PIX TAKEN BY JOE CALLERI AT THE MEDIA CALL FOR BARBIE LIVE THE MUSICAL: FRIDAY 04.04.2014.

The Palais Theatre will burst into high chroma life with the Australian premiere of Barbie Live The Musical.

REVIEW - A SUNBURNT HISTORY: CITIZENSHIP

A SUNBURNT HISTORY: CITIZENSHIP

TRADES HALL, UNTIL APRIL 06, 2014.

A sure-fire recipe for comedy magic made from soil, sweat, and sheer chutzpah!  

Stars: 4.

By: Joe Calleri.

CHARLIE RANGER (L), NICK WAXMAN (R) - IMAGE SUPPLIED

Wanna see two, young, hard-working Aussie comedians shoe-horn 226 years of Australian history into one tightly scripted, high energy, and highly entertaining, sweat-soaked hour?

Then go see Charlie Ranger’s and Nick Waxman’s production, A Sunburnt History: Citizenship.

These guys easily earn their 4-star rating for accomplishing comedy’s equivalent of climbing Mount Everest in an hour.

Part satirical history lesson, part reflection piece, these two blokes impressively and hilariously re-enact some important persons and events from Australia’s relatively short history.

This show is a welcome break from the self-absorbed rantings of most modern stand-ups.

After a beautifully written introduction containing only words ending in “ation” (nation, elucidation, eradication, etc), the duo enthusiastically put their personal spin on events including John Batman trying to acquire tracts of land from the native indigenous owners with mere trinkets, and the hero worship of the Eureka Stockade’s Peter Lalor.

Discussions regarding the absurdist White Australia Policy, all too pervasive racism, ridiculous border security policies, the risks presented by “boat people”, and how badly we continue to treat our indigenous population, made me pause and wonder once more whether as a nation we have advanced in our attitudes as far as we believe.

Some of the show’s many highlights include a hilarious cameo from our esteemed Prime Minister Abbott (clad only in little red Speedos), and the lovely Brynne Edelsten (compete with visible g-string, and 5 o’clock shadow) hosting the Dictation Test Challenge. Warning: it’s not as easy as it looks.

Readers, in my view, Charlie and Nick represent the exciting next wave of Australian comedy. They deserve your patronage during the 2014 Comedy Festival.

REVIEW - ANJELAH JOHNSON

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ANJELAH JOHNSON

HI FI BAR, UNTIL APRIL 06, 2014.

The “H” in Anjelah stands for hilarious - and hot!

Stars: 4.

By: Joe Calleri

ANJELAH JOHNSON - IMAGE SUPPLIED.

She sings, dances, raps, beatboxes, she impersonates. And she’s smokin’ hot to boot!

Anjelah Johnson is in da house.

This 31-year old Los Angeleno stand-up comedienne with her easy smile and spicy Mexican heritage, languidly lopes around the stage at a jam-packed Hi Fi Bar, reflecting a performer who is perfectly comfortable with her material and in her own skin.

Johnson arrives in Australia for the first time, boasting impressive comedy and performance credentials: former NFL cheerleader, and appearances on Comedy Central, and MadTV for starters. But, like many other performers, it is that modern marvel, YouTube, that has catapulted Johnson to international stardom. One of her YouTube clips alone has received more than 65 million hits! Perfect way to generate an ardent following.

Her comedy routine is one part revelatory, one part flexing her versatile vocal and physical performance skills.

Johnson, a Christian (which may partly explain the remarkable absence of profanity from her routine), is married to a handsome Puerto Rican Christian rapper. Didn’t know they existed.   

After describing the travails of a recent European travel adventure, Johnson unleashes from her ample arsenal of performance skills, neatly weaving them in with skilful, and impeccably observed impersonations of both her immediate and extended family. Her mother in law impression is a hoot!

But, the audience whoops and hollers the loudest during two of Johnson’s best known and loved routines. The first describes her encounters with Asian nail beautician, Tammy. Many will have had their nails buffed and polished by beauticians just like the overly friendly, intrusive, and impossible to understand, Tammy. Side-splitting stuff!

