Review: Top Girls

5 March, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

To celebrate her promotion, Marlene has a big dinner with the girls - including such historical figures as Pope Joan; explorer Isabelle Bird; Dull Gret; Lady Nijo; and Patient Griselda - and things get pretty drunk and messy.

In the second half of the play, told in a much more realist vein in Thatcher's England, Marlene returns to the office for her first week as managing director where she deals with her colleagues, her runaway teenage niece, and her estranged sister.

Much like Churchill's Cloud Nine, I found this a play of two halves. The dinner party was not boring but I found its overlapping, shouted dialogue and its array of self-absorbed characters pretty hard going. The second half on the other hand was much more engaging, and I think allowed most of the actors to be shown off to much better effect than they were in the historical roles.

Like Cloud Nine before it, almost all the actors switch roles in the second half. But where Cloud Nine invited comparisons of contrast (black and white, woman and man, adult and child all swapping places) Top Girls asks you to draw the parallel, between Pope Joan who had to give up all semblance of femininity to rule and the middle-aged manager who's "one of the boys"; between Lady Nijo the Emperor's concubine who became a nun and the businesswoman engaged in an affair with a married man - to connect the lines, between all the restrictions and restraints placed on women that have changed, and the ones that haven't.

I found the second half to be uncomfortable but really interesting - Marlene and her sister and niece all occupying different standpoints on ideas of class and privilege, on motherhood and family. I really like how Churchill allows these women and girls to be complicated, to be full of contradictions and irrationality, which in turn makes them very relatable.

But I'm not entirely sure I enjoyed spending that much time with them. And I was annoyed that the first half, which had laid the ground for all of this, felt like it was such a struggle to get through. Wasn't there a shorter distance from A to B (the play as a whole is 2.5 hours), or a more entertaining one? I'm not saying theatre necessarily has to be fun or 'likable' to be interesting - but it really does help when the journey is taking this long, and when I felt like the point could've been made in much less time.

I didn't dislike the first half like I disliked the first half of Cloud Nine, that's for sure, so it was a more even and consistent experience - but I found myself asking if I felt the trade-off had been worth it.

 

Director Imara Savage
Set Designer David Fleischer
Costume Designer Renée Mulder
Lighting Designer Damien Cooper
Composer & Sound Designer Max Lyandvert

With Paula Arundell, Kate Box, Michelle Lim Davidson, Claire Lovering, Heather Mitchell, Helen Thomson, Contessa Treffone

Review: Single Asian Female

21 February, Belvoir St Theatre

Pearl owns a Chinese restaurant in Nambour on the Gold Coast. She and her two daughters - violinist Zoe, who's floundering in the world of online dating, and teenager Mei, who feels conflicted about her Asian-Australian identity - bicker over generational and cultural differences, while Pearl steels herself to tell them some unwelcome news.

Written by Michelle Law (the sister of comedian Benjamin Law) this is a crowd-pleasing comedy drawn in broad strokes, eliciting frequent laughter. It has the kind of jokes you expect about karaoke and puffy vests, makes the expected points parental expectations and playground racism. I don't say this disparagingly - it's an entertaining ride that had the audience engaged and laughing throughout, and towards the end it does hit a few sincerely tear-jerking places.

As an Asian-Australian - some bits of it hit home hard; others felt like cliche to me and not representative at all. But it shouldn't be the burden of this one play to be 'representative' of the whole experience. What I'd like to see next is more plays from writers of diverse backgrounds. The more voices there are, then the more we can see the full spectrum of experiences reflected on the stage, as sprawling and diverse as that spectrum is.

Even if it doesn't offer anything new narratively, it's still a novelty to see a cast of almost entirely women and of those, three Asian women as the leads (in fact there's only 1 male actor, and he is not white).

My friend commented that the crowd was so white and middle-aged - to be honest, it actually felt more diverse than usual for me! There were at least 10! Maybe 20! Asians! Mostly around our age and younger too.

 

Emily Burton
Lucy Heffernan
Patrick Jhanur
Alex Lee
Courtney Stewart
Hsiao-Ling Tang

By Michelle Law
Director Claire Christian
Set & Costume Designer Moe Assaad
Composer & Sound Designer Wil Hughes
Lighting Designer Keith Clark
Stage Manager Peter Sutherland
Assistant Stage Managers Katie Hurst & Keiren Smith

Reviews: ...to a simple rock and roll song, and Act of God

A couple of capsule reviews:

...to a simple rock and roll song (Michael Clark Company, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House)

A contemporary dance program set to Eric Satie's piano, Patti Smith's Horses, and a medley of David Bowie. The program describing Clark's rebel-rousing career and the title set this up as this rock'n'roll affair but in contrast the actual show was very restrained. The choreo focussed often on stillness and holds and lines, and very precise spins and moves, that are very unforgiving and demonstrated the dancers' great physical skill - but overall felt to me very emotionally distancing. And I wasn't sure why this choreo with this music? I was left feeling both impressed and nonplussed, if you know what I mean.

 

An Act of God (Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst Theatre)

God has come to earth for one night, inhabiting the body of character actor Mitchell Butel (one of my faves!), to set the story straight on his new 10 Commandments, accompanied by the Angels Gabriel and Michael. This quippy, campy production has a fun, late-night talk-show air to it, with frequent references to current events and a few interactive segments with various audience members. I enjoyed this but it was really almost all just "boom-tish!" type humour and even at 75 minutes, it felt a little long.

Review: The Wider Earth, Sydney Festival

17 January, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

A production from the Queensland Theatre and Dead Puppet Society, depicting Charles Darwin's journey on the Beagle and his formulation of the theory of evolution.

There's much to admire about this play: the revolving stage that fluidly turned from interiors to exteriors, the video backdrop, and most of all the puppets.

All the animals are puppets - from pigeons and puppies through to tropical birds and, most impressively, a life-size, lumbering Galapagos tortoise. The puppets don't aim for realism but instead all have a wonderfully steampunky, skeletal air. I didn't feel they were always integrated well into the production, but they were really impressive.

I like the ideas in this a lot too, the way we see Darwin connect the theory of tectonic plates - a physical world that's constantly undergoing the act of creation - and his own burgeoning ideas about evolution.

So I liked a lot. I just didn't like… uh… the script.

Kudos to Tom Conroy as Darwin, a familiar face from the Sydney stage scene who did his best, but there wasn't much to work with. This felt very simplistic, with each character falling into quite a neat little box - the religious one, the skeptic, the scientist - they seemed like the ones adhering to some grand design rather than being allowed to live and breathe.

Good ideas, good design, lots of good elements, but this never came close to hitting the mark for me.

Trailer
Limelight Magazine

Review: Angels in America, NT Live

10 and 17 September, NT Live, Dendy Opera Quays

Set in 1980s America, under Reagan and in the midst of the AIDS crisis, this epic two-part play tells the story of urbane thirty-year-old Prior who is diagnosed with AIDS, and his lover Louis who can't deal with the reality of Prior's illness. Their lives intertwine with depressed Harper, who is married to Joe, a closeted gay man seen as a future potential star by conservative power player Ray Cohn. And then Prior becomes convinced he's seen an Angel...

I love this play for the way it draws these complex, often contradictory characters with compassion, and the way it's unafraid to talk about big ideas and tackle huge themes, mixing reality with fantasia as it questions the nature of the American dream. Running over six hours long - or over seven hours for this broadcast - it's a massive canvas which, when done well, feels vital and energised from start to finish. Though sadly, in the over twenty years since it premiered, it seems in some respects the world hasn't progressed very far at all.

My expectations were reasonably high for this NT Live production (filmed for international broadcast) of Tony Kushner's now-iconic play - it has quite the star-studded cast, featuring Andrew Garfield as Prior, Russell Tovey as Joe, and Nathan Lane as Cohn, and it's lavishly staged. The design is quite clean and minimalist, incorporating many moving parts - sets moving in and out and up and down, accentuated by neon. All the ingredients seemed to be in place for a great production of one of my favourite plays.

And yet, overall, it didn't quite hit the mark for me. I found the staging distracting at times, the way they broke up the stage into little mini-stages for the first half especially a waste of the large space.

The performances were solid as a whole, but I felt that most of them started at a high pitch, leaving the performers little choice but to stay at that pitch or to edge upwards into hysteria. Garfield, as the emotional centre of the play, isn't bad but seems to spend most of the play yelling or crying which grew wearying. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as nurse Belize probably comes off best by contrast, the grounding presence to the histrionics around him. Worst of all were the scenes when multiple conversations happen at once - these often felt like people just shouting over each other.

Mostly, I couldn't help but compare this production to the Eamon Flack-directed Belvoir St Theatre production of 2013 - my favourite production that year, and in hindsight one of my favourites ever. I connected so deeply to the performances by Luke Mullins, Mitchell Butel, Amber McMahon, and the rest; and I felt that they did so much with so much less, using one small stage to fantastic effect, achieving the illusion of multiple settings through simple prop changes and contextual framing.

When the material is as good and complex as this, and also as long and challenging as this, a million bells and whistles don't help or enhance if the fundamentals aren't all there.

The NT Live staging is not at all a bad production, I really want to say that, and if this is your opportunity to see Angels in America then by all means take it! It's a play worth seeing, for sure. But I'd then encourage you to seek out other takes.

I also want to lodge my strongest objection to NT Live's practice of framing its products with talking heads introductory content and interviews with cast and crew, even down to having part 2 preceded by a "previously in Angels in America" clip. This is SO UNNECESSARY on so many levels. Firstly we are already here, we don't need to be sold the product again - DID U KNOW people go to the actual live theatre all the time, and don't need to be spoonfed every little thing before it starts? Secondly it rips away the illusion that we are at the theatre at all. Thirdly, please, this thing is already over six hours long, why are you padding it out with even more content? NT Live, please take a leaf from Globe Shakespeare or the ballet companies - just show the thing as it is, no need for extra nonsense. Much like the play itself.
 

Links:
What can Angels in America teach us about the marriage equality debate?
Oral History of Angels in America
 

2017 NT Live

Cast:
Stuart Angell (Angel Shadow), Mark Arnold (Understudy Roy Cohn), Arun Blair-Mangat (Understudy Belize), Susan Brown (Hannah Pitt), Laura Caldow (Angel Shadow), Andrew Garfield (Prior Walter), Denise Gough (Harper Pitt), Kate Harper (Understudy Hannah Pitt), John Hastings (Understudy Joseph Pitt / Louis Ironson), Claire Lambert (Angel Shadow), Nathan Lane (Roy Cohn), Amanda Lawrence (The Angel), James McArdle (Louis Ironson), Becky Namgauds (Angel Shadow), Mateo Oxley (Understudy Prior Walter), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Belize), Russell Tovey (Joseph Pitt), Paksie Vernon (Understudy Harper Pitt), Stan West (Angel Shadow), Lewis Wilkins (Angel Shadow).

Production team:
Director: Marianne Elliott; Set Designer: Ian MacNeil; Costume Designer: Nicky Gillibrand; Lighting Designer: Paule Constable; Choreographer and Movement: Robby Graham; Music: Adrian Sutton; Sound Designer: Ian Dickinson; Puppetry Director and Movement: Finn Caldwell; Puppet Designers: Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes; Illusions: Chris Fisher; Aerial Director: Gwen Hales; Associate Director: Harry Mackrill; Staff Director: Miranda Cromwell; Fight Director: Kate Waters; Dialect Coach: Hazel Holder; Company Voice Work: Jeanette Nelson and Charmian Hoare; Associate Set Designer: Jim Gaffney

2013 Belvoir

By Tony Kushner
Director Eamon Flack
Set Designer Michael Hankin
Costume Designer Mel Page
Lighting Designer Niklas Pajanti
Associate Lighting Designer Ross Graham
Composer Alan John
Sound Designer Steve Francis
Assistant Director Shelly Lauman
Fight Director Scott Witt
American Dialect Coach Paige Walker-Carlton
Stage Manager Mel Dyer
Assistant Stage Manager Roxzan Bowes
Special thanks to: Reuze Vintage

Paula Arundell
Mitchell Butel
Marcus Graham
Amber McMahon
Luke Mullins
Robyn Nevin
DeObia Oparei
Ashley Zukerman