I thought, this month, I might give up with the rant categories and run all my thoughts together. Eeeeeeeeeeeep! So, June welcomed the magnificent Sydney Film Festival, and the lights-on-the-Opera-House, Vivid Festival. I never really do anything with Vivid but it does kind of buzz in the background and make buildings look pretty and make me go ‘dang, I wish I had tickets to The Cure’… I caught a glimpse at the pretty post theatre one evening, but it was raining and soggy and I didn’t stop to marvel, I jumped on a train and trudged home. But. Yes. Pretty. Funnily enough, considering I consider myself a film geek, I seldom celebrate SFF either… In fact, the only times I’ve ever gone to see something is when I’ve been taken/dragged. This year was no different. A lovely friend of mine had tickets to The Trip (Dir: Michael Winterbottom) and asked me to accompany her. Otherwise I would have just walked around all month going ‘dang, I wish I had tickets to Norwegian Wood’ (cos I’m super wetting my pants about seeing the first film rendering of Murakami, cos I’m a BIG Murakami junkie… Oh well… theatrical release is supposed to be in August, so I’ll just have to settle for soggy knickers till then) … Anyway, there was an odd short called Bunce (Dir: Peter Cattaneo) that screened before The Trip, written by Stephen Fry, who I’m super cranky at cos of when he said that women don’t enjoy sex and that sex is for men (read this and grumble: http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/index.html?story=/mwt/broadsheet/2010/11/01/stephen_fry) and I tend to not be in the mood to like him/find him funny anymore. Meanwhile, Bunce was really weird. It was all about Fry’s obsession with lollies in boarding school, and included scenes of actual Fry (playing the role of principal) beating himself as a kid (played by Daniel Roche, that cute kid from Outnumbered, how funny is Outnumbered btw?) for sneaking to the store and buying lollies. It was odd. On the other hand, The Trip was heaps of fun. Food, friendship, English countryside, impersonations, actors being actor-ish dicks. I was having a most enjoyable giggle. Sadly though, as things tend to happen in Sydney… Everything happened on the one night. I suddenly found myself with tickets to the opening of The White Guard, (Dir: Andrew Upton) and it was going up at 8 at Sydney Theatre and The Trip started at 6.30 on George Street. I checked the running time, there was no way we’d be able to see the whole of The Trip and make it in time for The White Guard. So we did a runner in the middle of the 4th Michael Caine impersonation and caught the bus down to Walsh Bay… So, I can only really say I’d begun to enjoy The Trip and was sad to leave and I fully intend to watch the rest at some point. Now, before I ramble about what I thought of The White Guard I want to rant about how much I love the Aussie flick, Dating The Enemy (Dir: Megan Simpson Huberman.) Odd segue I know, how the fuck is a 90’s rom-com related to a June-2011 rant? So, the thing is, I don’t usually get star-struck. Sydney is full of famous people. They’re annoying. Actually fame really gives me the shits. It’s a really freaky commodity/state. It artificalises places/experiences. It isn’t real. We don’t actually know these people… yet we’re filled with feelings for and about these people. They’ve captured our imaginations in some way. We have ideas and opinions about them. They are the characters they’ve portrayed or something (in the case of famous actors.) Or, there must be some bits of the characters we’ve invested in inside them cos they were them for a time. (I remember once, as a youngster, having to catch myself and swallow the urge to yell at Rachael Griffiths about what Brenda did on Six Feet Under that week when I was selling her movie tickets cos I knew it was absurd to conflate actress with her role, and you know, it was rude and embarrassing and I don’t know her…) I don’t know, but for whatever reason, when a famous person enters a room the feeling changes and I really, really hate that. It really struck me when I was about 16 having coffee with my mother and a friend and a famous person walked into the coffee shop. All of a sudden, we couldn’t just drink and talk as we had been. Everything now revolved around what the famous person was fucking doing… “ooh she’s ordering this, ooh she’s wearing that” Ugh. They suck. They turn settings banal and stupid. So I make a point of not finding them exciting or interesting. It mostly works too. Cept, at The White Guard opening no amount of don’t-let-fame-change-the-feeling-of-the-evening reasoning was going to stop my heart fluttering over Claudia Karvan being in the mix of famous-people-in-foyer-fodder and that’s because, Dating The Enemy is the Australian film that has meant the most to me in my life. I was there with my friend (who’d taken me to the beginning of The Trip) and she happened to also be a Karvan/Dating The Enemy nut, so the evening exploded in fan-girl giggling and perving and joking and general hysteria. There was no way to stop us. We were ridiculous. And I have to say it was pretty fun. And I think a coin or two dropped about what fandom is, how euphoric it can be. I’m still unsettled by the whole dynamic though. I think fame and fandom are fraught states and we need to be really careful… but a night of giggles at the theatre never really hurt anyone did it? Dating the Enemy was the film, throughout my teenage-hood, that I’d watch and re-wind and watch again. It was my Friday-night-learn-all-the-words-and-jokes-and-say-the-film-to-yourself-before-the-film-does film. I never really stopped to think about why I loved the film so much. I just loved it. Now I’m all nerdy and looking at the place films sit in peoples lives, specifically in lesbian spectators eyes, I realise that I was, without knowing it, watching the film queerly. I couldn’t get enough of Karvan acting like a man. The pretence, the masquerade, the woman acting butch, the edge of artifice and reality where I knew that Brett wasn’t really in Tash’s body, that it was actually