2024: The Hair and the Shortis by Shortis & Simpson

 

 

The Hair and the Shortis by Shortis & Simpson at Smith’s Alternative, Canberra City, Saturday December 7, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Political satire, written, composed and performed by John Shortis and Moya Simpson.

    Shortis & Curlies John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Andrew Bissett at The School of Arts Cafe, 108 Monaro Street, Queanbeyan.  Season: Thursdays to Saturdays till June 29, 1996.

If you are a Liberal politician confident that cutting government spending is the only way to go; or a Labor politician feeling sorry for yourself after 100 days of the new regime; or a veterinary surgeon operating out of Woden Valley; or someone who thinks that a national gun register is not a good idea; or Princess Diana; or Jeff Kennett; or even a frozen embryo who hopes to inherit your dead father's estate: then you shouldn't see this show because you probably won't laugh.

This is how I introduced Shortis & Simpson when they began performing in 1996.  Nowadays, with Shortis and only one Curly, how much has changed since the first 100 days of John Howard’s eleven years, 1996 – 2007, of Conservative government (weirdly called ‘Liberal’ in this country) and the possible prospect of an even more right-wing conservative Peter Dutton government from early in 2025.

In the meantime the political issues may have changed their names and parties like the Prime Ministers: Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd  (weirdly called ‘Labor’ instead of Labour) 2007-2013; Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison (Liberal National Coalition) 2013-2022; Anthony Albanese (Labor) 2022-2025, so far.  

Shortis & Simpson have remained the same in principle and have developed in practice over these three decades, receiving a Canberra Critics’ Circle award this year, the citation reading “for their original music series, Under the Influence, in which the duo wove their own stories and music together with those of guest artists Keith Potger, Karen Middleton, DJ Gosper, Nigel McRae and Beth Tully, culminating in seasons with Mikelangelo and Fred Smith…. [an] initiative [which] proved a creative way of highlighting leading Canberra region popular musicians.”

And their full house at Smith’s Alternative tonight still laughed, and sang and clapped along, and even groaned appropriately, as they did at the Queanbeyan School of Arts Café – this time at Lydia Thorpe’s intended insult but unintended comic mispronunciation of King Charles’ heirs as ‘hairs’ rather than ‘airs’, stirring up John Shortis’ fascination with word play via The Hare and the Tortoise to this show’s title, The Hair and the Shortis.  Moya made it very clear who had the hair and who was the shortis.

The people who probably wouldn’t have laughed include the CEOs of Woolworths and Coles supermarkets; the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers; Elon Musk; Tronald Dump; all the Moonlight Senatas to Beethoven’s tune, up all night rushing bills through while Albo’s In The Air with John Paul Young, after enjoying his time in the Chantas Quairman’s Lounge; the new local Australian Capital Territory Liberal leader, Country&Western singer, Leanne Castley; the richest woman in Australia, Gina Rinehart, after her smooching with Nigel Farage at Trump’s dinner party at Mar-a-Lago; Senator Lydia Thorpe – they want to get rydia; and many others.

You wouldn’t want to be a Middle American either; or a Peter Dutton type who can pronounce ‘nuclear’ in every way except the right way – and seriously imagine covering Australia with nuclear power plants.

Then there are different, intriguing songs and stories.  The Childless Dog Lady, that is Moya Simpson herself, doesn’t seek sympathy, but recognition of her personal preference for dogs rather than children, rather than being insulted as a Childless Cat Lady as Kamala Harris has been.  While there was the story of the Australian native stingless bees kept at Parliament House in Canberra, but which don’t like our frosts and are taken to Sydney each winter to breed, and how they become a model for our politicians to become stingless, instead of stinging each other and us like European bees.

I can’t report here on all 26 items in this engaging show before the encore, but that was an enlightening history in itself of protest movements and their songs which made a powerful finale.

The important thing to say about Shortis & Simpson is that they are an essential part of our community.  We feel every year how we belong to them and they belong to us.  And they have promised me that they will be there with us again next year.


©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson

 

 

Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson, based on the novel of the same name by Peter Carey, after Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
State Theatre Company South Australia at Canberra Theatre Centre, Playhouse.  December 5-7 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
December 5


Writer: Samuel Adamson    Director: Geordie Brookman

Cast
Jack Maggs: Mark Saturno;             Tobias Oates: James Smith
Mercy Larkin: Ahunim Abebe;         Hawthorne/Mary/Phipps: Rachel Burke
Constable/George/Partridge: Dale March;     Miss Mott/Lizzie: Jelena Nicdao
Percy Buckle/Dr Grieves: Nathan O'keefe
Ma Britten/Mrs Halfstairs/Old Mercy: Jacqy Phillips

Creatives
Designer: Ailsa Paterson; Lighting Designer: Nigel Levings
Composer: Hilary Kleinig; Sound Designer: Andrew Howard
Accent Coach: Jennifer Innes; Assistant Director: Annabel Matheson
Intimacy/Fight Choreographer: Ruth Fallon

Mark Saturno as Jack Maggs
State Theatre South Australia

Though I know Great Expectations from my teenage reading – most fascinated by the hero ‘Pip’, his hope of marrying Estelle, and the character of Miss Havisham, ‘a rich and grim lady…who led a life of seclusion’ – I never thought much about Abel Magwitch, alias ‘Provis’, ‘an escaped convict’.  

Now, watching Samuel Adamson’s in many ways quite remarkable play, I find it is unfortunate that I haven’t yet read Peter Carey’s story of the life of Magwitch, alias ‘Jack Maggs’, convicted of theft and sent to New South Wales ‘for the term of his natural life’.  

So here I am, watching a theatrical interpretation of a fiction twice removed.  As Jack Maggs arrives secretly back in London, is he the same character as the Magwitch I knew?  If you want the answer, you couldn’t do better than start at Chapter XL – the beginning of the third stage of Pip’s expectations – on Page 3ll where he tells Pip his real name, but they agree to use an assumed name ‘Provis’ and to call him Pip’s uncle.

Confused already?  In Great Expectations there are 38 characters, listed before you begin to read.   In Jack Maggs, the play, there are only 16 characters played by 8 actors, seemingly covering something like a new version of Chapters 36-42 of Great Expectations – except that there’s no Tobias Oates, 'mesmerist', or any of the others in Dickens’ story.  Perhaps I shouldn’t ever have read or have had Great Expectations in the first place – even though Carey’s Tobias Oates insists that reading the literary canon is essential!

On stage, the basic story of Jack Maggs’ life in Australia, and his type of character, is much the same as Magwitch telling Pip in Great Expectations, about how he was given a ticket of leave and became wealthy.  But now, as you can find out from the Study Guide at 

https://statetheatrecompany.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Jack-Maggs-Study-Guide2.pdf ,
The story follows the enigmatic ex-convict Jack Maggs (Carey’s version of Magwitch)
returning to London from Australia and embarking on a relentless quest to find his
‘son’ Henry Phipps, who has mysteriously disappeared. Maggs soon becomes
entangled in the web of Phipps’ neighbour, Percy Buckle and his bizarre household,
where he makes a deal with young novelist and “mesmerist” Tobias Oates (or is
it Charles Dickens himself?) To find Phipps. Oates has other plans though, and in
Maggs, might just find the perfect inspiration for his new novel.

Though the acting, choreography, costumes and technical wizardry make Jack Maggs eminently watchable, I wish I had been made by, say, an excellent drama teacher to read the 34-page Study Guide first.  Then I could have made the right connections to follow the plot, and better understood the point of the thoroughly enjoyable singing of such recognisably Australian songs.

With this in mind, I certainly recommend this interesting original view of the convict origins and history of Australian colonial life.  And thoroughly support the aim of encouraging the reading of literature of the Charles Dickens kind for Years 9 – 12 as the State Theatre intends.  They might find, then, as I see it, that Great Expectations is a social satire (of course, Pip and Estelle are at last inseparable, at least according to Pip, in the final paragraph); while there is not the same degree of ironic humour in Adamson’s Jack Maggs – and I am yet to find out about Peter Carey’s version.  There’s a laugh in ‘Toby’s Oats”, at least.

Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson
State Theatre South Australia

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl - Mill Theatre

 

 

Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl (world premiere at Madison Repertory Theatre, Madison, Wisconsin, September 2003; Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theater, 2007).
Retells the myth of Orpheus from the perspective of Eurydice, his wife.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurydice_(Ruhl_play)  
 
Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra. November 20 – December 14, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night November 27


Cast
Eurydice: Alana Denham-Preston; Orpheus: Blue Hyslop
Her Father: Timmy Sekuless;
A Nasty Interesting Man/The Lord of the Underworld: Michael Cooper
A Chorus of Stones: Heidi Silberman, Sarah Hull, Sarah Nathan-Truesdale

Contingency: Rhys Hekimian, Michelle Norris

Production Team
Writer: Sarah Ruhl        Director: Amy Kowalczuk
Movement Director: Michelle Norris; Costume Designer: Leah Ridley
Set Design and Construction: Simon Grist; Scenic Painting: Letitia Stewart
Lighting Designer: Jennifer Wright

Guitar, Vocalist and Arranger: Eleanna Stavrianoudaki with sound effects licensed via Artlist.

Production Stage Manager: Lexi Sekuless
Production team support: Mark Lee, Andrew Snell, Zeke Chalmers, Jaben Leadbetter
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena

Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions        Major partner: Elite Event Technology

Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs
Eurydice is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.
The navy curtain installed for this show is known as the Kershaw Curtain.
Carla Bruni wedding song licensed by APRA
__________________________________________________________________________________

In a world in which privacy has become such a big issue, I felt quite embarrassed, in the tiny Mill Theatre, watching almost within touching distance Eurydice and Orpheus enjoying such physical intimacy, in casual clothing prior to their more formal wear for their wedding.

Bringing an ancient Greek story into our personal experience is the point of the play, so we can accept the theatrical illusion of the two worlds – Life and Death – as reality for Eurydice, her father and her husband.  

The directing of the acting and movement, in the context of a simple yet ingenious set design on two levels, and with lighting and sound cues as the action shifts from one to the other, is highly successful.  

The choreography for the three women in the dead world – who are like the Furies would be in the living world, except that here they are the Stones enforcing the rules about what is not allowed – is especially well done.  I’ve met some people in my real world very much like them!  

As a comparison and contrast with Blue Hyslop’s genuine musical Orpheus, Michael Cooper’s mealy-mouthed manipulative controlling Nasty Interesting Man is awful to see. Alana Denham-Preston’s Eurydice is fearfully trapped, and escapes only to her death.  We see stories like this daily on the news.

So this production of Eurydice is highly recommmended, not only for the quality of its performance, but also for the choice of an interesting and important take on the ancient Greek story of the man’s frustration – when he sadly cannot look back – now seen from the woman’s point of view, when she desperately cannot call him back.  

Conventionally it’s a sad love story, but Sarah Ruhl’s version makes it a deeper consideration of life as a tragedy for love when one partner is suddenly dead.  In the modern world (and I guess equally in the Ancient Greek world), death is even more tragic when it is deliberately dealt out by other people.

After seeing Eurydice, to follow up the Ancient Greece connection, you should read the three novels by Pat Barker.  In The Trojan Women, The Silence of the Girls and The Voyage Home, seeing Greek history/myth from the women’s point of view is essential reading on sexual and political relations in Western culture to build on Sarah Ruhl’s dramatic work.

Not to be missed.

Blue Hyslop and Alana Denham-Preston
as Orpheus and Eurydice
Mill Theatre 2024

 

Timmy Sekuless and Alana Denham-Preston
as Her Father and Eurydice facing The Stones
Mill Theatre 2024

 

Heidi Silberman, Sarah Hull, Sarah Nathan-Truesdale (not necessarily L-R)
as The Stones
Mill Theatre 2024

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Ukulele Man by Marcel Cole

 

 

The Ukulele Man by Marcel Cole.  At Smith’s Alternative, Canberra City, November 15-16, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 15th

Written and Performed by: Marcel Cole as George Formby
Performed by: Katie Cole as Formby’s wife and manager Beryl, and other roles as necessary.

Directed by: Mirjana Ristevski

‘The Ukulele Man’ is the true story of wartime comedian and ukulele legend George Formby. From the Music Halls of Blackpool to the battlefields of Europe, this is the untold history of Britain's greatest entertainer!

He was banned by the BBC and committed to a psychiatric hospital by his wife, and yet still became the UK’s biggest star.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Katie Cole as Beryl and Marcel Cole as George Formby
in The Ukulele Man 2024

For an hour while thoroughly engaged in Marcel Cole’s re-creation of George Formby’s unassuming, I might even say shy, positivity – his humanity – I never for one moment thought of Donald Trump.  Not one jot.

