Uncle Vanya

Without a doubt Sydney Theatre Company’s “Uncle Vanya” is one of the most anticipated productions of the year. With a stellar cast such as Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Richard Roxburgh, John Bell and Jacki Weaver, it has a lot to live up to.

Sydney Theatre Company’s production of “Uncle Vanya” is a standard Chekov play with a non-standard touch. All the things you can expect from a Chekov play such as the condemnation of the landlords, the mocking of the intelligentsia, the disapproval of industrialisation, and the life of living in the middle of nothing were all echoing around the walls of the theatre in the 2.5 hour production. However, you no longer see the actors dressed in white standard “Chekov costumes” and walking around in certain posts. Gyoryi Szakacs, the costume designer had injected a heavy dose of naturalism into the costumes – they were worn out and sometimes unsophisticated yet they cry the parts out loudly. This twist of costume design fits in nicely with the superb class that delivered one of the most natural performances you saw on stage this year.

John Bell plays the returned “Celebrity Professor” Serebryakov who, as with some modern celebrities just created hell after hell for the rest of the people in the house. He completely upset the balance of time and habits of everyone and took his young second wife Yelena (Cate Blanchett) for granted. Richard Roxburgh plays the title role of Vanya who wasted most of his adult life for a mere return of profit for his hard work and had to endure a mother (Sandy Gore) who completely ignored his contributions but looked up to Serebryakov. The play opened with Jacki Weaver as the Nanny and Hugo Weaving as the battered doctor Astrov. The opening scene immediately delivered to the audience what a cast of top notch actors can do. The restlessness Hugo Weaving displayed was a sharp contrast to the reminiscing calmness that Jacki Weaver was delivering and yet they just melted together into one strong daily conversation. Cate Blanchett as the unsatisfied trophy wife was an obvious misfit to the rural setting. The immaculate locks on her hair and her tailored fit wardrobe distinguished her from the plain looking daughter Sonya (Hayley McElhinney) and paved way for future disruptions to this quiet and extremely boring country household. She became the drop of water that triggered a series of ripple effects for the pool. There were several scenes between Cate and individual cast members that were just a pleasure to watch. Richard Roxbourgh told the sad story of the title role with great precision and his break down scene in the second half was just a showcase of what a great actor can do when he is in a company of other great actors with a great script. Hayley McElhinney was a good choice for Sonya as she did exhibit the helpless plainness Chekov described in the play. However, sometimes her words lack the unbearable lightness of life that one would expect and this was particularly obvious in her closing monologue. Also at times I found the over deployment of head movements during conversation quite distracting.

Andrew Upton’s adaptation had modernised the language to make the material more approachable, although at times it is less poetic as it should be. However, given the setting is in a rural household (and most characters are supposed to be uneducated), this was not a serious problem. The set by Zsolt Khell was smart and made great use of the stage space. It first opens up to display an extensive space but then as the story progresses, it closes in further and further and created a suffocating space for all the characters – which directly reflects the stifling of these people because of the arrival of Serebryakov. However, also because of this sophistication in the set design, the audience needs to be prepared for some longish idle time when the set is changed on stage.

On the whole, “Uncle Vanya” represents a fine night of theatre for those who love classic text and great performances. If you are not a fan of Chekov you will still find the material angry and at times too tooth-aching. However, just having a chance to see a group of great actors working together is pure enjoyment that you will relish for the rest of the night.

Sex and the City 2

Sex and the City defined a generation of TV. It didn’t come as a surprise that the producers decided to make a movie out of it, as it is already a trend in Hollywood, although the series is far from being old. When it comes to the second movie out of the same TV series with the same characters, what more can they pull out of the hat is really a question.

A lot of people didn’t like Sex and the City 2, thinking that it is politically incorrect and trying too hard to magnify issues that are not issues but for the sake of being a feminist movie that provides a voice for women. Being a man, I really have no idea about what a woman’s voice should be (or less I will not be still single) but I personally do think Sex and the City 2 did have a better structure and script than the first movie.

The first movie cramped the timeframe of a whole series into one movie – so time moves quickly to show the changes of these women’s life in one year. Did it work? It didn’t. The characters became shallow and underdeveloped and issues dealt with were like damped fireworks that didn’t go off at all. Also the fact that they were dealing with the same old issues as they did in the last 6 years didn’t really help at all.

In the second movie, the time is more compact, and there were more development for all the four main characters. The plot was more tightly knit together as compared to the first movie. And the most important part was that the characters grew through time. They are dealing with a whole new lot of issues that compliment their characters. Samantha trying to beat menopause, Charlotte’s fairy tale world being torn apart by her kids, Miranda’s mid-career crisis and Carrie’s incompetence of dealing with marriage. These are real issues that fit well into the world and age of these characters and personally I think they were dealt with greatly.

I don’t really remember any memorable scenes in the first movie except Charlotte’s mishap at the resort. However, in the second movie, there were good scenes after good scenes being written for the main characters. The scene between Miranda and Charlotte on motherhood was extremely well written and acted. It proved once again Cynthia Nixon is an acting powerhouse. Every single reaction and line that she delivered in that scene was just right to the point. Under her influence, even Kristin Davis stepped up from a mediocre happy housewife into someone with a lot more layers for the audience to explore. Another remarkable scene was Samantha under arrest with her glamourous and confident veil removed. Kim Catrall proved that why she is one of the most popular theatre actors around the world. There were moments there were no words but expressions, and you can still see where the character came from. Even for Sarah Jessica Parker, the scene between Carrie and Charlotte out at the hotel front arch provided a much-needed injection of believability for this character. And the good part of this scene is her realization of she thinks she knew everything but in fact she knew absolutely nothing was an absolute gem (as that was the core of that character throughout the years but never really articulated).

Yes there were moments of political incorrectness (and sometimes they didn’t really work) but what I don’t understand is for the same dose of political incorrectness, if they showed up in movies like Hot Tub Time Machine and Hang Over, they will be funny and alright. But it is not so for Sex and the City 2. The jokes they exhibited in the movie are no worse than many of the others, so whether the critics in this aspect judge Sex and the City 2 a lot harsher I don’t know. The interesting thing about Sex and the City 2 is that it is dealing with women’s mid-life crisis as compared to a whole lot of other movies dealing with man’s mid-life crisis. I think that these issues were dealt with in good humour and some of the writing was beautiful. As compared to the first movie, it has a lot more substance than being just a fans movie. Is it really as Miranda said, “people pretend that they are not threatened by strong women and strong voices but they were in fact scared by them?” That’s interesting to know.

Some people say that Sex and the City 2 should be the end of the franchise as it lacks relevance to the current society. I only agree partially. I don’t agree that it lacks relevance. It just deals with issues that people prefer to pretend that they are not relevant or tricked themselves into believing that they are not relevant. However, I do agree that the franchise should end at this point unless they have more interesting issues to talk about in the next movie. At this point, I think it does wrap up the characters nicely both character-wise and story-wise.

Personally, I think Sex and the City: The Movie was a low for the franchise but contrary to most, I believe Sex and the City 2 managed to lift the franchise up back where it should be – dealing with real people and real issues with a tint of humour.

Flight

“Flight” is a play by Russian playwright Mikhail Bulgakov. The play sets in the years of turmoil at the end of the Civil War during which a group of people were tied together by fate while trying to survive the ordeal. It could also be seen as a semi-autobiography of part of the playwright’s own life.

This version is a NIDA second year production interpretation (with a cast of first year acting students as the crowd) of the play using the huge space provided by the Parade Theatre. A lot of value was put into this production. Apart from a huge cast, every detail from costume, make up, props and sets and even changing of stage were thoroughly thought through (and some of them pretty cool). The actions played out on a slanted wooden platform with two levels of radiating contours stretching out from the centre – a simple yet very versatile performance space. However, it is also because of this design that the stage was littered with traps. There were many times that actors miscalculated the height of the steps and tripped over or nearly lost balance during the actions. They masked the mistakes skillfully most of the time but after several stunts you will start to worry who will be the next victim of the stage.

This is a huge production with a huge cast. The deployment of the first year students as crowds and other ensemble characters gave them a chance to get involved and be seen. However, it is also because of the huge number of actors on stage that actually affect the delivery of the play and this is particularly obvious during the first half. Unlike musicals in which the chorus was usually tightly written into the production, for plays, when you deploy a huge cast of actors onto the stage, they have to serve a purpose. This is exactly what was lacking in this production. A lot of time these background actors were on the stage doing what they need to do but then they lack a purpose. For purpose I mean not only as backdrop but also what they are supposed to do as characters on the stage, how they are going to enrich the actions and tell the audience that they are essential in the scene. This is where this production fell short. Even worse was that at times they became distractions to the main actions of the leads and you can hardly concentrate on the main actions because there were so many other actors doing this and that all the time. This gave the audience a fragmented and shattered experience that nobody benefited from. The second half of play was a lot better as it focused on the main characters instead (or finally) and gave the audience a better experience or a chance to escape into the characters’ world. I am not saying that NIDA should not use that many actors, but they have to use them correctly. I remember when I saw “Jarabin” and “All in Good Timing”, they too had lots of actors on stage, but each actor was integrated in the whole production that you didn’t find them distracting or ruining your experience. So if NIDA wants to do a huge production like this one again in the future, that is one of things they have to look into and improve.

The main cast delivered a satisfactory but sometimes offbeat performance. Strangely enough, as a drama school that should be focusing strongly on stage acting, there were some real voice projection issues in this production. It could be because the space is huge, but I personally did not remember there were such issues with other similar performances, especially considering productions such as “The Plough and the Star” (with Ian Roberts), which only had a few actors throughout, didn’t have such issues. Neither did I remember that graduates from last year had such issues on their agent’s day performance. Apart from the crowd sometimes drowning out the main characters, or sometimes loud background music deafening your ears during the lines, there were times that when the actors were upstage, you could hardly hear them (and I was in the seventh row from the stage). And there were also times that you could just hear them mumbling their words with “lazy tones” (e.g. missing out consonants) that you needed to figure out the lines with the context. However, the actor who played Khludov (I think his name is Ross) was brilliant throughout. The journey he brought us through with his character was well executed and you could actually experience the journey with him. Also the actor who played Paramon was great too. The monologue on “the importance of a dollar” was so well done that you just couldn’t help but being blown away by his commitment to the character. The other actors were not bad actors (I’d seen them all in last year’s Chekov and Sonnets) but it seemed to me that the aforementioned voice issues really took out a lot from them. I was surprised as some of them were pretty good with lots of potential when I saw them as first years last year in their rehearsal room performances.

“Flight” was an above average production. It has great potentials but the issues mentioned above taxed out a lot from it. The play certainly got a lot better in the second half but as I saw tonight quite a number of the audience left during the intermission (one of them in my group left too). However, I personally would recommend those who go to see it to stay and soldier on, as the second half is really where you see great actions playing out on the stage. Also, the high production value that was put into this play would make your money worth. At the end of the day it is after all not an average amateur production. However, if NIDA want to put on similar scale productions in the future, issues mentioned above must be rectified to make them more enjoyable.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

There aren’t a lot of butt kicking heroines in the movies, Alice from the Resident Evil franchise is one of them. Created as a fictional character in which the first movie followed loosely the Resident Evil (or Biohazard in some regions) video game franchise about the T-virus transforming humans into the undead once bitten, Alice has been kicking butts and seeking revenge on the Umbrella Corporation that started the nightmare for the human race.

In the fourth instalment, Alice is fighting back again big time and reunited with some familiar faces that saw her through thick and thin in the previous instalments. The last movie, Resident Evil: Extinction was a disappointment for me as it [spoiler alert!] killed off one of my favourite characters in the movies franchise (although that character was quite annoying in the video games) and the tension was just not there. Also the abuse of certain characters in the video games translated into the movie didn’t really help either. So I was having quite a bit of reservation when I went into the theatre to watch Afterlife. Fortunately, Paul W S Anderson seemed to take notice of the flaws in the last movie and tried to make things right again with this one.

