High School Musical on Stage! based on the Disney Channel movie by Peter Barsocchini and book by David Simpatico. Music adapted, arranged and produced by Bryan Louiselle. Directed by Berin Denham, music directed by Leisa Keen and dance choreographed by Jordan Kelly in the Big Top, Eddison Park, Woden, until October 13 at 7pm. Tickets (5 years and over) $40/pp. Group rate (10 or more) $35/pp. Tickets: ticketmaster.com.au
The success of this show depends first of all on recorded sound, supplied by Disney Theatricals, which took the local team three months to re-record incorporating voice-overs and cues for singers, dance numbers and lights. Though not credited in the program, the sound team’s final cut, run on a laptop, worked like a charm.
Second, though the show is an example of franchised American schmaltz, the directors achieved the right high-energy level, timing, dance work and harmony singing from a large cast ranging from young teenagers to adults to make it work on stage in its own right. In particular, last Saturday, the central couple of Troy and Gabriella played that night by Andy Burton and Jacinta Mai Le produced the kind of electricity needed to focus the production. They managed to make a sentimental story pleasantly romantic.
The theme of High School Musical is seductive for an old drama teacher like me. The basketball coach talks of teaching teamwork, commitment and self-confidence. The drama teacher explodes with “That’s exactly what I teach” and then loudly attacks the tradition of sport being funded way above the arts. Of course, it’s hard to reject the resolution of the conflicts with hugs all round between the Jocks, the Brainiacs, the Thespians and the Skater Dudes in the song We’re All In This Together, however unrealistic this may be.
“I didn’t lie. I improvised,” says the fly in the ointment Drama Club President Sharpay, perhaps better representing the way people in power continue to behave after high school. It seemed to me that Vanessa de Jager had some difficulty changing Sharpay from “I am the star” to “I’m sorry” in her final scene with Gabriella. However, it’s clear this group of thespians have learned teamwork, commitment and self-confidence, and their show is certainly worth seeing (so long as younger audience members don’t imagine high school is really like this, even in America).
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 29 September 2007
Monday, 17 September 2007
2007: Metrosexual by Matthew Robinson
Metrosexual written and performed by Matthew Robinson. Produced by Bill Stephens in the Cabaret Crème series at The Street Theatre, Monday September 17.
Bill Stephens continues to be the doyen of cabaret since the days of his famous Queanbeyan School of Arts Café, and still works to bring both top class performers and new promising talent to public attention.
Matthew Robinson is an actor, songwriter and pianist who, at 27, is building a career in musical and straight theatre, on stage and television. He has certainly been successful in performing and writing, perhaps especially in winning an $80,000 Pratt Prize for Music Theatre in 2004 to develop Metro Street, his first full length musical, to production stage.
However, the program of his original songs in Metrosexual is not as engaging or exciting as I had hoped. Robinson’s lyrics are interesting, giving us a new twist in close-up observation of modern metro life. I thought the best example was the love song which focusses on finding someone who can give him broadband, pay tv and other electronic consumer experiences, at a reasonable cost per month, of course. Many individual lines are effective, but there are other stronger more stylish metro-folk-funk writer-singers especially from Melbourne where Robinson is based.
The Street Theatre mainstage is quite unforgiving for a solo performer trying to work in an intimate cabaret format. Without food, drink and scattered tables there was not the ambience which Robinson might have exploited, particularly with a younger audience to whom he would speak directly. To a largely middle-aged group at the 8.30pm session I attended, his patter between songs seemed a bit shallow and predictable, without the warmth of personality of a more mature performer.
I also found his music rather repetitive in form, though interesting for his Mozartian off the keynote endings. None of the songs had melodies which were well distinguished from each other or remain in the memory for later enjoyment. I was left with an impression of talent which will need some more years to mature before it fulfills its promise.
Cabaret Crème will present Lisa Schouw’s Life and Music of Nina Simone on October 15 and The Streisand Story performed by Avigail Herman on November 19.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Bill Stephens continues to be the doyen of cabaret since the days of his famous Queanbeyan School of Arts Café, and still works to bring both top class performers and new promising talent to public attention.
Matthew Robinson is an actor, songwriter and pianist who, at 27, is building a career in musical and straight theatre, on stage and television. He has certainly been successful in performing and writing, perhaps especially in winning an $80,000 Pratt Prize for Music Theatre in 2004 to develop Metro Street, his first full length musical, to production stage.
However, the program of his original songs in Metrosexual is not as engaging or exciting as I had hoped. Robinson’s lyrics are interesting, giving us a new twist in close-up observation of modern metro life. I thought the best example was the love song which focusses on finding someone who can give him broadband, pay tv and other electronic consumer experiences, at a reasonable cost per month, of course. Many individual lines are effective, but there are other stronger more stylish metro-folk-funk writer-singers especially from Melbourne where Robinson is based.
The Street Theatre mainstage is quite unforgiving for a solo performer trying to work in an intimate cabaret format. Without food, drink and scattered tables there was not the ambience which Robinson might have exploited, particularly with a younger audience to whom he would speak directly. To a largely middle-aged group at the 8.30pm session I attended, his patter between songs seemed a bit shallow and predictable, without the warmth of personality of a more mature performer.
I also found his music rather repetitive in form, though interesting for his Mozartian off the keynote endings. None of the songs had melodies which were well distinguished from each other or remain in the memory for later enjoyment. I was left with an impression of talent which will need some more years to mature before it fulfills its promise.
Cabaret Crème will present Lisa Schouw’s Life and Music of Nina Simone on October 15 and The Streisand Story performed by Avigail Herman on November 19.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 12 September 2007
2007: The Landlords by Jordan Prosser and Sam Burns-Warr
The Landlords by Jordan Prosser and Sam Burns-Warr, presented by the Wave Edge Theory (WET) Season at Belconnen Theatre, Swanson St, Belconnen, September 12 and 14, 8pm
If this were 1947 instead of 2007, this play would have been named En Attendant Godot, written by a mature age but new author, Samuel Beckett, who went on to become a central figure in 20th Century theatre. At 40 years of age, after years in the French resistance, hiding in fear of arrest and torture, his characters wait for their Godot in a bleak formless landscape, symbolising the devastation and hopelessness at the end of World War.
60 years on, at the beginning of the new century, new young writers Prosser and Burns-Warr present an equally bleak view of our world, perhaps even less hopeful than before. Their characters, named Archimedes and Jesus Christ, are holed up in a hotel foyer with a toilet each and an unreliable electricity generator, living on Cheezels and Kit-Kats, knowing (or at least believing) they are the last people left alive on earth, on their last day of life.
Prosser and Burns-Warr do not yet have the mature writing skills that Beckett had, not the poetic and powerful use of language of Waiting for Godot, but they may well be on the way. This is the purpose of the WET Season, to give new young writers a place to present their work – a purpose successfully fulfilled in The Landlords. The figure of Death as a pizza delivery boy, perhaps a parallel to the Boy who brings the message that Godot won’t come today, is quite brilliant, though the symbolism needs to be worked through more clearly.
The horrifying thing is that Vladimir and Estragon in 1947 still believed in Godot despite everything, while Archy and JC have absolutely nothing left to hope for, not even a belief in an illusory God. What have we done, this play asks, that perhaps in the quite near future will bring human society to such an uninspiring end? Drama should confront us with such questions, and I hope that Prosser and Burns-Warr continue a productive theatrical partnership.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If this were 1947 instead of 2007, this play would have been named En Attendant Godot, written by a mature age but new author, Samuel Beckett, who went on to become a central figure in 20th Century theatre. At 40 years of age, after years in the French resistance, hiding in fear of arrest and torture, his characters wait for their Godot in a bleak formless landscape, symbolising the devastation and hopelessness at the end of World War.
60 years on, at the beginning of the new century, new young writers Prosser and Burns-Warr present an equally bleak view of our world, perhaps even less hopeful than before. Their characters, named Archimedes and Jesus Christ, are holed up in a hotel foyer with a toilet each and an unreliable electricity generator, living on Cheezels and Kit-Kats, knowing (or at least believing) they are the last people left alive on earth, on their last day of life.
Prosser and Burns-Warr do not yet have the mature writing skills that Beckett had, not the poetic and powerful use of language of Waiting for Godot, but they may well be on the way. This is the purpose of the WET Season, to give new young writers a place to present their work – a purpose successfully fulfilled in The Landlords. The figure of Death as a pizza delivery boy, perhaps a parallel to the Boy who brings the message that Godot won’t come today, is quite brilliant, though the symbolism needs to be worked through more clearly.
The horrifying thing is that Vladimir and Estragon in 1947 still believed in Godot despite everything, while Archy and JC have absolutely nothing left to hope for, not even a belief in an illusory God. What have we done, this play asks, that perhaps in the quite near future will bring human society to such an uninspiring end? Drama should confront us with such questions, and I hope that Prosser and Burns-Warr continue a productive theatrical partnership.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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