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
Sunday, 20 February 2005
Saturday, 19 February 2005
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
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
Wednesday, 16 February 2005
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
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
Tuesday, 15 February 2005
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
"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
Monday, 14 February 2005
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
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
Friday, 11 February 2005
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
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
2005: When a Man Loves a Woman by Solomon F Caudle and Kabu Okai Davies
When a Man Loves a Woman by Solomon F Caudle and Kabu Okai Davies. African Globe Theatre Works, Newark N.J., New York USA, directed by Solomon Caudle. National Multicultural Festival at The Street Theatre February 10 - 12, 8pm.
This is a theatre-in-education play for young adults. Its central message is don't let physical attraction put safe sex out of mind. One mistake can give you AIDs.
Second, don't let real love be denied for the sake of one mistake. Third, don't be a manipulating, drug-taking living-a-lie asshole, because you cause disaster for the people you influence and infect. Literally.
The City of Newark's publicity talks of the "Renaissance" since 1980 after the city's decline in the mid-20th Century, but African Globe shows the African-Americans in the bar and music scene needing to learn to deal with the present-day scourge of AIDs, which infects women as much as men in a culture where men too often rely on sexual conquest to establish their status.
From the point of view of serious dramatic art, the storyline and spoken dialogue is too simple and quite predictable. The play opts for a positive, even sentimental, ending for the reunited husband and wife, even in the knowledge that she will die at some point from AIDs. The death of the asshole is almost laughable.
But I found the use of singing quite fascinating. American popular forms of music become deeply felt expressions of despair and love when African-Americans improvise, harmonise and take their voices to extremes in a style that belongs to their culture. This was not imitation or mere entertainment. And so I understood that this play, in its inner city Newark context, is designed to gets its message through directly to the hearts of its young African-American audience.
Don't go to see When a Man Loves a Woman as a commercial entertainment, but see it as an opportunity to experience this culture. Our own AIDs and drug-taking are hidden under Canberra's bush-capital superstructure, just as they are hidden in the "New" Newark. But we don't have the African-American voices to sing out the tragedy and the hope. The Multicultural Festival allows us this experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a theatre-in-education play for young adults. Its central message is don't let physical attraction put safe sex out of mind. One mistake can give you AIDs.
Second, don't let real love be denied for the sake of one mistake. Third, don't be a manipulating, drug-taking living-a-lie asshole, because you cause disaster for the people you influence and infect. Literally.
The City of Newark's publicity talks of the "Renaissance" since 1980 after the city's decline in the mid-20th Century, but African Globe shows the African-Americans in the bar and music scene needing to learn to deal with the present-day scourge of AIDs, which infects women as much as men in a culture where men too often rely on sexual conquest to establish their status.
From the point of view of serious dramatic art, the storyline and spoken dialogue is too simple and quite predictable. The play opts for a positive, even sentimental, ending for the reunited husband and wife, even in the knowledge that she will die at some point from AIDs. The death of the asshole is almost laughable.
But I found the use of singing quite fascinating. American popular forms of music become deeply felt expressions of despair and love when African-Americans improvise, harmonise and take their voices to extremes in a style that belongs to their culture. This was not imitation or mere entertainment. And so I understood that this play, in its inner city Newark context, is designed to gets its message through directly to the hearts of its young African-American audience.
Don't go to see When a Man Loves a Woman as a commercial entertainment, but see it as an opportunity to experience this culture. Our own AIDs and drug-taking are hidden under Canberra's bush-capital superstructure, just as they are hidden in the "New" Newark. But we don't have the African-American voices to sing out the tragedy and the hope. The Multicultural Festival allows us this experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 4 February 2005
2005: The Two Gentlemen of Verona ["Verona" crossed out] Thredbo
The Two Gentlemen of Verona ["Verona" crossed out] Thredbo mainly by William Shakespeare. Thredbo Players directed by Brett Thomas at Cooma Little Theatre, February 4.
"Thredbo Players is an amateur company," announced the director at the end of this summer's season. "As you can see," he added, almost shyly, while the cast was swamped once more with applause.
I mention "swamped" because there is a long conversation about tides, missing the tide, ebbing and flowing, when Proteus delays his departure, being lovelorn at the time in relation to Julia, when he is required by his father to leave Julia and Thredbo to attend the Mayor of Berridale Council, where his friend Valentine is working, and has fallen in love, mutually, with the Mayor's daughter, Silvia. Proteus switches his affections to Silvia immediately upon sighting her - not mutual - while she is expected by her father to marry the creepy but rich Thurio. Proteus uses subterfuge and dissimulation to cause Valentine's banishment. Julia, for her own safety, travels to Berridale dressed as a man, and is employed by Proteus, unwittingly, as a go-between to Silvia. Valentine becomes a Robin Hood / Ned Kelly gang leader, hiding away on Crackenback ... and all ends happily ever after.
I think this must be the most madcap outfit I can recall. There is a certain quality in their mangling of Shakespeare's poetic language, the incorporation of the prompt (including bring her on stage for the curtain call), the manic servants, a rendition of Who is Silvia to wobble-board accompaniment, all in 1880's costume including Ned's helmet, that just cannot be denied. But it's very hard to describe.
As an audience member said to me afterwards, it's just about being entertaining. And, amazingly, it was - for more than two hours without interval. Someone near me commented that the old language was hard to follow, but the story was no problem. I never worked out the tides in Berridale, but the warmth of connection between the country town cast and audience flowed back and forth wonderfully. I doubt you'll enjoy a show like this in a modern city, because it's really about country and community. Rather like it was in Shakespeare's day, I suspect, for this youthful romantic comedy.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"Thredbo Players is an amateur company," announced the director at the end of this summer's season. "As you can see," he added, almost shyly, while the cast was swamped once more with applause.
I mention "swamped" because there is a long conversation about tides, missing the tide, ebbing and flowing, when Proteus delays his departure, being lovelorn at the time in relation to Julia, when he is required by his father to leave Julia and Thredbo to attend the Mayor of Berridale Council, where his friend Valentine is working, and has fallen in love, mutually, with the Mayor's daughter, Silvia. Proteus switches his affections to Silvia immediately upon sighting her - not mutual - while she is expected by her father to marry the creepy but rich Thurio. Proteus uses subterfuge and dissimulation to cause Valentine's banishment. Julia, for her own safety, travels to Berridale dressed as a man, and is employed by Proteus, unwittingly, as a go-between to Silvia. Valentine becomes a Robin Hood / Ned Kelly gang leader, hiding away on Crackenback ... and all ends happily ever after.
I think this must be the most madcap outfit I can recall. There is a certain quality in their mangling of Shakespeare's poetic language, the incorporation of the prompt (including bring her on stage for the curtain call), the manic servants, a rendition of Who is Silvia to wobble-board accompaniment, all in 1880's costume including Ned's helmet, that just cannot be denied. But it's very hard to describe.
As an audience member said to me afterwards, it's just about being entertaining. And, amazingly, it was - for more than two hours without interval. Someone near me commented that the old language was hard to follow, but the story was no problem. I never worked out the tides in Berridale, but the warmth of connection between the country town cast and audience flowed back and forth wonderfully. I doubt you'll enjoy a show like this in a modern city, because it's really about country and community. Rather like it was in Shakespeare's day, I suspect, for this youthful romantic comedy.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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