Review - Moonlight and Magnolias - Melbourne Theatre Company

Eschewing Mother-in-law jokes, in his autobiography Ben Hecht quoted his in making an interesting observation about the disposable nature of theatre. "My mother-in-law," he wrote, "will sit in a theatre, laugh, and deeply enjoy herself. But she comes out of the theatre usually with a shrug and a sigh. 'What did it give you to take away?' she asks. 'Nothing. It leaves you nothing in your mind or spirit. An evening wasted'".

Moonlight and Magnolias is a curious piece. A few weeks into the shoot of Gone With the Wind the producer David O Selznick (Patrick Brammall) halts production, hires a new director, Victor Fleming (Stephen Lovatt) and writer Ben Hecht (Nicholas Hammond), locks the door and for the next five days the three re-write the screenplay. The play begins well enough, the impossible task of rewriting a screenplay of a massive novel by three people who respect but don’t like each other and all locked by key and contract in Selznick’s office for five straight days, gives rise to predictable comedy. Screwball one minute, serious the next, conflicting and more interesting issues arise; the racism of Scarlett O’Hara and the idolisation of the old South (and its reliance on slavery) irks Hecht. The war against Fascism is imminent and that Selznick is producing a celebration of America’s fascist past at the time when it was (or a least Hecht was) beginning to galvanise against it’s racism and anti-Semitism makes for an interesting parable. But this is Hecht not Brecht.

The only food Hecht and Fleming are allowed is a plentiful supply of bananas and peanuts, after a few days the shells and skins litter the stage reminding me of David Pownall’s fantastic Master Class, set in Soviet Russia where Stalin and his minister of Culture Zdanov terrorise the composers Shostakovitch and Prokofiev over one nightmarish evening into composing socially responsible music. In a brilliant coup de theatre that ended act one, Stalin shows Prokofiev shelves of recordings of every piece of music Prokofiev had written and asks him to choose his favourite. After a long search Prokofiev selects a record which Stalin calmly smashed, followed by another and another. Zhdanov joins him, smashing records by the armfull as the lights fade. The second act began with Stalin and Zhdanov still smashing records and the stage strewn with broken gramophone records which remained, crunching underfoot, for the rest of then play.

I think peanuts says it all. Moonlight and Magnolias is an awkward and often unconvincing piece that nearly breaks down when Selznick conveniently goes catatonic in order for Hecht and Fleming to have a private discussion. The irony, if not the moral, is that the movie business is fickle and even seasoned pros cannot predict let alone make a hit. Hecht and Fleming constantly predict the film will be a turkey while Selznick merely panders to popular taste. If Hecht's mother-in-law were to see this play with its heavy handed social message, she might well regret ever wanting something to take away.

David O Selznick – Patrick Brammall
Ben Hecht – Nicholas Hammond
Victor Fleming – Stephen Lovatt
Miss Poppenghul – Marg Downey
Director – Bruce Beresford
Set & Costume Designer – Shaun Gurton
Lighting Designer – Nigel Levings
Playhouse, The Arts Centre
26 February – 28 March 2009

Review - I Love You, Bro - Three To A Room Productions/Malthouse

La Chat Noir: A (B)romance in One Act

I Love You, Bro is a creepy little black comedy that is becoming justifiably famous since its debut at the 2007 Melbourne Fringe and subsequent season at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Set in England the eighty minute solo act is told by Johnny (Ash Flanders) who recounts how, as a lonely fourteen year-old, he began a chat-room relationship that nearly cost him his life. Bored and frustrated Johnny spends his nights at his computer talking to equally bored and frustrated strangers until he meets by chance another boy in his town who goes by the chat tag 'Marky Mark'. Mark mistakenly thinks Johnny is a girl and Johnny at first is attracted by the opportunity of chatting with one of the most popular boys in the neighborhood but something else begins to take hold of him. Although both boys are straight, Johnny becomes fascinated by Mark’s mistaken attraction to him and spins a web of lies to encourage his on-line suitor, "like fag love", he explains, "between two non-fags."

