2019: Siblingship by Daniel and Chiara Assetta

Siblingship at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, October 27, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone


Daniel Assetta and Chiara Assetta as themselves

Writer – Tobias Madden
Co-Directors – Scott Irwin and Danielle Barnes
Lighting Design – James Wallis

Musical Director / Arranger – Nicholas Griffin
Drums – Charlie Kurthi
Bass – Konrad Ball
Guitar – Yianni Adams

Siblingship follows the childhood journey of Daniel Assetta (The Book of Mormon, Wicked, CATS) and Chiara Assetta (West Side Story, Good Omens The Musical, The Dismissal), two real-life, all-singing, all-dancing, Italian-Australian siblings. Through classic show tunes and a splash of pop music….  
[  https://www.siblingshipcabaret.com ]  

Accentuate the Positive is one song from a much earlier generation that these twenty-something performers could have used to highlight their theme.  The audience at The Q was up for it.  It was a standing ovation for a humorous celebration of a loving sibling relationship.

The story of their dancing lives began on amusing slides and video-clips from their births and took us through to the present time, as they re-enacted themselves at home (Italian) and on stage in Western Sydney talent quests and by invitation at all kinds of social occasions, including weddings.  Choosing the right songs for weddings – and rejecting the wrong ones – was a nice satirical number.

While they were amazingly able to fling themselves and occasionally each other around the stage as the video showed them doing as children, the story has its strength in illustrating the process of growing up.  Family (Italian) held everything together for them until the time came for Daniel, now married to Tobias who has written this show, had to reveal (on an answering machine voice message!) to his mother that he is “a little bit gay”.  For Chiara, her older brother leaving to go on tour on his first professional engagement, just as she was finishing high school, was an emotional loss.

The take home message, though, was that ‘siblingship’ is stronger than parental and conventional expectations – it’s about love and protection of each other.

It’s awkward for me to review this show in the way I would for a fictional drama.  Playing themselves in their true story – their love for each other which concludes their performance is surely real – stops me from suggesting that the ending is hopeful for the characters but doesn’t guarantee such a perfect relationship forever. 

Yet the idea of writing their story and presenting it on stage – where, as we know, ‘theatre is illusion’ – puts the show into a category which I have previously called Theatre of the Personal Self. 

Two recent examples that Canberra and Queanbeyan people will remember are My Gurrwai by Torres Strait Islander woman Ghenoa Gela and Red by Liz Lea.  In this category, Siblingship, though highly entertaining and full of positivity, and therefore very well worth enjoying, is a much lighter piece from a dramatic point of view.

And, of course, there is plenty of room on stage for light entertainment, especially when it is as well choreographed, musically put together and performed as by Chiara and Daniel Assetta – siblings extraordinaire.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Fragments by Maura Pierlot

Fragments by Maura Pierlot. The Street Theatre, Canberra, October 23 – 27, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 24

Creatives: Director - Shelly Higgs; Stage & Costume Design - Imogen Keen; Sound Design – Kyle Sheedy; Lighting Design - James Tighe; Cultural Consultant - Daniel Berthon

Cast (in order of appearance):
Tom Bryson Will
Marni Mount Freya
Prithvi Saxena Vijay
Erin Pierlot Reena
Linda Chen Mila
Damon Baudin Nicky
Zane Menegazzo Mason
Holly Johnson Lexy



Fragments has a didactic purpose, especially appropriate at this time of year as young people (in the southern hemisphere) complete their Year 12 assessment and receive their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) results.  The author writes: “Please help create awareness about mental health issues, while reaching out to those who may be struggling, now and in the weeks ahead.”

It’s a kind of theatre-in-education as much for parents and children (and even grandparents) as for social decision-makers in modern times.  I wondered if the ubiquitous nature of social media on the internet has made things worse than in my time in the 1950s facing what Maura Pierlot describes: “Fragments embodies the theme that stress at home, at school and in life is challenging young people beyond their usual coping abilities, often leaving them disenfranchised and vulnerable.”

