2017: 7 Great Inventions of the Modern Industrial Age

7 Great Inventions of the Modern Industrial Age.  Music suite composed by Sally Greenaway linked by theatre written by Magenius: Paul Bissett and Catherine Prosser.  At The Street, Canberra, July 26 – 29, 2017.

Director – Shelley Higgs; Design – Christiane Nowak; Lighting Design – Linda Buck

Clockwise from top left: 
Sally Greenaway, composer; part of the set design by Christiane Nowak; Dene Kermond, actor; Musician.

This commission was initiated by the Merlyn Myer Fund and co-developed by the Fund and Melbourne Recital Centre.

Actor – Dene Kermond as Harry Hawkins, a 19th Century time-traveller reporting on seven innovations of the 20th Century:

Telecommunications
Aviation and Space Frontier
Advent of Convenience
The Mechanical Brain
Massed World Warfare
Biomechanics and Medical Marvels
The Advent of Film

Music performed by Syzygy Ensemble (Melbourne)

Reviewed by Frank McKone

In 60 minutes, Harry Hawkins, having been left on the ground in 1903 by his floating Zeppelin dirigible airship, travels 80 years around the world of the 20th Century.  Dene Kermond communicates with his pilot, named Sigmund (I think, unless that’s a Freudian slip on my part) by a kind of Morse code from Ziggy through to satellite phone when Harry gets that far.

Ziggy seems to be able to watch Harry’s quirky progress, making comments via the unnamed but brilliant percussionist.  In fact Syzygy seems to keep its members difficult to name, but I think I have found the others: Jenny Khafagi – violin; Laila Engle – flute; Robin Henry – clarinet; Leigh Harrold – piano; and (I hope I’m right) guest artist, Campbell Banks  – cello.  They need a special commendation for being forced to act as well as play Greenaway’s illustrative film-score-like music.

Syzygy Ensemble (percussionist missing)
Photo by Sarah Walker

Harry talks directly to us as we travel with him on his journey of discovery, while he also often expresses himself in mime, rather reminiscent of Marcel Marceau (though he wasn’t credited as he might have been as a mid-20th Century discovery).

Dene Kermond as Harry Hawkins winding up robot pianist Leigh Harrold
in 7 Great Inventions of the Modern Industrial AgePhoto: The Street Theatre

 

The character of Harry, as played by Dene, was often amusing in a mild kind of way, except for a reflective quiet time in recognition of the horrors of the world wars.  In the end, I found the piece – as theatre – whimsical rather than more deeply exploring the nature of, and effects of, these 7 Great Inventions.  Much of the music, I thought, reflected conventional expectations, illustrating features of the ‘inventions’ rather than interpreting history in a new way; while Harry was often surprised and quite fascinated by what he found, in the mode of 19th Century unthinking exploration (and colonisation) when perhaps he could have delved more into the changes in 20th  Century behaviour from his moral point of view.

So, though 7 Great Inventions was quite fun to watch, with some enjoyable audience participation, I feel there’s an opportunity to develop the piece into a more substantial story of the goods and bads of last century, especially considering the high quality of Greenaway’s compositional ability and of the musicians’ performance.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Arts Value Forum

Arts Value Forum.  Presented by The Childers Group and The Cultural Facilities Corporation, Canberra Theatre Centre, Wednesday July 26, 12.30 – 6.00 pm.

Keynote Speaker: Kate Fielding, Board Member Australia Council for the Arts, Chair Regional Arts Australia.

Program:
1.10 pm
What Arts and Culture can do for us; Insights and Reactions; Open Discussion.

Speakers: Kate Fielding; Jenni Kemarre Martiniello; Rachael Coghlan; Dr Natasha Cica; Michael Chappell; Padma Menon; Prof Desmond Manderson

2.40 pm
Focus Groups:
Health – Chair: Raoul Craemer
Speakers: Dr Jenny Macfarlane; Kristen Sutcliffe; John Pratt; Philip Piggin

Economic – Chair: Kate Fielding
Speakers: Kareena Arthy; Liz Lea; Harriet Elvin and Greg Randall; Gretel Harrison

Identity and Social – Chair: Dr Natasha Cica
Speakers: Gordon Ramsay MLA; Don Bemrose; Michael Chappell; Yasmin Masri

Commentary by Frank McKone

The Childers Group, according to Forum chair Stephen Cassidy, is not only independent but is ‘proudly’ unfunded.  This description raised in my mind some issues – for example, about the Group’s relationship with the Cultural Facilities Corporation owned by the ACT Government; or about the perception it may encourage that the arts might be proud to be unfunded; or about the middle-class nature of an arts advocate in this city being able, and proudly, to find its funds independently.

How independent is the Childers Group when this is the fourth event of this kind presented by them ‘in partnership with’ the Corporation?  Or is it better to say that this arrangement allows the Government to remain at arms length and therefore be better able to hear independent advocacy?

Putting my initial thoughts aside, as the Forum got underway the purpose of the partnership became clearer as 100 participants from across arts disciplines, representing practitioners, administrators and government policymakers, heard a keynote and six other speakers lay out their ideas and experiences about what Arts Value in Australia means.  This session was an opening for more focussed breakout groups headed Health, Economic and Identity and Social to hear each others’ stories, questions and responses.

I can confidently report that the variety and level of expertise of the speakers in the opening session succeeded in stimulating discussion in the three groups and clearly created a positive relationship between arts advocates and public service administrators, even up to the ACT Arts Minister, Gordon Ramsay flagging what he implied would be an important positive ‘announcement’ in the not too distant future as he concluded his time in the Identity and Social group speaking and answering questions on Art in an Inclusive Society.

“Watch this space,” he said, proving he well knew the business of creating theatrical anticipation as he left the scene for his next appointment. 

“No,” he told me, smiling, “I can’t say just how long you’ll have to wait.”


As Keynote Speaker, as I had expected from the part she played earlier in the year at the February 23, 2017 launch of Platform Paper No 50 by Lindy Hume: Restless Giant: Changing Cultural Values in Regional Australia (recorded on this blog and at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com), Kate Fielding gave an artistically well-structured speech – practical while philosophical – on how to talk to strangers (people who say they have little to do with the arts despite reading books, seeing films etc etc etc) who are actually friends (just needing to be made aware that they are already on our side).

She quoted Article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, pointing out that the arts don’t need to have an extrinsic purpose – they are simply a right without conditions, for anyone to create, enjoy and appreciate.  But she criticised the tendency in policy language to characterise the arts as ‘flattening out’ diversity by referring to their being in a general way for ‘our humanity’.  Art, she said, “is the opposite of flattening out” because it delves into the details of each artist’s culture.

(Amusingly, at least to me at this point, prior to her speech I had wished for more flat surfaces in the typically crowded conference style finger-food lunch with plate and serviette in one hand, coffee cup balanced on its saucer in the other, and nowhere left to put even one of them down.  Whether this symbolised the state of assessing the value of the arts, I leave to my reader’s imagination.)

Perhaps Kate Fielding’s most significant thought was that we report on the television almost nightly a graphical measure of ‘business confidence’ in the economy, with comment on the causes of its state that day and what the effects might be for the future of life as we know it.  Fielding suggests we should be building and measuring ‘community confidence’ which today’s research shows can largely be measured by the amount and quality of arts activity.  The evidence is that 98% of Australians participate in the arts as readers,viewers, audience or as practitioners, and the creative industry employs three times as many people as mining, as one example.

Building community confidence relates to evidence that 2 hours per week of creative activity creates a similar improvement in a person’s well-being as the more well-known evidence about having 30 minutes a week of physical activity.  This thinking was firmly backed later in the Health group, in the report presented by that group’s chair, Raoul Craemer, of the peer reviewed research in Western Australia published by Christine Davies et al about “the dose-response relationship between recreational arts engagement (for enjoyment, entertainment or as a hobby, rather than therapy) and mental well-being in the general population”, following similar research in the UK into Arts on Prescription: Creative Health.  There the prescription of arts activity created a drop off in GP consultations by 37%.

[Davies et al.  BMC Public Health (2016) 16:15 published online Open Access, Creative Commons Attribution.  Correspondence: christina.davies [at] westnet.com.au School of Population Health, University of Western Australia.  Full title: The art of being mentally healthy: a study to quantify the relationship between recreational arts engagement and mental well-being in the general population]

In WA, "respondents with high levels of arts engagement (100 or more hours/year)...after adjustment for demographics...had significantly better mental well-being than those with none...and medium levels of engagement".

