2021: SandSong by Bangarra Dance Theatre

 

 

SandSong – Stories from the Great Sandy Desert.  Bangarra Dance Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre July 15 – 17, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 15


SandSong is a major work of celebration tinged with sadness, the four seasons representing the history of the people.  

The dance is a drama of the establishment of ancient Indigenous culture, seemingly against the odds in cold and dry Makurra when “Time and space collide in a cloud of black collective consciousness”;
 
of new cultural understanding in the hot and dry Parranga – a “meditation on fragility, survival, balance, knowledge, life and death;
 
of the strength of culture needed in the time of Kartiya – the invasion of the land and the “lawlessness of a new frontier and the whims of station owners” when “people begin their new life…in servitude”;

of the determination in Yitilal, the Wet Season, by which “the spirit of people and place endures to stand strong in their kinship and belonging”.

The sadness?  “SandSong is our way of honouring and paying respect to our sister Ningali, to her People and Country” who “passed peacefully, surrounded by family and friends” in 2019 when “seriously ill in an Edinburgh hospital while on tour with Sydney Theatre Company’s production of The Secret River.”  Stephen Page and Frances Ring describe in their essay “Caring for Story” how they were able to “travel with Ningali’s family to Edinburgh to farewell and bring home our beautiful and irreplaceable friend.”

You may remember the impact of Ningali Lawford, as I do particularly for Solid,  a Black N'2 production for Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theatre by Ningali Lawford, Kelton Pell, Phil Thomson.  Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, 2001. (Review: Canberra Times, and available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au).

Solid ended in ironic humour with "How would you like your tea?  Black n'2 like you and me."

SandSong in dance is like the picture that hangs on my study wall: Wild Yam Dreaming by Annette Pitjara.  Just as dot painting and non-representational symbolic figures are ancient Australian forms of art which seem to be ‘modern art’ in the eyes of non-Indigenous viewers, so Bangarra’s dance – firmly based in the traditions of the Wangkatjungka and Walmajarri peoples of the Kimberley and Great Sandy Desert regions, the Lawford family’s people – integrates the ancient and ‘modern dance’ forms.

The effect then is not a focus on plot, not on linear story-line.  Each scene creates a mood, from images and movement, which take us along through experiencing living on this Country.  As in the painting, there are often small details of shape or action in the dance which an outsider may recognise as Aboriginal linked in with modern dance style.  Watching is to absorb the whole as an atmosphere.

Steve Francis’ sound is an eclectic gathering of songs, musique concrète and spoken word which makes an aural space for the dancers to perform in.

Following Bangarra’s 30 years of sixty five thousand, I see SandSong as a powerful symbolic representation of what it means to be Aboriginal – of the importance and place of Australia’s First Nations in the formation of our total culture, and therefore of central importance to us all.


Choreographers:
Stephen Page, Frances Rings and the Dancers of Bangarra Dance Theatre –

Rika Hamaguchi, Glory Tuohy-Daniell, Lillian Banks, Courtney Radford, Kassidy Waters, Maddison Paluch, Emily Flannery

Beau Dean Riley Smith, Rikki Mason, Baden Hitchcock, Ryan Pearson, Bradley Smith, Kallum Goolagong, Gusta Mara, Kiarn Doyle, Daniel Mateo

Cultural Consultants:
Putuparri Tom Lawford, Eva Nargoodah

Cultural Consultancy:
Wangkatjungka & Walmajarri Elders

Composer:
Steve Francis

Set Designer – Jacob Nash; Costume Designer – Jennifer Irwin; Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper; AV Designer – David Bergman; Rehearsal Director – Daniel Roberts; Aerial Movement Consultant – Joshua Thomson; Rigging Consultant – David Jackson; Lighting Realiser – Chris Twynam; Sound Recordist – Brendon Boney

Kimberley Country

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Potted Potter - a Parody

 

 POTTED POTTER – The Unauthorized Harry Experience – A Parody by Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner (writers and creators).  Canberra Theatre Centre July 13 – 18, 2021.

Director – Richard Hurst; Designer – Simon Scullion; Lighting Designer – Tim Mascall; Composer – Phil Innes

Performed by Adam Brown (Harry) and Tama Jarman (Everybody Else)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 13



Fortunately, I have not read the seven volumes of Harry Potter, and now – after an hour’s entertaining clowning – I will never need to.  As they demonstrated, the character of Harry Potter is essentially boring, and the only relationship of any real interest – between Hermione Granger and the red-haired guy Ron Weasley – gets a passing mention right at the end.

What horrified me most was how much I recognised.  What is it about ludicrous pretend mediaeval witchcraft fantasy that, in the modern rational world, can become an essential element in our consciousness?  The value of this absurdist parody is that at least the young aficionados in the audience thoroughly enjoyed laughing at it.  Potty Potter, I call it.

Even more ironically absurd is how the show was born as a promotion of J K Rowland’s sixth volume in the series way back in 2005. www.pottedpotter.com.au/ explains: Dan and Jeff are asked to create a five-minute street show recapping the plot of the first five Potter books, for performance to queues of fans waiting for the midnight release of the sixth book.  At least it means that the quality of British humour is not lost, and has even been touring the world, beginning very sensibly with Australia and New Zealand, since 2009.  These are facts of which I was previously completely oblivious.

When you look at sites like https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Hortense_Rowland perhaps it’s best to say that the Harry Potter phenomenon is a diversion away from reality for its fans, while money-making for its creators.  The social structure of J K Rowland’s fantasy is, unfortunately, entirely predictably conservative politically – so there is little of artistic value in her work, which is why it is so easy to parody.

There is one element of Potted Potter of educational value.  Most of the comedy is made out of the interplay between the actors out of their Potter characters, creating a story of their relationship.  Adam is played as the bookish type, seriously concerned with doing things properly (and therefore plays Harry); while Tama is just interested in having fun, and breaks all the rules.  This is what makes the show enjoyable – nothing really to do with Rowland’s books.  The show works because it breaks the conventions of theatre as the actors jump in and out of their Potter roles and their roles of being actors: talking, for one example, about their training in theatre school in New Zealand; and supporting more pay for teachers, at one point (achieving real approval from the audience).

So, now I’ve dragged you out of the fantasy, forget the world around you for an hour – and enjoy!

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

 

 

 The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood.  Crouching Giraffe in association with Papermoon Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre, Courtyard Studio, July 7 – 17, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 9

Creatives:                                                Cast:
Director – Kate Blackhurst                      Penelope – Elaine Noon
Vocal Coach – Tony Turner                    Telemachus/Maid – Martha Russell
Sound design – Neville Pye                    Melantho/Maid – Emily Smith
Lighting Design – Stephen Still              Antinous/Maid – Tijana Kovac
Original Music – Glenn Gore Phillips     Maid – Milena Rafic
Choreography – Brooke Thomas            Naiad Mother/Maid – Sarah Hull
Set Design – Cate Clelland                     Eurycleia/Maid – Carolyn Eccles
Costumes – Annie Kay                           Oracle/Maid – Emily Ridge
Properties – Jessica Dickie                     Icarius/Maid – Shauna Priest
                                                                Odysseus/Maid – Heidi Silberman
                                                                Laertes/Maid – Jess Waterhouse
                                                                Helen/Maid – Victoria Dixon
                                                                Anticleia/Maid – Sure Gore Phillips



Margaret Atwood, of The Handmaids’ Tale fame, dedicates her novella, The Penelopiad, “For my family”.  I wonder how her family felt on reading, and later watching, the often touching but ultimately horrifying story of Penelope, the wife of the putative hero, Odysseus, who rescued Helen of Troy.

