Grace

Grace is the latest production from the Melbourne Theatre Company, telling the story of Grace Freeman, an atheist scientist whose son announces that he wishes to become an Anglican priest.

On the surface this seems a pat set-up for the usual Dawkinsian science vs. religion arguments. And while they do get an airing, the play is about much more than that.

There’s nothing new in any of the arguments portrayed: they’re the usual suspects regularly trotted out on the interwebs, in print and from the pulpit (religion is irrational / atheism is narrow-minded / religion brings death and destruction / science can say nothing about the divine).

But quite deliberately, the writers of Grace have only lightly touched upon the debate, and allowed themselves space to make a much deeper point: that when it comes to our human relationships, the way we interact and the way we communicate, these things eventually stop being important.

At some point, being right doesn’t matter so much as being compassionate.

And getting so tied up in the debate that you miss that point can lead to real tragedy.

While the script seems clunky in parts (although that may have been the actors struggling with some of the technical and very fast dialogue), Noni Hazlehurst steals the show as fiery fem-Dawkins Grace and is well-supported by the small cast, particularly Leah Vandenberg as her pious son’s girlfriend.

Grace is essential viewing for anyone interested in the continuing debate on the influence of religion in our lives, and also highly recommended for anyone who thinks we’re all taking it a bit too seriously.

4 out of 5

Llareggub

RMIT Kaleide Theatre, Swanston Street.

Dylan Thomas' play Llareggub (often referred to by its US title Under Milk Wood) is a patchwork of voices floating on the ether, as we imagine ourselves drifting through the minds of the inhabitants of the eponymous village.

While this makes it perfect fodder for radio (its intended medium) it's very difficult to translate effectively to the stage. But the recent RMIT production faces this challenge with some success.

In a very engaging production the setting is one of organised chaos, with all actors on the stage at all times. This seems to be an attempt, mostly successful, to recreate the wafting movement of sound implied in the radio play, by constantly having the eyes of the audience moving in circles to follow who is speaking.

While this was fine, some of the technical limitations were distracting, such as characters passing around the few hand-held microphones. Also distracting was the wide variety of accents on display (some of them somewhat impenetrable) and, as can be expected in a student production with this number of speaking parts, the range of the performers' abilities.

Overall though it was very enjoyable, with particular standouts being Samantha Bond as the harridan Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and Sam Sejavka as the Reverend, who, amidst many other competent but mannered performances, managed to take the play into the surreal places it's supposed to go.

3.5 out of 5

The Burlesque Hour

fortyfivedownstairs, Flinders Lane

Moira Finucane has returned to Melbourne with her latest show, combining grand old saucy burlesque with some other stuff you probably wouldn't show your granny.

Borrowing elements from gothic horror, Virginia Woolf and Japanese lolita culture, it manages to cross every line you think of, some you don't, and ultimately plays like Cirque de Soleil on magic mushrooms. There's acrobatics, dancing girls, nudity, adult themes and some violence.

The revue format is good, mainly because it means that if you don't like this act, the next one is not far behind. Also, there's no common theme, except in the most general burlesque tradition of sex-as-comedy.

And make no mistake, it is very very funny.

Some will find the show offensive, but those will invariably be the same people guilty of taking sex far too seriously. The show is more or less designed to offend such people.

In fact, the beauty of this style of burlesque is that it dares to treat sex precisely as it should be treated . . . as something wonderful and something to be enjoyed, but at the same time something very human, a bit grotesque and most importantly, faintly ridiculous.

3.5 out of 5

The Chaser's Age of Terror Variety Hour

The Athenaeum, Melbourne

In September last year the respected but relatively obscure Chaser team found brief international fame when they pulled their Osama Bin Laden stunt at the APEC conference.

Now that that's all been quietly swept under the rug (presumably so as not to further embarrass those in charge of APEC security) they've gone back to being relatively obscure, and doing what they do best. Being smartarses.

This new live show follows much the same format as their TV show War on Everything with lots of short sketches and songs, but freed from the shackles of Your ABC they've turned the "inappropriate content" knob way up.

Highlights were a quiz show featuring two members of the audience vs. Craig Reucassel (Q: "Who should be arrested for displaying images that exploit children?" A: "Terri Irwin"), Chas Licciardello talking about his explicit adventures in fake internet dating, and in a moment of surreal comedy gold, Chas (again) being guided through an awkward audience interaction by a Navman GPS system.

It all comes off very much like an undergraduate revue, albeit a really really good one.

If you're into that kind of thing . . . think The Late Show circa 1992 . . . then it's well worth seeing.

4 out of 5

Spamalot

Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne.

When it was announced a few years ago that Monty Python and the Holy Grail was being made into a stage musical, I knew Eric Idle was behind it. For years he'd been the one milking Python's legacy with new albums, new books and his 'Greedy Bastard' tour.

Then when I heard the title would be Spamalot I knew he'd finally flipped. As far as I was concerned he'd sold Python utterly down the river and abandoned its wondrous comic legacy to derision and ridicule. I wept.

But then the show opened on Broadway to quite some success. The reviews were good. Derision and ridicule were nowhere to be seen.

I swallowed my pride and saw the Broadway production two years ago, and I was awestruck. I apologised profusely to Eric for doubting him (in my imagination, of course . . . although I must say he accepted it very graciously).

Then last week I saw the Melbourne show and while it wasn't quite up there (missing, as it was, Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce) it's still great purely on the strength of the material. And Stephen Hall was very good as Lancelot.

For Spamalot, Idle has managed to bring together into a cohesive narrative the bunch of disparate sketches that make up the film, and it's nothing short of genius. To top it off, he's peppered it with a bunch of great tunes that both take the piss out of Broadway excess, while at the same time showing you how amazing it can be when it's all done properly.

The great songs only hinted at in the movie (like Brave Sir Robin and Knights of the Round Table) are pleasantly expanded upon. And the great dialogue from the movie, like the migratory sparrow, the mudeater's political diatribe and the French taunting, are all left more or less intact.

So if it's a choice between Spamalot and Priscilla, go see Spamalot.

Or I shall taunt you a second time.

4 out of 5

Daniel Kitson in C-90

Last night we saw Daniel Kitson perform his show C-90 at the Fairfax theatre in the city.

I can say quite unashamedly that I love Daniel Kitson. At his Comedy Festival gig back in April, I was blown away by his combination of self-deprecating, almost daggy, persona combined with an amazingly surreal outlook on life. That and the fact that I laughed so much I was slightly sore the next day.

C-90 is not really stand-up, being a fully scripted one-man show. But it's not really a play either. It's more like an extended storytelling session with a set and some basic but effective lighting.

The story of C-90 is simple and beautiful. Henry works alone in an office cataloguing and filing discarded mix tapes. He's lost his passion for the work, but on his last day in the office, he receives a tape personally addressed to him. It's a 90-minute tape; a C-90. He listens to it, and it is a revelation. It rekindles his passion for his work. And starts him on a quest to find who sent it. But it's his last day, so he doesn't have much time.

And that's it. The beauty of the show is in the detail. Like the fact that it's Henry's last day because business in the mix-tape cataloguing business has inexplicably dropped off.

And the fact that Henry has never listened to any of the mix tapes he's filed, but can tell you in great detail about each one's manufacture, the type of paper used for the inlay card, and the gender of the person who owned it by the way the it smells. The only reason he's able to listen to the tape he's sent is that it's been sent along with a tape player.

I just can't say enough nice things about this show. It's funny, clever, poignant, sad, surreal, well-written, well-told and heartfelt.

Last night was Kitson's final ever performance of the show, which he has been doing on-and-off in between stand-up gigs, for the last eighteen months.

It's a beautiful piece of work. I only hope it gets a new life through some sort of recording.

Even if it's only on C-90 tape. I'd buy a tape recorder for that.

War of the Worlds

Robb and I went along to see War of the Worlds at Rod Laver Arena last night. And I have to say, it was absolutely the best live glam rock show adapted from a classic science fiction novel that I've ever seen.

Released back in 1978, Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds went on to become one of the biggest selling albums of all time (well, top 100 anyway), and has gathered a cult following that lingers even today.

It's a double-album suite of music, with H.G. Wells' story narrated by the mellifluous tones of the Richard Burton. (Mellifluousness appears to be a requirement for this role . . . Spielberg got Morgan Freeman to do it in his recent adaptation). On top of this, the original album featured a who's-who of 70s rock, with Justin Hayward, David Essex, Chris Thompson from Manfred Mann's Earth Band and Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy.

The music is all late-70s rock with wah-wah guitars, distorted bass and synthesised keyboards. It's cheesy in parts, but I'm guessing that was the case when it first came out. Burton's narration brings a gravitas to proceedings, and it was great that they kept it intact for the live show. Unfortunately, the CGI Richard Burton hovering above the stage was a little more Max Headroom than Marc Antony at times.

Still, the band was amazing, as you'd expect. Hearing the music played live was great and they certainly did it justice.

There was a giant screen at the back of the stage showing various images of the story. There were the Victorian-era paintings featured in the original album, along with some new CGI images. Some bits worked better than other. The Red Weed movement at the start of Act II was stunning, with simple but intensely creepy animations of wispy weeds crawling over the land. The Heat Ray bit near the start was less successful, with confused visuals and repetitive lighting that started to get irritating after a while (especially for the people sitting in the two spots in the audience that kept getting hit with the "Heat Ray").

And I just don't know quite what to say about the giant Tripod that got lowered down onto the stage at one point. I could sort of see what they were trying to do . . . but . . . mmm. No, not really.

The performers' styles were either classic rock strutting (Justin Hayward/Chris Thompson/Shannon Noll) or musical theatre showiness (Michael Falzon/Rachael Beck). But for the parts they were playing it all worked pretty well. I must say that Shannon Noll was a real surprise. The part of Parson Nathaniel takes a fair bit of acting talent to pull off, as well as rock-god vocals, and Mr Noll did quite well.

All in all, I loved it. But I'm far too biased to make any sort of objective comment. I'm not sure it would have made any new fans, but then again, I don't think that's the intention.

Quite a brilliant move, when you think about it, basing a musical on a classic science fiction novel. There should be more of this sort of thing.

Who wouldn't like to see an all-singing, all-dancing version of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash? Or a cabaret based on Asimov's Foundation series? And Ender's Game is just crying out for the high school musical treatment.

There's definitely a market out there. Rod Laver Arena was packed last night, and these people had even braved the rampaging hordes of drunken Collingwood and Geelong fans that were loose in the city. That's commitment, people.

And no, they weren't there just to see Shannon Noll.

Ying Tong

Last Friday night Budge and I went to see a play called Ying Tong. And as it's been a slack weekend, I haven't gotten around to writing about it until now.

The play is based on the history of The Goon Show. For the benefit of those living under rocks in caves with their fingers in their ears, The Goon Show was the 1950s BBC radio comedy that introduced the world to Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and the one and only Spike Milligan.

The story of Ying Tong (the title being a reference to the Goon song "Ying-tong-iddle-i-po") is centred around Spike, who is credited for writing the bulk of the Goon Show episodes. The story takes place variously in a recording session for an episode of the show, in the psychiatric hospital where Milligan was having one of his many nervous breakdowns, and in a surreal Goon-like world in which Milligan is visited by characters from the show, as well as their later incarnations, such as Sellers' Dr Strangelove.

It's a very strange play in a lot of ways, with nonlinear storytelling reminiscent of the Goon Show's famous lack of structure and stream-of-consciousness rambling. This was presumably deliberate. Much of the play is done in flashback, with the implication that we are seeing scenes of Milligan's drug-induced hallucinations while hospitalised. The visions range from simple recollections of conversations with Sellers and Secombe, to psychedelic visions of leprechauns and morris dancers. Yes really.

It's all done in a very post-modern way, though, with Milligan pointing out when another flashback is coming on, and Secombe and Sellers making constant reference to their imaginary status.

The play is mainly concerned with Milligan's breakdown towards the end of the show's run, and the impact it has on his marriage, his friends and his work. But through all this, we actually learn very little about the man himself. There's a lot of history bundled into a reasonably short piece, but it's all the stuff of public record, such as Milligan's war service, his injury and (first) breakdown, meeting with Secombe and Sellers and the pressures of writing the show. As a big fan of the Goons, I got a kick out seeing these things recreated, but I didn't learn anything new.

What surprised me was the quality of the performances. A couple of times I got so immersed in it that I imagined I was watching the real Milligan, Secombe and Sellers. For Jonathan Biggins, playing Sellers, this was particularly extraordinary. Biggins managed to pull out flawless renditions of many of Sellers' famous characters including Bluebottle, Crun, Grytpype-Thynne, Major Bloodnok, Dr Strangelove and Inspector Clouseau. The other actors also handled their complex, and occasionally frenetic, roles very well.

In summary, it's a must for fans of The Goon Show and (probably) very enjoyable for those unfamiliar with it.

Now, if you happen to be one of these unfortunates who are unfamiliar with it, then take my advice, and sit down and listen to a couple of episodes. Preferably three of four.

The first one will seem very strange, somewhat incomprehensible, and you won't find it funny at all. Sometime during the second episode you'll begin to get into the rhythm of the show, and it might raise a giggle or two. The third will have have you in stitches and by the end of the fourth you'll be ready to strap on your chocolate euphonium, don your extra-strength knees and join the Goon parade.