Renaissance Bloke - Peter J. Casey. Co-written and directed by Carissa Campbell. The Street Theatre Studio, September 23 - 25, 7.30 pm. Bookings 6247 1223.
You only have till Saturday. Don't miss Renaissance Bloke.
It's just so good to see a show full of wit, laughs and talent. Peter J. Casey satirises himself, appearing to put himself down as a "bloke", as a "man about the house", even as a performer at his four weirdest gigs, but don't you believe a word of it. His piano, his voice, his body so easily leap to his command. And we, his audience, respond to every nuance of tone, every lift of an eyebrow.
This is stand-up comedy sitting at a piano for nearly two hours, and you won't think about time passing. It's smooth, but knowingly smooth. Disarmingly simple but very clever. Three nights surely are not enough, but I guess, as Casey said, you have to remember that to earn a dollar in the arts you have to spend $1.50.
The show is not all original work by Campbell and Casey. Watch for the Tom Lehrer imports, and if you clap long enough - as everyone did on opening night - you'll get to hear the penis medley for a last laugh.
Casey can do every kind of nightclub / cabaret / musical song, but he offers us so much more than an interesting performance of the expected. He is an acute observer of himself as he performs. It may sound pedantic to say his work is metacognitive, at a level of awareness beyond the immediate. What's fascinating is that this deepens the satire, enlivens the laughter, and makes the evening totally satisfying.
Musically he can take any source - try Jaws, Close Encounter of the Third Kind and Star Wars - and find an original style in the music alone which plays with our expectations. Then the words sparkle with even more humour, acting against the musical setting. Personally, I thought Star Wars as a three-minute musical was perhaps the most brilliant, but every number was exciting and absorbing. Somehow it reminded me of the best of Circus Oz, but all the gymnastics happen in your head. Unforgettable.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 23 September 2004
Tuesday, 14 September 2004
2004: Exhibition - Sunken Treasures of Brunei Darussalem
Sunken Treasures of Brunei Darussalem. National Museum of Australia until October 4. Adults: $8 Concession: $6 Child: $5 Family $16. Enquiries 6208 5000.
This is an exhibition which ought to be a lot more fascinating than I found it. I wandered about rather aimlessly, when the story of the amazing discovery of a 500 year old shipwreck off the coast of Brunei should be full of excitement and drama. What's gone wrong?
All the elements are there. The vast array of pottery, mainly from 15th Century China and Thailand, shows us the great quality of goods being traded around the South China Sea. The deductions from the discovery about the trade routes and the important role of Brunei so long ago change our more recent perception of backwardness compared with Europe. The technical details of a difficult and dangerous archaeological project 63 metres under water make us wonder how it was done without a single accident.
The problem is the layout of the exhibition. It fails to take us on an engaging journey of discovery. We walk around images, objects and information, on film, still images and sound track. But it's all in dim lighting, while the sound surrounds us non-invasively, virtually unobtrusively. It's all too quiet, except for the sound of one pot smashing - the most dramatic part of the exhibition.
After seeing a 25 minute film, and naturally starting off to the left to explore, you may find the panel labelled Introduction which is very near the door called Way Out, on the far right. Or you may not. But if you do start from the Introduction and go right to left, you will not be guided through. You will have to piece the story together from interesting but disparate bits.
If you pay for the catalogue, you find the story told, beginning from a modern map, of the archeological discovery, integrating the history, with examples from the ship's payload, and leading to the details of the found objects and the reconstruction of the ship. If the exhibition clearly led us through in this order, we would be excited by the discovery, how the engineers and archaeologists did their work, how their work enlightens our understanding. Then we would look at the pottery from the ship with new eyes.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is an exhibition which ought to be a lot more fascinating than I found it. I wandered about rather aimlessly, when the story of the amazing discovery of a 500 year old shipwreck off the coast of Brunei should be full of excitement and drama. What's gone wrong?
All the elements are there. The vast array of pottery, mainly from 15th Century China and Thailand, shows us the great quality of goods being traded around the South China Sea. The deductions from the discovery about the trade routes and the important role of Brunei so long ago change our more recent perception of backwardness compared with Europe. The technical details of a difficult and dangerous archaeological project 63 metres under water make us wonder how it was done without a single accident.
The problem is the layout of the exhibition. It fails to take us on an engaging journey of discovery. We walk around images, objects and information, on film, still images and sound track. But it's all in dim lighting, while the sound surrounds us non-invasively, virtually unobtrusively. It's all too quiet, except for the sound of one pot smashing - the most dramatic part of the exhibition.
After seeing a 25 minute film, and naturally starting off to the left to explore, you may find the panel labelled Introduction which is very near the door called Way Out, on the far right. Or you may not. But if you do start from the Introduction and go right to left, you will not be guided through. You will have to piece the story together from interesting but disparate bits.
If you pay for the catalogue, you find the story told, beginning from a modern map, of the archeological discovery, integrating the history, with examples from the ship's payload, and leading to the details of the found objects and the reconstruction of the ship. If the exhibition clearly led us through in this order, we would be excited by the discovery, how the engineers and archaeologists did their work, how their work enlightens our understanding. Then we would look at the pottery from the ship with new eyes.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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