2011: In Praise of Nepotism - Philip Parsons 2011 Memorial Lecture by Katharine Brisbane. Feature article.

In Praise of Nepotism, ‘the unfair preferment of nephews’ or To Every Age its Art, to Art its Freedom.

Philip Parsons 2011 Memorial Lecture by Katharine Brisbane founder and chair of the cultural activist association, Currency House, her major activity since 2000, after leaving Currency Press which she also founded, now exactly 40 years ago.



Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney. Sunday November 27.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Although the audience for the doyenne of theatre in Australia was smaller than I had expected, the presence of the high-energy young new playwrights waiting for the annual Young Playwright’s Award which accompanies the Memorial Lecture, made Katharine Brisbane’s theme especially significant.

Though she is, in her words, "on the cusp of 80", she is not afraid of the risk that this may be like standing on a berm on a Sydney beach – a narrow shelf of sand which might suddenly collapse into the oncoming tide. Her speech was a disturbing interpretation of the history and the current state of Australian theatre. Are we all on the cusp of something unpredictable?

You will be able to hear the full speech on the ABC, Radio National: Big Ideas in February 2012 – keep an eye on the ABC website for details in January – but in the meantime I would like to wrap up her surprising theme In Praise of Nepotism for the coming Season of Goodwill and Cheer.

Brisbane concludes by saying “… we, the public and the artists at the centre, need more than just goodwill. We need curiosity.” And her very last words are “Our Indigenous artists must have the last word. They understand this. While we are arguing about economic imperatives, the imperative of Aboriginal artists is community culture, its interpretation, appropriation and preservation. This is just as contentious a task as it is in the white community. But they know that if they let it go, it will be gone forever. We need to learn that lesson too.”

Nepotism, she explains, is about “the creation of an in-group to achieve a common purpose, defend itself from outside attack and directly contravene our democratic belief in a fair go for all.” Nepotism showed its good profile in Melbourne’s Australian Performing Group, beginning with Marvellous Melbourne, in the graduates of early NIDA (The Legend of King O’Malley) and through to the establishment of the Victorian College of the Arts (before it was absorbed into Melbourne University) and the creation of Sydney’s Performance Syndicate by “the only real philosopher our theatre has produced”, Rex Cramphorn.

But she laments the huge government subsidies from the mid-1970s which, though they have led to state theatre companies and high-quality training, have taken audiences away from ‘dingo’ theatre (Jack Hibberd’s description) into safe territory according to the still “fundamental influence of our respectable [British colonial] emancipist classes”, avoiding our “[Irish] convict stain”. This has been done, she says, as “Commerce was now in conflict with culture. The 70s was, remember, the time when the Nobel prizewinner Friedrich von Hayek was leading a movement to replace our former measures of cultural value – on the ground that we humans were unstable creatures – with the more reliable face value imposed by the economy.”

The dark side of nepotism, Brisbane says, is that “Security in your own arts sector is what enables work to flow. But if timidity and arrogance is a consequence … then it is anti-art. That arrogance is bred by the old order of received opinion, which leads to tired revivals and preservation of one’s territory. But because our pursuit of excellence from the start excluded from government funding that whole layer of popular entertainment, amateur groups, private studios, end of year concerts and regional extravaganzas which once engaged people in the making of art, our artists have become a collection of specialists for whom communication outside their art has become more and more difficult. The less they try to break through this barrier the more they are misunderstood. It seems that only for artists is the word ‘elite’ a pejorative. In the sports world they are heroes. Why is this? Because, when the opportunities came in the 70s, the arts sector did not take their audiences with them."

The reason I go to Belvoir St is because it is the grandchild of Nimrod, the child of Jane St and the early NIDA graduates. I can only hope that Belvoir’s annual hosting of the Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture, this year presented by his wife Katharine Brisbane – former critic, publisher with him of Currency Press, and long-time cultural activist – will generate the curiosity our culture needs to survive among the new writers like Zoe Coombs Marr, who won the 2011 Young Playwright’s Award, and that they take their audiences with them. The electric energy that sparked around the theatre as the announcement was made augurs well for a collapse of the old berm and the creation of the new.

Thanks to Katharine Brisbane for such a highly stimulating address – and listen to Radio National to hear the full story, or read the final version of Katharine's speech now on the Currency House website at:

http://www.currencyhouse.org.au/sites/default/files/transcripts/In%20Praise%20of%20Nepotism%20final_0.pdf


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: The Fall of the City by Archibald MacLeish

The Fall of the City by Archibald MacLeish, directed by Andrew Holmes. ANU School of Cultural Inquiry, College of the Arts and Social Sciences at ANU Arts Centre Drama Lab October 26-29, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 29

Following Andrew Holmes’ production of MacLeish’s Panic (on the blog August 25, 2011), The Fall of the City is his next research project. Holmes writes “I am currently undertaking a PhD in Drama, with a focus on revaluing Archibald MacLeish’s early achievements in the genre of verse drama. However, rather than focussing on the more traditional methods of analysis that have accompanied much discourse around MacLeish’s career as a playwright, I am seeking to understand how his plays work in their performance context rather than, as MacLeish himself would have put it, how they read as ‘thin little books to lie on front parlor tables.’”

Holmes states that The Fall of the City was the first American verse play written for broadcast radio, in 1937, which places it in context as an early example of work such as Australian poet Douglas Stewart’s Fire on the Snow (1941) and Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood (1954). The latter will be staged in May 2012 by Sydney Theatre Company as a “play with voices” rather than as a “play for voices” on radio.

Perhaps taking a cue from the original 1953 presentation at the YMHA New York of Under Milk Wood before it was broadcast by the BBC, where five actors stood on stage without moving, except for Thomas himself who stepped forward for the Reverend Eli Jenkins’ morning prayer, Holmes had his audience seated on the flat stage of the Drama Lab looking up at figures with white masks in the raked seating. Only Duncan Ley, as the radio reporter, was without a mask, speaking into his microphone.

In this role, Ley found just the right degree of precision of voice and clarity of descriptive expression for an announcer giving the radio audience a detailed mental picture of the scene in the city square, the flurries of movement and silences among the crowd (perhaps of 10,000, he tells us) as the Conqueror approaches. His commentary is interspersed with speeches, such as from a woman in the crowd expressing her fear for the future, a state minister on a podium seeking a peaceful response rather than violence in the face of terrorism, ‘messengers’ who report what has happened in a nearby city through which the Conqueror has just passed, a man in the crowd expressing the need to defend freedom. While each individual speaks s/he removes the mask, and the whole crowd (of 20 actors) move in stylised unison in response to the changing moods until the Conqueror arrives. Despite what has to be a deep apprehension, the crowd succumbs to the charisma of the Conqueror and cheer him as if he is a hero rather than a controlling dictator taking their freedom away from them.

This simple visual representation of the scene seemed to me to enhance the effect that the play would have if it were presented on radio today. Whereas radio in the 1930s had nation-wide sway (Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds proving a highly disturbing example, apart from Hitler’s speeches), today perhaps only the talkback shock-jocks can claim to have anything like the same impact. I guess that MacLeish’s poetry would quickly fade into the ether, while Holmes’ stage treatment, though for a small audience, had strength in a message that is a warning that today we are not far from the dangers that developed in the 1930s. Only an hour or so before seeing The Fall of the City tonight, I saw the breaking news intrude across the ABC website that Alan Joyce had just announced the complete shutdown of Qantas indefinitely, until the unions ‘come to agreement’.

I certainly think that Holmes’ approach to taking MacLeish’s work out of ‘thin little books’ and onto the stage has worked effectively to show the quality of MacLeish’s writing. Since it would not be practical to take so many actors on tour, it could be worthwhile videoing this production of The Fall of the City. Even a limited television or YouTube distribution could bring MacLeish’s warning to the fore, at the very time we need it. After all, PhDs in the sciences have direct impacts in the real world. Why shouldn’t a Drama PhD?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Four Flat Whites in Italy by Roger Hall

Four Flat Whites in Italy by Roger Hall. Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre at The Street, Canberra. October 25-29, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 25

It’s a nice play, like Mrs Worthington’s daughter, “But,” as Noel Coward sang, “Mrs Worthington, dear Mrs Worthington, don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington.” I don’t mean the actors shouldn’t have been on the stage last night, but the author has some questions to answer.

Every play has a context within which it might be judged. Having just seen the so much cleverer Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, I can’t help thinking Roger Hall needs some critical advice. However worthy, he’s a Kiwi who shouldn’t go out in the midday sun without a proper pith helmet.

My reason for taking such a critical position – rather than simply saying that this production is as entertaining as one would normally expect from Ensemble Theatre – is reading commentary in NZ Herald TV like ‘Rather than batting away the question of whether he sees himself as New Zealand's greatest playwright, he considers it through a rational commercial lens. "The merit or otherwise of my plays aside, I've written more plays and fed more into the box office than any other New Zealand playwright."’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlfVahGfutE, while elsewhere the idea has been put around that Roger Hall is New Zealand’s David Williamson.

Though I have at times been critical of Williamson’s penchant for one liner comedies, Four Flat Whites in Italy can’t be compared with, say, Travelling North, which also deals with an older couple rediscovering the truth in their relationship in making a change. On the other hand, if Four Flat Whites is meant to be no more than light comedy, it hasn’t the delicate touch of a Noel Coward play like, say, Private Lives which has a similar pair of couples format.

Hall makes his themes – nowadays called ‘tropes’, I guess – far too explicit by using the husband Adrian as both commentator on and participant in the action. Sandra Bates as director and Michael Ross, the actor, handle this as well as the script allows, but you only have to look at Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie to see how it should be done. The problem here is that Adrian’s action in the past (falling asleep at the wheel and causing his and Alison’s daughter’s paraplegia and early death) is so central to the serious side of the play that it is embarrassing to have Adrian speak directly to the audience in comedy mode.

Because we see Alison – played very well by Sharon Flanagan with the full depth of the emotions resulting from her reaction to her life as Joanna’s carer – as a realistic character coming to terms with tragedy, it is difficult to know how to respond to the revival of her love for Adrian who, to us, has been outside the story as much as inside. The dance under the stars at the end, to me at least, became a simplistic sentimental romance conclusion which undermined the reality of Alison’s experience, while apparently her forgiving Adrian simply lifted all guilt and emotional weight from his shoulders. All too easy, for my liking.

The other themes, of wealth, of political positioning, of being Kiwi, of realising that someone else needs a bit of help when life has treated them unfairly, are all embedded in the other two characters. Henri Szeps and Mary Regan play Harry and his second wife Judy skilfully and to great comic effect as well as neatly handling the change of attitude towards Alison and Adrian as they discover more about Joanna’s life and death.

Yet these characters are there as ciphers, obviously symbolising points that the author wants to include in the play that New Zealanders will respond to. The success of the play at home, and the recognition by the audience on opening night here of the right times to laugh, showed that Hall has found his marks.

It was a bit problematical last night, though, that in real life the All Blacks had just beaten France and won the World Cup, when in the play, set in 2007, France had just beaten the All Blacks in a quarter-final and the Kiwis were in mourning for the loss. Perhaps this affected my response to the scene watching the rugby. Though the actors did it all very well, it went on far too long for me, watching their reactions to a screen I couldn’t see. Maybe this was a case where multi-media could have been used and we could all have seen famous footballers flailing in the face of French infallibility.

So though the night was enjoyable, I can’t say it was fully satisfying. Perhaps it’s being too harsh to say that, like Mrs Worthington’s daughter, it shouldn’t be on the stage. But it does seem to me not to be a play of the same standing as Neil Simon or David Williamson who have been a standard for Ensemble Theatre over the years.

____________________________________________________________________


Those readers who are probably much younger than me (or perhaps you’ve just lost your memory) can see a fair representation of Mrs Worthington by Fenton Gray at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=RA8XKb8OFfA (Uploaded by FentonGray on 16 May 2010)

and, though I think you will have to buy Coward’s original recording of this song, you can watch him singing others (like Mad Dogs and Englishmen) in his inimitable impeccable style at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=1ccGh8-Ipww (Noel Coward's first television appearance! Uploaded by kitschbitch on 4 Feb 2007).

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Debt Defying Acts – The Wharf Revue

Debt Defying Acts – The Wharf Revue by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott, with Amanda Bishop. Sydney Theatre Company at The Playhouse, Canberra, October 18-22, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 18

At the urinal, conversation flowed, fulsome and pithy:

“They really are clever.”
“They are! They are!”

Taking the piss out of politicians certainly worked on Canberra’s public servants.

Powers must have been specially delegated from DFAT considering the inordinate responses not only to the present Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd in the guise of the Phantom of the Opera, but also the mysterious appearance in the downstairs disabled toilet of ex-Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who didn’t want to be told anything about anything. The Phantom, of course, was holding his ambition (i.e. the Prime Minister Julia Gillard) incognito, insisting in magnificent song on his undying love for her.

Why is the disabled toilet downstairs where disabled people can’t get to it? – exactly. Just the place for a quiet read (Alexander had come to recover a forgotten tome), or for holding someone incognito, and indeed for a final stab in the back. As Julia made clear, this time she will do it properly, while Kevin slumped across the piano keyboard – I could say, “dead, buried and cremated”.

Which reminds me of the other phantom of this circus: a clown who appeared only briefly at the beginning as a shadow figure with big ears – Tony Abbott, the evil Dr No with his Invisible Mandate. Julia, Queen of the High Wire Balancing Act, was there, though actually riding a nameless (faceless?) pony. Wild Barry O’Farrell (or was it Farry O’Barrel?) got his gun with the help of the religious right. Even the Faded Rose of Yesteryear, Miss Kittie Keneally, had her day. The Tragedy of King Rupert played out to its inevitable conclusion as his favourite seeming daughter Rebekah took nothing, while his Crouching Tiger wife took everything. But no show for Tony Abbott.

Was the problem that there is simply nothing funny to write about an Opposition in a political revue? Or just about this Opposition?

Getting a bit more serious, a good revue should edge towards satire. If it’s edgy enough it should reach some kind of horrible truth. This was achieved in this year’s Wharf Revue in a shadow puppet presentation of the shock-jock horror, Alan Jones and those he has spawned. Using recordings of their broadcasts, including the ring-ins, this segment was parallel to wayang puppetry which might bring down a dictator in another country. If only, in our case.

And getting very serious, this production is magnificent. The action is fast-paced with great timing throughout, in a circus-tent set which incorporates its own lighting, sound and visual media, reminding me of the amazing Famous Spiegeltent. We are used to the annual Wharf Revue, of course, but this year I thought Amanda Bishop’s singing, dancing and athleticism stood out (upside down at the very end), as did Drew Forsythe’s Rupert Murdoch as King Lear. Switching so many roles – and some very complicated costumes – in short order, with each new character instantly recognisable, was a strength in all four performers.

My conclusion is that the Canberra Theatre Centre should have employed this team to launch its 2012 Program (see Love Song blog posted October 6) as well as including The Wharf Revue again next year (as they have).

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Bloodland by Kathy Balngayngu, Stephen Page (director) and Wayne Blair

Bloodland by Kathy Balngayngu, Stephen Page (director) and Wayne Blair. Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, October 7 – November 13, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 12

We need patience for Bloodland just as the Yolgnu need it in their own culture and to survive in “Australia Fair”. Be patient, allow yourself to gradually become absorbed into the twists and turns of cross-cultural existence, and you will be rewarded with a new understanding at the end.

There is humour in this drama – Mrs White, who teaches the children Advance Australia Fair and kills them if they speak language, Donkey the Dog who howls when AAF is sung, and Cherish who collects mobile phones, including ones whose service has been disconnected. But laughter is relief from tragedy in the Shakespearian sense.

In Romeo and Juliet tragedy derives from the opposing families, the Montagues and the Capulets whose children must not cross an unnecessary boundary. It is a romantic tragedy, because the deaths force the issue of the moral imperative of peace upon us. For the Yolgnu life is much more complicated because there are clans based in different parts of Yolgnu country, while a person in any clan may be Dhuwa or Yirritja and is forbidden to marry a person from their own group.

So the opportunities for conflict over romantic attachments which cross boundaries are rife. Whereas the Duke could lay down the law, which would have made it clear that Romeo and Juliet should have been allowed to come together in peace, and that Juliet’s father’s choice of who she must marry had no standing, Yolgnu law says that the man Billy, although having been away for years while gaining an education in the city, remains the only correct husband for Gapu. She makes the proper decision despite her feelings for Runu and his for her. There is no romance in this tragic ending, for Runu or Gapu. The law has been fulfilled, as it has been established over thousands of years for the survival of the people as a whole.

Add to all of this the imposition and the attractions of a culture of individual demands for freedoms, and conflicts become irreconcilable, even when elders try to maintain the proper ceremonies. For those of us whose forebears have come to these shores in very recent times, the best – in fact the only – offer we can make is patience, respect and proper treatment of those who came here so long before us. Advance Australia fair is what this brave drama says to all of us.

Looking at this production from a theatrical point of view, it is impressive to see such a range of Indigenous performers working at top quality level. For me the concluding ceremony represents a major shift in drama – which of course Stephen Page’s Bangarra Dance Company has made in pure dance – from the attempts to imitate non-Indigenous naturalistic plays, which I remember from the beginnings of Black Theatre in the early 1970s, to work where scenes both display Yolgnu practice and create symbolic meaning for a non-Indigenous audience, even including performance in Yolgnu language. This takes Indigenous theatre beyond even work such as Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead which in my view was a major development – and was performed by Wayne Blair.

From a practical point of view, if it is difficult to get to Sydney for 8pm performances, take advantage of STC’s matinees at 1pm on Wednesdays or Mondays at 6.30pm. Try not to miss Bloodland.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Little Day Out by Justine Clarke

Little Day Out. Justine Clarke and her three-piece band at Canberra Theatre, October 6, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

As a theatre experience for littlies on an imaginary day out – when they are actually on a real littlies’ day out to the theatre – Justine Clarke’s show is not to be missed. But you will have to try to squeeze your way in to the Sydney Opera House on Saturday October 8. The original Canberra tour publicity mentioned only the 10am show that I saw today, but this was followed by a 12 noon performance as well, so I can only assume that bookings for Saturday will be overflowing.

And so they should be. Justine (I’m sure I can use first names like all the ABC Playschool viewers do) is not just multi-talented but speaks personally to every child in the audience, fully justifying her claim “If you imagine there’s one child sitting on the floor watching, and you might actually get that child up on her feet, spark her imagination, that’s really everything you want to do as an actor. You want to tell a story and for that to ignite something.”

She certainly ignited a toddler’s mosh pit in the Canberra Theatre and absolutely nobody cried despite the crush. Good training for when they become teenagers. Adulation training – but without the negative overtones they will have to learn to watch for in later years.

Acculturation training is another way of looking at this show, and others like it. Over the years I’ve seen a few. They are not all so alike when I look back.

The Playschool tradition, stretching at least from Justine Clarke back to Monica Trapaga clearly stands out because these performers are experienced actors and musicians who are expert at communicating, through the tv screen and on stage.

Shows not in this league that I recall are the Gary Ginivan style in Pooh (2000) when I heard a parent explain to her 3-year-old after the show, "A movie's on a big screen. This was a play." It was hard to tell the difference. Much the same was true of the Dora the Explorer Live! show Dora’s Pirate Adventure (2008) where the whole performance was in lock-step with a pre-recorded sound track and everything from eye-flashing to emotional expression was pure formula. Even Humphrey B Bear, which perhaps ironically began Justine’s career when she appeared as a littlie in an Arnott’s biscuit advertisement, never matched Playschool for personality and quality contact with children.

Learning to appreciate good theatre is one aspect of acculturation which I think children can never get enough of. And I could never complain about the wide range of musical styles, as well as the basics of singing, rhythm and dancing in Justine’s work. But there are aspects of the content of the songs which had me thinking.

Almost everything in the show is colonial white and British. Although it is secular, as it should be to maintain independence from religious affiliation, one would think that Australia is absolutely monocultural except for one feature: the music, which varied from jazz, reggae, country and western, and even Aussie 70’s to a smidgeon of Beatles in the pre-show intro. This was reinforced when under the sea Justine found a yellow submarine.

Otherwise the only non-British bit was in the Gum Tree Family song, where we find in and around the tree a kookaburra, a koala, a platypus and a kangaroo. But soon after we are back hopping with bunnies as if we don’t have an Australian hopping mouse – or a bilby. Even the sun is merely ‘yellow’ shining mildly through – on the big screen – English green oak leaves (though I could be mistaken – perhaps they were Canadian maple). And, despite the range of people in the audience, there was nothing to discover on this Little Day Out about all the different coloured people who live in Australia, or the people who live in dry red country and have never built a sandcastle at the seaside or even seen the sea.

So, educationally speaking, I would dearly love to see Justine’s wonderful theatrical skills turned more towards our children’s lives in this country. Even Dora the Explorer teaches American children the Spanish they will need when Latinos outnumber Europeans in many areas, though I’m sure Justine could do similar teaching much more subtly than Dora. Let’s take our littlies on an imaginary day out in a more Australian land. After all, how British are the Teletubbies, and how American is Sesame Street?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Love Song by John Kolvenbach (after Canberra Theatre Centre’s program for 2012)

Love Song by John Kolvenbach. Centrepiece Theatre directed by Jordan Best at The Q, Queanbyean Performing Arts Centre, October 5-9 and 12-15, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

My evening began with a rather boring and certainly unsophisticated presentation of the Canberra Theatre Centre’s program for 2012. That doesn’t mean that the program contains no shows of interest. Just the unfunny ‘humour’ of the on-stage presenters between talking heads videos was terribly anti-dramatic, in unfortunate contrast, I should say, to the excellent modern dance item by Charmene Yap and Richard Cilli from Sydney Dance Company. Even the aria and duet from Don Giovanni, though sung quite well, were not staged or acted to the standard one might expect for this theatre.

The 2012 season is an eclectic and quite varied set of ‘Collected Works’ which you can check out at canberratheatrecentre.com.au/season2012 .

What a relief, then, to dash over to Queanbeyan for Love Song. Jordan Best’s Centrepiece Theatre have done good work since their inception six years ago, and have become one of the region’s reliably worthwhile small independent companies. The Q stage, also small and worthwhile, with good sightlines and acoustics, was a nice choice of venue for this production.

Direction and design are right for this play, and all the actors – Tim Sekuless as Beane, Jenna Roberts as his sister Joan, Jim Adamik as her husband Harry and Sophie Benassi as Beane’s ‘lover’ Molly – have captured the absurdity of the situation, timed the comedy very well and created a genuine sense of empathy at the right moments.

The tricky thing about this play is that it can easily appear that Beane represents a realistic character with a mental illness. Some reviewers of other productions seem to assume this, but what is his illness? Is it an extreme form of autism? No, autistic people are normally rational, despite their problems with making social connections. Is it depression? It certainly seems bi-polar, but Beane’s kind of fantasy is out of place. Is it schizophrenia, since Beane seems to have illusions which seem real to him? Perhaps. But in the end this play is not derived from the author’s research into actual mental health states.

His characters are metaphors for types of people. The play is a purely fictional dramatic construct, designed to make us think about ourselves in comparison to his characters. It seems a very modern play (first produced in 2006) but the technology, the language and the jobs characters have are merely superstructure.

Beane represents no more than a character who is unable to understand the world he lives in, and creates a fantasy (Molly) of sexual success. Only when he comes to recognise what he has done does he begin to come to terms with reality. This is Hamlet – though Ophelia is real, it is her role as his fantasy which he has to come to terms with: a tragedy because she really dies before he reaches understanding. Kolvenbach plays something of a game with us by making Molly appear to be real to us, as well as to Beane, and she appears to us to really leave him at the point of his realisation that she is no more than his fantasy. This makes for a happy ending – making the play a comedy.

Because the play is an imaginary construct, the production needs to make that clear to us. The provenance of this play is more like the absurdism of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros or Beckett’s Waiting for Godot than even Albee’s The Zoo Story which at first sight it seems to be similar to. On the other hand all these authors were much more stringent, and never produced a neat OK conclusion like Kolvenbach, where Joan and Harry find love while Beane finds himself. Nor did Shakespeare. Maybe Kolvenbach has not honestly come to terms with the reality of the human condition.

Yet, despite Kolvenbach not being quite the great playwright, Jordan Best and her team have done his script proud. In fact they have made the play seem better than it is. What that says about coming to terms with reality, I’ll leave to you, the reader and hopefully the viewer of Love Song at The Q.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: MP by Alana Valentine

MP by Alana Valentine. Commissioned by The Street Theatre, directed by Caroline Stacey, designed by Imogen Keen. At The Street October 1-15, 2011

Reviewed by Frank McKone

There is something Shakespearean about Alana Valentine’s latest play. I’m thinking about Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and, on the more political level, of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. I’m also thinking of the style of performance, which some would call ‘representational’, with its switching between inter-character speech and direct address to the audience – the soliloquies which Shakespeare made famous. And I’m thinking about the setting at the seat of central government and the issue of the nature of government. Is something rotten in the state of representative democracy in Canberra?

It also felt to me, as a citizen of Canberra, like what citizens of London, the seat of English government, must have felt in Shakespeare’s day. So many people – including politicians and bureaucrats I noted among the audience – responded so spontaneously to the experiences of the characters on stage that I’m sure this is how those in the political know in London would have laughed while watching the machinations play out.

Groundlings, like me, would have been empathising with the personalities of the politician Ava Turner, her supportive partner Raymond, her ambitious adviser Nadia, her terribly disabled son Cliff, her political party nemesis Drew, the astute journalist Tracey, the head of department Bonnie, and the couple Gary and Laura Robbins whose disabled daughter was raped and committed suicide. Watching how they all treated each other was a bit like watching Othello, except that the play is a political comedy with a kind of happy ending.

In other words, this is a play well worth watching for its content, plot and characters.

But, of course, a good script must be presented well – and this one is.

Geraldine Turner, billed as ‘starring’ in the role of Ava, fits the bill. She plays the twists and turns of emotion and power-play in Ava’s intimate and public relations with focus and strength of acting which holds the play together until the final surprising moment.

Her skill and standing as an actor might have dominated the production when working with a largely local cast with less experience, but it was clear that Leah Baulch (Nadia), Stephen Barker (Gary Robbins / Raymond), Soren Jensen (Cliff / Drew) and Andrea Close (Canberra Critics’ Circle Award 2007) in the multiple roles of Laura Robbins, Bonnie, Tracey, a waitress and Madeleine (another constituent from Ava’s electorate whose appearance concludes the play) had all been welded together to form a team of equals. This is to the credit, of course, of an expert director in Caroline Stacey, whose understanding of the style needed was also made clear in the technical aspects of the acting, movement, set design, lighting (by Nick Merrylees) and sound (by Liberty Kerr).

The set design – shaky towers of balancing plates representing a Member of Parliament’s massive correspondence load – was complemented by the sounds of smashing crockery and made a surprising but very effective metaphor for the fragility of the political life, and of life in general. Simple in form but imaginative, the design and directing allowed the themes of the play to stand out against the background of complex day-to-day government and the personal interplay of the people involved.

Author Alana Valentine, on opening night, took a curtain call with the cast and thoroughly deserved the applause. If this is the standard we can expect from the Street Theatre’s commissioning program in future, then Canberra may at last achieve the permanent local professional theatre company it has long deserved.

© Frank McKone, Canberra