2018: ‘So That You Might Know Each Other’ - Exhibition at NMA

‘So That You Might Know Each Other’ – Faith and Culture in Islam.  Exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, April 20 – July 22, 2018.  Free Entry.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 6

Museum people love to tell you how many ‘objects’ they have in a collection.  For this exhibition, I prefer the French word ‘objets’, as in objets d’art.  ‘So That You Might Know Each Other’ is certainly not about exhibitionism.  The items on display are from the daily lives of people, from the many ordinary to the occasional wealthy, shaped and decorated in beautiful ways.

 Is that what you expected from the rest of the title, ‘Faith and Culture in Islam’?  Perhaps not.  There is as much to learn from the story of this exhibition as there is to see in the exhibition.  Senior curator Carol Cooper’s quietly effervescent enthusiasm shines through.  An overhead spotlight projects an outline of the map of the world from Italy in Europe to China in the Far East, and round the corner to Australia in the South.

It all began with the Roman Catholic Pope Pius XI in 1925 and Fr Nicola Mapelli nearly a century later.  Let me explain.

I think of the NMA as a dynamic museum, not stuffed with objects from the past for people to stare at, but always mounting changing exhibits which illuminate not only the past, but the present too, with implications for the future.  Songlines – Tracking the Seven Sisters is a terrific example (reviewed here 17 November, 2017).

The story of ‘So That You Might Know Each Other’ begins in a museum set up in the Vatican by an Italian pope, Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, perhaps looking forward to the present Pope (who hails from South America).  Pius XI took the meaning of ‘catholic’ to suggest the church should collect in a museum – now known as the Anima Mundi – items which would show the philosophy of being ‘universal in extent – involving all’ (Macquarie Dictionary). 

As I see it, there could be two motivations for this decision.  Translated as ‘the soul of the world’ it might be seen as Roman religious colonialism.  But I suspect that Pius XI also thought of bringing to the Vatican, which in those days was an insular organisation, the ‘life’ of the world to make his administrators and Italian Catholics aware of the variety of other peoples’ beliefs and practices.  It is this interpretation which I’m sure Fr Mapelli, and the Director of Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, are working from.  It makes the translation something more like ‘Welcome to the World’.

Though I, personally, don’t subscribe to any religious belief, I see in their work the human rights and understanding value in a cooperative venture with the Sharja Museums Authority of the essentially Muslim society in the United Arab Emirates.  I don’t doubt that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was elected the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church in March 2013, becoming Pope Francis, and the first pope from the Americas, fully supports cross-cultural cooperation.  His choice of the saint’s name ‘Francis’ is obviously significant, and bodes well for human rights.

On the other side of the hand-shaking is a human rights interpretation of the essential Islamic text, the Q’ran.  Though I, again personally, have concerns about the parts of text that seem to be divisive, encouraging fighting in defence against believers’ enemies, there are two quotes which underpin this exhibition.

In Chapter 57, Iron, after the early prophets Noah and Abraham, “We sent other apostles, and after these Jesus son of Mary.  We gave him the Gospel and put compassion and mercy in the hearts of his followers.” (trans. N J Dawood, Penguin 1956)

The other includes the title of the exhibition: "O Mankind, We created you from a single pair of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know one another. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most righteous of you" (Chapter 49, The Chambers).  This translation is from an excellent paper by Abdul Malik Mujahid, delivered at the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ) Conference, Istanbul June 23, 2010.
http://www.iccj.org/redaktion/upload_pdf/201011262022430.Mujahid_keynote.PDF

In this paper, Abdul Malik Mujahid explains:

In this brief verse, Islamic scholars have been able to draw several fundamental Islamic principles which are reaffirmed elsewhere in the Quran and the Prophet’s teachings:

 God addresses all of humanity, not only the Muslims. 

 God says that He created us from one man and one woman, thus making us all
brothers and sisters. 

 The verse invalidates the claims of superiority due to one’s birth by stating that all
are born through a similar process, i.e. from a male and female. 

 God is the One who made human beings as part of tribes and nations as a means
of identifying and differentiating. This is not meant to be a source of superiority
or inferiority, nor as a contributing component of tribalism, caste systems,
nationalisms, colonialism or racism.

 The only measure of greatness among human beings is at the individual level, not
on a national or group level, based on the characteristic called “Taqwa” in Arabic.
This word means God-consciousness.

 This singular criterion of preference, Taqwa, however, is not quite measurable by
other human beings since it deals with the inner self. Therefore, human beings
must leave even this criterion to God to decide rather than using it to judge each
other. At the same time though, this principle does not mean that we are unable to
differentiate between right and wrong behavior, nor does it prevent us from acting
against wrong actions. Rather, it discourages the human tendency to ‘sit in
judgment’ of others.

And so, as you explore the extensive exhibition at the National Museum of Australia,  you will see objects from a camel’s saddle, a desk calendar, a lectern, an embroidered wedding shawl, among “over 100 precious 18th to 20th Century objects from over twenty countries” illustrating “the evolution of Islam across the globe and celebrates diverse Muslim societies from the Middle East, through to Africa and India, China and South East Asia” – and including objects and photos of Muslims in Australia, from early contacts with Indonesia several hundred years ago to those who came in substantial numbers from 1860.

Though the catalogue might seem expensive at $30, it is a wonderful record of the exhibition to keep, not only for the excellent quality of the photos of the objects, but especially for the detailed historical and cultural information in the text.

We can be justifiably proud of the humanity expressed in the meeting of the minds of Fr Nicola Mapelli, Ulrike Al-Khamis and Carol Cooper in bringing together the best of the collections in the Vatican Anima Mundi Museum, the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization and our own National Museum of Australia.  As Dr Barbara Jatta writes: “As I followed the preparation of this exhibition, I was sincerely struck by the beauty and sophistication of the Islamic world – I saw firsthand the refined productions of people living across a vast area stretching from Africa to Australia.”

For Australians now as much as for Pope Pius XI in 1925, such appreciation of others’ beliefs and cultures is essential for a better future around the world.  This exhibition is not to be missed.

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Glorious! by Peter Quilter

Glorious! by Peter Quilter.  Christine Harris & HIT Productions at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, May 3-5, 2018.

Director – Denny Lawrence; Set, Costume and Lighting Designers – Jacob Battista and Sophie Woodward

Cast:
Diana McLean as Florence Foster Jenkins; Alister Kingsley as Cosme McMoon; Kaarin Fairfax as Dorothy / Maria / Mrs Verrinder-Gedge

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Thursday May 3

What a glorious week for a reviewer it’s been!  Populist champagne-popping selfie theatre at The Spiegeltent (Blanc de Blanc, April 27); esoteric literary deep and meaningful theatre on grassy turf on the stage at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse (The Aspirations of Daise Morrow, May 1); and now warm empathetic humour theatre at The Q.  Glorious!, billed as hilarious comedy, in this production comes over as a sympathetic study of the relationship between Florence Foster Jenkins – the world’s worst opera singer – and her pianist, Cosme McMoon.

Many times I have praised The Q for its intimate community atmosphere.  On this occasion sympathetic feelings had rapidly spread through the staff on Monday for Joshua Sanders, the regular Cosme McMoon.  Artistic director Stephen Pike told them of Joshua’s sudden hospitalisation and that the show must be cancelled on its opening night on Wednesday.  By Thursday, at the new opening, we heard good news that he is recovering.

As we entered the theatre, sympathy abounded then for the cast, after, I believe, being able to have only four hours’ rehearsal with Alister Kingsley – book in hand – and retired  co-director of Canberra Academy of Music and Related Arts (CAMRA), Colin Forbes. 

The youthful Alister – looking perfect for Cosme, and coming with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Music Theatre) at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) – was able very cleverly to smoothly pass over his playing of the piano, on stage, on to Colin – one-time Australian Opera repetiteur – playing off stage for the more extended and demanding pieces.  Diana McLean, singing gloriously and amazingly, slightly off-key with Florence Foster Jenkins’ erratic timing, never missed a beat.  Our concern for Joshua and for the cast and director Denny Lawrence – who had explained the situation to the audience from the stage before the action began – was soon overtaken by admiration for the skills of these performers.

Florence Foster Jenkins – she seemed always to insist on her full title as if she were royalty – was excruciatingly funny, but gradually, despite her assumption that her inherited wealth entitled her to impose herself on the world as she saw fit, we found ourselves appreciating, along with Cosme, that her lack of self-awareness was beyond her control.  Where early on we thought he would only play for her because she had the money to pay him (three times what the restaurant offered), when it came to the incredible idea of her performing at Carnegie Hall, it was not just a chance for him to play there, but represented a grand risk and chance for fulfilment for her.

This is the same risk that all artists take – indeed, these very performers on stage before us in this production – no matter how ‘good’ we may judge them to be.  Though this is “The hilarious true story of Florence Foster Jenkins”, we end up not laughing at her, but alongside her, with empathy for her determination while objectively observing her failings. 

I guess this was not the case for a large proportion of the 3000 people who cheered her on in the Carnegie Hall in 1944, even though she vetted as 'my friends'.  As Carnegie Hall Museum Director and Archivist, Gino Francesconi, has said: "One of the most wonderful things about Carnegie Hall is the continuum of what Andrew Carnegie said at the laying of the cornerstone in 1890, which was, 'All causes may here find a place; we hope they're good causes, but it's not for us to judge'."
 [ https://www.classicalmpr.org/story/2016/08/12/florence-foster-jenkins-a-curious-concert-at-carnegie-hall- ]

Peter Quilter, I guess, may have had the spirit of Carnegie in mind in writing this play – and I guess the feeling, watching Glorious! and the many and varied shows presented by Stephen Pike, is something like the same for The Q.  The audience last night, I’m sure, were highly appreciative – including, of course, not only of the highly developed character of Diana McLean’s Mrs Jenkins, but especially of Kaarin Fairfax’s wonderful transitions from feisty Mexican Maria, vicious critic Mrs Verrinder-Gedge and naive disciple Dorothy.  These comic foils gave us a proper perspective, and helped us to recognise the truth in Alister King’s playing of Cosme.

Our concern for the absent Joshua and sympathy for director Denny Lawrence’s plight were certainly expressed in our applause, as well as our praise for design and directing well done.  What a genuinely nice piece of theatre to finish my week.

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: The Aspirations of Daise Morrow - Brink Productions adaptation of Patrick White

The Aspirations of Daise Morrow – a stage adaptation of the short story Down at the Dump by Patrick White in the collection The Burnt Ones, 1964.

Brink Productions, presented by Far and Away Productions with Canberra International Music Festival at Canberra Theatre Centre, May 1-5, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 1

To the genres ‘art-song’ and ‘art-cinema’ we can now add ‘art-theatre’.  To fully appreciate this concentrated small-scale 80 minute work, you should be familar with Patrick White’s story of two families, Morrow and Whalley, from the right side and the wrong side of the street respectively, on the occasion of the funeral of Mrs Daisy Morrow, sister to Mrs Myrtle Morrow, in the Sarsaparilla cemetery which abuts the Sarsaparilla dump.

On the ‘right’ side, consider White’s writing.  “The procession from Barranugli back to Sarsaparilla was hardly what you would have called a procession: the Reverend Brickle, the Hogben’s Holden, Horrie’s Holden, following the smaller of Jackson’s hearses.  In the circumstances they were doing things cheap – there was no reason for splashing it around.  At Sarsaparilla Mr Gill joined in, sitting high in that old Chev.  It would have been practical, Councillor Hogben sighed, to join the hearse at Sarsaparilla.  Old Gill was only there on account of Daise being his customer for years.  A grocer lacking in enterprise.  Daise had stuck to him, she said, because she liked him.  Well, if that was what you put first, but where did it get you?”

