Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, the story of three men kidnapped to a Beirut jail, gave its Bruce Myles-directed cast (Frank Gallacher, Richard Piper and Melvin Carroll) the opportunity to turn in some of the year's best performances.
Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, the story of three men kidnapped to a Beirut jail, gave its Bruce Myles-directed cast (Frank Gallacher, Richard Piper and Melvin Carroll) the opportunity to turn in some of the year's best performances.
David Williamson's Sanctuary, with its dense treatment of a wide canvas of issues, was politically and psychologically riveting.
And Barry Dickins' play, Ronald Ryan, was a strong and fascinating exploration, both dramatic and humorous, of the Australian criminal underclass.
Other significant contenders in this genre included the grim but memorable Michael Gurr play, Underwear, Perfume and Crash Helmet (with one of the year's most unpleasant on-stage executions), Hannie Rayson's Falling from Grace (about scandalous allegations over medical research) and Michael Gow's Furious (a play both politically and sexually bold).
Notable also were Playland (an Athol Fugard production which dug deep into South African racism) and Cosi (a Louis Nowra play which, although basically a comedy, touched on several intriguing political issues).
Melbourne was also treated to a steady stream of outstanding one-actor productions. American Anna Deavere Smith's festival offering, Fires In the Mirror, was a towering achievement in which she created 27 diverse and splendidly crafted characters.
An equally mesmerising but very different performance was that of Robert Morgan in Shadowboxing, the tensely physical story of a boxer bloodied as much by life as the blows of his opponents. Almost as physically demanding in its own way was Ian Scott's remarkable performance as a pig in Strategy for Two Hams.
The technical virtuosity of Robin Ramsay in The Bastard from the Bush (a theatrical working through of Henry Lawson's life and work) was consummate. Bob Hornery in The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin successfully brought a new perspective to the role made famous in years past by Gordon Chater. And Pamela Rabe brought pleasing subtlety to A Room of One's Own.
The year's offerings also included plenty of large-scale, high quality productions. Neil Armfield's Angels in America (Parts 1 and 2) was an immense, albeit uneven, undertaking which will be long remembered by theatregoers.
The Neil Armfield production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile, John Bell's The Taming of the Shrew, Gayle Edwards's The Shaughraun and Richard Roxborough's That Eye, The Sky, were all totally satisfying theatrical experiences.
While partially flawed, productions such as The Lady from the Sea and Hysteria were also memorable.
As usual, we enjoyed some of the most exciting avant-garde theatre in Australia.
Productions such as Lucien Savron's darkly comic Woyzeck (with an excellent performance by Thomas Wright), Daniel Schlusser's In the Service of Beauty (with a conspicuously superb performance by Maude Davey) and Barrie Kosky's The Wilderness Room, plunged deep into the macabre.
Frank Pig Says Hello, Joe O'Byrne's visiting production of manic comedy and bizarre drama for the Melbourne Festival, and the visually compelling Macbeth, directed by David Fenton, were other most unusual offerings.
Macbeth's science-fiction oriented set, and memorably, the astonishingly huge and horrible smashed animal that was created for the Banquo ghost scene, set a standard by which other such efforts will be long measured against.
The technical excellence and theatrical magic of Robert Draffin's The Last Supper should also not go unmentioned. Offering a full and varied dinner integrated into the performance, this was a sensual and enchanting evening.
Finally, we had a string of worthy general potboilers ranging from the unabashed Geoffrey Atherden crowd pleaser, Hotspur, to more ambitious fare, Roger Hodgman's The Sisters Rosensweig.
The latter offered a tight ensemble of skilled performances (particularly Tony Sheldon and Genevieve Picot) which hit all the right notes for the MTC. A production such as Jean-Pierre Mignon's Amadeus, while purporting to be no less a crowd pleaser and offering an occasionally brighter flash of inspiration, was ultimately betrayed by more uneven performances.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the year was the musical theatre production, Blood Brothers, which, for those who stuck it out until the very end, transformed a distinctly lukewarm response up to first interval, into an unreserved standing ovation by the end.
Other productions included: Woyzeck: A Good Murder, Gift of the Gorgon, Blood Moon, Freak Show, The Lady From the Sea, Rigoletto - A Perversion, Loot, The Glass Mermaid, Sistergirl, and On The North Diversion Road.
