2002: Adult Child/Dead Child by Claire Dowie.

Adult Child/Dead Child by Claire Dowie.  Performed by Alexis Beebe, directed by Herman Pretorius. Street Theatre Studio April 25 - May 4, 8.30pm.

   
    I'm glad the writer was originally a stand-up comedian: otherwise Adult Child/Dead Child might have remained just a worthy monologue.  Actually, the title should be A Dog Called Benjie. It is only at the point of comic self-realisation near the end that the play becomes genuinely theatrical.

    This is not a criticism of this production.  The writing creates an effect as if the actor is miming the character as she tells her story.  This is reinforced by occasional disembodied voice-over repeats of lines reflecting on the child's experience, later picked up by the child as she gains adulthood.

    There is a cleverness in this structure, but it is not truly dramatic until the connection is made between the three Benjies: two dogs and an imaginary friend.  At this point we stop watching a rather polemical piece about the mistreatment of a child growing up with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and suddenly find ourselves relating to a real character who has found a way to cope in a world which surrounds her with fear.

    The skill in Beebe's acting is in her ability to extract every nuance out of the lines, and especially the repeats of the lines.  The mood changes with each attempt on the child's part to take control of her situation, and each consequent knockdown.  She achieves a nice sense of the changes through childhood and teenage years, and the extra layer of awareness which adulthood provides.

    Clinical psychologist Dr Ross Wilkinson seems to make an excuse in the program notes: "one does not necessarily expect a scientifically accurate portrayal of psychological disorders" in a play.  However, my concern is more that a monologue restricts us to the character's perceptions of the truth.  She leaves us inclined to blame her parents for causing her psychological problem, yet in adulthood she understands she needs drugs to keep her mental state stable.  Which are we to believe - nature or nurture?  I think a much more complex drama is required to deal properly with this material.

    But Beebe's performance is well worth 80 minutes of your time.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2002: Raining Talent. Free-Rain Theatre Company. Feature article.

Raining Talent.  Free-Rain Theatre Company in association with 19th Hole Productions.  Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 11-13.

    Since its inception Anne Somes' Free-Rain has emphasised productions of well-known plays involving young people as actors and technicians, in recent times usually directed by her daughter, Kelly.  Putting on Equus (Peter Shaffer) or Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet) has distinguished Free-Rain from other groups like Canberra Youth Theatre, whose work is more usually group devised, or amateur entertainment groups like Supa.

    In Raining Talent, Anne Somes is putting her money, with some support from an artsACT grant, into work which looks more like Youth Theatre.  The show is a collection of short scripted and choreographed pieces which allow a range of young people between 10 and 21 years of age to display their talents.

Though the material does not make for a thematically cohesive show, the set design by Kelly Somes and choreography by UWS Nepean graduate Kiri Morcombe is stylish and provides a visual frame which holds together well.  Individual performances were all up to standard for the age group and levels of experience.

Is there a place for this kind of production from Free-Rain?  Somes' position is that she is continuing a mentoring tradition which, for her, began when Jigsaw Theatre Company - the fully professional theatre-in-education team which has now grown into a wide ranging national production company under Greg Lissaman - provided space, technical assistance and administrative help to Free-Rain at the now defunct Currong Theatre.

This backing helped Somes' work become more firmly established and has led to an association with the Canberra Theatre Centre, with technical and administrative support strongly encouraged by David Whitney and his staff.  Somes talks of having a "community conscience", looking for opportunities to assist young people to move out of their school environments into the wider world of theatre - and so she has picked up 19th Hole Productions, the ex-Canberra College group led by Soren Jensen.

So Free-Rain's theatrical niche does provide a slightly different experience, complementing Youth Theatre, Tuggeranong Community Arts and the others.  Opportunities for young theatricals in Canberra abound.

Free-Rain's next production is Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson, directed by Kelly Somes in August.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2002: The Dreamers by Jack Davis

The Dreamers by Jack Davis.  Directed by Wesley Enoch.  Starring Rachael Mazza and Kevin Smith. Company B Belvoir at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, March 27 - April 21 8pm.

    Reviewing The Price (Ensemble Theatre, Sydney) recently, I lamented the lack of an Australian Arthur Miller.  This production of The Dreamers (1982) has put me to shame.  Noongar Aboriginal writer Jack Davis (1917-2000) proves to be our equivalent of Miller, Tennessee Williams and the seminal Irish playwright J.M.Synge all rolled into one.

    Belvoir B's 2002 program is, I think, the most worth subscribing to within easy reach of Canberra: to come are David Hare, Patrick White, Sam Shepard and new Sydney writer Valentina Levkowicz.  There is still time to catch The Dreamers.

    Enoch notes "The chance to return to such classic Indigenous plays, as The Dreamers, helps us see what the future can be.  They become the measure by which we mark how much we've grown or not.  These plays are our history, a written and spoken account of our world.  We sit and watch our aunts and cousins and uncles and grandparents played out through these characters on stage, not always how we would want ourselves portrayed but with honesty - warts and all.  How else can we change?"  With advice from the respected Noongar theatre artist Lynette Narkle, Enoch has created a fitting memorial to the passing of Jack Davis, who wrote and then played the original Uncle Worru 20 years ago.

    Here we see the sad ending of an honorable everyman under pressure from insensitive society, just like Willy Loman in Miller's Death of a Salesman - and with just as much power in Dolly's final speech as in Linda Loman's last lament.  Rachael Mazza brings out Dolly's all-enduring strength, her humour, and her understanding of reality as if such acting is simple to achieve.  But we all had tears welling as she carried in Uncle Worru's shoes to symbolically pass on to the next generation.  And I have to say I found Kevin Smith's Uncle Worru much more endearing than the salesman in Miller's play.

    Then this production shows a play of memories, so much like Williams' The Glass Menagerie - with characters' evocative speeches half out of the frame of the play, yet within it and reflecting on it - that the effect on me was quite eerie.  Encompassing all is music and dance of the dreaming, so strongly reminiscent of Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows and the sense that the ancient spirits are drawing the old man away.  Uncle Worru, like Deirdre, teaches us to "draw a little back with the squabbling of fools when I am broken up with misery" and can equally say "I have put away sorrow like a shoe that is worn out and muddy, for it is I have had a life that will be envied by great companies."

    To create an Indigenous play so meaningful across ancient and modern cultures is a great wonder.  I respect the earlier generation of Jack Davis's era who often had to relearn their own languages and teach themselves the ways of non-indigenous theatre; and now the generation of thoroughly professional performers represented in this production of The Dreamers, where truth is experienced as it should be in the theatre.

© Frank McKone, Canberra