A delight

By Joana Simmons

Every once in a while, a piece of live theatre combines the exact amount of all the right ingredients to make the perfect potion. New Zealand Company Indian Ink’s production Guru of Chai is as warm, sweet and spicy as chai itself. This beautiful romantic thriller is told by bucktoothed chameleon, Jacob Rajan, who energetically plays seventeen different characters that jump in and out of the epic tale. Accompanied by musician Adam Ogle, this is one wonderful story to get swept up in.

The almost-full house on opening night is eating out of the palm of Rajan’s hand about three minutes in. He wins us over with charisma and comedy, telling us that all our problems (being stressed, being overweight, painful urination) will be gone by the end of the night. He transports us to bustling Bangalore railway station, painting an animated and, for anyone who has been to India, hilariously accurate picture. There at his chai stand, his life is changed with a young girl’s song, and the story develops from there. All elements of drama, pace, comedy, love, suspense and action flow and follow, skillfully enacted by Rajan. We are on board the whole way, with full belly-laughs and absolute breathless, edge-of-seat silence in some parts of this tale. It is magic.

It astounds me how Rajan played so many characters effortlessly to carry the story, and each character had its own personality and authenticity. You can see why this production has won two Edinburgh Fringe First awards, three Production of the Year awards, as well as achieving Best Play, Best Composer and Best Actor at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. Written by Rajan and Justin Lewis, the story is succinct and gives us little lessons along the way to hang onto. For myself and my date for the evening, who have both spent some time in India, we were nodding our heads and laughing at how the little details were so true, and was wonderful to be transported back to the intense sensory experience that is India. The music and sound design by David Ward which was played onstage by Adam Ogle, weaves in the Eastern tones and sound effects to add dimension and drama. I loved when both performers sang together with so much commitment and heart.

John Verryt’s set and costume-design concept was both simple and beautiful, reminiscent of an Indian skyline and interior of a home or shop. This combined with Cathy Knowsley’s lighting design which cleverly uses torches and shadow very well.

I was lucky to catch this show on a Tuesday night in the middle of a very busy week. I was also developing a chest infection, which hardly had me in the mood for doing anything other than drinking tea; but this show fully put the spring back in my step and gave me a cup of tea as well. If you love escaping the every-day, this show is the one to do it. It’s heart-warming, it’s epic, and it even has a few words of wisdom. It was brilliant: I’m still smiling. Whilst it may not have left us no longer stressed, overweight, and suffering painful urination, it certainly proves that laughter is the best medicine.

Guru of Chai was performed 22-27 August, 2017 at Arts Centre Melbourne.

https://www.artscentremelbourne.com.au/event-archive/2017/theatre-drama/guru-of-chai

Sci-fi on stage full of dark foreboding

By Caitlin McGrane

Dystopian futures have traditionally been the domain of Australian film: it’s rare to see the richly constructed dramatic landscapes from Mad Max recreated on stage. Red Stitch‘s current production The Way Out is one such example, directed by Penny Harpham and with an impressively layered script written by Josephine Collins that tells the story of a dystopian Australia. Shortly after a civil war when the land has been contaminated and there’s only krill to eat, Helen (Brigid Gallacher) and her veteran father Stewart (Dion Mills) own a pub in Margo selling bootleg booze to Aussie battlers Ryan (Kevin Hofbauer) and Claire (Olga Makeeva). They are visited by a government inspector, Fyfe (the always impressive Rory Kelly) on the same day as their black-market goods peddler Harry (Sahil Saluja), throwing their quietly subversive life into chaos and opening the door just a little too much into the past.

As the story unfolds, there’s a great sense of foreboding that casts a shadow over the rest of the play. A character coughs or Helen and Stewart recite their family motto, and you know it’s going to be important later. Each character is drawn with care and consideration, with nearly equal attention paid to all, and it’s impressive to watch that unfurl in a way that for the most part maintains its clarity and coherence.

The story itself seemed unusual to me for a stage play, but this worked to the play’s advantage because it enhanced my enjoyment of watching the cast working together as a team, as people (presumably) would need to in the event of a dystopian sci-fi-esque future.

With a running time of roughly 90 minutes, there is a lot to pack in, and I found the pacing towards the end to be slightly uneven. The characters had to do a lot of the scaffolding through the words of the script, and it would have been interesting in places to have a little more ‘show’ and a little less ‘tell’. It seemed to me the denouement felt slightly rushed; I had to clarify on the way home whether I had understood the play’s ending. That said, my attention was held throughout, and despite the larger story playing out just beyond the doors of the pub, I was engrossed by how this was being represented on stage.

The stage itself was tiny, and I was thoroughly impressed with the utilitarian staging (Liberty Gilbert and Natalie Lim), sets and costumes (Charlotte Lane) that brought the play’s ideas into physical being. Lighting design (Clare Springett and Michael Robinson) and sound (Daniel Nixon) were crafted to enhance the drama unfolding on stage. I love seeing Red Stitch plays because they feel like real labours of love, and like everyone has chipped in to bring this thing to an audience.

Maybe I’m being optimistic, but for me this idea of cooperation was also reflected in the way Helen looked after each character and tried to work together with everyone. The Way Out made me hopeful that if the worst were to happen, we might still be okay as a species.

22 August – 24 September (previews 22 – 29 August)

Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Rear 2 Chapel St, St Kilda

https://redstitch.net/bookings/

Image by Teresa Nobile Photography

A bold and ambitious new production

By Leeor Adar

Giuseppe Verdi’s accessible and lushly beautiful opera, La Traviata, is a favourite amongst opera lovers. The score is well-recognised across the globe, and it is certainly a treat to bask in its beauty up close.

The story follows familiar operatic lines: at a decadent party, an untamed woman and courtesan Violetta falls irrevocably in love with a bourgeois countryman, Alfredo. Their love is doomed of course by external forces, tearing them from each other only to be reunited in tragedy.

Enter BK Opera, that markets itself as a unique emerging opera company. Nurturing talent without the larger-than-life set and pomp, the company tries to bring the opera right before its audience with its ‘no sets, no props, no microphone’ styling coupled with outstanding singing talent. On this occasion, director Kate Millett reincarnates La Traviata as a modern show of glitz and glamour at a high-end brothel.

Boy, did BK Opera deliver on the stagecraft. The audience sat across from one another with a runway of gold for a stage: simple, yet effective. Strewn across this golden runway were handmade tissue flowers at one point, and with the sweep of a broom, it made way for further action during the production. I was impressed with these slick and strategic decisions, including those made over the lavish costuming, which did not shy away from lace, sequins and sparkles to really add to the allure of the bordello.

However, the production occasionally fell into some shambles, with the string quartet conducted by James Penn making some unfortunate jarring mistakes on the night I attended, and with Alfredo’s (Patrick MacDevitt) volume levels, particularly in Act One drawing Violetta (Rada Tochalna) from far away into a loving reverie manifested as blasting sentiments of love. Aside from these clumsy moments, there are standout elements to the production: some of the ensemble work was charged and sexy, and Tochalna’s astonishing, rich voice and strong stage presence and characterisation really gave this production its power. Interestingly, Joshua Erdelyi-Gotz’s performance of Alfredo’s brother, Giorgio, felt more deserving as a nuanced love interest. Erdelyi-Gotz’s voice was rich, measured and conveyed wonderful emotion.

While I therefore found some elements of this production a little frustrating, I was incredibly impressed with its innovation, and for this reason I would keep an eye on future productions that BK Opera produces. Undoubtedly as a new company there will be teething problems, but I cannot ignore the magnitude of effort and ambition injected into their work.

La Traviata was performed 18-26 August, 2017 at Reid Street Auditorium in Fitzroy North. For information on upcoming BK Opera productions, visit their website: https://www.bkopera.com.au

Evocative and engrossing physical theatre

By Leeor Adar

Theatre Press was lucky to sit in once again for Dislocate’s If These Walls Could Talk…?  for the Glow Winter Arts Festival 2017. Dislocate’s marvellous physical theatre finds a memorable home with slapstick comedy and the melancholy. If you think you’re in for some light physical comedy, you would be delighted to find that Dislocate’s artists are excellent acrobats, but even more brilliant storytellers.

Dislocate was founded in 1998 by Kate Fryer and Geoffrey Dunstan for the purpose of showcasing high-quality circus acts alongside powerful narratives. They have toured extensively over the years, and were nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Physical or Visual Theatre in 2015.

In this 2017 production, our four performers, director Fryer, Dunstan, Luke Taylor and Sam Aldham embody the lives of several decades of residents in an apartment. Generation after generation of inhabitants, starting from the 1960s, find themselves embarking on the harrowing highs and lows of life. At the close of each ‘life’ segment, the ensemble sweep in to dismantle the space in preparation for the next arrivals.

The performance is littered with polarities – on one hand we find ourselves admiring the devotion of an elderly couple remembering their youth and first flush of love for one another, and then despair when we see that they quietly follow through into mutual tragedy, and this theme continues throughout the production. Other sequences include the spirit of a lover haunting their living loved one as they groove to the music of the 1970s, and the tragi-comic suicide attempts of a man whose attempts are foiled by the higher powers of a faulty window and high-functioning ceiling lamp.

It’s unsurprising this production brings audiences in the droves and attracts critical acclaim – I laughed, gasped and sighed, all the while at the edge of my seat. If you have the chance to catch Dislocate in action, I would highly recommend it.

If These Walls Could Talk…? was performed from Thursday 17 – Saturday 20 August at Chapel Off Chapel. To keep up to date with Dislocate’s work, visit their website here: http://www.dislocate.com.au/web/Home.html

Magical

By Joana Simmons

“Everything is matter, and everything matters” – Quork.

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that can have the biggest effect. The Secret Life of Suitcases, originally co-produced by the Unicorn Theatre, London, is a beautiful tale told through puppetry and music for audiences of all ages. We follow the story of Larry, who is swept up from his busy life by a magic suitcase and taken on a journey to see the beauty in his world that business can often cloud. It’s a heart-warming, relevant and very relatable journey that leaves a smile on faces big and small.

The Secret Life of Suitcases is the second collaboration between Ailie Cohen and playwright and director Lewis Hetherington. Their elegant poetic narrative weaves well with soundtrack by Niroshini Thambar to take us away to a world that is not far from our own, but extremely well-crafted. Larry is taken by his from his busy office life to the park, the sea, an island to outer space, and in the process shown the things he is missing. There are droplets of humour and snippets of wisdom that are engaging yet completely un-patronising for young audiences, and sent chuckles around the grown-ups, myself included. That’s one of my favourite parts of this show: the story is opened up for the audience to take what they want, rather than in a “I can’t hear you boys and girls!” kind of way.

A simple set of suitcases in conservative colour schemes transforms seamlessly into various landscapes. It astonishes me how the puppeteers do it all with their two hands, manipulating the scenery and characters while maintaining dialogue from the characters and energetically keeping the story going. A few clever changes of t-shirt and costume combined with lighting take us from the normal to the nautical and astronomical. The simplicity is stunning. Cohen and Hetherington do a fantastic job doing the whole show without microphones, though sometimes I found it difficult to hear. The story developed to a final lesson for Larry (and us) to learn right at the end, which was beautiful but some of the younger audience members started to get restless and may have missed it. It’s difficult to present a show like this that develops and gets us invested without sacrificing the length of a show – this one almost achieves that.

It was an absolute treat to sit back and enjoy this clever creation. Puppetry is an art form that can sometimes cross into the naff or tacky, but The Secret Life of Suitcases was humourous and distinguished. I am happy I got to catch it; it was only on this weekend, but be sure to remember the name to catch it next time. The message is as beautiful as its delivery.

The Secret Life of Suitcases played at The Arts Centre from 12 & 13 August, 2017

http://www.secretsuitcases.com/

https://www.artscentremelbourne.com.au/