2013: Thursday by Bryony Lavery

Thursday by Bryony Lavery.  Brink Productions and English Touring Theatre, director/dramaturg: Chris Drummond.  At Canberra Playhouse, March 20-23, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 20

Before seeing this play I chose to avoid reading any details of the story of Dr Gill Hicks who lost both her legs in the London bombing of the train taking her to work in 2005.  I had also missed hearing or seeing interviews she gave, including the one on Enough Rope which stimulated the interest of Chris Drummond and led to the cooperative venture between these two theatre companies, one in Adelaide – Dr Hicks’ home town – and the other in London, where she works.

I did not want to find myself judging how correctly the play told her story.  I was hoping for a play, based upon her story, but standing in its own right as an artistic work.  And, indeed, that’s what I saw tonight.

The structure of the work is from the general to the particular, beginning that Thursday with an intriguing picture, almost like a movie where the camera shots from many different locations can be juxtaposed to make a montage in motion of the lives of the people and their partners who, by chance, became placed on that train jam-packed next to the suicide bomber.

After the explosion, which was imaginatively – and very effectively – represented in movement and light rather than excessive sound, the work draws in bit by bit to focus on Rose, based on Dr Hicks, played by Kate Mulvaney, until she walks again in the company of all those who have given so much of themselves to help another human being.

As a work of art, it was the originality of the staging, the characterisations and especially the use of heightened language which made the play work for me.  The approach to presenting what could have been a purely melodramatic plot – however true to actual events – was like using lights from oblique and unexpected angles, rather than obvious spotlighting.  The language, and a figure representing Death working to persuade Rose to depart with him, kept our conventional reactions at bay, just enough to see and feel in response, yet not to be overwhelmed by emotion.

To achieve this, Laverty writes “If I had the choice, I would always make a play in the Brink way....I always felt Chris [Drummond] and I were making it together.”  She makes it clear that “We were turning fact into fiction and those two states are empirically different....  One is random, the other is constructed.”

Yet the art is that the constructed fiction tells us so much more about the nature of the real experience than any news report.  And the artistry of all the actors met the demands of the writing.  The result was demanding but exhilarating theatre, a great confirmation of Dr Gill Hicks’ words: My hope is that Thursday will make us more conscious of the everyday and the intricacy of our interconnected relationships, whether that be with those we know and love, or with strangers.

Not to be missed.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: Vakomana Vaviri Ve Zimbabwe (Two Gentlemen of Verona) and Kupenga Kwa Hamlet. Feature article.

Tonderai Munyevu, Denton Chikura, Arne Pohlmeier in rehearsal

 Two Gents Productions Approaching End

by Frank McKone
March 20, 2013

Two Gents Productions is a cross-cultural theatre company based in London.  In Canberra at The Street we are seeing its penultimate program of Vakomana Vaviri Ve Zimbabwe (Two Gentlemen of Verona) and Kupenga Kwa Hamlet, before the company’s final season on international tour in May 2013.

I was fortunate to catch them between performances, wondering how it came about that a freelance director named Arne Pohlmeier has worked with actors Denton Chikura and Tonderai Munyevu since 2007 on Zimbabwean interpretations of Shakespeare.  Why Shakespeare?  Why Zimbabwe?  And, as it turned out, why Pohlmeier?

Arne Pohlmeier is German born, but spent his childhood in Cameroon, was educated in the US and lives in London.  This is the source of his concern with the migration experience.  What does it mean to leave one culture and join another? 

Travel back to Africa took him to Johannesburg, by this time as a theatre practitioner, where the idea began for a project exploring Shakespeare from a different cultural perspective.  Back in London, he found Shona-speaking actors rare.  Munyevu had come to London after a childhood in Zimbabwe and still had family connections there.  Chikura, after seven years’ insistence by his parents in London that only English must be used at home, came seeking work with much better English than Shona.  So the three began work, with little money, but what turned out to be a highly successful idea: Not only were we able to see the production (Vakomana) through a successful run at one of London’s premier fringe venues, the Oval House Theatre; but we were also able to honour invitations to perform at such exciting events as the 10th anniversary Harare International Festival of the Arts; The Market Theatre Laboratory’s 20th anniversary celebrations (in Johannesburg); and the celebrated Shakespeare Festival in Neuss, Germany.

They explained to me that the first production was, in my words, from outside in.  The two actors were exploring, in a collaborative style, to find ways of using their Shona traditions to express Pohlmeier’s idea.  But in doing this, both Munyevu and especially Chikura had to re-discover their culture, travelling back to Zimbabwe as adults.  For Munyevu the experience was more a matter of remembering, than re-learning; but Chikura found that he was treated and felt like a tourist – even having to pay ‘white’ prices because people heard his London-accented English and saw him dressed as an outsider.

Then, as work progressed, the next production became an inside out exploration of Hamlet, starting from the father-son relationships of Shona culture and connecting from that beginning with the story of Hamlet, his father and his uncle.