The situation escalates into a barely believable black farce as Mark, convinced Johnny is a girl, the pair become a 'cyber-couple'. The director Yvonne Virsik wondered how Johnny’s victim could be so completely fooled but all the more surprising is that the play is based on a real incident in which the real-life Johnny's deceits were far more extensive. That real Johnny was called at trial a ‘virtual Scheherazade’ but, unlike Scheherazade, who spun her nightly stories to postpone execution, Johnny ultimately welcomes death because life cannot match his fantasy.

Johnny compares his passion to Romeo and Juliet's, reminding us that he was the same age as Juliet. But the better Shakespearean parallel is Iago, particularly in his post-Freudian guise, unconsciously in love with Othello and so jealous as to destroy him. This kid is such a mess that he plays his own Desdemona too! Flanders has had the rare luxury of playing Johnny in various revivals of the play since the original run. His performance is beautifully nuanced with a great handling of the dialogue, the regional English accent and, disturbingly, Johnny's touchy-feely sensuality as he relives the affair as though the adrenaline and testosterone were really pumping through him. Desperate for love and desperate to keep his lover online, Johnny becomes a weird modern counterpart to Jean Cocteau's 'elle', desperately trying to keep her lover on the phone in La voix humaine.

Told after the events there is a sense of withheld conclusion to the story. The script might have returned to the present, where it began briefly with the older Johnny, for a postlude explaining what happened to him after those 170 or so crazy days of online espionage and leaving us wondering if we could - or should - believe him. Nonetheless I Love You, Bro is one of those plays that make its effect by taking its audience into a dark and scary place. Cass's script exploits the improbability of the story, creating the same effect you get watching a thriller film. And like a good thriller, that thrill is in wondering how far it will go and to what dark and scary places it will take its audience. Where it takes us is into the dark side of male sexuality. Johnny is overtaken by an unstoppable and inexplicable homoerotic obsession. His heart pounds with fear and desire as his virtual boyfriend strips on cam and, even though he is physically sickened by that arousal, he determines to make Mark love him. The staging is reduced to a minimum. Occasionally a crescent moon or the chat text is projected against the wall, but an office chair is the only prop on a darkened stage surrounded by half-lit junk. Barely discernible amongst the junk are abandoned children's toys lending an additionally creepy feeling of abandoned innocence. Because it is told in a single voice it would make an equally thrilling short story or, as it depends on deceit and not even being seen, a great radio play.

I Love You, Bro (2007) By Adam J Cass
Johnny - Ash Flanders
Director - Yvonne Virsik
Designer - Jason Lehane
Composer - Nick Wollan
Three To A Room Productions
Tower Theatre, Malthouse
10 - 28 February 2009

This is an expanded version of the review in Canvas

Review - Yellow Moon - Red Stitch Actors Theatre

Highland Fling
It must be a Russian thing in that, Russian born, Alex Menglet runs an ironic current through David Greig’s beautiful tragi-comedy Yellow Moon. The stage has been fitted out with red plush curtains like in a grand old theatre and when the dinner-jacketed narrator (Dion Mills) steps out to introduce the teen-aged hoodlum and his unlikely accomplice it becomes apparent that the curtain is one of the many theatrical artifices in the play. One side of the curtain parts revealing Lee (Martin Sharpe) behind over sized bars, and as the narrator rattles of Lee's list of criminal activity, it becomes obvious he is prison fodder in the making. The curtain on the other side parts revealing Leila (Erin Dewar). Wearing a Muslim woman’s black burka, she is also behind bars. Her prison, Lee suggests, cheerfully taking over the narration and with the popular misconception about Muslim society, is a cultural one. Leila's prison is also self imposed. A studious but deeply troubled girl, she never speaks or socialises. Her only outing is a weekly excursion to the all-night grocery store where she buys razor blades, celebrity magazines and, in the toilet, pours over the glamorous pictures while cutting her arms.

