Jeff Lang
The Spiegeltent
November 9th, 2008

The professionalism with which Jeff Lang performed on this warm Sunday night at the Spiegeltent was a notable change for a man who, in the past, made a habit of sitting down to tell jokes and stories while tuning his guitar and deciding which song best suits the mood.

This time he had all his guitars - and even a turkish cümbüş - pre-tuned and lined up in the order he was to use them. But this efficiency in no way negated the feelings synonymous with watching Lang and double bass-player Grant ‘the Squire’ Cummerford perform live.

There were the usual elements that make a Lang show so intimate and accessible: seeing a friend awkwardly run into Lang before the show in the Arts Centre toilet; standing behind and briefly talking to Jeff’s parents as they bought tickets to their son’s show; receiving warm smiles from his sister as she stood by the album table; and later, observing his infant child applaud his father after ‘Copper Mine’, an archaically modern folk -blues tune, during which his cümbüş - which apparently makes a nifty bedpan - introduced itself.

Self-described as “disturbed folk music, a tangled roots music stew,” Lang’s seducing lap-steel runs and tender acoustic melodies sit alongside - and never in place of - his poignant song-writing. His live performances only seem to heighten their impressive qualities.

For the exceedingly polite crowd seated leisurely at small round tables inside the Spiegeltent, Jeff Lang came out blazing, confidently opening with a ride down ‘The Savannah Way’, a song appearing on his latest album, Half Seas Over, and one written with fellow Melbourne musician, Suzannah Espie. With a down-to-business attitude, he retained a deliberateness that did not merely go through the motions, but which was attentive to the songs’ demands. He appeared as merely a channel for his music, some vehicle through which these songs manifest themselves.

Most of the set was lifted from his latest album, despite the odd few songs to maintain a “Melbourne-centric theme.” Lang played two songs from, Whatever Makes You Happy (2004). ‘You Should Have Waited’, an unrequited love song set in Fitzroy, and ‘Slip Away’, dedicated to his good friend and fellow Melbournian, C.W. Stoneking.

Lang left out his epic rendition of ‘House Carpenter’ - an old traditional song about unfaithfulness and death - instead playing his balmy blues, ‘Everything is still’, from his 2001 album of the same name.

No recent Jeff Lang performance is complete without a tribute to the “late and great” Chris Whitley. This time he played ‘The Road Leads Down’, a song from their collaborative album, Dislocation Blues, telling the story of a love that is lost. At least that’s what it could be about. Here ‘The Squire’ showcased his skills in an extended, but never out of place, double bass solo.

Special mention must also go to Lang’s reworking of an old folk song that appears on Half Seas Over. Rest assured, if you are not a folk-convert after the delightful yet slightly disturbing (two characteristics very at home within Jeff’s work) ‘My Mother Always Talked To Me’, you never will be.

When Jeff Lang and Grant Cummerford disappeared offstage after 55 minutes, the timid crowd found themselves chanting for an encore. A fly on the wall backstage would certainly have observed a determined Lang discussing with Mr. Cummerford how they could make the crowd boisterous.

Audience participation is the key, so when the two performers appeared on stage again and introduced ‘Newman Town’, the final song on the new album, Lang coached different sections of the crowd to keep two distinctive beats. Most people managed to keep time, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they didn’t; Jeff knew where he was going, and, if his latest albums and shows are any indication, has he has no intentions of slowing down.

By the end, the Spiegeltent had come alive.

C.W. Stoneking
The Spiegeltent
October 26, 2008

Two years after the release of King Hokum, C.W. Stoneking moves from cheeky duet ballads towards a blend of authentic blues and jungle music. His second album, Jungle Blues, was inspired in part by tales of previous travels - surviving a shipwreck off the west coast of Africa, and losing his tenor banjo and guitar in a New York yellow cab.

For the launch of his new record, C.W. entered the stage smiling, looking spick in a bow-tie, and very sprightly without his once-trademark top-hat. The other notable difference being that bottled water was the only liquid on stage.

Immediately, the crowd was content - listening to the first live version of the title track, Jungle Blues. With his band, the Primitive Horn Orchestra, his sexy steel Dobro guitar and his (new) banjo, The Spiegeltent came alive with authentic pre-war blues, jungle jazz and 1920s calypso.

