2025: Stages of Empathy - Rebus Theatre

 

 

Stages of Empathy presented by Rebus Theatre.  Opening night at Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman Arts Centre, Canberra.  July 31. 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Artistic Director and Joker: Sammy Moynihan – He/Him 
Project Manager: Harry Bhangu – He/Him
Wellbeing Officer: Verity Kimpton – She/Her
Accessibility Manager: Yenn Purkis – They/Them

Cast – Opening Night
Terry: Krystle Vicencio – She/Her
Jordan: Mark Polhuis – He/Him
Lee: Emily Smith
Alex / Sam: Zander Hanmer-Woods – He/Him

Cast – August 1
Jay Taylor – She/Her plays Lee
Josh Rose – He/Him plays Terry and Sam
Zander Hanmer-Woods plays Jordan


Sammy Moynihan tells me of his experience in Brazil where he was inspired by Augusto Boal’s approach to making political change.  AI is useful for summarising about Theatre of Oppression:

AI Overview
Founder of the Theater of the Oppressed, playwright Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theatre practitioner, developed the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) as a form of popular education using theatre to address social and political issues. Forum theatre, one of the techniques within TO, specifically focuses on empowering audiences to actively participate in the performance, influencing and changing the narrative to explore solutions to oppression. Boal's work, particularly his concept of the "spect-actor," encourages audience members to become active agents of change, stepping into the performance to explore alternative actions and resolutions to the presented conflict.

The oppressed people Moynihan is concerned about are those with disabilities who are excluded unfairly from activities and decision-making positions in workplaces, often because of  biased views about disabled people.

Rebus Theatre has always been about involving disabled members of the company performing theatre in the standard way – for an audience to watch and become aware of the actors’ capacities, and so for the abled to learn to recognise, perhaps intuitively, their biases against the disabled.

In Stages of Empathy, Moynihan and his team take us to the next stage in a cleverly devised form of Forum Theatre.  As a one-time drama teacher, I see this work as a form of educational drama – as enjoyable and as much a learning experience that I hope my classes were.

The politics is at the personal relationship level rather than at Boal’s governmental revolution level.  On a day-to-day level in the office, especially here in a public service town, learning how to make fair and more effective approaches to decisions for and by other people – disabled or not – is what Stages of Empathy is all about.

The Rebus actors play a shortish couple of office scenes in an organisation supporting artists – in this case visual artists, drawing, painting or sculpting.  The CEO is explaining to a new recruit in the management that for this year’s upcoming exhibition, Jordan’s artwork should be included because it is excellent, but Jordan should not be allowed to be present to talk to the public, especially the media, because last year he was an embarrassment, going into some kind of explosive panic attack which showed the organisation in a bad light.

The CEO Terry is insistent; Lee, inexperienced in her new management role, wants to offer an exciting sound-and-light show, and needs to please her boss; Alex is one of the artists, already very successful, who tries to push Jordan along.  But Jordan has a disability because of which loud sounds and bright lights will overwhelm him – the cause of the panic attack last year.

After the performances, Sammy takes on what I saw as the teacher role, inviting members of the audience to stop the action as the actors begin to repeat the performance, and to come on stage to take over one of the characters and show how that character could have made a better decision towards not just being fair and supportive to Jordan at this point in planning the exhibition, but to help make the relationships warmer, less bureaucratic, leading to a successful exhibition for Jordan and also for the organisation as a whole.

Usually, Rebus is working for this kind of relationship development in a workshop training situation.  It needs an intimate space for a theatre presentation for the general public.  

The theatre at Gorman House, suitably named after one-time Principal of Canberra High School, Ralph Wilson – famous in his day for his support of the arts and particularly drama – plays the role perfectly.  As did Rebus’ actors.

And, as it should, the show on opening night became an evening of lively action and thoughtful discussion by everyone no longer just in the “audience”.  A very successful Rebus project indeed towards unbiassing people towards disability.

