2023: Tim by Colleen McCullough, adapted by Tim McGarry

 

 

Tim by Colleen McCullough (1974), adapted for the stage by Tim McGarry (Currency Press 2023).  Presented by Christine Dunstan Productions, at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 25-26 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 25

Director – Darren Yap
Set Designer – James Browne; Costume Designer – Lucy M Scott
Lighting Designer – Ben Hughes; Composer – Max Lambert
Sound Designer – Zac Saric; Movement Director – Nigel Poulton
Stage Manager – Kirsty Walker

Cast in order of appearance:
Ben Goss – Tim Melville; Andrew McFarlane – Harry / Ron Melville
Akkshey Caplash – Jim / Nate / Raj
Valerie Bader – Emily Parker / Joy Melville
Jeanette Cronin – Mary Horton; Julia Robertson – Dee Melville
_________________________________________________________________________________

Tim was Colleen McCulloch’s first novel, 1974.  I have not read it, nor seen the 1979 movie, so I can only judge the play as it stands now, clearly updated to our era of smart phones and Google, though still locked in to on-course and TAB betting on the dogs and gee-gees, and an old-fashioned tradie working-class style.

The production of the play is excellent, both in the energy and focus in the acting by an expert team and in the originality of the set design, lighting and sound design.  The use of the classical music of Percy Grainger, Chopin, Schubert and Scriabin brilliantly illuminated the role of the upmarket Mary Horton.

Assuming, though, that the storyline is not changed from the original, the play is clever but not great.  Despite Darren Yap’s careful delineation of the characters – and each actor’s success in creating them – the play is a contrived piece rather than presenting characters developing their understanding of themselves and each other (as McCullough might have seen in, say, an Ibsen play).

The intention of raising the issue about the rights, and especially the sexual rights, of people with disabilities, still comes through as I suppose McCullough was aiming for; but the marriage, including legal arguments about powers of attorney, is certainly unlikely.  I’m probably onside with Tim’s lawyer-sister Dee on that point.

I can’t compare Tim McGarry’s work with how the novel feels on reading, but to say that it has been ‘sensitively’ adapted, as Currency’s blurb says, is not what I felt when seeing the play on stage.

Because it does raise important issues and because it is skilfully presented, this production of Tim is certainly well worth seeing.  Ben Goss does an excellent job of showing Tim’s particular kind of autism, in physical movement and in his ‘literal’ reactions.  But for depth of character and storyline development, if they are there in McCullough’s original work, perhaps another adaptation may be needed for a little less theatricality and rather more believable emotional drama.

Above: Jeanette Cronin and Ben Goss
Below: Valerie Bader, Julia Robertson, Ben Goss, Akkshey Caplash and Andrew McFarlane
teaching Tim to read
in Tim adapted from the Colleen McCullough novel by Tim McGarry

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Miss Peony by Michelle Law

 

Image: Dan Boud

 Miss Peony by Michelle Law.  Belvoir St Theatre (Sydney) at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, August 23-26, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 24

CREATIVES

Writer - Michelle Law; Director - Courtney Stewart; Set & Costume - Jonathan Hindmarsh

Asst Set & Costume - Keerthi Subramanyam; Lighting Designer - Trent Suidgeest

Composer - Dr Nicholas Ng; Sound Designer - Julian Starr; Assoc. Des. Sound - Zac Saric

Choreographer - Kristina Chan; Singing Teacher - Sheena Crouch

Vocal Coaches - Laura Farrell, Amy Hume

Fight & Intimacy Director - Nigel Poulton

CAST  
Gabrielle Chan 陳金燕 Adeline; Deborah Faye Lee 李淑菲 Marcy; Stephanie Jack 盧恩典 Lily

Mabel Li 李美宝 Sabrina; Shirong Wu 吴士容 Joy; Jeffrey Liu (JËVA) Zhen Hua

____________________________________________________________________________

If you imagine that serious satire must be sharp and essentially cold-hearted, you will be surprised – pleasantly – by this warm-hearted satire of Chinese-Australian culture about the Miss Peony Competition, modelled on Miss Australia, Miss World and even Miss Universe competitions, which began in this country “from humble beginnings” as the Miss Australia Quest, as a charity fundraiser – according to the National Museum of Australia – in  1907.

China Global Television Network tells us [ https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-07-25/Peony  ] in “Peony wins national flower vote”, how “The peony originated in China, and has been planted since 4,000 years ago. It was considered a symbol of the country during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907), and was the favorite flower of the people at that time. In Chinese culture, the peony represents prosperity, elegance, solemnity, and is nicknamed the ‘monarch of the flowers’”.

These are the very qualities in this very Australian-Chinese comedy which are ripe for satire. Yet the story behind the writing is one of warmth and respect for ancestors, specifically dedicated by Michelle Law to her Ma Ma, Law Wong Ching Lan.  An Australian Born Chinese (ABC), in her Writer’s Note, Michelle describes her visit to Hong Kong, aged 11, where she watched the Miss Hong Kong Pageant on tv.

“It was incredible witnessing so many women who looked like me being celebrated for their appearance and connection to culture when I’d learnt to dislike these things about myself and assimilate in order to survive living in a western country.

“One contestant stood out for me: a woman struggling to answer interview questions in Cantonese before ultimately giving up and speaking in English.  She had an Australian accent.  I remember sitting straighter on the couch as I watched her.  She sounded like an ABC and a banana, just like me – yellow on the outside, white on the inside.  She gave me hope that maybe there was finally a place where I belonged.  And then she was eliminated from the Pageant.”

And so began the story of Lily’s grandmother, having felt the “unique sense of displacement experienced by diasporic peoples” on coming to Australia, becoming famous two generations later for having won the Miss Peony Pageant which was still funded by a sexual predator businessman, Lam.

Being young Australian women today, accepting such behaviour is not on for Marcy, Sabrina, Joy and Lily as it was necessary in her grandmother’s day, perhaps to win – as they discover from Adeline.  Though she has died, Adeline’s ghost cannot rest until Lily has played her part in the Miss Peony Pageant with integrity and honesty.

And, being Australian in today’s social media world, the show becomes like an extreme Youtube influencer event with fantastic dancing, speaking (translated into the three languages Cantonese, Mandarin and Aussie English surtitled on a screen above the action) and (sometimes almost literally) stunning technical effects in sound and light.  LaughOutLoud is the mood, with individual moments clapped and cheered throughout the show, especially by the many young women in the audience.

But it was not only about sexist men and patriarchy.  Zhen Hua, the Pageant MC, comes to understand himself as Lily gives the most powerful speech in the Pageant, and true romance begins as the show ends.  La commedia è finita on a note of respect.

You have only one more day to see Miss Peony in Canberra, but you can catch it at Merrigong Theatre Company: 30 Aug – 2 Sep 2023; and Geelong Arts Centre: 6 – 9 Sep 2023.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: You Can't Tell Anyone by Joanna Richards

 

 

You Can’t Tell Anyone by Joanna Richards.  Canberra Youth Theatre, at Canberra Theatre Centre, Courtyard Studio, August 10-20 2023.
Playscript published by Currency Press 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 12

Cast:
Gwen – Ella Buckley; Tilly – Emily O’Mahoney; Jeremy – Jake Robinson
Willa – Jessi Gooding; Luke – Isaiah Prichard; Kat – Paris Scharkie
Benny – Lachlan Houen; Nicole – Breanna Kelly

Creatives:
Director – Caitline Baker
Set & Costume Designer – Kathleen Kershaw; Lighting Designer – Ethan Hamill
Sound Designer & Composer – Patrick Haesler
Stage Manager – Rhiley Winnett


https://canberrayouththeatre.com.au/emerging-playwright-commission-2021/?fbclid=IwAR1vKwThmqbdcKqwh2ypZMBhNB5IL0CiHxv2TPV3v21Cb9rp_FZVsWhk1iY

 
Canberra Youth Theatre’s Emerging Playwright Commission was a new initiative in 2021, “offering a professional commission for an emerging Australian playwright to create a new full-length work that brings young voices and stories to the stage.”  

With a background as an actor, comedian, and writer who has studied with the Moscow Art Theatre School, the American Repertory Theatre Institute, and The Groundlings Theatre School in Los Angeles, Canberran  Joanna Richards was awarded the commission of $16,200 for You Can’t Tell Anyone after being selected from over 50 applications from across the country.

In response, Richards said “The opportunity to write material for young people – about what is arguably one of the most formative times in any person’s life – is such a gift. I am excited to create a work that is intellectually meaty and performatively fun for an ensemble to work on. I am indebted to the Canberra Youth Theatre for giving me this opportunity.”

“Being a teenager is all about discovering who you are and where you fit in the world. I am interested in writing a work that speaks to the complicated process of becoming yourself, and how much more complicated that is in a world where we are constantly on display. Taking place at a high school party, “You Can’t Tell Anyone” explores what it means to be yourself and what it means to be a friend. Drawing on philosophical concepts, the piece will challenge our understandings of truth and deception, empathy and selfishness, and the extent to which we have control over how we are seen.”

Her aim in writing sets up a substantial challenge for young performers playing essentially themselves at the stage of finishing secondary school, looking back a little way to playing truth games as a mixed-sex group of younger teenagers, while now dealing with the new reality as young adults facing up to individual independent responsibility.  

I certainly still remember camping out on Mt Solitary in the Blue Mountains talking about the state of the world all night in 1960, and picking up my own daughter from an Aranda house (at her request) in the early hours in 1985.  “I only drank milk,” she told me.

Canberra Youth Theatre - You Can't Tell Anyone
Canberra CityNews

 

So, is the play and its performance a success, considering among the goals of Canberra Youth Theatre is to “Deliver opportunities for young people to collaborate, be creative, and develop their own artistic practice.”?

The performance I saw yesterday afternoon absolutely said ‘Yes”.

The play is indeed ‘intellectually meaty and performatively fun’, and also emotionally complex as the eight characters play the Paranoia Game.  “Who is the meanest person in the group?”  “Who is the creepy one?”  Seems innocent enough when you play it age 12, but at age 18, in a world of social media and education in history (“You really don’t understand what holocaust means, do you?”), the very room – where they all had partied before and is now full of memories and significances – takes on a life of its own.

They are held there by their reflections in the mirrors.  They can’t escape.  The fantasy becomes real, just as they can’t escape responsibility in the real world.

What impresses me is to see how creating the performance of the art – which shows intellectually how the world is falling apart – so successfully brings the performers together as a bonded group.  The great success of the play-writing and the play-acting is to make us feel so strongly with and for the young people – those represented in the characters and those creating those characters – as we understand how daunting their future is at the personal and the world-wide level, and how there is great hope as they “collaborate, be creative, and develop their own artistic practice.”

Let us not let the young people down.  Just tell everyone.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Hay Fever by Noel Coward

 

Hay Fever by Noel Coward.  ACT Hub at Causeway Hall, Kingston, Canberra.  August 2-12, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 8

Creatives:
Direction – Joel Horwood; Assistant to the Director – Steph Roberts
Sound Design – Neville Pye & Scarlett Coster; Lighting Design – Craig Muller
Costume Design – Fiona Leach & Tanya Taylor; Set Design – Joel Horwood
Stage Manager – Lucy van Dooren

Cast:
Judith Bliss – Andrea Close; Frances Bliss – Steph Roberts
Sorel Bliss – Holly Ross; Simon Bliss – Glenn Brighenti
Myra Arundel – Tracy Noble; Richard Greatham – Joe Dinn
Sandy Tyrell – Meaghan Stewart; Jackie Coryton – Robbie Haltiner
Clara – Alice Ferguson



It’s very hard to take Noel Coward seriously.  Especially when, to add to the 1924 flapper era absurdity, an audience member’s smartphone rang just as Richard pulled the cord to call the recalcitrant servant Clara, and Jackie said “I don’t suppose it rings” – which it wasn’t supposed to, of course.  (I don’t think this happens every night).

But it is a serious matter to decide to stage this 99-year-old post World War I “light comedy”; while the designing, directing and acting of an apparently very silly play is very serious business.

ACT Hub does Hay Fever brilliantly.  

The Bliss Family – being oh-so modern – no longer have a conventional father, the novelist David.  After all, you could say that Noel Coward himself was an instigator of the gay revolution, so the Two for Tea family in the song (a boy for you and a girl for me) means that Sorel and Simon Bliss have two mothers, Judith and her wife Frances Bliss, played very husbandly by Steph Roberts.

And, what’s more, as you would expect in today’s gay world, the Sandy who Judith invites for the weekend is not “he” who “loves anything Japanese”, but “she”, played manfully by Meaghan Stewart.

So the mix-up of sexual relationships when the invited men flirt with the wrong women in Coward’s still patriarchal play, in Act Two becomes even more funny (they all speak the same words and behave in the same way) in this differently gendered version – in which all the characters, including the men, Richard and  the now male Jackie (in a touching performance by Robbie Haltiner), accept the fact of these relationships as normal (and Jackie denies that he will marry Simon, after all, as does Coward’s original).

In modern employment terms, then, this is a more diverse production.  However awfully funny the performances are – and they are, I assure you – on this point we can take Noel Coward seriously.  It was a good decision, 99 years late some might say, though it wouldn’t be fair to imagine Coward should have done it in his day when “Throughout the eighteenth century and up until 1861, all penetrative homosexual acts committed by men were punishable by death. Following this date, hanging was replaced by life imprisonment, and after the passage of the Labouchere Amendment in 1885, by up to two years' incarceration”.  [ https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Gay.jsp ]

There was talk recently among theatre practitioners that Canberra should perhaps see itself as ‘Off Broadway’, with productions that would then go ‘On  Broadway’.  I suggest, for a start, that ACT Hub’s Hay Fever should at least go on to the Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Theatre in Sydney, and then on tour nationally.

Glenn Brighenti, Andrea Close, Holly Ross
as Simon, Judith and Sorel Bliss
in Hay Fever by Noel Coward
ACT Hub, Canberra 2023

Canberra CityNews - Photo by Ben Appleton

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Mr Bailey's Minder by Debra Oswald

 

 

Mr Bailey’s Minder by Debra Oswald.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, August 5 – September 2, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 5

Creatives:

Director – Damien Ryan; Assistant Director – Margaret Thanos
Set & Costume Designer – Soham Apte; Lighting Designer – Morgan Moroney
Composer & Sound Designer – Daryl Wallis
Intimacy, Movement & Fight Director – Scott Witt
Stage Manager – Lauren Tulloh; Costume Supervisor – Renata Beslik
Costume Art Finisher – Sasha Wisniowski

Cast:
Leo – John Gaden AO
Margo – Rachel Gordon
Karl / Gavin – Albert Mwangi
Therese – Claudi Ware


Debra Oswald has an impressive career history, writing for stage and television as well as novels.  Mr Bailey’s Minder first appeared at Griffin Theatre in Sydney, touring nationally in 2006.  Among the play readings in 2020 to celebrate their 50 Years of the Stables, Griffin described this play as a ‘seminal work’ for the company, saying “Leo Bailey is Australia’s greatest living artist. He lives in a fabulous hovel, built into a cliff over-looking Sydney Harbour, where his genius battles to survive the effects of alcohol, cynicism and self-loathing. His resentful daughter has been through a succession of carers until she finds Therese, who is down to her last job and determined to make a go of it.

This is a tough and funny play about friendship, forgiveness, ego and the secret longing for a better life."

Ensemble’s production has given the play a new lease of life, way beyond a reading.  Scott Witt’s work with Claudi Ware has produced an extraordinary physically wild character for Therese that makes her absolutely fascinating to watch.  

Yet Ware invests in her Therese a depth of emotion and growing understanding of herself  that makes the play work.  It really is about what being a ‘minder’ means.  It’s about minding about, minding for and minding with another person for their sake.  Ware’s Therese, against her own expectations, comes to see what is needed and discovers she has it within her to do what is needed.  

That’s enough on its own to want to see Mr Bailey’s Minder.  But when you have an 81-year-old of John Gaden’s theatrical stature playing an 81-year-old paranoid dementia sufferer, made worse by continually drinking straight spirits, to display – yet to cover up – his anger at himself, I found myself – only a few months older than him,  amazed at the quality of his acting, physically and emotionally, in this demanding, complex role.  There, even with the Grace of God, I fear I will never be.

Gaden has the comic timing down to the ‘t’, the shock of his aggression well up to the ‘a’, and the seriousness of his sense of shame precisely on the ‘s’, so though we can often laugh at Leo, we are surprised to find we can learn to laugh a little with him.  By the end we find we don’t mind him so much after all.

And that’s the measure of Therese’s success as Mr Bailey’s minder.  Mind you, we must not forgot the other two successes: Albert Mwangi as the understanding tradie Karl – not the Nazi that Leo at first sees; and Rachel Gordon as the rational daughter of an artist whose ‘money won’t last, you know’, but has to decide to put him in professional care when he violently rejects an offer of a reverse mortgage because he is certain that Margo will steal his house – which has something special in it for her which we find out about just before he dies.

And that’s when we recognise the skill in Debra Oswald’s writing.  Mr Bailey’s Minder is not only a ‘tough and funny play’ but a smart play, a clever theatrical work.  

I do mind if you miss it.

And, by the way, the famous Leo Bailey probably didn’t paint pictures quite like Brett Whiteley; or did he?

Albert Mwangi as Karl, Claudi Ware as Therese
in Mr Bailey's Minder, Ensemble Theatre 2023

 

John Gaden as Leo
in Mr Bailey's Minder, Ensemble Theatre 2023

 

Rachel Gordon (Margo), John Gaden (Leo), Claudi Ware (Therese)
in Mr Bailey's Minder, Ensemble Theatre 2023

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Legacies by Rachel Pengilly

 

 

The young stowaways and the First Mate
in Legacies by Rachel Pengilly

Legacies by Rachel Pengilly.  Ribix Productions and Q The Locals, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 2-5, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 2

Playwright & Director - Rachel Pengilly
Composer, Sound Designer & Production Manager - Shannon Parnell
Set Design & Construction - Mel Davies, Lachlan Davies
Costume Design - Helen Wojtas; Lighting Design - Jacob Aquilina
Movement Director & Stage Manager - Hannah Pengilly
Fight Director - Jim Punnett
Assistant Stage Manager & Props Master - Dania Anderson
Dramaturg - Jordan Best
Cast (in alphabetical order) - Tamara Brammall, Tom Bryson, Christopher Samuel Carroll, Tom Cullen, Joshua James, Chips, Jack Morton, Zoë Ross, Heidi Silberman, Phoebe Silberman, Tabby Silberman

RIBIX Productions, pre-professional theatre company, was founded around the idea of giving a voice to young people in the performing arts industry, placing them at the centre of the story.

With this in mind, I found strengths and weaknesses in the production of Legacies, although it was clear from the enthusiastic response of a large proportion of the audience on opening night that Ribix has built a keen community of young people and parents for whom Legacies is seen as a major achievement.

The dialogue and characterisation in retelling her personal family story from her great-great-great-grandfather David ‘Jollie’ Brand about “six Scottish stowaways who stole away on a ship chasing dreams of adventure” have led Rachel Pengilly to adopt a simplistic theatre approach.

The captain and first mate on the ship, for instance, say things that the author wants them to say forcefully, and without any subtlety in the relationship which good drama needs between these two men in such difficult circumstances.

There is a telling point to the story, since they received short jail terms for their actions which resulted in the deaths of three stowaways, but their characters are presented in too shallow a way for us to genuinely feel for and against them.

For the young members of the cast, it would have been important to work with adult professional actors to guide them, but in Legacies, only the mothers expressing their loss of their sons in short monologues provided models for the young to work towards and it was particularly surprisingly to see Christopher Samuel Carroll as a bombastic cruel first mate shouting with no apparent reason except that was what he does. The story about him may be true, but the drama on stage needs to round out his character.

It is evident in the writing that the author seems to have decided on her theme then acts out scenes to demonstrate the theme of decisions made which seem to be the only choice at the time.

This was clear enough when the captain agreed with his first mate to make the decision to send the children off the ship and to walk across the ice 12 miles to unlikely rescue.

But then the play  had young boys talking about how it was necessary to make difficult decisions, like leaving someone behind to die. The theme was clear, but despite a sad sound track, mood lighting, and the intense effort the actors put into miming and Scots accents, the excruciating miming of walking in bare feet could not be felt to be real by those watching.

The young actors did an excellent job of demonstrating physical theatre, but were not given the experience of working with a script that took them and us into real emotion.

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra