One for the Road by Harold Pinter. Paradox Theatre Company at the Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre. Directed by Belinda Pearson. October 31 - November 2 and November 6 - 9, 1996, 8.00 pm. All proceeds to support Amnesty International.
This is a short play - barely 40 minutes - but the combination of Pinter's honesty and writing skills with the clarity of characterisation achieved particularly by Phil Roberts, as Nicolas the interrogator, makes this production one you should not miss. It's a confronting play because you come away understanding how a torturer thinks. I'm glad it didn't last longer because I was ready to break all my principles of non-violence: I could easily have shot that interrogator if someone had handed me the gun.
Pinter has said "I'm aware that I do possess two things. One is that I'm quite violent myself....On the other hand, however, I'm quite reticent." He has used this self-knowledge in creating Nicolas, who we see interrogating a man, his wife and their son - each separately. Torture is the norm, happening off-stage before and after each interview. The reality which Amnesty International confronts every day in probably 90 countries around the world is made real for us in the theatre in the slippery character of Nicolas.
This is a brave production for Amnesty for it forces us to come to terms with the effort we must make to turn around the figures from 1995: 85 countries holding prisoners of conscience; 46,000 people held without charge; 27 countries imprisoning people after unfair trials; 10,000 people subjected to torture including 4,500 who died in custody in 54 countries; 63 countries where people were executed without trial; 140,000 people in 49 countries who have 'disappeared'; 2,900 people executed in 41 countries which still impose the death penalty.
Intelligent direction of Pinter's tightly controlled, carefully stylised dialogue has created spine-chilling tension. I would like this play to be put on as inservice training in every police station and prison in the country: our own human rights record is not yet perfect - enacting this torturer before those who hold such power daily, in Paradox's minimal setting, must help change the dark side of our culture.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 31 October 1996
Monday, 28 October 1996
1996: Preview for The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. The Looking Glass Theatre, directed by Nicholas Bolonkin. The Street Theatre, November 2 - 9, 1996, 8 pm (matinees Sunday 3rd and Saturday 9th, 3 pm).
"The skull beneath the skin" is where you will begin with this revenge thriller, opening on Saturday. Where you will end is being emotionally stirred, intellectually challenged and thoroughly entertained, if Nicholas Bolonkin achieves his aims. The Looking Glass Theatre has already had great success with its Shakespeare Festival productions. As William's career was concluding with The Tempest in 1612, John Webster was writing "passionate tragedies of love and political intrigue in Renaissance Italy, full of horror and exceptional cruelty, but validated by the macabre power of imagination, the dramatic force of their greatest scenes and the beauty of their poetry."
Will you have to pretend to be 400 years old to enjoy this play? The answer is both yes and no. Bolonkin is almost a Renaissance figure himself - an Honours graduate in Chemistry who finds it necessary to study for an Arts degree with Drama, because of "all those productions I've seen which make me want to tear my hair out!" He says he is a cynic, befitting our post-1980s times, when Bond, Skase et al tear the social fabric for their personal gain and politicians speak mealy-mouthed about social values while getting into bed with big business here and internationally. Just as we may mourn today the possibilities of the 1970s, so, according to Bolonkin, Webster's conception was "Our Virgin Queen [Elizabeth I] is dead - our new King [James I] is a poof - our World is going to End."
Rather than ask you to transport yourself so far back in time, Bolonkin has found the 19th Century's obsession with sex and death exactly parallels Webster's time - and ours. The connection is in science: the need to codify, classify and catalogue every little detail in the encyclopaedias of the 1850s produced exquisite drawings - images of scientific precision and neurotic obsession which we feel are part of our world yet connect us back to the world of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo. So Phil Rolfe has produced huge visual images crisply front-projected on three screens, with more subliminal effects on the cyclorama, all designed to focus the intensity of the play. Entertained you will be, but be prepared not to be squeamish. The skull beneath the skin will be laid bare.
Talking to Nicholas Bolonkin is exciting, for here maybe, at last, is the energy and intellectual drive coming from the ANU for which Canberra theatre has been hungry for fifty years. Somehow, this city, for so many of those years a swag of public servants alongside one of the top research institutions, cringed to the Sydney/Melbourne world of theatre. Perhaps this was because the research was so centred on science, and the practical arts have been fogged in like a Canberra winter's morning - the sun was shining above, but hidden. Bolonkin crosses the boundaries, a cynic with a purpose, demystifying history.
Webster's play may be a revenge tragedy; I suspect Bolonkin's production will be the cynic's revenge. In the 1990s we are gradually becoming inured not just to violence, sex and death but to the underlying belief that we can always get away with just a little bit more - until evil overreaches itself, and finally everything collapses. It will be ironic to be entertained by The Duchess of Malfi as our World goes towards its End.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"The skull beneath the skin" is where you will begin with this revenge thriller, opening on Saturday. Where you will end is being emotionally stirred, intellectually challenged and thoroughly entertained, if Nicholas Bolonkin achieves his aims. The Looking Glass Theatre has already had great success with its Shakespeare Festival productions. As William's career was concluding with The Tempest in 1612, John Webster was writing "passionate tragedies of love and political intrigue in Renaissance Italy, full of horror and exceptional cruelty, but validated by the macabre power of imagination, the dramatic force of their greatest scenes and the beauty of their poetry."
Will you have to pretend to be 400 years old to enjoy this play? The answer is both yes and no. Bolonkin is almost a Renaissance figure himself - an Honours graduate in Chemistry who finds it necessary to study for an Arts degree with Drama, because of "all those productions I've seen which make me want to tear my hair out!" He says he is a cynic, befitting our post-1980s times, when Bond, Skase et al tear the social fabric for their personal gain and politicians speak mealy-mouthed about social values while getting into bed with big business here and internationally. Just as we may mourn today the possibilities of the 1970s, so, according to Bolonkin, Webster's conception was "Our Virgin Queen [Elizabeth I] is dead - our new King [James I] is a poof - our World is going to End."
Rather than ask you to transport yourself so far back in time, Bolonkin has found the 19th Century's obsession with sex and death exactly parallels Webster's time - and ours. The connection is in science: the need to codify, classify and catalogue every little detail in the encyclopaedias of the 1850s produced exquisite drawings - images of scientific precision and neurotic obsession which we feel are part of our world yet connect us back to the world of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo. So Phil Rolfe has produced huge visual images crisply front-projected on three screens, with more subliminal effects on the cyclorama, all designed to focus the intensity of the play. Entertained you will be, but be prepared not to be squeamish. The skull beneath the skin will be laid bare.
Talking to Nicholas Bolonkin is exciting, for here maybe, at last, is the energy and intellectual drive coming from the ANU for which Canberra theatre has been hungry for fifty years. Somehow, this city, for so many of those years a swag of public servants alongside one of the top research institutions, cringed to the Sydney/Melbourne world of theatre. Perhaps this was because the research was so centred on science, and the practical arts have been fogged in like a Canberra winter's morning - the sun was shining above, but hidden. Bolonkin crosses the boundaries, a cynic with a purpose, demystifying history.
Webster's play may be a revenge tragedy; I suspect Bolonkin's production will be the cynic's revenge. In the 1990s we are gradually becoming inured not just to violence, sex and death but to the underlying belief that we can always get away with just a little bit more - until evil overreaches itself, and finally everything collapses. It will be ironic to be entertained by The Duchess of Malfi as our World goes towards its End.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 18 October 1996
1996: Feature article "Lunch in the Scarth Room" with Company Skylark
Lunch in the Scarth Room. Company Skylark at University House. October 18, 1996. Very professional. Co-ordination by Mark Soulsby and Rae Teasdale.
