Reviews: Woyzeck, Tom Ballard Is What He Is, Little Black Bastard

It struck me a moment ago - as I typed the names of the three very different shows I caught over the course of three days last week in the title of this blog post, above - that despite their differences, there is a unifying thread that links all three, tenuous as it may be.

Woyzeck sees the eponymous character's pysche broken down and destroyed by the machinery of the military; 19 year old Warnambool expat Tom Ballard's stand-up show Is What He Is focuses on Ballard's coming out as gay in a country town; and Noel Tovey's remarkable monologue Little Black Bastard is a story of indigenous survival in the face of sometimes shocking abuse and deprivation in the 1940s and 50s. All three productions, then, are in one way or another about the struggle to maintain one's sense of self in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds... not that that's necessarily relevant to each work individually, but taken collectively, it's an amusing coincidence, don't you think? Anyway, enough with the random associations and on with the reviews...


WOYZECK

Written by Georg Büchner and left unfinished at the time of his death in 1837, Woyzeck has been hailed, remarkably, as both a precursor of theatrical naturalism and a forerunner of German expressionism. This new production at the Malthouse Theatre is directed by Michael Kantor, features live music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis performed by an in-house band, and is based on an Icelandic adaptation by Gisli Örn Gardasson which premiered in London in 2005. (As an aside, you can catch Gisli's production of Kafka's Metamorphosis, with more music from Cave and Ellis, at this year's Ten Days on the Island festival in Tasmania from March 28 - April 1.)

The play tells the story of a hapless army barber, the eponymous Woyzeck (Sydney-based actor Socratis Otto, who I interviewed a few weeks ago), who is slowly going mad thanks in large part to the experiments of the Doctor (played in manic camp mode by Mitchell Butel) and the sadistic cruelty of the Captain (Merfyn Owen). Eventually Woyzeck snaps, killing Marie (Bojana Novakovic) the mother of his child.

Kantor's production of this theatrical classic is both expressionistic - such as the hallucinatory set designed by Peter Corrigan that somewhat overwhelms the drama enacted on stage - and realistic, i.e. Otto's take on the increasingly hapless and bewildered Woyzeck, a lost man slowly breaking under pressure. But perhaps as a result of trying to embrace both aspects of the play, for me this production fell short of the mark.

Despite a strong cast, opening night performances were generally unimpressive save for Tim Roger's swaggering Entertainer, who stole the show; and for the most part I felt as if the play's heart was somehow missing. The only real drama came from the music, played live on stage under the orchestration of Peter Fanan (ex-Boom Crash Opera) and adding some much-needed emotion to the production.

There was no sense of external threat to anchor the story: the characters were supposedly at war, but there was little sense of this in the play, which may have been an attempt to evoke a sense of timelessness by Kantor, but which to my mind left the story somewhat rootless.

Overall, Kantor's Woyzeck felt underbaked, although it may find its feet as the production settles into its run. As a spectacle it was entertaining, but as a story of working class tragedy, jealousy and dehumanisation, it missed its mark.

Woyzeck at The Malthouse until February 28. Bookings online or 9685 5111.


TOM BALLARD IS WHAT HE IS

Part of this year's St Kilda Laughs program (which is in turn part of the St Kilda Festival) this was the debut solo show from young stand-up artist Tom Ballard.

This initial run of Is What He Is was an opportunity for Ballard to road-test his material prior to this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival (you'll find him, ironically, in The Forum Theatre's Ladies Lounge from April 2 - 26).

The focus of the show is Ballard's coming out at the age of 18 in his home town of Warnambool, but he touches on a range of issues that anyone will relate to regardless of sexuality, such as joking about awkward adolescent sexual encounters (though I'm told the material about being offered a happy ending after a massage in Thailand with his father being massaged in the next room may not make it through to the final version of the show).

The basic premise is good, and Ballard's material, and his delivery of it, was great. The last 20 minutes of the show were however somewhat thin, a flaw which should be addressed with the help of a director (a step Ballard tells me he's taking prior to the festival in April). I'm definitely interested in checking Ballard out again at ComFest, and suggest you do too. A good, solid stand-up routine with a fresh perspective is always welcome.

Tom Ballard Is What He Is (season completed)


LITTLE BLACK BASTARD

I originally saw Noel Tovey's remarkable, moving and confronting one-man show Little Black Bastard at the Midsumma Festival in 2004, so was delighted to hear it was having a return season at the festival this year.

After a childhood marked by homelessness, alcoholism, violence and abuse, which peaked with being sent to Pentridge Gaol for 'the abominable crime of buggery' when he was 17, Noel Tovey escaped Australia to live out a rags-to-riches story in which he become a dancer, actor, singer, choreographer and director in England and America working alongside some of the great film and theatre artists of his day.

In Little Black Bastard, Noel recalls his return to Australia and his reconciliation with the country that had never managed to provide him with a home. Like Tovey's memoir of the same name, the show opens with Tovey using a tram trip through Melbourne and the memories the journey awakens as the introduction to a sometimes painful journey through the early years of his life. Taken from his mother's care at five, Tovey and his sister were adopted out to a Queensland family where their stepfather repeatedly sexually abused them for the next seven years. Later, Tovey became a streetkid in Melbourne, gradually drifting towards the fringes of Melbourne's arts community, where he became friends with the late great Mary Hardy.

So powerful are the memories which the monologue stirs up that Tovey can only perform it for three or four days at a time. So why does he keep doing it?

"I do it because for two reasons. One I don't want any other Indigenous child and for that matter any white child to ever go through what I went through. The second reason I do it if anyone thinks that their life is totally hopeless once they hear mine they think well if that old fella could get out of the shit so can I."

- from a 2005 interview with ABC local radio's Karen Dorante.

The story's effect on the audience is equally intense. Also available as a book published by Hodder Australia, Little Black Bastard is unmissable. A masterful performance from an acclaimed storyteller.

Little Black Bastard at Gasworks Theatre (season concluded).

JERKER and THIS IS OUR YOUTH

Two plays in two nights, both older works, both leaving me with very different impressions...

Robert Chesley's two-man play Jerker - A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Values made its controversial debut as a radio play in August 1986, and was staged at Hollywood's Celebration Theatre later that same year.

This new production for Melbourne's Midsumma Festival at Gasworks Arts Park opened on Thursday night, and is directed by Gary Abrahams, on a set consisting of two closely nestled single beds and their attendant lamps and telephones, with sound design by Kelly Ryall, lighting by Danny Pettingill, and costumes by Micka Agosta (who was also the costume designer for Holding the Man).

The play's full title, which is not used here, is also a deft summary of its plot: Jerker or The Helping Hand, A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Value and A Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Telephone Calls, Many of them Dirty.

In brief, Chesley's play is a love story between two men who never meet, played out over a series of telephone calls that start out as phone-sex but end up as frank and heartfelt exchanges about life, loss, intimacy and desire.

It's a fascinating period piece, capturing the response of gay men on the front line of a viral war in the first, terrifying years of the AIDS pandemic, when the young and the beautiful were dying in the thousands in the gay mecca of San Francisco, and the survivors were exploring ways to express their desire safely and securely.

In many ways, the legacy of that response is with us still today, in the cybersex that thousands of gay and bi men have every day and night around the world thanks to Manhunt, Gaydar, Gay.com and the many sites like them.

J.R. (played by the director, Abrahams) initiates the calls to Bert (Russ Pirie), which start out explicit and end up heartfelt. Although frank, funny and raunchy at times, the play's progression into an isolated intimacy is rapid, and I soon found myself hooked; hoping its characters would meet up to continue their revelations in person.

At its heart, the play is about a fight for survival by the newly emerged gay culture which flowered in the 1970s: a fight for survival, a fight against fear, and a fight for legitimacy. As Bert says, as he contemplates what gay men of his generation were losing due to the impact of AIDS:

[E]veryone's putting it down nowadays. "The party's over! The party's over!" Well, fuck it all, no! That wasn't just a party! It was more: a lot more, at least to some of us, and it was connected to other parts of our lives, deep parts, deep connections.... For me, for a lot of guys, it was...living; and it was loving.... And I don't regret a single moment of it: not one.... It was love. And...a virus can't change that; can't change that fact.

That fight for survival is embodied by the character of J.R., who reveals himself, at one point, to be documenting the lives of his peers; and by the simple fact that we're watching this play being re-staged, 23 years after its debut, says to me that it's a fight that we won, though not without great losses.

This production of Jerker is not perfect, with the staging feeling at time restricted, due to the necessity of the actors having to share a confined space but never - or almost never - coming together. (They do cum together, however - numerous times). Some will find elements of the script, such as a fantasy about consensual incest, confronting; and others may question the plot's acute lack of conflict, thinking it drains the work of drama, but for me the drama of Jerker comes from knowing the world its characters live in and are responding to.

The opening night performances didn't seem to quite hit the emotional mark they were aspiring to, but the actors came close, which suggests that this play will strengthen as the season progresses; and with a one-hour running time it certainly didn't outstay its welcome.

Jerker - A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Values at Gasworks Arts Park until February 7.

* * *

Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth is the debut production for a new Melbourne theatre company, Inside Job Productions. Directed by Nicholas Pollock, it stars Ashley Zukerman, Nicole da Silva and Ben Geurens (pictured left to right; photo by Pia Johnson). The impressive if ostentatious set is designed by Andrew Bailey, with lighting by Govin Ruben, sound by Robert Stewart and costumes by Mel Page.

Set in 1982, at the dawn of the Reagan era in the somewhat squalid New York apartment of the 21 year old slacker Dennis Ziegler, This Is Our Youth focuses on the interactions between Ziegler (Guerens), his 19 year old buddy Warren (Zukerman) and Jessica (da Silva) a friend of Ziegler's girlfriend with whom Warren is enamoured.

Warren turns up on Dennis' doorstep having been kicked out of home by his wealthy father, from whom he's just stolen $15,000. Bickering and bantering, the pair decide to buy a large sum of cocaine and invite a few girls over, introducing Jessica to this story about college drop-outs who are reacting against their parent's values but caught up in the 'greed is good' mentality of the excessive 80s.

It's not a play I especially enjoyed, though I suspect I would have a more positive reaction to a more competent production.

Accents were inconsistent among the cast, ranging from solid to virtually non existent - a fault which especially irked my companion on the night, though not something I was so bothered by, as I'd rather the actors focused on acting than their accents; I've seen too many productions where the necessity of maintaining an accent drained the passion from a performance.

As Dennis, Ben Geurens tries too hard. The character is supposed to be unlikeable, a schoolyard bully discovering that his tactics are not so effective in the real world, but Geurens' swaggering came over as brittle and unconvincing, and the dynamic between he and Ashley Zukerman felt contrived. Gearing down his performance a notch or two would have benefitted the production.

Zukerman flowered, however, once Nicole da Silva came on the scene. While he is evidently a far stronger actor than her, the chemistry between the pair brought the script to life, although a scene after interval between them that should have been downplayed was unfortunately not reigned in by director Nicholas Pollock, to the play's detriment.

Pre-interval, thanks to Zukerman and da Silva, I'd actually started to like this production. Afterwards, due to a combination of factors, I found it increasingly difficult to find much I liked about this production.

Subtlety and stillness would have helped this play find its feet; as it is, the manic pace Pollock has imposed works against the script and the story.

This Is Our Youth is on at 45 Downstairs until Sunday February 1.