HEIST

 

Heist

Written and produced by Shaylie Maskell. Directed by Shaylie Maxell and Elliot Cleaves. Green Oak Theatre. Belconnen Theatre. July 6 – 9 2023

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

Marlies Wray, Jesica King, Grace O'Mahoney and Daniel Tonon in HEIST

The emergence of a new theatre company in Canberra is a sign that the interest in theatre is thriving. Green Oak Theatre is mounting its third production since it began in 2020 with The Thornwaite Inheritance: the Musical and then followed this with If I could Save Her in 2021. Heist is the first post pandemic play written by company founder Shaylie Maskell with music provided by Caleb Wells. Heist, inspired by a play written while in high school, is Pink Panther meets Get Smart  comedy. Maxell, who also directs the production with Elliot Cleaves revisits the era of crime spoof action movies. The notorious Capella Gang kidnap billionaire Santo Sylvestri (Daniel Tonin). Incompetent D.I. Koffman (Sam Whiter) is on the trail, but it is butt of their bullying Constable Davey (David Hatherley) who ultimately cracks the case after a lot of slapstick, madness and mayhem, Maskell and Cleaves keep the action moving and the cast throw themselves into the zaniness with vigour and vim.

Mylee Pynt and Robbie Cohen in Heist

Green Oak is a company of emerging young actors, offering performance experience to interested cast and creatives. It also offers Maskell the opportunity to develop her skills in playwrighting and Heist is tightly structured and well plotted. It holds the interest and has enough twists and turns to keep an audience guessing. It is too long, running almost two hours without an interval. There is enough business to keep the comedy alive and the interest in the characters that are played with conviction by the performers but it becomes repetitive and could easily lose twenty minutes. The actors throw themselves into their parts sometimes too loudly and too boisterously. Even in a farcical comedy subtlety can prove an effective device to keep an audience guessing and a character more interesting. This comes with experience.

Sam Whiter,Alex Malegan,Hester Macdonald,Luke Lampard
,Hayden McPherson,David Hatherley in Heist

I am conscious while watching that I am watching a company of actors who may continue to develop as performers. There is obviously talent amongst the cast with interesting performances also from Luke Lampard as the camp TV Director and his assistant Marjorie (Chazelle Cromhout). Marshalling fifteen largely inexperienced performers around the stage can be a challenge on the Belconnen Theatre stage.

Heist has been a fun production for the company and audience alike, played with enthusiasm and gusto. In future it would be interesting to see Maskell’s playwrighting become more sophisticated and with  fewer characters and for Green Oak Theatre to stage well established playwrights with an experienced director. I look forward to seeing Green Oak grow and branch out.

 

VOICE UNWRAPPED

Sarah Mann, soprano

Ella Luhtasaari, piano

with

Milan Kolundzija, clarinet

Alira Prideaux, soprano

Sitiveni Talei, baritone

Larry Sitsky Recital Room 6 July

 

Reviewed by Len Power

 

Promised as an evening of “mainstream artsy and operatic hits”, the audience was treated to a well-planned program of mostly well-known operatic works cleverly arranged to flow effortlessly from one to the other.

Sarah Mann, soprano, is an accomplished performer, teacher and administrator. She has performed over twenty-six principal soprano roles in opera, operetta and oratorio, as well as performances with state and national arts organizations.

She teaches classical singing at the ANU School of Music and is researching singing perception. This concert is part of her PhD project exploring the ways the operatic singing technique is perceived and processed by listeners.

Ella Luhtasaari, piano, and Sarah Mann , soprano

Ella Luhtasaari is a collaborative pianist and teacher based in Canberra. She completed bachelor degrees in music and psychology at the ANU and completed post-graduate studies in Austria and the UK. She is a vocal and language coach at the ANU School Of Music.

Each of the songs were fine examples of operatic works that affect an audience through verbal and non-verbal elements, creating a sense of colours, textures, locations and emotions.

Opening with “Juliet’s Waltz” from Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette”, Sarah Mann conveyed the joyful moment of youth inherent in the song.  It was followed by Messaien’s “Vocalise étude”, in which the emotional sense was produced by this melodic work without words.

Milan Kolundzija and his clarinet then joined the singer with Schubert’s “Shepherd On The Rock”.  Mood, thoughts and imaginary conversation were evoked by this work, as well as the coming of spring.  Hauntingly played and sung, this work was a highlight of the concert.

Other colourful and emotional works on the program ranged from Handel’s 18^th century “Morrai si l’empia tua testa” from “Rodelinda” to Elena-Kats-Chernin’s “Eliza’s Aria” from the ballet “Wild Swans” of 2002, all of them superbly sung by Mann, who seemed to slip effortlessly into the emotional world of each song. Luhtasaari’s accompaniment on piano was excellent throughout.

For the rousing “To part is such sweet sorrow” from “Die Fledermaus” by Johann Strauss, Mann was joined by Alira Prideaux, soprano, and Sitiveni Talei, (baritone). Together, they gave this bright work its full sense of good cheer, the perfect end to a highly enjoyable concert.

 

Photo by Len Power

This review was first published by Canberra CityNews digital edition on 7 July 2023.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

  

PIERS LANE - Snow Concert Hall International Series.

 

Snow Concert Hall, June 29^th, 2023.

Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS

London-based Australian pianist, Piers Lane AO, is the second artist to be showcased in the Snow Concert Hall International Series.

Lane is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music and during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Birthday Honours was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished services to the arts. In 2022 he was presented with the Sir Bernard Heinze Award for his service to music in Australia.

His concerto repertoire of over 100 works has led to engagements with many of the world’s great orchestra’s and he has been five times soloist at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall. He also gives annual solo recitals in Wigmore Hall.

Back in Australia to chair the jury for the Sydney International Piano Competition, Lane took the opportunity to delight his Canberra audience with a sublime concert of piano works by two master composer-pianists, Rachmaninoff and Chopin.

Having recorded more than 70 CDs and premiered works by contemporary composers including Brett Dean, Colin Matthews, Richard Mills, Carl Vine and Malcolm Williamson, Lane’s choice for this concert of a program of works by two of the great classic pianist-composers, at first seemed particularly intriguing.

His program was presented in two halves. The first devoted to Sergei Rachmaninoff and the second to Frederic Chopin. In his charming introductions to each section Lane explained the reasons for his choices and the connections between the two composers.

Commencing with arguably Rachmaninoff’s most popular composition, his Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Op 3 No 2, which some believe was inspired by the bells of the Kremlin; Lane immediately captured the audience attention with his dramatic rendering of the first three chords. He played them so commandingly that the audience hardly dared to breathe until, after an extended pause, he echoed the tentative reply.  From those three notes onward he kept the audience in his thrall with his virtuosic shaping of this favourite work.

He followed with four more Rachmaninoff concerti, deftly revealing the varying moods and essence of each, before arriving at perhaps the most intriguing work on the program, Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Chopin Op.22

Lane explained that Rachmaninoff was an admirer of Chopin and often featured Chopin’s compositions in his concerts. He had composed these variations as homage. It proved to be an imposing work demanding a virtuosic interpretation, which is exactly what it received from Lane.

Following an interval, Lane continued with a collection of 11 short Chopin compositions, four of which, he explained, had originally been used for a short baller choreographed by Michel Fokine entitled “Chopiniana”. Fokine later reworked his idea by adding more of Chopin’s compositions to create the ballet “Les Sylphides” for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

Commencing with the majestic Polonaise in A Major, Op.40 No.1, Lane worked his way the entire suite of Nocturne’s, Mazurkas, Tarantellas and Waltz's, until he arrived at the final Grande Valse Brilliant in E-flat, performing each with such exquisite delicacy that it was impossible not to conjure up visions of the ethereal white-clad sylphs which provided the inspiration for one of Fokine’s most enduring ballet blancs.

Following an encore of one more Chopin nocturne, the lushly romantic Nocturne in E Flat Major, the blissed-out audience filed out into the frosty Canberra evening warmed by the realisation that it had just experienced a remarkable performance by a celebrated Australian piano virtuoso. One which will undoubtedly become a treasured memory.    

                                                     Images by Peter Hislop

        This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au               

UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL

 

Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger. 

Produced by Elizabeth Avery Scott. Technical operation. Cspian Scott. Set design Elizabeth Avery Scott. Production assistant Danielle Coles. Performed by James Scott  Honest Puck Theatre The Mill Theatre Dairy Road Fyshwick. June 28-July 2.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

James Scott in Underneath The Lintel

James Scott is a consummate storyteller. Alone on stage for eighty minutes he takes his audience on an intriguing and compelling search for the identity of a mysterious borrower who has returned an overdue book to the library in the small Dutch town of Hoofddorp, after 113 years. Scott plays an unremarkable librarian who is drawn into the improbable possibility that the book was returned by the actual borrower. His quest quickly becomes an obsession as he uncovers a series of clues that serve as evidence that becomes more and more puzzling and sets him on an irresistible journey from a Chinese laundry in London in 1913, a tram in Bonn in 1912, the estate of Lord Derby in 1756 to a love letter in 1906 and eventually to Brisbane Australia. How could the man who would not sit down in Bonn and who owned a dog that would not sit down in quarantine have in his possession a dry cleaning ticket from  a Chinese laundry in London seventy three years earlier lead him to a pair of trousers that reveal a PO Box number in China? How could a man known simply as A on the return slip have in his possession a copy of Baedeker’s Guide Book that takes him around the globe and back and forth in time through historical eras and events, projected on the back wall of the intimate Mill Theatre? The librarian decides to trace the steps of the mysterious borrower, uncovering his impressive evidence in the process. His search takes him back to the myth of the cobbler who spurned Christ underneath his lintel on the path to Golgotha and was cursed to wander the world until the Second Coming. Was this the man whom mythology had marked as immortal? Was this the man who could never sit down? And was this Ahasuerus most commonly known as the Wandering Jew? Was he the accursed borrower, condemned to travel the world aimlessly.

James Scott as The Librarian in Underneath the Lintel

Glen Berger’s play is the ideal vehicle for Scott’s talents as a storyteller who can excite curiosity, capture and captivate an audience with enticing leads, bemuse with humourous digressions, and evoke philosophical musings. The search to identify the borrower and extract the enormous fine becomes a quest for identity and an affirmation of life’s purpose and existence. In an act of defiance after being sacked for leaving his work to pursue his quest, the librarian performs the ultimate act of self-assertion by carving the words I Was Here into his desk.

In the intimacy of the Mill Theatre, Scott’s performance unravels a tale of mystery that effectively captures the moments of quirky humour or the regret at love’s lost opportunity.  From Bonn to Buchenwald and all corners of the globe Scott leads us to the librarian’s epiphany in a performance that is both heartwarming and illuminating. Sadly, Honest Puck Theatre’s season is short and one can only hope that this revival  of Scott’s 2015 performance will soon be revived again for a wider audience to enjoy.

Home, I'm Darling

 

Home, I’m Darling by Laura Wade.  Canberra REP Theatre, Naoné Carrel auditorium,  June 22 – July 8, 2023.
Book online at
http://canberrarep.org.au/content/book-online-choose-performance?ID=HD23

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 30

CAST
Judy — Karina Hudson
Johnny — Ryan Street
Fran — Natalie Waldron
Marcus — Terry Johnson
Sylvia — Adele Lewin
Alex — Kayla Ciceran

CREATIVES
Director • Alexander Pelvin
Assistant Director • Antonia Kitzel

Stage Managers • Ann-Maree Hatch, Paul Jackson
Assistant Stage Managers • Anne Gallen, Maggie Hawkins, Mae Schembri

Choreography • Annette Sharp, Madelyn White

Set Designer • Andrew Kay
Set Coordinators • Russell Brown OAM, Andrew Kay
Set Construction & Painting • Russell Brown OAM, Gordon Dickens, Rob de Fries, Rosemary Gibbons, Wolf Hecker, Andrew Kay, John Klingberg, Brian Moir
Set Dressing & Properties • Gail Cantle, Anne Gallen, Antonia Kitzel

Costume Designer • Helen Drum
Wardrobe Assistants • Jeanette Brown OAM, Ros Engledow, Rosemary Gibbons, Suzanne Hecker, Antonia Kitzel, Joan White

Lighting Designer • Stephen Still
Lighting Operators • Leeann Galloway, Deanna Gifford, Ashley Pope, Stephen Still

Sound Designer • Justin Mullins
Sound Operators • Justin Mullins, Disa Swifte


I think we have to call Home, I’m Darling a romantic comedy because, even though our laughter is quite often caused by shock as well as by empathetic recognition, in the end the twisted title comes true.  Karina Hudson’s Judy and Ryan Street’s Johnny happily find romance and respect in their marriage once again, and we laugh with them as we applaud a very well designed, directed and acted production.

The play is a cleverly written interplay between the two couples – Judy and Johnny; Fran and Marcus – in their mid-30s, without children; contrasting with Judy’s mother, Sylvia, and Johnny’s boss, Alex (assumed by Judy to be a man).

Set in the author’s UK in the 2010s, we look back through social and even political life to Sylvia’s experience of marriage as a woman in the 1980s; and further back to Judy’s romantic fixation on the 1950s.  ‘Rock Hudson’ and ‘Doris Day’ epitomise life of that time for her, along with songs like "Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White" by Perez Prado.  The value and importance of the play, including less than funny matters like sexual harassment in the work place, are revealed to us as we see Judy’s change in her understanding of herself.

The play is not only fascinating on that mental appreciation level:  the set design, the costumes and the choreography of how a feminist woman, who chooses to be a 1950s-style housewife, moves – “I have the choice,” she insists – is a wonder to be seen.  Andrew Kay and Russell Brown, Helen Drum, with Annette Sharp and Madelyn White all deserve Oscars in their own right.  As do the scene shifters (moving to those 1950s Harry Belafonte rhythms in bow tie and cocktail dress) like shadows of a formal past of butlers and maids.  

Canberra REP has a long history of top-class productions, and I was more than pleased to find myself comparing this play and the quality of the performances with my recent viewing of the 1984 play Benefactors, directed by Mark Kilmurry at Ensemble Theatre in Sydney (on this blog and at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com  June 24, 2023).  

There I wrote that the “directing of the actors’ characterisations show all the essential elements of Hayes Gordon’s instructive approach to Stanislavsky and method acting (Acting and Performing 1992)”; and I can now write the same of Alexandra Pelvin’s work with equal success for each of her actors.

Oddly enough the plays themselves have a similar device – going backwards and forwards in time – in Michael Frayn’s case from the 1980s to the 1960s.  Perhaps there’s a kind of English osmosis across time happening between Michael Frayn, now aged 89, and Laura Wade aged 46.  

As REP’s director Pelvin writes: “Laura Wade’s Olivier Award-winning satire has a lot to say about the complexity of women’s choices in the modern era, the pressures of modern life, and the desire to find a modicum of control in an unpredictable world” so could I write of Benefactors: “The great thing about Kilmurry choosing this play – and working so well with such finely-tuned actors – is that Frayn writes with a surprising yet satisfying combination of a depth of concern for his characters with a great sense of humour.  Time and again, we find ourselves laughing while recognising how real these characters’ thoughts and feelings are – in ourselves.”

And Mark Kilmurry could surely have said, as Alexandra Pelvin does in her Program Note, the play “is peopled with beautifully written characters, skillfully brought to life by my clever and capable cast.  It was a joy working with such a focused, kind, and hilarious group of actors.”  With special praise for Ryan Street covering with such short notice for the original Johnny, Tom May, who we hope has recovered well from illness.

So, from every point of view, Canberra REP’s production of Home, I’m Darling is not to be missed.

Ryan Street, left, and Karina Hudson
in Home, I'm Darling by Laura Wade.
Canberra Repertory Theatre, 2023
Picture by Eve Murray and Alex Fitzgerald
The Canberra Times

ST JOHN PASSION

Andrew Goodwin singing as the Evangelist

Music by J.S.Bach

Canberra Symphony Orchestra

Conducted by Elizabeth Scott

Llewellyn Hall, 30 June

 

Reviewed by Len Power

 

From the electrifying singing of the chorus of the opening of Bach’s “St John Passion”, it quickly became apparent that this performance was going to be something special.

Composed for Good Friday 1724, this story of Christ’s passion is dramatic and thoroughly involving as Bach’s glorious music weaves its spell over this much told story.  The story begins with Christ in the garden of Gethsemane and continues through his trial and, finally, his crucifixion.

The Canberra Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Elizabeth Scott, was joined by soloists Chloe Lankshear, soprano, Andrew O’Connor, bass, David Greco, bass, Tobias Cole, counter tenor and Andrew Goodwin, tenor, also taking over the Evangelist role from Robert Macfarlane, who was indisposed. Dan Walker, tenor, sang the smaller role of Servant.