The past 18 months have indeed been very successful for the Melbourne-based musician. The eventual success of King Hokum has transformed the old-muttering, beer drinking C.W., who for years played tunes in the corner of Collingwood pubs, into an old-muttering, (probably still) beer-drinking C.W. that stands centre stage under the bright lights of the hot and stuffy Speigeltent, to rapturous applause.

His anecdotes between songs are still met with almost constant giggling - the novelty of how a white man from 2008 can sound so much like a black man from the 1920s never wore off. However, his natural ability to delicately weave words in a delightfully unusual way provides the audience not only with fantastic music, but a complete performance that is truly superb.

The new and beautiful Jungle Lullaby, a song recorded after leaving his guitar and banjo in a New York taxi, relates the pain a musician feels after losing his strings. Even the amusing background stories to Darktown Shutters Blues and Homebound Blues, largely unknown even to some of the more hardened King Hokum fans, provide valuable context to what is being played.

The makeover of C.W. into a more accomplished performer has not diminished his authenticity at all. Almost halfway though one song he stopped playing, turned to drummer Jim White and then back to face the crowd, saying, “I’m going to do something unprofessional and start again, it’s just a little too fast for me.” It was unprofessional, but the crowd loved it.

More importantly though, C.W. provides an invaluable link to a forgotten time, to the Son House and Robert Johnson of the 1920s and 30’s. If you haven’t had the pleasure, please, sit back, grab a beer, relax, and give C.W. a spin.

C.W. Stoneking recently began a national tour. Locally, he will be playing:

- Ruby’s Lounge, Belgrave (27 November);

- The Peninsula Lounge, Moorooduc (28 November)

- The Corner Hotel, Richmond (29 November)

- The Corner Hotel, Richmond - matinee show (30 November)

- The Palais, Hepburn Springs (12 December)

Augie March
Forum Theatre
October 9, 2008

After One Crowded Hour topped last year’s Hottest 100 chart amid a spate of awards, Augie March’s status in Australia was catapulted above all expectations. The band’s hometown performance at the Forum on Thursday night was testament to this as fans packed the theatre’s grand halls for a special Live at the Wireless session for Triple J.

They were a little bit of everything, the crowd - some were clearly drawn by the novelty of give-away tickets, while others were eager for a sneak-peak at the upcoming fourth album, Watch me Disappear.

As the band launched into the set, it became clear they were under-practiced - front man Glenn Richards confirmed it had been six months since their last show. But the rawness of the material didn’t detract from the gig.

The album’s title track, Watch Me Disappear, began threateningly, building quickly towards a chorus that bordered on stadium rock. Pennywhistle’s playful instrumentals made you smile, conjuring images of the Australian landscape, while The Slant overflowed with sorrow, underlined by Richards’ aching vocals.

Farmer’s Son reminds you of the plight of young farmers in today’s drought stricken rural areas and City of Rescue, with its fast paced a-little-bit-country snare brushing, makes you forget again. Most of the songs were themed around life in Australia, and Richards’ voice really gelled them into something special. It was a strong, poetic mix of rock, country and folk.

Richards and drummer David Williams were captivating in the sometimes lengthy changeovers between songs, whilst guest guitarist Dan Kelly tried his hardest to stay out of the limelight. The charming on stage banter made you feel as if you were watching a few mates roll off some tunes at your local.

As the band led the audience through the new album, the overall impression was cohesion. This is a release without an obvious hit, but it speaks with meaning and will deservedly be enjoyed by many more now that One Crowded Hour has brought broad attention to Richards’ skillful song writing.

It was a chilled out show, without excessive showmanship. No one really let loose, needing rather to focus getting the music right. It was also lot less polished than their studio work. A couple of false starts and a retake perhaps wasn’t the best way to show off the new album, but the crowd enjoyed what was on offer and mirrored the relaxed attitude of the band from the comfort of the theatre’s seating.

Oedipus - A Poetic Requiem
72 Edward Street, Brunswick
Melbourne Fringe Festival (full coverage here)
Sept 30 - Oct 12, 2008

Liminal (Theatre and Performance) is a strange beast in the Melbourne theatre eco-system. In this city, where most theatre is produced for free and funding is at best flimsy, independent theatre-making is a long session of musical chairs, and a person who can get a large number of people to collaborate for a longer period of time something of a rarity. Another rare thing in this city, sadly but logically, is an independent theatre practitioner past a certain age: while we certainly have established mainstream theatre artists, there is simply not enough security of livelihood on the theatre margin to sustain long-term artistic inquiry.