Now, speaking from Hades, “being dead – since achieving this state of bonelessness, liplessness, breastlessness” – that is, her story being forgotten or never even recorded – Penelope begins with a warning to us all.  “I’ve learned some things I would rather not know, as one does when listening at windows or opening other people’s letters.  You think you’d like to read minds?  Think again.”

Of course, as Elaine Noon spoke these words, we all immediately fell into Atwood’s trap, held there for two hours’ traffic on the stage - and even beyond the Maids’ last words, as they sprout feathers, and fly away as owls:

we took the blame
it was not fair
but now we’re here
we’re all here too
the same as you

and now we follow
you, we find you
now, we call
to you to you
too wit too woo
too wit too woo
  too woo

In some other productions, a long table, behind which Penelope sits, is a central static fixture.  What I like especially about Cate Clelland’s set is its flexibility so that movement is at the core of the drama: it’s a story told in action, in a way I imagine similar to the way mythical stories of Aboriginal people are performed, as much in dance and song as in speech.

In one production (isn’t Youtube marvellous?), Odysseus is played by a man.  For me it seems essential to have the whole story presented by 13 women because the play is grounded in the perspective that only women can have.  When Heidi Silberman, one of Penelope’s close maids, takes on the role of Odysseus, there is humour and irony which does not happen if a man is brought in for that role.  The same is true later when the roles of the men suitors, who raped the maids in the story, are played by those very women.  

There is a very nice interview with two women in a production which, I think, has the right ‘feel’.  Uploaded by Xtra Magazine at

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcvHkNnkPLE

it’s about the Nightwood Theatre production: “Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad makes its Toronto remount at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre”.  Perhaps Margaret Atwood herself was there.

I like, too, the symbolism built into the set design, of the huge woven wall hangings which seem to represent the stage as in Ancient Greek times, and perhaps were woven by Penelope and her Maids.  The costumes, too, take us seemingly back to Ancient Greece, but give us a range of distinct characters as members of the Chorus take on roles in the story.

The music, voicing and singing, part and in unison, also do more than form a sound-track.  The production, seemingly simple in the intimate small-scale Studio space, has all the elements of drama working together with purpose and artistic integrity.

This Penelopiad is my kind of theatre – strong in its intention; powerful in its effect and its message.  When I hear the occasional boobook owl, the currawongs whooping or the sulphur crested cockatoos screeching every day around my home, I know Penelope and her Maids are reminding me that “we took the blame / it was not fair”.

Cate Clelland's set design for
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
Crouching Giraffe, Canberra 2021

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Carmen by Georges Bizet

 

 

Carmen by Georges Bizet.  Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy after the novella by Prosper Mérimée.  Opera Australia at Canberra Theatre Centre July 8 – 10, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 8

Conductor – Luke Spicer
Director & Choreographer – Matthew Barclay
Set & Costume Designer – Anna Cordingley
Lighting Designer – Paul Jackson
Fight Coordinator – Troy Honeysett
Orchestra Reducation – Robert Andrew Greene
Keyboard Programmer – Sean Peter

Alternating Cast:
Carmen – Angela Hogan, Agnes Sarkis, Dimity Shepherd
Don José – Iain Henderson, Matthew Reardon
Micaëla – Danita Weatherstone, Cathy-Di Zhang, Esther Song
Escamillo – Alexander Sefton, Haotian Qi
Zuniga – Haotian Qi, Alexander Sefton
Dancairo – Michael Lampard
El Remendado – Mathew Waugh, Nicholas Jones
Frasquita – Giuseppina Grech, Clarissa Spata
Mercédès – Genevieve Dickson
Moralès – Daniel Macey

Children’s Chorus Master – Kate Joy Stuart

Instrumental Ensemble:
Concertmaster – Caroline Hopson
Cello – David Moran, Stephanie Arnold
Flute/Piccolo – Eliza Shephard
Oboe – Ennes Mehmedbasic
Clarinet – Cameron Smith
Bassoon – Chris Martin
Trumpet – Sarah Hendseron, Dominic Longhurst, Sophie Spencer, Louisa Trewartha
Keyboard – Jane Matheson, Michelle Nguyen



It’s a little difficult when I can’t be sure who was playing which roles on the night, even after inspecting off-stage headshots in black-and-white in the full program.  I had hoped the single sheet handout, which most of the audience relied on, would have been more specific.

So, without naming names, I can say that Carmen was a terrific singer, actor, dancer and castinet player; Don José’s character seemed wishy-washy to the extent that Carmen should have got her bikie gang to shoot him very early in the piece (and his dishevelled costume when out of uniform was a distraction rather than a statement about his character).  Escamillo never had the charisma in voice or physical presence to create the champion bullfighter character he needed to be to make me accept that he could be so famous or that Carmen would be interested in him, even for his money.

I thought the most sincere character, not just in the plot but in her performance, was Micaëla.  I began to feel this play is really about her as the central character having to come to terms with the superficiality of all the others’ passions and self-destruction tendencies.  That idea at least gave me some sense of purpose in this production: but it’s not the kind of thought expressed in Matthew Barclay’s Director’s Note.

So I couldn’t stop myself digging out my program and my 2016 review of John Bell’s directing of Carmen for Opera Australia.  His was a show full of emotion – in fact horrifying at the very end, just as Barclay said it should be when he wrote “Their final confrontation is a tragic irony”.  But in this 2021 production, the ending was almost comic as the two of them chased around on the raised platform hidden from the crowd cheering the bullfighters on in the arena behind them.  How could the two productions by the same company be so different?

The answer is clear in the two Director’s Notes.  Barclay’s is all about “I wanted with this production to bridge the distance between 19th Century Spain and regional Australia [where this tour travels to] and create familiarity – advertising billboards [which is the central component of the set design], bleachers, cops, a motorbike, a diner, a drive-in [which explains the sections of black-and-white movie mysteriously appearing at times on the back of the billboard].  All of these evoke a sense of nostalgia for a vintage, postcard Spain and memories of our own experiences of unrequited love, jealousy, frustration, guilt or youthful rebellion.”

Well, I’ve been around for eight decades and had all those experiences and memories.  It’s an interesting idea, but I can’t say I had a sense of nostalgia evoked in me.  That isn’t what Carmen is about, I suggest.

