2022: The Comedy of Errors - Bell Shakespeare

 

 

 

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare on tour at Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse September 30 – October 8, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 30

If you wonder how Shakespeare can still be relevant after more than 400 years, see The Comedy of Errors – particularly this Bell Shakespeare production – in which fake news takes on a terrifying ironic twist.  Every character only tells the truth and reaches reasonable conclusions.  The social fabric is almost torn apart – which we find funny to watch – and only by chance is life sewn back together harmoniously in a final powerful scene full of tears of relief and hope for humanity.

As Bell Shakespeare write on their blog: “Family members are repeatedly mistaken for one another, prompting claims of betrayal, declarations of love, accusations of lunacy, and allegations of theft. By dawn, a number of characters face prison (or worse) before a local nun puts two and two (and two) together, to reveal who is who and reunite the family members.”  But there’s an awful contrast, despite the upbeat mood of the 1970’s dance music and songs, with today’s World Wide Web ‘family’ where people deliberately do not tell the truth and encourage others to believe unreasonable conclusions.  The chances are against that kind of final scene in about 2050.  

Director Janine Watson explains in her note From the Director how her own experiences made her read Shakespeare’s play “with fresh eyes.  Whilst undoubtedly hugely funny, at its heart it is about people searching for each other and the threat to their identities and lives as they do so…. So, I give you our mystical discotheque 1970’s-inspired Island of Ephesus….A world where I believe no coincidence is impossible.  A world full of laughter, tears, and undying love.”

Taking us with her into this wonderful world is simply great theatre.  But as the photo gallery shows, it’s quite unlike the world of Shakespeare’s first production in 1594.
[  https://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/2022-the-comedy-of-errors-photo-gallery  ]

The Comedy of Errors cast 2022
Bell Shakespeare, photo by Brett Boardman

 

The heart of the success of this performance is the sense of humour leaping off the stage for our enjoyment, built in to the intelligent self-awareness in the actors – who often speak directly and personally to us in the audience (and even one character explaining at one point to another that this is what they are supposed to do).  The amazingly choreographed tremendously athletic physicality of the action, in dialogue, song and dance – on the moveable staircases and all over the stage floor – makes the comedy exciting.  Bookended by the ‘straight’ beginning presaging the execution of the Syracusan who has unwittingly broken the law of Ephesus just by turning up to search for his long-lost twin sons and wife, and the seemingly impossible coincidence of finding them and receiving natural justice from the Duke in the end, the intervening comedy becomes a telling commentary on our belief that we understand what is true and what is not.

The first recorded performance of The Comedy of Errors was on 28 December 1594, at the Feast of the Holy Innocents, in the hall of Gray's Inn in Holborn as part of the Christmas festivities.

The Royal Shakespeare Company records [  https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-comedy-of-errors/dates-and-sources ]  that “Scholars are divided about the play's date of composition. Some argue that it was written in the very early 1590s but others maintain that 1594 is the more likely date and that it was, perhaps, expressly written for this [first] performance before a legal audience at the end of that year”.

In other words, the question – and the questioning of – evidence, in law and by extension in life, is the central concern in this 428-year-old drama.  This is a ‘knowing’ comedy.  Every actor on stage clearly understood this in the almost stand-up way they played the comedy – and then showed in perhaps a Hannah Gadsby way the truth of our human need for warm understanding in that empathetic final scene.
[ https://hannahgadsby.com.au/#shows Body of Work ]

I thank Janine Watson and her Creatives team for conceptualising this production of The Comedy of Errors.  I remain in awe of the magnificent Cast and Crew who made it all work so well on the night.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Our Country's Good

 

 

 Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker, based on the novel The Playmaker by Tom Keneally.  Canberra REP Theatre, September 8-24 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 21

Director – Karen Vickery; Assistant Director – Liz de Toth
Set Designer – Michael Sparks; Props – Antonia Kitzel
Lighting Designer – Mike Moloney; Sound Designer – Neville Pye
Fighting/Movement Assistance – Max Gambale and Ylaria Rogers
Stage Manager – David Goodbody

Ensemble Cast
Capt. Arthur Phillip / John Wisehammer                    Amy Crawford
Lt. Will Dawes / Liz Morden                                      Alexandra Pelvin
Lt. George Johnston / Duckling Smith / Meg Long    Meaghan Stewart
2nd Lt. Ralph Clark                                                    Callum Wilson
Capt. Watkin Tench / Black Caesar                            Gaurav Pant
Robert Sideway / Capt. David Collins                        Isabelle Gurney
Dabby Bryant / 2nd Lt. William Faddy                      Kate Blackhurst
Maj. Robbie Ross / Ketch Freeman                            Maurice Downing
Capt. Jemmy Campbell / MIDN Harry Brewer /
                                         John Arscott                        Paul Sweeney
Mary Brenham / Rev. Johnson                                    Rosangela Fasano

___________________________________________________________________

Virtually every word Tom Keneally has ever written has suggested meanings and implications beyond the obvious.  In this work his original title tells us that Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark is not only putting on a stage play – The Recruiting Officer – but is making a move to change society for the better.  In his speech to his actors as they are about to perform, he emphasises that they must be entertaining, and intelligible.

George Farquhar’s 1706 comedy about the social and sexual exploits of army officers was still so popular that in 1789 in Australia – at the time of the First Fleet invading Eora Country to create the Penal Colony of New South Wales – Clark had at hand two copies of the play and a supply of convicts, sent down for 7 years’ exile, for actors.  The play would entertain his fellow officers, while perhaps educating the often-illiterate convicts and thus improve their future prospects.  

The title of the play, adapted from Keneally’s 1987 novel by Wertenbaker for its first staging at the Royal Court Theatre, London in 1988, captures the irony of the convicts being removed from England – for that country’s good – while the putting on of the satirical comedy by those convicts was for our country’s good – that is for the Australia which the penal colony became.

Without a doubt, REP’s putting on this play after another 30-odd years, is absolutely relevant as the issues of the treatment of women and indigenous people, and the misuse of military force and the acceptance of violent behaviour are just as disturbing today as they were in 1988 and 1789.  Karen Vickery’s directing of Our Country’s Good is as important now for us in Canberra – the capital of Australia – as was Max Stafford-Clark’s 1988 production in London – the capital of the United Kingdom which has just put on such an overwhelming performance to memorialise the late Queen Elizabeth II – and as was the presentation of The Recruiting Officer, recorded in the diary of Watkin Tench and published in his Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay in 1789.

Wikipedia records “The play shows the class system in the convict camp and discusses themes such as sexuality, punishment, the Georgian judicial system, and the idea that it is possible for ‘theatre to be a humanising force’”.  We may wonder about our past in the days of George III and the future of Charles III, William V and George VII.  With all this history behind and before us, does REP’s production of Our Country’s Good stand up strong enough?

On the whole it does, but in one part it needs improvement.  I was unable to see the show until late in its run, and felt disappointed there was not a full house last night.  Competition from the late Queen’s funeral may have been a factor; or perhaps it was the lack of clarity of the speech of several performers that kept audience numbers lower rather than building.  It was Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark that sparked my concern: not all the performance was “intelligible”.

Our Country’s Good succeeded in its essentials, where Vickery’s direction of the action and mood, and characterisation, made us come to grips with the reality of people being whipped with 100 lashes, and even 300 lashes; with the impossibility of true justice when death by hanging was the standard; when trauma destroys relationships; and laughter at is so different from laughter with.

But I found, in attempting to represent the characters through their vocal accents from the many different parts of Britain that the real convicts came from (I recognised at least Devon or Somerset, possibly Scottish and Cockney) very often I could not understand the actual words being spoken.  Often, too, in presenting the agressiveness especially in the male characters, voices could sound like barking angry mastiff dogs – which certainly got the feeling through – but the actual words and what the character, and Tom Keneally, meant was lost in action.  

It was understandable that I would have had to listen hard to the character from Madagascar (Black Caesar), and Gaurav Pant succeeded in his speech about wanting to die in his own country, and not in Australia, in making a stand for indigenous people, even though the reasonable decision had been made to leave out Keneally’s original unnamed character, An Aboriginal Australian.  In her Director’s Note, Vickery writes “With the passage of 34 years the representation of our First Peoples in the play is problematic, even tokenistic”, after she consulted with Aboriginal and Torres Strait artists.

I think, on reflection, that more scenes could have gained from clearer articulation of the words, including particularly for the ‘barking’ parts of the Major and the Captain, to create more subtlety of emotion for us to respond to.  Scenes that were the strongest for me were when Liz is measured up for hanging; where she finally decides to speak in her own defence; and those emotional scenes between Harry Brewer and Duckling Smith.

A notable success in this production was the set design which worked so well without the need for changes for so many different settings – which is also praise for the directing of movement, exits and entrances, with complex lighting which shifted our imaginations smoothly from scene to scene.

Overall then this production of a demanding play achieves the key intention of Tom Keneally, which the original director and writer/adaptor described after seeing a play performed in Wormwood Scrubs prison: “in prison conditions, theatre can be hugely heartening and influential … and we saw immediately how doing a play could become absolutely absorbing if you were incarcerated”.  Like the convicts they observed, we “were, at least momentarily, civilised human beings”.  
[  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Country%27s_Good  ]

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: The Barber of Seville

 

 

The Barber of Seville by Rossini.  Opera Australia on tour at Canberra Theatre Centre, September 15-17 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 15

Composer – Gioachino Rossini; Libretto – Cesare Sterbini
Conductor – Luke Spicer; Director – Priscilla Jackman
Set Designer – Michael Scott-Mitchell; Lighting Designer – Morgan Moroney
Costume Designer – Sabina Myers

Characters:
Rosina – Esther Song; Count Almaviva – Nicholas Jones
Figaro – Haotian Qi; Dr Bartolo – Andrew Moran; Don Basilio – Shane Lowrencev
Fiorello & Coro – David King; Berta – Jennifer Black
Officer – Michael Lampard; Notary & Coro – Cathy-Di Zhang
Coro – John Longmuir; Coro – Andrew Williams; Coro – Dominica Matthews

Orchestra:
Leader/Violin 1 – Matthew Rigby; Violin 2 – Phoebe Masel
Viola – Mariette Reefman; Cello – Stephanie Arnold
Double Bass – Hamish Gullick; Flute – Eliza Shephard
Oboe – An Nguyen; Clarinet 1 – Amy Whyte
Clarinet 2 – Jarrad Linke; Bassoon – Chris Martin
Keyboard – Jane Matheson
Orchestra Reduction – Simon Bruckard

Children’s Chorus: Woden Valley Youth Choir
Children’s Chorus Master – Kate Joy Stuart

_____________________________________________________________________

This is how I might have imagined the style for The Barber of Seville in Rossini’s day:

[ https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/98023729377420159/ ]
cerovic_designs • Accademia Costume & Moda

 ________________________________________________________________________________

This is Opera Australia’s program centrefold picture of Rossini’s characters (the cast in this image are in their alternate roles which change from performance to performance):

 

Here we see a quite different style of costuming and characterisation.  Instead of a sophisticated version of Italian street theatre – commedia dell'arte – director Priscilla Jackson has shifted us from “Rossini’s Seville [as] a place of great fun, romance and the frolicking pleasures of life” and his “incredibly infectious and frothy music” to an absurdist modern comedy: “a world of ever moving delights, of intrigue, disguises, games, near catastrophes, amusing diversions, large moustaches, romps and romance”.  

Yet we must not forget the warning in Figaro the Barber’s final words:

FIGARO
Here is really the "Futile...

ALL
...Precaution"!

FIGARO
So happy a reunion
let us remember for ever.
I put out my lantern,
I am no longer needed.

while everyone sings again and again:

May love and faith eternal
reign in both your hearts.

not only to Rosina and Count Almaviva, but as an invocation to us all.  As Jackman writes, “In coming together as a community (moustaches and all), we are delighted to celebrate the whimsical games of love and connection with you through Rossini’s timeless, The Barber of Seville.”

The acting and choreography in this production are as excellent as the singing and the delightful small orchestra, but the extra level of absurdity which begins with everyone on stage wearing huge moustaches, and ends with an injunction to us – not in the original script, of course – to keep wearing our moustaches as we applaud, is a reminder.  Can we remain true to love and faith eternal, or will we need this Figaro again to light up his lantern?

Jackson notes that “it was interesting for us to reframe Rosina away from the damsel in distress needing to be rescued from the clutches of her controlling guardian, and create an environment for a more autonomous Rosina” who, in setting up her own business, is equal in status to the wealthy Count she loves, as he does her.  

The froth in the music becomes more substantial as the significance of the role of Figaro becomes clear.  There are four men with an interest in the woman, Rosina.  Her guardian, Bartolo, is a coercive controller.  His intention is to force Rosina to marry Don Basilio, an equally coercive controller.  The marriage would be a social status and maybe financial asset for Bartolo.  

Figaro, the barber who cuts every man’s hair, and thus knows the ways of all men, recognises the injustice of Rosina’s position and sees the genuine sincerity of Count Almaviva’s attraction to her, and of her response to him.  Though Almaviva is essentially naïve, Figaro takes a thoughtful, objective stand.  

He knows that, even if romance may not last forever, he has a duty to find a way to bring these two together because they are right for each other.

This, the good man behind the froth and often frantic comedy, is the achievement of Cesare Sterbini and Gioachino Rossini which makes The Barber of Seville timeless.  In our terms today, love is a human right; coercive control is at last a crime.  Figaro lives on.

Opera Australia offers us great entertainment, and more, in this engaging interpretation of The Barber of Seville.

 © Frank McKone, Canberra