Political Animals by Shortis & Simpson, with cartoons by Geoff Pryor. The Street Theatre Studio May 18 to June 3, 8.30pm. Bookings: 6247 1223.
Satire can be such sweet revenge, sometimes bitter sorrow – but not too much of the latter, or it will become less entertainment and more pill to swallow. John Shortis gives us the whole gamut, though the balance is best achieved in the second half of Political Animals.
The offending cartoons include Amanda Vanstone as the migrating mutton bird who should have stayed at home, guess who as Gorillis Kirribillis, Kimbat the almost wombat, Costello the Bull, the Julia Bird, Sugar Glider Bob, and the empty cage from which the Nationals animals have escaped and gone wild. The songs, derived from Pryor’s pictures, vary in tone from the quite frightening Gorillis who would dictate to all 20 million of us if not kept on what looked like a rather flimsy leash, to the wonderfully sweet-dreaming green and brown sugar glider in the old-growth forest who stops the Stihl, which leads us into the poem “How Stihl the pool…” where we discover the sharp-beaked Julia Bird who pecks at nasty chain-saws.
Not all the songs succeeded - the fighting bull, for example, was a fuzzy concept – but much of the writing was more original than in previous shows and more captivating musically, especially when pre-recorded by the excellent string quartet Vincent G Edwards, Har-bei Seng, Olga Haydon and Charlotte Winslade. Moya Simpson found a stronger and richer voice to match the moods and the imitations of past popular singers, which gave an extra point to the satirical lyrics which covered many topics in songs beyond the cartoons – like Sadaam in the guise of a Cockney spiv offering a deal to the AWB where they pay him to buy their wheat.
Bob McMullan, the only politician brave enough to attend opening night, explained, when invited onto the stage, why politicians hate satirists and cartoonists. “Who would come and pay to see us?” he asked. As Simpson interjected, “But we do – pay, that is!”, he redeemed himself by pointing out the value of satire, and the Shortis & Simpson tradition in Canberra, in maintaining our democracy.
And so say all of us, say I.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 18 May 2006
Monday, 1 May 2006
2006: Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson
Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson. Directed by Bruce Myles for HIT Productions at Tuggeranong Community Arts Centre, May 1-2.
An excellent play deserves excellent directing of excellent actors, and just desserts were what we received on Monday night at TCA.
Hotel Sorrento, Rayson's first major success in 1990, has justifiably become a key modern Australian play. In short movie-like scenes, 8 characters' intertwined relationships reveal the personal and the global complexities of their lives. Everyone in the audience found themselves recognising their own experiences and responding with emotions from joy to sadness, as the central three sisters deal with the past and the present. If you've missed this production, see the DVD of the 1995 film.
Though I liked the film, I loved this production of the play. On the small TCA stage so close to the audience, every detail of the actors' expressions and body language directly communicated their feelings and thoughts to us. Myles' directing and the set and lighting design took our attention from character to character, from within the house and garden to the jetty and across the world to London, all linked with clear-noted guitar music (by Andrew Pendlebury), so smoothly that we were transported into the world on stage as if it were the most natural place to be. Figures moved in and out of light and shadow, scene changes becoming a choreographed dance of movement and stillness - the perfect model from which to learn the art of changing scenes.
All the actors - the sisters Celia de Burgh (Hilary), Marcella Russo (Pippa), Jane Nolan (Meg, whose novel Melancholy is short-listed for the Booker Prize), John Flaus (the sisters' father), Jared Daperis (Hilary's son Troy), Roger Oakley (Meg's English husband Edwin), Beverley Dunn (Marge, a new neighbour who recognises Sorrento in Meg's novel), and Kevin Harrington (who publishes socio-political essays about Australian culture) - formed a team of great strength, lifting the play off the stage and into our heads and hearts.
This Hotel Sorrento is a great success for producer Christine Harris and HIT Productions, and proves the special value of the role of Tuggeranong Community Arts in the Canberra theatre scene.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
An excellent play deserves excellent directing of excellent actors, and just desserts were what we received on Monday night at TCA.
Hotel Sorrento, Rayson's first major success in 1990, has justifiably become a key modern Australian play. In short movie-like scenes, 8 characters' intertwined relationships reveal the personal and the global complexities of their lives. Everyone in the audience found themselves recognising their own experiences and responding with emotions from joy to sadness, as the central three sisters deal with the past and the present. If you've missed this production, see the DVD of the 1995 film.
Though I liked the film, I loved this production of the play. On the small TCA stage so close to the audience, every detail of the actors' expressions and body language directly communicated their feelings and thoughts to us. Myles' directing and the set and lighting design took our attention from character to character, from within the house and garden to the jetty and across the world to London, all linked with clear-noted guitar music (by Andrew Pendlebury), so smoothly that we were transported into the world on stage as if it were the most natural place to be. Figures moved in and out of light and shadow, scene changes becoming a choreographed dance of movement and stillness - the perfect model from which to learn the art of changing scenes.
All the actors - the sisters Celia de Burgh (Hilary), Marcella Russo (Pippa), Jane Nolan (Meg, whose novel Melancholy is short-listed for the Booker Prize), John Flaus (the sisters' father), Jared Daperis (Hilary's son Troy), Roger Oakley (Meg's English husband Edwin), Beverley Dunn (Marge, a new neighbour who recognises Sorrento in Meg's novel), and Kevin Harrington (who publishes socio-political essays about Australian culture) - formed a team of great strength, lifting the play off the stage and into our heads and hearts.
This Hotel Sorrento is a great success for producer Christine Harris and HIT Productions, and proves the special value of the role of Tuggeranong Community Arts in the Canberra theatre scene.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 28 April 2006
2006: Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. Papermoon directed by Tony Turner at ANU Arts Centre, April 28 - May 13, 7.30pm. Bookings 6275 2700 or www.canberraticketing.com.au
This production leaves me in a quandary. Is it an intellectual representation of themes, or is it emotionally engaging theatre? Either intention is possible, but neither is successfully achieved.
Praise first, however. Ian Croker stood out as Enobarbus. In the difficult acoustics of the Arts Centre, his enunciation was clear and the character's emotions and understanding of the political and warfare manoeuvrings were plain to see. He held the play together. It was a mistake to ask him to also play the Clown who brings the asp to Cleopatra, but Croker managed even that transition very well.
Christa de Jager's Cleopatra became much more successful after Antony's death than before it. Shakespeare's poetry worked its wonder as it should in her final speeches.
But otherwise things fell short of good intentions. Mark Antony (Douglas Amarfio) was never "the crown o' the earth" as Cleopatra calls him, nor ever "my brother, my competitor in top of all design, my mate in empire" at whose death Octavius (Duncan Ley) weeps. Amarfio's vocal skills and presence on stage were just not up to the mark. Ley, too, despite strong performances in other plays, was constrained by a business suited Octavius - even at the height of battle - and could give no more than occasional flashes of the consummate strategist that he needed to be to defeat Pompey, then Antony and Cleopatra, and go on to become Augustus Caesar.
Costume design seemed to try to be thematic, but the mix of beautiful and erotic ancient Egyptian women among modern suits and army gear made Cleopatra look too much like a good time girl on the make in Bangkok instead of the powerful Queen of Egypt which de Jager did her best to play. If the Romans had also been dressed in their historically correct costumes, the setting would have been immediately established in a consistent style, allowing the play to tell its own story without problems like soldiers with modern guns committing suicide by falling on their swords. Otherwise go all modern, or timeless, but be consistent.
The result? "Take to you no hard thoughts" but don't expect too much.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This production leaves me in a quandary. Is it an intellectual representation of themes, or is it emotionally engaging theatre? Either intention is possible, but neither is successfully achieved.
Praise first, however. Ian Croker stood out as Enobarbus. In the difficult acoustics of the Arts Centre, his enunciation was clear and the character's emotions and understanding of the political and warfare manoeuvrings were plain to see. He held the play together. It was a mistake to ask him to also play the Clown who brings the asp to Cleopatra, but Croker managed even that transition very well.
Christa de Jager's Cleopatra became much more successful after Antony's death than before it. Shakespeare's poetry worked its wonder as it should in her final speeches.
But otherwise things fell short of good intentions. Mark Antony (Douglas Amarfio) was never "the crown o' the earth" as Cleopatra calls him, nor ever "my brother, my competitor in top of all design, my mate in empire" at whose death Octavius (Duncan Ley) weeps. Amarfio's vocal skills and presence on stage were just not up to the mark. Ley, too, despite strong performances in other plays, was constrained by a business suited Octavius - even at the height of battle - and could give no more than occasional flashes of the consummate strategist that he needed to be to defeat Pompey, then Antony and Cleopatra, and go on to become Augustus Caesar.
Costume design seemed to try to be thematic, but the mix of beautiful and erotic ancient Egyptian women among modern suits and army gear made Cleopatra look too much like a good time girl on the make in Bangkok instead of the powerful Queen of Egypt which de Jager did her best to play. If the Romans had also been dressed in their historically correct costumes, the setting would have been immediately established in a consistent style, allowing the play to tell its own story without problems like soldiers with modern guns committing suicide by falling on their swords. Otherwise go all modern, or timeless, but be consistent.
The result? "Take to you no hard thoughts" but don't expect too much.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 20 April 2006
2006: Tartuffe by Moliere
Tartuffe by Moliere. Centrepiece Theatre directed by Jordan Best at The Street Theatre Studio, Wednesdays to Saturdays until May 6, 7.30pm. Matinees Sunday April 30 and Saturday May 6 at 2pm. Bookings: 6247 1223.
It really is satisfying to see a production done with assurance and wit. Jordan Best and her cast understand the style needed for Moliere's form of comedy and have the confidence to play with a genuine sense of fun. There is a special visual joke, which may be interpreted to be a reference to a certain recent political cartoon, during the curtain call which is worth waiting for.
The use of religious humbug for personal gain and power was as common in the 17th Century as it is today, so this play was banned from public performance for 5 years after it was written in 1664. Played with a light touch, as Centrepiece have done, it is the comedy which gives immediate enjoyment while the criticism of dastardly human behaviour pokes its satirical head up between the lines to add to the fun. I suspect, though, there are still countries where a ban would be in the offing.
Performances are very good throughout, with minor roles showing as much character as major roles. A tricky part to play is Dorine, the servant who survives in this household ruled by the delusional Orgon not by being submissive but by challenging and manipulating her employers. Erin Pugh played with the art of commedia very effectively, as Moliere intended. Matt Marshall, as "humble" but lecherous Tartuffe, and Veronica Merton, as Elmire (Orgon's wife who exposes Tartuffe's sexual predations) made an excellent oppositional pair, while Liz Bradley (Mme Pernelle - Orgon's peremptory mother) provided the strong framework in the first and last scenes which the play needs.
Particularly amusing was Carly Jacobs' very petulant Marianne, Orgon's daughter, paired well with the sincere if slightly goofy Valere (Jim Adamik), especially in their "domestic", rejecting each other when they actually are in love. Calm down, says Dorine - you can have this argument after you're married.
This is a good beginning to the second year of Centrepiece. May there be many more.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
It really is satisfying to see a production done with assurance and wit. Jordan Best and her cast understand the style needed for Moliere's form of comedy and have the confidence to play with a genuine sense of fun. There is a special visual joke, which may be interpreted to be a reference to a certain recent political cartoon, during the curtain call which is worth waiting for.
The use of religious humbug for personal gain and power was as common in the 17th Century as it is today, so this play was banned from public performance for 5 years after it was written in 1664. Played with a light touch, as Centrepiece have done, it is the comedy which gives immediate enjoyment while the criticism of dastardly human behaviour pokes its satirical head up between the lines to add to the fun. I suspect, though, there are still countries where a ban would be in the offing.
Performances are very good throughout, with minor roles showing as much character as major roles. A tricky part to play is Dorine, the servant who survives in this household ruled by the delusional Orgon not by being submissive but by challenging and manipulating her employers. Erin Pugh played with the art of commedia very effectively, as Moliere intended. Matt Marshall, as "humble" but lecherous Tartuffe, and Veronica Merton, as Elmire (Orgon's wife who exposes Tartuffe's sexual predations) made an excellent oppositional pair, while Liz Bradley (Mme Pernelle - Orgon's peremptory mother) provided the strong framework in the first and last scenes which the play needs.
Particularly amusing was Carly Jacobs' very petulant Marianne, Orgon's daughter, paired well with the sincere if slightly goofy Valere (Jim Adamik), especially in their "domestic", rejecting each other when they actually are in love. Calm down, says Dorine - you can have this argument after you're married.
This is a good beginning to the second year of Centrepiece. May there be many more.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 18 April 2006
2006: Kate Shearer: new artistic director for Jigsaw Theatre Co and Big Sister Little Brother. Feature article and preview.
Jigsaw Theatre Company has a new artistic director, Kate Shearer. What does this mean for the future of quality theatre for children and young people in Canberra? My expectation is that Jigsaw's reputation is safe and sound.
I have to admit my bias. 30 years ago, while I was briefly chair of Canberra Children's Theatre Committee which included the legal strong-arm of today's Public Prosecutor Richard Refshauge, the decision was made to formalise the structure of The Jigsaw Company as a professional organisation in its own right. This was a high point in the work of director Carol Woodrow, the driving force behind Jigsaw and Canberra Youth Theatre, both still essential elements in the ever-swirling flux that is Canberra theatre.
From the beginning Jigsaw has been unusual, if not unique, in being funded on the one hand as an independent theatre company by the Australia Council and on the other as a provider of children's theatre experience and professional development for teachers by the ACT government school system. In other places education department teams have come and gone as state government spending has fluctuated, while independent theatre-in-education companies have relied on beating ever-increasing competition - with many consequent demises.
Jigsaw is not completely immune, but Shearer is not only an experienced actor, teacher and director, but a successful theatre company administrator, well able to put up the quality grant applications and tender bids that the Australia Council and ACT Government expect. It is, first of all, her wide ranging background and ability to integrate, in the best Jigsaw tradition, the theatrical, educational and administrative aspects of her job that gives me confidence.
As the previous director, Greg Lissaman, has moved on after 7 years, budget tightening is necessary as grants are less forthcoming and the ACT undertakes its review of expenditure. Jigsaw began with an artistic director, an administrator, a team of 5 actors/tutors including a seconded teacher, and a part-time secretary. Peter Wilkins - now Narrabundah College teacher and Canberra Times reviewer - was able to maintain this structure when he directed Jigsaw from 1980 to 1985. There were various arrangements with more or less full time staff through the directorships of Rod Wilson and Steven Champion until Lyn Wallis, whose manual for independent theatre companies In Good Company was recently reviewed in Times 2, took the reins in 1995 and made Jigsaw into a leaner company, employing actors, tutors, technical staff and writers as needed for each project. Lissaman followed this structure with a staff of 4 - artistic director, administrative director, production manager and education officer.
Shearer has herself and the position of General Manager has been advertised. Her first production for 4 to 12 year olds, Big Sister Little Brother by Mike Kenny, opens with a special school holiday showing on Friday April 28 and goes on into primary schools for a 3 week season (there are still a couple of slots left for schools to book). Her next show for secondary schools is Shopping for Shoes, employing one actor and 30 pairs of shoes, designed to challenge young people's understanding of consumerism and their concepts of theatre. Then, with HealthPact support, we will see Smokefree Showpod, a new development from the successful Burning Boards program. Taking the pressure off teachers, Showpod will run out of school with students in a 10 week program working with theatre professionals, leading to non-competitive productions involving all the performing arts - "a celebration of excellence."
The school shows also include cross-curriculum resource kits for teachers, while The Teacher's Toolbox is a professional development program, particularly for primary teachers.
Can Kate Shearer cope? Her history says absolutely yes. A performer since the age of 4, whose mother directed and acted and whose father was a history teacher (and theatre technician), Shearer has a theatre degree and graduate diploma of education from Queensland University of Technology, worked through her twenties as an actor and drama teacher in Australia, teaching actor training in Britain where at 30 she was offered directing work, and has returned each year since 2002 to work on schools' touring productions and summer school drama programs. "Being an actor," she says, "has made me a much better director" because she knows how difficult, exhausting and complex the work of an actor is. In between employment, she set up her own company, learning the management details on the way. Having only one job with a contract which says she can only work outside with Jigsaw Committee's approval, is almost easing off for this energetic woman.
In her thirties she has discovered that directing is "what I was really meant to be doing with my life". She "loves the making" of theatre, working with each different actor, caring for them individually and facilitating them to find their way into the work. Like being a teacher, I suggest. Yes, she says, but I can be strong when I need to be. I realise it is her strength combined with her energy which makes her a survivor in the uncertain world of theatre, and it is her inclusive approach which is right for The Jigsaw Company - its original name - where theatre and education work as one.
Big Sister Little Brother
Jigsaw Theatre Company
Tuggeranong Arts Centre
Friday and Saturday April 28 - 29, 10.30am, 1pm and 3pm
Tickets: $8 concession, $10 adult, $30 family (2 adults, 2 children)
Bookings: Phone 6293 1443
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I have to admit my bias. 30 years ago, while I was briefly chair of Canberra Children's Theatre Committee which included the legal strong-arm of today's Public Prosecutor Richard Refshauge, the decision was made to formalise the structure of The Jigsaw Company as a professional organisation in its own right. This was a high point in the work of director Carol Woodrow, the driving force behind Jigsaw and Canberra Youth Theatre, both still essential elements in the ever-swirling flux that is Canberra theatre.
From the beginning Jigsaw has been unusual, if not unique, in being funded on the one hand as an independent theatre company by the Australia Council and on the other as a provider of children's theatre experience and professional development for teachers by the ACT government school system. In other places education department teams have come and gone as state government spending has fluctuated, while independent theatre-in-education companies have relied on beating ever-increasing competition - with many consequent demises.
