Caravan by Donald MacDonald. Directed by Rodney Delaney at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, June 24 – July 3, 2010.
Reviewed by Frank McKone, June 24.
Caravan
is more or less in the tradition of romantic comedy – we know this
because the final scene ends in a tableau of all the characters laughing
outrageously while drunk – except that the setting is not exactly
conducive to romance and the dalliances have already happened years
before this summer holiday in the rain.
The play is a
situation comedy, with pretensions to be a traditional farce, but for me
has serious weaknesses, despite its history of productions since 1983,
when I first saw it at the Opera House Drama Theatre, no less. I
wondered then whether it deserved that venue, but with strong
professional actors of that era like Kirrily Nolan it succeeded as pure
entertainment.
Delaney’s production has recognised that
pure fun is the objective. On first night things began a little too
slowly, as if we were expected to take the relationship between Penny
and Parkes Robinson seriously as the owners of the caravan waiting for
their invitees to join them. But the very effective acting of everyone
bashing their heads on the low door (except for Pierce’s cradle-snatched
girlfriend, of course, until she was as drunk as the rest) began to get
us in the mood for the farcical situation. By the second half things
were well underway as we wore our plastic coats while the rain could be
heard belting down.
The acting was well done all round.
Highlights for me were Bernadette Vincent’s scene reporting her “rape”
in the shower. Not only was her entrance at full intensity, but she
maintained the energy throughout the scene, and built on Monica’s
character throughout her performance. Jenny Rixon impressed as well,
particularly in turning Penny’s character around as she became seriously
drunk, from compliancy to the strength and determination need to
enforce “nice” behaviour. In the end it is only the relationship
between Penny and Monica which holds the play together, and these two
actors succeeded in making it work.
So it was not difficult to sing along with the cast at curtain call – just for fun.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
2010: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Sean
Mathius, Haymarket Theatre, London. Produced by Andrew Kay and Liza
McLean at Sydney Opera House, June 15 to July 10, 2010
Reviewed by Frank McKone, June 23.
Starring Ian McKellen (Estragon), Roger Rees (Vladimir), Matthew Kelly (Pozzo) and Brendan O’Hea (Lucky), how could this production fail?
And where on earth do I stand when to alleviate boredom Vladimir and Estragon decide to insult each other? Which insult got the biggest laugh from the full house – you guessed it:
ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR: Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.
Well, I didn’t wilt. In fact from Estragon’s first finger grappling over the rotting stone wall to his final “Yes, let’s go. They do not move.” I found myself entirely captivated. It was impossible to turn away.
Though Ian McKellen has had the publicity highlight, which is more than well-deserved, each of the actors has matched the demands of their roles. Often I have come across people who almost fear Waiting for Godot as if it is a “difficult” play and so “tedious”. These performances make nonsense of this undeserved reputation.
Estragon is a sweet old man who only wants the world to treat him decently.
Vladimir would like to believe he has more control over things than he really has. Despite everything, he will never give up trying. And hoping.
Pozzo is all bluster, knowing that he depends on Lucky, his slave. Though he represents all that is powerful, he has premonitions in Act 1 that his position is insecure, which proves to be the case in Act 2. Now blinded, he is entirely dependent, having to rely on the goodwill of the two tramps.
Lucky, of course, is in the most unlucky position of all. When he speaks, important truths roll off his tongue repetitively. He thinks but has no control over even his thinking, let alone his life. He speaks only when given permission, when he wears his hat. But in Act 2, to the horror of the tramps, even this is taken away, and he is dumb.
My description superficially may seem to support the play’s reputation, but Mathius’ directing has emphasised the humanity of each character and the actors have found the ways to express all the moods of their relationships with each other and with the universe within which they live. The result is a huge amount of humour – after all, how else can people survive what this set design represents as the collapse of society, except to laugh at the absurdity of everything. I am reminded, from my personal background, of the humour of the British under years of bombardment during World War 2. This crumbling ruin of a set design, in fact, looks very like what I remember of the London bombsites of my childhood. But I remember, too, the laughter and song of that era. The end may be nigh, but it doesn’t have to be depressing.
Rather, even though there is sadness in Vladimir and Estragon’s hope that Godot will come some day, their ability to enjoy a carrot and spit out a parsnip, dance a little and hug each other for comfort, is actually uplifting. This is a wonderful production: theatre at its best.
(I would like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Robyn and Jack Geary in enabling me to attend Waiting for Godot)
Reviewed by Frank McKone, June 23.
Starring Ian McKellen (Estragon), Roger Rees (Vladimir), Matthew Kelly (Pozzo) and Brendan O’Hea (Lucky), how could this production fail?
And where on earth do I stand when to alleviate boredom Vladimir and Estragon decide to insult each other? Which insult got the biggest laugh from the full house – you guessed it:
ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR: Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.
Well, I didn’t wilt. In fact from Estragon’s first finger grappling over the rotting stone wall to his final “Yes, let’s go. They do not move.” I found myself entirely captivated. It was impossible to turn away.
Though Ian McKellen has had the publicity highlight, which is more than well-deserved, each of the actors has matched the demands of their roles. Often I have come across people who almost fear Waiting for Godot as if it is a “difficult” play and so “tedious”. These performances make nonsense of this undeserved reputation.
Estragon is a sweet old man who only wants the world to treat him decently.
Vladimir would like to believe he has more control over things than he really has. Despite everything, he will never give up trying. And hoping.
Pozzo is all bluster, knowing that he depends on Lucky, his slave. Though he represents all that is powerful, he has premonitions in Act 1 that his position is insecure, which proves to be the case in Act 2. Now blinded, he is entirely dependent, having to rely on the goodwill of the two tramps.
Lucky, of course, is in the most unlucky position of all. When he speaks, important truths roll off his tongue repetitively. He thinks but has no control over even his thinking, let alone his life. He speaks only when given permission, when he wears his hat. But in Act 2, to the horror of the tramps, even this is taken away, and he is dumb.
My description superficially may seem to support the play’s reputation, but Mathius’ directing has emphasised the humanity of each character and the actors have found the ways to express all the moods of their relationships with each other and with the universe within which they live. The result is a huge amount of humour – after all, how else can people survive what this set design represents as the collapse of society, except to laugh at the absurdity of everything. I am reminded, from my personal background, of the humour of the British under years of bombardment during World War 2. This crumbling ruin of a set design, in fact, looks very like what I remember of the London bombsites of my childhood. But I remember, too, the laughter and song of that era. The end may be nigh, but it doesn’t have to be depressing.
Rather, even though there is sadness in Vladimir and Estragon’s hope that Godot will come some day, their ability to enjoy a carrot and spit out a parsnip, dance a little and hug each other for comfort, is actually uplifting. This is a wonderful production: theatre at its best.
(I would like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Robyn and Jack Geary in enabling me to attend Waiting for Godot)
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
2010: Oresteia by Aeschylus
Oresteia by Aeschylus, adapted and directed by Tom Wright. Sydney Theatre Company Residents at Wharf 1, June 5 - 27, 2010.
Reviewed by Frank McKone, June 22.
The Residents have been together as a permanent company of actors within the Sydney Theatre Company for a year now. This is their second mainstage production and the value of being able to work together consistently shows in this concentrated, highly focussed performance of Aeschylus’ moral tale of the cursed generations of the House of Atreus.
It was Meet the Actors night which I chose for the opportunity to find out how the transition from the earlier STC Actors’ Company to The Residents is progressing. The play, based mainly on Aeschylus’ first two plays rounded off by Apollo’s speech from the third (defending Orestes in Athene’s court, where the black and white pebbles are even in number but Athene adds her white pebble to acquit), ran for nearly three hours (including interval), followed by questions from the audience to Tom Wright and the actors. This made for a highly satisfying evening from 6.30 to after 10pm, in which time slipped by very easily.
This production was my kind of drama. Imagery was used symbolically, tension and focus were created through stillness, atmosphere developed from simple vocal harmonies, horror created in backlit shadow forms, reinforced by bloodied bodies frozen in death, and the story told in clear poetic rhythms. Though in “modern” dress, often more undressed, the staging is a simple open space in front of three double translucent doors which open and close like elevator doors to reveal or hide, or become shadow-puppet screens, as needed.
For me the modern symbols, meant to cue the audience in to elements of the story, were not all successful. The loss of childhood was represented by a door opening on a spinning wheel of a child’s scooter, yet the story is entirely set in Aeschylus’ Ancient Greece. I had the same problem of mismatch with the unattractive anorak used by the soldier and later by Orestes to represent hard-bitten travel. Yet the use of simple clinging shifts for the chorus women and Clytemnestra in the first act worked very well to represent the vulnerability of women, not only in the ancient militaristic world of the war on Troy, but in modern times still. Dressing Aegisthus in the same shift as the women wore in act one certainly made a humorous, and effective, point about his role in contrast to the cuckolded husband Agamemnon. After Clytemnestra has killed Agamemnon, in act two she and the chorus women are dressed as successful modern women, while Aegisthus might be described as a petty dictator pretending to be metrosexual. No wonder her surviving children, Orestes and Electra, feel they must destroy their mother and her toy-boy king.
The audience raised the question of male/female balance in Wright’s interpretation. Richard Pyros, who played Aegisthus, thought that the sexual and the violent aspects fell equally on both sexes. Then he described his experience, while acting, of an absolute “line down the middle” between the male and female characters but feeling “weird falling on both sides at once” in his role.
This kind of commentary and the discussion it generated was a mark of the group understanding among The Residents. The company was formed by Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton as a deliberate contrast to the previous STC Actors’ Company, which Robyn Nevin, based on her early experiences in Rex Cramphorn’s Performance Syndicate, had structured to include iconic actors well advanced in their careers to work with and to be mentors for young up-and-comers. Despite her good intentions, this system finally became unworkable.
The Residents, instead, are all actors showing great promise early in their careers, with an experienced associate director working at one remove from Blanchett and Upton, the overall Sydney Theatre Company artistic directors. The actors described being auditioned through a workshop process and finding themselves able to take risks in their work which are not possible when auditioning for specific parts as freelance actors. They talked of the security of having long-term membership, of working on many different projects (especially including theatre education programs), of “getting to know people as people” and developing a “different sense of trust”. I can only say that this looks like my kind of theatre company.
Since the run of Oresteia ends this weekend, there is little time for you to see it. Get there if you can, but certainly keep your wits about you for when The Residents appear again in STC’s Next Stage, Education or Main Stage program. Check out www.sydneytheatre.com.au .
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone, June 22.
The Residents have been together as a permanent company of actors within the Sydney Theatre Company for a year now. This is their second mainstage production and the value of being able to work together consistently shows in this concentrated, highly focussed performance of Aeschylus’ moral tale of the cursed generations of the House of Atreus.
It was Meet the Actors night which I chose for the opportunity to find out how the transition from the earlier STC Actors’ Company to The Residents is progressing. The play, based mainly on Aeschylus’ first two plays rounded off by Apollo’s speech from the third (defending Orestes in Athene’s court, where the black and white pebbles are even in number but Athene adds her white pebble to acquit), ran for nearly three hours (including interval), followed by questions from the audience to Tom Wright and the actors. This made for a highly satisfying evening from 6.30 to after 10pm, in which time slipped by very easily.
This production was my kind of drama. Imagery was used symbolically, tension and focus were created through stillness, atmosphere developed from simple vocal harmonies, horror created in backlit shadow forms, reinforced by bloodied bodies frozen in death, and the story told in clear poetic rhythms. Though in “modern” dress, often more undressed, the staging is a simple open space in front of three double translucent doors which open and close like elevator doors to reveal or hide, or become shadow-puppet screens, as needed.
For me the modern symbols, meant to cue the audience in to elements of the story, were not all successful. The loss of childhood was represented by a door opening on a spinning wheel of a child’s scooter, yet the story is entirely set in Aeschylus’ Ancient Greece. I had the same problem of mismatch with the unattractive anorak used by the soldier and later by Orestes to represent hard-bitten travel. Yet the use of simple clinging shifts for the chorus women and Clytemnestra in the first act worked very well to represent the vulnerability of women, not only in the ancient militaristic world of the war on Troy, but in modern times still. Dressing Aegisthus in the same shift as the women wore in act one certainly made a humorous, and effective, point about his role in contrast to the cuckolded husband Agamemnon. After Clytemnestra has killed Agamemnon, in act two she and the chorus women are dressed as successful modern women, while Aegisthus might be described as a petty dictator pretending to be metrosexual. No wonder her surviving children, Orestes and Electra, feel they must destroy their mother and her toy-boy king.
The audience raised the question of male/female balance in Wright’s interpretation. Richard Pyros, who played Aegisthus, thought that the sexual and the violent aspects fell equally on both sexes. Then he described his experience, while acting, of an absolute “line down the middle” between the male and female characters but feeling “weird falling on both sides at once” in his role.
This kind of commentary and the discussion it generated was a mark of the group understanding among The Residents. The company was formed by Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton as a deliberate contrast to the previous STC Actors’ Company, which Robyn Nevin, based on her early experiences in Rex Cramphorn’s Performance Syndicate, had structured to include iconic actors well advanced in their careers to work with and to be mentors for young up-and-comers. Despite her good intentions, this system finally became unworkable.
The Residents, instead, are all actors showing great promise early in their careers, with an experienced associate director working at one remove from Blanchett and Upton, the overall Sydney Theatre Company artistic directors. The actors described being auditioned through a workshop process and finding themselves able to take risks in their work which are not possible when auditioning for specific parts as freelance actors. They talked of the security of having long-term membership, of working on many different projects (especially including theatre education programs), of “getting to know people as people” and developing a “different sense of trust”. I can only say that this looks like my kind of theatre company.
Since the run of Oresteia ends this weekend, there is little time for you to see it. Get there if you can, but certainly keep your wits about you for when The Residents appear again in STC’s Next Stage, Education or Main Stage program. Check out www.sydneytheatre.com.au .
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 18 June 2010
2010: Winter’s Discontent by William Zappa
Winter’s Discontent written and performed by William Zappa, with Andrea Close, at The Street Theatre, June 18 – July 3, 2010, 7.30pm.
Reviewed June 18 by Frank McKone
A mathematician asked me would this play be “theatre for theatricals”?
When the line “An actor prepares” was made prominent without any mention of Stanislavsky, I might have thought “yes” in response to my mathematical friend except that to see Winter’s Discontent as being limited to those with theatrical know-how would be to miss the point and misrepresent the play.
It is about an actor – Robert Winter – preparing (to play the role of Thénardier, the inn-keeper in Les Miserables, for which Zappa has won awards), but it could as easily be about a mathematician for whom working out a proof which has baffled others is as necessary to his or her sense of self as acting is for a serious performer. In each case there is technique, commitment, stress in the face of failure, wonder and beauty in success. This is art, essential to human life.
Winter’s Discontent works at several different levels.
It is a technical display of Zappa’s acting skills which in themselves are fascinating to watch. Seeing and hearing his fine control of voice, movement and facial expression can be compared with being at a Richard Tognetti concert. For the theatrically savvy, technique may be enough to satisfy. But for the wider audience there is more to come.
It is a carefully crafted script, in which a small seemingly insignificant mystery (an airmail letter) grows into a point of emotional climax in Robert Winter’s life, which he has to resolve when the “beginner’s call” takes him out of his dressing room as “the House is open and the stage is live”. The backstage language is opened up for a non-technical audience to understand, because it is used in the context of Winter’s experience. The dramatic structure is conventional, engaging the audience in an empathetic concern for the character. Will he be able to face his audience while carrying the weight of feeling that he has failed his own son?
At this level, some may feel the play is too contrived, but there is still more. William Zappa really is an actor. It is hard not to imagine that he has had to face up to something like the horrifying experience that he has written for his character, Robert Winter. Indeed, in his acknowledgements, he offers “special thanks to Asha Zappa for inspiring, and putting up with an absentee father”. This is the very fault that Robert Winter – an actor always away from home – believes is the cause of his son’s suicide. Is it not possible that Zappa’s play has had to “go on” despite something awful happening off stage?
Now this play and this performance becomes a matter of extraordinary bravery. And now it opens up for any kind of audience our feelings about things that so often must be done – for duty’s sake, for financial survival, for the sake of someone else’s mental or physical survival, for an ideal, indeed even for art’s sake – even though one’s circumstances seem to make “going on” impossible.
I can only conclude by encouraging mathematicians and anyone else with a human heart to experience Winter’s Discontent.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed June 18 by Frank McKone
A mathematician asked me would this play be “theatre for theatricals”?
When the line “An actor prepares” was made prominent without any mention of Stanislavsky, I might have thought “yes” in response to my mathematical friend except that to see Winter’s Discontent as being limited to those with theatrical know-how would be to miss the point and misrepresent the play.
It is about an actor – Robert Winter – preparing (to play the role of Thénardier, the inn-keeper in Les Miserables, for which Zappa has won awards), but it could as easily be about a mathematician for whom working out a proof which has baffled others is as necessary to his or her sense of self as acting is for a serious performer. In each case there is technique, commitment, stress in the face of failure, wonder and beauty in success. This is art, essential to human life.
Winter’s Discontent works at several different levels.
It is a technical display of Zappa’s acting skills which in themselves are fascinating to watch. Seeing and hearing his fine control of voice, movement and facial expression can be compared with being at a Richard Tognetti concert. For the theatrically savvy, technique may be enough to satisfy. But for the wider audience there is more to come.
It is a carefully crafted script, in which a small seemingly insignificant mystery (an airmail letter) grows into a point of emotional climax in Robert Winter’s life, which he has to resolve when the “beginner’s call” takes him out of his dressing room as “the House is open and the stage is live”. The backstage language is opened up for a non-technical audience to understand, because it is used in the context of Winter’s experience. The dramatic structure is conventional, engaging the audience in an empathetic concern for the character. Will he be able to face his audience while carrying the weight of feeling that he has failed his own son?
At this level, some may feel the play is too contrived, but there is still more. William Zappa really is an actor. It is hard not to imagine that he has had to face up to something like the horrifying experience that he has written for his character, Robert Winter. Indeed, in his acknowledgements, he offers “special thanks to Asha Zappa for inspiring, and putting up with an absentee father”. This is the very fault that Robert Winter – an actor always away from home – believes is the cause of his son’s suicide. Is it not possible that Zappa’s play has had to “go on” despite something awful happening off stage?
Now this play and this performance becomes a matter of extraordinary bravery. And now it opens up for any kind of audience our feelings about things that so often must be done – for duty’s sake, for financial survival, for the sake of someone else’s mental or physical survival, for an ideal, indeed even for art’s sake – even though one’s circumstances seem to make “going on” impossible.
I can only conclude by encouraging mathematicians and anyone else with a human heart to experience Winter’s Discontent.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
2010: Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith
Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith. Sydney Theatre Company
directed by Lee Lewis, at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, June
9-12, 2010 8pm and matinee June 12, 2pm.
Reviewed June 9, 2010, by Frank McKone
Perfect casting – Wendy Hughes as the wife Honour, Paula Arundell as the lover Claudia, Yael Stone as the daughter Sophie, William Zappa as the husband, lover and father George – would have made this production stand out even if the set design had not so cleverly presented the actors to us.
The acting was quite simply awesome. A mere critic can have almost nothing to say, seeing such clear definition of every emotion. Of course it is Murray-Smith’s writing which provides all the twists and turns of love, from beginning to end, for the actors to work on. It was just wonderful to see every opportunity taken, the complexity of each moment revealed by each performer as an individual and as a totally connected member of the ensemble.
It was without doubt an honour to to be present at such a performance of such a play.
Since the history of productions of Honour took it from its 1995 Melbourne beginnings off around the world, only now coming to us in Canberra via Sydney, it was a revelation to me to see such a mature understanding of marriage, and such a degree of control of dialogue as a theatrical medium when, as Murray-Smith says, “I wrote the play as a new writer” then aged 29. Recently I reviewed her quite recent play, Ninety, presented very well at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, but Honour is by far the better play.
Ninety is a deliberately neatly structured piece, also on the theme of a husband about to re-marry, to a young attractive woman, but with a degree of predictability in the to and fro. Will he go or might he return to his previous wife becomes a kind of game for us to watch. But Honour has levels of emotional slipping and sliding so like real life that we feel for each character because they can’t know what will happen, and we have all been in this situation. Can love ever settle into stability? Or must we always live in the expectation of unpredictable change?
With this theme, perhaps the only theme of great drama, it was good to see the action played in a set which offered many interpretations. Two horizontal levels, three wide steps between, enclosed but not bounded by vertical spaced timbers could become George and Honour’s upmarket house, Claudia’s flat, the grounds of a university, or simply an abstract space for the meeting of minds. Without the conventions that a naturalistic set would impose on our imaginations, we were free to identify with the characters as if from within their consciousness.
And so this is a production of a play which should not be missed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed June 9, 2010, by Frank McKone
Perfect casting – Wendy Hughes as the wife Honour, Paula Arundell as the lover Claudia, Yael Stone as the daughter Sophie, William Zappa as the husband, lover and father George – would have made this production stand out even if the set design had not so cleverly presented the actors to us.
The acting was quite simply awesome. A mere critic can have almost nothing to say, seeing such clear definition of every emotion. Of course it is Murray-Smith’s writing which provides all the twists and turns of love, from beginning to end, for the actors to work on. It was just wonderful to see every opportunity taken, the complexity of each moment revealed by each performer as an individual and as a totally connected member of the ensemble.
It was without doubt an honour to to be present at such a performance of such a play.
Since the history of productions of Honour took it from its 1995 Melbourne beginnings off around the world, only now coming to us in Canberra via Sydney, it was a revelation to me to see such a mature understanding of marriage, and such a degree of control of dialogue as a theatrical medium when, as Murray-Smith says, “I wrote the play as a new writer” then aged 29. Recently I reviewed her quite recent play, Ninety, presented very well at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, but Honour is by far the better play.
Ninety is a deliberately neatly structured piece, also on the theme of a husband about to re-marry, to a young attractive woman, but with a degree of predictability in the to and fro. Will he go or might he return to his previous wife becomes a kind of game for us to watch. But Honour has levels of emotional slipping and sliding so like real life that we feel for each character because they can’t know what will happen, and we have all been in this situation. Can love ever settle into stability? Or must we always live in the expectation of unpredictable change?
With this theme, perhaps the only theme of great drama, it was good to see the action played in a set which offered many interpretations. Two horizontal levels, three wide steps between, enclosed but not bounded by vertical spaced timbers could become George and Honour’s upmarket house, Claudia’s flat, the grounds of a university, or simply an abstract space for the meeting of minds. Without the conventions that a naturalistic set would impose on our imaginations, we were free to identify with the characters as if from within their consciousness.
And so this is a production of a play which should not be missed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
2010: Shakespeare’s R&J adapted by Joe Calarco
Shakespeare’s R&J adapted by Joe Calarco. Directed by
Craig Ilott. Presented by Riverside Productions and Spiritworks at The
Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, June 8-12, 2010.
Reviewed June 8, 2010 by Frank McKone
I left the Q feeling that something was missing or I was missing something.
Was it my fault for expecting more from a play which began a decade ago as a Spiritworks – Bell Shakespeare co-production? Perhaps it was created as a theatre-in-education piece rather than an adult production of Shakespeare. Young people behind me certainly enjoyed the young men’s sexual references at the beginning, and Nurse’s volubility, as I did, but I’m not sure they could believe in the love and self-sacrifice at the end.
Was it Shakespeare’s fault? Well, hardly, especially since we were given other bits even beyond Romeo and Juliet, like the Summer’s Day poem and part of Puck’s speech at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Was it the production? Well, no. Although much of the text was delivered at high speed, perhaps representing how young men might speak Shakespeare, the meaning was clear. The use of theatrical devices in the set design, sound and light design and choreography was very effective – less is more created imaginative imagery and meaning from simple props, costume changes, and lighting from darkness through hand torches to careful selective stage lights. Only the thunderstorm was overdone. Though the explosive sound represented the turmoil in the Romeo and Juliet story, darker rumbling may have been less melodramatic.
So I had to conclude the fault is in the writing – by Joe Calarco, who claims to have done no more than “adapt” Shakespeare. The problem is that this play is not about Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. It is about four young men supposedly “who live together in the repressive regime of a Catholic boarding school (of decades ago)” who “engage in a clandestine reading of Romeo and Juliet” and who – according to the director’s notes – “are awakened, to themselves and to something greater than themselves .... it frees them to experience, to express, to feel, to fail – and to love.”
I could certainly see this intention in the set design and to some extent in the way the boys spoke their lines. I could see the idea in having the boys acting out what Shakespeare’s script demanded – the taunting of young males to the point of attack, with tragic consequences; the kissing and touching intimacy of the boy playing Romeo and the boy playing Juliet. But the four boys, called only Students 1, 2, 3 and 4, never spoke to each other in their own words, never named each other, and had no individual personalities except those they required as they played each of their various roles. Only at the very end, as the boy playing Juliet was left alone in his shirt-sleeves while the other three donned their school uniform jackets and departed, did I have a feeling for this boy, as himself, as he moved on from Puck’s dream speech to his own dream.
By this time it was too late. Here was the beginning of this play’s story, but in the last line. Instead of these boys exploring the text, as the director’s notes say, they are represented as having learnt the text with professional technique and level of understanding. Between attempts to perform the Shakespeare, we needed to identify with each individual boy as he discovers what Shakespeare meant and becomes aware of his changing feelings for the other boys. The play of the relationships between the boys needs to run in parallel with their play of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, like a kind of double helix, to make a fully complex play called Shakespeare’s R&J. I saw one strand of DNA, but not its mate. This was what was missing.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed June 8, 2010 by Frank McKone
I left the Q feeling that something was missing or I was missing something.
Was it my fault for expecting more from a play which began a decade ago as a Spiritworks – Bell Shakespeare co-production? Perhaps it was created as a theatre-in-education piece rather than an adult production of Shakespeare. Young people behind me certainly enjoyed the young men’s sexual references at the beginning, and Nurse’s volubility, as I did, but I’m not sure they could believe in the love and self-sacrifice at the end.
Was it Shakespeare’s fault? Well, hardly, especially since we were given other bits even beyond Romeo and Juliet, like the Summer’s Day poem and part of Puck’s speech at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Was it the production? Well, no. Although much of the text was delivered at high speed, perhaps representing how young men might speak Shakespeare, the meaning was clear. The use of theatrical devices in the set design, sound and light design and choreography was very effective – less is more created imaginative imagery and meaning from simple props, costume changes, and lighting from darkness through hand torches to careful selective stage lights. Only the thunderstorm was overdone. Though the explosive sound represented the turmoil in the Romeo and Juliet story, darker rumbling may have been less melodramatic.
So I had to conclude the fault is in the writing – by Joe Calarco, who claims to have done no more than “adapt” Shakespeare. The problem is that this play is not about Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. It is about four young men supposedly “who live together in the repressive regime of a Catholic boarding school (of decades ago)” who “engage in a clandestine reading of Romeo and Juliet” and who – according to the director’s notes – “are awakened, to themselves and to something greater than themselves .... it frees them to experience, to express, to feel, to fail – and to love.”
I could certainly see this intention in the set design and to some extent in the way the boys spoke their lines. I could see the idea in having the boys acting out what Shakespeare’s script demanded – the taunting of young males to the point of attack, with tragic consequences; the kissing and touching intimacy of the boy playing Romeo and the boy playing Juliet. But the four boys, called only Students 1, 2, 3 and 4, never spoke to each other in their own words, never named each other, and had no individual personalities except those they required as they played each of their various roles. Only at the very end, as the boy playing Juliet was left alone in his shirt-sleeves while the other three donned their school uniform jackets and departed, did I have a feeling for this boy, as himself, as he moved on from Puck’s dream speech to his own dream.
By this time it was too late. Here was the beginning of this play’s story, but in the last line. Instead of these boys exploring the text, as the director’s notes say, they are represented as having learnt the text with professional technique and level of understanding. Between attempts to perform the Shakespeare, we needed to identify with each individual boy as he discovers what Shakespeare meant and becomes aware of his changing feelings for the other boys. The play of the relationships between the boys needs to run in parallel with their play of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, like a kind of double helix, to make a fully complex play called Shakespeare’s R&J. I saw one strand of DNA, but not its mate. This was what was missing.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 7 May 2010
2010: Out of Strathnairn. Brief article on gallery exhibition opening.
Out of Strathnairn opening by Jon Stanhope, ACT Chief Minister, at Belconnen Arts Centre, May 7, 2010. Exhibition until May 23.
By Frank McKone
The exhibition is the first in a newly established relationship between the Belconnen Arts Centre and the Strathnairn Arts Association. The curator is Peter Haynes, Director of ACT Museums and Galleries.
In conversation with me Jon promised a “rambling” speech, rather like a rambling rose as it turned out. There were no thorns, but several blossoms of reminiscences of his quite frequent visits to Strathnairn, including something of the history of the old homestead, an interesting arts non sequitur connecting his turning the first sod on McCubbin Rise (in North Weston, Molonglo Valley) earlier in the day to Strathnairn (the house was built about the same time McCubbin died), and his request to be a gardener on the proposed landscaping which he insisted must consist of fruit trees.
In keeping, I guess, with his appreciation of the arts, the landscaping should not be merely decorative but must have depth of meaning. So it should bear fruit.
The biggest blooms, which I imagined in bright Texas rose yellow, were the announcements of $100,000 to build two new studios for practising artists, and another $100,000 for repairs and refurbishment of the homestead, in this year’s ACT Budget, which follow other similar grants in recent years.
It was pleasant to see a genuine warmth of response to a politician’s speech in this era of cynicism, as the Chief Minister spoke with real affection for Belconnen, where he has lived for 40 years, for the arts of the region and the importance of cultural life in general.
Belconnen Arts Centre is open 10:00am to 6:00pm Tuesday-Sunday.
118 Emu Bank, Belconnen, Canberra.
Tel: +61 2 6173 3300
Strathnairn Arts Association Inc. is a not for profit arts association supported by the ACT Government that provides working spaces and facilities for a range of artists and crafts people and community groups.
Strathnairn Homestead Gallery is set in a converted 1920s homestead on the north-western outskirts of Canberra. Located 900 metres past the Magpies Belconnen Golf Club turnoff, it's a facility which has been used by artists for decades but still remains one of Canberra's best-kept secrets.
Location address: 90 Stockdill Drive, Holt ACT 2615
Postal address: PO Box 4746, Higgins ACT 2615
Phone: (02) 6254 2134
Fax: (02) 6254 6924
General email: info [at] strathnairn.asn.au
Web: www.strathnairn.asn.au/
© Frank McKone, Canberra
By Frank McKone
The exhibition is the first in a newly established relationship between the Belconnen Arts Centre and the Strathnairn Arts Association. The curator is Peter Haynes, Director of ACT Museums and Galleries.
In conversation with me Jon promised a “rambling” speech, rather like a rambling rose as it turned out. There were no thorns, but several blossoms of reminiscences of his quite frequent visits to Strathnairn, including something of the history of the old homestead, an interesting arts non sequitur connecting his turning the first sod on McCubbin Rise (in North Weston, Molonglo Valley) earlier in the day to Strathnairn (the house was built about the same time McCubbin died), and his request to be a gardener on the proposed landscaping which he insisted must consist of fruit trees.
In keeping, I guess, with his appreciation of the arts, the landscaping should not be merely decorative but must have depth of meaning. So it should bear fruit.
The biggest blooms, which I imagined in bright Texas rose yellow, were the announcements of $100,000 to build two new studios for practising artists, and another $100,000 for repairs and refurbishment of the homestead, in this year’s ACT Budget, which follow other similar grants in recent years.
It was pleasant to see a genuine warmth of response to a politician’s speech in this era of cynicism, as the Chief Minister spoke with real affection for Belconnen, where he has lived for 40 years, for the arts of the region and the importance of cultural life in general.
Belconnen Arts Centre is open 10:00am to 6:00pm Tuesday-Sunday.
118 Emu Bank, Belconnen, Canberra.
Tel: +61 2 6173 3300
Strathnairn Arts Association Inc. is a not for profit arts association supported by the ACT Government that provides working spaces and facilities for a range of artists and crafts people and community groups.
Strathnairn Homestead Gallery is set in a converted 1920s homestead on the north-western outskirts of Canberra. Located 900 metres past the Magpies Belconnen Golf Club turnoff, it's a facility which has been used by artists for decades but still remains one of Canberra's best-kept secrets.
Location address: 90 Stockdill Drive, Holt ACT 2615
Postal address: PO Box 4746, Higgins ACT 2615
Phone: (02) 6254 2134
Fax: (02) 6254 6924
General email: info [at] strathnairn.asn.au
Web: www.strathnairn.asn.au/
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 29 April 2010
2010: Tin Pan Aussie by Shortis & Simpson
Tin Pan Aussie Shortis & Simpson at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, April 29 – May 1, 2010.
Reviewed April 29, by Frank McKone
I first reviewed the John Shortis and Moya Simpson team at the beginning of their Canberra Region history in 1996, in Shortis & Curlies at the erstwhile Queanbeyan School of Arts Café. There’s always been a certain gentleness in their musical humour and political satires throughout their 14 year career, and a kind of earnestness in John’s stage manner. There have been times when I thought the cutting edge of political commentary was softened too much. But Tin Pan Aussie seemed to me to get the balance right.
Shortis plays himself, but with a note of humorous self-deprecation in calling himself Professor. Yet when one considers the 44 songs dating from 1900 to 1957 which tell us the story of Australian popular music related to our social history throughout this period, his research justifies the title. Between the Federation Polka and Wild One we see and hear the development from ragtime, through jazz, hillbilly and songs from the wars which ordinary Australians wrote, played and sang. For me, a 10£ Pom who arrived in 1955, here was a new understanding of the culture that I belong to today.
But there is nothing academic about the performances of Moya Simpson, whose range and quality of voice has matured markedly in recent years, of Shortis himself on piano and singing, and especially of the band – Peter J Casey, Ian Blake, Jon Jones and Dave O’Neill – unless you would like to class their skills at reproducing 44 pieces of music in each of the original styles as an academic exercise. To me it was an involving thoroughly enjoyable entertainment.
The choice of songs, so many expressing vernacular humour, while often telling the truth about real people’s experiences in the good times and the bad, has taken this Shortis & Simpson show a step further towards the edge. There is no softening here in “My Little Wet Home in the Trench” (World War I), “Happy Valley” (from the Depression) or “Back in Circulation” (written in a Japanese World War II PoW camp), and wonderful contrasts in such songs as the pseudo-Hawaiian “Memories of a Lovely Lei”.
Instead of relying on inventing satirical commentary external to the subject matter, the selection of material creates its own comment on Australian life from within. The result is telling, showing us now to ourselves as we once were. And it shows me how Shortis & Simpson have grown in musical and political stature since their School of Arts Café days.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed April 29, by Frank McKone
I first reviewed the John Shortis and Moya Simpson team at the beginning of their Canberra Region history in 1996, in Shortis & Curlies at the erstwhile Queanbeyan School of Arts Café. There’s always been a certain gentleness in their musical humour and political satires throughout their 14 year career, and a kind of earnestness in John’s stage manner. There have been times when I thought the cutting edge of political commentary was softened too much. But Tin Pan Aussie seemed to me to get the balance right.
Shortis plays himself, but with a note of humorous self-deprecation in calling himself Professor. Yet when one considers the 44 songs dating from 1900 to 1957 which tell us the story of Australian popular music related to our social history throughout this period, his research justifies the title. Between the Federation Polka and Wild One we see and hear the development from ragtime, through jazz, hillbilly and songs from the wars which ordinary Australians wrote, played and sang. For me, a 10£ Pom who arrived in 1955, here was a new understanding of the culture that I belong to today.
But there is nothing academic about the performances of Moya Simpson, whose range and quality of voice has matured markedly in recent years, of Shortis himself on piano and singing, and especially of the band – Peter J Casey, Ian Blake, Jon Jones and Dave O’Neill – unless you would like to class their skills at reproducing 44 pieces of music in each of the original styles as an academic exercise. To me it was an involving thoroughly enjoyable entertainment.
The choice of songs, so many expressing vernacular humour, while often telling the truth about real people’s experiences in the good times and the bad, has taken this Shortis & Simpson show a step further towards the edge. There is no softening here in “My Little Wet Home in the Trench” (World War I), “Happy Valley” (from the Depression) or “Back in Circulation” (written in a Japanese World War II PoW camp), and wonderful contrasts in such songs as the pseudo-Hawaiian “Memories of a Lovely Lei”.
Instead of relying on inventing satirical commentary external to the subject matter, the selection of material creates its own comment on Australian life from within. The result is telling, showing us now to ourselves as we once were. And it shows me how Shortis & Simpson have grown in musical and political stature since their School of Arts Café days.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
2010: The Power of Yes by David Hare
The Power of Yes by David Hare. Company B Belvoir directed by Sam Strong. Belvoir St, Sydney, April 22 – May 30, 2010.
Reviewed April 27 by Frank McKone.
This play reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House. Shaw’s response to The Great War was to write a comedy about a tragedy. David Hare has done the same for the Global Financial Crisis.
At first I thought the device of the author himself being the central character could not be sustained. It seemed suspiciously too easy, and difficult to imagine how a storyline beginning in February 2007 with “United States subprime mortgages industry worth an estimated $US1.3 trillion collapses, with 25 subprime lending firms declaring bankruptcy” and concluding on 1 June 2009 with “General Motors, the world’s largest car-maker, declares bankruptcy” could possibly develop dramatically on the stage.
Shaw used fictional characters in a house full of sea-faring references as a metaphor for an England being changed forever by the sad lie that this was the War to End War. But Hare’s characters, including himself, are real. Shaw had to delay the production of Heartbreak House until after the end of the war, but Hare lets us know in no uncertain terms that the perfidy of the banks and the people paid so much to run them that they have no interest in checking their company accounts is a system of lies whose story still has a long way to go.
In fact, the drama in The Power of Yes is successful because as the character David Hare listens to a great array of financial system stake-holders, trying to understand such things as how the Royal Bank of Scotland could amass assets greater in value than the whole of the output of the British Isles, we identify with his wanting to know and with his terrifying suspicion that no-one really knows how the GFC happened, nor what to do about it. Though George Soros does get a guernsey.
For a theatre-going Sydney audience which I guess included many of the monied class, the laughter and the still moments of embarrassed reflection rang external and internal bells. We cannot wait till after the end of the war to see this play, because we may never know when the end has come.
On the night I attended, even events in the audience and off-stage proved that the unpredictable may happen at any time, exactly as demonstrated in the play. No Harvard Business School mathematical formula could have foretold that a woman would faint, creating a 20 minute break in the performance, just as building societies were being turned into banks which were destined to fail. Nor could anyone know that actor Rhys Muldoon’s mother would be hospitalised suddenly, so that he had to leave the stage before the final scenes. We hope for the best for both families.
The evening concluded with warm appreciation from the audience for the actors’ work, not only in so clearly performing a text horribly replete in the jargon of financial complexity, but for their professionalism in the face of unfortunate unavoidable interruptions. It was a great cast for a great play.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed April 27 by Frank McKone.
This play reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House. Shaw’s response to The Great War was to write a comedy about a tragedy. David Hare has done the same for the Global Financial Crisis.
At first I thought the device of the author himself being the central character could not be sustained. It seemed suspiciously too easy, and difficult to imagine how a storyline beginning in February 2007 with “United States subprime mortgages industry worth an estimated $US1.3 trillion collapses, with 25 subprime lending firms declaring bankruptcy” and concluding on 1 June 2009 with “General Motors, the world’s largest car-maker, declares bankruptcy” could possibly develop dramatically on the stage.
Shaw used fictional characters in a house full of sea-faring references as a metaphor for an England being changed forever by the sad lie that this was the War to End War. But Hare’s characters, including himself, are real. Shaw had to delay the production of Heartbreak House until after the end of the war, but Hare lets us know in no uncertain terms that the perfidy of the banks and the people paid so much to run them that they have no interest in checking their company accounts is a system of lies whose story still has a long way to go.
In fact, the drama in The Power of Yes is successful because as the character David Hare listens to a great array of financial system stake-holders, trying to understand such things as how the Royal Bank of Scotland could amass assets greater in value than the whole of the output of the British Isles, we identify with his wanting to know and with his terrifying suspicion that no-one really knows how the GFC happened, nor what to do about it. Though George Soros does get a guernsey.
For a theatre-going Sydney audience which I guess included many of the monied class, the laughter and the still moments of embarrassed reflection rang external and internal bells. We cannot wait till after the end of the war to see this play, because we may never know when the end has come.
On the night I attended, even events in the audience and off-stage proved that the unpredictable may happen at any time, exactly as demonstrated in the play. No Harvard Business School mathematical formula could have foretold that a woman would faint, creating a 20 minute break in the performance, just as building societies were being turned into banks which were destined to fail. Nor could anyone know that actor Rhys Muldoon’s mother would be hospitalised suddenly, so that he had to leave the stage before the final scenes. We hope for the best for both families.
The evening concluded with warm appreciation from the audience for the actors’ work, not only in so clearly performing a text horribly replete in the jargon of financial complexity, but for their professionalism in the face of unfortunate unavoidable interruptions. It was a great cast for a great play.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 16 April 2010
2010: King Lear by William Shakespeare
King Lear by William Shakespeare. Bell Shakespeare Company
directed by Marion Potts at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre April
15 – May 1, 2010.
If there is one thing King Lear makes clear, it is that kings can’t expect to comfortably retire on a super pension, even if it is backed by 100 knights. What about an actor/director? John Bell’s constitution is more than impressive. It’s amazing to me that he can go on putting out such energy night after night (and present himself for the public at the opening night cast party). Can he keep going?
Considering the historical significance of this play and this production, there is as much to say about Marion Potts’ directing, the design and execution, as there is about the acting. In King Lear and The Tempest, though their earthly political plots look superficially familiar, Shakespeare took flight creatively into an ethereal theatre of symbolism.
Because this production marks the 20th anniversary of the Bell Shakespeare Company as well as the year in which John Bell turns three score and ten (and the $15 Anniversary Edition Souvenir Program includes a Wesfarmers advert titled “Presenting the Extraordinary”), I cannot avoid the question, does Bell Shakespeare reach the heights of William Shakespeare?
BHPBilliton quotes Ben Johnson: He was not of an age, but for all time. They go on “This comment was made about Shakespeare but we think it also holds true for John Bell.” It’s nice of the biggest mining company in the world to pay for the privilege of saying so, but I think it’s not entirely true. John, indeed, has placed himself in a more realistic relationship with William in his note as Artistic Director, writing "It is incontestable that, to some extent, Shakespeare invented us; and through constant engagement with his work, we go on re-inventing ourselves."
So, to the performance I saw on April 16, 2010 just ten days short of William’s 446th birthday.
The beginning was extraordinary as a circular white curtain rose to reveal the Lear family isolated in an island of light. Off to the side, but made visible, the instruments of emotion interplayed with the action of the sculptural figures in the centre of our attention. Here was King Lear prefiguring The Tempest. Shakespeare’s words were as clear as we might expect from Bell, and the scene was set for “Nothing will come of nothing.” Much, in theatre, will come of simplicity. The open stage with no more than a central raised revolve, with light and sound, was all that was needed. Stage design held the play in place.
For this we must thank Marion Potts, designer Dale Ferguson, lighting designer Nick Schlieper, sound designer Stefan Gregory, and composer Bree van Reyk: seen and heard, even though largely mysterious to us spectators.
But the edge was taken off the imaginative intensity, at various points and in various ways. I found it difficult to feel the purity of truth in the naïve Cordelia, dressed as she was in a mess of clothing, in which she reappeared, with the addition of a cloak, years later as the mature Queen of France. She needed clean lines, simple in style in Scene 1 to contrast with her overblown sisters, an idealistic 15 year old who naturally would entrance the King of France, with or without a dowry. As grown-up strategic leader of the rescue invasion, she should more than match her sisters for wealth in a costume of plain elegance.
Cordelia was always my favourite Shakespeare character, and I was disappointed, even though I could not fault the quality of any of the acting. The characters seemed to be speaking just as themselves, even when speaking directly to the audience. Whatever they symbolise, there was never a hint of “speaking Shakespeare”. Perhaps the audience responded to three actors in particular (though their parts also help) – Peter Carroll as The Fool, Tim Walter as Edmund and Leah Purcell as Regan, especially when she makes her move on Edmund. So spiteful towards her rival, her sister Goneril , a ferocious Jane Montgomery Griffiths.
The speed and ease of entrances and exits made the set work wonderfully. The transitions from scene to scene are so often a major point of weakness in other productions, but never in Bell Shakespeare. However, I was surprised that the on-stage musical instruments disappeared after interval and sound became distant and only electronic. It was an emotional loss, especially because in the first half, characters used the instruments to comment on themselves. It was an imaginative master stroke, for example, to have Lear strike a cymbal and use his stick to strike an inferior character.
But the major disappointment for me was the staging of the ending of the play. Why were Lear and Cordelia left grovelling on the floor downstage left, where I could not see them except by wriggling about trying to peer between the audience’s heads in front of me? Why were they not taken to the central circle? Why didn’t the ending reprise the opening, with Lear and Cordelia isolated on the island, delicately enclosed again in the white curtain while Kent and Edgar spoke the words which reinforced what Cordelia had said in Scene 1? Am I being too obvious? Shouldn’t the symbolism be made this clear?
And, returning at last to the constitution of John Bell, I have found, over perhaps the last ten years or so, that the quality of his voice has often become restricted to a flat, rather thin sounding tone. This could work, for example, when he played Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, but it left me cold in King Lear. On the night, there was much strength and range of tone in Scene 1, but by the storm scene I lost feeling for this huge old man facing up to the elements as if he might defeat whatever they could throw at him, and in the final scene I could not feel the loss that this father felt, realising that his failing was the cause of his true daughter’s death.
Perhaps it is the clarity of meaning which John Bell has brought to the performance of Shakespeare, (which I still remember being impressed by when I first saw him in a tent in Adelaide in 1964, and still today is a great achievement), that has taken the focus off the creation of emotion in those of us watching. So I conclude that this production is in many ways a very good presentation of King Lear, but it does not reach the heady heights of Shakespeare’s imagination.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If there is one thing King Lear makes clear, it is that kings can’t expect to comfortably retire on a super pension, even if it is backed by 100 knights. What about an actor/director? John Bell’s constitution is more than impressive. It’s amazing to me that he can go on putting out such energy night after night (and present himself for the public at the opening night cast party). Can he keep going?
Considering the historical significance of this play and this production, there is as much to say about Marion Potts’ directing, the design and execution, as there is about the acting. In King Lear and The Tempest, though their earthly political plots look superficially familiar, Shakespeare took flight creatively into an ethereal theatre of symbolism.
Because this production marks the 20th anniversary of the Bell Shakespeare Company as well as the year in which John Bell turns three score and ten (and the $15 Anniversary Edition Souvenir Program includes a Wesfarmers advert titled “Presenting the Extraordinary”), I cannot avoid the question, does Bell Shakespeare reach the heights of William Shakespeare?
BHPBilliton quotes Ben Johnson: He was not of an age, but for all time. They go on “This comment was made about Shakespeare but we think it also holds true for John Bell.” It’s nice of the biggest mining company in the world to pay for the privilege of saying so, but I think it’s not entirely true. John, indeed, has placed himself in a more realistic relationship with William in his note as Artistic Director, writing "It is incontestable that, to some extent, Shakespeare invented us; and through constant engagement with his work, we go on re-inventing ourselves."
So, to the performance I saw on April 16, 2010 just ten days short of William’s 446th birthday.
The beginning was extraordinary as a circular white curtain rose to reveal the Lear family isolated in an island of light. Off to the side, but made visible, the instruments of emotion interplayed with the action of the sculptural figures in the centre of our attention. Here was King Lear prefiguring The Tempest. Shakespeare’s words were as clear as we might expect from Bell, and the scene was set for “Nothing will come of nothing.” Much, in theatre, will come of simplicity. The open stage with no more than a central raised revolve, with light and sound, was all that was needed. Stage design held the play in place.
For this we must thank Marion Potts, designer Dale Ferguson, lighting designer Nick Schlieper, sound designer Stefan Gregory, and composer Bree van Reyk: seen and heard, even though largely mysterious to us spectators.
But the edge was taken off the imaginative intensity, at various points and in various ways. I found it difficult to feel the purity of truth in the naïve Cordelia, dressed as she was in a mess of clothing, in which she reappeared, with the addition of a cloak, years later as the mature Queen of France. She needed clean lines, simple in style in Scene 1 to contrast with her overblown sisters, an idealistic 15 year old who naturally would entrance the King of France, with or without a dowry. As grown-up strategic leader of the rescue invasion, she should more than match her sisters for wealth in a costume of plain elegance.
Cordelia was always my favourite Shakespeare character, and I was disappointed, even though I could not fault the quality of any of the acting. The characters seemed to be speaking just as themselves, even when speaking directly to the audience. Whatever they symbolise, there was never a hint of “speaking Shakespeare”. Perhaps the audience responded to three actors in particular (though their parts also help) – Peter Carroll as The Fool, Tim Walter as Edmund and Leah Purcell as Regan, especially when she makes her move on Edmund. So spiteful towards her rival, her sister Goneril , a ferocious Jane Montgomery Griffiths.
The speed and ease of entrances and exits made the set work wonderfully. The transitions from scene to scene are so often a major point of weakness in other productions, but never in Bell Shakespeare. However, I was surprised that the on-stage musical instruments disappeared after interval and sound became distant and only electronic. It was an emotional loss, especially because in the first half, characters used the instruments to comment on themselves. It was an imaginative master stroke, for example, to have Lear strike a cymbal and use his stick to strike an inferior character.
But the major disappointment for me was the staging of the ending of the play. Why were Lear and Cordelia left grovelling on the floor downstage left, where I could not see them except by wriggling about trying to peer between the audience’s heads in front of me? Why were they not taken to the central circle? Why didn’t the ending reprise the opening, with Lear and Cordelia isolated on the island, delicately enclosed again in the white curtain while Kent and Edgar spoke the words which reinforced what Cordelia had said in Scene 1? Am I being too obvious? Shouldn’t the symbolism be made this clear?
And, returning at last to the constitution of John Bell, I have found, over perhaps the last ten years or so, that the quality of his voice has often become restricted to a flat, rather thin sounding tone. This could work, for example, when he played Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, but it left me cold in King Lear. On the night, there was much strength and range of tone in Scene 1, but by the storm scene I lost feeling for this huge old man facing up to the elements as if he might defeat whatever they could throw at him, and in the final scene I could not feel the loss that this father felt, realising that his failing was the cause of his true daughter’s death.
Perhaps it is the clarity of meaning which John Bell has brought to the performance of Shakespeare, (which I still remember being impressed by when I first saw him in a tent in Adelaide in 1964, and still today is a great achievement), that has taken the focus off the creation of emotion in those of us watching. So I conclude that this production is in many ways a very good presentation of King Lear, but it does not reach the heady heights of Shakespeare’s imagination.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2010: The Age I’m In Dance Theatre by Force Majeure
The Age I’m In Dance Theatre by Force Majeure directed by Kate Champion. At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre April 16-17, 2010.
It’s a great thrill to see work of this quality at The Q. Congratulations to program manager Stephen Pike for including The Age I’m In in his Simply Irresistible 2010 season. This show simply is.
Kate Champion’s Force Majeure won ‘Outstanding Performance by a Company’ for The Age I'm In at the 2009 Australian Dance Awards, so it’s a special coup for Queanbeyan. What I found most impressive was the natural way that diverse elements – pure dance, creative movement, mime, spoken word – are integrated with the physical space, recorded sound and music, lighting and finally back projection and portable video screens. Making a focussed artistic work using all these devices turns what, in principle is a simple or even ordinary idea – showing the experience of being different at different ages – into a higher form of art.
The video screens are the most extraordinary. It was hard to imagine how the images could appear so precisely in time with the action, while the effect of the picture on the screen often being an image of the part of the person who is behind the screen was quite unnerving, though one could not look away. This is a new way of interpreting the idea of mask, using sophisticated technology.
Yet it is the oldest form of expression, bodily movement and dance, which remains the core of the work, a commentary in action on the words spoken by Australians in real life interviews, about generational differences, family relationships, disability, ageing, drugs, sex, money, class, body image and even rock’n’roll. There is humour, sympathy, empathy and real concern, but there is also resilience, hope and success.
All in 90 minutes, through 26 scenes. There is Robyn, a woman played by both Veronica Neave and Vincent Crowley; a little boy Jack by Byron Perry and Kirstie McCracken; Tracey by Ingrid Weistfelt; Dan by Josh Mu; Sam the air guitarist by Samuel Brent; and Grandparents and Grandaughter Tilly Cobham-Hervey, Brian Harrison and Penny Everingham. Some performers originally trained in dance, while others as actors, all working together in ever changing roles and moods.
Kate Champion has put together a team of great strength behind the scenes: Geoff Cobham (designer), Roz Hervey (artistic associate), Max Lyandvert (composer), Bruce McKinven (costume designer), Mark Blackwell (sound editor), Tony Melov (audiovisual producer), Neil Jensen (audiovisual designer), and finally William Yang, the photographer whose show My Generation opened the National Portrait Gallery in December 2008.
Unfortunately you will have missed the Queanbeyan presentation by the time you read this, and will have to chase the show to Wagga Wagga, Griffith and Newcastle or to Brisbane’s Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts on May 4 – 5. I would book now. There should be spare planes to fly there while the Iceland volcano keeps erupting.
For the full touring schedule, check out http://www.forcemajeure.com.au/Resources/RoadworkPerformanceSchedule.pdf
and if you are a technical buff, have a look at http://forcemajeure.com.au/Resources/The Age I'm In - Technical Specifications Regional.pdf for the touring specifications – just fascinating.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
It’s a great thrill to see work of this quality at The Q. Congratulations to program manager Stephen Pike for including The Age I’m In in his Simply Irresistible 2010 season. This show simply is.
Kate Champion’s Force Majeure won ‘Outstanding Performance by a Company’ for The Age I'm In at the 2009 Australian Dance Awards, so it’s a special coup for Queanbeyan. What I found most impressive was the natural way that diverse elements – pure dance, creative movement, mime, spoken word – are integrated with the physical space, recorded sound and music, lighting and finally back projection and portable video screens. Making a focussed artistic work using all these devices turns what, in principle is a simple or even ordinary idea – showing the experience of being different at different ages – into a higher form of art.
The video screens are the most extraordinary. It was hard to imagine how the images could appear so precisely in time with the action, while the effect of the picture on the screen often being an image of the part of the person who is behind the screen was quite unnerving, though one could not look away. This is a new way of interpreting the idea of mask, using sophisticated technology.
Yet it is the oldest form of expression, bodily movement and dance, which remains the core of the work, a commentary in action on the words spoken by Australians in real life interviews, about generational differences, family relationships, disability, ageing, drugs, sex, money, class, body image and even rock’n’roll. There is humour, sympathy, empathy and real concern, but there is also resilience, hope and success.
All in 90 minutes, through 26 scenes. There is Robyn, a woman played by both Veronica Neave and Vincent Crowley; a little boy Jack by Byron Perry and Kirstie McCracken; Tracey by Ingrid Weistfelt; Dan by Josh Mu; Sam the air guitarist by Samuel Brent; and Grandparents and Grandaughter Tilly Cobham-Hervey, Brian Harrison and Penny Everingham. Some performers originally trained in dance, while others as actors, all working together in ever changing roles and moods.
Kate Champion has put together a team of great strength behind the scenes: Geoff Cobham (designer), Roz Hervey (artistic associate), Max Lyandvert (composer), Bruce McKinven (costume designer), Mark Blackwell (sound editor), Tony Melov (audiovisual producer), Neil Jensen (audiovisual designer), and finally William Yang, the photographer whose show My Generation opened the National Portrait Gallery in December 2008.
Unfortunately you will have missed the Queanbeyan presentation by the time you read this, and will have to chase the show to Wagga Wagga, Griffith and Newcastle or to Brisbane’s Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts on May 4 – 5. I would book now. There should be spare planes to fly there while the Iceland volcano keeps erupting.
For the full touring schedule, check out http://www.forcemajeure.com.au/Resources/RoadworkPerformanceSchedule.pdf
and if you are a technical buff, have a look at http://forcemajeure.com.au/Resources/The Age I'm In - Technical Specifications Regional.pdf for the touring specifications – just fascinating.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
2010: Ich Bin Faust by Joe Woodward
Ich Bin Faust written and directed by Joe Woodward,
Coordinator of Creative Arts and Theatre, Daramalan College, Canberra.
Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 6-10, 2010, 8pm.
The first purpose of this production is to extend the theatre experience of a group of senior secondary students who last year presented a group devised performance based on their studies of the Faust story, mainly derived from Marlowe and Goethe.
This script, written by Woodward but with considerable workshop input from his students, is also intended to develop the students’ thinking about the relevance of the Faustian theme to present day life. The plot follows what happens to a drama group who previously worked on a piece about Faust, starting from the cast party, reaching the end of their schooling and meeting up again four years later. Characters in this story parallel characters in the Faustian dramas. Is it possible not to sell one’s soul to the devil in the modern world of “I am”?
I guess there is also a desire to demonstrate what the students can do theatrically, and raise issues about the transition into adulthood for an audience of parents and student peers.
It’s not my place to write competitive reviews of individual performances, but it is fair to say that the group standard was very much what I would expect from a seriously committed Year 12 drama class. I certainly saw some potential tertiary theatre studies students.
It took me quite some time to feel involved in the drama, so I have some doubts about the script writing. It is true that the characters begin as youngish, a bit immature, almost “typical” dramaheads and grow into young adults, but the slow pace and background broken-up video images and sound track, combined with short duo scenes interspersed with drama workshoppy group movement segments made it difficult for me to find focus in the first half. Only in the more substantial mother-daughter scene did things start to fall into place, and in the later sections the metaphorical use of masks and devil characters worked effectively, reaching a strong emotional ending which made the ethic of being principled in life rather than self-indulgent come to the fore.
As an educational exercise, the work is obviously well worthwhile. Using the Large Hadron Collider as a focus for the range of questions around science and religion, life and death, and ethical principles certainly works for young people just reaching adulthood, as they search to establish their own identities and philosophies to carry them through an uncertain future. The script, in a nice piece of irony, was written before the Collider actually proved to work, only a few days ago, without causing us all to be sucked into a black hole.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The first purpose of this production is to extend the theatre experience of a group of senior secondary students who last year presented a group devised performance based on their studies of the Faust story, mainly derived from Marlowe and Goethe.
This script, written by Woodward but with considerable workshop input from his students, is also intended to develop the students’ thinking about the relevance of the Faustian theme to present day life. The plot follows what happens to a drama group who previously worked on a piece about Faust, starting from the cast party, reaching the end of their schooling and meeting up again four years later. Characters in this story parallel characters in the Faustian dramas. Is it possible not to sell one’s soul to the devil in the modern world of “I am”?
I guess there is also a desire to demonstrate what the students can do theatrically, and raise issues about the transition into adulthood for an audience of parents and student peers.
It’s not my place to write competitive reviews of individual performances, but it is fair to say that the group standard was very much what I would expect from a seriously committed Year 12 drama class. I certainly saw some potential tertiary theatre studies students.
It took me quite some time to feel involved in the drama, so I have some doubts about the script writing. It is true that the characters begin as youngish, a bit immature, almost “typical” dramaheads and grow into young adults, but the slow pace and background broken-up video images and sound track, combined with short duo scenes interspersed with drama workshoppy group movement segments made it difficult for me to find focus in the first half. Only in the more substantial mother-daughter scene did things start to fall into place, and in the later sections the metaphorical use of masks and devil characters worked effectively, reaching a strong emotional ending which made the ethic of being principled in life rather than self-indulgent come to the fore.
As an educational exercise, the work is obviously well worthwhile. Using the Large Hadron Collider as a focus for the range of questions around science and religion, life and death, and ethical principles certainly works for young people just reaching adulthood, as they search to establish their own identities and philosophies to carry them through an uncertain future. The script, in a nice piece of irony, was written before the Collider actually proved to work, only a few days ago, without causing us all to be sucked into a black hole.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
2010: Codgers by Don Reid
Codgers by Don Reid. A Steady Lad and Christine Dunstan
production, directed by Wayne Harrison at Queanbeyan Performing Arts
Centre, The Q, March 24-27, 2010
Even though the performances by a cast of luminaries like Ron Haddrick and Shane Porteous made for an enjoyable evening, the play is too lightweight for the themes the author introduces: racial and social prejudice, fear of change, the legacy of The Great War and the Second World War, what it means to be Australian.
The good idea behind the comedy is undermined by crude sexual innuendo, fart jokes and, most unfortunately, by the completely gratuitous use of a device – the sudden death of the youngest “codger” – to bring the play to a sentimental end. Harrison obviously worked hard to produce laughs from “business” like expressions of the men’s faces as they were put through their physical exercises, and the actors played the clown for everything it was worth. But nothing could cover up the basic superficiality of the characters and the relationships between them.
If it had been played as a true stylised farce, with speed and rapid pacing, it may have worked better. The mawkish sentiment and the unrealistic conflicts might then have become integrated into a consistent work, all of which could be taken as an ironic comic commentary on a certain kind of older Anglo-Australian male. In this production, stylisation was used to begin the play and to introduce some scenes, while slapstick took over in many scenes and in others we were expected to take characters and their reactions for real. This mix doesn’t hang together.
In the end, having done their best with a script which needs much more original use of language, a set of more complex characters and a less predictable plot, and working very well as an ensemble, the cast save the play. It reminded me of a rather old-fashioned theatre-in-education piece about multicultural harmony (it was Harmony Day last Sunday) – not for children, but rather for men in their second childhood. At my age, 69, I found I felt quite out of touch with the world of these “codgers”. If there was a point where I felt at home, it was in the character (and the portrayal by Jon Lam) of Stanley Chang. He made the evening worthwhile for me.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Even though the performances by a cast of luminaries like Ron Haddrick and Shane Porteous made for an enjoyable evening, the play is too lightweight for the themes the author introduces: racial and social prejudice, fear of change, the legacy of The Great War and the Second World War, what it means to be Australian.
The good idea behind the comedy is undermined by crude sexual innuendo, fart jokes and, most unfortunately, by the completely gratuitous use of a device – the sudden death of the youngest “codger” – to bring the play to a sentimental end. Harrison obviously worked hard to produce laughs from “business” like expressions of the men’s faces as they were put through their physical exercises, and the actors played the clown for everything it was worth. But nothing could cover up the basic superficiality of the characters and the relationships between them.
If it had been played as a true stylised farce, with speed and rapid pacing, it may have worked better. The mawkish sentiment and the unrealistic conflicts might then have become integrated into a consistent work, all of which could be taken as an ironic comic commentary on a certain kind of older Anglo-Australian male. In this production, stylisation was used to begin the play and to introduce some scenes, while slapstick took over in many scenes and in others we were expected to take characters and their reactions for real. This mix doesn’t hang together.
In the end, having done their best with a script which needs much more original use of language, a set of more complex characters and a less predictable plot, and working very well as an ensemble, the cast save the play. It reminded me of a rather old-fashioned theatre-in-education piece about multicultural harmony (it was Harmony Day last Sunday) – not for children, but rather for men in their second childhood. At my age, 69, I found I felt quite out of touch with the world of these “codgers”. If there was a point where I felt at home, it was in the character (and the portrayal by Jon Lam) of Stanley Chang. He made the evening worthwhile for me.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 18 March 2010
2010: Toy Symphony by Michael Gow
Toy Symphony by Michael Gow. Queensland Theatre Company and
State Theatre Company of South Australia, directed by Geordie Brookman
at Canberra Theatre Playhouse, March 16-20 2010. Reviewed March 18.
First the play. Going along with my critic’s monocle firmly screwed in my eye socket was a big mistake. When Alexander the Great conquered the stage as well as the world, I knew the game was up. Michael Gow could see right through me. He’s not the one with the writer’s …., er, um, what? What about me? Leave me alone, Michael, please, stop invading my space.
So when I got home I read Scientific American from cover to cover, but stuff about dark matter didn’t help, especially the article called The Brain’s Dark Energy. “Mysterious brain activity holds clues to disorders and maybe even to consciousness.” I needed sleep. And it came, supported by an after-image of Barbara Lowing’s broad-hipped brilliant yellow dress as Mrs Walkham, Roland Hemming’s warm and perspicacious teacher. I felt just like Chris Pitman looked, scared as the young Roland of his head full of rough-and-tumble images made real, and so grateful for Mrs Walkham’s offer of pencil and paper. Write it all down, she advised, and it will go away. And I slept, but now I must write it down. Just let me put my 3-D glasses on. Thank you.
So, the production. The play is about the nature of playwrighting. When I previously read commentary about what the play is about, my preconceptions leapt in: self-indulgence, incestuous writing about writing, capital R Romanticism (if serious), capital F Farce (if not).
But no, Toy Symphony is capital O Original. It impresses me in the same way as Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age did – as a new direction in Australian theatre. It excites me like Andrew Bovell’s Holy Day, or Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead. But it sets an additional challenge. Because it is about theatre, the acting style and set design must make this theatre on the night into a symbol of theatre in any time and place. It’s a bit like Chorus Line being about auditioning for a chorus line, except that Gow works far deeper into the complexity of Roland Hemming’s psychology, builds in theatrical elements which demonstrate how theatre works, and places the Sydney suburb of Como into its real social, historical and even literary context.
Who would have thought the Woronora River had glinted in the eyes of Henry Lawson, Mary Gilmore and D.H.Lawrence? Or that Lake Como in Italy was a reminder of home for the Italians who built the railway? Facts and imagination are all intertwined in Roland’s mind, as a child and adult, but how can everything be linked on stage with the clarity which his psychologist Nina (Lizzy Falkland) knows he needs?
The central device is Roland’s rediscovery, in his dead mother’s box of papers, of the play he wrote at the age of 12, which he believed had been destroyed by a vicious school principal and was never staged. One suspects that the young Michael Gow had something like this experience. The set ostensibly is a simple box – an office for the psychologist, or for the principal, or a classroom for Class 5A, or a hospital corridor, or even a seafront walkway where Anton Chekov takes an evening constitutional.
But the box is full of tricks. It’s a three dimensional jack-in-the-box sort of set, where Roland’s characters can enter and exit in highly surprising ways, even reaching the heights of a rocket ship exploding in space. The set demonstrates that theatre is imaginative play, just as real and funny and sad for the adult audience as for the young child. Gow creates the mental gymnastics of Roland’s imagination, and designers Jonathon Oxlade, Nigel Levings (lighting), and Brett Collery (sound) make Roland’s internal world manifest in wood, colour, light and shade, sound and silence.
Director Geordie Brookman takes up the same jack-in-the-box style in the way lines are delivered, actors set body positions, bodies move in the space (Scott Witt consultant), voices are accented (Melissa Agnew consultant), with costume and make-up almost clown-like. But when we see the adult Roland speaking in gaps, looking down and only fleetingly directly at others, moving away from risk, hiding exposed against a blank wall, we feel with him the depth of his childhood experiences. Theatre plays with him as much as he plays with theatre. Only after his rocketship explodes do we see him, visibly in posture and voice, come to a sensible understanding of himself as Chekov quietly and politely walks past.
The actors, Lizzy Falkland, Daniel Mulvihill and Ed Wightman, play a constantly surprising array of roles as Roland remembers his past and experiences his present, while only Mrs Walkham remains a stable point of reference for him. All have clearly understood the discipline and skills needed to exhibit a child’s imaginative play. There is a comic book element which when played in concrete form before our very eyes reveals that being a writer, a playwright especially, is to lead a life of terror.
I would like to thank Michael Gow for his bravery in deciding to stop managing theatre and to go back to creating it despite the risk. The risk was well worth taking. And having written, now once more I shall sleep.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
First the play. Going along with my critic’s monocle firmly screwed in my eye socket was a big mistake. When Alexander the Great conquered the stage as well as the world, I knew the game was up. Michael Gow could see right through me. He’s not the one with the writer’s …., er, um, what? What about me? Leave me alone, Michael, please, stop invading my space.
So when I got home I read Scientific American from cover to cover, but stuff about dark matter didn’t help, especially the article called The Brain’s Dark Energy. “Mysterious brain activity holds clues to disorders and maybe even to consciousness.” I needed sleep. And it came, supported by an after-image of Barbara Lowing’s broad-hipped brilliant yellow dress as Mrs Walkham, Roland Hemming’s warm and perspicacious teacher. I felt just like Chris Pitman looked, scared as the young Roland of his head full of rough-and-tumble images made real, and so grateful for Mrs Walkham’s offer of pencil and paper. Write it all down, she advised, and it will go away. And I slept, but now I must write it down. Just let me put my 3-D glasses on. Thank you.
So, the production. The play is about the nature of playwrighting. When I previously read commentary about what the play is about, my preconceptions leapt in: self-indulgence, incestuous writing about writing, capital R Romanticism (if serious), capital F Farce (if not).
But no, Toy Symphony is capital O Original. It impresses me in the same way as Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age did – as a new direction in Australian theatre. It excites me like Andrew Bovell’s Holy Day, or Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead. But it sets an additional challenge. Because it is about theatre, the acting style and set design must make this theatre on the night into a symbol of theatre in any time and place. It’s a bit like Chorus Line being about auditioning for a chorus line, except that Gow works far deeper into the complexity of Roland Hemming’s psychology, builds in theatrical elements which demonstrate how theatre works, and places the Sydney suburb of Como into its real social, historical and even literary context.
Who would have thought the Woronora River had glinted in the eyes of Henry Lawson, Mary Gilmore and D.H.Lawrence? Or that Lake Como in Italy was a reminder of home for the Italians who built the railway? Facts and imagination are all intertwined in Roland’s mind, as a child and adult, but how can everything be linked on stage with the clarity which his psychologist Nina (Lizzy Falkland) knows he needs?
The central device is Roland’s rediscovery, in his dead mother’s box of papers, of the play he wrote at the age of 12, which he believed had been destroyed by a vicious school principal and was never staged. One suspects that the young Michael Gow had something like this experience. The set ostensibly is a simple box – an office for the psychologist, or for the principal, or a classroom for Class 5A, or a hospital corridor, or even a seafront walkway where Anton Chekov takes an evening constitutional.
But the box is full of tricks. It’s a three dimensional jack-in-the-box sort of set, where Roland’s characters can enter and exit in highly surprising ways, even reaching the heights of a rocket ship exploding in space. The set demonstrates that theatre is imaginative play, just as real and funny and sad for the adult audience as for the young child. Gow creates the mental gymnastics of Roland’s imagination, and designers Jonathon Oxlade, Nigel Levings (lighting), and Brett Collery (sound) make Roland’s internal world manifest in wood, colour, light and shade, sound and silence.
Director Geordie Brookman takes up the same jack-in-the-box style in the way lines are delivered, actors set body positions, bodies move in the space (Scott Witt consultant), voices are accented (Melissa Agnew consultant), with costume and make-up almost clown-like. But when we see the adult Roland speaking in gaps, looking down and only fleetingly directly at others, moving away from risk, hiding exposed against a blank wall, we feel with him the depth of his childhood experiences. Theatre plays with him as much as he plays with theatre. Only after his rocketship explodes do we see him, visibly in posture and voice, come to a sensible understanding of himself as Chekov quietly and politely walks past.
The actors, Lizzy Falkland, Daniel Mulvihill and Ed Wightman, play a constantly surprising array of roles as Roland remembers his past and experiences his present, while only Mrs Walkham remains a stable point of reference for him. All have clearly understood the discipline and skills needed to exhibit a child’s imaginative play. There is a comic book element which when played in concrete form before our very eyes reveals that being a writer, a playwright especially, is to lead a life of terror.
I would like to thank Michael Gow for his bravery in deciding to stop managing theatre and to go back to creating it despite the risk. The risk was well worth taking. And having written, now once more I shall sleep.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
2010: The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh. Sydney
Theatre Company, directed by Cristabel Sved. Wharf 2, February 22 –
March 13, 2010. Reviewed March 9.
When I first saw The Beauty Queen of Leenane (STC, reviewed in The Canberra Times, August 16, 2000) I found it difficult to believe in the daughter Maureen. It had seemed to me that the play was too neatly constructed, that Maureen’s sexual delusions were a gratuitous device on the playwright’s part, and “too much is made of the traditional comic Irish loquaciousness”.
In this production Mandy McElhinney makes Maureen’s sexual need explicit, showing how the dominance of her mother (which her sisters refuse to accept) results in this daughter’s extremes of behaviour in the real world and of fantasy in her inner world. I guess it’s this quality of clarity that we should expect of the Sydney Theatre Company, making the travelling time and expense worthwhile.
There are references in the dialogue to Australian soaps on the “telly”, like Neighbours and Home and Away, the only entertainment available for these people stuck in poverty on a hill surrounded by mud in Leenane, a village with no part to play in a modern economy. These shows in fantasy at least open up the possibility of somewhere else to go, out of the rain, into sunshine forever. Ironically though, for Australians, they are also seen as cultural invaders, destroying the true Irish traditions.
But I found myself being reminded of Mother and Son, where the surface humour relied on the underlying determination of the aged to keep control of their lives. I even wondered if Garry McDonald might not have felt rather like Maureen after his “mother” Ruth Cracknell died in 2002. Did it mean relief and freedom from his role, or entrenched depression knowing that reality is insubstantial and unreliable? In other words, I found more depth and complexity in this production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane than I had seen previously.
Some commentators, including this director in her program note, think McDonagh, “a 2nd generation Irishman living in England … parodies, exaggerates and toys with ‘Irishness’ through his ‘outsider’s’ gaze”. But I have to say, at least in this production, that Cristabel Sved has made the play come close to the best of Irish plays, JM Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. McDonagh’s Maureen and Pato cannot quite match Pegeen and Christy, but his play is not a parody, even though Maureen uses a poker and Christy a loy. Both plays call a spade a spade, and this is the value of this STC production.
It is still true that we are left with somewhat sentimental sadness at the conclusion of Beauty Queen, as Maureen becomes so much like her mother. Playboy is much tougher on us, because we know that Pegeen knows she must face the real world alone, while Maureen can retreat into delusion.
However, I can confidently conclude that STC has made a justifiable success of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, with performances fully booked at the end of its run. With the key players Judi Farr, Mandy McElhinney and the always spot-on Darren Gilshenan, as well as a very effective relative newcomer Eamon Farren, success is not surprising but gratefully appreciated.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
When I first saw The Beauty Queen of Leenane (STC, reviewed in The Canberra Times, August 16, 2000) I found it difficult to believe in the daughter Maureen. It had seemed to me that the play was too neatly constructed, that Maureen’s sexual delusions were a gratuitous device on the playwright’s part, and “too much is made of the traditional comic Irish loquaciousness”.
In this production Mandy McElhinney makes Maureen’s sexual need explicit, showing how the dominance of her mother (which her sisters refuse to accept) results in this daughter’s extremes of behaviour in the real world and of fantasy in her inner world. I guess it’s this quality of clarity that we should expect of the Sydney Theatre Company, making the travelling time and expense worthwhile.
There are references in the dialogue to Australian soaps on the “telly”, like Neighbours and Home and Away, the only entertainment available for these people stuck in poverty on a hill surrounded by mud in Leenane, a village with no part to play in a modern economy. These shows in fantasy at least open up the possibility of somewhere else to go, out of the rain, into sunshine forever. Ironically though, for Australians, they are also seen as cultural invaders, destroying the true Irish traditions.
But I found myself being reminded of Mother and Son, where the surface humour relied on the underlying determination of the aged to keep control of their lives. I even wondered if Garry McDonald might not have felt rather like Maureen after his “mother” Ruth Cracknell died in 2002. Did it mean relief and freedom from his role, or entrenched depression knowing that reality is insubstantial and unreliable? In other words, I found more depth and complexity in this production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane than I had seen previously.
Some commentators, including this director in her program note, think McDonagh, “a 2nd generation Irishman living in England … parodies, exaggerates and toys with ‘Irishness’ through his ‘outsider’s’ gaze”. But I have to say, at least in this production, that Cristabel Sved has made the play come close to the best of Irish plays, JM Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. McDonagh’s Maureen and Pato cannot quite match Pegeen and Christy, but his play is not a parody, even though Maureen uses a poker and Christy a loy. Both plays call a spade a spade, and this is the value of this STC production.
It is still true that we are left with somewhat sentimental sadness at the conclusion of Beauty Queen, as Maureen becomes so much like her mother. Playboy is much tougher on us, because we know that Pegeen knows she must face the real world alone, while Maureen can retreat into delusion.
However, I can confidently conclude that STC has made a justifiable success of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, with performances fully booked at the end of its run. With the key players Judi Farr, Mandy McElhinney and the always spot-on Darren Gilshenan, as well as a very effective relative newcomer Eamon Farren, success is not surprising but gratefully appreciated.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2010: Ninety by Joanna Murray-Smith
Ninety by Joanna Murray-Smith. Directed by Sandra Bates,
Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, February 4 – April 3, 2010. Reviewed Tuesday
March 9.
The three theatres I visited on this trip to Sydney have quite different atmospheres and clientele.
B Sharp means what it says. Be ready to be bluntly confronted Downstairs at Belvoir St by pointed expertise.
Wharf 2 is like a well-bred show pony. Its audiences expect nothing less than the professional best, and all the jumps are cleared.
The Ensemble …? Well, it’s North Shore, suspended over gently lapping sailing boat water, moored in a bay of quietude. It’s about humanity, intimacy, warmth of feeling, and sense of local community. It still belongs to its audience as it has since Hayes Gordon set up Australia’s first theatre-in-the-round in the Kirribilli boatshed just 50 years ago.
Kate Raison and Brian Meegan could have performed Ninety as technically well in a bigger space, but even in Wharf 2 they would not have seemingly looked us directly in the eyes and we would not have seen our reflections in theirs. If Ninety were done in a proscenium, end-on or even side-on theatre like Belvoir Downstairs, it would seem no better than a slick David Williamson comedy from the days before his community conferencing trilogy.
In the round, even in the three-quarters round as The Ensemble is nowadays, Joanna Murray-Smith’s ninety minutes of post-ex-marital experience is quite rivetting. It’s the right play for this theatre.
It’s always a good drama exercise to place an external limitation on what may happen. There is no plot to Ninety except for Isabel’s intention. She knows her ex-husband William so much better than the young actress he is about to marry, from the time of her inveigling him into her bed in the beginning, through their young couple financial struggles, his becoming successful and finally rich-and-famous, with the memories joyful and tragic of their only daughter who died so young.
Isabel has phoned him and persuaded William to see her before he is off to Paris for the wedding – just as she had phoned him in the beginning. He can only afford 90 minutes of his time. The play lasts exactly 90 minutes. Will Isabel break through to William’s real feelings in this short time? Will he change his mind about marrying again? Does she really expect him to come back to her? Would she really want him to?
Of course, I cannot reveal such mysteries. But I can say that, though the details of these two people’s lives are so different from my own, almost everything that was spoken and left unspoken rang silent bells within me. If one can say there is no plot in this play, there is a fiendish plot at work to make us in the audience recognise ourselves as we are and as we have been. If you are up for it, there is still time to make a booking. 02 9929 0644 or www.ensemble.com.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The three theatres I visited on this trip to Sydney have quite different atmospheres and clientele.
B Sharp means what it says. Be ready to be bluntly confronted Downstairs at Belvoir St by pointed expertise.
Wharf 2 is like a well-bred show pony. Its audiences expect nothing less than the professional best, and all the jumps are cleared.
The Ensemble …? Well, it’s North Shore, suspended over gently lapping sailing boat water, moored in a bay of quietude. It’s about humanity, intimacy, warmth of feeling, and sense of local community. It still belongs to its audience as it has since Hayes Gordon set up Australia’s first theatre-in-the-round in the Kirribilli boatshed just 50 years ago.
Kate Raison and Brian Meegan could have performed Ninety as technically well in a bigger space, but even in Wharf 2 they would not have seemingly looked us directly in the eyes and we would not have seen our reflections in theirs. If Ninety were done in a proscenium, end-on or even side-on theatre like Belvoir Downstairs, it would seem no better than a slick David Williamson comedy from the days before his community conferencing trilogy.
In the round, even in the three-quarters round as The Ensemble is nowadays, Joanna Murray-Smith’s ninety minutes of post-ex-marital experience is quite rivetting. It’s the right play for this theatre.
It’s always a good drama exercise to place an external limitation on what may happen. There is no plot to Ninety except for Isabel’s intention. She knows her ex-husband William so much better than the young actress he is about to marry, from the time of her inveigling him into her bed in the beginning, through their young couple financial struggles, his becoming successful and finally rich-and-famous, with the memories joyful and tragic of their only daughter who died so young.
Isabel has phoned him and persuaded William to see her before he is off to Paris for the wedding – just as she had phoned him in the beginning. He can only afford 90 minutes of his time. The play lasts exactly 90 minutes. Will Isabel break through to William’s real feelings in this short time? Will he change his mind about marrying again? Does she really expect him to come back to her? Would she really want him to?
Of course, I cannot reveal such mysteries. But I can say that, though the details of these two people’s lives are so different from my own, almost everything that was spoken and left unspoken rang silent bells within me. If one can say there is no plot in this play, there is a fiendish plot at work to make us in the audience recognise ourselves as we are and as we have been. If you are up for it, there is still time to make a booking. 02 9929 0644 or www.ensemble.com.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2010: Sydney Theatre Company Education Program 2010. Feature article.
Sydney Theatre Company Education Program 2010.
March 9, 2010.
Today I saw a schools performance of The Beauty Queen of Leenane (reviewed separately), and discovered the extensive and varied educational program offered by the Sydney Theatre Company.
Current Education Manager, Naomi Edwards, has told me that the appointment of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton has meant a stronger emphasis on programming beyond the immediate and upfront productions. Funding for the Company is managed through the Sydney Theatre Foundation, and the first move has been to take a position out of Box Office to create a Schools Liaison post.
The new development also means establishing separate funding for the Education Program, seeking new donors for STC Ed, whose Patrons are Ian and Min Darling, Simon and Catriona Mordant, and the Caledonia Foundation in addition to the Sydney Theatre Foundation, supported further by the Girgensohn Foundation and the Gonski Foundation. Edwards reports that donors from businesses and the general public are now coming on board with enthusiasm.
Though some parts of the program, such as touring productions and workshops to regional areas, are done in partnership with the NSW Department of Education and Training, teachers and students from Canberra can take part in a very wide range of activities.
STC Ed productions this year, following The Beauty Queen of Leenane, are Nyuntu Ngali (You We Two) by Scott Rankin (presented by Windmill and Big hART), Burnt by Tom Lycos and Stefo Nantsou (Zeal Theatre, commissioned by STC to present issues about drought), Mr Freezy by Hamish Fletcher, Chris Kohn, Tamara Rewse and Sam Routledge (an Arena Theatre production for young children), The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare (STC Residents directed by Charmian Gradwell).
There are workshops for teachers and students: School Drama professional development for primary school teachers in association with the University of Sydney; Teacher Workshop Program one day workshops on practical techniques and strategies - Verbatim Theatre with Alana Valentine, Shakespeare with Charmian Gradwell and Naomi Edwards, Commedia Dell’Arte with Darren Gilshenan, and Using Drama Across the Primary Curriculum with Professor Robyn Ewing.
For students: Group Devised Performance Workshop with Zeal Theatre; Brecht Workshop with Shannon Murphy; Tragedy Workshop with Naomi Edwards; and the Young Playwrights’ Residency.
For young children there is also the Actor On A Box daytime storytelling program.
And there are schools days available for all the main stage STC productions of Stockholm, Vs Macbeth, Honour, Oresteia, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Tusk Tusk, August: Osage County, The Trial, Our Town, The Wharf Revue, True West, Uncle Vanya, and The Grenade. There are some seats allocated in the $10 Access Ticket program to help students who can’t afford full price to attend.
Contact details: Naomi Edwards, Acting Education Manager, 02 9250 1726
Toni Murphy, Education Coordinator, 02 9250 1795
Georgia Thorne, Schools Liaison Officer, 02 9250 1778
Email: education@sydneytheatre.com.au
Web: sydneytheatre.com.au/stced
© Frank McKone, Canberra
March 9, 2010.
Today I saw a schools performance of The Beauty Queen of Leenane (reviewed separately), and discovered the extensive and varied educational program offered by the Sydney Theatre Company.
Current Education Manager, Naomi Edwards, has told me that the appointment of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton has meant a stronger emphasis on programming beyond the immediate and upfront productions. Funding for the Company is managed through the Sydney Theatre Foundation, and the first move has been to take a position out of Box Office to create a Schools Liaison post.
The new development also means establishing separate funding for the Education Program, seeking new donors for STC Ed, whose Patrons are Ian and Min Darling, Simon and Catriona Mordant, and the Caledonia Foundation in addition to the Sydney Theatre Foundation, supported further by the Girgensohn Foundation and the Gonski Foundation. Edwards reports that donors from businesses and the general public are now coming on board with enthusiasm.
Though some parts of the program, such as touring productions and workshops to regional areas, are done in partnership with the NSW Department of Education and Training, teachers and students from Canberra can take part in a very wide range of activities.
STC Ed productions this year, following The Beauty Queen of Leenane, are Nyuntu Ngali (You We Two) by Scott Rankin (presented by Windmill and Big hART), Burnt by Tom Lycos and Stefo Nantsou (Zeal Theatre, commissioned by STC to present issues about drought), Mr Freezy by Hamish Fletcher, Chris Kohn, Tamara Rewse and Sam Routledge (an Arena Theatre production for young children), The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare (STC Residents directed by Charmian Gradwell).
There are workshops for teachers and students: School Drama professional development for primary school teachers in association with the University of Sydney; Teacher Workshop Program one day workshops on practical techniques and strategies - Verbatim Theatre with Alana Valentine, Shakespeare with Charmian Gradwell and Naomi Edwards, Commedia Dell’Arte with Darren Gilshenan, and Using Drama Across the Primary Curriculum with Professor Robyn Ewing.
For students: Group Devised Performance Workshop with Zeal Theatre; Brecht Workshop with Shannon Murphy; Tragedy Workshop with Naomi Edwards; and the Young Playwrights’ Residency.
For young children there is also the Actor On A Box daytime storytelling program.
And there are schools days available for all the main stage STC productions of Stockholm, Vs Macbeth, Honour, Oresteia, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Tusk Tusk, August: Osage County, The Trial, Our Town, The Wharf Revue, True West, Uncle Vanya, and The Grenade. There are some seats allocated in the $10 Access Ticket program to help students who can’t afford full price to attend.
Contact details: Naomi Edwards, Acting Education Manager, 02 9250 1726
Toni Murphy, Education Coordinator, 02 9250 1795
Georgia Thorne, Schools Liaison Officer, 02 9250 1778
Email: education@sydneytheatre.com.au
Web: sydneytheatre.com.au/stced
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 7 March 2010
2010: Bent by Martin Sherman
Bent by Martin Sherman. Focus Theatre in association with B
Sharp. Downstairs at Belvoir St, Sydney, February 18 to March 14, 2010.
Reviewed Sunday March 7.
This play is well-known for introducing audiences in many countries, since its original production in London in 1979, to the fact that the Nazi holocaust was not only a tragedy for Jews. There is only brief mention of the black triangles (the symbol for "asocials") or green triangles (the symbol for professional criminals) which were used to identify Romani people, but one step down below those with yellow stars, on the lowest rung of the heirarchy in the concentration camps, were the bearers of pink triangles. Bent is called ‘iconic’ by B Sharp because it has become a symbol of the rights of gay people, and this production is presented in conjunction with Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
The story follows the life of Max from his young adult days in 1933 Berlin, when high level political figures tolerated homosexuality, through a long period on the run after Hitler had these key figures killed, during which Max attempted to do deals via a gay uncle (who outwardly lived a standard married life while paying for ‘boys’ on the side) to escape to Amsterdam with his lover, Rudy. The Gestapo catches them living among unemployed people in a forest camp, and real disaster sets in.
On the train to the concentration camp, the SS guards set up a situation where Max is forced to kill Rudy and then to rape a young girl’s body in order to prove he is not homosexual. It’s a ‘deal’ that saves Max’s life at the time, and he is classed as a Jew instead. But later in the camp a deal to get medicine for Horst, classed as homosexual only because he had signed a petition supporting gay rights, goes awry, and Max is forced to watch while the SS give Horst the choice of electrocution on the perimeter fence or being shot if he refuses. Horst is shot, but Max is then ordered to dump the body in the nearby mass grave.
Max does as he is ordered, but finally cannot face his feeling of guilt for still surviving. He takes Horst’s ‘pyjama’ top, with its pink triangle, changes out of his own with its yellow star, and electrocutes himself on the fence.
The play has it weaknesses, not because these things might not have really happened in Nazi Germany, but because it is an unrelenting slide into absolute disaster, with not any sign of hope. This is, of course, a truth about the holocaust, but the play is less than it could have been because the German soldiers are shown only as cardboard cut-outs, as automatons. Sherman’s message comes through loud and clear, and this was probably the right thing to do in 1979 at a time when the public had still never been made aware of what had happened in the 1930s and ’40s. Now I think we need a greater playwright to round out the picture. Though some men were in tears when I saw this production, it was too easy to see the story as a contrivance rather than a complete representation of truth.
The reason this production had an emotional impact was careful attention to detail in the acting, and the effective set design which visually took us from an innocent down at heel but homely apartment to an open unprotected park bench and forest, on to a cold unfurnished railway van, and finally into the summer heat and winter freeze of a yard made of white stone, hemmed in from above by an oppressive representation of the electric fence. The playscript made it difficult to maintain momentum through the long second half where the characters continually move rocks from one place to another, but the imagery in the set design held the action together.
Yet the real strength of emotion came from the surround soundtrack, especially of marching soldiers, steam trains, the rumble of rolling stock, and uplifting military music which built an all-encompassing tension, made all the more horrifying at the point of each torture or death at first off stage and then in full view.
Overall, for me this was a satisfying performance of the play, while its neatly structured plot led me to want to see the issue of the treatment of gays as just one example with much wider implications. The crux of the story is that authoritarian control encourages the people who work as enforcers to go to extremes, placing their victims in impossible situations which become a choice between personal survival or self-destruction to save their souls. Max starts out believing it is right for him to do anything to survive, but in the end must commit suicide in the name of truth.
So I would like more complexity in this drama, so that the play might not be ‘iconic’ of one particular issue, but become more powerful as a symbol of what is wrong with human behaviour that lets us so often go along with, and too often actively participate in, humiliating and killing other people. This is not just the drama of the holocaust of 70 years ago, but is being played out all around us today as it has been for thousands of years. However, whereas Bent remains implacably without hope, I think, alongside the terror, we have gradually established a place for human rights since the Nazi era. We should not let the past horror stymie positive action for the future.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This play is well-known for introducing audiences in many countries, since its original production in London in 1979, to the fact that the Nazi holocaust was not only a tragedy for Jews. There is only brief mention of the black triangles (the symbol for "asocials") or green triangles (the symbol for professional criminals) which were used to identify Romani people, but one step down below those with yellow stars, on the lowest rung of the heirarchy in the concentration camps, were the bearers of pink triangles. Bent is called ‘iconic’ by B Sharp because it has become a symbol of the rights of gay people, and this production is presented in conjunction with Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
The story follows the life of Max from his young adult days in 1933 Berlin, when high level political figures tolerated homosexuality, through a long period on the run after Hitler had these key figures killed, during which Max attempted to do deals via a gay uncle (who outwardly lived a standard married life while paying for ‘boys’ on the side) to escape to Amsterdam with his lover, Rudy. The Gestapo catches them living among unemployed people in a forest camp, and real disaster sets in.
On the train to the concentration camp, the SS guards set up a situation where Max is forced to kill Rudy and then to rape a young girl’s body in order to prove he is not homosexual. It’s a ‘deal’ that saves Max’s life at the time, and he is classed as a Jew instead. But later in the camp a deal to get medicine for Horst, classed as homosexual only because he had signed a petition supporting gay rights, goes awry, and Max is forced to watch while the SS give Horst the choice of electrocution on the perimeter fence or being shot if he refuses. Horst is shot, but Max is then ordered to dump the body in the nearby mass grave.
Max does as he is ordered, but finally cannot face his feeling of guilt for still surviving. He takes Horst’s ‘pyjama’ top, with its pink triangle, changes out of his own with its yellow star, and electrocutes himself on the fence.
The play has it weaknesses, not because these things might not have really happened in Nazi Germany, but because it is an unrelenting slide into absolute disaster, with not any sign of hope. This is, of course, a truth about the holocaust, but the play is less than it could have been because the German soldiers are shown only as cardboard cut-outs, as automatons. Sherman’s message comes through loud and clear, and this was probably the right thing to do in 1979 at a time when the public had still never been made aware of what had happened in the 1930s and ’40s. Now I think we need a greater playwright to round out the picture. Though some men were in tears when I saw this production, it was too easy to see the story as a contrivance rather than a complete representation of truth.
The reason this production had an emotional impact was careful attention to detail in the acting, and the effective set design which visually took us from an innocent down at heel but homely apartment to an open unprotected park bench and forest, on to a cold unfurnished railway van, and finally into the summer heat and winter freeze of a yard made of white stone, hemmed in from above by an oppressive representation of the electric fence. The playscript made it difficult to maintain momentum through the long second half where the characters continually move rocks from one place to another, but the imagery in the set design held the action together.
Yet the real strength of emotion came from the surround soundtrack, especially of marching soldiers, steam trains, the rumble of rolling stock, and uplifting military music which built an all-encompassing tension, made all the more horrifying at the point of each torture or death at first off stage and then in full view.
Overall, for me this was a satisfying performance of the play, while its neatly structured plot led me to want to see the issue of the treatment of gays as just one example with much wider implications. The crux of the story is that authoritarian control encourages the people who work as enforcers to go to extremes, placing their victims in impossible situations which become a choice between personal survival or self-destruction to save their souls. Max starts out believing it is right for him to do anything to survive, but in the end must commit suicide in the name of truth.
So I would like more complexity in this drama, so that the play might not be ‘iconic’ of one particular issue, but become more powerful as a symbol of what is wrong with human behaviour that lets us so often go along with, and too often actively participate in, humiliating and killing other people. This is not just the drama of the holocaust of 70 years ago, but is being played out all around us today as it has been for thousands of years. However, whereas Bent remains implacably without hope, I think, alongside the terror, we have gradually established a place for human rights since the Nazi era. We should not let the past horror stymie positive action for the future.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 20 February 2010
2010: Kelly Somes. Feature article on becoming a theatre director.
Following the success of Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper (reviewed by Peter Wilkins in The Canberra Times
and by me on this blogspot), I thought to open up our critics’ blog to
more than our standard reviews. Readers may like to know something of
the people behind the scenes. What is the life of a professional artist
like?
I should begin by revealing some personal interest in Kelly Somes, since she attended my audition training class in Year 12, 1995. What happened to the quiet, unassuming girl whose first role was as a witch, in Year 7? Well, Kelly became one of the best examples of my advice to take time before making the decision to audition for professional training. At 18 anyone over 30 seems already over the hill, but now Kelly sees herself as one of the young ones just beginning to establish herself professionally.
The steps she took on the way, her decisions, are of course unique. What I noted, though, is that at every point she focussed on how she understood herself at that time. This is not a story of unmitigated ambition, of determination to win out at all costs, of achieving predetermined goals. It’s a much gentler story than the world’s go-getters would understand. As she spoke it seemed to me that she put into practice what Laertes struggled with – “This above all: to thine own self be true.” Polonius may have been pompous and overbearing but this advice, taken with common sense, is worthwhile.
Kelly did not rush into auditions but enrolled in Arts/Law at ANU. However, she found that Theatre Studies was a continuing interest, leading her to drop Law in favour of an Honours in Theatre. In Years 11/12 she had experienced acting and directing, indeed she had directed some work while still in junior high school. For her the undergraduate work, directing short pieces with her student colleagues and then directing a full length play for her Honours was to me an interesting example of the education process – spiralling round the same kind of work but at a new and more mature level each time around. It was pleasing, though a little humbling for me to hear her praise for the quality of her university teachers, Geoffrey Borny, Tony Turner and Cathy Clelland. Yet, with a degree and now a clear interest in directing rather than acting, where would she go?
To support herself had to be the immediate answer, so for three years she worked in Canberra, as much as possible in theatre. Administration work paid her way, while directing in the family theatre company, Free-Rain, continued to build her experience. My review in The Canberra Times of her 2002 production of Hotel Sorrento (by Hannie Rayson) reveals an aspect of Kelly’s interests which she had to face when she made the decision to apply for the directing course at Victorian College for the Arts (VCA) in Melbourne.
I wrote "Somes claims to have set the play in its period, when Margaret Thatcher was still in power in Britain: a point which is important to the politics of the play. At the same time, though, to deal with the family's memories and emotional conflicts, she has seen the characters as costumed figures against a blank background, making the whole set white except for the symbolic painting of 'Hotel Sorrento' (in which all of the older generation pictured have now died). Though this is ostensibly a good idea, the contrast in the first act between scenes in British London and the Australian beach village of Sorrento is not made as obvious as the drama demands. Or, on the other hand, a much more stylised set, using perhaps something like a Whiteley painting as a model, might have given the design the visual life it needs."
In her VCA interview she was asked why she had not applied for animateur training rather than directing, since she had a clear interest in design. But by this time, and confirmed as she progressed through her VCA training, her deepest interest was working directly with people within the settings she could imagine. Perhaps the central question she resolved during her time at VCA was whether she should centre her work on text or action. I am not surprised, since Lindy Davies was Head of the School of Drama, that Kelly now sees movement as the core of her work, both as the underpinning of text and as a ‘text’ in its own right which the audience can read.
It was this understanding which gave strength to the production of Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper which had stirred me to find out how Kelly had got to this point. And where to now?
Kelly Somes now works in Melbourne as a freelance director, concentrating on newly written work and on women’s theatre. Some work is with cooperatives, where pay is equally shared, and some is by invitation to take paid work as director or dramaturg. She spoke of having to learn how to promote herself and her work, having to become objective about her strengths and weaknesses, and especially of “opening up yourself to critical comment from new people, not just the trusted people you already know” and learning to make “judgements about other people who might be the right people to judge you”.
There is still a quietness, an unassuming quality in Kelly Somes, and I suspect a satisfying career ahead of her.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I should begin by revealing some personal interest in Kelly Somes, since she attended my audition training class in Year 12, 1995. What happened to the quiet, unassuming girl whose first role was as a witch, in Year 7? Well, Kelly became one of the best examples of my advice to take time before making the decision to audition for professional training. At 18 anyone over 30 seems already over the hill, but now Kelly sees herself as one of the young ones just beginning to establish herself professionally.
The steps she took on the way, her decisions, are of course unique. What I noted, though, is that at every point she focussed on how she understood herself at that time. This is not a story of unmitigated ambition, of determination to win out at all costs, of achieving predetermined goals. It’s a much gentler story than the world’s go-getters would understand. As she spoke it seemed to me that she put into practice what Laertes struggled with – “This above all: to thine own self be true.” Polonius may have been pompous and overbearing but this advice, taken with common sense, is worthwhile.
Kelly did not rush into auditions but enrolled in Arts/Law at ANU. However, she found that Theatre Studies was a continuing interest, leading her to drop Law in favour of an Honours in Theatre. In Years 11/12 she had experienced acting and directing, indeed she had directed some work while still in junior high school. For her the undergraduate work, directing short pieces with her student colleagues and then directing a full length play for her Honours was to me an interesting example of the education process – spiralling round the same kind of work but at a new and more mature level each time around. It was pleasing, though a little humbling for me to hear her praise for the quality of her university teachers, Geoffrey Borny, Tony Turner and Cathy Clelland. Yet, with a degree and now a clear interest in directing rather than acting, where would she go?
To support herself had to be the immediate answer, so for three years she worked in Canberra, as much as possible in theatre. Administration work paid her way, while directing in the family theatre company, Free-Rain, continued to build her experience. My review in The Canberra Times of her 2002 production of Hotel Sorrento (by Hannie Rayson) reveals an aspect of Kelly’s interests which she had to face when she made the decision to apply for the directing course at Victorian College for the Arts (VCA) in Melbourne.
I wrote "Somes claims to have set the play in its period, when Margaret Thatcher was still in power in Britain: a point which is important to the politics of the play. At the same time, though, to deal with the family's memories and emotional conflicts, she has seen the characters as costumed figures against a blank background, making the whole set white except for the symbolic painting of 'Hotel Sorrento' (in which all of the older generation pictured have now died). Though this is ostensibly a good idea, the contrast in the first act between scenes in British London and the Australian beach village of Sorrento is not made as obvious as the drama demands. Or, on the other hand, a much more stylised set, using perhaps something like a Whiteley painting as a model, might have given the design the visual life it needs."
In her VCA interview she was asked why she had not applied for animateur training rather than directing, since she had a clear interest in design. But by this time, and confirmed as she progressed through her VCA training, her deepest interest was working directly with people within the settings she could imagine. Perhaps the central question she resolved during her time at VCA was whether she should centre her work on text or action. I am not surprised, since Lindy Davies was Head of the School of Drama, that Kelly now sees movement as the core of her work, both as the underpinning of text and as a ‘text’ in its own right which the audience can read.
It was this understanding which gave strength to the production of Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper which had stirred me to find out how Kelly had got to this point. And where to now?
Kelly Somes now works in Melbourne as a freelance director, concentrating on newly written work and on women’s theatre. Some work is with cooperatives, where pay is equally shared, and some is by invitation to take paid work as director or dramaturg. She spoke of having to learn how to promote herself and her work, having to become objective about her strengths and weaknesses, and especially of “opening up yourself to critical comment from new people, not just the trusted people you already know” and learning to make “judgements about other people who might be the right people to judge you”.
There is still a quietness, an unassuming quality in Kelly Somes, and I suspect a satisfying career ahead of her.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 18 February 2010
2010: Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper by Tim Stitz and Kelly Somes
Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper
by Tim Stitz and Kelly Somes. Directed by Kelly Somes. Two Blue
Cherries & Soulart Productions in association with Free-Rain
Theatre Company at The Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre,
February 18-21, 2010, 7.30pm.
I can only hope that my grandson, who will be 25 when I am ninety, will present as warm, delightful and down-to-earth a homage for me as Tim Stitz has done for his grandfather, Lloyd Beckmann. Beekeeper could easily have been a merely personal, sentimental memoir of the hard life of an Aussie battler. But Somes’ direction with lighting by Bronwyn Pringle and sound by Liz Stringer and Neddwellyn Jones keeps the sentiment inside a clear boundary of reality.
The result is a 70 minute performance by Stitz which has more significance than the merely personal.
At first the character of Lloyd Beckmann could have easily seem to have been lifted out of a Steele Rudd Dad and Dave sequence, as he told us of the hilarious details of the sex-life of a queen bee. It was Beckmann’s old-fashioned Australian accent that centred our focus on the character, and made me think of On Our Selection. Arthur Hoey Davis, the real “Steele Rudd”, interestingly enough, based his stories on his father’s bush farming experience at Emu Creek, Queensland, not too far from where Beckmann lived most of his life. Davis’s publications made humorous bush characters highly popular from their beginning in The Bulletin in 1895 through to the 1940s, especially through the 1920s and 30s as Beckmann was growing up.
But once we moved indoors, into Beckmann’s granny flat, filled with family photos, furniture collected over the years, but missing his wife, now “up the hill”, we gradually came to understand that the humour of Beckmann’s character as he genuinely wanted to entertain us, his guests, was covering up the many disappointments in his life. At fleeting moments, his grandson Tim, would appear in a change of accent to modern Melbourne, and we then also began to understand that this show is a brave act on the part of Tim Stitz.
At the end, as Beckmann lays out the implements, boots and white overalls of the beekeeper on the floor between us in the intimate setting of the granny flat, and places the broad-brimmed bush hat with its surrounding veil at its head, suddenly all the totemic images of old Australia, the workers in the bush, immigrants, farmers, miners and soldiers, are blended into a feeling that with Lloyd Beckmann’s passing that Australia will be no more than a memory.
Tim Stitz allows us into his memorial for the past in a quite remarkable way, and leaves us to wonder what we are gaining or losing as we move on into the new world order of the 21st Century.
Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper is planned to go on tour through regional centres as well as major cities. I wish the company well in this venture, which is in itself part of a long tradition of travelling showmen who have maintained the links across this wide brown land. In this way the grandson pays homage to the grandfather, the present recognises its roots in the past.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I can only hope that my grandson, who will be 25 when I am ninety, will present as warm, delightful and down-to-earth a homage for me as Tim Stitz has done for his grandfather, Lloyd Beckmann. Beekeeper could easily have been a merely personal, sentimental memoir of the hard life of an Aussie battler. But Somes’ direction with lighting by Bronwyn Pringle and sound by Liz Stringer and Neddwellyn Jones keeps the sentiment inside a clear boundary of reality.
The result is a 70 minute performance by Stitz which has more significance than the merely personal.
At first the character of Lloyd Beckmann could have easily seem to have been lifted out of a Steele Rudd Dad and Dave sequence, as he told us of the hilarious details of the sex-life of a queen bee. It was Beckmann’s old-fashioned Australian accent that centred our focus on the character, and made me think of On Our Selection. Arthur Hoey Davis, the real “Steele Rudd”, interestingly enough, based his stories on his father’s bush farming experience at Emu Creek, Queensland, not too far from where Beckmann lived most of his life. Davis’s publications made humorous bush characters highly popular from their beginning in The Bulletin in 1895 through to the 1940s, especially through the 1920s and 30s as Beckmann was growing up.
