2016: The Golden Age by Louis Nowra

Back: Robert Menzies as Melorne, Sarah Peirse as Ayre, Anthony Taufa as Mac.
Front: Liam Nunan as Stef, Rarriwuy Hick as Betsheb and Zindzi Okenyo as Angel

The Golden Age by Louis Nowra.  Sydney Theatre Company directed by Kip Williams.  Wharf 1, January 20 – February 20, 2016.

Cast
Rarriwuy Hick – Betsheb
Remy Hill – Peter Archer / James
Brandon McClelland – Francis
Robert Menzies – William Archer / Melorne
Liam Nunan – Stef / Private Corris
Zindzi Okenyo – Dr Simon / Mary / Angel
Sarah Peirse – Ayre / Mrs Witcombe
Anthony Taufa – Mac / Mr Turner / George Ross MP / German Man
Ursula Yovich – Elizabeth Archer

Designer – David Fleischer; Lighting – Damien Cooper; Composer and sound designer – Max Lyandvert; Dramaturg – Paige Rattray; Voice and text coach – Charmian Gradwell.

Production photos: Lisa Tomasetti

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 27

“Only my younger self could have written a play with such audacity.  Perhaps that’s why I still have a great affection for it.”  So says author Louis Nowra in his program note, and so say I.

Of all Australian plays, this is the one which goes to the heart of being Australian.  We think we are egalitarian – the ‘fair go’ country – and others even tell us we are.  But it’s not true.  It was an audacious act to say this in 1985.  I certainly felt that when I saw an early production by the students of NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) in Sydney, 1986. 

But it needed to be said that treating all kinds of other people truly as equals is not how we commonly behave.  We have to learn from bitter experience what giving a fair go really entails – and by the time we realise, it’s often too late.  Irreparable damage has already been done.

Mind you, on the Q&A program on Monday night, February 1, 2016, the various Australians of the Year gave us new hope.   [www.abc.net.au / iview, available until 10.40pm on 15 February 2016]

There has been considerable argument about the state of Australian theatre, in recent years.  One important question has been why Australian plays of the past have not become essential to the programming, especially of the major companies.  Sydney Theatre Company’s decision to present this play, absolutely necessary to Australians’ understanding of ourselves, is to be commended, and I hope it will be the beginning of an established tradition.

The equivalent is for British theatres to stage George Bernard Shaw, or Americans to revive the early Arthur Miller.  In Australia, for good reasons, we have always tried to cover the field of theatre from around the world, but it is now time to do this without losing our own culture.  To not regularly program, say (among many others) Dorothy Hewett, David Williamson, Alex Buzo, Alma de Groen, and not to keep adding to the canon the newer great writers (like Andrew Bovell) as they appear and become established, would smack too much of cultural cringe.  Louis Nowra could not possibly be left off any sensible list when you consider at least Cosi, Inner Voices, Radiance, Summer of the Aliens and of course, The Golden Age.

Importantly, the casting of this production of The Golden Age makes a symbolic point which parallels the essence of the play.  None of the characters as written are Indigenous Australians, yet today the cast can naturally include actors from a range of Indigenous and other backgrounds, thoroughly suited to their roles and who perform to the highest standards – as we would nowadays automatically expect from not only the Sydney Theatre Company but virtually all levels of theatre groups in Australia.

Of course the quality of the acting – and this means of the directing and dramaturgy in the rehearsal process – is crucial to the impact of the play.  I found my emotional response to the different elements of the story – the middle class doctor’s family in Hobart, the newly discovered group left isolated for nearly a century at the site in the deep Tasmanian bush of a briefly extant gold mine of the 1850s, the poor working class existence of Francis’ family in 1930’s Melbourne, the awful war experience for Francis in Berlin, and the terrible treatment of Betsheb and her family in the New Norfolk insane asylum – was lifted in hope and dashed in despair. 

The great quality of Nowra’s text is that the big issues of violence against people’s right to independence and dignity in life, at the individual and international level, are not dealt with through intellectualised argument.  Where Francis or Dr Archer raise the issues, it is always in the context of experience with which we identify and in which we feel how they feel. To achieve this is a mark of great acting of an audacious text.

