Review: Taming of the Shrew

Taming of the Shrew
Sydney Opera House
Until 21 November
Tickets $30-60
Bookings (02) 9250 7777
Critic’s Rating 4/10

As published in the Sun Herald


It’s amazing that a production starring some of this country’s finest female stage performers could be so badly conceived. On the page, the idea of having an all-female cast performing in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, looks interesting.

It certainly has sex appeal. The misogynist Petruchio (Jeanette Cronin) who has been historically played by swaggering Don Juan leads (Kenneth Branagh, Peter O’Toole, Michael Siberry to name a few) tames the wild and disobedient Kate (Lotte St Clair).

It may have worked if the women were mocking the male species through caricatures but instead director Marion Potts hurtles head first like a train-wreck into a mock-lesbian world that is confused, predictable and unwittingly sacrifices the beauty of the text.

Setting the action in an atypical leagues club Chinese Restaurant doesn’t help. It certainly looks good as the lights go down, with its glitter balls and karaoke machine, but as soon as the characters enter the space in their mixture of '30s, '70s, '80s, '90s and contemporary clothing, you start to feel dizzy, unable to give the setting any context or meaning.

In one corner you have Kate’s wealthy father Baptista (Sandy Gore) playing cards and acting like a Sopranos mafia boss next to her slightly goofy mob. In the other corner you have a Sly Fox Hotel/The L Word love tryst of the butch Lucentio (Luisa Hastings Edge) and Tranio (Ksenja Logos) wooing their way to Baptista’s beautiful daughter Bianca (Emily Rose Brennan).

Sadly, this all-female Shrew is full of colour and possibilities but in the end it’s not thought through. The contemporary parallels shift so much that neither the actors nor the audience can focus in on what is actually being said. A perfect example of this is in the final scene when Kate delivers one of the most beautiful Shakespearean passages written for a female character to be then upstaged by Bianca for a cheap laugh.

All the performers fulfil their roles as well as they can, although some of the younger performers could learn some stillness from their older colleagues. The stand-out among them is Judy Farr, who steals the show with barely a line to say as the widow and Biondello.

Bell Shakespeare is a unique company in that they tour extensively through the country and caters to both schools and the general public. Creatively this can be a blessing – at other times it can be a burden as production teams try to find "contemporary parallels" to make Shakespeare more palatable. This Shrew is one of the latter.

Creative roles for women hard to find in Australian theatre

Summary article as published in Crikey

Crikey’s anonymous tipster who last week expressed dismay at the lack of women programmed in Sydney’s Company B theatre season for 2010 was certainly not alone. A wave of dissent in the blogosphere has descended on the theatre, in what one commentator has called a “public relations disaster”.

Yesterday it reached page three of the Sydney Morning Herald with Neil Armfield having to defend his final season launch as artistic director saying, ”When it comes down to planning each season, you just have to go with the best ideas, the best projects that are out there. I had interviews with half a dozen women directors, and we actually offered three women gigs for next year, and only one of them was taken up …”.

But it’s not just Company B that’s on notice — it’s the entire performing arts industry.

In The Age, the Melbourne Theatre Company was also questioned about its gender balance yesterday. The MTC’s response was a little bit more extraordinary saying it was not the MTC’s responsibility to provide gender equality when it was a problem for the whole theatrical industry.

”It is unreasonable to expect one level of the industry to compensate for the shortcomings of another,” MTC chairman Derek Young told The Age’s Robin Usher.

It’s hardly surprising that this issue has blown up in the face of some of the country’s leading arts companies and all it took was a couple of young female bloggers in Sydney to bring it to the attention of the major metropolitan news outlets.

A young director, Joanna Erskine gave her opinion saying “… I struggle to understand how such a prominent and successful and LOVED company such as Company B Belvoir, has openly produced such a female-less season. I don’t mean actors, I mean females in integral creative roles — as playwright and director.”

And then a blog run by seven writers based in Sydney (and mostly women) opined that “… in nearly every instance female students greatly outnumber men. So what happens to them? At what point in the process are they being passed over? Do they give up when the going gets tough? Are they perhaps less committed than their male counterparts? Or do they side-step more readily into admin and support roles?”

And then there was the anonymous rant on Crikey that said: “Even hardened members of the theatre community well used to the boys’ club of the Sydney theatre scene were taken aback at the launch of the much anticipated swansong from outgoing artistic director Neil Armfield at Belvoir on Monday night.”

Another young director in Sydney, August Supple put the issue plainly by pointing that, “If you look at Belvoir as a place of equality —  let’s look a little further,” and pointed readers to the Contact Us section of their website.

As Supple shows, the “creatives” in the company are all men and the women are all in positions of education, promotion and admin.

If you look at theatre company websites throughout the country the story is the same with a few exceptions (most notably in Western Australia where the artistic directors for Black Swan and Perth Theatre Company are both women).

Accusations of a “boys’ club” are extreme, but when you have the MTC saying that it is “unreasonable” for them to employ more women because that’s what everyone else is doing you start to feel like you’re in a time warp. And now heads are turning towards the film, television and music industries.

The arts need to address the problem head on and look at why women aren’t pursuing creative careers within the industry because the new found citizen journalists are starting to notice not much has changed in nearly thirty years. And for an industry that should know better, excuses are starting to run dry.

Review: Alchemist

As first published in the Sun-Herald.

The Alchemist
Playhouse, Sydney Opera House
Until 18 April
Tickets $30-$60
Bookings (02) 9250 7777
Critic’s Rating 7/10


Whether their racket is fake Nigerian trust funds, the promise of eternal youth or the chance to earn a quick buck, confidence tricksters intrigue us as we watch gullible fools fall victims to their schemes.

Just switch on A Current Affair for proof. But it’s far less funny when you’re the one who gets caught.

Despite the title, Ben Jonson’s 1610 play, The Alchemist, is less about alchemy and more about the way rip-off merchants get amongst almost anyone to part with their money in exchange for tantalising hope of riches. Wall Street shows us not much has changed in 400 years.

Lovewit, master of the house (Rssel Kiefel), is taking a sojourn to the country, leaving the housekeeper, Face (Andrew Tighe), his friend Subtle, the alchemist (Patrick Dickson) and saucy seductress Dol Common (Georgina Symes) with an opportunity to use the house as a base to run their racket.

From here they set about conning every soul they can lay their hands on. First there’s Dapper, a lawyers clerk (Bryan Probets); the local tobacconist, Abel Drugger (Lucas Stibbard); Sir Epicure Mammon, a bright-eyed knight (David Whitney); the gothic-looking deacon (Richard Sydenham); and the angry young Kastril (Scott Witt), decked out in his bling and oversized skater shoes.

Each queues up in a Mark Latham like conga line of suckholes believing the fantastical and whimsical promises of Face and his gang of three. Enter Surly (Sandro Caolarelli), the one person who can see through the masquerade and who attempts to undo their plot.

The brilliance of Jonson, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, is that his comedy portrays the failings of humanity with such life-like characteristics.

The Alchemist is written in such an over-the-top and melodramatic way it makes delicious material for the actors, allowing them to dive head first into the caricatures and the wit.

Director John Bell unleashes his cast and lets them rule the stage with a strut and playfulness. It is hard not to be caught up in the childlike antics of the rascals.

The physical and lyrical gags come fast as the performers do their best to outdo each other in a display the likes of which is rarely seen in theatre today.