Although this 55-minute, adult performance does not contain nudity as such, it does have attractive skimpy underwear, sexually explicit dialogue and raunchy acting, so it is recommended for ages 15 plus.

This daring Blue Room / Clara Loveny production can be seen at the Blue Room Studio Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge nightly at 8.30 pm. The season runs until Saturday 26^th November with a matinée at 6.00 pm on Saturday 26^th November.

Joshua Walker’s set comprises a large white dais, 60 cms high, centre stage, with a further smaller dais giving a pyramidal effect. Stage manager is Katie Moore. The lighting (design by Rhiannon Petersen) varied from the red-hot, sex scenes, to the cooler informal meetings, when a blend of UV and blue light was employed.

Leanne Puttick’s musical composition gave the perfect background to the variety of scenes.

        The theatre is pitch dark. Heavy breathing and panting can be heard. The lights rise to show two girls and a boy who are finishing a webcam porn scene. There is a fade to black.

        We see Alex (Elijah Melvin), a chef who is on his way home from work. He meets Zoe (Taryn Ryan), a shy veterinary surgeon who works at the local Animal Shelter. After a day’s work, Zoe smells of animal pee. She apologises to Alex, they laugh and the couple arrange to meet another evening.

        As a relief from his day’s work, and with Zoe in mind, Alex opens up his $35 a month, porn site and settles down for a night of solo, guilty pleasure. Zoe tells her friend, Nicola (Ann-Marie Biagioni) who works in a sex shop, about her new boyfriend. Nicola has a wealth of knowledge and plenty of sexual advice for her naïve friend.

        The relationship becomes adventurous, but seems to be going down a track that both do not seem agree upon. However, what happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom – or does it?

Sex is always a difficult topic to depict on the stage, but Samantha Maclean and Timothy Green have blended plenty of humour into the storyline, helping make the topic more acceptable. Often directors and playwrights, possibly due to their own awkwardness, will hint at what they mean and the audience can quickly spot this discomfort, and in turn become embarrassed. Our daring scriptwriters jump wholeheartedly into the fray, no punches pulled. Occasionally, the actors chat with a friendly, informal air (and non-threateningly) to audience members, this helps the patrons feel part of their instructive adventure.

The bold, courageous actors are faced with quick, tongue-twisting dialogue and numerous acrobatic positions, and yet the pace of the show did not miss a beat. There were powerful and quite touching performances by this talented team.

I left the theatre a fully educated, satisfied punter.

This 55-minute, Sean Guastavino production about eco-disaster, can be seen at 7.00 each evening until Saturday 27th August, in the main theatre of The Blue Room Theatre complex, 53 James Street, Northbridge, Perth.

The scene is a filthy, damp bunker; a most convincing set from designer, Matt McVeigh and set constructor, Matt Crock. The walls are graffiti sprayed black concrete. The low ceiling is comprised of white slabs. Graphic designer, Joseph Dennis added the finishing touches.

The sparse furnishings include a camp bed, a few milk crates, and a couple of 20-litre water bottles. Centre stage is a tub of compost containing a pathetic, dying tree with the odd shoot on the branches.

The production was stage managed by Georgia Smith.

    It is early morning, obsessed and deranged Margo (Zoe Street) is worshiping the failing tree that is struggling to grow in the bunker where Margo has lived for decades. Margo compliments and praises the struggling plant in the hope it will blossom again.

    Thanks to climate change and nearby chemical works, the whole area for kilometres around has died off. Not a tree, bush or blade of grass remains. It is therefore essential that Margo does her best for this remaining tree. Like Lord Byron’s ‘Prisoner of Chillon’, she never dares to leave her prison.

     Margo shares the bunker with a loving, sensible young man, Flint (Peter Lane Townsend) who everyday goes in search of potable water, and tries gleaning the minimal remaining food. If he is lucky, he may even find a few seeds that can be planted for the future, but with the chemical works gestapo patrolling around, it can be extremely risky.

     How long can this dire situation go on? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

The topic of ‘climate change’ as a theme for a play did not exactly fill me with enthusiasm. Was this to be another message bashing experience? Absolutely not. This was something exciting and completely new.

When a playwright directs his own play the result is rarely satisfactory, but Monty has proved his immense skill in both fields by giving a truly gripping play. The two amazing actors had us on the edge of the seat as the tension rose. The clever lighting by designer Rhiannon Petersen, accompanied by Alex and Yell’s sound design, gave a tremendous climax that shook the building and surprised us all.

It is always good for a production marketer to have something genuinely worthwhile to promote. Amelia Tuttleby has an outstanding play to offer the lovers of quality theatre.

There are three different, secret venues for this most unusual play. With performances performed in Fremantle for two nights, two in Guildford and two in Leederville. The hour long ‘happening’ starts at 7.00 on various evenings until the 20^th February.

The Fremantle venue was a rustic garden, surrounded by hewn, limestone walls, with fabulous, trailing and potted plants. A large fish pond lay in the secluded corner.

         The crowd are warmly welcomed into the private garden, by the home’s gardener, Greg (Nathan Whitebrook). As he brushes the paving, the visitors settle on cushions and crates. Greg explains how much pride he takes in his work, especially this garden and spins a few yarns. He has the blood group that seems to attract the mozzies, and so he invites anyone who has similar problem to spray themselves, offering around the Aeroguard.

         After a few minutes of light banter, Greg retreats to the BBQ at the rear of the house, to cook the snags.

         Perched on a high wall, a young guitarist (Tom Beech) softly plays his melodious compositions. As he strums, the cat from next door appears (Zoe Street), playing with her favourite musical toy, only to run into the owner’s big savage dog (Monty Sallur); however, when they hear Greg returning, they disappear quickly into the undergrowth.

