2026: Almost, Maine by John Cariani

 

 

Almost, Maine by John Cariani.  Mockingbird Theatre Company at Belconnen Arts Centre March 18 – 28, 2026.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 19

Cast
The production features a four-person ensemble cast portraying multiple roles: 
Alexander Wilson - Pete / Steve / Lendall / Chad / Man
Wendy Wakwella – Ginette / Sandrine / Gayle / Deena / Suzette / Rhonda
Jayde Dowhy – Glory / Waitress / Marvalyn / Shelly / Marci / Hope 
Alastair McKenzie – East / Jimmy / Randy / Phil / Dave
    
Creatives
Director: Zac Bridgman; Assistant Director: Anna Hemming
Artistic Director/Producer: Chris Baldock 
Set Design: Chris Baldock
Lighting and Sound Design: Rhiley Winnett and Zac Bridgman
Costumes and Props: Cast and Crew
Sound and Lighting Operator and Stage Manager: Rhiley Winnett
Projections: Chris Baldock
Intimacy Coordinator: Steph Evans


Good plays – and that means good performances of well-written scripts – are the hardest to write about, because what is most praiseworthy is how they directly create your emotional responses as you are watching.  It’s like listening to good music.  You don’t need to explain how you feel.

Achieving this depends on originality of design and human understanding in directing, so that actors can find fine detail in their characters and in their reactions to each other in role.

This witty American script consisting of nine unrelated short stories could easily become just enjoyably funny skits about falling in or out of love, set for no apparent reason in a small country town in Maine, north-east USA.

This presentation is so well designed, directed and acted that though the scenes are humorous, they work to create a multi-faceted image of Love, as if it were a large diamond which sparkles in different colours in different lights from different angles.  A very satisfying experience for any viewer, especially when the Prologue scene, which seemed somehow unfinished at the time, is referenced – a bit mysteriously – as an Interlogue at interval; and neatly – I could say nicely – resolved in the Epilogue at the end.

Almost, Maine is very much an American play, and it was a sensible decision to train the actors to be able to speak not only in the correct accents but in a somewhat exaggerated style which is a true feature of that culture.  All the way up to the one-time reality television host who is now President.

When John Cariani wrote Almost, Maine in 2002 he may not have thought a quarter of a century later an Australian like me would see some aspects of the play as satire about American love for their president.  Perhaps I’m going too far – but see this excellent Mockingbird Production and see what you think.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2026 My Brilliant Career - Melbourne Theatre Company

 

 

 My Brilliant Career, adapted as a musical from the novel by Miles Franklin.  Melbourne Theatre Company at Canberra Theatre Centre, 7 – 15 March, 2026

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night March 8

CREATIVES
Director Anne-Louise Sarks
Musical Director / Additional Music Arrangements Victoria Falconer
Choreographer Amy Campbell
Set & Costume Designer Marg Horwell
Lighting Designer Matt Scott
Orchestrator / Vocal Arranger James Simpson
Sound Designer Joy Weng
Associate Director Miranda Middleton
Associate Set & Costume Designer Savanna Wegman
Assistant Musical Director Drew Livingston

CAST (alphabetical order – Collective Ensemble)
Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward; Melanie Bird; Lincoln Elliott
Victoria Falconer; Kala Gare; Jack Green; Raj Labade; Drew Livingston
Meg McKibbin; Ana Mitsikas; Christina O’Neill; Jarrad Payne

Key acting roles:
Kala Gare as the protagonist Sybylla Melvyn. The ensemble includes Raj Labade (Harry/Peter), Drew Livingston (Father/Uncle Jay-Jay/M’Swat), Ana Mitsikas (Grannie/Rose Jane), and Christina O'Neill (Mother/Aunt Helen/Mrs M'Swat)


The very best theatre happens when the source material is emotionally honest and the writers, directors, designers, choreographers, musicians and actors create an original way to present on stage a work both thoroughly entertaining and true to its source.

This adaptation of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career as music theatre by Melbourne Theatre Company is a wonderful example.  It takes Franklin’s understanding of herself as a woman growing up in 1899, making it available for our young generation in the 21st Century through music, song and dance as the story which Sybylla Melvyn tells us is “about – me!”

In this way, Sybylla – in effect the young Miles Franklin – takes us into her confidence.  As her mother shows her, to see herself in a mirror is to see her external attributes; but it does not reveal her real self.  

Entirely appropriately for our modern concerns about, for example, the destructive effects – especially in girls and young women – of the misuse of imagery on internet social platforms, Sybylla’s search for how to find and, for herself, how to become “someone like me” – very often generating shout out loud comedy – creates for us empathetic depth.  We feel for Sybylla, for Miles, for ourselves as we react to and reflect on their experiences, and so by a kind of osmosis understanding grows.