Jigsaw is not completely immune, but Shearer is not only an experienced actor, teacher and director, but a successful theatre company administrator, well able to put up the quality grant applications and tender bids that the Australia Council and ACT Government expect. It is, first of all, her wide ranging background and ability to integrate, in the best Jigsaw tradition, the theatrical, educational and administrative aspects of her job that gives me confidence.
As the previous director, Greg Lissaman, has moved on after 7 years, budget tightening is necessary as grants are less forthcoming and the ACT undertakes its review of expenditure. Jigsaw began with an artistic director, an administrator, a team of 5 actors/tutors including a seconded teacher, and a part-time secretary. Peter Wilkins - now Narrabundah College teacher and Canberra Times reviewer - was able to maintain this structure when he directed Jigsaw from 1980 to 1985. There were various arrangements with more or less full time staff through the directorships of Rod Wilson and Steven Champion until Lyn Wallis, whose manual for independent theatre companies In Good Company was recently reviewed in Times 2, took the reins in 1995 and made Jigsaw into a leaner company, employing actors, tutors, technical staff and writers as needed for each project. Lissaman followed this structure with a staff of 4 - artistic director, administrative director, production manager and education officer.
Shearer has herself and the position of General Manager has been advertised. Her first production for 4 to 12 year olds, Big Sister Little Brother by Mike Kenny, opens with a special school holiday showing on Friday April 28 and goes on into primary schools for a 3 week season (there are still a couple of slots left for schools to book). Her next show for secondary schools is Shopping for Shoes, employing one actor and 30 pairs of shoes, designed to challenge young people's understanding of consumerism and their concepts of theatre. Then, with HealthPact support, we will see Smokefree Showpod, a new development from the successful Burning Boards program. Taking the pressure off teachers, Showpod will run out of school with students in a 10 week program working with theatre professionals, leading to non-competitive productions involving all the performing arts - "a celebration of excellence."
The school shows also include cross-curriculum resource kits for teachers, while The Teacher's Toolbox is a professional development program, particularly for primary teachers.
Can Kate Shearer cope? Her history says absolutely yes. A performer since the age of 4, whose mother directed and acted and whose father was a history teacher (and theatre technician), Shearer has a theatre degree and graduate diploma of education from Queensland University of Technology, worked through her twenties as an actor and drama teacher in Australia, teaching actor training in Britain where at 30 she was offered directing work, and has returned each year since 2002 to work on schools' touring productions and summer school drama programs. "Being an actor," she says, "has made me a much better director" because she knows how difficult, exhausting and complex the work of an actor is. In between employment, she set up her own company, learning the management details on the way. Having only one job with a contract which says she can only work outside with Jigsaw Committee's approval, is almost easing off for this energetic woman.
In her thirties she has discovered that directing is "what I was really meant to be doing with my life". She "loves the making" of theatre, working with each different actor, caring for them individually and facilitating them to find their way into the work. Like being a teacher, I suggest. Yes, she says, but I can be strong when I need to be. I realise it is her strength combined with her energy which makes her a survivor in the uncertain world of theatre, and it is her inclusive approach which is right for The Jigsaw Company - its original name - where theatre and education work as one.
Big Sister Little Brother
Jigsaw Theatre Company
Tuggeranong Arts Centre
Friday and Saturday April 28 - 29, 10.30am, 1pm and 3pm
Tickets: $8 concession, $10 adult, $30 family (2 adults, 2 children)
Bookings: Phone 6293 1443
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 5 April 2006
2006: Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks by Richard Alfieri
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks by Richard Alfieri. Sydney's Ensemble Theatre at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, directed by Sandra Bates, starring Nancye Hayes and Todd McKenney. April 5 - 9, 8pm. Bookings: www.canberratheatre.org.au or Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
With each dance lesson, widowed Lily Harrison buys more than she bargained for. Dance teacher Michael Minetti gives more than his due. Both are outspoken in this often very funny play, yet both hide much that can only be revealed when each learns to recognise honestly the other's situation. Their conflict is resolved in sad acceptance of their fates at last.
What might have been a too well-made play becomes a delight to watch as Hayes and McKenney bounce sparks and laughter off each other. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you take me to the dance - despite their mood swings, and phoned interruptions from Ida downstairs, they dance superbly in every lesson. As Minetti teaches the swing, the tango and Viennese waltz he begins to realise that old Mrs Harrison knows not only these but the foxtrot and the cha-cha as well as he does. And it takes her very little practice to find her feet in the twist and other "contemporary" dances, as she informs him that the Beach Boys split up at least 20 years ago.
As each exposes more of their life to the other, we see both the humour and the dreadful sides of their experiences. If there is a criticism of the play, it is that Alfieri uses his characters to make a point about too many issues, but Bates' tight directing and the actors' skills in raising and lowering the emotional temperature bring the play to life. The audience on Wednesday had no doubt that the result is thoroughly enjoyable on stage, while the issues are opened up for serious consideration.
Six Dance Lessons is here until Sunday, but if you miss it you can pick it up at the Theatre Royal in Sydney April 12 - 16.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
With each dance lesson, widowed Lily Harrison buys more than she bargained for. Dance teacher Michael Minetti gives more than his due. Both are outspoken in this often very funny play, yet both hide much that can only be revealed when each learns to recognise honestly the other's situation. Their conflict is resolved in sad acceptance of their fates at last.
What might have been a too well-made play becomes a delight to watch as Hayes and McKenney bounce sparks and laughter off each other. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you take me to the dance - despite their mood swings, and phoned interruptions from Ida downstairs, they dance superbly in every lesson. As Minetti teaches the swing, the tango and Viennese waltz he begins to realise that old Mrs Harrison knows not only these but the foxtrot and the cha-cha as well as he does. And it takes her very little practice to find her feet in the twist and other "contemporary" dances, as she informs him that the Beach Boys split up at least 20 years ago.
As each exposes more of their life to the other, we see both the humour and the dreadful sides of their experiences. If there is a criticism of the play, it is that Alfieri uses his characters to make a point about too many issues, but Bates' tight directing and the actors' skills in raising and lowering the emotional temperature bring the play to life. The audience on Wednesday had no doubt that the result is thoroughly enjoyable on stage, while the issues are opened up for serious consideration.
Six Dance Lessons is here until Sunday, but if you miss it you can pick it up at the Theatre Royal in Sydney April 12 - 16.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 28 March 2006
2006: In Good Company - A manual for producing independent theatre by Lyn Wallis. Book review.
In Good Company - A manual for producing independent theatre by Lyn Wallis. Currency Press 2005. $32.95 illustrated paperback.
Lyn Wallis was artistic director of The Jigsaw Company here in Canberra for 4 years in the '90s, and was largely instrumental in taking Jigsaw beyond its original theatre-in-education format to include young adult theatre, so successfully followed up by recent director Greg Lissaman.
Wallis went on to become Downstairs Theatre Director at Belvoir St, Sydney, where she set up the mentoring program, B Sharp, for Company B. She has observed and assisted the development of independent ("indie") theatre alongside the "world of fully-paid professional theatre [where] an artistic director would have for each production a full complement of designers, a production manager, a rehearsal room, a season stage manager (and maybe ASM), a costume co-ordinator" while the employing company "would very likely have an in-house marketing and publicity department and graphic designer, and would act as overall producer of the work, under the watchful eye of a general manager or administrator".
"The independent situation is rarely so richly resourced!", she writes, but small companies still need to cover all the producing responsibilities - and her book tells you how to do it. Written in a direct, sometimes even blunt, conversational style, In Good Company is a really useful book for what Wallis calls "collaborators" in Canberra's multitude of small independent theatre groups. Wallis describes it as a "practical guide for producers of small-scale professional, co-operative and amateur theatre", and that's exactly what it is.
For example, it gives you all the websites you need, to find out everything you've always known you needed to know but maybe never knew how to find.
I want to add drama teachers to the list of must-readers. The book is both full of information teachers need to put on public performances, but it is also a model for teachers to use. Wallis describes typical small company structures which can clarify how to set up a school student group as a production company, both to take the load off an individual teacher's shoulders and to teach the students about theatre in the real world.
And what is the real world of Canberra theatre? It's jam-packed full of small-scale professional, co-operative and amateur theatre. Some have lasted, it seems, forever - Canberra Repertory, for example - but many others are short-lived. There was Theatre ACT, Fortune Theatre, Canberra Theatre Company, which were the forerunners of The Street Theatre.
Looking over the reviews I've written in the past 10 years, I re-discovered names like Culturally Innovative Arts (remember David Branson?), Company Skylark, Elbow Theatre, Eureka!, BITS Theatre, WildWood Theatre, Women on a Shoestring and other fully professional outfits. When I began counting groups like those run by former students of colleges and universities, individuals, amateurs who sometimes employ a professional director and a host of other combinations, I found a total of about 70.
Full Tilt, New Erektions, Hidden Corners, Bohemian Productions, Paradox Theatre, Odd Productions, Free-Rain, Aberrant Genotype Productions - the mind boggles at the variety.
For a new company, begin with clarifying how your group will work. Write a Letter of Agreement between everyone involved, even if you remain an informal company. Inc or not to Inc? is an important question: "incorporation vs incarceration", says Wallis.
How independent do you want to be, or what can you gain from being associated with a venue which may provide box-office facilities, publicity, technical staff and other services in a "curated season". This is the direction The Street Theatre went in the days when several professional companies realised that doing everything separately, in effect in competition with each other, was counter-productive. Better to work co-operatively in The Season at The Street, so that funding applications had a firmer base, and costs such as publicity and ticketing could be shared.
What's the best way of managing the rehearsal and performance periods, covering your insurance and other legal requirements, setting up an Australian Business Number (ABN) and GST arrangements, handling the media, getting copyright right? Everything is answered in this almost pocket-sized book. "The more task-specific people you can build into your team the better, but most companies don't need (and don't have!) a dozen people to get a small-scale production up and running" and Wallis explains different options with real-life examples.
My advice is to read the book from cover to cover first, to get the big picture. Then go back and tab the pages with the particular bits of information you need. That's my only gripe. I would like a double-page spread at the beginning or the end with a complete flow chart from first meeting, through planning, administrative and legal set-up, funding and publicity, rehearsal, venue arrangements, production week, performance season, project completion and on-going arrangements.
Each twist and turn in the chart of the company's affairs could be flagged with the page number where you can follow through the details. Then the book would be just about perfect. And it may well save many theatre collaborators much angst, and even extend their - theatrical - lives.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Lyn Wallis was artistic director of The Jigsaw Company here in Canberra for 4 years in the '90s, and was largely instrumental in taking Jigsaw beyond its original theatre-in-education format to include young adult theatre, so successfully followed up by recent director Greg Lissaman.
Wallis went on to become Downstairs Theatre Director at Belvoir St, Sydney, where she set up the mentoring program, B Sharp, for Company B. She has observed and assisted the development of independent ("indie") theatre alongside the "world of fully-paid professional theatre [where] an artistic director would have for each production a full complement of designers, a production manager, a rehearsal room, a season stage manager (and maybe ASM), a costume co-ordinator" while the employing company "would very likely have an in-house marketing and publicity department and graphic designer, and would act as overall producer of the work, under the watchful eye of a general manager or administrator".
"The independent situation is rarely so richly resourced!", she writes, but small companies still need to cover all the producing responsibilities - and her book tells you how to do it. Written in a direct, sometimes even blunt, conversational style, In Good Company is a really useful book for what Wallis calls "collaborators" in Canberra's multitude of small independent theatre groups. Wallis describes it as a "practical guide for producers of small-scale professional, co-operative and amateur theatre", and that's exactly what it is.
For example, it gives you all the websites you need, to find out everything you've always known you needed to know but maybe never knew how to find.
I want to add drama teachers to the list of must-readers. The book is both full of information teachers need to put on public performances, but it is also a model for teachers to use. Wallis describes typical small company structures which can clarify how to set up a school student group as a production company, both to take the load off an individual teacher's shoulders and to teach the students about theatre in the real world.
And what is the real world of Canberra theatre? It's jam-packed full of small-scale professional, co-operative and amateur theatre. Some have lasted, it seems, forever - Canberra Repertory, for example - but many others are short-lived. There was Theatre ACT, Fortune Theatre, Canberra Theatre Company, which were the forerunners of The Street Theatre.
Looking over the reviews I've written in the past 10 years, I re-discovered names like Culturally Innovative Arts (remember David Branson?), Company Skylark, Elbow Theatre, Eureka!, BITS Theatre, WildWood Theatre, Women on a Shoestring and other fully professional outfits. When I began counting groups like those run by former students of colleges and universities, individuals, amateurs who sometimes employ a professional director and a host of other combinations, I found a total of about 70.
Full Tilt, New Erektions, Hidden Corners, Bohemian Productions, Paradox Theatre, Odd Productions, Free-Rain, Aberrant Genotype Productions - the mind boggles at the variety.
For a new company, begin with clarifying how your group will work. Write a Letter of Agreement between everyone involved, even if you remain an informal company. Inc or not to Inc? is an important question: "incorporation vs incarceration", says Wallis.
How independent do you want to be, or what can you gain from being associated with a venue which may provide box-office facilities, publicity, technical staff and other services in a "curated season". This is the direction The Street Theatre went in the days when several professional companies realised that doing everything separately, in effect in competition with each other, was counter-productive. Better to work co-operatively in The Season at The Street, so that funding applications had a firmer base, and costs such as publicity and ticketing could be shared.
What's the best way of managing the rehearsal and performance periods, covering your insurance and other legal requirements, setting up an Australian Business Number (ABN) and GST arrangements, handling the media, getting copyright right? Everything is answered in this almost pocket-sized book. "The more task-specific people you can build into your team the better, but most companies don't need (and don't have!) a dozen people to get a small-scale production up and running" and Wallis explains different options with real-life examples.
My advice is to read the book from cover to cover first, to get the big picture. Then go back and tab the pages with the particular bits of information you need. That's my only gripe. I would like a double-page spread at the beginning or the end with a complete flow chart from first meeting, through planning, administrative and legal set-up, funding and publicity, rehearsal, venue arrangements, production week, performance season, project completion and on-going arrangements.
Each twist and turn in the chart of the company's affairs could be flagged with the page number where you can follow through the details. Then the book would be just about perfect. And it may well save many theatre collaborators much angst, and even extend their - theatrical - lives.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 18 March 2006
2006: The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance
The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance. Moonlight, directed by Jay Sullivan at ANU Arts Centre Drama Lab. March 15-25, 8pm.
I'm glad I never saw the David Lynch film, which seems to count the roles of John Merrick and Dr Frederick Treves as the star parts. In Moonlight's production, Matt Borneman certainly stands out as the Elephant Man and Justin Davidson does a competent job as Dr Treves.
But the star is clearly Rachael Teding van Berkhout as Miss Kendal. The historical actress was Mrs (later Dame Madge) Kendal. In 1895 George Bernard Shaw said of his new play Candida "There are only two people in the world possible for [the woman's part]: Janet Achurch, for whom it was written, and Mrs Kendal." Van Berkhout played absolutely candidly as I am sure Mrs Kendal would have done, in sensitively showing Merrick true compassion.
I was somewhat surprised that Moonlight have moved away from their original plan of presenting three plays by one major playwright each year, previously Brecht and Chekhov. Though Sullivan has understood and successfully applied the non-naturalistic style of this play, The Elephant Man does not have the complexity to properly put ANU drama graduates to the test, nor the place in the theatre canon to justify study by undergraduates.
This production turns Moonlight into just another amateur theatre group, rather than the valuable link it has been for two years between gown and town. I thought the Edith Torey Bequest, which helps fund Moonlight, specified drama education as its purpose, but there is not enough to learn from Pomerance's chronological documentary piece of "faction".
But this is not to say the evening is wasted. I found the theme demonstrated through the awful experiences of Merrick as a freak show exhibit, and the moral problem Miss Kendal causes for the treating doctor, whose Christian beliefs run counter to his science, showed how we have not come very far since the days of the real Joseph Merrick. We may think we are liberated by reality television, but it seems to me like just a new kind of freak show, engendering similar prejudicial attitudes. The anti-discrimination message is made clear in this production - a worthwhile result.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I'm glad I never saw the David Lynch film, which seems to count the roles of John Merrick and Dr Frederick Treves as the star parts. In Moonlight's production, Matt Borneman certainly stands out as the Elephant Man and Justin Davidson does a competent job as Dr Treves.
But the star is clearly Rachael Teding van Berkhout as Miss Kendal. The historical actress was Mrs (later Dame Madge) Kendal. In 1895 George Bernard Shaw said of his new play Candida "There are only two people in the world possible for [the woman's part]: Janet Achurch, for whom it was written, and Mrs Kendal." Van Berkhout played absolutely candidly as I am sure Mrs Kendal would have done, in sensitively showing Merrick true compassion.
I was somewhat surprised that Moonlight have moved away from their original plan of presenting three plays by one major playwright each year, previously Brecht and Chekhov. Though Sullivan has understood and successfully applied the non-naturalistic style of this play, The Elephant Man does not have the complexity to properly put ANU drama graduates to the test, nor the place in the theatre canon to justify study by undergraduates.
This production turns Moonlight into just another amateur theatre group, rather than the valuable link it has been for two years between gown and town. I thought the Edith Torey Bequest, which helps fund Moonlight, specified drama education as its purpose, but there is not enough to learn from Pomerance's chronological documentary piece of "faction".