On the ‘wrong’ side, how about this?  “The fact that Whalleys ran a [Ford] Customline as well puzzled more unreasonable minds.  Drawn up amongst the paspalum in front of the Whalleys’ shack, it looked stolen, and almost was – the third payment overdue.  But would slither with ease a little longer to Barranugli, and snooze outside the Northern Hotel.  Lum could have stood all day to admire their own two-tone car.  Or would stretch out inside, his fingers at work on plastic flesh.”

14-year-old Lum, short for William (ie Willum in baby talk) made sure he was called Bill at school.  14-year-old “Meg Hogben and Lummy Whalley did not notice each other even when they looked”.

These snippets ask you to wonder who is thinking aloud?  Some bits seem to be the words of an objective observer; others are Councillor Hogben, about Old Gill or Daise; others by a mixture of observer and Lum, about the Ford Customline.  The whole story is told in this oddly elliptical manner.  I can’t tell from the published program who – but surely including director Chris Drummond – understood the potential for physically presenting the characters on stage, speaking the dialogue White gives them, and the thoughts they have about themselves and others, as well as observations as if from outside the action.

The effect is quite remarkable because it give us all these different angles of perception of the one event – a funeral.  Not only do we shift from character to character, but we shift in time as characters’ memories are stirred. 

Because we are placed on stage, in a circle in quite widely spaced rows, we become part of the theatrical effect, as characters move between and around us and we react to their physical presence – and importantly react emotionally.  Daise’s oration, rising from her own grave, spoken by the actor who also plays Meg, represents the experienced dead passing on a living essence into the young.  Mystical it may be, but this is a powerful point, in the original story and in this performance.

But the ‘art-theatre’ is not all about words.  Music composed and played by the Zephyr Quartet far more than accompanies the text.  The moods created in sound are essential to our reactions and understanding of the story, offering us a sense of the universality of these ordinary lives which, I found, added an extra depth to my reading of the story.  The music literally brought the text and action alive, in keeping with Daise Morrow’s ‘aspirations’.

For me, some aspects of the staging made following the text and action more difficult than it might have been elsewhere, while the music worked a treat.

Acoustics was the main concern.  Friends seated in the inner circle had little trouble hearing the dialogue, while in the outer circles speech not directed towards us was often lost.  This was because the large stage on which we were seated was not designed to enhance voices which could disappear into the wings, the flies, towards backstage or into the auditorum.  At the same time the stage floor, covered in a carpet apparently of living turf, absorbed sound like a sponge. 

Since I had not read the story beforehand, I missed a lot of the detail and was really only able to pick up on the main threads and moods. One answer could have been to mic the actors with surrounding speakers.  Since the piece is really a kind of art installation rather than the normal conventional form of acting out a linear story, issues like where the voice was coming from would not be a problem.  But clarity and details of the words spoken are essential elements, as you realise when you read Patrick White’s densely packed writing.

The casting and the acting were superb.  Rather than playing all the roles with individual actors, the essence of the work was focussed by casting only an Older Man (Paul Blackwell whose Myrtle Hogben was brilliant, alongside Wal Whalley), the Older Woman (Genevieve Picot, essentially as a wonderful Mrs Whalley, who made an authorative observant narrator), a Younger Man (James Smith who did both an excellent Lummy and a tremendously sad Ossie Coogan, as well many other parts) and finally perhaps the most terrific performance by Lucy Lehmann of the poetic Meg Hogben and her Aunt Daisy, in life and death. 

Costume changes, additions and subtractions distinguished the changing characters with a sense of flair; all smoothly done from props corners around the acting space.

Quality was the core element in this work – a model for the new genre of art-theatre.

© Frank McKone, Canberra