Mirjana Ristevski’s thoughtful, careful, tight directing of still relatively youthful Marcel Cole’s remarkable capacity for living in the moment as if from within his character, while also placing his musician mother, Katie, into roles particularly crucial to Formby’s life, makes us feel we are in the presence of the real George Formby – even up to the point when he describes the crowd of 150,000 lining the way from the funeral parlour to the site where his ashes are interred next to his father’s.

The Ukulele Man is real theatre.  Absolutely Not Netflix.  It’s weird but wonderful to find oneself responding to Formby, laughing and singing along with him, just as I remember we did when I was a child in England in the nineteen forties and fifties, seeing him on our brand-new television in the same year as we had the set switched on for 12 hours straight for the coronation of the new Queen Elizabeth.  

But Marcel Cole has done much more than bring back memories for old people.  The story of George Formby’s life through World War I and his entertaining the troops through World War II is disturbing.  He is still entertaining us today until, after the show has ended, we are left with the real possibility of World War III.  

I don’t want to think about Donald Trump again, but will remember the artist, George Formby, keeping up his ordinary person’s gentle, if a little bit risqué, sense of humour, leaning on a lamp-post, watching and waiting for a certain little lady to pass by.

If you want to know about the whole story of George Formby, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Formby#Biography .

To understand George Formby and feel for the life of an independent artist, go to Marcel Cole’s The Ukulele Man.

About Marcel Cole

Marcel Cole is a multi-disciplinary artist from Canberra. He comes from a family of musical performers and so music, singing and performing have been a part of life ever since he could walk. Since then, he has trained extensively as a dancer in Canberra and at the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington, NZ, and has studied theatre, mask and clown in Australia, London and Paris, most notably at the prestigious École Philippe Gaulier.

Wikipedia records:

Formby’s films are, in the words of the academic Brian McFarlane, "unpretentiously skilful in their balance between broad comedy and action, laced with ... [Formby's] shy ordinariness".

The film  Keep Your Seats, Please in 1936 contained the song "The Window Cleaner" (popularly known as "When I'm Cleaning Windows"), which was soon banned by the BBC. The corporation's director John Reith stated that "if the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they'll have to be content to hear it in the cinemas, not over the nation's airwaves"; Formby and Beryl were furious with the block on the song. In May 1941 Beryl informed the BBC that the song was a favourite of the royal family, particularly Queen Mary, while a statement by Formby pointed out that "I sang it before the King and Queen at the Royal Variety Performance". The BBC relented and started to broadcast the song:

    "To overcrowded flats I've been,
    Sixteen in one bed I've seen,
    With the lodger tucked up in between,
    When I'm cleaning windows!

    Now lots of girls I've had to jilt,
    For they admire the way I'm built,
    It's a good job I don't wear a kilt,
    When I'm cleaning windows!"

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Drizzle Boy by Ryan Enniss

 

 

Drizzle Boy by Ryan Enniss. Queensland Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, November 13-16, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 13

Creatives

Writer Ryan Enniss
Director Daniel Evans
Set and Costume Designer Christina Smith
Lighting Designer Matt Scott
Composer/ Sound Designer Guy Webster
Video Designer Nevin Howell

Stage Manager Kat O'Halloran
Assistant Stage Manager Nicole Neil

Cast

Drizzle Boy - Daniel R Nixon
Mother/ Juliet/ Valentina Tereshkova/ Dustin Hoffman/ Google/ Doctor - Naomi Price
Father/ Hans Asperger/ Baphomet/ Google/ Doctor - Kevin Spink



There are two ways to appreciate this modern-style theatre work.

First it is a highly original way of using theatre as a kind of adult theatre-in-education about how being autistic is a natural condition in some people, which the person concerned cannot change.

Second, it is a play about other people unfairly judging autistic people as abnormal or even subnormal, at best trying to treat them psychologically or at least trying to help them; at worst disrespecting them as figures of fun, as social failures, or even with aggression because they don’t change to suit ‘normal’ expectations.

Being “on the spectrum” is now a commonly used term, which at least recognises that every autistic person is different in their own way.  The line in the play is “If you have met one autistic person, you have met one; if you have met another autistic person, you have met another one.”

Because people with autism don’t respond in the expected ways to emotional subtext cues, they may – as David does – create fictional characters drawn from stories, and perhaps especially from movies, which they imagine to be real and may be called on for help; or may seem to impose judgements about what they are doing.

The key moment in the play, as a relationship is developing between David and Juliet in their late teens, is when she has expressed love for him.  David stops, looks at her in an objective kind of way, and asks “Are you real?”  Juliet says simply “Yes.”

He means the question literally: is she real or a figment of his imagination?  She means literally that she is real.  While in the ‘normal’ audience, we know that she really means she really does love him for what he is, as he is.

The presentation of the story in theatrical terms is quite remarkable.  The choreographed movement work is amazingly complex and so precisely done.  The use of voice over and other sound effects are quite stunning, as is the lighting.  And I found it hard to imagine how the two actors working with David – the Drizzle Boy – could possibly have managed all those costume changes – in addition to their character, voice and accent changes.

So, first the show is entertaining just for the performances, staging and technical impacts.

While, second, it commands respect for the actors as actors, and for the frustrations and difficulties that people with autism face on a daily basis – and must always face, even when intellectually they can learn to understand yet can never be sure of succeeding in emotional situations.  The play remains realistic about autism as a condition, but gives us hope that more people will find ways to treat each other with the respect we all deserve.

This hope comes from the experience, which I certainly had, of realising that we all surely have to learn to better appreciate and respect others for being who they are, because most of us – perhaps men, especially – are at least a little bit like David, the Drizzle Boy.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The End of the Wharf Revue As We Know It ! ! !

 

 

The End of the Wharf Revue As We Know It ! ! !.  Soft Tread Enterprises at Canberra Theatre Centre, October 25-November 2, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 28

I do not need to reiterate the enthusiasm of others for the best End of the Wharf Revue imaginable.  The Full House on Monday repeated the opening night’s tears of laughter last Saturday.

So, looking forward to First Tuesday in November – Wednesday our time –  I find myself trying to imagine the End of Trump or the Beginning of Harris as we might know America.  What would happen if the Wharf Revue sails the Pacific Ocean Blue and appears in, say, Pennsylvania, with Mandy Bishop playing Kamala shooting Drew Forsythe as Donald?

Would it be Funny in America?

Seriously, can we imagine the Wharf Revue ever happening in America?  

The fact that Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott with (in different years) Amanda Bishop, Genevieve Lemon, Jacki Weaver, Helen Dallimore and recently David Whitney, could have become icons of such withering political satire – for 25 years in a row! – says a very great deal about Australia, the Lucky Country – so ironically named by Donald Horne 60 years ago.

If there’s one crucial reason why I’m glad my £10 Pom parents fortuitously (in fact it was accidentally) sailed me on the oceans (mainly green) from Rotherhithe on the Thames to magnificent Sydney Harbour 70 years ago, is that I have come to appreciate Jacqui Lambie’s “no bullshit” approach to politics.  

Only in Australia could such a woman be elected to Parliament, surely.  And only in Australia could Amanda Bishop make her Your MC at the Parliament House Midwinter Ball.

Amanda Bishop as Jacqui Lambie
The End of the Wharf Revue As We Know It ! ! !
2024

 

Thank you, Australia, for the Wharf Revue.  May you live forever.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Rockspeare Henry VI Part Two

 

 

Rockspeare Henry Sixth Part Two.  Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra, 2-26 October 2024

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Thursday October 10

Cast:
Player One: Heidi Silberman ; Player Two: Chips Jin
Player Three: Kate Blackhurst; Player Four: Amy Kowalczuk
Player Five: Mark Lee

Contingency: Sarah Nathan-Truesdale

Production Team

Writer: Billy Shake; Director and Verse Nurse: Lexi Sekuless
Sound by Artlist - Designer: "ikoliks"
Costume Designer: Tania Jobson; Scenic Set Designer: Kathleen Kershaw
Scenic Painting: Letitia Stewart; Construction: Mark Lee, Simon Grist
Movement Director: Stefanie Lekkas; Lighting Designer: Stefan Wronski
Apprentice to Lighting Designer: Jennifer Wright
Production Stage Manager: Jess Morris
Apprentice to Production Stage Manager: Emma Rynehart

Front of House Manager: Lexi Sekuless
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena

Henry VI Part 2
Mill Theatre, Canberra 2024

The audience member seated front left in this photo is where I was placed last night.  In-the-Round is not nearly enough to describe the arrangement.  In-the-Action is more like it.  And how good is that when every noble command, threat, or surreptitious lie; every sexual encounter; every execution; every thunderbolt of rock-band explosion; every strike of lightning; and even every moment of intense silence, hits home?  You are in the King’s Chamber, on the battlefield at St Albans, in the Hall of Justice, in the Duke of York’s garden, in the Abbey at Bury St Edmund’s, and a dozen other places – all in the tiny theatre at The Mill.

At last you understand why Shakespeare wrote this play of governmental mayhem.  You’re in the thick of it, between a man, Henry, who has ‘inherited’ his ultimate position of power, and the Lancaster and York family heads doing whatever it takes to prove their legitimacy against his – and his French wife, Margaret, a desperate Queen in her own ‘right’.

I think ‘Billy Shake” was offering a warning to his own Tudor Queen Elizabeth: don’t forget the ordinary people.  In three plays about Henry VI from a century before she ‘inherited’ her throne, and in his other history plays, he shows what greed, graft, corruption and violence achieve.

As an aside, I remember how, only a few years before William’s 1564 birth, Elizabeth had given royal approval to the very grammar school – to educate the poor – which I attended – Enfield Grammar, near the forest where she used to go hunting.  

And with a bit of violence from stormy weather in 1588, the Spanish Armada was defeated.  But Shakespeare still had to write, not long before he died in 1616, The Tempest, about Prospero learning he had to give up the symbols of power – a lesson still not entirely put into practice.  King Charles III, I’m sure, though, is well aware of what happened to his forebear, Charles I in 1649.

So Lexi Sekuless and Company have achieved in this production her aim, which she had espoused at the Theatre Network Australia Canberra Gathering on Wednesday October 9: to make Mill Theatre a place for “thinking people”.  The show is full of energy, the characters’ speech is absolutely understandable; and the story is unfortunately true to the worst of what we see around us every day.

It certainly makes you think – and feel, and appreciate quality theatre, in all its manifestations – acting, movement, costume, set design, directing, and with a little irony in the personal history, as I believe, of the composer and sound designer, whose work creates the source of energy on which the production rides.

His background, coming from Ukraine, heightens the significance of Shakespeare’s work for presentation in the present time, when an invasion becomes merely a ‘special military operation’, taken up, it seems now in other places.

But, finally, the design of the casting makes this presentation work theatrically in perhaps an unexpected way.  We are not in all these grand or terrifying places but in a small working theatre space, with just 5 actors – to represent, as Sekuless has told me, some 40 cast members in some standard productions of these three plays.  The skill with which the script has been trimmed, costumes designed, selected and changed as the action progresses, and the actors chosen for physical, voice and emotional effect is quite remarkable, and is successful because we, the audience, can see what’s going on as if we are theatre workers in the wings.

Doing it this way, up close in the round, makes the show, for me, as if I were a stagehand when Phillip Henslowe made a diary note that a play called 'Harey Vi' was performed on 3 March 1592 at the Rose Theatre in Southwark.  It makes William Shakespeare real – and it rocks!

Amy Kowalczuk as Queen Margaret
in Henry VI Part Two
Mill Theatre, Canberra 2024

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Theatre Network Australia, October

 

 

Theatre Network Australia, 5/152 Sturt St, Southbank VIC 3006, E: info@tna.org.au
We acknowledge Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and to Elders past, present and emerging.

Commentary by Frank McKone

For anyone working in theatre of all kinds, from small-scale, independent or major companies, Theatre Australia Network provides resources, information and professional development assistance across Australia, linking private businesses with government Arts activities and funding.

I attended this afternoon’s Canberra Industry Gathering conducted by TNA’s Co-CEO Josh Lowe, presented by Canberra Theatre Centre in its Courtyard Studio.  Representatives from Canberra’s indie companies, the ACT Arts Department and Creative Australia spoke about local theatre issues following Lowe’s rundown of TNA activities.

Cross-group small group discussions came essentially to consensus that the fragmentation of theatre activities across the city is a problem which should be resolved by three suggestions:

    Each company provide free tickets to other companies’ practitioners; 

    Companies should share resources, not only technical equipment and expertise but, for example, marketing management;

     Members of different companies should on a reasonably frequent, but informal, basis meet for open conversation about their artistic work and management issues – such as employment and payment concerns.

