Lord of the Flies

 

 

 

Lord of the Flies by William Golding adapted for the stage by Nigel Williams.  Canberra REP July 25 – August 10, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 26

Directed by: Caitlin Baker and Lachlan Houen
Voice and Performance Coach: Sarah Chalmers
Set Designer: Michael Sparks OAM
Lighting Designer: Chris Ellyard; Sound Designer: Neville Pye
Costume Coordinator: Antonia Kitzel

Cast:
Ralph – Joshua James; Jack – Ty McKenzie; Piggy – Winsome Ogilvie
Simon – Lily Willmott; Roger – Robert Kjellgren; Sam – Brandon Goodwin
Eric – Zoë Ross; Maurice – Alex Wilson; Henry – Phoebe Silberman
Perceval – Tara Saxena; Naval Officer – John Stead; Bill – Caitlin Baker

Canberra REP have been brave to take on Lord of the Flies with a young cast who have produced a worthy result.  It is an exercise not only in giving up-and-coming actors an opportunity to gain experience in a substantial work, but in providing us all with a reminder of the possibilities and the weaknesses of human society in the real world.

Golding’s novel is an allegorical fiction – that is, it is a story which parallels real life.  It works well in that form because while reading and turning pages (or screens), our imaginations visualise what is happening, our feelings are engaged in response, and our intellect makes the connections between the fiction and fact.

On stage the designers and actors do the imagining for us.  We see and hear what’s happening.  Our feelings are as much engaged in responding to how effectively the staging and acting is done, as they are in response to the story; while our intellect may catch on to some of the meaning as the action goes on regardless, outside our control.  

Adapting Golding’s story for stage, unfortunately, results in long periods of young people yelling at each other, without enough of the character development and variety of volume and intensity levels which I remember imagining when I first read the novel as a teenager soon after it was published in 1954.

The value in Canberra REP presenting Lord of the Flies is the strength of the allegory and our need to come to terms with the truth that we humans are lost on our Island Earth, and have never learned to manage intransigent ‘leaders’ who tell us to go back to where you came from; who manipulate us into ritual dancing which turns into ritual killings; and who steal the fire from those who would be responsible citizens.

Though I can’t say I exactly ‘enjoyed’ Lord of the Flies, I can say that there were some dramatically strong points, such as the deathly silence as it was realised that Lily Willmott’s Simon was dead; and the anguish expressed in horror by Joshua James’ Ralph at the very end of everything.  

And though there was a laugh at John Stead’s Naval Officer berating the British boys for not behaving well as British boys should, it didn’t take much imagination to realise that there’s no-one out there to come and rescue us on Planet Earth.

So REP’s production of Lord of the Flies is certainly worthwhile going to see.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Mary Stuart adapted by Kate Mulvany

 

 

Mary Stuart adapted by Kate Mulvany after the verse play by Friedrich Schiller (the play Maria Stuart had its première in Weimar, Germany on 14 June 1800): Currency Press 2020.  

Presented by Chaika Theatre at ACT Hub, Kingston, Canberra July 24 – August 3, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 25

Director: Luke Rogers; Designer: Kathleen Kershaw
Sound Composition: Rachael Dease; Sound Design: Georgia Snudden
Sound Editing and Arrangement: Luke Rogers
Lighting Design: Disa Swifte; Voice and Text Coach: Sarah Chalmers

Cast:
Mary Stuart – Steph Roberts; Paulet – Cameron Thomas
Mortimer – James McMahon; Young Girl – Lily Welling
Burleigh – Richard Manning; Queen Elizabeth I – Karen Vickery
Ambassador Aubespine – Blue Hyslop; Leicester – Jarrad West
Shrewsbury – Neil McLeod; Davison – Lachlan Herring


Chaika Theatre very effectively uses what I call ‘presentational’ style for Kate Mulvany’s modern feminist approach to the historical story of Queen Elizabeth I executing her cousin Mary Stuart in 1587.

Schiller’s fascination with the story was more focussed on political philosophy, perhaps – about the use and misuse of monarchical power – rather than emphasising the women’s relationships.

You don’t need to know the history, but Life and Deathline of Mary, Queen of Scots, is at the National Museums Scotland site:
https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/mary-queen-of-scots/mary-queen-of-scots/life-and-deathline-of-mary-queen-of-scots

Roger Paulin, in his introduction to the Flora Kimmich 2020 translation, helps explain my term ‘presentational’: the [original] play is written mainly in a blank verse suited to the close confrontations and the interplay of repartee that are conditional on both moral and political argument and the clash of principles. This enables words and notions that are related in sense to be thrown back at each other in rhetorical encounters, such as those to do with right, justice and the law.

So Chaika has taken the right path in this adaptation, not towards what we call ‘naturalism’, but to show characters in a dramatic plot in order to bring out ideas.  And they do that very successfully, except I think for one brief moment.  

The setting, of course, is not strictly 16th Century, though it is suggested by the costumes and the mix of older formal and modern colloquial language.  But the opening of the second half as a social-media dance party scene really seemed inappropriate for a drinking session for Queen Elizabeth and her presumed lover Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Otherwise, the accompanying sound composition and design by Rachael Dease and Georgia Snudden (originally for Performing Lines WA) and the sound editing and arrangement by Luke Rogers captured the mood perfectly, drawing us in emotionally to so many scenes where concentrating on the words and their significance was crucial.

And, finally, the performances by Karen Vickery and Steph Roberts in the scene where they met, and then in their solos – Elizabeth’s anguish over her nightmare decision to sign the execution order; Mary’s confession according to her belief – brought out the depth of empathy from us for these women, because they were women, in our world of uncompromising politics, which Kate Mulvany wanted her adaptation to create beyond even Friedrich Schiller’s ending, where Elizabeth has lost her lover, Robert, Earl of Leicester – “His Lordship begs your pardon.  He is at sea and on his way to France”.

In Schiller, Elizabeth is forced to accept Shrewsbury’s words; “Live, rule content!  Your enemy is dead.  From now on you have nothing more you must fear and nothing you need to respect.”  (She forces herself and stands calm.)  The curtain falls.

In Chaika and Kate Mulvany’s dimming of the lights to black, we felt all that she lost in the awful beheading of her cousin, like her father’s beheading of her mother, Anne Boleyn.  And we felt for all those women who have no choice but to keeping standing calm.

This Mary Stuart is a valuable contribution to Canberra theatre and our culture.


 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Horizon - Bangarra Dance Theatre

 

 

Horizon   Bangarra Dance Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre, July 18 – 20 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 18

Artistic Director & Co-CEO: Frances Rings
Executive Director & Co-CEO: Louise Ingram
Choreographers: Deborah Brown, Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, Sani Townson
            Dancers Of Bangarra Dance Theatre
Composers: Steve Francis and Brendon Boney (The Light Inside);
        Amy Flannery (Kulka)
Set Designer: Elizabeth Gadsby; Associate Set Designer: Shana O’Brien
Costume Designers: Jennifer Irwin (The Light Inside); Clair Parker (Kulka)
Lighting Designer: Karen Norris
Video Designer: Davis Bergman; Associate Video Designer: Cameron Smith
Featured Music Performer: James Webster (The Light Inside)
Filmed Dancer: Phil Walford (Kulka); Rehearsal Director: Juliette Barton
Kalaw Kawaw Ya Language Consultant: Leonora Adidi (Kulka)
Featured Vocalist: Zipporah Corser-Anu (Kulka)
Stage Manager: Rose Jenkins; Asst Stage Manager: Ashleigh King



Horizon is a major work of outstanding cultural significance.  Frances Rings and Louise Ingram have taken Bangarra beyond the company’s traditional horizon, centred largely on the Australian mainland, by commissioning three Islander choreographers.  

From the Torres Strait, Sani Townson is of Samu, Koedal and Dhoeybaw clans of Sabai Island and Deborah Brown’s ancestry is of Mer and Badu Islands; while Moss Te Ururangi Patterson is of the Ngati Tuwharetoa Maori tribe, North Island, Aotearoa New Zealand.

In the 20 minute Act 1, Kulka, the dance is based on the style of the Saybaylayg people of Sabai, and forms an overture or prelude for the 70 minute work combining Brown’s Salt Water and Patterson’s The Light Inside in Act 2.

Absolute respect – for the strength and sincerity in the dance, the remarkable sound design and recorded performances, the lighting and visual design –  is the heart of the emotion and thought that the total work creates.  Technically thoroughly up to date, especially in the ‘reflections’ which represent the spirits (and the spirit) of the physically real figures on the stage, Horizon is the ancient Indigenous world created for us all by modern keepers of their culture.  The history is of resilience, survival and success through all those tens of thousands of years, living in our part of the world.

The production of this work in itself models that history, with a tremendous sense of achievement, felt by everyone in the audience, as the whole cast came together as one in the final scene.  This is art for arts’s sake and art for our sake, all in one.  Not to be missed.

Follow up for more understanding and appreciation: Refugia, Homecoming and Maar Bidi, the Next Generation - the poetry by Elfie Shiosaki, Noongar and Yawuru academic, Associate Professor at the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University, interviewed by Rudi Bremer on Awaye, Radio National, Saturday July 20 2024, 6pm (ABC Listen) – on human rights and the ‘future of peace’; about an ecosystem that survives catastrophic climate change.  “Keep the campfire burning” as a fitting ending to 2024 Naidoc week.


Bangarra Dancers:

Lillian Banks; Bradley Smith; Courtney Radford; Kallum Goolagong; Kassidy Waters
Jye Uren; Kiarn Doyle; Maddison Paluch; Daniel Mateo; Emily Flannery
Janaya Lamb; Chatelle Lee Lockhart; James Boyd; Amberlilly Gordon; Lucy May
Donta Whitham

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Midnight Oil - The Hardest Line -

 

 

 

 I can't do better than ask you to read this review by Richard Cotter in the Sydney Arts Guide:

 

at https://sydneyartsguide.com.au/midnight-oil-the-hardest-line 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Master Class by Terrence McNally

 

 

 Master Class by Terrence McNally.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, June 14 – July 20 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 29

Playwright: Terrence McNally
Director: Liesel Badorrek; Assistant Director: Miranda Middleton

Musical Director/Cast/Composer & Sound Designer: Maria Alfonsine
Cast/Composer & Sound Designer: Damian de Boos-Smith
Cast: Elisa Colla; Cast: Lucia Mastrantone
Cast: Bridget Patterson; Cast: Matthew Reardon

Set & Costume Designer: Isabel Hudson; Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik
Lighting Designer: Kelsey Lee

Dialect Coach: Linda Nicholls-Gidley; Operatic Voice Coach: Donna Balson
Theatre Stage Manager: Jen Jackson; Rehearsal Stage Manager: Emily Phillips

Photos: Prudence Upton



I’m not sure if Ensemble Theatre has reverted to the hippy days of collectivism, but their program calls all the cast members merely “Cast”.  I agree all cast members are equal, as performers, but I like to know who played the different characters.  

Maria Alfonsine is the accompanying pianist for Maria Callas’s master classes.  She is astute and careful to play an unassuming role as Manny, recognising Maria’s emotional frailty and providing just the support she needs.

Bridget Patterson as the first inexperienced soprano student, Sophie de Palma, doesn’t understand why her teacher is so uncompromising, and gives up in tears, despite a top-quality singing voice.

Damien de Boos-Smith has no name as the unfortunate comic stagehand that Maria treats as an idiot.  But we also know him as the secret cello player who accompanies Maria Alfonsine so well.

Matthew Reardon is Anthony (Tony) Candolini, the student not only with a tenor voice to die for, but the sense of humour and confidence that his teacher cannot easily deal with.  Perhaps she lets him go because he doesn’t need her; or because she couldn’t teach him if she tried.

Elisa Colla as Sharon Graham is the one that Maria knows will make it as a performer, so long as she can cope with life in the theatre world – on stage and in personal relationships.

Lucia Mastrantone has the role as Maria Callas which links us, in our role as potential Master Class students, to her at the time in her life when her voice, health and personal relationships are failing.  If she cannot perform any longer, perhaps she can at least leave a worthwhile legacy through her master classes for the new performers coming through.

 

Damian de Boos-Smith

Bridget Patterson as Sophie de Palma
with Lucia Manstrantone as Maria Callas

Elisa Colla as Sharon Graham
with Lucia Manstrantone as Maria Callas
and pianist Maria Alfonsine as Manny

Matthew Reardon as Anthony (Tony) Candolini
with Lucia Manstrantone as Maria Callas
and pianist Maria Alfonsine as Manny

Lucia Manstrantone as Maria Callas
with Damian de Boos-Smith (cello) and Maria Alfonsine (piano)

As a one-time drama teacher myself I hear the truth in Maria’s attempts to make her students understand the shift they must make beyond technique, and certainly not by imitation – which my teacher, Anton Witsel, called “acting acting” – into acting from within yourself.

Ton Witsel also warned me of how easy it is in theatre to “fall flat on your face”.  It can happen in the writing.  It can happen in the set design, the costumes design, the directing, and in the actor’s acting.  Theatre is always at risk of a flop.

Terrence McNally could have got it wrong about the real Maria Callas – but he has not written a documentary.  This play is his imagining how things might have gone for her, and these characters are his creation.  The real Maria died of a heart-attack when she was 53 in 1977.  Are these characters costumed as they would have been then?  It doesn’t matter!  But they are costumed just right for the Maria we see to react to them as she does.

But the real risk in performing McNally’s play is that the actors, including whoever plays Maria Callas, have to understand and be able work in the way that Maria says they must.  This means those playing Sophie, Tony and Sharon have to be able to work from within themselves, acting and singing, showing us that their characters don’t understand – yet – how to work from within.

This really is risky theatre.  But, surely thanks to sensitive directing from Liesel Badorrek and Miranda Middleton and the wide range of experiences these actors already have (and presumably how well they learned from their drama teachers), there are no flops here.

Quite the opposite.  The audience rose to their feet in appreciation for a new understanding of this prima donna, not as the difficult personality, nor the aggressive competitor, nor the publicity hound, nor the money-grubber, nor the failure in marriage, but as the woman who found herself, in performing from within, and so became the greatest opera singer, even despite probably the worst that could happen, when her child was still-born.

The season runs until July 20 – there is still time to make the journey to the Kirribilli boathouse, Ensemble Theatre. https://www.ensemble.com.au

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

 

 

 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams.  Free Rain Theatre at ACT Hub June 19-29 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 26

Directed by Anne Somes
Associate Director: Dr Cate Clelland
Set Design: Dr Cate Clelland and Ron Abrahams
Costume Design: Fiona Leach; Lighting Design: Craig Muller
Sound Design: Neville Pye; Sound & Lighting Operator: Maggie Hawkins
Stage Manager: Maggie Hawkins
Vocal and Dialect Coach: Sarah Chalmers; Intimacy Co-ordinator: Karen Vickery
Marketing Director: Olivia Wenholz
Photography: Promotional – Janelle McMenamin; Production – Jane Duong

Cast:                                                            Ensemble:
Amy Kowalczuk as Blanche DuBois         James Morgan
Alex Hoskison as Stanley Kowalski          Mercy Lelei
Meaghan Stewart as Stella Kowalski         David Bennett    
Lachlan Ruffy as Harold Mitchell             Olivia Wenholz
Sarah Hull as Eunice Hubbel                     Rina Onorato
Tim Stiles as Steve Hubbel
Lachlan Elderton as Pablo Gonzales

“I don’t want reality” says Blanche DuBois in – perhaps – one of her more lucid moments.  What makes Free Rain’s production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire brilliant is how real Amy Kowalczuk makes that terribly disturbed character understandable; and how our empathy is engaged by Meaghan Stewart’s realisation of the impossibility of her sister’s situation.
 
Williams, of course, was the brilliant writer.  Perhaps a bit like Blanche he had his fantasies, calling himself “Tennessee” rather than Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), but then becoming considered, along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, one of the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.

Putting this all together I need a better word for the work of all the actors, designers, coaches, managers and directors in this Streetcar – Exquisite.  As in the best-cut jewellery, the natural brilliance is brought out in all the detailed facets.  In this play about the contrasting lives of the two sisters, Blanche and Stella DuBois, the horror of emotional collapse which Amy captures is matched by the struggle Meaghan reveals that we all must face in coming to terms with reality.

And only then do we see it is the same for the men, represented by the man full of self-entitlement, Stanley, whom Stella has married; and Mitchell, hoping for and seeking comfort in Blanche while having to compete with the Stanleys of the male world.

And then it is amazing to reflect on the surrounding figures: the next door neighbours; the poker players; the passers-by in the street, all played with just the right simple clarity by the ensemble members.

I had arrived on a freezing-cold night in a somewhat distant mood at the old wooden Hub.  I left positively excited at how such top quality drama could take me out of the immediate into such a warmer understanding of humanity.  

After that, there are more reasons to see the play and, I think, this production.  Though Free Rain is an amateur company, I would hope that a way can be found to extend the run of their A Streetcar Named Desire, or take it to other venues.  It would certainly suit my favourite intimate theatre, Ensemble, in Sydney.  It’s set would not need much adjustment there, and would also work on stages like the Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse.

The quality of the acting, voice work and movement is all at professional standard.  The fact that this is true of Canberra’s small theatre productions at ACT Hub, The Mill and Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre has been under discussion for a long time, suggesting that we should be touring companies out as well as touring companies in.  In recent times Jordan Best's Playhouse Creatures was taken to the 16th Mondial du Théâtre in Monaco, and toured in Victoria, NSW and Queensland, but it’s a long time now since Women on a Shoestring, when I was writing in 1999:

At the Crossroads, reviewed in The Canberra Times at its first presentation in February 1998, was described as "polished theatre from a longstanding, very experienced team, designed to be toured to city and country venues around Australia".  Based on stories gathered from people in the bush, the play tempered an examination of racist attitudes - through the experience of a middle-class country woman whose mother is Aboriginal - with clever use of humour, movement and song.  How has the tour gone, I wondered, as I sat down at the café in Gorman House to talk with the Women on a Shoestring: Camilla Blunden, Julie Ross and Chrissie Shaw.
[ https://frankmckone2.blogspot.com/search?q=Women+on+a+Shoestring ]

I’m almost an historical monument myself now, but I think the issues of male and female relationships, with some touching on male-male and female-female lived experiences, which are central to the 1947 play by Tennessee Williams, are as important to deal with today is they were then – especially when it comes to women’s emotional and intellectual stability under the new pressures of what is called ‘social’ media and our new understanding of ‘cohesive control’.

As a homosexual man himself (before the word  ‘gay’), and having a sister who may have been a model for Blanche, Williams’ plays are surely exemplary for wider presentation today.  There’s an interesting study at https://theses.cz/id/7ogk1x/Sedlackova_bakalarska_prace.pdf .

And finally, in our local community, this production has a fascinating twist.  How could it be possible that Amy Kowalczuk, whom I mentioned in reviewing her first directing work [ The Boys - http://ccc-canberracriticscircle.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-boys_16.html ], - saying  that many will know her as Amy Dunham.  I must raise the possibility-of-bias flag, since I taught her parents, Kathleen Montgomery and Trevor Dunham, in the first drama class at Hawker College in 1976/77, when they directed, with Sue Richards, the first student written and directed show – a rock/folk musical Anna.  It’s great to see theatrical tradition continuing through the generations. – now has married into the Polish family Kowalczuk!

Not quite Tennessee Williams’ ‘Kowalski’?
Kowalczuk Name Meaning: Polish: patronymic from Kowal ‘blacksmith’. 

https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=Kowalczuk

So there is a special resonance when, in Streetcar, Stanley (what an English-sounding name) yells at Blanche in frustration that “Polish people are called Poles.  I am NOT a Polack.”  Which in Australia in 1947 would have been to call him a Wog.  Wogs in Australia have turned the insult on its head in recent times, as a joke.  Yet I remember, when performing, in 1965, Lick Jimmy, the next-door Chinese greengrocer in Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South, written in 1948, how the way my character was presented – though essentially sympathetically – as a bit of a joke because I couldn’t speak English.  My entrances, exits and returns were only because I had to use the Darcy’s toilet – with appropriate miming choreography.

In Free Rain’s production Alex Hoskison does a terrific job of making the deprecating insult a genuinely serious issue for Stanley Kowalski, as it should be today.  Yet it seems from the political use of anti-immigration sentiment that assumptions about social class and ethnic distinctions are not yet resolved.

In fact, the Poles in Williams’ American city seem to be as poor as the Irish in Ruth Park’s Surry Hills in Sydney in 1948.  Blanche can’t believe that her sister – born into the French slave-owning upper class of the Mississippi – could have married a Polack, even though she admits that their plantation property is ‘lost’.  It is Stanley who intelligently queries what has happened to the money, but Blanche can’t explain.  

So rather than see the play as a social-sexual psychological drama, you may see Blanche’s breakdown as the effect of social change bringing her down from seeing herself as part of French colonial aristocracy – an inevitable social change in an America which has just won World War II.

Stanley, then represents the new sense of self-entitlement that some would say is at the centre of the USA today.

What a play!  What a performance!  What a production success!

L to R: Meaghan Stewart as Stella Kowalski; Alex Hoskison as Stanley Kowalski
Lachlan Ruffy as Harold 'Mitch' Mitchell; Amy Kowalczuk as Blanche DuBois

Amy Kowalczuk as Blanche DuBois; Meaghan Stewart as Stella Kowalski
in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Free Rain Theatre, Canberra 2024
Photos: Jane Duong

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: TNA Budget Post

Posted by Frank McKone - Theatre Network Australia

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: The Actress by Peter Quilter

 

 

The Actress by Peter Quilter.  Canberra Rep, May 2 – 18 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night May 3

CREDITS
Director: Aarne Neeme AM; Director’s Asst: Mandy Brown

Set Designer: Andrew Kay; Set Coordinator: Russell Brown OAM
Costume Designer: Anna Senior OAM
Lighting Designer: Mike Moloney; Sound Designer: Neville Pye
Stage Manager: Paul Jackson

CAST
Lydia – Liz St Clair Long; Katherine – Sally Rynveld; Charles – Saban Berrell
Harriet – Jane Ahlquist; Nicole – Kate Harris; Paul – Rob de Fries; Margaret – Jazmin Skopal



Anton Chekhov is having a bit of a revival on the Canberra scene.  In a kind of parallel to Chaika Theatre’s Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina, the famous actress played by Karen Vickery in their very recent production of Seagull (reviewed here April 11 2024), Peter Quilter’s play The Actress  is about a famous actress, Lydia, played by Liz St Clair Long, ending her career playing Liubov Andryeevna in The Cherry Orchard.

In a cleverly designed set and lighting arrangement, we see Lydia in her long-standing dressing room (at the Old Vic perhaps) where she has installed a very comfortable couch, before going on stage. Then we see her, apparently from backstage, performing towards the end of Chekhov’s Act Two, and returning to her dressing room for interval (ours as well as hers).  We see her on stage, again from behind, in Chekhov’s Act Four, before her last return to her dressing room and her final exit from life as an actress – in parallel to Liuba’s final loss of her cherry orchard.

So Liz St Clair Long is actually an actress playing the fictional once-removed Lydia, an acclaimed actress afraid to go on any more, playing the fictional twice removed Liuba, afraid of what will happen to her, sobbing “Oh my darling, my precious, my beautiful orchard! My life, my youth, my happiness …goodbye!…Goodbye!”

This gives Liz two roles to play, in a sense both at once, with an extra twist at the end of Quilter’s play.  She has left her dressing room forever, but then appears on stage – as Lydia in her final curtain call – giving her farewell speech, but now directly to us, as if we have switched positions from backstage to auditorium and have become her fictional audience.  

And what a wonderful speech it was!  While nutting out what she might say, Lydia thinks Chekhov could write this better.  A nice little joke by Peter Quilter about himself, I guess.

In addition to the success of Liz St Clair Long creating this often difficult character – Lydia is very often very like Liubov Andreyeevna – Aarne Neeme has made sure that The Actress is a comedy.  There are many laughs as Lydia deals over-the-top with her dressing room guests – daughter Nicole, ex-husband Paul, new (old) beau Charles, her director’s lover-offsider theatre manager Margaret, her agent Harriet and her dresser Katherine – much funnier than Chekhov’s often dark, if not entirely black comedy with social criticism built-in.

Lydia’s character could be seen as undermining people’s assumptions about famous people who may not be as perfect as they seem, but Rep’s production sensibly keeps the play more light-hearted.  You will not forget the comfortable couch.

Though it’s not exactly an exciting production – because, I think, the playscript has weaknesses in setting up the relationships between the characters – it’s certainly interesting.  Jane Ahlquist’s agent Harriet is something to behold;  Sally Rynveld’s dresser Katherine puts her famous charge in her place; Jasmin Skopal’s Margaret is suitably annoying, even vindictive; Kate Harris’ daughter Nicole is a rather mixed up young adult which is not surprising when her father Paul, played especially well by Rob de Fries, keeps turning up to mess things up with his now famous ex-wife; while Saban Berrell’s too-nice old admirer now-fiancé Charles quietly engages our sympathy.  How he and Lydia will succeed in having a quiet life of snow and chocolates in Switzerland remains a mystery.

Enjoy. 

 

 

Liz St Clair Long as Lydia
in The Actress by Peter Quilter
Canberra REP 2024
Photo supplied

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Humans 2.0 by Circa

 

 

 Humans 2.0 by Circa.  Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, May 2-4 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night May 2


CREDITS
Director Yaron Lifschitz
Original Music Ori Lichtik; Lighting Designer Paul Jackson
Costume Design Libby McDonnell; Technical Director Jason Organ
Danielle Kellie / Circa Australia & New Zealand
Photos: Lesley Martin; David Kelly

Performed by 10 Circa acrobats


Humans 2.0 is incredible – it is truly unbelievable that this company of dance-drama gymnasts can maintain such energy, such discipline, such complexity of choreography, such humour, and so often create such fear and relief in us, for a straight 70 minutes – and look so much at ease during our ecstatic applause for the group as a whole and for each individual performer in their curtain call.

I had wondered about the title – Humans Two Point Zero – and now I understand its layers of meaning.

The play begins with separated beings and ends with the creation of community.  Humans 1.0, through seeking sincere self-expression and all the possible ways of linking with others – with absolute trust, deep respect, and equal recognition – become Humans 2.0.

At that level, the work of art is the model for us all.  This is human community at its best.  This is what the world should look like.  What we all wish it would look like.  What it could look like.  If only we humans really tried.

Then what is absolutely stunning is to realise that this company of performers actually tried and really succeed as Humans 2.0.  We could see in each performer their personal dedication to self-expression through movement.  We saw their absolute trust in each other, as people were literally flung and caught across the space and balanced up to four high.  We could see the deep respect everyone had for everyone else – forming a bond with enormous strength, emotionally as well as in physical form.

In this company balanced in numbers of women and men, we saw all as equals – in gymnastic skills, in taking real risks, in being supported – and especially in initiating moves and taking responsibility.

Their show is not just an acting out of an idea, as entertainment or even as a moral tale.  Their ensemble teamwork is a demonstration of sincere theatre, which works so well because of the real bond the group has formed in creating the work.

As I left the theatre, returning to concerns with current issues in our society – about coercive control, men’s belief in their entitlement, and their killing of women, for example – I wished that it were possible for everyone in the world to see Circa’s Humans 2.0.  And learn to become Humans, Two Point Zero – please!

Humans 2.0 by Circa

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Billy Elliot - The Musical by Free Rain

 

 

 

 

Billy Elliot – The Musical.  Book and Lyrics by Lee Hall.  Music by Elton John.
Free Rain at Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre,  April 9 – May 5 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 16

CREATIVES
Director: Jarrad West; Asst Director: Jill Young
Musical Directors: Katrina Tang & Caleb Campbell
Choreographer: Michelle Heine
Set Design: Dr Cate Clelland; Costume Design: Tanya Taylor
Lighting Design: Jacob Aquilina; Sound Design: Dillan Willding

ORCHESTRA
Keys 1/Conductor: Caleb Campbell; Keys 2: Vivian Zhu / Katrina Tang
Reed 1: Lara Turner; Reed 2: Caleb Ball
Trumpet: Sam Hutchinson / Elsa Guile
French Horn: Carly Brown / Dianne Tan
Guitar: Dylan Slater / Michael Rushby
Bass: Hayley Manning; Drums: Brandon Reed

CAST
Billy Elliot – Fergus Paterson and Mitchell Clement
Michael Caffrey – Charlie Murphy and Blake Wilkins
Jackie Elliot – Joe Dinn; Tony Elliot – Lachlan Elderton
Mrs Wilkinson – Janie Lawson; Mum – Jo Zaharias
Grandma – Alice Ferguson; Mr Braithwaite – James Tolhurst-Close
Debbie – Zahra Zulkapli and Madison Wilmott

FEATURED ENSEMBLE
David Gambrill, Tim Maher, Thomas Walker
Dave Collins, Sian Harrington, Jordan Dwight

Easington Cast                                  Maltby Cast
Florence Tuli, Addyson Dew             Eleanor Ladewig, Ella Field
Millicent Fitzgerald, Laura Keen       Sophie Kelly, Kaity Hinch-Parr
Rosie Welling, Amber Russell           Mia Veljanovsky, Laney Himpson
Heidi McMullen, Taylor Bollard       Giselle Georges, Ellie Grace de Landre
Caitlin Hunt                                       Bella Henness-Dyer

ENSEMBLE
Ash Syme, James Morgan, Anneliese Soper, Liam Prichard
Cameron Sargeant, Sam Welling, Jackson Dale
Bianca Lawson, Cassie Ramsay



Billy Elliot the Musical is about community.  Not just a coal-mining community in northern England in 1984 where the story is set.

On strike when PM Mrs Thatcher closed the coal mines.

Jarrad West and his huge cast make the evening about celebrating the performing arts in our community right here.

The whole community in Christmas celebrations

The audience in The Q were as energetic and enthusiastic as the onstage dancers, singers and actors in being together.  In community, in action.

It’s the real-life warmth of feeling that flows off the stage that makes this production so enjoyable to see.

The story itself is of a government cruelly destroying a community, and that community is divided even within families, which makes the original movie a tragedy for Billy to fight against.  His need for self-expression and determination to go his own way against the odds makes an engrossing drama.

But watching on a screen, at an emotional distance, means we focus on his individual experience.  In the theatre with a real Billy singing and dancing, real police tap dancing through their duties, and all those young girls showing Billy the way, life is clearly so much more positive – and we are no longer just watching but enjoying with the performers their expression through the art of performing.

And, of course, that’s the other theme of Billy’s success, even at last in his father’s eyes, at least, despite his never really understanding ballet.  The great thing was about seeing (I think on my night) Mitchell Clement as Billy showing exactly what his stage dance teacher Janie Lawson as Mrs Wilkinson sees in him, a potential Royal Ballet School entrant.

Billy ready for audition.  Father still doubtful.

Character acting was also forceful, and engaging at times in less than pleasant situations:

Photos side by side as if
Billy and Grandmother opposed to boxing lessons with Mr Braithwaite and Michael

Billy with his father, brother and dance teacher
Billy Elliot the Musical
Free Rain 2024
Photos supplied

 Overall, a highly successful production of a rather different kind of musical.

 

Concluding thought:

In closing down the coal mines Mrs Thatcher perhaps ironically foreshadowed our need now to close down as much fossil fuel industry as possible.  We can only hope our government can manage the transition to renewables with fair treatment of the communities involved. 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto

 

The Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto. Lexi Sekuless Productions at the Mill Theatre at Dairy Road, Canberra, April 10-27 2024

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 13

Production Team
Director: Lexi Sekuless
Sound Designer and Composer: Leisa Keen
Production Designer: Annette Sharpe
Lighting Designer: Jennifer Wright
Production Stage Manager: Katerina Smalley
Production Photography and Film: Daniel Abroguena
Interviewer voice: Timmy Sekuless
Set Construction: Simon Grist
Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions
Publicity Photographer: Robert Coppa
Publicity Hair and Makeup: Vicky Hayes
Major partner: Elite Event Technology

Cast
Bridie: Andrea Close
Sheila: Zsuzsi Soboslay
Contingency: Tracy Noble

Bridie: Andrea Close,  Sheila: Zsuzsi Soboslay
in Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto
Lexie Seculess Productions 2024
Photo supplied

This is an unusual sonata, being a duet for trumpet and piano.  It’s the story, based on true stories from nurses captured by the Japanese in World War II, of “Bridie” and “Sheila” who saved each other’s lives more than once during the period from 1942 to 1945, following the failure of the British administration and security to prevent Japan’s forces invading Singapore.

Nurses come in different shapes and sizes.  Bridie is tall, a strongly built Australian, a get up and go, let’s do it now no matter what, type of nurse.  She tells it as it is.  We would say, No Bullshit.  

Bridie trumpets at; while the English Sheila is softer and more tuneful, playing her scales for rather than at.  Yet there is a time when her grand opera, a Tchaikovsky 1812, bursts out.  And in the end her quiet secret, kept for 50 years, escapes, and brings Bridie to a new understanding about Sheila’s private strength; and a new self-awareness for herself.

The setting is a television interview with an invisible voice-over asking the questions, sometimes responding to the stories the women tell of what happened to them, as they were shipped out in crowded small boats from Singapore harbour; met each other nearly drowned when the Japanese Air Force fired on and sank their boats; and survived against soldiers and tropical sickness at a secret inland jungle camp with no known end to their incarceration.  Japan’s intention was that all the women (and even their children from Singapore families) would die – but in secret, to avoid the Japanese being called to account for their war crimes.

In the foyer Lexie Seculess has displayed the real diary, kept by the real Betty Jeffrey, writing in pencil on exercise books stolen from the supervising soldiers, amazingly kept and kept secret until publication after the war as White Coolies.  John Misto read this when young – and so began this play.

Betty Jeffrey's diary published as White Coolies

Betty Jeffrey's pencil
Photos: Frank McKone

The fascinating, yet in a sense awful, aspect, while watching the performance (with occasional snippets on a 1960’s tv set of how they looked on screen), is how these traumatic experiences generate both often dreadful criticism of each other at the same time creating an unbreakable bond of mateship.  It is the revelation of the secret Sheila kept for 50 years which seals the bond at last during the interview.  What is revealed is as powerful in its effect on us, watching, as it is for Bridie.

The performances of both Andrea Close and Zsuzsi Soboslay are outstanding.  The Mill Theatre is small and they are very much up close.

Bridie: Andrea Close and Sheila: Zsuzsi Soboslay
in Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto
Lexie Seculess Productions 2024
Photo supplied

And we never miss even the smallest turn away or look towards, expression of concern or sudden anger between these two such different but bound together characters.

You should take the chance as I and others did to meet the actors and director in the foyer after the show.  For me the essential value of our meeting was for the women to explain how the mateship bond in war is so different for women than for men.  These women – those who survived, and those who did not – knew from when they were girls how they were always under threat from men.  So for these women – these actresses – telling the stories of these wartime nurses, the sense of threat and the need to be so brave in the face of an army of men instructed to literally rape and kill, or just leave to die, provided the energy and determination which created their characters with such strength.

And so this play is not merely an historical documentary – which it might look like on an external screen – but becomes a plea for men – in or out of war – to treat women with the respect and honour with which they should treat their own mates.

And in a case of amazing serendipity I have also just reviewed RGB: Of Many, One with precisely the same demand, and warning if we men fail, from eminent human rights lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Don’t miss.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

 

 

 

2024: RGB: Of Many, One by Suzie Miller

 

 

RGB: Of Many, One by Suzie Miller.  Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, April 12-21 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 12

Director Priscilla Jackman
Designer David Fleischer
Lighting Designer Alexander Berlage
Composer & Sound Designer Paul Charlier
Assistant Director Sharon Millerchip
Voice & Accent Coach Jennifer White
Associate Designer (Tour) Emma White
Associate Sound Designer (Tour) Zac Saric

With
Heather Mitchell

Understudy
Lucy Bell

Marketing image Rene Vaile
Production photos Prudence Upton


RGB Of Many, One brings together three extraordinary women – the eminent American lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the international award-winning Australian playwright Suzie Miller; both in the remarkable hands of Australian actor Heather Lee Mitchell AM.

All three are, of course, directed on stage by a fourth woman – Priscilla Jackman, whose website explains: Priscilla is a multidisciplinary director working across theatre, opera and screen. Priscilla is invested in the exchange between performers and audience through a dynamic use of space using traditional and twenty-first century technologies and the hybrid fusion of innovative Arts and theatre practices in Australia.

It’s not surprising, then, for me to have little to say beyond effusive praise for an astounding theatre experience last Friday night.  

I want to use only their first names, rather than their surnames which ironically represent male relatives, even though – wonderfully – Ruth Bader’s marriage to Martin Ginsburg lasted 59 years together and then surely continued in spirit until her death at 87 in 2020.  Though Ruth is remembered as "the Notorious R.B.G.", Heather’s recreation of Ruth’s personality, sense of humour and strategic determination – using far more than just her hands and an amazing array of voices – was the wonder of the night for me.

And, through the telling of her story in such an intense and detailed 1 hour 40 minutes solo performance, reaching an understanding of how women’s human rights have not been put into practice nor even guaranteed in law as they should be.

All four of these women’s lives and work in creating such powerful theatre demonstrate what RGB stood for.  Perhaps the most telling and amusing stories in the play are her interviews with the three US Presidents, William – call me Bill – Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Suzie’s scriptwriting and Priscilla’s directing, as well as the very clever use of props, lighting and sound track, make a very simple stage setting bring out the best in drama – the opportunity for Heather to communicate personally with every member of the audience.  Her Ruth spoke to each of us as a friend who we come to respect – to the point where we need not be sad for her in her dying moments, but proud of all she achieved even while being realistic about what the rule of law can and should mean.  For women, of course – but importantly for us all.

I don’t know how long Heather can continue touring, following her extensive run in 2022, so I have to say do everything you can not to miss the chance of catching up with RGB: Of Many, One.

Heather Mitchell AM
as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in RBG: Of Many, One
Sydney Theatre Company, 2024
Photo: Prudence Upton

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Seagull by Anton Chekhov - Chaika Theatre

 

 

Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, translated by Karen Vickery.  Chaika Theatre at ACT Hub, 14 Apinifex St, Kingston, Canberra April 10-21 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night April 11

Directed by Caitlin Baker and Tony Night
Characters:
Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina – an actress, married surname Trepleva
Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev – Irina's son, a young man
Pyotr Nikolayevich Sorin – Irina's brother, owner of the country estate
Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya – a young woman, the daughter of a rich landowner
Ilya Afanasyevich Shamrayev – a retired lieutenant and the manager of Sorin's estate
Polina Andreyevna – Shamrayev's wife
Masha – her daughter
Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin – a novelist
Yevgeny Sergeyevich Dorn – a doctor
Semyon Semyonovich Medvedenko – a teacher in love with Masha.
    Yakov – a workman
    Cook or Chef
    Maid

Cast:

Joel Horwood – Konstantin (Kostya)
Amy Kowalczuk – Polina
Arran McKenna – Ilya Shamrayev
Neil McLeod – Pyotr Sorin
Natasha Vickery – Nina
Meaghan Stewart – Masha
Michael Sparks – Dr Dorn
James McMahon – Boris Trigorin
Cameron Thomas - Semyon
Karen Vickery - Irina


The translation of Seagull (without ‘The’, since Russian doesn’t use definite articles) into up-to-date OMG educated Canberra English (social platform style) is only problematical if you are like me.

I have always taken it as read that Chekhov, in what he called a comedy, was satirising with serious intent a specific group of people – the upper class Russians of his day, 1895, whose wealth and lives as landed gentry was beginning to disintegrate.  

As Wikipedia describes it: The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplev.

The joke of the day, I guess, was that in the character of Kostya, Anton was satirising himself.  Except that he hadn’t shot himself.

So, does Chaika (ie Seagull) Theatre’s production work today as a satiric comedy?  Yes and No, I think.

Because that kind of landed gentry – especially since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918 – doesn’t exist any more, in Russia or Australia, it’s a bit confusing when they have names and refer to things so obviously Russian while speaking like us.  For Chekhov’s audience, everyone falling so extremely in love with everyone else – and the gunshots as Kostya tries and finally does kill himself – is funny.  

Yet, of course, there is a dark side hinted at in the working class characters: Yakov, the Chef and the Maid.  These are obsequious servants.  In the ‘standard’ translation (Penguin) by Elisaveta Pen, as Irina is packing to leave she gives the Chef a rouble saying, “Here’s a rouble, between you three.”

They reply with Chef: “Thank you kindly, madam.  Good journey to you!  We’re most grateful for your kindness”; Yakov: “God-speed to you!”; while the Maid says nothing.

Without having Karen Vickery’s script to hand, I can’t give details, but she has cut or incorporated these parts into her play.

On the other hand, Vickery has turned Nina’s speeches as “This common soul of the world” in Kostya’s “Decadent School” play where “The souls of Alexander the Great, of Caesar, of Shakespeare, of Napoleon, and of the basest leech are contained in me!” into a plea for action on climate change as “my voice rings dismally through this void unheard by anybody.”

Playing Act One outdoors works very well for creating a sense of reality as the characters come and go to set up the stage near the lake as described by Checkhov.  We had no problem accepting that Trigorin had just ducked down to the lake, the real one, for another spot of fishing, even if it was dark because the moon hadn’t come up as expected – and fortunately Masha’s prediction that there would be a storm didn’t happen.  It felt as though we were not watching actors, but found ourselves among these rather peculiar people in emotional turmoils whom you might easily meet in Kingston on Lake Burley Griffin foreshore.  Though it was amusing when someone said they could hear music, while we heard a not very distant train shunting at Kingston Station and a plane taking off a bit further away at Canberra Airport.

So going back into the theatre felt like going into the family home.  We were in the lounge room, with doors to other rooms and the front door behind us, where we had just come in.

Using modern English certainly worked to make believable characters for us.  Some 30 years ago I worked for Carol Woodrow searching for the least stilted translation of The Seagull for our intended production for her Canberra Theatre Company.  I thought the translation by David Magarshack was better for acting than Elisaveta Pen’s, but that show never went on because a major sponsorship deal unexpectedly fell apart.  

But I suspect that Vickery’s translation is the best for an aspect of the comedy.  The OMG including the occasional F word as a style made characterisations – especially her own performance of Irina, and Joel Horwood’s as Konstantin – forceful without becoming farcical.  Farce may be more funny, while more stilted would have blunted the humour.  The very final scene in this translation and performance was fascinating because everyone’s reactions to the gunshot – from the terribly fearful shock that Natasha Vickery’s Nina must feel when she hears about what has happened,  to the let’s just carry on playing cards from Amy Kowalczuk’s Polina – left us in the audience a bit stunned, not knowing what it all meant or how we should respond, until the lights went out and we realised that’s the end.

This makes this Seagull something more in the line of absurdism – is it funny or is it not?  How should we respond to this relationship quagmire, representing as it does what we see around us all over the world?  What will be the end of that?

This is the strength of the success of this production - that this translation into our language makes Chekhov's play reflect how people around the world are feeling today, facing, as many think, the possibility of World War III.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2024: Potted Potter

 

 

 Potted Potter by Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner.  Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, April 3 – 7, 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night April 4

Creatives
Writers and Co-creators: Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner
Director: Richard Hurst; Associate Director: Hanna Berrigan
Designer: Simon Scullion
Lighting Designer: Tim Mascall; Composer: Phil Innes
Production Relighter: Andrew Haden; Line Producer: Jared Harford
Producer: James Seabright


Cast
Scott Hoatson (as “Scott” playing Harry Potter and others)
Brendan Murphy (as “Brendan” playing Voldemort and all the others)
Alternate: Jacob Jackson



The most serious thing I can say about the ‘parody’ of all seven Harry Potter books in seventy minutes is that it’s just too funny for words.  This may make my review seem as silly as the show itself – except that Potted Potter is not as silly as it looks.

Written by the British equivalents of our ABC’s Playschool presenters, known on the Children’s BBC as Dan and Jeff, behind the entertainment of the whole theatre audience excitedly playing Quidditch and the whole show being “A fabulously funny parody [which] will tickle the funny bone of every age group” (as the London Daily Telegraph puts it), it’s very clear if you think about it that Clarkson and Turner have two intentions.

The first is educational for the younger readers.  The show makes the acceptance of violence and death so ridiculous that it takes on the quality of that old cartoon “Stop laughing.  This is serious”.

For the grown-ups there is the final song “We will survive” with the line “She will survive!”  

Played with a Scottish accent, Scott as “Scott” admits he has lied about knowing J.K.Rowling personally.  This had made Brendan, as “Brendan” believe that “Scott” was a real expert, but now discovers he tells a lie to make himself seem more important than he really is.

“Scott” admits he doesn’t even know what the J and K stand for.  But in the song, it’s all about the threat to Harry, the death of Dumbledore, and when Voldemort attempted to kill Harry, his curse rebounded, seemingly killing Voldemort, and Harry survived with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead [which] made Harry famous among the community of wizards and witches. (Wikipedia)

All written by J.K.Rowling – but who will survive?  She, who has made a mint and reputation out of these morally questionable stories, is the only one to survive.

Indeed, since 2016 she has written another seven works after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in a new era of the Wizarding World, put out by global digital Pottermore Publishing.

It’s interesting to note (not mentioned in Potted Potter) that J.K.Rowling also pretends to be “Robert Galbraith” in the Cormoran Strike series of classic contemporary crime fiction – another set of seven.  

Perhaps Dan and Jeff might consider another parody?  

But I wonder, as probably much the oldest audience member (even older then Dumbledore), how on earth they can keep up the energy for this tour:
04 – 07 Apr Canberra, ACT Theatre Centre
12 – 21 Apr Sydney, NSW Seymour Centre
24 Apr – 05 May Melbourne, VIC Athenaeum Theatre
08 – 12 May Adelaide, SA Festival Centre
23 – 26 May Perth, WA State Theatre Centre

I hope they survive, for they actually made me stop thinking for 70 minutes about the dreadful violence and death going on all around us – until I began to see that Mr Netanyahu thinks he is Harry Potter, using his latest wizardry to eliminate his Voldemort with help from the bumbling Dumbledore of the White House Castle.

The skills of these performers, Scott Hoatson and Brendan Murphy, as interpreters of such clever scriptwriting but especially also as improvisers working a full-house audience, gave me a great feeling of relief through spontaneous laughter that everyone needs.  Though at some extreme absurdist point in the show, Scott exclaims that ‘theatre is the victim here’, the terrible irony is that, to paraphrase The Beatles, ‘all we need is theatre’ – to bring us to our senses.

Please don’t miss Potted Potter.

©Frank McKone, Canberra