Chan plays an introverted humanities academic, stitching Robyn’s recessive wit onto quiet vulnerability and an aching sense of longing. Harbridge’s Helen is a scientist, a charismatic, bold, and rather sweary extravert who carries the lion’s share of the play’s humour. The portrait of their domesticated suburban life together is attractive and moving in its detail.

And yet, some qualities in the script – arduous repetitions, an intentional poverty of language – militate against precise portrayal, occasionally leaving the actors at sea.

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Set and lighting create a purgatorial “liminal place”, thematically apt but mercilessly static – a difficulty director Katy Maudlin addresses through movement that doesn’t yet appear entirely organic.

Meet Me at Dawn remains an intriguing exploration of grief, combining the lover returned from the grave trope with an eerie fairy tale about a reckless desire gone wrong. But, despite its spartan theatricality and two very accomplished actors, I wasn’t as moved or convinced by it as I’d hoped to be.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
The Whisper ★★★
fortyfivedownstairs, until February 25

Inspired by interviews with his grandmother Lorraine in 2022, Wamba Wamba playwright Brodie Murray’s The Whisper reimagines a stark episode from family history – a journey made from Ngarrindjeri country in the 1940s, travelling across the Mallee by horse and cart, under cover of darkness, to Wamba Wamba country near Swan Hill on the Murray River.

The reason for the desperate exodus? To keep their children from being taken by authorities, under the genocidal policy of child removal that resulted in the stolen generations.

Melbourne audiences might first have encountered Murray’s work through computer screens rather than live performance. His three-hander Billy’s Choice was adapted into a film, directed by Rachael Maza, and livestreamed during COVID lockdowns in 2021.

Exploring connection to country, Aboriginal justice, and the implications for young Aboriginal people of the so-called “ring of steel” then separating Melbourne from regional Victoria, that work heralded the arrival of a talented young Indigenous playwright. The Whisper is as dramatically sure-footed, and although it feels like an unfinished play, only a heart of stone could fail to be moved by its story.

After Nan Rose (Melodie Reynolds-Diarra) receives a tip-off that police are on their way, she bundles her grandchildren onto a horse and cart in the middle of the night. Some of her own children were taken, and Nan will keep her family together even if it means abandoning country, never to return.

Two of the grandchildren, brothers Jack (Balla Neba) and Riley (Brodie Murray), have different perspectives on the trip. The much older Jack – who is in love with a white girl, and expecting a baby with her – chafes against the injustice of racial segregation and threatens to leave; Riley is only half-knowing, learning the true purpose of their journey midway through it.

For Nan, the land and everything on it helps guide them to safety. She sees warning signs in the behaviour of willy wagtails, intuits the weather, feels the ancient spirits of the plains they cross. She’s tough as nails and isn’t afraid to speak her mind, though the most eloquent scene is a desolating, and entirely silent, response to the loss of another child.

Some comfort arrives with her husband, Pop Ray, played with gentle authority by Greg Fryer, who joins the family en route.

There’s a character missing, I think, from this play. I wonder if some version of Lorraine – then a six-year-old girl, who described the journey as “the best time of [her] life” – would intensify the emotional impact and complete the generational picture.

Working with child actors is challenging, to be sure, but there would be dramatic power in framing this story of survival through innocent eyes incapable of registering the cruelty of the situation, eyes that see only an awfully big adventure.

The Whisper is a moving and elegantly staged work, but at a bare 50 minutes, and with an abrupt ending, there’s room to expand it.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
The Duchess of Malfi ★★
Arrant Knaves, North Melbourne Meat Market, until February 24

Shakespeare’s contemporaries get short shrift in Australian theatre. That’s a shame, so it’s a credit to Arrant Knaves that they have the chutzpah to stage an independent production of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, even if – intentionally or otherwise – it leans more into cult comedy horror than anything approaching tragic catharsis.

I last saw the play when Declan Donnellan’s Cheek by Jowl toured an elegant, darkly charged gothic production to Melbourne in the 1990s. This production suffers so badly in comparison that its main appeal might lie with audiences who’ve never seen the play live.

The Duchess of Malfi is one of the gore-strewn horrors of Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy. Corruption. Lust. Madness. Avarice. Espionage. Murder. Under the seeming virtues of court life in Renaissance Italy, the play seethes with every kind of vice and viciousness, but Webster does cut through all the elaborate cruelty with plaintive force. It is supposed to be more than a horror show.

The mad duke Ferdinand (Justin Harris-Parslow), for instance, after murdering his twin sister the Duchess of Malfi (Christina Costigan), says simply: “Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young.” It’s a stunning moment of unexpected lucidity, thrown away here by shameless mugging.

Indeed, Harris-Parslow comes across as a panto villain. By the time Ferdinand develops lycanthropy – complete with Halloween werewolf headpiece – the giggles are flowing freely.

Some actors fare better. Costigan is a defiant duchess, resisting the mire of misogyny to choose a secret husband she loves, looming as an avenging angel over the corpse-strewn climax.

Bruce Langdon as the scheming cardinal, the duchess’s elder brother, seems to channel the cadaverous charisma of Christopher Lee. Yvonne Martin and Marisa Warrington slip nimbly through the web of intrigue.

And Tom Bradley, who also directs, at least foregrounds the complicity of Bosola, an underling who survives tyranny by committing clandestine atrocities for his masters.

Alas, there’s also a fair whack of “private schoolboy Shakespeare” – the kind that affects the trace of a toffee English accent for no good reason – and some actors lack vocal training, making them hard to hear over the shlock-horror sound design.

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The gloomy soundtrack is augmented by visual horrors, but given they accumulate into an orgy of silliness, particularly in the second half, the show could perhaps have resigned itself to lurid comedy and gone full Hammer Horror mode.

As things stand, the essence of the tragedy is lost by failing to excavate all but the most obvious subtext.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Blink-182 ★★★★
Rod Laver Arena, February 13

A lot has happened since the last time Blink-182’s classic line-up – singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge, singer/bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker – were together in Australia 20 years ago.

Barker’s plane crash in 2008 instilled a fear of flying that meant he didn’t come Down Under with the band for their last tour in 2013; Hoppus beat cancer; DeLonge acrimoniously left the band in 2015.

So it’s more than a little emotional to see San Diego’s mischief makers back together on stage.

Blink-182 is a legacy act. The set list is stuffed with nostalgic pop-punk classics, leaning heavily on 1999’s Enema of the State, 2001’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket and 2003’s self-titled album.

They’ve never been the most polished live band, but they sound great – Hoppus’s deep voice and DeLonge’s instantly recognisable nasal tone still hit, and even the famously silent Barker takes to the mic for a song.

They’re much older but not much wiser – these are the same fart-joke-cracking lads that defined a generation of slackers. Any millennial who owned a copy of The Mark, Tom and Travis Show will have chortled at the immature banter typical of Blink.

These jokes don’t land as well decades later. Barbs about mothers, titties and sleeping with men grate more than amuse – these are 50-year-old men, after all – but live renditions of joke songs Family Reunion and Happy Holidays, You Bastard are a lot of fun.

Hoppus acknowledges, too, the misogyny of songs like Dysentery Gary and Dumpweed – I guess this really is growing up.

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Blink’s live show comes complete with pyrotechnics, confetti cannons and a constantly changing LED display.

It’s sometimes bemusing watching the antics playing out on stage with such a sophisticated rig, but it makes it into much more of an arena spectacular – not bad for a bunch of scrappy punks.

But really, what’s most delightful about a Blink-182 show is the sense of communal joy, singing songs from adolescence with thousands of other fans and remembering a time that was much simpler.

That nostalgia seems to be the case for the band, too, especially as they close the night with One More Time as a slideshow of old photos and footage rolls in the background, showing the three of them – Mark, Tom and Travis – through the years.

Let’s hope it’s not another decade before we get to hang out with them again.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

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