2025: Aria by David Williamson

 

 

Aria by David Williamson.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. January 24 – March 15, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 1

Creatives

Playwright: David Williamson
Director: Janine Watson;  Assistant Director: Anna Houston
Set & Costume Designer: Rose Montgomery
Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
Composer & Sound Designer: David Bergman
Operatic Voice Coach: Donna Balson
Intimacy Coordinator: Chloë Dallimore

 Cast
Monique - Tracy Mann

Her sons:
Charlie - Rowan Davie         Liam - Jack Starkey-Gill             Daniel - Sam O’Sullivan

Their wives:
Midge - Tamara Lee Bailey   Chrissy - Suzannah McDonald   Judy - Danielle King         
     
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David Williamson is only just a year younger than me, so when I say Aria is as good as the best of the old David Williamson, you know what I mean.  It’s full of the rapid and incisive repartee of Don’s Party but with the social and political world brought up to date.

And of course it’s funny, with his traditional one-liners – often causing us to universally groan while we laugh – and yet it’s a comedy, though never black, which brings out the honest reality to the third generation of this middle class family.  

Way back in The Department (1975) as the play ends Owen announces “It’s a girl” to add to his “four bloody boys already.”  And goes on “Boys are okay when they’re little, but by the time they’re about six they’re testing themselves out against you all the time.  I haven’t got the energy to cope with another.”  

And I hear Chrissy, the wife of Monique’s son, the ambitious never-at-home politician Liam, being accused of not disciplining her children and – in our social media world – in tears of frustration because they take no notice and just answer her back.  She wanted to be a teacher.  I hear the very same story from teachers today, in classrooms full of devices.

The beauty of Williamson’s writing is how we even end up feeling sorry for the deluded over-the-top capitalist Monique, singing Mozart's Queen’s aria which never made her the Maria Callas she believed she should have been, except that love, for her three boys, got in the way.

Ensemble Theatre, of course, has done the right thing again by providing the best in directing, designing and coaching for, in my view, an extraordinary team of actors.  The force of their energy as a group enlivens everyone as if Hayes Gordon is still here in his wonderful in-the-round acting space (and I am old enough to have seen him there at work).  

But much more than that, even, is each actor’s terrific awareness of the meaning of every word in Williamson’s script – not merely in their character’s personality, but so clearly motivated as to why they speak (or don’t) in their relationships with the other characters – and even further bringing out the implications in the metaphors which Williamson leaves implicit.  

Aria is exciting theatre of the very best kind – and kindness is what we need so much more of today.  At 84 it makes me charged with hope again by such great work from a mere 83-year-old.

Please don’t miss it!

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Chalk Pit by Peter Wilkins

 

 

The Chalk Pit by Peter Wilkins.  Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Canberra.
22 January - 1 February 2025

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 24

Creatives & Company

Playwright: Peter Wilkins
Coach: Julia Grace
Players performing: Rhys Hekimian, Chips Jin, Alana Denham-Preston, Heidi Silberman, Timmy Sekuless, Maxine Beaumont, Rachel Pengilly, Martin Everett
Workshop support players: Kate Blackhurst, Rachel Howard, Sarah Nathan-Truesdale, Wynter Grainger, Phoebe Silberman

Photographer: Daniel Abroguena
Major partner: Elite Event Technology
Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs

The Chalk Pit –  “A true tale of ambition, corruption, murder and betrayal, documenting the rise and fall of the Hon. Thomas John Ley” is presented by Lexi Sekuless “in a stripped back format called An Actor's Investigation. This is reflected in a lower ticket price.  This performance will be quite different from your usual night at the theatre. Each day from 10am, actors will work full time with renowned coach, Julia Grace (Melbourne Theatre Company), to pull apart the circumstances and characters and prepare to present a simple but powerful version of this story for the public at 730pm that evening.”

