comedy - Whats The Show

Shrapnel

21 June 2024 Amelia Williamson

Shrapnel Rating

★★★★★

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‘Shrapnel’, performed by Natalie Gamsu at Fortyfive Downstairs, is a distinctly charming recital depicting Gamsu’s life from being a young Jewish girl living in Namibia to performing in underground cabaret venues in Johannesburg to her life in Australia. Written by Natalie Gamsu and Ash Flanders and directed by Stephen Niccolazoo, the show is tastefully pertinent and yet totally unique.

The show runs a little over two hours without intermission, as Gamsu pulls the audience through a series of personal chronicles, beginning with her experience as a young Jewish girl dreaming to break free from the humdrum reality of her parents and the restrictive culture she was raised in.

In her opening ballad, Gamsu sets the scene – she is a hopeful young woman pursuing the world and all its wonders. The audience warms to Gamsu as she connects with every pair of eyes in the auditorium, one by one, before amusing the audience with tales of her love for exoticism through animated dialogue.

Gamsu bravely dives head first into describing experiences in matters often unspoken and outlawed as taboo. Her performance evocatively retells deeply personal experiences involving struggles with negative body image, her journey navigating a neurological health condition, and serious contemplations of suicide.

She recalls her experience being the daughter of a white Jewish family during South African apartheid, her love and loss of the black servants who raised her, and the diabolical persecution she witnessed within her community. Gamsu brings authenticity to her stories, which are so painstakingly well-written and delivered with a unique wit, allowing her audience to relax into her two-hour-long recital fully.

‘Shrapnel’ is performed in a way that dignifies Gamsu’s deepest secrets and induces the audience into bursts of laughter through a series of self-deprecating anecdotes and colourful descriptions of her favourite influential figures. Among the most memorable of these are her peculiar first casting agent in Cape Town and the eccentric directors of a cabaret club in Johannesburg.

As the recital nears a close, Gamsu describes a fond, long-awaited love from her mother amid her battle with dementia before closing her performance with ‘A Song For You’, affording herself a well-deserved and heart-felt standing ovation.

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.

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Moonlight and Magnolias

7 June 2024 Barry Hill OAM

Moonlight and Magnolias Rating

★★★★★

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Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War epic, Gone With the Wind, was published in 1936 and became an international bestseller. It was adapted into a movie in 1939, which garnered eight Academy Awards, including Hattie McDaniel’s win for Best Supporting Actress, which made her the first African American actor to take home an Oscar. However, the movie almost never made it to the big screen.

The producer, David O. Selznick, shut down production after 30 days because he was unhappy with the script. He called in hot shot writer Ben Hecht, who had never read the book, and director Victor Fleming to do a rewrite. Playwright Ron Hutchinson locks Hecht, Fleming, Selznick and his secretary in a room for five days and reimagines how the script was finished in Moonlight & Magnolias.

Hutchinson’s play, based on historical events, is written as farce, but the characters also deal with serious questions about race and the fragile position of Jewish executives in Hollywood.
The roles of Selznick, Hecht, and Fleming are based on historical figures. This play adds a secretary, Miss Poppenghul, who stays near the office while the men are locked inside for five days, surviving on peanuts and bananas.

Director Harry Dewar’s production focusses on the tension between the three creatives. He makes full use of the large stage dominated by an elegant Art Deco set in green and peach with a huge picture window at the back designed by Skye Mc Vicar and lit by Richard Parkhill. His blocking is almost choreographic at times utilising every corner of the set.

The play opens to a montage of Hollywood in the 2930s (by Brandon Boyer) with the cast cleverly included. A nice touch!

Adam Gregory Schultz plays David O. Selznick with a manic intensity, dominating the stage and pushing the narrative forward. He is a multi-tasker managing multiple props, phone calls, intercoms, bananas and peanuts with equal ease! He scenes with Hecht in Act 2 are a highlight.

Terry Crowe plays Ben Hecht the frustrated script writer with compassion. He is the realist of the creative team. The play uses Hecht’s character to raise questions about whether the script glorifies the Old South. He doubts that the movie will be a hit and doesn’t even want writing credit on the script for fear that it will ruin his career. Hecht asks Selznick at one point, “Why don’t you make a movie that makes America look its ugly face in the mirror?” To which Selznick replies, “Because no one wants to see that. America wants to see the way it thinks it looks.”

Scott Battersby plays Victor Fleming the director, pulled from the set of The Wizard of Oz to work on Gone With The Wind has many of the show’s ‘one-liners’ which he delivers with precision. His portrayal of Melanie giving birth in Act 2 is hysterical!

Rebecca Gardiner plays the well-meaning secretary Miss Poppenghul with patience alternating with exasperation. Dealing with Selznick is enough, but now she has two extra egos to deal with. Special mentions need to go to the costume coordinator Makala Modra and especially the props team Janet Jauncy and Karen Prior who progressively cover the stage with crumpled paper and scripts as time passes in the play.

My reservation with this production is the vocal tone of Act 1 which lacked light and shade with the result that the actors had nowhere to go when angry and some of the laughs were lost. This was resolved in Act 2.

Moonlight and Magnolias is an exposé of the side of Hollywood we do not see, the prejudices of the period, and of course the egos that brought us one of the most iconic movies of the last century!

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.

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Bernie Dieters Club Kabarett

7 June 20246 June 2024 Faith Jessel

Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett Rating

★★★★★

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Bernie Dieter is back with a bootylicious BANG and its settings on stun!

Dare to enter if you can handle the heat. A sultry fusion of circus, song and sexy burlesque, where the thrill of the centre ring meets the seduction of the velvet curtain. Temptation breaks all the boring boundaries and sinks itself into your lap. Ach, mein Gott! What a ride! You must see it darling- it’s BEAUTIFUL!

Like a glittering diamond in the rough under the dome of the Moore Park Spiegeltent, ‘Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett’ is a lesson in surrendering to the decadence of hedonism and celebrating the human form in all its glory. Settled within the intimate shadows and velvety atmosphere, we are offered a tasty blend of gritty underground danger and pure, unadulterated flair without ever tipping the scales into crassness or whimsy. This requires astounding skill, my friend.

What’s the X-factor that makes this experience so uniquely delicious? It captures and embraces the unbridled spirit and liberated essence of Weimar-era cabaret. This show is a thoroughbred, real deal cabaret that knows exactly how to deliver and doesn’t hold back. Vibrantly avant-garde and at times ironically grotesque, it provocatively pushes buttons, relishing in its own signature sauce of salaciousness. A big juicy f**k you to conformity and the mundane.

Talent upon talent upon talent. The spotlight ignites seven heavenly bodies – titillating tornadoes of effortless circus expertise. Our hair is literally blown back, our eyes ache from the dazzle, our spirits soar with the thrill of it all. This is a full on fatal attraction of strength, skill, and seduction in the form of a mesmerising array of aerial feats, fiery displays, hoop artistry, whip cracking and contortionism. Eight outstanding acts deliver the perfect balance of clowning and spell binding agility, each one jaw-droppingly unforgettable in its own way and expertly woven together by the quick-witted banter of the incomparable Mistress of Ceremonies, the marvellous Miss Dieter, a ringmaster-class of song and repartee.

How can I possibly describe this powerhouse of a woman? She’s a vocal force, delivering numbers with bodacious energy and precision that’s both captivating and rare. Backed by a very tight and pulsing 3 piece band, Dieter fearlessly embraces contrasts, pivoting from unbridled ferocity in ‘Rebel Yell’ to tender vulnerability in a haunting rendition of ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. A presence that’s both commanding and nuanced, she weaves a sonic tapestry that’s utterly immersive; she defies expectations and forges a connection that’s both raw and profound. Dieter IS cabaret.

The ultimate wild child of the Club circuit family, ‘Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabaret’ shatters the mold, of leaving similar variety shows for dust. The finale is a glorious personal homage to the alchemy of art and drinking, where transformation and reinvention converge in a dazzlingly gutsy and original song.

As you gather your wits to depart, the stage lies in perfect disarray, a telltale testament to the night’s divine debauchery. Littered with party popper innards, discarded costumes, confetti, shreds of balloon rubber, feathers and a spray of white powder which I suspect may represent an illicit substance 😉 This is the aftermath of a night of extravagant fun.

Bernie, you devil, you’ve done it again! You’ve released a kaleidoscope of creativity and set the bar ridiculously high with a night that revisits and then rewrites the rules of cabaret. The impossible is now possible and your imagination knows no bounds.

This is the ultimate winter retreat from the chill of a turbulent world. Indulge in the warmth of Dieter’s organised chaos to help you forget and play for a while, to remind you of the unapologetic, permissible pleasures of being human. All are welcome. So leave your inhibitions at the door, grab your favourite poison and sit back as the candles and stage are lit for a night you won’t forget.

Danke Darling Dieter!

‘Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabaret’ plays at Sydney Spiegeltent Moore Park Entertainment Quarter until July 28th. See https://www.entertainmentquarter.com.au/event/bernie-dieters-club-kabarett/ for details.
What are you doing??? Click the link and hustle those tickets!

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.

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Rootless Cosmopolitan

18 May 202417 May 2024 @thebenmurphy_

Rootless Cosmopolitan Rating

★★★★★

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With the title of “Rootless Cosmopolitans”, I half expected to turn up and see Carrie and the gals from “Sex and the City” sipping cocktails and comparing notes on the past week’s romantic adventures. Silly me. It refers to Stalin’s euphemistic pejorative for ‘Jew’. This was a play with far more to say on issues, such as terrorism, genocide, identity, war, and conflict.

Like the aforementioned television show however, despite its darker subject matter, Monstrous Productions, presenting Ron Elisha’s challenging play, manages to keep the laughs a plenty, with many a cultural joke that even Gentiles, like myself, easily relate to. Lured into a false sense of ‘lightness’ this makes the audio of the October 7, 2023 attacks when the characters are confronted with the news of the terrorism, hit extra hard. Taking both the atmosphere on stage and in the audience to a palpable knot in the throat.

Set in the offices of an internationally respected theatre company, Artistic Director Ira Brot, who like all of us in the arts, lives in fear of something he may say publicly via socials getting misunderstood and the catchword of the day “cancel culture” being firmly placed in his direction, navigates through an ever-changing world.

Where diversity and ticking boxes are placed ahead of vision, where Jewish people have been a persecuted minority, to on face value at least, overcoming adversity, to then be thrown back into depths of terror and racism. The weight of Ira’s people’s history, hanging forever over his past present, and future, is made even more apparent with the ghost of his mother, consistently in his ear.

Despite taking a small, struggling theatre company to the international stage in 6 short years, the moment the board feels the “optics” of having a Jewish Artistic director at the helm is no longer good for business, Ira Brot is thrown into a world where he strains to find his place. All the while his marriage breaks down, his assistant director uses his proxy vote to shoo him out, and he questions his privilege.

Packed into 90 minutes, “Rootless Cosmopolitans” bounds out of the gate strong, quick with the laughs, and instantly grabs our attention with fantastic acting, most notably from Babs McMillan, who steals the show as the ghost of Ira’s ever-quipping-dead mother, and a razor-sharp script. Despite the strong start, around the middle the script and direction felt a little lost, perhaps this was a choice to shadow the emotions, Ira, anchoring the story with an even and sympathetic performance by Anton Berezin, is facing.

With great turns from Seon Williams as Ira’s assistant and then the Artistic Director of her own company, and Emily Joy playing both board member and Ira’s wife, the play finds its feet again and gallops towards the finish line.

What made this a good night at the theatre, was how given the subject matter and the world we live in, it never felt preachy. It posed many questions and didn’t always tell us the answers. Like all the characters, the audience is left questioning our own privilege, struggles, and curious as to what boxes we tick and should the optics’ change, as it did for Ira, where would we find our place in this constantly changing, ever-scrutinizing world.

Review 3.5 Pineapples

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.

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