Coma Land - Black Swan State Theatre Company & Performing Lines WA (20 July 2017)

There is no doubt that local playwright (and director here) Will O'Mahony is a pre-eminent talent when it comes to crafting dialogue that dazzles, is fast-paced, dense and thoroughly entertaining. He loves having his actors deliver rat-a-tat barrages of facts and figures at high speed and his style favours repetition of key phrases and lists, point/counterpoint, as well as sly word play.

It is undeniably evident that O'Mahony loves words and language. What a gift that is for both his performers and the audience (though getting the rhythms and pace right must place all sorts of demands on the former).

Accompanying the sizzle is a sizeable 'chunk of gravity' though of the dramatic not physics kind. His plays explore interesting themes in an intriguing way, usually with a bitter-sweet emotional core. He has certainly served his 10,000 hour apprenticeship in mastering his writing gift.

The cast embrace the material - an exploration of loss, letting go, chasing perfection, and the expectations of parents and their children - within the framework of characters inhabiting this fantastical space while in a coma.

Morgan Owen is excellent playing a quintessential O'Mahony character in Penguin and generally handles the machine gun dialogue well. Working out the pauses for laughs will come with further performances. O'Mahony also knows when to slow down the verbal assault which emphasises the lovely contrasts as Owen modulates her delivery in volume, tone, and speed depending on dramatic or comedic beats.

Experienced comedian Ben Sutton adds brilliant timing and off-beat delivery to his unexpected character... as a panda. Yet it is the most off the wall character that delivers telling insight as revelations and epiphanies are made.

Kirsty Marillier's matter-of-fact delivery for the lamplighter character of Boon works well and she has a couple of notable scenes with Humphrey Bower who plays Penguin's Dad with paternal concern tinged with sadness.

Amy Mathews adds exuberance as Jinny, another coma patient who acts as almost a mediator between several of the other characters.

There was only one slight miss-step for mine - a cathartic emotional moment that is beautifully conveyed by Bower is drowned in a swell of unnecessary music. It jarred as the sound design for the rest of the play was far less intrusive.

The writing and the acting is top notch in an unexpected tale that is emotionally and thematically rich. I enjoyed it very much.

*originally published at facebook.com/perththeatrereviews

The War on Food - Fringe World 2016 (16 February 2016)

I have a confession to make. I don’t really know what Kale is. Some speak of it in the hushed tones of a convert; others with the contempt of a disbeliever. It’s not even a word I had heard of until recently. Apparently it’s a mystical foodstuff of some description that seems to attract an awful lot of attention at Fringe World. That includes here where it is one of the catalysts for the funkiest farrago of fresh food frolics seen this side of a spud busting Potato Board protest.

Yes, food fans, the world’s produce is in the grip of a monolithic corporation known only as Coleworths. Farming has been made illegal as has the time-honoured vegie patch in the backyard. You want to squeeze a lemon or gnaw on some precious kale then it’s off to a Big C store. Where the food is fresh, the service fresher, and the prices are jacked up to ridiculous amounts. Something has to give.

Like any good revolution there needs to be a band of intrepid visionaries who dare question the status quo and bring the tyrants to their knees. Either that or some kids in silly wigs tired of drinking the same crappy cab sav from scrawny, overpriced grapes.

Our heroes who audaciously take on the might of the Coleworths super-supermarket chain are Sage (Raj Joseph), Basil (Giuseppe Rotondella) and Rosemary (Morgan Owen) while avoiding the scrutiny of a Big C uber-executive played by Chloe Evangelisti. Sage is recently fired, Basil even more recently promoted as a result, while Rosemary is a farmer who can’t catch a break as the bad guys poison any illegally grown crops.

What follows is a whacky heist style caper of increasingly implausible proportions where our “fresh food fugitives” (try saying that fast three times) turn the tables by breaking into Coleworths stores and poisoning their overpriced, undersized produce. It’s a propaganda battle for hearts and stomachs where the Big C even has its own news channel.  

The show is not particularly subtle in its digs at big corporations, commercialism, duopolies, the media, advertising and possibly the sex appeal of lemons; however, it is presented and acted in an over-the top manner that befits the material.

The use of a quite startling array of wigs helps enhance the sense of mayhem as the four actors play up to absurdity of it all. Evangelisti gets to present several iterations of the over-zealous corporate middle manager with exaggerated accents, abrupt physical movement, and an almost Inspector Clouseau-like air of feigned competence. Rotondella gives his ‘inside man’ a naivety and genuine reluctance at the first sign of resistance whilst also dealing with the most unruly mop of fake hair featured in a Perth production in some time.

Owen plays her salt-of-the-poisoned-earth farmer with plenty of spunk while Joseph provides the passion as nominal leader of this merry band who will not go quietly into the night shift. All of them study at WAAPA and seem to relish inhabiting such outlandish characters and the freedom that writer-director Zoe Hollyoak allows them.

It’s also an interesting if somewhat warm venue with chairs lined up on either side of a long, narrow space with doors for rapid entrances and exits at each end. There was a nice effect replicating lifts with the mandatory cheesy muzak but otherwise this was simply staged with the audience close to the action. Indeed there were moments of brief interaction that added to the surreal nature of proceedings.

It’s all very zany with a slapstick style of humour that makes it a light and tasty Fringe World dish the likes of which The Big C would promote the hell out of.

The War on Food by The Cutting Room Floor is on at Paper Mountain, upstairs at 267 William Street until 20 February.