RAW: The Special Relationship – Film – 3.5K
Aug 5th
Reviewed By Kosta Jaric
Michael Sheen is making a damn good living out of other people’s lives. After playing reporter David Frost and famed English coach Brian Clough, he has come full circle and returns as the seemingly affable Prime Minister Tony Blair in “The Special Relationship”.
With Dennis Quaid as the unmistakable Bill Clinton, Richard Loncraine directs the finer moments of their relationship during their overlapping terms. Choosing Blair as the protagonist of the two, Sheen is seamless and brilliant in his role. Being the third time he’s played Blair, he’s almost undistinguishable from the real man. Quaid’s attempt at Clinton’s accent becomes a bit of a novelty from the get go, but he does a fine job playing a morally-questionable man (who on screen is shown to be just as deceptive as his successor).
Hope Davis is brilliant as the turmoiled Hilary, taking a leading role during the Lewinsky period, with Helen McCrory is exactly as she was in “The Queen” as Cherie (also written by Peter Morgan). The support cast is also on song (with Jacques Chirac ever the comedian).
The script is tight and creates some interesting moments between the two leaders. In what could’ve been a very dry film (originally made for US TV), the cast and crew have actually made an intriguing behind-the-scenes look at the marriages, friendships and political relationship between the two couples and their countries.
You won’t kick yourself if you miss this on the big screen but it is worth a mid-week peek.
Kryztoff Rating 3.5K
RAW: SALA Ann Newmarch – Flinders Uni Art Museum (State Lib) – 3K
Aug 4th
Cultural Pattern and Human Fragility By Ann Newmarch – Flinders Uni Art Museum (State Library) – Till 29th August
Ann Newmarch’s 25th solo exhibition comprises 16 works and opinion may well divide on their merits. To be sure they are complex, any one incorporating many motifs that span on one axis of thought cultural items like Afgham rugs, rosettes, Italian and Greek monuments and on the other images of war and death such as the silhouettes of rifles, the photo of Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack in the Vietnam war and a trader falling to his death from one of the twin towers on 9/11.
There is also a beauty about them in that they hang well together and can sustain individual curiosity as well filling a space on a wall. However, the repetition of the images across all 16 works and overall feel somewhat confound the individual and often distinct titles and commentary associated with each.
Newmarch speaks in the catalogue of how ‘these images grew bit by bit without much consideration for the big picture. I felt like I was dissolving into each area I altered or added (a bit like a quilt, the complexities of each stitch.)’ Janet Maughn speaks of ‘the messages appear not so obviously. These are pictures that reward close inspection of different parts of the picture surface; that hint at relationships and encourage the viewer to make connections across cultures, across time and across events.
Thus the divide on these works is either they are a hotch potch of icons that will resonate from one’s consciousness that holds together as complex and colourful or the trained eye will make out these connections of culture and war and tie them in with their titles. But if the artists didn’t seem to know where they were going, I am unsure why viewers should or would.
Kryztoff Rating 3K
RAW: Fugitive – Robin Hood Retold – Space Until 14th Aug – 4K
Aug 4th
Earlier in the year Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe gave us a cinematic new take on the old Robin Hood tale. Now writer, Matthew Whittet and Windmill Theatre have given us another take. The difference is Fugitive is much better.
Here, Robin (Eamon Farren) returns from an unexplained two year absence, hooks up again with Marion (Louisa Mignone) and along with Wil (Whittet) and bovver boy, Little John (Patrick Graham) take on the forces of evil in the district led by Marty (Carmel Johnson.) Along the way they battle knights, some bad, some incompetent, others invisible and also themselves, often at a frenetic pace.
The interweaving of this traditional Robin Hood story with almost everything else being modern, along with a tale about young people desperately trying to come to terms with their place in the world, is expertly done. The humour builds from Little John’s flatulence problem early on to Geoff Revell’s show stealing roles, first on a horse as a sage, then as the treacherous Guy. It is a great romps.
The impact of the whole off stage crew on all aspects of the production is significant. Richard Vabre’s lighting and Luke Smiles’ sound design keep giving the production vibrant and eccentric edges, always making contemporary what is after all a 1000 year old tale – the scene changes are an excellent example of the team work delivering clever outcomes.
Farren is an impressive stage figure and Mignone handles superbly the various challenges of Marion in a costume that was not exactly flattering.
The Windmill people are calling for young men to flood to see this. They cast their net not nearly wide enough. This is great entertainment for everyone.
Kryztoff Rating 4K
RAW: Mother Africa – Her Majesty’s – Aug 4 – 15 – Preview
Aug 2nd
Created in Germany by producer / director Winston Ruddle, Mother Africa arrives in Adelaide this week for a twelve day season at Her Majesty’s, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, without having ever been staged on their home continent. 
Included in the cast is 12 year old, Yonas Teka, who has created an unofficial Guinness World record of 30 continuous somersault flips, surpassing the previous record of 25. He, like all the other cast members, came through an exhaustive audition process by Ruddle to choose Africa’s most talented. The exception perhaps to that is MC, Bongi Mtshali, who got that particular role because she could best pronounce German when required to at short notice!
Mother Africa has already enjoyed an extended sell-out season on the Gold Coast and this should provide a warming relief to Adelaide circus lovers during the next fortnight as well.
RAW: Film – Me And Orson Welles – 4K
Jul 29th
When as a 17 year old, Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) gets a call up to be in a new 1937 Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar he immediately happens upon the massive ego and figure of Orson Welles (Christian McKay) and his crew of actors, stage hands and producers. In the course of the hectic shambles that precedes opening night, Richard gets infatuated with Sonja (Claire Danes) and observes at close range the actor’s world of ego (sometimes fragile), bluff, the lure of the next thing and its brutal impermanence.
To be sure, the ‘Me’ in the title is the star and Welles is relegated to just one of the next lead performers. Whether this is a design flaw will be a matter of taste. Danes is dazzling and immensely charismatic, being flirty but not exploitive. McKay wonderfully channels Orson’s bravado, brilliances and brittleness and Zoe Kazan as Greta, Richard’s off stage friend, is the model of youthful enthusiasm laced with self doubt and an endearing personality. As for Efron, it is rare for a teenage heart throb to develop into a genuine actor but Efron is one such novelty – he is a real actor and will be a star for audiences of all ages for years to come.
This is the third ‘play within a play’ this year (after NINE and I, Don Giovanni) and probably the best. The production is excellent all round. Richard Linklater’s direction is tight, shot in a brown sepia and Holly Gent Palmo’s screenplay (based on a Robert Kaplow novel) is a feature with dialogue that cuts to the essence of the personalities without stereotyping – Welles for all his bravado has his moments of self doubts, genius and cowardice, Richard and Greta have their youthful excesses without marking them juvenile. And who can go wrong with the music of era resonating throughout.
A failure as a biopic of Welles but a simple joy as entertainment.
Kryztoff Rating 4K
RAW: Letter’s End By Wolfe Bowart – Playhouse Till 31st July – 5K
Jul 29th
Adelaide parents and grandparents gather up in haste those pre-teen young ones in your life and make for the Dunstan Playhouse to revel in Wolfe Bowart’s Letter’s End. In a world of 3D and other cinema graphics, it is rare to see a single performer amaze and dazzle without all that tech. Bowart achieves that in trumps.
Mops that growl, apples that can be eaten off paintings, eggs that bounce and then don’t, a mosquito that never says die, blooms that transform from dead sun flowers to red roses and so it goes on in a never ending menagerie of products from a brilliant imagination that has children shrieking in joy and adults gasping in admiration.
His crowd interactions are fun with his helper on stage on opening night so full of joy even before he got on stage that it was obvious the goodwill of the whole show had infected all in the audience.
To be sure, this is mime of the highest order, in the Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton class for the 21st century. The sheer brilliance of not only the acts but the timing and the successful pursuit of magic throughout leaves those attempting to fathom how it is done exhausted and unfulfilled.
Please get your (grand)children along to Letter’s End, it will be an experience they and you will remember for a very long time.
Kryztoff Rating 5K
RAW: European Masters: Staedel Museum – NGV – Till 10th Oct
Jul 28th
Continuing the great series of Melbourne Winter Masterpieces, this year’s European Masters features almost 100 works by 70 artists from the Staedel Art Museum in Frankfurt, one of Germany’s oldest and most respected museums. The works are here, exclusively to Melbourne, as a result of the host museum undergoing renovations.
What’s on offer is unlike most curated exhibitions, being works with a tight collective theme, but rather what it is, a selection of the Staedel’s permanent collection of some 2700 paintings, 600 sculptures and more than 100,000 prints and drawings. As such it has items from across two centuries, with a strong Germanic core and spanning all manner of styles. Unlike perhaps how the publicity posters feature it, this is not another Impressionists wonderland, with items from that genre limited to about a dozen. Nonetheless, real artistic treats await the visitor.
The exhibition opens with Tischbein’s Goethe in the Roman Campagna from 1786, perhaps paying homage to Frankfurt’s son, regarded by many as Germany’s finest author. Amongst the Impressionist works is the stand out Renoir, La Fin du Dejeuner, though just what its meaning is remains unclear. The only artist with a true focus throughout is Max Beckmann. Born in 1884, Beckmann was profoundly affected by his involvement in World War 1 that altered his traditional depictions to distortions of both figures and space. These changes and many of his self and other portraits are featured in their own room. His Double Portrait (1923) portraying the wife and the mistress of the then director of the Staedel is notable if nothing else for its audacious subject matter.
As a tour through styles across 200 years, European Masters stands on its own. It certainly begs the question what will the next 100 years produce to match the upheavals and development of forms of this era. But, as a result, visitors will need to maintain an open mind and not allow their own preferences to prejudge works or rooms. This is helped by copious notes on the audio guide that both explain the specific works as well as place paintings in their context of both the exhibition and art movements generally.
Another Melbourne art treat this winter.
Kryztoff Rating 4K
RAW: Tex Perkins in The Man In Black – Her Majesty’s
Jul 27th
When people talk about The Man in Black, everyone knows to whom they refer. In this case however, it’s not just to Johnny Cash but also to Tex Perkins, who provides a wonderful tribute to him in this pleasurable and condensed serving of his life and music. In addition to renditions of many of Cash’s best known hits, such as A Boy Named Sue and Fulsome Prison Blues, it included several duets and some lesser known pieces, interspersed with snippets of personal history.
Perkins is an experienced and charismatic front man and he held the audience’s attention throughout. His vocals were beyond impressive, capturing the essence and emotion of the originals. Filling the role of June Carter in the duets and helping Perkins to tell the story in between songs, Rachael Tidd was likeable and did a pleasing job of her vocals. Supporting the singers were the cheekily named Tennessee Four, who provided skilled musical backing, adding to the fullness of the sound.
There was never a lapse in the popularity of Cash, but the success of the 2005 biopic Walk the Line can perhaps be credited with bringing the music, and the man, back to the forefront of the public consciousness. The audience crossed many demographic boundaries, showing the wide appeal of this show, and reacted with great enthusiasm. As good as the above film was, there’s something about hearing the music played live that really gets the heart soaring and this production certainly did that.
Kryztoff Rating 4K
RAW: Ziggy Diagne – Nexus – 23 July
Jul 24th
Unfortunately only a sparse crowd came to Nexus last night to hear Ziggy Diagne and his four piece ensemble play his high energy fusion of African, Salsa and other Latin rhythms. The setting was also not helped by a late start due to Ziggy et al losing their way, drums tumbling over during songs and musicians tripping over cords on stage. However, the second half was worth the wait.
Then Senegalese, Ziggy, (who, in a white jump suit adorned with small flags and with his hair in a bun on the top of his head looked like a cross between Whoopi Goldberg and Buzz Aldrin), got into his stride with brilliant control of his formidable kora that seemed to inject boundless hand energy into his two drummers, Funkalleros and Dunumbra. The interplay between them was spellbinding as the reggae funk, rap and jazz beat grew in intensity, the groovy M’balah rhythms, unique to Senegal, roaring through.
Before moving to WA in 2000, Diagne played and toured internationally for ten years in the Baaba Maal band as a drummer, dancer and choreographer. He has also performed on stage with the likes of Carlos Santana and Youssou N’Dour and has recorded with Assane Thiam (regarded by many as the world’s best talking drum player.)
Before a small, mostly middle aged audience, getting reciprocated energy from the dance floor before him was always going to be a struggle. However, one could imagine a WOMAD crowd going absolutely silly at the height of a performance (with good gunja only adding to the tsunami of energy and power and chills of ecstasy that would ripple through such an audience.)
Ziggy and friends deserved more support than they got last night but it was a richly rewarding experience nonetheless.
Kryztoff Rating 4K
RAW: Mumford & Sons – Thebby 22nd August
Jul 23rd
Mumford & Son’s have managed to create the perfect balance of folk and rock; pairing banjos and mandolins with heavy drum beats and intense guitar. They opened their Adelaide gig with the first, and title, track of their hugely popular album Sigh No More, which borrows various quotes from the work of Shakespeare to create a beautiful ode to the affect of love.
The majority of their songs interweave such traditional references with original, highly poetic lyrics, accompanied by soaring vocals and impressive instrumental lines. It would be easy for pieces with such subject matter to become clichéd, but in the hands of these lads the final product is rather an uplifting, engaging and genuine celebration, while still touching on the less positive aspects, of the experience.
When a song is as popular as their Triple J Hottest 100 chart topping Little Lion Man, there’s a danger that the crowd will be made up of people who don’t know the majority of the band’s songs. This was quite clearly not an issue, with hundreds of voices singing along to even the album tracks that don’t get much radio air-play.
The crowd was enthusiastic from the get-go, but built to frenzy during the rendition of Winter Winds; the brass section brought on tour ensuring that the live experience matched that produced on the recording. With the final song of the night, The Cave, the whole room was bouncing and the joy in the air was palpable. Happily, the new songs included in the set list left no-one in any doubt that there is much more fantastic music to come from Mumford & Sons.
Kryztoff Rating 5K