With six other highly original speakers in just the opening session and dozens more in the breakout session, I can report only snapshot images to show something of the diversity of ideas which made the Forum worthwhile as a gathering for cross-fertilisation of knowledge and generation of possibilities. 

Southern Arrernte woman, and award-winning visual artist, Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, made a strong point in showing that our knowledge of history is to be found in the art bequeathed by people in the past as an inheritance for us, and “we are all the custodians of the arts – creating, bequeathing and inheriting” – with a duty to “pass our sense of responsibility onwards”. 

Rachael Coghlan, speaking of Craft ACT’s annual Design Canberra Festival showed how the arts can engage a large number of people in their own and others’ homes in the featured and highly successful Living Room Design component.  This is arts in the community, with the prospect of Canberra being named a City of Design by UNESCO.

Dr Natasha Cica, recently named Director and CEO of Melbourne’s Heide Museum of Modern Art, focussed on her concern at the present-day ‘degradation’ of politics, art and culture, seeing her task as a ‘curator’, literally from the Latin meaning, to ‘take care’ of ‘beauty’ – which does not mean being pretty, but is the artistic expression of truth.  I thought of Keats, as she explained that she is a writer who likes to write in a book.  “I like books,” she said.  “I don’t tweet.”

Michael Chappell was concerned that Australia does not have an ‘evaluation culture’, while the UK and Canada are now spending money on evaluation, putting the metrics all together to create a ‘wholistic picture’ of the value of the arts.  He found the contrast disturbing in a West Australian policy paper including a note that funding in the arts is “expenditure in which no return is expected.”  He looks for a Public Value Measurement Framework.

Padma Menon was “not convinced we’ve gone very far in 20 years” in discussion of the value of the arts.  She sees the ‘economic argument’ as the ‘elephant in the room’ – hidden but dangerous.  Well-being is now established as an industry, so her aim is now to concentrate on Well-Being Plus, which adds the arts into the equation, because it is the arts which gives everything meaning.

Prof Desmond Manderson explained how the training in law is at fault.  Students, outstandingly gifted, have their expression of feelings repressed, but the law in all cultures is entirely based on feelings – about authority, respect, the body, other people; about fear and anxiety.  So, he said, “Art and Law are essentially the same thing.”  Art is experiment, creating the possibility of change.  It is not “instrumental logic which leads to submission to external pre-given standards”.  It is “not only the mirror but also the way of changing society.”

And finally I have chosen Liz Lea, performer, choreographer and producer, talking about Dance Business in the Economic breakout group.  She spoke of the contrast in working in Australia compared to Europe – the lack of decent levels of payment here, the lack of professionalism in communicating, and the lack of an investment approach to the arts – including the need to invest, as a performer, in your own body, mentally and physically, since she must “present myself as my product”.

So, without the space here – or indeed the need – to detail all those others who spoke, listened and questioned, I found my initial questions resolved.  The purpose of bringing those who practise the arts together with those who appreciate the arts and those who work in administration and policy development for the arts was to further everyone’s thinking; consistent, I thought, with the approach of Selina Walker’s Welcome to Country and Jenni Kemarre Martiniello’s Arrernte philosophy of respectful communication and recognition of everyone’s place as custodians, inheriting, creating, and bequeathing culture for future generations to grow.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: 1984 adapted by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan

1984 by George Orwell, a new adaptation created and directed by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan.  The Headlong, Nottingham Playhouse & Almeida Theatre production at Canberra Theatre Centre July 25-29, 2017.
Presented by GWB Entertainment, Ambassador Theatre Group Asia Pacific and State Theatre Company South Australia

Designer – Chloe Lamford; Lighting Designer – Natasha Chivers; Sound Designer – Tom Gibbons; Video Designer – Tim Reid

Australia: Associate Director – Corey McMahon; Associate Lighting Designer – Marc Gough; Associate Sound Designer – Richard Bell; Associate Video Designer – Ian Valkeith
Performers:  Paul Blackwell (Parsons); Tom Conroy (Winston); Terence Crawford (O’Brien); Ursula Mills (Julia); Renato Musolino (Martin); Guy O’Grady (Syme); Yalin Ozycelik (Charrington); Fiona Press (Mrs Parsons)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 25

Who would have thought that three decades past the real 1984, this physical theatrical embodiment of George Orwell’s 1948 dystopian vision of the future could make the worst features of our world now so transparent. 

