2025: The Almighty Sometimes

 

 

The Almighty Sometimes by Kendall Feaver. Off the Ledge Theatre co-presented by The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, 19-22 November 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 20

Cast and Creative Team

Anna – Winsome Ogilvie
Renee – Elaine Noon
Oliver – Robert Kjellgren
Vivienne – Steph Roberts

Director/Lighting Designer – Lachlan Houen
Stage Manager – Lucy van Dooren
Set/Costume Designer – Caitlin Baker
Sound Designer/Composer – Marlene Radice
Movement Director – Kristy Griffin
Costuming & Marketing Assistant – Liv Boddington



Theatre off the ledge is exactly the right way of thinking about this remarkable production of The Almighty Sometimes.  Winsome Ogilvie enacts Anna’s continuous likelihood of emotional collapse in such detail in action, voice and expression of her feelings that one is amazed at her capacity and flexibility as an actor – while also feeling so sorry for Anna caught in the impossible confusion of her mother’s doing everything “right” and maybe even more than might be expected, for her child’s benefit.

Now, legally an adult, what will become of Anna?  What was was her “illness” in the first place.  Something we call ADHD I suspect.  As a young child she became an irrepressible story writer, but after her encouraging father died, her mother sought help to, essentially, calm her down and have treatment so that Anna’s obvious intelligence could be directed into her education.  As a teacher herself, this seemed sensible to Renee.

To quote Off the Ledge Theatre: Winner of the Judges’ Award in the prestigious Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting (UK) and the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Prizes for Drama, Kendall Feaver’s captivating play is a profound and compelling study of a young woman trying to discover where her illness ends and her identity begins.
 
As a teacher myself, I wondered if the issue of classifying some behaviours as illnesses, justifying drug treatments as the psychiatrist Vivienne – played very straight by Steph Roberts – does, was from the author’s personal experience.  

A fascinating interview in The Saturday Paper in 2020 (at https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/theatre/2020/11/28/playwright-kendall-feaver/160648200010780) doesn’t reveal the answer, but the importance of the play being presented – which I am sure The Q recognises – is that Anne’s experience, through to what seems to be no more than an isolated life in a ‘home’ from the age of 20, is that it makes a medical/political issue become real.  Made worse by how her blunt behaviour has ruined her possible relationship with old school friend Oliver.

Presenting The Almighty Sometimes is a valuable community contribution by the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre and Off The Ledge Theatre to the Australian Capital region.  Canberra has often led new developments in education.  With the expansion of social media on the internet, parent, teacher and children relationships are changing, and creating new and fraught issues, with attempts at control by banning phones in the classroom and even at school at all, and limiting social media accounts to over 16s.

I hope that this production’s short run can be followed by presentation on tour, hopefully with a secondary school program component.  

Establishing one’s identity, always the central concern for teenagers, is what this play is about, and it should not be missed.  I have my own memories as a 7-year-old boy who wrote poetry, and how I was treated - though long before modern psychiatry, no-one thought to class me as ill.  I got my own back when I got into Uni - the only one in my all boys' school class to choose to answer the poetry question.  So there!

Photos supplied:

Psychiatry session with Vivienne

Meeting up again with Oliver

Fraught lunchtime episode

 

One of the worst moments with mother
The Almighty Sometimes
by Kendall Feaver. Off the Ledge Theatre 2025

 

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Equus by Peter Shaffer

 

 

Equus by Peter Shaffer.  Free Rain Theatre Company at The Hub, Kingston, Canberra, 12 - 22 November, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 14

CAST

Martin Dysart – Arran McKenna

Alan Strang – Jack Shanahan

Dora Strang – Janie Lawson

Frank Strang/Harry Dalton – Bruce Hardie

Hesther Salomon – Crystal Mahon

Nugget/Horseman – Sam Thomson

Jill Mason – Lily Welling

Nurse - Caitlin Bissett

Horses – Jamie Johnston, Finlay Forrest, Samara Glesti, Bianca Lawson, Robert Wearden

    

CREATIVES

    Director – Anne Somes
    Associate Director – Crystal Mahon
    Movement Director – Amy Campbell
    Set Design – Cate Clelland
    Director of Marketing – Olivia Wenholz


The drama Equus, based on a true report of a young man stabbing the eyes out of horses, is at its heart about a professional highly-regarded child psychologist becoming doubtful about the legitimacy of his work. 

Anne Somes’ production is top-class in design and acting quality – proof once again of the value of The Hub in our community.

Wikipedia records: The narrative centres on religious and ritual sacrifice themes, as well as the manner in which Strang constructs a personal theology involving the horses and the godhead "Equus". Alan sees the horses as representative of God and confuses his adoration of his "God" with sexual attraction. Also important is Shaffer's examination of the conflict between personal values and satisfaction and societal mores, expectations, and institutions, and between Apollonian and Dionysian values and systems.

For me, now 50 years on from the first production of Equus, personal confusion about one’s “God” and sexual attraction – which makes the play powerfully dramatic – is not the personal issue.  Canberra is replete with professionals, whose doubts about Apollonian and Dionysian values and systems make the character of Martin Dysart the one we can identify with.  

At a more purely bureaucratic level, consider the years of conflict and emotional confusion in the life of whistle-blower Derek Elias, assistant secretary for regional processing contracts in the Department of Home Affairs since 2019, reported in detail this very day as I write, November 15, 2025, in The Saturday Paper.

While the blatant male nudity in the final scene of Equus is no longer surprising and certainly not as controversial as it was in 1973, it brings to light Dysart’s dilemma.  He has engineered his patient into acting out what really did happen when he and the girl who worked with him in the horse stables met, presumably for his first sexual experience.  We experience watching how a young man’s twisted imagination, worshipping his all-knowing “god” named Nuggety, leads to emotional disaster and the blinding of the horse.

This is drama at its most demanding of our sympathy, even empathy if we dare, especially in close-up in the intimate space of The Hub.

So, what does Martin Dysart worship?  Not a horse, but the belief that he can really make a deluded child patient become normal – whatever “being normal” means.

This is where the writing skill of Peter Shaffer comes into play.  The essence of great theatre, as we all know from Shakepeare, is universality.  We all have our Nuggety.

Mine was my worship of the two young lads in autocratic Portugal who publicly raised a toast to freedom, leading to the establishment of Amnesty International in 1961.  In 2004 I represented Amnesty on the Australian Government Working Group responding, as Australia was required to do, at the end of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education.

In the meantime I came to understand the necessity of the Arts – and in my case Drama and Theatre – in education, as basic to the understanding and practice of human rights.  It’s fair to say, I guess, that though my 33 years as a full-time professional teacher, trying often to achieve Martin Dysart’s aims in my own way, ended in 1995 as prostate cancer made its play – I’m still a human rights educator through drama as a nowadays unpaid reviewer.

So Equus means a great deal to me, even if I look around and wonder if Amnesty International is still as great a god for good in the confusing world of self-induced climate change, as I had hoped when I turned 20 in 1961.

See Free Rain’s Equus, find your Nuggety, and open your eyes to world betterment.

 

Lily Welling as Jill Mason – Jack Shanahan as Alan Strang 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Looking for Alibrandi

 

 

Looking for Alibrandi. State Theatre Company South Australia presents Brink Productions at Canberra Theatre Centre October 3 / 4, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Oct 3

CREATIVES
Director Stephen Nicolazzo
Playwright Vidya Rajan
Author Melina Marchetta
Set and Costume Design Kate Davis
Lighting Design Katie Sfetkidis
Sound Design Daniel Nixon
Musicians Rosa Voto + Renato Vacirca
Tarantella Choreography Rosa Voto
Dialect Coach Paulo Bongiovanni + Rosanna Morales
Cultural and Language Consultant Lucia Mastrantone

CAST (National Tour in Canberra) 
Chanella Macri: as Josephine "Josie" Alibrandi
Amanda McGregor: as Christina (Josie's mother) and Sera
Natalie Gamsu: as Nonna (Josie's grandmother), Sister Bernadette, and Margaret Throsby 
Ashton Malcom: as Ivy and John Barton
Riley Warner: as Jacob Coote
Chris Asimos: as Michael Andretti
(Photos provided may show Lucia Mastrantone, Jennifer Vuletic in place of Amanda McGregor, Natalie Gamsu)

CREW
Production Managers Lachlan Turner + Steve Tilling
Stage Manager Jacinta Anderson
Assistant Stage Managers Ashlee Scott + Charlotte Welden

LtoR: Nonna, Christina and Josephine in the set symbolically overloaded with tomatoes.
Brink Productions: Looking for Alibrandi 2025
Photo: Matt Byrne

This upfront post-modernist expressionist presentation of Looking for Alibrandi, on the brink of satire, turns the story of the sensitive, intelligent daughter – Josephine – of Italian single mother – Christina – away from what could be an empathetic, though perhaps sentimental, approach to the racism, sexism and social class conflicts in Australia, into a blistering blast of social criticism, leavened by laughter.

 Essentially, the point of the play, as an up-to-date stage adaptation of the 1992 novel, is a justifiable feminist view of both Italian and colonial Australian treatment of women over the generations from Nonna to Tina to Josie.  To make this clear and strong, Chanella Macri plays her character forcefully; and, in expressionist style, at significant points, speaks directly to us in the audience.

In this way we become not merely observers of someone else’s story, but members of the modern Australian community with responsibilities towards people of difference, as migrants and in other ways.  Just as Josephine comes to an understanding and acceptance of her mother’s and grandmother’s position in life, we learn to appreciate Josie’s as she is about to begin university education.

Aimed by Brink particularly for school groups, it's worth noting that nowadays more than 50% of university entrants are women.

Country Arts South Australia provide a useful run-down:

Award-winning director Stephen Nicolazzo (Loaded, Merciless Gods) brought Melina Marchetta’s iconic best-selling novel – which she adapted into the cult 2000 movie – to the stage for the first time, where Vidya Rajan’s AWGIE nominated adaptation joined three generations of women in a passionate, heart wrenching, and unmissable rendering of the Australian classic. With live passata sauce making, traditional Italian music and a soundtrack of Australian pop classics, "Looking for Alibrandi" is a vibrant theatrical experience full of passion, laughs, and beauty.

Performed in English and Italian
Warnings: Frequent strong language; themes of suicide; mild violence. Suitable for ages 12+.

Tonight, Saturday October 4, is the final performance in Brink’s national tour.  My thanks to Canberra Theatre Centre for the opportunity not to miss Looking for Alibrandi.

Curtain call: Looking for Alibrandi Brink Productions 2025

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: True West by Sam Shepard

 

True West by Sam Shepard.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, September 8 – October 11, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 21

Playwright: Sam Shepard
Director: Iain Sinclair; Assistant Director: Anna Houston

    Cast
Mom - Vanessa Downing
Austin - Darcy Kent
Saul Kimmer - James Lugton
Lee - Simon Maiden

Set & Costume Designer: Simone Romaniuk
Lighting Designer: Brockman; Sound Designer: Daryl Wallis
Dialect Coach: Linda Nicholls-Gidley; Fight Director: Scott Witt
Stage Manager: Christopher Starnawski                                Asst Stage Manager: Bella Wellstead  Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik

By arrangement with Music Theatre International (Australasia)

95mins (no interval)    Recommended for ages 14+
 

 Photos by Prudence Upton

Mom - Vanessa Downing, arrives home unexpectedly

Saul Kimmer - James Lugton,  Lee - Simon Maiden confront Austin - Darcy Kent
about doing a movie script-writing deal

______________________________________________________________

Donald Trump said today, in what should have been a solemn commemoration of the life and shooting death of Charlie Kirk, that he disagreed with Kirk on one point – that Charlie never hated those who opposed him. “He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them,” Trump said of Kirk. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry,” Trump added. “I am sorry, Erika”, speaking to Kirk’s grief-stricken wife. [independent.co.uk]

What’s worse is that Trump sounded as if he was making a joke of the core American default state of mind – violence in word and deed.

