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Hay Fever: 100 Years Of Fun

27 June 202426 June 2024 Steve Willems

Hay Fever Rating

★★★★★

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It’s been 100 years since Noel Coward wrote his absurd comedy Hay Fever, and it’s played in theatres worldwide. Told in three acts, it follows a weekend in the Bliss family home, each of which has invited a guest over for the weekend without informing the others. When the guests arrive, the eccentric family’s theatrics and bickering cause plenty of absurdity and laughs.

Jason Darlington makes his directorial debut at the Genesian Theatre on Kent Street in Sydney, keeping the play set in the 1920s as originally written. Even in a modernised contemporary setting, this story would still make a testament to the timelessness of Coward’s writing, but it was fitting to go back to the decadence, style, and vocalisation of the 1920s when it was originally written.

The set design and associated props were spot-on and drew me into the Bliss household. The little details, such as the bookcase, staircase, picture frames, and period-correct china and tea set, really help draw the audience into the world. The 1920s costumes provide a strong sense of time and place, and my favourites were Sorel’s evening dress and Myra’s Flapper outfits.

The play has a large cast, including four members of the Bliss family, their housekeeper, and four guests. The performances from the cast were thoroughly enjoyable, as were the haughty and snobbish upper-class British accents. Maintaining the humour and timing of the dialogue is challenging, especially on opening nights, but the ensemble accomplished an excellent job.

Each character gets plenty of stage time, with the second act broken down into several sequences where a successive pair of actors dominate the stage. The jokes, the timing, and the energy all work well, with Zoe Wilson as Sorel Bliss and Elizabeth MacGregor as the matriarch Judith Bliss being especially noteworthy. Judith is a retired actress, and her subsequent theatrics were a lot of fun.

The story itself is quite soft and situational, and it’s not trying to be anything more than an absurd little romp. Much of it seems outlandish, like how quickly the characters seem to fall in love with each other, but given the theatrical and creative background of the Bliss family, it suits the characters and makes enough sense to be fun. The audience enjoyed many laughs, especially towards the end of the second act.

Despite some opening night quirks, Hay Fever is an energetic, fun, and worthwhile experience at the Genesian Theatre. Its lively performances make it a production worth your time.

Hay Fever runs from 22nd June to 27th July, with sessions running on Friday and Saturday nights at 7.30 pm and a Sunday matinee at 4.30 pm.

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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Sydney Film Festival – Aquarius

19 June 2024 Steve Willems

Sydney Film Festival – Aquarius Rating

★★★★★

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If you live in Australia, then it’s likely you’ve heard of Nimbin, famous for peace, love, and hippies. But it wasn’t always that way. In 1973, a group of university students from Sydney were looking for a place to celebrate new ideas and counterculture outside the conservative restrictions and government violence of the city.

To do this, they imagined a 10-day festival of art and music and alternate living in a rural setting. The location they finally picked was a small country town in Northern NSW called Nimbin. The rest, as they say, is history.

Aquarius is a new documentary exploring the 1973 Aquarius festival, which not only transformed a small country town into a hippie heartland but also triggered a social movement that changed a generation and is still alive today. Director Wendy Champagne wisely approaches the documentary with a soft hand, relying mostly on archival footage and contemporary interviews with those involved. This helps draw the audience into the experience while not over-explaining or over-dramatizing the event.

Luckily for Champagne and editor Karin Steininger, the festival was well-documented by several film-making collectives and amateur documentarians, leaving a vast library of video, film, and even television material to use. It’s a shame that much of the video footage was either damaged in storage or shot with damaged cameras–I could see the trails of burned-in video sensors damaged by inexperienced film-makers shooting bright lights like the sun–but the film-makers wisely chose to use the footage unaltered and not try to fix it somehow.

Authenticity counts, and the footage is important to tell the story. The editing was well-paced, and the images were always appropriate for the narrative or mood. Original design sketches made by University of Sydney students at the time who helped organise the festival are brought to life through fun, clever animations.

