2012: Food by Steve Rodgers

Emma Jackson as Nancy and Kate Box as Elma

Food by Steve Rodgers.  Directed by Kate Champion (Force Majeure) and Steve Rodgers at Belvoir Downstairs, Sydney, April 28 – May 20, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 29

Kate Champion - Co-director

Steve Rodgers - Writer and Co-director

Kate Box as Elma and Fayssal Bazzi as Hakan

Elma, of the sharp knives, looking into the eyes of Hakan, peripatetic Turk, as he looks into hers, making her decision to give him permission to kiss her, thinks aloud these words: Between the words!

This is the thematic climax of this new play, down-to-earth Australian in content, character and style.  It seems to me to settle into this century’s tradition set by Andrew Bovell and Christos Tsiolkas in its dialogue, yet takes off into the new form of dance theatre which Force Majeure has created.

The result is at times terrifying, funny and deeply saddening.  In this work, as in all good drama, it is what is happening, has happened and might happen, between the words, that catches our imagination and rings bells of truth about our lives.

Before going further, I should declare my potential for bias, since I taught Steve Rodgers drama in his senior secondary school years and trained him for the audition which took him to his tertiary training at University of Western Sydney, Nepean.

I also broke what I’m told is a cardinal rule for a critic, never to talk to the author or director after the show.  After 25 years I couldn’t miss the opportunity.  But I guarantee my reaction to the play, thoroughly confirmed by the excited response from the rest of the audience, was absolutely established in the last moment of silence before the lights came up for curtain call.

Because I have previously favourably reviewed two of Kate Champion’s works, The Age I’m In (2010) and Never Did Me Any Harm (Sydney Festival 2012) and seen the development from pure dance toward dance theatre, I wanted to ask Rodgers about the process he and Champion had gone through.  In this play I saw the choreographed movement working to reveal the feelings and meanings behind the everyday actions and words, integrating the text and plot in a new way.

Interestingly, Rodgers said that his original text was much longer, but as he and the actors worked with Champion, and she choreographed movement which ‘illustrated’ the text, it was often the case that the text should be cut and the movement stand in its own right.  In Never Did Me Any Harm which I saw only last January, words were used but seemed to me to be an expressive layer often exploding out from the feelings established in movement, which itself was choreographed closer to pure dance than in Food.  Now the words, movement and feelings come to us as a three-dimensional whole. 

It really is exciting to see new developments in theatrical form happening literally before my very eyes, only a metre or so from my front row seat.  It was also satisfying, talking about past times with Steve, to realise that he recognised the value of the educational drama processes of group improvisation, giving students the power to lead their own work, allowing creative writing to be assessed on the same terms as critical or analytic writing, and basing drama work on relationships in action rather than studying text isolated from action.

So what does happen in Food?  Elma (Kate Box) is in the kitchen of the small country town café she has set up with her sister Nancy (Emma Jackson).  The whole set is made up of pots and pans of every imaginable size.  Elma is already busy with the knives preparing for the men who will soon be there for breakfast, but Nancy is still in the shower, moving and singing to dance music.

At first she moves gently and in sync with the rhythm, but gradually becomes more and more agitated and out of time before at last coming out angrily responding to her sister’s increasingly autocratic demands.  Half-spoken words and looks – every turn of a face, twist of a wrist, sideways glance of an eye is choreographed, with the same kind of skill as in a traditional Indian dance – begin to reveal a dark family history for these two sisters.  It’s not my place to tell you of it here.  You need to experience the revelations for yourself.

The plot lightens when the sisters advertise for help, and Hakan (Fayssal Bazzi) steps off the bus. He’s a joker but essentially sincere, nothing like the Aussie boys and men who have wreaked havoc, physical and emotional, in the growing-up time of the two sisters.

He offers something that Nancy understands her elder sister needs.  He also is crucial in making the business grow, including indeed all of us in a kind of loaves-and-fishes audience participation.  I’ve seen real cooking on stage before, but this was a great degustation event not to be missed.

It was while celebrating the wonderful success that the scene is set for that kiss and more “between the words”.  Of course, Hakan has gone in the morning, knowing his role in Elma’s new understanding, and, I guess, recognising the conflict he would cause between the sisters if he stayed.  As they prepare the food for the coming day there is a brief mini-reprise of the tensions we saw at the beginning of the play, a sort of sadness at Hakan’s departure, then an understanding in their eye-contact, and a calm silence as they settle to the work and the lights dim to black.

The sensitivity and skills which each actor showed was quite extraordinary, supported in every detail by Anna Tregloan’s set and costume design, Martin Langthorne’s lighting and audio visual effects, and Ekrem Mülayim’s sound and music composition.  This production is literally and metaphorically a brilliant reflection of life in this country of contrasts of the best and the worst kind.  It is theatre you should not miss.

Kate Box

Emma Jackson

Fayssal Bazzi

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Let the Sunshine by David Williamson

Let the Sunshine by David Williamson.  Presented by Christine Harris & HIT Productions at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, directed by Denis Moore, April 26-29, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 26

This is a comedy of very good manners, on the part of the cast and crew especially. 

Even the characters finally work their way through their prejudices, self-centredness and argumentativeness to a neat rom-com happy ending, as the parents finally learn to accept the reality of their 30 and 33 year old children’s love of the “inward smile” kind.

What I liked about this production, reviving the success of the original 2009 Ensemble Theatre show, was the high energy level of all the performances, the nicely managed twists and turns and timing which showed excellent directing, the design of a simple set which kept the action constantly on its toes, and the live and recorded sound design.  Williamson’s best comedies of manners are traditionally ‘well-made plays’ and this production is well made on all fronts.

Reviving the play, and touring around the country, is also a well-worthwhile exercise. 

It reflects on the Great Financial Crisis which began in 2007, and looked forward to the likelihood of things getting worse rather than better.  In 2012 we can reach our own conclusions about Williamson’s perspicacity.

It also shows us the ‘issues’ of Gen X, Y or Z (wherever we are up to by now), especially letting us come to terms with the fact that while all things change, all things stay the same, as each new generation has to deal with its parents.  Both sides may look for rational and reasonable deals, but the human condition is not actually of that kind.  The best we can do is look for the kindness of the inward smile.

In other words, I was more than entertained by the comedy.  It was a satisfying night out at a serious level too, and makes me keen to see the next Williamson play in a couple of weeks’ time, When Dad Married Fury, which Sandra Bates is directing at The Ensemble.  The idea that Williamson’s move to Noosa was into retirement has been knocked on the head, especially as, in Let the Sunshine, he seems to reflect through film-maker Toby and his musician-turning-producer son Rick on something of his own experiences since the 1960s.

I have one gripe, though, about the Christine Harris & HIT management, as I did about the management of the previous The Q presentation I reviewed, Syncopation by Critical Stages & The Follies Company.  Can’t touring companies at least provide the audience with a record for them to take home of the cast and crew?  I think it’s an insult to the actors especially, and unfair in terms of their careers, as well as unfair to The Q, that I had to stand in front of a single poster, while others had to read over my shoulder, in order to write down the names of seriously praiseworthy theatre practitioners.

Here the actors are:  Toni Scanlan as the musician’s mother Ros, Dennis Coard as his father Toby, Peter Phelps as millionaire developer Ron, Alexandra Fowler as his big-spending wife Natasha.  Their daughter, feral lawyer and partner in love, Emma was played ferociously at first and warmly at last by Hannah Norris, and Ryan Hayward transformed from wafty musician to business-like husband Rick.

With director Denis Moore were Shaun Gurton (set design), Adrienne Chisholm (costumes – Ron’s changes got great laughs), Nick Merrylees (lighting – spot on) and Peter Farnan (sound).  But without a program, I haven’t all the pictures I would like to show here.  This is a shame.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Punch and the Magic Box by Hunky Dory Puppets

Punch and the Magic Box  Hunky Dory Puppets at Belconnen Arts Centre, Tuesday April 17, 2012, 3pm.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

What would you want a chainsaw for?  To open a milk carton, says Mr Punch.  But it makes such a mess.  I don’t know what to do.  What should I do with a chainsaw? 

The littlies say, Cut wood.  What kind of wood?  Tree wood, they say.  Like those trees outside my house?   Should I cut down the trees?  No, say the kids.

And so begins the lesson about our natural environment.  Despite Mrs Kangaroo’s objection that she needs the shade, Mr Punch is so excited to rev up his chainsaw that he cuts down the first two rather ordinary looking trees.  After all, Mrs Kangaroo could just wear a hat.  But when he comes to the big old tree with holes in it, leaves on it, and roots under it, Mrs Galah stops him because of her young babies in the hollow, Koala stops him because he only eats that kind of leaves, and Wombat stops him because he depends on eating those roots. 

On the way we learn that birds being born in tree hollows is just like children being born in hospital, koalas eating leaves is just like children eating leaves – like lettuce (I hope your parents give you lettuce to eat, says Koala), and wombats eating roots is just like children eating carrots (the littlies all liked carrots, just as Mr Punch did).  All through the story, Mr Punch asks the kids, Did you know that?  Yes – well you kids are really clever.  He finally puts his chainsaw away under his bed.

As Hunky Dory Puppets say on their website http://www.hunkydorypuppets.com.au/   The stories we use are devised to be educational, non-violent, positive and always have some kind of intrinsic environmental and people friendly flavour. 

In effect, Marcus and Carolyn Goddefroy apply the principle devised by the doyen of educational drama, Dorothy Heathcote, placing on the children – even 3 and 4 year olds – the ‘mantle of the expert’.  Mr Punch doesn’t know and the children tell him what to do, confirming them emotionally, and then extending their knowledge (about lettuce and carrots, for example).  And the children in the audience I observed certainly participated eagerly – though a couple of rather older kids saw through the device and sometimes deliberately challenged with the wrong answer. 

Typical! is what I would say, as a former teacher.  But Marcus, as Mr Punch, was never fazed, taking up the littlies’ responses and moving the story along.

As well as Carolyn and Marcus being puppeteers and puppet makers (of all kinds of puppets), and offering puppet making sessions for the children (at Belconnen Arts Centre this Thursday or by invitation: just email goddefroypuppets@gmail.com), Marcus is also a good magician and musician. 

As a lead-in, he involves the children in the action, in role as Hunky the Clown, giving the child volunteers the magic wand and incantations to make the tricks work, since Hunky causes failures because of his big red nose itching or sneezing.  He builds in constant surprises which keep the children on their toes.  With Marcus playing tin whistle, recorder, button and piano accordion, the magic introduces Dory with the dancing string puppets Angelina Angel (whose wings sprout so she can fly) and the rather thin, in fact skeletal, Pete the Pirate who hasn’t eaten for 300 years.  I hope you eat, says Hunky to the kids.

A community arts centre, I guess, has two key functions.  One is to provide exhibitions and performances which increase people’s appreciation of the arts, while the other is to engage people in the creation of art.  Hunky Dory Puppets covers the field in both directions.  It was good to see what they themselves call an ‘old-fashioned’ approach – not ‘slick’, not glossy, with all live music and sound effects, and with the traditional props and Punchinella style booth.  The children certainly didn’t need or miss the racy formula approach of shows like Dora the Explorer, for example, which are designed for massed audiences (and mass financial exploitation, I suspect).

Marcus and Carolyn Goddefroy are to be respected for their commitment to the small scale, personal and genuine concern for children, and their willingness to maintain ‘old-fashioned’ values in their work.  They work out of old European traditions, especially the Dutch, but apply them to themes suited to today’s children in New Zealand where they began their career, in country Queensland for some 17 years, and now in the ‘country’ city, Canberra.

Belconnen Arts Centre has a wide ranging program, but this is the only piece that involves chainsaws.  Coming up soon is everything from dance, kites, visuals, music (at Live@BAC on Fridays 5.30-7.00pm), and even the celebration of the winter solstice.  Go to

info@belconnenartscentre.com.au or ring +61 (0)2 6173 3300 for information
www.belconnenartscentre.com.au  for bookings

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Doubt: a parable by John Patrick Shanley

Cate Clelland


                

                                                                                                  




Hannah McCann                                                                                          Naoné Carrel

Doubt: a parable by John Patrick Shanley.  Free Rain Theatre Company, directed by Cate Clelland at the Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 13-29, 2012

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 13

It’s a great pleasure to see a risky piece of theatre done well.

You may ask why a Pultizer Prize winner (2005) could be called risky.  When it’s all about two people who have an argument.  You might think an argument would be dramatic, but not unless the characters come to a new understanding and change their position.  In this play only a side character, the young teacher Sister James (Hannah McCann), takes a step towards greater maturity, while the central characters – Sister Aloysius (Naoné Carrel) and Father Flynn (Jarrad West) - remain at the end as they were at the beginning.  The only other character – the mother of the Latino boy at the centre of the story, Mrs Ruiz (Ronnie Flor) – comes to the Principal’s office ready to breathe fire, and leaves in full flame. 

And what’s more challenging is that when we have watched the argument for 90 minutes, we can’t decide who won or what the truth was.  And even worse, there’s absolutely no action.  Just talk – even sermons!

The story behind the talk is quite simple.  The Principal expects the inexperienced teacher to tell her of anything she, the teacher, is not sure about.  The teacher reports that Father Flynn had taken a vulnerable recent arrival – the only boy in this Bronx school who was not Irish or Italian – for a private talk, and the boy had seemed disturbed when he returned to the classroom.  The Principal, suspicious that the boy had been molested, goes outside the rules – the Catholic ‘chain of command’ – which places men in charge of the women.  She confronts Father Flynn directly and uses subterfuge to put him in a position where he has no choice but to resign.  We learn, though, at the very end, that the Bishop not only did not accept the Principal’s accusation, but covered up by promoting Flynn to a higher position in another parish, with its school full of vulnerable boys.

So the story is, as the author has called it, a parable.  A very model of a post-modern parable in which nothing can be proven either way, yet we feel that the Principal was right to take action to protect her pupils despite her admitting finally that she had her doubts.  Any doubts we had about Father Flynn’s behaviour were swept aside by the Bishop’s promoting him – yet the truth could have been that the Bishop was correct to protect his subordinate’s career against unsubstantiated accusations.

So how was this production done well?  By focussing on simplicity, in the stage design and the acting.  By not being afraid to use disciplined silences to allow us to think through the implications of what was being said and how each character was reacting.  The drama was happening in our minds, established by the opening sermon where Father Flynn spoke directly to us in the congregation.  The writing is good, but quality presentation is needed to make it work on stage.

Each of the actors made sure that we were made aware of the motivation they had for saying what they did, for not saying what they might have, and for being silent when nothing might be said.  Each took up the challenge, and took us along with them. 

This made a highly satisfying piece of theatre, a great pleasure to experience, even though it revealed the awful side of the rigid male-dominated religious system.  Set in New York in the 1960s, shortly after the assassination of the Catholic President John F Kennedy, the play is not only still relevant today for the issue in the story (as we are now seeing in Victoria where a full inquiry into the abuse of children by priests is being seriously mooted), but is universal in its concern that we often cannot not take action despite never being able to prove the truth.

Cate Clelland and her team have taken the risk, kept their nerve throughout, focussed on the universal, and succeeded brilliantly.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

              Ronnie Flor                                                                                                                             Jarrad West