        The visitors are invited to help themselves to the food and homemade lemonade provided by the host. The perfect host, Greg, continues to tell us of his life and daily routine, when suddenly he discovers that a guest has betrayed their warm invitation. The mood changes.

 

The acting commanded by the three performers was both physically and mentally demanding, but the three performances had every ounce of energy packed into them.

This show must have been a major challenge for clever director Rhiannon Petersen and the producers, Sean Guastavino and Zoe Street, but by moving the venue around it covers most of Perth CBD, giving a very different atmosphere to the loveable creature’s play.

Publicist, Amelia Tuttleby, has advised me that it is a sell-out, with only a few tickets left for the final venue, Leederville.

The performances begin at 7.00 each evening at the Hayman Theatre Upstairs, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley. The nearest carpark is B13, which is free after 4.00 pm. The show has a short season, running until Saturday, 8^th August.

The design for this show is unique and stunning. Everything is white – brilliant white – every wall, floor, blade of grass, every piece of scenery and all of the props. Pure white. However, the clever and most effective point is that every brick, chair, dustbin etc. has black tape along every edge. The effect is striking. (Designed by Sean Guastavino and built by Ian Stewart).

Karen Cook’s colourful lighting design, worked beautifully on the white, bringing it to life. Elliot Macri’s soundscape was well recorded and brought a few smiles in places.

Each area of the set was minimalistic; there was a train station, a train, a laundry, café and a shop all depicted symbolically.

       A nine-year-old girl (Rhiannon Petersen) stands on the station platform; she has lost her mother. She watches the people around her, fascinated by the gays kissing on a bench and the wild woman (Amy Tamati) shouting her disgust at their behaviour. On another seat, a married couple (Daisy Coyle, Jarryd Dobson) are having their morning ‘warm up’, a pointless argument.

       A courier (George Ashforth) delivers a valuable package to a ‘special’ shop, where the manager (Terence Smith) gives him valuable advice.

     When a jilted bride (Ashleigh Ryan), still in her bridal gown, runs past in a flood of inconsolable tears, a young yob (Jeremy Bunny) tries unsuccessfully to cheer her up – by offering to sell her the latest perfume. He then moves on to robbing a young, gullible girl (Madeleine Mullins).

     All of life certainly passes by in this fascinating city.

Very often students’ devised shows are a collection of short acts, joined poorly together becoming a bit of a Curate’s Egg. This show, however, was magnificent from start to finish; beautifully structured with plenty of very different, but instantly recognisable characters and true-to-life situations.

The cast worked smoothly, most actors having two parts to play. The movement, directed by Joe Lui with dramaturg help from Dylan Searle, was slick and flawless.

This hour show was great fun and well worth seeing.

Free parking after 4.00.

The sidewalls and floor are covered in artificial turf, an ingenious idea from set designer Lachlan MacDonald, as it seemed to fit all the situations in this set of sketches. He combined the grass with a rear wall of silver stranded, ‘burlesque style’curtains and the effect was visually stunning. (Set and properties by Caitlin McFeat, Jordan Norrish, Scarlett Yakovina, and Zoe Street, and stage managed by Aaron Smith and his assistant Sean Guastavino).

        Because goats are nibbling at the very fabric of the Earth, a new safer planet – a goat free Utopia – must be found.

       To the sound of aircraft gunfire, a soldier (Monty Sallur) is found bleeding to death by one of his buddies (Jack Middleton). Petrified of dying alone, he makes a final request of his friend.

      A famous actress (Rebecca ‘Bubble’ Maynard – who is actually a wonderfully natural presenter in a Channel 7 teenagers’ programme) is shopping in IGA when she is spotted by an old school friend (Rhiannon Petersen, hilarious) who sidles up to her and tries to ingratiate herself.

      A young man sobs (Nathan Whitebook) as his pregnant girlfriend (Beth Tremlett) tells him she is leaving.

     Another pregnant young girl (Savannah Wood) is starting a new job, assembling toy models of goats. She is shown how to do this by a friendly, but overzealous supervisor (Ariel Tresham, what a captivating mover).

These are a few of the dozen or more, high quality sketches that kept us entertained. As well as the main theme of ‘goats’, other similarities and parallels cleverly interlinked the sketches. You can see that a great deal of work has gone into the writing and development of this show. The standard of this devised production is the highest that I have seen at Curtin in years. The immaculate lighting design by Karen Cook, although limited by the ancient lighting rig selection, was versatile and varied. Ashleigh Ryan smoothly operated the complex lighting schedule. The magnificent soundscape was designed Olivia Dugandzic who had obviously put a vast amount of effort into the complex depth of the sound effects and choice of music. Again, the operator Brittany Manifis had superb control of the cuing and volume. The costume design by Simone Chodorowski had a great deal of thought behind the styles, and Chelsea Johnston made the costumes themselves.

The idea of a devised piece for theatre students is to encourage them to try something new and exciting. To present to the audience a new experience. What the students have devised is extremely well presented. The acting and characterisation were first class.

The award winning director, Jeffrey Jay Fowler and his assistant director, Emelia Peet, have done a brilliant job guiding the students through their creation – and it is not the director’s task to create the script, but to help them get the most out of it. A little more script variety would have been welcome, perhaps a song or dance? They did have a Philip Marlowe scene that was very well observed and terrific in the presentation. The dramaturge by Emily Kingsley, who was recently outstanding in ‘The Shimmerin’’, developed plenty of quality movement. The students had a ‘daring’ final scene that worked well and stretched their stage experience outside their comfortable zone.

As I said, the acting and presentation of this devised piece was possibly the best I have seen by Curtin students in five years. The actors all seemed totally focused and their rapport was superb, not a weak link in sight.

Most enjoyable.