When this play premiered, its actors were arrested for obscenity. Now it’s back

As Ryan points out, men are measurably worse off than women on a range of indicators from suicide rates to educational outcomes, but they’re expected – due to a patriarchal conception of masculinity, sometimes inadvertently reinforced in feminist discourse – to suck it up.

Radha fires back with stats of her own, and things take an ugly turn with the arrival of a coked-up guy who sexually harassed her at the party.

The acting achieves a tenuous sense of intimacy between strangers and has an aching vulnerability to it. You empathise with both characters as they struggle to understand each other, though it’s true the play does get too essayistic, and could usefully emulate Buzo’s dramatic economy.

Still, this double bill is a potent antidote to the kind of cultural amnesia that sees most Australian plays vanish without a trace. We take it for granted at our peril. The fact that La Mama has recently been denied organisational funding by the federal government, I fear, is an act of cultural vandalism future generations will come to regret.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Beth Orton | Weather Alive ★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, April 23

Beth Orton’s voice is a ruined temple of a thing. Ravaged by time and who knows what other desecrations (she has battled Crohn’s disease for decades, which may or may not be a factor), it is brittle and, on Tuesday night at the Melbourne Recital Centre, always seemingly on the edge of collapse. Yet it never tips over.

In some strange way, its persistence and the way Orton manages its flaws is quite a wondrous thing, and one that drew much of the audience to its feet at the end. It may not have been the Orton they knew and loved from a catalogue of recordings dating back to the mid-1990s, but it was magical all the same.

Orton is a somewhat diffident performer. She walked on stage and sat at the piano – a borrowed Steinway that she would later say was far too good for her limited abilities – and launched into Weather Alive, the title track from her most recent album, with only the slightest glance and half-smile at the audience.

It was only after the second song, Friday Night, that she spoke. “Hello Melbourne. I’m all over here at the moment,” she said, indicating the piano, “but soon I’ll be all over there,” pointing to the microphone centre stage, and the guitar standing upright in expectation.

Over an hour and a half, she played all the tracks from Weather Alive, released in late 2022 and a set of songs clearly tailored to her new vocal range. But she also dipped into the back catalogue, with Central Reservation, Stolen Car, She Cries Your Name, Pass In Time and Sweetest Decline drawing big responses, even if they sometimes pushed her to the limits. She sang some of those songs alone; whatever distance exists between her younger voice and now, she certainly isn’t hiding from it.

When her band was with her, they were superb. Texan Jesse Chandler is a hugely talented multi-instrumentalist, covering synth, piano, sax, clarinet and flute over the course of the evening. Drummer Ben Sloan (from Cincinnati) and Melburnian James Gilligan (bass, guitar and violin) are just as good. Together, they brought a propulsive energy to many of the songs, but dialled it back for the gentler, more folksy moments, too.

Her early recordings were sometimes dubbed folktronica, and there were moments of that here; more often, though, it was a jazz-tinged sound that dominated, albeit one with half an ear (or more) to the dance floor. Jazztronica, anyone? And on Fractals and Haunted Satellite in particular, this quartet hit the sweetest of sweet spots.

Orton’s songs remain alluring, elusive, emotionally raw. Her voice is not what it was, but she has learnt to manage it well. Ruined temple or not, it’s still worth visiting.
Reviewed by Karl Quinn

THEATRE
The Almighty Sometimes ★★★★
Melbourne Theatre Company, until May 18

Contemporary plays about mental illness sometimes yoke science to poetry without really illuminating either. Kendall Feaver’s award-winning four-hander The Almighty Sometimes is impressive in bucking that trend, pulling off a dramatic, emotionally charged dissection of the subject with clinical precision.

For Anna (Max McKenna), the contested realm of paediatric psychiatry has been part of her life from a young age. She began to write unusually vivid and macabre stories as a precocious eight-year-old; she made her first suicide attempt at 11.

At her wits’ end, her mum Renee (Nadine Garner) sent Anna to Vivienne (Louisa Mignone), a leading child psychiatrist who diagnosed her with an unnamed condition (which some of her colleagues don’t believe exists in children), treating it with regular therapy and antipsychotic drugs.

