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Shakespeare’s Richard 111 – killed whoever stood in his way to power – has anything changed?

Richard 111 playing at the Ensemble Theatre, Sydney is a stage within a stage.

A troupe of actors gather to perform Shakespeare’s Richard 111, an intensely dark play of evil, revealing one of history’s greatest villain.

Complex with outstanding performances by the cast, most of who play multiple characters, Shakespeare’s Richard 111 is peopled with a huge number of characters. The diagrams of family trees as the backdrop, references this and then the challenge is for the audience to give themselves permission to leave aside the many names and players, and enter Richard’s world.

Richard 111 is driven by political ambition for power at any cost with murders, fierce battles, the strong female characters typical of Shakespearean drama, evil manipulations in its many forms.

Mark Kilmurray’s performance of Richard is brilliant portraying Richard, the hunchback, crippled with one arm deformed and a club foot. His deformities are painful physically, emotionally and morally denying Richard love, respect and acceptance which is a factor that underlies his consuming lust for power. Kilmurray’s Richard despite his disabilities, is fast and at times seems to dance through the blood of potential rivals controlling the stage and every player. Ironically, it is a pleasure to watch Kilmurray’s Richard.

There are some very funny moments in this play of murder and mayhem, with quick character changes, set designs and props that contrast to the vanities and ambitions of the characters. Matt Edgerton’s well executed character changes, are especially humorous. Amy Matthews and Danielle Carter’s as Queen Elizabeth and Lady Anne are powerfully gripping as they navigate the fall-out of Richard’s murderous plots, with the death of their children.

Richard 111 becomes king. It is a hollow victory as he faces his final scene where he is attacked and lies dying. He calls out – ‘A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’. Like Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin and other evil dictators, the lust for power ends in oblivion and the belated recognition that life is the most important thing.

Richard declared at the beginning that “Since I cannot prove a lover … I am determined to prove a villain.” He is certainly a villain who leave the audiences with questions about the human forces that create the pursuit of power at any cost. Is it nurture, nature, lack of love, evil within human nature? A play worth seeing.

Susanne Gervay ~ Reviewer, author www.sgervay.com

Ensemble Theatre
78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli Australia 2061
(02) 9929 8877; Box Office: (02) 9929 0644; http://ensemble.com.au/

The post ‘My Kingdom for a Horse’ ~ Who said that? appeared first on Susanne Gervay's Blog.

Insanely creative and hectic October zooms into November as we torpedo into December and these are a few of the things everyone’s celebrating:-

FUN & FABULOUS – INSIDE STORY – writers & illustrators across the world give the INSIDE STORY of creating their books to thousands in bookshops from Sydney to New York!

From Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver in the USA to our own stars. Tony Flowers’ illustrates the BEST dragons!

In Australia Black Cat Book Café Paddington in Brisbane; The Little Bookroom in Melbourne, and The Children’s Bookshop Beecroft in Sydney splashed illustrations and dragons and story through the community. yeah to books!

Celebrations for our Hazel Edwards famous author of There’s a Hippopotamus Easting Cake on the Roof, Antartic explorer stuck in ice writing those stories of icebergs and adventurers, defending authors rights and so much more  - received her ORDER OF AUSTRALIA to huge cheers from the Australian writing community.

Engrossed in the brilliant theatrical performances of the outstanding play ‘Rapture. Blister, Burn’ by Gina Gionfriddo cut into the heart of relationships at the Ensemble Theatre – one of the world’s most picturesque theatre nestled into the harbour overlooking sailing boats and bushland in Kirribilli.

SCBWI Room to Read’s writer ambassadors celebrating books for kids across Asia and Africa where they build a library every 4 hours!

As writer ambassadors, Deborah Abela and I were at Berkelouw’s Paddington – but there were SCBWI authors everywhere like Kate Forsyth, Belinda Murrell, Oliver Phommavanh, Sarah Davis – illustrator extraordinaire at Berkelouw bookshops through Sydney … and more.

Deb and I dressed up as a sheep and pig - we got HOT heads and a few PATS!

The post Kids’ Authors & Illustrators Reaching Everywhere! appeared first on Susanne Gervay's Blog.

One of the best plays I have seen – see Bombshells – twice.

‘Bombshells’ is a risky title, offering reviewers huge avenues for witty or unwitty sarcasm. But there’s nowhere that a reviewer can lift that poison pen.  ‘Bombshells’ is  dynamite, ripping inside women’s lives, exploding with vivaciousness, realism, hilarity, wit, music, dancing on an underlying  seam of ‘quiet desperation’. But there’s ‘the song still in them’.  (Henry David Thoreau).

