2016: The Big Dry, adapted from the novel by Tony Davis

The Big Dry by Mark Kilmurry, adapted from the novel by Tony Davis.  Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) at Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, June 4 – July 2, 2016.

Director: Fraser Corfield

Designers:  Production Designer – Rita Carmody; Lighting – Benjamin Brockman; Sound – Daryl Wallis.

Cast:      Jack Andrew (whom I saw) or Noah Sturzaker as Beeper
    Sofie Nolan as Emily
    Rory Potter as George
    Richard Sydenham as Rabbit Man and Man from next door.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 12


As I watched this post-apocalyptic scenario, I was reminded of the novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.  I found that work difficult to get through, because of its unrelenting grimness.  I haven’t read the children’s novel The Big Dry, but the relationship which develops between the girl, Emily, who breaks into the relentlessly sandstorm-blasted house, and the two boys she finds there, George – a young teenager like her – and his much younger brother nicknamed Beeper, makes the chance of humour, lively activity and even warmth of feeling seem possible.

I’m guessing, though, that Kilmurry has tried, in 75 minutes, to put in too many of the events in the novel, resulting in very short scenes between blackouts as the blasts hit the house again.  The developing relationship, from the time before Emily’s intrusion to her being blown away, and the boys’ decision to follow her, even though the man from next door has finally come to help; that development is pictured in brief snatches, little vignettes, which give us too little time to empathise or identify with the feelings of the three children.  The play becomes a series of plotted points, rather than an absorbing personal drama which engages us.

This is a pity, because Corfield’s directing of the scenes is very effectively done, and his three young actors Jack Andrew, Sofie Nolan and Rory Potter played very professionally (though I thought Rory needed to find more variety in voicing).

For an adult audience, I found myself looking for a different Irish comparison – with J M Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows – to turn the drama into something much more mythical.  Though Synge’s story seems nothing like Davis’s, in Ireland when the troubles cannot be overcome, the acceptance of death becomes mythologised.  It is often in the spirit of a woman that death appears to lead ordinary mortals away, and this is what happens in The Big Dry.

For the boys, Emily is both a source of life, offering George solutions to an impossible task and mothering Beeper.  But in the apocalyptic future – maybe at the extreme phase of the climate change we see beginning today – there is no final answer.  All the mythical figure can do is to provide, in her unseen death, blown away by the might of the roaring wind, just enough hope in the minds of the boys, though we know, and Rabbit Man knows, that wanting to find her can only lead them to their deaths.  Irishman Synge would do this using highly poetic language, in the Irish tradition, especially for the woman figure.  Here’s an example:

DEIRDRE (very quietly).  Am I well pleased seven years seeing the same sun throwing light across the branches at the dawn of day?  It’s a heartbreak to the wise that it’s for a short space we have the same things only.  Yet the earth itself is a silly place, maybe, when a man’s a fool and talker.
 

Though this level of drama may seem too much for a children’s play (if that was the intention of ATYP in this production), I can claim to have very successfully directed Year 8 students in Synge’s Riders to the Sea.  A novel is one thing, to read and let your imagination fly; but drama of the dread future of The Big Dry needs words of poetic power, far more than this adaptation offers.  With such poetry, I can promise the young actors so much more depth of experience for them to cultivate in their future careers.






©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: A Man with Five Children by Nick Enright

A Man with Five Children by Nick Enright.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Theatre (39 Burton Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney), June 3-26, 2016-06-13

Director:  Anthony Skuse

Designers: Production – Georgia Hopkins; Lighting – Christopher Page; AV – Tim Hope; Sound – Katelyn Shaw

Cast:  Jemwel Danao (Roger); Chenoa Deemal (Jessie); Charlotte Hazzard (Susannah); Jody Kennedy (Zoe); Ildiko Susany (Annie); Anthony Taufa (Doug); Aaron Tsindos (Theo); Jeremy Waters (Gerry); Taylor Wiese (Cameron).

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 11


Nick Enright was obviously from the generation fascinated, yet bemused, by the television series by Michael Apted: 7-Up.  That began in 1964 with a group of seven-year-olds representing the lower, middle and upper classes of Apted’s England.  It grew into interviews every seven years (with those of the original 14 who were willing) and you can read about the history up to 56-Up in London’s The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9259901/From-Seven-to-56-Up-the-story-so-far.html

As in 7-Up, obsessive documentary maker, Gerry, in Enright’s play, first takes the children to the zoo.  However, he offers an interview each year on the same day, Australia Day, until they reach 21.

His five children represent something of the ethnic and cultural diversity of Australia, the play beginning life as “a workshop exercise with students at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 1998”, as Skuse notes in the Program.

Roger is Australian-born.  His father is a wealthy Malysian engineer; his mother a Philippina.  Jessie’s mother is Aboriginal – a Murri, with a strong public presence politically on Indigenous issues.  Zoe is a standard working-class Anglo with little interest in education; while Cameron (only known as Cam) is Zoe’s male equivalent.  Susannah is from a successful Anglo background, already wanting to be a doctor or a teacher.

Wikipedia reports “The premise of the film was taken from the Jesuit motto 'Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man', which is based on a quotation by Francis Xavier.”  Gerry quotes the same idea, with the twist that he wants to see what really happens.

But Wikipedia also reports “The Up series has been criticised by both ethnographers and the subjects themselves for its editing style. Mitchell Duneier has pointed out that Apted has the ability to assert causal relationships between a character's past and present that might not actually exist..... Apted has stated in interviews that his ‘tendency to play God’ with the interviews was ‘foolishness and wrong.’”  It seems to me that it was this concern that Nick Enright took up in his play.  What would be the real relationships between Gerry and his five children, which may or may not appear on the tv screen?

And so we see on stage the children with Gerry, or sometimes not, more or less at yearly intervals, including live video as he films them as well as recorded video as it appeared on tv.  Until at the age of 35, with Roger missing, killed by rebels attacking tourists in an Asian country, the remaining four, plus partners Annie (Cam), Doug (Zoe) and Theo (Jessie), make the decision not to go on with the project.

To attempt to tell the story of all that happens in two hours running-time (plus 20 minute interval) would not be sensible, but it is fair to say that concerns about Gerry’s intentions, motivations, demands, sexual relations and even mental stability become of as much interest as the lives of the children growing up. 

Though the play is never didactic – it plays like a social documentary – it certainly is about the ethics and integrity of this film maker.  And in being that, it for me raises concerns about the use of photos and videos, especially on uncontrolled social media platforms – something that Enright and his workshop students would have hardly thought of in 1998.  And this is apart from the power of money to insist on prurient excitement on television (such as in the latest Bear Grylls series of “reality” extreme risk adventure).

Acting and design is very effective in this production of A Man with Five Children, in making the rapid transitions between episodes at different ages and levels of maturity and understanding for each character – including the adult from the beginning, Gerry – especially taking into account that the actors appear both physically on stage as well as in close-up video, often of ‘themselves’ when younger when we watch them watching the recorded takes.

Wikipedia records that “Apted has said: ‘I hope to do 84 Up when I’ll be 99’”. Enright’s Gerry lasts only 28 years before his time is up.  But after all, that was to make 28 shows, while Apted’s only up to 8 so far with only 4 more to go, 7 years apart.  Perhaps the real film maker Apted will make it, while the fictional Gerry could only just make it up to age 59, according to my calculations.

Darlinghurst Theatre Company has a history from small beginnings in 1992 until now being permanently settled in the Eternity Theatre.  By now Executive Producer Glenn Terry might be feeling a bit like Enright’s Gerry, except that his ‘children’ are not giving up the project.  The next show (after you’ve made sure you see this one) is Broken by Mary Anne Butler which has won both the Victorian Premier’s Best Drama and Literature prizes.  July 29 to August 28.







©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: All My Sons by Arthur Miller

Robyn Nevin and John Howard
as Kate and Joe Keller
in All My Sons

All My Sons by Arthur Miller.  Sydney Theatre Company at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, June 10 – July 9, 2016.

Director:  Kip Williams; Assistant Director – Elsie Edgerton-Till

Designers:  Set – Alice Babidge; Lighting – Nick Schlieper; Composer and Sound – Max Lyandvert; Voice and Text Coach – Charmian Gradwell.

Cast:  Toby Challenor or Jack Ruwald (Bert); Anita Hegh (Sue Bayliss); John Howard (Joe Keller); Bert Labonte (Dr Jim Bayliss); John Leary (Frank Lubey); Josh McConville (George Deever); Robyn Nevin (Kate Keller); Eryn Jean Norvill (Ann Deever); Chris Ryan (Chris Keller); Contessa Treffone (Lydia Lubey).

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 11

Despite the brilliance of the acting – as we naturally expect nowadays from such a cast in this company – I found it oddly disappointing that my own amateur production of All My Sons (Broken Hill Rep 1965) had a better ending.  Kip Williams has so focussed the spotlight on the political message, about the literally destructive nature of capitalist enterprise, that I felt he has set aside the warmth and empathy towards the characters that was equally Arthur Miller’s concern.

Interestingly, even oddly again, the Program includes a lengthy quote from Miller’s ‘Tragedy and the Common Man’ which concludes: It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can lead in our time – the heart and spirit of the average man.

This is why my set began as a sunny light-hearted garden with an attractive fence for the neighbours to poke their heads over and come bursting through the gate for chatter and a welcoming social life – even if they knew the Kellers and Deevers had their problems.  The back door and wall of the Keller’s house had to be pleasant brick and timber, with windows conventionally curtained.  Though only a single tree was seen on stage, the scattered leaves around the garden table and seat added life to the scene.  This was the house and garden made by Kate Keller, proud mother of two loving sons.

After the storm, with the tree now broken, and into the night, the colouring changed from its bright daytime yellow, through threatening red and into steel blue.  As the mood changed, the attractiveness of the scene – though dulled, except for the one light in the upstairs bedroom window – was still there to remind us of the ‘heart and spirit’ of ordinary suburban life.

It’s into this scene, after interval, that George Deever comes to expose Joe Keller’s perfidy and to create the inevitable emotional chaos about his sister Ann’s intended marriage to Chris Keller, the younger brother of her now-dead boyfriend, Larry.  Ann has kept secret the truth only she knows about why and how he died, but now must reveal this to Kate, so her mother-in-law will understand and come to accept Ann’s decision.

Joe Keller does not commit suicide simply because of the legal issue of his allowing faulty plane engines to be shipped in the madness of wartime pressure for delivery.  Nor even because he knew, or thought he knew, that Larry had crashed flying one of those planes.  It was because he was lost in the maelstrom that George Deever generates – a violent whirlpool taking him down, where he saw ‘all my sons’ – with no hope of a way out.  When he goes back into the house, leaving Ann, Chris and his wife in deep darkness in the garden, they know what he will do.  There is only one lighted window, curtained neatly.  Joe is a ‘common man’ who has lost his ‘heart and spirit’.

They wait.  Chris turns to Ann and quietly says to go and fetch Dr Bayliss,  and she leaves through the garden gate.  Chris and his mother are seated, and wait.  As we do in the audience.  At last, in the absolute silence, the bedroom light switches off.  Pause.  The shot rings out. 

In my production the whole theatre remained silent for at least a further minute, as the already dim light gradually faded to absolute black.  Applause began gently, quietly, even respectfully, only as the general stage light began to come up for Kate and Chris to rise and move downstage.  Ann and George Deever, Dr Jim and Sue Bayliss, and the Lubeys with Bert, entered from the garden gate to join the remaining Keller mother and son.

The applause rose to its peak for the entrance of Joe Keller from the wings, and the ‘curtain call’ was complete.

But this was not how it happened in Kim Williams’ production.  Alice Babidge’s set was an almost bare stage, with a small round garden table and chair, and the tree, surrounded entirely in black, flat walls taken to full height.  Entrances stage left and right were through invisible black doors.  Upstage, the door into the house was black, and there were several windows – flat unadorned rectangular holes through which action in the house could be seen, such as answering the telephone. 

This was never the mother Kate Keller’s house and garden.  Never the place of suburban socialising, bringing up children who became boyfriends and girlfriends, and trying to cope with her husband, trapped by his own ‘common-ness’.

Already black, the scene certainly got darker as the night went on.  I had used faint moonlight for Ann, Kate and Chris in the final scene: there was no moon, no stars of even faint hope here.  Then, after Joe entered the house, the rear wall impossibly rose up to reveal the internal corridor, the stairs and the upstairs room where we now saw Joe slumped with a pistol still in his hand.

We had heard the shot, of course, but then Chris went into the house, climbed up the stairs, inspected the body, came back out and told Ann to fetch Dr Bayliss.  Chris and his mother then reacted to what had happened by striking poses of utter desolation, Chris downstage left and Kate at the doorway into the house.

Blackout was quick.  The audience immediately applauded loudly and enthusiastically and all the cast came on rapidly for two curtain calls.

But within seconds of the play’s ending, whatever we have learned about nasty capitalism, we have not felt the warmth, the fear, the confusion, the humanity of these ordinary people – people like us who can easily make the same kinds of deliberate and ignorant misjudgements.  As indeed we do, when we send our young people off to war and teach them to have simplistic ambitions for ‘success’.

I suppose modern audiences expect precise professionalism – brilliance – and Kip Williams and his cast have provided that.  But I think a bit of old-fashioned fuzziness suits this play better.  I think this All My Sons sells Arthur Miller short.

All photos by Zan Wimberley

Chris Ryan, Eryn Jean Norvill, Anita Hegh as
Chris Keller, Ann Deever and Sue Bayliss
showing the set design for All My Sons

John Howard as Joe Keller with Jack Ruwald as neighbour Bert

Chris Ryan and Robyn Nevin as
Chris Keller confronting his mother Kate Keller
over the death of his brother Larry
symbolised by the broken apple tree

Eryn Jean Norvill, John Howard, Robyn Nevin, Chris Ryan
as Ann Deever. watches the Keller family in conflict

Joe Keller (above) observes conversation between Chris Keller, Dr Jim Bayliss and Ann Deever
John Howard, Chris Ryan, Bert LaBonte and Eryn Jean Norvill

Joe Keller breaks an apple from the tree felled by the storm, giving half each to Chris and Ann
Chris Ryan, John Howard and Erin Jean Norvill

George Deever refuses to accept his sister Ann's intended marriage to Chris Keller, who looks to his mother, Kate for support.
L:R  Robyn Nevin as Kate Keller, Chris Ryan as Chris Keller,
Eryn Jean Norvill as Ann Deever, Josh McConville as George Deever

Joe Keller with his only remaining son, Chris
John Howard, Chris Ryan

Kate Keller tries to comfort her husband, Joe
Robyn Nevin, John Howard
in All My Sons

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Hippo! Hippo! by Hazel Edwards

Hippo! Hippo! adapted from There’s a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake! by Hazel Edwards, illustrated by Deborah Niland.  Adaptation licensed by Penguin Australia.  A Garry Ginivan Attraction in association with Shows for Schools.  At Canberra Theatre Centre June 10 (schools) and June 11, 2016, 10am.

Adapted, designed and directed by Garry Ginivan
Original score and music by Mark Jones
Original arrangements by Tim Smith

Cast: Girl - Kaisha Durban; Mother - Rosie Byth; Father - Eamonn George; Brother - Dean Schulz
          Hippo / Suit Character - Andrew Dunne

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 10

The GGA blurb states “THERE'S A HIPPOPOTAMUS ON OUR ROOF EATING CAKE was first published in 1980.  Since then this book series has become one of Australia's most iconic and best loved childrens' publications.

HIPPO! HIPPO! - the musical, will make you laugh and make you cry, but most of all it will lift your spirits with a quality of entertainment for kids and families that is unbeatable.”

For 1000 4 to 5 year-olds this morning there was laughter, miming rubbing in sun cream, hiding behind the seats and bursting out visibly and audibly (very) with jungle masks at a surprise birthday party for the little girl and lots of other joinings in. 

But I didn’t notice any crying when Hippopotamus carried on his backpack and ladder, leaving the little girl – I presume – to explore the world and find other rooves where he could sit in peace, eat his cake...and perhaps piddle (going on the evidence in this show of large liquid drops, despite Father saying that the roof had never leaked!)

There was no need for tears, since by her birthday the little girl had successfully settled in to her first day at school, met a boy buddy who painted elephants to complement her paintings of her hippopotamus, and so she was on her way to new adventures just like Hippopotamus.  Not that she would ever forget him.  Instead of knowing that he was on her roof, perhaps she wouldn’t mind knowing that he was on someone else’s roof, somewhere else in the world, eating cake.

On stage my previous paragraph didn’t actually happen, but I’ve extended the story because this is what I imagine the children might do.  Imagination and not being afraid of where it might take you is what this show is all about.

It succeeds not just because of the original story, but possibly even better than hearing or reading the book.  The actors are highly skilled, as singers, dancers and actors who can communicate dramatically even with 1000 pre-schoolers/Year Ones.  It’s not easy to take the audience up to extreme noise and action in training them to prepare for the surprise party, and bring them down to expectant silence ready for the little girl’s entrance – and maintain the discipline of hiding (Animal 1), putting on their jungle masks (Animal 2), and then jumping up with such a huge roar as Animal 3 is called.

This is living theatre – a thousand acting together to bring the words into action.  This is highly successful education in theatre arts.  This is the purpose of Shows for Schools, and I can highly recommend Hippo! Hippo!

In the jungle
Dean Schulz, Andrew Dunne, Rosie Byth, Eamonn George

At the beach
Dean Schulz, Eamonn George, Rosie Byth, Kaisha Durban

At the birthday party
Andrew Dunne, Kaisha Durban

Kaisha Durban as Girl

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Things I Know To Be True by Andrew Bovell

Things I Know To Be True by Andrew Bovell.  State Theatre Company of South Australia, directed by Geordie Brookman and Scott Graham.  Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, June 8-11, 2016.

Designers: Set and Lighting – Geoff Cobham; Costume – Ailsa Paterson; Original Artwork – Thom Buchanan; Sound – Andrew Howard; Featuring Music by Nils Frahm.

Cast:  Paul Blackwell (Bob); Eugenia Fragos (Fran); Georgia Adamson (Pip); Tim Walter (Mark); Nathan O’Keefe (Ben); Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Rosie)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 8

This is a play of deception and revelation – deceptively simple in structure, revealing all about a very human family.  Rosie, returning from her ‘gap’ two years in Europe, makes a list of ‘all the things I know to be true’ in her effort to become ‘grown up’.  The list is very short.  She knows she knows very little, especially about love, after her travel experiences.

At the end of the play she has grown up.  Her new list is still not very long.  But it is a list of the truths that we all know if we allow ourselves to think about them.  This revelatory process, I think, makes this play perhaps Bovell’s best.

The script is highly original in style, yet brings to mind the presentational form of Shakespeare’s writing.  As a play about a modern suburban family, Things I Know To Be True does not use the heightened poetic language of a Shakespeare, but reminded me very much of two other powerful plays – Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.  “Life just goes on,” concludes Rosie.

The link to the presentational form is the soliloquy.  At crucial moments, the members of the family – Rosie (unexpectedly born after a considerable gap), her elder sister Pip and older brothers Mark and Ben, and her parents Bob and Fran – each present a soliloquy in the Shakespearean manner.  Each speaks as if to her/ or him/self, in a separating spotlight.  We feel they are speaking directly to us.

Then the directors have taken this form further, into silent choreographed movement episodes, in which the family physically lift Rosie or Fran, ‘flying’ them horizontally above their heads.  At other times characters briefly hold positions connecting them to another, such as a head on a shoulder, a touch on the back.  Highly significant is the pose adopted by Bob near the beginning and again near the end of the play.

This aspect of the approach to the production reminded me strongly of the work of Australia’s most original dance-theatre company, Force Majeure, where the news is not good: ( http://www.forcemajeure.com.au/news/ ) “Force Majeure Defunded by Newly Shrunk Australia Council”.  Let’s hope that the State Theatre Companies’ statement has effect at the Federal Election on July 2, 2016: “The Confederation of Australian State Theatre Companies (CAST) has welcomed the arts policy platform announced by The Greens on Monday 30 May and the Labor arts launch on Saturday 4 June.” ( http://www.statetheatrecompany.com.au/home/news/newsarchive/news-176/ )  Rosie might say “Life just goes on,” but we can only hope for the best for new works of art after the car-crash of ex-Arts Minister George Brandis in last year’s budget.

If you think my political comment is not appropriate in a review of a family drama, then see the play for yourself.  This family is in dire straits because of the closing down of car manufacturing in South Australia (Bob), the inadequate staffing of public hospitals (Fran), the lack of proper legal recognition of trans-sexual status (Mark), and the lack of ethics in the financial world, where Ben skims “because I can”.

It’s amazing, and welcome, to see how much humour Bovell could extract from this family’s life.  Though I can’t find the Brandis story very funny, there was a great positive feeling for me personally in this play.  When I was Rosie’s age, in the very year Andrew Bovell was born, I wanted to write a play like this.  The result was piss-weak and has been consigned to the depths where it belongs.  But Rosie decides to take up a course in creative writing.  And like her author (whose very first play did a lot better than mine), maybe she’ll write like Bovell when she is 54.

I just hope arts un-funding will not let down our creative artists of the next generation.  After all, even William Shakespeare was one of the King’s Men.

Nathan O'Keefe, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Paul Blackwell, Georgia Adamson
Photo by Shane Reid (from The Adelaide Review)

Nathan O'Keefe, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Eugenie Fragos, Paul Blackwell
as Ben, Rosie, Fran and Bob
Photo by Shane Reid (from the Adelaide Advertiser)

Lastly, but absolutely not leastly, the design and casting for this production is top-notch. 

The setting is a garden – very open, but with small lights hung all over the stage, reminding me of the stars in Australian skies to contrast with Rosie’s experience travelling in Europe.  The impeccably pruned rose bushes grow remarkably during interval, and become a significant emblem for Bob’s life with Fran – an Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams device.

The music and sound is subtle, but used very dramatically at the appropriate moments.  Nicely done!

The most difficult part must be to find such expert actors who all physically fit the parts so well, when dressed, as they are, so correctly for their roles as they change with the development of the story. 

Bob – retired with no choice from the assembly line – and  Fran – still nursing to avoid “hitting Bob with the back of a shovel” – show their age, now in their sixties, but with no hint of cliché.

In particular, the circumstances and the decisions their children make require subtle differences in Pip’s, Mark’s and Ben’s physical appearance, which you only notice as you begin to understand the changes in their relationships with their parents, their partners and others (off-stage) and with Rosie. 

Rosie remains a figure who draws your attention throughout, even when she is quite peripheral to episodes of dramatic action between others in her family – dressed exactly at the point of change between the teenage girl she was not long ago and the adult self-determining woman she will soon be.  Tilda Cobham-Hervey inhabits the image perfectly.

Though characters in this drama deceive each other, and yet create a remarkable illusion of reality, we know we can trust this author and these directors, designers and actors to reveal Things We Know To Be True.  Not to be missed.

Eugenia Fragos as Fran
Photo by Shane Reid (from The Adelaide Review)

Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Rosie, Paul Blackwell as Bob
Photo by David James McCarthy (from The Canberra Times)

©Frank McKone, Canberra