Review - Mr Braithwaite Has a New Boy - Outcast Theatre

Chat-tered Illusions

If I said a new play has just opened in Melbourne by one of Australia's best comic writers who produces a new piece nearly every year, you'd probably think David Williamson's Don Parties On. Wrong! I said one of Australia's BEST comic writers. Steven Dawson's gay themed comedies have the baroque excess of Restoration comedies. Ribald and irreverent they magnify the lustiness of the characters and parade them before an (providing they appreciate a good raunchy romp) audience. Mr Braithwaite Has a New Boy is no exception. With his trademark inclusion of occasional on-stage nudity and nearly constant, 'adult' language Dawson mixes the Pygmalion theme with Pretty Woman and adds the comic and dramatic tension of older men mentoring a younger men in Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane or Mordaunt Shairp's The Green Bay Tree to make one of his most elegant plays yet.

The understanding of a classic farce situation is all there. Like Alan Ayckbourn at his best Dawson plants a theme, idea or phrase and has it re-surface throughout the play to funny effect. Johnny’s insistence, for example, that he is not a prostitute but an ‘entertainment coordinator’ is taken by other characters and re-worked to new advantage each time. Dawson also delights in his own recurring dramatic devices too, namely gratuitous (as he puts it) nudity. In the opening scene a young man enters wearing only a towel which he removes and sits provocatively on the sofa slyly smiling - to us as much to himself - and alternates with covering and uncovering his penis. There was more teasing humour in those few seconds as he teased us with that strongest of ticket seller than all the self-conscious, full-frontal nudity the MTC has thrown at audiences in the last decade.

Half buried under a mountainous toupee Iain Murton is delightful as the prissy Braithwaite as he tries to turn Johnny into a genteel companion who doesn’t use the ‘f’ or ‘c’ words or sprawl naked on the sofa. As Johnny James Miller rattles of Dawson's outrageous, foulmouthed dialogue to Mr Braithwaite’s horror or provocatively poses – naked or near naked – in a wonderfully raunchy portrayal of the rent boy. Like a latter day Liza Doolittle, he is unable to self-censor in polite, or any, company, dropping expletives in front of Harold’s neighbor or brother-in-law but, again like Liza Doolittle, he grows fond and grateful toward his mentor despite the impossibility of fulfilling Harold’s proposal.

Nathan Butler pulls of a hat trick playing Braithwaite’s nosey and narcoleptic neighbour Edna, lecherous best friend Maurice and spiteful brother-in-law Edmond. Dawson doesn’t bury this impossible relationship with sentimentality but creates an endearing portrait of an odd couple. Perhaps frustrated by Harold’s constant reprimands for using bad language or letting his sweaty balls mark the sofa when he lounges around in the nude, Johnny reverts, sneaks out to see friends, a few client’s for old-times-sake, even steals money from Edna’s purse and samples her medications during one of her frequent black-outs.

The ending is hardly a surprise but Dawson resolves the two in an emotionally rewarding way without laying on the sentiment and then quickly ends the play, snapping us away from potential lugubriousness with a final, feline recurring device.

Mr Braithwaite Has a New Boy
written and directed by Steven Dawson
Harold Braithwaite - Iain Murton
Johnny – James Miller
Edna - Nathan Butler
Maurice – Nathan Butler
Edmond - Nathan Butler
Mechanics Institute Performing Arts Centre, Brunswick
14 January - 12 February 2010
Bookings: outcast.org.au

This is an expanded version of the review published in MCV

Review - A Midsummer Night's Dream - Opera Australia

Transplanting Britten’s Shakespeare opera to an Indian setting was a seemingly illogical step by Hollywood director Baz Luhrmann but the result made for a popular production. Dating from 1993 Luhrmann directed this long before his rise to fame but his flair for exotica and rich visuals was apparent even then. Luhrmann’s relocating of the story from ancient Athens to 1920s India cashed-in on the trend at the time for Bollywood movies and Indian inspired fashion and décor. The world of Indian mysticism does, however, seem more suited to the mysterious world Britten creates in his score. These spirit beings are to be feared and to enter their realm should therefore be far more disturbing. Ravel did the same in L’Enfant et les Sortileges, his enchanted garden is an alluring but fearful place, so is Britten’s. This Midsummer Night’s Dream was a run-away success when first staged and, unlike any other production of a Britten opera, played to full houses. The production was so popular it was presented at the 1994 Edinburgh Festival to equal acclaim.

