2024: Billy Elliot - The Musical by Free Rain

 

 

 

 

Billy Elliot – The Musical.  Book and Lyrics by Lee Hall.  Music by Elton John.
Free Rain at Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre,  April 9 – May 5 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 16

CREATIVES
Director: Jarrad West; Asst Director: Jill Young
Musical Directors: Katrina Tang & Caleb Campbell
Choreographer: Michelle Heine
Set Design: Dr Cate Clelland; Costume Design: Tanya Taylor
Lighting Design: Jacob Aquilina; Sound Design: Dillan Willding

ORCHESTRA
Keys 1/Conductor: Caleb Campbell; Keys 2: Vivian Zhu / Katrina Tang
Reed 1: Lara Turner; Reed 2: Caleb Ball
Trumpet: Sam Hutchinson / Elsa Guile
French Horn: Carly Brown / Dianne Tan
Guitar: Dylan Slater / Michael Rushby
Bass: Hayley Manning; Drums: Brandon Reed

CAST
Billy Elliot – Fergus Paterson and Mitchell Clement
Michael Caffrey – Charlie Murphy and Blake Wilkins
Jackie Elliot – Joe Dinn; Tony Elliot – Lachlan Elderton
Mrs Wilkinson – Janie Lawson; Mum – Jo Zaharias
Grandma – Alice Ferguson; Mr Braithwaite – James Tolhurst-Close
Debbie – Zahra Zulkapli and Madison Wilmott

FEATURED ENSEMBLE
David Gambrill, Tim Maher, Thomas Walker
Dave Collins, Sian Harrington, Jordan Dwight

Easington Cast                                  Maltby Cast
Florence Tuli, Addyson Dew             Eleanor Ladewig, Ella Field
Millicent Fitzgerald, Laura Keen       Sophie Kelly, Kaity Hinch-Parr
Rosie Welling, Amber Russell           Mia Veljanovsky, Laney Himpson
Heidi McMullen, Taylor Bollard       Giselle Georges, Ellie Grace de Landre
Caitlin Hunt                                       Bella Henness-Dyer

ENSEMBLE
Ash Syme, James Morgan, Anneliese Soper, Liam Prichard
Cameron Sargeant, Sam Welling, Jackson Dale
Bianca Lawson, Cassie Ramsay



Billy Elliot the Musical is about community.  Not just a coal-mining community in northern England in 1984 where the story is set.

On strike when PM Mrs Thatcher closed the coal mines.

Jarrad West and his huge cast make the evening about celebrating the performing arts in our community right here.

The whole community in Christmas celebrations

The audience in The Q were as energetic and enthusiastic as the onstage dancers, singers and actors in being together.  In community, in action.

It’s the real-life warmth of feeling that flows off the stage that makes this production so enjoyable to see.

The story itself is of a government cruelly destroying a community, and that community is divided even within families, which makes the original movie a tragedy for Billy to fight against.  His need for self-expression and determination to go his own way against the odds makes an engrossing drama.

But watching on a screen, at an emotional distance, means we focus on his individual experience.  In the theatre with a real Billy singing and dancing, real police tap dancing through their duties, and all those young girls showing Billy the way, life is clearly so much more positive – and we are no longer just watching but enjoying with the performers their expression through the art of performing.

And, of course, that’s the other theme of Billy’s success, even at last in his father’s eyes, at least, despite his never really understanding ballet.  The great thing was about seeing (I think on my night) Mitchell Clement as Billy showing exactly what his stage dance teacher Janie Lawson as Mrs Wilkinson sees in him, a potential Royal Ballet School entrant.

Billy ready for audition.  Father still doubtful.

Character acting was also forceful, and engaging at times in less than pleasant situations:

Photos side by side as if
Billy and Grandmother opposed to boxing lessons with Mr Braithwaite and Michael

Billy with his father, brother and dance teacher
Billy Elliot the Musical
Free Rain 2024
Photos supplied

 Overall, a highly successful production of a rather different kind of musical.