As Alison Croggon has noted, Liminal, with their sense of collective, long-term collaboration, defined aesthetics and a clear sense of tangent and purpose, are comparable to the visionary ensembles that are lushly funded in, let’s say, Europe, and heralded as creative laboratories, those raising the roof beams for the future. Ariadne Mnouchkine comes to mind, or Needcompany. In Melbourne, needless to mention, this is not quite the case, and Liminal tend to teach their devoted audience much about the suburban architecture of Melbourne, as we wander the back streets of Abbotsford or Brunswick, looking for the right warehouse or private house where their performances take place.

Based on Ted Hughes’s poetically mighty re-working of Seneca’s Oedipus, this is a production of which completely contradicting things can be said with total plausibility. It has a grand vision, fantastic ideas, excellent human and textual material, powerful execution, and yet it fails to work the way one expects it to. There is a touch of too-much and a touch of not-quite: velvety enunciation and somewhat heavy-metal make-up give Oedipus a little bit of easy slickness it doesn’t need, while choreographic and vocal syntony collapses in moments that wouldn’t matter if the performance didn’t strive for microscopic precision.

Liminal makes theatre full of sound and image, minutely choreographed motion and voice: to experience it in a suburban garage, in a glitchy execution with props collapsing, video and sound occasionally malfunctioning, fails the desired total immersion. The tight intimacy of the space works, and doesn’t: a larger space may have relieved Oedipus of some of its visceral potency, but some airiness could have sharpened our senses, slightly irritated as they were by the physical discomfort of crowdedness, of feet pressed against backs, shoulders rubbing, imperfect angles. Hugely ambitious, Oedipus burns under its own magnifying glass.

Partially, though, there may be an internal failure of rhythm and intent. There is not so much a sense of meandering, as a lack of progression until it kicks into the splendid end. Oedipus starts in high-strung tone, and keeps it, unwavering, until the very end. The result, rather than creating horrific tension, creates monotony. While four Jocastas toss and turn in the agony of loss, blame and fault, the audience, in minute steps, gets bored.

But if I focus so much on the shortcomings, it’s because Oedipus is, overall, stuff of giants. Classical tragedy is already thick with re-telling, with memory, but in this version only detritus of the original events remains. Any recognisable characters are shed for a mask of Oedipus and a chorus of four women in black, who less narrate than reminisce, re-live, mourn and wail. Everything has already happened, and on stage there will be only inconsolable mourning, only senseless rage and self-pity. Spitting mouthfuls of exquisite text - a text with a fine pedigree indeed - they bathe their bodies, voices, and the entire black box in gorgeous monochrome film, Ivanka Sokol’s flickering shadows of cloudy skies, streets, woods, faces.

Just like in Liminal’s previous work, Mishima’s The Damask Drum, there is a sense of reiterative, traumatic, short-circuited memory in these confused blurs of film, the orchestrated imprecision with which they slide up and down, bodies reduced to black dress and white skin, white shadows of trees in the black box. Physical movement is nearly perfectly directed: four women merge together and fall apart, assuming distinct voices only to drown into a writhing, wriggling mass of lean limbs and wild hair. And the text, broken between mouths and personae, is the most exquisite piece of writing I have heard on stage, angular and translucent and raucous and spiky.

At the very end, Claire Nicholls has five minutes of the most accomplished theatre one is likely to see in Melbourne this year. In a move characteristic of the production, a nameless black-dressed woman repeats a monologue of a slave, recounting how Oedipus blinded himself. Only a faint carbon-copy of an event, yet brought to life with such visceral urgency - as she screams, she is helpless, senseless chilling despair;

Suddenly he began to weep          everything that had been
Torment suddenly it was sobbing       it shook his whole
Body and he shouted                  is weeping all I can give
Can’t my eyes give any more        let them go with their
Tears          let them go      eyeballs too      everything
Out            is this enough for you you frozen gods of
Marriage     is it sufficient            are my eyes enough

From this point on we are in theatre heaven - although it required a jump-start. And here lies the problem. While Oedipus is flawed and imperfect, the act of critique becomes hard when what Liminal does is systematically rare, rarely systematic, and totally unsupported. And when such senseless acts of beauty go unnoticed, in Brunswick garages.

Click here for Laneway’s full coverage of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

The Heart of Another is a Dark Forest
Dancehouse
Melbourne Fringe Festival (full coverage here)
Sept 24 - 28, 2008

Twelve Restless performers, with different levels and types of disability, are confronted with twelve fully-able Rawcus performers in this fascinating exploration of the mystery of the other.

When you stand in front of me and look at me,
What do you know of the griefs that are in me
And what do I know of yours?

- Kafka, as quoted in the program notes

The Heart of Another is a Dark Forest opens with a loop of beautiful live music: guitar, piano, pan flute, cello. I’ve often noted that the fusion of genres in Australian theatre happens less between theatre, performance and dance, and more often with visual arts, music, and puppetry. That is, rather than eschewing dramatic narration for rebellious deconstruction, it engages in a sensuous tickle of all the senses, a total experience. This process usually creates, like in this case, lyrical theatre, stage poetry (as Maeterlinck demanded: “la pièce de théâtre dout être avant tout un poème”), in which the linear time of ascending action is replaced by slowly accumulating image-time, what Gertrude Stein would have approvingly called theatre as landscape.

Some of the most successful Australian theatre of recent times meticulously researched the possibilities of this approach, from My Darling Patricia’s Politely Savage and Peepshow Inc.’s Slanting Into the Void, to Vitalstatistix’s Cake (it is not surprising, therefore, that a number of names overlap in the credits of these shows). To analyse The Heart of Another with an analytical mind, thus, may be doing it great disservice.

There are moments in this performance of terrifying human beauty. More terrifying because resolutely silent - by which I don’t mean that speech isn’t present, merely that the words don’t amount to a statement, explanation, or challenge. They remain a part of the stage poetry.

Right at the beginning, all performers assemble on stage, merely breathing until they slowly smile. The variety of persons, of bodies, is astonishing - the sparse means of physical theatre work extraordinarily well at showing the individual beauty of each one of this enormous, diverse ensemble. Where will they all go?, you wonder. How will they all move? Where will this dense human mass disperse? It does and doesn’t: despite choreographic skill at emptying and populating the stage, The Heart of Another seemingly keeps the theatre densely upholstered, filled to the brim, with thick emotions, with faces, costumes, movement, but most crucially with objects.

A man is back-lit behind a life-size child drawing of a man. A woman cuts out a red heart in the paper, and through the hole starts pulling out a red scarf, a paper chain of little girls, toy animals, which another man gives to a girl, who assembles the lot in a wooden box. A mass of people unfolding a silk scarf, each with their own little assemblages: a collection of chocolate coins, or plastic roses and a plastic wedding cake. Someone’s memories, someone’s very private mementos. A girl puts words in a sequence of glass jars; another listens inside each one. Even the backstage is used to reveal a dark, private space behind the representational space at the front. At different times, the performance is counterpointed by a romantic duet, or a solo in dark sfumato.

On the one hand, it is a performance firmly situated in this world, latching onto an endless array of objects and gestures and relations and characters. At the same time, by refusing any response to this world apart from the hermetically, solipsistically intimist, it is a dance of deep, almost painful privacy. Using semi-abled performers, by definition a quiet part of our society - indeed, any society - underpins this sensuous introspection.

At multiple points, perhaps because of the opening quote, I was reminded of Kafka’s love letters to Milena Jesenska, among the most painfully intimate love correspondences of all times. There is more than a flimsy connection of this barely un-symbolist theatre to the love-letter format, with its own solipsism, planar non-narrative time, and an alchemist power to turn awkwardness, unease, fear and disgust into heavy, difficult and intensely private beauty. Instead of judging, we are led to feel. As a way of approaching the problem of able-bodiedness, this is not unintelligent. Everything in The Heart of Another is heart-breakingly beautiful in silence: loneliness, desire, the inability to connect, the girls and the boys. Members of the Rawcus ensemble seemed unaware of how much admiration they incited: the foyer buzzed with excited whispers on the beauty of particular girls.

There are, however, problems for the analytical mind. Keeping in mind that Australia is a resolutely mute culture in many aspects, that much of its best dramatic writing explores the poetic rhythms of non-communication and non-discussion (eg, Holloway’s harrowing Red Sky Morning), its predilection both for physical theatre and for ‘theatre as a poem’ becomes problematic, politically problematic.

