Earth cry: Stone Soup & Griffin Independent’s Thomas Murray and the Upside Down River

The thing I love most about the Stables theatre is the size of its stage. No other theatre in Sydney that I can think of has a stage quite like it – in size, shape, or layout – and I am constantly amazed at how malleable it is; no two productions ever feel quite the same – sometimes the space feels bigger, sometimes smaller, sometimes grander or more intimate, sometimes even a different shape, as directors, designers, and theatre-makers call upon our imaginations to inhabit and make total the world presented on stage. As you enter the theatre from the stairs, the first thing you notice is the dusty light, a golden glow like the sun, like lamp-light, like candles and canvas; the floor – that precious little diamond space – is covered in planks of timber, time-worn and much-loved, creams and greens and reds and browns and greys, all slotted together in a jigsaw of a stage, like a patchwork quilt, a farm seen from the air. To one side, a ladder and chair; to another, a tyre swing; behind it, a canvas backcloth. And as the lights dim, a figure enters, breathing heavily, covered in dust and mud and dirt, and the space begins to hum with a resonance I have not quite seen in that space for a little while. And it is beautiful.

Iphigenuous: Stories Like These & Griffin Independent’s Minus One Sister

Off the top of my head, this is the fifth retelling of the myth of Orestes (and/or Elektra; they were siblings after all) that I have seen in the past couple of years. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, except that I am still confused as to the finer points of what actually happens in the myth, traditionally-speaking. Some of the retellings, like Kit Brookman’s Small and Tired chose to set their action decades after the events, while others, like Elektra/Orestes earlier this year thrust us right into the thick of it.

Winner of the 2013 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, Anna Barnes’ Minus One Sister is based off of Sophocles’ version of the story, and unfolds in a fractured whirlwind of naturalistic dialogue scenes and chorus scenes. The story of a family – three sisters, their younger brother, and their parents – as much as the unspeakable crimes the parents commit, and the siblings’ need for retribution, Minus One Sister is a furious and fast-paced play, but I wonder if its swirl of words actually detracts from telling its stories.

A sure bet: Apocalypse Theatre Company & Griffin Independent’s The Dapto Chaser

First produced in 2011 by Merrigong Theatre Company, Mary Rachel Brown’s The Dapto Chaser is a wart-and-all love-letter to greyhound racing, and sinks its teeth into the dog-racing culture with gusto. Produced by Apocalypse Theatre Company and Griffin Independent, The Dapto Chaser is ninety minutes of acutely-observed writing and performances, wrapped up in the story of a family stuck in the vicious cycle of gambling as everything goes to, well, the dogs.

Many years ago, I read Markus Zusak’s series of books about two brothers who live near Central and spend a chunk of their time around the Wentworth Park dog track. Like Brown’s family – the Sinclair’s – the Wolfe brothers are fighting against their circumstances, each other, and end up winning in a way that only they and people like them can. The Dapto Chaser centres around a dog called ‘Boy Named Sue’, his owner Cess, Cess’ brother Jimmy who works at the Dapto race track, their father Errol, and the dog club manager Arnold Denny, and the dog-eat-dog struggle they find themselves locked into seemingly forever. Where The Dapto Chaser succeeds with flying colours, is in its language, its depiction of this family on the lower edge of society; in its evocation of the colourful and larger than life characters you find trackside.

Blunt instruments: Arts Radar & Griffin Independent’s Five Properties of Chainmale

Nicholas Hope’s Five Properties of Chainmale is described as a “confronting, uncomfortable and comical” examination of “modern man [as he] grapples with his crumbling reflection.” Despite the clumsy title, you could be forgiven for expecting a provocative and thought-provoking piece of theatre. What we get instead is clumsy, rather blunt, and dramaturgically confused, and never quite works out what it is trying to say.