2005: Exhibition - National Treasures from Australia's Great Libraries

National Treasures from Australia's Great Libraries at National Library of Australia December 3 2005 - February 12 2006, 9am - 5pm (closed Christmas Day).

    This is a Magic Pudding of an exhibition.  You know what's in the recipe? - lots of amazing tastes, unexpected traditional threepenny pieces (genuine silver, of course), mixed for four years with tremendous enthusiasm and skill, bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside (more like a living yeast than a Tardis) and, finally, a texture, structure and shape better than anything Normal Lindsay imagined.

    The only problem is time.  It will run away with you, as a good Magic Pudding should.  I would allow a couple of hours, lunch to chew 22 times per mouthful and digest, and then you could still go back for another hour or so for a second helping to discover nuts and raisins you missed the first time around.  What's more, all this is free (except lunch since, as we know, there's no such thing) because "Australia's libraries have a responsibility to collect, preserve and make accessible Australia's documentary heritage in a wide variety of forms" including exhibitions of national treasures.  Our first was in Hobart in 1858, then Melbourne in 1861, and then the first great Australian treasures exhibition organised by the Victorian Fine Arts Commission at the Melbourne Public Library in 1869.

    As curator Margaret Dent says, a library collection is great for finding things you want, but "how do you find something you're not looking for?"  Maybe you expect to see Don Bradman's favourite cricket bat and Ned Kelly's helmet made from ploughshares to armour (rather than swords to ploughshares), but the threepenny bits will set you thinking.  Look at the first diagram describing the Southern Cross ("this crosse is so fayre and bewtiful"), not on Peter Lalor's flag but in a letter from Andrea Corsali in 1516 to Giuliano de Medici (translated from Italian into English by Richard Eden in 1555), and the yeasty possibilites begin to grow.  Modern Australia might well have been Italian, or Dutch, or French.  Or Aboriginal. 

Did Indigenous people see a cross in this star formation?  Or did it take European Christians to perceive that image?  And should it have been such a cross to bear for Indigenous people?  British Lord Morton, President of the Royal Society, hoped not in 1768 when he advised Captain James Cook "No European Nation has the right to occupy any part of their country (meaning newly discovered lands), or settle among them without their voluntary consent.  Conquest over such people can give no just title; because they could never be the aggressors."  Eddie Mabo's papers are set next to Lord Morton's advice, not far from the secret instructions Cook received from King George III to claim the new continent for England.  The Royal Society organised Cook's trip, but the Government provided the funds - and it took more than 200 years until Mabo exposed the fraud.  Eddie Mabo's papers were placed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2001, perhaps ironically along with Cook's Endeavour Journal.

 This is just one thought bubble to grow from a page of a letter.  On November 6, 1942, a German U-boat sank the City of Cairo in the South Atlantic.  Of 17 people in Lifeboat No 4, only Margaret Gordon (whose husband drowned in a second torpedo attack) and Third Officer Whyte survived, sailing 3200 kms before rescue by a Brazilian minesweeper.  Whyte was torpedoed and died returning from America to England. Gordon recorded the names and addresses on a page of her diary of her six European companions, and only that page survived.  Margaret remarried, and as Margaret Ingham retired from the State Library of Victoria in 1980 as one of Australia's foremost experts on children's literature, establishing the 80,000 book Children's Research Collection. She never spoke of her ordeal, but wrote to inform the families of the dead.  Mrs Solomon wrote that Gordon's letter "has gone on to [her son's] wife - who will keep it to read to little Nigel when old enough to understand".

These National Treasures touch the personal lives of people in our past, stirring up stories and thoughts which are real for us now.  Even the suet in the Pudding - like the awful story of murderer Frederick Deeming - helps bind together our understanding.  Take your time, because I've only touched on two of many, many fascinating stories of ordinary bits of paper, a helmet, a bat, Bourke and Wills' gun and whip, the model Holden I drove in 1964, a quilt made by Aboriginal children (anonymous) in 1845 and pictures drawn by Aboriginal children (with their traditional names) in 1940, the first order book for Hills Hoists and so much more.  In fact the original Magic Pudding illustrations are about the last thing you'll see near the exit.  Before you have lunch, and go back for a second helping.  That's what I intend to do.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams.  Papermoon, directed by Geoffrey Borny, at ANU Arts Centre December 1 - 10.

    Tennessee Williams knew personally the fear, perhaps our worst fear, of losing your mind - of not knowing what is real and what is not.  In 1943 his parents authorised a prefrontal lobotomy on his older sister Rose.  In Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Catharine Holly (Lainie Hart) is threatened with this very treatment because, Mrs Venable (Naone Carrel) says, she "babbles".  Like Rose had, maybe.

    Dr Cukrowicz (Alex Sangston), though compromised by needing funding for his research work from Mrs Venable, finds a way to test Catharine's story in a long intense hypnosis session.  If Catharine speaks the truth, denying Mrs Venable's apocryphal belief that Catharine caused the death of her son Sebastian, the doctor cannot in conscience perform a lobotomy.  Dr Cukrowicz concludes that we should consider that she is speaking the truth - but how do we know?

    What Williams has done is to make us experience what it is like to be unsure of the truth, as a person on the verge of insanity is.  To do this he uses long monologues by Mrs Venable and Catharine which are major achievements for Carrel and Hart, and for director Borny.  The play focusses on the storytelling and requires close attention to the words, the pauses, the images and the implications.  This is not an easy ride, but well worth our effort.  The deliberate slow pacing may be too difficult for some, but let the words and the feelings wash over you.  The experience is not pleasant, but revealing, as we should expect from great works of art.

    What this production does, appropriately for its university context, is to make the careful construction of the art apparent to us. The dead Sebastian's jungle garden, like Williams' dialogue, is designed in every detail to seem real, and so the set cleverly complements the structure of the play.  It becomes both an intellectual and emotional quest for the nature of truth - a satisfying result.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: A Slice of Saturday Night by The Heather Brothers

A Slice of Saturday Night. Music and lyrics by The Heather Brothers (Lea, Neil & John).  G String Productions at Teatro Vivaldi, directed by Rod and Liz Beaver.  Choreography by Jordan Kelly and Susan Miller.  Band: Stuart King, Ben Braithwaite and Munro Melano.  November 16 - December 3, 6.30pm for dinner and show.  Bookings 3257 2718.

    Double degustation, double delight.  You only have till Saturday to book in to a show with excellent tastes.

    You can look up that big word later, but know right now that it wasn't just the gourmet dips, fetta cheese and leek filos, zucchini and herb dumplings and roasted tomato, eggplant and goat's cheese stack for entree which heralded Vivaldi's delightful mains and sweets.  Equally stunning was the quality of the slices, almost anatomical cross-sections, of Saturday Night at the Club A-Go-Go circa 1964. 

    Written in the late 1980s, this soft-satirical musical looks back with no regrets, in fact rather nostalgically, at what was probably the Heather Brothers' youthful experience of sexual awakening.  There are some very funny songs, with references musical and lyrical to all the pop names of that time - including the prediction by the club manager, Eric 'rubber legs' DeVere (played very well by Peter Brady as a Bill Haley look-alike) that it would be the "Whiff" Cliff (Richards) who would survive the Beatles, The Animals and all the rest.  How awfully true.

    The delight in G String's production is that the musicianship, band and singers, was spot on throughout.  Not a note out of place whether in a tear-jerker ballad, soft-porn rock, Beach Boys spoof, or an almost but not quite early Joan Baez (made sentimental) imitation folk revival song. 

And that's not all. The choreography was tight in design and performance, artistically exact for the period, while fitting precisely up to 14 movers and shakers on the restaurant stage.  The ensemble playing of the main boy-girl roles was so well balanced that it is unfair to pick one or two above the rest.  I think each audience member would have picked their own favourites.  Mine would be the couple Rebecca Franks (Sharon) and Will Huang (Rick) for voices and stage presence - and Craig Francis (Gary) especially for the premature ejaculation song.

As Eric asks, who in their right mind would want to be 17 again?  But it's terrific fun watching.  And watch for Queenie van de Zandt and Amanda Muggleton at Vivaldi's in December.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Three Scrooges - Comedy Christmas Cabaret.

 The Three Scrooges - Comedy Christmas Cabaret.  Shortis, Simpson and Casey directed by Carissa Campbell.  The Street Theatre Studio November 24 - December 10, 8.30pm.  Bookings: 6247 1223

    Pssssst....  I won't reveal my source but I've just had a leak.  The trouble is if I tell you about it the law will get me.  I'll disappear for two weeks and then I won't even be able to tell you I disappeared for another two years.  Sedition, I guess, would be the charge.  But no-one would ever know, including me.

    Maybe I can get around the problem by telling you that this is a terrible show.  It's funny, for a start.  Even worse, it's satirical.  It even makes fun of the actual words spoken by our great leader of the free world and his little mate.  And the music ... well, I can only say it is dreadfully so well done that you might be inveigled into enjoying the art and not realising that this is really the work of the devil.  Comedy Christmas Cabaret indeed!

    Don't be fooled.  The worst part is that the now traditional John Shortis and Moya Simpson combination has been horribly enlivened by the voice and keyboard playing that only seems to come from heaven, though it actually comes from Peter J. Casey.  If you thought Shortis and Simpson were unbearable last year, this combination is impossible now.  It's surely the fault of the faceless Carissa Campbell.  Only she could have choreographed the excellent Dance of the Latham Diaries - probably the only part of the show which might pass muster at ASIS.

    But I have to be careful not to reveal that, though this is perhaps the most irreligious Christmas show one can imagine, Shortis's solo about what has happened to Christmas in our globalised economy is even sadder this year.  Of course no-one can accept without a groan the disgusting representation of royalty, especially of Princess Di whose fashion photos were all over the Canberra Times front page on opening night.  But the implied relationship between Princess Mary and her boy child suggested some higher understanding.

