Canberra Repertory's version of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is powerfully staged

Tuesday 23rd February, 2021

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

by Tennessee Williams

Directed by Anne Somes

Theatre 3

Canberra Repertory Society

Until March 6

Bookings: canberrarep.org.au or 02 62571950

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

Victoria Dixon and Teig Sadhana. Picture: Cathy Breen

"This is a play that exposes the startling co-existence of good and evil," Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tennessee Williams said to Elia Kazan, the original director of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Williams is referring to " the shocking duality in the single heart" of members of the wealthy Pollitt family who have gathered at the stately Mississippi homestead to celebrate the birthday of patriarch Big Daddy (Michael Sparks).

Canberra Repertory Society has taken on a mighty challenge in staging this classic drama of a dysfunctional Southern family.

Disturbing truths are concealed in a litany of lies that reveal to an audience the pain and torment of troubled flaws and tensions. Deceit and mendacity are played out inside Cate Clelland's towering and imposing set design. Williams was himself a tortured soul, deeply tormented by his homosexual relationships and seeking solace in alcohol to dull the pain.

Here, he seeks catharsis through the character of Brick (Teig Sadhana), who is Big Daddy and Big Mama's favoured son and married to Maggie (Victoria Tyrrell Dixon), the cat of the play's title. Struggling to gain favour and a large share of Big Daddy's 28,000 acres of the richest soil in the state are younger son Gooper (Ryan Erlandsen) and his wife May (Lainie Hart), mother of their tribe of "no-neck monsters".

Director Anne Somes has assembled an uniformly strong cast to do justice to Williams's complex characters caught in a vortex of personal deception.

In her opening scene's long diatribe to the unresponsive Brick, Dixon convincingly captures the feline guile of Maggie's flirtatious and wilful tenacity, born of a desperate longing for a child. There was some difficulty with Dixon's enunciation of the languid Mississippi drawl that made some of her dialogue difficult to understand.

Sparks's Big Daddy offers a less physically overpowering presence than is often seen. This in no way diminishes the effective portrayal of a wealthy and domineering plantation owner's vulnerable fear of imminent mortality that gives rise to defiant denial and the eventual realisation of his fate.

Liz St. Clair Long's Big Mama, the long-suffering butt of Big Daddy's cruel invective, is every bit the erstwhile Southern belle now desperately struggling to hold her family together. St Clair Long offers a tour de force performance of maternal concern and damaged devotion.

Michael Sparkes as Big Daddy and Liz St Clair Long as Big Mumma.

As the devious team of opportunists Hart's May and Erlandsen's Gooper capture the sickly sense of sycophancy. There are also fine cameos from the supporting performances of Saban Lloyd Berrell as the perplexed Reverend Tooker and Rob Drennan as Doctor Baugh.

But for me it is Teig Sadhana's performance as Brick that is most compelling. Sadhana's characterisation recalls the gripping realism of a James Dean or a Marlon Brando.

Brick's sullen, defiant anguish and cry of the heart at his harboured fear of the love for his dead friend Skipper echoes Williams's private torment as he slid towards self-destruction. Sadhana's Brick is up there with any that I have seen on stage or film.

Somes and her cast have captured the essential truth of Williams's play - that the characters in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are neither wholly bad nor good.

Like their author they too are human and it is their flawed humanity that evokes our empathy in Canberra Repertory's admirable staging of Williams's revelatory and powerfully written masterpiece.

First published in The Canberra Times, February 23, 2021

Kelly trio delivers "the best" jazz in spades

Sunday 21st February, 2021

Ugly Beauty
Wayne Kelly Trio
The Street Theatre
February 20, 2021

Reviewed by Clinton White

Canberra jazz pianist Wayne Kelly

WHY go overseas to experience jazz when there’s the quality and class of groups like the Wayne Kelly Trio right here in our own backyard?

And Australian jazz is different to European or US jazz; it’s somehow more spacious and open, with a generous dollop of typical Aussie freedom and wit, not to mention spontaneity. No one performance is ever the same as another.

Delivering all this in spades were pianist Wayne Kelly, bassist Brendan Clarke, and drummer Andrew Dickeson.

