Adelaide Festival. Lost Dog. Scott Theatre. 7 March 2022
Juliet & Romeo is the only Festival show this year filed under dance, but it is much more than that. It is based on a terrific premise conceived by Lost Dog’s artistic director Ben Duke. What if Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers secretly walked out of the Capulet’s mortuary vault in modern times and eloped to Paris? We pick up the action many decades after those fateful days in Mantua. From the start, the audience is in the presence of fame! This isn’t an ordinary couple - wow – this is Romeo and Juliet – aged now around their 40s, on stage! You want to run up and get their autographs. Gee, how did they, you know, get away with it? You’ll get the reveals in due course, but we quickly understand that they are having some rather common matrimonial issues. No matter the spats, performers Kip Johnson and Solène Weinachter and their director, Ben Duke, have you fully convinced that their Romeo and Juliet have converted their aching youthful physical love to a long lasting and deep relationship resonating with respect, even as we see them desperately fighting to keep it together. Having gone through this process myself, I can testify to 100% accuracy of the normative male and female perspectives, ironic and sadly true.
The couple are having maybe a final go at repair, clearly after many earlier unsuccessful attempts. Weinachter, Johnson and Duke convey Juliet’s eagerness to follow the process with precision and Romeo’s evident reluctance but resignation to at least try. She expresses her feelings fully and vigorously; he has great trouble. I sensed an issue when she corrected him three times in seven minutes.
Comprising all of dance and dialogue, psychology and retrospection, the couple explore their past by role-playing loaded with ironic hilarity. They search for a shared past only to discover how often meaning overprints memory. The role-playing is highly physicalised by these remarkably versatile performers. Romeo’s remembrance of sexual desire upon first seeing Juliet at the costume party is danced with comic virtuosity. Johnson’s bodily contortions conjured a limb or two flying off his torso. Another blood-boiling dance highlight is the pair’s first sexual encounter in Paris. The choreography (no credit in program) is astonishing – no furniture is safe, no wall too vertical. They clasp each other in passionate love holds only to fly apart to catch breath and recouple with renewed vigour. Bravo!
They relive their trials and tribulations and the attendant emotional rollercoaster; their resilience and respect gets them through. But it seems that every event has a cost, takes them a little further away, so you are anxious for the outcome, because in the course of an hour, you have invested a lot of yourself into this remarkable couple.
Ben Duke’s description in the program notes of the development of this work with Solène Weinachter is very amusing reading. Indeed, the experimental route taken to create the narrative arc is evident in the performance as everything seems spontaneous and as fresh and messy as real life.
Solène Weinachter has an accent somewhere between Paris and Berlin that takes some getting used to but gives the performance a Europeanness that we like here. Kip Johnson may have come from the Hugh Grant Acting School of Bumbling Honesty, which is a good school. Try not to sit in the balcony as you may have to watch the show through a Perspex screen designed to prevent you falling into the stalls.
Lost Dog’s Juliet & Romeo is a first-class production in all of conception, performance, dance, humour, poignancy and theatricality as well as veracity on the important topic of saving a marriage. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 5 to 12 March
Where: Scott Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Boyslikeme Productions. Holden Street Theatres. 8 Mar 2022
Fringe festival fun and games. There’s nothing like a truly lateral, existential play the performance of which is prefaced by the director asking the audience not to give away the plot. There’s a curly twist that should not be revealed to the next audience.
New Zealand playwright Gary Henderson has received plaudits for this play which some call a whodunnit and others simply don’t know what to call it or what to make of it.
An Unseasonable Fall of Snow is, as director Darrin Redgate touts it, “a puzzle”.
There are two principals: Arthur, the interrogator and Liam, the interrogated. The play opens with Arthur pressuring Liam to admit to whatever it was he did the night before and Liam stressing his innocence. Arthur is the man with the power, but what power he has is unclear. The victim-cum-culprit’s status also is a matter of seeming ambivalence. And there is a torrent of dialogue to eke it out; old-school interrogation style with endless cups of coffee. If one thinks one knows what is actually going on, one clearly has lost the plot.
This is the essence of fringey Fringe theatre. Under Redgate’s direction, it is a taut piece. Redgate was responsible for that hit production Next Fall at Holden Street last year. Perchance he has a thing for falls. Certainly he is a stylish director and, while one cannot say one is crazy about this oblique play, he elicited compelling performances from both Gavin Cianci as Arthur and Jacob Houston as Liam.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 20 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Studio, Holden Street Theatres. 6 Mar 2022
English novelist Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot, once penned that “Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.” Perhaps with this in mind, Patrick Livesey’s final utterance in his affecting dramatic homage to Naomi, his mother, who passed some years ago in tragic circumstances, are that he must say her name often so that he never forgets her. He then turns away from the rapt audience into the fading light and Naomi is ended. One thing is for certain, anyone in the audience will be able to recall Livesey’s mother’s name until their own dying breath.
Naomi is written and performed by Livesey, and it is powerful stuff. It is a seventy minute monologue – perhaps overlong by five minutes or so – and, in true Fringe fashion, is set very simply. In the empathetic ambience of the Studio at Holden Street, there are eight small lights placed in a line on the downstage floor that direct pale blue light upwards. They frame and silhouette Livesey’s face as he steps in and out of their gentle but uncompromising beams. Each lamp designates a significant person in Naomi’s life, variously a parent, sibling, partner, child, or friend. Livesey has selected and interviewed them all. He moves from one light to the other and becomes each significant person in turn. He impressively takes on their voice patterns and mannerisms as he gives accounts of each person’s memories of Naomi. Some of it is very funny, some of it is ruthless, some of it is charmingly nostalgic, and we hang on every well-crafted word, sentence, and gesture.
Director Bronwen Coleman has collaborated beautifully with lighting designer Matt Ralph, composer Biddy Connor, and set designer Xandra Roberts. Between them they have crafted an unpretentious but impressive aesthetic. It’s just enough and emotionally supports Livesey to deliver in spades.
Every now and then, Livesey moves upstage and attaches objects that are personal memories of Naomi to an illuminated large triangular frame: an article of her clothing, a photo, a corsage, and the like. It becomes a shrine. Why a triangle? Whether intended or not by the creative team, the symbolism behind the triangle in some ways illustrates the powerful opposites in Naomi’s life. It evokes the idea that things are often created from opposites: a child is created and parented from feminine and masculine opposites; significant relationships often include both affection and animosity; a child’s love for their parent is coloured by both positive and negative aspects to the relationship.
Livesey’s performance of ‘Vince’, Naomi’s partner and Livesey’s step-father, is memorable. It is thrust into one’s face. We are almost overpowered by the intensity of the character – it makes one feel intimidated and uncomfortable. Experiencing Vince’s harsh machismo almost feels voyeuristic. Is it right that we should know this about him and his relationship with Naomi? Isn’t it private, or at least shouldn’t it be private? And then, almost on the ‘turn of a dime’, Livesey steps out of Vince’s visceral spotlight and becomes someone else, someone gentler, and the dramatic tension is expertly eased.
But the subject matter of Naomi is not gentle. It is about mental illness, substance abuse and suicide. It is confronting, and above all it is a story about a boy’s unconditional love for his mother whom he wishes never to forget.
Livesey is an accomplished actor. Everything he does is absorbing and natural. This is compelling and important theatre.
Kym Clayton
When: 8 to 20 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Vitalstatistix and Brink Productions. Festival Centre - Space Theatre. 5 Mar 2022
I’ve always said, the only ordinary people are the people you don’t know. Emma Beech, creator and performer of The Photo Box is no ordinary person. The creative heads at Vitalstatistix and Brink, Emma Webb and Chris Drummond respectively, have watched with delight how she has grown her capacity to extract the extraordinary from the lives of others and retell it with alacrity, humour and sensitivity on stage. In The Photo Box, she turns her remarkable talent on herself.
Beech grew up in a huge family on the banks of Lake Barmera. She missed the hub bub so much, she had triplets. The youngest of nine by a country mile, her elderly parents surrendered the family pics for some organization and Beech discovered her mob was interesting too.
Lovely old photos in faded pink tones of the child Emma are splashed on to movable boards upstage that simulate album viewing. The set evokes the lake itself complete with one of the ubiquitous dead trees derived from frequent re-flooding. Early on, Beech wisely eschews strict chronology for thematic grouping and narrative arc. Christmases, boyfriends, jobs, big brothers, parents, school, and partying fly off the photos and inhabit the versatile performer. Sporting an orange suit, her slim figure belies birthing triplets - the stories from the hospital nursery were very poignant. Whereas Matisse conveyed fulsome form in a sketch of few brushstrokes, Beech theatrically evokes family, friends and acquaintances with skillful minimalism. Director Mish Grigor shows off Beech’s capacity to transit between scenes and themes with grace and assurance, and associate biography with whimsical nostalgia and poignant memory. Some family make cameo appearances in film and in person. Confessions and intimate detail must have provided a gamut of emotions for Beech during show development that exudes as tender humour and honest reflection on stage.
Many of us are challenged by old photos, often because of fossilised interpretations of the past. Emma Beech inspires us to plunge in and have a fresh look with our subsequent accumulated life experience and to discover that the past is not forever the same. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 7 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Michaela Coventry, Sage Arts. Queen’s Theatre. 4 Mar 2022
We are told the show will last 35:33. We are ushered inside the bare whitewashed walls of the colonial Queen’s Theatre and before us is a room with tiny round tables - each with a single chair - laid out in neat rows. The only light emanates from the desk lamp on each table which is accompanied by a mid-20th Century-style, pre-push button, fixed line rotary dial phone and a small plug-in switchboard. All this is designed to take one back if one’s been there.
When I listen to 891 long after Peter Goers is finished - in the wee hours when I cannot sleep - I wonder about the lives of the people calling in. Who are they and why are they up and apparently alert? Victorian theatre-maker Roslyn Oades has actually taken her inquiry of this phenomenon to a whole new level by collecting thousands of messages volunteered by night owls between midnight and 6 am who call her special number. Again to invoke the past, their voices are replayed with the scratchy sound quality when answering machine messages were recorded on magnetic tape. Shift workers, bar staff, students, and even young people purge their anxieties and foibles, or ramble on in the dead of night.
Like the operator of an old telephone exchange from the movies, one can switch between callers and have a unique listening experience. Frequently ambient sound (Bob Scott – co-creator) and lighting effects (Fausto Brusamolino) bring the audience together for a shared experience.
In this immersive audio experience, you are awake in the middle of the night. That’s when the mind wanders - searching for meaning or rummaging through memory. Neat rows of tiny desks took me back to high school exams – complete with an invigilator (Katia Molino) observing from a high desk. The messages forced me to recall the disassociation I felt hearing a living voice without bodily attachment – more pertinent with someone you love than with an entertainment. Remember, this was a time when recorded messaging in the home was new, and one was getting used to the technology. Although the rotary dial on the phone was not connected, I played with it by dialing the number of the home of my
adolescence 233-3756, several times – maybe my Mum or Dad would pick up - even though they are deceased and the house is demolished. And all those torturous calls late-at-night trying to resuscitate a dying teen relationship. I found the The Nightline experience a deeply personal one.
But what does it hold for a more youthful audience member without nostalgia to be triggered? Perhaps creator Roslyn Oades is an aficionado of American film noir with its dark moods of pessimism, fatalism and menace. This makes the The Nightline a visceral introduction to the genre for the novice.
After 35 minutes and 33 seconds, the telephone ominously goes dead with the beep of disconnection. The invigilator slides back the enormous roller door and the fresh air outside awakens one as if from a dream. A delightful and transcendent experience.
David Grybowski
When: 4 to 20 March
Where: Queen’s Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Production Image Credit: Tony Lewis