It’s been a long time between drinks for Helen Morse between flashing her boozies in Stone in 1974 (or was it the other bikie chick?) and appearing in Tim Winton’s “Signs of Wife” at Perth’s State Theatre. Well it is a long time between drinks if you disregard the hideous Bryan Brown era, which I guess we all do, and the most tedious period of Oz film revival covering Caddie and Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Signs of Life is supposedly a continuation of Winton’s attempt at a Mills and Boon romance – Dirt Music. Well, bad romance is how Dirt Music appeared to me from the only 5 pages I could get through. With lines like”Georgie (Morse’s character earlier in life) stood out there longer than was comfortable, until her breasts ached from the chill .” – perhaps Dirt Music is a sequel to Stone? No doubt her bodice is ripped in future scenes. It’s a fat fucker of a book, so you’d hope so.
Now most Tim Winton fans will want to know one thing first – the footwear situation. Did the dude strip off his Converse or DBs, saying, as Georgie does in Dirt Music, “Bugger it, why not?” as she fairly implausibly lays her togs on the stranger’s truck, lets go his dog and has a nudie swim? That’s Dirt Music I’m talking about by the way. Nothing as interesting as a nude swim happens in Run for Your Wife the stage sequel. The new, the very suspiciously new ripple sole desert boots stayed on. Unfortunate because that would have been the only interesting thing about this very, very boring piece of corporate theatre.
At least with Rising Lunch there was a superb set and the cast made some determined headway through the Winton dead weight script.
Signs of Wife had none of this, but does have:
A year 12 final year drama style set that looks so cheap that you always felt it must be about to be drawn aside to reveal some luscious interior. It never does.
The trademark Cherry pedestrian direction. Surely there must be some way of ameliorating Winton’s habit of leaving vast lengths of time where characters have to literally stand staring doing fuck all.
A fucking kite. Again.
A ghost husband. Ljuke bet me that the aboriginal male character (probably the pick of the bunch payed by Tom E. Lewis) would turn out to be a ghost. Sorry Ljuke, you lose – but you sort of win because there was a ghost husband. A fucking ghost husband! It’s hard to critique George Shevtsov’s barefoot ghost husband, because he spends the majority of the play standing motionless and staring. He really does!
Morse being fairly ordinary.
Pauline Whyman playing the implausible.
Characters that you don’t care about.
Revealed secrets that are worth nothing when shown.
Awkward pause dogged dialogue.
There is no tension of any kind. Shouldn’t there at least be the tiniest hint of sexual tension between the leads? Why does she want him to stay? Her husband’s white ghost willie surely can’t be doing the job after 6 weeks underground. Can’t we at least have the slightest hint of some horizontal ebony and ivory in the future? The possiblity of a hint?
I wanted this to be bad, obviously, but unfortunately it was just really, really boring. Why does Winton feel he needs to do corporate theatre. What’s in it for the dude?
It’s hard to think of anything good to say about Signs of Wife. One or two half funny lines. Adequate lighting. The fact that there’s no intermission so you can get out quick. And the theatre is, as ever, lovely inside. And Max Kaye was there too.
The Worst of Perth 
“The fact that there’s no intermission so you can get out quick.”
Actually I think there was no intermission so nobody could escape during the break. There would have been a rush to the bar in any case.
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Same shoes as the Richard Ford lunch.
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Or were they..? Perhaps..?
Nah. Just trying to add some mystery to the event.
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Dear Sir,
So the “SIgns of Life” is dead.Just to give a “back story” to your excellent review L.A. ,via the BOCS website, the cast consists of Tom E. Lewis, Helen Morse, George Shevtsov and Pauline Whyman, the crew Kate Cherry Director
Zoe Atkinson Set & Costume Designer
Jon Buswell Lighting Designer
Ben Collins Sound Designer/Composer
These cowards need to step up and defend this excrescence.
Yours sincerely,
Anonymouse.
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It seems the predominant audience emotion was not simultaneously laughing and crying but instead sick and tired and frustterated. Tim , this is suitable for the 6PR demographic but not Perth’s arty farty set.
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6PR demo? With aborigines in it?
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Brain-damaged, alcoholic, child-murdering black – sounds right up 6PR’s alley to me
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And they found some kind of redemption through an old whitey pole sitter, so…I guess so.
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Who would have thought – a gubba with a pole up his arse…?
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Tim did seem to take a harder than normal look when he saw me. Maybe he noticed that I looked at his shoes first.
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TLA, I think it’s awesome that he gave you a dirty look. We all dreaded Winto’s books in high school, but I suppose that goes without saying. Our English teacher (a fan of his) was a fellow classmate of his at Uni, she said their Uni professor was always criticising his assignments and told him he would never get a book published. “Look at him now” she said. True story.
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Maybe he was critiquing lack of hand-tied bowtie?
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He wouldn’t know hand tied from hand cut chips.
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Just sayin’ – you shouldn’t set standards you can’t maintain.
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I had a blue silk tie, tied I think in a Windsor to go with the Tony Barlow. I think Tim would be equally uneasy with the Windsor, as the bow.