Lee has stolen the engagement ring his mother’s latest boyfriend Billy (Dion Mills) intended to give her and when provoked by Billy, Lee accidentally kills him and with Leila goes on the run, to hide out with his long absent father in the Scottish Highlands.
Intended for younger audiences, the play is written in a narration, the characters narrating each other's as well as their own actions and thoughts. It is also narrated in third person and the irony in the device is magnificent. Having the shy, even self-loathing Leila speak in third person suggests how a person with such low self-esteem would view themselves. For Lee, whose ambition is to become the local pimp, it intensifies his swaggering and over-inflated sense of himself. Being told at second hand it could also be a parody of trial, or even coroner's inquest. The section where they journey by train to the Highlands is done as a vaudeville turn with Lee and Leila singing, complete with piano accompaniment. Then, like Hansel and Gretel they become lost on the mountain where, like babes in the wood are found by a Forester. This forester (Dion Mills) is no hero but they stay on learning from him and each other, undergoing whatever the inland equivalent of a sea change is called.

Sharpe and Dewar are actors definitely worth watching out for. Sharpe has a natural ability to shape a sentence and get every meaning out of it. In a short scene where he speaks to his unseen, drunk and unconscious mother the words are infused with concern and anger. Dewar's face each time the 'silent Leila' fails to speak resembles Giulietta Masina in La Strada. Quickly ranging from a railway station to mountainside hut where a deer is slaughtered the staging is ingenious in its simplicity. A lot happens in the second act (including a climactic scene worthy of a Jacobean tragedy) and so perhaps the ultimate ending is abrupt. But the story telling, particularly in the reflective and beautiful development of Leila’s character is so entertainingly told. It is up-front and confronting about the most fearful issues young people can encounter but the nature of its style disarms without defusing the way it presents them. It has the feeling of Brecht's English disciple, Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop about it.

Yellow Moon – The Ballad of Leila and Lee (2007) by David Greig
Leila - Erin Dewar
Lee - Martin Sharpe
Narrator/Billy/Frank – Dion Mills
Holly - Ella Caldwell
Director – Alex Menglet
Set Design – Peter Mumford
Lighting Design – Stelios Karagiannis
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
2 Chapel Street, St Kilda
4 February – 7 March 2009

Review - Woyzeck - Malthouse

Army Fatigues
Woyzeck by George Büchner, the science geek who also wrote plays and stories in a style a century ahead of his time, is one of those watersheds in European art that, usually after a long time become hailed as a masterpiece. Büchner was by training a scientist; studying medicine, languages (becoming fluent in French, Italian and English) then specialising in animal anatomy and what we call Biology. His treatises on the nervous system of fish landed him, at 22, a Doctorate and a teaching position at the University of Zurich. His twin love of literature, especially drama, (although no account of his life uncovers a visit to a theatre) took up the rest of his time. Büchner died at 23 but had he lived and settled into his dual academic/dramatic existence, the form or content of Woyzeck would definitely not have appealed to a Biedermeier audience. His two completed plays, Danton’s Death and Leonce and Lenya, were never staged in his lifetime. Danton’s Death was published at the time, Leonce and Lenya was was staged in 1895, Danton’s Death was finally staged in 1902 followed by Woyzeck (after being assembled by guesswork and published in 1879) in 1913 to mark the centenary of Büchner’s birth. When Alban Berg composed his 1925 opera Wozzeck (the corrupt title taken from an incorrect edition of the play that had misspelled the title character’s name) the story was given an international boost and, thanks to the mostly ‘expressionist' styled productions of the opera, hailed as the precursor of the movement. In his introduction to his Oxford University Press translation of the three plays, Victor Price warns that Woyzeck “in method is not slice-of-life naturalism, nor larger-than-life expressionism, though it has been claimed as forerunner of both. Nor is it an anti-militarist tract … it is something far more complex than any of these, a unique work, organically conceived, which defies any attempt to put it in a category.” Bear in mind too that Büchner would have had little conception of ‘naturalism’, ‘expressionism’ or the artistic movement that claim Woyzeck.

