2019: Beware of Pity based on the 1939 novel by Stefan Zweig

Beware of Pity from the novel by Stefan Zweig, in a version by Simon McBurney, James Yeatman, Maja Zade and the ensemble.  Schaubühne Berlin, Germany, and Complicité (London), UK.  Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney Theatre Company), in Sydney Festival, January 23-27, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 23

Direction – Simon McBurney; Co-Direction – James Yeatman; Set Design – Anna Fleischle; Costume Design – Holly Waddington; Lighting Design – Paul Anderson; Sound Design – Pete Malkin; Sound Associate – Benjamin Grant; Video Design – Will Duke; Dramaturgy – Maja Zade.

Performers:
Robert Beyer, Marie Burchard, Johannes Flaschberger, Christoph Gawenda, Moritz Gottwald, Laurenz Laufenberg, Eva Meckbach.

If bühne means “stage” and schau means “show”, then an unfortunate English translation of Schaubühne might be a theatre which stages only for show.  When I add a translation of Complicité in to the mix, I start to wonder about the motivation for putting on Beware of Pity.  Are we expected to be complicit – that is “involved with others in an activity that is unlawful or morally wrong”?

Certainly the style of this production looks terribly like “let’s be as avant garde as possible – that is, ‘favouring or introducing new and experimental ideas and methods’.”  That translation’s unfortunate too, since avant garde became old-hat last century.

I actually fell asleep several times during the first hour of this two-and-a-quarter hours with no interval show.  At times the story seem to be told by the man I took to be the actual story-teller, yet others who may or may not have been characters in the story – on separate microphones from different places on the basically bare stage – seemed to tell their own story, or somebody else’s; while sometimes it seemed that someone spoke the words of another character who was speaking her words at the same time.

I suppose if Complicité is about turning theatre topsy-turvy for the sake of it, that may not be unlawful.  But for me, at least, it looked like show (including lots of sudden explosive noises which woke me up) for the mere sake of show – and that’s pretty much morally wrong theatrically, in my view.

Of course, having to concentrate on reading distant surtitles meant dividing my faculties between watching, listening, working out meaning and keeping up with the storyline – yet it seems that an English company choosing to work with German-speaking actors suggests that this is a planned zeitgeist for many audiences around the world.

However, does the form of presentation mean that the show was completely pointless?  Did the interminable story have a theme of note?

What does it mean to beware of the pity expressed by a socially naïve young lower-class soldier, who gets himself into a mess by trying to do the right thing by a young upper-class wealthy partly-paralysed young woman, after innocently asking her to dance?  Let’s consider.

In modern times in Australia he would have apologised when he realised the situation, she would have said something like “that’s alright – not your fault.”  Her parents might say to him, “Sorry, we should have told you.”  Any pity he felt, as any of us might feel, might make us feel a bit guilty and we might say, “Is there anything I can do?”
 
And yes, it is true that his apparent sympathy for her may turn into warm feelings for him on her part, which he may not be able to reciprocate – and so a complex story might begin.  It might even end in her suicide.  It might make a two hour movie or even a two-act play (with interval).  It might even cause us to think about how an innocent action can lead to unforeseen consequences – a sad reality – but not to Beware of Pity like Shut the Gate with a sign Beware the Dog!

So I’m left seeing this play as being about history, rather than old-fashioned psychology.

Only in the final few minutes, after all those explosive emotional shows, do we get to what may be meant to be the nub of the story.  The soldier must obey orders.  Archduke Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated, the soldier must leave with no way to communicate with the distraught young woman.  She kills herself; he faces the other kinds of explosions but survives World War I; his uniform ends up in a museum.  In 1939 (the year when “The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig [who] was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart” according to Goodreads, published his only novel) he tells his story to visitors seeing his uniform – and in some way this may be meant to be a warning about the foreboding World War II, when soldiers must again obey the Führer, whatever the consequences.  And was the young woman Jewish?  That might make sense.

Or that may be just my imagination.  If I’m right, the production of Beware of Pity has some point.  If not, it seems an odd play to present about such out-of-date attitudes and understanding of psychology – even for Jung or Freud.

So be a bit wary of Beware of Pity – you’ll need an open mind, but be ready to close your ears unpredictably while watching the surtitles like a hawk.

Photos by Will Duke

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Man with the Iron Neck by Ursula Yovich from an original work by Josh Bond

Man with the Iron Neck by Ursula Yovich, based on an original work by Josh Bond.  Legs on the Wall, in Sydney Festival at Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre, January 23-26, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 24

Photos by Victor Frankowski

Tibian Wyles, Kyle Shilling, Caleena Sansbury
as Ash, Bear and Evelyn

in Man with the Iron Neck
Legs on the Wall

Co-Director and Original Concept – Josh Bond; Co-Director – Gavin Robins;
Writer – Ursula Yovich;
Co-Composers – Iain Grandage and Steve Francis; Set Design – Joey Ruigrok;
AV Design – Sam James; Lighting Design – Matt Marshall; Costume Design – Emma Vine; Sound Design – Michael Toisuta and Jed Silver; Dramaturg – Steve Rodgers.

Performers:
Ursula Yovich – Mum Rose
Kyle Shilling – Bear
Tibian Wyles – Ash
Caleena Sansbury – Evelyn

Kyle Shilling
in Man with the Iron Neck

Ursula Yovich, Tibian Wyles, Kyle Shilling
in Man with the Iron Neck

The purpose for creating Man with the Iron Neck is clear and important.  Why do people commit suicide?  Why young people?  Why young Indigenous people in particular?  Why this particular Indigenous young man, nicknamed Bear by his twin sister Evelyn?

Before the story telling began – by Evelyn’s boyfriend, aspiring actor Ash – the welcome to Gadigal land, on which the Sydney Opera House stands, included a minute’s silence in which the audience stood in memory of the nine Australian Indigenous girls, aged 15, 14 and 12, who have taken their own lives just since the beginning of this year – that is in the first 24 days. 

Bear’s fictional story represents all that tragic truth.

Ash begins with his story of The Man with the Iron Neck, which you can find at https://www.oldtimestrongman.com/blog/2018/02/01/great-peters-man-iron-neck/ . Posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2018 by John Wood: “Aloys Peters was a German acrobat who developed an unusual skill — he could jump off a platform 75 feet in the air with a hangman’s noose around his neck and yet not hang himself. He had figured out the knack where he could maneuver his body mid-air and “tame the arc” taking the jolt out of gravity’s cruel grasp. Peters performed this feat initially for the famous Strassburger Circus in Berlin and then the Sells-Floto Circus on US shores in the early 1930’s.”

From this image, Legs on the Wall – a company famous for aerial dance – turn Rose’s teenage children into literally flights of fantasy, firstly swinging on the rotating Hills Hoist clothesline, which itself takes off in a dangerous entanglement, and jumping from the high limbs of a giant eucalypt, culminating in the hanging – when Ash, Evelyn and Rose herself cannot lift Bear’s body to save his broken neck.

Kyle Shilling as Bear
in Man with the Iron Neck

Caleena Sansbury and Tibian Wyles
as Evelyn and Ash
in Man with the Iron Neck

Ursula Yovich as Mum Rose
in Man with the Iron Neck

But it is not the physicality, the mental visualisations or the emotional anguish of Bear’s sister, his friend, nor even of his mother, which ask the key question.  Why did he do it?

The answer is shame.  Bear rarely spoke.  He was a young man of action, an AFL footballer who had won his first professional placing – only to have a racist call him a ‘monkey’.  This had happened in reality to Adam Goodes: [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Goodes ].  Bear was ashamed because he could not restrain his feelings, punching in response, sending his attacker to hospital with a broken nose.  Should he have walked away, maintaining his dignity?

But suicide…?  Not only because he had broken the code of responsible behaviour the football team expected, but because he – and we – realise that racism is the lot of Indigenous people daily throughout their lives.  This is what makes life not worth living.

So, the story is powerful and needs to be told.  Does the theatrical presentation stand up?  Not so well, in my view.

The dialogue, the choreography and the imagery tell the story too literally.  Legs on the Wall in previous work has moved and created images more poetically, making our imaginations work to seek out their meaning. 

In the scriptwriting, when Mum Rose expresses her feelings in a soliloquy, and when Ash makes his final observations about Bear and Evelyn, we are drawn in to identifying and deeply empathising with them.  Ursula Yovich especially stood out in her performance at this level.  But the characters of the young people, aged 16, needed much more development, with less obvious words and actions.  We needed to know from the beginning there were complex unexplainable feelings in the family and friendship relationships.  For this, though the words spoken might seem ordinary, the implications in the spaces between words must raise questions in our minds about what Mum Rose, Evelyn, Ash and Bear are really thinking and feeling about each other and themselves.

Then, with poetry in the aerial motion, Man with the Iron Neck could become the greater theatre experience which the importance of its theme deserves.

_________________________________________________________________



Following this short season at the Sydney Festival,
Man with the Iron Neck  will  be at the Adelaide Festival
Fri 8 March – Mon 11 March, 2019
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/man-with-the-iron-neck/

while another Sydney Festival show, Counting and Cracking, reviewed here Sunday January 20,  will be on March 2 – March 9, 2019, at the Ridley Centre, Adelaide Showgrounds, Goodwood Road, Wayville, Adelaide.  Tickets & Info: https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/counting-and-cracking/


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: The Big Time by David Williamson

The Big Time by  David Williamson.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, January 18 – March 16, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 22

Director – Mark Kilmurry; Set and Costume Designer – Melanie Liertz; Lighting Designer – Nicholas Higgins; Sound Designer – Marc Ee.
Cast:
Vicki Fielding – Claudia Barrie
Nelli Browne – Zoe Carides
Celia Constanti – Aileen Huynh
Nate Macklin – Matt Minto
Rohan Black – Jeremy Waters
Rolly Pierce – Ben Wood

A tightly scripted comedy of treachery, The Big Time shows that learning from experience is the way to go.  It’s not only true for the characters in his play, but for David Williamson himself.  My point is relevant particularly because for the first time, as far as I can recall, Williamson has focussed his critical attention on the business of acting, writing for the stage or a movie, the role of an agent, and the power of a producer and financiers.

To write a play about what is inevitably too close to home for comfort is to take a great risk.  Williamson, though, has learnt well from his many decades’ life-long experience to avoid self-indulgence and superficiality.  His lightness of touch balances our laughter with our disgust at some people’s behaviour.

Honesty about one’s own capabilities becomes the theme.  There are clues in the characters’ names.  Vicki Fielding, actor and dictatorial film director, plays the field looking only for the big time.  Nelli Browne is an agent who comes to understand the true motivations of her more colourful clients, and to respect those who have integrity.

Celia Constanti, who trained with Vicki at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, maintains her essential sense of what constitutes ethical behaviour – which writer, and her potential partner, Rohan Black, has to come to terms with, and learns for himself through his relationship with an old school friend, Rolly Pierce.  Rolly is not the brightest spark, but pierces Black’s darkness.

The role of Nate Macklin, movie producer, is kept as an example of the executive attempting to focus on the practical job of making money for investors, keeping himself outside the frame of personal relationships that constrain the others.

So this play is not laugh out loud except every now and then when you are caught out by surprise.  It’s also not  a condescending moral tale, and certainly not a conventional rom com, even though it seems that it might be in the early stages.  The second half and the ending show us the integrity of David Williamson, writer for stage and film, and occasional director of his own work, to match that of his central character, Celia Constanti.

Director Mark Kilmurry and his team have got the style of design and directing just right – no fuss, no unnecessary business, using less not more – to concentrate on the essentials.  Kilmurry writes: “I feel my job as director is to do two things: cast really well and secondly let the words fly”, mirroring Celia Constanti who knew she was “flying” in her audition for her duplicitous ‘friend’, Vicki Fielding’s movie.  Aileen Huynh won me over in this stunning scene – an actor believably playing an actor auditioning, in effect for us, the real audience, as much as for the fictional character Nate Macklin, is mindbending.

Kilmurry’s “job” was very well done indeed – by everyone: writer, actors, and all.

Photos by Brett Boardman

Truth telling over coffee?
Aileen Huynh and Claudia Barrie
as Celia Constanti and Vicki Fielding

 

 

Doing the right thing by your old school mate?
Jeremy Waters and Ben Wood
as Rohan Black and Rolly Pierce

Good news from your agent?
Zoe Carides and Aileen Huynh
as Nelli Browne and Celia Constanti

Watching Celia's audition video - how good is she?
Claudia Barrie and Matt Minto
as Vicki Fielding and Nate Macklin

Children with you?  Or not?
Jeremy Waters and Aileen Huynh as Rohan and Celia

Will she really make it big in LA?
Claudia Barrie as the ambitious Vicki Fielding

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Counting and Cracking by S. Shakthidaran (directed by Eamon Flack)

Counting & Cracking by S. Shakthidharan.  A collaboration between Belvoir and Co-Curious in the Sydney Festival, at Sydney Town Hall, January 11 – February 2, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 20

Director – Eamon Flack; Cultural and Costume Advisor – Anandavalli; Set and Costume Designer – Dale Ferguson; Lighting Designer – Damien Cooper; Composer and Sound Designer – Stefan Gregory; Movement and Fight Director – Nigel Poulton; Accent Coach – Linda Nicholls-Gidley.

Cast:
Prakash Belawadi – Apah and others
Nicholas Brown – Hasanga and others
Jay Emmanuel – Young Thirru and others
Rarriwuy Hick – Lily and others
Antonythasan Jesuthasan – Older Thirru and others
Nadie Kammallaweera – Older Radha
Ahilan Karunaharan – Sunil and others
Monica Kumar – Young Dhamayanthi, Swathi and others
Ghandi Macintyre – Priest, Hopper Cart Man and others
Shiv Palekar – Siddhartha and others
Monroe Reimers – Jailor, Vinsanda and others
Hazem Shammas – Ismet, Mr Levy and others
Nipuni Sharada – Young Nihinsa
Vaishnavi Suryaprakesh – Young Radha
Rajan Velu – Fundraiser, Bala, Maithra and others
Sukania Venugopal – Older Nihinsa, Aacha, Older Dhamayanthi and others

Musicians:
Kiran Mudigonda; Janakan Raj; Venkhatesh Sritharan

Counting & Cracking: stage setting in Sydney Town Hall
Photo: Frank McKone

The gestation of this play has been very long, since S. Shakthidharan’s Australia Council Young Artists Initiative grant in 2008, then the beginning of collaboration with Belvoir in 2013 and travel around the world including gaining family permissions in Australia (Yolngu), Sri Lanka (Colombo, Jaffna, Kayts, Batticaloa).  “We travelled to London, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur [and] spoke to people in Paris, Wellington, Toronto, New York….Together it has taken our two companies six years to bring everything into alignment”, wrote director Eamon Flack.

I understand the need for migrants to find the truth about their origins.  Only after my arrival here in 1955 and my father’s death in 1989, did my mother tell me important truths about my birth and why she had migrated from England and had never gone back, even for a visit.  In the meantime I became thoroughly Australian with, even after visits there, no desire to live in England again.

So I recognised why the audience gave a standing ovation to Counting & Cracking, as we came to understand how very-much-Australian Sid (that is Siddhartha) was born in Australia because his mother Radha had to escape from Sri Lanka even while pregnant, because she (Sinhalese) had insisted on marrying Thirru (a Tamil) who she believed was killed, since his sister had joined the Tamil Tigers.  “Counting and Cracking is a work of fiction”, writes Shakthi, “and there is no intention for any of its characters to represent or reference anyone in real life.  Nevertheless, real life has occasionally worked its way into the story, as it almost always does.”