The movie set in LA that was already transformed into a zombie capital in which a small bunch of survivors tried to stay alive long enough to go to Arcadia, originally thought as a save haven in Alaska but turned out to be a travelling cargo ship picking up infection free survivors. Alice (Milla Jovovich) has reunited with Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) on her search for Arcadia and together they went to LA to search for survivors where Claire was reunited with his brother Chris (Wentworth Miller). The movie then played out as a survival horror as they battled to get out of LA and board Arcadia.

As with the other instalments in the franchise, the main characters are strong headed and they were help by a cast of disposable characters to ensure their survival. Performance wise, the three leads were up to their job and Milla as Alice has already established herself outside the video game franchise as the spokeswoman for Resident Evil on the big screen. Ali and Wenthworth as Claire and Chris Redfield actually provided a surprisingly great chemistry that really brought these two characters from the video games’ fame to real life (I didn’t like Claire in Extinction). The scene between them and Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) was great and it did temporarily steal the limelight from Alice (especially when they threw in lines from the original video games). For all the other characters, they served the purpose of their roles in the film and they fulfilled their duties as they should.
Resident Evil: Afterlife is based on a video game, so it is an order to have the influence of the video games to satisfy fans. This is one of the weaker aspects in Extinction but in Afterlife, that was also redeemed. The movie was littered with homages to Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5. The fact that now the plagas in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 had taken a more centre stage has modernised the zombie franchise to a different level as the games are now more than just zombies. The Executioner from Resident Evil 5 was just a pleasure to watch and his fighting scene with Alice and Claire was strongly influenced by Code Veronica. The movie also has a number of jumping moments that keeps you going like the game, which is nice.

Resident Evil: Afterlife is not your average horror movie. It is actually not a horror movie as actions have taken centre stage when it was translated to the silver screen. However, it is still extremely enjoyable if you are looking for an entertaining action movie with enemies running around stupidly in hordes and getting their body parts blown off by magnums and machine guns. The gore meter is not that high in Afterlife to be honest but they are more stylised, which I personally preferred. There are still scenes that didn’t really make sense but then making sense out of everything is not what the Resident Evil movie franchise best known for. Further with all your favourites from the video game franchise (protagonists, villains and enemies alike), it should be a cool night out with friends in the cinema.

Toy Story 3

When I first saw the trailer for Toy Story 3, I was excited and sceptical at the same time. I was excited because it is my favourite Pixar movie franchise and sceptical because…well…you can see that from Shrek. The move of Toy Story 3 to 3D worried me even further as I thought do they need to do the Avatar gimmick (which I don’t think is a great movie anyway) to sell a well established franchise and its characters?

I went into the theatre, all worried and then 5 minutes into the movie I was completely blown away by the creativity and rich story that Pixar managed to create with our favourite characters. Toy Story 3 is about toys but it is not something that Pixar just toyed around to make another buck. It is about toys growing up with their owners and facing their own dilemmas and crisis in an innocent and “toyish” way. It is not just a kid’s movie as there are scenes that are so moving that even if you are a bloke you might want to bring a pack of tissue with you before you go into the theatre.

Toy Story 3 happens around 5 or 6 years after the second movie. Now Andy is all grown up into his late teens and going to the college. He and his family are facing the fact that the boy is all grown up and leaving home for a bigger world – and so are his toys. On the way to this part of the story, the toys have already lost some of their comrades to yard sales and “voluntary” disappearances (from those who move on to find new owners themselves). The remaining toys are the ones that Andy dearly loves and refuses to give away but keep them inside a chest in his room. The fact that Andy is moving out and clearing his room really caused a lot of anxiety for the toys and they are looking for resolution in their lives. The story just unfolds from this point onward.

Sounds familiar? Yes this is the phase that every grown up like us faced in our lives – what are we going to do with the toys that we once treasured but not as highly “regarded” by our parents? We all went through the heartache of watching our favourite toys being given away or being sold at yard sales. It is not a matter of we clinging ourselves to our childhood but it does feel like part of ourselves being torn away from us when this happens. This is an excellent territory that Toy Story 3 treaded into for Pixar created something so special that both adults and kids alike will enjoy.

Throughout the last 15 years, computer animation technology has improved a lot. When we look back at the first Andy showed in Toy Story, he was like a potato face with limited expression and human characters were largely avoided because of the technological limitations. Toy Story 3 exhibits a masterpiece that shows you – and all other movie makers – that technology advancement have to go hand in hand with rich storytelling to make a great movie. Late teen Andy is full of expressions and the details Pixar put in to tell the story about Andy and his toys growing up was so spectacular that they can rival real life actors’ performance. The voice over by great actors like Tom Hanks and Tim Allen without a doubt helped a lot to bring these characters to life.

Another great thing about Toy Story 3 is that after 15 years and with so many outings, Pixar still managed to deliver a creative movie that keeps on surprising you. The opening scene was breathtaking, creative and hilarious. The story between Barbie and Ken really took the movie by storm and sometimes sidelined Woody and Buzz. The lines given to Barbie and Ken will continued to ring inside your head long after the movie is finished. The innovative use of the detachable parts of Mr and Mrs Potato Heads just made you wonder “how did Pixar manage to continue to come up with such brilliant ideas after all these years?” Also the inclusion of Hayao Miyazaki’s Totoro and stayed true to that character really makes you appreciate the inclusive nature of the world Toy Story 3 created.

Toy Story 3 is not just another animation. It is a celebration of technology, character and rich story telling. I will highly recommend anyone who wants a good cinema experience to go and watch it. And for all the blokes, seriously, remember to bring a pack of tissue with you or ask for serviettes from the candy bar before you go in.

Oresteia

Greek tragedies are hard to tackle, especially in modern days. Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Oresteia is another bold attempt in its 2010 season. The results? On the night that I went, 1/5 of the audience left during the intermission.