The torturer, O’Brien, played excruciatingly brilliantly by Terence Crawford, explains as he ‘cures’ Winston Smith’s ‘insanity’that Big Brother is not like the earlier Nazis or Russian Communists:

“They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.  We are not like that.  We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.  Power is not a means, it is an end.  One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.  The object of persecution is persecution.  The object of torture is torture.  The object of power is power.  Now do you begin to understand me?”

Well, we only have to look around the world post-1984 to find established and up-and-coming dictatorial regimes, especially currently, but not only, in the Islamic Middle East.  But worst of all, the perception that politicians seek power for its own sake and not for the benefit of the people is now undermining ‘representative’ democracies.  You might see Putin or Erdogan as examples, but Trump is trending in their direction.  In Australia we are losing our enthusiasm for a ‘fair go’.

What Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan have done is not so much adapt Orwell’s novel as make the message of 1984 a visceral experience.  For me, an image I could not escape was when Winston is in Room 101, described in the novel:  “He was strapped into a chair surrounded by dials, under dazzling lights.  A man in a white coat was reading the dials.  There was a tramp of heavy boots outside.  The door clanged open.  The waxed-faced officer marched in, followed by two guards.”  Watching Tom Conroy strapped in his chair as Winston, made me feel sick to think of Dylan Voller in a ‘spitting hood’ strapped in a chair in the Northern Territory Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.

On a bigger scale, even though I sat in Row L in the large Canberra Theatre, the use of sound, lights and video made me feel entirely absorbed into the terribly disturbing atmosphere.  Where Orwell had only words to set our imaginations going, these designers assaulted our senses for real.  The whole 100 minutes was a choreographed, dramatically timed explosive dance of sound and silence, brilliant light and blackness, performers in action and stillness, voicing and in silent observation, and even whole sections of the set constructed and deconstructed.  A magnificent design.

In the end Orwell’s understanding of human social psychology comes to a very bleak conclusion, so I wonder if it’s worth asking politicians to experience this powerful theatre in the hope that they may learn a better insight into how and why they behave as they do.  Reports in January 2017 recorded that 1984 “became the best-selling book on Amazon.com” following Donald Trump’s inauguration, but I fear that’s just all the Winston Smith’s like me with romantic ideas about human rights and good governance.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Constellations by Nick Payne

Constellations by Nick Payne.  The Street, Canberra, July 15-29 2017.

Director – Caroline Stacey; Designer – Imogen Keen; Lighting Design – Owen Horton; Sound Design – Kyle Sheedy

Performed by Kristian Jenkins (Roland) and Lexi Sekuless (Marianne)

Photos by HCreations Novel Photographic

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 20

Kristian Jenkins and Lexi Sekuless
in Constellations by Nick Payne

Constellations brought to my mind the injunction laid upon me in childhood by my father:  Thank your lucky stars!  This was usually after I had survived some, at least to me, major trauma.  All these decades later, Nick Payne, almost young enough to be my grandson, has produced a much more sophisticated way of saying what my father told me. 

Though Marianne is a physicist, keen on explaining to Roland, a bee-keeper, about the difference between Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (all about the big things in the universe) and Neils Bohr’s theory of Quantum Mechanics (about all the tiny things), the key to the play is the survival – or not – of the inevitable trauma we all face living as we do in a universe operating by the Principle of Uncertainty.

This makes the universal very personal.  Whatever we would like to think, we do not have ‘control’.  As Marianne says, people used to have ‘faith’ – which she would love to have now that her frontal-lobe brain tumour is slowly disintegrating her power of speech – but today she can only say ‘fuck God’.

But Uncertainty means this Roland/Marianne story may not be the only one.  It may not have begun meeting ‘by chance’ at a barbecue and be ended with barbiturate (she can only get as far as saying ‘barb....’ by that point).  Perhaps their first feelings which seemed to form them into twin stars within a constellation of family and workmates, and the decisions they each made, may never have had to face that particular disruption.  They might have lived happily ever after.

But Payne cannot let us get away with fooling ourselves, since at every point these two decide what to do, both they and others in their constellation may have made other decisions.  And so, as we watch momentary snippets of their possible lives, we find ourselves creating in our imaginations perhaps half a dozen parallel but slightly different trajectories of this couple’s life, representing the conclusions of String Theory and the idea of there actually being Multiple Universes.

For the actors, Payne sets a magnificent challenge.  At each change, often after only a minute or two, Kristian and Lexi have to know where they are in each possible life, and immediately establish what they know in the audience’s perception, until the next change.  Though the personalities of the two remain more or less consistent (otherwise we would be completely lost), their responses emotionally to each situation can be wildly different.  The snippets we see are not only taken from different ‘lives’ but (because as Marianne explains, time can be bent – or may be only a concept in our minds) the order of events is mixed.  How on earth director Carolyn and the actors ever managed to work it all out, I find hard to imagine.  Perhaps, in the spirit of uncertainty, all they had to do was decide for themselves without worrying too much about what the author may have had in mind.

Whatever, it worked very well.  For Kristian as the more phlegmatic bee-keeper Roland, the task was perhaps a little easier, since most scenes depended on the more extreme differences in mood and behaviour of the Mariannes to which his Rolands had to respond.  Lexi was quite extraordinary in her creation of all the Mariannes, based upon a central contrast between her personality as an uncertain girl and her intellectual capacity as a professional academic. 

The result is an interesting play – almost a new form of theatre.  There are elements of what was known in mid-last century as Absurdism – the snippets from different universes don’t follow ‘normal’ expectations.  But those plays (from Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, via Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and through even to today’s Shaun Micallef’s MAD AS HELL all blame society for breaking down.  Payne says it’s not our fault.

Constellations also has an ‘alienation’ effect rather like Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt.  Just before the end, as Marianne is preparing for voluntary euthanasia, we feel the sadness of her situation perhaps more than thinking about the logic of her decision; but in the final scene, we see the couple back at the original barbecue about to begin a new happy life together.  Though we know we should have some doubts after what we have seen in various iterations of this couple in parallel universes, we can’t help feeling engaged and positive about their future this time around.

As in Brecht’s plays we are left thinking, but (once again compared with Absurdism) we are not left blaming human politics.  We can’t blame the Universe for being what it is, even if it is unexpectedly full of Multiverses.  Payne allows us to feel the negatives and the positives, while we think about reality.

Quite remarkable, when you think about it!  Let’s thank our lucky stars.

Kristian Jenkins and Lexi Sekuless
in Constellations by Nick Payne

Kristian Jenkins and Lexi Sekuless
in Constellations by Nick Payne

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Canberra Critics’ Circle 2017 Winter Conversations 1 - Guest: Lorna Sim

Lorna Sim in conversation with Canberra Critics' Circle

Canberra Critics’ Circle 2017 Winter Conversations 1, at Gorman House Arts Centre, July 10.

Guest: Lorna Sim, Dance/Art Photographer

by Frank McKone

Facing the Artist Herself for a Conversation is a very different experience for a Critic compared with viewing finished work for analysis and judgement.  Imagining this seemingly modest, even self-effacing woman spread-eagled on the ground photographing people jumping, often apparently as if much higher in the sky than anyone could think possible, projects me into a different space where conventional critical perspective just doesn’t operate.

It’s a bit like taking a quantum leap and visiting a parallel universe.  And, indeed, nowadays at least, Lorna Sim focusses much of her work on the QL2 dance program for young people aged 8 – 26 (where the next presentation will be This Poisoned Sea July 27-29, 2017).  Working closely with QL2 Director, Ruth Osborne, Sim is fascinated by the progress – as dancers and as committed young people – she sees, as they explore this work created by “celebrated West Australian choreographer Claudia Alessi; ex-Expressions Dance Company Jack Ziesing; and Eliza Sanders, a new voice to contemporary dance and theatre.” [www.ql2.org.au]   Here, Sim’s photos of the dancers in action are more than mere publicity for the program, but an important part of the process of encouraging their sense of artistry.

QL2 in action

With Eliza Sanders, Lorna has made an exhibition entitled Enigma, now on for an extra month in the Photography Room in the Kingston Bus Depot Markets.  The idea of Enigma took hold in our discussion of Sim’s purpose in creating still photos of movement.  I thought there were two aspects in her replies to our questions: each picture tells a story, yet is open to the viewer’s interpretation; and for her there is the mystery of not knowing as she clicks the shutter what exactly the camera will produce.

Enigma by Lorna Sim at Kingston Bus Depot Markets, Canberra

She made an important point that if she can see the picture in the viewfinder, then it’s already too late.  Just as our brains have to be able to incorporate the delay in our perception (caused by our neural signals travelling at only about 100 metres per second) so that we don’t notice the lag time, Lorna has to intuitively take the shot before the camera does the processing, so that she ends up with the shot she wants.

