Arts Theatre Cronulla Presents: The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps Rating

Click if you liked this article

2

High-paced physical comedy and a wildly multi-talented cast carry this chaotic and hilarious staged version of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps at Cronulla Arts Theatre.

Director Cheryl Butler’s production is charming and deft. With a cast of four and a character list of more than 150, this production is a serious ask of its ensemble. The four actors switch accents, attitudes, and hats at pace throughout the play and manage to get both laughs and sympathetic groans from the crowd.

 

Gavin Leahy’s Richard Hannay is charming and moves almost like Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz film; his pratfalls and facial expressions add jokes to the already enjoyable script. He and Angela Gibson (who play the three key female characters who cross Hannay’s path) both have genuine chemistry and some of the most precise timed visual gags.

The two clowns, Gary Clark and Kathryn Bray have several sequences where the gags are layered as they switch characters and accents with simple movements or costume shifts. These two actors create the groundwork for the moments of romantic chemistry, always following them with a wink and a nudge.

Despite a reasonably long run time for a comedy, the show doesn’t lose your attention. The night we attended, the laughs only seemed to build as the night went along. Using a standalone door as a prop starts slightly funny and grows to be consistently hilarious. The suits are sharp, the staging is mostly minimal, and that’s also worked into the comedy of the thing. The prop work, especially from Kathryn Bray, is excellent.

 

Patrick Barlow’s stage adaptation takes a loving and goofy approach to the source material. The iconic plane chase appears in shadow puppet relief, and there’s a dramatic and hilarious action sequence on a train that both pays tribute to and pokes fun at the original.

If you’re looking for a faithful Hitchcock adaptation, this is not the play for you, but some passing knowledge of the film will deepen the experience of the show and add a few jokes that might go over the head of someone going in cold. The energy required to convincingly carry off a clowning play is immense, and Cronulla Arts Theatre’s production of The 39 Steps has it and then some. I would thoroughly recommend it.

For Tickets to The 39 Steps, please book @ https://www.artstheatrecronulla.com.au/the39steps

The season runs from 25 October to 30 November, with Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees on 27 October and 3, 17, and 24 November at 2 p.m.

Photographer: Dan Binger, Graham West, Jeffrey Gall, Mark Phillips, Peter Gale

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

The Old Fitz Presents: The Female Of The Species

The Female of the Species

The Female of the Species Rating

Click if you liked this article

5

Arriving at the Old Fitz for the play, your night is already off to a great start. As the only surviving pub theatre in Australia, this atmospheric venue is a perfect setting for a play loosely inspired by a true Australian story of a feminist writer held hostage at gunpoint by a disgruntled student.

Upon entering the theatre space, the audience is immediately enveloped in the sounds of the Australian bush—chirping birds and buzzing cicadas—creating a vivid backdrop for the intimate setting of writer Margot Mason’s home. The stage is adorned with an eclectic array of books, hinting at the intellectual battles to unfold.

 

Lucy Miller delivers a standout performance as Margot, a revered feminist writer grappling with debilitating writer’s block. Her character embodies the struggle to stay relevant in a rapidly changing landscape of female representation and sexuality. Her latest book needs a new hook, but what new angle is there to explore on female sexuality?

Enter Jade Fuda as Molly Rivers, the fervent student whose admiration for Margot quickly reveals a darker undercurrent. Initially praising and fanatical, Molly’s obsession morphs into a chilling mission: to kill the woman whose work she holds responsible for her mother’s abandonment and subsequent suicide.

The dialogue shifts deftly between humour and tension as the play explores the evolving definitions of womanhood through the years. Margot and Molly’s banter serves as a comedic dissection of feminist ideals, questioning what it means to be an “ideal” woman—be it a nurturing homemaker, an ambitious careerist, or a childless self-improver. Margot is blamed for altering the “ideal” by swapping and changing the parameters in her every book, a relatable observation into the ever-shifting opinion of our own generation.

 

With the arrival of Molly’s exhausted homemaker daughter, Tess Thornton, who has disappointed Molly as she chose to dedicate herself to motherhood instead of a career, the three women represent polar opposites on the feminist scale. Who is the most “correct woman” you ask yourself as the story continues with the arrival of three men, equally as polarising and almost caricature like, leaving the audience reflecting on the complexities of female identity and the intersections of admiration and resentment.

The Female of the Species is not just a play but a thought-provoking exploration of feminism wrapped in sharp wit and dark humour.

Overall, with its strong performances, engaging script, and the Old Fitz’s charming ambience, this production is a must-see for anyone interested in the ongoing dialogue about womanhood in modern society.

The Female Of The Species season runs November 1 – 23, with session times as follows: 7pm Tuesday through Friday, 2pm and 7 pm Saturday, and 5 pm Sunday.

For tickets, please book @ https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/the-female-of-the-species

Photographer: Noni Carroll Photography

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Your Name Means Dream

Your Name Means Dream

Your Name Means Dream Rating

Click if you liked this article

Wow. I am going to put this front and centre: if you love seeing high-quality acting and theatre, go and see ‘Your Name Means Dream’ at Red Stitch Actors Theatre. What a phenomenal play and performances by two outstanding actors.

This brilliantly written play by the highly acclaimed Oscar nominee and Obie Award-winning playwright José Rivera (famous for ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’) has hit the shores of Australia for the first time at Red Stitch Theatre in Melbourne.

The cast of two give stellar performances, which should not be a surprise with their extensive backgrounds on both screen and stage. Caroline Lee takes on the role of ‘Aislin,’ a disgruntled widow in her mid-sixties who lives alone in her run-down apartment in New York in the not-so-distant future. Lucy Ansell plays the role of ‘Stacy,’ an advanced robot sent by Aislin’s son, Roberto, to be Aislin’s live-in caregiver and companion.

The play opens with the first meeting of the two characters. Aislin, having settled into a dreary and solitary life after the death of her husband and estrangement from her son, shows resistance to this new form of caregiver sent by her son, Roberto.

Stacy is programmed to assist Aislin in living as long and healthy a life as possible while learning from Aislin along the way. She also yearns to learn as much as she can about humanity from Aislin, wanting to get as close as she can to that point within the limits of being a robot.

 

You will walk away from this play contemplating themes including the future of technology with artificial intelligence and machine learning, family, relationships, what it means to be human, health, loneliness, quality of life, death, and grief. All of that in the space of a couple of hours. What a journey!

There is so much lovely comedy intertwined within the dialogue of this play. Caroline and Lucy really carried these comedic moments, having the audience switch from laughter to tears and back again in the blink of an eye.

It was an absolute joy to watch these two actors work together. Caroline and Lucy both portrayed their characters with so much depth, nuance, and humanity—yes, even the robot! The accents were flawless, and subtle characterisations were well-engrained into each character. Lucy’s quick switches between Stacy the robot and Roberto were mesmerising to watch.

The staging was perfect for what this play needed. A nice, simple set was more than enough to still have the audience buy into the world of Aislin and Stacy, with the entire play taking place in the living room of Aislin’s very drab and dilapidated apartment. This really is a play not to be missed.

Your Name Means Dream is on at the Red Stitch Actors Theatre from October 26 to November 24. Tickets may be purchased @ https://www.redstitch.net/your-name-means-dream-2024

Photographer: James Reiser

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

The Kingdom of Eucalypts: The Enigma of Miles Franklin

The Kingdom of Eucalypts: The Enigma of Miles Franklin

The Kingdom of Eucalypts: The Enigma of Miles Franklin Rating

Click if you liked this article

1

Thursday night’s rainy Halloween seemed a fitting time to see a play about the ageing, once-successful Australian writer and activist Miles Franklin, who is haunted by her past.

Moira Blumenthal directs The Kingdom of Eucalypts: The Enigma of Miles Franklin, a play by Australian-Hungarian playwright and psychologist Alice Spigelman, currently being performed at the Bondi Pavilion Theatre in Sydney. Spigelman has written an intriguing examination of a period of Miles Franklin’s life perhaps not all that well known.

While researching at the State Library of New South Wales for another project, Spigelman discovered that Franklin had curiously written some of her diaries in code. Spigelman wondered why a woman in her fifties needed to resort to such a habit, leading the playwright to find out why. The play goes some way in providing answers.

After decades spent overseas, a middle-aged Miles has returned to live in very straitened circumstances with her elderly mother, Susannah, in suburban Sydney. They are struggling so much that in one scene, Miles shamefully reveals they’re living off mouldy bread. The once-lauded writer, who had early success in her twenties with the novel My Brilliant Career, now finds herself ignored by the literary establishment.

Despite her years away from Australia, she sees that not much has changed in sexist attitudes towards female writers. In another scene, Miles rails against the fact that she still needs to adopt a male name in order to be published. Her choice of the nom de plume ‘Captain Bligh’ elicited chuckles from the audience.

 

It is through her friendship with Australian editor and publisher Percy ‘Inky’ Stephensen that Miles hopes to resurrect her flailing writing career. Miles, however, finds herself increasingly drawn into Inky’s political organising.

Spigelman has taken a clever approach to representing the bifurcated self that we see in the character of Miles. Two actors, Beth Daly and Sarah Greenwood, play the old and young Miles, respectively. This device allows us to see the impact of time on the writer’s psyche. Daly does an admirable job in portraying the now frustrated Miles, who at once seems world-weary but also still harbours hopes for a different future.

Greenwood plays the young Miles with a youthful energy, heightening our pity for her older self. Lloyd Allison-Young is excellent as the bombastic and eventually bitter Inky Stephensen, and James Coetzee very competently plays Edwin, Miles’ suitor in her youth. A highlight is Alice Livingstone’s portrayal of Susannah Franklin. Livingstone beautifully captures the elderly woman’s fussiness and also her deep love for her daughter.

The Kingdom of Eucalypts season runs from 30 Oct to 17 Nov. To book your tickets please go to https://www.moirablumenthalproductions.com.au/thekingdomofeucalypts

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Spread the word on your favourite platform!