The problem to me doesn’t seem to be in the text and in fact I think the text is well adapted by Tom Wright. But the whole production and experience was so disconnected that you sometimes do wonder what on earth is happening on stage? The play reminded me heavily of a segment in “War of the Roses” – lots of powder spraying and fake blood spilling – for no reasons apart from the apparent killing of certain characters. That use of these visual aids didn’t disturb me, but annoyed me when you got such an overdose for no apparent reasons.

I digressed. Back to the play. It is the story after Troy was destroyed at a time when Argos was trapped in time and space wondering what happened. The women of Agamemnon waited for the return of their king for different reasons. And the story unfolds to tell a tale of family curses and revenge – in Greek tragedy style. The play was modernised with characters entering and leaving in one of the three elevators, which is quite smart. But the smartness ended here.

The opening monologue started off well and then descended into a series of disjointed and unconnected words from the actor that you would lose your concentration and stared into the space like the actor did. The same actor continued with unstable performance throughout the whole play and as a key narrator / character, it really disintegrated the binding elements that are essential to keep the play together. As a result you feel like the actors are just doing each of their own thing. There seemed to be no communications among the characters despite the fact that conversations were being carried out.

Then it comes the chanting…and lots of them. What were they chanting for? There were times they were justified but there were other times you just kept wondering and wondering and they stopped and suddenly turned into dialogues and monologues that weren’t necessarily related to the chanting at all. I know art is abstract but the degree of abstractness exhibited in this production completely fell short to its story telling.

Having said that, there were some really good performances from the actors who actually “got it”. Tahki Saul and Zindzi Okenyo were the stand outs in the whole production. They nailed their monologues and lines perfectly and delivered performances that inhabit their characters completely. However, their presence on the stage was not long enough and it moved back to absurdity once they were off stage. The actor who played Queen Clytemnestra was not bad either with a good range of emotion displayed rightfully at right places. The other actors did a fair to average job but the disappointment was Ursula Mills whom I felt she sometimes really had no idea what the words coming out of her mouth meant, and with only facial expressions of 4, 6 and 7 and gestures 9 and 11 to play with during the whole 2.5 hour, it is really a stamina test for the audience.

Oresteia is an ambitious production that was disintegrated by its own ambition. It is over-stylised and underperformed. I was not surprised that half of the row in front of me was gone when I returned to the audience that night as all three of the other persons in the audience I happened to chat with during the intermission also disappeared from their seats in the far left. In my opinion, if you want to over stylised a production, first you need to get the actors to understand the text completely and this is definitely not the case in Oresteia. And man God forbid we waste milk as they did – there are people starving in other parts of the world you know? If you have spare money and time, I think you might get more out of your money by having a sip at the Wharf Bar.

Viva La Bieber

Modern media never failed to amuse us. After a year of going Gaga the world is hit by the storm of Bieber. Justin Bieber a teenage boy who just turned 16 with a voice hardly broken at all has raided the world with his cheeky smile, capturing the hearts of teenage girls.

The power of teenage girls is scary…really scary. From the wrath of “Twilight” to Justin Bieber, it just devoured and demolished everything on its way. In the case of Bieber, it happened last November in New York, and happened again yesterday in Sydney. Functions were cancelled because the crowd eventually proved to be too dangerous for the function to even start.

However what shocked me was the fact that parents were allowing their daughters of age 13 or so to go the city and sleep in public places overnight for their star chasing. Now we’d all been teenagers, but is the way teenagers, in this case teenage girls, behaving going to far? They are endangering themselves in the city, and some from interstate, to get a prime position for a function to be held 12 hours or so later. They even refused to listen to security’s advice to move back to the safe zone and broke into chaos. Now where are the parents of these teenage girls? Were they just happily having beacon and egg at home watching TV to see whether their 13-year-old daughters managed to get a front row seat? In a city where you can’t drink before 18 and can’t drive before 16, it is really appalling that 13 year girls were allowed to sleep in public places unsupervised overnight when it is supposed to be a school day. What is wrong with the parents of these girls?

Some advocates talk about can’t discipline our kids because that will make them dumb or hurt their pride when they grow up. So is this the result we got from discipline free parenting in this country? Or nowadays a lot of parents just don’t know how to teach or educate their kids about common sense?

I was at the Fox Studios enjoying a nice warm afternoon in a restaurant with a few other customers yesterday. There were some families there and of course you will expect to have screaming babies. I personally don’t like babies in restaurants but then they are too small to know anything and their parents do need to eat. Then in came a group with two 5-year-old girls. The moment they walked in, the girls started running around spitting on tables while their snobbish parents and friends were criticising seat arrangements in the restaurant. During the whole process they did not even attempt to stop the kids from spitting around. Customers around were appalled by what the kids were doing. One of the waitresses asked the kids to stop and the parents immediately shot her a stare. Eventually the restaurant moved tables around to accommodate them. Then they started criticising the menu while the mother called the girls to the table. Instead of asking them not to do that again, she praised the cuteness for their behaviours and wiped the remaining saliva around their lips. The poor waiting staff had to go around cleaning up tables again while enduring the criticisms from their parents. During the whole process there were no words of apologies for the girls behaviours. Instead the girls were praised for their behaviours.

I don’t know what these girls will grow up to be but judging from their parents, they will probably provide new force for the outrageous girl power we witnessed from the Bieber madness these two days. Whether they are doing the right thing, I don’t think their parents give a damn for whatever they are doing they will always be praised.

I don’t want to sound too biased about the whole thing but when we are living in a society with more and more teenage problems, who should be responsible? In my opinion it’s nobody else but the parents. If the Government or academics continue to call for non-disciplining of kids and regard it as bullying behaviours or irresponsible parenting, then do not complain about all the teenage problems we are having now. I am not saying that we should turn a blind eye to child abuse. In fact I am completely against it, but nowadays it seems that we are basically ruling by exception instead of for the good of the general mass.

Whose Business is this?

One of the latest news in the Hong Kong media in the last few days is the “covered up” marriage and divorce of two well known artists. The guy is the second generation of a token music family and the girl is from the super Hong Kong girl group Twins. It has been rumoured for quite a while that they were going out but when someone leaked the information that they were actually married for 4 years and currently in the middle of a divorce, the Hong Kong media completely exploded. Eventually under the pressure of the media and with all the different “versions” of the story, they called a press conference and explained themselves. This is the second time that the Hong Kong media condemned artists for not telling them their marital status and being dishonest to them. Last year it was another super star Andy Lau who got stung by them – at the funeral of his father-in-law.

As a communication graduate who was taught to be a responsible journalist, I can never understand this fuss. I have accepted the fact that nowadays a lot of so called journalists are really not journalists. They are story writers who just write whatever in fashion for them without actually accepting their liability for what they wrote. Journalism is all about selling copies and getting rating today instead of providing a factual and neutral view for readers or audience to judge. I have accepted that. But calling artists liars because they didn’t disclose certain private information to you and then gang up against them, condemning them days after days and weeks after weeks? I am totally baffled by these “journalist” behaviours nowadays.

Certainly they are in a very public business. Entertainment business earns big money from the public. But that doesn’t mean that they have to surrender every single piece of information about them to everyone. A lot of times people said that “you do this business, you accept the consequence”. That is total crap to me as for my understanding; you are responsible to your employers not the general public. If the general public wants to put you on a pedestal, it should not be certain artist’s responsibility to live up to their expectations – especially about their private lives. They can be condemned of being liars if they front an anti-drug campaign but they are junkies themselves. But why is it that whether someone is married or not anyone else’s business?

For me, the most annoying part of this saga is that neither one of them had ever talked about their relationship in the public but then now being crucified for “not talking”. In a recent interview, the girl from Twins even said that she just didn’t talk about things. Whether it’s true or not she knows or if other people know then that’s fine. She doesn’t want to say yes or no to things to feed unnecessary media frenzies. Similarly, the guy had never admitted or denied anything about their “rumoured relationship” in the past 6 years. So calling them liars and condemning them of dishonesty is really beyond my comprehension. Further, if that traitor in their social circle didn’t leak the information to the press, nobody would have even known that ever happened. So why does it matter when it isn’t something that matters to begin with? Is it because the media itself is angry with them because their marriage managed to sneak under their radar for that long? So is this their way of getting back to them and “teach them a lesson”?

The most amusing part of this saga is that they condemn the artists about dishonesty but at the same time composed new stories about things as if suddenly they were sleeping under their bed in the last 4 years. Now I really want to know who the bigger liar here is – the artists who wanted to keep their marriage to themselves or people who wrote untrue stories to sell copies. This kind of blatant and shameless double standard really put me off the Hong Kong media in the recent years. If there is a stone to cast and someone cast the first stone, it is still fine. But in this case, there is no stone to cast at all, but they built a boulder to roll over and knock down others – that’s not on!

I am saying this not because I like those two artists. And to be honest, I am never a fan to either of them. But I just couldn’t believe that the Hong Kong media has gone to that low in their practices while at the same time waving the moral flag in the air calling foul. It is not surprising that a lot of established Hong Kong artists like Maggie Cheung and Faye Wong nowadays prefer to live overseas or away from Hong Kong and just go back to work if they feel like to. Just that magnitude of media intrusion and “judgment” is enough a reason for them to stay away as much as possible.

I know the current frenzy will die away as soon as the Hong Kong media found new targets and move on. But I just really feel for this couple that they even couldn’t grieve their marriage breakdown privately and being pressured to become “responsible” to something that is nobody else but their own business.

Sex, Lies and a Father Figure?

It seems that these days we are facing scandals after scandals of prominent people in the media. First we have the undying saga of “the tiger living in the woods”, then we have “a cheating husband of a Hollywood darling and Oscar winner”, and now it is the “husband of a prominent acting agent and a lovable father figure in Australia”.

Now if all these people ever want to live a life as just another human being, they successfully did it – as they could have committed a sin as every other human being could commit on Earth. For Mr Wood and Mr James, they were involved with adults – not that their adulterous actions are correct or justifiable, but at least they are consenting adults. How messy they got, adults are dealing with adults. What distressed me most is the allegation of two powerful personalities – one leading actor and one major producer – trying to execute and cover up evil deeds against children worked on set. I don’t want to jump into conclusion that Robert Hughes is guilty as there is yet a trial on that. But I really dislike people taking advantage on helpless people and exercise their power to a magnitude that it helped to “conspire” and “perpetuate” such evil acts.

Everyone in the acting business knows that this is a tough business. Every time we got a job, we want to do our best to keep it (well maybe not all but most of us). So when a 6 year old who is on the set earning bread and butter for her family was experiencing such horrible thing, what could she do? According to the information she eventually sought help and advice from an elder cast member who was eventually told to shut up or “risk not working in the country anymore”. Now what interested me was why did that producer do that? Is it also just to keep the show running so he could earn a lot more out of it? If that’s so and if it was proved that the allegations are correct, the media industry should unite against this producer and throw him out of business too as he is equally guilty.

Another thing that kept me thinking was that if according to all the actors who came out to talk about this that Hughes’ behaviour is well known throughout the industry, why didn’t his wife know and take actions? As one of the most prominent agents of the country, surely there would be wind blowing pass her letting her know about this. So how could that kind of behaviour continued for so many years behind her back? I am not saying she had a part or she allowed this to happen, but then if she really didn’t know about all these, people surely had kept her in the dark very well. I could only feel sorry for her.

At this point it is really difficult for us to make judgement as there is no real judgement unless the case is officially filed and a trial is officially carried out. However, in due time hopefully the truth will come out as I do think that with such allegations, Hughes does have the responsibility to let the society know the truth because as I said, this is not private fun between two consenting adults behind his wife’s back but the exercise of power one a helpless kid in a wrongful manner. How many more people will come out and make further allegations is still unknown but I think not only for us but for just for human conscience, actions have to be taken. And should the truth prove Hughes is guilty, as I said earlier, the producer in question should be hung too.

As for all of us, as my friend said in his blog, if you are in the acting business or media industry and experienced harassment of such magnitude, do not hesitate to report it to the union: http://www.alliance.org.au/ as the more we tolerate such behaviour, the messier and more unprofessional the business becomes. Hopefully, bit by bit we can clear out the cancer cells in the industry and people who deserve to work will get work and not a bunch of conspiring evil wankers.

How Sweet is Short+Sweet?

Been having a blast attending different shows at this year’s Short+Sweet. For those who don’t know what Short+Sweet is, it is the world’s largest short play festival. All plays are strictly limited to 10 minutes and it is also a competition among participants to see who put on the best play of the year. Short+Sweet has been around for 9 years and is going from strength to strength. Maybe one day it will become like Tropfest, something that attracts more and more international attention (at the time of writing, Short+Sweet is already starting up in Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand).

I’ve never been in any Short+Sweet production but in the last two years got involved as one of the adjudicators. Still remember how flattered I was when I got the invitation. Many people asked me how come I got to be an adjudicator when I’ve never been involved in any production. Well not to blow my own horn, I do have a formal qualification in Theatre and am a fully trained dramaturg (though not many theatre companies can afford to employ us). But this is not about me it’s about all the people who bleed and sweated to put the festival together. Alex Broun has been at the helm as an artistic director the last few years and with him and Mark Clearly, the scale of Short+Sweet was just ever expanding.

Going to Short+Sweet is like going to a restaurant that provides only set menus according to the ingredients available on the day. So you are really in for some surprises from time to time. One week it could be really short and sweet, while some others they could be “Short+Missed”. Productions that managed to squeeze into the main program will usually be staged for a week. Audience will vote for their favourite play of the night and the judges will rank the plays according to (for me) writing, staging, direction and performance. Productions that got into the Wild Card sessions are more like in a sudden death judgement situation – one performance to determine whether they can enter the second round and thus from the second round to the Final Gala.

I had a great time judging on Short+Sweet. It is good to see so many people writing and putting themselves out there. However with the massive number of productions squeezed into around 8 weeks, you bound to have disappointments from time to time. For me disappointments can come in several ways:

Writing:

Mediocre and generic writing is one of the deadly sins in Short+Sweet. Sometimes you felt you have seen it all and the dialogues are as tasteless as filtered water. At times you will get plays that swore their heads off throughout the whole 10 minutes, and even after that you still don’t know why they needed to swear. I know this is Australia but do Australians just swear that much for the sake of swearing? I remember this year there was a production that uses the “c” word repeatedly. I am not against swearing or the “c” word specifically but then my company and I were looking at each other wondering what were they doing?

Staging and Directions:

This year I have seen a lot of productions using an extremely boring approach in terms of staging and directions. This is not limited to Short+Sweet but also to some amateur theatre productions. The most commonly seen approach is to just have people walking across the stage again and again for the sake of using the stage space. However, because they are walking to and fro that much, you just got distracted because you couldn’t figure out why they were doing so. Staging doesn’t necessarily means you have to use all the space available – use it only if it enriches your story telling. I remember in one of the productions this year, the two ladies were just using a small stage front area next to a double deck trolley most of the time and it worked extremely well. The other well-staged production involved placing the actors symmetrically on the stage. They only move out of their space when they needed to interact or when it was required to move the story forward. That was a pleasure to watch. However, there were quite a number of productions where they just have actors running around on the stage “doing their stuff” and after 10 minutes you felt more exhausted than they did.

Performance:

One of the common issues I found in Short+Sweet performances is the actors’ voice. Being a voice student for over 3 years now made me really pay attention to what came out of actors’ mouths. I remember in one of the productions, there were four actors. Two of them were spectacular but the other two were just awful whenever they opened their mouth. The words came out were mostly inaudible and one of them spoke so quickly that you just felt like popcorns were coming out of her mouth. There was another production where there were non-English speaking actors delivering lines in English. However, they were so heavily accented that it was quite difficult to understand what they were saying. Being someone from a non-English speaking background I know how difficult it is, but then when it comes to performing life, this is really something that need to be addressed – seriously. There were other productions that even when I was sitting on the second or fourth row, I couldn’t hear a word from the actors. Now I am not saying they need to yell cause I hate people just yelling for no reason and I’d seen too much of them on Australian stage and screen already. But clear articulation and projection are essential for all stage performers and I don’t think that is something a stage actor can get away with. To cite a good performance this year is the girl who was in the play about ranting. Her projection and articulations were clear but she managed to put so many dimensions and layers into the ranting that it was just enjoyable.

The Short+Sweet Final Gala will be held on 12 and 13 March this year and unfortunately I won’t be able to attend. But I am sure the program will be a wonderful and entertaining. It sounds like I am very critical when it comes to judging but I do think as a member of the local theatre and acting scene, I do need to be critical about our work so we can make improve each time. I enjoyed most of the program this year and there were certainly some really good stuff among them. So if you have missed Short+Sweet this year, remember to mark your calendar for next year’s festival. After all what is better than a night of aspiring theatre?

Spring Awakening

Spring Awakening is based on a play written in 1891 about the transition of adolescence to adulthood. The exploration of life goals, love, sexuality and all other things that the grown up world refused to discuss with their kids apart from issuing orders after orders. It has a strong sense of breaking through the cocoon of adolescence and thus the use of rock music throughout the whole production completely reflected this dying urge of the main cast. The opening song laid the foundation of the whole story in a mellow, desperate but sweet song. As the story progressed, you just got hooked to how such an ill trained bunch of kids reacted to all the catastrophes of adulthood they experienced.

The Sydney Theatre Company (STC) production commands a huge young cast together will well trained actors. The result is a refreshing production that is probably not to everyone’s taste. On the Saturday night that I attended, I was surrounded by a huge token STC patron group – Anglo middle to upper class baby boomers (as you can tell from their high end fashion and lack of command with their bunch of newly purchased iPhones and Blackberries). After the first act and the intermission, some of them disappeared. The remaining ones were talking about they had no idea what’s happening and wondered what’s with the rock music and hysteric performance of the cast. Of course the only reason the ones left were still there because “they paid for the ticket, might as well sit through it”.

If you judge by their reactions, you would probably think that it is a bad production. In fact it is not. What amused me was that their reactions were exactly the way the adult characters in the musical behaved throughout the whole story – they couldn’t understand and couldn’t be bothered to try to understand. “We have kids so we deal with them in a way we understand ourselves”. I am not saying the adults were portrayed as bad guys, they were just good guys with bad reactions to the events in the story. They couldn’t help it because that’s what they knew best and they had to stick with them to make things work for them.

The story has its setting in a small community with two groups of teenagers – one from an all boys school and the other from all girls school – trying to grow up and find out what it is about life and their position in the world. Heading these two groups were our three leads – Melchior (Andrew Hazzard), Moritz (Akos Armont) and Wendla (Clare Brown). As they experienced their own torment of growing up, they also confronted the mis-happenings and issues of their friends. The cast gave an electrifying performance as the growing teenagers, with most of them playing to their ages. The energy level was high and they performed professionally with some of the more daring and challenging scenes on stage. The singing and dancing looked quite demanding especially when the stage has quite limited space for them to manoeuvre around and it was slanting downward at an angle on the stage front. The numbers were well sung most of the time although at times you do hear broken notes – not that they were not reached, just not crisp enough. But all the ensemble numbers were so well done that they made you want to move along with them. Overall the cast gave a very good performance that kept your rhythm pumping.

Set design wise, it comprises of a huge mobile wooden and metal structure with lots of ladders. So as you would expect, there were a lot of climbing – and I mean a lot – and some of them were done in the dark. Even certain stage exits were above the stage level so actors did have to climb to exit stage. I am sure the stage design passed the OH&S check but you sometimes do sweat for the actors when they did have to climb the ladders quickly to exit from the scene. Lighting was used very smartly to help the structure to reflect different areas or scenarios in the community. They also helped to command some of the more confronting moments in the story.

The score is mainly rock music with a lot of ear catching tunes for the younger generation. So do not expect the more operatic style of singing and songs as exhibited in Phantom of the Opera. As mentioned before, the style of song did match with the theme of the musical perfectly and in fact it will be awkward to replace it with another style. There were some demanding moments, such as one of Moritz arias and considering that most songs were done together with a lot of electrical shot like and vigorous dance moves, they were a lot more demanding than they looked. The live band on stage behind the main stage area delivered a very moving score throughout the whole performance and it was great to see them on stage at the curtain call as without them the story wouldn’t be told in the way it was meant to be.

In all “Spring Awakening” is really a good night out and the production value was very high. STC has to be commended for putting on something different and more in touch with modern theatre and stage instead of sticking to the old school programmes that people had seen for x-trillion times.

iPad: Stud or Dud?

Without a doubt the latest media frenzy is the unveiling of the Apple iPad. Apple had already proved that they can turn ideas into great products with mass appeal. With the first revamp and resurgent of the Mac series computer to MacBook, iPod and eventually iPhone, Apple has gone from strength to strength. But could iPad break into a new market or create a new market? Let us take a closer look at the device.

There is no doubt that iPad is sleeky designed product to fit the bill of image conscious consumers. It looks like an upsize iPad but with the high portability offered by its distant cousin the MacBook Air in terms of its feather weight. The light weight means mobility without testing your body’s endurance, as compared to a lot of other netbooks and notebooks. The glossy touch surface and 9.7 inch screen offers a great visual touch interface that helped made iPhone a household name. Every aspect of its design seems to be flawless.

Software-wise, iPad can run all applications from the Apple Apps store as long as they are designed for iPhone. So now you can play iPhone games on a bigger screen and hopefully with more clarity with the polygons displayed on screen. It adopts the same accelerator and gameplay mechanism like iPhone, so you will be at home with it. The new introduction though is the iBook function. It is very obvious that Apple is keen to compete in the eBook market, which is growing quite steadily in recent years. Amazon’s Kindle is the current market leader with other companies like Sony also providing similar devices. The major difference of iBook from Kindle is that it provides a more beautiful screen on a simulation interface i.e. you flip the virtual pages (finished with a virtual page turning tone). 5 major publishers are already on board and Apple is keen to become the market leader as Steve Jobs said, “we are riding on the shoulders of Amazon’s success”. However, as enticing as it looks, iBook store is only available to the States at this point, so it will be less of a credible function to early adopters in other regions. iPad also supports the latest version of iWork from Apple. iWork is basically Apple’s struggling answer to MS Office. So it seems obvious that Apple is betting on iPad to popularise its own office applications. iWork itself is a nice bundle of software but for people who are actually using MS Office on Mac there seems to be little reason to shift over as there are still a number of compatibility issues of file formats between the two. Another major drawback is that despite you can browse the Internet with iPad, it doesn’t support Adobe Flash. That’s something really beyond comprehension as why would Apple not support something that is regarded as standard in the field? Boil down to this then it seems that iPad is just a bigger version of iPod Touch without a lot of new stuff to offer.

On the hardware side of things, iPad really didn’t offer much. It didn’t have a camera as iPhone does, it lacks USB ports that you can transfer files over (unless iPad can automatically synchronise with your Mac wirelessly), it doesn’t have a DVD drive so you can only watch things from your iTune collection (if you have one). I heard that you can dock the device on a separate keyboard instead of using the touch onscreen keyboard, but then to do that Apple will charge you separately. All these in fact will limit the appeal of the device as file transfer and synchronisation is no longer user friendly. Just imagine that you find something interesting, you have to use the iPhone (if you have one) to take the picture and then transfer it over to the iPad wirelessly in order to look at it on a big screen. Would majority of consumers do that? Previous Apple devices thrived on their easy to use interfaces. But now with such a clumsy set up, could iPad still appeal to their customers?

Function wise, Jobs said it is better than notebooks and netbooks. However, iPad actually has a lot less function than those devices as you cannot install software onto the iPad as you do with your netbooks and notebooks. That makes it a lot less versatile in terms of functionality. Maybe Apple didn’t want to create something that competes with its MacBook series, but then Job’s statement will be just comparing apples with oranges, which is quite misleading for the audience. If iPad is just an upsized iPod Touch with an eBook reader, its fate really depends on whether eBook is going to take off for Apple. For people who already have a Kindle and an iPhone, the appeal of iPad quickly diminishes unless they just want everything Apple. However, even so, the incompatibility of both eBook formats mean that people will need to spend a fortune of re-establishing their eBook collection on iPad, provided the iBook store actually holds those titles. Further, I am really sceptical about whether consumers who already have an iPhone would want to carry an additional device around with similar if not less functionality.

At this point iPad hasn’t really shown that it is a real winner yet. With all the issues that Apple may need to address eventually, iPad’s uptake could still be just restricted to hardcore Apple fans. It could become an alternative to netbooks or notebooks only if it can sync with Apple’s MacBooks, making it a must have on-the-go partner for both work and leisure. But even that it will mean consumers will have to be locked in to Apple products and no more. So it comes back to the question of apart from Apple fanboys, where is the market? The current fanfare and fireworks for iPad in the media are really merely fanfare and fireworks. The main issue here is: would iPad be a sustainable product after the initial thunder? Or it will just quietly go back to the back seat like MacBook Air?

Australian Ads - are they really value adding?

Was walking along the main street earlier today. A bus stopped by at the lights. I looked over. On the side of the bus it wrote: “It can take 400 tons of food in one day. That’s a busload of kids!” The ad was then signed off by The Australian Wild Life Park in the city.

Now no offence, but when did kids became food equivalent for Jurassic leftovers and also, when did people start thinking that “Let’s attract kids to come and see it because it can eat busloads of them!” I find it absurd that an ad that is supposed to attract kids to go to the Wild Life Park actually uses wordings against the same target group. Or maybe the current generation of kids has now evolved into a state that they find things that will potentially cost their lives a lot more intriguing and just telling them what they are?

Been talking about how badly designed a lot of Australian ads are for many years and we still haven’t seen any improvements in the ads that ambush us everyday asking for our attention. I liked the program “The Gruen Transfer” on ABC, but then the focus of that program is more about the fun side of advertising. What I am more interested is “Why the hell would the creators think that certain certain ads will actually sell the products?”

One of the most commonly used themes in Australian ads is SEX. I have to put that word on caps lock because those ads scream sex in such a loud way that you sometimes forgot what they were trying to sell. I mean from ads about that particular “Nasal Delivery Technology” to NSW Government’s no-speeding public announcement, sex is everything and everywhere. The funny thing about that no-speeding public announcement was that they focus on guys who speed, so “Nobody thinks big of you”, of course referring to their sacred temple of genitalia. Now may I remind our constantly shuffling NSW Government that not only guys speed. If they have actually done their homework, they would know that there are quite a proportion of female drivers who speed. I do know a girl who lost her license in the first year after she got it just because of speeding alone. I don’t know whether females think that a big vagina is a good thing or not, but if they actually prefer a smaller and more delicate genitalia, then maybe this is an encouragement for female drivers to speed so they can keep down there “small” and tight – as that’s the way the man eater Samantha Jones preferred.

Also, if you are lucky to be home between 4.30pm and 6.30pm in Australia, I will recommend you to turn down the volume of your TV or surround sound system. This is the time when all the yelling ads are shown. I lost my memories of these ads completely until I live in Sydney. I was stunned by the frequency of these “COME BUY BUY BUY WE ARE 30% CHEAPER THAN HELL!” on the Australian TV. Yeah certainly when Sydney is less densely populated and the suburb is quieter, this will work or maybe these ads did sound like music in the air. But in modern Sydney where more people are packed up like sardines in apartment blocks, certainly we can give this format of advertising a miss right? What good to the world will these yelling do? They completely turn me off going to those shops and at the same time adds to the carbon footprint of my TV because it has to use more electricity to deliver these thunderous messages.

Adding to these are some of those “What the” ads. Ads that even after they are finished, you still don’t really know what they are trying to sell. Or the revelation came in a way that they prompt you to go back to the universities to obtain a PhD and still couldn’t understand the relationship between the ads and the products. One of the classic ones I remember was and ad about a young couple making out in a wheat field (yes SSSSEEEEEEXXXXX!) and during the process the girl took a jar of honey and put the honey on the guy, first bit by bit and then more and more and eventually pouring the whole jar on him. At the end of the ad, it said something like “no taste is enough” with an ending scene of Honey Soy Chicken chips. I remember when I first saw the ad in the cinema, I turned around to my friend and said “What the?” and then around me were people laughing and saying “That’s such a stupid ad!” Yes! We are all surrounded by these ads day in day out. Sometimes watching these ads are so exhausting that you just want to turn the TV off or leave the cinema until the real feature is on.

The other much talked about ad was the Commonwealth Bank ones. Now I never like that bank but then I won’t mind them putting some decent ads on to entice people like me who left them because of their bad services. Anyway, there was a series of ads that at the beginning they put on a mock up big budget “Raiders of the Lost Ark” kind of main feature (there are several versions of that too) and at the end, it cut to the boardroom showing an advertising company trying to sell the idea to the Bank for a campaign. One of the Board Members said, “Why don’t we just tell them?” Now as “ingenious” as it looks, my reaction was exactly: “why don’t you actually tell me what services you are selling instead of an empty ad like that?” Yeah we sure remember the ad, but did it add kudos point to the Bank? No.

It seems like I have lots of complaints about Australian ads. To be fair, not all ads are bad. I quite like the skim yogurt ad about taking in calories because of careless eating and you don’t have a choice of where it goes. The actors surely did a great job because every time I saw that ad, it still puts a smile on my face.

However, is the once in a blue moon kind of good ad enough to salvage this raging sea of bad advertising? Sure there are some really creative and talented people out there, so what were they doing that eventually flooded the market with corpses of bad advertising? Even worse is that some recycled ads from overseas that were made (and I saw) years ago are still better than a lot of new ads we have now on TV and in cinemas. Maybe the advertising bosses think that it doesn’t matter but how are they going to explain themselves when a campaign failed flat? Or maybe it is just a way to keep the Australian economy less rely on consumer market thus helping Australia to cruise through the Global Financial Crisis with less scratches.