2018: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time adapted by Simon Stephens, based on the novel by Mark Haddon.  National Theatre of Great Britain at Canberra Theatre Centre, June 27 – July 1, 2018. 

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 27

If I describe this highly energised show as “children’s theatre for adults” I may upset most of the very large and equally highly appreciative audience on opening night.  I might perhaps ameliorate their response a little if I called the show “adult theatre-in-education”. 

I would probably make things worse for myself if I objected to the gratingly commercialised approach to the publicity, including the business of selling “official merchandise” derived from telling an ultimately heart-warming story of a child savant who as an impossible child splits his parents apart but equally impossibly brings them back to working together on his behalf.  Here’s what you can buy in the foyer:

But let me explain.  The drama is plot-centred, based upon setting up anticipation, points of potential achievement, episodes of likely disaster, climaxing in a major success and leaving us with a grand sense of hope for the future. This is the story of Christopher Boone, who can only tell the literal truth, succeeds in discovering who killed his neighbour’s dog, and scores 100% in a matriculation-level advanced maths test and expects to become a scientist – in other words, essentially a children’s story. 

Joshua Jenkins, on stage throughout each hour-long act – and even after curtain call to demonstrate the algebraic equation which describes Pythagoras’ square on the hypotenuse theorem – maintains an exhausting pace in physical movement, let alone in the abrupt changes in Christopher’s responses to a world which overloads his senses.  He does an admirable job, as indeed do the whole cast, but in truth (like Christopher I can only tell the truth) the plot is the thing, not any complexity of character. 

The style, appropriate to the task, presents us with a quite amazing picture book: we want to turn the pages.  We feel for Christopher and his Mum (Emma Beattie) and Dad (Stuart Laing), and even for the dead dog with the garden fork stuck in it.  We want to cheer Christopher on. We laugh and are happy for him when the train leaves Swindon before the policeman can get Christopher off (which would have been to face his father at the police station). We are afraid for his life when he jumps into the underground train track to rescue his pet rat.  We are amazed he manages to navigate the London Tube as chance voices give him incomprehensible clues.  And I was stunned when his mother and her current partner happen entirely by chance upon Christopher in a street presumably not too far from the address he has memorised – from the letters he secretly found in his father’s room, which proved his mother was not dead from a heart attack, as his father had told him, but alive in London.

So the acting is physical and close to cartoon in style – and very well done at that – while the set design is visually, audibly and technically dramatic, including especially Christopher’s putting together, bit by bit throughout the performance, a toy electric train set covering the whole stage.  It lights up and starts the train running as the play ends – highly symbolic of Christopher’s journey.

There is plenty to think about from an adult point of view, even though the design, in technique, is what the best of theatre-in-education teams would do – if they had the money.  A good comparison would be with Australia’s Shake & Stir Company, for example in their stage interpretation of  Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (reviewed on this blog March 9, 2016). 

The inability of Christopher’s mother to cope with a son who cannot recognise ordinary emotional clues, let alone respond to them except by extraordinary but purely literal logical comment, and her finding solace in a neighbour’s husband, is sad.  The response of Christopher’s father in violently rejecting his wife, killing the neighbour’s dog, telling his son that his wife has died (including a lengthy fiction about her time in hospital and her death), and hiding her letters addressed to Christopher from London, is an awful indictment of human vindictiveness.  This is an adult tale of the human condition.

Yet, because the core of the play is the plot and the characters cannot be fully developed, I found it hard to believe how Christopher’s mother could return to Swindon so easily – though it was true that she continued to live apart from her husband and, I suppose, kept herself at a distance from married intimacy just enough to support her son’s continuing need for help.  The play did show his father’s attempt to regain his son’s acceptance – this was a symbolic gentle hand-touching – and Christopher’s rejection of the contact.  I haven’t read the novel and at this point I’m therefore only considering Simon Stephens’ play. 