Having the fairies as Indian gods and the mortals as British Raj confuses the text and storyline and Luhrmann’s tendency to keep the action busy often spoils the nocturnal, dreaminess of most of the music. An English bandstand set in a park somewhere in India in 1923 dominates the set. The roof becomes a platform where Oberon oversees his magical ministrations while on stage level there is a pond below the bandstand where fairies and mortals meet. The orchestra have been relocated from the pit to the middle level and, dressed in military band uniform, are constantly in view as are the subtleties and inventiveness of Britten’s score.

The loveliest of the opera’s scenes, where Tytania awakens to the transformed Bottom is beautifully done here. Lorina Gore’s increasing ecstatic and extravagant vocal lines float around Conal Coad’s trombone accompanied bellowing and braying as Bottom.
With his genial, rollicking bass, Coad leads the mechanicals in their three scenes with great success. In the guise of an army entertainment troop, the effect is straight out of an English Music Hall parody of Italian opera along the lines that Britten and librettist Peter Pears intended.

The quartet of lovers is superb. Henry Choo’s ardent and honey-voiced Lysander sounds very much in the British tenor tradition. Choo’s first scene with Hermia is beautifully sung. Even more so as he sang the repeated “I swear to thee” phrases running up and down a staircase! Lisa Harper-Brown’s plaintive soprano beautifully contrasts with Dominica Matthews’s mezzo in the famous squabble which, here, becomes a cat-fight ending with both splashing about in the pool. The physical prowess of Opera Australia’s ensemble singers often matches their vocal prowess.

The most physical performance of all is Tyler Coppin’s as Puck. Does anyone cast a boy in this role anymore? But using an adult actor gives greater opportunity to create a character and with his small stature Coppin has the best of both worlds and looks like an adult trapped in boy’s body. His slapstick performance contrasts nicely with Tobias Cole’s stealthy, almost sinister Oberon. Perched above the stage with white face and blue, clawed hands and backed by Britten’s melismatic music Cole’s performance reinforces this role as still one of the best in modern operatic literature for a counter-tenor.
In a sound-world all of its own, Oberon’s music benefited from Cole’s restrained performance. With their prominence on the stage Orchestra Victoria, lead by Britten authority Paul Kildea, were able to glean every nuance in the fairies' music as well as the deliberately lumpen scenes for the rustics and their play. Despite its determination to please at all costs, the undeniable vitality of this production has made it a classic.


Britten - A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960)
Oberon - Tobias Cole
Tytania - Lorina Gore
Puck - Tyler Coppin
Theseus - Jud Arthur
Hippolyta - Catherine Carby
Lysander - Henry Choo
Demetrius - Andrew Moran
Helena - Lisa Harper-Brown
Hermia - Dominica Matthews
Bottom - Conal Coad
Quince - Richard Anderson
Flute - Graeme Macfarlane
Snug - Shane Lowrencev
Snout - Andrew Brunsdon
Starveling - Samuel Dundas
Opera Australia Children's Chorus
Orchestra Victoria
Conductor - Paul Kildea
Director - Baz Luhrmann (revival director - Julie Edwardson)
Designers - Catherine Martin & Bill Marron
Lighting Designer - Nigel Levings
State Theatre, The Arts Centre
December 4, 8, 11, 14, 16 & 18, 2010

pictured Lorina Gore as Tytania and tobias Cole as Oberon [picture Jeff Busby]

Review - Rigoletto - Opera Australia

The Joker is Wild
Not revived too frequently this 1991 production by Elijah Moshinsky updates the story to the 1960s and the films of Federico Fellini inspire the sets and costumes. The revival is even more welcome thanks to the outstanding performances of Michael Lewis and Rigoletto and Emma Matthews as Gilda.

The swinging, cynical sixties Moshinsky creates is the perfect world for the Duke. Paparazzi swarm around his act one party where showgirls dance with bishops. Act one springs along in this updated guise, the circus-like party music even sounding like the sort of music Fellini’s regular composer Nino Rota would have written had he lived a century earlier.
Michael Yeargan’s revolving ‘doll house’ set shows the Duke’s palace, the street where Rigoletto meets Sparafucile, Rigoletto’s house and Sparafucile’s inn. A quick quarter turn in acts two and four and you have some open space for Gilda’s abduction and the final father-daughter duet. It all works splendidly and is another of Opera Australia’s landmark productions. The set also concentrates the action close to the front of the stage so, when the many set pieces come along, the characters are conveniently up stage nicely placed to deliver their arias.

Michael Lewis is a model Verdi baritone, perfect diction, smooth legato and clear, ringing top. Lewis exploits every note of the music, sung and unsung, to convey character. Seen during the prelude, applying a grotesque clown make-up (anticipating Heath Ledger’s Joker from Batman), Lewis’s Rigoletto then stands to show this Rigoletto’s extra handicap. Crippled, Lewis beetles about on walking sticks. Lewis’s thirty years singing the role bring insights into the character’s words and music illuminate every dimension of Rigoletto’s tragedy big and small from his terrified freeze at Monterone’s curse to the perfectly timed pause and wild yowl when Gilda dies.

Emma Matthews is radiant as Gilda. Mentored in the role by Joan Sutherland, she now takes the highest alternatives at the close of “Caro nomo”, singing with a security and sophistication that would make her late, great predecessor proud. Matthews’s acting matches her singing and she creates an understandably fatalistic young woman out of Gilda. Her murder scene is actually shocking; she strides fearlessly into the tavern so Maddalena seems to see it is a woman, not a man, and shrieks with horror as Gilds is stabbed. Jacqueline Dark, in the unlikely double act of Gilda’s untrustworthy guardian and then co-assassin brings a Freudian undertone perfectly in keeping with the story.

Rosario la Spina makes less of the Duke than his colleagues seeming to sing without much involvement but this has the advantage of suggesting the Duke’s detachment from his many victims.

Conductor Marko Letonja and Orchestra Victoria do some splendid work with shaping the tender moments. The Rigoletto/Gilda duets are as lovingly shaped as they are sung and the often-repeated ‘curse’ theme and storm music are thrilling without being bombastic.

Verdi - Rigoletto
Rigoletto - Michael Lewis
Gilda - Emma Matthews (Natalie Jones 25 & 27 November)
Duke of Mantua - Rosario La Spina
Sparafucile - Richard Anderson
Maddalena/Giovanna - Jacqueline Dark
Monterone - Jud Arthur
Marullo - Luke Gabbedy
Borsa - David Corcoran
Count Ceprano - Richard Alexander
Countess Ceprano - Jane Parkin
Usher - Clifford Plumpton
Page - Jodie McGuren
Director - Elijah Moshinsky (Revival Director - Cathy Dadd)
Conductor: Marko Letonja
Set & Costume Designer - Michael Yeargan

Presented by Opera Australia
State Theatre, The Arts Centre
November 22, 25, 27 December 1, 3, 7, 10, 18, 2010

Review - Le nozze di Figaro - Opera Australia

I Love’s ya’ Porgi
It’s good to see Neil Armfield’s insightful production of Le nozze di Figaro again, especially in the lead-up to his greatly anticipated Ring Cycle in Melbourne in 2013 (the first complete cycle staged in Melbourne in a century) for the Wagner bi-centenary.

Armfield’s view of late eighteenth century life in Spain is a dark one. The Almaviva household is held in the same disdain as the then monarch Carlos IV and his dysfunctional family. Goya inspires Dale Ferguson’s costumes; Countess Almaviva in particular, in oyster satin (and thanks to soprano Rachelle Durkin’s supermodel physique and bearing) has the devastating allure of Goya’s beloved Duchess of Alba. Goya even makes an appearance in act three to ‘photograph’ Figaro’s nuptials and, just as the he did in his portrait of the Royal Family, captures a household in sexual, social and political turmoil.

Fergusson’s sets feature deliberate anachronisms that, to my eyes, show the contemptible attitude of the Almaviva’s to their staff. A shabby, red vinyl reclining armchair dominates act one for Cherubino then the Count to hide behind or in. It’s the sort of out-of-date furniture that would normally be dumped but here is given to the servants to furnish their quarters. For the wedding celebrations the Count has laid on a cheap looking spread that, with its old fashioned hot water urn and Sunshine brand cups and saucers resembles a remote Country Ladies’ Association luncheon circa 1962!

I personally prefer a deeper voiced Figaro in contrast to a lighter voiced Count as here. With that gruff edge to his voice Teddy Tahu Rhodes exemplifies the peasant against the more refined voice of Peter Coleman-Wright’s aristocrat. In “Se vuol ballare” he embellishes the repeated theme. The result is a little ungainly but in terms of characterisation the growl in his voice works splendidly. Even better in “Non più andrai” he directs the second verse to the Count, seated smugly in that recliner chair, and, towering over the trembling Count, warns him his days of philandering are over too and reminding us just how revolutionary this opera (and the play it derives from) was feared to be. Armfield fills the opera with insights like these and the principal singers - especially Coleman-Wright, Rhodes, Durkin and Tiffany Speight - integrate them into their performances with easy assurance.
Tall and sleek Durkin’s arms glide naturally into gestures both graceful and, at appropriate times, erotic. When, in act two, the Count tries to force her away from the door to force open the closet where Cherubino hides, he at first violently lays his gloved hands on her only to let them roam over her breasts and body making the sexual connection still existing between the two – despite their current marital problems – alarmingly obvious. Durkin’s response to this rare moment of contact with her faithless husband, melting at his touch, is simultaneously elegant and erotic. Erotic obsession is the basis of this opera after all and this insight into that eroticism created a frisson. The Countess’s attraction to Cherubino was insightfully played up too; the Countess wilting to his act two serenade like Gomez used to when Morticia spoke French.

Speight’s voice grows in size and stature with each appearance. Speight also has charming way with and special claim on Mozartian maids. Sian Pendry bravely displays the rampaging teenage sexuality of Cherubino behaving at times like a spaniel in heat! She neatly negotiates the rapid pace set for “Non so piu” beautifully enunciating the words as do he rest of the cast.

The secondary characters weave through the story with only occasional success, pity because Mozart and Da Ponte allow them often substantial stage time. Elizabeth Campbell’s Marcellina is another character caught in a precarious situation. Her frustrations run deeper than mere anxiety over her age. Her favour with the Count Almaviva, depends on her winning her case against Figaro. In Campbell’s hands there is that sense Marcellina is greatly relieved when she finds Figaro is her son and she can escape to bourgeoisie security now as Bartolo’s wife. When Armfield’s production was first staged Don Basilio’s and Marcellina’s arias were cut. They were restored for the revival in Sydney, although Marcellina’s is excised for this Melbourne season.

The tenor Robert Tear specialises in singing Basilio and devotes an entire essay to him in his book Singer Beware offering an illuminating analysis into “the quality of thought which might invest a small part with a fresh interest and, at the same time, probably alter the usual balance of the opera. “If the aria, is cut,” he writes, “the character becomes extremely hard to play simply because the chance of explaining his character to the audience is taken away, all the earlier behaviour seeming merely eccentric or stupid.” Basilio is a man of great intelligence, according to Tear, “more intelligent than anyone else in the Almaviva household” the seemingly bizarre aria "In quelli anni cui dal poco” is making a point about this “musician/thinker’s position in a philistine aristocratic house of the period.” While the near-revolutionary sentiments of Figaro’s are extrovertly apparent in Armfield’s clever twist in “Non più andrai”, there could have been similar possibilities with Basilio’s aria explaining his philosophy and how it helped him survive the “fooleries of class and politics” surrounding him.
Figaro is as much about disguise and hidden identity as it is about eroticism and Basilio revealing that he has disguised himself in a donkey skin his entire life should hardly come as a surprise after the multiple disguises of the previous acts. In Opera Australia's older production Basilio actually wore said pelt, converted into a cloak which he wore over his familiar curé's garments. In this production Basilio only speaks of the donkey skin.
Conductor Marko Letonja actually highlights the ascending horn passages at the end of Basilio’s aria so they ring out with a confidence worthy of Beethoven and suggest maybe Basilio is another plebeian hero. Kanen Breen plays Basilio primarily for laughs and by the time the aria arrives the character has become a rococo incarnation of Kenneth Williams. It’s an assured performance however; with a smug strut, the character slithers around with decreasing fear of his master after all.

There is a touch of early music practice from the orchestra; fortepiano replacing the usual harpsichord and the strings adopting that occasionally ‘wiry’ sound associated with early music practice. Acts one and two work the best in this current revival, the sexual and social strain made delightfully relevant by director and cast.

Mozart - Le nozze di Figaro
a co-production between Opera Australia and the Welsh National Opera
Conductor - Marko Letonja, Anthony Legge (November 23 & 27)
Director - Neil Armfield
Scenery & Costume Design - Dale Ferguson
Lighting Design - Rory Dempster
Count Almaviva - Peter Coleman-Wright
Countess Almaviva - Rachelle Durkin
Susanna - Tiffany Speight
Figaro - Teddy Tahu Rhodes
Cherubino - Sian Pendry
Marcellina - Elizabeth Campbell
Bartolo - Warwick Fyfe
Basilio/Curzio - Kanen Breen
Barbarina - Claire Lyon
Antonio - Clifford Plumpton
Bridesmaids - Katherine Wiles & Margaret Plummer
Opera Australia Chorus
Orchestra Victoria

Presented by Opera Australia
State Theatre, The Arts Centre
November 17, 20, 23, 27, December 2, 9, 11 & 15, 2010

pictured - Rachelle Durkin & Peter Coleman-Wright (picture Branco Gaicia)

Wagner's Ring Cycle announced for Melbourne in 2013

Opera Australia have announced performances of three cycles of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen in November and December 2013 in Melbourne to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth. Although the iconic Sydney Opera is the usual venue for premiere Opera Australia’s events, the cycles will be exclusive to Melbourne.

Der Ring Des Nibelungen has not been performed in Melbourne since its Australian premiere in 1913 by an English touring company formed by Thomas Quinlan as part of a grand – but ultimately unsuccessful - scheme of performing nine Ring cycles around the world in six months! Die Walküre had premiered in Australia, at the Princess's Theatre in May 1907 but Quinlan's company staged the cycle twice at Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne;
Das Rheingold on 19 August 1913
Die Walküre on 22 August 1913
Siegfried on 25 August 1919
and
Götterdämmerung on 29 August 1919

The cycle was not performed complete in Australia again until a French production was imported by the State Opera of South Australia in 1998.

The 2013 cycles will be the first time Opera Australia have stage the Ring in its entirety. A previous attempt at staging the cycle was abandoned after the first two operas only.
The 2013 project will be a joint venture between Opera Australia, the Houston Grand Opera and the Victorian Government’s Major Events Company. Melbourne philanthropists Maureen and Tony Wheeler are contributing $5 million of the $15.5 million production budget. A co-founder with her husband of the Lonely Planet travel guides the Maureen Wheeler is Wagner enthusiast, having attended Ring productions around the world.

Neil Armfield will direct the cycle which will be also be staged in Houston over four seasons - Houston Grand Opera's first-ever staging of the cycle – commencing in 2014. Armfield’s previous work with the Houston Opera includes a cycle of Britten operas. His most recent, Peter Grimes, is part of Houston’s 2010-11 season.
The musical director in Melbourne will be the Australian composer and conductor Richard Mills.
An exclusive orchestra will be created for the cycle, consisting of players from the permanent ensemble for opera and ballet performance in Melbourne, Orchestra Victoria, and its Sydney equivalent, the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra and other orchestras from around Australia. Younger musicians from elite training schools like the Australian National Academy of Music will be introduced into the pool of musicians to learn the culture of the repertoire and be mentored by established musicians in order to present the cycle when it is restaged on future occasions.

