2021: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

 

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams.  Canberra Repertory Theatre at Naoné Carrel Auditorium, Theatre 3, February 18-March 6, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 19

Director: Anne Somes
Associate Directors: Alexandra Pelvin, Antonia Kitzel

Set Designer: Cate Clelland
Sound Designer: Neville Pye
Lighting Designer: Stephen Still
Costume Designer: Fiona Leach

Cast:
Maggie “The Cat” Pollitt – Victoria Tyrrell Dixon
Brick Pollitt – Teig Sadhana
“Big Daddy” Pollitt – Michaels Parks OAM
Ida “Big Mamma” Pollitt – Liz St Clair Long
Mae “Sister Woman” Pollitt – Lainie Hart
Gooper “Brother Man” Pollitt – Ryan Erlandsen
Doctor Baugh – Rob Drennan
Reverend Tooker – Saban Lloyd Berrell



I hope that Canberra Rep will continue, every twenty years or so, to put on Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, to remind us how family life, sexual relations, money matters and sport are all tied up in the one terribly complicated knot.  This week I should also include a special reference to party politics and the treatment of women in a parliamentary democracy, which Williams could well have covered in his America in the 1950s.

The Rep 2021 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is very good indeed, tied together even more tightly, I think, than in 2001.  (Reviewed in The Canberra Times, April 28 2001; available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au)  

Even if often with pro input, in an amateur repertory company it can be a matter of good luck to find a cast that suits all of Williamson’s expectations.  But the difference in quality in these two Rep productions is nothing like as great as some people see between the original movie and the later one (1984) with Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Lange, Rip Torn, and Kim Stanley, described on Youtube as “True to Tennessee Williams's original play (unlike the awful Paul Newman / Elizabeth Taylor movie from 1958)”.

Rep’s casting, characterisation and consistency of team work in this presentation is particularly satisfying.  Even the great recent Sydney Theatre Company production (reviewed here May 19, 2019) could be seen as concentrating more on the stars – Pamela Rabe (Big Mama), Zahra Newman (Maggie) and Hugo Weaving (Big Daddy) – rather than giving as much status to Brick, Mae and Gooper.  At Rep last night I came away with an equal sense of the importance of each one of these six central characters, and the solid support of Rev Tooker and even from the small part of Dr Baugh.  Rather than being overwhelmed by Big Daddy and Maggie, I felt I understood better, and with more sympathy, not only their needs and why they behaved as they did; but also the relationships between the brothers Brick and Gooper, their wives Maggie and Mae, and the essential role in the whole family of Big Mamma.

When it comes to detail, Williams did not make casting easy.  At the risk of seeming sexist, for example, I have to say that when Williams makes Maggie stand before a full length mirror and point out that she has not lost her figure, Victoria Tyrrell Dixon absolutely looked the part.  How Teig Sadhana could make his Brick unresponsive was a small miracle as I saw it.  

According to www.sparknotes.com/drama/cat/summary  at the end “Maggie thanks Brick for saving her face [after announcing she and Brick are to have a child].  Brick puts down three shots, finds his click, and exits indifferently.  Maggie forlornly gathers Brick’s liquor bottles and locks them away, refusing to release it until he has sated her.  Desperately she declares her love for him.  The distant Brick can only reply: ‘Wouldn’t that be funny if that was true?’”

However, www.gradesaver.com/cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof/ says “In the published script, we are left entirely uncertain as to whether Brick will concede to sleep once more with Maggie and allow her to bear a child.  The text itself leads one to suspect that nothing is going to change, but with enough ambiguity that each production can choose for itself which ending will be implied.

“In the playing script, however [for the original Broadway production by Elia Kazan], Brick ends the act sitting on the bed – and although the dialogue is also quite different from the published script, it is this stage direction that significantly weights the dice in favor of Brick having a change of heart.”

Somebody said to me in the foyer on the way out: “Interesting ending!”  I felt glad with the ending Anne Somes chose.

And glad, too, that Michael Sparks played Big Daddy with an interesting mix of attitudes towards himself and Brick in their long duologue, in which I learned that he has more self-awareness than I had thought before.  It was a softer interpretation, and, I thought, opened up a better chance for interpersonal compromise.  This makes the play, firstly, perhaps more in tune with Tennessee Williams’ intention; and secondly makes it more hopeful for the future.

Perhaps this means that Williams was too hopeful, when we consider the experiences of Brittany Higgins, when she was a ministerial staffer in the Australian Parliament, and of others such as Dhanya Mani – whose article in The Saturday Paper February 20-26, 2021 is essential reading.

I must say that Ryan Erlandsen’s characterisation of Gooper, in tight formation with Lainie Hart’s Mae, gives me little hope that greed for money-grabbing is on the way out.  A certain Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and now threatening digital insurrection against the Australian democratic government, says that Tennessee Williams’ hope in this play that Brick would recover from his depression after the death of Skipper, and justifably inherit Big Daddy’s property, is no more than a romantic dream.  And maybe my dream will one day come true: when Big Daddies and Big Mummas – and Little Daddies and Little Mummas – learn to treat each other, and are treated by others, truly as equals.

Thank you all at Canberra Rep for such theatre, so well directed, designed and performed.

Canberra Repertory Theatre
Set Design by Cate Clelland
for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
February-March 2021
Photo: Helen Drum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2021: Wolf Lullaby by Hillary Bell

 

 

Wolf Lullaby by Hilary Bell.  Echo Theatre at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, February 18-27, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

February 18

Director: Jordan Best
Set Design and Construction: Chris Zuber; Lighting design: Jacob Aquilina; Sound Design/Composition: Matthew Webster; Props: Yanina Clifton

Cast:
Rachel Pengilly – Lizzie
Natasha Vickery – Lizzie’s mother, Angela
Joel Horwood – Warren, Lizzie’s father
Craig Alexander – small town police officer, Ray

At the very least this is an interesting play to begin our year of vaccination.  There are so many viewpoints to start from.  

The policeman, Ray, in some ways is a bit of a plodder: I can almost hear him say, with heavy sarcasm, “That’s a likely story!”  How likely? is a question I have to ask.

Then I must think about Hillary Bell’s intention in making up a story about a nine year old girl’s inner wolf and her parents.  Has Lizzie inherited a dangerous mental state from her mother?  Have Warren and Angela created an evil child through their fractious relationship?  Can we ever know ‘the truth’?  Is the application of criminal law the only way society can respond, if telling lies is truly a natural element of the human condition?

The directing and design of the telling of this story on this stage must be considered in the light of this likely or unlikely child’s tale with its philosophical implications.

Then I might be able to say if this innoculation against the fear of childhood killing has worked.  

The set design image which seemed to place most of the action behind the wire of something like a refugee detention centre stirred my questioning.  That central space became Lizzie’s bedroom, the police office, Angela’s living room, the police interrogation room, as well as the remand cell.  Perhaps the image represented the idea that all the people in their different ways were trapped in a chicken-wire cage, including Angela and her daughter because of their psychological conditions; Ray as he had to interrogate only according to the book; even the dead child Toby was in there behind the community’s commemoration flowers and poems placed outside the wire.

But apparently not Warren who was so often, conveniently, ‘on shift’, to pay for Angela’s and his separate rents, or when it was the weekend – the court-order time when his daughter stayed at his place – and the parents’ arguments took place in open space around the central raised set as if in the street where the children’s hopscotch pitch was laid out.  On the sides, left and right, words about murder were projected, becoming meaningful later as Ray’s interrogation ‘progressed’ and Lizzie’s parents worked out what their daughter might have done.

This set, combined with an ominous background sound track of children’s apocryphal skipping rhymes, disturbed me in two different ways.

First, as I suppose on reflection I was meant to feel, it all seemed to be an omen of doom.  

But I also felt there was a mismatch between this use of symbolic image and space and the seemingly naturalistic presentation of the characters.  Rachel Pengilly played her nine-year-old Lizzie so realistically that I found myself worrying that such a young actor was being allowed to play such psychological trauma – only to find when reading the program after the show that she is old enough to have a BA degree from University of New England.

Craig Alexander’s Ray, again naturalistically, played out the policeman’s conflict of feelings towards this local young girl, whose family he knew: he had unbending evidence-gathering rules to follow, while feeling at times sympathetic in a kindly adult way towards Lizzie’s telling lies, as well as feeling stressed by the frustration of not being able to extract the truth.

Similarly, the coming together and blowing apart episodes in Angela and Warren’s feelings about each other were realistic and very uncomfortable to watch.

After overnight reflection, I wonder if the set design, still without any need to set-change from short scene to short scene, would have been better if it represented a plain bland small room with a small desk, a chair and single bed, in which the naturalistic acting would feel normal instead of somehow out-of-place in the chicken-wire setting.  

By amazing coincidence, the image I have in mind appeared in Canberra’s CityNews on the very day of Wolf Lullaby’s opening night.  In a highly unlikely story, a significant artist, Melissa Beowulf, has painted “Cottage Room” 2018, representing the room in which she was held in remand at the Alexander Maconochie Centre for 14 months on a charge of murder (acquitted at her trial). [https://citynews.com.au/2021/digital-edition-february-18/  Page 28 in “Effects of injustice linger for ‘powerless’ painter” by arts editor Helen Musa]

 

Image courtesy of Melissa Beowulf
CityNews Digital Edition February 18, 2021 P28

The surround-sound of children’s rhymes would still make the point, and make us feel concerned about the violence inherent in many nursery rhymes.  The words that Lizzie supposedly wrote might have been better projected above the stage, rather as Tennessee Williams did in The Glass Menagerie.  A photo of the flowers and poems for Toby could be projected perhaps on the room window, as if on TV news, when the adults in the dialogue become aware of what Lizzie had written, and her words could appear as if the news camera had zoomed in.

Perhaps my reaction seems a bit old-fashioned, but I think the playscript and our need to come to grips with the truth of the story is unsettling in itself.  The mismatch in the set design was an extra layer which disturbed my focus on the characters and the implications of their experience, though the directing and performance in the acting was excellent.

In other words, Echo Theatre’s presentation of Hilary Bell’s Wolf Lullaby at The Q, Queanbeyan is an interesting production indeed.  Innoculation is advisable.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Fangirls by Yve Blake

 

 

Fangirls -  Book, Music & Lyrics by Yve Blake.  Directed by Paige Rattray.
Belvoir St Theatre -  A co-production with Queensland Theatre and Brisbane Festival, in association with Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP)

At Seymour Centre, University of Sydney, 30 January - 20 February 2021.  Also at
Canberra Playhouse 24-28 March 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 6

Cast:

Aydan (Harry); Danielle Barnes; Chika Ikogwe (Jules); Shubshri Kandiah (Brianna); Ayesha Madon (Lily); James Majoos (Saltypringl); Sharon Millerchip (Mother); Karis Oka (Edna); Tomáš Kant or Shannen Alyce Quan

Creatives:

Book, Music & Lyrics Yve Blake
Director Paige Rattray
Original Music Director / Vocal Arranger Alice Chance
Music Producer / Sound Designer David Muratore
Dramaturg Jonathan Ware
Music Director / Vocal Arranger Zara Stanton
Set, Video Content and Costume Designer David Fleischer
Video Content Design and Production Justin Harrison
Lighting Designer Emma Valente
Choreographer Leonard Mickelo
Sound Designer Michael Waters
Associate Director: Carissa Licciardello
Associate Choreographer: Sharon Millerchip
Lighting Realiser: Renae Kenward
Stage Manager: Khym Scott
Assistant Stage Manager: Julia Orlando
Front of House Engineer: Matthew Erskine
Head Electrician: Steve Hendy
Technical Coordinator: Tom Houghton


My dictum has long been, for new plays and new productions of plays I already know, to avoid reading about them before I review.  Having missed Fangirls’ first runs in Brisbane and Sydney in late 2019, fortunately Covid confusion took over.  So when Belvoir announced its success and another season to begin 2021, I still knew little while checking in the Service NSW QR Code at the Seymour Centre yesterday.

What I love about theatre is being surprised.  Fangirls turned out to be a great and very rewarding surprise.

Of course, if you follow my dictum, you should at this point stop reading.  Just go and see for yourself.  Then you might like to read my thoughts to see if you agree.

Booking at Belvoir, I couldn’t miss the basic info:

“Edna’s fourteen and is head over heels in love with Harry- he’s beautiful, talented, perfect, but there’s just one problem: he’s also the star of the world’s biggest boyband. Getting Harry’s attention might seem impossible, but there’s nothing that Edna won’t do to prove to Harry that she’s the one.

Yve Blake’s uproarious musical makes its much-anticipated return.”

Is this the show for me, I wondered, now I’m an octogenarian?  Surprise, surprise.  There’s much more than mere fun – the focus word in other publicity I had accidentally skimmed – in this seriously funny play.

When we became the pop-star show audience, (nearly everyone decades younger than me), and everyone did a Mexican wave with their phones lit up (I’d switched mine off, of course, as normal theatre convention requires), I began to think about the nature of theatrical illusion.

As the story developed, and Act I ended with a brief appearance on stage of a tied-up Harry, I was suddenly reminded of events in the real history of fandom.

In this story, Edna is from a single-parent family.  Her mother has to work, often long hours, and tries to provide everything her intellectual daughter needs.  Perhaps Edna falls in love with the publicity image of Harry, though she can’t afford to go to his concerts, because she has lost her father-figure.  We could get into Freudian psychology at this point, but this is not raised in this script.

However, Edna has won a scholarship which means she can continue in high school and meet up with another intellectual, a gay guy known as Saltypringl.  He becomes her adviser as she writes her story of how she will meet Harry; he will return her love when he looks into her eyes; and she will persuade him to ‘run’ with her to escape the pressure of fandom.  How can she put her story into practice, is her question to Salty.

What if, though, she can’t persuade Harry to run with her?  Salty takes a while to think things through, and at last says the only answer would be to kill him.  Where the Fangirls script has been essentially an amusing satire of fourteen-year-old girls’ behaviour to this point, in the second half the play becomes a farce.  

Edna can’t get to the concert, but she organises the kidnapping of Harry after the show; ties him up in her bedroom; tries to persuade him to run from the pressures of the fan culture; and ends up more or less accidentally killing him, in company with her two (less intellectual) girl friends. On their suggestion and with her mother’s help, the body is taken ‘to the woods’. Being a farce, in the very end we find that the girls were not jailed because the court could not believe that a girl could have done the kidnapping.  That is, it is implied that girls are not expected to be able to do things like that – only men can.

And so, Fangirls turns into an unexpected study of the destructive emotional and persuasive effects of popular fandom, while maintaining a political stance in favour of gender equality.  At the end last night the audience – with a clear majority of young women –  was still laughing uproariously and cheering the performers and the show for what it meant to them.

The cheering was absolutely justified for another surprise for me.  As a musical, the singing, dancing and acting was top quality; but the stunningly successful integration of the internet culture into the audio-visual design made this show relevant to a modern young audience far beyond anything I could have imagined.  

I may be 80; I may have seen earlier clunky attempts to use live digital effects which distract and undermine the work of the actors; I may have even seen very successful use of live camera work such as in Sydney Theatre Company’s Suddenly Last Summer; and in 2020 The Wharf Revue’s Good Night and Good Luck used pre-recorded video very effectively for getting the message across.  But Fangirls builds the video, sound and music into the live singing, acting and dancing – including scene changes and props – so well that this show becomes ‘total theatre’ of a most modern kind.

And what was it about the real history of the pressures of fandom that came to my mind as Harry’s head dropped forward in death?  By the late 1960s the Beatles had become disillusioned with the effects of fandom, and I remember the hordes of fourteen-year-old girls’ extreme emotional reactions which you can see in many video records, including some used in Fangirls so I have read.  But move on to the 1980s and read this about John Lennon’s death:

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-assassination-of-john-lennon-1779404

Mark David Chapman: From Drugs to Jesus

Chapman came to see himself as a real-life Holden Caulfield. He even told his wife he wanted to change his name to Holden Caulfield and would rage about the phoniness of people and of celebrities in particular.

Hatred of John Lennon

In October of 1980, Esquire magazine published a profile on John Lennon, which portrayed the former Beatle as a drug-addled millionaire recluse who had lost touch with his fans and his music. Chapman read the article with increasing anger and came to see Lennon as the ultimate hypocrite and a “phony” of the very type described in Salinger’s novel.

He began reading everything he could about John Lennon, even making tapes of Beatles’ songs, which he would play over and over for his wife, changing the tapes’ speed and direction. He would listen to them while sitting nude in the dark, chanting, “John Lennon, I’m going to kill you, you phony bastard!”

When Chapman discovered Lennon was planning to release a new album—his first in five years—his mind was made up. He would fly to New York City and shoot the singer.

My thinking was certainly a great surprise, with a new sense of dread, thanks to Fangirls.

The cast of Fangirls
Photo: Brett Boardman

© Frank McKone, Canberra