Concern centred on the need for the theatre industry in Canberra to work together to raise the profile nationally of the range and quality of work presented here.

Go to www.tna.org.au to follow the story further, whether you are a theatre practitioner and/or a theatre-goer.

_________________________________________________________________________________
07 December 2023

The Board of Theatre Network Australia is delighted to announce its new Executive Leadership team, Co-CEOs Erica McCalman and Joshua Lowe.

Interim Chair Sue Giles AM said, “Erica is a highly regarded producer and arts sector leader who has worked across the country with major festivals, local government and many small to medium performing arts organisations. Most recently she was Producer (Special Projects) at Melbourne Fringe. Josh is TNA’s current General Manager and has been leading much of TNA’s advocacy work, particularly for the performance with/for/by young people sector. He was previously CEO/Artistic Director of DRILL in Tasmania.

“Both Erica and Josh are already deeply respected by independent artists and the small to medium sector, and very well qualified to lead TNA at this time. This partnership takes TNA into the next years of our strategy with knowledge, care and connection and we are excited to work with their shared vision and perspective. No better partnership could drive the delivery of TNA’s key objectives of justice and equity.”

TNA Co-CEO Erica McCalman

TNA Co-CEO Joshua Lowe

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Queen's Nanny by Melanie Tait

 

 

The Queen’s Nanny by Melanie Tait.  Ensemble Theatre September 6 – October 12 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 28

Playwright: Melanie Tait
Director: Priscilla Jackman

Set Designer: Michael Hankin; Costume Designer: Genevieve Graham
Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney;
Composer & Sound Designer: James Peter Brown
Dialect & Voice Coach: Jennifer White
Stage Manager: Sean Proude; Asst Stage Manager: Madelaine Osborn
Costume Supervisor: Lily Matelian
Secondments: Sherydan Simson, Chelsea McGuffin

Cast:

Duchess of York; later Queen Elizabeth; later again the Queen Mother – Emma Palmer
Marion Crawford – ‘Crawfie’: Elizabeth Blackmore
J, Nanny, Bertie, Ainslie, Lilibet, George, Bruce, Gould – Matthew Backer



There is really no better way to show you Matthew Backer in his wonderful long list of characters than in these production thumbnails, on the Ensemble site:
https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/the-queens-nanny  

You’ll have to see the show, of course, to follow the story through all these scenes and more – a very full and highly satisfying 90 minutes.

Somewhere hidden in our house full of books, my wife is sure we must still have The Little Princesses; or perhaps it’s with one of our daughters.  She recalls the positive impact on her, aged 5 in 1950 when the book was published, towards the Royal Family.

I also remember, migrating from London as an anti-monarchist in 1955, being very surprised, while practice-teaching, to find the Australians in the group as Menzies-royalist as they come.

As the century morphed into Boris Johnson etc, I admit that I came to see Lilibet to be the highly astute woman that Crawfie helped make her.  Melanie Tait has written, and the Ensemble has presented, a terrific lively story of how The Little Princesses came to be written and published, almost as if in preparation for Lilibet’s accession to the throne as Elizabeth II.

But here’s the punchline.  In her Writer’s Note, Melanie Tait puts her work in context:

“I started working on this play around the time the Albanese Labor Government was voted in.

“Full of hope, I felt certain when the play got to the stage, we’d have lived through a successful Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum and, in an election year, movement would be ramping up about a new Republic Referendum.  I wanted this play to be part of that conversation.

“Instead, I write this note a week after a cabinet reshuffle, where, in the wake of last year’s referendum, the Albanese Government has abolished the Assistant Ministry for the Republic.  We’re about to welcome (and spend tax-payer money on) a visit from King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who’ve just had £45M of public money added to their annual income while the rest of the UK suffers a crippling cost of living crisis.”

Her play is not just fascinating to watch, each twist and turn of the relationship between the Duchess and the Nanny from Marion’s surprising interview showing how and why she got the job through to the Queen Mother’s disgust at the book’s publication – and most awful, to the new Queen’s putdown of the woman who made her what she was.

It’s a play that needs to be seen throughout Australia ready for next year’s election, probably in May.  You need to understand Marion Crawford’s story before you vote.

Maybe the Albanese Government could fund Touring Australia with some extra special funds.  I suggest you write to your local Federal Member of Parliament, now.

Good on you, Ensemble Theatre, for this new Australian play – surely in the tradition that Hayes Gordon would rise again from his grave to see.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Colder Than Here by Laura Wade

 

 

Colder Than Here by Laura Wade.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney September 16 – October 12 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 28

Playwright: Laura Wade (UK)
Director: Janine Watson
Set Designer: Michael Hankin; Costume Designer: Genevieve Graham
Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney; Video Designer: Mark Bolotin
Composer & Sound Designer: Jessica Dunn
Dialect Coach: Linda Nicholls-Gidley; Movement Coach: Tim Dashwwod
Intimacy Coordinator: Chloë Dallimore; Costume Supervisor: Lily Matelian
Asst Stage Manager: Bernadett Lörincz

Cast:
Myra – Hannah Waterman; Alec – Huw Higginson
Their adult daughters Jenna – Airlie Dodds and Harriet – Charlotte Friels

Airlie Dodds, Huw Higginson, Hannah Waterman, Charlotte Friels
as Jenna, Alec, Myra and Harriet
in Colder Than Here by Laura Wade, Ensemble Theatre 2024

This is Ensemble’s summary of Colder Than Here:

Myra’s typically middle-class family are scarily normal in their eccentricities, especially when it comes to dealing with her illness. The boiler is on the blink, the cat’s gone missing and the perfect funeral needs planning but her husband Alec would rather bury his head in a newspaper while daughters Harriet and Jenna have their own problems. Myra might be busy researching flatpack coffins and creating a PowerPoint presentation of her dying wishes, but her last big project is to fix her family.

In my early years I was brought up in this London, wearing Wellington boots to walk to school, perennially cold in the smog.  So I could sympathise with the idea of a play about a woman, diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her family trying to find somewhere nicer for her to die and to be buried.

In 2005, at least the titles of Laura Wade’s first plays – Colder Than Here and Breathing Corpses – suggest things were getting her down a bit, even though they won the writer the [UK] Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright.

So I’m sorry to have to say that I felt for the actors, having to struggle with a script which can’t really make up its mind whether to be a comedy or a sentimental but nice homily about being realistic about death.  

