Uncle Vanya etc ~ SPARK (State Theate Company) ~ Review

Uncle Vanya – but there’s ASMR soap cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner

SPARK/State Theatre Company
Adelaide College of the Arts
Sat 11 July, 2026

When rock videos were new on the scene people used to try and work out the symbolic connections between the song lyrics and the visual images. Sometimes those metaphorical connections were obvious, sometimes tenuous, and sometimes non-existent, and it was difficult to be sure of any of it. So it was with this version of Chekhov’s famous play. It was a lot to take in, a lot to digest, and some of it could be safely discarded as good-natured silliness. But it was certainly entertaining, and yes – it made Chekhov fun – and that is no mean feat.

SPARK is a development arm of the State Theatre Company. Its purpose is to encourage and support original, independent South Australian theatre. And there was plenty of originality on show in this bizarre offering.

Uncle Vanya etc was billed as a production for modern audiences who’ve had their attention spans ruined by the swill of social media. In this it was enormously successful. The audience had the option of stopping any pieces of dialogue considered too long, An awful, but very funny PowerPoint presentation was used to summarise some of the less interesting parts of the play without having to sit through them. This sped things up a great deal and made the whole play shorter and less demanding for the cognitively challenged.

A quiz at interval with prizes on offer helped to keep the audience from leaving before act 3 – smart thinking!

And just in case you were contemplating how well an individual actor was playing their character, most people changed character, and gender, at least once during the show.

Several more innovative approaches were employed to alleviate any risk of boredom, but best you see the show for yourself to find out what they are. You won’t regret it. Unless you’re a serious Chekhov purist in which case you might find the whole thing offensive and trivial.

Ironically, tedium and the nature of life being something to endure are themes central to the original Uncle Vanya, and they are in this production too. But in this production the tedium is regularly interrupted by hilarity.

Contrary to what one might expect, apparently Anton Chekhov was quite an entertaining and humorous fellow in his personal life. If so, I think he’d enjoy this but he may need to have the various media used explained to him.

Wonderfully entertaining risk-taking theatre!

Directed Mary Angley

This review also published on The Clothesline.

AFL: Rules, Umpiring, and the State of the Game

 

I have been playing and watching Australian football (Aussie rules or now more widely known as AFL) for 65 years and I’ve recently come to accept that I just don’t enjoy the game as much as I used to. Frequent rule changes, and constant meddling from AFL house have turned the game into a farce. I recently attended an AFL game at Adelaide Oval where more than 70 free kicks were awarded!!!

Some of the rule changes in recent times have been good ones – only 6 players in the centre square when the ball is thrown up is working well. The last touch or lasso rule is a vast improvement on the ludicrous and clumsily worded ‘insufficient intent’ rule; which was itself an attempt to update the deliberate out of bounds free kick.

The rule that’s driving everybody crazy at the moment is the stand rule and I will return to that but there are several new rules or interpretations that have slowed the game down and are ruining the game as a spectacle. They are of the so-called tiggy touchwood variety. For example,

• If I hold your guernsey for even 1 second or less it’s a free kick against me.
• If I touch you anywhere on the arms or the head or shoulders in a marking contest it’s a free kick against me
• If I make any front on contact with you, even the slightest touch, in a marking contest – free kick.

The absurd part of this is that often if these infringements happen at the other end of the ground when a forward interferes with a defender in the same fashion it’s play on!

When I played the game the key word in understanding the holding the man rule was retard. If a player was retarded when they did not have the ball it was a free kick. You could in theory run 20 metres with someone holding on to your guernsey and it was play on because you were not being retarded.

Years back you were only penalised in a marking contest if you made significant impact with a player’s head. Incidental contact was play on.

It’s a sad fact that so many marking contests in the forward fifty result in a free kick and the game stops. (A friend from Germany watching their first game of AFL commented after about 5 minutes – “this game stops a lot.” It really surprised me, but compared to soccer they’re right. It does.) There are way too many free kicks paid where the game stops, and the 30 second rule when shooting for goal is also dead time for spectators (but money-making time for TV sponsors). Players in the past on average took about 10 seconds to shoot for goal. And guess what? They were just as accurate as modern day players who take up to 30 seconds with their ridiculous routines. 

THE STAND RULE

The stand rule was brought in to try and make the game faster. In the past players could move around on the mark left or right but could not advance towards the player taking the free kick until play on was called. Now the player on the mark has to stand dead still until the umpire calls play on. If you don’t stand dead still, OR if no one stands the mark it is a 50 metre penalty. This is another example of over officiating. If a team chooses not to stand the mark that is their prerogative – it is in fact an advantage to your opposition as you are effectively letting that player run free. For a team to be penalised 50 metres for not standing the mark is insane.  Same applies for the player that encroaches on the ‘protected zone’. The game was doing fine for 150 years without a protected zone around the player taking a free kick – scrap it!

In nearly every game goals are scored because of these crazy 50 metre penalties, and given the number of games that get decided by a goal or less in a mostly very even competition, this means teams are winning games because they were awarded freebies by over officiating umpires, not because they were the better team. Too many games are being decided by intrusive and pointless umpiring decisions. And there’s nothing more ridiculous than seeing a player wildly celebrating the fact they’ve just kicked a goal because they were gifted a 50 metre freebie by the umpire – not because they did anything special.

Someone recently commented that fans don’t get angry at these dumb rules anymore – they just shake their heads in bewilderment. I was never one to complain that much about umpires but these days when I find myself frequently disagreeing with so many umpiring decisions I know something is wrong. The game’s changed. There was always the odd ‘howler’ – it’s a hard game to umpire - but now every game has several howlers because of stupid new rules and interpretations that aren’t needed. It is not the umpires’ fault – they are being instructed by people at AFL house to over umpire the game and award free kicks for minor inconsequential infringements. Consequently, the game is getting harder to watch and enjoy.

I like what Kane Cornes recently suggested as one step forward: unless an umpire is 100% sure there’s a free kick, then it’s play on. Too many free kicks ruin otherwise good games. Less free kicks means a better and more satisfying spectacle. Let the players play! Stop interrupting the game.

The Importance of Being Earnest - Review

State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse
Tue, 12 May, 2026

A version of this famous play was a great success at Adelaide’s recent Fringe festival because it took risks. This wonderful version of Oscar Wilde’s timeless classic is also a great success for much the same approach – they take risks that come off. Principal among these risks was to have men play female roles, and vice versa. This not only served to flag the contemporary fascination with fluid interpretations of gender, but was also a salute to Oscar Wilde who in the late nineteenth century, was much criticised and even jailed for his sexual orientation.

The Importance of Being Earnest is wordy – rich with nuance, articulate, and full of biting comic satire. But from the opening scene the actors are on point – decisive, clear, bold. Their command of Wilde’s language was extraordinary. As professionals of a state theatre company you’d think that would always be so, but it’s not. This cast was exceptional in that regard – diction pretty much perfect.

The early scene between Algernon (Algie) and Jack is priceless and so beautifully done. Knowing full well that Jack is lying Algie takes great delight in asking Jack questions that slowly but surely has him digging his own grave. It’s masterful comedy with both players fighting fiendishly to win the verbal stoush. Anna Lindner is simply magnificent as Algie. She prowls and prances around the stage like a predatory clown willing to pounce on any weakness. Teddy Dunn is also really impressive as Jack as he hopelessly defends the indefensible but refuses to yield and somehow manages to maintain a semblance of dignity.

Into the fray strides Lady Bracknell.  Played by Glenda Linscott she is almost charming as a pompous disapproving elderly matriarch with extremely strong opinions about good breeding and maintaining one’s social status. Any principals she may have however are quickly put aside if there is wealth or status to be gained.

Nathan O’Keefe is positively and benignly ridiculous as Miss Prism but his awkward appearance just adds to the humour of it all. And The Importance of Being Earnest is a very funny play. There are digs and asides at accepted values littered throughout and you need to be on the ball to catch them all. Romance, marriage, truth, fashion, and the upper classes are all targets for Wilde’s sharp wit.

There were other ploys to modernise this nineteenth century gem. Check out the cast’s footwear. More obviously, Director Petra Kalive has Adelaide based cabaret and rock singer Carla Lippis sings her parts as manservant and butler as a prelude to each new scene and it works wonderfully well.  Her powerful, raunchy delivery a fitting contrast to some of the suppressed sentiments beneath the surface of polite society in 1895.

Interestingly Wikipedia notes that this play was criticised at the time for “its lack of social messages.” I think rather that it is overflowing with social messages and probably offended a good many at the time. This was so often Wilde’s objective – to set the cat among the pigeons as it were; to expose hypocrisy, and question everything. That’s what The Importance of Being Earnest does, and that’s why it deserves a modern audience. It’s deservedly a classic and still thoroughly entertaining.

Simply great theatre with superb characterisations and lively, witty banter.

This review also published on The Clothesline.

For something completely different try this review of another version of Earnest.

Hydra - Review of State Theatre Company Production

 (I'm posting this retrospective review as a companion piece to the review of Cohen-Noir below.)

(Image by Jess Busby.)

Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, Sat 4 May, 2019

The Greek island of Hydra has long been known as a haven for international artists. Principal among them was Leonard Cohen, who met and fell in love with the woman he sang about on his debut album – So Long Marianne. Among the international artist community in post-war Hydra were Australian writers George Johnston (Bryan Probets) and Charmian Clift (Anna McGahan). They’d come to Hydra to follow their muse and escape the mundanities of Australian suburbs. Within their Hydra circle of friends was the then struggling artist, Sidney Nolan. Also included in their inner bohemian circle was Jean-Claude, a stereotypical French painter played by Kevin Spink.

So far so good. They were heady times and everyone was optimistic about their ability to carve out their niche in the Australian artistic psyche. Fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol and a prodigious work ethic they pump out the pages. However, George soon starts cramping his partner’s creative style and a series of rejections from publishers ushers in poverty and hardship. The struggling artist is no longer a romantic dream but a harsh reality. And George doesn’t cope with it very well. Severe illness doesn’t help and he becomes more and more unpleasant. Charmian on the other hand holds their lives together and keeps food on the table for them and their growing family, but she understandably turns elsewhere for affection.

The theme of artists struggling to make sense of their existence while being mired in substance abuse is not new. What should make Hydra more appealing for Australian audiences is the fact that it concerns Australian expatriates living abroad in an exotic paradise, and that perhaps the tyranny of distance in reverse might provide them with some insight into the Australian psyche and culture. But the fact that they were living on Hydra doesn’t detract from the fact they George and Charmian weren’t very nice people. You don’t get a sense that Hydra meant very much to them at all – they enjoyed ‘the idea’ of being there but they actually don’t seem to enjoy anything very much.

But then maybe that’s Hydra’s point. The artist or writer dreams of the idyllic location that will enable their muse to soar but, in the end, self-indulgence and a cantankerous nature will grind the muse into nothingness.

The set looked alluringly and wonderfully Greek and allowed for some intriguing use of light and shadow that often suggested alter egos or alternative opinions. As must be the case on a Greek island the metaphor of the sea was exploited artfully, and having the first born of George and Charmian on stage throughout as our narrator worked well. De rigueur references to Greek mythology added a supernatural layer that offered alternative explanations as to why so many run adrift amid Hydra’s beauty.

Bryan Probets as George was superb, and I enjoyed Tiffany Lyndall-Knight in the role of the would-be friend who dared tell the truth about the writers’ indulgent expatriate lifestyles.

Yes it was a sweeping tale that promised much, but you’re left with this lingering feeling that the protagonists were deeply flawed, and didn’t deserve to be in such a beautiful place. Had they been holed up in some dive in Paddington or Brunswick the outcome would have been much the same. The fact they were in Hydra didn’t seem that relevant, unless of course there is some truth in what Greek mythology tells us about this exotic isle.

(This review also published on The Clothesline.)

Monsieur Camembert – Cohen Noir

Dunstan Playhouse
Sat 20 June, 2026

Like many others my younger self found Leonard Cohen’s early music rather dirge-like. I had a friend who bought a Cohen album but needed to wait till he was in a fit mental state before he could listen to it. Cohen used to laugh at comments describing his songs as ‘music to slash your wrists by’ and thought some people failed to see the distinction between seriousness and depression. Cohen knew about subtlety and nuance. As do the members of Monsieur Camembert in this magnificent tribute to Cohen’s life and work.

Monsieur Camembert are a ten-piece gypsy jazz band from Sydney that have re-arranged a collection of Cohen classics and label the whole project as Cohen Noir, so bleak is in there for those who go looking. But on the whole this concert was an uplifting celebration of a hugely important artist. It was all about the soul – finding that place in each of us where the songs touch you most deeply. Where the music, the words, and the emotion all come together and resonate deep inside you. I had heard reports before of multiple people weeping at Cohen concerts, and though Leonard himself has left the table, he was there tonight in these loving renditions of his songs and poetry. And I cried. These beautiful songs that reflect on life in all its complexity and wonder, its sadness and joy, of birth and death and the genuine search for truth amid failure and despair.  And the band’s musical arrangements allowed all this to happen.

The band’s respect and admiration for Cohen’s work was evident in everything they did – yes subtle, nuanced. Delicate. But often also upbeat and brassy.  A series of guest vocalists added variety and surprise but it turned out that the star of the show was sitting in the back row playing  violin. When Susie Bishop stepped forward to deliver the vocal on Famous Blue Raincoat the world just stopped. She lived and breathed that song as her own with oozing passion and superb control before a soul-stirring sax solo just blasted the whole song into another realm. Extraordinary music.

Another of the guest vocalists, Lyn Bowtell, did something similar with the achingly beautiful If It Be Your Will, a haunting insight into Cohen the spiritual seeker, before the song was launched into heavenly realms with the help of the 50-strong Adelaide based choir, Born on Monday.

Before each song we heard recorded excerpts of Cohen’s lyrics, writings, or interviews that provided sage-like clues about the song to follow, offering beads of wisdom about how to lead a successful, mindful life. For example, Cohen’s reasoning behind Halleluja was to remind us that to celebrate each moment of your existence is one of the few things you can control and that you can actually be certain of. So, 600 people willingly sang Halleluja together.

Given my first impressions of Cohen’s music some fifty years earlier I never imagined that I’d be joining in a joyous en masse singalong of his music but that we did on Halleluja, So Long Marianne, and Dance Me to the End of Love.

Toward show’s end we heard words from Cohen’s final press conference. He humbly referred to himself as a disciplined craftsmen who used the meagre tools he had at his disposal – his guitar, his voice, and his language – and worked them as hard as he could. Anthem (“there are cracks in everything – that’s where the light gets in”) took us out, and the spirit of Leonard Cohen was appropriately accompanied on its way by ethereal Mongolian throat singing.

Cohen died on November 7th, 2016, Donald Trump was first elected president one day later. That felt hugely appropriate at the time. It was almost as if the spirit of Leonard Cohen could not co-exist on this earth with someone who was his polar opposite.

Cohen was not religious, but he was intensely spiritual, and that spirit lives on in the music of Monsieur Camembert. They have captured and expressed his quest for the meaning of existence with love and exquisite musical arrangements.

If Dylan was the poet who spoke for the incipient Boomer generation, then Cohen may have the equivalent role for their end. And the continuum from Dylan’s first words to Cohen’s last may well represent the cultural journey that generation has taken.

This review also published on The Clothesline.

An AI (Gemini) Review of My Photography

 Honestly - this just blew me away! It took less than 30 seconds .....

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Michael Coghlan, widely known online as mikecogh, is a prolific Australian photographer whose work stands out for its documentary value and commitment to open-access sharing. Operating predominantly under Creative Commons licensing, his massive portfolio serves as a vivid, accessible archive of contemporary life, urban evolution, natural lanscapes, and travel.

Coghlan’s photographic style is grounded in an authentic, unpretentious view of the world. Rather than heavily staging or over-processing his images, he captures environments as they truly exist. His architectural and street photography—spanning across Australia, Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and the Middle East—demonstrates a keen eye for geometry, scale, and human interaction within urban spaces. Whether framing the stark modernism of Doha’s skyline or the weathered charm of a Tasmanian street corner, he expertly uses natural light to bring out texture and depth.

Beyond grand structures, Coghlan excels at capturing the ephemeral details of everyday life. His portfolio is rich with candid street portraits, vibrant murals, local signage, and transportation infrastructure. These elements collectively document the social fabric and unique identity of the places he visits.

What makes Coghlan's photography truly significant, however, is its utility. By intentionally releasing his high-quality imagery to the public commons, his work transcends personal artistry. It functions as a vital educational and cultural resource, frequently utilized by global media outlets, travel blogs, and educational wikis to illustrate the diverse landscapes and cultures of our world. Ultimately, his photography is both a visually compelling travelogue and a generous contribution to collective digital history.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Can Tho

 Photos taken from a moving vehicle .......