2010: Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov.  Adapted by Andrew Upton, directed by Tamás Ascher.  Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Theatre, November 9 – December 23, 2010.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

November 24

Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya

© Lisa Tomasetti 2010

Despite the success of the first production by Moscow Art Theatre of Uncle Vanya in 1899, I like to imagine that Konstantin Stanislavsky was troubled.  He had not wanted to play the role of the doctor, Mihail Lvovich Astrov “for I had always dreamt of another part – the title role.  But [director] Vladimir Ivanovich managed to break my will and even got me to like Astrov.”

In Ascher’s production, I think Stanislavski’s troubles are over.  Considering he died in 1938, you may think it’s a bit late.  But there’s 111 years of theatrical history behind Ascher’s and Upton’s work, and it shows to perfection in the performances of top-class actors Hugo Weaving (today’s Astrov), Richard Roxburgh (Vanya), Cate Blanchett (Yelena), Hayley McElhinney (Sonya), John Bell (Serebryakov), Jacki Weaver (Nanny), Sandy Gore (Maria), Anthony Phelan (Telegin) and Andrew Tighe (Labourer).

Stanislavski also directed Chekov’s works and in the 1920s and 30s focussed on training actors to perform ‘naturalism’.  His work was the key to making the break from melodrama to the form of drama the 20th Century needed.  But that doesn’t mean that everyone got his ‘system’ right.  I think we were lucky in Australia, from the time of the early NIDA classes and Hayes Gordon, to eschew the ‘American Method’ of Lee Strasbourg. 

Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya   
© Lisa Tomasetti 2010

Australians, being perhaps less sentimental than Americans, knew that when Stanislavski said act ‘as if’ you were the character, he never meant ‘become’ the character.  This cast, with this director, backed by their Australian training and experience, demonstrated exactly what Stanislavski meant.  I suspect, too, they also ‘got’ Chekov better than Stanislavski himself had achieved in 1899.

The clue is the fun in this presentation.  Here is the humourist Chekov we know from his short stories and plays like The Proposal.  Weaving skips and even Russian dances about the stage.  Roxburgh swings and sways from gloom to fury, from lust to murderous intent.  The two of them reminded me of Ian McKellen (Estragon) and Roger Rees (Vladimir) in the recent production of Waiting for Godot – the same understanding of the absurdity of the social condition.

One might imagine that the young wife of the old fart professor, so imbued in boredom, would be waspish or merely sad.  Not this Yelena.  Blanchett collapses into unbridled laughter as often as she is the worst manipulator.  And who would have thought that the professor’s horribly put-upon daughter could lose herself so freely in laughter and take the audience along with her, especially in McElhinney’s marvellous scene with Blanchett in Act Two. 

And John Bell at last is free of the constraints he seems to have laid upon himself in recent years.  Compare his Lear with this pretentious old Serebyakov, and Chekov looks better than Shakespeare.

But how is this not mere farce or melodrama?  Because every actor plays their character’s intention behind every facial twitch, every loose movement, every eye contact, every incomprehensible vocalisation, every word which means the opposite of its apparent meaning, or diverts attention away from reality.  As Stanislavsky taught, nothing must happen on stage without the audience being aware of each character’s intention.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, was missed in this production.

A simple demonstration, but a most exciting moment in the play, was the silence after Yelena and Astrov realise that Vanya, bringing roses for her, has seen them kissing.  Such wonderful theatre in which no-one says anything for minutes on end.  My copy of the script has just four dots to indicate no more than a pause before Astrov says [with bravado] ‘The weather is not too bad today.’  On this stage, with this director and these actors, what tension was there – and what laughter from us watching this embarrassed triangle.  What a creation of the illusion of natural reality!  What honour to a master playwright.  What grateful thanks on my part for the skill and artistry of this company.

What a pity for so many of you that the season is fully booked.

 

Sandy Gore and Richard Roxburgh in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya
© Lisa Tomasetti 2010

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: When the rain stops falling by Andrew Bovell

When the rain stops falling by Andrew Bovell.  A collaboration with Hossein Valamanesh and Brink Productions.  Directed by Chris Drummond at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, November 10-13, 2010.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 10




This production of a play, described by Richard Zoglin in Time as ‘easily the best new play of the year’ at its US premiere at the Lincoln Centre in March this year, is a privilege to behold.  The acting, direction and design all fall into their right places stylistically and technically in a jigsaw puzzle which comes together piece by piece. 

At first there are scattered elements of a picture picked up seemingly at random from four generations leading to the meeting of Gabriel York and his son Andrew Price.  The experience watching is exactly as happens while reconstructing a complex 1000 piece puzzle.  Aha! realisations light up completely unexpectedly when it becomes clear that this or that piece just has to go here or there.  Yet it is not until the very last piece is in place that we feel the tension that we might not have everything correctly understood, fall away.  Only as the last clue is revealed, just as the rain stops falling, do we suddenly feel we can breathe again with satisfaction that all is now positively complete.

Zoglin goes as far as to compare Bovell’s work with the achievements of the novelist William Faulkner.  It is a fair comparison in two ways. 

Faulkner used devices like plain print interspersed with italic print and standard sentence structure interspersed with poetic line forms as a way of shifting from time to time or from internal to external experience.    The result is difficult reading until you allow the feelings expressed in the words to wash into your mind without self-consciously seeking logical understanding or even clarity of events.

Bovell’s writing is theatrically interpreted by this production team to create a similar kind of time and perspective shifting, which as Faulkner achieves in the end of The Sound and the Fury, finally comes into clear focus in the final scene of When the rain stops falling.

But the perhaps more important way that the comparison with Faulkner is sensible is that Bovell, as does Faulkner, creates in his jigsaw, images and themes in words and action which symbolise elements of the human condition which recognisably belong to the writer’s culture – American in Faulkner’s case, and Australian in Bovell’s.  In the local we see the universal. 

It is interesting to read the American Zoglin’s description: ‘The play is unrelievedly bleak but with a denouement of unexpected hope: a moving, almost revelatory evening of theater’ while the Australian audience on opening night in Canberra responded to the many moments of ironic humour which are built into our culture.  We certainly found the unexpected hope, but not an unrelieved bleakness.  In fact, without laughter, I suspect, the unexpected hope at the end would have been maudlin and sentimental.  In this production, it was ultimately satisfying to know that Gabriel and his son Andrew, with the help of a fish falling from the sky, could at last enjoy each other’s company after four generations of emotional disaster.

Bovell’s work, it seems to me, has matured in this play even beyond his earlier Holy Day.  Now he has achieved strength in simplicity, placing him among the great playwrights not only of Australia but around the world.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Namatjira by Scott Rankin

Namatjira by Scott Rankin.  Co-directed by Scott Rankin and Wayne Blair.  Big hART at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, until November 7, 2010.

Trevor Jamieson    Photo: Brett Boardman

Reviewed by Frank McKone, October 19.

Following their highly successful production in the 2008 Sydney Festival of Ngapartji Ngapartji (reviewed in The Canberra Times Thursday 17 January 2008), Big hART and Belvoir Street continue their series of Indigenous cultural projects in Namatjira.

Pitjantjatjara speaker, well-known performer Trevor Jamieson plays the man the general public knows as Albert Namatjira, attracting a friendly joking comment from an elder of the extended Namatjira family who gave permission for this presentation of their famous grandfather’s life story.  “How can a Pitjantjatjara man do an Arrernte?”

Very well indeed, in my view. 

Rankin’s writing tells the story plainly, allowing plenty of emotional space for the miming, dancing, singing, language and characterisation skills of Jamieson and his young performing partner Derek Lynch to be shaped into a major work with co-director Wayne Blair.  I am reminded of Wayne Blair’s own work as a performer in Wesley Enoch’s 2003 production of Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead.  It seems to me that there is a continuing strength of development in Aboriginal theatre, which I expect will go on being supported so well by Belvoir as Neil Armfield steps down in favour of Ralph Myers, whose work on Conversations was noted in the Canberra Times review (August 21, 2003).

But it’s not just important to see Namatjira placed in its Indigenous theatre context.  This play sits just as firmly in the context of non-Indigenous Australian theatre, because of the place Albert Namatjira has as the first Aboriginal person to be classed as an Australian citizen.  It was at this pinnacle of success that his downfall began.  This story is a tragedy which I found hit home just after the last line was spoken as the lights took the focus from the entertaining performer to his painted portrait which faded “Into the blue.”

This play for both cultures works so well because the central theme of the story is the remarkable relationship which grew over a lifetime of the two men, Elea – whose European first name, Albert, was arbitrarily given him by the German pastor at the Hermannsburg Mission combined with a mispronunication of his father’s totemic name as a surname – and Rex Battarbee, damaged physically and mentally as a young soldier in World War I, for whom painting watercolours was his only way of surviving.  In this production itself, writes Rankin, “Every layer of the project is dependent on the strength of the foundation formed with both the Namatjira family and Rex Battarbee’s daughter Gayle Quamby.  If this new performance piece resonated with audiences it does so because of the generosity of these families in contributing their stories to the research for the play, and their support for the broader Big hART project.”

There is no doubt, at the performance I witnessed, that this play resonated with all the culturally mixed audience (even German speaking friends of mine thought Jamieson’s pronunciation of German as the Pastor was “funny” – as, of course, it was meant to be).  For me, one of the great successes was to see Aboriginal people making biting satire of Australian institutions, right up to the Queen, but especially of speeches actually made by society women sponsors of the arts praising Albert Namatjira, to unrestrained laughter and applause throughout the audience.  It made the hypocrisy with which he was treated over his attempts to buy his country back, and finally the circumstances of his jailing, so much more poignant.

To my mind, this kind of theatre takes us in a new direction.  The move towards the end of last century to support community theatre rather than nothing but flagship companies is coming home to roost.  Here we see top-class quality performance, design and technical theatre used to bring people together into community across old divides.  Big hART refers to their work as “projects” because they are more than presenting plays on stage for people to sit back and watch.  This play engages us in coming to know the families in the story and to understand the reality of our own history.  We see Kevin Namatjira, Albert’s grandson, chalking the backdrop images of the Macdonnell ranges in his grandfather’s tradition.  From the next generation, Elton Wirri works with him.  There are some paintings on show in the foyer, but if you go to Alice Springs (Mparntwe) you can visit the Araluen Arts Centre and see the works of Albert Namatjira’s extended family as I did a few weeks ago, as well as works by Rex Battarbee and a portrait of Namatjira by Alfred Cook, painted in 1940, showing us a strong and forward-looking man as he was then, rather than the sad figure of his last years. 

Derek Lynch     Photo: Brett Boardman

Kevin Namatjira       Photo: Brett Boardman

You can follow up Big hART on 03 6423 4577, at www.bighart.org or email bighart@bigpond.com.au .  For political action, there is to be a rally organised by the Stop the Intervention Collective at Sydney Town Hall on Friday October 29, 12 noon.

Belvoir Box Office: (02) 9699 3444.

Namatjira will be seen in Canberra at The Playhouse, September 14-17, 2011.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill

Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill.  Sydney Theatre Company directed by Andrew Upton at Sydney Theatre, June 29 – August 1, 2010

Reviewed by Frank McKone, July 14.

If you have read about O’Neill’s personal life you will understand the significance of the title of this long play, which ran 3 hours 40 minutes (including a 20 minute interval).  Alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide were subjects he could not avoid, though he did put off writing this gruelling story until 1941, as the Parkinson’s-like neurodegenerative disease known as cortical cerebellar atrophy began to take hold, preventing him from writing ever again, until his death in 1953.

Some commentators see O’Neill as taking up, for the first time in America, the Chekovian tradition of realism, but this is not true of most of his work.  His characters and plots are full of symbolism, even though he employs apparently naturalistic forms of dialogue.  In fact, each of his plays is an experiment in theatrical form.  He was an innovator, an inventor never fully satisfied with his last creation. 

Before Long Day’s Journey Into Night only his structured study of racial discrimination in All God’s Chillun Got Wings produced a drama of ordinary internal family relations.  But Long Day is a searing journey to the centre of the night which, in my opinion, has not been undertaken by any other playwright since Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.

I’ll come back to themes later, but my first concern is whether or not Upton and his cast – Robyn Nevin as wife and mother Mary, William Hurt as husband, father and actor James Tyrone, Todd van Voris as eldest son James, and Luke Mullins as younger surviving son Edmund, and not forgetting Emily Russell as Mary’s household employee Cathleen – would have had any hope of satisfying the author who claimed, I believe, not to wish to see his plays on stage because he could always do a better production in his own imagination.

If the performance I saw had not been a matinee, requiring us to accept only two curtain-call appearances before the cast took a break to prepare for the evening,  I’m sure the demands of those calling for a standing ovation would have been granted by the whole audience on a third appearance.  Despite Edmund’s disparagement of James Tyrone’s old-style Irish Catholicism, almost certainly true of Eugene O’Neill’s attitude towards his actor-father James O’Neill’s religion, it would not be hard to imagine the author, looking down from theatrical heaven, with satisfied eyes.

The acting was, as we expect from STC, superb. 

Emily Russell’s small but crucial role is a great example.  In a family full of delusions, Cathleen is a normal person, seeing the funny side of situations, wanting to please but standing up for herself, recognising the realities of her job as household help and maintaining a commonsense relationship between her drug-affected employer and Bridget, the terror in the kitchen whom we never see but get to know well.  After a first act which takes us out to interval wondering if we can cope any more with the twists and turns of bickering, accusations, regrets and unsuccessful attempts to express love, Russell opens Act 2 with a large and ebullient Cathleen bringing out a vivacity in Mary so enjoyable to see that we can believe that Mary can perhaps achieve her sanity.  Yet it is Russell’s Cathleen who suddenly has to step back as she realises that Mary’s responses to normal enjoyment of life are abnormal.  Cathleen knows how to deal with Bridget the kitchen tyro, but this is beyond dealing with.  Russell loses nothing of Cathleen’s open personality, but by the time she leaves the stage we know what she knows, and we wonder how on earth this family will end its days.

As the long drunken evening winds it misty way around the men, each little gust of interaction sometimes seeming a little warmer but trending icy overall, we wait in dread.  If we ever see Mary emerge from the spare room again, what will we see?  It is Robyn Nevin’s triumph that, after perhaps an hour off-stage, in the dead of night her Mary is such a sad, sad figure that when she stands so still and speaks we are completely absorbed.  When she stops speaking we are silent.  No-one breaks as the lights slowly dim, and we even feel a bit tentative about beginning to applaud when the lights come up to relieve the intensity with appreciation for such actors.

Of course, without three men to match, no woman could produce such a Mary.  Each one had his element of surprise.  Tyrone, the “great” actor, was not the expected booming theatrical cliché voice.  Often he spoke too fast to pick up all the words, sometimes seeming as if William Hurt was not quite in control of his role.  But think of the complexity of an actor playing the role of an actor who only feels himself to be in control when he is acting before an audience.  At “home” he has no audience, only a wife and sons who see through him.  He is at home on the stage, or used to be in his hey-day, but he is no more than an illusion in this house which even looks like a run-down one-night stand hotel room.  And we are watching William Hurt in this illusion on stage before us, his audience.  So Hurt was right to show us Tyrone unable to maintain the cliché, too mentally messed-up to sound out the booming foghorn voice.

James was a visual surprise to me.  I had never imagined him as rotund as Todd van Voris appeared.  I suppose my cliché expectation was that he would be a drunken broken down version of his tall square-shouldered theatrically heroic father, as William Hurt appeared.  But this was the son who deliberately rejected his father’s appearance of athleticism, even though he showed that he was, at least when sober, a more sincere actor than his father.  And, in his cups, this James was a capable clown – until his cups overflowed, spilling his insecurity all over the floor in the final scenes, and the clown could only watch the horror of his mother, and do nothing.

Even though I knew the story of O’Neill’s tuberculosis, and thus Edmund’s “consumption”, and expected a sick looking Luke Mullins, his slimness looked so thin against van Voris’s roundness that at once his cough said what we needed to know.  So casting was not just a matter of finding actors who could act, especially actors who could act actors when they were acting and when they were not, as well as actors who can act characters who are always pretending, sometimes deliberately but often subconsciously.  Casting was also about design to create images of the characters which tell the story visually.  And this was very well done.

The design, too, of the claustrophobic ugly room, looking cheap and yet also reminiscent of the sort of ship’s cabin that O’Neill himself would have inhabited as a rough merchant seaman, set the atmosphere to dead astern.  But rather than hold us in this confinement for three hours, lighting and gaps in the wings allowed us to see out a little and place this dead centre in the beginnings of a context: the hedge out front, the verandah, the dining room, the street which led to the pub.  But there were only small disturbing sounds from the spare room upstairs, where Mary had her “naps”.  This was just sufficient for us to survive our time with this family – well done again.

The play operates on three levels, and Andrew Upton has allowed O’Neill’s writing to reveal them all.  First, conflicts within each of the personalities become apparent in more and more detail as the second level, conflict within the family between the individuals, grows apace.  These are the levels at which we respond to the action on stage as we watch.  The intricacies of the interactions make this play one of the greatest written in the 20th Century and an outstanding play historically.

The third level is not made explicit on stage, yet is shown in clues – put there by O’Neill – which may be cryptic.  This is an American play.  What does it say about America?  Upton, as director, has not only made sure the first two levels are fully developed, but he has been careful to put issues before us which are core questions in American culture.

The “ould country” is Ireland, and the accents of the two generations, compared also with the original Irish of the immigrant worker Cathleen, bring out the issue of change which we know so well in Australia.  This is fine voice design which, like good lighting, is done so well that it is not noticed.  But it establishes the credentials and credibility of this production, and I bet that O’Neill’s ghost is pleased.  This is because the theme of the migration to America and the consequential belief in the “American Dream” is crucial to appreciating O’Neill’s sense of tragedy. 

It is not just a story of characters who fall into the traps of alcohol and morphine addiction, for whom we may feel sorrow as they effectively commit suicide (as O’Neill’s sons did in real life – one only three years before O’Neill himself died).  It is the story of the failure of America to know itself – to understand that the Dream is a delusion, that America is not the great heroic nation it believes itself to be, that America cannot impose dictates upon others while maintaining its belief in freedom, that even within its own culture the dream of never-ending success for everyone is an impossible dream.

We see the effects of the American Dream played out in the news every day, and even in Australia (where we tell ourselves that we don’t accept authority, with a philosophy of “no bullshit”) we follow America into unwinnable wars and people constantly talk of achieving their dream.  O’Neill’s play is a warning: the dream is a self-destructive delusion. 

Yet the irony is that to create this drama on the stage so effectively, as Upton and his team have done, is to prove that O’Neill’s “dream” can be fulfilled – perhaps better even than in his imagination.  Watch Cathleen, the minor character of no apparent importance but the only one who will survive.

If you have to miss the Sydney season, your next opportunity is at the Newmark Theatre, Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland, Oregon USA, August 13-29, where it will be followed by Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness in September.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Caravan by Donald MacDonald

Caravan by Donald MacDonald. Directed by Rodney Delaney at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, June 24 – July 3, 2010.

Reviewed by Frank McKone, June 24.

Caravan is more or less in the tradition of romantic comedy – we know this because the final scene ends in a tableau of all the characters laughing outrageously while drunk – except that the setting is not exactly conducive to romance and the dalliances have already happened years before this summer holiday in the rain.

The play is a situation comedy, with pretensions to be a traditional farce, but for me has serious weaknesses, despite its history of productions since 1983, when I first saw it at the Opera House Drama Theatre, no less. I wondered then whether it deserved that venue, but with strong professional actors of that era like Kirrily Nolan it succeeded as pure entertainment.

Delaney’s production has recognised that pure fun is the objective. On first night things began a little too slowly, as if we were expected to take the relationship between Penny and Parkes Robinson seriously as the owners of the caravan waiting for their invitees to join them. But the very effective acting of everyone bashing their heads on the low door (except for Pierce’s cradle-snatched girlfriend, of course, until she was as drunk as the rest) began to get us in the mood for the farcical situation. By the second half things were well underway as we wore our plastic coats while the rain could be heard belting down.

The acting was well done all round. Highlights for me were Bernadette Vincent’s scene reporting her “rape” in the shower. Not only was her entrance at full intensity, but she maintained the energy throughout the scene, and built on Monica’s character throughout her performance. Jenny Rixon impressed as well, particularly in turning Penny’s character around as she became seriously drunk, from compliancy to the strength and determination need to enforce “nice” behaviour. In the end it is only the relationship between Penny and Monica which holds the play together, and these two actors succeeded in making it work.

So it was not difficult to sing along with the cast at curtain call – just for fun.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Sean Mathius, Haymarket Theatre, London. Produced by Andrew Kay and Liza McLean at Sydney Opera House, June 15 to July 10, 2010

Reviewed by Frank McKone, June 23.

Starring Ian McKellen (Estragon), Roger Rees (Vladimir), Matthew Kelly (Pozzo) and Brendan O’Hea (Lucky), how could this production fail?

And where on earth do I stand when to alleviate boredom Vladimir and Estragon decide to insult each other? Which insult got the biggest laugh from the full house – you guessed it:

ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR: Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.

Well, I didn’t wilt. In fact from Estragon’s first finger grappling over the rotting stone wall to his final “Yes, let’s go. They do not move.” I found myself entirely captivated. It was impossible to turn away.

Though Ian McKellen has had the publicity highlight, which is more than well-deserved, each of the actors has matched the demands of their roles. Often I have come across people who almost fear Waiting for Godot as if it is a “difficult” play and so “tedious”. These performances make nonsense of this undeserved reputation.

Estragon is a sweet old man who only wants the world to treat him decently.

Vladimir would like to believe he has more control over things than he really has. Despite everything, he will never give up trying. And hoping.

Pozzo is all bluster, knowing that he depends on Lucky, his slave. Though he represents all that is powerful, he has premonitions in Act 1 that his position is insecure, which proves to be the case in Act 2. Now blinded, he is entirely dependent, having to rely on the goodwill of the two tramps.

Lucky, of course, is in the most unlucky position of all. When he speaks, important truths roll off his tongue repetitively. He thinks but has no control over even his thinking, let alone his life. He speaks only when given permission, when he wears his hat. But in Act 2, to the horror of the tramps, even this is taken away, and he is dumb.

My description superficially may seem to support the play’s reputation, but Mathius’ directing has emphasised the humanity of each character and the actors have found the ways to express all the moods of their relationships with each other and with the universe within which they live. The result is a huge amount of humour – after all, how else can people survive what this set design represents as the collapse of society, except to laugh at the absurdity of everything. I am reminded, from my personal background, of the humour of the British under years of bombardment during World War 2. This crumbling ruin of a set design, in fact, looks very like what I remember of the London bombsites of my childhood. But I remember, too, the laughter and song of that era. The end may be nigh, but it doesn’t have to be depressing.

Rather, even though there is sadness in Vladimir and Estragon’s hope that Godot will come some day, their ability to enjoy a carrot and spit out a parsnip, dance a little and hug each other for comfort, is actually uplifting. This is a wonderful production: theatre at its best.

(I would like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Robyn and Jack Geary in enabling me to attend Waiting for Godot)

2010: Oresteia by Aeschylus

Oresteia by Aeschylus, adapted and directed by Tom Wright. Sydney Theatre Company Residents at Wharf 1, June 5 - 27, 2010.

Reviewed by Frank McKone, June 22.

The Residents have been together as a permanent company of actors within the Sydney Theatre Company for a year now. This is their second mainstage production and the value of being able to work together consistently shows in this concentrated, highly focussed performance of Aeschylus’ moral tale of the cursed generations of the House of Atreus.

It was Meet the Actors night which I chose for the opportunity to find out how the transition from the earlier STC Actors’ Company to The Residents is progressing. The play, based mainly on Aeschylus’ first two plays rounded off by Apollo’s speech from the third (defending Orestes in Athene’s court, where the black and white pebbles are even in number but Athene adds her white pebble to acquit), ran for nearly three hours (including interval), followed by questions from the audience to Tom Wright and the actors. This made for a highly satisfying evening from 6.30 to after 10pm, in which time slipped by very easily.

This production was my kind of drama. Imagery was used symbolically, tension and focus were created through stillness, atmosphere developed from simple vocal harmonies, horror created in backlit shadow forms, reinforced by bloodied bodies frozen in death, and the story told in clear poetic rhythms. Though in “modern” dress, often more undressed, the staging is a simple open space in front of three double translucent doors which open and close like elevator doors to reveal or hide, or become shadow-puppet screens, as needed.

For me the modern symbols, meant to cue the audience in to elements of the story, were not all successful. The loss of childhood was represented by a door opening on a spinning wheel of a child’s scooter, yet the story is entirely set in Aeschylus’ Ancient Greece. I had the same problem of mismatch with the unattractive anorak used by the soldier and later by Orestes to represent hard-bitten travel. Yet the use of simple clinging shifts for the chorus women and Clytemnestra in the first act worked very well to represent the vulnerability of women, not only in the ancient militaristic world of the war on Troy, but in modern times still. Dressing Aegisthus in the same shift as the women wore in act one certainly made a humorous, and effective, point about his role in contrast to the cuckolded husband Agamemnon. After Clytemnestra has killed Agamemnon, in act two she and the chorus women are dressed as successful modern women, while Aegisthus might be described as a petty dictator pretending to be metrosexual. No wonder her surviving children, Orestes and Electra, feel they must destroy their mother and her toy-boy king.

The audience raised the question of male/female balance in Wright’s interpretation. Richard Pyros, who played Aegisthus, thought that the sexual and the violent aspects fell equally on both sexes. Then he described his experience, while acting, of an absolute “line down the middle” between the male and female characters but feeling “weird falling on both sides at once” in his role.

This kind of commentary and the discussion it generated was a mark of the group understanding among The Residents. The company was formed by Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton as a deliberate contrast to the previous STC Actors’ Company, which Robyn Nevin, based on her early experiences in Rex Cramphorn’s Performance Syndicate, had structured to include iconic actors well advanced in their careers to work with and to be mentors for young up-and-comers. Despite her good intentions, this system finally became unworkable.

The Residents, instead, are all actors showing great promise early in their careers, with an experienced associate director working at one remove from Blanchett and Upton, the overall Sydney Theatre Company artistic directors. The actors described being auditioned through a workshop process and finding themselves able to take risks in their work which are not possible when auditioning for specific parts as freelance actors. They talked of the security of having long-term membership, of working on many different projects (especially including theatre education programs), of “getting to know people as people” and developing a “different sense of trust”. I can only say that this looks like my kind of theatre company.

Since the run of Oresteia ends this weekend, there is little time for you to see it. Get there if you can, but certainly keep your wits about you for when The Residents appear again in STC’s Next Stage, Education or Main Stage program. Check out www.sydneytheatre.com.au .

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Winter’s Discontent by William Zappa

Winter’s Discontent written and performed by William Zappa, with Andrea Close, at The Street Theatre, June 18 – July 3, 2010, 7.30pm.

Reviewed June 18 by Frank McKone

A mathematician asked me would this play be “theatre for theatricals”?

When the line “An actor prepares” was made prominent without any mention of Stanislavsky, I might have thought “yes” in response to my mathematical friend except that to see Winter’s Discontent as being limited to those with theatrical know-how would be to miss the point and misrepresent the play.

It is about an actor – Robert Winter – preparing (to play the role of Thénardier, the inn-keeper in Les Miserables, for which Zappa has won awards), but it could as easily be about a mathematician for whom working out a proof which has baffled others is as necessary to his or her sense of self as acting is for a serious performer. In each case there is technique, commitment, stress in the face of failure, wonder and beauty in success. This is art, essential to human life.

Winter’s Discontent works at several different levels.

It is a technical display of Zappa’s acting skills which in themselves are fascinating to watch. Seeing and hearing his fine control of voice, movement and facial expression can be compared with being at a Richard Tognetti concert. For the theatrically savvy, technique may be enough to satisfy. But for the wider audience there is more to come.

It is a carefully crafted script, in which a small seemingly insignificant mystery (an airmail letter) grows into a point of emotional climax in Robert Winter’s life, which he has to resolve when the “beginner’s call” takes him out of his dressing room as “the House is open and the stage is live”. The backstage language is opened up for a non-technical audience to understand, because it is used in the context of Winter’s experience. The dramatic structure is conventional, engaging the audience in an empathetic concern for the character. Will he be able to face his audience while carrying the weight of feeling that he has failed his own son?

At this level, some may feel the play is too contrived, but there is still more. William Zappa really is an actor. It is hard not to imagine that he has had to face up to something like the horrifying experience that he has written for his character, Robert Winter. Indeed, in his acknowledgements, he offers “special thanks to Asha Zappa for inspiring, and putting up with an absentee father”. This is the very fault that Robert Winter – an actor always away from home – believes is the cause of his son’s suicide. Is it not possible that Zappa’s play has had to “go on” despite something awful happening off stage?

Now this play and this performance becomes a matter of extraordinary bravery. And now it opens up for any kind of audience our feelings about things that so often must be done – for duty’s sake, for financial survival, for the sake of someone else’s mental or physical survival, for an ideal, indeed even for art’s sake – even though one’s circumstances seem to make “going on” impossible.

I can only conclude by encouraging mathematicians and anyone else with a human heart to experience Winter’s Discontent.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith

Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith. Sydney Theatre Company directed by Lee Lewis, at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, June 9-12, 2010 8pm and matinee June 12, 2pm.

Reviewed June 9, 2010, by Frank McKone

Perfect casting – Wendy Hughes as the wife Honour, Paula Arundell as the lover Claudia, Yael Stone as the daughter Sophie, William Zappa as the husband, lover and father George – would have made this production stand out even if the set design had not so cleverly presented the actors to us.

The acting was quite simply awesome. A mere critic can have almost nothing to say, seeing such clear definition of every emotion. Of course it is Murray-Smith’s writing which provides all the twists and turns of love, from beginning to end, for the actors to work on. It was just wonderful to see every opportunity taken, the complexity of each moment revealed by each performer as an individual and as a totally connected member of the ensemble.

It was without doubt an honour to to be present at such a performance of such a play.

Since the history of productions of Honour took it from its 1995 Melbourne beginnings off around the world, only now coming to us in Canberra via Sydney, it was a revelation to me to see such a mature understanding of marriage, and such a degree of control of dialogue as a theatrical medium when, as Murray-Smith says, “I wrote the play as a new writer” then aged 29. Recently I reviewed her quite recent play, Ninety, presented very well at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, but Honour is by far the better play.

Ninety is a deliberately neatly structured piece, also on the theme of a husband about to re-marry, to a young attractive woman, but with a degree of predictability in the to and fro. Will he go or might he return to his previous wife becomes a kind of game for us to watch. But Honour has levels of emotional slipping and sliding so like real life that we feel for each character because they can’t know what will happen, and we have all been in this situation. Can love ever settle into stability? Or must we always live in the expectation of unpredictable change?

With this theme, perhaps the only theme of great drama, it was good to see the action played in a set which offered many interpretations. Two horizontal levels, three wide steps between, enclosed but not bounded by vertical spaced timbers could become George and Honour’s upmarket house, Claudia’s flat, the grounds of a university, or simply an abstract space for the meeting of minds. Without the conventions that a naturalistic set would impose on our imaginations, we were free to identify with the characters as if from within their consciousness.

And so this is a production of a play which should not be missed.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Shakespeare’s R&J adapted by Joe Calarco

Shakespeare’s R&J adapted by Joe Calarco. Directed by Craig Ilott. Presented by Riverside Productions and Spiritworks at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, June 8-12, 2010.

Reviewed June 8, 2010 by Frank McKone

I left the Q feeling that something was missing or I was missing something.

Was it my fault for expecting more from a play which began a decade ago as a Spiritworks – Bell Shakespeare co-production? Perhaps it was created as a theatre-in-education piece rather than an adult production of Shakespeare. Young people behind me certainly enjoyed the young men’s sexual references at the beginning, and Nurse’s volubility, as I did, but I’m not sure they could believe in the love and self-sacrifice at the end.

Was it Shakespeare’s fault? Well, hardly, especially since we were given other bits even beyond Romeo and Juliet, like the Summer’s Day poem and part of Puck’s speech at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Was it the production? Well, no. Although much of the text was delivered at high speed, perhaps representing how young men might speak Shakespeare, the meaning was clear. The use of theatrical devices in the set design, sound and light design and choreography was very effective – less is more created imaginative imagery and meaning from simple props, costume changes, and lighting from darkness through hand torches to careful selective stage lights. Only the thunderstorm was overdone. Though the explosive sound represented the turmoil in the Romeo and Juliet story, darker rumbling may have been less melodramatic.

So I had to conclude the fault is in the writing – by Joe Calarco, who claims to have done no more than “adapt” Shakespeare. The problem is that this play is not about Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. It is about four young men supposedly “who live together in the repressive regime of a Catholic boarding school (of decades ago)” who “engage in a clandestine reading of Romeo and Juliet” and who – according to the director’s notes – “are awakened, to themselves and to something greater than themselves .... it frees them to experience, to express, to feel, to fail – and to love.”

I could certainly see this intention in the set design and to some extent in the way the boys spoke their lines. I could see the idea in having the boys acting out what Shakespeare’s script demanded – the taunting of young males to the point of attack, with tragic consequences; the kissing and touching intimacy of the boy playing Romeo and the boy playing Juliet. But the four boys, called only Students 1, 2, 3 and 4, never spoke to each other in their own words, never named each other, and had no individual personalities except those they required as they played each of their various roles. Only at the very end, as the boy playing Juliet was left alone in his shirt-sleeves while the other three donned their school uniform jackets and departed, did I have a feeling for this boy, as himself, as he moved on from Puck’s dream speech to his own dream.

By this time it was too late. Here was the beginning of this play’s story, but in the last line. Instead of these boys exploring the text, as the director’s notes say, they are represented as having learnt the text with professional technique and level of understanding. Between attempts to perform the Shakespeare, we needed to identify with each individual boy as he discovers what Shakespeare meant and becomes aware of his changing feelings for the other boys. The play of the relationships between the boys needs to run in parallel with their play of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, like a kind of double helix, to make a fully complex play called Shakespeare’s R&J. I saw one strand of DNA, but not its mate. This was what was missing.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Out of Strathnairn. Brief article on gallery exhibition opening.

Out of Strathnairn opening by Jon Stanhope, ACT Chief Minister, at Belconnen Arts Centre, May 7, 2010. Exhibition until May 23.

By Frank McKone

The exhibition is the first in a newly established relationship between the Belconnen Arts Centre and the Strathnairn Arts Association. The curator is Peter Haynes, Director of ACT Museums and Galleries.

In conversation with me Jon promised a “rambling” speech, rather like a rambling rose as it turned out. There were no thorns, but several blossoms of reminiscences of his quite frequent visits to Strathnairn, including something of the history of the old homestead, an interesting arts non sequitur connecting his turning the first sod on McCubbin Rise (in North Weston, Molonglo Valley) earlier in the day to Strathnairn (the house was built about the same time McCubbin died), and his request to be a gardener on the proposed landscaping which he insisted must consist of fruit trees.

In keeping, I guess, with his appreciation of the arts, the landscaping should not be merely decorative but must have depth of meaning. So it should bear fruit.

The biggest blooms, which I imagined in bright Texas rose yellow, were the announcements of $100,000 to build two new studios for practising artists, and another $100,000 for repairs and refurbishment of the homestead, in this year’s ACT Budget, which follow other similar grants in recent years.

It was pleasant to see a genuine warmth of response to a politician’s speech in this era of cynicism, as the Chief Minister spoke with real affection for Belconnen, where he has lived for 40 years, for the arts of the region and the importance of cultural life in general.

Belconnen Arts Centre is open 10:00am to 6:00pm Tuesday-Sunday.
118 Emu Bank, Belconnen, Canberra.
Tel: +61 2 6173 3300

Strathnairn Arts Association Inc. is a not for profit arts association supported by the ACT Government that provides working spaces and facilities for a range of artists and crafts people and community groups.

Strathnairn Homestead Gallery is set in a converted 1920s homestead on the north-western outskirts of Canberra. Located 900 metres past the Magpies Belconnen Golf Club turnoff, it's a facility which has been used by artists for decades but still remains one of Canberra's best-kept secrets.

Location address: 90 Stockdill Drive, Holt ACT 2615
Postal address: PO Box 4746, Higgins ACT 2615
Phone: (02) 6254 2134
Fax: (02) 6254 6924
General email: info [at] strathnairn.asn.au
Web: www.strathnairn.asn.au/

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Tin Pan Aussie by Shortis & Simpson

Tin Pan Aussie Shortis & Simpson at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, April 29 – May 1, 2010.

Reviewed April 29, by Frank McKone

I first reviewed the John Shortis and Moya Simpson team at the beginning of their Canberra Region history in 1996, in Shortis & Curlies at the erstwhile Queanbeyan School of Arts Café. There’s always been a certain gentleness in their musical humour and political satires throughout their 14 year career, and a kind of earnestness in John’s stage manner. There have been times when I thought the cutting edge of political commentary was softened too much. But Tin Pan Aussie seemed to me to get the balance right.

Shortis plays himself, but with a note of humorous self-deprecation in calling himself Professor. Yet when one considers the 44 songs dating from 1900 to 1957 which tell us the story of Australian popular music related to our social history throughout this period, his research justifies the title. Between the Federation Polka and Wild One we see and hear the development from ragtime, through jazz, hillbilly and songs from the wars which ordinary Australians wrote, played and sang. For me, a 10£ Pom who arrived in 1955, here was a new understanding of the culture that I belong to today.

But there is nothing academic about the performances of Moya Simpson, whose range and quality of voice has matured markedly in recent years, of Shortis himself on piano and singing, and especially of the band – Peter J Casey, Ian Blake, Jon Jones and Dave O’Neill – unless you would like to class their skills at reproducing 44 pieces of music in each of the original styles as an academic exercise. To me it was an involving thoroughly enjoyable entertainment.

The choice of songs, so many expressing vernacular humour, while often telling the truth about real people’s experiences in the good times and the bad, has taken this Shortis & Simpson show a step further towards the edge. There is no softening here in “My Little Wet Home in the Trench” (World War I), “Happy Valley” (from the Depression) or “Back in Circulation” (written in a Japanese World War II PoW camp), and wonderful contrasts in such songs as the pseudo-Hawaiian “Memories of a Lovely Lei”.

Instead of relying on inventing satirical commentary external to the subject matter, the selection of material creates its own comment on Australian life from within. The result is telling, showing us now to ourselves as we once were. And it shows me how Shortis & Simpson have grown in musical and political stature since their School of Arts Café days.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: The Power of Yes by David Hare

The Power of Yes by David Hare. Company B Belvoir directed by Sam Strong. Belvoir St, Sydney, April 22 – May 30, 2010.

Reviewed April 27 by Frank McKone.

This play reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House. Shaw’s response to The Great War was to write a comedy about a tragedy. David Hare has done the same for the Global Financial Crisis.

At first I thought the device of the author himself being the central character could not be sustained. It seemed suspiciously too easy, and difficult to imagine how a storyline beginning in February 2007 with “United States subprime mortgages industry worth an estimated $US1.3 trillion collapses, with 25 subprime lending firms declaring bankruptcy” and concluding on 1 June 2009 with “General Motors, the world’s largest car-maker, declares bankruptcy” could possibly develop dramatically on the stage.

Shaw used fictional characters in a house full of sea-faring references as a metaphor for an England being changed forever by the sad lie that this was the War to End War. But Hare’s characters, including himself, are real. Shaw had to delay the production of Heartbreak House until after the end of the war, but Hare lets us know in no uncertain terms that the perfidy of the banks and the people paid so much to run them that they have no interest in checking their company accounts is a system of lies whose story still has a long way to go.

In fact, the drama in The Power of Yes is successful because as the character David Hare listens to a great array of financial system stake-holders, trying to understand such things as how the Royal Bank of Scotland could amass assets greater in value than the whole of the output of the British Isles, we identify with his wanting to know and with his terrifying suspicion that no-one really knows how the GFC happened, nor what to do about it. Though George Soros does get a guernsey.

For a theatre-going Sydney audience which I guess included many of the monied class, the laughter and the still moments of embarrassed reflection rang external and internal bells. We cannot wait till after the end of the war to see this play, because we may never know when the end has come.

On the night I attended, even events in the audience and off-stage proved that the unpredictable may happen at any time, exactly as demonstrated in the play. No Harvard Business School mathematical formula could have foretold that a woman would faint, creating a 20 minute break in the performance, just as building societies were being turned into banks which were destined to fail. Nor could anyone know that actor Rhys Muldoon’s mother would be hospitalised suddenly, so that he had to leave the stage before the final scenes. We hope for the best for both families.

The evening concluded with warm appreciation from the audience for the actors’ work, not only in so clearly performing a text horribly replete in the jargon of financial complexity, but for their professionalism in the face of unfortunate unavoidable interruptions. It was a great cast for a great play.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: King Lear by William Shakespeare

King Lear by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare Company directed by Marion Potts at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre April 15 – May 1, 2010.

If there is one thing King Lear makes clear, it is that kings can’t expect to comfortably retire on a super pension, even if it is backed by 100 knights. What about an actor/director?  John Bell’s constitution is more than impressive.  It’s amazing to me that he can go on putting out such energy night after night (and present himself for the public at the opening night cast party).  Can he keep going?

Considering the historical significance of this play and this production, there is as much to say about Marion Potts’ directing, the design and execution, as there is about the acting.  In King Lear and The Tempest, though their earthly political plots look superficially familiar, Shakespeare took flight creatively into an ethereal theatre of symbolism.

Because this production marks the 20th anniversary of the Bell Shakespeare Company as well as the year in which John Bell turns three score and ten (and the $15 Anniversary Edition Souvenir Program includes a Wesfarmers advert titled “Presenting the Extraordinary”), I cannot avoid the question, does Bell Shakespeare reach the heights of William Shakespeare?

BHPBilliton quotes Ben Johnson: He was not of an age, but for all time.  They go on “This comment was made about Shakespeare but we think it also holds true for John Bell.”  It’s nice of the biggest mining company in the world to pay for the privilege of saying so, but I think it’s not entirely true.  John, indeed,  has placed himself in a more realistic relationship with William in his note as Artistic Director, writing "It is incontestable that, to some extent, Shakespeare invented us; and through constant engagement with his work, we go on re-inventing ourselves."

So, to the performance I saw on April 16, 2010 just ten days short of William’s 446th birthday. 

The beginning was extraordinary as a circular white curtain rose to reveal the Lear family isolated in an island of light.  Off to the side, but made visible, the instruments of emotion interplayed with the action of the sculptural figures in the centre of our attention.  Here was King Lear prefiguring The Tempest.  Shakespeare’s words were as clear as we might expect from Bell, and the scene was set for “Nothing will come of nothing.”  Much, in theatre, will come of simplicity.  The open stage with no more than a central raised revolve, with light and sound, was all that was needed.  Stage design held the play in place.

For this we must thank Marion Potts, designer Dale Ferguson, lighting designer Nick Schlieper, sound designer Stefan Gregory, and composer Bree van Reyk: seen and heard, even though largely mysterious to us spectators. 

But the edge was taken off the imaginative intensity, at various points and in various ways.  I found it difficult to feel the purity of truth in the naïve Cordelia, dressed as she was in a mess of clothing, in which she reappeared, with the addition of a cloak, years later as the mature Queen of France.  She needed clean lines, simple in style in Scene 1 to contrast with her overblown sisters, an idealistic 15 year old who naturally would entrance the King of France, with or without a dowry.  As grown-up strategic leader of the rescue invasion, she should more than match her sisters for wealth in a costume of plain elegance. 

Cordelia was always my favourite Shakespeare character, and I was disappointed, even though I could not fault the quality of any of the acting.  The characters seemed to be speaking just as themselves, even when speaking directly to the audience.  Whatever they symbolise, there was never a hint of “speaking Shakespeare”.  Perhaps the audience responded to three actors in particular (though their parts also help) – Peter Carroll as The Fool, Tim Walter as Edmund and Leah Purcell as Regan, especially when she makes her move on Edmund.  So spiteful towards her rival, her sister Goneril , a ferocious Jane Montgomery Griffiths.

The speed and ease of entrances and exits made the set work wonderfully.  The transitions from scene to scene are so often a major point of weakness in other productions, but never in Bell Shakespeare.  However, I was surprised that the on-stage musical instruments disappeared after interval and sound became distant and only electronic.  It was an emotional loss, especially because in the first half, characters used the instruments to comment on themselves.  It was an imaginative master stroke, for example, to have Lear strike a cymbal and use his stick to strike an inferior character.

But the major disappointment for me was the staging of the ending of the play.  Why were Lear and Cordelia left grovelling on the floor downstage left, where I could not see them except by wriggling about trying to peer between the audience’s heads in front of me?  Why were they not taken to the central circle?  Why didn’t the ending reprise the opening, with Lear and Cordelia isolated on the island, delicately enclosed again in the white curtain while Kent and Edgar spoke the words which reinforced what Cordelia had said in Scene 1?  Am I being too obvious?  Shouldn’t the symbolism be made this clear?

And, returning at last to the constitution of John Bell, I have found, over perhaps the last ten years or so, that the quality of his voice has often become restricted to a flat, rather thin sounding tone.  This could work, for example, when he played Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, but it left me cold in King Lear.  On the night, there was much strength and range of tone in Scene 1, but by the storm scene I lost feeling for this huge old man facing up to the elements as if he might defeat whatever they could throw at him, and in the final scene I could not feel the loss that this father felt, realising that his failing was the cause of his true daughter’s death.

Perhaps it is the clarity of meaning which John Bell has brought to the performance of Shakespeare, (which I still remember being impressed by when I first saw him in a tent in Adelaide in 1964, and still today is a great achievement), that has taken the focus off the creation of emotion in those of us watching.  So I conclude that this production is in many ways a very good presentation of  King Lear, but it does not reach the heady heights of Shakespeare’s imagination.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: The Age I’m In Dance Theatre by Force Majeure

The Age I’m In  Dance Theatre by Force Majeure directed by Kate Champion.  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre April 16-17, 2010.

It’s a great thrill to see work of this quality at The Q.  Congratulations to program manager Stephen Pike for including The Age I’m In in his Simply Irresistible 2010 season.  This show simply is.

Kate Champion’s Force Majeure won ‘Outstanding Performance by a Company’ for The Age I'm In at the 2009 Australian Dance Awards, so it’s a special coup for Queanbeyan.  What I found most impressive was the natural way that diverse elements – pure dance, creative movement, mime, spoken word – are integrated with the physical space, recorded sound and music, lighting and finally back projection and portable video screens.  Making a focussed artistic work using all these devices turns what, in principle is a simple or even ordinary idea – showing the experience of being different at different ages – into a higher form of art.

The video screens are the most extraordinary.  It was hard to imagine how the images could appear so precisely in time with the action, while the effect of the picture on the screen often being an image of the part of the person who is behind the screen was quite unnerving, though one could not look away.  This is a new way of interpreting the idea of mask,  using sophisticated technology. 

Yet it is the oldest form of expression, bodily movement and dance, which remains the core of the work, a commentary in action on the words spoken by Australians in real life interviews, about generational differences, family relationships, disability, ageing, drugs, sex, money, class, body image and even rock’n’roll.  There is humour, sympathy, empathy and real concern, but there is also resilience, hope and success. 

All in 90 minutes, through 26 scenes.  There is Robyn, a woman played by both Veronica Neave and Vincent Crowley; a little boy Jack by Byron Perry and Kirstie McCracken; Tracey by Ingrid Weistfelt; Dan by Josh Mu; Sam the air guitarist by Samuel Brent; and Grandparents and Grandaughter Tilly Cobham-Hervey, Brian Harrison and Penny Everingham.  Some performers originally trained in dance, while others as actors, all working together in ever changing roles and moods.

Kate Champion has put together a team of great strength behind the scenes: Geoff Cobham (designer), Roz Hervey (artistic associate), Max Lyandvert (composer), Bruce McKinven (costume designer), Mark Blackwell (sound editor), Tony Melov (audiovisual producer), Neil Jensen (audiovisual designer), and finally William Yang, the photographer whose show My Generation opened the National Portrait Gallery in December 2008. 

Unfortunately you will have missed the Queanbeyan presentation by the time you read this, and will have to chase the show to Wagga Wagga, Griffith and Newcastle or to Brisbane’s Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts on May 4 – 5.  I would book now.  There should be spare planes to fly there while the Iceland volcano keeps erupting.

For the full touring schedule, check out http://www.forcemajeure.com.au/Resources/RoadworkPerformanceSchedule.pdf

and if you are a technical buff, have a look at http://forcemajeure.com.au/Resources/The Age I'm In - Technical Specifications Regional.pdf  for the touring specifications – just fascinating.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Ich Bin Faust by Joe Woodward

Ich Bin Faust written and directed by Joe Woodward, Coordinator of Creative Arts and Theatre, Daramalan College, Canberra.  Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 6-10, 2010, 8pm.

The first purpose of this production is to extend the theatre experience of a group of senior secondary students who last year presented a group devised performance based on their studies of the Faust story, mainly derived from Marlowe and Goethe.

This script, written by Woodward but with considerable workshop input from his students, is also intended to develop the students’ thinking about the relevance of the Faustian theme to present day life.  The plot follows what happens to a drama group who previously worked on a piece about Faust, starting from the cast party, reaching the end of their schooling and meeting up again four years later.  Characters in this story parallel characters in the Faustian dramas.  Is it possible not to sell one’s soul to the devil in the modern world of “I am”?

I guess there is also a desire to demonstrate what the students can do theatrically, and raise issues about the transition into adulthood for an audience of parents and student peers.

It’s not my place to write competitive reviews of individual performances, but it is fair to say that the group standard was very much what I would expect from a seriously committed Year 12 drama class.  I certainly saw some potential tertiary theatre studies students.

It took me quite some time to feel involved in the drama, so I have some doubts about the script writing.  It is true that the characters begin as youngish, a bit immature, almost “typical” dramaheads and grow into young adults, but the slow pace and background broken-up video images and sound track, combined with short duo scenes interspersed with drama workshoppy group movement segments made it difficult for me to find focus in the first half.  Only in the more substantial mother-daughter scene did things start to fall into place, and in the later sections the metaphorical use of masks and devil characters worked effectively, reaching a strong emotional ending which made the ethic of being principled in life rather than self-indulgent come to the fore.

As an educational exercise, the work is obviously well worthwhile.  Using the Large Hadron Collider as a focus for the range of questions around science and religion, life and death, and ethical principles certainly works for young people just reaching adulthood, as they search to establish their own identities and philosophies to carry them through an uncertain future.  The script, in a nice piece of irony, was written before the Collider actually proved to work, only a few days ago, without causing us all to be sucked into a black hole.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Codgers by Don Reid

Codgers by Don Reid. A Steady Lad and Christine Dunstan production, directed by Wayne Harrison at Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, The Q, March 24-27, 2010

Even though the performances by a cast of luminaries like Ron Haddrick and Shane Porteous made for an enjoyable evening, the play is too lightweight for the themes the author introduces: racial and social prejudice, fear of change, the legacy of The Great War and the Second World War, what it means to be Australian.

The good idea behind the comedy is undermined by crude sexual innuendo, fart jokes and, most unfortunately, by the completely gratuitous use of a device – the sudden death of the youngest “codger” – to bring the play to a sentimental end. Harrison obviously worked hard to produce laughs from “business” like expressions of the men’s faces as they were put through their physical exercises, and the actors played the clown for everything it was worth. But nothing could cover up the basic superficiality of the characters and the relationships between them.

If it had been played as a true stylised farce, with speed and rapid pacing, it may have worked better. The mawkish sentiment and the unrealistic conflicts might then have become integrated into a consistent work, all of which could be taken as an ironic comic commentary on a certain kind of older Anglo-Australian male. In this production, stylisation was used to begin the play and to introduce some scenes, while slapstick took over in many scenes and in others we were expected to take characters and their reactions for real. This mix doesn’t hang together.

In the end, having done their best with a script which needs much more original use of language, a set of more complex characters and a less predictable plot, and working very well as an ensemble, the cast save the play. It reminded me of a rather old-fashioned theatre-in-education piece about multicultural harmony (it was Harmony Day last Sunday) – not for children, but rather for men in their second childhood. At my age, 69, I found I felt quite out of touch with the world of these “codgers”. If there was a point where I felt at home, it was in the character (and the portrayal by Jon Lam) of Stanley Chang. He made the evening worthwhile for me.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Toy Symphony by Michael Gow

Toy Symphony by Michael Gow. Queensland Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia, directed by Geordie Brookman at Canberra Theatre Playhouse, March 16-20 2010. Reviewed March 18.

First the play. Going along with my critic’s monocle firmly screwed in my eye socket was a big mistake. When Alexander the Great conquered the stage as well as the world, I knew the game was up. Michael Gow could see right through me. He’s not the one with the writer’s …., er, um, what? What about me? Leave me alone, Michael, please, stop invading my space.

So when I got home I read Scientific American from cover to cover, but stuff about dark matter didn’t help, especially the article called The Brain’s Dark Energy. “Mysterious brain activity holds clues to disorders and maybe even to consciousness.” I needed sleep. And it came, supported by an after-image of Barbara Lowing’s broad-hipped brilliant yellow dress as Mrs Walkham, Roland Hemming’s warm and perspicacious teacher. I felt just like Chris Pitman looked, scared as the young Roland of his head full of rough-and-tumble images made real, and so grateful for Mrs Walkham’s offer of pencil and paper. Write it all down, she advised, and it will go away. And I slept, but now I must write it down. Just let me put my 3-D glasses on. Thank you.

So, the production. The play is about the nature of playwrighting. When I previously read commentary about what the play is about, my preconceptions leapt in: self-indulgence, incestuous writing about writing, capital R Romanticism (if serious), capital F Farce (if not).

But no, Toy Symphony is capital O Original. It impresses me in the same way as Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age did – as a new direction in Australian theatre. It excites me like Andrew Bovell’s Holy Day, or Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead. But it sets an additional challenge. Because it is about theatre, the acting style and set design must make this theatre on the night into a symbol of theatre in any time and place. It’s a bit like Chorus Line being about auditioning for a chorus line, except that Gow works far deeper into the complexity of Roland Hemming’s psychology, builds in theatrical elements which demonstrate how theatre works, and places the Sydney suburb of Como into its real social, historical and even literary context.

Who would have thought the Woronora River had glinted in the eyes of Henry Lawson, Mary Gilmore and D.H.Lawrence? Or that Lake Como in Italy was a reminder of home for the Italians who built the railway? Facts and imagination are all intertwined in Roland’s mind, as a child and adult, but how can everything be linked on stage with the clarity which his psychologist Nina (Lizzy Falkland) knows he needs?

The central device is Roland’s rediscovery, in his dead mother’s box of papers, of the play he wrote at the age of 12, which he believed had been destroyed by a vicious school principal and was never staged. One suspects that the young Michael Gow had something like this experience. The set ostensibly is a simple box – an office for the psychologist, or for the principal, or a classroom for Class 5A, or a hospital corridor, or even a seafront walkway where Anton Chekov takes an evening constitutional.

But the box is full of tricks. It’s a three dimensional jack-in-the-box sort of set, where Roland’s characters can enter and exit in highly surprising ways, even reaching the heights of a rocket ship exploding in space. The set demonstrates that theatre is imaginative play, just as real and funny and sad for the adult audience as for the young child. Gow creates the mental gymnastics of Roland’s imagination, and designers Jonathon Oxlade, Nigel Levings (lighting), and Brett Collery (sound) make Roland’s internal world manifest in wood, colour, light and shade, sound and silence.

Director Geordie Brookman takes up the same jack-in-the-box style in the way lines are delivered, actors set body positions, bodies move in the space (Scott Witt consultant), voices are accented (Melissa Agnew consultant), with costume and make-up almost clown-like. But when we see the adult Roland speaking in gaps, looking down and only fleetingly directly at others, moving away from risk, hiding exposed against a blank wall, we feel with him the depth of his childhood experiences. Theatre plays with him as much as he plays with theatre. Only after his rocketship explodes do we see him, visibly in posture and voice, come to a sensible understanding of himself as Chekov quietly and politely walks past.

The actors, Lizzy Falkland, Daniel Mulvihill and Ed Wightman, play a constantly surprising array of roles as Roland remembers his past and experiences his present, while only Mrs Walkham remains a stable point of reference for him. All have clearly understood the discipline and skills needed to exhibit a child’s imaginative play. There is a comic book element which when played in concrete form before our very eyes reveals that being a writer, a playwright especially, is to lead a life of terror.

I would like to thank Michael Gow for his bravery in deciding to stop managing theatre and to go back to creating it despite the risk. The risk was well worth taking. And having written, now once more I shall sleep.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh

The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh.  Sydney Theatre Company, directed by Cristabel Sved.  Wharf 2, February 22 – March 13, 2010.  Reviewed March 9.

When I first saw The Beauty Queen of Leenane (STC, reviewed in The Canberra Times, August 16, 2000) I found it difficult to believe in the daughter Maureen.  It had seemed to me that the play was too neatly constructed, that Maureen’s sexual delusions were a gratuitous device on the playwright’s part, and “too much is made of the traditional comic Irish loquaciousness”.

In this production Mandy McElhinney makes Maureen’s sexual need explicit, showing how the dominance of her mother (which her sisters refuse to accept) results in this daughter’s extremes of behaviour in the real world and of fantasy in her inner world.  I guess it’s this quality of clarity that we should expect of the Sydney Theatre Company, making the travelling time and expense worthwhile.

There are references in the dialogue to Australian soaps on the “telly”, like Neighbours and Home and Away, the only entertainment available for these people stuck in poverty on a hill surrounded by mud in Leenane, a village with no part to play in a modern economy.  These shows in fantasy at least open up the possibility of somewhere else to go, out of the rain, into sunshine forever.   Ironically though, for Australians, they are also seen as cultural invaders, destroying the true Irish traditions.

But I found myself being reminded of Mother and Son, where the surface humour relied on the underlying determination of the aged to keep control of their lives.  I even wondered if Garry McDonald might not have felt rather like Maureen after his “mother” Ruth Cracknell died in 2002.  Did it mean relief and freedom from his role, or entrenched depression knowing that reality is insubstantial and unreliable?  In other words, I found more depth and complexity in this production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane than I had seen previously.

Some commentators, including this director in her program note, think McDonagh, “a 2nd generation Irishman living in England … parodies, exaggerates and toys with ‘Irishness’ through his ‘outsider’s’ gaze”.  But I have to say, at least in this production, that Cristabel Sved has made the play come close to the best of Irish plays, JM Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.  McDonagh’s Maureen and Pato cannot quite match Pegeen and Christy, but his play is not a parody, even though Maureen uses a poker and Christy a loy.  Both plays call a spade a spade, and this is the value of this STC production.

It is still true that we are left with somewhat sentimental sadness at the conclusion of Beauty Queen, as Maureen becomes so much like her mother.  Playboy is much tougher on us, because we know that Pegeen knows she must face the real world alone, while Maureen can retreat into delusion.

However, I can confidently conclude that STC has made a justifiable success of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, with performances fully booked at the end of its run.  With the key players Judi Farr, Mandy McElhinney and the always spot-on Darren Gilshenan, as well as a very effective relative newcomer Eamon Farren, success is not surprising but gratefully appreciated.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Ninety by Joanna Murray-Smith

Ninety by Joanna Murray-Smith.  Directed by Sandra Bates, Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, February 4 – April 3, 2010.  Reviewed Tuesday March 9.

The three theatres I visited on this trip to Sydney have quite different atmospheres and clientele.

B Sharp means what it says.  Be ready to be bluntly confronted Downstairs at Belvoir St by pointed expertise.

Wharf 2 is like a well-bred show pony.  Its audiences expect nothing less than the professional best, and all the jumps are cleared.

The Ensemble …?  Well, it’s North Shore, suspended over gently lapping sailing boat water, moored in a bay of quietude.  It’s about humanity, intimacy, warmth of feeling, and sense of local community.  It still belongs to its audience as it has since Hayes Gordon set up Australia’s first theatre-in-the-round in the Kirribilli boatshed just 50 years ago.

Kate Raison and Brian Meegan could have performed Ninety as technically well in a bigger space, but even in Wharf 2 they would not have seemingly looked us directly in the eyes and we would not have seen our reflections in theirs.  If Ninety were done in a proscenium, end-on or even side-on theatre like Belvoir Downstairs, it would seem no better than a slick David Williamson comedy from the days before his community conferencing trilogy.

In the round, even in the three-quarters round as The Ensemble is nowadays,  Joanna Murray-Smith’s ninety minutes of post-ex-marital experience is quite rivetting.  It’s the right play for this theatre.

It’s always a good drama exercise to place an external limitation on what may happen.  There is no plot to Ninety except for Isabel’s intention.  She knows her ex-husband William so much better than the young actress he is about to marry, from the time of her inveigling him into her bed in the beginning, through their young couple financial struggles, his becoming successful and finally rich-and-famous, with the memories joyful and tragic of their only daughter who died so young. 

Isabel has phoned him and persuaded William to see her before he is off to Paris for the wedding – just as she had phoned him in the beginning.  He can only afford 90 minutes of his time.  The play lasts exactly 90 minutes.  Will Isabel break through to William’s real feelings in this short time?  Will he change his mind about marrying again?  Does she really expect him to come back to her?  Would she really want him to?

Of course, I cannot reveal such mysteries.  But I can say that, though the details of these two people’s lives are so different from my own, almost everything that was spoken and left unspoken rang silent bells within me.  If one can say there is no plot in this play, there is a fiendish plot at work to make us in the audience recognise ourselves as we are and as we have been.  If you are up for it, there is still time to make a booking.  02 9929 0644 or www.ensemble.com.au

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Sydney Theatre Company Education Program 2010. Feature article.

Sydney Theatre Company Education Program 2010. 

March 9, 2010.

Today I saw a schools performance of The Beauty Queen of Leenane (reviewed separately), and discovered the extensive and varied educational program offered by the Sydney Theatre Company.

Current Education Manager, Naomi Edwards, has told me that the appointment of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton has meant a stronger emphasis on programming beyond the immediate and upfront productions.  Funding for the Company is managed through the Sydney Theatre Foundation, and the first move has been to take a position out of Box Office to create a Schools Liaison post.

The new development also means establishing separate funding for the Education Program, seeking new donors for STC Ed, whose Patrons are Ian and Min Darling, Simon and Catriona Mordant, and the Caledonia Foundation in addition to the Sydney Theatre Foundation, supported further by the Girgensohn Foundation and the Gonski Foundation.  Edwards reports that donors from businesses and the general public are now coming on board with enthusiasm.

Though some parts of the program, such as touring productions and workshops to regional areas, are done in partnership with the NSW Department of Education and Training, teachers and students from Canberra can take part in a very wide range of activities.

STC Ed productions this year, following The Beauty Queen of Leenane, are Nyuntu Ngali (You We Two) by Scott Rankin (presented by Windmill and Big hART), Burnt by Tom Lycos and Stefo Nantsou (Zeal Theatre, commissioned by STC to present issues about drought), Mr Freezy by Hamish Fletcher, Chris Kohn, Tamara Rewse and Sam Routledge (an Arena Theatre production for young children), The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare (STC Residents directed by Charmian Gradwell).

There are workshops for teachers and students: School Drama professional development for primary school teachers in association with the University of Sydney; Teacher Workshop Program one day workshops on practical techniques and strategies - Verbatim Theatre with Alana Valentine, Shakespeare with Charmian Gradwell and Naomi Edwards, Commedia Dell’Arte with Darren Gilshenan, and Using Drama Across the Primary Curriculum with Professor Robyn Ewing.

For students: Group Devised Performance Workshop with Zeal Theatre; Brecht Workshop with Shannon Murphy; Tragedy Workshop with Naomi Edwards; and the Young Playwrights’ Residency.

For young children there is also the Actor On A Box daytime storytelling program. 

And there are schools days available for all the main stage STC productions of Stockholm, Vs Macbeth, Honour, Oresteia, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Tusk Tusk, August: Osage County, The Trial, Our Town, The Wharf Revue, True West, Uncle Vanya, and The Grenade.  There are some seats allocated in the $10 Access Ticket program to help students who can’t afford full price to attend.

Contact details:  Naomi Edwards, Acting Education Manager, 02 9250 1726
        Toni Murphy, Education Coordinator, 02 9250 1795
        Georgia Thorne, Schools Liaison Officer, 02 9250 1778
    Email: education@sydneytheatre.com.au
    Web: sydneytheatre.com.au/stced

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Bent by Martin Sherman

Bent by Martin Sherman.  Focus Theatre in association with B Sharp.  Downstairs at Belvoir St, Sydney, February 18 to March 14, 2010. Reviewed Sunday March 7.

This play is well-known for introducing audiences in many countries, since its original production in London in 1979, to the fact that the Nazi holocaust was not only a tragedy for Jews. There is only brief mention of the black triangles (the symbol for "asocials") or green triangles (the symbol for professional criminals) which were used to identify Romani people, but one step down below those with yellow stars, on the lowest rung of the heirarchy in the concentration camps, were the bearers of pink triangles.  Bent is called ‘iconic’ by B Sharp because it has become a symbol of the rights of gay people, and this production is presented in conjunction with Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

The story follows the life of Max from his young adult days in 1933 Berlin, when high level political figures tolerated homosexuality, through a long period on the run after Hitler had these key figures killed, during which Max attempted to do deals via a gay uncle (who outwardly lived a standard married life while paying for ‘boys’ on the side) to escape to Amsterdam with his lover, Rudy.  The Gestapo catches them living among unemployed people in a forest camp, and real disaster sets in.

On the train to the concentration camp, the SS guards set up a situation where Max is forced to kill Rudy and then to rape a young girl’s body in order to prove he is not homosexual.  It’s a ‘deal’ that saves Max’s life at the time, and he is classed as a Jew instead.  But later in the camp a deal to get medicine for Horst, classed as homosexual only because he had signed a petition supporting gay rights, goes awry, and Max is forced to watch while the SS give Horst the choice of electrocution on the perimeter fence or being shot if he refuses.  Horst is shot, but Max is then ordered to dump the body in the nearby mass grave. 

Max does as he is ordered, but finally cannot face his feeling of guilt for still surviving.  He takes Horst’s ‘pyjama’ top, with its pink triangle, changes out of his own with its yellow star, and electrocutes himself on the fence.

The play has it weaknesses, not because these things might not have really happened in Nazi Germany, but because it is an unrelenting slide into absolute disaster, with not any sign of hope.  This is, of course, a truth about the holocaust, but the play is less than it could have been because the German soldiers are shown only as cardboard cut-outs, as automatons.  Sherman’s message comes through loud and clear, and this was probably the right thing to do in 1979 at a time when the public had still never been made aware of what had happened in the 1930s and ’40s.  Now I think we need a greater playwright to round out the picture.  Though some men were in tears when I saw this production, it was too easy to see the story as a contrivance rather than a complete representation of truth.

The reason this production had an emotional impact was careful attention to detail in the acting, and the effective set design which visually took us from an innocent down at heel but homely apartment to an open unprotected park bench and forest, on to a cold unfurnished railway van, and finally into the summer heat and winter freeze of a yard made of white stone, hemmed in from above by an oppressive representation of the electric fence.  The playscript made it difficult to maintain momentum through the long second half where the characters continually move rocks from one place to another, but the imagery in the set design held the action together.

Yet the real strength of emotion came from the surround soundtrack, especially of marching soldiers, steam trains, the rumble of rolling stock, and uplifting military music which built an all-encompassing tension, made all the more horrifying at the point of each torture or death at first off stage and then in full view.

Overall, for me this was a satisfying performance of the play, while its neatly structured plot led me to want to see the issue of the treatment of gays as just one example with much wider implications.  The crux of the story is that authoritarian control encourages the people who work as enforcers to go to extremes, placing their victims in impossible situations which become a choice between personal survival or self-destruction to save their souls.  Max starts out believing it is right for him to do anything to survive, but in the end must commit suicide in the name of truth. 

So I would like more complexity in this drama, so that the play might not be ‘iconic’ of one particular issue, but become more powerful as a symbol of what is wrong with human behaviour that lets us so often go along with, and too often actively participate in, humiliating and killing other people.  This is not just the drama of the holocaust of 70 years ago, but is being played out all around us today as it has been for thousands of years.  However, whereas Bent remains implacably without hope, I think, alongside the terror, we have gradually established a place for human rights since the Nazi era.  We should not let the past horror stymie positive action for the future.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2010: Kelly Somes. Feature article on becoming a theatre director.

Following the success of Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper (reviewed by Peter Wilkins in The Canberra Times and by me on this blogspot), I thought to open up our critics’ blog to more than our standard reviews.  Readers may like to know something of the people behind the scenes.  What is the life of a professional artist like?

I should begin by revealing some personal interest in Kelly Somes, since she attended my audition training class in Year 12, 1995. What happened to the quiet, unassuming girl whose first role was as a witch, in Year 7?  Well, Kelly became one of the best examples of my advice to take time before making the decision to audition for professional training.  At 18 anyone over 30 seems already over the hill, but now Kelly sees herself as one of the young ones just beginning to establish herself professionally.

The steps she took on the way, her decisions, are of course unique.  What I noted, though, is that at every point she focussed on how she understood herself at that time.  This is not a story of unmitigated ambition, of determination to win out at all costs, of  achieving predetermined goals.  It’s a much gentler story than the world’s go-getters would understand.  As she spoke it seemed to me that she put into practice what Laertes struggled with – “This above all: to thine own self be true.”  Polonius may have been pompous and overbearing but this advice, taken with common sense, is worthwhile.

Kelly did not rush into auditions but enrolled in Arts/Law at ANU.  However, she found that Theatre Studies was a continuing interest, leading her to drop Law in favour of an Honours in Theatre.  In Years 11/12 she had experienced acting and directing, indeed she had directed some work while still in junior high school.  For her the undergraduate work, directing short pieces with her student colleagues and then directing a full length play for her Honours was to me an interesting example of the education process – spiralling round the same kind of work but at a new and more mature level each time around.  It was pleasing, though a little humbling for me to hear her praise for the quality of her university teachers, Geoffrey Borny, Tony Turner and Cathy Clelland.  Yet, with a degree and now a clear interest in directing rather than acting, where would she go?

To support herself had to be the immediate answer, so for three years she worked in Canberra, as much as possible in theatre.  Administration work paid her way, while directing in the family theatre company, Free-Rain, continued to build her experience. My review in The Canberra Times of her 2002 production of Hotel Sorrento (by Hannie Rayson) reveals an aspect of Kelly’s interests which she had to face when she made the decision to apply for the directing course at Victorian College for the Arts (VCA) in Melbourne. 

I wrote "Somes claims to have set the play in its period, when Margaret Thatcher was still in power in Britain: a point which is important to the politics of the play.  At the same time, though, to deal with the family's memories and emotional conflicts, she has seen the characters as costumed figures against a blank background, making the whole set white except for the symbolic painting of 'Hotel Sorrento' (in which all of the older generation pictured have now died).  Though this is ostensibly a good idea, the contrast in the first act between scenes in British London and the Australian beach village of Sorrento is not made as obvious as the drama demands.  Or, on the other hand, a much more stylised set, using perhaps something like a Whiteley painting as a model, might have given the design the visual life it needs."

In her VCA interview she was asked why she had not applied for animateur training rather than directing, since she had a clear interest in design.  But by this time, and confirmed as she progressed through her VCA training, her deepest interest was working directly with people within the settings she could imagine.  Perhaps the central question she resolved during her time at VCA was whether she should centre her work on text or action.  I am not surprised, since Lindy Davies was Head of the School of Drama, that Kelly now sees movement as the core of her work, both as the underpinning of text and as a ‘text’ in its own right which the audience can read.

It was this understanding which gave strength to the production of Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper which had stirred me to find out how Kelly had got to this point.  And where to now? 

Kelly Somes now works in Melbourne as a freelance director, concentrating on newly written work and on women’s theatre.  Some work is with cooperatives, where pay is equally shared, and some is by invitation to take paid work as director or dramaturg.  She spoke of having to learn how to promote herself and her work, having to become objective about her strengths and weaknesses, and especially of “opening up yourself to critical comment from new people, not just the trusted people you already know” and learning to make “judgements about other people who might be the right people to judge you”.

There is still a quietness, an unassuming quality in Kelly Somes, and I suspect a satisfying career ahead of her.

© Frank McKone, Canberra