2012: Australia Day by Jonathan Biggins

Australia Day by Jonathan Biggins.  Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company co-production at Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, August 29 – September 1, 2012.

Review by Frank McKone
August 29

It’s a bit weird, I know, but Biggins’ name always reminds me of Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.Tolkien and English culture.  So watching Australia Day reminded me of an English comic playwright, famous for The Norman Conquests, Alan Ayckbourn.

In 1974, critic Eric Shorter wrote “The latest [Ayckbourn play] is called Confusions and consists of five sketches in a typically jaunty manner which have no bearing on each other but which again exhibit the author's delicious sense of humour in droll abundance.”  In fact, in my view, the second last of the five, Gosforth’s Fête, is not as frothy as this sounds, just as Australia Day is more than a witty spoof of country town incompetency.

The odd thing is that the plot of Gosforth’s Fête is almost the same as the second act of Australia Day (was Biggin’s channelling his English heritage, or borrowing from Ayckbourn?), but the social satire says that Australia is indeed very different from the Mother Country.

Both plays involve a conservative politician, a public occasion in a village/country town, speaking over a public address system which is accidentally left turned on to reveal dastardly behaviour as a tremendous thunderstorm explodes all around.  The details of the two plays are, of course, a little different, but the comic elements work beautifully in both.  The difference is how the central characters – Gordon Gosforth and Brian, the mayor of Coriole (all the Australian characters have only first names) – end up as the forces of nature and human failure reach their last gasp, and the audience’s last laugh.

The English Gosforth turns into a Hitlerian dictator, or at least would like to.  Brian, on the other hand, realises his ambition to micromanage and manipulate everything and everybody is justifiably washed away in the final downpour. 

Ayckbourn effectively warns of the dictator at the core of English whimsy.  And I suspect the Lord of the Rings makes the same point, though Tolkien and Ayckbourn were personally on opposite sides politically (Ayckbourn still is, though Tolkien died in 1973).

But, the Australian Liberal Party Mayor, Brian (played by Geoff Morell) , seeking preselection for a Federal seat, and his political opponent  Australian Greens Party, Helen (Alison Whyte), reach an understanding on two levels as the roof of the marquee caves in: respect and empathy are the keys to a workable community,  and honesty in politics is preferable.

After the laughter, Ayckbourn leaves a nasty taste about English life, which ironically our ex-pat Rupert Murdoch has tapped into since Gosforth’s Fête was written.

Biggins recognises our political game-playing, but leaves us with the good taste of common sense and compromise which can be distilled from the Australian culture.

Theatrically, Biggins’ Act 1 doesn’t match up to Ayckbourn’s playlets which lead up to Gosforth’s Fête in Confusions.  Eric Shorter seemed critical of their having “no bearing on each other”, but Ayckbourn was writing in the days when absurdism had moved on from an esoteric theatre form after World War II to the popularity of The Goons, The Goodies and Monty Python.  When I directed Confusions each of the first three playlets built the mood of impending disaster which came crashing down upon Gosforth, which is followed by a reflective Talk in the Park.

The short scenes in Act 1 of Australia Day, as the Committee meets over the months before 26th January  (or 25th March, or October – who knows?), the characters are introduced and divisions between them are laid out, but there need to be more clues, like an Agatha Christie mystery, which would lead us to talk during interval about the possible developments.  But without enough direction in the plot, we found ourselves over coffee and champagne without much to talk about, though much to laugh over. 

And much to appreciate in the performances.  But we were concerned that the role played by Kaeng Chan as Chester, an Australian born teacher of Vietnamese refugee parents, appeared, in the first Act, as token rather than of equal value.  But when it came to Act 2, Chester comes through as the most rational, the best organised, with the least personal issues and certainly incorruptible (after all, he is a teacher), alongside the rough-mouthed dogmatic, but truthful and practical Wally (powerfully played by Peter Kowitz),  the old-fashioned but genuinely caring CWA lady Marie (Valerie Bader, bravely wearing a “numbat dreaming” costume, who reconciles Wally and the Green feminist Helen), and finally the honest Robert (David James) who stands up to the culture of political manipulation (revealed over the public address system via CB radios which he thoughtfully imagined would make things go more smoothly), and who makes it clear that he is happy being a deputy rather than being corruptly made mayor.

