Lost Hellfire
Sun, 9 Nov 2003, 09:55 amWalter Plinge5 posts in thread
Lost Hellfire
Sun, 9 Nov 2003, 09:55 am'Lost Hellfire' is two new episodes of Luke Milton's brilliant series 'Across Hellfire'. They are showing at the Midland Town Hall - which is the spectacular building on the main road through Midland.
These episodes are what should have been episodes four and seven of the eight show series.
It opened to a full house of 380 people on the Friday night and a quite respectble number on the Saturday. A superb 8-sided programme brought people up to date with the series, who is who and what has happened previously - just in case they hadn't seen any shows before. However I could hear people around me asking 'what is this about?' as they were probably going to read their programmes at home later. So a live brief resume of the plot would have helped before the show.
Claire Hooper replaced Renee as Aimee, capably taking over a very well established part.
There were two episodes, the first, to quote Luke was a silly Halloween type scene. I found it the weakest of the 8 shows. There was one character who was Elvis's twin brother, good script, good story line - beautifully acted by Adam Mitchell, but I feel acted in the wrong persona. As most of the characters are as usual 'over the top', with this extra mad character the show became manic with all of the cast being on 'speed'. Had Elvis been a cool dude, as he was in real life and gradually changing towards the end, then I feel this episode would have been a lot better. Sorry Luke.
The second 'lost' episode, had guest appearances by Stuart Packham and Nisha Rivett and was back to the normal standard. Brilliant story line and very well portaryed by the whole cast.
Both shows well worth the extensive journey to the east! and at $10 full price who can miss it?
Gordon
These episodes are what should have been episodes four and seven of the eight show series.
It opened to a full house of 380 people on the Friday night and a quite respectble number on the Saturday. A superb 8-sided programme brought people up to date with the series, who is who and what has happened previously - just in case they hadn't seen any shows before. However I could hear people around me asking 'what is this about?' as they were probably going to read their programmes at home later. So a live brief resume of the plot would have helped before the show.
Claire Hooper replaced Renee as Aimee, capably taking over a very well established part.
There were two episodes, the first, to quote Luke was a silly Halloween type scene. I found it the weakest of the 8 shows. There was one character who was Elvis's twin brother, good script, good story line - beautifully acted by Adam Mitchell, but I feel acted in the wrong persona. As most of the characters are as usual 'over the top', with this extra mad character the show became manic with all of the cast being on 'speed'. Had Elvis been a cool dude, as he was in real life and gradually changing towards the end, then I feel this episode would have been a lot better. Sorry Luke.
The second 'lost' episode, had guest appearances by Stuart Packham and Nisha Rivett and was back to the normal standard. Brilliant story line and very well portaryed by the whole cast.
Both shows well worth the extensive journey to the east! and at $10 full price who can miss it?
Gordon
Re: Lost Hellfire
Fri, 14 Nov 2003, 01:53 amIt strikes me as VERY strange that the "Midland Contemporary Arts Festival" should choose images of Elvis Presley as its underlying icon....although stepping into the Midland Town Hall theatre did automatically transport me back at least 40 years.
So it was with a slight sense of sheepish apology that Luke Milton introduced these 'lost' episodes, explaining not only a brief background to the series, but that the Artrage Festival had commissioned the work...so long as Elvis somehow 'entered the building'.
Given that each episode with special guest cameos was always slightly contrived anyway, in order to justify new characters in a boarded-up house, I think Luke solved this imposition in a highly inventive way; although as others have mentioned, it is probably the weakest story device because it is such an obvious contrivance, and I think I would've preferred to see a story more in line with the previous episodes.
Nevertheless, while the overarching plot went on a bit of a tangent, individual scenes and dialogue were still fresh, biting and hilariously manic.
The 'ghost twin-brother of Elvis' story has been used a few times before on both stage and screen, and on one hand I was a little disappointed that, if you're going to go to the effort of a full jumpsuit-and-sideburns look, the rest has got to match....accent, hip swagger, sneer, songs, etc. Adam Mitchell played an exuberant characterisation, but it was far too much of a stretch for me to believe that the housemates could be taken in by him, no matter how much gravy powder they'd been surviving on.
But on the other hand, there are SO many bad Elvis impersonators out there (I just found a website with a band from Chicago called "Jesse Garon Presley and the Percolators") that I guess that even slightly near enough is more than good enough in many cases, so why not here? And the fact that Adam's 'Jesse' turned out to be not quite who he seemed kind of helped me re-sustain my disbelief.
I still found the overall story rather confusing (a lost character from the past, yet coming back from the future..?...and how did he know enough to incriminate Wheeler, so to maintain his story..?) but I guess we were forewarned that it was a 'Halloween TV special'-type anomaly, and in the best tradition of all Scooby-Doo style disguises, both the confusingly contrived and the glaringly obvious can be ignored. In this way, at least, Luke is again pretty spot-on when he parodies a genre.
The second lost episode, featuring Stuart Packham and Nisha Rivett, was indeed closer to the lines I had been expecting. Again manic, black, obscene and insane, with a lot of really good hard laughs but also the odd poignant moment right when you don't expect it. Jarrod, you'll be wanting to go along just to review Nisha's costume, but her speech to Amelia is one of those moments...so are some of the relationship insights between Devlin & Amelia, Anwar & Wheeler, and where Stella fits in to the picture. Damon, Paul, Claire and Tye all do marvellously as far as carrying it all too far and then bringing it right back again...it's watching these four characters inter-react that has been the success of the series.
When I reviewed the first episodes in April, I thought straight away it would translate very well into television, albeit with a rather specific audience. It seems that ArtRage agreed, and is assisting the series to be taped and screened next year...a terrific achievement for a local new work.
PS: Loved the detail, illustrations and humour injected into the programme....but who the hell are Richard and Philip..?
Cheers,
Craig
[%sig%]
So it was with a slight sense of sheepish apology that Luke Milton introduced these 'lost' episodes, explaining not only a brief background to the series, but that the Artrage Festival had commissioned the work...so long as Elvis somehow 'entered the building'.
Given that each episode with special guest cameos was always slightly contrived anyway, in order to justify new characters in a boarded-up house, I think Luke solved this imposition in a highly inventive way; although as others have mentioned, it is probably the weakest story device because it is such an obvious contrivance, and I think I would've preferred to see a story more in line with the previous episodes.
Nevertheless, while the overarching plot went on a bit of a tangent, individual scenes and dialogue were still fresh, biting and hilariously manic.
The 'ghost twin-brother of Elvis' story has been used a few times before on both stage and screen, and on one hand I was a little disappointed that, if you're going to go to the effort of a full jumpsuit-and-sideburns look, the rest has got to match....accent, hip swagger, sneer, songs, etc. Adam Mitchell played an exuberant characterisation, but it was far too much of a stretch for me to believe that the housemates could be taken in by him, no matter how much gravy powder they'd been surviving on.
But on the other hand, there are SO many bad Elvis impersonators out there (I just found a website with a band from Chicago called "Jesse Garon Presley and the Percolators") that I guess that even slightly near enough is more than good enough in many cases, so why not here? And the fact that Adam's 'Jesse' turned out to be not quite who he seemed kind of helped me re-sustain my disbelief.
I still found the overall story rather confusing (a lost character from the past, yet coming back from the future..?...and how did he know enough to incriminate Wheeler, so to maintain his story..?) but I guess we were forewarned that it was a 'Halloween TV special'-type anomaly, and in the best tradition of all Scooby-Doo style disguises, both the confusingly contrived and the glaringly obvious can be ignored. In this way, at least, Luke is again pretty spot-on when he parodies a genre.
The second lost episode, featuring Stuart Packham and Nisha Rivett, was indeed closer to the lines I had been expecting. Again manic, black, obscene and insane, with a lot of really good hard laughs but also the odd poignant moment right when you don't expect it. Jarrod, you'll be wanting to go along just to review Nisha's costume, but her speech to Amelia is one of those moments...so are some of the relationship insights between Devlin & Amelia, Anwar & Wheeler, and where Stella fits in to the picture. Damon, Paul, Claire and Tye all do marvellously as far as carrying it all too far and then bringing it right back again...it's watching these four characters inter-react that has been the success of the series.
When I reviewed the first episodes in April, I thought straight away it would translate very well into television, albeit with a rather specific audience. It seems that ArtRage agreed, and is assisting the series to be taped and screened next year...a terrific achievement for a local new work.
PS: Loved the detail, illustrations and humour injected into the programme....but who the hell are Richard and Philip..?
Cheers,
Craig
[%sig%]