Face to Face by David Williamson. Ensemble Theatre directed by Sandra Bates at The Playhouse, March 21-23 8pm, March 24-25 6pm and 9pm. Professional.
"Sorry to interrupt," said the Year 11 Drama student while I was asking Sandra Bates about how she achieved such realism from her actors, "but I have to do an assignment on the importance of David Williamson in Australian theatre." "Absolutely important," said Bates, "because he writes for the audience right now without caring about how important he is."
Diversionary conferencing is a right-now issue not just because it's having an extensive trial here and elsewhere but because it is the opposite end of the line which leads to mandatory sentencing. Should Glen go to jail for deliberately ramming his boss's Mercedes, when he's just been dismissed for his uncontrollable temper? Fortunately you can watch an expert convenor deal with an explosive situation - and you'll find yourself laughing, and maybe weeping - from the safety of your theatre seat.
Did Bates make the play work so well, or has Williamson at last really stopped caring about his importance? Actor Amos Szeps told me Bates gave the cast freedom to develop their characters but Bates explained that she rehearsed the play as if it were a real conference. Geoff Cartwright, playing the convenor as it really happens, separately interviewed each actor in role before full rehearsals began to get their agreement to attend the conference. So he knows things about each character that the other actors don't know he knows. This gives him the power to challenge each character/actor differently in each performance to create the spark of reality which this issue needs.
It certainly worked in the 104th performance which opened the Canberra season on Tuesday, so I can be confident of its ongoing success. But it wouldn't work without Williamson's tight writing, the best he has done since The Removalists 30 years ago. In 90 minutes 10 characters reveal themselves, their personal relationships, their class and cultural conflicts - a concentrated three-dimensional model of Australians at work.
Face to Face raises David Williamson's level of importance as a playwright. The Ensemble team is excellent. Justice is done. With discretion. It's mandatory to attend.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday 22 March 2000
Thursday 16 March 2000
2000: Canberra Dreaming
Canberra Dreaming. Images by Tim Brook, original music by Arne Hanna, choreography by Nicole Nerveu. Canberra National Multicultural Festival, Old Bus Depot, Kingston. March 16-18, 8pm.
My daughter won't come to dinner if I'm going to show slides. Now I know how she feels. At the bare, unadulterated Old Bus Depot you stand around on grey concrete under rigid girders waiting before the Dreaming, but you don't even get dinner. You are inexplicably escorted by young people on roller blades through a dark expanse to hard plastic chairs for an hour and a half watching slides of Canberra.
The slides are impeccably composed, each one aching to be used in a tourist promotion. They glide imperceptibly in slow cross-fades which sometimes produce unexpected overlaid images. You wake from your dream at dawn over Lake B-G, notice all sorts of long-shots, medium shots and occasionally quirky close-ups of a year around the city, returning at sunset to the dark once again. I had a nap about lunchtime and awoke to some odd underwater scenes: maybe someone was drowning?
The surround sound-scape was a mighty effort but became like the ultimate Phillip Glass repetition with shifts and variations which sometimes seemed to make sense but often didn't.
In front of the screen, with the images projected on them, a male and female did balletic/gymnastic exercises during the "Extended Overture" and the "Extended Coda". Each repeated a cycle of movements many times before walking, at the beginning forwards off stage, at the end backwards on stage. What their movements were supposed to mean I have no idea. Later during the "day" a group of small girls walked across, presumably to school, and teenagers mimed skateboarding and kick-boxing when the Civic Youth Centre appeared.
Despite my aching plastic behind, one photo really did wake me up: a close-up of autumn leaves, still on the tree, which had an amazing resemblance to Blue Poles. At last something of dramatic resonance, a bit of Canberra Dreaming - but alas this is the only meaningful experience I can offer. Or you can take it as an opportunity for a long meditation. Oh, and make sure you sit in the centre of the front row to avoid heads.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
My daughter won't come to dinner if I'm going to show slides. Now I know how she feels. At the bare, unadulterated Old Bus Depot you stand around on grey concrete under rigid girders waiting before the Dreaming, but you don't even get dinner. You are inexplicably escorted by young people on roller blades through a dark expanse to hard plastic chairs for an hour and a half watching slides of Canberra.
The slides are impeccably composed, each one aching to be used in a tourist promotion. They glide imperceptibly in slow cross-fades which sometimes produce unexpected overlaid images. You wake from your dream at dawn over Lake B-G, notice all sorts of long-shots, medium shots and occasionally quirky close-ups of a year around the city, returning at sunset to the dark once again. I had a nap about lunchtime and awoke to some odd underwater scenes: maybe someone was drowning?
The surround sound-scape was a mighty effort but became like the ultimate Phillip Glass repetition with shifts and variations which sometimes seemed to make sense but often didn't.
In front of the screen, with the images projected on them, a male and female did balletic/gymnastic exercises during the "Extended Overture" and the "Extended Coda". Each repeated a cycle of movements many times before walking, at the beginning forwards off stage, at the end backwards on stage. What their movements were supposed to mean I have no idea. Later during the "day" a group of small girls walked across, presumably to school, and teenagers mimed skateboarding and kick-boxing when the Civic Youth Centre appeared.
Despite my aching plastic behind, one photo really did wake me up: a close-up of autumn leaves, still on the tree, which had an amazing resemblance to Blue Poles. At last something of dramatic resonance, a bit of Canberra Dreaming - but alas this is the only meaningful experience I can offer. Or you can take it as an opportunity for a long meditation. Oh, and make sure you sit in the centre of the front row to avoid heads.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday 10 March 2000
2000: Pink Triangles by David Atfield
Pink Triangles written and directed by David Atfield. BITS Theatre Company at The Street Theatre Studio, March 9 - 18, 8pm.
Three years ago I reviewed the early workshop version of this play, which presents us with an unimpeachable moral theme. The story of the treatment of homosexuals during, and horrifyingly long after, the Nazi regime in Germany was only able to be published in 1972 (The Men with the Pink Triangles by Heinz Heger) when anti-gay laws were changed. It took rather longer in Tasmania, and one of the sources of stories in this play, who survived the holocaust and lives in Perth, still cannot come out for fear of violence or, at the least, social ostracism.
The play has been fleshed out since its first showing, but I found it disappointing that the first half is not more successful theatrically. It remains a set of brief vignettes, now linked with devices which belong to the theatre-in-education school (spurious TV interviews, advertisements, fashion shows) which create some humour but are out of place stylistically for dealing with such serious subject matter. The problem is the famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who escaped Germany the day after the Reichstag burned in 1933, set the standard (in Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle) for epic theatre which Atfield cannot match.
The second half largely drops theatrical pretence, becoming a simple story-telling session with slides, a documentary rather than a play. The result is strongly focussed dramatic journalism, moving us out of apparent fiction into inescapable reality.
Probably if you read Heger's book or saw the documentary on ABC television recently, you don't need to see the play to learn more about this awful abuse of human rights. On the other hand it is a joy to watch four excellent actors - Jonathan Gavin, Peter Robinson, Iain Sinclair and Clara Witheridge - working together in a strong ensemble as they switch from role to role, backed by precision technical work backstage.
I suspect if this play goes further than this brief season it will be because of the importance of the message, supported by the relative strength of the second half, rather than the more desirable total theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Three years ago I reviewed the early workshop version of this play, which presents us with an unimpeachable moral theme. The story of the treatment of homosexuals during, and horrifyingly long after, the Nazi regime in Germany was only able to be published in 1972 (The Men with the Pink Triangles by Heinz Heger) when anti-gay laws were changed. It took rather longer in Tasmania, and one of the sources of stories in this play, who survived the holocaust and lives in Perth, still cannot come out for fear of violence or, at the least, social ostracism.
The play has been fleshed out since its first showing, but I found it disappointing that the first half is not more successful theatrically. It remains a set of brief vignettes, now linked with devices which belong to the theatre-in-education school (spurious TV interviews, advertisements, fashion shows) which create some humour but are out of place stylistically for dealing with such serious subject matter. The problem is the famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who escaped Germany the day after the Reichstag burned in 1933, set the standard (in Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle) for epic theatre which Atfield cannot match.
The second half largely drops theatrical pretence, becoming a simple story-telling session with slides, a documentary rather than a play. The result is strongly focussed dramatic journalism, moving us out of apparent fiction into inescapable reality.
Probably if you read Heger's book or saw the documentary on ABC television recently, you don't need to see the play to learn more about this awful abuse of human rights. On the other hand it is a joy to watch four excellent actors - Jonathan Gavin, Peter Robinson, Iain Sinclair and Clara Witheridge - working together in a strong ensemble as they switch from role to role, backed by precision technical work backstage.
I suspect if this play goes further than this brief season it will be because of the importance of the message, supported by the relative strength of the second half, rather than the more desirable total theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday 7 March 2000
2000: The Director and the Doll by Jane Bradhurst
The Director and the Doll by Jane Bradhurst. Gallery Players directed by Cathie Clelland at the Canberra Museum and Gallery March 7,8,9 & 21,22,23 at 12.30pm and March 10, 24 at 5.30pm. A Canberra Multicultural Festival premiere.
This new one-act play is a good idea which is only partly realised - an interesting twist on the Pygmalion myth. The Director's creative abilities are applied to his actors while his Doll, waiting for him in lonely digs, critically reflects on him, a ventriloquist's doll who answers back.
The young actors Nielsen Gordon and Rebecca Clifford are clear and effective in their characterisations:in this tiny theatre - despite its technical limitations - and with excellent costumes, Cathie Clelland has produced a small success. "Enjoyable" and "gentle" were the words of one audience member.
For me, however, it is the script which held back the play, which should not be so gentle. The author explained to me before the show that the Director was "very good with actors but could not cope with real life". In her script I could see the failure to cope - and his need for the Doll to talk to - but I found it hard to believe that this Director would ever be very good with actors. Of course, we only get to see him talking to his Doll about the actors: we never know what they really think of him. He blames his frustrations on the amateur committees who employ him, but the Doll is surely right when she tells him that in fact he is not very good.
It is really only after this point that the play livens up as the Director uses the Doll to play the roles of his unworthy father and mother and reverts to his childhood, and it becomes clear that his mental instability is beyond control. The writing needs much more emotional subtlety in the early scenes, rather than exposition of the situation, to give depth and a full sense of the Director's tragedy at the end. Or a longer play could be made to show the Director in action as well as reflection: are the actors he directs another set of dolls, and do they answer back?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This new one-act play is a good idea which is only partly realised - an interesting twist on the Pygmalion myth. The Director's creative abilities are applied to his actors while his Doll, waiting for him in lonely digs, critically reflects on him, a ventriloquist's doll who answers back.
The young actors Nielsen Gordon and Rebecca Clifford are clear and effective in their characterisations:in this tiny theatre - despite its technical limitations - and with excellent costumes, Cathie Clelland has produced a small success. "Enjoyable" and "gentle" were the words of one audience member.
For me, however, it is the script which held back the play, which should not be so gentle. The author explained to me before the show that the Director was "very good with actors but could not cope with real life". In her script I could see the failure to cope - and his need for the Doll to talk to - but I found it hard to believe that this Director would ever be very good with actors. Of course, we only get to see him talking to his Doll about the actors: we never know what they really think of him. He blames his frustrations on the amateur committees who employ him, but the Doll is surely right when she tells him that in fact he is not very good.
It is really only after this point that the play livens up as the Director uses the Doll to play the roles of his unworthy father and mother and reverts to his childhood, and it becomes clear that his mental instability is beyond control. The writing needs much more emotional subtlety in the early scenes, rather than exposition of the situation, to give depth and a full sense of the Director's tragedy at the end. Or a longer play could be made to show the Director in action as well as reflection: are the actors he directs another set of dolls, and do they answer back?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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