Review: Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen

As published in the Sun Herald.


Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen
Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company
Until 29 August
Tickets $30-50
Bookings (02) 9250 1777
Critic’s Rating 8/10


The days when children were seen and not heard died about the same time as the baby boomers started to have their first offspring.

Now their grandchildren are in their teens and this new generation will not only be heard but will be heard loudly.

The brazenly titled Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen, from the Belgian group Ontroerend Goed, proves that what seems like teenage anarchy is quite simply ritual – a ritual we have all experienced. Maybe it’s a ritual we wish we could have over again.

Entering the space to the sound of the 13 performers who are hidden behind the walls screaming and banging memories come flooding back of mad bus rides home in the back seat and playground antics.

To the guitar riffs of the Velvet Underground, the teenagers enter the stage in a frenzy of pubescent energy, filling the space with youthful celebration.

With balloons, plastic bags, bottles of water, cups, string, roller skates and other everyday props, a scene is created that may seem chaotic but is orchestrated with absolute precision by director Alexander Devriendt. What the group shows is less about what happens but is more about flourishes in mood and tone as you have moments of love, affection, playfulness, naivety, strength, leadership, loneliness and belonging.

A bell then goes off, the teenagers retreat and the scene is once again played out and your eyes are drawn to any action on stage you may have missed earlier.

Then it is re-interpreted again in a multitude of parades, giving you the time to appreciate how you can see in each young face the child being left behind and the adult coming into focus. Ultimately, however, you start to see a reflection of yourself in days gone past.

But this isn’t just teenage kicks. In a scene more Radiohead than Jose Gonzalez, the ensemble dive deep into the fear of drugs, violence and addiction. It’s a fear for ourselves, for them and, by default, our community. The play then returns to the youthful abandon it began with.

Ignore the Board of Studies and their tired syllabus because this is the type of theatre that every student and teacher in Sydney should be made to go and see.

For those in their teens, as much as for those who are older, it is a delicate and beautiful offering that captures the spring awakening of the next generation and reminds us what it was like to be young.

Review: Ladybird

As published in the Sun-Herald.

Ladybird
Downstairs Belvoir Street
Until 12 April
Tickets $10-$29
Bookings (02) 9699 3444
Critic’s Rating 6/10

Entering the world of Russian playwright Vassily Sigarev’s Ladybird is like entering the world of a strife-torn housing estate in modern-day Sydney.

Dima (Ian Meadows) is a young man living with his alcoholic father on the barren outskirts of a forgotten town. What’s even worse is they live in a housing commission building overlooking a cemetery (which the locals call the house of the living and the dead).

On the eve of enlisting in the army to fight in Chechnya, Dima throws a party with his drugged-out mate Slavik (Eamon Farren), neighbour Lera (Sophie Ross), her cousin Julia (Yael Stone) and drug dealer (Adam Booth). On a mattress on the floor in a wasted-out stupor is his dad (Slava Orel).

This is a snapshot into the world of Putin’s Russia and the forgotten people left behind by the nation’s new elite. Conversations between these young characters are like incidental chatter you’d hear on any bus but with a few drinks the dark shadow of the cemetery slowly rises and they are faced with questions about the horrible situation they are in.

Director Lee Lewis has taken this Russian play, written only 5 years ago, and places it firmly within the world of fringe dwelling Australia. With extremely strong performances this is a production full of relevancy and timing. But its full affect is flawed by a set design far too overbearing, with mountainous amounts of garbage and flickering TV sets, distracting from a text already dripping in sad and haunting images.

At 70 minutes, Ladybird delivers a blunt reality check.

Review: Tattoo

Blog notes: My review of Tattoo which is posted below didn't have the space to fully expand on the intricacy and complexity of this play.

The timing of the production cannot be underestimated - just today I see that Josef Fritzl will appear in an Austrian court to face trial. Despite the timing, this play is an historical piece which was first written and produced in 1992 just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's about reunification and German guilt, Hitler's willing executioners, about collective forgetfulness... It's about 'keeping it in the family'.