Now 18, Anna should be asserting her independence, and the opening scene is such a classic adolescent moment – Renee blearily walks into the kitchen, interrupting her daughter’s teenage fumblings with apprentice locksmith Oliver (Karl Richmond) – that, for a time, everything seems normal.

Yet Anna’s teen rebellion extends to Vivienne, too. She challenges her diagnosis and claims the drugs have left her unable to write.

When Anna decides to go off her meds, a slide into danger and derangement begins, leaving those who love her struggling to cope.

Hannah Goodwin directs an assured production that plays with human scale. The performances bring a delicate, moth-like realism to the family drama, and rear into crisis with alarming authenticity. Each turn of the screw seems preordained by the austere and oversized revolving set, which twists like some comfortless machine between domestic and medical spaces.

Mental illness can present a complex puzzle to all parties involved, and the chief satisfaction of the play is the emotional intelligence with which it portrays that reality.

Feaver examines the relationship between creativity and madness, the side of psychiatry that represents a form of social control, the reification and ontological status of mental illness (what is Renee really saying, for instance, when she says, “that’s the illness talking”), and all the unknowns that make treating children with psychoactive drugs such a risky proposition.

In the absence of knowledge, after all, good intentions can achieve the same result as malice. On the other hand, would doing nothing, faced with a child suffering from the mental extremities Anna experienced, be a more ethical option? It may be impossible to know.

Wherever you stand on the questions and controversies of modern psychiatry, this humane and vulnerable portrait of a young woman coming of age will make you think more deeply about the issues. It will also make you wish people like Renee and Anna had better options available to them.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
ACO Up Close: Beethoven Arranged ★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, April 22

A concert of two contrasting Beethoven works arranged for different chamber configurations made for some thought-provoking listening within the intimate acoustic of the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Salon. Presented by musicians from the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the arrangements were no doubt made to fulfil the ever-increasing demand for domestic entertainment from the burgeoning middle class of Beethoven’s day.

From the composer’s early period came his Cello Sonata in F major, Op. 5, No. 1, arranged for a string quintet of two violins, viola and two cellos, made by his friend, pupil, secretary and early biographer Ferdinand Ries. This was followed by the somewhat later Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 in a version for piano trio made by the composer himself.

Ries’ creative reimagining of the sonata was by far the more interesting item on the program; in its new guise providing an expansive sense of texture that supported a clear but fresh re-exposition of the musical ideas, counterpointing the original cello and piano version (beautiful though that most certainly is).

Violinists Helena Rathbone, Liisa Pallandi, violist Stefanie Farrands together with cellists Timo-Veikko Valve and Melissa Barnard brought the ACO’s customary energetic ardour to the performance, illuminating the score with finely honed ensemble and genuine enjoyment.

Condensing the often extrovert drama of the symphony into the polite confines of the drawing room proved a challenging task for the composer who produced a worthy if somewhat workmanlike result. Indeed, the more introverted second-movement Larghetto seemed the most comfortably transitioned of the four movements. There was also a slight sense the accomplished performers (Rathbone and Valve joined by valiant pianist Aura Go) were working overtime to enliven occasional heavy-going passages.

Even so, hearing these fine works up close in their respective expansions and contractions was still a welcome and insightful experience.
Reviewed by Tony Way

THEATRE
The Exact Dimensions of Hell ★★★
fortyfivedownstairs, until April 28

When we first meet 14-year-old Girl, she’s friendless and alone, angry and hurting because she feels unseen by those closest to her. Venturing online in search of companionship, she meets an older man claiming to be a Witch. Wanting to be one herself, she’s soon ensnared in his web of deceit and duplicity.

Meg Wilson’s minimalist set where colourful drapes hang suspended from the ceiling is transformed into an otherworldly plain, a befitting stage for the unfurling of Girl and Witch’s “magic rituals” as boundaries are crossed, feelings are manipulated, and trust is betrayed. A screen backdropping the stage translates feelings of adulation and bliss into abstract images as the Girl and Witch transcend themselves to reach a place that’s altogether more terrifying and darker than anything Girl could’ve imagined.

Matilda Gibbs is captivating as Girl, speaking in the emphatic broad brushstrokes of a teenager and with a childlike cadence that only serves to underline the asymmetry of power between her and Witch. Daniel Schlusser plays Witch with a fitting moral ambiguity, unmistakable in his intentions yet complex, preventing him from becoming a caricature of a villain. The 1998 they’re both in is effectively conjured by Girl’s Magic Dirt t-shirt, her proclivity for Frenzal Rhomb, the early internet parlance.

Dramatic light design illuminates the two actors in overhead spotlights, surrounded by a sea of darkness or menacing shades of red, or the bright white light of dawn when morning has broken and Girl has spent yet another night with the Witch.

Sidney Millar’s sound design is eerie and transformative, seamlessly shifting from atmospheric background music to tracks that signpost specificities of the characters, like the unnerving distortion of The Stooges as Witch plies Girl with alcohol while playing his favourite music.

Where the play is let down entirely is in its pacing and narrative. More than halfway through, it loses coherence and descends into an unintelligible mess. Gibbs and the Witch jerk around frenetically onstage as the magic (manipulation) escalates, but the characters lack emotional development and the plot lacks focus. Harrowing scenes signalling sexual assault aren’t accompanied by any discernible shift in the characters or narrative. The play flits back and forth in time but with such abstractness that the effect is confusion, rather than elucidation.

The metaphor of a girl being placed under the spell of a witch to symbolise entrapment by an older predator is an interesting framework to explore girlhood, agency and power, but The Exact Dimensions of Hell never fulfils the profundity of its premise.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

THEATRE
A Case for the Existence of God ★★★
Samuel D. Hunter, Red Stitch, until May 12

Male vulnerability is a running theme in Samuel D. Hunter’s work. His play The Whale was adapted into a film starring Brendan Fraser, and took us into the confined world of Charlie, a morbidly obese recluse. In his latest, two men in small-town Idaho form a fragile bond in the face of bruising fatherhood issues.

Theirs is an unlikely camaraderie, not least because it starts in a mortgage broker’s office – a field of friendship that typically lies fallow, as broker Keith (Kevin Hofbauer) reminds us, because banks don’t care who you are as a person. It’s all numbers to them.

The numbers are crunching for Ryan (Darcy Kent) – an uneducated, white, recently divorced plant worker who wants to build a house in which to raise his baby daughter… assuming he can get joint custody.

His situation inspires Keith to do financial handstands to secure him a loan, and to reveal the difficult path he has walked trying to become a parent himself.

Seeking that rewarding experience has brought emotional punishment: Keith, who is black and queer and single, has pursued his dream of being a father through years of surrogacy attempts, adoption and fostering, all to no avail. The baby he’s caring for now as his own could be reunited with her birth mother at any moment.

Soon they’ve moved from financial jargon whizzing across the desk to exchanging baby photos, drunkenly baring their souls to each other, organising playdates. A precarious comfort is drawn from shared joy and suffering, as the fate of Keith’s adoption petition, and Ryan’s loan application, loom.

Disarming performances from Hofbauer and Kent don’t skimp on the offbeat surface comedy of this odd couple, who experience marginality in different ways, but find common ground on bigger questions. (Ironically enough, Keith wins Ryan’s custom with an unanticipated takedown of capitalism that appeals to the latter’s working-class soul.)

Yet the humour is anchored to a barely restrained anguish, and their friendship unfolds partly as a struggle for authentic emotional expression against the enculturated norms a masculine identity can inflict. This could’ve be icky and sentimental, but (with the exception of a corny flash-forward at the end) it isn’t, thanks to the nuance and verisimilitude of the acting.

Gary Abrahams directs intimate performances with a sure hand. Set and lighting design achieve an intriguing coup de theatre that’s best left as a surprise, though the spectacle undergirds the play’s existential position.

For despite its title, God really doesn’t get much of a look-in here. We arrive at “no man is an island” through the opposite notion: dehumanising systems conspire to make us all islands. To resist them, to draw comfort despite them, might be the one small divinity in our power.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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