2004: Seussical the Musical - preview article

Who was born 100 years ago, wrote a best-selling book with only 223 words in it, and inspired a Broadway musical?  And, not incidentally, has encouraged huge numbers of children to learn to read through his whimsical rhymes and quirky characters?

    Theodor Seuss Geisel is who.  Dr Seuss to you.

    The musical?  Seussical the Musical (co-conceived by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty and Eric Idle) opened on Broadway in November 2000, ran there for more than 5 months and has been touring since then.  As Graham Bauerle, one-time teacher and long-time President of Phoenix Players explained, Seussical is admirably suited to local communities where the whole family can participate.  That's why he and his dedicated committee jumped at the opportunity when the performing rights became available in Australia in 2004.

    Two Victorian schools got in first, but this is the first general public performance in Australia, opening January 14 for a 15 show run.

    Phoenix Players has grown over its 15 year history into a community theatre group with a sense of purpose.  Its first aim is to give young people a place to learn through experience - the only way - about theatre production.  Its second purpose is to give families a community to belong to.  Since its beginnings in Belconnen Community Centre, Phoenix has moved its performances to The Street Theatre and Theatre 3, finding these theatres give the Players the quality of experience they need, as well as expanding their membership and audience. 

And their expenses.  Seussical's budget is more than $30,000.  But passion for this particular musical carries the day with Bauerle and his director Belinda Anyos, well known as BJ, who doubles - now triples - as the Fairy Who Can't Fly and an Excited Particle at Questacon. In fact she quadruples as a trainee primary teacher at UC, which is where her interest in children's learning to read comes in.

Anyos explains the many layers of Seussical (maybe like a club sandwich of Green Eggs and Ham).  All the 47 young cast members have studied all the Dr Seuss books as their essential reading research, learning not only about their characters but also about the importance of learning to read.  They also learn a sense of humour while having fun.  So Phoenix show their members the bond between reading and acting out.

For the audience, the very young will see Seuss's characters appear from his books which form the set, narrated by the dynamic Arron Grainger as The Cat in the Hat.  But at another level, the story takes place in the imagination of a young boy, JoJo, as he reads about the Grinch, the Whos, the Sour Kangaroo, Gertrude Fuzz and many others.  The central books are Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches the Egg, while for the older audience, for whom Seuss may seem old hat, there is the fun of identifying the references to all 15 books. 

The music, singing and dancing carry the show along smartly and smoothly.  No dead scene changes, and very little spoken dialogue, makes Seussical into a rollicking light opera drawing on pop, gospel, blues and R&B musical styles.

There is a special excitement because this is a new show, where everyone from the director to the costume sewer has worked without preconceptions.  This makes creative juices flow, rather than being limited as amateur groups often are by the expectation to imitate famous stage or film productions.  Creating productions from literary sources is now a new theme for Phoenix Players, with a non-audition workshop for children 9-16 in first semester this year leading to a production in July of Roald Dahl's The Witches, which BJ will also direct.

Apart from Spot the Story (I have suggested there should be a prize for the first to find all 15), there is also a raffle, first prize a giant Cat in the Hat with Seuss books, and other book prizes.  And for parents with a real concern about the current debate about children learning to read via phonics or whole word methods, go to see Seussical the Musical to see how Theodor Seuss Geisel put the two together.  His rhymes give children the phonics, his visuals and use of repetition give the whole words, while his off-beat humour appeals even to the very young as well as the young-at-heart.  Just add music and dance, imaginative costumes and all the theatrical effects at Theatre 3 to bring it all to life.

Seussical the Musical
By arrangement: Hal Leonard Australia for Music Theatre International (NY)
Phoenix Players at Theatre 3
January 14 - 29
Matinee, Twilight and Evening performances
Bookings: Theatre 3 on 6257 1950


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2004: Extremes. Survival in the Great Deserts of the Southern Hemisphere

  Extremes.  Survival in the Great Deserts of the Southern Hemisphere.  National Museum of Australia, December 26 2004 to mid-2005.  Adults $8, Concession $6, Child $5, Family $16.

    Here is an exhibition which is worth crossing a desert to see - 4 deserts, actually.  There is plenty to slake your thirst for knowledge about the Atacama which contains the driest place on earth, the famous Kalahari, the less well-known Namib and our own Red Centre.  What links them is, in Afrikaans, the Steenbokskeerkring - the ring of antelopes - aka the Tropic of Capricorn.  As the earth spins, our swirling atmosphere creates this band of dry air still linking us to our old partners in Gondwanaland since we split up over 50 million years ago. 

    A good exhibition should be dramatic in its impact, and this story of people living in the deserts over the last 30,000 years begins with larger than life indigenous people talking quietly and personally to us on film, immersed in marvellous images of their country.  Stop as you go in, look and listen, before you explore the ancient and modern artefacts of change which is the history these people have survived.  It is not so much lack of water that makes life difficult in these deserts.  More often it has been insensitive, greedy and deliberately destructive invasion by people who have failed to learn to live within nature's bounds.

    It strikes home, as senior Ikuntji man Douglas Multa speaks, to realise that people started mining red ochre in his country 30,000 years ago, and still do today as part of the life of a man related to cattle bosses, cameleers and famous women artists, and whose own interests include football, heavy metal and country music.  How dramatic are these changes indeed? The stories of Namib elder of the ǂAonin people, Rudolf Dausab (ǂis a 'click' sound) and Atacamena Rosa Ramos are no less fascinating.

     Between the inflatable sea lion skin raft and the Conquistador helmet, ostrich egg water flasks and Dr Livingstone's actual cap he wore when Stanley greeted him "Dr Livingstone, I presume?", a hair string belt and the Bush Mechanics EJ Holden there is much more than an hour's worth of remarkable human experience for visitors young and old.  An extremely good exhibition in the best National Museum tradition.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2004: Nunsense by Dan Goggin

Nunsense.  Music, lyrics and most of the dialogue by Dan Goggin.  G-String Productions at Teatro Vivaldi Theatre Restaurant, ANU Arts Centre, directed by Rod Beaver.  December 8, 10, 14, 16, 17 and 19 at 6.30 for 7pm.  Dinner and show $49.  Bookings 6257 2718.

    2004 is the 20th anniversary of this wacky American off-Broadway musical.  Still popular over there, it's a good choice by G-String for a pre-Christmas fun night with a bunch of nuns.  Fortunately the food at Vivaldi's is way above the class of the convent cook, Sr Julia.  "Out of respect for the recently departed Little Sisters of Hoboken, vichyssoise will not be offered on this evening's menu" since the Sister's soup killed 52.  The few survivors, who by chance were at bingo that night, entertain us in the hope of raising enough money to bury the last 4 bodies, currently at rest in the kitchen freezer.

    The team of 5 women - Kylie Butler (Reverend Mother), Renay Hart (Sr Mary Hubert), Liz Beaver (Sr Robert Anne), Megan Simpson (Sr Mary Amnesia) and Rebecca Franks (Sr Mary Leo) - are a great ensemble, singing, dancing, telling jokes and stories, and gossipping along with excellent pianist Lachlan Cotter.  Though very evenly matched I would give a little extra for Hart's voice, especially in the final swinging gospel number, and for Simpson's very surprising puppet.

    You don't need to be Catholic to appreciate the jokes, especially ones like the clock with the 12 apostles. Like any good theatre restaurant, the close relationship between the performers spilling off a tiny stage and a relaxed well-fed audience is a bonus. 

    But at Vivaldi's the arrangement of the stage and seating made for difficult audio balancing.  The piano was too often over the top of the miked performers, making their words hard to pick up clearly, while at the far end some performers' voices were too soft.  This requires a more complex sound system than only 2 widely spaced speakers, and occasionally the director might have to sit on the pianist.  This could easily be incorporated into the show, which already contains a hilarious multi-media segment not imagined by the author.

    Make sure you book for excellent fare, real and theatrical.

© Frank McKone, Canberra