But this is not to say the evening is wasted. I found the theme demonstrated through the awful experiences of Merrick as a freak show exhibit, and the moral problem Miss Kendal causes for the treating doctor, whose Christian beliefs run counter to his science, showed how we have not come very far since the days of the real Joseph Merrick. We may think we are liberated by reality television, but it seems to me like just a new kind of freak show, engendering similar prejudicial attitudes. The anti-discrimination message is made clear in this production - a worthwhile result.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 17 March 2006
2006: Mass Appeal by Bill C. Davis
Mass Appeal by Bill C. Davis. UC Players dinner and show at the University of Canberra Café, above the Refectory, Building 1. Fridays and Saturdays March 17 - April 8. Dinner 7pm, Show 8.30pm. Bookings: 6201 2645
This is an American Catholic comedy about a young seminarian who believes he should bluntly tell the truth - to his superiors and to the congregation. Will he make it to deacon, sexual abstinence and full priesthood? Peter Holland plays Mark Dolson with the insistence of a reformed do-gooder. Not very likeable, however sincere.
Can Father Tim Farley, Irish whisky priest, turn this raw youth into a loveable rogue like himself, trusted and adored by his congregation? Is this what he should do, knowing that popularity is achieved more by being deliberately inane rather than pontificating? Avoiding, gently covering up the truth more often helps people in crisis than exposing them directly to reality.
Davis made his reputation when this, his first play, went on Broadway in 1981, and it has played regularly since then in America and Europe, opening shortly in London. Mass Appeal was also a film starring Jack Lemmon in 1984. Its comic effect is in the neat twists and turns of dialogue between Dolson and Farley, Farley and the invisible secretary Margaret, Farley and his superior on the phone, interspersed by Farley's and Dolson's sermons. The UC production needs a bit better pacing, but the script is good enough to make its mark.
Though the play is not, to my mind, as deep and satisfying as its reputation suggests, it is an interesting exercise in switching the characters' roles. Farley learns as much about the need to tell the truth as Dolson learns about the need for empathy so that others will hear the truth you have to tell. Worth a visit, with a pleasant meal to boot.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is an American Catholic comedy about a young seminarian who believes he should bluntly tell the truth - to his superiors and to the congregation. Will he make it to deacon, sexual abstinence and full priesthood? Peter Holland plays Mark Dolson with the insistence of a reformed do-gooder. Not very likeable, however sincere.
Can Father Tim Farley, Irish whisky priest, turn this raw youth into a loveable rogue like himself, trusted and adored by his congregation? Is this what he should do, knowing that popularity is achieved more by being deliberately inane rather than pontificating? Avoiding, gently covering up the truth more often helps people in crisis than exposing them directly to reality.
Davis made his reputation when this, his first play, went on Broadway in 1981, and it has played regularly since then in America and Europe, opening shortly in London. Mass Appeal was also a film starring Jack Lemmon in 1984. Its comic effect is in the neat twists and turns of dialogue between Dolson and Farley, Farley and the invisible secretary Margaret, Farley and his superior on the phone, interspersed by Farley's and Dolson's sermons. The UC production needs a bit better pacing, but the script is good enough to make its mark.
Though the play is not, to my mind, as deep and satisfying as its reputation suggests, it is an interesting exercise in switching the characters' roles. Farley learns as much about the need to tell the truth as Dolson learns about the need for empathy so that others will hear the truth you have to tell. Worth a visit, with a pleasant meal to boot.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 12 March 2006
2006: The Dora Fay Davenport Show: How to Achieve Domestic Bliss by Nigel Sutton and Jenny Hope
The Dora Fay Davenport Show: How to Achieve Domestic Bliss by Nigel Sutton and Jenny Hope at the National Museum of Australia Studio, March 12-13, and Saturday-Sunday March 18-19, 10.30-11.30am and 2.00-3.00pm. Tickets: $5 Bookings: 6208 5021 Details: http://www.nma.gov.au/events/major_events/the_dora_fay_davenport_show/
It's a bit disconcerting, but very funny, when museum exhibits come alive and you see your own memories on stage. Dora Fay Davenport is a fiction but she could easily have been the famous fifties radio housewife's adviser she claims to be, presenting her first show on brand-new television in 1957.
How I remember the slightly gauche fixed smiles and awkward hesitations, and the compulsory English accents, of the first Australian live television. Presenters were not allowed on without proper elocution lessons, and Sutton and Hope have clearly done their homework. So the play works as it is meant to for Senior Citizens like me, almost squirming while laughing at what we - or at least our mothers and fathers - were like then.
But Dora's how to decorate the home and cook a sponge show takes an interesting twist when her husband makes fun of the idea that her housework is not real work - like a man in his office for eight hours at a stretch. Hope does a wonderful comic solo, starting at 5am (she has to light the wood stove), getting the four children aged 9 to 12 and her husband out of the house on time with their lunches, preparing a tuna mornay for the unexpected dinner guest - her mother-in-law, who checks her dusting and offers no more than faint praise for the mornay attempt "Nice - but what is it?" ...... through to her husband's querulous demand, when she finally needs a cup of tea after putting the children to bed and washing up: "Aren't you coming to bed, dear." A flashback to World War II shows how women then were accepted as real workers - all forgotten by men by 1957.
Commissioned by the National Museum, this play is a great initiative which young people enjoy as much as seniors do. See it now before it moves on to the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, but I trust that it will return for a longer season here soon.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
It's a bit disconcerting, but very funny, when museum exhibits come alive and you see your own memories on stage. Dora Fay Davenport is a fiction but she could easily have been the famous fifties radio housewife's adviser she claims to be, presenting her first show on brand-new television in 1957.
How I remember the slightly gauche fixed smiles and awkward hesitations, and the compulsory English accents, of the first Australian live television. Presenters were not allowed on without proper elocution lessons, and Sutton and Hope have clearly done their homework. So the play works as it is meant to for Senior Citizens like me, almost squirming while laughing at what we - or at least our mothers and fathers - were like then.
But Dora's how to decorate the home and cook a sponge show takes an interesting twist when her husband makes fun of the idea that her housework is not real work - like a man in his office for eight hours at a stretch. Hope does a wonderful comic solo, starting at 5am (she has to light the wood stove), getting the four children aged 9 to 12 and her husband out of the house on time with their lunches, preparing a tuna mornay for the unexpected dinner guest - her mother-in-law, who checks her dusting and offers no more than faint praise for the mornay attempt "Nice - but what is it?" ...... through to her husband's querulous demand, when she finally needs a cup of tea after putting the children to bed and washing up: "Aren't you coming to bed, dear." A flashback to World War II shows how women then were accepted as real workers - all forgotten by men by 1957.
Commissioned by the National Museum, this play is a great initiative which young people enjoy as much as seniors do. See it now before it moves on to the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, but I trust that it will return for a longer season here soon.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 25 February 2006
2006: Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare at Madew Wines. Preview feature article.
Much Ado About Nothing means much ado about a lot of things to David Madew. Sunday March 5 is not far away, but Madew Wines has much more on its plate than its second Shakespeare production, again by Melbourne's Essential Theatre.
You might think the 40 weddings booked for the next 12 months would be enough. The setting for last year's A Midsummer Night's Dream now boasts tasteful curved low stone walls to complement the 2 huge willow trees which define the green-sward stage, making the acting area so attractive that young couples seem to feel they must perform there. Benedick and Beatrice never had it so good. Love doesn't exactly run smooth in Much Ado, but we shall see, anon, a racy production that the real marriages may emulate.
Talking to David Madew is to be caught up in a philosophical whirlwind. Fresh ideas spin around issues of practicality, and we finally reach a truism - that a quality process is essential for a quality product. "Riesling again shows well at the Madew site along with pinot gris and merlot - the region's alternative red variety to the almost uniformly successful shiraz," according to Sydney wine critic Peter Bourne discussing the 1995 vintage. I can personally attest to the very pleasant Belle Riesling 1993.
But, after being a finalist in 2002 in the Restaurant in a winery and Tourism Restaurant categories, Madew was the 2004 Winner - Restaurant in a winery - ACT/Southern NSW Region Restaurant & Caterers Awards for Excellence. His GrapeFoodWine Restaurant now has a new manager, Jenny O'Hagan, with a degree in graphic design (and a special interest in weddings), and a new chef will arrive from London in June, as yet incognito. So the wine and restaurant show quality in process and product.
But, like so many theatrical ventures in Australia, Madew has to budget careful to avoid numbers like Bell Shakespeare's $400,000 below the line that The Canberra Times reported recently. Looking at process, he is aiming to tailor his performance offerings to the times and to an audience seeking quality productions. This means smaller scale shows than his original Opera by George!, but more of them. Having successfully established Essential Theatre's Shakespeare in the Vines last year, 2006 will see the March 5 show and another in September / October. He has also moved a shed to allow outdoor film presentations from the restaurant balcony (and greatly improving the setting of the restaurant against the hills behind), and by testing ideas with care, he hopes to have 4 performance events next year, then 6 from 2008.
The measure of Madew's long-tem commitment, in which he plans to include professional theatre people and musicians from our region, can be seen growing next to the vines. His father has planted a variety of oak species - the ones which make good barrels - which will mature in 2095. He has also announced plans to stand for preselection against Steve Whan for the seat of Monaro, with support for regional arts, community and environment among his political objectives. His philosophy is to base his achievements on quality standards, aiming to be "popular, not populist."
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Essential Theatre at Madew Wines (Lake George Wineries off Federal Highway)
Sunday March 5, lunch 1.30pm, performance 4pm. Details www.madewwines.com.au or Tel 4848 0026
Tickets limited to 300. Hero general admission $40, Claudio Hamper Package $60, Benedick Cocktail Package $65, Beatrice Lunch Package $80, Balthazar Total Package $100. Dogberry group bookings of 15 or more $40pp includes ticket in reserved area plus a bottle of wine for every 5 people booked.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
You might think the 40 weddings booked for the next 12 months would be enough. The setting for last year's A Midsummer Night's Dream now boasts tasteful curved low stone walls to complement the 2 huge willow trees which define the green-sward stage, making the acting area so attractive that young couples seem to feel they must perform there. Benedick and Beatrice never had it so good. Love doesn't exactly run smooth in Much Ado, but we shall see, anon, a racy production that the real marriages may emulate.
Talking to David Madew is to be caught up in a philosophical whirlwind. Fresh ideas spin around issues of practicality, and we finally reach a truism - that a quality process is essential for a quality product. "Riesling again shows well at the Madew site along with pinot gris and merlot - the region's alternative red variety to the almost uniformly successful shiraz," according to Sydney wine critic Peter Bourne discussing the 1995 vintage. I can personally attest to the very pleasant Belle Riesling 1993.
But, after being a finalist in 2002 in the Restaurant in a winery and Tourism Restaurant categories, Madew was the 2004 Winner - Restaurant in a winery - ACT/Southern NSW Region Restaurant & Caterers Awards for Excellence. His GrapeFoodWine Restaurant now has a new manager, Jenny O'Hagan, with a degree in graphic design (and a special interest in weddings), and a new chef will arrive from London in June, as yet incognito. So the wine and restaurant show quality in process and product.
But, like so many theatrical ventures in Australia, Madew has to budget careful to avoid numbers like Bell Shakespeare's $400,000 below the line that The Canberra Times reported recently. Looking at process, he is aiming to tailor his performance offerings to the times and to an audience seeking quality productions. This means smaller scale shows than his original Opera by George!, but more of them. Having successfully established Essential Theatre's Shakespeare in the Vines last year, 2006 will see the March 5 show and another in September / October. He has also moved a shed to allow outdoor film presentations from the restaurant balcony (and greatly improving the setting of the restaurant against the hills behind), and by testing ideas with care, he hopes to have 4 performance events next year, then 6 from 2008.
The measure of Madew's long-tem commitment, in which he plans to include professional theatre people and musicians from our region, can be seen growing next to the vines. His father has planted a variety of oak species - the ones which make good barrels - which will mature in 2095. He has also announced plans to stand for preselection against Steve Whan for the seat of Monaro, with support for regional arts, community and environment among his political objectives. His philosophy is to base his achievements on quality standards, aiming to be "popular, not populist."
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Essential Theatre at Madew Wines (Lake George Wineries off Federal Highway)
Sunday March 5, lunch 1.30pm, performance 4pm. Details www.madewwines.com.au or Tel 4848 0026
Tickets limited to 300. Hero general admission $40, Claudio Hamper Package $60, Benedick Cocktail Package $65, Beatrice Lunch Package $80, Balthazar Total Package $100. Dogberry group bookings of 15 or more $40pp includes ticket in reserved area plus a bottle of wine for every 5 people booked.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 16 February 2006
2006: Seasons of Keene - I Alone by Daniel Keene
Seasons of Keene - I Alone. Two monologues by Daniel Keene: Kaddish performed by Peter Damien Hayes and The Rain performed by Liliana Bogatko, directed by Ben Drysdale for National Multicultural Fringe. The Street Theatre Studio February 16-18, 7.30pm.
Theatre comes in all shapes and sizes. This production is quite tiny, lasting not much more than 30 minutes, but delicately done. Like Bach's well-tempered klavier, these monologues are short exercises which test the actor and have an extra layer of depth than the ordinary five-finger exercise.
In Kaddish an old man speaks about his life with a woman who has died. Gradually, we realise that his emotion is building, that he is not able to contain his grief, until his story leads to an image - of a stuck pig - and in describing the scene to us he is at last able to find relief in a kind of scream.
Hayes created the character for us in his stilted movement around his room with no more than a bed and a chair. The result, in some 10 minutes, was quite electric, and sad.
Bogatko, in her longer The Rain, used movement to less effect, creating an old woman but not a very specific character. This piece relies on the story she tells of being a mere bystander given things by people in long lines being put on trains, and how she kept them, completely filling her house, waiting for the people to return and claim their belongings. Which they never do.
The Rain, I feel, needed to have more story-telling devices added to this old woman's voice to create in us more variety of responses. On the other hand, the piece makes its point as the picture of the people sent to the gas chambers becomes clear. With this production successfully complete, Drysdale might now consider a larger night of Keene theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Theatre comes in all shapes and sizes. This production is quite tiny, lasting not much more than 30 minutes, but delicately done. Like Bach's well-tempered klavier, these monologues are short exercises which test the actor and have an extra layer of depth than the ordinary five-finger exercise.
In Kaddish an old man speaks about his life with a woman who has died. Gradually, we realise that his emotion is building, that he is not able to contain his grief, until his story leads to an image - of a stuck pig - and in describing the scene to us he is at last able to find relief in a kind of scream.
Hayes created the character for us in his stilted movement around his room with no more than a bed and a chair. The result, in some 10 minutes, was quite electric, and sad.
Bogatko, in her longer The Rain, used movement to less effect, creating an old woman but not a very specific character. This piece relies on the story she tells of being a mere bystander given things by people in long lines being put on trains, and how she kept them, completely filling her house, waiting for the people to return and claim their belongings. Which they never do.
The Rain, I feel, needed to have more story-telling devices added to this old woman's voice to create in us more variety of responses. On the other hand, the piece makes its point as the picture of the people sent to the gas chambers becomes clear. With this production successfully complete, Drysdale might now consider a larger night of Keene theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 13 February 2006
2006: What's Goin' On? by John Barresi
What's Goin' On? written and performed by John Barresi. National Multicultural Festival at Tradesmen's Union Club, Dickson, February 13-15, 7.45 for 8pm start. Bookings: 6162 5656
Barresi's performance dominates as uncle (famous comedian), mother (deli-cafe owner), father (builder) and grandfather (escapee from the nursing home) of Luigi Lambrusco, overshadowing James Liotta (Luigi) and Michelle Galati as Karen Brown in this comedy of an Italian-Australian romance succeeding against all the traditional family objections. I would like to see the script give the young lovers more to counterbalance the star's roles.
Each of Barresi's characters are truly awful caricatures, played right over the top with sexual innuendo, Italian-English language jokes, exaggerated costumes, extreme stereotypes, and bodily movements no Anglo-Saxon could look at without shame. The result is very funny, whatever your cultural background (to quote, "Ca-tholic, Muslimite or P...P...Prostitute"), though especially so for the Australians of Mediterranean background who were there on opening night at The Tradies. Multiculturalism was the message on stage and was the order of the day among the audience. With supper at interval, the show is a good community event for everyone.
The Tradies are to be congratulated on sponsoring this show and providing a new venue for the National Multicultural Festival for the next three years. It is a trial venture for the Club and, with a full house on opening and few tickets left for the season, should be a great success. Though technician Tania Lentini had to contend with radio microphone problems on first night, these will be fixed with time, and the venue is intimate enough for voices to carry in any case.
If Luigi and Karen were written as commedia dell'arte characters, the play would become more consistently funny - in the real Italian tradition. The second half already points the way, as the audience reaction showed. It's a good night out now, but it could be much better.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Barresi's performance dominates as uncle (famous comedian), mother (deli-cafe owner), father (builder) and grandfather (escapee from the nursing home) of Luigi Lambrusco, overshadowing James Liotta (Luigi) and Michelle Galati as Karen Brown in this comedy of an Italian-Australian romance succeeding against all the traditional family objections. I would like to see the script give the young lovers more to counterbalance the star's roles.
Each of Barresi's characters are truly awful caricatures, played right over the top with sexual innuendo, Italian-English language jokes, exaggerated costumes, extreme stereotypes, and bodily movements no Anglo-Saxon could look at without shame. The result is very funny, whatever your cultural background (to quote, "Ca-tholic, Muslimite or P...P...Prostitute"), though especially so for the Australians of Mediterranean background who were there on opening night at The Tradies. Multiculturalism was the message on stage and was the order of the day among the audience. With supper at interval, the show is a good community event for everyone.
