Melbourne theatre, musical and dance reviews
Wondering which Melbourne shows to see? Check out the latest theatre, musical, opera and dance reviews from our critics
5 stars: top notch, unmissable
The Book of Mormon
Read about The Book of Mormon $40 ticket lottery. It can be difficult for Australian audiences to receive any international musical without certain preconceptions: the rumours of greatness tend to wash onto our shores long before the tour has even been announced. When one of the biggest Broadway hits of the millennium rolls into town, the sense of expectation can be dangerously high. The Book of Mormon comes with the kind of ecstatic hype usually found accompanying a messiah. Instead, Elders Price and Cunningham turn up – which is possibly less shattering, but ultimately way more fun. The unlikely genesis of this mega-hit is well documented; suffice to say that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the brains behind South Park and Team America, made an unholy alliance with Robert Lopez, the creator of dirty puppet porn Avenue Q, to create this monstrous satire of everything. The result is a show as perverse as it is heartfelt, as clever as it is moving. It really is as good as they say. The opening number, ‘Hello’, sets the tone as deftly and memorably as ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’defines the parameters of Oklahoma! The scene is familiar to us all: a bunch of trainee missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints are ringing on doorbells, keen to share the news “of this amazing book”. Their squeaky grins and infectious positivity are so aligned with the traditional image of the Broadway musical that the sparkly vests and tap routines that soon follow feel like a
My Fair Lady
When it was announced that Julie Andrews was going to direct a production of My Fair Lady in Australia, lifelong fans started salivating immediately. When she explained that it would be an exact replica of the original 1956 Broadway production in which she starred and made her name, doubts began to creep in. Could you possibly recreate the magic and allure of what was at the time the greatest musical theatre success story ever? And even if you could, why would you? What could a hoary old production, trapped in amber, have to say to modern audiences, even those primed for nostalgia?The answers are surprisingly multi-layered, even contradictory. It is, of course, impossible to know exactly how faithful the production is moment by moment without a time machine and a photographic memory, but certainly the sets (Oliver Smith) and costumes (Cecil Beaton) are verifiably precise, and the choreography breaks its back to seem authentic. My Fair Lady had several runs, on the West End and in revivals, and this 60th anniversary production aims to collate all that the designers learnt along the way. It means we have a gorgeous period motorcar that was intended for, but never appeared in, a scene on the road to Ascot. It means we get details, in both the scenic and lighting design, that have been augmented and refined, according to the production’s evolution. If that constitutes a replica, then maybe the concept isn’t so absurd.Lerner and Loewe’s musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s
4 stars: excellent and recommended
The Merchant Of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is often grouped within Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’, and shares with Measure for Measure a constantly shifting tone and register. In some ways, all of his comedies do, but these two plays are particularly challenging: Shylock and Angelo are so black and human, so pathological, that they tilt their comedies into truly dangerous territory. Neither play really recovers from their villains, who are so rooted in the moral and spiritual decay of the culture that surrounds them that they prove impossible to banish outright.Of course, Shylock is a character complicated – some could say compromised – by the history that has followed his creation; when he says, “the curse never fell upon our nation till now. I never felt it till now”, audiences cannot help but think of the horrors of the 20th century. It’s almost tempting to see him as a total victim, and director Anne-Louise Sarks comes perilously close, but to do so is to upend the play. Shakespeare humanises and shades his villain, but he refuses to pull away from the aspects of his character that are genuinely terrifying.Religion is the whetstone upon which the characters sharpen their hatred, and Sarks brings it niftily into play from the outset. The production opens with all the characters on stage, bar two, suddenly kneeling and reciting the Lord’s Prayer; Shylock (Mitchell Butel) and his daughter Jessica (Felicity McKay), are forced to sit it out on the sidelines. Throughout, Sarks peppers the text with
3 stars: recommended with reservations
Aladdin
Remember when Krispy Kreme donuts arrived on our shores? Australians were told in breathless tones that these were the “best in the world”, but when we bit into them we discovered they were strangely insubstantial and sickly sweet. Disney’s Aladdin has all the glaze and ornament of those airy donuts, and about as much nutritional value.Not that the original source was a feast for mind and soul. Aladdin was a largely forgettable 1992 Disney confection made palatable by the extraordinary improv skills of the late, great Robin Williams. It conformed precisely to a formula that is now virtually ubiquitous in animation: a plunder of traditional stories with little to no appreciation of their cultural significance; wisecracking animals who help disguise large chunks of exposition; and as many current pop culture references as possible, just so people know it’s all happening now.Much has been made of Princess Jasmine’s (Hiba Elchikhe) fierce sense of independence and the fact she isn’t white, but both of these traits come to very little in the transition to the stage. Aladdin (Ainsley Melham) is the focus, and their coupling – while not without its endearing naivety – doesn’t seem transgressive or evolutionary. The journey of self-discovery is all his, and it’s a classic Disney one: be yourself. She gets to marry her prince, but only because her father, the Sultan (George Henare) changes the law to allow it. It’s not exactly smashing the patriarchy.The characters who make the easies
Noises Off
Melbourne audiences have had plenty of opportunities to familiarise themselves with the mechanics of farce this year. Declan Greene’s The Homosexuals, or Faggots premiered at Malthouse Theatre, and the touring production of The Play That Goes Wrong had a season at the Comedy Theatre. Now we get the daddy of all farce, with Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. It’s the kind of play that doesn’t really get revivals because it never really closes; there’s almost always a production of it playing somewhere around the world.It’s not hard to see why; it is a textbook example of the form, and it provides a wealth of opportunity for gifted stage comedians. The play’s structure is also its meaning. The first act takes place during the dress rehearsal for a touring production of a grubby little bedroom farce called Nothing On. The second act takes place backstage, well into the tour when personal rivalries and sexual relationships have started to seriously sour. The final act takes place as the tour comes to its hobbled, halting end and everyone is ready to kill each other. It’s basically a metaphor for life.The director, Lloyd (Simon Burke) is initially a disembodied voice from the gods, but lead actress Dotty (Louise Siversen) gets so confused about which props she is supposed to be taking on and off that he comes down to the stage to take control. But control is a fragile concept in the theatre, especially when Lloyd’s previous fling, assistant stage manager Poppy (Emily Goddard), discovers
Frankenstein
Almost from the moment of its original publication, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein became one of the defining myths of the modern age. Harnessing all the wonder and terror of the Renaissance – when a geocentric view of the world gave way to a heliocentric one – and combining that with the rapid technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, Shelley tapped into the deep ambivalence surrounding humankind’s place in the universe. When Victor Frankenstein creates his monster he is indulging in the ultimate hubris but he is also at a kind of evolutionary zenith, stripping God of his power and inserting himself in his place. If he finds his creation hideous, it’s because he has created it in his own image. Playwright Lally Katz inverts this by writing the part of the creature as a beautiful young woman (Chantelle Jamieson). Now when Frankenstein (Michael McStay) sees her and finds her abhorrent, it says more about his own warped psyche than it does about any unnatural act of divine usurpation. Katz retains much of the novel’s dynamic between the two characters, from the rejection of the creator, through the murder of Victor’s loved ones, to the creature’s plea for a mate – she even has a showdown on the arctic ice that is more satisfying than Shelley’s climax – but she introduces an element of gender that she then failures to explore. To anyone familiar with Katz’s work, an adaptation of Frankenstein may seem an odd choice; she is a playwright concerned far less with grand phi
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