it features the compulsory nun and policeman - I think it's contained in the standard script licensing contract).  It's a tribute to Baltimore - and having been there in the not too distant past, I loved seeing the winos and flashers through the boundless optimism of the irrepressible Tracey Turnblad.  And it's also a tribute to Broadway - in this scene alone are fleeting, blink-and-you'll miss them tributes to Cats, Les Mis, How to Succeed, and possibly Anything Goes (although it could have been On The Town or South Pacific).  And these continue throughout the show, with undisguised nods to Chicago at the beginning of Act 2 and Gypsy at the very end.  As someone who loves loves loves musicals, spotting these was a source of considerable pleasure.

The set is easily the most successful thing Peter Karmel (also in the ensemble) has done to date.  Deceptively simple, and greatly enhanced by Chris Neal's lighting design, it consisted of a variety of hanging signs and platforms that could be easily rolled on and off (or up and down) to re-set a scene, and worked beautifully (except when SM's forgot to move them) under West's direction - there were absolutely no clunky scene changes or empty stage - your focus moved immediately to action on one side of the stage while the scenery on the other was discreetly adjusted.

One quibble here, though - the platform representing Chez Turnblad appeared to have been built to an insufficient depth, which mean that Edna Turnblad's opening scenes - actually almost any scenes in which she was shown at home - were played with her back to the audience as she stood over her ironing board.  If this had been the set-up for some big "reveal" it might have had a point (although it would probably have failed on other grounds, as the charm of Edna is that she is not necessarily played for laughs), but it seemed to be, simply, that if Edna stood behind her ironing board, facing the audience, there would not be enough room on the platform for her to also come out and work in front of it.

More on the production side before I move on to the stellar cast:  Is Rose Shorney the best Musical Director in Canberra?  She brings wonderful performances out of her musicians time and time and time again, from tiny ensembles like Avenue Q's Velvet Underground Glove Puppet band to the 22-piece Titanic orchestra. This effort was flawless, even down to a bit of colla voce for the marvellous Maybelle, a tough thing to manage from a pit.

Choreography from Nicole Slavos and Amy Fitzpatrick was energetic and wildly fun. I did notice some of the dancers not singing, which is certainly forgiveable given the paces they were being put through, and West & Shorney have wisely supplemented them with pit singers. The whole cast gives 100% to the dancing, though, which is no mean feat, and a massive contribution to the pace and momentum of the whole show.

I will confess to not being a huge fan of the dodgeball scene. Black-clad mummers manipulating oversized basketballs through carefully-choreographed slow-motion arcs just felt clumsy and a bit tiresome to me, though I also confess that I can't think of a better way this could have been staged. And it didn't slow the action down for long.

Eclipse (those most usual of suspects) provided light and sound. The lighting design was fabulous and enhanced the set brilliantly; the sound was a let-down. Mics dropped out often, and there was frequent interference from costumes. I saw Jarrett Prosser on the desk, though, so am prepared to put all of this down to hardware failures.  Speaking of costumes - the design was great, if, unfortunately, a few outfits were clearly not quite finished. And the wigs were admirable, especially the astonishing creation atop Vanessa de Jager.

And, oh goodie, now I get to talk about the cast. It's fabulous.  Krystle Innes brings the house down as Tracey Turnblad, bubbling over with joie de vivre, a sensational Broadway voice, and dance moves to match.  Amy Dunham as her shy friend Penny is back to her comic best.  Zach Drury is fun as the feckless Link, though possibly carrying a little too much of his Bud Frump baggage with him; there's more mugging than is strictly necessary.  Will Huang is his usual fabulous self as Corny Collins (another review called him "obsequious", but surely that's the last thing Corny is - smooth, yes, but a toady, absolutely not).

I was quite excited to see Nyasha Nyakuengama as Seaweed; I've been tipping him as a talent since his early days in kids shows (mind you, I've also been calling him "Oliver"; I couldn't tell you why; he may have played a character of that name once).  For someone who claims not to be a dancer he has bags of raw talent.  It was great to see Vanessa de Jager playing the vapid, bitchy Amber after her lovely turn as sweet Rosemary Pilkington, and she matched beautifully with Kate Graham, hamming it up in fine style as the villainous Velma (Miss Baltimore Crabs!).  Lots of laughs, too, from Emma White in a variety of supporting roles.

A special mention has to go to the astonishing Jenny Lu, playing more than twice her age and weight as Motormouth Maybelle.  Her massive gospel number "I Know Where I've Been" was, literally, a showstopper.  If she can do this at 20, I cannot wait to see what she has in store for us in a few more years. Viva! Encore! and Brav - frickin' - a!

And for last: the Turnblads! It is SO good to see Stephen Bardwell back on stage in this post Old-Time Music Hall era! Even if he's not in an animal costume, waggling his eyebrows and calling "I say, I say, I say!!"  This time, in Groucho glasses, he looked uncannily like Stanley Tucci. His Wilbur Turnblad was perfect. And as for Edna Turnblad : I just loved Max Gambale in this role, though I am concerned that the Marge Simpson voice might have shredded his vocal cords by the end of the run.  Resisting the urge to camp her up (I'll assume Jarrad West can take some credit for that as well), Gambale's Edna is just a big, sweet, awkward woman who overcomes her fear and low self-esteem to effect a cartoon of social change. Bless. The Wilbur and Edna love duet was truly genuine and touching, and a highlight of a show that was full of them.

This might be the most fun I've had at a show this year.  From a quick look at seating availability on closing night I don't think it needs me to sell it, but I'm happy to do my bit. I guarantee you'll enjoy this!


Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Street Theatre: The Flood

Ooooo, another piece about sisters, their mother and differing childhood recollections!

This one-act play by Jackie Smith is an absolute cracker. Janet (Shirley Cattunar) and her elder daughter Dorothy (Maude Davey) live on an old farm back of Burke somewhere. Janet, Dottie and farm are all growing more decrepit by the hour. One day, younger daughter Catherine (Caroline Lee) who's been living overseas for more than 20 years, turns up on the doorstep. She knows something's not right, but what?  And then the flood comes, and to everyone's dismay, she's stuck there.

And then the whole fabric of their lives unravels.

I could not look away from this play. In one act of 80 minutes I did not once find myself glancing at my watch or silently estimating the length of the queue at the bar. Director Laurence Strangio builds the pace slowly but it never flags, with just the right number of laughs to make the tension bearable. You think you know where this inexorable trajectory is going to take you, and you're right, but there's much more to it than that. It's relentless, and dark, and really, really good.

The set, by the "Sisters Hayes" (though there is also a designer credit for Kathryn Sproul) instantly gives the audience all the information they need about how Janet and Dorothy now live. The relentless rain, courtesy of sound and light designers Natasha Anderson and Bronwyn Pringle, creates a sense of claustrophobia, and when the cast go out in it, their hair really is wet; their feet really are muddy. It's very effective.

Caroline Lee is excellent as the brittle, affected Catherine, and Shirley Cattunar so natural as the addled Janet that it was all I could do not to step out of my seat, call social services and start cleaning up the set.  But as Dottie, who shifts from implacably strong to completely ruined, and back again, Maude Davey is utterly convincing, and absolutely devastating. Truly one of the best performances I've ever seen, and all the more intense in the tiny space of Street Two.

Seriously, if there is any way you can get yourself to this, go see it.  Go tomorrow. Tell everyone.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Judith Lucy: Nothing Fancy ( Canberra Theatre)

Judith Lucy is a very funny woman.

I mean, why else would a couple of hundred people find themselves queuing in a mad snake of a line in and about the Canberra Theatre foyer to collect tickets to her show?

It was strange start to the evening, and I suspect was based on a problem with the ticketing system, a conclusion based on no real evidence except that the three disturbingly unhurried staff behind the counter were none of the usual staff, who are pretty much like family to me by now*, and my ticket took some time to retrieve and was marked "reprint", which it shouldn't have been, because it wasn't one.

In any event, once I got inside at last and dislodged from my allocated seat a geriatric usurper who proved merely to be alphabetically challenged, I was more than ready for a few laughs.

And I got them!

Judith Lucy is one of the best comedians I've seen at audience interaction. She's never at a loss for a way to respond, and has the audience just where likes them. She has a style reminiscent of Dame Edna in some ways, though in her case the grandiose statements are self-deprecating. When she calls herself brilliant, it's a joke - except she is, so why do we laugh? And she has a way of taking simple statements and delivering them with an inflexion that somehow makes them hilarious, over and over again. I've loved her since the champagne comedy of The Late Show, which I will never give up hoping to see back on TV.

