Rod Quantock: The John Howard Farewell Party at The Street Theatre, October 16-21, 8.30pm
I’ll bet you have forgotten who wrote Under the Southern Stars to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory. She’s a rather large ex-Liberal Party minister currently resident in Italy, and Quantock will not let you forget her again.
You might also learn history far beyond the 47 required points for Years 9 and 10. Though esoteric, but not so tenuous as you might expect, there is a clear connection from the early German industrial revolution, the back-to-the-village Romantic backlash, Wagner who was Hitler’s favourite composer, through to the most dangerous Green fanatic Bob Brown, the love-child of Hitler and Eva Braun. Talking of schools, it’s also true that American students shoot each other because American teachers have not had chalk for 30 years, and that’s also the cause of the lack of discipline in our schools today.
Quantock claimed to have achieved a 5-star rating, not for the quality of his show but for using the least energy of any stand-up comedian by sitting down most of the time. However, since as a critic I should never accept a performer at face (or cheek) value, I disagree. Quantock’s laid-back manner rests not upon his backside but is kept in suspension by a constant flow of high level energy. Talking of energy, we need to keep selling our coal to China to pay for all the Australian men’s underpants produced only in that country, even though they will bring us to our knees when China activates its spy satellites, making them taller than us.
Talk is what Quantock does so well that we forget he is performing. Live in the theatre, he communicates directly with us as a real empathetic person, even though we remember him as Captain Snooze in a nightshirt.
The Party gets a look-in. The farewell to look forward to is when John Howard loses his seat but the Liberal Party wins the election. Try not to miss Rod Quantock. He is certainly the life of the party.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday 16 October 2007
Monday 15 October 2007
2007: Fabulous Diva – A Tribute to Nina Simone
Fabulous Diva – A Tribute to Nina Simone, devised and performed by Ruth Rogers-Wright with pianist Mark Fitzgibbon (replacing the advertised program The Other Woman – The Life and Music of Nina Simone by Lisa Schouw). Cabaret Crème at The Street Theatre, Monday October 15.
Special credit must be given to Bill Stephens whose standing in the cabaret business enabled him to bring this show in from Melbourne on only two days’ notice following the sudden death of Lisa Schouw’s father.
Sadness at the unexpected news tinged the audience’s early response to Ruth Rogers-Wright’s selection of songs, verse and reminiscences of Nina Simone’s performances. But the show settled in quickly after her rendition of He Needs Me, and we were rewarded by an impression of Simone’s strength of personality, her concern for civil rights, and her style of singing.
The key to this Tribute was the distinction made by Rogers-Wright between a singer who might be a mere entertainer compared with Simone, an artist. The point is valid, but as the show progressed something seemed to me to be missing. On listening to some original Simone performances, I realised that Mark Fitzgibbon’s piano playing, though expert and interestingly complex in blues style, was too smooth. Rogers-Wright’s singing voice also, though catching the blue notes and soul feeling, rarely re-created the raw or even deliberately flat quality of sound that Simone often combined with crude-seeming rhythms. This was the strength which grabbed audiences in large venues and outdoor settings, while Rogers-Wright perhaps felt the need for softer tones in the small theatre setting at The Street.
Personally I found the balance between miked voice and grand piano needed better mixing to prevent the piano masking the lyrics. However, recognising the limitations imposed by working at such short notice, I felt satisfied to have gained an appreciation of Nina Simone’s artistic purpose through Ruth Rogers-Wright’s personal tribute to her work. The applause was warmly given, and I Loves You, Porgy was a memorable encore.
The final Cabaret Crème for the year will be Avigail Herman presenting Hey World, Here I Am – the Streisand Story on Monday November 19.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Special credit must be given to Bill Stephens whose standing in the cabaret business enabled him to bring this show in from Melbourne on only two days’ notice following the sudden death of Lisa Schouw’s father.
Sadness at the unexpected news tinged the audience’s early response to Ruth Rogers-Wright’s selection of songs, verse and reminiscences of Nina Simone’s performances. But the show settled in quickly after her rendition of He Needs Me, and we were rewarded by an impression of Simone’s strength of personality, her concern for civil rights, and her style of singing.
The key to this Tribute was the distinction made by Rogers-Wright between a singer who might be a mere entertainer compared with Simone, an artist. The point is valid, but as the show progressed something seemed to me to be missing. On listening to some original Simone performances, I realised that Mark Fitzgibbon’s piano playing, though expert and interestingly complex in blues style, was too smooth. Rogers-Wright’s singing voice also, though catching the blue notes and soul feeling, rarely re-created the raw or even deliberately flat quality of sound that Simone often combined with crude-seeming rhythms. This was the strength which grabbed audiences in large venues and outdoor settings, while Rogers-Wright perhaps felt the need for softer tones in the small theatre setting at The Street.
Personally I found the balance between miked voice and grand piano needed better mixing to prevent the piano masking the lyrics. However, recognising the limitations imposed by working at such short notice, I felt satisfied to have gained an appreciation of Nina Simone’s artistic purpose through Ruth Rogers-Wright’s personal tribute to her work. The applause was warmly given, and I Loves You, Porgy was a memorable encore.
The final Cabaret Crème for the year will be Avigail Herman presenting Hey World, Here I Am – the Streisand Story on Monday November 19.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday 11 October 2007
2007: Wanderlust by Leigh Warren & Dancers
Wanderlust by Leigh Warren & Dancers, in association with Uno Man. The Playhouse, October 11 and 12.
Tabi ni yande
Yume wa kareno o
Kakemeguru
On a journey, ailing -
My dreams roam about
Over a withered moor.
According to Makoto Ueda, this was the last poem written by the master haiku poet Matsuo Basho shortly before his death in 1694.
I think “wanderlust” is too heavy a title, sounding too Germanic like something from Wagner, for a dance work inspired by the life of the Japanese poet who, says Ueda, developed the principle of "lightness", a dialectic transcendence of sabi. Sabi urges a person to detach themselves from worldly involvements; "lightness" makes it possible for them, after attaining that detachment, to return to the mundane world. Maybe Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) is the European equivalent.
However, what Leigh Warren’s team have achieved - himself and Uno Man (directors /choreographers), Tetsutoshi Tabata and Nic Mollison (visuals and lighting designers), India Flint (costumier), Stuart Day (composer) and dancers Deon Hastie, Mako Kawano, Jo Roads and Tomohiko Tsujimoto - is a remarkable work in which sound, movement and texture are displayed in a clean plain setting, illuminated both literally and metaphorically in ever-changing shapes, colours and intensities of light, according to the dreams which we may imagine to have roamed about Basho’s mind, not just on the travels he wrote about, such as in the most famous The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no Hosomichi), but throughout his life.
Especially I was impressed by the dancers’ lightness of touch in scenes representing great variations of mood, befitting the poet’s experiences. From floor to full stretch, from dazzling speed to deliberate measured pace, from tiny fingers vibrating to slow waves of total bodies rippling, all seemed as if without weight, abstracted, beyond the mundane: poetic. We Australians left the theatre, as we should, knowing Basho’s feeling when he wrote after his first journey in 1685:
Toshi kurenu
Kasa kite waraji
Hakinagara
Another year is gone -
A travel hat on my head,
Straw sandals on my feet.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tabi ni yande
Yume wa kareno o
Kakemeguru
On a journey, ailing -
My dreams roam about
Over a withered moor.
According to Makoto Ueda, this was the last poem written by the master haiku poet Matsuo Basho shortly before his death in 1694.
I think “wanderlust” is too heavy a title, sounding too Germanic like something from Wagner, for a dance work inspired by the life of the Japanese poet who, says Ueda, developed the principle of "lightness", a dialectic transcendence of sabi. Sabi urges a person to detach themselves from worldly involvements; "lightness" makes it possible for them, after attaining that detachment, to return to the mundane world. Maybe Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) is the European equivalent.
However, what Leigh Warren’s team have achieved - himself and Uno Man (directors /choreographers), Tetsutoshi Tabata and Nic Mollison (visuals and lighting designers), India Flint (costumier), Stuart Day (composer) and dancers Deon Hastie, Mako Kawano, Jo Roads and Tomohiko Tsujimoto - is a remarkable work in which sound, movement and texture are displayed in a clean plain setting, illuminated both literally and metaphorically in ever-changing shapes, colours and intensities of light, according to the dreams which we may imagine to have roamed about Basho’s mind, not just on the travels he wrote about, such as in the most famous The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no Hosomichi), but throughout his life.
Especially I was impressed by the dancers’ lightness of touch in scenes representing great variations of mood, befitting the poet’s experiences. From floor to full stretch, from dazzling speed to deliberate measured pace, from tiny fingers vibrating to slow waves of total bodies rippling, all seemed as if without weight, abstracted, beyond the mundane: poetic. We Australians left the theatre, as we should, knowing Basho’s feeling when he wrote after his first journey in 1685:
Toshi kurenu
Kasa kite waraji
Hakinagara
Another year is gone -
A travel hat on my head,
Straw sandals on my feet.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday 2 October 2007
2007: Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire.
Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire. Ensemble Theatre directed by Sandra Bates at the Playhouse October 2-7. Bookings Canberra Ticketing 62750 2700.
Rabbit Hole must have been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize because it is a feel-good play. When we think of the great American plays like O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, there simply is no comparison. Feel-good is just not the same as good, let alone great.
No-one could complain about the acting of any of the excellent cast, led by Georgie Parker and Mark Kilmurry, but the playscript is a contrived “well-made” play about an issue, coping with death, which must as quickly as possible in the last 15 minutes reach a happy resolution. On the way, the playwright has made obvious decisions like the first half must end with a massive emotional scene, while at predictable points the audience must be made to laugh (to relieve the tension, you know). The result is that the first half had to be fast-paced to cover for the lack of genuine emotional justification for the characters’ behaviour, while the second slowed a little (after an early gratuitous laugh) to lead us to a sentimental ending at which some audience members cried as they do watching a television soapie.
The play, and the excellent set, presents itself as naturalistic, but I can only say Lindsay-Abaire’s education at Sarah Lawrence College and the Juilliard School, New York, could not have included any study of the original master of naturalism, Henrik Ibsen. A Doll’s House runs rings around Rabbit Hole.
Fortunately the actors were good enough (even with some slightly wobbly American accents) to hold the play together despite its highly unrealistic elements like the appearance of the young driver who ran over Beccie and Howie’s 4-year-old son Danny. The issue of how people cope with such tragedies in an unforgiving universe is a worthwhile theme. It’s just disappointing that this playwright, prize-winner or not, does not give the actors a script with the depth of understanding they, and we, deserve.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Rabbit Hole must have been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize because it is a feel-good play. When we think of the great American plays like O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, there simply is no comparison. Feel-good is just not the same as good, let alone great.
No-one could complain about the acting of any of the excellent cast, led by Georgie Parker and Mark Kilmurry, but the playscript is a contrived “well-made” play about an issue, coping with death, which must as quickly as possible in the last 15 minutes reach a happy resolution. On the way, the playwright has made obvious decisions like the first half must end with a massive emotional scene, while at predictable points the audience must be made to laugh (to relieve the tension, you know). The result is that the first half had to be fast-paced to cover for the lack of genuine emotional justification for the characters’ behaviour, while the second slowed a little (after an early gratuitous laugh) to lead us to a sentimental ending at which some audience members cried as they do watching a television soapie.
The play, and the excellent set, presents itself as naturalistic, but I can only say Lindsay-Abaire’s education at Sarah Lawrence College and the Juilliard School, New York, could not have included any study of the original master of naturalism, Henrik Ibsen. A Doll’s House runs rings around Rabbit Hole.
Fortunately the actors were good enough (even with some slightly wobbly American accents) to hold the play together despite its highly unrealistic elements like the appearance of the young driver who ran over Beccie and Howie’s 4-year-old son Danny. The issue of how people cope with such tragedies in an unforgiving universe is a worthwhile theme. It’s just disappointing that this playwright, prize-winner or not, does not give the actors a script with the depth of understanding they, and we, deserve.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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