2022: Girl From The North Country

 

 

Girl From The North Country.  Presented by GWB Entertainment, Damien Hewitt and Trafalgar Entertainment in association with Canberra Theatre Centre, August 25 – September 3, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone, August 26

Creatives: reproduced below.  Original production opened at The Old Vic, London, 2017.

Cast - Australia (alphabetical order):
Mr Perry – Peter Carroll; Dr Walker – Terence Crawford
Mrs Burke – Helen Dallimore; Elias Burke – Blake Erikson
Katherine Draper – Elizabeth Hay; Nick Laine – Peter Kowitz
Elizabeth Laine – Lise McCune; Mrs Neilsen – Christina O’Neill
Reverend Marlow – Grant Piro; Gene Laine – James Smith
Mr Burke – Greg Stone; Marianne Laine – Chemon Theys
Joe Scott – Elijah Williams

Ensemble – Tony Black, Tony Cogin, Laurence Coy, Grace Driscoll,
Samantha Morley, Liam Wigney

Band
Musical Director – Andrew Ross; Acoustic and Slide Guitar – Cameron Henderson
Bass – James Luke; Violin and Mandolin – Pip Thompson

Peter Carroll as Mr Perry
in Girl From The North Country
Australian Tour 2022

Girl From The North Country is about failure – economic failure; failure to find love (Mr Perry, Joe Scott, the Laine family and Mrs Burke at least); social collapse.  The play has no plot because when “The Depression grabbed hold of Minnesota” the people’s lives, as presented by Conor McPherson, had nowhere to go “Like a Rolling Stone”.

There is a beginning as Nick Laine offers rooms; and an end as people who stayed there had no choice but to move on – without the money to pay Nick.  According to Dr Walker, the narrator of these sad times, Nick and his demented wife Elizabeth themselves left Minnesota as the bank foreclosed on their house.

The structure of the play is actually rather like Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children.  Episodes are interrupted by songs, which, often in an oblique way, reflect on social, even political, life.  Here, though, characters sing songs by Bob Dylan as if still in role in the American Musical tradition.  The distancing effect is rather less, then, than the estrangement effect (Verfremdungseffekt or V-Effekt) in Brecht’s work.

In addition the movement choreography and dance sequences (highly original and performed by the whole cast with great flair) become fascinating entertainment in their own right.  

So I find myself in two minds about the purpose of Girl From The North Country.  Am I to become empathetically engaged in the dreadful state of the lives of these people; or am I to take Bob Dylan’s songs as the focus for the criticism of American life, in the rather dry, almost cynical mood that I remember so well from his early songs when still in his acoustic folk-scene stage?  

Though I marvel at the quality of the acting, singing, music performance and strength of theatre design, my two minds remain divergent rather than finding a composite resolution which might turn this ‘Art Musical’ into a great and powerful work of art.  I note that Conor McPherson began writing “I’m thinking of an expansive Eugene O’Neill type play with Bob Dylan’s love songs intertwined”.  A great idea I think, but I have to say in return that Girl From The North Country is no match for Mourning Becomes Electra.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Ngadjung by Dylan Van Den Berg

 

Ngadjung by Dylan Van Den Berg.  Produced by BelcoArts at Belconnen Arts Theatre, Canberra, August 18 – 27 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night August 19

Cultural Consultant – Aunty Caroline Hughes
Writer and Director – Dylan Van Den Berg; Director Consultant – Rachael Maza
Sound Design – Peter Bailey; Lighting Design – Linda Buck
Set and Costume Design – Imogen Keen
Stage Manager – Anni Doyle Wawrzynczak
Dramaturg – Peter Matheson 

Cast: Lisa Maza and Kylah Day


Dylan Van Den Berg has created a new theatrical genre which I will call Fantasie Noir.  He imagines an impossible world, from a realistic point of view – seemingly a logical extension of global heating – in which there is almost no water on earth.  

