2016: Deck the Hall by Scott Radburn

Deck the Hall by Scott Radburn.  Christmas Morning Melodies, presented by Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council.  Performed by Scott and Cheryl Radburn, at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, 20 December 2016, 10.30am.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Live theatre is only good when real communication happens between performer and audience.  Scott Radburn was all communication, as magician, as joke-teller, as dancer (even with a 3-month-old new hip), as straight singer of every style from Engelbert Humperdink to Luciano Pavarotti, and even in character as the dead Pavorotti’s previously unknown grotty brother – who amazed by demonstrating how (after talking to Heaven on Skype) one’s body inevitably expands as one sings like Luciano.

Bringing his wife on stage to sing and tap-dance (his only actual wife, despite an apocryphal story, which at least one audience member I spoke to believed, about his ‘first’ wife) added to our feeling that we – while standing for Advance Australia Fair, or singing along, clapping and waving to the rhythm of all sorts of popular songs from the 1950s onwards, or laughing at old-time non-politically-correct jokes – were in touch with real people thoroughly enjoying entertaining us. 

I checked with them later and found that the seemingly wild story of how Scott proposed marriage to Cheryl on stage when she was Queen Guinevere in Camelot, was true.  He was unrecognisable, even by Cheryl, appearing hidden in a costume as the Jester, asking for the Queen’s hand in marriage via a favourite love-song.  It stopped the show (it was at curtain call), and the wedding on stage was followed by an all-night party.  You only have to do a few web searches to realise that Scott is a comic at heart, as I saw when the jokes continued to flow in the foyer to and from many members of the audience who came up to congratulate and buy a CD.

As a critic, of course, I love to pigeonhole shows, but I found myself challenged by this free flowing performance.  Then I remembered a recent show at The Q, An Evening with Groucho performed by Frank Ferrante.  There was an actor re-creating a comic from the old days of ‘variety’ shows; here in Scott Radburn, we have the original comic himself. 

Here was live theatre indeed, where Scott checks out the ‘demographic’ of the audience (most like me around or even well past Shakespeare’s three score years and ten), has a half-hour check on his laptop with The Q’s technicians just before the show goes on, is checking the time as he’s performing and from the stage cueing in the ‘maestro’ on the sound deck in the biobox, with instructions like ‘skip to cue 13’ as he realises the ad-libbing with the audience has taken more time than planned.  (The maestro, by the way, performed spot-on.)

To me, it was Bertolt Brecht for real – no hiding of the theatrical tricks of the trade – just here we are performing for you.  And it all worked, even when, as Scott admitted to me, a joke went flat and he covered by pouring another splash of water into a rubbish bin from his impossibly continually filling bucket.  Shows you how magic sleight of hand can divert our attention: even this critic only remembered the joke had gone flat when we talked about the ‘business’ an hour after the show.

And in conversation I saw the qualities of all good actors skilled in self-awareness which enables them to act outwards to their audience at the same time as checking inwardly how things are developing, and adjusting as they go – yet without skipping a beat in the music of communication.  Maybe this sounds a bit esoteric and over-the-top for a light-hearted Morning Melody – but this is what makes the song worth singing.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Santa, Baby - Budding Theatre

Santa, Baby – A showcase of ten-minute plays inspired by Christmas songs.  Budding Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre, The Courtyard, December 16-17, 2016.

Producer – Kirsty Budding; MC – Jasper Lindell; Tech – Ashleigh Robinson, Jaeden McLaughlin, Craig Lesueur and Nick Foong.

Plays:
Mother and Child by Kate Roediger, directed by Domenic Mico, performed by Alison Bigg, Peter Fock, Andrew Wallace and Paul Jackson.
Not What You Expected by Judith Peterson, directed by Rachel Hogan, performed by Helen Way.
Gingerbread or Smarties? written and directed by Zoe Swan, performed by Austen Saunders and Robert Shiells.
Christmas in Yorkshire by Harriet Elvin, directed by Rob Defries, performed by Kate O’Sullivan, Kate Blackhurst, Karla Bogaart and Elain Noon.
Christmas Cheers by Frances McNair, directed by Kitty Malam, performed by Jaslyn Mairs, Lachy Agett, Breanna Macey and Patrick Galen-Mules.
Christmas Fairy by Adele Lewin and Nigel Palfreman, directed by Adele Lewin, performed by Adele Lewin.
Reindeer in Red written and directed by Kirsty Budding, performed by Jess Waterhouse, Chantel Johnston, Katrin Praseli, Angela Perrotta, Kirsty Budding, Vandana Jaiswal, George Pulley and Grace Jasinski.
Statistically Speaking written and directed by Greg Gould, performed by Felicity Knott and Philip Meddows.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
December 17

Budding Theatre, its very name a play on the name of its originator, Kirsty Budding, has now established a stage presence for “budding playwrights, directors and performers” over its three years’ life.  “We stage theatre with and for adults, young adults and children across a range of genres.”

This year’s “Christmas play showcase” was a mainly light and mostly irreverent take on the assumed purpose of Christmas in celebrating good will to all and sundry, even including Santa’s relationship with his reindeer employees.

Though the format is reminiscent of the Short and Sweet competitions for 10-minute plays, and these plays vary considerably in quality of writing, directing and acting, the evening as a whole, compered competently with a neat line of humour by Jasper Lindell and bookended by three-part singing from the three Angels – Judith Peterson, Fiona Robertson and Michelle Priest – made for an entertaining, even occasionally thoughtful, two hours. 

Seen from my perspective behind my Seniors Card, this was a Young Adult show in tone, yet some issues behind what was often a stand-up comedy approach were significant for all ages.

The mother, Mary, with her husband Joseph and as-yet unnamed child, are refugees having made the perilous journey by recalcitrant donkey across a vast desert to the border of a country of safe haven.  But the border protection policy of donkey turn-backs, leaves them stranded – without  even the donkey, which has to be quarantined.  The playing of the border guards as characters in a farce to my mind was overdone.  The point of the story in Mother and Child was made, but the farce took over, so the depth of despair that refugees must feel today and which would have silenced our laughter, even in just ten minutes, wasn’t achieved.

What we didn’t expect in the next play was to find ourselves in the presence of "God", at the launch of her new book – with wine, cheese and signed copies.  Her name is Trisha, played with an amazing eccentric kind of grace by Helen Way.  She is clearly not happy with her humans – mainly men, of course – who have written their books taking her name in vain.  The script of Not What You Expected is very clever and the performance well directed and very funny – and the serious issue of the misuse of belief and religious power is not lost.  If there were a competition, I would have to say this was the best play of the night.

Gingerbread or Smarties? saw two young men’s friendship breaking up on their annual road trip.  Though the actors needed more training and experience to bring this off, and the script could be developed more, the play is an interesting variation on the celebration turning sour, and sad, theme.  In this case, each of the young men escape the expected demands of their families’ Christmas, but on this occasion find themselves setting up the same kind of petty conflicts (over what radio station to play while they drive, or whether they prefer gingerbread or smarties) until the ultimate point of breakup.

If you remember, as I’m sure you will, the Monty Python sketch called The 4 Yorkshiremen, then you will recognise that Harriet Elvin has borrowed the idea (with permission) and extended it to ten minutes as the four now wealthyYorkshire women, with pretty good accents, challenge each other with stories about their poverty-stricken past.  Though perhaps a little too long compared with the shorter sharper original, Christmas in Yorkshire worked very well and got the appropriate laugh from the young adults on the final line: “But you try and tell the young people today that ... and they won’t believe ya’.”

Christmas Cheers with Jack Frost behind the bar to which Santa retires – he drinks only milk to avoid corrupting children – was an absurdist play so deliberately disjointed that you had to be a young adult to follow all the non-sequiturs.  Breanna Macey’s performance as the jazz singer Noel was a very high point.  It was no wonder Santa fell in love (or just lust?), and I did wonder whether the children would be corrupted by such a thought.

