The Long Forgotten Dream

The stage is bare and sandy. Waves wash calmly on shore. We can see the ones of the theatre. The flys ate dropped onstage. A family story torn through time. Phd daughter returns home with her great grandfather's bones. To the town that killed him. A priest haunted by his families crimes against her family. A father tormented by loosing his mother in a car accident. A sister /aunt who cares for family. An old woman, dead and wandering the spirit world in search of the heart she lost to the great grandfather long ago. The large curtain cracked and filled with light, the spirit world hovering above and around them all. The old woman. Mother to the mother lost. Family. Finds her way to the father and they connect. Truth and reconciliation. First Truth. 

Act 2

King Tulla comes home. Great Grandmother lends strength to father so he can lay him to rest. Reconciliation can begin. 

The man playing King Tulla is so beautiful. In his jackaroo garb and his dance paint. When he dances with old woman to return their hearts to rest I wept for the beauty of it.

Dr Singh as the daughters crush is delightful. It's made clear that he's all in, that the family will continue. 

Standing ovation. The dreaming is recalled and the great breathing spirit world rests. 

Blackie Blackie Brown

Really great. Make people laugh and change their minds. Stage is raked. White. Covered in boxes. Two across bring us everyone. Megan paying the titular role and Ash all of her victims and tormentors. But they aren't the only cast. The white box is a projection surface that Springs to life and brings us grandmother, news castors and a young boy. 

The technical perfection was amazing but it's Ballina Lui's inventive genius that floored me. This fantastical tale of revenge kicked off by the retelling of a massacre. The visceral unpleasantness delivered gorgeously by MW reliving it through her grandmother's memory. That spirals out of control. Vengeful spirits driving Dr. Black onwards. And feminism at the core of every teachable moment. 

Thank you so much. For this work. I want it bigger and back again as often as possible. 

Leathal Indifference

Dim bedroom. Fan. Laundry basket. New carpet. Soft pillows and a dark balcony. 

The light travels across the room during the telling. Dawn through dusk. A heavily pregnant woman moves around stage spinnibg the stories together like a conversation we are a part of but don't contribute to. 

The telling is harrowing and connected. Stories of violence. Reema who married Ajay. The girl in the servo. The screaming girl next to the neighbour. The girl on the phone at work. Reema who broke out of the locked flat and told her story to strangers. Reema who told the neighbour of the beatings, the starvings, the rapes. Reema who escaped. But not really because this story starts in the coroner's court so we already know how it ends. 

It's heavy handed but impressive. 90min monologue that grips the audience tight. The communal gasp when we hear that a officer told Reema that Ajay was just texting to tell her   he still loved her. The palpable relief when PI Pee-wee looses his quarry. The slide of facts and truths into the narrative. Why women stay. How many we lose. What it costs financially. 

Leaving the theatre everyone is talking about violence. Maybe just maybe we might do something about it. Though the call to action is strong the course of the action is not clear to the audience and they walk away. 

Single Asian Female

I started following Michele Law on Twitter a few weeks ago so I'm quite looking forward to tonight. Ran into Sally again. She's done a film about a boy who gets his period. Must watch it. 

Into the show! 

The set looks like all the bedrooms of my high school friends uptop and like the local Chinese restaurant down stairs. Right down to the dark 'bamboo' Tiffany chairs and red table cloths. 

Smashing dialogue. We open with Pearl singing I WILL SURVIVE on top of a table celebrating her divorce. Single in neon lights up. She's ambitious and ready to start a new life. We meet her younger daughter Mai who is struggling with being not Aussie enough along with all the other teen issues. (And her brilliant friend Katie.) Asian in neon lights up. Finally we meet Zoe an aspiring professional violinist late for an audition because of a recent tinder date. Dealing with a bitch who also wants the gig. Female in neon lights.  Act 1 unravels Pearl has a secret she is trying to tell her girls but they are so wrapt up in their own troubles she can't get it out. But she gives and gives to them. Closing the restaurant and clearing it out but still offering to throw an after formal party for Mai (though after meeting the awful Lana we all know how that will turn out). Then a toilet rises out of up stage with Zoe and a pile of tests in get hand, pregnant. Simultaneously the phone rings and she's offered the orchestra spot she needs. Three women highlighted alone. Family. 

Act two:

Well you know it's great when the audience aren't ready to give up clapping so they have to turn the lights up to get us to leave! 

