Tag Archives: Esther Hannaford
Posted on February 29, 2016 by deborahjones2012
Luckiest Productions & Tinderbox Productions. Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, February 23.
RESISTANCE is useless Earthlings. Little Shop of Horrors is back and roaring for warm blood. Human blood. Your blood. I doubt it will be denied, at least in cult-musicals circles. The greatly cherished show has an almost mystical following and, with this production, should recruit a new generation of devotees.
To recap: after an unusual atmospheric disturbance, lovable loser Seymour Krelborn (Brent Hill) stumbles upon a weird plant and brings it back to the drooping Skid Row florist shop where he works alongside another of life's punching bags, self-sabotaging Audrey (Esther Hannaford). Given the name Audrey II by lovesick Seymour, the plant soon reveals itself to be carnivorous. Rapaciously so. What could possibly go wrong? And what will nebbish Seymour do to hold on to his dreams once he becomes something of a celebrity thanks to Audrey II, with a concomitant boost to his previously minimal store of courage?
Brent Hill as Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors. Photo: Jeff Busby
Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's musical takes its B-grade schlock-horror plot from a 1960 Roger Corman quickie film but it has much more heart and substance than that may suggest. At the Hayes, in a tightrope act pulled off with impeccable style and sophistication, director Dean Bryant expertly digs into the multiplicity of dark interpretations implicit in the text while keeping things light and fleet enough on the surface to keep the laughs coming.
Hanging over the story are those mid-20th century fears of invasion and subjugation in which aliens stood in for the enemy at the gate (think Orson Welles's broadcast of The War of the Worlds and John Wyndham's novel The Day of the Triffids just to name two). These fears are not entirely unknown today. Little Shop of Horrors is also a cautionary tale about the dangerous seductions of fame and money, particularly for someone as innocent as Seymour.
But it's the central story of doomed love and impossible aspirations that Bryant and his production team really hit hard and strong, just as they did in 2014 with their thrilling reworking of Sweet Charity.
Little Shop of Horrors premiered Off-Broadway in 1982, distant enough from Corman's film to be able to indulge in fond nostalgia for the 1960s and having it both ways by casting an arch but critical eye over the lingering 1950s social values of the time. Bryant sails audaciously close to the wind in his conceptions of Audrey and Seymour. When we first see Hannaford's Audrey her emotional fragility is heightened dramatically by the production design, an expressionistic rendering of the dismal grey lives of the denizens of Skid Row. Hannaford looks wraith-like and her not-entirely-American accent and twitchy, fey gestures make her seem already not of this world.
Esther Hannaford and Brent Hill. Photo: Jeff Busby
Audrey's resigned subservience to her sadistic dentist boyfriend Orin Scrivello DDS (Scott Johnson) – she's never allowed to forget Orin's academic credentials – is exceptionally painful and gives exceptional poignancy to her wistful fantasy of a safe, well-appointed home (Somewhere That's Green). The song is funny and heartbreaking all at once and Hannaford is attuned to every nuance. To hear her wish for not only a washer but a dryer too is to hear an entire life story. Hannaford's performance is exquisitely calibrated: strange, beautiful and unearthly, even when raising the roof with Hill's Seymour in Suddenly Seymour, where tenderness and a thumping great love ballad collide magnificently.
From Hill, also in tour-de-force vocal and dramatic form, we get to understand that even someone as sweet and gentle as Seymour is liable to turn into a kind of monster if he chooses to make compact with one. Still, that might be better than what he had to start with, no? And anyway, once on that slippery slope there's no getting off.
Bryant's Little Shop of Horrors lets such thoughts niggle tenaciously while making whoopee with the musical's trashy laughs, irresistible songs and grand guignol gestures. Erth Visual & Physical Inc's series of Audrey II plants (Jamie Clennett, animator) is spectacularly successful, as are the designs by Owen Phillips (set), Tim Chappel (costumes) and Ross Graham (lights). In a brilliant coup de théâtre they transform a dismal grey world into riotous colour when success comes calling at the decrepit business run by Mr Mushnik (Tyler Coppin). Andrew Hallsworth's pitch-perfect choreography is the cherry on top. Well, that and the darling red bias-cut coat Chappel gives Audrey in Act II. Divine.
While Hill and Hannaford are the glorious linchpin, the full cast of nine is a knockout, particularly Angelique Cassimatis, Josie Lane and Chloe Zuel as a sassy, sexy Greek chorus in close-harmony girl-group guise and Scott Johnson's pure macho evil as Orin that makes you laugh and gasp in horror all at once.