 

Concluding thought:

In closing down the coal mines Mrs Thatcher perhaps ironically foreshadowed our need now to close down as much fossil fuel industry as possible.  We can only hope our government can manage the transition to renewables with fair treatment of the communities involved. 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto

 

The Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto. Lexi Sekuless Productions at the Mill Theatre at Dairy Road, Canberra, April 10-27 2024

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 13

Production Team
Director: Lexi Sekuless
Sound Designer and Composer: Leisa Keen
Production Designer: Annette Sharpe
Lighting Designer: Jennifer Wright
Production Stage Manager: Katerina Smalley
Production Photography and Film: Daniel Abroguena
Interviewer voice: Timmy Sekuless
Set Construction: Simon Grist
Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions
Publicity Photographer: Robert Coppa
Publicity Hair and Makeup: Vicky Hayes
Major partner: Elite Event Technology

Cast
Bridie: Andrea Close
Sheila: Zsuzsi Soboslay
Contingency: Tracy Noble

Bridie: Andrea Close,  Sheila: Zsuzsi Soboslay
in Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto
Lexie Seculess Productions 2024
Photo supplied

This is an unusual sonata, being a duet for trumpet and piano.  It’s the story, based on true stories from nurses captured by the Japanese in World War II, of “Bridie” and “Sheila” who saved each other’s lives more than once during the period from 1942 to 1945, following the failure of the British administration and security to prevent Japan’s forces invading Singapore.

Nurses come in different shapes and sizes.  Bridie is tall, a strongly built Australian, a get up and go, let’s do it now no matter what, type of nurse.  She tells it as it is.  We would say, No Bullshit.  

Bridie trumpets at; while the English Sheila is softer and more tuneful, playing her scales for rather than at.  Yet there is a time when her grand opera, a Tchaikovsky 1812, bursts out.  And in the end her quiet secret, kept for 50 years, escapes, and brings Bridie to a new understanding about Sheila’s private strength; and a new self-awareness for herself.

The setting is a television interview with an invisible voice-over asking the questions, sometimes responding to the stories the women tell of what happened to them, as they were shipped out in crowded small boats from Singapore harbour; met each other nearly drowned when the Japanese Air Force fired on and sank their boats; and survived against soldiers and tropical sickness at a secret inland jungle camp with no known end to their incarceration.  Japan’s intention was that all the women (and even their children from Singapore families) would die – but in secret, to avoid the Japanese being called to account for their war crimes.

In the foyer Lexie Seculess has displayed the real diary, kept by the real Betty Jeffrey, writing in pencil on exercise books stolen from the supervising soldiers, amazingly kept and kept secret until publication after the war as White Coolies.  John Misto read this when young – and so began this play.

Betty Jeffrey's diary published as White Coolies

Betty Jeffrey's pencil
Photos: Frank McKone

The fascinating, yet in a sense awful, aspect, while watching the performance (with occasional snippets on a 1960’s tv set of how they looked on screen), is how these traumatic experiences generate both often dreadful criticism of each other at the same time creating an unbreakable bond of mateship.  It is the revelation of the secret Sheila kept for 50 years which seals the bond at last during the interview.  What is revealed is as powerful in its effect on us, watching, as it is for Bridie.

The performances of both Andrea Close and Zsuzsi Soboslay are outstanding.  The Mill Theatre is small and they are very much up close.

Bridie: Andrea Close and Sheila: Zsuzsi Soboslay
in Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto
Lexie Seculess Productions 2024
Photo supplied

And we never miss even the smallest turn away or look towards, expression of concern or sudden anger between these two such different but bound together characters.

You should take the chance as I and others did to meet the actors and director in the foyer after the show.  For me the essential value of our meeting was for the women to explain how the mateship bond in war is so different for women than for men.  These women – those who survived, and those who did not – knew from when they were girls how they were always under threat from men.  So for these women – these actresses – telling the stories of these wartime nurses, the sense of threat and the need to be so brave in the face of an army of men instructed to literally rape and kill, or just leave to die, provided the energy and determination which created their characters with such strength.

And so this play is not merely an historical documentary – which it might look like on an external screen – but becomes a plea for men – in or out of war – to treat women with the respect and honour with which they should treat their own mates.

And in a case of amazing serendipity I have also just reviewed RGB: Of Many, One with precisely the same demand, and warning if we men fail, from eminent human rights lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Don’t miss.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

 

 

 

2024: RBG: Of Many, One by Suzie Miller

 

 

RBG: Of Many, One by Suzie Miller.  Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, April 12-21 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 12

Director Priscilla Jackman
Designer David Fleischer
Lighting Designer Alexander Berlage
Composer & Sound Designer Paul Charlier
Assistant Director Sharon Millerchip
Voice & Accent Coach Jennifer White
Associate Designer (Tour) Emma White
Associate Sound Designer (Tour) Zac Saric

With
Heather Mitchell

Understudy
Lucy Bell

Marketing image Rene Vaile
Production photos Prudence Upton


RBG Of Many, One brings together three extraordinary women – the eminent American lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the international award-winning Australian playwright Suzie Miller; both in the remarkable hands of Australian actor Heather Lee Mitchell AM.

All three are, of course, directed on stage by a fourth woman – Priscilla Jackman, whose website explains: Priscilla is a multidisciplinary director working across theatre, opera and screen. Priscilla is invested in the exchange between performers and audience through a dynamic use of space using traditional and twenty-first century technologies and the hybrid fusion of innovative Arts and theatre practices in Australia.

It’s not surprising, then, for me to have little to say beyond effusive praise for an astounding theatre experience last Friday night.  

I want to use only their first names, rather than their surnames which ironically represent male relatives, even though – wonderfully – Ruth Bader’s marriage to Martin Ginsburg lasted 59 years together and then surely continued in spirit until her death at 87 in 2020.  Though Ruth is remembered as "the Notorious R.B.G.", Heather’s recreation of Ruth’s personality, sense of humour and strategic determination – using far more than just her hands and an amazing array of voices – was the wonder of the night for me.

And, through the telling of her story in such an intense and detailed 1 hour 40 minutes solo performance, reaching an understanding of how women’s human rights have not been put into practice nor even guaranteed in law as they should be.

All four of these women’s lives and work in creating such powerful theatre demonstrate what RGB stood for.  Perhaps the most telling and amusing stories in the play are her interviews with the three US Presidents, William – call me Bill – Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Suzie’s scriptwriting and Priscilla’s directing, as well as the very clever use of props, lighting and sound track, make a very simple stage setting bring out the best in drama – the opportunity for Heather to communicate personally with every member of the audience.  Her Ruth spoke to each of us as a friend who we come to respect – to the point where we need not be sad for her in her dying moments, but proud of all she achieved even while being realistic about what the rule of law can and should mean.  For women, of course – but importantly for us all.

I don’t know how long Heather can continue touring, following her extensive run in 2022, so I have to say do everything you can not to miss the chance of catching up with RBG: Of Many, One.

Heather Mitchell AM
as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in RBG: Of Many, One
Sydney Theatre Company, 2024
Photo: Prudence Upton

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Seagull by Anton Chekhov - Chaika Theatre

 

 

Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, translated by Karen Vickery.  Chaika Theatre at ACT Hub, 14 Apinifex St, Kingston, Canberra April 10-21 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night April 11

Directed by Caitlin Baker and Tony Night
Characters:
Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina – an actress, married surname Trepleva
Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev – Irina's son, a young man
Pyotr Nikolayevich Sorin – Irina's brother, owner of the country estate
Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya – a young woman, the daughter of a rich landowner
Ilya Afanasyevich Shamrayev – a retired lieutenant and the manager of Sorin's estate
Polina Andreyevna – Shamrayev's wife
Masha – her daughter
Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin – a novelist
Yevgeny Sergeyevich Dorn – a doctor
Semyon Semyonovich Medvedenko – a teacher in love with Masha.
    Yakov – a workman
    Cook or Chef
    Maid

Cast:

Joel Horwood – Konstantin (Kostya)
Amy Kowalczuk – Polina
Arran McKenna – Ilya Shamrayev
Neil McLeod – Pyotr Sorin
Natasha Vickery – Nina
Meaghan Stewart – Masha
Michael Sparks – Dr Dorn
James McMahon – Boris Trigorin
Cameron Thomas - Semyon
Karen Vickery - Irina


The translation of Seagull (without ‘The’, since Russian doesn’t use definite articles) into up-to-date OMG educated Canberra English (social platform style) is only problematical if you are like me.

