See article in its original context here by Meagan Welsh for Melbourne.Arts.Fashion.

★★★★

Presented as part of the 2015 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival’s Cultural Program Project Series, this world premiere prequel to Reid’s seminal Australian play Codgers, continues the tradition of war time larrikinism and mateship in this delightfully heartwarming romp.

Young & Jackson centres around two young seamen – the energetic, immature and feisty Jimmy (Jacob Machin) and his just slightly older, more focussed and steadfast ship mate Keith (Charlie Cousins) – who are currently on leave from the Navy and shored up in Room 24 of the iconic Melbourne hotel Young & Jackson. Using it as base camp as they sample the delights that war-time Melbourne has to offer, they fit in dances and attending the races between planning their latest skit, “Good Night Nursie”, as members of the Navy’s Concert Party troupe.

While out gorging themselves with the culinary treats found in China Town one night, they meet the intriguing Lorna (Gabrielle Scawthorn), a young ‘Rosie the Riveter’ in training, who’s not backwards in coming forward with her physical affection, determined to do anything she can to ease a young soldier’s path through the dark world of combat. Emotionally distant, she hides a dark past relationship behind fancy clothes, a quick wit and strong ability to improvise. The men fall quickly and swiftly in lust with her; Jimmy employing a serious of near embarrassing flirtatious moves while Keith supplies the black market liquor. They set up a series of fortnightly dates, choosing to meet underneath the clocks at Flinders Street train station, where a wager is put in place between the shipmates as to whether their new paramour will come back for Date #2.

See article in its original context here by Theatre Alive.

Once upon a time in Romania, Aaron Orzech and his girlfriend met a strange and powerful man named Victor Bergman. The next day, he married them in the village of Voroneț. By the third day, he was gone, but for days and weeks and months afterwards he haunted Aaron’s life.

From that encounter comes The Collected works of Victor Bergman. We caught up with Aaron, in the lead-up to the premiere season at fortyfivedownstairs…

Tell us a bit about The Collected works of Victor Bergman. How did the piece come about?

The Collected Works of Victor Bergman has its genesis in an encounter I had in 2009 while backpacking in Romania. My girlfriend and I met an older man, named Victor Bergman, with whom I became very close.

Within three days of our first meeting, he had convinced us to get married, presided over our wedding, and deserted us. This real-life story was the catalyst for our show.

As we worked on the show, co-director Romanie Harper and I began to find all sorts of strange parallels between my relationships with Victor Bergman, and Brian Lipson (my fellow performer in the show). These centered around notions of ritual, masculine mentorship, storytelling, and the passing on of wisdom from an older man to a younger one.

The work we have created is a cumulative fantasy. It’s drawn from the dreams, nightmares and real-life stories which the encounter with Victor Begrman has provoked in every member of The Family.

See article in its original context here by Cameron Woodhead for The Age. ★★★★ My Life in the Nude: Maude Davey shines in clever burlesque I’ve sat through a spate of underwhelming shows lately, and needed something to lift my spirits,…

See article in its original context here by Cameron Woodhead for The Age.

Larrikin Ensemble’s ‘Boy Out of the Country’ crackles with Aussie idiom and wit

Felix Nobis’ Boy Out of the Country is a tale of sibling rivalry and family secrets, of nostalgia for the lost world of childhood and confronting the reality of rapid social change. It’s a play infused with the vitality of Aussie idiom and melodrama that crackles with understatement and wit, and has been brought to life by a talented cast of actors. There’s a lot to admire.

See article in its original context here by Tony Reck for Real Time Arts.

The wrath of Plath

In staging Barry Dickins’ fantastical script about Sylvia Plath’s suicide, director Laurence Strangio, contracts the expansive 45 Downstairs warehouse space into an intimate pocket; one situated before a foreboding barred window. Imaginatively transposed to London, England, February 11, 1963, the audience is further seduced by an attention to detail that often characterises Strangio’s directorial efforts.

Mattea Davies’ design is a microcosm of Sylvia Plath’s mental duress: punitive order set amongst emotional chaos, and accentuated by a Shakespearean storm that, apparently, was the worst ever recorded at that time in England. Thankfully, centre-stage is not consistently occupied by a self-gratifying human presence; instead there is a gas oven inside which a luminous pilot light reminds the audience that this appliance is both heater and exterminator. Plath was arguably of Jewish descent and, as in history, her grasp on life is as tenuous as the arbitrary decision that underpinned the Holocaust. Sylvia Plath will die tonight: this will be the celebrated poet’s last night on earth.

See article in its original context here by Kathy Evans for The Sydney Morning Herald.

George Bernard Shaw defined patriotism as ”a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world, because you were born in it”, but musician Tania Bosak has always suspected there is much more to it than that.

Growing up in Australia, she believed she was the daughter of Yugoslav immigrants. All that changed on an ordinary day in 1991 when she came home to be told by her parents that she was, in fact, Croatian. The Yugoslav wars had broken out with bitter conflicts erupting between different ethnicities and feelings of nationalism were running high.
It came as a shock to Bosak, then 24, though she had some awareness of a secrecy that shrouded the family’s past.
Gradually stories began to emerge. Her musician father, she learnt, had defected from the former Yugoslavia to Belgium in 1958 along with two other men, while on tour with his folk band. Dispirited by the poverty and lack of opportunities under communist rule; dazzled by the freedom they witnessed in other countries, shortly before they were due to return, they went into hiding for three months.

See article in its original context here by Elizabeth Quinn for Weekend Notes.

See article in its original context here by Nick Jones for Pop Culture Y.

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned”
– William Congreve

Which is certainly true of classical Greek mythology; a typical tale (I think about 98% of them) begins with Zeus committing a dalliance (to put it mildly) much to the chagrin (to again put it mildly) of his wife Hera, who will then seek to bring about some sort of appropriate revenge (“appropriate” in the sense that revenge is owed, but frequently inappropriate in terms of proportion). While a sane couple might seek counseling or a divorce, their exploits make for what I’m pretty sure was the time-period’s equivalent of Jerry Springer.

Live Acts On Stage from Michael Gow, presented by Four Letter Word Theatre and directed bySarah Tabitha Catchpole, is the story of the journey of Orpheus, legendary musician, poet and prophet, who famously tried to bring his wife back from the underworld. Also, Zeus and Hera having a fight, but so is every one of those stories.

Michael Gow’s LIVE ACTS ON STAGE Revised for Four Letter Word Theatre   Seventeen actors. Over forty roles. Confronting Entertainment.     Part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Four Letter Word Theatre presents Australian Playwright Michael Gow’s bawdy, irreverent and…

The R E Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Awards are designed to foster Victoria's theatre industry by providing support to Victorian-based writers to develop their play scripts. Over the past 7 years the R E Ross Trust have produced some wonderful new…

See article in its original context here. FEET arched, tendons stretched and backs to the wall, Kate Denborough and Gerard Van Dyck are out to amaze us in a new exhibition of physical theatre Flesh and Bone. And this dynamic duo…

See article in its original context here. LIKE the angels in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, the characters played by Kate Denborough and Gerard Van Dyck can choose their sex or be both at once. Their sexual identities are changeable;…

Image 1:  Park Sung Soo, Garden Unique Area, 1303 x 1620 mm, ink on paper, 2007 Image 2:  Park Sung Soo, Garden Unique Area 5, 1303 x 1620 mm, ink on paper, 2007 Image 3: Park Sung Soo, Garden Unique Area…

What better way to usher in the festive season than with a shared exhibition opening. small gallery: Between 4 & 5 Allison Jonas Young Upon a background of bare timber, tiny jewel-like droplets of metallic paint are intricately articulated. Complex…

‘Michael James Manaia’, a one man show from New Zealand on at fortyfivedownstairs as part of the Melbourne Festival. This is a play written a couple of decades ago which reportedly had a big impact in New Zealand. It’s a…

Sinead Stubbins
City Weekly
28/06/2012

Jim McNeil was an armed robber, a violent ex-prisoner – and one of the most important playwrights Australia has ever seen.

Sentenced to 17 years in prison after shooting a police officer in the late 1960s, McNeil began writing plays for the amusement of fellow inmates.

Now almost 40 years after he was released from Bathurst Correctional Complex, two of his most influential plays, The Chocolate Frog and The Old Familiar Juice, will be performed in his home city of Melbourne.

See the review in it’s original context here.

Finucane & Smith’s Burlesque Hour is now a winter institution in Melbourne.

Bringing together guest artists and regular performers, it’s a collection of acts as burlesque is meant to be: clever, subversive, surprising and bawdy.

See the review in it’s original context here.

Follow the fairy-lit stairwell down and you come to the basement theatre of fortyfivedownstairs, tonight outlandish with scarlet oriental lamps and sumptuous drapes. The staff are glamorous, the crowd fervent with anticipation. This evening this room will be the court of Melbourne’s queen of burlesque, Moira Finucane.

See the review in its original context here.

Burlesque gets a bad rap sometimes because let’s face it – the majority of performance these days is unimaginative strip tease. Enter The Burlesque Hour, Finucane and Smith’s rotating ragtag troupe of circus performers, cabaret and performance artists. This is what burlesque should be – performance art that’s challenging, provocative, satirical and at times deeply discomforting.

Take a look at this promotional video for The McNeil Project, produced by Wattle We Do Next and opening in our theatre space on July 4. Find out more about The McNeil Project here.  

Cameron Woodhead reviews Far Away for The Age.

See the review in its orginal context here.

Far Away, by Caryl Churchill, SaySIX theatre and Lil’ Artistes, fortyfivedownstairs, until May 13.

The title of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away is a provocation. Its dystopian nightmare might seem far out – only Churchill could dream up a theatrical world that combines totalitarianism and, ah, millinery – but it is also ‘far in’. However weird it seems on the surface, this is a sinister, disturbing and blackly comic diagnosis of an all too familiar way of living.

International cabaret kamikaze sensation and 'cabaret diva of the highest order' (The New York Post), Meow Meow joins us downstairs for a string of special guest appearances in The Burlesque Hour: The Glory Box. Joining the acclaimed Finucane & Smith…

Cameron Woodhead reviews The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet for The Age.

***.5 / 4 stars

Zoey Dawson’s all-female Romeo and Juliet heralds the arrival of a fresh and exciting theatremaker.  Her version might flummox traditionalists: the play is condensed into ninety minutes, the role of Romeo becomes a tag-team affair, and physical comedy and choric effects are liberally deployed.  Yet this vigorous adaptation elucidates the character of Juliet like no other.

Erin James
AussieTheatre.com.au
24/2/2012

See the article in its original context here.

Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs is celebrating its 10 year anniversary as a haven for emerging artists and independent theatre this weekend. We caught up with Co-Founder and Artistic Director Mary Lou Jelbart to discuss the last 10 years, the success of the enterprise and the upcoming Anniversary Showcase tomorrow night.

10 years ago, fortyfivedownstairs was a closed-down contemporary art gallery which was, as Mary Lou Jelbart says, “too significant and too beautiful to disappear and become offices”.

Not content to see such a creative space go to waste, the former ABC Arts reviewer and journalist set about making the space available for independent emerging artists and performers to utilise in the centre of Melbourne.

The Age Annabel Ross 07/02/2012 See the article in its original context here. In contrast with her past shows, motherhood seems a quite conventional topic for photographer Morganna Magee. The sometime newspaper photographer has shot showgirls, residents of the bushfire-ravaged…

Footscray Star
Charlene Gatt
07/02/12

See the article in its original context here.

WEST Footscray artist Paola Balla has been shortlisted for a Victorian Indigenous Art Award.

Ms Balla is one of 20 artists in the running for more than $50,000 in prizes, with awards announced at an exhibition at Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs next month.

She was shortlisted for two pieces – a photo called Kaden Boy, and a photo and video called Sacred Ibis.

Check out this interview with the team behind the upcoming Leggings Are Not Pants - a great look behind the scenes of what promises to be a captivating circus-theatre show. a premier event of the 2012 Midsumma Festival.