Marzo, Dewey Dell, Arts House, Tuesday October 14th 2014

Marzo, Dewey Dell, Arts House, Tuesday October 14th 2014

"Marzo" by Dewey Dell and Agate Castellucci played at the Arts House at the North Melbourne Town Hall.

It was scheduled to start at 7.30pm and we were not admitted into the theatre until at least 7.45pm. The show started 22 minutes late with no apology or explanation.  Why is it that commercial theatres tend to start on time or within five minutes of advertised time while subsidised theatre starts later?

Note that no show has started on time at any of the Spoletto, Melbourne International Arts Festival or as it is now called the Melbourne Festival.  It is rude.

No one took ticket stubs at the entrance to the theatre.  It was a General Admission event and could do what Chapel Off Chapel did for "Carrie: The Musical" and have roped off entry to allow fairer queuing into the venue or similar queuing to any Boradway or Off Broadway theatre.

There was no announcement before the show about the use of mobile phones and cameras. They did have signs on the doors to the theatre but you could not read these once the doors were open. 

"Marzo" used Japanese dialogue with English surtitles. There was no mention of surtitles in the Melbourne Festival brochure when I booked the show.   It was only by chance that I looked up to see the surtitles.

The whole show reminded me of Rosie from The Jetsons meets the Michelin men (from the tyre company) doing a VCE dance project.

The costume designs by Yuichi Yokoyama had a cartoon quality about them.  The best part was the costumes for the main male character, the white beak, the Michelin men and the star. The masks were beautifully designed and constructed. The red and white jump suit had awful lines and was very unflattering with creases in all of the wrong spots. 

The best moment was the entrance of what looked like a fish on stage left and then crawled onto the stage and became a star. At times it looked like a Ku Klux Klan member in black.  This performer was the only one who worked their costume to create a fully realised character and the movements were the most creative and choreographed.  The use of the star costume paid true homage to the work of Alwin Nikolais  (who we were fortunate to see at the first Spoleto Festival in Melbourne at The Playhouse in 1986.)

These performers need to do more mask work or Disney type character work to fully understand how to work their costumes.  There is no real definition of a style of movement without any real clean lines or pure movements.  Even large archetypal movements lacked definition.

The supposed synchronisation of the dance of the Michelin type characters was messy.  They needed to be sharp and precise and the movements were blurred and ill defined.

The surtitles did not always have any relationship to what was happening on stage.  The funniest moment was the "One fig, two ......nine cucumbers, ten winter melons" sequence.  The stance and gesture of the red and white costumed performer with the blue-round-head character was quite funny.  As the "nine cucumbers, ten winter melons" slide came up it was quite an innocent moment, as if bragging about the size of their own genitalia.  I wonder if this was intentional?

It was a stylised production in design but lacked real definition of any style of movement.  There was no drama to their story telling and it rambled on.  The relationships between the characters seemed contrived and the gestures and movements lacked meaning due to some very awkward pauses.

The set and lighting design by Eugenio Resta did not provide great atmospheres. The most interesting aspect was the white backdrop and the floor.  The stark white set with the black tabs had a textured-like rubbery floor.  We could feel the vibrations of the performers as we sat in the front row. 

The curtain calls were very amateurish and reminded me of a poorly conceived student production.

Read the programme notes for more information about "Marzo" as the closest association is that we, as the audience are on another planet watching this very alien production that does not live up to their own notes.

Overall this production gets 5/10.