2025: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  Based on the novel by Mark Haddon; adapted for the stage by Simon Stephens.  Mockingbird Theatre Company, Canberra, at Belconnen Arts Centre, March 20 – April 5 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 1

CAST:
Christopher (at certain performances) – Wajanoah Donohoe
Christopher (at certain performances) – Ethan Wiggin
Siobhan – Leah Peel Griffiths; Ed – Richard Manning; Judy – Claire White
Ensemble – Travis Beardsley, Callum Doherty, Peter Fock, Meg Hyam, Anthony Mayne, Tracy Noble
with a special appearance from Phineas Baldock

PRODUCTION TEAM:
Director/Designer – Chris Baldock; Assistant Director – Stephanie Evans
Stage Manager – Rhiley Winnett
Lighting Design – Rhiley Winnett and Chris Baldock
Projections Design – Matt Kizer; Projection Realisation & Operation – Rhiley Winnett
Music Composer – Matt Friedman; Costumes and Props – Chis Baldock and cast
Autism Lived Experience Consultants – Jacob Alfonso and Jennyfer Lawrence Taylor
Rehearsal Prompt – Liz St Clair Long



The calculation of the square of the hyptenuse of a right angled triangle is the image which informs this thoughtful presentation of The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time.  

Though the drama of the life of Christopher John Francis Boone, accurately characterised by Wajanoah Donohoe, is not exactly exciting in a conventional theatrical way – since the central character has no empathetic capacity – we find ourselves watching the story play out at some ‘distance’ emotionally.  Rather like Christopher himself, we seem to be objectively observing a documentary about adults as parents and neighbours, including their rearrangements of sexual relations, and how difficult life therefore is for a seriously autistic child, at the stage of achieving the highest score possible in Mathematics on his way from high school to university.

Intellectual determination to complete his knowledge of mysteries, from who killed the dog in next door’s garden to the explanation of Pythagoras’ theorem is the central feature of Christopher’s life.  

So, physically, Baldock and the Design Team have us sitting in straight rows on three sides of a square, watching highly stylised acting-out of the story, in terms of choreography and costume design, surrounded by large rectangular projections of words, and even mathematics, and images of practical things like trains which illustrate the action in a Christopher-like way.

And then we discover the final ruse.  We are watching in real time Siobhan and Christopher creating a play for us to understand what happened in the past, especially including how difficult Christopher’s built-in need to only always speak the truth had been for his parents, and the reasonable resolution of their lives which was achieved.

So the play within a play parallels what the theatre company is doing – artfully creating the words of a novel in living form.  This extra level is emphasised in Baldock’s production by the abstract white costuming for the Ensemble, rather than having the characters dressed in normal street clothes. 

Wajanoah Donohue and ensemble in Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Photo: Chris Baldock

 This play is not presented as ‘naturalism’, but in a form designed to illustrate the issue of how being autistic, despite one’s intelligence, is fraught with difficult situations and often unfair treatment – even when other people understand that you can’t not behave in the frustrating, for them, way you do.  

Rather than presenting this now famous play with the razzamatazz of the Grand Tour by the National Theatre of Great Britain which I reviewed (on this blog) June 2018, Baldock brings the play down to size, and in doing so leaves me with a more simple focus on the issue as it is for so many people ‘on the spectrum’.

And Wajanoah’s explanation of the proof of the Pythagoras theorem – after the curtain call, as if he was Christopher but somehow out of role – was terrific.

Thank you, Mockingbird.


©Frank McKone, Canberra
 

2025: The Glass Menagerie - Ensemble Theatre

 

 

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, March 21 – April 26, 2025.
Presented by special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 29

Cast & Creatives

    Tennessee Williams. Playwright. ...
    Liesel Badorrek. Director. ...
    Danny Ball. Cast - Tom Wingfield. ...
    Blazey Best. Cast - Amanda Wingfield. ...
    Bridie McKim. Cast - Laura Wingfield. ...
    Tom Rodgers. Cast - Jim O'Connor. ...
    Grace Deacon. Set & Costume Designer. ...
    Verity Hampson. Lighting Designer.
Photos by Prudence Upton

Blazey Best, Bridie McKim, Danny Ball
as Amanda Wingfield, daughter Laura, son Tom
The Glass Menagerie, Ensemble Theatre 2025
Photo: Prudence Upton

Do your very best to get to Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, on the Harbour at Kirribilli, no matter what the weather, for their production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.  You have till April 26th.  It’s a classic.

How ironic is my shock as actor Tom Rodgers, as the smartly brylcreemed “gentleman caller” Jim, clumsily trying to dance with crippled terribly shy Laura, knocks over and smashes her beautiful but fragile glass model rearing horse (or rather, unicorn).  The whole audience gasped as one; and were horrified again as her brother Tom (Danny Ball in a consistently steady performance) threw another handful of precious glass, smashing it into the image of the face of his father; and like me were in tears for Bridie McKim’s delicately played Laura, left alone in her crippled world.

Bridie McKim and Blazey Best
The Glass Menagerie, Ensemble Theatre, 2025

 

Bridie McKim as Laura and Tom Rodgers as Jim O'Connor
in The Glass Menagerie, Ensemble Theatre 2025

Why is the power of this wonderful Ensemble Theatre production, so ironic?  On the very day as I watched The Glass Menagerie, in The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton was quoting from “the questionnaire sent by US officials to Australian researchers and institutions, seeking to determine whether their work complied with Donald Trump’s promise to cut funding from projects that support a ‘woke’ agenda.”

“Can you confirm that this is no DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] project, or DEI elements of the project?”

How even more ironic is it that Tennessee Williams’ character, gentleman caller Jim, is described by brother Tom when they were at high school, as so popular that within five years he could have become the President of America!  And now, at 22, like Tom, he works in an Amazon-like warehouse, and is soon to marry Betty.

So sorry, Laura.  

As I write, the Australian Broadcasting Commission is reporting on the problem of “boys’ culture” made so much worse by social media today. Has nothing changed since 1944?  Then, Tennessee Williams sent the boys like Laura’s father in the Depression and now her brother in wartime off to seek “adventure”, leaving their women frantic – like her mother, Amanda Wingfield, played to perfection by Blazey Best.  

So the final irony as I see it is that theatre, as produced by Ensemble Theatre, shows us the heights of human empathy in the teamwork of wonderful actors, and of human intelligence and understanding in the work of director Liesel Badorrek and her team of designers, set makers and stage managers, in presenting a great American tragedy of failing human relationships, just as true in this century as a century ago.

Theatre may be an illusion, but this work reveals the truth of how our real world is still no more than a collection of beautiful but yet so fragile possibilities, so easily accidentally knocked over – or so deliberately smashed by Presidents seeking adventure.  

Tennessee Williams saw World War 2 as the result of economic depression – a way of escape for the boys (though, in another irony not covered in his play, often a way into work for women, at least while the fighting continued).  It’s not unreasonable to expect that tragedy may be repeated in World War 3.  The Glass Menagerie is not just, as Ensemble Theatre says, “Williams’ timeless portrait of a shattered family” but an image of a shattered humanity.

Unfortunately President Donald Trump’s approach to theatre on The Apprentice surely means he sees Tennessee Williams as ‘woke’; and his performance in the White House attempting to intimidate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – who actually ironically has been a seriously successful professional satirical comedian – showed Trump to be the worst kind of ham actor, dangerous because he has no self awareness.

So we ordinary people are left like Laura to a seemingly unfulfilling future.  But the strength of Ensemble’s production of The Glass Menagerie can be measured by the depth of the silence achieved by Danny Ball and Bridie McKim in the moment which ends the play.  Theatre of this outstanding quality makes life worthwhile, no matter what.

Bridie McKim as Laura
in The Glass Menagerie, Ensemble Theatre 2025
Photo: Prudence Upton

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Moors by Jen Silverman

 

 

The Moors by Jen Silverman.  Lexi Sekuless Productions at The Mill Theatre, Canberra, March 26-April 12, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night March 26.

Cast

Agatha: Andrea Close; Marjory: Steph Roberts; Huldey: Rachel Howard
Emilie: Sarah Nathan-Truesdale
Moorhen: Petronella van Tienen; Mastiff: Chris Zuber

Contingency Moorhen: Rachel Pengilly (playing 21 March and 5 April)
Rehearsal contingency: Alana Denham-Preston

Production Team

Writer: Jen Silverman: Director: Joel Horwood
Production Designer: Aloma Barnes
Sound Designer: Damian Ashcroft; Lighting Designer: Stefan Wronski
Set Construction: Simon Grist
Production Stage Manager: Lexi Sekuless; Shadow Stage Manager: Ariana Barzinpour
Programming support: Timmy Sekuless and Zeke Chalmers
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena
Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions
Major partner: Elite Event Technology; Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs



Wuthering!  

See The Moors at The Mill to experience the heights of wuthering.  And indeed the depths of sister Agatha’s withering stares.  I think Andrea Close truly deserves a Julie Bishop Oscar [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7n2s6m-HbE  ]  

No wonder Emilie goes bonkers with her hatchet, and kills the conniving Agatha to death.  Living in The Moors with this simulation of the surviving Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne (Maria and Elizabeth died young), as well as their brother Branwell, chained in the attic, would send anyone round the bend.

Navigating Joel Horwood’s precision directing makes watching The Moors’ twists and turns exciting, like driving an obstacle course in a time trial in an electric car that can accelerate from stop to 100ks instantly.

If you are expecting an unconventional 19th Century romance of the Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Tenant of Wildfell Hall kind (the Brontës were never ordinary in their prudish time in history), then strap your seat belts on for a wild ride through Jen Silverman’s half-satirical yet still seriously enlightening exposition of life – like the one we all live daily – in a frighteningly unpredictable world.  

Kindness, empathy and self-awareness is what we need to learn in our relationships, beautifully represented – and wonderfully sensitively performed – in The Moors by Petronella van Tienen as the tiny Moorhen and Chris Zuber as the massive Mastiff: the Dog who thinks he is God.

Somewhat on the opposite of life is Steph Roberts’ maid Marjory – in her way as rational as Emilie tries to be; while Rachel Howard’s Huldey remains innocent and naïve through it all.

You can’t not enjoy the laughter and even the groans in The Moors experience – and you will certainly appreciate the thinking and skills that go into such stmulating theatrical fare.

Another excellent Mill Theatre production.  I don’t need to say, “Don’t Miss”.

https://sites.google.com/lexisekuless.com/mill-theatre-at-dairy-road/more/online-program-the-moors

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Song of First Desire by Andrew Bovell

 

 

 Song of First Desire by Andrew Bovell.  Belvoir Theatre, Sydney, February 13 – March 23, 2025.
Original production 2023 by Octubre Productions, Spain.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 22

Writer: Andrew Bovell; Director: Neil Armfield
Set and Costume Designer: Mel Page; Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney
Composer/Sound Designer: Clemence Williams
Associate Sound Designer: Madeleine Picard
Movement and Intimacy Director: Nigel Poulton
Voice Coach: Laura Farrell
Stage Manager: Luke McGettigan; Asst Stage Manager: Jen Jackson

“Set in 1968 and the present, it unpicks the instincts that drive individuals and whole societies towards fear and violence – and perhaps, also, reconciliation.”  Belvoir Artistic Director, Eamon Flack.

Cast:
Julia / Carmen – Kerry Fox
Alejandro / Juan – Borja Maestre
Carlos / Luis – Jorge Muriel
Camelia / Margarita – Sarah Peirse


Reviewing theatre is a personal response.  My truth, as young people today often would say, may be different from another audience member’s.  But that should not be taken as being against each other, though I find myself not entirely agreeing with the apparent statements of fact in the promotion material online like ‘powerful', ‘epic’, ‘utterly enthralling’.

Song of First Desire is an important story, as Eamon Flack notes.  But, I well remember my excitement in the theatre when I saw Andrew Bovell’s When the rain stops falling.  I wrote then: “The experience watching is exactly as happens while reconstructing a complex 1000 piece puzzle.  Aha! realisations light up completely unexpectedly when it becomes clear that this or that piece just has to go here or there.  Yet it is not until the very last piece is in place that we feel the tension that we might not have everything correctly understood, fall away.  Only as the last clue is revealed, just as the rain stops falling, do we suddenly feel we can breathe again with satisfaction that all is now positively complete.”

I think this story of why Alejandro was sent by by his mother to the one-time Spanish colony, Colombia, when he was a radical student ‘THEN’ and reappears ‘NOW’ as a Colombian ‘migrant’ seeking work, presented in episodic scenes as these words are projected on the stage set walls, was meant to be put together in our minds in a similar way.  But I found the complexities of the emotional relationships between the characters in the families, and the time gaps, left me too confused.  

By the end I think I have worked out a rough idea that Alejandro’s mother saved his life; and I understood how awful autocratic government is, but I didn’t feel personally engaged in the characters as I had in When the rain stops falling, or as in his other famous play, Speaking in Tongues.