The further away from Büchner’s time the more praise Woyzeck, with its brief, blunt dialogue, scenes and action, gets. In our own time that poverty of dialogue, but so essential in its poverty, have elevated it to a template of style. Add to that some magnificent imagery as he describes people and scenes; "you rush through the world like an open razor" says the Captain to the frantic Woyzeck. Music runs through the play, short snatches of folk song, marching band music, fairground music, again with an amazingly rich poverty. In this production some of the songs are set to music by Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Peter Farnan and, as Woyzeck’s barrack companion Andres, Hamish Michael has come up with his music for his own songs which he performs, like extemporisations, on a guitar.

Even a play in an unfinished state like Woyzeck has a beginning, middle and an end. This re-working by Michael Kantor of a re-working by Gisli Örn Gardarsson has a beginning - and a good one - descending into more of a muddle than a middle before it reaches a good, if ambiguous, end. With the exception of the Drum Major's introductory song which has an awful lyric, the play and its songs goes well until the 'carnival' scene where it gets overburdened with references to office Christmas parties and karaoke and nearly doesn't recover. Scenes such as Marie (Bojana Navakovic) watching the Drum Major (Marco Chiappi) and his band parading through town emphasise, even in their heightened setting, the simple directness of Büchner's writing.

In this version Woyzeck's perilous mental state is presented (beginning with the second scene where Woyzeck is haunted by a vision of death and the gallows). Occasional bursts of gunfire from off-stage suggest too that this regiment is on active service. Socratis Otto as Woyzeck is incredibly moving with his disarmed and disarming smile of his joy when he sees his beloved Marie and their child. In the same way he is frightening in Woyzeck's terror as his psychotic visions overwhelm him. The casting and playing of the Woyzeck's tormentors, the Captain (Merfyn Owen), Doctor (Mitchel Butel) and Drum Major is good in the way they are modern counterparts of earlier theatrical expressionism. Mitchel Butel's performance as the Doctor degenerates into a drag burlesque during the Carnival scene from which it never recovers. Pity, as in his first appearance he wears a skeleton T-shirt and Mickey Mouse ears (as though 'Mickey Mouse' was used here in its derogatory sense). Changing the Drum Major's gift to Marie from earrings to roses also means Woyzeck's line about how lucky she is to find two (most people only find one earring) make no sense.The important 'cat' scene, where the Doctor demonstrates the results of his crackpot experiments on Woyzeck and when Woyzeck, his physical state beginning to crumble like his mental one, gets the shakes, is truly scary. Tim Rogers as narrator and, briefly as the Carnival Barker, becomes something like the balladeer from The Threepenny Opera. Armed with a mandolin he and the band even have a few songs that sound like they were from a Brecht play. Peter Corrigan's set also evokes German expressionism of the 1920s. Doctor Caligari-like the jagged and raised stage splits open revealing an inner chamber where the cause and effect of the play - Marie's betrayal of Woyzeck with the Drum Major and then her murder by Woyzeck - are performed, in this isolation chamber it appears to the audience in a different reality, like one of Woyzeck's visions.

Woyzeck (1837) by George Büchner adapted by Gisli Örn Gardarsson
English translation by Gisli Örn Gardarsson, Ruth Little and Jón Alti Jónasson
Woyzeck - Socratis Otto
Captain - Merfyn Owen
Doctor - Mitchel Butel
Drum Major - Marco Chiappi
Marie - Bojana Navakovic
Andres - Hamish Michael
Narrator/Carnival Barker/Knife Seller - Tim Rogers
Director - Michael Kantor
Set, costume and mask designer - Peter Corrigan
Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse
31 January - 28 February 2009
90 minutes (no interval)

Happy 200th Birthday Felix Mendelssohn

... and, had she not become one of the most famous literary suicides since Sylvia Plath, Sarah Kane would be having her 38th birthday. Interestingly, if not morbidly, this coming February 20 will be the tenth anniversary of SK's death.