As a comedy it begins well with Myra’s attempt at a Powerpoint presentation of how she wants to prepare for the inevitable.  But the boiler on the blink business (by the way, the extension lead plug that Alec tries to fix is a sealed unit which cannot be taken apart, so his jabbing himself with his screwdriver is just silly) and what happened to Jenna’s cat, and whether Jenna’s relationships with her boyfriends have or will hold up, and why Harriet seems to be so inexplicably dependent on her mother, get in the way of comedy.

Yet the possibilities of drama of depth never develop either in this playscript.

Fortunately it is the set design and video projection that rescue the play as far as it can go.  As the daughters look for locations for the burial, the backdrop image of a calm and attractive woodland scene (well away from whether the boiler in the house really did ever get fixed) made it almost acceptable for Myra to lie down on her side there and slowly roll on to her back as she dies (having lasted till a warmer time in summer) – because (as we know from the earler scene with the cardboard coffin) she wouldn’t fit in if she stayed the way she sleeps.

Yet that final scene is quite unrealistic.  From what Myra tells Jenna, husband Alec is now busy fixing things around the house himself – so he’s not there with her.  What Harriet is doing is not clear – but she’s not there either.  And then, Jenna leaves her mother to it – to die alone.

Perhaps the author meant this to have sad and telling implications about people not facing up to death, but I found after the beginning warmth of a little bit of comedy, the rest of the play – except for the very last moment – left me cold.

Hannah Waterman as Myra
in the final scene of Colder Than Here by Laura Wade
Ensemble Theatre, 2024

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: ARC by Erth

 

 

ARC by Erth.  Canberra Theatre Centre, Playhouse, 26–28 September 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 26


Credits (as recorded by Arts on Tour)

Artistic Director  Scott Wright
Head of Design  Steve Howarth
Producer  Scott Andrew
Writer  Alana Valentine
Creative Associate – Puppet Design  Gabrielle Paananen
Associate Director  Solomon Thomas
Composer/Sound Designer  James Brown
Composer/Sound Designer  Daniel Herten
Lighting Designer  Frankie Clarke
Video Designer  Solomon Thomas
Cast  Scott Wright, Gabrielle Paananen, Rose Maher, Albert David, Tom Caley (subject to change)
Production Manager  Rick Everett

 No printed program was available at Canberra Theatre Centre, so I have assumed the company here is the same.

Erth describes the show in this way:
“ARC is a scalable and site-specific participatory theatre work designed around a menagerie of naturalistic critically endangered and extinct animals. Giving the audience small moments of highly intimate, transformational engagement with fragile, vulnerable life, the work will be led by children, who will enable the transition of wonder and preciousness onto participants.
 
“This is at a time when we are hearing stronger and younger voices speaking up on matters that affect their world. The work is a confrontation with the reality of species extinction, and at the same time, a provocation of hope. These guides are messengers, reminding us of the resilience of nature, our power as individuals to both protect and preserve, and the inherent hope and creative genius of children, who are our future.”
 
Though I can find no explanation by Erth for the meaning of the title ARC (which has many possible meanings), Scott Wright has written:
“The genesis of arc came about from a creative visioning residency with Healesville Sanctuary in 2016 supported by Zoos Victoria. During my visit I was lucky enough to be taken to where they were breeding Leadbeater’s Possums to increase their number, at a time when their population had been reduced to one small colony of around 30 individuals - the only Leadbeater’s Possums remaining in the world.

“A small furry bundle was placed in my hands, and like lightning it struck me: this moment was charged with empathy and awe. Right then I knew that if everybody could experience this delicate action of holding one of these beautiful creatures in their hands, an intangible connection between two species would be made and their continued protection would continue. Not from guilt from the wrongs we have done, but from love and compassion.”

The show consists of Scott musing out loud, apparently as himself rather than in a recognisably acted role, while the life-size puppets come to life in his loungeroom.  I missed how a quite large number of children appeared on stage to participate, which they did with obvious enthusiasm.

This is not theatre which you watch and react to in the ordinary way.  It is an experience, the impact of which grows upon you.  By the end it is impossible to imagine taking an unemotional rational view of the issue of ‘saving the animals’.  The warmth and depth of feeling as Scott winds up with thanks, encouragement and congratulations all round is now an expression of belief in saving the animals.

But from a theatre critic’s point of view I can see the danger of this kind of presentation.  It is nearer to a ceremony of religious faith than a drama revealing social understanding.  Is ARC, then, good children’s education; or is it – however justified – a form of indoctrination?

Though, in a general sense, I personally support the preservation of native species in their original ecological environments, examples – such as Canberra people refusing to accept the need to cull the local kangaroo population; or the people who believe the wild horses should be left to destroy the Kosciuszko national park environment – suggest to me that even children’s education through drama about preserving species can’t depend entirely on unadulterated love and compassion.

I am not seriously suggesting that ARC is a dangerous exercise.  Our fears about global warming are entirely justified.  But I am suggesting that Erth may need to create new works for children in which they learn the limits of belief and the value of action using science to understand Earth’s past and hopefully improve our likely future.

 

 

ARC by Erth, 2024

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Critic - Movie 2024

 

 

The Critic – Movie 2024.  A reimagining of the novel ‘Curtain Call’ by Anthony Quinn (Penguin 2015) set in the 1930s - described in Bookseller as “An elegant literary 1930s murder mystery”.


Sun 29 Sep  Wed 2 Oct  Thu 3 Oct
Dendy Canberra
10:45 am    2:00 pm    7:00 pm

Limelight Cinemas Tuggeranong
12:10 pm

Palace Electric Cinema
2:00 pm    6:00 pm

Director: Anand Tucker
Screenwriter: Patrick Marber
Production Company: BKStudios

Cast

    Ian McKellen as Jimmy Erskine             Gemma Arterton as Nina Land
    Mark Strong as David Brooke                 Lesley Manville as Annabel
    Ben Barnes as Stephen Wyley                 Romola Garai as Madeleine
    Alfred Enoch as Tom Tunner                  Matthew Cottle as Graham Meadows
    Beau Gadsdon as Freya                           Nikesh Patel as Ferdy Harwood
    Rebecca Gethings as Joan                       Éva Magyar as Dolly Langdon
    Jay Simpson as Slyfield                          Jacob James Beswick as Robbie
    Nicholas Bishop as Richard Pugh          Albie Marber as Lennie
    Grant Crookes as Critic                          Debra Gillett as Mrs. Keefe

Reviewed by Frank McKone

“VLADIMIR: Moron!
ESTRAGON: Vermin!
VLADIMIR: Abortion!
ESTRAGON: Morpion!
VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!
ESTRAGON: Curate!
VLADIMIR: Cretin!
ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR: Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“London, 1934. Jimmy Erskine (McKellen) is the most feared theatre critic of the age. He lives as flamboyantly as he writes and takes pleasure in savagely taking down any actor who fails to meet his standards. When the owner of the Daily Chronicle newspaper dies, and his son David Brooke (Strong) takes over, Jimmy quickly finds himself at odds with his new boss and his position under threat. In an attempt to preserve the power and influence he holds so sacred, Jimmy strikes a faustian pact with struggling actress Nina Land (Arterton), entangling them and Brooke in a thrilling but deadly web of desire, blackmail and betrayal.”
[ The Critic – Official Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jryTK4UZ-6E ]

As critic of The Critic, I will not start by“putting the dagger in” like ‘Jimmy Erskine’ does as a fearsome attention grabber, condemning West End actor ‘Nina Land’ unreasonably.  His real purpose is nothing more than maintaining his image – and therefore his job.

But, like Jimmy, I like to display my erudition with literary quotes.  Estragon’s “Crritic!” is amusing – but in this case it’s also telling.  In the film it is Nina who “wilts, vanquished, and turns away” at first – until her anger makes her turn upon Jimmy and demand an apology, in the street: in public.

A strong beginning for a film with lots of possibilities but not much in the way of probability – a bit like waiting for Godot.  I have not read Anthony Quinn’s novel, which is described as “utterly pleasing from the first page to the last” by Sadie Jones, (Guardian).  The essential problem in this movie is that the screenwriting is contrived, as if the characters’ actions, talk and reactions are predetermined to get Jimmy Erskine from his over-the-top, aggressive, unkind copy for the Daily Chronicle review of the performance of ‘The White Devil’ (the tragedy in five acts by John Webster, performed and published in 1612) through the ‘deadly web’ to his unlikely, unfortunate and unpleasant survival.

On the way he reviews fairly, Nina’s excellent acting as Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – but only for his central self-centred purposes.

The film then seems to be too stagey, as if it is all being acted out as if it were on stage, and so never achieves the true illusion of reality which is what film can do, but acting a play cannot.

At the same time it is fair to say that the actors in this film are as excellent as we might expect. But the writing and directing leave us with unfulfilled possibilities.  

For example, the song and scene At Midnight in the 1936 setting where the gay Jimmy and his ‘secretary’ Tom are set upon by Nazi characters was never developed as it could have been – especially when we see these groups in action in real life today.  The role of 1930s police also should have been much more fully developed, raising issues about the law and the treatment of gays and women.

And most disappointing, I thought, was the shallow characterisation of Nina, as if women actors were so easily manipulated by their needing to be praised.  Of course the issue was and is real, but the screenplay needed to offer other possibilities for the women.  In real life I think of how much Helene Weigel achieved in acting in the 1930s – and probably in writing – in Brecht’s plays, and in becoming artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble in the 1940s.  There is no women’s part in The Critic modeled on such a woman.

From a different perspective, you might see the movie as a fun variation of an Agatha Christie, but though there is a murder, there’s not the same engagement in mystery.  We may wonder about Jimmy Erskine’s intentions early on, but then we see it all happening until we are not surprised, as Jimmy is not surprised, at Nina’s death.  He is essentially cynical about what he does to engineer others’ actions.

This at least opens up our thinking about the nature of an unkind society.  So I lay aside my dagger at this point.

Ian McKellen and Gemma Arterton
as Jimmy Erskine and Nina Land
in The Critic 2024

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Cut by Mark Ravenhill

 

 
 The Cut by Mark Ravenhill.  Presented by The Seeing Place and Lexi Sekuless Productions at The Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra, September 12 – 21, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 19

Co-Producer – Lexi Sekuless; Produced by The Seeing Place
Director – Sammy Moynihan
Sound Designer and Operator – Marlene Radice
Lighting Designer – Jen Wright
Photos by Andrew Sikorsky

Cast
Paul – Ali Clinch
John / Meena – Diana Caban Velez
Stephen / Geeta – Maxine Beaumont
Susan – Hanna Tonks


The Cut is not an entertainment.  It is deeply depressing.  Yet the directing, sound design and acting create a work of significant theatre art.

We see a woman called Paul in three scenes:

 

At work as the administrator and operative of the government office of the legislated Cut program, interviewing a prospective young woman who insists on being cut:

 At home after work with their wife:

 Meeting up with their daughter Stephen on their return from university studies: 

In each situation another woman appears in a servile role, often breaking glassware which we hear in the background.

Sexuality and sexual roles are fluid.  Metaphorical implications abound, from female genital mutilation to glass ceilings; husbands’ coercive control to domestic violence; parents’ ‘ownership’ of children to their failure to accept their child’s adult independence.

It’s never a pretty picture in its 90 minutes of interactional talk and intense emotional reactions, without interval.  Be prepared for mystification gradually resolving into an awful sense of despair about the future of humankind.

It’s almost weird, then, to read the Wikipedia story of theatrical success of British playwright Mark Ravenhill, “one of the most widely performed playwrights in British theatre of the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”  The Cut appeared in 2006, midway in his career, working “as a freelance director, workshop leader and drama teacher” in the 1980s through to when “In September 2023, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama announced that Ravenhill would be joining their teaching staff as a Visiting Lecturer and co-tutor, focusing his time on the Writing for Performance BA degree.” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ravenhill ]

Maybe it means that theatre is more real than the real life it presents for us to be depressed by.

This is where the success of Lexi Sekuless Productions makes its entrance.  To quote: “The Cut is presented as part of the Mill Theatre co-production series, a program which provides an avenue for creatives to present their own work in the Mill Theatre space.  There have been 2 co-productions so far but, excitingly, The Cut is the biggest of its kind to date at the Mill and The Seeing Place have created a model which we can roll out for all ACT creatives to enjoy.”

The Mill reminds me of my visit, fortunately long before Covid, to see Ionesco’s La leçon at Théâtre de la Huchette, the tiny 85 seat theatre set up in Paris in 1948 largely, I believe, in response to the horrors of World War II and the end of the occupation.  

“As of February 2017 the two plays, Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice chauve) followed directly by The Lesson, have been performed more than 18,000 times at the theater, holding the record for longest running show without interruption at a single theater.

In 1975 the owner, Marcel Pinard, suffered a fatal heart attack in the theater's box office. Following his death the actors who had played the Ionesco double bill since 1957 battled to prevent the closure of the theater, eventually forming their own theater company to continue production.”  
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_de_la_Huchette ]

I trust Lexi may not have such a dire experience, but hope the Mill Theatre may have an equally long history.  The quality of The Seeing Place production of The Cut certainly matched my experience in Paris, and looks forward to providing Canberra with such necessary, even though disturbing theatre, far into the future.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Offering by Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts

 

 

 

The Offering by Omar Musa & Mariel Roberts.  Presented by Q The Locals at Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 8, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Performance Poetry – Omar Musa
Cello, live and recorded – Mariel Roberts

The Offering is a substantial work in a highly original form of a public meditation on how to become one with oneself; to be a whole person.  Memory is essential, yet a key thought through the series of poems which make up this hour presentation is “memories are always translations” – of the past before one’s birth, as well as of your past since your birth.

Taking up stories of his immigrant father’s family and traditions in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, Omar speaks in role as a water spirit.  He seeks understanding of the unity of land and water, searching in the archipelago of memories for the island which is himself – a Queanbeyan local, Australian, with memories of Borneo – its history as a country and the history of his family he has visited there as child and adult.

The often startling originality of his words, particularly when he tosses in unsuspected surprising rhymes, is matched by Mariel’s equally original creation of a soundscape – often perhaps in the tradition of musique concrète – live on the cello, but also incorporating instant recorded playback.  She provides not just an accompaniment for the poems but a form of music in its own right giving an emotional depth to the images and moods in her husband’s words.

The poems come to seem like major arias in a small opera: the audience spontaneously applauded each poem, and one solo ‘poem’ from the cello without words.  And, again surprisingly, the whole work becomes a drama with its hopes and dreams finally reaching the spirit’s success – as a fictional character which is also Omar Musa finding himself in a real world of human confusion.

Working together in the creation of art, Mariel Roberts and Omar Musa offer each of us the way towards our own one-ness.  Breathe: inhale and search; exhale and find the way.

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith

 

 

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, July 26 – August 31 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 3

Playwright: Anton Chekhov; Adaptor: Joanna Murray-Smith
Director: Mark Kilmurry; Asst Director: Emma Canalese
Set & Costume Designer: Nick Fry; Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
Composer & Sound Designer: Steve Francis
Dialect Coach: Nick Curnow; Intimacy Director: Chloe Dallimore
Stage Manager: Lauren Tulloch; Asst Stage Manager: Christopher Starnawski
Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik

Cast:
Nanny / Maryia – Vanessa Downing; Telyeghin – John Gaden AO
Yelena – Chantelle Jamieson; Serebryakov – David Lynch
Sonya – Abbey Morgan; Vanya – Yalin Ouzecelik
Astrov – Tim Walter



“I’d adapt a phone book in order to have a show at the Ensemble”, says Joanna Murray-Smith.  And so said all of us in the audience yesterday afternoon.

That’s because Murray-Smith achieved her Writer’s Note aim.  She points out that “the eternal dilemma for contemporary Artistic Directors” is whether “Chekhov’s language needs to change” when “historical language [such as in the standard Penguin translation by Elisaveta Fen ©1954] sometimes doesn’t work for comedic effect.  It sometimes sounds stilted or pompous to modern ears….  So by deftly translating the intention into language that fits it best in this moment now can make the play sing in the way more effectively as it was intended to.”

Of course, it was intended to be a satirical comedy in which Uncle Vanya’s plight in relation to the proposed selling of the family estate would be both a laughing matter and a serious concern for middle class Russians in 1899 attending the Moscow Art Theatre.  And, of course, in 1954 the F- word would never have been allowed to cater for “younger audiences who aren’t used to having to ‘work’ to understand a play”,  as Murray-Smith describes them today.

But, of course, at 83 I laughed along with the rest, many of whom were probably not much younger than me at the Saturday afternoon matinee.  Even attempted homicide made us laugh in nervous reaction – though I wonder how that was received in Chekhov’s time.

And I say that because Mark Kilmurry and the terrific team of actors kept us right on the correct satirical edge so close to reality that often we couldn’t be sure whether to laugh or not.  All the actors were equally in tune with Murray-Smith’s style, so that though we knew we were watching this late-19th Century specifically Russian society, we had no trouble believing these characters were real.

In particular I would like to give a little extra praise to Abbey Morgan.  Her teenage Sonya could so easily be overplayed, especially in her scene with the older Yelena  talking of her unrequited love for the doctor, Astrov.  Yet Abbey made a speech like this:
“O Lord, give me strength…. I’ve been praying all night…. I often go up to him, start talking to him, look into his eyes…. I have no more pride, no strength left to control myself….. etc. etc.”
into both Chekhov’s satire of overblown young love and at the same time was just sad enough for me to feel sympathy when Yelena asked “And he?” and Sonya replied “He doesn’t notice me.”


In other words, Ensemble Theatre has done both Joanna Murray-Smith and Anton Chekhov proud.  

And because of her deftly translating Chekhov’s intention, we see that this is not a play just about Russia in 1899, but a play which through our laughter makes us acutely aware of how the threat of social breakdown – all those F-words – is just as real for us today.  

P.S.
For those confused by Russian names here’s the list of the characters in the standard form.  It’s a bit like a phone book:

Serebriakov, Alexandre Vladimirovich, a retired professor

Yeliena, Andryeevna (Helene Lienochka), his wife, aged 27

Sonia (Sophia Alexandrovna), his daughter by his first wife

Voinitskaia, Maryia Vassilievna, widow of a Privy Councillor and mother of the professor’s first wife

Voinitsky, Ivan Petrovich (Vania), her son

Astrov, Mihail Lvovich, a doctor

Telyeghin, Ila Ilyich (nicknamed ‘Waffles’), a landowner reduced to poverty

Marina, an old children’s nurse, and A Workman

The action takes place on Serebriakov’s estate – which Sonia’s Uncle Vanya claims was given to Maryia when her daughter married Serebriakov, and so cannot be sold by Serebriakov without approval from at least his daughter Sonia (now a young adult) and preferably from her Uncle Vanya as well.

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra