Renaissance Bloke - Peter J. Casey. Co-written and directed by Carissa Campbell. The Street Theatre Studio, September 23 - 25, 7.30 pm. Bookings 6247 1223.
You only have till Saturday. Don't miss Renaissance Bloke.
It's just so good to see a show full of wit, laughs and talent. Peter J. Casey satirises himself, appearing to put himself down as a "bloke", as a "man about the house", even as a performer at his four weirdest gigs, but don't you believe a word of it. His piano, his voice, his body so easily leap to his command. And we, his audience, respond to every nuance of tone, every lift of an eyebrow.
This is stand-up comedy sitting at a piano for nearly two hours, and you won't think about time passing. It's smooth, but knowingly smooth. Disarmingly simple but very clever. Three nights surely are not enough, but I guess, as Casey said, you have to remember that to earn a dollar in the arts you have to spend $1.50.
The show is not all original work by Campbell and Casey. Watch for the Tom Lehrer imports, and if you clap long enough - as everyone did on opening night - you'll get to hear the penis medley for a last laugh.
Casey can do every kind of nightclub / cabaret / musical song, but he offers us so much more than an interesting performance of the expected. He is an acute observer of himself as he performs. It may sound pedantic to say his work is metacognitive, at a level of awareness beyond the immediate. What's fascinating is that this deepens the satire, enlivens the laughter, and makes the evening totally satisfying.
Musically he can take any source - try Jaws, Close Encounter of the Third Kind and Star Wars - and find an original style in the music alone which plays with our expectations. Then the words sparkle with even more humour, acting against the musical setting. Personally, I thought Star Wars as a three-minute musical was perhaps the most brilliant, but every number was exciting and absorbing. Somehow it reminded me of the best of Circus Oz, but all the gymnastics happen in your head. Unforgettable.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 23 September 2004
Tuesday, 14 September 2004
2004: Exhibition - Sunken Treasures of Brunei Darussalem
Sunken Treasures of Brunei Darussalem. National Museum of Australia until October 4. Adults: $8 Concession: $6 Child: $5 Family $16. Enquiries 6208 5000.
This is an exhibition which ought to be a lot more fascinating than I found it. I wandered about rather aimlessly, when the story of the amazing discovery of a 500 year old shipwreck off the coast of Brunei should be full of excitement and drama. What's gone wrong?
All the elements are there. The vast array of pottery, mainly from 15th Century China and Thailand, shows us the great quality of goods being traded around the South China Sea. The deductions from the discovery about the trade routes and the important role of Brunei so long ago change our more recent perception of backwardness compared with Europe. The technical details of a difficult and dangerous archaeological project 63 metres under water make us wonder how it was done without a single accident.
The problem is the layout of the exhibition. It fails to take us on an engaging journey of discovery. We walk around images, objects and information, on film, still images and sound track. But it's all in dim lighting, while the sound surrounds us non-invasively, virtually unobtrusively. It's all too quiet, except for the sound of one pot smashing - the most dramatic part of the exhibition.
After seeing a 25 minute film, and naturally starting off to the left to explore, you may find the panel labelled Introduction which is very near the door called Way Out, on the far right. Or you may not. But if you do start from the Introduction and go right to left, you will not be guided through. You will have to piece the story together from interesting but disparate bits.
If you pay for the catalogue, you find the story told, beginning from a modern map, of the archeological discovery, integrating the history, with examples from the ship's payload, and leading to the details of the found objects and the reconstruction of the ship. If the exhibition clearly led us through in this order, we would be excited by the discovery, how the engineers and archaeologists did their work, how their work enlightens our understanding. Then we would look at the pottery from the ship with new eyes.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is an exhibition which ought to be a lot more fascinating than I found it. I wandered about rather aimlessly, when the story of the amazing discovery of a 500 year old shipwreck off the coast of Brunei should be full of excitement and drama. What's gone wrong?
All the elements are there. The vast array of pottery, mainly from 15th Century China and Thailand, shows us the great quality of goods being traded around the South China Sea. The deductions from the discovery about the trade routes and the important role of Brunei so long ago change our more recent perception of backwardness compared with Europe. The technical details of a difficult and dangerous archaeological project 63 metres under water make us wonder how it was done without a single accident.
The problem is the layout of the exhibition. It fails to take us on an engaging journey of discovery. We walk around images, objects and information, on film, still images and sound track. But it's all in dim lighting, while the sound surrounds us non-invasively, virtually unobtrusively. It's all too quiet, except for the sound of one pot smashing - the most dramatic part of the exhibition.
After seeing a 25 minute film, and naturally starting off to the left to explore, you may find the panel labelled Introduction which is very near the door called Way Out, on the far right. Or you may not. But if you do start from the Introduction and go right to left, you will not be guided through. You will have to piece the story together from interesting but disparate bits.
If you pay for the catalogue, you find the story told, beginning from a modern map, of the archeological discovery, integrating the history, with examples from the ship's payload, and leading to the details of the found objects and the reconstruction of the ship. If the exhibition clearly led us through in this order, we would be excited by the discovery, how the engineers and archaeologists did their work, how their work enlightens our understanding. Then we would look at the pottery from the ship with new eyes.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 21 August 2004
2004: Mother Courage and her Children by Bertolt Brecht
Mother Courage and her Children by Bertolt Brecht. Moonlight directed by Jonathon Thomsen. ANU Arts Centre Drama Lab August 20 - 28 (Wed - Sat). Tickets at the door.
I can give an improvement award to this, the second in Moonlight's series of Brecht's plays. The whole cast now have a much better sense of Brecht's epic theatre style than when they performed The Caucasian Chalk Circle some months ago, and the design now includes to good effect projections of the descriptions of each upcoming scene, though not yet the words of the songs, which need to be read as well as heard for Brecht's messages to be clearly understood.
Though Moonlight has a very long way to go to reach even semi-professional standards, and though they may have taken some breach of copyright risks, they are now playing with the play rather than merely playing the play. Taking liberties means that they have achieved much more of the distancing effect that Brecht demands. The result is that the anti-war analysis is presented with considerable strength.
I suspect the cast have surprised themselves, and at times in unscripted moments they showed some self-consciousness. This, of course, is because they are graduates of Theatre Studies at ANU, which has not been developed into a proper professional training course to match Music and Visual Art. Dance at ANU has not even taken the first step. Without training in technique to complement their academic studies, even though these included some practical experience, Moonlighters are unlikely to reach higher standards of performance.
However, they are clearly improving, which I take to be their first objective, and have produced an instructive entertainment which is worth seeing, if only because it is not so often that we can see Brecht's work nowadays.
They face a challenge in presenting The Good Person of Szechwuan in November, a more subtle play than Mother Courage and one influenced by Brecht's brief exposure to the work of the famous Chinese actor Mei Lan-fang. The Chinese setting risks becoming, Brecht noted, a 'mere disguise'. This production will take even more courage, and I look forward to new developments in theatrical craft to build on Mother Courage and her Children.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I can give an improvement award to this, the second in Moonlight's series of Brecht's plays. The whole cast now have a much better sense of Brecht's epic theatre style than when they performed The Caucasian Chalk Circle some months ago, and the design now includes to good effect projections of the descriptions of each upcoming scene, though not yet the words of the songs, which need to be read as well as heard for Brecht's messages to be clearly understood.
Though Moonlight has a very long way to go to reach even semi-professional standards, and though they may have taken some breach of copyright risks, they are now playing with the play rather than merely playing the play. Taking liberties means that they have achieved much more of the distancing effect that Brecht demands. The result is that the anti-war analysis is presented with considerable strength.
I suspect the cast have surprised themselves, and at times in unscripted moments they showed some self-consciousness. This, of course, is because they are graduates of Theatre Studies at ANU, which has not been developed into a proper professional training course to match Music and Visual Art. Dance at ANU has not even taken the first step. Without training in technique to complement their academic studies, even though these included some practical experience, Moonlighters are unlikely to reach higher standards of performance.
However, they are clearly improving, which I take to be their first objective, and have produced an instructive entertainment which is worth seeing, if only because it is not so often that we can see Brecht's work nowadays.
They face a challenge in presenting The Good Person of Szechwuan in November, a more subtle play than Mother Courage and one influenced by Brecht's brief exposure to the work of the famous Chinese actor Mei Lan-fang. The Chinese setting risks becoming, Brecht noted, a 'mere disguise'. This production will take even more courage, and I look forward to new developments in theatrical craft to build on Mother Courage and her Children.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 18 August 2004
2004: Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell
Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell. Performed by Sue Howell, directed by Michael Sutton. At Theatre 3, August 18 - 29. Bookings 6257 1950 (theatre) 6281 0250 (all hours).
The advertising calls Shirley Valentine a "smash hit comedy". A more academic reference calls the play "a witty monologue". Sue Howell, however, underplays the comedy and wit in favour of an underlying sadness in the character of Shirley Bradshaw (nee Valentine).
I rather liked this interpretation. It avoids raucous superficial laughter, invokes a quieter response, and allows us time to absorb Shirley's feelings about how her youthful self, Shirley Valentine, became lost in the "cribb'd, cabin'd and confin'd" English suburban life of wife and mother Shirley Bradshaw. Her observations about orgasms, men, feminists and English xenophobia are not merely witty, but are little illuminations in self-understanding.
Sue Howell's Shirley is not presented to shock or titillate. She makes herself available to us, for us to identify with, as she rediscovers the spontaneity of being Shirley Valentine at the age of 42. We know both the joy and the sadness she will feel in the end, when, as her husband walks past her table outside the taverna at the edge of the sea in Greece, and fails to recognise her, she will reveal herself to him. "I'm Shirley Valentine," she will say. "I'll never be Shirley Bradshaw again." He must go home to Liverpool alone.
Technical production was a little amiss on opening night - some extraneous noises off, some recording levels too high, cues too early and changes too abrupt. The sets are nicely done, with a fully operational kitchen in which Shirley cooks real eggs and chips. I'm a bit concerned that by August 29 Theatre 3 will be coated with a fine film of cooking oil, but this realism succeeds in establishing a rapport between Shirley and her ever-listening audience, the fourth wall, which never answers back.
Willy Russell's "talking head" device, so similar to Alan Bennett's work, is perhaps an English dramatic form, well suited to English culture and character. Howell faithfully creates the accents and intonations of not only Liverpudlian Shirley but of the various other English types that Shirley imitates. Centring the character in her own environment strengthens our understanding and makes this a successful production.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The advertising calls Shirley Valentine a "smash hit comedy". A more academic reference calls the play "a witty monologue". Sue Howell, however, underplays the comedy and wit in favour of an underlying sadness in the character of Shirley Bradshaw (nee Valentine).
I rather liked this interpretation. It avoids raucous superficial laughter, invokes a quieter response, and allows us time to absorb Shirley's feelings about how her youthful self, Shirley Valentine, became lost in the "cribb'd, cabin'd and confin'd" English suburban life of wife and mother Shirley Bradshaw. Her observations about orgasms, men, feminists and English xenophobia are not merely witty, but are little illuminations in self-understanding.
Sue Howell's Shirley is not presented to shock or titillate. She makes herself available to us, for us to identify with, as she rediscovers the spontaneity of being Shirley Valentine at the age of 42. We know both the joy and the sadness she will feel in the end, when, as her husband walks past her table outside the taverna at the edge of the sea in Greece, and fails to recognise her, she will reveal herself to him. "I'm Shirley Valentine," she will say. "I'll never be Shirley Bradshaw again." He must go home to Liverpool alone.
Technical production was a little amiss on opening night - some extraneous noises off, some recording levels too high, cues too early and changes too abrupt. The sets are nicely done, with a fully operational kitchen in which Shirley cooks real eggs and chips. I'm a bit concerned that by August 29 Theatre 3 will be coated with a fine film of cooking oil, but this realism succeeds in establishing a rapport between Shirley and her ever-listening audience, the fourth wall, which never answers back.
Willy Russell's "talking head" device, so similar to Alan Bennett's work, is perhaps an English dramatic form, well suited to English culture and character. Howell faithfully creates the accents and intonations of not only Liverpudlian Shirley but of the various other English types that Shirley imitates. Centring the character in her own environment strengthens our understanding and makes this a successful production.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 7 August 2004
2004: A Local Man by Bob Ellis and Robin McLachlan
A Local Man by Bob Ellis and Robin McLachlan. Directed by Bill Blaikie. Presented by Bathurst Arts Council at the Ponton Theatre, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst Campus, August 6 - 15. Email: alocalman@bigpond.com .
Ben Chifley has just lost his second election to Bob Menzies. On June 9, 1951, he is writing his last speech for the next day's ALP Conference, knowing his heart disease is critical. Three days later he is dead.
What went through his mind on that freezing thunderous Saturday evening at 10 Busby Street, Bathurst? Is he the iconic revered Labor leader, symbol of honesty in politics which now seems to belong only to the distant past?
What can he tell us about the half-century - Federation, Gallipoli, Depression, the bombing of Darwin, Changi, Burma, Kokoda, the Welfare State, the Commonwealth Bank, the Snowy Mountains Scheme, even the opening of ANU - the stuff of the Australian legend, which constituted his adult lifetime?
What were his personal devils, clawing away at his sense of self-worth?
This collaboration between historian McLachlan and celebrated writer Bob Ellis gives us both the history and the man. In this simply subtitled "new play about Ben Chifley", his perceptiveness and his humour show us the reality of his time. His passing leaves us reflecting on today's political and personal world.
Though the script is a major achievement, welding art and accurate history, the performer, Tony Barry, was not properly prepared for opening night and needed a prompt far too often. A two-act monologue of this depth is a complex task, but Barry proposes to tour the play. It was disappointing that the first night audience were not given all that Ellis and McLachlan have created, but Barry portrays the character true to life and we saw the requisite acting skills in many segments. 10 more matinees and evenings in Bathurst will surely bring the whole performance up to expectations.
The set, sound track and photo projections have been meticulously researched and are cleverly constructed for touring. I trust that we may see A Local Man in Canberra, where there are many appropriate venues like the National Museum, Old Parliament House, Courtyard Studio and other small theatre spaces - or indeed new Parliament House, preferably before the next election. A light on the Hill, perhaps, or to quote from the play:
(The lights begin to flicker.) BEN: Hang on, the lights are going off .... Bloody Liberal government. Bunnerong and Bungeroff. (The lights go out.)
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Ben Chifley has just lost his second election to Bob Menzies. On June 9, 1951, he is writing his last speech for the next day's ALP Conference, knowing his heart disease is critical. Three days later he is dead.
What went through his mind on that freezing thunderous Saturday evening at 10 Busby Street, Bathurst? Is he the iconic revered Labor leader, symbol of honesty in politics which now seems to belong only to the distant past?
What can he tell us about the half-century - Federation, Gallipoli, Depression, the bombing of Darwin, Changi, Burma, Kokoda, the Welfare State, the Commonwealth Bank, the Snowy Mountains Scheme, even the opening of ANU - the stuff of the Australian legend, which constituted his adult lifetime?
What were his personal devils, clawing away at his sense of self-worth?
This collaboration between historian McLachlan and celebrated writer Bob Ellis gives us both the history and the man. In this simply subtitled "new play about Ben Chifley", his perceptiveness and his humour show us the reality of his time. His passing leaves us reflecting on today's political and personal world.
Though the script is a major achievement, welding art and accurate history, the performer, Tony Barry, was not properly prepared for opening night and needed a prompt far too often. A two-act monologue of this depth is a complex task, but Barry proposes to tour the play. It was disappointing that the first night audience were not given all that Ellis and McLachlan have created, but Barry portrays the character true to life and we saw the requisite acting skills in many segments. 10 more matinees and evenings in Bathurst will surely bring the whole performance up to expectations.
The set, sound track and photo projections have been meticulously researched and are cleverly constructed for touring. I trust that we may see A Local Man in Canberra, where there are many appropriate venues like the National Museum, Old Parliament House, Courtyard Studio and other small theatre spaces - or indeed new Parliament House, preferably before the next election. A light on the Hill, perhaps, or to quote from the play:
(The lights begin to flicker.) BEN: Hang on, the lights are going off .... Bloody Liberal government. Bunnerong and Bungeroff. (The lights go out.)
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 6 August 2004
2004: Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer, directed by Tessa Bremner for Free-Rain. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre August 4 - August 21. Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700.
This is a show you should not miss, for several reasons.
Bremner's direction is tight, stylish and perfectly suited to Shaffer's intentions. In the intimate setting of the Courtyard, the 18th Century operatic characters come to life more than they might on a larger stage. Costumes and make-up are original, comic, pointedly satirical. Lighting highlights characters and mood on a set designed for smooth changes, uncluttered yet always interesting.
The acting is highly polished, easily as good as many fully professional productions, in a play which requires strong, clear resonant voices - including singing - as well as choreographed movement and even playing Salieri and Mozart on piano. The whole cast works as a well-trained ensemble whose excitement in performing spreads throughout the theatre, drawing you into this awful story of how Salieri destroyed Mozart.
The play itself is a reason to go. It is so much better than the film, balancing Mozart's sublime imagination expressed in his music against Salieri's desperate need to break free from the mediocrity he recognises in his own work. We see Salieri not simply as an evil figure against Mozart's perfection, but as a man who will survive, though to do so he must destroy the innocent.
On stage, the play breaks the bounds of the ordinary to show us the nature of life and art, just as Mozart did through his music. And it is a special achievement for a small company like Free-Rain that their production in this unpretentious little space could, by artful design, take my mind beyond the immediate cardboard, paint and bits of wire to a terrible feeling of loss as Mozart dies.