While writing the original My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin was what we know nowadays as a young adult, just turning 21 as her first novel was published.  Opening night at the musical was full of cheers and whistles, and sighs – not only from the young, though I admit as an octogenarian I only clapped in admiration – standing with everyone for the final ovation.  

To achieve such great theatre, all the performers work as an extraordinary ensemble company, playing out all the characters over time as musicians, dancers, singers, mimes and actors with such precision, in itself a powerful reason to not miss My Brilliant Career – the Musical.

Though, as Sybylla insists, her story will not be a romance, and has no plot, I think it is fair to say that the performances by Kala Gare and Raj Labade as Sybylla and Harry are especially memorable.

It’s exciting to watch; ironic humour abounds; thoughtful on social issues; and emotionally honest.

A brilliant career for Melbourne Theatre Company; a brilliant theatre experience here in Canberra.

Kala Gare as Sybylla 
My Brilliant Career - Melbourne Theatre Company 2026

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2026: The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

 

 

 The Taming of the Shrew adapted from William Shakespeare’s play.  Lakespeare, Canberra, February 17 to March 1, 2026. Locations: Various parks and venues across the Canberra region, including Belconnen Arts Centre, Verity Lane, Pialligo Estate, Tuggeranong Town Park, Patrick White Lawns, Glebe Park, and Haig Park.
Saturday 28 February, FREE, Haig Park
Sunday 1 March, Pialligo Estate (two shows - lunch and dinner)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 27 at Belconnen Arts Centre

Cast
Petruchia: Ylaria Rogers        Christopher (Kit): Michael Cooper
Lucentia: Shontae Wright    Bianco: Alastair James McKenzie
Trania: Anneka van der Velde    Grumia: Yanina Clifton
Gremia: Alice Ferguson        Baptista:Giuliana Baggoley
Biondello: Blue Hyslop        Hortensia: Claire Noack
Vincentia: Jill Young

Creatives
Director: Karen Vickery
Voice and Performance Coach: Sarah Chalmers
Costumes: Helen Wojtas        Milliner: Rachael Henson
Sound design/composer: Paris Scharkie
Jig choreography: Ylaria Rogers
Stage Manager: Disa Swifte




Lakespeare’s reinterpretation of The Taming of the Shrew turns Shakespeare on his head.  I’ve not laughed so much in many years.

I have long had doubts about The Taming of the Shrew.  In a time – in 1590 – when women were not allowed to perform in plays and women characters were played by dressed-up men, what was Will Shakespeare’s intention?  Who laughed as Petruchio starved his wife into submission?

And who got the joke as the man playing Katharina, the shrew, told women “Fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow, and dart not scornful glances from those eyes, to wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor!”

I imagine, in Shakespeare’s audience, the men laughing along with their friend acting the role, but I wonder what women – including Queen Elizabeth herself – really thought.  Could Katharina seriously be in love with Petruchio, a kind of male shrew, so they make a match?  Should I, in modern times, laugh along to the very end, or see Kate’s final speech as a serious invocation of women’s liberation – which I support? 

By turning the boys’ parts into girls – Petruchio to Petruchia – played by powerful women, and the girls’ parts into boys – Katharina (Kate) to Christopher (Kit) – played by weak men, and acting as much towards us, as in stand-up comedy, as to each other in competition for sexual prowess, the play becomes a thoroughly enjoyable laugh-out-loud highly confusing farce.

Just as it was probably meant to be in 1590, or more likely at its first recorded showing in 1594: "begininge at newing ton my Lord Admeralle men & my Lorde chamberlen men as ffolowethe [...] 11 of June 1594 Rd at the tamynge of A Shrowe."  I asked AI “What reaction did the first performance of The Taming of the Shrew in Shakespear's time have?”, and there’s plenty of history to follow up about changing approaches to this play over the centuries.  How Christopher got into the story is fascinating in itself.

In other words, when you see Lakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew you’re seeing much more than an enjoyable romp with terrific acting, physical choreography, and wonderfully detailed emotional interactions between characters, but an interpretation which places the status of women equally – or even more than equally – up against the historical status of men.

Very highly recommended.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2026: Shakespeare in Love - Mockingbird Theatrics

 

 

 Shakespeare in Love, adapted by Lee Hall from the Oscar-winning screenplay by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman. 
Mockingbird Theatrics at Belconnen Arts Centre, Canberra, February 11-28, 2026.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Feb 17

I had an argument the other day with a Richard III fanatic who blamed William Shakespeare for getting his history wrong.  But, I said, who is the more important to us today?  

Here’s the play that proves what Shakespeare can do for all of us – it shows how important theatre is in a play that can make us believe in love.  And don’t we need it in today’s fractious world?

But, you might say, Tom Stoppard was an absurdist – remember Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?  How can we take him seriously?  Mockingbird is the obviously rightly named company to do the trick.

And they absurdly succeed in their riotous Shakespeare in Love, acted out in a small-scale living theatre with the immediacy actually more like backstage on the spot with Will in writing and rehearsing the Romeo and Juliet story than when watching the justifiably famous 1998 movie.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes are one thing on film.  Asha Forno and Tom Cullen are up to their mark on stage.  The movie is described as a “romantic period comedy-drama”, by the Shakespeare Network on Youtube, but I think Mockingbird’s irreverent farce is more true, not only to Stoppard but to us, sitting in amongst the action, laughing at the absurdity, while dealing with the issues of women’s rights (to perform as themselves equal to men), the nature of government (Liz St Clair Long’s Queen Elizabeth matches Judi Dench), sexist behaviour and funding for the arts.

I’m (privately) told director Chris Baldock, like several characters, may wave his arms saying “It’s a mystery” and “It’ll be alright in the end”.

And it is.  Highly recommended.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2026: The Social Ladder by David Williamson

 

 

The Social Ladder by David Williamson.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, 23 January – 14 March 2026

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 7

Playwright: David Williamson
Director: Janine Watson; Assistant Director: Jules Billington
Set & Costume Designer: Veronique Benett 
Costume Supervisor: Lily Mateljan; Choreographer: Sanjana Dhanakoti
Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
Composer & Sound Designer: Clare Hennessy
Stage Manager: Lauren Tulloh; Asst Stage Manager: Bella Wellstead




I thank Michael Bailey, appropriately writing in the Financial Review, considering the importance of monetary wealth to the characters in this play – and perhaps I may say to the Sydney North Shore audience at The Ensemble – for reminding me that

David Williamson once almost had a play cancelled because the government subsidising it didn’t like its content, and the renowned dramatist says the implosion of Adelaide Festival’s board is a reminder for arts directors to stand firm against attempted censorship.

Despite the crises engulfing boards from Creative Australia to Melbourne Symphony Orchestra since 2023, as their programming or performers were seen to take a side in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, an arts directorship is still the ultimate signifier of status for the characters in Williamson’s new play, The Social Ladder.

https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/david-williamson-reveals-his-writers-week-moment-20260122-p5nwbo

Accumulating money is the only purpose in life for Australian Charles Mallory, with no concern even for the subleties of his English wife’s delicacy about her upper middle-class origin.  Of course she married him and migrated to the one-time Workers’ Paradise, but she does wish he would behave better.

It had surprised me when David Williamson left Sydney for Noosa, I suppose now where society is less crass.  He certainly has it in for all classes struggling up the Sydney rungs like Katie Norrie, financial advisor, from Engadine to, I guess, St Ives; and for the ad-film-maker and medical researcher men to make their creativity financially viable.

The worry, I wonder, is should we laugh?  In fact, towards the end of the first act, though I had laughed with everyone else, the situation seemed to be a bit indefinite.  The issues were made apparent – but what on earth would be done about it?

Well!  The shorter second half is an absolute blast!!

Ordinariness is farcically blown up in our faces.  We can’t help but laugh and laugh the more farcical it gets, as Andrew McFarlane exposes the truth in the drunken Charles Mallory.  

David Williamson has done it again.  At 83 he still stands firm.  He shows how central to our society are the cold-hearted high-flyers.  And we have to stop laughing as we have to ask ourselves what can be done about that?

I leave you with this endearing image of his statue in the Ensemble Foyer, contemplating his next play after – as the orb above him reminds us – his “Last Play” in 2020!  May he live (write) for ever.

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2026: Mama Does Derby by Clare Watson & Virginia Gay

 

Mama Does Derby by Clare Watson & Virginia Gay. Windmill Production Company in Sydney Festival at Sydney Town Hall, January 15 – 22 2026

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 16


Credits

Co-Creator, Director – Clare Watson; Co-Creator, Writer – Virginia Gay

Assistant Director/Choreographer – Larissa McGowan
Designer – Jonathan Oxlade; Lighting Designer – Lucy Birkinshaw
Musical Director – Joe Lui; Sound Designer – Luke Smiles
Story Consultant – Ivy Miller

Performers:
Amber McMahon; Elvy-Lee Quici
Benjamin Hancock; Antoine Jelk; Dylan Miller
Annabel Matheson; Aud Mason-Hyde; Calliope Jackson

Derby Athletes – Members of the Sydney Roller Derby League
Sydney Derby Team Leader – Nicole “Ziggy” Eyles
Skate Consultant  – Jude ‘Vaderella’ Gaffney 

Hero image photography – Claudio Raschella and Bri Hammond



“A single mum, a teenage daughter, and a new life in a regional town where neither quite fits. Billie is 16 and restless, trying to navigate the chaos of adolescence. Mum, meanwhile, is spinning into a rebellion of her own – in the sweaty, rough and radical world of roller derby.”
https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/events/mama-does-derby 

I have to call the form of this surprising show a theatrical cartoon Rock’n’Roll Derby, full of symbolism.  What’s surprising is that it succeeds in celebrating women’s overcoming their demons.

When a girl is born resulting from a failed, perhaps abusive relationship, how is her mother to raise her?  Mama Does Derby says go out and achieve in your own right, because your daughter needs you to be the model she needs to overcome her fears.  

So instead of a gloomy view in response to the issue of family breakdown, the show is a rock’n’roll entertainment which has all the women in the audience,  and I suspect some men, whooping and cheering as daughter and mother finally hug and understand each other – and the rock band strikes up for the curtain calls.

There is no curtain, of course, as my photo of the set as the show opens, shows: just the roller derby track, onto which set pieces are rolled on and off by the women rollers scene by scene, of rooms in the house, and a complete rock band.

A throughline in the plot shows the rather satirical episodes with the professional – woman – psychological counsellor working on the assumption that the daughter has mental health problems, and then starts to think the mother has some too. But Mama's success in winning the derby competition puts the counsellor in her place as they hug each other at last.

Of course in cartoon style there’s not much subtlety in the treatment of their demons, though the daughter has nightmares which become an amazing glittery figure played by someone who is, as daughter exclaims, very flexible. A tremendously attractive looking demon indeed.  Unfortunately the cast list supplied doesn’t name each performer’s role.

Though early on I wonder how things would go, in the end Mama Does Derby is drama with a happy ending, and I’m glad it is, for it offers women the encouragement they need to be strong and self-determined.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

 

 

 

 

2026: Opera for the Dead - Sydney Festival

 

 

Opera for the Dead by Mindy Meng Wang & Monica Lim in the Sydney Festival at Bell Shakespeare, the Neilson Nutshell, January 15-18 2026

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 15

Credits

Creative Concept and Composition – Monica Lim and Mindy Meng Wang
Dramaturg – Ophelia Huang; Animation – Rel Pham
Set and Lighting Design – Jenny Hector; Choreography – Carol Brown
Costume – Leonas Panjaitan; Sound and Video System Design – Nick Roux

Guzheng – Mindy Meng Wang; Electronics – Monica Lim
Vocals – Yu-Tien Lin; Percussion – Alexander Meagher
Cello – Nils Hobiger

Production Manager – Justin Heaton
Producer – Penelope Leishman & Seb Calabretto, Insite Arts
Sound Engineer – Sascha Budimsk
Hero image photography – Michael Pham



“Inspired by Chinese mourning rituals but speaking to universal truths of grief and remembrance, Mindy Meng Wang and Monica Lim’s multi-sensory journey surrounds you with sound, movement and light.” 
https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/events/opera-for-the-dead 

As the crowd moves into the performance space  where there are no seats, and people begin to move around and among elements of the set within which are the musicians, singers and electronic keyboard, they find themselves surrounded by devices quite unknown to traditional Chinese opera.

All around them hang 12-inch loudspeakers, facing upwards, with up to four ‘oranges’ on them, made from light-weight plastic, which are vibrating, even jumping up and down, because the speakers, hanging from above, are wired in to the sound of the percussion.

As I saw it, these represented the constant vibrations of the universe.  As the music and singing worked up towards a crescendo approaching the end of the 50 minutes, the oranges bounced more and more until many jumped right out of their concave loudspeaker homes.  Then I understood the concept expressed in the music about death.

Though an individual’s death is an end-point for them, the universe doesn’t die – it continues to vibrate with perhaps extra depth of feeling as each person dies.

So, though I have had only fleeting experiences of Chinese opera and have no understanding of the words being sung, in this very modern abstract presentation in visual effects as well as in sound, instrumental and voice, I found a peace of mind in knowing the universe continues on, while experiencing the feelings, often of despair, at the time of a loved one’s death.  

As a presentation in a cultural festival this is quite remarkable – an original work invoking an ancient culture in the histories of many Australians of Chinese origin, while passing on to others such as myself and other audience members I spoke to, a more philosophical way of thinking about death.

This Opera for the Dead is for the Living, too.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2026: Nowhere by Kahlid Abdalla

 

 

Nowhere by Khalid Abdalla. Presented by Fuel UK in the Sydney Festival, 13 – 17 January, 2026 at Roslyn Packer Theatre.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 14

CAST & CREDITS
Writer and performer: Khalid Abdalla
Director: Omar Elerian; Set & Costume Designer: Ti Green; Choreographer: Omar Rajeh
Lighting Designer: Jackie Shemesh; Sound Designer: Panos Chountoulidis
Video Designer: Sarah Readman; Dramaturg: Ruth Little; Writing Mentor: Chris Thorpe
Associate Director: Riwa Saab; Set & Costume Associate: Jida Akil
Associate Lighting Designer: Rajiv Pattani; Associate Video Designer: Virginie Taylor
Lighting Associate: BROCKMAN; Press Representative: Bread & Butter PR
Poster Photography: Helen Murray; Trailer: Jamie Isbell / Jam + Post
Production Manager: Milorad Zakula; 
Company Stage Manager: Hannah Clare; Technical Stage Manager: Rachel Bowen



To say Nowhere is an original piece of theatre production is not sufficient.  It seems rather weird at first as you begin to wonder is this an actor playing himself?  He plainly is performing a script as an actor playing a role; but the role is himself revealing in choreographed, often almost dance-like, movement in response to the story he tells – via a variety of multimedia formats, visual and audio – of his life, born in Egypt and brought when very young by his parents as refugees to London, where Wikipedia records him as

an Egyptian-British actor and activist. He became known after starring in the 2006 film United 93.

Abdalla starred as Amir in The Kite Runner (2007) and acted with Matt Damon in Green Zone (2010), his second film with director Paul Greengrass. Abdalla appears as himself in Jehane Noujaim's documentary on the 2011 Egyptian revolution, The Square, which won the Audience Award at Sundance Festival in 2013. In 2022 and 2023, he starred as Dodi Fayed in seasons 5 and 6 of the historical drama series The Crown, for which he received a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.

He often appeared to be addressing us directly – even engaging us in an audience participation segment – and yet, it seemed on one occasion, he forgot his lines and had to ask for help from Prompt, who supplied the line he then repeated and continued on.  

Philosophically, at some point, he – in character – queried our perception of ourself compared with the self we would like to be, as if this is a real concern for Khalid.  Yet it’s obvious to me that his success on stage shows that he understands himself very well, in order to be able to act this ‘play’ called Nowhere.

In the end the essence of the play is represented by the white dove of peace trying time after time to find somewhere to land – but finding nowhere in modern times through the days of his great-grandfather, grandfather and father being jailed for their opposition to the British colonial government of Egypt, and the following governments, to the point where if he were to go back to Egypt now, his activism in the 2011 revolution could see him jailed.

And now The Guardian writes ‘An Arab in a post-9/11 world’: Khalid Abdalla’s one-man play about belonging comes to Australia

In Nowhere, The Crown actor interweaves personal experience and family history with commentary on western colonialism and the Israel-Gaza war.  In what is an example of good theatre taking risks, the script includes referring to the recent Bondi shooting in raising the question of the need to recognise the horror of the treatment of Jews in the Holocaust, while maintaining the need to support all people, and peoples, with equal respect – including the Palestinians at the time of the establishment of modern Israel and in Gaza today.

His audience participation game is gently and thoughtfully managed to reveal how multicultural the audience is in today’s Sydney, leaving us to consider the future of the white dove of peace for all.  The stage where he performs, he explains, is a safe place – but he calls it Nowhere, because nowhere else can the dove safely land.

In the light of what has just happened at the Adelaide Writers Festival, Kahlid Abdalla has taken a risk in presenting his life story in such a way, but this is what theatre is for – to reveal what we may not easily accept about human society.  Nowhere is highly recommended in my view.

Khalid Abdalla
performing in his play Nowhere, Sydney Festival 2026

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Hand to God by Robert Askins

 

 Hand to God by Robert Askins. Presented by Everyman Theatre at ACT Hub at Causeway Hall. 10 December – 20 December 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Dec 12

Directed by Jarrad West

Cast
Michael Cooper as Jason (and the puppet Tyrone)
Amy Kowalczuk as his mother Margery
Lachlan Ruffy as Pastor Greg
Meaghan Stewart as Jason’s girlfriend Jessica
William 'Wally' Allington as Timothy, one-time school acquaintance.


Hand to God is an American play: embarrassingly funny; a crude satire. Yet, in the final scene of a young man’s mental breakdown, we see a reflection of America this century – even unto Donald Trump.

Though first produced in 2011, the teenager with his devil of a hand-puppet is an image that inevitably brings to mind that over-the-top ham actor’s extremities in his first Presidential Term 2017-2020, and currently.

Tyrone with Michael Cooper as Jason 
in Hand to God, Everyman Theatre 2025

 The point about the play is that it’s very funny – I would say terribly funny.  AI says The play is described as a "blasphemous black comedy (with puppets!)" that explores faith and morality and is intended for adult audiences due to its mature content, coarse language, and sexual references.  So, don’t take your chidren.

