UPDATE: Pertinent to the discussion nicely bouncing along in the comments here: a speech by the distinguished American critic Eric Bentley on theatre criticism. He would be quite happy if newspaper criticism didn't exist. Thanks to George Hunka for the pointer.

When critics go to the theatre, it is a given that they have differing responses. One man's meat, as the proverb runs, is another man's poison. And this is as it should be: theatre audiences are as various as the theatre itself. But sometimes there are extremes that ought to be noted.

On Monday night I went to see a show of such earnest, bum-aching, unparalleled awfulness that, after canvassing the general dismay, I decided that it was kinder not to review it; there seemed to me little profit in trashing a small, hard-working independent theatre company. The show was Theatre@Risk's Requiem for the 20th Century, written by Tee O'Neill in collaboration with the company and directed by Chris Bendall. It is Theatre@Risk's largest (I won't say most ambitious) production so far, and it seemed to me a mistake of disastrous proportions. I couldn't understand how a work of such intellectual and theatrical naivetie had made it to the stage.

However, I opened the Age yesterday and found out that tyro critic Cameron Woodhead has exceeded even my low expectations of him. He devoted a complete rave to Requiem for the 20th Century. It is, says Woodhead, "the sort of inspiring work, unapologetically ambitious, bursting with the humour and tragedy of life writ large, that might just rewire your sense of what local theatre can achieve".

This was, gentle reader, the worst show I have seen for a long time. I have been thinking about it all week. It was a kind of Theatre in Education whistlestop tour of 20th century history, only of such superficiality that no year 11 syllabus would stand for it. It induced the kind of despair only bad theatre can; I remember glancing at my watch after what felt like five hours and noticing we were only up to 1913. Like Dorothy Parker, I wanted to shoot myself.

I was by no means the only person who left at interval. Life, I thought, is too short to spend another ninety minutes pole-axed by this kind of anguished boredom. Also, I had heard Lorca turned up in the second act. Lorca is one of my favourite poets. After witnessing the bowdlerisation of Walter Benjamin in the first act, I couldn't have stood it. Such things actually, physically, hurt.

I hoped that Bendall - a director I respect - and the rest of the crew at Theatre@Risk would take stock, review how it happened that they had worked so hard and devoted so many hard-won resources on a work of such monumental silliness, and think again.

It may seem somewhat ungenerous to grudge the fact that a show I disliked got a good review. It may seem that I am unfairly picking on Mr Woodhead. It may also seem suss that I am talking about a show on which, after all, I walked out (although, to be honest, if a show is that disastrous by interval, nothing is going to save it). But after I recovered from my sheer astonishment, I found that this review worried me for several reasons.

Firstly, such a review - after all, the Age is what passes here for the "paper of record" - may inoculate the company against the stock-taking to which I referred earlier. Let me make clear that, in my negative reaction, I was by no means in "mutinous isolation" (as has sometimes happened). If I were merely a minority voice in a chorus of effusive approval, I should not comment. But in this case, the general response of the first night audience was as close to unanimous as theatregoers can get. The best that could be said was that it was a brave attempt.

I should note also that if Woodhead had merely written a positive review, I would not have felt moved to say something. It's the fact that he wrote a rave.

Secondly, what about those audience members who, encouraged by the review, head off to the show, only to find their souls shrivelling as they watch? Will they believe, because the review tells them so, that this is the best theatre that our local companies have to offer and just decide, as so many do, that, after all, they don't like theatre?

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, this review betrays the quality of theatre that is being made in Melbourne. As I have said many times, we are witnessing a renaissance: this year I have seen more good to excellent shows than I can count on all my digits. To single out with inappropriate and lavish praise one of the real duds is not only, like the love of God, beyond all comprehension: it is a slap in the face to all the hard working theatre artists out there making brilliant theatre.

The point is that misplaced praise can be as damaging as misplaced spleen. I believe totally in George Devine's exhortation of the "right to fail". Yes, absolutely, a theatre must have that right. Tee O'Neill, Chris Bendall and Theatre@Risk are all capable of much more than this, and such a failure does not compromise this possibility. What worries me is what lessons will - or will not be - be drawn from it.

Read More.....

Charcot by William Glaser, directed and designed by Clare Watson. Lighting by Paul Lim, music and sound design Kelly Ryall. With Miriam Glaser, Chantelle Jamieson and Bruce Kerr (voiceover). Full Dress Productions at the Old Council Chambers, Trades Hall. The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky, directed by John Bolton. Designed by Katherine Chan, costume design Esther Hayes, sound design Gus Macmillan, lighting by Lisa Mibus. With Katherine Bradley, Jamison Caldwell, Gemma Cavoli, Jing-Xuan Chan, Sharon Davis, Soraya Dean, Patrick Flynn, Mick Lo Monaco, Tristan Meecham, Susan Miller, Christine Mowinckel, Eryn-Jean Norvill, Russ Pirie, Julie Wee, Thomas Wren and Ashley Zukerman. VCA Drama Company 2006, Victorian College of the Arts.

I'm getting tired of pleading dubious health. I seem to be playing host to a fascinating variety of gatecrashing micro-organisms, who trash the temple of my body and leave with nary a thankyou as the next team cheerily pulls up in their hotted-up station wagons.

All this is by way of excusing yet another double-barrelled and belated review; but it's true that a succession of colds have been cramping my style recently. My advice to those who would remain germ-free is (a) never have children and (b) if you do, and you can't give them back, lock them in a cupboard so they can't frequent public spaces, like schools or train stations.

But to get down to business... Charcot is the first production by Full Dress Productions, a new company founded by former MTC man David Frazer. And it is a very promising beginning.

Glaser's short (45 minute) play, his first venture into writing for theatre, briefly examines Professor Charcot's studies of feminine hysteria at the Salpêtriére asylum in 19th century Paris. Charcot was one of the foremost physicians of his time, and was famous for his demonstrations at the Salpêtriére amphitheatre. There his hypnotised patients performed their symptoms for an admiring public that attracted, as well as students such as Freud and Tourette, the cream of Paris' fashionable society.

Glaser is principally interested in the idea of madness as performance, how Charcot in fact elicited the symptoms of hysteria from his patients, who obligingly performed as he expected. The play is simply structured, cutting between conversations between two sisters, Margot (Miriam Glaser) and Henriette (Chantelle Jamieson), and their "performances" for Charcot.

Rich subject matter for a play, indeed; and I couldn't help wishing that it had been in more experienced hands. The script is very minimal, and adequate to its modest purposes: but it possesses little of the imaginative or lyrical excess that could really get under the skin of the themes it touches on, such as viciously co-dependent sibling rivalries or the extremities of sexual projection that the diagnosis of hysteria so often expressed in Victorian times.

What makes the show is the other theatrical elements, which are very impressive indeed. Clare Watson's striking design imaginatively exploits the amphitheatre of the Old Council Chambers. There are two playing areas: the first the bedroom of the sisters, a claustrophobic, lushly lit square set backstage, framed by black curtains. It is furnished by a pallet and a dressing table with a three-leaved mirror in which the audience is pallidly reflected, like watching ghosts.

When the sisters perform their hysteria they move frontstage to a larger playing space; their tiny room disappears and black and white images of a 19th century audience is projected on the black curtains while Bruce Kerr's mellifluous voiceover explicates their strange, repetitive movements.

The dramatic effect is heightened by a suggestive and sensual soundscape by Kelly Ryall, and an equally evocative lighting design. These frame the physically challenging performances by Miriam Glaser and Chantelle Jamieson to create a disturbingly fine piece of theatre. If only the words had matched the rest.

The Victorian College of the Arts graduate plays are worth seeing for several reasons: you get to preview the next generation of theatrical talent, the school has the resources to rehearse and mount large-cast plays and to do texts which are otherwise never done here, and they cost hardly anything.

Which is how I found myself at the rather nicely-appointed Dodds St Theatre watching Maxim Gorky's baggy monster of a play, The Lower Depths. Gorky's play is set in a doss house which houses the dregs of 19th century Russian society. The inhabitants are a range of degraded and struggling characters, either disenfranchised urban poor or those from bourgeois or even aristocratic backgrounds who have fallen on hard times. They seldom show each other any pity for their hardships, and mostly treat each other with cynicism and callous or even sadistic cruelty. This unremitting picture of human savagery is leavened by the entrance of Luka (Eryn-Jean Norvill), an eccentric old woman whose compassion brings a short-lived flicker of hope to those she befriends.

The brutal events of the play are interspersed with philosophical meditations on the virtues of truth and reality versus comforting illusions. Its unforgiving realism - especially the reasonless and unexpected unfolding of events - is initially striking, but Gorky can't escape the Russian disease of didacticism, and the play's dramatic urge seriously falters towards the end. Perhaps the most pertinent criticism of The Lower Depths comes from Chekhov, in a 1902 letter to Gorky:

You left out of the fourth act all the most interesting characters (except the actor), and you must mind, now, that there is no ill effect from it. The act may seem boring and unnecessary, especially if, with the exit of the strongest and most interesting actors, there are left only the mediocrities. The death of the actor is awful; it is as though you gave the spectator a sudden box on the ear apropos of nothing without preparing him in any way.

In the capable hands of John Bolton, Gorky's worst isn't so hard to bear: the company goes for it full-tilt in a somewhat Brookian fashion, dragging every last skerrick of theatricality out of what is mostly a rather recalcitrant text. The production looks lovely: Katherine Chan's simple and flexible playing space built on several levels economically suggests the lack of privacy and warren-like claustrophobia of the dosshouse, and focuses the eye to the performers, who are dressed in an eclectic range of colourful, over-the-top costumes by Esther Hayes, reinforced, in the more broadly drawn characters, with crude theatrical make-up.

The play has been cast with a free eye to gender: male characters are transformed into women, with no harm to the play, so far as I could see. It is performed with great brio, which means the first half flies by; and the cast even manages to make a decent fist of the rambling last act. A rather long night of theatre, but by no means unrewarding.

Read More.....

The Nero Conspiracy by Enzo Condello, directed by Beng Oh. Designed by Kat Chishkovsky, lighting by Nick Merrylees, sound by Robert Harewood. With Ian Rooney, Giovanni Bartuccio, Leon Durr, Tani Lentini, Simon Kearney, Steven Cabral, Christopher Broadstock, Josie Scott, Steven Dawson and Lauren Clare. Old Council Chambers, Trades Hall, Carlton, until April 2.

I'm not sure whether The Nero Conspiracy isn't one of the most naive plays I have ever seen. It's as if Enzo Condello simply decided that he wanted to write a Shakespearean tragedy and then went ahead and did it - blank verse, ornate language and all - blithely unaware of all the reasons why such a project might be impossible in the early 21st century.

I don't mean "naive" in any pejorative sense; indeed, a certain naivety, even stupidity, has always seemed to me an important ingredient of art, although it must be balanced by a concomitant sophistication. As Heiner Muller said: "Stupidity is a prerequisite for poets. I am a good example of this... Maybe I have too little fear."

And in fact, one thing that is striking about both this play and its production is its fearlessness. Director Beng Oh, whose work is new to me, meets the challenges of Condello's text head on, and in the process creates a powerful contemporary example of tragic theatre. It may be raw; it may even be, on reflection, something that oughtn't to work at all: but it seems to me that The Nero Conspiracy misses being a triumph by only the narrowest of margins.

The play retells Tacitus's history of a plot by members of Rome's aristocracy to assassinate the corrupt and tryannical Roman emperor Nero. Condello - drawing on Seneca's bloody tragedies, which influenced the Jacobeans as well as Shakespeare - creates a fast-moving and gripping drama. It has to be said that when Condello reaches for Shakespearean metaphorical complexities his language most often falters, falling into mere pastiche: he lacks the linguistic and dramatic finesse of his models. But for the most part, the play is written in muscular, plain blank verse, and it's surprisingly effective and economical.

What makes the play is, I think, Condello's solid sense of dramatic structure, which permits the inexorable unfolding of events to exert its own fatal fascination. Certainly, despite a feeling that the text was sometimes overwritten - especially at the end, where the powerful climax and denouement are muffled by the inclusion of three or four minutes of unnecessary dialogue - I was never bored.

Beng Oh's production is exemplary, attaining moments of authentic grandeur and horrible beauty. His sense of orchestration occasionally falters - it is a fine line he is treading here - but for the most part his direction is sure and compelling. He uses the simplest of resources to create a visual language drenched in the dark sensual splendour of Renaissance painting, highlighted by the operatic music which largely constitutes the sound. The wonderful opening scene, in which each character enters one by one and sits at a table draped with a white cloth, is for example clearly based on Da Vinci's The Last Supper.

But the major visual inspiration for the design is the dramatic painting of human form by Caravaggio, and here the lighting and design are crucial. The most important element is a plain red curtain that can be drawn across the middle of the stage, and many scenes are played against its vivid folds. The set is very simple: props are ordinary household objects, costumes neutrally contemporary, suggesting rather than illustrating the milieu of Ancient Rome. Nick Merrylees' expressive lighting enacts a lush chiaroscuro across the human forms on stage and makes the most of Kat Chishkovsky's design, which exploits the classic Victorian architecture of the Old Council Chamber space to its full.

But this would be mere framing if it were not for the high quality of the performances, which almost without exception meet the complex emotional and technical demands of this play. The scenes enacting human brutality are among the most effective I have seen in a theatre. This is, after all, a theatre of cruelty: Seneca's tragedies gave birth to Shakespeare's sadistic tragedy Titus Andronicus and the blood-drenched extremities of Jacobean drama, and Beng Oh picks up this tradition with an almost ascetic directness: it is the restraint which makes these scenes so potent.

The rape of the slave woman Epicharus (Tania Lentini) by Nero (Giovanni Bartuccio) early in the play is only surpassed by her torture, which is almost unwatchable. Violence of this extremity is very difficult to do well on stage: it is too easy for it to slip into the grotesquely comic. Here it is unambiguously horrifying, as if you were watching the real thing. This effect is not due to any particular gore on stage: it results from the ingenious manipulation of an audience's imaginative capacity, and some totally committed acting.

But tragedy is of course about pity as much as terror, and there is plenty of that as the characters in this tragedy struggle with events which they are powerless to resist or control as Rome's political climate darkens into slaughter. The final scenes between Seneca (Ian Rooney) and his wife Paulina (Josie Scott) manage to reach an extremity of pathos which is genuinely moving. And Seneca's suicide, the climax of the play, is at once sombre, grand and desolate.

Theatre of this imaginative ambition is rare anywhere, and it's worth seeing The Nero Conspiracy for that alone. I can't help feeling that this is at once one of the most peculiar and most arresting plays I will see this year. And I will watch Beng Oh's future development with enormous interest.

Bookings: Trades Hall, 9513 9363

Read More.....