2016: Playhouse Creatures by April de Angelis

Playhouse Creatures by April de Angelis.  Pigeonhole Theatre directed by Jordan Best at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre March 31 – April 9, 2016.

Set Design: Christiane Nowak; Costume Design: Anne Kay; Lighting Design: Kelly McGannon

Cast
Liz Bradley – Doll Common
Amy Dunham – Nell Gwynn
Jenna Roberts - Mrs Farley
Karen Vickery – Mrs Betterton
Emma Wood – Mrs Marshall

Dresser – Zoe Priest and Cellist – Jordan Best

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 31

Praise all round for right choice of play, neat set design, very good directing and acting, nice lighting, and interesting musical accompaniment.  An excellent beginning for the newly-formed Pigeonhole Theatre “dedicated to providing professional productions with great roles for women on and off the stage”.

Though it was written more than 20 years ago, de Angelis’ story of some of the first women to be allowed to perform on stage – after the re-establishment of the monarchy in England when Charles II returned from exile in France – and  how Nell Gwynn famously became the king’s mistress, makes the play a relevant and in some ways a cautionary tale for modern feminists. 

The case for women’s right to live entirely as the equals of men (which in Mrs Betterton’s case, historically, included her taking over her husband’s role as manager of The Duke’s Company after he died) is plainly and powerfully made. [eprints.uwe.ac.uk/15430/1/April_de_Angelis,_new.doc]

But the insulting and degrading treatment by the Duke of Oxford’s men of direct no-nonsense women like Mrs Marshall, and the women’s need to compromise – for example, by attempting to abort Mrs Farley’s pregnancy so that she could keep her job as an actor (and the fact that when this failed, Mrs Farley had to abandon the child and become a prostitute to earn a ‘living’) is a warning for us that issues of violence against women and of discrimination are still with us today despite nearly four centuries of ‘progress’ and developing ‘freedoms’.

Even in modern, erudite, literate and politically aware Canberra / Queanbeyan.

Though this aspect of the story is uncompromising, even apparently unpromising as enjoyable theatre, Jordan Best and her team of actors and designers present us with the positive side – that is, the commitment and enjoyment of being actors and theatre makers.  This is the connection between those five women from the 1660s and all of us involved in theatre today.  Doing theatre is about having fun, however serious the theme of the story may be.  It’s about close, intuitive communication on and off stage.  It’s about a special kind of freedom in your relationship with – to and from – your audience.  You have power as an actor, but you have responsibility to perform with sincerity and integrity.  Then your audience will respond in kind.  This is what Nell Gwynn has to learn – wants to learn:  and Amy Dunham takes us with her through Nell Gwynn’s experience.  Not as an individualist, not as a ‘star’, but as one of a team of equals.

The set shows us, in an open wooden framed structure, both the dressing room below and the stage above – simple, so practical, so evenly flowing from scene to scene within the theatre; and with a small low podium to one side on stage left, in a spotlight, for the outside street scenes.  Opposite is the solo musician, playing cello, as if in the street but not as a busker:  she is a soloist in an invisible orchestra, carefully balanced in the mixing with recorded sound.

The costumes take advantage of all the flamboyance of the Restoration period, in such contrast to the long decade of Puritanism after the beheading of the king, Charles I, in 1649.

Though not a ‘rich’ production, and so perhaps not seeming as ‘professional’ as a large mainstage company may present, Pigeonhole Theatre’s Playhouse Creatures has the sense of direction, the sincerity of purpose and the integrity essential to good theatre.  That’s professional enough for me.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Titjikala Project

Subject: Final Appeal for Unwanted Musical Instruments for Remote Indigenous Community !!From: Nick Shimmin <nshimmin@dodo.com.au>Reply-To: Nick Shimmin <nshimmin@dodo.com.au>To: <frankmckone2@optusnet.com.au>Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016

An urgent plea from the People's Republic, if you have any unwanted (even damaged) musical instruments, especially saxophones, keyboards or anything else, please reply to this email letting me know where to collect them.  We especially encourage anyone connected with schools, who often have surplus or old instruments taking up space. These will get a new lease of life with an important new long term project to support the community of Titjikala, about 100 km from Alice Springs.  Patricia and Sid, below, are two leading community figures who will help implement the project. For more information about the Titjikala Project, see below the photos. Gabriella Smart, one of Australia's most acclaimed concert pianists and festival organisers, has initiated the Titjikala Project, and she writes " The Titjikala Community project will address crucial concerns and key future aspirations of this remote Aboriginal community by implementing the principles of arts for health, with a special focus on music: Participatory learning, cross-cultural, multi-disciplinary music making and subsequent touring. The Project’s vision is to develop a culture of self-determination and dignity through artistic engagement and enrichment with the Titjikala community. It is a leading Central Australian community seeking to overcome social and cultural difficulties such as chronic ill health, poor education outcomes, and high unemployment. The Community endorses this Project, seeing in it opportunities for its young people to gain experience and confidence, and for the wider community to participate in cultural exchange. Titjikala Community has recently been awarded 4 star tourism status by the NT government, a vital first building block in creating community sustainability through the benefits of tourism: Vocational training, employment, and support of local business (bush tours, the Art Centre and local store) I envisage empowerment of the Titjikala Community, spanning a generation or more, through engagement with the arts that reflects the spiritual beliefs and aspirations of the community. This transformation is not limited to the education, creation, performance and touring of music. It will develop the infrastructure of the community to create employment opportunities through tourism and audience development. It will allow members of the community to engage with the outside world on their own terms, with the confidence that comes of education and practical advocacy; to have cultural engagement with others that places their own culture at the centre; and to put Titjikala on the map. The outside world will know the community through their rich culture, creativity, success and strength. Copyright © 2016 People's Republic of Australasia, All rights reserved. Thanks for supporting new music in Australia Our mailing address is: People's Republic of Australasia A Home Address Camperdown, Nsw 2050 Australia Posted by Frank McKone

2016: Machu Picchu by Sue Smith

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu by Sue Smith.  Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia, at Wharf 1, Sydney, March 9 – April 9, 2016.

Directed by Geordie Brookman; Set and Costume Designer – Jonathon Oxlade; Lighting Designer – Nigel Levings; Composer – Alan John; Sound Designer – Andrew Howard.

Cast: 
Elena Carapetis (kim/Nurse Jen/Backup Singer/Guilt)
Darren Gilshenan (Paul)
Luke Joslin (Marty/Elvis)
Annabel Matheson (Lucy/Pain/Backup Singer)
Lisa McCune (Gabby)
Renato Musolino (Lou)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 16

This is a new Australian play, about the fact that our lives are actually a matter of accident, despite our assumption that we will decide who comes into our lives (to misquote John Howard).

And it happened to me.  Sydney friends just chanced to be in the audience unbeknown to me, so I asked them what they thought over a post-show coffee (except that they had hot chocolate which I had not thought to order at that time of day – for me it’s a supper-time indulgence).

What they said surprised me a bit, too, until I considered their reasoning: “intriguing” “but not memorable”, they said.

First, though, what’s accidental about Machu Picchu (apart from the spelling, which has to be watched very closely)? 

For engineering students, acting together in their annual revue is entirely predictable, and so is the result of the after-revue party.  There are some of the expected lumpy moments in the course of true love, until Paul buys Gabby a surprise one-third of a horse, and a daughter Lucy is born.

It’s not surprising, either, that both are fascinated by the engineering feat of the Incas who built the city of Machu Picchu on a very high, very narrow ridge, so well designed that it has stood virtually unaffected by mountain uplifting, constant earthquakes and massive rainfall for more than 500 years, while their Spanish Conquerors’ cathedrals regularly collapse and are washed away in mudslides.

The accident which turns Paul into a paraplegic, sends him half-mad, and leaves Gabby angry and unwilling to be nothing more than his carer for the foreseeable future, is the result of Gabby driving them into a tree when a kangaroo leaps unpredictably across their road in the dark, as only kangaroos can do.

Lucy is by now a young doctor (at work, not in the car), Paul has spent lengthy periods away from home working on water supply and sewerage for an NGO in Cambodia, while Gabby has had to struggle with the business of being a woman and a mother, often alone, establishing her own career.  They know everything about Machu Picchu, but they’ve never been there.  They are sort-of arguing when they hit the tree.

It’s my duty, of course, not to write the rest of the story.  It certainly is intriguing, but it is not as memorable as one might hope.

The reasons for this are nothing to do with the quality of the directing and acting – you know what to expect with Darren Gilshenan and Lisa McCune leading the way.  The stage design, lighting and sound all work very well in Wharf 1’s floor level ‘corner of the space’ shape with the audience on three sides, which is the regular arrangement here, at Belvoir and with a slight variation at the Ensemble – the established practical version what was once called ‘theatre-in-the-round’.

It’s the writing, and maybe in the directing of the development phase of this new work, which makes the play intriguing.  Scenes are laid out in a complicated arrangement of flashes backwards and forwards, in which the beginning of the second hour (after a decent 20 minute interval) seems as though it might be about to repeat a cycle – except that it doesn’t.  Unexpectedly, bits of information are filled in, and in the process, changes in relationships take place, not only between Paul and Gabby but also between them and their old-university, now married too, friends Marty and Kim.  And including Lucy.

Yet the play is not “memorable” (by which my friends said they meant that they did not feel locked in by powerful emotions).  Despite the content and strength of acting of many scenes which were capable of engendering such emotions, the deliberateness of the structuring of the play became an end in itself.  Clever though it was, the drama felt contrived.  The author’s (or maybe the director’s) hand was revealed.

I feel a bit cruel quoting from ‘A message from Andrew Upton”, the artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company, who wrote in the program By any measurement, Sue Smith came late to playwriting.  Up until a few years ago, her writing lived mainly on the small screen.  Judging by her example, I think there’s something to be said for a writer stretching new muscles at a time when the ideas and experiences that surround them are thoroughly grown up.  This seemed rather condescending when I read it before seeing the show, and I still feel that because the ideas in the play are ‘thoroughly grown up’.

