Megamix of murder and mayhem doesn’t quite kill it

In a Nutshell: The Poetry of Violence
Bell Shakespeare, Neilson Nutshell, Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay
September 5
Until September 8
Reviewed by JOYCE MORGAN
★★½

On brown boxes that resemble packing crates, Shakespeare at his most savage is set to be unpacked.

What follows feels part-tutorial and part-wander through a chamber of horrors as we encounter some of the Bard’s most monstrous characters and harrowing scenes.

Jessica Tovey, Nigel Poulton and Madeline Li.Credit: Brett Boardman

Bell Shakespeare’s artistic director Peter Evans, notebook and pen in hand, is our pedagogic guide. “Listen to this,” is his mantra as he urges us to pay attention to a speech or even just a line.

This is a sequel to Bell Shakespeare’s In a Nutshell excerpts program, which launched the opening of the company’s intimate new Walsh Bay home in 2022. That production had no overt theme – the actors delivered great Shakespearean speeches from a range of plays. This time, violence is in the spotlight.

And there’s no shortage of murder and mayhem: from the slaughter of Macduff’s wife and son (Macbeth), the general about to bake the heads of enemies into pies (Titus Andronicus) and the assassins poised to murder Julius Caesar.

Men don’t have a monopoly on violence. Shakespeare’s blood-thirsty women are well-represented: from Volumnia revelling in her son’s brutality (Coriolanus), to Queen Margaret (Henry VI) and, of course, Lady Macbeth.

With excerpts from so many plays, the effect is Shakespeare the Megamix. This is the Bard without any boring bits. The disadvantage of this approach is there’s limited context.

Evans’ attempts to set up scenes from lesser-known works get mired at times in the fleeting introduction of too many unfamiliar characters.

The segues between excerpts need to hold the piece together and provide an arc or argument. Attempts to link them thematically – blood, guilt – felt underdeveloped and tenuous. Fleshing these out has potential for a more rewarding piece.

The mood lightened in the latter part of the show as performers delivered a stocktake of how Shakespeare killed off his characters – blades, dagger and swords being the most common and eating hot coals the least (Julius Caesar).

Fight director Nigel Poulton provided insights into how changing Elizabethan styles of fencing impacted Romeo and Juliet. His cameo was as fascinating as it was unexpected.

With six actors playing numerous roles, Lucy Bell, Jessica Tovey and Darius Williams were particularly strong.

Max Lyandvert’s subtle sound design provided moments of tension and unease as well as lyrical beauty. Anna Tregloan’s casual street clothes in a neutral palette aided the informality.

This taster-plate of a show attempts to present the Bard in a different way. Sadly, the production felt unsatisfying in its execution.

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Budjerah
Factory Theatre, September 7
Reviewed by FRANCES HOWE
★★★★

When Budjerah welcomes us to his therapy session, scepticism is a natural response. What guidance can a 22-year-old offer? He quickly warns that while one of his back-up singers has a degree in social work, he does not.

However, Budjerah is prepared to skip the talking phase of therapy and go straight to treatment. From the get-go his vocal ability is medicinal. He leads with his most recent release, Is It Ever Gonna Make Sense, and follows with Missing You, which he mashes up with TLC’s No Scrubs.

Despite his relative youth, Budjerah is already a veteran performer and has the humility and confidence that come from playing both stadiums and smaller rooms.

Budjerah stands in front of three vocalists and a full band that includes two of his older cousins, Jarulah and Banahm Slabb. He and Jarulah used to play music together when they were growing up and this familiarity is obvious on stage. For Video Game it’s just Budjerah and Jarulah on guitar. It sounds effortless but so, too, does a cover of Hero by Mariah Carey, which is a greater feat.

The set builds gradually on the back of Budjerah’s vocals. His songs are youthful and lack an edginess that will hopefully come with experience. Regardless, this is a once-in-a-generation talent and the fact only 700 people were in attendance felt wasteful.

He closes with his single Therapy, easily the best song of the night. And, by now, any ails in the crowd have been treated.

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SNOW WHITE
Riverside Theatres, September 7
Until September 21
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★

Somewhere in the middle of Bonnie Lythgoe Productions’ Snow White, Helpmann Award-winner Debora Krizak as the Wicked Queen asks, baiting for a panto response, “You don’t think Snow White is prettier than me, do you?”

“OH YES WE DO!” about a hundred small children thunder back gleefully. “OH NO YOU DON’T!” the queen snarls.

This is repeated three times until Krizak shuts them down. “I hate doing it, but it’s in my contract,” she laughs drily, breaking down a fourth wall panel for us adults.

There’s cheesy choreography, brightly coloured costumes and dazzling lighting.Credit: Robert Catto

It’s a bit humorous, but it’s also quite tragic. In my deluded heroic progressive fantasies, I would raise my voice and, a clarion to The Children, shout: “NO, YOU ARE ALSO VERY PRETTY!” I would of course never do that but, like, Krizak is attractive? And older woman can be? What kind of entertainment enjoins kids in a naïve chorus of ageist body-shaming? I was quite sad when the queen tried to seduce the prince (Tim Maddren) and he responded with disgusted horror. I imagine a few mums were, too.

Stiff competition, but Snow White is already one of the most superficial and sexist of the Disney-fied fairytales. The prince and princess get together just because he’s the most handsome and she’s the most fair, in a realm where beauty is equated with virtue, women always need saving (until they get old and ambitious), and marriage is the fantasy ending. Bewilderingly, this story-poor production hasn’t chosen to update any of this messaging.

They have swapped out the seven dwarves with seven ‘loyal courtiers’: “none of whom are vertically challenged so as not to offend anybody,” explains one of the characters. Who’s offended? You’d think only the dwarf actors who missed out on a gig. (This after last month’s controversial reveal that Disney will have CGI dwarves in their live-action 2025 remake.)

Instead, the show’s modernisations are devoted to an inordinate number of jokes about Botox, the usual pandering to Sydney suburb stereotypes, and a jumbled jukebox of hits. There’s cheesy choreography, brightly coloured costumes, dazzling lighting, some original songs from Olly Ashmore, and lovely painted panels for scene changes in the woodlands and castle. Did I mention the digital cameos from ’60s hit-maker Sir Cliff Richard and shock jock Kyle Sandilands?

Like a faux designer handbag, this Snow White has modified some key elements. There isn’t one magic mirror, but two: Richard is the “Mirror Enchanted”, weaving in lines from his songs at every opportunity like a dotty uncle; Sandilands is the “Mirror Disgruntled”, dead-eyed and snarky. These mirrors are pre-recorded videos that descend from the ceiling in gilded-framed screens. Garish and dystopian, they have a weird disconnect from the live actors on stage.

There is some fun to be had in this show, and for this we can thank Mark Jones. He plays a new character introduced into the fairytale universe, Snow White’s best friend called Muddles (because he’s always muddling up his words with spoonerisms). Looking like the lost Tweedle triplet with long patterned socks, high yellow silk pants and suspenders, Jones is a natural children’s entertainer and stage jester, as comedically sharp as he is bouncingly silly. His rapport with children and parents is undeniable. Eliza Sunderland is the other standout, our princess with an enchantingly sweet singing voice. (How good would it have been if Muddles had been the “love’s true kiss” to awaken her! The love of life-long friendship is so much deeper and more dependable than that of the newly enamoured.)

My own furiously vibrating, over-educated moral sensitivities aside: will kids enjoy the two-plus hours inside Riverside Theatres? Those at the opening matinee I attended did. At least, they yelled “YES!!” after Muddles explicitly asked them this at the end.

But we were all in a good mood by then. Because for reasons I cannot explain, the show ended with a Twelve Days of Winter rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas, where a ring of five toilet rolls was flung into the crowd eight times. Seeing kids and adults hurl back the toilet rolls was genuinely the best thing about this production. And it has nothing to do with Snow White.

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J Balvin
Qudos Bank Arena, September 6
Reviewed by SHAMIM RAZAVI
★★★

Movement is intrinsic to reggaeton. From its rapid evolution at the meeting of reggae en espanol, trap and Jamaican dancehall through the shifting kaleidoscope of countless, varied collaborations between its artists, movement defines not only the development of this genre but also the irresistible reaction of any listener. So it is that even the most awkwardly Anglo in the audience on this night – a minority in a Latinx-filled Qudos – sway and dance with uncharacteristic style.

Addressing that audience in Spanish with the merest smattering of English, Balvin effortlessly orchestrates the sashaying sway. From his grand entrance with megahit Mi Gente (you’ll know it if you hear it) through to the banging closing medley of Rhythm of the Night cover RITMO, Que calor and In da Getto (likewise – the tune that launched a thousand reels), Balvin works up the intensity to street-party levels across more than 30 tunes.

J Balvin works up the intensity to street party levels across more than 30 tunes.Credit: Mushroom Creative House

That those tunes rarely outstay their welcome is a trick achieved by neatly abbreviating each number. Not one for orchestral complexity, Balvin deftly truncates the earworms while there is still some brain remaining.

It is only before the closing crescendo that a brief three-song interlude drawn from his latest, disappointing Rayo album exposes the limitations of the formula. Recently tacked on to an established set, these autotune-heavy numbers lack the polish of the rest of the show, exposing a rather naked emperor at its core. So it is fitting that he follows these by removing his shirt for the grand finale to expose an enviably muscular, tattooed torso that is received with only a lukewarm audience reaction.

That reaction is also a little muted on those collaborations with which he made his name: Cardi B’s contribution on I Like It (trust me, you know it) is lip-synched by a dancer, as is Beyoncé’s vocal on the set opener.

He distracts as best he can – weird alien dancers here, a monolith that doubles as both podium and video screen there – but peer through the motion and noise and there is something slightly sad on that podium: a shooting star on a declining arc.

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VOICES OF JOAN
PACT Theatre, September 4
Until September 14
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★½

The title is metaphorical. It does not refer to the voices Joan of Arc believed came to her from her god, but to the multifarious ways her bold stance against a cruel and morally bankrupt patriarchy rattled the bones of history.

Janie Gibson hurls herself into endless costume changes.Credit: Lee Illfield

Although not the first feminist, she has as strong a claim as any to being the most extraordinary human of us all, being illiterate, teenaged, female and agrarian, and yet winning the ear of the highest echelons of state and church, bearing arms and trouncing a seemingly invincible foe.

If there’s such a thing as megaphone theatre, this is it – complete with megaphone.

Voices of Joan was devised by Janie Gibson and Anu Almagro, with Gibson the lone actor and Almagro directing. Lithe, brash and daring, it describes itself as “a feminist punk ritual unravelling the history of misogyny through a radical retelling of the story of Joan of Arc”. Box ticked! If there’s such a thing as megaphone theatre, this is it – complete with megaphone.

Gibson hurls herself into endless costume changes, variously emerging as herself, Joan, a corrupt judge and Heinrich Kramer, the author of Malleus Maleficarum, which, half a century after Joan was incinerated, formalised the practice of burning women alive.

This is black-box theatre with a few lights (Fausto Brusamolino), skerricks of music (Liesl Pieterse), a rack of costumes and elements of audience participation that culminate in a theatrical image to shake your soul.

Along the way come undergraduate moments and wavering intensity. We hear the voices of, or are given quotes by, Alan Jones and Donald Trump, while the text, like Shaw’s Saint Joan, draws extensively on the transcript of Joan’s trial.

The play’s dramaturgical sins are easily forgiven: they can happen when you take this many risks. Where it falters is metaphysically. Shaw, ever the sceptic, dismissed the voices, so his play ends up sitting uncomfortably on a rather precipitous fence.

Joan may or may not have suffered some malady of the mind, but these voices were so real to her that she convinced others to let her wear armour, ride a warhorse, devise battleground tactics and longer-term strategies, lead troops into action and win: inconceivable actions for one of her age, class and sex.

Even if the show’s creators struggle to give credence to the interlocutory powers of her angels and saints, they could have let Joan believe in them more – so she could also doubt.

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