The Tradies are to be congratulated on sponsoring this show and providing a new venue for the National Multicultural Festival for the next three years. It is a trial venture for the Club and, with a full house on opening and few tickets left for the season, should be a great success. Though technician Tania Lentini had to contend with radio microphone problems on first night, these will be fixed with time, and the venue is intimate enough for voices to carry in any case.
If Luigi and Karen were written as commedia dell'arte characters, the play would become more consistently funny - in the real Italian tradition. The second half already points the way, as the audience reaction showed. It's a good night out now, but it could be much better.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 8 February 2006
2006: La Guerra by Teatro del Mundo. Preview feature article.
"Caudillo de España por la gracia de Dios" (The Leader of Spain by the grace of God). This was the title Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde gave himself when in 1939 he established himself dictator of Spain, alongside Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany. Young Australians today probably think of Hitler and Mussolini as figures of ancient history. They were defeated in 1945. But General Franco was never defeated and relinquished his power only when he died in 1975 - just 31 years ago.
Teatro del Mundo is an Adelaide based theatre aiming to make the Spanish experience as real and personal for the rest of the world as it is for their Spanish background members. How should they do it, and why?
For the National Multicultural Festival they are performing La Guerra (The War). Why? - Because the story of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's, the attempt led by the Communist Party to defeat Franco's rise to power, is as relevant today as we face the problem of the use of the military for political purposes. For the young people who are not aware of General Franco, the Communists may also seem an unimportant part of history - almost a joke, since it all collapsed so quickly 15 years ago. But many young people from countries around the world, including Australia, went to fight alongside the Communists in Spain to try to bring democracy to a country ruled for centuries by kings and queens, and now under threat from an upstart army officer.
Telling the story as a history text is not enough to make us understand how the Spanish people feel, but Spanish dance - flamenco - is dramatic and powerful. So Liana Vargas plays the role of Dolores Ibarruri, the chief propagandist for the Communist Party, who directly confronts General Franco. Ibarruri leads a band of Revolutionary Women (Las Mujeres Libres - Anna Ovanesyan, Lucinna Chua and Natalie Quici) in her famous speech "No pasaran" (They shall not pass). Vargas explains "I have taken traditional flamenco and extended its potential, explored its pain and its ability to convey human emotion. It make so much sense to tell this story through flamenco." The dance can be imagined as Ibarruri says "It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."
But this drama is much more than the just a picture of Franco as cruel tyranny in a dramatic dance with Ibarruri, the pride of Spain. There is a special irony in Chris Shepherd's role, consistent with the flamenco tradition, of the poetic nature of the male dancer, and the connection with the sensitivity and grace of the toreador, the bull fighter, when he delivers the famous poem by Federico Garcia Lorca "A las cinco de le tarde" (At five in the afternoon).
"Now the dove and the leopard wrestle / at five in the afternoon. / And a thigh with a desolated horn / at five in the afternoon / ... And the bull alone with a high heart! / At five in the afternoon / ... Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! / It was five by all the clocks! / It was five in the shade of the afternoon!"
Should we feel only sympathy for the killed bullfighter, or pride in the success of the harrassed bull? What is the right way to feel in a civil war - did the Communists, however romantic their fight, get what they deserved? Did Lorca, the poet who represented all the hopes and fears of the Spanish people - "Tell the moon to come, for I do not want to see the blood of Ignacio on the sand" - deserve to be dragged into a field in 1936 by Franco's soldiers, shot dead and tossed into an unmarked grave?
Teatro del Mundo's Flamenco Quartet - guitarist Aloysius Leeson, cantaor (singer) Mari Olivares, violinist Andi Aldam and percussionist Shaun Doddy - have searched for the balance between the traditional flamenco improvisation and the written word and score, creating highly orchestrated music of many layers and subtle innuendo. Vargas says "The sound of La Guerra is as impressive as its subject matter. It drives us to fever pitch."
The work is placed in context by a montage of original propaganda posters and images from the Civil War, complementing the dance, spoken word, song and live music. Established in 2000 with an Arts South Australia development grant, Teatro del Mundo has previously presented La Guerra to full houses at the Adelaide Fringe and South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festivals in 2004.
Liana Vargas will also conduct open flamenco dance workshops February 18-19, for beginners to advanced dance students.
La Guerra
Teatro del Mundo
The Street Theatre Studio
Thursday to Saturday February 16-18, 8pm
Tickets: full $35; concessions and Festival card holders $30
Bookings: The Street Theatre 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Teatro del Mundo is an Adelaide based theatre aiming to make the Spanish experience as real and personal for the rest of the world as it is for their Spanish background members. How should they do it, and why?
For the National Multicultural Festival they are performing La Guerra (The War). Why? - Because the story of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's, the attempt led by the Communist Party to defeat Franco's rise to power, is as relevant today as we face the problem of the use of the military for political purposes. For the young people who are not aware of General Franco, the Communists may also seem an unimportant part of history - almost a joke, since it all collapsed so quickly 15 years ago. But many young people from countries around the world, including Australia, went to fight alongside the Communists in Spain to try to bring democracy to a country ruled for centuries by kings and queens, and now under threat from an upstart army officer.
Telling the story as a history text is not enough to make us understand how the Spanish people feel, but Spanish dance - flamenco - is dramatic and powerful. So Liana Vargas plays the role of Dolores Ibarruri, the chief propagandist for the Communist Party, who directly confronts General Franco. Ibarruri leads a band of Revolutionary Women (Las Mujeres Libres - Anna Ovanesyan, Lucinna Chua and Natalie Quici) in her famous speech "No pasaran" (They shall not pass). Vargas explains "I have taken traditional flamenco and extended its potential, explored its pain and its ability to convey human emotion. It make so much sense to tell this story through flamenco." The dance can be imagined as Ibarruri says "It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."
But this drama is much more than the just a picture of Franco as cruel tyranny in a dramatic dance with Ibarruri, the pride of Spain. There is a special irony in Chris Shepherd's role, consistent with the flamenco tradition, of the poetic nature of the male dancer, and the connection with the sensitivity and grace of the toreador, the bull fighter, when he delivers the famous poem by Federico Garcia Lorca "A las cinco de le tarde" (At five in the afternoon).
"Now the dove and the leopard wrestle / at five in the afternoon. / And a thigh with a desolated horn / at five in the afternoon / ... And the bull alone with a high heart! / At five in the afternoon / ... Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! / It was five by all the clocks! / It was five in the shade of the afternoon!"
Should we feel only sympathy for the killed bullfighter, or pride in the success of the harrassed bull? What is the right way to feel in a civil war - did the Communists, however romantic their fight, get what they deserved? Did Lorca, the poet who represented all the hopes and fears of the Spanish people - "Tell the moon to come, for I do not want to see the blood of Ignacio on the sand" - deserve to be dragged into a field in 1936 by Franco's soldiers, shot dead and tossed into an unmarked grave?
Teatro del Mundo's Flamenco Quartet - guitarist Aloysius Leeson, cantaor (singer) Mari Olivares, violinist Andi Aldam and percussionist Shaun Doddy - have searched for the balance between the traditional flamenco improvisation and the written word and score, creating highly orchestrated music of many layers and subtle innuendo. Vargas says "The sound of La Guerra is as impressive as its subject matter. It drives us to fever pitch."
The work is placed in context by a montage of original propaganda posters and images from the Civil War, complementing the dance, spoken word, song and live music. Established in 2000 with an Arts South Australia development grant, Teatro del Mundo has previously presented La Guerra to full houses at the Adelaide Fringe and South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festivals in 2004.
Liana Vargas will also conduct open flamenco dance workshops February 18-19, for beginners to advanced dance students.
La Guerra
Teatro del Mundo
The Street Theatre Studio
Thursday to Saturday February 16-18, 8pm
Tickets: full $35; concessions and Festival card holders $30
Bookings: The Street Theatre 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 3 February 2006
2006: "Judith as she was" by Jolanta Juszkiewicz. Preview feature article.
Kropka Theatre, founded by Jolanta Juszkiewicz in Sydney in 1997, has a special place in the Australian theatre scene. Though Judith as she was is to be performed as part of the National Multicultural Festival, Kropka is not a theatre of migrant experience, though that is an important role to have in a country full of immigrants - we will see an example in My Of Course Life this coming week.
It is not a theatre of our modern Australian identity, which we have seen this week in Drifting. It is not European theatre transposed to the colonies, though some readers may remember an early Kropka production in the 1999 Multicultural Festival called Grushenka, directed by Rodney Fisher, and based on the character in Dostoyevski's The Brothers Karamazov.
Juszkiewicz instead is a migrant, from Poland, who explores the emotions and ideas which are essential to her life as a person living in Australia - indeed, as an Australian - seeking to create what she describes as "poetic-metaphorical theatre, where the main attention is devoted to the psychologically exact, emotional and plastic acting, the special and unique usage of the scene properties which gets a multi-layer meaning in the play." Judith as she was has an interesting background indeed.
First, why was the story of Judith chosen? Readers will surely know the famous, rather grisly, early 17th Century series of paintings of Judith Beheading Holofernes by one of the few Renaissance woman artists, Artemisia Gentileschi. Was Judith a cold-hearted spy who seduced the general, Holofernes, who threatened to destroy the outnumbered Jewish forces? Was she, mythical or not, a great hero who saved her nation?
While Juszkiewicz was having a coffee break in rehearsals for her previous work Convict Women - Lifetime Exile, in a hall belonging to the Catholic Church, the resident priest raised the issue which became her central concern. Is it right or wrong to kill in the name of the Lord, in the cause of justice?
Gradually the importance of Judith's story seeped into the deeper recesses of her thinking, and Juszkiewicz found herself wanting to explore Judith as a normal woman. She, according to the text in the Apocrypha - the hidden books of the Old Testament - was a widow, who had not borne a child. Her brother-in-law had the right to take her as his wife, but, perhaps because she was childless and so of less interest to him, gave her time to make her own decision. Why did she decide to approach the enemy? How did she feel when surrounded by enemy soldiers? Was she attracted to the great General Holofernes, and he to her? Did she do what she knew she had to do, despite her feelings? In her later life was she sure that she had done the right thing?
In the meantime, Juszkiewicz was thinking, how important is the message in this myth for the modern world of terrorists who do indeed kill in the name of the Lord, in the cause of justice as they see it? If Judith was a terrorist, how do normal people do these things?
Then add to our story theatre director Anatoly Frusin, born in Ukraine, converted to Judaism when young and living in Israel, leaving his non-Jewish mother in New Zealand to become a NIDA graduate, working often with Neil Armfield at Company B and Opera Australia. For him, his mother's decision to become Jewish in the belief that it would make his life easier in the Jewish community has emotional resonances, in odd ways, with the story of Judith. And so, as Juszkiewicz worked out how to express the feelings of a normal woman, Judith, with a terrible responsibility, Frusin became not so much her director but her enabler, the person who helped her find the forms and images on stage to create Judith's story and its metaphorical meaning - the outside but committed observer who could provide the critical view she needed.
And so was born and grew Judith as she was. Juszkiewicz is influenced by the Polish-Jewish Bruno Schulz, writer of "poetic and fantastic short stories [in which] small details of ordinary reality become powerful and protean forces of beauty", who was shot by a Gestapo officer in 1942 on the street of his beloved home town, Drohobycz. Though she believes her Judith justifies her action in killing Holofernes, accepting that it was the will of the Lord, her play raises for us all the ultimate questions of justice and death.
Judith as she was devised and performed by Jolanta Juszkiewicz
Kropka Theatre, Sydney, directed by Anatoly Frusin
The Street Theatre Studio
Sunday to Tuesday February 12-14, 7pm
Tickets: $23 full, $18 concession, $20 group
Bookings: The Street Theatre 9247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
It is not a theatre of our modern Australian identity, which we have seen this week in Drifting. It is not European theatre transposed to the colonies, though some readers may remember an early Kropka production in the 1999 Multicultural Festival called Grushenka, directed by Rodney Fisher, and based on the character in Dostoyevski's The Brothers Karamazov.
Juszkiewicz instead is a migrant, from Poland, who explores the emotions and ideas which are essential to her life as a person living in Australia - indeed, as an Australian - seeking to create what she describes as "poetic-metaphorical theatre, where the main attention is devoted to the psychologically exact, emotional and plastic acting, the special and unique usage of the scene properties which gets a multi-layer meaning in the play." Judith as she was has an interesting background indeed.
First, why was the story of Judith chosen? Readers will surely know the famous, rather grisly, early 17th Century series of paintings of Judith Beheading Holofernes by one of the few Renaissance woman artists, Artemisia Gentileschi. Was Judith a cold-hearted spy who seduced the general, Holofernes, who threatened to destroy the outnumbered Jewish forces? Was she, mythical or not, a great hero who saved her nation?
While Juszkiewicz was having a coffee break in rehearsals for her previous work Convict Women - Lifetime Exile, in a hall belonging to the Catholic Church, the resident priest raised the issue which became her central concern. Is it right or wrong to kill in the name of the Lord, in the cause of justice?
Gradually the importance of Judith's story seeped into the deeper recesses of her thinking, and Juszkiewicz found herself wanting to explore Judith as a normal woman. She, according to the text in the Apocrypha - the hidden books of the Old Testament - was a widow, who had not borne a child. Her brother-in-law had the right to take her as his wife, but, perhaps because she was childless and so of less interest to him, gave her time to make her own decision. Why did she decide to approach the enemy? How did she feel when surrounded by enemy soldiers? Was she attracted to the great General Holofernes, and he to her? Did she do what she knew she had to do, despite her feelings? In her later life was she sure that she had done the right thing?
In the meantime, Juszkiewicz was thinking, how important is the message in this myth for the modern world of terrorists who do indeed kill in the name of the Lord, in the cause of justice as they see it? If Judith was a terrorist, how do normal people do these things?
Then add to our story theatre director Anatoly Frusin, born in Ukraine, converted to Judaism when young and living in Israel, leaving his non-Jewish mother in New Zealand to become a NIDA graduate, working often with Neil Armfield at Company B and Opera Australia. For him, his mother's decision to become Jewish in the belief that it would make his life easier in the Jewish community has emotional resonances, in odd ways, with the story of Judith. And so, as Juszkiewicz worked out how to express the feelings of a normal woman, Judith, with a terrible responsibility, Frusin became not so much her director but her enabler, the person who helped her find the forms and images on stage to create Judith's story and its metaphorical meaning - the outside but committed observer who could provide the critical view she needed.
And so was born and grew Judith as she was. Juszkiewicz is influenced by the Polish-Jewish Bruno Schulz, writer of "poetic and fantastic short stories [in which] small details of ordinary reality become powerful and protean forces of beauty", who was shot by a Gestapo officer in 1942 on the street of his beloved home town, Drohobycz. Though she believes her Judith justifies her action in killing Holofernes, accepting that it was the will of the Lord, her play raises for us all the ultimate questions of justice and death.
Judith as she was devised and performed by Jolanta Juszkiewicz
Kropka Theatre, Sydney, directed by Anatoly Frusin
The Street Theatre Studio
Sunday to Tuesday February 12-14, 7pm
Tickets: $23 full, $18 concession, $20 group
Bookings: The Street Theatre 9247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2006: The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco. Preview feature article.
It's a little disconcerting to hear from the director of The Chairs for the National Multicultural Festival, Chris Simion, "I hate Ionesco".
What can she mean? Eugene Ionesco, who wrote the play in 1952, is after all Romania's most famous playwright, though he did from his mid-twenties live and work in France. Simion is among Romania's busiest directors, concentrating on The Chairs twice a day in Bucharest and having previously taken the production to India for the Francophone Festival in 2004.
According to Simion, a founder of the Compania de teatru "D'AYA" as an experimental student theatre group in 1999, "D'aya" means "just like that" and "is a simple name for simple theatre". The Chairs may seem simple, but there's a lot more to it than a superficial view might suggest. Considering Simion's success over the years, taking the company to theatre festivals in Egypt and Italy, her dislike of Ionesco must surely be disingenuous.
In The Chairs, an old couple decide they would like to pass on to humanity what they have learned in their long lives. They invite a vast crowd of people, none of whom come. All the Old Man (Ioana Marchidan) and the Old Woman (Adriana Trandafir) can do is speak to a vast array of empty chairs.
So demoralised that they can't go on living, the old couple leave the revelation of their message to an Orator they have hired (Gabriel Fatu) - but he turns out to be deaf-mute. Well, maybe such a black view of the very ordinary lives we mostly lead is enough to hate Ionesco for. But does this mean his play is too horrible to watch?
On the contrary, there is a special fascination in the old couple's dilemma. Rather than depending on speech, Daya Theatre have devised a "modern and a new interpretation" based in movement and comedy which means the "end of our performance is not a conclusion. It's a choice."
What we can expect to see is strong theatre from that part of the world, the eastern end of Old Europe, where cultural diversity has been both a blessing and a cause of conflict for so long, and so has a tradition of art in all forms which entertains while exposing realities. It is this tradition which gives depth to what at first seems simple.
For the actors, then, there is a deep satisfaction in presenting The Chairs. Trandafir says "my role in the play is based upon movement and so it was difficult to assume it at my age. But I believed in this work and I made it. Now I'm happy." Fatu explains "In our performance the director's vision surpasses the one of the author, giving an open end to the play".
And so, we can reinterpret Simion's concern about Ionesco. When he was writing in the years soon after World War II, at the time when the proliferation of nuclear weapons was the order of the day, it was not surprising that his play had a doomsday feeling about it. Politically, Romania and its neighbours were oppressive and dangerous places for original thinkers and activists. For the new generation of the 1990s Ionesco's cynicism and the philosophy of absurdism - that life actually has no purpose despite what we would like to believe - must have been something to hate. How else could things change for the better?
The irony is, of course, that Simion admits that Ionesco's "vision of life is real". She at the same time proves him wrong in the very creation of art on stage, performing his play with a new purpose which inspires the actors, and will surely inspire us in the audience.
