2017: Mamma Mia! - Australian Tour

Stephen Mahy and Sarah Morrison
as Sky and Sophie
Photo by Peter Brew-Bevan

Mamma Mia! by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, with some songs by Stig Anderson.  Book by Catherine Johnson from an original conception by Judy Craymer.

Canberra Theatre Centre, November 24 – December 17.  Gala Opening November 30, 2017.

Director – Gary Young; Choreographer – Tom Dogson; Musical Supervisor – Stephen Amos; Set Design – Linda Bewick; Costume Design – Suzy Strout; Lighting Design – Gavan Swift – Sound Design – Michael Waters

Principal Cast (in order of speaking)
Sophie Sheridan – Sarah Morrison; Ali – Monique Sallé; Lisa – Jessica di Costa; Tanya – Jayde Westaby; Rosie – Alicia Gardiner; Donna Sheridan – Natalie O’Donnell; Sky – Stephen Mahy; Pepper – Sam Hooper; Eddie – Alex Gibson-Georgio; Harry Bright – Phillip Lowe; Bill Austin – Josef Ber; Sam Carmichael – Ian Stenlake; Father Alexandrios – Stephen Anderson

with an 18-strong chorus ensemble.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 30

There are many ways to judge a musical.  Audience participation last night would have meant dancing in the aisles, if only there had been room.  We appreciatively applauded after every song-and-dance number – except, of course, as Donna retreated from Sam’s advances in Winner Takes All.  I think the full complement of 1239 bums on seats stood up, jigged in time, clapped, screamed, whistled and waved arms about for the encores in perhaps the most enthusiastic response from traditionally cynical Canberrans that I can remember.

But I think there’s more to Mamma Mia! than a mere immediate enthusiasm.  The program has a neat history of “The Show that Won Over the World” by Dewynters London asking, “So why has the show struck such a chord with audiences around the world?”  But the obvious answers, offered by Judy Craymer, of “feel good factor”, audiences who “recognise themselves in the characters”, and ABBA’s music are not enough to explain the response of Canberra’s audience – equally mixed across the board from young to old, from those who would be regulars to Bell Shakespeare to young clubbers I might see at Comedy Club venues.

Mamma Mia! has become a kind of “popular opera”, which is different from traditional operas and the general run of musicals, written by a composer (or two) and a librettist.  Weaving a story out of a selection of previously written and very well-known songs places this work into a slot in what is nowadays a world-wide culture.  After all even Australia has presented songs in the Eurovision Song extravaganza, which was always widely multicultural and is likely to expand its reach in future even unto Asia, I understand.

For this Craymer, Catherine Johnson and, of course, the composer Andersson and lyricists Ulvaeus and Anderson should be recognised for making an original contribution.  Of course, the further question might be, for how long will it remain as a leader in its “musical” field?  This is Mamma Mia!’s second tour of Australia (previously 16 years ago in 2001), with a brand new thoroughly Australian design and production team – a good sign for a continuing life.

Could it last a hundred, or even four hundred years?  Well, it might.  I’ll suggest two comparisons, which you may find unexpected.

Alicia Gardiner, Natalie O'Donnell, Jayde Westaby
as Rosie, Donna Sheridan, Tanya
in Mamma Mia!
Photo by James Morgan

Ian Stenlake, Phillip Lowe, Jose Ber
as Sam Carmichael, Harry Bright, Bill Austin
in Mamma Mia!
Photo by James Morgan

First, there are Shakespeare’s romantic comedies.  What a shame he never thought of a daughter searching for her three possible fathers, inviting them without her mother knowing, and ending up with her mother “giving her away” in a conclusion with four marriages: the daughter to her lover; her mother to one possible father, Sam; Bill marrying Rosie; and the other possible father, Harry, marrying a man called Lawrence!

Just as William at the end of the 16th Century played with and queried the role of women in personal, economic and political life of his time, using humour, song and dance, so Mamma Mia! has a similar part to play at the end of the 20th Century.  Shakespeare gave us The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Taming of the Shrew, and even The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night.  Mamma Mia! we might exclaim!

Many of Shakespeare’s plays have been made into operas, but one other opera takes up the economic and personal/political issues like Mamma Mia!, and has a parallel history concerning the impact of its music.  John Bell’s recent production of Carmen was especially significant for using the music to tell the woman’s story, rather than concentrating the audience on wallowing indulgently in the fascinating Spanish dance.  Bizet wrote the opera as a new form of social criticism in 1875, but untimely died as the 32nd performance ended, preventing him from objecting to later productions which became all about the music.

Watching Mamma Mia! I realised how many in the audience were focussed on ABBA’s songs, applauding after each like an opera audience applauds each aria.  But we cannot fail to see the point in Donna’s story, bringing up Sophie without needing any of the three men who might have been Sophie’s father.  Her recognition in the end of her love for Sam is clearly made a separate issue: so she can marry for love, but not for submission; and the same is true for Sophie in marrying Sky; with the added modern twist of Harry – just in time for the passing of the same-sex marriage law.

The third element of judgement must be about not just the standard of the acting, singing, dancing and band performances, but about how well the directing and design worked for the type of drama being presented.

This show was excellent on all counts.  The choreography was much more fascinating to watch than some I found on Youtube, and executed with tremendous energy and vivid life which made the show almost bounce off the stage.  The straight acting by Sarah Morrison, Natalie O’Donnell and the four men (the ‘fathers’ and Sky) was well done, including what can be problematic – the transitions from speaking to singing.  The engagement with the audience was never lost.  Then the comic acting by everyone was wonderfully done – deliberately overplayed to exactly the right degree, always with a certain ironic humour, which comes from being an Australian show, I think.

On the music side I had only one – actually two – brief moments of concern.  All the band’s work for the songs seemed to me to be spot on as I felt they should be to be consistent with the ABBA musicianship and style.  But the two overtures, apart from being far too loud (while levels during the show were mainly very good for clarity, only sometimes dominating the voices a bit); the overtures included harmonies which seemed to me to be out of tune with Benny Andersson’s orchestration.  On each occasion, I thought someone was trying to introduce a kind of imitation ‘modern’ or even ‘post-modern’ off-colour dissonance, even if only for a few bars. 

Maybe there was an idea of saying, the story of Donna is not all harmony and light, but I think that was done better by the songs themselves, and the overtures should have kept to their musical style.

That said (as everyone says nowadays), this production of Mamma Mia! is literally brilliant, visually and musically, from costumes, set and lighting designs through to precision dancing, terrifically varied athletic choreography and great timing in the acting and singing.

Not to be missed.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Lex Marinos - Platform Paper No 53

The Jobbing Actor: Rules of engagement by Lex Marinos.  Platform Paper No 53, Currency House, November 2017.

Commentary by Frank McKone

“I comforted myself with the knowledge that I certainly wasn’t the first actor to be pelted with rotten tomatoes, just the most recent.  I was just a link in the chain that stretched back to the dawn of civilisation....Indeed, acting is arguably the world’s second oldest profession.”

With a light touch, Lex Marinos achieves his aim “to write about the vast majority of actors” – not “the ones that audiences pay to see” – “the ones that struggle to stay employed.  The ones for whom acting is, variously, a hobby, a job, a career, a vocation.”

Among many Platform Papers presenting arguments, Marinos tells a story in which he seems to be, like Tom in The Glass Menagerie, standing a little in the wings, almost in a shadow off-stage, explaining to us what happened to him and how his experiences took him down many unexpected paths, not always to success, sometimes dangerously slippery.  Luckily for him, but not so for many others, his careering has continued for many decades. 

“It’s what I do, and have done for half a century.  I’ve been blessed.  It’s enabled me to help raise a family, live in relative comfort, see exotic places, meet amazing people, work with wonderful artists, find friends and lovers.  It’s the life I’d hoped for, and it’s been my way of trying to understand the world.”

To read the paper is to stand alongside, doing and seeing all these things.  What made for me the greatest impact was that despite his fame and popularity from his beginning in TV comedy to his striking role as Manolis in The Slap, he stayed true to his choice of his image of himself, saying “T.S. Eliot nailed it in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock:

No!  I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous –
Almost, at times, the Fool.

There is humour in his humility, sincerity in his common sense, fascination in his history, and practicality in his advice.  I can do no more than highly recommend to you this jobbing actor who wants “my feet to be on the ground while my head is in the clouds” and his favourite quote from Katherine Hepburn who, he claims, once said:

Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living.  After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

Go at once to https://www.currencyhouse.org.au/ 

Lex Marinos

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters

Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters. Senior Custodians of Martu country and Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) and Ngaanyatjarra lands of Australia’s Central and Western Deserts, at National Museum of Australia. National Museum of Australia until February 25, 2018

ABC Radio National presenter Paul Barclay and special guests discuss why songlines are epic stories belonging to the tradition of grand human narratives.  Recorded at NMA Thursday November 16, 2017 for broadcast in January 2018.

Panel members:
Margo Neale, Indigenous Senior Curator, Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters
Scott Rankin, theatre director, writer and creative director of social change company Big hART
Alison Page, Indigenous scholar and designer
Curtis Taylor, filmmaker, screen artist and young Martu leader

Commentary by Frank McKone
November 16

In conventional Anglo terms, Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters is an ‘exhibition’.  Yes it is, but in a very special way: a traditional Australian Aboriginal way.  Rather than looking at, we are participating in our culture, which is our experience of living in this land.  All of this land, with all of our people.

Since migrating from England in the 1950s, I have lived in Eastern Australia, where I became a bushwalker, learning to navigate off-track across country using map and compass.  I have travelled through and walked in much of the country west from Alice Springs and Uluru to the coast of Western Australia, with minimum awareness of the traditional understanding of the land. 

When I visited the Pilbara town of Roebourne many years ago, between the huge off-shore gas shipping port of Karratha, and Port Hedland, the massive iron ore export facility farther north, I did not know this is where the Songline which tracks the Seven Sisters begins.  I saw then a town owned by people who barred up every door and window, fearful apparently of theft and, I supposed, violence – presumably by those other people, the Aboriginal people who I hardly noticed from my four-wheel-drive.

But there were those seeking change through museum education even then in that place.  The police had moved into a new modern building, while the old police station retained the cells and the history.  Most horrifying to me were the photographs from earlier in the 20th Century of long lines of Aboriginal men, chained at the ankles and chained together at the neck. 

Unsurprisingly, Roebourne and many other communities across the country are still struggling with the cultural destruction those photos represent, but as Pastor Marshall Smith said "There's good people around, there's lots of good people. Even those that are in chaos, they are good people....They are caught in something they cannot get out of, and they need other people to help them to see that."

Reporter Nicolas Perpitch observed in August this year “...there is a push to teach young people about their culture through dance programs, painting centres, and cultural tourism, to promote a sense of belonging and identity that has been lost to many.” [ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-29/roebourne-the-heart-in-the-darkness/8842220 ]

Going through the exhibition is more like exploring an art installation, even better like being an audience member in participatory theatre.  Individual elders in full-size videos personally welcome you into each part of the journey from Roebourne to Docker River – but only when I heard Margo Neale and Alison Page explain the process (which will be broadcast on Radio National in January) did I fully understand that aunties and elders, with young leaders like Curtis Taylor, from the West Coast to the Red Centre took up that challenge of teaching their young people by initiating the presentation of the Australia wide story of the Seven Sisters at the National Museum of Australia to take their teaching to all young people -–and even to old people like me who still need the lesson.

Former Director of the National Museum of Australia, Dawn Casey,
with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Photo: Mike Bowers

 The National Museum, from its inception by its original Indigenous Director, Dawn Casey, was planned to be a proactive collection of Australian cultural artefacts, with an invitation to communities and individuals to offer stories and materials for exhibits.

For me it was a great experience, for example, to interview Seaman Dan from the Torres Strait Islands at the Paipa Exhibition (available on my blog at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com ) for The Canberra Times, July 19, 2002.  And it was a salutory lesson to hear direct from the pearlshell diver’s mouth of “off Darnley, more than 30 fathoms down, where an unknown number of young men have been caught in the reef, in their bulbous divers’ suits, while their supply boats, pushed by tides and winds, shifted beyond the reach of safety lines and air hoses”.

Then Casey, the NMA Director, employed an Islander, Leilani Bin-Juda, to curate the exhibit – in itself a highly original management move (and controversial as political power in the shape of PM John Howard placed ‘black-armband’ historians on the NMA Board and Dawn Casey’s contract was not renewed after a powerfully successful first four years).  Her legacy, like her culture, has survived despite everything ranged against it, and we see the Songlines exhibition not only initiated but entirely planned, and the process of preparing materials from artworks to movies carried out and managed in a cooperative venture by Senior Custodians of Martu country and Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) and Ngaanyatjarra lands of Australia’s Central and Western Deserts.

Minyima Punu Kungkarangkalpa 2013, figures (from left) by Yaritji Young, Mary Katatjuku, Carlene Thompson, Tjunkaya Tapaya (obscured), Niningka Lewis, Ilawanti Ungkutjuru Ken and (unshown) Nyurpaya Kaika Burton, Tjanpi Desert Weavers.
Photo: Jessica Maurer.  Image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney.
© the artists.  Licensed by Viscopy, 2017

The role of the Museum has been to assist the elders in the creation of their project.  I see this way as a model for self-determination, not only for this magnificent work in social education, but for governance across Australia in all our communities.  Government should be about assisting people to create culture from the land up, rather than predetermining what top-down central power decides should happen.  In a democracy, and even more so in a multicultural society, the principle demonstrated by the Martu and Anangu people in the creation of Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters is essential to the growth and health of the whole Australian society.

The sun rises, resembling the Aboriginal flag, over the landscape
near Roebourne in the Western Australia Pilbara
Photo: Nicolas Perpitch

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: L'Amour et la Mort - Allycat Productions

L’Amour et la Mort – Plays by Judith Peterson, Helen Way and Rachel Hogan with original songs by the BetaBlockers.  Allycat Productions at Le Tres Bon, Bungendore, November 3 and 10, and Smiths Alternative, Canberra, November 17, 2017.

Direction by Rachel Hogan; Tech support – Bevan Noble

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 17

Act of Will by Helen Way
    Improvisation by Helen Way as Will Shakespeare, with Rachel Hogan as Post and audience members (two on this occasion: one as an anti-clockwise pole – or rather, post – dancer, and the other as a stand-in Post duelling in metaphors with Will Shakespeare, making the physical Post irrelevant).

A Modern Day Tragedy by Judith Peterson
    A woman, Juliette, is married to a man, Romeo, who stays out late drinking with his mates and expects her to have his dinner ready for him when he comes home drunk.  She meets a woman friend in a bar who offers a potion which, in small amounts, can make her seem temporarily dead.  This will test whether Romeo really does love her.  Juliette takes what seems to be too much. 

When Romeo finds her dead, he calls her a silly cow, and plans to lead his own life how he likes.  Except that he has never fixed the loose carpet, trips over and stabs himself with his pen-knife.  He almost dies several times, once on top of the dead Juliette, and finally flat out on the floor. 

Juliette wakes up after all, finds him dead, decides she’s had enough of him and leaves to lead her own life.  Romeo then wakes up after all, and leaves to lead his own life.
 
The Angle of Sympathy by Rachel Hogan
    In which short funeral director Gaylord (Peter Fock) trains new recruit, tall Mr Long (Michael Ubrihien) in the 20 degree angle of sympathy required in posture when commiserating with family members of the dead; and Mr Long mathematically solves the problem of hoisting the cardboard training coffin on their differentially high shoulders, at the 20 degree angle of sympathy, to avoid the metaphorically dead teddy from being jolted out of the coffin during a fast funeral procession.

Bad Egg by Judith Peterson
    Two female magpies (Barbi Jones and Helen Way) discuss the fine details of maintaining good relations with the humans, sensitively swooping within decent limits; while the male bad egg of the family (Daniel Tonon) is totally out to scare the wits out of everyone in the neighbourhood.  After he nearly kills himself attacking a garbage truck, but still glorying in his achievement, one female now sees him as her hero, to the confusion of her sensible friend.

Into the Sun by Judith Peterson
    A man (Peter Fock) whose wife died a year ago, has always followed the expectations of others.  He is afraid to positively respond, despite his real feelings, when his woman neighbour (Judith Peterson) and previously friend of his wife, tries to initiate a conversation about how they feel about each other.  After a lengthy embarrassing attempt, she insists she will be independent and take a boat trip on her own.  He at last shows initiative by offering to go by train.  She immediately accepts without hesitation for a happy ending.

Teddy as L'Amour and Skeleton as la Mort
keep an eye on L'Amour et la Mort
at Smiths Alternative

My straight descriptions of the plays, interspersed with rather quietly sung philosophical songs in the folk tradition by the BetaBlockers, give you little idea of how entertaining, funny and unpretentious these quirky vignettes turned out to be.  The relaxed, friendly and essentially intimate atmosphere of Smiths Alternative, the one-time left-wing bookshop now bar and jazz venue, was the perfect place for these gently satirical digs at the little exigencies of life. 

It might not be grand theatre, but there’s certainly a place for this kind of small-scale highly independent theatre that Allycats provides – it’s one lobe of the heart of the city which, it used to be said, was without a soul. 


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Three Sisters by Chekhov, adapted by Andrew Upton

Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, newly adapted by Andrew Upton.  Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, November 6 – December 16, 2017.

Director – Kip Williams; Designer – Alice Babidge; Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper; Composer – The Sweats; Sound Designer – Nate Edmondson; Assistant Director – Jada Alberts; Voice and Text Coach – Charmian Gradwell.

Cast:
The Prozorov family, living in a regional army-base city:

Alison Bell plays Olga (elder sister, high school teacher, 28, umarried in Act 1)

Eryn Jean Norvill plays Maria (called Masha, middle sister, 23 in Act 1, married at 18 to high school teacher Fyodor Kulygin).  Chris Ryan  plays Kulygin

Miranda Daughtry plays Irina (younger sister, unmarried in Act 1, aged 20)

Brandon McClelland and Nikki Shiels play Andrei their brother, about 25 in Act 1, now owner of their large house since both parents have died, and his fiancée Natalie Ivanovna, afterwards his wife, known as Natasha

Peter Carroll and Melita Jurisic play Phillip (called Ferapont by Chekhov: an old District Council employee) and Anfisa (the long-time Prozorov family nurse)

The Army Officers are battery commander Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vershinin (Mark Leonard Winter); Lieutenant Baron NicholasTusenbach, called Nick (Harry Greenwood); Subaltern Vasily Solyony (Rahel Romahn); Second Lieutenant Fedotik (Charles Wu); Second Lieutenant Rodé (Callan Colley)

Army Doctor Ivan Chebutikin is played by Anthony Brandon Wong

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 13

The magnificent performances, especially by the sisters – Alison Bell, Eryn Jean Norvill and Miranda Daughtry – as well as the company all round, were excellent to see, despite an adaptation based on an idea which really does not work very well for this particular Chekhov play, despite recent STC successes with Uncle Vanya and The Present. 

The program includes a phone conversation with Andrew Upton “from the UK to discuss the art of adaptation, his love of Chekhov and how Bob Dylan comes into the picture.”  I deliberately do not read such material before watching the show, but by interval I found myself wondering about what time and place I was supposed be in – because all sort of things just didn’t fit together.

Was this Russia?  All the names were the expected old Russian surnames with the familial nicknames like Masha for Maria, and the usual problem of working out exactly who is related, and how, when patronyms and surnames fly about, like Natalie (Natasha) Ivanovna, Aleks Vershinin (whose lover calls him Vershinin), Baron Tusenbach who’s called Nick and Ivan Romanovich Chebutikin, who’s mostly called just Doctor but occasionally Ivan.  The complexities of these intimate and more formal nomenclatures have long been a feature of Russian plays and novels, making translation difficult.  If an adaptation is to work easily in English, the play will need to become a parallel in storyline and character but free of this complexity. 

But this Three Sisters still sounded Russian despite it seeming to be set somewhere else in the late 1960s or early 1970s.  Maybe there is a ‘battery’ commander in Wagga Wagga, but in the context of Andy’s household, he’d just be called Alex and his surname probably never mentioned.  Nick might have the nickname, the Baron, but only if he put on airs, rather than actually being one.  The women might well be Olga, Mash, Rene and Tash.  They might all prefer to still be living in Sydney (or even Melbourne), but Chekhov’s sisters surely came from Moscow. 

Though the times were a-changin’ when Bob Dylan was a folk singer,  there was nothing like the ennui, that kind of late-19th Century Russian sense of going nowhere for the lower-level upper class.  It was the time of action when we all called ourselves middle-class; and it only took the squattocracy like Malcolm Fraser a short few years to put Whitlam in his place at the foot of the Governor-General’s throne, while keeping some of the best bits of progressive policy, particularly on education (at least for little while). 

Even if by the crash of 1987 we might have become cynical like Chebutikin, saying “It makes no difference!  It makes no difference!”, the details of Chekhov’s play are so specific to his culture and time that we would be much better off watching his Three Sisters set in Russia in 1900, and making our own comparisons for ourselves.  Our local Canberra company, Free Rain, did this very successfully in August 2008 (reviewed briefly in The Canberra Times and available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com ).

Then the lackadaisical attitude of Chebutikin towards the impending duel in which the Baron is killed, makes sense.  It could have really happened in Chekhov’s day, and symbolised his despair for the future.  It couldn’t have happened in Wagga Wagga in, say, 1972.  But the comparison we could see for ourselves in 1988 brought Chekhov’s point home.  And even then, our Government shoved us through the Great Financial Crisis with concrete action (like building school halls). 

We feel that despair again now, with an ineffective government getting nowhere, but this production of this adaptation fails to engage us in our world circumstances as it did for the Russians in theirs, when “the piece proved popular and soon it became established in the company's repertoire” at the Moscow Art Theatre in the period leading up to World War I.  Bob Dylan is just not in today’s picture.

Maybe I’m too cynical about where our theatre is going, but I saw Three Sisters after a weekend of three other Sydney productions – Bell Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Belvoir’s Atlantis by Lally Katz, and Mary Rachel Brown’s Silent Night at the Eternity Playhouse (Darlinghurst Theatre Company).  (Reviewed here and at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com November 10, 11 and 12 respectively.)  STC’s Three Sisters was disappointing in comparison.

But the standard of acting and stage design at Sydney Theatre Company is impressive to say the least.  And there’s always the chance you’ll find yourself disagreeing with me about the play adaptation.  If you know the play from previous straight translations (all of which make some adjustments for more modern English-language audiences), it helps.  (I’m quite happy with David Magarshack, Unwin 1969)


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017 Silent Night by Mary Rachel Brown

Silent Night by Mary Rachel Brown.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company, Sydney, at Eternity Playhouse, November 10 – December 10, 2017.

Director – Glynn Nicholas; Production Designer – Hugh O’Connor; Lighting Designer – Richard Whitehouse;  Sound Designer and Composer – Ross Johnson.

Cast:
Amanda Bishop as Anne Lickfold; Richard Sydenham as Bill Lickfold; Aaron Glenane as Rodney Lickfold; Michael Denkha as The Uninvited Guest

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 12 (Final Preview)


Non Sequitur may have been a good title for this play about a realistic view of the meaning of Christmas. 

There is a kind of silence for the Lickfold (think Christmas card envelopes) family after this two hours of convoluted morality strutting on the stage,  as they fearfully yet in a sense bravely face their inevitable end, but Mary Rachel Brown leads us on a merry, thoroughly unpredictable intellectual dance to their conclusion that they need to be a family at peace.

Essentially, Brown devilishly proves that good and evil are two sides of the same coin, and they need to understand each other for a realistic appreciation not only of human behaviour but even of where the universe is taking us – sort of à la rock star astronomer Brian Cox.

If this confuses you, don’t worry – it should, and it will, especially until the shock arrival of the Uninvited Guest at the end of Act 1.  You won’t expect what you see as Act 2 begins, but bit by bit the mystery will become clearer through the mists of time.

And while this is happening, you’ll find yourself constantly laughing at the oddities of a family vaguely reminiscent of the ethically-reversed Addams Family, even if you’re not quite sure why. 

Of course, Silent Night is anything but the normal idea of Christmas entertainment.  The author writes “The play points the finger at reductionist views of good and evil, and our often-juvenile relationship to notions of right and wrong.  Well, that was the intention, thank you for joining us to see if we pull it off.”

I thank Darlinghurst Theatre for putting it on.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Atlantis by Lally Katz

Atlantis by Lally Katz.  Belvoir at Belvoir Street, Sydney, October 28 – November 26,2017.

Director – Rosemary Myers; Set and Costumer Designer – Jonathon Oxlade; Lighting Designer – Damien Cooper; Composer and Sound Designer – Harry Covill; Dialect Coach – Paige Walker; Movement Director – Sara Black.

Cast:
Paula Arundell (Electra & Others);   Lucia Mastrantone (Bella / Dossie / New York Taxi Driver & Others); Amber McMahon (Lally); Hazem Shammas (Diego / Panther / Dave / Pop-op & Others); Matthew Whittet (Bella’s Daughter & Others)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 11


Atlantis is a quite remarkable picaresque fantastique adventure in the life of ‘Lally’, a writer in her mid-thirties seeking a soul-mate, to have children, to find love. 

Based shall we say ‘loosely’ on Lally Katz’s early childhood memories of living in Miami, Florida, her peripatetic travels to recover from her adult failing relationship with Dave in Australia turn into a wild kind of road movie – to a fake psychic in New York, her ageing grandparents in New Jersey, to a Hillsong kind of church in Kansas, to Miami in a hurricane, and finally to Caesar’s Palace Casino in Las Vegas – to name just a few of her many electrifying contacts with American life.

On the way, the myth of the drowned Atlantis continually floats out at Lally, weirdly mixed with her fantasy of the black panther who wants to eat her from childhood dreams. At Caesar’s Palace, “King Atlas’s children … fight until the gods tire of them and the whole of Atlantis is swallowed up by the sea…Atlantis is lost.  But the show happens every hour on the hour.  So it will be found again.”

There is no way that I can explain how Katz’s show gets to this highly potent ending, but when it does Lally, played absolutely brilliantly by Amber McMahon, has somehow found her place in life as a writer.  However fantastic her story-telling, in the end it’s about a writer being a writer, a myth-maker. And on the way being terribly and joyously funny.

“Hi, everyone, I’m Lally Katz.  I’m a playwright and I wrote this play….Thank you for coming.  I hope you really enjoy it.”

I certainly did. 


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: The Merchant of Venice - Bell Shakespeare

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare at Sydney Opera House, The Playhouse, October 24 – November 26, 2017.

Creative Team:
Director – Anne-Louise Sharks; Set and Costume Designer – Michael Hankin; Lighting Designer – Paul Jackson; Composer and Sound Designer – Max Lyandvert; Voice Coach – Jess Chambers; Dramaturg – Benedict Hardie

Cast:
Shylock – Mitchell Butel; Jessica – Felicity McKay; Lorenzo / Morroco – Shiv Palekar
Portia – Jessica Tovey; Nerissa – Catherine Davies
Launcelot – Jacob Warner
Arragon / Tubal / Duke – Eugene Gilfedder
Antonio – Jo Turner; Bassanio – Damien Strouthos; Gratiano – Anthony Taufa

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 10

Some things about The Merchant of Venice have always worried me. The ending of Shakespeare’s text seems to make the play into no more than a highly sexual romantic comedy – about ‘rings’ – as if Portia’s treatment of the Jew, Shylock, was a mere entertaining bagatelle along the way to everyone getting married.

This Bell Shakespeare production has absolved my concerns.  With just a little textual and motivational adjustment, Anne-Louise Sharks has made the play thoroughly modern, and in doing so has perhaps exposed  the author, still in his thirties, allowing himself to be compromised into writing an acceptable ending – leaving the plight of the Jews aside for the sake of a happy Christian conclusion.

First is the question, had Portia worked out the technical legal point – that Shylock must not shed blood, nor take no more and no less than exactly one pound of Antonio’s flesh – before she begins in court?  If so, her speech about mercy being not ‘strained’ is part of a deliberate and malicious strategy to destroy her opponent by extending her attack unnecessarily before hanging him out to dry.

Sharks’ approach made it clear that all these young people were bright young things (excluding Antonio), rather than mature strategists.  So Jessica Tovey’s Portia was genuine in asking Shylock to be merciful, and only when she looks again at the contract does she realise she has another line of argument, which will prevent the killing of Antonio.  And only then does she also realise the implications in Venetian law for the treatment of Shylock because he has effectively threatened the life of a another man.

The second question for me was, whatever happened to Jessica, Shylock’s daughter who has run away with Lorenzo to become a Christian, stealing not just her father’s  money, but his sentimental jewellery?  In Shakespeare’s text, Lorenzo and Jessica are seen together some time before the final scene.  There is a hint there that Shakespeare would have liked to deal with Jessica’s guilt:  Lorenzo brings on music and speaks in highly poetic terms about the excitement of being in love, but Jessica says

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

Sharks has kept Lorenzo and Jessica actively in play until the very end.  Shakespeare passes them off with the fop of Nerissa giving them what they do not deserve:

There do I give to you and Jessica,
From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift,
After his death, of all he dies possess'd of.

And Lorenzo replying, apparently innocently,

Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way
Of starved people.

But Sharks has connected the dots, giving Portia the final speech, spoken with a new sense of maturity:

It is almost morning,
And yet I am sure you are not satisfied
Of these events at full. Let us go in;
And charge us there upon inter'gatories,
And we will answer all things faithfully.

And then Sharks has Jessica go to one side, reacting against the superficial merriment and drawing the attention of them all as she hangs her head and says quietly “I am ashamed.”  So the play ends.

So now I see the play, and Shakespeare’s thinking in a new light.  And I see the relevance of this play to us in modern times, where it seems we are not to treat ‘different’ people with empathy, but like Antonio to despise them, and cause despicable behaviour in return.  I can see that for Shakespeare, writing in an England which had banned Jews completely since 1290, choosing to write about Venice which had previously accepted them as ‘entrepreneurs’ but had recently restricted them to the ‘ghetto’, empathy with Shylock and Jessica was a challenging thought.

Shakespeare may not have felt able to make his point too strongly, and so kept it hidden in conventional comedy.  Anne-Louise Sharks and Bell Shakespeare in a brilliant performance have completed for him what Shakespeare began.  I thank them for their daring, and hope as Portia says, that

there upon inter'gatories,
… we will answer all things faithfully.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Boys Will Be Boys by Melissa Bubnic

Boys Will Be Boys by Melissa Bubnic.  The Street Theatre, Canberra, October 27 – November 11, 2017.

Creative Team:
Director – Caroline Stacey; Musical Composition and Direction – Jess Green; Movement Direction – Emma Strapps; Production Design – Imogen Keen; Lighting Design – Niklas Pajanti; Sound Design – Kimmo Vennonen.

Cast:
Astrid – Pippa Grandison; Priya – Isha Menon; Arthur – Dianna Nixon; Harrison – Joanna Richards; Isabelle – Kiki Skountzos

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 8

The essence of Bubnic’s play is to be wary, very wary, of mentoring young talent: if they are worth mentoring you can expect them to usurp your job.

The importance of Boys Will Be Boys is that the theme is played out by two women – mentor Astrid, mentee Priya – working in the worst world of competitive men: a stockbroking firm.  This setting is horribly symbolic of the world of work at large where it is still true that practical power and decision-making is largely in the men’s domain.  The point is made bitter by the author’s injunction that all the parts, male and female, are to be played by women actors.

The value of The Street’s production of this play is in the top-class casting, directing and design.  Though the episodic nature of the scenes makes it seem a long time within its 90 minute run before the climactic point is reached, it is stunning when it happens, and the aftermath is depressing as the truth of women’s position sinks in.

The set design was particularly successful – better than the previous Sydney and London productions – by taking us away from any picture of ordinary realism.  The play is symbolic and metaphorical.  A plain looking office-setting does not express the sense of extraordinary self-aggrandisement central to the pure money-making business (Sydney Theatre Company 2015).  Steps up to the ‘trading floor’ above, each side of a row of toilets (Bush Theatre, London 2016) gets closer to what is needed. 

But the several floor-to-ceiling highly reflective yet semi-transparent swivelling rich-looking panels, which could open and close in myriad unexpected ways, provided the right kind of farcical feeling as characters rushed into and out of the main acting space.  Each time a gap opened, the roar of the trading floor – voices yelling prices, computers beeping or playing little Microsoft tunes, bells ringing like Wall Street in a sell-down panic – burst out; only to return immediately each swung shut to foreboding silence in Astrid’s office where the real machinations of power were taking place.  Steps down from that reality provided Astrid a space for intimacy with her audience – us – for her to sing ironic cabaret songs of love and longing.

We even applauded Pippa Grandison’s singing the first time, until we realised that this was Astrid, seeking some kind of human connection in this life where subtle attack is the best defence.  It was a shock to us as much as to Astrid when she realised that her only woman ‘friends’ – the determined newbie Priya who accepted rape as the price for the top account line Astrid covetted; and the professional corporate prostitute Isabelle who rejected Astrid’s bid for love which no man in this world could give her – that these women had beaten her at her own game.

And, of course, it was the firm’s owner/managing director, Arthur, played so coolly by Dianna Nixon, who controlled his puppets – his wife on the phone, his prostitute Isabella, and now his ethnically diverse “Indian”, the Bangladeshi Priya; and who now put Astrid right back in her place in the pecking order.

This staging of what might have been a ‘straight’ play about subterfuge and betrayal revealed an old Brechtian theatre technique which had seemed to fade away by the end of last century.  A musician accompanies the action on guitar, as a kind of narrator/commentator – but in music without the need for words, reminiscent of The Threepenny Opera.  The characters sing in role to us as if we are in a 1920s Berlin cabaret; or to bring to light a point about life experience as in Mother Courage and Her Children. 

The Creative Team – writer, director, composer and performer, designer, movement director, lighting and recorded sound designers – have produced the best piece of ‘alienation effect’ that I have seen for a long time.  The Street has shown us once again the value of its work in Canberra’s cultural landscape.

The understanding we are left with is to know how morally corrupt is the profit-for-profit’s-sake motive among men, and how much self-respect and love women inevitably lose by playing the game and seeming to win; or even worse, when tossed aside as losers.

It’s not a happy play, but a very effective play as produced and directed by Caroline Stacey at The Street.


© Frank McKone, Canberra