Considerations of quality

A couple of months away travelling and a couple more laid up with pneumonia and I saw fewer shows in 2017 than in recent years (but still well into the double digits). Reflecting, it is clear that quality over quantity can be incredibly rewarding. And what quality there was on offer… so much so that my usual top five favourite, has been blown out to the following ten:

1. Torch Songs (Mama Alto, Brisbane Powerhouse, Wonderland Festival)
2. Lady Beatle (The Little Red Company, La Boite Theatre Company)
3. My Name is Jimi (Queensland Theatre)
4. Once in Royal David’s City (Queensland Theatre)
5. The Play that Goes Wrong (Lunchbox Theatrical Productions, QPAC)
6. Chef (Persona Inc & Atobiz Ltd, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane Festival)
7. Nigel Kennedy: Vivaldi The New Four Seasons + Dedications (Nigel Kennedy, QPAC)
8. Kinky Boots (Michael Cassel in association with Cameron Mackintosh, QPAC)
9. Spectate (Counterpilot, Metro Arts)
10. Humans (Circa, QPAC)

And honourable mention to the UK’s National Theatre Stage to Screen show Yerma… Gut-wrenching, phenomenal theatre thanks to Billie Piper’s devastatingly powerful performance.

And mention also to the following highlights:

• Best performance:
  • Elaine Crombie as a hilarious house-slave in Queensland Theatre Company’s An Octoroon.
  • Merlynn Tong in her intimate and vulnerable one-woman work, Playlab’s Blue Bones
  • Cameron Hurry as badly behaved brother Valene in the darkly irreverent The Lonesome West by Troop Productions
• Best AV – Spectate (Counterpilot, Metro Arts)
• Most thought provoking –- Octoroon (Queensland Theatre, Brisbane Festival)
• Best new work – Merlyn Tong’s Blue Bones (Playlab, Brisbane Powerhouse)
• Best Reimagining – Signifying Nothing (Macbeth) (Hammond Fleet Productions, Brisbane Festival)
• Best musical – Kinky Boots (Michael Cassel in association with Cameron Mackintosh, QPAC)
• Best cabaret:
  • Torch Songs (Mama Alto, Brisbane Powerhouse, Wonderland Festival)
  • Lady Beatle (The Little Red Company, La Boite Theatre Company)
  • Song Lines (Michael Tuahine, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane Cabaret Festival)
  • Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs (Alan Cumming, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane Cabaret Festival)
• Best music – Nigel Kennedy: Vivaldi The New Four Seasons + Dedications (QPAC)
• Best opera – Mark Vincent Sings Mario Lanza and the Classics (Lunchbox Productions, QPAC)
• Funniest – The Play That Goes Wrong (Lunchbox Theatrical Productions, QPAC)
• Most fun – Let Them Eat Cake (Act/React, Anywhere Festival)
• Most madcap – Chef (Persona Inc & Atobiz Ltd, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane Festival)
• Most immersive – Trainspotting Live (In Your Face Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse)
• Most moving – Once in Royal David’s City (Queensland Theatre)

2018 looks set to continue to showcase both the wonderful work of this state’s creatives and innovative works from both here and further afield. Festivals will continue to punctuate the cultural calendar, serving to oscillate audiences between feast and famine like a cultural bulimic… although with Brisbane Powerhouse’s Melt Festival moving to May (maybe at the same time as Anywhere Festival) it may be a shower than usual start to the year.

Courtly comedy and cake

Let Them Eat Cake (Act/React)

Golden Pig Cooking School

May 11 – 13

Upon leaving “The Play That Goes Wrong” opening night last week, I didn’t think I could even laugh quite so hard at a show… then along came “Let Them Eat Cake”, a slice of silly improvised shenanigans presented as part of the 2017 Anywhere Theatre Festival. The work comes from the creative minds of those at Act/React, the improv troupe responsible for the smash, sell-out hits “Speed: The Movie, The Play” and “Titanic: the Movie, The Play” at the Brisbane Powerhouse and it is just as funny as its predecessor works, making it a clear Festival highlight. It is not a movie re-imagining this time though, but rather a farce which sees all sorts of French court characters revealed in all sorts of scandalous and hysterical situations.

Versailles can be a tough place, especially for a mime, we learn as the show begins with lone mime, Pierre (Dan Beeston) on stage. And though the front row of the audience may occupy his predominant interest, there really is no hiding anywhere as audience belongings are reappropriate to become the show’s religious relic props. It is soon apparent that he is not an ordinary mime.

Pretty Pierre has the pottiest of mouths (despite never speaking) and he may have done pornography. He is servant to the ambitious widow Madame Celeste (Natalie Bochenski, with a wig as large as her dress’ bussle) and so, spends initial scenes penning a dictated letter to her niece. Madame Celeste has money problems so quests to wed a wealthy, but boring, aristocrat Hugo (Wade Robinson), who may be after a top level wife but settles for Celeste, despite her having a little bit of the plague.

Gossipy court news travels fast and a Cardinal is soon also on the scene to stake his claim and confess his from-afar love for Celeste. It’s far from a France of polite parlour games with trickery, theft and bribery unfolding as audience suggestions contribute to the spontaneity of the largely ad-libbed show, ensuring that it travels in directions so random as to leave the actors themselves sometimes struggling to maintain composure. The deliberate overacting only adds to the exaggerated, improbable and farcical situations. But the absurdity is all part of the fun, especially when mention is made of chicken grenades.

Relent from the riotous laughter comes with interval, when, courtesy of the host venue, the audience is treated to rose water cupcakes, in honour of Queen Marie Antoinette’s supposed quote upon learning that the French peasants had no bread. The Golden Pig Cooking School is a wonderful venue for the experience too, full of atmosphere, enhanced by the show’s ongoing musical accompaniment from Richard Grantham on viola. Still, nothing is as memorable as the unfolding hilarity, thanks to the comic skill and timing of its players, vocally overemphasising where necessary as signpost to the weird and wacky directions of the plot and bouncing good-naturedly off each other and the audience. And in Dan Beeston’s hands, this mime needs no words to make many of the show’s funniest jokes.

“Let Them Eat Cake” is clever comedy all around. With its revisits to previous mentions and provision of associated puns, it shows that sometimes spontaneous can be best.  This is funny in its purest form as the dialogue, action, story and even aspects of the characters are created by the players and audience in collaboration and it is not only its abrupt ending that will leave its audiences wanting more. Hopefully Brisbane will see more of the show soon because as comedies go, this interactive farce really takes the cake.