Our reviews give their verdict on the latest Sydney Festival shows.
Our reviews give their verdict on the latest Sydney Festival shows.
By Chantal Nguyen and John Shand
January 19, 2025 — 11.14am
THEATRE
HAMLET CAMP
Carriageworks, January 16
Until January 25
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★½
What to do when “H” is coursing through your veins, and you constantly crave more? Where to go? If the “H” stands for Hamlet rather than heroin, help is at hand. Ex-Hamlets can attend Hamlet Camp, a rehabilitation facility for those poor souls who’ve play-acted the Dane, and since that day have never been quite sane.
Conceived by Brendan Cowell, and written, directed and performed by Cowell, Ewen Leslie and Toby Schmitz, Hamlet Camp is January’s highlight. Played in the round on a bare stage in a smallish space, it spotlights performance rather than director-driven conceptions. Part of the point, in fact, is to poke fun at directors who will not let well enough alone; who forget “the play’s the thing”.
It begins with poems penned and delivered by each actor. Autobiographical, each is bravely candid and brilliantly performed, drawing us in, not to people who played Hamlet, but to people whom Hamlet became. Schmitz’s Skip Retail Therapy looks back at his time selling second-hand books, a world so far from reality that a customer could ask for “the non-fiction fantasy”.
Cowell’s Storage tells of disencumbering his life to move to London and discovering his hired storage unit gave him his greatest sense of home. Leslie’s rhyming Ship to Shore, is about becoming an actor, that fateful calling demanding “the thickest skin with an open heart”. Claudia Haines-Cappeau then performs a little dance as Ophelia, and much later returns as a fourth (“she/her”) Hamlet.
Now in asylum garb, Cowell plays Stephen, Schmitz is Marcus and Leslie is Cameron – the latest to be committed, he maintains he’s still Hamlet, a stage the others have outgrown. But something is rotten in the state of their treatment. To be cruel only to be kind, every time they begin to quote from Hamlet they receive an electric shock to the neck.
“To be” becomes a dangerous way to start a sentence. Despite this ever-present threat, they compare their forays into this pinnacle of psychological and philosophical insight. Poor Cameron was condemned to play all the roles in a cine-theatre production, while Stephen’s director had a bet each way, incorporating both swords and mobile phones.
Along the way a disembodied voice tells them it’s time for such compulsory workshops as “Off-Stage Women” or “Breathing”. Cameron must also be “purged” of believing he’s Hamlet, a semi-surgical operation the others have already survived.
Ultimately, there is no recovery and there’s the rub. You’re hooked for life – except you become too old to play the role, the predicament in which they now find themselves. That may sound glum, but the show’s wildly funny, these three fellows of infinite jest volleying off one another in hugely engaging fashion, and enjoying the therapy of an excuse to revisit the great Dane. Well, almost. Brevity being the soul of wit, it flashes past in 90 minutes. The rest is silence.
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DANCEKATMAThe Neilson Nutshell, January 16Until January 19Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN★★★★
You don’t queue in a subdued ticket line for Katma. You crowd into the Neilson Nutshell’s vestibule, the ushers directing the excited crowd like bouncers. A muffled “doof doof doof” DJ beat (Jack Prest’s music) leaks from behind closed doors.
These swing open and the Nutshell no longer looks like a Shakespearean theatre but a post-industrial warehouse-turned-club. Only a few high stools fringe the room’s edges, so we spread out and stand, some moving to the music as downlights form little wells of brightness. The most tangible thing is that beat. Then the dancing starts.
Katma is the creation of Sudanese dance artist and educator Azzam Mohamed, aka Shazam, and arts company PYT Fairfield where Mohamed is artist-in-residence. He never studied dance formally but trained in the places that form the beating heart of street dance: the underground and community scene.
Bringing that energy, depth and culture to Walsh Bay, the epicentre a mainstream festival, Katma brims over with a raw, euphoric authenticity that is infectious and culturally rich. It immediately pulls the mask off any pretentious modern art you might have recently seen.
Katma is immersive: the audience becomes part of the dance scene as Mohamed and his six dancers move around the room. The audience follow excitedly, whooping and cheering with each new improvisation. It peaks as the dancers lead the now-insatiable audience in a dance-off.
Katma is advertised as a fusion of street and club styles: breaking, hip-hop, krump, waacking, locking, house and Afro dances. On opening night it was dominated by house, emphasising freestyling and vibing, and – as in any improvised work – varying in energy and interest. All the dancers are transcendental, but keep a special eye out for Angelica Osuji and Naethiel Lumbra.
From its Western Sydney base, PYT Fairfield emphasises inclusivity. In this respect, Katma is remarkable. For many in the usual inner-Sydney crowd, there’s little opportunity to experience the richness of the street dance scene unless you happen to know the right dance people or move in certain multicultural communities.
Katma breaks these socioeconomic barriers, exposing greater Sydney’s rich, joyous multicultural fabric. If nothing else, in Raygun’s cringeworthy wake, it’s a reminder of Australia’s authentic street dance scene. To the point where, after the show, a couple of ecstatic audience members panted: “That was amazing – even better than therapy!”
DANCETHE CHRONICLESRoslyn Packer Theatre, January 17Until January 19Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN★★★
Stephanie Lake’s The Chronicles describes itself as “More than just a show…[a] catharsis, a moment of reckoning, and ultimately a reflection on hope.”
After a prologue evoking birth, The Chronicles makes a flying start with a dozen dancers from the Stephanie Lake Company exploding into exhilarating movement. This first section has a thrilling momentum, with the dancers galloping and sliding across the stage’s horizontal planes as if caught up in an irresistible momentum.
It highlights the company’s outstanding talent: the dancers have exceptional physical and theatrical confidence, and an appetite for risk that laces their dancing with raw boldness. They’re clad in green-hued streetwear (Harriet Oxley’s costumes) that gives their athleticism a gritty, grungy edge as they race across the stage, hair and garments flying, to Robin Fox’s electro-acoustic score.
Then comes a sudden tonal shift: a serene children’s choir appears (the excellent Sydney Children’s Choir), bearing lanterns, clad in long white smocks, standing on a set of tall grass on a raised upstage (Charles Davis’s design). They sing the folk song Ah Poor Bird. The mood is now meditative and pseudo-liturgical, but inexplicably so. The shift and disjunct with the production elements create a tonal confusion from which The Chronicles never recovers.
Shifting segments follow. The children engage in mouth percussion. The dancers change into long, flamboyant skirts, exhilaratingly lit by strobe lighting. At one point they scream at the audience. There is a joyous hay bale fight that somehow turns into a more ominous focus on one dancer. In a long final section, bass baritone Oliver Mann sings Forever Young beautifully as white flowers appear on the upstage greenery. The final coda evokes death.
Each section is visually striking, and there are moments of strong choreographic creativity. But without a compelling link between sections, The Chronicles is fragmented and confused about its own message, giving the overwhelming impression of multiple, separate dance pieces bundled as one. Each sudden shift feels almost like a dissociation in identity, requiring an adjustment to engage with the next scene. By the end, the set-and-reset effect makes it a little difficult to be fully engaged.
John Shand has written about music and theatre since 1981 in more than 30 publications, including for Fairfax Media since 1993. He is also a playwright, author, poet, librettist, drummer and winner of the 2017 Walkley Arts Journalism AwardConnect via Twitter.
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