DREAM TWO

[Part one of an ongoing series in which the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is explained through reference to a range of curious and intriguing dreams experienced during my wanderings in the desert]

TODAY IN GLORIOUS B&W

THE DREAM:

I am holding a party to celebrate the birthday of an acquaintance who for some reason is a half-completed Sudoko grid. Only problem is, the party is entirely virtual, taking place in a small corner of the website Common Errors in English. Also, the only attendees are a potted vine, Peter Allen and half the cast of March of the Penguins. The words "Not for Resale" maintain a powerful presence. There are no shadows on the internet.

To unpack today's significance-loaded dream, we all welcome our special guest Sigmund Freud! Hi Dr Freud!

Don't you wish your analyst was hot like me? Don't you wish your analyst was a freak like me?

...

...

...

Doncha? Doncha?

I sure do. So what's the story with my dream, man?

Well firstly, and I shouldn't need to say this, but it's clear you've been eating a lot of heavy foods including cheese late at night before bed. Am I correct? I believe I am. And I certainly shouldn't need to lecture you on the dangers of carb-loading after 5pm. But as for the actual content of your fantasy, I believe that a certain level of repressed libidinal energy supplies its motivation. Let us look beyond the surface and explore this.
This party is transparently some kind of event at the Comedy Festival, one held by someone with whom you are familiar. It is one which appeals to the intellect, yes, but also plays with language and offers an unreal mental space within which to imagine oneself. "Not for Resale" obviously indicates the way that comedy does not often work when jokes are retold by non-comedians. For instance, despite it's obvious inherent humour, I can never seem to raise a laugh when I tell the story of how a hausfrau enters a butcher's establishment and complains that the bratwurst she has purchased is largely composed of meat, but the ends are stuffed with straw. The butcher comically replies that the middle of the item is is relatively easy to produce, but that "it is hard to make ends meat". This is the end of the joke.

In one of my many writings, I have theorised that laughter is almost always provoked when we witness a character acting mechanically, whether it be in his or her actions or his or her speech or mental behaviour. It is for this reason that the robot dance is humorous, but also why so many situation comedies make us laugh violently, because we are witnessing people responding in mechanical ways to situations that require them to adapt alternative responses. This is a theme taken up and extended by Henri Bergson, the thieving swine.

We seem to be wandering here a bit, Sig.

So be it. I am long dead. And all that one hears in the afterlife is the music of the Pussycat Dolls.

I see.

To return to your initial question, your dream tells us of American comedian Arj Barker. His is a witty and wry series of comic routines which appear lazily delivered but unfold as complex and carefully-constructed brainteasers. Also, he is a very sexy man and you clearly have sublimated some kind of man crush.

I think that'll end things for today thanks, Sigmund. Though I still don't understand the whole penguins etc deal.

That would be the carbs, dude.

Got ya.

DREAM ONE

[Part one of an ongoing series in which the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is explained through reference to a range of curious and intriguing dreams experienced during my wanderings in the desert]

THE DREAM:

My good friend Chris Martin (from the popular modern musical act Coldplay) is attempting to tongue kiss a slightly oversized crow on the pitch of the MCG. I'm looking at him as if to say "dude! Please!" and he's all "what?" and I'm like "so gross!" and all the while the randy avian is pecking away at his mouth since it's fallen for his lines about how "Gwynnie just hasn't been there for me since the new kid came along, I mean been there emotionally..." and he's having trouble because the pointy beak isn't exactly conducive to teen-style pashing and I sense a certain second-thoughts-havingness in his attitude now. And I'm thinking at this point that maybe Chris wasn't the best guy to sign on as the new P.E. teacher in the community school that I run for orphaned Native Americans living in Australia, but I stand by my choice on the grounds that pulling the hunky and inoffensive pop-rock star card is always acceptable when justifying poor professional practice before a board of trustees. All this reflecting on our schoolside practices has conjured up images of Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano in Battle Royale, and Chris and I are discussing the stylish matching tracksuit he wears throughout most of that film and wondering whether we could get away with something similar in our own teaching life. Man, says Chris, that was one messed up film, and I say yeah, sure, but it wasn't nearly as shocking as everyone made it out to be, and even provoked some interesting and philosophical interior monologues during my viewing experience. As in: is this simply an expression of the fact that the educational system itself is designed to establish a competitive heirarchy between students, and in fact implicitly encourages bullying, survival-of-the-fittest behaviour and clique-type tribalism, etc? So that the kid who gets his head flushed down the toilet is roughly analogous to the kid who is ritually shamed in class for not doing his homework, even though his rough family life makes a quiet study space all but impossible? But if that's the case, retorts Chris (wiping blood from his pecked and ragged lips), then doesn't basic Marxist theory imply that this system of repression will always lead to a corresponding revolutionary impulse on the part of the students? Exactly, I say, and am about to continue when I am rudely interrupted by a baseball-bat toting Richard Grieco from 21 Jump Street with a bone to pick or an axe to grind or a score to settle or somesuch and I'm suddenly woken-

Anyway, that's the dream, so it's time to introduce our first celebrity dream analyst who'll be explaining the significance of this mental narrative, so let's put our hands together and give a big round of applause to... Dr Phil!

Much obliged, AHFLV, and I gotta say I'm real pleased to take time outta my busy schedule to be here today on your program-


Well, it's not exactly a program-


-and I'm gonna cut right to the chase, cos I'm not the kinda guy to pussyfoot around, I mean I got an internationally syndicated show of my own to run, so let's get down to business and talk some turkey, okay?


Sure.

Now what we got here is a classic case of Comedy Festival introjection, and if I had a nickel for every time I've heard this exact same dream spelled out for me by some narcissistic loser I'd be upgrading the amenities in my Learjet faster'n you can say 10 points rolling gross for my upcoming biopic "Shooting Straight: Phil up the Tank" based on my somewhat fictionalised tour of duty in Iraq.


