All the King's women

‘All the King’s Women’ by award winning playwright, Luigi Jannuzzi, is presented by Arts and Entertainment (ARENA) in conjunction with Phoenix Theatre Inc. at the Phoenix Theatre, Memorial Hall, corner of Carrington Street and Rockingham Road, Hamilton Hill until 16^th October. All shows at 8.00 pm.
It then transfers to Camelot Theatre, Lochee Street, Mosman Park 29^th October – 13^th November, with one matinee at 2.00 pm on 7^th November.
 
      The black draped stage has as its centre of interest, a life-sized photo of Elvis in his ‘Jailhouse Rock’ prison outfit.
 
      In a department store in Tupelo Mississippi an 11 year-old boy comes in with his mother to buy a gun and 6 boxes of bullets for his birthday. This is the young Elvis. The store’s information lady (Jane Sherwood) relates the story of what happened on that day.
Another successful monologue is when a housewife (Mia Martin - superb) meets Elvis in a supermarket at 3 a.m. and there is only one bunch of bananas left!

      Then, in a wonderfully hilarious piece, Elvis visits the White House, in spite of the confusion from the three secretaries (Heather McGeorge, Danni Close and Amanda Watson).
The last monologue is the Graceland’s guard (Les Lee) telling of his love and respect for Elvis.
 
       A series of 8 short plays, three of which are monologues, based around the life and times of Elvis Presley. One man and 15 women relate their connections with ‘the King’.
 
I must first point out that this is not an Elvis musical; in fact his music is hardly mentioned. The fans that are relating the tales mimic any Elvis dialogue beautifully. Although ably directed by Simon James, very well acted, half of the stories were dire and in desperate need of editing down to half their length. The show was two and a half hours, and this was a rare occasion when I seriously considered not going back into the auditorium after the interval. Two or three episodes were funny and held my attention, but the links to Elvis were tenuous.
The lighting (Mario Piccoli) was excellent, and smoothly operated. The sound design (Danni Close), inventive, original and of an extremely high standard. The costumes (Denise Elkington) were excellent, spot-on for the era. As the set changes were being carried out, go-go dancers (leader Ellen O’Connor) came on and were a welcome distraction. Other cast members were Rosemary Longhurst, Cally Zanik and Kelly Van Geest.
A slapstick episode was cleverly executed, but totally unnecessary and unfunny.
A couple of the Deep South accents were a bit annoying, but the enunciation was clear. This was one of these plays where the cast were much better than average; the direction was snappy, technically very good and yet – despite the catchy final dance number, with a surprise - on leaving the theatre the overall glow of satisfaction was sadly lacking, mainly due to the painful script. My advice is burn the Warhol and the Cadillac scenes. This is an unfortunate review for what was a high standard community production delivered with enthusiasm.

Gordon the Optom