Geordie Brookman wrote in his Director’s Note that ...there is a deep knowledge at the centre of the text that can see that life’s journey bruises us and within each bruise exists both joy and sadness.  Here, indeed, is grownup-ness.

So I’ve concluded that the skills that Sue Smith has developed in her writing ‘mainly on the small screen’ show through in the clever structuring of the action, but that writing ‘memorable’ work for the stage entails creating the illusion that the scaffolding of the drama is invisible – until long after seeing the show, when the emotional power has waned somewhat in reflection, and an academic interest in the engineering behind the scenes might be indulged. 

Just as Paul and Gabby are fascinated by the study of the Incas’ hidden engineering techniques in constructing the emotional wonder of Machu Picchu.


©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Out of the Cabinet 1990 and 1991

Moya Simpson and John Shortis

Out of the Cabinet 1990 and 1991.  Shortis & Simpson with Dr Nicholas Brown.  An Enlightenment event at the National Archives, Canberra, March 5-12, 2016.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 12 

The atmosphere in this musical and academic recall of the years 1990 and 1991 via the just released Commonwealth Government Cabinet Papers is remarkable, perhaps unique.  Where else in the world would you find a light-hearted village-green gathering in the nation’s federal capital to hear a National University professor expound his analysis of the political positions of parliamentary ministerial participants – this year entitled “Strange, or Familar? – bookended by an amusing musical commemoration of those years to remind us of life outside of the Cabinet?

The music was definitely strange compared with today’s popular styles; but the politics was surprisingly familar, as Dr Brown explained.  In fact he saw that period as a transition point from an ‘old’ Australia to the ‘new’ Australia in which we now live.

In this time, as the “recession we had to have” was developing, economic rationalism became the buzz; workplace agreements at the enterprise level were first put in place; the rapidly reducing budget surplus meant cuts all round; new levels of increasing inequality had to be dealt with (and some claim, with interest rates at 18%, Keating managed and set a pattern which still meant we survived later recessions better than other economies); terrorism was seen to be shifting from the radical left/Communist forces to a new Islamist agenda; under Immigration Minister Gerry Hand, to deal with people “seeking to avoid the queue”, detention was first set-up and the policy made clear that the Australian Government will decide who will be admitted for permanent residency.  So conservative John Howard in 2001 was merely repeating a 1991 Labor policy. 

At the same time, while it was made clear on the UN’s Global Warming initiatives that Australia “should not lead on environment issues until others have followed”, Kim Beazley touted pay-tv as opening up opportunities for the ordinary people to make their own programs, and so it would be a force for social justice!

Perhaps the best of the strange but familar was that today’s acknowledgement of the original custodians of the land was first opened up in Cabinet discussions in 1990, well before the Mabo case was settled in the High Court.

Among the many reminders in John Shortis’ research and his and Moya Simpson’s songs were the composing in this period of From Little Things Big Things Grow (Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly), Took the Children Away (Archie Roach), and Treaty (Yothu Yindi in collaboration with Paul Kelly and Midnight Oil).

As always there were too many good pieces by Shortis & Simpson, but the one I especially liked from the satirical standpoint was the establishment of Natalie Cole’s career by the dubbed recording of her singing as if in duet with her father, Nat King Cole, the songs he had become famous for in his Unforgettable album of 1952.  This became neatly turned around referring to “A Hawke, so forgettable, and a Peacock, so forgettable, too”.

After reviewing their work since 1996, I’m going to very much miss Shortis & Simpson’s gently done humour which has become a Canberra cultural artefact in its own right.  This is because this is the last of the Out of the Cabinet annual shows, at least in this format as an event in the Canberra Day weekend’s Enlightenment program.  However, the National Archives promises that John and Moya will continue in the Archives education program. 

I think we need at least a Get Up! campaign for our very own political satire songsters to be heard on the village green (actually in the National Archives Reading Room) for many more Outs of the Cabinet to come.



©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Soldier Songs and Voices – Australia.

Soldier Songs and Voices – Australia. 

Kevin and Dustin Welch (USA) with Kevin Bennett and Fred Smith.  Presented by People First Charitable Trust, at The Famous Spiegeltent, Canberra, March 10, 2016.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Though all four of these performers have established careers as singer/songwriters, the purpose of this small-scale presentation was special and important beyond mere entertainment.  Over an hour and a half, they gave a small audience a concert, each singer in rotation leading with songs of significance to them.  What I had been told would be a 75 minute session just naturally extended to 90 minutes in a mood, in some ways of celebration but often in sadness.

The event was the beginning of a tour by father and son Kevin and Dustin Welch following the success of Dustin’s program in the US to establish local songwriting workshop and performing groups for war veterans, as a way of helping people cope with the trauma caused by war experiences.  So some songs we heard told stories of men being unable to keep up stable relationships – needing to ‘move on’, or to find solace in drugs and alcohol.  Others were about men finding a different kind of woman, and new kinds of relationships, as they travelled. 

The American songs seemed to me often in the old tradition of the cowboys, but now with a new meaning.  It was the Australians who brought home our stories. 

Kevin Bennett took us back to his upbringing in a timber milling place – in fact actually in the timber mill – and his discovery as an adult that he had Aboriginal heritage.  In a sense, as for the vets in Dustin’s program, through music Bennett explored the experience, and celebrated his life in a thoughtful way, especially in his song ‘I was Born White; but I’ll Die Black’.

I had heard Fred Smith sing his ‘Dust of Uruzgan’ at a National Folk Festival about our soldiers’ experiences in Afghanistan, and on this occasion he had a new song about the men killed there, which he was asked to write by surviving mates.  His theme as I heard it was that though ‘Crash’ had done all the right things and even more than expected in battle, it wasn’t right that he should have died.  It was a commemoration tinged with terrible sadness.

The important message is about the role of music and song in assisting people to cope with horror and tragedy.  As we are now beginning to understand the brain functions involved (for example on ABC’s Catalyst program, 8 March 2016, showing how music helps dementia and Parkinson’s disease patients), Dustin Welch has found similar calming and coping effects among war veterans.  This testimonial from Erika Vandenberg, SGT, US Army is crucial to our understanding, and shows that it’s not only a men’s issue:

“I would like to tell you about my life changing experience with this organization, but first a little background on me. I am an OIF Vet with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and PTSD. I lost the ability to speak from my TBI and it decreased my vocabulary immensely once I regained the ability to communicate. For the PTSD the anger, night terrors, and uncontrollable actions were outrageous to say the least. This program has saved my life and got it back on track. It’s given me purpose and taught me how to express my emotions and thoughts on paper instead of lashing out at the world. My vocabulary has increased a great deal. This program has also gotten me out of the house and made me socialize again. My short term memory is slowly remembering more, thru playing the guitar and having to remember chords. In just 6 months this program has done more for me and my healing than the 4 years of therapy I have been going to. Everything has lessened or gone away, for example my night terrors have gone and this is without medication, which is saying a lot. This program has given me hope for the first time in a long, long time and a reason to keep going. Music can change the world and is changing me for the better.”

Kevin Bennett and Fred Smith are now joining the movement begun by Dustin Welch.  Dustin writes: Soldier Songs and Voices is an organization I volunteer for twice a week. We give music and songwriting lessons to Armed Forces Veterans free of charge, and even provide them with guitars as a vital means of self-expression and psychological healing. The stuff coming out of these sessions is remarkable.

Here the program is known as Soldier Songs and Voices – Australia.  For workshop dates (for all veterans, workshop maximum 12) see http://www.soldiersongs.net.au/#!workshop or call 0439 227 658.
And for further background and contact information:

http://www.dustinwelch.com/dw/soldier-songs-voices/

http://www.fredsmith.com.au/index.php/bio

http://cruisincountry.com.au/2015/kevin-bennett-the-flood

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Breakfast with Michael Lynch CBE, AM

Michael Lynch

Breakfast with Michael Lynch CBE, AM.   Currency House, at Museum of Contemporary Art, Quayside Room, 140 George Street, The Rocks, Sydney, Wednesday March 9, 2016.

Report by Frank McKone


Entitled “East West Home’s Best? A Reflection on Art and Politics”, Lynch’s speech began by recounting his recent four years’ experience as CEO of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong.  Then he went on:

So, having got the ball rolling in West Kowloon, it was time to come home.  And, as our new leader says, what an exciting time to be an Australian in the great Age of Innovation!

We returned a week after the election of the great visionary Malcolm Turnbull who had wrested power from undoubtedly the worst PM since Billy McMahon; or at least since Kevin Rudd.  The atmosphere was palpably different, almost reminiscent of the halcyon days when Gough was elected.

The SMH commented in its editorial that “now he has a second chance at the top job, he is doing everything possible to reform the nation in his image.  He has a year to complete the makeover”.

But it’s still the Government led by our worst Prime Minister, and Malcolm must be judged by their actions, not by our hopes.  And I would like to be fair to Malcolm, as he is my local member and a very nice guy, who could make me feel proud to be an Australian at such an exciting time if my issues are addressed.

This doesn’t augur well for the PM, coming as it does from an AM (2001 – for services to arts administration, especially as General Manager of the Australia Council) and what’s more a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2008 – after, as CEO of London’s South Bank Centre, he rehabilitated Royal Festival Hall, opened by the Queen in 2007).

Apart from “hoped-for advances on Climate Change, Same Sex Marriage, Public Broadcasting” his emphasis was on funding for the Arts, beginning with the 10% cut under Richard Alston “in 1996 [when] the Howard government was elected.”

The worst though was “when, without warning and contrary to all the public commitments given by the Abbott government, the Australia Council had 40 million dollars taken without discussion and given to the then Minister George Brandis to create an alternative funding mechanism in Canberra under the Minister’s direct conrtrol and divorced from any advice from the Australia Council.”

What an astonishing way to run arts funding and arts policy! was Lynch’s reaction, but he goes on What has happened since is a disgrace to the present government....  Malcolm, you must stop this madness and restore funding to the Australia Council and you must do it in this next Budget before you go to the people this year.

But maybe even worse is his “concern over governance in our arts organisations and where it may lead us”:  The Captains of Industry seem to have done very well in taking over the governance role in most of the arts organisations I have encountered.  The Chairs and boards are now comprised of the truly great and the good, who have played a significant role in building private philanthropy as the most desired funding source...but it comes with a corresponding slide in corporate support for the arts and a perilous prospect of diminishing government support from both State and Federal sources, and also from local government.

The key point he notes about what this development means is: This is something we need to be very careful of as I’m sure it’s leading to very risk averse activity in many arts organisations.



For the full text, contact Martin Portus, Currency House, at info@currencyhouse.org.au

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Wuthering Heights by Shake & Stir

Wuthering Heights adapted by Nick Skubij from the novel by Emily Brontë.  Shake & Stir directed by Nick Skubij at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, March 9-12, 2016.

Set Designer – Josh McIntosh; Costumes Designer – Leigh Buchanan; Lighting Designer – Jason Glenwright; Sound Designer/Composer – Guy Webster; Projection Designers – optikal bloc.

Cast: Ross Balbuziente – Heathcliff; Tim Dashwood – Edgar Linton; Nelle Lee – Frances Earnshaw / Isabella Linton / Linton Heathcliff; Nick Skubij – Hindley Earnshaw / Hareton Earnshaw; Linden Wilkinson – Nelly Dean; Gemma Willing – Catherine Earnshaw / Cathy Linton

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 9

Despite the sickenly romantic vision I, and I suspect most of us, have of Catherine and Heathcliff running towards each other across the moors in slow motion, Wuthering Heights is a horror revenge story.  Shake & Stir have made it into something like a staged horror movie.  Designed for a modern young audience, it works very well.

Magnificent thunder and lightning is the linking thread from beginning to end, with ghostly images on diaphanous curtains blowing in blustering winds from across the grim moors.  It was logical dramatically, though I think not true of the original novel, that Heathcliff’s obsessive life is ended by a tremendous bolt of lightning as he chases after his fantasy of the dead Catherine in a rain-storm reminiscent of King Lear.

I liked this ending, since the whole story is melodramatic in the extreme – though I think Emily Brontë probably thought her psychological analysis was realistic.  With that in mind, remembering when Brontë was writing and her probable understanding of psychology (when bumps on the head – phrenology – were seriously taken to show personality traits, and mesmerism was not only popular entertainment but seen as a science), I was in two minds about the use of modern language style.  Young people today now use ‘f... off’ as a normal part of speech.  It’s use here worked, and made its point about Heathcliff’s at that stage childish behaviour, perhaps as a commentary looking back on the prudishness of Victorian attitudes, but it took us away from Brontë’s period which was established so well in costumes, props and set as well as social class manners.

Still, it made for risky theatre, for which Shake & Stir are well-known – and, I think, respected. 

In Skubij’s adaptation, we are effectively put in the position of Mr Lockwood, the short-term renter of Thrushcross Grange, who visits Wuthering Heights and wonders about the rather odd family he meets there, described in the summary published by http://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk :  “Mr Heathcliff appears a gentleman but his manners and speech suggest otherwise; the mistress of the house is in her late teens, an attractive but reserved, even rude woman; and there is a young man who appears to be one of the family although he dresses and talks like a servant.” 

In the novel, Ellen (Nellie) Dean, the old housekeeper / retainer, is asked by Mr Lookwood about the history, and she takes him back 30 years to the Earnshaw family and the adopting (and naming) of Heathcliff.  On stage (after the opening flash of lightning), we discover, quietly playing the piano, Nellie, who then launches into her story of the Earnshaws.  This makes the stage story linear from beginning to end, rather than a flashback.  But for a modern audience this is OK, since the story is already well-known – indeed, part of our culture – so we are in effect all Mr Lockwoods ready to hear Nellie Dean’s history.

The aspect of the production which I thought was especially effective was the emphasis on how young – and therefore childish – Heathcliff and Catherine were in Act One, and Linton and Cathy were in Act Two.  Temper tantrums were a feature throughout the story, and were especially well performed by Gemma Willing.  Having read the novel when I was young, I had thought of these characters as adults.  Now I see them as never properly growing up, even when they marry and have children.

And so the story on stage belongs to Nellie Dean – the observer and narrator, but also often the only properly adult person, with a proper sense of responsibility, but whose position in the social structure prevents her from saving the children from themselves.

So Shake & Stir have succesfully shaken and stirred, as good theatre should.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Jack of Hearts by David Williamson

Craig Reucassel (Stu) and Chris Taylor (Jack)

All photos by Clare Hawley

Jack of Hearts by David Williamson.  Ensemble directed by David Williamson, at The Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, January 29 – April 2, 2016.

Stage Design – Anna Gardiner; Lighting Design – Matthew Marshall; Sound Design – Alistair Wallace.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 5

As we sat down for the second half, an intrepid patron next to me leaned ‘in’ to say (before she knew I was ‘working’) that this new play was nowhere near as good as his early plays.  “All one-liners,” she humphed.

I didn’t get the opportunity to hear what she thought at the end of the play, but I’ll write what I might have said to her.

The purpose in writing Jack of Hearts was clearly not like The Removalists, Don’s Party, The Club or Travelling North.  But I think it has much more in common with his very first full-length play, The Coming of Stork. Tim Burstall is quoted on Wikipedia, saying:

It had a kind of gaiety and brio. It was good-natured and it celebrated our own lives in a very straightforward way. It wasn't the precious or arty. It was Australian comedy of a pretty straightforward sort, but also of a pretty well-observed and accurate sort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stork_%28film%29

Perhaps Jack is not as wild as Stork.  Who could ever forget Bruce Spence and the oyster up the nose trick (especially when it was done at very close range in the Old Tote theatre!)

But what Stork did so well in representing young people in the throes of establishing and re-establishing relationships in 1967, which you might have expected from a 25-year-old recently graduated engineering student (I remember them well – the throes and the engineers), David Williamson has managed to do pretty well for the same kind of young people today – almost 50 years later.

Chris Taylor (Jack), Paige Gardiner (Emma), Brooke Satchwell (Denys), Craig Reucassel (Stu)

His pair, to begin with, of married couples, Emma (Paige Gardiner) and Jack (Chris Taylor), and Denys (pronounced Denise – Brooke Satchwell) with Stu (Craig Reucassel) are a little older than the Stork age group, but then today they would be.  And as yet none have children.  And that includes Stu’s real-estate office assistant Nikki (Isabella Tannock), and the manager of the resort on a Queensland tropical island, Kelli (Christa Nicola), where everything comes together in a most unusual way in Act Two after everything falling apart in Act One.

 The only one with children is Emma’s client (she is his Personal Trainer), Carl (Peter Mochrie), world-famous host of A Current Affair-type tv program, who she marries only to find him obsessed to the nth degree not only with his fragile position in the competitive (and beginning to lose money) tv business, but with his messed-up 26-year-old daughter about whom he talks continuously on the mobile to his ex-wife.  The daughter is the same age as Emma, who blasts him with the nine descriptors of obsessive narcissism – all of which are absolutely true of him – in a terrific scene as she leaves him.

Emma and Carl - before
Paige Gardiner and Peter Mochrie

Emma and Carl - after (or soon will be)
Paige Gardiner and Peter Mochrie

Stu and Nikki - not at a conference in Adelaide
Craig Reucassel and Isabella Tannock

The three hearts - who will draw Jack's name from the ice bucket?
Emma, Denys or Kelli?
Paige Gardiner, Brooke Satchwell, Christa Nicola

The play is a romantic comedy: everyone is happy at the end, except Carl, who was never happy in the first place.  Two babies are on the way for Denys (a bit surprisingly back with Stu) and Kelli (her second with Jack).  I did feel a little sad for Emma.  She missed out when the three women draw Jack from the ice bucket, but Emma, like Nikki, is moving on to personal success as a fully independent woman.

My informant was right about the one-liners in Act One, but it turns out this was a deliberate device.  The ‘brio’ was created by a series of very short scenes, each with its punchline, set in different locations by projections on a backdrop screen and rapid very cleverly worked out shifting of rostra blocks which made up modern-style furniture in a set of rectangular shapes which looked  to have come straight out of the latest modern home magazine.

But Act Two was different.  Now all on locations on the terribly upmarket tropical island, the scenes became extended, each involving Jack, finally employed not as the lawyer he was trained to be but couldn’t stand being, but as the guests’ luggage guy – and guess who the guests turned out to be.

But the highlight was unusual for what, on the face of it, was a standard arrangement in the centuries-old tradition of farce.  In the modern resort, the entertainment is in the modern form – a stand-up comedian.  When Kelli’s comedian turns out to be unfunny, she turns to Jack – played by none other than Chris Taylor, renowned on Radio Triple J and tv’s The Chaser’s War on Everything (also supported in the cast by his Chaser mate, Craig Reucassel as the finally chastened Stu).

Jack, from the beginning of the play, was frustrating his then wife Emma by escaping the law by trying to be ‘creative’.  So Act Two become his opportunity.  In the audience are his ex-wife Emma and Carl; his possible-wife Denys (a teacher who had been told by husband Stu that he was at a conference in Adelaide, and had accepted Jack’s invitation to stay on the island for her school holidays); and his other possible wife, his boss at the resort, Kelli; and all of us in the ‘real’ audience.

So Chris Taylor plays Jack, the up-and-coming stand-up, doing a brilliant imitation of a real stand-up in a combination of material written by David Williamson and improvised interactions with all of us.  So Jack of Hearts comes up Trumps (Donald got a mention, plus something about Tony Abbott).