The first half of this one-act show was a selection of classics of Thelonious Monk (1917-82). “Britannica” says Monk’s playing was “percussive and sparse, often being described as angular, and he used complex and dissonant harmonies and unusual intervals and rhythms.”

But Kelly did not try to emulate Monk in his playing. While Monk’s style informed Kelly’s interpretations, these tunes were very much in Kelly’s own stylings, especially in the two solo tunes he played, the second of which he dedicated to another legendary jazz pianist, Chick Corea, who died only a week or so ago at the age of 79.

That Kelly put his own stamp on the Monk tunes was no clearer than in the second half, when the trio performed Kelly originals.

The first, “Wild Gazelle”, he wrote for his wife. But perhaps in defiance to the title, it largely is a thoughtful piece of beauty and grace, with moments of exhilaration interspersed with reflection.

The second was a suite comprising four parts. Kelly penned this deeply personal work during the globally topsy-turvy year of 2020 as his religious faith grew stronger. There are many moods and rhythms throughout the work and all three players put their heart and soul into its performance. There were brilliant solos from all three, and when they all played there was a cohesion and a unity that few could achieve and many would envy.

The Wayne Kelly Trio delivered one of the best and most enjoyable jazz concerts I have experienced. Judging from the capacity audience’s enthusiasm all the way through the performance, I was not alone in that thought.

First published in Canberra City News Digital Edition, February 21, 2021

Hamed delivers spellbinding sounds of mystique

"Afternoon Tea at Six" Album Launch 

Eishan Ensemble 

At The Street Theatre 

February 13, 2021 

Reviewed by Tony Magee

Tar virtuoso Hamed Sadeghi

THE Tar is an Iranian musical instrument, resembling a long-necked lute. Its sound quality is unique, but certainly includes hints of banjo, mandolin and lute.

In the hands of Iranian tar virtuoso Hamed Sadeghi, he and the instrument took centre stage, delivering spellbinding and evocative sounds of mystique, colour, warmth, passion and beauty.

Sadeghi was wonderfully supported by Michael Avgenicos on alto saxophone, Maximillian Alduca on double bass and Adem Yilmaz on percussions. Each of these artists also had numerous opportunities to showcase their own unique and superb talents throughout each of the eight pieces played on the night.

This was world music, where east meets west, including Indian, Middle Eastern and Western classical influences.

One of the hallmarks of the ensemble’s playing is the frequent use of unison between tar and alto sax, sometimes joined by the double bass, where Alduca would double or triple the melody, whilst at the same time, keeping the solid bass foundation driving through.

Eishan Ensemble

Much of this music is meditative in nature, particularly Sadeghi’s solo improvised tar introductions to many of the pieces, before bass and percussion created a huge array of pulses and rhythmic diversity over which the tar and sax could soar.

Whilst the pieces mostly ranged between triple time and quarter time, specific time signatures were cleverly disguised by the myriad of unusual accent points that Sadeghi places in his melodic phrases.

In fact, this music is sometimes “a-rhythmic” in nature, which is another fascination and hallmark of the style of the ensemble.

Opening with an extended and mournful tar solo from Sadeghi, the first piece, “En Route to Balkh”, referencing a town in Afghanistan, slowly introduced gentle percussion effects from Yilmaz, joined by bowed bass of majestic depth and discreet sax splashes, almost a prelude to the beginning of the concert.

“Behind the Window” and “The Street” included excellent bass solos from Alduca, the latter piece beginning with a hard driving bass and percussion foundation, captivating and drawing the listener in.

Other pieces featured on the album included “Black and White”, which opened the second half of the show, also featuring an extended tar solo introduction and “Future #2” which included a stunning percussion solo from Yilmaz, full of musical colourations, and interesting and unusual rhythmic accents.

“The Street” was also requested by several audience members as an encore, and on both occasions everyone, myself included, were caught out with its false ending – applause erupting at what seemed like the finish – only to have the ensemble strike up again for a final musical epilogue.

As an ensemble, Eishan operate almost as one, with superb accuracy in phrasing, cadence points and endings.

Sadeghi spoke only once during the first half and once during the second half, leaving the power of the music to say everything that was necessary.

First published in City News Digital Edition, February 13, 2021