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I have mentioned before how the atmosphere of Canberra’s Mill Theatre reminds me of my seeing La Leçon in the Théâtre de la Huchette in Paris where, of the young writer Eugene Ionesco, Jacques Lemarchand wrote in 1952, in Le Figaro littéraire, “Within its small walls the Théâtre de la Huchette has what it takes to blow away all other Théâtres in Paris.… When we have grown old we will be proud to have attended performances of La Cantatrice Chauve and La Leçon.” www.theatre-huchette.com/en/the-ionesco-show

I sense in Sekuless’s manner of working something similar to this: “In the backroom of a café on the boulevard Saint-Michel a group of actors seated around a table roar with laughter. Nicholas Bataille, a young director, reads aloud the first scenes of a play by the young playwright Eugene Ionesco.”  Following each night’s script-in-hand exploration of The Chalk Pit, Lexi and her actors gather together in the foyer to talk with audience members.

This is creative theatre production in a community setting, which I am sure fits admirably into this writer’s career – Peter Wilkins’s work in Canberra began as artistic director of The Jigsaw Company, a specialist in educational theatre.  And there’s plenty to learn from in The Chalk Pit.

I am, of course, stretching connections too far – but in 1948 as Ionesco was getting on his way to showing in fictional characters the breakdown of marriage relationships and the rise of dictatorship, Wilkins shows us the true story of the bombastic, coercive controller, Australian Member of Parliament and corrupt businessman, the Hon. Thomas John Ley, a migrant from England as a child who ended up back ‘home’, found guilty of murder in the chalk pit, sentenced to be executed – but finally commuted to life in an insane asylum, where he died in 1947.

Ionesco couldn’t have imagined a life in his time to be really so absurd.  It’s likely that Ley actually caused, in Mafia style, four or five deaths – and fortunately failed to become Prime Minister.

Ley’s life story is long and complicated, but The Mill’s Actor’s Investigation, working as a team of ever-changing true-life characters, have brought the focus clearly on Ley’s marriage and extra-marriage behaviour.  The effects on the two women make The Chalk Pit a human story of the kind still played out in daily news stories; while on the political side the awful misuse of power around the world is as obvious today as it was to the young Ionesco after the two World Wars – in which the Hon Ley loudly demanded sending Australians as cannon-fodder in support of the British Empire.

The Chalk Pit is a great example of creative theatre work, in writing and production, especially in the context of Canberra, the Nation’s Capital – which our current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, says today (Canberra Times Page 4, Saturday 25th January) is “a fantastic place to live”.

Further Reading: www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/members/Pages/member-details.aspx?pk=1344

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Dark Noon - Sydney Festival

 

Dark Noon – fix+foxy, Glynis Henderson Productions & The Pleasance (South Africa and Denmark).  Sydney Festival at Sydney Town Hall, January 9-23, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 9

CAST AND CREDITS
A fix+foxy production, produced by: Glynis Henderson Productions & The Pleasance
Writer & Director: Tue Biering
Co-director & Choreographer: Nhlanhla Mahlangu
Featuring:
Mandla Gaduka,   Katlego Kaygee Letsholonyana,   Lillian  Malulyck,  Bongani Bennedict Masango, Siyambonga Alfred Mdubeki,   Joe Young,   Thulani Zwane

Set Designer: Johan Kølkjær; Sound Designer: Ditlev Brinth
Costume Designer: Camilla Lind; Video Designer: Rasmus Kreiner
Lighting Designer: Christoffer Gulløv; Props Designer: Marie Rosendahl Chemnitz
Producer: Annette Max Hansen; Production Managers: Anne Balsma & Thomas Dotzler; Stage Manager: Svante Huniche Corell; Sound Manager & Operator: Filip Vilhelmsson; Assistant Director: Katinka Hurvig Møller; Costume Manager: Clara Bisgaard


Tue Biering, the Danish writer of Dark Noon, writes in his Director’s Note: What I found out was those Western films, as effective entertainment, laid the foundation for some violent narratives that moved off the screen and became part of a reality for many.

