2007
\nTheatre
\nAdelaide <\/p>\n
Talk to Me like the Rain and Let Me Listen
\nBy Tennessee Williams<\/p>\n
Hot Fudge
\nBy Caryl Churchill <\/p>\n
Central Park West
\nBy Woody Allen <\/p>\n
State Theatre Company
\nOf South Australia
\nDunstan Playhouse
\nAdelaide Festival Centre
\nJuly 10, 2007 Until July 28.
\nTickets $17 – $55. Bookings BASS 131 246<\/p>\n
In theatre parlance a triple threat is someone who can dance and sing as well as act. But with this winter program on the mainstage of the Dunstan Playhouse, State Theatre artistic director Adam Cook has another trifecta in mind. Confronting the perpetual dilemma of having too much available talent and too few programming opportunities, he has trebled his options with a triple bill of one-act plays – performed by a company of six, directed by three up-and-coming directors, lit by Mark Pennington, and designed to the nines by the deft hand of Mary Moore. <\/p>\n
Talk to me like the rain and let me listen is an ethereal dialogue written by Tennessee Williams in 1945. Set in a New York slum, but given crumbling classical trimmings with Moore\u2019s imposing masonry, this is a dream play for disconnected voices. A dissipated young man returns desperately to his girlfriend. As rain sheets down the window frame, they talk in alternating torrents of hope and despair. Director Netta Yashchin works diligently to capture all this febrile yearning but actors Nathan O\u2019Keefe and Kate Box cannot sufficiently master Williams\u2019 tendril-like Southern cadence (as they must, to justify the piece) or quite persuade us of the unspoken bond that contradicts their repeated declarations to break free.<\/p>\n
Caryl Churchill\u2019s Hot Fudge, from 1989, is often served with the short play Ice Cream, but Geordie Brookman has gone straight for the sauce in this densely packed study of petty grifters, identity fraudsters, spin merchants and pathological liars. Distancing herself from the family credit card scam, Ruby (touchingly played by Elena Carapetis) poses as a travel agent to impress Colin (Brendan Rock) who turns out to be a counterfeit himself. Brookman takes his gang of six briskly through Churchill\u2019s sharply-observed, if unsurprising, homily on the self-defeat of deceit. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not the cosmos, this is Central Park West,\u201d quips one of Woody Allen\u2019s characters – and unfortunately it is a little too true. Director Hannah Allert brings a raucous energy to this mid-Nineties New York boulevarde farce – stuffed full of one-liners, but with Woody\u2019s stage mechanics audibly grinding. Mary Moore\u2019s set, in etched deco glass, pastel trim and martini chrome, is a fine foil to the not very discreet charms of Phyllis and Sam Riggs (the excellent Carmel Johnson and Rob McPherson) whose George and Martha feud is Allen\u2019s version of Albee-to-go. With Elena Carapetis, trapped in a heavy Noo Joysey accent and Brendon Rock mugging hilariously as her luckless husband there are plenty of laughs for a winter night here. But, after two more thoughtful predecessors, the triple threat ends less with a bang than a whimsy. <\/p>\n
\u201cCook\u2019s three course a tad underdone\u201d The Australian, July 13, 2007, p.12. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
2007 Theatre Adelaide Talk to Me like the Rain and Let Me Listen By Tennessee Williams Hot Fudge By Caryl Churchill Central Park West By Woody Allen State Theatre Company Of South Australia Dunstan Playhouse Adelaide Festival Centre July 10, 2007 Until July 28. Tickets $17 – $55. Bookings BASS 131 246 In theatre parlance a triple threat is someone who can dance and sing as well as act. But with this winter program on the mainstage of the Dunstan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","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=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":965,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions\/965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}