‘STAGE ONE’ is an initiative of the Theatre Arts course at Curtin University. Now in its 5th year, it offers Western Australian playwrights the opportunity to write and premiere a new play. It is then produced at the Blue Room Theatre, providing undergraduates with the acting and technical experience of working and exploring a new work.

Previous Curtin students, who have benefited from this perfect opportunity, include Frances O’Connor, Mandy McElhinney, Kate Atkinson, Clare Hooper, Kate Mulvany and Jess De Gouw.

This 70-minute dark unsettling play, with touches of black comedy, can be seen at The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge until Saturday 10^th December. Please check the performance times.

Alexander Gerrans set of Patrick Howe’s design, is a very convincing garage and store room. There are several very good weather and woodland effects. Lizzie Howard had some unusual and difficult props to acquire. The costume supervisors were Taylor Burtenshaw and Gemma Wilkie, who created realistic gore damaged clothes.

Joe Lui mentored both Noah Bateman with his realistic soundscape, and Kane Scriven’s wonderful mood lighting.

Stage Management ran smoothly thanks to Sally Davies and her deputy, Jack Wilson.

The whole production was overseen by Stephen Carr and Karen Cook.

The scene is today in the region of the NSW Blue Mountains.

     In the mountainous countryside is a Body Farm, this is where people who have left their bodies to science are left lying around in different soils and fluids so that pathologists can gather information on how quickly bodies decompose in different circumstances.

     When Anton died, his family found that he had left his body to the Farm; his sister (Jess Nyanda Moyle) is devastated that he did not have a proper funeral. One day at university, a girl with an angelic face and a nervous smile (Caitlin McFeat) approaches the sister, and gabbling away asks if she would like to join her church.

     In a nearby garage, owned by the aunt and uncle of #2 (Bianca Roose), is a group known as ‘The Family of the Book’ – who, for anonymity reasons, prefer to use numbers rather than names. Dressed in white forensic overalls are two threatening men #3 and #4 (Frazer Shepherdson, Sam Ireland). After painstaking planning, they have kidnapped the Body Farm’s caretaker (Ming Yang Lim) in order to gain access.

       A slightly dozy member of the group, #6 (Anna Lindstedt) arrives wearing non-standard ‘Family’ clothing. With her is the leader, #1 (Declan Brown) who, knowing that it won’t be long before the police arrive, decides to quickly move in on the Farm.

       After such planning and with God on their side, what could possibly go wrong?

The director and guiding light of this highly original play, is the multi award-winning actor and writer, Will O’Mahony; who on this occasion is assisted in the directing by Chelsea Gibson. The play has superbly observed and richly written characters. The action starts with humour and slowly works up to a gripping climax, followed by a scene that had the whole audience squirming.

The actors each knew their part in the story’s colourful jigsaw. Many very different parts working in perfect harmony. One small suggestion, when there is a great deal of shouting, either lower the voices down an octave, or speak more slowly – even in the wildest argument – as some of the diction was lost.

Adroit direction of a terrific script, involving an interesting set of characters and backed by clever technical skills. Strongly recommended, you will not have seen a play like this before.

The story has been adapted and developed from Mary Shelley’s 200-year old classic by the Feet First team especially for this production.

The performances are 80 minutes without intermission. They take the audience through the ancient, innermost rooms of Fremantle’s iconic Moores Building with its Contemporary Art Gallery at 46 Henry Street, Fremantle. The voyeuristic audience members are required to stand, walk and climb stairs (on several occasions) during the performance, as they move from one intimate location to another.

Please note that the Moores Building does not have wheelchair access to the first floor.

The performances are at 7.00 and 9.00 pm, nightly until 6^th November. The numbers for each performance are strictly limited so booking is strongly advised.

The scene is the year 1800, in Frankenstein’s Gothic family home. There are several rooms used for this presentation, all of them have been carefully furnished with antiques. Towards the end of the performance, we arrive in a cold forest. Exhibition, set and costume design by Olivia Faraone and Olivia Tartaglia, with costume construction by Bianca Roose and Hannah Miller. Props by Kelly Fregon.

     On arrival, the audience are guided into a large, old-fashioned dining room, furnished with quality antiques even including a Grandmother clock. On the large dining tables are flutes of wine and an array of nibbles (generously provided by Moore and Moore Café). Two young girls in cream silk dresses, mingle with the assembled guests, introducing themselves as the bridesmaids. They are Mary (Bubble Maynard) and Justine (Jessica Moyle) relatives of Victor Frankenstein (Andrew David Sutherland).

     Into the room strides Henry (Declan Brown), Victor’s manservant. He is dressed in top hat and tails. After warmly welcoming us to the Frankenstein home, he tells us that we are guests at the wedding of Victor and Elizabeth Lavenza (Zoe Hollyoak). The doors from the street open and the happy couple enter.

     The lights flicker, there is loud clash and Victor appears to go into a trance. Time for the wedding party seems to stand still. The reception takes an evil turn. The lights return to normal and the warm, convivial atmosphere returns to the celebration. Strains of a violin – being played rather poorly – can be heard from upstairs. Victor invites us to join the happy couple and watch his young brother playing the violin.

     We pass into the master bedroom with its tasteful décor of drapes and furnishings. Soon we venture into Victor’s eerie laboratory, where we observe the pathetic sight of The Creature (Haydon Wilson) with numerous wires attached, he is strapped onto an operating bench.

     As the story progresses, the lonely Creature begs for a true companion and friend – a female friend.

The Director and movement coach, Teresa Izzard, has been nominated for prestigious awards, including an Equity Award, for her previous productions. Teresa, who is an inaugural member of the Australian Directors Lab, is assisted in the directing by actor and TV personality, Bubble Maynard. She has further dramaturg advice from the admired playwright, Finn O’Branagáin.

Because of the number of room used, the lighting and sound had to be operated remotely with instructions from the stage manager, Georgia Smith or her assistant Kennah Parker. This unusual prompt system worked perfectly, with all of the lighting cues (Lighting Design, Dana Ioppolo) and sound effects precisely cued (Sound and AV Design by George Ashforth).

Thanks to the vocal coach, Donald Woodburn, the cast delivered their lines in a style compatible with the era. The Creature – Haydon Wilson – was magnificent as he portrayed a poor soul attempting to achieve co-ordination of movement and speech; he really grabbed your heart and sympathy.

Unlike the clunky, mindless cinema monsters, this creature had an exceptional brain and could sum up those around him. Sutherland’s Frankenstein was disturbing as we watched his bipolar, schizophrenic tendencies. Hollyoak was strong as the heartbroken bride, coping with her new marital world. Master of Ceremonies, Henry, had a joie de vivre that contrasted perfectly with the turmoil. Sensitivity was brought to the play with the beautiful, caring bridesmaids doing their duty and protecting the bride.

The visual and auditory effects of the laboratory were clever, inventive and thoroughly disturbing. Who was really the monster? Could things have ended differently?

This play was fresh, innovative and succeeded on so many levels. Possibly draining and disturbing for the actors, but thank you, it was worthy your suffering. Congratulations.

Sarah Kane dedicated this, possibly her best piece, to the author Mark Ravenhill, another wonderful writer of a similar age and daring style. Ravenhill has described her writing as ‘achieving canonical status’.

This powerful and dark, 1-hour play is based around the pain found in love; it is recommended for audiences over 16 yrs. It is being presented by the highly driven, WA Youth Theatre Company in the Theatre Underground Studio, within the State Theatre Centre, Northbridge each evening at 7.30 pm until Saturday 11th June.

The lyrics, ‘An Echo, A Stain’ on Björk’s 2001 album ‘Vespertine’ are based on this play.

The director played occasional soft chords on a bass guitar as a backing.

Crave takes place in an abstract world. The four actors stand static and facing the audience, on a low dais. The lighting design was by Dylan Dorotich-O’Keefe.

The author did not provide context, stage directions or descriptions of the four characters. Simply known as A, B, C and M. ‘A’ having the main, larger passages.

The two cast alternated performances. I saw cast two.

A: was Declan Brown alternating with Luke Binetti,

B: was Odne Stenseth and George Ashforth

C: was Ally Harris and Katherine Langford

M: was Daisy Coyle and Megan Hollier

Directed by the company’s artistic director, Renato Fabretti is honoured and eager to present ‘Crave’, a conversation on mental health amongst four WA’s young adults. Renato was assisted in his directing by Eloise Carter.

This ground breaking work does not dodge the complexities and realities of mental health, but embraces them. Sarah Kane, who tragically suicided, asked that the players should not simply ‘act’ their parts, but in an advanced Mike Leigh style of acting, where they should live, experience and be totally absorbed by them, for weeks before performing.

The cast had a nightmare script that comprised mainly of short snappy sentences, being delivered almost at random from each of the four characters. This meant that the normal continuity and feeding each other a line disappeared. The topics and events – some real, some imagined – that each actor described included rape, incest, paedophilia, anorexia, drug addiction, mental instability, murder and suicide, all in an unsystematic manner and so the script had to be thoroughly learned to ensure flow.

The delivery was precise, the diction clear, the pace perhaps a little too fast but a great deal of admiration must go to the cast for never dropping a line or missing a beat. I did however find that the vocal range was limited in all four actors, and that another register or lower octave would have enhanced their feelings.

There was some emotion in the complex performances, but the real depth, inner suffering and anger at the misery perpetrated upon them did not really come through. Good performances, but not quite enough experience behind these young actors.

This week, another friend of the director, Kate Dickie (of ‘Game of Thrones’ fame) has just become a Scottish ambassador for Alzheimer’s.

Like all of Sarah Kane’s plays, this is a drama that demanded so much more of this bold cast of young performers – their honesty, sensitivity, courage and their SOULS.

In her youth, Churchill started writing with feminist or Brechtian themes, but in her later years has swung around to the more surreal and ‘open writing’ approach.

This 95-minute collection of vignettes, produced by Theatre Arts at Curtin, can be seen at Hayman Theatre Upstairs, in building 102, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley. The parking in Carpark B13 is free after 5.00 pm. The performances are nightly at 7.00 pm until the 5^th March at the low-ticket price of $15.

The set was designed by Sally Phipps with input from Amy Tamati, and built by the Hayman stalwart, Ian Stewart. Sally has built a low-level stage, with three sides of plain white flats, allowing the audience to spy effectively in private, into the white box. There are three flush, white doors leading into the box. Half a dozen, 60 cms white wooden cubes symbolised such diverse objects as ‘hedgehogs’ and ‘cinema seats’. Dylan Dorotich and Sally Davies managed the stage.

Maddy Mullins conceived the massive selection of costumes. With the show being so fast moving, one wonders how the characters managed to change in time for their next appearance. I suspect that the assistant stage managers (Jack Bengough, Paris Fields, Ellen Parfrey) were also acting as dressers for the cast.

Lighting and projection designer, George Ashforth had a myriad of well thought out lighting combinations. He employed under floor lights and colourful lasers, as well as the normal LEDs. George also provided difficult to obtain videos, and projection slides. Monique Bertolini operated the lighting flawlessly. Ryan Hunt’s audio design was excellent.

With 57 different ‘Acts’, some lasting a couple of minutes and others as short as even ten seconds, I will simply list the hard working and impressive actors, who had roughly 10 parts each.

 

Lauren Beeton

Declan Brown

Eloise Carter

Chelsea Gibson

Anna Lindstedt

Holly Mason

Nelson Mondlane

Jess Nyanda Moyle.

Director Teresa Izzard and her assistant director Becca Jackson were faced with a cliff face to tackle in presenting this play. The playwright has not created any characters, names and often, even the gender is not mentioned. There are no direction instructions, nor hints on how to approach the extremely varied topics – just dialogue. Subjects like sex – it had to be there – along with torture, children’s problems, marriage and anti-vivisection are all included in the three-score topics. The director had to invent the scenarios and then encourage the cast to add any of their own experiences to the story threads. This major challenge was proficiently conquered with the whole cast giving the numerous characters instant and recognisable personalities.

The show went at a tremendous pace, with only two or three of the stories not working (the writer perhaps being a little too adventurous). A very enjoyable night at the theatre, with something a little offbeat. It is always pleasant to see a team trying something new.