2021: The Performance by Claire Thomas

 

The Performance

 

Published by Hachette Australia

The Performance.  A novel by Claire Thomas.  Hachette Australia, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone


When watching a performance in a theatre, I often wonder what is going on in the heads of others in the audience.  You hear the occasional cough, and sense if the cougher seems embarrassed or seems to have no concern for the feelings of others.  I laugh, and shrink in a little as I realise I’ve laughed too loud.

As a critic, my feelings in response to what’s happening on stage are mixed with thoughts of many kinds about the technical elements like casting, costume and hairdressing, lighting, sound, use of voices, choreography of movement, and even placing of this play and this production in the history of theatre.  If thoughts about private matters arise, as they can, of course, I will try to set them aside and re-focus my attention on the performance.

As I write this, I seem to have become a character, not mentioned by Claire Thomas, in her audience watching Happy Days by Samuel Beckett.  Except that I am remembering the production directed by the one-time Canberra High School highly respected principal and noted theatre identity, Ralph Wilson, in 1991 – in what is now affectionately known as the Ralph Wilson Theatre.

In The Performance, the performance is clearly in a professional theatre.  Margot is an established academic and subscriber, Summer is an usher and budding actor, while Ivy is a middle-aged arts enthusiast who has brought her friend Hilary.  She thinks “Hilary was the obvious person to bring along.  They studied Waiting for Godot together in high school, an experience that marked the beginning of Ivy’s passion for Beckett, or SB as she came to refer to him.”  

“Summer has once again missed the beginning of the play” because she’s not “on Stairs” this night, but “on Door” where “her main task is handling the latecomers in the foyer".  Margot is “almost late”, “shuffling in a balletic first position along the strip of carpet between the legs of the already-seated people…and the chair backs of the row in front”.

And I immediately thought of the occasion in the Canberra Theatre, when my wife and I were amused, fortunately not in the same row as their one nearer the stage, watching the tremendously tall Margaret and Gough Whitlam, one-time Prime Minister of Australia, doing a more commanding kind of shuffle.  Then I thought, there’s another book everyone should read: Margaret Whitlam – A Biography by Susan Mitchell (Random House, 2006).

That’s what I love about The Performance.  It just naturally takes you into thinking about things, just like the characters in the story.  They are making connections, thinking and re-thinking about what’s happening on stage and what’s been triggered in their memories and about what’s happening around them at the moment.  It’s an absorbing book to read.  Though I had to take a break of a few days at interval, I understand entirely why musician and writer Clare Bowditch commented “I read from start to finish almost without looking up”.

I meant “at interval” literally.  The novel has a theatrical structure.  Before interval there are six parts, simply numbered ONE to THREE, focussed in turn on Margot, Summer and Ivy; then FOUR to SIX following each of them up later in Act One.  

Then comes THE INTERVAL – a short play, in four scenes, by Claire Thomas.  The characters listed are

SUMMER, female, early 20s, theatre usher
PROFESSOR MARGOT PIERCE, female, early 70s, audience member
IVY PARKER, female, early 40s, audience member
HILARY FULLER, female, early 40s, audience member
JOEL, male, mid-20s, audience member
APRIL, female, mid-20s (screen and voice only)

After The Interval, there are parts SEVEN to NINE, again following up Margot, Summer and Ivy in order through Act Two of Happy Days.  You don’t need to have seen or read Happy Days, but you certainly get to feel you appreciate Beckett’s work as each of the three respond to particular images, sounds, words and quality of light which spark their thoughts and feelings.

It is Ivy, then, through whose eyes we see the end of the play, in which Winnie is buried up to her waist in Act One and up to her neck in Act Two.  Ivy notes “When the lights darken to allow a surge in applause, Winnie will not climb out of her trap to appear whole again like a magician’s assistant whose destruction was an illusion.  Winnie will stay inside the mound.  She will not appease the audience.”

This is where the novel comes to its fruition, matching the insights of Samuel Beckett and the director and designer of his play (whom I take to be Claire Thomas, since there is no reference to any actual performance) with the inter-related experiences of the three women, and the traps they may or may not climb out of.

I can only agree with the other readers quoted on the cover of this novel: “Witty, affecting, brilliantly wise and original” (Gail Jones); “A potent meditation on the intensity of women’s lives” (Charlotte Wood); and “Read it as soon as you possibly can” (Emily Bitto).



 

First published by Grove Press NY
1961
First production at Cherry Lane Theatre, New York City on 17 September 1961

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: SandSong by Bangarra Dance Theatre

 

 

SandSong – Stories from the Great Sandy Desert.  Bangarra Dance Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre July 15 – 17, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 15


SandSong is a major work of celebration tinged with sadness, the four seasons representing the history of the people.  

The dance is a drama of the establishment of ancient Indigenous culture, seemingly against the odds in cold and dry Makurra when “Time and space collide in a cloud of black collective consciousness”;
 
of new cultural understanding in the hot and dry Parranga – a “meditation on fragility, survival, balance, knowledge, life and death;
 
of the strength of culture needed in the time of Kartiya – the invasion of the land and the “lawlessness of a new frontier and the whims of station owners” when “people begin their new life…in servitude”;

of the determination in Yitilal, the Wet Season, by which “the spirit of people and place endures to stand strong in their kinship and belonging”.

The sadness?  “SandSong is our way of honouring and paying respect to our sister Ningali, to her People and Country” who “passed peacefully, surrounded by family and friends” in 2019 when “seriously ill in an Edinburgh hospital while on tour with Sydney Theatre Company’s production of The Secret River.”  Stephen Page and Frances Ring describe in their essay “Caring for Story” how they were able to “travel with Ningali’s family to Edinburgh to farewell and bring home our beautiful and irreplaceable friend.”

You may remember the impact of Ningali Lawford, as I do particularly for Solid,  a Black N'2 production for Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theatre by Ningali Lawford, Kelton Pell, Phil Thomson.  Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, 2001. (Review: Canberra Times, and available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au).

Solid ended in ironic humour with "How would you like your tea?  Black n'2 like you and me."

SandSong in dance is like the picture that hangs on my study wall: Wild Yam Dreaming by Annette Pitjara.  Just as dot painting and non-representational symbolic figures are ancient Australian forms of art which seem to be ‘modern art’ in the eyes of non-Indigenous viewers, so Bangarra’s dance – firmly based in the traditions of the Wangkatjungka and Walmajarri peoples of the Kimberley and Great Sandy Desert regions, the Lawford family’s people – integrates the ancient and ‘modern dance’ forms.

The effect then is not a focus on plot, not on linear story-line.  Each scene creates a mood, from images and movement, which take us along through experiencing living on this Country.  As in the painting, there are often small details of shape or action in the dance which an outsider may recognise as Aboriginal linked in with modern dance style.  Watching is to absorb the whole as an atmosphere.

Steve Francis’ sound is an eclectic gathering of songs, musique concrète and spoken word which makes an aural space for the dancers to perform in.

Following Bangarra’s 30 years of sixty five thousand, I see SandSong as a powerful symbolic representation of what it means to be Aboriginal – of the importance and place of Australia’s First Nations in the formation of our total culture, and therefore of central importance to us all.


Choreographers:
Stephen Page, Frances Rings and the Dancers of Bangarra Dance Theatre –

Rika Hamaguchi, Glory Tuohy-Daniell, Lillian Banks, Courtney Radford, Kassidy Waters, Maddison Paluch, Emily Flannery

Beau Dean Riley Smith, Rikki Mason, Baden Hitchcock, Ryan Pearson, Bradley Smith, Kallum Goolagong, Gusta Mara, Kiarn Doyle, Daniel Mateo

Cultural Consultants:
Putuparri Tom Lawford, Eva Nargoodah

Cultural Consultancy:
Wangkatjungka & Walmajarri Elders

Composer:
Steve Francis

Set Designer – Jacob Nash; Costume Designer – Jennifer Irwin; Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper; AV Designer – David Bergman; Rehearsal Director – Daniel Roberts; Aerial Movement Consultant – Joshua Thomson; Rigging Consultant – David Jackson; Lighting Realiser – Chris Twynam; Sound Recordist – Brendon Boney

Kimberley Country

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Potted Potter - a Parody

 

 POTTED POTTER – The Unauthorized Harry Experience – A Parody by Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner (writers and creators).  Canberra Theatre Centre July 13 – 18, 2021.

Director – Richard Hurst; Designer – Simon Scullion; Lighting Designer – Tim Mascall; Composer – Phil Innes

Performed by Adam Brown (Harry) and Tama Jarman (Everybody Else)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 13



Fortunately, I have not read the seven volumes of Harry Potter, and now – after an hour’s entertaining clowning – I will never need to.  As they demonstrated, the character of Harry Potter is essentially boring, and the only relationship of any real interest – between Hermione Granger and the red-haired guy Ron Weasley – gets a passing mention right at the end.

What horrified me most was how much I recognised.  What is it about ludicrous pretend mediaeval witchcraft fantasy that, in the modern rational world, can become an essential element in our consciousness?  The value of this absurdist parody is that at least the young aficionados in the audience thoroughly enjoyed laughing at it.  Potty Potter, I call it.

Even more ironically absurd is how the show was born as a promotion of J K Rowland’s sixth volume in the series way back in 2005. www.pottedpotter.com.au/ explains: Dan and Jeff are asked to create a five-minute street show recapping the plot of the first five Potter books, for performance to queues of fans waiting for the midnight release of the sixth book.  At least it means that the quality of British humour is not lost, and has even been touring the world, beginning very sensibly with Australia and New Zealand, since 2009.  These are facts of which I was previously completely oblivious.

When you look at sites like https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Hortense_Rowland perhaps it’s best to say that the Harry Potter phenomenon is a diversion away from reality for its fans, while money-making for its creators.  The social structure of J K Rowland’s fantasy is, unfortunately, entirely predictably conservative politically – so there is little of artistic value in her work, which is why it is so easy to parody.

There is one element of Potted Potter of educational value.  Most of the comedy is made out of the interplay between the actors out of their Potter characters, creating a story of their relationship.  Adam is played as the bookish type, seriously concerned with doing things properly (and therefore plays Harry); while Tama is just interested in having fun, and breaks all the rules.  This is what makes the show enjoyable – nothing really to do with Rowland’s books.  The show works because it breaks the conventions of theatre as the actors jump in and out of their Potter roles and their roles of being actors: talking, for one example, about their training in theatre school in New Zealand; and supporting more pay for teachers, at one point (achieving real approval from the audience).

So, now I’ve dragged you out of the fantasy, forget the world around you for an hour – and enjoy!

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

 

 

 The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood.  Crouching Giraffe in association with Papermoon Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre, Courtyard Studio, July 7 – 17, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 9

Creatives:                                                Cast:
Director – Kate Blackhurst                      Penelope – Elaine Noon
Vocal Coach – Tony Turner                    Telemachus/Maid – Martha Russell
Sound design – Neville Pye                    Melantho/Maid – Emily Smith
Lighting Design – Stephen Still              Antinous/Maid – Tijana Kovac
Original Music – Glenn Gore Phillips     Maid – Milena Rafic
Choreography – Brooke Thomas            Naiad Mother/Maid – Sarah Hull
Set Design – Cate Clelland                     Eurycleia/Maid – Carolyn Eccles
Costumes – Annie Kay                           Oracle/Maid – Emily Ridge
Properties – Jessica Dickie                     Icarius/Maid – Shauna Priest
                                                                Odysseus/Maid – Heidi Silberman
                                                                Laertes/Maid – Jess Waterhouse
                                                                Helen/Maid – Victoria Dixon
                                                                Anticleia/Maid – Sure Gore Phillips



Margaret Atwood, of The Handmaids’ Tale fame, dedicates her novella, The Penelopiad, “For my family”.  I wonder how her family felt on reading, and later watching, the often touching but ultimately horrifying story of Penelope, the wife of the putative hero, Odysseus, who rescued Helen of Troy.

Now, speaking from Hades, “being dead – since achieving this state of bonelessness, liplessness, breastlessness” – that is, her story being forgotten or never even recorded – Penelope begins with a warning to us all.  “I’ve learned some things I would rather not know, as one does when listening at windows or opening other people’s letters.  You think you’d like to read minds?  Think again.”

Of course, as Elaine Noon spoke these words, we all immediately fell into Atwood’s trap, held there for two hours’ traffic on the stage - and even beyond the Maids’ last words, as they sprout feathers, and fly away as owls:

we took the blame
it was not fair
but now we’re here
we’re all here too
the same as you

and now we follow
you, we find you
now, we call
to you to you
too wit too woo
too wit too woo
  too woo

In some other productions, a long table, behind which Penelope sits, is a central static fixture.  What I like especially about Cate Clelland’s set is its flexibility so that movement is at the core of the drama: it’s a story told in action, in a way I imagine similar to the way mythical stories of Aboriginal people are performed, as much in dance and song as in speech.

In one production (isn’t Youtube marvellous?), Odysseus is played by a man.  For me it seems essential to have the whole story presented by 13 women because the play is grounded in the perspective that only women can have.  When Heidi Silberman, one of Penelope’s close maids, takes on the role of Odysseus, there is humour and irony which does not happen if a man is brought in for that role.  The same is true later when the roles of the men suitors, who raped the maids in the story, are played by those very women.  

There is a very nice interview with two women in a production which, I think, has the right ‘feel’.  Uploaded by Xtra Magazine at

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcvHkNnkPLE

it’s about the Nightwood Theatre production: “Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad makes its Toronto remount at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre”.  Perhaps Margaret Atwood herself was there.

I like, too, the symbolism built into the set design, of the huge woven wall hangings which seem to represent the stage as in Ancient Greek times, and perhaps were woven by Penelope and her Maids.  The costumes, too, take us seemingly back to Ancient Greece, but give us a range of distinct characters as members of the Chorus take on roles in the story.

The music, voicing and singing, part and in unison, also do more than form a sound-track.  The production, seemingly simple in the intimate small-scale Studio space, has all the elements of drama working together with purpose and artistic integrity.

This Penelopiad is my kind of theatre – strong in its intention; powerful in its effect and its message.  When I hear the occasional boobook owl, the currawongs whooping or the sulphur crested cockatoos screeching every day around my home, I know Penelope and her Maids are reminding me that “we took the blame / it was not fair”.

Cate Clelland's set design for
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
Crouching Giraffe, Canberra 2021

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Carmen by Georges Bizet

 

 

Carmen by Georges Bizet.  Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy after the novella by Prosper Mérimée.  Opera Australia at Canberra Theatre Centre July 8 – 10, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 8

Conductor – Luke Spicer
Director & Choreographer – Matthew Barclay
Set & Costume Designer – Anna Cordingley
Lighting Designer – Paul Jackson
Fight Coordinator – Troy Honeysett
Orchestra Reducation – Robert Andrew Greene
Keyboard Programmer – Sean Peter

Alternating Cast:
Carmen – Angela Hogan, Agnes Sarkis, Dimity Shepherd
Don José – Iain Henderson, Matthew Reardon
Micaëla – Danita Weatherstone, Cathy-Di Zhang, Esther Song
Escamillo – Alexander Sefton, Haotian Qi
Zuniga – Haotian Qi, Alexander Sefton
Dancairo – Michael Lampard
El Remendado – Mathew Waugh, Nicholas Jones
Frasquita – Giuseppina Grech, Clarissa Spata
Mercédès – Genevieve Dickson
Moralès – Daniel Macey

Children’s Chorus Master – Kate Joy Stuart

Instrumental Ensemble:
Concertmaster – Caroline Hopson
Cello – David Moran, Stephanie Arnold
Flute/Piccolo – Eliza Shephard
Oboe – Ennes Mehmedbasic
Clarinet – Cameron Smith
Bassoon – Chris Martin
Trumpet – Sarah Hendseron, Dominic Longhurst, Sophie Spencer, Louisa Trewartha
Keyboard – Jane Matheson, Michelle Nguyen



It’s a little difficult when I can’t be sure who was playing which roles on the night, even after inspecting off-stage headshots in black-and-white in the full program.  I had hoped the single sheet handout, which most of the audience relied on, would have been more specific.

So, without naming names, I can say that Carmen was a terrific singer, actor, dancer and castinet player; Don José’s character seemed wishy-washy to the extent that Carmen should have got her bikie gang to shoot him very early in the piece (and his dishevelled costume when out of uniform was a distraction rather than a statement about his character).  Escamillo never had the charisma in voice or physical presence to create the champion bullfighter character he needed to be to make me accept that he could be so famous or that Carmen would be interested in him, even for his money.

I thought the most sincere character, not just in the plot but in her performance, was Micaëla.  I began to feel this play is really about her as the central character having to come to terms with the superficiality of all the others’ passions and self-destruction tendencies.  That idea at least gave me some sense of purpose in this production: but it’s not the kind of thought expressed in Matthew Barclay’s Director’s Note.

So I couldn’t stop myself digging out my program and my 2016 review of John Bell’s directing of Carmen for Opera Australia.  His was a show full of emotion – in fact horrifying at the very end, just as Barclay said it should be when he wrote “Their final confrontation is a tragic irony”.  But in this 2021 production, the ending was almost comic as the two of them chased around on the raised platform hidden from the crowd cheering the bullfighters on in the arena behind them.  How could the two productions by the same company be so different?

The answer is clear in the two Director’s Notes.  Barclay’s is all about “I wanted with this production to bridge the distance between 19th Century Spain and regional Australia [where this tour travels to] and create familiarity – advertising billboards [which is the central component of the set design], bleachers, cops, a motorbike, a diner, a drive-in [which explains the sections of black-and-white movie mysteriously appearing at times on the back of the billboard].  All of these evoke a sense of nostalgia for a vintage, postcard Spain and memories of our own experiences of unrequited love, jealousy, frustration, guilt or youthful rebellion.”

Well, I’ve been around for eight decades and had all those experiences and memories.  It’s an interesting idea, but I can’t say I had a sense of nostalgia evoked in me.  That isn’t what Carmen is about, I suggest.

What it is about, is what John Bell wrote: “Coming to Carmen as a theatre director, the thing I find most exciting about the opera…is the accuracy and savagery of its psychology.”  And his production focussed with pin-point accuracy on how Don José’s “infatuation makes him Carmen’s slave, but he quickly develops a possessiveness that seeks to contain her, and Carmen will not be contained” and how “Carmen is infatuated with her fantasy of José, not the man himself.”

Barclay’s production is based on ideas external to the emotional drama; while Bell’s made the characters’ internal and conflicting emotions central to his design and the performances.  Bell’s was, indeed, exciting – and raised directly in our emotional responses the reality of what Barclay said he wanted to raise: “Violence confused as love may be inconceivable to many of us, but 150 years after Bizet wrote this opera, such violence is taking place between Australians in alarming proportions.”

Oddly, this year’s program cover image, above, looks much more suited to Bell than Barclay.
 
But Barclay got distracted into billboards, turning gypsies into criminal bikies, and imagining he had updated us to “1960 in Franco’s Spain, with church and state ruling with formidable power.”  I missed that completely until reading his note after the show.  I should have recognised the Norton 350cc motorbike, I suppose.

The touring production was, of course, limited to a smaller cast than on the main stage at Sydney Opera House.  This explains the alternating and doubling up of actors in various roles, and became the reason (starting from Barclay’s conception) for using the physical billboard structure, turned around in different configurations in each act.  There could be nothing like the massed Cubans in Havana that Bell could offer.

But in the end it is the directing concept which has limited Carmen 2021, away from the depth of human interaction which the story and the music require, towards an externalised set of ideas about symbolic actions and images which the audience is supposed to interpret intellectually.

For me, then Carmen 2021 is the presentation of an opera on a stage, rather than an inner experience of emotional depth through drama.  Technically very good; theatrically a bit pedestrian.

Carmen by Georges Bizet
Opera Australia National Tour 2021
Act I - Billboard Set Design

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: American Psycho - The Musical -- BB Arts & Two Doors Production

 

 

American Psycho - The Musical, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis.  Book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa; music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik; 80s hits from Phil Collins, Tears for Fears, New Order and Huey Lewis and the News.  
BB-Arts Entertainment & Two Doors Productions, by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.  At Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse June 30 – July 3, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 30

Director – Alexander Berlage; Musical Director – Andrew Wordboys; Choreographer – Yvette Lee; Set Designer – Isabel Hudson; Costume Designer – Mason Browne; Sound Designer – Nicholas Walker


My response on the night was very confusing.  I have needed a day or two to understand why.  

Despite appreciating the high quality singing, dance work and acting, for which the whole cast deserves an award for handling such complexity, especially of choreography and changing props and costumes, I weirdly found myself feeling bored by half way through the first hour, and even wondering whether to bother coming back after interval.  Fortunately the second half was more interesting theatrically – but then the ending left me unsure about how to interpret the production’s intention.

So my questions are: was it really satire?  And did the continuous use of the revolving stage work?  I think not on both counts.

On the revolve, though a good idea to solve the problem of a static set design like the one used on Broadway, the device of continually changing scenes with the main characters always walking in the same direction (anti-clockwise while apparently going nowhere) at a regular pace seems like a good idea, to represent perhaps the social lifestyle of Wall Street wheelers and dealers, the pressure of continual activity for the central character Patrick Bateman, and a way of competing on stage with the flexibility of scene presentation available on film.

To make it exciting, very often mirrors reflected lights which, in the Canberra Playhouse, flashed horizontally directly into my eyes in Row G.  So in addition to becoming bored with watching the revolve revolve, I had to close my eyes in defence against bright light battery.  By the end of an hour, even the longer stop in Patrick’s unit as he built up to chopping off his rival’s head couldn’t revive my engagement.  It wasn’t dramatic – just another in the series of events in an uninteresting life.

In the  early part of the second act the travel stopped for longer in the scenes in Patrick’s office with his secretary, and a degree of drama seemed on the cusp of happening.  Of course, Patrick’s reneging on our expectation that he would kill her, on sentimental grounds, was entirely predictable.  Perhaps this was meant to be satirical – it was certainly unrealistic – but it wasn’t funny either.  Good satire has to be funny, until it reaches a point of apparent reality where it’s funny no longer.  

So, in this production, or maybe in the original script which I have no access to at the moment, Patrick – apparently still in role – steps off the revolve to explain in a Puckish “If we shadows have offended… /And this weak and idle theme, / No more yielding but a dream” speech.  But what happened to the satire?  

It just fades away into oblivion, as if the whole horrible story of Capitalism’s seeds of its own destruction can be just put aside as if it doesn’t really matter.  It seems we are left to take what we have seen as no more than an upbeat dance-style pop entertainment.  It feels cynical, rather than an incisive satire of the very society which caused the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and the rise of Donald Trump, whose fall is not yet – or maybe never will be – guaranteed.

So I apologise to those who described this production of American Psycho - The Musical as “Slick, sexy and highly disturbing.” (The Guardian).  I think the directing and design was based on an intellectual concept which, for me, fell into a trap set by the original novel.  The Canberra Theatre Centre’s promo calls it a “hilarious musical” of the absolute superficiality of life “in [the] epicenter [sic] of excess”.  The massive surround-sound system, the excess of lighting, the continuous revolve, the over-stylised characterisation in the acting and singing, and extremes of ghastly dancing creates a show as shallow as the lives of its characters.

You might say it was slick and sexually titillating, but it never offered the theatrical depth to be disturbing.  And that, for me, was disappointing.

© Frank McKone, Canberra