Australia's Theatre: A Call for a National Strategy. Launch of Trapped by the Past: Why our Theatre is Facing Paralysis by Julian Meyrick, Currency House, Thursday January 20 at Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross.
Meyrick is associate director of Melbourne Theatre Company and a theatre historian who claims Australian theatre is stuck in the 1970s. He claims "unless we have a grasp of our root involvement in the art form, then we are taking a living artistic medium and reducing it down to a mentally-inert production line whose purpose is mere self-perpetuation. We are doing more than wasting time, we are actively killing it."
For the launch Currency brought in Rob Brookman, general manager of Sydney Theatre Company, Lyn Wallis, director of Belvoir's B Sharp program, and David Berthold, director of Griffin Theatre Company to challenge Meyrick's position. Berthold's pencilled notes have not come to hand, but Wallis and Brookman - one-time Canberra practitioners at Jigsaw Company and the erstwhile Australian National Theatre Festival respectively - find points of agreement on the "crumbling" since the 1970s of the "middle ground", represented, says Wallis, by regional and community theatres.
"When the death knell sounded for many of them ... a vital training ground for artists at entry level was lost." But, Wallis says, "I find myself working as mentor and facilitator with the Next Wave", listing many new directors working for little remuneration in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, who she claims are as "rambunctious, confident and slightly anarchic" as the New Wave of the 1960s which spawned La Mama and Nimrod.
Brookman sees less chance that they can revitalise our theatre culture. He takes Meyrick to task for blaming the baby boomers, noting that directors like Robyn Nevin at STC and others in major companies do their utmost to give work to new writers. Meyrick, says Brookman, sees historical trends and wants a national strategy of "cooperation". Sounds like Sesame Street, "brought to you by the letters S and C".
The issue, says Brookman, is money. There is plenty of cooperation among the majors, and by the majors with community and independent practitioners. But the balance of the majors' incomes is the problem. At STC in 1980 private sponsorship was 0%. Now government funding is 7%, private funding 9%, and box office 75%. On the face of it this looks like an improvement, but there is not enough money in total. Result one has been that major companies program carefully to avoid losing sponsorship while trying to maintain quality in new and classic play productions. Result two has been to survive by, gradually, bowing to financial pressures which lead new writers to produce string quartets but no symphonies.
The amount the Australia Council gets to distribute is decided by the Federal Government while relatively small amounts come from State and Local Government. It's not the baby boomers' fault, for they do their best to bring on the Next Wave. It's not lack of cooperation. It's more money. And it's government at all levels that need to kick in so the companies can get the cultural balance right.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 25 January 2005
Saturday, 22 January 2005
2005: Stepping Out by Richard Harris
Stepping Out by Richard Harris. Queanbeyan Players directed by Fiona Hale, choreography by Deborah Vaughan, music directed by Diana Thomson. Uniting Church Hall, Rutledge Street, Queanbeyan until January 29. Bookings: 6297 4054 or 6231 6073.
Stepping Out is a tap dancing Steaming, without the tasteful towels and occasional nudity, with slabs of sentimentality, more than occasional sexual innuendo, and a predictable ending - very well danced.
Don't go for the psychological depths the play pretends to plumb. Just go to see good tap dancing, and to see how it's OK for all shapes and sizes of people. As in Steaming, women actors are brave enough to be cast according to the shapes required by the script, wearing costumes and comments from other characters which are not entirely flattering in the conventional sense. And this cast, including the token male, carried themselves on opening night with professional dignity, turning the evening into a pleasant enough light entertainment.
Everyone played their roles effectively, within the limits the author imposes on them, as their various personal stories become revealed, but I would give an award for the best combination of acting and dancing to Georgia Pike for her Andy. Perhaps this is because Andy is the nearest to a character who develops through her experience in the dance class. Pike was meticulous in showing this development and revealed her sensitivity as well as style in the final dances.
Top-class production values are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in a bottom-class venue. A rectangular, hot hall with a flat floor and small stage, four spotlights and several garden floodlights and a small, though quite good quality sound system ... need I say more? The light refreshments at interval are necessary rather than an option. Queanbeyan surely deserves a better small theatre than this or its opposite, the barn of the Bicentennial Centre.
Directing and design overcame the venue pretty well, though the dance teacher's solo was too long, and the traditional problem of blackouts and noisy scene changes, sometimes several minutes long, could be solved. Drop the pretence of naturalism and do the changes in the light, so the audience have something to watch instead of waiting, bored, in the dark.
Still, in the end you'll be happily clapping to the tapping rhythm, which is what this show is really about.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Stepping Out is a tap dancing Steaming, without the tasteful towels and occasional nudity, with slabs of sentimentality, more than occasional sexual innuendo, and a predictable ending - very well danced.
Don't go for the psychological depths the play pretends to plumb. Just go to see good tap dancing, and to see how it's OK for all shapes and sizes of people. As in Steaming, women actors are brave enough to be cast according to the shapes required by the script, wearing costumes and comments from other characters which are not entirely flattering in the conventional sense. And this cast, including the token male, carried themselves on opening night with professional dignity, turning the evening into a pleasant enough light entertainment.
Everyone played their roles effectively, within the limits the author imposes on them, as their various personal stories become revealed, but I would give an award for the best combination of acting and dancing to Georgia Pike for her Andy. Perhaps this is because Andy is the nearest to a character who develops through her experience in the dance class. Pike was meticulous in showing this development and revealed her sensitivity as well as style in the final dances.
Top-class production values are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in a bottom-class venue. A rectangular, hot hall with a flat floor and small stage, four spotlights and several garden floodlights and a small, though quite good quality sound system ... need I say more? The light refreshments at interval are necessary rather than an option. Queanbeyan surely deserves a better small theatre than this or its opposite, the barn of the Bicentennial Centre.
Directing and design overcame the venue pretty well, though the dance teacher's solo was too long, and the traditional problem of blackouts and noisy scene changes, sometimes several minutes long, could be solved. Drop the pretence of naturalism and do the changes in the light, so the audience have something to watch instead of waiting, bored, in the dark.
Still, in the end you'll be happily clapping to the tapping rhythm, which is what this show is really about.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 19 January 2005
2005: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis, adapted and directed by Jasan Savage. Young World Theatre at UCU Theatre, The Hub, University of Canberra. January 19-30 (Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays 2.30pm and Saturdays and Sundays 10.30am and 2.30pm). Bookings 6201 2645 or www.ucu.canberra.edu.au/lion .
Jasan Savage has used a simple but very effective device which makes this production better for young children than usual. I saw the evidence at the opening performance.
"Won't the lion be scary?" asks Lucy of the audience. "No!" was the emphatic reply from the 3-5 year-olds. Whoops, I thought. Wasn't this the wrong answer? Is this a proper pantomime, or what?
Then I realised how Savage's adaptation cleverly teaches the children to understand the difference between fiction and reality. He had only two actors available and the intimate space of the UCU Theatre in which to tell Lewis's story of four children and a wardrobe within which is a Tardis-like Narnia with myriad animals and fairy-story characters. Two of the children, now grown up (Danielle McGettrick as Lucy and John Kerr as Peter), tell the children in the audience about their wardrobe experience when they were young. In character, they teach the children about using their imaginations, and, using costumes hung in the wardrobe, they re-enact the transition between the spare room and Narnia, playing not only Lucy and Peter when young, but their treacherous younger brother Edmund, the White Witch, the faun, the badger and even Aslan the Lion, while the presence of their other sister, Susan, is imagined in the dialogue and via mime.
The ending is very well done as the children, grown old in Narnia, rediscover the way back through the wardrobe, find they are young again in (their) real life, realise that they can never visit Narnia again, and revert to their original Lucy and Peter to reflect on the experience, and then to themselves as actors to take their well-deserved bows in our real life. Sophisticated theatre - but the littlies followed every step. Wonderful theatre.
McGettrick and Kerr handle the complexity of their acting task very well indeed. Their warmth and sincerity reach out to the children without unnecessary tricks. On the way out I heard little children telling their parents, very seriously, what they thought about the play. That's a successful production in my terms.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Jasan Savage has used a simple but very effective device which makes this production better for young children than usual. I saw the evidence at the opening performance.
"Won't the lion be scary?" asks Lucy of the audience. "No!" was the emphatic reply from the 3-5 year-olds. Whoops, I thought. Wasn't this the wrong answer? Is this a proper pantomime, or what?
Then I realised how Savage's adaptation cleverly teaches the children to understand the difference between fiction and reality. He had only two actors available and the intimate space of the UCU Theatre in which to tell Lewis's story of four children and a wardrobe within which is a Tardis-like Narnia with myriad animals and fairy-story characters. Two of the children, now grown up (Danielle McGettrick as Lucy and John Kerr as Peter), tell the children in the audience about their wardrobe experience when they were young. In character, they teach the children about using their imaginations, and, using costumes hung in the wardrobe, they re-enact the transition between the spare room and Narnia, playing not only Lucy and Peter when young, but their treacherous younger brother Edmund, the White Witch, the faun, the badger and even Aslan the Lion, while the presence of their other sister, Susan, is imagined in the dialogue and via mime.
The ending is very well done as the children, grown old in Narnia, rediscover the way back through the wardrobe, find they are young again in (their) real life, realise that they can never visit Narnia again, and revert to their original Lucy and Peter to reflect on the experience, and then to themselves as actors to take their well-deserved bows in our real life. Sophisticated theatre - but the littlies followed every step. Wonderful theatre.
McGettrick and Kerr handle the complexity of their acting task very well indeed. Their warmth and sincerity reach out to the children without unnecessary tricks. On the way out I heard little children telling their parents, very seriously, what they thought about the play. That's a successful production in my terms.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 12 January 2005
2005: Canberra Museums. Feature article
"My wife's gone back looking for Eternity."
There's something mythical about this visitor's response to the National Museum of Australia. Is his wife a latter-day Persephone? Did she find Eternity? Did he ever find his wife again, waiting, I suppose, at some earthly boundary? I just hope she didn't become a pillar of salt.
Though this couple may have been bemused by the map of the universe within the NMA, another said "The architecture is great - you can go off on little tangents." Isn't this what museums are for - myth making, exploring the universe within ourselves? Keeping places. Remembering places. Recognising ourselves. Finding where we belong.
Other visitors said, "Identifying with things from our past like Vegemite ads, school milk, bush tucker, the Pelaco ad" and "Fantastic overview of our Australian story, especially the Aboriginal story." The First Australians Gallery is the most popular at the NMA, and the first point of call for international visitors.
Then, as large as life, there's Tetsuya Wakuda at the National Portrait Gallery. Hails originally from Hamamatsu, Japan. "Make simplicity seem like abundance", he says, smiling over the kitchen bench in his Sydney sushi restaurant. I thought that was a line from the New Testament, about loaves and fishes. Or it's pure Japanese Zen. Hasn't Australia become an amazing place!
My interest in museum visitors arose in the recent flurry of worry about falling numbers, giving the impression that Canberra's tourist industry is coming apart at the seams. I thought, is ever-increasing tourist numbers the main purpose of our Federally funded institutions - the War Memorial, National Museum of Australia, National Portrait Gallery and Old Parliament House, new Parliament House, National Film and Sound Archives, the National Archives, and National Gallery of Australia? Are they failing in their duty?
Early New Year is not an easy time to get to everybody involved, but from the War Memorial, NMA, NPG and OPH it's clear the stories of doom and disaster are not the truth. This doesn't mean our big attractions can sit back on their laurels, but...
Linda Ferguson is the collector and analyser of visitor statistics at the War Memorial. Her figures show a 1 per cent increase in 2004 over 2003, but the first half of the year was up and the second half down. Yet OPH numbers show an average increase of about 2% each month from July to December 2004 compared with the same months in 2003. Outside factors like air fares and petrol prices seem to be the main concern. NMA permanent exhibition figures show a drop from the Sydney region late in the year but increases from Melbourne, Brisbane and especially Adelaide where airfare specials were laid on, while they also show 188 per cent increased attendance over 2003 at their travelling exhibitions.
The institutions, as they always have, can expect their different exhibitions to attract different numbers of people. An important or worthwhile exhibition should not be mounted simply on the basis of attracting the largest possible number. The issues I think the tourist industry should focus on are the outside factors which enable or prevent the potential numbers from getting here.
Especially they need to seriously promote Canberra as the national capital to international markets. Here the figures for recent years show a decline in the numbers and proportion of international visitors to Australia choosing to visit Canberra. How does this compare, for example, with Washington DC? Far too many overseas visitors still think Sydney is Australia's capital. The strongest attraction to come here is Aboriginal culture in the First Australians Gallery at NMA and Aboriginal art at the National Gallery. Ironic, isn't it? I haven't got figures on visitors to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
Talking to NMA Director Craddock Morton and his Director of Public Affairs Martin Portus, OPH Programs and Marketing Manager Sandy Clugston, NPG's Marketing Manager Suzie Campbell, War Memorial's Exhibitions Manager Helen Withnell and NMA's equivalent of Linda Ferguson, Susan Tonkin,raised more than tourist housekeeping issues. Each institution, being funded by the Federal Government, has its own raison d'etre, often based in formal legislation. The War Memorial, for example, is essentially a place of living ceremony and ritual. Providing its services is a national duty to all Australians, supported by its research and exhibition work. Old Parliament House is, too, more than a museum - it's a heritage site where people experience democracy as it was, moving on to new Parliament House for the way things are now. The National Portrait Gallery is both an art gallery and a museum of national icons, while both NPG and the National Museum work by being closely involved with people's stories - personal and community - so people come literally to see their own history in the exhibitions.
Making all this happen is a special artform. This is not about pumping up tourist numbers by offering special deals. It's about integrity of purpose, honesty on display, stimulation of understanding, depth of experience - all those elements that make for a good work of art. Our institutions are well up with international standards. This year, for example, the War Memorial collaborates with the Canadian War Museum and the British Imperial War Museum in an exhibition of World War II Art opening in Ottawa in May and here in November, while the International Museum Theatre Association will meet at NMA in October. In addition our institutions' outreach programs, touring across the nation and including such regulars as Talkback Classroom which goes international this year, are world leaders. But, like a good theatrical production, you need to know your audience. And this is where Linda Ferguson has come up with an interesting analysis.
Ferguson's "segmentation" studies have revealed four kinds of visitors. People who personally identify with the experience in the place they visit. People who seek to gain knowledge from their experience when they visit. People who like to be swept up in the experience, for fun, enjoyment, or satisfaction. People who visit as part of a bonding experience with the other people who come with them. In the case of the War Memorial on which she focussed, the tendency was for the first group to be mid-fifties and older, for whom the memories of the past were deeply emotional experiences. The second group tended to be middle-aged (35 to 55), the third group younger adults, while the fourth group were often family groups where the generations overlapped. In other places, like the National Museum, there is obviously a fifth group of the young for whom live story-telling and exploring stimulating experiences is the key.
This kind of understanding of the audience can help directors of these institutions link the expectations expressed in their formal aims with the obvious need to keep people rolling through the doors. An exhibition which entails an extra cost needs first to have integrity of content and then all the variety of presentation to cater for the audience, or to be clearly targeted in format to satisfy the needs of particular audiences (with promotion to match). All the national institutions have for many years been in close cooperative contact, which means Ferguson's work is a strength for the whole system.
The tourist industry must invest much more in promoting Canberra's speciality - the national institutions - just as Washington DC does. But it should be recognised that it is not the job of the institutions to focus their efforts on boosting the tourist industry. It's the tourist industry's job to put the institutions on the tourist map. The quality is there, and is more than competitive internationally. If local businesses want to turn a penny, and local government wants to support them, then they must work to get the quality message out.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
There's something mythical about this visitor's response to the National Museum of Australia. Is his wife a latter-day Persephone? Did she find Eternity? Did he ever find his wife again, waiting, I suppose, at some earthly boundary? I just hope she didn't become a pillar of salt.
Though this couple may have been bemused by the map of the universe within the NMA, another said "The architecture is great - you can go off on little tangents." Isn't this what museums are for - myth making, exploring the universe within ourselves? Keeping places. Remembering places. Recognising ourselves. Finding where we belong.
Other visitors said, "Identifying with things from our past like Vegemite ads, school milk, bush tucker, the Pelaco ad" and "Fantastic overview of our Australian story, especially the Aboriginal story." The First Australians Gallery is the most popular at the NMA, and the first point of call for international visitors.
Then, as large as life, there's Tetsuya Wakuda at the National Portrait Gallery. Hails originally from Hamamatsu, Japan. "Make simplicity seem like abundance", he says, smiling over the kitchen bench in his Sydney sushi restaurant. I thought that was a line from the New Testament, about loaves and fishes. Or it's pure Japanese Zen. Hasn't Australia become an amazing place!
My interest in museum visitors arose in the recent flurry of worry about falling numbers, giving the impression that Canberra's tourist industry is coming apart at the seams. I thought, is ever-increasing tourist numbers the main purpose of our Federally funded institutions - the War Memorial, National Museum of Australia, National Portrait Gallery and Old Parliament House, new Parliament House, National Film and Sound Archives, the National Archives, and National Gallery of Australia? Are they failing in their duty?
Early New Year is not an easy time to get to everybody involved, but from the War Memorial, NMA, NPG and OPH it's clear the stories of doom and disaster are not the truth. This doesn't mean our big attractions can sit back on their laurels, but...
Linda Ferguson is the collector and analyser of visitor statistics at the War Memorial. Her figures show a 1 per cent increase in 2004 over 2003, but the first half of the year was up and the second half down. Yet OPH numbers show an average increase of about 2% each month from July to December 2004 compared with the same months in 2003. Outside factors like air fares and petrol prices seem to be the main concern. NMA permanent exhibition figures show a drop from the Sydney region late in the year but increases from Melbourne, Brisbane and especially Adelaide where airfare specials were laid on, while they also show 188 per cent increased attendance over 2003 at their travelling exhibitions.
The institutions, as they always have, can expect their different exhibitions to attract different numbers of people. An important or worthwhile exhibition should not be mounted simply on the basis of attracting the largest possible number. The issues I think the tourist industry should focus on are the outside factors which enable or prevent the potential numbers from getting here.
Especially they need to seriously promote Canberra as the national capital to international markets. Here the figures for recent years show a decline in the numbers and proportion of international visitors to Australia choosing to visit Canberra. How does this compare, for example, with Washington DC? Far too many overseas visitors still think Sydney is Australia's capital. The strongest attraction to come here is Aboriginal culture in the First Australians Gallery at NMA and Aboriginal art at the National Gallery. Ironic, isn't it? I haven't got figures on visitors to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
Talking to NMA Director Craddock Morton and his Director of Public Affairs Martin Portus, OPH Programs and Marketing Manager Sandy Clugston, NPG's Marketing Manager Suzie Campbell, War Memorial's Exhibitions Manager Helen Withnell and NMA's equivalent of Linda Ferguson, Susan Tonkin,raised more than tourist housekeeping issues. Each institution, being funded by the Federal Government, has its own raison d'etre, often based in formal legislation. The War Memorial, for example, is essentially a place of living ceremony and ritual. Providing its services is a national duty to all Australians, supported by its research and exhibition work. Old Parliament House is, too, more than a museum - it's a heritage site where people experience democracy as it was, moving on to new Parliament House for the way things are now. The National Portrait Gallery is both an art gallery and a museum of national icons, while both NPG and the National Museum work by being closely involved with people's stories - personal and community - so people come literally to see their own history in the exhibitions.
Making all this happen is a special artform. This is not about pumping up tourist numbers by offering special deals. It's about integrity of purpose, honesty on display, stimulation of understanding, depth of experience - all those elements that make for a good work of art. Our institutions are well up with international standards. This year, for example, the War Memorial collaborates with the Canadian War Museum and the British Imperial War Museum in an exhibition of World War II Art opening in Ottawa in May and here in November, while the International Museum Theatre Association will meet at NMA in October. In addition our institutions' outreach programs, touring across the nation and including such regulars as Talkback Classroom which goes international this year, are world leaders. But, like a good theatrical production, you need to know your audience. And this is where Linda Ferguson has come up with an interesting analysis.
Ferguson's "segmentation" studies have revealed four kinds of visitors. People who personally identify with the experience in the place they visit. People who seek to gain knowledge from their experience when they visit. People who like to be swept up in the experience, for fun, enjoyment, or satisfaction. People who visit as part of a bonding experience with the other people who come with them. In the case of the War Memorial on which she focussed, the tendency was for the first group to be mid-fifties and older, for whom the memories of the past were deeply emotional experiences. The second group tended to be middle-aged (35 to 55), the third group younger adults, while the fourth group were often family groups where the generations overlapped. In other places, like the National Museum, there is obviously a fifth group of the young for whom live story-telling and exploring stimulating experiences is the key.
This kind of understanding of the audience can help directors of these institutions link the expectations expressed in their formal aims with the obvious need to keep people rolling through the doors. An exhibition which entails an extra cost needs first to have integrity of content and then all the variety of presentation to cater for the audience, or to be clearly targeted in format to satisfy the needs of particular audiences (with promotion to match). All the national institutions have for many years been in close cooperative contact, which means Ferguson's work is a strength for the whole system.
The tourist industry must invest much more in promoting Canberra's speciality - the national institutions - just as Washington DC does. But it should be recognised that it is not the job of the institutions to focus their efforts on boosting the tourist industry. It's the tourist industry's job to put the institutions on the tourist map. The quality is there, and is more than competitive internationally. If local businesses want to turn a penny, and local government wants to support them, then they must work to get the quality message out.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 7 January 2005
2005: Telling Moments selected and directed by Adam Maher
Telling Moments. Monologues by Robert Reinhart, Adele Lewin, Tessa Bremner, Margaret Fischer, Keith Curran and Neal Bell selected and directed by Adam Maher for A.R.T.S. at The Street Theatre, January 6-22.
This mixed bunch is a pot-pourri of mainly gay and lesbian scents, with a strong smell of death, actual or emotional. Though some pieces are humorous, even occasionally very funny, the lives of these disparate characters are essentially sad and at the extremes, bleak.
The bunch is also of mixed quality. Reinhart, a well-known New York gay writer, communications executive and media producer, wrote Telling Moments as a collection of 15 gay monologues, which sell to actors to use as audition pieces. Though published in 1994, I could find no internet reference to their production on stage in toto. The other pieces performed here are a mix of one-offs and monologues taken out of plays.
Reinhart's writing is clearly the best of the bunch, but with only some of his 15 presented, and the other pieces having a different focus and not so well written, the show is not clearly integrated. Some of Reinhart's characters do make references to each other, but the point of this is lost on the non-Reinhart characters. So, despite short bookend scenes, there isn't any dramatic development for the audience to follow.
Performances also ranged from fair to excellent. Bringing in only one woman asked too much of Adele Lewin, while Oliver Baudert and Ian Croker had real style and I was particularly impressed by the strength of the younger Jeremy Just's acting. On opening night the acting seemed to free up in the second half, and the audience responded in kind, so we can look forward to the show settling in quickly.
The musicians, Helen Way (cello) and Brett Janiec (clarinet) played with verve and great style between the telling moments. The musical links, composed by Helen Way and Tim Hansen, were neat and thematically pointed, successfully helping to hold the evening together.
In summary, an interesting and partially successful show, which is worth seeing to appreciate different lives of horror and humour as each character expresses his or her thoughts and feelings directly to us.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This mixed bunch is a pot-pourri of mainly gay and lesbian scents, with a strong smell of death, actual or emotional. Though some pieces are humorous, even occasionally very funny, the lives of these disparate characters are essentially sad and at the extremes, bleak.
The bunch is also of mixed quality. Reinhart, a well-known New York gay writer, communications executive and media producer, wrote Telling Moments as a collection of 15 gay monologues, which sell to actors to use as audition pieces. Though published in 1994, I could find no internet reference to their production on stage in toto. The other pieces performed here are a mix of one-offs and monologues taken out of plays.
Reinhart's writing is clearly the best of the bunch, but with only some of his 15 presented, and the other pieces having a different focus and not so well written, the show is not clearly integrated. Some of Reinhart's characters do make references to each other, but the point of this is lost on the non-Reinhart characters. So, despite short bookend scenes, there isn't any dramatic development for the audience to follow.
Performances also ranged from fair to excellent. Bringing in only one woman asked too much of Adele Lewin, while Oliver Baudert and Ian Croker had real style and I was particularly impressed by the strength of the younger Jeremy Just's acting. On opening night the acting seemed to free up in the second half, and the audience responded in kind, so we can look forward to the show settling in quickly.
The musicians, Helen Way (cello) and Brett Janiec (clarinet) played with verve and great style between the telling moments. The musical links, composed by Helen Way and Tim Hansen, were neat and thematically pointed, successfully helping to hold the evening together.
In summary, an interesting and partially successful show, which is worth seeing to appreciate different lives of horror and humour as each character expresses his or her thoughts and feelings directly to us.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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