These eight young people have the same central concern that I remember: is my outward presentation true to my real internal self?  Under the onslaught of 24/7 Instagram images and over-the-top positive and negative judgemental commentary from peers, I think struggling through that ten-year period from, say, 14 to 24, which I remember well, is made far more fearful for this generation. 

No wonder mental health issues are so much more on the public agenda today than in yesteryear.  So it should be, and this play has a valuable role to play.

The concept of fragmentation within each character’s personal perception of themselves and between themselves and others is displayed visually in Imogen Keen’s use of solid black cubical rostra blocks, carried about, put in place, stood upon and even thrown; contrasted with sheets of almost-transparent material, some complete rectangles like windows, some sharply shaped like accidentally dropped window glass.  Characters carry these about at times, looking into them as mirrors, looking through them, being seen through them: looking always in danger of shattering. 

Lighting was used very effectively to emphasise the points of separation and isolation – and finally to reach a general sense of hope, the last word spoken.  Sound provided a background of current music and song, which gave the young characters a common context; while action was often punctuated by the beeps, ringtones and notification tones we constantly have to respond to from our smartphones.  And, I thought, G5 is only just beginning to make its presence known!

Each of the eight speak to us directly, and each actor performed very realistically.  This is an important achievement on each of their parts, because being ‘fragments’ means that there is very little direct interaction, and no throughline for an actor to use in developing new understanding within a character. 

The situation, as I understood it, was that Mason, as school captain, has to give a speech to the school as he graduates at the end of Year 12.  Each character is different in their own particular way from any of the others.  The issues which arise include at least racism, sexuality, body image, parental academic expectations, parental divorce, the education system’s control of students’ future possibilities, and the Black Dog - which, as Mason points out, is not the friendly trusting pet you want to pat.

The theatre experience backgrounds of these young performers, not very much older than their characters, listed on the online program at http://www.thestreet.org.au/shows/fragments-maura-pierlot is in itself a positive record of the school, youth theatre and young persons’ professional training available in Canberra and further afield.  The results shown in Fragments represents the very hope that the play concludes with.  Here are young people, speaking through Maura Pierlot’s characters, who are achieving what she hopes: “I wanted to explore the healing that may come from looking outwards – from our connectedness to others and our realisation that we are not alone.”

This is what theatre does, and this production does it very well.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: West Side Story - Opera Australia

West Side Story based on a conception by Jerome Robbins.  BB Group (Mannheim, Germany) production presented by Opera Australia and GWB Entertainment.

Canberra Theatre Centre October 12 – 27, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 13

Photos by Jeff Busby

Jets men (not in order):
Joshua Taylor, Nicholas Collins, Christian Ambesi,
Nathan Pavey, Jake O'Brien, Blake Tuke,
Sebastian Golenko

Sharks men  (not in order):
Anthony Garcia, Temujin Tera, Matthew Jenon,
Jason Yang-Westland, Brady Kitchingham

Sophie Salvesani and Todd Jacobsson
as
Maria and Tony

 This production of West Side Story is a great example of museum theatre.  I mean this as a compliment because to update such an iconic show from the 1950s might not make much sense when teenagers today spend their time instagramming and sexting instead of rumbling and grooving on the street in gangs.

Nowadays we worry that the young are cut off from learning how to manage physical social contact.  Though I was not in New York in 1955 when Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and the then 25-year-old Stephen Sondheim wrote the choreography, story, music and song lyrics about the West Side, I knew well of the ‘bovver boys’ and ‘Teddy boys’ in my native London, and of the ‘bodgies’ and ‘widgies’ here in Australia fighting on the beach at Manly.

What impressed me about the young people performing on stage last night was how well they, in their dancing and their acting, were so clearly teenagers taking all those silly terrible risks.  At least sexting, I hope, is less likely to lead to murder.

Though in this performance I felt I was kept at a little distance emotionally through the first Act, even up to the murders just before interval – perhaps partly because the music and songs are so well-known, and the skills in recreating Robbins’ original choreography took my attention – the final shorter Act 2 made its emotional mark.

It was not a matter of sentimental sorrow for Tony’s death and Maria’s loss.  Sophie Salvesani brought out the great sense of waste. Not only of three young men’s lives, but for herself having to live on – and for the whole community knowing that reconciliation is so fragile.

I realised then what Jerome Robbins had done in updating William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  Juliet, in taking her own life, leaves the Montague and Capulet families to grieve and reconcile as a memorial – a neat and positive conclusion.  But Maria, who frighteningly fails to kill herself when the pistol that killed Tony misfires, then cannot try again.  She, unlike Juliet, must live with the consequences of her own and others’ actions, whether her conflicting communities genuinely reconcile or not.

Though Jets and Sharks carry out Tony’s body, the future is not secure.  As the Synopsis in the Program says, they “carry Tony’s dead body off the stage together as if in procession – a gesture of hope for reconciliation.”  But is it no more than a gesture?  This is a messy and not necessarily positive conclusion.  Robbins was more realist than Shakespeare, I think.

The quality of the production was excellent in all departments.  Because the production credits list includes designers and directors as ‘associates’ and ‘originals’ it’s difficult to be sure of who to give credit to most.

The balance between the orchestra, in the pit, and the singers worked very well.  It was good to hear a live performance of instruments and singers.  Musical supervisor/conductor Donald Chan’s expertise has seen him conduct more than 3000 performances of this production of West Side Story around the world.  His work, with associate musical director Anthony Barnhill, was ably supported by original sound designer, Rick Clarke, with Jonny Keating and Anthony Craythorn making it all happen.

The set design was quite remarkable, with projected backdrops of New York behind three storey high scaffolding ‘tenements’ which were moved on, off and around amazingly smoothly.  [ If you would like to compare with the original 1957 set, see https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/west-side-story-2639 ]  Paul Gallis from The Netherlands was the designer, but I would like to congratulate the mechanists (headed by Tony Bergin) who made the scene changes a delight.

I am not surprised to see costumes which brought the characters so wonderfully to life, especially for the dance sequences, having been designed by Renate Schmitzer.  The white costumed sequence was particularly stunning, making such a contrast to the standard street dress of ordinary life. The Australian touring production, with wardrobe, hair, wigs and make-up headed up by Jennifer Hall, Stephanie Meilak and David Jennings, is dedicated to her memory, after her very recent death after a short illness in her home in Ulm on 15 March, 2019, noted by Detlef Brandenburg:

“Renate Schmitzer's costumes were never just "something to wear". They were always an interpretation of the character, her character and sometimes her quirks. Thus, they made a substantial contribution to the characteristics of the characters - and met the director's work halfway, as it were.”
[translated from https://www.die-deutsche-buehne.de/zum-tod-der-kostuembildnerin-renate-schmitzer ]

Lighting designed by equally prominent internationally, Peter Halbsgut, took us from the high brilliance of Jerome Robbins’ most energetic street dance to the awful darkness of the rape of Anita – both solidly practical and clear in its emotional effects.

So finally to come to overall direction and performance, the story is just as complex.  Director Joey McKneely, a one-time student of Jerome Robbins and the one to reproduce the master’s choreography, with associate choreographer Jaquelyn Scafidi-Allsopp and resident director/choreographer Brendan Yeates, have given the Australian cast the precision, the timing and the humour to create the character of all the young performers as the crowd of teenagers racing ahead of themselves from childishness to the edge of adulthood.

Every young performer, all singing and dancing, had their clearly defined personalities as in the original production in 1957; as did the adults Paul Dawber (Lt Shrank), Beryn Schwert (Officer Krupke) and Ritchie Singer (as the saddened pharmicist, Doc).  The leads – Maria (Sophie Salvesani), Anita (Chloe Zuel), Tony (Todd Jacobsson) and Riff (Noah Mullins) were not allowed to stand too much out from the crowd – making the point as I see it about the theme of community.

On this point, I think, there is a difference between Robbins’ original conception of the drama compared with the famous movie, awarded ten Oscars in 1961, where stars were the focus.

I prefer the stage production for sincerity and integrity.

Jets women (not in order):
Molly Bugeja, Natasha O'Hehir, Angelica di Clemente
Taylah Small, Sarah Dimas

Sharks women (not in order):
Olivia Carniato, Nikki Croker, Amba Fewster, Ariana Mazzeo
with Jade Coutts

West Side Story cast and set design

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare - Bell Shakespeare

Zindzi Okenyo (Beatrice)

Set Design by Pip Runciman

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare directed by James Evans.  Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, October 11-19, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 11

What a wonderful production of Shakespeare at his irreverent best.  I have long tended to think of Much Ado About Nothing as an interesting play about a lot – that is, Shakespeare’s take on what we now call feminism: a kind of polemical comedy, a bit like Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man.

But James Evans’ directing of this terrific team of actors has revealed the real still-youthful William Shakespeare, in his thirties in 1598, whose play is just so funny!  I can’t recall, even when looking back at Bell Shakespeare’s excellent production in 2011, being in an audience so taken up with laughter, especially throughout the first half.

At last I felt like how I surely would have felt if I had been there when Shakespeare and his cast must have done as Duncan Ragg (Benedick) and Zindzi Okenyo (Beatrice) do in this production.  They become standup comics playing directly to the crowd, drawing laughter from all the innuendos and making fun of individuals in the audience. 

It must have been a hit still, even more than a decade later in 1612–1613, during the festivities preceding the marriage of King James’ daughter Princess Elizabeth with Frederick V, Elector Palatine.  Imagine that audience of wedding guests for the future Queen of Bohemia as Benedick picks out women in the crowd, even the bride perhaps, winking at each: “One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.  Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair, or I’ll never look on her; mild, or not come near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it please God.”
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Much_Ado_About_Nothing  ] 

There was certainly something of Judith Lucy in Okenyo’s Beatrice, while Ragg’s Benedick is certainly at home in Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell.  And what was even more insane was Mandy Bishop (who you’ll remember played Julia Gillard in eight Wharf Revues), here in male roles as Balthazar, Prince Don Pedro’s servant and singer; and an extraordinary scooter-riding Constable of the Watch, Dogberry of Spoonerism fame – a character straight out of Mad as Hell, cheered along by the audience like The Kraken.  And can she sing!

It worked so well in the first place because Evans has Leonato as a great entertainer.  David Whitney’s house was the centre of attraction for sophisticated fun, and we felt we were welcome guests.

That’s where Evans’ reverence for Shakespeare comes in.  After interval we find ourselves in Leonato’s house of hatred, even of his own daughter Hero, because Don Pedro and Claudius, betrothed to Hero, have been fooled by a plot contrived by Don Pedro’s bastard brother, Don John.  They believe they have seen Hero with an unknown lover at midnight immediately before the planned wedding.

The change in atmosphere from enjoyable laughter to vicious hatred was absolutely palpable for us, the more so because we had felt so much part of the entertainment before.  We hadn’t really liked Paul Reichstein’s Don John before interval.  He had given us an occasional laugh, but as we saw his plot being concocted, we became ready to boo him if he appeared again – which he didn’t.  He left town, but had himself been fooled by paying Borachio 1000 ducats to carry out the plot.  Borachio confesses after being arrested by our zany Dogberry.

In the meantime we see the other side to acting Shakespeare.  Comedy edges towards potential tragedy, and all the cast morph into stunningly good realism, taking us along with them.  As Evans writes in his Director’s Essay, “Shakespeare was never constrained by the limitations of genre”.  But the important point is that he shows us this, in action.  Everyone on stage, and backstage, understands.  And we sense the change.

So when we feel relief that Hero is shown not to be guilty, and the mood seems to revert to good humour, we hear Vivienne Awosoga's speech and cheer her on when she slaps Will McDonald's Claudio in the face.  As Evans writes “it is essentially a hybrid play”: just as hybrid as real life will always be for the two couples in their marriages. 

The whole company thoroughly deserved the ecstatic acclamation they received last night because they matched the maturity of Shakespeare’s writing – and magnificently changed my appreciation of Much Ado About Nothing for the better.

Not to be missed – in Canberra till October 19, then at Sydney Opera House October 22 – November 24.


If, by the way, you would like to know more about Shakespeare’s use of innuendo, have a look at “Noting” on that Wikipedia page.  There’s more than a nod-and-a-wink to the play’s title than you might think.


Cast:
Beatrice – Zindzi Okenyo                                  Hero / Conrade – Vivienne Awosoga
Don Pedro / 1st Watchman – Danny Ball          Margaret / Verges – Marissa Bennett
Dogberry / Balthazar – Mandy Bishop              Claudio / Barachio – Will McDonald
Antonio / Sexton – Suzanne Pereira                  Benedick – Duncan Ragg
Don John / 2nd Watchman – Paul Reichstein    Leonato – David Whitney

Creatives and Musicians:
Director – James Evans; Designer – Pip Runciman; Lighting Designer – Niklas Pajanti; Composer and Sound Designer – Andrée Greenwell; Movement and Fight Director – Nigel Poulton; Voice and Text Coach – Jess Chambers
Photography - Pierre Toussaint / Prudence Upton
Oboe – Angus Webster; Guitar – Nick Meredith; Bass – Jessica Dunn; Drumkit – Luke Herbert

Finally, the wedding of Claudio and Hero
L to R upstage: Danny Ball (Don Pedro), Paul Reichstein (Don John), Duncan Ragg (Benedick), Zindzi Okenyo (Beatrice)
David Whitney (Leonato), Suzanne Pereira (Sexton)
L to R foreground:  Will McDonald (Claudio), Vivienne Awosoga (Hero)
Photo: Clare Hawley

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: Oliver! Queanbeyan Players

Willum Hollier-Smith
Photo: Michael Moore

Oliver! Book, music and lyrics by Lional Bart.  Orchestral arrangements by William David Brohn.

Queanbeyan Players at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, September 27 – October 6, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 6


Queanbeyan Players have picked up on an interesting point about Oliver!, the musical, compared with Charles Dickens’ original novel, Oliver Twist.  Director Jude Colquhoun writes “Yes, there are great, fun songs for the whole cast.  The kids get right into it all but there is an underlying sadness to this story, and it isn’t necessarily Oliver’s.  It is Nancy’s.  We see her struggle with the life she has been dealt and, although she smiles through the pain, she doesn’t want this child to suffer.”

Her directing – with assistant director Christina Philipp; co-directing music with Jenna Hinton; and clearly working very closely with choreographer Jodi Hammond –  was very successful on the musical comedy aspect which Lional Bart’s book emphasises. 

Then, in the second half, Colquhoun comes to grips with the violence of Bill Sikes and his murder of Nancy, pushing the limits set by Bart (but not by Dickens) in Emily Pogson’s and Michael Jordan’s characterisations to make a clear and necessary statement for a modern audience about the issue of domestic violence.

In the end, since he wrote it this way, Bart wins the day, as did the Vernon Harris / Carol Reed movie (1968): we all cheerfully clapped along, whistled and whooped for the curtain call of 41 on the stage, as well as for the 26 in the orchestra under the stage in a show of high energy and great communication between cast and audience.

Picking out individuals for special praise can be unfair when actors and their characters naturally fall into classifications – kids, adults and principals – while the success of the show is how such a large cast worked so well together.  The sense of teamwork, yet with individuals having their own characters even in large group numbers, bounced out to us (even up to my Row K), keeping up our lively interest.

But I would like to say that Willum Hollier-Smith surely has a great stage future ahead of him as an actor and singer; I appreciated very much Emily Pogson’s capturing of Nancy’s awful state of mind in the face of Michael Jordan’s terrifying viciousness; and Anthony Swadling, often quietly spoken and singing, made Fagin into an understandable survivor in a criminal world, rather than a merely melodramatic monster.

This Oliver!, then, was very well done and justifiably filled The Q on its last night.

If, though, you would like to consider what Lionel Bart might have done – if he had been a Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (The Threepenny Opera) or a Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd) – you could have a look at
An Analysis of Oliver Twist And Oliver!
Angela Marie Priley
Children's Literature Association Quarterly
Johns Hopkins University Press
Volume 18, Number 4, Winter 1993
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/249378/pdf

Just Priley’s first page, which you can read online without needing Project MUSE authorisation, will show you what I mean.


© Frank McKone, Canberra