Four of the singers participating have been announced. British soprano Susan Bullock will sing Brunhilde. Finnish baritone Juha Uusitalo will sing Wotan. American tenor Gary Lehman will sing Siegfried and John Wegner will sing Alberich. Bullock, Uusitalo and Wegner have sung their roles at major houses on a number of occasions. An established Tristan, Siegfried, Parsifal and Tannhäuser, Lehman is adding Siegfried to his repertoire.
Other singers, from Australia and overseas, completing the casts will be announced as they are confirmed.

Dates for the three cycles are still to be confirmed and tickets go on sale in 2011.

Review [of sorts] The Turn of the Screw - Victorian Opera

When lighting designer Matt Scott is good, he's very good and created the one deluxe image in this otherwise uninspired production.
The children's former governess, Miss Jessel, has drowned herself. When her ghost appears Scott picks out her figure on the drakened stage in flickering, dark green light suggesting her submerged body in the rippling lake.
That contrast of saturated colour against total darkness was worthy of a lighting maestro like Mario Bava.

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw (1954)
Australian premiere - University of New South Wales (1968)
Victorian Opera
Playhouse, The Arts Centre 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 & 17 2010

Review - Boston Marriage - Melbourne Theatre Company

Material Grrrrrrl

Not that are many, but Boston Marriage is one of the funniest male authored imaginings of lesbian sexuality since Frank Marcus’s The Killing of Sister George.
Countering the charge that he could write only for and about men, American playwright David Mamet concocted a play featuring only women. A ‘Boston Marriage’ is a 19th century American term for a domestic arrangement between two unmarried women. Whether a Boston Marriage has a sexual dimension or open to quiet speculation. In Mamet’s play it is rampagingly obvious.




To secure a house and income to support herself and her estranged lover, Anna (Pamela Rabe) is the mistress of a wealthy man. Her estranged lover, however, is a woman, Claire (Margaret Mills). Instead of welcoming the offer of a ‘Boston marriage’ Claire wants to use Anna’s home for, an assignation with sweet, young and curious girl. Both women’s plans backfire when their new loves have an unexpected relationship of their own.

The farce is not played out as physical comedy. Instead Mamet has the pair taunting Anna’s well meaning maid Catherine (Sara Gleeson), going at each others throats or hatching plans to save each other’s necks.

The dialogue is steeped in Oscar Wild-ish artificiality requiring effortless delivery and barbed double-entendres. As an elegantly dressed but foul-mouthed, voyeuristic lesbian Rabe is in her element. She wrings every nuance of comedy out of the least funny words so an innocent word like ‘chintz’ becomes hysterical. As the plan backfires Rabe calculates Anna’s escalating frenzy to the smallest detail. Discovered elegantly nibbling bon-bons as the play opens, Anna is soon diving into them, guzzling them in her nervous frenzy like her modern counterpart would guzzle Valium.

Mills plays Claire as the butcher of the two, striding open-legged over Anna’s elegant furniture but creating a character reminiscent of the era’s real proto-feminists. As the maid Gleeson suggests the character’s development in the emancipated household from cringing dimwit to sexually liberated woman.

Christina Smith’s bold, glowing wallpaper set beautifully emphasises the artificiality of the play while Matt Scott's lighting provides a clean unfussy sheen over the main stage but adds a slightly Freudian, glowing, red tunnel of an 'entrance' through which the women enter and exit. Ian McDonald’s surprise musical touches emphasise how these women are not all they seem as well.

Mamet may have a limited insight into female sexuality but for play that was almost written for a bet Boston Marriage is little gem.

Boston Marriage (1999) by David Mamet
Anna - Pamela Rabe
Claire - Margaret Mills
Catherine - Sara Gleeson
Director - Aidan Fennessy
Set and Costume Designer - Christina Smith
Lighting Designer - Matt Scott
Composer - Ian McDonald
Fairfax Studio, The Arts Centre, 9 June - 24 July 2010.
Information and bookings: mtc.com.au

This is an expanded version of the review published in Melbourne Community Voice