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The ghost was bound to happen in some form or another (and ghosts always have to stand still, staring menacingly). Did anyone get fingered on the beach? That’s another old favourite. The fingerer then has to reflect on the similarity between the saltiness of the ocean and the saltiness of the fingeree.
Ugh.
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The prawniness?
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Brininess
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spume
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There was the compulsory ghost caressing without quite touching scene.
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no pottery then?
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It has been suggested that Standing still staring would have been stretching George’s skills.
Also suggested the play should have been titled George’s paid holiday.
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Did I mention there was much talk of pole sitting?
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Rebecca Gilling in Stone. Helen Morse was as well played Stone’s GF, Learnt something today
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Australia’s Helen Hunt.
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Vale, Gore.
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Hairdressing will never be the same.
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Even The West is basically calling it crap today.
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Hence low level of interest in this post. You’re not cutting edge or controversial enough. You’re the Inside Cover of the blogosphere.
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…no offense…
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It’s easily the most popular post of the last 7 days.
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can you weave a b’n’s story into it?
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Well they do talk about Moora I guess…
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Inseminators 2012 September 8th North Kellerberrin
It will be grate
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Water did him no favours last time. Sure they’d clapped, as drowsily content as after a summer’s day picnic at Mettam’s pool. But he’d gone our too far and too deep for their sheltered shallowness, gotten caught in the rip of his own oceanic gifts, then sucked back to shore and dumped. But no point lying panting in the surf, washed over by defeat’s briny spume. Time to head inland and inward again, back to his roots; back to the solid, dependable earth whereon he knew where he stood. Enter stage left: a new play, another chance.
Mr Winton, would you like to try these?
He turned from his reverie to the proffered shoes, soles as rippled as the laughing sea. But they wouldn’t laugh at him this time. More pity them if all it took was a pair of shoes to quell their manatoid braying…
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Oh god. I’m being handbagged to go and see this tonight with my girlfriend. Any advice on how to get through it?
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Tank up early. There’s no intermission.
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Pre stifle groan when ghost husband comes out to stare the first time.
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Sorry, spoiler alert.
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chest pains early on?
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Sunglasses disguise the fact you’ve nodded off (unless you snore).
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WA nostalgia bingo card?
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Or rural Westralian towns, regions, bingo card… that would work, too.
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Westalgia? I kind of like that word.
I get what you are doing here WoP but the small and tall ones are too easy a target.
… anyways
here is a story from the deep south from a mate who works in the local shop (cue League of).
An Aboriginal man came in the other day, looking a bit loosened up.
That unicorn in the window is looking at me, he said. It wants me to take it home. Another one, she thought.
I might buy it for my daughter, he said. D’yer think I should buy it for my daughter?
She got the plastic unicorn from the window and while she was there he waylaid her with:
Do you like singing? dancing around a bit. I like singing.
No, nah, don’t like singing, she said, thinking – don’t make eye contact, don’t make eye contact, and wrapping up the unicorn in tissue paper behind the counter, trying to hurry along the sale.
He started singing anyway.
Later that night she went to see Tim Winton’s new play.
Yes, of course. Tom E Lewis.
He’s an actor. He was fucking with you, wasn’t he? I asked.
Yep, he had a fine time with me that day, she said.
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What ever happend to Cloudstreet?
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We saw it at the weekend, and find it hard to disagree with any of the statements here. Mrs. Skink put her finger on what was wrong: that it was the most two-dimensional piece of theatre she had ever seen: flat set, flat direction, and the characters all stood in a line staring into space waiting for their sentimental monologue.
Poor Helen Morse spent most of it stood centre stage with her hands in her pockets, occasionally taking one hand out to massage the back of her neck. The only way the director marked the passing of time was by lighting changes and fresh cups of tea. I’m sure at one point we all sat waiting for the tea to steep in real time.
There was one passage where all four actors stood side by side with their arms folded, Wintoning into the middle distance, and tree blossom started to fall from the sky. It was the only thing moving on stage. It was the most dynamic part of the play.
I think Winton’s been reading his Chekhov, and has turned The Cherry Orchard into Tim’s Olive Grove, although he doesn’t seem to have read what Chekhov said about guns. I think the director put that in just to wake up the audience. The old bloke dozing next to me nearly went into arrest.
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And then the gun is just forgotten and left lying loaded on the table.
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I was reaching for that gun myself. The best part for me was a) when it was over, and b) the theatre is beautiful :)
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I was reminded of that line from Willy Russell’s ‘Educating Rita’ about overcoming the difficulties of staging Ibsen:
‘Do it on the radio’
it was like Winton had written a radio play and Cherry could think of no way to animate it, so let them stand there with their hands in their pockets reciting it. I started to wonder if they had painted a white dot on the back wall of the auditorium to give the cast something to focus on.
‘I’ve got to have something to do with my hands, how about I pretend to fix a flat tyre for the whole of Act Two?’
‘Good idea, then spend ten minutes scraping the dregs out of your cereal bowl’
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And didn’t the spare tyre just peter out too? I don’t remember him finishing fixing it. I may have been rubbing my eyes at the time though.
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There was a facebook comment saying that staring at the audience while talking about sand was not good theatre.
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I don’t think the offers of discounted food at various Northbridge establishments are worth the pain (Black Swan post about using the tickets to get 10% off burgers, sushi etc).
Is it part of the Perth Cultural Centre vibrancy or just a desperate ploy to try to move tix?
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I think it is pure pragmatism. We came out of the theatre at 9:30 and found it difficult to get something to eat. We went to the sushi place and were told the kitchen was closing. We took a walk down James Street and saw nothing we wanted to eat.
difficult to get a good meal in Northbridge at 10pm, just burgers and kebabs and chain restaurants. Had to get in the car and go to Asiatown, which was dead. Ended up wishing we’d gone back to the ‘Disse
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Two and a half fucking hours? Without intermission? I’m going on Thursday night and you bastards have me panicking already.
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If my review not warning enough, off you deserve it. Why are youse pigs still going? Removing irrational hatreds, Wintoning and other satire, it really is an extremely tedious experience. Rising Lunch shts all over this one.
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And isn’t it about $70 bucks each? (I’m not sure, never have to pay for it.)
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it’s only 90 minutes without intermission. It just seems longer.
to counterbalance the negativity – the theatre is wonderful, the seats comfy, the acoustics great, and Black Swan should be praised for commissioning new work by WA writers and assembling a good cast. The new venue seems to have inspired them to lift their game.
just the text, the direction and the set that lets it down. and the endless cups of tea.
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A friend is taking me as a belated b’day gift. I agreed to attend before your review.
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Concentrate on theatre interior then.
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definitely. and make sure you visit the loo, they are lovely.
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dear lord, let me have an aisle seat.
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You’ll sit there and take it. Read the Australian’s review instead. It remarks on the play’s “psychic resonance” or was that dissonance? Could make you feel better.
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That’s not a real friend.
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Brass Monkey has a pre-show get tanked offer… good luck!
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Black Swan are heavily cross promoting various food venues even as Signs of Life winds down… One of the promoted restaurants is open right until 8pm, most nights. (there were more exclamation marks in the original copy…)
*le sigh*
I see your point.
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Perhaps it is worth going, to the theatre anyway. After all, if the carpark bog can win a prize the theatre one must be v.spesh.
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I don’t know about ‘psychic dissonance’ and a ‘strong whiff of existential crisis’
but I had a bit of gastric turbulence, and there was a strong whiff of exuberant verbosity.
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You are an idiot. Saw it tonight and loved it. Winton and performances brilliant.
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Cunt.
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence… Likewise, a contrary opinion is an interesting beast.
What did you find to be the strengths of this production?
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The staring bit.
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I think there has to be some kudos to George the ghost husband for being able to supress a smirk over being paid handsomely to do almost nothing.
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where is the Stone review?
we need a barefoot Fremantle perspective
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She might have liked it and is ashamed.
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Or maybe a pre-loading hangover.
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Turns out, I am going next Thursday so youse’ll have to wait.
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tomorrow night Shazzanator!!!! in this case TWOPping while pissed is de rigeur
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Blogging and drinking must never, I say NEVER be mixed.
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BITE! was one of the better/worster ones
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And remember to never mix your links. Plus anal, too, also.
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Been and seen. Anticipation of something far worse meant it wasn’t excruciatingly bad. I have youse pigs to thank, so thanks.
Casting was excellent I thought. The overriding feeling at the finale was of life being a completely pointless exercise. Was that the point?
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“Not as bad as expected!” Winton can take that to the bank.
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Heh.
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cant wait to see that on the advertising flyers
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Dave are you a member of the cast of “Signs of Death”. If so don’t get sand in your groyne because “Sunburn on your Groyne , the musical” is now being cast. Stars Lara Bingle as Mollie Sugden , gutter slut bogan with a heart of gold and pussy to match. Other castees
Troy Mercanti ………….. Dickhead
Troy Buswell………………himself
Klag O”Kalammity………….corrupt police chief.
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Still waiting for clear description of the “brilliance”, Dave…
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Winton = brilliant, what else is there to say? Kill the unbeliever
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Oy…Black Swan…enough already!
is there not another playwright in the state?
Cherry and Winton to collude on another theatre work where people sit still on stage and take turns reciting monologues to the middle distance.
Winton says he is interested in how people commemorate their dead and so will resurrect John Howard and watch him die on stage again.
working title: ‘Strine.’
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/entertainment/a/-/entertainment/14806136/new-winton-play-on-road-trauma/
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It’s all part of the bigger picture, skink.
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I’m not going to the next. I’ve had a gutful.
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Full as a goog
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alternate title: ‘Roadkill’
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And a woman hater apparently.
http://www.dailylife.com.au/comment/what-tim-wintons-female-characters-reveal-about-him-20130801-2r08f.html
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Rereading my excellent review almost got me wanting to see the next one with John Howard. I had turned down the chance. It would just depress me to see more bad theatre. And it would annoy me if it wasn’t bad.
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