Enright on the Night @ Genesian Theatre, dissected by Marina

Almost 16 years after Nick Enright’s death, the Genesian Theatre pays a heartfelt tribute to their departed friend. Director Roger Gimblett’s Enright on the Night promises a fun, entertaining, somewhat nostalgic show that, at the very least, will have you leaving the theatre with the warm and fuzzies.

Enright on the Night is for long-time followers of the Genesian Theatre, the fans who would’ve heard the echoes of Enright’s name in Sydney’s theatre scene decades ago. His music, adapted by David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow, is performed between original songs that celebrate Enright’s career and life with a genuine appreciation only amplified by both men’s personal connection to the late legend. The diverse range of music, from lonely ballad to a forceful salsa, appears daunting to the untrained eye: but choreographer Debbie Smith and musical director and pianist Dion Condack step up to the task, capturing the different emotional touches in each performance with lovely piano riffs and impressive ensemble dances. Lighting by Michael Schell amplifies the experience - his bold use of colour enchants you to the cast’s performances.

At its opening, you are promised a fun night with sing-alongs and party games - where the first act of the production begins to feel monotonous as it continues, the second act picks up and steps up in all aspects. The first hour can sometimes feel like you’re watching a documentary - a performer laying out facts of Enright’s childhood, then a musical interlude, then a description of Enright’s early career, then a musical interlude, rinse and repeat. However, where the second half picks up the slack is in Gimblett’s desire to share his love of Enright’s life and legacy with the audience, incorporating a gameshow-style segment that makes you guess the last line of one of Enright’s poems, and the promised sing-along to Peter Allen’s ‘I Still Call Australia Home’, made famous from its origin in Enright’s The Boy From Oz. During the sing-along, I link hands with the older couple next to me and, when the song’s chorus arrives, we wave our arms in sync - it’s at this moment, with a hundred others beside you, that you truly realise the magnitude of impact Enright’s legacy has.

Special guest Angela Ayers is dazzling and unforgettable on stage in her every appearance and solo performance. Cast member Rosanna Hurley’s performance is similarly authentic and captivating. Alongside Juliette Coates and Lana Domeney, the quartet’s performance constantly makes you laugh at their classic Australian lingo or fall into quiet contemplation during a piano ballad, feeling the exact emotions they want you to.

Ultimately, At the end of the night, you’ll leave the theatre with a true appreciation for Enright and the family that the Genesian Theatre has built deep in Sydney’s business sector.

The Realistic Joneses @ Limelight on Oxford, dissected by Matt

Like me, I am sure many of you have had the urge to pack up and move out to a non-descript town in America, bathing in the sumptuous American Dream. No? Your loss.

The image of the non-descript American town in middle-America pervades many imaginations, having been used in so many of the great American novels and plays of the 20^th century. It shows the universality of our ingrained individual and societal problems. The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno follows the lives of two couples living next door (both incidentally named Jones) in their interactions and personal challenges. Jennifer Jones (Suzann James) is stoically taking care of her sick husband Bob (Jeff Houston), who is struck with a rare disease similar to Alzheimer’s. There is denial and genuine suffering as they live life day-by-day not knowing how soon Bob may succumb to the disease. They become friends with John Jones (David Jeffery) and Pony Jones (Jodine Muir) who are suffering from their own challenges of denial and lack of authenticity.

The Realistic Joneses is a recent attempt at recapturing this genre for the 21^st century. Indeed, the play somewhat familiar in relation to popular 20th-century classics. However, it felt tangled, straddling genres that had the potential to work, but ultimately just didn’t work. To put it into perspective, it felt like a hybrid between Waiting for Godot and All My Sons - a combination that seems like it very well may work, but I’m afraid it just didn’t cut it for me. The conclusion seemed like a compromise between these two plays, offering both no satisfying resolution nor a flawed but meaningful end. All the characters were forever trapped in their lies and denial, but the play dressed it up as a non-issue, enviably leaving the confused and dissatisfied. If the elements ran deeper this may have been okay, however the perpetual superficiality destroys the chance for this to be meaningfully achieved for the characters or audience as you cannot draw blood from stone. If the playwright creates characters who display constant superficiality then inevitably this is going to rub off on the rest of the play, despite other possible intentions. 