I can imagine, though, how strongly the audience in Madrid must have felt for these characters, drawing on their personal histories of families in conflict in Spain throughout the last century.  However I must say that I couldn’t see the relevance of the homosexual aspects of the story while watching the play.  Only afterwards can I  see that perhaps this was about the politics of a right-wing government – but only because of my knowledge of history rather than because of what was done or said in the play.

I must admit that this raises the question of my not being able to pick up all of the words actually spoken.  My old age and hearing aids were probably part of the problem in the acoustics of Belvoir, which are quite deadened by the three-quarters surrounding bodies of the audience.  The work of movement and intimacy director Nigel Poulton, with such experienced actors, certainly showed me what the characters felt in each short scene, but I needed much greater clarity in the voicing, especially of the men, to know what exactly they were saying.

So though for me on the night the theatre was not entirely ‘powerful', ‘epic’, nor ‘utterly enthralling’, I certainly appreciated the strength of the acting and the importance of the intention in writing about the horror of dictatorial power – not only in Spain in the past but in so many countries around the world, including ironically in the very Colombia that Alejandro was sent to for his safety.  

His final speech in memory of the poet/playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, assassinated in Spain in 1936, gives the play its strength of purpose and the reason for not missing Song of First Desire.  

Borja Maestre as Alejandro
in Song of First Desire by Andrew Bovell
Belvoir Theatre 2025
Photo: Brett Boardman

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell

 

 

Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell. A Gooding / Woodward Production presented by Canberra Theatre Centre, March 19-23 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night March 20

Performed by Natalie Bassingthwaighte


Lee Lewis - Director
Willy Russell - Playwright
Simone Romaniuk - Costume and Set Designer
Paul Jackson - Lighting Designer
Marcello Lo Ricco - Sound Designer
Brady Watkins - Composer
Jennifer White - Dialect Coach
Producers: Neil Gooding & Alex Woodward



It’s some twenty years since I was first as surprised as Shirley herself to learn the correct pronunciation of ‘clitoris’.  Played then by Sue Howell in the relatively small Canberra Repertory Theatre, I wrote (Canberra Times, Aug 2004) of her interpretation that it “avoids raucous superficial laughter, invokes a quieter response, and allows us time to absorb Shirley's feelings about how her youthful self, Shirley Valentine, became lost in the "cribb'd, cabin'd and confin'd" English suburban life of wife and mother Shirley Bradshaw.  Her observations about orgasms, men, feminists and English xenophobia are not merely witty, but are little illuminations in self-understanding.”

Natalie Bassingthwaighte, playing today to Canberra Theatre Centre’s almost full “proscenium arch theatre seating 1,244 patrons in one raked tier”

successfully talks to her kitchen wall – through the ‘fourth wall’ – achieving the laughter the crowd expects, while leaving us understanding the importance of Shirley’s right to independence – yet wondering how she will manage her middle-aged future when her job waitressing in Kosta’s taverna inevitably will come to an end.

Bassingthwaighte’s success was measured as much in the silence of so many as we absorbed the implications of Shirley’s responses to her situations, at home and away, cleverly built into Willy Russell’s script; as it was in the standing ovation bringing her back on for an extra curtain call.  But, I thought, she can’t do an encore!

You only have this weekend to see her in action in Canberra – do not miss the opportunity.  Otherwise you’ll have to travel to Adelaide for the Festival, April 1-6.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2025: Spit, the movie

 

 

 Spit – Screen Australia. Exclusively in cinemas 6 March, 2025.

Previewed by Frank McKone
February 23


Director:     Jonathan Teplitzky
Writers:      Christopher Nyst
Producer:    Greg Duffy  Trish Lake  Felicity Mcvay  David Wenham
Dir. of Photography:     Garry Phillips
Editor:         Nick Meyers
Production Designer:     Nicholas McCallum

Production Completion:     2024
Genre:     Comedy, Crime, Drama
Production Company: Tracking Films Pty Ltd


Cast:
 David Wenham     Helen Thomson     David Field     David Roberts
Gary Sweet     Arlo Green     Pallavi Sharda     Ayik Daniel Chut Deng
Sam and Teagan Rybka     Sami Afuni

Screen Australia: When ex-junkie, Johnny (Spit) Spitieri, flies into Australia on a false passport, he is locked up in an Immigration Detention Centre . The authorities want to know who he is, and where he's been. But so does gangster Chicka Martin, and his crooked cop mate, Arne Deviers, who are hot on Spit’s trail, and the Independent Public Integrity Commission is convinced the bumbling amnesiac is really an unlikely criminal mastermind. As Johnny talks up a storm without saying anything at all, he makes new friends amongst the detainees, and teaches them his version of mateship, and what it means to be truly Australian.
https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/spit-2024/41963

___________________________________________________________________________________
Exhilarated!  That’s how you will feel.  As Shakespeare might say: A most serious comedy, the funniest awful crime movie, and a moving drama extraordinaire all in one.  Spit is all about, and about all, humanity.  It’s art not for the sake of art.  It’s art which revives our faith in humanity, despite our worldly worries.

Like all the best Shakespearean comedies, all the confusion ends with a magnificent dance.

Another word you should use is rambunctious, or its synonyms like boisterous, unrestrained, irrepressible, exuberant, uproarious.  It’s not often that a cinema audience applauds with such enthusiasm at the end of a movie.

And again afterwards, when we were lucky enough to have David Wenham here in Canberra in person, speaking about his experiences in making the film, reviving his character in the 2003 comedy Gettin' Square.  

Unfortunately I never saw that film, but ABC Radio  National says “The film became a cult hit, partly because of Wenham's mesmerising performance as the mullet-headed Spit. Two decades on, Spit is the star once more”.   Wenham spoke with sincere respect of the importance and quality of the performances of the immigrant actors.  And he explained that Christopher Nyst, who wrote both films, is a criminal lawyer and knows these characters well.

It’s not unreasonable to class this film as Shakespearian.  It’s a comedy with depth of social understanding – and very specifically Australian.  No-one here should miss it; and I think I can guarantee it will travel internationally to acclaim – and to lighten our world-wide woes.

______________________________________________________________________________

BTW The only problem I had with Spit was the title caused an email to be treated as spam!

And check out the Funeral Parlour women as a contrasting image:

Image from
Spit
Screen Australia, 2024-25

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Hub Fest 2025 by ACT Hub

 

 

Hub Fest Play Festival.  ACT Hub at Causeway Hall, Kingston, Canberra.  February 16 – 22, 2025.
Hub Fest was devised by Lachlan Houen for ACT Hub

The Bestiary - An Interlude by Hannah Tonks
The Forsaken by Oliver Kuskie

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Feb 16



The two plays in this first Hub Fest are interesting, having in common serious criticisms of today’s social culture presented in short-form theatre.  The Bestiary is an Orwellian satire in 30 minutes of the world’s shifting towards authoritarianism at government level.  The Forsaken shows the breakdown of social norms at the personal level.

