Bob Dylan's Birthday

It ain't he, babe

• Sydney Morning Herald. May 24, 2008
  

A cyberspace homage to Bob Dylan has got everyone drawling, as Benito Di Fonzo found out.

Even Kris Felscher considers Bob Dylan's voice to be an acquired taste.

"I think a dog caught in a barbed wire fence is a good way to put it," he says when reminded of one reviewer's response to hearing Dylan for the first time.

The Florida computer programmer and musician is the driving force behind International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day.

The project began as a website (www.talklikebobdylan.com) which Felscher built last year to celebrate Dylan's 66th birthday. He encouraged fans to record themselves talking and singing like their hero and post the results to the site.

The response was enormous: hundreds of video submissions and more than a million hits.

Today is Dylan's 67th birthday. And with interest in the enigmatic American singer as strong as ever - he recently scored a Pulitzer Prize to accompany his Oscar and multiple Grammys - Felscher is hoping today's International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day will encourage Dylanophiles the world over to find and film their inner-Bob.

"I get a lot of people sitting in front of their webcams playing Dylan songs," says Felscher, 31. "And quite a few saying 'here's a song inspired by Bob Dylan."'

While most of the films are simple productions, a few fans have gone to extraordinary lengths to honour their hero. One hilarious spoof, No Direction, Period, claims that Bob Dylan has written every pop song since 1964 and includes impersonations of Dylan singing such unlikely material as Sir Mix-A-Lot's Baby Got Back.

Felscher and his friends need no excuse to talk like Dylan - they do it all year. But he hopes the event also makes a comment on today's music industry.

"A lot of the music you hear now is just manufactured and fabricated and you don't hear popular music like Dylan writes," he says. "His songs really come from the heart and mean something and really speak to the soul."

So far there's been no word on what the man himself thinks of a day designed to make people adopt his drawl. "I hope he would find it amusing, but certainly if he were to call up and say 'stop it! You're pissing me off', the site would be taken down in a heartbeat," says Felscher.

He believes the secret of Dylan's longevity is the uniqueness of his voice, as well as his lyrical substance.

"Part of the magic and the appeal is that he isn't pretending to be something other than he is. It's not something fabricated for mass appeal. He's presenting himself naked on stage. I think it's a hunger for substance that has brought him back into the limelight."

Yet Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941, is also famous for his many noms de plume. They include Elston Gunn, Blind Boy Grunt, Lucky Boo Wilbury, Elmer Johnson, Sergei Petrov, Jack Frost and Robert Milkwood Thomas.

Is it possible Dylan might post a video to the website under a pseudonym?

"It would be especially awesome to see whether he wins," says Felscher. "Jerry Lewis once came third in a Jerry Lewis lookalike contest, so you never know. He may not sound Bob Dylan enough."

FOR THE FANS

In 1966, when Dylan was asked for his thoughts on Australia, he said: "They don't have a baseball team here." The answer didn't suggest any great familiarity with the country but nor did it diminish his popularity.

More than 40 years later, Australians can celebrate Dylan's 67th birthday today by tuning in to 2SER-FM, 107.3, for its five-hour Bob Dylan Birthday Marathon from 8pm to 2am. Now in its 24th year, it is produced by Bill Kitson and Bruce Williams, who say Dylan was not at the peak of his popularity when the show first went to air in the 1980s.

"The Empire Burlesque album had disappointed many fans with its messy production," says Kitson. "Many were still getting over his 1979-1981 religious conversion."

However, the marathon created immediate interest and inspired the formation of the Sydney Dylan Society (www.sydneydylan.org.au).

"There were many people out there like myself and Bruce … who thought they were alone in their inordinate interest in the man and the music," says Kitson. "The show brought us together and soon we were having monthly meetings."

The society watched keenly as Dylan's fortunes improved with the release of critically lauded albums such as Oh Mercy (1989) and Time Out Of Mind (1997), which won three Grammys, including album of the year. His most recent LP, Modern Times (2006), went to No.1 in the US which, says Kitson, "in 1985 you would not have believed".

The Sydney Dylan Society also organises Dylan Conventions that occasionally coincide with his tours. Amanda Rose, 31, an Egyptology student, went to her first convention in 1998. She obliterates the stereotype of Bobfans as grizzled-hippies who trade bootleg recordings in beer gardens and says the society gives her a place to discuss the twists of Dylan's ever-evolving life-narrative with like minds. "From the '60s right through to now he has so many different threads," she says, "and they're all quite different."

Those not wishing to stay glued to the radio can attend tonight's Tangled Up In Dylan tribute show at Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL (tickets $25, bookings 9559 0000). It features Karl Brodie, Steve Balbi and Brett Hunt, and will be repeated next FRIDAY at The Basement (tickets $32/$25, bookings 9251 2797).

Says Hunt, "when you get inside a Dylan tune and really learn it you get centuries of songwriting. It's all in there - blues, folk, early rock; he had it all down."

in coversation with jay ryan & jeremy lindsay taylor of The Packer.

(unedited version of preview published in The Sydney Morning Herald.)

“The Packer”

By Dianna Fuemana,

Directed by Jeremy Lindsay Taylor,

Performed by Jay Ryan.

Old Fitzroy Theatre,

20 April to 10 May.

$16 - $34 (for beer laksa show deal)

Bookings 1300 GET TIX

“One-Hander Job” by Benito Di Fonzo.

“That is definitely one to come and see,” says New Zealand born actor Jay Ryan, best known for his roles in Neighbours and Sea Patrol, of the multi-character sex scene he performs solo in Dianna Fuemana’s The Packer.

Ryan, who plays all eight characters in The Packer, has just come from rehearsing said scene in which an older Islander man engages in congress with a ‘gin-addled’ expatriate-Aussie named Joyce.

“It’s something that we’re working on at the moment,” says Ryan, “different positions.”

“He’s coming up with some crazy ideas,” says director Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, “I don’t know from where.”

The Packer tells the story of Joyce’s son Shane, a ‘white-trash Westie’ from the streets of West Auckland attempting to make it as a hip hop artist and escape a life packing boxes in a factory. By spending 24 hours in West Auckland through the eyes of this working-class hero audiences gain insight into the lives of those around him.

“He’s getting to that age where he wants to step up and live his life but he feels a responsibility to care for his mother,” says Taylor of the protagonist. “You get to learn a lot about all eight characters, they’re all multi-layered individuals.”

Ryan, who like the playwright is an Auckland ‘Westie’, has received glowing reviews for what one Edinburgh Festival critic called a ‘virtuoso performance’ of all eight characters, four of which are female.

“Well, three females and a trannie,” Ryan corrects me.

“That’s the challenge,” says Taylor, “to make them individual ladies. You’ve got to have the audience believing that it’s not a characterisation, they’re not stereotypes, they’re real, and they’re all different. It’s a tour de force for an actor. There’s not many actors I know who could even attempt this.”

While the original production was directed by the author, Ryan asked his Sea Patrol co-star Taylor to direct this Sydney debut, a mission that entailed a road-trip around New Zealand to see where the characters originated.

“A lot of them are based on Dianna and my friends,” says Ryan, “so I took [Taylor] to meet these people - my mother, a couple of my mates who still live in West Auckland and don’t really do much with their lives, but they’re still good mates.”

They devoted each day on the road to a character from the play, finding relevant characteristics in the locals, such as when Ryan found the template for his transsexual.

“I’d had a big night and I was just driving home, legally of course. On Edinburgh Street, which is the street where all the trannies hang out, just as the sun was coming up [there] was this huge black woman standing there right by the Edinburgh Street sign. As I went past she waved at me and winked and I went that’s her, so I’ve got her image in my head and that’s who I bring on stage.”

Taylor, who grew up in Campbelltown, saw much similarity between Sydney and Auckland’s ‘Westies’.

“The people were very similar, doing it tough,” says Taylor. “There was no difference but the accent really.”

“And a few more Islanders,” adds Ryan, who originally helped Niuen/Samoan/New Zealand playwright-performer Fuemana conceive the play as they waited backstage during a production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

“[Fuemana] was playing the prostitute and I was playing the young collector that Blanche seduces so we were on stage for like 10 minutes out of a three hour play so the rest of the time we sat backstage and ranted about family life. She had written a one-woman show which she’d won awards for and was really successful and I think she thought I’m going to give it another go but write from a different perspective. She wanted to have it from a white person’s point of view but still have the Islander culture-clashes and me being a white boy and giving some stories over gave her that freedom.”

After his experience in Melbourne and Edinburgh, where the author declined an offer by British filmmakers to buy the script and change the nationality of the characters, Ryan feels vindicated in the universality of the tale.

“It’s a love story and love stories work anywhere don’t they?”

In coversation with Brendan Cowell & Toby Schmitz

Ruben Guthrie

Benito Di Fonzo, Metro, Sydney Morning Herald.
April 3, 2008

It's not easy working in an industry that encourages the odd night on the turps.

Just water thanks ... Toby Schmitz, left, and Brendan Cowell.
Photo: Marco Del Grande

Preview

"Yeah, the nights are hard," admits playwright and actor Brendan Cowell of his latest stint of sobriety, "but the days are unbelievable - the day's a whole new world."

Cowell's experiences during his first period as a teetotaller in 2005, the year he also won a commission from the Philip Parsons Young Playwright's Award, inspired his new play, Ruben Guthrie, the first production in B Sharp's 2008 season at Downstairs Belvoir.

"I got this incredibly raw, vivid perspective on myself and the universe," says Cowell of the time, "and a lot of my relationships changed completely. Some of them fell away, new ones started, everything looked different, myself included. Then I started to notice how society was completely geared towards drinking. Everything I went to, everywhere I went, everyone I met with, said, 'Have a drink, let's sit down and have a drink, we'll have a drink,' and I was like, 'My God, this is out of control.' "

Cowell's epiphany clashed with his love of pub culture, which still tempts him: "When the sun's just calming down a little bit, and you've worked really hard all day, and you want to take that f---ing edge off."

Ruben Guthrie tells the story of an enfant terrible of advertising who, after an industry-awards night, jumps off a rooftop into a kiddie pool, which leads him to consider temperance. All the inherent changes and challenges it brings into his life come into focus when his old drinking buddy hits town after being fired from his job in New York.

"I don't think what happened to me was as interesting as what happens in the play," Cowell says. "They were just little things I realised that I've dramatised for effect."

The problem for Guthrie (and Cowell alike), is that he works in an industry that encourages the odd night on the turps, as Toby Schmitz, who plays Guthrie, explains.

"Our industry has no office," Schmitz says. "It has no meeting place other than the foyer and the bar, which is hard for the ginger ale drinker. I've been cast in plays, sealed deals, over a glass."

Cowell: "I went to an opening night last week and there's thousands of glasses of wine. You've got to pay $4.50 to get a soft drink but you can drink a shit-tin of champagne, white wine, red wine or beer and not pay anything. I had two lemon, lime and bitters: I had to go to the bar [alone], so you're actually isolated."

It's this social isolation that Cowell and Schmitz, along with director Wayne Blair and designer Jacob Nash, will recreate in the intimate space of Downstairs Belvoir. Cowell hopes the audience's guffaws will have an uncomfortable edge as they see themselves reflected in the black comedy.

"For me, as a writer, that's heaven," Cowell says. "You've kicked your goal in the grand final as a playwright when you hear people swallowing their laughter or laughing out of an obscene discomfort."

Schmitz: "Ruben is what you could classify as a good drunk but the cracks are appearing from the beginning of the play. I think one of the great reveals of the play is how deep the cracks are."

Cowell: "That's exactly it. Because when I quit drinking everybody said, 'But you didn't have a problem? You never beat anyone up, you were a fun guy!' "

Schmitz: "You were still coming up with screenplays at 4am."

Cowell: "It's scary that you can lead two lives, because now [training for his role as Bell Shakespeare's Hamlet] my life is completely different. I'm up at seven, I'm at the gym. I'm reading more novels. I'm a nice guy. You end up doing weird things, like packing your bag the night before. And you call your grandmother, like you're really thoughtful. And then if I go back [to drinking], your life really switches - and who is the right person to be?"

Schmitz: "There's a problem with all artists, who are expected to retain their inner child. I think an inner child is a fantastic thing to have as an artist, even as a lover, person and conversationalist, but should inner children be allowed in the pub after 11pm? Or to have meaningful relationships or drive cars? I don't know. It's a good question."

Genre

Theatre

Location

Belvoir St Downstairs

Address

25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills

Date

17 April 2008 to 11 May 2008

Tickets

$20-$29

Phone Bookings

(02) 9699 3444

Online Bookings

www.belvoir.com.au

La La Land

Benito Di Fonzo
Sydney Morning Herald. March 28, 2008

These black-comic tales of expatriates in Hollywood should be required viewing for NIDA students.

Photo: Natalie Boog

Preview

"Rolf de Heer told me a funny story," says Christopher Johnson, relating one of the many Hollywood anecdotes that inspired his play La La Land. "[De Heer] was given 'The List'. Studios have a list of actors they're willing to give you money for, and Richard Dreyfuss is like No.267 on the list out of 500, but he's on The List. After 266 people - starting with Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington - say 'no', then Richard Dreyfuss says 'yes'. Then [the studio will make the film] but for $4 million as opposed to $80 million because as it goes down the list the budget gets smaller."

Johnson is a Sydney playwright who has dual US-Australian citizenship and lived and worked in Hollywood for eight years. After the success of previous stage comedies such as The Young Tycoons and his 2001 hit, Dog Logs, which toured Australia, Johnson has pulled together the best of his black-comic tales of expatriate minnows in the sharkpit of Hollywood for La La Land.

La La Land tells the story of Aussie filmmaker Terry Swanton, played by Sean Lynch, and his best friend Jason Pegler, played by Sam Smith, who find themselves in Hollywood after the success of their independent Aussie film Bushdance, about a gay Aboriginal man coming out in his community.

"I'm thinking I might change it to Coming Out-Back," Johnson says. "Nobody goes to see it, nobody wants to see it, but it wins the AFI for best picture. He's cast his mate as 'the cop' in the community and he wins best supporting actor at the AFIs."

Bushdance brings Swanton to the attention of Oscar-winning producer Jimmy Fleishberg (Ian Watkin), who is a fictional blend of several real-life characters including the Miramax founder Harvey Weinstein and the late American film producer Don Simpson.

"Don Simpson was Jerry Bruckheimer's partner who produced Top Gun, Days Of Thunder and Flashdance," Johnson says. "His entire Hollywood career, he just snorted the coke, screwed the ladies and drank too much, so he set the template for the out-of-control Hollywood producer and it killed him. Harvey Weinstein is probably a little more temperate."

When the Hollywood money lenders enter the temple of Swanton's latest project, he discovers where he really sits in the pecking order. Soon his best mate has been pushed aside for the biggest star in Hollywood. Then it seems Swanton himself may be the next minnow to be spat out of the dream cannery, a reality that many Aussie filmmakers have discovered, Lynch says.

"I remember [Phillip Noyce] talking about when he was doing Clear And Present Danger and Harrison Ford didn't like where the script was going and [Noyce] stood up and went, 'Bugger that, the script was great. Why are we changing it?' And the producer pulled him aside and went, 'We're definitely going to make Clear And Present Danger with Harrison Ford; we don't have to make it with Phillip Noyce.' "

"That's a classic Hollywood line," Johnson says. "So many Australian directors have this story."

Torn between loyalty to his mate and getting his script produced, Swanton begins to question his own dreams, wondering if he really wants to work in a town where arrogance is a badge of success.

"[Fleishberg] talks about how he loves being arrogant," Lynch says. "He says when he met Buzz Aldrin he was a friggin' arrogant man, 'But I out-arroganted him! He's been on the moon but I've won four Oscars!' "

Johnson feels that perhaps some Australians rush to Hollywood a little prematurely.

"People are going quicker than ever, that's for sure," he says. "It's no longer 'you've got your third lead in an Aussie feature film, go to LA', it's 'you've got your fifth-credited role in an Aussie film, go to LA and give it a shot'. Some make it, some stick around for quite a while and some find it brutal and come back quite quickly."

