Seen outside a shop for camping supplies in Hawthorn (some time ago, so sadly I can't supply a photo):

This is the winter of our discount tent!

King Lear by William Shakespeare, directed by Brian Lipson. Set design by Noami Wong, costumes by Jessica Daly, lighting design by Tom Willis, A/V design by Martyn Coutts. With Ben Hjorth, Celia Mitchell, Julia Markowski, Joanne Trentini, Brendan McCallum, Anthony Winnick, Gerard Lane, Cameron Moore, Brett Christian, Stuart Bowden, Tim Ross and Grant Foulkes. Victorian College of the Arts Company 2007 @ Space 28, 28 Dodds St, Southbank until November 6. Bookings: online or 9685 9234

A student production of King Lear is the sort of prospect that generally makes a critic mutter hasty excuses and flee for the exit. I can’t think of a play less hospitable to youthfulness and more likely to expose its performers to the consequences of biting off more than they can chew. One has premonitions of adhesive beards, overblown gestures and a general sensation of creeping embarrassment and boredom.

But a VCA student production directed by Brian Lipson is another thing altogether. VCA shows are always worth a look – they have the resources, human, imaginative and material, to mount ambitious theatrical experiments that are impossible in other venues. It's worth noting here that in repertoire with the Lear season are productions of Ibsen’s A Doll House, directed by Daniel Schlusser, and Yes, adapted from the film by Sally Potter and directed by Tanya Gerstle. I can't make Yes, and won't see A Doll's House until Saturday, so I'm alerting you now: if you miss them, don't blame me.


When I saw that Lipson had chosen to direct this play for Company 2007, I was consumed by curiosity. Whether it worked or not, it was sure to be interesting: Lipson is one of the most restlessly intelligent theatrical imaginations in this country, and his VCA production of Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker was one of my highlights of 2006. And while I don’t think this production quite reached the dizzy heights of The Skriker, it was pretty damned impressive. In terms of liveliness, humour, imagination, passion and – perhaps most interestingly – fidelity to the text, it beat the much hyped RSC production hollow, and at a tenth of the price.

Lipson’s conceit is to stage King Lear as a drama of contemporary celebrity culture. As he says in his director’s notes, noting the premiere of King Lear before James I in 1603, “the very public nature of the humiliations of Cordelia, Kent and Lear in the early part of the play remind me strongly of the kind of thing that happens so publicly nowadays in a TV show like Jerry Springer or Judge Judy. In addition, most of the characters in King Lear would have been perceived by their first audience as ‘celebrities’.… There is a strong element of schadenfreude in seeing the glamorous disgrace themselves that is not normally apparent in modern productions.”

As Bell Shakespeare has demonstrated so often, it is wise to be cautious about contemporising Shakespeare: it seldom works. The usual effect is to jam contemporary “relevance” uncomfortably onto the text, like an ill-fitting suit that gets more and more crumpled as the play winds up to its climax. One that indutibly works is Richard Eyre’s Richard III, starring Ian McKellen, in which the action is transposed to a fantasy 1930s Fascist Britain: the metaphor is at once loose and profound enough to escape the trap of literalness. In some ways, King Lear reminded me of that adaptation, but here the metaphor goes deeper, into the nature of performance and spectacle itself.

Lipson has elected to perform the entire text (it’s usually judiciously edited for performance), with brief intervals between the five acts. Aside from making this a long evening (four and a half hours), it makes you very aware of the structure of the play, and changes its focus and balance: minor characters and incidents are given more emphasis, and the texture of the play is much more various. One interesting aspect is that the double narrative of family betrayal is foregrounded. Edmund (Tim Ross) is visible on stage for the entire play; when he is not performing, he sits slumped at a table on the end stage, a sinisterly glamorous avatar over the action. Lipson’s endlessly imaginative direction, which surely uses every inch of Space 28 (and quite a lot of the space outside the theatre), gives this extra complexity vivid life. By the end of this densely-textured, intriguing production, I felt I had really seen the play.

When you enter the theatre, it’s decked out as if for an awards ceremony. It’s filled with circular tables, each with a table-cloth and speccy centrepiece – a triangle representing the kingdom – decked with candles. At one end is a stage, on which are more tables, and a microphone. A man with a digital camera roams the room, videoing audience members and actors in the dressing rooms. Their images are projected onto huge screens either side of the space. There’s a bar to the side where you can buy wine. The protagonists are formally dressed “celebrities”, and enter like stars coming up the red carpet, with the video our voyeur, practically peering up their noses.