I have always taken it as read that Chekhov, in what he called a comedy, was satirising with serious intent a specific group of people – the upper class Russians of his day, 1895, whose wealth and lives as landed gentry was beginning to disintegrate.  

As Wikipedia describes it: The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplev.

The joke of the day, I guess, was that in the character of Kostya, Anton was satirising himself.  Except that he hadn’t shot himself.

So, does Chaika (ie Seagull) Theatre’s production work today as a satiric comedy?  Yes and No, I think.

Because that kind of landed gentry – especially since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918 – doesn’t exist any more, in Russia or Australia, it’s a bit confusing when they have names and refer to things so obviously Russian while speaking like us.  For Chekhov’s audience, everyone falling so extremely in love with everyone else – and the gunshots as Kostya tries and finally does kill himself – is funny.  

Yet, of course, there is a dark side hinted at in the working class characters: Yakov, the Chef and the Maid.  These are obsequious servants.  In the ‘standard’ translation (Penguin) by Elisaveta Pen, as Irina is packing to leave she gives the Chef a rouble saying, “Here’s a rouble, between you three.”

They reply with Chef: “Thank you kindly, madam.  Good journey to you!  We’re most grateful for your kindness”; Yakov: “God-speed to you!”; while the Maid says nothing.

Without having Karen Vickery’s script to hand, I can’t give details, but she has cut or incorporated these parts into her play.

On the other hand, Vickery has turned Nina’s speeches as “This common soul of the world” in Kostya’s “Decadent School” play where “The souls of Alexander the Great, of Caesar, of Shakespeare, of Napoleon, and of the basest leech are contained in me!” into a plea for action on climate change as “my voice rings dismally through this void unheard by anybody.”

Playing Act One outdoors works very well for creating a sense of reality as the characters come and go to set up the stage near the lake as described by Checkhov.  We had no problem accepting that Trigorin had just ducked down to the lake, the real one, for another spot of fishing, even if it was dark because the moon hadn’t come up as expected – and fortunately Masha’s prediction that there would be a storm didn’t happen.  It felt as though we were not watching actors, but found ourselves among these rather peculiar people in emotional turmoils whom you might easily meet in Kingston on Lake Burley Griffin foreshore.  Though it was amusing when someone said they could hear music, while we heard a not very distant train shunting at Kingston Station and a plane taking off a bit further away at Canberra Airport.

So going back into the theatre felt like going into the family home.  We were in the lounge room, with doors to other rooms and the front door behind us, where we had just come in.

Using modern English certainly worked to make believable characters for us.  Some 30 years ago I worked for Carol Woodrow searching for the least stilted translation of The Seagull for our intended production for her Canberra Theatre Company.  I thought the translation by David Magarshack was better for acting than Elisaveta Pen’s, but that show never went on because a major sponsorship deal unexpectedly fell apart.  

But I suspect that Vickery’s translation is the best for an aspect of the comedy.  The OMG including the occasional F word as a style made characterisations – especially her own performance of Irina, and Joel Horwood’s as Konstantin – forceful without becoming farcical.  Farce may be more funny, while more stilted would have blunted the humour.  The very final scene in this translation and performance was fascinating because everyone’s reactions to the gunshot – from the terribly fearful shock that Natasha Vickery’s Nina must feel when she hears about what has happened,  to the let’s just carry on playing cards from Amy Kowalczuk’s Polina – left us in the audience a bit stunned, not knowing what it all meant or how we should respond, until the lights went out and we realised that’s the end.

