cinema Reviews
ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: THE MOVIE An adoring audience is guaranteed when a cult TV show is transferred to the cinema, but if you don’t belong to the cult the movie can be a bit of a struggle. What struck me most at the screening of this that I attended was how mirthless was the row of devotees in front of me (a dozen women of a certain age). So it wasn’t just me, I figured – this really is a dud. Having only been able to take the television show in small doses – there’s a limit to how many times you can laugh at somebody falling drunk out of a car – I was never confident that the one-joke humour could be sustained over a longer period. Nor did I anticipate it being so dull and try-hard naughty.
A SHOW WITH HEART S U P E R H E RO E S , E L E C T RO N I C A , CO M I C B O O K S , G A M I N G A N D P U N K RO C K , MY R A D I O H E A RT I S A LOV E L E T T E R TO T H E D I G I TA L AG E . Inspired by X-Men, video games and our obsession with the online world, My Radio Heart combines contemporary pop with large-scale digital projection to tell stories of love, loss and wanting to connect.
Director Rosie Dennis has been part of the re-imagining of the upcoming production of My Radio Heart, a show that brings together Sydney’s Urban Theatre Projects, NORPA and Performing Lines. Rosie, what was the reaction to the original production of My Radio Heart? The premiere of My Radio Heart was really well received in both Lismore and Sydney. People really loved the visual environment we created and, of course, the music. How did you pull it together? What was the underlying vision/ inspiration? The initial work was born out of an idea that Tralala Blip had about trying to find love in a world of routine. So I used that as a starting point. Then, through a series of improvisations and lots of conversation I got to know the performers. From there we developed characters and and then developed the story in relation to the characters. Can you tell me how you are ‘re-imagining’ My Radio Heart this time around? This re-designed version is still a love story, and still plays between the real and virtual worlds so that’s quite close to the original version. There are new songs and some new video footage and a couple of the characters have been modified. The work is now a singlechannel video projection and the visuals are beautiful. Who are the players? Lydian – The Romantic; Zac – The Seeker; Claudie– The Keeper of memories; Randolf – The Caretaker; Phoebe – Lydian’s love; Matt – The Professor. Can you give me a brief synopsis of the show? The show is a love story, set across three different worlds/times. There’s the real-time world in which we meet Matt on stage. Then there’s the world that Mat creates, which is pixel driven and includes four Avatars.
BY JOHN CAMPBELL
Eddie (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley) are still guzzling the champers and managing to get invited to A-list parties and fashion parades, but their star is waning. Eddie is particularly disturbed by her weight problem and the fact that, professionally, she is no longer a PR dynamo. At a swank London knees-up, she accidentally bumps Kate Moss into the Thames and the famous model is not seen again, presumed dead. Eddie is now a pariah, so to escape social opprobrium and the possibility of going to jail, she and Patsy flee to a glam resort on the Mediterranean. It’s all very silly and, as has always been the case, it is punctuated by a nastiness that is never fully diluted by its unconvincing tongue-in-cheek tone (a crack about Brigitte Bardot now being in nappies is needlessly crass for mine).
According to one interview I heard, there were scores of real-life celebs falling over themselves to be included in the movie, but I only recognised a handful – Barry Humphries does a neat turn as a fat old poolside Lothario and Rebel Wilson has a terrific cameo as a rude stewardess on an el-cheapo airline – but otherwise it falls terribly flat. Ab-fab it ain’t.
MAGGIE’S PLAN It’s funny how one scene can change your perception of a film – even stranger that it can do so retrospectively. Not too long ago, I had to bail out halfway through reading Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (‘the best novel of the year’ according to a couple of luminaries on the ABC’s Book Show). It followed the activities of a handful of typically privileged New Yorkers through their cloistered lives of desperate self-importance, but ultimately I didn’t give a rat’s about them. For a while, Rebecca Miller’s Manhattan rom-com threatened to leave me as cold as Yanagihara’s 700-page opus. Then suddenly, John and Georgette (Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore) were in a lounge in Quebec where a Canuk duo was performing an acoustic version of Bruce Springsteen’s anthemic Dancing in the Dark. John and Georgette joined the crowd in singing along and took to the dance floor and, out of the blue, I was in love with the movie.
Maggie (Greta Gerwig), an ‘arts facilitator’, wants a baby but does not have a partner (a baby on the shopping list is the crowning achievement of Western materialism). She engages Guy (Travis Fimmel), a pickle maker, to donate his sperm, but soon after hooks up with John, an academic without tenure, who happens to be married to Georgette, a Norwegian anthropology scholar, with a couple of kids of their own. A confusing time-jump finds Maggie with her own child and in fading conjugal bliss with needy, confused John, whose manuscript she is still editing. The potential for dreary cliché as she plans to reunite John with Georgette is ripe (Woody Allen has a lot to answer for), but Gerwig and Moore are so good in their severely contrasted roles – costume and hair stylists take a bow – that it is impossible to be entirely disengaged. I would have liked more of Fimmel, a magnetic screen presence with a sly comic gift, but the warmth generated by the night in Quebec was enough to lift this from the so-so to the endearing.
Then there is a third world that is accessed through virtual reality goggles and is more fantastical. It is in this world where Lydian finds love and where we meet some of the other characters outside their usual environment. How about the rehearsal process; how long do you have to make this happen? For the re-design we will be spending six days prior to the show on Saturday. What can audiences expect this time round? If you loved My Radio Heart the first time round, then you’ll enjoy the tweaks we’ve made. The overall show is more upbeat and playful, while still keeping true to the themes of the original. My Radio Heart. Saturday 20 August, 6pm. $25 adult, $18 concession, groups & under 18. NORPA at Lismore City Hall. Bookings: www.norpa.org.au or 1300 066 772. Duration: 50 minutes, suitable for 14+, companion card welcome.
North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
The Byron Shire Echo August 10, 2016 41