 

William 'Wally' Allington as Timothy, Meaghan Stewart as Jessica, Michael Cooper as Jason

 More – it really means, don’t take the children to America, where the diabolical Donald has Trumped – like Tyrone trumps Jason, destroying his faith in family –  even at the level of our international family.

In their small-town Cypress, Texas, Marjorie’s attempts to stay true to her marriage vows after her husband’s death, distracted by entertaining the faith community with puppets which go crazy, represent a world ruled by the dictates of an entertainer who believes he is the real thing.

Fortunately we still have the writers and performing artists we need to help us at least understand ourselves a bit better.

This is where the puppets and the terrific performances by Everyman come into the picture.

Once upon a time, many years ago when Drama was still not an independent school subject, I experimented with teachers of disaffected young teenagers using drama to assist with their education.  Using just one hand as theirself and the other as a puppet, what the hands said to each other, about behaviour issues, for example, could result in a new awareness about actions and consequences.  If the situation was managed by the teachers carefully and positively, of course.

In Hand to God, son Jason’s emotional dilemmas about his mother Margery’s struggles to find her way out of the grief and loss of her husband, while facing up to his own attraction to Jessica – and including the threat from Timothy’s sexual intentions towards both women – is simply not a situation that can be managed.

This is because they, including Paster Greg who is attracted, probably genuinely, to Margery, are all enclosed in an emotional prison.  There is no escape hatch; nor any independent non-interested outsider to help them manage.  Even in my teaching role, as my experiments showed, a successful change was difficult to achieve.

So in performing Jason, as he, as himself, talks with and argues with his puppet, who is also Jason – and in doing so instantly switching voice, mannerisms and feelings from one character to the other – Michael Cooper achieves an extraordinary feat as an actor.  From the very beginning, sitting alone (but with Tyrone) before any other characters have come on stage, I could respond at once to him, not as a puppeteer, but as a real person with some kind of special relationship with his puppet.

That degree of professionalism built throughout the cast and makes this production of Hand to God as good to see and engage with as I can imagine.

I fear, though, for America – and therefore for all the world – because Trump plays himself as Tyrone all the time, never revealing what we may hope is a real commonsense character hidden in himself.

The result is that too many people laugh – as we certainly did last night at The Hub – at the entertainment, and don’t realise that Marjery’s hope that her puppet show will create peace and harmony can’t succeed without true emotional intelligence.

The play ends deliberately without making it clear that the inordinate mess in the Church Hall, where everything is torn up and scattered everywhere, can never be put back in order.

Or maybe we might think that Margery’s final hug with Jason is an OK sign for the future.

For America, I guess, we haven’t got to the end of the play yet – but I’ve stopped laughing.  This is serious.

And I thank Jarrad West and everyone in Everyman Theatre.  

See Hand to God, but be careful of your mental puppets.

Michael Cooper, Amy Kowalczuk and Lachlan Ruffy
in the final scene of Hand to God, Everyman Theatre 2025

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2025: GOD

 

 

 GOD by Ferdinand von Schirach and translated by David Tushingham.  Lexi Sekuless Productions, with Rare Bird Ensemble,  at The Mill, Dairy Road, Canberra, November 26 - December 18, 2025

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Dec 5

CREATIVES & COMPANY

Cast
Rachel Gärtner: Heidi Silberman; Ms Biegler: Alana Denham Preston
Dr Keller: Maxine Beaumont; Dr Sperling: Timmy Sekuless
Bishop Thiel: Richard Manning; Professor Litten: Helen McFarlane
Chair: Jay James Moody; Council Associate: Sarah Hartley

Contingency and understudy for Dr Keller: Chipz Jin (playing Keller 230pm & 730pm 13 December)

Production Team
Writer: Ferdinand von Schirach; Translator: David Tushingham 
Director and Designer: Lexi Sekuless
Sound Designer: Damian Ashcroft; Costume Designer: Annette Sharpe
Shadow Costume Designer: Nicola Vavasour
Lighting Designer: Andrew Snell; Scenic Painter: Letitia Stewart
Set Builders: Revive Canberra
Production Stage Manager: Bea Grant
Deputy Stage Manager: Paige MacDonald 
Assistant Director: Eli Narev
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena

Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions 
Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs
By Arrangement with International Performing Rights Ltd


GOD asks the first question: when death knocks on your door, would you call the butler and tell them to let you out into the void?

But then a second question arises, since you and the butler are members of society.  What if the butler is afraid of being charged with a criminal act?

The drama is set in what seems to be Germany where a law has been passed to allow the butler to open the door, but only if they are a doctor qualified to judge whether you are of sound mind, but not of sound body – and so agree you would be better off dead.

But a 55-year-old woman has appealed to us to allow her to call death in, despite being sound of both mind and body.  This is because she had suffered for many months with her husband while he was dying in hospital,  where his butlers, the doctors, finally agreed to stop trying to ‘save’ his life; and she, his literally ‘other half’, cannot live without him.  A court has rejected her application as ‘unconstitutional’.

We, no longer a mere audience, sit on the official Council (like the Australian Capital Territory Appeals Tribunal) to hear the woman’s lawyer and a series of expert witnesses for nearly two hours (including a 20 minute tea break), before submitting our votes for or against her request.

The effect is dramatic, to say the least, as we bit by bit realise that our vote in that last ten minutes is not playing out a game of theatrical fiction.

Last night the 35 people voted 19 in favour, 15 against with 1 abstention.  On other nights, I’m told, the balance of votes was quite different, in different directions.

The value, in fact I would say the importance, of presenting this play is to marvel at the author’s amazing capacity, through the medical, social and religious ‘experts’ he creates, to takes us through something like the last three thousand years of the development of Western Philosophy, to the point where we feel sincerely that our decision is for real.

Then we realise how high is the quality of the directing and the acting on everybody’s part to shift our experience beyond mere observation and thinking about the issues, into a state of personal decision-making as we submit our votes (of course, recorded privately by the Council clerk, with only the numbers each way announced).

This is certainly my kind of theatre, becoming one in a tradition at The Mill Theatre, and definitively not to be missed – I say even if I am a generation older and biassed by my approaching the time I may decide I need the law to be on my side.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Twiggy - movie

 

 

Twiggy – A Film by Sadie Frost.  Transmission Films in cinemas from December 4, 2025

Reviewed by Frank McKone



There’s plenty to read about Dame Lesley Lawson (née Hornby) on Wikipedia under the name “Twiggy”.

But, you need to see this documentary to understand and appreciate what her life became as Twiggy, “The Face of 1966” when she was 15 going-on 16, through to the making of this memoir.

I feel guilty now that ever since that year, viewing her instant rise to fame from colonial Sydney, she seemed no more than a shallow sparkle of superficiality.  It was a mystery to me how an accidental shape could change fashion as if it really mattered.

Then as I approached viewing, I feared I would be watching nothing more than another form of commercialised or unnecessarily glorified history.  After all, since my reaction back in 1966, I had never followed her career.  I didn’t need to see more thin legs and over-long eyelashes.

How short-sighted I was!!

It turns out that Lesley Hornby, daughter of a practical and sensible tradesman, has never been a go-getting girl, seeking fame.  That was the last thing she expected.  I think, in the film, it is Dustin Hoffman who says how simply open and honest she is; while perhaps it is Charlotte Tilbury who speaks of how Twiggy is a great example of a girl growing into a woman.

I’m probably biassed the other way now, since I found her north London upbringing, though ten years after me, was in a house exactly like mine and my tradesman uncle’s semi-detached.  He was practical and sensible, too.

I mustn’t give you spoilers, but I think the key to appreciating her story is in an interview on TV when she was still a teenager, now among the upper-class of modelling.  She was asked “Do you feel at home among these people, since you come from a working-class background?”

Twiggy / Lesley just looked at this male interviewer, calmly, and simply said “Why not?”

She became a model, an actor, a partner, a wife, a mother, a success in many different ways – in other words a woman who says “Why not!”, and now tells her story first-hand in this documentary for the first time.

Enjoy. 

  
©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Low Pay? No Pay! - Dario Fo, 2010 translation by Joseph Farrell

 

 

Low Pay? Don’t Pay! New translation by Joseph Farrell of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! by Dario Fo.  
Canberra REP November 20 – December 6, 2025

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 21

An uproarious new version of Dario Fo's frenetic farce Can't Pay? Won't Pay! which, although set in Italy, has an all too familiar ring to it. Housewives Antonia and Margherita, fed up with high prices in the supermarket, take matters into their own hands and start shoplifting. Keen to keep their light-fingered antics from their husbands, Giovanni and Luigi - not to mention the police - the women are forced to resort to more and more inventive hiding places, and more and more elaborate cover stories, in this legendary comedy. Nobel prize winner Dario Fo [was] Italy's leading contemporary playwright, renowned for his hilarious satires including Accidental Death of an Anarchist. He has re-written his classic farce Can't Pay? Won't Pay! to take into account the global banking crisis and this translation, by world-leading Fo scholar Joseph Farrell, hints at UK current affairs too, including the credit crunch and MPs' expenses scandal. Although first written in 1970, this updated farce is still very relevant to today's state of affairs. (https://www.amazon.sg/Low-Pay-Dont/dp/140813103X) 

Directed by Cate Clelland
Written by Dario Fo, translation by Joseph Farrell (Hachette 2010)

CAST
Maddie Lee – Toni        Chloe Smith – Maggie
Lachlan Abrahams – Joe    Rowan McMurray – Lou 
Antonia Kitzel – The  Actor 