Hazem Shammas as Ismet; Shiv Pakelar as Siddhartha; Rarriwuy Hick as Lily; Nadie Kammallaweera as Older Radha
Photo: Brett Boardman

Behind Sid’s story was the rise of post colonial Sri Lankan nationalism.  English had been made the official language, keeping the dominance of Sinhalese over Tamil at bay.  In the play the motto of Radha’s father, a Government minister in a time of election conflict, said “Two languages, one country; one language, two countries”.  But social status and economic benefit flowed to Sinhalese/English speakers; poverty and low status was the lot of Tamil speakers.  As Tamils were attacked – shopkeepers in Colombo to the Tigers in the north of the island – and Sinhala was made the only official language, Radha’s father was arrested and kept in home detention – for his own safety, despite his high status – and the time came for Radha to be given a visa by Australia, through unspoken diplomatic channels.

The story on stage was complicated in Act 2 by flashbacking to Radha’s grandfather’s generation to tell the story of her birth, upbringing and marriage.  While in the present time, Siddhartha and Lily – a young Yolgnu woman from Yirrkala in far-northern Australia – were meeting at university and falling in love.  In addition, Radha, by now 21 years away from Sri Lanka, was found to be attractive by Ismet from Lebanon – and she found herself responding to his rather Australian-style direct sense of humour.  Would she remain faithful to the memory of Thirru?

Shiv Palekar and Rarriwuy Hick
as Siddhartha and Lily
Photo: Brett Boardman

Nadie Kammallaweera as Older Radha
Photo: Brett Boardman

Antonythasan Jesuthasan as Older Thirru
Photo: Brett Boardman

But am I cynical to point out that, of course, Thirru is found to have been hidden in jail all this time.  Radha had been expected by her family to agree to an arranged marriage to Sinhalese Hasanga, whose continuing search for Thirru is finally rewarded when Thirru is released – but as a trap to catch anti-government sympathisers against the 20-year war against the Tamil Tigers.  Hasanga has become a journalist, and is at risk because he reports both sides of the conflict, but has knowledge to keep threats at bay.  He now gets Thirru on a boat to India, after phoning Radha and putting Thirru on to allay her disbelief.

Long before this point – in fact during the first interval after the first hour – I had realised this fiction is an adaptation of the Ancient Greek myth of Penelope patiently waiting, putting off suitors, for the 10 years it took Odysseus (presumed to be dead) to get home from the sacking of Troy.  Their son, Telemachus, parallels Siddhartha.

Did I need all the backflashing in the second hour?  Did I expect Thirru to be found, and at the end of the last 40 minutes past the second interval, to be released from Villawood Detention Centre, for a family hug – Radha, Thirru and Siddhartha – while Lily gives them a little private space before she and Sid marry?

I thought – at 4.30 pm after a 1 pm start – that the ending was nice, and I hadn’t really needed much of Hour Two.  But maybe, since most of the audience partook of the provided curry lunch, they had a greater sense of satisfaction – while I, of a more lean and hungry disposition would have liked a tighter and therefore perhaps a more strongly flavoured drama.

I did find out what the title meant, though, from Act 2.  It was about democracy, said Radha’s father: it means counting heads, but only up to a point; after which cracking heads becomes inevitable, if not strictly necessary.  Radha, with her educated non-violence belief, was after all much better off in Australia.

Curry lunch at Sydney Town Hall
Photo: Frank McKone

PostScript:  16 July 2019 Helpmann Awards -

Counting and Cracking

Best New Australian Work
Best Production of a Play
Best Direction of a Play � Eamon Flack and S. Shakthidharan
Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role in a Play � Vaishnavi Suryaprakash
Best Male Actor in a Play � Prakash Bellawadi
Best Scenic Design � Dale Ferguson
Best Sound Design � Stefan Gregory

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: The Weekend by Henrietta Baird

The Weekend by Henrietta Baird.  Mooghalin Performing Arts in the Sydney Festival at Carriageworks, Redfern, January 18-23, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 19

Performed by Shakira Clanton

Director – Liza-Mare Syron; Producer – Lily Shearer; Set Design – Kevin O’Brien; Lighting Design – Karen Norris; Sound/Music Design – Nick Wales and Rhyan Clapham; Choreographer – Vicki Van Hout.

Developed from the author’s experience of a mother’s worst-ever weekend, The Weekend fools us into laughing at deeply ironic black moments of humour leading ultimately to a bleak recognition of the reality of domestic violence and a father’s inability to take on responsibility.  While performing as a dancer in Cairns, far-north Queensland, Lara receives a call saying that her children have been left alone by their father for days without food.  She takes the weekend off to fly to Sydney.  Unable to find Simon among drug-dealers who prey on poverty-stricken women, Lara, at risk of the violence already meted out by Simon to her children, manages to take them to Cairns with her to safety.

“Our vision is transformation through cultural arts.  We create community-based stories and produce distinctive cross-cultural and interdisciplinary performance works.  Moogahlin supports both emerging and established First Peoples performing artists, nurturing work created, produced and performed by First Peoples for First Peoples.”

Henrietta Baird’s is an Aboriginal woman’s story, culturally embedded in verbal language, body language and unexpected twists of humour – but our feeling of empathy is powerful, for her plight as well as her success in saving her children, no matter what our cultural background.  The Weekend is a terrific example of success for Moogahlin https://moogahlin.org/ .  It is an excellent choice for the Sydney Festival because, as my neighbour audience member commented, it gives people the chance to see theatre of a kind they might not normally go to.

Tower block 1 or 2 - Floor 7 appeared to Lara exactly the same in
either tower as she escaped the awful smell in the lift.

 Photos by Jamie James to illustrate Lara's experience searching for her children's father Simon in Sydney.

Lara in the entry approaching the filthy lift

For the Aboriginal community, despite The Weekend’s concern about drugs, alcohol and so many men’s failure to provide their sons with proper role models, I found when speaking with Henrietta and actor/dancer Shakira who represents her on stage, a powerful sense of celebration of their art.  There is in Redfern and in the old railway workshops a proud history of Aboriginal theatre from the days of the first National Black Theatre (1972 to 1977).  I thought I recognised the director’s name – Syron:  Dr Liza-Mare Syron, who has written “An Actor Prepares: what Brian told me” (search for https://australianplays.org/assets/files/resource/doc/2012/02/BlakStage_Essay_AnActorPrepares.pdf ).

Brian Syron, her father’s uncle, famously directed and trained actors, as I recall from seeing early Black Theatre work, leading to his production of Robert Merritt’s The Cake Man in 1975. She writes: “I was front row with my dad at the Bondi Pavilion production of Bobby Merritt’s The Cake Man  in 1977. I was fourteen…. and in 1986 I left Sydney to audition for the Victorian College of Arts (VCA) acting course in Melbourne; I was twenty-four. Before I left, Brian suggested I change my surname from Kenny to Syron, which he believed would assist my career. I took his advice.”

So The Weekend has cultural and personal history – back to an Aboriginal man who did provide a positive and productive role model for its director when she was young.

The performance style and design shows a fascinating development from the early naturalistic Black Theatre plays I remember, via the symbolism of The Cake Man, to a blending of traditional storytelling in dance, mime, rhythmic sound, and vocal effects, using a cleverly lit simple backdrop which could change, from a mirror reflecting Lara back to herself, to a filthy lift in a drug dealers’ block of flats where she could not bring herself to touch the disgustingly besmirched buttons to get to the 7th floor.  We laughed at her disgust, but....

Shakira Clanton begins as the professional dancer, Lara, incorporating “modern dance” and traditional Aboriginal styles; then shifting into storytelling mode, creating an array of women characters – but never the character of Simon, the father who she cannot find.  Her skills as an actor make the story engrossing as she, like the ancient mythical shift-shaper, switches in and out of characters; and from Lara telling the story, to her observations about herself and others.

The writing is intense and cleverly constructed, and, as Shakira explained to me, required her to find parallels in her own life experience for all these contrasting characters and emotions to make Lara’s story real.  Hard work, very satisfying for us to watch, and for her to achieve in this form of a kind of dance-drama.

This is a work, small in scale but immensely large in impact, which must surely go on long after this Festival production.




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: The Auction by Katie Cole

The Auction written by Katie Cole.  “Out of Place Theatre” at the amphitheatre in the park between Finn and Busby Streets, O’Connor, Canberra, Thursday January 17, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Directors – Mirjana Ristevski and Michael McNally

Cast: Ellen Sedgley (Local Resident; Greenie); George Breynard (Ron the Auctioneer); James Gardner (Russian Woman, Olga / ukulele), Marcel Cole (Homeless Hobo / Borzoi Ballet dancer / ukulele) ; Meg Foster (Teneille - sales assistant / Team Leader) ; Natasha Lyall (Police Officer).

Composer and Music Director: Katie Cole (ukulele)

Set design: ACT Parks and Gardens.

The POP Band (Pickled Onion Properties) in action
in The Auction

It was not until after this zany, thunderstruck performance had come to its final end that the company mysteriously became titled “Out of Place Theatre”.  In typical Canberra summer fashion, a lone sulphur-crested white cockatoo squawked a dire warning of doom about half-an-hour in.  Thunder rolled closer, lightning began a magnificent son et lumière.  Umbrella-less I dashed for shelter in my car, only slightly soaked, as the downpour drowned any hope of action on stage.

The storm begins to loom over The Auction

Yet, again typically, the rain eased enough for the second half of the show to go on, as it must, after only 15 minutes when the pink galahs chorussed their special kind of cackle.  It all seemed a natural part of this constantly diverging song and dance story of corrupt real estate selling.  How much should we bid when we are told the auctioneer has already bought our local park?  $6 million is not enough.

Should the local residents of Busby Street raise the money to buy back their own public park?  Should the kangaroos be culled?  What about the homeless buying the park as a place for socialising homelessly?  And how did the Borzoi ballet dancer and his twin brother-cum-female policeman and their mother Olga get into the story?

The auctioneer offered us the “golden key to unlock the pearly gates” while we sang along to “O’Connor’s got a country feel” with the Pickled Onion Properties team; and the Greenie said “I think we should cull the people according to how much they damage the environment.”

Absurdist is just the beginning of the words you might find to describe Katie Cole’s very funny piece of summer entertainment, but I found some serious things to say.

Though “Out of Place” was right on the night, I could term this a piece of “In Situ Theatre”: that is, the theme of corruptly turning every possible space into sellable real estate – played out in a suburban public park – is very much in its place, considering the regular criticism of the ACT Government’s public and green space management, even including demolishing long established public social housing along the route of the new light rail in favour of upmarket development, while the Minister for Housing and Suburban Development proposes taking community open-space land for social housing scattered around the suburbs, as Paul Costigan has reported in this week’s CityNews.

The crowd of some 170 largely O’Connor local residents watching The Auction sang along with Katy Cole’s satirical songs with laughter clearly tinged with knowing cynicism.  So here is community theatre very much in its place.

On a different note, Canberra is noted for its many uprisings of off-centre theatrical groups and bands with names such as Bohemian Theatre, Elbow Theatre and Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen, going back to the Doug Anthony All Stars among many who have come or gone, or gone on.  The Auction and its company of actors, many of whom have relatively recently taken drama courses in local senior secondary colleges, is typical of the seeding of new groups in Canberra.  In this sense, too, the new Out of Place Theatre is In Situ Theatre – another in our tradition of often quirky groups.

The Hive Program at The Street Theatre, under the direction of Caroline Stacey, has a special role in encouraging all kinds of new theatre, and has played its part in developing The Auction, with guidance from playwright Peter Matheson.  The script still needs to be tightened and focussed, but in the context of a wild night of storm, squawking cockatoos and cackling galahs, the random divergences of plot and characters didn’t seem out of place, but rather farcical and funny – a humorous twist on the theme of corruption in situ.

The audience upstanding in action
in The Auction

 Photos: Frank McKone

© Frank McKone, Canberra