Really? I've never heard-

Did I tell you to speak? Do you remember me giving you those orders? No, I don't think so, and you'd better cram a sock in your spit faucet before I kick your sorry ass all the way to Tallahasee (Population: the contents of my butt!). Do you want some dream analysis or not? Cos when it comes to dreaming, that's your mind's way of telling you something important, and if you aint gonna listen then you may as well be shutting down the whole facility right now.

So what I'm hearing from your dream is an underriding theme of disappointment: you got Chris Martin disappointing you with his crow kissing, you got Chris himself disappointed that the kissing aint up to scratch, and you got the fact that all this is going on somewhere where big things should be happening, the MCG itself. Add to this the whole Coldplay angle, a band who can rightly play somewhere like the MCG but never really live up to the hype, and it's clear that your subconscious is playing out a scenario of expectations unfulfilled. No wonder that you wander off into that frankly irrelevant debate over the meaning of a Japanese film, since what the facts of the scenario aren't even interesting enough to hold your attention. And is it any coincidence that it's a crow the man's kissing, since a gathering of crows is called a murder? The paucity of content is murdering the man's artform, and this combination of disappointment, expectations unmet and overinflated hype, along with the concern that the result will murder the medium in question makes it damn sure obvious to me that what your dream is really about is Adam Hills' new show, which is a fine enough way to pass an hour but never starts scoring the goals. I mean, the guy goes on for way too long about an audience member who gave him a carrot, and while in any possible metaphorical sense this would be a ripe subject for a few laughs, it's unfortunately entirely literal. So you have to ask yourself, AHFLV, what's in it for you? I mean, what's really in it for you?


Isn't that your answer for everything?

You can bet your bottom dollar. I'm outta here.


Thanks Dr Phil! You've cleared things up for me!

So I guess the lesson from this dream is that Adam Hills' new show is nice and pleasant but so sweetly inoffensive that I can't even remember the name of the thing. Fans might enjoy it, but like Coldplay, the material and delivery just don't explain why there are so many of these fans to begin with. Let us ponder that, before proceeding to our next dream.

Dream a Little Dream

Not so long ago, dear reader, I was visited by a strange and unearthly series of dreams and it is of these that I wish now to speak. They came upon me of a restless night, the sort which rattles the soul with its wanderings, of an echoing summer passing almost imperceptibly in autumn's shadow, and winter's creeping embrace sliding beneath the window cracks. These dreams, then, were perhaps the workings of a fevered and seasonally maladjusted temperament, yet I cannot but return to them and their possible significance. Of course, I realise that one's dreams are of no interest to anyone but oneself, one's psychoanalyst, one's resident hippie, any gypsies who may be passing, third-rate novelists, unreconstructed new agers, Scientologists, the Biblical king Nebudchanezzar, Dr Phil, the cynical purveyors of dream diaries, particularly intelligent cats and whomever may be sleeping next to you at the time you have said dream. If the dream ends with you in the role of Jean Claude Van Damme executing a roundhouse kick to the neck of a Russian arms dealer, and you wake to find your own foot has punched through the cheap plasterboard wall next to your slightly musty-smelling mattress, then we can add your landlord to the list, but that's a rare occasion and you're probably better off googling the website of your local community legal service rather than reading on here, but hey, whatever works for you.

For me, I have no choice but to explore these dreams, and by 'explore' I clearly mean 'write about on the web in a vaguely ill-informed manner', and by 'dreams' I mean 'device for posting about some shows I've seen recently'. We in the business call this 'meta-blogging', and by 'business' I mean 'bored way of passing time', and by 'time' I mean 'wind', and by 'wind' I mean 'dreams'.

To begin, however, me must go back, way back in time, to what seems many months ago but is really only a few months. Maybe enough to be called many, but not that many. Or...no, not many. Or...

For some time I'd been writing here of shows that I'd seen, the good and the bad, and those with excellent post-show catering. But as 2006 rolled around, I found the shows dried up a little, and with it my need to write on every show I attended. Moreover, I found that a fulfilling and utterly delightful relationship, a couple of new time-guzzling jobs and the need for more sleep took their toll. No time to write. There were still the shows, of course, calling me with their high-pitched siren-like tones, and of course I was there, but I couldn't write on them all. I'd lost the spirit. I'd lost the blogging* touch.

And so it was time to face my demons, to holster my shooters, saddle up and head off into the shimmering yonder. For forty days and forty shuddering nights I wandered the wasteland with naught for company but a stick useful for divining and the occasional brandishing; some cheefully packaged cheese stix; a flyer for a now-defunct pizza cafe; a photo of a zebra (by day 12 I'd called him Leroy); an Alanis Morrissette DVD; a memory of a plasticine Gorgon from Jason and the Argonauts; a wry smile; a team of bullocks (imagined); a sense of foreboding; and a scrap of paper for recording my dreams (you haven't forgotten the dream conceit, have you?). When my peripatetic nomadery was done, I found myself long-bearded and faraway-eyed returning to my domestic comforts, a long way from the nightly opening-attending boob I once was, yet still unsure of what I had become.

And so it is now, nestled neatly amidst my books and roaring fireplaces (two per room) and smugly attention-seeking cats that I have decided to revisit this period of wandering, in order to determine the meanings of the 40 Great Dreams which I found there. These dreams, sundry, are of such a diverse character that I cannot see any common theme therein, but I have a feeling that each and every one bears a mutual subliminal focus, and my only thought in this regard is as follows: the Comedy Festival is on and it lives in my mind. Perhaps we can work from there.

The first five dreams will be interpreted by a variety of guests tomorrow.

*note: this is the first time this blog has used the term 'blogging' or 'blog'. It may be the last. I prefer to use the term 'Guadalupe', a particularly endearing and colourful Hispanic name (feminine) which perfectly describes every blog in existence.

