Outlawed at the National Museum of Australia. Adults $8, Concession $6, Children $5, Families $16. Until April 26, 2004 (closed Christmas Day).
This is a massive exhibition - a real stage coach in the middle makes you realise how big, clumsy and heavy history can be - so be prepared to spend lots of time. I found 2 hours was not enough. You certainly get your money's worth, but it is a good investment to also buy the catalogue, even for $20, because it gives you an excellent guide to how you might think through all the detailed information, images and artefacts and put together your own idea of the place of outlaws in human history.
At the end you can literally make up your own mind by choosing, say, our own Ned Kelly or Mexico's revolutionary bandit Pancho Villa, logging in to consider the evidence for and against, and deciding on a guilty or not guilty verdict. The question is, should every terrorist be condemned for breaking the "sanctity of law and order", or is the law sometimes on the sanctimonious side, like the law that condemned Robin Hood for killing a deer because all the deer in the forest were the King's deer.
The next question is, even when some outlaws really were robbers and killers without any obvious justification, why do so many - like Australian bushrangers, or the "respected merchant revealed as Ishikawa Goemon, renowned thief" and executed in Japan, 1594 - become treated as heroes?
The exhibition presents the historical record in a visually almost overwhelming way. Large film screens show snippets of movies, touch-screens abound, you can make your own video acting with Jesse James on a railcar rooftop, hooves and gunshots surround you. At the very end you can play a brand new Robin Hood playstation game which is not available in games stores yet. You see the real guns, real costumes worn in films, real photos of outlaws - dead and alive, the real armour that Joe Byrne wore in the Kelly gang's final battle at Glenrowan, real death masks and even the real head of a Chinese outlaw from only 90 years ago which was hung on the wall after his execution as a warning to others.
It takes a while to work out the floor plan of all this excitement. I found this confusing until a kind staff helper explained it to me. Maybe the Museum should give people a map. You begin by finding out what an outlaw is: a person who is classed as outside the law. Dr Madden, speaking in the Victorian Parliament in 1878 about a law about outlaws said, "Under this Bill a person may stalk them; he may steal upon them and shoot them down as he would shoot a kangaroo..."
Then by following around the outside circuit of the exhibition you walk through the typical life of an outlaw: what starts them off (like Phoolan Devi's gang rape and torture by higher caste men); how they confront the forces of the government; what they gain or fail to gain from being an outlaw; and how they come usually to a grisly end. Not every outlaw is represented in each of these sections, especially the more ancient cases, depending on how much historical evidence there is available. Up above the entrances to each section, made to look like engravings in gaps through stone walls, you will find title words like "Confrontation", but there is so much to see and hear on either side and to walk around that you can easily miss the signposts.
In the central area you will find the "studio" where stacks of multimedia screens show the outlaws represented in fictional film and documentaries, and where you can make your own video acting alongside the outlaws. You don't have to speak Japanese to be seen with Ishikawa Goemon, but I guess it might help!
The studio also includes the major exhibits on Goemon and the American woman outlaw Belle Starr, so they have less about them in the outer circuit. Above everything there are screens virtually on the ceiling with lengthy sections of fictional movies, so you can see why I felt slightly overwhelmed. However, I noticed the young people present seemed not to be fazed in the slightest, so maybe I'm just getting a little old and jaded. One 10-year-old thoroughly enjoyed leaping from one carriage top to the next with Jesse James.
Some people have fussed about the Museum seeming to support revolution, but this is nonsense. Outlawed shows the good and the bad of those both outside and inside the law, and leaves us to consider the rights and wrongs. Because some outlaws saw themselves as doing some kind of good, and some were seen after their deaths in this way, I guess that's why they have become heroes. The National Museum doesn't push a viewpoint. The evidence is there for everyone to make up their own mind. This is as it should be.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 19 December 2003
Sunday, 14 December 2003
2003: Good Day, Mr.Courbet adapted by Peter Wilkins
Good Day, Mr.Courbet adapted and directed by Peter Wilkins from Good Day Monsieur Courbet - The Letters of Gustave Courbet selected and translated by Petra ten-Doesschate-Chu. The Acting Company at the James O. Fairfax Theatre, National Gallery of Australia. Thursdays, December 11 and 18 6pm; Sundays, December 14 and 21 2pm.
If you have to miss this well-worthwhile production, commissioned by the NGA to accompany its current major exhibition French Paintings from the Musee Fabre, Montpellier (November 7, 2003 - February 15, 2004) I'm sure it will be because there are only two more performances scheduled in a busy week leading up to Christmas. You will have noticed the whole season of 4 performances only by close reading of the NGA's summer program. There has not been the general publicity of this production which it deserves, both in its own right and as a very important part of the exhibition.
I and a few others in the know were there on Sunday and I was not surprised that well-known thoroughly professional actor Phil Roberts, as Mr.Courbet, fluffed some lines and took some time to establish his character. With so much research to do for so little reward and with a tiny audience in a quite large theatre, anyone would find the task somewhat confidence-shaking. Gustave Courbet is a major-scale character to more than match his paintings. Roberts has the measure of the man, but it would be good to see the performances continue throughout the run of the exhibition.
Peter Wilkins has built a well justified reputation with his previous productions of the letters of Arthur Streeton and Claude Monet, but this show has the additional quality of placing Courbet in the political history of France. The radical painter who broke down the old Academy rules was also the fighter for democracy. Though jailed and dying a man broken by successive governments, Courbet, forgotten in standard histories, left the twin legacies of realism which became the now so popular impressionism, and the demand for freedom and democracy which we now take for granted. More than a peek into the artist's personality, Good Day Mr. Courbet shows us, as Courbet himself wrote, "not only a painter, but a human being".
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If you have to miss this well-worthwhile production, commissioned by the NGA to accompany its current major exhibition French Paintings from the Musee Fabre, Montpellier (November 7, 2003 - February 15, 2004) I'm sure it will be because there are only two more performances scheduled in a busy week leading up to Christmas. You will have noticed the whole season of 4 performances only by close reading of the NGA's summer program. There has not been the general publicity of this production which it deserves, both in its own right and as a very important part of the exhibition.
I and a few others in the know were there on Sunday and I was not surprised that well-known thoroughly professional actor Phil Roberts, as Mr.Courbet, fluffed some lines and took some time to establish his character. With so much research to do for so little reward and with a tiny audience in a quite large theatre, anyone would find the task somewhat confidence-shaking. Gustave Courbet is a major-scale character to more than match his paintings. Roberts has the measure of the man, but it would be good to see the performances continue throughout the run of the exhibition.
Peter Wilkins has built a well justified reputation with his previous productions of the letters of Arthur Streeton and Claude Monet, but this show has the additional quality of placing Courbet in the political history of France. The radical painter who broke down the old Academy rules was also the fighter for democracy. Though jailed and dying a man broken by successive governments, Courbet, forgotten in standard histories, left the twin legacies of realism which became the now so popular impressionism, and the demand for freedom and democracy which we now take for granted. More than a peek into the artist's personality, Good Day Mr. Courbet shows us, as Courbet himself wrote, "not only a painter, but a human being".
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 5 December 2003
2003: Are You Being Served? by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft
Are You Being Served? by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft. Tempo Theatre at Belconnen Community Centre December 4-6, 10-13 8pm (Matinees December 6 and 13, 2pm). Bookings: ANU Ticketing 6125 5491.
The actors have done well in re-creating the characters from this once popular British television series. Although their main task was to imitate rather than create original roles, everyone had clearly defined their character's mannerisms, foibles and attitudes and successfully produced consistent figures in three dimensions. Their hard work was evident and well appreciated by the audience.
The result is quite enjoyable light entertainment despite weaknesses in direction and design. Director Kim Wilson had to also fill in as Mr Rumbold at the late stages when the original actor dropped out -- an unfortunate but common experience in amateur companies -- and may therefore not have been able to polish the speed and pacing up to what is required for British farce. However the show should pick up on these points, especially for the night when, I am told, a large contingent of employees from our very own Grace Bros will be on hand. Not that I can imagine such non-politically correct behaviour in the Belconnen Mall establishment!
Wilson noted in the program he "found [the script] had its challenges to bring it to the medium of live theatre". These challenges were not well solved. We sat in silence facing a blank curtain for some minutes before a brief and indistinct recording of the TV intro faded into morning greetings as characters appeared on the shop floor from the lift. All too slow on stage, though it had worked on the screen with close-ups of facial expressions and rapid cut aways. We needed bright music like Rule Brittania before and between acts. If the opening had been of the characters rehearsing their German slap-thigh dance, action and laughs would have got the show moving at once and warmed the audience up. The actual dance later in the first act certainly got a good reaction, and could have been used again at the end for the curtain call. Then we could all have marched out to Rule Brittania.
Simple theatrical devices like these would make this show more lively and more fun.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The actors have done well in re-creating the characters from this once popular British television series. Although their main task was to imitate rather than create original roles, everyone had clearly defined their character's mannerisms, foibles and attitudes and successfully produced consistent figures in three dimensions. Their hard work was evident and well appreciated by the audience.
The result is quite enjoyable light entertainment despite weaknesses in direction and design. Director Kim Wilson had to also fill in as Mr Rumbold at the late stages when the original actor dropped out -- an unfortunate but common experience in amateur companies -- and may therefore not have been able to polish the speed and pacing up to what is required for British farce. However the show should pick up on these points, especially for the night when, I am told, a large contingent of employees from our very own Grace Bros will be on hand. Not that I can imagine such non-politically correct behaviour in the Belconnen Mall establishment!
Wilson noted in the program he "found [the script] had its challenges to bring it to the medium of live theatre". These challenges were not well solved. We sat in silence facing a blank curtain for some minutes before a brief and indistinct recording of the TV intro faded into morning greetings as characters appeared on the shop floor from the lift. All too slow on stage, though it had worked on the screen with close-ups of facial expressions and rapid cut aways. We needed bright music like Rule Brittania before and between acts. If the opening had been of the characters rehearsing their German slap-thigh dance, action and laughs would have got the show moving at once and warmed the audience up. The actual dance later in the first act certainly got a good reaction, and could have been used again at the end for the curtain call. Then we could all have marched out to Rule Brittania.
Simple theatrical devices like these would make this show more lively and more fun.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 29 October 2003
2003: Welcome to the Machine by George Huitker
Welcome to the Machine by George Huitker. Huitker Movement Theatre at Theatre 3, October 29 - November 2, 8pm.
This multi-media theatre piece is a kind of Orwellian 1984 set in 2222. It has the same dire warnings, where Big Brother becomes Dr Oliver Hermanni (Oliver Baudert), a Pygmalion figure who creates a set of clones which cannot survive in the real world. Huitker himself refers to the Frankenstein story and has been strongly influenced by the set design of the 1931 film by James Whale.
As in all these earlier stories, the creations by the mastermind seek their freedom, with disastrous results for themselves and their creators. The interesting twist in Huitker's version is that Dr Hermanni experiments with creativity itself in a world in which creativity has been effectively destroyed by the arts becoming no more than technological entertainment. He uses visual images from earlier times - Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries - to stimulate his clones, who respond in movement imagery.
The clones, numbered One to Six, each represent a different kind of artist - writer, musician, dancer and so on - who finally tell stories of their childhoods where adults failed to recognise or appreciate their natural creativity. Interestingly enough, in keeping with Huitker's theme, this section of the work is the only part which is dramatically powerful, as each character's experience is told to us but also played out in action by the whole group. We recognise ourselves in their fears and frustrations.
Technically the multimedia mix of audio and digital video is very well done, taking on a life of its own. In a way this begs the question of whether theatre can justifiably rely on technological entertainment in its own right, without deeply emotional human performance. It's hard to say whether the conundrum Welcome to the Machine leaves us with is intended by Huitker, or is an accidental result of his attempt to turn philosophical considerations into a theatrical event.
So, though a curate's egg, this work is worth seeing, especially for younger people, as a re-working of an old tradition in modern style. If Huitker can afford it, he should seek criticism and professional development further afield. It's a pity Meryl Tankard is not still in Canberra.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This multi-media theatre piece is a kind of Orwellian 1984 set in 2222. It has the same dire warnings, where Big Brother becomes Dr Oliver Hermanni (Oliver Baudert), a Pygmalion figure who creates a set of clones which cannot survive in the real world. Huitker himself refers to the Frankenstein story and has been strongly influenced by the set design of the 1931 film by James Whale.
As in all these earlier stories, the creations by the mastermind seek their freedom, with disastrous results for themselves and their creators. The interesting twist in Huitker's version is that Dr Hermanni experiments with creativity itself in a world in which creativity has been effectively destroyed by the arts becoming no more than technological entertainment. He uses visual images from earlier times - Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries - to stimulate his clones, who respond in movement imagery.
The clones, numbered One to Six, each represent a different kind of artist - writer, musician, dancer and so on - who finally tell stories of their childhoods where adults failed to recognise or appreciate their natural creativity. Interestingly enough, in keeping with Huitker's theme, this section of the work is the only part which is dramatically powerful, as each character's experience is told to us but also played out in action by the whole group. We recognise ourselves in their fears and frustrations.
Technically the multimedia mix of audio and digital video is very well done, taking on a life of its own. In a way this begs the question of whether theatre can justifiably rely on technological entertainment in its own right, without deeply emotional human performance. It's hard to say whether the conundrum Welcome to the Machine leaves us with is intended by Huitker, or is an accidental result of his attempt to turn philosophical considerations into a theatrical event.
So, though a curate's egg, this work is worth seeing, especially for younger people, as a re-working of an old tradition in modern style. If Huitker can afford it, he should seek criticism and professional development further afield. It's a pity Meryl Tankard is not still in Canberra.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 24 October 2003
2003: National Forum on Performance in Cultural Institutions No 2. Feature article.
Spotlight on Performance: National Forum on Performance in Cultural Institutions No 2. October 23-25 at National Museum of Australia, The Australian War Memorial, ScreenSound Australia and Old Parliament House. Chaired by Nigel Sutton (aka Hans the Storyteller).
This was the second of the biennial forums arranged by the National Museum of Australia as a member of the International Museum Theatre Alliance. There is almost a symbiotic relationship with the Museum of Science in Boston, USA, where 2001 keynote speaker Catherine Hughes established IMTA. This year's keynote speaker was John Lipsky, Associate Professor of Acting and Playwriting at Boston University's College for the Arts, who is also Associate Artistic Director of Vineyard Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard. He writes and directs mainstage plays, as well as shows for the Museum of Science, a Planetarium and the Catalyst Collaborative (about science, scientists and scientific issues) and for the Boston History Collaborative (dramatising Boston's history).
From Australia, NMA Director Dawn Casey welcomed a long list of performers and cultural institution managers, with papers/performances presented by ACT's Jigsaw Theatre Company, Women on a Shoestring, Shortis & Simpson and The Street Theatre (with Violine opening October 30) alongside X-Ray Theatre, ERTH Visual & Physical Inc, storytellers Nigel Sutton, Ed Miller and Mary French, Sovereign Hill Museums Association, Australian National Maritime Museum, Art Gallery of NSW, Artback NT Arts Touring Inc, Cairns Regional Gallery, Parliament House Education Officer Camilla Blunden, Australian War Memorial, University of Newcastle, Robert Swieca on evaluation models, Melbourne Museum, freelance writer/actor Stephen Barker and ScreenSound Australia.
A packed program over 2 days, followed by a day of practical workshops led by Lipsky, obeyed the first and only commandment for performers: Thou shalt not be boring. Lipsky described how he wrote about the concept of gravity by creating Jumping Jack Flash, jester to Queen Gravitas. Though Jack believed only in levity, his Queen proved in the end he couldn't defy gravity. He also demonstrated how the American entrant in the Rooster's Olympics found it difficult to accept that other countries' roosters didn't say "cock-a-doodle-doo" (the French entrant said "coquerico") in a show about understanding other cultures.
Speaking of his play about the debate on stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, which included talking embryos, Lipsky raised the key issue of the forum: cultural integrity. In his context, this was about presenting performances which are true first to the emotional life of complex characters (whether roosters, embryos or historical figures) and only then to the factual information museum educators and curators need to impart. The point is that people remember the scenes - and the embedded information - only if they have emotionally identified with the characters: an interesting twist on the Brechtian theory of theatre. Writing for museum performances is thus as demanding as writing major mainstream plays; and museum pieces are often only 20 minutes long.
From Boston to the Northern Territory, cultural integrity was the common theme. Andrish Saint-Clare of Artback NT explained that "fitting the institution to the performance" is crucial where indigenous performers are engaged. He was highly critical, for example, of galleries using indigenous performers for a first night opener, where the traditional dancers are not paid. This marginalises their performance, as opposed to the "real business" of selling paintings. "Curators," he said, "need to understand the place of performance in indigenous cultures." Performances are not merely re-creations of traditional pieces, but are new creations which are necessary to maintain peoples' cultures.
Institutions need to budget for professional technical support, dramaturgy, appropriate venues, proper negotiation with indigenous elders, and proper payment so that indigenous performances take their proper place in the total Australian cultural scene. He concluded, as many speakers from quite different perspectives agreed, "If you can't do it properly, don't do it."
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This was the second of the biennial forums arranged by the National Museum of Australia as a member of the International Museum Theatre Alliance. There is almost a symbiotic relationship with the Museum of Science in Boston, USA, where 2001 keynote speaker Catherine Hughes established IMTA. This year's keynote speaker was John Lipsky, Associate Professor of Acting and Playwriting at Boston University's College for the Arts, who is also Associate Artistic Director of Vineyard Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard. He writes and directs mainstage plays, as well as shows for the Museum of Science, a Planetarium and the Catalyst Collaborative (about science, scientists and scientific issues) and for the Boston History Collaborative (dramatising Boston's history).
From Australia, NMA Director Dawn Casey welcomed a long list of performers and cultural institution managers, with papers/performances presented by ACT's Jigsaw Theatre Company, Women on a Shoestring, Shortis & Simpson and The Street Theatre (with Violine opening October 30) alongside X-Ray Theatre, ERTH Visual & Physical Inc, storytellers Nigel Sutton, Ed Miller and Mary French, Sovereign Hill Museums Association, Australian National Maritime Museum, Art Gallery of NSW, Artback NT Arts Touring Inc, Cairns Regional Gallery, Parliament House Education Officer Camilla Blunden, Australian War Memorial, University of Newcastle, Robert Swieca on evaluation models, Melbourne Museum, freelance writer/actor Stephen Barker and ScreenSound Australia.
A packed program over 2 days, followed by a day of practical workshops led by Lipsky, obeyed the first and only commandment for performers: Thou shalt not be boring. Lipsky described how he wrote about the concept of gravity by creating Jumping Jack Flash, jester to Queen Gravitas. Though Jack believed only in levity, his Queen proved in the end he couldn't defy gravity. He also demonstrated how the American entrant in the Rooster's Olympics found it difficult to accept that other countries' roosters didn't say "cock-a-doodle-doo" (the French entrant said "coquerico") in a show about understanding other cultures.
Speaking of his play about the debate on stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, which included talking embryos, Lipsky raised the key issue of the forum: cultural integrity. In his context, this was about presenting performances which are true first to the emotional life of complex characters (whether roosters, embryos or historical figures) and only then to the factual information museum educators and curators need to impart. The point is that people remember the scenes - and the embedded information - only if they have emotionally identified with the characters: an interesting twist on the Brechtian theory of theatre. Writing for museum performances is thus as demanding as writing major mainstream plays; and museum pieces are often only 20 minutes long.
From Boston to the Northern Territory, cultural integrity was the common theme. Andrish Saint-Clare of Artback NT explained that "fitting the institution to the performance" is crucial where indigenous performers are engaged. He was highly critical, for example, of galleries using indigenous performers for a first night opener, where the traditional dancers are not paid. This marginalises their performance, as opposed to the "real business" of selling paintings. "Curators," he said, "need to understand the place of performance in indigenous cultures." Performances are not merely re-creations of traditional pieces, but are new creations which are necessary to maintain peoples' cultures.
Institutions need to budget for professional technical support, dramaturgy, appropriate venues, proper negotiation with indigenous elders, and proper payment so that indigenous performances take their proper place in the total Australian cultural scene. He concluded, as many speakers from quite different perspectives agreed, "If you can't do it properly, don't do it."
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 10 October 2003
2003: King Jack from the play Jack and the Midnight Monsters by Kate McNamara
King Jack, adapted by Jennie Vaskess from the play Jack and the Midnight Monsters by Kate McNamara. Original music by Meg Colwell, directed by Tim Hansen. Designer, Hilary Talbot. Canberra Youth Theatre directed by Jenni Vaskess at Ribbon Gum Theatre, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. School holiday season till October 12.
Sensible people like me arrived in time for morning tea before the 11.30 am start last Friday with a hot thermos, a honey sandwich, an umbrella, a cushion and two warm woolly jumpers. So, as you would expect, it snowed.
Though the snow passed over and the local kookaburras appropriately announced dry weather just as the show opened, I was extremely glad of my double jumper and cushion in the open air theatre. Yet the littlies for whom this musical story is designed seemed not to notice the cold, while their parents kept on smiling bravely.
There was plenty to smile at from these young performers, acting and singing in the face of environmental reality: not just the wind, but surrounded by gums without ribbons and not too many epicormic shoots after the January firestorm. In the original play the character Kell represents all of Jack's night-time fears, but Talbot made a mask and costume in fiery colours and shapes, allowing us to blend the convention of a child's midnight monsters with the reality of the bushfire. All the masks for the bird and animal characters were wonderful, one young boy near me tugging at his brother to "Look at the owl!" Mopoke seemed to look straight at you, ready to eat you up, and yet with large eyes innocent of any wrongdoing: nature is as it is.
The story is of King Cracticus Torquatus, the grey butcherbird who has lost his way, and how Jack helps by passing on the Ranger's information so King has the confidence to sing and listen for his family's song, until he is reunited with them. His success empowers him to defeat Kell, showing Jack in turn how his midnight fears can be put in their proper place.
This is a worthy story for littlies, and a worthy community contribution in return for the small grant Canberra Youth Theatre received from the ACT Bushfire Recovery Taskforce to help with this project.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sensible people like me arrived in time for morning tea before the 11.30 am start last Friday with a hot thermos, a honey sandwich, an umbrella, a cushion and two warm woolly jumpers. So, as you would expect, it snowed.
Though the snow passed over and the local kookaburras appropriately announced dry weather just as the show opened, I was extremely glad of my double jumper and cushion in the open air theatre. Yet the littlies for whom this musical story is designed seemed not to notice the cold, while their parents kept on smiling bravely.
There was plenty to smile at from these young performers, acting and singing in the face of environmental reality: not just the wind, but surrounded by gums without ribbons and not too many epicormic shoots after the January firestorm. In the original play the character Kell represents all of Jack's night-time fears, but Talbot made a mask and costume in fiery colours and shapes, allowing us to blend the convention of a child's midnight monsters with the reality of the bushfire. All the masks for the bird and animal characters were wonderful, one young boy near me tugging at his brother to "Look at the owl!" Mopoke seemed to look straight at you, ready to eat you up, and yet with large eyes innocent of any wrongdoing: nature is as it is.
The story is of King Cracticus Torquatus, the grey butcherbird who has lost his way, and how Jack helps by passing on the Ranger's information so King has the confidence to sing and listen for his family's song, until he is reunited with them. His success empowers him to defeat Kell, showing Jack in turn how his midnight fears can be put in their proper place.
This is a worthy story for littlies, and a worthy community contribution in return for the small grant Canberra Youth Theatre received from the ACT Bushfire Recovery Taskforce to help with this project.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 3 October 2003
2003: The Beatification of Newt Berton [and the Great Viagra Robbery] by Chris McDonald
The Beatification of Newt Berton [and the Great Viagra Robbery] by Chris McDonald. Laughing Stock Productions at The Street Theatre Studio October 1-4.
Farcical, anarchical and occasionally satirical, the Beatification of Newt Berton raises the hackles of horror: what if the world were run by the Church of Good Morning Australia? Would a time traveller from 2093 return to try to prevent Newt's beatification, while cracking on to Gretchen with an execrable joke like "Time is not impotent to me!"
Since we have probably seen the last of this play, after its seasons in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, and winning Best Comedy Writing at the 2003 Big Laugh Festival, I can offer some reflective commentary.
Originating from the drama society at Macquarie University, the material is typical undergraduate humour: genitals, farts, sexual references, itchy sports bras, God, the Devil and a drunken angel constitute the core of the jokes. On the more satirical side, the swamping of our lives by advertising and "newstainment" is the focus. Characters fall in love when they both burst into the same advertising jingles on cue, as if they have been set up by a stage hypnotist.
What keeps the show together is a simple storyline about One-Nut (James Pender) and Danny (Heath Franklin), who are soon to be evicted, except that they hope to turn their house into a shrine when Newt Berton is beatified by the Pope on the premises. The comedy comes from constant interruptions as Danny's girlfriend leaves him, their housemate Steve stashes 400 boxes of Viagra in his room, an incredibly fast-talking Avon lady sells them make-up, Siamese twin nuns arrive to represent the Pope, a newsreader with a tv for a head gives us the latest, a silver short skirted time traveller eats One-Nut's preserved testicle ....
The non-sequiturs require rapid changes in timing, accents, costumes and characters, including inveigling members of the audience to become things like a bookshelf and to respond vocally. The cast kept up the pace of verbal and physical jokes and certainly entertained the audience thoroughly for 70 minutes.
Most of the group are or have been Creative Arts students at Macquarie, and some are moving on to professional theatre training, while some have also had work in television and on stage. If comedy be the food of theatre, play on.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Farcical, anarchical and occasionally satirical, the Beatification of Newt Berton raises the hackles of horror: what if the world were run by the Church of Good Morning Australia? Would a time traveller from 2093 return to try to prevent Newt's beatification, while cracking on to Gretchen with an execrable joke like "Time is not impotent to me!"
Since we have probably seen the last of this play, after its seasons in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, and winning Best Comedy Writing at the 2003 Big Laugh Festival, I can offer some reflective commentary.
Originating from the drama society at Macquarie University, the material is typical undergraduate humour: genitals, farts, sexual references, itchy sports bras, God, the Devil and a drunken angel constitute the core of the jokes. On the more satirical side, the swamping of our lives by advertising and "newstainment" is the focus. Characters fall in love when they both burst into the same advertising jingles on cue, as if they have been set up by a stage hypnotist.
What keeps the show together is a simple storyline about One-Nut (James Pender) and Danny (Heath Franklin), who are soon to be evicted, except that they hope to turn their house into a shrine when Newt Berton is beatified by the Pope on the premises. The comedy comes from constant interruptions as Danny's girlfriend leaves him, their housemate Steve stashes 400 boxes of Viagra in his room, an incredibly fast-talking Avon lady sells them make-up, Siamese twin nuns arrive to represent the Pope, a newsreader with a tv for a head gives us the latest, a silver short skirted time traveller eats One-Nut's preserved testicle ....
The non-sequiturs require rapid changes in timing, accents, costumes and characters, including inveigling members of the audience to become things like a bookshelf and to respond vocally. The cast kept up the pace of verbal and physical jokes and certainly entertained the audience thoroughly for 70 minutes.
Most of the group are or have been Creative Arts students at Macquarie, and some are moving on to professional theatre training, while some have also had work in television and on stage. If comedy be the food of theatre, play on.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 20 September 2003
2003: The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett
The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett. Canberra Rep directed by Tony Turner. Theatre 3, September 19 - October 11. Bookings: 6247 4222.
In Los Angeles, so the story goes, Americans were not sure about going to The Madness of George III because they had missed seeing The Madness of George I and II. No wonder George III didn't want anyone to mention America. Lose a colony in 1776 and just see how they turn out. It would be enough to turn your piss purple!
Alan Bennett's play is very British. Jokes abound like the one about Piss the Elder and Piss the Younger, but you don't really need to know too much about 18th Century British politics because Bennett's jokes are not superficial one-liners. The complicated story of the King's apparent madness, the Prince of Wales' machinations and the Whig plot to overthrow the Tories tells itself like a good detective novel.
So if you missed George I and II, don't worry. Tony Turner has directed George III with the right style - just a touch of Feydeau farce in the political characters, but with a proper respect for the distressing situation of the King, and the Queen.
Ian Croker and Naone Carrel come up to the required mark in these roles, while even though skills varied as one would expect in such a large non-professional cast, there were many other strong performances. Duncan Ley as the Prince of Wales certainly left us in no doubt about the unpleasant position which the modern Prince Charles is in ("I've been waiting all my life," he says). Geoffrey Borny's Dr Willis had us persuaded that talking therapy works - though in the end we find it is just as ineffective on the disease of porphyria as bleeding, blistering and the examination of the King's stools.
It was especially good to see all the servants' characters played with great individuality, while Croker's demanding role as a victim of a disease who knows he appears mad but also knows he is not mad elicited deserving applause on opening night. And the excellent costuming by Anna Senior demands special mention.
Though a little flat in the early scenes, first night grew in strength especially in the second half, making this a very worthwhile production to see.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
In Los Angeles, so the story goes, Americans were not sure about going to The Madness of George III because they had missed seeing The Madness of George I and II. No wonder George III didn't want anyone to mention America. Lose a colony in 1776 and just see how they turn out. It would be enough to turn your piss purple!
Alan Bennett's play is very British. Jokes abound like the one about Piss the Elder and Piss the Younger, but you don't really need to know too much about 18th Century British politics because Bennett's jokes are not superficial one-liners. The complicated story of the King's apparent madness, the Prince of Wales' machinations and the Whig plot to overthrow the Tories tells itself like a good detective novel.
So if you missed George I and II, don't worry. Tony Turner has directed George III with the right style - just a touch of Feydeau farce in the political characters, but with a proper respect for the distressing situation of the King, and the Queen.
Ian Croker and Naone Carrel come up to the required mark in these roles, while even though skills varied as one would expect in such a large non-professional cast, there were many other strong performances. Duncan Ley as the Prince of Wales certainly left us in no doubt about the unpleasant position which the modern Prince Charles is in ("I've been waiting all my life," he says). Geoffrey Borny's Dr Willis had us persuaded that talking therapy works - though in the end we find it is just as ineffective on the disease of porphyria as bleeding, blistering and the examination of the King's stools.
It was especially good to see all the servants' characters played with great individuality, while Croker's demanding role as a victim of a disease who knows he appears mad but also knows he is not mad elicited deserving applause on opening night. And the excellent costuming by Anna Senior demands special mention.
Though a little flat in the early scenes, first night grew in strength especially in the second half, making this a very worthwhile production to see.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 18 September 2003
2003: The Deep, based on the book by Tim Winton
The Deep, based on the book by Tim Winton, adapted by Justin Cheek. Spare Parts Puppet Theatre directed by Noriko Nishimoto. The Playhouse September 17-20.
Absolute envy was my main feeling at the end of this beautiful presentation of how Alice overcame her fear of swimming in "the deep". She had a mum and a dad, a brother and a dog who all swam every day just for fun. I was brought up in chilly London among people who always wore a raincoat so we wouldn't catch cold, and never, ever, went into the water.
So when Alice, fascinated by the dolphin, without thinking, forgot her fear, and spent such a wonderful time among the silver fish and blue-green bubbles, I just felt so jealous. I too knew all about building sandcastles, but I still can't swim.
But then I remembered how her funny round-tummied dad and her long-tall mum had kept her going by saying how different people can do different things. I realised that The Deep is about more than just learning to swim. It's an engaging metaphor for learning to let go of your inhibitions and dive into whatever you really feel that you want to do in life. I guess the theatre is one of those things for me, so now I feel much better.
Like the children around me, from babes in arms to grown up children (including the director of Canberra Theatre, David Whitney and even the DPP Richard Refshauge), I knew this was great theatre. Not a show which entices the children into crude cheering and booing, The Deep is subtle in its effect.
Even the very young could understand the humour in the relationships among the boat people, when they raced each other, or commented on Alice's predicament, or were caught in a sudden swell. Everyone jumped when Alice sat on the crab, and enjoyed the joke when Alice tickled the crab in return. There were long periods of almost absolute silence as the children absorbed the enjoyment of being in the deep with Alice, played out in fluid movement, luminescent colour, and a meditative soundscape.
50 minutes in The Deep immerses children in excellent theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Absolute envy was my main feeling at the end of this beautiful presentation of how Alice overcame her fear of swimming in "the deep". She had a mum and a dad, a brother and a dog who all swam every day just for fun. I was brought up in chilly London among people who always wore a raincoat so we wouldn't catch cold, and never, ever, went into the water.
So when Alice, fascinated by the dolphin, without thinking, forgot her fear, and spent such a wonderful time among the silver fish and blue-green bubbles, I just felt so jealous. I too knew all about building sandcastles, but I still can't swim.
But then I remembered how her funny round-tummied dad and her long-tall mum had kept her going by saying how different people can do different things. I realised that The Deep is about more than just learning to swim. It's an engaging metaphor for learning to let go of your inhibitions and dive into whatever you really feel that you want to do in life. I guess the theatre is one of those things for me, so now I feel much better.
Like the children around me, from babes in arms to grown up children (including the director of Canberra Theatre, David Whitney and even the DPP Richard Refshauge), I knew this was great theatre. Not a show which entices the children into crude cheering and booing, The Deep is subtle in its effect.
Even the very young could understand the humour in the relationships among the boat people, when they raced each other, or commented on Alice's predicament, or were caught in a sudden swell. Everyone jumped when Alice sat on the crab, and enjoyed the joke when Alice tickled the crab in return. There were long periods of almost absolute silence as the children absorbed the enjoyment of being in the deep with Alice, played out in fluid movement, luminescent colour, and a meditative soundscape.
50 minutes in The Deep immerses children in excellent theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 12 September 2003
2003: Holy Day by Andrew Bovell. Feature article
Recently Prime Minister Howard announced that he was no longer being asked to say "sorry". National Sorry Day Committee co-chair Audrey Kinnear responded, "He has shown he hasn't got the heart to do it. So we'll wait till we get another prime minister who has got a heart."
The Sydney Theatre Company production of Holy Day by Andrew Bovell comes to Canberra at the end of this month. Watching it at The Wharf in Sydney I wondered, Is this a black arm-band I see before me? On the one hand, yes - but on the other hand this dark drama is much more elemental than an intellectual discussion about the left-wing anti-imperialist view of our history as opposed to the right-wing denial of an Aboriginal holocaust.
Whatever it is, this production is a heartfelt tour de force for Pamela Rabe as Nora, the proprietor of an early 1800's outback Travellers Rest "halfway from where they come from and halfway to wherever they're going", leading a quality ensemble. The elements of flooding rains, drought and everlasting distance, invoked in true Dorothea Mackellar fashion, are forces of immediate impact out of which twisted, damaged, even bizarre characters are formed. Dry misshapen souls, like weird mallee roots, are contrasted with the dangerous play of light on the waterhole. "Do you think the people in England can imagine a sky like this?" asks Goundry (Steve Le Marquand), murderer and paedophile.
The forces which bind and destroy white and black, far more than mere prejudice or even the simple need for economic survival, are represented in symbolic characters. The stolen Aboriginal child (Natasha Wanganeen), named Obedience by her love-starved God-less Irish "mother" Nora. The missionary's wife Elizabeth (Belinda McClory), so God-obsessed that she creates black chaos in this isolated universe. The boy Cornelius (Abe Forsythe) stolen and used by the fiend Goundry. Epstein (Mitchell Butel), an honest but wandering Jew. The right-thinking sheep farmer Wakefield (Anthony Phelan) who in the end knows he cannot stop the massacre down by the river. An Aboriginal woman Linda (Kyas Sherriff) who confesses a lie, like Joan of Arc, and like St Joan can only retract it through suicide.
And then there is Elizabeth's missing white child, so reminiscent of Azaria Chamberlain - a mystery at the heart of Australian experience, with no satisfactory conclusion. Without a body, as Wakefield tells Elizabeth, we will never know the truth.
Towards the end, before her own body is added to the toll, Obedience tells us the number of bodies down by the river on Holy Day. Should we be sorry? Should we say "sorry"?
Bovell's play perhaps suffers a little from too much heart, tending towards melodrama rather like plays from the 19th Century in which Holy Day is set. Emotional strings are pulled, but for the purpose of creating a new understanding of the effects of privation and extreme poverty on the white "pioneers" with their absolute inability to appreciate the strength of the surrounding black society which knew how to live, rather than just survive, in the Australian environment. Are we to blame these people who are shown to be so destructive of their own, let alone Aboriginal, society.
Holy Day could be seen as Bovell's attempt to write the Australian equivalent of Arthur Miller's American classic The Crucible. Although, in my opinion, Bovell is not as great a craftsman as Miller, and he doesn't have available the same sort of well-known historical event as the Salem witchcraft trials to use in the service of raising our modern consciousness, he has created a similar sense of panic when social norms break down.
Acting out these panic stricken characters would not be easy, one would think. I spoke to young Pitjantjatjara woman Natasha Wanganeen (also in Rabbit Proof Fence), the widely experienced Anthony Phelan and mother-figure (backstage as well as in the play) Pamela Rabe and found that, despite the complications of plot and the proliferation of themes, Bovell's delineation of the characters give them each a clear guide. In working through the convoluted details of events in the first week of rehearsals, they discovered why each character tells lies or deliberately withholds the truth at each point.
It is the story of the lost child which becomes the central spine of the drama, but, they explained, each character has his or her own unrelenting demands, however twisted their motivation, which propel each actor on to the bitter end.
Bitter for the characters, maybe, but not so for Natasha playing Obedience. On first reading the script she wondered if she could cope with the horror of her character's story, but is now proud of her role in representing the truth of her people's experience, and pleased that a white writer has been able to understand. For all the actors the play represents a commitment to exposing the lie in Wakefield's admonishment to Elizabeth "You and I will be silent about what has passed. For what is not spoken will eventually fade". They believe the truth must be spoken because only then can we all be reconciled to our past history and to each other across classes and cultures.
The strength of the play as Natasha sees it is that the story does not lay the blame on the audience. She and Pamela observed that, especially for younger audiences, it is the working out of the mystery surrounding the missing baby that grabs attention. Then, in the end, the play becomes a powerful source of thinking about our past and our future as Australians.
So do we need to apologise for Australia? Walking back through Sydney I noted Sandringham Garden in Hyde Park, dedicated as a "Memorial to King George IV and King George VI" in faded gold - tying this penal colony with unbreakable bonds to the old British Empire. No wonder the ex-convict pioneers went mad.
Then I saw the quintessential Kenworth truck with the proud but heartless label "Bitch from Hell II". Presumably other trucks are numbered I, III and so on. If this is the world-view of the 2003 Australian truck driver, then we all have much to be sorry for. Holy Days are surely ahead otherwise.
Holy Day by Andrew Bovell
Sydney Theatre Company
The Playhouse
September 30 - October 4
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
Group and School Bookings (suitable Years 10-12): 6243 5709
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The Sydney Theatre Company production of Holy Day by Andrew Bovell comes to Canberra at the end of this month. Watching it at The Wharf in Sydney I wondered, Is this a black arm-band I see before me? On the one hand, yes - but on the other hand this dark drama is much more elemental than an intellectual discussion about the left-wing anti-imperialist view of our history as opposed to the right-wing denial of an Aboriginal holocaust.
Whatever it is, this production is a heartfelt tour de force for Pamela Rabe as Nora, the proprietor of an early 1800's outback Travellers Rest "halfway from where they come from and halfway to wherever they're going", leading a quality ensemble. The elements of flooding rains, drought and everlasting distance, invoked in true Dorothea Mackellar fashion, are forces of immediate impact out of which twisted, damaged, even bizarre characters are formed. Dry misshapen souls, like weird mallee roots, are contrasted with the dangerous play of light on the waterhole. "Do you think the people in England can imagine a sky like this?" asks Goundry (Steve Le Marquand), murderer and paedophile.
The forces which bind and destroy white and black, far more than mere prejudice or even the simple need for economic survival, are represented in symbolic characters. The stolen Aboriginal child (Natasha Wanganeen), named Obedience by her love-starved God-less Irish "mother" Nora. The missionary's wife Elizabeth (Belinda McClory), so God-obsessed that she creates black chaos in this isolated universe. The boy Cornelius (Abe Forsythe) stolen and used by the fiend Goundry. Epstein (Mitchell Butel), an honest but wandering Jew. The right-thinking sheep farmer Wakefield (Anthony Phelan) who in the end knows he cannot stop the massacre down by the river. An Aboriginal woman Linda (Kyas Sherriff) who confesses a lie, like Joan of Arc, and like St Joan can only retract it through suicide.
And then there is Elizabeth's missing white child, so reminiscent of Azaria Chamberlain - a mystery at the heart of Australian experience, with no satisfactory conclusion. Without a body, as Wakefield tells Elizabeth, we will never know the truth.
Towards the end, before her own body is added to the toll, Obedience tells us the number of bodies down by the river on Holy Day. Should we be sorry? Should we say "sorry"?
Bovell's play perhaps suffers a little from too much heart, tending towards melodrama rather like plays from the 19th Century in which Holy Day is set. Emotional strings are pulled, but for the purpose of creating a new understanding of the effects of privation and extreme poverty on the white "pioneers" with their absolute inability to appreciate the strength of the surrounding black society which knew how to live, rather than just survive, in the Australian environment. Are we to blame these people who are shown to be so destructive of their own, let alone Aboriginal, society.
Holy Day could be seen as Bovell's attempt to write the Australian equivalent of Arthur Miller's American classic The Crucible. Although, in my opinion, Bovell is not as great a craftsman as Miller, and he doesn't have available the same sort of well-known historical event as the Salem witchcraft trials to use in the service of raising our modern consciousness, he has created a similar sense of panic when social norms break down.
Acting out these panic stricken characters would not be easy, one would think. I spoke to young Pitjantjatjara woman Natasha Wanganeen (also in Rabbit Proof Fence), the widely experienced Anthony Phelan and mother-figure (backstage as well as in the play) Pamela Rabe and found that, despite the complications of plot and the proliferation of themes, Bovell's delineation of the characters give them each a clear guide. In working through the convoluted details of events in the first week of rehearsals, they discovered why each character tells lies or deliberately withholds the truth at each point.
It is the story of the lost child which becomes the central spine of the drama, but, they explained, each character has his or her own unrelenting demands, however twisted their motivation, which propel each actor on to the bitter end.
Bitter for the characters, maybe, but not so for Natasha playing Obedience. On first reading the script she wondered if she could cope with the horror of her character's story, but is now proud of her role in representing the truth of her people's experience, and pleased that a white writer has been able to understand. For all the actors the play represents a commitment to exposing the lie in Wakefield's admonishment to Elizabeth "You and I will be silent about what has passed. For what is not spoken will eventually fade". They believe the truth must be spoken because only then can we all be reconciled to our past history and to each other across classes and cultures.
The strength of the play as Natasha sees it is that the story does not lay the blame on the audience. She and Pamela observed that, especially for younger audiences, it is the working out of the mystery surrounding the missing baby that grabs attention. Then, in the end, the play becomes a powerful source of thinking about our past and our future as Australians.
So do we need to apologise for Australia? Walking back through Sydney I noted Sandringham Garden in Hyde Park, dedicated as a "Memorial to King George IV and King George VI" in faded gold - tying this penal colony with unbreakable bonds to the old British Empire. No wonder the ex-convict pioneers went mad.
Then I saw the quintessential Kenworth truck with the proud but heartless label "Bitch from Hell II". Presumably other trucks are numbered I, III and so on. If this is the world-view of the 2003 Australian truck driver, then we all have much to be sorry for. Holy Days are surely ahead otherwise.
Holy Day by Andrew Bovell
Sydney Theatre Company
The Playhouse
September 30 - October 4
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
Group and School Bookings (suitable Years 10-12): 6243 5709
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 22 August 2003
2003: Messages and Take Two. Australian Theatre of the Deaf
Messages and Take Two. Australian Theatre of the Deaf, directed by Tony Strachan, at Canberra Grammar School August 21-23 7pm
AToD has been a professional company for 25 years, performing for the general public as well as the deaf community, providing teaching workshops for children and adults, and taking theatre-in-education into schools.
Messages is a series of humorous vignettes about communication designed for primary schools, while Take Two, for secondary schools, is the story of a Chinese young man backpacking around Australia and a practical young Australian country woman who meet at university. Despite the differences in their cultures and personalities, a bond is formed and romance blossoms, not because they are both deaf but because they learn to appreciate difference.
I found good fun in the Messages cameos of situations like communicating on the Titanic just before the iceberg, body language between a girl (Romy Bartz) and two boys (Michael Ng and Mathew Glenday) on the beach in Victorian England, and how the first astronaut on the moon meets a friendly bug-eyed monster and tries to tell his story back home.
The message in Take Two was plain enough but I thought the storyline was too simplistic for the theme to have much effect on modern young people. When I think back to mime artists like Marcel Marceau and the erstwhile Canadian Mime Theatre, Take Two seems rather naive and old-fashioned in concept compared to work I saw maybe 20 years ago. The characters were modern enough - the country girl likes building engines and is studying Vet Science, while the Chinese boy sees an opportunity in going abroad to study Architecture, but the situations (especially the stereotyped Chinese restaurant owner, a character I found offensive rather than funny) showed too little subtlety.
Other shows in the offing include Interpretation (at the Performance Space in Sydney in November), an adult study of the layers of meaning for deaf and hearing people, where hearing actors play interpreters, deaf actors interpret, and professional interpreters sign and interpret in speech for the audience. Comedy and ironic misunderstandings result in what should be a fascinating entertainment.
Next year there will be a cabaret which will tour nationally, titled Dislabelled (not disabled), and a deaf musical Friction.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
AToD has been a professional company for 25 years, performing for the general public as well as the deaf community, providing teaching workshops for children and adults, and taking theatre-in-education into schools.
Messages is a series of humorous vignettes about communication designed for primary schools, while Take Two, for secondary schools, is the story of a Chinese young man backpacking around Australia and a practical young Australian country woman who meet at university. Despite the differences in their cultures and personalities, a bond is formed and romance blossoms, not because they are both deaf but because they learn to appreciate difference.
I found good fun in the Messages cameos of situations like communicating on the Titanic just before the iceberg, body language between a girl (Romy Bartz) and two boys (Michael Ng and Mathew Glenday) on the beach in Victorian England, and how the first astronaut on the moon meets a friendly bug-eyed monster and tries to tell his story back home.
The message in Take Two was plain enough but I thought the storyline was too simplistic for the theme to have much effect on modern young people. When I think back to mime artists like Marcel Marceau and the erstwhile Canadian Mime Theatre, Take Two seems rather naive and old-fashioned in concept compared to work I saw maybe 20 years ago. The characters were modern enough - the country girl likes building engines and is studying Vet Science, while the Chinese boy sees an opportunity in going abroad to study Architecture, but the situations (especially the stereotyped Chinese restaurant owner, a character I found offensive rather than funny) showed too little subtlety.
Other shows in the offing include Interpretation (at the Performance Space in Sydney in November), an adult study of the layers of meaning for deaf and hearing people, where hearing actors play interpreters, deaf actors interpret, and professional interpreters sign and interpret in speech for the audience. Comedy and ironic misunderstandings result in what should be a fascinating entertainment.
Next year there will be a cabaret which will tour nationally, titled Dislabelled (not disabled), and a deaf musical Friction.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2003: Bell Shakespeare's As You Like It. Preview feature article.
As ... You ... Like ... It. Just think about it. What sort of "it" do you like? How would you like it? Who would you like it with? How would you like it to finish? Who asked you in the first place?
William Shakespeare did just about 400 years ago.
He took what was then a modern 1590 novel, Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge, and posed the ultimate post-modern conundrum: truth is a matter of fact, but since facts have already happened and are therefore in the past, and the past is another country, facts are no more than stories we create which we believe to be true. Ergo, truth, when properly deconstructed, is fiction. As the very modern cynic Jaques says in Act 2: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."
But As You Like It is real enough, appearing at The Playhouse September 4 - 13. The Bell Shakespeare Company brings us director Lindy Davies, whose credentials in theatre go back to the original Marvellous Melbourne at the Pram Factory where the new wave in Australian theatre is claimed (by Melburnians) to have begun. Along the way, mixed in among work in Australia, Britain and Russia, Davies taught Cate Blanchett at NIDA, telling Geoffrey Rush about this "astonishing young woman in her class", and nowadays is Head of Acting at the Victorian College of the Arts.
She brings with her another young woman star, Alice McConnell (Caitlin in MDA)to play Rosalind, as well as a young man who has played Euripedes in Xena, the Warrior Princess, Joe Manning, playing the love-lorn Orlando.
Lorn or not, Manning says the Lindy Davies technique of exploring "what the text does to us" has led him to find a boldness and purity in Orlando. He is on fire with love. The comedy, Manning says, is in the complex situations which grow from the characters' completely different perspectives. Sounds very post-modern indeed.
And you may remember Jennie Tate's wonderful set design and costumes for Bell's The Comedy of Errors last year. A close friend and colleague of Davies, Tate has gone this year into chandeliers, mirrors, crystals and jewels to create a "spectacular world of mystery and magic". As you will like it, without a doubt, while also being a sparkling symbol of see-through and reflection, of myriad perspectives, of shifting surfaces of understanding.
Having just finished working in television, returning to the stage for Alice McConnell makes her "feel like an absolute virgin", which suits the character of Rosalind very well. Letting the text reveal the character, as McConnell describes the Davies process, takes her to a Rosalind who follows the extremes of her instincts. In pretending to be a man, Ganymede, she finds absolute freedom as a woman. She flirts like mad, pushing her luck when she can see she is on to a good thing. While having such fun, she discovers an inner empowerment not merely as a woman but as a person, as an individual.
This production also brings Canberra's Patrick Brammall home for a visit. After Marist College, Free Rain Theatre, a year at the Actors' Centre in Sydney, and a lucky break getting late into VCA when someone else resigned, he worked for Bell Company's Actors at Work Education Team in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.
Brammall plays William, the rustic lover of Audrey who is beaten to the altar by Touchstone's wit. Rather than accept poor William's sad fate, however, Brammall suggests the audience come prepared for his exit (Act V Scene 1) with placards to say that Touchstone is really a bounder, in fact just a clown. Audrey will regret her marriage to him, and William, though rather dim it is true, should have his place in the sun. And why not? Surely in Shakespeare's day the downtrodden in the pit would have stood up for poor William.
After all, as Lindy Davies says "The characters embark on a journey in which they discover the joy that love can bring and the virtues of loyalty and moral courage. They are empowered through standing up for their beliefs and by venturing into the unknown."
The other virtue Davies insists on is rigorous emotional and physical training of her actors. She praises Bell Shakespeare Company for supporting her approach and we can be assured of what she calls "virtuosity" in the performances we will see. Like top quality concert musicians, her actors become virtuosos who play their instruments - their bodies and brains - with consummate skill.
Consummation is, of course, what As You Like It is really about, with the celebration of 4 marriages in the final scene. Much witty word-play and flirting in the forest, skilfully acted, is great fun for us to watch. Australian actors are noted for their rough and tumble irreverence, in contrast to Americans' demand for intensity and Britons' focus on reverence for the art. Lindy Davies' early experience at the Pram Factory has combined with her later work training with Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski to bring both the priest and the clown together, just as Shakespeare did in his plays.
Shakespeare's, of course, is the art the British are so reverent about. But, as the film Shakespeare in Love suggested, William enjoyed the moment, pushed the envelope, and sought consummation in interesting ways. More post-modern than you can poke a stick (or whatever) at. Let's just do it, As You Like It, with
Bell Shakespeare
As You Like It
Canberra Playhouse
Thursday September 4 to Saturday September 13 7.30pm
Matinee Sat September 6 1.30pm
Mon September 8 6.30pm
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
Don't forget your placards for poor unconsummated William's exit.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
William Shakespeare did just about 400 years ago.
He took what was then a modern 1590 novel, Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge, and posed the ultimate post-modern conundrum: truth is a matter of fact, but since facts have already happened and are therefore in the past, and the past is another country, facts are no more than stories we create which we believe to be true. Ergo, truth, when properly deconstructed, is fiction. As the very modern cynic Jaques says in Act 2: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."
But As You Like It is real enough, appearing at The Playhouse September 4 - 13. The Bell Shakespeare Company brings us director Lindy Davies, whose credentials in theatre go back to the original Marvellous Melbourne at the Pram Factory where the new wave in Australian theatre is claimed (by Melburnians) to have begun. Along the way, mixed in among work in Australia, Britain and Russia, Davies taught Cate Blanchett at NIDA, telling Geoffrey Rush about this "astonishing young woman in her class", and nowadays is Head of Acting at the Victorian College of the Arts.
She brings with her another young woman star, Alice McConnell (Caitlin in MDA)to play Rosalind, as well as a young man who has played Euripedes in Xena, the Warrior Princess, Joe Manning, playing the love-lorn Orlando.
Lorn or not, Manning says the Lindy Davies technique of exploring "what the text does to us" has led him to find a boldness and purity in Orlando. He is on fire with love. The comedy, Manning says, is in the complex situations which grow from the characters' completely different perspectives. Sounds very post-modern indeed.
And you may remember Jennie Tate's wonderful set design and costumes for Bell's The Comedy of Errors last year. A close friend and colleague of Davies, Tate has gone this year into chandeliers, mirrors, crystals and jewels to create a "spectacular world of mystery and magic". As you will like it, without a doubt, while also being a sparkling symbol of see-through and reflection, of myriad perspectives, of shifting surfaces of understanding.
Having just finished working in television, returning to the stage for Alice McConnell makes her "feel like an absolute virgin", which suits the character of Rosalind very well. Letting the text reveal the character, as McConnell describes the Davies process, takes her to a Rosalind who follows the extremes of her instincts. In pretending to be a man, Ganymede, she finds absolute freedom as a woman. She flirts like mad, pushing her luck when she can see she is on to a good thing. While having such fun, she discovers an inner empowerment not merely as a woman but as a person, as an individual.
This production also brings Canberra's Patrick Brammall home for a visit. After Marist College, Free Rain Theatre, a year at the Actors' Centre in Sydney, and a lucky break getting late into VCA when someone else resigned, he worked for Bell Company's Actors at Work Education Team in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.
Brammall plays William, the rustic lover of Audrey who is beaten to the altar by Touchstone's wit. Rather than accept poor William's sad fate, however, Brammall suggests the audience come prepared for his exit (Act V Scene 1) with placards to say that Touchstone is really a bounder, in fact just a clown. Audrey will regret her marriage to him, and William, though rather dim it is true, should have his place in the sun. And why not? Surely in Shakespeare's day the downtrodden in the pit would have stood up for poor William.
After all, as Lindy Davies says "The characters embark on a journey in which they discover the joy that love can bring and the virtues of loyalty and moral courage. They are empowered through standing up for their beliefs and by venturing into the unknown."
The other virtue Davies insists on is rigorous emotional and physical training of her actors. She praises Bell Shakespeare Company for supporting her approach and we can be assured of what she calls "virtuosity" in the performances we will see. Like top quality concert musicians, her actors become virtuosos who play their instruments - their bodies and brains - with consummate skill.
Consummation is, of course, what As You Like It is really about, with the celebration of 4 marriages in the final scene. Much witty word-play and flirting in the forest, skilfully acted, is great fun for us to watch. Australian actors are noted for their rough and tumble irreverence, in contrast to Americans' demand for intensity and Britons' focus on reverence for the art. Lindy Davies' early experience at the Pram Factory has combined with her later work training with Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski to bring both the priest and the clown together, just as Shakespeare did in his plays.
Shakespeare's, of course, is the art the British are so reverent about. But, as the film Shakespeare in Love suggested, William enjoyed the moment, pushed the envelope, and sought consummation in interesting ways. More post-modern than you can poke a stick (or whatever) at. Let's just do it, As You Like It, with
Bell Shakespeare
As You Like It
Canberra Playhouse
Thursday September 4 to Saturday September 13 7.30pm
Matinee Sat September 6 1.30pm
Mon September 8 6.30pm
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
Don't forget your placards for poor unconsummated William's exit.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 21 August 2003
2003: Conversations with the Dead by Richard Frankland
THEATRE BY FRANK McKONE previously published in The Canberra Times, August 2003.
Conversations with the Dead by Richard Frankland. Company Belvoir B directed by Wesley Enoch at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, till August 31, 2003, 8pm.
I have been waiting for many decades for an Australian play which would hit dead centre. David Williamson tries, but even his recent therapeutic Conversations are too neat for reality. Louis Nowra and Alma de Groen get near at times. Last year I thought Adam Cook's version of Patrick White's novel The Aunt's Story was very close to the guts of the big dramas like Sophocles' Antigone, Shakespeare's King Lear, or Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
I'm not talking academic airy-fairy bullshit here. I'm talking about plays that churn you up because you know that at any time you are as vulnerable as Antigone, who only wanted to do the right thing by her dead brother, or Willy Loman, whose life in this world full of salesmen was only hype and self-advertisement, with no life at all once you are 'past it'.
I'm talking about what Dean Carey said at the launch of a new book Don't Tell Me, Show Me by Adam Macaulay (Currency Press) in which directors talk about acting: "If I'm going to spend three hours of my time in a theatre I want to be shown something extra-ordinary". [please keep the hyphen]
The key to why Conversations with the Dead is extraordinary lies in both the writing and the staging. Frankland, writing out of his direct experience as a researcher for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, has found a voice in poetry, music, and the character of Jack, played with remarkable emotional and physical energy by Wayne Blair.
As Jack struggles against his own demons, including the ingrained sense of inadequacy which the past 200 years has injected into Aboriginal people, he asks questions of himself which we all ask of ourselves when faced with a seemingly impossible task. We see him, in a clifftop scene reminiscent of King Lear's inviting the storm to destroy him, face up to the images and voices of the dead whose spirits are borne in the harsh calls of black crows and the unpredictable power of the wind so near to blowing him away.
Enoch's direction, working with young designer Ralph Myers and top actors Luke Carroll, Elaine Crombie, Lillian Crombie and Rachael Maza, turns every ordinary action, word and prop, every shadow, every light, into an extraordinary symbol of Jack's despair: a piece of rope, a power cord, football socks, a knife, and pistol bullets carefully made to stand up before one is chosen to go in the chamber.
But, unlike the usual tragic characters, Jack does not die. He is still here, as the Aboriginal people are still here, and he wonders about other people leading their ordinary lives - he wonders about us - and what we would do if we knew all that he knows about the 99 deaths he investigated, the other 25 deaths up to 1989 the Commission decided not to investigate, the deaths rising from 11 in 1991 to 19 in 2001, and the deaths still happening in custody today. If we knew, as he says, "all that every Koori knows".
So Frankland's play, now trimmed taut by Wesley Enoch, is the central Australian tragedy I have been seeking. Rather than feeling sorry for Jack, however, we are forced to see the tragedy in ourselves. As Lear understands his role in the death of his favourite daughter Cordelia; as Linda Loman sees all the human forces, including her own attitudes, which have made Willy kill himself; so we know that we have failed Jack's people.
Jack faces the truth, learns at last who he is, and is not afraid to converse with the dead. Can the rest of us do at least as much as Edgar advises at the end of King Lear: "The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."
Conversations with the Dead by Richard Frankland. Company Belvoir B directed by Wesley Enoch at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, till August 31, 2003, 8pm.
I have been waiting for many decades for an Australian play which would hit dead centre. David Williamson tries, but even his recent therapeutic Conversations are too neat for reality. Louis Nowra and Alma de Groen get near at times. Last year I thought Adam Cook's version of Patrick White's novel The Aunt's Story was very close to the guts of the big dramas like Sophocles' Antigone, Shakespeare's King Lear, or Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
I'm not talking academic airy-fairy bullshit here. I'm talking about plays that churn you up because you know that at any time you are as vulnerable as Antigone, who only wanted to do the right thing by her dead brother, or Willy Loman, whose life in this world full of salesmen was only hype and self-advertisement, with no life at all once you are 'past it'.
I'm talking about what Dean Carey said at the launch of a new book Don't Tell Me, Show Me by Adam Macaulay (Currency Press) in which directors talk about acting: "If I'm going to spend three hours of my time in a theatre I want to be shown something extra-ordinary". [please keep the hyphen]
The key to why Conversations with the Dead is extraordinary lies in both the writing and the staging. Frankland, writing out of his direct experience as a researcher for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, has found a voice in poetry, music, and the character of Jack, played with remarkable emotional and physical energy by Wayne Blair.
As Jack struggles against his own demons, including the ingrained sense of inadequacy which the past 200 years has injected into Aboriginal people, he asks questions of himself which we all ask of ourselves when faced with a seemingly impossible task. We see him, in a clifftop scene reminiscent of King Lear's inviting the storm to destroy him, face up to the images and voices of the dead whose spirits are borne in the harsh calls of black crows and the unpredictable power of the wind so near to blowing him away.
Enoch's direction, working with young designer Ralph Myers and top actors Luke Carroll, Elaine Crombie, Lillian Crombie and Rachael Maza, turns every ordinary action, word and prop, every shadow, every light, into an extraordinary symbol of Jack's despair: a piece of rope, a power cord, football socks, a knife, and pistol bullets carefully made to stand up before one is chosen to go in the chamber.
But, unlike the usual tragic characters, Jack does not die. He is still here, as the Aboriginal people are still here, and he wonders about other people leading their ordinary lives - he wonders about us - and what we would do if we knew all that he knows about the 99 deaths he investigated, the other 25 deaths up to 1989 the Commission decided not to investigate, the deaths rising from 11 in 1991 to 19 in 2001, and the deaths still happening in custody today. If we knew, as he says, "all that every Koori knows".
So Frankland's play, now trimmed taut by Wesley Enoch, is the central Australian tragedy I have been seeking. Rather than feeling sorry for Jack, however, we are forced to see the tragedy in ourselves. As Lear understands his role in the death of his favourite daughter Cordelia; as Linda Loman sees all the human forces, including her own attitudes, which have made Willy kill himself; so we know that we have failed Jack's people.
Jack faces the truth, learns at last who he is, and is not afraid to converse with the dead. Can the rest of us do at least as much as Edgar advises at the end of King Lear: "The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."
Wednesday, 20 August 2003
2003: It Stands Alone by John Breen
It Stands Alone by John Breen. Ross Mollison Productions. Directed by Wayne Harrison. Canberra Playhouse August 19-23.
"If you pay a visit to Ireland, you are taken in at first by all that extremely rapid, very clever kind of gabble; they talk and tell stories and are amusing for a while, but after a little time you discover the interest does not really sustain itself."
In my own self-defence, I quote a famous Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, who has written exactly my reaction to It Stands Alone. He wrote this in 1919; things haven't changed.
The story of how Munster defeated the All Blacks 12-0 in 1978 has been turned into a Mouse That Roared myth which John Breen takes as a given truth. The mawkish sentimental ending, singing Alone It Stands about this "little Isle" as if winning a football match gives Ireland all the dignity and freedom it deserves just turned my stomach.
Although the cleverly choreographed clowning and slapstick cameos which represented the football match were performed by the ensemble with considerable skill, and were suitably rewarded with laughter, the references to the real world outside football were made but were allowed to die on the vine when they should have grown to significant fruition.
The death of Donal Canniffe's father from heart attack while his son was on the field was not tragic (as claimed by the author in his notes): it was no more than a case of unfortunate timing. Gerry's failure to be with his wife for the birth of their twins was turned into a weak joke about the names she gives them. A brief discussion about Ireland glorifying its failures disappeared without a trace of development after it got its laugh. And the parallel story of the young teenager gangs' bonfire competition wasn't even funny. When the fire was lit and explosions of bullets nicked from one of the terrorist groups made the kids duck for cover, there was an opportunity for some real satire, or a dramatic shift into tragedy. But absolutely nothing happened. The next little cameo joke appeared and all reality was forgotten.
Go along for a humorous replay of a rugby game with a few standard jokes about sheep in New Zealand and some rough language concerning various kinds of balls, but don't bother if you want to see anything subtle, theatrically exciting or seriously satirical. Don't blame the actors: they're as good or rather better than the script allows them to be.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"If you pay a visit to Ireland, you are taken in at first by all that extremely rapid, very clever kind of gabble; they talk and tell stories and are amusing for a while, but after a little time you discover the interest does not really sustain itself."
In my own self-defence, I quote a famous Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, who has written exactly my reaction to It Stands Alone. He wrote this in 1919; things haven't changed.
The story of how Munster defeated the All Blacks 12-0 in 1978 has been turned into a Mouse That Roared myth which John Breen takes as a given truth. The mawkish sentimental ending, singing Alone It Stands about this "little Isle" as if winning a football match gives Ireland all the dignity and freedom it deserves just turned my stomach.
Although the cleverly choreographed clowning and slapstick cameos which represented the football match were performed by the ensemble with considerable skill, and were suitably rewarded with laughter, the references to the real world outside football were made but were allowed to die on the vine when they should have grown to significant fruition.
The death of Donal Canniffe's father from heart attack while his son was on the field was not tragic (as claimed by the author in his notes): it was no more than a case of unfortunate timing. Gerry's failure to be with his wife for the birth of their twins was turned into a weak joke about the names she gives them. A brief discussion about Ireland glorifying its failures disappeared without a trace of development after it got its laugh. And the parallel story of the young teenager gangs' bonfire competition wasn't even funny. When the fire was lit and explosions of bullets nicked from one of the terrorist groups made the kids duck for cover, there was an opportunity for some real satire, or a dramatic shift into tragedy. But absolutely nothing happened. The next little cameo joke appeared and all reality was forgotten.
Go along for a humorous replay of a rugby game with a few standard jokes about sheep in New Zealand and some rough language concerning various kinds of balls, but don't bother if you want to see anything subtle, theatrically exciting or seriously satirical. Don't blame the actors: they're as good or rather better than the script allows them to be.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 14 August 2003
2003: In Cold Light by Duncan Ley
In Cold Light by Duncan Ley. New Century Productions directed by Stephen Pike at Theatre 3 Wed-Sat August 14-30.
It's not fashionable to talk too directly of the ethics in telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Too many people in positions of responsibility might be embarrassed, and we should respect their feelings after all. In Cold Light is an old-fashioned play on this point, and therefore is a highly relevant allegorical investigation of social leaders like Governors-General, Prime and other Ministers, and business CEOs of recent years.
The author, and indeed God, will not permit me to reveal much of the plot of The Inspector's (Duncan Ley) examination of Father Christian Lamori (Michael Sparks), Deputy Principal of St Matthew's Boys' School. The Inspector interrogates at times obliquely, sometimes bluntly, once or twice even violently, but always unswervingly. It takes only an hour and a half for the shamelessly symbolically named Lamori to reveal his inner life, and the manner of his leaving it.
If this sounds mysterious, so be it. This mystery is enticing as Lamori wriggles under The Inspector's pin. Following the twists and turns of Ley's script, performed with admirable technical skill by both actors, becomes an intellectual exercise which any crime fiction addict cannot afford to miss. The ending is a neat surprise / reprise.
At first I thought, Oh God, not another play about Christian, even specifically Catholic guilt, but gradually The Inspector's role in playing with Lamori's cover-ups to avoid the truth, came to parallel the author's playing with our understanding of the situation. The final revelation, the folk-Christian picture of the after-life, is left for us to consider as a humorous metaphor rather than deadly serious literal truth.
Though there are potential depths of characterisation left unexplored, In Cold Light, Ley's second play, is well worth a visit. Technical design and production is excellent. We can look forward to more New Century Productions and more Duncan Ley plays.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
It's not fashionable to talk too directly of the ethics in telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Too many people in positions of responsibility might be embarrassed, and we should respect their feelings after all. In Cold Light is an old-fashioned play on this point, and therefore is a highly relevant allegorical investigation of social leaders like Governors-General, Prime and other Ministers, and business CEOs of recent years.
The author, and indeed God, will not permit me to reveal much of the plot of The Inspector's (Duncan Ley) examination of Father Christian Lamori (Michael Sparks), Deputy Principal of St Matthew's Boys' School. The Inspector interrogates at times obliquely, sometimes bluntly, once or twice even violently, but always unswervingly. It takes only an hour and a half for the shamelessly symbolically named Lamori to reveal his inner life, and the manner of his leaving it.
If this sounds mysterious, so be it. This mystery is enticing as Lamori wriggles under The Inspector's pin. Following the twists and turns of Ley's script, performed with admirable technical skill by both actors, becomes an intellectual exercise which any crime fiction addict cannot afford to miss. The ending is a neat surprise / reprise.
At first I thought, Oh God, not another play about Christian, even specifically Catholic guilt, but gradually The Inspector's role in playing with Lamori's cover-ups to avoid the truth, came to parallel the author's playing with our understanding of the situation. The final revelation, the folk-Christian picture of the after-life, is left for us to consider as a humorous metaphor rather than deadly serious literal truth.
Though there are potential depths of characterisation left unexplored, In Cold Light, Ley's second play, is well worth a visit. Technical design and production is excellent. We can look forward to more New Century Productions and more Duncan Ley plays.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 5 April 2003
2003: The Masters of Space and Time and Howard's Game
The Masters of Space and Time directed by Stuart Roberts. The Street Theatre Studio April 2-12, 8.30pm.
Canberra's tendency to spawn new theatre groups like coral on a full moon has created a metamorphosed Bohemian Productions now called The Masters of Space and Time. This is the title of the second short play in this program. The first is Howard's Game. Both are tightly scripted and directed.
Both plays show how depth of meaning is achieved in theatre by telling a story well rather than by trying too hard to be meaningful. Howard is a sad one-time children's television presenter who told his stories by having Mr Jimmy, a toy monkey, whisper what to say into his ear. We see Howard on screen from the past as well as on stage in the present, now grey haired, having just received a parcel which contains Mr Jimmy. His children's stories developed dark endings and seemed to predict disasters in real life, so he had been dismissed and the TV station had kept Mr Jimmy. We discover that Mr Jimmy's last screen story presaged Howard's own death. Reality is entirely blurred by imagination, leaving us laughing at the absurdity of the situation while aware that we are all vulnerable like Howard.
The style of The Masters of Space and Time is much more clearly absurdist. Jack owns the flat in which Mort and Hampton also live. Jack plans his life in every detail, including the moment when he will propose to Ellyse. Mort and Hampton will have to leave. They play the Consequences Game, in which a single event - throwing a paper aeroplane out the window - causes more and more extensive ripples in reality and finally disasters on a grand scale, following the chaos concept of the flutter of a butterfly's wing.
The consequence is not just that Jack's plans are destroyed and the lodgers remain in his flat, but everything collapses into some kind of earthquake inferno. No-one is the master of space and time, despite our fantastic belief in our central place in the universe.
Production values, in terms of lighting, sound, video, props, costumes and make-up, are high, once again by careful cutting back and avoiding unnecessary extravagance. The result is a night of excellent theatre from a young group whose work is developing fast.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Canberra's tendency to spawn new theatre groups like coral on a full moon has created a metamorphosed Bohemian Productions now called The Masters of Space and Time. This is the title of the second short play in this program. The first is Howard's Game. Both are tightly scripted and directed.
Both plays show how depth of meaning is achieved in theatre by telling a story well rather than by trying too hard to be meaningful. Howard is a sad one-time children's television presenter who told his stories by having Mr Jimmy, a toy monkey, whisper what to say into his ear. We see Howard on screen from the past as well as on stage in the present, now grey haired, having just received a parcel which contains Mr Jimmy. His children's stories developed dark endings and seemed to predict disasters in real life, so he had been dismissed and the TV station had kept Mr Jimmy. We discover that Mr Jimmy's last screen story presaged Howard's own death. Reality is entirely blurred by imagination, leaving us laughing at the absurdity of the situation while aware that we are all vulnerable like Howard.
The style of The Masters of Space and Time is much more clearly absurdist. Jack owns the flat in which Mort and Hampton also live. Jack plans his life in every detail, including the moment when he will propose to Ellyse. Mort and Hampton will have to leave. They play the Consequences Game, in which a single event - throwing a paper aeroplane out the window - causes more and more extensive ripples in reality and finally disasters on a grand scale, following the chaos concept of the flutter of a butterfly's wing.
The consequence is not just that Jack's plans are destroyed and the lodgers remain in his flat, but everything collapses into some kind of earthquake inferno. No-one is the master of space and time, despite our fantastic belief in our central place in the universe.
Production values, in terms of lighting, sound, video, props, costumes and make-up, are high, once again by careful cutting back and avoiding unnecessary extravagance. The result is a night of excellent theatre from a young group whose work is developing fast.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 15 February 2003
2003: Show Us Your Roots
THEATRE BY FRANK McKONE
Show Us Your Roots. "The biggest line up of Australia's Multicultural Comedians ever assembled in one place at one time", produced by Laing Special Events in association with the National Multicultural Festival. Llewellyn Hall, Friday February 14.
13 comedians in one night might not seem to augur well, but all except one stood up to my expectations. And really there were 14, because the compere, Peter Rowsthorn, was a quality comedian in his own right. He set the standard of good relations with the audience from the beginning, with humour in mime especially, when the dreaded echo of Llewellyn Hall might have turned the evening sour.
The least successful was Bev Killick of English and Scots origins. Though her vocal bagpipes were well done, too much of her act consisted of imitations (of Tina Turner and AC/DC doing advertising jingles) which could not compare with the traditional storytelling stand-up acts of the others.
