After crawling out of bed late on Saturday afternoon, thereby unfortunately missing DavetheScots's housewarming party, I slowly put my brain back together, retraced my movements after leaving the festival club, and vowed never again to allow myself to be waylaid by the thought of 'just one quick nightcap' at a bar close to home...
Then I threw myself back into the thick of things.
Autogeddon by Heathcote Williams
Northcote Town Hall until Thursday October 12
Somewhere inside this ambitious, sprawling, 90-minute production about the impact of car culture on our planet, there's a sharp, incisive 30- 45 minute play waiting to come out.
An excellent series of vignettes presenting such characters as an animated pair of crash-test dummies (excellent physical comedy by Corey Corbet and Simon Kearney) and the beautifully realised and very menacing Oil-Ogarchy pigs, with their swaying, petrol-bowser penises, could not save this laboured piece of theatre.
The flat singing and uneven acting didn't help, but the worst fault of Autogeddon is its self-indulgence; it's simply too long. It needs a good dramaturgical reworking in order to advise the writer when to cut material that simply doesn't work, such as the bulk of the laboured Wizard of Oz-referencing narrative. Awkward scene changes as a trolley variously representing a car and a hospital gurney was wheeled endlessly on and off were another drawback, and further slowed down this already over-extended production, which director Alice Bishop has failed to curb.
That said, Ryan Hodge's set design was simple yet instantly evocative, and costume designers Alice Bishop, Vic Nguyen and Anita King have done a superb job, ably assisted by mask- designer Dan Cooling.
The Wireless
Northcote Town Hall until Saturday October 7
A cast of three very talented actors bring this light comedy about a small regional radio station to vivid and entertaining life. Despite a completely unnecessary epilogue that rams the moral of the story about media ownership home a little too heavily, and overly-complex scene changes, The Wireless is a pithy, clever play by Vega FM writer Paul Menz that had me frequently guffawing.
The Chinese Art of Placement
Until Sunday October 14 at North Melbourne Town Hall
A one-man show performed by Candian actor Stephen Najera, The Chinese Art of Placement takes us into the life and mind of ex-poet Sparky Litman as he prepares for a party and arranges his apartment using the 'art' of feng-shui.
Within the first ten minutes we begin to realise that all is not well in Sparky's life, and as the show unfolds over an hour, everything starts to unravel - including Sparky's sanity...
Najera is amazing in his demanding role, and the play itself is as intense as it is amusing. This is a comedy so dark as to be nocturnal, and deserves to be seen, although its claustrophobic dramatics will not be to everyone's tastes, unless they're prepared to enter Sparky's special world.
I would have liked the piece to be 10 minutes shorter - less is more, people! - but overall I would definitely recommend this piece, a US-Canadian-Australian co-production.
Soundtrack for this blog post: Into the Blue Again by The Album Leaf.
2 comments:
Hi Richard - thanks for these reports - I've linked to them from my blog. I was under the impression that Autogeddon wasn't actually Heathcote Williams' poem, but was extensively rewritten - am I wrong?
You're not wrong at all, Alison. Some of the poem's lines are used verbatim in the play, but much is new dialogue. They've chosen to keep William's name as part of the title, however.
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