2015: Quintett by William Forsythe and Frame of Mind by Rafael Bonachela

Quintett by William Forsythe and Frame of Mind by Rafael Bonachela.  Sydney Dance Company at Canberra Theatre, April 30 to May 2, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 30

My interest in contemporary dance began with a couple of classes with NIDA’s Margaret Barr in the 1960s, and was strongly influenced by seeing Merce Cunningham, and though I can clearly see the link with both these works, I am qualified to make neither technical nor serious historical judgements.  My context for this show, given the overall title of Frame of Mind, is limited to what I saw, heard and felt in response.

Each work used music as the framework for the dance.  For Quintett this was a recording made by composer Gavin Bryars of a homeless man in London singing “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”.  The few lines of the old man’s voice was looped to be repeated throughout the performance with a backing of increasingly complex orchestration.  For Frame of Mind, the music (without words) was from the album by the composer Bryce Dessner called Aheym, recorded by Kronos Quartet.  ‘Aheym’ is Yiddish for ‘homeward’.

I thought Rafael Bonachela used his music more effectively than William Forsythe used his.  Both accompaniments  implied a dramatic structure.  In Quintett it was a gradual linear increase in intensity, as if the words of the old man’s song were looped in a tightening spiral.  But the dance of the young people seemed oblivious, as they endlessly played out their changing relationships, and the action stopped abruptly at no particular dramatic point.

Maybe that was the point, but for me it was an anti-climax – too cold emotionally for the feeling in the words and the orchestration.

Bonachela’s youngsters were also playing out their relationships, but there were times of warmth, of harmony, against times of threat, consistent with the music, ending in a sense of disaster from which togetherness might never come through.

Though this sounds a more conventional idea, the dance was never sentimental or ‘tragic Romantic’.  The strength of feeling was real, at least for me, as against a distant coolness in Quintett.

But maybe Merce Cunningham can be given the last word, in this ABC report:

“He started choreographing in 1944, and went on to establish his own company, one which did away with the idea that you dance to the music. In his world you dance with the music. Under the Cunningham philosophy, the two elements are created separately and only come together on the night, in a kind of co-existence but not co-dependency.”
[ http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/artworks/merce-cunningham/3218088 ]

I thought the quality and the originality of the choreography and performance was excellent and equally good in both works.  Maybe Frame of Mind was with the music, but leaning a little more to the music; but I’m not sure I can say that Quintett was really with or to the music.

But don’t mind me too much.  Two of Margaret Barr’s classes told me that I’d never be dancer; just a critic.

Photos: Ben Symons and Peter Greig



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Flak written and performed by Michael Veitch

Flak written and performed by Michael Veitch.  Ellis Productions directed by Helen Ellis at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, April 28 to May 2, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 28

“To be remembered.  Not always.  Just sometimes – to be remembered.”

That’s all this 90-year-old asks of us, though he was awarded the DFC twice.  That’s the Distinguished Flying Cross [ http://en.ww2awards.com/award/5 ] awarded to “Officers and Warrant officers for an act or acts of valour and courage or devotion to duty performed whilst flying in active operations against the enemy".

This was the conclusion to the presentation on stage by Michael Veitch of a number of the “true stories from the men who flew in World War Two” recorded in his 2006 book Flak.  He has made a very effective selection of Australian, English, Welsh and German fliers’ stories, and in the telling he creates the personality of each one as he was at the time and place of Veitch’s original interview.  As the narrator, he presents himself ‘in character’ as the adult man who from early childhood was fascinated by the wartime aeroplanes and who became almost obsessed first with the Spitfire and Battle of Britain story, and now with the history of World War Two through the experiences of those – the relatively few – who survived the ‘trips’ and ‘tours’ across the skies of Europe over six years of conflict.

Along with the men’s stories we are given the context of the machines – many of disastrously dangerous design, and all inevitably vulnerable to destruction by airborne gunfire and flak from the ground.  The result brings to life horrific events, yet leavened by the humour of the old men’s reflections.  The message remains that war and its requirement to kill or be killed is entirely pointless.

Yet there is hope in the message that we must remember, must never forget, that reality.  And in remembering the excitement of such a dangerous adventure as flying in all kinds of weather; dropping depth charges from a Sunderland, just barely above a U-boat’s conning tower (“You got him!” reported the navigator, at once both elated and horrified); being literally ejected at 22,000 feet when flak hit the fuel tank in an explosion which killed all the others on board; using your headphones cable to tie a tourniquet which slowed the bleeding from your shattered leg and then remembering to pull the rip cord on your parachute and enjoying the silence at 15,000 feet; bailing out injured over the Home Counties, landing near a farmhand who thought you were German and having to scream at him “Piss off and get me an ambulance!”  Or even sitting next to Eva Braun in the Eagle’s Nest and asking why she bothered with such an unimpressive man as Hitler (just after you have cheerfully shaken the Führer’s hand and received an award for your flying prowess).

And especially hope in that even that same German flyer, now living in Australia, had finally seen through it all, when starving and freezing German soldiers fleeing from the Russians were fired on by their own military police as they tried to crowd onto his plane to be rescued.  I will never forget the image of those desperate hands, just their skin, still stuck to the frozen metal of his fuselage when he landed in Poland with the few he was able to take off the Russian ice.

Veitch’s professional history as a comedian perhaps explains his ability to incorporate humour into these stories and his own experiences in seeking out his interviewees, but his acting is at all times entirely true.  There is no hint of exaggeration for effect.  His work is done with all the respect his sources deserve.  Though this production was not specifically to do with the current Anzac ceremonies, I could not help compare the honesty and lack of sentimentality in Veitch’s work with the emphasis on the ‘heroic’ qualities of the Gallipoli stories. 

Flak is storytelling at its best.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Mr Bennet’s Bride by Emma Wood

Mr Bennet’s Bride by Emma Wood.  Newcastle Theatre Company directed by Julie Black.  Set design by Robyn Greenwell; lighting design by Stewart MacGowan and Jenny Brook; costumes designed by Julie Black; wig design by Valmai Drury.  At Canberra Repertory’s Theatre 3, April 11 – 12, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 11

Newcastle Theatre Company is a pro-am community theatre with a similar history to Canberra Rep. [http://www.newcastletheatrecompany.com/aboutus.htm]  The presentation of this play, inspired by the characters of Mr and Mrs Bennet from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, seems perfectly appropriate in this milieu, where the up-and-coming middle class – academics, public servants and lawyers – take on the trappings of upper class traditions.

Emma Woods (her own parents having given her such a significant name) has captured the essence of Jane Austen’s sensibility in imagining that Mrs Bennet’s name was Emily and that her father was George Gardiner, the lawyer employed by Mr Bennet’s father, Robert.  Perhaps the quote from Pride and Prejudice which would stir up the mystery of Mr Bennet junior (named James in the play) is at the end of Chaper One:

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

How on earth did ‘James’ Bennet, with the name of kings appropriate to his wealth and station as landed gentry, become married to ‘Emily’ of middle-class pretensions?   At least he managed to have four of his daughters given the right queenly names – Jane, Elizabeth, Mary and Catherine.  But Lydia!  My goodness!

While watching Woods’ play, the question in my mind was how true the characters of James and Emily appeared as their 23-years-younger selves.

I think most of us think of Mr Bennet as genuinely sensible, even wise, and with a quiet ironic sense of humour which we see in his counselling Jane and Elizabeth and his concern about Lydia.  We certainly see Mrs Bennet as so motivated to be upwardly mobile that she fails entirely to have regard for her daughters’ personal development (to use a modern term).  How do these thoughts match the quote above?

Austen’s writing puts us subtley into seeing things from unexpected perspectives.  The first sentence in the quote is the view of Mrs Bennet about her husband.  The rest is Mr Bennet’s view of his wife.

The story in Mr Bennet’s Bride of how Robert Bennet put his son into such a position that James ended up having to marry in the hope of producing an heir to keep the property in the Bennet family’s possession – and how it was his employee’s lower-class daughter that became the only option – makes very good sense.  For readers of Pride and Prejudice it’s even more delicious to realise that James’ marriage to Emily produces only five daughters and no son.  So the property will go to cousin Benedict Collins’ newly-born son (at the time of the Bennet’s wedding) – the awful William Collins, who tries to marry Jane, then Elizabeth, but ends up having to marry the lower-class friend of Elizabeth, Charlotte Lucas.

For readers with an interest in economics and the politics of earned income as against inherited wealth, from the 18th Century onwards, the book you must read is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the French economist Professor Thomas Piketty, expertly translated into English by Arthur Goldhammer.  He uses Balzac and Austen as very effective observers of the social classes of their day.