This was a low-key high-powered performance, starring Skylark Patron Bob McMullan with Chairperson Judy Tier, Artistic Director Peter Wilson and well-known playwright John Romeril, touching base over lasagne with Colin Mackenzie (EPVAT from DEFAT), David Williams (ACDU), Cathy Winters (Canberra Festival Director), Rob Brookman (Festival of Australian Theatre Director), Boris Kelly (freelance theatre and film maker, currently with projects in Belgium and Ireland) and, last but certainly not least, with their major sponsors Ansett Australia and Ten Capital Television.
Acronyms are apocryphal, but EPVAT is about the performing and visual arts touring overseas, with a special emphasis on our Asian region. The program aims to make Australia synonymous with high quality productions in Asian nations, building up a regular clientele for our touring companies. ACDU is our local government Arts and Cultural Development Unit: between EPVAT and ACDU lies the field of action for Company Skylark.
If you are a company with an audience base here in Canberra and touring Australia and overseas, what better sponsors than an airline for travel deals and local television for advertising support. Puppets may seem like playthings on stage, but behind the scenes Max Mercer at Ansett has kept them on the move since 1995, while Ten Capital's Bronwyn Barrett will be highlighting three Skylark shows as well as giving overall support through 1997. Cathy Winters suggested that corporations are beginning to realise the benefits, to themselves and the arts companies, of long term (3 or 5 year) sponsorships - maybe Ansett has already set the mood for Skylark.
Bob McMullan spoke - sitting down informally in contrast to the stance required in the House - about the role of government in the arts. As an ex-Minister for the Arts, he felt satisfied that governments should not be involved in what people create and perform, but should provide the infrastructure for supply, helping create demand and systems for distribution of the arts. He saw Playing Australia as crucial to the interchange of the arts among the cities and country areas of Australia - a two-way approach which, for example, saw Dance North assisted to perform in Sydney before Sydney productions toured to the regions. He believed Australia needs a strong intra-national arts culture - only on this basis can we succeed internationally. For this reason, he supports the proper maintenance of the ABC, the source of cultural leadership, and the systematic funding of the film industry (not the simplistic tax-break system which created films like Coolangatta Gold) because the broad-range attraction of film creates spin-offs for the rest of the performing arts. Shine, only one example, has engendered a series of popular concert performances by David Helfgott.
The program of new work and old favourites for 1997 is exciting, particularly because John Romeril's new work, Love's Suicide, derived from 18th Century Japanese theatre, is a co-operative effort between Skylark and Playbox in Melbourne, with a 6 week season planned in November/December. Rich fare at lunch, indeed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This was a low-key high-powered performance, starring Skylark Patron Bob McMullan with Chairperson Judy Tier, Artistic Director Peter Wilson and well-known playwright John Romeril, touching base over lasagne with Colin Mackenzie (EPVAT from DEFAT), David Williams (ACDU), Cathy Winters (Canberra Festival Director), Rob Brookman (Festival of Australian Theatre Director), Boris Kelly (freelance theatre and film maker, currently with projects in Belgium and Ireland) and, last but certainly not least, with their major sponsors Ansett Australia and Ten Capital Television.
Acronyms are apocryphal, but EPVAT is about the performing and visual arts touring overseas, with a special emphasis on our Asian region. The program aims to make Australia synonymous with high quality productions in Asian nations, building up a regular clientele for our touring companies. ACDU is our local government Arts and Cultural Development Unit: between EPVAT and ACDU lies the field of action for Company Skylark.
If you are a company with an audience base here in Canberra and touring Australia and overseas, what better sponsors than an airline for travel deals and local television for advertising support. Puppets may seem like playthings on stage, but behind the scenes Max Mercer at Ansett has kept them on the move since 1995, while Ten Capital's Bronwyn Barrett will be highlighting three Skylark shows as well as giving overall support through 1997. Cathy Winters suggested that corporations are beginning to realise the benefits, to themselves and the arts companies, of long term (3 or 5 year) sponsorships - maybe Ansett has already set the mood for Skylark.
Bob McMullan spoke - sitting down informally in contrast to the stance required in the House - about the role of government in the arts. As an ex-Minister for the Arts, he felt satisfied that governments should not be involved in what people create and perform, but should provide the infrastructure for supply, helping create demand and systems for distribution of the arts. He saw Playing Australia as crucial to the interchange of the arts among the cities and country areas of Australia - a two-way approach which, for example, saw Dance North assisted to perform in Sydney before Sydney productions toured to the regions. He believed Australia needs a strong intra-national arts culture - only on this basis can we succeed internationally. For this reason, he supports the proper maintenance of the ABC, the source of cultural leadership, and the systematic funding of the film industry (not the simplistic tax-break system which created films like Coolangatta Gold) because the broad-range attraction of film creates spin-offs for the rest of the performing arts. Shine, only one example, has engendered a series of popular concert performances by David Helfgott.
The program of new work and old favourites for 1997 is exciting, particularly because John Romeril's new work, Love's Suicide, derived from 18th Century Japanese theatre, is a co-operative effort between Skylark and Playbox in Melbourne, with a 6 week season planned in November/December. Rich fare at lunch, indeed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
1996: Blue Murder by Beatrix Christian
Blue Murder by Beatrix Christian. Eureka! at The Street Theatre, directed by Camilla Blunden. Season October 17-26, 1996. Professional.
In the foyer: - I'm still thinking about it - I need a cigarette - I feel a bit shell-shocked - - Beatrix Christian is a new voice in Australian writing - I felt quite apprehensive about what was going to happen - I thought Eureka! wouldn't be sexy enough for this script - It made me feel quite disturbed, but I can't pinpoint why.
This play is a complex study, in the new form of imagist theatre, of the way men have created the fantasy that their art is more important than reality - even more real than death. In this case, the deaths of the writer's three previous wives. Evelyn, a modern girl, has made her escape from the country town where she seduced the priest behind the pub after her total immersion baptism. Blue wrote the stories Evelyn absorbed as a child - How Howard Saved Father Christmas - and takes her in as his personal live-in assistant. The current working title is Howard the Cynic.
The play begins behind a scrim: we can see reality but are separated from it. When the scrim is removed, we see the fantasy life of the writer directly, without any barrier. The layers of implications are strongly supported in the set design (Michael Wilkinson), lighting design (Philip Lethlean) and the music composed by Margaret Legge-Wilkinson. For Evelyn, the task is to see through the apparent reality of Blue's stories. As she does so, she gains strength - representing all women - and the mythic male as artist is finally and deliberately destroyed.
Christian is important not just as an imagist related to playwrights like the early Louis Nowra and more recently Jenny Kemp, but because she has more powerful language with which she opens up possibilities of meaning. She plays heightened dialogue against the mundane in ways which at first seem surreal, yet create those disturbing feelings in the foyer. I would call her a new symbolist: she is for this century what Strindberg was for the last. Except that Strindberg would have been a Blue - a misogynist whose artistic golden moon has set forever. Strongly recommended.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
In the foyer: - I'm still thinking about it - I need a cigarette - I feel a bit shell-shocked - - Beatrix Christian is a new voice in Australian writing - I felt quite apprehensive about what was going to happen - I thought Eureka! wouldn't be sexy enough for this script - It made me feel quite disturbed, but I can't pinpoint why.
This play is a complex study, in the new form of imagist theatre, of the way men have created the fantasy that their art is more important than reality - even more real than death. In this case, the deaths of the writer's three previous wives. Evelyn, a modern girl, has made her escape from the country town where she seduced the priest behind the pub after her total immersion baptism. Blue wrote the stories Evelyn absorbed as a child - How Howard Saved Father Christmas - and takes her in as his personal live-in assistant. The current working title is Howard the Cynic.
