Saturday, August 17, 2013

JOE CALLERI REVIEWS: SAVAGES by Patricia Cornelius

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What – SAVAGES by Patricia Cornelius
Where and When – fortyfive downstairs, 16 August 2013 – 08 September 2013
Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars - 4.

THE CAST OF SAVAGES, FROM L TO R: BROOKS, O'CONNELL, TREGONNING, ELLIOT - IMAGE SUPPLIED
Full Disclosure - I attended the opening night of this production on a complimentary ticket as the guest of a media invitee.

While the line notes in the program do not make reference to it, Patricia Cornelius’s sweat and testosterone-fuelled play, Savages, is based on some of the people involved in, and events that surrounded, the tragic death in 2002 of 42-year old, Dianne Brimble, after she was administered a lethal dose of the date rape drug, GHB, by a group of eight men, during an ill-fated cruise on the ship, Pacific Sky.

In Savages, Cornelius’s four characters are a sub-species of middle-aged, suburban man, utterly incapable of forming either meaningful, or in fact, any relationships with women.

We first sight these four miscreants, George (Lyall Brooks), Runt (Luke Elliot), Rabbit (James O’Connell), and Craze (Mark Tregonning) as they slowly, menacingly emerge half naked from the darkened set like grotesque, misshapen monsters. Andy Turner’s moody lighting and Kelly Ryall's deep, throbbing sound design, are among the many highlights of this production.  

When we next see the four, it’s cheerful back slapping and high fives all round as they anxiously wait at the docks before embarking on a pleasure cruise of a life-time where each expresses a desire to either lose, re-discover, or re-invent themselves. Runt, for example, will no longer be short, while Rabbit intends to throw in his job as a motor mechanic.

Once aboard set designer Marg Horwell’s intelligently, efficiently designed ship deck, complete with tiny stateroom (which echoes the famous state room sequence in the Marx Brothers’ film, A Night At The Opera, and which offers the audience the play’s only genuinely comedic moments), the four quickly come to terms with cruise life, including how quickly boredom sets in once they have finished their strenuous physical work-outs and sunbathed.

The initial jocularity, bonhomie and excitement felt by the four regarding their prospects of “scoring” while on board, becomes subsumed by some unenlightened navel gazing and general observations about the disappointments of life, and in particular, their fraught, failed relationships with the opposite sex.

However, any flickers of sensitivity, humanity, compassion, or emotional intelligence displayed by the characters, including when Runt speaks lovingly of his mother, are short-lived before we are jolted back into a grimmer reality as George speaks of drowning his lover, Craze threatens to kidnap his children, Rabbit admits to not enjoying sex, and Runt expresses his general and palpable disgust of women, who are ugly pigs fit only for rutting.

Cornelius has incorporated into her dialogue some of the deeply disparaging comments that those accused of killing Brimble, in particular, Letterio Silvestri, made about her, during the course of police interviews.

While certain of the themes and dialogue become repetitive, and Cornelius’s narrative deliberately casts out a number of red herrings that are not resolved, these are relatively trivial complaints and easily forgivable when one enjoys the intense and committed acting of the four male actors, Susie Dee’s precise, tight as a drum directing, and the overall high quality of this production.

Cornelius’s and Dee’s Savages, is a nightmarish journey into, and exploration of, the very darkest heart of modern male masculinity and misogyny, that recognises no boundaries, no laws, and exposes the tragic outcomes when those men allow themselves to be reduced to the level of savage beasts capable only of acting on their most primitive, and physical urges.

Highly recommended.



 

Friday, August 9, 2013

JOE CALLERI REVIEWS: RONNIE BURKETT THEATRE OF MARIONETTES IN PENNY PLAIN


What – RONNIE BURKETT THEATRE OF MARIONETTES IN PENNY PLAIN
Where and When – ARTS CENTRE, MELBOURNE, FAIRFAX STUDIO, 08-18 AUGUST, 2013
Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars – 4.

Full Disclosure - I attended the opening night of this production on a complimentary ticket as the guest of a media invitee.

