1997: The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare.  The Bell Shakespeare Company directed by Adam Cook at the Canberra Theatre.  May 24 - 31, 1997.  Starring John Bell, Deidre Rubenstein, Ron Haddrick, Heather Mitchell.

    This is an excellent production, not to be missed - yet not quite as wonderful as it might be.

    Maybe it's churlish to criticise a company of such standards, where every actor so technically skilled.  Clever artifice makes it hard for me to be sure of my grounds, but there seemed to be something missing in the first half, though all was redeemed in the second.

    I was disappointed by the bear.   In this production, lights and sound for "Exit, pursued by a bear" combined to create the right dramatic effect, but oddly the image of the bear was not clear enough for those who do not know the script well.  Leontes wore a cloak of bear skin, later worn again by the shepherd's son after the truth about Perdita has been revealed.  The symbolic linking was surely intended - so why was the the image of the bear not held so that we really knew it was a bear: the representation of Leontes' "shadow"?

    I found a fatal flaw in the first encounter between Polixenes and Leontes.  Polixenes, after a  nine month stay, announces he will leave Leontes' court "to-morrow".  Leontes, in Bell's version, has decided that something is going on between the pregnant Hermione and Polixenes: he opens with vicious jealousy.  Why, when we are told in Scene I that Leontes and Polixenes have had such a strong affection since childhood?  Scene II needs to begin with Polixenes genuinely not wanting to go, catching himself by surprise when he says "that's to-morrow"; while Leontes accepts his friend's necessary decision, and then is himself taken by surprise by Hermione's success in reversing the decision. 

    The first inkling of jealousy should appear only as Leontes reminds Hermione of her accepting his marriage proposal.  Then we could see an honest Leontes trapped in the twists and turns of jealousy, triggered by a misinterpretation of a minor event.  John Bell's Leontes was too evil from the start for me to believe in his redemption at the end.

    You should see The Winter's Tale.  The end is beautiful, and you may find me quite wrong about the first half.
   
© Frank McKone, Canberra

1997: News item on the Swan Shakespeare Foundation of Australia

Canberra is currently the Shakespeare capital of the nation.  The Bell Shakespeare Company has opened its national tour of The Winter's Tale here, and at a small-scale launching ceremony of a large-scale project in the Green Room of the Canberra Theatre last Saturday, the Artistic Director John Bell, AM, signed an agreement with the Swan Shakespeare Foundation of Australia making The Winter's Tale the first production in The Season of the Canon.

    The Swan Foundation, the culmination of a dream of Hazel Treweek, MBE, OAM, will celebrate Shakespeare's canon by reaching agreement with companies across Australia to perform all of Shakespeare's 37 plays, all his sonnets and his five other major poetic works.  Productions will take place from May 24 1997 to May 24 1999, commemorating Shakespeare's becoming one of the 'householders', with a 10 per cent share, of the new Globe Theatre in 1599.

    There are currently fifteen companies, university departments and individuals in the Foundation's program, supported by a large range of sponsorships.  Personal donations have provided the start-up money including a substantial amount from Thailand.  The Thai Government was represented at the launch by Mr Krairawee Sirikul, First Secretary, Cultural Attaché.

    The Foundation is seeking expressions of interest from companies under several category headings: professional companies; amateur companies of exceptional standard; community theatre and musical societies; university drama schools and societies; and a special category of professional children's theatre.

    Contacts for the Swan Foundation are the President, Hazel Treweek (02-9416-3939) or the Artistic Director, Peter Edge (02-9743-6330).

© Frank McKone, Canberra

1997: Sitomania by Odd Productions

Sitomania.  Odd Productions at the Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre, Gorman House.  May 22 - 24, 1997, at 8.00 pm with late shows on Friday and Saturday at 10.30 pm.

    On the one hand "this show is inspired by the 21st Century", but on the other "this project is made from completely recycled and borrowed materials." 

    I think these program notes define the parameters of this humorous study of the seven deadly sins - so much so that all die except Pride, who is clearly clinically paranoid.  Maybe self-serving obsessiveness with "brilopads (sic), nailbrushes, disinfectants and detergents" is what the 21st Century promises.  "My life is steeped in meaning.  I know what's going on, I watch the news everyday."

    The cynicism which makes us laugh as we walk around this little theatre watching Lust (Tim Wood), Greed (Rebecca Rutter), Sloth (Anne-Marie Sinclair, also the director), Gluttony (Remo Vallance), Anger (Rohini Sharma) and Envy (Kelly Ryall) act out the story told, more or less, by Pride (Estelle Muspratt) is probably the new element in this drama.  There is lots of social criticism but no sense of social purpose.  I suppose it's a kind of black farce.

    Oddly enough, though, the theatrical style of Sitomania seems to me almost old-fashioned in the mid-1990's.  The audience is not seated - not comfortable and relaxed.  You can expect to participate in twisted versions of The Price is Right or Ballroom Dancing.  Yet none of this is done with as much flair or challenge as The Open Theatre did in the 1960's.  Maybe only explicit penile representations and real bare bums push the old limits a little.

    Even the idea of mediaeval morality belongs to The Seventh Seal or to myriad teenage drama creations.  However, the use of mixed-media and much of the acting was well done.  The set is engaging in its detail.  Pride's Windex even gets up your nose as she cleans her cigarettes before drawing back the tar.

    It's a bit like being inside a living Roald Dahl story.  So don't go if you are old and staid, but if you like standing up for an hour, being bombarded by images and taken on a twisted fairy-story journey, you won't be bored. 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

1997: Short preview of Bell Shakespeare - Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr

The Bell Shakespeare Company has grown four tentacles, two of which reach out to Canberra this week.  The main company opens its 1997 tour with The Winter's Tale at the Canberra Theatre on Saturday.  The theatre-in-education company, on contract to Young Australia Workshop, is performing Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes at the Albert Hall during weekdays for primary schools.

    Bell Shakespeare has taken on a tradition which has a long history in Australia: taking Shakespeare to the people in large and small communities across the country.  Their high school education team, Actors at Work, workshops scenes from the Bard with teenage students, following in the footsteps of the Young Elizabethan Players of 30 years ago.  The fourth team presents Shakespeare Without Technology, currently performing Macbeth in rural towns.  These are minimal productions, rather along the lines of those on the goldfields a century and a half ago.

    Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is the story of Sadako Sasaki who died from leukemia at the age of eleven, nine years after the Hiroshima atomic bomb.  Bravery in the face of inevitable death, and the spiritual positives in the Japanese culture, are the themes of Eleanor Coerr's narrative, adapted for the stage and directed by Chris Canute. 

    The Bell Company decided that Shakespeare should be left to older audiences, but for younger children this play has the same effect as any of his tragedies.  Re-telling of traumatic memories can help someone cope with a dreadful past, and theatre can do the same for a whole society.  Sadako tries to make a thousand paper cranes before she dies, a task which was completed by the other children in her school.  Her statue stands in the Peace Park in Hiroshima.  Her mother's haiku poem says:

    Out of coloured paper
    the cranes come flying
    into our house.

    The play ends with: This is our prayer - Peace in the World.
   
© Frank McKone, Canberra

1997: Dimboola by Jack Hibberd

Dimboola by Jack Hibberd at Woden Tradesmen's Union Club.  Thursdays only.  Tempo Theatre directed by Myles Leon.

    Laid-ees an gennul-men.  I'd like t' begin, first up - an' up's always better th'n down, except in relation to drink, when down's definitely better th'n up - it won't be easy, an' it won't be 'ard, so I 'ope yer all enjoyin' yerselfs, 'cos I'm 'aving a good time ternight.

    Excuse me. 
    'Allo, 'oo are you, eh?  You'se look like an interlecshul.
    Yes, well I write for the local newspaper, you see.
    Toffy nosed bastard, eh?
    Well I do find it hard to believe that ordinary Australians could behave in such a manner at a wedding reception for their own sons and daughters.  There seems to be no moral dignity on what should be an occasion for genuine celebration of future joy, family values and the unity of marriage.

    Er, what wus that?  'Oo 've you been talkin' to - that Pauline Hanson?  You 'aving a go at us, or something.  Listen, mate - and I calls yer a mate advisedly - if you can't get up on the floor 'ere and partake in a bit of line dancin', or join the Canadian three-step (just ignore these stupid drunken bastards), then you don't belong 'ere, see?

    Well, yes, I suppose I do.  Maybe I should leave now.
   
    Aarr, no, mate, stay about for a bit.  Yer see, the priest's gotta give 'is speech yet (though you've gotta watch Father Pat or 'e'll be looking up yer skirt, or worse if yer a boy).  And Donna's gonna sing Ave Maria again at the end, and yer can't miss that.  An' you've gotta sing "Fer they yar jolly good fellows" an' "More beer, more beer" (that's meant ter be "Auld Lang Syne" o'course, but you won't get any o' this mob ter sing the right words!)

    So I stayed about, and I would like to thank the ladies who did the decorations and everyone else from Tempo Theatre for putting on a bright and lively show, and the Tradies for the wine, an' fin'lly I'sh like to shay Thursday's a great nigh' s'long as yer don't have ter work on Friday!  No worries, mate.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

1997: Feature article on Australian National Playwrights' Conference '97

 Something peculiar has been going on at this year's Australian National Playwrights' Conference, which ended last Saturday.  Returning to its ancient autumnal time slot, preventing me from characterising the playwrights as young Floriade plants going through the process of fertilisation and growth as I did last spring, the Conference seemed more reflective, at least in the sessions I observed.

    Usually the Conference is avidly practical, turning scripts into blueprints for production.  And indeed we are seeing last week and this, in BOD at The Street Theatre, one result of four years' development started at the 1993 Playwrights' Conference.  After BOD's opening night, I found myself at the ANU Arts Centre returning to the beginnings. 

    The Conference always has too much on to see everything unless one can be a full time aficionado: I saw the final readings of The Other Woman by Heather Nimmo and The Woman in the Window by Alma De Groen.

    But the unusual was manifest in the Forum called The Very Peculiar Language of Theatre.  Here for more than two hours a panel of five argued with each other and with the audience, despite determined efforts by Elizabeth Perkins (James Cook University) to keep the session in order, on the very esoteric question of what is peculiar about the language of theatre. 

    Lenora Champagne from New York laid her writing soul on the line: get away from naturalism.  Play with the elements of theatre, she said: use light as light; the actor as the actor.  Work the language and make it extreme.  Be poetic, peculiar, eccentric. 

    But Nicholas Parsons, the writer of the play and film script Dead Heart, after Neill Gladwyn introduced the idea that film and television are limiting compared with theatre, fell about with fury saying that there is no real difference in writing for the different mediums - it's all about telling stories.  Except that to me it seemed he meant naturalism all the way.

    Ian Robinson and Tom Guttridge seemed to be on the same side as each other, against the devilish Nick, and finally after probably half the audience had had their say, something important came out which caused me to reflect on the qualities of the two readings I attended.

    Tom had remarked early on that the relationship between the actors and the audience is "gladiatorial".  The language of theatre is not limited by what is set down by the writer, but is a matter of live interaction: audiences are different every night and actors use their skills, their theatrical language ability, to work on the audience and so the play is created anew at each performance.

    So what's the writer there for?  I concluded that a good writer, using dialogue for the most part, creates an illusion of reality in the script in such a way that directors, designers and actors are given permission, in fact encouragement, to devise their own way of presenting that illusion - of representing that reality.

    Maybe this sounds like useless philosophy, but I discovered that Heather Nimmo's play - based on the politics of WA in recent years, centring on the question of how an honest politician can survive an honest mistake - at this stage of its development does not offer the imaginative openings to make it a great play.  Set in corridors, party rooms and motels, the script consists almost entirely of two-person talking heads, rather like bad television, and it seems to prove the point of the book by Jerry Mander - Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television - that it's impossible to present serious argument on television.  The story of The Other Woman is based on reality, but it remains a pale illusion on stage.

    Alma De Groen, on the other hand, writes every word so that myriad implications are brought to mind, and so, apparently quite effortlessly, her play can take us back and forth between Stalinist Russia of 1951, a fictional society 300 years in the future, and a sudden flash of Australia right now.  The Woman at the Window is potentially a great play because it gives the audience, as Tom Guttridge said in the earlier forum, the freedom to create their own meaning.

    So a funny peculiar thing happened to me on the way from the Forum: I discovered a clearer understanding of how to judge a play.  To writers, then, I say: listen to Lenora Champagne.  Play with all the elements of the theatre - the light and shadow; the sounds and silences; the movements and stillnesses.  And be poetic, eccentric, peculiar and extreme.

© Frank McKone, Canberra