WHAT THE BUTLER SAW
Sun, 25 Sept 2005, 08:12 amBass Guy38 posts in thread
WHAT THE BUTLER SAW
Sun, 25 Sept 2005, 08:12 amWho: GRADS
Where: Dolphin Theatre, UWA
When: 8pm 23/9/2005
What: Sordid farce from the soon-to-be-bludgeoned-to-death Joe Orton
Why: Threats of conjugal favours being withheld if I failed to attend. (Not entirely true)
Well, if the butler saw what I saw on Friday last, he needs his eyes checked or his head read. I thought IÂ’d indulge a little too firmly in the house convivialities prior to the show, but IÂ’m led to believe I wasnÂ’t the only one to suffer the demented visions this play provokes, so I canÂ’t blame it on the unwitting ingestion of psychedelics. I can, however, blame it on the crazed imagination of Stephen Lee and his cast of lunatic stooges.
Orton’s farce apparently flopped at the time of its premiere- and I think I know why. There’s not much “whoops, matron my trousers fell through the pantry. More tea, vicar?” in WTBS. Well, check out the poster- there’s more emphasis on the PHWOOAAR! Factor. As evidenced by the opening five minutes, which sees the heroine on the piece reduced to her underwear, and being subtly drooled over by the hero. It’s like Carry On Without Any Inhibitions. Of course, this is precisely the highbrow entertainment demanded by Generation Zzzzz today, so the choice is apt.
The cast rollicked through the opening night production, with only pause for the occasional hiccup with miscreant props and recalcitrant business. Paul Treasure starts as a bear-like figure, but is soon reduced to a sympathetic putty-like creature by the idiocy of his circumstance. The elfin Jessyca Hutchens not only spends most of the play near naked (I couldnÂ’t afford tickets to WTBS Uncut- Jarrod Buttery had bought them all and was scalping them cruelly) but a good deal of it sedated and/or screaming. Not easy to do both at the same time. Scott Sheridan attacks his role with gusto giving us something akin to Norman Wisdom on crack- which is what the show requires. Tony Petani sets new records for the achievement of those born without gorm. His Sgt Match is bizarre in the way he falls into the mania of the situation without blinking or pause. Jenny McCannÂ’s portrayal as the nymphomaniac harridan was too close to home for me to consider it acting- but by God itÂ’s convincing.
The most FRIGHTENING portrayal in recent history belongs not to that Welsh pretender Hopkins, but the demented Grant Malcolm as Dr Rance. His Murnau-esque take on the character (eyes a-twitch, shoulders a-hunch, voice a-boom) is hysterically funny and unnerving at the same time- and consequently does little to counter my lack of faith in the Western Health System.
Bravura doesnÂ’t begin to describe the efforts of cast and crew for this show. And if opening night had hiccups, these will be ironed out and the show will become unfathomably slick. This is a play that will reward a repeated viewing- theyÂ’re getting more risque as the season progresses. Well, thatÂ’s the rumour IÂ’m going to be spreadingÂ….
El
Where: Dolphin Theatre, UWA
When: 8pm 23/9/2005
What: Sordid farce from the soon-to-be-bludgeoned-to-death Joe Orton
Why: Threats of conjugal favours being withheld if I failed to attend. (Not entirely true)
Well, if the butler saw what I saw on Friday last, he needs his eyes checked or his head read. I thought IÂ’d indulge a little too firmly in the house convivialities prior to the show, but IÂ’m led to believe I wasnÂ’t the only one to suffer the demented visions this play provokes, so I canÂ’t blame it on the unwitting ingestion of psychedelics. I can, however, blame it on the crazed imagination of Stephen Lee and his cast of lunatic stooges.
Orton’s farce apparently flopped at the time of its premiere- and I think I know why. There’s not much “whoops, matron my trousers fell through the pantry. More tea, vicar?” in WTBS. Well, check out the poster- there’s more emphasis on the PHWOOAAR! Factor. As evidenced by the opening five minutes, which sees the heroine on the piece reduced to her underwear, and being subtly drooled over by the hero. It’s like Carry On Without Any Inhibitions. Of course, this is precisely the highbrow entertainment demanded by Generation Zzzzz today, so the choice is apt.
The cast rollicked through the opening night production, with only pause for the occasional hiccup with miscreant props and recalcitrant business. Paul Treasure starts as a bear-like figure, but is soon reduced to a sympathetic putty-like creature by the idiocy of his circumstance. The elfin Jessyca Hutchens not only spends most of the play near naked (I couldnÂ’t afford tickets to WTBS Uncut- Jarrod Buttery had bought them all and was scalping them cruelly) but a good deal of it sedated and/or screaming. Not easy to do both at the same time. Scott Sheridan attacks his role with gusto giving us something akin to Norman Wisdom on crack- which is what the show requires. Tony Petani sets new records for the achievement of those born without gorm. His Sgt Match is bizarre in the way he falls into the mania of the situation without blinking or pause. Jenny McCannÂ’s portrayal as the nymphomaniac harridan was too close to home for me to consider it acting- but by God itÂ’s convincing.
The most FRIGHTENING portrayal in recent history belongs not to that Welsh pretender Hopkins, but the demented Grant Malcolm as Dr Rance. His Murnau-esque take on the character (eyes a-twitch, shoulders a-hunch, voice a-boom) is hysterically funny and unnerving at the same time- and consequently does little to counter my lack of faith in the Western Health System.
Bravura doesnÂ’t begin to describe the efforts of cast and crew for this show. And if opening night had hiccups, these will be ironed out and the show will become unfathomably slick. This is a play that will reward a repeated viewing- theyÂ’re getting more risque as the season progresses. Well, thatÂ’s the rumour IÂ’m going to be spreadingÂ….
El
Re: WHAT THE BUTLER SAW
Mon, 3 Oct 2005, 10:09 amWhat the Bulter Saw, directed by Stephen Lee
The Dolphin Theatre, UWA
1 October 2005
(Apologies for many spelling mistakes, I don't have a spell check)
Firstly, I aknowledge the fact that this may be considered a biased review. GRADS is the company I am usually involved with. I have been directed by Stepehen Lee in the past. Several of the cast are good friends. And the Dolphin has a bar.
However, all this will be balanced by the fact that I HATE this play. I had never seen it performed, but found the script to be uneccesarily unpleasent. I have seen many much more unpleasent plays, and the shocks are a little dulled by age, but it's still not very nice. I had read it thinking "This is never going to be funny."
Having worked with and admired the work of Mr Lee, Ms McCann, Mr Malcolm, Mr Sheriden, Mr Treasure and Mr Petani in the past, I should really have known better.
Firstly, the set is perfect. The curtains open and you say to yourself "Ah! A doctors office in the sixties." I love it when you don't have to guess. The furniture is all reminiscent of the age, and the props unobtrusive and functional. Technically my only complaint is the set change (I suppose you would call it that) at the end of the second act, is clearly viasble to the audience in terms of shadows. This wouldn't be too bad except that it happens at a point where the show is rocketing towards it's conclusion and it's a bad time to distract your audience.
The entire opening scene is chock full of lots of clever wordsmithery. Steve Lee always manages to build the pace of his plays as they go along, without ever actually starting slowly, quite a gift. The aforementioned wordsmithery also lulls us into a "farce meets Wilde" false sense of security, and that sensibility is played to the hilt by Paul Treasure and the appropiately innocent looking young thing (I'm sorry, it's Jessyca, but I didn't get the surname). I have to say when she first appeared I thought "Too young", but that fragility works very well later on. And I suppose the point is that we should be extremely disturbed by what happens to her character and youth is a good way to achieve that. Coupled with a wonderful performance, a maintainence of innocence in the face of adversity, Jessyca's character is in some ways the counterpoint to the rest of the action.
A small thing at this point, I know the play is set a considerable way outside reality, but anyone drinking as much scotch as Paul purports to do in the first few scenes would, I'm sure, have died of alcohol poisoning by the begining of Act 2.
Everything really hits it's stride with the arrival of Mrs Prentise, the incomperable Jenny McCann. She manages to be the harlot she is required to be, but also, in a strange way, quite human. Throughout all the tomfoolery and running about, we still manage to see her marriage as real. Difficult to explain but very effective.
And then comes Dr Rance, Grant Malcolm. My God. Grant has been away from the stage for a considerable period, being a husband and a father and all sorts of, Im sure, very worthy undertakings. Age (or rather, time) has not wearied him, nor the years condemned. In fact any word having any connotation of lack of evergy could never be associated with his powerhouse performance. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
For those who have missed out on Steve Lee's shows in the past, you should know that when he goes through his encyclopedic knowledge of drama, he choses plays to direct (for the Dolphin anyway) on one criteria; "Will this kill my cast?". If the actors aren't dripping with sweat and quietly dying of exhaustion backstage by the end of Act 1, I think Mr Lee believes he has failed. I may be exaggerating slightly. But my point is that this is a show where even one moment of flagging energy would kill it, and with Grant on stage pouring heart and soul and every ounce of electricity within his grasp into the part, that was just never going to happen. Performances like that teeter on the brink of being samey, of every outburst sounding exactly like the one before it. With Grant's performance, that never happens, you absorb everything he says. I can't say enough about this, he was amazing.
That haveing been said much of the comedy, and the moments that the audience walks away remembering (not counting old letches like me who count the hot boys running around in their undies as the momorable moments), came, as usual, from Jenny McCann. The hair was genius. Every step she took and every expression she made was perfectly timed and hilarious. I was determined not to laugh (what with the hating of the play and all), and I really couldn't help myself whenever she was on stage. And to balance the running and screaming in your slip with creation of a believeable human person is not an easy thing to do, but she achieved it. Jenny is an example of someone who is completely fearless when it comes to looking like an absolute tool, and as a result always ends up looking fabulous.
The two supporting men, played by Tony Petani and Scott Sheriden, were just perfect. They were required to do very different things, Tony was to ground the play, to heighten the riculousness of the situation with his own normalcy, whilst at the same time not looking out of step with the mode of performance. His performance was a credit to not giving in to the temptation of using farce as an excuse for heavy handed or thoughtless direction or characterisation. And he provided one of the moments of real skin crawling in a fairly true life portrayal of affliction. I don't want to give it away, but seeing an actor playing "stricken" real in the middle of high farce has a real sobering effect, which, in this particular text, is the point I think. It's only a very small moment, but it's given enough space to be really effective, and I felt the audience shift in discomfort.
And Scotty was great. Scotty is always great. He played impish impudence to the hilt. His is another character of conflicts, he has to confess to really horrible things whilst looking chipper and innocent. Another knife edged characterisation, but again, perfectly realised. There aren't that many actors who can make you like and sympathise with a confessed rapist and peadophile. In fact, my only critisism of Scott is that his crimes should, in some way, be given a little more weight, that there should be a little more of the sinister about him, of the obscene, the unpleasent. I really don't know how this would be achieved, but I think the performance would have to stay exactly the same, but a slightly different conciousness brought to it.
My only other critisism, and it might be where I was sitting, is that the final tableu was a little blurry. I'm not sure if the actors are too close together or is someone was in the wrong spot on the night. I saw what was attempting to be achieved, but it just ended up looking a bit like "milling about". I think it neede more space, but I'm not really sure.
This show is close to perfect. It is head and shoulders above most of what I have seen and to miss it would really be doing yourself a disservice.
The Dolphin Theatre, UWA
1 October 2005
(Apologies for many spelling mistakes, I don't have a spell check)
Firstly, I aknowledge the fact that this may be considered a biased review. GRADS is the company I am usually involved with. I have been directed by Stepehen Lee in the past. Several of the cast are good friends. And the Dolphin has a bar.
However, all this will be balanced by the fact that I HATE this play. I had never seen it performed, but found the script to be uneccesarily unpleasent. I have seen many much more unpleasent plays, and the shocks are a little dulled by age, but it's still not very nice. I had read it thinking "This is never going to be funny."
Having worked with and admired the work of Mr Lee, Ms McCann, Mr Malcolm, Mr Sheriden, Mr Treasure and Mr Petani in the past, I should really have known better.
Firstly, the set is perfect. The curtains open and you say to yourself "Ah! A doctors office in the sixties." I love it when you don't have to guess. The furniture is all reminiscent of the age, and the props unobtrusive and functional. Technically my only complaint is the set change (I suppose you would call it that) at the end of the second act, is clearly viasble to the audience in terms of shadows. This wouldn't be too bad except that it happens at a point where the show is rocketing towards it's conclusion and it's a bad time to distract your audience.
The entire opening scene is chock full of lots of clever wordsmithery. Steve Lee always manages to build the pace of his plays as they go along, without ever actually starting slowly, quite a gift. The aforementioned wordsmithery also lulls us into a "farce meets Wilde" false sense of security, and that sensibility is played to the hilt by Paul Treasure and the appropiately innocent looking young thing (I'm sorry, it's Jessyca, but I didn't get the surname). I have to say when she first appeared I thought "Too young", but that fragility works very well later on. And I suppose the point is that we should be extremely disturbed by what happens to her character and youth is a good way to achieve that. Coupled with a wonderful performance, a maintainence of innocence in the face of adversity, Jessyca's character is in some ways the counterpoint to the rest of the action.
A small thing at this point, I know the play is set a considerable way outside reality, but anyone drinking as much scotch as Paul purports to do in the first few scenes would, I'm sure, have died of alcohol poisoning by the begining of Act 2.
Everything really hits it's stride with the arrival of Mrs Prentise, the incomperable Jenny McCann. She manages to be the harlot she is required to be, but also, in a strange way, quite human. Throughout all the tomfoolery and running about, we still manage to see her marriage as real. Difficult to explain but very effective.
And then comes Dr Rance, Grant Malcolm. My God. Grant has been away from the stage for a considerable period, being a husband and a father and all sorts of, Im sure, very worthy undertakings. Age (or rather, time) has not wearied him, nor the years condemned. In fact any word having any connotation of lack of evergy could never be associated with his powerhouse performance. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
For those who have missed out on Steve Lee's shows in the past, you should know that when he goes through his encyclopedic knowledge of drama, he choses plays to direct (for the Dolphin anyway) on one criteria; "Will this kill my cast?". If the actors aren't dripping with sweat and quietly dying of exhaustion backstage by the end of Act 1, I think Mr Lee believes he has failed. I may be exaggerating slightly. But my point is that this is a show where even one moment of flagging energy would kill it, and with Grant on stage pouring heart and soul and every ounce of electricity within his grasp into the part, that was just never going to happen. Performances like that teeter on the brink of being samey, of every outburst sounding exactly like the one before it. With Grant's performance, that never happens, you absorb everything he says. I can't say enough about this, he was amazing.
That haveing been said much of the comedy, and the moments that the audience walks away remembering (not counting old letches like me who count the hot boys running around in their undies as the momorable moments), came, as usual, from Jenny McCann. The hair was genius. Every step she took and every expression she made was perfectly timed and hilarious. I was determined not to laugh (what with the hating of the play and all), and I really couldn't help myself whenever she was on stage. And to balance the running and screaming in your slip with creation of a believeable human person is not an easy thing to do, but she achieved it. Jenny is an example of someone who is completely fearless when it comes to looking like an absolute tool, and as a result always ends up looking fabulous.
The two supporting men, played by Tony Petani and Scott Sheriden, were just perfect. They were required to do very different things, Tony was to ground the play, to heighten the riculousness of the situation with his own normalcy, whilst at the same time not looking out of step with the mode of performance. His performance was a credit to not giving in to the temptation of using farce as an excuse for heavy handed or thoughtless direction or characterisation. And he provided one of the moments of real skin crawling in a fairly true life portrayal of affliction. I don't want to give it away, but seeing an actor playing "stricken" real in the middle of high farce has a real sobering effect, which, in this particular text, is the point I think. It's only a very small moment, but it's given enough space to be really effective, and I felt the audience shift in discomfort.
And Scotty was great. Scotty is always great. He played impish impudence to the hilt. His is another character of conflicts, he has to confess to really horrible things whilst looking chipper and innocent. Another knife edged characterisation, but again, perfectly realised. There aren't that many actors who can make you like and sympathise with a confessed rapist and peadophile. In fact, my only critisism of Scott is that his crimes should, in some way, be given a little more weight, that there should be a little more of the sinister about him, of the obscene, the unpleasent. I really don't know how this would be achieved, but I think the performance would have to stay exactly the same, but a slightly different conciousness brought to it.
My only other critisism, and it might be where I was sitting, is that the final tableu was a little blurry. I'm not sure if the actors are too close together or is someone was in the wrong spot on the night. I saw what was attempting to be achieved, but it just ended up looking a bit like "milling about". I think it neede more space, but I'm not really sure.
This show is close to perfect. It is head and shoulders above most of what I have seen and to miss it would really be doing yourself a disservice.
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···