Tag: James Hazelden

A Couple Decides What to have for Dinner by James Hazelden

By Lisa Clark

There’s comedy for everyone at The Melbourne International Comedy festival. Here there is no standup, impro or clowning. Instead we have a terrific short comedic play in which we witness a conversation on a couch between a married couple who know each other very well… or do they?

A Couple Decides What to have for Dinner is written and directed by James Hazelden and stars Amanda Buckley and Chris Saxton as the deciding couple. Its not hit you over the head obvious, but Chris Saxton is very much the hapless silly sidekick to Amanda Buckley’s savvy straight gal. A husband/wife dynamic familiar to most sitcom fans.

It’s lovely to have theatre troupes in Melbourne with their own style and Mystery Radio Theatre does dialogue based theatrical shows that are also funny. So it’s not surprising that this show might make a pretty good radio show, as the couple never leaves their couch and rarely look away from a TV, whose programs cannot be particularly entertaining, as they talk all the way through whatever is on. It’s a very simple set and a play that can be easily staged with only two actors.

The play does what it says on the box, an entertaining exploration of a middle aged couple’s relationship while they spend an hour deciding what to have for dinner. The bickering can get a bit much here and there, and may be a little triggering for people brought up in abusive households, but it mellows as the couple shares interesting anecdotes and gossip and never crosses the line to anger or abuse. Unlike the abhorent and shouty Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf we are presented with a couple who love each other, though there is annoyance and teasing, but they remain reasonable (if exasperatingly so at times) with no hot anger or nastiness. There is some getting to know one another throughout the play which deepens their relationship rather than pulling it apart.

I think this play actually helped me understand Waiting for Godot a little. The famous play where nothing happens, reflecting on the mundane interactions of life, how life isn’t all about the exciting stuff, mostly it’s just waiting or  having the same conversations going round and round eternally. Where Godot was so boring that people angrily walked out of early performances,  A Couple Decides What to have for Dinner does it in a relatable modern context with warmth, laughs and a cracker of a joke at the end.

This show is having a short run at The Butterfly Club until Sunday March 30 so get in quick before it ends.

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/a-couple-decides-what-to-have-for-dinner/

 

Radio Mystery Theatre

By Lisa Clark Mystery Radio Theatre

Radio Mystery Theatre is comedy at its most traditional, old fashioned and in some ways this is truly alternative comedy at the festival and it’s a refreshing palate cleanser.

The Cast of Radio Mystery Theatre are ambitiously staging three different radio plays during the MICF. All of them involving murder but sending up different genres. This one Whodiddendunnit is a send up of an Agatha Christie style murder mystery in a big old mansion with a butler, an inheritance, every one having a motive and a re-appearance of a long lost son.

There have been quite a few radio plays on at the Comedy Festival over the years with Radio Variety Hour getting a reprise on over at The Butterfly Club during the festival. This version is more formal and less anarchic but has a great big cast of about eight and is its own kind of fun. It keeps itself nice, with most of the humour being the sort that might have been performed at any time in the past eighty years and had audiences laughing. There were only a couple of anachronisms, like the word nail-gun which I think is actually a bit unnecessary, I was quite enjoying the whole historical re-enactment sort of feel of it all. But if it gets a laugh, it doesn’t really matter, this sort of whacky humour has been around since before The Goons and they began doing their thing in 1951 so in a way it’s in keeping with historical tradition of comedy radio plays after all.

A disappointment for me (in both radio shows on at the moment) is the lack of a specific foley artist. This important radio job that still exists in movies today is a way of making all the sound effects with everyday objects. To me this has always been one of the most exciting components of watching a radio play being performed. It is the big visual component for the audience (“ooh what is he going to use that big tank of water for?”) that the radio listeners will never see but adds to the radio listening experience. Here we had a table laid out with objects that got me excited, a chain, a knife, a bust and so on, but in the end they were used as silent props which did not make sense because they serve no purpose for the radio listeners. So apart from the odd knock on a table by the actors, most of the sound was pre-recorded and without the Foley artist running about doing his or her stuff, it’s a bit like watching a play reading.

The best thing about Radio Mystery Theatre was the performances of the actors dressed in formal black with the chaps in bow ties.  The highlight being Anna Renzenbrink in two roles, both as dotty Aunt Agatha and keen scullery boy cum detective side kick Tommy. Without a proper programme it’s hard for me to know who was playing whom but I also particularly enjoyed the narrator and host who sounded like Bela Lugosi, the characters of Hodges the butler cum detective and dippy son Teddy though everyone else was lots of fun too. The author/director James Hazelden (of musical comedy trio Man Bites God) managed to brilliantly play nasty Pater Gerald and do some of the music background effects as well. A lovely touch, was the musical interlude and advert at half time just like a real radio play. Both were excellent.

This was a very slick production, well written and acted with plenty of laughs. If you are also a fan of 40s film noir or Enid Blyton you might wish to check out the other Radio Mystery Plays Murder Me Again, My Darling and The Adventure of Smuggler’s Cove

All three Radio Mystery Plays are on at LaMama Theatre in Carlton

See the Melbourne International Comedy Festival site for details:

http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2016/season/shows/mystery-radio-theatre-james-hazelden