First up, a bril­liant inter­pret­a­tion of a Shakespeare’s Richard II.

Richard II is a few years into his king­ship and is start­ing to flex his power. After some dubi­ous decisions regard­ing his empire he takes the chance to seize land after the death of John of Gaunt  thus set­ting Gaunt’s child, Bol­ing­broke, against him. Richard seeks sup­port from his allies but pre­vi­ous bad decisions means he is aban­doned by those he thought he could trust.

Dir­ect­or James Cain dir­ects a great cast includ­ing Hay­den Frost (Richard II) and Mag­gie White (Henry Bol­ing­broke) as the main play­ers. Frost is excel­lent as Richard II, show­ing the qual­it­ies that helped him be king as well as the reas­ons for his down­fall. White is staunch and unyield­ing, relent­less in the pur­suit of the goal. There are plenty of oth­er famil­i­ar Wel­ling­ton faces on stage as well, all doing a ster­ling job. A scene between Patrick Dav­ies (John of Gaunt) and Bri­anne Kerr (Duke of York) is one of my high­lights as it shows the des­per­a­tion the two have for their fam­il­ies and coun­try in the face of Richard’s increas­ingly strange decisions.

Lucas Neal’s set uses the full height of the Pro­peller Stage which is great to see. (Try not to sit high­er than 3 rows from the back if you can oth­er­wise the lights will get in the way of the action.) It’s neatly lit by Tony Black’s design which includes some nifty hand held lights. Lisa Kiyomoto-Fink’s cos­tumes high­light the fac­tions & who sup­ports who, help­ing to cla­ri­fy the story.  Move­ment design­er Mag­gie White gives us visu­al interest on the smallish set while Flinn Gendall’s sound design provides just enough atmo­sphere without dis­tract­ing from the action.

Fant­ast­ic.

 

Van­ya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Broth­er and sis­ter, Van­ya and Sonia, live in their par­ents’ old house which is now owned by Masha, their suc­cess­ful movie star sis­ter. Masha vis­its for a week­end with her boy­friend Spike in order to go to a cos­tume party down the road. Bud­ding act­ress Nina vis­its and clean­er Cas­sandra has dire warn­ings for every­one.

Gav­in Ruther­ford (Van­ya) and Rachel Henry (Sonia) open the play with a won­der­fully dreary morn­ing routine. They have a good rap­port that is accen­tu­ated when Erina Daniels (Cas­sandra) arrives on stage. She is showy and dra­mat­ic, a com­plete con­trast to the oth­er two who seem as if they don’t have a life out­side of the house. Their life is inter­rup­ted by the arrival of Emma Kin­ane (Masha) with boy­friend Simon Leary (Spike) in tow. Kin­ane can switch char­ac­ter motiv­a­tions quickly which she plays to full effect. Leary spends a lot of his time with his shirt off which pleased the stu­dents behind me. Finally Har­riet Preb­ble (Nina) arrives on the scene like a stone dropped in a buck­et of water send­ing ripples through the lives of the oth­ers. (Except Cas­sandra who is a mar­vel­lous law unto her­self.)