2024: Rockspeare Henry VI Part Two

 

 

Rockspeare Henry Sixth Part Two.  Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra, 2-26 October 2024

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Thursday October 10

Cast:
Player One: Heidi Silberman ; Player Two: Chips Jin
Player Three: Kate Blackhurst; Player Four: Amy Kowalczuk
Player Five: Mark Lee

Contingency: Sarah Nathan-Truesdale

Production Team

Writer: Billy Shake; Director and Verse Nurse: Lexi Sekuless
Sound by Artlist - Designer: "ikoliks"
Costume Designer: Tania Jobson; Scenic Set Designer: Kathleen Kershaw
Scenic Painting: Letitia Stewart; Construction: Mark Lee, Simon Grist
Movement Director: Stefanie Lekkas; Lighting Designer: Stefan Wronski
Apprentice to Lighting Designer: Jennifer Wright
Production Stage Manager: Jess Morris
Apprentice to Production Stage Manager: Emma Rynehart

Front of House Manager: Lexi Sekuless
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena

Henry VI Part 2
Mill Theatre, Canberra 2024

The audience member seated front left in this photo is where I was placed last night.  In-the-Round is not nearly enough to describe the arrangement.  In-the-Action is more like it.  And how good is that when every noble command, threat, or surreptitious lie; every sexual encounter; every execution; every thunderbolt of rock-band explosion; every strike of lightning; and even every moment of intense silence, hits home?  You are in the King’s Chamber, on the battlefield at St Albans, in the Hall of Justice, in the Duke of York’s garden, in the Abbey at Bury St Edmund’s, and a dozen other places – all in the tiny theatre at The Mill.

At last you understand why Shakespeare wrote this play of governmental mayhem.  You’re in the thick of it, between a man, Henry, who has ‘inherited’ his ultimate position of power, and the Lancaster and York family heads doing whatever it takes to prove their legitimacy against his – and his French wife, Margaret, a desperate Queen in her own ‘right’.

I think ‘Billy Shake” was offering a warning to his own Tudor Queen Elizabeth: don’t forget the ordinary people.  In three plays about Henry VI from a century before she ‘inherited’ her throne, and in his other history plays, he shows what greed, graft, corruption and violence achieve.

As an aside, I remember how, only a few years before William’s 1564 birth, Elizabeth had given royal approval to the very grammar school – to educate the poor – which I attended – Enfield Grammar, near the forest where she used to go hunting.  

And with a bit of violence from stormy weather in 1588, the Spanish Armada was defeated.  But Shakespeare still had to write, not long before he died in 1616, The Tempest, about Prospero learning he had to give up the symbols of power – a lesson still not entirely put into practice.  King Charles III, I’m sure, though, is well aware of what happened to his forebear, Charles I in 1649.

So Lexi Sekuless and Company have achieved in this production her aim, which she had espoused at the Theatre Network Australia Canberra Gathering on Wednesday October 9: to make Mill Theatre a place for “thinking people”.  The show is full of energy, the characters’ speech is absolutely understandable; and the story is unfortunately true to the worst of what we see around us every day.

It certainly makes you think – and feel, and appreciate quality theatre, in all its manifestations – acting, movement, costume, set design, directing, and with a little irony in the personal history, as I believe, of the composer and sound designer, whose work creates the source of energy on which the production rides.

His background, coming from Ukraine, heightens the significance of Shakespeare’s work for presentation in the present time, when an invasion becomes merely a ‘special military operation’, taken up, it seems now in other places.

But, finally, the design of the casting makes this presentation work theatrically in perhaps an unexpected way.  We are not in all these grand or terrifying places but in a small working theatre space, with just 5 actors – to represent, as Sekuless has told me, some 40 cast members in some standard productions of these three plays.  The skill with which the script has been trimmed, costumes designed, selected and changed as the action progresses, and the actors chosen for physical, voice and emotional effect is quite remarkable, and is successful because we, the audience, can see what’s going on as if we are theatre workers in the wings.

Doing it this way, up close in the round, makes the show, for me, as if I were a stagehand when Phillip Henslowe made a diary note that a play called 'Harey Vi' was performed on 3 March 1592 at the Rose Theatre in Southwark.  It makes William Shakespeare real – and it rocks!

Amy Kowalczuk as Queen Margaret
in Henry VI Part Two
Mill Theatre, Canberra 2024

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Theatre Network Australia, October

 

 

Theatre Network Australia, 5/152 Sturt St, Southbank VIC 3006, E: info@tna.org.au
We acknowledge Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and to Elders past, present and emerging.

Commentary by Frank McKone

For anyone working in theatre of all kinds, from small-scale, independent or major companies, Theatre Australia Network provides resources, information and professional development assistance across Australia, linking private businesses with government Arts activities and funding.

I attended this afternoon’s Canberra Industry Gathering conducted by TNA’s Co-CEO Josh Lowe, presented by Canberra Theatre Centre in its Courtyard Studio.  Representatives from Canberra’s indie companies, the ACT Arts Department and Creative Australia spoke about local theatre issues following Lowe’s rundown of TNA activities.

Cross-group small group discussions came essentially to consensus that the fragmentation of theatre activities across the city is a problem which should be resolved by three suggestions:

    Each company provide free tickets to other companies’ practitioners; 

    Companies should share resources, not only technical equipment and expertise but, for example, marketing management;

     Members of different companies should on a reasonably frequent, but informal, basis meet for open conversation about their artistic work and management issues – such as employment and payment concerns.

Concern centred on the need for the theatre industry in Canberra to work together to raise the profile nationally of the range and quality of work presented here.

Go to www.tna.org.au to follow the story further, whether you are a theatre practitioner and/or a theatre-goer.

_________________________________________________________________________________
07 December 2023

The Board of Theatre Network Australia is delighted to announce its new Executive Leadership team, Co-CEOs Erica McCalman and Joshua Lowe.

Interim Chair Sue Giles AM said, “Erica is a highly regarded producer and arts sector leader who has worked across the country with major festivals, local government and many small to medium performing arts organisations. Most recently she was Producer (Special Projects) at Melbourne Fringe. Josh is TNA’s current General Manager and has been leading much of TNA’s advocacy work, particularly for the performance with/for/by young people sector. He was previously CEO/Artistic Director of DRILL in Tasmania.

