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
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