This is the special value of our National Multicultural Festival, growing, once again under Dominic Mico's direction, far beyond a folkloric celebration. The Embassy of Romania is doing our community a great service by presenting work which gives us an insight into their culture's serious theatrical life.
Daya Theatre's intentions are to show the nature of society in an educational light. It might surprise some people to know that Daya's performances in India were part of a cultural agreement between Romania and India from 1957. 1999 was the beginning of an explosion in cultural exchanges of all kinds from handicrafts, photographic exhibitions, art competitions, dance performances, an Indian feature film shot in Romania, books about India published in Romanian, through to occasions such as when Zubin Mehta conducted the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra at the annual George Enescu International Music Festival in Bucharest. The new century seems to be celebrating cultural diversity, pointing towards a more hopeful world.
Despite the director's throwaway line, I suspect we will not hate Ionesco, but find we appreciate and respect him in The Chairs.
The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco
Daya Theatre Company, Romania
Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre
Tuesday to Thursday February 14-16, 7.30pm
Tickets: $32 full, $28 concession and Festival card holders, $10 students
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
© Frank McKone, Canberra
What can she mean? Eugene Ionesco, who wrote the play in 1952, is after all Romania's most famous playwright, though he did from his mid-twenties live and work in France. Simion is among Romania's busiest directors, concentrating on The Chairs twice a day in Bucharest and having previously taken the production to India for the Francophone Festival in 2004.
According to Simion, a founder of the Compania de teatru "D'AYA" as an experimental student theatre group in 1999, "D'aya" means "just like that" and "is a simple name for simple theatre". The Chairs may seem simple, but there's a lot more to it than a superficial view might suggest. Considering Simion's success over the years, taking the company to theatre festivals in Egypt and Italy, her dislike of Ionesco must surely be disingenuous.
In The Chairs, an old couple decide they would like to pass on to humanity what they have learned in their long lives. They invite a vast crowd of people, none of whom come. All the Old Man (Ioana Marchidan) and the Old Woman (Adriana Trandafir) can do is speak to a vast array of empty chairs.
So demoralised that they can't go on living, the old couple leave the revelation of their message to an Orator they have hired (Gabriel Fatu) - but he turns out to be deaf-mute. Well, maybe such a black view of the very ordinary lives we mostly lead is enough to hate Ionesco for. But does this mean his play is too horrible to watch?
On the contrary, there is a special fascination in the old couple's dilemma. Rather than depending on speech, Daya Theatre have devised a "modern and a new interpretation" based in movement and comedy which means the "end of our performance is not a conclusion. It's a choice."
What we can expect to see is strong theatre from that part of the world, the eastern end of Old Europe, where cultural diversity has been both a blessing and a cause of conflict for so long, and so has a tradition of art in all forms which entertains while exposing realities. It is this tradition which gives depth to what at first seems simple.
For the actors, then, there is a deep satisfaction in presenting The Chairs. Trandafir says "my role in the play is based upon movement and so it was difficult to assume it at my age. But I believed in this work and I made it. Now I'm happy." Fatu explains "In our performance the director's vision surpasses the one of the author, giving an open end to the play".
And so, we can reinterpret Simion's concern about Ionesco. When he was writing in the years soon after World War II, at the time when the proliferation of nuclear weapons was the order of the day, it was not surprising that his play had a doomsday feeling about it. Politically, Romania and its neighbours were oppressive and dangerous places for original thinkers and activists. For the new generation of the 1990s Ionesco's cynicism and the philosophy of absurdism - that life actually has no purpose despite what we would like to believe - must have been something to hate. How else could things change for the better?
The irony is, of course, that Simion admits that Ionesco's "vision of life is real". She at the same time proves him wrong in the very creation of art on stage, performing his play with a new purpose which inspires the actors, and will surely inspire us in the audience.
This is the special value of our National Multicultural Festival, growing, once again under Dominic Mico's direction, far beyond a folkloric celebration. The Embassy of Romania is doing our community a great service by presenting work which gives us an insight into their culture's serious theatrical life.
Daya Theatre's intentions are to show the nature of society in an educational light. It might surprise some people to know that Daya's performances in India were part of a cultural agreement between Romania and India from 1957. 1999 was the beginning of an explosion in cultural exchanges of all kinds from handicrafts, photographic exhibitions, art competitions, dance performances, an Indian feature film shot in Romania, books about India published in Romanian, through to occasions such as when Zubin Mehta conducted the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra at the annual George Enescu International Music Festival in Bucharest. The new century seems to be celebrating cultural diversity, pointing towards a more hopeful world.
Despite the director's throwaway line, I suspect we will not hate Ionesco, but find we appreciate and respect him in The Chairs.
The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco
Daya Theatre Company, Romania
Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre
Tuesday to Thursday February 14-16, 7.30pm
Tickets: $32 full, $28 concession and Festival card holders, $10 students
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 31 January 2006
2006: How to Cheat Friends and Incriminate People by Nicholas J Johnson. Preview feature article.
If you meet a neatly dressed, unassuming, absolutely ordinary married man in his 30s, beware. Check that his name is not Doc Johnson, Nick the Greek, Mystic Nick or His Holiness Nicholas J Johnson, Third Incarnation of Goddess Gelar. If it is any of these, or even plain Nicholas J Johnson, then watch your watch in case it disappears as happened once to an FBI agent at a social function, right here in Canberra.
The FBI man protested far too much about his importance, so Nick Johnson, Entertainer Extraordinaire, nicked his watch. 45 minutes later, surrounded by all and sundry, Johnson innocently approached our FBI friend. "I think, maybe, this watch is yours?" said he, to its owner's fury and everyone else's titters.
Johnson has been a traditional clown, working professionally in circus and character roles for 8 years, and is well-known as a children's entertainer (laugh@funnybones.com.au). But his work has shifted, especially through his less generally known employment by corporate organisations, away from the clown role towards a kind of Rod Quantok (Australia You're Standing In It, Bus, Son of Bus and Cap'n Snooze ads) with the extra skills of a magician.
How to Cheat Friends and Incriminate People is his first straight stage show, at The Street Theatre, February 22 to 25. "Straight" might not be the best description, but Johnson sees himself rather more like a stand-up comedian than clown. He objects to the idea that he is an "artist", but is happy to be an "entertainer". But in my view, after an hour and a half's solid talk, there's more to this performer than meets the eye (or often doesn't when the sleight of hand gets out of hand).
Young Nicholas began his illusionist career at the age of 10, but I found it significant that his first straight acting role was in acclaimed Canberra director Carol Woodrow's 1994 production of Six Characters in Search of an Author. At 14, Johnson played The Boy, who is killed backstage, presumably murdered, in a play deliberately designed so that the audience would believe that the death was real. Luigi Pirandello, in 1921, was probably the first playwright to so directly challenge his audience's belief in the "boundary between illusion and reality, truth and make-believe, on the stage as well as in daily life" as theatre commentator Martin Esslin puts it.
Johnson tried out for straight actor training after leaving Hawker College but found the audition process "ridiculous" and saw the tertiary course as creating theatre "workhorses and mechanics". So, seeking freedom of thought and action, in addition to an Arts degree in Sociology, English, Drama and Philosophy he studied the arts of all kinds of con artists, including professional card sharps, pickpockets, the sellers of spurious potions, the purveyors of spiritual guff, mystics who manipulate in darkened seances, as well as expanding his repertoire of standard magician's tricks.
So you will be entertained by, and be fooled by Doc Johnson, the Snake Oil merchant and his Memory Tonic, the Gambler Nick the Greek, Mystic Nick the Medium (who works in the "dark" with the lights on) and the ultimate Guru His Holiness etc etc etc who will prove to you that he is divine. The entertainment comes with biting satire. One wonders how the psychic cards will stack up among the myriad memory training courses and spiritual experience lectures that regularly manifest themselves in our halls and meeting rooms like carpet sales at the Albert Hall.
I wondered if Johnson had been able to keep his wife in the manner to which she was previously accustomed, and she claimed he does as well financially as other middle class professionals. He says that he does not take corporate work where he disagrees with the company's message - though one tobacco company which remains nameless fooled him by employing him under a spurious company name. So as an illusionist he is not entirely perfect. However I lost 3 times in a row in the gambling game he showed me.
He also does not use "blue" material - "I don't need to" - but he was a successful security guard at a bomb data conference surrounded by the world's uniformed police. It was here he beat a Canadian Mountie (who I suppose was dressed in red) at three card monte using tricks he learnt from a Sydney casino card sharp.
Of course, Nicholas J Johnson is really plain Nicholas. He put the J in to distinguish himself from the other 2 Nicholas Johnsons in Canberra, and to give him credibility with Americans, especially FBI agents.
How to Cheat Friends and Incriminate People
Nicholas J Johnson at The Street Theatre
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday February 22 - 25 7pm; and
Friday and Saturday February 24 - 25 9pm
All Tickets $15. Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The FBI man protested far too much about his importance, so Nick Johnson, Entertainer Extraordinaire, nicked his watch. 45 minutes later, surrounded by all and sundry, Johnson innocently approached our FBI friend. "I think, maybe, this watch is yours?" said he, to its owner's fury and everyone else's titters.
Johnson has been a traditional clown, working professionally in circus and character roles for 8 years, and is well-known as a children's entertainer (laugh@funnybones.com.au). But his work has shifted, especially through his less generally known employment by corporate organisations, away from the clown role towards a kind of Rod Quantok (Australia You're Standing In It, Bus, Son of Bus and Cap'n Snooze ads) with the extra skills of a magician.
How to Cheat Friends and Incriminate People is his first straight stage show, at The Street Theatre, February 22 to 25. "Straight" might not be the best description, but Johnson sees himself rather more like a stand-up comedian than clown. He objects to the idea that he is an "artist", but is happy to be an "entertainer". But in my view, after an hour and a half's solid talk, there's more to this performer than meets the eye (or often doesn't when the sleight of hand gets out of hand).
Young Nicholas began his illusionist career at the age of 10, but I found it significant that his first straight acting role was in acclaimed Canberra director Carol Woodrow's 1994 production of Six Characters in Search of an Author. At 14, Johnson played The Boy, who is killed backstage, presumably murdered, in a play deliberately designed so that the audience would believe that the death was real. Luigi Pirandello, in 1921, was probably the first playwright to so directly challenge his audience's belief in the "boundary between illusion and reality, truth and make-believe, on the stage as well as in daily life" as theatre commentator Martin Esslin puts it.
Johnson tried out for straight actor training after leaving Hawker College but found the audition process "ridiculous" and saw the tertiary course as creating theatre "workhorses and mechanics". So, seeking freedom of thought and action, in addition to an Arts degree in Sociology, English, Drama and Philosophy he studied the arts of all kinds of con artists, including professional card sharps, pickpockets, the sellers of spurious potions, the purveyors of spiritual guff, mystics who manipulate in darkened seances, as well as expanding his repertoire of standard magician's tricks.
So you will be entertained by, and be fooled by Doc Johnson, the Snake Oil merchant and his Memory Tonic, the Gambler Nick the Greek, Mystic Nick the Medium (who works in the "dark" with the lights on) and the ultimate Guru His Holiness etc etc etc who will prove to you that he is divine. The entertainment comes with biting satire. One wonders how the psychic cards will stack up among the myriad memory training courses and spiritual experience lectures that regularly manifest themselves in our halls and meeting rooms like carpet sales at the Albert Hall.
I wondered if Johnson had been able to keep his wife in the manner to which she was previously accustomed, and she claimed he does as well financially as other middle class professionals. He says that he does not take corporate work where he disagrees with the company's message - though one tobacco company which remains nameless fooled him by employing him under a spurious company name. So as an illusionist he is not entirely perfect. However I lost 3 times in a row in the gambling game he showed me.
He also does not use "blue" material - "I don't need to" - but he was a successful security guard at a bomb data conference surrounded by the world's uniformed police. It was here he beat a Canadian Mountie (who I suppose was dressed in red) at three card monte using tricks he learnt from a Sydney casino card sharp.
Of course, Nicholas J Johnson is really plain Nicholas. He put the J in to distinguish himself from the other 2 Nicholas Johnsons in Canberra, and to give him credibility with Americans, especially FBI agents.
How to Cheat Friends and Incriminate People
Nicholas J Johnson at The Street Theatre
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday February 22 - 25 7pm; and
Friday and Saturday February 24 - 25 9pm
All Tickets $15. Bookings: 6247 1223
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 25 January 2006
2006: All-Mother by barb barnett and Matt Marshall
All-Mother devised by barb barnett, written by Matt Marshall, directed by Scott Wright. Serious Theatre at The Street Theatre January 25 to February 4, 8pm. Bookings 6247 1223.
All-Mother is a fantasy, quite fascinating for its unlikely origins in bureaucratic Canberra where the myth of Lilith seems a little out of kilter with our daily experience. Maybe our built environment, however much we like to call it a bush capital, makes people feel the need for a story which somehow links our ever conflicting emotions, especially in our sexual relationships, to an explanatory point of origin.
barb barnett has chosen to work over several years on the apocryphal story of Lilith, of whom you may not have heard. In the Bible, God apparently creates people twice. In Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 27 "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." But in Chapter 2 Verse 7 "God formed man of the dust of the ground" and in Verses 21/22 "he took one of [Adam's] ribs ... and made he a woman." Confusion reigned until the 11th Century when a Hebrew text claimed that the Verse 7 woman was Lilith, Adam's first wife - who argued with him on the grounds that they were created equal - while the Verse 22 woman was the well-known Eve, who could never claim to be equal in origin to Adam.
All-Mother presents us with Punch and Judy representing Adam and Eve, while Lilith, played by barnett, is shown in scenes in which she clashes with Eve, her story going backwards to the point of her creation. In this version of the myth, which corresponds more with Bernard Shaw's Back to Methusaleh, Lilith is the original creation - the mother of Adam and all human life ever since. Her retreat backwards is perhaps justified when we see Punch and Judy traditionally bashing each other, until they both die, return as ghosts and continue arguing about whether they are in heaven or hell.
The on-stage puppetry, the scenery, lighting and sound track are excellent, in keeping with Scott Wright's day job as director of Erth-Visual and Physical Inc who brought Gondwana to the National Museum recently. I found the mythical scenes rather slow, trying too hard to be "significant", but All-Mother is unusual theatre, if not entirely successful.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
All-Mother is a fantasy, quite fascinating for its unlikely origins in bureaucratic Canberra where the myth of Lilith seems a little out of kilter with our daily experience. Maybe our built environment, however much we like to call it a bush capital, makes people feel the need for a story which somehow links our ever conflicting emotions, especially in our sexual relationships, to an explanatory point of origin.
barb barnett has chosen to work over several years on the apocryphal story of Lilith, of whom you may not have heard. In the Bible, God apparently creates people twice. In Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 27 "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." But in Chapter 2 Verse 7 "God formed man of the dust of the ground" and in Verses 21/22 "he took one of [Adam's] ribs ... and made he a woman." Confusion reigned until the 11th Century when a Hebrew text claimed that the Verse 7 woman was Lilith, Adam's first wife - who argued with him on the grounds that they were created equal - while the Verse 22 woman was the well-known Eve, who could never claim to be equal in origin to Adam.
All-Mother presents us with Punch and Judy representing Adam and Eve, while Lilith, played by barnett, is shown in scenes in which she clashes with Eve, her story going backwards to the point of her creation. In this version of the myth, which corresponds more with Bernard Shaw's Back to Methusaleh, Lilith is the original creation - the mother of Adam and all human life ever since. Her retreat backwards is perhaps justified when we see Punch and Judy traditionally bashing each other, until they both die, return as ghosts and continue arguing about whether they are in heaven or hell.
The on-stage puppetry, the scenery, lighting and sound track are excellent, in keeping with Scott Wright's day job as director of Erth-Visual and Physical Inc who brought Gondwana to the National Museum recently. I found the mythical scenes rather slow, trying too hard to be "significant", but All-Mother is unusual theatre, if not entirely successful.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 21 January 2006
2006: Chronicles - A Lamentation by Teatr Piesn Kozla
Sydney Festival: Chronicles - A Lamentation. Teatr Piesn Kozla (Poland) directed by Grzegorz Bral at The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House until January 25 9.45pm and Riverside Theatre, Parramatta January 27-28 8pm.
This is a 45 minute example of intense ritualistic theatre, fascinating for its voice and movement work, but ultimately failing, in my view, to take the audience to new levels of understanding.
Bral and his co-founder of Teatr Piesn Kozla, Anna Zubrzycki, who is a central performer in Chronicles, have long taught and directed in the workshop tradition known best in this country through the Theatre Laboratory run by Jerzy Grotowski in the later decades of last century. They concentrate, always with high moral principle, on research into ancient and fading traditions and present their findings as re-created myth. In this case, they have taken the polyphonic harmonies and women's ululations of laments sung in Epiros, nowadays on the Greek - Albanian border, as their base. They have then used the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh to show a man's battle with the Great Goddess, and his search for immortality.
Rapidly spoken poetic language, almost continuous choral singing which sounded to me most like Polish - Russian style, highly choreographed mimetic movement which never quite becomes dance, all done with great skill and precision, still did not convey to me any clear idea of the purpose of the work. According to the program notes we are supposed to reach "the deep understanding which accompanies [the] acceptance" of "death, the ultimate finality in human life, the futility of escape." Because the work, however sincere in concept, does not have a strong dramatic structure, I found the point of the ending - where all 7 performers, for no apparent reason, singing, exited upstage left, continued singing for a minute or so off stage until their voices faded into nothing - escaped me.
