Avenue Q the Musical Music & Lyrics by Robert Lopez
and Jeff Marx. Supa Productions directed by Garrick Smith. Music
directed by Rose Shorney, choreography by Jordan Kelly, costumes
designed by Suzan Cooper. ANU Arts Centre September 16 – October 1,
2011
Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 30
Isn’t
it great? Isn’t it fun? Isn’t it just a relief to see a light-hearted
satirical American musical! I nearly missed it, and I’m glad I didn’t.
It’s a show I thought I’d heard of, but it had never entered my
consciousness – perhaps because of my lack of enthusiasm for
conventional American musicals. I guess the song Everyone’s A Little
Bit Racist puts me in my place.
Several things about Supa’s production impressed me.
The
puppets worked as characters in their own right, but this could only be
achieved by the singers who also had to be dancers and puppeteers.
Getting this right was a major plus, because the puppets’ characters
became the focus instead of the show being just a display of singing and
dancing.
The Velvet Underground Glove Puppet Modern
Jazz Sextet played magnificently, although sometimes they could have
been softened a little to bring out the voices more clearly.
The
set designer Jeremy Bailey-Smith doesn’t get special mention in the
program, but he should for a clever arrangement of movable units which
kept our interest at each set change, all smoothly done.
Characters,
within the limits deliberately set as spoofs of Sesame Street and of
traditional musical romances, are not all this show requires.
Fortunately Supa maintained its usual precision in movement and singing.
Timing makes this show, not just as a comedy but as a satire, and I
think no-one missed a beat. But I must add that Sarah Golding’s It’s A
Fine, Fine Line brought the first half to a beautiful end, at a level
beyond satire.
The result was enthusiastically received
by the very age group it was aimed at in just the right venue at ANU. I
even overhead people saying I Wish I Could Go Back To College as they
faced the reality of the cold night air. In fact even this 70-year-old
found himself wondering wouldn’t it be great, wouldn’t it be fun?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 30 September 2011
Thursday, 15 September 2011
2011:Get Back: The Lennon & McCartney Songbook
Get Back: The Lennon & McCartney Songbook. Produced and performed by: Melissa Langton, Libby O'Donovan and Mark Jones at The Q, Queanbeyan, September 15-17, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 15
In the spirit of a willing suspension of disbelief, especially in view of this image and the exhortation to “expect highbrow harmony and lowbrow comedy - and the occasional joke about one-legged ex-models”, I allowed myself to enjoy the singing, piano playing and some of the arrangements of Lennon and McCartney songs. There’s no doubt about the technical musicianship skills of all three performers.
But I found myself unsure of what kind of show I was watching and how I should respond. Cabaret can mean anything from the dark and sultry to stand-up comedy, and there were bits of both here, but the linking material – the patter – was too much and often too puerile for the Lennon and McCartney quality, and indeed for the Qeanbeyan audience. Odious comparisons, for example, with the possibly fictional worst audience in Mt Isa were quite unnecessary and set up an atmosphere completely at odds with songs like Help, Let It Be and Imagine which were performed with seriousness of intent, as they should be.
Despite the manner of John Lennon’s passing and perhaps because of Paul McCartney’s subsequent career, marital as well as on stage, it is fair that they should not be treated with undue reverence. I could accept Ob La Di Ob La Da in the style of an old-fashioned American square-dancing hoe down as a humorous take that I can suspect Paul might have had fun with in the studio. I wasn’t so sure, though, about a Southern Baptist religiosity approach to Let It Be. This arrangement seemed to be more about don’t let your ideology go, no matter what. But the right mood was captured for the medley based on the feelings of depression living in an oppressive society expressed in Help (even though this segment was the cause, apparently, of a Mt Isa yobbo crying “bullshit” because it wasn’t rock’n’roll).
Of course the weakest moment, but for us in Canberra-Queanbeyan the funniest, was when the obligatory audience participation call went out for a volunteer to face a quiz on their knowledge of Lennon and McCartney songs. Though the quiz turned out to be a spoof, no-one put their hand up for some embarrassing minutes until finally a certain Moya Simpson held up her partner’s hand and John Shortis took the stage. Despite the performers’ previous praising of the great experience of being in Queanbeyan, their research had not discovered Shortis and Simpson, our very own political cabaret team. The secret was never revealed, while John was renamed ‘Paul’ and gave his answers almost shyly as is his wont, to great cheers from we who were in the know.
In the end, it was good to hear Mark Jones’ version of Imagine. This really was the dreamer speaking, and he was not alone. And the a capella encore of Live and Let Die was a strong and worthy conclusion to the show.
The quality of these items showed up the need for less patter – especially about themselves and their show – and more sophisticated linking of the items with Beatles history and how the medleys were put together, to put the good work, and humour, into the right context.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 15
In the spirit of a willing suspension of disbelief, especially in view of this image and the exhortation to “expect highbrow harmony and lowbrow comedy - and the occasional joke about one-legged ex-models”, I allowed myself to enjoy the singing, piano playing and some of the arrangements of Lennon and McCartney songs. There’s no doubt about the technical musicianship skills of all three performers.
But I found myself unsure of what kind of show I was watching and how I should respond. Cabaret can mean anything from the dark and sultry to stand-up comedy, and there were bits of both here, but the linking material – the patter – was too much and often too puerile for the Lennon and McCartney quality, and indeed for the Qeanbeyan audience. Odious comparisons, for example, with the possibly fictional worst audience in Mt Isa were quite unnecessary and set up an atmosphere completely at odds with songs like Help, Let It Be and Imagine which were performed with seriousness of intent, as they should be.
Despite the manner of John Lennon’s passing and perhaps because of Paul McCartney’s subsequent career, marital as well as on stage, it is fair that they should not be treated with undue reverence. I could accept Ob La Di Ob La Da in the style of an old-fashioned American square-dancing hoe down as a humorous take that I can suspect Paul might have had fun with in the studio. I wasn’t so sure, though, about a Southern Baptist religiosity approach to Let It Be. This arrangement seemed to be more about don’t let your ideology go, no matter what. But the right mood was captured for the medley based on the feelings of depression living in an oppressive society expressed in Help (even though this segment was the cause, apparently, of a Mt Isa yobbo crying “bullshit” because it wasn’t rock’n’roll).
Of course the weakest moment, but for us in Canberra-Queanbeyan the funniest, was when the obligatory audience participation call went out for a volunteer to face a quiz on their knowledge of Lennon and McCartney songs. Though the quiz turned out to be a spoof, no-one put their hand up for some embarrassing minutes until finally a certain Moya Simpson held up her partner’s hand and John Shortis took the stage. Despite the performers’ previous praising of the great experience of being in Queanbeyan, their research had not discovered Shortis and Simpson, our very own political cabaret team. The secret was never revealed, while John was renamed ‘Paul’ and gave his answers almost shyly as is his wont, to great cheers from we who were in the know.
In the end, it was good to hear Mark Jones’ version of Imagine. This really was the dreamer speaking, and he was not alone. And the a capella encore of Live and Let Die was a strong and worthy conclusion to the show.
The quality of these items showed up the need for less patter – especially about themselves and their show – and more sophisticated linking of the items with Beatles history and how the medleys were put together, to put the good work, and humour, into the right context.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 5 September 2011
2011: The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill
The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, adapted
by Raimondo Cortese. Malthouse Theatre and Victorian Opera, directed
by Michael Kantor, conductor Richard Gill, at Sydney Theatre, September
3-24, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 5
Baz Luhrman, à la Moulin Rouge, meets Bertolt Brecht in Michael Kantor’s vision of The Threepenny Opera. As Phillip Adams commented on Late Night Live as I drove home from Sydney, it’s a ten dollar set for a threepenny opera. Quite a few thousands of dollars, in reality. Is it Entertainment or Polemic, Underbelly or Over the Top?
Whatever – it works. Cortese writes “My aim in adapting the text has been to honour the original, while updating it to a modern Australian context” which means in Sydney the setting is in a kind of Kings Cross, Campbell Street, Palmer Street, Darlinghurst Road, Oxford Street sort of Sydney, in something like the Brigadier Spry era that I remember when policemen were known to accidentally fall on prisoners (as if they still don’t occasionally on Palm Island, Queensland).
At the same time the costumes, designed brilliantly by Anna Cordingley, are exaggerated circus, the singing is a howling parody of opera which extracts every bit of meaning out of Weill’s amazing music, the characters are colourful cut-outs – puppets manipulated by the strings of society. If you have an image of 1928 German style like this from http://threepennyopera.org/histChron.php
you’ll need to think again for this:
An important point for me in seeing this production is to realise how much the daring of Brecht/Weill in their twenties in the nineteen-twenties stimulated theatrical freedom for us in our twenty-tens. It’s an interesting exercise to compare the language, for example in Macheath’s Pardon song, of Eric Bentley’s 1960 official translation:
“The wenches with their bosoms showing / To catch the eye of men with yearnings”
with Hugh MacDiarmid’s official 1973 version:
“Those painted girls who show their breasts off / To lure the men who stand about them”
with the raunchiness and fucks of Cortese’s version. The relaxed and comfortable Sydney middle class audience remained so throughout, and were clearly entertained.
But the directness of the language also meant that there is no more hedging about the polemics. This version makes even more plain than the previous translations that each one of us is guilty for, as MacDiarmid wrote it:
“You gentlemen, don’t you be taken in / What keeps a man alive is hate and sin.”
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to buy Cortese’s text immediately after the show, so you’ll have to go to check out his version to get the details.
As usual in good productions it is difficult to isolate particular performers. Paul Capsis as Jenny, who also plays the Narrator, certainly takes the stage – for some commentators s/he goes too far and becomes the central character of the play. I’m not unhappy about that, since I always felt that Jenny is the one genuinely tragic character. Capsis certainly got the audience response he deserves.
The other actor I would mention, in the Sydney production, is Amanda Muggleton playing Mrs Peachum (played by Judi Connelly previously in Melbourne). This Mrs Peachum is knowing and horrible to the absolute core, as Muggleton captures the quality of voice and accuracy of tone and pitch which Weill’s music requires.
And then there is the surprise. When fear, hatred, sin and corruption beggars belief, what might not be the explosive result? However comfortable you are in middle class Australia, go see and find out the truth.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 5
Baz Luhrman, à la Moulin Rouge, meets Bertolt Brecht in Michael Kantor’s vision of The Threepenny Opera. As Phillip Adams commented on Late Night Live as I drove home from Sydney, it’s a ten dollar set for a threepenny opera. Quite a few thousands of dollars, in reality. Is it Entertainment or Polemic, Underbelly or Over the Top?
Whatever – it works. Cortese writes “My aim in adapting the text has been to honour the original, while updating it to a modern Australian context” which means in Sydney the setting is in a kind of Kings Cross, Campbell Street, Palmer Street, Darlinghurst Road, Oxford Street sort of Sydney, in something like the Brigadier Spry era that I remember when policemen were known to accidentally fall on prisoners (as if they still don’t occasionally on Palm Island, Queensland).
At the same time the costumes, designed brilliantly by Anna Cordingley, are exaggerated circus, the singing is a howling parody of opera which extracts every bit of meaning out of Weill’s amazing music, the characters are colourful cut-outs – puppets manipulated by the strings of society. If you have an image of 1928 German style like this from http://threepennyopera.org/histChron.php
you’ll need to think again for this:
An important point for me in seeing this production is to realise how much the daring of Brecht/Weill in their twenties in the nineteen-twenties stimulated theatrical freedom for us in our twenty-tens. It’s an interesting exercise to compare the language, for example in Macheath’s Pardon song, of Eric Bentley’s 1960 official translation:
“The wenches with their bosoms showing / To catch the eye of men with yearnings”
with Hugh MacDiarmid’s official 1973 version:
“Those painted girls who show their breasts off / To lure the men who stand about them”
with the raunchiness and fucks of Cortese’s version. The relaxed and comfortable Sydney middle class audience remained so throughout, and were clearly entertained.
But the directness of the language also meant that there is no more hedging about the polemics. This version makes even more plain than the previous translations that each one of us is guilty for, as MacDiarmid wrote it:
“You gentlemen, don’t you be taken in / What keeps a man alive is hate and sin.”
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to buy Cortese’s text immediately after the show, so you’ll have to go to check out his version to get the details.
As usual in good productions it is difficult to isolate particular performers. Paul Capsis as Jenny, who also plays the Narrator, certainly takes the stage – for some commentators s/he goes too far and becomes the central character of the play. I’m not unhappy about that, since I always felt that Jenny is the one genuinely tragic character. Capsis certainly got the audience response he deserves.
The other actor I would mention, in the Sydney production, is Amanda Muggleton playing Mrs Peachum (played by Judi Connelly previously in Melbourne). This Mrs Peachum is knowing and horrible to the absolute core, as Muggleton captures the quality of voice and accuracy of tone and pitch which Weill’s music requires.
And then there is the surprise. When fear, hatred, sin and corruption beggars belief, what might not be the explosive result? However comfortable you are in middle class Australia, go see and find out the truth.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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