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
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Thursday, 18 February 2010
2010: Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper by Tim Stitz and Kelly Somes
Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper
by Tim Stitz and Kelly Somes. Directed by Kelly Somes. Two Blue
Cherries & Soulart Productions in association with Free-Rain
Theatre Company at The Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre,
February 18-21, 2010, 7.30pm.
I can only hope that my grandson, who will be 25 when I am ninety, will present as warm, delightful and down-to-earth a homage for me as Tim Stitz has done for his grandfather, Lloyd Beckmann. Beekeeper could easily have been a merely personal, sentimental memoir of the hard life of an Aussie battler. But Somes’ direction with lighting by Bronwyn Pringle and sound by Liz Stringer and Neddwellyn Jones keeps the sentiment inside a clear boundary of reality.
The result is a 70 minute performance by Stitz which has more significance than the merely personal.
At first the character of Lloyd Beckmann could have easily seem to have been lifted out of a Steele Rudd Dad and Dave sequence, as he told us of the hilarious details of the sex-life of a queen bee. It was Beckmann’s old-fashioned Australian accent that centred our focus on the character, and made me think of On Our Selection. Arthur Hoey Davis, the real “Steele Rudd”, interestingly enough, based his stories on his father’s bush farming experience at Emu Creek, Queensland, not too far from where Beckmann lived most of his life. Davis’s publications made humorous bush characters highly popular from their beginning in The Bulletin in 1895 through to the 1940s, especially through the 1920s and 30s as Beckmann was growing up.
But once we moved indoors, into Beckmann’s granny flat, filled with family photos, furniture collected over the years, but missing his wife, now “up the hill”, we gradually came to understand that the humour of Beckmann’s character as he genuinely wanted to entertain us, his guests, was covering up the many disappointments in his life. At fleeting moments, his grandson Tim, would appear in a change of accent to modern Melbourne, and we then also began to understand that this show is a brave act on the part of Tim Stitz.
At the end, as Beckmann lays out the implements, boots and white overalls of the beekeeper on the floor between us in the intimate setting of the granny flat, and places the broad-brimmed bush hat with its surrounding veil at its head, suddenly all the totemic images of old Australia, the workers in the bush, immigrants, farmers, miners and soldiers, are blended into a feeling that with Lloyd Beckmann’s passing that Australia will be no more than a memory.
Tim Stitz allows us into his memorial for the past in a quite remarkable way, and leaves us to wonder what we are gaining or losing as we move on into the new world order of the 21st Century.
Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper is planned to go on tour through regional centres as well as major cities. I wish the company well in this venture, which is in itself part of a long tradition of travelling showmen who have maintained the links across this wide brown land. In this way the grandson pays homage to the grandfather, the present recognises its roots in the past.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I can only hope that my grandson, who will be 25 when I am ninety, will present as warm, delightful and down-to-earth a homage for me as Tim Stitz has done for his grandfather, Lloyd Beckmann. Beekeeper could easily have been a merely personal, sentimental memoir of the hard life of an Aussie battler. But Somes’ direction with lighting by Bronwyn Pringle and sound by Liz Stringer and Neddwellyn Jones keeps the sentiment inside a clear boundary of reality.
The result is a 70 minute performance by Stitz which has more significance than the merely personal.
At first the character of Lloyd Beckmann could have easily seem to have been lifted out of a Steele Rudd Dad and Dave sequence, as he told us of the hilarious details of the sex-life of a queen bee. It was Beckmann’s old-fashioned Australian accent that centred our focus on the character, and made me think of On Our Selection. Arthur Hoey Davis, the real “Steele Rudd”, interestingly enough, based his stories on his father’s bush farming experience at Emu Creek, Queensland, not too far from where Beckmann lived most of his life. Davis’s publications made humorous bush characters highly popular from their beginning in The Bulletin in 1895 through to the 1940s, especially through the 1920s and 30s as Beckmann was growing up.
But once we moved indoors, into Beckmann’s granny flat, filled with family photos, furniture collected over the years, but missing his wife, now “up the hill”, we gradually came to understand that the humour of Beckmann’s character as he genuinely wanted to entertain us, his guests, was covering up the many disappointments in his life. At fleeting moments, his grandson Tim, would appear in a change of accent to modern Melbourne, and we then also began to understand that this show is a brave act on the part of Tim Stitz.
At the end, as Beckmann lays out the implements, boots and white overalls of the beekeeper on the floor between us in the intimate setting of the granny flat, and places the broad-brimmed bush hat with its surrounding veil at its head, suddenly all the totemic images of old Australia, the workers in the bush, immigrants, farmers, miners and soldiers, are blended into a feeling that with Lloyd Beckmann’s passing that Australia will be no more than a memory.
Tim Stitz allows us into his memorial for the past in a quite remarkable way, and leaves us to wonder what we are gaining or losing as we move on into the new world order of the 21st Century.
Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper is planned to go on tour through regional centres as well as major cities. I wish the company well in this venture, which is in itself part of a long tradition of travelling showmen who have maintained the links across this wide brown land. In this way the grandson pays homage to the grandfather, the present recognises its roots in the past.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
2010: Pennies from Kevin – The Wharf Revue
Pennies from Kevin – The Wharf Revue
by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott, with Virginia
Gay. Sydney Theatre Company at The Playhouse, Canberra, February 9-13
and March 11-13, 2010
What diversity of talent these four thrust before us. They sing, play and dance in every popular style since the 1930s, but the most surprising and fascinatingly funny is to watch the Colliery Brass Band perform the opening bars of 2001: A Space Odyssey with trumpets, trombone, euphonium and drum. They are the only four left in the band, of course, now that the rest are unemployed or working in “renewables”.
It’s amazing how there can seem to be some kind of logic in a story beginning in the Lower Chamber, Hogwart House, Kirribilli, rollicking through amongst other wonders the Independents of the Upper Chamber, the Democrats in Heaven, Michelle in the White House, Bob Ellis at 3am, up against the Wall in Palestine, and La dolce vita with Amanda V.
Berlusconi, Ratzinger and Vanstone is a combination of horror and laughter not to be missed.
It seems weird to write a serious review of such a riot of a revue, but I think it should be done. The question is raised in my mind, is it a farcical parody or worthwhile satire? To use the kind of wordsmithery Bob Ellis might employ, is it nobler in the mind to let fly the outrageous slings and arrows of political criticism, or to take arms against the oppressor’s wrongs, the proud man’s contumely?
The high point of satire in the show, I think, is the scene entitled “Master Robert Ellis” (so like the real thing in some hidden Hogwart chamber in nightgown and candle that I found it hard to recognise which actor played the role). Every nuance of Ellis’ shuffle, moody hesitation and originality of language is recreated, but this would still be only parody (and therefore insulting) if it were not for the wit in what he says. We laugh not only because he sounds like Bob Ellis speaking, but because what he says is as politically pin-pricking as the real Bob is. And it is not insulting to feel a certain sadness in the character who still wants to pretend he had an affair with Jackie Weaver, because there is a depth of feeling in the real Bob Ellis, a sadness in his integrity as he pinpoints our failings. He reminds me, as his character in Pennies from Kevin does, of Pooh’s friend Eeyore.
To write and perform at this level, interpolated with pure slapstick for light relief, is to make a show which is far better than parody, and therefore worthwhile. To come away laughing is one thing, but to see what is worth laughing at makes this show more than pennies, from Heaven or Kevin.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
What diversity of talent these four thrust before us. They sing, play and dance in every popular style since the 1930s, but the most surprising and fascinatingly funny is to watch the Colliery Brass Band perform the opening bars of 2001: A Space Odyssey with trumpets, trombone, euphonium and drum. They are the only four left in the band, of course, now that the rest are unemployed or working in “renewables”.
It’s amazing how there can seem to be some kind of logic in a story beginning in the Lower Chamber, Hogwart House, Kirribilli, rollicking through amongst other wonders the Independents of the Upper Chamber, the Democrats in Heaven, Michelle in the White House, Bob Ellis at 3am, up against the Wall in Palestine, and La dolce vita with Amanda V.
Berlusconi, Ratzinger and Vanstone is a combination of horror and laughter not to be missed.
It seems weird to write a serious review of such a riot of a revue, but I think it should be done. The question is raised in my mind, is it a farcical parody or worthwhile satire? To use the kind of wordsmithery Bob Ellis might employ, is it nobler in the mind to let fly the outrageous slings and arrows of political criticism, or to take arms against the oppressor’s wrongs, the proud man’s contumely?
The high point of satire in the show, I think, is the scene entitled “Master Robert Ellis” (so like the real thing in some hidden Hogwart chamber in nightgown and candle that I found it hard to recognise which actor played the role). Every nuance of Ellis’ shuffle, moody hesitation and originality of language is recreated, but this would still be only parody (and therefore insulting) if it were not for the wit in what he says. We laugh not only because he sounds like Bob Ellis speaking, but because what he says is as politically pin-pricking as the real Bob is. And it is not insulting to feel a certain sadness in the character who still wants to pretend he had an affair with Jackie Weaver, because there is a depth of feeling in the real Bob Ellis, a sadness in his integrity as he pinpoints our failings. He reminds me, as his character in Pennies from Kevin does, of Pooh’s friend Eeyore.
To write and perform at this level, interpolated with pure slapstick for light relief, is to make a show which is far better than parody, and therefore worthwhile. To come away laughing is one thing, but to see what is worth laughing at makes this show more than pennies, from Heaven or Kevin.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 1 February 2010
2010: La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi
La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. Opera Australia, Sydney Opera House February 1 – March 29 2010
I am not qualified to make critical judgements of the musicianship in this production, which is directed by Elijah Moshinsky and features Elvira Fatykhova as Violetta and Aldo Di Toro as Alfredo. However the full house on opening night applauded very enthusiastically after every aria and other set pieces.
Musically, I like what I like, and to hear Verdi’s music on this grand scale is a special experience. But this was the first opportunity for me see the whole play, rather than hear parts sung in isolation, on recordings. Theatrically, this presentation more than met my expectations.
In La dame aux camélias, the Dumas fils novel and play which were the source of the plot, Marguerite’s words define the central concern of the drama: “Whatever she may do, a fallen woman can never redeem herself!” Though Alfredo loves Violetta truly and his father (Jonathan Summers) finally understands that she is worthy in herself, and is not to be treated simply as a fly in the ointment of his family’s reputation, tuberculosis is the device the author uses to avoid facing up to the final solution. If she had not died, what would have become of her?
There has long been a trend in theatre to find a different setting for previous centuries’ plays to “update” them for a modern audience. Last year I thought this had not worked for the production of Don Giovanni and some commentators have been concerned about this year’s Tosca. This La traviata was set in its mid-19th Century Parisian high society context. Ironically Verdi had insisted on present-day costuming, but the Venice opera house overrode his wishes with a setting around 1700 instead of 1850. Michael Yeargan’s sets and Peter J Hall’s costumes have done the right thing by Verdi, and by the modern audience.
The effect, as I saw it, was that for us in modern Australia the “fallen woman” issue is a thing of the past, but the social pressures on Violetta and Alfredo and their emotional responses become metaphorical, symbolic of the determination of people of our generation to be independent of traditional family strictures and to find our own way in the world. What for Verdi was a realistic story, for us is a timeless fairy story.
The result was that the singers could freeze while the audience applauded, holding the emotion of the moment, and then pick up the thread to take us into the next phase. The chorus could be wonderfully choreographed in group movement and dance on a crowded stage, almost like an Ancient Greek chorus providing context and commentary on the actions of the protagonists.
Let’s not turn tuberculosis into breast cancer and dress Violetta in jeans. Let’s be true to Verdi’s original conception, as this production is, so we can take what we need from his art.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I am not qualified to make critical judgements of the musicianship in this production, which is directed by Elijah Moshinsky and features Elvira Fatykhova as Violetta and Aldo Di Toro as Alfredo. However the full house on opening night applauded very enthusiastically after every aria and other set pieces.
Musically, I like what I like, and to hear Verdi’s music on this grand scale is a special experience. But this was the first opportunity for me see the whole play, rather than hear parts sung in isolation, on recordings. Theatrically, this presentation more than met my expectations.
In La dame aux camélias, the Dumas fils novel and play which were the source of the plot, Marguerite’s words define the central concern of the drama: “Whatever she may do, a fallen woman can never redeem herself!” Though Alfredo loves Violetta truly and his father (Jonathan Summers) finally understands that she is worthy in herself, and is not to be treated simply as a fly in the ointment of his family’s reputation, tuberculosis is the device the author uses to avoid facing up to the final solution. If she had not died, what would have become of her?
There has long been a trend in theatre to find a different setting for previous centuries’ plays to “update” them for a modern audience. Last year I thought this had not worked for the production of Don Giovanni and some commentators have been concerned about this year’s Tosca. This La traviata was set in its mid-19th Century Parisian high society context. Ironically Verdi had insisted on present-day costuming, but the Venice opera house overrode his wishes with a setting around 1700 instead of 1850. Michael Yeargan’s sets and Peter J Hall’s costumes have done the right thing by Verdi, and by the modern audience.
The effect, as I saw it, was that for us in modern Australia the “fallen woman” issue is a thing of the past, but the social pressures on Violetta and Alfredo and their emotional responses become metaphorical, symbolic of the determination of people of our generation to be independent of traditional family strictures and to find our own way in the world. What for Verdi was a realistic story, for us is a timeless fairy story.
The result was that the singers could freeze while the audience applauded, holding the emotion of the moment, and then pick up the thread to take us into the next phase. The chorus could be wonderfully choreographed in group movement and dance on a crowded stage, almost like an Ancient Greek chorus providing context and commentary on the actions of the protagonists.
Let’s not turn tuberculosis into breast cancer and dress Violetta in jeans. Let’s be true to Verdi’s original conception, as this production is, so we can take what we need from his art.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)