2022: SIX The Musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss

 

 

SIX The Musical - book, lyrics and music by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Originally Produced by Kenny Wax, Wendy & Andy Barnes, and George Stiles.
Produced in Australia by Louise Withers, Michael Coppel and Linda Bewick.
Canberra Theatre Centre, April 23 – May 15, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 29

Directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage;
Choreography by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille.
Set Design by Emma Bailey; Costume Design by Gabriella Slade;
Lighting Design by Tim Deiling; Sound Design by Paul Gatehouse.
Orchestrator: Tom Curran; Musical Supervisor: Joe Beighton

Performers (April 29):
Catherine of Aragon - Phoenix Jackson Mendoza.
Anne Boleyn - Kala Gare
Jane Seymour - Shannen Alyce Quan (Swing performing tonight in place of Loren Hunter)
Anna of Cleves - Chiara Assetta (Swing performing tonight in place of Kiana Daniele)
Katherine Howard - Chelsea Dawson
Catherine Parr - Vidya Makan
SIX band Ladies in Waiting, Music Director / Keys Claire Healey, Kathryn Stammers on Drums, Debbie Yap on Guitar and Jessica Dunn on Bass
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SIX The Musical is more subtle than it first appears.  It’s an entertainment full of subterfuge – that is ‘deceit used in order to achieve one's goal.’

For those with an interest in etymology, the word ‘subterfuge’ arrived in England in the 16th century, about the end of King Henry VIII’s reign, from French, or from the late Latin subterfugium, from Latin subterfugere ‘to escape secretly’, from subter- ‘beneath’ + fugere ‘to flee’.

The deceit in SIX The Musical is in two parts.  The opening number is just so amazing for the set design, the music, the singing, acting and choreography – receiving whoops and whistles time and again from a full house in the main theatre – that ENTERTAINMENT PLUS seemed to be the purpose of SIX.  Watching those six gutsy 29 April 2022 women acting out those six 28 January 1547 ex-wives (that’s when Henry died) was incredible FUN – LoL, as one character exclaimed.

Having won their 'Canberra' audience over (they kept calling us that to show us how terrific we are), they set us up with the second-level deceit.  “How would you like to decide who was the best queen? Yes?”  How could we stop clapping and say “No”?  Who would dare kill the fun?

Would we vote for (as the producers’ notes describe them) the sassy Catherine of Aragon (Phoenix Jackson Mendoza); the rule-breaking second wife Anne Boleyn (Kala Gare); Shannen Alyce Quan’s loyal third wife Jane Seymour; the independent Anna of Cleves (Chiara Assetta); Chelsea Dawson’s playful fifth wife, Katherine Howard; or Vidya Makan’s empowering Catherine Parr?

This is clever writing – my academic etymological beginning is a hidden reference to the originators of SIX The Musical at Cambridge University which was founded in 1209, in competition with the even older Oxford University founded in 1096.  In the 21st Century Cambridge is still well ahead, at least in comedy.  

Have a read of David Stubbs’ article in The Guardian 2009 ( https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/jan/31/comedy-footlights-cambridge-stephen-fry ) titled Cambridge's Footlights has long been a fast track to comedy riches for a background to this show’s “early days as a student production in a 100-seat room at Sweet Venue during the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival”, only to “become a global phenomenon.”  I’m sure half our Canberra audience knew the songs by heart from the “Studio Album [which] has achieved in excess of 450 million streams across all platforms worldwide, over 3 billion views on TikTok and has recently reached Gold status”.  

Being a pre-boomer, of course I had no idea what to expect.  Though I felt genuinely affected by Quan’s sad rendition of Jane Seymour’s love for Henry, despite his bad temper, I have to say I was really pleased to have Catherine Parr, played absolutely straight by Makan, announce that “I can’t go on”.  Here was the revelation of the deceit.  Here was the modern woman saying it is not funny to compete with other women about who had the most miscarriages or who should win the competition for having their heads chopped off.  She even made us believe, at first, in strict Brechtian theatrical distancing form, that she, Vidya Makan, would not go on playing the role.  What a subterfuge!  What a woman!  We were fooled – but for the right purpose.

In the finale the goal of using deceit became absolutely and empoweringly clear, when the six ex-wives of Henry VIII, the most famous case of domestic violence in history (though certainly not the only case) – when the Six women sang “We are One”.  Then when they – young determined 21st Century women –  confidently brought the show to its proper conclusion, singing “We are Six” and had the whole audience on our feet, we knew “Six” women meant all women.

SIX The Musical is a lesson, justifiably a global phenomenon to be learned and put into practice by men and women all around the world.  When you look around at the moment from Russia to Myanmar, and many countries in between, the prospects are not good.  But keep singing the songs of the Dictator’s Six Wives of nearly five centuries ago, because the tune is changing with the times.

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As a final personal encouragement, I should record the historical irony that despite Henry VIII’s insistence on a son to inherit his power, that son, Edward VI – whose mother Jane Seymour died only four days after his birth, perhaps of post-natal puerperal fever or perhaps of some other cause ( see Alison Weir at https://tudortimes.co.uk/guest-articles/why-did-jane-seymour-die-in-childbed ) – Edward reigned only from the age of 10 to 16.  He died in 1553, to be succeeded by a woman –  first Queen Mary I, and then Queen Elizabeth I, whose fame as a monarch far surpassed her father’s, and has been matched only by two other women (in British history, at least), Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II.

The personal touch for me is that my school in England (state school, not private) – Enfield Grammar School – was founded in 1558 with the motto ‘Tant Que Je Puis’, Old French for ‘As much as I can’.

Enfield Grammar School (EGS) was officially (that is legally) founded in 1558 on the 25th May during the reign of Mary I (Mary Tudor otherwise known as 'Bloody Mary'). The year before in 1557 the princess, later Queen Elizabeth, had spent some days in Enfield in Edward VI's palace near to Enfield; with 'great pomp' she came to hunt in Enfield Chace, at that point well stocked with deer…[and] from 1558 a schoolmaster began teaching the children of Enfield's poor Latin and English 'according to the trade and use of grammar schools'.
https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/6009656

I remain proud of that motto and the tradition of education for all which Henry VIII’s daughters encouraged – though even more ironically in a school which is still only for boys!

May The Six continue to sing as One.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: White Pearl by Anchuli Felicia King

 

White Pearl by Anchuli Felicia King. A Sydney Theatre Company and
Riverside’s National Theatre Of Parramatta production at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, April 27-30, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 27

Director - Priscilla Jackman; Designer - Jeremy Allen
Lighting Designer - Damien Cooper
Composer & Sound Designer - Michael Toisuta
Composer & Associate Sound Designer - Me-Lee Hay
Projection Designer - Anchuli Felicia King
Dramaturg - Courtney Stewart
Voice & Text Coach - Leith McPherson

Cast:
Soo-Jin Park - Deborah An
Priya Singh - Manali Datar
Sunny Lee - Melissa Gan
Marcel Benoit - Stephen Madsen
Ruki Minami - Kaori Maeda-Judge
Built Suttikul - Nicole Milinkovic
Xiao Chen - Shirong Wu
Understudy - Jenny Wu

Photos - Philip Erbacher
________________________________________________________________________

I’m glad I don’t live in the modern world.  

The idea that everyone should only converse in one-line assertions makes Twitter an abomination.  But there you go – I’ve just done it myself.

It’s the million comments of this kind about the White Pearl company’s attempt at a humorous television advertisement for its facial skin whitener, aimed at Asian women, which form the focus in this play.  It became literally black humour when it went wrong – as a joke in the ad – and the woman’s face turned black instead of white.  In the ad she is suitably horrified.  After all, who would ever want a black face?  Eh?

There is only one man in this play – very French, of course, with a commercial interest in face make-up and aromatic products – and others for a few other unmentionable parts of the body: his body.  He leaked the ad video on Twitter with no regard for copyright law – just for fun.

All the other roles are the women high-flyin’ team who have made White Pearl a global sensation.  This is despite realising, when a newcomer starts to think about why selling White Pearl cream works universally, that women hate the way they look but are afraid to admit it.  So the Singapore company calls itself Clearday Cosmetics so women don’t have to admit to themselves that they really want to be white.  Only the Pearl is White – as a pearl should be.

The dark side of this theme is cleverly kept in the dark by turning the scenes of this over-the-top competitive group of creative money-makers into a kind of edgy satire of this world in which, I’m glad to say again, I don’t live.  The humour is blacker by dint of the fact that these are all go-getting women, rather than the more usual patriarchal men, who naturally deserve to be satirised.

The set is literally high-powered in audio and visuals – I had to take one hearing aid off  completely – as the million hits and many of the vicious Twitters flashed up between scenes, and numbers explosively clicked up and up.  I think they reached 400 million as the whole cast fell apart mentally and socially, as profit-taking defeated feminism.  We were still laughing at the final blackout.

On the serious side, on reflection, White Pearl raises real issues about the status of women, including among themselves in the workplace; about the overbearing nature of male sleazy sexual demands; about the commercial need to cover up the dangers of popular products (in parallel, I thought, with the tobacco industry: in this case the  dangerous chemicals are over-used to make darker-coloured skin go white); and racism – in this case between different Asian cultures, including skin colour as well as attitudes based on nationality. 

For comparison, I was reminded of Nakkiah Lui’s play Black is the New White (reviewed on this blog in March 2018), though her humour is far gentler, more generous in tone.  I could live in Nakkiah Lui’s world, if a little uncomfortably as I must face critical questioning.  But I really don’t have a place in Anchuli Felicia King’s world.  See what you think for yourself.

Clearday Cosmetics' 'modern' office at work in Singapore
The cast of White Pearl, excluding the man,
Sydney Theatre Co / Riverside production

© Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2022: The Trojan Women by Euripides

 

 The Trojan Women by Euripides, adapted by Daramalan Theatre Company (DTC), Canberra, April 23-30, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 23

Producer/Director – Joe Woodward; Dramaturg – Wynter Grainger;
Lighting & Technical Director – Joey Gardiner; Assistant – Maggie Wilson;
Costumes – Angela Dunn and Gabrielle Adamov;
Music Composer – Jo Philp; Song “A Child Cried” – Tilly Watson.

Initial Research, Scripting & Processing – Amy Goedecke; Assistant – Lilia Bank.
Acting Consultants – Jack Curry & Mel Tsimbas; Special Guidance – Michael Castrission & Ayaz Pazhohish.