Aesthetically, the silence of objects and people makes for very intense theatre. But, in a rich yet delicate landscape of visual effects within The Heart of Another, every object, motion and gesture resounds with what is left unsaid. The moment in which girls, all the girls, one by one join in a group homogeneous movement, although some simply cannot do it properly, struck me as somewhat aloof. In another, a man with speech impediments reads on the back stage - stirring too many memories of war orphans forced to pose at anti-war rallies, of that banal exploitation of someone’s misery for some quick, cheap compassion.

The wallpaper, framing the entire set in a florally geometric, patterned repetition of the same, may have been intended only as decoration - indeed, I commonly see Victorian wallpaper in Australian performances. It is, however, present as an unconscious atavism, a constant reminder of the oppressive, bourgeois structures that sent us all here. It was a society that created textile printing, the industrial, regimented repetition of geometrically restrained, prettified nature. So we have it: the imperative of pleasant decoration, the imperative of sameness, and in the middle of it all, elementary human wonder dancing. The effect is incongruous, raising more questions than it placates with silence. Are we watching prettified disability? Does it need to come with lush music to keep us calm? Are we refusing to think? These are just some of the nagging questions in the back of my mind. To every such political problem that arises, the answer seems to be to smother it indulgently in beautiful décor.

In targeting the body first and the mind later, there is always the danger of abandoning problems half-way through; of not allowing the audience to see clearly, and of choosing the pretty option over the less aesthetically rounded. This can happen even if there is no intention of glossing over. It happened in Cake, with its cheap conflation of baking, pregnancy and femininity; it happened in Politely Savage, with its ornate orientalization of Australia, the 1950s, and the housewife. The entire subtext of Kafka’s love letters is that of a deeply unhappy existence. Many unpleasant things may have been pushed aside in The Heart of Another in order to please the senses, but we may only realise later.

Click here for Laneway’s full coverage of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

The Mysteries of the Convent
Convent Building, Abbotsford Convent
Melbourne Fringe Festival (full coverage here)
Sept 25 - 28, Oct 1 - 5, 2008

Puppets, a nighttime tour of an old convent, live music, storytelling, comedy and drama. It all sounds amazing, doesn’t it? And it could be.

The Mysteries of the Convent is Peepshow Inc’s tour of the Abbotsford Convent (complete with dates, facts, and stories told by the ‘newbie’ tour guide Robyn McMicking). In the midst of the tour are vignettes with puppets and sketches revolving around the Mother Superior and girls trapped within the convent walls forced to do her biddings.

It is quirky and cute, but doesn’t realize its full potential. It’s a bit like a drama class performance where you happily support the collective because they are clearly attempting something great, but they never quite get there.

Perhaps the first puppet we see is a good metaphor. She is an old woman telling of when she lived in the convent as a little girl. Like many lonely old ladies, she speaks a whole lot, but never really has anything to say.

The story is disjointed. Directed and created with the cast by Melinda Hetzel, there are lots of great ideas on their own, but they don’t become a coherent whole. The real estate agent doesn’t fit with the fable. The sports bar doesn’t compliment the movement pieces with the flowing white sheets. The puppets don’t connect with the people.

The strength comes from the tour itself - specifically McMicking’s tour leader with her raised umbrella to guide the way, multitude of facts about the convent and comedic timing. The puppets get in the way. They seem like a separate show.

The live music did bring some consistency to the piece. Delia Poon’s cello and haunting operatic voice fill the space with an ethereal quality, fitting for the religious building.

The puppets themselves are clever; although like the rest of the production seem slightly unfinished. I didn’t quite get the point of the random singing and dancing giant bunny and rat. Perhaps there’s an inside joke I’m missing.

I would recommend you take the tour yourself. Apparently Peepshow Inc. are quite the institution at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, this being their third year remounting and adapting this production. And how often do you get to tour an old convent at night with puppets and a ‘lost’ tour guide? But don’t go with high expectations for a piece of polished theatre.

Click here for Laneway’s full coverage of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Image courtesy of Pia Johnson.

sKin
La Mama
August 28 - September 13, 2008

It always seemed to me that there is a lot that the garden variety bedtime story and the psychological horror genre have in common, in terms of execution. Both strive to lull the listener/viewer into a particular physical state, resorting to the repetition of motifs, avoiding any emphasis on logic, and creating a low murmur of sensations that teases the body into a state of light but constant focus, through a form of mild hypnosis. The only difference is that, while the bedtime story ends on an arbitrary, subjective point, with its audience seduced (put to sleep), the horror narrative is finely tuned to break the spell at the precise point of climax. A typical bedtime story, then, could be a horror tale without the climax.

Humphrey Bower, Jess Ipkendanz and Gwendolina Holmberg-Gilchrist were the team behind the astonishing The Kreutzer Sonata at La Mama last year, the first prose-based performance I saw completely blow its audience away. Novels, short stories and other forms of epic, non-recitatory writing, rarely turn into excellent theatre. The beauty of the theatrical form and the beauty of the written text are too easy to confuse, turning the stage into a declamatory empty space where something other, more real, is merely described.

More often than not, the solid black box becomes a tunnel, and the entire experience tantalising, but unsatisfying. The Kreutzer Sonata, however, with the simplest means of lighting, music, a few puppets and Bower’s hypnotising voice, seduced, terrified and enlightened. Building delicately upon Tolstoy’s superb narrative structure, which in itself combined prose with the discussion of music, all the bedtime-story elements of the Bower-Ipkendanz-Holmberg team fed into the terror of the murder plot, creating an extraordinarily rich melange of visceral effects, finely tuned to hit the body at the most receptive points. What made it rise above mere radio drama on stage was the way it worked on the body.

sKin, based on Bower’s original writing, is not the same calibre of achievement.

It is, as expected, finely crafted: Bower’s enchanting voice gracefully weaves together the mirroring themes of two tales at points of entrance and exit, unease and confusion, helplessness and gratitude. Ipkendanz’s music seamlessly punctuates the emotional songlines, and Holmberg-Gilchrist’s precise lighting fills the small La Mama stage with the Western Australian outback and Thai alleyways, dark hotel rooms and airy condominiums.

As theatre, this is a work of great subtlety. The stories, however, are afflicted with all the usual problems of local literature: passive characters, vague themes, stuttering development of both plot and ideas. It was the strong philosophical outlines, the emotional tempest and psychological fearlessness of The Kreutzer Sonata that made it gripping theatre. In sKin, the joint big themes of place, race, culture, intimacy and identity are reduced to a murmur in the background of an iceberg narrative.

While one man’s hilarious travel to Thailand develops poetically, culminating in his bright orange, made-in-Yarraville tan, its mirror story, another man’s uneasy trip to a town in Western Australia, is replete with visits from the dead, and the appropriately clichéd vague mystery of the land. The emotional curve of the storyline is reduced to descriptions of the landscape. These are understated narratives in which nobody murders, despairs or reaches frightening yet true conclusions about humankind. And Bower’s voice, hypnotic as always, so effective at narrating chilling details of domestic violence, infidelity and existential despair, now risks putting us to sleep.

Understatement in theatre is a dangerous thing. I would not let anyone but this group of people talk literature to me on stage: what they do is masterfully simple, but works mainly due to their talent and, where applicable, choice of works. Without a striking piece of prose to tie the performance, sKin remains just a bedtime tale.

You can read more of Jana at her blog, mono no aware.

The Zombie State
Union Theatre, The University of Melbourne
September 17 - 27, 2008

In its best moments, The Zombie State is Saturday night in the CBD.

At a cultural low point in my life, when I used to catch the glorious 4.30am Night Rider to Frankston, it was my weekly dose of the strangest of the Melbourne microcosmos. Nightshift workers, hospitality plebs, aggressive Frankstonians, vomiting girls, the desperate homeless that couldn’t pay their way out of Swanston Street that night, young accountants drinking their way out of existential angst, business tourists, casino winners and casino losers, all mingled in a haze of bile, spit, alcohol fumes, violence, money, vomit. I would escape to the KFC bouncers (another Saturday night phenomenon), a small, pacifist Sikh micro-community, who fed me spicy chicken with vegetarian detachment. The climax of the ride home, which inevitably involved brawls, singing and attempts at backseat intercourse, was the passage down Carlisle Street in St Kilda, when the entire bus would open the windows to shout abusive nonsense at the sex workers (who responded with comparative grace). And I would wonder about the personas these monster people assumed in daylight.

The Zombie State is the same barely controlled human grotesque. It flirts with the zombie horror genre, leaning on its own fear of the mindless crowd, the collective loss of reason. It’s the story of Prime Minister Kevin’s orchestration of Summit 2021, during which aloof teenagers overdose, clairvoyants foretell doom, Crown Casino cleaners clean, zombies dance themselves to death, Night Rider passengers are abducted for underground experiments and a posse of Persephones fight killer seagulls.

As long as the text is muffled, pinched and distorted through the enormous stage activity, as long as the setting, characters and context are barely approximated, it is an Artaudian phantasmagoria of associative illogic, a visual and aural feast as assaulting to the senses as it is delicately teasing to the mind. There is more than a pinch of the post-pretty European to Daniel Schlusser’s direction: that many of these actors are fundamentally playing themselves is not insignificant.

The grand and furious nightmare of The Zombie State was initially conceived as verbatim theatre, drawing upon workers’ submissions to the Howard government’s Commission for the Living Wage, and the line between mundane naturalism and hysterical parody is as sharp and thin as it was on Swanston Street on those cold Saturday nights, when structured mating rituals disintegrated into an orgy of publicly discharged bodily fluids, when healthy, acceptable business aggression morphed into senseless street fighting, and vegetarian KFC bodyguards seemed the most approximate flotsam of orderly humanity.

In terms of the sheer imagery Zombie State generates, there is enough in these 75 minutes to occupy a curious mind for weeks. It is passionately theatrical, with a cast of 26 (huge for Melburnian standards) fluidly moving through the glass cubicles, projections, backstage recordings and sound curtains that build into an experience that’s visceral, immediate, and decidedly un-television.

Alas, the script is the weakest part of the show, and the ending, played straight and political, catapults a mesmerising experience into the realm of didacticism. The Zombie State, for all its expansive, warm illusion of chaos, carefully walks the rope stretched between broad social farce and anti-dramatic fantasia, not giving in to either until the end. Both paths, hoinwever, are essentially neverending, the only possible conclusions being either implosion or explosion, theatre turning onto itself or onto the audience.

Instead, it reveals its political undergarments, with an unfortunate, politically hammy question mark that bogs down what had until then successfully remained mid-air with levity and infinite grace. In retrospect, the entire play looks tainted with programmatic politics, all those moments of social-realist dialogue suddenly springing up in the mind, the playfulness receding, the grand oneiric beauty lost with one sweep of the writing hand. While a zombie is spurting blood in a vague waiting room with an egg slowly frying on the back screen, the dentist can torture him for not having health insurance: our social sensibility is fully activated, but our sensuousness nourished nonetheless. But when Prime Minister Kevin declares that choosing zombidom allows him to rule the country without needing sleep, that delicate tickle of counterpointed images and words is shot down with a loud bang.

As strange as it may sound, Schlusser’s theatre could have been more successful had it completely renounced text. It flirts with the barely controlled plotless chaos of European performance collectives, building powerful effects out of images alone, using text as only one layer of the performancescape (something rare and needed in Australian theatre), but ultimately returns to the dictate of the writer’s message, dismantling its own battle machine. And yet, despite its flaws, I don’t remember the last time it was so exciting to be in the theatre in this city. By all means, this is a production not to miss, a rare gem of near-Regietheater in Melbourne.

Vamp
Merlyn Theatre, CUB Malthouse
September 4 - 22, 2008

Meow Meow enters from the audience. She wears black fishnet tights, and a shimmering silver gown with matching sparkled eye shadow. She wails and smokes as she puts her leg up on an audience member’s chair, thrusting her crotch into the old lady’s face. The actress grabs the head of her dead boyfriend.

This is Vamp. Part cabaret, part concert, and part morbid indulgence.

Meow Meow is an entity. She is award winning, has traveled the world, and well known in Melbourne from her performances at The Famous Spigeltent in 2005 and 2006. She is larger than life. She fills the room with her presence, her personality, her songs, laughter and mischief.

In a smaller room, or a different atmosphere, this would have been enough. But this is a full-scale production, complete with a large staircase up the centre, elaborate couture (set and costumes designed by Anna Tregloan), a five-piece band, and a harness, which allows her to fly. Added to this are many references to previous femme fatales - Eve being tempted by the snake and Oscar Wilde’s version of the Salome story, to name a couple.

As spectacular as this all sounds, it just didn’t seem to fit. Not to say that in their own right every element wasn’t stunningly executed. But it just wasn’t the right venue, or the right mix.

First, the average age of the audience was around 60, probably subscribers and wealthy to take a guess (I did go on a Wednesday evening), and they didn’t seem to want to participate in Meow’s antics. Her frequent pleas for help and her murmurs of “it’s going to be a long night” didn’t make an impact.

Then, the venue itself: The Malthouse’s Merlyn Theatre is a large round room in which the seating is moved around to suit the production. With the decision to make the audience around three sides of the jetted-out stage, came the decision to exclude close to two thirds of the audience from seeing the special effect created by Meow Meow flying through the air in a harness with the backdrop of a large moon (which I imagine would have been amazing had I been sitting head on to see it).

The original music by Meow and Iain Grandage was haunting, if a bit boring at times. I wish the talented band members (Orchestra of Wild Dogs - Sam Anning, Iain Grandage, Martin Kay, Igor Oskolkov, Ben Vanderwal) had a more upfront presence. Being relegated to the back corners didn’t give them the credit they deserved - a more prominent position might also have helped with more interaction between Meow and the musicians.

There were some really striking moments. Her final song (although it wasn’t original - a Radiohead cover, I believe), where she just stood and sang, was eerily touching. And Meow was lit beautifully as she flew higher and higher, with a black lace veil wrapped over her head and shoulders, up from the ground (even from the side - credit to lighting designer Paul Jackson).

The costumes were characters in themselves. At one point Meow Meow made her entrance from a door in the Moon wearing a black tutu with small, amputated doll arms and legs attached to it. In another instance she entered with a neon red fox stole, ending on one side with tiny heads of perhaps those same dolls.

There were also some funny moments - the money shot comes to mind. Her interaction with the audience was precious, although it started to get a bit old after the first few attempts because her choice was pretty much restricted to the first row (which unfortunately included one creepy man who tried to feel Meow up).

Meow’s voice is striking, and its presence grand. But it became overly staged (I’m not sure whether this is due to director Michael Kantor). A more intimate venue where the audience could eat, drink and feel freer to interact would have suited her better. I would happily sacrifice the cool special effects for more connection to what Meow and her version of the tragic Vamp is all about.

Note: I wish I’d read the program notes, especially regarding Oscar Wilde’s version of Salome’s story, before I saw the production. They help explain some of the more obscure references.

Red Sky Morning
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
August 27 - September 27, 2008

A vicious dog, a fart and a pulsating pimple. This is how the day begins.

Three inner monologues tell the raw thoughts of a father, a mother and a daughter. In one day a lot can be considered and not said to those we love - even when we desperately need to reach out.

Red Sky Morning, the new play by Red Stitch playwright-in-residence Tom Holloway, is three interlocking monologues by a man (David Whiteley), his wife (Sarah Sutherland), and his teenage daughter (Erin Dewar). It is one day in the life of this family. To tell anymore would diminish the tender experience of discovering their secrets for yourself.

Developed in conjunction with ensemble cast members and director/dramaturge Sam Strong, and a result of the Red Stitch Writers program, this is new, exciting Australian modern theatre. The words are striking in their honesty. They are real people in crisis - they could be our neighbour, our friend, or our child’s classmate.

The characters speak directly to the audience and never once interact with each other. Yet their stories entwine together. The dialogue changes speed and rhythm like a piece of music. Sometimes they speak alone, sometimes all at the same time, and sometimes they answer each other’s pauses.

This can get tricky, and perhaps there was too much sound; at times it was hard to pick out a single voice within the harmony. Their jumbled words during the middle of the production could have used a more central focus - one speech to rise above the others.

As well, Whiteley’s sole male voice was frequently drowned out by the higher pitch of the two females. This was not helped by his position upstage on many occasions and the lower lighting on his face. His most dramatic scenes came seemed a little out of place, lacking the buildup the women were able to produce.

However, this is only a small issue. And perhaps we needed these moments of cacophony.

Each actor was comfortable in his or her character’s skin and confident with the lyrical script (perhaps due to their working alongside Holloway and Strong to develop this play). I believed in them, and in their family. There was humour and intensity when needed.

The functional set, designed by Peter Mumford, was a room with a sole table, two chairs, and one coffee mug. This area was bordered by floor-to-ceiling cream-coloured venetian blinds, which the actors opened and closed, lifted up and brought down, letting us into their heads and lives and bringing us back out again.

Red Sky Morning is a commentary on our society and a candid look into the modern family unit. It is also a beautifully sincere story about three people and the pressure and problems they face dealing with existence.

This world premiere production was raw, real and human. It left me wondering: how many of us spend our lives in our own inner thoughts and never really say what we want or need to those we love - even in times of crisis? And if we don’t speak out, will our lives continue the same daily cycles or will our problems eventually explode regardless?