The acclaimed playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, goes to the heart of the lives of women in six vignettes of seemingly very different women at different ages and stages: – a stay-at-home wife and mother with a baby and toddlers; a divorcee with her passion for cacti; a school girl’s ambitions for stardom in the school talent show; a bride on the pathway to disintegration; the widow and hope for love; and the come-back cabaret diva capturing audiences, singing her story of love and life.

The pianist and talented musical director Lindsay Partridge takes his place on the stage as the pianist in the final scene accompanying the diva. However, it is in essence a one-person play.  Sharon Millerchip, the multi-talented award winning actor is extraordinary. Her energy, versatility and ability to change persona quickly, takes the audience on the journeys of these diverse women. She is extraordinary, as she captures the audience immediately with fast paced dialogue, bitter-sweet characterisations and emotive themes of entrapment.

The audience is rolling in the aisle as Millerchip races across the stage as a frenzied mother  madly juggling breast feeding, school lifts, shopping, kids’ demands, cooking dinner and her guilty indulgence of real coffee and a few minutes for herself.  The pathos hits deeply when she says that at dinner she has nothing to say to her husband, because she’s done nothing.

Each vignette holds insights, challenges, laughs, insights, be it the cacti obsessed fanatic or the bride in love with her dress rather than her groom.  Sharon Millerchip, dances and sings across the stage. Her comedy is hilarious. Her tragedy moving.  Her humanity warm and real.  No one goes away untouched and everyone is energised by her outstanding performance.

The Director Sandra Bates and choreographer Nicole Buffoni have beautifully directed Sharon Millerchip with perfect pacing and interchange between vignettes. Marissa Dale-Johnson’s set design successfully melds into the stories changing as the scenes change.

‘Bombshells’ deserves to have huge success. Sharon Millerchip is outstanding, captivating and truly one of Australia’s great actors.

Rating: 5 stars plus.  See ‘Bombshells’ at The Ensemble.

www.ensemble.com.au

Showing now at the Ensemble Theatre Kirribilli -a must see play.

by Jeffrey Hatcher

Artistic Director Nicole Buffoni

Cast: Danny Adcock, Sharon Millerchip

Reviewed by Susanne Gervay www.sgervay.com

Emotionally and intellectually gripping, The Ensemble Theatre’s production of Jeffry Hatcher’s ‘A Picasso’ opens in an underground bunker in Paris October 24, 1941. The sound of Nazi jackboots set the scene for a potent, thought provoking confrontation between Pablo Picasso and Miss Fischer from the German Cultural Ministry on the power of art, war and ideas.

Pablo Picasso has been brought in for interrogation.  The young female Nazi official Miss Fischer enters the colourless bunker, in her harshly cut suit and German-like precision. Pablo Picasso is flamboyant, opinionated, a huge fluid presence like his art. She must obtain an authentic Picasso for the Nazi exhibition of ‘degenerate art’.

‘From now on we are going to wage a merciless war of destruction against the last remaining element of cultural disintegration.’ Adolf Hitler, 18 July 1937

Picasso’s life and the political events of the time are brilliantly interspersed with witty, quick dialogue in the interrogation. In a roller coaster of ideas and conscience, values and humanity, ‘A Picasso’ reaches into the role of art in politics.  Picasso fights for his art, claims it is not political, he is not political. The question of politics and art culminate in Miss Fischer’s challenge to Picasso that he hid in France under the protection of art, while his country Spain burned, as the Spanish Civil War tore it apart. She breaks down Picasso’s certainty, as he screams, but there is Guernica.

On 26 April 1937, the German Condor Legion, in a bloodbath of bombing destroyed the quiet village of Guernica in support of the Spanish Civil War and to test their blitzkrieg. Picasso’s Cubist masterpiece Guernica, is one of the world’s greatest anti-war paintings. It is political.

Art is ideas and the Nazis needed to destroy ideas. Miss Fischer’s role was to gain a Picasso painting, to destroy it.  Picasso’s role was to fight for art’s survival.  They both change, breakdown, as power moves between them.

Picasso runs 90 minutes with no intermission as ideas, clash and change, and tension escalate in this play about war and art and conscience. Powerfully performed by Danny Adcock who plays Picasso and Sharon Millerchip who plays Miss Fischer, ‘A Picasso’ is a play that needs to be seen more than once.

Ensemble Theatre, Sydney www.ensemble.com.au  showing NOW!

Another brilliant play dealing with the impact of Nazism is Hitler’s Daughter by Jackie french at Darling Quarter Theatre Darling harbour

www.monkeybaa.com.au