The last Judith Lucy show I saw was her I Failed! tour in 2006. Lucy had been sacked from her radio gig, but was happily engaged. The humour was self-deprecating as always, but it was about career, and family, and a whole raft of things. I laughed til it hurt. It was a show worth a couple of hundred ab crunches at least.

This was another funny show, but for some reason it didn't pull me in as hard. I think part of it is that with her career now on cruise control, but single again, a fair chunk of Lucy's routine is given over to the plight of the single middle-aged woman and where are all the men. I'm a tiny bit completely sick to death of this theme from female comedians. I'm far from unsympathetic, and there's a rich vein of material, sure, but it's not that new. And I don't hear male comedians having the same conversation. And it makes me want to say: "Are we really still talking about this? Really? Still?"

But there's a lot more material than this in the show; Lucy talks about the making of her TV series, a move to Sydney, some of her less "mainstream" gigs, her cameo appearance in the movie The Sapphires and the weird way in which she can be quasi-famous and completely unrecognised at exactly the same time.

So yes, she's funny, and yes, it was well worth the price of admission. But I'll go dig out my copy of  The Lucy Family Alphabet for Judith Lucy at her best.



* That is, we know each other by sight, see each other occasionally on weekends, and keep our conversations brief and polite.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Women's Theatre Forum: Wyrd Sisters

So many possible ways of starting this post.

For example, The Women's Theatre Forum has taken to abbreviating itself as WTF. But that's a bit fish-in-a-barrel even for me.

Or I could go with that old Wodehouse story of the faltering speaker who hears a voice from the back of the auditorium calling "Louder!", followed shortly after by another voice calling "And funnier!"

And I sort of want to pick up the whole Shakespearean theme with a header like "Get thee to a vocal coach!"

I didn't start writing these reviews to be nasty; as I've explained elsewhere, I go to see shows for fun, and I'm predisposed to enjoy them for that very reason. I want to help theatre flourish, not tear it down. And I'm a big fan of Pratchett's, and was looking forward to this.

But I am genuinely sorry to say that WTF's Wyrd Sisters was really, truly, dreadful.

Awful.

I can offer a few positives: sound, lighting and costumes are fine (though, what is it lately with actors wearing their own suit trousers?), for a low-budget effort the little set works well, and there are some quite nifty effects using a video screen and some magic tricks (notably the one involving a giant image of a dagger that becomes a small real dagger).

Elaine Noon as Granny Weatherwax is sound as always; Janine O'Dwyer might have been born to play Nanny Ogg in the best performance I've seen from her yet; Michael Miller mops up the competition in several small roles; Jonathan Sharp is good as Verence the Fool (despite the half-smart programme bio). Ralphie Kabo as Tomjon seemed decent, but was wasted in the far recesses of late Act 2.  Tracy Thomas (Magrat) has potential, but would really benefit from some vocal coaching to even out her tone and keep that rising inflection in check.

Robbie Mathews, in several supporting roles, knew what he was doing, though I wasn't sure it was a wise move when he ventured on at curtain call to play "The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered at All" (with guitar inexplicably depending from a strap proclaiming "Crime Scene"). Because in some way this almost defined the fundamental problem with this production.

 The Hedgehog Song is a famous filk, an in-joke for Pratchett fans, because Pratchett fans were the target audience. Hell, in costume Mathews even looked like Pratchett. But it was very clear that many of the rest of the cast had no understanding of either Pratchett or of this particular play. They mishandled lines, and sometimes forgot them, buried the jokes, missed opportunities and generally bungled most of the script without mercy. It was like seeing Spamalot produced by people who had never seen or heard of Monty Python. And when you are deliberately pitching your show at Pratchett fans, that's unforgiveable.

Even then, a cast of Pratchett virgins ought not to be fatal under decent direction, but it was painfully clear that this production did not have that. My attention has been drawn to this post from WTF on their own Wyrd Sisters Facebook page, which says "Some of the actors got their own jokes for the first time last night when the audience laughed at them!"

That is not cute and amusing, that is absolutely disgraceful.  You're charging the public money to see this show, and you think it's funny that your actors don't understand their lines?  And you sent them out there knowing they didn't understand their lines? It didn't occur to anyone involved that it might help to explain them?

