Sep 17

OzAsia Festival – 2016 – Psycho Raman – Mercury Cinema – 1K

by Tom Eckert

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Psycho Raman, a psychological suspense film directed by Anurag Kashyap has a lot going for it but unfortunately could have been executed better.

The plot centers around the parallel narrative of a psychopath and the Mumbai policeman whom he becomes platonically infatuated with upon seeing the policeman murder someone with the same weapon he had used to make his first kill just minutes earlier.

The setting is the strongest element of this film. Kashyap uses the labyrinthine  slums of Mumbai to great effect to create tension as well as some excellent chase scenes that have one holding their breath.

This would have been satisfying if the cinematography had not been a little cliche, using standard shaking cameras in stalking scenes and half-screen obscured shots to demonstrate inner turmoil.

The soundtrack was reminiscent of a nightclub that decided it wasn’t worth investing in decent sound gear.

The central premise has some merit, juxtaposing the killer who does so through intent and purpose to the killer who lashes out in passion unable to control their impulses, and perversely manages to make the former come out as the more morally upstanding. This premise however is executed awkwardly through a fallen angel trope made all the less effective by the fact the supposed angel seemed to have already fallen some time prior.

Between a killer determined to systematically tick off the criteria for a clinical psychopath, and a man that between father-issues, a drug addiction and an over fondness of his own appearance  is left with almost no motivations, there is not much to be said for the characterisation.

A curious mash-up of bad American TV crime serial and portrait of Indian masculine values, Psycho Raman dragged at times and was almost comical in others at it’s attempts to create drama.

One caveat I will add is that the reviewer would likely have gotten more out of the film with a deeper understanding of Hindu mythology as the central story struck him as richly allegorical.

Kryztoff rating 1K

Sep 16

THEATRE – A Steady Rain – Lost in Translation – HST – 4K

By Peter Maddern

Two cops working together on the beat in Chicago, one a racist, the other a loner; well, a drive-by shooting would seem inevitable. Keith Huff’s riveting and often disturbing A Steady Rain starts this way when the home of Denny (Nick Fagan) is the target, seriously injuring his two year old son. From there we witness a man spin out of control while his partner Joey (Rohan Watts), with ambitions of his own, starts to fill the voids that Denny is leaving behind.

Things get particularly macabre and taut when one night they both attend to a routine disturbance and leave a naked Vietnamese teenager in the care of his ‘uncle’ who proceeds to devour the lad in the style of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. It is when both are offered the chance to sustain their tenuous careers by dobbing in the other for that cock-up that the brotherly love between them gets its most severe test.

The production works as two interwoven monologues with both players sitting adjoining the other; their times in and out of focus dictated by Scott Cleggett’s lighting. Huff takes us beyond your standard TV police drama into the very human worlds of both men with Denny seemingly overwhelmed by ambitions of self-destruction even though he has the most to lose.

Both Fagan and Watts deliver on their characters. Fagan’s Denny is a fire ball of anger and manipulation while Watts straddles the nuances between his own failings, ambitions and loyalty. It is the best performance I have seen from him. Fagan is perhaps too angry for too long – do we appreciate his sense of helplessness at the end or does it seem more of the same from the previous 60 minutes? His performance may also struggle from an overdone Chicago accent which for even these ears, one who spent five years living in the town and who frequented many of the locales alluded to in the scrip in the age of Ditka, Sosa and Jordan, was often incomprehensible.

This production is a repeat season from its acclaimed first run at this year’s Fringe by Nick Fagan’s Lost in Translation company. His aims are to produce the scripts he has seen and wish he could perform in and this certainly production has certainly been worth his efforts to get the rights to it – for audiences at least.

For intense theatre, the aptly named A Steady Rain delivers a punch and if one missed it in March, do not again now.

Kryztoff Rating  4K

Sep 13

FILM – Girl Asleep – 3.5K

girl_asleep_film_poster_oct_2015By Peter Maddern

For those confronted by them each teenage year can be a struggle but at 15 the passing from childhood and the hurtling into early adulthood comes at you quickly. For Greta Driscoll (Bethany Whitmore) the difficulties of navigating this change are magnified when her dorky parents suddenly decide to throw a birthday party for her. During it she takes a nap where she enters the forest of her dreams, apprehensions, nightmares and future.

Girl Asleep is based on the successful 2014 Adelaide Festival of Arts Windmill Theatre production written by Matthew Whittet who also scores himself a couple of roles in this, most notably as Greta’s father, Conrad.

Under Rosemary Myers’ direction, Greta’s world is a pastiche of the 1970s – fawn, ill-fitting clothing, stone walls, limited technology. Her best friend and suitor Elliott (Harrison Feldman) stands by her side, awkward in the thrall of his first love while other school mates range from well-meaning associates who drift in and out of her world to the most vicious of bullies.

The stage play was overwhelming received by its target audience two years back and many (but not all critics) have similarly oozed over the film as it has toured the Festival circuit since being released at the Adelaide Film Festival not quite 12 months ago. Whether it will resonate with audiences, particularly the key forest / dream scenes in the film’s middle third, now it is in public release only time will tell but Whitmore is a delight as she meets her challenges with an air of bewilderment but stoic determination while Feldman is jammed packed with charisma and a perfect foil for his Greta.

The use of actors in multiple roles works well with perhaps the exception of Windmill regular Eamon Farren who’s Benoit Tremet is a touch confusing. Also  confusing was the need for Greta and Elliott to swap their gear at the end but under the Safe Schools regime anything goes nowadays I suppose.

With the strong potential to be a sleeper that like Greta emerges as a success, Girl Asleep is ideal for anyone with teenage children and for them to attend alone.

Kryztoff Rating  3.5K

Sep 01

THEATRE – Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense – Her Majesty’s – 4K

2326E49A6-B95D-714F-05A4827AB8B96CCEBy Peter Maddern

The brilliant PG Wodehouse was a prolific writer of books and plays many of which targeted the more idiotic elements of the English aristocracy. Two of his most popular characters were the somewhat mindless Bernie Wooster and his faithful and cunning valet, Jeeves. Whilst many saw his work as flippant, it is a mark of Wodehouse that his works have influenced so many (for example, his impact on the Monty Python crew is greater than may be ordinarily acknowledged) and his humour still works as many as 100 years on.

That latter observation is fully evident in this delicious new comedy, featuring the aforementioned Wooster (Matthew Carter) and Jeeves (Joseph Chance) along with butler Seppings (Robert Goodale).

Perfect Nonsense, written by Goodale and his brother David (who also directs) is aptly named as it mixes the usual sillies of love trysts, misunderstandings, villains and innocent young women in an amalgam of many Wodehouse works that have their stories pivot around, of all things, a silver cow creamer.

Other than Carter as Wooster, the other two cast members interchange in a variety of characters until such time as they simply run out of options and two roles need to be shared by the same actor simultaneously in one of the many standout scenes.

The acting, comic timing and stage craft is, as one would expect of seasoned British performers, brilliant with full credit to Cater for sustaining, without ere a momentary pause, his air head persona throughout his near on two hours on stage. Chance digs deep with relish some of his more bizarre roles while Goodale delivers the more non-dialogue moments with stunning aplomb.

It is perhaps a sad coincidence that this show hits town just as State Theatre’s very similar story and production of The 39 Steps breaks local box office records. But be advised, if you can handle both, do – delights like these do not happen every week. Or more likely, if you can’t get into The Playhouse you certainly won’t go home with any sense of missing out after revelling in Perfect Nonsense this week.

But both is best.

 

Kryztoff Rating    4K

Aug 24

THEATRE – The 39 Steps – Playhouse – 4.5K

[Image by Shane Reid]

[Image by Shane Reid]

By Peter Maddern

A beautiful young woman is killed in Richard Hannay’s flat and the police think he did it. But he didn’t and just before she died she has told him vital information that may save Britain. Can he stay ahead of the police and the villains what dunnit?

This farcical reworking of John Buchan’s timeless and inspirational thriller is a beauty of comic writing and timing. Jon Halpin rips into Patrick Barlow’s play with a zest, ably supported by all his four member cast and a dedicated set and costume design team that meets every challenge as the plot rollicks along from locale to locale.

Nathan Page is a delight as the straight laced, indefatigable hero Richard Hannay. Anna Steen ensures his various female partners in stopping crime are suitably dissy yet strong willed, while Tim Overton steals the show playing his assortment of other female characters. Charles Meyer is suitably villainous and nasty especially when as the professor.

The focus on extracting as much humour and as many laughs from the material and genre needs to be commended; it reminded me somewhat of the success of the creators of the film Flying High for their concentration on all those terrible Airport movies of the 1970s. No fumble, bumble or double meaning is overlooked for its possibilities, yet in rolling them out they in no way confuse or deflect from keeping the narrative alive and whole.

This is comic theatre at its best, though seating forward is recommended as sometimes vocal projection is marginal for moments set in the middle or back stage areas.

Kryztoff Rating  4.5K

Aug 19

THEATRE – Titus Andronicus – Red Phoenix Theatre – HST – 3.5K

Titus and the Young Lucius - image by Richard Parkhill.

Titus and the Young Lucius – image by Richard Parkhill.

By Peter Maddern

As one his earliest works, it is not clear in the slaughterfest that is Titus Andronicus whether Shakespeare was just playing to the blood lusts of his audiences or also trying out a few ideas as practice for his more nuanced tragedies to come.

Back from the war, the great soldier Titus (Brant Eustice) knocks off one of his captured Goths only to find the kid’s mother, Tamora (Rachel Burfield), marries the next emperor, Saturninus (Matt Houston) and sets out to square the ledger with some unspeakable acts against Titus’ family, particularly the beautiful Lavinia (Anna Bampton).

Revenge of course is a dish best served cold and when Titus gets his chance the servings are enormous. In this play it seems there are more deaths scored by the knife than there are runs off the bat by Australian batsmen on the spinning decks of Sri Lanka and director Michael Eustice revels in the opportunities they present.

Brant Eustice bears some resemblances to the great Shakespearian actor Kenneth Branagh as to both looks and talent and his slightly unhinged Titus successfully mixes bombast and badness in appropriate quantities. Matt Houston’s Saturninus is aptly flawed, nearly pathetic as he gets conned and bluffed by his ‘heinous tiger’ Tamora, played with ample sorcery by Rachel Burfield. Bampton is delightful as Lavinia and the injuries she suffers and endures for us to witness attract the full count of our pity, while Joshua Mensch’s Demetrius is suitably nasty and feral.

Matt Houston as the flawed Emperor - image by Richard Parkhill.

Matt Houston as the flawed Emperor – image by Richard Parkhill.

Opinion is often split as to whether or not Titus Andronicus is a great play; certainly with 17 in the cast and a less than subtle story line, it is perhaps not a surprise that it has previously never been performed in this town. As the tag line to Michael Eustice’s Red Phoenix Theatre’s ambitions – to bring never before seen theatre to Adelaide – he has certainly made a splash. The production is bold and confronting even with the use of the most spare staging.

If slaughter is your thing, get off your couches shaped by hours before Game of Thrones and take in how it used to be done, live on stage.

Kryztoff Rating   3.5K

Aug 16

VISUAL ART – Stanley Spencer – Carrick Hill

Stanely SPENCER - Sunflower CROPPED_event-detailBy Peter Maddern

The custodians of Carrick Hill – the gift to the State of their home by Bill and Ursula Hayward – have chosen well the subject of Stanley Spencer to commemorate 30 years as a public institution.

For nobody promoted the works of the diminutive Spencer in this country more than Ursula, first through her own acquisitions (thanks to her close networks in London) and then in her role on the board of the (then) National Gallery of South Australia (now the Art Gallery of South Australia.)

This exhibition, limited appropriately to around 30 works, adorns the northern upstairs rooms of Carrick Hill and provides a rich overview of his work.

To be sure Spencer was (at the least) a slightly odd man; perhaps his home schooling deprived him of a sense of the world but praised he is today by art lovers for the outcomes of it. His life and art centred around Cookham, a village on a bend in the Thames River near Maidenhead on the now outskirts of west London. There he focused initially on landscapes, not of grand views but of the ordinary, cosy world of his own backyard. His works bring a brilliant radiance and detail to that mundane place, with never a blink askance about the potential distractions of such things as glasshouses or jagged walls that rest behind his immediate subjects. Flowers were another favourite subject with his Sunflower (above) one of the most striking works exhibited.

Daphne By The Window

Daphne By The Window

But while his fancies also lay in nudes, portraits and various Christian themes, economic austerity, somewhat self-imposed, necessitated him to keep churning out the landscapes and flowers in order to stay alive. For it was another of his failings to leave his first wife, Hilda, in favour of Patricia, his model subject, who even known to be a lesbian he married granting her his house in a pre-nuptial arrangement. It seems the marriage did not even get as far as the bedroom on the wedding night.

These sadnesses are also displayed in two very poignant paintings – Hilda Welcomed and Parents Resurrecting – homages to happier and more innocent times with these large influences on his life, now lost as he struggles on. The figures in these are rounded, avuncular and fulsome individuals, a departure from some of the usual tortured portraits usually commended from that and other eras.

Still for all his disappointments and frustrations, Spencer’s work through the late 1930s sustains a poise and calm at odds with his predicament, some testament to his vision.

This is an excellent exhibition of one of England’s finest 20th century painters, bringing together works from across the country and England in a rare retrospective of colour and beauty that sits more than soundly in the grandeur of Carrick Hill. The accompanying book by Richard Heathcote and Anna Jug adds much to the understanding of the exhibit and one may well benefit from reading it before embarking up the majestic staircase.

 

Aug 15

FILM – Motorkite Dreaming – 3.5K

1-motorkite-dreaming-519x760By Peter Maddern

A better understanding of the true nature of the Australian outback and it’s inhabitation by aborigines is something most city slickers would benefit from. There are probably few better to explain it all for us than film maker Charlie Hill-Smith whose work has focused on cross cultural worlds, especially in this country and the region including the ‘Nesias’ – Micro, Poly and Indo.

His protagonists are Daryl and Aidan who are embarking on an adventure, in the air on Mircolights (the kind of aircraft Leonardo DaVinci  may have conjured (and little more)) and their partners Elsie and Lexi, who remain on the ground driving along laden with supplies and fears of what may happen above them. Their proposed trek is from Adelaide across four deserts to Beagle Bay on the far north-west coast of Australia.

It’s made clear early on that both men are somewhat card carrying members of the loose cannon club with preparations somewhat constrained by a lack of training (licences only obtained  a few days before lift-off), experience and resources – notably cash for petrol – but off they go.

As any such journey may encounter, but certainly this one would seem more than likely to, our team gets into a range of fraught positions – crashes, bogged vehicles, unscheduled extended stays in the bush – and of course tensions between members resulting from male boneheadedness, tiredness and time out of the comfort zone of home.

However, the highlights come from Hill-Smith’s focus on the encounters with the land and the aborigines. Whether perceived as a blessing or a curse, this month-long journey sees the outback covered with water and Hill-Smith captures superb scenes over a flooded Lake Eyre and then the western deserts as the trek goes further north.

Two moments while they are in Kintore, a remote WA township, are perhaps the best of the film. Here we see a football carnival being played – who knows from how far away these people came for this – and paintings by local dot painters of their perceptions of their land viewed from above layered over with those taken from the Microlights.

There is something very skilful about the filmmaking here as well. While we are presented with maybe five or six players on the trek, the credits acknowledge the contributions of many more on the film crew. Keeping an authenticity about the adventure and isolation in foreign territory is another strength of this engaging documentary.

Microlighting (or the ‘Motorkites’ as the aborigines refer to them) may appear an enormous buzz but they are not without danger – it is noted that at least four people have died on them in one local’s memory alone – but beyond the adrenaline rush the perspective on the land and its people, combined with the contraption’s fragility, make this Dreaming riveting and enjoyable viewing.

Kryztoff Rating  3.5K

See our interview with Director and Film maker, Charles Hill-Smith below:

 

Aug 15

GUITAR FESTIVAL – Paco de Lucía – The Journey – Her Majesty’s – 4K

By Peter Maddern

Born into a guitar family, with his development watched over assiduously by his father, by his 15th birthday Paco De Lucía had become a more than proficient flamenco player, steeped in Andalusian traditions. However, on a concert trip to New York he was encouraged by legends Sabicas and Mario Escudero to write his own music and develop his own style, advice he took to heart.

Paco de Lucía – The Journey is a superb documentary produced by his son, Curro Sánchez, which, thanks to volumes of recorded video from the past 50 years and quite intimate and open conversations with his father captured before his death two years ago, reveals the, at times, very problematic journey of a genius.

Not only did some unique style have to emerge, but Paco, like many other heretics of conventional wisdoms, needed to also stand firm against the criticism of industry leaders and commentators alike. For them he was a threat and a renegade but through a series of chance meetings and events, we see how various stages of the great’s career developed; from joining with singer Camarón to incorporating jazz and even box beats into his repertoire.

But beyond, as is made plain in the film, lay a skill and understanding of his instrument that facilitated both virtuosity and passion in his playing no matter the lengths of effort he went to surpass previous heights.

Sadly, it seems this documentary is yet to find Australian distribution but hopefully it will get included in a future Latino Film Fest or similar at the Palace for it is certainly worth the price of admission, if only for hearing the playing, the sounds of which are finely reproduced in it.

Kryztoff Rating    4K

Aug 13

GUITAR FESTIVAL – Lord Byron’s Don Juan – Tama Matheson and Karin Schaupp – 4.5K

By Peter Maddern

There is something quintessentially British about George Gordon Byron; living in a society that while prescribing morality and propriety is dominated by those whose behaviour is more notable for the breach than the observance of that civil code. Indeed it is unclear just exactly what principles guided the young Byron other than some devotion to his own ego and varied sexual pleasure.

Tama Matheson superbly takes us through this life posed as he is in his final days, aged 36, before sepsis arising from treatment for fever takes its ultimate hold. In it Matheson also speaks to the genesis and development of Byron’s masterpiece, the unfinished Don Juan.  These prove to be threads that are deeply interwoven; autobiographical and delusional, grand and petty.

Adding to the intrigue, the hubris and the humour is Karin Schaupp working away on solo guitar with music from Turina, Pujol and Tàrrega before herself too getting caught up in the tale.

Matheson’s Lord Byron’s Don Juan is a gem, a quinella of consummate writing and delivery, a gripping tale of a free (albeit self-obsessed) spirit accompanied by rhythms of love, passion and struggle. One can only hope for a repeat season – one night is surely not enough.

Kryztoff Rating    4.5K