'In a Dark, Dark House

[suse]

In this dark, dark house there's a door to a new career
As her alter-ego Bridget Parker met her untimely death on Neighbours last night, Eloise Mignon was preparing for tonight's opening of Neil Labute's 'In a Dark, Dark House. It's at Red Stich Actors Theatre, St Kilda East until August 22.



Thanks to Han at Nfans

How cute does she look ;D. I hope she enjoys doing it.

[Chris]

I'm glad to see she hasn't given up acting all together as it was suggested that she might do.
Can someone pleas watch out for a review of the play and post it.
Thanks

[suse]

In A Dark, Dark House | Red Stitch Actors' Theatre


In A Dark, Dark House
Written by Neil LaBute
Directed by Wayne Pearn
22 July – 22 August


“’House’ is about adolescence...how it can be warped, stolen, frozen and wilfully extended...LaBute’s most sophisticated use of language thus far.” – New York Times

“Whether with monologues or interaction between two or more characters, Mr LaBute functions as
an archaeologist digging beneath the surface of the relationships among family members, friends
and lovers.” – Curtain Up


In A Dark, Dark House by one of America’s most provocative playwrights, Neil LaBute, is the latest offering
by Red Stitch Theatre. An explosive drama full of twists, secrets and revenge, In A Dark, Dark House
explores the depths of family loyalty and betrayal.

Terry is visiting his estranged younger brother Drew in the grounds of a psychiatric institution. Drew, a
lawyer turned wealthy businessman, wants Terry to confirm a watershed event from their adolescence
which may help make sense of his recent fall from grace. But information has a price. In A Dark, Dark
House is a tense tale of fraught fraternal relationships, where male violence and vulnerability co-exist and
where emotion can be seen as weakness.

Neil LaBute is one of the most prolific and provocative writers of our generation. He adapted his first play
for the big screen - In the Company of Men starring frequent collaborator Aaron Eckhart. Some of his
other plays include Bash, Fat Pig and This is How It Goes. He wrote the screenplays The Wicker Man,
and The Shape of Things, as well as directing Nurse Betty and Lakeview Terrace starring Samuel L.
Jackson.

Wayne Pearn, founder of award winning theatre company, Hoy Polloy, makes his directorial debut with
Red Stitch Theatre. Pearn’s previous productions include the much acclaimed play, Killing Jeremy, as
well as last year’s The Real Thring and David Mamet’s Boston Marriage.

Red Stitch Ensemble member Dion Mills (Work of Wonder, Yellow Moon) stars as Terry alongside guest
actors Geordie Taylor (This Wide Night) as Drew and Eloïse Mignon (Neighbours) as Jennifer. Design
is by Peter Mumford (Leaves Of Glass), with lighting design by Stelios Karagiannis (This Wide Night).

[hannah]

Cheers for posting Suse.

LaBute's work is pretty heavy stuff, should be great for Eloise and her career - I'm sure she'll get rave reviews. Hopefully it'll be a two fingers up to all her critics out there. Mind you, her theatre work has always been valued, which imo, is a sign of a great actress. Not TV and film, where it's all stop and start. Acting on the stage must be the toughest gig out there.

[suse]

From The Age

By Neil LaBute,
Red Stitch, Rear 2A Chapel Street, St Kilda
Reviewer Cameron Woodhead

NEIL LaBute has been labelled a misanthrope, but he's really a thinking man's Jerry Springer. Since the Bash: Latter-Day Plays (the work that got him expelled from the Mormon church), his works have consistently mined the darkest veins of human behaviour, their emotional sensationalism grounded by sharp, streetwise dialogue, and leavened by black wit.

LaBute's theatrical trajectories are semi-predictable and easy to parody. Take the most outrageous pulp-magazine headline you can find, and insert the most inappropriate response: "I can't believe my mother slept with my boyfriend's dead body … and I loved it!"

This isn't entirely fair. A Dark, Dark House deals with child abuse and drug addiction rather than necrophilia and incest.

But it does subvert conventional responses to these subjects so wilfully that, for all its expertly observed interaction, the play's dramatic reversals come across as tendentious and perverse.

Terry (Dion Mills) is a security guard summoned to meet his younger brother, Drew (Geordie Taylor), a disbarred lawyer, at an expensive rehabilitation centre.

Drew claims to have repressed memories of being preyed upon by a pedophile as a child.

Taylor lends credibility to Drew's extended adolescence, but there isn't enough going on under the surface.

The lack of chemistry hobbles an otherwise outstanding performance by Mills, who is at his finest when opposite Eloise Mignon, who portrays a teenager with breathtaking accuracy.

;D
You go girl!!!!

[suse]

From crossoverman.livejournal.com/

Neil LaBute is often desribed as a misanthrope because he writes about unpleasant characters doing despicable things. If you have seen any of his earlier work (the films In the Company of Men or Nurse Betty, for example), In a Dark, Dark House plays as you might expect as well as with a kind of compassion that is unexpected.

It's certainly not that there's any sentiment in this tale of estranged brothers finally dealing with a terrible secret from their childhood or even that they are particularly pleasant, but the evenhandedness of their portrayal makes it easy to sympathise with them - if not always agree with their action. Indeed, the end is quite black and very unpleasant, but until then the brothers' relationship is easy to relate to.

Red Stitch Actors Theatre prides itself on presenting cutting edge contemporary plays - and the small space in which this show is played reflects their interest in pieces that allow their acting ensemble to shine. Red Stitch regular Dion Mills imbues brother Terry with a rough exterior and an anger which is barely contained; the anger, though, when it does manifest itself is nearly always about his inner pain - Mills trembling with a kind of sadness inside Terry.

Actor Geordie Taylor relishes brother Drew's ability to waver between fun loving larrakin and deeply unethical charlatan. It's an interesting balance to maintain, but Taylor manages to pull it off; Drew is sympathetic even when his own style of bravado makes him hard to like.

Eloise Mignon's debut performance with Red Stitch is a remarkable one of pubescent temptation in the form of Jennifer.

One of the recurring themes of LaBute's works is how entrenched misogyny is in society. While In the Company of Men tackles that issue head on, to the point where the play/film is particularly uncomfortable, here it plays mostly as undercurrent in the scene where Terry meets Jennifer. LaBute's writing, while bleak, isn't nihilistic or misogynistic itself but the playwright knows how to keep the audience on edge about where these characters are headed. The performances enrich the work and in Red Stitch's small but well-used space, we are confronted by dark things head on and somehow survive them.

Eeeekkkkkk ;D

[kate]

I don't know whether to go with an "Eeeep", a "yay!" or a "whooo!" So all three!

Don't know why I'm so excited really, lol, I think it might just be that after all the slack we get for being fans around the Neighbours-loving world, I'm mega excited to hear that we're being proved right about how ace she is...

[hannah]

Exactly what I was thinking Kate! Just shows we have impecable taste when it comes to appreciating great acting! Eloise's theatre work always gets such rave reviews, which is awesome. All the greatest actors are on the stage afterall!

[Ali]

yey! i was so pleased to read that - i hope the V Sign is visible enough for a certain other forum to see ;D

[suse]

The great thing about seeing a Red Stitch show is knowing you are going to see an amazing script written by a playwright who loves theatre and understands the difference between writing to be read and writing to be performed. You’re also going to see the work of some of our best independent actors, directors and creators, who are involved because they love the emotional power of theatre. The opening production of Red Stitch’s 2009 Season Two is the Australian premiere of Neil La Bute’s In A Dark, Dark House.

American playwright and film director La Bute wants theatre that is unafraid. In 2008 he said to The Guardian: “Go back to the theatre, audience members everywhere, and get your hands dirty. Sit closer than you usually do. Smell the actors and make eye contact and let a little blood splash on your hem...Let us know that if we are brave enough to write about the stuff that matters, then you'll come and watch. I may never fight a battle, or run for office, or help an old lady across the street - but when I sit down and put pen to paper, I can promise to write about a subject of some importance, and to do so with honesty and courage. The time for fear and complacency is past. Bravery needs to make a comeback on both sides of the footlights, and fast.”

No wonder Red Stitch like him. In A Dark, Dark House is about the abuse, secrets and lies that bond and separate brothers Terry and Drew, and LaBute is unafraid to twist and turn the truth in this uncompromising and disturbing psychological drama.

The script pulls the audience through the story and refuses to let us go until the final moment. Director Wayne Pearn proves his detailed understanding of the script, but this knowledge is almost blocking the audience from the story. In his determination to make sure that we see every foreshadowing hint, he doesn’t let the script speak for itself and puts the audience in a position where we are too far ahead of the action. Because of some obvious sign posting with props and performances that underline the subtle clues, the Act 3 revelations are not surprising or unexpected. It’s so much more rewarding for an audience to think back and remember or re-interpret what we saw, rather than knowing the truth before its revealed to the characters.

Actors Dion Mills, Geordie Taylor and Eloise Mignon are as equally in touch with the script, but they are performing so intelligently that their process is too visible. Physical reactions are happening a split second before the character says or feels something. Characters are reacting to each other just before they actually hear what the other person says. I couldn’t “let the blood splash” on my hem, because I was watching and admiring their technique, rather than living with and feeling for the damaged souls they were portraying.

In A Dark, Dark House is already a terrific piece of theatre that may become astonishing. Everything is already there, but it need to turn the intensity down from a 9 to a 6, let the characters escape from the actors’ conscious thoughts, and trust that the script is so good that the audience don’t need to be “told” what to notice.

From - www.aussietheatre.com/revdarkhouse.htm

[kate]

Thanks for that. Not as positive but importantly they're obviously still seeing some of the greatness. So yay.

[Geo]

Good for her! I'm glad she hasn't quit acting too. Good luck to her <3

[kate]

In a Dark, Dark House: Red Stitch Actors Theatre

By Chloe Walker ArtsHub | Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Red Stitch has a reputation as one of Melbourne’s eminent independent theatre companies, so it is disappointing that its latest production, Neil LaBute’s In a Dark, Dark House, is so riddled with faults.

Drew (Geordie Taylor) is a disbarred lawyer turned successful businessman whose love of the bottle has landed him in a psychiatric facility. He calls upon his older brother, Terry (Dion Mills), to substantiate Drew’s claim that he was sexually abused as a child.

The brothers share an awkward relationship, but it’s not nearly as awkward as the delivery of their lines. The play is set in the US even though it could just as easily be any wealthy western nation, and the use of American accents presents an unnecessary obstacle to fluent acting.

Taylor manages a consistent drawl, but the effort exerted stilts his timing. Mills’s accent roams all over the States and constantly switches between rough and overly mannered. The flimsy premise of the plot (what therapist demands proof of past traumas?) and the lack of chemistry onstage make for an unconvincing set up.

Fortunately Eloise Mignon is absolutely radiant as Jennifer, the 16-year-old mini-golf manager. Evidently Mignon can act and enunciate at the same time, even creating some chemistry with Mills. However, her otherwise flawless performance can’t rescue a script that has her oscillating randomly between a wholesome all-American teen taking care of the family business and a saucy little temptress hell-bent on being a bad, bad girl.

There’s a real laziness that permeates this production. The script feels unfinished and unconvincing. Energy spent on voice coaching should have been directed elsewhere. There is no sound designer, which is made painfully obvious when bird calls are cut off mid-tweet. Too many easy, cop-out choices have been made and some aspects are simply sloppy.

Even the title of the play is irritating. It’s called In a Dark, Dark House and yet all of the scenes take place outside, Drew’s alleged abuse took place in a treehouse and the only mention of the family home comes when Terry remembers running away from camp and hiding in the garage. Except in the next line of dialogue he has mysteriously moved to the attic.

The play does deal with some interesting themes. The notion of childhood is wrung out like a sodden towel – Terry never really had a one, Jennifer is trying to shed hers much too fast and Drew has never grown up. The twisted confessions in the last act raise some interesting, and very unsettling, questions regarding what constitutes abuse and consent, although any poignancy or meaning that could be found in this is ruined by some very gratuitous final touches.

LaBute’s writing is known for its dark themes and outrageous plots, and Red Stitch excels at tackling challenging works. In this case, though, the company has failed to hit the mark.

In a Dark, Dark House: Red Stitch Actors Theatre
By Neil LaBute
Directed by Wayne Pearn
July 22 – August 22

[kate]

Not too good a review for the whole performance obviously, but the important bit is the Eloise bit... "radiant"!

Again: yay!

[hannah]

Oh dear, not a very good review. But thank heavens Eloise saved it from being completely panned.

Yay for the "flawless" and "radiant" Eloise ;D