Tag Archives: Thomas Campbell

Theatre

THE MOORS: WELL, I LOVED IT!

Production images -Clare Hawley

It really isn’t going to be for everyone but I adored THE MOORS.  The black humour grabbed my jaded funny bone and wrestled in into a very odd shape.  Plus, weirdly, my typhus must have been acting up because I could hardly breathe in places.  It is a deliciously detailed production which, despite being non-sequitur free, is alarmingly disorienting and it’s ferociously feminist and with some remarkably troubling hits over the head with a Bronte.  And an easy to follow narrative … go figure.

It begins with a nunnunnunnah. And from there on Nate Edmondson’s audio design leaves no clichéd audio cue unreferenced.  It takes the horrible from horror with a score which interlaces plunks and a distant pipe strike and swirls of strings and a contrapuntal discordancy in places.  It never overwhelms and even has a bell motif that rings distant from a hillock through the fog!  Continue reading THE MOORS: WELL, I LOVED IT! →

Theatre

TINY REMARKABLE BRAMBLE @ KINGS CROSS THEATRE

It starts with an intrigue. We can see who but what is the issue and why? Intriguing beginning yes but this is not mystery theatre. This is the theatre of chaos writ large in a small space. I loved TINY REMARKABLE BRAMBLE and I “wasn’t even hammered so I have no excuse!”

Alice (Geraldine Viswanathan) is a bedbound, self-absorbed, ennui ridden, depressive when we meet her. Not hilarious so far, right? Sparklingly comic BFF Sonny (Catherine Terracini) is trying to talk her into … going somewhere? feeling something? remembering somehow? And not really succeeding. This is a very reluctant protagonist who will eventually rouse enough to go somewhere somehow for something. It gets a bit weird and crazy after that.

There is a Brigadier of something nameless (Thomas Campbell), a sot called Vino (Lucy Suze Taylor ), Douglas a chemist we think because he has a lab coat (Michael Whalley ) and Pipkin (Contessa Treffone)who might be a girl in a bubble. They are preparing for a talent quest perhaps. A blending back into Alice’s wounded and split psyche perhaps? A break from their societally allocated role? Theories abound but I reckon I will hazard a guess. I have seen enough preparing Theatresports teams to stick my neck out here. Continue reading TINY REMARKABLE BRAMBLE @ KINGS CROSS THEATRE →

Theatre

Misterman @ The Old Fitzroy Theatre

Kate Gaul seems to be the go to gal when it comes to staging Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s plays in Sydney.

Following on fromThe New Electric Ballroom at The Stables and Penelope at Tap Gallery, Gaul mounts MISTERMAN at The Old Fitzroy and scores a hat trick.

Funny bleak in the way so much Irish theatre and literature is, MISTERMAN has a not so oblique antecedence from Krapp’s Last Tape with its solitary protagonist and its use of  reel to reel  recorders. Continue reading Misterman @ The Old Fitzroy Theatre →