The orchestra, conducted very well by Elizabeth Scott, played superbly throughout and the chorus singing, directed by Tobias Cole, was very strong and accurate, bringing out the full colour and meaning of Bach’s dramatic music.

The singing of the principal parts was notable for the way the distinctive voices complemented each other. Highlights included Chloe Lankshear’s beautiful singing of “Dissolve, my heart, in floods of tears”, Tobias Cole’s aria, “It is finished”, Andrew O’Connor’s heartfelt singing throughout of the role of Jesus and David Greco’s aria, ” My precious saviour, let me ask”. Andrew Goodwin gave an extraordinary performance in the large role of the Evangelist, singing it with assurance, drama and great appeal.

 

Photo by Martin Ollman

 

This review was first published by Canberra CityNews digital edition 1 July 2023.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/. 

HOME, I'M DARLING

 

Home, I’m Darling by Laura Wade.

Directed by Alexandra Pelvin. Assisted by Antonia Kitzel. Set design Andrew Kay. Lighting design Stephen Still Sound design Justin Mullins. Stage Managers Paul Jackson and Ann-Maree Hatch . Production manager Ann Gallen. Canberra Repertory. Until July 8. Booking 62571950.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

 Karina Hudson is Judy in Home,I'm Darling

In Laura Wade’s cautionary play Home,I’m Darling  fantasy comes at a price. Happily married housewife Judy (Karina Hudson) has indulged her childhood nostalgia to resurrect her romantic notion of the Nineteen Fifties. She has thrown in her high level job and plays the happily subservient housewife to her husband Johnny (Ryan Street). But all is not scones and jam and cream as cracks appear in the façade and tensions rise as reality bites. Judy discovers as her mother Sylvia (Adele Lewin) only too morosely points out that the Fifties were not the bed of roses she has imagined and when the inevitable money woes surface the idyllic imaginings are dashed on the rocks of reality.

Canberra Repertory’s production of this moralistic glimpse into the past against the reality of the present is a delight to watch and cast and creatives under the direction of Alexandra Pelvin have  created a show that faithfully depicts the romanticized version of the Fifties against a backdrop of contemporary challenges and social issues. Wade skilfully interweaves themes of sexism, feminism, matrimony, capitalism and sexual harassment throughout the play as Judy and Johnny discover the high price to pay to survive in a world of  yesteryear’s clichés.

For someone who lived through the Fifties and is able to look back on that grey and faded past, Canberra Rep’s production is perfectly staged food for reflection. The Rep set building team under the direction of Andrew Kay has excelled in recreating the black and white chequered linoleum floor, the patterned wallpaper and pastel walls and bright lime-green kitchen. There is even a toilet with a chain in the upstairs bathroom! The period leaps out at you as you enter the theatre and an era that has thankfully vanished into the history books. Or has it? Wade might have us believe that the design has changed but her characters expose the universal nature of the human condition.

Pelvin imaginatively directs a stellar cast with sharply observant intuition and theatrical flair. As Judy, Hudson is magnificent, joyfully effervescent in her fantasy world and anxiously vulnerable when the real world intrudes. Filling in for Tom May who was struck ill prior to opening, Street gives a totally believable performance as the husband who finds himself forced to eventually confront the consequence of Judy’s fantasy. He offers a perfect foil to his wife’s exuberant role playing. They are supported by a flighty, gossipy friend Fran, played with a daffiness by Natalie Waldron in contrast to husband Marcus’s sleazy Me Too character, played with uncomfortable authenticity by Terry Johnson. Only Kayla Ciceran as Johnny’s boss Alex at the real estate firm and Lewin as the long suffering Syvia firmly root the play in today’s reality.

A delightful touch of comic invention has backstage crew Paul Jackson and Ann Gallen performing comical set and prop changes in the dimly lit breaks between scenes They may have made the play that little bit longer but they earned the pair some well-deserved applause from the audience.

Wade gives her comedy a happy ending, but we are left in no doubt that life is a fragile journey through challenges that are constantly there to provoke and distract and when we examine the nature of human behaviour it would be recalcitrant to argue that we have left the past behind and entered a brand new and better world.  Wade has given us food for thought and Rep has given us a production that is finely staged and wonderfully entertaining.