2015: The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The Tempest by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare directed by John Bell; set and costume designer, Julie Lynch; lighting designer, Damien Cooper; composer, Alan John; sound designer, Nate Edmondson; movement director, Scott Witt.  The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, August 19 – September 18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 29

Only one other production of The Tempest has inspired me as much as John Bell’s farewell to his career as artistic director and founder of Bell Shakespeare.  This was Rex Cramphorn’s “1972 Performance Syndicate production of The Tempest [which] received critical and popular acclaim, being remounted and taken on tour until 1974.”   It’s an irony of history that  Cramphorn’s later production of The Tempest in 1991 was his last show before his untimely death in November that year.

There seems to be something magical in the divergences and points of contact in the histories not only of John Bell and Rex Cramphorn, but even for me.  Our births were very close (1 November 1940, 10 January 1941 and 9 January 1941 respectively), though far apart in Maitland, Brisbane and the UK.  We each were influenced by choreographer and dance-drama teacher, the inimitable Margaret Barr, briefly in my case at summer schools, as his teacher at NIDA for Rex and as his colleague when John taught at NIDA. 

I attempted a few dance classes with Margaret Barr, and remember her home as light, white, almost bare of furniture, spotless, pure and simple.  I began my 20 year drama teaching career at Hawker College, Canberra, in 1976, with a production of The Tempest, keeping in mind my image of Margaret Barr and Rex Cramphorn’s production, keeping the action within a circle, enclosed only by loose unadorned material.  And so it is for John Bell’s production all these years later.

In the tradition of Margaret Barr’s teaching, both Cramphorn and Bell focus on movement of the actors in open space, creating an island of dancing magic – sometimes heavy on the ground, sometimes up and light yet powerful, often ethereal and invisible, yet audible – or, in contrast, silent.  This is The Tempest that was also William Shakespeare’s most original and last major work. 

It was the creation of a spirit world that had inspired me about Cramphorn’s work.  It was a world of philosophic enquiry, where the island became the universe, a place of wonder and mystery.  It was this theme that my late teenage students took up enthusiastically, with an image of a huge eye painted high on the rough hessian backdrop, observing all silently, as if from a different universe.

Bell’s production keeps the same feel and the same philosophical implications, but blends in the complexity of ordinary reality.  Though Cramphorn (and I) had kept all our actors in the circle on stage throughout, as if there were no other place to be, even for those not active in the scene, Bell used the circle as an ever-changing space into and out of which characters come and go, as if the rest of the island is concretely out there somewhere, while the spot we see shifts from place to place – entirely in our imaginations, with nothing more than wind moving the surrounding material drops, a rope or a log, or no more than the characters’ costumes to tell us where we are.

The effect is to add a layer of understanding to those previous productions, anchored as they were in the 1970s.  For me, and I suspect for Rex Cramphorn, influenced so much by Jerzy Grotowski, the freedom of the magical world to explore the unknown was where we needed to go.  We were escaping philosophically, perhaps.  But the new world order today requires us to come to grips with strategic thinking – as indeed it was in Shakespeare’s time as absolute monarchy was beginning to be taken down, at first by extremist Puritans, until over the next centuries a reasonable form of democracy could evolve.  Shakespeare is described in John Bell’s director’s notes as “to have been a remarkably competent businessman and one celebrated by those close to him for his witty, mild and affable companionship”.  The very kind of democrat we would all hope to see – and to be.

So in Bell’s production, Prospero is realistically getting a bit past it, and at times is aware that he can’t keep his powers up to the mark.  At 74 I find I have the same problem, and perhaps John Bell feels a bit the same way.  I asked him if leaving the task of directing Bell Shakespeare, the Company, was to be free in particular of Responsibility (though he is continuing to work, as an actor in Ivanov with Belvoir next month).  “No more applications for funding grants,” was his reply.  And there he was, as director of The Tempest, in the second week of the run, still watching and making notes for cast and crew.

My notes say that the casting is excellent, the set and costumes brilliant, the lighting, sound and music composition wonderful, and the movement exciting and telling: the balance between fantasy and reality, or rather the fact that both exist at one and the same time, is made in the movement design and the capacity of the actors to work as dancers – and singers – while completely grounded in their characters. 

You may not think you are seeing dance for the most part, since the choreography is of symbolic or natural seeming movement.  But watch this perfect apparition of Ariel, played with such grace and strength by Matthew Backer.  Watch the two drunken clowns, Trinculo and  Stephano – Arky Michael and Hazem Shammas, who also amazingly play Sebastian and Antonio – to see what I mean about choreography.  But especially watch the one and only woman in the cast (the others – Caliban's mother Sycorax and Prospero’s wife – die before the play begins). 

Eloise Winestock shows us Miranda as the girl brought up in the wild – she hisses at Caliban with animal ferocity.  Now the hormones of developing sexuality lock her onto the quite proper young man, Ferdinand.  Felix Gentle is exactly the right name for this actor, and his Ferdinand is just as amazed at Winestock’s Miranda as she is by him.

I would have presented Caliban, I think, as much more ugly or wild-looking, but I can see why Damien Strouthos was given a less animal-like hair cut, but one still representing rebellion.  It makes him a genuinely serious threat to Miranda’s safety, which Prospero must defend, while we also realise that Caliban is justified in hating Prospero, in parallel to Ariel’s position – though Ariel is more like an indentured labourer, while Caliban is enslaved.

Finally, Prospero’s awareness of his own ageing frailty explains how he can step out of the fantasy and speak directly to us, asking us to free him from his responsibility as an actor.  This speech, especially under Bell’s direction, places Shakespeare centuries ahead of his time in theatre history – beyond Bertolt Brecht even.  We see this level of sophistication currently in the ABC’s The Weekly, in the relationships between Charlie Pickering, Tom Gleeson, Kitty Flanagan and the studio audience, as well as with us watching our screen at home.  If we thought Shakespeare is no longer relevant after 400 years, think again on Prospero’s final speech.

Which ends “Let your indulgence set me free.”  And so be it for John Bell, except that it’s no indulgence on my part.  Bell writes in his program notes “Prospero is a dreamer and is a disastrously ineffective leader.  He prides himself on being a humanist scholar, but in fact governs through terror, tyranny and the employment of dark forces.  Shakespeare, on the other hand, seems to have been....”  I think the evidence, in this production of The Tempest, proves that John Bell is more like Shakespeare than Prospero, and so thoroughly deserves his freedom.


Links:
Ian Maxwell in Australian Dictionary of Biography, at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cramphorn-rex-roy-15453

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_%28Australian_actor%29

Garry Lester in Australian Dictionary of Biography, at
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barr-margaret-14855

Photos by Prudence Upton

Matthew Backer as Ariel, Brian Lipson as Prospero

Brian Lipson as Prospero, Eloise Winestock as Miranda, Damien Strouthos as Caliban

Damien Strouthos as Caliban

Eloise Winestock as Miranda, Brian Lipson as Prospero

Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel, like a harpy

Eloise Winestock, Arky Michael, Haxem Shammas as Spirit Shapes
Brian Lipson as Prospero

Felix Gentle (Ferdinand) and Eloise Winestock (Miranda) in rehearsal

The Drunks in rehearsal
Arky Michael as Trinculo, Hazem Shammas as Stephano, Damien Strouthos as Caliban

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim

Into the Woods  Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; Book by James Lapine.  Dramatic Productions in association with ANU School of Music, directed by Richard Block.  Musical Director: Damien Slingsby; Choreographer: Kathryn Jones; Lighting: Hamish McConchie; Sound: James PcPherson.  At Gungahlin College Theatre, Canberra, August 28 – September 12, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 28

Having only previously seen Into the Woods via the movie, I would like to thank the Dramatic Productions team.  Now I know what Sondheim meant me to understand.  Only on stage, because of the way a playwright structures the drama, do we appreciate both the humour in the breaking of conventions and the genuinely serious theme which results.

At the simplest level, the film does not have an Act I Finale, followed, after an interval of popcorn consumption, by Act II with its Finale.  ‘No One is Alone’ is a powerful expression of humanity in the context of truth about the human condition.  In movie format the guts of the message is lost.

My appreciation also goes to all the performers for clearly understanding the Sondheim style, in the music and in the often surprising structure of the songs, where what would be short sharp dialogue between characters makes duets into lively interactions – little dramas in their own right.  The two princes Alexander Clubb (Cinderella’s Prince) and Anthony Simeonovic (Rapunzel’s Prince) created very effective comedy in their timing in their singing lines, as well as in their choreographed movement; while Veronica Thwaites-Brown and Grant Pegg captured the edginess of the marital arguments of the Baker and his Wife, as well as their tenderness.  Despite the ‘spoof’ nature of the whole idea of the mixed up fairytales, the sudden death, crushed by the Giant’s footfall off-stage, of this Wife made me feel entirely at one with this Baker’s sense of loss.  Her later return in spirit to give him support and direction was played with such simple sensitivity by Veronica, that we could genuinely accept Grant’s new quiet strength as the Baker taking the still impetuous young Jack (Pippin Carroll) under his wing in ‘No One is Alone’. 

The relationship Veronica and Grant had established by then also passed on to Philippa Murphy’s Cinderella in mentoring Siân Harrington’s effervescent Little Red Riding Hood in their half of that quartet.  Here was the formation out of the worst adversity of a new family of the best kind.  For me it was the emotional strength in this scene which lifted the play far above making fun of fairy stories, and beyond conventional sentimentality.  The Giants with their crushing footsteps are all around us, yet on this very day instead of our society understanding the need to bring us all together in positive human feeling, people in Melbourne were on the streets in instant protest against the Australian Border Force proposing to stop people – “any individual we cross paths with” – and demand to see that they are legitimately in Australia.  Within hours Operation Fortitude was cancelled as a result of the Melbourne Jacks’ action.  The Giant was slain.  But I fear this may not be the last of the Giants our Bakers, Jacks, Cinderellas and Red Riding Hoods, or indeed the sons and daughters of the Baker and his Wife, the Baker and Cinderella, and presumably Jack and Red Riding Hood, will have to deal with.

Though there were a few glitches in the lighting and once or twice in the singers’ mikes, the set, costumes and choreography made very good use of the excellent Gunghalin College Theatre.  I could only be jealous in comparison with what for me had been an unusually good school theatre at Hawker College back in the 1990s.  It’s good to see such wonderful – and appropriate – development in government school and community arts facilities.

Finally, the musicianship of the orchestra, directed by Damien Slingsby, must not be forgotten.  Sondheim writes ‘difficult’ music, and this 16-piece orchestra made it a joy to listen to, in combination with singers all of whom mastered what I, as an amateur, would call ‘musical jumps’ – like an obstacle course for an Olympic horse-riding team.

So thanks again for a very interesting night out.

All photos by Peter Stiles

Baker's Wife, Baker, Jack, The Cow
Veronica Thwaites-Brown, Grant Pegg, Pippin Carroll

Cinderella's Family
Jessica Baker, Kitty McGarry, Miriam Miley-Read
Philippa Murphy as Cinerella

Cinderella at The Ball
Philippa Murphy

Kelly Robert as The Witch

The Wolf and Red Riding Hood
Alexander Clubb, Siân Harrington

'No One is Alone'
Little Red Riding Hood, Jack, Cinderella (holding Baker's son), Baker
Siân Harrington, Pippin Carroll, Philippa Murphy, Grant Pegg

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Betrayal by Harold Pinter

Alison Bell as Emma
with the tablecloth from Venice
on the table at Jerry and Emma's flat

 Betrayal by Harold Pinter.  State Theatre Company of South Australia: Directed by Geordie Brookman.  Lighting and Set Designer, Geoff Cobham; Sound Designer, Jason Sweeney; Costume Designer and Associate Designer, Ailsa Paterson.  At Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, August 19-22, 2015.

Cast: Alison Bell – Emma; Nathan O’Keefe – Jerry; Mark Saturno – Robert; John Maurice – Waiter

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 19

How would you handle this situation?  You meet up with someone, on their invitation, with whom you have had an intimate relationship in the past.  You might say How’re you going, then?  We haven’t seen each other for a while, eh? and the other person hesitates a little, and then says No. It’s OK, I’m alright.

What do you think?  Do they know something I don’t know?  Why did they call me to meet up again after all this time?  Do they mean they really are OK, or are they just saying that?  If they aren’t really OK, what does that mean?  Do they want to tell me something because they think I should know whatever it is?  Or because they think I can help in some way?  And if they are really OK, then why did they call me?  Do they want to start up with me again?  Do I want to start up with them again?  If I do, should I say something?  Or should I just wait and see?  They haven’t said anything else, but it seems a bit ordinary just to say something like “That’s good, then”, considering how we were together before.  I’d better say something, I guess.  How long can we sit here?  Are they looking at me, waiting for me to say something?  Or are they just needing a quiet time, and don’t really want me to say anything?

As you read all these possible thoughts, try timing how long it takes, remembering that there will be gaps of time between thoughts, probably with changes in your expression (eyebrows, forehead, where your eyes turn, how your head moves, how your body relaxes or tightens up).  My timing suggests at least a full minute – which is a long pause on stage.

This a Pinter pause.  Some are much longer, maybe even up to three minutes, which ought to kill a drama stone dead – except that it doesn’t in a Pinter play.  It might if the actors were not skilled enough to give us the expressions which they will derive from their study of the play, the relationships between their characters, the history of their relationships, and the possible future of their relationships.

Pinter’s skill is to provide his actors with a back story, all put together in very ordinary language – in fact using words which in themselves are so ordinary they are more or less meaningless (Oh, for example).  Two productions of Betrayal will end up revealing to us the same basic story, but the picture we may have of the quality of the triangular relationship between Robert, Jerry and Emma will be different in its impact on us Peeping Toms according to each director’s and actors’ decisions in rehearsal and skills in performance.

If you’d like a detailed analysis of the nature of betrayal in Betrayal you could hardly do better than read Hanna Scolnicov’s 2008 essay available at http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1228 .

My concern here is the quality of this production as a theatrical experience.  I have no complaints about the top-class professionalism of the actors or Geordie Brookman’s directing of them. 

I did find, though, that people with different sightlines had different responses to the need to see the subtle facial and bodily expressions of characters’ thoughts and feelings in those pauses.  I placed Nathan O’Keefe as having a stronger impact than the other actors, but in talking with other audience members, realised that from my seat (E6 – close to the stage-left proscenium wall) I had more consistently seen Jerry front on through several of the nine scenes, while Alison Bell’s Emma more often showed me a side-on or even partially rear view of her face.  From a stage-right position my viewpoint would have been reversed.  But then a friend who sat in the upper circle had not responded to the pauses’ intensity or detail merely because of her extra distance and higher angle of vision.  Opera glasses would have been an advantage, even in the Playhouse.

Our discussion led to wondering if the play would be better performed in a smaller theatre, perhaps preferably in-the-round, such as in the Ensemble, Belvoir Upstairs or Wharf 1 in Sydney.  Though Brookman made a point of praising Canberra’s Playhouse as a better venue than some others – unnamed – I wonder if its conventional fourth-wall proscenium design might not serve this play well.

This thinking led me to consider the stage, lighting and sound design for this production.  It’s a matter of big or small scale.  The set surrounds the stage in a big way between the scenes.  As it grinds its way around to reveal the next scene, the sound is raucous, aggressive and industrial in the earlier transitions (which are later in historical time) and become a little gentler as we approach the end of the play (which is the beginning of the story).  But the set visually remains big.

Yet each scene is small, often with only two characters, sometimes only one, and rarely with three.  Each scene has a single focal point (a bar, a restaurant table, the table in Jerry and Emma’s flat, Robert and Emma’s bed), and especially in those great pauses the action is minimal.  Between scenes, mysteriously half-hidden behind the semi-see-through set, the action is busy as furniture is moved into and out of the centre and actors change out of and into clothes hung on the stage side of the set.

I found myself unsure of the designers’ intention in making the scene changes visually large and audibly loud, sometimes with very bright floodlights in our eyes, while the scenes were lit to make them seem to take up only a small space on the stage, except for the final scene with Jerry, Emma and Robert in the bedroom – but even then the action was mainly restricted to a small area around the bed.  Perhaps there was a kind of Brechtian intention – that is to force us out of the assumption that we were seeing naturalistic scenes being played out for us to emotionally/sentimentally engage in.  The big scene changes made it clear we were watching a highly theatrical presentation. 

From a practical point view, there was a need to separate each scene and help us accept that time was going backwards and (once) forwards, which was done by adding big projected titles of the year, the location and the season of the next scene as the set spun around.  The costumes took us back to the fashion of each year, so perhaps the projected information was not entirely necessary, at least for those of us who recognise what the London literati wore in those years from 1968 to1977.  But at the end of the day I suspect that less giant and gimmicky scene changes might have given us a softer focus of attention on the words, silences and feelings in each scene.  Rather than having the sound effects between scenes seem to illustrate too obviously the bitterness of betrayal, perhaps romantic music might have better made the contrast between the conventional expectation and the reality of love.

So it’s a play and a production which should not be missed: for Pinter’s work and the quality of the acting.  But for me, less might have proved to be more, in the set and sound department.

Nathan O'Keefe as Jerry, Alison Bell as Emma
Meeting at the bar

Nathan O'Keefe as Jerry, Mark Saturno as Robert
Lunch at the restaurant

Nathan O'Keefe as Jerry, Mark Saturno as Robert
Publisher and Literary Agent

Nathan O'Keefe as Jerry
"Small" lighting in a "Big" set

Alison Bell as Emma

  © Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: The Present by Andrew Upton, after Anton Chekhov

The Present by Andrew Upton, after Anton Chekhov’s Platanov.  Sydney Theatre Company, directed by John Crowley.  Designed by Alice Babidge; lighting by Nick Schlieper; composer and sound design by Stefan Gregory.  At Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, August 8 - September 19, 2015

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 12

The lengthy history of what appears to have been Chekhov’s first play, an extraordinary lengthy 300 pages which it seems he began drafting at the age of 18, is partly explained in Upton’s Message from the Artistic Director and fully developed in a five page essay in the Program.

However you really don’t need to read all this to appreciate a highly theatrical script and production, supported of course by top quality acting and direction.  The key roles of Anna and Mikhail are played by Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh – and you get what you expect – but all of the other eleven actors never let the quality drop below the leads’ example.

So I won’t even begin to buy into the inevitable argument about whether we are watching Chekhov or Upton.  If Chekhov really did write this story of 40-year-olds riding the wild emotional surf of their second wave of sexuality, when he was still a teenager, he showed remarkable prescience if not precociousness.     This play is not Uncle Vanya or The Seagull  but the markers of their genetic history show up plainly here.

Perhaps to escape comparison, rather than setting The Present in its original period in the late 19th Century, Upton saw a parallel time in Russian history which also relates closely to what is still happening there and even here.  Australia and kangaroos get a token one liner.  Stalin died in 1953 and the reminiscences, interminable under the influence of being Russians constantly drinking vodka, make it clear that our present is 20 years later.  Glasnost is in, but characters who succeeded under Stalin still rule the roost.  They are the 60+ year-olds.

