The Sydney Morning Herald doesn't upload reviews published in the Sun-Herald anymore. They used to, particularly when the Herald didn't have the time/resources/inclination to send a reviewer to a show themselves.
In one way it's a shame, because if you happened to miss last weekend's Sunday paper, you would have missed a review that only comes along every now and again - a review that went straight for the jugular.
Reviewers in the Fairfax stable don't often go to town on a production, often giving the benefit of the doubt to most of the shows they see - particularly the professional ones. Messrs Hallett and Hopkins are consistently far too kind and the closest the paper has to an attack dog reviewer is Stephen Dunne who gets let lose on those poor souls in the independent sector.
Even Mr Dunne has been rather mild of late. In fact the only bit of critical rage I have seen come out of his corner is to use the word 'ersatz' in describing a recent production.
Which makes Jason Blake's tirade on Sunday just beautiful. And so it begins;
The expression 'train wreck' is barely adequate when it comes to describing Las Vegas (Confidential). After all, there's always something grimly fascinating or educational to see in a train wreck.
Not since Stephen Dunne's review of the infamous The Nothing Men has such an opening to a review been such a corker. So, of course, I kept reading.
No, this is a fiasco, an embarrassment to all involved in its making and an insult to its audience.
Tell us what you really think Jason.
Even Mr Dunne has been rather mild of late. In fact the only bit of critical rage I have seen come out of his corner is to use the word 'ersatz' in describing a recent production.
Which makes Jason Blake's tirade on Sunday just beautiful. And so it begins;
The expression 'train wreck' is barely adequate when it comes to describing Las Vegas (Confidential). After all, there's always something grimly fascinating or educational to see in a train wreck.
Not since Stephen Dunne's review of the infamous The Nothing Men has such an opening to a review been such a corker. So, of course, I kept reading.
No, this is a fiasco, an embarrassment to all involved in its making and an insult to its audience.
Tell us what you really think Jason.
And so he does.
Based on 'previously untold true events', the plot revolves around Alexander 'The Great' Dean (Tamlyn Henderson), a stage illusionist and headline act at a Vegas Casino managed by mob figure Tony 'The Tool' Spitori (Tony Nikolakopoulos), to whom Dean owes a million bucks or more.
With encouragement from his personal Goddess of Fortune (a ludicrous role written for producer-writer James Karp's wife, Simone), a love affair blossoms between the feckless Dean and the undertandably wary Francesca, a singer. In order for it to survive, however, Dean must work out an exit strategy from the dangerous situation he finds himself in.
Responsibility for this mind-bendingly inept jukebox musical lies with Karp - a stage illusionist himself - and it bears all the hallmarks of a vanity project gone mad.
Without exception, the scenes are sketchy, the dialogue dull-witted and the characters hopelessly cliched. Humour only arises because Karp is unable to distinguish the funny from the laughable. Some episodes exist only as framing devices for magic tricks, all of which look silly in this context.
Design-wise, there's nothing to arrest the eye other than the migraine-inducing glare of the stadium-style jumbotron screen dominating the stage. Karp's choice of songs - ranging from Que Sera, Sera to an excruciating version of Robbie Williams's Me and My Monkey - is as strange as it is unappetising.
Director Christopher Hurrell struggles to make the basics - entrances, exits, scene changes - work and James Taylor's choreography is a mess of showgirl shapethrowing, Eurovision twizz and tawdry bump 'n' grind, much of inexpertly realised.
Rhythm and sass are what's needed and both are utterly absent. Henderson shows some determination in the lead role yet not for an instant do we care about dean or anything he does. Leading lady Katrina Retallick was indisposed on opening night and would do well to stay that way.
Our sympathies go to understudy Diana Holt, who gamely played the thankless role of Francesca. Tiffani Wood, of the late and unlamented pop act Bardot, is rather too obviously there as an audience drawcard but her role - a hooker-singer named Tiffany - is restricted to a couple of Shania Twain-style workouts in the second act. Garry Scale certainly earns his fee playing an elderly Mexican barman in what appears to be a tribute to Tattoo from Fantasy Island.
And if that wasn't enough, we have the closing to make sure you really understand what Blake is trying to say;
Tosh from top to tail, Las Vegas (Confidential) is rubbish and a rip-off.
That's enough to make me really want to go and see it now. Anyone up for it?
But what were the two points out of ten for Jason? The afterparty?
5 comments:
For the last year or so my Sun Herald would turn up dutifully each week on my doorstep, I would remove the ‘S’ section. With my coffee in hand I would read Mr Blake’s reviews about 2/3 of the way through, and then recycle the lot. Until about 4 weeks ago when my subscription expired and I could not justify the waste of trees on the basis that the SMH arts site had SOME value, in that it at least it uploaded Mr Blake’s reviews. But, no, no longer. They should give up on that half-arsed excuse for a webpage, seriously. It contributes nothing that isn't far better covered in the blogosphere.
In any case, thankyou SAJ for reproducing this here. A golden treat in my grey day..
For some reason, the SMH have stopped putting many of their classical music reviews on the net as well. Are they holding out for us to buy the hard copy? What other reason could there be?
I wrote a feature about this thing! (Luckily, The Australian has the policy about the person writing the feature not also writing the review.) But I know the publicist and can get us tickets if you're seriously up for it. I was working on opening night and gave mine to one of the interns, who loathed it. Let's do it!
After reading the review last weekend, I have a strange desire to go see such a train wreck. I feel this is a show I must experience!
Yes ... but not a patch on my greatest (lack of) memory of a review of a production at the Darlinghurst Theatre some three or four years ago. It was supposed to be some kind of TheatreSports comedy show and the reviewer (whose name escapes me) wrote (and please forgive the paraphrasing) something about this production drops to the floor stone-cold dead within the first five minutes and the rest of the time is spent observing the corpse!
I laughed and laughed and laughed. It is the most memorable review I've ever read, even if the finer details escape me for the moment: as in who wrote it and what it was for.
Funny though.
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