2021: Kiss Me, Kate by The Queanbeyan Players

 

 

Kiss Me, Kate.  Music & Lyrics by Cole Porter; book by Sam & Bella Spewack.  Based on the 1999 revival directed by Michael Blakemore, choreographed by Kathleen Marshall.

Queanbeyan Players at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, June 18 – 27, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 18

Director – Michael Moore; Musical Director – Leisa Keen; Choreographer – Lauren (Laurenzy) Chapman
Costume Design – Rhiannon De Margheriti; Properties – Helen McIntyre & Alison Newhouse; Set Design – Thompson Quan-Wing
Lighting Design – Jacob Aquilina, Sound Design – Nick Cossart (Eclipse Lighting and Sound)

Principals:
Janelle McMenamin – Lilli Vanessi / Katharine (Kate)
Adam Best – Fred Graham / Petruchio

Supporting Cast:
Samantha Marceddo – Lois Lane / Bianca; Nathaniel Patterson – Bill Cahoun / Lucentio; Dick Goldberg – Gangster 1; David “Dogbox” Cannell – Gangster 2; Chelsea Heaney – Hattie; Sarah Perruzza – Paula; Brian Kavanagh – General Harrison Howell; Tony D’Abrera – Harry / Baptista; Dimitri Yialeloglou – Gremio; Kristofer Patston-Gill – Hortenso; Aleesha Boyé – Ralphina

Ensemble:
Kay Liddiard, Jess Zed, Sara Johnson, Anna Tully (Dance Captain), Britt Lewis, Kara Murphy, Silvano Moro, Shelby Holland, Benjamin Martin, Daniel Evans, Tobias Price, Lauren Welfare



Even though I’ve never seen the stage, film or television versions of Kiss Me, Kate before, I seemed to know all about it – by osmosis, I guess from the so-recognisable Cole Porter songs.  After all, it played more than 1000 times on Broadway.  Queanbeyan Players’ excellent production has brought me up to date, to 1948!  

Except I discovered the real reason why Lilli decides that General Harrison Howell is not what she needs after all.  It’s not just that he’s a proto-family-violence creep, but he’s a close friend and advisor to President Trump!  No wonder she realises that despite Fred / Petruchio’s challenging behaviour, with a slightly-off sense of humour, as Lilli and Kate she has more in common with him because they are both actors at heart.

The best thing I learnt from Queanbeyan Players’ Kiss Me, Kate was to have fun enjoying a comedy.  I often had wondered whether Shakespeare intended (or actually directed) The Taming of the Shrew to be a comedy.  The post-World War II irreverence of Kiss Me, Kate, which the Players captured beautifully, made it clear.  The whole play is a kind of joke, until Act V Scene 1.  

As the conflict between Vincentio and Biondello reaches the stage of stupidity, Petruchio says privately “Prithee, Kate, let’s stand aside, and see the end of this controversy.”  This is the first time Petruchio is straight with Katharine.  This is the turning point in their relationship.  After watching more stupidity, they – in contrast – come together in common sense.  Katharine controls the matter of the kissing, and of staying rather than going home as Petruchio suggests.

This is a small but important moment in Shakespeare’s play which is parallel to the moment Kate realises in Kiss Me, Kate that General Harrison Howell is stupid, and Fred is the right choice after all.  However, I still think the soft music mood of Cole Porter’s final song by Kate, I Am Ashamed That People Are So Simple, misses the deliberate irony in Shakespeare’s much longer speech by Katharine, where it’s plain that for her Petruchio is not “[my] husband  [who] is [my] lord, [my] king, [my] governor” and she certainly is not ashamed about the way she has done all those things that, conventionally, women are not supposed to do.

It is because she has stood up for herself and comes to Petruchio (as Lilli does to Fred) as an equal, that Petruchio can say, equally ironically, “Why, there’s a wench!” and then recognise that she has the power to choose to “Come on, and kiss me, Kate.”

As to the quality of the Queanbeyan Players’ production, on the relatively small stage in The Q, they had everything right.  

The 14 piece band, conducted in an amazingly low-key manner by Ian McLean, easily created the effect of an American Big Band, while making sure that each member had standout moments, especially in jazz sequences.  Fortunately, The Q Theatre has excellent acoustics, and McLean used every opportunity to give us the variety of mood and style needed to keep the show moving – as much during scene changes as during the action.

Acting, singing and dancing throughout were excellent.  Though the company may not be formally classed as professional, the important qualities of detail and tremendous cooperative teamwork, including the stage management, in this production made this Kiss Me, Kate as professional in effect as anyone could wish for.  I could pick any number of the cast for special mention in their larger and smaller roles, but it’s important to say that the directing and performances of Janelle McMenamin as Lilli / Kate, with solid backing from Adam Best as Fred / Petruchio, and Dick Goldberg and David “Dogbox” Cannell as the very funny couple of gangsters were highlights for me.

L to R: Adam Best (Fred Graham / Petruchio), Dick Goldberg (Gangster 1),
Janelle McMenamin (Lilli Vanessi / Kate), David "Dogbox" Cannell (Gangster 2)
not on the real set of Queanbeyan Players' Kiss Me, Kate

 In other words do yourself a favour and see Kiss Me, Kate by the Queanbeyan Players at The Q this week. https://theq.net.au/whats-on/productions/kiss-me-kate/

 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill and Stephen Mallatratt

 

 

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill and Stephen Mallatratt.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, June 11 – July 24, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 16 Opening Night

Cast
The Actor Garth Holcombe
Mr Kipps Jamie Oxenbould

Creatives
Director Mark Kilmurry
Assistant Director Rachel Chant
Set & Costume Designer Hugh O’Connor
Lighting Designer Trudy Dalgleish
Sound Designer Michael Waters
Stage Manager Ruth Hollows
Assistant Stage Manager Jack Wilson
Costume Supervisor Margaret Gill
Special Effects Bronte Bailey
Assistant Sound Designer David Grigg


You will surely cling tight to your partner as the LNER (London North Eastern Railway) Express flashes and roars past, blasting your local train carriage with terrifying sound and light, as you approach the small market town of Crythin Gifford to attend the funeral of a client, Mrs Alice Drablow.  Is it she who appears, or rather disappears, in the shadows of the graveyard?  Is her house, isolated among foggy swamps and the notoriously freezing easterly winds of the Broads, truly haunted?

This is a very English play, in a fearfully good presentation in the boatshed, with its feet in the water, which is The Ensemble – hardly more capacious than that local train compartment.  Never a dull moment in its two-hour traffic on the stage, even in the silences when your mind races to guess what may or may not be real.  Garth Holcombe and Jamie Oxenbould never miss a heart-beat in this expertly designed drama of sound and light.

Yet, despite The Woman in Black (1987) being the second-longest-running West End non-musical show after The Mousetrap, as theatre art goes the play-script doesn’t compare with the first play of its kind, when, in 1921 the audience “split into supporters and adversaries. The author, who was present at the presentation with his daughter Lietta, was forced to leave the theatre through a side exit in order to avoid the crowd of opponents.”  That was Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author which ends with the death of a young boy backstage, leaving the audience believing it had really happened.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Characters_in_Search_of_an_Author ]

Long before that “Leoncavallo wrote that he based the story of [his opera] Pagliacci on an incident from his childhood: a murder in 1865, the victim of which was a Leoncavallo family servant, Gaetano Scavello. The murderer was Gaetano D'Alessandro, whose brother Luigi was his accomplice. The incident resulted from a series of perceived romantic entanglements involving Scavello, Luigi D'Alessandro, and a village girl with whom both men were infatuated. Leoncavallo's father, a judge, was the presiding magistrate over the criminal investigation.” [  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagliacci  ]

In the opera, where the singers we see are commedia dell’arte actors in the Harlequin story, the stabbing and death for real of Nedda, playing the part of Colombina, by her acting partner, Canio, playing the role of the clown Paliaccio, is horrifying to watch – even more so when Silvio, who was playing Arlecchino, is also killed by Canio.  The clown had, in jealousy, mistakenly thought the words of Colombina to Arlecchino "I will always be yours!" are truly the words of his wife Nedda to his rival Silvio.

All three plays mess up our heads about acting and reality; at a deeper level about belief and truth; and even at a political level about fake news and honesty. The Woman in Black is relatively simple plot-wise, and the ending is too predictable – a fictional device – compared with the complexity of the Six Characters from an unknown play invading another company’s rehearsal of a known play, (Mixing it Up by Luigi Pirandello!).  It becomes impossible to distinguish between the roles actors are playing, in the play within the play within the play we are watching, and the possibility that they are not acting but are in real conflict, leading to actual death.

The success, in the end,  of The Woman in Black relies upon the technical quality of the production.  We know we are watching a performance, yet we still are genuinely frightened as we hear ghostly sounds and see for ourselves a woman in black whose name is not revealed in the program.  And, to be fair, we feel afraid along with The Actor that his young son may die just as did Mr Kipps’ boy.  We do not know what will happen, but we can imagine how we would feel if it did; even more if it happened to us.

So this ghost story is not about making you believe in ghosts: but it’s certainly about our fear of the uncertainty of life.  Ensemble Theatre, with great directing, top quality acting and terrific (terrifying) sound and light design succeed perhaps better, I suggest, in this small theatre-in-the-round – where we become like Mr Kipps’ family having this Actor act out Mr Kipps’ scary story for us – than it would in a large conventional theatre.

It is a tour de force for just two actors (not counting the mystery woman) over two intense hours, constantly changing from being in and out of fictional roles in Mr Kipps’ play while switching into and out of their roles as Actor and Mr Kipps in Susan Hill’s story as developed by Stephen Mallatratt.

Some stills by Daniel Boud help to show how the play works:

Garth Holcombe as The Actor and Jamie Oxenbould as Mr Kipps

 

Garth Holcombe as The Actor directing Mr Kipps who says he is not an actor, how to act.

Jamie Oxenbould playing as Mr Kipps acting as Mr Daily
from the town of Crythin Gifford in Mr Kipps' playscript.

Garth Holcombe playing The Actor acting as Mr Kipps
in the house of his client, Mrs Alice Drablow
in Mr Kipps' playscript

Far left, Garth Holcombe playing The Actor acting as the solicitor Mr Kipps searching
through Alice Drablow's papers in Mr Kipps' playscript
while we see Jamie Oxenbould playing Mr Kipps
remembering his experiences

 There is, of course, no photo of the woman in black.

"La commedia è finita!!" – or in this case, the mystery is ended – or is it?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Grace Under Pressure by David Williams and Paul Dwyer

 

 

Grace Under Pressure by David Williams and Paul Dwyer, in collaboration with the Sydney Arts & Health Collective.  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, June 10 – 12, 2021.

Performed by Emily Taylor, Sal Sharah, Tanya Schneider and Meg Dunn
Understudies: Carla Jane McCallum, Richard Bligh, Mary Helen Sassman and Stephanie Panozzo

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 10

Director: David Williams; Dramaturg: Paul Dwyer
Lighting Designer: Nick Higgins; Sound Designer: Gail Priest
Set & Costume Designer: Isabel Hudson

Grace Under Pressure
Photo: Isabel Hudson

 

Grace Under Pressure is theatre, plain and simple.  Apart from the microphones, stage spotlighting and a quiet amorphous background recorded soundscape, these could have been four from our community who have come forward around our campfire to tell us their stories of what happened on their long arduous journey.  Sometimes one takes the foreground; then two may tell a story together; or someone listening may ask a question, and get a couple of different responses.  There were times of worry, times of success, times of friction and others of happiness, until all four come forward together to tell about the end: about the beauty and practical reality of dying.

Perhaps this is how theatre began, telling such stories honestly and openly, without performing for effect, maybe 300,000 years ago in Africa as our species found their voice.  And still today, in The Q, the elemental drama of telling stories works wonderfully.

The purpose of the storytelling is ostensibly to “open a broader public conversation about some of the persistent workplace issues facing health workers”, using verbatim material from “around 30 people – physicians, surgeons, interns, registrars, nurses, a paramedic, a hospital administrator and even a union official” ranging in “ages (from mid-20s to early 70s) and experience levels (from medical students to recently retired)”.

So each of the four performers take on many different “characters” as they reproduce the interviewees’ stories.  There is no clear storyline, but the drama is created by the way the stories have been selected and often interrelated, so that the mood and our feelings change through the 85 minutes of determination, worry, unexpected humour, success against seemingly impossible odds, fear and insecurity, and yet, finally, warmth and a tremendous sense of the humanity and self-sacrifice of those who do so much for everyone else’s benefit.

Grace Under Pressure presents us with the drama of life and death.  It is not a politicised campaign for better conditions but a revelation of reality more powerful than confronting street protest or petitions.  The tour across the country “has been assisted by the Australian government through the Department of Communication and the Arts’ Catalyst – Australian Arts and Culture Fund…and assisted by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.”

We can only hope that Members of Parliament have their eyes opened by Grace Under Pressure, and find creative ways to legislate and fund what is needed to make these stories able to focus more on the satisfaction and success side of the equation than on the worry and how to cope aspects of these extraordinary real life performers.

Perhaps the tour should include a performance in Parliament House.  I will suggest it to my local member.

 

 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Milk by Dylan Van Den Berg

 

 

Playscript and Program
published by Currency Press

Milk by Dylan Van Den Berg.  The Street Theatre, Canberra, June 9 – 12, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 9

Director – Ginny Savage
Set and Costume Design – Imogen Keen
Lighting Design – Gerry Corcoran
Sound Design – Peter Bailey
Cultural Consultant – Gaye Doolan
Movement Cultural Consultant – Tammi Gissell

Performed by
Roxanne McDonald – Character A
Katie Beckett – Character B
Dylan Van Den Berg – Character C

Milk is a new and powerful development in Australian First Peoples’ theatre.  It is a highly emotional work in the long-standing tradition which can be seen in four contrasting examples from among many since The Cake Man by Robert J Merritt (1975) became well-known in its film version in 1978, followed (selected just from my own 20 years’ of reviews) by Conversations with The Dead by Richard Frankland (2003), My Urrwai by Ghenoa Gela (2018), and Black is the New White by Nakkiah Lui (2018).

  
It is also a major achievement of the development program under-pinning The Street Theatre’s work, not only for the scriptwriting and direction, but for the beautiful set design and lighting, especially for the lightning on the distant edge of brooding mountains.

To explain how affected, in fact shaken, I felt as the lights and sound faded on the history and personal experiences of these three characters – “an Aboriginal woman from 1840s Tasmania, an Aboriginal woman from 1960s Tasmania, and a fair-skinned, young Aboriginal man from the 2020s” – I need to go to my own experience, weirdly enough in a café in a Canberra suburb, Ainslie, across the city from my usual area.

Dylan Van Den Berg has written “Milk reflects the complex private struggles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples living out bifurcated identities.”  A few days ago, I found myself at a loose end in Ainslie waiting for a doctor’s prescription to be filled.  A café offered onion soup for lunch, and had a Covid-spaced table available.

The café is named Breizh, which I couldn’t pronounce in English.  The onion soup was very definitely French.  The people serving were clearly Middle Eastern.  The specialities were Breton.  This is multicultural Canberra.  

When I looked up Breizh on my phone while waiting for the soup, I found it is the Breton language name for Brittany in France – the language related to Old Cornish in England and Welsh in Wales, where I was born.  Now my mind began to do what Dylan Van Der Berg’s mind was doing in creating his play.  One of my grandmothers was Welsh.  My father was one of her six sons, but my mother’s father was born within the sounds of Bow Bells in London, with a Cockney accent like I had when my parents brought me to Australia, aged 14 in 1955.  His surname was Solly – Jewish, perhaps?

But then, because of the French connection in the café, I remembered going to Normandy to find my Australian wife’s grandfather’s World War I grave, and then my mind turned to Richard the Lionheart, the English king buried at Anjou with his heart kept at Rouen.  Then I began thinking, but my background on my father’s father’s side must be in Ireland, as my clearly Celtic skin's lack of colour and red beard and face shape show.

I knew I would be seeing Milk, written by an Aboriginal man with a Dutch name (I assume), so I began to think how my knowledge of the history of Europe which informs my background and personal connections, and the whole way I think and approach life, simply are not in any way part of an Aboriginal person’s make-up.

Though I now have Australian citizenship, I cannot be Australian in the same way as a First Australian is.  I only have one or two thousand years to call on; nothing like the tens of thousands represented, say, in the oldest rock art in the world at Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula in WA) where I have heard the local elders speak.  

After watching the play, I began to wonder if any of my Irish ancestors who probably left poverty-stricken Western Ireland for London in the late 18th Century, had been transported to Australia in the days of the invasion , or perhaps had become whalers and sealers on Bass Strait islands who had become ‘husbands’ of women such as Character A in Milk.

Other McKones, I think unrelated to me, arrived here in the early 20th Century.  I can only hope none of them were the drunkard types that Character B met in pubs in her time.  Like Character C, on his European side, I have had the opportunity for a university education and recognition; but without the slur he suffered when whiteys thought he might look a bit Aboriginal.  The worst I’ve been called is Ten Pound Pom.

What hit me hard in seeing Milk – a title which I guess might refer to skin colour or even to the fact that Aboriginal people have had difficulty digesting milk which was never in their evolutionary history – was exactly what Van Den Berg has described in his program note:  Writing Milk has been a tremendous challenge and an unexpected pleasure.  After trawling through stories of grief and pain, what became apparent to me was the strength and resolve of our mobs – despite what we have lost (or, rather, what’s been taken from us) and despite concerted efforts to resign us to history books and anthropological study, we are still here.

As director Ginny Savage wrote,  This metaphorical, time and space shifting world asks its audience to consider: what are the truths of the land you’re standing on?  Shouldn’t you know them?

Yes, indeed.

L-R: Dylan Van Den Berg, Katie Beckett and Roxanne McDonald
as Characters C, B and A in Milk, The Street Theatre, Canberra
Photo: Creswick Collective

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Impermanence by Sydney Dance Company

 

 

Impermanence  Sydney Dance Company at Canberra Theatre Centre, June 4-5 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Choreographer – Rafael Bonachela
Composer – Bryce Dessner
Lighting Designer – Damien Cooper
Stage Designer – David Fleischer
Costume Designer – Aleisa Jelbart

Australian String Quartet:
Dale Barltrop – Violin I
Francesca Hiew – Violin II
Christopher Cartlidge – Viola (Guest)
Michael Dahlenburg – Cello

Rehearsal Director – Chris  Aubrey; Rehearsal Associate – Charmene Yap
Dancers: Juliette Barton, Isabella Crain, Sabine Crompton-Ward, Davide Di Giovanni, Dean Elliott, Riley Fitzgerald, Jacopo Grabar, Liam Green, Luke Hayward, Telea Jensen, Dimitri Kleioris, Rhys Kosawoski, Chloe Leong, Jesse Scales, Emily Seymour

Photos by Pedro Greig

There’s a great irony in the creation of Impermanence.  We all seek continuity, stability, even harmony in our lives.  We treat this as the ‘normal’ state we expect, or at least hope for, in our physical world and in our personal relationships.  But in this dance work the moments when everything comes together in unison, or the connection in spirit between a couple is locked in: these moments are surprising, wonderful – and fleeting.  There is a great sadness, finally, as the last figure in the fading light understands that this is the truth.  Nothing is permanent.

Yet, at that very moment we are brought to our feet to celebrate the discipline of the musical composition, the choreography, and then the dancers and musicians – the continuity, stability and harmony which they have demonstrated to create this work of art. And, ironically, in this there is great joy.

The work originated in the experience of Dessner and Bonachela who were in Paris in 2019 shortly after the Notre Dame fire, then here as the bushfires engulfed the east coast of Australia, followed by the Covid pandemic in 2020.  Scenes are broken up by flashes of light and changing cyclorama colours, following the line of extraordinary unexpected harmonies within the dissonant urgent music, as the dancers form unrelated groups, individuals leave and enter at random, pairs, threes and fours form and break apart and at intervals a solo dancer takes the space, perhaps only to be discovered by horrified observers as if melted into the ground.

In the Program, which can be found online at the Sydney Dance Company website, the scenes are entitled:
Before
Alarms
Disintegration
Alarms 2
Urgences
Embers
Shards
Emergency
Impermanence
Pulsing
Requiem – Ashes
Another World

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The Appleton Ladies' Potato Race by Melanie Tait

 

 

The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race by Melanie Tait.  Ensemble Theatre (Sydney) at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, June 3-5 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 3

Director and Dramaturg: Priscilla Jackman
Assistant Director: Felicity Nicol
Dramaturg: Jane Fitzgerald
Set Designer: Michael Scott-Mitchell
Costume Designer: Genevieve Graham
Lighting Designer: Karen Norris
Composer and Sound Designer: Tegan Nicholls
Stage Manager: Lauren Tulloh
Touring Production Manager: Tim Burns

Cast: Valerie Bader, Merridy Eastman, Sapidah Kian, Amber McMahon, Sharon Millerchip

Entirely predictable and therefore thoroughly enjoyable, The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race is a celebration of women’s equality.  As soon as we know that the winning man will receive $1000 and the winning woman only $200, we can be sure that the ending will be happy.

The mood is humorous and energetic from the beginning, entirely – of course – performed by women.

The play, written by Melanie Tait, is an autobiographical story about Tait’s return home to Robertstown, NSW, in 2018. The playwright and journalist discovered the town’s annual potato race awarded a $1000 prize to the winner of the men’s race, while victorious women only walked away with $200.

She started a Go Fund Me page to bring the women’s prize money up to be equal to the men’s and then wrote a play about it.
[Zoe Rice: https://indaily.com.au/inreview/theatre/2021/05/26/on-your-marks-for-the-appleton-ladies-potato-race/]

The real town, well-known to Canberrans, is Robertson on the Southern Highlands which sports The Big Potato:

The Big Potato, Robertson NSW

I have to say, since I attended professional development courses in Robertson many years ago, I’m sure it’s a much more sophisticated place than Tait represents.  Coarse language is a major feature of the dialogue, and I can’t imagine the wreck of a fifties Holden ute would be left to dominate the scene:

L-R: Amber McMahon, Merridy Eastman, Sapidah Kian, Sharon Millerchip, Valerie Bader
Photo by Phil Erbacher (audreyjournal.com.au)

But I wouldn’t doubt that sexism abounds as it does, after all, apparently even in the Australian Parliament and sports such as tennis, as the story of Naomi Osaka tells us.  The symbolism of the unfair Ladies’ Potato Race, laugh out loud funny though it is on stage, should not be missed.  Nor should the terrific performances of all the cast – an ensemble show in the true sense of The Ensemble Theatre.

A telling issue in the play, adding to the basic unfairness of the treatment of women, is the way social media is so destructive of community spirit, especially in a small town.  When the doctor, herself originally from the town and now returning with a ‘politically correct’ message about women’s rights, reads out-loud the attacking Facebook posts ‘liked’ by a sports-mad woman she had gone to school with, the language is disgusting, violent and literally shocking.  Of course, the ending is happy: reconciliation is possible, at least among these strong-minded women.

Some have called the play ‘heart-warming’ and I’m glad to say they are right.  But that scene told me I’m right to keep my social distance well away from ‘The Facebook’ virus.

Published by Currency Press

© Frank McKone, Canberra