2019: NoneSoBlind by Garreth Cruikshank

NoneSoBlind by Garreth Cruikshank.  Dark Pony as part of Sydney Fringe 2019 at Erskineville Town Hall, The Living Room, September 24-28, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 24

Director and Set Design – Susan Jordan; Lighting/Sound Design – Jacinta Frizelle; Artwork – Andrew Langcake; Fight Choreography – Kurtis Wakefield.

Martin Portus as Mr Shepherd
Russell Cronin as Jude
Thomas Burt as Scott
Dale Wesley as Teenager


NoneSoBlind is an illuminating short play showing the difference between genuine gay relationships and manipulative pedophilia. 

It raises difficult questions.  Is Mr Shepherd strictly speaking a pedophile (as defined in Wikipedia “Pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children”) because he claims his behaviour is an uncontrollable obsession?

But, because his focus is on teenage boys who, he claims, are sixteen and willing to be paid, should we see him as Jude ultimately does as a fraud who uses young gay men purely for his own gratification? 

In the small confines of The Living Room, with the limited audience sitting almost in the acting space, the playing out of Jude’s middle class attempts to do the right thing by this old blind man demanding help, while working out his relationship with working-class Scott, and by chance observing Mr Shepherd in a sexual encounter with a teenager, the play is confronting.  When violence ensues, barely two metres from my seat, it is quite simply shocking.

When the story was revealed, by Jude’s insistent questioning, about how Mr Shepherd was blinded by his gay partner; and then when Scott reveals his abuse as a child by ‘friends of the family’ – and explains how he recognises that he is manipulating Jude to sustain his love – the complexity of Garreth Cruikshank’s writing becomes apparent.

Martin Portus successfully plays Mr Shepherd’s demands and sly manoeuvres, using his old age and blindness, against the truth that he is psychologically disturbed and did grow up in the past when homosexuality was a crime, and had to be hidden and kept secretive. 

Though he abuses others, he is also the victim of abuse – by social attitudes and the law, and by the attack in which he, an art teacher and sculptor, being blinded, lost his one opportunity to achieve positive recognition.  As he points out, many famous artists, like Michelangelo,  and philosophers, like Sophocles, were homosexuals like him.  I thought of Joe Orton murdered by Kenneth Halliwell, in their Islington flat in 1967. 

Capturing this complexity and our changing feelings for and against Mr Shepherd was a major achievement for Martin Portus.  And, though his was the role central to the issues in the play, the quality of his acting was thoroughly backed by Russell Cronin as Jude, who plays our representative in this drama.  He asks all the questions of both Mr Shepherd and his partner Scott in their developing relationship that we are asking ourselves.  Thomas Burt in that role shows us how modern understanding is changing, while Scott’s backstory shows us how much further there is to go.   Both younger generation actors, in their intense emotional reactions, make us understand their feelings – and wonder how we would go in their circumstances.

Being in the Fringe Festival means only small-scale financial support, not including funds to pay everyone or even pay for rehearsal space.  Set, props, lights and sound equipment are minimal.  Yet the directing and design worked very well in creating the three areas needed: in the street outside Mr Shepherd’s flat, inside his kitchen, and along the street to Scott’s dining table.

So to conclude, I saw NoneSoBlind as a successful production of an important play, which needs now to be taken further afield.  Perhaps Dark Pony, a very new outfit headed by Susan Jordan, can work in cooperation with Creative Partnerships Australia (see my commentary on this blog 15 May 2019) to build support, perhaps for touring this production and for developing a continuing program. 


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Spencer by Katy Warner

Spencer by Katy Warner.  Presented by Lab Kelpie at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, September 19-21, 2019

Director – Sharon Davis; Designers – Rob Sowinski and Bryn Cullen; Stage and Production Manager – Tanje Ruddick; Photo by Pier Carthew

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 21

The play is an excruciating embarrassing success.  But you certainly could not call the extended family, into which the two-year-old Spencer is about to be welcomed, an embarrassment of riches.  If you were to draw up a family tree for Marilyn, Ian and their sons Ben and Scott, and their daughter Jules, it might look rather farcical. 

Yet author Katy Warner keeps us very cleverly right on the edge, balanced between farce and comedy.  Then, almost against our expectations, the story of the young up-and-coming footballer who couldn’t remember or even recognise which was the girl, among many, who has become the mother of his son – that story becomes sad, and has something significant to say about our society.

For a nation-wide tour to lots of smaller performing spaces, the designers have put together an amazingly effective set centred on the family lounge room; even down to the banging-shut screen door out in the hallway.  With the props, including things that pop-up among welcome decorations that make a huge mess, I wonder what size truck they have to fold it all into.

The casting and the resulting performances were spot-on.  Lyall Brooks as Ben, the elder son who has never grown up, is quite extraordinary.  The manic unloveable sexist larrikin kids’ football coach is a character ripe for over-playing.  Brooks makes Ben almost believable. 

Fiona Harris plays the eldest, Julia – always “Jules” in this drinking swearing family on the outer edge of Melbourne suburbs – with a dignity.  She has a sense of how her life could have gone if she had been able to work in fashion design; yet knows she is somehow held back.  I felt some hope by the end that she will find a way out.

Ian, the father who left when the uncomprehending children were small, is played by Roger Oakley with a subtle kind of knowingness while pretending naïvety.  He captures perfectly the frustrating nature of this man from the point of view of young women like Marilyn, when he married her, and the one who has just left him, taking his children with her to Queensland (2000 kilometres away).  So, says Ben, she couldn’t even stay in the same state!

To Jane Clifton as Marilyn and Jamieson Caldwell as her youngest son Scott get my special accolades for character development. 

Caldwell shows us Scott apparently in relaxed mode as Ben chivvies him in the opening scene; but bit by bit we cotton on, as his sister does, that he is hiding depression and guilt for the way he had treated Spencer’s mother.  As we come to understand him, the farcical nature of his surrounding family takes on new meaning.  His past behaviour towards women raises our attention to all those news reports of sports athletes in court; and his sense of guilt and pride in wanting to have his unexpected son welcomed, and his decision to drop a promising professional career in football, offers hope for positive change.

Clifton gives us an absolutely realistic Marilyn: the mother doing her very best to keep everything going from the days when when she certainly did not hate Ian (Julia asked her about that); through separation and another man, now also departed, to be her children’s Dad; while keeping faith always for Scott’s success. 

Her swearing, drinking and smoking may cause us to laugh – until Jane Clifton turns the table on us with Marilyn’s speech saying sorry to her children.  The words may have been written by Katy Warner, but it is Jane Clifton who makes us understand.

Spencer, then, is not laugh-out-loud comedy: quite remarkably it is laugh-along-with comedy because it is full of the typically Australian chiacking – the teasing put-down intra-family way of keeping up not only the appearance of continuing fun, but even the reality of love.  And in the great Australian cartoon tradition, we keep laughing while we quote from Stan Cross: “For gorsake stop laughing: this is serious!”



LAB KELPIE – An Australian New Writing Theatre Company is a “not-for-profit organisation with a board of experienced and passionate industry professionals [who] are strong advocates of new writing and aim to support Australian playwrights by developing, presenting, touring and publishing their work…”


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: The Irresistible

The Irresistible.  Side Pony Productions and The Last Great Hunt at Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, September 20-21, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 21

On overnight reflection on my initial response – that The Irresistible is the most boring theatre work I have seen for a long time – I think I have worked out at least what was the intention.  It’s a new kind of theatre which I dub Metaphoric Obscurantism.

Even the cast and creatives are hidden, since we were not presented with a program, until you search online.  Here they are at https://www.artsontour.com.au/tours/irresistible/

Director: Zoe Pepper
Writers: Zoe Pepper, Adriane Daff and Tim Watts
Performers: Adriane Daff and Tim Watts
Designer (Set & Costume): Jonathon Oxlade
Composer: Ash Gibson Greig
Sound Design: Phil Downing
Lighting Design: Richard Vabre

The metaphor seems to be that a young couple (perhaps married, but at least in a relationship) are represented as the pilot (male) and co-pilot (female) of a plane which crashes.  The backstory seems to be about the woman, when aged about 12, having been left by her sister Bridget to walk home alone through a park where she was followed by a man.  Though apparently nothing actually happened, the woman was (justifiably) frightened. 

How this was connected to a more immediate story about going to an airport to pick up a child (who may have been Bridget’s daughter, though I was never sure of this) seemed to be that the woman’s intention to care for the child became the source of raging conflict with her husband – who at one point raves at her in the foulest of language for several minutes.  I took this to be an example of at least verbal abuse of women.  Perhaps the plane crashing was meant to be a symbol of the violence and failure of men to understand women’s needs – as sisters and carers.  Her insistent concerns seemed to prevent him, during interminable bouts of rage, from getting on with the job of piloting. 

Whether we were meant to blame him or her for the crash, I couldn’t work out.

The production was obscure often to the point of incomprehension, especially because the two actors (behind a plastic screen) were using microphones which often (deliberately) distorted their voices.  Either of them at any one point could sound like the woman, the man, Bridget or the young child, in between announcements by either of them as pilots to their passengers.  Were we meant to be the passengers on this ill-fated plane?  Perhaps.  (I have to disclosure my generation gap here.  Picking up and understanding distorted high frequency sound is difficult through hearing aids.)

I began to wonder if the actors were miming to a pre-recorded sound track.  Their performances were amazingly detailed in physical movement, but entirely cold in terms of emotional response with us.  For me, theatre is about living communication between the actors, through their characters, with us in the audience. 

Watching this show was alienating in its normal meaning during the performance; at best, as my overnight reflection suggests, I could see it as a more modern form of expressionism with the intention to create distancing effect (Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt).

But where Brecht’s plays engaged us in progressive understanding while we watch an unfolding story, The Irresistible is just a plane crash.  Resistible, in my case.

 
© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: The Woman in the Window by Alma de Groen

Image: Helen Drum

The Woman in the Window by Alma de Groen.  Canberra REP, directed by Liz Bradley.  At Theatre 3 (Acton, Canberra) Naoné Carrel Auditorium, September 5 – 21, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Wednesday, September 11

Set Design – Michael Sparks OAM; Costume Design – Anna Senior; Lighting Design – Chris Ellyard; Sound Design – Neville Pye; Properties – Brenton Warren.

Cast:

The Russians                                          The Australians

Karen Vickery – Anna Akhmatova        Zoe Swan – Rachel Sekerov
Lainie Hart – Lili Kalinovskaya              Alex McPherson – Maren
Thomas Hyslop – Stetsky                      Alex McPherson – Miz
Michael Sparks – Korzh                        Michael Cooper – Sandor
Amanda Brown – Tusya                        Marli Haddeill – Auditor



There are three reasons to praise Canberra REP’s production of The Woman in the Window: for their revival of this significant and currently highly relevant 1998 play, rarely performed since; the quality set, sound and lighting design; the excellence of the directing and acting.

I must say I was surprised to find fewer than 20 attended last night.  I trust there will be many more on Friday and Saturday.  

The play:

‘Dystopia’ is the opposite of ‘utopia’: “an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic”; the opposite of “an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect”.

Alma de Groen didn’t have to imagine the historical dystopian society of Stalin’s Russia where the poet Anna Akhmatova was kept under surveillance, forbidden to write her own poetry and required to show herself at her window twice a day to the security police.  Perhaps it was the election of the Howard government in 1996 that stirred de Groen to imagine an Australia in the year 2300 where total surveillance is inescapable. 

Her play is extraordinary for a gradual melding of time and place, as if our future is seen almost hologram-like by Anna.  Finally, the Russian-Australian young woman, Rachel Sekerov, who has illegally searched and copied the secret deep archive of poets from the past, sees Anna. They reach out to each other across space-time.  Their mutual hug dissolves into a hopeful blackout to end the play.  Maybe if not utopia, but at least a future where artistic and scientific imagination and questioning are at the heart of society.

De Groen’s story is almost a parallel to a combination of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (published 1945) and 1984 (1949), starting from a satirical fictional view of Russia.  Orwell imagined the corruption represented by the pigs in the end who could not be distinguished from the corporate humans.  Looking 40 years ahead he also saw how the use of electronic technology would allow surveillance and control to become the central feature of society. 

The Woman in the Window starts from actuality in Russia in the 1950s and extends forward (from 1998) some 300 years to a time when quantum computing and artificial intelligence programming turn humans into virtual robots – even the poets.  But Rachel, employed to service the poets (only men), and the poet she serves, Sandor, break into the system.  With an indestructible virus they publish the whole of the archived poetic works.  I’m paraphrasing, but the Auditor says that knowledge of history causes disruption of social order, and that’s a crime.

In the revelations by whistleblowers Chelsea Manning (2010) and Edward Snowden (2013) we can see how prescient Alma de Groen’s thinking was, just 20 years ago.  We needn’t wait until 2300!  We already have the politics of 3-word slogans; of random drug-testing of the unemployed; of ASIO and AFP attacks on freedom of the press and prosecutions of whistleblowers and even their defence lawyers; and Immigration officials bursting in at 5am, to arrest a family with young children born in Australia because their parents’ visas have expired.

And Newspeak has become internalised in Twitter and Facebook posts.


The production design:

The stage design creates three spaces: on our left, a claustrophobic room cluttered with kitchen cupboard and small table – and books – for Anna, the poet.  Lili, a mathematician, wife of a ‘disappeared’ nuclear scientist who revealed the danger of radiation from contaminated cooling ponds, is Anna’s house help and protective companion. 

Anna’s window, where she must show herself twice a day, looks onto an open space centre stage, with a low platform upstage and cyclorama which can represent the sky.  This space provides for outdoors in 1950 and 2300, and so becomes the time crossover area.

On our right is a cold bare area with two chairs – the 2300 administrator’s office.

With effective lighting and projection, and voice over instructions and announcements, and props which include ‘real grass’ where Sandor can take Rachel, who has never been outdoors before, to see a projection of the night sky “which is accurate” says Sandor, the scenes move from our left to right and centre – at first simply in space, but gradually in time as well.

This design, with costumes of the periods (2300 looks ‘modern’) is essentially simple in concept and works very well.

The directing and acting:

This is the heart of theatre.  From constable plod (Thomas Hyslop) and Russian security interrogator (Michael Sparks) through Administrator Miz (Alex McPherson, who also plays Rachel’s friend Maren) and Auditor (Marli Haddeill), next-door neighbour/informer Tusya (Amanda Brown) and to the four leads, each actor’s characterisation is precise and complex even though many scenes are quite short. 

Especially noted is Karen Vickery’s combination of authority, strength of self-awareness and poetic imagination.  She provides a crucial grounding of purpose for the whole play, supported so well by Lainie Hart and Michael Cooper as partners of Anna and Rachel.  Zoe Swan takes Rachel from a naïve, innocent and confused young woman (reminding me of Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale) through to a new maturity of understanding as she meets Vickery’s Anna to complete the drama.

Some have classed The Woman in the Window as science fiction.  I call it social realism.  Not to be missed.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: The Last Wife by Kate Hennig

The Last Wife by Kate Hennig.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, directed by Mark Kilmurry.  August 30 – September 29, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 7

Assistant Director – Adam Deusien; Set & Costume Designer – Simone Romaniuk; Lighting Designer – Nicholas Higgins
Cast:

Eddie – Emma Chelsey             Bess – Emma Harvie
Thom – Simon London             Kate – Nikki Shiels
Mary – Bishanyia Vincent        Henry – Ben Wood

Whose ‘Last Wife’ could we possibly be thinking of?  King Henry VIII, you say?  And what was her name?  Oh, yes – Katherine Parr?  Well done!

But here we are in ‘A Royal Household’ where Thom and Kate, and Henry when he bursts in, and then Mary and Bess with little Eddie are all obviously speaking Australian.  It’s not long, of course, before we all cotton on to the fun.

Hold on though, what’s going on in this family is not as much fun as it seems.  Henry already knows about Thom and Kate – basically tapping his nose.  Henry is King of England and Ireland and he’s obviously not going to have anything going on between his political adviser and the woman he’s now planning to marry.  The way he orders people about and won’t brook any criticism or objection – and he’s got a horrible infection on his leg – means we soon accept that we are not watching a modern parallel. 

This is King Henry VIII in about 1542 saying what he would have said translated into modern vernacular so we can understand not only the meanings of his words, but all the underlying feelings and intentions among what remains of the Royal Family. 

He has just beheaded his fifth wife, Catherine Howard;
that was just over a year after anulling his marriage to Anne of Cleves;
that was only three years after Jane Seymour had died;
that was only a year and a half after he beheaded Anne Boleyn;
and that was only three years after he annulled his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

If you want a more recent family history of this kind have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam%27s_family.
 
As Mark Kilmurry writes “I am thrilled to have been transported to this world with this wonderful cast and marvel at the ways we haven’t changed much in the last 500 plus years.”

At the beginning of the play, all that remains of the Tudor family are:

Henry aged 51, now with no wife and looking at Kate;
Mary: Catherine of Aragon’s and Henry’s daughter (aged 26);
Kate (30) whose mother was Catherine of Aragon’s lady-in-waiting and was brought up with Mary;
Bess: Anne Boleyn’s and Henry’s daughter aged 9; and
Eddie aged 4, but with no mother since Jane Seymour had died a few days after he was born.
Thom was Jane Seymour’s brother, and Kate’s cousin.

Shakespeare wrote history plays using the English of his own time.  If you thought his plots were complicated, then I think you’ll find Kate Hennig may have outdone the master in intra-family detail.

Here is Bess at the end of Hennig’s play, still only about 12, making Mary celebrate their father’s death with a Protestant Bible.  We all know by then that Mary remained a determined Catholic against her father’s separating the English Church from the Pope.  And the rest is history, of course.

Katherine Parr, after the play finishes, did historically provide for Elizabeth’s education to be furthered, until her own death in childbirth five years later, in 1548 – a great preparation for Bess, after Mary had died, to become the Queen in 1558, that Shakespeare knew from his birth in 1564.

The great thing about Kate Hennig’s writing is that you don’t need to know all this history because all you need to know is brought out in the family interactions, conflicts and occasional, if temporary, resolutions over the 6-year period.  The amazingly clever thing is that everything in the play is historically consistent with what we do know, at least as much as anyone can, of the real story.

In other words, the play is remarkable and the performances thoroughly justify Mark Kilmurry’s being ‘transported’.  It was as if the cast were entirely imbued with the atmosphere and family dynamics.  You could not escape Ben Wood’s towering viciousness, even as you knew underneath was insecurity linked to the political necessity to keep the throne in Tudor hands.  Nikki Shiels’ Kate was a characterisation par excellence, a fascinating combination of integrity of intention with acuity of family political perception.  You couldn’t excuse Wood’s Henry even though you could understand where he was coming from; but you were with Shiels’ Kate even when she had to make risky decisions and execute ploys for herself and the children.

And so she was not executed as two previous wives had been – but be prepared to cope with the moment when it could well have happened.  If you want to look for it, you’ll find plenty to learn about domestic violence, and how a woman is murdered each week by a man who thinks he is king.

The audience on Saturday at 4pm was as deeply engaged and appreciative of the acting (and therefore the directing and design) as any audience could be in the more standard witching hour in the evening.  This is exciting theatre, perhaps one of the best I have seen in my more than 50 years of playgoing at The Ensemble.

Definitely not to be missed.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Avalanche by Lulia Leigh

Maxine Peake
Photography – Richard Davenport

Avalanche by Julia Leigh.  A Barbican Theatre and Fertility Fest Production (UK), co-produced by Sydney Theatre Company and Audible. 

Directed by Anne-Louise Sarks at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, September 2 – 14, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 6

Designer – Marg Horwell; Lighting Designer – Lizzie Powell; Composer and Sound Designer – Stefan Gregory; Dramaturgs – Penny Black, Kirsty Housley, Hilary Bell; Movement Coach – Imogen Knight.

Maxine Peake – direct from the premiere London production, as Woman

Childlings (on different nights) – Kaan Guldur, Jethro Jensen, Hannah Sistrom, Amy Wahhab



In Avalanche, a “Woman” has everything come crashing down upon her.  Her “childlings” never become more than silent images of her desperate hope.

“Woman”, who speaks directly to us, does not give herself a name, because, as I see it, she represents the fact that all women must face reality in a way that men never have to.

This woman, in our modern society, leaves aside having a child as she moves in and out of her relationship with “Paul” from the age of 19 (he is 23) while she establishes herself as an independent professional.  She becomes a successful writer and film maker, but at the age of 37 and finally entering a rocky marriage with Paul, discovers that he has had an irreversible vasectomy.

IVF becomes the only option.

Can she produce viable eggs?  What are the chances that Paul can provide viable sperm?  What about donors, of sperm or eggs?  If frozen, to provide extra sperm or eggs – are they as good as fresh?

It’s not long before Paul goes his own way – again, as he has always done.  Surgery to reverse his vasectomy fails.  He already has children from other women.  He doesn’t need her.  But now she must go on, against the odds and at great expense.

Maxine Peake drags us into her story almost unwillingly, yet we are fascinated as she is by the chance of succeeding.  I found myself thinking of those ‘problem’ gamblers playing poker machines, even when they know the machines are designed to win against them.  Woman plays the IVF game for a horrifying eight rounds, until at the age of 45 the chance of success is down to 2% at best.  She quotes some of the costs on the way – later my wife and I calculate probably around $100,000.

At this point the whole set, representing the bare pale walls of uninviting clinics, suddenly, literally comes crashing down around her.  It’s a frightening experience even for us watching from the safety of comfortable seats.

Yet the play is not a tragedy: more a recognition of reality.  As women have always had to, “Woman” faces up to disappointment, finding she can love her sister’s new baby and extend her love beyond herself.

In the end, Avalanche, with its detailed descriptions of what IVF entails, becomes a source of continuing thinking and discussion about the practicalities of our evolution.  Are we better off for having invented artificial insemination, or should we simply accept that nature is not romantic or sentimental?  In fact, would the Earth and us living on it be the better if we had not tried to selfishly improve everything?

Maxine Peake’s performance, with a little help from her childling friends, is a tour de force, with frightening real and philosophical implications. 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: My Brilliant Divorce by Geraldine Aron

My Brilliant Divorce by Geraldine Aron.  Christine Harris / HIT Productions on tour: Directed by Denny Lawrence; Sets and Costumes by Adrienne Chisholm; Lighting by Nick Glen.  

At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, September 4-7, 2019.  Bookings: (02) 6285 6290

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 4

I left the theatre in two minds about this presentation of My Brilliant Divorce.  Though there were laughs at points throughout the show, we were not fully engaged in feeling empathy with Angela at any time.  I think this was reflected in the somewhat muted applause at curtain call.

Mandi Lodge deserves praise, as we might expect from such an experienced actor, for a highly crafted performance, showing her skills for fine detail in presenting Angela’s changing moods, as well as in her abilities in mime and voice as Angela acts out other characters in her story – of divorce from ‘Maximus’ (aka Mervyn) and new love in Dr Steadman.

Perhaps it was the style of the presentation, using pre-recorded voices of, for example, Angela’s mother and the grotty Welsh Adventure tour operator, as well as the illustrative slideshow (as a window on the world behind the action set in Angela’s loungeroom) that took our attention away from how we might have felt for Angela’s dilemma.  Should she sign the divorce agreement papers, or keep up hope that her ‘roundhead’ philandering husband might return – and that she may be able to love him again?

The style turned even more to simple laughter when her dog rolled on stage on wheels – and the skateboard-like trolley wheeled itself off as Angela cuddled her toy pet.

On the other hand, considering the content of the story and the scriptwriting, perhaps making an obviously staged presentation might be the only way to make the play work.  It might be difficult to play Angela in a straightforward naturalistic way, since she seems to speak directly to us, sometimes seeking to make us laugh, or to shock us with some detail of men’s and women’s sexual parts; and sometimes seeking our sympathy.  The structure of the story is too clearly designed by the author for us to accept Angela as an entirely believable character.

Imagine, though, if Judith Lucy, one of our more acerbic standup comedians, took on this role: alone on a bare stage, with just a microphone.  She would surely have the self-awareness to see the irony of her inability to free herself for so long from Mervyn’s grip on her love.  There would be an extra dark edge to her phone calls to her Irish Catholic mother.  And would she seriously be happy with the offer of her gynaecologist doctor to go further than he had on the operating table, already knowing “everything about me”?

But would the Irish author Geraldine Aron be happy?  Probably not: her script seems to ask for no more than a light approach, based on what seem to me to be fairly old-fashioned jokes about women and men: this 51-year-old pretends to be 39 going on 38; she sees men (or she herself?) as only concerned about the size of their penises.  1950s jokes seem a little out of place in a play puiblished in 2003.

So for me Angela’s divorce was not as brilliant as it might have been if the author had written a character of much greater depth, and of a more modern kind.  Then the questions, and Angela’s answers, that arise for us all about love and divorce could be both much funnier and more telling.

But for you, and certainly for quite a few people in the audience at The Q last night, HIT’s production of My Brilliant Divorce could be an enjoyable hour and a half to have with a glass of bubbly.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: None So Blind by Garreth Cruikshank - preview notice

A new startup indie theatre company, Dark Pony, will present None So Blind by Garreth Cruikshank at The Living Room, Erskineville Town Hall, Sydney, near the end of this month, September 24-28 2019, 6.15pm.

The play, starring Martin Portus as Mr Shepherd, a former Catholic school teacher, gay and blind, “explores the loneliness, repression and moral ambiguity lurking behind sexual abuse, and the anger, emotional ambivalence and violence it sparks”.

Jude (Russell Cronin) plays the good Samaritan, but “his well-educated moral principles are shattered” while his boyfriend, Scott (Thomas Burt), a working class apprentice chef, “faces his own dark fears”.

Directed by Dark Pony founder and co-producer, Susan Jordan, None So Blind promises to be a “big story from little theatre”.  “That’s what I love about our Indie scene,” says Jordan, “ – the persistence and creativity on a shoestring approach to telling a good story.”

The issue represented in this play has great significance in view of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and current conviction of Cardinal George Pell. 

I shall certainly be there to review None So Blind on September 24.

© Frank McKone, Canberra