Theatre Review: Boy Girl Wall at La Boite

 Now in its third incarnation, Boy Girl Wall has been making waves around Brisbane for a number of years. Creative team Lucas Stibbard, Matthew Ryan, Neridah Waters and Sarah Winter have put together a delightful show for this year’s La Boite season, and boasting sell outs and standing ovations, it seems it’s an event not to be missed.

Boy Girl Wall follows, as the title suggests, the intertwining stories of a boy, a girl and a wall. At just over an hour in duration it’s an exciting ride, containing everything from dramatic battles with demon magpies and computers with complexes to the painfully recognisable annoying bosses and the feeling of dread caused by looming deadlines. It’s a high energy comedy with a love story at its core, and while best suited to a youth audience, Boy Girl Wall has something for everybody. 

Performer Lucas Stibbard does a delightful job piloting this show, and it’s hard to imagine the material bought to life by anybody else. Charismatic and unpredictable, he transitions easily between the role of narrator and the many characters involved in the play. The show has been designed wonderfully, and as it progresses it becomes clear that the seeming simplicity of the set has in fact been calculated meticulously to act as a literal drawing board for Stibbard as creates the world of the story around himself.

With references to ‘The Pixies’, obscure dress up parties and bicycles complete with baskets and tassels, Boy Girl Wall nails the trends of current youth pop culture, but does so without being overly kitschy or elitist. It is a really solid, entertaining show and the hard work put in to its development over the past few years seems to have paid off. Brisbane audiences, I highly recommend you take the chance to see it now, everyone else, start crossing your fingers for tours and later productions. 

Boy Girl Wall plays at La Boite until April 17, tickets available here.

Theatre Review: Julius Caesar by La Boite Theatre Company

"Between the acting of a dreadful thing/And the first motion, all the interim is/Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream."

More images can be found at the official production gallery.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a gripping, political, gory and glamorous piece of theatre, and is aptly presented as such in Brisbane based La Boite Theatre Company’s current rendition.

The show opens with the tail end of roaring party, table dancing and shot swigging youngsters frolic around Thomas Larkin’s Marc Antony while Cassius (Paul Bishop) broods and Brutus (Steven Rooke) sleeps, and the audience get their first taste of the fantastic original score created and performed by the ever talented Steve Toulmin.

From the get go, this show shouts sexy, the cast’s bodies on display with abs, arms and legs flashing for the audience to enjoy. Watching, it’s hard to not imagine the lot of them taking part in group gym sessions to get toned for the season, and the as an audience member I feel compelled to appreciate the effort gone to for my visual pleasure. This choice to firstly focus on the human body is enhanced later as the blood letting begins and strikes a nice contrast with the second half of the play wrapped up in questions of the mind, morals and spirit.

Guided by the company’s Artistic Director David Berthold, the visually stunning cast work Shakespeare’s text with an ease not often seen in modern performances. It is relieving to finally see a Shakespearean performance not all delivered in shouts and screams and mumbles, classic good diction allowing the language to set the base of the play, as it should do. For me, Paul Bishop stands out with a wonderfully measured portrayal of the mastermind Cassius. The play is performed brilliantly in the round, the first time the Roundhouse Theatre has been used for its purpose in a long while, the audience are engaged from the top of the show through to its stunning climax.

Berthold has made some remarkable choices within his interpretation of Caesar, and as the show draws on and the characters lose themselves between dreams and reality, he proves that this political piece is highly relevant in the modern day. Many have suggested that the play has been chosen at the perfect time to coincide with Australian political goings on, but while political back stabbing remains a topical issue in Australia, Caesar showcases the idea with much more intensity, violence and conviction, and makes Australia’s political landscape seem almost farcical and petty in comparison. If this was the director’s aim, then I applaud him on a job well done.

There is indeed some fantastic fight choreography in this performance (directed by Nigel Poulton), the brutality shown in the fight scenes matching that within the graphic spoken language, a feat not easily achieved. There is a lot of blood, a lot, but what else can be expected from a play with the lines, “And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood/ Up to the elbows” (Act III Scene I). Instead being tasteless and tacky, as often on-stage goriness can appear, in this it adds to the chill, degrading atmosphere that develops throughout the show.

For a Shakespearean production, La Boite’s show runs quite short, the pace remains quick throughout. In some moments it feels too quick, though, and with this there is a lack of tenderness in the developing of relationships in some moments of the play, which would have added a nice variety and depth. This being my one main criticism, however, it was nice to not sit through a three hour rendition of the play.

This is a brilliant interpretation of an unfalteringly brilliant play, and in my opinion showcases some very good individual performances as well as a solid marriage of design and direction.

Julius Caesar runs at The Roundhouse Theatre in Brisbane until March 20.