As in Mozart's Figaro and The Magic Flute, it is the clever use of humour which elicits the sense of tragedy. This is where Bremner has the right touch. A production which takes the work too seriously would become maudlin, but here a deftly timed movement, a visual joke, a tableau which becomes an orchestra for Mozart to conduct, a threatening look from Salieri's wife, in fact a constant array of humorous devices keeps us at just the right distance emotionally until the key moments when we both understand and feel the truth. This is what good theatre is all about.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a show you should not miss, for several reasons.
Bremner's direction is tight, stylish and perfectly suited to Shaffer's intentions. In the intimate setting of the Courtyard, the 18th Century operatic characters come to life more than they might on a larger stage. Costumes and make-up are original, comic, pointedly satirical. Lighting highlights characters and mood on a set designed for smooth changes, uncluttered yet always interesting.
The acting is highly polished, easily as good as many fully professional productions, in a play which requires strong, clear resonant voices - including singing - as well as choreographed movement and even playing Salieri and Mozart on piano. The whole cast works as a well-trained ensemble whose excitement in performing spreads throughout the theatre, drawing you into this awful story of how Salieri destroyed Mozart.
The play itself is a reason to go. It is so much better than the film, balancing Mozart's sublime imagination expressed in his music against Salieri's desperate need to break free from the mediocrity he recognises in his own work. We see Salieri not simply as an evil figure against Mozart's perfection, but as a man who will survive, though to do so he must destroy the innocent.
On stage, the play breaks the bounds of the ordinary to show us the nature of life and art, just as Mozart did through his music. And it is a special achievement for a small company like Free-Rain that their production in this unpretentious little space could, by artful design, take my mind beyond the immediate cardboard, paint and bits of wire to a terrible feeling of loss as Mozart dies.
As in Mozart's Figaro and The Magic Flute, it is the clever use of humour which elicits the sense of tragedy. This is where Bremner has the right touch. A production which takes the work too seriously would become maudlin, but here a deftly timed movement, a visual joke, a tableau which becomes an orchestra for Mozart to conduct, a threatening look from Salieri's wife, in fact a constant array of humorous devices keeps us at just the right distance emotionally until the key moments when we both understand and feel the truth. This is what good theatre is all about.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 28 July 2004
2004: 1º of Separation. Canberra Youth Theatre.
1º of Separation. Canberra Youth Theatre's Generation Group directed by Simone Penkethman. C Block, Gorman House Arts Centre, Wednesday to Saturday July 28 - August 7, 8 pm.
For this Youth Theatre production I have coined the term Eclectic Theatre. Over the course of a little less than an hour we see mime, dance, symbolic movement and imagery, naturalistic dialogue, poetry and stylised use of voice, electric and acoustic guitar, and recorded music, birdsong, cars and trucks.
People come in through real doors and windows as well as enter from shadowy wings. People freeze in shadowed areas while others act in the spotlight. They all line up for a curtain call, without a curtain.
Somewhere in here is meant to be a theme, of Canberra characters devised from improvisations, bound together by the four seasons and stretching over time from childhood to old age. Interactions between them all, from the crippled rich Lady Tyreana at the top of the hill to the sandwich bar employee, and every possibility in between, are meant to show how closely we all are connected.
As Linda McHugh, CYT Artistic Director told me, you can do anything in theatre. This show, however, is not as together as many recent CYT performances. Youth theatre is certainly about providing young people the opportunity to explore all aspects of theatre, and this show certainly does that.
But youth theatre should also give its young participants the experience of developing theatrical focus and intensity in their productions. In 1º of Separation every actor has their focussed moment, but the points of focus are not put together into a strong dramatic structure, ending rather weakly with a quite shallow stereotyped representation of two characters from the sandwich bar in old age.
It is, of course, not fair to criticise a youth theatre performance as if it were expected to be equal to a professional production. But I think it is fair to suggest that, though I could see the professionalism of the direction in each actor's performance skills, in movement and speech - I should also have seen a better shaping of the work to take it from the improvisation of scenes into an hour long show.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
For this Youth Theatre production I have coined the term Eclectic Theatre. Over the course of a little less than an hour we see mime, dance, symbolic movement and imagery, naturalistic dialogue, poetry and stylised use of voice, electric and acoustic guitar, and recorded music, birdsong, cars and trucks.
People come in through real doors and windows as well as enter from shadowy wings. People freeze in shadowed areas while others act in the spotlight. They all line up for a curtain call, without a curtain.
Somewhere in here is meant to be a theme, of Canberra characters devised from improvisations, bound together by the four seasons and stretching over time from childhood to old age. Interactions between them all, from the crippled rich Lady Tyreana at the top of the hill to the sandwich bar employee, and every possibility in between, are meant to show how closely we all are connected.
As Linda McHugh, CYT Artistic Director told me, you can do anything in theatre. This show, however, is not as together as many recent CYT performances. Youth theatre is certainly about providing young people the opportunity to explore all aspects of theatre, and this show certainly does that.
But youth theatre should also give its young participants the experience of developing theatrical focus and intensity in their productions. In 1º of Separation every actor has their focussed moment, but the points of focus are not put together into a strong dramatic structure, ending rather weakly with a quite shallow stereotyped representation of two characters from the sandwich bar in old age.
It is, of course, not fair to criticise a youth theatre performance as if it were expected to be equal to a professional production. But I think it is fair to suggest that, though I could see the professionalism of the direction in each actor's performance skills, in movement and speech - I should also have seen a better shaping of the work to take it from the improvisation of scenes into an hour long show.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 25 July 2004
2004: The Paragon Files by Adam Hatzimanolis
The Paragon Files, written and performed by Adam Hatzimanolis. Sidetrack Performance Group in The Oneira Festival at National Gallery of Australia, July 24.
With a kind of self-deprecating humour, Hatzimanolis integrates the pathos of his personal second-generation Greek migrant story and the Australian mythical sense of maturity achieved through brave failure into a tragi-comic Homeric journey. This sounds complex, but his presentation of his upbringing behind the scenes in a Wollongong fish and chip shop - The Paragon, of course - never flags.
The wonderful irony is that the woeful semi-fictional attempts he makes to become an actor are performed by the real Hatzimanolis with consummate skill. His writing, too, is not merely witty but contains layers of meaning which can be enjoyed at the surface but then will stir up cultural references which inevitably demand to be discussed after the show.
His rebuilt EJ Holden finally blows up; he burns down, accidentally, the fish and chip shop; the doctor tells him he has a wog in his throat; Uncle Stavros dies but, at the age of seven, he switches the TV on to watch a horror movie rather than view the body; and Nicole Kidman passes him by "eyes wide shut" on the film set when he at last gets an acting job as an extra. There are many more iconic moments which English- and Greek-speaking audiences can all appreciate.
The Paragon Files is a perfect vehicle for this festival - Oneira or The Evolution of Dreams - which is produced by Vasiliki Nihas as an Australian reflection of the Olympic Cultural Festival in Greece. Dreams change from one generation to the next, and they don't only have to be about winning at sport.
Oneira began with a Taverna Night at the Hellenic Club in early July, followed by Sydney's Maria Yiakoulis and her musical maestros, and a range of other events. Yet to come is Websong, a ceremonial performance by Canberra's A Chorus of Women (August 7-8), a guided tour of the Classics Museum at ANU (August 4) and of St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church (August 8), a talk on Greek literature (August 6), the Greek Oz Writers Festival (August 7), and much more.
Go to www.oneira.net.au for details.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
With a kind of self-deprecating humour, Hatzimanolis integrates the pathos of his personal second-generation Greek migrant story and the Australian mythical sense of maturity achieved through brave failure into a tragi-comic Homeric journey. This sounds complex, but his presentation of his upbringing behind the scenes in a Wollongong fish and chip shop - The Paragon, of course - never flags.
The wonderful irony is that the woeful semi-fictional attempts he makes to become an actor are performed by the real Hatzimanolis with consummate skill. His writing, too, is not merely witty but contains layers of meaning which can be enjoyed at the surface but then will stir up cultural references which inevitably demand to be discussed after the show.
His rebuilt EJ Holden finally blows up; he burns down, accidentally, the fish and chip shop; the doctor tells him he has a wog in his throat; Uncle Stavros dies but, at the age of seven, he switches the TV on to watch a horror movie rather than view the body; and Nicole Kidman passes him by "eyes wide shut" on the film set when he at last gets an acting job as an extra. There are many more iconic moments which English- and Greek-speaking audiences can all appreciate.
The Paragon Files is a perfect vehicle for this festival - Oneira or The Evolution of Dreams - which is produced by Vasiliki Nihas as an Australian reflection of the Olympic Cultural Festival in Greece. Dreams change from one generation to the next, and they don't only have to be about winning at sport.
Oneira began with a Taverna Night at the Hellenic Club in early July, followed by Sydney's Maria Yiakoulis and her musical maestros, and a range of other events. Yet to come is Websong, a ceremonial performance by Canberra's A Chorus of Women (August 7-8), a guided tour of the Classics Museum at ANU (August 4) and of St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church (August 8), a talk on Greek literature (August 6), the Greek Oz Writers Festival (August 7), and much more.
Go to www.oneira.net.au for details.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 24 July 2004
2004: The Foursome by Norm Foster
The Foursome by Norm Foster. Directed by Cathie Clelland for Canberra Repertory at Theatre 3, July 23 - August 14.
"Great fun!" was the comment that rose above the general hubbub of celebration as the lights went up at the end of opening night. I thought The Foursome was fun, but it's not a great play.
It takes a while to warm up, but all the actors - Michael Sparks (Donnie), Brendan Sloane (Cameron), Alex Sangston (Ted) and Simon Lissaman (Rick) - have got their characters right and work very well together as an ensemble. Clelland's direction neatly takes us into occasional set pieces which contrast with the naturalistic scenes, and the result is a sense of design in the production, an achievement on stage which the audience can justly celebrate.
The Canadian Norm Foster "has been compared to Neil Simon" and his work related to "the character-driven comedies of Woody Allen", according to the program notes. That's stretching a long bow, at least in this play about a reunion on the golf course, after 15 years, of four male Business graduates.
The situation is static, even though they play 18 holes, and the comedy comes from the particularly competitive nature of Rick, who gets dudded in the end. It's as good as one of David Williamson's lighter-weight pieces, but even in a play like Money and Friends, Williamson's one-liners get us laughing sooner and more consistently.
The set design, costumes, sound and lights are up to Rep's usual excellent standard, and it was pleasing to hear the actors very naturally using proper Canadian accents. This is important because these characters' attitudes and language are not just North American but specifically Canadian. Foster has an ear for his native English just as Williamson has for Australian idiom.
Though, in my terms at least, the play is not "great", it is certainly fun. The treatment of the issues, such as the men's relations with women, though quite daring in its day, almost seems naïve in today's upfront world, but this only adds to the humour. It's funny, in both senses, to look back to 1989 - as the characters do to 1974 - and seem to remember an innocent past.
Book at Rep on 6247 4222.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"Great fun!" was the comment that rose above the general hubbub of celebration as the lights went up at the end of opening night. I thought The Foursome was fun, but it's not a great play.
It takes a while to warm up, but all the actors - Michael Sparks (Donnie), Brendan Sloane (Cameron), Alex Sangston (Ted) and Simon Lissaman (Rick) - have got their characters right and work very well together as an ensemble. Clelland's direction neatly takes us into occasional set pieces which contrast with the naturalistic scenes, and the result is a sense of design in the production, an achievement on stage which the audience can justly celebrate.
The Canadian Norm Foster "has been compared to Neil Simon" and his work related to "the character-driven comedies of Woody Allen", according to the program notes. That's stretching a long bow, at least in this play about a reunion on the golf course, after 15 years, of four male Business graduates.
The situation is static, even though they play 18 holes, and the comedy comes from the particularly competitive nature of Rick, who gets dudded in the end. It's as good as one of David Williamson's lighter-weight pieces, but even in a play like Money and Friends, Williamson's one-liners get us laughing sooner and more consistently.
The set design, costumes, sound and lights are up to Rep's usual excellent standard, and it was pleasing to hear the actors very naturally using proper Canadian accents. This is important because these characters' attitudes and language are not just North American but specifically Canadian. Foster has an ear for his native English just as Williamson has for Australian idiom.
Though, in my terms at least, the play is not "great", it is certainly fun. The treatment of the issues, such as the men's relations with women, though quite daring in its day, almost seems naïve in today's upfront world, but this only adds to the humour. It's funny, in both senses, to look back to 1989 - as the characters do to 1974 - and seem to remember an innocent past.
Book at Rep on 6247 4222.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 1 May 2004
2004: The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht
The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht. Directed by David Clapham for Moonlight at ANU Arts Centre Drama Studio, April 30, May 1 and May 4-8 8pm (matinee May 8 2pm)
The ANU drama scene has expanded. The Theatre Studies course has long supported Papermoon, mainly as a town-and-gown link. Now senior lecturer Tony Turner has helped Theatre Studies graduates set up Moonlight by providing a small budget and the DramaLab space for them to continue performing apres uni.
As a gown-and-town link, Moonlight has an academic framework. Each year a selection of works by a noted playwright will be presented. For this year's program The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Mother Courage and her Children (August) and The Good Person of Setzuan (September-October) are central to Brecht's work and highly accessible for a general audience.
Beginning with Brecht is a worthwhile challenge for graduates of a course which is not designed to produce fully-trained actors. This production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a success for its sincerity of purpose. The essential theme concerning the nature of justice in a world of social inequalities is clearly developed, particularly through Steph Brewster's presentation of the role of Grusha.
What is missing is the tight timing needed for the flow of Brecht's epic theatre, especially in the travelling scenes of the first half. Design and direction also needed Brecht's "literalisation" techniques. Banners with scene titles and the words of songs would balance the emotional aspects of scenes with the intellectual recognition, for example, of the oppositional nature of society, much of which was lost because actors and singers did not have the clarity of enunciation which would be expected of professionals.
Though the performers had a reasonable idea of the epic style, only Ruth Pickard as Shauwa, Azdak's assistant, maintained the proper degree of expressionistic acting that Brecht requires. There is a particular skill in avoiding the pitfalls of naturalism and melodrama which Brecht wrote about and taught in his Berliner Ensemble productions. Moonlighters will need to do more study to find the right fine line, the edge that epic theatre needs.
It is good to make these plays available. They are essential viewing to understand modern theatre, and this production is quite successful enough for a worthwhile and often enjoyable evening.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The ANU drama scene has expanded. The Theatre Studies course has long supported Papermoon, mainly as a town-and-gown link. Now senior lecturer Tony Turner has helped Theatre Studies graduates set up Moonlight by providing a small budget and the DramaLab space for them to continue performing apres uni.
As a gown-and-town link, Moonlight has an academic framework. Each year a selection of works by a noted playwright will be presented. For this year's program The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Mother Courage and her Children (August) and The Good Person of Setzuan (September-October) are central to Brecht's work and highly accessible for a general audience.
Beginning with Brecht is a worthwhile challenge for graduates of a course which is not designed to produce fully-trained actors. This production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a success for its sincerity of purpose. The essential theme concerning the nature of justice in a world of social inequalities is clearly developed, particularly through Steph Brewster's presentation of the role of Grusha.
What is missing is the tight timing needed for the flow of Brecht's epic theatre, especially in the travelling scenes of the first half. Design and direction also needed Brecht's "literalisation" techniques. Banners with scene titles and the words of songs would balance the emotional aspects of scenes with the intellectual recognition, for example, of the oppositional nature of society, much of which was lost because actors and singers did not have the clarity of enunciation which would be expected of professionals.
Though the performers had a reasonable idea of the epic style, only Ruth Pickard as Shauwa, Azdak's assistant, maintained the proper degree of expressionistic acting that Brecht requires. There is a particular skill in avoiding the pitfalls of naturalism and melodrama which Brecht wrote about and taught in his Berliner Ensemble productions. Moonlighters will need to do more study to find the right fine line, the edge that epic theatre needs.
It is good to make these plays available. They are essential viewing to understand modern theatre, and this production is quite successful enough for a worthwhile and often enjoyable evening.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 30 April 2004
2004: The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldini
The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldini. Bell Shakespeare Company directed by John Bell at The Playhouse, April 29 until May 15, 7.30pm. Matinees Saturdays May 1 and 15, 1.30pm. Bookings: 6275 2700 or 1800 802 025.
Go, Go, Go for Gold...ini! Take the kids to the matinees, they'll love it. Ring the Bell for John and his great team of designers, choreographers and actors. First among equals is Darren Gilshenan as the wildly comic servant Truffaldino.
Toll the bell for the late Nick Enright, sadly lost to cancer in 2002 at 52. He and Ron Blair adapted this 1746 off-beat Italian romantic comedy by translating it into the very Australian comic style of performers like Graham Kennedy, the earlier vaudeville team of Stiffy and Mo, Aunty Jack (I'll come round your place and I'll rip your bloody arms off) and today's Kath and Kim.
The jokes come thick and fast, in words and action, half the time apparently nothing to do with the play, and often improvised like Theatre Sports. There are no boundaries, and gradually a standard middle-class first-night Canberra audience warmed to the freedom until Truffaldino only had to show an eyebrow through the curtain and the place went wild.
But the play works so well because Goldini knew what he was doing. He took the popular Italian commedia street theatre into the theatre for the educated classes. The stock characters now have a new significance and the play becomes a social satire in which the servant class ups the ante on the master class and a sense of equality is the name of game in the final scene. I guess most of the audience today are descendants of the working class, so the play fits our Australian egalitarian sensibility.
