Toby Francis: Blokelahoma!

Judging from his short season at the second annual Melbourne Cabaret Festival, 23 year old Toby Francis – the winner of Sydney’s 8th Annual Cabaret Showcase in December 2010 – has a remarkable career ahead of him.

Possessed of a powerful tenor voice - displayed to good advantage in a selection of songs ranging from rock numbers to showtunes - as well as excellent comic timing and a gently self-deprecating wit, there were times on Wednesday night when Francis definitely felt too large for the small Butterfly Club stage, despite being very new to the cabaret world.

His debut solo show, Blokelahoma! – directed by David Campbell and previously performed at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in June – is an engaging exploration of what it means to be a man in a post-modern world, in which Francis discourses about everything from painful hair removal incidents to coming out as an atheist to his deeply religious family.

Impressing with both his emotional and vocal range, in a show that embraced bawdy comedy as well as heartfelt emotion, Francis was at his best when belting out such familiar numbers as ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’ from the 1943 Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! and Jim Steinman’s rock epic, ‘Bat Out of Hell’.

A medley of Australian rock classics by such artists as The Angels, Divinyls, and Skyhooks also impressed, as did his poignant cover of Joe Jackson’s ‘Real Men’.

One or two minor stumbles served to remind audiences that Francis is still very new to the world of cabaret, but he quickly rose above them. Nor did he seem unsettled by the presence of his mother and grandmother in the audience, which might have inhibited less assured performers, especially in light of some of his more colourful material.

Accompanying Francis on piano and occasional backing vocals was the dextrous and versatile Andrew Worboys, whose deft performance added greatly to this already engaging production.

Keep an eye out for Toby Francis – this young man is going to be a star.

Rating: Three and a half stars

Toby Francis - Blokelahoma!
The Butterfly Club
Season concluded

Melbourne Cabaret Festival
July 19 – 24

This review first appeared at Arts Hub on July 25th 2011.

MICF 2010: Smart Casual - Same Mother, Different Fathers

Musical comedy is strongly represented at this year’s Comedy Festival, ensuring that punters seeking a song as well as a laugh are well catered for. Adding their considerable skills to the mix are the deadpan duo Smart Casual, half brothers Roger David and Fletcher Jones.

At the heart of their new show is the duo’s slowly simmering sibling rivalry, brought to a head by a series of tape-recorded messages from their mother, Rhonda, about the fathers the boys never knew. Increasingly improbable stories about their respective dads soon follow, interspersed by sketches about bullying seagulls, and an excellent and topical Shirley Temple cover.

Through short pithy songs such as ‘Why is There a Polar Bear at My Party?’ and ‘Please Don’t Dance, Ellen DeGeneres’, Smart Casual provoke sporadic, staccato bursts of laughter rather than continued hilarity, but their carefully constructed shtick and wry, winning humour ensures audiences are constantly entertained.

Three and a half stars

Smart Casual - SAME MOTHER, DIFFERENT FATHERS
Tue-Sat 7.15pm, Sun 6.15pm
Victoria Hotel
$15 - $22

This review originally ran in The Age on Monday March 29.

Review: CEDAR BOYS

STARRING LES CHANTERY, RACHEL TAYLOR

DIRECTED BY SERHAT CARADEE

Love for an incarcerated brother – and aspiration for a lifestyle that is well out of reach – drive this story of money, drugs and machismo set in Sydney’s Western Suburbs. Tarek (Chantery, in his first leading role) is a young panel beater of Lebanese heritage dreaming of a better life. With his incarcerated brother’s court case stalled for lack of funds, Tarek enrols in a friend’s plan to steal drugs from a criminal gang and sell the pills for profit. He also hungers after Amie (Taylor) and her privileged Rose Bay lifestyle, but with the vengeful gang out for blood, it’s not long before Tarek’s plans come tragically undone.

There have been plenty of stories about drug heists, gangs and bloody revenge in Australian cinema in recent years (think Getting’ Square, Little Fish and most recently Nash Edgerton’s The Square) but what differentiates Cedar Boys is its focus on telling an authentic story from a rarely-seen perspective. Unfortunately, writer/director Serhat Caradee’s story does not sustain the originality of its premise. The rise and fall of Tarek and his friends is clichéd, their dialogue trite, and the cinematography flat and uninspired. Two key scenes which bookend the film display the dramatic tension so sadly lacking in the rest of Cedar Boys, although a driving soundtrack merging hip-hop, techno and traditional music somewhat offsets the film’s sluggish pace.

Rating: Two and a half stars

CEDAR BOYS opens nationally on Thursday July 30.

Comedy Festival review #3: The Delusionists

THE DELUSIONISTS IN BUNKER 5

Melbourne Town Hall, April 2 - 26, Tuesday-Saturday 6pm, Sunday 5pm.Tickets $19 - $15
Rating: 2.5/5

The Delusionists are an energetic quintet of young Sydney comedians whose undergraduate origins are still evident in this post-apocalyptic story of friendships, mayonnaise and mutants.

In a labyrinthine bunker deep below the surface of the Earth, five survivors fend off boredom by playing virtual squash, squabbling over food rations and practising their contamination drills.

Chaos threatens when the arrival of a three-armed stranger shifts the balance of their self-contained world.

A distinct improvement over last year's Everything That Ever Happened, Ever (which was dragged down by its episodic structure and the weakness of the roles for the two female cast members) Bunker 5 sees The Delusionists playing to their strengths: sharply written scenes, the group's collective chemistry, and a well developed sense of the absurd.

The second half of the show struggles under a laboured plot, but a Dolly Parton musical number and a werewolf ensure the energy never lags.

This review first appeared in The Age Online on Monday April 6.

Fame at last!

Hoorah! I've been verbally spanked by Sydney's version of Andrew Bolt, the conservative sexual predator Mr Piers Ackerman, over my part in awarding the John Curtin Prize - the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Journalism - to Richard Flanagan for his passionate polemic in
The Monthly last year. Finally, I can die happy!

INTERVIEW: Graeme Murphy

The final curtain

Richard Watts speaks with the Sydney Dance Company’s outgoing artistic director Graeme Murphy, on the eve of his departure.

After 31 years with the Sydney Dance Company, choreographer and artistic director Graeme Murphy has programmed the ‘farewell premiere season’ of his latest work, Ever After Ever, to thank Melbourne audiences for their loyalty and patronage. The production, which opens this week at the Arts Centre, consists of a new work, Short Stories, together with a ‘greatest hits’ program of extracts from some of Murphy’s most popular works to date.

“It’s an opportunity to pass a backwards glance over works that Melbourne has really embraced over the last decade or so; works that were really the pinnacle of our creative development, and to bring with it this bitter-sweet last farewell serenade to the dancers, which is Short Stories,” Murphy tells MCV.

Ever After Ever also provides Murphy with the opportunity to once again work with composer Carl Vine, who he describes as “one of Australia’s greatest treasures.”

“Carl was our resident pianist in [1978],” Murphy explains. “I can’t believe that we had one of our greatest composers playing plonketty-plonk for class; but he always said it was some of the absolute best discipline, in terms of having to be rhythmic, having to be aware of dancers and movement. He holds that period very dear, and of course that was the beginning of a long-term relationship between us.”

Working collaboratively with people like Vine has enabled Murphy to develop some of his most memorable and acclaimed dance pieces during his three decades with the company.

“It’s [the result of] a relationship that develops with time and understanding, until you get this amazing shorthand, but more than that, you get this connection, so that if you say something; and I tend to say things in poetic brevity,” he laughs dryly, “they get it, and they take it somewhere, and with confidence.”

“It’s a trust thing,” Murphy continues, “and to me, that’s been the whole basis of the period that Janet and I have been involved with Sydney Dance Company.

In 1976, the ambitious young Murphy was appointed to what was then known as the Dance Company of NSW, and entrusted with the mission of revitalising the moribund company. Ably assisted by his wife and co-artistic director Janet Vernon, Murphy did just that.

Despite their many triumphs since, last year the pair shocked many in the art world by announcing their joint resignation. They were, they said in a media statement at the time, worn down by the persistent struggle to convince federal and state funding bodies of the importance of the arts in a world where sport and war took centre stage. It’s clear that Murphy’s stance on this subject has not changed.

“I don’t think we, as a nation, are looking in the right places for our future,” he says passionately.

“I do think that we really need to look at ourselves very, very closely and say what is really important. If you do that you’ll find that great art, the survivor of all holocausts and horrors, is the one thing in history that tends to survive. Beautiful, creative, philosophical works of art, in many forms, outlive the obvious hedonistic pleasures that we all seem to be struggling and striving for.”

Sydney Dance Company’s Ever After Ever, July 7 – 14, State Theatre, The Arts centre. Tickets through www.ticketmaster.com.au or 1300 136 166.

I am in Sydney

Greetings from overcast Sydney. Yes, Sydney, the Sodom of the South, home to this:


And this:



As well as this:


And of course not forgetting this:


I flew up here at 7am, in order to meet with the Sydney branch of Evolution Publishing, owners of the gay and lesbian community newspaper MCV, as I'm taking over as the paper's editor next week. So far I've met with seven people in a row, and my head's in a bit of a whirl - not to mention crammed full of exciting and daunting new information.

Flying home later this afternoon, where new changes await: I'm getting a flatmate!

Yes, after six years of living alone, my good mate No Necked Monsters is moving in, which is going to require some repositioning of bookcases, couches and other furniture - not to mention getting used to having someone else around on a regular basis (note to self: don't walk around naked or masturbate in the lounge-room any more!) but I think it's going to be great fun. I've been far too solitary and reclusive the last couple of years, so this should be just the change I need.

God, new job, new housemate - whatever next? :-)