a woman, Karvan, acting like a man, was so fucking exciting for little-kid-repressed-lesbian-me. I still watch the film really regularly. It’s silly and fun and dorky and 90s and I love all the shots of Sydney and I still find Karvan incredibly hot. I want to nerd it up properly and write a proper queer response to the film but I prolly wont do that here (in blog land) and I definitely wont do it now. I just thought I’d tell you the way in which my night devouring bits of Sydney culture felt, cos the experience of a theatre foyer is just as important as the actual theatre. Well, maybe not just, but it really is a big part of the evening. The red wine, and gossip over a bag of over-priced potato chips before the show goes up, the theatre skull, (cos there’s never enough time for a full glass of wine) and the slightly giddy feeling said theatre skull gives you as you stumble into the theatre and take your place, the pitch of the foyer chatter, the fashion, the type of crowd, all the little bits add to the feeling of the show, how the space feels, is it sterile? Is it a grimy underground venue? Is it pretentious? It all informs how we feel and theatre is all about how we feel. Anyway. What I thought of The White Guard… pretty dull. It runs till July 10 if you want to dash and see it but it’s not much to write home about. I really loved Dale March’s work. He’s charming and funny and keeps you giggling. He’s a really skilled and humble clown. A real joy to watch. One of the most interesting Sydney actors around at the moment. He’s the true comic genius of the show. Big wigs of the comic-actor scene such as same-every-time-Darren-Gilshenen are acted (and funnied) right off the stage by March. It might even be worth it just to see his work but, all in all, the production doesn’t really work. It’s supposed to be farcical, (I think) but it sits somewhere (uneasily) between farce and tragedy and doesn’t hit the right notes of either. Upton’s adaptation is as mediocre as his directing. Neither are inspired and some bits just didn’t work at all. Meanwhile, over at Wharf 1, Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness, (Dir: Sarah Goodes) is amazing and well worth a look. It runs till July 23rd, if you want a good night at the theatre GO AND SEE IT! We all know I’m a big Lindsay Farris fan and he doesn’t disappoint here. Gorgeous, charming, hilarious, generous, magical, intelligent, performance. Paul Bishop, Bryan Probets and Emily Tomlins are great too. It’s a tight ensemble. The play, by Anthony Neilson, is wonderful, full of wit and charm and magic and imagination. I should quit with the listing of adjectives shouldn’t I? It’s about theatre and love and storytelling and the wonder of storytelling and it’s silly and absurd and loopy and gross and breathtaking. Whoops. Can’t seem to stop with the gushy listing. Sorry. It took me right in. It’s theatre that is theatre and is about theatre. It is imbued with all that is wonderful and exciting about performance and stories and storytelling. It’s circus-like and vaudeville and yum. My only complaint is I didn’t really feel like it suited STC. It felt too, well STC at STC… I wanted to see it in a tent or in a grimy warehouse in Marrickville, or even just Darlo (Speaking of Darlo it kept reminding me of a show I once saw there: The Illusion, (Dir. Damien Miller, 2006) one of my all time favourite theatre experiences ever!) would have done the trick. Seeing it in the charming but still very bloody proper and upper-middle-class-feeling Wharf 1 made me feel distanced form the piece a bit. I felt like I was at a zoo, or a museum, seeing what this rare specimen of “exciting theatre” was all about. The show transcends the space though. It’s completely rad. I should prolly mention Romance was Born did the costumes and they’re pretty good. The idea of them doing it made me a little uneasy. So fucking hipster, and, can’t we just have them be designers and give costume jobs to costume artists? (like say Gemma Lark… I’d have loved to have seen what her gorgeous imagination could have cooked up for this one.) But then, what can you expect when you’ve got and actor and an adaptor running a theatre company eh? What I mean is, I have to begrudgingly admit the costumes were really great. Full of, you know the drill… magic and wit and charm… I’d also like to mention that the sound design, by Steve Toulmin was really awesome. Super yum. Toulmin, as it turns out, is one incredibly talented individual. I also happened to be blown away by his acting chops this month round the corner (or right underneath) at the Studio 1 ATYP theatre, (seems I lurked at Walsh Bay for my theatre this month) in the Arts Radar/Under The Wharf production of Tooth of Crime, (Dir: David Harmon.) Toulmin, who plays Crow, was stunning, and sexy, and Bowie, and electrifying, and everything. He well and truly blew Hoss (Akos Armont) off the stage. I thought Armont was a tad weak, I’d have liked if I gave more of a shit about his demise but it was a solid (and sexy) performance too, I’m not going to complain too much. I also want to mention how much I dig Paige Gardiner. She was a little rusty at the start of the show I saw but she really warmed into her role and had heaps of really compelling vulnerable moments. Watch her. My bet is she goes places. I saw her in her final year of NIDA in a mish-mash-of-Moliére production and she really knocked my socks off. She really knew how to engage an audience and think on her feet and improvise and be funny and charming. I’m a fan. I also thought Dan O’Leary was great and had one of the most moving numbers in the show. I got all hairs-on-my-neck-standing-on-end (in a good way) about him. Anyway, they play was pretty good. It’s a Sam Shepard play and it’s dirty and Rock and Roll and exciting. It almost feels more like a gig than theatre. In a good way. Not much of a story and it kind of drones on a bit but it’s punctuated by fucking cool numbers. Fun. Enjoyed it much. That will do for this month. June equals: I’m a failed film geek who saw a bit of theatre. End rant.
Love,
