2019: Winyanboga Boga by Andrea James

Winyanboga Yurringa by Andrea James.  Directed by Anthea Williams.  The song Ngalya Woka composed for this production by Dr Lou Bennett AM.

Presented by Belvoir, in association with Moogahlin Performing Arts at Belvoir Street Theatre Upstairs, Sydney, May 4-26, 2019.  Indigenous Theatre at Belvoir is supported by The Balnaves Foundation.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 18

 For me, a non-Indigenous unsuspecting then-teenage invader of this country in 1955, to claim that I can ‘review’ this work is not sensible.  Winyanboga Yurringa is Aboriginal theatre which becomes cultural ceremony, which I can observe and respond to – but not judge.  It is both Aboriginal business and specifically Aboriginal women’s business which I can respect, and participate in only through my imagination.

I have long been, through non-Indigenous law, an Australian citizen, and a bushwalker all my adult life.  In her illuminating excerpt from her PhD thesis, quoted in the program, Danièle Hromek quotes Torres Strait Islander architect and artist Kevin O’Brien writing:

“Country is an Aboriginal idea.  It is an idea that binds groupings of Aboriginal people to the place of their ancestors, past, current and future. It understands that every moment of the land, sea and sky, its particles, its prospects and its prompts, enables life.  It is revealed over time by camping in it….There is no disenfranchisement, no censorship and no ownership.  Country is a belief.  It is my belief.”

Though my camping and walking on country in many parts of Australia has a history of only some 60 years – and cannot be compared with the Aboriginal history which we now know to be more like 60,000 years – my enjoyment and appreciation of ‘going bush’ means I understand the feelings of Auntie Neecy, played by Roxanne McDonald, in seeing the need to insist on the young city women camping out, even if only once a year, in the bush without their phones and alcohol.

The essence of the play is not a romance about the purity of nature (which is more like how a person of European upbringing like me might see it).  For these women, it is where the realities of their lives and the conflicts which arise daily can be worked through with better understanding of how their Aboriginality literally and culturally connects them.

When the young Jada (Tuuli Narkle) rebels, steals a phone and cannot be found – since she had gone to find a spot with a mobile signal and then walked to a road to meet a boyfriend – the group, in facing the risk that she is lost and could be in harm’s way, must work together as they search.  In fact, her boyfriend failed to meet her as promised.  Jada returns, taught by the experience to respect the concerns of the women for her welfare, and a return to country ceremony is played out by returning items held in a museum (one woman is a PhD researcher) to be buried in the sands of this sacred site.

The crucial item is a full length possum skin cloak which they place reverently on Auntie’s shoulders in recognition of her essential role as an elder – an act of powerful emotion which connects them to the past, the present and the future.

I feel proud of the good fortune I have had at Belvoir to see again a performance by Roxanne McDonald, who I first saw in Yibiyung by Dallas Winmar (reviewed in The Canberra Times, September 2008, available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com ).

Angela Penrith, Tasma Walton, Roxanne McDonald, Tuuli Narkle, Dubs Yunupingu, Dalara Williams

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Pamela Rabe, Zahra Newman, Hugo Weaving
Photo: Hon Boey

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams.  Sydney Theatre Company at Roslyn Packer Theatre April 29 – June 8, 2019.  By special arrangement with the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 18

Production photos by Daniel Boud

 Kip Williams may be no relation, but his production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is  literally a vindication of Tennessee Williams’ brilliance.  It’s all about light, mirrors and reflection – a grand celebration of the work of lighting designer Nick Schlieper, within a magnificent space shaped by sound designer Stefan Gregory.

Nothing is out of place theatrically in this billionaire’s expansive mansion, except the family within, lost in the forces of jealousy, lust, frustration and retribution.  Though a sociologist might write an erudite essay on the social and economic causes in the nature of capitalism, this playing out of ‘a synthesis of all my life’, as Williams wrote, becomes a lived experience for us, watching from the safety of our theatre seats.

The design of the staging seems to have given the actors freedom of action, expression and feeling to match the magnificent space.

Zarah Newman’s Act One performance is almost beyond belief as Maggie – the cat on that terribly hot tin roof, where to stop for even a fraction of a second would be to be destroyed.

From even a simple acting-skills point of view, let alone accuracy of characterisation, Harry Greenwood’s manipulation of his body, balancing on one leg, wielding his crutch not so much as a support but as a weapon, becomes a horrifying representation of his psychological state.

I could give examples of every actor’s particular wonderful achievements, especially including the antics of the children (and the directing of such young ones), but will focus on Hugo Weaving’s voice.  Even Big Daddy could not physically fill the empty reaches of the space, yet his voice in anger was as frightening as the explosions of the fireworks to celebrate his birthday; while when weak in sorrow or confusion, the sound of Weaving’s voice carried his mood all around and off the stage, into our minds and even our hearts.  A great performance, indeed.

This is a modern production of a great American play which I’m fortunate not to have missed.  I hope it will go on tour, especially to Tennessee Williams’ homeland.  America needs to learn now as much as in the 1950s from its great artists; as we do here and all around the world, through the honesty and truth-telling of such writers, producers, directors, designers and actors.

Zahra Newman and Harry Greenwood
as Maggie and Brick

Harry Greenwood and Zahra Newman
as Brick and Maggie

Children: Buster, Dixie, Polly, Sonny with
Peter Carroll, Anthony Brandon Wong, Josh McConville and Hugo Weaving
as Reverend Tooker, Doctor Baugh, Gooper, and Big Daddy

Zahra Newman and Hugo Weaving
as Maggie and Big Daddy

Harry Greenwood and Pamela Rabe
as Brick and Big Mama

 For further thinking, the essay “Tennessee Williams: Life on a hot tin roof”, published in the program (with no acknowledged author!) is excellent, in addition to Kip Williams’ Director’s Note; while the interview with Hugo Weaving written by Harry Windsor, published in The Saturday Paper, May 18-24, 2019 adds a great deal more detail about the production than I have space for here.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Folk by Tom Wells

Folk by Tom Wells.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, May 3 – June 1, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 17

All photos by Phil Erbacher

Set design by Hugh O'Connor for Folk by Tom Wells
Genevieve Lemon, Libby Asciak, Gerard Carroll

Folk is a quirky unusual 90 minute play about the end of one life and the beginning of another, accompanied by folk songs, in a ‘Dirty Old Town’ on the Yorkshire coast.

Three characters are oddly brought together in a church house provided for the past 35 years to accommodate an Irish nun, Sister Winnie.

Gerard Carroll and Genevieve Lemon

Gerard Carroll and Libby Asciak

Genevieve Lemon is a rumbustious centre of goodness in a town crucially damaged by the results of Margaret Thatcher industrial policies, the destruction of manual jobs by modern technology, the failure of schooling made worse by the developing internet, and the collapse of families in poverty.  Yet Sister Winnie is herself a victim – insistently cigarette smoking and drinking Guinness with Stephen, and now with angina at a dangerous stage.

Representing the working man, painting pipes for maintenance at the gas works, while playing guitar and tin whistles (which he makes from offcuts from work) and singing folk in private with Winnie, Gerard Carroll’s Stephen is self-effacing to a fault,  Yet he finds his way, despite his job becoming redundant, in an unexpected turn of events in the final scene.

15-year-old Kayleigh, pregnant to a boy who has just been killed in a car crash, literally crashes her way into Winnie’s singing-dancing lounge room.  Libby Asciak creates a character forced to rapidly grow up, with the help of Winnie’s insistence on treating her with goodness instead of the standard negativity.  How her relationship with Stephen changes is the central thread of the play.

The set design is cleverly built in to the Ensemble’s fourth wall – not between the actors and the audience in-almost-the round, but in relief on the back cyclorama wall, with a street door entrance, windows out of which Winnie blows her smoke, a staircase to the upstairs, and a doorway entrance into the kitchen.  The effect is to make us feel we are in Winnie’s lounge room with her, Stephen and Kayleigh.  In the aftershow Q&A, the cast said that each audience had been different, but many had joined in singing these songs from the folk revival period I remember of the 1960s.

Gerard Carroll, Genevieve Lemon, Libby Asciak
Singalong on guitar, spoons and tin whistle
in Folk by Tom Wells

I felt like singing along too, but our audience last Friday generally kept their singing under the breath – though I saw some lips moving.  This was the unusual feature of this script, where the characters were singing with each other for their own reasons, yet we felt we could sing with them, and react to what they said or did as if we were one of them.  Of course, it was Genevieve Lemon’s skill in creating the inclusive character of Winnie that made this work, but it was also the homely set design and the intimacy of the small theatre where we could all see each other, including the characters, in our circle, that makes this play an excellent choice for The Ensemble.

Kayleigh and Stephen together
Libby Asciak and Gerard Carroll
in Folk by Tom Wells

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Creative Partnerships Australia

                                                            Wildskin, a NORPA Production. 
                                                 Directed by Julian Louis. 
                                            Image by Darcy Grant

Creative Partnerships Australia – The Arts Funding Process.  Information seminar and discussion, Friday May 10, 2019 at CMAG – Canberra Museum and Gallery.

Commentary by Frank McKone
May 2019.

Are you a major, small-scale or individual maker of art?  How do you find the money to start up; keep going; increase (if you want to) your output, your impact, the quality of your work?

These questions form an important part of the context for a reviewer.  My being conscious of the situation in which an artist or a company finds themselves, perhaps with implications for their status, affects not so my judgement of artistic quality as the terms in which I present my judgement.

As a critic, I am also seeking to place the work I see in the context of cultural change.  Is this stage production more ‘modern’ in style, for example; or is it more culturally authentic; and are new developments more theatrically successful artistically?

In 2012 (January 21) I reviewed (here, and also available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com ) Buried City by Raimondo Cortese, presented at Belvoir Street Theatre, one of the ‘majors’ alongside Sydney Theatre Company.  The performance by Urban Theatre Projects received a damning criticism, though I acknowledged “the intentions of Urban Theatre Projects are worthwhile in principle – to expose the terrible empty space of living without purpose”. 

I made negative comparisons with famous works such as Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.  This seemed appropriate at the time, in the context of the expectations I should have of Belvoir Street productions.  Similarly, I criticised the production by Sydney Theatre Company of Dinner by Moira Buffini (September 24, 2017).

But listening to Jill Colvin, director of philanthropy for the Australian Chamber Orchestra in a seminar conducted by Este Darin-Cooper, NSW/ACT manager for Creative Partnerships Australia, I realised the error of my ways.  Sydney Theatre Company deserved what it got, but I had misjudged in the manner of my writing about Urban Theatre Projects 7 years ago.

Jill Colvin is UTP board director, a position she undertakes in a volunteer capacity alongside her paid position at the ACO. ACO patrons may have their $500 per head fundraising gala at Carriageworks and be taken on trips to the Barossa Valley wineries; while donors to UTP have cups of tea with warm-hearted quietly committed artistic director Rosie Dennis as she continues to work on group devised projects in the less affluent suburbs of western Sydney. 

The point is that UTP has grown its funding and its impact in the community from its first crowd-funded one-off project to an established donor pool, without the need to rely only on ticket selling and government grants.  Looking back, embarrassingly, I now see that Belvoir was doing the right thing back in 2012 in supporting and promoting UTP, just as Belvoir continues to support Aboriginal writing and productions – with the Balnaves Foundation as a key long-term sponsor.  My reviews, especially from Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead in 2003 (August 21), show the terrific results.

Creative Partnerships Australia, and its platform for fundraising, the Australian Cultural Fund, originating in the development of the Creative Australia policy by Arts Minister Simon Crean during the period of Labor governments from 2008 to 2013, has continued to provide assistance to people such as the 21 who attended last Friday, representing, for example, major organisations such as the National Portrait Gallery, the rather smaller M16 visual arts centre and some individual artists.

The concept of Creative Partnerships is to assist artists and arts organisations to diversify their sources of income beyond direct grants from government and sales (of tickets or art works) into the world of sponsorship and philanthropy, while it also aims to increase support and awareness for private giving to the arts.

Perhaps Carol Woodrow’s planned production of Chekhov’s The Seagull by her Canberra Theatre Company (for which I was researching translations) may have gone ahead in 1991 despite the failure of one sponsor company to come up with the money at the last minute.  An established donor ‘pool’ as described by Jill Colvin and with help from Creative Partnerships could have saved the day.  Or indeed may have enabled Woodrow’s Wildwood Theatre to continue after the introduction of the GST in 2000.  As volunteer chair and treasurer of the board, receiving the standard one-off project money from the Australia Council, I realised it was not possible to handle the seeming complexities of the GST administration without having reliable continuous funding to employ professional accounting staff.

The advantage of Creative Partnerships Australia is that it uses government money in an AusAid or Oxfam kind of way – assisting people to more easily do what they need to do.  The most important issue at last Friday’s session, concerned artistic integrity.  Would the emphasis on seeking private individual and corporate money mean compromising on the quality of the art?

Jill Colvin, after her experience across the range, was absolutely adamant that the key to creating a successful donor pool is to never waver from authenticity.  Cups of tea with Rose Dennis are just as powerful in forming and maintaining UTP’s support base as are ACO board members chairing committees in Melbourne and Sydney.  It’s about people’s commitment to the purpose of the art and their personal involvement in owning the results – not in the crass sense of getting returns on their money, but in the process of working together as a group of donors for the benefit of the artist’s work.  What struck me about the Creative Partnerships process is the positive cooperative approach at its core.

To conclude, Nicole Hasham reported last weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald “Labor’s arts spokesman, Tony Burke, on Saturday [May 11] is expected to announce that if elected next weekend, the party will revive its Creative Australia policy and ensure arts and culture reaches the lives of everyday Australians.”

https://www.creativepartnershipsaustralia.org.au/

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl

Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Theatre, Sydney, May 3 – May 26, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 7

How good is your guru?  How true to yourself are you?  Are you a complacent little green frog deep in your narrow-bounded well; or are you a widely-travelled big colourful frog who knows the depth of the infinite sea?

Fact check:  How well do you feel, little green frog in your week-long strictly silent retreat, when your oh-so impressive-sounding guide-frog’s mobile phone rings.  Do you feel sick because the yoga mat has been pulled from under your hope?  Do you breathe out knowingly?  Laugh at the irony?  Feel a kind of wonder at the totally unexpected?  Feel almost frightened because something’s gone wrong?  Or know that at some point you are going to have to tell your life story because…well, you just need to, despite everything?

Joan              Judy              Jan              Rodney              Alicia              Ned
Sharon Millerchip, Jane Phegan, Justin Smith, Dorje Swallow, Amber McMahon, Yalin Ozucelik

To try to explain to you all that Bess Wohl’s six characters in search of enlightenment go through would be ridiculous, and spoil for you what makes this satire so funny.  It’s equally subtle and LoL.

I will tell you about the staging, the acting, the costumes, the lighting, the accompanying sounds (not all small, and not all mouth, sounds), and why they needed an Intimacy Choreographer for a bit more than the warning about nudity.  All was done so well that within a few minutes you are drawn into forgetting your disbelief for 90 minutes straight.  But then, you ask yourself, what are you laughing at except your own capacity to believe nonsense?  More fool you!

But it also proves that the illusion of theatre, even if not Jo Turner’s lugubrious guru, can be an enlightening experience.  More satisfied you!

Sharon Millerchip (Joan) and Jane Phegan (Judy)
Mat pulled from under hope
Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl
(Photo: Robert Catto)

Dorje Swallow and Amber McMahon
in a moment of intimacy choreography
in Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl
(Photo: Robert Catto)

From a more pedestrian viewpoint, it is great (sorry, Mr Trump) to see Darlinghurst Theatre Company thoroughly fulfilling its purpose in life.  That is, to show us Australians that Americans (or at least this American woman) actually can have a sense of ironic humour, and that our actors and designers can exploit the opportunity to the max.

Every tiny movement, from eyebrow to little toe and literally everything in between, expressed character and the electric connection between characters so precisely, so tellingly – even between the Alicia (Amber McMahon), Joan (Sharon Millerchip), Ned (Yalin Ozucelik), Judy (Jane Phegan), Jan (Justin Smith and Rodney (Dorje Swallow) we could see on stage and the purely voice-over guru (Jo Turner).

Small Mouth Sounds is an original, intriguing play.  I loved the early morning Sydney magpies and cockatoos, a morning chorus to outdo any silent retreat, making this production thoroughly Australian.

L-R: Justin Smith (Jan), Jane Phegan (Judy), Yalin Ozucelik (Ned), Dorje Swallow (Rodney)
Amber McMahon (Alicia), Sharon Millerchip (Joan)
in Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl (Photo: Robert Catto)

Post Script:  I studiously avoid reading others’ reviews or commentaries, before writing, especially of plays new to me; but I wondered about my thoughts about the Aussie sense of irony.  So I went to the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/theater/review-small-mouth-sounds-silence-at-a-spiritual-spa.html
mainly to see if the original set design had been kept by Darlinghurst.

Yes, it has; but as I read on through Charles Isherwood’s review where he calls Small Mouth Sounds “enchanting”, refers to its “humour and pathos” and how the play “leaves behind its own warming glow”, I feel not so sure that all Americans would appreciate Jo Turner’s almost absurdist take.  Where Isherwood sees the play “laced with gentle satire”, I see a touch of American sentimentality which Turner’s production thankfully avoids.  See what you think.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Sydney Dance Company: Season One

Season One 2019 – Bonachela / Nankivell / Lane. Sydney Dance Company:

Performed in this order:

Neon Aether choreographed by Gabrielle Nankivell
Music by Luke Smiles; Costume by Harriet Oxley; Lighting by Damien Cooper

Cinco choreographed by Rafael Bonachela
    Music by Alberto Ginastera, String Quartet No.2 Op.26
    Costume by Bianca Spender
    Lighting by Damien Cooper

Woof choreographed by Melanie Lane
    Music by Clark
    Costume by Aleisa Jelbart
    Lighting by Verity Hampson

Canberra Theatre Centre May 2 – 4, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 2

Since we are in election mode in Australia – compulsory preferential voting – I shall review in my order of preference, despite Season One’s title.

Neon Aether
Photo: Pedro Greig

 Nankivell’s Neon Aether is the best (indeed most wonderful and meaningful) of the three works on offer.  Lane’s Woof is a special kind of satire – very effective.  Bonachela’s Cinco – notwithstanding the terrific performance by the dancers – is disappointingly unimpressive.

So, in reverse order.

Cinco
Photo: Don Arnold

 A gentleman seated in front of me had been intently engaged throughout Neon Aether.  But about half-way through Cinco, he decided it was necessary to re-tie a loose shoe lace, bending forward and sideways into the aisle – and blocking my view for at least a minute.  When he straightened up, what I saw on stage looked more or less the same as before, as it had for most of the time before that, and continued to do afterwards.

Of course, the choreography of the individual moves was a ‘modern dance’ representation of changing relationships between the two men and three women – the five of the title – but as a work of theatrical art it was disappointing because there was no development, no drama with a beginning, middle and end.

When I read Bonachala’s Note in the program, I began to see why.  “Using 5 dancers [because the music has five parts], I have explored the duality and opposition that I hear in the texture of the music….My approach to the work has been driven by a mathematical approach which” so he claims “has been wholly softened and enriched by my collaborators.”

I can certainly see the intention of Spender’s costumes and Cooper’s lighting, but the choreography is the problem.  Ginastera’s String Quartet is an energetic description of the state of things, firstly in 1958 when he composed the work, but with an extra sense of how things were going wrong in his revision of 1968.  It’s a powerful work, using strings to create an almost industrial musique concrète effect.  It’s worrying from the beginning and ends with foreboding.  But Bonachela’s response shows some minor ups and downs of mood with no particular state of feeling at the beginning, nor at the end.

All dance is mathematical – I’ve always been amazed at dancers’ capacity to keep to hugely complex counting systems which bamboozle me entirely – but the dance artist, the choreographer, must invest the mathematics with emotion and meaning for the audience.  In Cinco I felt the dancer’s technical skills were all I had to engage me.

Woof
Photo: Pedro Greig

 In contrast, Woof was intriguing from the beginning.  For so long nothing seemed to be happening except for freeze-frame photos between odd apparently random blackouts, as it the lighting system was playing up.  Then bit by bit the movement speeded up, the freezes were overtaken by continuing change – and the choreography developed into what seemed to me to become a satire of modern dance itself.  Soon there were a collection of characters on stage showing up all their pretentiousness, extending the satire off the stage.  These characters, thinking themselves so full of importance, are us!

By now I was quietly laughing, foot-tapping along, and thinking am I really as bad as that?  And how could this end?

As action got most absurd, the lights dimmed, the black cyclorama curtains parted to reveal a wonderful warm sunset glow, for the dancers to resolve into perfectly ordinary sensible people as they exited peacefully and cooperatively, the curtain closing behind them.  A satirical ending?  Perhaps, yet with positive feeling that we can get past pretention when artistry alerts us to the need for change.

Neon Aether
Photo: Pedro Greig

Finally, Neon Aether presents us with a deeper sense of our place in the universe.  I give it 5 stars.  It’s an exciting, highly original and emotionally moving work.  Where in Cinco the dancers could be seen to being ‘choreographed’ rather than dancing for themselves, and in Woof you could see the whole company working as a team to create their story, the dancers in Neon Aether seemed to have been given freedom to express themselves in a new way. 

They were not ‘doing modern dance’ but each telling their own story of how impossible it is to understand how we fit into an unknowable universe.  This work makes us understand that movement is everything and everything is moving – to forces which we may learn to manipulate in some small ways, but ultimately are far beyond our control.

The drama is played out through a single dancer – a woman in red who seems to represent Gabrielle Nankivell herself – who at times watches the actions of others, tries to become part of others’ action without ever being sure of her place, until she stands outside watching again in the second last scene, as she had done at the beginning.  Then she is left alone on stage in a final terribly sad solo – alone on stage, alone in the world, alone in the universe.

All that freedom of expression, which is the core of great art, still takes us nowhere in the face of an uncomprehending universe.  This work is the clear star of Sydney Dance Company’s Season One in 2019.

Chloe Leong in Cinco
Photo: Wendell Teodoro

© Frank McKone, Canberra