This makes this Seagull something more in the line of absurdism – is it funny or is it not?  How should we respond to this relationship quagmire, representing as it does what we see around us all over the world?  What will be the end of that?

This is the strength of the success of this production - that this translation into our language makes Chekhov's play reflect how people around the world are feeling today, facing, as many think, the possibility of World War III.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Potted Potter

 

 

 Potted Potter by Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner.  Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, April 3 – 7, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night April 4

Creatives
Writers and Co-creators: Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner
Director: Richard Hurst; Associate Director: Hanna Berrigan
Designer: Simon Scullion
Lighting Designer: Tim Mascall; Composer: Phil Innes
Production Relighter: Andrew Haden; Line Producer: Jared Harford
Producer: James Seabright


Cast
Scott Hoatson (as “Scott” playing Harry Potter and others)
Brendan Murphy (as “Brendan” playing Voldemort and all the others)
Alternate: Jacob Jackson



The most serious thing I can say about the ‘parody’ of all seven Harry Potter books in seventy minutes is that it’s just too funny for words.  This may make my review seem as silly as the show itself – except that Potted Potter is not as silly as it looks.

Written by the British equivalents of our ABC’s Playschool presenters, known on the Children’s BBC as Dan and Jeff, behind the entertainment of the whole theatre audience excitedly playing Quidditch and the whole show being “A fabulously funny parody [which] will tickle the funny bone of every age group” (as the London Daily Telegraph puts it), it’s very clear if you think about it that Clarkson and Turner have two intentions.

The first is educational for the younger readers.  The show makes the acceptance of violence and death so ridiculous that it takes on the quality of that old cartoon “Stop laughing.  This is serious”.

For the grown-ups there is the final song “We will survive” with the line “She will survive!”  

Played with a Scottish accent, Scott as “Scott” admits he has lied about knowing J.K.Rowling personally.  This had made Brendan, as “Brendan” believe that “Scott” was a real expert, but now discovers he tells a lie to make himself seem more important than he really is.

“Scott” admits he doesn’t even know what the J and K stand for.  But in the song, it’s all about the threat to Harry, the death of Dumbledore, and when Voldemort attempted to kill Harry, his curse rebounded, seemingly killing Voldemort, and Harry survived with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead [which] made Harry famous among the community of wizards and witches. (Wikipedia)

All written by J.K.Rowling – but who will survive?  She, who has made a mint and reputation out of these morally questionable stories, is the only one to survive.

Indeed, since 2016 she has written another seven works after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in a new era of the Wizarding World, put out by global digital Pottermore Publishing.

It’s interesting to note (not mentioned in Potted Potter) that J.K.Rowling also pretends to be “Robert Galbraith” in the Cormoran Strike series of classic contemporary crime fiction – another set of seven.  

Perhaps Dan and Jeff might consider another parody?  

But I wonder, as probably much the oldest audience member (even older then Dumbledore), how on earth they can keep up the energy for this tour:
04 – 07 Apr Canberra, ACT Theatre Centre
12 – 21 Apr Sydney, NSW Seymour Centre
24 Apr – 05 May Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre
08 – 12 May Adelaide, SA Festival Centre
23 – 26 May Perth, WA State Theatre Centre

I hope they survive, for they actually made me stop thinking for 70 minutes about the dreadful violence and death going on all around us – until I began to see that Mr Netanyahu thinks he is Harry Potter, using his latest wizardry to eliminate his Voldemort with help from the bumbling Dumbledore of the White House Castle.

The skills of these performers, Scott Hoatson and Brendan Murphy, as interpreters of such clever scriptwriting but especially also as improvisers working a full-house audience, gave me a great feeling of relief through spontaneous laughter that everyone needs.  Though at some extreme absurdist point in the show, Scott exclaims that ‘theatre is the victim here’, the terrible irony is that, to paraphrase The Beatles, ‘all we need is theatre’ – to bring us to our senses.

Please don’t miss Potted Potter.

©Frank McKone, Canberra