Sam Shepard understood it was not a joke when he wrote True West in 1980 – nearly half a century ago.  Though the play is famous, I’m embarrassed to say that I had known nothing about it before seeing Ensemble’s presentation.  For the final fifteen minutes and for long after leaving the theatre, I was literally in a state of shock.  

The performances by Darcy Kent and Simon Maiden, directed with such accurate precision by Iain Sinclair (whose work I saw in his younger days in his Elbow Theatre, here in Canberra) was quite extraordinary, achieving all, perhaps even more, than Shepard could ever have wished for.
 

 

Lee confronts Austin with the toast made in toasters Austin has stolen
to satisfy Lee's earlier challenge that the intellectual Austin couldn't do practical things.

Lee teases Austin with the keys of Austin's car

 

 

Which, on reflection, makes his play as important today, here in Australia, as it was in his America.  Shepard said [ http://www.sam-shepard.com/truewest.html ] "I wanted to write a play about double nature, one that wouldn't be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. It's a real thing, double nature. I think we're split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal. It's not so cute. Not some little thing we can get over. It's something we've got to live with."

But what Donald Trump and this frightening production shows is that True West is powerfully symbolic and metaphorical precisely because it is more than a mere taste of what it feels like to be two-sided.  The most awful feeling in the play is at the moment when the two brothers are at the point of killing each other as their Mom arrives home unexpectedly from what she had hoped would be a holiday.

She doesn’t seem really surprised to find her house almost destroyed in their drunken mayhem. It’s just something she’s got to live with, apparently.  Just like we have to live with Trump’s hatred which will tear the whole world apart.

 

Austin has lost his sense of propriety, and now behaves like his profligate brother Lee
shortly before their Mom arrives home.

 

As I searched for others’ views, I couldn’t do better than this, from Misha Berson written in 1997:

"'True West' isn't just a combustive slam dance of warring brothers. It also animates the psychic struggle of self and shadow self, and it makes vivid the unbridgeable split in the American West mythos between unfettered individualism and mainstream success, wide open space and subdivided wilderness. The play is inconclusive. It offers no healing of such divisions, no integration. It just lays out its contradictions with high-voltage dramatic force. It rocks, and reverbs."   ...Misha Berson, Seattle Times theater critic.

30 years later, we – in Australia – on social media and in the face of destructive climate change which we have caused ourselves;  do we not see that contradiction between unfettered individualism (in Lee) and the insistence on mainstream success (in movie producer Saul Kimmer), and between the wide open space of the natural world and the subdividing of the wilderness?

The shooting of Charlie Kirk has filled our news with arguments about political violence and gun control, as the Minister for the Environment struggles to control the expansion of the gas industry which has already awfully damaged the ancient heritage of Murujuga in Western Australia.

While a “sovereign citizen” has gone bush after killing police in Victoria – the Australian version of Sam Shepard’s characters (and apparently his own father) going to the desert to escape social responsibility.

Ensemble’s True West is quite simply a fantastic production, but be prepared for its powerful emotional effect on a personal level, and for the truth of its story on the wider social level.

Definitely not to be missed.  This is theatre art at its best.

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: How to Plot a Hit in Two Days by Melanie Tait

 

 

https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/how-to-plot-a-hit-in-two-days/

How to Plot a Hit in Two Days by Melanie Tait.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, August 29 – October 11, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 13

Playwright: Melanie Tait
Director: Lee Lewis; Assistant Director: Tiffany Wong
    
Set & Costume Design: Simone Romaniuk
Lighting Design: Brockman; Composer & Sound Design: Paul Charlier
Stage Manager: Jen Jackson; Assistant Stage Manager: Sherydan Simson
Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik

This production is made possible by the Commissioners’ Circle and The Tracey Trinder Playwright's Award.

Cast
 Sharon – Amy Ingram
 Dell – Genevieve Lemon
 Bert – Seán O'Shea
 Judy – Georgie Parker
 Sally – Julia Robertson



Turning the death of Molly into a heart-warming comedy was a stroke of genius on Melanie Tait’s part.

For anyone else as ignorant as me, who never watched A Country Practice, the crucial question is, Did Molly Really Die?

As serendipity would have it, my wife and I missed our usual appointment to watch ABC TV’s 7.30 just last Monday.  You can watch it now, at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-08/behind-molly%E2%80%99s-heartbreaking-death-on-a-country/105750504 celebrating 40 years since Molly’s “heartbreaking death” as “a new play goes inside the writer’s room to reveal how that heartbreaking storyline was created. Richard Mockler brings us this story” including interviewing the actors, Anne Tenney (Molly) and Shane Withington (her husband, Brendan).

So the answer to that crucial question is complicated.  Molly was a fictional character, so “iconic” that she still hasn’t died in our cultural memory.  But that’s only because she really did die, in that fiction.

And now, Melanie Tait – who is obviously very real – has created her fictional story of the group of writers, as she imagined them, who created the fictional Molly for the very real Anne Tenney to act, 40 years ago.  In deciding, over many fraught sessions, about how to “kill” Molly, Tait’s writers find themselves imagining why Anne has decided to leave the show, and so create for them this awful task of writing Molly out.  Was it just for a better paid acting job somewhere else?

The real Anne doesn’t say in the 7.30 interview, but does say “They coined my character mad Molly, for some reason or other. She was very involved in local issues and very environmentally aware.” Hmm!

 

Writers Team: 
Julia Robertson whose other job is ICU Nurse, Sally, 
who has seen someone die from leukemia.
Georgie Parker as Judy, the final writer who "kills" Molly.

Writers Team:
Genevieve Lemon as Dell Isn't there another character we could make a theatre critic
and get Judy to kill? (The Mirror's Woeful Theatre Section revolting little man)
Seán O'Shea as Bert, whose wife takes off with a camera grip on a film shoot in Darwin.
Georgie Parker as Judy

Amy Ingram as Sharon, in full motorcycle gear.
Full rock star/former jail inmate vibes.

In the end the important thing, as you watch Melanie Tait’s imagination made real before your very eyes by the terrific top-quality actors, so precisely directed in every detail of lifted eyebrow, rolled eyes, widened eyes and clarity of ironic speech, the real answer is that at many points you will die laughing.

But in the end you will be seriously impressed by Tait’s skill making humour telling.  A Country Practice  may have been a commercial television soapie, but the way that team of writers finally came up with the way Molly dies – maintaining for the audience not just a conventional sentimentality about her unfortunate passing, but a positive view of her life as a mother and wife – turned A Country Practice into a positive social force.

The play, How to Plot a Hit in Two Days, is wonderfully enjoyable to watch, especially because the group of writers, each quite different personalities, work so well together, understanding each others’ feelings about problematic situations in their own lives which arise from working out the effects on people who will watch Molly’s death – from understanding medical issues (she dies from leukemia), social and family issues, and environmental issues (after all, it’s a country practice).

The theatre company is not called Ensemble for nothing.  This is an ensemble production of the best kind – light-hearted in performance and strong-hearted in effect.

As the playscript says (it includes the program, for $10: Currency Press), This isn’t your average conference room.  It’s where writers are expected to come up with ideas, so it’s comfortable, lived in and welcoming.  Indeed it is.

Certainly not to be missed.
 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Peter/Wendy by Jeremy Bloom

 

 

Peter/Wendy by Jeremy Bloom. Ribix Productions and Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra, September 3-27, 2025.

Presented as part of the Mill Theatre Co-Production Series, a program which provides an avenue for creatives to present their own work in the Mill Theatre space.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 10

Cast

In alphabetical order:
Wendy U/S, Swing: Aleksis Andreitchenko (she/her)
Wendy: Veronica Baroulina (she/her)
Tinker Bell: Chipz (they/them)
Lost Boy: Phoebe Fielden (she/her)
Tiger Lily:    Sarah Hartley (she/her)
Peter Pan: Joshua James (he/him)
Mr Darling/Smee: Mark Lee (he/him)
Mrs Darling/Hook: Heidi Silberman (she/her)


Creative Team

Writer: Jeremy Bloom; Director: Rachel Pengilly (she/her)
Movement Director: Hannah Pengilly (she/her)
Composer & Sound Designer: Shannon Parnell (she/her)
Set & Costume Designer: Helen Wojtas (she/her)
Lighting Designer: Jacob Aquilina (he/him)
Stage Manage: Hannah Pengilly (she/her)
Assistant Stage Managers: Sophie Hope-White (she/her) & Ciara Ford (she/her)
Intimacy Coordinator: Chipz (they/them)
Marketing and Publicity: Liv Blucher (she/her)
Vocal Coach: Lexi Sekuless (she/her)
Singing Tutor: Petronella van Tienen (she/her)
Consulting Artist: Julia Grace (she/her)

Co-Producers: Ribix Productions and Lexi Sekuless Productions by permission of ORiGiN™ Theatrical on behalf of Playscripts, Inc and Broadway Licensing Global

Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs; Media Partner: Darkhorse Creative

Further credits found here: https://www.ribixproductions.com.au/peter-wendy/


You can read the original playscript of Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up at https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300081h.html 
Or you can also read the book called Peter and Wendy at https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Peter_and_Wendy/yhbTEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA2&printsec=frontcover

Peter/Wendy seems to have drawn on both.  J M Barrie writes as if he, in reality, is living in a fantasy land.  His play has hugely long stage directions which seem impossible to fulfill, while his novel describes the characters in excruciating psychological details that are hard to accept.

At this point in my reading, Barrie seems either an early 20th Century absurdist or an unpleasant social satirist.

At https://www.playscripts.com/play/2714 you will find Jeremy Bloom’s script, “adapted from the works of J M Barrie”, which is described as a “lyrical, atmospheric interpretation of Peter Pan, [in which] Jeremy Bloom strips the familiar story down to its emotional essence. Peter lures Wendy away from her nursery to the magical world of Neverland, where she joins his adventures with Tinker Bell, Tiger Lily, and the menacing Captain Hook. A low-tech, inventive adaptation that pays homage to the darker themes of J. M. Barrie's original”.

And I am pleased to report that Rachel Pengilly and her team of designers and actors have succeeded in creating that ‘emotional essence’ in the relationship between Wendy and the faeries, and reveal the need in an imaginative young daughter to psychologically escape the ‘standard’ parents’ assumptions about parenting.  They are not the darlings that their name suggests.

This justifies a positive answer to the question we might ask: why present stage material written in that ‘different country’ more than 100 years ago?  It’s because that need for escape – to grow up – is as relevant today as then; and perhaps more so in a world where a modern Peter will be on Wendy’s social media feed, while her parents have no idea of the Captain Hooks and Tinker Bells she come across.  It’s a worry – and we feel it as Peter/Wendy ends as the dawn begins.

On the practical theatre side, the set design, the detailed complex choreography in using all the symbolic items of Peter’s world of adventures, and the lighting and sound, created the fantasy world very successfully, showing a high degree of originality which, for me, solved those stage direction difficulties I saw in Barrie’s script.

Especially important, and highly successful was the casting.  Apart from all the tricky acting in the fast moving changes for the whole cast, Wendy and Peter looked and felt absolutely right in their parts.

The Mill Theatre writes it is “excited to announce the first co-production of 2025”, and I say the more the merrier, especially for the young people on stage and in the audience.  This production is full of life, auguring well for the future of Ribix Productions.

