2023: King Lear - Echo Theatre at The Q

 

 King Lear by William Shakespeare.  Echo Theatre at Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, The Q.  

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night November 30, 2023


Creative Team:
Playwright: William Shakespeare    Director: Joel Horwood
Producer/Props Assistant: Jordan Best    
Stage Manager: Maggie Hawkins; Assistant Stage Manager: Ann-Maree Hatch
Set and Costume Design: Kathleen Kershaw; Set Builder: John Nicholls
Costumier: Helen Wojtas; Sound Design/Operator: Neville Pye, Sophia Carlton
Lighting Design/Operator: Zac Harvey; Voice Coach: Sarah Chalmers
Promotional Photography: Jenny Wu, Shelly Higgs
Promotional Videography: Craig Alexander
Production Photography: Photox - Canberra PhotographyServices

Cast (in order of appearance)
Karen Vickery - Lear
Lewis McDonald - Edmund/Others
Christina Falsone - Kent
Michael Sparks - Gloucester/Others
Lainie Hart - Goneril
Jim Adamik - Albany/Others
Natasha Vickery - Regan
Tom Cullen - Cornwall/Others
Petronella van Tienen - Cordelia/Fool
Glenn Brighenti - Oswald/Burgundy/Others
Holly Ross - France/Doctor/Others
Josh Wiseman - Edgar
Ensemble - Sienna Curnow, George Hatch, Liam Prichard, Nathan Wilson

_________________________________________________________________________________

You might wonder if a small-town theatre company, Echo Theatre in Queanbeyan, could have the resources to mount a great Shakespeare play, but, as Hamlet said, “The play's the thing/ Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.”  

Joel Horwood shows us, as Peter Brook famously explained last century, all a play needs is The Empty Space and some people to watch some other people acting.  Around the same period, Jerzy Grotowsky called this Poor Theatre.  But there was nothing poor about Karen Vickery’s performance last night.

Petronella van Tienen and Karen Vickery
as The Fool and Lear
Echo Theatre 2023

Her Queen Lear, for the first time in my experience watching a number of productions of this play, made me feel deeply sorry for this royal parent whose political opponent, the horribly manipulative sexually and socially-controlling Edmund, had ordered the hanging of her youngest daughter – whom she now realised was the only one who genuinely loved her.  As she remembered Cordelia’s “voice was ever soft, / Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman”, we remembered how harsh her mother’s voice had been in Scene 1 when Cordelia had spoken truthfully about her love for her mother as Queen, and the hypocrisy of her elder sisters – which we saw play out in their treatment of their mother throughout the play.  

Reaching this impossibly low point after the madness engendered by Goneril and Regan, and their ‘noble’ husbands, and by Edmund’s perfidy against his brother Edgar, the sons of her only honest noble supporter, Earl of Gloucestor, it is no wonder Lear dies exhausted by the utter collapse of her world.  The bravura performances of Karen Vickery and Michael Sparks were exhausting to watch, against the cruelty of Lainie Hart’s and Natasha Vickery’s Goneril and Regan.

Horwood has captured the human disaster of government by monarchy, or any other form of dictatorship, and made it real at a personal level.  I could not help recognising what we saw on ABC TV recently: Queen Victoria’s Royal Mob.  This UK Sky History TV production showed how the family relationships of Queen Victoria’s grandaughters led to the disastrous World War I.  What on earth could we expect to happen next in Lear’s Britain?  

Anthony Burgess in his Shakespeare points out that King Lear was written after the Gunpowder Plot of November 1605: the “[Robert] Catesby plot [when] the people nearly came face to face with the ultimate apocalyptic vision of horror – their king [James VI of Scotland, now James I of Britain], whom only holy oil had laved, blown skyhigh.  His father [Henry Stuart] had been blown skyhigh too, at Kirk-o’-Fields when his mother had gone to a ball….   At Christmas, 1606, The Court was regaled with King Lear….   The theme of deference to a ruler by divine right is sounded loudly enough in the very first scene, but Lear is all too James-like in wanting fulsome flattery more than plain truth; his tragedy springs from a rejection of honesty.”

In fact, it was Tuesday, 30 January 1649 when “the anonymous executioner beheaded [James’ son] Charles with a single blow and held Charles' head up to the crowd silently, dropping it into the swarm of soldiers soon after.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Charles_I
Shakespeare was some 33 years dead by then, but did he wonder about the possibility of Parliament forming a “Commonwealth” without a king or queen?  And later reinstating monarchy, but limited, as we see today in King Charles III?

I think he might have – and it is Echo Theatre’s showing the visciousness of the social destruction caused by divine right that makes William Shakespeare live again.

Christina Falsone, Petronella van Tienen, Karen Vickery
as Kent, Cordelia and Lear
Echo Theatre, 2023

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Christmess - a Heath Davis film

 

Christmess – a Heath Davis film. Genre: Comedy, Drama, Musical.  
Production Company: Albert Street Films Pty. Ltd. Produced by Brick Studios.
In cinemas around the country from November 30, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Crew:  
Director: Heath Davis; Writer: Heath Davis
Producer: Heath Davis  Daniel Fenech  Cindy Pritchard  Matthew McCracken
Executive Producers: Julia Scales  Nick Cole

Cast:
Steve Le Marquand (Chris); Nicole Pastor (Noelle)
Darren Gilshenan (Nick); Hannah Joy, of ARIA winners Middle Kids, (Joy)


“Christmess tells the story of a washed up actor, Chris Flint, who takes a job as a suburban strip mall Santa Claus where he encounters his long estranged daughter, Noelle. With the support of his caring sponsor, Nick, and a young, sharp tongued, musician in recovery named Joy, Chris sets about staying sober in order to win his daughter's forgiveness for Christmas.” (Blue Mountains Gazette, November 21 2023)

Beyond the standard idea of ‘genre’, Christmess is funny in its own truly Australian way, with a wry sense of humour.  It is much more than simple comedy.  Hannah Joy’s music creates her character ‘Joy’ in a highly original way.  The drama is in the story of how these people come to understand themselves and work out how to deal with life better through their unlikely Christmas experience.

Or perhaps, as Heath Davis explained in a Q&A, it’s not so unlikely when our culture expects extended families and long-lost friends to ‘celebrate’ Christmas no matter what.

Set in Sydney’s western suburbs, everything seems very ordinary.  This is what makes it warm and naturalistic, with none of the sentimentality or over-the-top drama that you might expect from a conventional (ie Hollywood) Christmas movie.

Interestingly, at the launch of Christmess at the Austin Film Festival, Texas, Heath Davis reports, he was surprised at how Americans were entranced by the humour.  A good thing for the new wave of Australian film-making, I think.

A fascinating aspect of the film is that a stage actor plays an actor, another stage actor plays this actor’s sponsor to help him out of rehab, while a successful musician plays an up-and-coming struggling musician.  One of the best scenes – from the point of view of a theatre reviewer like me – is when the three, on Joy’s suggestion (or did Heath say it was Hannah’s idea when improvising during the shoot?) – rehearse Chris’s attempt to meet his daughter in a role play.  Darren plays Nick playing Noelle; Steve plays Chris playing Chris; Hannah plays Joy sort-of playing Nick advising on the success of the role playing and the likely success when Chris puts it into practice.

Does he succeed? That’s for you to watch, while you think about the names Chris, Noelle, Nick and Joy, and enjoy a sometimes sad Yuletide story with a strong dose of good cheer.

I wouldn’t miss it if I were you.
 

A Christmess Day lunch

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2023: Metaverse of Magic - Interactive Magic Spectacular

 

 

Metaverse of Magic.  JONES Theatrical Group, presented by Sydney Coliseum Theatre, Canberra Theatre and Queensland Performing Arts Centre, at Canberra Theatre November 23 – December 3, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night, Canberra, 23 November

Co-Creator & Director: Siobhan Ginty; Co-Creator & Producer: Suzanne Jones
Co-Creator & Associate Director: Del Wynegar

Interactive Game Design: ZEBRAR – Simone Clow & George Kacevski
Technical Direction & Design: Nick Eltis (TechNick)
Production Design: Patrick Larsen (Studio Bound)
Lighting & Video Design: Paul Collison (Eleven Design)
Composition: Adam Gubman (Moonwalk Audio)
Magic Design/Consultant: Adam Mada (Magic Inc)
Choreography: Lauren Elton; Additional Script: Eddie Perfect
Sound Design: Julian Spink; Production Management: L’Argent Wilson

Character Roles:
On stage: Lenoxx – Ash Hodgkinson aka Ash Magic
On screen: DIGI – Erin Bruce

Magicians:
Charli Ashby (Australia); HARA (Japan); Horret Wu (Taiwan)
Jarred Fell (Aotearoa New Zealand); Sabine Van Diemen (Netherlands)

Ensemble:
Bronte Carrington; Damon Wilson; Max Simmons; Mei Yamada; Tim Mason

Ash Hodgkinson as Lenoxx
on his way to the Inner Realm

The magic of theatre is that it is nothing but illusion.

The Metaverse of Magic, an “Interactive Magic Spectacular”, is theatre about illusion.

The magic performed on stage is real, yet the drama – in the form of a four-dimensional participatory computer game with a happy ending – is just an illusion.

With the central character “i-Gen magician” Lenoxx and the “all-knowing Game Master” DIGI - via wi-fi on their smartphones - members of the audience “embark on a thrilling quest to reveal the secrets of the four masters of illusion and strive to gain access to the prestigious Inner Realm.”  They begin at “Legacy”  level (magic as it was in the days of Houdini, when I was young), pass through “Creative” levels and at last achieve “Courage” – the happy ending.

But not everyone is a winner, including oldies like me who forgot to take their phone!

Sabine Van Dieman, HARA, Charli Ashby, Horret Wu
Masters of Magic

 

Technically amazing, with magicians who are skilful and therefore as surprising and mysterious as they should be, the show is the ultimate crowd-pleaser.  Jarred Fell’s pickpocketing was the highlight for me.  However hard you looked, you just couldn’t see him do it.  He would get away with never being proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt.  But I did notice the only slip out of illusion in the whole show, when Sabine’s whip failed to extinguish the last of the four lighted candles.  But I’m sure that won’t happen again.  Leaving Lenoxx with just the right number of petals, left on the rose he held in his teeth while she whupped from metres away, was a winner.

The use of multiple screens, scrims and hologram effects on such a scale certainly is engaging, even while I watched people near me focussed on tapping incomprehensible details on their phone screens to gain points in the game, but at the end of the day I wondered if this is no more than bread and circusses for the modern generation.

DIGI set up moments of success, points where Lenoxx and the players had not yet got there, pats on the back for the leaders at each of the levels, and praise be to everyone at the final countdown.  

But after all, "Metaverse" – meaning Beyond Life Gaming – is a steal from Mark Zuckerberg, whose influence on society is unfortunately not an illusion.  The history of the origin of Facebook for his male student mates to judge women pejoratively, and the extension of this ‘game’ into so-called ‘social’ media across the internet has now reached the point democracies are twisting and squirming towards new forms of autocracy.

The Metaverse of Magic crowd may want to believe in the happy ending, but the reality – which the best theatre helps us understand – is that we are going to need much more than Level Four Courage to survive the next few decades.

Enjoy the magic and the technology, but beware the illusion that laughter is all we need.  

And, to be honest, from the real people on stage, and even from the more remote DIGI, there was respect and in that sense, love was there, made clear especially in Jarred Fell’s working with and thanks to the youngster and adults who went up on stage.

Jarred Fell
Master of Ceremonies

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] - Canberra REP

 

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield.  Canberra REP 16 November – 2 December 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 17 Opening Night

Creatives:
Director: Ylaria Rogers; Asst Director: Jude Colquhoun
Stage Manager: Paul Jackson
Set Designer: Kayla Ciceran; Mentor: Andrew Kay;
Set Coordinator: Russell Brown OAM
Props: Anne Gallen; Costume Designer: Heather Spong
Lighting Designer: Stephen Still; Asst Lighting Designer: Ashley Pope
Sound Designer: Neville Pye

Cast:
The Players — Callum Doherty, Alex McPherson, Ryan Street



Go now to https://canberrarep.org.au/CompleteWorks  so you don’t miss out on hilarity at its best.  

Wherever The Complete Works is put on, the Players are expected to take the built-in opportunities for improvisation and local community revisions.  What’s so good about this Canberra REP show is how lively is the action, how absurd the style, and how original are the set, props and costumes compared with what you will see on Youtube.

Most important is how directly, personally and warmly these three connect with the audience.  We were completely engaged from Ryan Street’s announcement about switching off our phones, via Alex McPherson’s pre-eminence, to Callum Doherty’s extraordinary Hamlet moment when we suddenly realised we had stopped laughing – but only until they did Hamlet faster and faster and shorter and finally backwards!

Clowning, of course, is a very special art where fun is made by playing with our expectations.  These three get the essential ingredient – the timing of the unexpected – absolutely right every time.  You don’t need to know your Shakespeare.  You’ll be surprised at how much you learn – while you laugh, wave in unison, shout out the words, and applaud with gusto.

Just be there, and enjoy every moment – I promise you will.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: This Rough Magic by Helen Machalias

 

 

 This Rough Magic by Helen Machalias.  Produced by The Street at The Street Theatre, Canberra, November 10-19, 2023.  Published by Currency Press 2023.


Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening night November 11

Creatives
Director – Beng Oh
Dramaturgs – Dr Rebecca Clode and Granaz Moussavi
Production Design – Imogen Keen
Lighting Design – Gerry Corcoran; Sound Design – Kyle Sheedy
Cultural Consultants – Sheida Jafari and Parastoo Seif
Stage Manager – Brittany Myers

Cast
Prospero – George Kanaan; Miranda – Kaitlin Nihill
Ariel – Reza Momenzada; Caliban – Andre Le
Dive-Shop Owner/The Official/Parnia – Lainie Hart



This Rough Magic is a worthy play about the ethics of the treatment by Australia of asylum seekers arriving by boat.  Though the playscript has potential, only a little of the magic made it through to us.  The style of presentation needs the rough smoothed off before I could say that the play is as good as it would like to be.

Helen Machalias has turned the island in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, stolen from Caliban and his mother Sycorax, by Prospero, with his daughter Miranda, into Christmas Island – famous for its huge population of crabs – where Australia has detained refugees off-shore, preventing them from being treated as they should be under the 1951 Refugee Convention (ratified in 1954).

In this story, Prospero and Miranda end up seeking to go to a perfect life in Australia, perhaps themselves having arrived in a storm in Flying Fish Cove, just like others from Iran who are ship-wrecked as the play begins in a storm.  Prospero “tries to command the waves using his staff”, and fails.  Flying Fish Cove, after all, is real, as are the ship-wrecked refugees.

Prospero hands back the island to the local resident, Caliban, since the island is no longer the idyllic place for settlement.

As the play begins, the script says:

A microphone in a stand is on stage. PROSPERO enters, wearing a cloak and holding a staff and book.

PROSPERO:  It begins, as always, with a storm.  Sit still, and hear of my sea-sorrow.

    What follows [ie the rest of the play] is an account of PROSPERO, MIRANDA and ARIEL’S arrival     on the island told from multiple perspectives.  The storm reaches a crescendo.  Lines overlap                  throughout the scene in the chaos.  Sirens sound continually.

    Ensemble cast enters, including CALIBAN, running and holding a machete.

I had followed my usual approach to a new play.  I had avoided reading much about it and had not looked at the script even though we were provided with the full Currency publication in the foyer.

I recognised Prospero, knowing that “this rough magic I here abjure” was quoted from The Tempest, but Caliban appeared as a perfectly good-looking modern teenage boy, complaining about his mother’s injunctions to behave properly while armed with a machete.

I cottoned on that the girl was probably Prospero’s daughter Miranda, but I never realised that the other character in Scene One was a Dive-Shop Owner touting for tourists to come diving in Flying Fish Cove.

At the end of the scene, I understood how things were going a bit better when some one who was obviously an Australian politician on the microphone talked about having to tell the Prime Minister about “the information that babies had died”.

By the end of Act One, at interval, I had to scrabble around to skim the playscript, largely because I could hardly understand any of the male characters’ speeches because most were shouted and not enunciated clearly.  I would call the style of presentation ‘loud staccato’.  

When I read the words, I could see that better characterisation, especially for Prospero, but often also for Ariel as the refugee father, needed much more range of voice quality and clarity of pronunciation to allow us to have empathy and understanding – which is where the magic would be.

Something of that magic came through the choreography, especially of the Iranian family distraught at their child’s death, and at times for Ariel where he is rather like Shakespeare’s Ariel, and in the relationship between Caliban and Miranda (very different from in Shakespeare’s play); but it took that peek at the Act Two script to make better sense after interval.

Perhaps the problem in the directing of the actors was that the excitement of the chaos of the storm in Scene One overtook too much of the rest of the performance.  Looking back at The Tempest, it’s true that Prospero treated Caliban as an over-the-top dictatorial figure, and even treats Miranda harshly, until near the end  he begins to understand that he should treat people ‘kindlier’, and abjure his ‘magic’.

For example in Machalias’ play, in Act One Scene Two, where Prospero tells Miranda how she should deal with being interviewed to show that she is a genuine refugee,  George Kenaan needed to be quieter and softly persuasive when she has said

MIRANDA:  Our prayer centre was attacked.  They imprisoned our leaders. Sufis were banned from government jobs, so my father couldn’t work---

and PROSPERO says: Too much detail.  Don’t make it political.  Focus on your education, how it impacted you as a child.

I lost the detail of their situation as Moslems, and the sympathy I should have felt, because of the loud staccato manner, particularly on Kenaan’s part.

From a different perspective, the stage design, sound design and lighting are all very successful in moving the scenes along, but better clues could be given in the costumes or props as to what each character was – for example, an MP sign for Chris Bowen; a PRESS sign for the journalist; a PM sign for Scott Morrison; a clipboard for the Official; a diving item like a flipper held by the dive-shop owner.

Overall, then, the concept of the play is interesting, the intention of criticising refugee policy is worthy, but there is more to be done to make the presentation more effective.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Under the Influence with Mikelangelo - Shortis & Simpson with Michael Simic

 

 

Under the Influence with Mikelangelo – Shortis & Simpson with Michael Simic at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre November 3-4, 2023.

Not reviewed by Frank McKone
November 3

Composed and Performed by
Michael Simic as guest of John Shortis and Moya Simpson
with band The Reprobates: Jon Jones, Dave O’Neill and Matt Nightingale
Directed by Tracy Bourne


This episode of Under the Influence is a community celebration of the musical lives of Shortis & Simpson, friends I have reviewed since their beginning at Bill, Pat and Tim Stevens’ Queanbeyan School of Arts Café in 1996, and Michael Simic – of Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen – from whom I learned as much as I taught him, in my 1980s drama classes at Hawker College in Canberra.

It was a pleasure to meet up with my drama teaching colleague of those years, Helen Boucher, agreeing with a laugh how dominating Michael had been then.  His performance now of his “lovingly forced intimacy and buoyant cruelty” in his song  Formidable Marinade, reminding me of his raucous days in the Famous Spiegeltent, shows he has lost none of his energy and dominant stage presence, though now spending much of his time as “a loving and present dad to my kids!” in the old gold-mining village of Majors Creek with his wife Rose and their daughter Sunny, where “he splits his time between being a husband and father, a writer and performer, and a mentor and champion of local music.”  

The show reveals unexpected linkages between the ways the three singers began as children to become musicians, with a special note on how the English young woman Moya became connected to Bulgarian language and songs in a choir; John learnt the Nikriz or Ukrainian minor scale (described in Wikipedia at length at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Dorian_scale ); while Michael’s father was a refugee from Croatia who came to Australia to work on building the hydroelectricity Snowy Mountains Scheme – with a never-ending sadness for the loss of his country and culture, but expressed in the music and dance of his son Mihael (nicknamed Miho or Mijo).

So I am far too biassed to write an analytical critical review of Under the Influence with Mikelangelo.  
For me, it was the warmth of connection with the local audience that was most important.  And my feeling at the end that I had spent two good hours completely forgetting to think about the dire circumstances of the larger world surrounding us, as Michael sang Love is All We Need in harmony with Moya and John, with us learning with John to sing along in those blue note scales, clapping to those syncopated 3-beat, 4-beat and even up to 9-beat rhythms.  

I thank them, and the excellent backing band, for a celebration of life – and maybe for the luck we have to be living in this place and time.

John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Michael Simic

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

 

 
The Dictionary of Lost Words adapted from the original novel by Pip Wlliams.  Co-presented by State Theatre Company of South Australia and Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, October 26 – December 16, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 1, 1pm matinee performance

Creatives:
Playwright: Verity Laughton; Author: Pip Williams
Director: Jessica Arthur; Designer: Jonathon Oxlade
Costume Designer: Ailsa Paterson; Lighting Designer: Trent Suidgeest
Composer and Sound Designer: Max Lyandvert; Assistant Director: Shannon Rush
Accent Coach: Jennifer Innes; Intimacy and Fight Coordinator: Ruth Fallon

Cast
Esme Nicoll: Tilda Cobham-Hervey
Harry Nicoll: Brett Archer
Lizzie Lester/Mrs Smythe/Maria: Rachel Burke
Sir James Murray: Chris Pitman
Ditte/Mabel/Megan/Alice: Ksenja Logos
Gareth/Mr Crane: Raj Labade
Tilda Taylor/Sarah/Frederick Sweatman: Angela Mahlatjie
Bill Taylor/Arthur Maling: Anthony Yangoyan

For this matinee performance November 1, 2023
Guy O'Grady, with script in hand, replaced Chris Pitman. However for the evening performance Chris Pitman returned and Guy took over the roles of Bill Taylor and Arthur Maling, replacing Anthony Yangoyan.

__________________________________________________________________________________

The Dictionary of Lost Words is an extraordinary historical fiction about the Oxford English Dictionary project: “Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but it was only in 1884 that it began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society.”
 [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary  ]

The novel, and the play, begin in 1886 when Esme Nicoll is four years old, playing under the tables in the scriptorium, discovering slips of paper with words on them, with meanings, and sentences in which they have been used – often centuries ago for their first known use.  As Erich Mayer wrote in his Arts Hub review

“The Dictionary of Lost Words is an unforgettable novel that has a lot to say, and says it exceptionally well. You will laugh, you will cry and you will emerge with a deeper understanding not only of words but of the subtle biases of language.”

This is certainly my experience of the novel, which is why I was determined to see the play.  Verity Laughton, in her Playwright’s Note explains:

…the great events of Esme’s own life are often internal. This is part of the tender and thoughtful intelligence of the narrative voice in the novel. She is a wonderful – and highly original – creation. In terms of an adaptation, however, she does not drive the action, as the protagonist in a stage play usually would. So to allow her to do so was probably Task #1.

It’s true that watching, as a member of an audience, an adult actor playing a four-year-old interacting with her lexicographer father, who she calls ‘Da’, is a quite different experience from reading in the first person the adult Esme remembering:

“I turned back to the word and tried to understand.  Without his hand to guide me, I traced each letter.
‘What does it say?’ I asked.
‘Lily,’ he said.
‘Like Mamma?’
‘Like Mamma.’
‘Does that mean she’ll be in the Dictionary?’
‘In a way, yes.’
‘Will we all be in the Dictionary?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
I felt myself rise and fall on the movement of his breath.
‘A name must mean something to be in the Dictionary.’
I looked at the word again.  ‘Was Mamma like a flower?’ I asked.
Da nodded.  ‘The most beautiful flower.’”

When reading, in our imagination we are Esme speaking, thinking and feeling as she does.  We do this for 400 pages.  On stage for three hours (with a 20 minute interval half-way through) we watch as Laughton notes “a long arc from its heroine Esme’s 1880s childhood in Oxford, England, to her lexicographer daughter’s opening address at the 1989 Convention of the Australian Lexicography Society in Adelaide, Australia.”  

“Between and within those events Esme grows up, word-obsessed, with a bright intellect for which there is no outlet. She accepts each blow of fate, working to find resilience and meaning in her modest, circumscribed, but intellectually busy life. She is radicalised through the suffrage movement but even her activist forays are polite, contained, and wary. She maintains an aura of innocence and a commitment to moral principles to the end.”

Though I haven’t checked all 400 pages against the story I saw on stage, the scenes seem to have used the dialogue from the novel, while Esme’s words like, for example, “Lizzie rolled her eyes but kept her smile” or, about herself, like “”Tilda was right; I was a coward” seem to have become stage directions for the actors which would have been used by Jessica Arthur as Director and Ruth Fallon as Intimacy Coordinator in rehearsals to help actors establish each character they played in each scene.

The result for me was a fascinating story to watch, rather like a well-made documentary put together in a slightly stylised way, just as a film-maker would carefully edit the raw takes.  What gives the story depth, of course, is the words chosen for focus – the words of women’s experience that men miss out; the words of sexual matters that people prefer to hide; the words and attached actions described in social protest – the suffragettes’ physical experiences and treatment compared with those who are merely intellectual suffragists; and in the very central thread throughout of the meaning of the word ‘Love’.

At the very end the emotion that I felt while reading the novel came through as Esme’s daughter, chosen by her mother, who was determined not be conventionally married without love, to be given to others, to be brought up in Australia.  

And now, Professor Megan Brookes, having been sent her mother’s effects in 1928, in her own research as a lexicographer (or lexicographa as Esme had said aged four) follows the connection back to Esme’s slip with the word 'Lily', and so back to Esme who also had not had her mother to bring her up.  Meg gives her lecture at the tenth Annual Convention of the Australian Lexicography Society in 1989 as “the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has been published, sixty-one years after the completion of the first.”

Yes, it helps to read the novel, I must admit; but the play stands up very well in its own right.  If you haven’t read The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (Affirm Press, 2020) before you see the play, you will surely want to afterwards.  And you’ll also want to read A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw which get a mention on certain key words in the story.

©Frank McKone, Canberra