2018: Canberra Theatre Centre Program 2019

Canberra Theatre Centre Program 2019

Previewed by Frank McKone
October 29, 2018

Following a warmly appreciative-of-the-arts speech, by ACT Arts Minister Gordon Ramsay, the 2019 Program Launch was short and keat – ing.  The "Honourable Paul Keating" did not go quite as far as to call us unrepresentative middle-class swill, but even if he had, his absolutely biassed take-over of the prime position as MC, emphasising his own show The Gospel According to Paul above all (especially denigrating that “cheap” show The Wharf Revue) would have been applauded just as enthusiastically.

I suspect a campaign for Jonathan Biggins as Prime Minister (so long as he only ever speaks in the inimitable Keating manner) would be a great success.  Indeed, I thought Biggins sounded more impressive than Keating himself, and certainly spoke with more intelligent wit than many currently in Parliament.

The Canberra Theatre Centre is an ACT Government-run venue, administered by the Cultural Facilities Corporation.  In some countries a standard collection of conservative work might be implied, but the range of shows for us next year seems to me to represent an appropriate mix of the usual expectations and up-to-date developments.  The works are all imported, of course, leaving the other government owned theatre, The Street, attached to the Australian National University campus, to take up locally written work at a professional level, as well as more ‘fringe’ visiting productions.

The Program is presented in packaged suggestions: 

NO MORE FOMO
I’m obviously not up to date, having no idea what that suggests.  An online dictionary tells me: noun. Slang, a feeling of anxiety or insecurity over the possibility of missing out on something, as an event or an opportunity: If I say no to a party invitation, I get a bad case of FOMO.  In the program, “For those who need to be first to see brand-new work”, we find

Dear old Biggins (sorry – I always think of the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins) with The Gospel According to Paul in March;

Sydney Theatre Company’s production of the new play How to Rule the World in April by Indigenous writer Nakkiah Lui, following her Black is the New White (reviewed on this blog March 28, 2018);

The Sydney Dance Company’s new works by Bonachela/Nankivell/Lane, Cinco, Neon Aether and WOOF in May;

Kate Mulvaney in a new play by Suzie Miller, Prima Facie, presented by Griffin Theatre Company (Sydney) in June; and

Bangarra: 30th Anniversary Season – A celebration of contemporary dance, story and culture, “inspired by 65,000 years of culture and the continual evolution of Indigenous storytelling", under Artistic Director Stephen Page, in July.

These and other shows are suggested under headings

A GREAT NIGHT OUT

John Bell in Moliere’s The Miser (Bell Shakespeare) in April;

Barbara and the Camp Dogs from Belvoir, Sydney – “A Rock-Gig Musical…part road-story, part family drama, part political cry-from-the-heart” by Ursula Yovich and Alana Valentine, in May/June;

The Melbourne Theatre Company stage adaptation of the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard of Shakespeare in Love, in August;

The 39 Steps, adapted from the movie by Alfred Hitchcock and the novel by John Buchan as comedy in which “four actors perform 139 roles in 100 minutes at breakneck hilarity”, presented by the State Theatre Company of South Australia, in October / November; and

The Wharf Revue 2019 in November.

GET POLITICAL suggests
The Gospel According to Paul; How to Rule the World; Barbara and the Camp Dogs; Prima Facie; The Wharf Revue; and adds

American folk singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie (Alice’s Restaurant Massacree) in a one night stand on April 22 (presented by BluesFest).

GET READY TO LOL (For those who enjoy a good giggle) includes
The Gospel According to Paul; How to Rule the World; The Miser; Shakespeare in Love; The Wharf Revue; and adds

Bell Shakespeare’s production of Much Ado About Nothing starring Zindzi Okenyo as Beatrice, in October.

And finally MOVERS AND SHAKERS, including Bonachela/Nankivell/Lane; Barbara and the Camp Dogs; Bangarra: 30th Anniversary Season; and the add-on

Nicole Car & Etienne Depuis, with Jayson Gillham, (presented by Andrew McKinnon) in a one-off recital on August 9, “featuring romantic French and Spanish songs, as well as popular opera arias and duets”.  Australian Nicole and husband Etienne “recently starred in Puccini’s La Boheme at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

It seems to me that the only months I can get away for grey nomad adventures next year will be in February (already booked for Tasmania) and September.

https://canberratheatrecentre.com.au/

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: The Wharf Revue 2018: Déjà Revue

The Wharf Revue 2018: Déjà Revue.  Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, October 23 – November 3, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 23

Written and Created by Jonathan Biggins and Drew Forsythe
Designer – Charles Davis; Musical Director – Andrew Worboys; Lighting Designer – Matt Cox; Sound and Video Designer – David Bergman

Cast:
Rachael Beck; Jonathan Biggins; Simon Burke (for Drew Forsythe); Douglas Hansell; Andrew Worboys.



Brilliantly executed, while the Australian Government self-destructs in real life, this year’s Wharf Revue gets it all together on the satirical stage. 

While Rachael Beck as Stormy Weather (aka Daniels) nearly gets into the all-together, revealing all about a Donald so sadly inadequate and essentially uncomprehending of social or political complexity that he absolutely trumps nobody.  Not only does Stormy run rings around him: Putin and Erdogan (Donald thought Turkey was what he ate at Thanksgiving) make mincemeat of him (and the show was written before the news of the Saudi murder of Jamal Khashoggi).

I can only hope that this year’s subtitle Déjà Revue does not suggest that we’ve seen it all before, and that this could be the end of the show’s decade and a half run.  Maybe the incisive satire may prevent another back-stabbed ex-Prime Minister being performed as the pantomime Principal Boy, beautifully played by Beck, singing “Poor Little Me” as Cinderella is kicked off stage by the Three Ugly Sisters –  Kevin (!!) Andrews, Eric(a) Abetz with Tony (Toni?) Abbott the most ugly Fairy Godmother of them all. Peter (Peta?) Dutton gets his dance with Malcolm later.

Rachael Beck and Douglas Hansell
as Malcolm Turnbull (Principal Boy) and Peter Dutton (Prince Charmless)
Photo: Brett Boardman

Because revues traditionally consist of a series of skits, in 90 minutes there are far too many items for me to review them all.  But the audience members around me said it all: so many times I heard not just uncontainable laughter, but people going silent and saying almost under their breath, “Oh…No!”.  Perhaps the Tamworth Golden Guitar Country Music performance of Barnaby Joyce, including the cooking of his little sausage in the business of his family values, caught our breath most strongly.

But the highlight most memorable for this Canberra, the Federal Capital, audience was surely Biggins’ Paul Keating, the ascerbic previous Prime Minister, the last Labor man before the awful election of Conservative John Howard in 1996.  (I was there in the Tally Room, and I’ll never forget.)  Howard doesn’t appear in Déjà Revue, but we all know how he is still such an influence – especially in last Saturday’s Wentworth by-election to replace Principal Boy, Malcolm Turnbull.

Paul Keating
Photo: Encyclopedia Britannica

 Biggins’ imagined speech that Keating would give – with all the mannerisms, significant pauses and turns of phrase that we know so well – is a devastating review of our current alt-Conservative regime, tearing itself apart.  The parallel in a later scene is where Donald Trump fails to recognise his current security adviser, John Bolton, as he thinks Bolton is each of the many previous advisers he has forgotten he sacked.

“We don’t hate,” says the Wharf Revue's Jonathan Biggins. “I actually pity politicians tremendously.”  [https://www.audreyjournal.com.au/arts/wharf-revue-2018/ ]  The strength of this year’s show is that the satire is so effective because we find ourselves pitying while we laugh.  The Keating speech could have been written by Paul Keating himself – a withering indictment of political ineptitude.  Biggins’ performance was cheered and applauded, while appreciated for the comic tradition in his imitation of the real Keating’s character.

Simon Burke was so good that I didn’t miss the always terrific Drew Forsythe.  Forsythe will be back on stage for the Sydney season, but catch the Wharf Revue 2018: Déjà Revue in Canberra if you can.

https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2018/the-wharf-revue-2018

Jonathan Biggins as President Donald Trump
Photo: Brett Boardman

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Salon at The Street, hosted by Jane Rutter: Composers in Exile

Jane Rutter as herself

Composers in Exile by

Peter Coleman-Wright – Baritone and Piano
and the Nexas Quartet:
Michael Duke – Soprano Saxophone
Andrew Smith – Alto Saxophone
Nathan Henshaw – Tenor Saxophone
Jay Byrnes – Baritone Saxophone
with Jane Rutter – Flute

The Street Theatre, Canberra, October 19, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

L to R: Jay Byrnes, Michael Duke, Peter Coleman-Wright, Andrew Smith, Nathan Henshaw
in Composers in Exile

Jane Rutter introduced the show with Eight Pieces for Solo Flute composed in 1927 by Paul Hindemith.  Like the other composers in the main part of the performance, he had been conscripted into the German Army in World War I.  As the Nazis gained strength and complete power by 1933, and the official criticism of Hindemith’s work became intolerable,  he “finally emigrated to Switzerland in 1938 (in part because his wife was of partially Jewish ancestry), before moving to settle in the United States in 1940.”  [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hindemith ]

Rutter’s fine playing brought out for us the sense of release through music mixed with the sense of foreboding that was the key to appreciating the work not only of Hindemith but of those other composers who took up their fascination with banned American jazz, became Communists, were Jewish, and sought to educate the people politically through entertaining cabaret. 

Finally escaping as many did to the USA, they became a major influence as musical and film score composers on the perception we now have of American popular music and song before the advent of rock’n’roll; such as the long-term favourite September which ends the show.  It first appeared in the 1938 Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday, and then in the 1950 film September Affair.  How many realise that the music is by Kurt Weill (of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera fame) to words by the serious American writer, Maxwell Anderson!

Projected behind the players, as they took on the roles of composers Weill, Eisler, Schreker, Korngold and Stolz, were photos not only of them but of many of the scenes they witnessed or were happening in Germany, especially to Jews in the 1930s – in the streets, behind the wire, with signs in shop windows and official notices.  Jaunty or romantic though the music seemed, reality haunted the scene from behind.

The four saxophones (they were banned, too) made a fascinating band, with all the expressive possibilities from joy to despair (sometimes even overwhelming the power of Coleman-Wright’s operatic strength – partly, I think, because of the not-so-good acoustics of The Street auditorium); and a special highlight was Jane Rutter singing the part of Pirate Jenny from The Threepenny Opera, in a very lively translation of her Whore House song in Act 2  – at least compared to that by Hugh McDiarmid that was the much duller official version when I directed it in 1976.

For me the show was enlightening history as well as a musically entertaining trip back to the days of those great talents between the World Wars, when a bit of unusually syncopated jazz played on a saxophone could be taken by a government to be such a threat.  Those composers, forced into exile or execution, made art which has far outlasted the murderers.  Thanks to Nexas Quartet, Peter Coleman-Wright and the irrepressible Jane Rutter for presenting Composers in Exile.

Jane Rutter in character

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: An Enemy of the People by Melissa Reeves after Henrik Ibsen

An Enemy of the People by Melissa Reeves after Henrik Ibsen.  Belvoir at Belvoir St Upstairs, Sydney, October 11 – November 4, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 13

Director – Anne-Louise Sarks; Set & Costume Designer – Mel Page; Lighting Designer – Verity Hampson; Composer & Sound Designer – Stefan Gregory

Cast:
Morton Kiil – Peter Carroll; Randine – Catherine Davies; Peter Stockman – Leon Ford; Hovstad – Steve Le Marquand; Aslaksen – Kenneth Moraleda; Dr Stockman – Kate Mulvaney; Petra – Nikita Waldron; Billing – Charles Wu

Photos: Brett Boardman

Nikita Waldron, Leon Ford, Kate Mulvaney
as Petra, her uncle Peter and her mother Dr Stockman
An Enemy of the People, Belvoir 2018

Belvoir may be a “Major” in the Australian theatre scene – and therefore we can expect productions of plays from the past in the standard canon – but when I leave the theatre feeling excited and even quite shivery about our future, I know I’ve seen an old play do for us now what Henrik Ibsen did in Norway in 1882: blow the whistle!

“By Melissa Reeves after Henrik Ibsen” means what it says.  She has taken his play by the throat and shaken out of it all the changes in society that have evolved since – and very much because of – what he started.  Naturalism on stage offended and frightened audiences and officials in his day.  Reeves, with her “gang of four…with Anne-Louise Sarks, Louise Gough, and Kate Mulvaney”, does not offend me – but certainly frightens me.

Ibsen himself, of course, was already telling men off for how they treated women in A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler and Ghosts, while in An Enemy of the People he tells the men off for allowing themselves to be corrupted by fear of losing money when they should always stand up for the truth despite the consequences.

Here’s the relevant ending in the Wikipedia account:
Dr. Stockmann's father-in-law, Morton Kiil, arrives to say that he has just bought shares in the Baths with the money intended for the legacy that Dr. Stockmann's wife will inherit. He expects that this fact will cause his son-in-law to stop his crusade in order to insure that his wife and children will have a secure future. Dr. Stockmann rebuffs Kiil's threat and also ignores Peter's advice to leave town for a few months. Dr. Stockmann's wife tells him she is afraid that the people will drive him out of town. But Dr. Stockmann replies that he intends to stay and make them understand "that considerations of expediency and justice turn morality and justice upside down." He ends by proclaiming himself the strongest man in town because he is able to stand alone.

But the Gang of Four Women at Belvoir know that two issues are front and centre today: women being silenced, and the power of social media.  So their Dr Stockman is the widow of Ibsen’s Stockmann; Morton Kiil is her father-in-law; Peter, the mayor, is her brother; and the legacy money is for her daughter Petra.

In their ending Dr Stockman, like Ibsen’s Stockmann, goes over-the-top at the public meeting (except that they both spoke nothing but the truth) in a magnificent performance by Kate Mulvaney.  Her windows are not broken like his had been, but are scrawled with troll language: ‘bitch’ or was it 'witch' (as in ‘ditch the witch’ from Julia Gillard days) is the operative word.

The mother nearly gives in to her father-in-law’s threat to impoverish his granddaughter, but Petra, who has already been dismissed from her casual teaching job, tells Dr Stockman it’s too late – she has already posted everything on social media.  The truth is now out there.  Petra will stand alone.

Steve Le Marquand
as newspaper proprieter Hovstad, seeing his future as a politician
in the polluted waters of the health spa

At the public meeting

After the public meeting

Two moods of Dr Stockman: Kate Mulvaney

Catherine Davies as Dr Stockman's cleaner

The production of An Enemy of the People is brilliant.  Leon Ford is an awful mayor and brother, even raising in public, stories about his sister’s mental health after her husband died.  Peter Carroll’s Morton Kiil thinks the pollution story is fake news and remains frustratingly obtuse until the very end.  Nikita Waldron produces such a sensible and aware Petra for us to sincerely hope she will be able to stand the forces that we know will be brought to bear.  And Kate Mulvaney, in a fascinating kind of way, almost brought the strength of her Richard III to mind as she handled the most risky part of the show with such guts.

As a family story, there was more laughter from us watching than in ‘straight’ versions of An Enemy of the People, such as Hayes Gordon’s intense drama at Ensemble Theatre which I saw in 1969.  But even Hayes didn’t dare do what Anne-Louise has done – turn the whole theatre into the public meeting, with handouts to us all of pictures of the terrible skin disease effects of the heavy metal pollution of the spa baths.

This is brave theatre indeed, absolutely powerful in the Belvoir Upstairs shape.  The focus is concentrated on Dr Stockman on her microphone trying to manage the mayor who demands control, the small businessman with nothing but immediate profit on his mind, the newspaper proprieter with an aim to take over the town council, the aggressive reporter with his own agenda, interrupting from all points among the audience, marching down to take control and destroy the woman’s right to speak.

I felt like jumping up to take part myself, and kept thinking surely someone else will?  As a theatre critic, I was hamstrung, of course.  How could I become involved  when I am supposed to remain objective?  And why didn’t anyone else jump in?  I suppose because they were conscious they were an audience and were not meant to perform.

But that was the clever part in taking such a risk on the actors’ part.  The key point Dr Stockman makes is that even though we know the truth, and have the evidence in our very hands, what will we do?  Keep mum and do nothing!

And what an indictment of middle class morality among middle class audiences – even those who go to Belvoir.

I’m sure Kate Mulvaney will cope if someone joins in one night.  I hope they do, on her side.  I might still leave the theatre shivering, but more with the excitement of real hope for the future (even if I wonder how the play will end if the audience are at loggerheads with each other as the lights dim at the end of what was Act IV in Ibsen’s original, with the ending I quoted above still to go.)

Please don’t miss An Enemy of the People by Melissa Reeves after Henrik Ibsen at Belvoir.  You have only three weeks to go.




© Frank McKone, Canberra


ADDENDUM

http://www.dailycal.org/2018/10/14/an-enemy-of-the-people/

The Daily Californian reports:

“An Enemy of the People” was brought to Berkeley by Schaubühne, an innovative theatrical group out of Berlin, Germany.

By Kate Tinney

During the final few scenes of the show, the actors opened the discussion of free speech and the value of democracy to the audience, asking them to contribute and pass around the microphone. One woman spoke of Flint, Michigan, another of the limits of representational democracy. Against each comment, Aslaksen (David Ruland), the newspaper’s printer, pushed back, twisting the facts and gaslighting the audience.

“You are trying to silence him, and we’ve had enough of people like you, so shut up and sit down,” one man said, pointing a finger up at Aslaksen.

“Then you drink the damn water,” another shouted against Aslaksen’s insistence that the water was both clean and fixable.

During the Beijing performance of this show just a month ago, this section of the play prompted shouted insults against the government and was met with a complete shutdown of the show and an end of that piece of the tour. In Berkeley, however, a call for government transparency and revolution was met with snaps and cheers from the audience.

There is something uniquely devastating about a show written hundreds of years ago about the mores of society remaining so relevant across cultures and centuries. “An Enemy of the People” was just such a show. Even across languages, Schaubühne effectively updated the show to make it viscerally relevant to today’s society.

2018: Maggie Stone by Caleb Lewis

Maggie Stone by Caleb Lewis.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Theatre, Sydney, September 30 – October 21, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 13

Eliza Logan and Thuso Lekwape
as Maggie Stone and Benedict Deng
in the opening scene, Maggie Stone by Caleb Lewis

All Photos: Robert Catto

Director – Sandra Eldridge; Production Designer – Sallyanne Facer; Lighting Designer – Matt Cox; Composer & Sound Designer – David Bergman; Cultural Advisor & Assistant Producer – Moreblessing Maturure; Dialect Coach & Cultural Consultant – Deng Deng

Cast:
Maggie Stone – Eliza Logan; Amath / Doctor – Kate Bookallil; Amath Deng – Branden Christine; Leo Hermes – Alan Dukes; Georgina Spack – Anna Lee; Benedict Deng / Benny Deng – Thuso Lekwape

Branden Christine and Thuso Lekwape
as Amath Deng and her son Benny

Maggie Stone is a series of short scenes about a money lender and the trap into which a refugee family can fall. 

It’s a play about social conscience – first of all to recognise that in Australia there are criminal and semi-criminal elements in our culture which take advantage of vulnerable people.

Then we must also understand that conditions in refugee camps, such as in Kenya in the case of the Deng family, encourage the same kind of money-borrowing and theft as they find here.  Benedict and Amath manage to get out of that situation before the constant threat of being killed happens.  But it happens here.

Maggie has a heart of stone in the first scene where she refuses to lend the cash that Benedict needs immediately to pay off debts.  Only later she realises that Amath and the children are left without a father because of her decision.  We see her finally succeed in rehabilitating Benedict’s son – Benny is actually the result of Amath having been raped in Kenya – and, through her connections from childhood with the dodgy money-lender Leo, Maggie manages to get Amath and her family back on their feet.

Kate Bookallil
as Doctor

The writing is spare, so the story becomes revealed only bit by bit, with scenes separated by sound bites and blackouts – more like film shots than fully developed scenes.  But the 80 minute length is right for the essential message which is the purpose of the play, which fits in well with the Darlinghurst Theatre Company approach:

…each year we invite professional artists to put forward concepts for our company to develop and produce….We fully fund artists’ work including professional performers at award wages and creative fees…and invariably each new show hits our stage with a sense of urgency and immediacy.

Maggie Stone certainly succeeds in doing so.

Eliza Logan, Branden Christine, Anna Lee
 as Maggie Stone, Amath Deng and do-gooder neighbour Georgina Spack
in confrontation scene, Maggie Stone by Caleb Lewis

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare National Tour at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, October 12 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 12

 Photos: Prudence Upton

Kenneth Ransom as Julius Caesar
Bell Shakespeare 2018

Director – James Evans; Set & Costume Designer – Anna Tregloan; Lighting Designer – Verity Hampson; Composer & Sound Designer – Nate Edmondson; Movement & Fight Director – Scott Witt; Voice Coach – Jess Chambers
Cast:
Julius Caesar – Kenneth Ransom    Calpurnia / Octavius – Emily Havea
Brutus – James Evans (usually Ivan Donato)        Portia – Maryanne Fonceca
Casca / Messala – Ghenoa Gela    Cassius – Nick Simpson-Deeks
Trebonius / Soothsayer / Pindarus – Neveen Hanna
Devius Cinna / Lucilius – Russell Smith
Mark Antony – Sara Zwangobani

 

The movable set for Julius Caesar,
Bell Shakespeare, 2018

I see this production as a ‘mash up’.  I’m not sure what Gens X, Y or Z mean by this term – something like a deliberately untidy iconoclasm, with modern fantasy highlights, in a dressed down rough guide to the human universe.

For me, of the A generation even earlier than the B-B, the missing elements of unity of time and place mean I miss a neat development of an emotional through-line.  But you have to admit that Shakespeare himself, I suspect, was struggling to tie this story together.  The second half can seem interminable after the high drama of the murder and Antony’s ‘lend me your ears’ speech.

So I need to review Bell Shakespeare’s ‘diversity’ production with several audiences in mind.  It begins with Torres Strait Islander woman Ghenoa Gela, in costume as a commoner ready for Shakespeare’s opening street scene, speaking directly to the audience about recognition of the Ngunnawal land on which the performance would take place, as a formal request, in the traditional way, to the elders.  The audience unanimously endorsed her speech with applause.

Then, in Scene 1 Rome.  A Street.,  Flavius, a woman instead of Shakespeare’s male character, orders the commoners home, and Shakespeare’s text is under way.  Ghenoa plays a great commoner with all the kind of humour and body language we recognise as literally Indigenous to Australia.  Her acting skills add to her dance skills, as I have previously noted in her own show My Urrwai in the Sydney Festival (January 19, 2018).  She is a treasure on stage, turning her hand to the role of the first to stab Caesar, as Casca.

Julius Caesar under attack
Bell Shakespeare 2018

By that time we had found ourselves wondering about a lean and hungry looking Caesar, of African descent, whose voice no longer commands attention or seems to justify the clamour of the crowd – is this because, as Cassius tells Brutus in the story of failing to swim the Tiber, the man is physically weakened and on his way out?  He certainly has lost all strategic common sense, stupidly ignoring Calpurnia’s warnings of the danger of appearing in public at his rival Pompey’s tomb.

Then we find that Sara Zwangobani’s Antony is almost some kind of rival to Calpurnia.  Maybe she loves Caesar more than Caesar’s wife does.  It seemed this way when, after her terrific speech manipulating the crowd over Caesar’s dead body, she collapses in tears, drawing aside the shroud and kissing him.  (And is there something to be said about the African connection here?)

Sara Zwangobani as Antony
Bell Shakespeare 2018

The woman, Antony, entirely changes the conventional view of Shakespeare’s play – that the warmonger male Antony cynically uses Caesar’s murder to gain ascendancy, taking Octavius along with him.  But wait, there’s more!  Octavius is now a woman like Antony herself, opposing in more clever warfare, the men – Cassius and Brutus – and winning the day, while the males suitably commit suicide.  The one is a typical young boy risktaker imagining his day of freedom – written literally in Caesar’s blood across a huge banner; while the other, the more sensibly cautious, realises how naïve his political theory, and his military strategy, is.

Now, for modern millenials there is much to discuss in this new mashed-up avocado on toast.  It’s rather the story of Brutus on toast.  His great mistake is a warning for risktakers: before taking action, check out all the possible consequences.  Use the pill-testing facilities at the big music gig.

The message is, Don’t Use Ice.

And if you’re the old style man, sexist and full of self-importance, then watch out for the women – they’ll get you in the end because that’s how it should be.  Just ask Portia, strongly played by Maryanne Fonceca:

“No, my Brutus; you have some sick offence within your mind, / Which, by the right and virtue of my place, / I ought to know of.”

Although she kneels, note her pointed accusation: “Dwell I but in the suburbs / Of your good pleasure?  If it be no more, / Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.”

How’s that for Shakespeare’s relevance in modern times?  And praise must be given for the clarity of meaning that Bell’s actors achieved in speaking Shakespeare’s lines.

So what can I say, being born before the Baby Boomers in the early stages of a World War II even more to be condemned than Antony and Octavius’ defeat of the Roman Republic’s Brutus and Cassius (so that Octavius called himself Augustus as the first Emperor of Rome)?  That this production was a bit too messy for me, needed a more tidy design and direction, and probably should have kept the men in togas so they looked like Romans to suit Shakespeare’s language?

Well, maybe – but that really is for you to decide when they ring the foyer bells for Shakespeare’s  Julius Caesar at the Canberra Theatre till October 20, and then in Sydney at the Opera House from October 23 to November 25.



 © Frank McKone, Canberra