Heartbreaking secret is that she's being deported thanks to her husband shady business dealings in her name. Her abusive ex husband who raped her and hurt her and made her feel less than the amazing woman she is. 

Super love Zoe who has panick attacks and copes with them just normal and noone freaks out. They  just do the things she needs. Zoe's boyfriend is so hot. And so so amazingly great at being a normal human. 

This play was  a scream out loud funny, with sobs mixed in once you loved them so much you wish never to be parted from the Wong's. I'm in Chains indeed. 

Top Girls

Crash blackouts conceal each scene change so we feel.like we are jumping from one place to the next. The dinnet party looks like a Chinese banquet room but all the food is white. The Wild Swan orders Waldorf salad. Each self obsessed but the dialogue feels so natural. Overlapping, some times repeated stories intertwined and unique. Gret stealing potatoes for later and describing the descent into hell to kill devils. Drunk Victorian lady stripping it all of to be free. Pope Joan killing the mood with her death. The theft of children and the despair of men every being or doing something kind. Then it all ends in drunkenness. Black

Cut to our host recruiting with all the worst of decisions on display. Black. Cut to her neice hiding in the garden from her mum with a friend much younger than get but yet still more mature. The rain pours down as the shimmering party curtain descended. Black

Interval

Move into the office with the dinner host. Hitting all the sexist tropes in interview form somehow much worse cause its women saying them to other women. Each of the cast appears again in a different role. Strange flip to class in final scene with the sister. 

Overall the performances were superb but the totally black transitions last too long to keep the flow going. Plus this feels so dated. It's white middle class feminism with all the tone deaf notes and poor portrayals of women who are different. Amazingly acted but otherwise flat.

My name is Jimini

The black blank stage is bathed in black light and rythim as two Torres Straight Islanders begin their dance. The movement Hypnotic and yet simple and perfectly timed. We will meet these two later as Jimi introduces his family by drawing in sound and stunning visuals his family tree as a constellation, his brothers part of the Aunty and  uncles that are so important to griwing children up and imparting a culture that is language that is stories and music and dance. A culture that is not fully captured in any book but with technology can be shared. The show is Artful and beautiful. The two diaramoas create a sense of place and platform for story telling. The dark horror of the little girl taken by a monster, eyes gouged out, smashed and rubbed raw on a rock. The monster prevailing over the village is horrifying even though you can see the cardboard people in the diarama and the family moving the camera around. Stories of family, of culture. The impromptu tests on the knowledge we have been gaining. The invitation to join them in preserving and growing the nation and culture and knowledge. This acceptance that the old white man from Cambridge did his best and didn’t mean to harm them but was never the right tool for holding onto culture. The sharp let down as we discover that his grandfather was denied the ‘artifacts’ of his people even though he did what was wanted. Jimi welcomes us and we feel welcomed. Jimi doesn’t upbraid us but shares and we learn and in so doing spread the fire, feeding and watch it grow. 

The book! Back projection of simple filmed sequences onto gorgeously detailed drawings. The story of the boy and the crocodile. A story of pride.  

I could feel the frustration pour from Jimi when his son answered the phone. I’ve felt that. You are sharing something important but they can’t/won’t see or hear it because they are lost in their own place. Their own world. Contrived and rehearsed near to death the show still manages to feel nearly real, nearly right now but misses I think because they are not actors and so cannot be in the moment. It’s a strength in this show for sharing what they do but as I does sometimes worth Treehouse it also lets it down. It’s the only thing that does. 

Atlantis

Of course it has a quirky and adorable set. It’s L Katz! Black glass floor, pastel walls giant round bed and window not sure what the crucifix is about can’t wait!

The show picks up where we last saw Lally. Onstage talking to NY psychics and drops us into the reason the show was so late. It opens up a whole world of emotions in me I’m 35. I don’t have kids and I want them. I’ve got Gav at least and thank God I lack her onstage naivety. 

She wonders after the break up spinning back to psychics and pseudo spiritualism in New York, running to Kansas to freeze eggs and holding the idea of a perfect Miami childhood deep beneath the waves submerged like Atlantis. 

Actors are superb. I can remember first seeing ‘Electra’ as Portia in Julia Caesar and loving her outside of all reason in an otherwise lacklustre show. In Atlantis her brilliance really shines through, each character distinct and clearly drawn.