Greed
by Weeping Spoon Productions
1987. Love Ballads. Big Shoes. Bad Morals. Dirty Business. Four lives influenced by GREED, and it’s about to come crashing down… “Weeping Spoon is one of the most dynamic and innovative groups currently producing theatre from Perth (Australia).” Luke Milton – ARTRAGE. Greed is good. Greed is Right. It’s a tragic-comedy so consuming that you’ll want it all for yourself.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Very funny stuff! Lots of energy, Australian accents and creative use of cardboard. Very worthwhile.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:44 am
I keep hearing how people enjoyed this show. I was left cold. I didn’t manage to laugh once. I felt the entire time that I was watching a high-school level collective-creation. The actors seemed to be frantic and rushed, and ended up simply yelling out their lines.
Don’t waste your precious time or money. There are many more deserving and interesting productions out there.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:20 pm
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Greed
Loser’s ups and downs a winner
Poor Hubert. A lowly office clerk who ornaments his pencil with a troll doll, he’s clearly a loser until he straps on his wonder boots. Ka-pow! He’s transformed into a business superstar, the admiration of his formerly scornful colleagues.
Then, whoops, he’s back at the bottom of the vicious corporate pile. Then he’s on top again. Then he’s, well, you know.
Seems that certainty is not one of the business world’s defining characteristics, at least not according to this broad, clever comedy by Australia’s Weeping Spoon Productions.
A frantic and funny ensemble piece, Greed is about exactly that: insatiability — for money, power, adulation (but those Aussie accents sometimes make the dialogue incomprehensible).
It’s deliciously overacted physical theatre where cheap props such as a giant cardboard telephone underscore the emptiness that greed produces. It’s also got a fine piece of choreography set to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, a song title that just might reference one result of greed.
Greed, Academic Hall until June 25.
– Patrick Langston
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Here’s a link to our reviews on the montreal website for those interested, make sure you come on down, we’ve got three shows left!
http://montrealfringe.ca/en/spectacles/greed
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
[...] Greed, by Australian company Weeping Spoon productions, can be seen at the Academic Hall, Monday the 24th through Wednesday the 26th. [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
GREED
Presented by the Weeping spooners from Australia. One could say that Australians seem to love Monty Python’s style of comic acting. This is comedy, but it is also a tragedy, and a parody, full of gushy romantic emotion, guilt and redemption All the conventions of theatre are here and tightly choreographed and impeccably manipulated, as five exciting actors take us through the life of a company with all the tensions, rivalries and jealousies that the business world generates, Here, however, they add a shoe fixation, and there is a story line that is sliced up, pulled back and pushed forward to create the ideal ending. A parody of material needs, consumerism, theatre, and everything else. I makes your head spin. A collective event by a group of very talented young people that left me wanting to see more… GREED plays at Academic Hall…
June 25th, 2008 at 6:50 am
High production values! (Cardboard set and props.)
Cast of thousands! (Well, five)
Girls! Beautiful girls! (OK, OK. One)
Sex, sex, sex! (Does morning after count?)
Nudity! (A little)
Multi-million dollar budget! (Well, hundreds anyway)
High energy! (AND HOW!!!)
This witty, charming, intelligent, inventive show makes a virtue of its low budget with huge creativity and energy from a very talented troupe. The set alone is a marvel. For example, when was the last time you saw a touring Fringe show with its own photocopier on stage?
The choreography is some of the most energetic on the Fringe outside of actual dance company performances. And there’s a sendup of modern dance that had me giggling uncontrollably.
Structurally the script replays the events in question from multiple points of view (as does Kurosawa’s film “Rashomon”). So the intricate interrelationships between the characters is revealed slowly, in spite of all the frenetic activity. During some of the replays, the action is “fast forwarded” to keep up momentum. Tighter editing of the replays would also help.
And the last few scenes touched my heart.
I highly recommend this show.
WARNING: only one more performance at the Ottawa Fringe. Today at 21:30.
June 28th, 2008 at 1:42 am
They’ve already gone, but GREED was my first ever fringe show, and the one that hooked me. I’ve have Bonnie Tyler running through my head ever since that day. A ding-dang fun show, great structure, and oh the joy of cardboard props. Many thanks to Weeping Spoon for all the memories.