Theatre
The year of the goat
by Listener critics
The best theatre of 2005, judged by Listener critics.
The year was blessed with some terrific theatrical moments, but if there was one show that stood out from the rest, it was The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? at Silo Theatre. Productions as good as this only come along once every few years, if you’re lucky.
No doubt about it, Michael Hurst and Jennifer Ward-Lealand gave the performances of the year, possibly of their lives, in Edward Albee’s brilliant and confronting work about a successful architect who has fallen for a goat. Director Oliver Driver milked every drop of drama out of the crisis, highlighting the absurdity and Greek-like dimensions of the tragedy. The effect of Ward-Lealand unleashing primal howls while hurling crockery at the fallen hero was electric. Seated inches from the action in the brightly lit intimate Silo box, we, too, felt implicated.
Next best was the Auckland Theatre Company’s feelgood comedy Niu Sila by Dave Armstrong and Oscar Kightley. The two-hander starred David Fane and Damon Andrews, who with wicked irreverence kept the laughs coming thick and fast by conjuring up hilariously sketched characters from 60s Ponsonby. And with a poignant twist at the end, delicately handled by director Conrad Newport, the payoff was deeply affecting.
Another excellent year from the Silo produced two more stand-out theatrical events, Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat and retro 60s hit The Boys in the Band. In the first, 9/11 forms the background to an end-of-an-affair tale, played with just the right brittleness and cynicism by Alison Bruce and Craig Hall. In the latter, we eavesdropped on a dinner party, where the lives of seven New York gay friends are dissected. Bitchy, witty and perceptive, it was packed with one-liners, lasagne and superb performances from the all-male cast.
The boldest production was Colin McColl’s Duchess of Malfi for the ATC. McColl consistently mounts challenging theatre, and there were some inspired moments in this stylish production. Notably, the best design of the year by Tony Rabbit, with his thrust sandpit stage and imaginative use of the Town Hall concert chamber, sumptuous costumes by Elizabeth Whiting, striking original music by John Gibson, not to mention another captivating performance by Hurst (as Bosola).
Other memorable moments: wacky Canadians Les 7 doigts de la main; the horses in Equus; Ben Barrington in The Return; and Andrew Laing’s “Amsterdam” in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.
Ultimately, though, 2005 was the Year of The Goat.
My most visceral theatrical moment of the year went like this: Cornwall gloatingly held up Gloucester’s gouged-out eyeball and very deliberately squeezed it between finger and thumb, splattering the front row of the audience. That was at Chi-chester during David Warner’s all-passion-spending King Lear. My equivalent local moment was in a quite different key: Peter Vere-Jones tottering on stage as the abandoned Firs at the end of Circa’s The Cherry Orchard to universal gasps of “oh no”.
The Wellington theatrical year was bracketed by two superb, no-frills Bacchanals productions at Bats, A Midsummer Night’s Dream in January and Anthony Sher’s ID in October. Both were adroitly directed by David Lawrence and featured the irrepressible Erin Banks in various roles, most notably as Helena in Dream. The fascinating ID presented a highly imaginative exploration of the life of the mysterious drifter and tapeworm host Demetrios Tsafendas (Malcolm Murray), who in 1966 assassinated South Africa’s apartheidophiliac Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd and spent the next 30 years in a psych unit. Also memorable at Bats was the SEEyD Company’s The Remedy Syndrome with Tim Spite and Danielle Mason as a vaccination-anxious couple.
Downstage mounted the year’s most ambitious show, Katie Wolfe’s stylish production of Clare Boothe Luce’s 1930s smash, The Women. Eight actors played the 30 parts in a claws ’n’ all catfight of frocks, divorce and double entendre. Better still was Downstage’s 21st anniversary revival of Renée’s wonderful Wednesday to Come about four generations of women in the sugar-bag years. Kate Harcourt (Mary in the original production) was quietly riveting as Granna, and Ellen Simpson shone as the young, awakening Jeannie.
Circa, too, had its stand-out productions. In the Studio, Nigel Collins and Toby Leach offered an even tighter version of their engaging backblocks comedy Wheeler’s Luck, and Dave Armstrong’s witty The Tutor hit the spot with its conscientiously non-PC squiz at NCEA and other assorted algebra. In the main auditorium, Stephen Sinclair’s equally non-PC The Bach ostentatiously barbecued several current Pakeha and Maori pieties. More sombrely, Michael Frayn’s Democracy, with Peter Hambleton brilliant as the East German “sleeper” Günter Guillaume, recaptured the complex allegiances of the Cold War. As a final bow, there was Roger Hall’s hilarious panto Cinderella. Hall knows the genre inside-out, and he and a strong cast, led by Ellie Smith as the fairy godmother, delivered the perfect stockingful of slapstick, catchy tunes and spicy topical jokes.
Faith Oxenbridge – Christchurch
Peninsula was the highpoint of both the Christchurch Arts Festival and the Court Theatre’s 2005 line-up. Nothing much happens in the rural settlement of Duvauchelles on Banks Peninsula in the 60s: Gary Henderson’s characters work, play and dream, while their secrets and longings whisper and sigh around them and every so often threaten to blow. There’s an ethereal quality to Henderson’s beautifully understated new play, but his characters are all convincingly flesh and blood.
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