Friends of the National Museum of Australia will present a Victorian Parlour performance next Sunday afternoon, to complement the Exiles and Emigrants exhibition, which runs until June 4.
“Let’s do a tea party!” (the original idea of curator Cheryl Crilly and public programs manager Gabrielle Hyslop) has become a two-hour program of songs, poetry and prose readings performed by Mr Tom Layton, former Friends’ Executive Officer and professional bass baritone, actor and director Dr Geoffrey Borny, former head of Theatre Studies at ANU, Miss Georgia Pike, also well-known on Canberra stages, pianist and specialist dealer in pianos Mr Carl Rafferty, and Mrs Hyslop herself, whose illustrious career began in the Sydney University student Victorian Music Hall in the 1960s, and who has published research on the subject of 19th Century popular culture.
Among many items of note, Mr Rafferty will present a piano solo, Hearts and Flowers, composed by Alphons Czibulka, while under the heading Love and Marriage Dr Borny will read, as Charles Dickens did on his American tour, Mr Tracy Tupman woos the Spinster Aunt from Pickwick Papers, and Mr Layton and Miss Pike will sing the affecting duet by the well-loved American Stephen Foster If You’ve Only Got a Moustache.
Mr John Howard Payne’s everlasting song, set to music by Sir Henry Bishop, will bring memories flooding back to all Exiles and Emigrants when Miss Pike presents Home Sweet Home while Thinking of England. But later Poverty and Death must be confronted when Miss Pike and the company sing Father’s a Drunkard and Mother is Dead, written by the anonymous ‘Stella’ with music composed by Mrs Parkhurst.
Intended to be for Friends and their friends, word of the event rapidly spread from the NMA website, so that the venue is already fully booked. Entertaining rather than strictly educational, perhaps we may look forward to more performance of this kind, complementary to exhibitions, including in this case the current display of 40 objects from our local region’s Springfield collection in the Horizons Gallery “Settlers and Settling In”.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 25 May 2006
Thursday, 18 May 2006
2006: Political Animals by Shortis & Simpson
Political Animals by Shortis & Simpson, with cartoons by Geoff Pryor. The Street Theatre Studio May 18 to June 3, 8.30pm. Bookings: 6247 1223.
Satire can be such sweet revenge, sometimes bitter sorrow – but not too much of the latter, or it will become less entertainment and more pill to swallow. John Shortis gives us the whole gamut, though the balance is best achieved in the second half of Political Animals.
The offending cartoons include Amanda Vanstone as the migrating mutton bird who should have stayed at home, guess who as Gorillis Kirribillis, Kimbat the almost wombat, Costello the Bull, the Julia Bird, Sugar Glider Bob, and the empty cage from which the Nationals animals have escaped and gone wild. The songs, derived from Pryor’s pictures, vary in tone from the quite frightening Gorillis who would dictate to all 20 million of us if not kept on what looked like a rather flimsy leash, to the wonderfully sweet-dreaming green and brown sugar glider in the old-growth forest who stops the Stihl, which leads us into the poem “How Stihl the pool…” where we discover the sharp-beaked Julia Bird who pecks at nasty chain-saws.
Not all the songs succeeded - the fighting bull, for example, was a fuzzy concept – but much of the writing was more original than in previous shows and more captivating musically, especially when pre-recorded by the excellent string quartet Vincent G Edwards, Har-bei Seng, Olga Haydon and Charlotte Winslade. Moya Simpson found a stronger and richer voice to match the moods and the imitations of past popular singers, which gave an extra point to the satirical lyrics which covered many topics in songs beyond the cartoons – like Sadaam in the guise of a Cockney spiv offering a deal to the AWB where they pay him to buy their wheat.
Bob McMullan, the only politician brave enough to attend opening night, explained, when invited onto the stage, why politicians hate satirists and cartoonists. “Who would come and pay to see us?” he asked. As Simpson interjected, “But we do – pay, that is!”, he redeemed himself by pointing out the value of satire, and the Shortis & Simpson tradition in Canberra, in maintaining our democracy.
And so say all of us, say I.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Satire can be such sweet revenge, sometimes bitter sorrow – but not too much of the latter, or it will become less entertainment and more pill to swallow. John Shortis gives us the whole gamut, though the balance is best achieved in the second half of Political Animals.
The offending cartoons include Amanda Vanstone as the migrating mutton bird who should have stayed at home, guess who as Gorillis Kirribillis, Kimbat the almost wombat, Costello the Bull, the Julia Bird, Sugar Glider Bob, and the empty cage from which the Nationals animals have escaped and gone wild. The songs, derived from Pryor’s pictures, vary in tone from the quite frightening Gorillis who would dictate to all 20 million of us if not kept on what looked like a rather flimsy leash, to the wonderfully sweet-dreaming green and brown sugar glider in the old-growth forest who stops the Stihl, which leads us into the poem “How Stihl the pool…” where we discover the sharp-beaked Julia Bird who pecks at nasty chain-saws.
Not all the songs succeeded - the fighting bull, for example, was a fuzzy concept – but much of the writing was more original than in previous shows and more captivating musically, especially when pre-recorded by the excellent string quartet Vincent G Edwards, Har-bei Seng, Olga Haydon and Charlotte Winslade. Moya Simpson found a stronger and richer voice to match the moods and the imitations of past popular singers, which gave an extra point to the satirical lyrics which covered many topics in songs beyond the cartoons – like Sadaam in the guise of a Cockney spiv offering a deal to the AWB where they pay him to buy their wheat.
Bob McMullan, the only politician brave enough to attend opening night, explained, when invited onto the stage, why politicians hate satirists and cartoonists. “Who would come and pay to see us?” he asked. As Simpson interjected, “But we do – pay, that is!”, he redeemed himself by pointing out the value of satire, and the Shortis & Simpson tradition in Canberra, in maintaining our democracy.
And so say all of us, say I.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 1 May 2006
2006: Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson
Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson. Directed by Bruce Myles for HIT Productions at Tuggeranong Community Arts Centre, May 1-2.
An excellent play deserves excellent directing of excellent actors, and just desserts were what we received on Monday night at TCA.
Hotel Sorrento, Rayson's first major success in 1990, has justifiably become a key modern Australian play. In short movie-like scenes, 8 characters' intertwined relationships reveal the personal and the global complexities of their lives. Everyone in the audience found themselves recognising their own experiences and responding with emotions from joy to sadness, as the central three sisters deal with the past and the present. If you've missed this production, see the DVD of the 1995 film.
Though I liked the film, I loved this production of the play. On the small TCA stage so close to the audience, every detail of the actors' expressions and body language directly communicated their feelings and thoughts to us. Myles' directing and the set and lighting design took our attention from character to character, from within the house and garden to the jetty and across the world to London, all linked with clear-noted guitar music (by Andrew Pendlebury), so smoothly that we were transported into the world on stage as if it were the most natural place to be. Figures moved in and out of light and shadow, scene changes becoming a choreographed dance of movement and stillness - the perfect model from which to learn the art of changing scenes.
All the actors - the sisters Celia de Burgh (Hilary), Marcella Russo (Pippa), Jane Nolan (Meg, whose novel Melancholy is short-listed for the Booker Prize), John Flaus (the sisters' father), Jared Daperis (Hilary's son Troy), Roger Oakley (Meg's English husband Edwin), Beverley Dunn (Marge, a new neighbour who recognises Sorrento in Meg's novel), and Kevin Harrington (who publishes socio-political essays about Australian culture) - formed a team of great strength, lifting the play off the stage and into our heads and hearts.
This Hotel Sorrento is a great success for producer Christine Harris and HIT Productions, and proves the special value of the role of Tuggeranong Community Arts in the Canberra theatre scene.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
An excellent play deserves excellent directing of excellent actors, and just desserts were what we received on Monday night at TCA.
Hotel Sorrento, Rayson's first major success in 1990, has justifiably become a key modern Australian play. In short movie-like scenes, 8 characters' intertwined relationships reveal the personal and the global complexities of their lives. Everyone in the audience found themselves recognising their own experiences and responding with emotions from joy to sadness, as the central three sisters deal with the past and the present. If you've missed this production, see the DVD of the 1995 film.
Though I liked the film, I loved this production of the play. On the small TCA stage so close to the audience, every detail of the actors' expressions and body language directly communicated their feelings and thoughts to us. Myles' directing and the set and lighting design took our attention from character to character, from within the house and garden to the jetty and across the world to London, all linked with clear-noted guitar music (by Andrew Pendlebury), so smoothly that we were transported into the world on stage as if it were the most natural place to be. Figures moved in and out of light and shadow, scene changes becoming a choreographed dance of movement and stillness - the perfect model from which to learn the art of changing scenes.
All the actors - the sisters Celia de Burgh (Hilary), Marcella Russo (Pippa), Jane Nolan (Meg, whose novel Melancholy is short-listed for the Booker Prize), John Flaus (the sisters' father), Jared Daperis (Hilary's son Troy), Roger Oakley (Meg's English husband Edwin), Beverley Dunn (Marge, a new neighbour who recognises Sorrento in Meg's novel), and Kevin Harrington (who publishes socio-political essays about Australian culture) - formed a team of great strength, lifting the play off the stage and into our heads and hearts.
This Hotel Sorrento is a great success for producer Christine Harris and HIT Productions, and proves the special value of the role of Tuggeranong Community Arts in the Canberra theatre scene.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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