Even the environmental issues which showed up in Uncle Vanya poke their noses into concerns about profit-making in the new Russia from mines and gas fields.  Despite causing a small ripple of recognition as we think of NSW and Queensland, such concerns are entirely peripheral to what is largely a satirical comedy with surprising (and highly effective) explosions. 

Mikhail, obsessive womaniser, presages his death as the only solution to the impossible complexity of love and relationships.  However skilled Roxburgh is, though, it was difficult not to see his demise as not too dissimilar from that of Pyramus, though his several Thisbes surround him, or have left him, in anger or tears.

Watch especially for the four terrific set designs, and for the technique used in the transitions.  The opening set for Act 2 was especially evocative.  Mikhail himself wonders if he is seeing apparitions, in a set that had already made me wonder the same thing.

So, while the characters philosophise in the most annoying (and often very funny) ways, let’s not bother to do all that thinking.  Just let the theatricality of the moment become your present belief, and you’ll find yourself remembering those 40th Birthday parties in all their extremities of attraction and rejection (though you might wonder what you should be looking forward to, if you are still 18). 

There seems to be a theory behind the play – presumably in Chekhov’s imagination – that there is a sexual cycle which reaches some kind of pinnacle of excess every 20 years.  See The Present for a lifetime experience, and see what you think.

Nikolai and Anna
Toby Schmitz, Cate Blanchett

Nikolai, Mikhail, Sergei
Toby Schmitz, Richard Roxburgh, Chris Ryan

40th Birthday Party

My death is the only solution
Richard Roxburgh (Mikhail), Cate Blanchett (Anna)

Sergei and Sophia
Chris Ryan, Jacqueline McKenzie

 Complete Cast:
Anna Bamford - Maria                        Jacqueline McKenzie - Sophia
Cate Blanchett - Anna                         Marshall Napier - Ivan
Andrew Buchanan - Osip                    Susan Prior - Sasha
David Downer - Yegor                         Richard Roxburgh - Mikhail
Eamon Farren - Kirill                          Chris Ryan - Sergei
Martin Jacobs - Alexei                        Toby Schmitz - Nikolai
Brandon McClelland - Dimitri

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Seventeen by Matthew Whittet.

Image by Julian Meagher

Seventeen by Matthew Whittet.  Presented by Belvoir.  Directed by Anne-Louise Sarks; designed by Robert Cousins; costumes by Mel Page; lighting by Paul Jackson; sound by Nate Edmondson; choreography by Sara Black; movement by Scott Witt.  At Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, August 5 - September 13, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 12

Actors:
Peter Carroll – Tom
Maggie Dence – Sue
John Gaden – Mike
Genevieve Lemon – Lizzy
Barry Otto – Ronny
Anna Volska – Edwina

It’s quite disturbing reviewing the work of a bunch of actors who are all around my age – 74½ – when they are playing 17-year-olds trying to celebrate their exit from high school.  The exception is Genevieve Lemon playing Mike’s 14-year-old sister.

Knowing my own physical incapacities I was amazed how well my confreres could still move in the wild ways that I can, just, remember from when I was 17.  It shows you what actor training can do for you.

The play is a hoot, as you might expect; but it’s not just a hoot.  Whittet has done his homework interviewing today’s 17-year-olds with these questions:

What matters to me right now is…
What or who do you want to be when you are older?
Can you imagine life at 70?  What might it be like?
The advice I would give to my older self would be…
What do you daydream about?
What does love mean to you?
Regrets – do you have any?  If you are happy to, can you share what these are?
The message I would send to the rest of the world right now is…

The value of the Program is that it includes the Writer’s and Director’s Notes and also the text of the play which has been a cooperative venture involving the author, the actors and director, the actor Judi Farr (who is not in the performance) and the dramaturg Anthea Williams.

This certainly is an original project, so what was Whittet hoping to achieve and has it worked?