This, to me, was the stunning part of our conversation.  Not only does she often have to squirm on the floor, but then compose the scene and take the shot of someone jumping or dancing before they get to the point that she wants to record.  That’s a kind of artistry which I can’t imagine succeeding.  She explained that she had found, while working with dancers for example, that she had to relax and not listen to any external factors, such as the dance-director counting, while also seeking the moment when the people being photographed are genuinely relaxed.  Posed photos can never work, except in one sense where expert dancers and actors can do both at once.

The evidence for remarkable success is in her prints, not only of work done in a studio with experienced performers like Eliza Sanders, but equally with the young dancers in QL2 and even more amazing with all sorts of people in public places.  Among many shots, I loved the couple in mid-jump, clearly in love and enjoying themselves, moving away from the camera apparently at least a metre up in the air.  Such a grand feeling of togetherness and exuberance, such a positive view of life!

That was the mood of our Conversation with Lorna Sim, dance/art photographer.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Antony and Cleopatra RSC on stage and screen

Josette Simon as Cleopatra and Antony Byrne as Mark Antony
Production photo by Helen Maybanks © RSC

 

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare.  Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford Upon Avon, UK, May 24 live and being filmed on stage; Dendy Cinema, filmed, July 1, 2017.

Director – Iqbal Khan; Designer – Robert Innes Hopkins; Composer – Laura Mvula; Lighting – Tim Mitchell; Sound – Carolyn Downing; Movement – Villmore James; Fights – Kev McCurdy

Cast:
Joseph Adelakun – Mardian; Ben Allen – Octavius Caesar; Kristin Atherton – Iras; Will Bliss – Soothsayer; David Burnett – Pompey; Antony Byrne – Mark Antony; James Corrigan – Agrippa; Paul Dodds – Menas; Patrick Drury – Lepidus; Waleed Elgardi – Alexas; Sean Hart – Eros; Amber James – Charmian; Luke MacGregor – Menecrates; Anthony Ofoegbu – Diomedes; Dharmesh Patel – Philo/Ventidius; Lucy Phelps – Octavia; Josette Simon – Cleopatra; Jon Tarcy – Varrius/Demetrius; Marcello Walton – Maecenas; Andrew Woodall – Enobarbus

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 24 and July 1

As Octavius Caesar proclaimed, to us seated in the farther reaches of the upper circle in this most prestigious theatre of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon, 

She shall be buried by her Antony:
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous.  High events as these
Strike those that make them; and their story is
No less in pity than his glory which
Brought them to be lamented.

my wife and I felt some uncertainty, some vague misgiving, about this magnificent stage production.

From the grand, even mystical, ceremonial opening to this eloquent finale everything had seemed to be in place.  But – my wife raised the question – what about the laughter when Antony tried to kill himself, but failed and exclaimed How!  not dead?  not dead?  And so I also thought, there was laughter when Cleopatra’s women struggled to pull Antony, dying, up to Cleopatra, in the Monument.  The stage instruction in my copy simply states [They heave Antony aloft to Cleopatra.
And these two moments were still in our discussion as I went, a month and a half later, to view the movie made on that very day.  Had we been in any of the shots as the cameras on their long gantries had smoothly swooped around the auditorium below our perch in the Gods?  Had the presence of the cameras, and the time taken before the show began and at interval to interview the director, Iqbal Khan, and the composer, Laura Mvula (without our being able to hear what was said) affected the performance?  Or the audience’s reactions?  Was there more to be thought about Shakespeare’s play and this production when seen on a cinema screen recorded by multiple cameras (with about 6 people in the immediate audience at Dendy), after watching, listening and feeling in the expansive space and atmosphere, surrounded by a massive body of other people, for the same three and a half hours in Stratford? 

On screen we did get to see and hear the interviews; and we also had the same twenty minute interval which allowed for a takeaway flat white in the bland Dendy foyer, rather than absorbing the late-evening views over the Avon River.

The movie enhanced some features of the stage production, and in doing so revealed what I think was the cause of our original uncertain feelings. 

Both onstage and onscreen, the strength of the acting makes a direct impact.  An example which stood out for me was watching Enobarbus as he realises he must leave the now failing Antony and at last is left alone with absolutely nowhere to go.  This worked well on the distant stage with its empty spaces around him, and worked as well on film in middle distance shots leaving him in the empty space of an unfocussed background.

The mystical effect of the movement of huge sections of the set and the attendant lighting which had impressed when we looked down upon it from the great distance of the upper circle became even more dramatic on screen as the cameras in the stalls gave us the looming presence and could increase the effect of movement by slowly zooming in while the set moved towards us; or could increase our excitement at group scenes in middle or close-up shots, for which we had needed binoculars to see detail. 

But it was the use of close-up to show actions and reactions, especially facial responses, that made the film far better than binoculars could ever do.  Going with this was the way that the spoken word and clarity of the language was enhanced in close-up.  Yet it was this that revealed aspects of the production which had caused our modicum of discontent.

What became evident was that the production was set at two registers.  One was what I would call ‘declaratory’ while the other could be called ‘intimate’, though that did not always mean softening of feelings between characters.  Intimate scenes between Cleopatra and her women, and with Antony often saw explosive manners of speaking rather than more subtle communication between these imperial figures.

From a distance, and being aware of practical matters like natural voice projection, the point of these scenes came through in strong characterisations of these personalities.  But on screen in close-up I became much more aware of the style of acting being expected by this director.  The actors, especially Antony Byrne and Josette Simon, demonstrated their voice and movement skills, but they were not being asked to create much depth of tenderness or love – despite Shakespeare’s words.

In thinking about the triumvirate of Antony, Lepidus and Octavius Caesar, on stage Lepidus rather disappeared in contrast to the continuous over-the-top declarations by Caesar, and later by Pompey.  Though it was clear that Antony was meant to be the ‘greater’ man, seeing Caesar and Pompey for the shallow figures they were, his position was not so well established from the point of view of the upper circle. 

In close-up on screen, especially in the scene in which the three finally reach a handshake agreement, Lepidus’ strength of commonsense character is far more established than could be felt in the theatre, while Antony’s beginning to feel more insecure in his role as a politician and warfare commander becomes clearer than could be seen on stage.

And so, in my reflection now, looking back over space and time on a production of great strength, I think what was missing was what I might call the ‘managerial’ level, to provide a kind of fulcrum balance point between 'declaration' and 'intimacy'.  I think the grand scale of Khan’s concept lost the sense of these imperial figures being the managers of large empires, dealing with the inevitable internal disagreements, trying to find ways around the worst conflicts, and finally having to make decisions to force the issue.  Around me, in Canberra today, public servants are engaged in this kind of ‘managerialism’ every day (while there are certain politicians – currently especially in New South Wales and in the USA – who operate most of the time at the declaratory level, I admit).

And it is not unknown for sexual relations among office colleagues to cause managerial and political mayhem.   We still talk of ‘backstabbing’ and ‘execution’, while for Shakespeare, living in his time with absolute monarchy, these were physical reality.  Do the tour of his house – the most expensive in Stratford in his time – and you get a feel for how cleverly he managed for success.

To conclude, then, the audience’s laughter at those two moments felt inappropriate to me when I heard it while watching the movie.  Though at those points first Antony’s and then Cleopatra’s management was clumsy in the face of inevitable failure, his language style should have been about being determined to solve the problem; while the ‘heaving’ of Antony up to Cleopatra should have been done by the soldiers who had carried him to the monument in a ceremonial respectful mood. 

Then the strength of intimacy of the lovers’ final scene, where Antony advises Cleopatra, even as he knows he is dying, to be realistic and accept Caesar’s win, noting that she should trust only Proculeius, and she, while kissing him, maintains her independence saying “My resolution and my hands I’ll trust;/ None about Caesar.” would not have been diminished by that laughter.

My wife and I, I believe, would then have been even more satisfied on that day in that theatre, while I advise going to see the movie for an excellent production in its own right.

The Company of Antony and Cleopatra
Production photo by Helen Maybanks © RSC

David Burnett as Pompey, Lucy Phelps as Octavia, Antony Byrne as Mark Antony
and Luke MacGregor as Proculeius in Antony and Cleopatra
Production photo by Helen Maybanks © RSC

Andrew Woodall as Enobarbus and Antony Byrne as Mark Antony
in Antony and Cleopatra
Production photo by Helen Maybanks © RSC

© Frank McKone, Canberra