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I was looking forward to the Bell Shakespeare production of Coriolanus - the Bell Shakespeare marketing team really outdid themselves with "Vote 1 Coriolanus, Consul for Rome!" posters and a post-election press-release to coincide with the Australian federal election. Then in the days before the show, I got an email letting me know that I would be seated on the "Plebian" side of the audience, with the other half designated the "Patricians" - it was definitely an interesting way to stage the play!

However, this was probably the least interesting Coriolanus of the 3 versions I've seen. The Ralph Fiennes movie from 2011 is very good. The Tom Hiddleston Donmar Theatre version from 2014 is pretty good. This one I think got the tone not quite right, with too much yelling and a bit of slapstick that felt really out of place, and some pacing that dragged. Mostly, I think this production reads the character of Coriolanus wrong. He's depicted not as an anti-hero or a divisive figure - he's much more straightforwardly a villain, someone who went to war for fame and glory - and I think that's less interesting and complex than the Coriolanus in the text, who doesn't care what people think of him and really is a good general, but is utterly unsuited to public life in peacetime. On the upside the yaoi energy with Aufidius was still good.

( excerpt from the email about the seating arrangements )

By contrast I have also seen and read a couple versions of The Talented Mr Ripley, and I think this version from Sydney Theatre Company holds up very well. It's a good adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith book, about wannabe Tom Ripley who is seduced by the luxury of Dickie Greenleaf's charmed life, and by Dickie himself, until it all goes so sour. At 2 hours 10 minutes it's nice and sharp, trimming the book down but keeping the character and flavour of this tale of homoerotic murder in Italy.

Belvoir's new adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando was at least 50% of an excellent play, and for that I'll forgive a lot. This production has four different actors (all trans or non-binary) playing the central role as they move through the ages. It starts in the Elizabethan era, with all the actors whizzing around stage on rollerskates, including a young, dreamy male Orlando. Then in the Restoration period, Orlando is a woman, who at first enjoys the frippery and flirtation of the court until she realises how little she is allowed to do or be - but the women of the court have their own secrets, revealed in a big musical number. I really loved the playfulness and excitement of these two acts, the campiness and colour and the big performances. But the production lost me a bit in the Victorian era, all very gloomy and dark, and the final era set in contemporary times felt very perfunctory and a bit trite.

STC's Whitefella Yella Tree was more even. Two teenage Aboriginal boys meet up, scuffle, fall in love. They're dressed in hoodies and sneakers - but this is a story from years ago, as white colonisers are just starting to encroach on their lands. The anachronistic costume and dialogue work really well, making the story feel so immediate. But the lives they should lead, the sweet romance they deserve, is disrupted by the colonisers. A simply but effectively staged two-hander, that starts out quite light and funny, and ends up quite tragic. It didn't blow me away but I thought it was really solid.

But hey, it can't all be good, and Dracula the ballet by Biglive was really - something. Did you know Dracula starts with an action scene, with Dracula fucking shit up on the battlefield? Well, now it does. "What about London?" I said at interval. This production said FUCK London. Also, no Van Helsing or cowboy or doctor! NO LUCY! Only brides of Dracula! Only Mina and Jonathan and Dracula! Sure okay!

The music choices were egregiously bad throughout. If there was an obvious music choice to make, they made it. Mendelssohn wedding march for the Harker wedding. Night on Bald Mountain for Dracula's origin story. An utterly ludicrous Mina girl power ending to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. No rhyme or reason or thought - just throwing in the Greatest Hits of classical music every whichway, all mashed up.

I couldn't figure out if this was a vanity project or a shameless cash grab, but I think it tends to be the latter. It felt like a cheap and lazy dumbing down, a Cliff Note's version of a night at the ballet. Not to be mistaken for the actual good Dracula ballets, of which there is at least one.

Final note - Rent the musical, which I saw in Seoul, in the Korean language, for the purpose of seeing Solji from EXID as Mimi and Jo Kwon as Angel. I'll probably do a fuller write up in my kpop dw at some point but suffice to say: this was my first Rent experience (YEAH), and so large swathes of the story went over my head, but I did enjoy it. I don't know if I would see this again in English - I didn't like the songs that much and the story seemed so over the top - but it was a fun thing to see once.