Thebigf’s Weblog

When the Rain Stops Falling

by Andrew Bovell; a collaboration with Hossein Valamanesh and Brink Productions. Directed by Chris Drummond for Brink Productions, State Theatre Company of S A and the 2008 Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts.Scott Theatre, 28 Feb – 15 Mar 2008.Performance of 28/02/08 reviewed by Myk Mykyta.  The fluttering wings of a butterfly in the Amazon forest cause a cyclone in northern Australia.That could well be the thesis for Andrew Bovell’s new play When the Rain Stops Falling given a superb, loving premiere at the Scott Theatre by Brink Productions, State Theatre of S A and the 2008 Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts.In this short review I cannot do justice to the experience of the play that runs non-stop for a short two hours and the excitement and emotions associated with it. I can only begin to share my deep feelings of the event. Suffice to say that even if I see nothing else in this Festival When the Rain Stops Falling will remain etched in my brain forever.From Gabriel York’s opening cry of, “I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in miracles!” as an ocean dwelling fish falls from the sky in Alice Springs to the bewildered laying out of family relics that seem to only be connected by their presence I was drawn into the lives of the characters. Ironically the name ‘Gabriel’ translates as ‘the man of God’. Bovell, the playwright, Hossein Valamanesh, the collaborator and designer of a setting that assists in and insists on meditative reflection, Quentin Grant, the composer and invisibly ever present musician, Chris Drummond, the director, and the talented cast have all worked together to give an unforgettable and emotional theatrical experience. Niklas Pajanti’s lighting design melds seamlessly into the setting to help create indelible images.The events of the play range over eighty years – from London in 1958 to Alice Springs in two thousand and thirty eight, but it is not a bleak vision of a dire future. The implications of the effects of climate change provide the canvas to the minutiae of the lives of the people: in 1958 London the emotional turmoil of newly weds where the difficult adjustment to living with another person is exacerbated by one partner’s psychological problem; emotional aridity caused by the denial of love; the turmoil of a suddenly burgeoning love in the Coorong; the spiritual impact of sunrise near Uluru; the long, slow devotion within an almost accidental marriage; and the loss and rediscovery of filial and paternal love.Just as they do in memory the events of the play occur simultaneously yet without confusion. Neil Pigot is Gabriel York in two thousand and thirty eight and he is also Gabriel’s grandfather Henry Law in 1958. Yalin Ozucelik is Gabriel Law and Andrew Price, the abandoned sons of Henry Law and Gabriel York. Paul Blackwell is Joe Ryan, Gabriel York’s stepfather and the rock of his troubled life as well as a devoted husband trying to come to terms with his wife’s slide into Alzheimers.Michaela Cantwell is the young Elizabeth Law, Henry’s new wife in 1958 London, seen in the flush of a recent marriage and devotion and then changing to adjust to the discoveries of her husband’s drives that dampen her love as she slides into the solace of alcohol. Carmel Johnson is Elizabeth Law some thirty years on as a repressed alcoholic who seems to have withheld her love from her son yet remains a caring mother in the bleakness of London. The rain reflected in the title is a metaphor for the unrelenting troubles that beset her family.Anna Lise Phillips is Gabrielle York in 1988, a 24-year-old waitress in a roadhouse on the Coorong. Gabrielle is a virgin whose parents have committed suicide after the death of their eight-year-old son and Gabrielle’s older brother and she falls in love with the Englishman Gabriel Law who is trying to retrace the paths of his long lost father Henry. Kris McQuade is Gabrielle York some twenty six years later in the grips of rapidly advancing Alzheimers who no longer recognises her caring husband Joe Ryan.When Gabriel York brings out the family relics in front of his estranged son Andrew in Alice of 2038 the audience immediately recognises their significance and connections while the characters stumble on unwittingly. Andrew Bovell shows his playwrighting skills as every word counts like it does in Chekhov and like Stoppard in After Magritte Bovell leaves the audience knowing all while the characters remain befuddled. If you believe that theatre should provoke, disturb and evoke unforgettable images then you must not miss When the Rain Stops Falling.

The Age I’m In

 Directed by Kate Champion for Force Majeure.Dunstan Playhouse, 5-8 Mar 2008.Performance of 5/03/08 reviewed by Myk Mykyta. Looking for an interesting dance work that will leave you with some interesting moving images? Then The Age I’m In at the Dunstan Playhouse is a Festival show for you. This group devised dance piece from Force Majeure, well controlled by the director Kate Champion, looks at social perceptions of age and how irrelevant and constricting they can be. And it is a wry, funny and loving look.The group consists of ten performers with about a forty year age range and different body forms and dance skills. The five men and five women perform with the assistance of very thin computers on a simple yet effective set by Geoff Cobham. Computer technology and a contemporary approach to sound by Max Lyandvert combine with Cobham’s sharp lighting to ensure that The Age I’m In is fully acceptable to a modern audience brought up on electronic media. I found it sadly curious that a show that is so preeminently accessible for a non-theatrical audience is unlikely to be seen by that very audience.The Age I’m In is very much a community dance piece; by that I mean that everyone is included and their abilities used well by the director Kate Champion. While that is a strength of the performance it is also a hindrance. I found some of the choreography repetitive and also the running time of sixty minutes too long. If audience satisfaction rather than the performers’ were to be primarily considered The Age I’m In would be some ten to fifteen minutes shorter.Because ironically, while The Age I’m In caters very effectively to an audience’s demand for technology, it doesn’t consider that this same audience has sharp and quick perceptions that don’t require so much repetition.But perhaps I’m speaking from a jaded point of view of someone who sees a great number of performances because at the end of the hour many of the opening night audience stood up in spontaneous applause. Probably the only solution is for you to check out the show yourself at one of the three remaining performances.

Karen Dunbar

The Pod
Garden of Unearthly Delights
16 Feb – 15 Mar
7.15pm
$20/$18 (Tue$14) If a brown eyed girl with a thick Scottish accent tells you she is the
Carrington Bar retrace your receptors because that’s probably the
Queen of Scottish Television comedy flaring her nostrils at you. Karen
Dunbar employs, a rough as guts back hand fresh from Glasgow, reveals
a fine singing voice for comedy and a very sharp wit. Her stand up act
in The Pod (on your immediate left as you enter the Garden of
Unearthly Delights) had me thinking I was trapped with an albino
Whoopie Goldberg inside a wayward weather balloon. Giddy, funny but
never too offensive as long as you have it in your heart to laugh at a
prolapse, Karen Dunbar is a feverishly funny female.

David Jobling

Camille, Dark Angel

Umbrella Revolution
Garden of Unearthly Delights

20 – 21 Feb 7pm
3 Mar 7pm
4 Mar 11:30pm

Camille O’Sullivan is a totally hilarious singing booze hag one
moment, a slinky predatory femme fatale the next. This singer
transforms a few times over during her hour long cabaret, like a
dazzling coquette she plays with the audience delivering searing
renditions of Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill. There
are tones in this womans voice with her raw Irish accent, her passion,
resonances that are so charming… and she has beautifully developed
style. Unpacking herself like a fancy gift, she drinks red wine and
flirts with the audience. What seems like honest interaction has a
danger to it with Camille. She presents like a Judy Garland after one
too many downer and Rye. She warns the audience, “If you look afraid,
I’ll come after you”, and smiles reassuringly and insists “I will”.

This is all great fun because as out of control as she acts, Camille
sings beautifully, and her song list is strong. These are great,
sometimes obscure songs and her local back up band have to watch her
every gesture to follow where she wants them to go, in the traditional
conductor and subservient manner, which is also fun to watch.
Certainly it’s a very tight cabaret show; whimsical and dangerous with
more than a few great impassioned moments. Charmingly accomplished.

David Jobling

TOM TOM CLUB
Umbrella Revolution
Garden of Unearthly Delights
until 6 Mar @ 10pm
Matinees 1 – 2 Mar 5:30pm
$34/$25

Tom Tom Club is an excellent revelation of physical athletics,
dexterity of tongue, and rhythm. It’s modern vaudeville incorporating
a collection of world class entertainers who dig busting out on the
decks, beating a drum and beat-boxing. Breathtaking leaps and tumbles,
back flips, doubles, tripples, rope work, no safety nets, just good
old fashioned team work. This combination of urban taiko inspired
drumming (delivered by the highly gifted and remarkably skilled Ben
Walsh), scratching decks (DJ Dizz1) and seemingly super human
physicality is heartily testosterone driven without lurching towards
the cheesy raunchy burlesque end of the vaudevillian spectrum. It’s
truly a family show and contains ample positive images of focus and
strength for young folk.

The not so young folk will get a great buzz as long as they’re hip to
the music that drive today’s urban sounds. Essentially the show is
driven by this music as ancient as the dawn of time meeting
beat-boxing, an individual playing themselves like a sound machine
(the excellent Tom Thum), and a DJ busting out on his decks – which is
playing a multitude of samples and simulating sounds with some
technological and intuitive wizardry. Spell bindingly accessible
entertainment for absolutely everyone; a top show!

David Jobling

SCAPEGOAT

By Tony Moore
Music by Peter Dorrian.

Jah’z Lounge, Vaughan Place Adelaide (near the FringeTIX office
off Rundle Street next to the Exeter Hotel)
21 Feb – Mar 8th at 7.00pm
Matinees 26, 28 2.30pm.

Tix $15.00/$12.00
Bookings 0400 579 530
On Tuesday 26th and Thursday 28th we will be having a student,
pensioner and unemployed rush.

Playwright Tony Moore tackles themes of racism and institutionalized
terrorism in this short nightmarish drama. Like Josef K. in Kafka’s
novel ‘The Trial’, Scapegoat chillingly observes the reality of being
detained and subjected to torture for an unspecified crime. Sahil
Choujar as the detained individual doesn’t look too worse for wear to
begin with but after being interrogated by his Personal Enquiry
Officer (Joanna Webb) he does start to wither.

Webb’s character, a mean spirited spider of a human being behaves in
an indescribably loathsome way. Webb uses small gestures in a deeply
creepy relationship she has with her supernumerary protectors that at
once seem absurd until one discovers the ultimate power this character
possesses; then of course they seem completely natural in the saddest
possible way. This play is an observation of what Moore has
justifiably been struck by in the real world. The text avoids being
overtly didactic although there is strong dogma in what plays out. It
is an alarming slice of life.

David Jobling

EVERY FILM EVER MADE

The Pod
Garden of Unearthly Delights

9.30pm
Feb 16 March 15

Thriving on mayhem a trio of fast talking improvisers with a well
planned hour of exposition, attempt to enact every film ever made.
Their deliberations on film, celebrity, sexuality and gender along
with a wealth of other asides and sight gags engage the audience all
the way through dreaded moments of pending audience participation and
sighs of relief when it doesn’t turn out to be more taxing than
receiving a flirt. This is a fun piece of live theatre that will tax
any film buff out of inertia.

Possibly not every film ever made gets a full viewing as it were,
because the small screen imposes from time to time to shed light on
the sexual tensions between anti-celebrities Margaret and David; and
the focus gets pulled awry here and there. It’s not as focused as the
One Man Star Wars, which is an extraordinary feat, however if you saw
and enjoyed that Every Film Ever Made will definitely tickle your
ribs. Be warned, it’s an adult only show with some strong language
(the c word).

David Jobling