What fascinated me was the common thread of irony, done in the Australian laconic manner (itself the butt of many of the jokes), which linked performers from such diverse backgrounds: Jilkamu (Indigenous Australian), Joe June (China), Desh (India, South Africa), Gabriel Rossi (Italy), Jackie Loeb (Germany, Austria), Dave Callan (Ireland), Tahir Bilgic (Turkey), George Smilovici (Cuba, Romania), Chris Wainhouse (New Zealand), Tommy Dean (USA), Hung Lee (Vietnam) and Anthony Mir (Lebanon).
The 3 hour program was too full of laughs for me to give a complete picture. Some highlights were a very brave Jackie Loeb in an underwear routine which began from a visit to the Miss America swimsuit competition, a terrific didgeridoo performance representing hitchhiking in a truck by Jilkamu, and Dave Callan's image of Irish people - trying to be sophisticated - drinking potato daquiris.
Hung Lee's probably true story of his mother, unable to understand English, deciding to make sandwiches for his school lunch filled with corn flakes and soy sauce dressing, showed the light side of cultural confusion. But it was the American Tommy Dean's probably fictional story of the September 11 highjackers secretly laughing at the air hostess demonstrating the safety features of their aircraft which provided the blackest humour of the night.
The hall was full for this one-night stand-up, which I think deserves to become a National Multicultural Festival tradition.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Show Us Your Roots. "The biggest line up of Australia's Multicultural Comedians ever assembled in one place at one time", produced by Laing Special Events in association with the National Multicultural Festival. Llewellyn Hall, Friday February 14.
13 comedians in one night might not seem to augur well, but all except one stood up to my expectations. And really there were 14, because the compere, Peter Rowsthorn, was a quality comedian in his own right. He set the standard of good relations with the audience from the beginning, with humour in mime especially, when the dreaded echo of Llewellyn Hall might have turned the evening sour.
The least successful was Bev Killick of English and Scots origins. Though her vocal bagpipes were well done, too much of her act consisted of imitations (of Tina Turner and AC/DC doing advertising jingles) which could not compare with the traditional storytelling stand-up acts of the others.
What fascinated me was the common thread of irony, done in the Australian laconic manner (itself the butt of many of the jokes), which linked performers from such diverse backgrounds: Jilkamu (Indigenous Australian), Joe June (China), Desh (India, South Africa), Gabriel Rossi (Italy), Jackie Loeb (Germany, Austria), Dave Callan (Ireland), Tahir Bilgic (Turkey), George Smilovici (Cuba, Romania), Chris Wainhouse (New Zealand), Tommy Dean (USA), Hung Lee (Vietnam) and Anthony Mir (Lebanon).
The 3 hour program was too full of laughs for me to give a complete picture. Some highlights were a very brave Jackie Loeb in an underwear routine which began from a visit to the Miss America swimsuit competition, a terrific didgeridoo performance representing hitchhiking in a truck by Jilkamu, and Dave Callan's image of Irish people - trying to be sophisticated - drinking potato daquiris.
Hung Lee's probably true story of his mother, unable to understand English, deciding to make sandwiches for his school lunch filled with corn flakes and soy sauce dressing, showed the light side of cultural confusion. But it was the American Tommy Dean's probably fictional story of the September 11 highjackers secretly laughing at the air hostess demonstrating the safety features of their aircraft which provided the blackest humour of the night.
The hall was full for this one-night stand-up, which I think deserves to become a National Multicultural Festival tradition.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 12 February 2003
2003: Carboni by John Romeril
Carboni by John Romeril. Renato Musolino as Rafaello Carboni, directed by Peter Dunn. Tuggeranong Arts Centre in association with the National Multicultural Festival, February 11-15 8pm.
Rafaello Carboni stayed up on watch at the Eureka Stockade over Thursday and Friday nights. By midnight Saturday December 2, 1854, his need for sleep overcame his dedication to the cause of defence against the expected troopers. He, as Peter Lalor's valued interpreter - he spoke 6 languages - was allowed to leave the stockade while things seemed quiet, only to be awakened by gunfire at dawn.
What sense of guilt he must have felt, being forced merely to watch while 20 of his mates were killed and some twice that number left injured, all for the sake of their objection to the Victorian Government's demand, enforced by constant police harrassment, that they pay a licence fee to dig for gold at Ballarat.
Surviving a false charge of treason, Carboni wrote his record of these seminal events in Australian history in a book The Eureka Stockade, was elected a member of the local court in Ballarat, and later returned to Italy where he marched alongside Garibaldi.
Romeril's play, though rather theatre-in-education in style, gives us Carboni the writer, political activist, and defender of the barricades - often rather melodramatic in speech and mannerisms, but a sincere and clear thinker. The result is a perfect multicultural festival presentation. Those 6 languages were needed at Ballarat 150 years ago, and his lack of Chinese was a severe frustration for Carboni.
Musolino performs the play in an Italian translation as well as English. I felt I needed to experience more complexity of emotion in Carboni's character in the English version I saw, but an Italian speaker at the all-Italian opening night was very impressed with the powerful effect of the play in that language, where its strength lay in a dramatic story-telling tradition. For me the action was rather too slow and studied, yet this style gradually built to a strong ending and a clear understanding of the brutal reality of the massacre.
The visual design by Casey van Sebille was a strength of this production: clever back projections reinforced the story and the theme very effectively. The Southern Cross flag now has much greater meaning for me.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Rafaello Carboni stayed up on watch at the Eureka Stockade over Thursday and Friday nights. By midnight Saturday December 2, 1854, his need for sleep overcame his dedication to the cause of defence against the expected troopers. He, as Peter Lalor's valued interpreter - he spoke 6 languages - was allowed to leave the stockade while things seemed quiet, only to be awakened by gunfire at dawn.
What sense of guilt he must have felt, being forced merely to watch while 20 of his mates were killed and some twice that number left injured, all for the sake of their objection to the Victorian Government's demand, enforced by constant police harrassment, that they pay a licence fee to dig for gold at Ballarat.
Surviving a false charge of treason, Carboni wrote his record of these seminal events in Australian history in a book The Eureka Stockade, was elected a member of the local court in Ballarat, and later returned to Italy where he marched alongside Garibaldi.
Romeril's play, though rather theatre-in-education in style, gives us Carboni the writer, political activist, and defender of the barricades - often rather melodramatic in speech and mannerisms, but a sincere and clear thinker. The result is a perfect multicultural festival presentation. Those 6 languages were needed at Ballarat 150 years ago, and his lack of Chinese was a severe frustration for Carboni.
Musolino performs the play in an Italian translation as well as English. I felt I needed to experience more complexity of emotion in Carboni's character in the English version I saw, but an Italian speaker at the all-Italian opening night was very impressed with the powerful effect of the play in that language, where its strength lay in a dramatic story-telling tradition. For me the action was rather too slow and studied, yet this style gradually built to a strong ending and a clear understanding of the brutal reality of the massacre.
The visual design by Casey van Sebille was a strength of this production: clever back projections reinforced the story and the theme very effectively. The Southern Cross flag now has much greater meaning for me.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 19 January 2003
2003: Chronicle of a Death Foretold from the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Chronicle of a Death Foretold adapted by Fabio Rubiano from the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. National Theatre of Colombia directed by Jorge Ali Triana. Theatre Royal: Sydney Festival January 17-18, 20-25.
An honour killing in a small town. Angela Vicario is found not to be a virgin on her wedding night. Other women knew beforehand and advised her how to deceive her husband, but she would rather tell the truth.
Everyone knew the Vicario brothers intended to kill Santiago Nasar, whose name was beaten out of Angela by her mother, when her husband dumped her home. Everyone said they didn't think the brothers would do it. But they do.
What are the rights and wrongs here? The final question is not whether Santiago was actually guilty of deflowering Angela, but what can we do to have people take action to prevent the real crime - murder - especially when they all have their own small town agendas.
By using a flashback technique, Rubiano reveals the many different viewpoints before and after the murder, but when even the priest and the mayor turn a blind eye, the rule of law is effectively abandoned. Only the doctor tried hard to prevent the killing, but was called away suddenly to someone's dying father. A convenient move for someone, probably.
The program notes describe this play as a "powerful story of revenge", but I found it a tough analysis of social failure.
The use of choral chant, song and dance to highlight a contrasting presentational style of delivering dialogue was particularly successful - both emotions and intellect were engaged in this production, in the Brechtian tradition of distancing us from mere sentimental involvement in a story of revenge so that we could see the political workings of each part of this society. And, sadly, just as in reality, there was no final solution. "Man is man", as Brecht wrote.
The only hope in the play came from a woman, Angela. Beaten, deserted and with no social standing, she writes loving letters to her estranged husband for 17 years. Though he never opens the letters, at last, now fatter, balding and wearing glasses, he returns to stay. May we hope, then, that Angela's insistence on telling the truth, however destructive its effect, will shine eternally? Well, an audience member on opening night in a pause between curtain call applause, called "Viva la Colombia" - and we all felt one with that.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
An honour killing in a small town. Angela Vicario is found not to be a virgin on her wedding night. Other women knew beforehand and advised her how to deceive her husband, but she would rather tell the truth.
Everyone knew the Vicario brothers intended to kill Santiago Nasar, whose name was beaten out of Angela by her mother, when her husband dumped her home. Everyone said they didn't think the brothers would do it. But they do.
What are the rights and wrongs here? The final question is not whether Santiago was actually guilty of deflowering Angela, but what can we do to have people take action to prevent the real crime - murder - especially when they all have their own small town agendas.
By using a flashback technique, Rubiano reveals the many different viewpoints before and after the murder, but when even the priest and the mayor turn a blind eye, the rule of law is effectively abandoned. Only the doctor tried hard to prevent the killing, but was called away suddenly to someone's dying father. A convenient move for someone, probably.
The program notes describe this play as a "powerful story of revenge", but I found it a tough analysis of social failure.
The use of choral chant, song and dance to highlight a contrasting presentational style of delivering dialogue was particularly successful - both emotions and intellect were engaged in this production, in the Brechtian tradition of distancing us from mere sentimental involvement in a story of revenge so that we could see the political workings of each part of this society. And, sadly, just as in reality, there was no final solution. "Man is man", as Brecht wrote.
The only hope in the play came from a woman, Angela. Beaten, deserted and with no social standing, she writes loving letters to her estranged husband for 17 years. Though he never opens the letters, at last, now fatter, balding and wearing glasses, he returns to stay. May we hope, then, that Angela's insistence on telling the truth, however destructive its effect, will shine eternally? Well, an audience member on opening night in a pause between curtain call applause, called "Viva la Colombia" - and we all felt one with that.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2003: Black Chicks Talking by Leah Purcell and Sean Mee
Black Chicks Talking by Leah Purcell and Sean Mee. La Boite Theatre and Queensland Performing Arts Centre in association with Bungabura Productions. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House: Sydney Festival January 17-18, 20-25.
Leah Purcell has now turned Aboriginal women's true stories from her book and television documentary into a dramatic fiction. Four women representing different Aboriginal backgrounds - Elizabeth (Leah Purcell) who has been brought up white, Patricia (Kyas Sherriff) who knows she's black and learns Aboriginal Studies at Uni, Michelle (Sher Williams-Hood) who's proud to be black, despite a life of poverty, drink and drugs, and Sophie (Tessa Rose) who is closest to traditional knowledge while also educated in European ways - are brought together mysteriously to a mythic bush setting by the spirit of Jeanine, the younger sister of Patricia.
When their Aboriginal mother left, their white father kept Patricia but fostered out Jeanine in the hope that she would not remember, being only 5 at the time of her removal. But, of course, her father is the one person she cannot forget, and she now searches for the knowledge of her real family.
For this play non-Indigenous people must suspend disbelief. The Aboriginal spirit world is absolutely frightening and hard to interpret, even for Sophie, when in someone else's country. We never get to understand how these diverse women come to be in Jeanine's country, but this is not the issue. This is spirit business.
In the end, each character - and that means each of us - must face the realities of their own past, seeing how their present behaviour is not based on truth: only then can they grow into real knowledge, understanding and compassion.
The theme is unexceptional and universal, but in my opinion the play is not as powerful as the SBS documentary where we saw the real women speak. This is because the script needs tightening. For example the message that Elizabeth, who could only see herself as part-Aboriginal (which part? says Michelle), finally found her way in a dance experience, was immediately clear, but the dance sequence then went on far too long, as if repeating the message unnecessarily.
Much more heightened poetic language would also lift sequences above and beyond the ordinary and deepen the emotional effect. So Black Chicks Talking is a good play, but not yet a great play.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Leah Purcell has now turned Aboriginal women's true stories from her book and television documentary into a dramatic fiction. Four women representing different Aboriginal backgrounds - Elizabeth (Leah Purcell) who has been brought up white, Patricia (Kyas Sherriff) who knows she's black and learns Aboriginal Studies at Uni, Michelle (Sher Williams-Hood) who's proud to be black, despite a life of poverty, drink and drugs, and Sophie (Tessa Rose) who is closest to traditional knowledge while also educated in European ways - are brought together mysteriously to a mythic bush setting by the spirit of Jeanine, the younger sister of Patricia.
When their Aboriginal mother left, their white father kept Patricia but fostered out Jeanine in the hope that she would not remember, being only 5 at the time of her removal. But, of course, her father is the one person she cannot forget, and she now searches for the knowledge of her real family.
For this play non-Indigenous people must suspend disbelief. The Aboriginal spirit world is absolutely frightening and hard to interpret, even for Sophie, when in someone else's country. We never get to understand how these diverse women come to be in Jeanine's country, but this is not the issue. This is spirit business.
In the end, each character - and that means each of us - must face the realities of their own past, seeing how their present behaviour is not based on truth: only then can they grow into real knowledge, understanding and compassion.
The theme is unexceptional and universal, but in my opinion the play is not as powerful as the SBS documentary where we saw the real women speak. This is because the script needs tightening. For example the message that Elizabeth, who could only see herself as part-Aboriginal (which part? says Michelle), finally found her way in a dance experience, was immediately clear, but the dance sequence then went on far too long, as if repeating the message unnecessarily.
Much more heightened poetic language would also lift sequences above and beyond the ordinary and deepen the emotional effect. So Black Chicks Talking is a good play, but not yet a great play.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 18 January 2003
2003: The Junebug Symphony by James Thierree
The Junebug Symphony by James Thierree and La Compagnie du Hanneton. State Theatre: The Sydney Festival. January 16-25.
For a summer festival in Tinsel Town this show is real glitter. It's the French version of Circus Oz - terrific acrobatics, with a special note of admiration for contortionist Raphaelle Boitel, all thoroughly mixed up with images of fantasie extraordinaire.
Like all good circus you can enjoy it from 3 to 300, and there were some great observations made in the most dramatic silences by unselfconscious very little ones on opening night. After all it is hard not to respond when, as Thierree describes it, "a man loses his head, his legs and his arms, but not his temper".
The pièce de résistance has to be the final scene of a kind of mediaeval mayhem where an armoured insect wearing cutlery and other kitchenware battles something vaguely like a soft toy, each "animal" played by 2 people.
On the way people had great difficulty on either side of a door with no walls, with a wardrobe which produced a surprising range of very loud music, with books that burst into flame, and so many other unsettling experiences packed into 90 minutes that I can't remember them all. The junebug caused all this wierdness in the mind of the man by buzzing around so he couldn't sleep. That's when he began to lose his head ....
Of course, if you really feel the need, you can look for the "Surrealism, primarily an artistic movement, [which] concerns the expression of the imagination as it is revealed in dreams" as Erica Fryberg explains in her very serious program notes. But I suggest you just let the visual and musical jokes have their place in the Sydney sun and leave the Dada stuff to the Samuel Beckett part of the Festival. Or to the London Daily Telegraph, no less, which we are told invited "comparisons with Dali and Chagall...."
Why not simply enjoy laughing at the erratic junebug (mayfly in English) and appreciate the acrobatic skills of Thierree, Boitel, Uma Ysamat (also an excellent operatic singer) and the mime Magnus Jakobsson. We can worry about the existential nightmare when we grow up - maybe when we get to 300. For me the Junebug Symphony was much more fantastical fun than the Lord of the Rings.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
For a summer festival in Tinsel Town this show is real glitter. It's the French version of Circus Oz - terrific acrobatics, with a special note of admiration for contortionist Raphaelle Boitel, all thoroughly mixed up with images of fantasie extraordinaire.
Like all good circus you can enjoy it from 3 to 300, and there were some great observations made in the most dramatic silences by unselfconscious very little ones on opening night. After all it is hard not to respond when, as Thierree describes it, "a man loses his head, his legs and his arms, but not his temper".
The pièce de résistance has to be the final scene of a kind of mediaeval mayhem where an armoured insect wearing cutlery and other kitchenware battles something vaguely like a soft toy, each "animal" played by 2 people.
On the way people had great difficulty on either side of a door with no walls, with a wardrobe which produced a surprising range of very loud music, with books that burst into flame, and so many other unsettling experiences packed into 90 minutes that I can't remember them all. The junebug caused all this wierdness in the mind of the man by buzzing around so he couldn't sleep. That's when he began to lose his head ....
Of course, if you really feel the need, you can look for the "Surrealism, primarily an artistic movement, [which] concerns the expression of the imagination as it is revealed in dreams" as Erica Fryberg explains in her very serious program notes. But I suggest you just let the visual and musical jokes have their place in the Sydney sun and leave the Dada stuff to the Samuel Beckett part of the Festival. Or to the London Daily Telegraph, no less, which we are told invited "comparisons with Dali and Chagall...."
Why not simply enjoy laughing at the erratic junebug (mayfly in English) and appreciate the acrobatic skills of Thierree, Boitel, Uma Ysamat (also an excellent operatic singer) and the mime Magnus Jakobsson. We can worry about the existential nightmare when we grow up - maybe when we get to 300. For me the Junebug Symphony was much more fantastical fun than the Lord of the Rings.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 10 January 2003
2003: A Night Down the Hole
A Night Down the Hole. A program of one-act plays, film and music directed by Soren Jensen and Christian Doran for The Nineteenth Hole at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, January 8-11.
Soren Jensen describes one-act plays as escaping "the cultural trap of 'the serious' while being very serious indeed. They have the immense advantage of flying below the level of cultural radar.... Such is also the case with The Nineteenth Hole." "We act to entertain each other rather than [for] the glory of a paying audience," says Christian Doran.
Their recognition of the modest theatrical place they occupy seems to me to have kept The Nineteenth Hole on track over the two years since they were just a group of friends at college. A Night Down the Hole is a neatly structured entertainment, exploring the differences between love, lust and friendship. "I can't be your friend," says a young man to his now married ex-girlfriend, "because I love you."
The task of linking 8 plays, some local and others mainly American (Apres Opera by Michael Bigelow and Valerie Smith, Pvt. Wars by James McClure, Anything for You by Cathy Celesia, Tom's Lament by Justin Greenaway, 4AM by Bob Krakower, Sure Thing by David Ives, Downtown by Jeffrey Hatcher and Success by Arthur Kopit) into scenes in a pub so that the transitions are seamless and the themes develop sensibly was demanding and certainly done well enough for a paying audience.
The Nineteenth Hole may be flying low, but radar over the horizon shows a strong cultural development since I last saw them a year ago. Not only is the material - the film sequences, musical interludes and scripts - much more tightly integrated now, but individual actors have matured. I noted particularly Jensen as Barman Jim (who plans this year to take on further training in Sydney), Imogen Fayed in Anything for You, and Jack Millyn and Clare Martin in Sure Thing. They may "act to entertain each other" but the company has surely been a worthwhile self-development group for all involved. They have found a style, absurdist and witty, which suits them well. It challenges them and in doing so made A Night Down the Hole a satisfying evening's entertainment.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Soren Jensen describes one-act plays as escaping "the cultural trap of 'the serious' while being very serious indeed. They have the immense advantage of flying below the level of cultural radar.... Such is also the case with The Nineteenth Hole." "We act to entertain each other rather than [for] the glory of a paying audience," says Christian Doran.
Their recognition of the modest theatrical place they occupy seems to me to have kept The Nineteenth Hole on track over the two years since they were just a group of friends at college. A Night Down the Hole is a neatly structured entertainment, exploring the differences between love, lust and friendship. "I can't be your friend," says a young man to his now married ex-girlfriend, "because I love you."
The task of linking 8 plays, some local and others mainly American (Apres Opera by Michael Bigelow and Valerie Smith, Pvt. Wars by James McClure, Anything for You by Cathy Celesia, Tom's Lament by Justin Greenaway, 4AM by Bob Krakower, Sure Thing by David Ives, Downtown by Jeffrey Hatcher and Success by Arthur Kopit) into scenes in a pub so that the transitions are seamless and the themes develop sensibly was demanding and certainly done well enough for a paying audience.
The Nineteenth Hole may be flying low, but radar over the horizon shows a strong cultural development since I last saw them a year ago. Not only is the material - the film sequences, musical interludes and scripts - much more tightly integrated now, but individual actors have matured. I noted particularly Jensen as Barman Jim (who plans this year to take on further training in Sydney), Imogen Fayed in Anything for You, and Jack Millyn and Clare Martin in Sure Thing. They may "act to entertain each other" but the company has surely been a worthwhile self-development group for all involved. They have found a style, absurdist and witty, which suits them well. It challenges them and in doing so made A Night Down the Hole a satisfying evening's entertainment.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 8 January 2003
2003: Constructed Realities by Clare Dyson
Constructed Realities. Concept, choreography and direction by Clare Dyson. Canberra Theatre January 9-11 and 15-18, 8pm. Bookings 6251 3959.
Following her two months residency at the Powerhouse, Brisbane, where this work was created, Dyson has received support from artsACT and the Canberra Theatre Centre to bring her vision of the Australian landscape back to her home town. The work is well worth the journey in many senses.
Rather than relegating her audience to merely watching a distant performance, Dyson invites us to explore the landscape of the theatre - inside and outside - travelling from station to station, from image to image, in a kind of almost religious meditation on the central theme "for white Australia, landscape is seen as similar to the unconscious". The real sensations we experience, of wind and dust, of the built environment, traffic noise on City Circle, of the darkened stage, of controlled light and recorded music, become naturally mixed with images created by dancers, images on video screens, in sets and costumes, in words you hear and read.
The effect is to change one's perception of Australia as, in Gordon White's words, "we huddle on the coast, our faces turned to the waters, and to a world that despite the vast oceans and skies between us is closer than this voiceless arid void at our backs." There is no Aboriginal perspective here, deliberately so Dyson tells me, because though she finds herself drawn to the inland country of Tibooburra, The Corner and Innamincka, she realises she has no right to interpret the landscape "that is ours only in name, because we proclaim it to be ... never to possess. Never to know."
Yet her images of the well-dressed woman rearranging nature to make a nice garden, of the young woman in her wedding gown attached to her suburban green lawn, of relaxing with sexual overtones to a popular song with a cup of tea behind a city facade, are drawn not negatively, but with humour. All this is part of the landscape, too.
So go prepared for some real wind - take a jumper. And go prepared for an hour's journey from the city to the outback and return, except that you may find a little more of the inland stays with you back on the edge of the continent.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Following her two months residency at the Powerhouse, Brisbane, where this work was created, Dyson has received support from artsACT and the Canberra Theatre Centre to bring her vision of the Australian landscape back to her home town. The work is well worth the journey in many senses.
Rather than relegating her audience to merely watching a distant performance, Dyson invites us to explore the landscape of the theatre - inside and outside - travelling from station to station, from image to image, in a kind of almost religious meditation on the central theme "for white Australia, landscape is seen as similar to the unconscious". The real sensations we experience, of wind and dust, of the built environment, traffic noise on City Circle, of the darkened stage, of controlled light and recorded music, become naturally mixed with images created by dancers, images on video screens, in sets and costumes, in words you hear and read.
The effect is to change one's perception of Australia as, in Gordon White's words, "we huddle on the coast, our faces turned to the waters, and to a world that despite the vast oceans and skies between us is closer than this voiceless arid void at our backs." There is no Aboriginal perspective here, deliberately so Dyson tells me, because though she finds herself drawn to the inland country of Tibooburra, The Corner and Innamincka, she realises she has no right to interpret the landscape "that is ours only in name, because we proclaim it to be ... never to possess. Never to know."
Yet her images of the well-dressed woman rearranging nature to make a nice garden, of the young woman in her wedding gown attached to her suburban green lawn, of relaxing with sexual overtones to a popular song with a cup of tea behind a city facade, are drawn not negatively, but with humour. All this is part of the landscape, too.
So go prepared for some real wind - take a jumper. And go prepared for an hour's journey from the city to the outback and return, except that you may find a little more of the inland stays with you back on the edge of the continent.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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