If you meet a neatly dressed, unassuming, absolutely ordinary married man in his 30s, beware. Check that his name is not Doc Johnson, Nick the Greek, Mystic Nick or His Holiness Nicholas J Johnson, Third Incarnation of Goddess Gelar. If it is any of these, or even plain Nicholas J Johnson, then watch your watch in case it disappears as happened once to an FBI agent at a social function, right here in Canberra.
The FBI man protested far too much about his importance, so Nick Johnson, Entertainer Extraordinaire, nicked his watch. 45 minutes later, surrounded by all and sundry, Johnson innocently approached our FBI friend. "I think, maybe, this watch is yours?" said he, to its owner's fury and everyone else's titters.
Johnson has been a traditional clown, working professionally in circus and character roles for 8 years, and is well-known as a children's entertainer (laugh@funnybones.com.au). But his work has shifted, especially through his less generally known employment by corporate organisations, away from the clown role towards a kind of Rod Quantok (Australia You're Standing In It, Bus, Son of Bus and Cap'n Snooze ads) with the extra skills of a magician.
How to Cheat Friends and Incriminate People is his first straight stage show, at The Street Theatre, February 22 to 25. "Straight" might not be the best description, but Johnson sees himself rather more like a stand-up comedian than clown. He objects to the idea that he is an "artist", but is happy to be an "entertainer". But in my view, after an hour and a half's solid talk, there's more to this performer than meets the eye (or often doesn't when the sleight of hand gets out of hand).
Young Nicholas began his illusionist career at the age of 10, but I found it significant that his first straight acting role was in acclaimed Canberra director Carol Woodrow's 1994 production of Six Characters in Search of an Author. At 14, Johnson played The Boy, who is killed backstage, presumably murdered, in a play deliberately designed so that the audience would believe that the death was real. Luigi Pirandello, in 1921, was probably the first playwright to so directly challenge his audience's belief in the "boundary between illusion and reality, truth and make-believe, on the stage as well as in daily life" as theatre commentator Martin Esslin puts it.
Johnson tried out for straight actor training after leaving Hawker College but found the audition process "ridiculous" and saw the tertiary course as creating theatre "workhorses and mechanics". So, seeking freedom of thought and action, in addition to an Arts degree in Sociology, English, Drama and Philosophy he studied the arts of all kinds of con artists, including professional card sharps, pickpockets, the sellers of spurious potions, the purveyors of spiritual guff, mystics who manipulate in darkened seances, as well as expanding his repertoire of standard magician's tricks.
So you will be entertained by, and be fooled by Doc Johnson, the Snake Oil merchant and his Memory Tonic, the Gambler Nick the Greek, Mystic Nick the Medium (who works in the "dark" with the lights on) and the ultimate Guru His Holiness etc etc etc who will prove to you that he is divine. The entertainment comes with biting satire. One wonders how the psychic cards will stack up among the myriad memory training courses and spiritual experience lectures that regularly manifest themselves in our halls and meeting rooms like carpet sales at the Albert Hall.
I wondered if Johnson had been able to keep his wife in the manner to which she was previously accustomed, and she claimed he does as well financially as other middle class professionals. He says that he does not take corporate work where he disagrees with the company's message - though one tobacco company which remains nameless fooled him by employing him under a spurious company name. So as an illusionist he is not entirely perfect. However I lost 3 times in a row in the gambling game he showed me.
He also does not use "blue" material - "I don't need to" - but he was a successful security guard at a bomb data conference surrounded by the world's uniformed police. It was here he beat a Canadian Mountie (who I suppose was dressed in red) at three card monte using tricks he learnt from a Sydney casino card sharp.
Of course, Nicholas J Johnson is really plain Nicholas. He put the J in to distinguish himself from the other 2 Nicholas Johnsons in Canberra, and to give him credibility with Americans, especially FBI agents.
How to Cheat Friends and Incriminate People
Nicholas J Johnson at The Street Theatre
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday February 22 - 25 7pm; and
Friday and Saturday February 24 - 25 9pm
All Tickets $15. Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 31 January 2006
Wednesday, 25 January 2006
2006: All-Mother by barb barnett and Matt Marshall
All-Mother devised by barb barnett, written by Matt Marshall, directed by Scott Wright. Serious Theatre at The Street Theatre January 25 to February 4, 8pm. Bookings 6247 1223.
All-Mother is a fantasy, quite fascinating for its unlikely origins in bureaucratic Canberra where the myth of Lilith seems a little out of kilter with our daily experience. Maybe our built environment, however much we like to call it a bush capital, makes people feel the need for a story which somehow links our ever conflicting emotions, especially in our sexual relationships, to an explanatory point of origin.
barb barnett has chosen to work over several years on the apocryphal story of Lilith, of whom you may not have heard. In the Bible, God apparently creates people twice. In Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 27 "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." But in Chapter 2 Verse 7 "God formed man of the dust of the ground" and in Verses 21/22 "he took one of [Adam's] ribs ... and made he a woman." Confusion reigned until the 11th Century when a Hebrew text claimed that the Verse 7 woman was Lilith, Adam's first wife - who argued with him on the grounds that they were created equal - while the Verse 22 woman was the well-known Eve, who could never claim to be equal in origin to Adam.
All-Mother presents us with Punch and Judy representing Adam and Eve, while Lilith, played by barnett, is shown in scenes in which she clashes with Eve, her story going backwards to the point of her creation. In this version of the myth, which corresponds more with Bernard Shaw's Back to Methusaleh, Lilith is the original creation - the mother of Adam and all human life ever since. Her retreat backwards is perhaps justified when we see Punch and Judy traditionally bashing each other, until they both die, return as ghosts and continue arguing about whether they are in heaven or hell.
The on-stage puppetry, the scenery, lighting and sound track are excellent, in keeping with Scott Wright's day job as director of Erth-Visual and Physical Inc who brought Gondwana to the National Museum recently. I found the mythical scenes rather slow, trying too hard to be "significant", but All-Mother is unusual theatre, if not entirely successful.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
All-Mother is a fantasy, quite fascinating for its unlikely origins in bureaucratic Canberra where the myth of Lilith seems a little out of kilter with our daily experience. Maybe our built environment, however much we like to call it a bush capital, makes people feel the need for a story which somehow links our ever conflicting emotions, especially in our sexual relationships, to an explanatory point of origin.
barb barnett has chosen to work over several years on the apocryphal story of Lilith, of whom you may not have heard. In the Bible, God apparently creates people twice. In Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 27 "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." But in Chapter 2 Verse 7 "God formed man of the dust of the ground" and in Verses 21/22 "he took one of [Adam's] ribs ... and made he a woman." Confusion reigned until the 11th Century when a Hebrew text claimed that the Verse 7 woman was Lilith, Adam's first wife - who argued with him on the grounds that they were created equal - while the Verse 22 woman was the well-known Eve, who could never claim to be equal in origin to Adam.
All-Mother presents us with Punch and Judy representing Adam and Eve, while Lilith, played by barnett, is shown in scenes in which she clashes with Eve, her story going backwards to the point of her creation. In this version of the myth, which corresponds more with Bernard Shaw's Back to Methusaleh, Lilith is the original creation - the mother of Adam and all human life ever since. Her retreat backwards is perhaps justified when we see Punch and Judy traditionally bashing each other, until they both die, return as ghosts and continue arguing about whether they are in heaven or hell.
The on-stage puppetry, the scenery, lighting and sound track are excellent, in keeping with Scott Wright's day job as director of Erth-Visual and Physical Inc who brought Gondwana to the National Museum recently. I found the mythical scenes rather slow, trying too hard to be "significant", but All-Mother is unusual theatre, if not entirely successful.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 21 January 2006
2006: Chronicles - A Lamentation by Teatr Piesn Kozla
Sydney Festival: Chronicles - A Lamentation. Teatr Piesn Kozla (Poland) directed by Grzegorz Bral at The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House until January 25 9.45pm and Riverside Theatre, Parramatta January 27-28 8pm.
This is a 45 minute example of intense ritualistic theatre, fascinating for its voice and movement work, but ultimately failing, in my view, to take the audience to new levels of understanding.
Bral and his co-founder of Teatr Piesn Kozla, Anna Zubrzycki, who is a central performer in Chronicles, have long taught and directed in the workshop tradition known best in this country through the Theatre Laboratory run by Jerzy Grotowski in the later decades of last century. They concentrate, always with high moral principle, on research into ancient and fading traditions and present their findings as re-created myth. In this case, they have taken the polyphonic harmonies and women's ululations of laments sung in Epiros, nowadays on the Greek - Albanian border, as their base. They have then used the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh to show a man's battle with the Great Goddess, and his search for immortality.
Rapidly spoken poetic language, almost continuous choral singing which sounded to me most like Polish - Russian style, highly choreographed mimetic movement which never quite becomes dance, all done with great skill and precision, still did not convey to me any clear idea of the purpose of the work. According to the program notes we are supposed to reach "the deep understanding which accompanies [the] acceptance" of "death, the ultimate finality in human life, the futility of escape." Because the work, however sincere in concept, does not have a strong dramatic structure, I found the point of the ending - where all 7 performers, for no apparent reason, singing, exited upstage left, continued singing for a minute or so off stage until their voices faded into nothing - escaped me.
If I hadn't seen the publicity I would never have known that Rafal Habel was Gilgamesh, Marcin Rudy his battle companion Enkidu, and Christopher Sivertsen a Shaman, or that Anne Zubrzycki was The Wild Cow - Mother of Gilgamesh, Anna Krotoska was the Goddess Ishtar, Maria Sendow was Death and Ian Morgan was The Immortal, Utnapishti. Crossing cultures is never easy - perhaps knowledge of Polish would have helped - but even after reading the program again following the performance I find it difficult to identify these characters. Even less could I identify with them. Unfortunately, moral principle is not enough to make great theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a 45 minute example of intense ritualistic theatre, fascinating for its voice and movement work, but ultimately failing, in my view, to take the audience to new levels of understanding.
Bral and his co-founder of Teatr Piesn Kozla, Anna Zubrzycki, who is a central performer in Chronicles, have long taught and directed in the workshop tradition known best in this country through the Theatre Laboratory run by Jerzy Grotowski in the later decades of last century. They concentrate, always with high moral principle, on research into ancient and fading traditions and present their findings as re-created myth. In this case, they have taken the polyphonic harmonies and women's ululations of laments sung in Epiros, nowadays on the Greek - Albanian border, as their base. They have then used the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh to show a man's battle with the Great Goddess, and his search for immortality.
Rapidly spoken poetic language, almost continuous choral singing which sounded to me most like Polish - Russian style, highly choreographed mimetic movement which never quite becomes dance, all done with great skill and precision, still did not convey to me any clear idea of the purpose of the work. According to the program notes we are supposed to reach "the deep understanding which accompanies [the] acceptance" of "death, the ultimate finality in human life, the futility of escape." Because the work, however sincere in concept, does not have a strong dramatic structure, I found the point of the ending - where all 7 performers, for no apparent reason, singing, exited upstage left, continued singing for a minute or so off stage until their voices faded into nothing - escaped me.
If I hadn't seen the publicity I would never have known that Rafal Habel was Gilgamesh, Marcin Rudy his battle companion Enkidu, and Christopher Sivertsen a Shaman, or that Anne Zubrzycki was The Wild Cow - Mother of Gilgamesh, Anna Krotoska was the Goddess Ishtar, Maria Sendow was Death and Ian Morgan was The Immortal, Utnapishti. Crossing cultures is never easy - perhaps knowledge of Polish would have helped - but even after reading the program again following the performance I find it difficult to identify these characters. Even less could I identify with them. Unfortunately, moral principle is not enough to make great theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 19 January 2006
2006: Bright Abyss by James Thierree
Sydney Festival: Bright Abyss created and directed by James Thierree, at Theatre Royal January 8-22 and 24-29, 8pm.
Brought up by his parents, Jean-Baptiste Thierree and Victoria Thierree Chaplin, from the age of 4 on tour with Le Cirque Imaginaire and Le Cirque Invisible, James Thierree has what one might call circus cred. He's still only 32, with acrobatic and dance skills which put any Olympic "artistic" gymnast to shame.
I saw his first creation, The Junebug Symphony, 3 years ago and enjoyed it as entertainment, but Bright Abyss successfully sets sail into the blue yonder. There is a story, told in wonderful images, rather like Shakespeare's The Tempest. It begins with a great wind, full of foreboding, threatening to destroy the lives of the five characters on their journey. 90 minutes later all have resolved the tangle of relationships which hold them back, often very funny to watch as well as exciting, sometimes frightening, sometimes touchingly sad. Finally they learn to go with the wind in a most beautiful scene with spinnaker billowing into the future.
Circus, dance and mime work was so impressive that a full house last Thursday applauded scene after scene, rising to a crescendo with 3 curtain calls. Thierree's directing made what might have been a series of circus-style acts into a work of strong dramatic structure which drew the audience into the lives of those on stage and reflected on our own experience - and gave hope that, working together, we may survive the abyss and find our way in some kind of harmony.
There was applause too for the performers indvidually, each with their own special skills and personality. Thierree is a marvellous mime, the still young Raphaelle Boitel - now just 22 - a seemingly jointless contortionist, Niklas Ek a true dancer (from the Royal Ballet Stockholm and the Nederlands Dans Theater), Brazilian capoeira dancer and tumbler Thiago Martins and the always surprising soprano and pianist Uma Ysamat from Spain.
Together they made a great celebration of performance, entertainment and life, deserving every handclap, cheer and whistle.
Book at Festival Ticketek 02 9266 4890 or www.sydneyfestival.org.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Brought up by his parents, Jean-Baptiste Thierree and Victoria Thierree Chaplin, from the age of 4 on tour with Le Cirque Imaginaire and Le Cirque Invisible, James Thierree has what one might call circus cred. He's still only 32, with acrobatic and dance skills which put any Olympic "artistic" gymnast to shame.
I saw his first creation, The Junebug Symphony, 3 years ago and enjoyed it as entertainment, but Bright Abyss successfully sets sail into the blue yonder. There is a story, told in wonderful images, rather like Shakespeare's The Tempest. It begins with a great wind, full of foreboding, threatening to destroy the lives of the five characters on their journey. 90 minutes later all have resolved the tangle of relationships which hold them back, often very funny to watch as well as exciting, sometimes frightening, sometimes touchingly sad. Finally they learn to go with the wind in a most beautiful scene with spinnaker billowing into the future.
Circus, dance and mime work was so impressive that a full house last Thursday applauded scene after scene, rising to a crescendo with 3 curtain calls. Thierree's directing made what might have been a series of circus-style acts into a work of strong dramatic structure which drew the audience into the lives of those on stage and reflected on our own experience - and gave hope that, working together, we may survive the abyss and find our way in some kind of harmony.
There was applause too for the performers indvidually, each with their own special skills and personality. Thierree is a marvellous mime, the still young Raphaelle Boitel - now just 22 - a seemingly jointless contortionist, Niklas Ek a true dancer (from the Royal Ballet Stockholm and the Nederlands Dans Theater), Brazilian capoeira dancer and tumbler Thiago Martins and the always surprising soprano and pianist Uma Ysamat from Spain.
Together they made a great celebration of performance, entertainment and life, deserving every handclap, cheer and whistle.
Book at Festival Ticketek 02 9266 4890 or www.sydneyfestival.org.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 18 January 2006
2006: All Wear Bowlers and The Tiger Lillies
Sydney Festival: All Wear Bowlers and The Tiger Lillies at The Studio, Sydney Opera House, until Saturday January 21.
These are two of the 7 "cutting-edge works from the ridiculous to the sublime" in the About an Hour program. I can see why festival director Fergus Linehan chose the British "art" cabaret The Tiger Lillies because of their cult reputation overseas. I found them shallow - ridiculous.
But All Wear Bowlers by Philadelphians Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford was close to sublime.
The Lillies' Masturbation Jim song was rated his favourite by one 30-ish groupie I overheard, but to compare such work with Weill and Brecht, or to pretend that it's a satire of that tradition, as the publicity does, is just not on. Falsetto singing about killing babies - and bashing drums with dolls - is weak undergraduate humour - quite puerile.
The claim that All Wear Bowlers has "the pathos of Laurel and Hardy, the desolate humour of Samuel Beckett" and, I would add, the skill of Charlie Chaplin and the imagination of Woody Allen, is all true.
Two silent movie bowler hatted tramps fall off the film screen, as in The Rose of Cairo, onto the stage where they have no choice but to entertain us. Their clowning in a state of steadily increasing disorientation takes us along with them until we realise that, like them, we all wear the clown's bowler hat.
Sobelle and Lyford trained with vaudeville consultant David Shiner of Cirque du Soleil, and the quality in their timing and characterisations shines through. They made fun of pretentious art - "all those layers" - then through our laughter gave us true art with many levels of meaning.
I saw Bowlers first on Wednesday evening - a pity perhaps, because their sublimity only served to highlight the pretentiousness of the Tiger Lillies an hour later.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
These are two of the 7 "cutting-edge works from the ridiculous to the sublime" in the About an Hour program. I can see why festival director Fergus Linehan chose the British "art" cabaret The Tiger Lillies because of their cult reputation overseas. I found them shallow - ridiculous.
But All Wear Bowlers by Philadelphians Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford was close to sublime.
The Lillies' Masturbation Jim song was rated his favourite by one 30-ish groupie I overheard, but to compare such work with Weill and Brecht, or to pretend that it's a satire of that tradition, as the publicity does, is just not on. Falsetto singing about killing babies - and bashing drums with dolls - is weak undergraduate humour - quite puerile.
The claim that All Wear Bowlers has "the pathos of Laurel and Hardy, the desolate humour of Samuel Beckett" and, I would add, the skill of Charlie Chaplin and the imagination of Woody Allen, is all true.
Two silent movie bowler hatted tramps fall off the film screen, as in The Rose of Cairo, onto the stage where they have no choice but to entertain us. Their clowning in a state of steadily increasing disorientation takes us along with them until we realise that, like them, we all wear the clown's bowler hat.
Sobelle and Lyford trained with vaudeville consultant David Shiner of Cirque du Soleil, and the quality in their timing and characterisations shines through. They made fun of pretentious art - "all those layers" - then through our laughter gave us true art with many levels of meaning.
I saw Bowlers first on Wednesday evening - a pity perhaps, because their sublimity only served to highlight the pretentiousness of the Tiger Lillies an hour later.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 7 January 2006
2006: Shout! by John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow
Shout! by John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow. G-String Productions at The Street Theatre, directed by Rod and Liz Beaver, January 6-14 8pm.
I found this production of Johnny O'Keefe's life story strangely disappointing.
The first half seems to intend to be a celebration of his early years to 1960 - when he suffered severe injuries in a car accident - but instead of the great burst of excitement that I was expecting as the King of Australian Rock 'n' Roll swung into action, there was a rather flat series of short scenes. Each had its song, but the build up of dramatic tension was missing.
I looked then for the real guts of O'Keefe's life to spill out as his mental stability was seriously affected not only by the road accident, but especially by the drug induced death of the manager he so much believed in, Lee Gordon, in 1963, his inability to keep his marriage together, his fightback to success on occasions like the Sunbury Festival in 1973, and finally his early death from alcohol and prescription drug poisoning in 1978. Some scenes in the second half had dramatic strength - especially the Kings Cross party scene - but still there wasn't the sense of foreboding that his life story required.
Then, literally at last, the show returned to the 1959 hit Shout! and a celebration burst out from the stage and engulfed the audience - as it should have at the beginning.
Musicality was not the problem, either from the band or the singers. I haven't seen any previous production, but the dialogue seemed minimal to me, to the point that no real characters became established, except the awful conniving Lee Gordon. O'Keefe's songs were used to illustrate the story, but they were not the type of songs to carry the drama without rounded characters to sing them. After the show I remember best Pat Gallagher as Lee Gordon and Tony Maxfield as Marianne, O'Keefe's first wife. Rod Beaver made JO'K memorable only in the final song.
Costumes and dance steps were a problem for me too. I couldn't see the detailed research needed to clearly identify each change in style belonging to the dates of the original performances, and Beaver was dressed entirely unlike the mod suits and ties which O'Keefe wore most of his career. Maybe I expect too much, but I have seen better G-String productions.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I found this production of Johnny O'Keefe's life story strangely disappointing.
The first half seems to intend to be a celebration of his early years to 1960 - when he suffered severe injuries in a car accident - but instead of the great burst of excitement that I was expecting as the King of Australian Rock 'n' Roll swung into action, there was a rather flat series of short scenes. Each had its song, but the build up of dramatic tension was missing.
I looked then for the real guts of O'Keefe's life to spill out as his mental stability was seriously affected not only by the road accident, but especially by the drug induced death of the manager he so much believed in, Lee Gordon, in 1963, his inability to keep his marriage together, his fightback to success on occasions like the Sunbury Festival in 1973, and finally his early death from alcohol and prescription drug poisoning in 1978. Some scenes in the second half had dramatic strength - especially the Kings Cross party scene - but still there wasn't the sense of foreboding that his life story required.
Then, literally at last, the show returned to the 1959 hit Shout! and a celebration burst out from the stage and engulfed the audience - as it should have at the beginning.
Musicality was not the problem, either from the band or the singers. I haven't seen any previous production, but the dialogue seemed minimal to me, to the point that no real characters became established, except the awful conniving Lee Gordon. O'Keefe's songs were used to illustrate the story, but they were not the type of songs to carry the drama without rounded characters to sing them. After the show I remember best Pat Gallagher as Lee Gordon and Tony Maxfield as Marianne, O'Keefe's first wife. Rod Beaver made JO'K memorable only in the final song.
Costumes and dance steps were a problem for me too. I couldn't see the detailed research needed to clearly identify each change in style belonging to the dates of the original performances, and Beaver was dressed entirely unlike the mod suits and ties which O'Keefe wore most of his career. Maybe I expect too much, but I have seen better G-String productions.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 6 January 2006
2006: Phoenix Players' Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! Preview feature article.
Charlotte's Web, EB White's famous children's story, is a romance about a piglet, Wilbur, saved from the farmer's axe by a spider, Charlotte. It's also about death and a kind of resurrection. When Charlotte dies, Wilbur makes sure her 514 babies are safely hatched.
At first blush this hardly sounds like musical material for the school holidays but, says John Alsford, have no worries. Alsford is this summer's director for Phoenix Players of Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! He has created a show which is an entertainment for young and old, and - in the Phoenix community theatre tradition - a wonderful experience for the 27 children and grown-ups in the cast.
In 1952 New Yorker Elwyn Brooks White published the original Charlotte's Web, promptly dubbed by the US Children's Literature Association "The best American children's book of the past two hundred years", and praised by one critic for its "liveliness and felicity, tenderness and unexpectedness, grace and humor and praise of life". Alsford has aimed to bring all this to the stage through music, dance and song in an Australian style. The core directing team - Alsford, musical director Susan Davenport and choreographer Elissa Singer - have re-worked the American script, giving their show a local feel, especially in the humour, which counter-balances some of the sentimentality which can be attached to a story of American farm life.
Alsford sees working on the musical as a maypole dance. The music is the strong central fixed point, interpreted in the dance and the songs, holding the dialogue and storyline together. This is the opposite to many productions where the music is an add-on to the storyline, but the advantage is that from the beginning of rehearsals 4 months ago all the children and adults on stage have been actively working together, especially to create the dance sequences. This has also allowed Alsford, now a veteran of 12 years' work with Phoenix (a veteran indeed of Blue Folk where he was first directed by Dominic Mico in 1979) to focus on helping his young choreographer, 16-year-old Elissa Singer, to find ways of translating her original dance ideas into movement sequences which can work successfully for performers of different ages and experience.
This approach is just what Charlotte's Web and Phoenix Players need. Like Warehouse Circus and other Canberra community theatres, Phoenix brings together diverse, especially young people and, in Alsford's words, "corrupts the kids into theatre - where they gain so much confidence, friends for life, and have such fun". He cites his own daughter, Annie, now a respected drama teacher in country NSW, as proof - and her one-time college boyfriend, Mark Truebridge. His career began as stage manager when Alsford directed Peter Pan at Hawker College, and today is a NIDA graduate, currently lighting director for opera houses in France and Germany.
Learning friendship and trust, and tolerance of difference, is the universal theme of Charlotte's Web. When speaking of the animal and even insect characters, Alsford points out that they are "invisible" to the adult humans. "They're like barmaids and hairdressers - like people who just do their job." Like himself, in fact, in his day job as Commonwealth driver. EB White makes the invisible non-entities of farm life into characters with the same humanity as the humans - oddly similar in idea to George Orwell's Animal Farm. White's animals, too, are aware of the conspiracy against them. Wilbur, the new piglet, is naïve as Sheep says "But you know why they want to make you fat and tender, don't you?" Fern, the farmer's young daughter is equally unaware. For children watching, it is through Fern's and Wilbur's awakening that they may come to understand what intolerance of difference means to the victims.
When presented as a musical, with both entertainment and new understanding in mind, this production reinforces feelings of community not just in the abstract but right before us on stage by one of our Canberra well-established community theatre groups, Phoenix Players.
Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! adapted by Joseph Robinette; music and lyrics by Charles Strouse; based on the story by EB White
Phoenix Players at Theatre 3, Ellery Cres., Acton
January 13 - 28
Evenings 7.30pm Fri 13, Sat 14, Thurs 19, Fri 20, Sat 21, Fri 27, Sat 28
Matinees 2.30pm Wed 18, Sat 21, Sun 22, Wed 25, Sat 28
Australia Day Thurs 26 at 11am and 3pm
Bookings: Ph 6257 1950
© Frank McKone, Canberra
At first blush this hardly sounds like musical material for the school holidays but, says John Alsford, have no worries. Alsford is this summer's director for Phoenix Players of Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! He has created a show which is an entertainment for young and old, and - in the Phoenix community theatre tradition - a wonderful experience for the 27 children and grown-ups in the cast.
In 1952 New Yorker Elwyn Brooks White published the original Charlotte's Web, promptly dubbed by the US Children's Literature Association "The best American children's book of the past two hundred years", and praised by one critic for its "liveliness and felicity, tenderness and unexpectedness, grace and humor and praise of life". Alsford has aimed to bring all this to the stage through music, dance and song in an Australian style. The core directing team - Alsford, musical director Susan Davenport and choreographer Elissa Singer - have re-worked the American script, giving their show a local feel, especially in the humour, which counter-balances some of the sentimentality which can be attached to a story of American farm life.
Alsford sees working on the musical as a maypole dance. The music is the strong central fixed point, interpreted in the dance and the songs, holding the dialogue and storyline together. This is the opposite to many productions where the music is an add-on to the storyline, but the advantage is that from the beginning of rehearsals 4 months ago all the children and adults on stage have been actively working together, especially to create the dance sequences. This has also allowed Alsford, now a veteran of 12 years' work with Phoenix (a veteran indeed of Blue Folk where he was first directed by Dominic Mico in 1979) to focus on helping his young choreographer, 16-year-old Elissa Singer, to find ways of translating her original dance ideas into movement sequences which can work successfully for performers of different ages and experience.
This approach is just what Charlotte's Web and Phoenix Players need. Like Warehouse Circus and other Canberra community theatres, Phoenix brings together diverse, especially young people and, in Alsford's words, "corrupts the kids into theatre - where they gain so much confidence, friends for life, and have such fun". He cites his own daughter, Annie, now a respected drama teacher in country NSW, as proof - and her one-time college boyfriend, Mark Truebridge. His career began as stage manager when Alsford directed Peter Pan at Hawker College, and today is a NIDA graduate, currently lighting director for opera houses in France and Germany.
Learning friendship and trust, and tolerance of difference, is the universal theme of Charlotte's Web. When speaking of the animal and even insect characters, Alsford points out that they are "invisible" to the adult humans. "They're like barmaids and hairdressers - like people who just do their job." Like himself, in fact, in his day job as Commonwealth driver. EB White makes the invisible non-entities of farm life into characters with the same humanity as the humans - oddly similar in idea to George Orwell's Animal Farm. White's animals, too, are aware of the conspiracy against them. Wilbur, the new piglet, is naïve as Sheep says "But you know why they want to make you fat and tender, don't you?" Fern, the farmer's young daughter is equally unaware. For children watching, it is through Fern's and Wilbur's awakening that they may come to understand what intolerance of difference means to the victims.
When presented as a musical, with both entertainment and new understanding in mind, this production reinforces feelings of community not just in the abstract but right before us on stage by one of our Canberra well-established community theatre groups, Phoenix Players.
Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! adapted by Joseph Robinette; music and lyrics by Charles Strouse; based on the story by EB White
Phoenix Players at Theatre 3, Ellery Cres., Acton
January 13 - 28
Evenings 7.30pm Fri 13, Sat 14, Thurs 19, Fri 20, Sat 21, Fri 27, Sat 28
Matinees 2.30pm Wed 18, Sat 21, Sun 22, Wed 25, Sat 28
Australia Day Thurs 26 at 11am and 3pm
Bookings: Ph 6257 1950
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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