The parallels with Fritzl are unnerving. The silence of the mother, the neighbours, the entire town. Did they know? Did anyone try to do anything?

No doubt, we won't find out any of this from the trial.

Interestingly, debates about this theme have also been raised around the release of the new Kate Winslet film The Reader and there was a fascinating article in The Australian by Tim Bower which argues that "sixty years after the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals and when nearly all the murderers are dead, the truth about Germany's reintroduction of slavery and persecution into 20th-century Europe has become blurred by convenient myths".

It's a fascinating discussion which directly correlates with what this play is screaming out.

Despite the relevancy it's a real shame that the director didn't use a better translation. I learnt of the importance of good, thorough and relevant translations while studying theatre directing in Slovenia all those years ago.

You can hear the German in the text and you can hear where words don't fit. Even the names of the characters are affected by translation and chosen quite deliberately. To my ear 'Dog Face Julie' doesn't sound quite right and the fact that the youngest and more unruly daughter is called Lulu is loaded with over one hundred years of Germanic literature history.

Dramatically, such an ordinary translation puts up a wall between the audience and the action. Regardless, this is a very interesting and timely piece.

Review as published in yesterday's Sun-Herald.


Tattoo
Griffin Independent, Stables Theatre
Until 28 March
Tickets $26-$30
Bookings (02) 8002 4772
Critic’s Rating 6/10


Less than a year ago, Austrian father Josef Fritzl made headlines when it was discovered he had locked up and abused his daughter for 24 years.

The world was shocked. For most people, family represents what should be a sanctuary - if you look through the eyes of the family, you look through the eyes of the world.

Tattoo, by German playwright Dea Loher, portrays a family corrupted by the actions of a father, Oven-Wolf (David Ritchie), who is sexually abusing his eldest daughter, Anita (Sophie Kelly).

The mother of the family, Dog Face Julie (Sandra Eldridge), just looks on as a silent witness while nervously scratching away at her arms, head and neck. When a local flower shop boy (Simon Corfield) learns of the abuse he takes Anita away, forcing the abuser to turn on his youngest daughter, Lulu (Megan Drury).

Director Rochelle Whyte has created a Doll’s House space straight out of a story book. But it’s a story book which is clinical and white against the dark backdrop of Oven-Wolf’s heinous acts.

As a parable for the wider world it is disturbing, showing that the legacy and repercussions of mistakes and evil will go on if good people do nothing.

The actors deliver powerful caricatures in the grim fairytale world but they don’t go into deeper moments of sincerity to allow the harsh reality of these true stories to come through.

After all, fairy tales are at their most powerful when you see reflections of your world.

Review: Baghdad Wedding

Baghdad Wedding by Hassan Abdulrazzak
Company B
Belvoir Street Theatre

Herbal Cigarette Warning: This is another production which uses HERBAL CIGARETTES .

Following the lives of three young Iraqi students, Baghdad Wedding is a play straddled between the worlds of London and Baghdad from the period of the first American attack on Iraq in the 1990's to around 2005 when the three young émigrés return to their homelands.

It is one of those new pieces of writing taken from the point of view of an expatriate reflecting on their homeland from afar - a story of an educated middle class. It's becoming a common method of telling personal semi-autobiographical émigré stories which use more creative license than the transcript driven verbatim theatre style.

In one sense, the new wave of autobiographical theatre is the next step in the verbatim style of theatre which is currently so popular in English speaking countries. Both styles share many similarities with a heavy social conscience, a challenge of stereotypes and a didactic intent. In fact, one could almost say that verbatim theatre and autobiographic theatre are two sides of the same coin.

In an interview with the Guardian, stem-cell biologist Hassan Abdulrazzak, explains he wrote Baghdad Wedding "to show authentic Arabs, the kind of people I know and grew up with, who are interested in the arts, who drink and smoke, and whose social relationships are not governed by taboos. I hope in the future we'll hear more of this kind of Arab voice." It’s a shame the UK doesn’t have an SBS TV equivalent.

The play’s protagonist is the charismatic novelist Salim (Benjamin Winspear), a man you quickly learn has already died. We find him in Baghdad on the eve of his wedding, as he goes out on the town celebrating his last night of bachelorhood. With him is his old friend and narrator of the story Marwan (Yalin Ozucelik).

They are nostalgic of the old times, days when they would have big fiestas with women, marijuana, Johnnie Walker and the occasional bit of bisexuality.

In the mix is also the young, beautiful and feisty medical student Luma (Melanie Vallejo) who captures the hearts of both Salim and Marwan.

But it is not just a love story and the three of them are thrown into the real world when their country captures the attention of the international community. For better or worse the three of them and the play moves from the relatively safe confines of student dormitories and London life to a war zone.

What is most beautiful about this play is the intimacy of the language and the close encounters between the main characters. Whether it is the overtures of love in a London park or the hair rasing interrogation scenes with American soldier, this play is all about the dialogue which is quick, clever and moving.

This is one reason why it doesn’t work in the large upstairs Belvoir St theatre space. Coming out of the play I felt the structure of it was lost somehow and the ending came on far too quickly. Reading the notes, I suddenly realised why.

Baghdad Wedding first premiered in a very intimate 140-seat theatre in the Soho part of London. One of the qualities that is clear from its creation in that small space is the way it alludes to, but doesn’t show, the upheaval of a country on the edge of destruction. Moments of violence are explained, not recreated and this is where Geordie Brookman’s production trips up as it tried to fill the space with a play designed to be performed on a small stage.

In many instance, a lot of conversations are stuck up in the back corner of the space unable to reach out and achieve the closeness that would have been experienced at the Soho Theatre. So many of these conversations are about love or the need for love or the regrets of love - whether romantic or platonic. They are small, eaves-dropping pieces of dialogue. But next to a massive wall (what is it with plays set in the Middle East and big walls – Scorched, Serpent’s Teeth and now this???) and in such a large space so much of the action is totally dwarfed.

Despite this, the performances from most actors are excellent, particularly Winspear, Ozucelik and the always brilliant Arky Michael - who is one of the best physical performers on our stages. The lighting and costume design is also inspired moving eloquently between space, mood and time.

Baghdad Wedding is a beautiful journey with a heart and a touching finale. But it’s no Scorched, which was awe-inspiring for its epic scale. In a word, Baghdad Wedding should have been staged in the Downstairs theatre.


Baghdad Wedding
Belvoir St Theatre
Until 22 March
Bookings 02 9699 3444 or belvoir.com

Anti-Putin Play Opens B Sharp

It's good to see the Russians haven't lost their taste for being anti-everything. And so begins B Sharp's 2009 season with the Australian premiere of the anti-Putin play Ladybird by Russian writer Vassily Sigarev.

Most of the promotional info floating around is centring on who won a Sydney Theatre Critic Award or who in the production did this or who did that. The interesting story, however, is around the young playwright who has penned this work.

To begin with, Vassily Sigarev is just 31 and already the author of nineteen plays which have been performed in all corners of the world. (But not too much in Sydney funnily enough).

At such a young age and with such a prolific amount of work behind him, it's no surprise that Sigarev has won a whole heap of awards making him a theatre celebrity by the time he was just 25.

To begin with, Sigarev comes from the Ural part of Russia. Depending on who you ask, you'll get a few different notions of what that means. On the website Russia.com they describe the Urals as an area with "forested mountains, partially wooded steppes and normal, grassy steppes. Together these combine to make a beautiful and diverse landscape which exhibits topographical elements from all over Russia".

Elsewhere they'll tell you that the region was one of the most cruelly affected by the collapse of the USSR. It went through severe impoverishment and appalling isolation. The population, like many remote areas of Eastern Europe felt as though they were drowning in their new and so-called freedom. Industry was lost, commerce was lost but more importantly it was a side of Russian life not seen on our television screens. It was a Russia losing its values and its culture to a lust for material goods as it entered a stupor ignoring the rapid growth between those who could just afford bread and those who could afford a Porsche.

And in walks Sigarev who has something to say about the whole thing - which goes some way to explain why he already has a score of plays under his belt.

Ladybird, first produced in English in 2004, is set in an apartment situated next to a cemetery in a bleak little town with very little hope. As with all good things Russian it has its fair share of drinking and continues to fly the Chekhov flag of young people wanting to get to 'Moscow' (read: somewhere, anywhere but here).

How it goes down in Surry Hills will be interesting. It will be directed by Lee Lewis (now I know why she was loitering around Central Station today), stars my new favourite actor of the minute Yael Stone and received a New Work Production grant from the Australia Council for over $50,000.

Should be a corker of a show to kick off the year.

Family Stories: Belgrade

This is not so much a review, but rather a reflection on a new production that opened on Saturday at the Stables.

The reason I can only reflect on it is that I directed a production of Family Stories: Belgrade two years ago. It was such a labour of love that went on for so many years that seeing it again after I had presented the work was extremely strange.

Written by Belgrade based writer and lecturer Biljana Srbljanovic, Family Stories: Belgrade is one of my most favoured pieces of theatre text that has emerged out of post-war Yugoslavia. In an article that I wrote for Arts Hub at the time I said that "Srbljanovic’s plays are uncompromising, violent and beautiful. She writes with an arrogance that both respects and abuses her audiences. And for a director, sets a challenge to create theatre from a buffet of conflicting and imperfect choices."

And I still think that's true.

In the article I also explained the enormous struggle that both I and Bojana Novakovic went through to get the Australian premiere up. Bojana is the translator and co-director on this more recent production.

Very little has changed with the text since I workshopped Bojana's translation and I believe that it is still a wonderful play that deserves to be seen far more often. (That could be said for a lot of other plays that have emerged from non-English speaking countries).

But naturally, the protective little director in me had problems with this new presentation particularly with the characterisations of the four characters.

The difficult thing about Family Stories: Belgrade for Australian audiences is that there is very little reference points for them to grab hold of. Unless they are well-read on the events that happened during the Balkan Wars and Slobodan Milosovic's dictatorship it is an extremely surreal play that can easily fall into that apocalyptic genre of plays that we see so often coming out of the UK.

But Family Stories: Belgrade isn't an apocalyptic play, it is very much a satirical piece made up of short scenes where four adult actors play eleven or twelve year old children who role-play adult characters. The adult characters that the kids play come from an array of Serbian stereotypes and political figures framed by the crisis of events that happened around Milosovic's reign.

The trouble that you face with an audience so far from the setting is that so many of the references are lost. The most poignant reference lost is with the character of Nadezda, the character that plays a dog and is largely silent for most of the play. Nadezda when translated from Serbian means 'Hope'. But if you translate her name there are obvious problems.

A possible way of getting around that is to aim directly for the theatricality of the piece and to explore the beauty of the opening stage direction of the play;

The characters in the play are children, They age or get younger according to what is required in the stories. There’s no need for anyone to marvel at this.

The actors, on the contrary, are not children. They are grown ups who play children, who in turn play adults. There’s no need for anyone to marvel at this either. There are plenty of other things for people to marvel about.

It is important to remember that these the characters aren't that young and at eleven or twelve would have a great capacity to role play the adult figures and stereotypes. Add to the mix the element of adult actors playing the kids and you have a fascinating theatrical experiment that can shift and change unexpectedly from the three different realities.

I felt however that this recent production didn't fully explore those different realities and played an over simplified straight bat in characterising the kids as younger and cognitively less mature beings than they are.

The other problem that the production faced was utilising the theatrical elements of surprise that the play has to offer. I believe that this had more to do with the Stables space that could be a little small for four kids to run around role-playing all these different scenes.

As well, the character who is the temperature gauge on the production, Nadezda, should be more available to the audience and help them through the reactions to the scenes. In the Stables space, all to often her back was to the audience or she was lost within the limited sight lines.

It's a problematic play with so many options and in no way do I think that I have the answers to it. It is such a relief that the Griffin is brave enough to put on plays like this. In fact, it would be safe to say that this year's selection has been one of the most interesting and adventurous for a long while. Family Stories: Belgrade is no different and it's a text that really is quite wonderful.


Until 8 November.
SBW Stables Theatre
10 Nimrod Street Kings Cross
Bookings 1300 306 776

Brendan Cowell - eat your heart out!

An SAJ reader has passed this on after a recent trip to Sweden ... a new production of Hamlet in Stockholm.

Review: Miss Julie

Miss Julie by August Strindberg
B Sharp & Vanilla Productions


Belvoir Street Theatre management very nearly canceled this production due to some pretty ridiculous off-stage antics. Thankfully, however, common sense and sensibility reigned and Sydney audiences now have the opportunity to experience a rare theatrical treat.

Indeed, it is such an intricately delivered show that I had to go and see it twice. Not only for the textual brilliance of a playwright we don't see performed very often, or the beautiful performances but because the direction is some of the most refreshing that I have seen in quite a long time.

It should be no surprise to anyone that I write my reviews with the distinct perspective of someone who once trained and worked as a director. Leopards, spots etc etc.

And it is the expert delicacy of Miss Julie's direction that so captured my imagination and gave me so much of what I look for in theatre. Sydney could do well with a lot more of these types of productions.

Written in 1888, it is Strindberg's most famous work and probably one of his most timeless. Miss Julie (Katie Fitchett) is the rich daughter of a Count residing on his large estate. St John's Eve celebrations fill the home of the Count, as the young heiress mingles with the servants downstairs.

It is midsummer, and recalling a similar Shakespearian love affair, Miss Julie falls for Jean (Laurence Breuls), her father's valet. Jean who is already engaged to marry another servant Christine (Julie Moore), Strindberg creates an upstairs downstairs world that exposes tendencies of dominance, submission, use, abuse and power. And it is astonishing how well it translates to the contemporary world.

Director Vladislavs Nastavshevs has created a world that honours the beautiful naturalist text, but he has layered it with a passion and a visualisation that is so unique and theatrically brilliant that I was quite taken aback. His is what I would call a unique director's voice.

This is a production which immediately strikes you in the way it looks. It is all startlingly simple, but Nastavshevs, set designer Alice Morgan, lighting designer Nicholas Higgins and costume designer Rita Carmody have utilised the size and shape of the Downstairs theatre with such beauty and confidence that it has exposed how often the space is so badly utilised.

The use of the back wall, for instance, to provide simple fillers to evoke images of a physical or emotional journey for the characters was practically genius. The no frills black and white costumes are powerful and the lighting is just stunning.

This is a production that is clean, striking and without unnecessary fluff. It is a credit to Belvoir to ensure that this production went ahead, because it would have been a travesty if it had been pulled out of panic. What is it that they say? 'It'll be alright on the night'. Except in this case, it was pretty damn fine on the night.


Miss Julie closes tonight.

Belvoir St Downstairs Theatre
25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
$29/$23
9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au

Review: Antigone - The Burial At Thebes

Antigone - The Burial at Thebes
a version of a Sophocles' play by Seamus Heaney
Company B

Last night as I watched Chris Kohn's Company B directing debut, I recalled a film I watched some time ago, Vanya on 42nd Street.

The whole premise of the film starts with a group of actors walking around the streets of New York. They chat, buy coffee, and catch up with each other's business. Eventually they walk into an abandoned building and before you even realise, Chekhov's beautiful, beautiful Uncle Vanya has started.

It is one of the most simple and elegant examples I have seen used in film that brings to life the resonance of a classical piece of literature from a reality setting.

In much the same way, Kohn's Antigone begins with much the same intention. Instead, Kohn along with designer Dale Ferguson have created a community hall. Indeed, a community hall so similar to any you could find in any suburb of Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide.

You have the small stage, one and a half feet from the ground, the tacky stage curtains, the tea and coffee pots, the sparse arrangement of chairs, the obligatory fire exit doors and of course, the green EXIT sign.

We find a man wandering the space who we later find out is Creon (Boris Radmilovich). He looks out the windows, tests the lights and finally takes a seat in one corner of the space that is no doubt, about to become his kingdom.

The world then comes alive, as homeless looking bodies crawl out from crevices under the stage, through all the doors and we find ourselves in the Community Hall of Thebes.

It certainly creates an awesome anticipation. What will Kohn do with this? How will the tragedy play out? How will Antigone front up to Creon, who has not allowed her to bury her brother? What status will Creon assume in this world? And enticingly, what will the gods of the Community Centre of Thebes be like?

The answer for most of those questions is, unfortunately, not very much.

When I left the theatre, people naturally come up to you and give you a smile and say, "So what did you think?" With this one, I was immediately unsure.

The first problem with this production is that the intent behind Seamus Heaney's translation was totally ignored. In a fascinating Guardian article, Heaney explains the way he began the translation:

"Early in 2003 we were watching a leader, a Creon figure if ever there was one: a law and order bossman trying to boss the nations of the world into uncritical agreement with his edicts in much the same way as Creon tries to boss the Chorus of compliant Thebans into conformity with his. With the White House and the Pentagon in cahoots, determined to bring the rest of us into line over Iraq, the passion and protest of an Antigone were all of a sudden as vital as oxygen masks."

It's a good old battle between good and evil, and as far as Heaney is concerned, that George W Bush chap is Doctor Evil numero uno.

In our Community Centre of Thebes edition, the stakes are totally lost, and you can feel that when actors are trying to wind up those fire and brimstone monologues (cause hang on a minute we are in a suburban Community Centre) that the ground is terribly shaky.

It has been suggested by casting indigenous actor Deborah Mailman as Antigone, local race relations would surface and provide the necessary context.

Indeed, in The Australian, Mailman says that "even though we haven't highlighted any of the facts of reconciliation - or the unreconciliation - that has happened within our country, certainly there is resonance that comes with me being in the role of Antigone."

Maybe the production needed to highlight it more. It certainly seems that Heaney wasn't afraid of highlighting his opposition to the actions of an American president.

The second problem is that the lighting and sound design raises the theatrical stakes to a compelling level that is unmatched by the events happening on stage. The fluorescent lights which add even further to the 'faithful reproduction' of a community hall flash and flicker whenever the tension rises. Thunderous and earthy sounds are even emitted, but when it is not matched, the effects just float off into the distance.

There is one moment, however, when Gillian Jones enters as the soothsayer and messenger through the double doors that finally provides the production with a height in tension and adds a clear and disturbing element of the 'other world' into our community hall.

This type of entrance and mood could have been utilised a lot more, especially in a play that is practically all messenger driven with all the violent action happening away from Creon's sight.

In many ways, there are too many opposing creative forces within this show, and the full breadth of its tragedy dissipates.

I wonder whether Kohn would have almost been better off doing this production within the smaller confines of a real community hall. At least then the context would have been created, like that in Vanya on 42nd Street, and where the intimacy may have lifted the tragic elements into something we could grasp and resonate with.

Until 25 May

Review: Moving Target

Moving Target by Marius Von Mayenburg
Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Opera House and Adelaide Festival production
The Studio, Sydney Opera House


After presentations in Adelaide and Melbourne, the reputation of Benedict Andrews' Moving Target preceded its Sydney showing.

Cameron Woodhead of Melbourne's The Age said that the production takes "us to a state of shocking indifference through hilarity and disgust".

Lola MacMillan of Australian Stage found it a "self indulgent exercise in over intellectualizing theatre games".

And Alison Croggon thought it was "one of the most intriguing pieces of theatre you will see this year".

The pure contention that this production generated was enough to raise my interest and ensure a place to experience Moving Target myself.

What was interesting about the audience that piled into the theatre on opening night was the mix of practitioners and supporters that were attending - half from the traditional script based theatre crowd - the other half from the performance art and dance fraternity. It is rare that these crowds blend together at any one event.

It says a lot about where director Benedict Andrews is positioning himself - for it isn't often that a child of the script based world dives into the world of performance art with such intent. It is much more common for the performance world to neatly extract from the text based brethren.

The staging of a white blank space that acts as a cube of confinement for the performers greets the audience as it walks in. The performers are placed on stage in a formation that wouldn't be far removed from a Diesel Jeans commercial with their trendy inner city garb and sun glasses, waiting for us to settle before they can start their game.

Using each others real names we find Julie (Forsyth) sitting quietly behind a kitchen table. Alison (Bell) sits like a naughty girl in a corner gazing into the centre of the space. Rita (Kalnejas) is situated side by side with Matthew (Whittet) on a bright red lounge. Robert (Menzies) hunches up the back, watching over his companions. And Hamish (Michael) looks intently at the others looking ready to pounce or move at any moment.

And as the lights fall, so the play (and playing) begins.

The premise of having adult actors playing children role-playing adults is not new to theatre from central Europe and is useful to wash down serious and grating adult themes with a good dose of innocence.

In Moving Target, the game is hide and seek played out within a space where there is no where to hide. However the child characters on stage ask us to use our imagination, as the game is played over and over again with each character taking turns to hide and to seek.

Underneath these games a narrative starts to float out through a series of monologues that the performers deliver, often to the strains of a severely striking sound design. And the story emerges - it is one of a mysterious woman and a green parcel she leaves behind in a very public place.

The characters on stage act almost like the Famous Five, as they watch the woman, follow the woman and share intrigue as to what is in the green parcel.

It is a long show (one hour and fifty minutes) but is carried by a beautiful text that has endless opportunities and it makes Marius Von Mayenburg one of the most exciting playwrights around. The delivery of the piece however, left me cold.

Central to the problems suffered by the staging is that often there was very little reason for what the characters did on stage. From the sticky tape to the painting, it felt more like a text based piece trying to be performance art rather than just being performance art in its delivery.

The result was that it left the piece with a distinct lack of intrigue, and by about half way through this reviewer had had enough.

In one way, the set design is extremely clever and unique, but it also creates certain problems. This was especially highlighted when Whittet breaks a convention established from the very beginning of the show - no one is to leave this space and nothing from the outside can come in. And yet, three-quarters of the way through he reaches out from the iron curtain fourth wall, under the stage and grabs a whole pile of paints, brushes and paper for the 'kids' to draw.

In one way it is a simple thing, but on a much larger level, it showed that the world of the games was not created. The end result is that it left very little room for any elements of surprise - a vital element whenever you deal with either innocence or children.

Review: Mistero Buffo

Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo
Stage Left Productions

Lying on a bench in the middle of the city, a hobo suddenly wakes up to find himself covered in newspapers with an audience in front of him. Surrounding him is a view of the harbour and a bit of sheet metal as a shelter.

The man awakes and in a gesture of hospitality and explanation, explains his story. It is a beautiful story of building a life, finding a bit of land, marrying and having children. It is also a story of losing it all, despite the advice he receives from those he trusts.

Initially written as a monologue, the play is part story telling with crowd scenes, part anecdote with performers Myles Pollard and Douglas Blaikie taking on all of the characters.

In many ways, the plays is as much about the fair go as any Australian bush yarn, but Mistero Buffo (Comic Mystery) is unmistakeably European. The reason for this is that central to how Fo writes stories is reminiscent of the travelling troupes of players that would travel around Europe delivering their simple tragic-comedy stories.

The appeal of course is that these troupes of players would thumb their nose at the establishment, at the church and at the land-owners – which fits neatly in his distrust of their descendents in 20th Century Europe.

This is one of the better productions of Fo I have seen in Sydney for a long time because it avoids playing the comical, comically – always the pitfall for many. It also embraces the ancient art of performing Commedia del Arte in a subtle and beautiful way and is technically unobtrusive. However, it could dive into the play far more and deliver the tragedy with more Italian-like chest beating and even more heart wrenching sincerity.

Belvoir Street Downstairs
Until April 13
$23-29
www.belvoir.com.au
02 9699 3444