2018: Art, Politics, Money: Revisiting Australia’s Cultural Policy by David Throsby

Art, Politics, Money: Revisiting Australia’s Cultural Policy by David Throsby.  Currency House: Platform Papers No 55,  May, 2018.

Commentary by Frank McKone

In 2006 David Throsby wrote Platform Papers No 7: Does Australia Need a Cultural Policy?  After 12 years of a terrifying but fascinating political history, he concludes we should begin again. 

He suggests our starting point should be the ‘definitional proposition’ from the Labour policy document Creative Australia which came to nought in 2013 when the Liberal/Nationals Coalition under Tony Abbott defeated Labour’s Kevin Rudd.  The proposition reads:

 Australian culture is the embodiment of the distinctive values, traditions and beliefs that make being Australian in the 21st Century unique – democratic, diverse, adaptive and grounded in one of the world’s oldest living civilisations.

Throsby believes that this ‘can be seen to rise above Party politics’, and ‘is likely to be generally accepted, regardless of political leaning.”  He is concerned as probably we all are that ‘a wide-ranging rumination on our culture and its values at this present time is most unlikely to appeal to the Prime Minister or his Cabinet, given the cultural conflicts that keep re-surfacing within the Coalition’s own ranks, the Government’s apparent lack of interest in the area, and its preoccupation with issues they would see as having higher priority’.

But he does put up some practical suggestions for immediate application by a Labour Minister for the Arts after the next election, which must take place by May 2019.  I suggest his ideas should be taken up by The Arts Party, which has recently established a new formal structure with the objective of sending at least one member to the Senate next year.  We need a voice in the Parliament whichever party forms Government.

As Throsby puts it: The Minister for the Arts “will have his own ideas of
what might be included, but here are some suggestions for components for a new arts policy package, derived from discussion in this paper:

• A recalibration and expansion of the
artist-in-residence programs in schools;

• A forum or series of forums on arts funding,
perhaps including a broad discussion of the
role of peer assessment in evaluating grant
applications;

• In conjunction with the Cultural Ministers’
Statistics Working Group, persuade the ABS to
re-establish the National Centre for Culture and
Recreation Statistics;

• A program to increase funding for art centres
in remote communities to enable expansion in
their support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander arts in all areas of art practice;

• Re-establishment of the Cultural Industries
Innovation Centre;

• Set up a feasibility study to consider the
establishment of a Heritage Lottery Fund.”

A little explanation, in reverse order:

The “Heritage Lottery Fund” is based on the UK National Lottery, funding to which – as an example – the Royal Shakespeare Company has access through Arts Council England.  Throsby recalls, in support of this idea, the success of the Opera House Lottery which helped fund the construction of the Sydney Opera House back in the day.

“The Australian Government’s Creative Industries Innovation Centre (CIIC) was a wonderful organisation that worked with over 1,500 creative enterprises from 2009 to 2014. They provided one-on-one support, and facilitated research reports including Valuing Australia’s Creative Industries, which showed that the creative industries made a direct contribution to GDP of $32.8 billion in 2011/12, more than the contribution made by many traditional industries.” https://www.creativeplusbusiness.com/ciic-resources/

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts centres are now a feature of many communities across Australia. They are already supported to some extent by the Federal Government but need more money and more security of funding to develop fully.  The rationale is that art is central to those communities’ social cohesion and ongoing stability, to the benefit of the whole Australian society.

Throsby writes: “Progress in implementing any policy needs to be tracked over time, and this requires data. In the cultural arena, the axing by the Federal Government of the National Centre for Culture and Recreation Statistics (NCCRS) of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 2014 dealt a blow to the steady supply of data about arts and culture from the Centre that had contributed so strongly to supporting policy-making in the field.” (Page 57)

Throsby notes that the Australia Council has thankfully survived through all the political exigencies, including some shenanigans, since its inception as an independent statutory authority through the Australia Council Act 1975.  There are other models internationally for the evaluation of grant applications which he believes we should examine, especially because of confusions over the years about concepts like ‘quality’, ‘excellence’, ‘diversity’, and issues like inclusion, small to medium organisations, heritage, individual practitioners, ‘major’ performing companies.

An expansion of the artists-in-residence program in schools is a straightforward action a new minister could take immediately, as part of much broader policy development about the central role of arts in education. 