In theatrical terms, The Bestiary’s half-hour is more successful than The Forsaken’s 70 minutes.  

In both plays characters make a series of polemical statements which slow down the drama.  

In The Bestiary, the statements made by the rebellious terrorist artists serve to increase the dramatic tension about what they will do with the focus character: the hypocritical woman Minister for Aesthetics.  Their punishment – making her create a work of art – then results in her execution because she has broken the very law she is responsible for.  Just as she had had Wolf executed.  The shame is that Wolf’s partner, in bringing the Minister to justice, is herself shot by the firing squad as well.

In The Forsaken, the social issue about the isolation of the elderly and the impossibility of this old man’s ever being able to do anything practical about the family violence (on one side of his thin walled flat) or about the poverty-driven drug-driven theft and profiteering by the flat-sharing young (on the other side) is as powerful a theme as the issue of the need for government support of creative artistic freedom in The Bestiary.

But sitting listening to the old man’s recording of his frustrations, though very well performed, and faithful to my own feelings (like him I am in my 80s), started to feel a bit interminable.  The breaking away to the short scenes in the other flats – in the foreground on stage – took the dramatic action away from that central character.  We saw what was happening and understood his frustration and even fears, but there needed to be much more emotional interaction beyond just the peripatetic popping-in by the wild-haired young man from the share flat, before the effective scene with the wife from the family side.

Perhaps, as The Bestiary showed, maybe 40 minutes of intense interactions could have got the message through more strongly.

In the end, of course, the value of ACT Hub’s Hub Fest is exactly this – that for a small price you can make such comparisons and appreciate the creativity of the theatre arts, without being executed!

See https://www.acthub.com.au/production/hub-fest-play-festival

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Aria by David Williamson

 

 

Aria by David Williamson.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. January 24 – March 15, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 1

Creatives

Playwright: David Williamson
Director: Janine Watson;  Assistant Director: Anna Houston
Set & Costume Designer: Rose Montgomery
Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
Composer & Sound Designer: David Bergman
Operatic Voice Coach: Donna Balson
Intimacy Coordinator: Chloë Dallimore

 Cast
Monique - Tracy Mann

Her sons:
Charlie - Rowan Davie         Liam - Jack Starkey-Gill             Daniel - Sam O’Sullivan

Their wives:
Midge - Tamara Lee Bailey   Chrissy - Suzannah McDonald   Judy - Danielle King         
     
 _________________________________________________________________________  


David Williamson is only just a year younger than me, so when I say Aria is as good as the best of the old David Williamson, you know what I mean.  It’s full of the rapid and incisive repartee of Don’s Party but with the social and political world brought up to date.

And of course it’s funny, with his traditional one-liners – often causing us to universally groan while we laugh – and yet it’s a comedy, though never black, which brings out the honest reality to the third generation of this middle class family.  

Way back in The Department (1975) as the play ends Owen announces “It’s a girl” to add to his “four bloody boys already.”  And goes on “Boys are okay when they’re little, but by the time they’re about six they’re testing themselves out against you all the time.  I haven’t got the energy to cope with another.”  

And I hear Chrissy, the wife of Monique’s son, the ambitious never-at-home politician Liam, being accused of not disciplining her children and – in our social media world – in tears of frustration because they take no notice and just answer her back.  She wanted to be a teacher.  I hear the very same story from teachers today, in classrooms full of devices.

The beauty of Williamson’s writing is how we even end up feeling sorry for the deluded over-the-top capitalist Monique, singing Mozart's Queen’s aria which never made her the Maria Callas she believed she should have been, except that love, for her three boys, got in the way.

Ensemble Theatre, of course, has done the right thing again by providing the best in directing, designing and coaching for, in my view, an extraordinary team of actors.  The force of their energy as a group enlivens everyone as if Hayes Gordon is still here in his wonderful in-the-round acting space (and I am old enough to have seen him there at work).  

But much more than that, even, is each actor’s terrific awareness of the meaning of every word in Williamson’s script – not merely in their character’s personality, but so clearly motivated as to why they speak (or don’t) in their relationships with the other characters – and even further bringing out the implications in the metaphors which Williamson leaves implicit.  

Aria is exciting theatre of the very best kind – and kindness is what we need so much more of today.  At 84 it makes me charged with hope again by such great work from a mere 83-year-old.

Please don’t miss it!

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Chalk Pit by Peter Wilkins

 

 

The Chalk Pit by Peter Wilkins.  Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Canberra.
22 January - 1 February 2025

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 24

Creatives & Company

Playwright: Peter Wilkins
Coach: Julia Grace
Players performing: Rhys Hekimian, Chips Jin, Alana Denham-Preston, Heidi Silberman, Timmy Sekuless, Maxine Beaumont, Rachel Pengilly, Martin Everett
Workshop support players: Kate Blackhurst, Rachel Howard, Sarah Nathan-Truesdale, Wynter Grainger, Phoebe Silberman

Photographer: Daniel Abroguena
Major partner: Elite Event Technology
Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs

The Chalk Pit –  “A true tale of ambition, corruption, murder and betrayal, documenting the rise and fall of the Hon. Thomas John Ley” is presented by Lexi Sekuless “in a stripped back format called An Actor's Investigation. This is reflected in a lower ticket price.  This performance will be quite different from your usual night at the theatre. Each day from 10am, actors will work full time with renowned coach, Julia Grace (Melbourne Theatre Company), to pull apart the circumstances and characters and prepare to present a simple but powerful version of this story for the public at 730pm that evening.”

_____________________________________________________________________

I have mentioned before how the atmosphere of Canberra’s Mill Theatre reminds me of my seeing La Leçon in the Théâtre de la Huchette in Paris where, of the young writer Eugene Ionesco, Jacques Lemarchand wrote in 1952, in Le Figaro littéraire, “Within its small walls the Théâtre de la Huchette has what it takes to blow away all other Théâtres in Paris.… When we have grown old we will be proud to have attended performances of La Cantatrice Chauve and La Leçon.” www.theatre-huchette.com/en/the-ionesco-show

I sense in Sekuless’s manner of working something similar to this: “In the backroom of a café on the boulevard Saint-Michel a group of actors seated around a table roar with laughter. Nicholas Bataille, a young director, reads aloud the first scenes of a play by the young playwright Eugene Ionesco.”  Following each night’s script-in-hand exploration of The Chalk Pit, Lexi and her actors gather together in the foyer to talk with audience members.

This is creative theatre production in a community setting, which I am sure fits admirably into this writer’s career – Peter Wilkins’s work in Canberra began as artistic director of The Jigsaw Company, a specialist in educational theatre.  And there’s plenty to learn from in The Chalk Pit.

I am, of course, stretching connections too far – but in 1948 as Ionesco was getting on his way to showing in fictional characters the breakdown of marriage relationships and the rise of dictatorship, Wilkins shows us the true story of the bombastic, coercive controller, Australian Member of Parliament and corrupt businessman, the Hon. Thomas John Ley, a migrant from England as a child who ended up back ‘home’, found guilty of murder in the chalk pit, sentenced to be executed – but finally commuted to life in an insane asylum, where he died in 1947.

Ionesco couldn’t have imagined a life in his time to be really so absurd.  It’s likely that Ley actually caused, in Mafia style, four or five deaths – and fortunately failed to become Prime Minister.

Ley’s life story is long and complicated, but The Mill’s Actor’s Investigation, working as a team of ever-changing true-life characters, have brought the focus clearly on Ley’s marriage and extra-marriage behaviour.  The effects on the two women make The Chalk Pit a human story of the kind still played out in daily news stories; while on the political side the awful misuse of power around the world is as obvious today as it was to the young Ionesco after the two World Wars – in which the Hon Ley loudly demanded sending Australians as cannon-fodder in support of the British Empire.

The Chalk Pit is a great example of creative theatre work, in writing and production, especially in the context of Canberra, the Nation’s Capital – which our current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, says today (Canberra Times Page 4, Saturday 25th January) is “a fantastic place to live”.

Further Reading: www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/members/Pages/member-details.aspx?pk=1344

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Dark Noon - Sydney Festival

 

Dark Noon – fix+foxy, Glynis Henderson Productions & The Pleasance (South Africa and Denmark).  Sydney Festival at Sydney Town Hall, January 9-23, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 9

CAST AND CREDITS
A fix+foxy production, produced by: Glynis Henderson Productions & The Pleasance
Writer & Director: Tue Biering
Co-director & Choreographer: Nhlanhla Mahlangu
Featuring:
Mandla Gaduka,   Katlego Kaygee Letsholonyana,   Lillian  Malulyck,  Bongani Bennedict Masango, Siyambonga Alfred Mdubeki,   Joe Young,   Thulani Zwane

Set Designer: Johan Kølkjær; Sound Designer: Ditlev Brinth
Costume Designer: Camilla Lind; Video Designer: Rasmus Kreiner
Lighting Designer: Christoffer Gulløv; Props Designer: Marie Rosendahl Chemnitz
Producer: Annette Max Hansen; Production Managers: Anne Balsma & Thomas Dotzler; Stage Manager: Svante Huniche Corell; Sound Manager & Operator: Filip Vilhelmsson; Assistant Director: Katinka Hurvig Møller; Costume Manager: Clara Bisgaard


Tue Biering, the Danish writer of Dark Noon, writes in his Director’s Note: What I found out was those Western films, as effective entertainment, laid the foundation for some violent narratives that moved off the screen and became part of a reality for many.

Several of the South African performers, in a post-script video, describe the effects on them as children watching Westerns on television or in the cinema – as indeed I remember doing back in the 1950s.  One even tells of his part as a teenager in the desecration of the dead body of a rival enemy gang leader.

What they present, in content and in the extraordinary manner in which they present it, is a parody of the history of the American Wild West – how it came about and developed in the 19th Century, and how it ended – but in the best tradition of the genre, it is disturbingly paradoxical.

Should we take the black humour seriously?  Does this forthright expounding of the story of the worst results of the poor whites and those who would take advantage of them invading the lands of the native peoples of central and western America, make nearly two hours of theatre consistently engaging?

I have to report that, though I entirely felt the strength of this critique of American culture – especially the fascination with and continuing demand for guns in that country – I did not find myself falling asleep like the gentleman seated next to me did, on and off.  I think this happened to him because the humour was not often subtle enough to engage our imaginations enough; and the forthrightness often became theatre being thrown at us, rather than – again more subtly – drawing us in.

On the other hand, I must report that that gentleman’s perhaps defensive response was probably the only one of its kind in the full house.  The great theatrical risk was taken on board, including by the audience members who found themselves being physically brought into the action, even though they were faced with being socially examples, perhaps, of the very whites who, according to Tue Biering, are in the catalogue of our collective search for freedom and a better life — and all the horrible things we have done over time to grab it and keep it.

It shows need for us to face up to ourselves, just as Biering found about himself in the process of writing, when it ended up having many more layers and meanings. It was about who told the story and my own blind spots.

From the practical theatre point of view, not only were the character acting, the choreography and performer’s skills in movement, and especially the range and quality of voice work in song and speech quite outstanding, but the complexity of the design of seemingly hundreds of scenes, and the timing of positioning of video cameras and all kinds of structures made the show fascinating to hear and watch just for its own sake.  

The team work and timing – sometimes frantically comic, yet often stunning in moments of silence – demonstrated the strength of community in the total team, which becomes an essential message from Dark Noon – that theatre art in itself is a grand measure of human cooperative achievement, in absolute contrast to the killings, the guns, and the misinterpretation of the real Wild West as the romance of freedom.

The show’s historical aspect limits it to the period from the major destruction of the native peoples and the animals such as the bison, their main food source, through the American Civil War, to the recognition of the western areas as states united, by the end of the 1800s.  It leaves us watching the political developments in the US today with a sense of horror as violence engulfs that country in massive numbers of mass murders, increasing as the years go by.

Dark Noon should be seen, as it has been since its inception in 2018, in Festivals and theatres around the world.  But whether the paradoxical nature of the parody of the ironically named United States’ culture can create change for the better, I unfortunately have my doubts.

 

One moment in the ever-changing Dark Noon
fix+foxy, Glynis Henderson Productions & The Pleasance (South Africa and Denmark).
Sydney Festival 2025
 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2025: Antigone in the Amazon - Sydney Festival

 

 

Antigone in the Amazon by Milo Rau.  Sydney Festival at Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney Theatre Company), January 4-8, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 5


Credits:
Concept & Direction: Milo Rau; Text: Milo Rau & Ensemble

On stage – Frederico Araujo, Sara De Bosschere, Pablo Casella & Arne De Tremerie live on stage

On Video –  Kay Sara, Gracinha Donato, Célia Maracajà, Martinez Corrêa, choir of militants of Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST), and as Tiresias: Ailton Krenak

Dramaturgy: Giacomo Bisordi; Collaboration Dramaturgy: Douglas Estevam, Martha Kiss Perrone; Assistant Dramaturgy: Kaatje De Geest, Carmen Hornbostel

Collaboration Concept, Research & Dramaturgy: Eva-Maria Bertschy
Set Design: Anton Lukas; Costume Design: Gabriela Cherubini, An De Mol, Jo De Visscher, Anton Lukas
Light Design: Dennis Diels; Music Composition: Elia Rediger, Pablo Casella
Video Design: Moritz von Dungern; Video Making: Fernando Nogari;
Video Editing: Joris Vertenten

Direction Assistant: Katelijne Laevens; Intern Direction Assistant: Zacharoula Kasaraki, Lotte Mellaerts

Production Management: Klaas Lievens, Gabriela Gonçalves; Assistant Production Management: Jack Do Santos; Technical Production Management: Oliver Houttekiet
Stage Manager: Marijn Vlaeminck
Technique: Max Ghymonprez, Sander Michiels, Raf Willems

Special thanks to Carolina Bufolin
Production: NTGent
Coproduction: The International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM), Festival d'Avignon, Romaeuropa Festival, Factory International (Manchester), La Villette Paris, Tandem - Scène nationale (Arras Douai), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Equinoxe Scène Nationale (Châteauroux), Wiener Festwochen

In collaboration with Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)

The Antigone in the Amazon team would like to thank and acknowledge support provided by Goethe Institut Saõ Paulo, PRO HELVETIA programme COINCIDENCIA - Kulturausch Schweiz - Südamerika, The Belgian Tax Shelter

Hero image and gallery images - Photo credit: Kurt Van der Elst

_________________________________________________________________________________

www.sydneyfestival.org.au/stories/your-guide-to-antigone :

Created by the award-winning Swiss director and playwright Milo Rau in collaboration with Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement and the Belgian theatre company NTGent, Antigone in the Amazon draws a line connecting an ancient Greek tragedy of a young woman who defied a despotic king to present-day activists and First Nations people working to save the Amazon rainforests.

At the production’s heart is a real-life incident: the 1996 massacre of activists from the Landless Workers’ Movement by a unit of Brazilian federal police. A peaceful blockade of a highway ended bloodily, with 19 of the protestors killed.

In Rau’s retelling of the story, a modern-day Antigone stands up for those advocating land rights in the Amazon. Marshalled against her is the apparatus of a corrupt state. The tragedy is that of the Amazon itself – and by extension that of humanity. Not for nothing has the Amazon been likened to “the lungs of the planet”.

___________________________________________________________________________________

To quote from the play, Antigone in the Amazon is “the magic of theatre which transcends violence”.

This is no mere academic claim. The Europeans have worked with the people in Brazil in the Latin American tradition known as magical realism, creating the most emotionally powerful theatre I have ever experienced.  

We normally experience theatre as illusion used to help us reflect on reality – we stay at a degree of ‘distance’ to keep ourselves ‘safe’.  But when we see on huge screen video the people who survived that massacre, and the actors live on stage in front of us, as they tell and re-enact what happened to the people as they were being killed, it feels as if we are present at that moment of awful reality.

The worst – and best – moment was when we found out that the police were ready to ban the blocking of the road for the annual commemoration of the massacre, on this occasion when the filming was underway, just as the junta’s police had done in 1996.  But instead of arresting and shooting people, they listened to a woman who spoke to them about the importance of the event to the whole community – and allowed the re-enactment and filming to go ahead.

Otherwise we might have seen a repeat of the refusal to allow Antigone to properly commemorate her brother’s death – recorded by Sophocles in Ancient Greece.  Perhaps his play was a theatrical fiction about the rights of the ordinary people, but yesterday Antigone’s story became real.

You have only another day or so to see Antigone in the Amazon.  Do your utmost to get to Sydney to see it.  If you can’t – and even if you do – remember how great theatre transcends violence, and seek to make this your motto in action.  I am in awe not only of the Swiss Milo Rau, but of all those non-violent activists like the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) members who played their part in Antigone in the Amazon.

_______________________________________

PS   If you would like to understand the Latin American magical realism tradition, and its place in responding to colonialism, look up the article in the The Brown Daily Herald by Aalia Jagwani, Arts & Culture Editor, October 6, 2022 at

www.browndailyherald.com/article/2022/10/latin-american-literary-traditions-through-time

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Hair and the Shortis by Shortis & Simpson

 

 

The Hair and the Shortis by Shortis & Simpson at Smith’s Alternative, Canberra City, Saturday December 7, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Political satire, written, composed and performed by John Shortis and Moya Simpson.

    Shortis & Curlies John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Andrew Bissett at The School of Arts Cafe, 108 Monaro Street, Queanbeyan.  Season: Thursdays to Saturdays till June 29, 1996.

If you are a Liberal politician confident that cutting government spending is the only way to go; or a Labor politician feeling sorry for yourself after 100 days of the new regime; or a veterinary surgeon operating out of Woden Valley; or someone who thinks that a national gun register is not a good idea; or Princess Diana; or Jeff Kennett; or even a frozen embryo who hopes to inherit your dead father's estate: then you shouldn't see this show because you probably won't laugh.

This is how I introduced Shortis & Simpson when they began performing in 1996.  Nowadays, with Shortis and only one Curly, how much has changed since the first 100 days of John Howard’s eleven years, 1996 – 2007, of Conservative government (weirdly called ‘Liberal’ in this country) and the possible prospect of an even more right-wing conservative Peter Dutton government from early in 2025.

In the meantime the political issues may have changed their names and parties like the Prime Ministers: Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd  (weirdly called ‘Labor’ instead of Labour) 2007-2013; Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison (Liberal National Coalition) 2013-2022; Anthony Albanese (Labor) 2022-2025, so far.  

Shortis & Simpson have remained the same in principle and have developed in practice over these three decades, receiving a Canberra Critics’ Circle award this year, the citation reading “for their original music series, Under the Influence, in which the duo wove their own stories and music together with those of guest artists Keith Potger, Karen Middleton, DJ Gosper, Nigel McRae and Beth Tully, culminating in seasons with Mikelangelo and Fred Smith…. [an] initiative [which] proved a creative way of highlighting leading Canberra region popular musicians.”

And their full house at Smith’s Alternative tonight still laughed, and sang and clapped along, and even groaned appropriately, as they did at the Queanbeyan School of Arts Café – this time at Lydia Thorpe’s intended insult but unintended comic mispronunciation of King Charles’ heirs as ‘hairs’ rather than ‘airs’, stirring up John Shortis’ fascination with word play via The Hare and the Tortoise to this show’s title, The Hair and the Shortis.  Moya made it very clear who had the hair and who was the shortis.

The people who probably wouldn’t have laughed include the CEOs of Woolworths and Coles supermarkets; the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers; Elon Musk; Tronald Dump; all the Moonlight Senatas to Beethoven’s tune, up all night rushing bills through while Albo’s In The Air with John Paul Young, after enjoying his time in the Chantas Quairman’s Lounge; the new local Australian Capital Territory Liberal leader, Country&Western singer, Leanne Castley; the richest woman in Australia, Gina Rinehart, after her smooching with Nigel Farage at Trump’s dinner party at Mar-a-Lago; Senator Lydia Thorpe – they want to get rydia; and many others.

You wouldn’t want to be a Middle American either; or a Peter Dutton type who can pronounce ‘nuclear’ in every way except the right way – and seriously imagine covering Australia with nuclear power plants.

Then there are different, intriguing songs and stories.  The Childless Dog Lady, that is Moya Simpson herself, doesn’t seek sympathy, but recognition of her personal preference for dogs rather than children, rather than being insulted as a Childless Cat Lady as Kamala Harris has been.  While there was the story of the Australian native stingless bees kept at Parliament House in Canberra, but which don’t like our frosts and are taken to Sydney each winter to breed, and how they become a model for our politicians to become stingless, instead of stinging each other and us like European bees.

I can’t report here on all 26 items in this engaging show before the encore, but that was an enlightening history in itself of protest movements and their songs which made a powerful finale.

The important thing to say about Shortis & Simpson is that they are an essential part of our community.  We feel every year how we belong to them and they belong to us.  And they have promised me that they will be there with us again next year.


©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson

 

 

Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson, based on the novel of the same name by Peter Carey, after Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
State Theatre Company South Australia at Canberra Theatre Centre, Playhouse.  December 5-7 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
December 5


Writer: Samuel Adamson    Director: Geordie Brookman

Cast
Jack Maggs: Mark Saturno;             Tobias Oates: James Smith
Mercy Larkin: Ahunim Abebe;         Hawthorne/Mary/Phipps: Rachel Burke
Constable/George/Partridge: Dale March;     Miss Mott/Lizzie: Jelena Nicdao
Percy Buckle/Dr Grieves: Nathan O'keefe
Ma Britten/Mrs Halfstairs/Old Mercy: Jacqy Phillips

Creatives
Designer: Ailsa Paterson; Lighting Designer: Nigel Levings
Composer: Hilary Kleinig; Sound Designer: Andrew Howard
Accent Coach: Jennifer Innes; Assistant Director: Annabel Matheson
Intimacy/Fight Choreographer: Ruth Fallon

Mark Saturno as Jack Maggs
State Theatre South Australia

Though I know Great Expectations from my teenage reading – most fascinated by the hero ‘Pip’, his hope of marrying Estelle, and the character of Miss Havisham, ‘a rich and grim lady…who led a life of seclusion’ – I never thought much about Abel Magwitch, alias ‘Provis’, ‘an escaped convict’.  

Now, watching Samuel Adamson’s in many ways quite remarkable play, I find it is unfortunate that I haven’t yet read Peter Carey’s story of the life of Magwitch, alias ‘Jack Maggs’, convicted of theft and sent to New South Wales ‘for the term of his natural life’.  

So here I am, watching a theatrical interpretation of a fiction twice removed.  As Jack Maggs arrives secretly back in London, is he the same character as the Magwitch I knew?  If you want the answer, you couldn’t do better than start at Chapter XL – the beginning of the third stage of Pip’s expectations – on Page 3ll where he tells Pip his real name, but they agree to use an assumed name ‘Provis’ and to call him Pip’s uncle.

Confused already?  In Great Expectations there are 38 characters, listed before you begin to read.   In Jack Maggs, the play, there are only 16 characters played by 8 actors, seemingly covering something like a new version of Chapters 36-42 of Great Expectations – except that there’s no Tobias Oates, 'mesmerist', or any of the others in Dickens’ story.  Perhaps I shouldn’t ever have read or have had Great Expectations in the first place – even though Carey’s Tobias Oates insists that reading the literary canon is essential!

On stage, the basic story of Jack Maggs’ life in Australia, and his type of character, is much the same as Magwitch telling Pip in Great Expectations, about how he was given a ticket of leave and became wealthy.  But now, as you can find out from the Study Guide at 

https://statetheatrecompany.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Jack-Maggs-Study-Guide2.pdf ,
The story follows the enigmatic ex-convict Jack Maggs (Carey’s version of Magwitch)
returning to London from Australia and embarking on a relentless quest to find his
‘son’ Henry Phipps, who has mysteriously disappeared. Maggs soon becomes
entangled in the web of Phipps’ neighbour, Percy Buckle and his bizarre household,
where he makes a deal with young novelist and “mesmerist” Tobias Oates (or is
it Charles Dickens himself?) To find Phipps. Oates has other plans though, and in
Maggs, might just find the perfect inspiration for his new novel.

Though the acting, choreography, costumes and technical wizardry make Jack Maggs eminently watchable, I wish I had been made by, say, an excellent drama teacher to read the 34-page Study Guide first.  Then I could have made the right connections to follow the plot, and better understood the point of the thoroughly enjoyable singing of such recognisably Australian songs.

With this in mind, I certainly recommend this interesting original view of the convict origins and history of Australian colonial life.  And thoroughly support the aim of encouraging the reading of literature of the Charles Dickens kind for Years 9 – 12 as the State Theatre intends.  They might find, then, as I see it, that Great Expectations is a social satire (of course, Pip and Estelle are at last inseparable, at least according to Pip, in the final paragraph); while there is not the same degree of ironic humour in Adamson’s Jack Maggs – and I am yet to find out about Peter Carey’s version.  There’s a laugh in ‘Toby’s Oats”, at least.

Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson
State Theatre South Australia

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl - Mill Theatre

 

 

Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl (world premiere at Madison Repertory Theatre, Madison, Wisconsin, September 2003; Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theater, 2007).
Retells the myth of Orpheus from the perspective of Eurydice, his wife.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurydice_(Ruhl_play)  
 
Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra. November 20 – December 14, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night November 27


Cast
Eurydice: Alana Denham-Preston; Orpheus: Blue Hyslop
Her Father: Timmy Sekuless;
A Nasty Interesting Man/The Lord of the Underworld: Michael Cooper
A Chorus of Stones: Heidi Silberman, Sarah Hull, Sarah Nathan-Truesdale

Contingency: Rhys Hekimian, Michelle Norris

Production Team
Writer: Sarah Ruhl        Director: Amy Kowalczuk
Movement Director: Michelle Norris; Costume Designer: Leah Ridley
Set Design and Construction: Simon Grist; Scenic Painting: Letitia Stewart
Lighting Designer: Jennifer Wright

Guitar, Vocalist and Arranger: Eleanna Stavrianoudaki with sound effects licensed via Artlist.

Production Stage Manager: Lexi Sekuless
Production team support: Mark Lee, Andrew Snell, Zeke Chalmers, Jaben Leadbetter
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena

Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions        Major partner: Elite Event Technology

Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs
Eurydice is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.
The navy curtain installed for this show is known as the Kershaw Curtain.
Carla Bruni wedding song licensed by APRA
__________________________________________________________________________________

In a world in which privacy has become such a big issue, I felt quite embarrassed, in the tiny Mill Theatre, watching almost within touching distance Eurydice and Orpheus enjoying such physical intimacy, in casual clothing prior to their more formal wear for their wedding.

Bringing an ancient Greek story into our personal experience is the point of the play, so we can accept the theatrical illusion of the two worlds – Life and Death – as reality for Eurydice, her father and her husband.  

The directing of the acting and movement, in the context of a simple yet ingenious set design on two levels, and with lighting and sound cues as the action shifts from one to the other, is highly successful.  

The choreography for the three women in the dead world – who are like the Furies would be in the living world, except that here they are the Stones enforcing the rules about what is not allowed – is especially well done.  I’ve met some people in my real world very much like them!  

As a comparison and contrast with Blue Hyslop’s genuine musical Orpheus, Michael Cooper’s mealy-mouthed manipulative controlling Nasty Interesting Man is awful to see. Alana Denham-Preston’s Eurydice is fearfully trapped, and escapes only to her death.  We see stories like this daily on the news.

So this production of Eurydice is highly recommmended, not only for the quality of its performance, but also for the choice of an interesting and important take on the ancient Greek story of the man’s frustration – when he sadly cannot look back – now seen from the woman’s point of view, when she desperately cannot call him back.  

Conventionally it’s a sad love story, but Sarah Ruhl’s version makes it a deeper consideration of life as a tragedy for love when one partner is suddenly dead.  In the modern world (and I guess equally in the Ancient Greek world), death is even more tragic when it is deliberately dealt out by other people.

After seeing Eurydice, to follow up the Ancient Greece connection, you should read the three novels by Pat Barker.  In The Trojan Women, The Silence of the Girls and The Voyage Home, seeing Greek history/myth from the women’s point of view is essential reading on sexual and political relations in Western culture to build on Sarah Ruhl’s dramatic work.

Not to be missed.

Blue Hyslop and Alana Denham-Preston
as Orpheus and Eurydice
Mill Theatre 2024

 

Timmy Sekuless and Alana Denham-Preston
as Her Father and Eurydice facing The Stones
Mill Theatre 2024

 

Heidi Silberman, Sarah Hull, Sarah Nathan-Truesdale (not necessarily L-R)
as The Stones
Mill Theatre 2024

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Ukulele Man by Marcel Cole

 

 

The Ukulele Man by Marcel Cole.  At Smith’s Alternative, Canberra City, November 15-16, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 15th

Written and Performed by: Marcel Cole as George Formby
Performed by: Katie Cole as Formby’s wife and manager Beryl, and other roles as necessary.

Directed by: Mirjana Ristevski

‘The Ukulele Man’ is the true story of wartime comedian and ukulele legend George Formby. From the Music Halls of Blackpool to the battlefields of Europe, this is the untold history of Britain's greatest entertainer!

He was banned by the BBC and committed to a psychiatric hospital by his wife, and yet still became the UK’s biggest star.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Katie Cole as Beryl and Marcel Cole as George Formby
in The Ukulele Man 2024

For an hour while thoroughly engaged in Marcel Cole’s re-creation of George Formby’s unassuming, I might even say shy, positivity – his humanity – I never for one moment thought of Donald Trump.  Not one jot.

Mirjana Ristevski’s thoughtful, careful, tight directing of still relatively youthful Marcel Cole’s remarkable capacity for living in the moment as if from within his character, while also placing his musician mother, Katie, into roles particularly crucial to Formby’s life, makes us feel we are in the presence of the real George Formby – even up to the point when he describes the crowd of 150,000 lining the way from the funeral parlour to the site where his ashes are interred next to his father’s.

The Ukulele Man is real theatre.  Absolutely Not Netflix.  It’s weird but wonderful to find oneself responding to Formby, laughing and singing along with him, just as I remember we did when I was a child in England in the nineteen forties and fifties, seeing him on our brand-new television in the same year as we had the set switched on for 12 hours straight for the coronation of the new Queen Elizabeth.  

But Marcel Cole has done much more than bring back memories for old people.  The story of George Formby’s life through World War I and his entertaining the troops through World War II is disturbing.  He is still entertaining us today until, after the show has ended, we are left with the real possibility of World War III.  

I don’t want to think about Donald Trump again, but will remember the artist, George Formby, keeping up his ordinary person’s gentle, if a little bit risqué, sense of humour, leaning on a lamp-post, watching and waiting for a certain little lady to pass by.

If you want to know about the whole story of George Formby, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Formby#Biography .

To understand George Formby and feel for the life of an independent artist, go to Marcel Cole’s The Ukulele Man.

About Marcel Cole

Marcel Cole is a multi-disciplinary artist from Canberra. He comes from a family of musical performers and so music, singing and performing have been a part of life ever since he could walk. Since then, he has trained extensively as a dancer in Canberra and at the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington, NZ, and has studied theatre, mask and clown in Australia, London and Paris, most notably at the prestigious École Philippe Gaulier.

Wikipedia records:

Formby’s films are, in the words of the academic Brian McFarlane, "unpretentiously skilful in their balance between broad comedy and action, laced with ... [Formby's] shy ordinariness".

The film  Keep Your Seats, Please in 1936 contained the song "The Window Cleaner" (popularly known as "When I'm Cleaning Windows"), which was soon banned by the BBC. The corporation's director John Reith stated that "if the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they'll have to be content to hear it in the cinemas, not over the nation's airwaves"; Formby and Beryl were furious with the block on the song. In May 1941 Beryl informed the BBC that the song was a favourite of the royal family, particularly Queen Mary, while a statement by Formby pointed out that "I sang it before the King and Queen at the Royal Variety Performance". The BBC relented and started to broadcast the song:

    "To overcrowded flats I've been,
    Sixteen in one bed I've seen,
    With the lodger tucked up in between,
    When I'm cleaning windows!

    Now lots of girls I've had to jilt,
    For they admire the way I'm built,
    It's a good job I don't wear a kilt,
    When I'm cleaning windows!"

©Frank McKone, Canberra