The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, presented by the Frozen Shape Collective directed by Nick McCorriston at Belconnen Theatre March 28-31, 7.30pm
Frozen Shape Collective is the latest kaleidoscopic rearrangement of people most of whom were previously or are still associated with Bohemian Theatre, BKu and Opiate Productions which seem to have spun off each other over the past six years or so.
I suggest this is the team to keep working together, because The Birthday Party is the most successful piece of work I recall seeing from these various groups. Part of the Wet Season (Wave Edge Theory), McCorriston has cast, directed, designed lights and sound (set design by Sudzset) with an excellent ear for Pinter’s language and eye for Pinter’s characters in this dreary British seaside boarding house setting.
Each actor – Robert Matthews (Petey Boles), Kerrie Roberts (Meg Boles), Matt Borneman (Stanley Webber, whose birthday is “celebrated”), Chris Rooks (Lulu), Pat Gordon (the hit man Seamus McCann) and Robert De Fries (the standover man Nat ‘Simey’ Goldberg) – has equally well understood that each Pinteresque pause is full of a character’s thinking. Usually, what the hell can I say now to fill in this awkward silence, when I don’t actually know what’s going on. Or in McCann and Goldberg, the pauses just let the creepy feeling sink in, to us in the audience as much as to the other characters. Laughter happens – but it’s short-lived.
To pull this degree of subtlety off so that two hours (including only a short interval) passed without concern for time on opening night is a success that Frozen Shape are well justified in celebrating. I was especially impressed that no character was allowed to become a minor role, compared with the central roles of Goldberg, McCann and Webber.
Rooks’ Lulu, for example, was a clearly drawn character caught in Goldberg’s web for a one-night stand, who grew overnight to realise that such men are fatally dangerous. De Fries gave us the charm of Goldberg as well as his menace, while Gordon’s McCann kept even Goldberg guessing, making this character much stronger and better balanced against Goldberg than in some other productions I have seen.
All in the ensemble gave equally, creating satisfying theatre which certainly justifies Belconnen Theatre’s efforts to encourage young serious theatre practitioners. Go to www.belcomserv.com.au/art/wet/ for more information.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
Monday, 26 March 2007
2007: Falling in Love Again - Jennifer Ward-Lealand. Promo feature article.
It looked like a production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame on the stage of The Street Theatre. Two garbage bins and a cute looking bucket between them. But they were full of water, like all the theatre spotlights, the carpets, the seats. Ceilings collapsed, one near the lower theatre door while the insurance assessor was standing close by.
This was the result of the storm on February 27. Almost endgame for The Street, one might think, considering the cost of repairs, replacement of all those stage lights, relocating shows to other venues and loss of income from cancelled or postponed shows.
But the show goes on, starting this Friday with Auckland-based Jennifer Ward-Lealand, so revered in New Zealand that on April 4, we can reveal, she will receive an ONZM for her services to theatre. Falling in Love Again is a tribute to the strength of character of the German cabaret singer, Marlene Dietrich, who “had the guts,” says Ward-Lealand, “to turn her back on her own country”.
Since her youth theatre days some 30 years ago, Ward-Lealand has been rewarded with critical accolades. As Agnes in Agnes of God (1985) she was “an electrifying combination of distracted guilt and vengeful rage.” Her portrayal of Hedda Gabler (1986) captured “the audience’s undivided attention from the very first time she walks on stage.” In 2005, as Stevie in The Goat, she was “formidable”, and of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in 2006, the NZ Herald critic wrote “The delicate interactions between Viola and Olivia produces some wonderfully poignant moments, notably when Jennifer Ward-Lealand’s magisterial countess dissolves into a lovestruck teenager as she is captivated by the overpowering sweetness of Viola.”
For all these years Ward-Lealand has been more than a stalwart entertainer. As she has found in researching Marlene Dietrich, theatre can change how one sees the world, not only for the audience but for the practitioner. In 2002 she was approached to play the part of Dietrich in a play Marlene by British author Pam Gems, who has also written about Edith Piaf. Despite her musical family background, Ward-Lealand was hesitant about taking the role, which included six Dietrich songs.
But when a friend, a specialist in European cabaret, gave her documents and recordings, she found herself becoming fascinated, especially by Dietrich’s role in World War 2 on the Allied side, persuading German troops through her cabaret songs to reject the Nazi government in favour of democracy. Dietrich could, of course, have stayed in Germany and become equally famous and perhaps richer supporting her country’s war effort.
What was it, I asked Ward-Lealand, that made Dietrich reject her strict conservative upbringing, and in the USA become a focus for displaced German Jews? Theatre cabaret was the answer. Through the 1920s and 1930s the cabaret was an open society, more European than national, a swinging lifestyle, and particularly for Dietrich a place where she associated personally with Jewish people. She found in herself a “deep sense of outrage that she couldn’t easily run away from” at their treatment.
And, though Ward-Lealand has not been placed in such a testing situation, she too has found the theatre to be a “tolerant industry, where really nothing is shocking”. In her career she feels she has been very fortunate to have played such an array of characters from Polly Peachum in Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, Janet in The New Rocky Horror Show and Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein to Anna in Old Times by Harold Pinter, the Young Girl in Yerma by Garcia Lorca and many, many others. The key, she says, is the experience of taking these roles with directors you can respect, so that you learn to extend your understanding of the characters and change your own understanding of the world.
So when she performs in the role of Marlene Dietrich in Falling in Love Again, we will not see a singer imitating Dietrich. Through 23 songs, including some Cole Porter, Piaf and others, we will become engaged in that gutsy character, created for us by Jennifer Ward-Lealand as much as a celebration of Dietrich’s contribution as an entertainment. “I take my work very seriously” says Ward-Lealand, on stage and in Auckland theatre, film and television management boards.
One special program she has established is the Theatre Patrons program, which she says ten years ago she would not have had the guts to do. The audiences need to “own” their theatre, and, I am sure, they are now thanking her with the honour of an ONZM. “Like an OBE,” she explains, “but like you in Australia we have grown up now and have our own honours.” And, I sense, it is growing up that she has done since those youth theatre days, and Marlene Dietrich did through her theatre cabaret experience. We will see the mature performance on Friday night.
Falling in Love Again
Jennifer Ward-Lealand, with Grant Winterburn and Aaron Coddel
The Street Theatre Stage 1
Saturday March 30, 8.30pm
Tickets: $30
Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This was the result of the storm on February 27. Almost endgame for The Street, one might think, considering the cost of repairs, replacement of all those stage lights, relocating shows to other venues and loss of income from cancelled or postponed shows.
But the show goes on, starting this Friday with Auckland-based Jennifer Ward-Lealand, so revered in New Zealand that on April 4, we can reveal, she will receive an ONZM for her services to theatre. Falling in Love Again is a tribute to the strength of character of the German cabaret singer, Marlene Dietrich, who “had the guts,” says Ward-Lealand, “to turn her back on her own country”.
Since her youth theatre days some 30 years ago, Ward-Lealand has been rewarded with critical accolades. As Agnes in Agnes of God (1985) she was “an electrifying combination of distracted guilt and vengeful rage.” Her portrayal of Hedda Gabler (1986) captured “the audience’s undivided attention from the very first time she walks on stage.” In 2005, as Stevie in The Goat, she was “formidable”, and of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in 2006, the NZ Herald critic wrote “The delicate interactions between Viola and Olivia produces some wonderfully poignant moments, notably when Jennifer Ward-Lealand’s magisterial countess dissolves into a lovestruck teenager as she is captivated by the overpowering sweetness of Viola.”
For all these years Ward-Lealand has been more than a stalwart entertainer. As she has found in researching Marlene Dietrich, theatre can change how one sees the world, not only for the audience but for the practitioner. In 2002 she was approached to play the part of Dietrich in a play Marlene by British author Pam Gems, who has also written about Edith Piaf. Despite her musical family background, Ward-Lealand was hesitant about taking the role, which included six Dietrich songs.
But when a friend, a specialist in European cabaret, gave her documents and recordings, she found herself becoming fascinated, especially by Dietrich’s role in World War 2 on the Allied side, persuading German troops through her cabaret songs to reject the Nazi government in favour of democracy. Dietrich could, of course, have stayed in Germany and become equally famous and perhaps richer supporting her country’s war effort.
What was it, I asked Ward-Lealand, that made Dietrich reject her strict conservative upbringing, and in the USA become a focus for displaced German Jews? Theatre cabaret was the answer. Through the 1920s and 1930s the cabaret was an open society, more European than national, a swinging lifestyle, and particularly for Dietrich a place where she associated personally with Jewish people. She found in herself a “deep sense of outrage that she couldn’t easily run away from” at their treatment.
And, though Ward-Lealand has not been placed in such a testing situation, she too has found the theatre to be a “tolerant industry, where really nothing is shocking”. In her career she feels she has been very fortunate to have played such an array of characters from Polly Peachum in Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, Janet in The New Rocky Horror Show and Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein to Anna in Old Times by Harold Pinter, the Young Girl in Yerma by Garcia Lorca and many, many others. The key, she says, is the experience of taking these roles with directors you can respect, so that you learn to extend your understanding of the characters and change your own understanding of the world.
So when she performs in the role of Marlene Dietrich in Falling in Love Again, we will not see a singer imitating Dietrich. Through 23 songs, including some Cole Porter, Piaf and others, we will become engaged in that gutsy character, created for us by Jennifer Ward-Lealand as much as a celebration of Dietrich’s contribution as an entertainment. “I take my work very seriously” says Ward-Lealand, on stage and in Auckland theatre, film and television management boards.
One special program she has established is the Theatre Patrons program, which she says ten years ago she would not have had the guts to do. The audiences need to “own” their theatre, and, I am sure, they are now thanking her with the honour of an ONZM. “Like an OBE,” she explains, “but like you in Australia we have grown up now and have our own honours.” And, I sense, it is growing up that she has done since those youth theatre days, and Marlene Dietrich did through her theatre cabaret experience. We will see the mature performance on Friday night.
Falling in Love Again
Jennifer Ward-Lealand, with Grant Winterburn and Aaron Coddel
The Street Theatre Stage 1
Saturday March 30, 8.30pm
Tickets: $30
Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 23 March 2007
2007: Jasan Mindmaster by Jasan Savage
THEATRE BY FRANK McKONE
Jasan Mindmaster ESP Mindshow at UC Theatre, The Hub, University of Canberra. March 23 and 24, 8pm; March 25, 5pm; March 30, 8pm, March 31 2pm and 8pm; April 1, 5pm
With a willing suspension of disbelief, Jasan Savage’s stage illusions are thoroughly enjoyable.
He claims not to be a magician, proving the point by demonstrating to us what he could not do because he is not a magician, except that in doing so he does the trick anyway, proving that he is an accomplished magician. This kind of gentle humour is the key to a pleasant evening of an old-fashioned kind.
Those of us who know Savage as the UC Theatre’s director, as many on opening did, were surprised to discover his talent as magician and mind-reader, though not so surprised at his deliberately execrable jokes. In fact he began his career at the age of 18, worked with the famous The Great Franquin in the 1950s, and claims to hold the record for a solo artist in Australia by performing 65 straight weeks in Queensland, quoting a high recommendation from Sir Joh Bjelke-Peterson “Your jaw will get sore from repeatedly hitting the floor.”
In my childhood days in the early 1950s there were performers like Jasan Mindmaster on television seemingly weekly in my native England, and I remember the sense of innocence, amazement and humour of those shows, unaware at that age of the Cold War and the growing threat of hot nuclear war. This ESP Mindshow took me back to that atmosphere, now in an age of a war on terror. The old tricks still work, as they have for centuries, taking our minds off harsh reality for an hour or two.
Savage does this particularly well by involving members of the audience throughout the show, in a completely non-threatening manner. The only warning for children is the opening story – The Eye by Edgar Allan Poe – which might cause nightmares, but otherwise the show is fun, though you might need a guide to find The Hub in the half dark of the UC campus.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Jasan Mindmaster ESP Mindshow at UC Theatre, The Hub, University of Canberra. March 23 and 24, 8pm; March 25, 5pm; March 30, 8pm, March 31 2pm and 8pm; April 1, 5pm
With a willing suspension of disbelief, Jasan Savage’s stage illusions are thoroughly enjoyable.
He claims not to be a magician, proving the point by demonstrating to us what he could not do because he is not a magician, except that in doing so he does the trick anyway, proving that he is an accomplished magician. This kind of gentle humour is the key to a pleasant evening of an old-fashioned kind.
Those of us who know Savage as the UC Theatre’s director, as many on opening did, were surprised to discover his talent as magician and mind-reader, though not so surprised at his deliberately execrable jokes. In fact he began his career at the age of 18, worked with the famous The Great Franquin in the 1950s, and claims to hold the record for a solo artist in Australia by performing 65 straight weeks in Queensland, quoting a high recommendation from Sir Joh Bjelke-Peterson “Your jaw will get sore from repeatedly hitting the floor.”
In my childhood days in the early 1950s there were performers like Jasan Mindmaster on television seemingly weekly in my native England, and I remember the sense of innocence, amazement and humour of those shows, unaware at that age of the Cold War and the growing threat of hot nuclear war. This ESP Mindshow took me back to that atmosphere, now in an age of a war on terror. The old tricks still work, as they have for centuries, taking our minds off harsh reality for an hour or two.
Savage does this particularly well by involving members of the audience throughout the show, in a completely non-threatening manner. The only warning for children is the opening story – The Eye by Edgar Allan Poe – which might cause nightmares, but otherwise the show is fun, though you might need a guide to find The Hub in the half dark of the UC campus.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 14 March 2007
2007: Within by Elyse Horan
Within, incorporating Hamlet and Ophelia by Elyse Horan and Interior by Maurice Maeterlinck. Directed by Elyse Horan at Belconnen Theatre, Belconnen Community Centre, March 14-16 at 7.30pm.
It is important to see this production in context. Elyse Horan is a young writer and director who has put an interesting idea on stage, in what seems to me to be a self-training exercise. Completing Year 12 Drama at Copland College last year, and with several years’ experience at Canberra Youth Theatre, she has taken up the offer of a short season at Belconnen Theatre.
Director of Belconnen Theatre, Jan Wawrzynczak, has developed his role as producer for the many young people in Belconnen who need a place to put on work as they move from College into the adult world of theatre. Currently, Copland, Hawker and Radford Colleges have ex-students in the program, which gives them the theatre space free, with practical assistance and mentoring from Wawrzynczak. Other groups are nominally charged a hire fee, but pay at the end of their season, with Wawrzynczak able to adjust his budget to support groups who make a loss.
In this context, Horan’s experiment is clever in concept. Maeterlinck’s play is about a family unaware that their eldest daughter has been drowned. An old man from the village must tell them, but we see him with the man who discovered her body, watching the contented family through a lighted window. He does not know how to tell them, but in the end he must as the villagers bring the daughter’s body to the house.
Horan has seen the daughter as Ophelia, and presents her imagined scene of the lovers at the point where Hamlet begins to go mad, leading to Ophelia’s drowning. Though she has caught onto the idea of symbolism, which was Maeterlinck’s original contribution to theatre, Horan’s play is a mix of some effective realism with some juvenile black-costumed characters supposedly representing elements of Hamlet’s madness. If she had worked in the same mode as Maeterlinck, perhaps with a chorus who describe for us what they see, objectively reporting as we watch Ophelia and Hamlet in action (and hear Shakespeare’s words), Horan might have produced a small masterpiece.
She has far to go as a writer yet, of course, and this is a worthwhile rite of passage.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
It is important to see this production in context. Elyse Horan is a young writer and director who has put an interesting idea on stage, in what seems to me to be a self-training exercise. Completing Year 12 Drama at Copland College last year, and with several years’ experience at Canberra Youth Theatre, she has taken up the offer of a short season at Belconnen Theatre.
Director of Belconnen Theatre, Jan Wawrzynczak, has developed his role as producer for the many young people in Belconnen who need a place to put on work as they move from College into the adult world of theatre. Currently, Copland, Hawker and Radford Colleges have ex-students in the program, which gives them the theatre space free, with practical assistance and mentoring from Wawrzynczak. Other groups are nominally charged a hire fee, but pay at the end of their season, with Wawrzynczak able to adjust his budget to support groups who make a loss.
In this context, Horan’s experiment is clever in concept. Maeterlinck’s play is about a family unaware that their eldest daughter has been drowned. An old man from the village must tell them, but we see him with the man who discovered her body, watching the contented family through a lighted window. He does not know how to tell them, but in the end he must as the villagers bring the daughter’s body to the house.
Horan has seen the daughter as Ophelia, and presents her imagined scene of the lovers at the point where Hamlet begins to go mad, leading to Ophelia’s drowning. Though she has caught onto the idea of symbolism, which was Maeterlinck’s original contribution to theatre, Horan’s play is a mix of some effective realism with some juvenile black-costumed characters supposedly representing elements of Hamlet’s madness. If she had worked in the same mode as Maeterlinck, perhaps with a chorus who describe for us what they see, objectively reporting as we watch Ophelia and Hamlet in action (and hear Shakespeare’s words), Horan might have produced a small masterpiece.
She has far to go as a writer yet, of course, and this is a worthwhile rite of passage.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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