If I hadn't seen the publicity I would never have known that Rafal Habel was Gilgamesh, Marcin Rudy his battle companion Enkidu, and Christopher Sivertsen a Shaman, or that Anne Zubrzycki was The Wild Cow - Mother of Gilgamesh, Anna Krotoska was the Goddess Ishtar, Maria Sendow was Death and Ian Morgan was The Immortal, Utnapishti. Crossing cultures is never easy - perhaps knowledge of Polish would have helped - but even after reading the program again following the performance I find it difficult to identify these characters. Even less could I identify with them. Unfortunately, moral principle is not enough to make great theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a 45 minute example of intense ritualistic theatre, fascinating for its voice and movement work, but ultimately failing, in my view, to take the audience to new levels of understanding.
Bral and his co-founder of Teatr Piesn Kozla, Anna Zubrzycki, who is a central performer in Chronicles, have long taught and directed in the workshop tradition known best in this country through the Theatre Laboratory run by Jerzy Grotowski in the later decades of last century. They concentrate, always with high moral principle, on research into ancient and fading traditions and present their findings as re-created myth. In this case, they have taken the polyphonic harmonies and women's ululations of laments sung in Epiros, nowadays on the Greek - Albanian border, as their base. They have then used the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh to show a man's battle with the Great Goddess, and his search for immortality.
Rapidly spoken poetic language, almost continuous choral singing which sounded to me most like Polish - Russian style, highly choreographed mimetic movement which never quite becomes dance, all done with great skill and precision, still did not convey to me any clear idea of the purpose of the work. According to the program notes we are supposed to reach "the deep understanding which accompanies [the] acceptance" of "death, the ultimate finality in human life, the futility of escape." Because the work, however sincere in concept, does not have a strong dramatic structure, I found the point of the ending - where all 7 performers, for no apparent reason, singing, exited upstage left, continued singing for a minute or so off stage until their voices faded into nothing - escaped me.
If I hadn't seen the publicity I would never have known that Rafal Habel was Gilgamesh, Marcin Rudy his battle companion Enkidu, and Christopher Sivertsen a Shaman, or that Anne Zubrzycki was The Wild Cow - Mother of Gilgamesh, Anna Krotoska was the Goddess Ishtar, Maria Sendow was Death and Ian Morgan was The Immortal, Utnapishti. Crossing cultures is never easy - perhaps knowledge of Polish would have helped - but even after reading the program again following the performance I find it difficult to identify these characters. Even less could I identify with them. Unfortunately, moral principle is not enough to make great theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 19 January 2006
2006: Bright Abyss by James Thierree
Sydney Festival: Bright Abyss created and directed by James Thierree, at Theatre Royal January 8-22 and 24-29, 8pm.
Brought up by his parents, Jean-Baptiste Thierree and Victoria Thierree Chaplin, from the age of 4 on tour with Le Cirque Imaginaire and Le Cirque Invisible, James Thierree has what one might call circus cred. He's still only 32, with acrobatic and dance skills which put any Olympic "artistic" gymnast to shame.
I saw his first creation, The Junebug Symphony, 3 years ago and enjoyed it as entertainment, but Bright Abyss successfully sets sail into the blue yonder. There is a story, told in wonderful images, rather like Shakespeare's The Tempest. It begins with a great wind, full of foreboding, threatening to destroy the lives of the five characters on their journey. 90 minutes later all have resolved the tangle of relationships which hold them back, often very funny to watch as well as exciting, sometimes frightening, sometimes touchingly sad. Finally they learn to go with the wind in a most beautiful scene with spinnaker billowing into the future.
Circus, dance and mime work was so impressive that a full house last Thursday applauded scene after scene, rising to a crescendo with 3 curtain calls. Thierree's directing made what might have been a series of circus-style acts into a work of strong dramatic structure which drew the audience into the lives of those on stage and reflected on our own experience - and gave hope that, working together, we may survive the abyss and find our way in some kind of harmony.
There was applause too for the performers indvidually, each with their own special skills and personality. Thierree is a marvellous mime, the still young Raphaelle Boitel - now just 22 - a seemingly jointless contortionist, Niklas Ek a true dancer (from the Royal Ballet Stockholm and the Nederlands Dans Theater), Brazilian capoeira dancer and tumbler Thiago Martins and the always surprising soprano and pianist Uma Ysamat from Spain.
Together they made a great celebration of performance, entertainment and life, deserving every handclap, cheer and whistle.
Book at Festival Ticketek 02 9266 4890 or www.sydneyfestival.org.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Brought up by his parents, Jean-Baptiste Thierree and Victoria Thierree Chaplin, from the age of 4 on tour with Le Cirque Imaginaire and Le Cirque Invisible, James Thierree has what one might call circus cred. He's still only 32, with acrobatic and dance skills which put any Olympic "artistic" gymnast to shame.
I saw his first creation, The Junebug Symphony, 3 years ago and enjoyed it as entertainment, but Bright Abyss successfully sets sail into the blue yonder. There is a story, told in wonderful images, rather like Shakespeare's The Tempest. It begins with a great wind, full of foreboding, threatening to destroy the lives of the five characters on their journey. 90 minutes later all have resolved the tangle of relationships which hold them back, often very funny to watch as well as exciting, sometimes frightening, sometimes touchingly sad. Finally they learn to go with the wind in a most beautiful scene with spinnaker billowing into the future.
Circus, dance and mime work was so impressive that a full house last Thursday applauded scene after scene, rising to a crescendo with 3 curtain calls. Thierree's directing made what might have been a series of circus-style acts into a work of strong dramatic structure which drew the audience into the lives of those on stage and reflected on our own experience - and gave hope that, working together, we may survive the abyss and find our way in some kind of harmony.
There was applause too for the performers indvidually, each with their own special skills and personality. Thierree is a marvellous mime, the still young Raphaelle Boitel - now just 22 - a seemingly jointless contortionist, Niklas Ek a true dancer (from the Royal Ballet Stockholm and the Nederlands Dans Theater), Brazilian capoeira dancer and tumbler Thiago Martins and the always surprising soprano and pianist Uma Ysamat from Spain.
Together they made a great celebration of performance, entertainment and life, deserving every handclap, cheer and whistle.
Book at Festival Ticketek 02 9266 4890 or www.sydneyfestival.org.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 18 January 2006
2006: All Wear Bowlers and The Tiger Lillies
Sydney Festival: All Wear Bowlers and The Tiger Lillies at The Studio, Sydney Opera House, until Saturday January 21.
These are two of the 7 "cutting-edge works from the ridiculous to the sublime" in the About an Hour program. I can see why festival director Fergus Linehan chose the British "art" cabaret The Tiger Lillies because of their cult reputation overseas. I found them shallow - ridiculous.
But All Wear Bowlers by Philadelphians Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford was close to sublime.
The Lillies' Masturbation Jim song was rated his favourite by one 30-ish groupie I overheard, but to compare such work with Weill and Brecht, or to pretend that it's a satire of that tradition, as the publicity does, is just not on. Falsetto singing about killing babies - and bashing drums with dolls - is weak undergraduate humour - quite puerile.
The claim that All Wear Bowlers has "the pathos of Laurel and Hardy, the desolate humour of Samuel Beckett" and, I would add, the skill of Charlie Chaplin and the imagination of Woody Allen, is all true.
Two silent movie bowler hatted tramps fall off the film screen, as in The Rose of Cairo, onto the stage where they have no choice but to entertain us. Their clowning in a state of steadily increasing disorientation takes us along with them until we realise that, like them, we all wear the clown's bowler hat.
Sobelle and Lyford trained with vaudeville consultant David Shiner of Cirque du Soleil, and the quality in their timing and characterisations shines through. They made fun of pretentious art - "all those layers" - then through our laughter gave us true art with many levels of meaning.
I saw Bowlers first on Wednesday evening - a pity perhaps, because their sublimity only served to highlight the pretentiousness of the Tiger Lillies an hour later.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
These are two of the 7 "cutting-edge works from the ridiculous to the sublime" in the About an Hour program. I can see why festival director Fergus Linehan chose the British "art" cabaret The Tiger Lillies because of their cult reputation overseas. I found them shallow - ridiculous.
But All Wear Bowlers by Philadelphians Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford was close to sublime.
The Lillies' Masturbation Jim song was rated his favourite by one 30-ish groupie I overheard, but to compare such work with Weill and Brecht, or to pretend that it's a satire of that tradition, as the publicity does, is just not on. Falsetto singing about killing babies - and bashing drums with dolls - is weak undergraduate humour - quite puerile.
The claim that All Wear Bowlers has "the pathos of Laurel and Hardy, the desolate humour of Samuel Beckett" and, I would add, the skill of Charlie Chaplin and the imagination of Woody Allen, is all true.
Two silent movie bowler hatted tramps fall off the film screen, as in The Rose of Cairo, onto the stage where they have no choice but to entertain us. Their clowning in a state of steadily increasing disorientation takes us along with them until we realise that, like them, we all wear the clown's bowler hat.
Sobelle and Lyford trained with vaudeville consultant David Shiner of Cirque du Soleil, and the quality in their timing and characterisations shines through. They made fun of pretentious art - "all those layers" - then through our laughter gave us true art with many levels of meaning.
I saw Bowlers first on Wednesday evening - a pity perhaps, because their sublimity only served to highlight the pretentiousness of the Tiger Lillies an hour later.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 7 January 2006
2006: Shout! by John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow
Shout! by John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow. G-String Productions at The Street Theatre, directed by Rod and Liz Beaver, January 6-14 8pm.
I found this production of Johnny O'Keefe's life story strangely disappointing.
The first half seems to intend to be a celebration of his early years to 1960 - when he suffered severe injuries in a car accident - but instead of the great burst of excitement that I was expecting as the King of Australian Rock 'n' Roll swung into action, there was a rather flat series of short scenes. Each had its song, but the build up of dramatic tension was missing.
I looked then for the real guts of O'Keefe's life to spill out as his mental stability was seriously affected not only by the road accident, but especially by the drug induced death of the manager he so much believed in, Lee Gordon, in 1963, his inability to keep his marriage together, his fightback to success on occasions like the Sunbury Festival in 1973, and finally his early death from alcohol and prescription drug poisoning in 1978. Some scenes in the second half had dramatic strength - especially the Kings Cross party scene - but still there wasn't the sense of foreboding that his life story required.
Then, literally at last, the show returned to the 1959 hit Shout! and a celebration burst out from the stage and engulfed the audience - as it should have at the beginning.
Musicality was not the problem, either from the band or the singers. I haven't seen any previous production, but the dialogue seemed minimal to me, to the point that no real characters became established, except the awful conniving Lee Gordon. O'Keefe's songs were used to illustrate the story, but they were not the type of songs to carry the drama without rounded characters to sing them. After the show I remember best Pat Gallagher as Lee Gordon and Tony Maxfield as Marianne, O'Keefe's first wife. Rod Beaver made JO'K memorable only in the final song.
Costumes and dance steps were a problem for me too. I couldn't see the detailed research needed to clearly identify each change in style belonging to the dates of the original performances, and Beaver was dressed entirely unlike the mod suits and ties which O'Keefe wore most of his career. Maybe I expect too much, but I have seen better G-String productions.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I found this production of Johnny O'Keefe's life story strangely disappointing.
The first half seems to intend to be a celebration of his early years to 1960 - when he suffered severe injuries in a car accident - but instead of the great burst of excitement that I was expecting as the King of Australian Rock 'n' Roll swung into action, there was a rather flat series of short scenes. Each had its song, but the build up of dramatic tension was missing.
I looked then for the real guts of O'Keefe's life to spill out as his mental stability was seriously affected not only by the road accident, but especially by the drug induced death of the manager he so much believed in, Lee Gordon, in 1963, his inability to keep his marriage together, his fightback to success on occasions like the Sunbury Festival in 1973, and finally his early death from alcohol and prescription drug poisoning in 1978. Some scenes in the second half had dramatic strength - especially the Kings Cross party scene - but still there wasn't the sense of foreboding that his life story required.
Then, literally at last, the show returned to the 1959 hit Shout! and a celebration burst out from the stage and engulfed the audience - as it should have at the beginning.
Musicality was not the problem, either from the band or the singers. I haven't seen any previous production, but the dialogue seemed minimal to me, to the point that no real characters became established, except the awful conniving Lee Gordon. O'Keefe's songs were used to illustrate the story, but they were not the type of songs to carry the drama without rounded characters to sing them. After the show I remember best Pat Gallagher as Lee Gordon and Tony Maxfield as Marianne, O'Keefe's first wife. Rod Beaver made JO'K memorable only in the final song.
Costumes and dance steps were a problem for me too. I couldn't see the detailed research needed to clearly identify each change in style belonging to the dates of the original performances, and Beaver was dressed entirely unlike the mod suits and ties which O'Keefe wore most of his career. Maybe I expect too much, but I have seen better G-String productions.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 6 January 2006
2006: Phoenix Players' Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! Preview feature article.
Charlotte's Web, EB White's famous children's story, is a romance about a piglet, Wilbur, saved from the farmer's axe by a spider, Charlotte. It's also about death and a kind of resurrection. When Charlotte dies, Wilbur makes sure her 514 babies are safely hatched.
At first blush this hardly sounds like musical material for the school holidays but, says John Alsford, have no worries. Alsford is this summer's director for Phoenix Players of Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! He has created a show which is an entertainment for young and old, and - in the Phoenix community theatre tradition - a wonderful experience for the 27 children and grown-ups in the cast.
In 1952 New Yorker Elwyn Brooks White published the original Charlotte's Web, promptly dubbed by the US Children's Literature Association "The best American children's book of the past two hundred years", and praised by one critic for its "liveliness and felicity, tenderness and unexpectedness, grace and humor and praise of life". Alsford has aimed to bring all this to the stage through music, dance and song in an Australian style. The core directing team - Alsford, musical director Susan Davenport and choreographer Elissa Singer - have re-worked the American script, giving their show a local feel, especially in the humour, which counter-balances some of the sentimentality which can be attached to a story of American farm life.
Alsford sees working on the musical as a maypole dance. The music is the strong central fixed point, interpreted in the dance and the songs, holding the dialogue and storyline together. This is the opposite to many productions where the music is an add-on to the storyline, but the advantage is that from the beginning of rehearsals 4 months ago all the children and adults on stage have been actively working together, especially to create the dance sequences. This has also allowed Alsford, now a veteran of 12 years' work with Phoenix (a veteran indeed of Blue Folk where he was first directed by Dominic Mico in 1979) to focus on helping his young choreographer, 16-year-old Elissa Singer, to find ways of translating her original dance ideas into movement sequences which can work successfully for performers of different ages and experience.
This approach is just what Charlotte's Web and Phoenix Players need. Like Warehouse Circus and other Canberra community theatres, Phoenix brings together diverse, especially young people and, in Alsford's words, "corrupts the kids into theatre - where they gain so much confidence, friends for life, and have such fun". He cites his own daughter, Annie, now a respected drama teacher in country NSW, as proof - and her one-time college boyfriend, Mark Truebridge. His career began as stage manager when Alsford directed Peter Pan at Hawker College, and today is a NIDA graduate, currently lighting director for opera houses in France and Germany.
Learning friendship and trust, and tolerance of difference, is the universal theme of Charlotte's Web. When speaking of the animal and even insect characters, Alsford points out that they are "invisible" to the adult humans. "They're like barmaids and hairdressers - like people who just do their job." Like himself, in fact, in his day job as Commonwealth driver. EB White makes the invisible non-entities of farm life into characters with the same humanity as the humans - oddly similar in idea to George Orwell's Animal Farm. White's animals, too, are aware of the conspiracy against them. Wilbur, the new piglet, is naïve as Sheep says "But you know why they want to make you fat and tender, don't you?" Fern, the farmer's young daughter is equally unaware. For children watching, it is through Fern's and Wilbur's awakening that they may come to understand what intolerance of difference means to the victims.
When presented as a musical, with both entertainment and new understanding in mind, this production reinforces feelings of community not just in the abstract but right before us on stage by one of our Canberra well-established community theatre groups, Phoenix Players.
Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! adapted by Joseph Robinette; music and lyrics by Charles Strouse; based on the story by EB White
Phoenix Players at Theatre 3, Ellery Cres., Acton
January 13 - 28
Evenings 7.30pm Fri 13, Sat 14, Thurs 19, Fri 20, Sat 21, Fri 27, Sat 28
Matinees 2.30pm Wed 18, Sat 21, Sun 22, Wed 25, Sat 28
Australia Day Thurs 26 at 11am and 3pm
Bookings: Ph 6257 1950
© Frank McKone, Canberra
At first blush this hardly sounds like musical material for the school holidays but, says John Alsford, have no worries. Alsford is this summer's director for Phoenix Players of Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! He has created a show which is an entertainment for young and old, and - in the Phoenix community theatre tradition - a wonderful experience for the 27 children and grown-ups in the cast.
In 1952 New Yorker Elwyn Brooks White published the original Charlotte's Web, promptly dubbed by the US Children's Literature Association "The best American children's book of the past two hundred years", and praised by one critic for its "liveliness and felicity, tenderness and unexpectedness, grace and humor and praise of life". Alsford has aimed to bring all this to the stage through music, dance and song in an Australian style. The core directing team - Alsford, musical director Susan Davenport and choreographer Elissa Singer - have re-worked the American script, giving their show a local feel, especially in the humour, which counter-balances some of the sentimentality which can be attached to a story of American farm life.
Alsford sees working on the musical as a maypole dance. The music is the strong central fixed point, interpreted in the dance and the songs, holding the dialogue and storyline together. This is the opposite to many productions where the music is an add-on to the storyline, but the advantage is that from the beginning of rehearsals 4 months ago all the children and adults on stage have been actively working together, especially to create the dance sequences. This has also allowed Alsford, now a veteran of 12 years' work with Phoenix (a veteran indeed of Blue Folk where he was first directed by Dominic Mico in 1979) to focus on helping his young choreographer, 16-year-old Elissa Singer, to find ways of translating her original dance ideas into movement sequences which can work successfully for performers of different ages and experience.
