'The Widow Unplugged'

(Ensemble Theatre)

Legendary Australian theatrical performer Reg Livermore is the creator of, and one person performer in, 'The Widow Unplugged'.

An ageing performer, now resident in a home for the aged recalls earlier days of his career when he appeared in pantomimes and vaudeville entertainments. I sense a degree of autobiography in the work and a reflection of some of the characters, real and imagined, that Livermore encountered.

There is considerable energy in Livermore's performance and he handles the dialogue, dense with malapropisms, with aplomb but I found the play, itself, rather uneven. Act 1 lacked cohesion and didn't engage me. Sadly many audience members didn't return for Act 2 which I considered to be a noticeable improvement.

✮✮

'The Boy from Oz'

(The Production Company)

'The Boy from Oz' is the story of Peter Allen who grew up in a small Australian country town with an ambition to sing and entertain and ended up an international favourite and Academy Award winner.

The musical unabashedly targets Australian audiences recalling with affection the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

This limited season production is tireless and showy. Rohan Browne is energetic in the title role and whilst he doesn't always hit the pitch in his singing he conveys the aura of his character. The supporting performers are outstanding especially Caroline O'Connor (as Judy Garland) and at the performance I attended Hudson Sharp (as young Peter).

✮✮✮

'The Long Forgotten Dream'

(Sydney Theatre Company)

Jeremiah Tucker's daughter returns for a lengthy overseas trip with the news that she has discovered the location of his grandfather's remains and has organised for their return home to Australia for an appropriate burial and memorial service.

The news and the preparations for the welcome to home stir up memories and questions of the past.

'The Long Forgotten Dream' is a wonderful new play by H Lawrence Sumner. The mostly indigenous cast and performers bring the story to life in an inventive staging.

Highly recommended.

✮✮✮✮

'A Taste of Honey'

A single mother and her teenage daughter lead a love/hate struggling life finding solace and disappointment in each other and in the men in their lives.

'A Taste of Honey' was a first play hit from Shelagh Delaney in 1958 and again in the subsequent film version but has rarely been performed since.

Now staged by Belvoir St Theatre this production has been transplanted to an Australian setting whilst seemingly retaining much of its original regional British character.

✮✮✮

'Gloria'

Young 'wannabes' in a Manhattan magazine office chat, gossip and compete. As diverse as they may be one thing they are in agreement is that their colleague 'Gloria' is an oddball. Someone who no-one seems to like very much.

Their ethics are stretched following a tragic event.

Apparently this play, regarded as a satire and drama, was a finalist in the Pulitzer Prize. I don't see that merit myself. The cast worked hard to squeeze humour from dialogue that was fairly predictable at the outset. Several twists lifted the plot briefly but still left the play limping to its abrupt end.

✮✮

‘Saint Joan’

(Sydney Theatre Company)

My previous exposure to George Bernard Shaw's plays has been of furtive glances to my watch as hour after hour of dense dialogue passed by. Concentration and patience waned through plays seemingly intended to outlast time.

Against this background of experience I ventured to 'Saint Joan' with some degree of reluctance. In the event this adaptation considerably shortens Shaw's work and, I gather, considerably tightens the traditional staging.

The settings may be a bit static but the performances are powerful with Sarah Snook exceptional in the title role.

I enjoyed it.

✮✮✮✮

Hamer’s Hall

Hamer Hall is Melbourne’s impressive concert venue. Spread over multiple levels, four of them below street level, it can be a bit of a trap for the novice or the unwary. I was both these on my recent, first attendance there.

Arriving there early for a concert I ventured down various levels by escalator in search of a food outlet I assumed to be there from the evidence of others munching away in the foyer levels.

Four levels of escalators down I discovered a small sandwich selection on one of the bars. Having purchased some food I looked around in vain for an empty chair but all were taken. Go back up I thought but the question was how. I realised all the escalators were set to travel down. No escalator was travelling up.

There were stairs and so I trudged up one level at a time until I could find seat on the first level I started from. Not good for an almost septuagenarian! It was only when I got my breath back that I noticed the elevator in a corner.

By the way, at concert's end all the escalators were reset to travel up.

The power couple

The 2,000 seat auditorium is filling fast. Two minutes or so to go before the start of the concert. All the seats in our row are occupied except for the two to my left which adjoin the side wall so their occupants, if any, will need to squeeze past the full row to reach them.

Late arrivals are streaming down the aisles then doing the sideways crab crawl to their seats.

Then they appear. The power couple.

He is in his mid-twenties, growing a thin moustache which is barely hairier than his 8pm shadow. He is wearing a skinny suit, slightly crimped behind the knee joints from tightness and day long wear. He has slip on shoes and is either stocking-less or wearing skin toned socks. He looks like lamb posing as debonair mutton.

On this winter’s night she is dressed for a balmy summer’s evening on a verandah wearing a loose short sleeve pastel coloured blouse, light skinny jeans and towering stilettos.

Both carry auditorium friendly tiny plastic cups containing red wine. As each of us in the row stands in turn the couple slides by careful not to spill a drop of wine. They are not so much protective of our clothing but of the minuscule amount which surely won’t last till interval.

They take their seats at the row’s end and, entrance made, they share a whisper.

Fifteen seconds pass by, 105 seconds now to performance time. Nothing has happened yet, so she decides it is time to make her way out minus the plastic cup and wine. I decide on a semi raise rather than a full raise and she exercises additional caution to avoid my protruding knees. The others in the row take my cue and follow with semi raises of their own. She ambles off casually into the flow of other latecomers, smaller numbers now, who are almost racing down the aisles to reach their seats.

Another fifteen seconds passes. Although no-one in my hearing has said a word, it seems he feels the need to make an announcement. Apparently speaking to no-one in particular but everyone in general he says ‘I saw Ramin in back to back concerts in New York last year and he...is...ah...may...zing.’

‘Oh really?’ is the response from the row behind.

‘Ah...may...zing’, he reiterates.

‘And I saw Anna on her opening night at the Regent’, he adds.

No response from anyone. Maybe nobody is interested in Anna?

Sixty seconds to performance time.

She has reappeared and the audience member on the aisle decides not to rise; not even a semi rise. Each of us in turn, as though by unspoken concensus, follows suit. This slows her progress but undaunted she continues with ostentatious care to ensure her summery skinny jeans make no contact with the roughage of our wintery apparel.

Thus reunited, the power couple is ready. The auditorium lights are extinguished. The concert can commence.

No bliss

I had tickets to see 'Bliss' at Belvoir Street but felt anything but blissful as I drove to the theatre. My nose was running, my throat felt like sand paper and I was coughing regularly.

I sat in my car thinking that somehow I would be able to get through the performance but that was wishful, not blissful, thinking. Apart from spreading my cold across the audience I would be a complete nuisance for those sitting around me.

I didn't get out of my car. I drove home where I should have remained all along.

No bliss for me.

Oklahoma!

(The Production Company)

Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Oklahoma!' premiered on Broadway in 1943 and to this day is widely regarded as the landmark introduction of the 'musical play' in which the songs are relevant to and progress the play's plot.

Set at the dawn of the twentieth Century as the Territory of Oklahoma approaches statehood, the musical depicts twin tales of men vying for the affections of their love interests.

A quaint plot but the tuneful songs and rollicking dance numbers carry the day.

✮✮✮✮

The Book of Mormon

Just over one year since seeing 'The Book of Mormon' in Melbourne I have seen it again in its new Sydney season.

A couple of recently graduated Mormon missionaries are posted to Uganda in the seemingly futile project to acquire religious converts.

As slick and seamless a production as it was down south and still as offensive and hilarious as before.

✮✮✮✮½

No Such Thing As A Fish

We booked to see 'No Such Thing As A Fish' many months ago purely on the description that this is the title of a popular British podcast featuring four researchers behind the British television series 'QI'.

The performance was in two parts. The first half has each of the researchers providing a humorous presentation about their work and interests. The second half was a live recording of a podcast for future broadcast.

Many interesting and wacky facts. A little uneven but an interesting and mostly humorous experience.

✮✮✮

Still Point Turning

(Sydney Theatre Company)

'Still Point Turning: The Catherine McGregor Story' relates this story of the Australian Trans Woman who reached the heights as a Political Staffer, Cricket commentator and as an Officer in the Australian Army, marrying and fathering two children before transitioning after years of gender dysphoria.

The play is based on hours of interviews with Cate and depicts the extraordinary highs and lows of her life.

Beautifully staged and performed.

✮✮✮✮

The Flick

Sam is a cleaner at 'The Flick', an old style single screen movie theatre located somewhere in Massachusetts and when the play opens he is training new starter Avery in the cleaning procedures. It is a repetitive, sometimes unpleasant, task; a fact made clear in scene after scene. It is a job with limited prospects other than an unlikely promotion to projectionist, a position which Robyn achieved over the longer serving Sam.

The dead end nature of their working lives is relieved slightly by their shared love of cinema and a secret low level defrauding of the box office revenue.

At almost three hours this is a lengthy play, punctuated repeatedly by the longest of pauses turning the play into an endurance test. Nonetheless it is surprisingly humorous and despite its length maintained my interest throughout. Would the play be just as effective, even more so, if it were half the length? I don't see why not.

Well acted but bring a cushion.

✮✮✮

The Children

(Sydney Theatre Company)

Rose (Sarah Peirse) surprises Hazel (Pamela Rabe) arriving unannounced at her isolated home. Hazel is home alone waiting for her husband Robin (William Zappa) to return from feeding their cows.

As 'The Children' unfolds - with a surprising amount of humour - we learn that the house is close to an exclusion area around a damaged nuclear facility closed off following an earthquake and tsunami. Rose, Hazel and Robyn share a past both personally and professionally and while their meeting might focus thoughts on memories the real issue is who is responsible for the effects of that past on the future. Is it them; or their children?

✮✮✮½

Going Down

Sydney Theatre Company

Natalie Yang is a published writer. Still in her twenties, her autobiographical account heavy with steamy details of her sex life, has sold copies in the big city but isn't to the taste of the readers in rural Australia who prefer the work of her rival Lu Lu Jayadi.

Natalie's ambitions are central to 'Going Down' and her rivalry with Lu Lu is the plot focus of this one act play which has its moments. Bawdy and energetic Catherine Davies certainly gives everything but her character Natalie is a bit of a one note irritant.

✮✮½

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

Sydney Theatre Company

This adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui' sets the events in a contemporary Australia with the gangster/standover merchant Ui infiltrating and terrorising the Greengrocers industry.

The staging reminded me of a Guy Ritchie movie. Cameras film the production flashing the images on a huge screen across the backstage. Each scene is introduced with captions describing the location and the characters involved and the bullying style is reminiscent of Ritchie films.

Hugo Weaving is outstanding as Ui.

✮✮✮✮

Diplomacy

In August 1944, months following the D-Day landings, Allied forces are descending upon occupied Paris. The Nazi's Military Governor is preparing to carry out Hitler's orders to destroy the city before abandoning it.

'Diplomacy' is based on these events. John Bell is the General who finds himself in a last moment battle of minds with the Swedish Consul General played by John Gaden.

A very nicely depicted lesser known moment from the the latter days of World War 2 in Europe.

✮✮✮½

The Parisian Woman

'The Parisian Woman' is a contemporary drama and satire on political life in Washington and those jockeying for positions of power and favour.

Uma Thurman is the wife who is balancing both husband and lover whilst manipulating those around her around to achieve her political and personal goals.

A delight for those into political intrigue.

✮✮✮✮

Jerry Springer the Opera

I have seen 'Jerry Springer the Opera' previously at the Sydney Opera House and was interested to see it again in its current off-Broadway season.

Act 1 replicates a Jerry Springer show with its tangled, scarcely believable, relationships and situations with an audience baying for metaphorical blood followed by a homily from Mr Springer. Act 2 takes Mr Springer into a spiritual realm of his own facing the wrath of God and the Devil for his own behaviour.

Funny and bizarre with excellent performances.

✮✮✮½