Ensemble
Ben Zolfaghari - Stephanie van Lieshout - Ariana Barzinpour - Georgie Bianchini Rucha Tathavadkar - Sterling Notley - Rosemary Gibbons - Paul Jackson

CREATIVES
Cate Clelland: Set Designer; Stephen Still: Lighting Design
Neville Pye: Sound Design; Darcy Abrahams: Costume Design
Rosemary Gibbons: Properties Coordinator
Russell Brown OAM I Special properties construction

PRODUCTION
David Goodbody: Stage Manager: John Stead: Production Manager
Lachlan Ruffy: Assistant Director; Russell Brown OAM: Set Coordinator Elizabeth Goodbody: FoH Coordinator & Council liaison
TEAMS
Sets: Russell Brown OAM, Andrew Kay, Brian Moir, Wolfgang Hecker,
Eric Turner, John Klingberg
Wardrobe:Darcy Abrahams, Wardrobe Wenches
Lighting: Anne Gallen, Ashley Pope, Lennard Duck, Liz de Totth Sound: Andrea Garcia, Imogen Holland, John Maguire
Properties & Set Dressing: Rosemary Gibbons
Stage Crew: Emily Backhouse, Julie Barnes, Mae Schembri
Front of House: REP members & volunteers
Artwork & Promotons: Tiana Johannis Design, Helen Drum
Marketing: Victoria Dixon, Helen Drum 
Program: Helen Drum 
Promotional & Foyer Images: Ross Gould, Victoria Dixon


https://socialistworker.co.uk/obituaries/dario-fo-a-committed-revolutionary-who-stood-against-the-state 2016 

Italian dramatist Dario Fo, who has died at the age of 90, was one of the great artistic and political revolutionaries of the 20th and 21st centuries.

His death has prompted hollow eulogies from some members of the Italian ruling class. Make no mistake, however, the bourgeoisie despised Fo and the feeling was entirely mutual.

Fo’s great plays, such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! and Mistero Buffo (a one-man piece that confirmed Fo’s brilliance as an actor), are both spectacularly funny and savage in their satire of the rich and powerful.

So what on earth are all these people in the Canberra Repertory Theatre, based in the centre of Australian Government, doing?

Do they really support a Socialist Workers’ Revolution?  

You could certainly think so when the lead actors, Maddie Lee as Toni, Chloe Smith as Maggie, Lachlan Abrahams  as Toni’s husband Joe and Rowan McMurray as Maggie’s husband Lou, actually managed to make us believe in their characters, and even feel sorry for their plight as ordinary workers and wives in our world of continuous inflation, despite the absolutely zany, and therefore very funny, plot.

This is because of the clever way director Cate Clelland has combined an absurdist style of choreographed group work for the workers like police, council workers and so on – led by Antonia Kitzel – with the desperate attempts by the two couples to make sense of it all.

Then the moment finally comes where we understand the point of it all as our set of characters meld back in time with the backdrop picture of the Italian workers Dario Fo originally presented in 1976.

In other words, the message is, nothing has changed.  We can’t forget the intensity of people’s struggle to find toilet paper in 2007.

I don’t know how many REP members are public servants.  Enough I hope to cause more than a laugh or two in the appropriate policy departments in working out ways not only to better balance economic inequality, but also to manage zero damaging emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere before our world becomes even more impossible to live in than Dario Fo imagined.

Low Pay? Don’t Pay! is the kind of ‘comedy’ which must not be missed.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Almighty Sometimes

 

 

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

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 20

Cast and Creative Team

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos supplied:

Psychiatry session with Vivienne

Meeting up again with Oliver

Fraught lunchtime episode

 

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

 

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Equus by Peter Shaffer

 

 

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

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 14

CAST

Martin Dysart – Arran McKenna

Alan Strang – Jack Shanahan

Dora Strang – Janie Lawson

Frank Strang/Harry Dalton – Bruce Hardie

Hesther Salomon – Crystal Mahon

Nugget/Horseman – Sam Thomson

Jill Mason – Lily Welling

Nurse - Caitlin Bissett

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

    

CREATIVES

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Lily Welling as Jill Mason – Jack Shanahan as Alan Strang 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Looking for Alibrandi

 

 

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

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Oct 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Country Arts South Australia provide a useful run-down:

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

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

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

Curtain call: Looking for Alibrandi Brink Productions 2025

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: True West by Sam Shepard

 

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

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 21

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

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

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

By arrangement with Music Theatre International (Australasia)

95mins (no interval)    Recommended for ages 14+
 

 Photos by Prudence Upton

Mom - Vanessa Downing, arrives home unexpectedly

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

______________________________________________________________

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

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

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

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

 

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

Lee teases Austin with the keys of Austin's car

 

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra