06.04.2010

"Cosi" in the suburbs

And so we arrive at the end of the first part of our tour…the suburbs of Melbourne and some. Over the past couple of weeks we have performed in Dandenong, Nunawading, St. Martins (South Yarra), Bendigo, Werribee, Moorabbin and Pakenham. Now we have a blessed break over Easter, and then we resume again, into regional Victoria. It’s like we’ve had a little taste of life on the road and now we have a rest, and then we begin in earnest. It has been fascinating, a bit confronting, and extremely interesting.

First, Dandenong. This was our first public outing of the play. Up until then we had been performing either just to Dennis, the director, or maybe to one or two of the producers. So we did a dress rehearsal in the lovely new Drum Theatre in Dandenong, to an audience of about 25, which was fantastic, they laughed a lot and were very responsive, so we got a TINY feel of what a real audience might feel like. But then the next night, our opening night, also in Dandenong, we had an audience of 550 people. This was astonishing and quite wonderful. I personally hadn’t played to an audience that big since I performed in the Playhouse in 1995, and I think some of the cast had never performed to an audience that size.

The fact that it was a full house was itself surprising given the nature of the place itself. On brief acquaintance Dandenong felt pretty bleak. The architecture was dull and not very pretty, and the main street is a four-lane highway. The barrenness was emphasised by the construction happening all along the main road, which meant it felt like there was NO life in the place, especially after 5pm. During the tech, I went to try and find a newspaper, (I didn’t find one…) to do get the crossword and the quiz, which has rapidly become one of our cast’s group activities. I ended up going into a horrible complex called The Plaza, in which I still couldn’t find a newsagency. I was in costume, Ruth’s bleak, brown clothes and as I walked past these two rather rough boys on of them said, “Oh yeah, I’d really like to FUCK that woman in the brown…” which made me feel quite uneasy and rather awful. I didn’t find a newsagency or a newspaper anywhere but in the end the VERY nice young man behind the bar in the theatre let me take the newspapers from the café, as well as making me a coffee when he really was actually closed. He was lovely. (This was, indeed, in marked contrast to the coffee maker at the café where we rehearsed, who was not a happy chappy. I was glad to see the end of HIM.)

One day I went out by train and Dandenong station is also very bleak. It’s not manned by any staff and the barriers were open for all to get through. It felt like a scary wasteland where it appeared that no-one gave a stuff what was going on. Near the station however is a strip of Indian restaurants and shops selling food and clothing and other imported stuff and I am sorry I didn’t get a chance to try out one of the Indian restaurants. They smelt fabulous. Clearly there is life in Dandenong, and a real interest in the arts, as was evidenced by our audience of 550, and I have heard that a new Aesop store has recently opened there and is going off, but it just wasn’t immediately apparent.

However, contrary to all expectations, the opening night with its full house was AMAZING. The audience LOVED the play, they completely got into it. We found out later that there were about 200 year 11 and 12 students because Cosi is on the school syllabus this year) and the rest were adults. They laughed, they cheered, they sighed, they clapped. The energy and excitement in the theatre was intoxicating, and it was so incredible to be in a theatre with that level of enthusiasm and joy. It was a gift. Denis, the director came back to the dressing rooms after the show and he had tears in his eyes! He said that he hadn’t experienced a night in the theatre like that for a long time, and then Nava, one of the producers came back and said it was like being at a rock concert. They were so excited and so proud. It was fantastic. For us it was wonderful to finally get reactions, and lots of them, to what we were doing on stage, to what we’d been working on for the previous five weeks in rehearsal.

The next few performances were at Nunawading. It felt weird going to new theatre for the first time, especially because we’d been at Dandenong all week and also because we’d had such a great show. But Nunawading turned out to be really lovely. The staff were fabulous and very interested in the show and welcomed us like kings and queens. There were chips, chocolates and tea and coffee and water in the dressing room! And a free drink at the bar afterwards. It was gorgeous hospitality, and made the transition to being on the road a lot easier. Also there was a ballet studio there, backstage of the theatre. It was fabulous to warm up in. The performances at Nunawading went really well, and the audiences seemed very happy. The only one who was not really happy was our cast dog, Jack, who belongs to Claire our stage manager, but who we have all taken to our hearts. He just couldn’t settle. We figured the theatre was probably haunted (as they mostly are) by someone who didn’t like dogs.

Then, at the beginning of the following week, we had our second opening night at St. Martins in South Yarra. Lots of us had friends, family and agents coming. It was a little bit weird at first being there, we were all still getting used to the whole new theatre thing. There is a different shape, space, feel and acoustic in every new theatre, as well as a whole new backstage and dressing room set up and it can be quite disorienting. But this second opening night also went really well. People laughed a lot but also seemed to appreciate the subtleties of the performance and the characters. It was really exciting and the foyer was abuzz afterwards. Then we had a series of matinees at St. Martins. These were great for getting the sense of the difference between performing to a mix of kids and adults and then just kids. My character Ruth, seems to be appreciated more when there is a mix of kids and adults. My final image from St. Martins is from the dressing rooms where the laminate on the bench tops had this groovy 50’s black and white pattern of aborigines.

Next we travelled to Bendigo, where we stayed two nights and did three shows. The first taste of life on the road. We travel in two Tarragos, four of us in each. The set and crew go separately in a big truck. It was really lovely to see trees and hills and grass and sky. And, while the countryside was not luscious, it was quite green in parts and didn’t looked parched. We arrived sometime in the early afternoon and settled into our accommodation which were serviced apartments and very nice. There was a pool! The theatre was really beautiful, a grand building with columns out the front. Apparently it had originally belonged to the Masons. It had been renovated and restored and was really gorgeous. It was painted a beautiful red colour inside. It kind of glowed. There was a lot of backstage space which was a relief, it always makes all the costume changes and backstage business much easier to handle, although I did have a minor disaster with my last quick change. I have to change from my elaborate Cosi Fan Tutte costume into my ordinary Ruth clothes in about one minute. I have Claire to help me but it is still very quick. I have to change clothes AND take off all my makeup. I have these pretty green glistening beads which I wear for my Cosi Fan Tutte costume and which I like to wear on top of Ruth’s ordinary clothes in her final scene because it is a little sign of the changes that are taking place for her on account of having been involved in Cosi Fan Tutte. On the second night in Bendigo as I took my beads off and put them on the floor ready to put on again once I had Ruth’s day clothes on, I heard a weird sound and they had fallen down a little hole in the floor and were nowhere to be seen! Claire and I looked at each other aghast. She opened up the hole…it was a little trap door and there were the beads glinting up at us from about six feet below. No beads for Ruth’s final scene that night! Luckily they were able to rescue them when they did the bump out and apparently Jack the dog enjoyed wearing them for a few hours!

We were also treated to wonderful hospitality in Bendigo. After the first show (in which we got our first standing ovation!) we were invited to have drinks at a little café/bar next to the theatre called the Basement, which was really lovely, then the following afternoon, following the matinee, we had an excellent lunch at a place down the road from the theatre called Wine Bank. We went back there after the evening show because it had a great atmosphere, nice feed, great wine, good coffee and lovely people.

Bendigo is a very beautiful town. There is a lot of gorgeous period architecture and also some really fantastic contemporary buildings, like the Bendigo Bank building (BNV Architecture and Gray Puksand) and the new police station. There is a fabulous art gallery, a contemporary art gallery and even the swimming pool had a beautiful aspect and was fabulous to swim in. I think this really affects one’s state of mind and being. I felt really comfortable and happy there, excited about what we would find next.

And as it happened what we found next was brilliant. Jacob Allen, one of the actors in the show, has a wine wholesaling business and so he contacted one of his mates and thus the next day, on our way from Bendigo to Werribee, we stopped off at Bress Winery in Heathcote and were treated to a hilarious and very informative tour of the winery and the wine (in all stages of preparation) by the head Winemaker and Proprietor, Adam Marks. The wine was fabulous but Adam was even more fabulous, very funny, a real raconteur and an excellent host. So, a couple of hours later, with lots of sips of wine in our bellies and bottles in the car boots, we continued the trip down to Werribee.

How could the Werribee mall measure up? It didn’t. And things in general felt a bit bleak for a few hours, even in the theatre, which was really cold and barren in a sort of new, institutional way. Fortunately we had a reasonably large and very appreciative audience, and the added bonus of having finished a long week and being able to go home to our own beds for a couple of days rest.

Then we went to Moorabbin. It was crazy. We squeezed our set (minus a good couple of feet either side and from the front of the playing space!) and ourselves (masses of costumes, props and actors) into a tiny theatre, which sat about 97 people. It felt like a living room compared to what we’d been performing in. We had to spend a solid hour and a half in the theatre working out new blocking to accommodate the new space, which was not only smaller, but also a bit wider. But it was all worth it. The audience was packed, mainly with adults, and it went off, they loved it. I actually really enjoyed being able to be small and quiet for once, not having to really project, and knowing that all the detailed work would be seen by all the audience. Also Denis Moore, our director, came to see the show for the last time. It was great to get his feedback after a week or so of being on our own. Now it feels right for us to embark on the next part of this crazy journey.

Our last show before Easter was in Pakenham. It was a long drive, felt far away from the city, and indeed is quite a beautiful place, nestled at the southern end of the Dandenongs. The theatre was new and rather lovely, a great design, and had lots of backstage space, which was fantastic. The show, although not packed, went well, but we had our first backstage drama. During the show, towards the end, Bessie Holland, who plays Cherry, tripped over as she was exiting and fell very heavily down the prompt side stairs. She was very shaken and badly hurt her hand, wrist, and shoulder. There was lots of adrenalin and a small amount of chaos backstage, we were all shocked and worried, but she was fabulous, as were Claire and Jacob Williams, our backstage crew, who helped her and steadied her. She was able to make it through to the end of the show but then had to be taken to casualty. It wasn’t a great end to the week, but at least it was then the Easter break. Hopefully we will all have rested and recovered and be ready to continue with our crazy Cosi.