Well the audience on this occasion certainly thought the show worked, responding in a very lively manner to every twist and turn in the relationships being played out at the all-night hang-out in the local children’s playground, the scene particularly of the first meeting of Mike and Tom when they were 11 and their friendship was established.  What happens as the night wears on turns from a naïve attempt at celebration into a bumping up against reality – both sad and encouraging for each character according to their personality, proclivities and social circumstances.  It’s not just a hoot to have no choice but face the prospect of growing suddenly into adulthood.

I still felt a bit uncomfortable with the author’s intention, though.  He has set the play now, not in 1956 when I finished Fifth Form, yet somehow it seemed to me that the characters were more childish than I remember being (though I’ll admit to some very weird behaviour), and more so than the many Year 12s I taught in the 1960s to the 1990s (many of whom turned 18 before finishing their sixth year of secondary schooling).

Whittet has written about the passion [that] is always there just under the surface.  Waiting to erupt like a volcano….So having said this, it’s been a very important decision to set the play now.  A now that is not concerning itself with the thorniness of Snapchat and Facebook, but more with the burning questions under the surface for these kids.  Questions that were asked yesterday, today and I think will be asked well into tomorrow.

At the same time he just seems to have been fascinated by the idea that I didn’t want these characters to be played by teenagers.  I wanted them to be played by actors in their 70s – theatre elders who would get a chance to do something that is rarely asked of them….[and] to get the chance to watch incredible actors like Peter Carroll, Maggie Dence, John Gaden, Barry Otto, Anna Volska and Genevieve Lemon … wrestle with the questions: What does it mean to be 17? How do I say goodbye to the people I love? How do I say goodbye to the person I was?How do I become the person I should be?…This to me is what makes it such a thrilling piece to be a part of.

I think these “incredible” actors did a highly creditable job of creating the characters that the dialogue and plot engendered for them to work on, and made a thoroughly enjoyable show, but in the end perhaps more time than 90 minutes is needed to invest all that depth of meaning into the drama.  And probably for a modern young adult audience more subtlety and emotional understanding would be achieved by young actors, many of whom are just about as “incredible” as their elders.

So I conclude that the show is a success and very worthwhile seeing for its original idea – and to see these actors at their credible best is wonderful – but to expect the deep and meaningful experience that the author wishes for is to expect more than the play actually offers.  In fact I suggest that Samson by Julia-Rose Lewis, even at only 75 minutes (reviewed on this blog on May 12, 2015), and played by young actors, more successfully satisfies this kind of expectation.

 All photos by Brett Boardman

Group Hug

Barry Otto as Ronny

Anna Volska as Edwina, Maggie Dence as Sue

John Gaden as Mike, Peter Carroll as Tom

Genevieve Lemon as Lizzie

Tom and Sue swing together
Peter Carroll and Maggie Dence

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: The Art of Shakespeare Exhibition

The Art of Shakespeare Exhibition of artworks in response to William Shakespeare’s dramatic works, presented by Bell Shakespeare.  Original concept: Gill Perkins.  Artists invited by John Bell.  Exhibition curated by Nick Vickers.

Previewed by Frank McKone
Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
August 11, 2015.

Touring to
Melbourne
Sofitel Melbourne on Collins, September 2 – October 1
Canberra
Australian Parliament House, October 8 – 25
Sydney
Sydney Opera House, November 2 – 15

Artists:

Sophie Cape I Am In Blood Stepp’d In So Far (Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Lucy Culliton My Kingdom For A Horse (Reno) (The Hughes Gallery)
Tamara Dean A Midsummer Night’s Dreamscape (Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Ken Done A Woman Is A Dish For The Gods (Ken Done Gallery)
Joe Furlonger Unto These Yellow Sands (The Hughes Gallery)
Peter Godwin Where Be Your Gibes Now? (Defiance Gallery)
Nicholas Harding It’s The Same With Men (Wildflower, Cactus And Dogs) Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Alan Jones Leave The Rest To Me (Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Mathew Lynn Unmannerly Breech’d With Gore (Lady Macbeth) (Independent artist)
Euan Macleod Storm/King Lear Watters Gallery)
Luke Sciberras Bottom! (Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Wendy Sharpe The Witches (King Street Gallery on William)
Garry Shead Romeo And Juliet (Australian Galleries)
Ann Thomson La Sonnambula (Olsen Irwin Gallery)

©Wendy Sharpe The Witches

Art is about creation, intent, response and interpretation.  

As David Malouf writes in the Foreword to the exhibition catalogue What interests Shakespeare is the working of the mind, an inner state.  When, on the other hand, painters and illustrators turn to his characters, what they tend to present is their external attributes….  This exhibition presents artists working as Shakespeare himself does, in the realm of atmosphere and suggestion.

Each work is thus an original creation in its own right, in response to a moment – often just a line – chosen by the artist in answer to John Bell’s invitation.  As you would expect from artists of this quality, not one work is a simple illustration, even if some titles quote the quote.

As they create in response to Shakespeare, each with their own idea of his intent, and showing the viewer their interpretation, so I found myself facing their creations, wondering about their intentions, and interpreting the ideas and emotions I felt in response.

Nick Vickers has hung the works in such a way that some brashly stand out, others are more discreetly hidden for you to come upon them unexpectedly close up, while the three Lady Macbeths form a triptych which build from her personal horror in Lynn’s Unmannerly Breech’d, through the evil intent of Jones’ Leave The Rest To Me and culminating in an abstract explosion of feeling in Cape’s I Am In Blood Stepp’d In So Far.  And then you see Lady Macbeth’s final mental collapse in Thomson’s sleepwalking scene, La Sonnambula.

Then you realise that it is The Witches who you could not avoid as you entered the space.  The works begin to take on lives of their own, like characters in a bizarre drama.

It was at about this point that I thought I should test out my reactions, so I sought out the most expensive artist, Garry Shead, whose Romeo And Juliet I thought I understood.  Having explained that I saw the two families not just shocked by the sensuality of the kiss and bare breast, but that they simply were unable to understand, and certainly not accept, the natural sexuality of the attraction between Romeo and Juliet.

©Garry Shead Romeo And Juliet

Oh, no, explained the artist.  It was just the ballroom scene.  There’s only one family there, except for Romeo, and they are all horrified at his temerity at gatecrashing the ball, discovering Juliet and kissing her.  For Shead, it is a painting of one moment in one scene; I interpreted it as representing the core of the whole play.  We parted on highly amicable terms – that’s what art is all about.

I mentioned expense because all the works are for sale, with – through the goodwill of the artists and their respective galleries – a percentage being donated to Bell Shakespeare to support their outreach programs “looking for new ways to educate, collaborate and recreate”.

This exhibition, I believe, is an original approach, centred in artistic creation, to encourage philanthropy to support the arts.  It is also an Occasion – to mark the 25th Anniversary of the establishment by John Bell of the Bell Shakespeare Company, while it also could be said, to quote Malcolm concerning the traitorous Thane of Cawdor, that “Nothing in his [Bell Shakespeare] life became him like the leaving it”.

Whether that means we should see Peter Evans as an incarnation of Macbeth, who inherited the former thane’s title, I’ll leave to others’ interpretation.  As John Bell retires in the wake of directing the upcoming The Tempest (Sydney Opera House August 19 – September 18), maybe Prospero’s staff will receive more kindly treatment than in the play and be passed on to Evans without being broken.

The Art of Shakespeare will surely make a fitting farewell for the theatrical stalwart whose work I first saw in Henry V at the Adelaide Festival in 1964.  Though he may be leaving the tent – “just going outside and may be some time” – I suspect we’ll see more of John Bell before long, even if it’s only to present the next The Art of Shakespeare in a year’s time – I hope.

©Tamara Dean A Midsummer Night's Dreamscape

©Luke Sciberras Bottom!

©Nicholas Harding It's The Same With Men (Wildflower, Cactus And Dogs)

© Frank McKone, Canberra