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RBG: Of Many, One

6 April 2024 Paige Jenkins

‘RBG; Of Many, One’, a play by Suzie Miller, has made its way to Wollongong. Originally a Sydney Theatre Company production, ‘RBG’ saw a sold-out opening night at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre. This incredible one-woman show stars the phenomenal Heather Mitchell, who has reprised her role and is a brilliant display of talent.

Ms Mitchell embodied the United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg through the decades, leading a decades-long tale of life, love, loss and societal change. Mitchell not only became Justice Ginsberg but constantly shifted between young and old, as well as each president and critical character that propelled Ruth to greatness. With her exactness of accent, speech patterns, and a variety of accents from across the States, Heather Mitchell captivated the audience from the moment the lights came on stage.

It’s easy to be sceptical when coming into a one-person show, particularly one with no intermission to break up the performance; however, Heather Mitchell’s immersive experience made it difficult to look away from it. She was funny and charming, making the storytelling completely disarming and inviting. It felt as though you were sitting in a room with Justice Ginsberg as if she were an old friend or a friend of your grandparents, recounting her glory days and telling us to continue the fight she dedicated her life to. Jokes and pointed comments about future hypotheses had the audience laughing with the beauty of hindsight.

The simplicity of the set and costuming forced the acting to maintain the show’s focal point. A single armchair repurposed over and over, a side table or a satchel bag are very simple props that, when paired with certain lighting or sound effects, transport the audience to each high and low of RBG’s life.

A seamless use of production elements invited the audience into Ruth’s recount of her most influential and moulding moments. Beautiful arias from her favourite operas, sound effects of the all-important telephone call, and real-life audio taken from critical events like Presidential debates and basketball games all assisted in the impressive immersive experience.

A screen above the stage helped keep track of the year or case being discussed. Small asides and lapses into memories weaved their way through the primary time or story being discussed. It felt like a stream-of-consciousness style of discussion rather than an hour and 40-minute monologue being spoken at you.

The play began in 1993 and ended with Ruth’s death in 2020, but recounted moments from her childhood and teenage years, as well as her time at Cornell University, Harvard Law, and Columbia Law School.

Playwright Suzie Miller, director Priscilla Jackman, and the entire creative team are to be commended for their dedication to history and ability to produce a version of the so-called “Notorious RBG” that felt simultaneously undiscovered and new while being the real recount of one of the most highly regarded influential legal figures of our time.

‘RBG; Of Many, One’ runs until the 6th of April with Merrigong Theatre Company at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre. Tickets can be purchased via the Merrigong Theatre Company website.

The show is recommended for ages 15+ as it does contain some adult themes, herbal cigarettes and a complete theatrical blackout.

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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Circus of Illusion Comes to The State Theatre

1 April 2024 Linda Lokhee

The Circus of Illusion show has entertained audiences all around Australia for years. Produced, directed, and featuring acclaimed Australia’s Got Talent finalist illusionist Michael Boyd, it includes a short mix of acts that feels as though it is trying to appeal to a wide range of people. As such, it came across as more of a vaudeville variety show.

As the name suggests, the show opened with the Circus of Illusion’s ringmaster, Idris Stanton, who prepared the audience for the evening by lightening the mood with his comedic opening. The magic of Idris hosting was similar to him being the MC at a Comedy Festival, which appealed to the front row and the wider audience. Idris was also a performer in the show, and his percussion juggling act, accompanying a Queen song, was original and entertaining, as was his dangerously skilled juggling act of two knives and a working chainsaw.

One act included an aerial hula hoop artist, who displayed exceptional skills working with many hoops in a show of spinning and balance. At one stage, some hoops were LED lit and created a colourful display of fast-moving circular lights.

Other acts were illusions, during which Michael Boyd involved the audience and invited his young guests onto the stage to help him perform his illusions. “Do you believe in magic?” Michael asked his guest apprentices, to which they enthusiastically nodded. It was heart-warming to watch his connection with the kids, and no doubt, these children will believe in magic even more after being his guest apprentice!

Michael Boyd came onto the stage for more time than the first set during the second half to perform more illusions, some of which left me wondering how they were done. He performed them with practised ease.

The true standout of the evening for me and, it seemed, the audience, judging by their cheering, was Sascha Williams’ impressive Rola Bola performance at the end of the first act. Performing with his wife, Sascha displayed incredible skills balancing atop a variety of cylinders and ramps. At one stage, he even played the electric guitar while balancing high on several items.

Scattered throughout the show were a few dance routines performed by two dancers. The choreography complemented the music, and the dancers’ movements were precise and agile. Their costumes were beautiful, adorned with sequins and headwear with feathers. The glitz of a stage show was well and truly incorporated into the costume design for Circus of Illusion.

The stage setting was very simple, with a few standing lights and white drop sheets in the background. With a few more props incorporated into the design, they perhaps could have matched the glamour of the costumes.

Circus of Illusion is an entertaining show best suited for families with children and audience members who would expect a light, entertaining night out rather than a death-defying, thrilling night of illusion.

Circus of Illusion was performed at The State Theatre on Saturday, March 30, 2024. It consists of two 45-minute acts with a twenty-minute interval.

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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Atlantis

25 March 2024 Steve Willems

In the opening scene of Lally Katz’s semi-autobiographical play Atlantis, Lally confides in her boyfriend at the time, Dave, about an important dream she had involving a panther, friendship, and growing up in Miami. Dave reluctantly listens, and when Lally confronts him about not being interested in her story, Dave casually remarks that he isn’t. I confess I found it difficult to engage with her story, too.

The biggest problem lay at the core of the stage play, with a heavy emphasis on narrating events occurring on stage, making it difficult to settle down and immerse myself in a scene. After half an hour of ongoing narration, I had no idea where the story was meant to be going or why I should be caring. Lally was doing stuff while telling us about doing that stuff and relying too heavily on ‘this is a true story’, but maybe I’m being unfair.

I could see where the dialogue and narration could have used a more delicate touch. Often, the story may have worked better at a different pace or delivered more reflectively and thoughtfully. Georgia Britt, to her credit, played Lally with energy and enthusiasm. But Lally (not Britt) comes across as a hyperactive, overbearing, self-indulgent narcissist obsessed with marriage, babies, and curses. Lally is quirky, optimistic, and energetic almost all the time, which, to my mind, distracts us from the deeper character arc of her story.

Many scenes suffered pacing issues, sometimes seeming to be a race to get through a scene as fast as possible, with offbeat timing, pace, and/or control.

The most interesting character was Electra, played superbly by Tamara Foglia Castañeda, but felt her efforts were diluted because there was no humorous contrast between her rapid-fire New York Latino delivery and that of rapid-fire, overly enthusiastic about everything Lally. Many of the characters came across as manic. Some scenes would have been far more emotional, interesting, and impactful if the play had slowed down and become more intimate.

The set itself and the technical delivery were impressive. Two single panels and a few props were used to create a range of environments, from apartments to streets, nightclubs, and churches. Each panel also had chalkboard windows that would open up to serve as bars, windows, reception desks and even a DJ booth. I was, however, confused as to why place names were written on the chalkboards, like subtitles in a movie, when we switched locations. There was so much potential there to use the chalkboards for more than place names.

The cast did a great job switching between their multiple characters, which came across more as caricatures to me. The cast did what they could, but unfortunately, much of their time, effort, and energy fell flat on occasion.

The story is that of the playwright, and the characters are based on real people. My favourite moments revolved around Electra’s dog. The second was an in-joke about a caricature the same performer had played earlier. And the third was the sex scene. I was genuinely impressed and amused by the creativity of the sex scene between Lally and Diego.

Alyona Popova genuinely entertained me in the background of a scene between Lally and an Uber driver. With each driving scene, a spare actor in the background runs a toy car around the inside of a window frame. During Lally’s final journey to Miami, given the length of the journey represented, Popova used the entire backdrop and moved with a slow, purposeful grace. It was a slow-motion dance, really, and genuinely entertaining.

An interaction with a New York Cabbie helped introduce us to the theme of Atlantis. References included global warming, finding oneself, holding on to the past, yearning, loneliness, the challenges of womanhood, growing up, and finding love.

These are themes I normally connect with. I appreciate being drawn into the characters’ feelings and emotions, but the play goes so fast that I found investing in Lally and her struggles challenging. And that’s a shame. To be fair, many in the audience were noisy and laughing out loud—a lot. So it just might be that Lally and I just didn’t connect with each other on this occasion.

Atlantis is playing at the New Theatre in Newtown until the 13th of April, 2024.

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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French Film Festival – The Book Of Solutions

12 March 2024 Kat Skarbek

The Book of Solutions is a quirky, sometimes funny, sometimes confusing comedy-drama from writer-director Michel Gondry, who is best known outside of France for directing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The story centres on Marc, a paranoid filmmaker with a narcissistic personality and an incredibly creative but highly distractible mind, which borders on the pathological. To prevent the studio from shutting his film down, he and his crew steal the footage and retreat to Marc’s aunt’s house in the country to finish it.

Marc spends most of his time there, avoiding watching his film whilst restlessly pursuing whatever idea takes hold of his mind at the moment. These pursuits range from being elected mayor of the rural town to filming an ant for three days to creating a soundtrack for his film by gracelessly conducting the orchestra himself with a series of bizarre body and hand gestures. The orchestra scene was a particular favourite, and I enjoyed the idea that someone clueless could make something special happen through their unwavering belief in themselves.

Marc’s pompous narration throughout is also very funny, with a favourite line coming after his triumphant booking of Sting (who works on his soundtrack): ‘Some victories are so spectacular they don’t need a voiceover’.

Over the course of the movie, his increasingly erratic mood and behaviour begin to alienate his crew, worry his elderly aunt, and lead to him being unable to tell facts from fiction in real life. His strangely obsessive thoughts result in him writing ‘The Book of Solutions’, which is supposed to provide the answers to any conflict from the local to the global. All of the ideas in the book are based on his own highly skewed (and often contradictory) perception of the world as he tries to finish his film while his mind simultaneously unravels.

Although Marc’s childlike ability to lose himself in whatever captures his attention at the moment is a beautiful illustration of the power of being totally present, I personally found the film lacked a satisfying story. Like Marc, the film jumps from one thing to the next without any real connectivity or explanation, although it’s an enjoyable journey nonetheless.

Perhaps this lack of a traditional storyline can be chalked up to the fact that it is, after all, a French film and the French have a far more existential relationship with story and filmmaking than Hollywood does. Or perhaps it’s because the film represents a confusing window into the internal struggle of an unsound but sometimes brilliant mind.

Regardless, it’s as darkly humorous and provocative as one might expect a French film to be and is certainly worth watching, even if you’re new to French cinema.

This review also appears on It’s On The House, and check out more reviews at Dark Stories Theatre to see what else is on in your town.

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