Adele Lewin had such a sad story to tell as Crystal, the top-of-the-Christmas-tree fairy once famous for her beauty who has grown old, and who now year after year can only look forward to a life among the secondhand goods in an op shop.  Though Crystal could be a bit of a bore and was even rather paranoid, Lewin’s performance in Christmas Fairy left us all feeling seriously upset about anyone left alone at Christmas time.

The four fashionably green reindeers – Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen – were bitchily mortified when Red-Nosed Rudolph terribly unfashionably appeared on the catwalk dressed in red.  The Young Adults in the audience found it all lol funny, of course, until Santa (remember – dressed in red) castigated the little bitches, and promptly had consensual sex with Rudolph (played, of course, by a woman – indeed, the author of the play Reindeer in Red).  I think the theme was something about politically correct behaviour and non-discrimination at the office Christmas party.  But it was too funny to bother about that.

The night concluded with a probably unintended nod to the recently formed The Arts Party, whose policy (currently at the draft stage) ends with a strong statement about supporting Science as the other side of the Arts coin.  Statistically Speaking  is a ten minute apparently extremely unlikely romance entirely predicted by the use of statistics by Milton to the great surprise of Steph – except for one point.  The statistics on women’s behaviour make it virtually inevitable that Steph will include cranberry in her daily diet.  But she doesn’t.

Though by this stage of the talk, Steph has completely changed her view of life and thoroughly fallen for Milton, he must say No without this piece of his statistical jigsaw in place.

Whatever we should make of this conclusion, which wasn’t after all as Christmassy as green reindeers, it was quite thoughtful about the nature of love and good will in a nerdy world.

Felicity Knott as Steph and Philip Meadows as Milton
in Statistically Speaking by Greg Gould

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Circus 1903 / Circa - lecture by Yaron Lifschitz

Performers in Circus 1903

Yaron Lifschitz
Director of Circa

 Circus 1903 at Canberra Theatre, December 7 – 11, 2016

Circa: Creative Leaps (not faster horses) speech by director Yaron Lifschitz (Currency House Creativity and Business Breakfast, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Wednesday November 30, 2016)

Circus 1903
Produced by The Works Entertainment: Simon Painter (Creative), Tim Lawson (Executive) and Andrew Spencer (Co-Executive)

Director / Co-Creative Producer – Neil Dorward

Scenic Design – Todd Edward Ivins; Lighting – Paul Smith; Costumes – Angela Aaron
Composer / Arranger/ Musical Director – Evan Jolly
Orchestra: The City of Prague Orchestra recorded by Jan Holzner; Band: recorded by James McMillan and mixed by Simon Changer and Ian Wood

Puppets designed by Mervyn Millar and Tracy Waller for Significant Object, UK

Puppeteers: Chris Milford, Henry Maynard, Luke Chadwick-Jones, Nyron Levy, Jessica Spalis, Daniel Fanning

Performers:
David Williamson – Ringmaster Willy Whipsnade (USA)
Yevgeniy Dashkivskyy and Yefrem Bitkine – Duo Flash (Kiev, Ukraine)
Richard and Richardo Rossi – Hermanos Rossi (Barcelona, Spain)
Lopez Family (Johan, Jonatan and Mariaiose Pontigo) – Los Lopez (Guadalajara, Mexico)
Anny Laplante and Andrei Kalesnikau – Lez Incredibles (Montreal, Canada)
Elena Gatilova – Lucky Moon (Odessa, Ukraine)
Florian Blümmel – The Cycling Cyclone (Stuttgart, Germany)
Senayet Assefa Amara – The Elastic Dislocationist (Ethiopia)
Francois Borie – The Great Gaston (Paris, France)
Artur Ivankovich, Petter Vatermark and AJ Saltalamacchia – The Flying Fins (Helsinki, Finland)
Alfonso Lopez and Maria Jose Dominguez Pontigo – The Perilous Perigos (Mexico)
Mikhail Sozonov – The Sensational Sozonov (Moscow, Russia)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
December 6

What a joy to be so thoroughly entertained by skilful performers of traditional circus acts, led by a magician not only of the usual kind but one who is such an effective actor.

There is an adage never to perform with animals or children.  The puppet elephants, of course, behaved as they should, but the children volunteers from the audience put Ringmaster David Williamson on his mettle.

“Do you believe in magic?”

“No,” said Alex, very firmly.

“Ah, a skeptic!” said Williamson the Magician.  “We need more of them.”

Yet we could all enjoy the way he played magic tricks with two girls and two boys, 5 – 7 years old, who found themselves laughing and as relaxed on stage as the rest of us were, in the auditorium, laughing at their antics.  Williamson is a great family-friendly clown – we all felt part of the family he created.

Not even Alex could have been skeptical about the physical acts where the risks were real.  One of the Los Lopez men came off the tightrope (with no safety net) while trying to land after jumping over Maria who hunkered down, balanced by holding a long cross-pole.  As he fell, he caught onto the tightrope, swung himself up to standing again, acknowledged the audience – and jumped over again, this time with success and to huge applause.

Similarly, either Richard or Richardo Rossi fell from his amazing backward somersault, crashing into either Richardo or Richard.  There was a mat to absorb the impact, but we (and they) were really worried that either Richard or Richardo was injured.

But Richardo and Richard took a minute to recover and went on to complete their act with an impossibly long continuous series of somersaults, once again to huge applause.

These were only two of the many tremendously suspenseful episodes that made this show great theatre.

The success of this show is not just in the gymnastic skills of the performers but in re-creating the atmosphere and positive relationship with the audience, based in the drama of suspense, the acknowledgement of success, and an all-pervading sense of humour – an atmosphere I remember from my childhood in the 1940s.  Childhood memories are never reliable, but I think I may have seen Charlie Cairoli and his famous white-face clarinetist partner, Paul Freedman, at the Blackpool Tower Circus.  I certainly remember much knockabout humour, stunning music and a white face with a conical hat.

In recent years on this blog I’ve reviewed Okham’s Razor: Arc, Memento Mori & Every Action… (UK aerial dances); Circolombia: Urban (city street life in Colombia); Yaron Lifschitz’s Circa work “S” (Brisbane), Flying Fruit Fly Circus (Circus Under My Bed) and Circus Oz (From the Ground Up and But Wait...There’s More).

Lifschitz’s breakfast manifesto began:

Over the past few months the world turned colder and less hospitable.  Brexit, the rise of fundamentalisms both east and west, the election of Trump.  Suddenly things I believe in seem out of key with the times.  Plurality, diversity, compromise, compassion now appear to belong to another, quainter era – a distant empire of decency.  Except that they are needed more than ever now.  There is a pressing urgency to ask more fearless questions, debate more savagely unpleasant truths and explore our own contradictions more robustly....And as an artist, company leader and a festival director, it is beholden on me to respond.

In re-creating the era of the mass audiences for circus in the early 20th Century, rather than making circus shows with modern social themes (From the Ground Up was about discrimination against Indigenous workers in the building trades in Australia, for example), or making what some may call “Art Circus” (such as Okham’s Razor and Circa), does Circus 1903 satisfy any of Lifschitz’s concerns?

In its way I think Circus 1903 does demonstrate plurality and diversity (actually, one of the Flying Fins – AJ Saltalamacchia – began his career in Flying Fruit Fly Circus), and more importantly showed compromise in the adaptability of the performers and the lighting and sound operators towards the audience reactions.  They played to and for the audience, never at the audience.

And even more important was the use of humour and interaction with the audience by David Williamson as Ringmaster.  He set, developed and maintained a warmth of feeling towards all that was going on in the different acts, coming to a climax, of course, when the baby elephant Karanga (Swahili for ‘peanut’) came on stage.  The ‘distant empire’ of decency and compassion was no longer so far away.

Lifschitz also spoke especially, in contrasting the small to medium theatre companies against the Major Performing Arts companies (who were exempted from the recent Australia Council cuts), about how Our reality is we live from hand to mouth, we fly economy, we search for opportunities....Henry Ford said that if he’d asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses.  The heritage arts companies produce marginally faster horses, more expensively each year.  A modest increase in audience numbers here, a bail-out there.

He concludes by showing how important taking risk is, having after some 18 years built Circa into three companies touring Australia and internationally.  Risk, he says, is the oxygen of my world....We put extraordinary young men and women on stage in a way that every performance could be their last.  When things go wrong in circus, people can die.  Our risks are very real – artistically, physically and organisationally.

I am proud to dance with risk on a daily basis.  It is at the core of my art.  In risk is our hope.

In the end, despite the apparent difference between Circus 1903 and a Circa show, I’m sure The Works Entertainment Company appreciates my last quote from Yaron Lifschlitz:

Art may not solve problems but, as Susan Sontag notes, it can wear them down.  Art lifts our species, puts us in touch with our gods, encodes our memories and harnesses the collective imagination in service of our possibilities.  The act of making art is inherently hopeful.

That’s how I found Circus 1903.

David Williamson as Ringmaster
Circus 1903

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Shortis and Simpson - Voting Dangerously

Who's in the picture:  L to R, Top to Bottom: "We can make Canberra sing again!"

Australian Labor Party Opposition Leader Bill Shorten: "Who can shorten your attention span?  Billy can!"
Ex-UK before Brexit Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Boris Johnson, UK Foreign Secretary after Brexit.
Australian Minister for Immigration (including - sorry, excluding - refugees) Peter Dutton.
Australian one-time radio talkback broadcaster, founder (April 2016), leader of Derryn Hinch's Justice Party  and now Senator, Derryn Hinch.
Hillary Clinton, majority popular vote winner, US non-President-Elect.
Donald Trump, non-majority popular vote winner but majority weird Electoral College voting system winner, US President Elect.
Australian Conservative - sorry, Liberal - Party current leader, Prime Minister Malcolm (Muddle Headed Wombat) Turnbull.
Even more Australian Conservative - sorry Liberal - Party ex-Leader, backbencher Tony (Mr Rabbot) Abbott.
Moya Simpson and John Shortis
Australian just about Tea-Party Conservative founder and leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party and now Senator, Pauline Hanson.

 _________________________________

The Year of Voting Dangerously.  Shortis&Simpson at Teatro Vivaldi, ANU Canberra, December 2, 2016.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

The mood of this year’s ‘satirical look’ at political events by John Shortis and Moya Simpson, at the dreadful end of their second decade, is expressed perfectly in their title. 

They were still upbeat playing Stop the Votes, We Want to Get Off on election night in July (“a terrific convivial party atmosphere”, I wrote then).  But after the conservatives (in this upside down country called the Liberal Party) clung on with a one-seat win in the lower house, following June’s Brexit referendum in the Mother Country and now compounded by calling Trumps for the wild card in the poker game for Leader of the Free World, a sense of danger and insecurity made satirical fun into something less convivial and rather more terrifying.

We still laughed a lot, of course (and Vivaldi’s food and wine was as encouraging as ever), but I couldn’t help feeling rather too much like Bottom, whistling.  Shakespeare understood his politics in The Dream.  At least 400 years later we get to vote.  But is that just another whistle in the wind?

Three numbers framed the mood for me. 

I first heard the first, the Pauline Hanson fish-and-chip-shop song, when I reviewed the first Shortis&Simpson show in 1996!  [Shortis and Curleys at the one-time Queanbeyan School of Arts Cafe for the Canberra Times and now at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au] 

At the time I couldn’t possibly foresee the significance that her One Nation Party would have this year, now with four Senators, considering her collapse in the 1999 Federal election and the break up with David Oldfield forming his One Nation NSW to get himself into that State’s upper house (just for the eight years required to give him an over-the-top parliamentary superannuation pension for the rest of his life). 

Please explain how that song can still be as awfully relevant as if nothing has changed in 20 years, except the names of the ethnic groups she vilifies.

The third was not a song but a beautifully told very funny children’s story of Mr Rabbot and Malcolm the Muddle-Headed Wombat continuing to vie for the leadership of all the animals.  As Malcolm, on his second time around, becomes even more muddle-headed, Mr Rabbot has gathered his friends for his second try – Cory, Eric, and several others – and, the story ends, “You know what rabbots do...!” 

Enough said.  What horror!

The words of my second song, which was given a reprise (before the audience insisted on an encore – of Bob Dylan concluding ironically with The times, they are a’changing) told us in no uncertain terms that though satire can be good fun, sometimes it’s just not possible to laugh.  These are the words recorded in the ABC’s Four Corners interviews with the children still held after three years on Nauru – refugees whose teachers from Save the Children have been removed and told they may be jailed for telling us about our Government’s treatment of people in dire need.

Immediately after watching that program, John Shortis wrote a quiet, almost pretty, but terribly sad song.  Moya sang without pretension the children’s words:

We’re not criminals,
We’re not dangerous.
We’re refugees
So tell us please
Why
We’re still here?

Why indeed?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Elmo’s Super Fun Hero Show by Sesame Workshop

The four ducks that the Count counts backwards
with Jessica Brown as Super Sparkleheart

Big Bird

The Count

Cookie Monster about to share his cookie,
while Elmo holds his Kindness Certificate

Elmo’s Super Fun Hero Show by Sesame Workshop, produced and toured in Australia by Life Like Touring (Au).  At Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, November 22, 2016.

Writer/Director: Theresa Borg
Creative Producer (Australia): Luke Gallagher
Designers: Craig Bryant – Composer (original songs) and Sound Design; Choreographer – Katie Ditchburn; Set – David Bramble and Luke Gallagher; Lighting – Dan Evans; Costume – Peri Jenkins.

Cast:
Super Sparkleheart – Jessica Brown
Sesame Street characters – Shaylee Murray, Many Vugler. Kaisha Durban, Dylan McEwan, Pauly Maybury, Kelly Hamilton, Chloe Gibson.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 22

I was surprised to see that the very young children (3 to 5) that made up the main part of the audience were not as excited throughout the show as I had expected.  After all Sesame Street began the year my youngest was born (1969) and I knew the attachment she and her sister had to the tv show.

I have also reviewed other stage versions of children’s tv and books, including Dora the Explorer, and several Garry Ginivan productions.  What was happening, I wondered?

Though the music was very danceable, as the characters on stage demonstrated admirably, I only saw one three-year-old bopping around in time – with her mother’s encouragement.  Other children and their adults were not responding to the music or even the story with any great enthusiasm.  What a shame, considering the highly worthwhile educational message about kindness, and the clear intention to teach emotional intelligence.

So why did this happen?  If you watch the (probably illegal) Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peeZzmQunqc] showing Sesame Street Episode 3857 you can see the problem.  The stage show creates a completely different atmosphere from the tv show.  From the reactions around me in the theatre, I think the adults were disappointed that the warm, gently humorous mood they have always known, which drew them in as it does their children, became a fast-paced razz-a-matazz show coming at them off the stage.  The children responded with cheers each time a new character, like the Count or Big Bird appeared, and the first time Elmo and friends burst into action, but Super Sparkleheart, despite Jessica Brown’s skillful playing of the role, did not engage them fully.  I noticed, in fact, that many of the children were talking to each other or their parents rather than being thoroughly focussed on what was happening on stage.

I thought back to Dora the Explorer – Dora’s Pirate Adventure (reviewed for the Canberra Times September 24, 2008).  That storyline was a very conventional adventure searching for a hidden prize.  It was superficial educationally, but the mass of children in the enormous Australian Institute of Sport arena were dancing in the aisles to the upbeat music and following the story step by step.  Elmo’s Super Fun Hero Show has a searching for a hidden prize story with a deeply important educational theme, but the format turned Sparkleheart into an explicit top-down teacher of the abstract concept of how to be kind. 