This approach is just what Charlotte's Web and Phoenix Players need. Like Warehouse Circus and other Canberra community theatres, Phoenix brings together diverse, especially young people and, in Alsford's words, "corrupts the kids into theatre - where they gain so much confidence, friends for life, and have such fun". He cites his own daughter, Annie, now a respected drama teacher in country NSW, as proof - and her one-time college boyfriend, Mark Truebridge. His career began as stage manager when Alsford directed Peter Pan at Hawker College, and today is a NIDA graduate, currently lighting director for opera houses in France and Germany.
Learning friendship and trust, and tolerance of difference, is the universal theme of Charlotte's Web. When speaking of the animal and even insect characters, Alsford points out that they are "invisible" to the adult humans. "They're like barmaids and hairdressers - like people who just do their job." Like himself, in fact, in his day job as Commonwealth driver. EB White makes the invisible non-entities of farm life into characters with the same humanity as the humans - oddly similar in idea to George Orwell's Animal Farm. White's animals, too, are aware of the conspiracy against them. Wilbur, the new piglet, is naïve as Sheep says "But you know why they want to make you fat and tender, don't you?" Fern, the farmer's young daughter is equally unaware. For children watching, it is through Fern's and Wilbur's awakening that they may come to understand what intolerance of difference means to the victims.
When presented as a musical, with both entertainment and new understanding in mind, this production reinforces feelings of community not just in the abstract but right before us on stage by one of our Canberra well-established community theatre groups, Phoenix Players.
Charlotte's Web - Some Musical! adapted by Joseph Robinette; music and lyrics by Charles Strouse; based on the story by EB White
Phoenix Players at Theatre 3, Ellery Cres., Acton
January 13 - 28
Evenings 7.30pm Fri 13, Sat 14, Thurs 19, Fri 20, Sat 21, Fri 27, Sat 28
Matinees 2.30pm Wed 18, Sat 21, Sun 22, Wed 25, Sat 28
Australia Day Thurs 26 at 11am and 3pm
Bookings: Ph 6257 1950
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 20 December 2005
2005: Exhibition - National Treasures from Australia's Great Libraries
National Treasures from Australia's Great Libraries at National Library of Australia December 3 2005 - February 12 2006, 9am - 5pm (closed Christmas Day).
This is a Magic Pudding of an exhibition. You know what's in the recipe? - lots of amazing tastes, unexpected traditional threepenny pieces (genuine silver, of course), mixed for four years with tremendous enthusiasm and skill, bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside (more like a living yeast than a Tardis) and, finally, a texture, structure and shape better than anything Normal Lindsay imagined.
The only problem is time. It will run away with you, as a good Magic Pudding should. I would allow a couple of hours, lunch to chew 22 times per mouthful and digest, and then you could still go back for another hour or so for a second helping to discover nuts and raisins you missed the first time around. What's more, all this is free (except lunch since, as we know, there's no such thing) because "Australia's libraries have a responsibility to collect, preserve and make accessible Australia's documentary heritage in a wide variety of forms" including exhibitions of national treasures. Our first was in Hobart in 1858, then Melbourne in 1861, and then the first great Australian treasures exhibition organised by the Victorian Fine Arts Commission at the Melbourne Public Library in 1869.
As curator Margaret Dent says, a library collection is great for finding things you want, but "how do you find something you're not looking for?" Maybe you expect to see Don Bradman's favourite cricket bat and Ned Kelly's helmet made from ploughshares to armour (rather than swords to ploughshares), but the threepenny bits will set you thinking. Look at the first diagram describing the Southern Cross ("this crosse is so fayre and bewtiful"), not on Peter Lalor's flag but in a letter from Andrea Corsali in 1516 to Giuliano de Medici (translated from Italian into English by Richard Eden in 1555), and the yeasty possibilites begin to grow. Modern Australia might well have been Italian, or Dutch, or French. Or Aboriginal.
Did Indigenous people see a cross in this star formation? Or did it take European Christians to perceive that image? And should it have been such a cross to bear for Indigenous people? British Lord Morton, President of the Royal Society, hoped not in 1768 when he advised Captain James Cook "No European Nation has the right to occupy any part of their country (meaning newly discovered lands), or settle among them without their voluntary consent. Conquest over such people can give no just title; because they could never be the aggressors." Eddie Mabo's papers are set next to Lord Morton's advice, not far from the secret instructions Cook received from King George III to claim the new continent for England. The Royal Society organised Cook's trip, but the Government provided the funds - and it took more than 200 years until Mabo exposed the fraud. Eddie Mabo's papers were placed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2001, perhaps ironically along with Cook's Endeavour Journal.
This is just one thought bubble to grow from a page of a letter. On November 6, 1942, a German U-boat sank the City of Cairo in the South Atlantic. Of 17 people in Lifeboat No 4, only Margaret Gordon (whose husband drowned in a second torpedo attack) and Third Officer Whyte survived, sailing 3200 kms before rescue by a Brazilian minesweeper. Whyte was torpedoed and died returning from America to England. Gordon recorded the names and addresses on a page of her diary of her six European companions, and only that page survived. Margaret remarried, and as Margaret Ingham retired from the State Library of Victoria in 1980 as one of Australia's foremost experts on children's literature, establishing the 80,000 book Children's Research Collection. She never spoke of her ordeal, but wrote to inform the families of the dead. Mrs Solomon wrote that Gordon's letter "has gone on to [her son's] wife - who will keep it to read to little Nigel when old enough to understand".
These National Treasures touch the personal lives of people in our past, stirring up stories and thoughts which are real for us now. Even the suet in the Pudding - like the awful story of murderer Frederick Deeming - helps bind together our understanding. Take your time, because I've only touched on two of many, many fascinating stories of ordinary bits of paper, a helmet, a bat, Bourke and Wills' gun and whip, the model Holden I drove in 1964, a quilt made by Aboriginal children (anonymous) in 1845 and pictures drawn by Aboriginal children (with their traditional names) in 1940, the first order book for Hills Hoists and so much more. In fact the original Magic Pudding illustrations are about the last thing you'll see near the exit. Before you have lunch, and go back for a second helping. That's what I intend to do.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a Magic Pudding of an exhibition. You know what's in the recipe? - lots of amazing tastes, unexpected traditional threepenny pieces (genuine silver, of course), mixed for four years with tremendous enthusiasm and skill, bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside (more like a living yeast than a Tardis) and, finally, a texture, structure and shape better than anything Normal Lindsay imagined.
The only problem is time. It will run away with you, as a good Magic Pudding should. I would allow a couple of hours, lunch to chew 22 times per mouthful and digest, and then you could still go back for another hour or so for a second helping to discover nuts and raisins you missed the first time around. What's more, all this is free (except lunch since, as we know, there's no such thing) because "Australia's libraries have a responsibility to collect, preserve and make accessible Australia's documentary heritage in a wide variety of forms" including exhibitions of national treasures. Our first was in Hobart in 1858, then Melbourne in 1861, and then the first great Australian treasures exhibition organised by the Victorian Fine Arts Commission at the Melbourne Public Library in 1869.
As curator Margaret Dent says, a library collection is great for finding things you want, but "how do you find something you're not looking for?" Maybe you expect to see Don Bradman's favourite cricket bat and Ned Kelly's helmet made from ploughshares to armour (rather than swords to ploughshares), but the threepenny bits will set you thinking. Look at the first diagram describing the Southern Cross ("this crosse is so fayre and bewtiful"), not on Peter Lalor's flag but in a letter from Andrea Corsali in 1516 to Giuliano de Medici (translated from Italian into English by Richard Eden in 1555), and the yeasty possibilites begin to grow. Modern Australia might well have been Italian, or Dutch, or French. Or Aboriginal.
Did Indigenous people see a cross in this star formation? Or did it take European Christians to perceive that image? And should it have been such a cross to bear for Indigenous people? British Lord Morton, President of the Royal Society, hoped not in 1768 when he advised Captain James Cook "No European Nation has the right to occupy any part of their country (meaning newly discovered lands), or settle among them without their voluntary consent. Conquest over such people can give no just title; because they could never be the aggressors." Eddie Mabo's papers are set next to Lord Morton's advice, not far from the secret instructions Cook received from King George III to claim the new continent for England. The Royal Society organised Cook's trip, but the Government provided the funds - and it took more than 200 years until Mabo exposed the fraud. Eddie Mabo's papers were placed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2001, perhaps ironically along with Cook's Endeavour Journal.
This is just one thought bubble to grow from a page of a letter. On November 6, 1942, a German U-boat sank the City of Cairo in the South Atlantic. Of 17 people in Lifeboat No 4, only Margaret Gordon (whose husband drowned in a second torpedo attack) and Third Officer Whyte survived, sailing 3200 kms before rescue by a Brazilian minesweeper. Whyte was torpedoed and died returning from America to England. Gordon recorded the names and addresses on a page of her diary of her six European companions, and only that page survived. Margaret remarried, and as Margaret Ingham retired from the State Library of Victoria in 1980 as one of Australia's foremost experts on children's literature, establishing the 80,000 book Children's Research Collection. She never spoke of her ordeal, but wrote to inform the families of the dead. Mrs Solomon wrote that Gordon's letter "has gone on to [her son's] wife - who will keep it to read to little Nigel when old enough to understand".
These National Treasures touch the personal lives of people in our past, stirring up stories and thoughts which are real for us now. Even the suet in the Pudding - like the awful story of murderer Frederick Deeming - helps bind together our understanding. Take your time, because I've only touched on two of many, many fascinating stories of ordinary bits of paper, a helmet, a bat, Bourke and Wills' gun and whip, the model Holden I drove in 1964, a quilt made by Aboriginal children (anonymous) in 1845 and pictures drawn by Aboriginal children (with their traditional names) in 1940, the first order book for Hills Hoists and so much more. In fact the original Magic Pudding illustrations are about the last thing you'll see near the exit. Before you have lunch, and go back for a second helping. That's what I intend to do.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 1 December 2005
2005: Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams
Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams. Papermoon, directed by Geoffrey Borny, at ANU Arts Centre December 1 - 10.
Tennessee Williams knew personally the fear, perhaps our worst fear, of losing your mind - of not knowing what is real and what is not. In 1943 his parents authorised a prefrontal lobotomy on his older sister Rose. In Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Catharine Holly (Lainie Hart) is threatened with this very treatment because, Mrs Venable (Naone Carrel) says, she "babbles". Like Rose had, maybe.
Dr Cukrowicz (Alex Sangston), though compromised by needing funding for his research work from Mrs Venable, finds a way to test Catharine's story in a long intense hypnosis session. If Catharine speaks the truth, denying Mrs Venable's apocryphal belief that Catharine caused the death of her son Sebastian, the doctor cannot in conscience perform a lobotomy. Dr Cukrowicz concludes that we should consider that she is speaking the truth - but how do we know?
What Williams has done is to make us experience what it is like to be unsure of the truth, as a person on the verge of insanity is. To do this he uses long monologues by Mrs Venable and Catharine which are major achievements for Carrel and Hart, and for director Borny. The play focusses on the storytelling and requires close attention to the words, the pauses, the images and the implications. This is not an easy ride, but well worth our effort. The deliberate slow pacing may be too difficult for some, but let the words and the feelings wash over you. The experience is not pleasant, but revealing, as we should expect from great works of art.
What this production does, appropriately for its university context, is to make the careful construction of the art apparent to us. The dead Sebastian's jungle garden, like Williams' dialogue, is designed in every detail to seem real, and so the set cleverly complements the structure of the play. It becomes both an intellectual and emotional quest for the nature of truth - a satisfying result.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tennessee Williams knew personally the fear, perhaps our worst fear, of losing your mind - of not knowing what is real and what is not. In 1943 his parents authorised a prefrontal lobotomy on his older sister Rose. In Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Catharine Holly (Lainie Hart) is threatened with this very treatment because, Mrs Venable (Naone Carrel) says, she "babbles". Like Rose had, maybe.
Dr Cukrowicz (Alex Sangston), though compromised by needing funding for his research work from Mrs Venable, finds a way to test Catharine's story in a long intense hypnosis session. If Catharine speaks the truth, denying Mrs Venable's apocryphal belief that Catharine caused the death of her son Sebastian, the doctor cannot in conscience perform a lobotomy. Dr Cukrowicz concludes that we should consider that she is speaking the truth - but how do we know?
What Williams has done is to make us experience what it is like to be unsure of the truth, as a person on the verge of insanity is. To do this he uses long monologues by Mrs Venable and Catharine which are major achievements for Carrel and Hart, and for director Borny. The play focusses on the storytelling and requires close attention to the words, the pauses, the images and the implications. This is not an easy ride, but well worth our effort. The deliberate slow pacing may be too difficult for some, but let the words and the feelings wash over you. The experience is not pleasant, but revealing, as we should expect from great works of art.
What this production does, appropriately for its university context, is to make the careful construction of the art apparent to us. The dead Sebastian's jungle garden, like Williams' dialogue, is designed in every detail to seem real, and so the set cleverly complements the structure of the play. It becomes both an intellectual and emotional quest for the nature of truth - a satisfying result.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 26 November 2005
2005: A Slice of Saturday Night by The Heather Brothers
A Slice of Saturday Night. Music and lyrics by The Heather Brothers (Lea, Neil & John). G String Productions at Teatro Vivaldi, directed by Rod and Liz Beaver. Choreography by Jordan Kelly and Susan Miller. Band: Stuart King, Ben Braithwaite and Munro Melano. November 16 - December 3, 6.30pm for dinner and show. Bookings 3257 2718.
Double degustation, double delight. You only have till Saturday to book in to a show with excellent tastes.
You can look up that big word later, but know right now that it wasn't just the gourmet dips, fetta cheese and leek filos, zucchini and herb dumplings and roasted tomato, eggplant and goat's cheese stack for entree which heralded Vivaldi's delightful mains and sweets. Equally stunning was the quality of the slices, almost anatomical cross-sections, of Saturday Night at the Club A-Go-Go circa 1964.
Written in the late 1980s, this soft-satirical musical looks back with no regrets, in fact rather nostalgically, at what was probably the Heather Brothers' youthful experience of sexual awakening. There are some very funny songs, with references musical and lyrical to all the pop names of that time - including the prediction by the club manager, Eric 'rubber legs' DeVere (played very well by Peter Brady as a Bill Haley look-alike) that it would be the "Whiff" Cliff (Richards) who would survive the Beatles, The Animals and all the rest. How awfully true.
The delight in G String's production is that the musicianship, band and singers, was spot on throughout. Not a note out of place whether in a tear-jerker ballad, soft-porn rock, Beach Boys spoof, or an almost but not quite early Joan Baez (made sentimental) imitation folk revival song.
And that's not all. The choreography was tight in design and performance, artistically exact for the period, while fitting precisely up to 14 movers and shakers on the restaurant stage. The ensemble playing of the main boy-girl roles was so well balanced that it is unfair to pick one or two above the rest. I think each audience member would have picked their own favourites. Mine would be the couple Rebecca Franks (Sharon) and Will Huang (Rick) for voices and stage presence - and Craig Francis (Gary) especially for the premature ejaculation song.
As Eric asks, who in their right mind would want to be 17 again? But it's terrific fun watching. And watch for Queenie van de Zandt and Amanda Muggleton at Vivaldi's in December.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Double degustation, double delight. You only have till Saturday to book in to a show with excellent tastes.
You can look up that big word later, but know right now that it wasn't just the gourmet dips, fetta cheese and leek filos, zucchini and herb dumplings and roasted tomato, eggplant and goat's cheese stack for entree which heralded Vivaldi's delightful mains and sweets. Equally stunning was the quality of the slices, almost anatomical cross-sections, of Saturday Night at the Club A-Go-Go circa 1964.
Written in the late 1980s, this soft-satirical musical looks back with no regrets, in fact rather nostalgically, at what was probably the Heather Brothers' youthful experience of sexual awakening. There are some very funny songs, with references musical and lyrical to all the pop names of that time - including the prediction by the club manager, Eric 'rubber legs' DeVere (played very well by Peter Brady as a Bill Haley look-alike) that it would be the "Whiff" Cliff (Richards) who would survive the Beatles, The Animals and all the rest. How awfully true.
The delight in G String's production is that the musicianship, band and singers, was spot on throughout. Not a note out of place whether in a tear-jerker ballad, soft-porn rock, Beach Boys spoof, or an almost but not quite early Joan Baez (made sentimental) imitation folk revival song.
And that's not all. The choreography was tight in design and performance, artistically exact for the period, while fitting precisely up to 14 movers and shakers on the restaurant stage. The ensemble playing of the main boy-girl roles was so well balanced that it is unfair to pick one or two above the rest. I think each audience member would have picked their own favourites. Mine would be the couple Rebecca Franks (Sharon) and Will Huang (Rick) for voices and stage presence - and Craig Francis (Gary) especially for the premature ejaculation song.
As Eric asks, who in their right mind would want to be 17 again? But it's terrific fun watching. And watch for Queenie van de Zandt and Amanda Muggleton at Vivaldi's in December.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 25 November 2005
2005: The Three Scrooges - Comedy Christmas Cabaret.
The Three Scrooges - Comedy Christmas Cabaret. Shortis, Simpson and Casey directed by Carissa Campbell. The Street Theatre Studio November 24 - December 10, 8.30pm. Bookings: 6247 1223
Pssssst.... I won't reveal my source but I've just had a leak. The trouble is if I tell you about it the law will get me. I'll disappear for two weeks and then I won't even be able to tell you I disappeared for another two years. Sedition, I guess, would be the charge. But no-one would ever know, including me.
