2025: The Glass Menagerie - Ensemble Theatre

 

 

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, March 21 – April 26, 2025.
Presented by special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 29

Cast & Creatives

    Tennessee Williams. Playwright. ...
    Liesel Badorrek. Director. ...
    Danny Ball. Cast - Tom Wingfield. ...
    Blazey Best. Cast - Amanda Wingfield. ...
    Bridie McKim. Cast - Laura Wingfield. ...
    Tom Rodgers. Cast - Jim O'Connor. ...
    Grace Deacon. Set & Costume Designer. ...
    Verity Hampson. Lighting Designer.
Photos by Prudence Upton

Blazey Best, Bridie McKim, Danny Ball
as Amanda Wingfield, daughter Laura, son Tom
The Glass Menagerie, Ensemble Theatre 2025
Photo: Prudence Upton

Do your very best to get to Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, on the Harbour at Kirribilli, no matter what the weather, for their production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.  You have till April 26th.  It’s a classic.

How ironic is my shock as actor Tom Rodgers, as the smartly brylcreemed “gentleman caller” Jim, clumsily trying to dance with crippled terribly shy Laura, knocks over and smashes her beautiful but fragile glass model rearing horse (or rather, unicorn).  The whole audience gasped as one; and were horrified again as her brother Tom (Danny Ball in a consistently steady performance) threw another handful of precious glass, smashing it into the image of the face of his father; and like me were in tears for Bridie McKim’s delicately played Laura, left alone in her crippled world.

Bridie McKim and Blazey Best
The Glass Menagerie, Ensemble Theatre, 2025

 

Bridie McKim as Laura and Tom Rodgers as Jim O'Connor
in The Glass Menagerie, Ensemble Theatre 2025

Why is the power of this wonderful Ensemble Theatre production, so ironic?  On the very day as I watched The Glass Menagerie, in The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton was quoting from “the questionnaire sent by US officials to Australian researchers and institutions, seeking to determine whether their work complied with Donald Trump’s promise to cut funding from projects that support a ‘woke’ agenda.”

“Can you confirm that this is no DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] project, or DEI elements of the project?”

How even more ironic is it that Tennessee Williams’ character, gentleman caller Jim, is described by brother Tom when they were at high school, as so popular that within five years he could have become the President of America!  And now, at 22, like Tom, he works in an Amazon-like warehouse, and is soon to marry Betty.

So sorry, Laura.  

As I write, the Australian Broadcasting Commission is reporting on the problem of “boys’ culture” made so much worse by social media today. Has nothing changed since 1944?  Then, Tennessee Williams sent the boys like Laura’s father in the Depression and now her brother in wartime off to seek “adventure”, leaving their women frantic – like her mother, Amanda Wingfield, played to perfection by Blazey Best.  

So the final irony as I see it is that theatre, as produced by Ensemble Theatre, shows us the heights of human empathy in the teamwork of wonderful actors, and of human intelligence and understanding in the work of director Liesel Badorrek and her team of designers, set makers and stage managers, in presenting a great American tragedy of failing human relationships, just as true in this century as a century ago.

Theatre may be an illusion, but this work reveals the truth of how our real world is still no more than a collection of beautiful but yet so fragile possibilities, so easily accidentally knocked over – or so deliberately smashed by Presidents seeking adventure.  

Tennessee Williams saw World War 2 as the result of economic depression – a way of escape for the boys (though, in another irony not covered in his play, often a way into work for women, at least while the fighting continued).  It’s not unreasonable to expect that tragedy may be repeated in World War 3.  The Glass Menagerie is not just, as Ensemble Theatre says, “Williams’ timeless portrait of a shattered family” but an image of a shattered humanity.

Unfortunately President Donald Trump’s approach to theatre on The Apprentice surely means he sees Tennessee Williams as ‘woke’; and his performance in the White House attempting to intimidate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – who actually ironically has been a seriously successful professional satirical comedian – showed Trump to be the worst kind of ham actor, dangerous because he has no self awareness.

So we ordinary people are left like Laura to a seemingly unfulfilling future.  But the strength of Ensemble’s production of The Glass Menagerie can be measured by the depth of the silence achieved by Danny Ball and Bridie McKim in the moment which ends the play.  Theatre of this outstanding quality makes life worthwhile, no matter what.

Bridie McKim as Laura
in The Glass Menagerie, Ensemble Theatre 2025
Photo: Prudence Upton

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Moors by Jen Silverman

 

 

The Moors by Jen Silverman.  Lexi Sekuless Productions at The Mill Theatre, Canberra, March 26-April 12, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night March 26.

Cast

Agatha: Andrea Close; Marjory: Steph Roberts; Huldey: Rachel Howard
Emilie: Sarah Nathan-Truesdale
Moorhen: Petronella van Tienen; Mastiff: Chris Zuber

Contingency Moorhen: Rachel Pengilly (playing 21 March and 5 April)
Rehearsal contingency: Alana Denham-Preston

Production Team

Writer: Jen Silverman: Director: Joel Horwood
Production Designer: Aloma Barnes
Sound Designer: Damian Ashcroft; Lighting Designer: Stefan Wronski
Set Construction: Simon Grist
Production Stage Manager: Lexi Sekuless; Shadow Stage Manager: Ariana Barzinpour
Programming support: Timmy Sekuless and Zeke Chalmers
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena
Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions
Major partner: Elite Event Technology; Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs



Wuthering!  

See The Moors at The Mill to experience the heights of wuthering.  And indeed the depths of sister Agatha’s withering stares.  I think Andrea Close truly deserves a Julie Bishop Oscar [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7n2s6m-HbE  ]  

No wonder Emilie goes bonkers with her hatchet, and kills the conniving Agatha to death.  Living in The Moors with this simulation of the surviving Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne (Maria and Elizabeth died young), as well as their brother Branwell, chained in the attic, would send anyone round the bend.

Navigating Joel Horwood’s precision directing makes watching The Moors’ twists and turns exciting, like driving an obstacle course in a time trial in an electric car that can accelerate from stop to 100ks instantly.

If you are expecting an unconventional 19th Century romance of the Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Tenant of Wildfell Hall kind (the Brontës were never ordinary in their prudish time in history), then strap your seat belts on for a wild ride through Jen Silverman’s half-satirical yet still seriously enlightening exposition of life – like the one we all live daily – in a frighteningly unpredictable world.  

Kindness, empathy and self-awareness is what we need to learn in our relationships, beautifully represented – and wonderfully sensitively performed – in The Moors by Petronella van Tienen as the tiny Moorhen and Chris Zuber as the massive Mastiff: the Dog who thinks he is God.

Somewhat on the opposite of life is Steph Roberts’ maid Marjory – in her way as rational as Emilie tries to be; while Rachel Howard’s Huldey remains innocent and naïve through it all.

You can’t not enjoy the laughter and even the groans in The Moors experience – and you will certainly appreciate the thinking and skills that go into such stmulating theatrical fare.

Another excellent Mill Theatre production.  I don’t need to say, “Don’t Miss”.

https://sites.google.com/lexisekuless.com/mill-theatre-at-dairy-road/more/online-program-the-moors

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Song of First Desire by Andrew Bovell

 

 

 Song of First Desire by Andrew Bovell.  Belvoir Theatre, Sydney, February 13 – March 23, 2025.
Original production 2023 by Octubre Productions, Spain.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 22

Writer: Andrew Bovell; Director: Neil Armfield
Set and Costume Designer: Mel Page; Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney
Composer/Sound Designer: Clemence Williams
Associate Sound Designer: Madeleine Picard
Movement and Intimacy Director: Nigel Poulton
Voice Coach: Laura Farrell
Stage Manager: Luke McGettigan; Asst Stage Manager: Jen Jackson

“Set in 1968 and the present, it unpicks the instincts that drive individuals and whole societies towards fear and violence – and perhaps, also, reconciliation.”  Belvoir Artistic Director, Eamon Flack.

Cast:
Julia / Carmen – Kerry Fox
Alejandro / Juan – Borja Maestre
Carlos / Luis – Jorge Muriel
Camelia / Margarita – Sarah Peirse


Reviewing theatre is a personal response.  My truth, as young people today often would say, may be different from another audience member’s.  But that should not be taken as being against each other, though I find myself not entirely agreeing with the apparent statements of fact in the promotion material online like ‘powerful', ‘epic’, ‘utterly enthralling’.

Song of First Desire is an important story, as Eamon Flack notes.  But, I well remember my excitement in the theatre when I saw Andrew Bovell’s When the rain stops falling.  I wrote then: “The experience watching is exactly as happens while reconstructing a complex 1000 piece puzzle.  Aha! realisations light up completely unexpectedly when it becomes clear that this or that piece just has to go here or there.  Yet it is not until the very last piece is in place that we feel the tension that we might not have everything correctly understood, fall away.  Only as the last clue is revealed, just as the rain stops falling, do we suddenly feel we can breathe again with satisfaction that all is now positively complete.”

I think this story of why Alejandro was sent by by his mother to the one-time Spanish colony, Colombia, when he was a radical student ‘THEN’ and reappears ‘NOW’ as a Colombian ‘migrant’ seeking work, presented in episodic scenes as these words are projected on the stage set walls, was meant to be put together in our minds in a similar way.  But I found the complexities of the emotional relationships between the characters in the families, and the time gaps, left me too confused.  

By the end I think I have worked out a rough idea that Alejandro’s mother saved his life; and I understood how awful autocratic government is, but I didn’t feel personally engaged in the characters as I had in When the rain stops falling, or as in his other famous play, Speaking in Tongues.

I can imagine, though, how strongly the audience in Madrid must have felt for these characters, drawing on their personal histories of families in conflict in Spain throughout the last century.  However I must say that I couldn’t see the relevance of the homosexual aspects of the story while watching the play.  Only afterwards can I  see that perhaps this was about the politics of a right-wing government – but only because of my knowledge of history rather than because of what was done or said in the play.

I must admit that this raises the question of my not being able to pick up all of the words actually spoken.  My old age and hearing aids were probably part of the problem in the acoustics of Belvoir, which are quite deadened by the three-quarters surrounding bodies of the audience.  The work of movement and intimacy director Nigel Poulton, with such experienced actors, certainly showed me what the characters felt in each short scene, but I needed much greater clarity in the voicing, especially of the men, to know what exactly they were saying.

So though for me on the night the theatre was not entirely ‘powerful', ‘epic’, nor ‘utterly enthralling’, I certainly appreciated the strength of the acting and the importance of the intention in writing about the horror of dictatorial power – not only in Spain in the past but in so many countries around the world, including ironically in the very Colombia that Alejandro was sent to for his safety.  

His final speech in memory of the poet/playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, assassinated in Spain in 1936, gives the play its strength of purpose and the reason for not missing Song of First Desire.  

Borja Maestre as Alejandro
in Song of First Desire by Andrew Bovell
Belvoir Theatre 2025
Photo: Brett Boardman

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell

 

 

Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell. A Gooding / Woodward Production presented by Canberra Theatre Centre, March 19-23 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night March 20

Performed by Natalie Bassingthwaighte


Lee Lewis - Director
Willy Russell - Playwright
Simone Romaniuk - Costume and Set Designer
Paul Jackson - Lighting Designer
Marcello Lo Ricco - Sound Designer
Brady Watkins - Composer
Jennifer White - Dialect Coach
Producers: Neil Gooding & Alex Woodward



It’s some twenty years since I was first as surprised as Shirley herself to learn the correct pronunciation of ‘clitoris’.  Played then by Sue Howell in the relatively small Canberra Repertory Theatre, I wrote (Canberra Times, Aug 2004) of her interpretation that it “avoids raucous superficial laughter, invokes a quieter response, and allows us time to absorb Shirley's feelings about how her youthful self, Shirley Valentine, became lost in the "cribb'd, cabin'd and confin'd" English suburban life of wife and mother Shirley Bradshaw.  Her observations about orgasms, men, feminists and English xenophobia are not merely witty, but are little illuminations in self-understanding.”

Natalie Bassingthwaighte, playing today to Canberra Theatre Centre’s almost full “proscenium arch theatre seating 1,244 patrons in one raked tier”

successfully talks to her kitchen wall – through the ‘fourth wall’ – achieving the laughter the crowd expects, while leaving us understanding the importance of Shirley’s right to independence – yet wondering how she will manage her middle-aged future when her job waitressing in Kosta’s taverna inevitably will come to an end.

Bassingthwaighte’s success was measured as much in the silence of so many as we absorbed the implications of Shirley’s responses to her situations, at home and away, cleverly built into Willy Russell’s script; as it was in the standing ovation bringing her back on for an extra curtain call.  But, I thought, she can’t do an encore!

You only have this weekend to see her in action in Canberra – do not miss the opportunity.  Otherwise you’ll have to travel to Adelaide for the Festival, April 1-6.

©Frank McKone, Canberra