What it is about, is what John Bell wrote: “Coming to Carmen as a theatre director, the thing I find most exciting about the opera…is the accuracy and savagery of its psychology.”  And his production focussed with pin-point accuracy on how Don José’s “infatuation makes him Carmen’s slave, but he quickly develops a possessiveness that seeks to contain her, and Carmen will not be contained” and how “Carmen is infatuated with her fantasy of José, not the man himself.”

Barclay’s production is based on ideas external to the emotional drama; while Bell’s made the characters’ internal and conflicting emotions central to his design and the performances.  Bell’s was, indeed, exciting – and raised directly in our emotional responses the reality of what Barclay said he wanted to raise: “Violence confused as love may be inconceivable to many of us, but 150 years after Bizet wrote this opera, such violence is taking place between Australians in alarming proportions.”

Oddly, this year’s program cover image, above, looks much more suited to Bell than Barclay.
 
But Barclay got distracted into billboards, turning gypsies into criminal bikies, and imagining he had updated us to “1960 in Franco’s Spain, with church and state ruling with formidable power.”  I missed that completely until reading his note after the show.  I should have recognised the Norton 350cc motorbike, I suppose.

The touring production was, of course, limited to a smaller cast than on the main stage at Sydney Opera House.  This explains the alternating and doubling up of actors in various roles, and became the reason (starting from Barclay’s conception) for using the physical billboard structure, turned around in different configurations in each act.  There could be nothing like the massed Cubans in Havana that Bell could offer.

But in the end it is the directing concept which has limited Carmen 2021, away from the depth of human interaction which the story and the music require, towards an externalised set of ideas about symbolic actions and images which the audience is supposed to interpret intellectually.

For me, then Carmen 2021 is the presentation of an opera on a stage, rather than an inner experience of emotional depth through drama.  Technically very good; theatrically a bit pedestrian.

Carmen by Georges Bizet
Opera Australia National Tour 2021
Act I - Billboard Set Design

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: American Psycho - The Musical -- BB Arts & Two Doors Production

 

 

American Psycho - The Musical, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis.  Book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa; music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik; 80s hits from Phil Collins, Tears for Fears, New Order and Huey Lewis and the News.  
BB-Arts Entertainment & Two Doors Productions, by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.  At Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse June 30 – July 3, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 30

Director – Alexander Berlage; Musical Director – Andrew Wordboys; Choreographer – Yvette Lee; Set Designer – Isabel Hudson; Costume Designer – Mason Browne; Sound Designer – Nicholas Walker


My response on the night was very confusing.  I have needed a day or two to understand why.  

Despite appreciating the high quality singing, dance work and acting, for which the whole cast deserves an award for handling such complexity, especially of choreography and changing props and costumes, I weirdly found myself feeling bored by half way through the first hour, and even wondering whether to bother coming back after interval.  Fortunately the second half was more interesting theatrically – but then the ending left me unsure about how to interpret the production’s intention.

So my questions are: was it really satire?  And did the continuous use of the revolving stage work?  I think not on both counts.

On the revolve, though a good idea to solve the problem of a static set design like the one used on Broadway, the device of continually changing scenes with the main characters always walking in the same direction (anti-clockwise while apparently going nowhere) at a regular pace seems like a good idea, to represent perhaps the social lifestyle of Wall Street wheelers and dealers, the pressure of continual activity for the central character Patrick Bateman, and a way of competing on stage with the flexibility of scene presentation available on film.

To make it exciting, very often mirrors reflected lights which, in the Canberra Playhouse, flashed horizontally directly into my eyes in Row G.  So in addition to becoming bored with watching the revolve revolve, I had to close my eyes in defence against bright light battery.  By the end of an hour, even the longer stop in Patrick’s unit as he built up to chopping off his rival’s head couldn’t revive my engagement.  It wasn’t dramatic – just another in the series of events in an uninteresting life.

In the  early part of the second act the travel stopped for longer in the scenes in Patrick’s office with his secretary, and a degree of drama seemed on the cusp of happening.  Of course, Patrick’s reneging on our expectation that he would kill her, on sentimental grounds, was entirely predictable.  Perhaps this was meant to be satirical – it was certainly unrealistic – but it wasn’t funny either.  Good satire has to be funny, until it reaches a point of apparent reality where it’s funny no longer.  

So, in this production, or maybe in the original script which I have no access to at the moment, Patrick – apparently still in role – steps off the revolve to explain in a Puckish “If we shadows have offended… /And this weak and idle theme, / No more yielding but a dream” speech.  But what happened to the satire?  

It just fades away into oblivion, as if the whole horrible story of Capitalism’s seeds of its own destruction can be just put aside as if it doesn’t really matter.  It seems we are left to take what we have seen as no more than an upbeat dance-style pop entertainment.  It feels cynical, rather than an incisive satire of the very society which caused the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and the rise of Donald Trump, whose fall is not yet – or maybe never will be – guaranteed.

So I apologise to those who described this production of American Psycho - The Musical as “Slick, sexy and highly disturbing.” (The Guardian).  I think the directing and design was based on an intellectual concept which, for me, fell into a trap set by the original novel.  The Canberra Theatre Centre’s promo calls it a “hilarious musical” of the absolute superficiality of life “in [the] epicenter [sic] of excess”.  The massive surround-sound system, the excess of lighting, the continuous revolve, the over-stylised characterisation in the acting and singing, and extremes of ghastly dancing creates a show as shallow as the lives of its characters.

You might say it was slick and sexually titillating, but it never offered the theatrical depth to be disturbing.  And that, for me, was disappointing.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Kiss Me, Kate by The Queanbeyan Players

 

 

Kiss Me, Kate.  Music & Lyrics by Cole Porter; book by Sam & Bella Spewack.  Based on the 1999 revival directed by Michael Blakemore, choreographed by Kathleen Marshall.

Queanbeyan Players at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, June 18 – 27, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 18

Director – Michael Moore; Musical Director – Leisa Keen; Choreographer – Lauren (Laurenzy) Chapman
Costume Design – Rhiannon De Margheriti; Properties – Helen McIntyre & Alison Newhouse; Set Design – Thompson Quan-Wing
Lighting Design – Jacob Aquilina, Sound Design – Nick Cossart (Eclipse Lighting and Sound)

Principals:
Janelle McMenamin – Lilli Vanessi / Katharine (Kate)
Adam Best – Fred Graham / Petruchio

Supporting Cast:
Samantha Marceddo – Lois Lane / Bianca; Nathaniel Patterson – Bill Cahoun / Lucentio; Dick Goldberg – Gangster 1; David “Dogbox” Cannell – Gangster 2; Chelsea Heaney – Hattie; Sarah Perruzza – Paula; Brian Kavanagh – General Harrison Howell; Tony D’Abrera – Harry / Baptista; Dimitri Yialeloglou – Gremio; Kristofer Patston-Gill – Hortenso; Aleesha Boyé – Ralphina

Ensemble:
Kay Liddiard, Jess Zed, Sara Johnson, Anna Tully (Dance Captain), Britt Lewis, Kara Murphy, Silvano Moro, Shelby Holland, Benjamin Martin, Daniel Evans, Tobias Price, Lauren Welfare



Even though I’ve never seen the stage, film or television versions of Kiss Me, Kate before, I seemed to know all about it – by osmosis, I guess from the so-recognisable Cole Porter songs.  After all, it played more than 1000 times on Broadway.  Queanbeyan Players’ excellent production has brought me up to date, to 1948!  

Except I discovered the real reason why Lilli decides that General Harrison Howell is not what she needs after all.  It’s not just that he’s a proto-family-violence creep, but he’s a close friend and advisor to President Trump!  No wonder she realises that despite Fred / Petruchio’s challenging behaviour, with a slightly-off sense of humour, as Lilli and Kate she has more in common with him because they are both actors at heart.

The best thing I learnt from Queanbeyan Players’ Kiss Me, Kate was to have fun enjoying a comedy.  I often had wondered whether Shakespeare intended (or actually directed) The Taming of the Shrew to be a comedy.  The post-World War II irreverence of Kiss Me, Kate, which the Players captured beautifully, made it clear.  The whole play is a kind of joke, until Act V Scene 1.  

As the conflict between Vincentio and Biondello reaches the stage of stupidity, Petruchio says privately “Prithee, Kate, let’s stand aside, and see the end of this controversy.”  This is the first time Petruchio is straight with Katharine.  This is the turning point in their relationship.  After watching more stupidity, they – in contrast – come together in common sense.  Katharine controls the matter of the kissing, and of staying rather than going home as Petruchio suggests.

This is a small but important moment in Shakespeare’s play which is parallel to the moment Kate realises in Kiss Me, Kate that General Harrison Howell is stupid, and Fred is the right choice after all.  However, I still think the soft music mood of Cole Porter’s final song by Kate, I Am Ashamed That People Are So Simple, misses the deliberate irony in Shakespeare’s much longer speech by Katharine, where it’s plain that for her Petruchio is not “[my] husband  [who] is [my] lord, [my] king, [my] governor” and she certainly is not ashamed about the way she has done all those things that, conventionally, women are not supposed to do.

It is because she has stood up for herself and comes to Petruchio (as Lilli does to Fred) as an equal, that Petruchio can say, equally ironically, “Why, there’s a wench!” and then recognise that she has the power to choose to “Come on, and kiss me, Kate.”

As to the quality of the Queanbeyan Players’ production, on the relatively small stage in The Q, they had everything right.  

The 14 piece band, conducted in an amazingly low-key manner by Ian McLean, easily created the effect of an American Big Band, while making sure that each member had standout moments, especially in jazz sequences.  Fortunately, The Q Theatre has excellent acoustics, and McLean used every opportunity to give us the variety of mood and style needed to keep the show moving – as much during scene changes as during the action.

Acting, singing and dancing throughout were excellent.  Though the company may not be formally classed as professional, the important qualities of detail and tremendous cooperative teamwork, including the stage management, in this production made this Kiss Me, Kate as professional in effect as anyone could wish for.  I could pick any number of the cast for special mention in their larger and smaller roles, but it’s important to say that the directing and performances of Janelle McMenamin as Lilli / Kate, with solid backing from Adam Best as Fred / Petruchio, and Dick Goldberg and David “Dogbox” Cannell as the very funny couple of gangsters were highlights for me.

L to R: Adam Best (Fred Graham / Petruchio), Dick Goldberg (Gangster 1),
Janelle McMenamin (Lilli Vanessi / Kate), David "Dogbox" Cannell (Gangster 2)
not on the real set of Queanbeyan Players' Kiss Me, Kate

 In other words do yourself a favour and see Kiss Me, Kate by the Queanbeyan Players at The Q this week. https://theq.net.au/whats-on/productions/kiss-me-kate/

 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill and Stephen Mallatratt

 

 

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill and Stephen Mallatratt.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, June 11 – July 24, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 16 Opening Night

Cast
The Actor Garth Holcombe
Mr Kipps Jamie Oxenbould

Creatives
Director Mark Kilmurry
Assistant Director Rachel Chant
Set & Costume Designer Hugh O’Connor
Lighting Designer Trudy Dalgleish
Sound Designer Michael Waters
Stage Manager Ruth Hollows
Assistant Stage Manager Jack Wilson
Costume Supervisor Margaret Gill
Special Effects Bronte Bailey
Assistant Sound Designer David Grigg


You will surely cling tight to your partner as the LNER (London North Eastern Railway) Express flashes and roars past, blasting your local train carriage with terrifying sound and light, as you approach the small market town of Crythin Gifford to attend the funeral of a client, Mrs Alice Drablow.  Is it she who appears, or rather disappears, in the shadows of the graveyard?  Is her house, isolated among foggy swamps and the notoriously freezing easterly winds of the Broads, truly haunted?

This is a very English play, in a fearfully good presentation in the boatshed, with its feet in the water, which is The Ensemble – hardly more capacious than that local train compartment.  Never a dull moment in its two-hour traffic on the stage, even in the silences when your mind races to guess what may or may not be real.  Garth Holcombe and Jamie Oxenbould never miss a heart-beat in this expertly designed drama of sound and light.

Yet, despite The Woman in Black (1987) being the second-longest-running West End non-musical show after The Mousetrap, as theatre art goes the play-script doesn’t compare with the first play of its kind, when, in 1921 the audience “split into supporters and adversaries. The author, who was present at the presentation with his daughter Lietta, was forced to leave the theatre through a side exit in order to avoid the crowd of opponents.”  That was Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author which ends with the death of a young boy backstage, leaving the audience believing it had really happened.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Characters_in_Search_of_an_Author ]

Long before that “Leoncavallo wrote that he based the story of [his opera] Pagliacci on an incident from his childhood: a murder in 1865, the victim of which was a Leoncavallo family servant, Gaetano Scavello. The murderer was Gaetano D'Alessandro, whose brother Luigi was his accomplice. The incident resulted from a series of perceived romantic entanglements involving Scavello, Luigi D'Alessandro, and a village girl with whom both men were infatuated. Leoncavallo's father, a judge, was the presiding magistrate over the criminal investigation.” [  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagliacci  ]

In the opera, where the singers we see are commedia dell’arte actors in the Harlequin story, the stabbing and death for real of Nedda, playing the part of Colombina, by her acting partner, Canio, playing the role of the clown Paliaccio, is horrifying to watch – even more so when Silvio, who was playing Arlecchino, is also killed by Canio.  The clown had, in jealousy, mistakenly thought the words of Colombina to Arlecchino "I will always be yours!" are truly the words of his wife Nedda to his rival Silvio.

All three plays mess up our heads about acting and reality; at a deeper level about belief and truth; and even at a political level about fake news and honesty. The Woman in Black is relatively simple plot-wise, and the ending is too predictable – a fictional device – compared with the complexity of the Six Characters from an unknown play invading another company’s rehearsal of a known play, (Mixing it Up by Luigi Pirandello!).  It becomes impossible to distinguish between the roles actors are playing, in the play within the play within the play we are watching, and the possibility that they are not acting but are in real conflict, leading to actual death.

The success, in the end,  of The Woman in Black relies upon the technical quality of the production.  We know we are watching a performance, yet we still are genuinely frightened as we hear ghostly sounds and see for ourselves a woman in black whose name is not revealed in the program.  And, to be fair, we feel afraid along with The Actor that his young son may die just as did Mr Kipps’ boy.  We do not know what will happen, but we can imagine how we would feel if it did; even more if it happened to us.

So this ghost story is not about making you believe in ghosts: but it’s certainly about our fear of the uncertainty of life.  Ensemble Theatre, with great directing, top quality acting and terrific (terrifying) sound and light design succeed perhaps better, I suggest, in this small theatre-in-the-round – where we become like Mr Kipps’ family having this Actor act out Mr Kipps’ scary story for us – than it would in a large conventional theatre.

It is a tour de force for just two actors (not counting the mystery woman) over two intense hours, constantly changing from being in and out of fictional roles in Mr Kipps’ play while switching into and out of their roles as Actor and Mr Kipps in Susan Hill’s story as developed by Stephen Mallatratt.

Some stills by Daniel Boud help to show how the play works:

Garth Holcombe as The Actor and Jamie Oxenbould as Mr Kipps

 

Garth Holcombe as The Actor directing Mr Kipps who says he is not an actor, how to act.

Jamie Oxenbould playing as Mr Kipps acting as Mr Daily
from the town of Crythin Gifford in Mr Kipps' playscript.

Garth Holcombe playing The Actor acting as Mr Kipps
in the house of his client, Mrs Alice Drablow
in Mr Kipps' playscript

Far left, Garth Holcombe playing The Actor acting as the solicitor Mr Kipps searching
through Alice Drablow's papers in Mr Kipps' playscript
while we see Jamie Oxenbould playing Mr Kipps
remembering his experiences

 There is, of course, no photo of the woman in black.

"La commedia è finita!!" – or in this case, the mystery is ended – or is it?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Grace Under Pressure by David Williams and Paul Dwyer

 

 

Grace Under Pressure by David Williams and Paul Dwyer, in collaboration with the Sydney Arts & Health Collective.  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, June 10 – 12, 2021.

Performed by Emily Taylor, Sal Sharah, Tanya Schneider and Meg Dunn
Understudies: Carla Jane McCallum, Richard Bligh, Mary Helen Sassman and Stephanie Panozzo

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 10

Director: David Williams; Dramaturg: Paul Dwyer
Lighting Designer: Nick Higgins; Sound Designer: Gail Priest
Set & Costume Designer: Isabel Hudson

Grace Under Pressure
Photo: Isabel Hudson

 

Grace Under Pressure is theatre, plain and simple.  Apart from the microphones, stage spotlighting and a quiet amorphous background recorded soundscape, these could have been four from our community who have come forward around our campfire to tell us their stories of what happened on their long arduous journey.  Sometimes one takes the foreground; then two may tell a story together; or someone listening may ask a question, and get a couple of different responses.  There were times of worry, times of success, times of friction and others of happiness, until all four come forward together to tell about the end: about the beauty and practical reality of dying.

Perhaps this is how theatre began, telling such stories honestly and openly, without performing for effect, maybe 300,000 years ago in Africa as our species found their voice.  And still today, in The Q, the elemental drama of telling stories works wonderfully.

The purpose of the storytelling is ostensibly to “open a broader public conversation about some of the persistent workplace issues facing health workers”, using verbatim material from “around 30 people – physicians, surgeons, interns, registrars, nurses, a paramedic, a hospital administrator and even a union official” ranging in “ages (from mid-20s to early 70s) and experience levels (from medical students to recently retired)”.

So each of the four performers take on many different “characters” as they reproduce the interviewees’ stories.  There is no clear storyline, but the drama is created by the way the stories have been selected and often interrelated, so that the mood and our feelings change through the 85 minutes of determination, worry, unexpected humour, success against seemingly impossible odds, fear and insecurity, and yet, finally, warmth and a tremendous sense of the humanity and self-sacrifice of those who do so much for everyone else’s benefit.

Grace Under Pressure presents us with the drama of life and death.  It is not a politicised campaign for better conditions but a revelation of reality more powerful than confronting street protest or petitions.  The tour across the country “has been assisted by the Australian government through the Department of Communication and the Arts’ Catalyst – Australian Arts and Culture Fund…and assisted by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.”

We can only hope that Members of Parliament have their eyes opened by Grace Under Pressure, and find creative ways to legislate and fund what is needed to make these stories able to focus more on the satisfaction and success side of the equation than on the worry and how to cope aspects of these extraordinary real life performers.

Perhaps the tour should include a performance in Parliament House.  I will suggest it to my local member.

 

 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Milk by Dylan Van Den Berg

 

 

Playscript and Program
published by Currency Press

Milk by Dylan Van Den Berg.  The Street Theatre, Canberra, June 9 – 12, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 9

Director – Ginny Savage
Set and Costume Design – Imogen Keen
Lighting Design – Gerry Corcoran
Sound Design – Peter Bailey
Cultural Consultant – Gaye Doolan
Movement Cultural Consultant – Tammi Gissell

Performed by
Roxanne McDonald – Character A
Katie Beckett – Character B
Dylan Van Den Berg – Character C

Milk is a new and powerful development in Australian First Peoples’ theatre.  It is a highly emotional work in the long-standing tradition which can be seen in four contrasting examples from among many since The Cake Man by Robert J Merritt (1975) became well-known in its film version in 1978, followed (selected just from my own 20 years’ of reviews) by Conversations with The Dead by Richard Frankland (2003), My Urrwai by Ghenoa Gela (2018), and Black is the New White by Nakkiah Lui (2018).

  
It is also a major achievement of the development program under-pinning The Street Theatre’s work, not only for the scriptwriting and direction, but for the beautiful set design and lighting, especially for the lightning on the distant edge of brooding mountains.

To explain how affected, in fact shaken, I felt as the lights and sound faded on the history and personal experiences of these three characters – “an Aboriginal woman from 1840s Tasmania, an Aboriginal woman from 1960s Tasmania, and a fair-skinned, young Aboriginal man from the 2020s” – I need to go to my own experience, weirdly enough in a café in a Canberra suburb, Ainslie, across the city from my usual area.

Dylan Van Den Berg has written “Milk reflects the complex private struggles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples living out bifurcated identities.”  A few days ago, I found myself at a loose end in Ainslie waiting for a doctor’s prescription to be filled.  A café offered onion soup for lunch, and had a Covid-spaced table available.

The café is named Breizh, which I couldn’t pronounce in English.  The onion soup was very definitely French.  The people serving were clearly Middle Eastern.  The specialities were Breton.  This is multicultural Canberra.  

When I looked up Breizh on my phone while waiting for the soup, I found it is the Breton language name for Brittany in France – the language related to Old Cornish in England and Welsh in Wales, where I was born.  Now my mind began to do what Dylan Van Der Berg’s mind was doing in creating his play.  One of my grandmothers was Welsh.  My father was one of her six sons, but my mother’s father was born within the sounds of Bow Bells in London, with a Cockney accent like I had when my parents brought me to Australia, aged 14 in 1955.  His surname was Solly – Jewish, perhaps?

But then, because of the French connection in the café, I remembered going to Normandy to find my Australian wife’s grandfather’s World War I grave, and then my mind turned to Richard the Lionheart, the English king buried at Anjou with his heart kept at Rouen.  Then I began thinking, but my background on my father’s father’s side must be in Ireland, as my clearly Celtic skin's lack of colour and red beard and face shape show.

I knew I would be seeing Milk, written by an Aboriginal man with a Dutch name (I assume), so I began to think how my knowledge of the history of Europe which informs my background and personal connections, and the whole way I think and approach life, simply are not in any way part of an Aboriginal person’s make-up.

Though I now have Australian citizenship, I cannot be Australian in the same way as a First Australian is.  I only have one or two thousand years to call on; nothing like the tens of thousands represented, say, in the oldest rock art in the world at Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula in WA) where I have heard the local elders speak.  

After watching the play, I began to wonder if any of my Irish ancestors who probably left poverty-stricken Western Ireland for London in the late 18th Century, had been transported to Australia in the days of the invasion , or perhaps had become whalers and sealers on Bass Strait islands who had become ‘husbands’ of women such as Character A in Milk.

Other McKones, I think unrelated to me, arrived here in the early 20th Century.  I can only hope none of them were the drunkard types that Character B met in pubs in her time.  Like Character C, on his European side, I have had the opportunity for a university education and recognition; but without the slur he suffered when whiteys thought he might look a bit Aboriginal.  The worst I’ve been called is Ten Pound Pom.

What hit me hard in seeing Milk – a title which I guess might refer to skin colour or even to the fact that Aboriginal people have had difficulty digesting milk which was never in their evolutionary history – was exactly what Van Den Berg has described in his program note:  Writing Milk has been a tremendous challenge and an unexpected pleasure.  After trawling through stories of grief and pain, what became apparent to me was the strength and resolve of our mobs – despite what we have lost (or, rather, what’s been taken from us) and despite concerted efforts to resign us to history books and anthropological study, we are still here.

As director Ginny Savage wrote,  This metaphorical, time and space shifting world asks its audience to consider: what are the truths of the land you’re standing on?  Shouldn’t you know them?

Yes, indeed.

L-R: Dylan Van Den Berg, Katie Beckett and Roxanne McDonald
as Characters C, B and A in Milk, The Street Theatre, Canberra
Photo: Creswick Collective

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: Impermanence by Sydney Dance Company

 

 

Impermanence  Sydney Dance Company at Canberra Theatre Centre, June 4-5 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Choreographer – Rafael Bonachela
Composer – Bryce Dessner
Lighting Designer – Damien Cooper
Stage Designer – David Fleischer
Costume Designer – Aleisa Jelbart

Australian String Quartet:
Dale Barltrop – Violin I
Francesca Hiew – Violin II
Christopher Cartlidge – Viola (Guest)
Michael Dahlenburg – Cello

Rehearsal Director – Chris  Aubrey; Rehearsal Associate – Charmene Yap
Dancers: Juliette Barton, Isabella Crain, Sabine Crompton-Ward, Davide Di Giovanni, Dean Elliott, Riley Fitzgerald, Jacopo Grabar, Liam Green, Luke Hayward, Telea Jensen, Dimitri Kleioris, Rhys Kosawoski, Chloe Leong, Jesse Scales, Emily Seymour

Photos by Pedro Greig

There’s a great irony in the creation of Impermanence.  We all seek continuity, stability, even harmony in our lives.  We treat this as the ‘normal’ state we expect, or at least hope for, in our physical world and in our personal relationships.  But in this dance work the moments when everything comes together in unison, or the connection in spirit between a couple is locked in: these moments are surprising, wonderful – and fleeting.  There is a great sadness, finally, as the last figure in the fading light understands that this is the truth.  Nothing is permanent.

Yet, at that very moment we are brought to our feet to celebrate the discipline of the musical composition, the choreography, and then the dancers and musicians – the continuity, stability and harmony which they have demonstrated to create this work of art. And, ironically, in this there is great joy.

The work originated in the experience of Dessner and Bonachela who were in Paris in 2019 shortly after the Notre Dame fire, then here as the bushfires engulfed the east coast of Australia, followed by the Covid pandemic in 2020.  Scenes are broken up by flashes of light and changing cyclorama colours, following the line of extraordinary unexpected harmonies within the dissonant urgent music, as the dancers form unrelated groups, individuals leave and enter at random, pairs, threes and fours form and break apart and at intervals a solo dancer takes the space, perhaps only to be discovered by horrified observers as if melted into the ground.

In the Program, which can be found online at the Sydney Dance Company website, the scenes are entitled:
Before
Alarms
Disintegration
Alarms 2
Urgences
Embers
Shards
Emergency
Impermanence
Pulsing
Requiem – Ashes
Another World

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The Appleton Ladies' Potato Race by Melanie Tait

 

 

The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race by Melanie Tait.  Ensemble Theatre (Sydney) at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, June 3-5 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 3

Director and Dramaturg: Priscilla Jackman
Assistant Director: Felicity Nicol
Dramaturg: Jane Fitzgerald
Set Designer: Michael Scott-Mitchell
Costume Designer: Genevieve Graham
Lighting Designer: Karen Norris
Composer and Sound Designer: Tegan Nicholls
Stage Manager: Lauren Tulloh
Touring Production Manager: Tim Burns

Cast: Valerie Bader, Merridy Eastman, Sapidah Kian, Amber McMahon, Sharon Millerchip

Entirely predictable and therefore thoroughly enjoyable, The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race is a celebration of women’s equality.  As soon as we know that the winning man will receive $1000 and the winning woman only $200, we can be sure that the ending will be happy.

The mood is humorous and energetic from the beginning, entirely – of course – performed by women.

The play, written by Melanie Tait, is an autobiographical story about Tait’s return home to Robertstown, NSW, in 2018. The playwright and journalist discovered the town’s annual potato race awarded a $1000 prize to the winner of the men’s race, while victorious women only walked away with $200.

She started a Go Fund Me page to bring the women’s prize money up to be equal to the men’s and then wrote a play about it.
[Zoe Rice: https://indaily.com.au/inreview/theatre/2021/05/26/on-your-marks-for-the-appleton-ladies-potato-race/]

The real town, well-known to Canberrans, is Robertson on the Southern Highlands which sports The Big Potato:

The Big Potato, Robertson NSW

I have to say, since I attended professional development courses in Robertson many years ago, I’m sure it’s a much more sophisticated place than Tait represents.  Coarse language is a major feature of the dialogue, and I can’t imagine the wreck of a fifties Holden ute would be left to dominate the scene:

L-R: Amber McMahon, Merridy Eastman, Sapidah Kian, Sharon Millerchip, Valerie Bader
Photo by Phil Erbacher (audreyjournal.com.au)

But I wouldn’t doubt that sexism abounds as it does, after all, apparently even in the Australian Parliament and sports such as tennis, as the story of Naomi Osaka tells us.  The symbolism of the unfair Ladies’ Potato Race, laugh out loud funny though it is on stage, should not be missed.  Nor should the terrific performances of all the cast – an ensemble show in the true sense of The Ensemble Theatre.

A telling issue in the play, adding to the basic unfairness of the treatment of women, is the way social media is so destructive of community spirit, especially in a small town.  When the doctor, herself originally from the town and now returning with a ‘politically correct’ message about women’s rights, reads out-loud the attacking Facebook posts ‘liked’ by a sports-mad woman she had gone to school with, the language is disgusting, violent and literally shocking.  Of course, the ending is happy: reconciliation is possible, at least among these strong-minded women.

Some have called the play ‘heart-warming’ and I’m glad to say they are right.  But that scene told me I’m right to keep my social distance well away from ‘The Facebook’ virus.

Published by Currency Press

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

 

 

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov.  Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, May 29 – June 27, 2021.

Director and Adaptor EAMON FLACK
Set & Costume Designer ROMANIE HARPER
Lighting Designer NICK SCHLIEPER
Composer & Sound Designer STEFAN GREGORY
Choreographer ELLE EVANGELISTA
Intimacy Coordinator CHLOË DALLIMORE
Movement/Fight Director NIGEL POULTON
Voice Coach DANIELLE ROFFE
Assistant Director CLAUDIA OSBORNE
Stage Manager KHYM SCOTT
Assistant Stage Manager JESSIE BYRNE
Photos by Brett Boardman

Previewed by Frank McKone
May 29


When you see Eamon Flack’s presentation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, don’t expect a museum exhibit of decaying Russia in 1904.  Remember that, sadly, Chekhov was very disappointed with the first production:

It opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. Chekhov described the play as a comedy, with some elements of farce, though Stanislavski treated it as a tragedy. Since its first production, directors have contended with its dual nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cherry_Orchard

This Belvoir production is nothing like the usual approach in what has become one of the most popular plays for amateur companies.  A nice example is on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI9x6b8Vdow recorded at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, Illinois, on October 17 & 18, 2013.

Flack has “set our production not in Russia but in ‘Rushia’, and not in 1904 but ‘now’, which is a time somewhere between the last and the next hundred years.”  As the cast shows, this means in a multicultural society which could be modern Australia – or the world.

Well before his time, facing dying from tuberculosis, Chekhov saw the absurdity of people who believe that life should and would go on forever ‘as we know it’.  His comedy is black – terribly funny.  In this, surely the most highly energetic production imaginable, you’ll be surprised – and thoroughly engaged – by the wild choreography of movement, the frantic singing and dancing, the extremes of laughter and tears.  After all, this is the end of these characters’ world as they think they know it.

But Flack has also “contended with its dual nature”.  He has not fallen into Stanislavski’s trap.  To drag acting out of 19th Century melodrama, Stanislavski has been essential for showing us how to make acting ‘realistic’, developing his theory and practice from about the time he directed The Cherry Orchard, seeking to express directly the tragedy.

Flack has understood Chekhov’s desire to show the tragedy obliquely by emphasising the absurdity of the character’s behaviour.  So the audience ends up laughing at them – but bit by bit realising we are losing our personal cherry orchards every day.

This is an exciting presentation of The Cherry Orchard to watch, and thoughtful on reflection – and highly recommended.

The Cast in rehearsal for The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
Belvoir 2021
L-R: SARAH MEACHAM as Dunyasha; MANDELA MATHIA as Lopahkin;
CHARLES WU as Yasha; NADIE KAMMALLAWEERA as Varya; PAMELA RABE as Ranevskaya; PRISCILLA DOUEIHY as Petya; KEITH ROBINSON as Gaev; PETER CARROLL as Firs;
KIRSTY MARILLIER as Anya
Not in photo: LUCIA MASTRANTONE as Charlotta; JOSH PRICE as Pishchick;
JACK SCOTT as Yepikhodov

Note for Chekhov enthusiasts: The original cast list in The Portable Chekhov (Penguin/Viking 1947)

Lubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya, a landowner [Pamela Rabe]

Anya, her seventeen-year-old daughter [Kirsty Marillier]

Varya, her adopted daughter, twenty-two years old [Nadie Kammallaweera]

Leonid Andreyevich Gayev, Mme. Ranevskaya's brother [Keith Robinson]

Yermolay Alexeyevich Lopahin, a merchant [Mandela Mathia]

Pyotr Sergeyevich Trofimov, a student [Priscilla Doueihy as "Petya"]

Simeonov-Pishchik, a landowner [Josh Price]

Charlotta Ivanovna, a governess [Lucia Mastrantone]

Semyon Yepihodov, a clerk [Jack Scott]

Dunyasha, a maid [Sarah Meacham]

Firs (pronounced fierce), a man-servant aged eighty-seven [Peter Carroll]

Yasha, a young valet [Charles Wu]

A Tramp, Stationmaster, Post Office Clerk, Guests, Servants.

The action takes place on Mme. Ranevskaya's estate.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The 7 Stages of Grieving by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman

 

 

Program Cover
Elaine Crombie
 The 7 Stages of Grieving
Sydney Theatre Company 2021

The 7 Stages of Grieving by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman.  Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, May 21 – June 19, and at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, June 23-26.

First premiered at Metro Arts, Brisbane, 1 September 1995.  Now with additional material by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman 2008 and Shari Sebbens and Elaine Crombie 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 29

Performed by Elaine Crombie as The Woman
Director – Shari Sebbens; Designer – Elizabeth Gadsby; Lighting & AV Designer – Verity Hampson; Composer & Sound Designer – Steve Francis; Assistant Director – Ian Michael; Stage Manager – Todd Eichorn

Elaine Crombie as The Woman
The 7 Stages of Grieving
Photo: Joseph Mayers

 

Elaine Crombie’s performance of The Woman in The 7 Stages of Grieving is at once terrifying and glorious.  This is an acting role which does not provide her with the personal distancing an actor can normally use to protect herself emotionally.  She represents her personal reality of survival after 233 years of violent oppression by an inhumane colonial society – our Australia.

“We can’t go back now.  To go back is to deny our humanity.”  

She means reconciliation now, no more WRECK ON SILLY NATION, the joke which flashes on the screen behind her.  Should we laugh?  Of course not.  But in her dignity and strength of character and purpose, the humour central to her Indigeneity, she gives us permission to see the joke.  And we laughed, with her.

The Woman is not a character in a play.  She is Elaine Crombie investing in our education, offering us a new understanding.  Asking us now not merely to act in conventional sympathy, but to take practical action politically to achieve proper recognition of the justice of self-determination for First Nations people in Australia, whose continuing culture is now known to be at least some 65,000 years old – twice as old as the broken history of the European invaders in 1788.

The addition this year of 7 Acts of Reconciliation starts with An Act to Lift the Age of Imprisonment so that 10 and 12 year old children, whose families need help and support, will no longer be jailed – as they are now, for example in one of her stories, for swearing at police who are applying racial profiling and violently arresting them for minor offences as if they are adult criminals.

Then there is her own story of accidentally locking her keys in her car.  Police will not believe it is her car, as she tries the door.  This is no joke.  No-one laughed.

She names a clutch of offending politicians, from Peter Dutton to Pauline Hanson.  For me, the most upsetting is Malcolm Turnbull – the apparently moderate – who instantly dismissed the Uluru Statement from the Heart.  What an absolute insult!

I can only conclude as director Shari Sebbens ends her program note for this, the fourth production by the Sydney Theatre Company since 1995:

“To me this play feels eternal,
which makes me so happy.

But also, this play feels eternal
And that makes me furious.”

Don’t miss Elaine Crombie in The 7 Stages of Grieving, in Sydney and soon in Canberra.  Don’t lose your fury, but please, to keep your balance, also enjoy this picture of the happy team working on the production:

Photo: Joseph Mayers

And consider the story of the play in the Writers’ Note:  “In many ways it is not a play that is to be slavishly reproduced but is an invitation to be remade with every passing year.  We once entered 7 Stages into a playwriting award and were rejected as they said it was not a play but more a ‘blueprint for a production’.

So here, for contrast, are Deborah Mailman in the role in 2002, Ursula Yovich in 2006 and Lisa Flanagan in 2008.

Photos by Tracey Schramm

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2021: The Twins - Truer than Fiction by Sarah Butler, Ian Darling and Greg Fleet

 

 

The Twins by Sarah Butler, Ian Darling and Greg Fleet.  Shark Island Institute and The ArtsLab Kangaroo Valley at Canberra Theatre Centre, Courtyard Studio, May 3 – 6, 2021

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 3

Directors: Terry Serio and Sarah Butler
Producer: Mary Macrae

Designer – Sarah Butler; Lighting Designer – Morgan Moroney; Voice & Acting Coach – Terry Serio; Additional Accent Vocal Coach – Jillian O’Dowd; Production Assistant – Alisha Manning

Ian Darling and Greg Fleet
in The Twins - Truer than Fiction

Photo: Lisa Tomasetti

Ian Darling, “an award-winning documentary filmmaker, who returns to the stage for the first time in 40 years”,  and Greg Fleet “an award-winning actor, comedian, playwright and author” are apparently preparing to rehearse the roles they played together at school all those years ago – the twin sons of Ægeon, who is a wealthy merchant from Syracuse,  in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors; both of whom are known as Antipholus.

In Act I, the racist Duke of Ephesus demands:
“Well, Syracusian, say in brief the cause
Why thou departedst from thy native home,
And for what cause thou camest to Ephesus.”

Ægeon, explains the long and complicated story in which he adopts a pair of twins from a poor family (each become known as Dromio) and how by accidents at sea on his “prosperous voyages”, he and his wife, each with one son and his attendant, become separated.  So we end up with Antipholus (and Dromio) of Syracuse, at the age of 18, going off to search for their twins Antipholus (and Dromio).  As we find out much later, they are in Ephesus, where the Duke, though sympathetic, has just jailed their father, after

“Five summers have I spent [searching] in furthest Greece,
Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia,
And, coasting homeward, came to Ephesus
Hopeless to find, yet loth to leave unsought.”

But, in keeping with the Australian government, that’s the law, says the Duke : “Which princes, would they, may not disannul.” I have to do this to you: “Yet I will favour thee in what I can.”  Refugees still effectively held in Papua New Guinea and Australians trapped by Covid in India will surely understand.

The Twins is an 80 minute journey of discovery about what actually happened to Ian and Greg when they were separated after school.  They never get around to performing more than a few snippets of Shakespeare’s play – mainly bits of their “father’s” speech.  This becomes significant because both of them seem to have been unduly influenced by their real fathers’ expectations and lifestyle.  

Perhaps the most interesting issue that divides them, as they argue about what they think they remember, is that Ian comes from a wealthy family who buys his private education, while Greg from a poor and dysfunctional family seems to have got to Geelong Grammar on a scholarship.  Ian, it seems, was the real Antipholus, while Greg was really a Dromio.

I have in mind that Act II of The Twins might be to work up a piece from the Shakespeare.  Perhaps we could see the two families, based upon Ægeon’s emphasis on his loving wife with a strong sense of responsibility equal or more than his own, compared and contrasted with the Dromios’ mother who, says Ægeon, was

“A meaner woman [who] was delivered
[in the same inn where his wife became
A joyful mother of two goodly sons]
Of such a burden, male twins, both alike.
Those, for their parents were exceeding poor,
I bought, and brought up to attend my sons.

In other words the “meaner” woman had no option but to sell her children.

This story is relevant to Ian’s life because he says that he feels guilty for being so wealthy.  Has he, in real life, come to understand and live up to the goodness of his Shakespearean father and mother?  Antipholus of Syracuse is certainly rather like the stockbroker Ian says he became, but Shakespeare gives a different view of family life in Act II Scene I in the house of Antipholus of Ephesus, where Dromio is treated in the worst way as a slave; and bites back magnificently.

So, though the stories of Ian Darling’s and Greg Fleet’s adult lives are interesting, and their playing of themselves raises questions about the nature of being an actor, I felt they could have written a play incorporating what they have learned from playing Shakespeare with such a strength of mutual connection at the age of 16.

They write in the program “We have coined the term ‘theatre verite’ to describe this piece because it is a play, first and foremost, but the characters are real people and are also played by themselves.”  I have several times recently reviewed what I have termed “Personal Theatre”.  John Bell’s One Man In His Time takes up the Shakespeare theme, of course, but I think Stop Girl by Sally Sara has been the most powerful, alongside My Urrwai by Ghenoa Gela and Red by Liz Lea.

The Twins is given a structure, which raises social issues, making the play more significant than two guys nattering about their lives.  They begin and end with stylised statements that “I am a man” and “I am a white man”, implying that they recognise, for example, that they are not women and not diverse.  They also focus often on the question of being truthful and trustworthy, because being an actor can mean hiding the truth, and social prejudice can raise its head.  That raised for me the question that, having written this play and continuing to perform it, have they not changed simply as a result of this experience, especially working together after so many years apart?  Maybe the script will have to keep changing.

John Bell pointed out that you can only trust an actor to the extent that you know they are pretending.

So, though The Twins is not “great theatre”, it certainly can stimulate a lot of ideas.

Greg Fleet and Ian Darling
in The Comedy of Errors
Geelong Grammar 1978

© Frank McKone, Canberra