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.