Review: The Mysteries: Genesis

Mysteries: Genesis is a strange monster to be walking into on a Monday night at the Wharf. In three parts, directed by Matthew Lutton, Andrew Upton and Tom Wright respectively, Mysteries tracks the opening moments of the bible, from Creation through Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and Noah’s ark. I call it strange not only because of the conceit of the work (somewhat like Hayloft’s 3xsisters; same actors, 3 directors, three different takes on the same progression, except with the bible and no fake blood) but also because of the fact that I was viewing it as part of STC’s mainstage season. This feeling continued through the night, a strange mix of radicalism and conservatism.

Wharf 2 has been completely transformed for this performance. The audience surround the space on two levels, ground floor and upstairs, in the centre we look onto the playing space. The blurb states designer Alice Babidge took inspiration from “old courtyards, bear-baiting pits, cloisters and coaching inns of the medieval world.” and this rings true, although I was also reminded of an underground parking lot or food court at any multi level mall. While I had thought that sightlines would be a nightmare in this space, such was the confidence in design that I never felt I was missing anything, despite staying on the ground floor and hugging the walls most of the night. It is a credit to Babidge and each director that the space was used in vastly different and developing ways across the three sections of the piece, I felt only at the very end had I seen a trick before.



Matthew Lutton’s Eden is a square of white confetti, populated by the naked Adam and Eve (Cameron Goodall and Sophie Ross) in glorious white wigs, a fluffy suited penguin and hanging from a rope in the corner of the square, is a plastic apple filled with milk, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Lutton’s piece is the most aesthetically assured of the three, establishing a theatrical language almost immediately as the lights slowly rise on God, slumped naked in a chair. The performances are heightened, as is demanded by Hilary Bell and Lally Katz’s highly poetic text, Lutton matches the poeticism of the text with a formalism of gesture, repeating certain actions that we become familiar with the meaning of. Because of this the piece takes on a sort of distance, and we become sucked into the theatrical world of Eden, the text and movement of the naked bodies lulls us into an almost meditative (perhaps religious) state. This serves Lutton brilliantly as paradise is stripped from it’s inhabitants after Eve succumbs to Lucifer and the serpent, rendered here as a lock of black hair. The text shifts into purer action and so does the performances, we see Adam and Eve shiver from cold and beg God for one last hug before they are cast out. In this first section of the Mysteries, Lutton has created a stunningly confident and rather unsettling opening. And while the piece is occasionally marred by weaker passages of language and some fairly indulgent acting to match it, I think I may be starting to “get” this Lutton thing.

After a fifteen minute break head back in for Upton’s After the Fall, which is, I have to say, pretty rock and roll. There are a few balloons strewn around the place and the cast (STC’s residents) are belting out a version of Velvet Underground’s Run Run Run from the upper and lower levels of the space. Upton’s piece is performed in promenade and the performers move and appear amongst the audience as Adam and Eve (now a dysfunctional Australian family swearing at each other) lament their great loss while their son’s Cain and Abel feud over their respective harvests. Through this landscape stalks death, a girl with her pony tail hanging over her face, claiming everyone as the end comes to them as murder, suicide or old age. The actors are here given license to play clear, somewhat realistic actions, Adam bitches about Eve, Abel teases Cain and Seth wanders around trying to calm everyone down. This is a massive relief after Lutton’s formalism, and while Upton lacked Luttton’s aesthetic confidence, it certainly gained something from this shift. The space is used well and the performers seem to relish the opportunity to be so close to the audience, allowing a different sort of communication, I always get a kick out of laughing and having the actor look straight at you to share the moment. It’s magic: television can’t do that. The audience seemed fairly bemused by the staging, and for the most part they steered clear of wandering around to get a better look at the action. This is so far removed from the world of promenade performances at PACT or Performance Space, where the audience is more literate in this style and will move freely to view more or even to test the limits of the performers. The strange mix of radicalism and conservatism was no where more prevalent than in Upton’s section, made more obvious by some clunky sections of text intoned once again to great virtuosity but little effect, set against really powerful images and kick arse music. Stranger and strangerer.



The final section dealt with Noah and his ark. Here Noah is a bedridden obsessive compulsive listening intently to the radio as his wife pleads with him to come down and back out into the town. Tom Wright’s set is a pile of mattresses in the centre of the stage on which Noah remains for the entire piece. His daughters coming to him from the depths of the sheets and God appearing to him through the radio or from the foot of his bed. Wright’s piece is the weakest of the three, suffering from further ponderous sections of text and some fairly unsubtle choreography. I am also totally sick of revolves and as soon as the mattresses did so I switched off, content to watch the lights in the ceiling and listen to the loud amplified rain instead of what was happening onstage. The strength of Wright’s section was in how he combined formal elements from the other sections and reused them so as to illuminate the story of Noah, it was a fitting end to the whole performance as it reminded us of what had gone before and suggested beginning anew after the flood.

The Mysteries: Genesis is an amazing thing to be occurring as a part of a main stage season at STC, The Residents (STC’s new crack team of young theatre makers) are committed and sometimes thrilling performers, the direction is playful, assured and considered and the language, while sometimes ill formed, invokes a certain tone of spirituality that is invaluable to the work. It is flawed, in some places quite deeply, but nevertheless it is a landmark thing to be occurring at a flagship company and deserves support for this kind of programming. It is the most interesting thing I have seen at STC all year, and I hope that their 2010 season can come up with something just as interesting, by the looks of it… maybe not, but fingers crossed anyway.

Also sorry for being out of the loop for ages, I had shows and assignments. Here is a picture from Elephant People by Daniel Keene, which I directed with 2nd students at UOW.



Mark

Catch-up: The Bougainville Photoplay Project, Gethsemane, A Streetcar Named Desire

Wow, it’s been a long time since we’ve done any real blogging. Both Mark and I regret the lack of sweet blog times on offer lately, and you’ve already heard our excuses before so I won’t bother giving them again. Instead what I do have to offer is a quick wrap of a few things I’ve seen lately that I wanted to comment on. It goes back a while so I thought rather than doing full reviews that nobody is going to bother to read about shows that finished a month ago, I’d just write some comments about a few different things that hit me about each production. I’m sure Mark will get some writings up sooner or later, even if only to say “holy shit man, Körper changed my world” (although he’s a little busy right now directing the English language premiere of Daniel Keene’s Elephant People). Anyway, let’s get to the plays…

The Bougainville Photoplay Project – Version 1.0 at The Old Fitz

This was truly an extraordinary night of theatre. The concept is quite simple. Paul Dwyer recounts some stories from his life based around his trips to Bougainville, a small region of Papua New Guinea. In the course of doing so, we learn about his father’s work as a surgeon, the various human rights abuses that have been perpetrated in Bougainville, and the amazing reconciliation process that is now occurring in the region. The stories themselves are amazing, insightful and at times truly horrifying. The delivery is honest and is set against the backdrop of the physical objects of Dwyer’s memories – newspaper articles, photos, and even a set of bones that his dad once used to demonstrate surgical techniques. There are several visual aids to the storytelling, from an old slide projector, to Sean Bacon’s video stylings which were perfectly measured as usual. However, the true victory of this show is that amidst these many technical elements and dramatic techniques, the story is what comes through. It is because the show is so tightly crafted that the message comes through pure and strong.
For more info about Bougainville, one can consult the ever-useful wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bougainville

Gethsemane – Belvoir St

I know I’m coming incredibly late to the party, but I think I just might be a David Hare fan. After seeing this show I finally got around to reading The Vertical Hour which I bought a few months back, and I was impressed by both, and if the hype is anything to go by I haven’t even got to his best plays yet. I was expecting a lot from Gethsemane. I cared a lot about the subject matter, the problem of corporate funding controlling political parties, and I’m yet to see an Armfield show that I dislike (Scorched in particular was an affecting experience).
For the most part, the show delivered. The script was tight, and merciless, going for the jugular of a variety of political players, the direction cool (setting props by lighting rectangles? Very cool…) and the performances were mostly memorable. In a weird turn of events, it was Charlie Garber’s Fran Pegg, the irrepressible butler, that stole the show, with Garber turning one word answers into moments of comedy brilliance. In fact all the younger players were impressive, with Emily Barclay simply stunning as the troubled teenager of the home secretary, played with equal skill by Sarah Peirse. However, Claire Jones as sympathetic teacher was anything but sympathetic, and Dan Wyllie’s journalist never seemed real to me. Hard to reconcile from actors with such strong history.

Unfortunately, the play lacked a strong ending, something I found similarly problematic in the Vertical hour. It seemed in both texts as if once Hare had finished his political discussions he struggled to conclude the personal stories, and in turn the plays. I’ll keep an eye out to see whether this is a theme that runs throughout his oeuvre.

A Streetcar Named Desire – Sydney Theatre Company


Now we come to one of the most anticipated theatre events of the year. Cate Blanchett as Blanche. This was the show that more people in Sydney were going to see than any other, and therefore the biggest theatrical opportunity of the year, and in my opinion it was wasted. There is no question that the acting was top notch. With the exception of a few of the bit parts, the performances were solid and beautifully crafted, and yes Cate proved once again that she is truly a chameleon, this time eschewing her powerful low register to take on the soprano range of the faux-timid Blanche. What was so frustrating though was that the play was really, really slow. I got bored, regularly, and maybe that’s because I’m born of the internet generation that as a result of tabbed browsing and violent video games can’t pay attention to anything for longer than 30 seconds, or maybe it’s because I’ve studied the text twice at different institutions. Maybe it’s because I missed the details of the relationships, or because I’d driven 2 hours in the pouring rain and was a bit stressed and was therefore distracted easily. But maybe, just maybe it was because this main stage production, which sold out before it opened, whose budget I can only imagine, was directed by a first time theatre director, was horribly paced, and failed to find anything new or insightful in the text, and instead simply came over as a bit bland. I was hugely disappointed. I have been defending Cate and Andrew’s decision making to the more cynical of my theatre friends all year, and was disappointed to not have a gem in the crown of my argument. I just hope star-studded Uncle Vanya next year doesn’t prove to be another lifeless staging, a fear that will perhaps be confirmed or denied when the director is finally revealed.

Well that’s all I have for now. I’m off to the next in the Appleloft series, a performance night presented by everyone’s favourite performance collective Applespiel.

- Simon

Quick Post - The Bougainville Photoplay Project/Angels In America

More apologies for the lack of blog action of late. You know the drill: uni, grad show, honours applications, it's all been piling up and sadly reviewing has lost out a little. But don't worry there's going to be an update storm anyday now...

However, I did want to mention Version 1.0's the Bougainville Photoplay Project before the week got too old. I will have a full review coming soon, but as it's only got this week left in its current run at the Old Fitz I wanted to take this opportunity to encourage anyone who's thinking about going to go. If you only see one show this week and it isn't Angels In America at PACT (our grad show) then you should see the Bougainville Photoplay Project... It's quite simply a beautifully crafted moving theatre experience that should be had by all. Just in case you missed my incredibly subtle linkage you can find all the information here:

The Bougainville Photoplay Project
http://www.versiononepointzero.com/index.php/projects/the_bougainville_photoplay_project1/

Angels In America
http://www.uow.edu.au/crearts/performances/UOW068184.html

If any of you do come to our show this week, be sure to stay around and say hi afterwards. Hopefully there'll be some more stuff to read soon. Thanks for sticking with us through the downtime!

Cheers,
Simon

Sorry for the lack of excitement...

Hi All,

This is one of those lame "sorry we haven't updated the blog a lot lately, we're really busy" messages. Mark and I are being kept pretty busy by our uni degree at the moment so unfortunately we probably won't be able to get any new reviews up until next week. Get ready though, we have the big This Is Not Art report coming up as well as hopefully a review of Gethsemane and perhaps some comments on Streetcar... The UOW season is now well under way so we also might get around to writing about those shows as well. This is if we can fit this all in between finishing our last session of study and putting on a grad show.

In the meantime, here is some shameless advertising for our uni and our graduates... enjoy!

Bake Sale For Art have another Monthly Friend coming up, and this time it's being presented by our friends over at Quarterbred. Here's the flyer and press release. Or you can just use the handy link on the right hand side of our site to go straight to their blog.
The author is dead.
The aura is dead.
The critic is dead.
God is dead.
Theatre is dead.
Art is dead.
Bela Lugosi is dead.

But hey, let’s not get overly maudlin. The theme for this Monthly Friend, ‘Dead or Alive’, questions our conception of how ideas, forms, texts and spaces may ‘live’ or ‘die’. Are these bold proclamations of death premature? (The author is still very much alive in mainstream theatre and literature, at least.) And what is the flipside of death? When the author dies the audience becomes alive, and that ain’t so bad is it? Monthly Friend October also celebrates the merging of live and not-live forms. Contemporary arts need not these distinctions! So ah, let’s all take a leaf out of George Romero’s book and let the dead live again. And let the living dead suck the brains out of the living, so that the living die and eventually become the living dead and go out looking for more living. Hope to see you there.

Meanwhile, the UOW season has already begun! Over this week and next we've got two second year shows. Check here at the Faculty website for further details of Dario Fo's Trumpets & Raspberries, and Catherine McKinnon's As I Lay Dreaming. If the beach wasn't already a good enough reason to visit Wollongong, you've now got two more incentives...

Hope to see you all soon,
Simon

Brand Spanking New (New Theatre)

Opportunities to show new work are both exciting and important. For a start they give everyone a deadline, something to work towards. But most importantly it’s a chance for artists to test out their ideas in front of an audience. It’s all very well for something to work in your brain or on the page, but it’s another thing altogether for it to make that next step to performance. This is why performance opportunities are so important, this is why we here at The Perf are great supporters of initiatives like Bake Sale For Art’s Monthly Friend series, or the recent Applelöft where a bunch of our fellow artists got together in a house to share new ideas. These sort of low risk events help to create a strong community of support for new artists as well as serving as a breeding ground for new talent.
Which brings me to Brand Spanking New, a two-week festival of new writing put together by Augusta Supple at the New Theatre in Newtown. This time it’s the writing that is on show, with both established and emerging writers offering their wares to the good people of Sydney. What was exciting for me was that it was often the names I didn’t know, at least as writers, whose scripts I found the most interesting. Highlights for me across the two weeks were Kit Brookman’s “if i could be anything i would be something different” with director Mark Pritchard carefully wedging the actors into the space, Jonathon Ari Lander’s “Measure” which looked at the aftermath of years of pain in Cambodia, and Sonal Moore’s “White Wedding”, a tender look at marriage in another culture.

But in the end it is not the specific works which make the festival worthwhile. It is the theatrical community coming together to give emerging artists a chance for their work to be seen and critiqued. It is also a chance for new actors and directors to be seen on a Sydney stage. Experiments like this should be the rule not the exception, and hopefully, they will be successfully and spurn more opportunities for new work of all varieties. The second week programme opens tonight, so you've got four nights to get in there and support it.

- Simon

Peter Craven's Total Bullshit

Here is a link. Read it then read on.

http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-trouble-with-australian-theatre-20090930-gbkn.html

In his article Peter Craven derides a new trend he percieves in Australian theatre, a trend which he lables as "talented directors who feel they are above realism and well-made plays." Talented directors like Benedict Andrews and Barrie Kosky. According to Craven their productions War of the Roses, Season At Sarsparilla and Women of Troy are some of the worst offenders in a director led revolt against the text. He suggests that these directors "often...cut their teeth with student theatre and have been too narcissistic to grow up" and indeed that "It's much easier to treat student actors like puppets and to improvise a text than it is to treat Judy Davis like that. Most cut-and-paste postmodern tinkerings with classics make Joanna Murray-Smith look like Racine on a good day"

As a burgeoning director, working at present in student productions, cutting my teeth as it were: I think Peter Craven is full of shit. His article shows a willing blindness to new playwrighting, an obvious penchant for the naturalistic and perhaps worst of all an outdated attitude to the artform itself. Poisonous attitudes such as his are what stunts the theatrical community, and are not (as i'm sure he sees it) a heroic belief of the sanctity of illusion. Any person working in the artform that dismisses the work of Robert Wilson as "mime-oriented experimentalism" is not only ill-informed and a lazy researcher but a complete fucking idiot, and the fact that his pompous wank of an article was published at all is what is indicative of real issues in Australian theatre.

His article bears several similarities with David Williamson's back earlier in the year, in which the big DW accused the STC of only programming capital T theatre, the theatre of Barrie Kosky. At the time on theperf I accused DW of being an antiquated tit-mouse, not knowing what a tit-mouse was, but finding the insult fitting nevertheless. Since finding out a tit-mouse is actually a small insect-eating passerine bird of the family Paridae, found in woodland areas throughout the world, maybe i missed the mark a little. But I think the sentitment was still there and as such I would like to declare that Peter Craven is too, an utter tit-mouse.

What he is suggesting about student theatre is so patronisingly infruiating that it needs to be explored further. I think that (in between the lines) he's calling me young, telling me to grow up, get a real job, get into realism, direct Joanna Murray-Smith, forget about Sarah Kane, forget about Performance Space, Romeo Castellucci and The Black Lung, forget about 3xsisters and Marius Von Mayenburg, forget about the Sydney Front and Robert Lepage and Open City, you'll grow out of it, wake up to yourself, tuck your shirt in, all the people you admire are not artists but arrogant wankers, what you like will take you nowhere, give up the dream, give it away, theatre is not for you Mark Rogers, you who cannot write for the stage and as such must to find other ways of communicating, theatre is not for you, it for other people, it is for Joanna Murray-Smith and for the big DW, it is a literary theatre where you Mark Rogers have no place.

Well Peter... get fucked.
I direct plays, plays written by writers, but I try to bring to plays written by writers an attention to aesthetic detail, an interest in formal innovation, an awareness of the power of direct audience contact, a willingness to delve into abstraction, a search for some kind of truth however we get there, a hope not to create a theatre that has been perfected, but one that is ever evolving and fluid, one that listens to the artists around it and filling it and one that doesn't simply put all the faith into one individual writer. Theatre is made by many people, not one, and they are all important.

I listened to a radio national podcast of Edward Albee's recent talk at STC a while ago and when he said that directors are interpretive artists and not creative artists (or something to that effect) i thought; how interesting to hear this kind of statement, he thinks about it like a heirachy, wow, that's not the way people think anymore. But obviously I was wrong. Peter Craven does.

Now that was a rant, yes. But am I unjustified? Is this what he's saying? Shoud I just wake up to myself and get my hands on a copy of Don's Party? What does everyone else think? Please comment, I need to talk about this.

A two way interview with Simon and Mark, regarding The Hayloft Project’s The Only Child.

M: Simon. The Only Child?

S: Good play. I had a really great time, I loved the comedy, thought the acting was all quite strong and design was beautiful. There were some glorious images (flowers) and the whole thing felt pristine.

M: Pristine? Do you care to elaborate?

S: You walked into the intimate Downstairs Belvoir theatre, to the serene sound of a shower running into the stark porcelain of a claw foot bath. The bath sat atop perfectly polished floorboards. Obviously, this was the bathroom of someone successful. We soon learned that it was the home of Rita and Alfred, a well-to-do couple with a harrowing secret.

M: I’m yawning already.



S: I know right? When you dumb it down to its simplest elements, it’s a fairly conventional plot. But the story itself in fact takes many twists, and at times a dark comedy comes out moving it away from the simple story it could easily have been

M: It’s an Ibsen adaption yeah?

S: Yeah, not that I know anything about the original, which doesn’t seem to be a problem with this production as the story is quite far removed from the play that inspired it.

M: What did you like about it?

S: I’ve talked already about the comedy, which I think was one of the most striking elements of the play. I’m a great lover of awkwardness on stage, and the character of Henrik (Gareth Davies) was awkwardness personified. It was as if he was in a different play altogether, but rather than this being a problem, it in fact provided a great counter point to the heavy burden the text placed on the other characters.

M: Heavy burden you say. What burden?

S: Alfred and Rita have a child, Eyolf, who at the beginning of the play is missing. This is all the more worrying because Eyolf has a disability, one of his legs is crippled. The play begins with Rita and Alfred’s sister Asta in the bathroom discussing the incident, as well as Alfred’s impending return. It is clear from the start that Alfred and Rita’s relationship is far from harmonious. This is then compounded when Eyolf is declared dead, and we watch as Alfred falls to pieces, unable to leave the bath, let alone the bathroom. Throw into the mix Henrick, who is in love with Asta and gloriously unable to deal with people, and you have The Only Child, an hour and a half long investigation of guilt and recrimination in modern relationships

M: Did you love it? Why don’t you marry it?

S: But there’s the frustrating thing. It was so close to being marriage worthy, but it never quite got to the altar. Was this your experience? Am I being too harsh?

M: No you’re not too harsh. I thought it was great too. But I left wishing it’d been better. In the language, the content, the images, the form was such potential. But ultimately I felt like I’d seen the veneer of a show, the surface of an emotional impact. Never something as raw and painful as I was sure it would be. I think it glossed over all the nasty bits.

S: Do you mean in the text or the production?

M: Well the text was nasty as fuck. Thomas Henning and Simon Stone’s adaption of the Ibsen is a cutting look at moral collapse with a vicious wit and sly humour. So that rules out the text.

S: So it was the production then?

M: Set and lighting you mean?

S: Yeah, and the direction.

M: Direction then. All the theatrical elements made this play easier to bear. As you’ve mentioned they were gorgeous and really effective. But to the wrong end. The transition states, the ethereal images and stage pictures made the raw content disappear. I wanted to be rubbed raw by the uncomfortable truth of Alfred and Rita’s relationship, by their inadequacies mirroring my own personal failings but instead, everything was working to placate me.

S: Even the nudity, did that feel like gloss? Surely that was visceral. For those who haven’t seen it, there was a fair bit of nudity.

M: The naked bodies were beautiful first, visceral second. And this was to do with how they were framed. Despite Downstairs Belvoir being a tiny little space and even though I was two feet away from the naked actors, they seemed pictorial and not physical beings. Beautiful but, AHHH, I didn’t care. Is that fair enough, am I just insane or something. They were naked for ages why didn’t I get the sense it was raw?



S: I think you’re right, and I think it was partially to do with the beautiful framing, the warm lights shining back of the polished floor to give their bodies a sort of sheen rather than leaving them stark and grotesque. With the possible exception of Henrick’s initial forays into nudity.

M: Yeah that worked. I feel guilty for slamming it this way. Because I think it is such an achievement to make abundant nudity onstage beautiful first, it never felt tacky. Always an organic development of the staging. It was stunning really. It’s just that it didn’t serve the text in the right way. It slightly backed off from really being effective.

S: I think that was the main thing that stopped this production from being absolutely devastating, was that it backed off at all the wrongs moments. Just as I was on the edge of my seat, there was a blackout or a joke to let me off the hook. The most obvious example was when Rita joined Alfred in the bath and began to seduce him.

M: And…….blackout.

S: I was left thinking why didn’t they just have sex? It would have horrific in the wake of what had come before. But we seem to have lost sight of our interview form. Did you have a problem with the transitions?

M: Not really. I accepted the blackouts as a convention that was consistent, they weren’t overly long. It was the inbetween images and subtle shifts that annoyed me. FUCK SIMON. This is so frustrating. I loved it. I loved The Only Child. It is a confident, aesthetically assured, devastatingly performed production by a young company under the restless direction of Simon Stone. I hated The Promise. I thought this Hayloft work was awesome. BUT. It could have been so much better and all I can think about is What If? What IF? WHAT IF? This sucks.

S: I had the same problem. In the past couple of days I’ve had several conversations about the play where half way through, I realise I sound like I hated it. Which I didn’t. It’s just that it could have been one of the shows of the year, and it just didn’t quite get there.

M: Everyone should see it though yeah?

S: Absolutely. They’re one of the most important companies in Australia at the moment, and this is further of evidence of that.

M: So we keep hearing. I’m glad that this time, Hayloft and Simon Stone lived up to hype. But they could have exceeded it.

S: ARGH! I’m normally frustrated when things are bad, not when they are good.

M: ARGHHHGGGHHHHH!!!!

Simon and Mark