Rebus Theatre - Stages of Empathy
The actors ready for action

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

 

2025: Enron at Mill Theatre

 

 Enron by Lucy Prebble (UK).  Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Fyshwick, Canberra July 31 – August 9, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 31

CREATIVES & COMPANY

Cast
Jeffrey Skilling: Jay James Moody; Andy Fastow: Oliver Bailey
Jen (gender changed from Ken) Lay and Ensemble: Andrea Close
Claudia Roe and Ensemble: Lexi Sekuless
Ensemble: Rhys Hekimian, Timmy Sekuless, Alana Denham-Preston

Production Team
Direction for this production was completed by the production team and our rehearsal support team. 
Writer: Lucy Prebble
Set Designer: Soham Apte; Costume Designer: Caitlin Hodder
Lighting Designer: Andrew Snell; Sound Designer: Damian Ashcroft
Production Stage Manager: Chips Jin
Assistant Stage Managers: Paige Macdonald and Bea Grant
Contingencies and Rehearsal Support: Rachel Howard, Jen Noveski, Kate Blackhurst, Heidi Silberman, Maxine Beaumont, Goldele Rayment, PJ Williams
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena
Publicity images: Andrea Close, Rhys Hekimian, Steph Roberts

Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions; Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs
Special thanks to Molonglo,  Mojo Guitars and PJ Williams

L to R: Jay James Moody as Jeffrey Skilling; Andrea Close as Jen Lay
Oliver Bailey as Andy Fastow; Lexi Sekuless as Claudia Roe
The Party Scene in Enron by Lucy Prebble
Mill Theatre, Canberra 2025

Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy) in 1867 that Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction.  

Lexi Sekuless and The Mill team’s brilliant production of Enron by British playwright Lucy Prebble proves the point 150 years later, in this quite extraordinary satire of the “spectacular rise and notorious fall of the American energy giant Enron and its founding partners Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling”, as Sydney’s New Theatre described it in the Australian premiere in 2013.

Company Secretary Jen Lay in charge.  Ideas man Andy Fastow in background.

Andy Fastow explaining phantom investment system.

Claudia Roe working on company owner Jeffrey Skilling (out of shot)

The Mill, in politically diplomatic Canberra, may not see itself quite like the New Theatre which “was set up in 1932 as the Sydney Workers Art Club, opening with the slogan ‘Art is a Weapon’”, but when you’ve seen this Enron, which you must because it has such a clever design and terrific acting, you should look up Steve Evans’ amazing article in the Canberra Times today as I write (Thursday July 31, 2025 Page 4) headlined Star-spangled soiree where diplomacy’s done to a ‘T’, about the “unmentionable spectre [Mr T] at the magnificent party thrown at the American embassy…[where the] fireworks and herds of brisket and pork-belly barbecue were in celebration of American independence from the British”.

You’ll see a party rather like this - minus the barbecue - on the Mill Theatre stage – with every nuance of underhand meaning similar to Evans’ reporting: “But mentioning the T word [to Meta’s representative] felt a bit like passing wind in church – just not done”.  My point is that though this play was written by a British woman playwright in 2009, it foreshadows America’s progress to today’s President T.  The satire is telling – exciting to watch, especially in close-up in the tiny Mill Theatre; but the truth it reveals is frightening as much as it is illuminating.

It’s important, too, that we have a theatre company in Canberra presenting us, including our national public servants and politicians, with the confronting conclusion – that by not regulating the financial market, especially the use of phantom investment companies, we are all guilty of setting up exactly what Karl Marx predicted.

Yet, as Jeffrey Skilling believed even after years in jail, performed with real sincerity by Jay James Moody, he had never intended to cause economic breakdown: he was merely trying to “change the world” for the better.  Though dangerous climate warming is not mentioned in this play, it has been technical innovation and developments in financial markets – over the past few thousand years – aimed at expanding economic activity and improving people’s incomes,  and the inevitable profiteering, which is now threatening us with worse even than Karl Marx imagined.  Some say not just economic chaos and warfare, but the self-destruction of our species.

 Ironically in the play, Andy Fastow makes a big point of the 'Darwinian evolution' of modern business.  

Lexi Sekuless, in presenting this play and so artfully performing it (herself included) in a wonderful tightly directed small team (New Theatre used 15 actors), must be recognised for both the quality and the importance of her work.

Please don’t miss Enron at the Mill Theatre.

 P.S. The fictional character in Prebble’s play, Claudia Roe, appears to have been based on the true woman involved in Enron’s history: Rebecca Mark.  
See https://commongroundolivia.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-real-claudia-roe.html 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Emerald City by David Williamson

 

 

 

 

 

Emerald City by David Williamson.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, July 18 – August 23, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 26

Director: Mark Kilmurry
Asst Director: Tiffany Wong; Set & Costume Designer: Dan Potra
Lighting Design: Morgan Moroney; Composer & Sound: Madeleine Picard
Stage Manager: Lauren Tulloh; Asst Stage Manager: Bella Wellstead
Photography: Phil Erbacher

Cast:
Helen – Aisha Aidara; Elaine – Danielle Carter; Kate – Rachel Gordon
Mike – Matt Minto; Colin – Tom O’Sullivan; Malcolm – Rajan Velu

 

Aisha Aidara as Helen, Matt Minto as Mike

Tom O’Sullivan as Colin, Danielle Carter as Elaine

 

Although I can’t be specific about what changes David Williamson has made to update Emerald City since its first production in 1987, it seemed to me in the Ensemble Theatre’s much more intimate space than the large wide postbox stage in the Drama Theatre at Sydney Opera House, the play full of one-liners about the business of being a playwright, zinged along much more smartly than I remember from nearly 40 years ago.

I think too, though I can hardly imagine it, that this cast could be any better than theatrical icons (Colin) Garry McDonald, (Elaine) Ruth Cracknell, (Kate) Robyn Nevin, (Mike) Drew Forsythe , and now QUT Associate Professor (Helen) Andrea Moor.  

Yet Tom O’Sullivan, Danielle Carter, Rachel Gordon and Aisha Aidara, along with a raucus Matt Minto and so-cool and collected Rajan Velu, captured, I’m certain from Mark Kilmurry’s directing skills, every twist and turn of ironic pronouncements that made each character so distinctive – and seemingly real.  The play stayed in its 1980s period, but now has so much more depth in its implications about being ethical as well as money-making.

Or maybe I’m just seeing more in it now than I could in my state of understanding 40 years ago without a Trump in the deal of my cards back then.

The argument between the Melbournites who read books on the tram against the Sydneyites who just read the morning paper, made the play an amusing comedy – and still does – but the frustrations Colin faces now, and especially the effect he has on his wife Kate, as well as the success of Mike’s pragmatic commerciality, gives the humour, on reflection after the laughter, a new blacker edge.

This Emerald City is a play for our time perhaps even more than it was in its time – and it was truly famous then.  Don’t miss it now.

Rachel Gordon as Kate

Whole cast of Emerald City,
L to R: Colin – Tom O’Sullivan    Mike – Matt Minto    Kate – Rachel Gordon 
Malcolm – Rajan Velu   Elaine – Danielle Carter Helen – Aisha Aidara


Ensemble Theatre 2025

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Illume - Bangarra Dance Theatre

 

 

Illume – Bangarra Dance Theatre.  Canberra Theatre Centre July 25-26 2025-07-27

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 25 

Choreography: Frances Rings and artists of Bangarra Dance Theatre  

Artistic & Cultural Collaborator: Darrell Sibosado  

Composition: Brendon Boney  

Set Design: Charles Davis; Costume Design: Elizabeth Gadsby; Lighting Design: Damien Cooper. Cultural Consultant: Trevor Sampi. 

Dancers:Lillian Banks, Courtney Radford, Kallum Goolagong, Daniel Mateo, Emily Flannery, Janaya Lamb, Kassidy Waters, Jye Uren, Maddison Paluch, James Boyd, Chantelle Lee Lockhart, Amberlilly Gordon, Donta Witham, Zeak Tass, Edan Porter,Tamara Bouman, Roxie Syron, Eli Clarke.

___________________________________________________________________________________

If I were to tell you about me, I would begin with my grandfather on my mother’s side – a Cockney, born within the sound of the Bow Bells who could read the newspaper upside down and back to front in the mirror (because he was a compositor).  And so I am a Londoner, who went to Enfield Grammar School, a state school approved by Queen Elizabeth in about 1550.  She went riding at ‘Endfield” and supported education for the ordinary people.  That was where I played the part of Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s play when I was in Form 2.

Yet on my father’s side, my grandmother was a Welsh Methodist, and my Uncle Llewellyn in Cardiff played Chopin on the piano and was a Socialist and a Naturopath who told me that “everyone’s the same without their clothes on”.  

And now I have lived in Australia for 70 years and became legally an Australian in 1975. And you think you know who I am.

So when you read in the Illume program that Artistic & Cultural Collaborator Darrell Sibosado  is a "Goolarrgon Bard man from Lombadina, Western Australia, whose multidisciplinary practice reimagines the traditional pearl shell carving practices into contemporary art; and Frances Rings is a Mirning woman from the Far West Region of South Australia and also has German Heritage", you are only just beginning to know who these people are.

A dance for me would have to include Irish (McKone is, I think, West Coast of Ireland from the 18th Century), probably Anglo-Saxon from 1500 years ago, and maybe French or Jewish from up to 1000 years ago (my mother's maiden name was Solly).  

Yet that’s nothing compared to the Australian history of around 600 peoples beginning some 65,000 years ago.

So just as I saw Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, performed in a modern style and interpretation by the Russian-named Chaika Theatre on Wednesday, on Friday I saw Bangarra’s story of the history of the Lombadina and Djarindjin people who live on the North-West Dampier Peninsula, from the rising of the sea-level as the last Ice Age melted and formed King Sound 7000 years ago, in a very up-to-date modern dance style in a very modern highly technical audio-visual setting.

In eleven scenes over 90 minutes, centred on Ngarrgidj Morr (the Proper Path), the dance takes us through all the changes from times of a sense of freedom and positive excitement through times of hardship, focussed on how, to quote the excellent program, “All living things are interconnected in harmony.  Goolarrgon people navigate Country with purpose, changing their behaviours to align with the true rhythm of Country.”

It is like, in my culture, dancing all the scenes you can imagine from Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the French Revolution and Colonialism, with hope for World Peace.  

Bangarra gives us that hope.

©Frank McKone, Canberra 

 

2025: Echo

 

Echo (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) apparently written by Nassim Soleimanpour and directed by Omar Elerian.  
Co-commissioned by Canberra Theatre Centre at The Playhouse, July 24-26, 2025.

Possible Actors:
Fayssal Bazzi – seen on July 24
Benjamin Law, Nathalie Morris, or Paula Arundell on other occasions.

Other creatives, designers and technicians – no information apparently provided.



Because I could not understand what was going on in Canberra Theatre Playhouse last night, I asked Google AI if Echo is genuine.  It appeared to me that the person on stage wasn’t acting, but was simply responding as himself to instructions and questions being put to him by someone apparently in Berlin, who had migrated there from Iran, on a 90 minute video call.

Here’s the question I put, and the beginning part of the AI answer:

Is the theatre production Echo genuine?  Are the actors live on the internet in Berlin and Canberra? 

Yes, the theatre production "Echo" is genuine, and it does feature actors performing live on stage in Canberra while interacting with the playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour, who appears to be live via the internet from Berlin. The show intentionally blurs the lines between reality and performance, using live video feeds, pre-recorded footage, and live interaction to create a unique and unpredictable theatrical experience.

AI then gives more details under headings:
    Live, Unrehearsed Performance
    Real-Time Connection with the Playwright
    Blending Live and Pre-Recorded
    Uncertainty and Authenticity
    Thematic Exploration

And ends with “While the show plays with the audience's perception of reality, the live interaction between the actor and the playwright, as well as the unrehearsed nature of the performance, are genuine aspects of the production.”

So, in fact, I have no play to review.  The early part, when the “actor” was given an envelope and took out a long document which he read out loud about the writer’s process of writing, is monumentally uninteresting.  You couldn’t call this a ‘performance’.

Then when the connection settles down with Berlin (apparently) it is more interesting when it seems that our ‘actor’ is also middle eastern and migrated to Australia to escape the warfare conditions, and so the two of them discuss the migration experience, very much in terms of emotionally remaining Iranian or Lebanese and so never quite accepting themselves as, or not being accepted as, German or Australian.

Though there is no acting going on, since there’s no script for our actor to perform, it’s obvious that at the Berlin end there is a stack of prepared material about the experience of leaving Iran, apparently including some pre-recorded video and what may be live interactions between Nassim and other people. The time difference between evening here and morning in Berlin doesn't seem to matter.

Of course the migrant experience and issues around refugees and the possibility of returning home is of interest, but this conversation has no direction, no dramatic structure, and ends nowhere in particular.  

Since a different ‘actor’ takes part at each presentation, the conversation will be different each night,  So to really see Echo, you would have to go every night throughout the run in Canberra.  Then you should travel to the next venue, wherever it may be in the world, to keep up.

In fact, what Echo is really about is an abstract – and therefore necessarily untheatrical – highly intellectual exposition of a philosophy, which seems to say that human life only exists as a mental construct which each of our brains put together from the remains of memories of our individual pasts.

When I taught Years 11/12 Philosophy, coming up with such ideas was a feature of working out who you were and what you really believed, but philosophising is nothing like creating a drama for an audience to become emotionally engaged in, which is what theatre art is all about.

Perhaps I can imagine writing a song called “Echoes in My Mind”.  Then you can imagine what it might say and sound like, and sing it to yourself.  And write your own review!

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: 21 Hearts

 

 

21 Hearts – Vivian Bullwinkel & the Nurses of the Vyner Brooke by Jenny Davis. Theatre 180 presented at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

July 24/25 | 11am & 7pm    July 26 | 2pm & 7pm

July 31 | 11am & 7pm          Aug 1 | 11am & 7pm

Aug 2 | 2pm & 7pm              Aug 3 | 5pm

WRITER 
Jenny Davis OAM 
DIRECTOR 
Stuart Halusz 

CAST 
Caitlin Beresford-Ord; Rebecca Davis; Michelle Fornasier
Alex Jones; Helen Searle; Alison van Reeken
 
Rebecca Davis plays Vivian Bullwinkel

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 24

L-R:  Caitlin Beresford-Ord, Alison van Reeken, Rebecca Davis, Alex Jones, Michelle Fornasier, Helen Searle

 

21 Hearts is a living breathing documentary with an extraordinary emotional effect, only achievable by live performances, supported by projected historical material.  If you ever wondered if some War Museums may do more than only commemorate wars, by seeming to encourage a fascination with wars past,  you will not doubt the Australian War Memorial’s purpose in presenting this play in its new theatre.

Many times during her service from 1942 to 1945, when she alone had survived the enemy’s treatment of her and her nursing colleagues, Vivian exclaimed, out of a deep sense of guilt, “I should not be here.  I should have died with the others on the beach.”

But always a personal chance of caring for, of supporting, or saving someone else’s life would revive her determination to not give up.  These were the moments which hit home to the heart, especially for me, but I’m sure for everyone in the audience, many of whom were nurses who have faced difficult conflicting circumstances as they often do, even outside the fog of war.

The quality of this production – the acting, singing and movement, the costuming, and the technical audio-visual presentation – is absolutely top-class.  With mood swings from humour in the face of the threat of death, to the horror not only of direct hits but also of their captors’ terrible treatment of them – despite their rights as international Red Cross nurses – directing this play requires a tight discipline to make the drama true to reality, which Stuart Halusz has clearly achieved.

It’s that very discipline that is the creed for nurses everywhere, as it is for these actors in creating these nurses’ stories.  Their teamwork lifts the drama off the stage so we feel as they and their characters feel.

Each of us will have our personal response to this experience.  The play does not make Vivian into the conventional idea of ‘hero’.  Known as ‘Bully’ by all, we come to know her as an ordinary person, like ourselves, getting on with what needs to be done, if that’s possible, and working to help others no matter the circumstances with what I would call practical empathy.

The reason I felt so emotionally affected goes back to my birth.  In January 1941 (in UK) I was named Frank after my mother’s favourite brother had been called up, posted to France and had disappeared – only to reappear when I was 5 years old, having walked across Europe from Poland, where he had been made to work in forestry for the Germans.  Like Vivian and those nurses on Sumatra had to provide their Japanese captors with their nursing services.

Like so many, my uncle never told details of his story, and how he survived.  

Seeing 21 Hearts has made me realise and understand anew why my father had taken the stand as a conscientious objector to being conscripted as my uncle had been; and it has reinforced my own determination, when I turned 18 in Australia, to take the same stand as my father against National Service, which was still compulsory in 1959.

Neither of us were sent to jail for opposing war. The wartime court decided to classify my father’s trade, plasterer,  as a ‘reserved occupation’ so he worked on repairing war damaged houses in London for the war years.  In Sydney, a magistrate rejected my claim, but on appeal to a higher court, a judge ordered I must be put in a medical corps where I would be “saving lives, not taking lives”.  I was allowed to defer going until I finished university – and by then National Service had been abandoned; weirdly not long before the 18th Birthday lottery began sending young men to the Vietnam War.

And still, at 84, I sometimes feel that guilt, when I think of those who did not come back from Vietnam, or continue to suffer the mental anguish caused by their experiences there.

Certainly go to see 21 Hearts – Vivian Bullwinkel & the Nurses of the Vyner Brooke, but be prepared for its highly personal impact on your thoughts and feelings about what in earlier times used to be called Glorious War.

Rebecca Davis as Vivian Bullwinkel
in 21 Hearts Jenny Davis OAM

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Julius Caesar - Chaika Theatre

 

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.  Chaika Theatre at ACT Hub, Causeway Hall, Kingston, Canberra, 23 July – 2 August 2025

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 23

CAST

Brutus – Lachlan Ruffy
Cassius – Yanina Clifton
Mark Antony – Colin Giles
Julius Caesar – Michael Sparks
Casca – Karen Vickery
Portia/Calpurnia – Amy Kowalczuk
Metellus Cimber – Sophia Mellink
Decius Brutus – Paris Scharkie
Lucius & Octavius – Joshua James
Cinna the Conspirator – Pete Stiles
Ligarius & Cinna the Poet – Ian Russell

 

PRODUCTION TEAM

Director & Set/Costume Designer – Caitlin Baker
Stage Manager – Sienna Curnow
Lighting Designer – Lachlan Houen
Composer & Sound Designer – Paris Scharkie
Associate Sound Designer – Neville Pye
Props Master – Yanina Clifton
Fight Choreographer – Lachlan Ruffy
Assistant Director – Kat Dunkerley


It is certainly appropriate for Chaika Theatre, based in Australia’s National Capital, to open Julius Caesar just as our 48th Parliament has opened for its next 3-year term.  This very successful production of Shakespeare’s study of the politics of government raises the age-old question: is power in the hands of an ambitious self-adulatory individual better for the country than any, even if limited, form of democracy?

I leave the discussion of what has happened and is happening now, in the more than 200 countries around the world, to others, except to say that watching the honourable Brutus agonising about taking part in the killing of Caesar to prevent Rome becoming a dictatorship, after several centuries of republican parliamentary government, could not help but raise a comparison with the situation in the United States of America, where President Trump was recently very nearly assassinated.

The worst part of Shakespeare’s version of Roman history is the civil war among the conspirators following the assassination, rather than a return to reasonably stable government by the Senate.  

The value of Chaika’s presentation is how clearly they showed the confusion of political positions, before and after the murder, that led to social disaster.  Making the play modern in style and costumes, rather than Shakesperean ‘Roman’, allowed for a highly successful innovation.  Half the usually male politicians and military characters were women – not just played by women, but as women, though keeping Shakespeare’s characters’ names and dialogue.

The effect, at least for me, was that the interplay between the characters was enlivened, and the depths of the feelings they expressed were clarified.  The women generally articulated Shakespeare’s words and their implications with more variety and sharpness of effect – and made the issues real for everyone.

I think Shakespeare tried, but in his time could only manage to go some of the way, in the reactions of Portia and Calpurnia, played with great strength by Amy Kowalczuk, but seeing Cassius, Casca and Metellus Cimber from a woman’s point of view, played forcefully by Yanina Clifton, Karen Vickery and Sophia Mellink, was quite startling and opened up these characters far better than when played conventionally by men.

In addition, the choreographed representations of the stabbings and the warfare, stylised in almost dance form, worked very well.  This allowed the feelings of the characters to become the focus, enhancing our feelings in the audience – the art in the movement made us feel the reality of the deaths.

Lighting and sound, though very hard to describe here in writing, were also a great strength of the production, especially with the audience either side of the central stage.

So, without more ado, I say do see the result of Caitlin Baker’s directing of Chaika, even if you think you don’t need to see again the Julius Caesar you had to study at school.  Chaika will open your eyes, your mind and your feelings in a new way of seeing great Shakespeare.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2025: La Bohème

 

 

La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini.  Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa & Luigi Illica.

Opera Australia at Canberra Theatre Centre. July 17-19 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 17

Creatives
    Director: Dean Bryant
    Revival Director: Warwick Doderell
    Set & Costume Designer: Isabel Hudson
    Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper
    Children’s Chorus Master: Stephanie Arnold
    Conductor: Simon Bruckard
    Language: Italian with English surtitles
    Setting: modern

Cast
Rodolfo – John Longmuir; Mimi – Danita Weatherstone
Marcello – Andrew Williams; Musetta – Cathy-Di Zhang
Schaunard – Kiran Rajasingam / Michael Lampard
Benoit & Alcindoro – Eugene Raggio; Colline – Eddie Muliaumaseali’i
Parpignol & Chorus – Nick Kirkup; Chorus – Maia Andrews; Sarah Prestwidge Alexander Selton; Benjamin Del Borrell 

La Bohème is a morality play designed to teach a lesson to young men about how to treat young women properly.  Such  a story is inevitably at risk of confronting the listener with injunctions they would prefer to ignore.

Presenting this play as an opera risks creating an overblown sense of its own importance.  This is one reason I have never been a dedicated opera buff.

This production of La Bohème by Opera Australia knows the risks and how to win the moral and theatrical day. Puccini and his librettists are hard task-masters musically and dramatically.  Dean Bryant and the whole team get everything right.

The measure of their success is how they made the change over interval.  The first half is often light-hearted, even comical as the four young men play out their natural fascination with the beauty of Mimi and Musetta – though also revealing their sexist attitudes.  It even seems, for example, that Mimi is not as sick as she pretends to be when she first approaches her next door neighbour, Rodolfo, and can’t find her key to return to her rooms.

The risk is that the shift to being, literally, deadly serious in the second half may not be believable.  But Danita Weatherstone, our Mimi last night, captured our feelings immediately, as she asked a policeman about Rodolfo’s whereabouts to begin Act Two.  Of course, the music – instrumental and voice – help, but it is the acting by all the cast which made her death real to us– from consumption, or tuberculosis, which was increasingly common when the opera was first performed in the 1890s.

Our sense of that reality, 135 years later, lifts our understanding of Puccini’s team’s purpose.  Just as we see happening in our ‘social media’ times, those male ‘conventions’ about women as, to quote, ‘witches’, have to change in the face of reality.

Even if they are, as these young men claim to be, bohemian artists – so self-important.  

This production, by successfully creating true empathy in us, as these characters realise the error of their youthful ways, shifts from being almost a caricature of artists in Act One to making us understand the quality and sincerity of the performances, on stage and in the pit, of these theatrical artists – men, women and even children.

A production not to be missed.

La Bohème Act One
Opera Australia, Canberra Theatre 2025

 

La Bohème Act Two
Opera Australia, Canberra 2025

 

 

 

2025: The Half-Life of Marie Curie by Lauren Gunderson

 

The Half-Life of Marie Curie by Lauren Gunderson.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, June 13-July 12, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 5

    Playwright: Lauren Gunderson
    Director: Liesel Badorrek

    Cast
    Rebecca Massey as Hertha Ayrton; Gabrielle Scawthorn as Marie Curie

    Production Concept: Anthea Williams
    Set & Costume Designer: James Browne
    Lighting Designer: Verity Hampson
    Composer & Sound Designer: Daniel Herten
    Video Designer: Cameron Smith
    Dialect Coach: Linda Nicholls-Gidley
    Movement Coach: Gavin Robins
    Stage Manager: Bella Kerdijk; Assistant Stage Manager:  Maddison Craven
    Costume Supervisor: Lily Mateljan
   
 “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service imprint. (www.dramatists.com)

Director's Note

It is 1912 and Marie Curie has won two Nobel Prizes in different scientific fields. It is almost impossible to overstate her level of international celebrity or, consequently the tempest that exploded after it was leaked to the press that she was having an affair with her married colleague Paul Langevin.

Virtually held hostage in her Paris home by journalists and angry mobs, Marie fell into a deep depression. Her friend, the British physicist, electromechanical engineer and suffragist, Hertha Aryton, took Marie to her house on the English coast for the summer, the respite of which may have saved Marie’s life. Obviously, we will never know the intricacies of this incredible friendship between two extraordinary women….but we can imagine.

The Victorian age was one of incredible change and discovery, particularly in the field of science. Unlike now, the worlds of science and spirituality weren’t regarded as mutually exclusive. There was a feeling that it was possible to reveal the invisible, and know the previously unknowable – in science, nature and even, to quote Hamlet, ‘That undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’.

Like many Victorians, Marie attended seances with her husband Pierre out of curiosity. Could there be any science there? A measurable energy? What have we been and what do we become?
Lauren Gunderson’s play is about Transformation and Discovery – processes which shape both Marie and Hertha as women, as scientists and as friends, in real and transcendent ways.

‘Half-life. The moment an element transforms so fully that it is more other than self.’

Liesel Badorrek 

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First, the performances, the stage design and choreography make this production of The Half-Life of Marie Curie one of the most imaginative, engaging and even exciting to watch shows that I have ever seen.

Second, but not least, the play, short though it is, has intellectual and emotional power which places it among the greatest theatrical works.

It was simply wonderful to see these two exquisite actors working so completely in harmony together, creating totally believable characters. Rebecca Massey as Hertha Ayrton grabs our attention from the get-go, so focussed on her concern for the welfare of her colleague, equal in scientific achievement, but suffering social contumely as a woman leading an independent life.  

Gabrielle Scawthorn’s Marie Curie pulls us inevitably in to her emotional turmoil as a woman and lover of her dead husband, needing to find new love in Paul, in the context of her almost spiritual understanding of science, working with these men, which enabled her to explain the process by which seemingly unchanging elements radiate energy – changing half-life by half-life from uranium to lead.

Physics and chemistry are brought together in a fascinating abstract circle of light, darkness and transparency, representing in my mind the universe within which, and indeed integrated into, Marie and  Hertha – like all of us – exist, live and die.

Thinking of the experience of such force emanating from the intimate space of the Ensemble Theatre brought to my mind, almost in a funny way, two words.  Marie’s death, probably from cancer caused by the very radium she discovered, though long after the holiday that Hertha provided for her which “saved her life” socially, and gave her love, seemed AWFUL.  Yet her two Nobel prizes are AWEFUL, and rightly show the importance of Marie Curie as a woman scientist.

I am not surprised to find on Wikipedia that Lauren Gunderson's works heavily focus on female figures in history, science, and literature. She is one of the top 20 most-produced playwrights in the country, and has been America's most produced living playwright since 2016. She has had over twenty plays produced including, “I and You”, “Émilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight”, “Parts They Call Deep”, and “Background”.  

Thanks to Ensemble, my hope for American culture is restored.  Ensemble’s founder, Hayes Gordon, would surely be proud.

And, in case you were wondering, Google AI says:
No, Pierre Curie did not die from radiation poisoning. He died in a street accident in Paris on April 19, 1906, when he was run over by a horse-drawn carriage. His death was a tragic accident, not a result of radiation exposure. While both Pierre and Marie Curie were pioneers in the study of radioactivity and exposed themselves to radiation, Pierre's death was not related to that. Marie Curie, however, did eventually die from aplastic anemia, likely caused by prolonged exposure to radiation. 

 Gabrielle Scawthorn as Marie Curie; Rebecca Massey as Hertha Ayrton
in The Half-Life of Marie Curie, Ensemble Theatre 2025
Photo: Prudence Upton

©Frank McKone, Canberra