So the 2016 The Golden Age is not to be missed.  The ending proved the point for me, when instead of ecstatic theatrical applause which seems to have become a habit of audiences, Betsheb’s quiet singing, her understanding now so limited by electric shock treatment, and Francis’ wondering if what Peter Archer had said as he left them alone together in the bush clearing might really be the truth, made our sense of the tragic mood deepen.  The text:

BETSHEB: [softly, singing]
        Rain, rain go thy way,
        Come a-back ne’er a day.

PETER: Goodbye, Betsheb

        She pays no attention.

She lives in a world of her own.  You know that.  She destroyed my father [Dr Archer] just as she’ll destroy you.  You have done the wrong thing.

FRANCIS: Maybe I have; I don’t know.  But she’s all I’ve got to believe in.

PETER: Goodbye.

FRANCIS nods a ‘Goodbye’.  PETER departs.  Silence.  BETSHEB continues to sing softly to herself.

FRANCIS: Betsheb? Betsheb?

BETSHEB, immersed in her own world, doesn’t answer.  FRANCIS sits down away from her and wonders if PETER is right.  BETSHEB laughs to herself.  After a time she turns around and notices FRANCIS: a lonely, confused figure.  She stares at him and, almost as if he has heard his name, he turns and looks at her.  She smiles across the gulf that separates them.

BETSHEB: Nowt more outcastin’.

The lights fade slowly to blackout.

Copyright © Louis Nowra 1985

Currency Press, Sydney

Revised edition 1989

Electronic edition 2012

At this matinee, at four in the afternoon, the applause began tentatively, and remained muted, but insistent, through two call backs for the actors before the houselights came up slowly.  I can still feel the beginning of tears even as I write this several days later.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anthony Taufa as George Ross MP, Rarriwuy Hick as Betsheb,
Brandon McClelland as Francis and Robert Menzies as Dr William Archer

But the set design worried me, though perhaps only for me as a longtime bushwalker who knows the Tasmanian dense ancient forests from the inside.

Being nostalgic, I found the design in the photos below lost what for me is an essential element of the play being set in Tasmania.  Where is the wall of greenery surrounding even the Archer’s home and the New Norfolk Asylum, as well as the ‘clearing’ as Nowra describes the bush location?

Sarah Peirse as Ayre

Liam Nunan as Stef, Brandon McClelland as Francis and Rarriwuy Hick as Betsheb

As I saw it, the contrast between the absolute fecundity of the Tasmanian bush landscape and the sterility of the treatment of Ayre, Betsheb and their little lost community, as well as of Francis’ mother’s death and the war scenes in Berlin: that contrast made the point about what Australia has to offer, that the conventional and official world has forgotten.

Oddly enough, in the photo below, the set for the NIDA students’ production looks much more conventional than the modern style.

Louis Nowra edited by Veronica Kelly
Australian Playwrights
Monograph Series edited by Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt
Published by Rodopi, Amsterdam 1987

But it was the combination of Grecian columns and the beautiful bush landscape, which could be simply changed by dropping a different backdrop for the funeral and war scenes, with little interruption to the flow of the action on stage, which was all that was needed.  The text and the acting does the rest – though I have to say the lighting and the sound effects for the thunderstorms and the war scenes in 2016 were terrific, almost literally, compared with 30 years ago’s technology.

The mound as the central feature of today’s production and the bringing of symbolic trees, fallen bits of ancient European culture, and poles looking rather like traditional Aboriginal spears as the wall of the asylum or of the prison certainly made for a much more active production, rather than one that could concentrate too much on dialogue.  So I think my solution would have been to paint the walls (which look like the interior of an industrial shed) with Tasmanian forest (it could still include its doorways).  A mound in the acting space would still work, but not apparently made of dry earth (loam, as Ayre calls it).  In Tasmania that hill would be pure mud, and impossible to perform on.  Bush litter among button grass clumps would be the way to go, with the occasional tiger snake curled up ready to strike.

That’s my Tasmania!

Rainforest clearing in Pine Valley, Tasmania.
Photo: Meg McKone

Buttongrass plain
Mount Oakleigh from near New Pelion Hut, Tasmania
Photo: Meg McKone

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Peter Best

Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Peter Best.  Centrepiece Theatre: Director, Set Designer and Costume Designer – Jordan Best; Lighting Designer – Kelly McGannon.  at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, January 19-24, 2016.

Cast
Musical Cow – Matthew Webster
Daddy Bear – Jim Adamik
Mummy Bear – Kiki Skountzos
Baby Bear – Tim Sekuless
Goldilocks – Amy Dunham

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 24

There’s a great sense of family revival in this witty but nice show.

Endearing and now enduring, Peter Best’s morality musical for the under-eights began its life as a grandfatherly gesture back in the day, 2011.  After its Canberra debut, Centrepiece took the Bear Family to Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion in 2012, and have now brought it back to dearly beloved Queanbeyan, with Amy Dunham as the best snoring Goldilocks – in Baby Bear’s bed, of course.

She also wore golden shoes that matched those of a littly, discovered in the post-show meet-the-cast (still very much in costume) gathering.  For both Goldilocks and Goldilette it seemed like a surprise meeting of Cinderellas – and better than plain old glass slippers.

What happened in the foyer after the show was as important for the children and their parents as their enjoyment and engagement in the show on stage.  The Best family’s Bear Family cleverly turn the old cautionary folk tale into one of respect for difference and diversity – just the ticket for the new Australian of the Year, David Morrison.  And it’s about how to say ‘sorry’ when you’ve eaten all of someone else’s porridge.  That’s another story for an Australia Day.

I guess this Goldilocks and the Three Bears will never be a serious money-turner, like other children’s theatre – say, the Gary Ginnivan or Dora the Explorer extravanzas.  It wasn’t written with that kind of purpose, and its strength lies in keeping its audience small (in both senses) and being with the children after the stage performance, as friends and as actors in costume and improvising in character.  I caught Jim Adamik having a great conversation with a young lad – not as anything like that other bear of very little brain (dear old Pooh!), but as a Daddy Bear genuinely interested in a little boy’s story of things that had happened to him.  A very modern model of a Daddy Bear, in fact.

Of course, the heart of this success is the delicate scripting, lyrics writing and music composing by Peter Best.  I say ‘delicate' because it is so carefully written – meaning full of care for the children watching and responding.  And Jordan Best’s directing picked up that delicacy for her actors, who all responded in kind.  I could also say, in kindness.

From little things, big things grow – so I rather hope that this Best version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears will expand its reach, go further afield.  Perhaps it could become a franchise for small-scale non-profit theatre companies to put on in their local communities around the country and beyond.  I think that would be nice.


©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, adapted for the stage by Kate Mulvaney

Guy Simon
Photo by Brett Boardman

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, adapted for the stage by Kate Mulvaney.  At Belvoir Street Upstairs, Sydney, January 6 – February 7, 2016.

Directed by Anne-Louise Sarks; Set Designer – Michael Hankin; Costume Designer –Mel Page; Lighting Designer – Matt Scott; Composer and Sound Designer – Steve Toulmin; Fight Choreographer – Scott Witt; Choreographer – Sara Black.  Indigenous Consultant – Jada Alberts.

Cast
Charlie Bucktin Tom Conroy
Mrs Bucktin / Warwick Kate Mulvaney
Laura Wishart / Eliza Wishart Matilda Ridgway
Mr Bucktin / Mad Jack Lionel Steve Rodgers
Jasper Jones Guy Simon
Jeffrey Lu Charles Wu

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 23

Since it’s a very long time since I was a young adult (in fact the category didn’t even exist when I was that young), I went to Belvoir for the matinee unaware of Craig Silvey and his ‘iconic’ story with its referencing literature, especially Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and full of what Kate Mulvaney calls ‘favourite bits’.  The audience, which included quite a number of today’s young adults, as well as many who used to be, not too long ago, there were obviously favourite bits all over the place.

My favourite bit was the ending, and how it was staged.  D H Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers was not specifically mentioned, but Jasper Jones in 1965 – like Paul Morel in 1913 – walks away from constriction towards distant lights representing a new life in the wider world.  The symbolism of an off-stage spotlight on Guy Simon’s beautifully characterised Jasper as he exits was obvious, and brought the play to a veritable explosion of audience enthusiasm in response.

Anne-Louise Sarks’ direction and Michael Hankin’s set design kept up a sparkling pace from the opening scene, with scene changes becoming part of the drama that built the audience response.  And the acting of all concerned was clear, precise and strong, with all the energy of young adults on display.

