2012: The School for Wives by Molière

Harriet Dyer, John Adam, Meyne Wyatt

The School for Wives by Molière, translated by Justin Fleming.  Bell Shakespeare directed by Lee Lewis.  Designer: Marg Horwell, Lighting Designer: Niklas Pajanti, Composer: Kelly Ryall, Movement Director: Penny Baron.  Canberra Theatre Playhouse, September 26 – October 6, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 26

Originality + is my assessment for the translation into modern Australian rhymed verse, a movable feast of a set design, the Parisien Charlston era setting, precision characterisation, and the especially clever use of pause and silent movement.

The + is for John Adam’s voice in the lead role of Arnolde, the man whose wealth leads him into territory rather akin to some more modern moguls or mining magnates: assuming he has the right (because he has the power) to arrange other people’s lives to suit his own requirements.  Except, of course, his expectations don’t match other people’s reality, so he comes seriously unstuck.

I’ll deal with Arnolde’s sticky end later; the + for Adam’s voice is because I was aware that he almost had to abandon opening night to the vicissitudes of a throat infection.  Anyone not in the know would never have known – a great performance which I can only hope he can maintain.

Originality abounded everywhere.  Pianist and percussionist Mark Jones had a ball (you’ll see what I mean when you see the play), tinkling the ivories like the accompaniment to a Charlie Chaplin silent movie – always the right ironic mood, but never dominating the scene, even when he became a comic character in his own right.  If Jean-Baptiste Poquelin had had a Kelly Ryall and a Mark Jones available in 1643, he would have surely realised that comedy was his métier, would never have tried to act (in his stage name of Molière) the tragedies of writers like Corneille, would have employed them in his Illustre-Théâtre – and would never have gone to debtor’s prison. 

Poquelin would also have appreciated aluminium scaffolding on wheels to make frames, screens and even Agnes’s balcony.  It didn’t look 17th Century, or even 1920’s Paris (unless you wanted to see a reference to the iron-frame Eiffel Tower :-), but what a touring set, for France in his day or for playing Australia today.  This set took the old Peter Brooks’ Empty Space to its ultimate point – to create the scene  in the audience’s imagination, not by filling up the stage with predetermined pictures on immovable flats and blocks.

Then there was the rhyming, coming thick and fast, first and last.  Justin Fleming is a stickler for getting it right, working with all his might for rhyming couplets (AA/BB) when Arnolde is raving on, 1st and 4th – 2nd and 3rd line couplets (ABBA) when he is dealing with his young rival Horace, alternate rhymes (ABAB) for Agnes as she begins to realise her position, and back to rhyming couplets for the ensemble at the end.  Poquelin and Fleming could have been a great team – and still are.  The language itself becomes a character full of humour with which the actors play.

And this brings us to the style of acting, a combination I guess of the efforts of Lee Lewis, Penny Baron and Vocal Coach Anne McCrossin-Owen – and the skills of John Adam (Arnolde, originally Arnolphe); Harriet Dyer (Agnes – Agnès – all pure honesty and naiveté); Meyne Wyatt (the lovely Horace – rhymed on one occasion with “horses” for a great laugh); Arnolde’s commedia-like servants Georgette (Alexandra Aldrich) and Alan – Alain (Andrew Johnston); Jonathan Elsom (Notary and Henri); Mark Jones (Laurence, as well the musician); and Chrysalde – known in Australia as Chris – played magnificently by Damien Richardson.

Theatre of the era can be called “presentational” or maybe “representational”, as characters “present” themselves to the audience, sometimes directly and sometimes in the manner in which they speak and act towards other characters.  Later in history, Brecht would turn this into a theory of “alienation effect”, because stylisation sets the audience back from identifying with characters in a personal way, and allows them to see the characters for what they represent.  At one end of this scale is much of 19th Century English melodrama; at the other end I would put Shakespeare; while on the way between is commedia dell’arte. 

Molière sits towards the Shakespeare end, but – as I have mentioned – he was never a good tragic actor.  Shakespeare probably was.  So this production uses devices in mime, gestures, facial expression, expressive movement, silences, which we recognise from melodrama and commedia, but takes them at times into an expressionistic level, which makes the comedy into the kind of humour which tells – about character, social convention and ultimately about the human condition.  Arnolphe’s treatment of Agnès is far beyond acceptable norms, yet is understandable because he has human needs – for gratification and love.

The ending of this production raises for me what may be a difference between the 17th Century Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and the 21st Century Lee Lewis, perhaps between the centuries and perhaps between the sexes over the centuries.

Molière’s Chrysalde tells Arnolphe that he will never be able to marry, and Arnolphe leaves the stage transportè, et ne pouvant parler, just managing to huff and puff “Oh!”, implying that he will never change.  Lewis’s Arnolde seemed to me to leave rather sadly, leaving open the possibility that he might recognise his faults and mend his ways, or at least realise that he should change even if he can’t bring himself to do it.  Maybe our time is just a little softer in judgment of others than 350 years ago.

Whatever your interpretation, this is a great production.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Rolling Home by Greg Lissaman

Catherine Hagarty and Chrissie Shaw

Rolling Home by Greg Lissaman.  Music and songs by John Shortis.  Presented by Canberra Theatre Centre in the Courtyard Studio September 17-22, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 21

Greg Lissaman, himself once-upon-a-time an artistic director of The Jigsaw Company – Canberra’s regular theatre-in-education team – has written, produced and directed this independent production for 7-10 year olds with support from the Canberra Theatre Centre, ArtsACT and Riverside Theatres, Parramatta (Sydney).  He has pulled together an experienced team in composer John Shortis, lighting designer Matt Cox, sound designer Kimmo Vennonen, costume designers Hilary Talbot and Imogen Keen, and puppetry director Catherine Roach, with actors Catherine Hagarty and Chrissie Shaw.

The result is high quality material and performance which held a mixed audience from Kindergarten to Year 5 this morning, including an enthusiastic 20 minute Q&A session conducted by the actors when the story was finally finished.

“Finally finished” is not a criticism of the script, but its main theme.  You could call Rolling Home Brechtian theatre for littlies.  The two main characters are Figaro (Shaw) and Georgio (Hagarty) who are fairytale story tellers, in the story they tell to us in the audience, singing songs as they go along.  They slip easily between their characters as wandering story tellers, the characters they become in the stories they tell, and as out-of-role actors in teacher mode, asking questions of the children about the characters they played, as well as in actor mode explaining about the business of theatre.

Georgio is young and rather naive, seeking to settle down in his own home – his story cannot finish until the story of the magic crystal belonging to the Queen of the Dark Forest is concluded.  Figaro is older, craftier, and prefers to keep moving on, even after their caravan has rolled away downhill and smashed to pieces.  In the end, they find their “home” in their friendship, built up through all the experiences they have had together in returning the crystal to its rightful owner.  Only then does Figaro reveal to Georgio that the King (who had stolen the Queen’s crystal, and from whom Georgio had taken it) had actually paid 12 gold pieces for their storytelling, not the 3 he had at first said the King had paid.

So the story finally finishes when true friendship means honesty – Georgio can build a home, Figaro can travel on, but both are welcome in each other’s life.

Would this complexity of levels of understanding come through to the children watching? 

In the session I saw, my half of the audience were mainly well below the age of 7, while the half I could watch in the opposite seats were mainly 8 plus.  On my side the children responded to everything as if they understood (after the little boy in front of me had wondered after the first song and we all clapped “Is that the end?"), but when it came to Q&A, the littlies had questions which they couldn’t remember when asked to speak.  The actors handled these potentially embarrassing situations with positive encouragement but without improper pressure.  Good teaching approach, in other words.

On the other side, I could see faces light up during the performance as children picked up what was happening in the relationship between Georgio and Figaro, and there were many very thoughtful and insightful questions in the Q&A.  Good theatre-in-education at work, in other words.

I don’t need many more words then to say that this is an interesting and well worthwhile theatre and educational experience, especially for the intended age group but even for much younger children.

But then I had other thoughts about the concept.  Essentially the script, songs and music draw upon a range of storytelling traditions which come down to us from Europe, including the key “quest for the holy grail” element in the magic crystal story and the “royalty / commoner” characters.  In the Australian context this material is in the background of most people, but is quite outside the traditions of Indigenous Australians. 

Though there is great value in Rolling Home, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders it is a confirmation of the power of invasive culture, with no counterbalance.  So I proposed to Greg Lissaman that he might take up the search for a way to make a play for young children which would draw on maintaining country and community from the ancient Australian tradition.

I suppose this is just another quest, but in our conversation we wondered how David and Stephen Page, and Frances Rings, might like to take Bangarra into work for young children, now that Terrain has shown how their work can ring true across our cultural differences – as Lissaman’s Georgio and Figaro found in friendship and honesty.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Hair – The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical

Hair – The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical  Book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado.  Music by Galt MacDermot.  Presented by Queanbeyan City Council, directed by Stephen Pike at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, September 19 – October 6, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 19

Excellent musicianship by a neatly arranged band led by Major Geoff Grey set the tone for a quality all-singing-acting-dancing cast on a set (Brian Sudding) and in lighting (Adrian Rytir) that thoroughly loved to rock.

The shocks that reverberated through the audience in the war scenes, ostensibly in Claude’s pot-driven imagination but terrifyingly real to those of us who have seen the footage of all the wars since Hair was first produced in 1967, were a special achievement in sound, lighting and movement.  And the final tragic scene was played with just the right level of intensity – touching our hearts and minds without over-stepping into sentimentality, which is always a risk in American musicals.

Especially wonderful is to know that here, in the Capital region of Australia, 45 years on and despite the “demeaning” politics of our democracy today (according to Tony Windsor, Member for New England, discussing with Anne Summers and Natasha Mitchell Civility, sexism and democracy, on Life Matters, Radio National, 20 September 2012), young people can respond to the feelings and the message of peace with so much enthusiasm and sincerity as this cast achieved.  This production is not an imitation of the 1967 Hair, but a highly successful re-creation.

After reading David Marr’s Quarterly Essay 47 Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott, I naturally searched for a quote from B.A.Santamaria about the production of Hair which I saw in Sydney in 1969.  No luck, except that Wikipedia states “The Sydney, Australia production's opening night was interrupted by a bomb scare in June 1969”.  I wasn’t surprised, then, to see that a bomb was actually exploded at a theatre in Cleveland, Ohio in 1971.

Though I remember that people around me reacted most to the shock of nudity on stage in sophisticated 60’s Sydney, I realised yesterday that for Americans the most shocking scene concerned the “Folding of the Flag”, perhaps the most emotive nationalistic ceremony one can imagine, taking the people back to the horrors and final resolution of the Civil War.  Yet it is interesting to note that though both the issues of nudity and the desecration of the American flag were taken to the Massachusetts and the Federal Supreme Courts, nudity caused the most problems for the continued presentation of Hair, since, on the flag issue, the show "constitutes ... an obscure form of protest protected under the First Amendment."

In Queanbeyan 2012, the nudity, which is essential to complete the first half, was managed with great delicacy as the spotlights went to blackout and no more than some unspecified flesh tints were visible.  I’m guessing that this doesn’t mean that regional Australians are more prudish today.  I think it’s more likely that nudity no longer shocks, and that the lessening of this scene’s impact allowed the major theme of the production to take its proper place.

The same effect could be seen in the treatment of the pot-smoking.  For us the greatest shock was to see smoking represented on stage (I have that reaction when I watch old Hollywood movies), but the effects of marijuana were acted out in a light-hearted way since we are long past believing that pot-smoking means the end of the world as we know it.  We just know it is part of the world, and even the occasional US president admits it, even though we also know of the psychological effects.

Of course, the draft – or in Australia’s case, the lottery – which was used to force people to fight in the unwinnable Vietnam War, has fallen into the wastebasket of history, perhaps to at least some extent due to Hair.  But the decision, represented by Claude’s dilemma, to be willing to kill or be killed in the name of one’s country or ideology, or to seek to live peaceably without causing deliberate harm to others, has been a difficult, if not impossible, choice to make throughout human history.

Entertaining as Hair is, and especially so in this Queanbeyan production, I think Stephen Pike’s direction has made the right balance of high energy youthful life-affirming enjoyment against the truth of human self-destructive tendencies.

I went to the show with some trepidation about a Hair revival, but revived I have been by such strong performances by all concerned.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Terrain Bangarra Dance Theatre

Terrain    Bangarra Dance Theatre: Cultural Advisor – Arabunna elder Reg Dodd, Choreographer - Frances Rings, Composer - David Page, Set Designer – Jacob Nash, Costume Designer – Jennifer Irwin, Lighting Designer – Karen Norris.  Canberra Theatre Centre September 13-15, 2012.

Review by Frank McKone
September 13

David Page and Frances Rings, speaking at the pre-show forum, said that dance is its own language, so it is difficult to explain in words.  The best I can do is to describe Terrain as a symphonic poem in nine movements, however trite, old-fashioned and European that sounds.

The nearest Frances herself could give us was to say it is an abstract work, not a narrative, and I suppose this refers to visual art rather than music.

Like a symphony, there are leitmotifs in action creating such a complexity of movement around Rings’ original style that I found myself thinking of Brahms for depth of feeling.  As a poem, it has the terse, and I may say, dry quality of T.S.Eliot’s Four Quartets, though in nine parts rather than just four.

As an art work it is indeed an abstraction in which, as in many Aboriginal paintings, an almost hidden angle of a woman’s bent arm, a man’s knees briefly widened apart remind us of traditional dance, or a momentary flow of loose feathery costume denotes a mother emu, or hands brought up briefly show us a powerful male kangaroo.  This is not a dripping Jackson Pollack, but referential and entirely reverential expression of feelings constructed with the flair, speed of action and linear detail of a Blue Poles.

Then realise that the dance work and the music are integrated in close creative cooperation between Rings and Page, and wonderfully enveloped in the set by Jacob Nash and costumes by Jennifer Irwin,  and you understand you are experiencing a major work.

Terrain draws us away from the world of city cacophony, beyond the boundaries of settlement, into the centre of our land itself, where tiny groups of people have learned to understand the harshness and the beauty of their country, from the whiteness of ever-extending salt in the dry times to the rippling colours of water in times of flood.  For any Australian, Terrain is essential viewing.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Widowbird by Emma Gibson

Widowbird by Emma Gibson, directed by Joanne Schultz at The Street Theatre, September 8-16, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 8

An epic play of mythical proportions, Widowbird is interesting for its ancient Greek tragedy sensibility.  It is still a work in progress, coming out of the Street Theatre’s Hive Development Program.  Emma Gibson is surely a busy bee.  There’s enough honey here to make the presentation of the work worthwhile at this stage, but the royal jelly will take some more buzzing.

The meaning of the title eluded me – until I looked up Percy Bysshe Shelley.  I didn’t understand what he meant either.  But he gave me a clue to the sort of buzzing Emma Gibson might need to make.  Shelley’s rhymes can sometimes be execrable, but Emma needs poetry to give her work regal quality.

Her entirely original folk tale of a woman whose sympathetic tears instantly heal anyone’s illness or injury is exactly on the money in modern times.  Just send $13 a month and the world will be saved.  But what would happen if your charitable tears really worked?  Gibson’s mediaeval-style King just uses the woman’s tears to repair his battalions and keep his wars going until ... well, until he chooses to stop being King, which he will never do.  Political parties of all modern stripes, from Al Qaeda and the Taliban to the ALP or the LNP are not so different in their desire to be in, or stay in, power.

That’s some of the honey – the symbolism which allows you much metaphorical interpretation – but in the second act, where the now blinded woman tries to protect her daughter from the world by blinding her so that she cannot produce tears, we see dramatic quality beginning to gel.  In Act 1 the story is told and acted out with accompaniment on drums and xylophone, all a bit too illustrative rather than emotionally engaging.  In Act 2, the action becomes more central, while the story-telling becomes more explanatory, so we understand and identify with the implications for ourselves and our family relations.  A bit more like Sophocles’ Oedipus and Antigone.

But the heightened effect of the Greek tragedies was achieved by the dialogue being in verse, not ordinary prose, and sung by the Chorus, with music to which the actors danced.   If Gibson can turn her play into a total poetic work, in words, movement and music, then her symbols and metaphors will begin to vibrate with meaning.  Experiencing a performance will then be a real buzz.

At this point praise must be awarded to Caroline Stacey, The Street’s director and originator of the Hive.  Canberra’s role has long been the incubator of original new work, hiving off performers, writers and directors from myriad small companies to the big cities which think of themselves as the real Australia.  Despite many attempts previously to coordinate our theatrical creativity – think Carol Woodrow (Fool’s Gallery and Wildwood), Camilla Blunden (Women on a Shoestring), David Atfield (BITS Theatre) or the CIA (Canberra Innovative Arts) and maverick David Branson – only recently have we begun to get our act together.

Stacey brings in solid professional help for new writers, like Peter Matheson, one of Australia’s best recognised  dramaturgs, who has worked with Emma Gibson to turn an idea – “For me, this play really began as an exploration of how far a person must be pushed before their goodness is corrupted” – into a story on stage.  Stacey’s abiding purpose is to provide the theatrical “infrastructure” for the writers to transport themselves to a place where they find their “voice”, and thus their confidence, learning the skills of playwriting along the way.

But rather than a linear journey, it’s all about collaboration and networking – buzzing and dancing like bees in a hive – all supported by government through artsACT, the Australia Council through the Local Stages program, and Canberra 100, as well as the ACT Government supporting Gibson to attend the recent Women Playwrights International Conference in Stockholm, where Widowbird was first presented as a reading.

May Stacey’s work continue and grow to match the extensions of The Street Theatre, coming soon.

© Frank McKone, Canberra