Showing posts with label Toby Schmitz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Toby Schmitz. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Ruben Guthrie by Brendan Cowell - at Company B, until 5 July 09 so far
Back and slicker this time. I can't help feeling that I loved it more the first time, though, with the downstairs' intimacy. A few things have changed, including the ending. Definitely, worth seeing a second time if you thought it was all over for you. It sparkles. Not sure about the frosty beer scene, though.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Ruben Guthrie by Brendan Cowell - Downstairs Belvoir, 17 April - 11 May 08
There are almost 5,000 recovering alcoholics in the Alcoholics Anonymous program in Australia. Brendan Cowell introduces us to its latest member, Ruben Guthrie.
Brendan Cowell writes with a concern for the state of Australia alcoholism as well as a personal knowledge of the pitfalls and stark realisations that come with taking a year off the booze.
Toby Schmitz plays Ruben Guthrie, the slick wunderkind of the glossy advertising world. His finessed timing and mannerisms give Ruben an easy coolness and accessibility, even as he slips seamlessly between extremes of vulnerability, love and anger.
We join Ruben’s metaphoric descent after a failed attempt to fly from the top of a building into a kiddies, wading pool. His arm is broken, his beautiful fiancé has left him, and the play commences in the confines of an AA meeting he has been dragged to by his mother. Despite this grim scenario, Ruben Guthrie is filled with comedic, drunken debacles, and we are left to question whether it is nervous laughter or just good, old-fashioned, Australian mateship.
As Ruben proceeds through the familiar twelves-steps, he discovers that his family and friends – far from supporting him – continue to feed the monkey on his back. His boss (played by Christopher Stollery), who is also on the wagon, needs Ruben’s creativity to keep flowing and encourages his drinking; his best friend (Torquil Neilson) with his failed New York expedition conjures drunken Ruben to help him forget; and his mother (Tracy Mann) just wants her son back.
The timing of Ruben Guthrie’s arrival at the Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre is poignant, coinciding with high profile, Australian athletes being publicly disciplined for alcoholic excess. Cowell has an acute Australian sensibility that throws brutal truths in our faces and, despite the discomfort, we find ourselves thanking him for it.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
This Is How It Goes by Neil LaBute - Darlinghurst Theatre, 27 Feb – 22 Mar 08
I love it when you’re in the theatre, the actors have taken their bows, everyone has finished clapping and the lights are back up and ... no one is moving. At This Is How It Goes by Neil LaBute, directed by Toby Schmitz, everyone was either stunned or eager to move onto idle conversation to break the intensity of its last moments.
This story tricks you onto the side of the racist. It’s brilliant! I could feel everyone’s faces collectively drop in the last diatribe by our protagonist who at this point leads us down an overtly racist commentary including confronting words of ‘coon’ and the like. I know I should have read some of LaBute's work by now, so after writing this entry, I’m off to Berkelouw's to buy everything I can lay my hands on.
At the beginning of the journey we are presented with the protagonist (who is played by Patrick Brammall but whose character name isn’t established). He talks directly to us. He is humble yet opinionated, and his language is familiar. He chats with us casually in typical daily parlance of disjointed sentences and colloquialisms. He is our narrator. He is the presenter of scenes in which he is involved and in others not. In between the scenes (and sometimes in the middle of them) he stops to chat to the audience to deliver his own take on things, while the rest the characters freeze in time. He even passes his cap to a patron in the front row, at one point, to mind while he steps into a new scene.
We like him; he is charismatic, charming and the underdog enough to make us feel he is one of us. And at the end of the play we are left to question just how much like him we are?
This play is simple with only three characters: Belinda, played by Rebecca Rocheford Davies, Cory, played by Wayne McDaniel with his Samuel L. Jackson-like voice and speech patterns, and our narrator.
The direction (as well as the lighting and set) is simple and focuses on impeccable and comic timing as well as the Schmitz cool attitude. I can almost feel the Schmitz fervent persona come through in Patrick Brammall’s more casual performance.
Unfortunately, you’ve missed the Darlinghurst Theatre production now, but go out and buy the play and enjoy the slap in the face at the end.
This story tricks you onto the side of the racist. It’s brilliant! I could feel everyone’s faces collectively drop in the last diatribe by our protagonist who at this point leads us down an overtly racist commentary including confronting words of ‘coon’ and the like. I know I should have read some of LaBute's work by now, so after writing this entry, I’m off to Berkelouw's to buy everything I can lay my hands on.
At the beginning of the journey we are presented with the protagonist (who is played by Patrick Brammall but whose character name isn’t established). He talks directly to us. He is humble yet opinionated, and his language is familiar. He chats with us casually in typical daily parlance of disjointed sentences and colloquialisms. He is our narrator. He is the presenter of scenes in which he is involved and in others not. In between the scenes (and sometimes in the middle of them) he stops to chat to the audience to deliver his own take on things, while the rest the characters freeze in time. He even passes his cap to a patron in the front row, at one point, to mind while he steps into a new scene.
We like him; he is charismatic, charming and the underdog enough to make us feel he is one of us. And at the end of the play we are left to question just how much like him we are?
This play is simple with only three characters: Belinda, played by Rebecca Rocheford Davies, Cory, played by Wayne McDaniel with his Samuel L. Jackson-like voice and speech patterns, and our narrator.
The direction (as well as the lighting and set) is simple and focuses on impeccable and comic timing as well as the Schmitz cool attitude. I can almost feel the Schmitz fervent persona come through in Patrick Brammall’s more casual performance.
Unfortunately, you’ve missed the Darlinghurst Theatre production now, but go out and buy the play and enjoy the slap in the face at the end.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Self-Esteem by Brendan Cowell
Self-Esteem is a black, political comedy by Brendan Cowell and presents a bleak criticism of our Australian community and identity. There’s a strong religious current as Cowell confronts American indoctrination.
As you enter the Wharf2Loud theatre, you are collectively confronted by the vast, pristine space the stage takes up and the starkness of the suburban home floor plan surrounded by a white picket fence. This initial uncomfortable feeling, for anyone who grew up in the suburbs, is reinforced in the first ten minutes of the play: the dad, Rob, ignores the mum, Pam; the brother, Rick, resents the sister, Lucy, who is articulate, political and restless; and the grandmother, Ethel, who is in advanced stages of dementia, attempts to take a dump on the lounge-room floor.
These uncomfortable feelings are only strengthened when Chad arrives, but in another way, completely. Neatly dressed in a white tracksuit embossed with the black insignia of Chad, he launches into the suburban Australian home with his loud and strong American accent. Chad is a generic, good-looking, twenty-something, soon-to-be-part-of-every-Australian-home brainwasher, who comes with his own instruction kit restricting certain questions like, “how do you feel, Chad? What do you want for yourself, Chad?” As the play progresses he starts to break down and realises his own short-comings as these types of questions inevitably arise.
Toby Schmitz is brilliant in this role. His energy bursts well beyond the suburban bore, and his excessive smile and cheer makes you grate your teeth, ‘but in a good way.’ His subtle ticks and smooth transition between his multi-faceted manipulation techniques make you aware that things are going to go horribly wrong for him (and everyone else) and that you are going to enjoy seeing him come apart.
Initially, Chad is rejected by most of the family who are keen to stick with the status quo. Pam prepares meals for Chad, as is her motherly duty. He tantalises her and wins her over with his insincere compliments, and the family’s conversion to the Chad way of life begins: strict exercise regimes in leg-warmers; making money any way you can; being creative even if it means exploiting others. Chad manipulates his way into the hearts of each of them as is his duty dictated by the greater Chad.
The real joy is in watching each component of the family break down with too many Chad pills, a rat plague and gay porn.
Tim Richards creates a bold and risky Rick. His metamorphosis from lazy, masturbating brat to inspired, home-porn creator is hilarious.
Heather Mitchell’s Pam is sympathetic and pathetic, and her energetic physical movement makes her amphetamine addiction deliciously farcical.
Alice Babidge’s set design is simple and functional and works in well with Gavin Robins movement instruction to assist the unified feeling of the family home.
In essence, Cowell is characterising the Australian lack the self-esteem and our inability to effectively create a national identity. Americans, on the other hand, with their confidence whether genuine or not, can easily infiltrate any community, often resulting in it breaking down. Self-Esteem, in its own black comedy, American-bashing way it is a nationalistic play.
It is an interesting comment on Australian identity however simplistically it has been presented here. It’s a subject not often discussed so overtly, yet one that all the arts are implicitly trying to achieve by their existence. What does it mean to be Australian? What do we have to be proud of? Are we a racist nation? Cowell delicately includes this last precarious question, which ironically reflects our own oppressive history. I think the malaise of Self-Esteem successfully remains with its audience members long after the performance has finished.
As you enter the Wharf2Loud theatre, you are collectively confronted by the vast, pristine space the stage takes up and the starkness of the suburban home floor plan surrounded by a white picket fence. This initial uncomfortable feeling, for anyone who grew up in the suburbs, is reinforced in the first ten minutes of the play: the dad, Rob, ignores the mum, Pam; the brother, Rick, resents the sister, Lucy, who is articulate, political and restless; and the grandmother, Ethel, who is in advanced stages of dementia, attempts to take a dump on the lounge-room floor.
These uncomfortable feelings are only strengthened when Chad arrives, but in another way, completely. Neatly dressed in a white tracksuit embossed with the black insignia of Chad, he launches into the suburban Australian home with his loud and strong American accent. Chad is a generic, good-looking, twenty-something, soon-to-be-part-of-every-Australian-home brainwasher, who comes with his own instruction kit restricting certain questions like, “how do you feel, Chad? What do you want for yourself, Chad?” As the play progresses he starts to break down and realises his own short-comings as these types of questions inevitably arise.
Toby Schmitz is brilliant in this role. His energy bursts well beyond the suburban bore, and his excessive smile and cheer makes you grate your teeth, ‘but in a good way.’ His subtle ticks and smooth transition between his multi-faceted manipulation techniques make you aware that things are going to go horribly wrong for him (and everyone else) and that you are going to enjoy seeing him come apart.
Initially, Chad is rejected by most of the family who are keen to stick with the status quo. Pam prepares meals for Chad, as is her motherly duty. He tantalises her and wins her over with his insincere compliments, and the family’s conversion to the Chad way of life begins: strict exercise regimes in leg-warmers; making money any way you can; being creative even if it means exploiting others. Chad manipulates his way into the hearts of each of them as is his duty dictated by the greater Chad.
The real joy is in watching each component of the family break down with too many Chad pills, a rat plague and gay porn.
Tim Richards creates a bold and risky Rick. His metamorphosis from lazy, masturbating brat to inspired, home-porn creator is hilarious.
Heather Mitchell’s Pam is sympathetic and pathetic, and her energetic physical movement makes her amphetamine addiction deliciously farcical.
Alice Babidge’s set design is simple and functional and works in well with Gavin Robins movement instruction to assist the unified feeling of the family home.
In essence, Cowell is characterising the Australian lack the self-esteem and our inability to effectively create a national identity. Americans, on the other hand, with their confidence whether genuine or not, can easily infiltrate any community, often resulting in it breaking down. Self-Esteem, in its own black comedy, American-bashing way it is a nationalistic play.
It is an interesting comment on Australian identity however simplistically it has been presented here. It’s a subject not often discussed so overtly, yet one that all the arts are implicitly trying to achieve by their existence. What does it mean to be Australian? What do we have to be proud of? Are we a racist nation? Cowell delicately includes this last precarious question, which ironically reflects our own oppressive history. I think the malaise of Self-Esteem successfully remains with its audience members long after the performance has finished.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