OF MONKS AND MARTIANS

On Wednesday night I went to see The Borough at Gasworks in Albert Park. I was mildly trepidatious. All I'd heard about it was that it was a history of Port Melbourne, which doesn't to me scream 'must-see theatre' (I don't know if that phrase even makes any kind of sense, actually). But a friend directed it and some other friends had expressed interest in going (for that reason, not the subject matter) so we piled up outside some bar in Chapel St just as dusk began to spread its warm husky hues across the land.

Somebody decided it would be a good idea to grab something to eat. Time on our side, we went for a Thai-Vietnamese place with tables outside, and spoke of many things. Most of these aren't that interesting or relevant, but one thing that came up was how the biggest obstacle preventing a manned mission to Mars from taking place was that a bunch of people cooped up in a tin can for a four-year trip each way would undoubtedly end up killing each other, or something equally horrible. I mean, it only takes a few weeks on Big Brother before the honeymoon is over and people are going at each other with the wrong end of the pool cleaner.

Being amongst the finest minds of our generation, a few solutions were batted around before we got bored/ADHD kicked in:

- one of the crewmembers must be an annoying robot, and therefore the first to go (but not tragically so). Doesn't work for me.

- one of the crew members must be an annoying human, and therefore the first to go. Much better. When the others realise what they've done, there will be no more killing.

- the sole crew member must be Tom Hanks, who's been into space before and who lasted much longer on his own in Cast Away and should be fine as long as a steady supply of volleyballs is at hand. If he does go mad, it will be entertaining for Earth viewers.

- send a bunch of Buddhist monks.

Now, I wouldn't mention all of this talk if it didn't come up again later. As we were leaving Gasworks, we noticed a poster for another event coming up in the same location: namely, these guys:

THE GYUTO MONKS

They almost look like Martians themselves. But lo! Do they look suspiciously like anyone in particular?

YES:

And we'd just spent an hour learning about Port Melbourne, home of the very nice MARS gallery!

AND ONE OF OUR NUMBER WORKS FOR THE COMPANY THAT SETS UP PLANETARIUMS AROUND THE WORLD.

All very strange.

Anyway, opinions were divided on The Borough. Half of our number (myself incl.) enjoyed it, other half didn't. I guess I kind of like historical stuff and also the fact that now I know more about Port Melbourne than most people, which makes me feel superior and non-ignoramus-like.
But it wasn't for everyone - culled from 25 interviews with residents, it was a pretty straight delivery of various voices expressing their opinions on the good ol' days, the bad ol' days and the current over-development of the area. Played out by two actors, one of whom wrote the thing, the job was pulled off pretty smoothly and economically, with a minimal design and lighting scheme. It was part verbatim theatre, part community event, part performed lecture. If you had an interest in the area (or lived there) you'd be well off seeing it. If you're not big on historical details and parochial anecdotes, though, maybe not.

Kid Cool

I found this picture while randomly searching for something else in the chaos that is my working life right now, and frankly it brought on a sense of immense calm and inner peace. I want what this kid's got (the coolness, not the sunglasses or thermal jumper). I'd love this kid to answer the door at an exclusive bar. I'd like him to be the celebrant at a shotgun wedding. I'd like him to turn out to be the elusive Mr Big I've spent the better part of my police career hunting down, narrowly missing him in midnight stakeouts and spinning high-backed armchairs around to reveal nothing but a taperecorder and a ticking timebomb.

Whoever took this photo is the John Woo of children's photography.

If you're in a time of crisis or doubt, just check in on Kid Cool.

Work = Play

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, they say.

This was demonstrated to memorable effect in the hilarious comedy The Shining, in which Jack Nicholson struggles with his career as a writer while trying to juggle his roles as father and husband. I think there was a wacky sidekick in there somewhere, but I'll confess it's been a while since I saw the movie.

But back on topic: what do you do when your work INVOLVES plays? Or worse, dull plays? Please revise the aphorism IF APHORISM IT INDEED BE.

Jack: Now I am confused.

Short story - I've seen too much to write up here lately. But in brief: The Theatre @ Risk show One-Way Street was great, and if it's remounted you get yourself along to watch it. A peripatetic tour of Berlin and its history by a very unreliable English guide whose own romantic and familial past is inextricably tied into his tale-telling. Simon Kingsley Hall is so much stronger in this than in his previous work that I was pretty astonished by his performance. Even his director laughed that he'd never realised Simon would be so good at comic stuff.

Wednesday night was Jo Lloyd's Public=UN+Public, a new dance work she's choreographed with Off Nibroll (from Tokyo). It was a very charming piece visually - the multimedia projections which took up three walls of the Chunky Move Studio were top quality CGI stuff, and probably cost a pretty penny. The soundtrack was awesome as well, mostly composed of the squeaky, beatsy, staticky electronica that accompanies most contemporary movement in Melbourne these days. The dancing was for the most part as good as I've come to expect from Jo & Co, who I think is up there with the best in town at the moment. I'd call this one

A HOME RUN

That's all for now. Like I said, I've just got too much work on these days.

Can Leave, Did Leave

Last weekend I went to the opening of Can't Leave Tomorrow Alone, a play whose title is suspiciously reminiscent of a Bond film. I was looking forward to it, quite a bit really, perhaps for the potential Bond-factor (I was thinking knife-throwing midgets and deadly-yet-open-minded ladies in lycra playsuits). Didn't really work out that way.

We got incest, kidnapping, psychological torture, miscarriage, human trafficking, pedophilia, bondage, irresponsible Elizabethan ruff-wearing and a whole lotta shouting. Oh, the shouting. Part of the problem with the shouting stems from the venue. When you're performing in Theatreworks in St Kilda, you have to be loud to be heard since the space is so huge. But if you're loud, you end up getting lost in your own echo. They really, really need to invest in some kind of cladding for the roof or even painting it with an absorbent coat or something. Or more curtains. I don't know - I'm just a big picture guy.