    All in all, I can't say this was a great night out.  That was just a leak, and the perpetrator will be brought to justice.  I think I might just disappear at this point,  and don't let yourself be seen at The Street, or you might never be seen again either.  Bye-ee!

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Deckchairs by Jean McConnell

Shoppers, Doggies, Dancers and Cruise Missile from Deckchairs by Jean McConnell.  HIT Productions at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, October 18 and 19.

    Sitting relaxed at Tuggeranong By The Sea, watching the deckchairs for entertainment was about as exciting as you might expect.  Because of the neat directing by Gary Down and fine performances from stalwart sisters Joan Sydney and Maggie King, maybe a bit more than you would have bargained for.

    Jean McConnell is an English writer for television, radio and stage.  The format for the 12 20 minute playlets in Deckchairs is a variation of a long tradition of English "characters" just talking, more or less to each other.  In this case they are sitting in deckchairs, on a promenade or, in Cruise Missile, on a cruise ship.  Unlike Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, which are ascerbic revelations of the sad, even tragic, inner lives of English suburbanites, previously presented by HIT Productions at TCA, McConnell's women are more comic in tone. 

    The result is an entertaining evening which the Canberra audience thoroughly enjoyed, yet I found the themes, like the upper and lower class dog owners who end up growling at each other, a bit too predictable.   When I think back to the masters of this form, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (in, say, the 1960s Dagenham Dialogues in which 'Pete', as a confident but ill-informed bore, held forth to 'Dud', a scruffy, even less informed Herbert), I realise that Jean McConnell, writing Deckchairs in the decade since 1995, misses the absurdity of Pete and Dud which her characters need to lift them beyond quite funny but ultimately rather shallow images of English life.  Tuggeranong certainly seemed rather far-flung from her world, yet could seem closer to Dagenham.

    On the other hand, O'Connell has a good ear for the language of her characters, and the Australian sisters were very skilled not only in accents and comic timing, but especially in the right phrasing and intonation for each class of character.  The conniving "shoppers" were perfectly matched in speech, the dog owners' manners and language matched their very funny hand-puppet dogs (wild bitzer and snooty pug), and especially interesting were the 'A' Deck single-cabin wealthy-but-genuine woman and the contrasting below-decks shared-cabin know-it-all "cruise missile" who got her come-uppance to great applause to end the evening's show.

    So, in the English tradition, a bit of a curate's egg.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2005

MUSEUM EVENTS BY FRANK McKONE
   
Welcome to the International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2005.  The world has moved on from the museum theatre of old - like, let's do Shakespeare exactly the way he did it, even though The Globe burned down 400 years ago, and nowadays we can put LED stars in the firmament.  Shakespeare didn't even know about museums, which really only became big in the 1800s.  I was sitting in the studio of a big one, the National Museum of Australia, surrounded by digital video equipment, lights, cameras and action.  A jigsaw blade had just appeared through the blackened door into the bio box and was cutting out a neat rectangle for a vision panel.  It had to be in place before the speeches were to start at 9.40am.

Meanwhile, next door in the Temporary Gallery, conference delegates were watching Gondwana, the live action puppetry performance by ERTH, true to the most recent scientific research, which had drawn full houses throughout the school holidays with life size dinosaurs, growing plants, insects and even an early mammal from deep time when Australia, Africa, India, South America and Antarctica were all joined in the super-continent Gondwanaland.  This is museum theatre today.

Then, here the delegates entered, not exactly the conventional bunch of bureaucrats and backroom boffins that you might associate with a museum.  At this, the first IMTAL Conference in the southern hemisphere, there was a definite atmosphere of bubbling excitement.  Craddock Morton, NMA director, dared to admit that he had been a skeptic about museum theatre (boo, hiss from the crowd), but now he had become a convert (claps and cheers).  All power to your arms, he concluded.  Louise Douglas, general manager public programs, conducted a pre-curtain call of the backstage team from NMA, Questacon, National Gallery, War Memorial, Old Parliament House, to enthusiastic applause.

First keynote speaker, theatrical icon Robyn Archer, noted that whooping and laughter was not common to other conference audiences she had spoken to.  Before long, though, she was challenging museums and museum theatre practitioners.  Quoting Bertolt Brecht and using powerful examples from her recent worldwide experiences from Buenos Aires, Teheran, Britain and many other places, she said that, in a society of a widening gap between rich and poor, theatre must "test ourselves and our moral stance" which it can do without putting our loved ones at actual risk.  Brecht wrote that our fates are "knotted and cast by men" and theatre is about "teaching [the audience] the great art of living together".

The challenge, Archer said, is that it's easy to create a shallow entertainment, even if it might illustrate a museum exhibit.  But "all theatre makers should aspire to the best", she said, and in doing so she challenged museums to take the kinds of risk that, I wonder, may not be acceptable to conservative administrators or the politicians behind them.  In response to a question about Minister for Education Brendan Nelson, Archer's view was that "Cultural institutions remain the only places for the reclamation of democracy" in societies where only stories like Simpson and his donkey are to be told, or you won't get your grant next year.

Catherine Hughes, founder of IMTAL, presented research information from her doctoral studies at Ohio University which backs Archer's position.  Empathy for characters, though vicarious, sets off processes in the brain like those from real experience.  These hormonal and neuronal activities - emotional arousal - enhance long-term memory.  After a play about the human genome project, 87% of students were able to articulate how the genome project might impact on their lives - a 59% increase on a pre-performance study.  In other research, students remembered detailed information from a theatre-in-education performance 7 months later.

Hughes' message was "Activate the amygdala; resonate with [the audience's] lives; shape performances with surprises".  This means presenting unexpected viewpoints, like making the murderer of South American rainforest activist Chico Mendez the main character who justifies his action - "just clearing the frontier, just like you [Americans] did".  Most important for museums and the issue of truth, Hughes concluded, "Address difficult and controversial subject matter."

Proof of her point followed as Anne E Stewart of the Victorian Storytelling Guild presented the story of the death of her brother Tony Stewart in Balibo in 1975 in "East Timor: Grief: Personal to Public - Telling the Story". Her family's tragedy becomes an uplifting story of her other  brother Paul, who began the band Painters and Dockers, and now teamed up with East Timorese refugee Gil Santos to form The Dili Allstars.  Their latest CD documents the killing of the Balibo 5 and is a powerful anti-war musical statement in the local language.  Delegates had no difficulty feeling empathy, recognising the resonance, being surprised by the serendipity of the Stewart family's story.  I'm sure they will not forget.

This article is just a look into a 4-day conference.  I cannot let you go without hearing something from Professor Sam H. Ham, director of the Centre for Training and Outreach, University of Idaho, and an expert in the psychology of audiences.  He suggested 3 aims for museum theatre - acquisition of new factual knowledge, entertainment and holding attention, heightened "awareness". 

To achieve heightened awareness he described a choice of 3 roads.  The Teacher Tell Paradigm "if they know what we know, then they too will care as we care".  Research shows that this approach may increase factual knowledge, but does not change awareness.  The Infotainment Paradigm "if we can just keep people entertained long enough something good is bound to happen and they'll end up being changed for the better" is no more successful at creating awareness, though positive feedback may appear convincing.

Only the Meaning Making Paradigm works.  "If you can get visitors thinking ... they'll make their own connections, and if they make their own connections, it's possible they'll be able to care" about what has been presented.  "The main thing [museum] interpretation should try to accomplish is getting people to make their own themes inside their own heads".  Then "it must (Italics on) matter (Italics off) to the audience.  As Robyn Archer / Bertolt Brecht said, making meaning is teaching "the great art of living together".

Extending Our Reach: 4th Biennial IMTAL Conference at National Museum of Australia October 13-16.
Go to     www.nma.gov.au/events/major_events/2005_imtal_conference/
    www.anne-e-stewart.com

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Bam! by Warehouse Circus

Bam!  Warehouse Circus directed by Jeremy Davies, Pablo Latona and Kylie O'Keeffe.  The Street Theatre, September 29 - October 8, 8pm.  Bookings: 6247 1223.

    Joyous celebration - that's the only way to describe Bam! 

    When I was 10 I loved balancing sticks and twirling ropes, and even made my own stilts.  I just wish there had been a Warehouse Circus handy.  I would have learned to juggle and uni-cycle, though I doubt I would ever have become as adept at tumbling as this Warehouse team.

    But I hope I would have learned the tremendous sense of community and humour which oozes out of these young people.  I last reviewed their work 3 years ago, enthusiastically, when original member Skye Morton had returned, after a professional performing career, to direct.  Now, the 3 artistic directors, all Warehouse trained, are following through a commitment to the younger members - and the development shows.

    Bam! is a nicely structured show, using music (and other sound effects) largely attributable to Pablo Latona, to underpin the action.  O'Keeffe's set design (Skye Morton is now responsible for "rigging" and "lugging") and lighting by Chris Neal turn movement sequences into small dramas an extra step beyond the immediate tension of successfully demonstrating a physical skill.  Much of the show is dance rather than gymnastics, but not the cold kind of competition in showing off skills which we see in the Olympics. 

Warehouse have created original music and use circus-style movement to open up our emotional responses, especially in a scene using 4 black boxes, each inhabited by a young woman.  All are dressed the same, contortions - in slow motion - are in unison, but slight differences in action create individuality despite apparent conformity.
   
    The result is a show in the tradition of modern Australian circus - think of Circus Oz - melding music, action, humour and theatrical design in a quite original way.  The mood is often underplayed, almost contemplative, rather than bold and brassy like traditional circus, and the effect is to draw the audience in to feeling at one with the performers.  The first night crowd showed themselves warmly appreciative in the finale and curtain-call.  This was community - Canberra's soul - in action.

    Warehouse Circus provides training and performance opportunities for young people aged 8-25 years.  Contact manager@warehousecircus.org.au (Tel: 6287 3968 Mobile: 0415 357 859).
   
© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Gondwana: A Live Journey Through Time by ERTH

Gondwana: A Live Journey Through Time.  ERTH Visual and Physical Theatre at the National Museum of Australia directed by Scott Wright. September 24 - October 9 (except Mondays), 11am and 2pm (and 6pm Friday September 30, Saturday October 1).  Bookings: Phone NMA Freecall 1800 558 670; Details: www.nma.gov.au/events/major_events/gondwana/

    Apart from Grand Finals, do not miss Gondwana.  It's a fascinating live theatre museum exhibition which takes you back into "deep time" when Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India and South America were all joined to Antarctica - one huge continent we call Gondwana.

ERTH's genuinely life-size dinosaurs are just amazing.  They move like the real thing, far better than Walking with Dinosaurs, thanks to one-time Canberran puppeteers adviser Peter Wilson and technician Bryony Anderson.  Just you wait for the big one at the end.

The voice-over parts of the soundtrack are a bit acoustically-challenged, being mixed in with very large sounds of ancient evolution, but don't worry.  The story is easy to follow in the action and projections, and you get a very informative sheet to go with the show so you can accurately answer the children's inevitable questions.

If you really want the details, seek out the books by ERTH's palaeontology adviser, Dr Mary White: The Greening of Gondwana, After the Greening, and Listen ... Our Land is Crying.  This show is the first of three which will cover the time up to the dinosaurs, time after the dinosaurs, and the present time and future of Australia.

If for nothing else, you must see the imaginative, beautiful landscape of Gondwana in the time when moss, ferns, and cycads were as tall as today's trees.  After the show you can see how ERTH make whole forests grow, collapse and grow again.

This is excellent theatre in the service of a great museum, where you should also visit the related displays: Platypus and Diprotodon (Tangled Destinies), Emu and Ochre (First Australians) and the Gondwana Plants (in the entrance hall), including Wollemi Pines.  The science is accurate and the drama is engaging, from the goggle-eyed youngsters to very impressed adults I saw on opening day.  A full house, by the way, so book early.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Phantasmagoria by David Ruby Howe and Tomas Watson

Phantasmagoria by David Ruby Howe and Tomas Watson.  Five Skinny White Guys at The Street Theatre Studio August 24-27, 7.30pm.

    The story of the weird ship Phantasmagoria takes on possible meanings of Titanic proportions in this light-hearted revue-style presentation.  Canberra is renowned for spawning new young theatre groups like coral on the Barrier Reef, without even the requirement of the right tide and full moon, and there is something vaguely Tempest-like in this first production by former Dickson College drama students.  Not quite up to Shakespeare yet, but time may tell.

    From the point of view of the opening night audience largely of friends and relations, the array of definitely abnormal characters combined with an acting style which satirised American sitcoms created bursts of laughter and a sense of anticipation that something seriously risque would appear before our very eyes.  An oft-used technique was the long pause which, in the sitcom, would be filled with meaningful glances.  Here, an existential blank would fail to fill the space as characters were too weird to understand such subtlety.

    I found unfortunately, as in the sitcoms, that the pacing was often excruciatingly slow, especially in the first half in which all the main characters were introduced in short apparently unrelated scenes.  The second half picked up on board Phantasmagoria when the story line became something of a plot.

    It's an achievement to have produced close to 2 hours' entertainment, if still raw in form.  Though not the "innovative comedy" their promotion material claims, there are many touches of originality which these writers can build on and I can see some potential theatrical careers in the offing.

    The four (yes, four) Five Skinny White Guys and the other 13 who performed, designed and operated backstage should certainly take the risk again and push their envelope further into the abyss of absurdity next time.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: President Wilson in Paris by Ron Blair

President Wilson in Paris by Ron Blair.  HIT Productions at Tuggeranong Arts Centre August 16-17.

    The Lesson by Ionesco, The Maids by Genet, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Albee - President Wilson by Ron Blair.  I don't think so.

    But, even if the play doesn't have the sophistication of its forebears, it could have been a much more entertaining night out than I saw on Tuesday.  Described by the Victorian Department of Education (Senior Drama playlist) as an "absurdist comedy thriller", I saw a mild attempt at psycho-realism, some funny bits (mainly in the second half), and nothing very thrilling.  Billed also as "in the style of Hitchcock", this production just did not rise to the required level of horror.

    What a shame, when the actors - especially Henri Szeps (President Wilson) and Deborah Kennedy (Edith Wilson) - are very well-known and highly professional, as is the director, Jennifer Hagan.  In fact I thought relative newcomer Henry Nixon (down and out actor, amateur burglar and Wilson's adviser Colonel House) was the most consistent performer.

    Though it was clever to update the political references and the setting with some nice one-liners, the production needed to go well over the top to highlight the absurdity, create an increasing sense of madness at which we might laugh until we are brought up with shock at the finality of death.  Or, we could have been treated to a rising sense of ghoulish foreboding - with laughs to temporarily break the tension - as we watch Nixon's character writhe until he is finally put out of his misery.

    Either way would have required a bond between the actors, particularly between Szeps and Kennedy as psychopathic husband and wife, which just was not there on the night.  Lines were even fluffed, timing was rarely right, the flow of the play broke too often into little eddies which could be mildly interesting in themselves but were not joined to form a mighty river. 

And so, having gone to see one of the minor icons of Australian theatre, performed by class actors including Henri Szeps who has major icon status, I was disappointed.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Sharon, Keep Your Hair On! by Gillian Rubinstein

Sharon, Keep Your Hair On! based on books by Gillian Rubinstein.  Patch Theatre directed by Dave Brown at The Playhouse, August 3-6, 6.30pm (1 hour)

    Patch Theatre tells 3 stories in this production - Sharon Keep Your Hair On!, Hooray for the Kafe Karaoke, and Prue Theroux, the Cool Librarian.  The performers are multi-talented singers, musicians, multi-media technicians and communicators with young children (and their parents) in the foyer as well as on stage. 

    Yet despite the high level of professionalism and sophistication, and a genuine educational purpose, I found myself feeling lukewarm - not fully engaged by the performers. Checking around the audience I noticed this was also true of many of the children.  I can certainly recommend the show as an entertainment, with nicely done ironic jokes that most of the children would have missed but their parents enjoyed.  I can recommend it for its inclusiveness of diverse ways of living and its emphasis on reading books.  These strengths come, of course, from Rubinstein's writing.

    I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the energy, timing and terrific musical skills, particularly in the singing of the three women, Astrid Pill, Libby O'Donovan and Catherine Oates.  So why was I not completely satisfied?

    Patch Theatre claims to "create theatre experiences to fuel children's imaginative engagement to feed and enrich their creative play", but their show is so tight and professionally slick that the audience participation became slotted in to the predetermined schedule.  There was not the time or dramatic space allowed for responses from the children to grow, so that the children might feel they were in charge and leading the creativity.  Some parents may remember Monica Trapaga's shows where the littlies and lots of bigger people would be singing and dancing to Monica's encouragement.  I think those children learned more about experiencing live theatre than in Patch's show, because Trapaga worked with her audience rather than worked her audience.  Patch demonstrated theatre to the children; Trapaga had the children play for her.

    My reservations should not hold you back from seeing Sharon, Keep Your Hair On!  The stories are fun, with good intentions.  The show certainly brings the books to life, and should encourage the children to read.  Though I did notice singing along with "I love karaoke" was one of the most enthusiastic episodes, but hardly a time of quiet reflective contemplation with a good book.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Girl Who Lived by Adam Loughlin and Paul Quinn

The Girl Who Lived by Adam Loughlin and Paul Quinn.  Bridging the Gap Youth Productions at The Street Theatre until Saturday, 12 noon and 8pm. 1 hour 50 minutes, no interval.

    We are often told that youth are less politically committed today, but this group from Wollongong stands tall for human rights.  They tell the story of the Holocaust, saying it must not remain a footnote in history, just an entry in an encyclopaedia with dates and numbers "but not our voices". 

The Girl Who Lived is an often powerful and confrontational production by 50 young people aged 14 to 21.  The voices of the victims, of the ordinary people persuaded into hatred by propaganda and fear-mongering, and of the perpetrators of torture and industrial-scale mass murder are loud and clear.  So too is the message.  The world must never again "stand by, and watch" as we did then and since in Cambodia, Kosovo, Rwanda ....

    Performers on stage, though not professionals, are totally committed and tightly focussed.  They present an excellent example to the large numbers of teenagers in our school and college drama courses.  Though it may be short notice, every local drama student should endeavour to get to The Street Theatre this week.

    The video production, sound track, set design and technical production are all excellent quality.  Definitely professional standard, and especially effective on The Street's main stage.  Some scenes on stage could be trimmed, but the multi-media is spot on.

    The unnamed girl in the title was found by an SS guard.  She alone survived the gas, was taken out by the guard whose superiors ordered him to shoot her, which he did.  He recorded the event in his diary.  Lest we forget.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: National Institute of Dramatic Art public workshop. Feature article

NIDA - the National Institute of Dramatic Art - comes to Canberra for a week of workshops July 11 - 17. This year they are offering a mix of short courses in the Open Program. 

You don't need to be an experienced actor or to have any special qualifications, but you do need some attitudes.  Like, be prepared to enjoy yourself while you are working hard.  And be ready to learn new and different ways of preparing yourself for a role, letting your imagination work for you, and expressing your character in action.

2 courses are for 12 - 15 years: Acting for Stage and Screen and Acting to Camera.  Shakespeare Made Easy is for anyone 15 years and over.  For 16 years and over, the choices are Acting, Building a Character, Screen Acting, Auditions and Screen Tests, Acting Intensive, Directing Intensive. 

For details check the NIDA website at www.nida.edu.au/short_courses/open/national.

To find out what it will be like I spoke to tutor Simon Bossell.  I last saw him as the young man playing opposite Ruth Cracknell in the quirky road movie Spider and Rose.  He is one of a large team of NIDA tutors which includes Jennifer Hagan (a famous and early NIDA graduate), Sam Worthington (of Water Rats, Backberner, Blue Heelers, Getting Square and Somersault), Nicholas Bishop (currently playing Detective Peter Baker in Home and Away), Nathaniel Dean (AFI Best Supporting Actor in Walking on Water), Katrina Campbell (All Saints and McLeod's Daughters), Gerard Sont (Double Dare, and the ABCTV's Antenna) and Edith Podesta (Sydney stage director and performer at Belvoir St and Sydney Festival).

The list of NIDA graduates is full of the famous from Cate Blanchett, Judy Davis, Steve Bisley to Miranda Otto.  Bossell explained that the short courses will give students a taste of the professional training actors receive at NIDA, but I wanted to know more.  He is a film and a stage actor.  What do you have to learn, and is acting very different on screen compared with on stage?

The difference is about "filling the space" on stage and "pulling it all back" for the camera.  Although stage acting means "finding natural ways of amplifying" and film work means "most of the technique is contained" mainly in your face and hands, both kinds of acting are the same when it comes to your imagination - what's going on in your head.  Bossell was taught by the famous director and teacher Lindy Davies, and described one of her methods he still uses, called "dropping in", which he says is particularly useful for classical theatre, such as his performances for Bell Shakespeare, Sydney Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company in A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, Titus Andronicus and A Winter's Tale.

First you prepare by going through the script, finding all the images you can see in the words and relating these pictures in your mind to your personal experiences, so they become your images.  When you read and rehearse the lines, you "breathe in" each image and then "breathe out" the line as you speak it.  Using your breath in this way makes the images real in your imagination so that as you speak the line, you appear to someone watching as if you are the real character.  Going with the images, of course, are the thoughts which come to mind.  As you work to find the character, you focus on these thoughts, and allow yourself to react and to act outwardly in response. 

Working to the camera means you keep your concentration on thinking the thoughts, letting them strike you - this is what is meant by "being in the moment".  The expression on your face, where your eyes focus, how you speak and how you move follows naturally, and will often surprise you.  This is what the camera records.  Some directors want their actors to be self-sufficient, while others take their actors through a process as they film each scene to help create the illusion of real characters on film.

Working on stage means learning to keep focussed on the images and thoughts while making the action and speech fill the space in a theatre.  Bossell says many actors find this difficult.  It's easy to forget the thoughts and get involved in the big movements and voice, but the trick is that it is really the thoughts and the emotions they create which the audience responds to.  What's in the head is what fills the space, not the obvious actions.

So what you can expect from NIDA classes is much more than fun.  The work will be satisfying as you learn to take the first steps in professional training - a taste of what is to come if you decide acting is for you.

NIDA Open Program:
July 11-15 Acting, Acting for Stage and Screen, Building a Character, Screen Acting
July 12-14 Auditions and Screen Tests
July 16-17 Acting Intensive, Acting to Camera, Directing Intensive, Shakespeare Made Easy
Venue: Daramalan College
Information and Bookings:
Phone: (02) 9697 7626
Email: open@nida.edu.au
Website: www.nida.edu.au/short_courses/open/national

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Inside Story: Writers, Manuscripts and the Creative Process. Feature article.

Last Saturday at the National Library a remarkable celebration took place - The Inside Story: Writers, Manuscripts and the Creative Process. 

"It's too close for me, too small and too big ... I need to go away." These were the prophetic lines spoken by Peter, the new schoolteacher in a small country town in A Spring Song, the most successful play by Sydney writer Ray Mathew, presented by Twelfth Night Theatre Company in Brisbane in 1958.

Mathew really meant Australia. And leave he did, in 1960 - never to return. After a brief sojourn in Italy and some years in London (where A Spring Song appeared at The Mermaid in 1964), Mathew moved to New York with a friend's introduction to wealthy engineer and businessman Paul Kollsman and his wife, Eva, who became firm friends and literary patrons.  Though he continued to write with a distinctive Australian voice (poetry, plays, novels, art criticisms) without ever becoming a household name, his body of work was significant enough for the National Library to begin archiving his papers in 1977.  After his death in 2002, Eva Kollsman donated more of Mathew's papers, will make a generous bequest to the Library and has begun already with a major donation for this symposium to discuss the cultural heritage value of original manuscripts and the need to collect and preserve writers' original works - the reason for celebration.

But there was also reason for sadness, for among the prominent writers invited to talk to a full house about their fears and delights in having their manuscripts, diaries, notebooks, hard disks and CDs collected by the Library, Alex Buzo's serious ill health prevented him travelling to Canberra.  We wish him well.

John Kinsella has a poem archived which is notable for a mysteriously overlaid policeman's boot print.  Chris Mansell explained how preserving her drafts "keeps the writer honest because you can't deny who you are".  Jack Hibberd's manuscripts are the result of mental fermentation.  He claimed he could put them in order from the tea, coffee, wine and port stains, while guaranteeing there were no stains of self-abuse on his writing.  Discussion before morning tea went to "metatextualising" (which none claimed to be guilty of) - that is, the "really unhealthy" practice of writing for the archivist, with only an eye on posterity.

At the other end of the day, scholar-archivist Susan Woodburn walked us through the Library's 13 kilometres of manuscripts and history since the Commonwealth Literary Fund of 1940, when grants were made by a parliamentary committee on which sat both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.  Henry Handel Richardson's was the first individual collection in 1946.  Woodburn concluded that the archive can "convey immortality - your corpus, if not your hand, will be resurrected."  This referred to her gruesome discovery in a cardboard box behind a curtain on a window ledge in the manuscript room of a cast of the hand of Henry Lawson.

Other writers, researchers and biographers like Michael McGirr, Nadia Wheatley, Tom Shapcott, Adrian Caesar and Lenore Coltheart agonised over ethical issues, sometimes feeling they were invading the privacy of the people whose papers they studied.  But they noted that the discoveries of "who wrote what and when" (in the case of George Johnston and Charmian Clift), how "voice creates character, then character creates plot" (in the changes Mark Twain made as he wrote the first words spoken by Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer), or how only her letters and diaries can tell us not who Jessie Street was but who she is ("the only Jessie Street I - Coltheart - will ever know") keep the public debate and the people from the past alive.

All speakers were received enthusiastically throughout the day, leading to Philip Mead's talking of the manuscript room as "the book of revelations" and Robyn Holmes' demonstrating on screen how original music scores can not only be seen but heard online.  But the grandest applause of the day went to old stager Bob Ellis, whose speech was a great example of the writer's art, taking the day's theme into a piece of writing well worthy of archiving.

Ellis told a story starting from Dickens who "believed a writer was also a citizen, with a citizen's obligations to report social evils to the authorities, to make corruption known, and bureaucratic folly lampooned and so reduced". 

He proposed that the True Life of John Howard is an Australian story that needs to be told, since "despite 30 years of fame we know almost nothing about him".  Did he approve the sending of an envelope containing white powder to the Indonesian Embassy?  "He, the Prime Minister, and Alexander Downer were beating the story up when nobody else was too fussed about it ... and for a few crucial days the Wood kidnapping, the Corby sentence, the Leong injustice, the Rau injustice, the Chinese defectors, the coming massacres of whales by Japan, the Georgiou uprising, the Vanstone tailspin, the desecrated heroes' bones dug up to build a carpark on Gallipoli, and all the other instances of his cowardice were, as they say, 'overshadowed' by six or seven ounces of skilfully targeted Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder... If I'm wrong, let him take the lie detector test, or say why he won't."

The story ended "It is only by telling all without flinching ... can you illuminate an epoch, or portray a man ... Only by putting yourself, and him, and what Shakespeare called the very age and body of the time at risk, in peril, can you ever find, and know, and tell, the one thing that it is our obligation to tell: the truth." 

This was truly a celebration of writers, manuscripts and the creative process, for which we must thank Eva Kollsman and her friendship for Ray Mathew, home at last in the archives at NLA.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Loot by Joe Orton

Loot by Joe Orton.  ARTS Theatre Company directed by Adam Maher at ANU Arts Centre DramaLab Studio, June 17 - 25.

    Loot is a hoot, with mystery, satire and police corruption to boot.  And a real dead body.  Kerrie Roberts as the ex-Mrs McLeavy deserves the best of applause for her lifeless flexibility flat out in her coffin, upside down in what was once her wardrobe, strapped up as a taylor's dummy, dragged off stage by her feet, stripped down - so we believe - thankfully behind a screen, re-dressed and returned to her coffin, to the immortal retort that Mr McLeavy had no justifable complaint about this treatment since she began the day dead and was just as dead at the end.

    Living actors came off almost second-best in the face of such competition, but Lucy Goleby as the murdering nurse Fay and Steven Kennedy as Truscott, the most devious detective in the corruption business, stood out as exponents of the Orton style.  British farce has a long history, but Orton invented black farce which twists and turns until logic takes bizarre directions.  Especially neat is McLeavy's gormless son Hal (Michael Beard), the bank robber's off-sider, who always tells the truth and is therefore believed to be lying, ironically by the protector of the law, Truscott, who nevers tells the truth.  The art lies in creating an impossible storyline which has its own line of logic, drawing us in to suspending our disbelief.

    Adam Maher's direction keeps up a cracking pace, sometimes a little too fast and tight for the DramaLab's bouncing acoustics, at least in the upper half of the seating.  But, jokes aside, this production works very well because all the visuals are right and the timing of the action is excellent.

    The program is well worth the cost for the background to the play and the author.  Laughing at Orton's theatre takes a turn for the worse when one is reminded of his awful death, only the year after this play was written, murdered by his partner Kenneth Halliwell because he was jealous of Joe's success.  Black farce indeed.

    ARTS Theatre continues to produce theatre with a purpose, stylish without pretension, and therefore worth seeing.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Old Time Music Hall

 Old Time Music Hall.  Canberra Repertory directed by Rosemary Hyde at The Playhouse, June 16-25, 8pm

    The 31st Old Time Music Hall is traditional.  There are no surprises, but plenty of good performances.  Though an old friend, who has seen many of these annual celebrations of an almost antique kind of theatre, thought that this year's fare was less varied than the best, I came away satisfied, if not satiated. 

    Master of Ceremonies Russell Brown, in his 30th performance in this role, took a little while to warm up on opening night, but I felt this was not a disadvantage.  It gave the show less of an over-the-top feeling than I've had in some previous years, giving time for the evening to find its feet with more surety and even a little subtlety.  Brown's jokes were as execrable as ever.  One was even excretable, which got the biggest laugh and loudest groan.

    The cast has an excellent team feeling, each person working well when in unison and with humorously played individual characters in group and solo sections.  The traditional male Harmony Quartet became an octet, which allowed an excellent range of voices and variety of attitudes to come to the fore.  Among soloists, I thought Sheena Smith, Jamie Swann and Helen Perris stood out not just for their singing voices but for the warmth of their communication with the audience, and their ability to play the comic and the straight.

    As always, Jeanette Brown's expertise as Manager of Wardrobe shines through every costume.  Pauline Sweeney, pianiste extraordinaire, percussionist Ron Tito and Andrew Kay, for the 30th time directing the music from his piano, form a wonderful team who keep the show moving along in tune with the singers and dancers.  Their work is certainly no less vibrant this year. 

    This is the first year I have seen choreographer Anne Supple's work.  The measure of quality is the variety of dance, the suitability for the numbers and the confidence of the dancers - the whole cast.  The women's tap dancing with farming tools in Run, Rabbit, Run was a particular delight.  On all three points the choreography measures up, and with the music makes the show so coherent that two hours and a half pass very smoothly and pleasantly. 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Interview with Alana Valentine. Feature article.

Did you think "Shirley" as I did when I read the name "Valentine"?  Remember the housewife who breaks out of domestic boredom, goes on a permanent holiday to Greece and resumes her maiden name?  Her British suburban husband Mr Bradshaw comes to find her to take her home, but passes without recognising his wife, at her table outside the taverna at the edge of the sea.  "I'm Shirley Valentine.  I'll never be Shirley Bradshaw again."

I didn't ask Alana Valentine the origin of her name.  She is certainly not fictional, but like Willy Russell's Shirley, this Valentine seeks what she calls "magical reality".  Not on a Greek island, however enticing that may be, but through her writing - short stories, poetry, drama for radio, television, film and especially for the stage.  Living in inner-Sydney Redfern, her grandfather a fervent supporter of the Rabbitohs, Valentine didn't wait or deny herself like Shirley, but started young with a BA Communications at UTS in 1982, became a script editor for Grundy Television, wrote some 16 ABC radio programs, 5 film scripts, speeches for Judi Connelli and Max Gillies, 18 playscripts, gained a Grad Dip in Museum Studies (with Merit) at Sydney University in 2001 and in 2004 wrote Episode 89 of McLeod's Daughters, for Millenium Television.

Rather surprised, I wondered why McLeod's Daughters?  After all I remembered Mary Rachel Brown's very affecting performance of Valentine's Radio Silence under the vast wings of G for George at the Australian War Memorial soon after Episode 89 appeared.  Did Valentine need the money?  No, it wasn't the money.  It was to learn the craft of writing to a strict formula with the characters and their way of speaking and acting already decided.  You need this, she explained, to get more work as a television writer.

But what about the sentimentality? I asked.  We discussed craft and content, sentiment rather than sentimental, practicality and the writer's voice, theatre and community - her "magical reality".  What about her current Canberra play, Butterfly Dandy?  Her $20,000 grant from the NSW Ministry for the Arts researching and writing a verbatim theatre piece Parramatta Girls, for Belvoir Street's Company B, about the Parramatta Girls Home and its past residents?  Or Run Rabbit Run retelling South's Rugby League fight for survival, or Savage Grace about a deeply religious man who falls in love with a younger man, "drawn together by sexual passion and driven apart by professional ethics"?  The accolades are there from a NSW Premier's Literary Award in 1989, through a Shakespeare Globe Theatre Writer's Fellowship, a Rodney Seaborn Playwrights' Award, an AWGIE from the Australian Writers' Guild, a Churchill Fellowship, an Australian National Playwrights' Centre Award.  I felt exhausted just talking to her.

Writing to a formula is not Valentine's style.  "Each play is a puzzle to solve.  You solve that puzzle in a different way," she says.  The text is "just one more brush" to add to set, costume, lights and all the other theatrical devices.  She might begin writing with an idea like exploring euthanasia (in Savage Grace), or material from a commission like cross-dressing women performers of 1900 (researched by Julie McElhone who performs in Butterfly Dandy), or making a museum exhibit come alive (in The Prospectors, originally for the Australian National Maritime Museum).  Then she has to find the drama in a character, pair or group who have to face up to a problem and, in trying to solve it, come to a different understanding of themselves.  And they need to be in Australia because that connects them to our community. 

The prospectors of the Gold Rush exhibit are an experienced Californian miner and a young Australian new-chum who gets taken up in the Eureka Stockade, against the American's advice.  Designed for 13 year-olds, the play is about friendship: "Do I do those things because my friend does it?"  Or should I not follow my American friend's opinions? 

In Butterfly Dandy, based on real-life women performers' experiences, Valentine's character Mirabella Martin is talked into performing in a man's costume because it is the 1905 fashion, though she has to struggle with her feelings to do it.  But with her stage success, she finds her feelings change from limited to liberated woman - with significant resonances for us in 2005.  This is not only a "delightful and very funny cabaret" but has been written strictly in the tradition of the Women on a Shoestring Theatre Company.  It is a perfect example of Valentine's central diamond of reality in a magical theatrical setting.  Her art is to make the magic reveal the reality to which we all can respond.

In doing so, Valentine also shows the way for new Australian theatre, drawing audiences like South's Rugby fans to the theatre and into a sense of community.  Live theatre is certainly not dead, according to this Valentine, and it's even better than escape to a Greek island.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov.

 Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov.  Moonlight directed by Martha Ibrahim at ANU Arts Centre Drama Studio, May 17-21 8pm (Matinee Saturday 2pm).  Tickets at the door or phone 6125 5491 or dinner and show package 6257 2718.

    It's a bit scary to watch Dr Mikail Astrov (Sana Vasli), 110 years ago, demonstrate how the natural forest cover in his native Russia has declined from one half, to one third, to almost zero in the previous 40 years.  He cannot understand why people cannot see that if they continue to destroy the environment in their struggle for survival, their survival can only be for the short term before final collapse.  Shades of Jared Diamond.

    Moonlight's production is great to see not just for Chekhov's prescience concerning issues like this, but particularly for showing so clearly how destructive attitudes on the big issues play out in personal relationships.  It's also good to see young actors successfully creating this play, an odd combination of real drama and farce, in which only two roles - Alexander's young second wife, Helena (Gina Guirguis), and his daughter by his first wife, Sonia (Daisy Cohen) - are in their age range. The others, in their 40s, 60s and 80s, are not only much older but variously see themselves as too old to have reason to go on living, or playing on their age to demand 'respect' (which means power), or wise enough to have accepted their age without undue complaint.

    Glenn Brown is especially effective as Ivan Voynitsky, Sonia's Uncle Vanya, fatally attracted to Helena and almost fatal to her retired professor husband, Alexander (Timothy Sekuless), who by his first marriage to Vanya's sister gained control of the estate which he now proposes to sell in a highly dramatic emotionally explosive scene.  Moonlight's actors, coming as they do from ANU's Theatre Studies course, are not expected to have professional training, and often missed the subtleties of light and shade needed, especially in voice levels.  But they had good direction as a team, with timing which drew laughs, surprise, shock and sadness at all the right points on opening night.  Uncle Vanya's great original director Stanislavski might have needed to teach them more technique, but he wouldn't have been disappointed with this production's final scene which drew genuine, respectful applause.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Big Con by Guy Rundle

The Big Con by Guy Rundle.  Max Gillies and Eddie Perfect, directed by Aubrey Mellor and Denis Moore.  Canberra Playhouse May 10 - 14, 8pm.  Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700 or www.canberraticketing.com.au

    What a ripper!  This is such unforgiving political satire that it's hard to imagine any of the targetted politicians willingly watching.  Rundle's words and Gillies' characterisations, especially of Downer, Ruddock, Vanstone and Howard, are not simply humorous or even mere clever cutting commentaries.  They reveal a bitterness in exposing the stupidity, the hypocrisy, the inhumanity, and the glorification of power.

    I am sure I heard a certain SES public servant call Bravo! from the balcony on opening night, and I say bravo indeed.  Max Gillies is a national treasure, a supreme actor (on stage and screen) not only for the outward instantly recognisable representations of people we see in the media - you will never forget his Amanda Vanstone - but for his ability to take us inside their personalities.  A special treat is his historian Keith Windshuttle, a figure who has discovered a ploy to overcome his insignificance.  Rundle's scripting gives the actor great material, but it is Gillies who makes the characters live.

    The relative weakness of The Big Con, is that Eddie is not as perfect as Max.  Part of the problem is technical - Perfect's diction is not as precise and the first night audio balance too often left his voice masked by his piano.  He wrote his own lyrics, some songs failing to catch the note of true satire.  Some people found the Gays Should Not Marry song too gross, even offensive, while other songs tried to be too clever.  Perfect has a lot to learn from Guy Rundle's verbal subtlety and variety. At the same time, his musical humour and performance are excellent, and he holds the show together well while Gillies changes backstage.

    The show builds to the point where I found myself unable to stop laughing until I discovered myself cringing with horror.  This is the mark of great gutsy theatre, which should not be missed.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: A Girl in a Car with a Man by Rob Evans

A Girl in a Car with a Man by Rob Evans.  Directed by Lenore McGregor at The Street Theatre Studio, April 21 - May 7, 7.30 pm.

    This is an engrossing play which forces us to pay attention when we would rather constantly seek diversion.  Its form exactly suits its theme, while the direction, the acting style, costumes, set, lighting, sound and the use of multiple video screens faithfully match the form. 

Its impact is personal, rather like watching television, so its presentation in the Studio rather than on a larger stage was the right decision.  This production will transfer to the Old Fitzroy Theatre in Sydney May 19 to June 11 and was first presented by the English Stage Company in the studio style Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London, in November 2004. Young Scottish writer, Rob Evans, began work on the play at the Interplay Young Writer's Festival in Townsville, 2003, and Lenore McGregor directed the first stage of its development at the Australian National Playwrights' Conference in February 2004.

    These credentials mean you should not miss the chance to see A Girl in a Car with a Man.  All five actors - Mary Rachel Brown (Paula), Peter Damien Hayes (David), John Leary (Policeman) and especially Henry Nixon (Alex) and Amanda Bishop (Stella) - create intense, surprising characters, each fascinating to watch in their own right.  And their performance skills are equalled in the writing and directing. 

    The concept of the play could have become a disjointed confusion.  All that holds the characters together is that they have all seen on television a security camera sequence of a young girl taking the hand of a man who takes her to a car and drives away.  Paula and the Policeman meet near where this event took place.  Stella and David meet accidentally in David's house in the north of the country.  Alex tells us the story of a night at a gay club near Arthur's Seat.  All fear for the girl in the car, and we, like them, must either divert our attention elsewhere or become obsessed with the horror of what may have happened to her.

    The implication is that the more we seek personal security, the more we isolate ourselves, the less we trust each other and the more insecure we feel.  This is the vicious circle of modern civilisation, displayed here with many a light touch to divert us, but with no easy resolution.  The truth is not easy to bear.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Requiem In Sanity by Peter Butz

 Requiem In Sanity by Peter Butz.  Maenad Theatre at Murranji Theatre, Hawker College.  From April 13, 8pm.

    This new "co-operative company dedicated to artists expressing themselves" has serious intentions, serious local actors, several with serious skills, and a serious though not original theme: that the world outside is mad enough for one escapee from the asylum on the hill to shoot herself, while her twin brother would prefer to return to the safety of the madhouse.

    Unfortunately the quality of theatrical imagination in the writing is patchy, the staging is pedestrian (literally as shadowy figures carry props on and off in clunky half-blackouts between scenes), and the sound track eclectic rather than clearly thematic.  Costumes were interesting.

    Despite these flaws, Maenad deserves encouragement.  Butz's script needs professional development to turn it from a concept into a properly focussed drama.  In its current form it tries to do too much, with a murderous devil and his fantasy mother which reminded me somehow of the Rocky Horror Show at one end, a clearly normal young secretary seduced by a cad and coming to a realistic understanding of her situation at the other, while the insane twins speak sanely about how the freedom they sought places them in jeopardy.  To tie all this together, Butz's plot becomes inevitably predictable, even melodramatic.

     I find it surprising that, though many of the Maenad company have stage experience and tertiary training, this production shows little understanding of theatrical style or form.  It is episodic without knowing how to be epic.  Bits seem naturalistic incomprehensibly mixed into expressionistic fantasy.  I apologise if this terminology is not your thing, but this company's serious intentions lead me to expect that they (after a century of development in Western theatre) should be more in control of dramatic style - which means that in the audience we wouldn't become conscious of this issue.  We would simply become engaged in the drama experience.

    So, messy but interesting, and hopefully the beginning of better work next time. 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Seagull by Anton Chekhov

 The Seagull by Anton Chekhov.  Moonlight Theatre at ANU Arts Centre Drama Studio, directed by Justin Davidson.  March 10-19, 8pm.  Tickets $15 at the door, or dinner and show package at Teatro Vivaldi, 6257 2718.

    Moonlight opens its second year with a very satisfying production of Chekhov's arguably most difficult play.  After its failure in St Petersburg in 1896, Konstantin Stanislavski made it a lasting success at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898.  Stanislavski's method has clearly inspired Davidson and his cast, who have succeeded in making the play work on all its three levels - the intense personal interrelationships, the wider social context, and the changing nature of European theatre from simplistic melodrama to complex naturalism.

    Each of ten characters are significant in the web of emotions, and each actor made their part clear and memorable.  The only weakness - which may be to some extent excused in a university-based company whose theatre studies were not designed to train professional actors - was the lack of clarity of diction in some men, particularly Stuart Roberts in the major role of the suicidal writer Treplyov.  Perhaps as an aspect of this uptight character, Roberts adopted a tight-jawed form of speech which too often failed to make individual words precise and comprehensible, even though there was no doubt about the character and his intentions.

    David Clapham made the successful writer and seducer Trigorin properly, though sweetly, insufferable.  Sam Hanna-Morrow's doctor Dorn weaved his way skilfully through the relationship quagmire. The teacher Medvedenko (Ben Drysdale) was as dry as chalkdust, and no wonder Stephanie Brewster's excellently played Masha took to snuff and vodka at the realisation she would have to marry him. The decrepit lawyer Sorin (Glenn Brown), estate manager Shamrayev (Brendan Hawke)and his wife Paulina (Martha Ibrahim) neatly filled the spaces in the peripatetic lives of the old always-acting actress Irina Arkadina (Emma Lawrence), Trigorin and the young "seagull" Nina Zarietchnaya. Rachael Teding van Berkhout in this role was notable for so successfully moving in and out of the roles that Nina tries to play.  Her being on the edge of emotional collapse in the famous seagull speech was a high point.

    After showing solid development last year through three Brecht plays, Moonlight can be proud of The Seagull, and we can look justifiably forward to two more Chekhov plays in 2005.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Georgia by Jill Shearer

Georgia by Jill Shearer.  Directed by Carol Woodrow at The Street Theatre, March 10-19, 8pm.

    This play is about an intense, original artist, the American Georgia O'Keeffe.  Her minder in her old age, Juan Hamilton, puts her in a ground floor room while his family lives upstairs. "Why can't I be upstairs?" Georgia demands.  "Because you might fall," he replies.  "Yes," she retorts, "but I might fly."

    Unfortunately, this production fails to get off the ground.  Definitely pedestrian.  No winging our imaginations to the heights of O'Keeffe's paintings, some of which are displayed in the foyer. And so disappointing when the actors, particularly Jennifer Hagan as Georgia and Ken Spiteri as Juan, are so good.

    The fault lies, I think, partly in a script which uses repetitive flashbacks which tell us a little more information each time but do not reveal dramatic new perspectives on Georgia's part about her personal progress as an artist.  

    Woodrow describes the play as "merging constantly from 'the real' to memory, dream, myth or fantasy, and back to 'the real',  but I found the many short scenes broken by blackouts in the first act did not create a sense of merging.  In the second act, centred around a bed in an unadorned space, characters from the present and past could come and go, more successfully creating an uninterrupted flow in and out of reality for part of the time, but still with sudden stops and starts, including a final stop which left me wondering if this was the end (which it was). 

    A major failing, I felt, was an unimaginative use of the projected images.  We did not see the "color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for" that O'Keeffe wrote about.  The Art Gallery posters in the foyer and the 1921 photos of her by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and reproduced in the program, could have been projected to pinpoint her feelings at significant points in her life. The recorded sound track also needed adjusting to support the action rather than interrupt or dominate the speakers.

    Finally, this production does not set us up emotionally to hope that Georgia can die satisfied with her life, and to discover if she does.  It's quite interesting to know her story but, as I overheard someone say, "I don't really care."

     © Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Miser by Moliere. Review.

The Miser by Moliere directed by Jordan Best.  The Street Theatre Members in association with Centrepiece Theatre at The Street Theatre Studio, Thursdays to Saturdays March 3-19, 7.30pm.  Twilight March 13, 5pm. Matinee March 19, 2.30pm.  Bookings: 6247 1223.  Tickets: $19/$15.

    This is a competent and highly enjoyable production of a classic comedy.  The modern translation catches all the twists and turns of the original, and the actors work well as a team and individually.  Moliere's theme, about how obsession with money results in gross abuse of common humanity, is clearly presented in a lively physical style of acting in a bright colourful setting with costumes to match.

    Among the actors, two stood out in my view. 

Ian Croker, in the lead role of the miser Harpagon, played a devilish character which required great energy to maintain.  His intensity gave us an interesting perspective which, at the right moments, revealed the psychological insecurity which underlies such a determinedly autocratic figure.  There was something of Saddam Hussein in Croker's Harpagon when, having discovered his 10,000 crowns were stolen, he accused the whole town, including us in the audience, demanding that we all be tortured.

In a strong and intelligent performance of Frosine, Margie Sainsbury showed us the kind of torture imposed by the miser, hiding her real self in the hope of gaining enough to survive, but being forced to grovel before the dictator who takes all the flattery and advantage he can get without ever giving anything in return.  Sainsbury found both the funny clown and the tragic clown in the role, and allowed us the satisfaction of seeing the real Frosine in the final scene, as Moliere surely intended.

Technically, Matt Balmford (Cleante) and Jeremy Just (Jacques) needed clearer articulation and volume control, but otherwise in characterisation and comedic style were the equals of Carly Jacobs (Marianne), and Matt Borneman (La Merluche) and Tania Stangret (Brindavine) who also played a range of slapstick roles.  In the more sane roles of Valere (Jim Adamik) and Elise (Liz Cotton), Adamik's acting was the stronger, while Cotton's stage presence faded at times - though her stoush with her father over who she would not marry showed her capability.

Newly established Centrepiece Theatre has begun very well.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Miser by Moliere and Men by Brendan Cowell. Preview feature article.

Centrepiece Theatre is new.  Its first production is The Miser by Moliere.  The second will be Men by Brendan Cowell.  From a French commedia masterpiece of 1658 to the first play by a 2001 Patrick White Award winner.

Moliere is a good choice theatrically and symbolically.  In his early twenties Jean-Baptiste Poquelin took the plunge, renamed himself Moliere and, with actress Madeleine Bejart and no money, started l'Illustre Theatre (The Illustrious Theatre) against all odds.

Centrepiece is a properly constituted company established by Jim Adamik, Jordan Best and the illustrious Matthew Thomas, ACT Young Australian of the Year (Arts).  I'm sure they are more socially acceptable than actors in Moliere's day, who were generally excommunicated by the Church, but we may hope their enterprise in our capital city does not lead them into debtor's prison, as it did for Moliere who had to abandon his troupe of ten actors and escape to the provinces.

For The Miser, Centrepiece also needs ten actors. Ian Croker, in the lead role of Harpagon, has a solid reputation to back this role including recently performing Feste the Clown in Papermoon's Twelfth Night and King George in Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III at Canberra Rep.

Jordan Best is directing and says she has found the whole cast - Jim Adamik, Jeremy Just, Richard Anderson, Margie Sainsbury, Carly Jacobs, Matt Borneman, Liz Cotton, Tain Stangret and Matthew Balmford, as well as Croker - a delight to work with.  Her approach has been to make all the costumes early, so that each actor starts finding their character from the costume.  This suits commedia-style characters, saves actors from nasty surprises which they might have if later costumes were to conflict with their idea of character, has led to exciting and playful rehearsals where actors feel at home, and sets up the production visually as Best wants to see it.

Best herself comes to this, her first stint at directing, not only from a successful performing arts family which includes AFI award winner Peter Best and well-known Sydney actress Blazey Best, but with a background studying cello at the Canberra School of Music and acting at the Victorian College of the Arts.  She has become well-known locally for her performances with Elbow Theatre, the National Summer Shakespeare and Free Rain Theatre, where she excelled last year in The Crucible and Amadeus.  Further afield her original songs featured in the recent Chris Kennedy film A Mans Gotta Do, coinciding with the release of a full-length album.

The Miser was chosen also because it was the play which turned Best on to theatre when a new drama teacher, at a "posh" girls' school, directed her in the role of Harpagon and "pushed me like a real actor."  When she thinks Moliere, she thinks "fun", but it's obvious she is disciplined and dedicated.  Talking about the rehearsal process, Best explained that she is aware, from her acting experience, of what she has come to dislike about some directors, particularly those who say "This is how I want you to do it" and then demonstrate what they require.  Her basic philosophy is about respecting the actor, working with the actor from what the actor offers, adjusting as they go along.  In this way she seeks to arrive at an ensemble performance as an end product of the process, rather than expecting an imposed formula to work. 

Best is very pleased to have be given the rights to Men for the next Centrepiece production this year.  Sydneysider Brendan Cowell, like Moliere all those centuries ago, is a young and prolific playwright.  Among half a dozen plays, Men began life at the Old Fitzroy in 2000, going on to a season at Belvoir St, Bed won the Patrick White Award in 2001, ATM was commissioned for the 2002 Sydney Festival and Rabbit won the 2003 Griffin Award for production at Griffin Theatre at The Stables.

Though Centrepiece expects the earnings, to be distributed equally to all involved, will not be large, the 2005 program, which will also include something light and celebratory late in the year, looks an interesting beginning for a theatre company which hopes to grow in stature and prove its worth before seeking grant money.  Enjoyment for the audience is their first concern, in productions of a mix of classic and modern quality plays.

The young Jordan Best, like the young Moliere, still receives support from her non-miserly parents, but I would hope that Canberra's non-miserly theatregoers will keep her here in the nation's capital, rather than force her to escape to the provinces of Sydney or Melbourne. 


The Miser by Moliere
The Street Theatre in association with Centrepiece Theatre
At The Street Theatre Studio
Thursdays to Saturdays March 3-19, 7.30pm
Twilight March 13, 5pm
Matinee March 19, 2.30pm
Bookings: 6247 1223
Tickets: $19/$15

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: Show Us Your Roots 3

 Show Us Your Roots 3  Stand-up comedy presented by A List Entertainment.  National Multicultural Festival at Canberra Theatre, Friday February 18.

    New Zealander Cal Wilson provided me with a mental image of push down, twist and squelch when she described the object on top of Parliament House as a giant potato masher.  No wonder she went on to say that NZ PM Helen Clarke is "more of a man than yours is."  Anti-Howard political comment was a common theme from at least half of the comedians, receiving laughter and often applause from a very full Canberra Theatre.

    The image provided by part-Russian Steve Abbott, aka Sandman but this night playing host, was anything but mental.  Stripping off his luminescent pink suit jacket, he described his paunch as the place where his backside had gone to get a better view.  We got a better view too when, demonstrating first the "high-pants" walk, then rolling up his shirt for the "low-pants" walk, his paunch received mixed laughter and horror.  Abbott is a great comedian, almost to the point of overshadowing the acts he introduced.

    Big Brother Little Brother had us singing We Are Australian in the worst nasal accent.  Tania Losanno told what seemed to be a true story of how she won beauty pageant sashes at the Italian Club in Forrest.  Fijian-Indian Umit Bali's rapid-fire talk was almost beyond my comprehension, but younger ears picked up the nuances. 

Steve Bastoni ("Which TV show are you off?" "All of them!") described McLeod's Daughters ironically as an accurate representation of rural Australia (where are the Italians?) and more viciously as a rural tampon commercial.

Hung Le, from 'Nam (Syd'nam) proposed a pornographic kung fu movie called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Salami.  African-American-Australian Daria demonstrated how loud Americans are, which is why they like Steve Irwin and not David Attenborough.  Londoner Terry North seemed as non-Aussie ethnic as anyone else, while very-much Aussie but originally American Greg Fleet was brilliant for the last 15 minutes.  You will never fly again after his safety equipment run-down.  And he actually did borrow cash from audience member Andrew because he'd lost his credit card - I saw them out the back after the show.

A great night out.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: A Midsummer Night's Dream - Essential Theatre at Madew Wines. Preview feature article

If you had to choose between making wine or making theatre, you couldn't do better than David Madew.  He's done both separately and together.

Following musical successes like Opera by George! and concerts featuring Jackson Browne and Joan Armatrading, Madew Wines presents its first "straight" play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.  To be performed by Essential Theatre from Melbourne, under the shade of two huge willow trees, Shakespeare's magical fairy world will not be exactly straight.  I suggest you bring portable seating and wear a shady hat, because anything might happen among the vines.

Why Essential Theatre?  Apart from being a professional company whose actors have a wide range of experience in film, television and on stage, Essential has established a touring calendar of "Shakespeare in the Vines".  It didn't take too many phone calls to other winemakers for David Madew to be satisfied that this production will be up to his standards. 

He could also trust an old mate.  Madew and Paul Robertson, who plays the ass-headed Bottom, took drama together at Narrabundah College in the early 1980s.  Paul became an actor and puppeteer, while David discovered, after completing the Theatre/Media course at Mitchell Campus of Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, that his talents were more in the production management and technical side of theatre.  While Paul has played in everything from Blue Heelers to The Sentimental Bloke, from being Claudius in Hamlet and being funded to study Noh Theatre at the Practice Performing Arts School in Singapore, David stage managed Chess, was technical manager for Cats, production manager for Sydney Carnivale and producer for Grace Bros Christmas Parade.

At Mitchell, Madew played Lysander under a full moon in a production where the fairies took control.  The magical influence has stayed with him, so he owns only Great Dane dogs all named after characters in Hamlet, and even his children's names are Shakespearean.  But the fantasy is balanced by the technical.  This is where winemaking comes in.

"The thing is, it's the rhythm," says Madew.  He drew diagrams for me, like oscilloscope pictures of the changing soil profile, the sugar development in the grapes, the relationship between the volume of the grape and the surface area of the skin and the effect this has on flavour.  It could just as easily have been a lighting plot for a stage production.  But then he talked of the timing.  Whatever the technical evidence, it's only when he tastes the grapes he can decide how much longer they should stay on the vine.  It's only as the weather changes that he can judge what qualities he can bring to the wine.  Only then can he know which oak from which French location should be used, and which French barrel-maker will be right for this wine. 

This is the art of wine-making. Just as the actor and stage manager pace the action according to the audience, which is different every night.  Just as they have to know how to deal with the unexpected.  During one Opera by George!, a passing truck saw the crowd and blasted his horn.  Joan Carden, in full song, knew how to hold while the audience regained composure, and draw them back into focus.  This is the art of theatre.

Madew plans to build a regular performance program now that he has a successful series of one-offs behind him, and he has the contacts with theatrical people who are outward looking, not "precious" about their work.  He wants to make Madew Wines an arts centre where quality can develop through years of production, just as the wine maker develops the quality as he learns the art of growing, making and marketing his wines in his particular environment.  At Crossarts Theatre in Sydney, David Madew worked with actors like Richard Roxburgh and David Wenham when they were young.  I sense that he has watched such actors mature like good wines and wants, now that the winery is established and provides him a firm base, to play his part in the maturing of theatre in this country.

"A wine can be technically perfect, but still it can be crap ... at the end of the day it's all about flavours."  The taste of Shakespeare at Madew will certainly be interesting on March 6, but "if it can bring joy to my life, it will bring joy to other people's lives" and we can surely expect a product at Madew which will improve with age.  "Winemaking is agriculture for intellectuals.  Theatre is work for intellectuals," says David Madew.  "You have to be alive.  You give them the platform, so they can fly." 

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
Essential Theatre, directed by Peter Tulloch
At Madew Wines, Federal Highway, Lake George
Sunday March 6
Performance 2pm.  Lunch available before show.
Bookings: (02) 4848 0026 or www.madewwines.com.au

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Virgin Club by Phyllis Foundis

  The Virgin Club, written and performed by Phyllis Foundis.  National Multicultural Festival at ANU Arts Centre, February 15 - 19.  Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700.

    "Do you remember your first kiss?", asked Phyllis, of a woman audience member, who obviously had no problem doing so.  Of a man inadvertently in the centre of the front row she asked "Do you remember your first ... Cortina?"  The audience of 90% women fell about laughing, as they did throughout The Virgin Club.

    This was the most innocent joke in the story of Phyllis's journey towards devirgination, which should come with the warning  "The following show is stuffed full of sexual references". These include pictures of sex-shop paraphernalia, and some real ones.  Be near the front to receive a lipstick vibrator or something larger.

    But the show is not pornographic.  The laughs are in recognition by the women of their own experiences.  For men, there is a sense of camaraderie with the women and probably a realisation of how much more they may need to know.  Foundis creates Phyllis not as a naif, nor as a come-on, but as an honest woman reflecting on the frustrations of a traditional Greek upbringing.  Perhaps the most hilarious scene is near the end when she attempts to advertise a "second-hand vagina" for sale.  But it's a sad irony that so much guilt can be attached to breaking the hymen at the age of 26.

    Phyllis's mother is an essential element in her story, fascinating for her conflicting attitudes.  On the one hand, Phyllis's virginity must be preserved and orgasms denied their potency.  On the other, her answers to young Phyllis's questions are couched in the most earthy terms.  We laugh either way, and enjoy with Phyllis her final feelings of cleanliness and satisfaction. 

Only afterwards, beyond the theatrical illusion, did I think, Where has this mother been for the last 30 years? Locked, I suppose, in a time-warp where virginity and purity, family honour and ownership of property are inevitably linked.  And the young woman is responsible for that "honour", regardless of modern contraception.  And guilty, risking dire consequences if she breaks the code.

I have no doubt that you will enjoy the performance, while I think Foundis is more profound than Phyllis seems.  

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005: The Ramayana - Indonesian Wayang Kulit puppetry by Dalang Sutendri Yusuf

The Ramayana.  Dalang (puppeteer) Sutendri Yusuf, accompanied by "Laras Budoyo" gamelan orchestra led by composer Soegito Hardjodikoro.  National Multicultural Festival at Albert Hall, February 14 - 18.  School performances 10am and 2pm each day.  Evening performance Friday February 18, 7pm (Indonesian meals available from 6pm).

    The title "Laras Budoyo" has just been coined by Soegito Hardjodikoro for the gamelan performers combining Australians and Indonesians from Canberra and Perth.  The locals told me they have been learning the music since last October, but the group had only one rehearsal with Sutendri Yusuf before opening day.  Both Sutendri and Soegito were very happy and so "The Beautiful Harmony of Arts and Culture Orchestra" it became.

    Wayang Kulit simply means puppets made of leather, but there is nothing simple about the artistry and cultural importance of the dalang.  The gamelan and dalang tradition go back to around 600AD, before Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam became in turn incorporated into Javanese life.  In telling the adopted Indian stories like The Ramayana and The Mahabarata, the dalang has become both creative artist and wise man, to whom people go for counselling about ethical behaviour, about making good decisions.  The stories reveal the nature of good and evil, opening up philosophical issues.  So ordinary villagers and also people of high status in government will all seek out the dalang for advice.

    One might wish for more Beautiful Harmony of Arts and Culture in Australian politics.  Maybe the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition should seek out John Bell, director of Bell Shakespeare.

    Watch Sutendri Yusuf from behind the shadow puppet screen and you see the artistry hard at work.  He tells the story with the puppets, speaks all their voices (in English for our benefit), sings the traditional operatic songs, cues in the orchestra.  A master dalang indeed.  The effect on the front of the screen is a wonderful creation of characters and technically fascinating as the figures change from highly focussed to soft shadows, from small detailed actions to amazing somersaults and battle scenes.  Yet Sutendri told me that only a month or two ago he saw a video of the front of screen for the first time.  Since he began learning as a teenager he has only worked backstage, studying other masters in action.

    Friday evening will be a true community performance, though only 2 hours rather than the traditional 8 hours long.  Sutendri will shape his performance for the full range of adults and children expected in the audience. Take the opportunity, too, to talk with this genuine educator through the arts - a wise man indeed.
   
   
© Frank McKone, Canberra

2005 : Tony Llewellyn-Jones to direct Proof for Canberra Rep. Preview interview feature article

    "If you can't prove one's self to oneself, then you'll be a bit lost."  Listening to Tony Llewellyn-Jones, exploring his layers of connection with this city, Canberra, and how he comes to be directing his first stage play Proof for Canberra Rep, I found myself drawn into the world of his imagination and memory.  This is not a man out to prove himself to the world in a competitive superficial sense.  This is not an actor playing the role of "Actor".  Here is a man whose art is his life, who has proved his worth in the performing arts over a 30-year career, who still seeks to prove himself to himself.

    According to your age and viewing interests you will have seen Tony Llewellyn-Jones on television in (among many others) All Saints, Backberner, Hell Has Harbour Views, GP; in films like Picnic at Hanging Rock, Fatty Finn, and Cosi; and on stage from Melbourne Theatre Company's early 1970s Theatre-in-Education troupe, through every play you can imagine from MTC, the original Nimrod Theatre, the Old Tote (remember Norman in The Norman Conquests?), Sydney Theatre Company and Bell Shakespeare.  You probably missed the 1996 production at Club Cockroach of Merry Christmas Pauline Hanson!

    You may also not have known about his long-standing relationship with key Australian film-maker Paul Cox.  Llewellyn-Jones has been producer, as well as sometimes actor, working on Kostas, Man of Flowers, My First Wife, Cactus and Vincent.  Being producer with Cox means much more than being a general manager or administrator.  Cox's intensity and concentration on the interior life of his characters requires his producer to become absorbed in the imaginative process, working alongside his director more as a facilitator freeing up the possibilities for the expression of feeling and mood, while at the same time being the commercial negotiator on films which have grown in influence and international standing over Cox's career.  For Llewellyn-Jones, I felt, there was a special significance in his work on Vincent, Cox's study of Vincent van Gogh, an artist searching for ways of understanding his demons and expressing himself as fully as possible.

    After this, why Proof in Canberra for Rep?  Though this may be his first job as stage director, Llewellyn-Jones brings a special kind of experience which signals an exciting new wave at Rep at this end of his career.  At the other end, as a recent immigrant teenager staying briefly with family friends in Canberra, he saw his first stage production in Australia at the original Riverside Hut - The Tempest, probably, he thinks, directed by the inimitable Ralph Wilson. Later there was NIDA, and also a degree in Fine Arts and Aboriginal Studies at ANU.  He says 3 years in Canberra means you are hooked for life - in your mental life, even if you need to live elsewhere.

    Special memories are his walks to the top of Capital Hill, pondering on the thought that the legendary King O'Malley had left his thumbprint on that foundation stone - a look back in wonder - and we laughed at the "rampage" of Bob Ellis and Michael Boddy's seminal Australian happening The Legend of King O'Malley.  A memory, too, when plans for the new Parliament House were announced, of discovering a small circle of Indigenous people around a fire, sharing a beer, without polemical speeches, sitting in silent witness for weeks through a bitter winter just above O'Malley's thumbprint, waiting "for the top of the hill to be chopped off like the top of an egg".  Such a beautiful rounded hilltop, trees outlined against the sunset.  Such feeling, in memoriam, in his memory.

    I felt, in Lewellyn-Jones' acceptance of Canberra Rep's offer to direct, a sense of commitment, even obligation, to give something back to this city.  David Auburn's Proof is about an academic family, riven with trauma from within and without as the university property division plans to resume the house that has been home to two generations.  What will the younger family members, and the stranger by the shore, decide as the older people reach their inevitable ends?

    By the shore?  Lake Michigan, since this play is about Chicago - which should be our sister city, says Llewellyn-Jones.  Lake Burley Griffin, of course.  Walter and Marion designed their winning plan in Chicago.  That city is not all abattoirs and heavy industry.  Proof reminds Llewellyn-Jones of ANU, where he still resides when in Canberra - at the professorial University House nowadays, rather than an undergraduate college.  He remembers an Australia when performing arts infrastructure like the Opera House were unheard of, but has a vision of our arts precinct - the School of Art, School of Music, Theatre 3, Street Theatre, not forgetting, he says, the Family Law Court (and ANU Arts Centre a little off to the side) - full of drama "as unique as Hickson Road in Sydney".

    Rehearsals, with a cast he auditioned - David Bennett, Ellen Caesar, Michael Sparks and Emma Strand - consist of Llewellyn-Jones "quietly weeping" not merely for the characters' struggle to prove themselves to each other and to themselves, but for a group of actors with the capacity for "stillness" and the concentration to bring the "apparent stillness to life".  This Proof is not a mathematical exposition in linear logic form, but "the complex formula of love, trust and fear that bind a family together.  For better or for worse."

    For Tony Llewellyn-Jones, this is your life.

Proof by David Auburn
Canberra Repertory at Theatre 3
Ellery Crescent, Acton
February 18 - March 12
    Evening:     Wednesday - Saturday 8pm
    Matinees:    Saturday February 26, 2pm
            Saturday March 5, 2pm
    Twilight:    Sunday March 6, 5pm
Bookings: 6257 1950

© Frank McKone, Canberra