2022: Collected Stories by Donald Margulies

 

 

Collected Stories by Donald Margulies.  Chaika Theatre at Act Hub, Kingston (Canberra) October 27 – November 12, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night October 28

Director - Luke Rogers
Assistant Director - Caitlin Baker
Stage Manager - Sophia Carlton
Lighting Designer - Stephen Still
Sound Designer - Neville Pye
Production Manager - Sebastian Winter
Production Photography - Jane Duong
Promotional Photography - Sebastian Winter

Performed by Karen Vickery and Natasha Vickery

Karen Vickery as Professor Ruth Steiner and Natasha Vickery as her student Lisa Morrison
in Collected Stories by Donald Margulies
Chaika Theatre
Photo: Jane Duong

Collected Stories is a Pygmalion play in which “Ruth Steiner is a teacher and respected short story writer. Her student and protégée is Lisa Morrison. Over the course of six years, Lisa journeys from insecure student to successful writer. After publishing a well-received collection of short stories, Lisa writes a novel based on Ruth's affair with the poet Delmore Schwartz. The women deal with the moral dilemma of whether a person's life events are suitable for another to use in their own creative process.” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collected_Stories_(play) ]

Professor Ruth Steiner is a lot like Professor Henry Higgins in personality: essentially self-centred and an ‘instructor’ rather than empathetic teacher.  Lisa Morrison has a similar determination to succeed and find her own way as does Eliza Doolittle.  Henry succeeds in teaching his pupil how to speak, but he is forced to let Eliza go in the end, now she is equal to and independent from her teacher/mentor.

Ruth succeeds in teaching her pupil to write, but angrily forces Lisa to go in the end, now she is equal and independent from her teacher/mentor. Ruth is angry, accusing Lisa of ‘stealing my story’ but in writing her fiction novel, based on the story  – which Ruth intended not to make public – of her affair at “a young 22” with an older man, Lisa did no more than Ruth had taught her.  Any good story is grist to a writer’s mill.

In both plays the end shows up the underlying insecurity of the teacher-instructor.  Henry Higgins laughs as Eliza goes, but we know how lost he feels.  Ruth Steiner sinks into despair as it seems her age is catching up with her.  We know how lost she feels.  Yet we are left not able to offer all our sympathy, because both of these Professors have brought their endings upon themselves, at least in part.

Now to the performances by mother and daughter, Karen and Natasha Vickery.  

For me to criticise would be an embarrassment after spending most of two hours sitting right next to Professor Steiner’s writing desk in her comfortable 1990s lounge room.  I could easily have picked up her phone for her when it kept on ringing as she slumped in depression when the final lights and jazz music faded.  I looked at her protégée Lisa and felt her sadness, yet understood her need to leave the room and the relationship with this woman who had become almost a mother for her.  She was now the teenager who had grown up.  It was time to go.

It goes without saying that their performances demanded, and they achieved, a high degree of professional skill individually and as an acting partnership.

Credit, of course, must also go to Luke Rogers and Caitlin Baker as director and assistant director for their detailed work with the actors, and for the layout of the action in this very much in-the-round staging which works so well in The Hub; as well as for such thoughtful design of the lighting by Stephen Still, and especially for Neville Pye’s choices of the integrated sound of modern jazz with all its blue notes which belonged to that period of social history.

Chaika Theatre is proving to be a well-worthwhile venture indeed.

Natasha Vickery as successful novelist Lisa Morrison and Karen Vickery as Professor Ruth Steiner
in Collected Stories by Donald Margulies
Chaika Theatre
Photo: Jane Duong

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: The Wharf Revue: Looking for Albanese

 

 

The Wharf Revue 2022: Looking for Albanese.  Presented by Soft Tread Enterprises and Canberra Theatre Centre, at The Playhouse October 25 – November 5, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night

Writers: Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Philip Scott
Co-Directors: Jonathan Biggins and Drew Forsythe
Musical Director: Philip Scott
Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
Video Designer: Todd Abbott
Costume Designers: Hazel and Scott Fisher
Photos by Vishal Pandey

 Performed by Jonathan Biggins, Mandy Bishop, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott

 Keeping the bastards honest since 2000.

As Covid and fear of impending Alzheimer’s has glued me to crosswords, one answer stands out time after time. Éclat.  The clue?  The brilliance of success.

Nothing else describes better this year’s Wharf Revue.  All the scenes from the open-mouthed clowns to King Charles III, from Albo in Wonderland (Queensland!) to when he faces Death in a nursing home in 2050 (after 6 terms, passing on the Prime Ministership to Jacqui Lambie) make up a crossword full of Éclats.  

But there is one very special scene where the brilliance of satire is set aside.  Channeling Fred Smith and his singing of Lee Kernaghan’s song Dust of Uruzgan, a returned soldier sings of Australia’s longest war, and simply asks the question “Why?”.  The dazzling wit of all the other scenes becomes highlighted in the contrast of their brilliance against the dark depth of feeling in that quietly sung question.  Our critical satirical laughter at politics needs the silence of the reality of the decision to go to war.  

Go to https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=dust+of+uruzgan+lyrics for the words of Dust of Oruzgan, including
Yeah, there's nothing about the province, that's remotely fair or just
But worse than the corruption is the endless bloody dust
and seek out Fred Smith’s CD.

That this amazingly skilled team could provide us with both the laughter and the silence is a measure of the value and importance of their work.  We need the Wharf Revue.  

We need to see Jacqui Lambie at her downright best (and join her Network); Katy Gallagher, the determined woman in charge of finance (even though the charming Chalmers gets the credit); the three previous Labor PMs, Julia, Paul and Kevin, enjoying a pleasant moment together; and the Wharf’s famous Pauline whose use of language this year even more subtly undermines her intentions than usual; – among a plethora of extraordinary political characterisations/assassinations.

Watching The Wharf Revue 2022 is literally exciting – both of our imaginations and our responses from unstoppable laughter to that quiet recognition of the truth.  Two decades of writing have honed the team’s scripting skills to a fine point, matched – this year especially by the range and depth of characterisation, quality of voice and movement by Amanda Bishop – in their musicianship, rapid-change costuming, makeup and hairdos.  All backed on screen by the Losers answering You Can’t Ask That questions – like John Howard unable to remember who was the longest serving Prime Minister!  I almost felt sad for him, recognising the onset of Alzheimer’s.

And do they find Albanese?   Yes, I think they do.  Pointed satire can be destructive, but this year’s Wharf Revue is a productive, even positive review of our world of politics – except of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a scene which I hope will be seen on Youtube by Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  Their response might be of the ‘Stop Laughing – This is Serious’ kind, though.

Don’t miss The Wharf Revue 2022.  

Julia Gillard, Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd
in The Wharf Revue 2022

Jackie Lambie shirt-fronts the real Barnaby Joyce
Amanda Bishop in The Wharf Revue 2022

Pauline Hanson as the Red Queen of Hearts in Wonderland (Queensland)
Drew Forsythe in The Wharf Revue 2022

Albo meets the United Australia Party in Wonderland (Queensland)
in the Wharf Revue 2022

The cast of clowns
in The Wharf Revue 2022

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: The Caretaker by Harold Pinter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Caretaker by Harold Pinter.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, October 14 – November 19 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 22, 3.30pm

Cast:
Darren Gilshenan – Davies; Anthony Gooley – Aston; Henry Nixon – Mick
Understudies: Laurence Coy; Tim Walter

Creatives:
Director – Iain Sinclair; Assistant Director – Danielle Maas
Set & Costume Designer – Veronique Benett
Lighting Designer – Matt Cox; Sound Designer – Daryl Wallis
Stage Manager – Lauren Tulloh; Costume Supervisor – Renata Beslik
Dialect Coach – Linda Nicholls-Gidley; Combat Director – Scott Witt

Mick, a man in his late twenties; Aston, a man in his early thirties; Davies, an old man

____________________________________________________________________

Kirribilli Village – multi-multicultural, just below Sydney Harbour Bridge – having coffee before the afternoon show, at the Bakery, near the Japanese, Thai and Italian restaurants, not far from the Indian restaurant for dinner; a world away in time and distance from Harold Pinter’s London of my childhood in the 1950s.  

I’m sure like many of the people around me of migrant origin, I am more than grateful for my sense of freedom in Australia – even though only from the English class system which I fear would have held me back in my working class culture.  Like Aston, the elder brother in The Caretaker, my mental confusion might have led to electroconvulsive shock treatment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electroconvulsive_therapy_in_the_United_Kingdom
while we are seeing the Eton / Oxford upper class culture play out in the Conservative Party political disaster in the UK right now.

You might have thought the sound of rain on the roof of the Ensemble Theatre, and the drips into the bucket hanging from the ceiling were real, but ‘I can tell you’ (a favourite phrase from the old Cockney, Davies) that the rain of three La Ninas in Sydney is nothing like London’s drizzle.  From October 1952 until well after Easter 1953 I never saw the sun and had to walk home from school unable to see my own feet because of the smog – which killed my grandma that Easter.  I understood those drips, despite laughing along.

The terrific creation by all three actors, led by Darren Gilshenan in one of, arguably his best performance, of that Cockney culture was a delight for me.  It has a long literary history. The language and the ironic, often deliberately politically incorrect humour, is there in the Gravedigger in Hamlet and the Porter in Macbeth, so the connection through my maternal grandfather, who was born ‘within the sound of Bow Bells’ which rang to introduce each scene (and could also have been Big Ben) took me right back to Shakespeare.

And, of course, Davies’ disgust at the dirty ‘blacks’ next door and the ‘Poles’, as the Commonwealth people with British citizenship immigrated and the beginning of Britain’s connection with what became the European Union was under way, has now created that other disaster, Brexit.  Ironically today, Davies would never have read the works of the “Polish-British” writer (as I had always known him) Joseph Conrad [https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Joseph_Conrad] who was actually born in 1857 in Berdychiv, Ukraine [https://www.britannica.com › ... › Novelists A-K].

So I must give special thanks to Ensemble Theatre and the one-time Canberran ANU Theatre Arts student,  Iain Sinclair, for a stunning presentation of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker.  Pinter became famous for his ‘pause’, the moments when nothing happened, in silence, while the characters react internally and work out what, if anything, they might let themselves say next.

In his Director’s Note, Sinclair writes:

Aston: Where were you born then?
Davies: (Darkly) What do you mean?
Max Stafford Clark who ran The Royal Court Theatre in UK taught me the most important lesson I have ever learned in directing and he used the above two lines from The Caretaker to do so.

Sinclair’s direction, though, also has about it the physicality for which Australian theatre has become legendary.  Just watch for the ‘rugby league’ football training scene using the bag of second-hand clothing the kindly-hearted Aston has bought for the down-and-out Davies, thoroughly against his younger brother’s wish to kick Davies out.  Nothing was said for at least five minutes – but everything was meant in the frantic hand-passing of the bag.

Particularly because Mack Davies himself often plays for laughs (his ‘papers’, entirely fictional of course, are held at Sidcup: The Sidcup in The Caretaker comes from the fact that the Royal Artillery HQ was there when I was a National Serviceman and its almost mythical quality as the fount of all permission and record was a source. " To English ears," Billington continues, "Sidcup has faintly comic overtones of suburban respectability." https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › The_Caretaker), the play is often funny, but Sinclair, Gilshenan, Gooley and Nixon have accurately captured the absurdity of the play, and of life as Pinter saw it in 1960.

Is the play, and its production in Sydney in 2022, still relevant without knowing about Shepherd’s Bush and Finsbury Park, or Tottenham Court Road?

Yes, because in the end, though nowadays it will seem out of place with no female (or diverse) characters, it is essentially about what is universal: what does it mean to be a caretaker?  Is it enough to take care of oneself, without regard for others?  Is it possible, and how do you do it, to take care of someone else?  Should not we all be caretakers in attitude towards everyone, however different from each other and from ourselves?  Towards the environment, even?  

With care, our world may be a better place.  That’s the legacy Harold Pinter’s artistry passes on to us, today.  Davies not only says “What do you mean?”, but also “Know what I mean!”  Now we know and are thankful.

L-R: Darren Gilshenan as Davies, Henry Nixon as Mick, Anthony Gooley as Aston
in The Caretaker by Harold Pinter
Ensemble Theatre
Photo: Prudence Upton

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Curses to Newton

 

 

 Curses to Newton by Brett Hoppenbrouwer.  Belco Arts, Belconnen, Canberra.  October 7, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Production manager: Jen Wright
Producer/ Live Programs Officer: Sammy Moynihan
Mentor: Jim Sharrock
Performer: Brett Hoppenbrouwer


The arts, science and emotional intelligence come together in Brett Hoppenbrouwer’s presentation of Isaac Newton’s First, Second and Third Laws of Motion, especially suited for middle school ages. Brett is a non-binary and neurodivergent science communicator and circus artist with a background in molecular biology.

Brett takes on a role as a young person in the most untidy room you can imagine, full of balls, tubes, - all sorts of surprising paraphenalia.  They invent experiments as they juggle (very skilfully), and phone their Mum excitedly about what they’ve discovered about why things fall, why some things don’t, and how some things go in opposite directions from each other.  Children (and one parent) from the audience help them with doing experiments and explaining what’s happening.

Each time they talk to their mother, she tells them that Newton’s already explained the particular law of motion, and politely says “Don’t forget to clean up your room.”

After the third time Newton has beaten them to it, they feel angry and sad.  They ring their cheerful Dad who commiserates, and reminds them what their Mum will say.  In this mood, Brett turns to the children for advice about dealing with difficult feelings.  After several suggestions today, including “eat some food”, one boy explained what he knew about managing emotions.  Brett calms themself for a final juggling performance, and a great demonstration of what happens when you blow (with a powerful fan) a spinning toilet roll at the audience: like portside streamers.

As I saw it, Curses to Newton is more about an education in attitudes to life than imparting details of the Laws of Motion.  The show encourages the enjoyment of experimenting and inventing – science in practice – as well as teaching resilience and positivity rather than a sense of failure in the face of competition.

It must be the least ‘slick’ show I’ve ever seen – but that’s its strength.  The children,  and their parents (and grandparents) are with Brett as they try so hard – and after all, all the ‘experiments’ actually worked!

___________________________________________________________________

During a short break from research to figure out what they wanted from a career in STEM, Brett fell into a job as a balloon twister and clown, followed by another as a science party host and school show presenter, and another as half of the comedy juggling duo Passing Out. Enjoying all of these more than being cooped in a lab, they completed a Certificate IV in Circus Arts and a Master of Science Communication Outreach before continuing to work as, what they like to call, a science clown.

In Canberra, Brett developed the show through a mentorship with the well-known children’s music entertainer, Jim Sharrock (Lucky Jim https://www.luckyjim.com.au ) in a residency at Belco Arts, following training with You Are Here, a Canberra based, independent arts organisation. “We exist to provide Canberra artists with the resources and environment to develop, investigate, and be ambitious with their practice. We are focused on art that cares for the artists who make it, and the audience who experiences it.” (https://www.youareherecanberra.com.au/)

Contact to learn more: Sammy Moynihan
Live Programs Officer (Tuesdays to Thursdays)
Belco Arts

Brett Hoppenbrouwer
discovery.asn.au/

 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Elemental - Warehouse Circus

 

 

Elemental by Warehouse Circus.  Produced by Aleshia Johnson, at Street One, Canberra, October Wed 5- Sat 8, 7pm; Matinee Sat 8, 1pm, 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening night Thursday Oct 6

Warehouse Artistic Director – Tom Davis

Elemental Director – Idris Stanbury
Assistant Director / Stage Manager – Ashley Cox
Choreography – The Cast, Ashley Cox, Ellen Cunningham, Maisie Walker-Stirling, Dimitri Yialeloglou
Props – Clare Pengryffyn, Bonnie Roppola
Costumes – Lynne Johnson, Ashley Cox, Ellen Cunningham
Lighting and Sound Design – Idris Stanbury
Live Music Arrangement – Kian MacLeod
String Teacher Extraordinaire – Jenny Higgs


“Elemental uses circus and comedy to explore the effects of weather and the seasons on the world around us. A show that explores all sides of the natural systems that affect our lives, sometimes dramatically. A thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining circus show perfect for all ages, with something for everyone.”  The Street Theatre publicity describes Warehouse Circus’s 2022 production perfectly.

Quality modern circus needs to bring together three crucial elements: skills, entertainment, meaning.  Learning the physical skills individually is not enough: working in concert with a team is the beginning of making circus.  Performing physically amazing things that made the little person just behind me say many times “Ooh, I can’t do that!” is the core of circus entertainment.  Add in clowning, and riding and ‘taming’ animals, and fear of accident, injury or even death, and we have the kind of circus I remember a generation or two ago as a child in 1940s and 1950s London.  

It was Circus Oz in the late 1970s who introduced me to animal’s rights (by not riding or ‘taming’ them) and to making the acts into a drama about social issues.  Director of Elemental, Idris Stanbury, writes “Each scene is inspired by the effects of the elements on life [wind, fire and water each get a special guernsey], seemingly positive or negative; large weather events really do shape Australia.”  And so each act is choreographed to a sound track of a “mix of genres, pop songs and deep cuts, reflecting the meaning…”

Warehouse Circus is not just about training young people to be skilled physical performers of tumbling, balancing, swinging on trapezes, and juggling.  Funded through ACT Health and the Community Services Directorate, it is for the Australian Capital Territory an ArtsACT Key Arts Organisation “not-for-profit dedicated to improving the mental and physical health of young people through the medium of social circus.”  And this means for the audience as much as for the performers, at least their mental health, judging by the enthusiastic responses of the children and their parents to the show I saw tonight.  And the clapping (and oohs and aahs) was very vigorous physically, too.

So I congratulate everyone involved in creating and presenting Elemental for so successfully combining the elements of physical skills, entertainment (with special mention of the comedy skills of the four clowns who spread the seeds from which the whole show grew), and the meaning about the environment left for us to contemplate.  

It was very clear to me that, as Artistic Director Tom Davis writes, “They all take their training as seriously as they take their approach to stagecraft.”  Well done!

 
© Frank McKone, Canberra

2022: Whitefella Yella Tree by Dylan Van Den Berg

 

 

Whitefella Yella Tree by Dylan Van Den Berg.  Griffin Theatre Company (Sydney) at Canberra Theatre Centre, Courtyard Studio, September 28 – October 1 2022.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 1

The combination of Dylan Van Den Berg’s scriptwriting, the lighting by Kelsey Lee and Katie Sfetkidis, and especially the extraordinary sound track by Steve Toulmin has produced the most original piece of theatre that I can recall.  The acting of the two characters, Ty and Neddy, is also a tour de force making enormous demands on Callan Purcell and Guy Simon in maintaining a constant broken-up flow of tiny changes through to massive emotions in their intense relationship over 90 minutes.

From a purely theatrical point of view, of the three works by Dylan Van Den Berg that I have seen – Milk, Ngadjung, and now Whitefella Yella Tree – this is the most successful.  Because, as Griffin Theatre points out, there is a poetic element in his writing which makes any storyline quite mysterious – less so in Milk, too much so in Ngadjung, and just so in Whitefella Yella Tree.  The meaning of the title becomes more apparent each time Ty and Neddy meet again for an “exchange”.

Van Den Berg identifies as Indigenous, linking his family history back to ‘Iutruwita’ – Van Diemen’s Land / Tasmania – and I see a parallel in Van Den Berg’s method with traditional Aboriginal art.  Embedded in the abstract paintings are symbols which, for the people with the appropriate knowledge, tell stories of events and place which remain a mystery to an outsider like me.  The art is attractive, impressive in its own right, which is why our home has works on display (from Warmun and Warlpiri traditions), but I will never know the full meaning of the story of the two women, Napanganka and Napangardi and their relationship with the shape-shifter man Jakamarra, behind Joanne Nangala’s Bush Banana Dreaming ‘yuparli tjukurrpa’ (not reproduced here, since I have not sought appropriate permission).

The beginning of Whitefella Yella Tree is theatrically attractive – humorous even though mysterious – but bit by bit Van Den Berg reveals the story as we – watching, responding, and thinking – put together a story of Ty from the River People, wanting to keep his people true to their law, meeting on the boundary with Neddy from the Mountain People, who hopes his people can survive by making himself useful to the British invaders – to the point of wearing the costume of the Red Coats.  Though the two men find they love each other intensely, sexually, Ty is left without the possibility of fulfilling his dream.  I wonder if, in his search for rediscovering his personal cultural history, Ty represents Dylan Van Den Berg himself.

Of course, I am privy to the British side of this sorry story, being an unwitting invader myself when brought to Australia by my ten-pound Pom parents in the 1950s under the government’s immigration scheme.  The details of the Iutruwita / Tasmania story, of the Mountain People and the River People, are now exposed in The Australian Wars, Part 2 on SBS and NITV and On Demand, Wednesday September 28, 2022 – ironically the opening night of the run of Whitefella Yella Tree in Canberra.

The essential symbolic image in the play, as if in a traditional painting, is the white invaders’ lemon tree – the sweet-looking fruit of which is both bitter and sour.  I trust that Whitefella Yella Tree will take its rightful place in the canon of Indigenous theatre, telling its story in a new, highly original way to many more audiences in Australia and in the wider world.

Simon Guy and Callan Purcell
in Whitefella Yella Tree by Dylan Van Den Berg
Griffin Theatre Company, 2022
Photo: Dayvis Hayne

 © Frank McKone, Canberra