2001: Lord of the Rocks, a musical by John O'Neil

Lord of the Rocks, a musical by John O'Neil.  Tempo Theatre directed by Michael Weston.  Belconnen Community Centre April 4-7.

    I feared that some Federation celebrations would be embarrassing - and so it was. 

    I have not previously heard of John O'Neil. This spurious story of The Rocks in Sydney Town when Macquarie arrives to save the colony from injustice is so childish that I wouldn't let a child near it. John Howard would be proud: not one black armband among the happy band of Britishers.  The final puke came when Macquarie announced that in future people would all be mates in the commercial centre of the world surrounded by a wide brown land and the whole cast sang Advance Australia Fair.  Seriously!

    After the worst choice of script came the worst performance.  I can only praise the band Jeff Burns (bass), Ben Tyrell (drums) and especially Lachlan Cotter on keyboard.  Without their stirling effort, keeping strict time and tuning, the show would have fallen completely apart, since the only actors who could sing in tune were Jon Elphick and Leah Wheelhouse - and only Leah could act as well.  The description of one actor in the program as "quite good at voice contortion which is more a personality trait than a skill" says it all.  If only it had been ironic!

    From a deadly static opening, with leads who had almost no stage presence, the brightest spot in the show - though dim by any other amateur standards - was the knockabout Rum Corps. At last O'Neil broke just a smidgin out of gawky sentimentality with an almost G&S-esque song and dance.  But the slapstick didn't last long, and goo covered the stage, getting thicker, and thicker until I felt thick.

    I'm sorry to be so critical of an amateur group presumably enjoying themselves, but Holt Primary School did Joseph's Dreamcoat streets better than this 20 years ago.  Tempo itself has done far better in the past; and we had a couple of very presentable musicals from Phoenix Players recently as well classy stuff from Supa Productions. 

If we are going to celebrate Federation, let's at least do it in style (and maybe even mention an indigine or three).

© Frank McKone, Canberra