Lear's (Ben Hjorth) division of his kingdom between his daughters is performed as an Oscar acceptance speech, with Goneril (Celia Mitchell) and Regan (Julia Markowski) unfolding pre-prepared speeches. But when Cordelia (Joanne Trentini) refuses to play the game, the action moves off the stage and into the audience: Lear’s angry vanity, played with icy restraint by Hjorth, is here driven by public embarrassment.

This awareness of lives played out in the public gaze is highlighted through the first two acts: the audience is, like the servants and other lowly denizens of the kingdom, fascinated spectators of the downfall of the powerful. (One remembers that in the French court, the public was able to watch royalty dress and eat: their most private moments were open to the public gaze). But gradually the stage is dismantled, until – after a 10-minute interval counted down electronically on the hanging screens – by the third act we are back in a theatre, ranged around three sides of a huge empty space, on which are played out the private outcomes of these earlier public actions. For Act V, the public sorting out of the battles, alarums and intrigues of the previous four, we are back at the tables.

This constant shifting of perspective makes the production fascinating: the action might erupt from beneath your table, or around it, or move outdoors, or overhead among the lights, or in mercilessly intimate close-up on the screens. You can never escape the fact that you are witnessing an act of theatre, a thing of artifice and invention, of masking and unmasking. One convention I especially liked was how actors used the microphone when making asides, stepping out of the imagined reality of the scene and speaking their amplified confidences to the audience.

But how did the play fare through this intricate web of alienation and intimacy? Remarkably well, I thought: the play preserves its tragedy and power. Lear’s appearance with the hanged Cordelia in Act V is a coup de theatre. The unwatchable scene of atrocity when Gloucester’s (Brett Christian’s) eyes are plucked out by Cornwall (Anthony Winnick) was genuinely horrific. In their night attire – luxurious red dressing gown and silky red nightie – Cornwall and Regan (Julia Markowski) are the image of empty, privileged amorality. For them, the transgression of mutilating their host is exciting, hilarious, sexually arousing. The act itself, performed with a spoon that Regan has been using to eat a dainty dessert out of a glass, is brilliant grande guignol, but Gloucester’s scream goes to the heart.

There were longeuers – surprisingly few, however, and mostly in Act IV. And not everything worked: the storm scene. effectively sounded by the Fool (Cameron Moore) at the microphone as ear-splitting beat box effects, suffered from its amplification: at that point for me it was very important to know exactly where Lear was in the theatre, and for a short time I actually thought his lines were being said by the Fool (bold, I thought, in a puzzled fashion, until I tracked Lear down…)

The performances demonstrate the talents, skills and energies of this VCA intake: there’s no moment where you wince and wish for a “proper” cast. I was particularly impressed by Cameron Moore as the Fool – a remarkable performance – Brett Christian’s authoritative Gloucester, Tim Ross’s elegantly predatory Edmund and Joanne Trentini’s interestingly martial (and certainly not low-voiced) Cordelia.

Ben Hjorth was on a hiding to nothing in the role of Lear, which is frankly an impossible ask: age is something no talent can fake. That he pulls it off creditably, in a performance strong on restraint and intelligence, is a considerable tribute; that he manages to generate scenes of real feeling and a moment – the first speech where he pleads not to go mad – where I went cold with sudden, prescient horror, is more than that. It will probably be worth waiting the four decades or so until he’s actually old enough to do the role.

Picture: Ben Hjorth as Lear. Photo: Jeff Busby

Boy, they like a good feeding frenzy up in Sydney. Nicholas Pickard is doing a good job of logging the controversy. Meanwhile, the latest STC savaging comes courtesy of Diana Simmonds in Stage Noise, under the somewhat ambiguous heading "Give Colin the clap". Below is a tidied-up version of my response in TN comments:

I guess the real task is sorting out the valid criticisms from the bile.

Simmonds' comment here - "Moody will be painted as a malcontent in public and as a hero in corners where he will be surreptitiously patted on the back. Meanwhile, his former colleagues who are enjoying the rare experience of a steady job and decent salary will toe the line and work their arses off as they have been for the past couple of years." - is, I know, complete rubbish. The reaction to Moody's comments, especially from those "insiders" critical of the STC, has been dismay. Why? Because it makes it so much harder to address the real issues.

For what it's worth, I think the questions of artistic leadership, the critique of the importation of second-rung directors, the issue of the "treadmill" and the central issue of artistic vision are things that invite discussion. The 2008 program - especially the Actors Company part of it - promises some real vision. And I'm kind of wondering, looking at those hyping Gale Edwards and Rodney Fisher - let's face it, not the most exciting directors on earth - whether this vision might not well be part of the real problem. It seems to me that there are some outspoken voices who want their theatre nice, and want to get rid of adventurers like Kosky, and any excuse will do.

Frankly, I think if they succeed, it will be a tragedy. Do you really want a straight diet of Noel Coward, dead plays and musicals up there? Not that there's anything wrong with Coward, or musicals, in a balanced menu; but I rather think that's the subtext.

A bonus for all you happy readers: Victoria Chance from Currency Press has a special offer to TN readers: if you order Power Plays online before Monday (click here) and write "Theatre Notes" in the comment box, you'll get a 20 per cent discount when the order is processed. Note that the discount won't appear until the order is processed but, Victoria assures us, "we will do it".
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Ms TN is surprisingly well after an intense three weeks of theatre. I put this down largely to having severely edited my diary so that I was only doing one thing. Next month I'm back to wearing three hats (I have to do the rewrite on my novel) but I'm beginning to see the point of a singly-focused life. Not that I seem very capable of it.

But today, swimming out of the post-fest haze, comes Corrie Perkin's preview of Hilary Glow's book Power Plays: Australian Theatre and the Public Agenda in the Australian. (Reviewed in Eureka Street here too: link via Ben Ellis, one of the playwrights discussed in the book, who also include Stephen Sewell, Hannie Rayson, Wesley Enoch and Patricia Cornelius).

The book is on my to-read list, so I can't comment on its substance. But a couple of Glow's comments made me pause. She says that under the Howard Government, theatre companies have been forced to adopt a more conservative repertoire and avoid risk. "I think there has been a change," says Glow, of the past few years. "And it's a change in which it's harder for critically adventurous work, challenging work, to emerge."

There is most certainly a truth in this - I've recently criticised the MTC for its conservative repertoire, which to me appears to emerge precisely from various kinds of risk avoidance. But equally, fresh out of a festival notable for its adventure and challenge, and packed with profoundly political works, ranging from Laurie Anderson's Homeland to Athol Fugard's Sizwe Banzi is Dead to Jérôme Bel's anti-spectacle The Show Must Go On, it strikes me that this is a very partial view. On the contrary, in many places I'm picking up an increasing political thoughtfulness, an increasing engagement with contemporary issues, an increasing sense of urgency among artists to connect, to speak, to make.

What's shifted is the idea that theatre is primarily a socio-political document, and primarily the home of naturalism. The focus has moved from issue-based plays to a more multivalent awareness that representation itself, in this media-saturated world, is a deeply political issue, and that it is not nearly enough merely to state the issues. You can see this awareness, to cite a few examples among many, in productions like Stephen Page's Kin or Nigel Jamieson's Honour Bound, both on at the Malthouse, or in independently produced plays like Hélène Cixous's The Perjured City, or Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur. All of them wholly engaged political works which certainly meet the benchmarks of adventure and challenge.

Criticising the controversial Behzti by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, British critic/blogger Andrew Haydon recently observed: "Plays which 'expose secret, seedy worlds' in my experience often do so at the expense of pretty much anything else that might make a play watchable or indeed, uh, theatrical...The whole play would have sunk utterly without trace were it not for the disgrace of its being rioted off stage." He goes on to comment of "issue-based" plays:

...writers frequently appear to be encouraged to produce what amounts to emotional pornography - moreover: authentic, “urban” or exotic emotional pornography. And lastly, and worse, they appear to be encouraged to do this in a very narrow, restrictive, shallow sort of naturalism, which utterly refuses any use of language, metaphor, or most of the other things that actually make theatre vital.

I'm all for conversation, for art being on the public agenda. But as I said in my review of Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, "political writing, if it is to mean anything, has to reach both higher and lower than the banalities of ideology". That means, among other things, an attention to the form of theatre itself, and not regarding it as simply a vessel into which are poured various worthwhile messages.

Puzzling over the claim that theatre is less political, when it is so manifestly not the case, I suspect that this shift away from naturalistic issue-based plays is the change that Glow notes, and mistakes for a lack of political engagement. And while Glow's book includes a variety of writers, many of whom I admire, it has to be said that some of them have given me the most boring nights I've ever spent in the theatre.

So much for bloggers being scummy scandal-mongers only interested in drawing blood. In Sydney, Nicholas Pickard is scornful of the Fairfax shock-horror beat up on the STC, courtesy of a Colin Moody apparently bent on career suicide. Brief background, and an avalanche of lively comment, on TN here.

In today's papers, the 2007 Melbourne Festival is annointed as a brilliant success. Kristy Edmunds' faith that Melbourne audiences could enthusiastically embrace contemporary art has been amply repaid. Over the past three years, she has patiently built an audience which is prepared to take a punt, to experience work which may be puzzling or challenging, but which might also rewardingly explode their expectations.

They've discovered that this work isn't about making the non-arty feel foolish, but about stimulating curiosity, humour, hunger for beauty, about opening the marvellous within the ordinary. It's about the conversations, the long arguments over a drink by the Yarra, about the skin-tingling buzz before a show, the exhilaration or disappointment afterwards. It's about being alive.

The chorus of praise is pretty much unanimous. According to the Age, "even former critics are lauding this festival". The box office, according to Corrie Perkin's excellent round-up in the Australian, is more than satisfactory:

Final figures won't be released until later this week but, by the third day of this year's festival, it had sold more tickets than the 2006 total of 57,000. This suggests last year's box-office takings of $1.245 million will be eclipsed, and the total attendance of 454,000 people to ticketed and free events will be exceeded.

Yay for Melbourne, you feisty little city you. There will always be naysayers, but I hope the conservative lobby takes proper note of Melbourne's appetite for this work. It's not as if, as some commentators claim, Edmunds has changed her tactics from earlier festivals. Rather, the critics have caught up.

Earlier this year, Age writer Robin Usher - a leading naysayer - said of this year's program that although Edmunds "concentrated on more cutting-edge works in her first two programs, she has included more mainstream artists this year." Au contraire, this year's program had much the same kind of mix as previous years.

Some of us hailed MIAF 2005 as the most exciting program for years. Like this year's program, 2005 and 2006 featured high-profile headline acts such as the Théâtre de Soleil or Robert Wilson, a diverse sampling of international contemporary practice, a large proportion of work from local innovative artists, and so on. However, in its richness, variety and depth, MIAF 2007 was clearly a result of long-term planning. And people - especially young people - have caught on. Something interesting is happening here.

This year's audiences were certainly notable for their diversity, but also for their generosity. Despite a tendency to emphysemic coughing in silent bits and a sprinkling of bad audience behaviour (most notoriously during the first night of Merce Cunningham's Program A, which fortunately I missed), the queues have been long, attention has been warm and applause often ecstatic. Even when, as I thought occasionally, the show didn't warrant it.

And, as a quick scan of my reviews will demonstrate (scroll down), I've had a ball. I didn't like everything I saw, but for me there were only two duds and, conversely, a generous serving of unforgettable work. The menu was various, and the general standard of theatre and dance was very high indeed. It's been a brilliant 17 days. Although, unlike some greedy types I was talking to this weekend, I'm not sorry it's all over, I can't wait for next year. But there's no question that MIAF 2007 will be a hard act to follow.

Melbourne Festival #12

Programs A and B, Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Choreography by Merce Cunningham, musical direction by Takehisa Kasugi. Danced by Jonah Bokaer, Lisa Boudreau, Julie Cunningham, Brandon Callwes, Emma Desjardins, Halley Farmer, Jennifer Goggans, Daniel Madoff, Rashaun Mitchell, Koji Mizuta, Marcie Munnerlyn, Daniel Squire, Robert Swinston and Andrea Weber. State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre.

Program A: Suite For Five (1956), music by John Cage, costumes by Robert Rauschenberg, lighting by Beverly Emmons. eyeSpace (2006), music by Mikel Rouse, design by Daniel Arsham, lighting by Josh Johnson. Biped (1999), music by Gavin Bryars, design by Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser, costumes by Suzanne Gallo, lighting by Aaron Capp.

