2015: Kill the Messenger by Nakkiah Lui

Illustration by Julian Meagher

Kill the Messenger by Nakkiah Lui.  Directed by Anthea Williams; set designer, Ralph Myers; lighting by Katie Sfetkidis; costumes, Mel Page; dramaturg, Jada Alberts.  Indigenous theatre at Belvoir, suppported by The Balnaves Foundation at Belvoir Upstairs, February 18 – March 8, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 20

Author: Nakkiah Lui

Kill the Messenger is a great little play, and a different play.  It is a modern play.  As I left the theatre, I was confronted by the vociferous excitable melee of Friday night revellers bunched around the restaurants in Elizabeth Street, and wondered what world I was in.  This was not where I had been for the previous hour and a half.

Great big plays of the past, let’s say by Sophocles or Shakespeare, were set in another time and/or place.  For the characters, the story might be personal, but the audience knew that after the emotional engagement, their task was to interpret the author’s intention.  What does Oedipus’ tragic unwitting mistake in marrying his mother tell us about the human condition?  Are the gods worthy of our continuing belief, or might not we be better off to forget them?  How does the ex-king’s son, Hamlet, deal with his uncle’s perfidy?  Is the play in 1604 a warning not to continue to rely on the honesty and propriety of the new King of England, James the First (also James the Sixth of Scotland).

We may look back on these plays and see how the ancient Greeks took the first steps which established the scientific method, without the need to believe in gods, and how the next King of England, Charles the First, was killed in 1649, and how the Commonwealth Parliament ran without a king for 11 years, establishing the principle that the Parliament would choose who would be King for evermore.

Nakkiah Lui has set her play in her time and place: St Marys in Western Sydney where her Nanna fell through the white-ant rotten floor of 37 Griffith Street, owned but never maintained by HFA – Housing for Aborigines – despite years of complaints.

Nakkiah Lui (Nanna on screen)

On the screens which are the backdrop we see the photos of Nakkiah’s family, including herself as a child and Nanna, bright, alive, and later near the death caused by the fall.  The time is recent: perhaps it was only yesterday when the phone call came from the hospital, or when Paul hanged himself in the park nearby because the Emergency Department had to make him wait while other more urgent lives were saved – or not, as the case may be.  Nakkiah did not know Paul but had to write his story.  Did she meet him in the park?  If she had, could she have changed his story?

Lasarus Ratuere as Paul

The modern play is immediate, in the here and now.  Unlike the authors Sophocles and Shakespeare, Nakkiah Lui is on stage.  For us, watching, she becomes a character in her own life, frightened even that we, observing from a certain distance, may not appreciate, like, understand her play.  Off stage, Sophocles and Shakespeare surely had the same fears.   On stage last night, at curtain call, in the centre of the line of actors, Lui’s fear was palpable.  This is extreme risk-taking.

Nakkiah Lui

But she needn’t be afraid.  She has written a great work, even if not on the grand scale.  Our engagement in the emotions of the characters, including the author herself, inevitably embraces us, urging us on to understand her intention.  Beyond the question of why are Aboriginal people still treated as beneath rather than of equal standing to others, is the more frightening concern.  Is life truly out of our control?  Are we kidding ourselves?  Like Nakkiah, we write our stories of our lives as if things make sense, as if there is some sort of order in our universe.  But at curtain call we must face up to the possibility that we cannot understand the what and why of life.

Shakespeare, perhaps seeing himself in Prospero, came to this point in The Tempest.  Lui has proved that she, a Gamilaroi / Torres Strait Islander, stands equal among her playwriting peers.

The performances and direction of this production are exemplary, and must provide Lui with a great sense of support.  Each part requires emotional expression of sensitivity and guts, in a structure of short scenes, and each actor – Matthew Backer (the ER nurse Alex), Katie Beckett (Paul’s sister Harley), Sam O’Sullivan (Peter, Nakkiah’s boyfriend and confidant), Lasarus Ratuere (Paul) and Nakkiah Lui as herself – has created an instantly real character.  Their work, under Anthea Williams’ precise direction, draws us into a weird experience where the borderline between what might or might not be fiction or fact keeps shifting, like those metaphorical goalposts.

The result is outstanding and should not be missed.  But give yourself a little time outside afterwards to adjust.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s important to realise that Nakkiah Lui is writing within a new tradition of Indigenous playwriting, presented on our mainstages.  Belvoir and The Balnaves Foundation have been crucial to this development.

Two plays earlier in this tradition are the Noongar story of Yibiyung by Dallas Winmar, 2008 (in association with Malthouse, Melbourne) and Conversations with the Dead by Richard Frankland, 2003, both directed by Wesley Enoch at Belvoir.  My reviews of these plays were published in the Canberra Times and can also be found on my personal blog at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au .

The script of Kill the Messenger is also published by Currency Press, 2015.

Nakkiah Lui as Author with Sam O'Sullivan as boyfriend and confidant Peter

Paul in the Park
(Lasarus Ratuere)

Matthew Backer as Alex

Katie Beckett as Harley

Lasarus Ratuere and Katie Beckett

Mathew Backer and Katie Beckett

All photos by Brett Boardman













© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

Eryn Jean Norvill as Catherine Holly

Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams.  Directed by Kip Williams.  Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Opera House, the Drama Theatre, February 13 - March 21, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 21

The play about whether Catherine needs brain surgery because she ‘babbles’, or is the only one who knows the truth, is one of Tennessee Williams’ enduring works for theatre.  In his own time he experimented with staging techniques, famously in The Glass Menagerie where Tom at times removes himself from the action and becomes a narrator, while text signs remind us of people’s misconceptions – such as the hopeful “Blue Roses” for the ill-health condition ‘pleurosis’.

Kip Williams, perhaps channelling his namesake, has taken this production of Suddenly Last Summer far beyond the standard Brechtian distancing approach into the modern world of live video – and has done a brilliant job with his design team, Alice Babidge (Designer), Damien Cooper (Lighting), Stefan Gregory (Composer and Sound) and Shane Johnson (Audio-Visual Consultant).

For many years I have found myself critical of the use of multi-media as it became de rigeur – often being used as an unnecessary adjunct to the drama, merely because it had become the fashion.  This production proves that media on stage has grown up at last from its very early days (even back as far as Erwin Piscator’s political theatre in 1920s Germany).

An underlying but crucial theme of Suddenly Last Summer is revealed when the young woman under attack from her aunt, her mother, her brother, her nurse from St Mary’s Psychiatric Hospital, and, she suspects, from the specialist doctor who must decide if she should have a lobotomy, bursts out that she knows she is ‘being watched’.  Here’s a theme which, of course, has nowadays become a major political issue called ‘privacy’, and we all feel the threat of ‘surveillance’.

Using live video in this production, everyone on stage is being watched – by us, in exquisite close-up when we need to see exactly how a character is feeling, or to judge a character’s motivation.  Combined with a full-stage revolve, we are able to see every nuance throughout the extensive semi-tropical, almost primeval, garden in a way that would normally be impossible in a large conventional proscenium theatre. 

In fact, for perhaps the first time in my experience, the far too wide letter-box shape of the Drama Theatre stage has been used to the advantage of the play.

The result is absolutely rivetting.  Whatever we might think of the psychological ideas of Tennessee Williams’ era, which this play criticises in any case, the technique used by Kip Williams exposes the awful attitudes and destructive behaviours of Sebastian Venable (Brandon McClelland), his mother Violet Venable (Robyn Nevin), his dead father’s sister Grace Holly (Susan Prior), and his cousins George Holly (also Brandon McClelland) and the central young woman Catherine Holly (Eryn Jean Norvill).

Including Mark Leonard Winter as Dr Cukrowicz (or ‘Sugar’ in translation), Paula Arundell as Sister Felicity and Melita Jurisic as Violet’s servant Miss Foxhill, the whole cast expertly worked in both stage and film method.  The only (minor) technical fault was that the good doctor’s mic lead showed above his collar in shots from behind. 

If any special praise should be given, beyond the high praise all deserved, it has to be for Eryn Jean Norvill’s tour de force as Catherine.  Her performance, and the whole production, should be watched for its clarity of purpose on the part of the Sydney Theatre team and of the author, Tennessee Williams.  And, as usual, the STC program is a very worthwhile read in itself.

Grace Holly (Susan Prior), her son George Holly (Brandon McClelland) and her daughter Catherine Holly (Eryn Jean Norvill)

 All photos by Brett Boardman

Mark Leonard Winter as Dr Cukrowicz (watching live on screen), Paula Arundell as Sister Felicity and Eryn Jean Norvill as Catherine Holly

Melita Jurisic as Violet’s servant Miss Foxhill with Robyn Nevin as Violet Venable

Two views of Violet Venable (Robyn Nevin)

Violet Venable (Robyn Nevin) being watched by Catherine Holly (Eryn Jean Norvill) on live camera

Three perspectives on Catherine Holly (Eryn Jean Norvill)

Catherine Holly in a different mood (Eryn Jean Norvill)

Violet Venable and Miss Foxhill (Robyn Nevin and Melita Jurisic)

Watching as Catherine tells the truth:
Melita Jurisic, Susan Prior and Paula Arundell as Miss Foxhill, Grace Holly and Sister Felicity
with Robyn Nevin (foreground) as Violet Venable

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Dream Home written and directed by David Williamson

Guy Edmonds (Paul) and HaiHa Le (Dana)

All photos by CLARE HAWLEY

Dream Home written and directed by David Williamson.  Set and costumes by Marissa Dale-Johnson; lighting by Matthew Marshall.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney.  Previews from January 31; Season February 5 to March 28, 2015.

Cast:
Paul (film music composer and sometime dog-catcher) – Guy Edmonds

Paul’s wife Dana (commercial advertising film director, six-weeks away from giving birth) – HaiHa Le
 
Sam (a Lion of Lebanon) – Justin Stewart Cotta

Sam’s wife Colette (also one-time girlfriend of Paul) – Libby Munro

Henry (“consultant” and downloader of pornography of a certain kind) – Alan Flower

Henry’s wife Cynthia (Qantas air hostess with a special interest in Los Angeles) – Olivia Pigeot

Wilma (kleptomaniac, rumour-monger and bingo cake maker) – Katrina Foster

Reviewed by Frank McKone
World Premiere Opening Night
February 5

David Williamson’s The Coming of Stork premiered in 1970 at La Mama Theatre.  I saw it at the Old Tote, the National Institute of Dramatic Art’s original tin shed theatre at the University of NSW (replaced long ago by The Parade Theatre). Graham 'Stork' Wallace was played by the 6ft 7inches Bruce Spence, creating an unforgettable character.  I have never quite got over his trick of stuffing an oyster up his nostril, later blowing his nose to the absolute horror of all concerned.  Not only for the characters on stage, but for us in the front row of that tiny theatre, almost on stage ourselves.

That was the beginning of my following Williamson’s career, now for 45 years.  Over all that time and (I think) 48 plays, counting this new one Dream Home, he has never again written quite such an excitingly wild character as Stork – until Sam, the Lion of Lebanon came along.  His first entrance is a real shock, and, like Pavlov’s dogs, classical conditioning sets us up to jump every time there’s another knock on the door.  Cotta’s ferocity and oiled muscles are a different kind of horror from an oyster up the nose, but equally unforgettable for us in Row B at the Ensemble’s theatre in-the-round, almost as close as in the old Old Tote.

Justin Stewart Cotta (Sam), HaiHa Le (Dana), Guy Edmonds (Paul)

I’ll come back to the history later, but first what about the directing and acting?  Does the play work on stage?

It plays like a traditional farce by Georges Feydeau, though he needed, I believe, a minimum of four entrances for characters to be forever unpredictably appearing at.  For Williamson one front door of the flat is enough – you just never know who else is going to suddenly appear.  In the flat are the newly arrived lucky couple, Paul and Dana, who are only just able to cover the rent for the extra space they need for the baby.  The rent problem is where Paul’s stint as a dog catcher comes in – it pays better than an occasional dreamy film score.

What they don’t know about is the body corporate, or rather the bodies incorporated in the building around them.  From the cast list you can imagine some possibilities for yourself.  Williamson’s imagination is quite extraordinary and should not be revealed here.  Just make sure you book a seat as near Row A as you can – the nearer you are to the action, the more exciting, surprising and funny will be the experience.  Mind you, laughter spread like wildfire around and behind me right up to the uppermost rows on all three sides of the full house on opening night.

Williamson’s directing of his own work, always a risky business in my view, was not a problem.  The realisations of the characters brought out the subtlety in the writing.  The actions are exaggerated, but this is real farce, not mere slapstick.  Paul’s dilemma, which makes him the central character, of discovering his previous lover, and, what’s worse, of her discovering him, could have been overplayed.  But Guy Edmonds takes care to allow us to understand the softness of Paul’s approach and how that gives Paul the strength he demonstrates, as he remonstrates, in the extremely funny climactic scene.

Guy Edmonds (Paul) and Libby Munro (Colette)

I felt the pacing of the performance came off the boil a bit in the early part of Act 2.  I’m not sure without being there in rehearsal, whether this means livening up the writing or working in some extra ‘business’.  I also wondered at first if the final scene, which reprises the sounds of the unit block from the opening, was just an easy way to make a denouement to finish up neatly.  But I can also see it as an ironic ending.  The horrors of living in a block of flats are still there, but now Dana can live with that, because she has come to know everyone and successfully taken charge as Chair of the Body Corporate.  Maybe something more is needed to point up the irony, if that’s what Williamson intended.

Guy Edmonds (Paul) and HaiHa Le (Dana)

And back to history to conclude.  When Williamson was being the radical at La Mama and the Old Tote, Hayes Gordon had already established the Ensemble on the upper-middle class North Shore, literally in a boatshed, perhaps in memory of the Princeton Players of Eugene O’Neill’s early days in the USA, not far from his [Gordon’s] Boston birthplace.  Hayes had migrated after refusing to sign a loyalty oath declaring that he was not a communist, and became famous here for his 1967 performance as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

Theatre in-the-round was Hayes Gordon’s contribution to radical theatre but you might have thought theatre on the North Shore would be rather different from La Mama.  So I find it interesting that today David Williamson finds himself almost umbilically attached to the Ensemble, after many years of first productions of his plays by Hayes Gordon’s protegée Sandra Bates – herself having reached her final season as Artistic Director and passing the role on to Mark Kilmurry who has been Associate Director since 2005.

All this sounds quite cosy and comfortable, yet here’s the wild man Sam, Lion of Lebanon, stirring up the audience at the Ensemble just as Graham 'Stork' Wallace stirred us up at the Old Tote.  And the audience loved it today, as we did 45 years ago.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Mother and Son (stage play) by Geoffrey Atherden

Mother and Son (stage play) by Geoffrey Atherden.  Produced by Spencer McLaren, Dean Murphy and Joseph Thomsen.  Directed by Roger Hodgman; lighting by Nigel Levings; set design by Shaun Gurton; costumes by Esther Marie Hayes.  Canberra Theatre, February 4 – 7, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 4

Maggie doesn't need Vitamin B: her memory's perfect!
Rachael Beck as Anita, Noeline Brown as Maggie Beare, Darren Gilshenan as Arthur

Would you have passed this test?  Mrs Beare says she is good at tests and hopes to pass this one.  How about you?

Aged Care Assessment Test Question: Mrs Beare.  Can you tell me who the Prime Minister is?
Mrs Beare:  Is he still there?
Tester:  I’m not sure.  I think so.  Can you tell me his name?
Mrs Beare: flaps her hands in a gesture of faint despair, and changes the subject, as the Canberra audience erupts in raucous laughter.

Mrs Beare passed with flying colours.

As you can see, Geoffrey Atherden has re-worked his 1984-94 ABC TV series to bring it up to date.  The characters of Maggie Beare, her carer son Arthur, and her profligate dentist (but favoured) son, Robert, remain much the same, but they now live in the modern technological world.  Mobile phones, very suspect rip-off call centres, and Skype play a major role in this comedy, taking it a little nearer to social satire in its two hours on the stage compared to the 22 minute episodes (according to Wikipedia) of the original sitcom.

I guess it’s more common for novels and stage plays to be turned into movies.  I had my doubts about making a television production into a play.  But in a very short while I had forgotten that I wasn’t watching Ruth Cracknell, Garry MacDonald, Henri Szeps and Judy Morris.  Noeline Brown, Darren Gilshenan, Rob Carleton and Nicki Wendt became Maggie, Arthur, Robert, and Robert’s wife Liz in their own right, in the company of Rachael Beck as Arthur’s new-found love, Anita; Robyn Arthur as Maggie’s new-found friend at the respite centre, Monica; and Sharon Davis as Karen, the Aged Care Assessment tester.  On Skype we met Robert and Liz’s charming children, Dylan Redman as Jarrod Beare and Jade Redman as Bronte Beare.

I have to admit I didn’t watch all the ten years’ worth of episodes, partly because although each viewing was enjoyable in itself and there were always little unexpected surprises, there was an inevitable degree of predictability.  You could miss an episode, or even many episodes, without losing anything crucial.  After all, that's how television works.

I found the full-length play more engaging, not just because the situations were funny but because of the ingenuity of the twists and turns in the plot which had to reach two climactic points, and find a satisfactory conclusion.  Atherden showed his skills as a writer as we left Act 1 for interval wondering if Maggie was dead and what on earth could happen next, and then being taken to the point of apparent inevitable failure for Arthur in Act 2.

But then this Arthur, through the influence of the smart and enthusiastic Anita, who is the carer for her disabled brother, works his way out of his old tendency to give up on his mother in frustration.  He uses a subterfuge - a letter supposedly written to Maggie by his dying father - which is at once a trick and yet is also a moral act seeking a resolution which brings out Arthur's love and respect for his mother and solves the problem of her future care. 

It is the development in Arthur’s understanding which makes his relationship with Maggie at last positive instead of potentially destructive.  And all this is done by Atherden cleverly drawing on the humour of the situation.

The actors received the lengthy enthusiastic applause that they deserved, while I would add special recognition for Shaun Gurton’s clever set design.

Any doubts I had brought with me were gone long before Act 1 ended.  Atherden and his director, cast and crew certainly passed their test, even as Mrs Beare passed hers.

Nicki Wendt as Robert's long-suffering wife, Liz Beare

Arthur realises he must confront his dishonest brother, Robert
L to R: Rob Carleton as Robert Beare, Noeline Brown as Maggie Beare, Darren Gilshenan as Arthur Beare

Success at last for Arthur
Noeline Brown as Maggie Beare, Darren Glishenan as Arthur Beare

---------------------------------------------------------------
Footnote.  It is very disappointing not to have a printed program for people to have in hand on the night.  Although you can find information about the cast and creatives on the net at www.motherandsononstage.com.au/cast-creative/, there is no context for the production, beyond a brief run-down of the plot.  Director’s and author’s notes in a program are valuable for audience members, not only as guides to a greater appreciation of the play, but at least as a physical memento of their visit to the theatre.  Producers, please note.

© Frank McKone, Canberra