In fact, I find myself thinking, we need this play to remind us not to let our rough and tumble knockabout ironic humour become lost in the new corporate world. It's what makes Australia endearing and different from the overblown self-importance of other cultures. This production is true to our culture, and it's great to see. Don't miss it, or I'll send Aunty Jack round your place.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Go, Go, Go for Gold...ini! Take the kids to the matinees, they'll love it. Ring the Bell for John and his great team of designers, choreographers and actors. First among equals is Darren Gilshenan as the wildly comic servant Truffaldino.
Toll the bell for the late Nick Enright, sadly lost to cancer in 2002 at 52. He and Ron Blair adapted this 1746 off-beat Italian romantic comedy by translating it into the very Australian comic style of performers like Graham Kennedy, the earlier vaudeville team of Stiffy and Mo, Aunty Jack (I'll come round your place and I'll rip your bloody arms off) and today's Kath and Kim.
The jokes come thick and fast, in words and action, half the time apparently nothing to do with the play, and often improvised like Theatre Sports. There are no boundaries, and gradually a standard middle-class first-night Canberra audience warmed to the freedom until Truffaldino only had to show an eyebrow through the curtain and the place went wild.
But the play works so well because Goldini knew what he was doing. He took the popular Italian commedia street theatre into the theatre for the educated classes. The stock characters now have a new significance and the play becomes a social satire in which the servant class ups the ante on the master class and a sense of equality is the name of game in the final scene. I guess most of the audience today are descendants of the working class, so the play fits our Australian egalitarian sensibility.
In fact, I find myself thinking, we need this play to remind us not to let our rough and tumble knockabout ironic humour become lost in the new corporate world. It's what makes Australia endearing and different from the overblown self-importance of other cultures. This production is true to our culture, and it's great to see. Don't miss it, or I'll send Aunty Jack round your place.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 27 April 2004
2004: Wallflowering by Peta Murray
Wallflowering by Peta Murray. Starring Noeline Brown and Doug Scroope. Directed by Bruce Myles. Produced by Christine Harris and Hit Productions at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, April 27.
What a pity that such a good production of such a good play with such good actors could squeeze only 2 performances in Canberra into over 41 weeks of touring. I can only hope that Tuggeranong Arts Centre's coup can be followed up by a return season here.
Wallflowering began its stage life here at the Australian National Playwrights Conference. After a public reading at the Sydney Theatre Company in 1989, Canberra Theatre Company - our last attempt at a permanent professional mainstage company - staged Wallflowering's first full production. Since then it has been produced around Australia, in England and USA and has even been screened on Polish television, in a Polish translation. The ABC has also adapted it for radio.
I wondered whether the play may have seemed dated by now. It's like having my life flashed before my eyes as Peg and Cliff face the onslaught of feminism. As Peg's "friends" and their books turn her "old-fashioned" ideas of happiness and love topsy-turvey, Cliff's equally "old-fashioned" beliefs about his role in life are challenged. He comes to understand that adults are no more than the children they always were, taller but no less nasty towards those who don't accept the group norms.
Peg's friends prove the point when they turn up to Peg and Cliff's fancy-dress party, dressed as Peg and Cliff. Peg, in tears, dressed as a carrot, finds Cliff as Julius Caesar, in tears for the first time in his life, and realises this is the moment when she loves him the most.
Held together by their love of dancing, Noeline Brown's Peg and Doug Scroope's Cliff tell us their story with such great delicacy and skill that, in a world where selfishness and short term gains seem set to take over our lives, we know at the end that "old-fashioned" can mean lasting love. "And what's wrong with that?", as Peg says.
15 years on it seems that Wallflowering has not become dated. It now looks even more like a play for our time.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
What a pity that such a good production of such a good play with such good actors could squeeze only 2 performances in Canberra into over 41 weeks of touring. I can only hope that Tuggeranong Arts Centre's coup can be followed up by a return season here.
Wallflowering began its stage life here at the Australian National Playwrights Conference. After a public reading at the Sydney Theatre Company in 1989, Canberra Theatre Company - our last attempt at a permanent professional mainstage company - staged Wallflowering's first full production. Since then it has been produced around Australia, in England and USA and has even been screened on Polish television, in a Polish translation. The ABC has also adapted it for radio.
I wondered whether the play may have seemed dated by now. It's like having my life flashed before my eyes as Peg and Cliff face the onslaught of feminism. As Peg's "friends" and their books turn her "old-fashioned" ideas of happiness and love topsy-turvey, Cliff's equally "old-fashioned" beliefs about his role in life are challenged. He comes to understand that adults are no more than the children they always were, taller but no less nasty towards those who don't accept the group norms.
Peg's friends prove the point when they turn up to Peg and Cliff's fancy-dress party, dressed as Peg and Cliff. Peg, in tears, dressed as a carrot, finds Cliff as Julius Caesar, in tears for the first time in his life, and realises this is the moment when she loves him the most.
Held together by their love of dancing, Noeline Brown's Peg and Doug Scroope's Cliff tell us their story with such great delicacy and skill that, in a world where selfishness and short term gains seem set to take over our lives, we know at the end that "old-fashioned" can mean lasting love. "And what's wrong with that?", as Peg says.
15 years on it seems that Wallflowering has not become dated. It now looks even more like a play for our time.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 8 April 2004
2004: Knowledge Quest: Australian Families Visit Museums launched at Australian National Museum. Feature article.
Craddock Morton, Acting Director of the National Museum of Australia, made an interesting observation in conversation after launching Knowledge Quest: Australian Families Visit Museums last Tuesday April 6. It's a dangerous profession, he said, referring not only to the review of the NMA and the discontinuation of Dawn Casey's services as Director, but to the fact that similar events have occurred recently at almost every major museum in Australia.
What's going on, and what does the future hold for the National Museum?
Knowledge Quest is an important research report published jointly by the Australian Museum in Sydney and the National Museum here in Canberra. I spoke to Susan Tonkin, co-author and leader of the Canberra team. A literature review of research into families at museums over some 70 years (in Britain, USA, Canada and Australia) gives a context for field research into 29 case studies of families in Sydney and Canberra who have visited one or other of the two local museums.
The result calls for action, but cleverly does not have the usual set of recommendations which can so easily be forgotten in a cobwebbed archive.
The conclusion to the report lays out the findings from the interviews like "Museums provided public spaces where parents could share community culture with their children" and suggests the implication of each finding. In this case "Museums have a role to play in presenting historic and contemporary topics in a form that both adults and children can engage with". There are 26 of these findings, ranging from the bigger issues to "Parents avoided places that were hard to supervise or had hazards" with the perhaps obvious implication "Spaces should not only allow easy supervision, but should be safe for children".
The clever part is Appendix 1: a Family-Friendliness Checklist. On the left are "Principles" under the headings Pre-visit, Orientation, Exhibit Design, Content, Labels/text, Programs, Practical considerations, Audience-specific (Infants and toddlers; Primary/secondary). Here's where the implications in the conclusion become manifest.
Being of simple mind, I chose Orientation. The first principle is "clear map with family facilities marked". In the right column is a box where you put Yes or No. The map I was given by a guide at NMA is a vertical cross-section of a circular structure laid out from left to right. All the bits of the museum are labelled, but it took the guide (who was very good) several minutes to explain to me how the map worked. Even then, when walking around the exhibits, I was quickly lost, and I had no children to look after. Tick No.
A new map is being prepared and should be ready in a month or two. Action is under way.
Take a principle like "facilitates developmentally-appropriate child-centred programs". I can quite confidently tick Yes for the National Museum, where events like the recent The Great Garden Game by Canberra Youth Theatre and the Tracking Kultja Festival in 2001, as well as the regular story-telling, place this museum at the forefront of modern practice.
Families represent 43% of visitors to NMA. 93% of families say they are satisfied or very satisfied, and 79% say they have "learned something interesting about Australian history which I didn't know before". But can the museum maintain the buzz of the first years? And will I soon be able to tick Yes in all the boxes? At the moment I have to put question marks against more than half of the implications from the research findings.
Craddock Morton says the new Strategic Plan, from July 1 2004, is designed to sustain the outward buzz by better underpinning with academic research. To do this well means money, of course. To do it really well means more money than in the past and submissions have gone to Cabinet. Knowledge Quest: Australian Families Visit Museums is a great example of strong research which says Give the NMA the money it needs to do really well. Let's tick more Yes boxes next year.
I guess we'll have to do a family-friendliness checklist on the Budget in May....
And maybe a museum directors' friendliness checklist might make their profession a little less dangerous. This research shows that "family-friendly" means up-to-date, new approaches, being interactive, learning through exploring, or as one principle of exhibit design says: "encourages children to apply principles rather than just push buttons". Let's hope a new permanent director understands this as Dawn Casey did.
"Underpinning with academic research" surely means discovering more historical truths, but not to be put in glass cases in dusty corners. Sustaining the NMA's energy means ticking Yes in all the family-friendliness boxes.
For a copy of Knowledge Quest: Australian Families Visit Museums contact Susan Tonkin, Evaluation and Visitor Research, National Museum of Australia GPO Box 1901, Canberra ACT 2601. Ph: 6208 5120. Email: s.tonkin@nma.gov.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
What's going on, and what does the future hold for the National Museum?
Knowledge Quest is an important research report published jointly by the Australian Museum in Sydney and the National Museum here in Canberra. I spoke to Susan Tonkin, co-author and leader of the Canberra team. A literature review of research into families at museums over some 70 years (in Britain, USA, Canada and Australia) gives a context for field research into 29 case studies of families in Sydney and Canberra who have visited one or other of the two local museums.
The result calls for action, but cleverly does not have the usual set of recommendations which can so easily be forgotten in a cobwebbed archive.
The conclusion to the report lays out the findings from the interviews like "Museums provided public spaces where parents could share community culture with their children" and suggests the implication of each finding. In this case "Museums have a role to play in presenting historic and contemporary topics in a form that both adults and children can engage with". There are 26 of these findings, ranging from the bigger issues to "Parents avoided places that were hard to supervise or had hazards" with the perhaps obvious implication "Spaces should not only allow easy supervision, but should be safe for children".
The clever part is Appendix 1: a Family-Friendliness Checklist. On the left are "Principles" under the headings Pre-visit, Orientation, Exhibit Design, Content, Labels/text, Programs, Practical considerations, Audience-specific (Infants and toddlers; Primary/secondary). Here's where the implications in the conclusion become manifest.
Being of simple mind, I chose Orientation. The first principle is "clear map with family facilities marked". In the right column is a box where you put Yes or No. The map I was given by a guide at NMA is a vertical cross-section of a circular structure laid out from left to right. All the bits of the museum are labelled, but it took the guide (who was very good) several minutes to explain to me how the map worked. Even then, when walking around the exhibits, I was quickly lost, and I had no children to look after. Tick No.
A new map is being prepared and should be ready in a month or two. Action is under way.
Take a principle like "facilitates developmentally-appropriate child-centred programs". I can quite confidently tick Yes for the National Museum, where events like the recent The Great Garden Game by Canberra Youth Theatre and the Tracking Kultja Festival in 2001, as well as the regular story-telling, place this museum at the forefront of modern practice.
Families represent 43% of visitors to NMA. 93% of families say they are satisfied or very satisfied, and 79% say they have "learned something interesting about Australian history which I didn't know before". But can the museum maintain the buzz of the first years? And will I soon be able to tick Yes in all the boxes? At the moment I have to put question marks against more than half of the implications from the research findings.
Craddock Morton says the new Strategic Plan, from July 1 2004, is designed to sustain the outward buzz by better underpinning with academic research. To do this well means money, of course. To do it really well means more money than in the past and submissions have gone to Cabinet. Knowledge Quest: Australian Families Visit Museums is a great example of strong research which says Give the NMA the money it needs to do really well. Let's tick more Yes boxes next year.
I guess we'll have to do a family-friendliness checklist on the Budget in May....
And maybe a museum directors' friendliness checklist might make their profession a little less dangerous. This research shows that "family-friendly" means up-to-date, new approaches, being interactive, learning through exploring, or as one principle of exhibit design says: "encourages children to apply principles rather than just push buttons". Let's hope a new permanent director understands this as Dawn Casey did.
"Underpinning with academic research" surely means discovering more historical truths, but not to be put in glass cases in dusty corners. Sustaining the NMA's energy means ticking Yes in all the family-friendliness boxes.
For a copy of Knowledge Quest: Australian Families Visit Museums contact Susan Tonkin, Evaluation and Visitor Research, National Museum of Australia GPO Box 1901, Canberra ACT 2601. Ph: 6208 5120. Email: s.tonkin@nma.gov.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 1 April 2004
2004: Dislabelled by Sofya Gollan and Caroline Conlon
Dislabelled by Sofya Gollan and Caroline Conlon. Australian Theatre of the Deaf directed by Tony Strachan. Music by Blair Greenberg. The Playhouse April 1-3 8pm.
If you think theatre of the deaf is theatre only for the deaf, think again. Open up the biscuit tin, shove your prejudice inside and firmly close the lid. Stick it in a dark cupboard, get out of the house and go and see Dislabelled. It's a hoot.
If you like sharp stand-up comedy with just enough audience participation, and who doesn't, then sharpen your wits and look out for the barbs when Gollan and Conlon get into action. As Gollan explains, deaf people don't beat about the bush. They get straight to the point, so be prepared for some R-rated sign language. These women insist they want to tell us about their awful, downtrodden lives. And then they complain because we keep on laughing!
A lot of their stories are about their sexual adventures. Of course, as they explain, there's no particular reason for deaf girls to fall in love with deaf boys, but communicating in the dark with an always-talking sweet-nothings hearing man is more than difficult - it's hilarious. Just wait till you hear how they tell each other whether they want sex or not by squeezing certain bits of anatomy.
In addition to music, song and dance, a special segment is Sophya Gollan's short film. She is not only a NIDA trained actor, but has an MA in directing from the Australian Film Television and Radio School. With a slightly satirical nod to Peter Corris she has produced a little crime mystery with a twist which is worth the trip to The Playhouse in its own right.
Caroline Conlon is a voluptuous bright-eyed joy on stage, while musician Greenberg is a great fall-guy for the two women. See the show, and see what I mean.
And after this show, you can forget about your old biscuit tin. You'll never need to open it again. You might be surprised to know that Auslan (Australian Sign Language) has over 4000 signs and is "spoken" by about 10,000 deaf people. It's an Australian original, like no other - and great fun.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If you think theatre of the deaf is theatre only for the deaf, think again. Open up the biscuit tin, shove your prejudice inside and firmly close the lid. Stick it in a dark cupboard, get out of the house and go and see Dislabelled. It's a hoot.
If you like sharp stand-up comedy with just enough audience participation, and who doesn't, then sharpen your wits and look out for the barbs when Gollan and Conlon get into action. As Gollan explains, deaf people don't beat about the bush. They get straight to the point, so be prepared for some R-rated sign language. These women insist they want to tell us about their awful, downtrodden lives. And then they complain because we keep on laughing!
A lot of their stories are about their sexual adventures. Of course, as they explain, there's no particular reason for deaf girls to fall in love with deaf boys, but communicating in the dark with an always-talking sweet-nothings hearing man is more than difficult - it's hilarious. Just wait till you hear how they tell each other whether they want sex or not by squeezing certain bits of anatomy.
In addition to music, song and dance, a special segment is Sophya Gollan's short film. She is not only a NIDA trained actor, but has an MA in directing from the Australian Film Television and Radio School. With a slightly satirical nod to Peter Corris she has produced a little crime mystery with a twist which is worth the trip to The Playhouse in its own right.
Caroline Conlon is a voluptuous bright-eyed joy on stage, while musician Greenberg is a great fall-guy for the two women. See the show, and see what I mean.
And after this show, you can forget about your old biscuit tin. You'll never need to open it again. You might be surprised to know that Auslan (Australian Sign Language) has over 4000 signs and is "spoken" by about 10,000 deaf people. It's an Australian original, like no other - and great fun.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 23 March 2004
2004: Remember Fortune Theatre? The Street Theatre Ensemble Group. Feature article
Remember Fortune Theatre? Theatre ACT? Canberra Theatre Company? Where have all these flowers gone?
The fact that I remember them only shows my age, I guess, but age does not weary some people, hope remains eternal, and now The Street Theatre has designs on another form of professional theatre for Canberra in its new Ensemble Group. But don't get your hopes up too high. It will take time, says artistic director Herman Pretorius.
Why, I ask, can't this higher-than-average income community simply put in the money for our own national capital flagship company? Similar cities in other countries do - like Ottawa in Canada, for example. Well, maybe not so similar: "A population of over 1.2 million makes the Ottawa region the fourth-largest urban area in Canada" explains the website. But on the other hand it also says "Whether your interest is culture, history or simply natural outdoor attractions, Canada's Capital region offers a unique combination of both. 30 museums. 50 galleries and theatres. Night clubs. Fine dining. World-class shopping. Heritage sites. Stunning architecture. Festivals. Cultural activities. Attractions. Tours. Natural wonders. Sports. Friendly people."
Sounds like home, but even at one quarter the population surely we should have at least one permanent professional theatre. Will The Street do the trick?
Facts in favour are a small number of trained actors coming to or returning to Canberra looking for professional work and continued professional development, and The Street's success in pulling in more audiences: 14,000 in 2000 raised to 26,561 in 2003. Facts against are the original conception of The Street as a "community" theatre, the tendency in Canberra to form lots of small companies, the always interesting issue of funding, and perhaps our proximity to the bright lights of Sydney.