A giant monopoly – perhaps named WestCo or WetCo (I couldn’t be sure via my hearing aids) – still supports cities and what seemed to be a highly militaristic control operation, selling a synthetic liquid to replace water.  Two of their one-time employees have escaped their clutches and meet in a dry river bed, with rose-coloured-glasses memories of drinking real water and even going swimming.

The elder woman has half a very small bottle of real water left.  One drop revives the younger woman from death by dehydration.  They survive a smothering dust storm, massive dry lightning, and the threatening robot helicopters searching – I imagined – for renegade water miners.  Though they dig in the river bed, the women never find new water; and the elder is killed by laser from the company helicopter.

But the younger women revives the elder with one drop of real water.  They celebrate their survival once again, to end this episode of life in an entirely dystopian world.  Their relationship has shifted from paranoid mistrust and conflict to something like acceptance, recognition and respect.

The title Ngadjung is taken from the Ngunnawal word meaning water, written in phonetics as ‘ŋadyuŋ’, emphasising the importance of the First Nations history of Canberra and Australia, and their deep understanding of how we are all connected to country, integrated with all of nature.

Though the acting by Lisa Maza (the elder woman) and Kylah Day (the younger) has the strength of characters needed to play their interactions from moment to moment, the most dramatic effects are from the lighting and sound – not only of the obvious kind like frightening lightning, thunder and spotlights, and lasers from helicopters; but especially of mysterious amorphous impressionistic sounds of the spirits of the moon and the atmosphere.  Peter Bailey and Linda Buck deserve special mention for their work on this production.

This form of theatre in response to what Van Den Berg sees – “the world is falling to pieces; politically, socially, environmentally” – might be more akin to performance poetry or a musical fantasia than a conventional stage play.  It is a metaphorical fantasy of our future, and very definitely black.

Lisa Maza and Kylah Day
in Ngadjung by Dylan Van Den Berg

Kylah Day and Lisa Maza
in Ngadjung by Dylan Van Den Berg
Photos by Andrew Sikorski 

 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2022: Demented by Ruth Pieloor

 

 

Demented by Ruth Pieloor.  The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre – ‘Q the Locals’ Season, August 17-20, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night August 18

Playwright / Producer – Ruth Pieloor; Director – Ali Clinch
Dramaturg – Peter Matheson
Lighting Designer – Jacob Aquilina; Set Designer – Mel Davies
Set Construction – Lachlan Davies; Costume Designer – Fiona Leach
Sound Designer – Damian Ashcroft; Sound Assistant – Ruth O’Brien
Puppet Designer – Hilary Talbot; Puppetry Director – Ruth Pieloor
Clowning Coach – Robin Davidson

Stage Manager – Mel Davies
Assistant Stage Manager – Lachlan Davies
Stagehand / Dresser – Chipz Jin
Auslan Interpreter – Brett Olzen

Maggie – Chrissie Shaw
Rachel – Heidi Silberman; Kat – Rachel Pengilly; Emily – Carolyn Eccles

Demented is an unusual play in two parts.  

Before interval Maggie’s ‘clown’ personality (she claims to have been a trapeze artist in her time), now seriously affected by the onset of dementia, is represented in a seemingly light-hearted manner.  She seeks our attention and laughter as a character; while the ever-changing of the set around her is carried out by apparently circus performers, who morph into her daughters and grandaughter.  Underpinning the superficial comic behaviour, we sense that Maggie’s life, from her point of view, is lost in confusion as conflicting or entirely irrelevant memories are stirred in a setting she no longer properly understands.

This is the premiere of a brand new play, with an enthusiastic opening night audience including many, I’m guessing, who were close to its development and the people on and behind stage.  I found at interval I now had a picture of Maggie, but not yet a story-line to suggest where the play might go from that point.  Of course, from my own personal experience following my own mother’s transformation and final death, I could see the inevitable end.  But theatrically, I felt I needed a stronger sense of dramatic possibility to end Act One.

