RENT
Step into the vibrant streets of New York City’s East Village, where dreams are born, friendships are tested, and the power of love prevails against all odds.
RENT opened at the State theatre on Tuesday February 29 to a full theatre.
The cast was of eight people and the ensemble also ten, totalling on stage 18 performers.
The stage was simply set with scaffolding both left and right of stage.
Plus, scaffolding centre which was moved in accordance with the script.
The eight main characters caught the essence of their roles giving a good balanced performance.
The ensemble kept up the standard set by the cast and gave a wonderful evening.
It was a good evening of entertainment of theatre, vey popular with the opening night audience.
The stage movement of the cast and ensemble was excellent, and the working together was a dream.
Overall, it was a wonderful evening and climaxing with a standing ovation.
1812 Theatre
Mother and Son
First my congratulations to Director Pip Le Blond for such a wonderful evening of Mother and Son.
The stage setting was brilliant, a lounge room, a kitchen to audience left and then when required a wall was moved to give a dentist’s rooms and a respite area.
The players all had high standards making a delightful evening.
Maggie (Mother) was played by Anne B. Smith an absolute extraordinary performance of an elderly lady not sure of her memory and the trouble that causes her son Arthur.
Something many of the audience could relate to.
Her son, Arthur, was given an understanding yet frustrating performance as the son who looked after his mother but was not her favourite son.
Tony Clayton caught the essence of such a character giving a superb and sympathetic performance.
His brother Robert, the one mother calls her favourite son was played by George Thompson.
A wonderful performance of the somewhat sleazy character, two timing his wife.
Robert’s wife Liz, who put up with so much then did something about it was played by Anna Ruth Laird A remarkable performance living up to the standard of the other performers.
The author, Geoffrey Atherden, the original writer of the TV show wrote the stage production bringing it up to date with mobile phones and skype.
Maggie communicated with her grandchildren.
1812 theatre had two TV screens each side of the stage where the audience saw what was happening when Maggie used skype.
The two grandchildren were played by Skyla Cleverley and Josh Cleverley both giving good performances.
There various voice overs used as fill ins as the sets were changed for various scenes.
One could recognise bringing the play really up to date with the voice overs as the current day scams.
An evening of delight by 1812 Theatre and a production not to be missed.
The Basin Theatre
Hatched, Matched and Dispatched.
A story of life, birth marriage and death. An interesting concept by author/actor Chris Hudson.
Three plays with an interesting introduction including the author playing a car and the door lady playing the usher.
Both were extremely good in their roles and the audience was left wondering of this was or was not part of the show.
The story of Hatched revolved around a young couple who were parents for the first time and their respective parents/grandparents arriving.
The girl is Greenie and so are her parents.
The husband goes along with his wife, but his parents are business people ,and the father has no time for Greenies.
Lucy Butler was Fleur in this palay as the young new mother.
A good performer and handled the role with finesse.
She also played Sarah and Judith in the following stories handling the of characters with finesse.
Kai Ratiteri was the young father in this story and was Simon and Stan in the other stories.
Klai projects well but does need to speak up a little. As the other roles he did a good job of handling different characters.
Jackie Hutchison as Penny the bigoted Greenie mother to Fleur handled the role with professionalism giving a great performance and also as Iris handling the change of role comfortably.
Chris Shaw was Dennis/Anton/Morris.
Chris really captured the characters he portrayed giving the audience the correct feel to is roles.
A good portrayal.
Susan Collier was Maree/Rose/Vera.
A great performance of the three different characters.
Lachlan McGill was Barry/Paul/Gordon. A fair performance but did have trouble with his lines.
The second story was Matched about a forthcoming marriage.
And the last story was Dispatched a story of a man whose wife has just passed away and the results of same.
The Basin Theatre did have some trouble with Thursday opening night.
It had to be cancelled because The Basin Theatre is in a high fire zone, and they did not want the risk of anyone being hurt.
So this amounted to the opening night being the primary pre night leading to some memories being lost in the lines and the audience could hear the prompts at various stage.
This in no way deterred the audience and your correspondent recommends the show to all.
