Review: Beautifully Imperfect (NICA - circus)

Here's a great night out for thinking circus fans, Beautifully Imperfect is on at the National Circus Centre in Prahran until 20th April. Get there if you can. It is quite astonishing. For more about the show, read my review now published in Stage Whispers.

Get tix online through NICA
More reviews by Lucy 

Rock of Ages - musical theatre (review)

Rock of Ages is the newest musical comedy production to hit Melbourne. Its a fun night, time-warping back to the 1980's, when big hair and shoulderpads were in, and mobile phones were the size of a brick.
Read my review in Stage Whispers.

More reviews

Eating the Neighbour's Pets

Pedro is eating our neighbour’s pets. It’s happened twice now. The first time he scooted through our legs at the front door, sprinting past five minutes later with a glossy black fowl in his jaws. And he kept running. We had no idea where he’d caught the chook, or what he did with it.  And we weren’t inclined to start knocking on doors.

We returned home to Melbourne and dined out on the story. We salved our consciences by concluding the chicken had it coming – it must have been out of its pen after all. Many people were shocked. But Pedro is a Labrador, they pondered, he is so friendly - how could he? Some children refused to pat him despite his waggly tail. Everyone nodded soberly when urged to shut the front door.

Months later we were back at the beach house. I returned from a massage to a flutter of brown and white feathers by the front door. My bloke broke the news. He told how the distressed owner and her pre-school child had followed Pedro home. How Pedro had crunched on his prey as they talked. The chooks were more than a source of eggs, she said, they were the kid’s pets. How the child had looked at our dog. Our dog, eating her pet.

We were ashamed. Our vegetarian son was mortified. Our offer to pay for new chooks was declined. Pedro was banished to the back yard, and what was left of the unfortunate bird deposited in our wheelie bin. My massage, negated.

Veterinarians are increasingly offering yearly checkups to chooks as suburban ownership increases. After initially getting chooks for their laying power, many people develop an attachment, keeping their brood for years after they have stopped laying.  

Live poultry sales to suburban and inner-city households have been doubling in past years, and local council laws typically allow 5-10 backyard hens without registration fees.

Backyard poultry advocates Aussies Living Simply say, “a chook is a pet who pays board”. They say the benefits of keeping hens can’t be measured by egg production alone, as hens eat food scraps and garden bugs, fertilise the garden, and provide companionship and entertainment like other household pets.

“The costs of having your own backyard chooks or other poultry is negligible when you know that the egg they have given you is from a known and trusted friend, for simply giving them a good life and home,” says one member.

But any inclination I had to keep a few hens is now thwarted. Our accidentally free-range dog has developed a taste for free-range poultry. He is canis lupus, a descendent of wolves, an instinct we’ll never override. When he runs free again, and it’s only a matter of time, we’ve promised to run and shut our neighbour’s gate.

We have no right to be mortified, we omnivores. This very moment people all over this globe are hunting their own food. Food they will kill by their own hand, then skin, gut, and cook or eat raw. So while we tut-tut about my dog Pedro, we need to face the fact that our lunch today is what someone else has killed on our behalf. Bon appétit!

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Review: Another Year (film)

This is a film about us, whether we like it or not.

Another Year is full of brilliantly believable characters, searching for happiness as they negotiate life's ups and downs. As the year passes friends and family move in and out of the lives of Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), savouring their hospitality, generosity and friendship. Tom and Gerri's stability is irresistable to those whose lives have taken a tragic turn. They are the epitome of great friends, doing what they can to help.

Each season we return with Gerri and Tom to the community garden where they tend their garden with care, just as they do their relationships. The garden is a metaphor for happiness, not flash-in-the-pan but a sustained kind that comes with an investment of time and devotion. The garden is also a sanctuary away from troubled friends, in fact their son is the only one we ever see joining them to tend the garden beds.

But Gerri and Tom are not doormats. Generosity is not doled out at their family's expense, and when Mary (Lesley Manville) crosses this line they are "disappointed" and distance themselves from her. Ultimately our choices are our own responsibility, affecting our relationships, health, work and attitude to life.

Written and directed by Mike Leigh, Secrets and Lies(1996), Vera Drake (2004) and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), Another Year premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2010, and has been widely acclaimed and awarded.

In Melbourne Another Year is reaching the end of its cinema life, but it can still be seen in some Palace Cinemas (Balwyn, Brighton Bay and Kino), Cameo Belgrave, and Mornington.


Watch the movie trailer
Have a gander at Lucy's other reviews

Review: Cafe Scheherazade (play)

My review of Cafe Scheherazade by Therese Radic (based on the novel by Arnold Zable) is now published by Stage Whispers.

Cafe Scheherazade is playing at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne until 3rd April, 2011. It is commended as a compelling 90 minutes of theatre which may prompt a dose of self-reflection.

Have a gander at Lucy's other reviews

Wearing Bamboo: Slip, Slop, Slap with an environmental plus

Bamboo may prove to be the unlikely hero in the global quest for environmentally responsible agriculture thanks to the discovery by a Deakin University PhD candidate.

Amid concerns about cotton's water footprint in a country with an increasingly erratic water supply, fabric made with bamboo fibres is emerging as a future alternative, with added environmental advantages.

Tarannum Afri, a student at Deakin University's Institute for Technology Research and Innovation, has identified the property that gives bamboo superior sun-blocking characteristics. She is now working to develop a fabric using bamboo fibres in an environmentally responsible way.

Ms Afri, a former textile engineer, said that bamboo is 60% better than cotton at blocking UV rays. Bamboo can grow up to metre overnight, and spreads rapidly allowing a yield per acre 10 times that of cotton with no need for irrigation, pesticides, chemical weeding, insecticides and fungicide to thrive.

"Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world and grows to its maximum height in about three months, and reaches maturity in three to four years," she said.

Video Interview with Tarannum Afri

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Scott Morrison: tragedy seen in dillusions of worthiness

ABC News Victoria last night was one of the most tragic I have ever seen. The bulletin began with a report on twin four-year old boys, fighting for their lives after being severely burned following an explosion at their home. Next we were told of the death of a 16 month old child, run over by his father in the driveway of their home. And then the funeral for those asylum seekers whose bodies were recovered in the waters off Christmas Island. The death of children and of the parents of children, their bodies encased in plain wooden boxes. No flowers. Whole families lost. An eight year old boy sobbed as his father was buried. His mother and brother were never found. He has no family left. He has no home. He has no country. His prospects are bleak.

If this were not tragedy enough, we then heard from Oppostition Immigration Spokesman Scott Morrison, who has so little empathy he is complaining about the transportation costs of flying relatives to Sydney for the funeral.

Who exactly is Scott Morrison, and what qualifies him to make such a call. On his website we read that Mr Morrison: believes in "helping young people prepare for their future" and "supporting families to stay together". He espouses the values of his parents who taught him "that success in life was about what you contributed, rather than what you accumulated", but he values prosperity. Ironic really. 

Morrison grew up in family active in local community through youth groups, local church and local government. He attended Sydney Boys High, and the University of NSW, where he received an honours degree in Applied Science. He has worked in senior management positions for several companies. Mr Morrison has the privilege of being a regular kayaker on Port Hacking,  "heavily involved in sports" and enjoying "the local beach lifestyle". Sounds lovely doesn't it.  He has a gorgeous young family. He is highly active in the church and attributes a Christian faith as the driving force for his beliefs and values .

And herein lies the tragedy.

Comparisons are rarely fair, and yet I cannot help but wonder how someone who didn't lose his entire family at the age of eight, has presumably never been homeless or unemployed, subject to poverty, racial predjudice, or political persecution, can make such a call. Nowhere do I read that Mr Morrison's family could not even hope to have him educated, or believed that life in their country of origin was so unbearable that they would risk everything in the pursuit of freedom. How is it possible that someone who has been so lucky, can have become so squintingly mean?

None of us had any power over where we were born, and into what circumstances. And this goes for those bruised by cyclones, bushfire and flood in recent days. Likewise good  luck should never be confused with deservingness. Life is never a level playing field and we need to be on guard against anyone who feeds our dillusions of worthiness. All we can do is attempt to walk a while in other's shoes and to respond with the most compassionate of hearts.

About the Christmas Island tragedy
Morrison and anti-muslim sentiment as a vote winner

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No Mate, She WON'T Be Right: facing up to the climate crisis

2010: 

Australia's Warmest Decade on record.

Eastern Australia's Wettest Year on record.

Northern Australia's Wettest "Dry Season" on record.

South Western Australia's driest year on record.

Australia's Wettest Year since 2000 (3rd wettest on record)

As Australia comes up for air after an unprecedeted series of natural disasters, the Bureau of Meteorology's Annual Australian Climate Statement has offered some salient statistics on our changing climate.

It's not the national picture that has me gasping for air, but the extremes experienced across vast tracts of country. Pictorial representations in the report illustrate the climate crisis we appear unwilling and therefore ill-equipped to challenge. Take a look.

Australia's south-west has recorded its lowest rainfall on record at 392mm, well below its previous record low of 439mm in 1940.You can do the percentages on that one. While Northern Australia's "dry season" (May - October) has been the wettest on record with 190mm eclipsing the previous record of 176mm in 1978.  The Murray Darling Basin, notorious for its legendary dryness, has suddenly recorded its wettest year on record.

Nationally Australia has recorded its warmest decade. 2010 was the third wettest year since records began in 1900, and the wettest since 2000. The Bureau of Meteorology  explains that "this underscores that the warming of Australia's climate continues, even though individual years may be cooler than other years".

Suddenly "she'll be right mate" sounds more irresponsible and lazy, than endearingly laid-back.

More on this subject from a global perspective:
Skeptical Science - 2010: Record Warmth and Weird Weather
Grist: Crazy Storms highlight the crazy climate mess we're in

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