“There are many lessons to be drawn from the sad meandering tale that represents the progress, if it can be called that, of Australian cultural policy over the last ten years that we have charted in these pages.  Some of these lessons are encouraging – for example, as Australians we have shown that we can indeed countenance a coherent national cultural policy if the mood so takes us.  Some of the lessons are profoundly discouraging, such as the sense that good policy is fragile, it can be replaced by bad policy, and in the end does anyone really care?”, writes David Throsby.

Throsby’s paper is a clarion call for political action, and maybe there are signs of hope.  The Arts Party did remarkably well in the last election while it was still in a very early fledgling state.  It is now ready for a major campaign for 2019.

And equally remarkably, “Gonski’s radical review” was the front page Fairfax headline as I write (Canberra Times, Monday April 30, 2018). 

“Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will push for a radical overhaul of the Australian curriculum after endorsing a blueprint by his businessman friend David Gonski to fix the lagging school system.  The Gonski 2.0 plan will transform the school system to assess and reward personal progress, not just standard academic benchmarks.  It challenges the Commonwealth, states and territories to ditch their ‘industrial model of schooling’ in favour of a more modern and individual approach.” (by Michael Koziol)

This raises the possibility of applying the very model of student centred learning and personal development which arose from Currency House’s Platform Papers No 54 Young People and the Arts: An Agenda for Change by Sue Giles, which I reviewed on this blog in March 2018, and developed with a detailed article on my blog at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com . 

It’s time to take action, I believe.


SYDNEY: Launch of Art, Politics, Money: Revisiting Australia’s Cultural Policy –
David Throsby in conversation with MUP publisher and commentator Louise Adler

When: 6pm – 8pm, Tuesday 1 May 2018

Where: Dentons Seminar Room
Level 16, 77 Castlereagh Street, Sydney (between King/Market Streets)

All welcome. Book https://www.trybooking.com/VDYN or info@currencyhouse.org.au

Currency House’s Platform Paper No.55 is available for media on request and for
purchase on https://currencyhouse.org.au/node/255.

Media enquiries to Martin Portus at mportus@optusnet.com.au or 0401 360 806.




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Blanc de Blanc by Strut & Fret

Blanc de Blanc.  Strut & Fret at The Spiegeltent, Civic Square, Canberra, April 26 (preview), April 27 – May 20, 2018.

Director – Scott Maidment; Musical Director – Steve Toulmin; Costume Designer – James Browne; Choreographer & Co-Creative Director – Kevin Maher; Lighting & Set Designer – Philip Gladwell

Performers: Tuedon Ariri; Hampus Jansson; J’aiMime; Jess Mews; Laura New; Milena Straczynski; Monsieur Romeo; Spencer Novich; Shun Sugimoto.

Program illustration - The cast of Blanc de Blanc in action

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 27

New circus is now old, if not old hat – becoming established as it did in Australia with Circus Oz in 1978.  But perhaps the better comparison for Strut and Fret’s Blanc de Blanc might be the work of the French James Thierée, brought up in Le Cirque Imaginaire and Le Cirque Invisible and reviewed on this blog for his work Bright Abyss presented in the Sydney Festival, 19 January 2006.

Quoting myself, “Thierrée's directing made what might have been a series of circus-style acts into a work of strong dramatic structure which drew the audience into the lives of those on stage and reflected on our own experience - and gave hope that, working together, we may survive the abyss and find our way in some kind of harmony.”

There will be people in the audience last night who will object, saying but we only came for a fun night!  But I reply, in my curmudgeonly way (to steal a favourite word from the famous Canberra Times columnist, Ian Warden), that I wanted more.  The performers – especially Jess Mews whose hoop swinging was certainly the most amazingly complicated and skilful I have ever seen – were all terrific acrobats, dancers, mimes and contortionists, but the basic idea of turning the largest Spiegeltent in Australia into nothing but a bawdy champagne party was a bit limited dramatically, I thought.

Of course, I appreciated what was often a spoof of the up-itself French-Canadian Cirque du Soleil, but what does Blanc de Blanc really mean?

I can’t do better, I suggest, than quote wine merchants Berry Bros. & Rudd:

A classic Blanc de Blancs is restrained and elegant when young, yet with ageing it develops a mouth-coating brioche richness that overlays an intense expression of fruitiness.   Their Champagne by Le Mesnil, Grand Cru is described in this way: Le Mesnil is a cooperative located in one of Côte des Blancs’s greatest villages, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. It produces Champagnes that are smooth and rich with fine acidity at the basic level; while the vintage wines offer a significant step up, with crisper, richer and fuller fruit that will develop a toasty finesse.