But the shouting was also a feature of the play itself, which started things off at an emotional level of about 9 or 9.5 and got to ten in a couple of minutes. Doesn't leave much room to move, there. And watching a play at that heightened emotional frequency for nearly two hours is bound to leave you with strong impressions, good or bad. In my case, I like some modulation of tone, and at times probably had a pretty sour look on my face, as if I'd just taken a gulp of milk and felt solid bits go down.

The story concerned a wealthy couple who buy a third-world baby. When baby is all grown up, we find that Dad has just gotten her pregnant and Mum is in a state of denial over the whole situation. Baby soon gets kidnapped and held prisoner by a weird, creepily zen-like dude whose face we don't see much of. The expected amount of hilarity ensues.

Helen Thomson gave the piece a right old excoriation in today's Age, and I think she went too far (there were good elements to the play, and the story had more to it than she gave credit for). But the negative aspects were too much for this viewer: after someone miscarries, is it really necessary to bring the lights up on a massive jar of tomato paste? And when someone burns their house down with themselves inside it, does tipping said jar of paste over their own head really work as a symbol? Actually, I'm beginning to wonder if it wasn't the tomato jar that was behind every flaw in the play.

Maybe I'm getting it wrong. Maybe it was a Howard Barker-type Theatre of Catastrophe piece set in a contemporary and recognisable world. But then again, I've never liked Barker that much, either.

Maybe it should have been a bit more like this:

Tell me there isn't more drama and excitement in that collage than you'll find in a thousand local productions. I have no idea what those images are from, by the way, or why someone felt the need to put them all in one place.

I left Can't Leave Tomorrow Alone really quickly, and even though it wasn't opening night, I didn't even glance at the catering.

Was there even catering?

I don't know, because I didn't even glance at it.

I just mentioned that.

Are you even paying attention?

My Life, My Cheese

Like most people, I have every expectation that one day, sooner or later, I will receive a telephone call during which an anonymous caller will state their intention to make a movie of my life. I usually imagine the voice to sound remarkably like the late Orson Welles, for some reason, and in the more elaborate versions of this fantasy I am speaking into an oversized gold receiver dangling from diamond-ring encrusted fingers (my own or somebody else's).
Now, I'm not delusional. I put my pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else (especially one-legged people). As an aside, however, I have developed a method of putting on my underpants two legs at a time, which involves lying on my back on the bed or floor and flinging them up in the air while kicking wildly. It usually takes four or five attempts, but it's hell satisfying once achieved.

Anyway, since I'm not delusional, I'm fully aware that such biopics don't just come along to any old joe. That's why I've been working on several secret projects that will set me aside from the common folk once revealed (hush hush for the moment but if you're thinking "could he mean robots who look just like normal peoples?" you MAY be on the right track.

But this is also why Orson doesn't just come out and say "we want the rights to your life and we're already two weeks into shooting with several leading Hollywood actors including Denzel Washington in an uncredited cameo as your fictionalised half-brother/table tennis coach". What he says is more like "we're going to begin with a six month development period in which we workshop the script we're using and conduct test readings with real live audiences".

And so it was with interest that I went to a reading on Monday. The script in question was a play, not a film, and it didn't so much tell the story of one interesting man's life as it did explore the grim future offered by cloning technology. Futur Deluxe is by an acclaimed Swiss playwright, and now that I think of it, Orson Welles made a famous comment about the Swiss in his film The Third Man. It was something about nothing ever coming out of Switzerland except cuckoo clocks. There was more to it than that but I'm so lazy I'm not even going to google it.

The play reading was a pleasant enough experience, comfortable and presented in the attractive environs of fortyfivedownstairs. The cast were mostly good, but I just couldn't get excited about the script. Cloning is not and never will be an interesting subject for a play, and if it does feature in a decent script it will be a 'despite' thing, not a 'because of' deal. A conversation afterwards included something along the lines of "it might have been a better play if the whole cloning bit was cut out", and if somebody is saying your play might be better without its central theme, you might want to rethink things.

The Theatre @ Risk crew have been responsible for some outstanding stuff, and this was just one of a week of different play readings they're doing alongside the season of performances of One Way Street which I'm seeing on Sunday. Since Futur Deluxe was the first of this season, opening night featured catering from some Swiss folks (might have been the embassy). That meant pretty good wine and bucketloads of cheese - white cheese, Swiss cheese and the biggest monster-truck-wheel-sized block of blue I've ever clapped eyes upon. And it was all great, in that "ewww, I think I'm sweating cheese" post-event manner. But kudos to the Swiss for a fine spread.



NOTE: this scene will probably be cut from the final script of my life.

Ode to a Grecian...

In the interests of full disclosure and transparency, I might as well come out and say it: I'm not a big fan of Greek tragedy. Now, those of you who've read along for a while might be pursing the corners of your mouth and "pfft"-ing and pulling the same face you wore when Howard denied any underlying racism in Australia, thinking "Of course he doesn't go for Greek tragedy! He's already complained about Shakespeare, Brecht, Williamson and plenty of other stuff whichmakes up the cornerstones of theatre education in this country! NO SURPRISES HERE thank you".

Well, sure. But there's a difference. See, and gather round now children, there you go, make room for your brother, there's plenty of room for all...see, here's the difference: if I want to know what happens in Troilus & Cressida but can't be bothered reading it, I can always find a shoddy 80s BBC version featuring ugly men with wispy beards and have a good laugh while I'm watching it. Same goes for most of the modernist theatrical masterpieces. But there's no way I'm watching a film version of no greek drama. I'm stuck either a) reading the damn thing (which isn't so bad) or b) watching a really boring rendition by a bunch of graduation VCE students.

I understand the contribution this stuff has made to contemporary theatre. This includes The Chorus, wherein a gang of hangers-on pretty much tell you the plot (like sitting in the tea room at work the night after a particularly good episode of The Bill); excessive overuse of masks, which always brings up vague Eyes Wide Shut paranoia in me; and the cathartic function of drama, also seen in forms such as the daytime soap and Jerry Springer.

