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
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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