I first encountered Kip Williams’ work in
2013, with his production of Romeo
and Juliet for the Sydney
Theatre Company. From the opening moments with the Montague boys swinging
on the chandelier, to Mercutio’s mustard-coloured velvet suit, the revolving
mansion, a tangibly dangerous knife-fight, snatches of Alt-J and Max Richter in
the soundtrack, and the devastating conclusion of empty white beds in a black
void, I was struck by the poetic imagery and exuberance with which it exploded
onto the Drama Theatre stage.
I’ve since had the pleasure to see the
rest of Williams’ work for the STC. From the stark isolation of his Macbeth,
to the aching Chekhovian lyricism of Children
of the Sun, the luscious haunting of Suddenly
Last Summer, and the frenetic kaleidoscope of Love
and Information, Williams’ body of work is nothing short of remarkable.
Following my recent chat with fellow STC
Resident Director Sarah Goodes, I sat down with Kip Williams for an
engrossing and lengthy discussion about the nature of scale, the poetics of
space, the enormous challenges of wrestling Love
and Information to the stage, and the promise of STC’s 2016
season.
Often cited as the
world’s longest love-letter, Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando
is a fictional biography of Orlando, an Elizabethan youth who wins the favour
of Queen Elizabeth I, and through good fortune and a dash of incredulity, lives
across centuries, barely ageing a day in the process; following a sex-change in
Constantinople, she (“for there can be no doubt about her sex”) returns to
England a woman, only to find the deck of cards is stacked against her time and
again, until Woolf’s novel finishes in “the present age” (i.e. 1928), when
Orlando is well over three-hundred years old (yet looks little more than thirty
six). Adapted for the stage by Sarah Ruhl, Sydney Theatre Company’s production
of Orlando
is directed by Sarah
Goodes, and although full of colour and energy, it is perhaps hampered
somewhat by a text which contains perhaps too much of Woolf’s own text and not
enough of the playwright’s own dramaturgical landscaping to make it a truly
effective piece of theatre.
When John Doyle’s play Vere (Faith) was announced as part of
Sydney Theatre Company’s 2013 season, I leapt at the chance to become
acquainted with director Sarah
Goodes’ work. I had heard positive reviews from her previous productions at
STC – Anthony Neilson’s Edward Gant's Amazing
Feats of Loneliness in 2011,
and Hilary
Bell’s The Splinter in 2012 – so although
I had been unable to see both those productions, I knew of her work’s
reputation as being generous-spirited, inquisitive, and compassionate pieces of
theatre.
Since 2013, I’ve had the pleasure to see
four of her productions, with a fifth – Orlando
– about to open. Following the end of Battle
of Waterloo’s run, I sat down with Goodes for a discussion about her
work as an independent theatre-maker and as a Resident Director at STC, the
importance of new work, the role of a director, and the seriousness of playing.
We’re all familiar
with digital content being present with us wherever we go, of being able to
lose ourselves to the point of oblivion in a hand-held screen as real life
happens around us, but the possibilities of immersive theatre are still
relatively untapped in Australia.
Sitting somewhere between art installation, theatre, and real-life
do-it-yourself adventure storytelling, immersive theatre can be created on as
large or as intimate a scale as the space and resources allow, with the
intention that no two experiences are identical. British theatre company Punchdrunk are game-changing pioneers in this
scene, and their work is nothing short of phenomenal, bringing “cinematic [levels] of detail”
to large-scale installations in often unexpected locations.
Part of this
year’s Village
Bizarre festival in The Rocks, 7-ON’s
We
Are the Ghosts of the Future is a home-grown piece of immersive theatre
set in The Rocks in 1935, on the day of Charles Kingsford-Smith’s
disappearance. Whilst roaming around the Rocks Discovery
Museum, the audience is
given relative autonomy to wander in and out of rooms, building the (a?) world
from the fragments and scenes we glimpse, the people we meet. Particularly
memorable and powerful are the cross-dressing policeman, the abortionist (or
‘kind gentleman,’ to use the period’s euphemism), and the artist and the idiot
savant (or ‘holy fool’). Street urchin children run throughout the building,
trying to steal hats or delivering letters, and they are kind of like a ball of
red string which connects each of the characters in this labyrinth.
Having previously
tackled Greek myths and self-devised theatre, Lies, Lies and Propaganda (LLP)
have decided to tackle a completely scripted piece for their latest production,
but I’m not sure it is the right vehicle to showcase their strengths, as
individuals and as theatre-making collective. Sheila Callaghan’s Roadkill Confidential
is the story of Trevor, a successful artist with a penchant for roadkill
victims, whose latest work becomes a matter of national importance and the
subject of a top-secret investigation when citizens start dying. While
Callaghan’s play purports to ask the question ‘can art truly be dangerous, or
is it only true when it is,’ it ultimately doesn’t quite reach the searing heights
it sets out to investigate, and leaves us feeling left on the shoulder of the
road one too many times.
Angela Betzien’s
reputation as a writer of darkly furious plays which are as much social commentaries
as they are impassioned calls to action makes her new play, Mortido, a welcome
jolt of adrenaline in the tail-end of a year of theatre. Exploding upon Belvoir’s
corner-stage after a critically successful season in Adelaide, Mortido is equal parts crime drama,
revenge tragedy, morality play, and familial drama all in one thrilling
evening.
Co-commissioned by
Belvoir and Playwriting Australia, and
presented here in a coproduction between Belvoir and State Theatre Company of South
Australia, Mortido begins with a
Mexican fable about death, life, and rebirth, and ricochets between past and
the present, dreams and reality, across multiple countries and continents, while
hunting down its elusive target. Amongst it all, its beating heart is the story
of Jimmy, a small-time dealer in Sydney’s west, his medium-big-time distributor
brother-in-law Monte, and their various run-ins with police detective Grubbe.
Connecting all of them is cocaine, and an article
from the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011 that inspired Betzien to ultimately write
this play.