But now to the production of Woods’ play.  I have a concern about the characterisation of James Bennet.  Of course, the play needs to be comic in parts to match the satirical elements of the novel, but the costume and manner of James’ role is used in the play to go too close to farce.  It should be funny when he is discovered at the beginning asleep on the floor with ‘a book fallen askew where he has been reading’, but to dress him and play him as a kind of buffoon is not right.  It is true, as Austen wrote from the point of view of ‘Emily’ 23 years later, that she could not understand her husband’s ‘quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice’.  At the age of 29, as ‘James’ confronts his father, these characteristics should be played with much more incisive depth of feeling than I saw last night.

For example there is something close to vindictiveness in James’ saying: Perhaps I am so happy to be still living at home with you, Father? which came over merely as playing word-games for a laugh (from us, of course, not from his Father), when we should have heard the dark edge of attack that would have stopped our laugh promptly as we realised the intensity of his feelings.  Then we could accept more easily how Robert’s sister Mary helps him to see that he has damaged James, and when we find out the story of James’ mother’s death in childbirth, we can have real sympathy for Robert and for James.  And we would also recognise James’ anguish as he realises at the wedding the limited nature of the wife he could not get out of marrying, however ‘pretty’ she is.

Then we can see why, 23 years later, his wife cannot understand him, but he understands her and knows he must treat his daughters with humour, care and concern – as he had been treated by his aunt Mary in place of his dead mother.

My example is only one of many during Act 1.  In Act 2 James appeared almost a different man, but the setting him up beforehand as a comic farce character prevented us seeing the development of his character in a serious way.

I think the script is not the problem here.  It’s a matter of interpretation.  Jane Austen’s comedy is serious; this production of Woods’ play doesn’t come up to that mark.  But it is still well worthwhile seeing as a stand-alone comedy of 18th Century manners and as a cleverly written lead-in (or rather as a post-prequel) to discussion of Pride and Prejudice.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: The Anzac Project: Dear Mum and Dad by Geoffrey Atherden and The Light Begins to Fade by Vanessa Bates

The Anzac Project: Dear Mum and Dad by Geoffrey Atherden and The Light Begins to Fade by Vanessa Bates.  Commissioned by The Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, to commemorate 100 years since the Anzacs landed at Gallipoli.  Directed by Mark Kilmurry; lighting by Verity Hampson; sound by Daryl Wallis.  At The Ensemble, Kirribilli, Sydney April 9 – May 10, 2015.

Cast: Eric Beecroft, Anita Hegh, Amy Mathews, David Terry

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 9

The two one-act plays form a satisfying evening’s theatre, each taking a similar approach to the Project by looking back at the Gallipoli event through the eyes of 2015 characters.  The quality of the acting may be taken as read, of course, with such a strong team at work.  

In Dear Mum and Dad a modern couple wonder what to do with the contents of a black tin box, exactly like the one in my house, which contains stuff from the past, including the letter which begins “Dear Mum and Dad” and war medals.  Are the medals worth selling?  Should they toss the box out, assuming that when they die their children will not want to keep their old stuff?

The Light Begins to Fade has a different scenario: four TV writers are trying to come up with ideas for a special on Gallipoli.  Between their ideas sessions, scenes appear.  In effect we end up seeing something of the documentary they envisage.

The two plays, for me, made different impacts which concern what I would call ‘emotional distance’.  I think I would have presented Bates’ play as the first half of the program, and Atherden’s second.

The device of the four writers struggling with ideas and their bits and pieces of understanding often created laughter, and their sessions in between scenes re-enacting elements of the Gallipoli experience, kept us at a considerable distance emotionally.  The piece is almost like an example of theatre-in-education, which keeps the audience safe from too much engagement.  This is not to condemn the play, but to say that it is a good way in to the issue of commemoration, and provides those in the audience who may not know much about what really happened (like these TV writers) a better knowledge and understanding of the truth.  The mimed enactment of the soldiers having to keep rowing ashore even while their mates were being killed around them was a good example.  Though the mime was an obvious theatrical device, the message was made clear.  The soldiers may have gone with enthusiasm for the ‘glory’ of war, but the reality was gory, not glorious.  The men had no choice but to be heroes, whether they lived or died.

All photos by Clare Hawley

L to R: Anita Hegh, David Terry, Eric Beecroft, Amy Mathews as
Actors 1, 2, 3, 4 beginning The Light Begins to Fade

Scenes from The Light Begins to Fade

An interval after this might have meant people discussing what The Light Begins to Fade had told them – or they might have identified with the humour arising from the writers’ concerns about their next cup of coffee, not forgetting the one who preferred chai but who missed out.  Chai was a bit too far out for the coffee drinkers!

Then I think, to come to Dear Mum and Dad would have moved people’s feelings about what the other play had told.  The story behind the letter and medals, about Holly’s great granddad Bert, is revealed essentially through the hallucinations, flashbacks and emotional connections that draw us in to the soldier’s experience – on the farm at home, as a child relating to his mother, and to his father as an older lad, the decision to follow his brothers to the front, his injury and final evacuation as the withdrawal was ordered, his relationship with his nurse who writes the letter for him, and his life later with shell shock.  The interweaving of the past and the present cleverly conflates memories and reality in a way which makes our emotional distance close as we identify with the modern couple and their soldier ancestor.

Eric Beecroft as Bert, David Terry as Frank
in Dear Mum and Dad

Anita Hegh as Connie, David Terry as Frank
in Dear Mum and Dad

Amy Mathews as Cathy, Eric Beecroft as Bert

Scenes from Dear Mum and Dad

I think presenting the plays in this order would deepen the audience’s understanding and appreciation of what the Gallipoli soldiers experienced as the evening goes on, and therefore commemorate their sacrifice, and that of those left at home in Australia, more powerfully than in the order I saw last night.

I have to explain, too, that my reaction is very much influenced by having recently reviewed a play which tops both of these for its emotional impact – Black Diggers (March 25, 2015).  These plays are about white diggers, with their own stories, and reach out to us over the century in a similar way.  If there is any value in this year’s commemorations, I think it is in the theatre where documentary material and artistic expression bring home the truths we need to feel, as well as know.

Anita Hegh as The Mother
in The Light Begins to Fade

The Returned Soldier

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: As You Like It by William Shakespeare

All photos by Rush

As You Like It by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare directed by Peter Evans; set design by Michael Hankin; costumes designed by Kate Aubrey-Dunn; lighting by Paul Jackson; musical director and composer, Kelly Ryall.  Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, April 8 – 18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 8

As I liked it very much indeed.  There’s less to write about when there’s little to complain about.  Mind you, I suppose I could take a leaf out of Jaques’ ever-present notebook and do a grumpy philosophical filibuster. 

John Bell could make such speechifying enjoyable, and then made Jaques’ personality come fully to life with his sly laughs in recognition, especially in Zahra Newman’s Rosalind, of a mind to match his own.  For me this was a significant achievement of Peter Evans’ directing.  I had not seen the strength and depth of Rosalind’s character before, and the fact that she is a woman of intellect beyond all of the men except Jaques, equivalent to all those other Shakespearean women like Portia, Kate, Beatrice and even the ever-so-young Juliet.

No wonder Zahra had such a good time playing Rosalind, with wonderful team work with Kelly Paterniti as Celia.  Now it’s clear why Rosalind is so good at (and is the only one capable of) getting everything properly organised for the mass weddings.  And then, what an ending!  I had not realised before that it is Rosalind who speaks the epilogue.  I wondered, did Peter have Zahra do it to make a modern point about the role of women?  But no – there it is in Shakespeare’s script:

Ros.  It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue....

Once again Shakespeare takes me by surprise and shakes common sense into me.  And thanks indeed to a company who have understood how to make Shakespeare’s play still do this after more than 400 years. 

Taking the play far away from ‘naturalism’ into a kind of nether world was a brilliant way to do it.  The set design was both beautiful in an idiosyncratic way and weirdly fantastic.  I kept being reminded of The Tempest on its magical island: here was the younger Shakespeare’s absurdist comedy in the forest, isolated from conventions, where Rosalind plays on the heart and intellectual strings – a precursor to Prospero.

I’ve said enough, I think.  It’s time for me to quietly depart the scene, like Jaques, not a grumpy critic any more but with a satisfying little smile to myself.  A nice way to exit, for me, for Jaques, and for John Bell.

Zahra Newman as Rosalind is banished on pain of death by
the usurper to the dukedom, Frederick

Abi Tucker as courtier Amiens in song

John Bell as courtier Le Beau, Gareth Davies as clown Touchstone
Kelly Paterniti as Frederick's daughter Celia, Zahra Newman as Rosalind,
daughter of the banished Duke Senior, just before Duke Frederick banishes her.

Charlie Garber as Orlando, Zahra Newman as Rosalind pretending to be Ganymede

Kelly Paterniti as Celia pretending to be Aliena

Tony Taylor as the shepherd Corin, Gareth Davies as Touchstone, Zarah Newman as Rosalind as Ganymede

Zahra Newman as Rosalind as Ganymede

Rosalind has fixed all the marriages.  John Bell as Jaques is about to exit, satisfied.
L to R: George Banders as Silvius, Abi Tucker as Audrey, Emily Eskell as Phebe, Gareth Davies as Touchstone,
John Bell as Jaques, Alan Dukes as Duke Senior,
Zahra Newman as Rosalind, Charlie Garber as Orlando,
Dorje Swallow as the reformed Oliver

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: National Folk Festival: WWI - The Antipodes by Griffyn Ensemble; Dust of Uruzgan by Fred Smith; Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen

National Folk Festival, Sunday April 5 2015 at Exhibition Park, Canberra.

A little reflection by Frank McKone

The National Folk Festival is so vast, with by my count 112 performers listed in the main program as well as a myriad of others in 26 venues and in the streets, that to review them all would be impossible.  I went only on Sunday, despite admonitions from aficionado friends who start on Thursday night and finish late on Monday night.  Every year!

The atmosphere seemed very relaxed (even when a brief storm intruded), the venues were packed, with queues for most performances, and the energy level was buzzing everywhere this year as it always has every year I’ve been.  I would like to mention three shows which I thought were outstanding – all with a Canberra origin.

The Griffyn Ensemble’s WWI – The Antipodes, using music, songs, speeches, documentary records from the period is a work of serious re-interpretation of World War I, compared with the focus on the commemoration of heroes which is central to much of our 100-year anniversary presentations.  The relationship between the role of the Rugby League clubs (from the introduction of League to Australia in 1907-8 which was news to me), the Trade Unions, Billy Hughes, and popular attitudes towards – and I must say, against – the war, made fascinating history.  The attempts to impose conscription, and the failure of those attempts, shed for me a new light on that war.

On the day, modern technology failed to show the video to accompany the performance.  In any case for the Festival the show was edited down, but the complete two hour show will be performed at the Belconnen Arts Centre on Anzac Day and the next day (that is, Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th) at 5pm.  Miss the two-up, but don’t miss this.

Then there’s Fred – Fred Smith, that is.  Canberran to the boot-straps.  A DFAT warrior with a successful diplomatic record in some of the war-torn and socially messy parts of the world, who writes ascerbic songs about life.  The wit is clever and telling, but for me the music was inspiring.  There’s a folk base with a subtlety of tone and mood which adds intellect to the emotional quality.  Now I must follow up his work on CD, Dust of Uruzgan.  Google him as ‘fred smith folk singer’ since there are rather a lot of other Fred Smiths – or if you prefer you can google ‘Iain Campbell Smith diplomat’.

For Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen I have to admit a very likely bias, since Michael Simic was a student in my drama classes in his Years 11 and 12 at Hawker College.  So I quote a friend – also a retired (science) teacher but who knew nothing about Mikelangelo: ‘Just brilliant’ was his unsolicited judgement as the crowd went wild.

I last saw the Black Sea Gentlemen at The Street Theatre in 2011 adding to the celebration of the life of David Branson, an original member of the group before his untimely death.  At that time the performance seemed a bit subdued without the originality of today’s show.  When I think back, maybe that was an occasion for being subdued, but I can imagine David Branson cheering them on today.  Every song was a drama – comic, but on the dark side of life – and the absolutely full to the brim Majestic responded to every twist and turn of words, music and action on stage.  Actually quite a lot was off-stage.  The show began as the performers carried in the double-bass as if it were a coffin; it ended with the audience seeming almost ready to carry off the performers as they played their way out through the auditorium.

So I just thought I should reflect a little on the excellent quality of these Canberra-based performers.  Are there still some Canberra bashers who think we have no heart?  Surely not after these three shows.

© Frank McKone, Canberra