Program B: Views on Stage (2004), music by John Cage, design by Ernesto Neto, costumes by James Hall, lighting by Josh Johnson. Split Sides (2003), music by Radiohead and Sigur Rós, design by Robert Heishman and Catherine Yass, costumes by James Hall, lighting by James F. Ingalls.

It was a fitting ending to what has been a triumphantly successful Melbourne Festival. As Merce Cunningham emerged on stage last night at the end of Split Sides, a frail figure in his wheelchair, the entire State Theatre rose to its feet, whooping and clapping. It was a totally exhilarating moment: I think everyone there floated out on a cloud of high. I know I did.


I was standing as much out of admiration for this artist who, at 88, has never stopped thinking and wondering over more than half a century of work. Dammit, the man's an inspiration. And Cunningham's residency here was always the jewel in the crown of the 2007 festival. It was a chance to actually see for ourselves a revolutionary and seminal force in modern dance. A bit like going to see Rothko or Pollock at the art gallery, only with the artist himself still working on the painting. How cool is that?

Quite cool, as it turned out. I use the painting metaphor advisedly: I found it absolutely impossible to watch Program A without thinking about painting. De Kooning, Matisse, Gorky... and, insistently, the plastic arts of classical Greece, especially the pottery. And, as with painting, it is a challenge to write about anything as wordless as dance; I fear this review will simply be a long list of associations that floated up while I was watching, transfixed by the dynamic form that was unfolding before my eyes.

Perhaps it was only compensation for this wordlessness that an insistent subtext was the poetry of the New York School - poets like John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Kenneth Koch, even Frank O'Hara. I decided later that this association was a function of the rhythms Cunningham exploits in his choreography, a certain interrupted grace that makes a larger beauty. And I guess also that Cunningham's long artistic partnership with John Cage embodies a certain aspect of New York culture that is practically legend now.

Perhaps it's not surprising that Cunningham's approach to movement and form, so radical and modern then in its dissociation, for example, of music from choreography, looks classical now. This is very clear in the 1956 piece Suite for Five, accompanied by John Cage's minimalist Music for Pianos 4-19, which is absolutely of its time, but still startling in the rigor of its pure movement. It was a series of dances - solos, trios, quintets - each defined from the other by a moment of blackout, which would then lift to reveal the next dancer on the stage as Cage's piano trickled its silence uninterruptedly throughout.

Suite for Five was the acme of style as bare simplicity - no decoration on stage, the dancers in Rauschenberg's citrus-coloured leotards that revealed every contour of their bodies. In its exquisite judgements of spatial relationships it was pure form, pure celebration of the classically beautiful human body. Perhaps this dance will stay with me most, lodging itself next to the poems of HD as an exquisite expression of a certain mode of classically rigorous modernism.

It was followed by eyeSpace, a dance dating from exactly five decades later, that featured the notorious i-Pod shuffles (dutifully picked up from a desk beforehand). At a signal from the conductor, every audience member pressed their button, and was immediately isolated in his or her personal earphones, listening to randomly selected tracks by Mikel Rouse - kitschy salsa music, for the most part, with a sense of subliminal menace.

If you took the i-Pods off, as some rebellious souls did, it revealed an ambient urban soundscape, which could be heard faintly through the headphones for those who kept them on. Much as what happens when you wear headphones on a train or when walking through the city. On stage was what appeared to be a sunken (perhaps post-apocalyptic?) railway station, and the dancers were clad in metallic costumes, rather like escapees from Star Trek. The dance here seemed less sharp to me, even at times distractingly loose, detracting from Cunningham's stern formality.

The last piece of the night, and the most spectacularly beautiful, was Biped, choregraphed to Gavin Bryars's sombre lyricism of low strings and woodwind. In front of the stage was a scrim which I didn't notice at first, so when the first projection - a blue bar - flashed up subliminally, I thought my eyes were playing tricks. This scrim permits Cunningham the full canvas of the stage - onto it are projected abstract drawings of dancers, that pirouette through the air in bright blues, reds and yellows, as well as a series of abtract patterns - lines, sweeping scans that run horizontally or vertically across the stage space, large dots. The virtual dancers were created by motion capture technology, which permits an exact mimicry of human movement, so effectively this piece exploits a double choreography of the projected body and living flesh.

In Biped, the pas de deux is a feature. As the men and women kept combining into strangely beautiful shapes of attraction and repulsion, melding sometimes into a single eight-limbed body, I kept thinking of Plato's story about how the original androgyne was split in two, fated to search eternally for its other half.

Program B, interestingly, didn't make me think of painting at all, although the dances - Views on Stage and Split Sides - were no less visual. Perhaps I had already thought enough about painting, or perhaps these dances focused less on the painterly aspects of space and bodies on a stage and more on the relationships of movement between the dancers. In any case, there was a palpable buzz of excitement beforehand outside the Arts Centre, and a noticeable sprinkling of Sigur Rós fans, there to see their Icelandic heroes. I must say, I couldn't help wondering what they would make of John Cage. I'd still love to know.

Unlike several others, I enjoyed the abstract beauties of Views on Stage, accompanied by a Cage score for piano and violin again notable for its silences. Again there was a classical edge - this time I kept thinking of those statues of Greek athletes or young maidens - reinforced by the short white skirts and bare arms and shoulders of both sexes. Gesture here was almost Egyptian at times, with a ritualistic, hieratic quality.

But the event of the night was, of course, Split Sides. It's introduced by Cunningham and a cast of dice rollers, including Kristy Edmunds and several festival artists, who determine the make-up of the piece. It is, as the title suggests, in two parts, each of them interchangable, and odd or even rolls determine the order of the music, by Sigur Rós or Radiohead, and which backdrops, costumes, lighting designs and dances will come first. Thus, for the mathematicians among you, leading to any number of possible combinations.

In this performance, Radiohead was first, which seemed somehow serendipitious: the electronic urban angst of Radiohead dissolved into the icy fantasies of Sigur Rós. We got the black and white background first, with the coloured, wierdly 70s costumes (reversed in part 2, which follows from the first without pause, to black-and-white costumes against a coloured background). And it was spellbinding, although to be honest I am really not sure why. The bewitching Icelandic electronica of Sigur Rós was accompanied by a strange kind of wooden clockwork sound, as if the stage were a rather anarchic music box, and the dancers themselves the wooden figures come desiringly alive.

Through these two programs, I began to evolve a theory that Cunningham is a master of the pas de deux, though I could be talking through my hat. In fact, I loved the pas de deux in all the works I saw: of all the dance passages, save for an enchanting trio in Suite for Five that made me think of the Three Graces, they were what most compelled me. Through his series of alienating strategies - chance, projections, use of the camera and computer technology - Cunningham strips back gesture and movement to something that at times seems like a pure expression of desire. The kind of thing Matisse can do with a single drawn line. It's probably very Romantic of me to say so, but there we are.

Photograph: Suite for Five. Photo: Tony Dougherty

Melbourne Festival #11

Glow, conceived and choreographed by Gideon Obarzanek. Concept and interactive design system by Frieder Weiß. Original music and sound design by Luke Smiles, additional music by Ben Frost. Dancers: Kristy Ayre, Sara Black, Amber Haines and Bonnie Paskas. Chunky Move @ Chunky Move Studio, until tonight.

After 16 days solid theatre-going, TN is at the point where, when the program announces that a show is "30 mins, no interval", she gives a little skip and thinks hungrily of an early night. Appalling, I know, since this is the surfeit of privilege. But so it is. And Glow demonstrates that the length of a show is no measure of substance.


A collaboration between the endlessly ingenious Gideon Obarzanek and theatrical computer wizard Frieder Weiß, it's a richly detailed dance solo that exploits the technology of motion tracking, permitting the lighting to be responsive to the movements of the dancer's body. Performed on a white square with seating on four sides, it has the intimacy and some of the agon of a boxing arena.

When the lights go down, strips of light flash across the floor and vanish into darkness. And then a dancer, dressed in a simple white costume that suggests scales, scrabbles to the edge of the floor like some exotic sea creature. She writhes, contorts her limbs, utters inarticulate noises, as if she were an entity in the process of becoming.

For all its technological ingenuity, Glow, which is mostly performed on the floor, is an intensely visceral experience. It becomes a fascinating battle between the dancer's body and light and shadow: the luminous patterns enclose her, possess her, stalk her, stake her out. Her movements leave traces that fade out, gorgeous geometrical afterimages of gesture.

She cannot escape the light, because her body is defining and controlling it: it is like trying to escape one's own shadow. At one point as she lies on the floor, the purple strip of light around her body is exactly the shape of a coffin. At another, she is enclosed, even crushed, in moving grids of light. She is scanned and pinned, defined and darkened, or illuminated by auras that follow her every gesture. At times she is absorbed by the patterning, as if she is scarcely human, scarcely there at all; at others, we hear her panting, or the scuffle of her legs on the floor, and are made suddenly and intensely aware of her sensual body.

Perhaps the most compelling sequence is where the writhing dancer leaves body imprints of shadow on the white floor, which then coalesce into inky demons that stalk and repossess her. When the shadow leaps and shrinks into an ordinary shadow under her feet, she screams, and lunges desperately across the floor to rid herself again of her darkness. It is a startlingly nightmarish image, as if we are watching her soul being gobbled up.

For a dance-illiterate like me, it was fascinating to see Merce Cunningham the night before seeing Glow. Obarzanek is almost at the other end of the spectrum: where Cunningham creates form with the classical purity of a Greek vase, Obarzanek's choreography reminds me of the asymmetries and grotesqueness, the complex and unpredictable rhythms, the vulnerabilities, of the human body. The idealism of Cunningham here gives way to a darker but surprisingly humane vision.

Picture: A moment from Glow. Photo: Rom Anthonis

...while we're on the subject of State theatre companies, actor Colin Moody is in the Age today tearing strips off the STC. Moody's parting from the STC's Actors Company was a bitter one, and it's all come out here, with attacks on the Blanchett/Upton duo ("an Oscar for acting is not a suitable recommendation to run the biggest theatre company in the country") and the STC ethos of "office politics" and "hypocrisy".

There's justice in the criticism that Robyn Nevin has imported second-rung British directors. But I'm still baffled by the "observer" logic that the fact that a bunch of actors have a full-time job means that others are deprived. The pie's more complex than that, people.

The proof, for us audience types, is in the pudding. As I said earlier this week, the STC's 2008 season is looking very impressive. And "industry insiders" (to take a leaf from the Fairfax book), while critical of many aspects of the process there, are generally up-tempo and optimistic about the new STC leadership.

It's hard to see much in Moody's criticisms beyond a great deal of bile. Which is bad, of course, but not germane. TN's twitching journalistic antennae are still telling her that the real story is elsewhere, beyond the STC.

I know that the Melbourne Festival has been the epicentre of the universe lately, but a couple of things have banked up while I've been hobnobbing with Merce and the lads. (Wowee, was that good; but I think I'll wait for Program B before I write anything). So this is a bit of a catch-up post.

Yesterday in the comments, Julian Meyrick denied rumours that his departure from the MTC was impelled by anger. If he wasn't cross before, he sure is now: he took the opportunity to have a few swings at the critical culture and, in particular, blogging.

Over the last two years especially, I have watched with dismay as the tone of local crits has increasingly muddled subjective response and dispassionate analysis. Like the judges in Australian Idol, reviewers seem less concerned to address work presented than to trial aberrant, at times bizarre sets of personal predilections. This is particularly true of blog coverage which, in its looseness and lack of protocol, ignores context, embraces personal comment, and makes frequent use of strong, vilificatory language.

Good to see the MTC at last getting into the commentary mix. For my part, this protocol-free, aberrant blogger hopes that a careful read of her reviews will reveal plenty of context and dispassionate analysis. (Even the odd positive review of MTC productions.) Meyrick also tells me rather startlingly that I inspire fear and dread. "Is that what you want?" he asks me. "For artists to be afraid of you?" Well, of course not: TN is really a fluffy little bunny with a heart of butter. But my motto is "without fear or favour", and that can sometimes get a little sticky with even the nicest people.

Meanwhile, the National Library has asked to include TN in its Pandora Archive, an ongoing project to archive electronic documents of "social, political, cultural, religious, scientific or economic significance and relevance to Australia", so all this can be recorded for a deeply puzzled posterity.

Finally, Matt Clayfield at Esoteric Rabbit finds himself wishing audiences would spontaneously combust, and adds a few handy hints on protocol himself. They must have read his post, because last night's audience was very well-behaved, at least where I was sitting. Not a whisper of German Death Metal. And further afield (har har), Andrew Field addresses the faux Us v Them dichotomies of experimental v legitimate, mainstream v fringe (pick your poison) in an interesting post taking to task the reviews of Michael Billington.