Private Lives by Noël Coward. Melbourne Theatre Company directed by Roger Hodgman at The Canberra Theatre Centre, March 19 - 22, 1997.
Hodgman and designer Shaun Gurton have turned this well-made play into a small gem - a comedy of upper class British manners of 1930 played with a 1990's sensibility. Coward's wit is amusing in its own right: this production adds visual style and comic timing par excellence.
As a critic I am placed by Coward in an invidious position - though nothing compared to some positions of characters in the play. Watch for Victor Prynne (Mark Pegler) on what I can only describe as an art nouveau couch à la exercise bike, opening Act III. And I am not surprised to learn, from Gertrude Lawrence in the excellent program, that the Lord Chamberlain's critical eye focussed severely on the sofa scene - until Noël charmed Lord Cromer with a personal reading and "not a word of Noël's script was censored."
My problem is that if I take the play seriously I shall appear to lack humour like Victor Prynne - a fault which even silly Sybil Chase (played by Rebekah Robertson) recognises. But if I laugh (as I did a lot on opening night) at a playwright which the director's notes refer to as "a thoroughly 'modern' writer" whose name was "synonymous with the sort of smart, witty, decadent and 'fast' image of twenties' youth, which indeed he helped create", then maybe I am undervaluing Noël Coward.
Elyot Chase (Philip Holder) and Amanda Prynne (Nicki Wendt), divorced for five years, use a sophisticated sense of the absurd to deal with accidentally meeting again on their second-time around honeymoons. Coward originally played Elyot, and leaves any critical tendentiousness with no role to play. Yet Amanda refers to her heart being "jagged with sophistication": seeing the funny side can only redeem the vicious ingredient in the chemistry of love for short periods. Though the structure of play has a neat ending, there is no resolution to the chaos of love.
I used to think of Coward as 'decadent', but these actors with this director in Gurton's subtly accurate set, have found a facet - reflecting over 65 years - which shows gem quality after all.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 20 March 1997
Monday, 10 March 1997
1997: Water Stories. Song Ngoc Company and Canberra Youth Theatre
Water Stories. Song Ngoc Company and Canberra Youth Theatre. Canberra Festival in Glebe Park. Schools program: Monday March 10 - Thursday March 13, 11 am and 1 pm. General Public: Friday March 14, 7.30 pm. Saturday - Sunday March 15 - 16, 1 pm and 4 pm. Monday March 17, 1 pm. Bookings on 248 5057.
Surely among all these time-slots you can find one to suit. Water Stories is towards the Casino end of Glebe Park, but this is anything but crass materialism.
Song Ngoc has revived the water puppets traditional to their home village in northern Vietnam after decades of war threatened them with extinction. They have been brave enough to collaborate with Australian iconoclasts even to the extent that they have created a wonderful golden kangaroo as the ultimate down-under tourist pointing a camera at everything in Vietnam.
The young primary school children when I saw the show were as fascinated as the adults by the variety, and strangeness, of the mixture of Vietnamese and Australian images - created by puppets of all kinds and Youth Theatre underwater actors, with many weird things on their heads. Among the stories was one of sailing ships arriving on Australian shores, prior to and including the final invasion, seen from our Aborigines' point of view. Captain Cook's Norfolk Broads wherry might have come a long way to get here, but it doesn't match the beautiful barque, perhaps representing William Dampier, the model of which was crafted in Saigon.
In the Vietnamese tradition, the puppets are like dancers working in strict time to the music (which will be played live in the public program). For this show, Le Tuan Hung, with Geoff Grey conducting, has created an aural feast of imagery to match the puppets; and the Canberra Youth Wind Ensemble performs beautifully.
Youth Theatre Director Roland Manderson's efforts in bringing this show together need rewarding - maybe with more financial backing to help take it back to Vietnam to complete the cultural link. I'm sure the children there will be as fascinated as the children here - and greater multicultural understanding can only be of benefit to us all.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Surely among all these time-slots you can find one to suit. Water Stories is towards the Casino end of Glebe Park, but this is anything but crass materialism.
Song Ngoc has revived the water puppets traditional to their home village in northern Vietnam after decades of war threatened them with extinction. They have been brave enough to collaborate with Australian iconoclasts even to the extent that they have created a wonderful golden kangaroo as the ultimate down-under tourist pointing a camera at everything in Vietnam.
The young primary school children when I saw the show were as fascinated as the adults by the variety, and strangeness, of the mixture of Vietnamese and Australian images - created by puppets of all kinds and Youth Theatre underwater actors, with many weird things on their heads. Among the stories was one of sailing ships arriving on Australian shores, prior to and including the final invasion, seen from our Aborigines' point of view. Captain Cook's Norfolk Broads wherry might have come a long way to get here, but it doesn't match the beautiful barque, perhaps representing William Dampier, the model of which was crafted in Saigon.
In the Vietnamese tradition, the puppets are like dancers working in strict time to the music (which will be played live in the public program). For this show, Le Tuan Hung, with Geoff Grey conducting, has created an aural feast of imagery to match the puppets; and the Canberra Youth Wind Ensemble performs beautifully.
Youth Theatre Director Roland Manderson's efforts in bringing this show together need rewarding - maybe with more financial backing to help take it back to Vietnam to complete the cultural link. I'm sure the children there will be as fascinated as the children here - and greater multicultural understanding can only be of benefit to us all.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 9 March 1997
1997: Pink Triangles by David Atfield
Pink Triangles, written and directed by David Atfield. BITS Theatre at the Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman House. Dramaturgy by Campion Decent. Saturday April 15, 1997.
This was a one-off work-in-progress presentation, aiming at a full touring production in 1998. I think it is a script that has the potential to succeed - though there is something about the first half which worries me.
As I arrived - a balding mid-fifties man, on my own, in a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up (but only to the elbows), neat trousers and gently coloured sleeveless cardigan - I heard a woman say, "We'll be the only straight people here, by the look of it."
I dismissed it at the time, but now I have seen the play through, the assumption this person made that she could tell people's sexuality in a superficial glance stands out not just for its overt prejudice, but because it is this prejudice which sent people perceived as homosexual to Germany's death camps in the 1930's and 40's. More horrifying, if that is possible, is the continuing prejudice after the war, even among the rescuers of the concentration camp victims.
This is a story which must be told, yet David Atfield's research led often to people who would not tell their truths, 50 years later, for fear of humiliation. All of us need to face this reality, and Atfield's play will help us do it.
What worried me was that the first half seemed less focussed than the second. Each vignette is successful individually, but I felt lost without clearer links. In the second half, the stories are juxtaposed so that each one - the gay, the lesbian and the Jew - reflects on the others until we meet the real people, whose stories these are, at the very end.
I don't have a simple answer to this dramaturgical problem - maybe it's to do with turning an almost cabaret style into something more stylistically expressionist - but my hope is that Atfield will continue his work. He has had deserved support so far from the ACT Cultural Council, the Australia Council for the Arts and the Goethe Institut, Canberra. I think we need a full production.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This was a one-off work-in-progress presentation, aiming at a full touring production in 1998. I think it is a script that has the potential to succeed - though there is something about the first half which worries me.
As I arrived - a balding mid-fifties man, on my own, in a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up (but only to the elbows), neat trousers and gently coloured sleeveless cardigan - I heard a woman say, "We'll be the only straight people here, by the look of it."
I dismissed it at the time, but now I have seen the play through, the assumption this person made that she could tell people's sexuality in a superficial glance stands out not just for its overt prejudice, but because it is this prejudice which sent people perceived as homosexual to Germany's death camps in the 1930's and 40's. More horrifying, if that is possible, is the continuing prejudice after the war, even among the rescuers of the concentration camp victims.
This is a story which must be told, yet David Atfield's research led often to people who would not tell their truths, 50 years later, for fear of humiliation. All of us need to face this reality, and Atfield's play will help us do it.
What worried me was that the first half seemed less focussed than the second. Each vignette is successful individually, but I felt lost without clearer links. In the second half, the stories are juxtaposed so that each one - the gay, the lesbian and the Jew - reflects on the others until we meet the real people, whose stories these are, at the very end.
I don't have a simple answer to this dramaturgical problem - maybe it's to do with turning an almost cabaret style into something more stylistically expressionist - but my hope is that Atfield will continue his work. He has had deserved support so far from the ACT Cultural Council, the Australia Council for the Arts and the Goethe Institut, Canberra. I think we need a full production.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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