This killed the experience instead of enlivening the learning as happens on the tv Sesame Street.  Psychologically, the stage show uses extrinsic teaching/learning instead of developing intrinsic learning through emotional engagement.  I think in Australian culture the ‘hype’ of a ‘super fun hero’ show is suspect because it bombards the audience rather than welcoming them in.  This show seems to me to be at odds with the long-standing principle of the Sesame Street Workshop, which is from our perspective unusual in American culture.  Sesame Street on tv approaches our ABC TV’s Playschool, whose theme song is an invitation to ‘Come inside’, not too far from finding our way ‘to Sesame Street’.

Trying to understand where the Super Sparkleheart role went wrong, it was in the ending of each character’s story of seeking treasure that was the clue.  Good learning means being motivated intrinsically to be successful.  There is no reward for being kind except for internalising wanting to be kind for its own sake – because it feels and is good.  But in this Hero Show, Super Sparkleheart sets up the wrong motivation: if you find the hidden treasure you are rewarded with a certificate.  Even though she says everyone can be kind, the final message is about extrinsic motivation: you’ll get a certificate if you do what you are supposed to do.

Oddly enough, this competitive aspect in real life causes stress, and in the story the children are taught to handle this by learning diaphragm breathing or ‘breathing with your belly’.  Bellies are funny for little children and I had thought this would be great audience participation with lots of laughter (which also relieves stress).  But no.  Sparkleheart makes this a ‘very serious’ thing to do – and most of the adult audience, if they did it at all, did it quite half-heartedly, while the 3-year-olds were just too young to understand. 

So finally I worked out that the problem for this show also arose from the technical approach to the staging.  Good children’s theatre, with effective learning through modelling which provides intrinsic motivation (a major Sesame Street principle) has to be performed by actors with time and flexibility of approach, so that they can communicate with the children and respond fully to the children’s ideas and feelings.  Recently this was demonstrated wonderfully by a local company, Centrepiece Theatre, in Peter Best’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears (reviewed here January 24, 2016), and many years ago by Monica Trapaga in Monica’s House (reviewed in the Canberra Times, May 1996).

As I have been given to understand, Elmo’s Super Fun Hero Show had a pre-recorded sound track, including all the voices of the Sesame Street characters, singing and speaking, voiced “for this Australian produced show” by “the original cast of the Sesame Street TV series in New York City earlier this year”.  The only actor singing and speaking live was Jessica Brown as Super Sparkleheart, while the other performers (who were completely hidden inside their costumes) danced and moved to the sound track – like a kind of karaoke or ‘air’ performance.  Although the sound operator in theory could delay the next bit of track if Jessica had taken extra time to work with her audience, in practice the show ran strictly to time and speed encouraged very much by the over-the-top nature of the music – which controlled the characters’ movement and to which Jessica had to sing, dance and somersault.

So I must conclude that I am disappointed in Elmo’s Super Fun Hero Show because it didn’t feel like Sesame Street and didn’t teach like Sesame Street, even though the theme of learning how to be kind is such an important lesson we all need to remember.

[Reviews referred to can be accessed at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au including those from before 2010]






© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: An Evening with Groucho

An Evening with Groucho performed by Frank Ferrante with his pianist Alex Wignall; directed by Dreya Weber.  Produced by Jally Entertainment,  at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, November 22-25, 2016.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 22

My earnest Socialist parents brought me up in England on Karl Marx, not Groucho Marx.  Perhaps they were in the audience in 1922 when, as Groucho remembers, the Marx Brothers’ attempt at zany American humour went down like a lead balloon in London.  Even when I arrived in Australia in the 1950s, though others tell me films like A Night at the Opera and Duck Soup were common fare for teenagers at the Saturday afternoon pictures, I never saw them.

So I approached An Evening with Groucho in some trepidation.  Fortunately I wasn’t seated in Rows A to D, or my fears may have been well-founded – for the aspect of Groucho Marx’s special skill in what we nowadays call stand-up comedy, which Frank Ferrante has down to a fine art, is very funny enforced audience participation. 

This can only work – and be thoroughly enjoyed even by those in the immediate firing-line – because Ferrante channels Groucho’s stage charisma, a kind of excruciating absolutely politically incorrect charm, so well that we are transported back in time.  If you are English you would recognise Arthur Askey as the equivalent performer of innuendo, or if Australian it would be Roy Rene (Mo).

Ferrante’s success is because he does not merely imitate Groucho’s talk, singing and ‘dancing’ – a forerunner, I’m sure, of John Cleese’s funny walks – but he inhabits the character.  This enables him to improvise his playing with the audience for lengthy periods between the official script, all nicely related to his venue, in Queanbeyan on this occasion, to the age of the audience, and then to the personal stories that people recount even as he makes fun of them.

At one point last night the modern political scene lifted its ugly head when one woman turned out to be American, though now has lived in Australia for more than 40 years.  “So you have dual citizenship?  Don’t ever go back!”  And turning to another couple who had been married for 39 years – after having pointed out that he (Groucho) had been married for longer – 44 years, to three different wives – he then proposed marriage to the woman.  “So he could stay here” didn’t have to be said, as the audience immediately picked up on the joke, thinking of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s and President-elect Donald Trump’s diatribes against refugees.

An important quality of the show is Groucho-Ferrante’s playful relationship with his Adelaide pianist, Alex Wignall.  Of course, Groucho uses Alex as his fall-guy, but always with a warmth of feeling between them.  Behind Groucho’s ‘front’ there is a sense of fragility, of needing the support which was supplied by his brothers, especially Harpo and Chico in real life.  Wignall’s top-rate piano playing, from the magisterial classical to the whimsical and cute, makes him the steady influence in the show, with his gentle sense of humour, which represents Harpo for Groucho.

So, despite my woeful lack of background experience of the Marx Brothers, Frank Ferrante’s An Evening with Groucho has filled me in, in a most entertaining way.  And for further entertaining background you can buy a wonderfully informative program in the form of a 2017 calendar to hang above your workdesk for a whole year of memories!




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Seasons of Birth Art Exhibition

Seasons of Birth Art Exhibition.  Co-curators: Douglas Purnell and Lachlan Warner. 

Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, Director – Stephen Pickard.  Cnr Kings Ave and Blackall Street, Barton, Canberra, November 13 – 26, 2016, Mon – Fri, 10 am – 4 pm.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 13

Artists exhibited:
Chris Auckett:  ‘Creation’ (the ties that bind)  Sculpture (steel rod, wire, found natural timber)

Julie Dowling:  Maran.ga (Being in love)  Painting (acrylic, red ochre on canvas)

Jeanette Siebols:  Fecundus  Painting (oil on canvas)

Jenny Little:  Conception  Digital animation

Anne Graham:  Annunciation: Lily  Sculpture (mixed media)

Dongwang Fan:  Seasons of Birth Diptych  Painting (acrylic on canvas)

Barbara Bateman:  Fluttering  Painting (acrylic on linen)

Shoufay Derz:  Golden Boat (after Tagore)  Pigment print on archival cotton paper
        Odysseus at Sea  Handwoven silk, dyed with pomegranate skin
        In Widening Circles (after Rilke) 1 & 3  Pigment print on archival cotton rag

Chris Wyatt:  Moment of Birth  Painting (oil on masonite)

Hilarie Mais:  10 Thoughts  Sculpture (mixed media)

Deborah Kelly:  After After del Sarto from The Miracles  Photomontage (gicleè print in pigment inks on Canson infinity cotton paper)

Mirre Van Dalen:  Dawn Breaking Over the Valley  (acrylic, graphite and fabrics on canvas)

Jumaadi:  Mother and Child  (chinagraph on hand made paper)

Ella Whateley:  The Giver, the Gift  Painting (acrylic, oil and wax on canvas)

Danica I. J. Knezevic:  within the shadows lie my true reflections  Video

Performance by a chorus of women:
The Canticle of Night and A Recipe for Peace lyrics and music by Glenda Cloughley
Peace is the Nurture of Life from A Passion for Peace – text by Jane Addams, music by Glenda Cloughley

In archaeological studies it is commonly thought that the mark distinguishing modern people homo sapiens sapiens from earlier stages in our evolution is the evidence from about 40,000 years ago of ceremony and art, which is seen as representing magical and religious beliefs.  Figurative art with symbolic significance has been a key feature of Christianity from very early in its history.  This exhibition continues that tradition, but now includes abstract as well as figurative works, not all necessarily falling within strictly conventional Christian theology.

