#stcsa

RIPCORD – a review

With seating restricted and wearing of masks

The play went to preview, let’s hope it will last!

Lucky for some who got to their seat

Because it was special, a theatrical treat.

Two ladies, to cohabit, have traits not conducive

One a curmudgeon, the other effusive.

A wager is on to see who can deploy

One’s sangfroid to fear, one’s anger from joy.

There’s a lot of bad blood to get over the hump

You’d think it a case of Biden v Trump:

A playhouse that’s spooky, with flesh-eating clown

A baby to save, Abby’s guard appears down.

A plane ride with instructions from Marilyn’s son

(He looks familiar, has she got more than one?)

A parachute jump, not for hearts that are faint

Pull on the ripcord, free-falling, restraint.

Phone calls all night to get stuff that is free

In answer to ads someone placed on Gumtree.

A fire truck, torn, was by one’s little boy

Sudokus filled in, all parts of the ploy.

The exchanges are witty, quips timed to perfection,

But darkness emerges, they’d rather not mention.

There are family ties and finances turned bad

Relationships soured, heartbreakingly sad.

But out of the sombre, emerges some light

As grandchildren divide but also unite.

Sharing a room is no longer a fight -

Abby’s and Marilyn’s futures are bright.

The direction‘s superb as are lighting and sets,

Seamless transitions and special effects.

Acting that’s versatile, perfect for stage

In response to requests for a review of this fab play....

After Dinner  - a preview

 Girls out for a night of dinner and dancing

Men meeting up - one talking, one prancing.

Now here is the thing, and I do hate to spoil it

The drama begins when one goes to the toilet.

  It’s funny but poignant, and awkward for wives

And husbands reflecting on days of their lives.

There’s flirting and drinking and splitting of cost

And misunderstandings of gender and loss.

 “Stephen’s” long locks are a dream to behold

And so is the jacket when sleeves have been rolled.

He’s alpha to zeta, you can see where we’re headed,

But hiding short-comings with ladies he’s bedded.

  He moves like Travolta, like the Fonz, opportune,

His lean and his groove thing will leave you to swoon.

The plot and the ending we haven’t betrayed,

He’s ready and willing, where are you? Adelaide!

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0THa0qwAK4E)

By MURRAY BRAMWELL, The Australian  August 25, 2016

Written in 1914 by English novelist John Buchan as a distraction during convalescence, The 39 Steps became the enduring prototype for the fugitive thriller.

Then, adapted by Alfred Hitchcock and his team, the 1935 film marked a high point in the director’s British career, using tropes and signatures that later defined his Hollywood classics.

The ripping yarn of British patriot Richard Hannay, on the run in Scotland and in pursuit of master spies and foreign agents posing as pillars of the establishment, captured the zeitgeist before both world wars.

A new century brought a fresh twist to a beloved text when in 2006 English writer and comedian Patrick Barlow scripted the film version to be played as a stage comic thriller; a tour de farce by four actors.

Fun would be had with the hats, trench coats and pencil moustaches — and dialogue intended for 240 characters was now divvied up four ways.

One actor plays Hannay, another the three intriguing women from the Hitchcock version, and two hypermanic thespians play everyone else in a flurry of hats, wigs, false beards, accents and dialects that span the British Isles and beyond.

Ten years after Barlow’s play became a West End hit, the State Theatre Company of South Australia and director Jon Halpin have again put The 39 Steps through its paces.

And a fine and funny job they have made of it. Designer Ailsa Paterson has created a 1930s deco proscenium facade within which tall scaffold frames on wheels imaginatively become parlours, hotel lobbies and street scenes. A painted flat of a Scottish moor recreates the mysteries of Hannay’s pursuit, intriguingly lit in foggy noir by Geoff Cobham. Stuart Day’s music is an excellent mix of period dance styles, rolling drums and a brass band version of The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

The actors rise to the task. Nathan Page plays the intrepid Hannay seriously enough to keep the suspense moving, while adding the necessary drollery. Anna Steen crisply captures the doomed agent Annabella Schmidt, the melancholy Margaret and the unflustered heroine Pamela Edwards.

Moving through The Others and the Other Others, as Barlow calls the 236 remaining parts, Charles Mayer luxuriates as the villainous Professor, escalating to Milligan goonery for the Scottish characters.

Tim Overton as Mr Memory, the hotelier’s wife and a multitude of gormless offsiders, is equally a comic delight.

Halpin has kept the pace brisk but is careful to savour the jokes and visual gags — the extended silent scream of the housekeeper parodying the Hitchcock set piece, the witty jokes with props, the mistimed scene changes, the slapstick and hat-changing schtick.

Such fresh, inventive stagecraft makes retracing The 39 Steps entertaining all over again.

Of course, it’s good!  

Page is very solid in his creation of Hannay as a jolly good, patriotic, heroic citizen, without taking himself too seriously, and his stable performance allows the others to perform madcap antics around him.

http://indaily.com.au/arts-and-culture/theatre/2016/08/24/review-the-39-steps-is-a-guaranteed-night-of-laughs/