2012: The Polyphonic Bard – Music and Shakespeare in our time

The Polyphonic Bard – Music and Shakespeare in our time The Pocket Score Company and Canberra Academy of Dramatic Art, directed by Tamzin Nugent.  Made in Canberra Season at The Street Theatre, November 30 – December 2, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 30

My reference for this review just has to be the Bach Guild / Vanguard recording BG-606 by the Deller Consort (Alfred Deller (countertenor), Wenzinger Consort of viols - August Wenzinger, dir., April Cantelo (soprano), Eileen McLoughlin (soprano), Desmond Dupré (lute), Taylor Recorder Consort, Gustav Leonhardt (harpsichord), Ambrosian Singers) titled A Musical Panorama of Shakespeare’s England.

This was my introduction, in 1963, to the fascinating strange harmonies of Renaissance songs, beginning with the ironic humour of “We Be Soldiers Three” included in this Pocket Score show.  One song not included, which I would have loved to hear and see performed, is Ben Jonson’s “Have You Seen But A Whyte Lily Grow”, a great deflator of the conventions of romantic love which would have fitted so well in this program.

And what an odd but interesting program this is.  It certainly fulfils the Made in Canberra description of diverse works mixing up new ideas in theatre, music, dance, opera, and interdisciplinary work in live performance.

I saw The Polyphonic Bard as having two purposes.  It is an “entertainment”, which means a lot more than being merely entertaining.  There are light-hearted episodes here, but set among themes concerning the nature of love, life and even death.

For the young students of the Canberra Academy of Dramatic Art, the top-quality 5-part singing of the Pocket Score team – David Yardley (countertenor), Paul Eldon (tenor), John Virgoe (tenor), Daniel Sanderson (baritone) and Ian Blake (bass) – provides a model for them to aspire to.  They have a long way to go at this point in their quest, but this public performance is an important step along the way.

Once upon a time, when I trained young people for tertiary training auditions, requiring a Shakespeare piece, of course, I used to explain how 5- or even 8-part singing took place in the pubs of London in Shakespeare’s day, and how those complexities of rhythm, harmony and stress patterns underlie the poetry of Shakespeare’s words.  These CADA students are lucky enough to learn in practice, from the Pocket Score Company, what I could only explain to my trainees.  But, of course, in today’s theatre world, all professional actors must be able to sing well.

Though the show is indeed “diverse” and a “mixing up”, the audiovisual and photographic work of Aaron King and Danielle Osomanski – not exactly of Shakespeare’s time – often added images to the speaking and singing.  Particularly effective, I thought, was video of (I assume) swirling drops of coloured inks, which metaphorically represented ideas in the words, especially when red seemed to show the blood of warfare.  This brought the experiences of Shakespeare’s period of history into the present – artfully, rather than as a blunt instrument, in keeping with the choice of sonnets and comedy in the spoken word.

I wasn’t so sure of the success of the use of hanging ropes – literally with hangman’s nooses – which provided something for the actors, and sometimes even the singers, to hang on to.  It is a simple idea (that means a good idea) and certainly raised thoughts of dangers, social strictures and death, behind words of comedy and love, but a choreographer was needed to work up a movement design which could have lifted the actors’ performances more “artfully” to match the video.

So, once again I have to thank the recently announced Artist of the Year, Caroline Stacey, for instituting the Made in Canberra program which “through partnership relationships...puts a spotlight on independent artistic activity in the ACT and has continued to evolve in response to artists’ needs and Canberra’s creative context”.  It does indeed, and The Polyphonic Bard is a good example.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Glory Box by Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith

Glory Box by Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith at The Street Theatre, Canberra, November 28 – December 8, 2012.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 28

Glory Box is the latest version of The Burlesque Hour which I reviewed in February 2009 in the Canberra Times.  Some items, like strawberries and blood-red soup, are still part of the show, but this show generally did not have the same bite as before.  Only the last major scene – “Miss Finucane’s collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria (Get Wet for Art!)” – reached something like the satire of the Hour. 

Even so it was Yumi Umiumare, with her expertise in Butoh, who had been the standout in 2009.  She was missing in this action, and there was no-one to match her this time.

Of course, age may be wearying me, but Glory Box was more like a ritualised karaoke, broken by minimum (but well done) items on the trapeze and hula hoops.  And, though I had warned people back in 2009, I still forgot to take my earplugs.  The sound volume and oomph, oomph was perhaps even more penetrating this time around.

There was more nudity, too, but more nudity is less titillating, unless that’s just my age showing again.  Lots of other men in the audience cheered the swinging bits, though the women had no comparable male bits to cheer, since Paul Cordeiro was nude only for a brief discreet backside-to-the-audience exit.

The show is still funny and enjoyable, but in my view just not as engaging or thought-provoking as the original Burlesque Hour.  There were still plenty in the audience standing, stomping, clapping and dancing in what would have been a mosh pit in a larger venue – and buying Burlesque Underpants from the Glory Box on their way out.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.  WildVoicesmusictheatre, directed by Dianna Nixon, composer Vanessay Nimmo, at The Street Theatre, Canberra, November 14-17, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 14

Since Dianna Nixon chose to present Under Milk Wood in a quite similar way on the stage to the very first performance of the Play for Voices (at the YMHA Poetry Centre, New York, May 14, 1953), I thought I should listen to my still serviceable vinyl recording as a comparison.

Different, but in some ways equal.  Dylan Thomas was commissioned by the BBC, and the “Y” performance was still a work-in-progress.  According to the sleeve notes, “The final scene was typed as the audience was being seated”!  And it was, of course, intended for and performed by adults.

Dianna Nixon has written “WildVoicesmusictheatre has been established to create and present music theatre events and activities with a commitment to cross-curricular arts pedagogy – alongside professional practice – and celebrating multiskilling.  Vocal and physical skills are central to our work.  Our pedagogy eschews the concept of talent, and instead we focus on relationships, process and long-term skills development – and on sharing our passion for the heritage on which performing arts practice is based.”

Like the “Y”, Nixon could never have afforded or found volunteers to present one actor per character, which would – as the sleeve notes say – “have given the impression of a local Philharmonic”.  As chance would have it the “Y” had only five professional actors available, plus Thomas who significantly played the 1st Voice and the Reverend Eli Jenkins.  Each one stood, still throughout except for when Thomas, on the advice of the actors, took two steps forward for Eli Jenkins’ morning prayer.  Nixon, on the other hand had her Voices for the main part seated, but with some movement carefully devised to add to the drama visually.

In her production, Nixon plays the 1st Voice and piano – she has a B.A., Music (piano) from VCA – while the other parts are played by six adult professional singer/actor/musicians: Nick Byrne, Tobias Cole, Dene Kermond, Kate Hosking, Zsuzsi Soboslay and PJ Williams, as well as 20 children.  Three teenagers, Bethany Stoney, Aidan Pierlot and Felicity Ward were the “Foley Team”, producing all the necessary sound effects devised by Vanessa Nimmo.  In the original recording there was a bare minimum of sounds beyond those heard in the imagination in response to Thomas’ poetic descriptions.

Watching this WildVoices performance I was reminded of the Goon Show.  This is in no way a derogatory thought, because it was quite fascinating, as it was for the Goon Show’s BBC studio audiences, to see the sounds being made live as the actors spoke.  In using a live foley team, Nixon has fulfilled her pedagogical aim.  The youngsters were learning the “heritage on which performing arts practice is based” – so much better than googling YouTube or downloading iTunes.

In taking this approach, and setting appropriate parts to music, Nixon has equalled Thomas.  At the same time, his more spare presentation did some things that Nixon’s softer more mellifluous approach doesn’t.  Partly because of time passing and Under Milk Wood now being a familar classic instead of a case of the shock of the new as it was in 1953, Nixon’s visit to Llareggub is almost a romantic trip.  For Thomas, as you hear in the recording, there is a hard edge behind the quaintness.  As the sleeve notes say (written by someone unfortunately unacknowledged) “Why the audience finds the motley crew of variously henpecked, overbearing, drunken, promiscuous townspeople so funny might be a study for psychologists, had psychologists not long ago determined that misfortune at this remove is cause for self-congratulation and laughter .... But the laughter is cathartic, too.”

Our applause on November 14, 2012 could not match that of  May 14, 1953 when Dylan Thomas’ “shy and stammered ‘Thank you, thank you very much’ is lost in the shouts of the audience.  The bravos come from people close enough to the stage to see the tears that rolled down his cheeks.”  But we justifiably applauded a quality production, beautiful, and a great learning experience especially for the children taking part.

Vinyl LP Recording: original recording by Caedmon; my recording by Philips B 94022 L / B 94023 L (2 records)

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Empire by Graham Jones and Jepke Goudsmit

Empire by Graham Jones and Jepke Goudsmit.  Kinetic Energy Theatre Company at the Drama Lab, Australian National University Arts Centre, Canberra, November 8-10, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 9

The evening’s program, put together by Kinetic Energy based in Sydney, began with poems of social criticism – Poetry with a Punch – by local Canberra poets, Fiona McIlroy, Sandra Renew, Jill Sutton, Laurie MacDonald and Hazel Hall.

Though, as an introduction to the presentation of what was advertised as a “gritty play”, the staging of the poetry was very ordinary, with Jones popping on and off to adjust the microphone and no special lighting, MacDonald’s and Hall’s works particularly engaged the small mainly academic audience with humanity and art.

Following the poetry, in what might have been an effective lead-in to the play, the well-known A Chorus of Women sang the Lament by Glenda Cloughley and Judith Clingan, an anthem for peace which was first sung in the foyer of the Australian Parliament as the news was being broadcast of Australia’s decision to join the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in invading Iraq.

Lament begins with the line “Open the doors of the chambers of your hearts”, but unfortunately at this point the doors of the Drama Lab were shut behind us for some half an hour while the stage was set for Empire.  Though this was an opportunity for coffee and cake and a preparatory visit to the toilets, the momentum was lost, as people stood about waiting in an unprepossessing back corridor in the bowels of the Arts Centre.

If the poetry and song had been staged well and incorporated into the total presentation, as Act 1, then the audience would have been warmed up to face the cold hard agit-prop approach of the main event, Empire, an indictment of the role the United States plays in the modern world as a democratic equivalent of imperial dictatorships of the past.

Unfortunately, dramatically speaking, polemical theatre of this most uncompromising kind is its own worst enemy.  This is not to say that the information presented was unbelievable – in fact I would assume that especially among this ANU audience there would be few who had not known the critical works of Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky, or had not understood the importance of the revelations of  the whistle-blower Bradley Manning, or of the horror of the helicopter gunship’s murder of Reuters journalists in Baghdad.

As a history presentation, however, and including the taped conversations of US Air Force pilots during the Vietnam War and the sermons of John Winthrop, a founding father of the attitudes of Americans as he brought ‘civilisation’ to Massachusetts in the 17th Century, Empire might be a useful education piece for teenage students.

As a theatre production for a modern adult audience it was simplistic, lacking in subtlety, poorly structured, often basically boring.  The only highlights for me were the fact that I got to see the whole of the footage of the helicopter gunship episode, and I enjoyed the quality of the musicianship of the young student wind instrument players.

I can’t say I enjoyed very much of the acting performances, except for the spirited young woman who confronted Noam Chomsky.  This was almost the only occasion when something like real drama was happening – but only for a brief moment, as she left the scene in frustration and Chomsky remained in control of the intellectual battlefield.

The central conception of the play, with Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky as talking heads, espousing their political positions – quoting from their public writings and interviews – was not a bad idea in itself, but without any development of their personalities and how they may have dealt with the personal challenges they must, in real life, face, we are left with no more than cardboard cutouts.

It was disappointing, considering the artistic sensitivity and dramatic structure which characterised Graham Jones’ work in his earlier days as director and choreographer of the Kinetic Energy Dance Company, to see him decades later associated with such amateurish writing.  The art of expression through dance demands subtlety in movement without words, which was once Jones’ strength.  A drama with speaking characters demands a wholly different set of skills, to write and to perform.  Technically, too, the use of video, on a screen sometimes masked by the actors, and with confusing text above and below the image, or with far too lengthy slabs of chatroom text, showed a surprising failure in stage design.  I miss the dance Jones might have created, and would rather not have seen this quite embarrassing attempt at a play.

Bringing back A Chorus of Women to conclude the program might have worked better as the other bookend, if their first performance had been given its proper place.  But their entrance was disorganised, where it could have moved us smoothly on into a more positive note, as was clearly intended by encouraging us to sing along to When People Start to Sing (by Janet Salisbury and Johanna McBride) with the words “When people start to sing / Things are changing”.  The Women’s voices were strong and harmonious but there was no strength in the audience participation.

I could at this point launch into a lengthy essay on the tradition of agit-prop theatre, from  Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Schweik, through to Erwin Piscator’s success in 1920s Germany in having his middle-class audiences enthusiastically singing revolutionary songs after shows including film of war-time atrocities, and on, of course, to the famous Bertolt Brecht in plays such as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

I have no doubts about the sincerity and honesty of Graham Jones and Jepke Goudsmit.  These are necessary but unfortunately not sufficient conditions for the production of successful theatre.  Like mercy, the quality of good theatre is not to be “strain’d, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven...”  In doing so it enlightens and persuades, as some of the poetry and singing did last night, but the raging storm of Empire certainly left me cold.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Diva Sheila, the Eco Diva: Takin’ it to The Street by Kate Hosking

Diva Sheila, the Eco Diva: Takin’ it to The Street by Kate Hosking.  Lighting by Kelly McGannon.  At The Street 2, Canberra, November 8-10, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 8

Brave and honest are my keywords tonight: brave because she is honest.  In her story-telling sequences, Kate Hosking leaves herself with few of the protections (and none of the pretensions) of an actor playing a role defined by a script, since her words are her own about herself; while in singing her own songs and interpreting songs by others, her arrangements and accompaniment on double bass make her performance highly personal – and original.

Takin’ it to The Street is intimate theatre, chamber theatre, almost boudoir theatre.  The Street 2, small as it is, was rather too cavernous for this work.  So it took a little while for us to come to terms with the intimacy.  It was, I think, the quiet, angry-sad quality of her rendition of I was only 19 (by John Schumann) that drew us in to Hosking’s depth of feelings about the world she has grown up in – our world, of course.

I last reviewed Kate Hosking in The Jigsaw Company’s play for children Pearl Verses the World (May 19, 2012) where her performance was very effective within the conventional frame of acting.  As Diva Sheila, she has created a role which hovers on the tight-rope between acting and reality.  Her balance is impressive.  Her voice has a great range, in this show concentrated on a blues style which allows her feelings to play out through the lyrics.  There is a maturity in this work which augurs well for a continuing career already backed by a decade of international world music performances.

In her program, as a kind of subtitle to her work, she has written “Sometimes it takes a character bigger than yourself to say what’s on your mind”.  Diva Sheila is never too big for Kate Hosking’s high-heeled shoes.  They fit very well together. 

Diva Sheila is another success of The Hive, The Street Theatre’s writers’ development program.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Bare Witness by Mari Lourey

Bare Witness by Mari Lourey.  Performing Lines and the Bare Witness Company, directed by Nadja Kostich, designed by Marg Horwell, soundscape and music composed and played by Kristin Rule, lighting by Emma Valente, video by Michael Carmody, at The Street Theatre, Canberra, November 6-10, 2012.


Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 6

Immediately outside the auditorium is a small colourful sign saying “Thank you.  We hope you enjoyed the show”.  Ironic, even shocking, on this occasion.  Bare Witness is not meant to be ‘enjoyed’, but appreciated – for its theatrical inventiveness and for its theme, questioning the role of the war-zone photojournalist.

The structure of the play is simple in concept: we are watching a slide show in reverse, from Photograph 011 to Photograph 001, of pictures taken by photojournalist Dannie as she recalls and reacts to the memories surrounding each shot, from places and wartimes like Bosnia, Chechnya, East Timor.

Her picture of a blinded woman who did not know she was being photographed sells worldwide, establishing Dannie’s career, leading to international awards, while keeping her on the move.  Despite calls home to Australia when Dannie can squeeze them in, her mother keeps the seriousness of her illness secret.  When Dannie discovers her mother has died, she has been away from home for five years, obsessed with seeking out the best shot.

The ultimate photo is probably based on the execution by the Taliban of Daniel Pearl in 2002.

In the background, the video material is not straight documentary, but imagery obliquely relevant, such as of dogs – the dogs of war.  The soundscape is created amazingly by Kristin Rule using an amplified cello for both music and sound effects which complement each situation and mood.  The action is tightly choreographed stylised movement and voice, in a set and lighting which re-creates the image of photographing in war conditions.

The result is ‘total theatre’ – imagist in form, creating moods all the way from excitement (at winning prizes or selling pics to news agencies), wild release (when photojournalists meet together in some remote hotel), love (even in the midst of terror), respect (for each other’s professionalism), despair (in the face of impossible dilemma).

Australia is justly proud of its tradition of physical theatre, and this recent play is an excellent example.  For me some of the imagery was a bit too obscure, and I found the women (Daniela Farinacci as Dannie, and Eugenia Fragos as Violetta) much clearer to understand compared to the men whose diction was not as definite as my hearing needed.  But all the cast (the men were Adam McConvell as Jack, Todd MacDonald as Jacek and Ray Chong Nee as Jose) worked perfectly together in what was often as much a dance company as an acting company.

This is original work, coming out of the long-standing Melbourne theatrical culture, and very much appreciated – a very worthwhile inclusion in The Street’s program.

© Frank McKone, Canberra