And yet I had an odd feeling, as Jasper left his boots, whisky and cigarettes on Charlie’s window sill, swung his empty rucksack over his shoulder and walked at full height into the light.  Where was he going, in 1965?  Towards the 1967 Referendum which at last gave recognition of Aboriginal people as citizens of the country they had owned since time immemorial?  Towards 2008, when Silvey wrote his novel, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made his speech apologising to the Stolen Generations?  Towards 2016, when Reconciliation has still failed to give proper place to the original owners of this land in the Australian Constitution?

And towards today’s Australia where family men still abuse and cause the deaths of women  - every week – like Laura Wishart, daughter of the Corrigan Shire President?

Maybe, when the applause for the skilful adaptation and stage production of this novel had slackened off, I needed a reminder of Silvey’s theme – that the fictional town of Corrigan could be anywhere in Australia.  Then where could Laura Wishart and Jasper Jones go?  Then, or now?

Photos by Lisa Tomasetti

Tom Conroy as Charlie Bucktin

 

Tom Conroy as Charlie Bucktin and Charles Wu as Jeffrey Lu

Matilda Ridgway as Eliza Wishart

L to R: Jennifer Parsonage, Matilda Ridgway, Tom Conroy and Charles Wu
as cricketer, Eliza Wishart, Charlie Bucktin
and Jeffery Lu succeeding at cricket

Tom Conroy as Charlie and Kate Mulvaney as Mrs Bucktin

Steve Rodgers as Mr Bucktin and Tom Conroy as Charlie

Matilda Ridgway as Eliza Wishart and Tom Conroy as Charlie Bucktin

Matilda Ridgway as Eliza Wishart holding Laura Wishart's suicide note

Tom Conroy as Charlie and Kate Mulvaney as Mrs Bucktin

Steve Rodgers as Mad Jack Lionel
Tom Conroy as Charlie Bucktin and Guy Simon as Jasper Jones

Guy Simon and Tom Conroy
as Jasper Jones and Charlie Bucktin

2016: +51 Aviacón, San Borja by Yudai Kamisato

+51 Aviacón, San Borja written and directed by Yudai Kamisato.  Okazaki Art Theatre (Japan).  Sydney Festival About an Hour at Carriageworks, Redfern, Bay 17, January 21-24, 2016.

Performers – Masahiko Ono, Wataru Omura, Mari Kodama; Set Design – Yudai Kamisato; Sound Design – Masashi Wada; Lighting Design – Ryoya Fudetani; Dramaturg – Hinako Arao; Surtitles Translation – Aya Ogawa.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 22

This is a complex study of the place of socially critical theatre in modern times as the conceptual structures of left-wing / right-wing and Labour / Capital seem to be breaking down.  Kamisato takes his own family history intertwined with his imagined relationship with Seki Sano, the pre-WWII Japanese new theatre movement dramaturg who was driven out for ‘thought crimes’ and became the ‘Father of Mexican Theatre’ – an important figure in the left-wing anti-Capitalist theatre of South and Central America.

The complexity in the story comes about from the migration of Japanese within Japan and especially to and from the Americas mainly since the 1930s, resulting largely from the conflicts with and the influences of the USA.  Kamisato was born in Lima, Peru, where his grandmother from Okinawa still lives, while his father returned to Okinawa, and Kamisato to Tokyo.

The essence of the play is about how the modern day director of an Art Theatre in Tokyo, challenged by his family’s experiences in Okinawa, the one-time US base, and challenged again by his visions of the ghost of Seki Sano, can come to terms with visiting the emigrant Japanese community still mentally living in the past in Lima.  Where does Kamisato belong and what kind of theatre should he make today?

His attempt to fathom this out is, of course, the very piece of theatre he shows us.  Movement in action, yet often held in stillness, has been a core element of Japanese drama for many centuries, while the forms of the shapes of the actors’ bodies in this modern Art Theatre are oddly angular and seemingly distorted.  Then movements also become highly disturbing to watch.  The modern world is not a pretty place, nor a place of dignity.  And so we are taken finally to the grandmother in Lima, unable to ever return to her origin in Okinawa in the physical or emotional sense, yet whose grandson, no longer able to return to his origin in Lima, must leave her alone in her old age as he must search on – perhaps through some kind of spurious New Age ‘spirituality’. 

It’s a sad ending, for a play which certainly cannot be fitted into the old left-wing / right-wing boxes.  It’s about changing cultures, geographically as people migrate to escape or for a better future, and chronologically as the generations shift away from past identities.

+51 Aviacón, San Borja is an intelligent, sensitive exploration of not just this theatre director’s life, but of all our lives in the modern world.  It’s a very worthwhile example of cross-cultural experience, highly suitable for the Sydney Festival, and should be followed up with more work from Yudai Kamisato being brought to Australia.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: All the Sex I’ve Ever Had by Mammalian Diving Reflex (Canada)

All the Sex I’ve Ever Had by Mammalian Diving Reflex (Canada).  Sydney Festival at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, January 21-24, 2016.

Writers (in collaboration with local panel members): Konstantin Bock (Berlin) – Director and Environment Designer ; Darren O’Donnell (Canada) – Director; and Eva Verity (Canada) – Producer, Director of Creative Production and Artistic Associate.

Sydney Panel Members: Jennie, Judith, Liz, Paul, Peter, Ronaldo

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 22

This production of All the Sex I’ve Ever Had is the ninth ‘edition’ staged in cities around the world, each with a panel of local people currently aged in their 60s and 70s.  The show is in the form of an entertainment, a little bit like live reality television with an element of the now ancient tv show, This Is Your Life.

It’s raison d’être, however, is not entertainment for entertainment’s sake.  The company’s name, Mammalian Diving Reflex, with its theory of evolution context, reveals a serious intention to explore human behaviour with a view to opening up our understanding.  Recent productions have been titled These Are the People in Your Neighbourhood and Nightwalks with Teenagers, for example.

And so this All the Sex begins with a pledge.  The audience agrees, led by Eva Verity (a most appropriate name for this role), never to gossip – that is never to reveal any personal information about the panel members or participating audience members outside the confines of this two hours in the theatre.

Although, it has to be said, there can be no guarantee that every member of the audience has really signed on, and the agreement can never be policed after the event, the pledge creates a powerful feeling of trust between those of us anticipating exciting revelations and those on the stage prepared to reveal all.

Without this trust the show could not go on.  I found myself recalling, from my days as a drama teacher, how essential that trust within the group was for continuing to learn from working closely together.  Rather than thinking of All the Sex I’ve Ever Had as an entertainment, it is more appropriate to see it as a kind of directed improvisation workshop in a drama class, where participants have the freedom to express themselves in a safe environment.

The event is given structure by chronology: each decade begins with a signature tune –  for 1940, Vera Lynn sings her wartime heart out in The White Cliffs of Dover, for example.  Particular years are then nominated according to the material provided by the panel members in their four-hour long interviews with the writers in preparing the show.  Since sex begins with birth, my story, if I had been on the panel, would begin with the announcement ‘1941’ and I would read from my script something like “I was born.  The snow in Wales was said to be so deep that my father was not able to reach the hospital at 6pm on the 9th of January.  Though I didn’t know that at the time, of course, I’ve never forgotten being told about it.” 

By the end of stories, often very funny, sometimes very sad, from both the panel members and volunteers in the audience, we reach the sparklers and fireworks of the Year 2000, the date now, and then look forward to when the youngest on the panel reaches 100 years old (in 2044 in this case).

As an entertainment, the descriptions of people’s sexual behaviours are inherently fascinating, and cover a wide range of social issues: about a father mistreating his daughter, say, or the advent of AIDs, or the depth of feeling as a long term partner succumbs to heart disease – or indeed to cheers in celebration of successful treatment of breast cancer.

As an education, the show opened up for me a much wider understanding of my own experiences in common with other people, and of the variety of sexual relationships far beyond my way of life.  Because the stories were personal, yet prepared in script form for public presentation, I found myself recognising the reality of other peoples’ ‘lifestyles’.  So often sexual behaviour was driven by underlying inbuilt tendencies personal to each individual, and practical choices had to be made according to the demands, of other family members, of social expectations, and even of the law.

And it was fascinating to see how attitudes in all these areas have changed over the last 70 years – including the acceptance of sexual activity in old age.

All the Sex I’ve Ever Had is not a conventional theatrical entertainment, but I found it a highly successful staged experience.  On the night I was there, a small group at one point did not respect the trust asked for in the pledge, but the Mammalian team quickly managed the situation very calmly and professionally – and the interruption itself became something to reflect upon as part of our experience.

Highly recommended.

All the Sex I've Ever Had - Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre
Sydney Festival January 2016
Photo: Prudence Upton

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: This Is How We Die by Christopher Brett Bailey

This Is How We Die written and performed by Christopher Brett Bailey (commissioned by Ovalhouse, UK).  Sydney Festival About an Hour, at Carriageworks, Redfern, Bay 17, January 20 – 24, 2016.

Dramaturg – Anne Rieger; Lighting Design – Sherry Coenen; Sound Design – George Percy, Christopher Brett Bailey; Musicians – Alicia Jane Turner, Christopher Brett Bailey, Matthew McGuigan, James Eccles; Produced by Beckie Darlington.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 21

Christopher Brett Bailey
Photo by Jamie Williams

In summary: superficially clever, but ultimately boring. 

The “action” consisted of Bailey, seated at a small desk with reams of paper and a microphone, apparently reading a sort of prose-poem for 60 minutes.  The opening was a very lengthy, very loudly and very rapidly spoken diatribe against every possible modern “issue” and fashionable mode of expression, which later became a “list” of all the “-ists” which had to be so thoroughly denigrated that even the “list” could not be used because it was an “-ist”.  At this point his girl-friend suggested it would be better to stick to criticising “-isms” because they were principles, rather than “-ists” because they were just the people who proposed the “-isms”.

Though undergraduate philosophical fun of this kind caused some laughter from younger members of the audience, it was hardly a dramatic opening, even if it was an over-theatrical performance on Bailey’s part of skilfully articulated voice work.

The rest of the speech became a series of stories from Bailey, ostensibly in character as himself, following a thin thread of his relationship with “Her” through all sorts of bizarre fantasy situations, including many “mother-fuckers” and many deaths; and raising concerns for us to cogitate upon, such as the nature of the presentation as fiction rather than fact.

At their best, some episodes were momentarily funny and I even caught a faint distant echo of Tim Minchin.  But it was a long hour until floodlights from the stage gradually brightened to the point of blinding the audience.  The storytelling stopped, but at what point or with what significance I am unable to say, and a form of repetitive music became apparent.

As the sound became louder and harsher, the time for our ear plugs came upon us.  I simply held my fingers in my ears so that I could vary the level a bit, but made sure I protected myself from tinnitus.  I think most others did not actually use their ear plugs, but several people got up and left during the almost unbearable ten minutes of aural attack. 

At last the blinding lights began to fade, followed by a lessening of the by now deeply battering-ram sound, until the musicians were revealed with silent instruments.  There was a little clapping as Bailey returned to his desk and asked us to encourage others to attend following performances, since they had “come a long way”.  And we were invited to buy, for $10, his book of the text of the show.

Though This Is How We Die could be seen as a brave attempt at iconoclastic theatre-making, for me it just lacked any subtlety – and I still cannot see what connection the title has with the content of the material, in words or in sound.  Maybe it’s just that I’m not subtle enough to appreciate any deeper meaning.  I declined the offer to spend $10, while I appreciated Bailey’s thanking us for taking the risk of coming to the show without knowing what to expect.

After all, that’s what a Festival is for.

Photos: Jemima Yong, Matthew Humphrey

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan - Opera Australia

The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan, adapted by John Sheedy.  Composer – Kate Miller-Heidke; libretto by Lally Katz; arrangements and additional music by Iain Grandage. 

Opera Australia in association with Sydney Festival – a co-production with Barking Gecko Theatre Company in association with West Australian Opera.  This production is assisted by the Australian Government’s Major Festivals Initiative, in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals – Perth International Arts Festival, Melbourne Festival and Sydney Festival, and the Western Australian Government through the Department of Culture and the Arts.

Musical Supervisor – Iain Grandage; Musical Director – Isaac Hayward; Director – John Sheedy; Designer – Gabriela Tylesova; Lighting Designer – Trent Suidgeest; Sound Designer – Michael Waters; Indigenous Consultant – Rachael Maza; Assistant Designer – Michael Hili; Fight Choreographer – Scott Witt. Photo credits – Jon Green, Jeff Busby.

At Roslyn Packer Theatre (previously Sydney Theatre, 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay) January 14 – 24, 2016.

Cast
Bird – Kate Miller-Heidke

Marsupials
Coda – Hollie Andrew
Flinch – Jessica Hitchcock
Roxie – Lisa Maza
2Stripe – Marcus Corowa
3Stripe – David Leha

Rabbits
A Scientist – Kaneen Breen
A Society Rabbit – Nicholas Jones
A Convict – Christopher Hillier
A Lieutenant – Simon Meadows
The Captain – Robert Mitchell

Band
Piano, Cello and Piano Accordion – Isaac Hayward
Trumpet – Callum G’Froerer
Guitar and Electronics – Keir Nuttall
Violin – Stephanie Zarka
Bass and Tuba – Andrew Johnson

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 14

There are very good reasons for going to the opera to hear and see this hour long allegory of the invasion of Marsupial country by The Rabbits.  But, despite the tremendous nation-wide support listed above, I was not entirely satisfied at the opening night of The Rabbits in Sydney.
Traditionally, for many people opera is as much or even more about the music than the play.  Opera is often claimed to be the greatest form of theatre because it combines all the arts in telling dramatic, often romantic, stories – but the 18th and 19th Century core of the operatic tradition leaves a legacy of melodrama and grand display.

As a text written for children, John Marsden kept to a carefully designed minimum, while Shaun Tan’s illustrations both amuse and horrify.  As a stage adaptation, John Sheedy gives us plenty of humour and just a touch of empathy for the plight of the Marsupials, but I think for adults the horror has slipped away.  The allegory is clearly to show the tragic consequences for the Indigenous peoples of Australia of the ruthless invasion of modern European culture. 

Kate Miller-Heidke’s composition has about it, in a surprising blend of the conventions of pop and traditional opera, just the right attitude in music to match Shaun Tan’s original illustrations.  The set design and the costumes use Tan’s images, but the effect is not, oddly enough for opera, on the grand scale of the book illustrations.  It might seem to some that I am asking too much, but I think the theme of The Rabbits needs something as huge and grotesque as the descent into hell in Don Giovanni.

The Rabbit Captain

Bird - the narrator

Though these images of The Captain and Bird show the wonderful originality of both Shaun Tan’s art and of Gabriela Tylesova’s translation of that art into stage costumes, only bits and pieces of Tan’s pictures appeared in the set design.

I felt more oomph was needed while watching the performance. 

These images (which I’ve brought over from Shaun Tan’s webpage at http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-rabbits.html ) would have created the right impact, maybe as huge full-stage projections, instead of our seeing only the front section of the invading ship, or a few rather spindly smoke-stacks.

Though I appreciate the support of all those government and theatrical organisations for this opera, which was why I have quoted them all at the top, for my full satisfaction I think John Marsden and Shaun Tan deserve a grander production.  Then when the Marsupials express their final fear that everything – their country and even their children – have been taken away from them forever, we – especially those of us descended from The Rabbits – will feel the complete horror of the situation, and strengthen our resolve to make amends.

And though I fully appreciated the support and excitement in the audience for the performers, the quality of the presentation and the whole idea of such a new, original, and definitely Australian opera, I’m not so sure that the curtain call for actors and the band should have been quite so cheerful.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Woyzeck - Thalia Theater Hamburg at Sydney Festival

Woyzeck adapted from the play by Georg Büchner: created by Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan and Robert Wilson; songs and lyrics by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. 

Thalia Theater Hamburg directed by Jette Steckel; text adapted by Ann-Christin Rommen and Wolfgang Wiens; stage design by Florian Lösche; musical director Laurenz Wannemacher (after Gerd Bessler, d. 14 June 2011); costumes by Pauline Hüners; lighting by Paulus Vogt; sound by Rewert Lindeburg and Gerd Mauff; dramaturg – Susanne Meister.

Sydney Festival at Carriageworks, Sydney, Bay 17 January 7-26, 2016.

Cast
Bernd Grawert (Tambourmajor, Woyzeck’s army drum major and seducer of Marie);
Julian Greis (Karl, an Idiot);
Franziska Hartmann (Marie, wife of Woyzeck);
Philipp Hochmair (Hauptmann, Woyzeck’s army captain);
Felix Knopp (Woyzeck, basic infantry soldier);
Jörg Pohl (Andres, soldier friend of Woyzeck);
Gabriela Maria Schmeide (Margreth, storyteller);
Tilo Werner (Doctor, psychologist ‘treating’ Woyzeck)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 7

Terrifyingly, disturbingly sad, is this version of the play that I am told is a necessary study at matriculation level in German schools.  Written in 1836, it is a classic ahead of its time as a drama of social criticism and as a forerunner of expressionist theatre.

I see this production as taking up the view that "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there" (the famous opening sentence of the novel The Go-Between by L P Hartley.)  This Woyzeck is more than a translation of Büchner’s original script: it is a creative highly imaginative re-interpretation in a modern theatrical language.

It becomes the story of the child left behind by the deaths of its parents, Woyzeck and Marie – a story of mental mayhem and murder in which the perpetrator is as much a victim as the woman he kills.  The awful question the play begs for an answer is, Who can you blame?

The terror this production makes you feel is that there is no answer, but there is a reason.  The truth is that none of us have absolute control over our lives, but unless we can believe we are in control, we fall apart emotionally and lash out violently even against the ones we love. 

To present a naturalistic performance of characters interacting would not transport an audience out of ourselves.  Tom Wait’s music and especially Jette Steckel’s directing in Florian Lösche’s stage design shifts our perception.  Terrifying it may be, but theatrically stunning it certainly is.  This production of Woyzeck is a major work which should not be missed.  It is a mark of maturity of the Sydney Festival to bring us theatre of such quality from “a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

So how did they do it?  At the rear of the stage is a band of six musicians who produce any type of music from symphonic to an amusing clown trumpeter, but mostly concentrating on folk and jazz and a lot that sounds almost like Kurt Weill – as a reference I guess to the main period of development of expressionism in Germany influenced by Erwin Piscator’s 1928 staging of the The Good Soldier Schweik adapted from the unfinished Czech novel by Jaroslav Hasek, a play which has always seemed to me to be the most immediate follow-on, a century later, from Woyzeck.

Now it’s almost another century, and the music and songs underpin the emotions and the messages set up by Büchner at a level of audience engagement a step above the platform where we watched Brecht, purposefully ‘alienated’.

The main stage is bare, but suspended above, at first out of sight, is a horizontal rectangular frame which when lowered covers a large proportion of the stage area.  Strung on the frame is a net of substantial cables forming squares, which you can see in the program cover photo above.  Silent motors control the suspension cables so that the net can be tilted at any angle from horizontal to vertical by lifting or lowering the front or rear edge. 

Actors, as you can see if you look closely at the photo, can be hooked onto the net with harnesses, and can be suspended away from or underneath the net, or without a harness can walk or climb across or up and down the net, or go through the square holes to emerge forward or ‘hide’ behind the vertical or sloping net; or in the final scene, have the horizontal net lowered over them to reveal them standing on the stage floor as if trapped and unable to travel across the acting space.

The net, perhaps the ‘web of life’, is a great example of an essentially simple device with infinite symbolic possibilities.  Just one example was when Marie sits with the doll representing her child, after her seduction by the drum major and knowing that her husband is now uncontrollable.  Woyzeck is not there, but could appear at any moment.  Is she safe as the net lowers to just above her?  Does it protect her like a roof from the exigencies of life, or is she trapped as if walled in waiting for him in abject fear?

Light and shadow, as in so much expressionist stage and film work, make us identify with the situations the characters are in, emphasised by sound ‘concrète’ as well music and voice, and the result is total concentration for nearly two hours.

Susanne Meister writes in her program note: ‘...Lösche enables stunning images of people trying to hold on to something, losing their equilibrium and not being safe in a changing, unstable world....A Woyzeck of today.’  The feeling is terrifying, it is disturbing – and so sad.


Photos by Jamie Williams

Felix Knopp as Woyzeck

Tilo Werner as Doctor; Felix Knopp as Woyzeck

Felix Knopp as Woyzeck; Jörg Pohl as Andres

Franziska Hartmann as Marie; Bernd Grawert as Tambourmajor

Bernd Grawert as Tambourmajor; Franziska Hartmann as Marie

Julian Greis as The Idiot; Franziska Hartmann as Marie

Marie, Andres, Woyzeck and The Idiot

Andres, Tambourmajor, Marie, Woyzeck and The Idiot

Marie holding child; The Idiot above

Marie with The Idiot holding her child

Woyzeck lowers the murdered Marie
He then lowers himself to join her in death

For background info on the original play, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woyzeck


©Frank McKone, Canberra