As can often happen at the Hayes on opening night the sound from music director Andrew Warboys's small band was sometimes too boomy and precious lyrics were smothered. It's a hard space to get right it would seem, but one is grateful for the gems it produces. One more thing: Little Shop looks too big for the 110-seat Hayes, but this was always likely. There's a national tour ahead in more capacious venues.
This is an expanded version of a review that appeared in The Australian on February 25.
Little Shop of Horrors ends in Sydney on March 19. Adelaide from April 20, Melbourne from May 4, Canberra from May 25, Brisbane from June 1, Perth from August 4.
Posted in Musical theatre	| Tagged Andrew Hallsworth, Andrew Warboys, Angelique Cassimatis, Brent Hill, Chloe Zuel, Dean Bryant, Erth Visual & Physical Inc, Esther Hannaford, Hayes Theatre Co, Jamie Clennett, Josie Lane, Luckiest Productions, Owen Phillips, Ross Graham, Scott Johnson, Tim Chappel, Tinderbox Productions, Tyler Coppin	| Leave a reply
Sydney Theatre Awards 2015
Posted on January 19, 2016 by deborahjones2012
AT the Sydney Theatre Awards no one need ever fear a journalist asking them "who are you wearing" or indeed have any need of a stylist. There is no red carpet at the Paddington RSL, there are no TV cameras. The proceedings could be described as low-key, or even a little bit daggy if you wish, but it is always such a happy night. Yes, theatre practitioners are in competition with one another for our awards – I'm one of the Sydney critics whose votes determine the winners – but there is great warmth and good will in the room. As Belvoir's new artistic director Eamon Flack said on Monday night when the awards for 2015 were announced, this is the one occasion when the industry gets together.
It's also an occasion on which the tables are turned, slightly, on the critics, as we troop onstage to introduce presenters, ask those present to remember colleagues who have died in the past year, announce special awards and pay tribute to all the theatre workers who never get awards but whose backroom toil is essential. We're always frightfully nervous about getting up in front of a room of theatre professionals but they are very kind.
This year's highlights included passionate state-of-the-arts speeches from Flack and from Griffin's artistic director Lee Lewis; a fantastically funny version of My Favourite Things specially written for the occasion by Dash Kruck and performed by him; a gorgeously heartfelt acceptance speech from James Millar when he won best supporting actor in a musical for his Miss Trunchbull in Matilda; Esther Hannaford's performance of I'll Hold On from the Nick Enright-Max Lambert musical Miracle City that got the audience to its feet (Lambert was on piano); and the bright presence of the four little girls – Molly Barwick, Sasha Rose, Georgie Taplin and Bella Thomas – who shared the role of Matilda and received our Special Achievement Award.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was accepted by Christine Dunstan, a woman steeped in many aspects of theatre for more than 50 years since starting her working life as an assistant stage manager. She founded her production company CDP in 1993 and it has been particularly active in making high-quality theatre for children. (CDP won the 2015 Sydney Theatre Award for best production for children for The 52-Storey Treehouse.) CDP also takes productions to many regional Australian centres and tours productions internationally.
Belvoir's Ivanov: Ewen Leslie, centre on the sofa, with John Howard, AirlieDodds, Blazey Best, Helen Thomson and John Bell
2015 SYDNEY THEATRE AWARD WINNERS
BEST MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
Ivanov (Belvoir)
BEST INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Of Mice and Men (Sport for Jove and Seymour Centre)
BEST DIRECTION OF A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
Eamon Flack (Ivanov)
BEST DIRECTION OF AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Iain Sinclair (Of Mice and Men)
BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE IN A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
Eryn Jean Norvill (Suddenly Last Summer)
BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE IN A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
Hugo Weaving (Endgame)
BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE IN AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Kate Cole (Grounded)
BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE IN AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Thomas Campbell (Misterman)
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
Blazey Best (Ivanov)
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
John Howard (Ivanov)
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Taylor Ferguson (Good Works)
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
James Bell, centre. Photo: Rupert Reid
James Bell (The Aliens)
BEST STAGE DESIGN OF A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
Nick Schlieper (Endgame)
BEST STAGE DESIGN OF AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Michael Hankin (Of Mice and Men)
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
Alice Babidge (Suddenly Last Summer)
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Angela White (Heathers)
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
Paul Jackson (Love and Information)
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Hartley TA Kemp (Misterman)
BEST SCORE OR SOUND DESIGN OF A MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION
The Sweats (Love and Information)
BEST SCORE OR SOUND DESIGN OF AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION
Nate Edmondson (Misterman)
BEST NEW AUSTRALIAN WORK
The Bleeding Tree (Angus Cerini)
Lauren McKenna (Heathers)
After Dinner (Sydney Theatre Company)
BEST PRODUCTION OF A MAINSTREAM MUSICAL
Matilda (The Royal Shakespeare Company, Louise Withers, Michael Coppel and Michael Watt)
BEST PRODUCTION OF AN INDEPENDENT MUSICAL
Violet (Blue Saint Productions in association with Hayes Theatre Co)
BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL
Mitchell Butel (Violet)
JUDITH JOHNSON AWARD FOR BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Amy Lepahmer. Photo: James Morgan
Amy Lehpamer (The Sound of Music)
JUDITH JOHNSON AWARD FOR BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Hayden Tee (Les Miserables)
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
Elise McCann (Matilda)
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
James Millar (Matilda)
BEST MUSICAL DIRECTION
Lucy Bermingham (Violet)
BEST CABARET PRODUCTION
Josie Lane (Asian Provocateur)
BEST PRODUCTION FOR CHILDREN
The 52-Storey Treehouse (CDP)
BEST PRODUCTION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
War Crimes (ATYP)
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Molly Barwick, Sasha Rose, Georgia Taplin, Bella Thomas (Matilda)
Molly Barwick with Elise McCann in Matilda. Photo: James Morgan
Christine Dunstan
Posted in Theatre	| Tagged Bella Thomas, Belvoir, Christine Dunstan, Dash Kruck, Eamon Flack, Esther Hannaford, Georgia Taplin, Griffin Theatre Company, James Millar, Lee Lewis, Max Lambert, Molly Barwick, Nick Enright, Sasha Rose, Sydney Theatre Awards	| 2 Replies
Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, October 22
GLORY hallelujah! Miracle City has been resurrected. It is alive and it is well, if a little in need of fine-tuning.
An explanation for those not steeped in music-theatre lore: in 1996 Nick Enright and Max Lambert's show had a short season at Sydney, Theatre Company and it was good. But for various reasons it wasn't revived and soon acquired quasi-religious status. But to every thing there is a season and Miracle City has found a natural home at Hayes Theatre Co, with its 110 seats and committed music-theatre audience. The small, bare-bones space is perfect for Miracle City's setting, a regional Tennessee television station from which the Truswell family conducts its evangelical Christian ministry and tries to raise money for an ill-considered theme park.
Josie Lane, Marika Aubrey and Esther Hannaford. Photo: Kurt Sneddon
Michael Hankin's rudimentary set of a sparkly curtain, a few monitors and some backstage bits and bobs strikes exactly the right note. The Truswells have a long-standing ministry but they are nowhere near the league of the Reverend Millard Sizemore, a bully with a private jet, oily authority and vast sense of entitlement. Rick Truswell doesn't lack for ambition, however, and has grandiose plans, advertised regularly during the family's Sunday program. Naturally funds are required. From their unprepossessing studio the family intersperses its home-spun homilies and rousing songs with calls for donations that will enable the completion of the theme park they have called Miracle City. "First you pray, then you play," say the ads, but before that can happen someone has to pay. Rick Truswell needs money, he needs it badly, and, as it transpires, will do anything to get it.
In real time – just under 90 minutes – the veneer of good cheer and good works shatters. Idolised men are shown not only to have feet of clay but to be viciously corrupt and a woman married at 16 finds the strength to be her own person. (The echoes of A Doll's House are pleasing as the woman is played by Blazey Best, who recently starred in an updated version of Ibsen's play for Belvoir.)
With their exercise of iron-clad patriarchial control, Rick Truswell (Mike McLeish) and his mentor Sizemore (Peter Kowitz) could be old-school Stalinists, except with way, way better music. Which is where Miracle City really nails it. Lambert and Enright's songs are heaven, absolutely crucial to the show's tightrope-walk between satire and seduction. There are up-tempo exhortations to raise the roof, share the load and to take up arms until the war is won, and there is a strong temptation to leap to one's feet and join right in.
The country-and-gospel score hits bull's-eyes again and again. Marika Aubrey, Hilary Cole, Esther Hannaford and Josie Lane are all in knockout vocal form as they deliver the effortless mix of shiny-eyed faith and glossy showbiz. Hannaford, who plays the troubled Bonnie-Mae, is magnificent in the show's standout number I'll Hold On, and Aubrey leads a storming Raise the Roof, but really everyone gets a strong vocal moment. Who knew Best (Lora-Lee Truswell) could sing like that? She's a revelation, as is young Cameron Holmes as baby of the family Ricky-Bob. Keep him on your radar. Jason Kos as floor manager of the Truswells' show rounds out this highly appealing cast.
The difficulty is in managing the shift from clean-living serenity to ugly reality in such a short time. Director Darren Yap has allowed McLeish and Kowitz, both charismatic, to become too obviously villainous and therefore less chilling than they might be. But to be fair, the piece probably needed a few more drafts to enrich overly emblematic characters. Rick Truswell has the usual reclamation story (he was a no-account wrong-doer until he met Lora-Lee when she was just a girl), Aubrey is the tough, astringent gal who can look after herself, Hannaford the woman with a painful past and Lane the adoring disciple who sees nothing. Cole has a little more to play with as Loretta, the teenager with a combustible mix of rebellion and naivety, and Best has the most complex path to tread as she touchingly shows the illusions of 20 years being stripped away in moments.
Best is an intensely sympathetic actor who negotiates the swift transition from subservience to vulnerability to defiance with appealing dignity, willing us to believe in a situation that doesn't entirely ring true.
The dramaturgy isn't perfect, but this is nevertheless an absorbing evening created by a lavishly talented group of people. Apart from designer Hankin, the composer leads a terrific five-piece band, Kelley Abbey choreographed, Roger Kirk did the costumes and Hugh Hamilton the lights. These are people normally seen on far bigger projects. But then this is Miracle City. Back at last.
Miracle City ends November 16
A version of this review appeared in The Australian on October 2
Posted in Musical theatre	| Tagged Blazey Best, Cameron Holmes, Darren Yap, Esther Hannaford, Hilary Cole, Hugh Hamilton, Jason Kos, Josie Lane, Kelley Abbey, Marika Aubrey, Max Lambert, Michael Hankin, Mike McLeish, Nick Enright, Peter Kowitz, Roger Kirk	| Leave a reply
King Kong, Robot Vs Art
Posted on June 21, 2013 by deborahjones2012
King Kong, Regent Theatre, Melbourne, June 19; Robot Vs Art, Bondi Pavilion, Sydney, June 20
WHAT'S wrong with this picture? It's late in Act II of King Kong and Queenie van de Zandt, as Cassandra, is singing the show's most stirring number, Rise. As she sings, a chorus swelling behind her – and van de Zandt was in tremendous voice on Wednesday evening – we are to envisage King Kong climbing to the top of the Empire State Building where, we know, he will be destroyed. The climax of King Kong, the extravagantly scaled new musical, is at hand.
But who is Cassandra that she gets the night's prime position? She's a character – a device, really – the show really, truly doesn't need. This is no disrespect to van de Zandt, who is as accomplished a music theatre performer as you'll ever meet. It's a structural thing. Cassandra – the name is the giveaway – is there to be the voice of foreboding at the beginning of the piece when film producer Carl Denham (newcomer Adam Lyon) is embarking on his grandiose plans to go to Skull Island, home to Kong. Cassandra is there to predict this will all come to a bad end. You don't say …
Cassandra is given relatively little stage time, so at this late crucial point in King Kong the big anthemic number is sung by a character in whom there is absolutely no audience investment. Obviously she's covering the set change that places Kong on the top of the Empire State Building. Obviously there should be more than that.
Esther Hannaford and King Kong
King Kong is, should be, about nothing but the highest stakes, something the show's one unequivocal success proves. King Kong – the beast, not the show – is utterly, extraordinarily, splendiferously magnificent. King Kong producer Global Creatures has given audiences a creature to inspire awe and pity; to marvel at and to weep over – or at least potentially. As operated by a group of puppeteers called the King's men, Kong expresses feelings unmatched by any living thing on stage.
The body of Kong contains the key themes writ extremely large: colonisation, oppression, exploitation, migration, the outsider and, above all, devotion. The show touches on all this, albeit too many times with an unnecessarily heavy hand, but hasn't yet managed an effective balance between the characters the audience needs to care about and those it doesn't. I longed for a scene on the boat back from Skull Island that would show Kong in captivity and starlet Ann Darrow (Esther Hannaford) developing her compassion for him; without it Act II gets underway with the audience having to connect an awful lot of dots. On the other hand, I longed for savage cuts to be made to scenes featuring Carl Denham. The character is deeply unpleasant and Lyon lacks the adamantine charisma that can give an awful but seductive charm to such men.
Since King Kong's premiere in Melbourne last Saturday night there has been interesting and fruitful discussion about whether it really is a musical, or a spectacular, or a new direction in theatre that takes the book musical, adds elements unknown in the golden era of the 1950s, and creates something new. That's all good to talk about, but is a separate issue from the nitty-gritty of King Kong's weaknesses. The flaws have nothing to do with genre. They have to do with logic, shape, rhythm, tone and character development.
And some of the dialogue is execrable, as if it's what has remained after the scissors have been wielded over-enthusiastically to fit in more spectacle. (Craig Lucas, who is credited with the book, is a highly experienced and successful writer.) "I must be dreaming," says Hannaford helpfully as scantily clad dancing girls emerge from nowhere on the Skull Island-bound ship for a fantasy scene. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Surely there's a better way to signal this if you doubt the audience's ability to get what's happening. Such dead language, and there are many other examples, is entirely at odds with the originality of the piece's visual and musical aspirations.
I loved the way the music mixed original songs (not all entirely memorable) with existing material, particularly when it included 1920s and 1930s references. There are brief snatches of Brother Can you Spare a Dime, I Wanna be Loved by You and the Lutheran hymn carol Joy to the World, the Lord is Come. There is stunning use made of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler's Get Happy, given surreal treatment with traces of Weimar Republic-era desperate wit. As the escaping Kong starts his rampage, a line of platinum-blonde chorines keeps the show going: "Get ready for the judgment day," they sing. Quite.
An eclectic approach is also taken to the show's tone. There are traces of cheesy Saturday morning adventure flick, 1930s romantic comedy, futuristic sci-fi, camp send-up and early Dr Who – a hugely ambitious position that, I think, can only work if anchored by the strongest emotional through-line.
Hannaford and Chris Ryan, as Ann's love interest Jack Driscoll, do their best with the insufficient time they have to connect deeply – and they'd be helped by a more dramatic setting for their falling-in-love dance scene. In a show so ear- and eye-poppingly decked out with son et lumiere they look quite lost and dull here. And Jack appeared to be singing about men killed while building the San Francisco bridge (que?), or did I get that wrong?
(On another matter relating to lyrics, does Cassandra really sing about people falling at the top of Act II? It was in a context that made me immediately think of September 11, 2001. Not sure that will be right for Broadway, should that be in the offing.)
King Kong needs a lot more work to achieve its goal of being the "timeless love story" it bills itself as, but gee, I hope it gets there. The big fella at its centre deserves it. All hail to Kong's creators, who have given the huge creature expression, character and eloquent articulation. The puppeteers who animate Kong are involved in an intricate choreography that is entrancing in and of itself, but more pertinently they and the great wires that support Kong so visibly get right to the heart of the story. As men swarm over, around and under Kong there's not only the excitement of his moving presence but a premonition of his subjugation. From the moment we first see Kong he's already captive.
King Kong shows in Melbourne only. It is currently taking bookings through to October 13 for groups and August 18 for the general public.
Robot Vs Art, presented by Tamarama Rock Surfers
NOT in Melbourne, but from Melbourne, comes Travis Cotton's surreally comic sci-fi morality tale Robot Vs Art. A bit like King Kong in some respects, at about a millionth of the budget. There's even a bit of the early Dr Who vibe about it.
In a not-too-distant dystopian future, robots rule the earth of which humans have made such a hash. After some wholesale slaughter the men and women who remain are put to work as underground miners while the robots set about creating a weird kind of Eden. But then Executive Bot (Simon Maiden) has a mind to investigate this puzzling art stuff; stuff that apparently has some emotional value, whatever that is. Giles (Daniel Frederiksen) is a human who has done a bit of playwriting – cue many hilarious theatre in-jokes – and is charged with finding a way of getting art, and thus feeling, across to robots. This involves him working with unlikely thespians Claw Bot (Paul David Goddard) and Fembot (Natasha Jacobs).
Some of the message-making is pretty heavy-handed (honestly, the similarities to King Kong keep piling up) but the show is a delight. Rough and ready to the nth degree, packed with great jokes, performed with tremendous elan and with a nice twist at the end. Much recommended.
Bondi Pavilion until July 6.
Posted in Musical theatre, Theatre	| Tagged Adam Lyon, Bondi Pavilion, Chris Ryan, Craig Lucas, Daniel Frederiksen, Daniel Kramer, Esther Hannaford, Global Creatures, King Kong, Natasha Jacobs, Paul David Goddard, Queenie van de Zandt, Regent Theatre, Robot Vs Art, Simon Maiden, Tamarama Rock Surfers, Travis Cotton	| Leave a reply