Perhaps La La Land should be required viewing for NIDA students?

"You've only graduated once you've seen this play," Lynch says.

Genre

Theatre

Location

Darlinghurst Theatre

Address

19 Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point

Date

30 April 2008 to 24 May 2008

Tickets

$25-$30

Phone Bookings

(02) 8356 9987

Online Bookings

www.darlinghursttheatre.com

I've had worse reviews...

“The Chronic Ills of Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan (A Lie)”

As part of ‘Short & Sweet Short Play Festival 2008,’ Seymour Centre, Sydney.

By Joanna Erskine, www.AussieTheatre.com

As soon as this play commenced, I was wondering why we were watching the stage version of the recent Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. Onstage are three ‘Dylans’ each telling their story through song or nostalgia, but the piece soon takes its own track. Benito Di Fonzo’s script almost parodies itself and its subject matter, poking fun, concocting outrageous stories focused on the eccentric muso. Lucinda Gleeson’s production moves at a cracking pace, aided greatly by the guitar soundtrack played live onstage. It’s not mind-blowing theatre, but I found it immensely more enjoyable than the film ‘equivalent.’

"Burt Bacharach on Amyl Nitrate" (Benito in coversation with The Wet Spots)

(Unedited version. For Sydney Morning Herald edit click on the title above)

“Songs For Singing Swingers” by Benito Di Fonzo.

“A big problem I run into is dry rot,” says John Woods, one-half of the singing, swinging comedy duo The Wets Spots. He’s giving me tips on how to op-shop for smoking jackets. “Avoid polyester at all costs,” he adds.

The ‘sophisticated sex comedy’ of the Canadian duo first came to the attention of many through their viral video ‘Fist Me This Christmas’ which became a seasonal hit.

“It’s been a great calling card for us,” admits Cass King, the other half of the husband and wife duo on the phone between sets in Sweden. “That’s how we got gigs in South Africa and the UK, people started coming to us. The first video we did, ‘Do You Take It In The Ass,’ was downloaded almost 3,000,000 times. The Christmas one has been popular but it’s more of a specific audience the fisting audience.”

The Wet Spots combine the sweet sounds of 1930s cabaret, swinging 60s, and Cole Porter style tunes with comic-erotic tales of their bi-sexually polyamorous relationship. Like Burt Bacharach on amyl nitrate perhaps?

“That’s an excellent description,” says King.

Woods prefers, “Monty Python by way of the music Hugh Hefner would be listening to in his space-age pad in the 60s.”

Says King, “We like to juxtapose beautiful music with very direct language about sex. In our universe there’s no taboos so it’s perfectly normal for a husband and wife lounge act to come out and be singing about bottoming, fisting and oral sex.”

While in Sydney they’ll be playing The Studio at Sydney Opera House as part of Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras. However their unique blend of the sacred and profane has seen them play everything from fetish venues where patrons can have sex on premises to a Unitarian church in Santa Barbara explains Woods as he no doubt pulls up his sock-garters and tops up his pipe and brandy snifter.

“All the local bars in town turned us down for being too smutty so the promoter wrote an irate letter to the editor of the local paper, [then] the local Unitarian church wrote saying you can use our church hall. There was some kafuffle in the church about whether we were appropriate so they had watchdogs sitting in the audience ready to shut it down if need be. One of them came up to me after the show and said ‘I didn’t really know what to expect but I think what you are doing is actually a ministry.’”

King certainly seems qualified to minister on kinkiness, having worked as a sex columnist and at Womyns’Ware (sic), an award winning sex-toy shop in their native Vancouver. “They’re like a really high-end hardware store,” she says, “they find the best tools for the job.”

Woods stresses that The Wet Spots are entertainers first and foremost, “because if something hopes to educate first and entertain second it’s probably not going to be very good at either.”

Nonetheless King admits their shows have helped many couples. “It happens all the time, people come to us after shows and say ‘Gee I’ve always wanted to try spanking and I was afraid to ask my girlfriend and after the show we were talking about the spanking song and then she said that she’d always wanted to try being spanked and now we spank each other all the time!’”

So perhaps if people have a closeted kink they can come to the show and chances are The Wet Spots will address it in song. Then on the drive back to Gosford you can tell your partner that you’ve been wearing their old school uniform while they were out taking the kids to soccer training and were wondering if they’d dress like Pope Benedict when they get home?

“Well,” says King, “we like to say that the people in the suburbs laugh because they think we’re kidding and the people in the city laugh because they know we’re not.”

The Wet Spots also address what they see as important social issues, particularly in America, says King.

“Selling a dildo is actually illegal in many of the states so we thought that was ripe [for satire.] One of our stories is about a woman who was doing home sex-toy parties. She got caught with more than six vibrators in her trunk and they charged her with possession with conspiracy to distribute.”

Do they worry about getting in trouble with the law themselves, perhaps for inciting the use of a proscribed marital device?

“I think it falls under freedom of speech,” says King. “I’m not sure if Canadians have the right to freedom of speech in America. I hope so.”

While most bands have a motto of ‘what goes on tour stay on tour,’ surely The Wet Spots polyamorous inclinations would make them happy to swap singing, swinging partners on the road?

“Well they don’t have to be talented darling,” says King.

“Oh boy,” says Woods worriedly. “You know it’s always so hard to say how that might play out. [However] we have met some really wonderful people on tour that way. The funny thing is that in some other areas of our lives such as going out and partying till dawn we’re actually a little bit conservative.”

Then Woods’ voice perks up as he adds, “but you know what? Come talk to us after the show, we’ll be out in the lobby selling our CDs just like every other performer.”

#

(908 words)

Benito Di Fonzo

“The Wettest Of The Wet Spots”

Starring The Wet Spots (Cass King & John Woods)

Wednesday 27 to Friday 29 February at 9:30pm.

The Studio, Sydney Opera House.

(A New Mardi Gras Festival Event)

Bookings (02) 9250 7777

$30/$25.

Benito's review of "Juno"

As I watched director Jason Reitman’s most recent film Juno this past Valentine’s Day with my girlfriend it seemed appropriate that just that week we had been fighting over changes to my studio/loungeroom that would or would not be made when she moved in.

As one grows older one makes sacrifices, of space, time, and general convenience. The young protagonist of Juno deals with such issues with a level of humour and wit rarely seen in American cinema.

Essentially Juno tells the story of a teenage girl who falls pregnant, and the people, from the unwitting father, to her own parents, and the future adoptive parents of her unborn child, that she encounters as she deals with this coming-of-age event.

At the heart of Juno is Diablo Cody’s sensitive and brilliantly crafted script that gives a rare insight into the lives of real, intelligent human beings. In fact these people seem more ‘real’ than the production line of aspiring celebrities one encounters on so-called ‘reality TV.’ Those people are monkeys performing to a production company’s suggestions and the perceived desires of their fellow viewers. Juno’s world is populated with real people with their guard down. People doing stupid things, like we all do, and then dealing with it without losing their sense of humour, an example that undoubtedly more of us should follow.

The dialogue is sharper than Oscar Wilde on free wiz. The characters are likeable in their pure human fallibility, and with fascinating and surprising story arcs. The acting from the likes of J.K Simmons as Juno’s father and The West Wing’s Allison Janney as her stepmother is beautifully natural. There is also the return of Jason Bateman as a thirty-something failed rock muso who many will empathise with just as others see him as a shallow cad. Michael Cera is also impressive as dorky but lovable father of the little bastard-to-be. The most impressive performance of all, and the one that I predict will make this film last the test of time, is that of Ellen Page as the smart and spunky Juno MacGuff herself (the name comes from Roman mythology apparently.)

I met Jason Reitman, son of Ghostbusters and Animal House director Ivan, last year when he was in Australia promoting Thank You For Smoking. He was a surprisingly down-to-earth, jokey guy, and his darkly goofy sense of humour shines through Juno as it did through Thank You For Smoking. It is this that stops Juno becoming a ‘worthy’ and dull soapy-style cautionary tale, but rather an optimistic coming-of-age story with a healthy sense of irony.

Interestingly the film is produced by John Malkovich who obviously has a keen eye for a good script. Juno is undoubtedly one of the finest blends of drama and comedy to come out of Hollywood in a long time. If only I could deal with my human relationships with the wit, wisdom, ease, and humour that these characters do then my life, and my loungeroom, would be a very different place.

Ratty, Mole, & Other Mafiosi (the link between The Wind In The Willows & La Cosa Nostra)

Metro, Sydney Morning Herald, December 28, 2007

BENITO DI FONZO finds Mafia references in The Wind In The Willows.

Front at left, Callie Gray as Mole with Joe Sullivan as Ratty. At back is left, Warwick Allsopp as Weasel and Tamlyn Henderson as Toad.
Photo: Marco Del Grande

Preview

"It feels like one big picture book," says Callie Gray of the production of The Wind In The Willows, staged annually in the Royal Botanic Gardens. "We're really at one with nature."

Gray again will embody Mole, whose journey above ground into the world of the riverbank, chaperoned by nautical companion Ratty (played by Joe Sullivan), is at the heart of Kenneth Grahame's classic children's tale.

In the 100 years since its original publication, Grahame's novel has been adapted many times for stage and screen. It has introduced whole generations to the pastoral wonders of boating by the riverbank, where Ratty, Mole and other creatures such as the stern Badger (Colin Donnelly) and the mischievous Toad (Tamlyn Henderson) live.

This Australian adaptation by Glenn Elston introduces audiences to the magic of theatre as well as the gardens.

"I think kids naturally have a love of theatre, of dressing up, make-up and play-acting," Gray says. "It's wonderful that we can have it in such a wonderful position on Sydney Harbour and you can bring your mother, grandmother, sons, daughters - it's for everyone. For an actor it's absolute bliss: outdoors, a receptive audience, great material."

The performers mostly stick to the original story but the production allows for some improvisation, particularly when the children who are turned into rabbits become part of the show.

Later, parents allowing, these children are formed into teams and taken into the "Wild Wood". Ratty's team is termed the Rat Pack. It reminds me that, while many over the years have seen the story as analogous to the British class system, with the upper-class twit Toad, middle-class river bankers, the proletariat of rabbits and underclass of weasels and stoats, no one seems to have noticed the obvious references to Mafia mythology, namely the "rats" and "moles" "badgered" by an ancient and powerful patriarch.

I put this to Ratty and Mole.

Gray: "Badger could be the Godfather, couldn't he?"

Sullivan: "He'd kneecap you with his walking stick."

Gray: "I'm loving that. Maybe we should go with that?"

Sullivan: "Who would Toad be, the bumbling fool?"

I suggest the clumsy Fredo Corleone and decide to quit while I'm behind.

Toad Hall, positioned in a natural amphitheatre near Mrs Macquaries Chair, is the scene for a climactic imbroglio in Grahame's novel, where Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad wield clubs and rifles against weasel and stoat squatters. However, this scene has been softened for the gardens.

"We use water bombs," Gray says. "We try to make it a bit of fun - Weasel [Warwick Allsopp] is scary enough."

Much of the story revolves around the foolish Toad, including his jailing for grand theft auto and escape as a washerwoman in a moment of classic pantomime drag. However, Gray feels Mole's discovery of a world beyond her tiny underground home and the unique personalities that populate it resounds most with audiences.

"There's an innocence that the kids really relate to," she says. "I almost represent them up there with these animals. They learn to be themselves - not to apologise for who you are - and enjoy that. Kids are the best to perform to: they're amazing, so generous and, if they don't like it, they'll tell you."

A few brats among the bunnies, then?

Sullivan: "Which Badger keeps in line. They'll yell out and throw things."

Gray: "Tug costumes."

Sullivan: "Pull your tail."

Gray: "Say, 'You're not really a badger.'"

Nonetheless, Gray admits Mole is her childhood dream role.

"I put the make-up on when I go out on Friday nights," she quips.

I thought I recognised her from that weird club near The Sopranos' Bada Bing.

"Yeah, it's called The Burrow."

Genre

Theatre

Location

Royal Botanic Gardens

Address

Mrs Macquaries Rd, Sydney

Date

5 January 2008 to 26 January 2008

Tickets

$25 ($85 family of four)

Phone Bookings

1300 122 344

Online Bookings

www.shakespeareaustralia.com.au

Details

Tues - Sat, 11am & 6pm.

Myfanwy 'Myf' Warhurst & Alan Brough In Conversation with Benito

Spicks And Spec-tacular

Benito Di Fonzo, Metro, Sydney Morning Herald
December 14, 2007

The road-show version of ABC TV's hit rock quiz show, now with live audience participation.

Season's greetings ... (from left) Myf Warhurst, Adam Hills and Alan Brough.

Genre

Comedy, Theatre

Location

Enmore Theatre

Address

130 Enmore Rd, Newtown

Date

9 January 2008 to 12 January 2008

Tickets

$33.90-$46.90

Phone Bookings

02 9550 3666

Online Bookings

www.enmoretheatre.com.au

Preview

"We've got very special ways of picking out the music nerds in the audience." So says Myfanwy "Myf" Warhurst of the road-show version of ABC TV's hit rock quiz show Spicks And Specks, now with live audience participation.

"There'll be Adam [Hills], Myf and myself onstage and a band," says opposing team leader Alan Brough. "What we'll do is pick 10 contestants from the audience and they're going to play the games [from the TV show] and we're going to whittle it down to an eventual winner."

The house band will feature Warhurst's brother Kit from Rocket Science, as well as Jet keyboardist Stevie Hesketh and, from the Vandas, Gus Agars on drums.

The idea of taking the TV show on tour came from the frustrations of ABC studio audiences.

"The audience is always so much fun," Warhurst says. "They love having a yell at us and they always get told to shush on the TV show so I'm hoping there'll be a lot of yelling and a lot of chaos."

"On television everything's pretty much prescribed," Brough says. "It can be edited and any screw-ups taken out. The great thing about a live show is that who knows what the hell's going to happen, particularly when you're interacting with the audience."

Aside from choosing players on the basis of questions from the stage, Brough will be scouting the audience for what he calls "super nerds".

What's the best way to spot them? Vulcan handshake? Deep Purple T-shirt?

"I think that they're fairly obvious," Brough says. "We'll have a set of questions which are quite specific because every night we'll want to find different sorts of people. One night we might want a classical-music nerd or a show-tunes nerd."

Or someone attractive to share the stage with? "That should never be discounted as a criteria for selection," Brough says. "We're going to go from the actually practical, asking them whether they know about music, to the completely facile, [such as] 'That's a nice blouse you've got on' or 'I like that T-shirt'. So everyone will get a chance of being involved."

Doesn't inviting the audience onstage risk them being upstaged?

"I have no doubt that every night we will be upstaged," Brough says enthusiastically, "but it will be fun. I think as soon as you start worrying about people being better or funnier than you, you should give up."

Once the 10 audience players are chosen they'll be run through the paces of familiar segments such as "Know Your Product", "Malvern Stars On 45" and "Substitute", which in the live show will be a medley sung by Hills, Warhurst and Brough.

"We'll just slowly lose people until we have one eventual winner," Brough says. "And in keeping with the ethos of the ABC they will win nothing!"

Except kudos? "That's exactly right."

Brough first exercised his music-nerd muscles working behind the counter of a record store in his native New Zealand, which he left after gaining fame as the personification of margarine, a husky transvestite, in a butter commercial.

"I'll be perfectly honest with you," Brough says. "I think the people who came up with [the campaign] were on drugs."

In Australia, his stand-up success garnered him spots such as his 1998 rendition of I'm In Love With The Chemist Shop Girl on ABC TV's Recovery to a bemused group of youngsters, before Spicks and Specks brought him wider fame.

"That was a spectacular disaster," Brough says of the Recovery spot. "I remember looking up and all these kids were staring at me, going, 'You're not You Am I!' "

Warhurst, meanwhile, was rising up the grimy pole of youth radio, moving from Melbourne's 3RRR to Triple J. Next year on Melbourne's Triple M she'll co-host breakfast with Rove's Peter Helliar.

Warhurst also received the 2007 Fugly Award, which runs in tandem with the Logies, for Most Spankable TV Personality.

"It's a bit of a worry," Warhurst says. "I wasn't sure if that meant someone that you wanted to slap."

Warhurst, who studied music at university, will give a rare display of her musical skills.

"I have put my hand up to be playing some sort of '80s balladry piano. That will be deeply frightening for everybody involved. You get to see little sides of us that you wouldn't see on the show."

Will Brough and Warhurst finally get to live out their frustrated rock-star dreams on the road?

"We hope so," Warhurst says. "I've already got plans to trash a hotel room somewhere along the line just so I can have that little fantasy, but I'm sure I will be very polite."

Brough doubts they'll live up to the dream.

"I'd be tempted to but all my friends would laugh at me, which is a fairly potent weapon. We were asked for our backstage requests recently and all I could think of was fresh fruit and a nice bottle of red wine. I think that doesn't make me rock."

Warhurst, who famously forgot the title of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit in the second episode of Spicks And Specks due to nerves, admits she is a little frightened of her first live theatre show.

"There could be some Britney Spears moments for me," she says. "[But] we can all be humiliated together."

Surely mass humiliation is the modus operandi of the show?

"That's right," Warhurst says. "And all having a good time doing it."

Book Reviews on 2ser

Today on 2ser 107.3 fm, at roughly 5pm, Benito will be discussing the slightly over-hyped meta-textual tome The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall (see www.rawsharktexts.com )


and the brilliant and serious academic study entertainingly translated for the layman Eccentrics by David Weeks & Jamie James (see http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/1873173/used/Eccentrics%20:%20a%20study%20of%20sanity%20and%20strangeness)

Vital Organs

Here is an unedited version of the article. For the Sydney Morning Herald click on this post's title. (photo: Simon Elekna)

“Insalata & Accessible Absurdism”

by Benito Di Fonzo.

“It was salad days back then,” says Patrick Brammall of the time last year when he and co-writer/performer John Leary won The Philip Parsons Young Playwright’s Award, had their first play staged, and were commissioned to write a B Sharp production.

“It was all high-fives and check-us-out and how we can get a commission, and then there was the reality of doing it...”

“Holy Moses,” remembers Leary, “we have to write a show!”

Brammall and Leary have a healthy rapport, as evidenced by the number of times they finish each other’s sentences or digress into topics ranging from Gunter Von Hagen’s plastinated corpses, Tony Abbott, or the deficiencies of Facebook’s ‘Scrabulous’ versus genuine Scrabble. No wonder their company is called Easily Distracted.

Their first play The Suitors was written whilst sharing a house in Camperdown, taking turns typing whilst bouncing ideas around the walls. However that was suddenly impossible with Brammall moving interstate to film the upcoming Channel 9 series Canal Road, then travelling overseas with his girlfriend on the proceeds. They turned then to the already mentioned popular website, making Vital Organs possibly the first play written on Facebook.

Vital Organs begins with the two actors performing a light-hearted show about the history of medicine called Vital Organs. Things veer towards weirdness when Brammall’s character decides their long-running show must delve deeper into the meaning of pain and the human body. He decides he can do this by removing his own organs in front of an audience.

“We actually tried to write a serious play,” says Brammall. “That’s where the idea of the man removing his organs came from, the idea of a man on an existential quest. He feels pain and doesn’t know how to deal with it so he tries to locate it within his own body and he finds it, he thinks it’s in his stomach, so he tries to open up and physically remove it, and that was quite serious, but the difficulty with us writing together is that we tend to live in the ‘joy zone.’ We’re not very comfortable staying in the...”

“In the dark,” interrupts Leary.

Living in separate cities and writing via the web presented it’s own problems, such as how to distinguish each other’s changes to the script.

“When either of us had an addition or an amendment we’d change the colour of the font,” says Leary.

“So it was a rainbow script,” adds Brammall. “We’re like Brad and Angelina in a way.”

“How?” asks Leary.

“Well,” explains Brammall, “our words are our children, and they’re a rainbow.”

“So what are we: John-Trick?”

“No, I’m Brad, you’re Angelina.”

“Yeah; Brangelina; Johntrick.”

“Pat-John? Patathon? No, you’re not Jonathon are you?”

“Just John.”

“Johntrick, that’s a shit name.”

I suggest we leave that one to the editors at Who Weekly to work out and ask how the long-distance writing relationship affected the final draft.

“I certainly didn’t expect to come up with something so absurd,” says Brammall. “Not just silly either, it actually travels and constantly deviates in ways I didn’t expect. It’s completely off the beam, but not obscure...”

“I think it’s accessible Absurdism,” says Leary.

“There you go,” laughs Brammall, “corporate Absurdism.”

“No,” corrects Leary, “rather than Absurdism that leaves you completely baffled, I think...”

“It still has a logic integrity to it that you can follow,” adds Brammall, “so you understand how they got to where they are but it’s ridiculous where they get to - a man trying to take out his organs and another man...”

“Doing everything that he can to stop it,” finishes Leary.

While there are no Dr. Von Hagen-style organs exposed there are a few faux bodily fluids passed through the show.

“[Designer] Bobby Cousins has to come up with stage wee and stage poo,” says Leary.

“And it’s got to be the right kind of warm so that if someone touches it they’ll think it’s wee,” adds Brammall.

It won’t put people off their dinner?

“You’ll be able to eat before the show,” says Brammall helpfully.

Perhaps something to remind you of your salad days?

“A salad yeah, some sort of insalata would be good, then your main meal, then come see the show and get some desert afterwards.”

#

“Vital Organs”

By Patrick Brammall and John Leary.

Directed by Matt Whittet.

November 29 – December 22.

Belvoir St. Downstairs Theatre.

$29/$23 (Preview November 28 $20, Tuesday Pay-What-You-Can min $10)

Bookings 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au

"Keeping Your Kitsch In Sink"

The Needle And The Damage Done

Benito Di Fonzo
Metro, Sydney Morning Herald, November 30, 2007

Fiona Scott-Norman uses her collection of vinyl atrocities to educate as well as entertain.

Fiona Scott-Norman puts a comic spin on her collection of trash vinyl.

Genre

Comedy

Location

The Studio

Address

Sydney Opera House, Sydney

Date

5 December 2007 to 8 December 2007

Tickets

$28/$20 plus booking fee.

Phone Bookings

(02) 9250 7777

Online Bookings

www.sydneyoperahouse.com

Preview

"It really is is shockingly bad," says Fiona Scott-Norman of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival hit she is bringing to the Opera House. "The whole show is full of shockingly bad stuff."

At first appearance it seems a strange way to entice audiences but, in the case of The Needle And The Damage Done, bad is kitsch, and kitsch is good.

Over 75 minutes, Scott-Norman counts down a top 10, or should that be bottom 10, of the worst albums of all time. She trawls through the collection of just-plain-wrong vinyl she has amassed over the years, starting as a teenager in England when she shoplifted a Rolf Harris LP. It was strange preparation for her move to Australia at 18 but great grounding for her Melbourne radio program Trash Is My Life.

"This is the thing," Scott-Norman says. "I'm a good DJ, but I also have a large trash collection. It's like the evil side of me, the dark side. At some level I'm programmed for kitsch."

As comically kitsch as much of Scott-Norman's albums are - be they John Laws's spoken word LP In Love Is An Expensive Place To Die, or her most recent acquisition, a collaboration between the London Philharmonic Orchestra and romance novelist Barbara Cartland - there is certainly a dark side to this malodorous menagerie, as seen in categories including Swinging Sexism and I'm Not Racist But, in which even old Rolf takes a fall.

"I concentrate on the '60s and '70s because there's a big gap between what was acceptable then and what is now," Scott-Norman says. "I play a bit from Rolf Harris' Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport [which goes] 'Let me Abos go loose, Lew, let me Abos go loose, they're of no further use Lew, so let me Abos go loose.' By our standards that's appalling [but] he wrote that in 1957 and at that point Aborigines not only didn't have the vote but their deaths on outback stations were recorded in the livestock records."

Scott-Norman uses these vinyl atrocities to educate as well as entertain.

"It's cultural archaeology," she says. "It's drawing attention to things and reminding people how far we've come. It's celebratory, my show."

She has also found a rich vein in the vintage work of various Christian singers.

"A lot of it's simple in that what's funny is that it's so daggy or structured because, man, they go for a lot of hairspray those Christians. But what I find interesting about Christian music is the hypocrisy. They pose as being about love and Jesus and Christian values but so much of it is propaganda and it's manipulative."

There is a jaunty Christian sing-a-long (or should that be sin-a-long?) to a song called Oh Buddha.

"It's a categorical slagging off of all other religions," Scott-Norman says. "It's passive-aggressive."

Has she thought of evening the score with some Islamic, Hindu or Buddhist kitsch? Some duets between the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere perhaps?

"If the Dalai Lama put out a record of songs, I'd be there."

Scott-Norman brings her unique comic analysis to the albums, something that comes naturally to her after parallel careers as a DJ and a theatre and comedy critic for publications including The Age and The Australian.

"A couple of comedians have gone, 'Ooh, gamekeeper turned poacher,' " she admits of her first forays into stand-up after 15 years as a critic. "It's different doing it to writing about it. The stuff that seems obvious from the outside is not so easy when you're on the inside. It's like you're on different sides of the membrane. I was lucky in bringing all my interests together and it struck a chord with people. It's like going to a fun fair, on a roller-coaster or ghost train: we all enjoy being terrified. I think there's a lot of that in my show, people being appalled but also delighted."

Scott-Norman, whose vinyl library will be featured in a coming episode of ABC TV's Collectors, admits the reason she has been able to amass such a cornucopia of crap is that most people consider them rubbish and chuck them out.

"I've got most of my stuff from op shops over the years," she says.

How does one decide if an op-shop find is kitsch, and therefore cool, or daggy and bad?

"What you're looking for is something that has that extra edge," she says. "Something that catapults it into the spectacular category. It's a lot to do with the intention of the artist, the self-awareness."

Cover art is also important, says Scott-Norman, hence her section Men With Stuff.

"Basically that's an album cover art section, the props that men use to make themselves appear more masculine on their album covers."

After Scott-Norman's show, you'll no doubt be scouring St Vinnie's for Bernard King's A Man Of Style, John Laws's You've Never Been Trucked Like This Before or Charlie Manson's folk album Lie.

Alternatively, you could search for Olympic skaters Torvill and Dean's collection of embarrassing duets.

"They do Saturday Night and I Ain't Got Nobody," Scott-Norman says. "They're so white, they make Leonard Nimoy sound like 50 Cent."