Several of the South African performers, in a post-script video, describe the effects on them as children watching Westerns on television or in the cinema – as indeed I remember doing back in the 1950s.  One even tells of his part as a teenager in the desecration of the dead body of a rival enemy gang leader.

What they present, in content and in the extraordinary manner in which they present it, is a parody of the history of the American Wild West – how it came about and developed in the 19th Century, and how it ended – but in the best tradition of the genre, it is disturbingly paradoxical.

Should we take the black humour seriously?  Does this forthright expounding of the story of the worst results of the poor whites and those who would take advantage of them invading the lands of the native peoples of central and western America, make nearly two hours of theatre consistently engaging?

I have to report that, though I entirely felt the strength of this critique of American culture – especially the fascination with and continuing demand for guns in that country – I did not find myself falling asleep like the gentleman seated next to me did, on and off.  I think this happened to him because the humour was not often subtle enough to engage our imaginations enough; and the forthrightness often became theatre being thrown at us, rather than – again more subtly – drawing us in.

On the other hand, I must report that that gentleman’s perhaps defensive response was probably the only one of its kind in the full house.  The great theatrical risk was taken on board, including by the audience members who found themselves being physically brought into the action, even though they were faced with being socially examples, perhaps, of the very whites who, according to Tue Biering, are in the catalogue of our collective search for freedom and a better life — and all the horrible things we have done over time to grab it and keep it.

It shows need for us to face up to ourselves, just as Biering found about himself in the process of writing, when it ended up having many more layers and meanings. It was about who told the story and my own blind spots.

From the practical theatre point of view, not only were the character acting, the choreography and performer’s skills in movement, and especially the range and quality of voice work in song and speech quite outstanding, but the complexity of the design of seemingly hundreds of scenes, and the timing of positioning of video cameras and all kinds of structures made the show fascinating to hear and watch just for its own sake.  

The team work and timing – sometimes frantically comic, yet often stunning in moments of silence – demonstrated the strength of community in the total team, which becomes an essential message from Dark Noon – that theatre art in itself is a grand measure of human cooperative achievement, in absolute contrast to the killings, the guns, and the misinterpretation of the real Wild West as the romance of freedom.

The show’s historical aspect limits it to the period from the major destruction of the native peoples and the animals such as the bison, their main food source, through the American Civil War, to the recognition of the western areas as states united, by the end of the 1800s.  It leaves us watching the political developments in the US today with a sense of horror as violence engulfs that country in massive numbers of mass murders, increasing as the years go by.

Dark Noon should be seen, as it has been since its inception in 2018, in Festivals and theatres around the world.  But whether the paradoxical nature of the parody of the ironically named United States’ culture can create change for the better, I unfortunately have my doubts.

 

One moment in the ever-changing Dark Noon
fix+foxy, Glynis Henderson Productions & The Pleasance (South Africa and Denmark).
Sydney Festival 2025
 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2025: Antigone in the Amazon - Sydney Festival

 

 

Antigone in the Amazon by Milo Rau.  Sydney Festival at Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney Theatre Company), January 4-8, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 5


Credits:
Concept & Direction: Milo Rau; Text: Milo Rau & Ensemble

On stage – Frederico Araujo, Sara De Bosschere, Pablo Casella & Arne De Tremerie live on stage

On Video –  Kay Sara, Gracinha Donato, Célia Maracajà, Martinez Corrêa, choir of militants of Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST), and as Tiresias: Ailton Krenak

Dramaturgy: Giacomo Bisordi; Collaboration Dramaturgy: Douglas Estevam, Martha Kiss Perrone; Assistant Dramaturgy: Kaatje De Geest, Carmen Hornbostel

Collaboration Concept, Research & Dramaturgy: Eva-Maria Bertschy
Set Design: Anton Lukas; Costume Design: Gabriela Cherubini, An De Mol, Jo De Visscher, Anton Lukas
Light Design: Dennis Diels; Music Composition: Elia Rediger, Pablo Casella
Video Design: Moritz von Dungern; Video Making: Fernando Nogari;
Video Editing: Joris Vertenten