Pretorius admits that 80% of work at The Street is "community", 20% professional, and although the theatre is fully utilised throughout the year, I'm guessing that more than 80% of audience numbers is in the community sector. What looks good about The Street's 2004 program is the community / cultural / professional mix in the monthly Bunch of Fives, Saturday Club and Youth Un-Plugged, the visiting shows by Shadow House PITS, Supa Productions, Shortis & Simpson, Daramalan Theatre Company, Phoenix Players and Stopera, as well as the special events which started with the National Multicultural Fringe Festival in February, Class Clowns 2004 March 23-25, the Midwinter Choral Festival in July after The Street's own 10th birthday Gala Performance in June.
The Street is presenting 3 professional productions - Domenic Mico's Sirocco and the Angel directed by Peter Damien Hayes (June-July), The Unexpected Man by the author of Art, Yasmina Reza, directed by Catherine Langman (September), and the "mysterious comedy" Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo directed by Herman Pretorius (November-December). This is an interesting combination of local and overseas writing which should be attractive to a Canberra theatre audience.
Calling itself "home to local professional theatre" The Street is managed by Stagemaster Inc. on contract to artsACT, now with 3 year funding and Board membership. The Stagemaster Board largely consists of theatre professionals from the earlier years of Season at the Street. Following last year's Professional Development Group project, The Ensemble Group is seen as stage 2 towards a standing professional company. 7 actors have been selected from interviews, auditions and a group workshop, supported by an "Artistic Group" (designer Kauro Alfonso, manager Katriina Ovchynik, musician and composer Lachlan Cotter, writer Peter Robinson, dramaturg and technician Steven Arculus and visual artist Blaide Lallemand). Project Directors are barb barnett and Catherine Langman, who also has this year's Residency at The Street for 3 months May-July.
Ensemble projects will explore The Four Humours (blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile) and Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. There will also be readings of 5 plays by local authors Peter J Casey & Carissa Campbell, Joel Barcham, David Finnigan and Adam Hadley, Bill Fleming, Paul Cliff and Susan Pellegrino, with Catherine Langman, Herman Pretorius, Steven Arculus, Cathy Clelland and Camilla Blunden as directors/dramaturgs. The Ensemble actors Emma Strand, barb barnett, Natasha Vagg, Cameron Thomas, Andrew Bibo, Raoul Craemer and Oliver Baudert will form the company for Mistero Buffo as the final main stage production for the year.
Can Pretorius, as CEO and Artistic Director of Stagemaster Inc., pull everything together and lead the Ensemble on to a bright new world of a permanent company? With a PhD from University of Pretoria (doctoral dissertation: Apartheid and Resistance: the development of a political protest theatre in South Africa) and his earlier Master of Arts in Drama cum laude, University of Stellenbosch (thesis: The implementation of Drama and Theatre in Education in South African schools), his academic and practical theatre background plus a successful business career in New Zealand seems just the right mix of left and right for Canberra. But, he says, at each step "you have to make it work to go the next step". Like our recycling efforts, he wants to "stop the waste" of local actors having to go elsewhere for professional employment. Like ActewAGL he wants to "stop the drop". To succeed, he insists, The Street must be inclusive of community and professional practitioners, never developing an exclusive elitist group.
I'm getting on a bit now, so I hope that it doesn't take too long for The Ensemble at The Street to become permanent. It won't only depend on Herman Pretorius, of course. The ACT Government, through artsACT, will be the final arbiter. Maybe there should be some "Save the Ensemble" demonstrations before this year's election. When do we need a permanent professional theatre? Now!
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The fact that I remember them only shows my age, I guess, but age does not weary some people, hope remains eternal, and now The Street Theatre has designs on another form of professional theatre for Canberra in its new Ensemble Group. But don't get your hopes up too high. It will take time, says artistic director Herman Pretorius.
Why, I ask, can't this higher-than-average income community simply put in the money for our own national capital flagship company? Similar cities in other countries do - like Ottawa in Canada, for example. Well, maybe not so similar: "A population of over 1.2 million makes the Ottawa region the fourth-largest urban area in Canada" explains the website. But on the other hand it also says "Whether your interest is culture, history or simply natural outdoor attractions, Canada's Capital region offers a unique combination of both. 30 museums. 50 galleries and theatres. Night clubs. Fine dining. World-class shopping. Heritage sites. Stunning architecture. Festivals. Cultural activities. Attractions. Tours. Natural wonders. Sports. Friendly people."
Sounds like home, but even at one quarter the population surely we should have at least one permanent professional theatre. Will The Street do the trick?
Facts in favour are a small number of trained actors coming to or returning to Canberra looking for professional work and continued professional development, and The Street's success in pulling in more audiences: 14,000 in 2000 raised to 26,561 in 2003. Facts against are the original conception of The Street as a "community" theatre, the tendency in Canberra to form lots of small companies, the always interesting issue of funding, and perhaps our proximity to the bright lights of Sydney.
Pretorius admits that 80% of work at The Street is "community", 20% professional, and although the theatre is fully utilised throughout the year, I'm guessing that more than 80% of audience numbers is in the community sector. What looks good about The Street's 2004 program is the community / cultural / professional mix in the monthly Bunch of Fives, Saturday Club and Youth Un-Plugged, the visiting shows by Shadow House PITS, Supa Productions, Shortis & Simpson, Daramalan Theatre Company, Phoenix Players and Stopera, as well as the special events which started with the National Multicultural Fringe Festival in February, Class Clowns 2004 March 23-25, the Midwinter Choral Festival in July after The Street's own 10th birthday Gala Performance in June.
The Street is presenting 3 professional productions - Domenic Mico's Sirocco and the Angel directed by Peter Damien Hayes (June-July), The Unexpected Man by the author of Art, Yasmina Reza, directed by Catherine Langman (September), and the "mysterious comedy" Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo directed by Herman Pretorius (November-December). This is an interesting combination of local and overseas writing which should be attractive to a Canberra theatre audience.
Calling itself "home to local professional theatre" The Street is managed by Stagemaster Inc. on contract to artsACT, now with 3 year funding and Board membership. The Stagemaster Board largely consists of theatre professionals from the earlier years of Season at the Street. Following last year's Professional Development Group project, The Ensemble Group is seen as stage 2 towards a standing professional company. 7 actors have been selected from interviews, auditions and a group workshop, supported by an "Artistic Group" (designer Kauro Alfonso, manager Katriina Ovchynik, musician and composer Lachlan Cotter, writer Peter Robinson, dramaturg and technician Steven Arculus and visual artist Blaide Lallemand). Project Directors are barb barnett and Catherine Langman, who also has this year's Residency at The Street for 3 months May-July.
Ensemble projects will explore The Four Humours (blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile) and Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. There will also be readings of 5 plays by local authors Peter J Casey & Carissa Campbell, Joel Barcham, David Finnigan and Adam Hadley, Bill Fleming, Paul Cliff and Susan Pellegrino, with Catherine Langman, Herman Pretorius, Steven Arculus, Cathy Clelland and Camilla Blunden as directors/dramaturgs. The Ensemble actors Emma Strand, barb barnett, Natasha Vagg, Cameron Thomas, Andrew Bibo, Raoul Craemer and Oliver Baudert will form the company for Mistero Buffo as the final main stage production for the year.
Can Pretorius, as CEO and Artistic Director of Stagemaster Inc., pull everything together and lead the Ensemble on to a bright new world of a permanent company? With a PhD from University of Pretoria (doctoral dissertation: Apartheid and Resistance: the development of a political protest theatre in South Africa) and his earlier Master of Arts in Drama cum laude, University of Stellenbosch (thesis: The implementation of Drama and Theatre in Education in South African schools), his academic and practical theatre background plus a successful business career in New Zealand seems just the right mix of left and right for Canberra. But, he says, at each step "you have to make it work to go the next step". Like our recycling efforts, he wants to "stop the waste" of local actors having to go elsewhere for professional employment. Like ActewAGL he wants to "stop the drop". To succeed, he insists, The Street must be inclusive of community and professional practitioners, never developing an exclusive elitist group.
I'm getting on a bit now, so I hope that it doesn't take too long for The Ensemble at The Street to become permanent. It won't only depend on Herman Pretorius, of course. The ACT Government, through artsACT, will be the final arbiter. Maybe there should be some "Save the Ensemble" demonstrations before this year's election. When do we need a permanent professional theatre? Now!
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 5 March 2004
2004: The Great Garden Game. Canberra Youth Theatre
The Great Garden Game. Canberra Youth Theatre's interpretation of the Garden of Australian Dreams at the National Museum of Australia. Artistic Director, Linda McHugh. March 3-6 and 12-13, 7.30-8.45pm.
If we praise Canberra Youth Theatre, then praise must go even more to the National Museum for commissioning The Great Garden Game, to follow CYT's Shake, part of the Tracking Kultja Festival 2001, and Alive! in 2002. Commissioning original work of this kind is unique among museums worldwide, and places our NMA in the forefront of modern thinking about a museum's role.
As a museum of Australian national culture, NMA firstly records, secondly reflects upon our cultural heritage, and thirdly creates new culture. CYT has produced a young person's view of life in Australia, in dramatic form, by exploring the Garden of Australian Dreams, which is itself a symbolic exploration of Australia in the form of landscape architecture. In April 2003 CYT formed a team of "Germinators", older young people including Antonia Aitken, Aj Biega, Maddy Donovan and Tom Woodward, joined in October by Dörte Finke as part of her studies in Cultural Science at the University of Hildesheim in Germany. Aged between 19 and 27, the Germinators were given the opportunity to learn the ropes of directing a creative development program with younger people, mainly secondary college student members of CYT.
Encouraging this process is an important initiative by NMA, and a unique feature of its work. So what have the young people come up with? They discovered while talking with Richard Weller of Room 413, the designer of The Garden of Australian Dreams, that the tunnel represented for him the idea that much of Australia's wealth is underground, and in this sense the land itself is where our modern dreaming is located.
CYT has used the tunnel as the place where each actor presents their personal understanding of what it means to live in Australia. Amongst critical views of our involvement in war, the main theme that I heard was about their sense of freedom, of speech and action. As you pass, each actor "switches on" rather like the soundscape in City Walk - an interesting idea, but I found it difficult to pick up more than a few words from each performer as the audience pass through and several actors are speaking at once.
Contrasting with the freedom theme, I found the two strongest pieces dramatically were being "imprisoned" in the white tower, which might have represented the experiences of asylum seekers in recent years, and the picture of the convict era played out around the huge fallen tree in floodwaters, with the road water depth indicator. By this time darkness had fallen, moonlight eerily shadowed the space and our authoritarian past seemed to well up with foreboding. Taken on a tour of this dreamscape, on a warm still night with the sun slowly setting, we had begun with humour (I found myself saying "Of course I do" to a sheep which demanded in baa language "Do you love me?") and gradually slipped into a deeper fantasy, almost a cultural memory.
I hope this kind of commission by the Museum can be extended in future years to youth theatres from other parts of Australia. This way young people's cultural understanding can be made available more widely. Perhaps an annual ritual exploration of the Garden of Australian Dreams could become part of the Museum program.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If we praise Canberra Youth Theatre, then praise must go even more to the National Museum for commissioning The Great Garden Game, to follow CYT's Shake, part of the Tracking Kultja Festival 2001, and Alive! in 2002. Commissioning original work of this kind is unique among museums worldwide, and places our NMA in the forefront of modern thinking about a museum's role.
As a museum of Australian national culture, NMA firstly records, secondly reflects upon our cultural heritage, and thirdly creates new culture. CYT has produced a young person's view of life in Australia, in dramatic form, by exploring the Garden of Australian Dreams, which is itself a symbolic exploration of Australia in the form of landscape architecture. In April 2003 CYT formed a team of "Germinators", older young people including Antonia Aitken, Aj Biega, Maddy Donovan and Tom Woodward, joined in October by Dörte Finke as part of her studies in Cultural Science at the University of Hildesheim in Germany. Aged between 19 and 27, the Germinators were given the opportunity to learn the ropes of directing a creative development program with younger people, mainly secondary college student members of CYT.
Encouraging this process is an important initiative by NMA, and a unique feature of its work. So what have the young people come up with? They discovered while talking with Richard Weller of Room 413, the designer of The Garden of Australian Dreams, that the tunnel represented for him the idea that much of Australia's wealth is underground, and in this sense the land itself is where our modern dreaming is located.
CYT has used the tunnel as the place where each actor presents their personal understanding of what it means to live in Australia. Amongst critical views of our involvement in war, the main theme that I heard was about their sense of freedom, of speech and action. As you pass, each actor "switches on" rather like the soundscape in City Walk - an interesting idea, but I found it difficult to pick up more than a few words from each performer as the audience pass through and several actors are speaking at once.
Contrasting with the freedom theme, I found the two strongest pieces dramatically were being "imprisoned" in the white tower, which might have represented the experiences of asylum seekers in recent years, and the picture of the convict era played out around the huge fallen tree in floodwaters, with the road water depth indicator. By this time darkness had fallen, moonlight eerily shadowed the space and our authoritarian past seemed to well up with foreboding. Taken on a tour of this dreamscape, on a warm still night with the sun slowly setting, we had begun with humour (I found myself saying "Of course I do" to a sheep which demanded in baa language "Do you love me?") and gradually slipped into a deeper fantasy, almost a cultural memory.
I hope this kind of commission by the Museum can be extended in future years to youth theatres from other parts of Australia. This way young people's cultural understanding can be made available more widely. Perhaps an annual ritual exploration of the Garden of Australian Dreams could become part of the Museum program.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 11 February 2004
2004: Chiao Wan Jan Puppet Troupe
THEATRE BY FRANK McKONE
Chiao Wan Jan Puppet Troupe. Ping Deng Elementary School, Taipei, Taiwan on the World Music Stage, Garema Place Wednesday, Thursday, Friday February 11-13, 6pm and Glebe Park Sunday February 15, 11am. National Multicultural Festival - free event.
One young gentleman informed me that he already knew the story of the three kings, which begins with the Monkey-king who lives in the water curtain cave where he is attacked by Ninjas, and so I realised how the Chinese tradition, via Japan's play stations, have infiltrated Australian culture. Much of what I saw, in my ignorance of the details of the story, looked like marvellous hand-puppets with all the action of a Bruce Lee / Jackie Chan movie, sometimes the subtleties of Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger, and often a sense of humour reminiscent of the English Punch and Judy.
Your children will certainly enjoy a show that for the fifth graders from Taipei was obviously good fun to perform. But there is much more to this puppet troupe. In a similar way to how the Flying Fruit Fly Circus School operates in Albury, these students choose hand puppetry as an elective class in a school which employs Puppet Master Li Tien-Lu to pass on the traditional art. For 11 year olds who have been training for less than 3 years, the current Ping Deng students have learned skills of a high order indeed in expressive manipulation of the puppets, in stage voice work, and on traditional musical instruments. The effect is a miniature but complete Chinese opera, including acrobatics and even a puppet which spins a plate balanced on a stick just as in the circus.
What I found impressive was that the teachers were so competent that they could be the facilitators and assistants for their students, who had clearly become self-reliant, independent and confident performers. They have travelled before to Korea, Canada and Singapore, so we are benefitting from their experience. These young people have learned the art of self-expression through discipline. The complexities and detail of the puppets' movements, the speaking and music are as much as most adults would find a challenge to learn, yet backstage (which we can see in the open air staging) there was absolute teamwork, cooperation and good humour. Not to be missed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Chiao Wan Jan Puppet Troupe. Ping Deng Elementary School, Taipei, Taiwan on the World Music Stage, Garema Place Wednesday, Thursday, Friday February 11-13, 6pm and Glebe Park Sunday February 15, 11am. National Multicultural Festival - free event.
One young gentleman informed me that he already knew the story of the three kings, which begins with the Monkey-king who lives in the water curtain cave where he is attacked by Ninjas, and so I realised how the Chinese tradition, via Japan's play stations, have infiltrated Australian culture. Much of what I saw, in my ignorance of the details of the story, looked like marvellous hand-puppets with all the action of a Bruce Lee / Jackie Chan movie, sometimes the subtleties of Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger, and often a sense of humour reminiscent of the English Punch and Judy.
Your children will certainly enjoy a show that for the fifth graders from Taipei was obviously good fun to perform. But there is much more to this puppet troupe. In a similar way to how the Flying Fruit Fly Circus School operates in Albury, these students choose hand puppetry as an elective class in a school which employs Puppet Master Li Tien-Lu to pass on the traditional art. For 11 year olds who have been training for less than 3 years, the current Ping Deng students have learned skills of a high order indeed in expressive manipulation of the puppets, in stage voice work, and on traditional musical instruments. The effect is a miniature but complete Chinese opera, including acrobatics and even a puppet which spins a plate balanced on a stick just as in the circus.
What I found impressive was that the teachers were so competent that they could be the facilitators and assistants for their students, who had clearly become self-reliant, independent and confident performers. They have travelled before to Korea, Canada and Singapore, so we are benefitting from their experience. These young people have learned the art of self-expression through discipline. The complexities and detail of the puppets' movements, the speaking and music are as much as most adults would find a challenge to learn, yet backstage (which we can see in the open air staging) there was absolute teamwork, cooperation and good humour. Not to be missed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 31 January 2004
2004: The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare. Thredbo Players at Cooma Little Theatre, January 30.
Despite a hailstorm of Shakespearean proportions outside, Thredbo Players succeeded in creating a relaxed warm atmosphere inside the converted Snowy Mountains Scheme shed which is Cooma Little Theatre (CLT). Since the rest of their season at Thredbo was outdoors, the Players must have appreciated proper facilities, expertly lit for them by Charles Monticone. CLT will be 50 years old next year, and the shed looks set for many more productions from Cooma itself and around the region.
It was a nice touch to set The Comedy of Errors in the Caribbean, not just because a cast member had Trinidadian dreadlocks and another a genuine Carib-English accent. The story of merchants sailing between islands, storms and shipwrecks, pirates, and the separation of husband and wife and the two sets of twins seemed natural in a fantasy island Caracus, not far from Barbados. Though many in the cast had never been on stage before, the setting and brightly-coloured costumes gave them a style and liveliness that carried them through. Playing for an audience who were not personal acquaintances allowed them to let their characters have their heads. The Cooma audience was enthusiastic, applauding each scene, giving the Thredbo players a sense of achievement that made the performance a celebration.
Thredbo Players is all that remains of the erstwhile Thredbo Shakespeare Festival, a great idea incorporating city professionals as well as the local amateurs which lasted several years, but was expensive without drawing the audience numbers needed for financial security. Directors Brett Thomas and Danni Matson have kept the spark of community drama alive, with support from a wide range of Thredbo businesses and associations. Little theatres like this are the life-blood of drama in small communities across the country.
The Comedy of Errors, though the prompt had plenty to do and received a special accolade at curtain call, proved not to be an error but a genuine expression of community spirit, with a number of people who were effective Shakespeare performers (Danni Matson as the Wife of Antipholous of Caracus in particular). The show communicated the fun and enjoyment of theatre to an appreciative audience. What more is community about?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Despite a hailstorm of Shakespearean proportions outside, Thredbo Players succeeded in creating a relaxed warm atmosphere inside the converted Snowy Mountains Scheme shed which is Cooma Little Theatre (CLT). Since the rest of their season at Thredbo was outdoors, the Players must have appreciated proper facilities, expertly lit for them by Charles Monticone. CLT will be 50 years old next year, and the shed looks set for many more productions from Cooma itself and around the region.
It was a nice touch to set The Comedy of Errors in the Caribbean, not just because a cast member had Trinidadian dreadlocks and another a genuine Carib-English accent. The story of merchants sailing between islands, storms and shipwrecks, pirates, and the separation of husband and wife and the two sets of twins seemed natural in a fantasy island Caracus, not far from Barbados. Though many in the cast had never been on stage before, the setting and brightly-coloured costumes gave them a style and liveliness that carried them through. Playing for an audience who were not personal acquaintances allowed them to let their characters have their heads. The Cooma audience was enthusiastic, applauding each scene, giving the Thredbo players a sense of achievement that made the performance a celebration.
Thredbo Players is all that remains of the erstwhile Thredbo Shakespeare Festival, a great idea incorporating city professionals as well as the local amateurs which lasted several years, but was expensive without drawing the audience numbers needed for financial security. Directors Brett Thomas and Danni Matson have kept the spark of community drama alive, with support from a wide range of Thredbo businesses and associations. Little theatres like this are the life-blood of drama in small communities across the country.
The Comedy of Errors, though the prompt had plenty to do and received a special accolade at curtain call, proved not to be an error but a genuine expression of community spirit, with a number of people who were effective Shakespeare performers (Danni Matson as the Wife of Antipholous of Caracus in particular). The show communicated the fun and enjoyment of theatre to an appreciative audience. What more is community about?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 21 January 2004
2004: In Conversation with Ian McKellen
In Conversation with Ian McKellen. Talking Culture (interviewer Bille Brown) at the Sydney Festival, Theatre Royal, January 19.
There were about 8 Gandalfs - stand-ins and even digitalised images - but the real Ian McKellen stood up before us, ending his conversation with an absolutely up-to-date speech about treating others with the respect that we would hope they would give us if we were to arrive unannounced in their country. These were Shakespeare's words in the mouth of Sir Thomas More in a play mostly written by others and never performed. The original manuscript -- the only handwritten Shakespeare speech extant - is in the British Museum.
I had wondered how McKellen coped with the ersatz Shakespeare in Lord of the Rings. The answer came in his story of a 14-year-old girl admirer. He asked her how she, at Juliet's age, could accept him playing Romeo. He was 37 at the time. "Well," she said, "it's only a play."
That humility about the actor's place was the key to appreciating Sir Ian's conversation with another actor, Bille Brown. His empathetic connection with a full house at the Theatre Royal was so strong that he could joke about the stage actor's hatred of microphones. "Fucking mikes" he exclaimed as pops, buzzes and electronic bangs reverberated around us. A 1 hour event became almost 2. The standing ovation almost made me late for my next show, Alibi, but this warmth of feeling was not to be missed. The contrast at the Town Hall was painful (see Alibi review, CT ....).
"I do have the facility," said McKellen in reply to a question about whether he plans to direct more plays or films, "as all actors have for seeing what's wrong with someone else's performance" and he admitted to being guilty, as others had said even when he refused a part, of "backing into the limelight again." But Brown described a rehearsal exercise devised by McKellen where each character tells each other character what they really think about them. This device ensures that each actor plays her or his character as if they are central to their scene and the whole play. No matter how "minor" the role, all the actors play with an equal sense of importance.
This creates true ensemble acting, for which McKellen is justifiably renowned. In this vein, he praised NSW Premier Bob Carr for supporting Robyn Nevin's plans to create a permanent ensemble at Sydney Theatre Company, and begged the Sydney Festival to have a Fringe Festival where new performers can break in. As he said, playing in 27 plays in a year in the old repertory theatres was the best training he had, but now it's much harder to get that kind of experience early in one's career.
Towards the end of his long career, McKellen finds it "very curious" that Gandalf is the part he is likely to be most remembered for. Fame is inescapable. When a woman in the street the day before made a double-take, asking "Are you Gandalf?" he promptly replied, "No, I'm not!"
But I can say he is a genuine wizard on stage.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
There were about 8 Gandalfs - stand-ins and even digitalised images - but the real Ian McKellen stood up before us, ending his conversation with an absolutely up-to-date speech about treating others with the respect that we would hope they would give us if we were to arrive unannounced in their country. These were Shakespeare's words in the mouth of Sir Thomas More in a play mostly written by others and never performed. The original manuscript -- the only handwritten Shakespeare speech extant - is in the British Museum.
I had wondered how McKellen coped with the ersatz Shakespeare in Lord of the Rings. The answer came in his story of a 14-year-old girl admirer. He asked her how she, at Juliet's age, could accept him playing Romeo. He was 37 at the time. "Well," she said, "it's only a play."
That humility about the actor's place was the key to appreciating Sir Ian's conversation with another actor, Bille Brown. His empathetic connection with a full house at the Theatre Royal was so strong that he could joke about the stage actor's hatred of microphones. "Fucking mikes" he exclaimed as pops, buzzes and electronic bangs reverberated around us. A 1 hour event became almost 2. The standing ovation almost made me late for my next show, Alibi, but this warmth of feeling was not to be missed. The contrast at the Town Hall was painful (see Alibi review, CT ....).
"I do have the facility," said McKellen in reply to a question about whether he plans to direct more plays or films, "as all actors have for seeing what's wrong with someone else's performance" and he admitted to being guilty, as others had said even when he refused a part, of "backing into the limelight again." But Brown described a rehearsal exercise devised by McKellen where each character tells each other character what they really think about them. This device ensures that each actor plays her or his character as if they are central to their scene and the whole play. No matter how "minor" the role, all the actors play with an equal sense of importance.
This creates true ensemble acting, for which McKellen is justifiably renowned. In this vein, he praised NSW Premier Bob Carr for supporting Robyn Nevin's plans to create a permanent ensemble at Sydney Theatre Company, and begged the Sydney Festival to have a Fringe Festival where new performers can break in. As he said, playing in 27 plays in a year in the old repertory theatres was the best training he had, but now it's much harder to get that kind of experience early in one's career.
Towards the end of his long career, McKellen finds it "very curious" that Gandalf is the part he is likely to be most remembered for. Fame is inescapable. When a woman in the street the day before made a double-take, asking "Are you Gandalf?" he promptly replied, "No, I'm not!"
But I can say he is a genuine wizard on stage.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2004: Eora Crossing. Legs on the Wall
Eora Crossing. Legs on the Wall with students from the Eora Centre, directed by Wesley Enoch. Sydney Festival, Museum of Sydney Forecourt, January 20-24, 9pm.
This free event was a genuine quality community festival display. Held at the site of Sydney's first Government House, the centre of the invading force which removed the Eora people from their home country, Enoch turned the modern city's buildings into images of Sydney Heads as people, spotlighted high on roof tops, observed the strangers arrive.
A smoking ceremony began proceedings. Serious business was in the offing, yet Enoch played the story of the clash of cultures with a lightness of touch emphasised by the aerial acrobatic dance we have come to expect from Legs on the Wall (remember the Opera House, New Year 2000?)
Even direct comedy had its place. An Aboriginal stand-up comedian told us "deadly" jokes, and we laughed. He raised the Aboriginal flag to stick it in the ground, just as Governor Phillip had raised the Union Jack. A volley of shots knocks him back over a high parapet. One sandshoe (a Volley, of course) waves at us cheekily as he disappears.
In spotlit office windows in surrounding real offices, besuited workers are stressed out. They have red hands - Eora blood on their hands. Later they print hand stencils on office windows - just like the red ochre hands in caves across Australia.
A figure in a black Nineteenth Century dress strips to reveal white underclothes, looking like Eliza Fraser. She dances suspended on the wall with an Aboriginal woman. A man in a grey suit pours buckets of water over a ceremonial dancer to remove his white ochre. He tries to put a suit on the Aboriginal man. But an Eora man cannot wear a suit and reverts to his own culture, to cheers and whistles from the crowd.
Finally, a rock climber - with a top rope but really climbing - slowly scales the vertical sandstone wall with Eora carvings projected on it. He links the white people on the lower parapet with the Eora people, appearing ghostlike more than 10 metres higher and more tens of metres above the audience.
Eora Crossing was both spectacular entertainment and a celebration of cultures seeking reconciliation. A Sydney Festival winner.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This free event was a genuine quality community festival display. Held at the site of Sydney's first Government House, the centre of the invading force which removed the Eora people from their home country, Enoch turned the modern city's buildings into images of Sydney Heads as people, spotlighted high on roof tops, observed the strangers arrive.
A smoking ceremony began proceedings. Serious business was in the offing, yet Enoch played the story of the clash of cultures with a lightness of touch emphasised by the aerial acrobatic dance we have come to expect from Legs on the Wall (remember the Opera House, New Year 2000?)
Even direct comedy had its place. An Aboriginal stand-up comedian told us "deadly" jokes, and we laughed. He raised the Aboriginal flag to stick it in the ground, just as Governor Phillip had raised the Union Jack. A volley of shots knocks him back over a high parapet. One sandshoe (a Volley, of course) waves at us cheekily as he disappears.
In spotlit office windows in surrounding real offices, besuited workers are stressed out. They have red hands - Eora blood on their hands. Later they print hand stencils on office windows - just like the red ochre hands in caves across Australia.
A figure in a black Nineteenth Century dress strips to reveal white underclothes, looking like Eliza Fraser. She dances suspended on the wall with an Aboriginal woman. A man in a grey suit pours buckets of water over a ceremonial dancer to remove his white ochre. He tries to put a suit on the Aboriginal man. But an Eora man cannot wear a suit and reverts to his own culture, to cheers and whistles from the crowd.
Finally, a rock climber - with a top rope but really climbing - slowly scales the vertical sandstone wall with Eora carvings projected on it. He links the white people on the lower parapet with the Eora people, appearing ghostlike more than 10 metres higher and more tens of metres above the audience.
Eora Crossing was both spectacular entertainment and a celebration of cultures seeking reconciliation. A Sydney Festival winner.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2004: Alibi. Damaged Goods (Belgium)
Alibi. Damaged Goods (Belgium) directed by Meg Stuart. Sydney Festival at Sydney Town Hall January 19, 21 and 22.
I worked it out 1 hour 30 minutes into 2 hours without interval. By attempting to confront the audience, this post-post-modern "dance" performance tried to say "because you want to be polite normal people, you allow things to happen which shouldn't be allowed to happen." A worthy theme but ....
The sound track bombarded us, lights were turned on us, among disconnected film projections dysfunctional characters accused us in long boring monologues. I saw almost no dance, but interminable repetitious mimetic movement sequences. In each the point was made in the first 30 seconds but then repeated itself with slight variations for up to 15 minutes, sequence after sequence for 2 hours.
On opening night the first of about 50 audience members clattered down the wooden bleachers after 20 minutes. I was obliged to stay, to see a grand nonentity of an ending. Movement stops, lights and sound switch off. That's it. Brilliant!
The performers were lucky the audience who stayed were good polite Australians. This piece is typical old-fashioned Continental European self-indulgent existential angst. Some people clapped and even a few cheered the bravura effort which looked and probably was exhausting.
It's not that I don't like modern dance. Remember - well I do - Merce Cunningham's completely silent dance in the late 1950s? No music! It was fascinating and showed us that our assumptions should never be taken for granted. So I suppose there are some 16-year-olds today who will say Yes (with a punch in the air) to Damaged Goods. But because their work showed so little subtlety or progression in the dance, it failed to move the audience emotionally.
Perhaps that's what they wanted to prove - that modern life so overwhelms us that we are no longer moved. A French character, simultaneously on film and on stage, said he was so ordinary that no-one would notice him. This is so old hat that we who were still there remained polite and allowed this performance to happen. No-one seriously challenged back like the audience who physically attacked an actor in the 1960s as he deliberately remained silent. Was our politeness worth it? I think not.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I worked it out 1 hour 30 minutes into 2 hours without interval. By attempting to confront the audience, this post-post-modern "dance" performance tried to say "because you want to be polite normal people, you allow things to happen which shouldn't be allowed to happen." A worthy theme but ....
The sound track bombarded us, lights were turned on us, among disconnected film projections dysfunctional characters accused us in long boring monologues. I saw almost no dance, but interminable repetitious mimetic movement sequences. In each the point was made in the first 30 seconds but then repeated itself with slight variations for up to 15 minutes, sequence after sequence for 2 hours.
On opening night the first of about 50 audience members clattered down the wooden bleachers after 20 minutes. I was obliged to stay, to see a grand nonentity of an ending. Movement stops, lights and sound switch off. That's it. Brilliant!
The performers were lucky the audience who stayed were good polite Australians. This piece is typical old-fashioned Continental European self-indulgent existential angst. Some people clapped and even a few cheered the bravura effort which looked and probably was exhausting.
It's not that I don't like modern dance. Remember - well I do - Merce Cunningham's completely silent dance in the late 1950s? No music! It was fascinating and showed us that our assumptions should never be taken for granted. So I suppose there are some 16-year-olds today who will say Yes (with a punch in the air) to Damaged Goods. But because their work showed so little subtlety or progression in the dance, it failed to move the audience emotionally.
Perhaps that's what they wanted to prove - that modern life so overwhelms us that we are no longer moved. A French character, simultaneously on film and on stage, said he was so ordinary that no-one would notice him. This is so old hat that we who were still there remained polite and allowed this performance to happen. No-one seriously challenged back like the audience who physically attacked an actor in the 1960s as he deliberately remained silent. Was our politeness worth it? I think not.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 12 January 2004
2004: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, adapted for the stage and directed by Jasan Savage. The University of Canberra Union and Young World Theatre at UCU Theatre, The Hub, UC, January 12-24 (Mon-Fri 10.30am & 2.30pm; Sat 2.30pm only).
This is a light holiday presentation for young children, quite nicely done in parts, but struggling to match its ambitions.
Though Baum wrote the original story a century ago, like most people I have lived for my 63 years with young Judy Garland's Dorothy energetically skipping along the Yellow Brick Road with the Scarecrow with no brain, Tinman without a heart and the Cowardly Lion, in the classy 1939 movie: impeccable timing and never a dull moment. So it was disappointing to walk in to the lively recording of the film soundtrack, which suddenly stopped. After a silence broken by some other unrelated music, and another silence while the Narrator and Dorothy entered the auditorium and sat about waiting, and more bits of soundtrack, and then a light on the front curtain, into which the Narrator finally walked to "tell us a story", I have to say I was amazed at the patience of toddlers and their obviously very polite parents.
After hearing the story of the Kansas tornado taking Dorothy's house up into the sky with her and Toto on board, as if from a mildy well-trained primary school teacher, the play began. At this point, I hoped, there would be action and movement to stir the children along, but no - just the Good Witch talking and answering Dorothy's questions. Only slowly did the storyline get moving towards the Emerald City and the Wizard himself. Although each actor played their character well, this adaptation left any excitement until the Scarecrow fell about needing stuffing without being tickled too much and we, the Munchkins, were asked to help Tinman not to cry so he wouldn't get rusty or to make a forest of hands for the travellers to hide in away from the nasty Witch of the West. With the small audience inevitable in this tiny theatre, it was hard work for the actors to establish warmth and rapport with the children. It wasn't quite the "magical fun filled, laughing, scary time" the program promised.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a light holiday presentation for young children, quite nicely done in parts, but struggling to match its ambitions.