Cast:
Andromache – Lucy O’Neill; Athena – Wynter Grainger; Bearer – Daniel Baraniecki; Cassandra – Amy Goedecke; Hecuba 1 – Rose Thiele; Hecuba 2 – Jen Noveski; Hecuba 3 – Lilia Bank; Helen – Vivien Murray; Menelaus – Benjamin Philp; Poseidon – Jack Curry; Talthybius 1 & Podcaster – Brodie Campbell; Talthybius 2 – Ethan Gumbrell; Talthybius 3 – Lachlan Faella; Woman 1 – Mia Burton; Woman 2 – Tilly Watson; Women on Beach – Lilia Bank, Wynter Grainger, Georgie Wiley and Katie Woodward.
________________________________________________________________________________

Joe Woodward in his Director’s Note provides us with the context for this adaptation of The Trojan Women, using – I am guessing – the Gilbert Murray translation into an archaic form of English verse (1905).  Woodward refers to the prejudices of a long-ago school principal against racial equality and political activism who set the boundaries, saying “Joe, you and I can discuss these issues but you can’t expect seventeen year olds….”  Woodward explains then how “The semantics of ‘free speech’ and developing ‘critical and creative thinking’ become weapons to disguise and hide the real powers and structures that aim to do just the opposite.”

“Euripides knew these same things over two thousand years ago.  A Year 11 student from last year…suggested we put on ‘The Trojan Women’ as a wake-up call.  So here it is. With students doing all their own interpreting, research and adapting to today’s world and seeking comparisons in the play’s content with the situation in Afghanistan, the production exhibits an organic response that theatre creation rarely sees.”

That student, Amy Goedecke, writes in her Purpose statement “The Trojan Women, as a text, has allowed us to truly see that women in our own world, in times of both war and peace experience the same disgusting disregard for human decency that women experienced in the ancient world.”

Their production combines a kind of ritualised live performance, with videoed scenes on the sea shore (representing where the Greek ships were delayed by the gods’ onshore wind from leaving Troy after its destruction), and scenes from television news of the plight of women under Taliban control in Afghanistan, all presented by a male recording a podcast.

The staging, for a limited audience in a studio setting, without full-scale theatre facilities, was necessarily compromised in terms of sight-lines and the need for more complex lighting, for example.

I have to say that the students took on a Herculean task in learning Gilbert Murray’s arcane lines.  I’m not surprised that the meaning and even the storyline was often difficult to grasp.  Here’s Poseidon setting the scene with Pallas Athene:

The groves are empty and the sanctuaries
Run red with blood. Unburied Priam lies
By his own hearth, on God's high altar-stair,
And Phrygian gold goes forth and raiment rare
To the Argive ships; and weary soldiers roam
Waiting the wind that blows at last for home,
For wives and children, left long years away,
Beyond the seed's tenth fullness and decay,
To work this land's undoing.
                                            And for me,
Since Argive Hera conquereth, and she
Who wrought with Hera to the Phrygians' woe,
Pallas, behold, I bow mine head and go
Forth from great Ilion and mine altars old.
[ https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/murrayeuripides-trojanwomen/murrayeuripides-trojanwomen-00-h.html  ]

However, the essential point of the production was to prove that these “seventeen year olds” could indeed come to grips with the issues that one-time principal said they couldn’t – or more significantly said they shouldn’t.  These young women were perfectly capable of appreciating the “disgusting disregard for human decency” that women still experience around the world, and I am sure understand the importance of role models such as Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame.

In re-enacting Euripides’ cry for such understanding – even just in learning by heart what he wrote and expressing what the Trojan Women felt on stage – they have consolidated their learning through the drama.  I trust the male figures, including the podcaster, have absorbed that cry in real life, against the cruelty of their characters in the play.

These students, I hope – and others who see the production – will take up political activism.  The eighteen year olds, I trust, are registering to vote right now, ready for May 21st.



Further reading for those who have not yet discovered Pat Barker are her two novels about the Trojan War: The Silence of the Girls (Penguin 2018) and The Women of Troy (Penguin 2021).  Much better written for modern times than Gilbert Murray; and filling in the gaps in Euripides from a woman’s point of view.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Canberra Circus Festival - Warehouse Circus

 

 

Canberra Circus Festival – Warehouse Circus at The Big Top, Lions Youth Haven, Kambah Pool Road, Kambah, Canberra April 19-23, 2022.

Commentary by Frank McKone

Galoshes were definitely needed for the sploshes as the rain fell faster than a Warehouse youth performer unravelling down from the high point of an artistic three-dimensional ‘dance’, twisted in two strands of beautiful hung material which looked hardly likely to support her weight.  Then it supported two of them at once in a thrilling suspended daring duet!

Fortunately the Big Top didn’t drip on the audience, but I was worried about the electrics when the ground began to flood.  Would I ever get my car out of the parking paddock?  Would I ever get home on the terrifying drive on the Tuggeranong Parkway?

Like my language, circus always has an exaggeration about it, demonstrated admirably by the acts and the audience responses throughout the launch – almost literally – of the brand new Canberra Circus Festival, titled appropriately “The Great Big Circus Gala(h)” opening night.  For our overseas readers, galahs are wondrously silly large pink-and-grey parrots who entertain us throughout our Bush Capital, in cahoots with other crowds of sulphur-crested brilliantly white cockatoos.  This is the seat of Australian government, you should know – where the air is full of noise and flapping about, not necessarily signifying much, but fun to laugh at.

Nothing could dampen the enthusiasm of this circus crowd, from littlies to ancients like me, especially after the concert master with an enormously unlikely extending baton, trained us in the subtleties of clapping and cheering from the soft and thoughtful to letting go of all inhibition.

The Canberra Circus 5-day Festival is a sort of culmination of the thirty years’ development of Warehouse Circus since 1990 – the last two pandemic years shouldn’t be counted.  Except that the pressure of holding things down in lockdowns has built the energy for this new explosion.

The acts showcased performers from young barely teenagers training with Warehouse through to professionals from other visiting companies, making the point about how their skills keep developing even as they reach what I call middle-age, which the young think is old.  Personal development through circus arts is what Warehouse Circus was always all about: one strand of arts education.  

It was excellent to hear, as the Australian Capital Territory’s Minister for the Arts’ senior adviser Michael Liu emphasised the commitment from Tara Cheyne (who was unable to attend personally) to continuing support for the arts, and in particular the financial investment in Warehouse Circus which – with many other sponsorships and practical help from community and business organisations, such as the Lions Club – means that the Canberra Circus Festival will add to the many arts-based events in the Canberra calendar.

Go to https://warehousecircus.org.au/ to book tickets:

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: The Boys by Gordon Graham - Alchemy Artistic

 

 

The Boys by Gordon Graham. Producers: Alchemy Artistic (Amy Kowalczuk), Shadow House PITS (Joe Woodward) and Sophie Benassi.  At the Australian Capital Theatre Hub, Causeway Hall, Kingston, Canberra, April 13-16, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 16

Creatives:
Director/Designer: Amy Kowalczuk; Stage Manager: Carmen King; Production Manager: Alice Ferguson; Movement Director: Michelle Norris; Photographer: Mark Actually (Mark Kowalczuk); Set/Technical Advisor: Stephen Crossley; Sound Design: Neville Pye; Graphic Scribe: Arran McKenna; Lighting Design: Murray Wenham

Cast:
Sandra Sprague: Liz St Clair Long; Understudy: Alice Ferguson; Brett Sprague: Alex Hoskison; Glenn Sprague: Cole Hilder; Stevie Sprague: Blue Hyslop; Michelle: Meaghan Stewart; Jackie: Indy Scarletti; Nola: Caitlin Baker

​_______________________________________________________________________________

Presenting The Boys at Easter – based partly on the true story of the rape and murder of Anita Cobby – is significant.  Long before Christianity, Easter was a European celebration of Spring, which is why we still treat it as a holiday to be enjoyed, rather than as a commemoration of the death of an innocent.

Of the five men found guilty and sent to prison for life –  without the possibility of parole –  on 16 June 1987, Gordon Graham imagines the family relationships of the three who were brothers, aged 22, 28 and 33 at the time.  “Sandra Sprague”, her three sons and their women partners are fictional; public information about the original Murphy brothers provides no clues about the women, if there were any – as it must to maintain privacy.

The Boys is about why the boys took part in the rape and murder; and what are the roles of these four women  – the mother Sandra; Michelle (with Brett); Jackie (with Glenn); Nola (with Stevie).  Essentially the question is, could a mother and her sons’ sexual partners have changed the boys’ attitudes and behaviours away from anti-women violence?

To attempt to write this play is to take a great risk, perhaps of seeming to disrespect women as weak if they can’t bring up boys better; or of seeming to accept men’s sexism, belief in their own superiority and right to be violent, as inevitable.  

Or is ‘society’ to blame for not ensuring all people live well above the poverty line; have thorough family and medical support  from birth through all the vicissitudes of life until death; and have suitable education and satisfying work?

It’s a big ask of a new local theatre company, directed by Amy Kowalczuk, who many will know as Amy Dunham.  I must raise the possibility-of-bias flag, since I taught her parents, Kathleen Montgomery and Trevor Dunham, in the first drama class at Hawker College in 1976/77, when they directed, with Sue Richards, the first student written and directed show – a rock/folk musical Anna.  It’s great to see theatrical tradition continuing through the generations.

Has Amy made it work?  

Indeed she has.  Being present for this in-the-round performance, reminded me of country-town theatre in the local community hall – which is exactly what the Causeway Hall (1926) once was when Kingston was still called “Eastlake”, the first area settled in the new National Capital, Canberra.

I was also not surprised, since Amy has acted and sung in many shows (I’m sure I remember her singing at the National Folk Festival as a teenager) and is now teaching Performing Arts, to find myself watching what felt like a drama improvisation workshop, followed by a debrief discussion – to wind down from the emotional intensity for those watching as much as for those in the action.  Here’s a top-class teacher at work, I thought: the teacher as enabler, setting up the situation for the actors to explore the theme of male violence against women, using the awful Anita Cobby story as the stimulus.  

The sense of improvisation, oddly enough, makes the actors –  in their characters with personalities and background histories – seem real as they say what they think and do what they want, in the room with us.  In the Q&A afterwards, everyone spoke about the fictional characters as if they had really been there for the past two hours.  Even in the interval I found myself talking concernedly to someone nearby about how the boys’ behaviour might be treated by a counsellor – or even if that could be possible.

Of course, we all knew they were acting out a playscript already written for them – and the rearranging of “improvised” drama studio rostra blocks and other crude props as scenes changed, kept our Brechtian distancing in place.  A particularly effective device was for the boys to almost dance together (or rather against each other) between scenes, culminating in the scene which is described in the script beginning with the oldest brother, Brett, fighting the next brother down, Glenn, who Brett sees as challenging his dominance.  The youngest, Stevie, breaks down in frightening wild movement, banging himself into the floor.

It was Amy Kowalczuk’s directing of the acting, in close concert with Michelle Norris’ movement directing that shaped the script (which I had had some doubts about on my quick reading) into so much more than just an important play about a worrying social issue.  Watching, we became engaged directly in the experience of Sandra, left by a husband, perhaps very like her terrifyingly angry eldest, when her third boy was still very young and who then only had eleven-year-old Brett as his model.  The middle boy, Glenn, seemed to have taken on some of Sandra’s demands about behaving with respect for women – and had found some hope in Jackie.  But in the end he could not escape Brett’s power in the threesome, which must always stick together against any authority, including their mother and – now in their twenties plus – against all women, who they see as restricting their freedoms and right to do as they please.

Finally, the right to abduct an innocent woman, rape her and kill her.

In the discussion, the point was made that this behaviour is not restricted to the poverty-stricken class, but can be seen throughout our society including in corporate life and political life, up to the violence in deliberate warfare.  Putin is Brett in extremis, I thought, as women and men spoke of their experiences and how the play had affected them.  Someone pointed out that these boys in earlier times would have been expected to be and praised for becoming soldiers – with the same attitudes and behaviours.  I thought of the court case still underway at this very time, where a soldier claims to have been defamed when accused of such behaviour.

But I also thought, as the women in the play tried to overcome their impossible situation (left to bring up Nola’s and Stevie’s newborn boy), and as the women spoke in the discussion, that social change has begun since the real case happened in the 1980s and the play was written, made into a film, and has been performed (at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney 2012, www.griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/the-boys ) and used as a school text for study.

The feeling of horror around the world at what has been happening in Ukraine is, I hope, a change; an unwillingness to accept the violence of such warfare as any kind of normal.

And for these thoughts I thank Amy (Dunham) Kowalczuk, her outstanding cast, and all the many people she thanks in her program, for setting up Alchemy Artistic and taking on the risk of performing The Boys first up.  If this is the standard of the company’s upcoming productions we can look forward, in our community and I hope further afield, for more drama which has revived my trust in humanity.  This Easter has been as it should be – the commemoration of an innocent’s death; and a hope for the future of humankind.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Hamlet - Bell Shakespeare

 

 

Hamlet by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse April 7-16, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night April 8

Creatives:
Director – Peter Evans; Designer – Anna Tregloan; Lighting Designer – Benjamin Cisterne; Composer & Sound Designer – Max Lyandvert; Video Designer – Laura Turner; Movement, Intimacy and Fight Designer – Nigel Poulton; Voice & Text Coach – Jess Chambers; Dramaturg – James Evans

Cast: (alphabetical order)
Hamlet – Harriet Gordon-Anderson; Gertrude – Lucy Bell;
Rosencrantz / Marcellus – Jeremi Campese;
Player Queen / Second Gravedigger / Osric – Eleni Cassmatis;
Claudius – Ray Chong Nee; Laertes / Player – Jack Crumlin;
Ghost / Player King / Gravedigger – James Evans;
Guilderstern / Barnardo – Jane Mahady;
Polonius – Robert Menzies; Ophelia – Rose Riley;
Horatio – Jacob Warner; 

Hamlet as a child – Mirii Anderson



Photos by Brett Boardman 

The Royal Family

Prince Hamlet, Queen Gertrude,
Adviser Polonius, King Claudius

Ophelia and her father Polonius

“She made Hamlet comprehensible!”  This audience member’s response to Bell Shakespeare’s Hamlet, played exquisitely by Harriet Gordon-Anderson, was as true of the character as it was of the play.  The audience as a whole thoroughly agreed, bringing the whole cast out three times for applause, each time led – with specially enthusiastic recognition – by Harriet.

Especially notable for me was her first appearance alone – playing the character as a male, by the way –  before the appearance of Horatio to tell Hamlet about seeing his father’s ghost.  Harriet’s ability to express to us wordlessly the deep despair that he is feeling was quite extraordinary.  I was reminded at once of the insightful recent novel, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell [ reviewed on this blog Friday, 19 June 2020 ] which focussed on Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, that O’Farrell imagines as “Agnes”, since there are no trustworthy records.

Anne and William’s son, Hamnet (a name also commonly known as Hamlet in those times) died of the plague on 11 August 1596.  The play was probably written between 1599 and 1601.  It was first published in 1603, but “The title page of the 1603 quarto edition tells us that it has been played 'by his Highness' Servants in the City of London, as also in the two universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere'.”  [ www.rsc.org.uk/hamlet/about-the-play/stage-history ].  In the novel, O’Farrell has Agnes go to London four years after Hamnet died to see her husband’s play Hamlet.  “She recognises the playhouse from her husband’s description: a round wooden place next to the river”.  When the play is under way “She watches, baffled.  She had expected something familiar, something about her son.”  

But “Suddenly, the actor on the stage says something about a dreaded sight, and a realisation creeps over her….She has her eye on that ghost: the height, that movement of the arm, hand upturned, a particular curl of the fingers, that roll of the shoulder….She knows exactly who is underneath that costume, that disguise.”

Harriet Gordon–Anderson plays for us Hamlet grieving for his dead father, King Hamlet – or a young sensitive actor playing Hamlet seeing his director, Master Shakespeare, as the Ghost, grieving for his dead son, Hamnet.  Whether or not Peter Evans and Harriet consciously rehearsed with this in mind, this is the depth of feeling that she created for us, and set us on the course of Hamlet’s story, explaining every detail of his thinking and behaviour – making the ‘mystery’ of Hamlet’s character an open book.

This Hamlet is a production close to Shakespeare’s heart.

There were only two aspects of  this production about which I was not so impressed.

Every other actor except one – even down to making clear the differences between Rosencrantz and Guilderstern; and a particularly truthful rendition of the often weakly played Polonius – got the characterisations right.  Rose Riley’s Ophelia, for example, showed how her breakdown was entirely understandable in the face of the machinations of King Hamlet’s brother Claudius, which led young Hamlet – who really did love her – to try to protect her, hoping she understood when he told her to escape by going to a nunnery.  Ophelia had strength in trying to maintain the truth of her feelings, but Hamlet’s unintentional killing of her father, left her nowhere to go.  Her songs were not recognised, even by Hamlet’s mother, as the indictments they were.  Her drowning was her only way of escape.

But, I’m afraid, Ray Chong Nee’s King Claudius was a too simplistic presentation of a character, manipulative and psychopathic in the extreme.  The lack of sublety of his approach showed up in scenes where he ordered people about bluntly, when this character in reality could always make himself appear to be doing his underlings a favour.  The one scene, though, where the character failed entirely was where he pretends even to himself that making a show of praying to God can turn around a situation which even he is beginning realise is getting out of his control.  His prayers are no more than an attempt to manipulate God himself.  But Ray’s presentation of this scene was confusing to the audience because it was obvious that Claudius could not really be genuine but it was played as if we were meant to think that perhaps he was.  

My criticism here derives from the fact that this play – certainly for Shakespeare considering the politics of his era, even apart from the mourning for his son’s death at the whim of the plague (after some 400 years since it first appeared in England) – that this play is a deep philosophical study of the nature of reality.  This is what makes Hamlet continue to be staged century after century.  Shakespeare clearly understood, if you think about all his plays, that God is not an answer.  In fact, God rarely gets a mention except in this one scene in Hamlet.  And then Hamlet himself realises that to kill Claudius while in ‘prayer’ is not good enough.  He is only justified at the very end of the play when everyone knows that Claudius, the ultimate manipulator, has poisoned everyone literally in their drinks.

Finally, I found the use of video, apparently of the Queen Gertrude family with her children when young, in happy times at the beach – I suppose in summer instead of the winter of discontent in Denmark’s snow when the play’s action takes place – this occasional video on different screens at different times became a mere distraction.  

Though I guess the contrast was meant to be a comment, if not a message about how family life can break down, it was simply not clear why it was being shown.  There were no understandable links made to the script for the children playing in the water, or the mother enjoying her role with the children on a beach.  Playing in modern dress may have made the designer and director look for a modern context for the play, but this play doesn’t need it.

Setting the stage so that it was clear to us (thinking in Brechtian terms) that we were watching actors today performing a script written by Shakespeare 400 years ago made it perfectly clear to us that ‘the play’s the thing’.  The pine forest all in snow was enough to place the action in a fictitious ‘Denmark’; the removable furniture and props were cleverly staged; and the action moving in our imaginations from inside to outside locations, was enough to symbolise the drama and let our thoughts and feelings develop as Shakespeare surely wanted.

My carping on these couple of points must not be taken too much to heart.  All theatre is about taking magnificent risks.  Bell Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 2002 is a major and significant achievement, precisely because “She made Hamlet comprehensible” beyond, I think, those dependent on male actors playing the part.  

Harriet Gordon-Anderson took us out of conventional expectations and showed us William Shakespeare’s originality and depth of humanity, rare in his own time and place and equally necessary in the world today.  

The Final Scene

Ophelia and her father Polonius are dead.
Osric manages the duel between
Ophelia's brother Laertes and Hamlet.
Hamlet's mother watches, afraid for her son.
Her husband, Claudius, has secretly poisoned
Laertes' sword point and the drink meant for Hamlet.
Gertrude, unawares, drinks to her son's success with his poisoned wine. 
Laertes poisons Hamlet, who in turn stabs Laertes with his own poisoned sword.
Before he dies Hamlet forces his uncle to drink his own poison.

Because the original four-hour-long script was cut to take out the international warfare involving Norway, Denmark and further afield, in favour of the close family drama, Horatio – played exactly right by Jacob Warner – doesn’t get, in this production, to make his final absolutely pertinent speech near the end of the original text, where Young Fortinbras arrives “with conquest come from Poland”.  Shakespeare said through Horatio to Shakespeare's Royal Highness:

“But let this same be presently perform’d,
Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more perchance,
On plots and errors, happen.”

Can we hope that the Claudius of our present time, perhaps a certain Vladimir who hopes to come with conquest of Ukraine, can be taught the lesson or made to drink his own poison.

Let’s just hope as William must have done, even as Queen Elizabeth – who herself had survived her father’s murderous family and political life – perhaps saw Hamlet before she died in 1603, just as his play was published, and the new King James arrived from Scotland.

Hamlet really is an amazing play.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Arts, Culture and Country by Josephine Caust

 

Arts, Culture and Country by Josephine Caust. Edited by Julian Meyrick, Harriet Parsons and Katharine Brisbane. New Platform Papers No 2, Currency House, Sydney, March 2022.

Commentary by Frank McKone

Josephine Caust brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the discussion of Arts, Culture and Country, noting  “This year marks my fifty years of employment in the arts. Over that time I have been an actor, artistic director, administrator, program coordinator, policy adviser, academic lecturer, and researcher. And in the process I have also been witness to, and participated in, significant change across the sector.”

The reality of our times is an essential point of departure: “When we think about Australia’s art and culture, we must start with the First Nations peoples who for thousands of years have cared for the land on which modern Australia has ‘settled’. For the First Nations people of Australia art, culture, identity and country are intertwined and interdependent.”  

‘Our times’, of course, cannot avoid the continuing experience of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Caust’s view is that “the Coalition government’s large-scale financial intervention to prevent economic collapse and protect the community from suffering was a revelation.”  Yet, although “In 2018, the Federal Government itself calculated that the cultural and creative industries contribute A$111.7 billion to the Australian economy, or a 6.4% of GDP, and employ over 600,000 people….In mid-March 2020, nearly all arts activity stopped.”

After detailing the application, in practice, of programs like Jobkeeper, the end of the beginning for Caust, is clear: “Above all, the pandemic has highlighted the political priorities of both federal and state governments. Major sporting events have been supported and allowed to continue, while arts events have been cancelled, sometimes at the last minute.  Football teams have been allowed to circumvent lockdowns and interstate border closures by staying in ‘bubbles’ but artists have rarely been given the same opportunities. The 2020 Byron Bay Music Festival was cancelled before it even opened while only a few kilometres away neighbouring sports events continued. This all points to government preferences for supporting certain activities on grounds very different from economic ones.”

So the questions arise, in this ‘wealthy’ country, Australia: “Professional artists are people who do their creative work because it is central to their being. Their work is a gift to the broader community. Yet they are not treated as equals in our society. Why can’t artists have access to all the normal social and economic benefits, without being slighted and demeaned? Why shouldn’t they be able to access unemployment benefits, as the rest of the workforce does, while searching for work in the professions for which they are qualified: as musicians, actors, artists and writers? Why can’t we institute fellowships for mid-career and senior artists that enable them to continue their work with dignity and respect? Treating the arts community thus, requires a shift in our mind set. It is in society’s interest to acknowledge and respect our cultures and arts practices. It is part of who we are and connects us to our country. It is the real wealth of the nation.”  [My emphasis]

The history – essential reading in my view – of what happened, how it happened and why it happened since the establishment, essentially by the senior public servant Herbert ‘Nugget’ Coombs, of the Australia Council from the late 1960s until its full legal status as a statutory body was recognised in 1975, explains the influence then of the famous economist John Maynard Keynes who had set up the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1946.

We were running a bit behind but at least the key idea was that “the arts were fundamental to a healthy society”.  But, by the time the Labor Party took on the mantle of neo-liberalism in the 1980s “Saying that you work in the ‘arts’ can then be seen as elitist and old-fashioned and a sign that you are out of touch: no longer part of the technical, post-modern world in which today’s Australians live.”

So I was apparently elitist, old-fashioned and out of touch as I developed my drama teaching practice, reworked the process and the documentation year after year through the 80s, and increased the enrolments in my secondary college from 14 in 1976 to around a consistent 75 from 1986, needing three of us for the workshop classes and regular full-scale stage productions, which were credited towards students’ Year 12 Certificates.

Yet there the political history stands: it’s really all about economics, but not the Keynesian kind, where “funding for the arts was justified as ‘public good’” rather than its goodness to be measured only in audience numbers, private sponsorship and profit-making by ‘business entities’ in the ‘creative industry’.

Caust takes up the story of the Major Performing Arts Organisations Board established by Prime Minister John Howard in 1999:

“In 2018, after Circus Oz suffered a dramatic reduction in its earned income but was not insolvent, it was put ‘on fair notice’ by the MAPAB. After a review  commissioned by the Australia Council and Creative Victoria, MAPAB recommended to the Circus Oz Board in 2021 that it remove the last of its remaining artists and embrace a completely ‘skills based’ membership (that is non-arts members).

“Instead of recognising that the company was lacking artistic leadership and this had dramatically affected its mission and hence its revenue earnings, the recommendation was to increase the corporatisation of the board.  How would new corporate members renew the artistic vision of Circus Oz when the existing members had failed to grasp its importance? Circus Oz is unique in having a core membership of former staff and performers of the circus. These members elected four board members out of a total of 11.

“The solution to a lack of artistic directorship was to remove these members and replace them with more corporate delegates, even though they were already the majority. The membership refused to agree to this demand, so the board summarily decided to close the company. When the membership resisted this move, the board resigned and, in early 2022, they took back ownership of the company and created a new board.”

By Page 40, Caust notes that “Many countries resolve this problem with a Ministry for Culture. An Australian Ministry of Culture might include the arts, First Nations arts and heritage, public broadcasting, film, and cultural heritage in its ambit. All these areas are interconnected through their association with ‘culture’; and placing them together in an integrated and central location would help bring ‘culture’ into the political mainstream.”

Then “Middle-size and smaller arts organisations and individual artists would continue to be funded by the Australia Council; and film would continue to be funded through Screen Australia. It might also be helpful to establish a new statutory authority, similar to the Australian Foundation for Culture and Humanities that was lost in a change of government thirty years ago. This entity could address the gap between community cultural heritage, local history and community arts, and ensure that grants were awarded at arm’s length from political interests.”

To read the whole of New Platform Paper No2 is fascinating in itself for the many surprising details of what and how in the history.  The importance of the Paper lies in the question of why Australia has gone astray politically, to the frustration of artists across the multicultural landscape.  

Whether a federal government Ministry of Culture for the big picture alongside a well-funded highly flexible cross-cultural Australia Council, linked closely I imagine to state and territory governments, can be successfully put in place, I’m not sure.  The world is in a parlous state just now, socially and environmentally, and I am not seeing a resurrection of Nugget Coombs in any of the parties likely to take up the cudgels in our upcoming national election in May.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2022: Shortis & Simpson - Under the Influence #2, with guest Karen Middleton

Under the Influence #2, guest Karen Middleton.  Shortis & Simpson at Smith’s Alternative, Canberra, April 1, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Karen Middleton

Photo supplied

 

The headline should read KAREN MIDDLETON DOESN’T CROSS THE LINE.  As a long-standing political journalist based in the Press Gallery of Australia’s national Parliament House, can she objectively report on all sides, and then write and sing satirical songs about politicians?  Can she sing them to the general public, but only after singing them to the politicians themselves in the Press Gallery’s annual social gathering?  Where is the line, and did she cross it last night at Smith’s Alternative (one-time Bookshop)?

John and Moya – Shortis & Simpson – in Under the Influence #2 with guest Karen Middleton brought a nice feeling of warmth and entertainment to a packed house, including some others from the other House, the Press Gallery’s “House Howlers” choir who joined Karen, Moya and John for a grand finale: Kevin (never quite rhymed with ‘heaven’) Rudd; Off to an Election and The Hose, about you know who.  

Only those in the know can know what political lines were crossed, but Karen had reported earlier that their song about how 11-year-long PM, John Howard, refused to act on his agreement with Peter Costello to let him have a go, had gone down well.  At least with Peter who had told her he was happy with the song – though of course never happy with Howard’s refusal to do the right thing and the loss of government to Labor in 2007.  

Named I Only Want The Job You Do, it was a good song too, as Gilbert and Sullivan might have said.  As they also would have said about the song which opened the second half, naming and shaming all the Australian Prime Ministers from Edmund Barton to Scott Morrison – covering both sides of the aisle, of course: a combination of the Howlers’ parody with excerpts from Shortis & Simpson’s songs Your First PM, Malcolm (Turnbull) Where’s Your Troosers and The Very Model of a Modern Governor General, about the Governor General, Sir (can you believe it?) John Kerr, who dismissed Gough Whitlam’s Labor government in 1975.  But the warmth in the room generated by satirical fun was a reflection of an audience enjoying the risk of crossing lines of all political kinds.  Smith’s Alternative was just the right venue, in name and in nature.

Though we pride ourselves today, as we should, on our multi-cultural credentials, I am still proud of our parliament’s traditions going back at least to the lampooning of Edmund Burke in Britain’s 18th Century parliament by Gillray - Smelling Out a Rat...

 

Gillray - Smelling Out a Rat... [1790]
© Trustees of the British Museum

But satire is not the only kind of influence Karen Middleton brought to bear.  Equally important was her concern for equity, social empathy in practice and in response to her experiences reporting from around the world.  Still young (from my point of view) at 56, her life of travel is a source of jealousy on my part – except, perhaps, for the dangers and awful situations she sometimes faced.  

After her favourite musical songs from her younger self in the first half – Joseph’s Technicoloured Dream Coat, Protestant hymns (which even Moya the atheist remembered), a sad Mull of Kintyre, All My Loving and the Bay City Rollers’ Give a Little Love through to ABBA’s Mamma Mia and There Are Worse Things I could Do from Grease – giving us a picture of a perfectly ordinary teenager of her time, we were treated to the truly awful national anthem O Canada (from when her family lived in Ottawa) in both French and English, of course.

On the political side was Right Hand Man from Keating, The Musical and the Australian Labor Party jingle Let’s Stick Together.  But on the social issues side came a surprise.  Her family had taken in a Vietnamese family when those people came by boats, and Bosnian people during that pre-Ukrainian war, as well as her experience in Arnhem Land – so we were impressed with Karen and Moya presenting in their languages the Vietnamese children’s song Con Co, the Bosnian poem Emina set to music and Geoffrey Gurrumul's Djambarrpuyngu language song to his father, Bapa.

In the second half, after those Howler parodies of PMs, the mood changed to the very human feelings of regularly visiting New York (Art Garfunkel’s song and Always True to You from Kiss Me Kate on Broadway) and being there with John Howard in 2001 on September 11 (the song from Come From Away called 28 Hours about the diverted airline pilots, including a colleague flying one of those which were deliberately crashed).

Then Karen’s personal feelings were revealed through Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, Roy Orbison’s song Blue Bayou as sung by Linda Ronstadt, and a Bulgarian traditional song Vetar Ve sung gloriously together with Moya.  That exhilaration shifted dramatically for Fred Smith’s Sappers’ Lullaby from his, and Karen’s, experiences of useless death in the war in Afghanistan.

John Shortis brought us back home with a genuine study of Grace Tame – her having such grace and never being tame as Australian of the Year.

So that Grand Finale about Kevin Rudd on one side, the upcoming election and The Hose to balance on the other side – essentially leaving us with little hope of any politicians leading us to a time of peace, equity and empathy – gave us a Karen Middleton of honesty and depth of understanding, and an influence for good in the world.  

Perhaps this is one of Shortis & Simpson’s strongest shows over all their years as Canberra’s conscience since they began at the Queanbeyan School of Arts Café in 1996.

 

© Frank McKone, Canberra