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
Sunday, 19 January 2003
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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