Thursday 14 May 2015

2015: The Wizard of Oz - Adena Jacobs' interpretation

Image by Julian Meagher

The Wizard of Oz after L. Frank Baum.  Belvoir directed by Adena Jacobs; set designed by Ralph Myers; costumes by Kate Davis; lighting by Emma Valente; composer and sound, Max Lyandvert; dance captain, Luisa Hastings Edge.  Belvoir Theatre Upstairs May 6 - 31, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 14

If you thought, as did the young people I asked in the foyer at the end of this hour and ten minutes of imagist theatre, that The Wizard of Oz was a ‘nightmare’ and ‘self-indulgent’, then it’s a good idea to read the plot summary of the original horrifying children’s story at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz#Plot_summary .  Adena Jacobs’ weirdness is nothing compared with L. Frank Baum.

My interviewees said they were ‘lost’ (like, 'it was lost on me'), unable to understand what the show was about, and could not even offer any theories.  I thought the old woman in the wheelchair at the end might have been Dorothy whose life (including for some reason her sexual life, which I’m sure was not alluded to in the book) had been utterly ruined by her childhood nightmare Munchkin experience – actually the result of the terror she felt as the tornado took her house up and smashed it to the ground.

I also wondered, because of the nightclub style singing of It had to be you and the fact that Somewhere, over the rainbow only got as far as the word ‘Somewhere’, whether this was some kind of oblique reference to Judy Garland whose fame began as a child with playing Dorothy, and whose life also turned nightmarish after that toe-tapping fantasy version of Baum’s story.

Then again, maybe – since all the parts except the cowardly lion were played by women with most of their parts exposed at various times – this play was meant to be some kind of twisted feminist plot.  But then I couldn’t for the life of me work out what was supposed to have happened or what it meant.

Perhaps it was meant to be a satire of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (that’s the original title), showing how a woman’s life is anything but wonderful.

Anyhow, at least I suppose it led me to think a bit, even if only in ever-decreasing circles.

As a creative work of art, I can’t give it too much praise, despite the obvious demands on the actors’ skills which I presume they carried out as required.  As a teacher of improvisation from way back, it struck me as a case of a potentially interesting idea workshopped to within an inch of its life.  Most of it wasn’t boring to watch, but then I approached it after a scrumptious dinner and half a bottle of good red wine.

To conclude, I thought the most disciplined role was Toto, the little fox terrier who paid attention and never misbehaved.  So much for the injunctions against acting with animals.

I leave you to viewing the photos below.

The cast is listed as

Lion - Paul Capsis
Witch - Luisa Hastings Edge
Scarecrow - Melita Jurisic
Woman - Eileen Kramer
Dorothy - Emily Milledge
Tin Man - Jane Montgomery Griffiths
Toto - un-named Dog

Photos by Brett Boardman















© Frank McKone, Canberra

Tuesday 12 May 2015

2015: Samson by Julia-Rose Lewis

Belinda Jombwe and Ashleigh Cummings

Production photos all by Lisa Tomasetti



Ashleigh Cummings and Benjamin Creek



Charles Wu and Belinda Jombwe

Image by Julian Meagher
Samson by Julia-Rose Lewis.  Presented by Belvoir and La Boite Theatre Company.  Directed by Kristine Landon-Smith; set & costume design by Michael Hili; lighting by Ben Hughes; composer and sound, Kim Bowers; fight director, Scott Witt.  At Belvoir Street Downstairs, May 7 - 31, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 12

The OZLotto ad on the back page of MX, the free upbeat paper which everyone reads on the trains in Sydney, ends with the injunction “Have fun and play responsibly”.

To get a feel for the MX idea of attraction for today’s youth, the front page is pictured large with a furious shot from Mad Max: Fury Road (“The wait is over”); and writ large with the serious budget news headlined “Say cheese, Joe.  No attention deficit disorder, despite selfie” with details of how Anika Buining, 16, “ sidled up beside the Federal Treasurer in the middle of his press conference on the steps of Parliament House this morning and asked for a selfie, to which he replied ‘Sure’.  ‘I don’t want to feel like Kevin Rudd’ the Treasurer joked to reporters, while insisting the photo opportunity was not a setup”.

Inside, MX Talk is about questions like: “My girlfriend and I broke up a couple of months ago, I want to be amicable but she won’t acknowledge me whatsoever.  It really hurts me a lot and I feel she doesn’t care!  What should I do?”

LeaverHerAlone replies “Contrary to what you might think, she doesn’t owe you friendship.  If you keep pestering her, she won’t be able to get over the relationship.  Leave her alone, she obviously doesn’t want to talk to you.”  MovingOn says “Chances are she is just moving on with her life and finding her own [way] again, she probably doesn’t mean to make you feel left behind.” [Quotes include original punctuation and apparently missing word.]

Viewing Samson from the distant realm in which live, I needed the MX experience to remind me what it is like to be a teenager on the cusp of adulthood.  Samson does not appear in his play – only his memorial, “down at the creek” on the edge of the tiny Downstairs stage at the feet of the audience in Row A.  Just as the small-town teenagers – Essie, Beth (both in love with or loved by Samson), and rival Sid, with recent arrival “Rabbit” – are seeking love, death undermines their chance for fun.  They lose touch with how to play responsibly.

It’s a short hour and fifteen minutes from dysfunction to some kind of hopeful acceptance and resolution – moving on – in this cleverly written play, for which Julia-Rose Lewis received the 2014 Philip Parsons Fellowship (noted on this blog November 30).

This is a young playwright writing for young actors.  Ashleigh Cummings (Essie), Benjamin Creek (“Rabbit” whose real name is never revealed), Belinda Jombwe (Beth) and Charles Wu (Sid) are an interesting cast, not only for the excellent quality of their acting but because they represent visually four different ethnic backgrounds: Anglo, Aboriginal, African and Singapore Chinese.  My point in mentioning this is that the script could have been played by any mix or lack of mix of young people from any of the enormous multicultural range which is the norm in Australia today.

The troubles and needs of 15 to 19 years olds are universal, and Julia-Rose Lewis captures the essence of their concerns.  The stories of the death of Samson, involving a rope, a fall and drowning in the creek, and of Rabbit’s sister in a house fire, only gradually become clear as the rapid bits of dialogue of the young are put together like the pieces of a complex jigsaw.  The avoidance of truths leads to a climactic level of conflict until at least some degree of an adult sense of responsibility begins to filter through.

Julia-Rose Lewis is already building a career and I hope to see much more of her work in the future.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Thursday 7 May 2015

2015: The Arts and the Common Good by Katharine Brisbane






The Arts and the Common Good by Katharine Brisbane.  Platform Papers No 43: Currency House, Sydney, May 2015.

Commentary by Frank McKone

In 1967, when Katharine Brisbane first came to my notice as the new ‘national theatre critic’ for The Australian, the upstart and still quite radical Rupert Murdoch newspaper, I fitted exactly one description she gives of theatre activities of the day.  I was an educated and sort of semi-professional amateur as a teacher doing as much drama as I could, extra-curricular with school students as well as in the local community theatre groups (Broken Hill Repertory and the Wyong Drama Group in my case).  Coming to Canberra gave me the opportunity to join the new school system in 1974, fortunately at the time of the Whitlam Government’s enthusiasm and even relative largesse towards education, where I was able to turn my drama interest into a professional career, writing curriculum and teaching the new subject called ‘Drama’ for the next two decades.

Brisbane also notes that development, and the importance of drama in education, in her detailed history of theatre in Australia and its relationship with ‘the common good’.  From a highly perceptive study, especially of the role of government, commercial interests and social movements, and drawing on some 60 references from the likes of Vance Palmer, to Donald Horne, and on to Robyn Nevin and Wesley Enoch, Brisbane reaches highly practicable conclusions, not just about where we stand today but what we might do tomorrow.

And I mean preferably tomorrow, rather than in some indefinite future.  After all just today, as the Reserve Bank has reduced the official cash rate to ‘a new record low of 2 per cent’, ‘Treasurer Joe Hockey has urged Australian households and businesses to borrow and invest money’ (to quote The Canberra Times).

So let’s pick up Brisbane’s six proposals in her section 7. So what is the matter with profit?, for this is the key question that her history raises about amateurism, popular commercialism, high art’s non-profitalism, and issues like excellence-ism, elitism and community-access-ism.

She begins with the playwright Alan Seymour’s question about the Parade Theatre: “'Why isn’t it a metropolitan theatre?', he asked, 'and the [NIDA] students apprentices?'”  Here Brisbane is concerned about the ‘edifice complex’, noting that “The Parade Theatre, seating 700, has been under-used since it opened and is too impractical and expensive for hiring use.”  Rather than, I assumes she means, as nothing but a non-profit training venue for the students.

I had a similar problem with Murranji Theatre where I taught at Hawker Secondary College.  I had visions of it being used as a significant place for theatre in Canberra, as well as for experiential learning for my students, but it rarely attracts commercially viable theatre (though it has been a successful venue for community users), despite its excellent acoustics and quite sensible proscenium stage.   But backstage facilities were always limited by the theatre being built within a school structure.  Erindale College Theatre was rather more successful because it was originally designed to operate as a community facility more or less independent of the school.  The venue which has made the grade has been The Street Theatre, which finally got a decent extension just in the last year or so, and is on the boundary between the University and the Civic Centre – while the ANU’s Arts Centre has had mixed success, being fully within the Universiy.

Katharine Brisbane puts these proposals:

1.     A real industry.  I believe that we have the potential for a profit-based performance industry of the highest quality.

2.     National development. I believe that we need a national theatre workshop dedicated to developing an Australian performance tradition and working with playwrights to bring the text, performance and design to its optimum before public performance.

3.     Rethought venues. I believe that it is now time for our performing arts centres to become metropolitan theatres open for hire.

4.     Refocussed Australia Council. I believe that the Australia Council should be redrafted to invest their money in talent, employment, assisting individual artists, funding innovation and advancing the interests of cultural continuity and self-examination. Supporting the national workshop would be one of its responsibilities.

5.     Cultural leadership. I believe that our major artists should take their place at the head of the profession as advocates and spokesmen and women; should actively promote their industry’s practice and social value; and be retained by and identified with their particular arts organisation or company not through occasional appearances but for a year at a time.

6.     Outside funding. I believe that the Australian performing arts have more than enough talent and vision to attract their second-step development venture capital and the ethical investment sector.

As you can see, there’s a lot more to the Platform Paper than I can cover here, except to say that all six proposals are clearly derived from Katharine Brisbane’s long experience.  She also refers to previous Platform Paper writers Julian Meyrick and Wesley Enoch, whose papers are also reviewed on this blog (May 16 and Aug 9, 2014 respectively).  From so much that I could cover, I will extract an idea which I also drew from those papers which relate to Brisbane’s proposals 2, 3 and 4.

We once hosted the Australian National Playwrights’ Conference each year in Canberra (which I recall fondly since a play of mine was workshopped there in 1981).  Katharine Brisbane was a key organiser in establishing the Playwrights’ Conference.  The role she suggests for the Australia Council suggests to me that Canberra should become the place for the National Performing Arts Development Program (2 above) invested in by the refocussed Australia Council (4 above) and conducted in the Canberra Theatre Centre - or Australian National Theatre Centre (3 above).

Elsewhere in her Paper, Brisbane sees the National Development Program as the place for apprentices to be trained on new writing, and their work to be performed on a profit-making basis, on an off-Broadway model (or something like the UK provinces or  off-West End model).  She specifically sees that this needs to happen away from the main capital city commercial theatre centres.  I see Canberra as the perfect place, at least for the rest of this century.

In effect Canberra has been playing the role of stimulating the development of young writers and performers over the 40 years I have worked here – for them to move off to the bigger centres.  As just a couple of examples among many, think of Iain Sinclair and Tommy Murphy in recent times and the work of Carol Woodrow (including at the Playwrights’ Conference) in times past.  Caroline Stacey’s work at The Street Theatre is already a great model to work from.

With investment not only from governments (ACT and Australian) but through industry partnerships (think Film Australia as another useful model) Canberra can play its proper role as the Australian capital of new Australian theatre.

Let’s make the move!

Katharine Brisbane
© Frank McKone, Canberra




Wednesday 6 May 2015

2015: Le Noir – The Dark Side of Cirque






Le Noir – The Dark Side of Cirque  Contemporary Circus produced by Tim Lawson and Simon Painter at Canberra Theatre Centre, May 6-10, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 6

Master of Ceremonies: Salvador Salangsang Jr
I could get all academic about the nature of contemporary circus, but for Le Noir it would only be to point out that like many shows going back to Circus Oz and Cirque du Soleil, the costumes and style of presentation have a theme. 

Le Noir is actually ‘Le Blanc et Le Noir’, white for the first half and black for the second (much shorter) half, with a French feel established by the comedic clown MC Salvador Salangsang Jr as a background to a sexy presentation of the circus acts.

In fact, as opposed to the tendency of others, like James Thiérrée, to become pretentious as if his circus is high art about significant social themes, Le Noir is pure seductive entertainment with no other purpose beyond showing off the skills of the trapeze, balancing, twirling, contortion and gymnastic performers.  Just relax and ooh and aah as appropriate.  Clap, cheer and whistle as impossible feats are successfully achieved.  Just like the capacity audience on opening night. 

Thoroughly enjoyable, though I did have to plug my ears most of the time to defend them against damage from the sound system.

But watching and recognising the excellent work of the performers made the evening well worthwhile.  Having been to the circus since my infant days in a different society of long ago, I have to say I still miss the animals.  But that’s life, I suppose.

Elena Gatilova                            Anna Ostapenko


Marie-Christine Fournier & Louis-David Simoneau         Yuliia Lytvynchuk & Valerii Volynets




Gediminas Pavolvicius                     Denis Ignatov-Radokhov




David Matz             Valeri Tsvetkov & Yani Stoyanov




Daria Shelest & Vadym Pankeych     Jeronimo Ernesto Garcia Medina & Jessica Anne Ritchie





Success!

© Frank McKone, Canberra