cinema Reviews
BY JOHN CAMPBELL
SHERPA
‘two riotous hours of food, wine and impeccable comic timing’ (Great Aussie Bite at Sydney Opera House). Born in 1997, Faulty Towers the Dining Experience is a fully immersive, highly improvised and sitespecific piece of comedy theatre that continues to be acclaimed around the world by audiences and critics alike. It opened a residency in London’s West End in 2012 and continues there still, ranking consistently high in TripAdvisor’s top London theatre listings. Nine teams of cast now tour the world virtually non-stop.
DINNER WITH THE CREW FROM FAULTY TOWERS! This globetrotting show is truly quite legendary, selling out in places such as Sydney Opera House, Raffles Singapore and London’s West End. When the audience become diners in the Faulty Towers restaurant and are served by Basil, Sybil and Manuel, pretty much anything can happen – especially with two-thirds of the show improvised. The fun starts as guests wait to be seated, then hurtles along in a tour de force of gags and belly-laughs. Expect shambolic service and a 70s-style 3-course meal in
Saturday at the Ballina RSL, Doors open 7pm, dinner and show 7.30pm. Ticket price $64.90 includes 3-course meal and 2-hour show.
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MOTHER’S DAY
Call me a dag, but I love this sort of chick flick. It belongs to that school of rom-com writing that always gives the impression that those who came up with the screenplay started at the end and worked backwards, discovering as they went needed to happen in order to get one couple having a happy-ever-after meeting in a hospital, another getting married (a wedding is more or less mandatory) etc. It is a process of unscrambling the egg. The movie itself is not particularly funny, instead it’s one in which you find yourself smiling goofily at the screen as the formulaic plot and likeable cut-out characters while away a couple of harmless hours. And when you have three top-notch actresses involved – Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts and Kate Hudson – you know you can rely on being in the company of expertly drawn, well-rounded stereotypes. Sandy (Aniston), divorced with a couple of little boys under wing, is put out when her ex takes a gorgeous young thing as his new partner. Jesse (Hudson) has for years hidden her marriage to a ‘towel head’ (Aasif Mandvi) from her redneck parents. Jesse’s sister (Sarah Chalke – the second Becky in Roseanne if you’re wondering where you’ve seen her) has likewise concealed her lesbianism. Miranda (Roberts) is a celebrity who has made a name for herself selling jewellery on TV. She hides a deep sadness concerning the child she had as a sixteen-year-old (it doesn’t take long to see who that grown-up child will be). Widowers are now de rigueur in such capers and this time it’s Bradley (Jason Sudeikis), who happens to have a couple of daughters about the same age as Sandy’s boys. Makes you wonder what might happen there, doesn’t it – or does it? There is some laudable social commentary and subtle satire, but the biggest laugh for me came in the bloopers, with Julia Roberts sitting waiting for an endless train to pass. ‘I think I need to go shave my legs again,’ she cracks. Â
The very best docos are those that evolve before your eyes, in an organic way that is free of bombast and cant. Unconcerned with gouging her imprimatur on her movie, as is Michael Moore’s way, Australian director Jennifer Peedom lets the story tell itself – and what an incredibly moving, confronting story this is. Peedom was in Nepal ostensibly to follow the sherpa Phurba on his record twenty-second ascent of Mount Everest. During filming, in April 2014, sixteen of Phurba’s fellow guides – hired to do the heavy carrying and camp preparation for Western ‘adventurers’ – were killed in an avalanche. The riveting drama of the following days is a shameful indictment of how the commerce of tourism so often goes hand in glove with a complete disregard for others. Of the hordes of people who arrive at the mountain during climbing season, Peedom’s crew were with a group led by New Zealander Russell Brice who, out of his own mouth, condemns himself as a man of pious and patronising duplicity. Telling one thing to his clients and another to his sherpas, who, after the tragedy, were unwilling to continue, he is Cassius in an anorak, with his eye never far off the dollar. Casual racism invariably accompanies exploitation of the poor, but it is nevertheless shameful beyond words to hear a disgruntled client of Brice’s ask which tour organiser ‘owns’ the more militant guides who had the temerity to agitate for better conditions. Encouraged by Brice’s divisive reports (was he not aware of how he was exposing himself on camera?), one American, peeved at not getting his selfie on the peak, refers to the disgruntled sherpas as ‘terrorists’. The photography, much of it handheld, captures the environment’s majesty and ever-present danger, while Antony Partos’s score is delicate and haunting – as accompaniment to a helicopter, dwarfed by the mass of rock and snow, trailing a body back to base, it was too much for me. Devastatingly sad, this is agitprop as high art and it makes an absolute mockery of the sinkhole of Marvel dross.
FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS
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EYE IN THE SKY
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DAUGHTER
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THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY
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The Byron Shire Echo May 4, 2016 43