An Evening with Queen Victoria, a portrait in her own words. Devised and directed by Katrina Hendrey. Prunella Scales with Ian Partridge (Tenor) and Richard Burnett (Piano). The Playhouse, November 29-30.
I wonder if Ms Scales (you see, I still keep up with modern thinking just as I loved Rossini's 'Il Rimprovero' in my youth) will emulate my determination to never give up. She has only some ten years to go to match my longevity, but I must agree that she is much more sprightly than I at her age. I doubt that I could have played myself aged 18 in 1891, though I did very much enjoy the Misters Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers in that year. The song 'The Working Monarch' was so much fun, just such a delight that the common people should come to know how my days were spent signing Bills, dispensing knighthoods and so on.
Of course, though Ms Scales, and indeed Professor Partridge, are Commanders of the British Empire, they can never be the real thing as I was. My insistence on my assuming the title Empress of India was perhaps the highlight of my life, revealing - as I wrote - how "prince and peasant are all the same ... before God". We are amused to observe how well my attitudes have survived, in the words of dear Prince Ernest and my very dear Prince Albert in his song Schmerz der Liebe, 'the ship of love battered by the rocks and tempests of life's journey'. My dear great great great grandson Prince Charles understands so well the duties of a monarch and one's proper relations with those in the lower orders, even when, as in the case of my dear Scotsman J. Brown, a commoner has 'feelings and qualities that the highest Prince might be proud of'.
Though I once wrote 'women are unfit to reign', I am informed Ms Scales filled the Playhouse even after more than 400 performances, so it seems Tory or Liberal (I was never sure which was which) values live on, even in far-flung Australia. Long live the Queen.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 30 November 2004
2004: An Evening with Queen Victoria by Katrina Hendrey
An Evening with Queen Victoria, a portrait in her own words. Devised and directed by Katrina Hendrey. Prunella Scales with Ian Partridge (Tenor) and Richard Burnett (Piano). The Playhouse, November 29-30.
This team has toured Queen Victoria four times to Australia as well as to North America, New Zealand and what the program refers to as the Far East. It's still a worthy study of a Queen from her own point of view but it is showing signs of wear.
Scales has a very long history as a popular actor, with credits of much more artistic value than her famous Sybil in Fawlty Towers, so it was disappointing to find her lines slipping occasionally and her intimacy with the audience quite variable. Perhaps the ravages of time are catching up, though physically she is remarkable for ably capturing Victoria aged 18 as well as aged 82 just before her death in 1901.
The 19th Century family soiree setting was easy on the eye, and appropriate, though Hendry's husband Richard seemed to me not as relaxed at the keyboard as I expected - a little rushed and having to cover some missing notes occasionally. However, I did appreciate the quality of tone and the atmosphere created by tenor Ian Partridge. His singing and gentle playing of just enough of the role of Prince Albert held the show together, I thought.
Though I too, in 1961, found Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam fascinating, as Victoria had 100 years earlier after Albert's unexpected sudden death, I wonder now if it is not time to let Victoria go. To hear her patronising attitudes, even if natural to a monarch, presented as empathetic humour seems rather out of our place and time. It's a worry that her great great great grandson Charles (just search the web for British Royal Family Tree) seems to have very similar ideas about the common people. In Victoria's words, after she assumed the title of Empress of India, "Prince and peasant are all the same ... before God".
Here on earth it's a different story, and Prunella Scales tells it well - though on this occasion not as well as I had expected.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This team has toured Queen Victoria four times to Australia as well as to North America, New Zealand and what the program refers to as the Far East. It's still a worthy study of a Queen from her own point of view but it is showing signs of wear.
Scales has a very long history as a popular actor, with credits of much more artistic value than her famous Sybil in Fawlty Towers, so it was disappointing to find her lines slipping occasionally and her intimacy with the audience quite variable. Perhaps the ravages of time are catching up, though physically she is remarkable for ably capturing Victoria aged 18 as well as aged 82 just before her death in 1901.
The 19th Century family soiree setting was easy on the eye, and appropriate, though Hendry's husband Richard seemed to me not as relaxed at the keyboard as I expected - a little rushed and having to cover some missing notes occasionally. However, I did appreciate the quality of tone and the atmosphere created by tenor Ian Partridge. His singing and gentle playing of just enough of the role of Prince Albert held the show together, I thought.
Though I too, in 1961, found Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam fascinating, as Victoria had 100 years earlier after Albert's unexpected sudden death, I wonder now if it is not time to let Victoria go. To hear her patronising attitudes, even if natural to a monarch, presented as empathetic humour seems rather out of our place and time. It's a worry that her great great great grandson Charles (just search the web for British Royal Family Tree) seems to have very similar ideas about the common people. In Victoria's words, after she assumed the title of Empress of India, "Prince and peasant are all the same ... before God".
Here on earth it's a different story, and Prunella Scales tells it well - though on this occasion not as well as I had expected.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 29 November 2004
2004: Radio Silence by Alana Valentine
Radio Silence by Alana Valentine, performed by Mary Rachel Brown. ANZAC Hall, Australian War Memorial, Fridays to Mondays 11.45am, 12.45pm, 1.45pm.
This 12 minute play is an emotional recreation of the thoughts and feelings of Violet, a WAAF wireless operator stationed at Binbrook in Britain where Australians in Bomber Command were based, as she waits through 8 hours of radio silence. Her English friends say she is "growing a tail". In one of the Lancasters is Marty, who dances clumsily but claims that's the way things are done in Australia and he'll give her more lessons.
Will Marty's plane come on air on schedule? If not, will the crew have been able to parachute out to safety? News comes in of a plane, crashed "with no survivors". Violet has previously been engaged to a pilot who did not survive. She tries to forget him "but I learned to let his face just sit there. To smile at his memory." She tells us how "kissing with a sense of the future cannot be contemplated by either of you."
She picks up the right signal only a short time after radio silence ends, and is ecstatic that she will see Marty again, at least for one more night. Then he will be on ops again, and she will go through radio silence again, and again. "I thought wireless ops would mean I'd be talking to lots of people, but it isn't like that," she says.
Museums are about facts, and plays are fiction. Valentine has imagined a terrible truth about war, and Mary Rachel Brown holds our attention on the imaginary Violet so we come to understand the fear and the seeming futility of a war in which she plays an essential role but over which she has no control.
Performed in the shadow of the huge wing of G for George, the strength of Radio Silence is its simplicity, surrounded as it is by the images, sounds and icons of World War II. It says to all of us: Remember what it was really like. Lest we forget.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This 12 minute play is an emotional recreation of the thoughts and feelings of Violet, a WAAF wireless operator stationed at Binbrook in Britain where Australians in Bomber Command were based, as she waits through 8 hours of radio silence. Her English friends say she is "growing a tail". In one of the Lancasters is Marty, who dances clumsily but claims that's the way things are done in Australia and he'll give her more lessons.
Will Marty's plane come on air on schedule? If not, will the crew have been able to parachute out to safety? News comes in of a plane, crashed "with no survivors". Violet has previously been engaged to a pilot who did not survive. She tries to forget him "but I learned to let his face just sit there. To smile at his memory." She tells us how "kissing with a sense of the future cannot be contemplated by either of you."
She picks up the right signal only a short time after radio silence ends, and is ecstatic that she will see Marty again, at least for one more night. Then he will be on ops again, and she will go through radio silence again, and again. "I thought wireless ops would mean I'd be talking to lots of people, but it isn't like that," she says.
Museums are about facts, and plays are fiction. Valentine has imagined a terrible truth about war, and Mary Rachel Brown holds our attention on the imaginary Violet so we come to understand the fear and the seeming futility of a war in which she plays an essential role but over which she has no control.
Performed in the shadow of the huge wing of G for George, the strength of Radio Silence is its simplicity, surrounded as it is by the images, sounds and icons of World War II. It says to all of us: Remember what it was really like. Lest we forget.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 19 November 2004
2004: Debbie Does Dallas - The Musical
Debbie Does Dallas - The Musical, adapted from the film by Erica Schmidt, music by Andrew Sherman. Three Amigos Productions at Canberra Theatre Friday November 19.
"Life can give you more than to go where you thought you need to go." Small-town cheerleader Debbie wants to be a Dallas Cowgirl. To raise the funds to get to Dallas, she discovers that working for minimum wages of $2.90 per hour does not compare with selling her boss a look at her breasts for $10, and a suck for $20. She has only two weeks, with school and cheerleading to fit in as well, so when Mr Greenfelt dresses her in the Dallas Cowgirl costume and himself in the Cowboy football uniform, and offers to pay her way, how can she refuse?
She wonders if she looks different afterwards, but off she goes, leaving the rest of the local boys and girls behind, to discover what more life can give her.
All this happens, including all sorts of simulated sex among the boys and girls on the way, at a terrifyingly cheerful pace, presumably appropriate for American cheerleaders. The all singing, all dancing cast are entirely up to the mark. Visuals, sound and lights are very well designed and just about everything worked, even though for only one performance in Canberra.
If the original, apparently purely pornographic film was made as a simple celebration of the joys of sex, then this musical version must be at least a light hearted semi-satire. It reminded me of the ancient Greek Lysistrata, where the women tease the men but won't let them have sex until they stop the war. Here we saw only one banana, used to represent a blow job and then regurgitated, and one over-long fabricated penis - nothing to compare with old Aristophanes. All good for a laugh, but rather tame pornographically speaking.
But I was surprised that adult women in the audience were cheering Debbie on in her purely commercial enterprise. I thought we lived today in a new world of family values and traditional morality. Maybe there are a lot more Debbies doing Dallas in Canberra today than I have come across. Or maybe they haven't really thought about the exploitation of women by men - an issue completely ignored in this musical representation of life giving you more than you dreamed of.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"Life can give you more than to go where you thought you need to go." Small-town cheerleader Debbie wants to be a Dallas Cowgirl. To raise the funds to get to Dallas, she discovers that working for minimum wages of $2.90 per hour does not compare with selling her boss a look at her breasts for $10, and a suck for $20. She has only two weeks, with school and cheerleading to fit in as well, so when Mr Greenfelt dresses her in the Dallas Cowgirl costume and himself in the Cowboy football uniform, and offers to pay her way, how can she refuse?
She wonders if she looks different afterwards, but off she goes, leaving the rest of the local boys and girls behind, to discover what more life can give her.
All this happens, including all sorts of simulated sex among the boys and girls on the way, at a terrifyingly cheerful pace, presumably appropriate for American cheerleaders. The all singing, all dancing cast are entirely up to the mark. Visuals, sound and lights are very well designed and just about everything worked, even though for only one performance in Canberra.
If the original, apparently purely pornographic film was made as a simple celebration of the joys of sex, then this musical version must be at least a light hearted semi-satire. It reminded me of the ancient Greek Lysistrata, where the women tease the men but won't let them have sex until they stop the war. Here we saw only one banana, used to represent a blow job and then regurgitated, and one over-long fabricated penis - nothing to compare with old Aristophanes. All good for a laugh, but rather tame pornographically speaking.
But I was surprised that adult women in the audience were cheering Debbie on in her purely commercial enterprise. I thought we lived today in a new world of family values and traditional morality. Maybe there are a lot more Debbies doing Dallas in Canberra today than I have come across. Or maybe they haven't really thought about the exploitation of women by men - an issue completely ignored in this musical representation of life giving you more than you dreamed of.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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