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.”
_____________________________________________________________________
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”.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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