2008: Pink Floyd’s The Wall by Roger Waters

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