Of course, my informant might still have complained about one-liners, but I thought Act Two was ace-high, especially when stand-up Jack gave us the real-estate game (to embarrass Stu and Nikki) – making up ads for properties, like the house which had been owned by a serial killer.  There was suspicion about whether some bodies might still be buried in the garden.  “Of great historical interest” came the one-liner suggestion from a real audience member.

David Williamson couldn’t have done better!

Stand-up Comedian!
Chris Taylor in Jack of Hearts

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: An Audience with Machiavelli

An Audience with Machiavelli – The Mandrake Root / The Prince by Rachel Hogan.  Produced by Peter Fock and Rachel Hogan; directed by Rachel Hogan.  At the Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre, Canberra, March 4-12, 2016.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 4

Rachel Hogan has taken the view that historically Machiavelli’s reputation as a force behind the worst political behaviour is at least a misrepresentation and more likely a denigration of an original thinker.

She shows us two sides of Machiavelli: as a writer of clever satirical farce, in her adaptation of his play The Mandrake Root (La Mandragola); and as a philosopher with a long-suffering wife, writing his major work, The Prince.

In both works we see that Machiavelli is essentially a moral philosopher: that is, he is concerned with teasing out the nature of ethics and therefore what constitutes moral behaviour.  In The Mandrake Root he sets up an ethical conundrum for the characters to resolve.  In Hogan’s The Prince we see him hide away in his study from the world, including his wife, as he focusses all his attention on working out how an absolute ruler must understand the reality of human behaviour, and therefore how to act properly as a ‘prince’ – meaning, of course, as a person in the position of the last absolute ruler in England, King Charles I.

Unfortunately for Charles, he failed to read the century-old text by Machiavelli – or failed to understand it – and so his subjects chopped off his head in 1649.  Even if he had seen and thought enough about La Mandragola for which Machiavelli was then more well-known, he might have understood that he needed to take much more care about presenting Catholic moral philosophy in the face of Protestant radical ideology.

If, like the lawyer Callimaco (Brendan Kelly), Charles had followed the advice of the spin-doctor Ligurio (John Lombard), then I’m sure he could have bedded his wife, the innocent faithful public, represented by Lucrezia (Jess Waterhouse), in safety via the ruse of the somewhat distorted turnip.

Even as the fake doctor – Oliver Cromwell – Nicia (Philip Meddows), after intercourse, became Lucrezia’s long-term lover, and even though her mother Madonna Sostrata (Nikki-Lynne Hunter) and the Catholic priest Father Timoteo (Tony Cheshire) had twisted all their moral arguments in extraordinary ways to satisfy Lucrezia’s qualms; then Charles and Cromwell could have got along just fine as King and Prime Minister, the baby could still have been baptised “The Commonwealth”, and the system which England still operates would have been born peacefully a century or three earlier.

Indeed if Charles I had appreciated the practical wisdom of Queen Elizabeth I, he might have kept his head.  Of course, all we can say today is “Long Live the Queen – Elzabeth II”! If she hasn’t read The Prince, I’m sure she behaves as though she has.

In The Mandrake Root Peter Fock plays Sira, the manservant who, of course, is the only one who knows everything about what’s going on, and is therefore also named Machiavelli.  Fock then plays Machiavelli, the philosophically engrossed and therefore highly impractical husband, with Nicol Tyndale-Biscoe as Marietta doing her best to keep the house and farm viable, even while he dutifully spends a month in prison for treason.  It obviously wasn’t just Charles I a century later who didn’t understand The Prince.  After all, it was the Borgia family who controlled Florence in Machiavelli’s day.  Real philosophy just meant treason to them.  I suspect there are some politicians today who might not treat him much better.

Since Hogan’s work attracted four Canberra critics in the audience (and even one on stage in the manipulative guise of John Lombard), I will leave consideration of the theatrical qualities of the production to others.  But it is a worthy presentation, thoroughly suited to this kind of city, and especially in keeping with the ghost of School Principal and Samuel Beckett aficionado, Ralph Wilson.  It’s good to see this little theatre back in operation.


©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: The Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, music by Kurt Weill.  Canberra Repertory Theatre at Theatre 3, February 25 – March 12, 2016.

Directed by Aarne Neeme; Band – The Threepenny Pits, Director – Ewan; Costumes – Anna Senior; Lighting – Stephen Still; Sound design – David Garrard.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 2

With the band up on scaffolding, my first thought was to remember my own production, 40 years ago.  I had to have Union inspection and approval for scaffolding over 4 ft up, for workplace safety reasons.  I’m not sure, though, that Brecht was a strict Union man when he ran the Berliner Ensemble, set up as a state supported theatre in East Germany from 1949.

On the day of the Uprising of 1953, he wrote to the Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (effectively the government) “At this moment I must assure you of my allegiance...” and, I believe, at first refused to allow his actors to participate.  But he also wrote the following poem soon afterwards (although it was not published until 1959, after his death):

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinalee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts.  Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

He died only three years later in 1956, but the irony of his 1928 The Threepenny Opera lived on – even if he now had had to apply it to himself.  Canberra Rep’s production effectively brought out the theme, especially by directing the last lines of Act Two’s concluding song, ‘What Keeps a Man Alive?’, at us in the audience:

You gentlemen, don’t you be taken in
What keeps a man alive is hate and sin.

The stage set was consistent with Brecht’s approach at the Berliner Ensemble, with not only the band and the technical equipment all visible, but even with no ‘wings’ and the door open to the backstage area for actors to come on.  However, also in keeping with the original production’s band, the Threepenny Pits and the singers have not used any amplification.

Despite the purity of Rep's intention, the original band was in the pit, not above and behind the actors, and the action was on a conventional ornate proscenium stage – though with drops on each side showing the words of the songs (I believe, though I have not been able to firmly establish this).  Unfortunately the acoustics of Theatre 3 in its ‘Brechtian’ mode, often made it difficult to get a good balance between the singer’s voice and the band – even though Ewan’s program notes specifically mention ‘the judicious use of mutes’.

So, though all singers were excellent in voice, for me, seated at one end of a row, only four succeeded in providing the clarity and articulation necessary for the songs to make their full impact: Tim Sekuless as the villain/hero Macheath; Peter Dark as entrepreneurial provider of beggars to the streets of London, Mr Peacham; Helen McFarlane as chief prostitute Jenny Diver; and especially Sian Harrington as Lucy Brown, Polly Peachum’s rival for Macheath’s attentions (and also daughter of Macheath’s old army mate, now Police Commissioner, Tiger Brown).  Jim Adamik as Tiger won the day in another way, clearly having learnt some amazing ‘silly walks’ from John Cleese.

When jazz trumpet virtuoso Satchmo – Louis Armstrong – made ‘Mack the Knife’ (performed very ably here by Dick Goldberg as the Street Singer / Narrator) into a popular entertainment, I felt it was sacrilege.  As Aarne Neeme wrote in his Director’s Notes, Brecht’s underlying idea [is]: ‘If criminals are bourgeois, are bourgeois criminals?”  Anne Senior’s costuming of Macheath as the city dandy, and Neeme’s directing of Tim Sekuless’ acting makes the point that he is outwardly indistinguishable from a middle-class bourgeois, but his knife – though well hidden – is quite likely to be put to violent use.  The seriousness – even horror – of Mack the Knife is lost in Louis Armstrong’s purely entertaining portrayal.  Canberra Rep ‘gets it’ right.

Neeme also writes that Elisabeth Hauptmann was the person who translated the original The Beggars Opera (by John Gay) into German and probably wrote most of the dialogue.  ‘At the core of The Threepenny Opera is the opposition of Hauptmann’s women, tired of being kicked around by ruthless and egocentric men’ he writes.  ‘...it is the women, who actually control events’.  And I guess it is the ultimate irony that it is a woman – the newly crowned Queen Victoria – who pardons and rewards the murderer/ standover man Macheath – in order to give the opera a conventional ‘happy ending’.

All of this works in Canberra Rep’s production, through the relationships established between  Tina Robinson’s Polly Peachum, with her mother, played fiercely by Sarahlouise Owens, her rival Lucy Brown (Sian Harrington) and Jenny Diver (Helen McFarlane).  These are strong women, despite the awful domineering Mr Peachum (Peter Dark).

So, it was rather disappointing to see that the auditorium was nowhere near full, at this point in the run, especially when compared with the effect in 1928:

The Threepenny Opera in Europe

Set design by Caspar Neher

Poster for 1928 original production of The Threepenny Opera

Berlin, 1928, Theater am Schiffbauerdamm
Director: Erich Engel
Conductor: Theo Mackeben
Stars: Harald Paulsen (Mack), Roma Bahn (Polly), Erich Ponto (Mr. Peachum), Rosa Valetti (Mrs. Peachum), Lotte Lenya (Jenny)
Length of run: over 2 years
Cast recording: No original cast recording. Lotte Lenya, Erich Ponto, and Kurt Gerron from the original cast, along with several other singers, recorded about half of the score in December 1930 (available on several CD reissues, including Telefunken Legacy 0927 42663 2).

Notes: One of the greatest rags-to-riches stories in the history of theater. After a disastrous rehearsal period, everyone involved thought the show was doomed. Producer Ernst Josef Aufricht had already started trying to find another play for his theater the day before Threepenny opened. But the audiences couldn't get enough, and within a week the show was the talk of Berlin. Count Harry Kessler noted, "It is the show of the season, always sold out." Threepenny-fever swept Berlin-one entrepreneur went so far as to open a club (the Dreigroschenkeller) named after the show-Germany, and Europe. The show saw an amazing 130 productions on the Continent over the next four years.

[http://www.threepennyopera.org/histEurope.php]

My conclusion
 
Maybe, despite the politics and Royal Commissions – and terrorism – going on all around us, we Canberrans are just a little too complacent.




©Frank McKone, Canberra