The documentary’s core drawback is establishing its purpose. Why should people care? The film does explore the festival’s impact on subsequent environmental and social movements, but ultimately, it just feels like nostalgia bait for those who were there. It doesn’t really have anything to say to a younger audience apart from repeating how fun it was and that it was historically important. But those claims are never really that convincing.

My screening was mostly occupied by people over 60, many of whom were there. Will a broader audience be interested in some hippy festival that happened back in 1973? I hope so. Aquarius is still a well-made documentary and a satisfying look at a special time in Australian history. It’s well worth your time.

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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Sydney Film Festival – The Outrun

14 June 2024 Steve Willems

The Outrun – Sydney Film Festival Rating

★★★★★

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According to Orkney Island folklore, when people drown in the sea they get turned into seals. These creatures, called Selkies, secretly come back to land at night to dance in human form, before heading back into the sea. But, if someone sees them while on land, they get stuck in human form, to live their lives unhappily on land and longing to return to the sea.

I recently saw The Outrun, a new Scottish film by German director Nora Fingscheidt, at the Sydney Film Festival. It tells the story of Rona, a young woman who returns to the windswept Orkney islands of Scotland to recover from a troubled past while studying in London. The film is fragmented and non-linear, jumping back and forth in time between her childhood, wild nights out in London, the rise and fall of a relationship, and her journey of recovery on the Islands of Orkney.

The cinematography is solid and often beautiful, showcasing not only the wild, natural beauty of the Orkneys, but also letting us dive into the colour and vibrancy of London and the sensory confusion of intoxication. Rona is an alcoholic, and her journey deep into the abyss of her addiction and then trying to climb back out is the core of the film.

The cast are incredibly engaging. Saoirse Ronan, who plays Rona, also produced the film and leads an outstanding cast including Stephen Dillane, Saskia Reeves, and Paapa Essiedu. They all deliver solid, believable performances that feel true to their characters.

What I noticed most about the film was how well sound was being used to create atmosphere. The constant howling wind on the islands gave a real sense of an unforgiving and cold environment. I felt like I was there. It was often subtle but almost always there, and when they faded out the wind for a poignant moment of reflection it worked beautifully.

In London, the sounds of traffic and people and music was an effective contrast to the desolate wind. Sound was also important to Rona. She listens to dance music as she works on her father’s farm or walks along the shore, a connection to her distant life in London. For months she listens out for the elusive call of a rare migratory bird.

We are told this bird, the Corncrake, has a low chance of surviving its journey to Africa and back. That was an allegory I felt laid on with a heavy hand, especially when Rona is told similar statistics to the success of recovering alcoholics before embarking on her journey back to the Orkneys.

Another problem was the cliché use of hair colour to denote different periods on Rona’s life. Hair-colour is a well-used visual cue for the audience to keep track of constant shifts in narrative time, but they could have come up with something more creative, such as hairstyle or even tattoos. It seemed easy, and lazy. And worse, it was used to manage an editing choice that was itself problematic.

The narrative has several layers of extra complexity and detail that could have been dropped from the film without doing any damage to the core emotional story. This seems to be a hangover from its source; the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot, who also helped write the screenplay. It felt as if the production team was so enamoured by elements from the novel, they were determined to put them in the film even though they’re different mediums. Random voiceovers came in that don’t help build the world or drive the narrative forward in a satisfying way. It was obvious these were simply bits from the book they wanted in the film but didn’t have time to explore properly. The Outrun is littered with these half-formed ideas or half-developed themes.

Paradoxically, while it’s littered with detail, the narrative runs out of steam. By mid-way, the film settles into a constant repetition of events and doesn’t really go anywhere, only adding small details or extra information that could have been told earlier and more efficiently, or not at all.

The second act is often dangerous territory for film-makers and The Outrun suffers from a lack of discipline. The constant jumping in time and place may represent Rona’s state of mind, and reflect the source material, but it doesn’t allow the audience to settle down and get drawn into the story. Instead, I was getting bored.

And then came the ending, which I felt was somewhat derivative, predictable, and a little unsatisfying. The Outrun is a well shot, superbly acted film that suffers from an undisciplined script and a chaotic structure that takes the wind out of its sails.