The works are presented within a thematic arrangement, but the purpose is as much about artistic exploration as about telling a standard story.  I found, as an atheist, plenty to interest me about the nature of being born and especially about the central place of women in all our lives, independent of religious or specifically Christian doctrine.

The curators explain in their introduction to the catalogue:  We approached fifteen leading Australian artists who reflect different cultural, different faith and non-faith, different gender and sexual orientation backgrounds, and invited them to participate in the project leaving them free over a symbolic nine months to create the most appropriate work in the ways that work best for them.

So, though each work appears in the order listed above under 15 headings:

Phase 1 – Creation
Phase 2 – In the Beginning
Phase 3 – Impregnation
Phase 4 – Conception
Phase 5 – The Announcement
Phase 6 – The Early Growth in the Womb
Phase 7 – The Child Leaping in the Womb
Phase 8 – Anxiety of Waiting
Phase 9 – The Birth Moment
Phase 10 – The First Breath, The First Sound, The First Grasp
Phase 11 – Holding the Newborn Child
Phase 12 – The Song of Joy of the Whole Creation at the Birth of the Newly Born
Phase 13 – The Mother Feeds her Child, the Child Sucks at the Breast
Phase 14 – The Naming, The Blessing, and The Hope
Phase 15 – Connection of the New Birth with the Whole of Creation

you don’t have to think of the works as telling what looks like the story of the birth of Christ.  Leave out the Biblical words like ‘creation’, ‘in the beginning’, or ‘the blessing’, and the works speak for themselves.  Only one in fact makes a direct and very clever reference to traditional Christian art – Deborah Kelly’s photomontage in Phase 11: After After del Sarto from her larger work The Miracles, in which “The portraits were shot across Australia with the assistance of photographer Alex Wisser, using fabrics and clothing that Kelly collected to suggest the drapery-rich compositions of Renaissance art.” [https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4000/deborah-kelly-the-miracles/] 

On the other hand, if you would like to be made aware of Christian philosophical interpretations of the works, although entry to the exhibition is free you should pay $5 for the excellent catalogue in which the reproduction of each work is accompanied by an erudite short essay.  These are 15 individual responses written by academics and church ministers representing the Australian Catholic University, the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture,  St Mark’s National Theological Centre (Charles Sturt University), the Uniting Church and the Bishops Commission for Ecumenism and Interreligious Relations.

Dr Raymond Canning, the Executive Secretary of the Bishops Commission, demonstrates in one short quote the philosophical approach behind this exhibition: In the Qur’an 49:13 Allah is heard to reveal: “O mankind!  Truly We created you...and We made you peoples and tribes that you may come to know one another.”

The opening of the exhibition in Canberra was itself a ceremony not one of speeches of the conventional kind.  Stephen Pickard spoke briefly to thank the appropriate people, then passed proceedings over to women, the focus of the art works. 

Linlea Rodger took a political viewpoint, saying “Clearly something very new is coming to birth at BHP”, the mining and industrial business where research shows “that workplaces with a high proportion of women are happier, have a better safety record, and enjoy higher productivity” and so “is taking the giant leap of fast tracking the training, mentoring and placement of women.” 

She then looked at the results of the US presidential election, referred to T S Eliot’s saying that “birth and birthing can, at the time, feel and look more like death – bloody, dangerous, painful and uncertain”, concluding “As I see it, what each of these pictures conveys to us in different ways is the pregnancy of uncertainties...and I invite you to invite hope...that the power of life is stronger than the power of death, and that all birthings can also beget the kind of hope which has the power to wrestle with fear.”

Thea Pickard, whose own 18 month old son cutely gazumped her at the microphone, chose to focus on her own experience of birth.  Reflecting on the quite confronting painting by Chris Wyatt Moment of Birth, she found herself imagining the guardian of women’s mysteries, the patroness of midwives, Lilith – “the first wife of Adam” – in a substantial poem full of metaphor, ending

I am the wild woman within
that eternal place of reckoning
Always beckoning
Come in, come in
The door is open
The hearth is warm
The kettle on
Make yourself at home
And let’s get on...

Women’s poetry was powerfully complemented by the songs of Glenda Cloughley and a chorus of women, with a highlight performance of the words of Jane Addams, founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1919) and the second woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Though they won’t be there when you visit Seasons of Birth, you can find, and join, a chorus of women at www.chorusofwomen.org , and see and hear them in person at this same venue on Saturday November 26, 2016 from 6 pm, after the final showing of the art.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: A Life in the Theatre by David Mamet

A Life in the Theatre by David Mamet.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Playhouse, November 4 – December 4, 2016.

Director – Helen Dallimore

Designers: Production – Hugh O’Connor; Sound – Jed Silver; Lighting – Christopher Page
Performed by Akos Armont and John Gaden

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 5

I bet David Mamet has forgotten The Art of Coarse Acting (by Michael Green, 1964), but I haven’t.  It has a section on how to dominate a scene while hidden behind a sofa, which I actually used when acting in a British farce of that era.

But I bet John Gaden knew it well.  He applies several Coarse Acting devices, but in this play seen from the backstage viewpoint, which makes them even funnier.  The scene where Robert (Gaden) and John (Armont) are in a small boat expecting to die a horrible death, while the stage hand crawls behind to wave a cardboard cutout seagull at the inappropriate moment and steals the scene (from their audience’s point of view) was a great demonstration of the Green Principle.

Yet, though supposedly based on Mamet’s own experience in Repertory, where actors are forever changing costumes, props and whole acting styles, this very funny play is not a mere farce. 

Armont’s John is a young actor learning the game as the constant colleague of old-timer Robert.  As we see them in their horribly cramped dressing room manically change costumes, do make-up, rehearse, answer the phone on the stage manager’s desk in the Opposite Prompt corner, talk about anything and everything, shift props and perform bits of any number of shows (not real ones but imitations by Mamet) and leave to go ‘out’, or go home late at night, and arrive next day, the theatrical genre certainly looks like farce.

But what the play is about is the changing nature of the relationship between Robert and John, as Robert grows older, even towards frailty, and John grows into maturity.

The wonderful thing about this production is that Akos Armond is young, and already is in reality the mature highly professional actor that John becomes; while John Gaden is in reality Robert’s age – but in no way is Gaden showing Robert’s tendencies, not only to pontificate, or to lose his lines, or to fly off the handle in contradiction to his pontifications; and certainly not to become slightly Alzheimic and lose his bearings.  The details of Gaden’s characterisation in movement, voice, facial expression, and the chemistry of his acting relationship with Armond is as precise and fascinating as it ever was when I first saw him perform many decades ago.

The production design, lighting and sound are hugely complicated – backstage is just so full of bits and pieces in typical grotty wings which the actors have to negotiate at speed to meet their cues.  Once, when they forget their lines, they miss a cue – what horror!  While the jaunty music we hear is always just on the edge of comedy.  How well I remember the night when, somehow, a gust of wind got in backstage nearly toppling a 12 foot painted flat onto the actors on stage.  Only our quick-thinking fast-moving stage manager managed to grab it from behind, how I’ll never know, and hold it up for the rest of the scene.  Didn’t we laugh as we tied it in place during interval!

So the only disappointments I have are that the program does not acknowledge the costume designer, unless the supply of myriad costumes was done by the excellent set construction team of Brett Wilbe and Emily Polson; and nor is the role of stage manager named – after all he was a crucial actor, and certainly had his own personality while constantly flitting about, yet obviously always in control backstage.  Perhaps it was assistant stage manager Sunil Chandra we saw, since I don’t think the women Amy Morcom (stage manager) or Angela Atkinson (the other assistant stage manager) appeared.