Then, Johnson’s MadTV alter ego, the violent, fast-talking, fast food employee, Bon Qui Qui, hits the stage with her tender rendition of the rap song, “I’m a cut you”.

A short hour spent with this performer is inadequate. So, y’all come back and visit us, Anjelah, y’hear?

REVIEW - TOMMY DASSALO - DREAMBOAT

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TOMMY DASSALO - DREAMBOAT

ACMI, FEDERATION SQUARE, UNTIL 20 APRIL 2014

Time-travelling down memory lane with talkative Tommy worth the ticket.

Stars: 3 & 1/2.

By: Joe Calleri

TOMMY DASSALO - IMAGE SUPPLIED

While Tommy Dassalo’s new show, Dreamboat, breaks no new comedic ground, it contains one especially clever and memorable twist that proves once and for all, that time travel is possible – with eye-popping and hilarious results.

The amiable, well-known host of The Little Dum Dum Club Podcast mostly succeeds with this rapid-fire delivery performance because of his absolute commitment to material that, in the hands of less skilled comedians, could be pedestrian.

After the audience throws their brightly coloured undies at Dassalo (folks, he supplied them), he settles into a generic, stand-up slice-of-life routine.

There’s the growing up pains when your Mum bought your underwear, the warm comfort of high school tuck-shop food, and the geeky friends with strangely appropriate nicknames.

Dassalo throws in some uncomfortable but funny anecdotes about parents and partners (the side-effects of eating bad seafood), and familiar tales of daily life and interactions with them. It’s grist for the mill for most stand-ups, but Tommy ably carries off this material with the audience’s appreciation.

He throws in one dark tale, which I can’t disclose here, regarding the cringingly sinister derivation of the show’s cute title.

And, did you know how many Australians are injured each year by slipping on stray grapes? No?

If you want to know, mosey down to ACMI, and spend an hour with Dreamboat Dassalo. Just don’t call him Carl Pilkington, OK?

Review - The Umbilical Brothers – KiDShow (Not Suitable For Children)

The Umbilical Brothers – KiDShow (Not Suitable For Children)
Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse – to 13 April 2014
Underwhelming Umbilicals Under-Perform and Under-Deliver
Stars: 3
By: Joe Calleri

DAVID COLLINS (L), SHANE DUNDAS (R) - IMAGE SUPPLIED.

Despite a few highlights, The Umbilical Brothers’ latest production, KiDShow (Not Suitable For Children) lacks their usual snap, crackle and pop, leaving it an awkward and curiously tentative effort.

The internationally renowned, and usually dynamic duo of curly-haired David Collins and bald Shane Dundas – those blokes you see flogging cough lollies on telly – are noted for their unique brand of high-impact mime, physical humour, and remarkable vocal dexterity.

The performance has the basic ingredients of a children's show: cute, smiling, overly-friendly presenters, silly songs and dances, and a parade of well-known and imaginary characters.

It’s ironic the duo choose to disguise this piece as a children’s show, considering they recently starred in a genuine but now defunct children’s television program, The Upside Down Show.

Once the Brothers discover the audience is made up of adults, the gloves come off, the tone and subject matter become decidedly darker, and the language decidedly bluer.

The audience then witnesses tantalising glimpses of the theatrical magic of which these Brothers are undoubtedly capable.

Such flashes of brilliance include an anarchic, violent and destruction-fuelled parody of The Brady Bunch, and Collins' impressive rendition of Nina Simone’s classic Feeling Good, with Dundas providing hilarious, background sound effects.

Some of the problems with this show may stem from the last-minute replacement of the Brothers' sound and lighting operator, however this does not excuse the problematic structure and its intermittently lacklustre performances.

These veteran Aussie performers possess unique theatrical skills so it’s a shame that the Brothers have, to coin a TV chef critique, plated up a flawed dish.

END

MORE FEMALE PARTS - Theare Review

What – MORE FEMALE PARTS

Where and When – NORTHCOTE TOWN HALL – 08 FEBRUARY 2014 TO 23 FEBRUARY 2014

Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars - 4 out of 5.

Evelyn Krape works hard to keep mind and soul intact. Image Supplied.

Disclosure - I attended the opening night of this production on a complimentary ticket as the guest of a media invitee.

The program for More Female Parts states: “Sara Hardy wrote more female parts specifically for Evelyn Krape to perform and Lois Ellis to direct. It is a ‘thirty years on’ celebration of their original, phenomenally successful production of Female Parts by Dario Fo and Franca Rame in 1982.”

It may be thirty years on, but diminutive performer, Krape is in fine artistic and physical form - all sharp muscular angles, curly red hair, and often chaotic, hyper-activity as she first portrays two oppressed women, and then the narrator in an unusual adult parable / fairy tale, in this highly enjoyable, often thought-provoking, three part performance.

Part 1, Can’t Sleep, Can’t Sleep, finds Krape portraying the hapless, frenetic, chaotic, Julie Evans, a woman of a certain age whose cad of a husband has run off and married a much younger woman who also happens to be a pole dancer.

Such brutal spousal abandonment creates a new, harsh reality for Julie that includes interviewing for mindless clerical jobs (including one as an Arts Centre usher where for a team building exercise she and fellow candidates must create a silver cube) in order to support herself, and dealing with the mindless bureaucrats at Centrelink.

But, Evans also must deal with problems associated with her own failing memory, and that of her ageing mother, a gay son who is about to be married in London, and two precocious grandchildren, Frangipane and Kayell.

And, if you though life for women was difficult in 2013, just wait until you visit the pink-wigged, floral leotarded, yellow fluoro t-shirted, Veronica in Part 2 titled “Penthouse Woman 2044”. Veronica’s life seems enviable – she lives on the 99^th floor of an apartment building in Melbourne, where she is surrounded by a variety of exercise equipment, is never alone with her NewTube connections, the talking, ever-amenable computer, Pal (think HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey), and possesses the magical Instashop delivery system, where goods materialise within mere seconds of submitting an on-line order. Wow!     

But, these wiz-bang technological marvels designed to make one’s life so easy, disguise a Dante’s Inferno-type of existence for Veronica. We discover she must resort to a series of positive affirmations (“60 is the new 30”) and gruelling physical exercise to keep mind and soul intact. Veronica, you see, is a prisoner in her own apartment; where the windows cannot be opened. While her businessman husband jets around the globe, Veronica has not left her apartment in years.

And therein lays one of the beauties of Hardy’s writing and Krape’s performance – the ability to quickly switch emotional gears, from laugh out loud hilarity one second to though-provoking pathos and genuine concern the next.  

And, what of those wonderful on-line “contacts”? Well, her new contact, Glenda, is also a prisoner, but suffers the indignity of wearing a collar and long chain.

While Veronica can never be physically free of her surroundings, at least she has freedom of thought.

While Part 3, Hip Op, lacks some of the emotional layering of the first two parts, it allows Hardy an opportunity to show off some very clever writing, and Krape yet another opportunity to display her wonderful, impish physicality, this time as narrator of an unusual adult fairy-tale / parable regarding the Ginger Family, and their three children, Angelica, Emily and Albrecht.

Youngest daughter, Emily, falls under the influence of wickedly funny, foul-mouthed, Fluckety Dolly, and decides to become an economist. This is where the fairy tale transforms into parable. Emily, you see, wears a glass mortar-board which causes her to hit the ceiling (get it?) thereby preventing her from climbing the corporate ladder.

Like all great fairy-tales, there is a conveniently happy ending of sorts, but, by the end of the third part, we have well and truly gotten the message.

Even if you are not a feminist, this rewarding, often laugh out loud funny piece gently, and movingly highlights some recognisable, relatable, very serious, and festering social issues that confront women on a daily basis, while displaying the loveable Evelyn Krape’s highly skilled clown work.

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JOE CALLERI REVIEWS: SAVAGES by Patricia Cornelius

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What – SAVAGES by Patricia Cornelius

Where and When – fortyfive downstairs, 16 August 2013 – 08 September 2013

Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars - 4.

THE CAST OF SAVAGES, FROM L TO R: BROOKS, O'CONNELL, TREGONNING, ELLIOT - IMAGE SUPPLIED

Full Disclosure - I attended the opening night of this production on a complimentary ticket as the guest of a media invitee.

While the line notes in the program do not make reference to it, Patricia Cornelius’s sweat and testosterone-fuelled play, Savages, is based on some of the people involved in, and events that surrounded, the tragic death in 2002 of 42-year old, Dianne Brimble, after she was administered a lethal dose of the date rape drug, GHB, by a group of eight men, during an ill-fated cruise on the ship, Pacific Sky.

In Savages, Cornelius’s four characters are a sub-species of middle-aged, suburban man, utterly incapable of forming either meaningful, or in fact, any relationships with women.

We first sight these four miscreants, George (Lyall Brooks), Runt (Luke Elliot), Rabbit (James O’Connell), and Craze (Mark Tregonning) as they slowly, menacingly emerge half naked from the darkened set like grotesque, misshapen monsters. Andy Turner’s moody lighting and Kelly Ryall's deep, throbbing sound design, are among the many highlights of this production.  

When we next see the four, it’s cheerful back slapping and high fives all round as they anxiously wait at the docks before embarking on a pleasure cruise of a life-time where each expresses a desire to either lose, re-discover, or re-invent themselves. Runt, for example, will no longer be short, while Rabbit intends to throw in his job as a motor mechanic.

Once aboard set designer Marg Horwell’s intelligently, efficiently designed ship deck, complete with tiny stateroom (which echoes the famous state room sequence in the Marx Brothers’ film, A Night At The Opera, and which offers the audience the play’s only genuinely comedic moments), the four quickly come to terms with cruise life, including how quickly boredom sets in once they have finished their strenuous physical work-outs and sunbathed.

The initial jocularity, bonhomie and excitement felt by the four regarding their prospects of “scoring” while on board, becomes subsumed by some unenlightened navel gazing and general observations about the disappointments of life, and in particular, their fraught, failed relationships with the opposite sex.

However, any flickers of sensitivity, humanity, compassion, or emotional intelligence displayed by the characters, including when Runt speaks lovingly of his mother, are short-lived before we are jolted back into a grimmer reality as George speaks of drowning his lover, Craze threatens to kidnap his children, Rabbit admits to not enjoying sex, and Runt expresses his general and palpable disgust of women, who are ugly pigs fit only for rutting.

Cornelius has incorporated into her dialogue some of the deeply disparaging comments that those accused of killing Brimble, in particular, Letterio Silvestri, made about her, during the course of police interviews.

While certain of the themes and dialogue become repetitive, and Cornelius’s narrative deliberately casts out a number of red herrings that are not resolved, these are relatively trivial complaints and easily forgivable when one enjoys the intense and committed acting of the four male actors, Susie Dee’s precise, tight as a drum directing, and the overall high quality of this production.

Cornelius’s and Dee’s Savages, is a nightmarish journey into, and exploration of, the very darkest heart of modern male masculinity and misogyny, that recognises no boundaries, no laws, and exposes the tragic outcomes when those men allow themselves to be reduced to the level of savage beasts capable only of acting on their most primitive, and physical urges.

Highly recommended.

 

JOE CALLERI REVIEWS: RONNIE BURKETT THEATRE OF MARIONETTES IN PENNY PLAIN

What – RONNIE BURKETT THEATRE OF MARIONETTES IN PENNY PLAIN

Where and When – ARTS CENTRE, MELBOURNE, FAIRFAX STUDIO, 08-18 AUGUST, 2013

Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars – 4.

Full Disclosure - I attended the opening night of this production on a complimentary ticket as the guest of a media invitee.

The Master Marionetteer, Ronnie Burkett, with Penny Plain. Image Supplied.

The latest news is of global Armageddon. Hundreds of millions are dead as a result of widespread global warming, pandemics, viruses, and earthquakes. In the midst of such death, destruction and the breakdown of society as we know it, and quietly sitting in her armchair, is a frail, blind, gentle, unassuming woman, and the titular character of Ronnie Burkett’s marvellous marionette performance, Penny Plain. Sitting next to Ms Plain is well, her … all too human dog, Geoffrey.

Ronnie Burkett, that fast-talking, masterfully dextrous Canadian marionetteer, returns to Melbourne with one of his darkest themed shows to date.

Prepare to be amazed as more than twenty of Burkett’s beautiful, delicately sculpted marionettes, seem to take on lives and emotions of their own, as they navigate, with varying measures of success, the many real perils of a world that is rapidly descending into chaos, corruption and often unspeakable madness and cruelty.

Yes, there are moments of levity, common decency, civility, and a surprising, yet tantalising hint of a potentially bright future for our world during Penny Plain, but, admittedly those moments are brief and mostly weighed down by Burkett’s powerfully clear sub-text that warns audiences of the dire consequences of continuing to abuse our precious planet … and one other.

For those theatre patrons seeking a somewhat unusual, yet genuinely thought-provoking, heart-felt and beautifully conceived and executed theatrical production that allows them to witness a true master of a rare craft at work, I unreservedly recommend Penny Plain to you.

 

JOE CALLERI REVIEWS - EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, An Opera in Four Acts.

What – EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, An Opera in Four Acts

Where and When – The Arts Centre, Melbourne from 31 July, 2013 to 04 August 2013.

Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars – 4.  

The Trial Scene from Einstein on the Beach. Image by Stephanie Berger.

Full Disclosure - I attended the opening night of this production on a complimentary ticket as the guest of a media invitee.

Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach is a four and a half hour long, pulsing, mesmeric, meditative, mind-bendingly epic journey into a fourth dimension of light, sound, movement, and wonderful stage magic.

Devoid of conventional narrative and through line which may alienate many prospective theatre goers, Einstein fuses Philip Glass’s eclectic, often repetitive musical score, Robert Wilson’s inspired direction, and timeless, wondrous stage design, poetry by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M Johnson and Lucinda Childs, ballet (choreography by Andrew de Groat), and opera, with an obsessive, perfectionist, wonderful attention to detail that I have rarely seen displayed in a theatrical performance.

Watching this work, and contemplating some of its pressing contemporary themes including conformity in manner, in dress and in action, android-like dehumanisation, mindless repetition of tasks, phrases, sound bytes and news stories on constant 24 hour loops, it is hard to believe it was first performed in France, in 1976.

Together, Glass and Wilson have set about exploring and then exploding Einstein’s life, his massive intellect and his complex, ground-breaking theories on gravity, relativity, quantum mechanics, space and time, and life itself, into tiny fragments, and then ever so intelligently, elegantly and creatively laid those fragments out into eleven performances.

So, we have Einstein appearing during the performance either in projected photographs, or portrayed (complete with trademark white hair and brush moustache) by wonderful solo violinist - and one of the stand-out stars of this performance - Antoine Silverman. Einstein was a proficient violinist with a love of Mozart’s sonatas.

But, it is the complex, befuddling complexity of time itself that so intrigued Einstein, and Glass and Wilson have attempted to explore this concept theatrically: a train appears to travel at a glacial pace, performers repeat gestures and expressions, and banal, routine, nonsensical words, expressions, names, and number sequences (1,2,3,4,5,6) are repeated in perfect, loop-like, infinite patterns.

Given the duration and complexity of this work, you will be amazed at the skill, dexterity, patience, physical endurance, and commitment to perfection of the scores of performers on stage and in the orchestra pit. While I have singled out Silverman earlier in this review, the sum of each performer (including young Jasper Newell) contributes equally to the whole.   

Lest you believe you are stuck in the theatre for the entire marathon running time, audiences have the opportunity of leaving the theatre and returning to the performance whenever they wish. On the night I attended, 8pm seemed a popular time for many audience members to take a nature break, stretch their legs, or leave the theatre not to return.

No, this piece is not universally accessible; some will find it cold, aloof, high-brow and conceptual, bewildering, frustrating, impenetrable, alienating. But, if you are prepared to invest your hard-earned time, Einstein will reward you with one of the theatre world’s most remarkable and unforgettable theatrical experiences.

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JOE CALLERI REVIEWS - NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LIVE – INTO THE ICY REALMS: ON ASSIGNMENT WITH PAUL NICKLEN.

What – NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LIVE – INTO THE ICY REALMS: ON ASSIGNMENT WITH PAUL NICKLEN

Where and When – ARTS CENTRE, MELBOURNE, FAIRFAX STUDIO; SUNDAY 28 July, 2013, 3PM AND 6PM

Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars - 4.

Full Disclosure - I attended this presentation on a complimentary ticket provided to me by the event publicist.

During this entertaining, thought-provoking, 75-minute presentation titled Into The Icy Realms, Canadian marine biologist and award winning, National Geographic photojournalist, Paul Nicklen, provides some fascinating insights into his “get the shot at all costs” philosophy that goes into capturing beautiful, often breath-taking nature images.

For readers unfamiliar with the National Geographic Live series of presentations, they involve prominent National Geographic photojournalists presenting, and discussing how some of their most iconic images were captured. The images are shown on a large projection screen.

Nicklen, who specialises in capturing endangered marine life on our polar regions, and who has had more than 16 photo stories published by the iconic, US-based, 125-year-old National Geographic magazine, is an enthusiastic, passionate, often humorous raconteur. His passion intensifies when he discusses the many real and present dangers - including global warming, and rampant hunting - that face our polar regions and its vulnerable, animal inhabitants.

Lest you believe being on assignment for the world-famous National Geographic magazine is some type of Martini-sipping, romantic fantasy, Nicklen provides his audience with the harsh truth of this dangerous profession in graphic detail: living in a tent for months at a time on ice and enduring sub-zero conditions; only having between 1 and 2 hours of shooting during a one-month period, and failing 95% of the time to take any usable images; crash-landing ultra-light planes in the Canadian Arctic while travelling to remote locations to photograph the elusive, long-toothed Narwhal whales; falling through ice into freezing water, only to be saved in the nick of time by a laconic, Inuit hunter; almost being killed by a bull seal. Tales straight out of a Boys Own Adventure annual by a man whose philosophy on image-taking includes “get as close as possible to your subject and if you get scared, suck it up.”

But, when Nicklen does capture his award-winning images, they are, as you would expect, wondrous to behold especially when shown as giant projections. Beautifully lit and composed, in-your face, close-up images of polar bears, emperor penguins, and leopard seals brought spontaneous gasps, cheers and universal applause from an entranced audience.

IMAGE OF A WALRUS BY PAUL NICKLEN: SUPPLIED.

IMAGE OF EMPEROR PENGUINS BY PAUL NICKLEN: SUPPLIED.

Weaving throughout Nicklen’s presentation is a very serious conservationist sub-text that describes a fragile, disappearing, polar ice eco-system that will potentially cause the extinction of polar bears during our life-time.

In generations to come, I believe Nicklen’s photos may be used by historians to reveal a time when beautiful creatures inhabited our planet’s icy, polar regions.

These presentations will appeal not only to amateur and professional photographers alike, but, to those with an adventurous spirit, and those with a conscience regarding the future of our planet and its increasingly vulnerable animal inhabitants.

This is the first time that, National Geographic Live has been to Melbourne. I sincerely hope that such presentations will become a regular fixture for the National Geographic.

The next National Geographic presentation, enticingly titled “Grizzlies, Piranhas and Man-Eating Pigs”, will be by explorer, Joel Sartore, and you will be able to catch it at The Arts Centre, on 01 September 2013.

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