Maybe I can get around the problem by telling you that this is a terrible show. It's funny, for a start. Even worse, it's satirical. It even makes fun of the actual words spoken by our great leader of the free world and his little mate. And the music ... well, I can only say it is dreadfully so well done that you might be inveigled into enjoying the art and not realising that this is really the work of the devil. Comedy Christmas Cabaret indeed!
Don't be fooled. The worst part is that the now traditional John Shortis and Moya Simpson combination has been horribly enlivened by the voice and keyboard playing that only seems to come from heaven, though it actually comes from Peter J. Casey. If you thought Shortis and Simpson were unbearable last year, this combination is impossible now. It's surely the fault of the faceless Carissa Campbell. Only she could have choreographed the excellent Dance of the Latham Diaries - probably the only part of the show which might pass muster at ASIS.
But I have to be careful not to reveal that, though this is perhaps the most irreligious Christmas show one can imagine, Shortis's solo about what has happened to Christmas in our globalised economy is even sadder this year. Of course no-one can accept without a groan the disgusting representation of royalty, especially of Princess Di whose fashion photos were all over the Canberra Times front page on opening night. But the implied relationship between Princess Mary and her boy child suggested some higher understanding.
All in all, I can't say this was a great night out. That was just a leak, and the perpetrator will be brought to justice. I think I might just disappear at this point, and don't let yourself be seen at The Street, or you might never be seen again either. Bye-ee!
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Pssssst.... I won't reveal my source but I've just had a leak. The trouble is if I tell you about it the law will get me. I'll disappear for two weeks and then I won't even be able to tell you I disappeared for another two years. Sedition, I guess, would be the charge. But no-one would ever know, including me.
Maybe I can get around the problem by telling you that this is a terrible show. It's funny, for a start. Even worse, it's satirical. It even makes fun of the actual words spoken by our great leader of the free world and his little mate. And the music ... well, I can only say it is dreadfully so well done that you might be inveigled into enjoying the art and not realising that this is really the work of the devil. Comedy Christmas Cabaret indeed!
Don't be fooled. The worst part is that the now traditional John Shortis and Moya Simpson combination has been horribly enlivened by the voice and keyboard playing that only seems to come from heaven, though it actually comes from Peter J. Casey. If you thought Shortis and Simpson were unbearable last year, this combination is impossible now. It's surely the fault of the faceless Carissa Campbell. Only she could have choreographed the excellent Dance of the Latham Diaries - probably the only part of the show which might pass muster at ASIS.
But I have to be careful not to reveal that, though this is perhaps the most irreligious Christmas show one can imagine, Shortis's solo about what has happened to Christmas in our globalised economy is even sadder this year. Of course no-one can accept without a groan the disgusting representation of royalty, especially of Princess Di whose fashion photos were all over the Canberra Times front page on opening night. But the implied relationship between Princess Mary and her boy child suggested some higher understanding.
All in all, I can't say this was a great night out. That was just a leak, and the perpetrator will be brought to justice. I think I might just disappear at this point, and don't let yourself be seen at The Street, or you might never be seen again either. Bye-ee!
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 19 October 2005
2005: Deckchairs by Jean McConnell
Shoppers, Doggies, Dancers and Cruise Missile from Deckchairs by Jean McConnell. HIT Productions at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, October 18 and 19.
Sitting relaxed at Tuggeranong By The Sea, watching the deckchairs for entertainment was about as exciting as you might expect. Because of the neat directing by Gary Down and fine performances from stalwart sisters Joan Sydney and Maggie King, maybe a bit more than you would have bargained for.
Jean McConnell is an English writer for television, radio and stage. The format for the 12 20 minute playlets in Deckchairs is a variation of a long tradition of English "characters" just talking, more or less to each other. In this case they are sitting in deckchairs, on a promenade or, in Cruise Missile, on a cruise ship. Unlike Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, which are ascerbic revelations of the sad, even tragic, inner lives of English suburbanites, previously presented by HIT Productions at TCA, McConnell's women are more comic in tone.
The result is an entertaining evening which the Canberra audience thoroughly enjoyed, yet I found the themes, like the upper and lower class dog owners who end up growling at each other, a bit too predictable. When I think back to the masters of this form, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (in, say, the 1960s Dagenham Dialogues in which 'Pete', as a confident but ill-informed bore, held forth to 'Dud', a scruffy, even less informed Herbert), I realise that Jean McConnell, writing Deckchairs in the decade since 1995, misses the absurdity of Pete and Dud which her characters need to lift them beyond quite funny but ultimately rather shallow images of English life. Tuggeranong certainly seemed rather far-flung from her world, yet could seem closer to Dagenham.
On the other hand, O'Connell has a good ear for the language of her characters, and the Australian sisters were very skilled not only in accents and comic timing, but especially in the right phrasing and intonation for each class of character. The conniving "shoppers" were perfectly matched in speech, the dog owners' manners and language matched their very funny hand-puppet dogs (wild bitzer and snooty pug), and especially interesting were the 'A' Deck single-cabin wealthy-but-genuine woman and the contrasting below-decks shared-cabin know-it-all "cruise missile" who got her come-uppance to great applause to end the evening's show.
So, in the English tradition, a bit of a curate's egg.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sitting relaxed at Tuggeranong By The Sea, watching the deckchairs for entertainment was about as exciting as you might expect. Because of the neat directing by Gary Down and fine performances from stalwart sisters Joan Sydney and Maggie King, maybe a bit more than you would have bargained for.
Jean McConnell is an English writer for television, radio and stage. The format for the 12 20 minute playlets in Deckchairs is a variation of a long tradition of English "characters" just talking, more or less to each other. In this case they are sitting in deckchairs, on a promenade or, in Cruise Missile, on a cruise ship. Unlike Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, which are ascerbic revelations of the sad, even tragic, inner lives of English suburbanites, previously presented by HIT Productions at TCA, McConnell's women are more comic in tone.
The result is an entertaining evening which the Canberra audience thoroughly enjoyed, yet I found the themes, like the upper and lower class dog owners who end up growling at each other, a bit too predictable. When I think back to the masters of this form, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (in, say, the 1960s Dagenham Dialogues in which 'Pete', as a confident but ill-informed bore, held forth to 'Dud', a scruffy, even less informed Herbert), I realise that Jean McConnell, writing Deckchairs in the decade since 1995, misses the absurdity of Pete and Dud which her characters need to lift them beyond quite funny but ultimately rather shallow images of English life. Tuggeranong certainly seemed rather far-flung from her world, yet could seem closer to Dagenham.
On the other hand, O'Connell has a good ear for the language of her characters, and the Australian sisters were very skilled not only in accents and comic timing, but especially in the right phrasing and intonation for each class of character. The conniving "shoppers" were perfectly matched in speech, the dog owners' manners and language matched their very funny hand-puppet dogs (wild bitzer and snooty pug), and especially interesting were the 'A' Deck single-cabin wealthy-but-genuine woman and the contrasting below-decks shared-cabin know-it-all "cruise missile" who got her come-uppance to great applause to end the evening's show.
So, in the English tradition, a bit of a curate's egg.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 13 October 2005
2005: International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2005
MUSEUM EVENTS BY FRANK McKONE
Welcome to the International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2005. The world has moved on from the museum theatre of old - like, let's do Shakespeare exactly the way he did it, even though The Globe burned down 400 years ago, and nowadays we can put LED stars in the firmament. Shakespeare didn't even know about museums, which really only became big in the 1800s. I was sitting in the studio of a big one, the National Museum of Australia, surrounded by digital video equipment, lights, cameras and action. A jigsaw blade had just appeared through the blackened door into the bio box and was cutting out a neat rectangle for a vision panel. It had to be in place before the speeches were to start at 9.40am.
Meanwhile, next door in the Temporary Gallery, conference delegates were watching Gondwana, the live action puppetry performance by ERTH, true to the most recent scientific research, which had drawn full houses throughout the school holidays with life size dinosaurs, growing plants, insects and even an early mammal from deep time when Australia, Africa, India, South America and Antarctica were all joined in the super-continent Gondwanaland. This is museum theatre today.
Then, here the delegates entered, not exactly the conventional bunch of bureaucrats and backroom boffins that you might associate with a museum. At this, the first IMTAL Conference in the southern hemisphere, there was a definite atmosphere of bubbling excitement. Craddock Morton, NMA director, dared to admit that he had been a skeptic about museum theatre (boo, hiss from the crowd), but now he had become a convert (claps and cheers). All power to your arms, he concluded. Louise Douglas, general manager public programs, conducted a pre-curtain call of the backstage team from NMA, Questacon, National Gallery, War Memorial, Old Parliament House, to enthusiastic applause.
First keynote speaker, theatrical icon Robyn Archer, noted that whooping and laughter was not common to other conference audiences she had spoken to. Before long, though, she was challenging museums and museum theatre practitioners. Quoting Bertolt Brecht and using powerful examples from her recent worldwide experiences from Buenos Aires, Teheran, Britain and many other places, she said that, in a society of a widening gap between rich and poor, theatre must "test ourselves and our moral stance" which it can do without putting our loved ones at actual risk. Brecht wrote that our fates are "knotted and cast by men" and theatre is about "teaching [the audience] the great art of living together".
The challenge, Archer said, is that it's easy to create a shallow entertainment, even if it might illustrate a museum exhibit. But "all theatre makers should aspire to the best", she said, and in doing so she challenged museums to take the kinds of risk that, I wonder, may not be acceptable to conservative administrators or the politicians behind them. In response to a question about Minister for Education Brendan Nelson, Archer's view was that "Cultural institutions remain the only places for the reclamation of democracy" in societies where only stories like Simpson and his donkey are to be told, or you won't get your grant next year.
Catherine Hughes, founder of IMTAL, presented research information from her doctoral studies at Ohio University which backs Archer's position. Empathy for characters, though vicarious, sets off processes in the brain like those from real experience. These hormonal and neuronal activities - emotional arousal - enhance long-term memory. After a play about the human genome project, 87% of students were able to articulate how the genome project might impact on their lives - a 59% increase on a pre-performance study. In other research, students remembered detailed information from a theatre-in-education performance 7 months later.
Hughes' message was "Activate the amygdala; resonate with [the audience's] lives; shape performances with surprises". This means presenting unexpected viewpoints, like making the murderer of South American rainforest activist Chico Mendez the main character who justifies his action - "just clearing the frontier, just like you [Americans] did". Most important for museums and the issue of truth, Hughes concluded, "Address difficult and controversial subject matter."
Proof of her point followed as Anne E Stewart of the Victorian Storytelling Guild presented the story of the death of her brother Tony Stewart in Balibo in 1975 in "East Timor: Grief: Personal to Public - Telling the Story". Her family's tragedy becomes an uplifting story of her other brother Paul, who began the band Painters and Dockers, and now teamed up with East Timorese refugee Gil Santos to form The Dili Allstars. Their latest CD documents the killing of the Balibo 5 and is a powerful anti-war musical statement in the local language. Delegates had no difficulty feeling empathy, recognising the resonance, being surprised by the serendipity of the Stewart family's story. I'm sure they will not forget.
This article is just a look into a 4-day conference. I cannot let you go without hearing something from Professor Sam H. Ham, director of the Centre for Training and Outreach, University of Idaho, and an expert in the psychology of audiences. He suggested 3 aims for museum theatre - acquisition of new factual knowledge, entertainment and holding attention, heightened "awareness".
To achieve heightened awareness he described a choice of 3 roads. The Teacher Tell Paradigm "if they know what we know, then they too will care as we care". Research shows that this approach may increase factual knowledge, but does not change awareness. The Infotainment Paradigm "if we can just keep people entertained long enough something good is bound to happen and they'll end up being changed for the better" is no more successful at creating awareness, though positive feedback may appear convincing.
Only the Meaning Making Paradigm works. "If you can get visitors thinking ... they'll make their own connections, and if they make their own connections, it's possible they'll be able to care" about what has been presented. "The main thing [museum] interpretation should try to accomplish is getting people to make their own themes inside their own heads". Then "it must (Italics on) matter (Italics off) to the audience. As Robyn Archer / Bertolt Brecht said, making meaning is teaching "the great art of living together".
Extending Our Reach: 4th Biennial IMTAL Conference at National Museum of Australia October 13-16.
Go to www.nma.gov.au/events/major_events/2005_imtal_conference/
www.anne-e-stewart.com
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Welcome to the International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2005. The world has moved on from the museum theatre of old - like, let's do Shakespeare exactly the way he did it, even though The Globe burned down 400 years ago, and nowadays we can put LED stars in the firmament. Shakespeare didn't even know about museums, which really only became big in the 1800s. I was sitting in the studio of a big one, the National Museum of Australia, surrounded by digital video equipment, lights, cameras and action. A jigsaw blade had just appeared through the blackened door into the bio box and was cutting out a neat rectangle for a vision panel. It had to be in place before the speeches were to start at 9.40am.
Meanwhile, next door in the Temporary Gallery, conference delegates were watching Gondwana, the live action puppetry performance by ERTH, true to the most recent scientific research, which had drawn full houses throughout the school holidays with life size dinosaurs, growing plants, insects and even an early mammal from deep time when Australia, Africa, India, South America and Antarctica were all joined in the super-continent Gondwanaland. This is museum theatre today.
Then, here the delegates entered, not exactly the conventional bunch of bureaucrats and backroom boffins that you might associate with a museum. At this, the first IMTAL Conference in the southern hemisphere, there was a definite atmosphere of bubbling excitement. Craddock Morton, NMA director, dared to admit that he had been a skeptic about museum theatre (boo, hiss from the crowd), but now he had become a convert (claps and cheers). All power to your arms, he concluded. Louise Douglas, general manager public programs, conducted a pre-curtain call of the backstage team from NMA, Questacon, National Gallery, War Memorial, Old Parliament House, to enthusiastic applause.
First keynote speaker, theatrical icon Robyn Archer, noted that whooping and laughter was not common to other conference audiences she had spoken to. Before long, though, she was challenging museums and museum theatre practitioners. Quoting Bertolt Brecht and using powerful examples from her recent worldwide experiences from Buenos Aires, Teheran, Britain and many other places, she said that, in a society of a widening gap between rich and poor, theatre must "test ourselves and our moral stance" which it can do without putting our loved ones at actual risk. Brecht wrote that our fates are "knotted and cast by men" and theatre is about "teaching [the audience] the great art of living together".
The challenge, Archer said, is that it's easy to create a shallow entertainment, even if it might illustrate a museum exhibit. But "all theatre makers should aspire to the best", she said, and in doing so she challenged museums to take the kinds of risk that, I wonder, may not be acceptable to conservative administrators or the politicians behind them. In response to a question about Minister for Education Brendan Nelson, Archer's view was that "Cultural institutions remain the only places for the reclamation of democracy" in societies where only stories like Simpson and his donkey are to be told, or you won't get your grant next year.
Catherine Hughes, founder of IMTAL, presented research information from her doctoral studies at Ohio University which backs Archer's position. Empathy for characters, though vicarious, sets off processes in the brain like those from real experience. These hormonal and neuronal activities - emotional arousal - enhance long-term memory. After a play about the human genome project, 87% of students were able to articulate how the genome project might impact on their lives - a 59% increase on a pre-performance study. In other research, students remembered detailed information from a theatre-in-education performance 7 months later.
Hughes' message was "Activate the amygdala; resonate with [the audience's] lives; shape performances with surprises". This means presenting unexpected viewpoints, like making the murderer of South American rainforest activist Chico Mendez the main character who justifies his action - "just clearing the frontier, just like you [Americans] did". Most important for museums and the issue of truth, Hughes concluded, "Address difficult and controversial subject matter."
Proof of her point followed as Anne E Stewart of the Victorian Storytelling Guild presented the story of the death of her brother Tony Stewart in Balibo in 1975 in "East Timor: Grief: Personal to Public - Telling the Story". Her family's tragedy becomes an uplifting story of her other brother Paul, who began the band Painters and Dockers, and now teamed up with East Timorese refugee Gil Santos to form The Dili Allstars. Their latest CD documents the killing of the Balibo 5 and is a powerful anti-war musical statement in the local language. Delegates had no difficulty feeling empathy, recognising the resonance, being surprised by the serendipity of the Stewart family's story. I'm sure they will not forget.
This article is just a look into a 4-day conference. I cannot let you go without hearing something from Professor Sam H. Ham, director of the Centre for Training and Outreach, University of Idaho, and an expert in the psychology of audiences. He suggested 3 aims for museum theatre - acquisition of new factual knowledge, entertainment and holding attention, heightened "awareness".
To achieve heightened awareness he described a choice of 3 roads. The Teacher Tell Paradigm "if they know what we know, then they too will care as we care". Research shows that this approach may increase factual knowledge, but does not change awareness. The Infotainment Paradigm "if we can just keep people entertained long enough something good is bound to happen and they'll end up being changed for the better" is no more successful at creating awareness, though positive feedback may appear convincing.
Only the Meaning Making Paradigm works. "If you can get visitors thinking ... they'll make their own connections, and if they make their own connections, it's possible they'll be able to care" about what has been presented. "The main thing [museum] interpretation should try to accomplish is getting people to make their own themes inside their own heads". Then "it must (Italics on) matter (Italics off) to the audience. As Robyn Archer / Bertolt Brecht said, making meaning is teaching "the great art of living together".
Extending Our Reach: 4th Biennial IMTAL Conference at National Museum of Australia October 13-16.
Go to www.nma.gov.au/events/major_events/2005_imtal_conference/
www.anne-e-stewart.com
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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