I note that director Helen Dallimore has at one point in her career been assistant director to Jonathan Biggins (of Wharf Revue fame) on Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Michael Frayn’s famous backstage play, Noises Off.  I’ve no doubt she put that experience to very good use in this show.

And, mentioning the women in passing, I wonder a little why Mamet wrote only men into his play.  Perhaps the ‘business’ with props, costume changing and lack of space might have taken our attention onto issues beyond his key philosophical concern – is this play “Absurd Theatre”, or is theatre essentially just absurd?  Either way, the relationship between John and Robert grows as they work together and come to respect each other.  We in the audience in turn feel for them, and in our applause express our respect for all those engaged in great theatre – the actors, directors, designers and crew.

This season of A Life in the Theatre has only just begun.  Eternity Playhouse is at 39 Burton Street (just off Crown Street, opposite the now defunct TAP Theatre), with a program well worth the trip to Sydney.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Title and Deed by Will Eno

Title and Deed by Will Eno.  Presented by Belvoir at Belvoir St Theatre Downstairs, Sydney, October 13 – November 6, 2016.

Director – Jada Alberts

Designers: Set and Costume – Anna Gardiner; Lighting – Ross Graham; Composer and Sound – Kelly Ryall.

Performed by Jimi Bani

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 5

Jimi Bani, a Torres Strait Islander of Mabuiag and Darnley Islands heritage, gives a moving performance, directed by Larrakia woman Jada Alberts, of a quite unusual American play by Will Eno.  Title and Deed  was included in the New York Times and The New Yorker’s Top 10 Plays of the Year 2012.

Bani’s role is The Traveller – away from ‘home’ and recently arrived ‘here’.  He speaks to us, surprised and thankful for our willingness to listen.  What he says is an internal conversation with himself in which he imagines us to be his audience.  Except that we are real.  Perhaps the weirdest moment theatrically was when the stage lights had faded on him in character and the house lights came up for applause.  It really felt as if we were applauding this engaging but ultimately worrying stranger rather than this highly accomplished actor.  Only on his exit (through the audience in the tiny Belvoir Downstairs) and reappearance did we feel that now we were applauding Jimi Bani rather than this rather strange but thoroughly recognisable character, The Traveller.

What was worrying was that he clearly had something out of kilter emotionally because of his occasional stammer when he would find himself unable to say the words he was searching for, because of his hearing things in his head that we couldn’t hear, because of his swinging from outgoing confidence to obsequious thanking us, with sudden retreats physically into moments of unexplainable despair – as he had seemed, leaning against the dirty brick wall, slightly twisted with head down, when we had arrived to take our seats.

We were clearly ‘here’, but he was, as he said at one point, not exactly ‘there’ – which might have been ‘home’ – but he was perhaps ‘somewhere’, which made him think he might be ‘nowhere’, leading him to think about how we have invented all our words to try to help ourselves understand life and death.  He looked into our eyes – actually into the eyes of one of us – and then quoted “The eyes are the window into our eyes” – not from some famous person, but from Brian, with whom he had painted a house. Later he thought perhaps he was quoting Shakespeare, but then remembered it was Brian.

And so we were engaged intellectually in a philosophical exploration of language, meaning and the impossibility of actually knowing what is in someone else’s mind, while emotionally we gradually became aware of the background to his anxieties derived from very ordinary parental demands like “Where do you think you’re going?” or “What do you think you’re doing?”  We even learned that he had not been breast fed, and after losing the rubber nipple from his bottle had been left to drink from a cup, which his mother had said was not very satisfactory.  And he clearly had been afraid of his father.

No wonder his apparently brief relationship with Lauren – he found a calendar in which she had blacked out all the days they had had together – was not as ‘here’ as he had thought it was.  Now his father had died (first, as Nature decreed, and without his being there) and his mother had also died (he had managed to get ‘there’ for her) his parents ‘are dead for me now’, he explained.  It was surprising what we laughed at, yet it was with sympathy as we now understood why he had to be The Traveller, and with empathy as we realised that like him we are ‘travelling’ until we die.

And so this is why I found it interesting to know how this play, written by a New Yorker, with all its imagery and references centred in a kind of American small town  life, could resonate for a Larrakia woman writer and now director from Darwin and a Torres Strait Islander actor who had travelled all the way to train at WAAPA in Perth, coming together to work at Belvoir in Sydney (with support for Indigenous theatre by the Balnaves Foundation).

As Jada Alberts wrote in her Director’s Note, “I hope you see and forget to see, the skin he’s in.”  And that was exactly what this production achieved – a moving performance of an unusual play, in which we were transported from ‘wherever’ to our immediate ‘here’, seeing as Jada hoped “yourself in the character you meet, or in the least someone you care for”.

Title and Deed travels very well.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: The Lighting Designer: by Nigel Levings

The Lighting Designer: What is ‘good lighting’?  by Nigel Levings.  Platform Paper No 49 November 2016 (Currency House, Sydney)

Sydney Launch by Lindy Hume, artistic director of Opera Queensland
Monday November 14, 2016, 6pm at Belvoir Street Theatre, Surry Hills.

Adelaide Launch by Rachel Healy, co-artistic director of the Adelaide Festival
Tuesday November 15, 2016, 6pm at Imprints Booksellers, 107 Hindley St.

Free, but essential to book at info@currencyhouse.org.au

Media enquiries to Martin Portus at mportus@optusnet.com.au
Pdf available on request.

Posted by Frank McKone
November 4

Media Release: About The Author
Nigel Levings is one of Australia’s leading theatre lighting designers and in his early career was the first to be fully employed by an Australian theatre company as a lighting designer. In a distinguished career he has lit over 490 original productions including 174 operas and 28 musicals. He has lit opera in St Petersburg, Paris, Washington, London, Cardiff, Berlin, Baden Baden, Innsbruck, Bregenz, New
York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Seoul and Toronto as well as all the major opera houses of Australia. 

His awards for lighting design include the Helpmann and Green Room Awards, the Los Angeles Ovation Award and the Canadian Dora Mava Moore Award. On Broadway he has won two Outer Circle Critics Awards, a Drama Desk and a Tony Award. He was awarded the Centenary Federation Medal by the Australian Government for his services to opera lighting and, in 2003, was honoured by the SA Great – Arts Award. 

Recent work includes: Die tote Stadt, Of Mice and Men and the world premiere of Bliss for Opera Australia: Maria de Buenos Aires for Victorian Opera; Romeo et Juliette for Korea National Opera; The Book of Everything at the New Victory Theatre, New York; The King and I for Opera Australia and Gordon Frost; Cloudstreet for State Opera of South Australia, Disgraced for Melbourne Theatre
Company; Machu Picchu for State Theatre Company of South Australia; Don Carlos for Opera Australia.

Contents
1. This Lighting Designer
2. The Craft of Lighting Design
3. Industrial Issues
4. The Technology
5. The Opinions
6. The Lighting Designer and Good Lighting

I, as a one-time drama teacher, am very pleased to note that Nigel Levings begins: “I grew up in Melbourne and in primary school our Year 6 teacher, Mr Edgar Seppings, gave me my first brush with the theatre. I was too young at the time for much recall but I do remember the magic of that lit space and the surrounding darkness.”

If I were still teaching I would be sure to invite Nigel to speak to my students, especially about the personal attributes they should aspire to. 

He writes: When I get it right, my lighting design springs from a desire to share with an audience this love of light: visibility, poetic density of meaning, but above all pure, succulent, sensuous, visual pleasure and Good lighting is intelligent lighting. It springs from deep thought about the text and the director's interpretation of it.

This is not a geek speaking, but an artistic designer.  His personal history informs his development in and experience of the craft, the industry, the technology and the changing perceptions – including of critics – since he “was offered the position of head of lighting for the Melbourne Theatre Company at Russell Street Theatre... at the beginning of 1971.”

The history and comparisons between his experiences in Australia and overseas would give my students an excellent grounding, while his enthusiasm 45 years later must inspire them when he writes The play of light on surface continues to be a source of constant delight and almost physical pleasure for me, an inspiration for my work. When I get it right, even if only to my partial satisfaction, my lighting design springs from a desire to share with an audience this love of light: visibility, poetic density of meaning—but above all pure, succulent, sensuous visual pleasure.

This is not so much a how-to-do essay, but rather a how-to-be reading experience – genuinely enlightening, indeed.  Nigel knows his stuff from the “small resistance dimmer board on a perch position behind the proscenium” to the “current lighting control systems [which] allow extremely complicated manipulation of the transition from one lighting image to the next [where] we are now well in reach of that dream of a totally fluid light plot, one in which the light never ceases to shift over the entire course of the play.” 

Yet he makes it clear in his final chapter that technical skills must be integrated with personal and interpersonal skills, like working calmly and quickly under extreme time pressure, making both spontaneous and planned creative decisions, being able to quickly comprehend both the surface meaning of a text and its underlying subtext, having empathy for the demands faced by performers and being willing to adapt, having knowledge of the physics of light and how the eye works with a psychological understanding of the process of perception, as well as a broad understanding of
electricity and electronics.

It looks like he’s given me the assessment criteria for judging my lighting students’ progress.  But there’s still “Above all—you need a thick skin and a not-easily-bruised ego.”  Hmmm!  Just what we critics need, too?

Don’t miss Platform Paper No 49, especially (if you’re a critic) Chapter 5 – The Opinions!

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Faith Healer by Brian Friel

Colin Friels as Frank Hardy
in Faith Healer
Photo by Brett Boardman

Faith Healer by Brian Friel.  Presented by Belvoir at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, October 26 – November 27, 2016

Director – Judy Davis

Set Designer – Brian Thomson; Costume Designer – Tess Schofield; Lighting Designer – Verity Hampson; Composer and Sound Designer – Paul Charlier

Performed by Colin Friels – Frank Hardy; Alison Whyte – Grace Hardy; Pip Miller – Teddy.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 29

Frank Hardy – Fantastic Faith Healer Francis Hardy, One Night Only – begins his story without telling us about his ending. 

Grace Hardy – he said mistress, she says wife – tells her story without her ending, of her life with Frank, yet without making the end of his life known, if indeed it has yet ended at all.

Teddy – manager of artistes extraordinaire, so he says – tells his story of Grace and Frank.  His own story has not yet ended.  He knows her ending, but even he does not make Frank’s ending clear.

Then Frank, now apparently after his end, tells his story with some more embellishment.  He obviously ends, but still we are not told exactly what happened.

Maybe it’s all a story of Irish blarney.  You kiss and polish the blarney stone while you tell fantastic stories, mostly about what you wish would happen.  This wasn’t mentioned in the play, but it’s what the play is about.

From our point of view it’s all about listening, and trying to work out what’s blarney and what’s not – except that the whole, the perhaps bigger, question is whether all art is just blarney – or not, as the case may be.

The three actors have clearly been directed by her excellency Judy Davis down to the very last aaargh! of their characters’ lives, but in the end – or in their ends – or even my end, there wasn’t enough beginning to make the play as significant as others seem to want to make it.  Davis makes a fair attempt in her Director’s Note, quoting Brian Friel saying “I certainly think we’re a maimed people in this country [Ireland, that is]”, that it’s about ‘issues of identity, of the importance of a sense of place, of foreign conquest, and of the damage done when one’s destiny is out of one’s control’, and concluding with ‘another quote from Friel may be helpful: “I gave up my study for the priesthood out of conflict with my belief in paganism.”

Well, perhaps, but I honestly think Brian Friel couldn’t match his sort-of confrere, Samuel Beckett.  This is because Beckett created, and knew he was creating, an original form of drama, a new genre in the aburdist line.  Friel’s story-writing is apparently ordinarily naturalistic – and so the possibilities remain rather ordinary – while Beckett created metaphors redolent with interpretations.

This doesn’t mean that Faith Healer isn’t quite watchable – the actors are very good at naturalism after all – but there’s not the poetry I need.  Maybe that’s my version of blarney.  You might well feel differently if you kiss the stone. 


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: The Wharf Revue 2016 – Back to Bite You

Drew Forsythe, Phillip Scott, Jonathan Biggins
in Back to Bite You The Wharf Revue 2016
Photo by Hon Boey

The Wharf Revue 2016 – Back to Bite You, written and created by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott, performed with Paige Gardiner (originally with Katrina Retallick).  Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, October 19 – December 23, 2016.

Musical Director – Phillip Scott; Lighting Designer – Matthew Marshall; Sound and Video Designer – David Bergman; Costumes – Scott Fisher and Nick Godlee; Wig Stylist – Margaret Aston; Video Artist – Todd Decker;  Music Tracks – Andrew Worboys.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 29

Someone told me they were disappointed that no sitting Prime Minister appeared in this year’s Wharf Revue.  But Malcolm Caesar was spoken about in such glowing or scathing terms by so many Senators in Ancient Rome AD 2016, that we did not need to see him in person to know all about him.  The Treasurer “didn’t come to bury him, but to praise him”.

On the other hand, perhaps the Revue Creators simply could not find anything funny about him to present.  While on the third hand, they had no difficulty presenting Antonius Abbottus doing a fandango fan dance in red budgie smugglers, now banished to the isolated island of Warringah.

As always Drew Forsythe was absolutely remarkable in every role, as was Jonathan Biggins, both live and on video; Phillip Scott played the grand in every impossible style from Dave Brubeck to Gilbert and Sullivan; and Paige Gardiner was wonderful all the way from Juliana, the experienced vestal virgin, through a West Side Story conservative illegal Mexican horrified at Donald Trump, to a terrific characterisation of Hillary – who nearly forgot to mention the other minority group: Women!

The meeting Georgie Brandis called to negotiate terms with Pauline Hanson (Forsythe) and Jacqui Lambe (Gardiner) – she called him Georgie – was a great example of political and other types of innuendo, one of the best among a lengthy series of skits taking us all the way from the Shakesperean politics of Ancient Rome, through the less than enlightening politics of the Australian Parliament (Brandis had to explain to Pauline that she had been in the Green House last time – before she went to jail courtesy of Tony Abbott – but now she is in the Red Senate, but the House isn’t Green now that M Caesar has a one-seat majority), and finally on to the American shenanigans of Bernie, Hillary and Donald.

This historical perspective gave this year’s Revue an intellectual depth, with satirical finesse (and terrific use of video) which makes it one of the best.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Katrina Retallik, but Paige Gardiner was certainly a very fine performer as actor, dancer and singer, fully up to the mark required by the Wharf Revue tradition.

What will change when the US election result is announced I can’t guess, but it could well be worth another trip to Sydney to find out.

But in the end the most powerful episode in this year’s Revue was not a black satirical piece, but the warm, loving, wonderful visit from Heaven by the ever shambolic but so erudite Bob Ellis.  Not to be missed – yet how much do we miss him.

And so it goes….


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Antigone by Sophocles

Andrea Demetriades as Antigone, William Zappa as King Creon
in Sophocles, Antigone adapted by Damien Ryan

Antigone by Sophocles, adapted by Damien Ryan.  Presented by Sport for Jove and The Seymour Centre at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, October 27-29, 2016.

Damien Ryan: Writer and Director; Terry Karabelas: Director.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 27

It may seem a bit far-fetched to compare Damien Ryan with the Ancient Greek Sophocles, but.... 

Of course, the idea of writing three plays tracing the myth of the accursed House of Labdacus was entirely Sophocles’.  The story shows how Oedipus became King of Thebes (Oedipus Rex), why he was banished by his successor Creon and settled in the village of Colonus near Athens where his “soul was received into the blessed abodes...” (Oedipus at Colonus), and finally how Oedipus’ sons, Eteocles and Polynikes fought – Eteocles defending Thebes while Polynikes allied with the Argives to attack.  When both were killed – they killed each other – and Creon was once more in charge, he decreed that only Eteocles would receive proper burial rites, while the body of Polynikes “should be left in ignominy, un-wept and unburied, upon the plain where it lay.  Penalty of death was promulgated against any who should defy this order; and the voices of the city, whether in consent or in fearful submission, were silent.”  [Sophocles: The Theban Plays trans. E F Watling]

Antigone shows the final collapse of the House of Labdacus, as the two daughters of Oedipus – Antigone and Ismene – and Creon’s son, Haemon, defy Creon’s order.

