OffStreet Arts

Escape from the Breakup Forest

/ Zenobia Frost / Leave a comment

Escape from the Breakup Forest (directed by Claire Christian and Ari Palani) is the Brisbane debut for Toowoomba’s Mixtape Theatre Collective, who formed in 2011. The show’s cut-out-and-colour-in forest set pieces take root in the Judith Wright Centre’s Shopfront.

The Shopfront is a good space for Mixtape’s intimate offering. The border between stage and audience is just a line of masking tape. We share the casual cabaret seating with a fellow critic, whom I hadn’t seen years, and a traveller who bought a ticket on a whim.

Steve Pirie, as Josh, takes the lead in a plot as simple as “boy loves girl; girl leaves boy; boy meets puppet.” The collective take their time telling the story of Josh’s romantic youth and eventual delirious five-year spin with Emma (Ell Sachs) — which ends in three years of red wine, Special K, and Friends re-runs. The real action starts when our mopey protagonist wakes up in a mystical land, the Breakup Forest, and meets Curly (puppeteering by Dan Stewart).

Escape from the Breakup Forest is one part Boy Girl Wall, one part Scott Pilgrim, and one part fresh-but-relatable comedy. In the mystical Breakup Forest, Josh must battle the memories of his exes and others who’ve hurt him. The narrative style (even some sound effects) seems heavily influenced by the work of Brisbane’s Escapists. Regardless, this production — along with the collective’s proactive attitude to making and funding theatre — suggests there’s more to come from Mixtape. And I’ll be watching.

Escape from the Breakup Forest

Pirie is one multitalented chap: he wrote and designed Breakup Forest, as well as performing the central role. Suitably pitiable as Josh, he embodies the role with just the right amount of charisma. Despite lingering on Chapter One, the scriptwriting is sharp. The cast has our motley table of viewers laughing together — and frequently.

The monochromic set design, along with projected animations, brings to mind “Elmo’s World” or, for a more grown-up audience, Don Hertzfeldt’s “Rejected”. Coloured lighting works really well in this regard, but could be harnessed more often. The cast, wearing white tees with details gaff-taped on, use cardboard props as costumes and weapons as they flit between roles. Sachs proves herself to be a versatile actor as she plays a series of Josh’s challengers: the female friend who dotes on him, the “slut” who rejected him in grade nine (a problematic character), and (signal boss fight) the memory of his ex-girlfriend Emma.

Unfortunately Curly’s simplistic design is limiting. Despite Stewart’s best efforts, Curly lacks the individual spirit we’ve come to expect from Muppet-like hand puppets — a pity, as he proves to be a major player in Josh’s story. But perhaps Escape from the Breakup Forest’s fatal flaw is optimism; in the end, the play takes a saccharine and all-too-easy escape route. While it might be a common fantasy, few dumpees as dedicated to red wine and re-runs as Josh can tap together their ruby slippers and vamoose; this particular wood is dark and deep, and there are usually miles yet to tread — on foot.

The Mixtape Collective’s Escape from the Breakup Forest plays at the Judith Wright Centre until 23 March 2013.

Dancing with Bach

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Judith Wright Centre, March 6

Bach’s Cello Suites were amongst the first suites of classical music to work their way into my bones. Lucid Dance Theatre’s Dancing with Bach project, choreographed by Louise Deleur in collaboration with cellist Louise King, aims to evoke the feeling of the suites as well as to paint a portrait of the composer’s life and work through dance.

But first, before Bach, we are shocked into a short piece called Surge — a lightning storm of a dance piece, performed by two sinewy figures upon a beach. The visuals are engrossing, with the dancers silhouetted against shoreline. We can almost smell the salt in the air.

There’s a 10-minute break that is determinedly not an interval: house lights go up, pop music hums, the stage is set for the main event — but we can’t leave our seats. At last, lights go down and bow meets cello. King’s performance is fluid and captivating. It’s easy to focus on her body language, but the dancers too are worthy of attention. They do more than dance to the music; the aim is to perform the suites with the body.

Dancing with Bach

Dancing with Bach is a work developed through the Judith Wright Centre’s Fresh Ground program. It’s an interesting production in this theatre space. With cello the only accompaniment, the thud of dancers’ feet on stage reverberates. In some ways, this focuses us on the dancers’ visceral movements; in other ways, it’s distracting. (You could hear a pin drop — or the sound-techs whisper.)

I always try to state my biases: dance is something I’m only learning about. For me, Dancing with Bach is an unsubtle piece — a little heavy-handed, heavy-footed. Rikki Mason dances the role of Bach himself, with Melissa Tattam and Elizabeth Barnard. Their danced relationships are intimate and tense, yet perhaps it is the sonic-emptiness of the space that makes communicating this intimacy to the audience difficult. Projections on a tall, thin screen illuminate stories from Bach’s life and, in this manner, we are unnecessarily told that we “find a world of emotions” in the suites — something the performance itself inherently seeks to show. The show don’t seem confident that the music will guide the dancers’ movements and our reactions and, as such, Dancing with Bach never seems to get the timing just right.

 

Dancing with Bach played at the Judith Wright Centre from March 6 to 8, 2013. 

For a different point of view, I liked this review at SameSame.com.au.

Holding the Man

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La Boite, February 26

I first saw Tommy Murphy’s adaptation of Timothy Conigrave’s memoirs half a decade ago. It was a devastating experience then, at Brisbane Powerhouse in 2008. Thus it is that I have no excuse for my rookie mistake at La Boite: I have forgotten tissues. David Berthold returns to direct the story of Conigrave, a Melbourne actor and playwright born in 1959 whose high school love affair would last a lifetime — albeit a tragically short one.

There are two distinct halves to Holding the Man: the youthful comedy of act one, and then the slower march of act two. To say it’s a play about AIDS would be to sell Conigrave’s work and life short; rather, it’s about life: growing up gay in Australia in the 1970s and 80s, being in love, making mistakes, and negotiating family, politics and health.

The frank dialogue sets the pace for act one. Murphy’s script is refreshingly open about sex — enough to cause a few jaw-drops in the audience. We share the stalls with a class of Year 11 drama students in uniform — from my personal experience at a religious high school, this must sure beat any sex education they’ve had to date.

Alec Snow is the right man for the job as Tim; we are immediately on his side as he casually woos the gentle athlete, John Caleo (Jerome Meyer). Murphy has translated their voices authentically to the stage; their sincerity is the quality the play pivots around.

Holding Man

As we dash through the decades, we meet a kaleidoscope of queer archetypes played by a strong supporting cast: Eugene Gilfedder, Helen Howard, Jai Higgs and Lauren Jackson. The cast are made vulnerable by on-set costume changes in amongst mirrors bedecked with stage lights. It’s a good choice — in Holding the Man, everything is exposed.

Throughout this, Tim and John’s relationship develops and wavers. Then the 1980s bring their horrific revelations. Act two slows its pace: while the epidemic rages, each tragedy is deeply personal. The strongest scenes play out as fevered amalgams of drama workshops and medical scenarios — these whirlwinds make our hearts thump with the protagonist’s confusion and fear.

At times, the ensemble seems a little uncomfortable with the staging. But then, Holding the Man isn’t really a play in the round, and this is the Roundhouse Theatre. Still, the discrete elements of Brian Thomson’s design are striking and effective, and Micka Agosta’s uncanny puppetry makes the play’s final scenes resonate. If 2008 is anything to go by, those chills may resonate for years.

It’s easy to look back on the 70s and 80s and think about how much Australia has changed for queer people, their friends and families. But the poster for Holding the Man (pictured) has Snow and Meyer in a pose evocative of Queensland Association for Healthy Communities’ now-famous “Rip & Roll” campaign of 2011. Last year Queensland Health defunded QAHC, which provided HIV prevention services to local LGBTIQ communities. It’s a pertinent time to revisit Conigrave’s story, and to ensure that it does resonate.

Holding the Man runs at La Boite until March 16.

Can’t Be Artsed #5: All The Things

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This week, while I should have been attending to The To-Do List, I instead attended a diverse bunch of artsy gigs. It was pretty rad. I should be studying/working/poeting/editing, but I wanted to at least jot down some thoughts before I lose ’em.

Henry Rollins, May 3

I’d never heard of Mr Rollins, nor his career with punk band Black Flag, before friends gifted me a ticket for my birthday. I decided to head in blind and find out what this spoken-word maestro has to offer on the fly.

Continue reading →

No Mere Freak Show

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Review: Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness

In a word, Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness is sumptuous. Renée Mulder’s set design and Damien Cooper’s exquisite lighting transform La Boite into a worn, warm big top. Finally, this theatre space—often a difficult one to negotiate—puts its best foot forward, rivalling the Spiegeltent for ambience with a raised, tilted platform that evokes a spider web of carnival memories.

Anthony Neilson’s script is rich pickings: witty, ridiculous, poignant, irreverent, poetic and absolutely spellbinding. “In a world where death is at our shoulder every hour,” says Gant “even the smallest act of creativity is a marvellous, courageous thing.” The show is a paean to imagination. Emphasising that “the truth of life lies least of all in the facts,” the over-arching story is revealed through a series of plays-within-the-play (not entirely unlike the layers of Gilliam’s Imaginarium).

 

Australian designers Romance Was Born have created wonderful costumes for a show that draws so much inspiration from the days of travelling carnivals. Every inch of the cast seems to sparkle, though I am glad Edward Gant (self-professed “prodigy, soldier, traveller, poet but always and ever a showman”) has such a glorious, glittering cape to distract from a fake potbelly that never quite looks right. The cast of four play numerous roles, from their carnival selves to teddy bears who just want some imaginary tea, whilst clever staging enables a chorus of pimples, bursting with “cheese,” to dance for us. Delicious.

I’ll admit that Paul Bishop is not the kind of Gant I expected, but his voice is perfect and he wears that moustache with finesse. Occasionally, perhaps uncomfortable in the role, he overplays Gant by mere inches and loses the confidence he needs to be ringleader. Bryan Probets* slips most effortlessly into his role as Jack Dearlove (and others), and seems the most versatile and genuine of the cast. Emily Tomlins (recently seen in Julius Caesar) is less convincing—she never quite disappears into her characters—while La Boite newcomer Lindsay Farris is competent, but like Tomlins never quite melds into the setting, unable to lose the Athletic Young Australian Bloke vibe.

Sarah Goodes clearly has a steady hand as director, and Steve Toulmin’s music delivers. With so much working in the play’s favour, the stage certainly was set for a mind-blowing performance. But, as I watched, I couldn’t help but be conscious of the fact that the cast were Actors (with a capital A) only pretending to be carnies. Possibly I go to more circus than is healthy. None the less, this La Boite/Sydney Theatre Company co-production delights, disgusts, enchants and surprises with what must be called amazing feats of theatre.

 

*I read, in his bio, that Bryan Probets was in the great Aussie vampire flick, Daybreakers. I was certain I remembered him as a vampire scientist working for the baddies. Turns out he was a subsider (a very uncivilised vampire indeed) in full make-up, so there’s no way that I actually remember his face. Memory is so fallible…but “the truth of life lies least of all in the facts,” right? Right?

Edward Gant plays until June 12 at La Boite. You can read my interview with composer and sound designer Steve Toulmin at Rave Magazine. What did you think of the show? Tell me in the comments section below.

Photos by Al Caeiro for La Boite.

11 Questions with Jason Webley

/ Zenobia Frost / 1 Comment

The gentleman with the accordion and the pork pie hat, Mr Jason Webley, is finally touring Australia again (it’s been nearly five years!). While he was zipping around the continent, I snuck into his busy schedule to ask him 11 questions.

ZENOBIA FROST: You last visited Down Under four years ago. In that time, you’ve released a solo album and several collaborations. What’s been your most memorable moment since we last saw you?

Wow. That’s a big question… I’m not sure what the MOST memorable moment has been—a lot has happened in the last four years. I’ve been everywhere in the world and back, played shows in Siberia, in Morocco, Mexico City. Actually, the other afternoon stands out pretty strongly. I happened to be in Christchurch when the big earthquake hit. I was meant to play there that night, it was my first time and I was staying with friends not far from the city center. Luckily I was okay, as were my friends—and I was be able to get out of the city the next day. But it was crazy walking around and seeing the collapsed houses, the streets and bridges all ripped apart, and the clay billowing out of the earth like a million little volcanoes.

ZF: Southern Cross was written in Australia nearly a decade ago. How did the song come to be written?

JW: That song is partly stolen goods. When I first arrived in Australia I stayed for a couple days in Sydney with a Canadian woman I knew who hummed a Leonard Cohen song to me—she said he had written after learning of an affair between his wife and his best friend. I wasn’t very familiar with his work at that time. I had a cassette of some of his songs and loved his work, but I had never heard the tune before.

Later I went on to Adelaide for three weeks to perform as a street performer at the Fringe. It was a rather alienating experience. At the time I had been performing at a lot of festivals all over the US and Canada, but Adelaide didn’t go very well for me. The street scene was a bit more of a drunken mess than I had anticipated and I never really found my audience. It was hard work hitting the Rundle Mall day after day, and I remember at night I’d go and lay down in a park or somewhere and look up at the sky above me, not recognising any of the constellations, and think, “Fuck, what the hell am I doing out here?”

On that trip I became smitten with a girl I met. We had a brief affair that ended swiftly and left me feeling the same way that the foreign constellations and the streets of Adelaide had. The song came out quickly, and while I wrote, I was very aware that it borrowed a bit from whatever I could remember of the melody that the woman in Sydney had hummed to me. I didn’t realise until I heard the song later how horribly I had ripped off Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat. But I decided not to change it. People still give me shit about it sometimes when they hear the song, but I still think it was a lovely way to steal a tune, and I hope that Leonard Cohen wouldn’t mind if he knew. I think he might like the song if he heard it.

ZF: Your compositions range in style from the gloriously and joyously absurd to the heart-breakingly serious (I’m looking at you, With). Is there a particular genre/style you prefer writing and performing?

JW: I don’t like to think in terms of genre generally. Whenever I start writing a song, and it feels a bit like it fits too well into a particular category, I always feel a bit embarrassed somehow. I like songs that feel like they could have been written a hundred years ago. My songs, these days, do seem to get divided into categories of totally ridiculous silly songs and the serious ones… I think when I first started I had a lot more material that somehow lived in between those extremes.

You mention With. That was an interesting one. I wrote that song as some kind of hello, a welcome, but to everyone else it must look like a song about letting go—and I suppose I see it that way too now. That song gets played at funerals.

ZF: You’ve been compared to figures like Tom Waits. This might have been an easy comparison early on in your career, but you’ve long-since developed a sound all your own. If you could coin a title or description for the Jason Webley sound, what would you call it?

JW: I generally try to avoid defining my own music. That is other people’s job… If somebody has to coin a title for the Jason Webley genre, I hope I have nothing to do with it. I guess, on my flyers I lazily put “punk accordion” because I think that helps give people an evocative, simple idea of what to expect. But in a lot of ways that doesn’t make sense, the music isn’t punk and I only play accordion about half of the time. There are all of these labels though—stomp punk, gypsy punk, steam punk, punk cabaret, folk punk, whatever. They don’t really mean anything to me.

ZF: Your lyrics frequently stray into the realm of poetry (especially on albums like Only Just Beginning). Do you consider yourself a poet as well as a musician? What’s your usual song-writing process?

JW: It’s funny, I don’t really consider myself to be a poet or even exactly a musician. I’m a terrible instrumentalist (really, I am, trust me.) And whenever I write, I never would call myself a poet. I guess I call myself a songwriter, which is sort of a marriage of the two and sort of a compromise of the two.

I don’t have a usual songwriting process. Most of my songs, at least the ones that are worth anything, have arrived at my home uninvited, conveyed by their own unique form of transport.

ZF: I particularly enjoy the way your albums (especially Counterpoint and Against the Night) reward repeat listens by revealing layers and patterns in both sound and lyric. Webley albums feel like treasure hunts. The Cost of Living is a very different album, but a particularly cohesive album thematically.

JW: The Cost of Living was a different sort of album for me. I’m not sure if you notice, but there aren’t as many “treasure hunts” you mentioned going on with that one. There are certainly themes and there are a few melodic shapes that return, but I didn’t construct it in the same way as the other albums with all of the internal references between the songs. Another difference is that I also didn’t try so much to resolve whatever darkness comes up within the songs. For that reason, to me it is a much starker album than Against the Night and if it does somehow redeem itself and burn through the dark areas it touches on, it is because of something beyond my planning. I was a bit scared of that album while working on it. For a while I thought it might even have a bit of a curse. One of my best friends died shortly into the recording process and my father got very sick and nearly died right around the day it was released.

ZF: What are the benefits and challenges of working in collaboration as opposed to writing and performing solo?

JW: It is easier to reinvent yourself and try new things when you are bouncing ideas off of someone else. For me something in my inner-editorial board really relaxes and lets me make choices I’d never make on my own songs. Also, when I know I’m working with a new musician, even if they aren’t in the room, my mind starts going all sorts of places it would never go normally. That’s fun. But it can also be hard, and it is easy when working with others to write a lot of stuff that doesn’t actually penetrate very deeply. I believe Ayn Rand (who I don’t normally agree with) was right: nothing too remarkable ever gets done by a committee. If you have a bunch of people working on a song, it is very possible that the end result will work out to be much less than the sum of its parts. Although, maybe that’s wrong—the Beatles sure made amazing songs together and turned out a bunch of crap when they were on their own.

ZF: What kind of repertoire can we expect at your Australian shows? Old stuff? New stuff? Evelyn Evelyn stuff? Will we be treated to some songs we’ve never heard before?

JW: Well, since it has been four years, I do have a bunch of new stuff. Hopefully there will be a happy mix of it all: old songs, new songs, serious songs, silly songs, a few covers, a few old things that I wasn’t playing four years ago, and of course a few familiar songs. Last night I played a two-hour set in Perth, and I’m guessing that there were only about three or four songs that anyone there might have ever heard me perform when I was there last.

ZF: What are you most looking forward to getting up to in Australia? Do you have a favourite touring-Australia story from the past?

JW: I’m looking forward to getting to Hobart and exploring Tasmania a bit, since I’ve never been there before. I’m also playing in a bunch of smaller towns this time around—Canberra, Newcastle, Geraldton and Lismore. I’m very curious how those gigs will go.

As to Australian stories from the past—I’ve got a bunch. About half the songs on my third album, Counterpoint, were born in Australia. I still don’t like to think in terms of “favourites” but the full version of the story of Southern Cross was the one that stuck out from my first trip. An interesting anecdote is that I met Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls on that same trip, back before her band had formed when we were both street performers struggling and suffering in Rundle Mall in Adelaide.

ZF: Why the fascination with vegetables? And the number 11?

JW: The vegetable thing is or mostly was just a playful thing I did back in the beginning of my street performing. I’d wave a big toy carrot in the air to try and get the crowd worked up. You can also learn a lot from vegetables about how to live and die and about generosity. Vegetables are very generous. The number eleven is more complicated. It is an odd number.


ZF: Your website says you’ll be taking a long hiatus from touring after 2011. What’s in the works for 2012 and onwards?

JW: I don’t have any plans. The only thing I know is that I will be taking at least a year off from performing beginning on November 12th of this year. I love what I do though and hope it will continue in some fashion for a long, long time, but a voice that I trust has told me it is time to take a big break and I’m going to do that. I’m not sure how long the break will be or what exactly I will do after the break, but I hope very much that I’ll keep performing in some way and that it won’t take me four years to get back to Australia again.

[This is the full transcript of an interview I conducted for Rave Magazine. Go read that too!]
SILVER SIRCUS supports JASON WEBLEY at The Zoo in Brisbane on Wednesday, March 23 (yay!), but the remainder of his Brisbane touring schedule is as follows:

March 17—Canberra, AUSTRALIA – The Front
March 18—Sydney, AUSTRALIA – Camelot Lounge
March 19—Sydney, AUSTRALIA – Explicit Manor
March 20—Newcastle, AUSTRALIA – Great Northern
March 23—Brisbane, AUSTRALIA – The Zoo
March 24—Lismore, AUSTRALIA – Gollan Hotel

3…2…1—Lift-off (of WTF11)

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Brisbane Powerhouse put on a very fine evening of drinks and nibblies at the launch of World Theatre Festival this week. I liked the idea of WTF from the beginning because it meant Ben Law’s face was on posters all over Brisbane and every time I saw one, I remembered The Family Law and giggled. (Ben, are you even part of WTF, poster aside?) The festival itself has a great line-up from Europe, the USA, Chile and NZ, as well as home-grown talent.

While we clutched our free wine and cider (the twittersphere keeps mentioning the WTF cider!), The Rat Trap, part of the festival’s Scratch Series of works-in-progress played out on the Turbine Platform. Sure, Polytoxic’s latest work is a little rough around the edges, but the audience was enraptured. With great costumes and a fantastic soundtrack (CW Stoneking and Amanda Palmer, together at last), the Polytoxic crew showed off some very promising choreography. I particularly loved the remote-control ratties and the swinging-from-the-lampshades dance routine. I wanted more from a one-trick strip to Palmer’s Missed Me, and couldn’t help but feel that the Siamese twins with the ping-pong balls were getting a bit too close to being offensive. But that’s what the Scratch Series is about—trying things out and trying things on, and The Rat Trap hit the mark far more often than it missed. With a bit of polish and tightening up, this will probably have the same obsession-creating effect on me that Cantina had at last year’s Brisbane Festival.

Apollo 13: Mission Control is an “interactive, intergalactic theatre piece” from the Land of the Long White Cloud. I was really excited to be one of the 100 “staff” working at Mission Control to help safely launch and land the Apollo 13, so I was a little disappointed when I ended up in the Press Gallery, looking on. Luckily, the friend I brought along managed to get in right up the very front, in the middle of all the action. The set is fantastic; audience members sit at 1970s-style computer consoles with functioning phones and video and shiny buttons. The cast went around sprucing up the new staff by handing out ties and tubs of Brylcreem. We (the pretend press) were handed a clipboard to jot down questions for the astronauts. We were all ready to be lifted off into funland.

The difficulty with a show like this—a recreation of a shuttle launch—is how to turn it from a historical event into theatre. Punters at consoles were given (rather involved) manuals to read, equations to solve, numbers to ring, and questions to answer, but ultimately nothing the audience did had any effect on the plot or characters. From the press gallery, there were lots of flashing lights and goings on—and lots of shouting—but I couldn’t see much meaningful interaction. I enjoyed the chats with the newsreader (great moustache!) and the astronauts, but my favourite scenes in the control room involved my buddy up the front hijacking the set, taking hold of a microphone, and making an air filter out of a tissue box, a vacuum tube, and sticky tape. His feedback was that the play felt like it couldn’t choose between serious re-enactment and freeform play. When he steered Apollo 13 in the latter direction, faces in the audience lit up.

At its worst, it felt a bit like a dud Thank God You’re Here segment; at its best, it was a joyous and chaotic rush of actors and punters playing together whilst machines made exciting pinging noises. I saw a lot of genuinely bored and anxious faces sitting at consoles, which is certainly a pity—but I think the cheers, when our astronauts came safely back to earth, were genuine too. There were moments when we felt like we were part of something momentous. I just wish there’d been more of those.

Find out more about WTF at: www.brisbanepowerhouse.org or you can check out my previews in Rave Magazine.