But a lot of the time, I'm thinking "don't fart on me, sonny, and call it French perfume". No amount of white pancake and hollering can really make me that intrigued by the machinations of Theban rulers. Just give it to me straight, or find something more relevant to my situation and the situation of my aching bumcheeks, usually screaming at me for putting them in a moulded plastic assembly-hall chair for two hours plus.

This week I visited the opening of Unholy Site, an interpretation of Sophocles' Antigone by Jacklyn Bassanelli. And I'm pleased to say that nary a mask nor chorus was in sight, and the cathartic element of the play wasn't its focus (not for me, at least). And I really enjoyed it, though opinions differed as to why.

The wonderfully-initialed JB gave a solo performance which took the basic tale and shook things up a bit (or a lot). She tells the thing from Antigone's POV, and plays her as an angry, violently rebellious princess. One punter later called her "Paris Hilton with more neuroses", but I didn't see it that way. Either way, it was a compelling and well-considered interpretation of a character fairly done to death these days.

The big thing what got me, though, is the method of presentation. On opening night at The Crofts Institute, the entire performance was delivered on a video screen with camera attached and sound pumped through an amp. In one long take, with lighting and sound operated via a remote by the actor herself onscreen, we saw the performance play out in real time but strangely absent. Bassanelli might not have even been in the building, though I later found out that she was. One reviewer noted that the effect of the TV screen showing meant that Antigone became curiously entombed alive in the black box, which is entirely thematically appropriate. For my part, I was wondering all sorts of other things, about the "live"-ness of prerecorded performance, and about the effect of a theatre audience watching a TV screen (totally different to a projected film/video) and the alternating or even concurrent sense of presence and absence, passivity and interactivity this creates. There was also the sense of the prerecording as a suicide note, or a voice from beyond the grave.

But I was in a minority here, and others couldn't help but want some more life to the show. I'll state it bluntly, I really liked the daring of playing things the way they were played, but I can understand the reservations others had about it. And after opening night, a joint decision from the creators saw the live element reintroduced, and the show now offers the same story played live while the camera simultaneously records it and plays it on the television. I'll try to go back and see how this looks some time next week.

Diamond Dust Blues

John Michael Howson, a person who wrote Dusty

I read recently that the first draft of Dusty didn't get the big toothy grin and double-thumbs jerking skywards from the late singer's friends. The exact response, according to one of the writers (professional gossip hound and campy socialite John Michael Howson) was something along the lines of "you haven't captured her at all!".

I would love to read that draft. I can't imagine how it could have gone wrong. Not when the final version included an exchange so molar-impactingly awful that it will probably have quite a few dentists throwing their little mouth mirror things across the room in disgust and despair in the coming weeks.

Allow me to recount the scene ('scene' is industry talk for 'bit' - I sometimes forget that not all readers are in The Biz). Dusty Springfield is about to go on tour to Australia. She complains to her gay hairdresser friend (is there any other kind?) that she's getting a bit too chubby to tour. And he replies that it's ok, THEY ALREADY HAVE ONE SLIM DUSTY IN AUSTRALIA.

Here's me after hearing that line:

Anyway, it's taken me a week to write on the show, but not for any interesting reason. I enjoyed it quite a lot, though there are huge gaps and oversights and misjudged plot maneuvers. It's a musical, however, so I'm willing to give it some slack since the musical isn't my preferred genre and I'm not as qualified to judge their worth or lack thereof. For my money, some toe-tappin' tunes and a bag of spirit fingers are enough. Dusty already came with the music in the bag, and it wasn't long in before a saw a scene in which about twenty people were all doing slow spirit fingers around the show's star, so I felt I'll gotten what I asked for.

Tamsin Carroll might well win a whole heap of awards for her role as Dusty; especially when you consider that she's only 26. It's an amazing performance for someone so young, and though she doesn't try to replicate the singer's vocal style exactly, she can sure belt out a number. In spoken sections, she does an incredibly unnerving accent which I've since been told is pretty faithful to Springfield, but nonetheless had me worried that she'd been listening to water-damaged tapes of the singer or something.

The opening night after party was an epicentre of Melbourne artistic elite, if you interpret the word 'artistic' to mean 'recognisable' and the word 'elite' to mean 'nobodies'. Lots of Aussie Idols, ex-TV celebrities, music industry old guard and the like. I won't name names because I don't do that sort of thing (remember them, I mean). But I was most impressed to see even JM Howson making an appearance and eagerly answering questions from admiring young things.

The food was okay: leek and gorgonzola arancini things; basil, cheese and tomato 'panini' (I'd call 'em 'toasties') and party pies topped with some kind of salsa (they called them 'beef and burgundy' but they sure as hell looked 'four and twenty' to me).

But I didn't stay long. My significant other/girlfriend/main squeeze/whatever the terminology is these days and I hoofed it off before the speeches, because there was only so much backslapping and belly-rubbing and metaphorical high-fiving we could handle. And there was also that other thing.

You know on those dark cold winter nights when you realise you've been idling in the car alone out the front of the house for about two hours, playing Hotel California over and over and remembering how it thrilled you in your youth before the responsibilities of life shoved all your dreams to one side, responsibilities which are now lying in bed inside that heavily mortgaged house wondering where you are and why you always seem so distant nowadays and have taken to strumming that old guitar in the shed for entire weekends, not uttering a word or making eye contact, and how you wish you could go back and do things differently because now you've dug yourself into a hole you can't get out of? And how you could have been a contender, a real musician, and how they should have been writing musicals about YOU goddammit! You know that feeling?

No, me neither. But I think a lot of the people at that party might.

I'm not making accusations. Supposition and vague aspertion-casting are more my forte.