I’m guessing that the words of the Chorus, the people of Thebes, stimulated Damien Ryan to seek a way to show how modern Sophocles’ thinking was, at the time when Athens was experimenting with a new form of government – rule by the people.  With Creon still in power as King, they say to Antigone:

An act of homage is good in itself, my daughter;
But authority cannot afford to connive at disobedience.
You are the victim of your own self-will.

Here is the essence of the politics in the play, as Ryan notes in the Program: The theme of the individual conscience struggling against the power of judicial law and the state is eternal and inspirational.  The loss of political balance into extremism and groups that kill for their own moral or religious law is terrifying.

But Ryan has cleverly not done as many other directors have done in recent times with Shakespeare.  He has not transposed the play into some modern place, though the stage set looks eerily like this week’s news pictures of Aleppo, but he has written into the dialogue mention of modern weaponry and human rights violations as if Thebes is one of the cities we know, like Mosul or Raqqa, or indeed Aleppo today.

Then he has done the most daring adapting by writing in what Sophocles might have thought of, but couldn’t quite go there: Ryan’s Creon announces that “tomorrow” we will have democracy, saying that he and his family will stand down from kingship to become ordinary citizens like everyone else.

The edict of the death penalty concerning burying the body of Polynikes legally remains in force, of course, and Antigone does her deed that very night – before tomorrow comes.  And dies before Creon heeds the voice of the people to release her from prison.

Yet the strength of this production is not just in the twists and turns of argument about government: Damien Ryan has brought the personal story of Antigone, her sister Ismene and her lover Haemon to life in a way that could never have been presented on the great outdoor theatre in Sophocles’ Athens.  We see and hear them speak to us directly in scenes additional to Sophocles’ descriptions by messengers in the original script.

Ryan writes: Tragedy’s intention is to remind us we are alive.  And indeed his writing and directing has brought Sophocles to life in this remarkable production of Antigone.

The success of this production also relied very much on casting, set design, sound design and lighting.

Casting Andrea Demetriades as Antigone, Louisa Mignone as Ismene, Joseph Del Re as Haemon, Anna Volska as Tiresias – the seer who so severely criticises Creon’s actions, William Zappa as Creon, Deborah Galanos as Creon’s wife Eurydice, and Fiona Press as the Leader of the Chorus made a brilliant team – all except William Zappa (for obvious reasons) doubling as members of the Chorus along with Janine Watson, Thomas Royce-Hampton, Marie Kamara and Elijah Williams, who also played respectively the Sentry, the Soldier (and live percussionist), the young Boy and the older Boy with critical messenger roles.

Such quality casting and grouping emphasised the sense of community in the people of Thebes, enhanced by the use of song and Greek language shouts for action, of acclamation, of concern, drawing us into their culture and involving us emotionally in their lives.  Terry Karabelas’ work shone through the production, as did Scott Witt’s choreography.

Sets and costume design by Melanie Liertz, working with scenic artist Rosalind McKelvey Bunting, took us exactly into a city almost destroyed by years of warfare, even down to graffiti, with a mood to match in Matt Cox’s lighting and Bruce Halliday's sound design.

This is a production not to be missed, with a run after Canberra at Riverside Theatre, Parramatta, November 9-12.  Well worth the drive. 

© Frank McKone, Canberra   

2016: Othello by William Shakespeare

Othello by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare at Canberra Theatre Centre, Playhouse, October 14-22, 2016.

Directed by Peter Evans; Sets and Costumes by Michael Hankin; Lighting by Paul Jackson; Composer and Sound Designer – Steve Toulmin; Movement and Fight director – Nigel Poulton; Voice Coach – Jess Chambers.

Cast:
Ray Chong Nee – Othello; Yalin Ozucelik – Iago; Elizabeth Nabben – Desdemona; James Lugton – Brabantio/Lodovico; Michael Wahr – Cassio; Edmund Lembke-Hogan – Roderigo; Joanna Downing – Emilia; Alice Keovahong – Bianca; Huw McKinnon – Duke/Montano

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 14

I had some difficulty seeing this performance by virtue of the fact that the raking of the seating in the Canberra Playhouse is at far too shallow an angle.  It only took a normal height couple immediately in front of me to mean that I had to keep shifting from left to right, and when I wanted to concentrate closely, shifting forward to the edge of my seat to see the actors on different parts of the stage.

Maybe it’s Row F where the problem is worst.  I hope I didn’t distract the people behind me too much.

Row F, I think, is perhaps also the worst for acoustics.  I’ve been further forward and further back before, but in the middle the sound seems to be especially muzzy.  Perhaps that was why I found it quite difficult to pick up all the words, especially when spoken fast (such as in Scene 1 when you need to hear Iago and Roderigo to get the detail of their complaints and their financial arrangements which underpin the rest of the action), and in general of the men compared with the women.

Being aware of these technical issues and doing my best to discount them in my judgement, I still have to use the word “lacklustre” to describe this production of Othello.

This is disappointing after Peter Evans’ Romeo and Juliet.  His modernisation worked then, despite the anachronisms, because the central story is still universal to today’s families and their children; but not for Othello. 

Shakespeare’s characterisation of the Moor demanded that he be so strategic in war, so compelling a commander and so attractive in love – indeed, so genuine a personality – that his blackness simply has to be put aside, despite white Venice’s standard discriminatory assumptions.   Othello is highly intelligent, working through the detail of information he receives to see the possibilities and probabilities, and taking decisive action.  Of course, though Shakespeare’s audience in a time of absolute monarchy would recognise the value of such a man – and pick up on Shakespeare’s point that these characteristics are not exclusive to  Englishmen (or white Venetians) – it is his tragedy not to see through the subtlety of Iago’s manipulative intelligence. 

Unfortunately, neither Ray Chong Nee nor Yalin Ozucelik showed us the complexity of these characters – presumably because they were not directed to do so.  Chong Nee’s Othello seemed too limited in intelligence, commanding presence or personal charm, and indeed was represented as actually being mentally unstable; while Ozucelik’s Iago was clever to an extent at a superficial level but was never the smooth operator – not oily enough to succeed against a man of Othello’s erudition; or indeed even enough to explain how Emilia would ever have married him.

One demonstrative example was when Iago turned on Emilia, threatening violence, insulting her as a ‘fool’, and obviously frightening her.  The real Iago (and they are extant today as ever they were in Shakespeare’s time) would never be so obvious.  They smile as they call their wives fool, just as they speak so apparently genuinely while taking their ‘mates’ down.  This Iago actually made some audience members laugh openly when speaking directly to us, when we should have felt the need to stop ourselves from laughing because of his dreadful intention.

Though all three women, as Emilia, Desdemona and Bianca, performed their roles with tremendous strength of character – and thoroughly justified Shakespeare’s insistence on their equal rights – without properly fine-tuned male characters, their work was not enough to bring this production of Othello up to Shakespeare’s mark.

I suspect that attempting to use modern dress (which lacks the specific delineation of social position) and technology to create massive alarums was a distraction in the directing of this play.  Its setting is so specific (where Othello even speaks of his action in Aleppo!) that keeping to the time and place that Shakespeare chose would work better, allowing the characterisations to grow from those circumstances and yet making the story of Venetian domination and its undermining from within be told metaphorically via the ironic tragic story of the Moor, Othello, his pure Venetian wife Desdemona, and his disaffected underling Iago.

Ray Chong Nee and Yalin Ozucelik
as Othello and Iago
in Shakespeare's Othello

© Frank McKone, Canberra