But once we moved indoors, into Beckmann’s granny flat, filled with family photos, furniture collected over the years, but missing his wife, now “up the hill”, we gradually came to understand that the humour of Beckmann’s character as he genuinely wanted to entertain us, his guests, was covering up the many disappointments in his life. At fleeting moments, his grandson Tim, would appear in a change of accent to modern Melbourne, and we then also began to understand that this show is a brave act on the part of Tim Stitz.
At the end, as Beckmann lays out the implements, boots and white overalls of the beekeeper on the floor between us in the intimate setting of the granny flat, and places the broad-brimmed bush hat with its surrounding veil at its head, suddenly all the totemic images of old Australia, the workers in the bush, immigrants, farmers, miners and soldiers, are blended into a feeling that with Lloyd Beckmann’s passing that Australia will be no more than a memory.
Tim Stitz allows us into his memorial for the past in a quite remarkable way, and leaves us to wonder what we are gaining or losing as we move on into the new world order of the 21st Century.
Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper is planned to go on tour through regional centres as well as major cities. I wish the company well in this venture, which is in itself part of a long tradition of travelling showmen who have maintained the links across this wide brown land. In this way the grandson pays homage to the grandfather, the present recognises its roots in the past.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
2010: Pennies from Kevin – The Wharf Revue
Pennies from Kevin – The Wharf Revue
by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott, with Virginia
Gay. Sydney Theatre Company at The Playhouse, Canberra, February 9-13
and March 11-13, 2010
What diversity of talent these four thrust before us. They sing, play and dance in every popular style since the 1930s, but the most surprising and fascinatingly funny is to watch the Colliery Brass Band perform the opening bars of 2001: A Space Odyssey with trumpets, trombone, euphonium and drum. They are the only four left in the band, of course, now that the rest are unemployed or working in “renewables”.
It’s amazing how there can seem to be some kind of logic in a story beginning in the Lower Chamber, Hogwart House, Kirribilli, rollicking through amongst other wonders the Independents of the Upper Chamber, the Democrats in Heaven, Michelle in the White House, Bob Ellis at 3am, up against the Wall in Palestine, and La dolce vita with Amanda V.
Berlusconi, Ratzinger and Vanstone is a combination of horror and laughter not to be missed.
It seems weird to write a serious review of such a riot of a revue, but I think it should be done. The question is raised in my mind, is it a farcical parody or worthwhile satire? To use the kind of wordsmithery Bob Ellis might employ, is it nobler in the mind to let fly the outrageous slings and arrows of political criticism, or to take arms against the oppressor’s wrongs, the proud man’s contumely?
The high point of satire in the show, I think, is the scene entitled “Master Robert Ellis” (so like the real thing in some hidden Hogwart chamber in nightgown and candle that I found it hard to recognise which actor played the role). Every nuance of Ellis’ shuffle, moody hesitation and originality of language is recreated, but this would still be only parody (and therefore insulting) if it were not for the wit in what he says. We laugh not only because he sounds like Bob Ellis speaking, but because what he says is as politically pin-pricking as the real Bob is. And it is not insulting to feel a certain sadness in the character who still wants to pretend he had an affair with Jackie Weaver, because there is a depth of feeling in the real Bob Ellis, a sadness in his integrity as he pinpoints our failings. He reminds me, as his character in Pennies from Kevin does, of Pooh’s friend Eeyore.
To write and perform at this level, interpolated with pure slapstick for light relief, is to make a show which is far better than parody, and therefore worthwhile. To come away laughing is one thing, but to see what is worth laughing at makes this show more than pennies, from Heaven or Kevin.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
What diversity of talent these four thrust before us. They sing, play and dance in every popular style since the 1930s, but the most surprising and fascinatingly funny is to watch the Colliery Brass Band perform the opening bars of 2001: A Space Odyssey with trumpets, trombone, euphonium and drum. They are the only four left in the band, of course, now that the rest are unemployed or working in “renewables”.
It’s amazing how there can seem to be some kind of logic in a story beginning in the Lower Chamber, Hogwart House, Kirribilli, rollicking through amongst other wonders the Independents of the Upper Chamber, the Democrats in Heaven, Michelle in the White House, Bob Ellis at 3am, up against the Wall in Palestine, and La dolce vita with Amanda V.
Berlusconi, Ratzinger and Vanstone is a combination of horror and laughter not to be missed.
It seems weird to write a serious review of such a riot of a revue, but I think it should be done. The question is raised in my mind, is it a farcical parody or worthwhile satire? To use the kind of wordsmithery Bob Ellis might employ, is it nobler in the mind to let fly the outrageous slings and arrows of political criticism, or to take arms against the oppressor’s wrongs, the proud man’s contumely?
The high point of satire in the show, I think, is the scene entitled “Master Robert Ellis” (so like the real thing in some hidden Hogwart chamber in nightgown and candle that I found it hard to recognise which actor played the role). Every nuance of Ellis’ shuffle, moody hesitation and originality of language is recreated, but this would still be only parody (and therefore insulting) if it were not for the wit in what he says. We laugh not only because he sounds like Bob Ellis speaking, but because what he says is as politically pin-pricking as the real Bob is. And it is not insulting to feel a certain sadness in the character who still wants to pretend he had an affair with Jackie Weaver, because there is a depth of feeling in the real Bob Ellis, a sadness in his integrity as he pinpoints our failings. He reminds me, as his character in Pennies from Kevin does, of Pooh’s friend Eeyore.
To write and perform at this level, interpolated with pure slapstick for light relief, is to make a show which is far better than parody, and therefore worthwhile. To come away laughing is one thing, but to see what is worth laughing at makes this show more than pennies, from Heaven or Kevin.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 1 February 2010
2010: La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi
La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. Opera Australia, Sydney Opera House February 1 – March 29 2010
I am not qualified to make critical judgements of the musicianship in this production, which is directed by Elijah Moshinsky and features Elvira Fatykhova as Violetta and Aldo Di Toro as Alfredo. However the full house on opening night applauded very enthusiastically after every aria and other set pieces.
Musically, I like what I like, and to hear Verdi’s music on this grand scale is a special experience. But this was the first opportunity for me see the whole play, rather than hear parts sung in isolation, on recordings. Theatrically, this presentation more than met my expectations.
In La dame aux camélias, the Dumas fils novel and play which were the source of the plot, Marguerite’s words define the central concern of the drama: “Whatever she may do, a fallen woman can never redeem herself!” Though Alfredo loves Violetta truly and his father (Jonathan Summers) finally understands that she is worthy in herself, and is not to be treated simply as a fly in the ointment of his family’s reputation, tuberculosis is the device the author uses to avoid facing up to the final solution. If she had not died, what would have become of her?
There has long been a trend in theatre to find a different setting for previous centuries’ plays to “update” them for a modern audience. Last year I thought this had not worked for the production of Don Giovanni and some commentators have been concerned about this year’s Tosca. This La traviata was set in its mid-19th Century Parisian high society context. Ironically Verdi had insisted on present-day costuming, but the Venice opera house overrode his wishes with a setting around 1700 instead of 1850. Michael Yeargan’s sets and Peter J Hall’s costumes have done the right thing by Verdi, and by the modern audience.
The effect, as I saw it, was that for us in modern Australia the “fallen woman” issue is a thing of the past, but the social pressures on Violetta and Alfredo and their emotional responses become metaphorical, symbolic of the determination of people of our generation to be independent of traditional family strictures and to find our own way in the world. What for Verdi was a realistic story, for us is a timeless fairy story.
The result was that the singers could freeze while the audience applauded, holding the emotion of the moment, and then pick up the thread to take us into the next phase. The chorus could be wonderfully choreographed in group movement and dance on a crowded stage, almost like an Ancient Greek chorus providing context and commentary on the actions of the protagonists.
Let’s not turn tuberculosis into breast cancer and dress Violetta in jeans. Let’s be true to Verdi’s original conception, as this production is, so we can take what we need from his art.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I am not qualified to make critical judgements of the musicianship in this production, which is directed by Elijah Moshinsky and features Elvira Fatykhova as Violetta and Aldo Di Toro as Alfredo. However the full house on opening night applauded very enthusiastically after every aria and other set pieces.
Musically, I like what I like, and to hear Verdi’s music on this grand scale is a special experience. But this was the first opportunity for me see the whole play, rather than hear parts sung in isolation, on recordings. Theatrically, this presentation more than met my expectations.
In La dame aux camélias, the Dumas fils novel and play which were the source of the plot, Marguerite’s words define the central concern of the drama: “Whatever she may do, a fallen woman can never redeem herself!” Though Alfredo loves Violetta truly and his father (Jonathan Summers) finally understands that she is worthy in herself, and is not to be treated simply as a fly in the ointment of his family’s reputation, tuberculosis is the device the author uses to avoid facing up to the final solution. If she had not died, what would have become of her?
There has long been a trend in theatre to find a different setting for previous centuries’ plays to “update” them for a modern audience. Last year I thought this had not worked for the production of Don Giovanni and some commentators have been concerned about this year’s Tosca. This La traviata was set in its mid-19th Century Parisian high society context. Ironically Verdi had insisted on present-day costuming, but the Venice opera house overrode his wishes with a setting around 1700 instead of 1850. Michael Yeargan’s sets and Peter J Hall’s costumes have done the right thing by Verdi, and by the modern audience.
The effect, as I saw it, was that for us in modern Australia the “fallen woman” issue is a thing of the past, but the social pressures on Violetta and Alfredo and their emotional responses become metaphorical, symbolic of the determination of people of our generation to be independent of traditional family strictures and to find our own way in the world. What for Verdi was a realistic story, for us is a timeless fairy story.
The result was that the singers could freeze while the audience applauded, holding the emotion of the moment, and then pick up the thread to take us into the next phase. The chorus could be wonderfully choreographed in group movement and dance on a crowded stage, almost like an Ancient Greek chorus providing context and commentary on the actions of the protagonists.
Let’s not turn tuberculosis into breast cancer and dress Violetta in jeans. Let’s be true to Verdi’s original conception, as this production is, so we can take what we need from his art.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
2010: Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Two reviews - standard newspaper style and magazine style.
Two reviews - standard newspaper style and magazine style. Comments invited.
1.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Schaubühne Berlin directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Sydney Festival at the Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, January 8-16, 2010. In German with surtitles.
Mud, mud, (in-)glorious mud. What a difference from Australia’s own Hamlet on Ice or the British traditional Laurence Olivier film that my generation was brought up on. This Hamlet really is mad, with lucid moments, in grief at the death of his father. Madder as he realises what his mother has done and what women may do under a man’s control. Mad with anger and thoughts of revenge against his uncle, the murderer. Mad with fear that he may destroy the innocent Ophelia, with regret that he has killed her father, assuming Polonius to be King Claudius behind the arras. Mad at himself for not knowing how to take action, when, or what to do.
When the end comes, alone in the mud of the graveyard, we understand what “The rest is silence” means. At last, his death is a relief for Hamlet, and felt by the audience to be a kind of triumph. As the stage switched to black, in silence, the applause exploded, calling the cast back 5 times when I was there to express appreciation for the artistry of this production.
A surprising feature of this adaptation, which includes occasional modern language, topical references and even improvisation as Hamlet directly addresses his audience (characters in the play and us in the auditorium) is the humour. Shakespeare built this in to the gravedigger and Polonius, but Ostermeier and the translator Marius von Mayenburg have dared to show how watching a mad person is often very funny. The mood switches from zany wild clowning to humour which suddenly becomes very black, and again to terrible feelings of complete breakdown. Though Lars Eidinger as Hamlet has received most publicity, all the cast are entirely in control of their work in this highly expressionistic mode. Judith Rosmair’s scene as the broken Ophelia, hardly able to articulate her words, was just extraordinary. How different in style from the past is this performance, but how true it seems to be to Shakespeare’s intentions.
To bring, or not to bring this production to Australia may once have been the question, but the Schaubühne company prove the answer to be absolutely in the positive.
2.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Schaubühne Berlin directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Sydney Festival at the Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, January 8-16, 2010. In German with surtitles.
The essential question of any theatre production is Hamlet’s: to be, or not to be. The answer for Schaubühne is about whether their adaptation can be seen as true to Shakespeare’s intentions, as well as create a genuine response from a modern audience. Being chosen for the Sydney Festival also raises the question of translation from Berlin to Australia, Sydney in particular.
The answer is in the positive on all three counts, in my view, but you need to know more. Taking the last first, Lars Eidinger, playing Hamlet, is quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, saying that his use of improvised dialogue directly to the audience and of the humour in this version has a quite different effect in Berlin than in Sydney. In Germany he does not talk directly to those watching, and he thought people there laughed only to show themselves to be with it. In Sydney, the laughter is a genuine response, and it was clear to me (on Tuesday January 12) that the enjoyment of the business of theatre flowed fast between audience and actors, however fashionably dressed up Sydney people can be. Eidinger talked of “insight”, and I agree that Sydney audiences have a sophisticated appreciation of theatre which has grown over the past several decades. (Aside: see SMH Letters to the Editor, Friday January 15, for a contrasting view.) Translating the words and the action from Berlin to Sydney has been not just successful, but has brought out the best at both ends.
Oddly perhaps, I thought the surtitles showing Shakespeare’s original text was a brilliant Brechtian idea. We picked up the feeling from the sound of the German, the physical action and the live camera images while we also saw the words. I don’t know if the result was deliberate, but the ‘literalisation’ created exactly the right degree of ‘alienation effect’, allowing us to be both participants in the emotion and observers understanding the significance of the ideas. Perhaps in Berlin they should perform in English with surtitles in German, although I was conscious that the rhythm and cadences of Shakespeare’s language do not translate well into a different set of words and sentence structures.
This production takes literally Shakespeare’s emphasis on earth and nature, as against the unnatural and dysfunctional. The main part of the stage, thrust towards the audience, is covered in soil which, when wetted by characters holding garden hoses to represent Danish rain, turns into slippery mud. What this material actually is I don’t know, considering that actors buried their faces in it and apparently were still able to breathe, but the symbolic import was very clear. Earth, and nature, are unforgiving rather than being the sort of ideal harmonious environment that has become the fashionable view since the Romantics held sway.
Hamlet is shown to be justifiably mad, in the sense that although he knows he is behaving madly, everything that has happened around his father’s death and what happens as the play progresses goes against any possibility of his being able to direct events or control his life. This version concentrates on his personal and the local political life, leaving out Shakespeare’s wider political concerns about the forthcoming invasion by Fortinbras from Poland, except at the very end when we hear the drums of the approaching army to heighten the tension as all but Horatio die. I thought it would have been better to have left even this reference out, because the collapse of Denmark’s ruling elite was obvious enough in any case.
Shakespeare himself may well have not used all the material he wrote. I suspect the final gathering together of the whole script, I think in 1604, was probably in defence against others pinching his script – perhaps an early attempt at proving copyright ownership – but the result is more than four hours long and loses focus when what’s going on outside Denmark has to be covered.
So I conclude that the Schaubühne company have been true to Shakespeare’s central concerns. They also come from a long tradition, in my view beginning essentially from Erwin Piscator’s productions from the 1920s, of using expressionist techniques to open up theatre to the expansion of ideas in some degree in contrast to the ‘naturalism’ of the late 19th Century (which is still popular today). Schaubühne began in 1962, only a few years before Piscator died (still directing theatre in Berlin after his sojourn in the US during the Nazi period), and it seems to me they have continued and developed that tradition, which is much more in tune with Shakespeare’s ‘presentational’ theatre than with naturalism. This explains why this production is far superior to the ‘psychological angst’ versions that we have become familiar with (and also shows that Freud in his use of both the Oedipus and the Hamlet dramas got things out of kilter).
I think Schaubühne got the art into kilter, however much Hamlet’s world falls apart. This is why the audience responded so well when I saw the play, their applause bringing the cast back on stage five times for bows.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
1.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Schaubühne Berlin directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Sydney Festival at the Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, January 8-16, 2010. In German with surtitles.
Mud, mud, (in-)glorious mud. What a difference from Australia’s own Hamlet on Ice or the British traditional Laurence Olivier film that my generation was brought up on. This Hamlet really is mad, with lucid moments, in grief at the death of his father. Madder as he realises what his mother has done and what women may do under a man’s control. Mad with anger and thoughts of revenge against his uncle, the murderer. Mad with fear that he may destroy the innocent Ophelia, with regret that he has killed her father, assuming Polonius to be King Claudius behind the arras. Mad at himself for not knowing how to take action, when, or what to do.
When the end comes, alone in the mud of the graveyard, we understand what “The rest is silence” means. At last, his death is a relief for Hamlet, and felt by the audience to be a kind of triumph. As the stage switched to black, in silence, the applause exploded, calling the cast back 5 times when I was there to express appreciation for the artistry of this production.
A surprising feature of this adaptation, which includes occasional modern language, topical references and even improvisation as Hamlet directly addresses his audience (characters in the play and us in the auditorium) is the humour. Shakespeare built this in to the gravedigger and Polonius, but Ostermeier and the translator Marius von Mayenburg have dared to show how watching a mad person is often very funny. The mood switches from zany wild clowning to humour which suddenly becomes very black, and again to terrible feelings of complete breakdown. Though Lars Eidinger as Hamlet has received most publicity, all the cast are entirely in control of their work in this highly expressionistic mode. Judith Rosmair’s scene as the broken Ophelia, hardly able to articulate her words, was just extraordinary. How different in style from the past is this performance, but how true it seems to be to Shakespeare’s intentions.
To bring, or not to bring this production to Australia may once have been the question, but the Schaubühne company prove the answer to be absolutely in the positive.
2.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Schaubühne Berlin directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Sydney Festival at the Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, January 8-16, 2010. In German with surtitles.
The essential question of any theatre production is Hamlet’s: to be, or not to be. The answer for Schaubühne is about whether their adaptation can be seen as true to Shakespeare’s intentions, as well as create a genuine response from a modern audience. Being chosen for the Sydney Festival also raises the question of translation from Berlin to Australia, Sydney in particular.
The answer is in the positive on all three counts, in my view, but you need to know more. Taking the last first, Lars Eidinger, playing Hamlet, is quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, saying that his use of improvised dialogue directly to the audience and of the humour in this version has a quite different effect in Berlin than in Sydney. In Germany he does not talk directly to those watching, and he thought people there laughed only to show themselves to be with it. In Sydney, the laughter is a genuine response, and it was clear to me (on Tuesday January 12) that the enjoyment of the business of theatre flowed fast between audience and actors, however fashionably dressed up Sydney people can be. Eidinger talked of “insight”, and I agree that Sydney audiences have a sophisticated appreciation of theatre which has grown over the past several decades. (Aside: see SMH Letters to the Editor, Friday January 15, for a contrasting view.) Translating the words and the action from Berlin to Sydney has been not just successful, but has brought out the best at both ends.
Oddly perhaps, I thought the surtitles showing Shakespeare’s original text was a brilliant Brechtian idea. We picked up the feeling from the sound of the German, the physical action and the live camera images while we also saw the words. I don’t know if the result was deliberate, but the ‘literalisation’ created exactly the right degree of ‘alienation effect’, allowing us to be both participants in the emotion and observers understanding the significance of the ideas. Perhaps in Berlin they should perform in English with surtitles in German, although I was conscious that the rhythm and cadences of Shakespeare’s language do not translate well into a different set of words and sentence structures.
This production takes literally Shakespeare’s emphasis on earth and nature, as against the unnatural and dysfunctional. The main part of the stage, thrust towards the audience, is covered in soil which, when wetted by characters holding garden hoses to represent Danish rain, turns into slippery mud. What this material actually is I don’t know, considering that actors buried their faces in it and apparently were still able to breathe, but the symbolic import was very clear. Earth, and nature, are unforgiving rather than being the sort of ideal harmonious environment that has become the fashionable view since the Romantics held sway.
Hamlet is shown to be justifiably mad, in the sense that although he knows he is behaving madly, everything that has happened around his father’s death and what happens as the play progresses goes against any possibility of his being able to direct events or control his life. This version concentrates on his personal and the local political life, leaving out Shakespeare’s wider political concerns about the forthcoming invasion by Fortinbras from Poland, except at the very end when we hear the drums of the approaching army to heighten the tension as all but Horatio die. I thought it would have been better to have left even this reference out, because the collapse of Denmark’s ruling elite was obvious enough in any case.
Shakespeare himself may well have not used all the material he wrote. I suspect the final gathering together of the whole script, I think in 1604, was probably in defence against others pinching his script – perhaps an early attempt at proving copyright ownership – but the result is more than four hours long and loses focus when what’s going on outside Denmark has to be covered.
So I conclude that the Schaubühne company have been true to Shakespeare’s central concerns. They also come from a long tradition, in my view beginning essentially from Erwin Piscator’s productions from the 1920s, of using expressionist techniques to open up theatre to the expansion of ideas in some degree in contrast to the ‘naturalism’ of the late 19th Century (which is still popular today). Schaubühne began in 1962, only a few years before Piscator died (still directing theatre in Berlin after his sojourn in the US during the Nazi period), and it seems to me they have continued and developed that tradition, which is much more in tune with Shakespeare’s ‘presentational’ theatre than with naturalism. This explains why this production is far superior to the ‘psychological angst’ versions that we have become familiar with (and also shows that Freud in his use of both the Oedipus and the Hamlet dramas got things out of kilter).
I think Schaubühne got the art into kilter, however much Hamlet’s world falls apart. This is why the audience responded so well when I saw the play, their applause bringing the cast back on stage five times for bows.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 27 November 2009
2009: Not Axel Harrison by Sam Floyd.
Not Axel Harrison by Sam
Floyd. Freshly Ground Theatre at The Street Two, November 26 – December
5 2009 (excluding Sundays and Mondays) at 8pm.
Freshly Ground Theatre has carved a small but attractive niche in Canberra’s theatrical architecture. The company is the vehicle for the writer Sam Floyd, whose work continues to show flair in this, their third, production.
Not Axel Harrison is a parody of the gangster movie genre in which the hit man Axel Harrison (Tom Watson) is killed by his intended victim,Chris, a non-violent florist (Chris Brain) who disguises himself as Harrison not only to avoid detection as a murderer but to escape the attention of the gangster loan-shark Poncioni (David MacNamara)to whom he owes a large sum, which is why Poncioni had sent Harrison.
At this point the plot, involving the non-appearing Bruce (apparently already killed by Harrison), the dim-witted bodyguard Val (Adam Salter), Poncioni’s sexy aggressive daughter Donna (Becky Bergman), Micky the Mule (Jack Dyball), and the corrupt cop in Poncioni’s pocket, Spiegel (Daniel McCusker), follows a constantly twisted line of logic which should not be revealed here: better to see the play and be surprised. Suffice to say, farce is the order of the day.
The performances varied in strength, with the commendations going to McNamara and Salter. But the generation X, Y or Z audience was not looking for highly polished acting from a cast of their peers. It was the dialogue and plot which carried the laughs, making for a successful light entertainment.
Floyd’s work has antecedents in Joe Orton’s Loot and Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound. Both those writers had the advantage of being able to participate in the British repertory and university traditions in their day. Freshly Ground’s niche is in this mould, but Canberra cannot boast the equivalent of the Cambridge University Footlights, the progenitor of much zany British comedy since the 1960s.
Maybe this is the time for Floyd and those around him to take up where Elbow Theatre left off and build our own Capital new wave of original young writers.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Freshly Ground Theatre has carved a small but attractive niche in Canberra’s theatrical architecture. The company is the vehicle for the writer Sam Floyd, whose work continues to show flair in this, their third, production.
Not Axel Harrison is a parody of the gangster movie genre in which the hit man Axel Harrison (Tom Watson) is killed by his intended victim,Chris, a non-violent florist (Chris Brain) who disguises himself as Harrison not only to avoid detection as a murderer but to escape the attention of the gangster loan-shark Poncioni (David MacNamara)to whom he owes a large sum, which is why Poncioni had sent Harrison.
At this point the plot, involving the non-appearing Bruce (apparently already killed by Harrison), the dim-witted bodyguard Val (Adam Salter), Poncioni’s sexy aggressive daughter Donna (Becky Bergman), Micky the Mule (Jack Dyball), and the corrupt cop in Poncioni’s pocket, Spiegel (Daniel McCusker), follows a constantly twisted line of logic which should not be revealed here: better to see the play and be surprised. Suffice to say, farce is the order of the day.
The performances varied in strength, with the commendations going to McNamara and Salter. But the generation X, Y or Z audience was not looking for highly polished acting from a cast of their peers. It was the dialogue and plot which carried the laughs, making for a successful light entertainment.
Floyd’s work has antecedents in Joe Orton’s Loot and Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound. Both those writers had the advantage of being able to participate in the British repertory and university traditions in their day. Freshly Ground’s niche is in this mould, but Canberra cannot boast the equivalent of the Cambridge University Footlights, the progenitor of much zany British comedy since the 1960s.
Maybe this is the time for Floyd and those around him to take up where Elbow Theatre left off and build our own Capital new wave of original young writers.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 20 November 2009
2009: Porcelain by Chay Yew.
Porcelain by Chay Yew.
Director: Beng Oh. Lighting Designer: Nick Merrylees. Cast: Keith Brockett (John Lee); Colin MacPherson (Voice One/Dr Worthing); Nicholas Barker-Pendree (Voice Two/Mr Lee); Paul David-Goddard (Voice Three/Alan White); Leon Dürr (Voice Four/William Hope).
At The Street Theatre Studio, Canberra, 3-7 November 2009 (original production at La Mama, Melbourne, 2008)
This production of Porcelain, about a gay relationship which turns sour and results in a tragic death, was presented at The Street in its most spare form. Just five plain chairs, John Lee in the centre surrounded by red paper cranes more of which he continues to make throughout the play.
This was Chay Yew’s first play, from 1993. His imagery is strongly reminiscent of Kathryn Schultz Miller’s A Thousand Cranes, a play for children which tells the true and poignant story of Sadako Saki’s battle against radiation sickness after the Hiroshima bomb and the tradition of folding origami miniatures according to which if a sick person folds a thousand cranes, the gods will grant her a wish and make her healthy. Is John Lee sick? Can, or should, the prison psychiatrist find him unfit to plead on a murder charge?
But it is the dialogue which still brings the horror to life. All five actors are seated with little movement except on one occasion when John Lee is caressed by his lover. Now I am reminded of that other play for voices, Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. Though famous as a BBC radio play, its first performance was recorded by five actors standing on stage at the 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association, Manhattan, in 1953. As the Reverend Eli Jenkins, Thomas made the only movement, stepping forward to declaim his morning prayer. Porcelain and Under Milk Wood are entirely different plays, yet the quality of the interplay between the voices is the strength in both cases, and it is to Beng Ho’s credit that he maintains that focus, avoiding the temptation to represent action physically. As is often the case in good theatre, less is more.
Especially well done in the performance I saw was the exposure of the conflicts and compromises made in the dialogue between the television interviewer and the prison psychiatrist, all happening on the sidelines of the real story of what John Lee did and why. Not only is the play worth seeing for its only too human story, but this production successfully worked our feelings and our intellects in coming to terms with the complexities of destructive relationships.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Director: Beng Oh. Lighting Designer: Nick Merrylees. Cast: Keith Brockett (John Lee); Colin MacPherson (Voice One/Dr Worthing); Nicholas Barker-Pendree (Voice Two/Mr Lee); Paul David-Goddard (Voice Three/Alan White); Leon Dürr (Voice Four/William Hope).
At The Street Theatre Studio, Canberra, 3-7 November 2009 (original production at La Mama, Melbourne, 2008)
This production of Porcelain, about a gay relationship which turns sour and results in a tragic death, was presented at The Street in its most spare form. Just five plain chairs, John Lee in the centre surrounded by red paper cranes more of which he continues to make throughout the play.
This was Chay Yew’s first play, from 1993. His imagery is strongly reminiscent of Kathryn Schultz Miller’s A Thousand Cranes, a play for children which tells the true and poignant story of Sadako Saki’s battle against radiation sickness after the Hiroshima bomb and the tradition of folding origami miniatures according to which if a sick person folds a thousand cranes, the gods will grant her a wish and make her healthy. Is John Lee sick? Can, or should, the prison psychiatrist find him unfit to plead on a murder charge?
But it is the dialogue which still brings the horror to life. All five actors are seated with little movement except on one occasion when John Lee is caressed by his lover. Now I am reminded of that other play for voices, Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. Though famous as a BBC radio play, its first performance was recorded by five actors standing on stage at the 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association, Manhattan, in 1953. As the Reverend Eli Jenkins, Thomas made the only movement, stepping forward to declaim his morning prayer. Porcelain and Under Milk Wood are entirely different plays, yet the quality of the interplay between the voices is the strength in both cases, and it is to Beng Ho’s credit that he maintains that focus, avoiding the temptation to represent action physically. As is often the case in good theatre, less is more.
Especially well done in the performance I saw was the exposure of the conflicts and compromises made in the dialogue between the television interviewer and the prison psychiatrist, all happening on the sidelines of the real story of what John Lee did and why. Not only is the play worth seeing for its only too human story, but this production successfully worked our feelings and our intellects in coming to terms with the complexities of destructive relationships.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 30 October 2009
2009: Wil Anderson's Wilosophy
Wil Anderson's Wilosophy. Stand-up comedy, with Justin Hamilton, at The Playhouse, October 29-31.
It's hard to put your finger on Wil Anderson's G-spot. He claims that God has hidden it. As a warm-up (I suppose you could say foreplay) Justin Hamilton is good, yet he doesn't have Anderson's touch. Just as well. You wouldn't want the intro to outshine the main act. But Hamilton deserves credit for a professional act as well as an award for bravery.
It's the risk-taking that makes Anderson stand out. Not just by saying out loud words that confront even audience members less than half my age. Not only by satirising politicians, religious ideologues, and office workers probably like most people in the Canberra audience. Not even by accompanying his words with quite extraordinary physical actions and facial expressions.
What's exciting is how he interacts with his audience, often leading him into potential black holes which he amazingly escapes from, like a kind of mentally gymnastic Houdini. He is more than a skilled stand-up comic. He has enough art to play with the artform.
Then, in addition, there is a carefully constructed plan to each of the items of social criticism which constitute his "Wilosophy". Issues of the day are exposed as arguments, presented by characters we know from television and the press, including himself. The core of the humour is not from the occasional slapstick interjection, but from showing up public figures' lack of logic.
And, finally, Anderson brings a quality of human kindness into this critical mass, in his warm story of a Down Syndrome children's concert. If you missed him in Canberra last week, or in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Edinburgh during the last year, you can fly down south to Wrest Point Entertainment Centre in Hobart on Friday October 6 for a one-night stand. Why not?
©Frank McKone, Canberra
It's hard to put your finger on Wil Anderson's G-spot. He claims that God has hidden it. As a warm-up (I suppose you could say foreplay) Justin Hamilton is good, yet he doesn't have Anderson's touch. Just as well. You wouldn't want the intro to outshine the main act. But Hamilton deserves credit for a professional act as well as an award for bravery.
It's the risk-taking that makes Anderson stand out. Not just by saying out loud words that confront even audience members less than half my age. Not only by satirising politicians, religious ideologues, and office workers probably like most people in the Canberra audience. Not even by accompanying his words with quite extraordinary physical actions and facial expressions.
What's exciting is how he interacts with his audience, often leading him into potential black holes which he amazingly escapes from, like a kind of mentally gymnastic Houdini. He is more than a skilled stand-up comic. He has enough art to play with the artform.
Then, in addition, there is a carefully constructed plan to each of the items of social criticism which constitute his "Wilosophy". Issues of the day are exposed as arguments, presented by characters we know from television and the press, including himself. The core of the humour is not from the occasional slapstick interjection, but from showing up public figures' lack of logic.
And, finally, Anderson brings a quality of human kindness into this critical mass, in his warm story of a Down Syndrome children's concert. If you missed him in Canberra last week, or in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Edinburgh during the last year, you can fly down south to Wrest Point Entertainment Centre in Hobart on Friday October 6 for a one-night stand. Why not?
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
2009: The Christian Brothers by Ron Blair
The Christian Brothers by Ron Blair. Performed by Bill Boyd, directed by Geoffrey Borny. Presented by Tuggeranong Arts Centre, Thursdays to Saturdays October 15-24, 8pm. Matinees: Friday 16th, Thursday 22nd, Friday 23rd at 10am. Bookings: 6293 1443.
At its first production, 34 years ago, The Christian Brothers could easily be seen as an indictment of the Catholic Church. Today, the play remains a classic because Blair's writing reveals far more. The original message is not lost, as ex-Catholic school men in the audience showed by their reactions at the special preview last Wednesday. But the theme as we see it now is not about the Catholic faith, nor about a particular religious faith, not even about religious faith at all.
Geoffrey Borny had the good sense, as we would expect from someone of his professional standing and experience, to allow Bill Boyd time to let Blair's words seem to slip out of the mouth of The Brother, as if by accident rather than deliberate intention. Even though Boyd is not a great actor – I found myself imagining Geoffrey Rush in the role – the effect is powerful as we, being addressed as if in his class, gradually realise that this teacher is at breaking point. It is both frightening and sad.
The Brother's breakdown turns on the same issue we all face in the modern world, and indeed in times past as well as presumably in the future. How could it be, for example, that reconciliation with indigenous people was pushed aside in political power play in 2000 and still struggles to revive 10 years later? How could it be that people invented completely unsustainable forms of financial investment for their immediate gain but inevitably for longer term collapse? What has happened to moral integrity in a world replete with intellectual knowledge and technical capacity? As Borny notes, The Brother asks the question "What does it profit my pupils to pass exams in such subjects as Mathematics, English or History, if they suffer the loss of their immortal souls?"
At the end, as he paints a representation of bars of a tiny prison cell, we know that The Brother's loss of religious faith represents the bigger loss in us all of sincerity and ethical purpose. It's a credit to Tuggeranong Arts Centre that they offer strong theatre of this kind. Take the opportunity to see it.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
At its first production, 34 years ago, The Christian Brothers could easily be seen as an indictment of the Catholic Church. Today, the play remains a classic because Blair's writing reveals far more. The original message is not lost, as ex-Catholic school men in the audience showed by their reactions at the special preview last Wednesday. But the theme as we see it now is not about the Catholic faith, nor about a particular religious faith, not even about religious faith at all.
Geoffrey Borny had the good sense, as we would expect from someone of his professional standing and experience, to allow Bill Boyd time to let Blair's words seem to slip out of the mouth of The Brother, as if by accident rather than deliberate intention. Even though Boyd is not a great actor – I found myself imagining Geoffrey Rush in the role – the effect is powerful as we, being addressed as if in his class, gradually realise that this teacher is at breaking point. It is both frightening and sad.
The Brother's breakdown turns on the same issue we all face in the modern world, and indeed in times past as well as presumably in the future. How could it be, for example, that reconciliation with indigenous people was pushed aside in political power play in 2000 and still struggles to revive 10 years later? How could it be that people invented completely unsustainable forms of financial investment for their immediate gain but inevitably for longer term collapse? What has happened to moral integrity in a world replete with intellectual knowledge and technical capacity? As Borny notes, The Brother asks the question "What does it profit my pupils to pass exams in such subjects as Mathematics, English or History, if they suffer the loss of their immortal souls?"
At the end, as he paints a representation of bars of a tiny prison cell, we know that The Brother's loss of religious faith represents the bigger loss in us all of sincerity and ethical purpose. It's a credit to Tuggeranong Arts Centre that they offer strong theatre of this kind. Take the opportunity to see it.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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