The play begins behind a scrim: we can see reality but are separated from it. When the scrim is removed, we see the fantasy life of the writer directly, without any barrier. The layers of implications are strongly supported in the set design (Michael Wilkinson), lighting design (Philip Lethlean) and the music composed by Margaret Legge-Wilkinson. For Evelyn, the task is to see through the apparent reality of Blue's stories. As she does so, she gains strength - representing all women - and the mythic male as artist is finally and deliberately destroyed.
Christian is important not just as an imagist related to playwrights like the early Louis Nowra and more recently Jenny Kemp, but because she has more powerful language with which she opens up possibilities of meaning. She plays heightened dialogue against the mundane in ways which at first seem surreal, yet create those disturbing feelings in the foyer. I would call her a new symbolist: she is for this century what Strindberg was for the last. Except that Strindberg would have been a Blue - a misogynist whose artistic golden moon has set forever. Strongly recommended.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 16 October 1996
1996: Freeze Frame by Full Tilt
Freeze Frame. Full Tilt Performance Troupe. Festival of Contemporary Arts at Gorman House Arts Centre, October 16, 1996. Professional
Intimations of William Dobell frozen in mime, eyes and mouth wide open for a very long time. The "painting" takes the new recruit art gallery explainer's spectacles. His vision is impaired as he leaps through the frame into a world where surrealism is deconstructed against the intermittent front-projected backdrop of Erika Harper's post-romantic tarot cards, interspersed by works from Rebecca Robinson, Ed Radclyffe, Deborah Matrice, Sean Kenan, U.F.A., Hayley Hillis and Felicity Jenkins.
Will, the gallery attendant, learns about privatisation and reality, steps back through the frame and finds his glasses on the floor after all. Was it all a dream?
Fringe festivals are meant for experimentation and try-outs, but this company operates too much on the scent of the milk of human kindness. The art works were generally interesting but the dramatic responses were relatively mundane. The origin of Full Tilt's work is in successful children's entertainment at the National Gallery of Australia, but only some of the dialogue draws on an adult view of art. The plot and characters are too naive in conception to carry the full weight of political commentary and reflective criticism of post-modernism which seems to be the objective.
The performers use commedia and circus skills, but not with the precision of timing and dramatic pacing which can amaze an audience seeing fools who could only appear so foolish because of their physical and intellectual prowess. Rapid-fire wit in words and mime is the first requisite for commedia: the Troupe has the idea right, but needs much more training.
The idea, the humour, and the critical analysis behind Freeze Frame are well worth developing, so now it is up to Danny Diesendorf, Robin Davidson, Mark Johnson and Sean Kenan - perhaps with the addition of a woman or two - to go Full Tilt towards sophistication of style, depth of research and theatrical discipline.
This year, the fringe: next year, towards the centre....
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Intimations of William Dobell frozen in mime, eyes and mouth wide open for a very long time. The "painting" takes the new recruit art gallery explainer's spectacles. His vision is impaired as he leaps through the frame into a world where surrealism is deconstructed against the intermittent front-projected backdrop of Erika Harper's post-romantic tarot cards, interspersed by works from Rebecca Robinson, Ed Radclyffe, Deborah Matrice, Sean Kenan, U.F.A., Hayley Hillis and Felicity Jenkins.
Will, the gallery attendant, learns about privatisation and reality, steps back through the frame and finds his glasses on the floor after all. Was it all a dream?
Fringe festivals are meant for experimentation and try-outs, but this company operates too much on the scent of the milk of human kindness. The art works were generally interesting but the dramatic responses were relatively mundane. The origin of Full Tilt's work is in successful children's entertainment at the National Gallery of Australia, but only some of the dialogue draws on an adult view of art. The plot and characters are too naive in conception to carry the full weight of political commentary and reflective criticism of post-modernism which seems to be the objective.
The performers use commedia and circus skills, but not with the precision of timing and dramatic pacing which can amaze an audience seeing fools who could only appear so foolish because of their physical and intellectual prowess. Rapid-fire wit in words and mime is the first requisite for commedia: the Troupe has the idea right, but needs much more training.