However, in Act Two, the drama does develop through what happens to Rachel, Kat and Emily.  The use of the puppet, which had been intriguing in Act One as an illusion of Maggie’s memories of Kat, expanded to represent all three, Rachel, Kat and Emily, not only for Maggie but for themselves in the next generations as well.  Maggie dies after the expected awful process of leaving her home for a palliative care facility, but we are left with the positive proof of love from woman to woman across the generations – and also with the understanding that dementia, especially perhaps more for early-onset dementia, has a strong genetic component.

It comes down to a simple question from a gerontologist: are you lost and unable to find your way out of the shopping centre and back to your car?  

So the story-line of the play is for us to come to realise that dementia, in many families, may be inherited and also very unpredictable.  This play emphasises the love needed to cope with that insecurity across the generations of women; and I would like to add that early, and late-onset dementia in men is equally difficult.  Perhaps there’s another play to be written in parallel to this Demented.

The production of Demented is interesting to see in its own right.  The variety of acting skills needed by Heidi Silberman, Rachel Pengilly and Carolyn Eccles – as  highly athletic comic big-top performers; as well as the daughters/grandaughter at different ages dealing with each other and their mother/grandmother; and as operators of the puppets – were a joy to watch.

The set design and construction, with large rollable and reversible walls and a range of other props and furniture were a tour-de-force both before during construction and during the performance for Mel and Lachlan Davies (I hope I’m right in assuming they are related – they certainly worked together remarkably well).

And lighting and sound were effective and complicated, especially through the rapid changes of short scenes in Act One, and taking us through to the quietness and slow dim-out of the emotional ending of the play.

Finally, I think it is important to recognise the work of Chrissie Shaw, with a long history especially in women’s theatre, in presenting the role of this particular dementia sufferer, Margaret, who thinks of herself as Maggie with a special connection to the black-and-white bird, the Australian magpie – and even reproducing (sort-of) its impressive song!  A positive note to remember.  A Q – cue? – for the Locals to also thank Jordan Best, The Q’s Artistic Director, for her practical encouragement of new writing.

Chrissie Shaw as Maggie
in Demented by Ruth Pieloor
Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, 2022

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

 

 

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.  Critical Stages Touring at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre August 5,6 (postponed from July 7-9) 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 5

Creative Team

Written by Joan Didion
Directed by Laurence Strangio
Performed by Jillian Murray
Lighting Designer – Andy Turner
Sound Designer – Darius Kedros
Photography – Jodie Hutchinson
Production / Stage Manager – Cecelia Scarthy


I had not read Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, nor even known what it was about.  I’m glad I hadn’t, for the same reason that her daughter said she did not want to read her parents’ writings: “I don’t want to judge my parents.”

Coming to Jillian Murray’s performance without preconceptions meant that I was not distracted, as I otherwise surely would have been, by making a judgement about how well – or not – she accurately represented the book.  What I saw was an actor presenting a highly complex intelligent character speaking directly to me about the deaths of her husband and her daughter, wanting to explain what she did, what she thought and what she felt throughout that fateful year.

She was motivated by thinking that everyone may, at some time in their life, have a loved-one die – and would benefit by understanding beforehand how they might behave in ways quite different from what they might assume they would.

Jillian Murray made me feel that she was that very person for real.  She was telling to me all that she was thinking in her continuous internal personal dialogue, just as I talk to myself, constantly analysing what I said and did, or could have said or done, and what would have happened if….  Having been to my own cancer specialist that very morning I was already talking to myself about what my wife and daughter need to know about what he told me.  Like Joan, so much was about practical matters – about keeping my control of the situation.  Jillian’s acting was personal – and brilliantly done.

So for me, as a theatre critic, the simplicity of the staging, costume, lighting and background sound was the key to success.  Looking back now, I can see, though, the fine details in Jillian’s acting, for which Laurence Strangio must surely also be given credit as director.  Underplaying, which makes the characterisation so strong and realistic, takes a great deal of work, of mental focus and concentration to make it seem simple and without ostentation – to make it seem real.

I am not sure how the tour is going, being thoroughly messed up I presume by Covid, but I congratulate Jillian Murray and Critical Stages for presenting such significant theatre.

Jillian Murray
in The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Critical Stages Touring 2022

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Romeo and Juliet - Canberra REP

 

 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.  Canberra REP.

28 July - 13 August 2022: Season: Wed - Sat, 8pm, Matinees: 6, 7, 13 August, 2pm

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Directors - Kelly Roberts and Chris Zuber

Cast
Romeo - Pippin Carrol; Juliet - Annabelle Hansen; Capulet - Richard Manning
Lady Capulet - Crystal Mahon; Nurse/Lady Montague - Tracy Noble
Tybalt - Francis Shanahan; Gregory/Paris - Marcel Cole
Sampson - Grayson Woodham; Friar Lawrence/ Prince - Ryan Street
Mercutio - Anneka Van Der Velde; Balthasar - Lachlan Herring
Abram - Blue Hyslop; Benvolio - Mischa Rippon
A Montague/Apothocary - Tasman Griffiths

Designers
Set – Christopher Zuber; Sound – Justin Mullins; Original Composition and Performance – Richard Manning; Lighting – Michael Moloney; Wardrobe: Costume Designer – Jennie Norberry; Coordinator – Jeanette Brown.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The directing and design concept of Canberra Rep’s Romeo and Juliet is original and very successful.  The set design is a good place to begin to understand how and why.

The set for REP's 2022 production of Romeo and Juliet
Photo: Helen Drum

 

Starting perhaps from Shakespeare’s placing the play specifically in Verona, this image of colonnades is about city life where action is constrained by the spaces between, around and behind walls.  Conflict is easily generated between houses literally; or between “Two households, both alike in dignity” as the Prologue says.

How ‘dignified’ are they when the Prince must report “Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word, by thee, old Capulet, and Montague, have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets”, threatening “If ever you disturb our streets again, your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.”

The moving of the seeming solid walls and doorways, on secret silent rollers, becomes a character in the play itself.  The unadorned style contrasts symbolically with the often too, too florid language – in anger, say, when old Capulet will make his daughter be married to Paris; in irresponsible fun from Mercutio; in fury because of so-called insult from Tybalt; from Romeo on first sighting Juliet:

“It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!”

The acting matched the hard-edge scenery in what I would call ‘presentational’ style, so that the audience is kept at some distance from the emotional experiences of the characters.  As the first act was ending I felt a bit concerned that – though it was working very well for the storytelling, often with a sense of comedy – the second half would need to change gear.

And this was done very well.  The opening after a relaxed interval went immediately into the horror of the young people actually knifing each other.  Using a kind of ‘modern’ dress and dispensing with swords was powerful.  I had at first some qualms about Mercutio being played by a woman – whose wit was certainly up to the mark – but when she stabbed and was stabbed, the feeling was awful to watch; and then more than justified Romeo’s defence of her and his killing of Tybalt.  From here on, the seriousness and depth of feelings were established right through to the dreadful end.

The casting was well balanced.  Appropriately no roles were allowed to become ‘star’ parts, though it would be unfair not to mention Tracy Noble’s frantic nurse trying so hard to keep everything together; and the rather surprising Friar Lawrence as played by Ryan Street – sometimes quite wildly almost ‘losing it’, frustrated with these people, rather than being the more usual philosophical adviser.

Overall, then, this is a realistic Shakespeare – a picture of social dysfunction, when love is not allowed to have its proper place.  Despite old Capulet and Montague shaking hands and talking of a golden statue to commemorate Juliet, this production made the final lines feel like the truth we can never avoid:

For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Pippin Carroll as Romeo and Annabelle Hansen as Juliet. Photo: Helen Drum
Canberra CityNews

© Frank McKone, Canberra