I don't blame the cast. There was a lot of really, really bad acting, but a fair bit of it was from people very new to acting. It was clear that several of the cast didn't fully understand what the words they were saying meant, and while perhaps they should have gone and asked someone, this is frankly something that ought easily to be cured by adequate direction, especially for a couple of major characters (not necessarily that new to acting) who mumbled, forgot lines, emphasised the wrong words, paused in the wrong places and were so stilted and self-conscious in their overall delivery that it was painful to watch them (or sometimes, to try to hear them).  And the impression left is that either the director did not understand the play (unlikely as I gather that it's the director's own adaptation), or understood it but didn't care to share that with the cast.

Add to that lots of lengthy blackouts for scene changes that usually involved no actual changes of scenery, and this production gave the overall impression that almost no direction was provided beyond some basic blocking.

The original book by Terry Pratchett is a clever meta-analysis of the motives of story-tellers, and a very funny satire on Shakespearian tropes (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Richard III all get more than a nod).  I recommend you stay home and read it.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Canberra Rep: The Memory of Water

I feel a little guilty to be reviewing this when there are only three performances left, but I didn't get to see it until well into the run, and things have been really busy, and, and, and ...

Guilt and self-justification are not the only emotions explored in Shelagh Stephenson's play, but they're up there. The death of their mother brings three sisters and a couple of their partners (I'm resisting the temptation to embrace that word with quotation marks) together for the funeral, and, de rigeur, old tensions and rivalries come roaring to the foreground.

This is a good play, well-directed and very funny in places.  The set is good, with some lovely attention to detail; the lighting functional and appropriate (is our Mr Ruffy tilting at a Gold CAT?), and the props an absolute triumph - it's not often that props get a shout-out, but here it's well-deserved.

The play, set by a wintry coast somewhere in the North of England, is also well-performed - with the sole but glaring exception of terrible, terrible accents.  I exempt from this criticism Sally Rynevelt, bless her slingbacks, who is really wonderful as the late mother - or is she merely the memory of the late mother? Her accent is flawless; she inhabits the role completely, and I had to check afterward that it wasn't, in fact, her natural speaking voice.  I've only seen her perform previously in recordings, and we can all be glad that she'd decided to return to the stages of Canberra. 

Andrea Close (the eldest sister Theresa), who is also a wonderful actress, seemed really to struggle with the accent, though it was easily the next best effort in the cast. I remember how stunning she was as Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" a few years back and I know she can hold an accent, but this one just never completely took.  She's at least as good a drunk here as she was in VW, though, and is always a joy to watch, even when magically somehow transforming her slender and elegant self into the lumpen exhausted Theresa by dint of a cardi, utility apron and a change of stance.

Lainie Hart (middle sister Mary) didn't even bother with an accent, resorting to her standard pseudo-Hepburn drawl (Audrey, that is). For me, it's actually starting to mask her talent as an actress, which people keep telling me is considerable.  I remember agreeing the first few times I saw her.  But now I've seen her play everything from a fallen angel to an anxious Anglo-Indian bride and she always sounds exactly the same. There's a lot to admire about her acting, but I'm starting not to be able to hear it.

In one of the most extraordinary casting coups ever, though, she plays a doctor with a speciality in cognitive impairment - particularly amnesia and memory issues - which as I understand it almost exactly Lainie's day job (she holds a PhD is Clinical Neuropsychology).  Is it just me or can we agree that is completely remarkable?

Eliza Bell (Catherine, the attractive, self-obsessed youngest) is another actress I love, and I'm so pleased to be seeing so much more of her lately (a sentiment doubtless echoed by quite a few gentlemen in the audience as she stripped down to bra and knickers - albeit briefly, and all in the best possible taste). This is her third performance for Rep this year and she is always a standout, with a CV that makes me wonder what she's doing in Canberra, until I remember that I'm here too. But she makes no attempt at an accent either, apart from a sort of generalised English one.

I can configure all sorts of interesting backstories to explain why these sisters and their mother all sound nothing alike, but that's not my job, frankly, and it was annoying and distracting.  David MacNamara. as Mary's married inamorato, doesn't need to share the accent, and was fine, though I'm starting to wonder if he's just typecast as a stilted Englishman or actually is a stilted Englishman (for the ladies, there's a fair bit of D'arcy-esque shirtlessness to restore the gender equity).  Rob de Fries, someone else I usually enjoy watching, would have utterly confounded 'Enry 'Iggins, and several times slipped into tones reminiscent of a mobster from the Bronx.

Better not to do accents at all than to do them badly and inconsistently, I say - because here I am spending paragraphs and paragraphs complaining about it when overall I thoroughly enjoyed this play.

The title, while not particularly commercial, is clever. The memory of water is a reference to the claims of homeopaths that even if water is refined and refined and diluted and diluted until not a trace of an additive remains, it will nevertheless retain a "memory" of that additive.  As someone who likes my medicine evidence-based, homeopathy as a metaphor for the unreliability of memory is appealing, as is the less subtle dig consisting of Theresa rushing about crazily while sucking down Rescue Remedy (I was about to say "as if it were water" - which, of course, it is).

And so all three sisters have completely different recollections of their shared childhood - as, indeed, has their mother Vi - and some of those memories are demonstrably false, and others are shown to be have been constructed, and at the end, as in life, we get to make our own decisions about where the truth lies (or what lies contain truth).  Hardworking, put-upon, reliable Theresa, who has spent her life looking after everybody else, finally cracks. Clever favourite Mary has to face some awful revelations, some hitherto unknown and some just hitherto un-faced.  Scatty, pretty, empty Catherine treads endless water, still a child in her 30's.

Stephenson gives David MacNamara's Mike an excellent, insightful line when her sisters react with derision to self-centred Catherine's claim that her problem is that she "gives too much" - "She does give too much, it's just that what she gives is usually inappropriate".  Yes. Yes, it is.  And don't we all know someone like that.

Despite some of the subject matter, this is a very funny play, and Ed Wightman's direction is seamless and intelligent, getting every shred of nuance out of Stephenson's well-crafted script.  And even if you fixate on accents to the same degree as me - and I doubt many people do - this is a very enjoyable and well-put together production which is worth your time.

Friday, August 10, 2012

CJP: Gian Slater & Invenio

Yes!! I got to this after all!  When all hope seemed lost my evening unexpectedly opened up, and thus I took myself down to the Street Theatre to catch Gian Slater and Invenio performing Gone, Without Saying; the only session of the Capital Jazz Festival I managed to catch.

Without a programme (I hate it when there are no programmes!) it was quite difficult to follow. While it's billed as a single work, it is also divided into movements, of sorts, but given the unusual nature of the music and the light choreography, it's hard to know what's the end of a movement and what's merely a pause. So applause was a bit sporadic and uncomfortable, and I suspect I could have taken away more meaning than I did with a bit more explanation of the work.

The choir is beautiful. They harmonise faultlessly and the timing is impeccable. And the sounds they make wander well outside the box; Slater's composition has various members at different times burbling into ceramic pots, buzzing into tinfoil, and making divers percussive noises. It's very effective once you're immersed, but also vaguely silly if you start thinking about it too much.

Gian Slater herself has a light, sweet, deft voice, with an almost coloratura reach; a bit unfashionable in a world that favours the sort of finger-waving belters commonly seen on TV talent quests. She scats gorgeously. I was glad to finally have had the chance to hear her sing.

This was a fascinating piece, but for something so unusual, it was also oddly bland. The choir is dressed all in pale neutrals, and while the effects vary, the overall tone doesn't. It's beautiful, but also a bit whale-song new-agey. It's true that jazz is a very broad church, but I didn't get the surge of happiness and energy that I get from what I usually think of as jazz; this piece could as easily have fitted in to a contemporary classical concert or a world music festival.  It didn't make want to move the way jazz did; actually it nearly soothed me to sleep. 

It's a lovely piece, and I'm glad to have heard it; but not enough to wait around after for the autographed copy.  And I'm still hanging out to hear Gian Slater swing some Great American Songbook someday!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Sids & Kids: Canberra Takes 2

Quite disappointed to be missing the following on Saturday night (a straight poach from their website):


What does a politician have in common with a journalist and a school principal? They are all taking to the stage for Canberra Takes 2 to help fund bereavement support services for families following the death of their child.

The inaugural SIDS and Kids ACT’s Canberra Takes 2 teams together local entertainers and celebrities to provide a night of entertainment all in the name of charity.

Teams competing in this fun event are:

Journalist Lisa Ridgley and Ben Kindon http://www.everydayhero.com.au/lisa_ben

Canberra Raiders Media Manager Ben Pollack and Laura Dawson http://www.everydayhero.com.au/ben_laura

Prime7 presenter Natalie Forrest and Dave Evans http://www.everydayhero.com.au/natalie_dave

Celebrity butcher Peter Lindbeck and Sarah Golding http://www.everydayhero.com.au/butcher_sarah

Queanbeyan Mayor Tim Overall and Christine Forbes http://www.everydayhero.com.au/tim_christine

Canberra Girls Grammar principal Anne Coutts and Dave Smith http://www.everydayhero.com.au/anne_dave

Bendigo Bank’s Nicole Prior and Tim Stiles http://www.everydayhero.com.au/nicole_tim

Senator Gary Humphries and Maigan Fowler http://www.everydayhero.com.au/gary_maigan

Maddi Knudsen from the Canberra Trophy Centre and Will Huang http://www.everydayhero.com.au/maddi_will

Jerrabomberra Public School teacher Mardi Croke and Peter Ricardo http://www.everydayhero.com.au/mardi_peter

On the night, the audience will vote for the song and performance they like the best by donating money to SIDS and Kids ACT in the name of their favourite duo.

Canberra Takes 2 will be held on Saturday, August 11 at the Queanbeyan Conference Centre. It promises to be a really entertaining night out. Tickets are $25 per person and guests will be seated at tables and chairs and encouraged to bring along a picnic basket or nibbles. There will be back-up singers and dance performances to add to the fun.

For further information or to book a table, call SIDS and Kids ACT on 6287 4255.
To vote for your favourite team, click on the link next to their name above.


Some interesting questions to be posed, here.  For example, is it fair to allow people to vote via the link when they may not be there to hear the performances?  Should some excellent performers be penalised for the misfortune of have been hooked up with some quite awful "celebrities"?  Does Gary Humphries have an unfair advantage given his cameo in "The Producers" a few years back?  Why is Butcher Lindbeck allowed to do anything, anywhere, ever? 

In any event, $25 is such a bargain to see 50% of these people that it more than makes up for the fact that the other 50% is $25 overpriced.  If not already spoken for, I'd be getting along to this.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Restaurant: Sake (Brisbane)

People who say there's nothing to do in Canberra deserve a good slap.  There's so much going on in Canberra that I can limit myself to one slice of it (theatre) and still not get to everything I want to.

But the one thing that I might agree is lacking here us a really first class Japanese restaurant.

Yes, the food at Iori is very good, but it's not exactly an "occasion" restaurant.  I have heard acceptable reports of Wasabi (Manuka), but after three visits there I have yet to find an occasion when they had sashimi available. And I'm not counting anything that is mainly Teppanyaki.  I've spent a chunk of my life in cities where good, genuine sushi and sashimi were plentiful and reasonably priced, and I miss, miss, miss my raw fish.  Sizzle Bento has a placemat that tells you what hotate is, but I've never actually been able to order it there. (It's raw scallop, for those who don't share my passion. Plump, fresh, succulent, delicious raw scallop. Mmmmmmm.)

So finding myself at a loose end in Brisbane on a Monday night, I Googled "Best Japanese Restaurant", browsed through the assorted claimants to the title, narrowed it down to those within walking distance, and took myself off to the Eagle Street Pier to see if I could negotiate a table for one at Sake. Woot! I could, and not only that, there is some sort of in-house tradition whereby all the kitchen staff yell Woot! too (or the Japanese equivalent) as you're shown to your table. It may have helped that it was Monday night, but they were also very good about giving me a table for one rather than make me perch at the sushi bar.

The menu has a staggering array of sake on offer, but alas, my policy is to never drink alone. However champagne doesn't count, so long as I'm out (the same way cider doesn't count, as long as I'm home), so I settled in with a glass of Veuve to survey the menu.


Ah, the menu. My house and my car I decided on within minutes; a menu this interesting can confound me for hours.  In a restaurant of this quality that can usually be solved by the degustation, but alas it's not available for diners a seule.  So while I agonised I started with what I'd been jonesing for - a serve of the hotate sashimi.  Man, it was good. Beautiful fat firm delicate wonderful tasty tasty tasty bites of scallopy deliciousness.  If they weren't $4 each I could have eaten a hundred of them.


I  also love a good seaweed salad - actually, I even love a bad seaweed salad, by which I mean those green concoctions of 30/70 shredded wakame and threads of agar coloured green and sprinked with sesame seeds you see under glass in the food court.  This one was sensational - five different types of seaweed, in five different colours, with five different dressings, and all of them delicious.


Which was good, because all around me the wisdom of the degustation was being affirmed by happy diners hoeing into fabulous looking plates of red-claw crab tempura with mango, and galantine of soy/orange-glazed quail. Dammit.


My next choice took me to the sushi maki menu, originally driven there by a deep nostalgia for the futomaki of my youth. But the ingredient list did not feature that sine qua non of my long-lost futomaki, kanpyo. (Where has all the kanpyo gone? Long time passing ... Seriously, I haven't seen it for years; the last packet I secured was about ten years ago in the Asian grocers in Dickson, and when   I went back for another they denied all knowledge of it, sort of like a Hitchcock film.)  


So, still in a haze of scallop lust, I opted for something a bit more idiosyncratic, called an S-Express, constructed with, inter alia, scallop, salmon, spicy mayo and cucumber, sliced and interleaved with witlof.  It was g-o-o-o-o-od. I could possibly have done with a little less mayo, but only out of guilt. The witlof was a surprise - I often find it bitter, but it was crisp and perfect to cut through the richness of the mayo and salmon.


The only real criticism that I can make of the maki was that it was much more filling than I expected. My whole plan had been to eat a boatload of raw fish, and here I was already replete.  So with not a little regret I settled for a macchiato (perfectly decent, if not brilliant), but I had to leave a polite pause for even that.


The service here was excellent; the waitstaff knew the menu well and provided good advice; they had that first-class knack of being there when you need him them and not when you didn't.  One small annoyance was that the seaweed salad was clearly listed as a "side", but then served alone, when I had in fact wanted it as a side to the maki roll.  And after asking one waiter to take away the sugar, others kept returning it to the table. But there are worse faults in a restaurant than over-attentive service, and I appreciated not being overlooked or made to feel out of place as a solitary diner.

But I do wish I had been able to try the degustation, and I hope to be able to return here with a companion some day and see if it is as good as it looked.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

The Street: Pick of the Capital Jazz Project

I'm shattered to be missing the whole of the Street Theatre's Capital Jazz Project, starting tomorrow night, 3 August, at the Street Theatre, and running until 12 August. I got along to fair few sessions of last year's, and enjoyed every semi-quaver.  This year, I had booked in to attend at least one session every night, but a combination of work and personal commitments have now conspired to thwart me completely.

If you can make it, though, the CJP it is a great opportunity to experience some performances from interstate artists you'd normally have to get down to Bennett's Lane or the Adelaide Cabaret Festival to enjoy.  So if you're browsing through the attractively full programme and trying to choose what to attend, here are the ones I'm most upset to be missing:

Paul Capsis - Make me A King.  Capsis is a remarkable performer and love him or hate him, you should definitely hear him sing at least once in your life time.  This sounds like it will be cabaret rather than  pure jazz, but as that's where he excels, that really shouldn't stop you.

Gian Slater & Invenio - I've been trying to find my way to hear Gian Slater live for years now, and from all accounts this is an extraordinary work. I'm fascinated by the use of voice purely as an intrument, and apparently the air at Stonnington was thick with wool as her choir Invenio knocked the socks off all who heard them.  I think this is the thing I am saddest to be missing.

Joe Chindamo, "Another Place, Some Other Time": He's also doing a session with some young musos from the School, called FreshBace, but if you want to hear Chindamo at his virtuosic best, this is the concert to queue for. One of the mosted gifted pianists you will ever hear, in any genre, anywhere.  YouTube his Umbrian performances if you want to see what I mean, and try for a seat on the left, as believe me, you'll want to watch his hands.

Dick & Christa Hughes:  There's nothing Dick Hughes doesn't know about jazz, and nothing his daughter Christa can't sing.  They're both original, talented, and absolutely fearless. Street Two is the
right choice for this performance in terms of ambience, but it's a crying shame that not more people will be able to cram in to such a tiny venue. 

If you can't attend any of these, there are an awful lot of consolation prizes on offer.  I'm hoping that locals will really get behind and support the CJP - with the destruction of the ANU Jazz School, and cutbacks from local venues, the Canberra jazz scene can use all the support it can get.