Veronica Baroulina as Wendy
in Peter/Wendy
Ribix Productions, 2025

 

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Hidden Canberra - Shortis&Simpson

 

 

 Hidden Canberra by John Shortis and Moya Simpson as Shortis&Simpson at Smith’s Alternative, Canberra City,  Saturday, September 6, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone


I feel somehow like an archaeologist discovering a new site in a cultural landscape, digging up a cultural artefact, recorded in mystery as a ‘Shortis&Simpson’.

Whatever it is, it’s equally funny and fascinating.  Radiocarbon datings of Shortis&Simpsons show them going back nearly 30 years to a site then known as the School of Arts Cafe, Queanbeyan, and they have been found in many similar cultural sites over the years.

Smith’s Alternative – the one-time bookshop, now arts coffee-shop – have provided an accurate rundown of this new example:

“John Shortis and Moya Simpson moved to the Canberra region from Sydney in 1996. John fell instantly in love with a place where history and politics popped up everywhere he looked. For Moya it was where her passion for world music and voices flourished.

 “Hidden Canberra is their tribute to the city and environs, where their creativity has been able to blossom for nearly 30 years.

“With a bunch of original and collected songs, an array of projected images, and a witty and informative script, the wildly interesting and quirky depth of the capital region comes to life.

“Stories of a rainbow coloured airport, a right wing pollie once a serious Canberra punk, public art, musical street names, Lake George as a capital city, and much, much more. And you thought you knew Canberra…Hidden Canberra is Shortis and Simpson’s funny, moving, surprising love letter to the weird and wonderful town that they proudly call home.”

Ken Behrens all will remember the Artificial Intelligence that produced that wonderful failure to translate the spoken word into digital text.  It wasn’t done originally as the joke it became, but in their song about its history,  Canberrans John and Moya tapped right into the mix of feelings we have about ourselves at home in Australia’s National Capital.  Outsiders, who send their parliamentary representatives here, wouldn’t understand how we combine the serious matters of state with a sense of Australian ironic humour about ourselves that the song sparked in the audience.  What an exciting archaeological dig that was.  We found a road warning sign: STAY SAFE  KEN BEHRENS.

The script for Act 1 is 22 pages long; and 23 pages for Act 2. So I can only reveal a few snippets.  This is how the story begins:

We talk of a city that’s freezing and hot,
Where threads of progressiveness thicken the plot
Where humour and hist’ry and knowledge are not
Forbidden…..
We walk through a city where legends abound
Gleaming and dreaming, both light and profound
Where the heart of a nation is beating its sound
In hidden…Canberra

It’s a gentle beginning, but notice rhyming the slightly syncopated “not / Forbidden” with “In hidden...Canberra”.  This is John’s so-called ‘quirky’ song writing, particularly familiar to those, like myself, who have followed Shortis&Simpson since 1996.  It’s not just the words of the songs, nowadays sung with even more variety of character and clarity of articulation as Moya’s voice has matured, but it’s the oddities of rhyme and rhythm in John’s essentially jazz-based approach in his music that keeps us on the qui vive.

So the singing of Section 125 of the Australian Constitution with lines like

The seat of government of the Commonwealth
Shall be determined by Parliament.
Such territory shall contain an area
Not less than one hundred square miles,
And such portion thereof
As shall consist of Crown lands,
Shall be granted to the Commonwealth
Without any payment therefore,
The Parliament shall sit at Melbourne
Till it meet at the seat of government

(i.e. Canberra, which didn’t exist when the Constitution was written)

in John’s musical hands comes to seem like something from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Then the show takes us through a series of songs which reminded me of the weekly Tim the Yowie Man (in the Canberra Times’ Panorama) quest for people to identify a photo of somewhere obscure, often resulting in a hidden historical story – such as this weekend as I write, about Is this the smallest railway platform?

There’s the story of how the Australian Capital Territory voted, on a metre long ballot paper full of party names like the Warm Tomato Party, or The Party Party, against self-government (eat your heart out, Washington, in your days of Donald Trump).  

Politicians’ Statues are a big thing – especially the very few of women: the first to be elected, not until  1943 mind-you, Enid Lyons and Dorothy Tangney, facing the lack of women’s loos in Parliament House.  The theme was developed in the much later story of the Canberra Alpine Club’s Mount Franklin Hut on the Brindabella Range border with New South Wales, where for sewerage reasons - to keep Canberra's water clean - the women had to walk interstate:

But if you stay
At our Chalet,
Be sure your pissport’s up to date
‘Cause you’ll be headed interstate
To have a spray
Heed what I say
Show your I-Dee-ee-ee
Whenever you wee-ee-ee
Show your I-Dee-ee-ee
When you leave the A-ay C-ee-Tee-ee

Enough for now I should say, except for the one song, about the invention of the QASAR electronic keyboard, first shown in the 1970s at Llewellyn Hall at the School of Music, which the Australian National University seems likely to close down very soon.  There was no laughter this time:

John sings - 
A centre of sound
Climbing
Careering
Bathe in a wave
That’s never disappearing
(Moya oohs in background)
Ground breaking
Risk-taking
Trail blazer
QASAR

Save the ANU School of Music! says everyone.
 

Though there’s another hour to go in the show, I shall come to the end here, with the beginning.  Near the ACT, on the Sydney side, is Lake George, famous for its rapidly changing water levels from undergound sources.  I’ve seen it almost entirely dry, or flooding onto the main road, the Federal Highway, in different years.  Here’s the script:

John speaks –

Back at the beginning of the 20th century, when the call was made for nominations for Australia’s capital city, Lake George was actually proposed. Here’s an artist’s impression of what the lake could look like in that role- Venice meets Lake George.

Only problem being that when a team of senators came to inspect the site, the enigmatic lake did its thing and the water that is so prolific in that design was virtually non-existent.

Fortunately, instead of looking like a European city of long ago, we now have a pristine and important part of our environment, sacred for the indigenous people of our district. 

This is the song John wrote for The Universal Lake in 1998.

Moya sings – of the traditional custodians of this land, the Ngunnawal and Ngamberri peoples, who know Lake George, named after King George IV, as Weereewa.  You see the origin of the name, Canberra, right there.

Ancient lake, eight million years,
Ancient land, salt in the tears,
Grassy bank, inland sea,
Stone unturned, mystery,
Ngunnawal, Weereewa,
Ngamberri, Weereewa,

Muddy bed, emu bone,
Bogong moth, pumice stone,
Sudden squall, choppy sea,
Waterweed, eucalypt tree,
Ngunnawal, Weereewa
Ngamberri, Weereewa,
Ngarrigo, Gandangarra, Wiradjari,
Walbinga, Wandandian, Wiradjuri, 

Level fall, level rise,
Frozen death, boat capsize,
Charcoal burn, kangaroo,
Mine the sand, steal the view,
Ngunnawal, Weereewa,
Ngamberri, Weereewa,
Ngunnawal, Weereewa,
Ngamberri, Weereewa    

Moya Simpson and John Shortis
in love with Canberra

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Romeo and Juliet - Bell Shakespeare

 

 

 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare at Canberra Theatre Playhouse, August 29 – September 7 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night, September 1

Director – Peter Evans
Set & Costume Designer – Anna Tregloan
Lighting Designer – Benjamin Cisterne
Composer & Sound Designer – Max Lyandvert
Associate Fight Director – Thomas Royce-Hampton
Voice & Understudy Director – Jack Starkey-Gill
Choreographer – Simone Sault

Cast:
Juliet – Madeline Li; Nurse – Merridy Eastman; Paris – Jack Halabi
Romeo – Ryan Hodson; Friar – Khisraw Jones-Shukoor
Tybalt – Tom Mathews; Mercutio / Prince – Brittany Santariga
Benvolio – James Thomasson; Capulet – Michael Wahr
Lady Capulet – Adinia Wirasti
Understudy – Caitlin Burley; Thomas Royce-Hampton


William Shakespeare makes it very clear that he is presenting us with a play, which
 
“Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; 
The which if you with patient ears attend, 
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.”

Bell Shakespeare, in this production thoroughly true to William’s intention, makes sure we miss nothing.  We see actors working brilliantly, taking on their characters, presenting us with a play of words, often times a play on words.

This requires, for a start, a director who clearly understands and knows how to impart that understanding of what is known as Presentational Style – the style necessary for Romeo and Juliet to become far more than a sentimental sob story of the two lovers’ deaths.  

It is a morality play about political ‘families’ becoming trapped in conflicts based purely on ‘loyalties’ and misrepresentations to the point of self-destruction.  

The only hope Shakespeare could offer was to have Capulet say finally “O brother Montague! Give me thy hand”, while Montague offers a grand “statue in pure gold” to commemorate Juliet.

If they had shaken hands from the beginning of the young men's violence, as the Prince had ordered, then it would not have become such a story of more woe.  Like the stories of Palestine and Israel, say.

The full value of this work by Peter Evans and his exciting team of actors is in the clarity of all those words, their meanings and their implications.  We feel particularly, as Evans’ writes in an excellent From the Director, for Romeo who “says of his intervention in the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt: I thought all for the best.”

But there is never such a thing as a ‘just’ war.  “Go hence” says the Prince of Verona in the play’s last words, “to have more talk of these sad things; 

For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

I thank Bell Shakespeare for the honesty and sincerity of their presentation of Romeo and Juliet.  

Their toil is not to be missed.



©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey

 

 

 The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey.  Mockingbird Theatre Company at Belconnen Arts Centre (Belco Arts), Canberra, August 21-30, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 23

CAST: (in order of appearance)
Angus – Chris Baldock; Miles – Callum Doherty; Morgan – Richard Manning

PRODUCTION TEAM:
Director – Zac Bridgman
Stage Manager – Rhiley Winnett
Lighting Design – Rhiley Winnett and Zac Bridgman
Sound Design – Rhiley Winnett, Zac Bridgman and Chris Baldock
Set Design – Chris Baldock
Set Realisation – Chris Baldock, Richard Manning, cast and crew
Projections – Chris Baldock
Projection, Sound & Lighting Operation – Rhiley Winnett
Costumes – Cast
Props – Chris Baldock, Richard Manning, cast and crew


The Drawer Boy – meaning the boy who drew – is the perfect choice for the ironically named Mockingbird Company, for this play is essentially full of irony.  AI says Irony occurs when events or words are the opposite of what is expected, creating a sense of surprise, humor, or deeper meaning in literature, rhetoric, and everyday situations. 

We can trust AI on this occasion, because Mockingbird’s production creates all those things, out of everyday situations, from the opposite of what we expect, through surprise and humour to an ending with a deeper meaning – even with a bit of rhetoric thrown in by an over-enthusiastic university educated budding playwright/actor, Miles, researching what a farmer’s life is really all about.

But the tricky part of performing this script, for the director and the actors, is that the characters at first – and even for the whole first hour-long Act One – are almost cartoonish caricatures.  It reminded me of the nearest Australian material to compare with this Canadian work, Dad and Dave from Snake Gully, from an earlier time in history, (the radio show aired from 1937 to 1953), beginning before the World War II which turns out to be the most important part of The Drawer Boy in Act Two.

Directing and acting all the silences between those often tacitern ironic words or surprising outbursts is how the play works.  Zac Bridgman and all three actors got it all right last night.  That’s much better than just alright!

Since I was born in 1941, the year that Angus and Morgan enlisted in Canada and found themselves in France, though I was close to being hit by a V-bomb in 1944, I was lucky not to be hit by shrapnel like Angus.  

On the other hand, now in my mid-eighties with a typically embarrassing erratic short-term memory and no memory for names of people or places, I appreciated Chris Baldock’s awful, and therefore thoroughly successful performance of the damaged Angus.

Like Angus I found the naivety and rapidity of Miles’ speech a bit hard to take (even though I was guilty in my 20’s of over-the-top drama), which means that Callum Doherty started well and ended even better when his understanding of the old men’s lives reached a genuine level of empathy.  Surely now he is ready to write his play about farmers – just like Michael Healey himself!

And then Richard Manning’s Morgan held the play together – just as Morgan’s loving, respectful and determined caring for his friend, from boyhood, through times of war and hope of marriage together with the tall and the taller English girls, could hold the mentally disabled Angus together.  

I can’t praise 65 year-old Richard too much, since I was his drama teacher in his Year Twelve.

But I can say how much I enjoyed the cows mooing and chooks chuckling, and the clever way Angus’s architectural drawing was reflected in the backdrops.  Their farm became the landscape of practical life and memories, with the right style in the accompanying music, that I am sure Michael Healey would love.

I had, amazingly, never heard of this 1999 play.  But perhaps Canadians have not heard of Dad and Dave from Snake Gully.  I suggest an excellent follow-up read is at https://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=The%20Drawer%20Boy

So let’s not take Mockingbird literally.  Go see The Drawer Boy.


©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg

 

 The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg at The Street Theatre, Canberra, August 12 – 16, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night August 12

Director: Abbie-lee Lewis
Set Designer: Angie Matsinos
Costume Designer: Leah Ridley
Lighting Designer: Nathan Sciberras
Sound Designer: Kyle Sheedy
Photos: Canberra Streets, Helen Fletcher

Cast

WOMAN and GHOST– Laila Thaker

SWAGMAN, HUSBAND, YOUNG MAN, HORSEMAN,
BARMAN, TRAVELLERS and PRIEST – Craig Alexander
__________________________________________________________________________________

Dylan Van Den Berg’s The Chosen Vessel is a work of poetic theatre.  Words have meanings beyond the immediate in a setting of half-seen images in light and sound, creating a world full of emotional power.  The writer’s imagination appears as if real in this wonderful yet disturbing production.  

When reading a good poem, one’s imagination and feelings respond to the words, reaching an aha moment as you find yourself coming to an understanding in the last line.  In the theatre, our imaginations are enhanced by the stimulating work in the set design, lighting, sound and costumes, as well as, of course, in the directing and skills of the two actors in movement, facial expression and voice.

Laila Thaker, Craig Alexander
in The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg
The Street Theatre, Canberra 2025
Photos: Helen Fletcher

 This excellent production in the small Street Two space becomes a total poem.  That last line is “If the dead can see, why can’t you?”  

Then you understand what it means to describe this work as "Aboriginal Gothic Horror", and realise the nature of the truth about the European cultural invasion of Aboriginal Land – in practical terms:

                        Baby cries.
                        GHOST hangs a string of shells around baby’s neck.
                        GHOST disappears.
                        Sounds of the river:
                                            Blackout.
                                           THE END



Australia’s iconic publisher of our theatre – Currency Press – have made the script available with the program.  I suggest, though, that you see the play as I did without preconceptions.  Then reading The Chosen Vessel by Palawa man Dylan Van Den Berg, “after the short story by Barbara Baynton” will take you through the experience again that only live theatre can give you, and keep it as a living memory and understanding forever. 

 

 Frank McKone's reviews are also accessible at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com 

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra 

 

2025: Mr Burton - movie

 Mr Burton – Movie.  Dendy Canberra preview August 7 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone


Director: Marc Evans
Producer: Trevor Matthews, Ed Talfan, Josh Hyams, Hannah Thomas
Writers: Tom Bullough & Josh Hyams

Cast 
Toby Jones as teacher Mr. Burton; Harry Lawtey as his student, Richie Jenkins who becomes Richard Burton.
With  Steffan Rhodri, Lesley Manville, Daniel Evans, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Aneurin Barnard

Rating: Mature themes and coarse language

Film making is an enormous undertaking.  For the full cast and crew listing go to IMDb at www.imdb.com/title/tt5171016/fullcredits/ 

___________________________________________________________________________________

Whatever view you may have of the one-time world famous Welsh actor, Richard Burton, you must see this remarkable movie to appreciate what he really was like – as an actor and as himself.

The publicity overview is useful, especially if like me you had no idea of Richard Burton’s personal life: Set against the grit of post-war Wales, MR BURTON is the extraordinary true story of a working-class boy destined for greatness and the teacher who saw it first. When Philip Burton, a principled and passionate schoolteacher in Port Talbot, meets Richie Jenkins, a volatile yet gifted teen from a fractured home, he recognises a spark that others have overlooked. Through mentorship, discipline, and love, Philip shapes Richie’s raw talent, setting him on the path to becoming Richard Burton, one of the greatest actors of the 20th century.

The details of Richie Jenkins’ family and how he was brought up by his elder sister, and his relationship with Philip Burton, form the central through-line of the drama, which brought me to tears, of fear for his future and joy for his success as he performed Prince Hal at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon in 1951, directed by Anthony Quayle.

The remarkable thing about the film is how these actors – particularly in the key roles of Philip Burton and Richie Jenkins developing into Richard Burton – have to be such wonderful actors that they can make us believe in these other actors.  Philip Burton realises from Jenkins’ reactions in English class that he has the capacity to perform but needs to be trained.  So we see Richie being trained in some surprising, sometimes very funny, ways, which means that we see Toby Jones acting demonstrating how to act, and Harry Lawtey acting innocently badly until finally he acts Richard Burton acting as he really did as Prince Hal – after he has acted Richard Burton become a drunkard and smoker, and telling off Anthony Quayle (played by Daniel Evans) in rehearsal.

After you’ve seen the movie, and know how you feel about how Richie Jenkins felt from the age of about 13 to 26, it’s interesting to read, for example, what his younger brother Graham Jenkins and other local people told of the family in the setting of the mining country in Wales in Memories of Richard Burton at https://dramaticheart.wales/our-valleys/afan-valley/richard-burton/memories-of-richard-burton/.  And at https://lisawallerrogers.com/tag/richard-burtons-father in Lisa’s History Room there’s more fine detail about Dic Jenkins (played by Steffan  Rhodri).

And I have to confess, only two years after Burton’s first great success in 1951, my English teacher had this 13 year-old, in Form Two, up on stage in a public reading at Enfield Grammar School – as Prince Hal!  Of course, though I had no Philip Burton to adopt me and change my name, it is true that that was the beginning of my drama interest and future academic and teaching career.  

And for Canberra readers especially, it was only last Tuesday that the invited speaker, at our Canberra Critics’ Circle gathering, was Lexi Sekuless, producer at the Mill Theatre, whose work is reviewed here.  She gave us a fascinating run-down of her actor training in London, and the differences between the approach at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), with its more formal convention – something like the Royal Shakespeare Company style which Richard Burton faced in Stratford upon Avon – and the more modern style of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where Lexi acquired the far more varied skills and approaches to characterisation and staging styles which we see in Mill Theatre’s production of Enron, finishing shortly.

Watching Richie Jenkins under Philip Burton’s tutelage reminded me of Lexi Sekuless’s explanation of how that Central approach had broken actors away from the other famous technique – the American Method – and how working all these ways through in Australia has resulted nowadays in a kind of practical strength in our actors who do so well in the modern film industry.

And, I suspect the acting in this film, made in Wales – not in the English establishment setting – has some of that flair that we have in Australia.  Whether you thought you liked Richard Burton with Elizabeth Taylor or not, you can’t not like Harry Lawtey with Toby Jones, with the women, Lesley Manville and Aimee-Ffion Edwards as Ma Smith (Philip Burton’s landlady) and Cis (Richie’s sister) who held the real Richie together and whose acting hold the movie together, in my view.

Not to be missed – from August 14th.

Toby Jones as teacher Mr. Burton; Harry Lawtey as his student, Richie Jenkins

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2025: Stages of Empathy - Rebus Theatre

 

 

Stages of Empathy presented by Rebus Theatre.  Opening night at Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman Arts Centre, Canberra.  July 31. 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Artistic Director and Joker: Sammy Moynihan – He/Him 
Project Manager: Harry Bhangu – He/Him
Wellbeing Officer: Verity Kimpton – She/Her
Accessibility Manager: Yenn Purkis – They/Them

Cast – Opening Night
Terry: Krystle Vicencio – She/Her
Jordan: Mark Polhuis – He/Him
Lee: Emily Smith
Alex / Sam: Zander Hanmer-Woods – He/Him

Cast – August 1
Jay Taylor – She/Her plays Lee
Josh Rose – He/Him plays Terry and Sam
Zander Hanmer-Woods plays Jordan


Sammy Moynihan tells me of his experience in Brazil where he was inspired by Augusto Boal’s approach to making political change.  AI is useful for summarising about Theatre of Oppression:

AI Overview
Founder of the Theater of the Oppressed, playwright Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theatre practitioner, developed the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) as a form of popular education using theatre to address social and political issues. Forum theatre, one of the techniques within TO, specifically focuses on empowering audiences to actively participate in the performance, influencing and changing the narrative to explore solutions to oppression. Boal's work, particularly his concept of the "spect-actor," encourages audience members to become active agents of change, stepping into the performance to explore alternative actions and resolutions to the presented conflict.

The oppressed people Moynihan is concerned about are those with disabilities who are excluded unfairly from activities and decision-making positions in workplaces, often because of  biased views about disabled people.

Rebus Theatre has always been about involving disabled members of the company performing theatre in the standard way – for an audience to watch and become aware of the actors’ capacities, and so for the abled to learn to recognise, perhaps intuitively, their biases against the disabled.

In Stages of Empathy, Moynihan and his team take us to the next stage in a cleverly devised form of Forum Theatre.  As a one-time drama teacher, I see this work as a form of educational drama – as enjoyable and as much a learning experience that I hope my classes were.

The politics is at the personal relationship level rather than at Boal’s governmental revolution level.  On a day-to-day level in the office, especially here in a public service town, learning how to make fair and more effective approaches to decisions for and by other people – disabled or not – is what Stages of Empathy is all about.

The Rebus actors play a shortish couple of office scenes in an organisation supporting artists – in this case visual artists, drawing, painting or sculpting.  The CEO is explaining to a new recruit in the management that for this year’s upcoming exhibition, Jordan’s artwork should be included because it is excellent, but Jordan should not be allowed to be present to talk to the public, especially the media, because last year he was an embarrassment, going into some kind of explosive panic attack which showed the organisation in a bad light.

The CEO Terry is insistent; Lee, inexperienced in her new management role, wants to offer an exciting sound-and-light show, and needs to please her boss; Alex is one of the artists, already very successful, who tries to push Jordan along.  But Jordan has a disability because of which loud sounds and bright lights will overwhelm him – the cause of the panic attack last year.

After the performances, Sammy takes on what I saw as the teacher role, inviting members of the audience to stop the action as the actors begin to repeat the performance, and to come on stage to take over one of the characters and show how that character could have made a better decision towards not just being fair and supportive to Jordan at this point in planning the exhibition, but to help make the relationships warmer, less bureaucratic, leading to a successful exhibition for Jordan and also for the organisation as a whole.

Usually, Rebus is working for this kind of relationship development in a workshop training situation.  It needs an intimate space for a theatre presentation for the general public.  

The theatre at Gorman House, suitably named after one-time Principal of Canberra High School, Ralph Wilson – famous in his day for his support of the arts and particularly drama – plays the role perfectly.  As did Rebus’ actors.

And, as it should, the show on opening night became an evening of lively action and thoughtful discussion by everyone no longer just in the “audience”.  A very successful Rebus project indeed towards unbiassing people towards disability.

Rebus Theatre - Stages of Empathy
The actors ready for action

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra