Look, No Hans! - 3.5 out of 5 stars
Tea Tree Players
TICKETS: https://www.trybooking.com/au/event/1505721
As I sat in the audience last night, I took the time to consider what it is about theatre involving farce that continues to bring audiences back repeatedly? The one connecting tissue it has throughout its delivery from Greek, to Roman, Italian, French and British theatre is its human element. The essence of the human in all of us that can apply humour to everyday situations and how complicated we humans can make those events. Overlay physical comedy, snappy dialogue, cringe one-liners, multiple stage entrances and exits and the embellishment of facts, and you’ve created circumstances that make it difficult for the stage cast to control their environment and challenges the audiences to keep up. Tea Tree Players Theatre, with nearly five decades of experience in this theatre form, continue to fill houses by presenting high-quality productions in this regard. With their latest production, ‘Look No Hans’, this tradition continues.
Written by highly respected British writers of the farce
genre, John Chapman and Michael Pertwee (A Funny Thing Happened On The Way
To The Forum, 1966) and directed by the wonderfully creative Damon Hill,
this production illuminates the trials and tribulations of a not so good
British spy, undercover in Germany, trying to sell British cars to the
Germans. Entering this world and wholly contributing to the farcical
environment that ensues, are another British spy, a blond-haired mistress, an
unseen voice from the showroom floor below, a stripper from Hamburg, a wife and
a car company executive. Have you got that so far?
The car business manager and want-to-be spy, Peter Fischer,
is strongly delivered by Kieran Drost. Drost has several show credits with Tea
Tree Players including a Lamerton Award for his performance in Charley’s Aunt.
I think that performing on the small stage with an audience up close and
personal such as here is one of the scarier acting tasks and Drost delivers
with aplomb. Taking on a bulk of dialogue and physical comedy, particularly in
the fast-paced farce style is challenging but there was never a sign of him
struggling to keep up or losing (real) control of the chaos around him. My only
very small criticism was an occasionally what felt like too quick delivery of a
one-liner or two, a lighter longer pause before delivery may have elicited a
much louder groan from the audience, as such dreaded farce one-liner jokes
should be received!
Drost’s main support character, the British industrial spy
Cadwallader, is strongly performed by Kyle McCarthy. McCarthy is a graduate of
the Players highly regarded Youth Theatre program and like Drost, has several
Player’s credits including ‘The Butler Did It’ earlier this year. Like Fischer,
this role has a large amount of dialogue and physical comedy elements to it,
and these were again delivered well. His consistent British accent and
mannerisms were well placed as was his ‘confused look’, the latter which he had
to produce often!
The ensemble ancillary characters in a production are so
important in setting the overall environment and comic boundaries. Player’s
newcomer, Millie Webb, made a welcome and consistent debut as the rooftop
sunbathing mistress Heidi. This is the type of role well suited to a debutant,
giving them experience with dialogue delivery, characterisation and in the
comic timing required for line delivery and entrances. The experienced Amber
Wiltshire (Player’s ‘Unnecessary Force, 2024’) has the role of Mitzi,
the Hamburg stripper sent as a birthday gift to Peter Fischer. Like Heidi,
Mitzi is constantly off and on stage, and although her eastern European accent
and ‘omelette experience’ served her character very well, a slightly slower
dialogue delivery may ease some of the small hearing and understanding moments
for some audience members.
Jo-Anne Davis, a returning Player’s performer (including the
TASA award winning ‘Kitchen Witches’), has an interesting
multi-dimensional role as Peter Fischer’s wife, Monika. With slight character
changes a couple of times throughout the performance, each change is done with
ease and little or no indication to the audience as to what the next one will
be, or without giving away the plot.
The Player’s Stacey Webb returns here as Ms Tregunter-Jones,
British car company executive. Webb gives a good performance as a character
that provides a grounded counterpoint to the shenanigans of the remaining cast,
giving the overall effect of balance and quasi moments of seriousness.
The final member of the support ensemble is Player’s
stalwart, Brian Godfrey as Kurt Vo, the car salesman. Heard only as a speaker
delivered voice through the telephone, Godfrey provides cultural context,
language misunderstandings and well-timed interruptions and misleads – all
important!
For a farce to be performed well, the overall pace of the
production needs to be consistent throughout. Director Damon Hill has achieved
this and the actors have obviously responded to his direction very well.
Additionally, his set design is also perfectly suited to maintaining the pace
of the show, giving ease of entrances and exits to the cast and allowing the
action to not only stay on track at the required pace but also delivering
additional support to the physical comedy that takes place. A glance at the Production
Team section in the program clearly emphasises the weight of Hill’s involvement
in this show.
Much modern theatre has audiences spellbound with the
technical marvels that they achieve. Farce is more like a lovely cup of tea and
a good scone, the expected rather than the unexpected and surprising, the
twists and turns of humankind and the groans of the audience as they delight
over another well-timed one-liner!
- David Kilsby
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