SEARCH RESULTS

Grand Theft Theatre Tālava - Wayville’s Latvian Hall Pony Cam is an experimental collective of five theatre makers from around Australia.They are driven, we are told, by a desire to bring people together to create experiences that could not otherwise be had. By subverting well-known forms, activating unexpected spaces, and inviting audiences into the work in unexpected ways, they create moments where audiences are challenged to question their assumptions, laugh at themselves, and reject habitual recourse. The current line-up for Pony Cam is Claire Bird, Ava Campbell, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub and Hugo Williams. Joined by theatrical adventurer David Williams, the company presents “Grand Theft Theatre” at Adelaide festival 2024. The intention is to recreate the theatrical experiences that changed their lives. It is lo-fi, gently chaotic and an ode to theatrical memories that we all carry – if we are middle class, white and have the privilege of indulging our broad interests in theatre.   “Grand Theft Theatre” is a paean to theatre’s power to create community and a recognition of our collective and personal memories. Through re-appropriation and recreation, moments remembered are bought back to life – these moments are from significant shows that have toured the world and from mostly well-known western cultural institutions and mostly male-driven iconic events. The company even include bits from shows in the Adelaide 2024 program. It is intentionally autobiographical, highly amusing and could have left us on an emotional high – but I will get to that. The audience arrives at a beautiful Latvian community hall in Adelaide.  G&Ts and a warm pretzel can be purchased – also a reference to a formidable experience in the past.  We are asked to write on and wear a sticky label announcing a memorable theatrical experience of our own. These become prompts to conversations between guests during the short intervals in the action. On the way out that conversation might be with a Pony Cam performer if they are not cleaning up after the crazy mess the show leaves behind (a metaphor?).  I wrote “1980” – a seminal work by Pina Bausch which I had the good fortune to catch as a teen at the 1982 Adelaide Festival (clang!). Frankly, its imprint on me is indelible.  I see its influence on my most recent work now decades later.  In a larger way the Bausch experience in Australia of the early 1980s pointed the way for the impact of German performance practices and – probably – leads us to this performance in a Latvian community hall in Adelaide 2024. David Williams’ experience recalls theatre across decades, the young performers of Pony Cam tell us about theatre from this century – shows that changed them when they were teenagers and when they were starting out making theatre themselves. David tells us his PHD is in the work of UK company Forced Entertainment and it’s easy to spot FE’s confessional style and some structural features in this work – but that’s the point.  The scattered chairs, seeming chaos, a formless meandering event.  But the community inside the hall know that we are pushing back against accepted theatrical mores. Across the evening, we see a stunning recreation of Simon Stone’s “Thyestes”, an actor reads from this text.  It’s a repetition of the word “remember’.  It is a powerful reminder that theatre is ephemeral. We experience it and then, once we leave, it’s gone. It remains only in our memories. To be remembered. It lives again when we talk about it. We cover everything from Betty Grumble’s vagina to “Charles Horse Lays and Egg” to events witnessed in Berlin to a three-hour journey to Hobart to see “Chicago”. And many more. During the various “acts” the audience is moved around the hall into different seating configurations.  By the end we are sitting on the stage gazing out at the company as we feel things conclude.  “Grand Theft Theatre” moves from humour to something more profound in its sideways exploration of theatre as a metaphor for death.  But it doesn’t stay there – rather it loses energy, and emotional connection towards its end.  Sure, this is intimate, there are moments of genuine vulnerability as we get to know each performer. There is great talent on display here and I am pleased to have encountered Pony Cam’s more “polished” version of this work after its premiere in Melbourne last year. But are we moved?  What sensation will survive this viewing to be remembered? Perhaps that’s the extraordinary experiment of “Grand Theft Theatre”. Kate Gaul

GOODBYE, LINDITA Dunstan Playhouse National Theatre of Greece and Adelaide Festival present director Mario Banushi’s haunting “Goodbye, Lindita”.  Over 70 gripping minutes audiences are treated to a production that is best described as authentic festival fare.  Original, confronting, theatrically astute, and entirely unique. “Goodbye, Lindita” is a poetic farewell, a visual meditation on mourning. A family experiences grief wordlessly, stupefied by their loss, until a series of extreme events seems to suspend the boundaries between their world and that of the departed Lindita. “I feel like mourning has a silent, almost suffocating quality,” director Mario Banushi writes in his program notes. “This is why it is a performance without words.”Trivial house chores are followed by poetic images and rituals originating from Balkan traditions. In the complete absence of dialogue and no defined characters, we witness a journey, an attempt to answer humanity’s oldest question: how can we reconcile ourselves with death? In “Goodbye, Lindita” the end is also a beginning, and the love shared an eternal sanctuary. “Goodbye, Lindita” sprung to world-wide attention after a presentation in a converted factory in Athens 2023. Conceived and directed by Mario Banushi, the 24-year-old son of Albanian immigrants, the production was part of a five-day showcase organised by the National Theatre of Greece. Michael Billington of The Guardian wrote, “I was witnessing the emergence of an exciting new talent”. The show begins with relatives tidying up clothes while vacantly watching television. A chest of drawers unfolds to reveal the stretched-out figure of a naked female corpse. The body is ceremonially bathed, adorned in a mask and sumptuous robes, and placed on a flower-festooned funerary platform. Soon, the relatives, predominantly female, silently gather and slowly start to judder, shake and, in one extreme case, take balletic flight through an open window. Mundanity is expressed and then the searing emotions that sit under avoidance explode through relentless, convulsive, and ritualised movement. Director Mario Banushi uses silence and stillness to great effect.  It is often confronting. A couple of breath-taking coup-de-theatre moments lean into the spectacular, but these are never gross or overplayed. It’s all a dash of theatrical magic.  Everything is poised and we are held lightly as this mysterious event unfolds. The set, designed by Sotiris Melanos, is a single room that stretches across the entire stage. Tasos Palaioroutas’ golden lighting bleeding in yellow from a hallway or through the window, often with the flimsy curtain fluttering is poetic and ethereal. When coupled with Emmanouel Rovithis’ complex, spectral musical composition the mood is elevated but never overwhelming. Sounds from the real world combine with Balkan rhythms to transport us into this strange netherworld.  The entire experience of death and grief carries its own rituals. The image of the Black Madonna is central. Banushi took his inspiration from an icon he encountered in a church on the island of Kythira. Inside the empty church he found a lone woman kneeling before the icon in prayer. This image stayed with him. A replica of the icon hangs on the wall in “Goodbye, Lindita”. Later, we see her embodied by a performer. This is beautifully presented though also means that the only Black female performer in the piece is relegated to this otherworldly role. The final image is one of the most striking, an elderly woman crawling towards a welcoming and tender Madonna figure.  The final pieta with Black Madonna lingers. Without a doubt, one of the highlights of 2024. Kate Gaul

The Ceremony The Courtyard of Curiosities Ben Volchok, master of “The Ceremony”, is one the most intriguing characters I have encountered in the theatre for a long time.  Some shows just scream pure Fringe and “The Ceremony” is one of them.  Unique, intellectually spiky, spurious, definitely silly!  Playing in the mediative surrounds to The Chapel at the Migration Museum this is an experience rather than a performance. A quick post show google tells me that Ben Volchok is a Melbourne based comedian who peddles his own style of stand-up/solos shows.  He creates multidisciplinary art across theatre, comedy, fiction, audio, and design. I was attracted to the blurb as is mentioned “The Ceremony” wasn’t about cults.  Just the mere mention of a cult gets my blood racing, and I was in. So how to describe this event – it is experimental and definitely interactive.  In fact, no two shows would ever be alike as Ben Volchok relies on the audience to construct the substance of the show.  He has the format – the (not) ritual falls into four parts.  On our chairs are slips of paper and a pen.  After a hilarious introduction about what the show is and is not – as well as several disclaimers – we are asked to name and write a meaningful event from our past.  Most of these are then read out to both hilarious and poignant effect.   We move then from the past though the present to the future.  Volchok as a great way of dealing with the existential aspects of our relationship to time. But the big philosophical questions remain – Who and Why are we?  How do we create meaning? Described accurately as part sermon, part group therapy, part comedy show, “The Ceremony” asks us to consider tradition in our contemporary world. As we rummage through our collective pasts/presents/futures we build a wholly new ceremony to take home for personal use. As if the ideas around this show aren’t deep enough what makes “The Ceremony” really special is Volchok’s desire (and ability) to remain present with his flock and it is that gift we are left.  The take-away just might be that we are slightly less afraid to contemplate our existence or at least know we are all in a similar boat. And perhaps to hold our humanity lightly. We all need a version of “The Ceremony” in our lives – mmm – but that starts to sound cultish and this is (not a cult). Kate Gaul

Alex Wright and Phil Grainger (Wright and Grainger) wrote this modern re-telling of Greek mythology in 2016.  Written in the heat of new love, we are told, the two have performed it around the world ever since. In The Yurt at The Courtyard of Curiosities we sit in traverse. The narrow space between the rows of audience is where these two weave a magical performance. Alex Wright with words, Phil Grainger on guitar. This is story telling at its most elegant as we are transported to a pub, a karaoke bar, a park bench and to Hades. We begin in Edinburgh. We are told it is grey – grey buildings, skies, streets.  Even the beer is grey.  This is Dave’s world.  He lost the ability to see colour as a child. The poetic writing is filled with clean cut images that burn into our imaginations – everything from the face of a jock to the cut and pattern of a shirt.  Bullied by school mates for singing to flowers Dave retreated to a world of grey and today is his 30th birthday.  Singing Springsteen in a Karaoke bar, his world breaks open as Eurydice enters all coloured in love. Now, if you know your Greek Myths you know how this ends.  But let’s imagine you don’t and in the hands of these master story tellers the plight of these star-spangled lovers is reimagined anew.  The joy of love is all sunshine and flowers. We are dancing on a meadow with friends and a feast.  I guess we know it can’t end well. In six short weeks, Dave’s is transformed by love, and he is almost broken by it when Eurydice dies.  The Gods will him to venture into Hades to retrieve his love. He encounters the three headed Cerberus and, with his music, soothes the savage beast. Charon appears and takes him across the river Styx. Dave is prepared to risk everything to save Eurydice. In the Underworld he sings a love song so achingly beautiful that Hades agrees to let Eurydice go. On one condition: she will travel behind him, and Orpheus must not look back until they both reach the surface. Just as they are approaching the light of the living world, Orpheus — plagued by doubt — takes one backward glance. And sees her. And loses her. Again. Despair! There is a parallel story that weaves throughout this tale.  An older gentleman is sat on a park bench, he is dressed in his finest and may be waiting to meet someone.  An older Dave?  If love is stronger than death is this Dave waiting for his Eurydice to return? Wright and Grainger immediately charm their audience and it is a pleasure to be in their thrall. In just over an hour, we are given a rare and blissful gift that appeals to our hearts and souls. Moving between our known world and the mythological has never been so engaging.  Catch “Orpheus” and then go see “Helios” – another myth reimagined and shared in a similar (but different) way at the Fringe. Recommended! Kate Gaul

Helios The Courtyard of Curiosities In a Yurt, seated in the round Alexander Wright fashions an intimate and masterful story from an Ancient Greek myth. He and his collaborator Phil Grainger have a reputation of crafting contemporary stories from Greek myths.  In “Helios” it is only Wright who takes the stage in person. He reads from cards, employs audience members to be additional characters and voices, fires an evocative and original soundtrack from his computer by Phil Grainger and takes us on a magical, memorable, and stirring story. The Yurt is lit with what seems to be a golden light. A woman in the front row asks Wright to turn down the sound – he doesn’t and assures her he knows what he is doing. We are asked to share what we know about the sun. Over the next 60 minutes we will learn a lot more. Helios is the god of the sun.  He lived in a golden palace at the far ends of the earth from which he emerged each dawn, crowned with the aureole of the sun, driving a chariot drawn by four winged steeds. This 21st Century adaptation has him as a commercial pilot who flies planes that drag the sun into place each day.  He has two sons Atlas (meaning “to carry”) and Phaeton (meaning “shining” or “radiant”), who are fourteen and seven when the story starts. They live on a hill in a tiny village in Yorkshire, the kind where you know who everyone is and where everything is, even if you’ve never been there before. We get facts about the sun - it takes sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Photons emitted from the surface of the Sun need to travel across the vacuum of space to reach our eyes.  These photons striking your eyeballs were actually created tens of thousands of years ago and it took that long for them to be emitted by the sun. “Helios” is a story of men and boys, of struggling with vulnerability, the love of late 80s pop and a yearning to be free. This is Phaeton’s coming of age story – of facing the school bus each day; his interactions with bullies; crazy teenage behaviour and, later, finally driving his father’s golden chariot into the city meeting up with the erstwhile bully. They share an unexpected kiss and end the day in chaos. “Helios” is an epic poem in Wright’s hands. His performance is virtuosic. More than the story of the sun, some tough boys and a banging soundtrack, “Helios” is a paean to courage, to sidestepping the middle of the road, to go beyond the edge and into the unknown. It’s a clarion cry to us all and a reminder that Helios, Atlas, and Phaeton matter because they are human which is truly the greatest gift a storyteller can give an audience. “Helios” has you laughing, crying and everything in between. Low fi and high class! Brilliant!  Run, do not walk! Kate Gaul

