The best of thespellofwakinghours (2010 – 2016) - IN PICTURES

The best of thespellofwakinghours (2010 – 2016)

Over the past seven years, I’ve had the pleasure and fortune to see over three-hundred-and-twenty productions in Sydney and interstate, across various mainstage, independent, and underground venues, by a variety of artists and companies with diverse resources, and the results contained within this blog speak for themselves.

As I write this, the future of this blog is uncertain – new adventures await, and I am putting it on hold until I can figure out the best way to continue it in the future. It will stay here as a record and a resource for theatre-makers and theatre-lovers alike.

Thank you to all the artists – mainstage and independent alike – who have invited me to your shows, who have taken the time out to share your thoughts and knowledge, and who have got in touch for one reason or another.

Sometimes you see a show that sticks with you for whatever reason hours, days, weeks, months – even years – later, and it is in honour of these shows that I have compiled the following list, celebrating the rich and wonderful hours of adventures I’ve spent in theatres over the past seven years. So, in a roughly chronological order, here are the brain-wormy experiences that comprise the spell of waking hours.

2015, the verdict

THEATRE

Event(s) of the Year Ukchuk-ga: Pansori Mother Courage – Sydney Festival Camille O’Sullivan: Changeling – Sydney Festival The Tempest – Bell Shakespeare What Rhymes with Cars and Girls – MTC Orfeo ed Euridice – Spectrum Now
Honourable Mention 4.48 Psychosis; Manic Pixie Dream World – SUDS All About Medea – Montague Basement Of Mice and Men – Sport for Jove Battle of Waterloo – STC Love and Information – STC & Malthouse Man of La Mancha – Squabbalogic A View from the Bridge – Young Vic [NT Live]
Dishonourable Mention Tabac Rouge – Sydney Festival Five Properties of Chainmale – Arts Radar & Griffin Independent The Rocky Horror Show – Richard O’Brien She Only Barks at Night – Living Room Theatre Jumpy – STC/MTC
Best (New) Play What Rhymes with Cars and Girls, Aidan Fennessy Battle of Waterloo, Kylie Coolwell Extinction, Hannie Rayson Manic Pixie Dream World, Tansy Gardam	The Most Pertinent Award ASYLUM – Apocalypse Theatre Company
The ‘Proud Overdaring’ Award Masquerade – Griffin Theatre Company, STCSA, & Sydney Festival Mother Courage and Her Children – Belvoir Edward II – Sport for Jove	Shakesproud The Tempest (dir. John Bell) Hamlet (dir. Saro Lusty-Cavallari) Love’s Labour’s Lost (dir. Damien Ryan)

The Playlist: 2015 at the theatre

As with previous years, ‘The Playlist’ is a musical summary of the year’s theatre-going. The rule is (mostly) simple: find a piece of music that encapsulates either the production or my response to it (or both, as the case often is). The only catch is I cannot re-use a piece from a previous year, even if it is the same text.

Thus, here is The Playlist for 2015.

We are left darkling: STC’s King Lear

Alongside Hamlet, King Lear is one of the megaliths of the Western dramatic canon, regarded by Percy Bysshe Shelley as “the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world.” Often cited as being sublime and universal, it is also extremely nihilistic, a bleak portrait of despair, a Bacon-like scream into the abyss. Known for his acute observations of humanity and generosity in directing, Neil Armfield’s work embraces the epic and intimate all at once, and so it was with great expectations and an almost-equal dose of trepidation that I entered his production of King Lear for Sydney Theatre Company. The only trouble is, it isn’t really that compelling at all.

There’s the point: Montague Basement’s Hamlet

Hamlet – the play, the character; the phenomenon – needs no introduction. In Sydney this year alone, we have been offered at least four productions in one form or another, and this is the third I have seen. In many respects, Montague Basement’s production is the strongest – and certainly the boldest – but it could be bolder, more daring; more Hamletian.

Kip Williams and the poetic gesture

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.

Neither a woman nor a man: STC’s Orlando

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.

Sarah Goodes and the leap of faith

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.

Our place: 7-ON’s We Are the Ghosts of the Future

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.

Lies, Lies and Propaganda’s Roadkill Confidential

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.

Mexican waves: Belvoir & STCSA’s Mortido

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.

Thrill-seeking: Griffin Theatre Company’s A Rabbit for Kim Jong-Il

In the promotional blurb, Kit Brookman’s new play – A Rabbit for Kim Jong-Il – is described as “a cunning comic thriller spanning two continents,” as being “crammed with secret agents, espionage, [and] double-crossings,” and as being “a pointed parable about betrayal and forgiveness, greed and regret.” The only trouble is, it’s not quite any of those things, least of all a thriller.

To know, to know: Genesian Theatre’s Three Sisters

This review was written for artsHub.

First performed in 1901, Chekhov’s Three Sisters is a play about love, the question (and delusion) of love, and the notion of happiness and/or contentedness. Perhaps not as bleak as Ivanov, or as elegantly poignant as The Seagull, Three Sisters is still undeniably Chekhovian in its depiction of a group of people caught up in their foibles and their lives, with much philosophising and talk of fate and the future that lies ahead of them. The three Pozorov sisters – Olga, Masha, and Irina – are stuck in a provincial town hundreds of miles from Moscow, and one day dream of returning to their beloved city; fate, however, has other ideas, and life overtakes them, further anchoring them to the small town. In one sense, it is a comedy in the Chekhovian sense, but at the same time it is very much a drama. This production at the Genesian Theatre is undeniably a comedy, but not as Chekhov ever intended it.

Modern Prometheus: SUDS & Verge Festival’s Manic Pixie Dream World

Perhaps it’s an indication of our shift in socio-cultural thinking, that a lot of the narrative tropes we take for granted in popular culture are being turned on their head and examined in the theatre, on film, in books and comics and other mediums. Like All About Medea recently, SUDS’ Manic Pixie Dream World (henceforth MPDW) draws on the manic-pixie-dream-girl trope and problematises it like it deserves, making recent filmic forays such as Ruby Sparks look rather mild and clumsy by comparison.  

Proud overdaring: Sport for Jove’s Edward II

Written in 1592, Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II is a spectacular exploration of what happens when passion and politics mix, when desires and allegiances are compromised, and what happens when you are forced to choose one over the other. While Marlowe’s Edward pursues his desires over good government and lawfulness, his play has perhaps been eclipsed by another Elizabethan play about a transgressive king faced with a similar choice. That is not to denigrate Marlowe’s play which is strong by itself but, like Edward II, Sport for Jove’s production suffers from following its passion for accessibility and contemporaneity rather than its foundations in solid dramatic traditions.

Uplifted: Black Swan’s The Red Balloon

Released in 1956, Albert Lamorisse’s film The Red Balloon is a near-wordless story of a boy and an almost-sentient balloon in post-war Paris. It’s a beautiful film, whimsical and charming to boot, but rewatching it now, there’s a curious emptiness in the film which makes it even more poignant. This production, adapted by Hilary Bell from Lamorisse’s film (not the subsequent slightly over-sentimental book he fashioned from it) and designed by India Mehta, takes note of this emptiness and creates a poignant piece of theatre which never feels forced or indulgent.

Quollity: Black Swan’s Extinction

It’s an interesting coincidence that there are two plays currently playing on national mainstages that deal quite substantially with the idea of extinction. Malthouse’s They Saw A Thylacine, and Black Swan’s Extinction talk around and about the issue, not just examining its ramifications, but also about the role we humans play in the process, the way we can prevent mass extinctions through changing the way we behave and act. Hannie Rayson’s Extinction adds another layer to the mix, in examining the idea of ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ money – money that comes from ethically-grey sources, in this case, a coal-mining company. It’s a bold move for Black Swan to produce this play, as their major sponsor is mining giant Rio Tinto, and the play’s very existence further examines this idea simply by being programmed, staged, and written about.

Out of the dark: Malthouse & HUMAN ANIMAL EXCHANGE’s They Saw A Thylacine

In September 1936, the last thylacine (or Tasmanian Tiger) died in Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo, due to exposure, cold, and lack of care or concern by the superintendant. My grandparents remember seeing that thylacine – a female, called Benjamin – and for years I was fascinated by this bizarre creature with its dog-like gait, dark stripes, straight tail, and eerily large yawn, and more than a little frightened of the grainy black-and-white footage that would be rolled out every time someone mentioned extinction or cloning (this was the early 2000s, when the Australian Museum – headed by Dr Michael Archer – was attempting, however foolishly, to clone the creature). HUMAN ANIMAL EXCHANGE’s They Saw A Thylacine – presented by Malthouse Theatre – is a simple story about two women whose paths crossed with this animal in the 1930s, and despite the simplicity and elegance of its staging, it is powerful and quite moving.

Cosmic particles: MTC’s The Boy at the Edge of Everything

Finegan Kruckemeyer has the unique ability to capture a childlike sense of wonder and storytelling, yet unlike so much theatre for young people he is never patronising, but simply asks ‘would you like to hear a story?’ and away we go. Following Kate Gaul’s production of The Violent Outburst That Drew Me to You at Griffin Theatre last year, I set about trying to track down as many of Kruckemeyer’s plays as I could; when Melbourne Theatre Company announced The Boy at the Edge of Everything as part of their 2015 season, I knew I had to see it. But sometimes great expectations can be their own worst enemy.