The Coriole Australia Day Committee being democratic meant that all the actors were equal, and they certainly performed as an exemplary team.  The plot, as the Day itself turns to mud, flood, thunder and lightning, enlightens us about the Greens’ agenda.  Helen outmanoeuvres Brian, as Alison Whyte matches Geoff Morrell.  It is fair to say that here is where Biggins goes one better than Alan Ayckbourn, just as Baggins wins honourably against the Lord of the Rings.  (I won’t try to push this envelope too far!)

Rather than the sense of deep absurdity in English life leading to a simple, if horrific, conclusion – the final cynical words, in Talk in the Park, are “Might as well talk to yourself” – Australia Day brings the complex inanities of Australian life to a positive conclusion where we have seen professional give-and-take among the actors, between the actors and us in the audience, and finally among the characters of Coriole.  The play, more subtly than Gosforth’s Fête, represents the life of its culture.  This Australia Day is certainly not a disaster, whatever the forces of nature – human and atmospheric – bring to bear.

Footnote: Alan Ayckbourn went on to write 74 plays so far; this is Jonathan Biggins’ first ‘proper’ play, but he is already famous for the annual Wharf Revue.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: David Page Talks. Feature article.

David Page Talks- at Canberra Theatre Centre in the series Take Part: Artist Talk, August 25, 2012, 12:30pm

by Frank McKone

Bangarra Dance Theatre are touring their new work, Terrain – the timeless wonder and spiritual resonance of Lake Eyre to Canberra Theatre, September 13-15, with a pre-show forum at 6:30pm on the 13th.

Artistic director Stephen Page commissioned Frances Rings to choreograph work representing her mother’s country where Lake Eyre, Kati Thanda, has a powerful story of a giant kangaroo being hunted and injured in the area to the south around Maree, where Frances was brought up by her mother and German father.  The kangaroo escaped the hunters but died and turned to salt where the lake is now.

Canberra Theatre Centre are to be congratulated for establishing a new tradition, Take Part: Artist Talk.   In July, Scott Rankin talked about Ngapartji Ngapartji one, Trevor Jamieson’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara story.  Today Stephen Page’s elder brother, David, in keeping with his tradition, gave a talk in the form of a story – of the formation and growth of Bangarra and his role as composer.

When I went to a talk and demonstration of dance given by Yolgnu man Wandjuk Marika and a young nephew in Melbourne back in the late 1970s, it was difficult to believe that Marika’s desire to bring his culture to the non-Indigenous world would succeed.  He explained then why his nephew was so nervous when asked to dance stories when Marika had been given a hard time by other elders who wanted to keep their culture inviolate. He was a brave young man indeed. And, of course, how could people from the mainstream commercial culture ever learn to appreciate Aboriginal culture, so different from their own, especially concerning our relationship to the land?  But Marika was determined to try because, as he said that day, Aboriginal culture will die unless it is taken out to the rest of the world.

I thought of all this as David Page spoke, not just of the tradition that it is the land that owns us, not we who own and can buy and sell the land, but because the Marika family had been an important part of Stephen Page’s learning traditional dance when he first went from Sydney's National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA) to Arnhem Land early in the 1980s.

In Bangarra, Wandjuk Marika’s hope has been fulfilled.  The Page family boys, as David explained, came to fill the traditional roles, despite their urban childhood in Mt Gravatt in Brisbane, of storyteller – Stephen, the choreographer; dancer – Russell; and song man – David himself, Bangarra’s resident composer.  Founded in 1989 by Carole Johnson, founding director of NAISDA, Bangarra has achieved what Marika desired – keeping the integrity of their traditional culture while creating connections between those stories, with the proper permissions from the owners of those stories, with the feelings and ideas of people beyond traditional boundaries through the mediums of dance and music.

To see how what we like to call ‘modern dance’ and the styles that are true to the ancient Australian heritage, can creatively become one, and to do the same with musical expression, is to appreciate that the work of Stephen and David Page is unique.  And David even began to talk today of retirement!  Never, I hope – or at least there must be a new Bangarra, a continuing ‘making of fire’, long into the future.

Frances Rings, among others encouraged to take on this responsibility by today’s elders, will surely continue to make Aboriginal – and everybody else’s – culture live on.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Boy Girl Wall by Matthew Ryan and Lucas Stibbard

Boy Girl Wall by Matthew Ryan and Lucas Stibbard.  The Escapists in association with Critical Stages, at The Street Theatre August 22 – September 1.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

It’s just wonderful to see theatre pure and simple, in the ancient story-telling tradition from the bush camp, the jongleurs and jesters, through commedia to today’s stand up comedians.  Boy Girl Wall can only be called larrikin theatre, turning conventions upside down, spoofing everything including itself, laughing with us at ourselves.

It is, of course, a love story – of Thom and Alitha – and the Wall between them that just wants to bring them together, surely a theme that begins for most of us with the Midsummer Night’s Dream story of Pyramus and Thisbe and the Wall with its chink (Shakespeare).  But, in our workaday world, they are not rude mechanicals but an IT worker who should have been a supernova astronomer and a writer and illustrator of children’s books, whose monsters make the children cry.

No matter that the Narrator, played by Lucas Stibbard (he plays all the other characters too), will tell you that “This is not a love story...This is a story about love”, don’t you worry about that (these are Queenslanders, so I thought I should put a bit of dear old Jo Bjelke-Petersen in here) – Love Conquers All (Chaucer) in the end even though neither Thom or Alitha have any idea it’s going to happen.  Nor does the Wall.

The script comes and goes in between improvised back-chatting with the audience, but Stibbard remarkably never loses track of the non-sequiturs.  With high quality mime, split-second transformations from character to character, including all sorts of inanimate objects, giving swooping magpies their well-deserved come-uppance, and all done with nothing more than a swish of his hair, Stibbard tells us the history of the universe via the ruminations of an electricity swtichboard – and shows us how it all leads to a kiss in the dark.

He doesn’t quite do it all on his own.  Visibly on the side is Nerida Waters, doing what used to be done in the BBC radio studios for the live audience of the Goon Show – sound effects and music (which she also composed) as required.  And in the bio-box were Matthew Ryan and Sarah Winter, working lighting designed by Keith Clark.

In the best of those ancient traditions, satire rules, as it should.  Fun is fun, and never the twain shall meet (Rabbie Burns?), but that kiss was greeted with a satisfied sigh, and very enthusiastic applause in appreciation of enjoyable, skilful, intelligent theatre – pure and simple.  

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: The Flood by Jackie Smith

The Flood by Jackie Smith, directed by Laurence Strangio.  Critical Stages and Finucane and Smith at The Street, August 15-25, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 21

Because this play is sincere in its intention, genuine in its conception, directed and acted with clarity, and its subject is of great importance, I almost feel that I have no right to criticise.

Yet something about the play points me at a word that I shudder to use, perhaps even more so when I read the write-up about the author and director in the program.  It is “unsophisticated”.

The point about what Smith describes in her Playwright’s Notes as “a terrible reality that faces too many people, city folk and country folk” comes through strongly as the younger sister Catherine (Caroline Lee) pushes her elder sister Dorothy (Maude Davey) to explain why their mother Janet (Shirley Cattunar), whom Dorothy lives with, won’t accept her visit after twenty two years away from the family.

The truth about their father’s abuse of his daughters and his “death” and the role Dorothy played in protecting Catherine becomes apparent bit by bit, but I think the structure of the play is the source of my feeling that theatrically things didn’t quite ring true.

Reading again from her Notes, Smith says “The play explores the interface between the monstrous and the mundane – a hallmark of the vast internal world of Gothic literature – and the genuine horror when we realise that the monstrous can be part of our every day, imbedded deep within our society”.  This heavy-weight thinking has led her into the play’s step by step revelation of the mystery at its core becoming too close to a Gothic melodrama. 

Fortunately the performances by all three actors, and direction which made sure that characters’ intentions (in the Stanislavsky sense) were clearly established, covered up the ‘mystery melodrama’ underlay, and strong performances were achieved – most especially, I thought, by Davey in reacting to Dorothy’s memories of what her father had done, and finally telling Catherine that he was not dead. 

This was in the second last scene, and produced a powerful moment as Lee said simply “He’s dead!”

I would have been satisfied if the play had ended at that point, instead of bringing back the mother for a messy ending about her going to a nursing home.  Or maybe just the magpies carolling the morning, the mother going back to her decoupage as if nothing had changed and the two sisters silently watching her.  We would have understood what they would be thinking about what they would have to do with her.  Fade to blackout and curtain call.

Though I can see (even though I wonder a little about the language) why Cattunar, “in 2009 ... won universal acclaim for her role as the mother ... and since that time has scarcely had a day off” and I can agree that Smith may have “turned heads from the very beginning” of her writing, “so particularly Australian – with language often so sparse, dry, humorous and disturbing”, because these were two strong points in this production, yet I must conclude that The Flood is not a great play, but is certainly worthwhile seeing for its theme.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Face to Face adapted from the film by Ingmar Bergman

Kerry Fox as Jenny

Face to Face adapted for the stage from the film by Ingmar Bergman, by Andrew Upton and Simon Stone.  Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Theatre, August 7 – September 8, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 18

For this show my review must be split into two parts – the success of the adaptation and the quality of the production.

When I saw Bergman’s film some 30 years ago, I had doubts about the question of psychological truth.  I had no doubts about Liv Ullman’s capacity to act with the sense of internal intensity which Bergman’s use of close up and lengthy shots of her facial expression required. 

But I was never quite comfortable with the seemingly interminable “dream” sequence of Jenny’s fantasies, growing out of her close relationship with her father, tragically cut off at the age of 9 when he, driving home drunk from a party, crashed and killed himself and Jenny’s mother, who, Jenny believed, had never loved her.

At the time I saw too much of Freud’s unsupportable theory of the Oedipus complex in this.  Because film makes one feel that you are watching reality, these doubts left me appreciative of Liv Ullman, the actor, but not of Jenny, the character created by Bergman.

This adaptation resolves the problem for me.  Theatre is necessarily artificial, and, if done artfully, can reflect experience not as in a simple mirror but as if we, watching, can gradually identify with the character’s experience as we get to know her through her physical presence.  This requires not only an actor to appreciate, in this case Kerry Fox, but staging techniques which create symbolically a context, within the black box of a theatre, for us to accept the character’s mental life as hers and for us to respond emotionally.

Especially, Simon Stone and Andrew Upton (who, by the way, will continue as artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company for another 3 years) made the hospital scene, as Jenny recovers from her attempted suicide, absolutely entirely brilliant white as she sleeps and dreams, but just slightly warmer off-white as she wakes into normal reality.  It’s a simple theatrical device, done with delicacy, which allows us to see that Jenny believed, being the psychiatrist of her day, in the Oedipus complex, but comes through to realising that it is childhood trauma and others’ uneducated reactions to her expression of the resulting feelings that led to her adult feelings of inadequacy and her need to block out her capacity for love.

And, in addition, Upton and Stone have Jenny and her 14 year-old daughter, who not surprisingly thinks her mother doesn’t love her, play out the final scene – where Jenny tells Anna (Jessica Nash) of her attempted suicide – as a tentative game, kicking a ball to each other, unlikely in reality but symbolically representing both Jenny’s and Anna’s state of play, and Jenny’s now normal understanding of her self-harming behaviour.

So the adaptation works very well indeed.  It is not Bergman’s film on stage; it is better than Bergman’s film, because it is on stage.

Then it is not surprising that the production – acting, set design, scene changes, lighting and sound – are up to the best, as we have come to expect from the STC.  Kerry Fox was getting much praise in the foyer, as she should, but all the actors gave her the ensemble platform on which to perform.  Because most of their characters are memory/fantasy figures it could have been too easy to go over the top, but even the most extreme characters, like Queenie van de Zandt’s socialite Elizabeth and John Gaden’s demented Uncle, were played precisely within the right disciplinary bounds; while Tomas, the character we see as right on the borderline of Jenny’s reality, is played so discreetly by Mitchell Butel that we all understand why Jenny responds to him as she returns to being able to love.

The set design and lighting, starting from the traditional rule of ‘less is more’, is surprising, exciting and exactly right, supported by music nicely chosen. Everything technical went without a hitch with scene shifting (a complete restaurant setting at one point), a whole ceiling on the fly, a physical transparent fourth wall and front apron action becoming a performance in itself – yet always supporting the drama, never taking focus away.

Bookings for the rest of the season at this point are not up to the full house mark that this production deserves.  It’s more than an interesting experiment in adapting a film to the stage.  It’s a great production of a fascinating drama.  Do your best not to miss it.
 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: The Splinter by Hilary Bell

The Splinter by Hilary Bell.  Sydney Theatre Company directed by Sarah Goodes at Wharf 1, August 10 – September 15, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 18

Helen Thomson as Mother       Erik Thomson as Father

The title has a symbolic meaning, though not made explicit as far as I could see in this piece of imagist theatre.  I take it to mean that if a splinter is lost from a finished piece of timber, and it is later recovered, the original piece can never be made good again.

The plot is simple.  A four year-old girl disappears from her bedroom.  Nothing can be found to explain what has happened to her.  Nine months later, now aged 5, she returns, alone.  She will not talk.  There is no information about what has happened, except that a doctor says she has not been injured or violated.

But the original family of three can never be made good again.  Laura’s mother (Helen Thomson) and father (Erik Thomson) have irrevocably changed because of having to survive their daughter’s loss, and change again as they try to cope with her re-appearance.

The drama is an exploration of ghostly imagery derived from the doubts the parents imagine – about the new Laura, whom they are not sure they recognise, and about each other as they find themselves telling each other truths that they had previously kept to themselves to protect the other’s feelings, and as they blame each other for what happened and how they behaved during the nine months’ of loss, how they are behaving now and into the future.

Rather than attempting any kind of naturalism, the designer Renee Mulder working with puppetry and movement director Alice Osborne, uses a kind of Gothic mystery format, with a Banraku style puppet to represent the silent Laura, operated by Kate Worsley and Julia Ohanessian, who each also play Laura in live form.  Gusts of wind, swirling curtains and rustling dry leaves emphasise the fears of the frightened parents as they speak to each other and Laura in apparently ‘normal’ dialogue.

Mulder has written The setting begins as interior, it’s minimal and changeable, a space where absence has a presence.  Eventually the interior is invaded and overpowered by external forces that turn the space inside out.  For this kind of effect, the play went through three stages of development. 

Hilary Bell was commissioned to present an idea, originally for a ‘spooky’ story for young people, but came up with a study of adult fears which suited the mainstage rather than STC’s education program.  Next came a ‘Rough Draft’ workshop stage with the puppeteer Alice Osborne finding ways with performers to put Bell’s ideas into physical form.  Then Bell wrote the dialogue, with the space for visual action and further interpretation and expansion of her ideas in the rehearsal process directed by Sarah Goodes.

The result is a great demonstration of STC’s commitment to new writing.  In previous times, now long ago,  this kind of workshop development process was done annually at the now defunct National Playwrights’ Conference.  It’s important to support this work as part of the natural function of the Sydney Theatre Company.

The ending of The Splinter remains a mystery, spooky and with the equal possibility of new life or death.  Walking to the train station, each unexpected sound – of a security guard slamming a door, of the swish of a passing car in the dark street – made me jump as if the wind which brought Laura’s ghostly figure into being would make her suddenly appear before me.

The theatrical illusion had worked its power on me. 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Capital Jazz Project and The Next Gen

Capital Jazz Project and The Next Gen – an afternoon of critical conversations at The Street Theatre and Belconnen Arts Centre, Sunday August 5 at 1.30pm and 3pm respectively.

by Frank McKone

These two events, staged independently, formed an interesting afternoon of thinking about the business of being a critic.

At The Street Theatre, as part of a 10-day program ‘of all things jazz’, Miriam Zolin, managing editor and publisher at extempore publishing (www.extempore.com.au) conducted a seminar discussion with four writers/broadcasters: freelancer Jasmine Crittenden, blogger Eric Pozza, Sydney Morning Herald reviewer John Shand and ABC presenter of The Music Show, Andrew Ford.

At Belconnen Arts Centre, Yolande Norris, independent arts writer, curator and producer, moderated four presentations by local young artists:

Reuben Ingall – musician (acoustic and electronic), composer and contemporary dance collaborator who has worked with Quantum Leap Youth Choreographic Ensemble and currently works with independent dancer Adelina Larsson;

Jamie Winbank – dancer and choreographer, working in interactive theatre, as well as teaching dance;

George Rose – multi-disciplinary graphic artist and designer, coordinator of You Are Here, a curated festival of the best of Canberra’s independent and experimental arts and culture;

Michael Bailey – creative member of Boho Interactive, a theatre company whose aim is to spread understanding of concepts from complex systems science (Game Theory and Network Theory) via interactive theatre projects.

Each discussion had its own key question.  At The Street it was, Is the best music criticism a description or an opinion?  At Belconnen it was, Why would anyone in their right mind be an artist?  For me, the key question became, What is the key question I should ask myself as a critic?

Some of the erudite speakers at The Street had seemed to give me sensible answers, yet my confidence in knowing my role was challenged by these young experimental artists.  How do you judge people’s work when they are testing out new ideas, new combinations of genres, new technologies?

All four at The Street were in agreement on basic principles, but it was John Shand who most clearly articulated two central points: the judgement is about how well the artist has achieved what they intended to do; and the critic must be honest in making that judgement.

On the way to and from these points, there was discussion of how much a review should analyse technical matters, and therefore reach conclusions, or how much it should be about the reviewer’s emotional or intellectual responses to the work.  In music, and improvised jazz in particular, this raised perhaps the most division between the speakers, because the political and social history of jazz could justify focussing on the effect on the audience rather than on the technical skill.

In the end I concluded that the best work must integrate the technical with the emotional, and so create the greatest quality.

But my own rather intellectualised metacognitive approach was rather blown apart when the young artists’ presentations of videos of snatches of their works, and their attempts to explain what they were doing, raised a question about the principle of judging whether the artist has achieved what they intended to do.  In fact, it had been Andrew Ford who had talked about interviewing musicians who were quite inarticulate verbally when asked about their playing, and had put the view that many artists actually don’t know what they are doing while they are doing it.

Ford and others had backed this position by quoting composers, including Ford himself, whose work had come to mean completely different things to other people than the composer had thought he meant.  In other words, as I thought while watching and listening to the young people, how can I know what their intentions are, or were when I see a finished work, and be able to say if they achieved their aims?

Indeed, it had seemed easier to do this for a jazz performance, however improvised, because a tradition has grown up over the last century of what jazz is which has allowed even for the shift from trad jazz to modern jazz.  A language for talking about jazz has grown up alongside the performance of jazz.

But when the young are deliberately challenging previous conventions and experimenting with new forms, am I right to say I found Reuben Ingall’s work less than enthralling, Jamie Winbank rather superficial, Michael Bailey’s concepts intellectually interesting but seemingly a bit too much like Questacon, while, in the range and skills she showed, George Rose seemed the most together and likely to produce the best art in the long term?

What would I have said about jazz in its early years?  That it wasn’t what I understood to be real music?  While in fact, as a youngster in the 1950s I played Pee Wee Hunt’s trad Twelfth Street Rag on my mouth organ, and later became fascinated by the Modern Jazz Quartet, despite my father’s objection that they were just tip-toeing about, instead of playing real jazz. 

The Street Theatre’s speakers also made the point that at times a reviewer can be useful to a composer or performer by criticising their work honestly – sometimes helping the creative to understand what they have created, or sometimes to help them improve a work – and I have had feedback occasionally to support this.  Of course, I have also endured brickbats as well.  But in the end it may be that John Shand has the last word.

He suggested that, when it comes to placing a value on the work of the artist compared with the work of a critic, we critics are essentially parasites on the body of performance.  So there!




© Frank McKone, Canberra