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. 

The Father

Running late doesn’t set you up for a great experience. I arrived red and puffing with my left calf threaten to cramp up, my seat was right in the back corner as close to the ushers as could be but luckily it’s previews so won’t be starting in time and Wharf 1 doesn’t have a bad seat in the house! 

Australian Grafitti

I really wanted to see this show. I’m always fascinated by the glimpse through other eyes in Theatre not made by or about white people but  I’ve found it difficult to collect my thoughts on this play. Still I’ll loose it to memory if I don’t write something down.

Wharf 2 is a really small space but it also isn’t. You can feel close to the actors but there is really quite a lot of us in here. The set is one long room. A high window on the left lets in dawn. A door bolted shut is set beneath it. Banquet chairs stacked against the wall. A few are set around a family table. A small cot in one corner beneath a small photo of someone the Thai king maybe. I can't make it out from where I am. Sitting at the table in one chair is a man. His head on the table. Asleep? Dead. He's the chef the head of the kitchen and the primary reason the restaurant, the family has been kept alive in Australia. Now he's dead. He caught something. Coughed and choked and died. No one knows what it was they couldn't take him to the doctor. No time. No papers.

We are far out west in a country town. The only non-whites here and unwelcome for it. The boy is a teenager and young still, this is for him. This slaving in a restaurant. For his future. This is for her. This slaving in a restaurant in a foreign land, sending money home, never seeing her. The mother, the owner is ridgid and stiff in all her movements. The couple who work in the kitchen are flightly and panicked. They fight and love and regret their daughter who they have not seen in so many years. He desperately wants to return to her. She does not.

Then it starts.

Someone has written a big black letter in paint on the wall of the church. A thai letter. The local police burst in. Aggressive and racist enough. The town already suspicious and unwelcoming, turn hostile. Throwing glances and bricks.

The mother pushes them all each night to prepare for a restaurant full of customers who never come. They rage against the futility but she pushes.

The dead chef, concealed in the family room throughout all of this, cajoles and whispers and instructs the young boy in life, cooking, family and the impossibility of escape.

There is a riot. They town comes to throw them all out and the young woman who has realised now that she is sick with whatever killed the chef leaves with them. A sacrifice. The burn the boy of the chef for they are Thai and escape into the night. To the next place. Or maybe to home. They lie to the man about where his wife has gone. The young boy meets the girl by the waterhole again. The girl who is the policeman's daughter. The girl who didn't want to be part of the riot but was. The girl who can't look at her village as beautiful anymore because she can't unsee what was always there but hidden. She will leave. She loves it but will leave it one day because she can't unsee the ugliness that was always there.

This play is so sinister in an almost supernatural way. It feels like racism is a malevolent spirit hovering over all of them. Igniting the town against them. Pushing them to turn on each other. The kindness of the dead chef in sharp contrast to the supernatural summoning of black paint on a church wall that everyone claims they aren't writing.

You do it all for your kids and then what? What do the kids do? All for theirs? Or does it stop here with this first generation? You give your life so theirs will be better but the same but a better same because you won't let them flex or change or leave. 

Cloud 9

I love previews! The fresh feel of a piece as it unfurls itself for the first time, it's quivering hopeful face turned towards us begging for acceptance, love, understanding. I love when the director stands diffidently in front of us and begs our indulgance with any technical issues, offering their new baby to the light tender touch of its first audience. 

I'm not in love with the play. It's bleakly comic farce of Victoria's sexually repressed colonialism just makes me uncomfortable rather than amused or titilated. The actors are working up a sweat trying to keep the pacing going but it flags in places. the crashing blackness of scene changes are awkward, they merely highlight the difficult exits some characters must make. The difficult entrances of others and given the deftness of some of the changes with light (particularly 'boys best friend is his Mother') it leaves me wondering if some of the staging is still very much in flux at this point. Oh to have the funds to come back in the middle of the run and see it in full flight!

Act Two awaits! 

Also what's so awesome about glass boxes? I've yet to see one do anything. 

Better in act two. The box gave us some vignettes to setup characters and show us these actors we've come to know as new people. The blackouts while still as stark felt more in tune with this act. 

Victoria is my real problem in act two, it still feels like she's not acting for gelded but being pulled but others. 

A Murder is Announced

We all went to see Emma. Sister asked me to take RJ for the day so she had to come the show with us. It was pretty good and RJ liked it! She kept repeating lines and talking about the characters and reveals during the whole drive home. I must take her to more shows and properly convert her into a theater groupie. 

I don't think it is one of the better Agatha Christie plays but certainly the printed set was reasonably impressive until the cast interacted with it and it rippled like water and until the two printed on light fixtures didn't get 'lit' when all the other lamps came on.  The costumes were spot on for the the period by looking sadly wrinkled with wear by the time act two came along. 

I thought the two detectives were the weakest performers, just sort of rambling over the stage. The brother character was very campy but I didn't feel it out of place with the period or the character. Our Em was a delight in her role, showing up some of her scene partners a little but perhaps I am biased. Letty really carried the show well and I was impressed by the depiction of Miss Marple. 

I'd give it a solid 4 out of 5 community stars. 

Black is the New White

I love new Australian works. It is why I'm such a big Belvoir and Lally Katz fan so I was thrilled to see two new Australian works in the list for Sydney Theatre Company this year.

This was a fascinating play. I felt inside and outside of understanding at so many times. I could see my family in there but also not. I could feel the love and joy and frustration of a life lived not quite to expectations. Some scenes worked brilliantly like dinner dissolving into a food fight and the confession of attraction for the mothers but others felt rushed. The breakup between our protagonists felt a bit left field but then so did their affection for each other. Perhaps that was the plays weakest point. The lynch pin that would bring all the families together didn't feel quite strong or stable enough to warrant the risk.

I liked it. I would give 3/5.

Talk

I'm so angry right now. I feel like I could vibrate with rage right through this reality and into one that is less infuriating! This play is the Fourth Estate from every angle in the new digital age of talk show hosts and law and order politics. So good and so vociferously upsetting. I can't even discuss it right now!

Chimerica

 Wow. A more beautifully staged production I have not seen in some time. The depth of the Ros Packer stage was really well put to use especially during the Tinnamen Square scenes. The haze and endless screaming running cast was heart wrenching and the opening plastic bags of 30 'Tankman' all moving in unison was visually stunning. It's rare to see a show with a cast this large and the ensemble were used with such perfect precision to set each scene and bring atmosphere. I must figure out how they managed to never make the enourous space feel empty even when thee were only two people on stage - feel like we could use that in Treehouse...

The cast were fantastic. Rebecca Massey's many faces were always something of a scene stealer but that might just be my fangirling giving her added weight. I still remember her being the most transcendent thing about Belvoir's It Just Stopped and then falling completely in love with her in every way during Perplex at STC back in 2014. I'm willing to admit my bias but never to overcome it!

The story was a little weak or perhaps I'm just not that interested in a bloke trying to recapture the single defining moment of his career at the expense of EVERYTHING and EVERYONE around him. I was far more interested in the journey of Geraldine Hakewill's character from corporate drone to activist and the melt down during her presentation was one of the most evocative political and economic monologues I've ever seen. 

Still it's definitely a 5/5 show and you should get along to see it.