This was the second time this year that I have caught up with the Short and Sweet Festival, now in its tenth anniversary year.
There were twelve ten minute pieces on show. Again, it was the diversity of the subjects that the writers explored, the different approaches that these playwrights took to their material, and the energy created by the actors on stage, that were the evenings’ main attractions.
Craig Delahoy’s ‘Serenity’ asked the question, what does a wife have to do to get some time away with her husband who carries around with him so much personal baggage?! The playwright directs and comes up with a very funny and poignant piece. Delahoy wins good performances from his cast with Laura Holmes and Alex Nicholas playing the leads.
Humphrey Cheung’s quirky. busy and at times, sinister piece, ‘Memories Of A Forgotten Thursday’ impressed. The question that Cheung’s piece asks relates to whether it’s a case of repression rather than a failing memory that is the reason a man can’t remember the events of one fateful Thursday. Daniel Cohn directed with Pablo Woodward and Martin Estridge playing the leads.
Gemma-Lak Johnson and Gideon Payten-Griffiths beautiful dance piece ‘Tig’ has ballet mime overtones which would have delighted even the late Sir Robert Helpman. Inside a mirror box lie some sad secrets- a broken heart and a limp rag-doll (loss of a baby), tangled in a large skein of red wool. Subtly placed in the piece is a spoof on the cinema tourism trailer that depicted wool trails draped through Melbourne’s secret bluestone alleyways and trawling through its Edwardian streets.
Carol Dance’s ‘Gallery Guard’ was a sweet vignette that captured the last ten minutes (how’s that for synchronicity!) of the shift that two American art gallery security attendants share. To pass the time, they comment on the eccentricities of the gallery visitors. The play turns on the broken heart that one of the women is carrying after a recent break-up. Carol Dance directs herself and wins good, relaxed performances from Neveen Hanna and Merran Winchester.
Will Keyes-Byrne’s piece ‘In A Fool’s Paradise, As They Say’, a clever, breezy spoof, is set in an Al- Quaeda suicide bomber recruitment office. Louise Fletcher directed and Josh Mawer and Hatef Ahankoob delivered understated, subtle comic performances.
As the title suggests, Fleur Beaupert’s piece ‘The Caramello Koala Stick-Up’ was a comedy piece. Alice Keohavong plays a disturbed young woman who holds up a milk bar. Her criminal action stems from a broken heart than any violent tendencies. Liam Burgess directs with Alice Keohavong and Matt Hopkins playing the leads.
A regular and award winning contributor to Short and Sweet, gifted comic Steve McGrath’s wry piece ‘Love, Art and Dreams’ was a highlight. o The setting was the box office of a city cinema, and turns on the interactions that take place between a diligent and cheerful young box office attendant and the quirky Sir Percival Brimstone OBE, replete with tuxedo and top hot. When his matronly and minxy wife walks in, mayhem ensues. McGrath directs and also plays Sir Percival, Alastair Buchanan plays the box office attendant and and Cindi Knapton plays Sir Percival’s wife.
Lorna Lesley’s quirky ‘Community Spirit’ featured a lonely, middle-aged busy-body living in a housing estate, traumatised by some recent murders that have taken place on the estate. Her panacea is to perform quaint gardening rituals, as she waits for the next drama to ensue. Kate Gaul, one of Sydney’s leading directors, helms the production with Julie Hamilton giving a strong solo performance.
Writer and director Dino Dimitriades’s piece ‘Virginia/Ophelia’ was the darkest, most esoteric, literary piece of the night. Dimitriades’s piece explored the parallels in the journeys of Virginia Woolf and Hamlet’s Ophelia, two complex women who took their own lives. Cat Martin played Virginia Woolf with Melissa Brownlow playing Ophelia.
Susan Pellegrino’s poignant drama ‘An Ordinary Street’ looks at how neighbours in a community fail a separated mother on struggle street with a young child and a baby. Sharon Mullins directed as well as performed in the piece. Naomi Livingstone gave a striking performance in the lead. The cast featured three members of the talented Chivers family.
Maggie Kelley’s delicate dance piece about loss, ‘Night Visitors’, directed by the playwright, featuring aerial trapeze was a stand-out. ‘Night Visitors’ was beautifully performed by Emma Goh, Simon Shields, Phillip Srhoj and David Helman.
Short and Sweet NIDA Week 1 not only featured a graceful trapeze act but also a swashbuckling sword duel! In Nir Shelter’s costume drama, ‘Brotherly Love’ saw two brothers, Edward and Roderick, dueling over the beautiful but promiscuous Lenora. Shelter directed, Brett Heath and Pat Brennan played the feuding brothers, and add to this Valentino Arico who just happened to play the great Alexander Pope.
With the end of another week, the Short and Sweet Festival is now two thirds of its way through its program. It remains great value for people looking for stimulating, entertaining theatre. The festival concludes with two Gala Finals night on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th March at NIDA’s prestigious 700 seat Parade theatre.