Sunday Arts Magazine

18 Sep 2016

Motormouth&Suckface, Our Man in Havana, Mapplethorpe, Blank Tiles

Arts, Books, Comedy, Music, Performing Arts, Sexuality, TV & Film, Visual Arts

We have more interviews with Fringe artists today.  Brendan, surprisingly, saw few films this week with the main one being Perfect Strangers–the opening night film of the Italian Film Festival. It is a dramedy, with a dinner party full of long-time friends agreeing to share any communications from their mobiles. Well-shot and riveting–4 stars.  Brendan also talks about his experience of 2 exhibitions–both finishing today (18Sept).  First Scorsese at ACMI –an understated but good exhibition about Scorsese’s life and work.  Brendan also snuck in last minute to the Degas Exhibition at NGV.  He thought it was beautiful. David went along to the media launch for next year’s Winter Masterpieces at the NGV which is Van Gogh. David is very excited about it; as is the NGV because these are pieces from private collectors and different galleries. David talks about the man and his paintings. David was also at the opening of the John Olsen exhibition at the NGV Ian Potter Centre at Fed Square and thought it wonderful.

Special guests this week are:

15:23 to 32:09 mins–Composer and Lyricist Anthony Crowley is here to talk about his musical-comedy Motor-mouth Loves Suck-face; An Apocalyptic Musical on from 6 to 23 October at Chapel off Chapel.  Anthony talks about being inspired by Jesus Christ Superstar and also old-school musicals when young, and how he’s now selling his new musical to the public by releasing some songs and using words like Armageddon and zombies and satire. He gets income through this work but supplements it by writing plays, directing, teaching and acting. Motor-mouth Loves Suck-face has teenagers at a party discovering the world is ending that night, and that they can only escape through a cosmic wormhole that will open just before the end. Unfortunately a zombie apocalypse gets in the way! Anthony describes it as a lot of fun, with a satirical edge.    He also describes the themes and modern issues which the musical represents as well as the target audience. As an aside, Anthony mentions he worked with composer Henry Krieger (Dream Girls)as his lyricist for a project involving Kristen Chenoweth !! Our hosts force him to elaborate.

33:23 to 48:27 mins–Baritone Michael Jones is part of Lyric Opera who are putting on the first Australian production of Malcolm Williamson’s black comedy / spy thriller Our Man in Havana which is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.  It’s on at the Atheneum 2, 188 Collins Street Melbourne on 17, 20, 22 and 24 September.  Michael talks about his background and long and colourful singing career, often being in the right place at the right time.  He starts in New Zealand and then London, Cambridge’s Kings College Choir, Westminster Abbey choir and then travelling the world with the Choral Scholars. Then positions at the University of Queensland and Trinity College at Melbourne Uni, doing a variety of work involving singing and choirs. Our Man in Havana is an opera never performed in Australia before. Based on Graham Greene’s book it is a spy spoof and black comedy set in the 1950s, about a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana who gets a job with MI6 because he needs the money to support his daughter’s expensive tastes. Michael talks about the opera–a tour de force– and the Australian composer who he’d worked with in the 1970s. He also describes some of the plot and characters, the Atheneum, and how opening night went.

David MCed last night (17 Sep) for the Melbourne Rainbow Band’s concert For Weddings (and a Funeral). He talks about the beautiful classical pieces played in the concert and our world-class band itself.  Plus an interesting anecdote on the connection between the Wedding March and Shakespeare.

55:49 to 1:16:39 mins–James Hewison is  Head of Film Programs at ACMI and is here to talk about various events but mainly the doco Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures on from 22 September to 11 October exclusively at ACMI with a special Q&A session (about Mapplethorpe, controversy and censorship) with renowned photographer Bill Henson on 25 September. James has been at ACMI for 5 months.  Previously he worked as a Film Consultant, including doing some ongoing film curating for MONA Museum, in Hobart, for Dark MOFO. He also did the theatrical distribution of films for Madman and was the executive director of MIFF. At present, ACMI have a number of docos happening including Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie and also Wiener–about a US Congressman and a sex scandal. James goes into detail about the Mapplethorpe doco and provides additional info about the man himself including his relationship with Patti Smith.  Mapplethorpe was a very talented and also controversial photographer who really pushed the boundaries of the artform especially with his S&M photos.  This and the fact that he was uncompromising, and openly gay, really fanned the ire of the Christian Right.  The feature-length doco covers this along with his family-life, friends and love-life with numerous interviews and photos.

1:17:05 to 1:30:51 mins–Dylan Cole is the writer and performer of the show Blank Tiles–on at the Lithuanian Club from 16 to 23 September and also part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Dylan has a theatre and comedy background. He’d studied drama at Deakin Uni and has a day-job at the Arts Centre.  Regarding comedy, he started with stand-up but found he was more suited to character comedy which also fit better with theatre. In this play Dylan plays a scrabble world-champion who is suffering from memory loss.  The idea for the play germinated from Dylan’s love of words, puns and neuroses and he thought Board games fit these criteria. He researched tournament scrabble and the unusual contestants–many of whom spent days memorising words. From there he thought about what could happen to a contestant to make it a story and came up with memory loss–a devastating loss for this activity and a very dark subject. Memories shape us and form our identity so what happens when we lose them? Adding comedy to this is walking a fine line and Dylan discusses how he did this with our hosts. He likes to premiere his shows at Fringe because the audiences are so generous.

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