An Attempt to Lose Time The Warehouse Theatre UK writer and actor Miranda Prag take us on a journey to lose time. Just like it says on the tin!  She feels her life is hectic, imploding and losing meaning. The solo show follows her strange and philosophical attempt at a solution. Instead of being more productive, she aims to lose her perception of time entirely. Prag ignores clocks, takes the timers off her computer and phone to find a different way to structure her life. In the middle of this experiment, the pandemic strikes and, to escape London, she takes her canal boat north on an adventure. Prag’s narration of this story alternates with monologues on climate change, the fate of humanity, quantum physics, industrialisation, and natural history. Attempts at humour are added to highlight our disconnection between our mundane lives and the big picture. The personal and the philosophic are intertwined. The script has neither sophistication nor poetry so it’s a plodding 70 minutes as we amble through the journey. Spliced in between Prag’s spoken monologues are audio descriptions of what is on stage and the changing set. These are played as she deconstructs and then reconstructs a series of copper bars, bicycle wheels, tins of sand, string, metal levers and coloured discs, moving them from one seemingly abstract sculpture to another. Built in accessibility! The most interesting part of the monologue is descriptions of the far north of Scotland, the activity of moor hens and the changing patterns of light which are natures clock. Explanations of the equinox and what it means for those in the northern hemisphere and incidentally how cults and religions grow around nature’s strangeness are striking hearing these facts sitting in a theatre in Adelaide. Prag wears a dark green encrusted cape for the wackier parts of the show and even a helmet with horns – it’s all terribly serious at this point. The assemblage of this abstract sculpture is intended to be the transcendent achievement of the production. Once fully assembled and able to activate independently this sculpture of metal, sand, string, and plastic is meant – it think – to mirror time that has been eschewed and its relationship to Prag and by extension, humanity? The idea is strong, but its intentions are not achieved. It is a salutary lesson to those wanting to value add to a production to make more of what is often a simple story. There’s something interesting at the heart of this work but inside the unfocussed and meandering production it cannot be caught. The Warehouse Theatre is a little out of the centre of town but with its intimate cabaret seating and it’s a charming venue with a terrific bar.  Well worth checking out the rest of its offerings for Adelaide Fringe this year. Kate Gaul

Javaad Alipoor Company (UK) and Riverside’s National Theatre of Parramatta (NTofP), playing as part of the Sydney Festival, 2024. “Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World” - a co-production between the Javaad Alipoor Company and National Theatre Parramatta – makes its Sydney Festival debut as a full-scale production following a work-in-progress showing as part of Sydney Festival in 2022. Alipoor and cast members Asha Reid and Raam Emami work alongside Australian creatives Benjamin Brockman (lighting and productioin design) and Me-Lee Hay (composer and musician) with excellent results. Regular Javaad Alipoor fans get what they expect – a guaranteed dopamine hit from visually detailed staging and mind-expanding text. In 1992 Iranian popstar Fereydoun Farrokhzad was found brutally murdered in his while living as a refugee in Germany – stabbed more than 70 times, his tongue was cut out, and his genitals cut off. The case was never solved. “Things Hidden” is an investigation into this iconic murder and an interrogation into the nature of investigation. It’s a world of murder mystery podcasts that presents everything in the world as knowable. It aims to show the audience how, in this age of information, our ability to truly grasp knowledge is distorted by satisfying Wikipedia deep dives and endless podcasts that present their own version of events, revealed at truth. As Alipoor brilliantly demonstrates, knowledge is not the same as understanding. As with all Alipoor’s work this is also about the impossibility of translation, the reproduction of colonial structures, and the way the internet shapes our sense of knowing. It “gleefully mashes up genres, smashing together the quiet authority of the murder mystery podcast, the intimacy of autobiographical storytelling, and the visual spectacle of multimedia performance — while simultaneously deconstructing each of these forms.” (The Guardian) “Things Hidden” challenges us to look to the periphery of society in the global North – to acknowledge subaltern groups and their invisibility to a majority who have no need to look for them. The production also stars King Raam, a hugely successful Iranian artist – one so controversial that Canadian officials came knocking on his door to tell him that Iran wanted him dead. At first, Raam appears only in video footage, before we catch a glimpse of him behind a screen, and then he later steps on stage and addresses us directly. It is in this speech that he tells us about Iran wanting him dead, and he even jokes that if any of us in the audience are there to kill him, now would be a poetic time to do it! His personal story is actually the easiest to empathise with of all the content in “Things Hidden”.  His father, and environmental activist, mysteriously died while imprisoned. Raam is worth the deep dive into Wikipedia and for my money he steals the show!  The confusion of those in political exile who yearn for a homeland to which they cannot return is deeply moving. “Things Hidden” can be endlessly analysed and deconstructed. This is a world where anyone with a platform can rewrite the facts. If you get the chance go watch it yourself.  Recommended. Kate Gaul

Ontroerend Goed - Sydney Festival In 2019 I had the exquisite pleasure of catching Belgiun theatre company Ontroerend Goed conceptually daring “Are we not drawn onward to new erA” at Edinburgh Fringe Festival (originally made in 2014). Four years later, a pandemic and a load of international presentations the show finally arrives in Sydney. Director Alexander Devriendt’s production is a visual expression of a question on everyone’s lips. Now we agree that the way to avert climate catastrophe is to wind back the clocks, how much of the environment have we permanently damaged? We are informed by numerous press-releases the title is a palindrome. Information about the show contains a Kierkegaard quote: ‘Life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards.’ This is what rigorous theatre looks like in 2024.  It’s the kind of show that makes some arts festival attendees see red and walk out – their patience exhausted by the invitation to engage with challenging form. It is a devastating reflection on the current plight of humanity, on the brink of environmental meltdown. As theatre this is a show of extraordinary visual beauty, set in a garden (of Eden) corrupted by the political veneration in the  form of a giant gold statue, and of breath-taking ingenuity, as we realise – in the second half - that the strange gibberish language the performers are speaking in the first half is actually the English of the second half, backwards, and that the whole spectacle has been videoed (Jeroen Wuyts and Babette Poncelet), to be replayed to us, in reverse. It really is a coup de theatre. At the mid-point a performer steps forward to tell us that now, right now is the time that our future must start over.  It’s hard and not everyone agrees but the simplicity of her words and understanding are incredibly moving; a melancholia pervades the stage as the ensemble of 6 actors begin again (Angelo Tijssens, Jonas Vermeulen, Karolien De Bleser, Leonore Spee, Maria Dafneros and Vincent Dunoyer). These acts are accompanied by a haunting original musical composition “Disintegration Loops” by William Basinski  played by a sextet of musicians from the Spectra Ensemble. Duška Radosavljević describes things best: “The show draws attention to the action, labour and, amid that, to the somewhat meta-theatrical dimension of artistic labour and the specificities by which this particular piece of theatre has been made with such meticulous precision. One wonders where the company started from, what came first, how exactly they found the convincing palindromic effect of each detail, the dramaturgical power of each moment… But aside from the formal considerations, the searing significance of the show’s content is inescapable and multiply layered too – what are we doing, where are we going, can we rewind and start over again, how badly have we messed up, in fact? These questions evoke not only the Bible and Becket but also the very pressing issues of our ecological reality in the 21st century. Formally, there is an apparent sense of wishful thinking, a whiff of a fairy-tale, a formal feelgood factor to the piece, but nonetheless, it is steeped in fragile and deeply conceptual poetry, and those central questions are very much alive and haunting for a long time after you’ve left the theatre.” For me, a visually arresting, emotionally charged and an outstanding technical achievement of a production.  To see it a second time, years apart, makes for contemplation of what we see in drama when we stop searching for plot and character. It’s even better. And reminded me – in the words of the great Joni Mitchell – “We are stardust, we are golden. We are caught in the devil's bargain. And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden” Kate Gaul