Though Baum wrote the original story a century ago, like most people I have lived for my 63 years with young Judy Garland's Dorothy energetically skipping along the Yellow Brick Road with the Scarecrow with no brain, Tinman without a heart and the Cowardly Lion, in the classy 1939 movie: impeccable timing and never a dull moment. So it was disappointing to walk in to the lively recording of the film soundtrack, which suddenly stopped. After a silence broken by some other unrelated music, and another silence while the Narrator and Dorothy entered the auditorium and sat about waiting, and more bits of soundtrack, and then a light on the front curtain, into which the Narrator finally walked to "tell us a story", I have to say I was amazed at the patience of toddlers and their obviously very polite parents.
After hearing the story of the Kansas tornado taking Dorothy's house up into the sky with her and Toto on board, as if from a mildy well-trained primary school teacher, the play began. At this point, I hoped, there would be action and movement to stir the children along, but no - just the Good Witch talking and answering Dorothy's questions. Only slowly did the storyline get moving towards the Emerald City and the Wizard himself. Although each actor played their character well, this adaptation left any excitement until the Scarecrow fell about needing stuffing without being tickled too much and we, the Munchkins, were asked to help Tinman not to cry so he wouldn't get rusty or to make a forest of hands for the travellers to hide in away from the nasty Witch of the West. With the small audience inevitable in this tiny theatre, it was hard work for the actors to establish warmth and rapport with the children. It wasn't quite the "magical fun filled, laughing, scary time" the program promised.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 19 December 2003
2003: Outlawed at the National Museum of Australia
Outlawed at the National Museum of Australia. Adults $8, Concession $6, Children $5, Families $16. Until April 26, 2004 (closed Christmas Day).
This is a massive exhibition - a real stage coach in the middle makes you realise how big, clumsy and heavy history can be - so be prepared to spend lots of time. I found 2 hours was not enough. You certainly get your money's worth, but it is a good investment to also buy the catalogue, even for $20, because it gives you an excellent guide to how you might think through all the detailed information, images and artefacts and put together your own idea of the place of outlaws in human history.
At the end you can literally make up your own mind by choosing, say, our own Ned Kelly or Mexico's revolutionary bandit Pancho Villa, logging in to consider the evidence for and against, and deciding on a guilty or not guilty verdict. The question is, should every terrorist be condemned for breaking the "sanctity of law and order", or is the law sometimes on the sanctimonious side, like the law that condemned Robin Hood for killing a deer because all the deer in the forest were the King's deer.
The next question is, even when some outlaws really were robbers and killers without any obvious justification, why do so many - like Australian bushrangers, or the "respected merchant revealed as Ishikawa Goemon, renowned thief" and executed in Japan, 1594 - become treated as heroes?
The exhibition presents the historical record in a visually almost overwhelming way. Large film screens show snippets of movies, touch-screens abound, you can make your own video acting with Jesse James on a railcar rooftop, hooves and gunshots surround you. At the very end you can play a brand new Robin Hood playstation game which is not available in games stores yet. You see the real guns, real costumes worn in films, real photos of outlaws - dead and alive, the real armour that Joe Byrne wore in the Kelly gang's final battle at Glenrowan, real death masks and even the real head of a Chinese outlaw from only 90 years ago which was hung on the wall after his execution as a warning to others.
It takes a while to work out the floor plan of all this excitement. I found this confusing until a kind staff helper explained it to me. Maybe the Museum should give people a map. You begin by finding out what an outlaw is: a person who is classed as outside the law. Dr Madden, speaking in the Victorian Parliament in 1878 about a law about outlaws said, "Under this Bill a person may stalk them; he may steal upon them and shoot them down as he would shoot a kangaroo..."
Then by following around the outside circuit of the exhibition you walk through the typical life of an outlaw: what starts them off (like Phoolan Devi's gang rape and torture by higher caste men); how they confront the forces of the government; what they gain or fail to gain from being an outlaw; and how they come usually to a grisly end. Not every outlaw is represented in each of these sections, especially the more ancient cases, depending on how much historical evidence there is available. Up above the entrances to each section, made to look like engravings in gaps through stone walls, you will find title words like "Confrontation", but there is so much to see and hear on either side and to walk around that you can easily miss the signposts.
In the central area you will find the "studio" where stacks of multimedia screens show the outlaws represented in fictional film and documentaries, and where you can make your own video acting alongside the outlaws. You don't have to speak Japanese to be seen with Ishikawa Goemon, but I guess it might help!
The studio also includes the major exhibits on Goemon and the American woman outlaw Belle Starr, so they have less about them in the outer circuit. Above everything there are screens virtually on the ceiling with lengthy sections of fictional movies, so you can see why I felt slightly overwhelmed. However, I noticed the young people present seemed not to be fazed in the slightest, so maybe I'm just getting a little old and jaded. One 10-year-old thoroughly enjoyed leaping from one carriage top to the next with Jesse James.
Some people have fussed about the Museum seeming to support revolution, but this is nonsense. Outlawed shows the good and the bad of those both outside and inside the law, and leaves us to consider the rights and wrongs. Because some outlaws saw themselves as doing some kind of good, and some were seen after their deaths in this way, I guess that's why they have become heroes. The National Museum doesn't push a viewpoint. The evidence is there for everyone to make up their own mind. This is as it should be.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a massive exhibition - a real stage coach in the middle makes you realise how big, clumsy and heavy history can be - so be prepared to spend lots of time. I found 2 hours was not enough. You certainly get your money's worth, but it is a good investment to also buy the catalogue, even for $20, because it gives you an excellent guide to how you might think through all the detailed information, images and artefacts and put together your own idea of the place of outlaws in human history.
At the end you can literally make up your own mind by choosing, say, our own Ned Kelly or Mexico's revolutionary bandit Pancho Villa, logging in to consider the evidence for and against, and deciding on a guilty or not guilty verdict. The question is, should every terrorist be condemned for breaking the "sanctity of law and order", or is the law sometimes on the sanctimonious side, like the law that condemned Robin Hood for killing a deer because all the deer in the forest were the King's deer.
The next question is, even when some outlaws really were robbers and killers without any obvious justification, why do so many - like Australian bushrangers, or the "respected merchant revealed as Ishikawa Goemon, renowned thief" and executed in Japan, 1594 - become treated as heroes?
The exhibition presents the historical record in a visually almost overwhelming way. Large film screens show snippets of movies, touch-screens abound, you can make your own video acting with Jesse James on a railcar rooftop, hooves and gunshots surround you. At the very end you can play a brand new Robin Hood playstation game which is not available in games stores yet. You see the real guns, real costumes worn in films, real photos of outlaws - dead and alive, the real armour that Joe Byrne wore in the Kelly gang's final battle at Glenrowan, real death masks and even the real head of a Chinese outlaw from only 90 years ago which was hung on the wall after his execution as a warning to others.
It takes a while to work out the floor plan of all this excitement. I found this confusing until a kind staff helper explained it to me. Maybe the Museum should give people a map. You begin by finding out what an outlaw is: a person who is classed as outside the law. Dr Madden, speaking in the Victorian Parliament in 1878 about a law about outlaws said, "Under this Bill a person may stalk them; he may steal upon them and shoot them down as he would shoot a kangaroo..."
Then by following around the outside circuit of the exhibition you walk through the typical life of an outlaw: what starts them off (like Phoolan Devi's gang rape and torture by higher caste men); how they confront the forces of the government; what they gain or fail to gain from being an outlaw; and how they come usually to a grisly end. Not every outlaw is represented in each of these sections, especially the more ancient cases, depending on how much historical evidence there is available. Up above the entrances to each section, made to look like engravings in gaps through stone walls, you will find title words like "Confrontation", but there is so much to see and hear on either side and to walk around that you can easily miss the signposts.
In the central area you will find the "studio" where stacks of multimedia screens show the outlaws represented in fictional film and documentaries, and where you can make your own video acting alongside the outlaws. You don't have to speak Japanese to be seen with Ishikawa Goemon, but I guess it might help!
The studio also includes the major exhibits on Goemon and the American woman outlaw Belle Starr, so they have less about them in the outer circuit. Above everything there are screens virtually on the ceiling with lengthy sections of fictional movies, so you can see why I felt slightly overwhelmed. However, I noticed the young people present seemed not to be fazed in the slightest, so maybe I'm just getting a little old and jaded. One 10-year-old thoroughly enjoyed leaping from one carriage top to the next with Jesse James.
Some people have fussed about the Museum seeming to support revolution, but this is nonsense. Outlawed shows the good and the bad of those both outside and inside the law, and leaves us to consider the rights and wrongs. Because some outlaws saw themselves as doing some kind of good, and some were seen after their deaths in this way, I guess that's why they have become heroes. The National Museum doesn't push a viewpoint. The evidence is there for everyone to make up their own mind. This is as it should be.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 14 December 2003
2003: Good Day, Mr.Courbet adapted by Peter Wilkins
Good Day, Mr.Courbet adapted and directed by Peter Wilkins from Good Day Monsieur Courbet - The Letters of Gustave Courbet selected and translated by Petra ten-Doesschate-Chu. The Acting Company at the James O. Fairfax Theatre, National Gallery of Australia. Thursdays, December 11 and 18 6pm; Sundays, December 14 and 21 2pm.
If you have to miss this well-worthwhile production, commissioned by the NGA to accompany its current major exhibition French Paintings from the Musee Fabre, Montpellier (November 7, 2003 - February 15, 2004) I'm sure it will be because there are only two more performances scheduled in a busy week leading up to Christmas. You will have noticed the whole season of 4 performances only by close reading of the NGA's summer program. There has not been the general publicity of this production which it deserves, both in its own right and as a very important part of the exhibition.
I and a few others in the know were there on Sunday and I was not surprised that well-known thoroughly professional actor Phil Roberts, as Mr.Courbet, fluffed some lines and took some time to establish his character. With so much research to do for so little reward and with a tiny audience in a quite large theatre, anyone would find the task somewhat confidence-shaking. Gustave Courbet is a major-scale character to more than match his paintings. Roberts has the measure of the man, but it would be good to see the performances continue throughout the run of the exhibition.
Peter Wilkins has built a well justified reputation with his previous productions of the letters of Arthur Streeton and Claude Monet, but this show has the additional quality of placing Courbet in the political history of France. The radical painter who broke down the old Academy rules was also the fighter for democracy. Though jailed and dying a man broken by successive governments, Courbet, forgotten in standard histories, left the twin legacies of realism which became the now so popular impressionism, and the demand for freedom and democracy which we now take for granted. More than a peek into the artist's personality, Good Day Mr. Courbet shows us, as Courbet himself wrote, "not only a painter, but a human being".
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If you have to miss this well-worthwhile production, commissioned by the NGA to accompany its current major exhibition French Paintings from the Musee Fabre, Montpellier (November 7, 2003 - February 15, 2004) I'm sure it will be because there are only two more performances scheduled in a busy week leading up to Christmas. You will have noticed the whole season of 4 performances only by close reading of the NGA's summer program. There has not been the general publicity of this production which it deserves, both in its own right and as a very important part of the exhibition.
I and a few others in the know were there on Sunday and I was not surprised that well-known thoroughly professional actor Phil Roberts, as Mr.Courbet, fluffed some lines and took some time to establish his character. With so much research to do for so little reward and with a tiny audience in a quite large theatre, anyone would find the task somewhat confidence-shaking. Gustave Courbet is a major-scale character to more than match his paintings. Roberts has the measure of the man, but it would be good to see the performances continue throughout the run of the exhibition.
Peter Wilkins has built a well justified reputation with his previous productions of the letters of Arthur Streeton and Claude Monet, but this show has the additional quality of placing Courbet in the political history of France. The radical painter who broke down the old Academy rules was also the fighter for democracy. Though jailed and dying a man broken by successive governments, Courbet, forgotten in standard histories, left the twin legacies of realism which became the now so popular impressionism, and the demand for freedom and democracy which we now take for granted. More than a peek into the artist's personality, Good Day Mr. Courbet shows us, as Courbet himself wrote, "not only a painter, but a human being".
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 5 December 2003
2003: Are You Being Served? by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft
Are You Being Served? by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft. Tempo Theatre at Belconnen Community Centre December 4-6, 10-13 8pm (Matinees December 6 and 13, 2pm). Bookings: ANU Ticketing 6125 5491.
The actors have done well in re-creating the characters from this once popular British television series. Although their main task was to imitate rather than create original roles, everyone had clearly defined their character's mannerisms, foibles and attitudes and successfully produced consistent figures in three dimensions. Their hard work was evident and well appreciated by the audience.
The result is quite enjoyable light entertainment despite weaknesses in direction and design. Director Kim Wilson had to also fill in as Mr Rumbold at the late stages when the original actor dropped out -- an unfortunate but common experience in amateur companies -- and may therefore not have been able to polish the speed and pacing up to what is required for British farce. However the show should pick up on these points, especially for the night when, I am told, a large contingent of employees from our very own Grace Bros will be on hand. Not that I can imagine such non-politically correct behaviour in the Belconnen Mall establishment!
Wilson noted in the program he "found [the script] had its challenges to bring it to the medium of live theatre". These challenges were not well solved. We sat in silence facing a blank curtain for some minutes before a brief and indistinct recording of the TV intro faded into morning greetings as characters appeared on the shop floor from the lift. All too slow on stage, though it had worked on the screen with close-ups of facial expressions and rapid cut aways. We needed bright music like Rule Brittania before and between acts. If the opening had been of the characters rehearsing their German slap-thigh dance, action and laughs would have got the show moving at once and warmed the audience up. The actual dance later in the first act certainly got a good reaction, and could have been used again at the end for the curtain call. Then we could all have marched out to Rule Brittania.
Simple theatrical devices like these would make this show more lively and more fun.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The actors have done well in re-creating the characters from this once popular British television series. Although their main task was to imitate rather than create original roles, everyone had clearly defined their character's mannerisms, foibles and attitudes and successfully produced consistent figures in three dimensions. Their hard work was evident and well appreciated by the audience.
The result is quite enjoyable light entertainment despite weaknesses in direction and design. Director Kim Wilson had to also fill in as Mr Rumbold at the late stages when the original actor dropped out -- an unfortunate but common experience in amateur companies -- and may therefore not have been able to polish the speed and pacing up to what is required for British farce. However the show should pick up on these points, especially for the night when, I am told, a large contingent of employees from our very own Grace Bros will be on hand. Not that I can imagine such non-politically correct behaviour in the Belconnen Mall establishment!
Wilson noted in the program he "found [the script] had its challenges to bring it to the medium of live theatre". These challenges were not well solved. We sat in silence facing a blank curtain for some minutes before a brief and indistinct recording of the TV intro faded into morning greetings as characters appeared on the shop floor from the lift. All too slow on stage, though it had worked on the screen with close-ups of facial expressions and rapid cut aways. We needed bright music like Rule Brittania before and between acts. If the opening had been of the characters rehearsing their German slap-thigh dance, action and laughs would have got the show moving at once and warmed the audience up. The actual dance later in the first act certainly got a good reaction, and could have been used again at the end for the curtain call. Then we could all have marched out to Rule Brittania.
Simple theatrical devices like these would make this show more lively and more fun.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 29 October 2003
2003: Welcome to the Machine by George Huitker
Welcome to the Machine by George Huitker. Huitker Movement Theatre at Theatre 3, October 29 - November 2, 8pm.
This multi-media theatre piece is a kind of Orwellian 1984 set in 2222. It has the same dire warnings, where Big Brother becomes Dr Oliver Hermanni (Oliver Baudert), a Pygmalion figure who creates a set of clones which cannot survive in the real world. Huitker himself refers to the Frankenstein story and has been strongly influenced by the set design of the 1931 film by James Whale.
As in all these earlier stories, the creations by the mastermind seek their freedom, with disastrous results for themselves and their creators. The interesting twist in Huitker's version is that Dr Hermanni experiments with creativity itself in a world in which creativity has been effectively destroyed by the arts becoming no more than technological entertainment. He uses visual images from earlier times - Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries - to stimulate his clones, who respond in movement imagery.
The clones, numbered One to Six, each represent a different kind of artist - writer, musician, dancer and so on - who finally tell stories of their childhoods where adults failed to recognise or appreciate their natural creativity. Interestingly enough, in keeping with Huitker's theme, this section of the work is the only part which is dramatically powerful, as each character's experience is told to us but also played out in action by the whole group. We recognise ourselves in their fears and frustrations.
Technically the multimedia mix of audio and digital video is very well done, taking on a life of its own. In a way this begs the question of whether theatre can justifiably rely on technological entertainment in its own right, without deeply emotional human performance. It's hard to say whether the conundrum Welcome to the Machine leaves us with is intended by Huitker, or is an accidental result of his attempt to turn philosophical considerations into a theatrical event.
So, though a curate's egg, this work is worth seeing, especially for younger people, as a re-working of an old tradition in modern style. If Huitker can afford it, he should seek criticism and professional development further afield. It's a pity Meryl Tankard is not still in Canberra.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This multi-media theatre piece is a kind of Orwellian 1984 set in 2222. It has the same dire warnings, where Big Brother becomes Dr Oliver Hermanni (Oliver Baudert), a Pygmalion figure who creates a set of clones which cannot survive in the real world. Huitker himself refers to the Frankenstein story and has been strongly influenced by the set design of the 1931 film by James Whale.
As in all these earlier stories, the creations by the mastermind seek their freedom, with disastrous results for themselves and their creators. The interesting twist in Huitker's version is that Dr Hermanni experiments with creativity itself in a world in which creativity has been effectively destroyed by the arts becoming no more than technological entertainment. He uses visual images from earlier times - Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries - to stimulate his clones, who respond in movement imagery.
The clones, numbered One to Six, each represent a different kind of artist - writer, musician, dancer and so on - who finally tell stories of their childhoods where adults failed to recognise or appreciate their natural creativity. Interestingly enough, in keeping with Huitker's theme, this section of the work is the only part which is dramatically powerful, as each character's experience is told to us but also played out in action by the whole group. We recognise ourselves in their fears and frustrations.
Technically the multimedia mix of audio and digital video is very well done, taking on a life of its own. In a way this begs the question of whether theatre can justifiably rely on technological entertainment in its own right, without deeply emotional human performance. It's hard to say whether the conundrum Welcome to the Machine leaves us with is intended by Huitker, or is an accidental result of his attempt to turn philosophical considerations into a theatrical event.
So, though a curate's egg, this work is worth seeing, especially for younger people, as a re-working of an old tradition in modern style. If Huitker can afford it, he should seek criticism and professional development further afield. It's a pity Meryl Tankard is not still in Canberra.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 24 October 2003
2003: National Forum on Performance in Cultural Institutions No 2. Feature article.
Spotlight on Performance: National Forum on Performance in Cultural Institutions No 2. October 23-25 at National Museum of Australia, The Australian War Memorial, ScreenSound Australia and Old Parliament House. Chaired by Nigel Sutton (aka Hans the Storyteller).
This was the second of the biennial forums arranged by the National Museum of Australia as a member of the International Museum Theatre Alliance. There is almost a symbiotic relationship with the Museum of Science in Boston, USA, where 2001 keynote speaker Catherine Hughes established IMTA. This year's keynote speaker was John Lipsky, Associate Professor of Acting and Playwriting at Boston University's College for the Arts, who is also Associate Artistic Director of Vineyard Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard. He writes and directs mainstage plays, as well as shows for the Museum of Science, a Planetarium and the Catalyst Collaborative (about science, scientists and scientific issues) and for the Boston History Collaborative (dramatising Boston's history).
From Australia, NMA Director Dawn Casey welcomed a long list of performers and cultural institution managers, with papers/performances presented by ACT's Jigsaw Theatre Company, Women on a Shoestring, Shortis & Simpson and The Street Theatre (with Violine opening October 30) alongside X-Ray Theatre, ERTH Visual & Physical Inc, storytellers Nigel Sutton, Ed Miller and Mary French, Sovereign Hill Museums Association, Australian National Maritime Museum, Art Gallery of NSW, Artback NT Arts Touring Inc, Cairns Regional Gallery, Parliament House Education Officer Camilla Blunden, Australian War Memorial, University of Newcastle, Robert Swieca on evaluation models, Melbourne Museum, freelance writer/actor Stephen Barker and ScreenSound Australia.
A packed program over 2 days, followed by a day of practical workshops led by Lipsky, obeyed the first and only commandment for performers: Thou shalt not be boring. Lipsky described how he wrote about the concept of gravity by creating Jumping Jack Flash, jester to Queen Gravitas. Though Jack believed only in levity, his Queen proved in the end he couldn't defy gravity. He also demonstrated how the American entrant in the Rooster's Olympics found it difficult to accept that other countries' roosters didn't say "cock-a-doodle-doo" (the French entrant said "coquerico") in a show about understanding other cultures.
Speaking of his play about the debate on stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, which included talking embryos, Lipsky raised the key issue of the forum: cultural integrity. In his context, this was about presenting performances which are true first to the emotional life of complex characters (whether roosters, embryos or historical figures) and only then to the factual information museum educators and curators need to impart. The point is that people remember the scenes - and the embedded information - only if they have emotionally identified with the characters: an interesting twist on the Brechtian theory of theatre. Writing for museum performances is thus as demanding as writing major mainstream plays; and museum pieces are often only 20 minutes long.
From Boston to the Northern Territory, cultural integrity was the common theme. Andrish Saint-Clare of Artback NT explained that "fitting the institution to the performance" is crucial where indigenous performers are engaged. He was highly critical, for example, of galleries using indigenous performers for a first night opener, where the traditional dancers are not paid. This marginalises their performance, as opposed to the "real business" of selling paintings. "Curators," he said, "need to understand the place of performance in indigenous cultures." Performances are not merely re-creations of traditional pieces, but are new creations which are necessary to maintain peoples' cultures.
Institutions need to budget for professional technical support, dramaturgy, appropriate venues, proper negotiation with indigenous elders, and proper payment so that indigenous performances take their proper place in the total Australian cultural scene. He concluded, as many speakers from quite different perspectives agreed, "If you can't do it properly, don't do it."
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This was the second of the biennial forums arranged by the National Museum of Australia as a member of the International Museum Theatre Alliance. There is almost a symbiotic relationship with the Museum of Science in Boston, USA, where 2001 keynote speaker Catherine Hughes established IMTA. This year's keynote speaker was John Lipsky, Associate Professor of Acting and Playwriting at Boston University's College for the Arts, who is also Associate Artistic Director of Vineyard Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard. He writes and directs mainstage plays, as well as shows for the Museum of Science, a Planetarium and the Catalyst Collaborative (about science, scientists and scientific issues) and for the Boston History Collaborative (dramatising Boston's history).
From Australia, NMA Director Dawn Casey welcomed a long list of performers and cultural institution managers, with papers/performances presented by ACT's Jigsaw Theatre Company, Women on a Shoestring, Shortis & Simpson and The Street Theatre (with Violine opening October 30) alongside X-Ray Theatre, ERTH Visual & Physical Inc, storytellers Nigel Sutton, Ed Miller and Mary French, Sovereign Hill Museums Association, Australian National Maritime Museum, Art Gallery of NSW, Artback NT Arts Touring Inc, Cairns Regional Gallery, Parliament House Education Officer Camilla Blunden, Australian War Memorial, University of Newcastle, Robert Swieca on evaluation models, Melbourne Museum, freelance writer/actor Stephen Barker and ScreenSound Australia.
A packed program over 2 days, followed by a day of practical workshops led by Lipsky, obeyed the first and only commandment for performers: Thou shalt not be boring. Lipsky described how he wrote about the concept of gravity by creating Jumping Jack Flash, jester to Queen Gravitas. Though Jack believed only in levity, his Queen proved in the end he couldn't defy gravity. He also demonstrated how the American entrant in the Rooster's Olympics found it difficult to accept that other countries' roosters didn't say "cock-a-doodle-doo" (the French entrant said "coquerico") in a show about understanding other cultures.
Speaking of his play about the debate on stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, which included talking embryos, Lipsky raised the key issue of the forum: cultural integrity. In his context, this was about presenting performances which are true first to the emotional life of complex characters (whether roosters, embryos or historical figures) and only then to the factual information museum educators and curators need to impart. The point is that people remember the scenes - and the embedded information - only if they have emotionally identified with the characters: an interesting twist on the Brechtian theory of theatre. Writing for museum performances is thus as demanding as writing major mainstream plays; and museum pieces are often only 20 minutes long.
From Boston to the Northern Territory, cultural integrity was the common theme. Andrish Saint-Clare of Artback NT explained that "fitting the institution to the performance" is crucial where indigenous performers are engaged. He was highly critical, for example, of galleries using indigenous performers for a first night opener, where the traditional dancers are not paid. This marginalises their performance, as opposed to the "real business" of selling paintings. "Curators," he said, "need to understand the place of performance in indigenous cultures." Performances are not merely re-creations of traditional pieces, but are new creations which are necessary to maintain peoples' cultures.
Institutions need to budget for professional technical support, dramaturgy, appropriate venues, proper negotiation with indigenous elders, and proper payment so that indigenous performances take their proper place in the total Australian cultural scene. He concluded, as many speakers from quite different perspectives agreed, "If you can't do it properly, don't do it."
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 10 October 2003
2003: King Jack from the play Jack and the Midnight Monsters by Kate McNamara
King Jack, adapted by Jennie Vaskess from the play Jack and the Midnight Monsters by Kate McNamara. Original music by Meg Colwell, directed by Tim Hansen. Designer, Hilary Talbot. Canberra Youth Theatre directed by Jenni Vaskess at Ribbon Gum Theatre, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. School holiday season till October 12.
Sensible people like me arrived in time for morning tea before the 11.30 am start last Friday with a hot thermos, a honey sandwich, an umbrella, a cushion and two warm woolly jumpers. So, as you would expect, it snowed.
Though the snow passed over and the local kookaburras appropriately announced dry weather just as the show opened, I was extremely glad of my double jumper and cushion in the open air theatre. Yet the littlies for whom this musical story is designed seemed not to notice the cold, while their parents kept on smiling bravely.
There was plenty to smile at from these young performers, acting and singing in the face of environmental reality: not just the wind, but surrounded by gums without ribbons and not too many epicormic shoots after the January firestorm. In the original play the character Kell represents all of Jack's night-time fears, but Talbot made a mask and costume in fiery colours and shapes, allowing us to blend the convention of a child's midnight monsters with the reality of the bushfire. All the masks for the bird and animal characters were wonderful, one young boy near me tugging at his brother to "Look at the owl!" Mopoke seemed to look straight at you, ready to eat you up, and yet with large eyes innocent of any wrongdoing: nature is as it is.
The story is of King Cracticus Torquatus, the grey butcherbird who has lost his way, and how Jack helps by passing on the Ranger's information so King has the confidence to sing and listen for his family's song, until he is reunited with them. His success empowers him to defeat Kell, showing Jack in turn how his midnight fears can be put in their proper place.
This is a worthy story for littlies, and a worthy community contribution in return for the small grant Canberra Youth Theatre received from the ACT Bushfire Recovery Taskforce to help with this project.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sensible people like me arrived in time for morning tea before the 11.30 am start last Friday with a hot thermos, a honey sandwich, an umbrella, a cushion and two warm woolly jumpers. So, as you would expect, it snowed.
Though the snow passed over and the local kookaburras appropriately announced dry weather just as the show opened, I was extremely glad of my double jumper and cushion in the open air theatre. Yet the littlies for whom this musical story is designed seemed not to notice the cold, while their parents kept on smiling bravely.
There was plenty to smile at from these young performers, acting and singing in the face of environmental reality: not just the wind, but surrounded by gums without ribbons and not too many epicormic shoots after the January firestorm. In the original play the character Kell represents all of Jack's night-time fears, but Talbot made a mask and costume in fiery colours and shapes, allowing us to blend the convention of a child's midnight monsters with the reality of the bushfire. All the masks for the bird and animal characters were wonderful, one young boy near me tugging at his brother to "Look at the owl!" Mopoke seemed to look straight at you, ready to eat you up, and yet with large eyes innocent of any wrongdoing: nature is as it is.
The story is of King Cracticus Torquatus, the grey butcherbird who has lost his way, and how Jack helps by passing on the Ranger's information so King has the confidence to sing and listen for his family's song, until he is reunited with them. His success empowers him to defeat Kell, showing Jack in turn how his midnight fears can be put in their proper place.
This is a worthy story for littlies, and a worthy community contribution in return for the small grant Canberra Youth Theatre received from the ACT Bushfire Recovery Taskforce to help with this project.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 3 October 2003
2003: The Beatification of Newt Berton [and the Great Viagra Robbery] by Chris McDonald
The Beatification of Newt Berton [and the Great Viagra Robbery] by Chris McDonald. Laughing Stock Productions at The Street Theatre Studio October 1-4.
Farcical, anarchical and occasionally satirical, the Beatification of Newt Berton raises the hackles of horror: what if the world were run by the Church of Good Morning Australia? Would a time traveller from 2093 return to try to prevent Newt's beatification, while cracking on to Gretchen with an execrable joke like "Time is not impotent to me!"
Since we have probably seen the last of this play, after its seasons in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, and winning Best Comedy Writing at the 2003 Big Laugh Festival, I can offer some reflective commentary.
Originating from the drama society at Macquarie University, the material is typical undergraduate humour: genitals, farts, sexual references, itchy sports bras, God, the Devil and a drunken angel constitute the core of the jokes. On the more satirical side, the swamping of our lives by advertising and "newstainment" is the focus. Characters fall in love when they both burst into the same advertising jingles on cue, as if they have been set up by a stage hypnotist.
What keeps the show together is a simple storyline about One-Nut (James Pender) and Danny (Heath Franklin), who are soon to be evicted, except that they hope to turn their house into a shrine when Newt Berton is beatified by the Pope on the premises. The comedy comes from constant interruptions as Danny's girlfriend leaves him, their housemate Steve stashes 400 boxes of Viagra in his room, an incredibly fast-talking Avon lady sells them make-up, Siamese twin nuns arrive to represent the Pope, a newsreader with a tv for a head gives us the latest, a silver short skirted time traveller eats One-Nut's preserved testicle ....
The non-sequiturs require rapid changes in timing, accents, costumes and characters, including inveigling members of the audience to become things like a bookshelf and to respond vocally. The cast kept up the pace of verbal and physical jokes and certainly entertained the audience thoroughly for 70 minutes.
Most of the group are or have been Creative Arts students at Macquarie, and some are moving on to professional theatre training, while some have also had work in television and on stage. If comedy be the food of theatre, play on.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Farcical, anarchical and occasionally satirical, the Beatification of Newt Berton raises the hackles of horror: what if the world were run by the Church of Good Morning Australia? Would a time traveller from 2093 return to try to prevent Newt's beatification, while cracking on to Gretchen with an execrable joke like "Time is not impotent to me!"
Since we have probably seen the last of this play, after its seasons in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, and winning Best Comedy Writing at the 2003 Big Laugh Festival, I can offer some reflective commentary.
Originating from the drama society at Macquarie University, the material is typical undergraduate humour: genitals, farts, sexual references, itchy sports bras, God, the Devil and a drunken angel constitute the core of the jokes. On the more satirical side, the swamping of our lives by advertising and "newstainment" is the focus. Characters fall in love when they both burst into the same advertising jingles on cue, as if they have been set up by a stage hypnotist.
What keeps the show together is a simple storyline about One-Nut (James Pender) and Danny (Heath Franklin), who are soon to be evicted, except that they hope to turn their house into a shrine when Newt Berton is beatified by the Pope on the premises. The comedy comes from constant interruptions as Danny's girlfriend leaves him, their housemate Steve stashes 400 boxes of Viagra in his room, an incredibly fast-talking Avon lady sells them make-up, Siamese twin nuns arrive to represent the Pope, a newsreader with a tv for a head gives us the latest, a silver short skirted time traveller eats One-Nut's preserved testicle ....
The non-sequiturs require rapid changes in timing, accents, costumes and characters, including inveigling members of the audience to become things like a bookshelf and to respond vocally. The cast kept up the pace of verbal and physical jokes and certainly entertained the audience thoroughly for 70 minutes.
Most of the group are or have been Creative Arts students at Macquarie, and some are moving on to professional theatre training, while some have also had work in television and on stage. If comedy be the food of theatre, play on.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 20 September 2003
2003: The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett
The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett. Canberra Rep directed by Tony Turner. Theatre 3, September 19 - October 11. Bookings: 6247 4222.
In Los Angeles, so the story goes, Americans were not sure about going to The Madness of George III because they had missed seeing The Madness of George I and II. No wonder George III didn't want anyone to mention America. Lose a colony in 1776 and just see how they turn out. It would be enough to turn your piss purple!
Alan Bennett's play is very British. Jokes abound like the one about Piss the Elder and Piss the Younger, but you don't really need to know too much about 18th Century British politics because Bennett's jokes are not superficial one-liners. The complicated story of the King's apparent madness, the Prince of Wales' machinations and the Whig plot to overthrow the Tories tells itself like a good detective novel.
So if you missed George I and II, don't worry. Tony Turner has directed George III with the right style - just a touch of Feydeau farce in the political characters, but with a proper respect for the distressing situation of the King, and the Queen.
Ian Croker and Naone Carrel come up to the required mark in these roles, while even though skills varied as one would expect in such a large non-professional cast, there were many other strong performances. Duncan Ley as the Prince of Wales certainly left us in no doubt about the unpleasant position which the modern Prince Charles is in ("I've been waiting all my life," he says). Geoffrey Borny's Dr Willis had us persuaded that talking therapy works - though in the end we find it is just as ineffective on the disease of porphyria as bleeding, blistering and the examination of the King's stools.
It was especially good to see all the servants' characters played with great individuality, while Croker's demanding role as a victim of a disease who knows he appears mad but also knows he is not mad elicited deserving applause on opening night. And the excellent costuming by Anna Senior demands special mention.
Though a little flat in the early scenes, first night grew in strength especially in the second half, making this a very worthwhile production to see.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
In Los Angeles, so the story goes, Americans were not sure about going to The Madness of George III because they had missed seeing The Madness of George I and II. No wonder George III didn't want anyone to mention America. Lose a colony in 1776 and just see how they turn out. It would be enough to turn your piss purple!
Alan Bennett's play is very British. Jokes abound like the one about Piss the Elder and Piss the Younger, but you don't really need to know too much about 18th Century British politics because Bennett's jokes are not superficial one-liners. The complicated story of the King's apparent madness, the Prince of Wales' machinations and the Whig plot to overthrow the Tories tells itself like a good detective novel.
So if you missed George I and II, don't worry. Tony Turner has directed George III with the right style - just a touch of Feydeau farce in the political characters, but with a proper respect for the distressing situation of the King, and the Queen.
Ian Croker and Naone Carrel come up to the required mark in these roles, while even though skills varied as one would expect in such a large non-professional cast, there were many other strong performances. Duncan Ley as the Prince of Wales certainly left us in no doubt about the unpleasant position which the modern Prince Charles is in ("I've been waiting all my life," he says). Geoffrey Borny's Dr Willis had us persuaded that talking therapy works - though in the end we find it is just as ineffective on the disease of porphyria as bleeding, blistering and the examination of the King's stools.
It was especially good to see all the servants' characters played with great individuality, while Croker's demanding role as a victim of a disease who knows he appears mad but also knows he is not mad elicited deserving applause on opening night. And the excellent costuming by Anna Senior demands special mention.
Though a little flat in the early scenes, first night grew in strength especially in the second half, making this a very worthwhile production to see.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 18 September 2003
2003: The Deep, based on the book by Tim Winton
The Deep, based on the book by Tim Winton, adapted by Justin Cheek. Spare Parts Puppet Theatre directed by Noriko Nishimoto. The Playhouse September 17-20.
Absolute envy was my main feeling at the end of this beautiful presentation of how Alice overcame her fear of swimming in "the deep". She had a mum and a dad, a brother and a dog who all swam every day just for fun. I was brought up in chilly London among people who always wore a raincoat so we wouldn't catch cold, and never, ever, went into the water.
So when Alice, fascinated by the dolphin, without thinking, forgot her fear, and spent such a wonderful time among the silver fish and blue-green bubbles, I just felt so jealous. I too knew all about building sandcastles, but I still can't swim.
But then I remembered how her funny round-tummied dad and her long-tall mum had kept her going by saying how different people can do different things. I realised that The Deep is about more than just learning to swim. It's an engaging metaphor for learning to let go of your inhibitions and dive into whatever you really feel that you want to do in life. I guess the theatre is one of those things for me, so now I feel much better.
Like the children around me, from babes in arms to grown up children (including the director of Canberra Theatre, David Whitney and even the DPP Richard Refshauge), I knew this was great theatre. Not a show which entices the children into crude cheering and booing, The Deep is subtle in its effect.
Even the very young could understand the humour in the relationships among the boat people, when they raced each other, or commented on Alice's predicament, or were caught in a sudden swell. Everyone jumped when Alice sat on the crab, and enjoyed the joke when Alice tickled the crab in return. There were long periods of almost absolute silence as the children absorbed the enjoyment of being in the deep with Alice, played out in fluid movement, luminescent colour, and a meditative soundscape.
50 minutes in The Deep immerses children in excellent theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Absolute envy was my main feeling at the end of this beautiful presentation of how Alice overcame her fear of swimming in "the deep". She had a mum and a dad, a brother and a dog who all swam every day just for fun. I was brought up in chilly London among people who always wore a raincoat so we wouldn't catch cold, and never, ever, went into the water.
So when Alice, fascinated by the dolphin, without thinking, forgot her fear, and spent such a wonderful time among the silver fish and blue-green bubbles, I just felt so jealous. I too knew all about building sandcastles, but I still can't swim.
But then I remembered how her funny round-tummied dad and her long-tall mum had kept her going by saying how different people can do different things. I realised that The Deep is about more than just learning to swim. It's an engaging metaphor for learning to let go of your inhibitions and dive into whatever you really feel that you want to do in life. I guess the theatre is one of those things for me, so now I feel much better.
Like the children around me, from babes in arms to grown up children (including the director of Canberra Theatre, David Whitney and even the DPP Richard Refshauge), I knew this was great theatre. Not a show which entices the children into crude cheering and booing, The Deep is subtle in its effect.
Even the very young could understand the humour in the relationships among the boat people, when they raced each other, or commented on Alice's predicament, or were caught in a sudden swell. Everyone jumped when Alice sat on the crab, and enjoyed the joke when Alice tickled the crab in return. There were long periods of almost absolute silence as the children absorbed the enjoyment of being in the deep with Alice, played out in fluid movement, luminescent colour, and a meditative soundscape.
50 minutes in The Deep immerses children in excellent theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 12 September 2003
2003: Holy Day by Andrew Bovell. Feature article
Recently Prime Minister Howard announced that he was no longer being asked to say "sorry". National Sorry Day Committee co-chair Audrey Kinnear responded, "He has shown he hasn't got the heart to do it. So we'll wait till we get another prime minister who has got a heart."
The Sydney Theatre Company production of Holy Day by Andrew Bovell comes to Canberra at the end of this month. Watching it at The Wharf in Sydney I wondered, Is this a black arm-band I see before me? On the one hand, yes - but on the other hand this dark drama is much more elemental than an intellectual discussion about the left-wing anti-imperialist view of our history as opposed to the right-wing denial of an Aboriginal holocaust.
Whatever it is, this production is a heartfelt tour de force for Pamela Rabe as Nora, the proprietor of an early 1800's outback Travellers Rest "halfway from where they come from and halfway to wherever they're going", leading a quality ensemble. The elements of flooding rains, drought and everlasting distance, invoked in true Dorothea Mackellar fashion, are forces of immediate impact out of which twisted, damaged, even bizarre characters are formed. Dry misshapen souls, like weird mallee roots, are contrasted with the dangerous play of light on the waterhole. "Do you think the people in England can imagine a sky like this?" asks Goundry (Steve Le Marquand), murderer and paedophile.
The forces which bind and destroy white and black, far more than mere prejudice or even the simple need for economic survival, are represented in symbolic characters. The stolen Aboriginal child (Natasha Wanganeen), named Obedience by her love-starved God-less Irish "mother" Nora. The missionary's wife Elizabeth (Belinda McClory), so God-obsessed that she creates black chaos in this isolated universe. The boy Cornelius (Abe Forsythe) stolen and used by the fiend Goundry. Epstein (Mitchell Butel), an honest but wandering Jew. The right-thinking sheep farmer Wakefield (Anthony Phelan) who in the end knows he cannot stop the massacre down by the river. An Aboriginal woman Linda (Kyas Sherriff) who confesses a lie, like Joan of Arc, and like St Joan can only retract it through suicide.
And then there is Elizabeth's missing white child, so reminiscent of Azaria Chamberlain - a mystery at the heart of Australian experience, with no satisfactory conclusion. Without a body, as Wakefield tells Elizabeth, we will never know the truth.
Towards the end, before her own body is added to the toll, Obedience tells us the number of bodies down by the river on Holy Day. Should we be sorry? Should we say "sorry"?
Bovell's play perhaps suffers a little from too much heart, tending towards melodrama rather like plays from the 19th Century in which Holy Day is set. Emotional strings are pulled, but for the purpose of creating a new understanding of the effects of privation and extreme poverty on the white "pioneers" with their absolute inability to appreciate the strength of the surrounding black society which knew how to live, rather than just survive, in the Australian environment. Are we to blame these people who are shown to be so destructive of their own, let alone Aboriginal, society.
Holy Day could be seen as Bovell's attempt to write the Australian equivalent of Arthur Miller's American classic The Crucible. Although, in my opinion, Bovell is not as great a craftsman as Miller, and he doesn't have available the same sort of well-known historical event as the Salem witchcraft trials to use in the service of raising our modern consciousness, he has created a similar sense of panic when social norms break down.
Acting out these panic stricken characters would not be easy, one would think. I spoke to young Pitjantjatjara woman Natasha Wanganeen (also in Rabbit Proof Fence), the widely experienced Anthony Phelan and mother-figure (backstage as well as in the play) Pamela Rabe and found that, despite the complications of plot and the proliferation of themes, Bovell's delineation of the characters give them each a clear guide. In working through the convoluted details of events in the first week of rehearsals, they discovered why each character tells lies or deliberately withholds the truth at each point.
It is the story of the lost child which becomes the central spine of the drama, but, they explained, each character has his or her own unrelenting demands, however twisted their motivation, which propel each actor on to the bitter end.
Bitter for the characters, maybe, but not so for Natasha playing Obedience. On first reading the script she wondered if she could cope with the horror of her character's story, but is now proud of her role in representing the truth of her people's experience, and pleased that a white writer has been able to understand. For all the actors the play represents a commitment to exposing the lie in Wakefield's admonishment to Elizabeth "You and I will be silent about what has passed. For what is not spoken will eventually fade". They believe the truth must be spoken because only then can we all be reconciled to our past history and to each other across classes and cultures.
The strength of the play as Natasha sees it is that the story does not lay the blame on the audience. She and Pamela observed that, especially for younger audiences, it is the working out of the mystery surrounding the missing baby that grabs attention. Then, in the end, the play becomes a powerful source of thinking about our past and our future as Australians.
So do we need to apologise for Australia? Walking back through Sydney I noted Sandringham Garden in Hyde Park, dedicated as a "Memorial to King George IV and King George VI" in faded gold - tying this penal colony with unbreakable bonds to the old British Empire. No wonder the ex-convict pioneers went mad.
Then I saw the quintessential Kenworth truck with the proud but heartless label "Bitch from Hell II". Presumably other trucks are numbered I, III and so on. If this is the world-view of the 2003 Australian truck driver, then we all have much to be sorry for. Holy Days are surely ahead otherwise.
Holy Day by Andrew Bovell
Sydney Theatre Company
The Playhouse
September 30 - October 4
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
Group and School Bookings (suitable Years 10-12): 6243 5709
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The Sydney Theatre Company production of Holy Day by Andrew Bovell comes to Canberra at the end of this month. Watching it at The Wharf in Sydney I wondered, Is this a black arm-band I see before me? On the one hand, yes - but on the other hand this dark drama is much more elemental than an intellectual discussion about the left-wing anti-imperialist view of our history as opposed to the right-wing denial of an Aboriginal holocaust.
Whatever it is, this production is a heartfelt tour de force for Pamela Rabe as Nora, the proprietor of an early 1800's outback Travellers Rest "halfway from where they come from and halfway to wherever they're going", leading a quality ensemble. The elements of flooding rains, drought and everlasting distance, invoked in true Dorothea Mackellar fashion, are forces of immediate impact out of which twisted, damaged, even bizarre characters are formed. Dry misshapen souls, like weird mallee roots, are contrasted with the dangerous play of light on the waterhole. "Do you think the people in England can imagine a sky like this?" asks Goundry (Steve Le Marquand), murderer and paedophile.
The forces which bind and destroy white and black, far more than mere prejudice or even the simple need for economic survival, are represented in symbolic characters. The stolen Aboriginal child (Natasha Wanganeen), named Obedience by her love-starved God-less Irish "mother" Nora. The missionary's wife Elizabeth (Belinda McClory), so God-obsessed that she creates black chaos in this isolated universe. The boy Cornelius (Abe Forsythe) stolen and used by the fiend Goundry. Epstein (Mitchell Butel), an honest but wandering Jew. The right-thinking sheep farmer Wakefield (Anthony Phelan) who in the end knows he cannot stop the massacre down by the river. An Aboriginal woman Linda (Kyas Sherriff) who confesses a lie, like Joan of Arc, and like St Joan can only retract it through suicide.
And then there is Elizabeth's missing white child, so reminiscent of Azaria Chamberlain - a mystery at the heart of Australian experience, with no satisfactory conclusion. Without a body, as Wakefield tells Elizabeth, we will never know the truth.
Towards the end, before her own body is added to the toll, Obedience tells us the number of bodies down by the river on Holy Day. Should we be sorry? Should we say "sorry"?
Bovell's play perhaps suffers a little from too much heart, tending towards melodrama rather like plays from the 19th Century in which Holy Day is set. Emotional strings are pulled, but for the purpose of creating a new understanding of the effects of privation and extreme poverty on the white "pioneers" with their absolute inability to appreciate the strength of the surrounding black society which knew how to live, rather than just survive, in the Australian environment. Are we to blame these people who are shown to be so destructive of their own, let alone Aboriginal, society.
Holy Day could be seen as Bovell's attempt to write the Australian equivalent of Arthur Miller's American classic The Crucible. Although, in my opinion, Bovell is not as great a craftsman as Miller, and he doesn't have available the same sort of well-known historical event as the Salem witchcraft trials to use in the service of raising our modern consciousness, he has created a similar sense of panic when social norms break down.
Acting out these panic stricken characters would not be easy, one would think. I spoke to young Pitjantjatjara woman Natasha Wanganeen (also in Rabbit Proof Fence), the widely experienced Anthony Phelan and mother-figure (backstage as well as in the play) Pamela Rabe and found that, despite the complications of plot and the proliferation of themes, Bovell's delineation of the characters give them each a clear guide. In working through the convoluted details of events in the first week of rehearsals, they discovered why each character tells lies or deliberately withholds the truth at each point.
It is the story of the lost child which becomes the central spine of the drama, but, they explained, each character has his or her own unrelenting demands, however twisted their motivation, which propel each actor on to the bitter end.
Bitter for the characters, maybe, but not so for Natasha playing Obedience. On first reading the script she wondered if she could cope with the horror of her character's story, but is now proud of her role in representing the truth of her people's experience, and pleased that a white writer has been able to understand. For all the actors the play represents a commitment to exposing the lie in Wakefield's admonishment to Elizabeth "You and I will be silent about what has passed. For what is not spoken will eventually fade". They believe the truth must be spoken because only then can we all be reconciled to our past history and to each other across classes and cultures.
The strength of the play as Natasha sees it is that the story does not lay the blame on the audience. She and Pamela observed that, especially for younger audiences, it is the working out of the mystery surrounding the missing baby that grabs attention. Then, in the end, the play becomes a powerful source of thinking about our past and our future as Australians.
So do we need to apologise for Australia? Walking back through Sydney I noted Sandringham Garden in Hyde Park, dedicated as a "Memorial to King George IV and King George VI" in faded gold - tying this penal colony with unbreakable bonds to the old British Empire. No wonder the ex-convict pioneers went mad.
Then I saw the quintessential Kenworth truck with the proud but heartless label "Bitch from Hell II". Presumably other trucks are numbered I, III and so on. If this is the world-view of the 2003 Australian truck driver, then we all have much to be sorry for. Holy Days are surely ahead otherwise.
Holy Day by Andrew Bovell
Sydney Theatre Company
The Playhouse
September 30 - October 4
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
Group and School Bookings (suitable Years 10-12): 6243 5709
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 22 August 2003
2003: Messages and Take Two. Australian Theatre of the Deaf
Messages and Take Two. Australian Theatre of the Deaf, directed by Tony Strachan, at Canberra Grammar School August 21-23 7pm
AToD has been a professional company for 25 years, performing for the general public as well as the deaf community, providing teaching workshops for children and adults, and taking theatre-in-education into schools.
Messages is a series of humorous vignettes about communication designed for primary schools, while Take Two, for secondary schools, is the story of a Chinese young man backpacking around Australia and a practical young Australian country woman who meet at university. Despite the differences in their cultures and personalities, a bond is formed and romance blossoms, not because they are both deaf but because they learn to appreciate difference.
I found good fun in the Messages cameos of situations like communicating on the Titanic just before the iceberg, body language between a girl (Romy Bartz) and two boys (Michael Ng and Mathew Glenday) on the beach in Victorian England, and how the first astronaut on the moon meets a friendly bug-eyed monster and tries to tell his story back home.
The message in Take Two was plain enough but I thought the storyline was too simplistic for the theme to have much effect on modern young people. When I think back to mime artists like Marcel Marceau and the erstwhile Canadian Mime Theatre, Take Two seems rather naive and old-fashioned in concept compared to work I saw maybe 20 years ago. The characters were modern enough - the country girl likes building engines and is studying Vet Science, while the Chinese boy sees an opportunity in going abroad to study Architecture, but the situations (especially the stereotyped Chinese restaurant owner, a character I found offensive rather than funny) showed too little subtlety.
Other shows in the offing include Interpretation (at the Performance Space in Sydney in November), an adult study of the layers of meaning for deaf and hearing people, where hearing actors play interpreters, deaf actors interpret, and professional interpreters sign and interpret in speech for the audience. Comedy and ironic misunderstandings result in what should be a fascinating entertainment.
Next year there will be a cabaret which will tour nationally, titled Dislabelled (not disabled), and a deaf musical Friction.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
AToD has been a professional company for 25 years, performing for the general public as well as the deaf community, providing teaching workshops for children and adults, and taking theatre-in-education into schools.
Messages is a series of humorous vignettes about communication designed for primary schools, while Take Two, for secondary schools, is the story of a Chinese young man backpacking around Australia and a practical young Australian country woman who meet at university. Despite the differences in their cultures and personalities, a bond is formed and romance blossoms, not because they are both deaf but because they learn to appreciate difference.
I found good fun in the Messages cameos of situations like communicating on the Titanic just before the iceberg, body language between a girl (Romy Bartz) and two boys (Michael Ng and Mathew Glenday) on the beach in Victorian England, and how the first astronaut on the moon meets a friendly bug-eyed monster and tries to tell his story back home.
The message in Take Two was plain enough but I thought the storyline was too simplistic for the theme to have much effect on modern young people. When I think back to mime artists like Marcel Marceau and the erstwhile Canadian Mime Theatre, Take Two seems rather naive and old-fashioned in concept compared to work I saw maybe 20 years ago. The characters were modern enough - the country girl likes building engines and is studying Vet Science, while the Chinese boy sees an opportunity in going abroad to study Architecture, but the situations (especially the stereotyped Chinese restaurant owner, a character I found offensive rather than funny) showed too little subtlety.
Other shows in the offing include Interpretation (at the Performance Space in Sydney in November), an adult study of the layers of meaning for deaf and hearing people, where hearing actors play interpreters, deaf actors interpret, and professional interpreters sign and interpret in speech for the audience. Comedy and ironic misunderstandings result in what should be a fascinating entertainment.
Next year there will be a cabaret which will tour nationally, titled Dislabelled (not disabled), and a deaf musical Friction.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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