Direction Assistant: Katelijne Laevens; Intern Direction Assistant: Zacharoula Kasaraki, Lotte Mellaerts

Production Management: Klaas Lievens, Gabriela Gonçalves; Assistant Production Management: Jack Do Santos; Technical Production Management: Oliver Houttekiet
Stage Manager: Marijn Vlaeminck
Technique: Max Ghymonprez, Sander Michiels, Raf Willems

Special thanks to Carolina Bufolin
Production: NTGent
Coproduction: The International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM), Festival d'Avignon, Romaeuropa Festival, Factory International (Manchester), La Villette Paris, Tandem - Scène nationale (Arras Douai), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Equinoxe Scène Nationale (Châteauroux), Wiener Festwochen

In collaboration with Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)

The Antigone in the Amazon team would like to thank and acknowledge support provided by Goethe Institut Saõ Paulo, PRO HELVETIA programme COINCIDENCIA - Kulturausch Schweiz - Südamerika, The Belgian Tax Shelter

Hero image and gallery images - Photo credit: Kurt Van der Elst

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www.sydneyfestival.org.au/stories/your-guide-to-antigone :

Created by the award-winning Swiss director and playwright Milo Rau in collaboration with Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement and the Belgian theatre company NTGent, Antigone in the Amazon draws a line connecting an ancient Greek tragedy of a young woman who defied a despotic king to present-day activists and First Nations people working to save the Amazon rainforests.

At the production’s heart is a real-life incident: the 1996 massacre of activists from the Landless Workers’ Movement by a unit of Brazilian federal police. A peaceful blockade of a highway ended bloodily, with 19 of the protestors killed.

In Rau’s retelling of the story, a modern-day Antigone stands up for those advocating land rights in the Amazon. Marshalled against her is the apparatus of a corrupt state. The tragedy is that of the Amazon itself – and by extension that of humanity. Not for nothing has the Amazon been likened to “the lungs of the planet”.

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To quote from the play, Antigone in the Amazon is “the magic of theatre which transcends violence”.

This is no mere academic claim. The Europeans have worked with the people in Brazil in the Latin American tradition known as magical realism, creating the most emotionally powerful theatre I have ever experienced.  

We normally experience theatre as illusion used to help us reflect on reality – we stay at a degree of ‘distance’ to keep ourselves ‘safe’.  But when we see on huge screen video the people who survived that massacre, and the actors live on stage in front of us, as they tell and re-enact what happened to the people as they were being killed, it feels as if we are present at that moment of awful reality.

The worst – and best – moment was when we found out that the police were ready to ban the blocking of the road for the annual commemoration of the massacre, on this occasion when the filming was underway, just as the junta’s police had done in 1996.  But instead of arresting and shooting people, they listened to a woman who spoke to them about the importance of the event to the whole community – and allowed the re-enactment and filming to go ahead.

Otherwise we might have seen a repeat of the refusal to allow Antigone to properly commemorate her brother’s death – recorded by Sophocles in Ancient Greece.  Perhaps his play was a theatrical fiction about the rights of the ordinary people, but yesterday Antigone’s story became real.

You have only another day or so to see Antigone in the Amazon.  Do your utmost to get to Sydney to see it.  If you can’t – and even if you do – remember how great theatre transcends violence, and seek to make this your motto in action.  I am in awe not only of the Swiss Milo Rau, but of all those non-violent activists like the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) members who played their part in Antigone in the Amazon.

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PS   If you would like to understand the Latin American magical realism tradition, and its place in responding to colonialism, look up the article in the The Brown Daily Herald by Aalia Jagwani, Arts & Culture Editor, October 6, 2022 at

www.browndailyherald.com/article/2022/10/latin-american-literary-traditions-through-time

©Frank McKone, Canberra