SOPHIA=(WISDOM): Part 3 The Cliffs New Theatre It’s been around 20 years since anyone presented the work of Richard Foreman in Sydney. Patrick Kennedy Phenomenological Theatre Company audaciously present Richard Foreman's 1972 play, “SOPHIA=(WISDOM): Part 3 The Cliffs” at New Theatre this month.  Richard Foreman – doyen of the NYC 1970s avant-garde and founder of Ontological-Hysteric Theatre which made its debut in 1968. His plays have been a mainstay of the weird and wonderful (and wise?) ever since. From memory sound designer and director Max Lyandvert (who worked briefly with Foreman in the late 90s) presented “My Head is a Sledgehammer” at B Sharp (2001) and “I’ve got the Shakes” at Darlinghurst Theatre (2004) and I recall something at the Reginald (before it was the Reginald) possibly also by Lyandvert and company called Kitchen Sink.  At the time, Keith Gallash writing in “Real Time” noted, “With their associative constructions and broken theatre rules, Foreman’s plays particularly appeal to connoisseurs of contemporary performance and visual art, but they can be refreshing for the jaded theatre palate. In “I’ve got the shakes”, says the company, “the characters are disoriented, unsure of where the stage begins and ends. They are caught up in inscrutable plots and speak as though they have just begun to learn language. The play only exists in the present moment, and the whole evening is made up of numerous present moments...which invite the audience to refocus their attention and revise their interpretation.” For the characters, performers, and audience alike this should prove an entertaining night of metaphysical pratfalls and existential sublimes.” Now, Patrick Kennedy is UK trained director, designer, and producer.  He leads a razor-sharp ensemble through a piece which left an original critic of the piece feeling “as though I were being lobotomized with a rusty knife”.  To be honest this is high praise – in a theatrical landscape where we often leave the theatre feeling indifferent to what has taken place. Kennedy’s production may not engage us emotionally, but it is intellectually curious and visually arresting with its endless beginnings.  This is very hard work to describe:  A series of moving tableaux, enigmatic interactions; maybe it ultimately means to be just what the title of his work says it is: WISDOM. But in the process, our traditional sense of theatrical expectation is continually jabbed and prodded. One among many projections reads: "I hope this is interesting enough to suit your purposes," and on the soundtrack there is the sound of a gun shooting far off in the distance. We are continually asked to think about contradiction and paradox. The occasional waiting and inaction are for the sake of something like Zen contemplation. It’s not boring. There are various attempts to describe a narrative for the purposes of press releases and web site blurbs, but these things just do not apply to this unique work. Scratchy records, eclectic music and sound effects, amplified voices and recorded instructions are all part of the complex technical mix – operated, I noted on the afternoon I attended, by Kennedy and his associate. This production really is a complex labour of love.  Outfitted in elaborate 18th Century costumes – all made and worn with a cheeky contemporary touch – the principal characters perform in an idiosyncratic style and speak similarly.  Of note is Luke Visentin as Ben – his charisma and technical prowess make for a focussed, gripping and playful performance. Kirsty Saville, Beatrice McBride, and Lara Kocsis are a formidable trio of women who are supported by a further six actors all of whom work with dedication or realise Kennedy’s vision.  Impressive. One other element of Foreman's work must be mentioned: his stage is filled with pulleys, ropes, levers, and esoteric contraptions that sooner or later do something or are used in a particular way.  Kennedy honours this instruction from the script and creates an oversized model box as set design – which is fully appreciated when an actor arrives on stage wearing a set model box as a mask. Yep – its’ out there!  And a comprehensive program that can be picked up at the door contains a directorial note and essay which might be useful. I am pleased I spent 2 hours investigating this unpredictable and idiosyncratic work.  One for theatrical adventurers, ontological nerds and those keen to sample gems from the avant-garde. Kate Gaul

Masterclass Brokentalkers Superbly crafted and presented, “Masterclass” is one of this year’s highlights and is created by Irish based company Brokentalkers who presented “Have I No Mouth” at Sydney Festival in 2015.  Doyen of what I’d call “advanced theatre” is Adrienne Truscott who is also no stranger to Sydney audiences having presented her “Asking For It” also in 2015 (and other great collaborations which you can google for yourself!) Having been performed around the world, “Masterclass” now makes its way to Sydney Festival and is not to be missed! Performed by Adrienne Truscott and Feidlim Cannon “Masterclass” deconstructs the construct of a ‘masterclass’, examining power, adoration, the lone male genius, and hierarchy within the arts to explore themes of political power, misogyny, and gender. The show begins as a kind of send up of those American arts master series shows that can now be caught on YouTube. Truscott is playing a legendary, misogynistic, enfant terrible of screen and stage, Adrienne Truscott (whose latest play is called “Fat Cunt” as the title “Fat Pig” was already taken!)  Cannon, the interviewer, can’t help but over share his admiration of his guest.  