The idea, the humour, and the critical analysis behind Freeze Frame are well worth developing, so now it is up to Danny Diesendorf, Robin Davidson, Mark Johnson and Sean Kenan - perhaps with the addition of a woman or two - to go Full Tilt towards sophistication of style, depth of research and theatrical discipline.
This year, the fringe: next year, towards the centre....
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 15 October 1996
1996: The Invisibility of Mrs Geralds by Mary Ellen Turbet
The Invisibility of Mrs Geralds by Mary Ellen Turbet. Rehearsed reading for the Festival of Contemporary Arts, directed by Carol Woodrow. Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre, October 14. Professional.
When I saw the incomplete, mainly naturalistic script early in the year (in the Australian National Playwrights' Centre Writers' Course), I expected Mrs Geralds' situation to be tragic. Maddie's belief in her invisibility was a recognition of the truth about how she was ignored - being a woman and "old" - while it led others to think she had "lost her marbles". I could see no escape from the inevitability of a nursing home.
WildWood Theatre, The Company and Jigsaw have combined to present three of the scripts-in-progress from the ANPC Writers' Course, the actors donating their time and skills. This reading showed the importance of professional developmental work. Jennie Vaskess produced a Maddie full of humanity, with complete ensemble support from Anne Yuille, Michael White, Naone Carrel and Sarah Chalmers, in a script with new sections being rehearsed up to half an hour before performance.
It turns out that Madeleine Geralds can escape. The play now has an original free flowing form: a startlingly humorous study of how it is only through our fantasies that we can come to terms with our reality. Meeting a man of no consequence in his own eyes until he takes on the spirit of Elvis, Mrs Geralds realises she can be the invisible Maddie, growing old as others expect her to, or choose to be a visible Madeleine who leaves the play to holiday in Bali on her own terms. This is no tragedy after all, and indeed becomes a metaphor for me of the role of drama - the theatrical illusion through which we reflect on life.
Carla, Mrs Geralds' entirely business oriented daughter, ignores imagination at the expense of herself becoming invisible, just as her bank manager ignores her requests for boutique expansion loans. Carla may now be the tragic figure, unless Turbet can find her an escape. If she can't, the play will retain a certain coolness when human warmth seems to me to be its centre. Maybe we'll see Mrs Geralds at next year's Playwrights' Conference - I hope so.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
When I saw the incomplete, mainly naturalistic script early in the year (in the Australian National Playwrights' Centre Writers' Course), I expected Mrs Geralds' situation to be tragic. Maddie's belief in her invisibility was a recognition of the truth about how she was ignored - being a woman and "old" - while it led others to think she had "lost her marbles". I could see no escape from the inevitability of a nursing home.
WildWood Theatre, The Company and Jigsaw have combined to present three of the scripts-in-progress from the ANPC Writers' Course, the actors donating their time and skills. This reading showed the importance of professional developmental work. Jennie Vaskess produced a Maddie full of humanity, with complete ensemble support from Anne Yuille, Michael White, Naone Carrel and Sarah Chalmers, in a script with new sections being rehearsed up to half an hour before performance.
It turns out that Madeleine Geralds can escape. The play now has an original free flowing form: a startlingly humorous study of how it is only through our fantasies that we can come to terms with our reality. Meeting a man of no consequence in his own eyes until he takes on the spirit of Elvis, Mrs Geralds realises she can be the invisible Maddie, growing old as others expect her to, or choose to be a visible Madeleine who leaves the play to holiday in Bali on her own terms. This is no tragedy after all, and indeed becomes a metaphor for me of the role of drama - the theatrical illusion through which we reflect on life.
Carla, Mrs Geralds' entirely business oriented daughter, ignores imagination at the expense of herself becoming invisible, just as her bank manager ignores her requests for boutique expansion loans. Carla may now be the tragic figure, unless Turbet can find her an escape. If she can't, the play will retain a certain coolness when human warmth seems to me to be its centre. Maybe we'll see Mrs Geralds at next year's Playwrights' Conference - I hope so.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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