“Both Erica and Josh are already deeply respected by independent artists and the small to medium sector, and very well qualified to lead TNA at this time. This partnership takes TNA into the next years of our strategy with knowledge, care and connection and we are excited to work with their shared vision and perspective. No better partnership could drive the delivery of TNA’s key objectives of justice and equity.”

TNA Co-CEO Erica McCalman

TNA Co-CEO Joshua Lowe

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Queen's Nanny by Melanie Tait

 

 

The Queen’s Nanny by Melanie Tait.  Ensemble Theatre September 6 – October 12 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 28

Playwright: Melanie Tait
Director: Priscilla Jackman

Set Designer: Michael Hankin; Costume Designer: Genevieve Graham
Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney;
Composer & Sound Designer: James Peter Brown
Dialect & Voice Coach: Jennifer White
Stage Manager: Sean Proude; Asst Stage Manager: Madelaine Osborn
Costume Supervisor: Lily Matelian
Secondments: Sherydan Simson, Chelsea McGuffin

Cast:

Duchess of York; later Queen Elizabeth; later again the Queen Mother – Emma Palmer
Marion Crawford – ‘Crawfie’: Elizabeth Blackmore
J, Nanny, Bertie, Ainslie, Lilibet, George, Bruce, Gould – Matthew Backer



There is really no better way to show you Matthew Backer in his wonderful long list of characters than in these production thumbnails, on the Ensemble site:
https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/the-queens-nanny  

You’ll have to see the show, of course, to follow the story through all these scenes and more – a very full and highly satisfying 90 minutes.

Somewhere hidden in our house full of books, my wife is sure we must still have The Little Princesses; or perhaps it’s with one of our daughters.  She recalls the positive impact on her, aged 5 in 1950 when the book was published, towards the Royal Family.

I also remember, migrating from London as an anti-monarchist in 1955, being very surprised, while practice-teaching, to find the Australians in the group as Menzies-royalist as they come.

As the century morphed into Boris Johnson etc, I admit that I came to see Lilibet to be the highly astute woman that Crawfie helped make her.  Melanie Tait has written, and the Ensemble has presented, a terrific lively story of how The Little Princesses came to be written and published, almost as if in preparation for Lilibet’s accession to the throne as Elizabeth II.

But here’s the punchline.  In her Writer’s Note, Melanie Tait puts her work in context:

“I started working on this play around the time the Albanese Labor Government was voted in.

“Full of hope, I felt certain when the play got to the stage, we’d have lived through a successful Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum and, in an election year, movement would be ramping up about a new Republic Referendum.  I wanted this play to be part of that conversation.

“Instead, I write this note a week after a cabinet reshuffle, where, in the wake of last year’s referendum, the Albanese Government has abolished the Assistant Ministry for the Republic.  We’re about to welcome (and spend tax-payer money on) a visit from King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who’ve just had £45M of public money added to their annual income while the rest of the UK suffers a crippling cost of living crisis.”

Her play is not just fascinating to watch, each twist and turn of the relationship between the Duchess and the Nanny from Marion’s surprising interview showing how and why she got the job through to the Queen Mother’s disgust at the book’s publication – and most awful, to the new Queen’s putdown of the woman who made her what she was.

It’s a play that needs to be seen throughout Australia ready for next year’s election, probably in May.  You need to understand Marion Crawford’s story before you vote.

Maybe the Albanese Government could fund Touring Australia with some extra special funds.  I suggest you write to your local Federal Member of Parliament, now.

Good on you, Ensemble Theatre, for this new Australian play – surely in the tradition that Hayes Gordon would rise again from his grave to see.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Colder Than Here by Laura Wade

 

 

Colder Than Here by Laura Wade.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney September 16 – October 12 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 28

Playwright: Laura Wade (UK)
Director: Janine Watson
Set Designer: Michael Hankin; Costume Designer: Genevieve Graham
Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney; Video Designer: Mark Bolotin
Composer & Sound Designer: Jessica Dunn
Dialect Coach: Linda Nicholls-Gidley; Movement Coach: Tim Dashwwod
Intimacy Coordinator: Chloë Dallimore; Costume Supervisor: Lily Matelian
Asst Stage Manager: Bernadett Lörincz

Cast:
Myra – Hannah Waterman; Alec – Huw Higginson
Their adult daughters Jenna – Airlie Dodds and Harriet – Charlotte Friels

Airlie Dodds, Huw Higginson, Hannah Waterman, Charlotte Friels
as Jenna, Alec, Myra and Harriet
in Colder Than Here by Laura Wade, Ensemble Theatre 2024

This is Ensemble’s summary of Colder Than Here:

Myra’s typically middle-class family are scarily normal in their eccentricities, especially when it comes to dealing with her illness. The boiler is on the blink, the cat’s gone missing and the perfect funeral needs planning but her husband Alec would rather bury his head in a newspaper while daughters Harriet and Jenna have their own problems. Myra might be busy researching flatpack coffins and creating a PowerPoint presentation of her dying wishes, but her last big project is to fix her family.

In my early years I was brought up in this London, wearing Wellington boots to walk to school, perennially cold in the smog.  So I could sympathise with the idea of a play about a woman, diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her family trying to find somewhere nicer for her to die and to be buried.

In 2005, at least the titles of Laura Wade’s first plays – Colder Than Here and Breathing Corpses – suggest things were getting her down a bit, even though they won the writer the [UK] Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright.

So I’m sorry to have to say that I felt for the actors, having to struggle with a script which can’t really make up its mind whether to be a comedy or a sentimental but nice homily about being realistic about death.  

As a comedy it begins well with Myra’s attempt at a Powerpoint presentation of how she wants to prepare for the inevitable.  But the boiler on the blink business (by the way, the extension lead plug that Alec tries to fix is a sealed unit which cannot be taken apart, so his jabbing himself with his screwdriver is just silly) and what happened to Jenna’s cat, and whether Jenna’s relationships with her boyfriends have or will hold up, and why Harriet seems to be so inexplicably dependent on her mother, get in the way of comedy.

Yet the possibilities of drama of depth never develop either in this playscript.

Fortunately it is the set design and video projection that rescue the play as far as it can go.  As the daughters look for locations for the burial, the backdrop image of a calm and attractive woodland scene (well away from whether the boiler in the house really did ever get fixed) made it almost acceptable for Myra to lie down on her side there and slowly roll on to her back as she dies (having lasted till a warmer time in summer) – because (as we know from the earler scene with the cardboard coffin) she wouldn’t fit in if she stayed the way she sleeps.

Yet that final scene is quite unrealistic.  From what Myra tells Jenna, husband Alec is now busy fixing things around the house himself – so he’s not there with her.  What Harriet is doing is not clear – but she’s not there either.  And then, Jenna leaves her mother to it – to die alone.

Perhaps the author meant this to have sad and telling implications about people not facing up to death, but I found after the beginning warmth of a little bit of comedy, the rest of the play – except for the very last moment – left me cold.

Hannah Waterman as Myra
in the final scene of Colder Than Here by Laura Wade
Ensemble Theatre, 2024

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: ARC by Erth

 

 

ARC by Erth.  Canberra Theatre Centre, Playhouse, 26–28 September 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 26


Credits (as recorded by Arts on Tour)

Artistic Director  Scott Wright
Head of Design  Steve Howarth
Producer  Scott Andrew
Writer  Alana Valentine
Creative Associate – Puppet Design  Gabrielle Paananen
Associate Director  Solomon Thomas
Composer/Sound Designer  James Brown
Composer/Sound Designer  Daniel Herten
Lighting Designer  Frankie Clarke
Video Designer  Solomon Thomas
Cast  Scott Wright, Gabrielle Paananen, Rose Maher, Albert David, Tom Caley (subject to change)
Production Manager  Rick Everett

 No printed program was available at Canberra Theatre Centre, so I have assumed the company here is the same.

Erth describes the show in this way:
“ARC is a scalable and site-specific participatory theatre work designed around a menagerie of naturalistic critically endangered and extinct animals. Giving the audience small moments of highly intimate, transformational engagement with fragile, vulnerable life, the work will be led by children, who will enable the transition of wonder and preciousness onto participants.
 
“This is at a time when we are hearing stronger and younger voices speaking up on matters that affect their world. The work is a confrontation with the reality of species extinction, and at the same time, a provocation of hope. These guides are messengers, reminding us of the resilience of nature, our power as individuals to both protect and preserve, and the inherent hope and creative genius of children, who are our future.”
 
Though I can find no explanation by Erth for the meaning of the title ARC (which has many possible meanings), Scott Wright has written:
“The genesis of arc came about from a creative visioning residency with Healesville Sanctuary in 2016 supported by Zoos Victoria. During my visit I was lucky enough to be taken to where they were breeding Leadbeater’s Possums to increase their number, at a time when their population had been reduced to one small colony of around 30 individuals - the only Leadbeater’s Possums remaining in the world.

“A small furry bundle was placed in my hands, and like lightning it struck me: this moment was charged with empathy and awe. Right then I knew that if everybody could experience this delicate action of holding one of these beautiful creatures in their hands, an intangible connection between two species would be made and their continued protection would continue. Not from guilt from the wrongs we have done, but from love and compassion.”

The show consists of Scott musing out loud, apparently as himself rather than in a recognisably acted role, while the life-size puppets come to life in his loungeroom.  I missed how a quite large number of children appeared on stage to participate, which they did with obvious enthusiasm.

This is not theatre which you watch and react to in the ordinary way.  It is an experience, the impact of which grows upon you.  By the end it is impossible to imagine taking an unemotional rational view of the issue of ‘saving the animals’.  The warmth and depth of feeling as Scott winds up with thanks, encouragement and congratulations all round is now an expression of belief in saving the animals.

But from a theatre critic’s point of view I can see the danger of this kind of presentation.  It is nearer to a ceremony of religious faith than a drama revealing social understanding.  Is ARC, then, good children’s education; or is it – however justified – a form of indoctrination?

Though, in a general sense, I personally support the preservation of native species in their original ecological environments, examples – such as Canberra people refusing to accept the need to cull the local kangaroo population; or the people who believe the wild horses should be left to destroy the Kosciuszko national park environment – suggest to me that even children’s education through drama about preserving species can’t depend entirely on unadulterated love and compassion.

I am not seriously suggesting that ARC is a dangerous exercise.  Our fears about global warming are entirely justified.  But I am suggesting that Erth may need to create new works for children in which they learn the limits of belief and the value of action using science to understand Earth’s past and hopefully improve our likely future.

 

 

ARC by Erth, 2024

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Critic - Movie 2024

 

 

The Critic – Movie 2024.  A reimagining of the novel ‘Curtain Call’ by Anthony Quinn (Penguin 2015) set in the 1930s - described in Bookseller as “An elegant literary 1930s murder mystery”.


Sun 29 Sep  Wed 2 Oct  Thu 3 Oct
Dendy Canberra
10:45 am    2:00 pm    7:00 pm

Limelight Cinemas Tuggeranong
12:10 pm

Palace Electric Cinema
2:00 pm    6:00 pm

Director: Anand Tucker
Screenwriter: Patrick Marber
Production Company: BKStudios

Cast

    Ian McKellen as Jimmy Erskine             Gemma Arterton as Nina Land
    Mark Strong as David Brooke                 Lesley Manville as Annabel
    Ben Barnes as Stephen Wyley                 Romola Garai as Madeleine
    Alfred Enoch as Tom Tunner                  Matthew Cottle as Graham Meadows
    Beau Gadsdon as Freya                           Nikesh Patel as Ferdy Harwood
    Rebecca Gethings as Joan                       Éva Magyar as Dolly Langdon
    Jay Simpson as Slyfield                          Jacob James Beswick as Robbie
    Nicholas Bishop as Richard Pugh          Albie Marber as Lennie
    Grant Crookes as Critic                          Debra Gillett as Mrs. Keefe

Reviewed by Frank McKone

“VLADIMIR: Moron!
ESTRAGON: Vermin!
VLADIMIR: Abortion!
ESTRAGON: Morpion!
VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!
ESTRAGON: Curate!
VLADIMIR: Cretin!
ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR: Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“London, 1934. Jimmy Erskine (McKellen) is the most feared theatre critic of the age. He lives as flamboyantly as he writes and takes pleasure in savagely taking down any actor who fails to meet his standards. When the owner of the Daily Chronicle newspaper dies, and his son David Brooke (Strong) takes over, Jimmy quickly finds himself at odds with his new boss and his position under threat. In an attempt to preserve the power and influence he holds so sacred, Jimmy strikes a faustian pact with struggling actress Nina Land (Arterton), entangling them and Brooke in a thrilling but deadly web of desire, blackmail and betrayal.”
[ The Critic – Official Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jryTK4UZ-6E ]

As critic of The Critic, I will not start by“putting the dagger in” like ‘Jimmy Erskine’ does as a fearsome attention grabber, condemning West End actor ‘Nina Land’ unreasonably.  His real purpose is nothing more than maintaining his image – and therefore his job.

But, like Jimmy, I like to display my erudition with literary quotes.  Estragon’s “Crritic!” is amusing – but in this case it’s also telling.  In the film it is Nina who “wilts, vanquished, and turns away” at first – until her anger makes her turn upon Jimmy and demand an apology, in the street: in public.

A strong beginning for a film with lots of possibilities but not much in the way of probability – a bit like waiting for Godot.  I have not read Anthony Quinn’s novel, which is described as “utterly pleasing from the first page to the last” by Sadie Jones, (Guardian).  The essential problem in this movie is that the screenwriting is contrived, as if the characters’ actions, talk and reactions are predetermined to get Jimmy Erskine from his over-the-top, aggressive, unkind copy for the Daily Chronicle review of the performance of ‘The White Devil’ (the tragedy in five acts by John Webster, performed and published in 1612) through the ‘deadly web’ to his unlikely, unfortunate and unpleasant survival.

On the way he reviews fairly, Nina’s excellent acting as Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – but only for his central self-centred purposes.

The film then seems to be too stagey, as if it is all being acted out as if it were on stage, and so never achieves the true illusion of reality which is what film can do, but acting a play cannot.

At the same time it is fair to say that the actors in this film are as excellent as we might expect. But the writing and directing leave us with unfulfilled possibilities.  

For example, the song and scene At Midnight in the 1936 setting where the gay Jimmy and his ‘secretary’ Tom are set upon by Nazi characters was never developed as it could have been – especially when we see these groups in action in real life today.  The role of 1930s police also should have been much more fully developed, raising issues about the law and the treatment of gays and women.

And most disappointing, I thought, was the shallow characterisation of Nina, as if women actors were so easily manipulated by their needing to be praised.  Of course the issue was and is real, but the screenplay needed to offer other possibilities for the women.  In real life I think of how much Helene Weigel achieved in acting in the 1930s – and probably in writing – in Brecht’s plays, and in becoming artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble in the 1940s.  There is no women’s part in The Critic modeled on such a woman.

From a different perspective, you might see the movie as a fun variation of an Agatha Christie, but though there is a murder, there’s not the same engagement in mystery.  We may wonder about Jimmy Erskine’s intentions early on, but then we see it all happening until we are not surprised, as Jimmy is not surprised, at Nina’s death.  He is essentially cynical about what he does to engineer others’ actions.

This at least opens up our thinking about the nature of an unkind society.  So I lay aside my dagger at this point.

Ian McKellen and Gemma Arterton
as Jimmy Erskine and Nina Land
in The Critic 2024

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Cut by Mark Ravenhill

 

 
 The Cut by Mark Ravenhill.  Presented by The Seeing Place and Lexi Sekuless Productions at The Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra, September 12 – 21, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 19

Co-Producer – Lexi Sekuless; Produced by The Seeing Place
Director – Sammy Moynihan
Sound Designer and Operator – Marlene Radice
Lighting Designer – Jen Wright
Photos by Andrew Sikorsky

Cast
Paul – Ali Clinch
John / Meena – Diana Caban Velez
Stephen / Geeta – Maxine Beaumont
Susan – Hanna Tonks


The Cut is not an entertainment.  It is deeply depressing.  Yet the directing, sound design and acting create a work of significant theatre art.

We see a woman called Paul in three scenes:

 

At work as the administrator and operative of the government office of the legislated Cut program, interviewing a prospective young woman who insists on being cut:

 At home after work with their wife:

 Meeting up with their daughter Stephen on their return from university studies: 

In each situation another woman appears in a servile role, often breaking glassware which we hear in the background.

Sexuality and sexual roles are fluid.  Metaphorical implications abound, from female genital mutilation to glass ceilings; husbands’ coercive control to domestic violence; parents’ ‘ownership’ of children to their failure to accept their child’s adult independence.

It’s never a pretty picture in its 90 minutes of interactional talk and intense emotional reactions, without interval.  Be prepared for mystification gradually resolving into an awful sense of despair about the future of humankind.

It’s almost weird, then, to read the Wikipedia story of theatrical success of British playwright Mark Ravenhill, “one of the most widely performed playwrights in British theatre of the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”  The Cut appeared in 2006, midway in his career, working “as a freelance director, workshop leader and drama teacher” in the 1980s through to when “In September 2023, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama announced that Ravenhill would be joining their teaching staff as a Visiting Lecturer and co-tutor, focusing his time on the Writing for Performance BA degree.” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ravenhill ]

Maybe it means that theatre is more real than the real life it presents for us to be depressed by.

This is where the success of Lexi Sekuless Productions makes its entrance.  To quote: “The Cut is 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.  There have been 2 co-productions so far but, excitingly, The Cut is the biggest of its kind to date at the Mill and The Seeing Place have created a model which we can roll out for all ACT creatives to enjoy.”

The Mill reminds me of my visit, fortunately long before Covid, to see Ionesco’s La leçon at Théâtre de la Huchette, the tiny 85 seat theatre set up in Paris in 1948 largely, I believe, in response to the horrors of World War II and the end of the occupation.  

“As of February 2017 the two plays, Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice chauve) followed directly by The Lesson, have been performed more than 18,000 times at the theater, holding the record for longest running show without interruption at a single theater.

In 1975 the owner, Marcel Pinard, suffered a fatal heart attack in the theater's box office. Following his death the actors who had played the Ionesco double bill since 1957 battled to prevent the closure of the theater, eventually forming their own theater company to continue production.”  
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_de_la_Huchette ]

I trust Lexi may not have such a dire experience, but hope the Mill Theatre may have an equally long history.  The quality of The Seeing Place production of The Cut certainly matched my experience in Paris, and looks forward to providing Canberra with such necessary, even though disturbing theatre, far into the future.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Offering by Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts

 

 

 

The Offering by Omar Musa & Mariel Roberts.  Presented by Q The Locals at Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 8, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Performance Poetry – Omar Musa
Cello, live and recorded – Mariel Roberts

The Offering is a substantial work in a highly original form of a public meditation on how to become one with oneself; to be a whole person.  Memory is essential, yet a key thought through the series of poems which make up this hour presentation is “memories are always translations” – of the past before one’s birth, as well as of your past since your birth.

Taking up stories of his immigrant father’s family and traditions in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, Omar speaks in role as a water spirit.  He seeks understanding of the unity of land and water, searching in the archipelago of memories for the island which is himself – a Queanbeyan local, Australian, with memories of Borneo – its history as a country and the history of his family he has visited there as child and adult.

The often startling originality of his words, particularly when he tosses in unsuspected surprising rhymes, is matched by Mariel’s equally original creation of a soundscape – often perhaps in the tradition of musique concrète – live on the cello, but also incorporating instant recorded playback.  She provides not just an accompaniment for the poems but a form of music in its own right giving an emotional depth to the images and moods in her husband’s words.

The poems come to seem like major arias in a small opera: the audience spontaneously applauded each poem, and one solo ‘poem’ from the cello without words.  And, again surprisingly, the whole work becomes a drama with its hopes and dreams finally reaching the spirit’s success – as a fictional character which is also Omar Musa finding himself in a real world of human confusion.

Working together in the creation of art, Mariel Roberts and Omar Musa offer each of us the way towards our own one-ness.  Breathe: inhale and search; exhale and find the way.

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith

 

 

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, July 26 – August 31 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 3

Playwright: Anton Chekhov; Adaptor: Joanna Murray-Smith
Director: Mark Kilmurry; Asst Director: Emma Canalese
Set & Costume Designer: Nick Fry; Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
Composer & Sound Designer: Steve Francis
Dialect Coach: Nick Curnow; Intimacy Director: Chloe Dallimore
Stage Manager: Lauren Tulloch; Asst Stage Manager: Christopher Starnawski
Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik

Cast:
Nanny / Maryia – Vanessa Downing; Telyeghin – John Gaden AO
Yelena – Chantelle Jamieson; Serebryakov – David Lynch
Sonya – Abbey Morgan; Vanya – Yalin Ouzecelik
Astrov – Tim Walter



“I’d adapt a phone book in order to have a show at the Ensemble”, says Joanna Murray-Smith.  And so said all of us in the audience yesterday afternoon.

That’s because Murray-Smith achieved her Writer’s Note aim.  She points out that “the eternal dilemma for contemporary Artistic Directors” is whether “Chekhov’s language needs to change” when “historical language [such as in the standard Penguin translation by Elisaveta Fen ©1954] sometimes doesn’t work for comedic effect.  It sometimes sounds stilted or pompous to modern ears….  So by deftly translating the intention into language that fits it best in this moment now can make the play sing in the way more effectively as it was intended to.”

Of course, it was intended to be a satirical comedy in which Uncle Vanya’s plight in relation to the proposed selling of the family estate would be both a laughing matter and a serious concern for middle class Russians in 1899 attending the Moscow Art Theatre.  And, of course, in 1954 the F- word would never have been allowed to cater for “younger audiences who aren’t used to having to ‘work’ to understand a play”,  as Murray-Smith describes them today.

But, of course, at 83 I laughed along with the rest, many of whom were probably not much younger than me at the Saturday afternoon matinee.  Even attempted homicide made us laugh in nervous reaction – though I wonder how that was received in Chekhov’s time.

And I say that because Mark Kilmurry and the terrific team of actors kept us right on the correct satirical edge so close to reality that often we couldn’t be sure whether to laugh or not.  All the actors were equally in tune with Murray-Smith’s style, so that though we knew we were watching this late-19th Century specifically Russian society, we had no trouble believing these characters were real.

In particular I would like to give a little extra praise to Abbey Morgan.  Her teenage Sonya could so easily be overplayed, especially in her scene with the older Yelena  talking of her unrequited love for the doctor, Astrov.  Yet Abbey made a speech like this:
“O Lord, give me strength…. I’ve been praying all night…. I often go up to him, start talking to him, look into his eyes…. I have no more pride, no strength left to control myself….. etc. etc.”
into both Chekhov’s satire of overblown young love and at the same time was just sad enough for me to feel sympathy when Yelena asked “And he?” and Sonya replied “He doesn’t notice me.”


In other words, Ensemble Theatre has done both Joanna Murray-Smith and Anton Chekhov proud.  

And because of her deftly translating Chekhov’s intention, we see that this is not a play just about Russia in 1899, but a play which through our laughter makes us acutely aware of how the threat of social breakdown – all those F-words – is just as real for us today.  

P.S.
For those confused by Russian names here’s the list of the characters in the standard form.  It’s a bit like a phone book:

Serebriakov, Alexandre Vladimirovich, a retired professor

Yeliena, Andryeevna (Helene Lienochka), his wife, aged 27

Sonia (Sophia Alexandrovna), his daughter by his first wife

Voinitskaia, Maryia Vassilievna, widow of a Privy Councillor and mother of the professor’s first wife

Voinitsky, Ivan Petrovich (Vania), her son

Astrov, Mihail Lvovich, a doctor

Telyeghin, Ila Ilyich (nicknamed ‘Waffles’), a landowner reduced to poverty

Marina, an old children’s nurse, and A Workman

The action takes place on Serebriakov’s estate – which Sonia’s Uncle Vanya claims was given to Maryia when her daughter married Serebriakov, and so cannot be sold by Serebriakov without approval from at least his daughter Sonia (now a young adult) and preferably from her Uncle Vanya as well.

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Sunshine Club by Wesley Enoch AM

 

The Sunshine Club by Wesley Enoch AM. HIT Productions at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 1 2024

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Creative Team:
Writer & Director: Wesley Enoch AM
Composer: John Rodgers; Musical Director: Shenzo Gregorio
Choreographer: Yolande Brown; Lighting Designer: Ben Hughes
Set& Costume Realiser: Adrienne Chisholm

Cast:
Frank Doyle – Garret Lyon; Rose Morris – Claire Warrillow;
Aunty Faith Doyle – Roxanne McDonald; Pearl Doyle – Tehya Makani
Reverend Percy Morris / Bill Harris – Dale Pengelly
Dave Daylight – Leeroy Tipiloura; Lorry Hocking – Colin Smith
Peter Walsh / Doorman / Jimmy Daily – Rune Nydal
Patti Maguire (Rose Cover) – Chloe Rose Taylor
Mavis Moreton (Pearl Cover) – Jade Lomas-Ronan

Band: 5-piece live

The cast and five-piece live band
in The Sunshine Club 2024

Ostensibly, The Sunshine Club is an intriguing rom-com, until – like Romeo and Juliet – the dark forces of social discrimination wreck the rom and eliminate the com.  

Claire Warrillow and Garret Lyon
as Rose Morris and Frank Doyle
dancing in The Sunshine Club

Is there any real hope for change for the better, as Frank Doyle starts on the alcohol path in angry frustration in the final scene?  Will Rose achieve the professional singing career she deserves?  How will Dave and Pearl manage bringing up a white man’s child?

Yet the terrific up-beat band (who unfortunately are not acknowledged in the printed program); the always lively precision choreography; and the careful direction of the mood changes, light the drama with sunshine from within.  What makes it intriguing is that the show is simply enjoyable to watch even while the reason for needing mixed blak/white weekly dance clubs brings up clouds and even thunder and lightning.

Rozanne McDonald as Aunty Faith Doyle
bringing on thunder and lightning
in The Sunshine Club by Wesley Enoch AM

In fact – and this is a worry about how far we have improved in view of last year’s referendum – I (a 1950s immigrant) had never known about the Sunshine Clubs that some claim were set up around the country after returned Indigenous World War II soldiers realised their fighting for freedom didn’t mean theirs.  

Perhaps I’m wish-fulfilling: in offtheleash.net.au “The Sunshine Club is a fictional place but it's based on a real place called the Boathouse in Brisbane that a lot of my Elders went to. They'd tell stories of the dances they'd go to, how they'd have to sneak in and sneak back out again,” Enoch says.

But then again, after explaining he wrote the musical in 1999 “in reaction to the late 1990s and the Reconciliation movement”: “There’s a song right at the end, and I don’t want to give away too much, but when we wrote it in the 90s the sentiment was that we have to make change. The lyric goes: “If not now, then when? If not now, then show me a world where it can,” says Enoch.

Despite the brilliance of The Sunshine Club, I fear I still can’t see that world yet.  I was surprised to see much less than a full-house audience last night, while to me it is a great shame that it gets a run of just one night in Queanbeyan.  

I can only hope, as Enoch writes in his program Creative Note, that “you see The Sunshine Club as a great celebration of our history but also, through our history, a way of talking about the situation that we [were in] twenty years ago in the 1990s when I first wrote it.  In 2024, we need to focus a lot more on how we work together and how reconciliation is possible in the future.”

But is this the last of HIT Productions’ presentation of this entertaining and important show?  Their web page, https://www.hitproductions.com.au/theatre/come-on-down-to-the-sunshine-club  last updated May 2, 2024, lists the performances through 2023-2024:

2024 PERFORMANCES:  Sydney Coliseum, NSW; Tanunda Soldiers’ Memorial Hall, SA; Murray Bridge Performing Arts and Function Centre, SA; Nautilus Arts Centre, the SALT Festival, Port Lincoln; Mildura Arts Centre, Mildura; Broken Hill Civic Centre, Broken Hill; Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre, Wangaratta; Ballarat Civic Hall, Ballarat; Kingston Civic Hall, Moorabbin.

2023 PERFORMANCES: Far more than I can record here, in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland.

So I hope I need not worry so much, since as Wesley Enoch says “This play is a way of having our voice heard and our world view expressed so we can be heard” and that it’s people who go to plays who make things change.

Claire Warrillow as Rose Morris with Garret Lyon as Frank Doyle
Their first touch in The Sunshine Club by Wesley Enoch AM

 

 

 

 

2024: Lord of the Flies

 

 

 

Lord of the Flies by William Golding adapted for the stage by Nigel Williams.  Canberra REP July 25 – August 10, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 26

Directed by: Caitlin Baker and Lachlan Houen
Voice and Performance Coach: Sarah Chalmers
Set Designer: Michael Sparks OAM
Lighting Designer: Chris Ellyard; Sound Designer: Neville Pye
Costume Coordinator: Antonia Kitzel

Cast:
Ralph – Joshua James; Jack – Ty McKenzie; Piggy – Winsome Ogilvie
Simon – Lily Willmott; Roger – Robert Kjellgren; Sam – Brandon Goodwin
Eric – Zoë Ross; Maurice – Alex Wilson; Henry – Phoebe Silberman
Perceval – Tara Saxena; Naval Officer – John Stead; Bill – Caitlin Baker

Canberra REP have been brave to take on Lord of the Flies with a young cast who have produced a worthy result.  It is an exercise not only in giving up-and-coming actors an opportunity to gain experience in a substantial work, but in providing us all with a reminder of the possibilities and the weaknesses of human society in the real world.

Golding’s novel is an allegorical fiction – that is, it is a story which parallels real life.  It works well in that form because while reading and turning pages (or screens), our imaginations visualise what is happening, our feelings are engaged in response, and our intellect makes the connections between the fiction and fact.

On stage the designers and actors do the imagining for us.  We see and hear what’s happening.  Our feelings are as much engaged in responding to how effectively the staging and acting is done, as they are in response to the story; while our intellect may catch on to some of the meaning as the action goes on regardless, outside our control.  

Adapting Golding’s story for stage, unfortunately, results in long periods of young people yelling at each other, without enough of the character development and variety of volume and intensity levels which I remember imagining when I first read the novel as a teenager soon after it was published in 1954.

The value in Canberra REP presenting Lord of the Flies is the strength of the allegory and our need to come to terms with the truth that we humans are lost on our Island Earth, and have never learned to manage intransigent ‘leaders’ who tell us to go back to where you came from; who manipulate us into ritual dancing which turns into ritual killings; and who steal the fire from those who would be responsible citizens.

Though I can’t say I exactly ‘enjoyed’ Lord of the Flies, I can say that there were some dramatically strong points, such as the deathly silence as it was realised that Lily Willmott’s Simon was dead; and the anguish expressed in horror by Joshua James’ Ralph at the very end of everything.  

And though there was a laugh at John Stead’s Naval Officer berating the British boys for not behaving well as British boys should, it didn’t take much imagination to realise that there’s no-one out there to come and rescue us on Planet Earth.

So REP’s production of Lord of the Flies is certainly worthwhile going to see.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Mary Stuart adapted by Kate Mulvany

 

 

Mary Stuart adapted by Kate Mulvany after the verse play by Friedrich Schiller (the play Maria Stuart had its première in Weimar, Germany on 14 June 1800): Currency Press 2020.  

Presented by Chaika Theatre at ACT Hub, Kingston, Canberra July 24 – August 3, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 25

Director: Luke Rogers; Designer: Kathleen Kershaw
Sound Composition: Rachael Dease; Sound Design: Georgia Snudden
Sound Editing and Arrangement: Luke Rogers
Lighting Design: Disa Swifte; Voice and Text Coach: Sarah Chalmers

Cast:
Mary Stuart – Steph Roberts; Paulet – Cameron Thomas
Mortimer – James McMahon; Young Girl – Lily Welling
Burleigh – Richard Manning; Queen Elizabeth I – Karen Vickery
Ambassador Aubespine – Blue Hyslop; Leicester – Jarrad West
Shrewsbury – Neil McLeod; Davison – Lachlan Herring


Chaika Theatre very effectively uses what I call ‘presentational’ style for Kate Mulvany’s modern feminist approach to the historical story of Queen Elizabeth I executing her cousin Mary Stuart in 1587.

Schiller’s fascination with the story was more focussed on political philosophy, perhaps – about the use and misuse of monarchical power – rather than emphasising the women’s relationships.

You don’t need to know the history, but Life and Deathline of Mary, Queen of Scots, is at the National Museums Scotland site:
https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/mary-queen-of-scots/mary-queen-of-scots/life-and-deathline-of-mary-queen-of-scots

Roger Paulin, in his introduction to the Flora Kimmich 2020 translation, helps explain my term ‘presentational’: the [original] play is written mainly in a blank verse suited to the close confrontations and the interplay of repartee that are conditional on both moral and political argument and the clash of principles. This enables words and notions that are related in sense to be thrown back at each other in rhetorical encounters, such as those to do with right, justice and the law.

So Chaika has taken the right path in this adaptation, not towards what we call ‘naturalism’, but to show characters in a dramatic plot in order to bring out ideas.  And they do that very successfully, except I think for one brief moment.  

The setting, of course, is not strictly 16th Century, though it is suggested by the costumes and the mix of older formal and modern colloquial language.  But the opening of the second half as a social-media dance party scene really seemed inappropriate for a drinking session for Queen Elizabeth and her presumed lover Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Otherwise, the accompanying sound composition and design by Rachael Dease and Georgia Snudden (originally for Performing Lines WA) and the sound editing and arrangement by Luke Rogers captured the mood perfectly, drawing us in emotionally to so many scenes where concentrating on the words and their significance was crucial.

And, finally, the performances by Karen Vickery and Steph Roberts in the scene where they met, and then in their solos – Elizabeth’s anguish over her nightmare decision to sign the execution order; Mary’s confession according to her belief – brought out the depth of empathy from us for these women, because they were women, in our world of uncompromising politics, which Kate Mulvany wanted her adaptation to create beyond even Friedrich Schiller’s ending, where Elizabeth has lost her lover, Robert, Earl of Leicester – “His Lordship begs your pardon.  He is at sea and on his way to France”.

In Schiller, Elizabeth is forced to accept Shrewsbury’s words; “Live, rule content!  Your enemy is dead.  From now on you have nothing more you must fear and nothing you need to respect.”  (She forces herself and stands calm.)  The curtain falls.

In Chaika and Kate Mulvany’s dimming of the lights to black, we felt all that she lost in the awful beheading of her cousin, like her father’s beheading of her mother, Anne Boleyn.  And we felt for all those women who have no choice but to keeping standing calm.

This Mary Stuart is a valuable contribution to Canberra theatre and our culture.


 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Horizon - Bangarra Dance Theatre

 

 

Horizon   Bangarra Dance Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre, July 18 – 20 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 18

Artistic Director & Co-CEO: Frances Rings
Executive Director & Co-CEO: Louise Ingram
Choreographers: Deborah Brown, Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, Sani Townson
            Dancers Of Bangarra Dance Theatre
Composers: Steve Francis and Brendon Boney (The Light Inside);
        Amy Flannery (Kulka)
Set Designer: Elizabeth Gadsby; Associate Set Designer: Shana O’Brien
Costume Designers: Jennifer Irwin (The Light Inside); Clair Parker (Kulka)
Lighting Designer: Karen Norris
Video Designer: Davis Bergman; Associate Video Designer: Cameron Smith
Featured Music Performer: James Webster (The Light Inside)
Filmed Dancer: Phil Walford (Kulka); Rehearsal Director: Juliette Barton
Kalaw Kawaw Ya Language Consultant: Leonora Adidi (Kulka)
Featured Vocalist: Zipporah Corser-Anu (Kulka)
Stage Manager: Rose Jenkins; Asst Stage Manager: Ashleigh King



Horizon is a major work of outstanding cultural significance.  Frances Rings and Louise Ingram have taken Bangarra beyond the company’s traditional horizon, centred largely on the Australian mainland, by commissioning three Islander choreographers.  

From the Torres Strait, Sani Townson is of Samu, Koedal and Dhoeybaw clans of Sabai Island and Deborah Brown’s ancestry is of Mer and Badu Islands; while Moss Te Ururangi Patterson is of the Ngati Tuwharetoa Maori tribe, North Island, Aotearoa New Zealand.

In the 20 minute Act 1, Kulka, the dance is based on the style of the Saybaylayg people of Sabai, and forms an overture or prelude for the 70 minute work combining Brown’s Salt Water and Patterson’s The Light Inside in Act 2.

Absolute respect – for the strength and sincerity in the dance, the remarkable sound design and recorded performances, the lighting and visual design –  is the heart of the emotion and thought that the total work creates.  Technically thoroughly up to date, especially in the ‘reflections’ which represent the spirits (and the spirit) of the physically real figures on the stage, Horizon is the ancient Indigenous world created for us all by modern keepers of their culture.  The history is of resilience, survival and success through all those tens of thousands of years, living in our part of the world.

The production of this work in itself models that history, with a tremendous sense of achievement, felt by everyone in the audience, as the whole cast came together as one in the final scene.  This is art for arts’s sake and art for our sake, all in one.  Not to be missed.

Follow up for more understanding and appreciation: Refugia, Homecoming and Maar Bidi, the Next Generation - the poetry by Elfie Shiosaki, Noongar and Yawuru academic, Associate Professor at the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University, interviewed by Rudi Bremer on Awaye, Radio National, Saturday July 20 2024, 6pm (ABC Listen) – on human rights and the ‘future of peace’; about an ecosystem that survives catastrophic climate change.  “Keep the campfire burning” as a fitting ending to 2024 Naidoc week.


Bangarra Dancers:

Lillian Banks; Bradley Smith; Courtney Radford; Kallum Goolagong; Kassidy Waters
Jye Uren; Kiarn Doyle; Maddison Paluch; Daniel Mateo; Emily Flannery
Janaya Lamb; Chatelle Lee Lockhart; James Boyd; Amberlilly Gordon; Lucy May
Donta Whitham

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Midnight Oil - The Hardest Line -

 

 

 

 I can't do better than ask you to read this review by Richard Cotter in the Sydney Arts Guide:

 

at https://sydneyartsguide.com.au/midnight-oil-the-hardest-line 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Master Class by Terrence McNally

 

 

 Master Class by Terrence McNally.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, June 14 – July 20 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 29

Playwright: Terrence McNally
Director: Liesel Badorrek; Assistant Director: Miranda Middleton

Musical Director/Cast/Composer & Sound Designer: Maria Alfonsine
Cast/Composer & Sound Designer: Damian de Boos-Smith
Cast: Elisa Colla; Cast: Lucia Mastrantone
Cast: Bridget Patterson; Cast: Matthew Reardon

Set & Costume Designer: Isabel Hudson; Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik
Lighting Designer: Kelsey Lee

Dialect Coach: Linda Nicholls-Gidley; Operatic Voice Coach: Donna Balson
Theatre Stage Manager: Jen Jackson; Rehearsal Stage Manager: Emily Phillips

Photos: Prudence Upton



I’m not sure if Ensemble Theatre has reverted to the hippy days of collectivism, but their program calls all the cast members merely “Cast”.  I agree all cast members are equal, as performers, but I like to know who played the different characters.  

Maria Alfonsine is the accompanying pianist for Maria Callas’s master classes.  She is astute and careful to play an unassuming role as Manny, recognising Maria’s emotional frailty and providing just the support she needs.

Bridget Patterson as the first inexperienced soprano student, Sophie de Palma, doesn’t understand why her teacher is so uncompromising, and gives up in tears, despite a top-quality singing voice.

Damien de Boos-Smith has no name as the unfortunate comic stagehand that Maria treats as an idiot.  But we also know him as the secret cello player who accompanies Maria Alfonsine so well.

Matthew Reardon is Anthony (Tony) Candolini, the student not only with a tenor voice to die for, but the sense of humour and confidence that his teacher cannot easily deal with.  Perhaps she lets him go because he doesn’t need her; or because she couldn’t teach him if she tried.

Elisa Colla as Sharon Graham is the one that Maria knows will make it as a performer, so long as she can cope with life in the theatre world – on stage and in personal relationships.

Lucia Mastrantone has the role as Maria Callas which links us, in our role as potential Master Class students, to her at the time in her life when her voice, health and personal relationships are failing.  If she cannot perform any longer, perhaps she can at least leave a worthwhile legacy through her master classes for the new performers coming through.

 

Damian de Boos-Smith

Bridget Patterson as Sophie de Palma
with Lucia Manstrantone as Maria Callas

Elisa Colla as Sharon Graham
with Lucia Manstrantone as Maria Callas
and pianist Maria Alfonsine as Manny

Matthew Reardon as Anthony (Tony) Candolini
with Lucia Manstrantone as Maria Callas
and pianist Maria Alfonsine as Manny

Lucia Manstrantone as Maria Callas
with Damian de Boos-Smith (cello) and Maria Alfonsine (piano)

As a one-time drama teacher myself I hear the truth in Maria’s attempts to make her students understand the shift they must make beyond technique, and certainly not by imitation – which my teacher, Anton Witsel, called “acting acting” – into acting from within yourself.

Ton Witsel also warned me of how easy it is in theatre to “fall flat on your face”.  It can happen in the writing.  It can happen in the set design, the costumes design, the directing, and in the actor’s acting.  Theatre is always at risk of a flop.

Terrence McNally could have got it wrong about the real Maria Callas – but he has not written a documentary.  This play is his imagining how things might have gone for her, and these characters are his creation.  The real Maria died of a heart-attack when she was 53 in 1977.  Are these characters costumed as they would have been then?  It doesn’t matter!  But they are costumed just right for the Maria we see to react to them as she does.

But the real risk in performing McNally’s play is that the actors, including whoever plays Maria Callas, have to understand and be able work in the way that Maria says they must.  This means those playing Sophie, Tony and Sharon have to be able to work from within themselves, acting and singing, showing us that their characters don’t understand – yet – how to work from within.

This really is risky theatre.  But, surely thanks to sensitive directing from Liesel Badorrek and Miranda Middleton and the wide range of experiences these actors already have (and presumably how well they learned from their drama teachers), there are no flops here.

Quite the opposite.  The audience rose to their feet in appreciation for a new understanding of this prima donna, not as the difficult personality, nor the aggressive competitor, nor the publicity hound, nor the money-grubber, nor the failure in marriage, but as the woman who found herself, in performing from within, and so became the greatest opera singer, even despite probably the worst that could happen, when her child was still-born.

The season runs until July 20 – there is still time to make the journey to the Kirribilli boathouse, Ensemble Theatre. https://www.ensemble.com.au

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra