2001<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
Come Out is back for its\u00a0 biennial best and Artistic Director, Catherine Carter has put together the sort of program we have come to expect – school outreach activities, the Friday street parade, indigenous events, comedy workshops, the Allwrite literature festival and a diverse range of international, national and local theatre.<\/p>\n
Belvoir Company B brings to the Playhouse Neil Armfield\u2019s restaging of\u00a0 David Holman\u2019s The Small Poppies. <\/em>First commissioned in 1986 by then Magpie director, Geoffrey Rush, this play has close associations with Adelaide and Pennington Primary School in particular. As Holman and the actors interviewed and\u00a0 researched their subject –\u00a0 the first day at school for a range of kids from different backgrounds – some marvellous stories and vignettes unfolded.<\/p>\n In Armfield\u2019s version, which, I note with some parochial indignation, has been relocated in Sydney, there has been a broadening of style. Full of jokes and riddles, sight and sound gags,\u00a0 though it always was,\u00a0 the play has been given the\u00a0 full pantomime treatment with Stephen Curtis\u2019s brightly coloured set and burlesque costumes. With its mirror ball, planetary extravaganzas and knock-kneed knockabout,\u00a0 these little poppies make the first day of school into something like an out-take from Strictly Ballroom.<\/p>\n There are still\u00a0 tender moments as Theo the Greek boy, Cambodian refugee Lep and the timorous Clint face the highs and lows of Big School.\u00a0 But the business often gets in the way of things – as in the extended overture to Act Two. The campy\u00a0 Hippotamus revue –\u00a0 amusing though it is – drags out and obscures the narrative, and weakens the dramatic impact of important scenes, such as when Lep and the other children make a Buddhist ceremony in tribute to her dead mother. There are some excellent performances – Richard Sydenham as Clint, Andrew S. Gilbert as the headmaster, Ursula Yovich as Lep and Arky Michael as the ever devious Shane Miller. But Alan John\u2019s fussy score and Neil Armfield\u2019s inclination to over-gild the lily often prevents these Poppies from getting the simple dignity they deserve.<\/p>\n Danish company Gruppe 38,\u00a0 performing\u00a0 their production of Hansel and Gretel<\/em> in the Experimental Theatre in the newly opened Roma Mitchell CPVA building in Light Square, have brought an almost austere simplicity to the story. Presented by Bodil Alling, with keyboard accompaniment from Soren Sondberg, the visual focus is confined to Ms Alling seated on a chair and using her loose weave white shawl as a screen for woodcut-like projections of the eponymous H and G as well as assorted birds, wolves and wicked witches. Sondberg, dressed in tux and tie, occasionally comments on the action, and drily indicates his indifference to the lamentations of the children\u2019s beastly mother by combing his carefully cropped scalp and eating marshmallows by the handful while she complains of hunger.<\/p>\n The story is told with measured understatement and an unwillingness to pander to the junior primary school audience. This is a respectful strategy and the production may well prove intriguing to them as a consequence. But the coolness of delivery also risks insufficient engagement with young children for whom this archaic story of woodcutters, neglected siblings, gingerbread houses and very negative female role models is not only grim, but a far and foreign country.<\/p>\n Also originating from Scandinavia is The Dreamed Life <\/em>by Swedish playwright Mia Tornquist and translated by May Britt Akerhold. Directed by Catherine Carter and modestly designed by Robert Cousins, it describes how a young unnamed girl restores the spirit of a bereaved couple, Eva and Erik, whose baby Nora Schahrazade has died hours after birth. The girl\u00a0 encourages them-\u00a0 Eva willingly, Erik with reluctance – to imagine Nora\u2019s life from childhood to marriage as a way of resolving their grief. These are complex notions psychologically – you might call them adult concepts, which I felt largely escaped the primary school audience. They seem much happier when the pompous von Feldt, played with blustering caricature by Roger Newcombe, takes a fall on his bum, or,\u00a0 inexplicably, when they find unintended hilarity at Eva giving birth.<\/p>\n As Erik and Eva, Andrew Martin and Petra Schulenburg give pleasing performances, Emily Branford has a more difficult task defining the child and at times resorts to rather desperate\u00a0 over gesticulation.\u00a0 The Dreamed Life<\/em><\/p>\n is a fascinating play but, instead of oversimplifying its meaning to reach its young audience, Catherine Carter might be better to take its Ibsenite expressionism and make something weird for older fry instead.<\/p>\n Zeal Theatre made a big splash at the 99 Come Out with The Stones<\/em>, a theatrically smart account of a serious crime committed by thoughtless boys. This time their new work, Mouse,<\/em> ventures into the harsh and unusual cruelties of playground bullying. Mouse is the only child of well-off, career-obsessed parents. They bicker and fight, while he plays his violin, and, at school, wreaks havoc amongst his peers.\u00a0 He winds up the guileless Shorty and torments the Asian girl Chui, and all the while maintains the studious persona of A-student, sportsman and prodigy.<\/p>\n As Mouse, Tom Lycos gives us a disturbingly vivid glimpse of active and passive hostilities, especially as they affect the refugee boy Shortie, played by co-writer Stefo Nantsou. Mouse<\/em> is an ambitious work – and at times it carries too much freight, especially the subtexts involving the parents and their friends- but in refusing to gratify our need for justice to be seen to be done the play leaves us\u00a0 to seethe and reflect on the vicious dynamic of systematic persecution.<\/p>\n Local company Urban Myth has premiered a new play for Come Out. TheTime of Ashes by Sean Riley is set in Adelaide in a Catholic boys\u2019 school in Adelaide in the late 1970s. On the day that Premier Don Dunstan is to make a visit to the school , one of the boys, Samuel O\u2019Shaugnessy has gone missing. He is AWOL in Hindley Street and when enquiries\u00a0 follow, several of the boys, including the Luke, the son of the police investigator, have guilty secrets to hide.<\/p>\n The play is a sensitive portrait of a community of boys, full of bravado and uncertainty, good humour and vindictiveness. In their\u00a0 honesty\u00a0 about their unworldliness and their compulsive curiosity about the world, these characters\u00a0 are reminiscent of Wedekind\u2019s Spring\u2019s Awakening<\/em>, except that here the adult world of priests and fathers and police is more generously drawn.<\/p>\n Director Brendan Ross has gathered a strong cast of experienced actors augmented by the lively talents of members of the Urban Myth Theatre Company. Geoff Revell is again accomplished as the father of the missing boy, Michael Baldwin and Stephen Sheehan give well-judged accounts as the senior priest Father Mac and the ever-questioning brother Anthony, Rod Ho\u2019vell is excellent as the cop Davis. Among the younger actors Jason Lewis works well as the troubled Tim Forrester, Benji Groenewegen is energetic as Maddick and Liam Gerner is\u00a0 striking as the free-spirited O\u2019Shaugnessy.<\/p>\n The Time of Ashes<\/em> shows Sean Riley as a playwright with a gift for narrative and an ear for natural dialogue. There is a refreshing lack of clich\u00e9 in his depiction of both priests and\u00a0 schoolboys, and an absence of melodrama in the simplicity of their quests to express themselves. By framing the play with`references to\u00a0 Dunstan he evokes this city at a particular time and place in a way that is both vivid and unselfconscious. This play deserves a return season, it is definitely a highlight among\u00a0 this year\u2019s Come Out offerings.<\/p>\n The Adelaide Review, No.211, April, 2001, p.36.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2001 Reviewed by Murray Bramwell Come Out is back for its\u00a0 biennial best and Artistic Director, Catherine Carter has put together the sort of program we have come to expect – school outreach activities, the Friday street parade, indigenous events, comedy workshops, the Allwrite literature festival and a diverse range of international, national and local theatre. Belvoir Company B brings to the Playhouse Neil Armfield\u2019s restaging of\u00a0 David Holman\u2019s The Small Poppies. First commissioned in 1986 by then Magpie director, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,19,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-international","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}