There are certainly adult concerns and issues here, but the happy ending as Christopher receives his result – which he accepts without excitement since he had no doubts about his having completed the exam perfectly – leaves me unsatisfied.  His teacher (Julie Hale), a great example of compassionate professionalism, is overcome by Christopher’s success, as is his mother, and even his father sincerely tells Christopher how proud he is.  But the play fails the adult education question I have: what chance does this extreme Asperger Syndrome character really have of coping when he is frantic under the normal bombardment of noise and movement which is part of other peoples’ ordinary lives; when he is obsessive to the extreme that his mother has to clean his toilet before he can use it after any stranger; and when he quickly turns to aggressive acts like hitting and even trying to stab someone – admittedly his mother’s London manfriend who is clearly obnoxious.

This play doesn’t offer any hope to us adults, except for the everlasting patience of the teacher – who, of course, even so, must remain at a professional distance and refuse Christopher’s request to live with her in her house.

So, I conclude that this production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time is an interesting example of theatre-in-education which raises questions for adult consideration – but leaves us with no easy answers or even suggestions.  That’s why I find the promotion of the production – done in much the same format as for the recent royal wedding – is superficial commercialism, which I find grating, when the issues of how we can improve the lives of people born with such differences as Asperger’s Syndrome are deeply difficult, and require great respect from the rest of us.

Joshua Jenkins and Emma Beattie
in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Director – Marianne Elliott; Designer – Bunnie Christie; Lighting Designer – Paule Constable; Video Designer – Finn Ross; Movement Directors – Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett (Frantic Assembly); Music – Adrian Sutton; Sound Designer – Ian Dickinson (Autograph)

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Saint Joan by George Bernad Shaw

Sarah Snook as Joan
in Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
Photo: Brett Boardman

Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw.  Sydney Theatre Company at Roslyn Packer Theatre, June 5 – 30, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

I first acknowledge George Bernard Shaw.  At 16, my adult life began with my reading his 1924 play Saint Joan and his Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.  This phase took me from the fifties to the sixties, to Bob Dylan’s words about The Times They Are A-changing: “I had to play this song on the same night that President Kennedy died.”

Now in 2018, at a similar age Shaw was when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925, I humbly acknowledge Imara Savage and Sarah Snook for showing me the right Saint Joan for our times, true to Shaw and the direction of change – even in the face of those who would take us backwards to the fifties or worse.

This production of Saint Joan must surely travel the world.  Not merely because it has such clarity of purpose and theatrical intensity, but because people need to understand the ethics of civilisation – if you like, of the Western tradition.

Sarah, Imara and writer Emme Hoy have done what I had never imagined could be done: they have made Shaw’s work even more powerful than he could have known.  As Imara has written in her Director’s Note: “Shaw, like Joan, was a thoroughly modern individual, a rebel and an agitator.  It is in this spirit that we have approached the work.  And whilst failure is always a possibility, an unambitious Saint Joan is really no Saint Joan at all.”

They have trimmed and refocussed the original script because times have indeed a-changed.  Shaw’s audience, shortly after the mass destruction of World War I, needed to have Joan, seeking support early in her career, introduced to them via some seemingly inconsequential comedy at Robert de Baudricourt’s expense: “No eggs!  No eggs!  Thousand thunders, man, what do you mean by no eggs?”  His steward explains:  “Sir: it is not my fault.  It is the act of God.”

Today’s audience, after World Wars I and II and the current threat of a breakdown in world order, wants humour of a different kind – direct and pointed.  And so we begin today with the meeting in Scene IV of Richard de Beauchamp Earl of Warwick and Bishop Cauchon of Beauvais.  Apart from asides like “We were not fairly beaten, my lord.  No Englishman is ever fairly beaten”, the issue of Joan’s success – “Charles is to be crowned at Rheims, practically by the young woman from Lorraine; and – I must not deceive you, nor flatter your hopes – we cannot prevent it...” as Warwick lays the political cards out:  “It would, I presume, be the duty of your reverend lordship to denounce her to the Inquisition, and have her burnt for that offence” of being a sorceress.

This is Shaw with no leavening of the horror of Joan’s situation.  This the Shaw whose every word is telling, whether it makes us laugh or cringe in its irony.  Nothing of Shaw’s writing is lost, while some is added so that we come to know and understand Joan’s voices.  We know from the beginning of this production that we are in the hands of a great playwright.  Sarah’s Joan becomes more than a mere theatrical symbol as she realises how she has been fooled into signing a confession which will lead to a life worse than death.  Sarah’s performance is nothing short of miraculous.

Focus in simplicity of costume, set design, lighting and sound is the keynote to this production.  Wherever it goes, this design must go with it.  See it very soon if you can, or seek out Sydney Theatre Company’s Saint Joan wherever in the world you may find it.



Director – Imara Savage
Additional Writers – Imara Savage, Sarah Snook, Emme Hoy

Set Designer – David Fleischner; Costume Designer – Renee Mulder; Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper; Composer & Sound Designer – Max Lyandvert

Gareth Davies – Dauphin / King / Assessor / George
John Gaden – Inquisitor / Archbishop
Brandon McClelland – General / Executioner
Sean O’Shea – Priest
Socratis Otto – Officer / Prosecutor
Sarah Snook – Joan
Anthony Taufa – Brother / Bluebeard / Julian
David Whitney – Earl / Captain
William Zappa – Bishop




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison

Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, June 15 – July 21, 2018

Previewed by Frank McKone
June 16

The Ensemble Theatre this week brings the original stage play of Marjorie Prime to Australia for the first time.  Written in 2013, workshopped that year at the Pacific Playwrights’ Festival, and premiered by the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles in 2014, the play made Jordan Harrison a Pultizer Prize finalist.

The film adaptation by Michael Almereyda, made after the play’s New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons, was a winner at the 2017 Sundance Festival.

Opening night on Tuesday is already booked out, and I’m not surprised.  In many ways the 85 minute stage play is more tightly focussed on the relationship between Marjorie and her daughter Tess than the more “discursive” movie, which is only slightly longer.  This is because all the external scenes – about the dog Toni on the beach, for example – are created by us in the theatre, in our imaginations, as we watch, listen and try to work out what really happened and what were slightly manipulated memories among the questions, answers and stories of the four living characters and the three “primes”.

For those who haven’t heard of “primes” (and haven’t seen the trailer of the film on Youtube), these are artificially intelligent compassionate robots of those who have died, providing some kind of comfort for those still living.  They are ‘primed’ about the past by what the living tell them about themselves and others.  In a sense, we in the audience are ‘primed’ too, though we don’t speak back, asking questions or commenting as the ‘primes’ do – we just listen, think things out and maybe talk to our friends afterwards.

When Maggie Dence appears as Marjorie Prime after her earlier scenes as Marjorie, the subtle shift in her characterisation is startling and even quite disturbing.  The same is true later of Lucy Bell as her Tess translates into Tess Prime.  We always know that the long dead Walter is Walter Prime (still aged about 30), but I found myself wondering whether Jon, Tessa’s husband – a linking character throughout the drama – is or is not a Prime at certain points.

On stage the immediacy, especially in the Ensemble’s intimate theatre-in-the-round, makes the play stronger, I think, than a movie which feels more like ordinary reality.  Because Mitchell Butel has kept his design simple and stylised as an obviouly staged performance – where the actors shift the furniture and props into place for each new scene – the effect is to create a kind of Brechtian distancing which makes us think about the issues – of human family interactions as much as ideas about artificial intelligence devices and their potential in our future lives.

The quality of the acting in the preview I saw goes without saying considering the experienced cast, and certainly says not to miss the opportunity – after Opening Night, of course – to see Marjorie Prime in its original form.

Director – Mitchell Butel
Set & Costume Designer – Simon Greer
Alexander Berlage – Lighting Designer
Lucy Bell – Tess
Maggie Dence – Marjorie
Jake Speer – Walter
Richard Sydenham - Jon





© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018 The Hypochondriac, adapted by Hilary Bell

The Hypochondriac – a new version of Molière’s Le Malade Imaginaire by Hilary Bell.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Playhouse, Sydney, June 9 – July 1, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 17

Though mildly amusing, this highly energetic slapstick farce, full literally of toilet sight-gags, does a disservice to the still relevant issue of forced marriage.  Molière was the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, whose plays were banned because his satiric comedies threatened the powers that be – resulting in his excommunication from the Catholic Church and his incarceration in the debtors’ prison.

Writer Hilary Bell and director Jo Turner have no likelihood of such a fate; yet forced marriage is still “normal” in many places, and in the news especially in the UK as well as here in Australia.  When Argan, the recalcitrant father, complained towards the end that his brother Béralde and his housemaid (sorry, household manager) Toinette were making fun of him – as they were well justified in doing – I suddenly thought “But this play is making fun of Molière” – as it certainly should not.

Molière’s play certainly has singing and dancing, but not of the kind that Bell has used.  His characters, like Pan, Daphne, the Two Zephyrs and the Troupe of Shepherdesses and Shepherds were satirical romantic fantasies, to contrast with the awful anti-romantic Argan and his cynical moneygrubbing second wife Béline whose only concern is to force his daughter Angélique either into marrying for Argan’s personal convenience or being sent to a nunnery so she cannot inherit his property and wealth – for Béline’s personal convenience.

Bell has, I think, combined the original all-singing all-dancing prologue with the later version of Molière’s play (in the 1674 edition) which has instead a romantic forest scene with “agréable” music, fauns and satyrs, with a single shepherdess who sings that all the doctors in the world – despite their “grand mots latin” cannot cure the pain of love.

This has taken the direction of Bell’s version into inane television advertising of “alternative” medicines and concentrated on making fun of Argan’s fixation of believing he is sick because of the massive influence of the alternative medicine industry.  This becomes the “serious intention” of her play, setting aside the matter of how Angélique is treated; whereas for Molière it was his then very modern issue of the denial of love and independence of women which was central to the play – while Argan’s “malade imaginaire” is a sideline device to make a satirical comment on how unfeeling and self-centred such fathers are.

Then there is an awful irony in the behaviour of Béline, who will send her step-daughter Angéline to a nunnery to gain her, Béline’s, financial independence.  Despite the overwhelming slapstickery of this production, Sophie Gregg as Béline managed to make her nasty enough in her description of her husband, when he has collapsed and is apparently dead, to bring us back adequately to Molière’s true intention to expose upper class graft and inhumanity.

It is also true, as Bell has suggested with a more limited cast, that Molière ended with ‘une cérémonie burlesque” with eight enimatic syringes, six apothecaries, twenty-two doctors, eight surgeons, all singing and dancing.  This goes on for seven pages in Molière’s script, written in extremely funny rhyming imitation Latin, with the climax line “Fluxus de sang, et dysenterias!”

But the problem for Bell was that modern medicine has split into the scientific and so-called alternative.  Her adaptation can only deal with the fad for alternative medicine, while for Molière there was no alternative.  In his day it was true, as the Shepherdess sang “Votre plus haut savoir n’est que pure chimère, / Vains et peu sages médecins.”

Unfortunately to satirise alternative medicine today has not enough strength as a theme to support a parallel serious criticism of the treatment of women in our time.  Going for slapstick, however well done by the likes of Darren Gilshenan and Lucia Mastrantone, sacrificed that second theme and only really got to grips with the first in Gabriel Fancourt’s scene as Béralde berating his stupid brother Argan for believing such medical nonsense.

See The Hypochondriac for the clowning and brilliant timing, but don’t expect Molière.  For that, you should have seen Justin Fleming’s translation of Tartuffe into wonderful modern English rhyming couplets in the Bell Shakespeare production at the Sydney Opera House in 2014 ( reviewed on this blog August 13, 2014).


Playwright & Lyricist – Hilary Bell
Director – Jo Turner
Production Designer – Michael Hankin
Lighting Designer – Verity Hampson
Sound Designer & Additional Music – Maria Alfonsine
Music for Songs – Phillip Johnston

Gabiel Fancourt – Cléante / Bonnefoi / Béralde
Darren Gilshenan – Argan
Sophie Gregg – Béline
Emma Harvie – Angélique
Lucia Mastrantone – Toinette
Jamie Oxenbould – Thomas Diafoirus
Monica Sayers – Doctor Diafoirus


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: The Beginning of Nature by Garry Stewart

The Beginning of Nature, conceived by Garry Stewart.  Australian Dance Theatre National Tour, June – August 2018.  Canberra Theatre Centre, June 14-15, 2018.


Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 14



As a drama goes, birth – excitement – occasional chaos – sex – and death is a reasonable representation of nature as we know it.  As choreographed by Garry Stewart and the dancers of Australian Dance Theatre of Adelaide, South Australia, it’s astonishing that Life on Earth (for it seemed as big a canvas as David Attenborough might draw) could all take place in 80 minutes.

With the range of A to Zephyr’s music drawing us into each mood from the glory of unbridled action to the sadness of final stillness, I was satisfactorily exhausted by the end.

Having not had technical training in dance I would not dare to comment on the amazing athleticism required to perform this work.  How the dancers survive is a mystery to me, let alone how they remember such detail from tiny expressive movements to literally flying – and especially how they can do this suddenly in unison or deliberately out of sync to make images fleetingly appear out of nothing.

In any case, to give a detailed analysis of such a dynamic work would remind me of teenagers being required to produce ‘literary criticisms’ of poems.  They want just to experience the whole poem, not pull it to pieces like cutting up a frog in a science lab.  The Beginning of Nature is an 80 minute poem – just let it stand in its own right – and Enjoy!

2018: Young People and The Arts: The child as cultural citizen.

Young People and The Arts: The child as cultural citizen. 

Industry Forum: Theatre Network Australia at Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) at Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, Sydney (The Wharf), Wednesday May 30, 2018.

Intro by Fraser Corfield, ATYP

Keynote Address by Sue Giles: Young People and The Arts: An Agenda for Change
(Platform Papers No 54, Currency House, Sydney, February 2018)

Sector Updates by:
The House That Dan Built
Monkey Baa
Tantrum Youth Arts
Bankstown Poetry Slam

Industry Panel: Whose Theatre Is It Anyway?
Tasnim Hossain (Writer)
Amy Matthews (Parramatta Riverside Theatres)
Stefo Nantsou (Zeal Theatre)
Sarah Parsons (Outback Theatre for Young People)
Moderated by Sue Giles

Commentary by Frank McKone

Theatre Network Australia, based in Melbourne, held the original forum to launch Sue Giles’ Paper at the Coopers Malthouse on February 2, 2018.  That success was emulated in Sydney, bringing together a wide range of people from theatre practitioners to venue administrators, with a particular concern for young people’s theatre.

For those unaware of the Network’s role: “Theatre Network Australia (TNA) is the leading industry development organisation for the performing arts, prioritising independent artists and small to medium companies.

Based in Melbourne, Australia, TNA works nationally and has a dedicated Victorian program. We run professional development forums, including the biennial Australian Theatre Forum, workshops on current issues for the sector including sustainability, touring, diversity in theatre, Indigenous theatre, women in theatre and interconnections, and we provide information and resources through our popular e-news and the online resource library.”

Then there is the Theatre Network NSW (TNN) [which] “is the peak agency for theatre in NSW. ... All the latest theatre news from around NSW and goings-on in the network.” 

Additionally many attending in Sydney are active in ASSITEJ (International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People) which “unites theatres, organisations and individuals throughout the world who make theatre for children and young people. ASSITEJ is dedicated to the artistic, cultural and educational rights of children and young people across the globe and advocates on behalf of all children regardless of nationality, cultural identity, ability, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion. ASSITEJ brings people together so that they can share knowledge and practice within the field of theatre for children and young people in order to deepen understandings, develop practice, create new opportunities and strengthen the global sector. The members of Assitej are National centers, Professional Networks, and individuals from around 100 countries across the world.”

In other words, my role on this occasion was to respectfully watch, listen and learn.

You might have thought that, with themes like “the child as cultural citizen” and “whose theatre is it anyway?”, the talk would be perhaps pseudo-philosophical or aggressively political.  I could have spouted in that manner endlessly, but held my tongue as people spoke, many more than those mentioned above, with stories of practical experience.  From these stories, the issues which had been flagged in Sue Giles’ Paper became manifest. [See Canberra Critics’ Circle and Frank McKone  March 20, 2018 at www.ccc-canberracriticscircle.blogspot.com and www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au ]

Time and again, young speakers proved the essential point that they are ‘cultural citizens’, as innovative designers and managers of successful theatre programs.  The young woman organiser of the Bankstown Poetry Slam, Sara Mansour, was particularly impressive for her determination to change her local culture and the conventional assumptions made by others about that part of Sydney.

At the other end of the age range, Stefo Nantsou’s story of Zeal Theatre and his refusal to be bound by the conventions of government funding over many decades provided a fascinating take on the politics of theatre.  Rather than following the conservative line of liberalism (no taxation and plenty of unregulated commercial profiteering), his form of what I might call Artistic Marxism equally rejects government control alongside anti-commercialism.  “Zeal Theatre is an internationally renowned touring theatre company dedicated to creating plays for schools, theatres and festivals. Founded in 1989 by actor / writer / director Stefo Nantsou, Zeal has created over 45 original productions and has performed throughout Australia, Europe, North America, Asia, New Zealand & South Africa, with their plays being staged in over 30 countries worldwide.”

So there!

Somewhere in the middle is the work of Sarah Parsons at Outback Theatre for Young People which “engages with young people from regional and remote communities to make distinctive contemporary theatre through collaborative processes, dedicated to creating innovative, participant-owned youth theatre. We engage young people, aged 4 to 26 years, from throughout the Riverina region of NSW and Northern Victoria, in collaborative, generative theatre projects that celebrate their lives and their aspirations. OTYP works with an Artistic Directorate model where a small group of Artistic Directors work across our region, supported by a Creative Producer. Each project is designed for and shaped by the participants, with two stages over two years in order to develop sustainable arts practice in our communities.”

Yet, she told us, none of the high schools in this vast region, which stretches up to Broken Hill, has a drama teacher.  Nor a theatre.  But no matter – any space, even after many hours’ travelling from place to place, will be turned into an “Empty Space” à la Peter Brook.  Hers was a brave and daunting story.

Even within the industry there were questions about the extent of support, not only for theatre for children and young people but more especially by them. Amy Matthews gave a spirited defence on behalf of Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres programming, going beyond assumptions of other times and places about participation by children and young people.

So where I had at first considered Platform Paper 54 as too much focussed on advocacy, I now understand that the key issue is recognition of and proper support for children and young people as the cultural citizens they already are.  Where the Paper was subtitled An Agenda for Change it did not just mean we should be doing theatre ‘with, for and by’ young people, but that this well-established branch of arts industry should be better understood, including by the powers that be who make political and funding decisions.

I see this Industry Forum as an essential step, to articulate clearly within the industry an agreed understanding of what Young Peoples’ Theatre consists of, and what distinguishes it from other kinds of theatre.  The panel discussion and Q&A session were, I think, very successful. 

Now I see the need for Theatre Network Australia to take determined and long-term action to develop understanding in the general community to underpin campaigning for improved and continuing funding.  The case of Outback Theatre for Young People seems to me to be an excellent model to start the ball rolling.

Contact:

Nicole Beyer, Executive Director
nicole@tna.org.au
Simone Schinkel, General Manager
simone@tna.org.au
Bethany Simons, Program Director
bethany@tna.org.au
Jamie Lewis, Communications Coordinator
jamie@tna.org.au
TNA E-News Submissions
content@tna.org.au

---

Office Telephone:
(03) 8640 6014
Office/Postal Address:
Theatre Network Australia,
222 Bank Street
South Melbourne VIC 3205
Australia


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Sense & Sensibility by Kate Hamill

Sense & Sensibility by Kate Hamill, based on the novel by Jane Austen.  State Theatre Company South Australia at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, May 29 – June 2, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 30

Director – Geordie Brookman; Designer – Ailsa Paterson; Lighting Designer – Geoff Cobham.

Musical Arrangements – Stuart Day and Cast; Accent Coach – Jennifer Innes; Wardrobe Supervisor – Emma Brockliss; Wigs/Dresser – Jana di Biasi; Ball Choreographer – Erin Fowler.

Cast (alphabetical):

Rachel Burke – Margaret Dashwood / Lucy Steele / Gossip / Servant
Miranda Daughtry – Marianne Dashwood
Rashidi Edward – John Willoughby / Thomas / Gossip
Lizzy Falkland – Fanny Dashwood / Mrs Jennings / Gossip
Dale March – John Dashwood / Colonel Brandon / Gossip / Servant
Caroline Mignone – Mrs Dahwood / Anne Steel / Gossip / Doctor
Nathan O’Keefe – Edward Ferrars / Lady Middleton / Robert Ferrars / Gossip / Servant
Geoff Revell – Sir John Middleton / Mrs Ferrars / Gossip / Servant
Anna Steen – Elinor Dashwood

In rehearsal: Miranda Daughtry and Rashidi Edward
as Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby

An exquisite delicacy, beautifully prepared and presented, this adaptation of Sense and Sensibility makes a traditional recipe in the style of modern cuisine.  Were Jane Austen here to see it she would be pleasantly surprised, somewhat intrigued, and absolutely delighted.

She would undoubtedly recognise the qualities of satirical farce, not only in the French commedia dell’arte style but in the English tradition begun by her novelist predecessor Henry Fielding, whose 1730 play, The Author’s Farce, caused the infamous Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 to be enacted “to control and censor what was being said about the British government through theatre. The act was modified by the Theatres Act 1843 and was finally named as the Theatres Act 1968.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_Act_1737]

It was a stroke of genius on the part of the American author [www.kate-hamill.com/], director Geordie Brookman and designer Ailsa Paterson to see how subversive Austen’s first published novel was – and still is when presented in modern times as great fun, yet with a dark shadow for women, and indeed for men, if they have their independence untimely ripped from them by unscrupulous wealthy men. Our amusement turns to genuine concern as we see the real possibility that Marianne Dashwood might die.

Even when we find ourselves at a rom com ending, we now know the fears that twist young men’s behaviour and compromise young women seeking love, because of the demands of social status.

Yet watching was exciting – I just wished I could have been in the cast.  Everyone on stage and off were obviously having so much fun, and I can imagine the rehearsals with those costumes, hairstyles, amazing set changes, bird-whistles, ‘musical’ accompaniment and clowning, and finally the stunning lighting, all part of the enjoyment.  Pure jealousy on my part. 

Though I have to say, the costume changes for so many of the actors must have been scary.  How on earth Dale March managed to get so correctly and precisely kitted out as Colonel Brandon so fast between three completely different characters – or even worse for Nathan O’Keefe playing the romantic lead Edward one moment, then his brother Robert, and the fearsome Lady Middleton in between being a servant and a village gossip monger in the wonderful sort-of terribly British Ancient Greek chorus.

It’s the intelligence in the fun that I am certain Jane Austen herself would love about this staging of her first major work – rejected in its early version when her father tried to get it published in 1797, and reworked as the family moved to Bath and then Southampton in considerable financial straits, very much like the Dashwood mother and her three daughters: Elinor, the sensible; Marianne, with more sensibility than sense; and Margaret, without either sense or sensibility as yet.  The playing of these three by Anna Steen, Miranda Daughtry and Rachel Burke was a wonder to behold.

Don’t expect to see anything like the 1995 movie with Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood, Kate Winslet as Marianne, Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon, Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars and Greg Wise as John Willoughby.  Of that version, one reviewer, Bob Smithouser, wrote “Jane Austen's nineteenth century novel is brought to life as a refreshing tribute to a more innocent age of ladies and gentlemen.”  Forget the ‘innocence’: Hamill’s play – and especially this modern cuisine design and directing of it – is a terrific satire of competitive social status.  As relevant today as it ever was, just as Jane Austen intended.

In rehearsal - I wish I could have been there
Nathan O'Keefe and Anna Steen

© Frank McKone, Canberra