Shorter+Sweeter. 9 short plays from the Short+Sweet Festival at Canberra Playhouse Tuesday June 3 to Saturday June 7, 8pm.
This is entertainment plus, certainly in short chunks but not sweet in the sentimental sense.
Mark Cleary’s Upwardly with Sophie Cook is an opening that rings true. In Moving Fast by Adam Gelin, Roger (Alan Flower) shows Susan (Olivia Solomon) how easy it is to change the world. Changing residences is a bargain of sorts for Louie (Sophie Cook) and Betty (Christine Greenough) in Catherine Cresswell’s This Bitch Called Home. The last moments of the dog, in Borys the Rottweiler, by Christopher Johnson, are played with great tenderness by Heath Wilder, while Matthew (Johan Walraven) has just the technique to soften the shock for Claire (Sophie Cook) of waking up in his bed, in Saturday Night Newtown, Sunday Morning Enmore by Alex Broun, with no idea how she got there.
After a decent interval, the six actors give us the amusing musical solution to The Keys to the Mystic Halls of Time by Matt Casarino, the frightening experience of a briefcase on a train platform in The Example by Tom Taylor, the horror of Himmler’s lampshade in Relics by Iain Triffitt and Brett Danalake, and the final embarrassment of Adam and Eve in Paradise by Steven Hopley.
Felicity Burke and Alex Galeazzi are directors in addition to Cleary, Gelin and Cresswell.
The Short+Sweet Festival is a great example of professional-standard independent theatre which has grown out of the demise of the Sydney Festival Fringe. Over 200 plays are premiered in Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore each year, with plans for expansion to Malaysia and other countries. This program is a selection of nine of the best, gaining funding support from Playing Australia and Arts on Tour NSW as well as corporate sponsorship. They are sharply observed, humorous, ironic and touching scripts, well deserving of this support and the cooperative arrangements provided by the Canberra Theatre Centre.
Variations on the theme are the ShortSweet+Song Festival held at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, in March, sponsored by the Australian Institute of Music, and the Fast+Fresh Festival for writers and performers under 18. This should be of great interest to Canberra’s college drama departments. The ten-minute script is a disciplined constraint and a great learning device. Go to www.shortandsweet.org/fast-and-fresh .
And in the meantime don’t miss Shorter+Sweeter - the best of the best.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Friday, 9 May 2008
2008: Pink Floyd’s The Wall by Roger Waters
Pink Floyd’s The Wall by Roger Waters. Additional material by David Gilmour and Bob Ezrin. Original adaptation and direction by Ron Dowd, music arranged by Ewan Putnam-Hargreaves and directed by Garrick Smith, choreography by Belynda Buck, costumes by Suzan Cooper, set design by Brian Sudding, Ron Dowd and Ian Croker, lighting design by Chris Neal, audio design by Chris Shackleton. Supa Productions in association with ANU and papermoon at ANU Arts Centre Wed-Sat May 9-24, 8pm, Sat matinees 2pm. Bookings: 1300 737 363 or Dinner and Show at Vivaldi’s 6257 2718.
What I like about this show is that now I understand what The Wall is all about. Dowd’s new stage version fixes the two problems I had with the original Pink Floyd presentations. On stage in the 1980s the band sang and played with exciting, often explosive, visuals. In the film, realistic short scenes had the songs as a soundtrack, which oddly kept the emotions cooled. Dowd tells the story, and at last the drama is integrated with the music. The songs are his characters’ dialogue, and we understand what they mean.
We see Pink struggling to maintain his sanity against his mother’s need to protect him, his teachers’ need to make him conform, his record industry’s managers’ need to profit from his talent, his realisation that the World War 2 in which his father died was global madness, his sense of guilt for not being able to relate to his wife with the sensitivity she deserves. No wonder he builds a wall to try to hide behind. George Huitker does an excellent job representing this character, unable in the end to resist the power seen on stage in the evil figure of the MC, the Master of Ceremonies, who revels in Pink’s destruction as the Wall collapses to the sound of the atomic bomb explosions which brought WW2 to its bitter end.
Especially impressive is the quality of the musicianship from the band and the singers. The ANU Arts Centre has the feel of the huge concerts of yesteryear, yet we are close and intimate enough, for example, to feel for mother, the young Pink and the adult Pink as Kath Dunham, Will Huang and Huitker sing this complex trio in the song Mother. As Pink himself turns into the fascist he hates, we feel directly threatened, personally guilty that we daily play our part on the side of the MC and do not protect and support the artist.
Supa have made real music theatre in The Wall. Don’t imagine you need to be a Pink Floyd fan to appreciate this work. Dowd’s adaptation brings Roger Waters’ creation to life, Putnam-Hargreaves’ arrangement is top concert rock - sounding better to me than Waters himself, the lighting, set design, choreography and costumes are dramatic in their own right, the musicians and singers perform their hearts out. Don’t miss it.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
What I like about this show is that now I understand what The Wall is all about. Dowd’s new stage version fixes the two problems I had with the original Pink Floyd presentations. On stage in the 1980s the band sang and played with exciting, often explosive, visuals. In the film, realistic short scenes had the songs as a soundtrack, which oddly kept the emotions cooled. Dowd tells the story, and at last the drama is integrated with the music. The songs are his characters’ dialogue, and we understand what they mean.
We see Pink struggling to maintain his sanity against his mother’s need to protect him, his teachers’ need to make him conform, his record industry’s managers’ need to profit from his talent, his realisation that the World War 2 in which his father died was global madness, his sense of guilt for not being able to relate to his wife with the sensitivity she deserves. No wonder he builds a wall to try to hide behind. George Huitker does an excellent job representing this character, unable in the end to resist the power seen on stage in the evil figure of the MC, the Master of Ceremonies, who revels in Pink’s destruction as the Wall collapses to the sound of the atomic bomb explosions which brought WW2 to its bitter end.
Especially impressive is the quality of the musicianship from the band and the singers. The ANU Arts Centre has the feel of the huge concerts of yesteryear, yet we are close and intimate enough, for example, to feel for mother, the young Pink and the adult Pink as Kath Dunham, Will Huang and Huitker sing this complex trio in the song Mother. As Pink himself turns into the fascist he hates, we feel directly threatened, personally guilty that we daily play our part on the side of the MC and do not protect and support the artist.
Supa have made real music theatre in The Wall. Don’t imagine you need to be a Pink Floyd fan to appreciate this work. Dowd’s adaptation brings Roger Waters’ creation to life, Putnam-Hargreaves’ arrangement is top concert rock - sounding better to me than Waters himself, the lighting, set design, choreography and costumes are dramatic in their own right, the musicians and singers perform their hearts out. Don’t miss it.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 8 May 2008
2008: It Was That Way When I Got Here by Andrew Hackwill and Jonathan Flack
It Was That Way When I Got Here. Musical comedy written and directed by Andrew Hackwill and Jonathan Flack. A PhoenixRising world premiere, Phoenix Players at Theatre 3, May 8, 9 and 10 at 8pm; 10 and 11 at 2pm.
It’s hard to imagine such a zany funny musical running for only five performances. Under the direction of Ian McLean the 1st XV Orchestra is terrific, there is a wealth of good singing from men and women, costumes by Christine Pawlicki are bright and hilarious, dancing is disciplined (by Lisa Buckley), set (by Brian Sudding) is simple, lit well and works perfectly.
The songs are witty, reminding me of anything from Gilbert and Sullivan to My Fair Lady, and each is a take-off of a different style from Gospel to Sondheim, with a special nod at the smooth Dean Martin. The plot is a bit hard to follow at times, but that is as it should be in this wildly multicultural school which I could only see as a truly Australian iconoclastic kind-of Catholic version of Vicar of Dibley madness. Certainly not politically correct, and with many sexual references.
The only problem on opening night was audio balance - the band often drowned the singers - made worse by radio mikes working intermittently. But the cast were so well-rehearsed that no-one missed a beat. Though, at the end of the day, this is a production by a local community theatre group with the attendant difficulties that a fully professional theatre company would not face, I am sure there would be a willing audience for a longer season which the commitment and obvious enjoyment of the cast and musicians deserve.
The Phoenix Players’ PhoenixRising program to help new writers get their work on stage has paid off with It Was That Way When I Got Here. It’s thoroughly madcap, but there is some method after all in a priestly-robed school principal carrying his “bible”, entitled Religion for Dummies. Enough said. Enjoy.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
It’s hard to imagine such a zany funny musical running for only five performances. Under the direction of Ian McLean the 1st XV Orchestra is terrific, there is a wealth of good singing from men and women, costumes by Christine Pawlicki are bright and hilarious, dancing is disciplined (by Lisa Buckley), set (by Brian Sudding) is simple, lit well and works perfectly.
The songs are witty, reminding me of anything from Gilbert and Sullivan to My Fair Lady, and each is a take-off of a different style from Gospel to Sondheim, with a special nod at the smooth Dean Martin. The plot is a bit hard to follow at times, but that is as it should be in this wildly multicultural school which I could only see as a truly Australian iconoclastic kind-of Catholic version of Vicar of Dibley madness. Certainly not politically correct, and with many sexual references.
The only problem on opening night was audio balance - the band often drowned the singers - made worse by radio mikes working intermittently. But the cast were so well-rehearsed that no-one missed a beat. Though, at the end of the day, this is a production by a local community theatre group with the attendant difficulties that a fully professional theatre company would not face, I am sure there would be a willing audience for a longer season which the commitment and obvious enjoyment of the cast and musicians deserve.
The Phoenix Players’ PhoenixRising program to help new writers get their work on stage has paid off with It Was That Way When I Got Here. It’s thoroughly madcap, but there is some method after all in a priestly-robed school principal carrying his “bible”, entitled Religion for Dummies. Enough said. Enjoy.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 2 May 2008
2008: Rebel Without a Cause by James Fuller
Rebel Without a Cause by James Fuller, based on the screenplay by Stewart Stern from an adaptation by Irving Shulman from a story by Nicholas Ray. Free-Rain Theatre directed by Anne Somes. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre, May 1-17, 2008, Thursdays-Saturdays 8pm, Pay What You Can Wednesdays 6.30pm, Matinees Saturdays May 10 and 17 2pm. Bookings 6275 2700.
The stage adaptation of this 1955 film is a comic strip version, a storyboard designed to show the key bits of the plot and make sure we get the message that teenagers must break parental bonds. In an America where mothers keep handguns and classmates sport flick knives as a matter of course, young men’s lives are at risk as they establish their independent pecking order. Jim wins his Judy, while gangleader Buzz and oddball Plato die.
Director Somes rose to the challenge of making this unlikely material work. Avoiding naturalism, stylising the action - down to almost choreographed staccato movement even including scene changes, using exaggerated New York accents, projected images and dramatic background music, set in lots of symbolic black and contrasting red, Somes stirs our emotions and builds a surprising level of tension in the final scene despite the absurdity of the situation as, next to Plato’s dead body, Jim hugs his reconciled parents and introduces Judy to them. With dancing and singing, it could almost have been West Side Story, except that would have made it a parody.
Is the play still relevant? Perhaps. The simple clarity of this production makes us think. Rebel Without a Cause could mean that Jim and Judy had no real reason to reject their parents’ behaviour. Yet we see parents who reject their children’s behaviour, or can’t talk to them sensibly about social realities. Or the title could mean that if you are going to rebel, you should have a definite aim to achieve - a cause celebre. But all Jim can say is that although he has everything and is “well fed”, he just feels like a “tiger in a cage” and has to escape. Is this all that a wealthy society can offer? To escape with no idea of what to do next, except fall in love, become parents and go round the cycle again, is a bleak view of life.
Or maybe to binge-drink or, tragically, [currently in the news] take 14 people out on Sydney Harbour in a stolen unsuitable runabout at 2am? Is that the best we can offer fifty years later? Maybe Free-Rain’s showing us Rebel Without a Cause does have a point. It makes us think.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
The stage adaptation of this 1955 film is a comic strip version, a storyboard designed to show the key bits of the plot and make sure we get the message that teenagers must break parental bonds. In an America where mothers keep handguns and classmates sport flick knives as a matter of course, young men’s lives are at risk as they establish their independent pecking order. Jim wins his Judy, while gangleader Buzz and oddball Plato die.
Director Somes rose to the challenge of making this unlikely material work. Avoiding naturalism, stylising the action - down to almost choreographed staccato movement even including scene changes, using exaggerated New York accents, projected images and dramatic background music, set in lots of symbolic black and contrasting red, Somes stirs our emotions and builds a surprising level of tension in the final scene despite the absurdity of the situation as, next to Plato’s dead body, Jim hugs his reconciled parents and introduces Judy to them. With dancing and singing, it could almost have been West Side Story, except that would have made it a parody.
Is the play still relevant? Perhaps. The simple clarity of this production makes us think. Rebel Without a Cause could mean that Jim and Judy had no real reason to reject their parents’ behaviour. Yet we see parents who reject their children’s behaviour, or can’t talk to them sensibly about social realities. Or the title could mean that if you are going to rebel, you should have a definite aim to achieve - a cause celebre. But all Jim can say is that although he has everything and is “well fed”, he just feels like a “tiger in a cage” and has to escape. Is this all that a wealthy society can offer? To escape with no idea of what to do next, except fall in love, become parents and go round the cycle again, is a bleak view of life.
Or maybe to binge-drink or, tragically, [currently in the news] take 14 people out on Sydney Harbour in a stolen unsuitable runabout at 2am? Is that the best we can offer fifty years later? Maybe Free-Rain’s showing us Rebel Without a Cause does have a point. It makes us think.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 12 April 2008
2008: Berlin Cabaret of Desire by Paul Barrett, John Verryt and Jennifer Ward-Lealand
Berlin Cabaret of Desire conceived by Paul Barrett, John Verryt and Jennifer Ward-Lealand of Silo Theatre, Auckland. Directed by Naomi Brouwer at The Street Theatre, April 11-12, 15-19, 22-26, 2008, at 8pm, Matinees: 13 & 20 April at 4pm.
Bookings: 6247 1223 or online www.thestreet.org.au
Silo Theatre has an established program dedicated to presenting what I might call Art Theatre. The nearest equivalent in Sydney might be Belvoir B. The Street Theatre has a program made up by collecting all sorts of productions for a wide range of audiences. This presentation of Berlin Cabaret of Desire is a brave attempt, reasonably successful, but unable to match the quality required by the material.
Prior publicity gave the impression that we would experience the “lust and anarchy of the Weimar Republic”, but the show consists of songs by Mischa Spoliansky, Frederick Hollander and Kurt Weill whose work focussed on biting political satire, some of which originally appeared in Berlin cabarets in the 1920s and 1930s, while much of Weill’s work was written for plays by Bertolt Brecht. Of the three singers, Stephen Anderson was the most consistent, Justine Campbell succeeded in the lighter comedy, while both Campbell and Ruth Rogers-Wright struggled, though sincerely, with the more difficult Weill material in particular.
The band was rarely able to produce the gutsy harshness of tone and rhythm which Weill requires, being rather too smooth and sonorous, though the music certainly held the show together, and its leader Tim Hansen on piano made a successful MC.
The result overall was enjoyable, while the aerial acrobatic performances by Tyler Ayres were exciting. Even though it was not clear why these were included, Ayres’ fluidity of movement and demanding choreography focussed attention and justifiably received the most applause. The other highlights, in my view, were the song of hypocrisy and democracy - Hollander’s Oh How We Wish That We Were Kids Again - and the beautifully sung but by now ironic ending, Die Lorelei.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Bookings: 6247 1223 or online www.thestreet.org.au
Silo Theatre has an established program dedicated to presenting what I might call Art Theatre. The nearest equivalent in Sydney might be Belvoir B. The Street Theatre has a program made up by collecting all sorts of productions for a wide range of audiences. This presentation of Berlin Cabaret of Desire is a brave attempt, reasonably successful, but unable to match the quality required by the material.
Prior publicity gave the impression that we would experience the “lust and anarchy of the Weimar Republic”, but the show consists of songs by Mischa Spoliansky, Frederick Hollander and Kurt Weill whose work focussed on biting political satire, some of which originally appeared in Berlin cabarets in the 1920s and 1930s, while much of Weill’s work was written for plays by Bertolt Brecht. Of the three singers, Stephen Anderson was the most consistent, Justine Campbell succeeded in the lighter comedy, while both Campbell and Ruth Rogers-Wright struggled, though sincerely, with the more difficult Weill material in particular.
The band was rarely able to produce the gutsy harshness of tone and rhythm which Weill requires, being rather too smooth and sonorous, though the music certainly held the show together, and its leader Tim Hansen on piano made a successful MC.
The result overall was enjoyable, while the aerial acrobatic performances by Tyler Ayres were exciting. Even though it was not clear why these were included, Ayres’ fluidity of movement and demanding choreography focussed attention and justifiably received the most applause. The other highlights, in my view, were the song of hypocrisy and democracy - Hollander’s Oh How We Wish That We Were Kids Again - and the beautifully sung but by now ironic ending, Die Lorelei.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 4 April 2008
2008: Chloe Dallimore in Cabaret
Chloe Dallimore in Cabaret with David Cashman on piano. Teatro Vivaldi dinner and show, April 4-5, 2008.
Cuisine - exciting; entertainment - dull. Go for the dinner, not for the show.
My title would be Stagestruck – The Musical. Plot consists of random name-dropping anecdotes (Patrick Swayze, Liza Minelli etc. etc. etc.), regular reminders that Chloe goes to New York, details of David’s car deodorant.
Action consists of incy-wincy spider type arm movements, with occasional whole body shimmers – sexy or funny (or superficially titillating) according to your taste. Dallimore’s voice in low register is strong for easy listening, but at big stage volume and high pitch in this intimate venue her tone loses roundness and becomes mere blast.
Dallimore’s main claim to fame is for her comic Swedish character, Ulla, in The Producers, but even her brief demonstration which concludes this show was no more than mildly funny. She began with what promised to be an interesting interpretation of All That Jazz, until it rose into blast-level volume without feeling. Too many songs had the same format, while those that avoided blast, such as My One True Friend, turned all gooey and sentimental.
The most dramatic moment was when singer and pianist lost contact and their place and had to start again. Irony stepped in with Bette Midler’s words “let me stumble, and be surprised”.
The patter was mere pitter-patter, coming over as little homilies, rather condescending to us on the receiving end – even though she praised us for being a “magical” audience at the end. Though some responded as expected to the mention of celebrities, applause was not much more than polite.
My conclusion is that Dallimore should stick to the big musical stage. She does not have the warmth and directness of communication with an audience needed for intimate cabaret, nor has she put together a dramatic narrative for her songs to give the evening a sense of drive and purpose. The result is bland, in great contrast with the atmosphere, and the cooking, at Teatro Vivaldi.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Cuisine - exciting; entertainment - dull. Go for the dinner, not for the show.
My title would be Stagestruck – The Musical. Plot consists of random name-dropping anecdotes (Patrick Swayze, Liza Minelli etc. etc. etc.), regular reminders that Chloe goes to New York, details of David’s car deodorant.
Action consists of incy-wincy spider type arm movements, with occasional whole body shimmers – sexy or funny (or superficially titillating) according to your taste. Dallimore’s voice in low register is strong for easy listening, but at big stage volume and high pitch in this intimate venue her tone loses roundness and becomes mere blast.
Dallimore’s main claim to fame is for her comic Swedish character, Ulla, in The Producers, but even her brief demonstration which concludes this show was no more than mildly funny. She began with what promised to be an interesting interpretation of All That Jazz, until it rose into blast-level volume without feeling. Too many songs had the same format, while those that avoided blast, such as My One True Friend, turned all gooey and sentimental.
The most dramatic moment was when singer and pianist lost contact and their place and had to start again. Irony stepped in with Bette Midler’s words “let me stumble, and be surprised”.
The patter was mere pitter-patter, coming over as little homilies, rather condescending to us on the receiving end – even though she praised us for being a “magical” audience at the end. Though some responded as expected to the mention of celebrities, applause was not much more than polite.
My conclusion is that Dallimore should stick to the big musical stage. She does not have the warmth and directness of communication with an audience needed for intimate cabaret, nor has she put together a dramatic narrative for her songs to give the evening a sense of drive and purpose. The result is bland, in great contrast with the atmosphere, and the cooking, at Teatro Vivaldi.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
2008: Menopause the Musical by Jeanie Linders
Menopause the Musical by Jeanie Linders. Director Gary Young, musical director Paul Keelan, choreographer Andrew Hallsworth. Presented by G4 Productions at The Playhouse, Tue & Thu-Fri 8pm, Wed 1pm & 8pm, Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 2pm, February 19 – March 2. Bookings 6275 2700.
A woman friend wondered why a man “was sent” to review this high energy “hilarious celebration of women and The Change”. I wasn’t sent. I chose to go, and when I discovered that the director of the Australian production, and the musical director, and the choreographer are all men, I certainly didn’t feel out of place. Having passed, vicariously, through menopause myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the celebration, though not with quite the same sense of identity experienced by many in the audience who clapped, cheered and whistled throughout the show.
The four performers in the Canberra season, Caroline Gillmer (The Power Woman), Carolyn Waddell (The Earth Mother), Donna Lee (The Dubbo Housewife) and Vivien Davies (The Soap Star) are a well-bonded team, all highly skilled singers, dancers and comedians. On opening night I found myself watching the Dubbo Housewife the most, maybe because this character has the most change to go through, from inhibited mouse to shaking all over, but also because Lee communicated so directly with the audience in every scene. Gillmer, I thought, was the most versatile singer. Her Fever was imbued with deeply felt hot flushes. It was great comedy, yet sung with a strength reminiscent of the original Peggy Lee.
Being of a certain age myself, audio quality can be an issue. Volume was no problem. Perhaps there was more than strictly necessary in the relatively small Playhouse. But I find the use of face-microphones a bit disconcerting, because the sound comes down from somewhere on high instead of from the mouths of the actors. These mics have become the norm, but I think a well-mixed array of directed shotgun mics, especially with such good singers in this theatre, can produce realistic stereo and make the sound warmer.
I also think the show lacks a strong story-line, making it basically a song-and-dance show rather than a traditional musical. After the celebration, worthy though that is, and the excellent comic performances, I’m left feeling a bit distant without a gutsy story to remember and reflect on. But maybe, that’s entertainment, and the show should certainly go on.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
A woman friend wondered why a man “was sent” to review this high energy “hilarious celebration of women and The Change”. I wasn’t sent. I chose to go, and when I discovered that the director of the Australian production, and the musical director, and the choreographer are all men, I certainly didn’t feel out of place. Having passed, vicariously, through menopause myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the celebration, though not with quite the same sense of identity experienced by many in the audience who clapped, cheered and whistled throughout the show.
The four performers in the Canberra season, Caroline Gillmer (The Power Woman), Carolyn Waddell (The Earth Mother), Donna Lee (The Dubbo Housewife) and Vivien Davies (The Soap Star) are a well-bonded team, all highly skilled singers, dancers and comedians. On opening night I found myself watching the Dubbo Housewife the most, maybe because this character has the most change to go through, from inhibited mouse to shaking all over, but also because Lee communicated so directly with the audience in every scene. Gillmer, I thought, was the most versatile singer. Her Fever was imbued with deeply felt hot flushes. It was great comedy, yet sung with a strength reminiscent of the original Peggy Lee.
Being of a certain age myself, audio quality can be an issue. Volume was no problem. Perhaps there was more than strictly necessary in the relatively small Playhouse. But I find the use of face-microphones a bit disconcerting, because the sound comes down from somewhere on high instead of from the mouths of the actors. These mics have become the norm, but I think a well-mixed array of directed shotgun mics, especially with such good singers in this theatre, can produce realistic stereo and make the sound warmer.
I also think the show lacks a strong story-line, making it basically a song-and-dance show rather than a traditional musical. After the celebration, worthy though that is, and the excellent comic performances, I’m left feeling a bit distant without a gutsy story to remember and reflect on. But maybe, that’s entertainment, and the show should certainly go on.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 15 February 2008
2008: Face Value by Australian Theatre of the Deaf
Face Value by Australian Theatre of the Deaf. National Multicultural Festival at The Street Theatre, February 15 and 16.
Face Value is an engaging humorous theatre-in-education show about prejudice, focussing on relationships between “hearies” and “deafies”.
Members of the audience participate, being invited to turn around signs such as “Stereotype” or “Archetype”. On the reverse of the stereotypes are situations like driving, on the internet, in class, diving, in a nightclub, ignorance at high school. The three performers act out two scenes for each heading, one as hearies and one as deafies. Archetypes have names of successful deaf people on the reverse. An audience member is invited on stage to take the podium as if being filmed and reads an information sheet about heroic people.
The show begins with a set of pictures:
Which is the blind person? Which is the Muslim person? And finally, which is the deaf person? The fact that deaf people are not obvious is the source of much of the difficulty they face with hearing people, demonstrated in the acted out scenes. Sample scenes are performed first, showing the frustrations and aggressiveness of hearies. At the end, after the message has been presented in the stereotype scenes, the same sample scenes are shown with sensible hearies who understand that being deaf does not mean being stupid or deliberately obstructive.
The young performers, Bowyn, Michael and Bethany, were expert in mime and communicating with the audience. A sense of fun combined with neatly designed set and props makes an hour seem short, and the message comes through clearly.
I would recommend AToD very highly for schools or perhaps teenage clubs. Details:
Years: 7—12
Duration: 50 minutes + Q & A
Cost: $5.00 per student
Minimum Cost: $600.00 per show (Fees for non school shows by negotiation).
Max. Audience: 300
Teachers’ Kit: Comprehensive kit with activities, information about deaf issues and the issue of prejudice behind the title Face Value.
Requirements: Area 6m x 6m, power outlet, 45 minute set up time
http://www.ozdeaftheatre.com/school/highschool.htm
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Face Value is an engaging humorous theatre-in-education show about prejudice, focussing on relationships between “hearies” and “deafies”.
Members of the audience participate, being invited to turn around signs such as “Stereotype” or “Archetype”. On the reverse of the stereotypes are situations like driving, on the internet, in class, diving, in a nightclub, ignorance at high school. The three performers act out two scenes for each heading, one as hearies and one as deafies. Archetypes have names of successful deaf people on the reverse. An audience member is invited on stage to take the podium as if being filmed and reads an information sheet about heroic people.
The show begins with a set of pictures:
Which is the blind person? Which is the Muslim person? And finally, which is the deaf person? The fact that deaf people are not obvious is the source of much of the difficulty they face with hearing people, demonstrated in the acted out scenes. Sample scenes are performed first, showing the frustrations and aggressiveness of hearies. At the end, after the message has been presented in the stereotype scenes, the same sample scenes are shown with sensible hearies who understand that being deaf does not mean being stupid or deliberately obstructive.
The young performers, Bowyn, Michael and Bethany, were expert in mime and communicating with the audience. A sense of fun combined with neatly designed set and props makes an hour seem short, and the message comes through clearly.
I would recommend AToD very highly for schools or perhaps teenage clubs. Details:
Years: 7—12
Duration: 50 minutes + Q & A
Cost: $5.00 per student
Minimum Cost: $600.00 per show (Fees for non school shows by negotiation).
Max. Audience: 300
Teachers’ Kit: Comprehensive kit with activities, information about deaf issues and the issue of prejudice behind the title Face Value.
Requirements: Area 6m x 6m, power outlet, 45 minute set up time
http://www.ozdeaftheatre.com/school/highschool.htm
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
2008: We Don’t Need Another Euro by Shortis & Simpson
We Don’t Need Another Euro by Shortis & Simpson at Teatro Vivaldi. Wednesday February 13, Friday 15 and Saturday 16 at 7pm for 3 course dinner and show; Saturday February 16 at 2pm for show and high tea. Bookings 6257 2718.
John Shortis and Moya Simpson are icons of Canberra culture, and ditto for dinner at Teatro Vivaldi. This is an enjoyable night out aurally, visually, multiculturally and degustationally. That’s French for wine tasting (ask for the shiraz from Young), but my dictionary says “wine tasting etc”. Vivaldi’s Pacific nouveau cuisine was a lot more than etc and ought not to be missed. High tea on Saturday could be your high point of the week.
Talking of high points, I have to say Moya couldn’t quite match the piercing quality of Cilla Black, which was probably just as well in a small venue. But she captured Judith Durham in The Carnival is Over just right. If you are wondering what happened to the Shortis & Simpson political commentary, just relax. We Don’t Need Another Euro is a whimsical humorous history of European songs which became popular worldwide. You will be surprised, very surprised, at the origin of the Muppets singing Mahna Mahna, which you will enjoy singing yourself while watching Moya recreate a scene from an Italian film set in a Swedish sauna.
Two other high points are the inclusion in the show of special guests. Canbelto a cappella singers joined in for a wonderfully rhythmic and harmonic rendition of the eastern Mediterranean song which became the Australian surfing anthem Bombora. Louise Page, singing the original 17th Century Plaisir d’Amour, was just stunning, and what a beautiful contrast to Simpson’s Elvis Presley singing Can’t Help Falling in Love.
Simpson’s voice seems to me to range more widely as the years go on. Shortis’s research required her to sing in so many languages she became a feature of the Multicultural Festival in her own right. Her comic timing was just right, yet I think a highlight for me, immediately after a frantic New Yorker translating from the original French, was a genuinely affecting performance of Autumn Leaves, in Johnny Mercer’s English and the French of Jacques Prévert.
There’s far more I could tell you, but it would be better to see the show, and enjoy the meal, for yourself.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
John Shortis and Moya Simpson are icons of Canberra culture, and ditto for dinner at Teatro Vivaldi. This is an enjoyable night out aurally, visually, multiculturally and degustationally. That’s French for wine tasting (ask for the shiraz from Young), but my dictionary says “wine tasting etc”. Vivaldi’s Pacific nouveau cuisine was a lot more than etc and ought not to be missed. High tea on Saturday could be your high point of the week.
Talking of high points, I have to say Moya couldn’t quite match the piercing quality of Cilla Black, which was probably just as well in a small venue. But she captured Judith Durham in The Carnival is Over just right. If you are wondering what happened to the Shortis & Simpson political commentary, just relax. We Don’t Need Another Euro is a whimsical humorous history of European songs which became popular worldwide. You will be surprised, very surprised, at the origin of the Muppets singing Mahna Mahna, which you will enjoy singing yourself while watching Moya recreate a scene from an Italian film set in a Swedish sauna.
Two other high points are the inclusion in the show of special guests. Canbelto a cappella singers joined in for a wonderfully rhythmic and harmonic rendition of the eastern Mediterranean song which became the Australian surfing anthem Bombora. Louise Page, singing the original 17th Century Plaisir d’Amour, was just stunning, and what a beautiful contrast to Simpson’s Elvis Presley singing Can’t Help Falling in Love.
Simpson’s voice seems to me to range more widely as the years go on. Shortis’s research required her to sing in so many languages she became a feature of the Multicultural Festival in her own right. Her comic timing was just right, yet I think a highlight for me, immediately after a frantic New Yorker translating from the original French, was a genuinely affecting performance of Autumn Leaves, in Johnny Mercer’s English and the French of Jacques Prévert.
There’s far more I could tell you, but it would be better to see the show, and enjoy the meal, for yourself.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
2008: The Curse of the Dying Swan by Erika Schneider and Cristine de Mello
The Curse of the Dying Swan. Cristina de Mello Dance Co in the National Multicultural Festival. Written, choreographed and performed by Erika Schneider and Cristine de Mello. Courtyard Theatre, February 12 and 13.
This is a 40 minute piece of apparently naïf dance/narrative, but quite poignant.
It seems to be autobiographical, with a story of the dancers having given up their training 11 years ago. Yet we are left then having to decide if the nice but not perfect ballet work is really the result of 1. not having performed for so long, or 2. because they gave up training when they realised that they were never going to get up to the standard required to dance the dying swan (and haven’t), or 3. because the whole thing is a fiction in which these characters have never become the dancers they once hoped to be.
Reasons 1. and 2. would be really naïve, but brave. And rather sad. How would you feel if you had trained for something like dance from the age of five, come to love doing it, but at fifteen knew that you would never make it to the top. It is risky to tell the story and show it through dance, and we in the audience can sympathise with the dancers’ feelings.
Reason 3. makes the story and the dance work seem disingenuous. We get the idea, but the sense of failure and the feeling of sadness and loss is weakened. This is because when they speak, using their own names and seeming to tell their own stories, we can’t be sure of our ground. In this case how do we know that Cristina and Erika are top-class dancers performing “Cristina” and “Erika” who are less than top-class dancers, when they don’t display top-class technique?
I’m going to plump for Reasons 1. and 2. because I preferred to feel sympathetic and a bit sorry for them, rather than worry about whether I had been cleverly fooled. Perhaps I’m rather naïve, but I feel happier this way.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a 40 minute piece of apparently naïf dance/narrative, but quite poignant.
It seems to be autobiographical, with a story of the dancers having given up their training 11 years ago. Yet we are left then having to decide if the nice but not perfect ballet work is really the result of 1. not having performed for so long, or 2. because they gave up training when they realised that they were never going to get up to the standard required to dance the dying swan (and haven’t), or 3. because the whole thing is a fiction in which these characters have never become the dancers they once hoped to be.
Reasons 1. and 2. would be really naïve, but brave. And rather sad. How would you feel if you had trained for something like dance from the age of five, come to love doing it, but at fifteen knew that you would never make it to the top. It is risky to tell the story and show it through dance, and we in the audience can sympathise with the dancers’ feelings.
Reason 3. makes the story and the dance work seem disingenuous. We get the idea, but the sense of failure and the feeling of sadness and loss is weakened. This is because when they speak, using their own names and seeming to tell their own stories, we can’t be sure of our ground. In this case how do we know that Cristina and Erika are top-class dancers performing “Cristina” and “Erika” who are less than top-class dancers, when they don’t display top-class technique?
I’m going to plump for Reasons 1. and 2. because I preferred to feel sympathetic and a bit sorry for them, rather than worry about whether I had been cleverly fooled. Perhaps I’m rather naïve, but I feel happier this way.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 9 February 2008
2008: A Sustainable Arts Sector: What will it take? by Cathy Hunt and Phyllida Shaw. Platform Papers No 15 - Feature article.
How to Make the Arts Sector Sustainable. Public Forum and launch of Platform Papers No 15: A Sustainable Arts Sector: What will it take? by Cathy Hunt and Phyllida Shaw. Presented by Currency House at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, Saturday February 9 2008.
Chaired by the well-known commentator David Marr, some 100 people from arts policy and arts management took part in a lively and informative forum on Saturday February 9 titled How to Make the Arts Sector Sustainable. The key speakers, at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, were the authors of Currency House Platform Papers No 15: A Sustainable Arts Sector: What will it take?, Cathy Hunt and Phyllida Shaw, followed by John Baylis, chair of the Australia Council Theatre Board.
Hunt and Shaw have spoken at forums in Brisbane and Cairns, and will go on to Melbourne and Perth, raising issues of arts policy and funding mechanisms in Australia in the light of the developments in Britain in recent years.
Shaw, associate lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management at University of Sussex and research associate at the Cities Institute, London Metropolitan University, described the evocatively-titled British sustainability programs Advancement, Stabilisation and Thrive!. The word “sustainability”, she said, should be used in the same sense as environmental sustainability.
Hunt, a founding director of the Brisbane strategic arts consultancy Positive Solutions and a consultant for the post-Thatcher Arts Council of England’s first Stabilisation Program in the early 1990s, was concerned that some politicians take sustainability to mean “viability”. In other words, government support for the arts might not mean ensuring the healthy survival of the species, but feeding just enough until it can be left to hopefully survive on its own.
The use of language became an important issue in the discussion phase of the forum. David Marr in his introduction had talked of politicians “putting their hands into the pockets of the nation” but then giving too little, wrongly spent. Quoting playwright Nick Enright, he complained that arts people spend all their time talking about money in the “ dog-eat-dog world of light opera.”
John Baylis seemed to agree that communication has long been a problem within the Australia Council, that “we gather information, but we do not know how to feed back information to the arts sector”, and explaining that applications from individual organisations are expertly assessed with a high degree of integrity, but “we are not good at seeing how to make connections”. In later discussion, various speakers saw the problem as arts people talking arts-talk, without being willing to learn politician-talk, while few politicians understand arts-talk.
This gave rise to argument. If politicians see everything, including the arts, only in economic terms, should arts advocates submit? Katharine Brisbane, co-founder of the Currency Press, dedicated to publishing Australian performing arts, said artists have allowed themselves to become submissive because of the structure of the funding, while another speaker said her research showed that artists are afraid to be honestly self-critical for fear of losing funding.
The conclusion was that artists should stand up confidently and say that sustainability of the arts is, as Hunt said, “about much more than money”. Shaw’s words were that the arts “make people’s lives richer”. Marr said “art gives people the opportunity to transform their lives”. Others said we should not be negative and depressed about the state of the arts because quality and diversity has in fact improved dramatically since the 1970s in Australia. The arts have an essential social value in their own right, and should therefore be supported by government.
Hunt and Shaw had raised practical issues in their speeches. In Britain the arts is given a small percentage of funds from the National Lottery, but this came about by chance and could not be done in Australia, according to some speakers, when the dependence of governments on gambling revenue is under severe criticism (and even the Sydney Opera House cannot get new lottery money for its refurbishment). In Britain, even small to medium organisations can find funding sources of many kinds including from continental Europe. One group in Brighton had 18 grants and sponsorships, for example. Such a range of sources is not available in Australia, and small to medium organisations especially, and individual artists, are struggling.
The big ticket solution suggested by Shaw is for the Federal government to establish a Future Fund for the Arts as an endowment. This would be a permanent source of arts funding, at arms length from day-to-day political pressure. A good model to begin is the British 2007 McMaster Review: Assessing Excellence in the Arts by Sir Brian McMaster, former Director of the Edinburgh International Festival. The approach should be to invest in innovation for its social and cultural value in its own right, across the range of individual artists, small, medium and large organisations, while profitable work could be expected to return some income to the Future Fund for the Arts.
The forum ended with the announcement, to a standing ovation, of a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Sydney Critics’ Circle to Katharine Brisbane for 40 years’ contribution to the performing arts.
Further information: arts management www.positive-solutions.com.au ; Platform Papers info@currencyhouse.org.au ; McMaster Review http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/Arts/mcmaster_review.htm
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Chaired by the well-known commentator David Marr, some 100 people from arts policy and arts management took part in a lively and informative forum on Saturday February 9 titled How to Make the Arts Sector Sustainable. The key speakers, at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, were the authors of Currency House Platform Papers No 15: A Sustainable Arts Sector: What will it take?, Cathy Hunt and Phyllida Shaw, followed by John Baylis, chair of the Australia Council Theatre Board.
Hunt and Shaw have spoken at forums in Brisbane and Cairns, and will go on to Melbourne and Perth, raising issues of arts policy and funding mechanisms in Australia in the light of the developments in Britain in recent years.
Shaw, associate lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management at University of Sussex and research associate at the Cities Institute, London Metropolitan University, described the evocatively-titled British sustainability programs Advancement, Stabilisation and Thrive!. The word “sustainability”, she said, should be used in the same sense as environmental sustainability.
Hunt, a founding director of the Brisbane strategic arts consultancy Positive Solutions and a consultant for the post-Thatcher Arts Council of England’s first Stabilisation Program in the early 1990s, was concerned that some politicians take sustainability to mean “viability”. In other words, government support for the arts might not mean ensuring the healthy survival of the species, but feeding just enough until it can be left to hopefully survive on its own.
The use of language became an important issue in the discussion phase of the forum. David Marr in his introduction had talked of politicians “putting their hands into the pockets of the nation” but then giving too little, wrongly spent. Quoting playwright Nick Enright, he complained that arts people spend all their time talking about money in the “ dog-eat-dog world of light opera.”
John Baylis seemed to agree that communication has long been a problem within the Australia Council, that “we gather information, but we do not know how to feed back information to the arts sector”, and explaining that applications from individual organisations are expertly assessed with a high degree of integrity, but “we are not good at seeing how to make connections”. In later discussion, various speakers saw the problem as arts people talking arts-talk, without being willing to learn politician-talk, while few politicians understand arts-talk.
This gave rise to argument. If politicians see everything, including the arts, only in economic terms, should arts advocates submit? Katharine Brisbane, co-founder of the Currency Press, dedicated to publishing Australian performing arts, said artists have allowed themselves to become submissive because of the structure of the funding, while another speaker said her research showed that artists are afraid to be honestly self-critical for fear of losing funding.
The conclusion was that artists should stand up confidently and say that sustainability of the arts is, as Hunt said, “about much more than money”. Shaw’s words were that the arts “make people’s lives richer”. Marr said “art gives people the opportunity to transform their lives”. Others said we should not be negative and depressed about the state of the arts because quality and diversity has in fact improved dramatically since the 1970s in Australia. The arts have an essential social value in their own right, and should therefore be supported by government.
Hunt and Shaw had raised practical issues in their speeches. In Britain the arts is given a small percentage of funds from the National Lottery, but this came about by chance and could not be done in Australia, according to some speakers, when the dependence of governments on gambling revenue is under severe criticism (and even the Sydney Opera House cannot get new lottery money for its refurbishment). In Britain, even small to medium organisations can find funding sources of many kinds including from continental Europe. One group in Brighton had 18 grants and sponsorships, for example. Such a range of sources is not available in Australia, and small to medium organisations especially, and individual artists, are struggling.
The big ticket solution suggested by Shaw is for the Federal government to establish a Future Fund for the Arts as an endowment. This would be a permanent source of arts funding, at arms length from day-to-day political pressure. A good model to begin is the British 2007 McMaster Review: Assessing Excellence in the Arts by Sir Brian McMaster, former Director of the Edinburgh International Festival. The approach should be to invest in innovation for its social and cultural value in its own right, across the range of individual artists, small, medium and large organisations, while profitable work could be expected to return some income to the Future Fund for the Arts.
The forum ended with the announcement, to a standing ovation, of a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Sydney Critics’ Circle to Katharine Brisbane for 40 years’ contribution to the performing arts.
Further information: arts management www.positive-solutions.com.au ; Platform Papers info@currencyhouse.org.au ; McMaster Review http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/Arts/mcmaster_review.htm
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 17 January 2008
2008: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, adapted by Joseph George Caruso
Treasure Island from the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, adapted by Joseph George Caruso. Free Rain Theatre directed by Anne Somes. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, Wednesdays to Sundays January 16-27, 2pm (45 mins, no interval). Bookings: 6275 2700.
This is a highly rumbustious performance which I recommend for children from about 7 years of age. The play is entirely plot driven, in every sense of the word, and the pirates are very loud and very funny. I fear younger children might be a’feard, but for the right age (and for their adult minders) it’s all good indelicate fun.
The pirate crew are suitably devious, ebullient and wonderfully nasty. I’m sure they all studied Pirates of the Caribbean for their parts, but I must say that David Villanti makes Captain Billy Bones and (after he dies), Long John Silver into rum characters without looking a bit like Johnny Depp.
Threats of violence and death make up a large part of this rollicking story, and by the way show how romantic Robert Louis Stevenson was about piracy. Maybe Greenpeace should take up his approach, considering the success of Treasure Island since 1883. I recall the characters from my childhood in a quite friendly light despite Stevenson telling the story in a serious frame of mind. Perhaps this production is not true to the book, being almost a spoof, but at least it maintains Stevenson’s myth, enhanced later in Peter Pan, of pirates being essentially good at heart (except that Long John Silver didn’t have a parrot, much to my disappointment).
It’s pure entertainment, quite different from Free Rain’s other presentation, on the same days, of The Secret Garden, and I think for a smaller age range – say, 6-14.
Presenting theatre for children is a new direction for Free Rain. The 2008 program includes Jack and the Beanstalk in April, and The Jungle Book in July.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a highly rumbustious performance which I recommend for children from about 7 years of age. The play is entirely plot driven, in every sense of the word, and the pirates are very loud and very funny. I fear younger children might be a’feard, but for the right age (and for their adult minders) it’s all good indelicate fun.
The pirate crew are suitably devious, ebullient and wonderfully nasty. I’m sure they all studied Pirates of the Caribbean for their parts, but I must say that David Villanti makes Captain Billy Bones and (after he dies), Long John Silver into rum characters without looking a bit like Johnny Depp.
Threats of violence and death make up a large part of this rollicking story, and by the way show how romantic Robert Louis Stevenson was about piracy. Maybe Greenpeace should take up his approach, considering the success of Treasure Island since 1883. I recall the characters from my childhood in a quite friendly light despite Stevenson telling the story in a serious frame of mind. Perhaps this production is not true to the book, being almost a spoof, but at least it maintains Stevenson’s myth, enhanced later in Peter Pan, of pirates being essentially good at heart (except that Long John Silver didn’t have a parrot, much to my disappointment).
It’s pure entertainment, quite different from Free Rain’s other presentation, on the same days, of The Secret Garden, and I think for a smaller age range – say, 6-14.
Presenting theatre for children is a new direction for Free Rain. The 2008 program includes Jack and the Beanstalk in April, and The Jungle Book in July.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
2008: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden from the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Music and lyrics by Bill Francoeur. Book by Tim Kelly. Free Rain Theatre directed by Anne Somes. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, Wednesdays to Sundays January 16-27, 10.30am (1hour 45mins with interval). Bookings: 6275 2700.
This musical play version is definitely as good as reading the original novel, according to one family with four children interviewed by The Canberra Times after last Thursday’s performance. This is because the characters and human relationships are true to the novel, even though theatrical devices are used to entertain us in a style which readers may not expect.
This adaptation and its interpretation in action neatly weaves song, dance and dialogue to create emotional effects from humour and concern for people’s welfare through to a sense of achievement in a satisfying conclusion. This gives children in the audience a genuine theatre experience which kept even two-year-olds watching, while from an adult point of view may be even better than the novel. What could be read as a sentimental story has been directed by Somes so that songs are both cheerful and reflective, allowing the story to be told simply and clearly.
The cast of 16 was remarkable for working so well as an ensemble, while each is an individual character worth watching in their own right. Experienced actors like Lainie Hart – wonderful as Mrs Sowerby – gave leadership to younger performers such as Samantha Wood, playing the lead role of Mary Lennox. The warmth of their camaraderie flowed off the stage into the audience, so even the very young could believe in the turnaround in the feelings of self-worth for Colin (Jack Taylor) and his father Archibald Craven (Andy McLeod).
My only criticism would be that the overly cheerful reprise of the happy family song as the curtain call, though thematically justifiable, was a rather too sudden change in mood from the quiet recognition of the new emotional security established in the final scene. I would have liked the audience to have had the opportunity to thank the performers with applause at that moment, with perhaps just the magical memories song to conclude.
But one small quibble should not distract readers from taking their children to a highly successful production of The Secret Garden.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
This musical play version is definitely as good as reading the original novel, according to one family with four children interviewed by The Canberra Times after last Thursday’s performance. This is because the characters and human relationships are true to the novel, even though theatrical devices are used to entertain us in a style which readers may not expect.
This adaptation and its interpretation in action neatly weaves song, dance and dialogue to create emotional effects from humour and concern for people’s welfare through to a sense of achievement in a satisfying conclusion. This gives children in the audience a genuine theatre experience which kept even two-year-olds watching, while from an adult point of view may be even better than the novel. What could be read as a sentimental story has been directed by Somes so that songs are both cheerful and reflective, allowing the story to be told simply and clearly.
The cast of 16 was remarkable for working so well as an ensemble, while each is an individual character worth watching in their own right. Experienced actors like Lainie Hart – wonderful as Mrs Sowerby – gave leadership to younger performers such as Samantha Wood, playing the lead role of Mary Lennox. The warmth of their camaraderie flowed off the stage into the audience, so even the very young could believe in the turnaround in the feelings of self-worth for Colin (Jack Taylor) and his father Archibald Craven (Andy McLeod).
My only criticism would be that the overly cheerful reprise of the happy family song as the curtain call, though thematically justifiable, was a rather too sudden change in mood from the quiet recognition of the new emotional security established in the final scene. I would have liked the audience to have had the opportunity to thank the performers with applause at that moment, with perhaps just the magical memories song to conclude.
But one small quibble should not distract readers from taking their children to a highly successful production of The Secret Garden.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
2008: Robin Hood by Jennifer Maclean and Justin Watson
Robin Hood by Jennifer Maclean and Justin Watson. Ickle Pickle Productions at Belconnen Theatre, January 15, 18, 25 at 11am and 7pm; January 16, 17, 22, 23, 24 at 11am and 2.30pm; January 19, 26 at 2.30pm. Bookings: 6247 1223.
Theatre should be judged in its context. Ickle Pickle is essentially a community theatre. Robin Hood is as much about teaching and giving stage experience to young performers, in this case from age 9, as it is about entertaining young and old in the audience.
The choreography is mostly routine but by using popular songs (often with drastically re-written lyrics) and keeping the timing upbeat and precise, Hannah McFadden and musical director Adam Bluhm kept our interest in the musical numbers at the opening performance.
The script has a number of good ideas like Robin Hood gaining a pardon by turning from theft to running a legitimate charity for the poor, but the exposition early in Act 1 was a bit dull, especially for young ones in the audience. The traditional theme of the contest between The Sheriff and Robin for the hand of Maid Marion is played out with several interesting twists, but I wondered what happened to the notion of charity. Robin wins, of course, but seems to settle for a life of handouts from his upper class wife. Maybe Marion’s father, the King in this version, should only agree if she becomes a commoner and helps run the charity.
After interval, Act 2 brightens up when we meet Friar Tuck’s half-brother, the Muslim ruler of an unnamed “Middle East” country. On the entertainment side, Dave Smith does a wonderful marriage ceremony singing Love Me Tender as Friar Tuck, and runs a mean casbah as Sheik Yabooty. His character also raised the satiric standard which should be waved in all good pantomimes, and could offend some in his references to The Prophet among bare midriffs and, on the other hand, as Friar Tuck again, to his double standards “after all, I do work for the Church.” Mind you, it was Robin, cross-dressed in harem gear, who questioned Tuck’s standards.
With more laughs for small people in Act 1, like the yucky food competition at the end, and knowing that the pace of the show will improve as the young players gain experience, Robin Hood will entertain while achieving Ickle Pickle’s community theatre aims.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Theatre should be judged in its context. Ickle Pickle is essentially a community theatre. Robin Hood is as much about teaching and giving stage experience to young performers, in this case from age 9, as it is about entertaining young and old in the audience.
The choreography is mostly routine but by using popular songs (often with drastically re-written lyrics) and keeping the timing upbeat and precise, Hannah McFadden and musical director Adam Bluhm kept our interest in the musical numbers at the opening performance.
The script has a number of good ideas like Robin Hood gaining a pardon by turning from theft to running a legitimate charity for the poor, but the exposition early in Act 1 was a bit dull, especially for young ones in the audience. The traditional theme of the contest between The Sheriff and Robin for the hand of Maid Marion is played out with several interesting twists, but I wondered what happened to the notion of charity. Robin wins, of course, but seems to settle for a life of handouts from his upper class wife. Maybe Marion’s father, the King in this version, should only agree if she becomes a commoner and helps run the charity.
After interval, Act 2 brightens up when we meet Friar Tuck’s half-brother, the Muslim ruler of an unnamed “Middle East” country. On the entertainment side, Dave Smith does a wonderful marriage ceremony singing Love Me Tender as Friar Tuck, and runs a mean casbah as Sheik Yabooty. His character also raised the satiric standard which should be waved in all good pantomimes, and could offend some in his references to The Prophet among bare midriffs and, on the other hand, as Friar Tuck again, to his double standards “after all, I do work for the Church.” Mind you, it was Robin, cross-dressed in harem gear, who questioned Tuck’s standards.
With more laughs for small people in Act 1, like the yucky food competition at the end, and knowing that the pace of the show will improve as the young players gain experience, Robin Hood will entertain while achieving Ickle Pickle’s community theatre aims.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 11 January 2008
2008: Ngapartji Ngapartji, by Scott Rankin and Trevor Jamieson
Ngapartji Ngapartji, written by Scott Rankin and co-creator Trevor Jamieson. Director, Scott Rankin for Big hART. Musical director, Damian Mason. Sydney Festival and Company B at Belvoir Street Theatre on Tuesdays 6.30pm, Wednesdays – Saturdays 8pm, Sundays 5pm, January 11 to February 10. Bookings: Company B 02 9699 3444 or www.sydneyfestival.org.au
“A very, very powerful, graceful, moving work” is how Federal Minister for the Arts, Peter Garrett, described to me this family history of Spinifex man Trevor Jamieson. I and the rest of the audience on opening night could not have agreed more. A standing ovation said everything about the quality of the performance and the tears said “Sorry” as it should have been said many years ago. The Pitjantjatjara people deserve a great deal more than an apology for the devastation Australian governments have caused.
The title means “I give you something, you give me something”. The Jamieson story shows that Aboriginal people have been giving time and time again, since the first British horsemen arrived in their country, with no by-your-leave. Next were Afghans and camels, the effects of two world wars, and worst of all the explosion of 9 major nuclear bombs and many smaller bomb trials from 1953 to 1965 which killed and irradiated very many Pitjantjatjara and other central Australian people. Jamieson’s parents were orphans, literally refugees from their own country.
But still they keep giving, through the Big hART program which you can participate in at www.ninti.ngapartji.org and in the resilience they demonstrate to all of us in this production. Whatever traumas we or our forebears have faced and survived, these people have faced at least as much and still perform with strength and hope.
Their narrative is told in song, dance and storytelling in a form that reminded me of ancient Greek theatre. The senior women who lead the audience in song and action, who sing such strong harmony, and bring calm and acceptance in times of trouble, are a baseline of security in the play, just as they are in real life. They, especially, make us feel respect for country and culture. With new Ministers in a new Government, let us hope that this “powerful, graceful, moving work” helps to persuade people with the power to have the grace to move Australia to give in return in full measure.
Being at Ngapartji Ngapartji is an experience which you should not miss.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
“A very, very powerful, graceful, moving work” is how Federal Minister for the Arts, Peter Garrett, described to me this family history of Spinifex man Trevor Jamieson. I and the rest of the audience on opening night could not have agreed more. A standing ovation said everything about the quality of the performance and the tears said “Sorry” as it should have been said many years ago. The Pitjantjatjara people deserve a great deal more than an apology for the devastation Australian governments have caused.
The title means “I give you something, you give me something”. The Jamieson story shows that Aboriginal people have been giving time and time again, since the first British horsemen arrived in their country, with no by-your-leave. Next were Afghans and camels, the effects of two world wars, and worst of all the explosion of 9 major nuclear bombs and many smaller bomb trials from 1953 to 1965 which killed and irradiated very many Pitjantjatjara and other central Australian people. Jamieson’s parents were orphans, literally refugees from their own country.
But still they keep giving, through the Big hART program which you can participate in at www.ninti.ngapartji.org and in the resilience they demonstrate to all of us in this production. Whatever traumas we or our forebears have faced and survived, these people have faced at least as much and still perform with strength and hope.
Their narrative is told in song, dance and storytelling in a form that reminded me of ancient Greek theatre. The senior women who lead the audience in song and action, who sing such strong harmony, and bring calm and acceptance in times of trouble, are a baseline of security in the play, just as they are in real life. They, especially, make us feel respect for country and culture. With new Ministers in a new Government, let us hope that this “powerful, graceful, moving work” helps to persuade people with the power to have the grace to move Australia to give in return in full measure.
Being at Ngapartji Ngapartji is an experience which you should not miss.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 10 January 2008
2008: Au Revoir Parapluie by James Thierree
Au Revoir Parapluie by James Thierree. Contemporary circus in the Sydney Festival at Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay. Tuesday to Sunday 8pm until January 27. Sydney Theatre 02 9250 1999, Festival Ticketek 1300 888 412 or www.sydneyfestival.org
Thierree has brought both more and less to this year’s Sydney Festival, in his third presentation following The Junebug Symphony (2003) and Bright Abyss (2006). Last Thursday, the energy and drive of all the performers – Thierree, Kaori Ito, Satchie Noro, Magnus Jakobsson and Maria Sendow – was perhaps greater, while the theme is simpler. The result was better entertainment than Junebug, but less seriousness of meaning than Bright Abyss.
Acrobatic rope work, gymnastic dance and clowning in mime, form the focus of attention in Au Revoir Parapluie, with a great deal more direct communication with the audience and much more humour than previously. This a major strength of the show which kept the audience thoroughly engaged for the full 90 minutes. It is a joyful celebration which had us enthusiastically clapping in time to a fast beat for three curtain calls.
Rather than the imagery, which is Thierree’s forte, being linked into a tight narrative, the whimsical umbrella (to which in Aussie parlance we might say “See ya!”) is a briefly spun symbol of enjoyment of life’s activities, among many which invoke industry and agriculture, family ups and downs, and the arrival seemingly out of nowhere of the unexpected. Disruptions ,even eruptions, become challenges as much as frustrations. If there is a theme, it’s something like Life goes on despite everything, and what happens is funny at least as often as not.
Although the images were of the past rather than the post-industrial world, and might be seen as a bit old-fashioned, I enjoyed a stage show in which only the sound track was electronic (and very effective), while the action, both of the performers and the mechanical apparatus of the set, was big and physically impressive. The show seemed much larger than a mere five performers could create, and the audience responded in kind.
Thierree, a grandson of Charlie Chaplin, has done his family tradition proud.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thierree has brought both more and less to this year’s Sydney Festival, in his third presentation following The Junebug Symphony (2003) and Bright Abyss (2006). Last Thursday, the energy and drive of all the performers – Thierree, Kaori Ito, Satchie Noro, Magnus Jakobsson and Maria Sendow – was perhaps greater, while the theme is simpler. The result was better entertainment than Junebug, but less seriousness of meaning than Bright Abyss.
Acrobatic rope work, gymnastic dance and clowning in mime, form the focus of attention in Au Revoir Parapluie, with a great deal more direct communication with the audience and much more humour than previously. This a major strength of the show which kept the audience thoroughly engaged for the full 90 minutes. It is a joyful celebration which had us enthusiastically clapping in time to a fast beat for three curtain calls.
Rather than the imagery, which is Thierree’s forte, being linked into a tight narrative, the whimsical umbrella (to which in Aussie parlance we might say “See ya!”) is a briefly spun symbol of enjoyment of life’s activities, among many which invoke industry and agriculture, family ups and downs, and the arrival seemingly out of nowhere of the unexpected. Disruptions ,even eruptions, become challenges as much as frustrations. If there is a theme, it’s something like Life goes on despite everything, and what happens is funny at least as often as not.
Although the images were of the past rather than the post-industrial world, and might be seen as a bit old-fashioned, I enjoyed a stage show in which only the sound track was electronic (and very effective), while the action, both of the performers and the mechanical apparatus of the set, was big and physically impressive. The show seemed much larger than a mere five performers could create, and the audience responded in kind.
Thierree, a grandson of Charlie Chaplin, has done his family tradition proud.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 16 November 2007
2007: The Vicar of Dibley by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer
The Vicar of Dibley by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer, directed by Jasan Savage. UC Players at Gallery Café, University of Canberra Fridays and Saturdays November 16 December 15 (6.45pm dinner and show). Bookings essential 6201 2645.
The meal was tasty and very filling, while the show was like the curate’s egg - good in parts.
Act 1 between mains and dessert is The Easter Bunny (April 1996). Act 2 is the 1999 Christmas Day special. Translation from small screen to stage is not very successful, mainly because short scenes of dialogue with little physical action and almost no plot can work with Dawn French in close-up but have much less impact at even a short distance on a live stage.
Act 1 suffers particularly, except for Stella Wilkie’s performance of Letitia Cropley whose death was quite something to watch. Act 2 is more successful because it has a focus in the nativity play within the play, in which Tse Yee Tah made the farcical birth of Alice’s real baby during the performance of the “Greatest story ever told” very funny indeed.
Marie Carroll faced a difficult task in representing the Vicar Geraldine, as played by French until Geraldine’s marriage and final show only last Christmas to a TV audience in Britain of 11.4 million. She looked the part, made a fair fist of the character and held the action together as well as the script allowed, but neither she nor the cast in general could match the crisp timing of the television shows, especially enhanced by snappy editing. It would take a much more sophisticated technical setup than is possible in the UC Café to create that effect.
Among the other actors I thought Richard Anderson as the earthy farmer Owen Newitt was best, though none let the team down. Costumes were effective, though I was a little surprised at a sound track including American Gospel singing which to me was out of place compared with the deliberately very English church choral music used in the original TV shows.
In the end, for me, this is ethnic English material in the centuries-long tradition of poking fun at their institutions like the Church (Anglican, of course). The opening night audience had a social night out, quite enjoyed themselves, were generally old enough to recognise the 1990s references and appreciate passable representations of characters they knew. Otherwise, I would have preferred Australian material, but perhaps there is not enough on television to guarantee an audience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The meal was tasty and very filling, while the show was like the curate’s egg - good in parts.
Act 1 between mains and dessert is The Easter Bunny (April 1996). Act 2 is the 1999 Christmas Day special. Translation from small screen to stage is not very successful, mainly because short scenes of dialogue with little physical action and almost no plot can work with Dawn French in close-up but have much less impact at even a short distance on a live stage.
Act 1 suffers particularly, except for Stella Wilkie’s performance of Letitia Cropley whose death was quite something to watch. Act 2 is more successful because it has a focus in the nativity play within the play, in which Tse Yee Tah made the farcical birth of Alice’s real baby during the performance of the “Greatest story ever told” very funny indeed.
Marie Carroll faced a difficult task in representing the Vicar Geraldine, as played by French until Geraldine’s marriage and final show only last Christmas to a TV audience in Britain of 11.4 million. She looked the part, made a fair fist of the character and held the action together as well as the script allowed, but neither she nor the cast in general could match the crisp timing of the television shows, especially enhanced by snappy editing. It would take a much more sophisticated technical setup than is possible in the UC Café to create that effect.
Among the other actors I thought Richard Anderson as the earthy farmer Owen Newitt was best, though none let the team down. Costumes were effective, though I was a little surprised at a sound track including American Gospel singing which to me was out of place compared with the deliberately very English church choral music used in the original TV shows.
In the end, for me, this is ethnic English material in the centuries-long tradition of poking fun at their institutions like the Church (Anglican, of course). The opening night audience had a social night out, quite enjoyed themselves, were generally old enough to recognise the 1990s references and appreciate passable representations of characters they knew. Otherwise, I would have preferred Australian material, but perhaps there is not enough on television to guarantee an audience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
2007: Talking Heads by Alan Bennett
Talking Heads by Alan Bennett: Her Big Chance performed by Sigrid Thornton and Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet performed by Brenda Blethyn. Directed by Braham Murray at Canberra Theatre, November 6-7.
Thornton and Blethyn deservedly attracted an almost full house in the big theatre on opening night. For me the most exciting aspect of the evening was watching these actors live on stage, after having seen them so much on film and television. Making these intimate 40 minute monologues communicate successfully across a large auditorium was hard work indeed, a challenge which both performers met more than admirably.
From the 1987 BBC TV Talking Heads 1 series, the bit-part but oh so professional actress, Lesley, is I think more difficult to play today than Miss Fozzard from the 1998 Talking Heads 2 series. Bennett was less forgiving, much less empathetic towards Lesley than Miss Fozzard, and I guess that the decade between writing these characters was a period of developing greater psychological insight and skill at integrating the dark and the comic line by line. The effect was that Her Big Chance seemed more dated, especially from a woman’s perspective, while Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet remained more universal despite the character belonging to the kind of old-fashioned British suburban culture which I can remember from my childhood there 60 years ago.
It was therefore a good decision to have Thornton play the first half, for which she received applause fully appreciative of her skill in bit by bit revealing the unwillingness of Lesley to recognise her limitations, or how she was actually being used by a sleazy team to make a soft-porn film in contrast to her image of herself as a proper actor. Thornton, of course, had to create Lesley, Lesley’s idea of the character Travis she plays in the film, and all the members of the film crew from the German director Gunther to the dogsbody roadie Scott, telling a story that possibly is all a lie, maybe entirely Lesley’s fantasy. There were laughs, but often Lesley’s shallow understanding made us laugh at her, putting her down rather than creating empathy for a sad soul.
In the second half, Blethyn’s Miss Fozzard was a laugh a minute, but we recognised her failings and appreciated that we, like her, often miss the point, don’t quite realise what’s really going on around us. And so we felt quite uplifted as Miss Fozzard, in a weird way, does find her feet in her relationship with a kinky chiropodist. This gave us an ending to the evening which was greeted with huge enthusiasm, with both performers, united on stage, receiving several curtain calls, followed by a long queue in the foyer for them to sign programs. This was excellent celebratory theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thornton and Blethyn deservedly attracted an almost full house in the big theatre on opening night. For me the most exciting aspect of the evening was watching these actors live on stage, after having seen them so much on film and television. Making these intimate 40 minute monologues communicate successfully across a large auditorium was hard work indeed, a challenge which both performers met more than admirably.
From the 1987 BBC TV Talking Heads 1 series, the bit-part but oh so professional actress, Lesley, is I think more difficult to play today than Miss Fozzard from the 1998 Talking Heads 2 series. Bennett was less forgiving, much less empathetic towards Lesley than Miss Fozzard, and I guess that the decade between writing these characters was a period of developing greater psychological insight and skill at integrating the dark and the comic line by line. The effect was that Her Big Chance seemed more dated, especially from a woman’s perspective, while Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet remained more universal despite the character belonging to the kind of old-fashioned British suburban culture which I can remember from my childhood there 60 years ago.
It was therefore a good decision to have Thornton play the first half, for which she received applause fully appreciative of her skill in bit by bit revealing the unwillingness of Lesley to recognise her limitations, or how she was actually being used by a sleazy team to make a soft-porn film in contrast to her image of herself as a proper actor. Thornton, of course, had to create Lesley, Lesley’s idea of the character Travis she plays in the film, and all the members of the film crew from the German director Gunther to the dogsbody roadie Scott, telling a story that possibly is all a lie, maybe entirely Lesley’s fantasy. There were laughs, but often Lesley’s shallow understanding made us laugh at her, putting her down rather than creating empathy for a sad soul.
In the second half, Blethyn’s Miss Fozzard was a laugh a minute, but we recognised her failings and appreciated that we, like her, often miss the point, don’t quite realise what’s really going on around us. And so we felt quite uplifted as Miss Fozzard, in a weird way, does find her feet in her relationship with a kinky chiropodist. This gave us an ending to the evening which was greeted with huge enthusiasm, with both performers, united on stage, receiving several curtain calls, followed by a long queue in the foyer for them to sign programs. This was excellent celebratory theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 1 November 2007
2007: Lovepuke by Duncan Sarkies
Lovepuke by Duncan Sarkies, directed by Naomi Brouwer for The Street Theatre and ANU Drama Department at The Street, November 1-3.
I thoroughly enjoyed this very stylish production of a highly stylised short satire on sex.
A lightweight piece from a literary standpoint, published in Sarkies’ native New Zealand in Eleven Young Playwrights (1994), Lovepuke shows its age and the youth of its writer at that time. The lavatory humour (the ‘puke’ side) and the sexual activities of the eight mixed pairs (the ‘love’ side) probably belong nowadays to a younger group than the early 20-somethings that seemed to be represented here. Still that didn’t stop an ageing fader like me recalling the twists and turns of youth.
But the play could have failed without a director and cast who so clearly understood a style which, if one is looking for a literary reference, has a distant cousin in Dario Fo and even a cousin once or twice removed in commedia. The detail of body language, facial expression and nicely exaggerated voices kept the drama alive. Every action and spoken line produced an ironic commentary on the conventions of love and the exchange of bodily fluids. Every actor played up the outward characteristics of each stock personality just enough to make us laugh at, but not too much so as to stop us from laughing with, the character.
Cast members Thomas Connell (Kevin), Byron Fay (Ivan), Cara Irvine (Louise), Jasmin Natterer (Hermione), Aaron Ridgway (Glen), John-Paul Santucci (Nathan), Virginia Savage (Marissa) and Carol Whitman (Janice) all deserve high praise. All current or recent ANU students, they have demonstrated the value of The Street Theatre’s partnership with the ANU Drama Department.
However, the season seems to me to have been too short. This production should be seen by college students as a model for drama students, as well as being great entertainment for the much larger number of young adults than could be accommodated in three nights in The Street Studio.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I thoroughly enjoyed this very stylish production of a highly stylised short satire on sex.
A lightweight piece from a literary standpoint, published in Sarkies’ native New Zealand in Eleven Young Playwrights (1994), Lovepuke shows its age and the youth of its writer at that time. The lavatory humour (the ‘puke’ side) and the sexual activities of the eight mixed pairs (the ‘love’ side) probably belong nowadays to a younger group than the early 20-somethings that seemed to be represented here. Still that didn’t stop an ageing fader like me recalling the twists and turns of youth.
But the play could have failed without a director and cast who so clearly understood a style which, if one is looking for a literary reference, has a distant cousin in Dario Fo and even a cousin once or twice removed in commedia. The detail of body language, facial expression and nicely exaggerated voices kept the drama alive. Every action and spoken line produced an ironic commentary on the conventions of love and the exchange of bodily fluids. Every actor played up the outward characteristics of each stock personality just enough to make us laugh at, but not too much so as to stop us from laughing with, the character.
Cast members Thomas Connell (Kevin), Byron Fay (Ivan), Cara Irvine (Louise), Jasmin Natterer (Hermione), Aaron Ridgway (Glen), John-Paul Santucci (Nathan), Virginia Savage (Marissa) and Carol Whitman (Janice) all deserve high praise. All current or recent ANU students, they have demonstrated the value of The Street Theatre’s partnership with the ANU Drama Department.
However, the season seems to me to have been too short. This production should be seen by college students as a model for drama students, as well as being great entertainment for the much larger number of young adults than could be accommodated in three nights in The Street Studio.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
2007: Rod Quantock: The John Howard Farewell Party
Rod Quantock: The John Howard Farewell Party at The Street Theatre, October 16-21, 8.30pm
I’ll bet you have forgotten who wrote Under the Southern Stars to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory. She’s a rather large ex-Liberal Party minister currently resident in Italy, and Quantock will not let you forget her again.
You might also learn history far beyond the 47 required points for Years 9 and 10. Though esoteric, but not so tenuous as you might expect, there is a clear connection from the early German industrial revolution, the back-to-the-village Romantic backlash, Wagner who was Hitler’s favourite composer, through to the most dangerous Green fanatic Bob Brown, the love-child of Hitler and Eva Braun. Talking of schools, it’s also true that American students shoot each other because American teachers have not had chalk for 30 years, and that’s also the cause of the lack of discipline in our schools today.
Quantock claimed to have achieved a 5-star rating, not for the quality of his show but for using the least energy of any stand-up comedian by sitting down most of the time. However, since as a critic I should never accept a performer at face (or cheek) value, I disagree. Quantock’s laid-back manner rests not upon his backside but is kept in suspension by a constant flow of high level energy. Talking of energy, we need to keep selling our coal to China to pay for all the Australian men’s underpants produced only in that country, even though they will bring us to our knees when China activates its spy satellites, making them taller than us.
Talk is what Quantock does so well that we forget he is performing. Live in the theatre, he communicates directly with us as a real empathetic person, even though we remember him as Captain Snooze in a nightshirt.
The Party gets a look-in. The farewell to look forward to is when John Howard loses his seat but the Liberal Party wins the election. Try not to miss Rod Quantock. He is certainly the life of the party.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I’ll bet you have forgotten who wrote Under the Southern Stars to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory. She’s a rather large ex-Liberal Party minister currently resident in Italy, and Quantock will not let you forget her again.
You might also learn history far beyond the 47 required points for Years 9 and 10. Though esoteric, but not so tenuous as you might expect, there is a clear connection from the early German industrial revolution, the back-to-the-village Romantic backlash, Wagner who was Hitler’s favourite composer, through to the most dangerous Green fanatic Bob Brown, the love-child of Hitler and Eva Braun. Talking of schools, it’s also true that American students shoot each other because American teachers have not had chalk for 30 years, and that’s also the cause of the lack of discipline in our schools today.
Quantock claimed to have achieved a 5-star rating, not for the quality of his show but for using the least energy of any stand-up comedian by sitting down most of the time. However, since as a critic I should never accept a performer at face (or cheek) value, I disagree. Quantock’s laid-back manner rests not upon his backside but is kept in suspension by a constant flow of high level energy. Talking of energy, we need to keep selling our coal to China to pay for all the Australian men’s underpants produced only in that country, even though they will bring us to our knees when China activates its spy satellites, making them taller than us.
Talk is what Quantock does so well that we forget he is performing. Live in the theatre, he communicates directly with us as a real empathetic person, even though we remember him as Captain Snooze in a nightshirt.
The Party gets a look-in. The farewell to look forward to is when John Howard loses his seat but the Liberal Party wins the election. Try not to miss Rod Quantock. He is certainly the life of the party.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 15 October 2007
2007: Fabulous Diva – A Tribute to Nina Simone
Fabulous Diva РA Tribute to Nina Simone, devised and performed by Ruth Rogers-Wright with pianist Mark Fitzgibbon (replacing the advertised program The Other Woman РThe Life and Music of Nina Simone by Lisa Schouw). Cabaret Cr̬me at The Street Theatre, Monday October 15.
Special credit must be given to Bill Stephens whose standing in the cabaret business enabled him to bring this show in from Melbourne on only two days’ notice following the sudden death of Lisa Schouw’s father.
Sadness at the unexpected news tinged the audience’s early response to Ruth Rogers-Wright’s selection of songs, verse and reminiscences of Nina Simone’s performances. But the show settled in quickly after her rendition of He Needs Me, and we were rewarded by an impression of Simone’s strength of personality, her concern for civil rights, and her style of singing.
The key to this Tribute was the distinction made by Rogers-Wright between a singer who might be a mere entertainer compared with Simone, an artist. The point is valid, but as the show progressed something seemed to me to be missing. On listening to some original Simone performances, I realised that Mark Fitzgibbon’s piano playing, though expert and interestingly complex in blues style, was too smooth. Rogers-Wright’s singing voice also, though catching the blue notes and soul feeling, rarely re-created the raw or even deliberately flat quality of sound that Simone often combined with crude-seeming rhythms. This was the strength which grabbed audiences in large venues and outdoor settings, while Rogers-Wright perhaps felt the need for softer tones in the small theatre setting at The Street.
Personally I found the balance between miked voice and grand piano needed better mixing to prevent the piano masking the lyrics. However, recognising the limitations imposed by working at such short notice, I felt satisfied to have gained an appreciation of Nina Simone’s artistic purpose through Ruth Rogers-Wright’s personal tribute to her work. The applause was warmly given, and I Loves You, Porgy was a memorable encore.
The final Cabaret Cr̬me for the year will be Avigail Herman presenting Hey World, Here I Am Рthe Streisand Story on Monday November 19.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Special credit must be given to Bill Stephens whose standing in the cabaret business enabled him to bring this show in from Melbourne on only two days’ notice following the sudden death of Lisa Schouw’s father.
Sadness at the unexpected news tinged the audience’s early response to Ruth Rogers-Wright’s selection of songs, verse and reminiscences of Nina Simone’s performances. But the show settled in quickly after her rendition of He Needs Me, and we were rewarded by an impression of Simone’s strength of personality, her concern for civil rights, and her style of singing.
The key to this Tribute was the distinction made by Rogers-Wright between a singer who might be a mere entertainer compared with Simone, an artist. The point is valid, but as the show progressed something seemed to me to be missing. On listening to some original Simone performances, I realised that Mark Fitzgibbon’s piano playing, though expert and interestingly complex in blues style, was too smooth. Rogers-Wright’s singing voice also, though catching the blue notes and soul feeling, rarely re-created the raw or even deliberately flat quality of sound that Simone often combined with crude-seeming rhythms. This was the strength which grabbed audiences in large venues and outdoor settings, while Rogers-Wright perhaps felt the need for softer tones in the small theatre setting at The Street.
Personally I found the balance between miked voice and grand piano needed better mixing to prevent the piano masking the lyrics. However, recognising the limitations imposed by working at such short notice, I felt satisfied to have gained an appreciation of Nina Simone’s artistic purpose through Ruth Rogers-Wright’s personal tribute to her work. The applause was warmly given, and I Loves You, Porgy was a memorable encore.
The final Cabaret Cr̬me for the year will be Avigail Herman presenting Hey World, Here I Am Рthe Streisand Story on Monday November 19.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 11 October 2007
2007: Wanderlust by Leigh Warren & Dancers
Wanderlust by Leigh Warren & Dancers, in association with Uno Man. The Playhouse, October 11 and 12.
Tabi ni yande
Yume wa kareno o
Kakemeguru
On a journey, ailing -
My dreams roam about
Over a withered moor.
According to Makoto Ueda, this was the last poem written by the master haiku poet Matsuo Basho shortly before his death in 1694.
I think “wanderlust” is too heavy a title, sounding too Germanic like something from Wagner, for a dance work inspired by the life of the Japanese poet who, says Ueda, developed the principle of "lightness", a dialectic transcendence of sabi. Sabi urges a person to detach themselves from worldly involvements; "lightness" makes it possible for them, after attaining that detachment, to return to the mundane world. Maybe Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) is the European equivalent.
However, what Leigh Warren’s team have achieved - himself and Uno Man (directors /choreographers), Tetsutoshi Tabata and Nic Mollison (visuals and lighting designers), India Flint (costumier), Stuart Day (composer) and dancers Deon Hastie, Mako Kawano, Jo Roads and Tomohiko Tsujimoto - is a remarkable work in which sound, movement and texture are displayed in a clean plain setting, illuminated both literally and metaphorically in ever-changing shapes, colours and intensities of light, according to the dreams which we may imagine to have roamed about Basho’s mind, not just on the travels he wrote about, such as in the most famous The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no Hosomichi), but throughout his life.
Especially I was impressed by the dancers’ lightness of touch in scenes representing great variations of mood, befitting the poet’s experiences. From floor to full stretch, from dazzling speed to deliberate measured pace, from tiny fingers vibrating to slow waves of total bodies rippling, all seemed as if without weight, abstracted, beyond the mundane: poetic. We Australians left the theatre, as we should, knowing Basho’s feeling when he wrote after his first journey in 1685:
Toshi kurenu
Kasa kite waraji
Hakinagara
Another year is gone -
A travel hat on my head,
Straw sandals on my feet.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tabi ni yande
Yume wa kareno o
Kakemeguru
On a journey, ailing -
My dreams roam about
Over a withered moor.
According to Makoto Ueda, this was the last poem written by the master haiku poet Matsuo Basho shortly before his death in 1694.
I think “wanderlust” is too heavy a title, sounding too Germanic like something from Wagner, for a dance work inspired by the life of the Japanese poet who, says Ueda, developed the principle of "lightness", a dialectic transcendence of sabi. Sabi urges a person to detach themselves from worldly involvements; "lightness" makes it possible for them, after attaining that detachment, to return to the mundane world. Maybe Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) is the European equivalent.
However, what Leigh Warren’s team have achieved - himself and Uno Man (directors /choreographers), Tetsutoshi Tabata and Nic Mollison (visuals and lighting designers), India Flint (costumier), Stuart Day (composer) and dancers Deon Hastie, Mako Kawano, Jo Roads and Tomohiko Tsujimoto - is a remarkable work in which sound, movement and texture are displayed in a clean plain setting, illuminated both literally and metaphorically in ever-changing shapes, colours and intensities of light, according to the dreams which we may imagine to have roamed about Basho’s mind, not just on the travels he wrote about, such as in the most famous The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no Hosomichi), but throughout his life.
Especially I was impressed by the dancers’ lightness of touch in scenes representing great variations of mood, befitting the poet’s experiences. From floor to full stretch, from dazzling speed to deliberate measured pace, from tiny fingers vibrating to slow waves of total bodies rippling, all seemed as if without weight, abstracted, beyond the mundane: poetic. We Australians left the theatre, as we should, knowing Basho’s feeling when he wrote after his first journey in 1685:
Toshi kurenu
Kasa kite waraji
Hakinagara
Another year is gone -
A travel hat on my head,
Straw sandals on my feet.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
2007: Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire.
Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire. Ensemble Theatre directed by Sandra Bates at the Playhouse October 2-7. Bookings Canberra Ticketing 62750 2700.
Rabbit Hole must have been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize because it is a feel-good play. When we think of the great American plays like O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, there simply is no comparison. Feel-good is just not the same as good, let alone great.
No-one could complain about the acting of any of the excellent cast, led by Georgie Parker and Mark Kilmurry, but the playscript is a contrived “well-made” play about an issue, coping with death, which must as quickly as possible in the last 15 minutes reach a happy resolution. On the way, the playwright has made obvious decisions like the first half must end with a massive emotional scene, while at predictable points the audience must be made to laugh (to relieve the tension, you know). The result is that the first half had to be fast-paced to cover for the lack of genuine emotional justification for the characters’ behaviour, while the second slowed a little (after an early gratuitous laugh) to lead us to a sentimental ending at which some audience members cried as they do watching a television soapie.
The play, and the excellent set, presents itself as naturalistic, but I can only say Lindsay-Abaire’s education at Sarah Lawrence College and the Juilliard School, New York, could not have included any study of the original master of naturalism, Henrik Ibsen. A Doll’s House runs rings around Rabbit Hole.
Fortunately the actors were good enough (even with some slightly wobbly American accents) to hold the play together despite its highly unrealistic elements like the appearance of the young driver who ran over Beccie and Howie’s 4-year-old son Danny. The issue of how people cope with such tragedies in an unforgiving universe is a worthwhile theme. It’s just disappointing that this playwright, prize-winner or not, does not give the actors a script with the depth of understanding they, and we, deserve.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Rabbit Hole must have been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize because it is a feel-good play. When we think of the great American plays like O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, there simply is no comparison. Feel-good is just not the same as good, let alone great.
No-one could complain about the acting of any of the excellent cast, led by Georgie Parker and Mark Kilmurry, but the playscript is a contrived “well-made” play about an issue, coping with death, which must as quickly as possible in the last 15 minutes reach a happy resolution. On the way, the playwright has made obvious decisions like the first half must end with a massive emotional scene, while at predictable points the audience must be made to laugh (to relieve the tension, you know). The result is that the first half had to be fast-paced to cover for the lack of genuine emotional justification for the characters’ behaviour, while the second slowed a little (after an early gratuitous laugh) to lead us to a sentimental ending at which some audience members cried as they do watching a television soapie.
The play, and the excellent set, presents itself as naturalistic, but I can only say Lindsay-Abaire’s education at Sarah Lawrence College and the Juilliard School, New York, could not have included any study of the original master of naturalism, Henrik Ibsen. A Doll’s House runs rings around Rabbit Hole.
Fortunately the actors were good enough (even with some slightly wobbly American accents) to hold the play together despite its highly unrealistic elements like the appearance of the young driver who ran over Beccie and Howie’s 4-year-old son Danny. The issue of how people cope with such tragedies in an unforgiving universe is a worthwhile theme. It’s just disappointing that this playwright, prize-winner or not, does not give the actors a script with the depth of understanding they, and we, deserve.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 29 September 2007
2007: High School Musical on Stage!
High School Musical on Stage! based on the Disney Channel movie by Peter Barsocchini and book by David Simpatico. Music adapted, arranged and produced by Bryan Louiselle. Directed by Berin Denham, music directed by Leisa Keen and dance choreographed by Jordan Kelly in the Big Top, Eddison Park, Woden, until October 13 at 7pm. Tickets (5 years and over) $40/pp. Group rate (10 or more) $35/pp. Tickets: ticketmaster.com.au
The success of this show depends first of all on recorded sound, supplied by Disney Theatricals, which took the local team three months to re-record incorporating voice-overs and cues for singers, dance numbers and lights. Though not credited in the program, the sound team’s final cut, run on a laptop, worked like a charm.
Second, though the show is an example of franchised American schmaltz, the directors achieved the right high-energy level, timing, dance work and harmony singing from a large cast ranging from young teenagers to adults to make it work on stage in its own right. In particular, last Saturday, the central couple of Troy and Gabriella played that night by Andy Burton and Jacinta Mai Le produced the kind of electricity needed to focus the production. They managed to make a sentimental story pleasantly romantic.
The theme of High School Musical is seductive for an old drama teacher like me. The basketball coach talks of teaching teamwork, commitment and self-confidence. The drama teacher explodes with “That’s exactly what I teach” and then loudly attacks the tradition of sport being funded way above the arts. Of course, it’s hard to reject the resolution of the conflicts with hugs all round between the Jocks, the Brainiacs, the Thespians and the Skater Dudes in the song We’re All In This Together, however unrealistic this may be.
“I didn’t lie. I improvised,” says the fly in the ointment Drama Club President Sharpay, perhaps better representing the way people in power continue to behave after high school. It seemed to me that Vanessa de Jager had some difficulty changing Sharpay from “I am the star” to “I’m sorry” in her final scene with Gabriella. However, it’s clear this group of thespians have learned teamwork, commitment and self-confidence, and their show is certainly worth seeing (so long as younger audience members don’t imagine high school is really like this, even in America).
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The success of this show depends first of all on recorded sound, supplied by Disney Theatricals, which took the local team three months to re-record incorporating voice-overs and cues for singers, dance numbers and lights. Though not credited in the program, the sound team’s final cut, run on a laptop, worked like a charm.
Second, though the show is an example of franchised American schmaltz, the directors achieved the right high-energy level, timing, dance work and harmony singing from a large cast ranging from young teenagers to adults to make it work on stage in its own right. In particular, last Saturday, the central couple of Troy and Gabriella played that night by Andy Burton and Jacinta Mai Le produced the kind of electricity needed to focus the production. They managed to make a sentimental story pleasantly romantic.
The theme of High School Musical is seductive for an old drama teacher like me. The basketball coach talks of teaching teamwork, commitment and self-confidence. The drama teacher explodes with “That’s exactly what I teach” and then loudly attacks the tradition of sport being funded way above the arts. Of course, it’s hard to reject the resolution of the conflicts with hugs all round between the Jocks, the Brainiacs, the Thespians and the Skater Dudes in the song We’re All In This Together, however unrealistic this may be.
“I didn’t lie. I improvised,” says the fly in the ointment Drama Club President Sharpay, perhaps better representing the way people in power continue to behave after high school. It seemed to me that Vanessa de Jager had some difficulty changing Sharpay from “I am the star” to “I’m sorry” in her final scene with Gabriella. However, it’s clear this group of thespians have learned teamwork, commitment and self-confidence, and their show is certainly worth seeing (so long as younger audience members don’t imagine high school is really like this, even in America).
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 17 September 2007
2007: Metrosexual by Matthew Robinson
Metrosexual written and performed by Matthew Robinson. Produced by Bill Stephens in the Cabaret Crème series at The Street Theatre, Monday September 17.
Bill Stephens continues to be the doyen of cabaret since the days of his famous Queanbeyan School of Arts Café, and still works to bring both top class performers and new promising talent to public attention.
Matthew Robinson is an actor, songwriter and pianist who, at 27, is building a career in musical and straight theatre, on stage and television. He has certainly been successful in performing and writing, perhaps especially in winning an $80,000 Pratt Prize for Music Theatre in 2004 to develop Metro Street, his first full length musical, to production stage.
However, the program of his original songs in Metrosexual is not as engaging or exciting as I had hoped. Robinson’s lyrics are interesting, giving us a new twist in close-up observation of modern metro life. I thought the best example was the love song which focusses on finding someone who can give him broadband, pay tv and other electronic consumer experiences, at a reasonable cost per month, of course. Many individual lines are effective, but there are other stronger more stylish metro-folk-funk writer-singers especially from Melbourne where Robinson is based.
The Street Theatre mainstage is quite unforgiving for a solo performer trying to work in an intimate cabaret format. Without food, drink and scattered tables there was not the ambience which Robinson might have exploited, particularly with a younger audience to whom he would speak directly. To a largely middle-aged group at the 8.30pm session I attended, his patter between songs seemed a bit shallow and predictable, without the warmth of personality of a more mature performer.
I also found his music rather repetitive in form, though interesting for his Mozartian off the keynote endings. None of the songs had melodies which were well distinguished from each other or remain in the memory for later enjoyment. I was left with an impression of talent which will need some more years to mature before it fulfills its promise.
Cabaret Crème will present Lisa Schouw’s Life and Music of Nina Simone on October 15 and The Streisand Story performed by Avigail Herman on November 19.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Bill Stephens continues to be the doyen of cabaret since the days of his famous Queanbeyan School of Arts Café, and still works to bring both top class performers and new promising talent to public attention.
Matthew Robinson is an actor, songwriter and pianist who, at 27, is building a career in musical and straight theatre, on stage and television. He has certainly been successful in performing and writing, perhaps especially in winning an $80,000 Pratt Prize for Music Theatre in 2004 to develop Metro Street, his first full length musical, to production stage.
However, the program of his original songs in Metrosexual is not as engaging or exciting as I had hoped. Robinson’s lyrics are interesting, giving us a new twist in close-up observation of modern metro life. I thought the best example was the love song which focusses on finding someone who can give him broadband, pay tv and other electronic consumer experiences, at a reasonable cost per month, of course. Many individual lines are effective, but there are other stronger more stylish metro-folk-funk writer-singers especially from Melbourne where Robinson is based.
The Street Theatre mainstage is quite unforgiving for a solo performer trying to work in an intimate cabaret format. Without food, drink and scattered tables there was not the ambience which Robinson might have exploited, particularly with a younger audience to whom he would speak directly. To a largely middle-aged group at the 8.30pm session I attended, his patter between songs seemed a bit shallow and predictable, without the warmth of personality of a more mature performer.
I also found his music rather repetitive in form, though interesting for his Mozartian off the keynote endings. None of the songs had melodies which were well distinguished from each other or remain in the memory for later enjoyment. I was left with an impression of talent which will need some more years to mature before it fulfills its promise.
Cabaret Crème will present Lisa Schouw’s Life and Music of Nina Simone on October 15 and The Streisand Story performed by Avigail Herman on November 19.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 12 September 2007
2007: The Landlords by Jordan Prosser and Sam Burns-Warr
The Landlords by Jordan Prosser and Sam Burns-Warr, presented by the Wave Edge Theory (WET) Season at Belconnen Theatre, Swanson St, Belconnen, September 12 and 14, 8pm
If this were 1947 instead of 2007, this play would have been named En Attendant Godot, written by a mature age but new author, Samuel Beckett, who went on to become a central figure in 20th Century theatre. At 40 years of age, after years in the French resistance, hiding in fear of arrest and torture, his characters wait for their Godot in a bleak formless landscape, symbolising the devastation and hopelessness at the end of World War.
60 years on, at the beginning of the new century, new young writers Prosser and Burns-Warr present an equally bleak view of our world, perhaps even less hopeful than before. Their characters, named Archimedes and Jesus Christ, are holed up in a hotel foyer with a toilet each and an unreliable electricity generator, living on Cheezels and Kit-Kats, knowing (or at least believing) they are the last people left alive on earth, on their last day of life.
Prosser and Burns-Warr do not yet have the mature writing skills that Beckett had, not the poetic and powerful use of language of Waiting for Godot, but they may well be on the way. This is the purpose of the WET Season, to give new young writers a place to present their work – a purpose successfully fulfilled in The Landlords. The figure of Death as a pizza delivery boy, perhaps a parallel to the Boy who brings the message that Godot won’t come today, is quite brilliant, though the symbolism needs to be worked through more clearly.
The horrifying thing is that Vladimir and Estragon in 1947 still believed in Godot despite everything, while Archy and JC have absolutely nothing left to hope for, not even a belief in an illusory God. What have we done, this play asks, that perhaps in the quite near future will bring human society to such an uninspiring end? Drama should confront us with such questions, and I hope that Prosser and Burns-Warr continue a productive theatrical partnership.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If this were 1947 instead of 2007, this play would have been named En Attendant Godot, written by a mature age but new author, Samuel Beckett, who went on to become a central figure in 20th Century theatre. At 40 years of age, after years in the French resistance, hiding in fear of arrest and torture, his characters wait for their Godot in a bleak formless landscape, symbolising the devastation and hopelessness at the end of World War.
60 years on, at the beginning of the new century, new young writers Prosser and Burns-Warr present an equally bleak view of our world, perhaps even less hopeful than before. Their characters, named Archimedes and Jesus Christ, are holed up in a hotel foyer with a toilet each and an unreliable electricity generator, living on Cheezels and Kit-Kats, knowing (or at least believing) they are the last people left alive on earth, on their last day of life.
Prosser and Burns-Warr do not yet have the mature writing skills that Beckett had, not the poetic and powerful use of language of Waiting for Godot, but they may well be on the way. This is the purpose of the WET Season, to give new young writers a place to present their work – a purpose successfully fulfilled in The Landlords. The figure of Death as a pizza delivery boy, perhaps a parallel to the Boy who brings the message that Godot won’t come today, is quite brilliant, though the symbolism needs to be worked through more clearly.
The horrifying thing is that Vladimir and Estragon in 1947 still believed in Godot despite everything, while Archy and JC have absolutely nothing left to hope for, not even a belief in an illusory God. What have we done, this play asks, that perhaps in the quite near future will bring human society to such an uninspiring end? Drama should confront us with such questions, and I hope that Prosser and Burns-Warr continue a productive theatrical partnership.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 3 August 2007
2007: Rebecca, adapted for the stage by Clifford Williams
Rebecca, adapted for the stage by Clifford Williams from the novel by Daphne du Maurier. Tempo Theatre directed by Jon Elphick at Belconnen Theatre, August 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11 at 7.30pm; August 4, 9, 11 at 2pm; August 5 at 4pm. Bookings 6247 4456 or www.philo.org.au/rebecca
Daphne du Maurier may have been taken seriously by people in the 1930s who were easily titillated by the idea of murder among the upper classes, but Rebecca, at least in this adaptation for the stage, today is laughable. Instead of the ending, when Mrs Danvers gets her revenge, being a dramatic finale, the opening night audience could not help but laugh at Maxim de Winter’s line “Oh, the West Wing’s on fire” instantly accompanied by smoke, red floodlights and sound of an old-fashioned firebell.
I note that the 1938 novel is still in print, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 movie is now a popular DVD. Clifford Williams is to blame for making Tempo Theatre’s task very difficult. Perhaps an option might have been to play it as a farce – that would have produced more lively theatre.
Within the attempt to play this post-neo-gothic romantic murder mystery as if it were a representation of reality, only two actors fully made the grade.
Cheryl Browne as the twisted Mrs Danvers actually made me feel creepy, and persuaded me that she believed what she said in her set speeches (the only decently written speeches in the script).
But the top award goes to Nikki Higgins as the young second Mrs de Winter. Despite having little to play with, or against, from the other actors (except John Rogers as the butler Frith), and generally slow pacing which killed the suspense, she looked and felt the part of the shy young working girl picked up by the indolent rich. Her difficult position in being brought up against the class-ridden rules of de Winter’s society was acted so well it reminded me of Princess Diana’s experience moving up into royalty. Suddenly I could see some relevance to modern times, and some connection to what du Maurier probably had in mind in her original novel.
It was Higgins’ performance in this central role which held the play together.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Daphne du Maurier may have been taken seriously by people in the 1930s who were easily titillated by the idea of murder among the upper classes, but Rebecca, at least in this adaptation for the stage, today is laughable. Instead of the ending, when Mrs Danvers gets her revenge, being a dramatic finale, the opening night audience could not help but laugh at Maxim de Winter’s line “Oh, the West Wing’s on fire” instantly accompanied by smoke, red floodlights and sound of an old-fashioned firebell.
I note that the 1938 novel is still in print, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 movie is now a popular DVD. Clifford Williams is to blame for making Tempo Theatre’s task very difficult. Perhaps an option might have been to play it as a farce – that would have produced more lively theatre.
Within the attempt to play this post-neo-gothic romantic murder mystery as if it were a representation of reality, only two actors fully made the grade.
Cheryl Browne as the twisted Mrs Danvers actually made me feel creepy, and persuaded me that she believed what she said in her set speeches (the only decently written speeches in the script).
But the top award goes to Nikki Higgins as the young second Mrs de Winter. Despite having little to play with, or against, from the other actors (except John Rogers as the butler Frith), and generally slow pacing which killed the suspense, she looked and felt the part of the shy young working girl picked up by the indolent rich. Her difficult position in being brought up against the class-ridden rules of de Winter’s society was acted so well it reminded me of Princess Diana’s experience moving up into royalty. Suddenly I could see some relevance to modern times, and some connection to what du Maurier probably had in mind in her original novel.
It was Higgins’ performance in this central role which held the play together.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 20 April 2007
2007: Moonshadows: A tribute to Cat Stevens. Concept by Peter Cox
Moonshadows: A tribute to Cat Stevens. Concept by Peter Cox, starring Darren Coggan. Musical director Naomi Coggan. Produced by McPherson Ink at Canberra Playhouse, April 20 and 21.
Darren Coggan unplugged his guitar and left the stage, but appreciative applause would not let him “go, away, I know, I have to go”, as the real Cat Stevens had done, becoming Yusuf Islam in 1979. The theatre hushed as Coggan reappeared. "Thank you very much," he said.
Thank you from a single voice, sounding “miles from nowhere”, and as if the whole audience remembered the line from Longer Boats are Coming “just a flower I can help along”, a supportive murmur spread around for just one more song.
Coggan stars as narrator of the life story of Steven Demetre Georgiou, illustrating his significant experiences and spiritual searching through Cat Stevens’ songs. Coggan has found a quality of voice which is so close to the original that you would think it is Cat Stevens himself unless you are a bit too pedantic, like me, and play the original LPs like Tea for the Tillerman, Mona Bone Jakon and Teazle and the Firecat after the show.
The band and backing singers supporting Coggan, perhaps especially musical director Naomi Coggan on keyboard and piano, are impressive. Seeing a band play this music makes you realise how diverse and complex Cat Stevens’ compositions are. In this show, the effect is much bigger than the more intimate-sounding original recordings, but it works well because this is a show about Cat Stevens, not an attempt merely to reproduce him.
The commitment from writer Peter Cox is not just to the music, but to the message. When Georgiou, brought up in the anti-Turk tradition of Greek Cypriots of his time, finally finds in the Qur’an the central theme of peace and goodwill, of de-emphasising the superficiality of material wealth, we hear a message of just as much importance today as 30 years ago.
Moonshadows, thankfully, ends at this point, avoiding Yusuf Islam’s later unfortunate slip towards fundamentalism when he supported the fatwah against Salman Rushdie (though he claimed to have been misquoted). The result is an exciting concert and a dramatic narrative with a worthwhile theme - a success.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Darren Coggan unplugged his guitar and left the stage, but appreciative applause would not let him “go, away, I know, I have to go”, as the real Cat Stevens had done, becoming Yusuf Islam in 1979. The theatre hushed as Coggan reappeared. "Thank you very much," he said.
Thank you from a single voice, sounding “miles from nowhere”, and as if the whole audience remembered the line from Longer Boats are Coming “just a flower I can help along”, a supportive murmur spread around for just one more song.
Coggan stars as narrator of the life story of Steven Demetre Georgiou, illustrating his significant experiences and spiritual searching through Cat Stevens’ songs. Coggan has found a quality of voice which is so close to the original that you would think it is Cat Stevens himself unless you are a bit too pedantic, like me, and play the original LPs like Tea for the Tillerman, Mona Bone Jakon and Teazle and the Firecat after the show.
The band and backing singers supporting Coggan, perhaps especially musical director Naomi Coggan on keyboard and piano, are impressive. Seeing a band play this music makes you realise how diverse and complex Cat Stevens’ compositions are. In this show, the effect is much bigger than the more intimate-sounding original recordings, but it works well because this is a show about Cat Stevens, not an attempt merely to reproduce him.
The commitment from writer Peter Cox is not just to the music, but to the message. When Georgiou, brought up in the anti-Turk tradition of Greek Cypriots of his time, finally finds in the Qur’an the central theme of peace and goodwill, of de-emphasising the superficiality of material wealth, we hear a message of just as much importance today as 30 years ago.
Moonshadows, thankfully, ends at this point, avoiding Yusuf Islam’s later unfortunate slip towards fundamentalism when he supported the fatwah against Salman Rushdie (though he claimed to have been misquoted). The result is an exciting concert and a dramatic narrative with a worthwhile theme - a success.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 19 April 2007
2007: Eleven Year Itch - The Howard Years by Shortis and Simpson. Promo feature article.
Three months into his Canberra Times career, this very writer, reviewing John Shortis and Moya Simpson in June 1996, wrote “But maybe I expect too much of Queanbeyan: terror on Monaro Street is not something we can seriously contemplate” in response to the promise to “terrorise the audience” with satire.
Shortis & Curlies, with the late Andrew Bissett, at The School of Arts Cafe, presented by the now legendary Bill Stephens, was the first of the Shortis and Simpson series of satirical shows which have played (or maybe plagued, according to your political position) the Canberra region every year since. But not only did their career run parallel with mine. The much more illustrious comparison is with the grasp on government of PM John Howard, who has made the fear of terror real, even in Queanbeyan.
“Let the itch begin / Let us start from scratch” introduces Eleven Year Itch - The Howard Years, opening on May 3 at The Street Theatre.
The itch to write and sing satirical cabaret began in Sydney, when Stephens heard one of Shortis’ songs performed by Margaret Roadknight. Although Simpson was a also successful singer, it was not until 1995, when their children left home and gave them freedom, that the couple toured together in country regions. When their caravan reached Bungendore they stopped, and took up the School of Arts offer.
Eleven years on, looking back on both the political changes and their own creative development, audiences may be surprised to find themselves in a new theatrical world. The Street Theatre’s artistic director, Caroline Stacey, is working with Shortis and Simpson, building on and extending their talents. Eleven Year Itch is risky and demanding work, taking John Shortis out of the writer’s garrett, off the piano stool, and behind instruments we never knew he could play: ukulele, accordion, pedal organ, trombone among some others previously unknown to anyone.
Stacey’s expectations for the full depth of character which she brings fom directing plays and opera, is a new challenge for Moya Simpson. During rehearsal, as I watched, Simpson grew in one of her roles, as John Howard dreaming of waterfront reform (remember the black dogs in the night). Stacey also has expertise in European political cabaret, making each of her rehearsal notes hone both Simpson’s quality of voice and belief in her character’s desires. Just the first line “I’m down here, on the waterfront, in the full moonlight” suddenly became tragic (because we know the implications of his instructions to Peter Reith), romantic (in an irky sort of way), and horribly funny against Shortis’ French-style accordion playing.
The ACT Creative Arts Fellowship which Shortis received a year or so ago led him to the same conclusion as Stacey. When it comes to New York cabaret or European cabaret, though he likes both, it’s the European tradition which underpins political satire. After a reading of some new work last year, Eleven Year Itch is Shortis’s first full production which has grown out of the Fellowship study which took him back to Paris in 1880, through the Berlin cabaret which made Bertolt Brecht famous. This show also has ACT backing through a one-off project grant, which has enabled Shortis and Simpson to work with Stacey, produce good publicity material, and set up the studio at The Street in style.
The floorspace where the audience sits, quaffing as required, is decorated in the ornate way which, in the European tradition, makes the audience feel glamorous. But don’t imagine the action will remain neatly confined to a tiny stage in the corner - as you may have seen in the restaurant scene in the French film The Singer, where Alain Moreau (Gerard Depardieu) is ignored by the snooty clientele. Be prepared, if you please, for the karaoke.
Already bookings are coming on apace, so some people may have discovered that their tables are not numbered. They are named. After all, naming names is often what politics is about. You will soon be singing along with I Lunched With a Man Who Lunched With a Man Who Lunched at the Burke and Grill.
Mention of Labor allows us to make a note that, though project money from the ACT Government supports Eleven Year Itch, the satirical target is not just the incumbent Commonwealth Government. Shortis has written more than humorous songs linked in a revue format. Using some of his own songs from previous years, many new ones and a powerful lament for David Hicks written by Peter J Casey, for the first time Shortis’s script is more like a play, with sections delimited by the election years since 1996, and leading to a mystery ending. What will happen in 2007?
Of course the Coalition comes in for the stick it deserves, but the failure of Labor gets its just deserts too. Latham in the Aisles will be one song you won’t want to miss, whatever your personal preference. Shortis makes no bones about how he sees satire. A good politician is an oxymoron, he says. He looks for “things that are worth being scathing about”. No politician is safe because dishonesty, manipulation of other people, using politics for one’s personal advancement, and aiming only at winning rather than doing honourable things are all worth being scathing about.
Being satirical is about being even-handed, which some people see as being wishy-washy, but being scathing leaves its mark on both hands, right and left. It’s theatrically and politically risky (though not as much in Canberra 2007 as, say, in Berlin 1933), but, say Shortis, Simpson and Stacey, the risk must be taken. You’ve got to do it, they say, in theatre, just as you have to in politics. Otherwise nothing is achieved.
This leads our discussion to the awful realisation that, indeed, Prime Minister Howard has done exactly that - achieved. All of a sudden there are dark stories on all sides. We see Australian culture as an Othello. In destroying Othello, Iago achieves everything he desires, through manipulating people’s fears, setting up fictional lines of demarcation, and creating immense but unjustified jealousies. But Othello’s power was Iago’s original support. By succeeding in cutting down Othello, Iago only destroys himself. Is this the real story of the last eleven years? Is aggrandisement the itch at which politicians must scratch away, until our culture is undermined, to the detriment of us all?
This is the new Shortis and Simpson. You will find an edge to their work, even in songs you’ve heard before. Stacey’s view is that a culture only comes to maturity when an audience appreciates a satire even of itself. In the humour of political satire, dark though it may be when governments make life and death decisions, or light as we delve into the Prince of Dorkness himself, we find strength as a culture.
At the same time, as Shortis, Simpson and Stacey explore new ways to stretch their and our imaginations, they pull together the experience of theatre and the strands of history, at least of the last eleven years - the Howard Years.
Eleven Year Itch - The Howard YearsShortis and Simpson at The Street Theatre
Directed by Caroline Stacey.
May 3 May 19, 8.30pm
Matinee May 19, 2.30pm
Tickets: $30 full; $26 concession and groups.
Previews: May 1 and 2 $20
Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Shortis & Curlies, with the late Andrew Bissett, at The School of Arts Cafe, presented by the now legendary Bill Stephens, was the first of the Shortis and Simpson series of satirical shows which have played (or maybe plagued, according to your political position) the Canberra region every year since. But not only did their career run parallel with mine. The much more illustrious comparison is with the grasp on government of PM John Howard, who has made the fear of terror real, even in Queanbeyan.
“Let the itch begin / Let us start from scratch” introduces Eleven Year Itch - The Howard Years, opening on May 3 at The Street Theatre.
The itch to write and sing satirical cabaret began in Sydney, when Stephens heard one of Shortis’ songs performed by Margaret Roadknight. Although Simpson was a also successful singer, it was not until 1995, when their children left home and gave them freedom, that the couple toured together in country regions. When their caravan reached Bungendore they stopped, and took up the School of Arts offer.
Eleven years on, looking back on both the political changes and their own creative development, audiences may be surprised to find themselves in a new theatrical world. The Street Theatre’s artistic director, Caroline Stacey, is working with Shortis and Simpson, building on and extending their talents. Eleven Year Itch is risky and demanding work, taking John Shortis out of the writer’s garrett, off the piano stool, and behind instruments we never knew he could play: ukulele, accordion, pedal organ, trombone among some others previously unknown to anyone.
Stacey’s expectations for the full depth of character which she brings fom directing plays and opera, is a new challenge for Moya Simpson. During rehearsal, as I watched, Simpson grew in one of her roles, as John Howard dreaming of waterfront reform (remember the black dogs in the night). Stacey also has expertise in European political cabaret, making each of her rehearsal notes hone both Simpson’s quality of voice and belief in her character’s desires. Just the first line “I’m down here, on the waterfront, in the full moonlight” suddenly became tragic (because we know the implications of his instructions to Peter Reith), romantic (in an irky sort of way), and horribly funny against Shortis’ French-style accordion playing.
The ACT Creative Arts Fellowship which Shortis received a year or so ago led him to the same conclusion as Stacey. When it comes to New York cabaret or European cabaret, though he likes both, it’s the European tradition which underpins political satire. After a reading of some new work last year, Eleven Year Itch is Shortis’s first full production which has grown out of the Fellowship study which took him back to Paris in 1880, through the Berlin cabaret which made Bertolt Brecht famous. This show also has ACT backing through a one-off project grant, which has enabled Shortis and Simpson to work with Stacey, produce good publicity material, and set up the studio at The Street in style.
The floorspace where the audience sits, quaffing as required, is decorated in the ornate way which, in the European tradition, makes the audience feel glamorous. But don’t imagine the action will remain neatly confined to a tiny stage in the corner - as you may have seen in the restaurant scene in the French film The Singer, where Alain Moreau (Gerard Depardieu) is ignored by the snooty clientele. Be prepared, if you please, for the karaoke.
Already bookings are coming on apace, so some people may have discovered that their tables are not numbered. They are named. After all, naming names is often what politics is about. You will soon be singing along with I Lunched With a Man Who Lunched With a Man Who Lunched at the Burke and Grill.
Mention of Labor allows us to make a note that, though project money from the ACT Government supports Eleven Year Itch, the satirical target is not just the incumbent Commonwealth Government. Shortis has written more than humorous songs linked in a revue format. Using some of his own songs from previous years, many new ones and a powerful lament for David Hicks written by Peter J Casey, for the first time Shortis’s script is more like a play, with sections delimited by the election years since 1996, and leading to a mystery ending. What will happen in 2007?
Of course the Coalition comes in for the stick it deserves, but the failure of Labor gets its just deserts too. Latham in the Aisles will be one song you won’t want to miss, whatever your personal preference. Shortis makes no bones about how he sees satire. A good politician is an oxymoron, he says. He looks for “things that are worth being scathing about”. No politician is safe because dishonesty, manipulation of other people, using politics for one’s personal advancement, and aiming only at winning rather than doing honourable things are all worth being scathing about.
Being satirical is about being even-handed, which some people see as being wishy-washy, but being scathing leaves its mark on both hands, right and left. It’s theatrically and politically risky (though not as much in Canberra 2007 as, say, in Berlin 1933), but, say Shortis, Simpson and Stacey, the risk must be taken. You’ve got to do it, they say, in theatre, just as you have to in politics. Otherwise nothing is achieved.
This leads our discussion to the awful realisation that, indeed, Prime Minister Howard has done exactly that - achieved. All of a sudden there are dark stories on all sides. We see Australian culture as an Othello. In destroying Othello, Iago achieves everything he desires, through manipulating people’s fears, setting up fictional lines of demarcation, and creating immense but unjustified jealousies. But Othello’s power was Iago’s original support. By succeeding in cutting down Othello, Iago only destroys himself. Is this the real story of the last eleven years? Is aggrandisement the itch at which politicians must scratch away, until our culture is undermined, to the detriment of us all?
This is the new Shortis and Simpson. You will find an edge to their work, even in songs you’ve heard before. Stacey’s view is that a culture only comes to maturity when an audience appreciates a satire even of itself. In the humour of political satire, dark though it may be when governments make life and death decisions, or light as we delve into the Prince of Dorkness himself, we find strength as a culture.
At the same time, as Shortis, Simpson and Stacey explore new ways to stretch their and our imaginations, they pull together the experience of theatre and the strands of history, at least of the last eleven years - the Howard Years.
Eleven Year Itch - The Howard YearsShortis and Simpson at The Street Theatre
Directed by Caroline Stacey.
May 3 May 19, 8.30pm
Matinee May 19, 2.30pm
Tickets: $30 full; $26 concession and groups.
Previews: May 1 and 2 $20
Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
National Folk Festival opening by Hon Barry Cohen
The Hon Barry Cohen, former Arts Minister in the Hawke Labor Government, said he was surprised and proud to be asked to open this year’s National Folk Festival last Thursday. Thoroughly in keeping with Australian folk culture, and in tune with his many books of anecdotes such as What About the Workers?, The Almost Complete Gough and From Whitlam to Winston, humour of an unofficial kind was the keynote of his official opening speech.
For NFF Board President, John Taylor, there was good reason to celebrate the publication 20 years ago this year of the report of the Committee of Inquiry into Folklife in Australia: Our Living Heritage, commissioned by Cohen. “It is a unique document with which any student of Australia’s rich and diverse cultural history should familiarise themselves … We have Barry to thank for having the vision to get this project started.”
Unfortunately one of his revealing anecdotes, a bit less than humorous but nonetheless of the blunt Australian kind, told in conversation with the Canberra Times, concerned later Prime Minister Keating and Minister for Education John Dawkins.
Cohen had done his research, personally observing the positive social impact of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington. The famous and continuing Centre's interests and practical work in cultural policy are “framed principally around local agency and cultural democracy in grassroots communities, and collaborative projects designed to foster self-representation.”
But Keating “wouldn’t have a bar of it” as year after year Cohen tried in Cabinet to implement the Inquiry’s recommendation to set up a Folklife Centre in Canberra. Dawkins put in the boot in the last budget before Keating’s fatal flaw election in 1996, using the favourite politician’s ploy by going for an inquiry. At this point in history a project delayed was a project as dead as a bloated wombat on a country road.
Mention of wombats introduces a different side of Barry Cohen, wildlife sanctuary endangered species breeder until, in 2005, age crept into the picture and he passed on this work to others. Environmental issues are an important theme in this year’s National Folk Festival with three interrelated themes.
Various performers present songs, poems and even narrative dances about water, in its many incarnations. But the flip side of the issue is the presentation, headed by Social History and Folklore Collector Rob Willis, of material from the National Library of Australia’s ongoing project on drought. Among presenters is Dr Graham Seal of Curtin University, WA, who had a major part to play in the Folklife inquiry back in 1987. Another is Sue Riley, a Centrelink Counsellor, addressing the human impact and social cost of continued drought. Willis can be contacted at rwillis@westserv.net.au if you have stories to add to the collection.
Alongside the NLA is the Climate Change Tent, where there are workshops, talks and films by a wide range of experts and commentators including Professor Will Steffen, director of the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU, the Fair Trade Society, Australian Greens economics researcher Richard Dennis and Bob Douglass, formerly head of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population at ANU who leads a Forum on Nature and Society at 3.30pm tomorrow.
Everyone can take part in the third aspect of cleaning up the National Folk Festival, called No Ifs, No Butts. Clean Up Australia says that 49% of rubbish around Australia consists of cigarette butts, so this year there are specially designed bins all over the Festival site, and special individual butt bins for smokers to carry with them, produced in a new partnership with the Butt Littering Trust.
Smoking is no joke, but jokes aside, the former Minister Cohen was clearly the right person to open this year’s Festival. He even had a very serious suggestion for how to set up a Folklife Centre for Australia. Why not, he said, make it part of the National Museum of Australia? Why not, indeed.
Cohen is nowadays deputy chair at Old Parliament House, and points out that the National Portrait Gallery began life in a space shared with OPH. Its success has won it the fame and consequent power to claim a new building in its own right. An Australian National Folklife Centre set up in a space at the National Museum will surely have a parallel history in the future, he says. Now that heritage and history are the regular subject of debate, on all sides of politics, it’s time for the move to be made.
Young people and more recent migrants need an active centre to discover our folk history, as happens in Washington, where the Smithsonian themes cover indigenous life, working life, regional folklife, and recent migrants’ life. Like the National Folk Festival, which Cohen calls Canberra’s best kept secret, the Smithsonian exhibits include a Guest State each year, and even a Guest Country for comparison. With the National Museum’s visitor drawing power based so strongly already on its cultural history and personal story exhibits, a National Folklife Centre should be a natural fit, like a stockman on his horse or a novelist from Brindabella writing My Brilliant Career.
National Folk Festival runs until late on Monday April 9 at Exhibition Park. Information at www.folkfestival.asn.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
For NFF Board President, John Taylor, there was good reason to celebrate the publication 20 years ago this year of the report of the Committee of Inquiry into Folklife in Australia: Our Living Heritage, commissioned by Cohen. “It is a unique document with which any student of Australia’s rich and diverse cultural history should familiarise themselves … We have Barry to thank for having the vision to get this project started.”
Unfortunately one of his revealing anecdotes, a bit less than humorous but nonetheless of the blunt Australian kind, told in conversation with the Canberra Times, concerned later Prime Minister Keating and Minister for Education John Dawkins.
Cohen had done his research, personally observing the positive social impact of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington. The famous and continuing Centre's interests and practical work in cultural policy are “framed principally around local agency and cultural democracy in grassroots communities, and collaborative projects designed to foster self-representation.”
But Keating “wouldn’t have a bar of it” as year after year Cohen tried in Cabinet to implement the Inquiry’s recommendation to set up a Folklife Centre in Canberra. Dawkins put in the boot in the last budget before Keating’s fatal flaw election in 1996, using the favourite politician’s ploy by going for an inquiry. At this point in history a project delayed was a project as dead as a bloated wombat on a country road.
Mention of wombats introduces a different side of Barry Cohen, wildlife sanctuary endangered species breeder until, in 2005, age crept into the picture and he passed on this work to others. Environmental issues are an important theme in this year’s National Folk Festival with three interrelated themes.
Various performers present songs, poems and even narrative dances about water, in its many incarnations. But the flip side of the issue is the presentation, headed by Social History and Folklore Collector Rob Willis, of material from the National Library of Australia’s ongoing project on drought. Among presenters is Dr Graham Seal of Curtin University, WA, who had a major part to play in the Folklife inquiry back in 1987. Another is Sue Riley, a Centrelink Counsellor, addressing the human impact and social cost of continued drought. Willis can be contacted at rwillis@westserv.net.au if you have stories to add to the collection.
Alongside the NLA is the Climate Change Tent, where there are workshops, talks and films by a wide range of experts and commentators including Professor Will Steffen, director of the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU, the Fair Trade Society, Australian Greens economics researcher Richard Dennis and Bob Douglass, formerly head of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population at ANU who leads a Forum on Nature and Society at 3.30pm tomorrow.
Everyone can take part in the third aspect of cleaning up the National Folk Festival, called No Ifs, No Butts. Clean Up Australia says that 49% of rubbish around Australia consists of cigarette butts, so this year there are specially designed bins all over the Festival site, and special individual butt bins for smokers to carry with them, produced in a new partnership with the Butt Littering Trust.
Smoking is no joke, but jokes aside, the former Minister Cohen was clearly the right person to open this year’s Festival. He even had a very serious suggestion for how to set up a Folklife Centre for Australia. Why not, he said, make it part of the National Museum of Australia? Why not, indeed.
Cohen is nowadays deputy chair at Old Parliament House, and points out that the National Portrait Gallery began life in a space shared with OPH. Its success has won it the fame and consequent power to claim a new building in its own right. An Australian National Folklife Centre set up in a space at the National Museum will surely have a parallel history in the future, he says. Now that heritage and history are the regular subject of debate, on all sides of politics, it’s time for the move to be made.
Young people and more recent migrants need an active centre to discover our folk history, as happens in Washington, where the Smithsonian themes cover indigenous life, working life, regional folklife, and recent migrants’ life. Like the National Folk Festival, which Cohen calls Canberra’s best kept secret, the Smithsonian exhibits include a Guest State each year, and even a Guest Country for comparison. With the National Museum’s visitor drawing power based so strongly already on its cultural history and personal story exhibits, a National Folklife Centre should be a natural fit, like a stockman on his horse or a novelist from Brindabella writing My Brilliant Career.
National Folk Festival runs until late on Monday April 9 at Exhibition Park. Information at www.folkfestival.asn.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 2 April 2007
2007: National Folk Festival - feature article on Jared Wilkins and Dave O'Neill
The Board of the National Folk Festival is delighted to announce two new senior staff positions. Jared Wilkins, Production Manager of the Festival for the last three years has been appointed Managing Director and Dave O’Neill, Program Manager in 2000 and 2006, is now the Festival’s Artistic Director.
Both jobs are full time, fixed term contract positions. O’Neill, a music teacher and internationally acclaimed professional musician, a member of the Eric Bogle Band, has taken on an expanded role as artistic director. Wilkins began 10 years ago as a volunteer, then volunteer coordinator. I spoke to Wilkins as he stood in the middle of a paddock rapidly filling with tents as volunteers began arriving from all over Australia for the NFF, which will be opened on Thursday evening at 8pm by the Hon Barry Cohen, former Minister for the Arts in the Hawke Government.
1300 volunteers, grouped into teams managed by volunteer coordinators, work to a paid Volunteer Manager, one of only five paid staff in Wilkins’ office. I wondered on the one hand if, since the National Folk Festival was permanently based in Canberra in the early 1990s, the new positions represented a corporatisation of the NFF. On the other hand, here was the Managing Director in the field, literally, looking and sounding like just another groupie of the folk music community. How does it all work?
Wilkins’ personal history goes a long way to answering this question. Community, he says, is the key. Even he, who attended Narrabundah College, and O’Neill who went to Narrabundah High School work together as members of the Canberra community. Teaching, too, is a central component of their lives. Kids, says Wilkins, usually fantasise about growing up to run away with the circus (perhaps this is the story of O’Neill’s life as a musician), but being brought up in the household of well-known drama and art identities, Peter and Lola Wilkins, saw their son run away from the circus to become a chemistry teacher at Marist Brothers in Canberra for three years.
It was a hard struggle for Wilkins to succeed in chemistry and maths through secondary school and university, but he came to understand how to crack the code of scientific language and to appreciate the challenge his students faced. He clearly sees his managerial task in an educational light.
But he never really left the circus, working on events production at WOMADelaide, Adelaide Fringe and the real thing, Cirque du Soleil, to help pay his way through uni. The National Folk Festival had to become managed as a business to survive but, he says, the corporate-looking structure does not undermine the folk music community approach, even though there is great competition for places as performers. 2007 attracted 600 applications for 200 performing spots.
The way it works is that volunteers pay their own way to come from all over Australia, with even a few from overseas, because the quality of the program is guaranteed. Yet the program is designed deliberately to cover the range from performers at the beginning of their careers to those at their peak, with a strong emphasis on teaching and encouraging the young. The generations play and learn together so that the folk music community rolls on. We can hope that the NFF 40-year generational report will be more positive than Peter Costello’s announcement last Monday.
Even the three-year contract arrangements for the Artistic Director and Managing Director jobs are planned with the intention that these roles will be passed on to new people to maintain an invigorating folk music culture over the years. Each year, too, one of the states is the focus – this year Western Australia – so interest and personal involvement revolves around the country. And, as we reported in the Canberra Times Panorama last weekend (Lusty Lyricism and Politics), a relevant theme is chosen each year which helps to give the content of the Festival a direction and social purpose. For 2007 the Middle East is the focus.
Wilkins, says NFF Board President John Taylor, is “superbly able, committed and professional, and the Board has every confidence that the event will continue to prosper and grow under his leadership”. Wilkins claims it’s all just a matter of “nuts and bolts” putting the Festival together, connecting all the parts, working out how “everything affects everything else”.
All 1300 volunteers come together because “folk music is the music of the folk”. It’s all about community, the soul of the National Folk Festival, says the very model of a modern managing director, Jared Wilkins.
O’Neill’s understanding of the Festival’s program potential and his experience and personal status in the broader music industry is “enviable”, says John Taylor. “We are truly fortunate to have two highly skilled professionals to fill these roles”.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Both jobs are full time, fixed term contract positions. O’Neill, a music teacher and internationally acclaimed professional musician, a member of the Eric Bogle Band, has taken on an expanded role as artistic director. Wilkins began 10 years ago as a volunteer, then volunteer coordinator. I spoke to Wilkins as he stood in the middle of a paddock rapidly filling with tents as volunteers began arriving from all over Australia for the NFF, which will be opened on Thursday evening at 8pm by the Hon Barry Cohen, former Minister for the Arts in the Hawke Government.
1300 volunteers, grouped into teams managed by volunteer coordinators, work to a paid Volunteer Manager, one of only five paid staff in Wilkins’ office. I wondered on the one hand if, since the National Folk Festival was permanently based in Canberra in the early 1990s, the new positions represented a corporatisation of the NFF. On the other hand, here was the Managing Director in the field, literally, looking and sounding like just another groupie of the folk music community. How does it all work?
Wilkins’ personal history goes a long way to answering this question. Community, he says, is the key. Even he, who attended Narrabundah College, and O’Neill who went to Narrabundah High School work together as members of the Canberra community. Teaching, too, is a central component of their lives. Kids, says Wilkins, usually fantasise about growing up to run away with the circus (perhaps this is the story of O’Neill’s life as a musician), but being brought up in the household of well-known drama and art identities, Peter and Lola Wilkins, saw their son run away from the circus to become a chemistry teacher at Marist Brothers in Canberra for three years.
It was a hard struggle for Wilkins to succeed in chemistry and maths through secondary school and university, but he came to understand how to crack the code of scientific language and to appreciate the challenge his students faced. He clearly sees his managerial task in an educational light.
But he never really left the circus, working on events production at WOMADelaide, Adelaide Fringe and the real thing, Cirque du Soleil, to help pay his way through uni. The National Folk Festival had to become managed as a business to survive but, he says, the corporate-looking structure does not undermine the folk music community approach, even though there is great competition for places as performers. 2007 attracted 600 applications for 200 performing spots.
The way it works is that volunteers pay their own way to come from all over Australia, with even a few from overseas, because the quality of the program is guaranteed. Yet the program is designed deliberately to cover the range from performers at the beginning of their careers to those at their peak, with a strong emphasis on teaching and encouraging the young. The generations play and learn together so that the folk music community rolls on. We can hope that the NFF 40-year generational report will be more positive than Peter Costello’s announcement last Monday.
Even the three-year contract arrangements for the Artistic Director and Managing Director jobs are planned with the intention that these roles will be passed on to new people to maintain an invigorating folk music culture over the years. Each year, too, one of the states is the focus – this year Western Australia – so interest and personal involvement revolves around the country. And, as we reported in the Canberra Times Panorama last weekend (Lusty Lyricism and Politics), a relevant theme is chosen each year which helps to give the content of the Festival a direction and social purpose. For 2007 the Middle East is the focus.
Wilkins, says NFF Board President John Taylor, is “superbly able, committed and professional, and the Board has every confidence that the event will continue to prosper and grow under his leadership”. Wilkins claims it’s all just a matter of “nuts and bolts” putting the Festival together, connecting all the parts, working out how “everything affects everything else”.
All 1300 volunteers come together because “folk music is the music of the folk”. It’s all about community, the soul of the National Folk Festival, says the very model of a modern managing director, Jared Wilkins.
O’Neill’s understanding of the Festival’s program potential and his experience and personal status in the broader music industry is “enviable”, says John Taylor. “We are truly fortunate to have two highly skilled professionals to fill these roles”.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
2007: The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, presented by the Frozen Shape Collective directed by Nick McCorriston at Belconnen Theatre March 28-31, 7.30pm
Frozen Shape Collective is the latest kaleidoscopic rearrangement of people most of whom were previously or are still associated with Bohemian Theatre, BKu and Opiate Productions which seem to have spun off each other over the past six years or so.
I suggest this is the team to keep working together, because The Birthday Party is the most successful piece of work I recall seeing from these various groups. Part of the Wet Season (Wave Edge Theory), McCorriston has cast, directed, designed lights and sound (set design by Sudzset) with an excellent ear for Pinter’s language and eye for Pinter’s characters in this dreary British seaside boarding house setting.
Each actor – Robert Matthews (Petey Boles), Kerrie Roberts (Meg Boles), Matt Borneman (Stanley Webber, whose birthday is “celebrated”), Chris Rooks (Lulu), Pat Gordon (the hit man Seamus McCann) and Robert De Fries (the standover man Nat ‘Simey’ Goldberg) – has equally well understood that each Pinteresque pause is full of a character’s thinking. Usually, what the hell can I say now to fill in this awkward silence, when I don’t actually know what’s going on. Or in McCann and Goldberg, the pauses just let the creepy feeling sink in, to us in the audience as much as to the other characters. Laughter happens – but it’s short-lived.
To pull this degree of subtlety off so that two hours (including only a short interval) passed without concern for time on opening night is a success that Frozen Shape are well justified in celebrating. I was especially impressed that no character was allowed to become a minor role, compared with the central roles of Goldberg, McCann and Webber.
Rooks’ Lulu, for example, was a clearly drawn character caught in Goldberg’s web for a one-night stand, who grew overnight to realise that such men are fatally dangerous. De Fries gave us the charm of Goldberg as well as his menace, while Gordon’s McCann kept even Goldberg guessing, making this character much stronger and better balanced against Goldberg than in some other productions I have seen.
All in the ensemble gave equally, creating satisfying theatre which certainly justifies Belconnen Theatre’s efforts to encourage young serious theatre practitioners. Go to www.belcomserv.com.au/art/wet/ for more information.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Frozen Shape Collective is the latest kaleidoscopic rearrangement of people most of whom were previously or are still associated with Bohemian Theatre, BKu and Opiate Productions which seem to have spun off each other over the past six years or so.
I suggest this is the team to keep working together, because The Birthday Party is the most successful piece of work I recall seeing from these various groups. Part of the Wet Season (Wave Edge Theory), McCorriston has cast, directed, designed lights and sound (set design by Sudzset) with an excellent ear for Pinter’s language and eye for Pinter’s characters in this dreary British seaside boarding house setting.
Each actor – Robert Matthews (Petey Boles), Kerrie Roberts (Meg Boles), Matt Borneman (Stanley Webber, whose birthday is “celebrated”), Chris Rooks (Lulu), Pat Gordon (the hit man Seamus McCann) and Robert De Fries (the standover man Nat ‘Simey’ Goldberg) – has equally well understood that each Pinteresque pause is full of a character’s thinking. Usually, what the hell can I say now to fill in this awkward silence, when I don’t actually know what’s going on. Or in McCann and Goldberg, the pauses just let the creepy feeling sink in, to us in the audience as much as to the other characters. Laughter happens – but it’s short-lived.
To pull this degree of subtlety off so that two hours (including only a short interval) passed without concern for time on opening night is a success that Frozen Shape are well justified in celebrating. I was especially impressed that no character was allowed to become a minor role, compared with the central roles of Goldberg, McCann and Webber.
Rooks’ Lulu, for example, was a clearly drawn character caught in Goldberg’s web for a one-night stand, who grew overnight to realise that such men are fatally dangerous. De Fries gave us the charm of Goldberg as well as his menace, while Gordon’s McCann kept even Goldberg guessing, making this character much stronger and better balanced against Goldberg than in some other productions I have seen.
All in the ensemble gave equally, creating satisfying theatre which certainly justifies Belconnen Theatre’s efforts to encourage young serious theatre practitioners. Go to www.belcomserv.com.au/art/wet/ for more information.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 26 March 2007
2007: Falling in Love Again - Jennifer Ward-Lealand. Promo feature article.
It looked like a production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame on the stage of The Street Theatre. Two garbage bins and a cute looking bucket between them. But they were full of water, like all the theatre spotlights, the carpets, the seats. Ceilings collapsed, one near the lower theatre door while the insurance assessor was standing close by.
This was the result of the storm on February 27. Almost endgame for The Street, one might think, considering the cost of repairs, replacement of all those stage lights, relocating shows to other venues and loss of income from cancelled or postponed shows.
But the show goes on, starting this Friday with Auckland-based Jennifer Ward-Lealand, so revered in New Zealand that on April 4, we can reveal, she will receive an ONZM for her services to theatre. Falling in Love Again is a tribute to the strength of character of the German cabaret singer, Marlene Dietrich, who “had the guts,” says Ward-Lealand, “to turn her back on her own country”.
Since her youth theatre days some 30 years ago, Ward-Lealand has been rewarded with critical accolades. As Agnes in Agnes of God (1985) she was “an electrifying combination of distracted guilt and vengeful rage.” Her portrayal of Hedda Gabler (1986) captured “the audience’s undivided attention from the very first time she walks on stage.” In 2005, as Stevie in The Goat, she was “formidable”, and of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in 2006, the NZ Herald critic wrote “The delicate interactions between Viola and Olivia produces some wonderfully poignant moments, notably when Jennifer Ward-Lealand’s magisterial countess dissolves into a lovestruck teenager as she is captivated by the overpowering sweetness of Viola.”
For all these years Ward-Lealand has been more than a stalwart entertainer. As she has found in researching Marlene Dietrich, theatre can change how one sees the world, not only for the audience but for the practitioner. In 2002 she was approached to play the part of Dietrich in a play Marlene by British author Pam Gems, who has also written about Edith Piaf. Despite her musical family background, Ward-Lealand was hesitant about taking the role, which included six Dietrich songs.
But when a friend, a specialist in European cabaret, gave her documents and recordings, she found herself becoming fascinated, especially by Dietrich’s role in World War 2 on the Allied side, persuading German troops through her cabaret songs to reject the Nazi government in favour of democracy. Dietrich could, of course, have stayed in Germany and become equally famous and perhaps richer supporting her country’s war effort.
What was it, I asked Ward-Lealand, that made Dietrich reject her strict conservative upbringing, and in the USA become a focus for displaced German Jews? Theatre cabaret was the answer. Through the 1920s and 1930s the cabaret was an open society, more European than national, a swinging lifestyle, and particularly for Dietrich a place where she associated personally with Jewish people. She found in herself a “deep sense of outrage that she couldn’t easily run away from” at their treatment.
And, though Ward-Lealand has not been placed in such a testing situation, she too has found the theatre to be a “tolerant industry, where really nothing is shocking”. In her career she feels she has been very fortunate to have played such an array of characters from Polly Peachum in Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, Janet in The New Rocky Horror Show and Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein to Anna in Old Times by Harold Pinter, the Young Girl in Yerma by Garcia Lorca and many, many others. The key, she says, is the experience of taking these roles with directors you can respect, so that you learn to extend your understanding of the characters and change your own understanding of the world.
So when she performs in the role of Marlene Dietrich in Falling in Love Again, we will not see a singer imitating Dietrich. Through 23 songs, including some Cole Porter, Piaf and others, we will become engaged in that gutsy character, created for us by Jennifer Ward-Lealand as much as a celebration of Dietrich’s contribution as an entertainment. “I take my work very seriously” says Ward-Lealand, on stage and in Auckland theatre, film and television management boards.
One special program she has established is the Theatre Patrons program, which she says ten years ago she would not have had the guts to do. The audiences need to “own” their theatre, and, I am sure, they are now thanking her with the honour of an ONZM. “Like an OBE,” she explains, “but like you in Australia we have grown up now and have our own honours.” And, I sense, it is growing up that she has done since those youth theatre days, and Marlene Dietrich did through her theatre cabaret experience. We will see the mature performance on Friday night.
Falling in Love Again
Jennifer Ward-Lealand, with Grant Winterburn and Aaron Coddel
The Street Theatre Stage 1
Saturday March 30, 8.30pm
Tickets: $30
Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This was the result of the storm on February 27. Almost endgame for The Street, one might think, considering the cost of repairs, replacement of all those stage lights, relocating shows to other venues and loss of income from cancelled or postponed shows.
But the show goes on, starting this Friday with Auckland-based Jennifer Ward-Lealand, so revered in New Zealand that on April 4, we can reveal, she will receive an ONZM for her services to theatre. Falling in Love Again is a tribute to the strength of character of the German cabaret singer, Marlene Dietrich, who “had the guts,” says Ward-Lealand, “to turn her back on her own country”.
Since her youth theatre days some 30 years ago, Ward-Lealand has been rewarded with critical accolades. As Agnes in Agnes of God (1985) she was “an electrifying combination of distracted guilt and vengeful rage.” Her portrayal of Hedda Gabler (1986) captured “the audience’s undivided attention from the very first time she walks on stage.” In 2005, as Stevie in The Goat, she was “formidable”, and of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in 2006, the NZ Herald critic wrote “The delicate interactions between Viola and Olivia produces some wonderfully poignant moments, notably when Jennifer Ward-Lealand’s magisterial countess dissolves into a lovestruck teenager as she is captivated by the overpowering sweetness of Viola.”
For all these years Ward-Lealand has been more than a stalwart entertainer. As she has found in researching Marlene Dietrich, theatre can change how one sees the world, not only for the audience but for the practitioner. In 2002 she was approached to play the part of Dietrich in a play Marlene by British author Pam Gems, who has also written about Edith Piaf. Despite her musical family background, Ward-Lealand was hesitant about taking the role, which included six Dietrich songs.
But when a friend, a specialist in European cabaret, gave her documents and recordings, she found herself becoming fascinated, especially by Dietrich’s role in World War 2 on the Allied side, persuading German troops through her cabaret songs to reject the Nazi government in favour of democracy. Dietrich could, of course, have stayed in Germany and become equally famous and perhaps richer supporting her country’s war effort.
What was it, I asked Ward-Lealand, that made Dietrich reject her strict conservative upbringing, and in the USA become a focus for displaced German Jews? Theatre cabaret was the answer. Through the 1920s and 1930s the cabaret was an open society, more European than national, a swinging lifestyle, and particularly for Dietrich a place where she associated personally with Jewish people. She found in herself a “deep sense of outrage that she couldn’t easily run away from” at their treatment.
And, though Ward-Lealand has not been placed in such a testing situation, she too has found the theatre to be a “tolerant industry, where really nothing is shocking”. In her career she feels she has been very fortunate to have played such an array of characters from Polly Peachum in Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, Janet in The New Rocky Horror Show and Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein to Anna in Old Times by Harold Pinter, the Young Girl in Yerma by Garcia Lorca and many, many others. The key, she says, is the experience of taking these roles with directors you can respect, so that you learn to extend your understanding of the characters and change your own understanding of the world.
So when she performs in the role of Marlene Dietrich in Falling in Love Again, we will not see a singer imitating Dietrich. Through 23 songs, including some Cole Porter, Piaf and others, we will become engaged in that gutsy character, created for us by Jennifer Ward-Lealand as much as a celebration of Dietrich’s contribution as an entertainment. “I take my work very seriously” says Ward-Lealand, on stage and in Auckland theatre, film and television management boards.
One special program she has established is the Theatre Patrons program, which she says ten years ago she would not have had the guts to do. The audiences need to “own” their theatre, and, I am sure, they are now thanking her with the honour of an ONZM. “Like an OBE,” she explains, “but like you in Australia we have grown up now and have our own honours.” And, I sense, it is growing up that she has done since those youth theatre days, and Marlene Dietrich did through her theatre cabaret experience. We will see the mature performance on Friday night.
Falling in Love Again
Jennifer Ward-Lealand, with Grant Winterburn and Aaron Coddel
The Street Theatre Stage 1
Saturday March 30, 8.30pm
Tickets: $30
Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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