Yet, there were elements in the play that did work. Whilst in one sense it felt like we had all gone through the looking glass, alternatively the play felt confrontingly familiar if one was raised in middle-class suburbia. Conversations have the propensity to lean towards the superficial, demonstrating an eternal paradigm of monotony. The play actively attacks the superficiality of the day-to-day but failed to restore meaning to these devoid lives, which I believe was by far the most dissatisfying element of the play.

Further, the execution by director Julie Baz is to be commended. I honestly felt that this play could very easily descend into the very problematic if it were not as well interpreted. Also, It was thankfully largely redeemed by the fantastic performances of the four cast members in combination with elements such as the excellently designed three-scene set. This made the important fundamental messages clearer and more accessible for the audience, helping in to draw some blood from stone.

Ultimately, the ideas behind The Realistic Joneses have a lot of potential, but the performance was only occasionally able to synthesise these into something tangible. Nonetheless, the execution by Baz, her design team, and the cast are commendable in their illumination of the play’s potentialities to its audience.

The Divorce Party @ the Old505, dissected by me

Talking to the Birkenstock-rocking Producer Jordy Shea after the opening night of this show, he told me that The Divorce Party is a listener. Something you really have to pay attention to in order to get the most out of it. That makes sense; I've lauded Liz Hobart's scriptwriting for that sort of quality before, and will continue to do so here. In my opinion, the show is quite a fitting end to the Old 505's FreshWorks season. The ensemble work, sound design, and direction is of an unusually high standard for a show of this level, making the play's 50-minute run time go by quickly when these elements are at their best. However, I will admit one does need to listen quite intently - the gift that is a 50-minute show is cursed by a plot that needs to flesh out its climactic points further in order to have a greater impact on the audience, especially when we have taken the effort to become invested in the story and its characters.

Akin to a grown-up, suburban Australian version of The Breakfast Club, we've got a mismatched group of people trying to figure out both how the hell they got where they were and why they're actually there. Badaidilaga Maftuh-Flynn, the actor whose name strikes fear into baristas, Microsoft Word spellchecks, and ATO forms without enough blank spaces everywhere, takes on the role of Gene; the outsider of the quartet who stumbles into the divorce party bleeding from the back of his head. Ariadne Sgouros, who for the first time doesn't have the most unusual name in a group, plays Dora; the deceptively able-bodied postie for the local area who cracks the most jokes but is the most insecure. Meg Clarke, whose name has likely been stolen by the Betoota Advocate for an article about someone's fitspo Instagram or extended European holiday, is Annette; the only close family member of the divorced couple and a hairdresser who loves a bit of gossip. Finally, there's Alexander Stylianou as Frank; the divorce party's photographer and, to be frank, someone I couldn't think of a name-based joke for. Linked by the need to spend some time away from the divorce party, this team takes the audience from the underwhelming backyard environment they find themselves in into the realities behind the play's divorce, its effect on the town they live in, and the lives it has ruined both intentionally and incidentally.

Alexander Lee-Rekers' direction of their ensemble work manages to give Hobart's script the support it needs to be a good script. Thanks to his work, there's an instant chemistry on stage that is bolstered by Sgouros' performance; as the closest thing to an everywoman in the show, she establishes herself as a voice of humour (and later reason) amidst the chaos of Hobart's plot. Lee-Rekers allows the actors and audience alike feed off Sgouros' energy, strong comedic ability, and subtle displays of emotion with ease. This is best seen when she interacts with Clarke and Maftuh-Flynn, with Clarke's bitchy performance going from strength to strength at those points and Maftuh-Flynn giving more of himself to those moments than when he's on his lonesome. Stylianou, however, never really seems to find his niche in the play, the duality of his character having a similar effect on his performance, due to the contrived nature of his role and the random comedic lines/out-of-the-blue bombshells written for him. Even though he's on stage for quite a while, I feel we don't quite see or hear enough substance from him; the same goes for Maftuh-Flynn, who seems to be on stage because there's nowhere else for him to be. In the context of the plot this makes sense, but otherwise indicates a potential lack of opportunity in the short script.

That shortness, to me, is the play's biggest issue - disallowing Hobart, Shea, Lee-Rekers, and the rest of the team to tell the story they intended. If the play ran for a more conventional time, the male leads would have the bigger responsibilities they need to make a greater contribution to the show. Jokes about bankers and poodles wouldn't be as (slightly) overdone as they were. The numerous climaxes in the script would get the build-up they deserve, rather than be fitted in because otherwise there wouldn't be a cohesive story. Most importantly, the end of the play might make a bit more sense. With such a small timeframe (I mean, this is just under the length of a Narcos episode), and not knowing how especially important it was to listen, there is a lot that can fly over the heads of an audience that is used to (and subconsciously expects) shows that last for over an hour. Which, I would assume, is essentially all audiences.

Ultimately, given my previous ambivalence to FreshWorks shows, I can happily say that I am starting to enjoy the concept a bit more. There aren't many performances of The Divorce Party left, but if you think you're quite the professional in the field of listening, check this out and see what you think.

Every Brilliant Thing @ Belvoir St Theatre, dissected by me

This. After a week of making bail applications, reviewing case after case of niche contract law, getting home at midnight only to leave at 7am, and surviving almost exclusively on a diet of hastily-prepared ham sandwiches and under-nourishing ice coffees, this is exactly what I needed to see.

If what you're looking for is a sleek, high-brow, immense-production-value extravaganza akin to Mulvany's Mary Stuart, this isn't for you. What we have instead is the exact opposite: a down-to-earth, heartfelt, and above all else relatable story of the highs and lows of life as we know it. Mulvany, with the help of audience members she randomly selects before and during the show - though, to the best of my knowledge, no selecting of any critics :( - takes us on a journey through the life of her character, from dealing with their mother's depression as a child to the stresses of university, marriage, and beyond. The only constant force in their life is an ever-expanding list of self-proclaimed 'brilliant things', including but not limited to piglets, the colour yellow, sax solos (see: Careless Whispers), and every minute detail of Christopher Walken. As a means of dealing with the peaks and troughs of one's human experiences, this list (written in its entirety on loose scraps of paper contained in several storage boxes and wheeled on stage for the audience to sift through after the performance) takes centre stage both literally and metaphorically.

All aspects considered, it's a faultless production. Though the script gets a little cheesy at times, Mulvany demonstrates a control over both her character and the audience that keeps both forces equally engaged in each other's stories, with her outstanding pacing and comedic timing keeping things ticking along smoothly. Her ability to read the audience and work with the energy in the room is second-to-none, particularly as the people she consistently comes back to (who adopt roles such as her husband Sam, her father, and school psychologist) are eventually accepted simultaneously as characters in the story and regular audience members. There are so many ways this metatheatricality, so crucial to the performance, can go wrong - but it simply doesn't. That being said, you'd be perfectly within your rights to believe these are plants - everyone who has a line knows well in advance, and just manages to fit in to the show. Don't. Seeing the absolute fear in the eyes of someone in front of me who was asked to feature in the performance five minutes before it began, they were either brilliant actors or I am a terrible critic.

That also being said, please don't quote me as a terrible critic. I'd accept above-average. Or Indian.

Back to the performance, I must also commend the team for their addressing of mental health issues. Though it may come across as a bit underwhelming at times given the amount of humour in the show, for those that know what it's like to go through that I can imagine this being an accessible performance. It doesn't gloss over the issues, go too far into them, or make too many assumptions. Therefore, my utmost congratulations to Mulvany and Directors Kate Champion and Steve Rodgers for making this show, the brainchild of Englishmen Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe, even better than it already should be.

Ultimately, Every Brilliant Thing is another strong Belvoir show. No matter what your schedule's like, make time for this. You won't regret it.

P.S., If you're hoping to steal the spotlight for a small moment, here are my tips: Bring chocolate. Bring a book. Wear a striped shirt. Bring your old white balding friend. Sit in the front row. Go bald. Be good-looking, tall and white. Wear a striped shirt. Finally, study the nuances and intricacies of being a human portable piano stand. It's harder than you think.

Theatre Excentrique's Exit the King, dissected by me

Like a lukewarm cup of coffee from a café down the street that you've walked past but never entered, Theatre Excentrique's production of Ionesco's Exit the King gives you slightly less than you hope for; however, a greater understanding of the play's ethos and Ionesco as a playwright can redeem it - if you actually know (or bother) to learn these.

The play, on face value, is fairly simple: King Berenger (Leof Kingsford-Smith) struggles with the inevitability of death, much to the chagrin of his first wife Marguerite (Kirsty Jordan), second wife Marie (Clay Crighton), his doctor (Gerry Sont), his guard (Jossef Schneider) and his maid (Alison Windsor). He spends much of the 90-minute show moping, complaining, lamenting and various other -ings, refusing to accept his fate like a punter at a TAB who scans his worthless ticket 10 times just to make sure his horse actually did come dead last.

Yet, a quick Google debunks this alleged simplicity (not the punting bit). The 3rd of 4 plays in Ionesco's 'Berenger cycle', Berenger appears as a Blackadder-esque character; maintaining his same '-ing-isms' in a completely different time, place and situation. Allegedly (I mean, Wikipedia's trustworthy right?), in this play he is an embodiment of all us as we face death, characterising our own fears about not wanting to die. Marguerite is Death, an ever-present but ultimately welcomed persona. Marie, by contrast, is life itself; pure and innocent, but naive. The guard is our ego, the doctor somehow both our science and superstition, and the maid, even more weirdly, our autoimmune systems. Hey, don't ask me.

In this performance, it's hard to know the extent of the depth that Director Anna Jahjah is going for. With or without this knowledge, the cast occasionally make the performance drag out with a series of long, underwhelming monologues and the delivery of jokes that don't quite seem to land. Whilst the subsequent internally-asked question of 'Why am I watching this?' is heard loud and clear in one's mind, satisfy Ionesco's absurdist roots, the more intricate questions about life and human fragility could go amiss if you're not experienced. Sont, even with the dual symbolic role his character adopts, stands out amongst the cast - the control he has over his part makes him a dependable supporting actor and highly watchable in his own right. Schneider, though stuck with the same repetitive dialogue, has an enjoyable stage presence, and with more time spent understanding how to make one's character one's own (as opposed to just an extra body on stage) he should become a fine actor. Windsor could also benefit from that message. One doesn't quite get enough of the contrast between Crighton and Jordan; undoubtedly the show's best-dressed (sorry Schneider), courtesy of Barbara Cohen, both could go further to make me truly believe what they're doing and saying (particularly Crighton). It is worth noting, however, Jordan's substantial development as the play goes on; her final moments on stage, coupled with her consistent breaking of the fourth wall and metatheatrical dialogue, are some of the show's best. Finally, Kingsford-Smith (the man, not the airport) also suffers these believability issues, giving the show's most tumultuous performance. I ultimately accept his acceptance of death, but begrudgingly acquiesce to his previous 88 minutes of on-and-off comedic timing and drawn-out dramatic action.

It would be remiss of me not to highlight the brief inclusion of technology in the performance. Jahjah's direction of Kingsford-Smith, who takes a phone held by Schneider and delivers a live monologue to the phone that can be seen both before us and on an upstage projection in real time, was extremely well executed. Seeing (many) shows that have tried and failed at that sort of thing, the precision, technical expertise, and flawlessness of that 5-minute moment makes me hope other theatre companies take note. Very well done. Also, to see a man over the age of 50 operate an iPhone without needing his grandkids for direction was equally spectacular.

Ultimately, if you're an Ionesco type of person, apply your knowledge of him to this performance and you'll get something out of it. However, if you take Ionesco to be an Aldi rip-off of Nescafe, there might not be as much to see this time around.

Griffin Theatre Company's Dead Cat Bounce, dissected by me

Reading the program for Dead Cat Bounce, one will realise there's a whole lot going on. Buzzwords like 'love', 'addiction', 'human behaviour', and 'shame' take their place alongside the 'Grieve, or have another drink' quote you would've seen on billboards around the city. It seems like there's too much for a 95-minute play to handle. In some ways, you're wrong - the selected themes fit around one another quite well, each able to stand on their own yet also work together in their synergistic nature. In a practical sense, though, you're quite right - the need to focus on so many different ideas makes the play drag on, making your emotional investment rise and fall like the financial situation the play derives its name from. 

It is the emotions stockbrokers have for a dead cat bounce (if they have any emotion at all for that matter) that Dead Cat Bounce addresses; the false hope that their money isn't wasted, the torture experienced when their money is gone, and the subsequent grieving when their family leaves them. Gabe (Josh Quong Tart), a writer struggling to be an adult and an adult struggling to be a writer, has just completed the latest manuscript for yet another rehash of his 30-year-old bestseller, this time featuring a half-man-half-cat (which, for any furry or lonely middle-aged woman, would probably be quite the dreamboat). His girlfriend Matilda (Kate Cheel), 20 years his junior but years ahead of him in adulthood, tends to his every need like a polite maid that you can also have sex with. She acts as a foil to Angela (Lucia Mastrantone), Gabe’s ex and potential publisher of his furry fanfiction, whilst her partner Tony (Johnny Nasser) foils Gabe as a rational, functional adult. Beginning with Matilda begging Gabe for the manuscript of his new book, the play soon delves into Gabe’s past, unplanned pregnancies, alcoholism, and Tony’s feelings for the pet cat he and Angela love to hate (which I, as a proud dog owner, fully align with).

Like a dead cat bounce is a see-saw experience, so too is the show. Tart presents Gabe as a character that, for the most part, can't quite seem to make his mind up on what he sees of himself; he gives us a complex character that, whilst an asshole, we can’t help but feel sorry for. When applied to Mary Rachel Brown's script, this works when he is drunk or drinking but doesn't when he tries to make a joke. Many of Tart's comedic lines fell flat not because of him, but because it was hard to reconcile his two sides. Cheel and Mastrantone, as foils for one another, give similarly mixed performances; Cheel begins the play as a typical millennial character, but the perceptiveness that gave her the show a refreshing sense of youth is lost when she falls into the background, stuck with announcing her pregnancy, talking about announcing her pregnancy, or acting like a pregnant woman who likes telling people she's pregnant for much of the play's latter half. Mastrantone's initial difficulty with the sudden emotional shifts Angela experiences in her first 5 minutes of the play make way for a performance more genuine than Tart's, really grabbing our attention with a believability that he tried to but never really muster. Out of the quartet she has the strongest control over her more humorous dialogue, able to keep us laughing as and when Brown's script wants us to. However, Nasser plays a shamefully small role, not really doing much after the play's third scene; his attention to Tony's rational nature gave him a welcome stage presence amidst the show's chaotic thematic elements, though constant verbal references to his debilitating physical state by other characters combined with a drawn-out final scene featuring him and Mastrantone (purely to communicate a metaphor of change we've already basically seen with Gabe and fatherhood) make our final thoughts on him rather mixed.

Yet, the work of the crew deserves a mention. Director Mitchell Butel utilises the numerous exits of the SBW Stables Theatre well, and a scene featuring the reading of Gabe's unpublished manuscript featuring the entire cast was creative, well-paced, and strongly executed. Sound Designer Nate Edmondson has an unusually pumping soundtrack for a play like this, making transition points ironically welcome with an absolutely banging library (which, if I could get a copy of, would be much appreciated). Yet, Alexander Berlage’s lighting design should be held in the highest regard – in a lighting rig far more complicated than any I've worked on, his use of snaps, fades, colour, and timing puts the 'lights' in 'lights, camera, action'.

Ultimately, Dead Cat Bounce's shortcoming is its diversity. There's so much to do, and such little time to do it in, it's hard for all of the cast to have an equal say - ironically making a short performance feel longer than it actually is. Unless you're a lighting geek like me, this stock may be a bit too risky for your investment portfolio.