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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A Mid-Autumn Night’s Frenzy Of Laughter And Joy

13 April 2024 Steve Willems

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Rating

★★★★★

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Often, the idea of seeing a Shakespearian play conjures up similarities to visiting the opera, symphony, or ballet. There’s a stigma of intelligence, stuffiness, sophistication, and class. You don’t normally consider Macbeth or Hamlet a fun night out with the family. But Shakespeare wrote his plays for everyone, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream was always meant to be a fun comedy, not some academic undertaking. This performance by the Australian Shakespeare Company maintains that tradition while celebrating its 35th year.

I thought about this perception of Shakespeare as I crouched down into my low-rise chair on the lawn, wine in hand, and stared at the empty stage in front of me. The air was cool, and the sky was clear. Behind the stage, the trees of Centennial Park were lit up to form the perfect backdrop to this magical play.

I initially felt a little let down, expecting a more elaborate set-up for a larger, more spectacular show, making the most of the location amongst the trees. Instead, I looked up at a raised stage with a few stairs dressed up with vines and leaves. Then, all of a sudden, a golf cart-style greenskeeper vehicle raced up a ramp onto the stage, and the Athenian players, modernised for contemporary times, burst into a frenzy of audience announcements mixed with their planning of a play within the play. It set the tone well, and the couple beside me were immediately in hysterics. But I needed a bit more warming up, and so I sipped my wine cautiously as the story began…

The energy was electric, and the play moved along at a rapid but carefully controlled pace. Modern humour was added throughout the classic dialogue, which flowed along seamlessly. This helped to keep a well-worn play fresh and entertaining while staying true to the original material. Most of this came through the Athenian players, but even our lovers had plenty of modern quips and references that never felt intrusive or disrespectful.

The soundtrack cleverly used well-known tracks that often triggered the audience to sing along. There was a Taylor Swift Eras Tour joke at one point because even Shakespeare can’t escape her orbit. All around me, groups of friends, partners, and colleagues were turning to each other and gasping, ‘This is so amazing! How good is this!’

The cast gave it their all, sometimes a bit too much, with only one scene becoming a bit hyperactive. The humour was often cartoonish, in a good way, with body language replicating characters from Loony Tunes cartoons, such as the love-sick Lysander and Demetrius floating along on Tiptoes after Helena. You’ll know it when you see it. This cartoonish energy worked well with the fantasy feel of the play. While the Greek lovers, players and Aristocracy were dressed in what seemed like 1990s-inspired suits, dresses and overalls, our fairy kingdom was wisely kept fantastical.

The audience became more vocal as the play progressed, and the wine flowed. The performers all encourage cheers, laughs, clapping, and whooping. When Oberon’s coat was caught on a trapdoor on his way onto the stage, Hugh Sexton broke character and declared to the crowd ‘what an entrance!’ to which they cheered and clapped. The whole point of the play, and the way it’s delivered, is to have a great time.

Once the lover’s quarrel is resolved and the wedding takes place, the Athenian players take to the stage within the stage.
That’s when the whole performance goes into manic overdrive. Layer upon layer of humour and inventiveness energised the audience. Details like the ‘director’ mimicking the actor’s performances, the reactions of Theseus and Hippolyta, actors not in the central performance, adding a few jokes, there was always something going on.

And when it was all finally over, I didn’t mind that my initial expectations of some visual spectacular had not been met. The staging was subdued, and I was disappointed that the big fog cannons and fireworks only came on at the end, but something even better happened. I left with a smile on my face.

I’m not sure what a serious Shakespearian scholar would think of this performance. I hope they simply had a great time, along with all the other adults, young kids, and even middle-aged kids like me. So, if you want a god-natured fun night out with a lot of laughs, be sure to get there while you can. And don’t forget to bring some nibblies and a blanket, because the weather is starting to turn cold out there.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Under the Stars is playing at the Centennial Park Belvedere amphitheatre until the 28th of April, with a range of ticket prices to suit your budget.

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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