2025: The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey

 

 

 The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey.  Mockingbird Theatre Company at Belconnen Arts Centre (Belco Arts), Canberra, August 21-30, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 23

CAST: (in order of appearance)
Angus – Chris Baldock; Miles – Callum Doherty; Morgan – Richard Manning

PRODUCTION TEAM:
Director – Zac Bridgman
Stage Manager – Rhiley Winnett
Lighting Design – Rhiley Winnett and Zac Bridgman
Sound Design – Rhiley Winnett, Zac Bridgman and Chris Baldock
Set Design – Chris Baldock
Set Realisation – Chris Baldock, Richard Manning, cast and crew
Projections – Chris Baldock
Projection, Sound & Lighting Operation – Rhiley Winnett
Costumes – Cast
Props – Chris Baldock, Richard Manning, cast and crew


The Drawer Boy – meaning the boy who drew – is the perfect choice for the ironically named Mockingbird Company, for this play is essentially full of irony.  AI says Irony occurs when events or words are the opposite of what is expected, creating a sense of surprise, humor, or deeper meaning in literature, rhetoric, and everyday situations. 

We can trust AI on this occasion, because Mockingbird’s production creates all those things, out of everyday situations, from the opposite of what we expect, through surprise and humour to an ending with a deeper meaning – even with a bit of rhetoric thrown in by an over-enthusiastic university educated budding playwright/actor, Miles, researching what a farmer’s life is really all about.

But the tricky part of performing this script, for the director and the actors, is that the characters at first – and even for the whole first hour-long Act One – are almost cartoonish caricatures.  It reminded me of the nearest Australian material to compare with this Canadian work, Dad and Dave from Snake Gully, from an earlier time in history, (the radio show aired from 1937 to 1953), beginning before the World War II which turns out to be the most important part of The Drawer Boy in Act Two.

Directing and acting all the silences between those often tacitern ironic words or surprising outbursts is how the play works.  Zac Bridgman and all three actors got it all right last night.  That’s much better than just alright!

Since I was born in 1941, the year that Angus and Morgan enlisted in Canada and found themselves in France, though I was close to being hit by a V-bomb in 1944, I was lucky not to be hit by shrapnel like Angus.  

On the other hand, now in my mid-eighties with a typically embarrassing erratic short-term memory and no memory for names of people or places, I appreciated Chris Baldock’s awful, and therefore thoroughly successful performance of the damaged Angus.

Like Angus I found the naivety and rapidity of Miles’ speech a bit hard to take (even though I was guilty in my 20’s of over-the-top drama), which means that Callum Doherty started well and ended even better when his understanding of the old men’s lives reached a genuine level of empathy.  Surely now he is ready to write his play about farmers – just like Michael Healey himself!

And then Richard Manning’s Morgan held the play together – just as Morgan’s loving, respectful and determined caring for his friend, from boyhood, through times of war and hope of marriage together with the tall and the taller English girls, could hold the mentally disabled Angus together.  

I can’t praise 65 year-old Richard too much, since I was his drama teacher in his Year Twelve.

But I can say how much I enjoyed the cows mooing and chooks chuckling, and the clever way Angus’s architectural drawing was reflected in the backdrops.  Their farm became the landscape of practical life and memories, with the right style in the accompanying music, that I am sure Michael Healey would love.

I had, amazingly, never heard of this 1999 play.  But perhaps Canadians have not heard of Dad and Dave from Snake Gully.  I suggest an excellent follow-up read is at https://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=The%20Drawer%20Boy

So let’s not take Mockingbird literally.  Go see The Drawer Boy.


©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg

 

 The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg at The Street Theatre, Canberra, August 12 – 16, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night August 12

Director: Abbie-lee Lewis
Set Designer: Angie Matsinos
Costume Designer: Leah Ridley
Lighting Designer: Nathan Sciberras
Sound Designer: Kyle Sheedy
Photos: Canberra Streets, Helen Fletcher

Cast

WOMAN and GHOST– Laila Thaker

SWAGMAN, HUSBAND, YOUNG MAN, HORSEMAN,
BARMAN, TRAVELLERS and PRIEST – Craig Alexander
__________________________________________________________________________________

Dylan Van Den Berg’s The Chosen Vessel is a work of poetic theatre.  Words have meanings beyond the immediate in a setting of half-seen images in light and sound, creating a world full of emotional power.  The writer’s imagination appears as if real in this wonderful yet disturbing production.  

When reading a good poem, one’s imagination and feelings respond to the words, reaching an aha moment as you find yourself coming to an understanding in the last line.  In the theatre, our imaginations are enhanced by the stimulating work in the set design, lighting, sound and costumes, as well as, of course, in the directing and skills of the two actors in movement, facial expression and voice.

Laila Thaker, Craig Alexander
in The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg
The Street Theatre, Canberra 2025
Photos: Helen Fletcher

 This excellent production in the small Street Two space becomes a total poem.  That last line is “If the dead can see, why can’t you?”  

Then you understand what it means to describe this work as "Aboriginal Gothic Horror", and realise the nature of the truth about the European cultural invasion of Aboriginal Land – in practical terms:

                        Baby cries.
                        GHOST hangs a string of shells around baby’s neck.
                        GHOST disappears.
                        Sounds of the river:
                                            Blackout.
                                           THE END



Australia’s iconic publisher of our theatre – Currency Press – have made the script available with the program.  I suggest, though, that you see the play as I did without preconceptions.  Then reading The Chosen Vessel by Palawa man Dylan Van Den Berg, “after the short story by Barbara Baynton” will take you through the experience again that only live theatre can give you, and keep it as a living memory and understanding forever. 

 

 Frank McKone's reviews are also accessible at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com 

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra 

 

2025: Mr Burton - movie

 Mr Burton – Movie.  Dendy Canberra preview August 7 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone


Director: Marc Evans
Producer: Trevor Matthews, Ed Talfan, Josh Hyams, Hannah Thomas
Writers: Tom Bullough & Josh Hyams

Cast 
Toby Jones as teacher Mr. Burton; Harry Lawtey as his student, Richie Jenkins who becomes Richard Burton.
With  Steffan Rhodri, Lesley Manville, Daniel Evans, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Aneurin Barnard

Rating: Mature themes and coarse language

Film making is an enormous undertaking.  For the full cast and crew listing go to IMDb at www.imdb.com/title/tt5171016/fullcredits/ 

___________________________________________________________________________________

Whatever view you may have of the one-time world famous Welsh actor, Richard Burton, you must see this remarkable movie to appreciate what he really was like – as an actor and as himself.

The publicity overview is useful, especially if like me you had no idea of Richard Burton’s personal life: Set against the grit of post-war Wales, MR BURTON is the extraordinary true story of a working-class boy destined for greatness and the teacher who saw it first. When Philip Burton, a principled and passionate schoolteacher in Port Talbot, meets Richie Jenkins, a volatile yet gifted teen from a fractured home, he recognises a spark that others have overlooked. Through mentorship, discipline, and love, Philip shapes Richie’s raw talent, setting him on the path to becoming Richard Burton, one of the greatest actors of the 20th century.

The details of Richie Jenkins’ family and how he was brought up by his elder sister, and his relationship with Philip Burton, form the central through-line of the drama, which brought me to tears, of fear for his future and joy for his success as he performed Prince Hal at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon in 1951, directed by Anthony Quayle.

The remarkable thing about the film is how these actors – particularly in the key roles of Philip Burton and Richie Jenkins developing into Richard Burton – have to be such wonderful actors that they can make us believe in these other actors.  Philip Burton realises from Jenkins’ reactions in English class that he has the capacity to perform but needs to be trained.  So we see Richie being trained in some surprising, sometimes very funny, ways, which means that we see Toby Jones acting demonstrating how to act, and Harry Lawtey acting innocently badly until finally he acts Richard Burton acting as he really did as Prince Hal – after he has acted Richard Burton become a drunkard and smoker, and telling off Anthony Quayle (played by Daniel Evans) in rehearsal.

After you’ve seen the movie, and know how you feel about how Richie Jenkins felt from the age of about 13 to 26, it’s interesting to read, for example, what his younger brother Graham Jenkins and other local people told of the family in the setting of the mining country in Wales in Memories of Richard Burton at https://dramaticheart.wales/our-valleys/afan-valley/richard-burton/memories-of-richard-burton/.  And at https://lisawallerrogers.com/tag/richard-burtons-father in Lisa’s History Room there’s more fine detail about Dic Jenkins (played by Steffan  Rhodri).

And I have to confess, only two years after Burton’s first great success in 1951, my English teacher had this 13 year-old, in Form Two, up on stage in a public reading at Enfield Grammar School – as Prince Hal!  Of course, though I had no Philip Burton to adopt me and change my name, it is true that that was the beginning of my drama interest and future academic and teaching career.  

And for Canberra readers especially, it was only last Tuesday that the invited speaker, at our Canberra Critics’ Circle gathering, was Lexi Sekuless, producer at the Mill Theatre, whose work is reviewed here.  She gave us a fascinating run-down of her actor training in London, and the differences between the approach at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), with its more formal convention – something like the Royal Shakespeare Company style which Richard Burton faced in Stratford upon Avon – and the more modern style of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where Lexi acquired the far more varied skills and approaches to characterisation and staging styles which we see in Mill Theatre’s production of Enron, finishing shortly.

Watching Richie Jenkins under Philip Burton’s tutelage reminded me of Lexi Sekuless’s explanation of how that Central approach had broken actors away from the other famous technique – the American Method – and how working all these ways through in Australia has resulted nowadays in a kind of practical strength in our actors who do so well in the modern film industry.

And, I suspect the acting in this film, made in Wales – not in the English establishment setting – has some of that flair that we have in Australia.  Whether you thought you liked Richard Burton with Elizabeth Taylor or not, you can’t not like Harry Lawtey with Toby Jones, with the women, Lesley Manville and Aimee-Ffion Edwards as Ma Smith (Philip Burton’s landlady) and Cis (Richie’s sister) who held the real Richie together and whose acting hold the movie together, in my view.

Not to be missed – from August 14th.

Toby Jones as teacher Mr. Burton; Harry Lawtey as his student, Richie Jenkins

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra