Pink Floyd’s The Wall by Roger Waters. Additional material by David Gilmour and Bob Ezrin. Original adaptation and direction by Ron Dowd, music arranged by Ewan Putnam-Hargreaves and directed by Garrick Smith, choreography by Belynda Buck, costumes by Suzan Cooper, set design by Brian Sudding, Ron Dowd and Ian Croker, lighting design by Chris Neal, audio design by Chris Shackleton. Supa Productions in association with ANU and papermoon at ANU Arts Centre Wed-Sat May 9-24, 8pm, Sat matinees 2pm. Bookings: 1300 737 363 or Dinner and Show at Vivaldi’s 6257 2718.
What I like about this show is that now I understand what The Wall is all about. Dowd’s new stage version fixes the two problems I had with the original Pink Floyd presentations. On stage in the 1980s the band sang and played with exciting, often explosive, visuals. In the film, realistic short scenes had the songs as a soundtrack, which oddly kept the emotions cooled. Dowd tells the story, and at last the drama is integrated with the music. The songs are his characters’ dialogue, and we understand what they mean.
We see Pink struggling to maintain his sanity against his mother’s need to protect him, his teachers’ need to make him conform, his record industry’s managers’ need to profit from his talent, his realisation that the World War 2 in which his father died was global madness, his sense of guilt for not being able to relate to his wife with the sensitivity she deserves. No wonder he builds a wall to try to hide behind. George Huitker does an excellent job representing this character, unable in the end to resist the power seen on stage in the evil figure of the MC, the Master of Ceremonies, who revels in Pink’s destruction as the Wall collapses to the sound of the atomic bomb explosions which brought WW2 to its bitter end.
Especially impressive is the quality of the musicianship from the band and the singers. The ANU Arts Centre has the feel of the huge concerts of yesteryear, yet we are close and intimate enough, for example, to feel for mother, the young Pink and the adult Pink as Kath Dunham, Will Huang and Huitker sing this complex trio in the song Mother. As Pink himself turns into the fascist he hates, we feel directly threatened, personally guilty that we daily play our part on the side of the MC and do not protect and support the artist.
Supa have made real music theatre in The Wall. Don’t imagine you need to be a Pink Floyd fan to appreciate this work. Dowd’s adaptation brings Roger Waters’ creation to life, Putnam-Hargreaves’ arrangement is top concert rock - sounding better to me than Waters himself, the lighting, set design, choreography and costumes are dramatic in their own right, the musicians and singers perform their hearts out. Don’t miss it.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 9 May 2008
Thursday, 8 May 2008
2008: It Was That Way When I Got Here by Andrew Hackwill and Jonathan Flack
It Was That Way When I Got Here. Musical comedy written and directed by Andrew Hackwill and Jonathan Flack. A PhoenixRising world premiere, Phoenix Players at Theatre 3, May 8, 9 and 10 at 8pm; 10 and 11 at 2pm.
It’s hard to imagine such a zany funny musical running for only five performances. Under the direction of Ian McLean the 1st XV Orchestra is terrific, there is a wealth of good singing from men and women, costumes by Christine Pawlicki are bright and hilarious, dancing is disciplined (by Lisa Buckley), set (by Brian Sudding) is simple, lit well and works perfectly.
The songs are witty, reminding me of anything from Gilbert and Sullivan to My Fair Lady, and each is a take-off of a different style from Gospel to Sondheim, with a special nod at the smooth Dean Martin. The plot is a bit hard to follow at times, but that is as it should be in this wildly multicultural school which I could only see as a truly Australian iconoclastic kind-of Catholic version of Vicar of Dibley madness. Certainly not politically correct, and with many sexual references.
The only problem on opening night was audio balance - the band often drowned the singers - made worse by radio mikes working intermittently. But the cast were so well-rehearsed that no-one missed a beat. Though, at the end of the day, this is a production by a local community theatre group with the attendant difficulties that a fully professional theatre company would not face, I am sure there would be a willing audience for a longer season which the commitment and obvious enjoyment of the cast and musicians deserve.
The Phoenix Players’ PhoenixRising program to help new writers get their work on stage has paid off with It Was That Way When I Got Here. It’s thoroughly madcap, but there is some method after all in a priestly-robed school principal carrying his “bible”, entitled Religion for Dummies. Enough said. Enjoy.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
It’s hard to imagine such a zany funny musical running for only five performances. Under the direction of Ian McLean the 1st XV Orchestra is terrific, there is a wealth of good singing from men and women, costumes by Christine Pawlicki are bright and hilarious, dancing is disciplined (by Lisa Buckley), set (by Brian Sudding) is simple, lit well and works perfectly.
The songs are witty, reminding me of anything from Gilbert and Sullivan to My Fair Lady, and each is a take-off of a different style from Gospel to Sondheim, with a special nod at the smooth Dean Martin. The plot is a bit hard to follow at times, but that is as it should be in this wildly multicultural school which I could only see as a truly Australian iconoclastic kind-of Catholic version of Vicar of Dibley madness. Certainly not politically correct, and with many sexual references.
The only problem on opening night was audio balance - the band often drowned the singers - made worse by radio mikes working intermittently. But the cast were so well-rehearsed that no-one missed a beat. Though, at the end of the day, this is a production by a local community theatre group with the attendant difficulties that a fully professional theatre company would not face, I am sure there would be a willing audience for a longer season which the commitment and obvious enjoyment of the cast and musicians deserve.
The Phoenix Players’ PhoenixRising program to help new writers get their work on stage has paid off with It Was That Way When I Got Here. It’s thoroughly madcap, but there is some method after all in a priestly-robed school principal carrying his “bible”, entitled Religion for Dummies. Enough said. Enjoy.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 2 May 2008
2008: Rebel Without a Cause by James Fuller
Rebel Without a Cause by James Fuller, based on the screenplay by Stewart Stern from an adaptation by Irving Shulman from a story by Nicholas Ray. Free-Rain Theatre directed by Anne Somes. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre, May 1-17, 2008, Thursdays-Saturdays 8pm, Pay What You Can Wednesdays 6.30pm, Matinees Saturdays May 10 and 17 2pm. Bookings 6275 2700.
The stage adaptation of this 1955 film is a comic strip version, a storyboard designed to show the key bits of the plot and make sure we get the message that teenagers must break parental bonds. In an America where mothers keep handguns and classmates sport flick knives as a matter of course, young men’s lives are at risk as they establish their independent pecking order. Jim wins his Judy, while gangleader Buzz and oddball Plato die.
Director Somes rose to the challenge of making this unlikely material work. Avoiding naturalism, stylising the action - down to almost choreographed staccato movement even including scene changes, using exaggerated New York accents, projected images and dramatic background music, set in lots of symbolic black and contrasting red, Somes stirs our emotions and builds a surprising level of tension in the final scene despite the absurdity of the situation as, next to Plato’s dead body, Jim hugs his reconciled parents and introduces Judy to them. With dancing and singing, it could almost have been West Side Story, except that would have made it a parody.
Is the play still relevant? Perhaps. The simple clarity of this production makes us think. Rebel Without a Cause could mean that Jim and Judy had no real reason to reject their parents’ behaviour. Yet we see parents who reject their children’s behaviour, or can’t talk to them sensibly about social realities. Or the title could mean that if you are going to rebel, you should have a definite aim to achieve - a cause celebre. But all Jim can say is that although he has everything and is “well fed”, he just feels like a “tiger in a cage” and has to escape. Is this all that a wealthy society can offer? To escape with no idea of what to do next, except fall in love, become parents and go round the cycle again, is a bleak view of life.
Or maybe to binge-drink or, tragically, [currently in the news] take 14 people out on Sydney Harbour in a stolen unsuitable runabout at 2am? Is that the best we can offer fifty years later? Maybe Free-Rain’s showing us Rebel Without a Cause does have a point. It makes us think.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
The stage adaptation of this 1955 film is a comic strip version, a storyboard designed to show the key bits of the plot and make sure we get the message that teenagers must break parental bonds. In an America where mothers keep handguns and classmates sport flick knives as a matter of course, young men’s lives are at risk as they establish their independent pecking order. Jim wins his Judy, while gangleader Buzz and oddball Plato die.
Director Somes rose to the challenge of making this unlikely material work. Avoiding naturalism, stylising the action - down to almost choreographed staccato movement even including scene changes, using exaggerated New York accents, projected images and dramatic background music, set in lots of symbolic black and contrasting red, Somes stirs our emotions and builds a surprising level of tension in the final scene despite the absurdity of the situation as, next to Plato’s dead body, Jim hugs his reconciled parents and introduces Judy to them. With dancing and singing, it could almost have been West Side Story, except that would have made it a parody.
Is the play still relevant? Perhaps. The simple clarity of this production makes us think. Rebel Without a Cause could mean that Jim and Judy had no real reason to reject their parents’ behaviour. Yet we see parents who reject their children’s behaviour, or can’t talk to them sensibly about social realities. Or the title could mean that if you are going to rebel, you should have a definite aim to achieve - a cause celebre. But all Jim can say is that although he has everything and is “well fed”, he just feels like a “tiger in a cage” and has to escape. Is this all that a wealthy society can offer? To escape with no idea of what to do next, except fall in love, become parents and go round the cycle again, is a bleak view of life.
Or maybe to binge-drink or, tragically, [currently in the news] take 14 people out on Sydney Harbour in a stolen unsuitable runabout at 2am? Is that the best we can offer fifty years later? Maybe Free-Rain’s showing us Rebel Without a Cause does have a point. It makes us think.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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