Although his stated intention is to really dig deep in his interview all he does is preserve the myth of the white male genius. Costuming is complete with wigs and false moustaches and on a retro looking playing space we quickly get the idea that is not all as it seems. There’s a gun, cigarettes, whisky, talk of Hemingway and discussion around Truscott’s barely sketched women characters. Truscott’s author delights in sharing the best ways to dominate a room to create a climate of fear for everyone around you. In a highlight the pair enact a scene from Truscott’s aforementioned play. Cannon reads the lines of the female character and Truscott’s author shoots down any suggestion that his writing is sexist. "If you think that, you clearly haven’t understood it." They then go into a rehearsal of the scene. Truscott denies any claims of traumatising female actors while looking for a raw visceral reaction. It was never women that Truscott attacked (It’s “female characters”, he insists). It’s all for the sake of art, of course. It’s bleak and very funny.  It feels safe – we know they are acting. Complete with funny dances and exaggerated physicality the show could have continued in this way and been provocative and entertaining. Halfway through, however, “Masterclass” evolves into something else. And it becomes edgier.  Truscott and Cannon appear to break from the characters they play and discuss the time they met (at a Sydney Festival!). The piece squares up against the current conversations around equality and power sharing in the arts. They grapple with the balance of power in their own relationship and the different way men in positions of authority behave towards them. A scene where Cannon briefly describes his reading of “Little Women” is another highlight. So, it’s time to redefine who should occupy the stage – where and why. For how long? There isn't enough room or resources for everyone, and white men have told all their stories. Time for them to get off the stage and make way for others. White women may have to leave too – but not quite yet. The conversation is layered with the resonances of the actor’s initial characterisation still partly intact – American Truscott’s macho silhouette, his/her confident and easily flowing vocabulary against Irishman Cannon’s bluster which renders him an almost inarticulate and hovering figure. Sixty minutes of pure joy, skill, and provocation. Not problems are solved.  No easy answers presented.  The sands of privileged art making are forever shifting.  Catch this show if you can. Review by Kate Gaul

In the small Womens’ Locker Room, seated in the semi round Alexander Wright fashions an intimate and masterful story from an Ancient Greek myth. He and his collaborator Phil Grainger have a reputation of crafting contemporary stories from these kinds of myths. In “Helios” it is only Wright who takes the stage in person. He reads from cards, employs audience members to be additional characters and voices, fires an evocative and original soundtrack from his computer by Phil Grainger and takes us on a magical, memorable ,and stirring story. Helios is the god of the sun. He lived in a golden palace at the far ends of the earth from which he emerged each dawn, crowned with the aureole of the sun, driving a chariot drawn by four winged steeds. This 21st Century adaptation has him as a commercial pilot who flies planes that drag the sun into place each day. He has two sons Atlas (meaning “to carry”) and Phaeton (meaning “shining” or “radiant”), who are fourteen and seven when the story starts. They live on a hill in a tiny village in Yorkshire, the kind where you know who everyone is and where everything is, even if you’ve never been there before. We get facts about the sun - it takes sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Photons emitted from the surface of the Sun need to travel across the vacuum of space to reach our eyes. These photons striking your eyeballs were actually created tens of thousands of years ago and it took that long for them to be emitted by the sun. This is Phaeton’s coming of age story – of facing the school bus each day; his interactions with bullies; crazy teenage behaviour and, later, finally driving his father’s golden chariot into the city meeting up with the erstwhile bully. They share an unexpected kiss and end the day in chaos. This story sounds like an epic poem in Wright’s hands. “Helios” will have you laughing, crying and everything in between. Wright makes the story of Helios, Atlas, and Phaeton matter because they are human which is truly the greatest gift a storyteller can give an audience. Brilliant! Run, do not walk if they come to a venue near you! Kate Gaul

The Master and Margarita Belvoir In circa-1930 Soviet Moscow, a man known only as “the Master” goes for a walk. He encounters a sad woman (Margarita) holding a bunch of yellow flowers, and the two begin strolling side-by-side. Their attraction is intense and immediate. She throws her flowers into the gutter; the Master picks them up and carries them for her. They embark on their relationship in secret and spend their evenings in the Master’s basement apartment as he writes a novel about Pontius Pilate. At Margarita’s encouragement, the Master brings his novel to an editor. The editor shoots him down and maliciously shares the novel with the publishing community. Soon the Master is called out in several newspaper articles as a Christ apologist. Ruined, the Master falls into despair. Margarita tells him that she will stay with him no matter what - and runs off to break up with her other lover. When she returns to the Master’s apartment in the morning, he is gone. This all happened four months ago. The Master has been living in a mental institute since the night Margarita left. Margarita, despondent and unable to find the Master, has tried to move on by marrying someone else. Meanwhile, an unexpected visitor arrives in Moscow: the devil himself. Aided by an absurd crew of assistants, he playfully wreaks havoc everywhere he goes. In the opening scene he introduces himself to a pair of men sitting in a park. After their conversation, one of the men slips on the streetcar tracks on his way to a meeting and gets beheaded by an oncoming streetcar. The other winds up in a mental institute — the very same one as the Master. In another crazy episode, the devil tricks the manager of the Variety Theatre into letting him perform a “Black Magic” routine for a packed house. During the show the devil makes money rain from the ceiling and the audience members pocket it. It turns out that the notes are cursed, and the ladies in the audience are welcomed onstage to pick out beautiful new dresses for free. The only cost, they later realize, is that the dresses vanish when worn. In another trick, the master of ceremonies has a nasty encounter with one of the devil’s assistants, Behemoth. A giant tomcat who threatens to rip the MC’s his head off. These seemingly unrelated plot lines intertwine on the night before the devil’s annual “spring ball of the full moon.” The gala calls for a woman named Margarita to perform the duties of hostess. Of all the women named “Margarita” in Moscow — there are exactly 121 of them — the devil’s ensemble finds our love-stricken Margarita to be the only suitable match. Margarita therefore makes a deal with the devil: she will host his gala, and in return, he will reunite her with the Master. Between these primary chapters are excerpts from the Master’s novel about Pontius Pilate. Far from his depiction in the Bible, we come to know Pilate as a pitiful man plagued by a bad job and a searing headache. All he wants to do is lie down next to his loyal dog, but his encounter with Jesus ensures that he will get no rest. These, anyway, are the elements of “The Master and Margarita”. What they produce is a lot less straightforward and to bring it to the stage is an ambitious task as Eamon Flack and the excellent ensemble have done. Chunks of this production are harder to engage with than others and perhaps that is not surprising given the 3-hour running length in its first public outing as a production. Ensemble movement scenes are to be savoured and the excellent choreography (Ella Evangelista) is a pleasure to experience. A large empty stage and an ensemble of ten players can offer myriad possibilities and this is where the Belvoir production really succeeds. Emma Maye Gibson is credited as performance guide, and one certainly feels that the tasks required by the cast and the extensive nudity (which is never gratuitous or cringey) have been generously and sensitively shepherded by this extraordinary artist. The literal magic used in the production adds many thrills and spills (Adam Mada). With incredible energy and heart at its core this is a deliberately scrappy and bare production but with focused modesty and the occasional Flack signature (the throwing of glitter before an exit or disappearance, for example). Romany Harper’s costumes and objects are beautiful with that hard-to-achieve understatement of seeming period and contemporary design. Space and lighting design by the masterful Nick Schielper makes use of a super reflective floor, revolve and the simplicity of a sophisticated lighting plan. Music and is used sparingly (Stefan Gregory, Jessica Dunn, Hamed Sadeghi) with an appearance from Gary Daly behind some crazy onstage instrumentals. Mad to pick standouts from the stellar cast but shoutouts to Marco Chiappi who demonstrates far greater comic chops as Variety Theatre MC; Jana Zvedeniuk whose warmth and quiet charisma shine as Bulgakov’s wife Yelena; and the irrepressible Gareth Davies – is there no limit to his creativity? - incredible work! There is something triumphant in the encounter with an adaptation of Bulgakov’s writing. Oh, the novel wasn’t published until the 1960s. It proves what the devil said: manuscripts don’t burn. Free speech cannot be suppressed forever. “The Master and Margarita” has risen from the literal ashes to become one of the world’s most important novels. And yet, there is something deeply sad in this story. Perhaps free speech cannot be suppressed, but it can certainly be delayed. This is exactly what Stalin’s regime succeeded in doing. Bulgakov’s writing, so important today, would have been even more essential in the time and place it was written. “The Master and Margarita” is indeed “the greatest explosion of imagination, craziness, satire, humour, and heart,” but it is decidedly more. A time capsule containing its author’s life and a glimpse into Soviet society, “The Master and Margarita” – the book and now the play - is a moving reminder that creative freedom is something to be cherished. Kate Gaul