How could you seriously make fun of that, hey? The term Blanc de Blancs designates Champagnes made only from Chardonnay grapes.  If that had been explained in the show, I would have understood.  Surely middle-class Canberrans only ever drink chardonnay – never those awfully pretentious NZ sauvignons.  Though I notice that there’s a backsliding trend recently to the terrible Rhine rieslings, would you believe!

Well, the brioche richness certainly came in a highly original approach to the aerial work, in solo and duet, in and out of the water, but, while the ending inside and outside very surprising balloons and soap bubbles lightened the tone, the crowd taking selfies with the performers was not quite the ‘significant step up’ I would have preferred – certainly not ‘crisper, richer and fuller fruit that will develop a toasty finesse’.

On the other hand, perhaps this is not what the traditional Famous Spiegeltent is about – except that my first experience (of the then much smaller original ‘tent’) was at the Sydney Festival in 2007.  The show was La Clique, compered by Canberra’s very own Mikelangelo, backed live by his Black Sea Gentlemen band.  The episodes followed much the same format as Blanc de Blanc, the nudity of magician Ursula Martinez was much more sexually stimulating, the humour was not based on old-style stereotyping (including isn’t it great to just get drunk), the pure circus skills were nearly as good – and finally, the satire was funnier because it was better written and more biting.

But don’t let this curmudgeon put you off going along for the party, party, party atmosphere.  It was just fun, and after all – maybe – all you need is fun!

Post Partum

All I didn’t need was to stand in a very long queue for a very long time in what was an unusually merely cool evening, instead of Canberra’s usual freezing temperature by this time of year.  I suggest the 6.30 pm hour-long shows should start at 6 pm or even 5.30 pm, since we found ourselves waiting until the previous crowd departed and the venue was set up for the 8 pm show, which actually got under way maybe by about 8.20 pm.  This really wasn’t fun, and helped make the opening of the action a less effective audience warm-up than it could have been.

A small fraction of the queue at The Spiegeltent Canberra
waiting in the cool for Blanc de Blanc, April 27, 2018
Photo: Frank McKone

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: The Celtic Tenors - The Irish Songbook Tour

Matthew Gilsenan    James Nelson    Daryl Simpson

The Celtic Tenors – The Irish Songbook Tour.  Presented by Duet Entertainment and Sport at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, April 17 / 18, 2018.

Performers:

Matthew Gilsenan    James Nelson    Daryl Simpson

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 17

The strength of The Celtic Tenors’ performance is not so much in the quality of their singing – which ranges from high opera to pure folk – but in the sense of community they quickly establish with their audience.  They found the level just right for Queanbeyan’s The Q, the locals and the busful from Ulladulla, Moruya and Batemans Bay, silver-hairs among the golden harmonies.  It was not long before everyone was singing the chorus parts – from yodelling in John Denver’s Calypso to aaahing in Nessun Dorma.

In two 50-minute segments, 21 songs from bawdy Irish humour in Finnegan’s Wake (nothing to do with James Joyce!), to sad songs critical of the sending of young men to war (especially Eric Bogle’s All the Fine Young Men) and even of the transportation to Botany Bay of the young Irish farmer, for stealing bread to feed his wife and family in the potato famine (The Fields of Athenry which was written in the 1970s by Pete St. John).

A social conscience is a central concern in The Celtic Tenors’ songbook, about the plight of the homeless or about the crucial role played by carers for those ageing with dementia.  Yet the show is leavened with a sense of humour, often improvised in direct fun with us, and songs of homecoming like Song for Ireland (by English folksingers June and Phil Colclough).

After the expected Nessun Dorma by Puccini to conclude the show, when the audience demanded an encore, came a wonderful highlight – the traditional Danny Boy sung a capella without microphones. 

I’m not so sure about the presenters’ expertise in sport, but Duet certainly provided excellent entertainment, which continues at The Q for one more night before moving on to Tasmania at the Theatre Royal, Hobart, on Saturday April 21, and in Victoria in Traralgon April 22 and Frankston on the 24th to complete their first tour of Australia.

My only disappointment was that though we were told the name of the terrific young pianist / musical director, my silver-haired aural memory is not up to scratch.  I have not been able to find out who he is – he deserves acknowledgement as much as the singers in my view.  Nor could I find details of the technical team, whose lighting and especially sound mixing was equally excellent.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Antony and Cleopatra - Bell Shakespeare

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, April 12 –21, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 13

Director – Peter Evans; Designer – Anna Cordingley; Lighting Designer – Benjamin Cisterne; Composer & Sound Designer – Max Lyandvert; Movement and Fight Director – Nigel Poulton; Voice Coach – Jess Chambers

Cast:
Cleopatra – Catherine McClements; Antony – Johnny Carr
Charmian – Zindzi Okenyo; Alexas – Janine Watson
Enobarbus – Ray Chong Nee; Menas / Philo – Joseph Del Re
Octavius – Gareth Reeves; Lepidus / Clown – Jo Turner
Pompey / Scarrus – Lucy Goleby
Octavia / Soothsayer / Eros – Ursula Mills
Agrippa / Demetrius – Steve Rodgers


All of Shakespeare’s plays, even the comedies, question the nature of absolute rule.  Unsurprisingly, considering the likelihood of execution in the reigns of autocrats Queen Elizabeth I and James I, he set his plays in the past and in other places.  Even his history plays were in the past “which is another country”.  So Shakespeare made his plays metaphors or allegories: an astute move as writer and (I guess) director of theatre which upper and lower classes felt to be relevant to their times – and from which he did well financially and in social status, as a tour of Stratford upon Avon reveals. 

As Bell Shakespeare hangs upon the great man’s coat-tails, and has become, like Shakespeare in London – the capital city of his day – an accepted central element of our culture (we can count Sydney and Canberra as our combined capital, I think), how does this production of Antony and Cleopatra stack up?

I’ll start with costumes.  Read the Globe Theatre Costumes site http://www.bardstage.org/globe-theatre-costumes.htm and you will notice two points: Shakespeare’s actors were probably not dressed in ancient Roman or Egyptian clothes, but were certainly dressed in materials and colours which immediately told the audience the social status of each character.  Queen Elizabeth made this clear in her Sumptuary Law of 1574 ( The Statutes of Apparel ) [which] contained the following clause:

" Note also that the meaning of this order is not to prohibit a servant from wearing any cognizance of his master, or henchmen, heralds, pursuivants at arms; runners at jousts, tourneys, or such martial feats, and such as wear apparel given them by the Queen, and such as shall have license from the Queen for the same."

Shakespeare’s theatre companies were given that licence from the Queen so the actors could wear clothes on stage of a class different from those they had to wear in the street.

So should Anna Cordingley have dressed her actors in her idea of Roman and Egyptian clothes, to make it clear the play is set in that place in the past?  Or should she have gone for what Shakespeare’s actors would have worn – but without an audience today understanding the meanings of Queen Elizabeth’s laws of apparel?  Was it enough, then, to dress the characters in some kind of recognisably millenium-babies’ style for modern 18-year-olds to get the metaphorical meaning of the play?

As a pre-baby-boomer, from a time when couture could more easily define social status, I found oligarchs and soldiers in narrow-leg suits a bit hard to swallow (and their identities hard to follow); while a dressed-down with messy hair Cleopatra and Charmian as some kind of Spiegeltent performer (they’ll be here on April 26 in Civic Square) didn’t seem to me to support what Peter Evans wrote (in the Conversation published in the program):

Of Antony and Cleopatra’s relationship: “They use the biggest images and are often entertaining each other and themselves with these poetic gestures.  It’s what makes this play and their love very adult.”

And having actors draped in various unlikely forms over modern lounge room furniture, in costume but not apparently in character, in scenes their characters were not part of, didn’t seem to match the director’s other words:

“Shakespeare’s historically based plays are about powerful people in back rooms, making decisions that will affect the world....where the stage could be an oval office or a hotel that gets taken over for a political campaign – they’re waiting spaces, they’re meeting spaces...[the actors] won’t always be their characters, but they’ll be witnesses....”

It was the style of movement and the poses, in a setting that never had the sense of an oval office or grandiose hotel, that seemed out of place to me.  The penultimate scene, where the whole cast pop-danced to a pop-song before the too-long ending (which I think was Shakespeare’s fault), was so out of place that there was a general feeling of “What is this?”  The couple behind me, throughout the genuinely sad scene of Enobarbus dying in a ditch rather than follow either side in a crazy war, and even through the final defeat and brave suicides of Cleopatra and her maids, continually crackled their Malteser packets.

Well, Peter Evans did say “When the audience watches this production, I’m hoping there’s a sense of delight in how outrageous these people are.  The audacity, the charisma, and the language of the play is big and exciting.”  Like the crackles of the lolly packets.

Seriously though, I think this production has sincerely tried to deal with this difficult play but has not been able to integrate the elements which Shakespeare set up as a real challenge: Can we accept that power brokers seeking autocratic power can genuinely fall in love with each other?  Can we have empathy for such people when they lose in that competition because of that love?

For today, for example, should we feel sorry for US President Donald Trump having to fend off criticism of his apparent friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, because of his marriage to Melania who was born in Slovenia (then part of communist Yugoslavia).  Did Putin use this situation to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails and so support Trump’s election?  Is Putin now engineering a war over Syria to put Trump down?

Just remember, one of the countries in the contest between the children of Julius Caesar (Octavius and Octavia Caesar) and Pompey the Great (Pompey the Younger, played here as Pompey’s Daughter) – a conflict which dragged in the older generation’s Mark Antony and Cleopatra – was Syria! 

Pompey the Younger was murdered in Egypt in 45 BCE.  Mark Antony married Octavius’ sister Octavia in 40 BCE  (don’t forget the dates go backwards).  Mark Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide in 31 BCE.  Should we feel sorry for them?

I’m inclined to think that Shakespeare wasn’t sure what he thought about this.  The play may have been written about the same time or a year or two either side of King Lear (1605).  I’m sure Shakespeare felt empathetic towards Lear when he (Lear) realised how his demand for power had undermined his love for his youngest daughter, Cordelia.  Antony and Cleopatra’s love reversed the situation – their demand for love undermined their power.

Though Peter Evans and Anna Cordingley tried to bring out the power side of the story, by projecting the dates of the wars on the scrim between scenes, these made no real impact on us in relation to the love story.  I feel that I would, for a modern audience, trim Shakespeare’s script down to focus better on the main elements of the story, with less of the “big and exciting” language (which worked in Shakespeare’s day), to simplify the issue of power and love – even make it more domestic than political on the huge scale of Shakespeare’s original.  Just as Shakespeare himself did in King Lear.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: The Sound of Waiting by Mary Anne Butler

The Sound of Waiting by Mary Anne Butler.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Theatre, Sydney, March 31 – April 22, 2018.

Director – Suzanne Pereira; Video Artist and Screen Designer – Samuel James; Composer and Sound Designer – Tegan Nicholls; Lighting Designer – Christopher Page

Cast:
Reza Momenzada as Hamed Mokri; Gabrielle Scawthorn as The Angel of Death

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 8



The Sound of Waiting is more like performance poetry than a conventional drama.  There are two voices in a tone poem: the father, Hamed, “who escapes his war-torn country to seek a future of hope and possibility for his young daughter” and an Angel of Death who becomes “Hamed’s antagonist; the Angel’s job being to eliminate Hamed en route, as per instructed by The Host – who has ordered the Angels of Death to eliminate every displaced person on the planet” (Mary Anne Butler in her Playwright’s Note).

I can imagine this work as a purely sound recording by Tegan Nicholls, which I think would work very well.  On stage it becomes imagist theatre.  Centre stage is a small low ‘island’.  It is surrounded by a circle of see-through netting hung from on high on a track, with an opening in front, so that the Angel or Hamed can speak in front of the curtain, or can open the curtain to left or right or both ways at once, and take up positions at floor level inside the curtain area, or on the island. 

On the netting simple images are projected, such as water drops moving upwards as Hamed’s boat sinks.  White feathers float down and catch on the netting towards the end.  These images are abstract, creating just enough reference to the story Hamed tells – of the bomb which kills his wife and son, of the soldier who accepts their counterfeit documents to escape their country, of their flight in a decrepit aircraft, of the overcrowded boat with an unreliable engine, of the storm, the sinking and their drowning.  The Angel succeeds in her mission, though even she at times admits to empathetic feelings for this determined father and hapless child.

The work becomes emblematic, representing the hypocrisy of power players in the world who speak of achieving great things while causing so many to become refugees and then claiming to save lives by turning back the boats.

The Sound of Waiting is an interesting and worthwhile example of Darlinghurst Theatre Company’s aim to “value freedom of expression, the discussion of ideas, different points of view and dialogue.  We seek out work and provocations that explore, discuss and engage with contemporary Australia and topical issues.  It is this ‘democracy of ideas’ that drives our company...”



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: The Children by Lucy Kirkwood

The Children by Lucy Kirkwood.  Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, March 29 – May 19, 2018.

Director – Sarah Goodes; Designer – Elizabeth Gadsby; Lighting Designer – Paul Jackson; Composer and Sound Designer – Steve Francis; Voice and Dialect Coach – Geraldine Cook-Dafner

Cast:
Sarah Peirse – Rose; Pamela Rabe – Hazel; William Zappa – Robin

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 9


Though the performances, set, sound, and lighting designs were all up to the expected standard for these major theatre companies, I found the playwriting left me unsatisfied. 

Despite STC’s artistic director Kip Williams writing “...Lucy talks about her struggle to find an emotionally resonant way to write about climate change.  She clearly found it”, I think she has tried to put too much into this two-hour long (without interval) three-hander. 

The first issue is that the meltdown of the nuclear power plant – because these retired nuclear engineers when they were in their 20s did not plan for a tsunami on the east coast of Britain to flood the reactor’s pumping system – could not have been caused by climate change. 

Nor was the real case in Japan on which this story is obviously based.  The ring of fire that Japan sits on is caused by geological plate movements quite independent of our last 200 years’ increase in global warming.  In her play, Kirkwood has a local earthquake which shakes Robin and Hazel’s house near the reactor and which then causes a tsunami which floods the house and the reactor.  In the geology of Japan this scenario is possible as happened at Fukushima, but not in Britain.  See https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap4-Plate-Tectonics-of-the-UK.

Even if it had been possible, it would have had nothing to do with climate change.  No wonder Lucy was struggling.

However, accepting the scenario as a fiction for the sake of writing about how even middle-class scientists have personal sexual relationships which mess up their lives when placed under ethical tension in their later years, the play still doesn’t ring true.  The dilemma, which is hardly a matter of much fun, takes up the idea that they should be cleaning up the nuclear reactor rather than younger people, because the radiation will inevitably cause cancer and early death. 

Rose has organised a team of other old workers and needs the expertise of Hazel and Robin, arguing that young people should not be employed because they have their whole adult life ahead of them, while she, Robin and Hazel have their relationships and children behind them, with only their unnecessary old age to go.  If their lives are shortened by radiation, that is better than sacrificing the young – especially considering that the three of them helped cause the problem in the first place.

It’s a clinical proposition which I suppose Lucy Kirkwood imagines a scientist might make.  But the more than 30-year-long story of Rose’s previous relationship with Robin, his marriage to Hazel instead, engineered by Hazel to thwart Rose (she claims), and the children Robin has with Hazel while Rose has none because she only ever wanted children with Robin, becomes the main focus of our attention for two hours.

The only relevance to the issue of climate change is that Rose has kept on smoking, while Hazel insists on ‘doing the right thing’ – like picking up other people’s rubbish as well as their own when she and Robin go camping.  Otherwise the real story is about Rose’s obsession with Robin, to which he apparently may have responded at times during his married life; and Rose’s self-imposed single state, now at the age of 65.

The end is a cop-out.  In my view, Kirkwood could see after two hours that there is no end to the situation.  So after a point about halfway through – a kind of interval, perhaps – when the three of them break out into dancing together as they did 40 years previously, at the end Hazel gets out her yoga mat and starts the salute to the sun, and Rose (the smoker) joins in.  Robin seems to accept that things have settled, despite his agreement to leave with Rose for the power plant, without Hazel’s decision clear – and this is to force independence on their 38 year old daughter, Lauren, who is constantly on the phone never having properly grown up.  I’m sorry, but I seemed to have lost the plot – was it about the children, or the grown-ups, or the dangers of nuclear power?  And what ever happened to climate change?

Kip Williams writes “People have said this is Lucy Kirkwood’s best play yet, and some have gone further to say that this might be the play of decade.”  I don’t think so.  I reviewed Kip Williams’ production of Kirkwood’s Chimerica (March 11, 2017) and thoroughly agree that is a major work.  I think the change to a concentrated domestic setting has not worked for Kirkwood as well as her handling of the extensive political setting ranging from Beijing to New York in Chimerica.

And, as a contrast, I would be inclined to say that the other recent domestic writing with broader implications produced by Sydney Theatre Company – Black is the New White – suggests that Nakkiah Lui is the playwright with “the play of the decade”.

Pamela Rabe (Hazel), William Zappa (Robin) and Sarah Peirse (Rose)
The dance sequence in The Children by Lucy Kirkwood
Photo: Jeff Busby

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Sami in Paradise - Belvoir

Sami in Paradise.  Based on The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman, adapted by Eamon Flack and the Company.  Belvoir at Belvoir St Theatre Upstairs, Sydney, April 1 – 29, 2018. 

Director – Eamon Flack; Set and Costume Designer – Dale Ferguson; Lighting Designer – Verity Hampson; Musical Direction, Sound Designer and Composer – Jethro Woodward, with Musicians: Mahan Ghobardi (percussion) and Hamed Sadeghi (strings); Movement Director – Nigel Poulton; Dialect Coach – Amy Hume

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 7

Cast:
Paula Arundell – Fima / Fairuz; Fayssal Bazzi – Abu Walid; Nancy Denis – Adnan / Sanda; Charlie Garber – Charlie Gerber; Victoria Haralabidou – Maria; Marta Kaczmarek – Gita; Mandela Mathia – Owke; Arky Michael – Father Arky; Yalin Ozucelik – Sami; Hazem Shammas – Hazem; Vaishnavi Suryaprakesh – Vaish / Boy / Waiter

Thematically sincere, though theatrically a mess, Sami in Paradise has tried to use a Russian comedy from 1928 – about the incompetent confusion which was the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 – to say something about the impossibility of living in a refugee camp in modern times. 

The central figure, Sami, concludes he must kill himself, but he must justify his death as being for the good of all humankind.  The Chekovian philosophical angst is very Russian – which in 1928 made excellent comedy, I’m sure (until Stalin made sure the great directors Meyerhold and Stanislavski abandoned their productions, and Erdman was exiled to Siberia in 1933). 

But despite the obvious enthusiasm of the Company in their research, where everywhere “we found quotations, people, events which bore an uncanny similarity to lines, characters and situations in the play” and made them ask “Why would life as a refugee bear such a resemblance to life in Stalin’s Russia?”, their conclusion that “Perhaps [it is] because both regimes seek to treat people as a problem to be solved” has not led to an effective satiric comedy, which might stir Peter Dutton to send Belvoir to Siberia.

Theatrically, I guess I have to sheet the failure home to the adapter / director Eamon Flack. 

Comedy can range from frantic farce through inconsequential humour all the way to bitter black satire.  This largely group-devised show has bits of all these entering and exiting all over the shop.  Though we get the basic idea that it’s funny to see absurd behaviour which mostly does not seem to have any understandable motivation, and on the other hand there is a kind of anxious laughter in the tension of watching Sami trying to persuade himself to shoot himself (in the mouth?… through the temple?…through the heart?…oh, which side is my heart, left or right?…), the ‘plot’ fizzles away in the end.  Would it have been more funny, humorous, satirical if he had succeeded in killing himself?  Was it satirical, humorous or merely funny as he appeared and disappeared in and out of his coffin?

I really couldn’t tell by the end how this play told us anything new, or funny, about being a refugee.  Until, after the first round of applause, we were asked, very and sincerely seriously, to donate money to an organisation that helps refugeees to find ways to support themselves as independent agents.  Even though during the play, one of the most telling sections of potential satire criticised do-gooder NGOs for satisfying their own needs for doing good on a continuing basis, rather than actually solving the refugee problem at its political core.

Seeing Sami in Paradise made me see that the modern refugee problem is not the right material for comedy, despite the apparent parallels with a Russian play from 90 years ago.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht

Hugo Weaving as Arturo Ui
in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Program cover photo supplied

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Tom Wright.  Sydney Theatre Company and UBS at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, March 21 - April 28, 2018.

Director – Kip Williams; Set Designer – Robert Cousins; Costume Designer – Marg Horwell; Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper; Composer and Sound Designer – Stefan Gregory; Cinematographer – Justine Kerrigan; Fight Director – Nigel Poulton; Assistant Director – Alastair Clark; Voice and Text Coach – Charmian Gradwell

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 9

If you ever thought Bertolt Brecht was getting a bit passé, even somewhat historic, Kip Williams and especially his translator Tom Wright, in this production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui will shake you out of your 21st Century middle-class complacency.  You can’t escape the terrifying epilogue speech, done here by the risen-from-the-dead figure of the honest but forcibly-compromised politician Dogsborough, spoken with such depth of feeling by one of our greatest veteran actors, Peter Carroll.

In the socialiststories.com translation, [ http://www.socialiststories.com/writers/bertolt-brecht/ ] a sign appears after the final demagogue speech by Ui, saying “On 11 March 1938 Hitler marches into Austria.  An election under the Nazi terror results in a 98% vote for Hitler”. The epilogue reads:

Therefore learn how to see and not to gape.
To act instead of talking all day long.
The world was almost won by such an ape!
The nations put him where his kind belong.
But don’t rejoice too soon at your escape –
The womb he crawled from still is going strong.

Tom Wright’s uncompromising translation ends after similar couplets:

The bitch that bore Arturo Ui is still in heat.

Throughout this script, more transformed rather than merely translated, Ui is made to represent all the political thugs who threaten and actually kill all who oppose the essential lie of their offer of ‘protection’.  It’s a protection racket, of course.  Hitler used the ancient ploy by creating fear in Germans’ minds of economic disaster, loss of nationhood status, and finally scapegoating Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals.  Of course, in his play Brecht used the mafia controlled cauliflower trade in Chicago as his parallel to the rise of Hitler.

Tom Wright has brought Brecht up to date by turning Brecht’s particular into our general situation, from the worst cases like the treatment of the Rohingas in Myanmar, to our own politicians’ just announced Gang of 20 setting us up to fear infinitely rising electricity prices unless our government subsidises new coal mines and builds new coal-burning power stations, instead of encouraging renewable resources for power production. 

Wright’s text makes you think of these things by subtly incorporating references into the speeches written by Brecht – and in doing so, supported by exactly the production style that Brecht was seeking, Wright has injected life back into Brecht, however jaded we may have thought he had become.  The middle-class audience in the aptly corporately-sponsored named Roslyn Packer Theatre were amused by the line in Arturo’s election victory speech, beginning “We will decide …..”, as John Howard’s ghost appeared in our memories, stirred by Hugo Weaving’s powerful populism.  Laughter was stopped in its tracks by our recognition of the truth in Peter Carroll’s final line.

Then there was an almost revolutionary feeling in the explosion of applause for a play so well done and of such social import.  The Monash Forum had better take notice – but they will surely keep their eyes neatly blinded, and probably accuse the Sydney Theatre Company of being ‘lefties’ as if that sort of insult is all that’s needed to shut the conversation down.

True to Brechtian principles, every element of the staging of his play is open for our inspection, with the wonderful addition of cleverly designed live video.  Just to list cinematographer Justine Kerrigan in the credits is not enough.  The skills of her team – camera operators Philip Charles and Daniel Boules, video supervisor Dave Bergman and mixer Jason Jones – bring their parts as performers in the play up to the standard of this team of best Australian actors in the cast.  Hugo Weaving, deservedly, is the publicity front-runner for a quite extraordinary bravura performance, while everyone else in their many roles equal his strength of characterisation and contact with the audience – at long range and in close-up.

This has to be the very best production of this master-work that I can imagine, proving the place of Brecht as the Shakespeare of the 20th Century, just as relevant today and, I suspect, for the next four centuries as Shakespeare has been since his death four centuries ago.

The question for the future is, How Resistible is the Rise of Arturo Ui?  Will we just keep talking all day?  Or if we take action, how do we do that without starting World War III?


Cast: (alphabetical order)

Mitchell Butel – Clark / Theatre Director / Court Appointed Physician
Peter Carroll – Dogsborough
Tony Cogin – Ignatius Dullfleet / Maulbeer / Hook / 1st Millstreamian
Ivan Donato – Giri / Young Dogsborough
Anita Hegh – Betty Dullfleet / Carruthers / Deller / Defence Attorney
Brent Hill – Ragg / Gaffles / Gazillo / Prosecutor / Short Man / Priest
Colin Moody – Roma
Monica Sayers – Dockdaisy / Counsel / 2nd Millstreamian
Hugo Weaving – Arturo Ui
Charles Wu – Inna / Schussel / Mullet / Waiter
Ursula Yovich – Givola / Magistrate



© Frank McKone, Canberra