Show Off

Anyone who knows me (and who really knows anyone, when you get down to it?) will be aware of my interest in audiences; specifically in audience behaviour. To me, the twentieth century was a long period of shutting up, closing down and reining in the various things audiences got up to during a show. If you look into your crystal ball (and set it in reverse) you'd see that a few hundred years ago, house lights were usually kept on during a show, audience members yelled to each other across the room and if you didn't like a show, you got on stage and told the actors what they were doing wrong. Or, if you were up in the gallery (the 'toothpick and crutches crowd' - I have no idea what this means but I love the phrase) you'd assert your displeasure more pungently: the vegetable missile as a tool of criticism. This is when throwing tomatoes was an actuality, not just a Muppet-show caper, and along side the toms you might find spuds, carrots, eggs, pumpkins (ouch), chairs (double ouch) or worse. I've read of one performance which saw a hail of not only the above items, but a sack of flour, and pail of ash and a dead goose.

"Poor show, I say"

I don't know who brings a dead goose to a show, but you can probably tell that attending the theatre was a different story way back then.

Anyway, things are much less interactive these days, but we're not all automatons. One of the ways we can still comment publicly on a show in an mostly acceptable manner is to walk out. The walkout fascinates me, mainly because I never do it (professional courtesy and all that). It seems to me that there are a few kinds of walkout.

The Interval Walkout: a fairly low-impact walkout, the Interval Walkout allows you to avoid the rest of the show without making a spectacle of yourself. The sudden, unexpected freeing up of your time also makes for a refreshingly unexpected evening, though most people tell me this means sitting in a bar or fast-food outlet.

The In-Show Walkout: a far more barbed attack, this let's the rest of the audience (and, often, the performers) know that you're not amused. Unless you do the awkward and embarrassed apologetic tiptoe, in which case people tend to suspect a bathroom mishap.

The Preemptive Walkout: More of a social bonding thing, this is when two or more patrons turn up to a show and after some hesitation decide to ditch the thing and do something else. A wonderful feeling.

The Long-Distance Preemptive Walkout: This is when one decides a show is crap without even seeing it. Favourite tactic of Andrew Bolt, who last year blasted an entire festival without seeing a single show.

The Post-Show Walkout: A very subtle and polite walkout - there's always at least one audience member or group to bolt for the doors as soon as the applause kicks in. This allows others the belief that you've simply got to beat the rush/avoid a parking fine/get home and catch the babysitter in the act.

The Walkin: A very rare and confusing thing, this isn't just the "Oops, got caught in the tram doors" sneak-in five minutes after the show begins. It's the walk in an hour or more into proceedings. A recent show saw someone walking in a few minutes before the show's finale, and the excited patron only caught the encore. Always stumps those who notice the (very) latecomer.

I mention all this because a friend walked out of the MTC's Dumb Show last week, and this left me a mite confused. The stated reason was that she couldn't identify or find any interest in any of the characters. Fair enough. And I've read some scathing reviews of the show since. But I had a great time there: very accomplished and able actors, a fast-paced script and a nice design. Sure, the show was pretty middle-brow and there wasn't much we haven't seen before, but you can't expect much else from the MTC. Or, at least, you shouldn't reasonably expect much else, considering the subscriber base and business goals of the company. Nobody really looks to the MTC for cutting edge, experimental or deeply challenging work, and the closest plays to head in that direction in last year's season (Hitchcock Blonde and Cheech) were either awfully misogynist or too simple to really rattle any cages.

I'm not apologising for the play, and if you don't like it, more power to you. Tell people. Or throw a goose. For my part, I very rarely identify with a theatrical character, and by rarely I might even mean never. I probably identify more closely with dance, or something like that. Not 'character', especially as evoked through dialogue. Got a problem with that?

TALK TO THE MEXICAN

"I am the Mexican, by the way"

Old School Daze Part 2

And so we stand poised at the edge of 2006, 2005 still gripping our coat-tails but feeling its fingers beginning to lose hold as we strain towards our new friend...isn't it time to reflect on the year that was?

Of course it is. The year that was, in this case, was 1930, when I was just a wee bit of a thing in rural Massachussets. A country determinedly blind to the threat of Depression, a nation letting itself slip like a 40-something businessman who's two-decade marriage has gone to ruin. We danced those dark days - oh, how we danced. And, naturally, it was the dance of children, for I was entering my early teens and, as a wise songstress later put it, I was "not a girl, not yet a woman" (or a man). We called our dance The Flibbertigibbit, and it failed to make waves. But even now when I meet one of my old school chums (ever more rarely, I'm afraid), one or the other of us will inevitably launch into a spirited rendition of our untimely jig and we will both fall about laughing. To paraphrase Jesus: where two or more of us are gathered, The Flibbertigibbit will be there. It was a bit like The Running Man, now that I think of it.

Thoughts like these take me back to my old school photos, and I've dug up another one from these days in Crook Neck, Mass., USA. Ah, here 'tis.

I was absent this day, oddly enough. I think I had a bad case of quinsy that day, but it could equally have been a dose of scrumpox or Bronze John. I was a veritable treasure trove of archaic ailments, all once common but oddly lacking from contemporary medical dictionaries. In less than three years in my youth, I managed to suffer from trench mouth, La Grippe, grocer's itch, croup, bloody sweat, dock fever, dropsy of the brain and many good old bouts of the horrors.

Anyway, before you began prying into my private life in such a fashion, I was discussing my schoolmates. Let's have a closer look at some of the kids.

Have you ever noticed how every class has at least one dirty kid? Kind of like Pigpen from Peanuts. He was always my favourite. Just living free. So this kid here was called Dirk, and we all knew him as Dirty Dirk for obvious reasons. Also because he often exposed himself to other children.

Ah, Jemima. Paler than most, on account of an anaemic disposition which was eventually to be the end of her, she also saw a wasting of the brain which had many side effects. You can see here the tea towel she always insisted be draped across her head at a jaunty angle. She insisted it would come into fashion but I don't think it ever took off.

Beatrice here was quite the character. She always insisted that she was in fact a well-known gossip columnist for the New York Times, and suffered the humiliation of our derision and scorn at these outrageous claims. But what do you know? It turns out that when this photo was taken, Betty was in fact 43 years old and one of the most talked-about writers at that esteemed publication. We never could understand what she was doing in our class, but suspect a kind of Fast Times at Ridgemont High undercover deal.

Hmm. Now this might seem a bit distasteful for modern audiences, but you have to understand that we did things differently then. Nowadays, with access to modern medical facilities and vaccines and so on, it's hard to remember what it was like in the grip of a depression with no such things as antibiotics, regular meals or even clean water. But we stuck together. So gasp if you will, but I think it was right that we included Eric in our school shot, even if he had been dead for seven weeks. I mean, we kept him in class that whole time. After all, his parents had paid his tuition in full.

This is our teacher, Mr Singh. In retrospect, I do question the wisdom of employing a twelve year old Indian boy as our teach, but he arrived with very good references which included time spent teaching at Princeton, Harvard and MIT. The teaching staff was limited, and they could use all the help they could get. Also, Mr Singh's teaching style was pretty much limited to throwing paper planes at us, taking our lunches and starting singalongs (with songs we never knew the words to).

Gretel may be confusing to you younger folk. You see, back in the day, it wasn't uncommon for actual fairy folk to sign up for class. In this case, Gretel was a bridge troll. I don't know what she ended up doing, but then I haven't been back to Crook Neck for some time.

Anyway, there you have it. My memories have begun to fade over the years, so I felt it might be worth putting these down for posterity. Carpe Diem, and all that ("seize the carp", I believe).

A Very Christmas Viewing

Herewith for your Yuletide perusal, a selection of Xmas-themed television programs playing over this merry weekend:

The Twelve Days of Christmas Eve
Gets the award for title that makes no logical sense. Also it's an "action-adventure" which actually makes it sound intriguing.
Lello: Christmas with the Strongest Man in the World
Because when I'm tucking into my family lunch, I often think "the only thing that's missing is a strongman"
Mr St. Nick
Too many appellations there.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
I've actually wanted to see this extremely loopy 1964 film for a while. Santa apparently has a reindeer called 'Nixon'. Also teaches us that "Four kids using ping-pong balls and soap bubbles can take on one grown man who is armed with a disintegration ray."
Inspector Rex Christmas Special
Speaks for itself.
I'll Be Home for Christmas
There are actually two versions of this playing tomorrow on the same channel. Directed by different people in 1997 and 1998. Either that's one HELL of a title, or it deserved/required a remake REALLY quickly. Though I do notice that the 3.40pm version is "comedy" and the 11.10pm version contains "adult themes". Oo er.
A Carol Christmas
I'm guessing they thought that would be a genius bit of word play, and don't you just bet the main character is named Carol? Since it stars Tori Spelling, however, we'll never know because nobody in their right head would watch it.
Salty Love
Not Xmas-themed that I'm aware of, but surely not appropriate fare for 3pm on a Saturday.

Have a good holiday and don't forget to sing Happy Birthday for Jesus.

ARE YOU OUR MILLIONTH VISITOR???

Well, no. But if you tell 997,720 of your friends/associates about this site, you could be that lucky person.

Apparently it's lazy to do this, but I thought I'd take the slack option today and let you know some of the odd things about visitors to AHFLV.

The most common way people find this site is by googling "Very Confused Woman". WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? IT IS MAKING ME VERY CONFUSED! (but not a woman - note to self: get chromosomal DNA check)

Others have found it by googling, amongst other things:
"Tsubi Book Launch" (huh? They have a book? What reason could they have for having a book?)
"How to Sing Low" (Awesome, good luck and let me know how you go)
"The hidden meaning in the play until someone wakes up" (I've never heard of it, but I think the hidden meaning is this: crime doesn't pay. If not, how about: there is no such thing as Santa)
"Sociophobes" (fair enough)

That's all. Oh and also:

Something in Store

I'm not a superstitious person. At least, that is, I don't think of myself as one. Never throw salt over my shoulder, no problem stepping on cracks, will open a hundred umbrellas indoors and a black cat crosses my path several times a day (thank you Pete).

Although, now that I think of it, I do have certain superstitions I adhere to, but they're ones I've either made up myself or adapted from existing beliefs. For instance, if I spot a five-cent coin I have to pick it up; if I drop one I have to let it lie. Other denominations aren't affected.

Also, I've long feared saying "good luck" to someone. This might have started with the whole don't-say-good-luck-to-an-actor thing, but has since been expanded to incorporate everyone. At the same time, I do find myself saying it but always feel a little bad when I do. If whatever endeavour I'm wishing them luck in goes awry, I'll probably blame myself. But what's the alternative? "Bon chance"? "I wish you well"? "Knock 'em dead"?
All of which is in no way a relevant preamble to the fact that I went to see this guy last night:

Young Angus Cerini's This Thousand Years I Shall Not Weep finished up last night at The Store Room and, well, it was quite the corker. I hadn't seen Angus perform for a few years (probably not since Uni, even) so I was looking forward to catching it. Solo show devised in collaboration with Kelly Ryall on sound, it was a barrage of sucker punches that didn't necessarily make sense but kept you intrigued the whole time. It told a few intercut stories, one of a "peacekeeper" in Iraq who commits an atrocity, another of an anaemic kid who is given a disease during a routine blood transfusion, and a framing device wherein a politician makes some broad claims which set the rest of the show in contrast.

It's a hard show to follow - the various threads don't add up to an overall picture, and the physical intensity of the thing makes Cerini look like a balled fist undergoing electro-shock treatment. But you can't deny the power of it, or the seriousness motivating what you see. Anyway, it's over now, so you don't get to see it at all I suppose.

After the show it was a bit of a 2005 break-up party for The Store Room over at the Pinnacle, where (as usual) the spread was outstanding. If you ever get the chance to go to a function or something there, step over your own grandmother to get to it.

What a dry post. I'm tired.

Golden Rough/Holy Maloney

Wednesday of this week must have seen some kind of astral confluence, water contamination or chemical imbalance of my brain as I got it into my damn fool head to attend not one, but two theatre shows on the same night (Wednesday night, as mentioned). How I managed to finish work at 6pm, get to Carlton to see Golden Chains at La Mama by 6.30pm and then over to North Melbourne to see Billy by 8pm is quite the miracle. Thank you non-denominational deity. How I managed to fit in a sit-down meal somewhere in there is even more incomprehensibel. Plus I dashed into the supermarket to pick up an onion, a lemon, baby spinach and some other stuff. Didn't throw any of it during either show.

Golden Chains...well, I'm not sure what to say about this one. It's physical theatre performed by a solo artist (Kath Papas) with recorded voices delivering text from Pushkin's Folktales as well as more contemporary documentary stuff. There's live percussion, too (very well delivered). But I wasn't quite sure what I was watching. Papas is a good presence, and has always seemed like a nice and professional person when I've seen her. And the show's creator Elissa Goodrich has done good work, too. But it wasn't apparent what linked the many components of the piece. Apparently Russia has something to do with it. By if there's one thing worse than being able to second-guess why every single artistic decision has been made, it's not being able to take a punt on any of them. I've since heard that the show was originally intended as part of La Mama's most recent Season of Explorations, and I think that would have been a more appropriate venue. Just because, well, this feels like a work in progress, and it probably needs some time to ripen.

Billy has had a looong time to mature, and writers Sue Gore and Bill Garner know their historical stuff. They specialise in solidly researched plays which unearth lesser-known events and characters from Melbourne's past (The Ishmael Club was a winner which was picked up by the then-Playbox for a more mainstream season). In this case, they've picked up on the story of Billy Maloney, a "larger-than-life" character who helped get women the vote, fought for the 8 hour workday, spoke up for free speech etc etc. He was a parliamentarian of the most idealistic, utopian sort, and the play does a good job of painting him as a candidate for secular sainthood.

It's also a very weird experience for a relatively young 'un like me (not giving too much away there, obviously, since the mean audience for political/historical theatre is hardly that of The OC). Within a few minutes, we were standing on our feet singing along to a rousing old time tune of solidarity. What? At least I knew that I was hardly in for a dry old lecture.

And yes, it's a very enjoyable piece which left me with a spring in my step. That word, rousing, really is an apt one: I couldn't help but curse the current government and wish we had more fellas like that Billy Elliot, I mean Maloney around these days to fight the good fight. If the play is to be believed, he certainly accomplished more than any pollie of nowadays, and it's a depressing thought. I have to disagree with some when I suggest that the panto/music hall style of the play is perfectly appropriate: okay, it gives us a cardboard greasepaint version of an undoubtedly complex figure, but the play isn't seeking to open up an unproblematic window into another era or a subtle psychologising of a historical personage. It's trying to make you think about today's political climate, and about how in some ways we're far worse off than we might have been a century ago. Which is a fair aim. If it sometimes accomplishes this with exaggerated or ham-fisted acting, or creaky conventions, no matter. Gore and Garner are trying to rouse you, perhaps to action, and if they managed to literally rouse their audience to their feet every night, I imagine that we can't call this project an entirely unsuccessful one.

Site for Sore Eyes

Hi there! Hello.

No, there's not been much activity here of late, but I just thought I'd pop in to let you in on a development:

Pat and Joel now have their own site! It's at:
Plastic Acoustic

Why? Well, three (3) reasons:
Firstly, popular demand meant that their adventures could no longer be housed here, and this site was never meant to be devoted to funny-looking mannequins and dolls, frankly.
Second-like, there's not that much arty/opening type stuff going on, so this site will be quieter over the summer.
And third, well, some people find Pat and Joel a bit scary and nightmare-inducing, so I thought it best if we quarantine them. You can always look them up if you want, but you don't have to.

The new site will feature all kinds of adventures in emoting, as well as your regular cast of characters and a whole bunch of new friends you've yet to meet (thanks to those who submitted their own photos, especially Our Man in Tokyo who took his own).

That's all, see.

A Festival of Carnage

It's not often that AHFLV offers up music as part of your daily digestibles, but since the better part of four days was spent at last weekend's Queenscliff Music Festival, it's probably worth a mention. Only problem is: I've just gotten the photos back, and Something Is Afoot. Let us review the evidence:

Look in the bottom right corner of the frame:

Someone has gotten a little too festive in their frolicking, perhaps? That's what I thought, until I turned to the next shot.

Something is definitely amiss here. Why has nobody noticed this mysterious figure lying in their midst? And why do I have no memory of said figure?

Jiminy Crickets! It's almost as if a conspiracy of silence is keeping this mystery from surfacing? What horrors are being perpetrated under the mantle of an innocent music festival? WHAT HORRORS?

Even the beach isn't safe. Was this figure washed ashore, or did they attempt to reach the relative safety of the waters only to be cut down mere metres from its edge?

And what of this poor soul? Was he scrambling down a sharp embankment to escape his pursuers and lift the lid on the dark secrets lurking beneath Queenscliff's sunny facade? Or was he thrown bodily over the edge, finding this bench anything but the calming place of rest it is supposed to be?

But my biggest shock came when I reached the shot I'd taken once back in Melbourne. With one frame still remaining on the roll of film, I snapped off a quick image of Edinburgh Gardens in North Fitzroy. Here is what came back:

The horror has followed me home. Could it be within me? Don't think so (hope not).

I'm waiting on the photos of my fellow travellers, and will let you know if they shed any light on this gruesome enigma.

Also: what the music at the Festival was like.