EnTrance created and performed by Yumi Umiumare at The Street Theatre, Canberra. June 30 – July 2, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 30
Under the spotlight: Yumi Umiumare
MiNDFOOD talks to Yumi Umiumare as she prepares for her solo performance "EnTrance" at [this] year’s Oz Asia Festival.
Aug 03, 2009
“This
is my first time performing a full-length solo show where I incorporate
all the elements of my art. There are short segments for each style
and towards the end I perform a Butoh segment with my face painted white, so it is like I am returning to my roots.”
“I first came to Melbourne in 1991 with the Butoh company Dai Rakuda Kan, which is the oldest Butoh
company in Japan. We were invited to perform for the Melbourne
International Arts Festival. I met a lot of people in the arts community
at the time and started visiting regularly between 1991 and 1993. I
moved permanently in 1993.
I lived in Tyoko before and
while it is an exciting and stimulating city it is also very busy. In
Melbourne there is more space, more of your own space. I found artists
have more freedom to develop their own style and ideas.”
“For EnTrance
I’m working with media artist Bambang Nurcahyadi, installation artist
Naomi Ota and sound designer Ian Kitney, so while I was initially scared
about doing a solo performance I realized the other artists were
supporting me.”
I’ve
chosen these quotes from this interview two years ago because I think
they help us to understand Umiumare’s work. A friend commented after
the show, “She’s a work of art.” I agree, and so felt I needed to know
something about her, particularly why she had moved from Tokyo to
Australia, as well as knowing something about the Japanese radical dance
form, butoh.
First though, she had no need to
be scared tonight. Her focus, discipline and originality held the
audience for 75 minutes, confirming the reputation she brings from 20
years’ worth of stage and film work in this country. I have seen her
only twice before, in Ngapartji Ngapartji at Belvoir Street in 2008 and in The Burlesque Hour
in 2009 here at The Street. There could not have been a greater
contrast between her gentle role in the story of Pitjantjatjara man,
Trevor Jamieson, and her frantic satirical mime of frustrated
glass-ceiling shattering modern womanhood in Burlesque.
EnTrance
begins seemingly at peace in a garden with her cat, but quickly leads
to the horror of living at the mercy of a huge city, which I have taken
to be Tokyo. Experiences there include seeing her mother’s face as she
leaves her son, “Yumi’s” brother, in hospital to die. The character, of
course, may not actually be Yumi, but the identification with the
mother’s feelings, expressed in butoh style, seems terribly real. Who would want to keep living, if you can call it that, in such a city?
Butoh
developed as a response to the occupation of Japan after World War II
and it seems to have become a tradition for its practitioners to leave
the city to, in a sense, return to the origins of Japanese culture in
the country. As I thought about this and recalled the final scene of EnTrance, a connection seemed to form – or what Yumi has called a ‘chain’. She writes, “In EnTrance, each section is interconnected through a ‘chained world’ in which a new world opens up, one to the other.”
As she moves into the ‘pure’ butoh
style, naked and whitened with rice flour, the screen behind shows a
body of water on which her image floats and in which it is reflected –
in the tradition of “the two worlds of Life and Death” described as “two
shores; one is ‘the near shore’ (the world of the living), and the
other is ‘the far shore (world of after-death)”. But this water is an
Australian billabong, with old gum trees on the banks and Australian
birds calling.
In that final scene there is a feeling
of freedom, perhaps as Yumi Umiumare experienced in moving permanently
to Australia, and in the ending, represented in the form of the
overwhelming light described by those who have had a near-death
experience, there is a sense of satisfaction, of completion. So for me
at least, EnTrance is a work of art by an artist at work,
successfully achieving what she describes as “the moment of
transformation where the spirit and the body are propelled into another
world or existence”. Which is, of course, the nature of true theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
2011: Turns by Reg Livermore
Turns by Reg Livermore, with Nancye Hayes and piano
accompaniment by Vincent Colagiuri. Christine Dunstan Productions
directed by Tom Healey at Canberra Playhouse, June 21-25 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
The story of Turns – a pantomime with a twist – is entirely fictional. Gladys Moncrieff, Australia’s ‘Queen of Song’ is claimed to be the mother of Nancye Hayes’ character, Marjorie Joy. Marjorie’s son, Alistair Moncrieff, claims his mother shot Gladys on stage as she opened wide to sing high C. In case you want to know, the real Gladys Moncrieff had no children and died in hospital in 1976 at the age of 83, having retired from the stage with her husband Tom Moore to the Isle of Capri in 1968.
Livermore’s author’s note says ‘Turns is a broad reflection on show business, matters of identity, of family and dependency, of the memory, and the commonality of an experience that lies ahead for most of us.’ This refers, presumably, not to death, since that lies ahead for all of us, but to dementia – although European studies show incident rates of 2.5 per 1000 at age 65, growing to 85.6 per 1000 at age 90. In other words most of us will not suffer from dementia, but 95 year old Marjorie Joy certainly does, and I begin to suspect that her son Alistair (who I suppose is about the same age as me and Reg Livermore) is headed in the same direction.
I should calm any fears by noting that on stage and at the pre-show talk hosted by Helen Musa on June 21, neither Reg (72) nor Nancye (67) showed the slightest signs of any forms of dementia that I could detect – but of course that may merely reflect my own shortcomings now I am 70. What I do know is that there is no way I could hoof, sing, mime, speak, shout, and hold an audience with anything like the verve and discipline of these two. Or remember my lines. So I’ll stick to criticism, thank you very much.
I guess what Livermore, as author, has shown is that not only is theatre all a matter of illusion, but that life itself is largely illusory. When we see Alistair attempting to cope with caring for his impossible mother, he appears to be normal. He feels duty bound even while her behaviour is frustrating. We find her funny even as we sympathise with him.
When Alistair speaks to us after his mother’s death, we begin by assuming that he is normal, but the twist is that he reveals to us his own need for illusion to sustain a sense of personal integrity. Like his mother, he must use dress-ups as a way to create a life for himself. We are back in the world of theatre, where fiction can be made to seem real, even including a story about the death of Gladys Moncrieff.
What does it all mean? Well, I suggest that Hayes and Livermore, who have both been named among Australia’s Top 100 Entertainers of the 20th Century, in the musical theatre tradition, can be seen as the children of Gladys Moncrieff. Hayes’ career began as a dancer in the JC Williamson 1961 production of My Fair Lady, while Livermore’s got under way at the Phillip Street Theatre in 1957. I had arrived in Australia in 1955 and was certainly made well aware of the Queen of Song – though I have to admit that my 1957 highlight was Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, sitting up in the Gods at the Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown. Gladys Moncrieff was a pleasant radio voice for me, but one who didn’t often make it among AE Floyd’s Music Lovers’ Hour on the ABC each week. Maybe even then I was too pretentious for my own good.
So I guess I have to conclude that although Turns and Reg Livermore as a writer can’t match O’Neill and Long Day’s Journey, this is an entertainment with something more than mere enjoyment – a ‘broad reflection on show business’ as the author has claimed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
The story of Turns – a pantomime with a twist – is entirely fictional. Gladys Moncrieff, Australia’s ‘Queen of Song’ is claimed to be the mother of Nancye Hayes’ character, Marjorie Joy. Marjorie’s son, Alistair Moncrieff, claims his mother shot Gladys on stage as she opened wide to sing high C. In case you want to know, the real Gladys Moncrieff had no children and died in hospital in 1976 at the age of 83, having retired from the stage with her husband Tom Moore to the Isle of Capri in 1968.
Livermore’s author’s note says ‘Turns is a broad reflection on show business, matters of identity, of family and dependency, of the memory, and the commonality of an experience that lies ahead for most of us.’ This refers, presumably, not to death, since that lies ahead for all of us, but to dementia – although European studies show incident rates of 2.5 per 1000 at age 65, growing to 85.6 per 1000 at age 90. In other words most of us will not suffer from dementia, but 95 year old Marjorie Joy certainly does, and I begin to suspect that her son Alistair (who I suppose is about the same age as me and Reg Livermore) is headed in the same direction.
I should calm any fears by noting that on stage and at the pre-show talk hosted by Helen Musa on June 21, neither Reg (72) nor Nancye (67) showed the slightest signs of any forms of dementia that I could detect – but of course that may merely reflect my own shortcomings now I am 70. What I do know is that there is no way I could hoof, sing, mime, speak, shout, and hold an audience with anything like the verve and discipline of these two. Or remember my lines. So I’ll stick to criticism, thank you very much.
I guess what Livermore, as author, has shown is that not only is theatre all a matter of illusion, but that life itself is largely illusory. When we see Alistair attempting to cope with caring for his impossible mother, he appears to be normal. He feels duty bound even while her behaviour is frustrating. We find her funny even as we sympathise with him.
When Alistair speaks to us after his mother’s death, we begin by assuming that he is normal, but the twist is that he reveals to us his own need for illusion to sustain a sense of personal integrity. Like his mother, he must use dress-ups as a way to create a life for himself. We are back in the world of theatre, where fiction can be made to seem real, even including a story about the death of Gladys Moncrieff.
What does it all mean? Well, I suggest that Hayes and Livermore, who have both been named among Australia’s Top 100 Entertainers of the 20th Century, in the musical theatre tradition, can be seen as the children of Gladys Moncrieff. Hayes’ career began as a dancer in the JC Williamson 1961 production of My Fair Lady, while Livermore’s got under way at the Phillip Street Theatre in 1957. I had arrived in Australia in 1955 and was certainly made well aware of the Queen of Song – though I have to admit that my 1957 highlight was Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, sitting up in the Gods at the Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown. Gladys Moncrieff was a pleasant radio voice for me, but one who didn’t often make it among AE Floyd’s Music Lovers’ Hour on the ABC each week. Maybe even then I was too pretentious for my own good.
So I guess I have to conclude that although Turns and Reg Livermore as a writer can’t match O’Neill and Long Day’s Journey, this is an entertainment with something more than mere enjoyment – a ‘broad reflection on show business’ as the author has claimed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
2011: In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl. Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Playhouse, directed by Pamela Rabe. June 8-11, 2011
Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 8
Only two years after its first production at Berkeley Rep, it’s good to see Sydney put on a play described by one of its first commentators (Rachel Swan in the East Bay Express) as ‘a pretty progressive play, even by 2009 standards’. I am sure that most of the Canberra audience last night was much more sophisticated than I am, and their delight in this rare kind of comedy suggests they are pretty progressive too. At interval a friend asked if I had “learnt anything new”. It was a trap question, of course, so I mumbled vaguely rather than reveal my ignorance.
I’ll return later to the play and its writer, because there’s lots there to think about.
But I want to begin by praising Pamela Rabe, and her cast Jacqueline McKenzie (Catherine Givings – the vibrator’s wife), David Roberts (Dr Givings – the vibrator), Helen Thomson (Sabrina Daldry – the first to be vibrated), Marshall Napier (Mr Daldry – her non-vibrant husband), Mandy McElhinney (Annie – the vibrator’s assistant and a vibrator in her own right), Sara Zwangobani (Elizabeth – the wet nurse who understands) and Josh McConville (Leo Irving – the artist and the second to be vibrated).
Equally praiseworthy is the designer, Tracy Grant Lord and her team led by Hartley T A Kemp (Lighting Designer), Iain Grandage (Composer/Sound Designer), Laura A. Proietti (Wigs, Hair & Make Up Supervisor), and Charmian Gradwell (Voice & Text Coach). A large part of the particular success of this production was how the set, costumes, hair-dos, lights and sound gave the actors exactly the environment to allow their characters to spark.
And spark they certainly did, in more ways than one. Being a bit too much like Dr Givings myself, I loved the moment when he sees that Mrs Daldry needs an extra boost, turns the vibrator up to maximum and blows every Edison light in the house. Isn’t it great to be a technician?
Each actor had strengths with no noticeable weak points, so none can be honestly awarded more praise than any other in such a tight ensemble, but there were special moments for me.
One was the depth of character expressed by Sara Zwangobani as Elizabeth announces her decision to leave Catherine’s employ as a wet nurse – such bitterness held in check by her maturity of understanding took this role far beyond a matter of simple racist discrimination. Her speech opened up the whole issue of universal human rights.
At the other end of the scale was the brief exit of Marshall Napier’s Mr Daldry as he realises that he has to walk out to see Catherine’s garden and leave her and his wife alone together. Perhaps he is mainly responding to Catherine’s vivacity, but he also recognises Sabrina’s new-found sense of authority. Probably he can’t explain to himself why he should go, but he knows he must.
These are only two examples which show why I am so pleased to see a modern play offer the actors the opportunity for such finesse. This brings me to the play itself.
One commentator mentioned that the set is deliberately similar to that of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and I found myself thinking of another playwright also influenced by Ibsen: George Bernard Shaw, still famous in the popular mind today for Pygmalion and its musical version My Fair Lady. Shaw was a progressive playwright in his day. He didn’t mention vibrators but he wrote about attitudes towards women’s sexuality in 1892 only a decade or so after the technically advanced Americans in Ruhl’s play were discovering how to treat hysteria with ‘paroxysms’. In Mrs Warren’s Profession Shaw wrote a comedy about Mrs Warren’s Cambridge educated daughter being horrified to find that her mother financed her daughter’s education by running a brothel.
Mrs Warren’s Profession was banned by the Lord Chamberlain because of its ‘frank discussion and portrayal of prostitution’, getting its first production after 10 years in the members-only New Lyric Club in 1902 and waiting for its first public performance in London until 1925. Interestingly, ‘it had a performance in New York, this time on a public stage in 1905, [which] was interrupted by the police who arrested the cast and crew, although it appears only the house manager of the theatre was actually charged.[citation needed] The play has been revived on Broadway five times since, most recently in 2010.’ [Wikipedia accessed 9 June 2011]
Well, how does Ruhl compare to Shaw? First, however progressive she may be, it seems that the re-enactment of orgasms on stage has not caused the arrest of the cast and crew, despite present-day public concerns about pornography. Maybe this is because Ruhl has set her play in the prudish Victorian era in the past (now 130 years ago), whereas Shaw’s play was set in his own time – the actual prudish Victorian era. In the official 1912 Constable edition, Shaw’s preface, called The Author’s Apology, made no apology at all for refusing to write a conventional sentimental romantic comedy and having his characters speak and behave as real people would.
Ruhl, in re-creating the language of the past era, has written at least as cleverly as the famous wordsmith Shaw. Her comedy grows from the fact that her characters avoid direct description, yet we know today exactly what they mean. Shaw’s comedy drew on characters saying exactly what they mean in a society that wishes they didn’t. The one quote, of course, which has come down to us from Shaw is Eliza’s innocent exclamation in Pygmalion: ‘Not bloody likely.’
So one thing I learnt from In the Next Room or the vibrator play is that Sarah Ruhl well deserves the prizes she has been awarded (Glickman Prize and finalist for Pulizter Prize), and that she is writing in a tradition which I find thoroughly satisfying.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 8
Only two years after its first production at Berkeley Rep, it’s good to see Sydney put on a play described by one of its first commentators (Rachel Swan in the East Bay Express) as ‘a pretty progressive play, even by 2009 standards’. I am sure that most of the Canberra audience last night was much more sophisticated than I am, and their delight in this rare kind of comedy suggests they are pretty progressive too. At interval a friend asked if I had “learnt anything new”. It was a trap question, of course, so I mumbled vaguely rather than reveal my ignorance.
I’ll return later to the play and its writer, because there’s lots there to think about.
But I want to begin by praising Pamela Rabe, and her cast Jacqueline McKenzie (Catherine Givings – the vibrator’s wife), David Roberts (Dr Givings – the vibrator), Helen Thomson (Sabrina Daldry – the first to be vibrated), Marshall Napier (Mr Daldry – her non-vibrant husband), Mandy McElhinney (Annie – the vibrator’s assistant and a vibrator in her own right), Sara Zwangobani (Elizabeth – the wet nurse who understands) and Josh McConville (Leo Irving – the artist and the second to be vibrated).
Equally praiseworthy is the designer, Tracy Grant Lord and her team led by Hartley T A Kemp (Lighting Designer), Iain Grandage (Composer/Sound Designer), Laura A. Proietti (Wigs, Hair & Make Up Supervisor), and Charmian Gradwell (Voice & Text Coach). A large part of the particular success of this production was how the set, costumes, hair-dos, lights and sound gave the actors exactly the environment to allow their characters to spark.
And spark they certainly did, in more ways than one. Being a bit too much like Dr Givings myself, I loved the moment when he sees that Mrs Daldry needs an extra boost, turns the vibrator up to maximum and blows every Edison light in the house. Isn’t it great to be a technician?
Each actor had strengths with no noticeable weak points, so none can be honestly awarded more praise than any other in such a tight ensemble, but there were special moments for me.
One was the depth of character expressed by Sara Zwangobani as Elizabeth announces her decision to leave Catherine’s employ as a wet nurse – such bitterness held in check by her maturity of understanding took this role far beyond a matter of simple racist discrimination. Her speech opened up the whole issue of universal human rights.
At the other end of the scale was the brief exit of Marshall Napier’s Mr Daldry as he realises that he has to walk out to see Catherine’s garden and leave her and his wife alone together. Perhaps he is mainly responding to Catherine’s vivacity, but he also recognises Sabrina’s new-found sense of authority. Probably he can’t explain to himself why he should go, but he knows he must.
These are only two examples which show why I am so pleased to see a modern play offer the actors the opportunity for such finesse. This brings me to the play itself.
One commentator mentioned that the set is deliberately similar to that of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and I found myself thinking of another playwright also influenced by Ibsen: George Bernard Shaw, still famous in the popular mind today for Pygmalion and its musical version My Fair Lady. Shaw was a progressive playwright in his day. He didn’t mention vibrators but he wrote about attitudes towards women’s sexuality in 1892 only a decade or so after the technically advanced Americans in Ruhl’s play were discovering how to treat hysteria with ‘paroxysms’. In Mrs Warren’s Profession Shaw wrote a comedy about Mrs Warren’s Cambridge educated daughter being horrified to find that her mother financed her daughter’s education by running a brothel.
Mrs Warren’s Profession was banned by the Lord Chamberlain because of its ‘frank discussion and portrayal of prostitution’, getting its first production after 10 years in the members-only New Lyric Club in 1902 and waiting for its first public performance in London until 1925. Interestingly, ‘it had a performance in New York, this time on a public stage in 1905, [which] was interrupted by the police who arrested the cast and crew, although it appears only the house manager of the theatre was actually charged.[citation needed] The play has been revived on Broadway five times since, most recently in 2010.’ [Wikipedia accessed 9 June 2011]
Well, how does Ruhl compare to Shaw? First, however progressive she may be, it seems that the re-enactment of orgasms on stage has not caused the arrest of the cast and crew, despite present-day public concerns about pornography. Maybe this is because Ruhl has set her play in the prudish Victorian era in the past (now 130 years ago), whereas Shaw’s play was set in his own time – the actual prudish Victorian era. In the official 1912 Constable edition, Shaw’s preface, called The Author’s Apology, made no apology at all for refusing to write a conventional sentimental romantic comedy and having his characters speak and behave as real people would.
Ruhl, in re-creating the language of the past era, has written at least as cleverly as the famous wordsmith Shaw. Her comedy grows from the fact that her characters avoid direct description, yet we know today exactly what they mean. Shaw’s comedy drew on characters saying exactly what they mean in a society that wishes they didn’t. The one quote, of course, which has come down to us from Shaw is Eliza’s innocent exclamation in Pygmalion: ‘Not bloody likely.’
So one thing I learnt from In the Next Room or the vibrator play is that Sarah Ruhl well deserves the prizes she has been awarded (Glickman Prize and finalist for Pulizter Prize), and that she is writing in a tradition which I find thoroughly satisfying.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 4 June 2011
2011: Magpie Blues by Ursula Yovich
Ursula Yovich: Magpie Blues at The Street Theatre, June 4 2011
Reviewed by Frank McKone
Even though, on her only Canberra performance, Ursula Yovich’s voice was badly affected by a dry throat, she began with something like a Bessie Smith quality of sound that made it clear why she calls this a Blues show. Maybe she also felt a bit blue since this was the very last performance of Magpie Blues after some two years, culminating at the Sydney Opera House in May.
Her voice problems seemed to shake her confidence, making her forget her lines on quite a few occasions, and so I’m not in a position to confirm or deny the strongly positive reviews she has previously received.
I found myself making comparisons and concluding that the show needs a good writer. Other reviewers were keen on the lack of artifice in her telling of her life story, but for me her work was nowhere near the storytelling standard of David Page’s Page 8. Page, of course, had the guidance of Louis Nowra to give the narrative structure, while Yovich relies too much on chronological anecdotes. I felt I wanted the songs to do more of the driving along of the drama, instead of seeming to be illustrations – though the more powerful of these were generally those composed by Yovich herself, rather than the covers of songs she had picked up along the way.
It seemed to me there were two themes. One was about her getting into WAAPA. Her story included just a humorous few words about swimming a croc-infested flood to get to the airport from Maningrida. I wanted to know much more about how she got such a voice, and how this White side of her parentage and experience linked up with the Black side. She sang in her mother’s Brada language, but the form of the music was much more like American ballad than Maningrida song.
This was the second theme – I guess the main theme from Yovich’s point of view. It was about her parents’ breaking up when Ursula was eight and her consequent loss of proper understanding of her Aboriginal language, culture and status. She ended Magpie Blues with Over the Rainbow, her white culture song, asking poignantly “Why can’t I?”. And yet the success of this work, including at the Darwin Festival, the Dreaming Festival in Queensland and the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land, as well as her acting and singing successes in London, New York and Sydney, seem to say that she can.
I guess if the performance I saw had hung together properly, the depth of emotion in her story would have been the focus as other reviewers have said. But perhaps it is time now to bring this show to an end, and maybe work up a more substantial piece in the future using, I would hope, a song cycle of Yovich’s original compositions.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
Even though, on her only Canberra performance, Ursula Yovich’s voice was badly affected by a dry throat, she began with something like a Bessie Smith quality of sound that made it clear why she calls this a Blues show. Maybe she also felt a bit blue since this was the very last performance of Magpie Blues after some two years, culminating at the Sydney Opera House in May.
Her voice problems seemed to shake her confidence, making her forget her lines on quite a few occasions, and so I’m not in a position to confirm or deny the strongly positive reviews she has previously received.
I found myself making comparisons and concluding that the show needs a good writer. Other reviewers were keen on the lack of artifice in her telling of her life story, but for me her work was nowhere near the storytelling standard of David Page’s Page 8. Page, of course, had the guidance of Louis Nowra to give the narrative structure, while Yovich relies too much on chronological anecdotes. I felt I wanted the songs to do more of the driving along of the drama, instead of seeming to be illustrations – though the more powerful of these were generally those composed by Yovich herself, rather than the covers of songs she had picked up along the way.
It seemed to me there were two themes. One was about her getting into WAAPA. Her story included just a humorous few words about swimming a croc-infested flood to get to the airport from Maningrida. I wanted to know much more about how she got such a voice, and how this White side of her parentage and experience linked up with the Black side. She sang in her mother’s Brada language, but the form of the music was much more like American ballad than Maningrida song.
This was the second theme – I guess the main theme from Yovich’s point of view. It was about her parents’ breaking up when Ursula was eight and her consequent loss of proper understanding of her Aboriginal language, culture and status. She ended Magpie Blues with Over the Rainbow, her white culture song, asking poignantly “Why can’t I?”. And yet the success of this work, including at the Darwin Festival, the Dreaming Festival in Queensland and the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land, as well as her acting and singing successes in London, New York and Sydney, seem to say that she can.
I guess if the performance I saw had hung together properly, the depth of emotion in her story would have been the focus as other reviewers have said. But perhaps it is time now to bring this show to an end, and maybe work up a more substantial piece in the future using, I would hope, a song cycle of Yovich’s original compositions.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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