When David Williamson received a royalty cheque (or “check”) he thought “Who the f*** would put Don’s Party on in Texas?” The answer is Colin Anderson, who has also directed the play for students of Commonwealth Literary Studies in Denmark.
He let the Americans keep their accent, but had to explain the meaning of “chook” among many iconic Australian words, while the Danes, who all spoke perfect English, hardly understood anything. This was not so much because of their lack of vocabulary but more a matter of the rhythm and flow of Australian English. The Texans couldn’t believe how fast they had to talk to make the lines funny. So much for the myth of the laconic Australian compared to the Texan drawl.
So, Anderson says, directing Don’s Party for Canberra Repertory, not too far from the Lyneham High School National Tally Room, is easy – like coming home.
Yet 35 years after the play was written, one actor wondered “Are we doing it with Australian accents?”, while another needed to be trained out of his “stage” educated Anglo accent. Anderson also had to explain about the DLP (Democratic Labor Party), Archbishop Mannix and Bob Santamaria to his cast, who are about the age of the young marrieds they are acting at Don’s 1969 election night party. In case you’ve forgotten, or never knew, the program includes brief notes on key political figures (strictly in alphabetical order) Bob Hawke, John McEwen, Malcolm Mackay, Frank McManus, Daniel Mannix, Bartholomew Augustus Santamaria and Gough Whitlam.
Such references in the play mean a director has to choose between updating the production or keeping to the original period. Anderson has chosen an accurate representation of 1969 as the right way to go, and he has been backed magnificently by set designer Quentin Mitchell, properties manager Fay Butcher and costume designer Judy Wemyss. Watch carefully when the beer cans come out of the frig – they have the correct labels for that year. Orange, flamingo and a certain kind of yellow were the designer colours of the day, and the short, triangular Modigliani art dress that Susan (Anne Mewburn) wears is quite startling.
But perhaps the comedy begins with the men’s flairs – ankle flappers, as one cast member calls them. Anderson’s central focus is on the play as a comedy – he certainly hopes the audience will still be laughing at the end – yet he points out that this play, along with The Removalists, has become the long-laster among Williamson’s huge output. Why is this so?
Anderson’s answer is that Don’s Party is more personal than political. There is a “human truth – that life catches up with you” in the lives of these 11 people as their great expectations of themselves and each other fail to be fulfilled. Just as Don’s great hope that Labor would win was dashed in that election. Some consider that Don represents David Williamson himself at that time, and, quite by chance according to Anderson, Soren Jensen who plays the role has the same two metre height and lean aspect as Williamson. I found it quite uncanny watching a rehearsal as if Williamson was in the wrong part of the theatre.
Some commentators have seen a similarity with Chekhov. There is something poignant, even “sad and embittered” says Anderson, underlying the superficially funny. It is this which gives the play an “historical dimension” and requires that it be played “true to its period and its spirit”.
As I watched Jensen rehearsing Don, I could see Anderson’s point. Don is a teacher and, though he has invited the raucous characters like Cooley, Mack and Mal (with or without women partners) which make the party swing (and it certainly does), he spends a lot of time hesitant, somewhat apart from the action, watching and reflecting on his own and others’ behaviour. Although I didn’t see the end, I think it will be through Don that we will find ourselves reflecting on the “comedy” of our personal and political lives today.
This explains, for me, the quite extensive use of four-letter words in Don’s Party. This was not merely Williamson keeping up with the recent trend after Alex Buzo’s Norm and Ahmed had resulted in actors being charged with obscenity, and winning the legal right to swear on stage. The characters who swear in this play are the least secure personalities with the least self-awareness, however successful they may be at one-night sexual stands. So, I suppose too, Williamson’s reaction to a production in the American mid-west was not surprising.
It will be interesting to see how today’s Canberra audience responds.
Don’s Party by David Williamson
Canberra Repertory at Theatre 3
Opening this Friday August 4, 8pm
Bookings: 6257 1950
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 31 July 2006
Thursday, 27 July 2006
2006: Wolf Lullaby by Hilary Bell.
Wolf Lullaby by Hilary Bell. Centrepiece Theatre directed by Jordan Best at The Street Theatre Studio, July 27–29, August 2–5 and 9–12 at 7:30pm.
Matinées: August 6 at 5pm and August 12 at 2pm. Tickets: $20–$25. Special rates for members, students, U27, Wednesdays and matinées.
Wolf Lullaby is a little over an hour long. Based quite closely on the 1968 British case of 11-year-old murderer Mary Bell, I was reminded of the short stories of James Joyce in Dubliners. There is a concentrated intensity which builds characters and explores their relationships until an end point is reached artistically. However this does not mean that the author provides us with simple answers to real life questions like, in this play, how can parents accept that their 9-year-old has killed a 2-year-old child?
Best’s direction focuses on the steady progression of the story through the eyes of the murderer, Lizzie, her separated parents Angela and Warren, and the policeman, Ray. The pacing is deliberately slow, demanding our attention – the right choice I think.
The actors each rise to the demands made of them, as has been the case in previous Centrepiece productions. Tain Stangret creates a very believable 9-year-old whose fantasy and fears combine in the act of killing. Jim Adamik’s ordinary working-man character struggles with the complexity of feelings and distrust in reality which Veronica Merton creates very effectively in Angela, while Jay Sullivan as the policeman required to find and have the child admit to the truth shows us the frustrations caused by the limitations of his official position and those of his personality.
The result is tragedy on a personal scale, something like what James Joyce called an epiphany – a new brief glimpse into an aspect of life, put into focus for us by the artist. It doesn’t explain the unexplainable, but now the world is a little different for the experience.
The design and execution of the visual and especially the audio setting enhance the actors’ work very well. Another Centrepiece production which I highly recommend.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Matinées: August 6 at 5pm and August 12 at 2pm. Tickets: $20–$25. Special rates for members, students, U27, Wednesdays and matinées.
Wolf Lullaby is a little over an hour long. Based quite closely on the 1968 British case of 11-year-old murderer Mary Bell, I was reminded of the short stories of James Joyce in Dubliners. There is a concentrated intensity which builds characters and explores their relationships until an end point is reached artistically. However this does not mean that the author provides us with simple answers to real life questions like, in this play, how can parents accept that their 9-year-old has killed a 2-year-old child?
Best’s direction focuses on the steady progression of the story through the eyes of the murderer, Lizzie, her separated parents Angela and Warren, and the policeman, Ray. The pacing is deliberately slow, demanding our attention – the right choice I think.
The actors each rise to the demands made of them, as has been the case in previous Centrepiece productions. Tain Stangret creates a very believable 9-year-old whose fantasy and fears combine in the act of killing. Jim Adamik’s ordinary working-man character struggles with the complexity of feelings and distrust in reality which Veronica Merton creates very effectively in Angela, while Jay Sullivan as the policeman required to find and have the child admit to the truth shows us the frustrations caused by the limitations of his official position and those of his personality.
The result is tragedy on a personal scale, something like what James Joyce called an epiphany – a new brief glimpse into an aspect of life, put into focus for us by the artist. It doesn’t explain the unexplainable, but now the world is a little different for the experience.
The design and execution of the visual and especially the audio setting enhance the actors’ work very well. Another Centrepiece production which I highly recommend.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 21 July 2006
2006: Life in the Pacific: The 21st Century: National Museum of Australia. Feature Article.
Presenting history is an art which the National Museum of Australia does very well. Cook’s Pacific Encounters is much more than a static display of fascinating objects collected on Captain Cook’s three Pacific Ocean voyages.
In the Nation Focus Gallery on the lower floor there is a free photographic exhibition of Life in the Pacific: The 21st Century. In an educational project, largely funded by the State of Hawai’i and the US National Endowment for the Arts, to complement the Cook-Forster exhibition, digital cameras were given to 80 school students from many Pacific Islander communities to document their cultures.
Some show traditional arts and crafts, dance and music in modern contexts. Many attractive shots show the beauty and importance of island scenery and the environment, and there are photos by the young of their elders which enhance their sense of respect, as well as others of modern youth culture. Comments by the students emphasised how they had learned much more about the diversity and depth of their own societies. These pictures are certainly worth a visit.
But there’s more. On Sunday August 6, 12-3pm, an afternoon of Pacific Islander culture will be held in the Hall at the Museum. Free performances and activities feature Tahitian, Maori, Hawaiian, Torres Strait Islander and Tongan groups, making arts and crafts, performing dances, even demonstrating traditional weapons. Films to be shown include Whale Rider, and there will be a “conversation” on the maintenance of traditional culture with Dr Lissant Bolton from the British Museum, NMA curator Dr Ian Coates and Ralph Regenvanu, director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre..
Lissant Bolton will also speak on Friday this week, July 28, with other experts including Adrienne Kaeppler of the Smithsonian Museum, Washington, Doreen Mellor, an Indigenous Australian and Director of Development at the National Library of Australia, and Paul Tapsell, Director Maori – Tumuaki Maori at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The NMA and ANU’s Centre for Cross-Cultural Research are collaborating in this major symposium, Discovering Cook’s Collections.
A less intensive forum will also be presented for the general public the evening before, 6–7pm this Thursday, featuring Adrienne Kaeppler, Paul Tapsell and Lissant Bolton.
So the National Museum has put the Cook-Forster collection from the Georg-August University of Göttingen into the full context of today and of the period 1768 to 1780 when Cook, with secret instructions to find the expected Great South Land and claim it for Britain, encountered a wide range of Polynesian peoples.
Johann Reinhold Forster replaced Joseph Banks on Cook’s third voyage. Forster’s personality alienated most on board, but he and Swedish naturalist Andes Sparrman described some 500 new plants and 300 animals. An account by the ‘gentlemen skilled in natural history and drawing’ was prevented from being published by Lord Sandwich, leaving Cook’s detailed but largely navigational account as the version we know today.
It was Forster’s collection which the University of Göttingen bought on his death. Now we can see the beauty and the skilled workmanship of tools, ceremonial head-dresses, clothes, household objects and weapons, set among paintings made both by Europeans and Pacific Islanders of life and times 220 years ago.
Despite those who think Australian history began with Captain Cook, he knew very well that he was meeting ancient and impressive cultures. An important display shows the probable migration routes of the Polynesians, leaving the islands off South East Asia aound 1600BC, reaching the Marquesas Islands about 300BC. From there they went to Hawai’i, Easter Island and Raratonga, finally reaching New Zealand around 1000AD. But the winds and currents left Australia isolated.
It was actor Nigel Sutton as Robbie the Rat, who claims to have come with the First Fleet, who showed me, among a group of young children and their parents, how all this history is the story of real people leading real lives. He took us on an adventure where we saw the transit of Venus (a parent) between a small boy Earth and a smiling, indeed beaming, young girl Sun. A highlight was the beautifully back-lit display of fish hooks, hanging as if under water, from small to one so large “it would catch a shark”, so one boy reckoned.
In telling how Cook was killed, Robbie made clear how shaky historical truth can be when even people who were there told different and even conflicting stories. But he had no doubt about the 1769 surfing contest at Tahiti. For the adults, Robbie explained that Tahitian “massages” were popular among the sailors, too, “to relieve their back pain” – and such activities may well have been one cause of the conflict which arose in Cook’s last days on Hawai’i.
Now the school holidays are over, visitors will have to miss the art of Robbie the Rat, whose prodigious memory and ability to incorporate unsolicited commentary from excited children into the story was a joy to experience. At least make sure you include Life in the Pacific: The 21st Century, Discovering Cook’s Collections and the Pacific Festival if you can.
Discovering Cook’s Collections:
One-day Public Symposium
ANU Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at National Museum of Australia,
Visions Theatre, Friday July 28
Register at www.anu.edu.au/culture/cook_conference_july/cook_conference.php
Free Evening Public Forum
Visions Theatre, Thursday July 27, 6-7pm
Cook’s Pacific Encounters
Cook-Forster Exhibition from the Georg-August University of Göttingen
Until September 10
Adult: $10 Concession: $8 Child: $4 Family: $22
Life in the Pacific: The 21st Century
Free Photographic Exhibition
Nation Focus Gallery
Until September 10
Pacific Festival
Main Hall, Sunday August 6, 12-3pm
Free entry
Details: www.nma.gov.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
In the Nation Focus Gallery on the lower floor there is a free photographic exhibition of Life in the Pacific: The 21st Century. In an educational project, largely funded by the State of Hawai’i and the US National Endowment for the Arts, to complement the Cook-Forster exhibition, digital cameras were given to 80 school students from many Pacific Islander communities to document their cultures.
Some show traditional arts and crafts, dance and music in modern contexts. Many attractive shots show the beauty and importance of island scenery and the environment, and there are photos by the young of their elders which enhance their sense of respect, as well as others of modern youth culture. Comments by the students emphasised how they had learned much more about the diversity and depth of their own societies. These pictures are certainly worth a visit.
But there’s more. On Sunday August 6, 12-3pm, an afternoon of Pacific Islander culture will be held in the Hall at the Museum. Free performances and activities feature Tahitian, Maori, Hawaiian, Torres Strait Islander and Tongan groups, making arts and crafts, performing dances, even demonstrating traditional weapons. Films to be shown include Whale Rider, and there will be a “conversation” on the maintenance of traditional culture with Dr Lissant Bolton from the British Museum, NMA curator Dr Ian Coates and Ralph Regenvanu, director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre..
Lissant Bolton will also speak on Friday this week, July 28, with other experts including Adrienne Kaeppler of the Smithsonian Museum, Washington, Doreen Mellor, an Indigenous Australian and Director of Development at the National Library of Australia, and Paul Tapsell, Director Maori – Tumuaki Maori at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The NMA and ANU’s Centre for Cross-Cultural Research are collaborating in this major symposium, Discovering Cook’s Collections.
A less intensive forum will also be presented for the general public the evening before, 6–7pm this Thursday, featuring Adrienne Kaeppler, Paul Tapsell and Lissant Bolton.
So the National Museum has put the Cook-Forster collection from the Georg-August University of Göttingen into the full context of today and of the period 1768 to 1780 when Cook, with secret instructions to find the expected Great South Land and claim it for Britain, encountered a wide range of Polynesian peoples.
Johann Reinhold Forster replaced Joseph Banks on Cook’s third voyage. Forster’s personality alienated most on board, but he and Swedish naturalist Andes Sparrman described some 500 new plants and 300 animals. An account by the ‘gentlemen skilled in natural history and drawing’ was prevented from being published by Lord Sandwich, leaving Cook’s detailed but largely navigational account as the version we know today.
It was Forster’s collection which the University of Göttingen bought on his death. Now we can see the beauty and the skilled workmanship of tools, ceremonial head-dresses, clothes, household objects and weapons, set among paintings made both by Europeans and Pacific Islanders of life and times 220 years ago.
Despite those who think Australian history began with Captain Cook, he knew very well that he was meeting ancient and impressive cultures. An important display shows the probable migration routes of the Polynesians, leaving the islands off South East Asia aound 1600BC, reaching the Marquesas Islands about 300BC. From there they went to Hawai’i, Easter Island and Raratonga, finally reaching New Zealand around 1000AD. But the winds and currents left Australia isolated.
It was actor Nigel Sutton as Robbie the Rat, who claims to have come with the First Fleet, who showed me, among a group of young children and their parents, how all this history is the story of real people leading real lives. He took us on an adventure where we saw the transit of Venus (a parent) between a small boy Earth and a smiling, indeed beaming, young girl Sun. A highlight was the beautifully back-lit display of fish hooks, hanging as if under water, from small to one so large “it would catch a shark”, so one boy reckoned.
In telling how Cook was killed, Robbie made clear how shaky historical truth can be when even people who were there told different and even conflicting stories. But he had no doubt about the 1769 surfing contest at Tahiti. For the adults, Robbie explained that Tahitian “massages” were popular among the sailors, too, “to relieve their back pain” – and such activities may well have been one cause of the conflict which arose in Cook’s last days on Hawai’i.
Now the school holidays are over, visitors will have to miss the art of Robbie the Rat, whose prodigious memory and ability to incorporate unsolicited commentary from excited children into the story was a joy to experience. At least make sure you include Life in the Pacific: The 21st Century, Discovering Cook’s Collections and the Pacific Festival if you can.
Discovering Cook’s Collections:
One-day Public Symposium
ANU Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at National Museum of Australia,
Visions Theatre, Friday July 28
Register at www.anu.edu.au/culture/cook_conference_july/cook_conference.php
Free Evening Public Forum
Visions Theatre, Thursday July 27, 6-7pm
Cook’s Pacific Encounters
Cook-Forster Exhibition from the Georg-August University of Göttingen
Until September 10
Adult: $10 Concession: $8 Child: $4 Family: $22
Life in the Pacific: The 21st Century
Free Photographic Exhibition
Nation Focus Gallery
Until September 10
Pacific Festival
Main Hall, Sunday August 6, 12-3pm
Free entry
Details: www.nma.gov.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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