The Master Marionetteer, Ronnie Burkett, with Penny Plain. Image Supplied.
The latest news is of global Armageddon. Hundreds of millions are dead as a result of widespread global warming, pandemics, viruses, and earthquakes. In the midst of such death, destruction and the breakdown of society as we know it, and quietly sitting in her armchair, is a frail, blind, gentle, unassuming woman, and the titular character of Ronnie Burkett’s marvellous marionette performance, Penny Plain. Sitting next to Ms Plain is well, her … all too human dog, Geoffrey.

Ronnie Burkett, that fast-talking, masterfully dextrous Canadian marionetteer, returns to Melbourne with one of his darkest themed shows to date.

Prepare to be amazed as more than twenty of Burkett’s beautiful, delicately sculpted marionettes, seem to take on lives and emotions of their own, as they navigate, with varying measures of success, the many real perils of a world that is rapidly descending into chaos, corruption and often unspeakable madness and cruelty.

Yes, there are moments of levity, common decency, civility, and a surprising, yet tantalising hint of a potentially bright future for our world during Penny Plain, but, admittedly those moments are brief and mostly weighed down by Burkett’s powerfully clear sub-text that warns audiences of the dire consequences of continuing to abuse our precious planet … and one other.

For those theatre patrons seeking a somewhat unusual, yet genuinely thought-provoking, heart-felt and beautifully conceived and executed theatrical production that allows them to witness a true master of a rare craft at work, I unreservedly recommend Penny Plain to you.



 

Thursday, August 1, 2013

JOE CALLERI REVIEWS - EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, An Opera in Four Acts.


What – EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, An Opera in Four Acts
Where and When – The Arts Centre, Melbourne from 31 July, 2013 to 04 August 2013.
Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars – 4.  

The Trial Scene from Einstein on the Beach. Image by Stephanie Berger.
Full Disclosure - I attended the opening night of this production on a complimentary ticket as the guest of a media invitee.

Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach is a four and a half hour long, pulsing, mesmeric, meditative, mind-bendingly epic journey into a fourth dimension of light, sound, movement, and wonderful stage magic.

Devoid of conventional narrative and through line which may alienate many prospective theatre goers, Einstein fuses Philip Glass’s eclectic, often repetitive musical score, Robert Wilson’s inspired direction, and timeless, wondrous stage design, poetry by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M Johnson and Lucinda Childs, ballet (choreography by Andrew de Groat), and opera, with an obsessive, perfectionist, wonderful attention to detail that I have rarely seen displayed in a theatrical performance.

Watching this work, and contemplating some of its pressing contemporary themes including conformity in manner, in dress and in action, android-like dehumanisation, mindless repetition of tasks, phrases, sound bytes and news stories on constant 24 hour loops, it is hard to believe it was first performed in France, in 1976.

Together, Glass and Wilson have set about exploring and then exploding Einstein’s life, his massive intellect and his complex, ground-breaking theories on gravity, relativity, quantum mechanics, space and time, and life itself, into tiny fragments, and then ever so intelligently, elegantly and creatively laid those fragments out into eleven performances.

So, we have Einstein appearing during the performance either in projected photographs, or portrayed (complete with trademark white hair and brush moustache) by wonderful solo violinist - and one of the stand-out stars of this performance - Antoine Silverman. Einstein was a proficient violinist with a love of Mozart’s sonatas.

But, it is the complex, befuddling complexity of time itself that so intrigued Einstein, and Glass and Wilson have attempted to explore this concept theatrically: a train appears to travel at a glacial pace, performers repeat gestures and expressions, and banal, routine, nonsensical words, expressions, names, and number sequences (1,2,3,4,5,6) are repeated in perfect, loop-like, infinite patterns.

Given the duration and complexity of this work, you will be amazed at the skill, dexterity, patience, physical endurance, and commitment to perfection of the scores of performers on stage and in the orchestra pit. While I have singled out Silverman earlier in this review, the sum of each performer (including young Jasper Newell) contributes equally to the whole.   

Lest you believe you are stuck in the theatre for the entire marathon running time, audiences have the opportunity of leaving the theatre and returning to the performance whenever they wish. On the night I attended, 8pm seemed a popular time for many audience members to take a nature break, stretch their legs, or leave the theatre not to return.

No, this piece is not universally accessible; some will find it cold, aloof, high-brow and conceptual, bewildering, frustrating, impenetrable, alienating. But, if you are prepared to invest your hard-earned time, Einstein will reward you with one of the theatre world’s most remarkable and unforgettable theatrical experiences.

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