In this process, a new show telling the personal story of Munyevu’s return to Zimbabwe was devised by the group, called Magetsi.  This brings directly home to viewers the traditional storytelling style incorporating dance, voice calls, and drums, as well as words, which is used  in the Shakespeare works, now also including The Moors Project focussing on the black characters in Shakespeare’s plays: Othello, the Prince of Morocco from The Merchant of Venice, and Titus Andronicus.

There was such a strength of connection between the three as I spoke with them, grown from five years’ working together, understanding their different perspectives and finding such powerful forms of expression on stage, that I was quite shocked to find that Chikura now has a young daughter – to whom he speaks Shona every day – and not only will finish up with Two Gents in May, but will even give up acting in favour of a stable home life instead of touring as an actor must; while Pohlmeier is already working with a new group in Cameroon to explore his childhood experiences through a classical German text; and Munyevu simply says he will be ‘unemployed’.

I’m sure that the skills and experience they have gained over these five years will mean they all have a interesting future to look forward to, and I thank them for a conversation which opened up for me the beginning, the heights of the middle, and the necessary end of a professional and deeply committed theatre company.
www.twogentsproductions.com/ for further reading.

Denton Chikura

Arne Pohlmeier

Tonderai Munyevu

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: It’s My Party (And I’ll Die If I Want To) by Elizabeth Coleman

It’s My Party (And I’ll Die If I Want To) by Elizabeth Coleman.  Produced by Christine Harris & HIT Productions.  Directed by Denis Moore, designed by Shaun Gurton, sound by Chris Hubbard, costumes by Adrienne Chisholm.  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, March 19-27, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Superficially an entertaining farce involving revelation, death and resurrection, It’s My Party... has a little something extra.  Elizabeth Coleman, in this – her first full length play – skilfully, smoothly, shifted the mood from laughter (on our part) at the characters’ family wrangling to moments of silent recognition of the truth of each adult child’s accusations against their father, and back to laughter in no time at all.

Quality writing gave all the actors every chance of establishing strong characters and clear relationships, and every one of the family members – Henri Szeps (father, Ron Patterson), Robyn Arthur (mother, Dawn Patterson), Trent Baker (son, Michael), Sharon Davis (elder daughter, Debbie) and Freya Pragt (younger daughter, Karen) – took full advantage of the offer.  Though Szeps is so well-known that he was applauded just for appearing on stage, there was no prima donna in this ensemble performance.

In the end (literally) the role of the undertaker, Ted Wilkins, emphasises the farcical nature of the situation but introduces a character from outside the web of the family’s relationships.  The writing is not so strong here, and I thought Matt Furlani could have made this character rather more absurdist in style to make the point.

One of the delights of this production was the set designed by Shaun Gurton.  Though the drama takes place in an internal room, above the “walls” are trompe-l'oeil pictures of the tiled roofs of the suburban house – at least I assume they were painted flats rather than the complete 3-dimensional structures they looked like.  This cleverly established for us, with the furniture in the room, the small business lower middle class status of Ron Patterson, stationery shop proprietor. 

Though first produced at La Mama in Melbourne 20 years ago, with a little updating of some references, It’s My Party... still works well as a study of the changing generations.  Even if our adult children don’t use Blackberries much any more, the question Ron wants to have answered by them – was I a good father? – is still relevant, and their answers are just as funny, or devastating, as ever.

Henri Szeps as Ron Patterson

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: The Chalk Pit by Peter Wilkins

The Chalk Pit by Peter Wilkins.  The Acting Company directed by Tom O’Neill at the Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, March 15-16 and 20-23, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Based upon Wilkins’ research into the history of the Hon Thomas John Ley,  Parliamentarian and Minister in NSW and Commonwealth governments in the 1920s and 1930s, this play is a lengthy narrative displaying the personality of a charismatic murderer – a psychopath.  To this end, I must give credit where it is due: to Craig Higgs, who successfully presented this worst kind of politician.  His carefully managed charm covering up his megalomania, his corrupt dealings, gradually releasing more of his essential violence as life deals its inevitable disappointments, was well done.

Otherwise, what has been a long term project for Wilkins, which began in 1986 with a chance discovery of Ley’s papers at the National Library of Australia, to cover this quite extraordinary story from the 1890s to Ley’s death in Broadmoor Prison in 1947, still needs a great deal of work – to trim and focus the drama, and to establish a consistent style.

In the first half I was strongly reminded of the 1953 folk musical by Dick Diamond, Reedy River.  There were the rambunctious bush characters, fighting for their various political causes (in Reedy River’s case around the 1890s Depression and the Shearers’ Strike), the political speeches, the softer and sometimes grim tones of Henry Lawson’s poetry (such as The Faces in the Street), and a propensity to burst into song.  Though I came to Australia a couple of years after the New Theatre staged Reedy River, I quickly absorbed this traditional culture through songs like The Ballad of ’91 from the 10” Diaphon LP which I still have, and was grateful to see the whole play performed at the National Folk Festival a few years ago.

But even in the first half, the writing in The Chalk Pit could not match Reedy River.  Dee Sheville, the singer, and Sabrina Tesfouxis on piano, had an unenviable task.  Only once, as Miss Collins, did Sheville’s singing have a role to play in the action – when invited by Ley to sing to the crowd to follow his rousing electioneering speech.  After that, songs – usually only snatches of song – were interspersed among the dialogue, sometimes with some relevant words but often with no apparent purpose beyond filling in a gap.  In Reedy River all the traditional songs are integral to the action and mood of the play, and in fact drive the drama along.

The Lawson poems might have had a better impact if they had been given much more stage prominence, rather than coming from spaces outside the central acting area.  Though Martin Hoggart and Kristy Richardson tried hard, their skills as performers were not good enough to overcome the staging.  Lawson’s poems are powerful enough to have been used as deliberate action-stoppers which reflect critically at each point in the life of John Ley.  Perhaps this was the intention, but it was lost in this production.

By interval, the first apparent ‘suicide’ by one of Ley’s opponents, but probably a murder, has taken place.   If we were to pick up the folk drama tradition, we could expect the second half to expose Ley as he becomes step by step more paranoid, more aggressive, more violent, and literally more murderous.  The style for this development might use a melodrama form, or of course move into something Brechtian as in Mother Courage and her Children, the climax of which is devastating.

But it seems that Wilkins became tied up in the minutiae of the truth of Ley’s story, which moves to England and becomes almost a comic Cockney cop story with a detective who says things like “I can feel it in my bones” that Ley is guilty of murdering John McBain Mudie, with a representation of the Old Bailey trial full of cliché lawyers and seeming to belong to some early 19th Century court rather than anything like one which would have taken place in 1946.

Along the way, the genre shifted dramatically towards artifices like having Ley arguing with both his wife – in Australia – and his mistress – in London – as if they were in the same time zone.  And, finally, we see the device where characters from his past throw up at him remembered words, I suppose reinforcing his paranoia, while he declines and dies isolated in the insane section of Broadmoor Prison, ironically escaping being murdered by the State after all.

Were we supposed at this point to feel empathy and sympathy for this psychopath?  Hardly, especially after a tedious, far too long, second half.  We had been spoken to, during the court scene, as if we were the jury, but on the evidence in this script, I was certainly somewhere beyond reasonable doubt, not about Ley, but about the play.

It’s a shame, since the virtually unknown story of this figure, elected to both the NSW and the Federal Parliaments – and therefore a warning to us all for the need to be very, very careful about those who would claim to represent us – should be made into a drama for our times.  This will be a demanding task - as the effort that Wilkins has already put in shows.  It needs, perhaps, an Andrew Bovell.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell, adapted for the stage by shake&stir theatre company (Brisbane), directed by Michael Futcher.  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, March 5-7, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 5

shake&stir is essentially a theatre-in-education youth theatre group – and young people came along in considerable numbers.  The applause from them and from those of us who are somewhat beyond youth was for a very satisfying piece of theatre, which made the message of Orwell’s famous cautionary tale absolutely clear.

All of us benefitted from a reminder to watch out for the con men and women of politics, especially when they spout slogans which morph mysteriously from All animals are equal to All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others!  There could be no more salutary lesson for us in this election year.

The success of this 90 minute adaptation relied on high energy precision in movement and voice by the cast of five, playing over 30 animal characters plus brief narration roles; and on equally high energy and precision in the sound track and visuals.  It was a joy for me to see multi-media and stage action thoroughly integrated, yet never becoming robotic (as I have seen in some children’s shows, for example, like Dora the Explorer performed to a pre-recorded tape).

Here, Ross Balbuziente, Nick Skubij, Tim Dashwood, Bryan Probets, and Nelle Lee (especially in her role of Molly, the horse who could not resist sugar, ribbons and a properly brushed mane) were all spot on in their timing and mood creation.  This Animal Farm was a revolution in action from go to whoa, never a comfortable fable of talking quadrupeds.  Or rather: Two legs Bad, Four legs (or two legs with wings) Good – or the chooks would never have stayed.

The set was quite extraordinarily complex, especially for a touring group to cart around the country.  It must be constructed as a huge jigsaw of pieces of myriad shapes and sizes, including speakers, lights and projector.  I can only admire the designer, Josh McIntosh, for his ingenuity – and the lighting designer, Jason Glenwright, and composer/sound designer Guy Webster – in making a set where actors, lights and sounds, and visuals on screens could all come and go in the right places at dizzying speed.

No roadie’s name is recorded in the program, so I presume everyone must be congratulated for amazing teamwork just to bump in and bump out.  Maybe Michael Futcher whips them all into place every night, unless they have all become as compliant as 457 Visa holders in the mining industry.  Whatever – it’s a great show for old and young to learn or re-learn Orwell’s warning.

© Frank McKone, Canberra