EnTrance created and performed by Yumi Umiumare at The Street Theatre, Canberra. June 30 – July 2, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 30
Under the spotlight: Yumi Umiumare
MiNDFOOD talks to Yumi Umiumare as she prepares for her solo performance "EnTrance" at [this] year’s Oz Asia Festival.
Aug 03, 2009
“This
is my first time performing a full-length solo show where I incorporate
all the elements of my art. There are short segments for each style
and towards the end I perform a Butoh segment with my face painted white, so it is like I am returning to my roots.”
“I first came to Melbourne in 1991 with the Butoh company Dai Rakuda Kan, which is the oldest Butoh
company in Japan. We were invited to perform for the Melbourne
International Arts Festival. I met a lot of people in the arts community
at the time and started visiting regularly between 1991 and 1993. I
moved permanently in 1993.
I lived in Tyoko before and
while it is an exciting and stimulating city it is also very busy. In
Melbourne there is more space, more of your own space. I found artists
have more freedom to develop their own style and ideas.”
“For EnTrance
I’m working with media artist Bambang Nurcahyadi, installation artist
Naomi Ota and sound designer Ian Kitney, so while I was initially scared
about doing a solo performance I realized the other artists were
supporting me.”
I’ve
chosen these quotes from this interview two years ago because I think
they help us to understand Umiumare’s work. A friend commented after
the show, “She’s a work of art.” I agree, and so felt I needed to know
something about her, particularly why she had moved from Tokyo to
Australia, as well as knowing something about the Japanese radical dance
form, butoh.
First though, she had no need to
be scared tonight. Her focus, discipline and originality held the
audience for 75 minutes, confirming the reputation she brings from 20
years’ worth of stage and film work in this country. I have seen her
only twice before, in Ngapartji Ngapartji at Belvoir Street in 2008 and in The Burlesque Hour
in 2009 here at The Street. There could not have been a greater
contrast between her gentle role in the story of Pitjantjatjara man,
Trevor Jamieson, and her frantic satirical mime of frustrated
glass-ceiling shattering modern womanhood in Burlesque.
EnTrance
begins seemingly at peace in a garden with her cat, but quickly leads
to the horror of living at the mercy of a huge city, which I have taken
to be Tokyo. Experiences there include seeing her mother’s face as she
leaves her son, “Yumi’s” brother, in hospital to die. The character, of
course, may not actually be Yumi, but the identification with the
mother’s feelings, expressed in butoh style, seems terribly real. Who would want to keep living, if you can call it that, in such a city?
Butoh
developed as a response to the occupation of Japan after World War II
and it seems to have become a tradition for its practitioners to leave
the city to, in a sense, return to the origins of Japanese culture in
the country. As I thought about this and recalled the final scene of EnTrance, a connection seemed to form – or what Yumi has called a ‘chain’. She writes, “In EnTrance, each section is interconnected through a ‘chained world’ in which a new world opens up, one to the other.”
As she moves into the ‘pure’ butoh
style, naked and whitened with rice flour, the screen behind shows a
body of water on which her image floats and in which it is reflected –
in the tradition of “the two worlds of Life and Death” described as “two
shores; one is ‘the near shore’ (the world of the living), and the
other is ‘the far shore (world of after-death)”. But this water is an
Australian billabong, with old gum trees on the banks and Australian
birds calling.
In that final scene there is a feeling
of freedom, perhaps as Yumi Umiumare experienced in moving permanently
to Australia, and in the ending, represented in the form of the
overwhelming light described by those who have had a near-death
experience, there is a sense of satisfaction, of completion. So for me
at least, EnTrance is a work of art by an artist at work,
successfully achieving what she describes as “the moment of
transformation where the spirit and the body are propelled into another
world or existence”. Which is, of course, the nature of true theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
2011: Turns by Reg Livermore
Turns by Reg Livermore, with Nancye Hayes and piano
accompaniment by Vincent Colagiuri. Christine Dunstan Productions
directed by Tom Healey at Canberra Playhouse, June 21-25 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
The story of Turns – a pantomime with a twist – is entirely fictional. Gladys Moncrieff, Australia’s ‘Queen of Song’ is claimed to be the mother of Nancye Hayes’ character, Marjorie Joy. Marjorie’s son, Alistair Moncrieff, claims his mother shot Gladys on stage as she opened wide to sing high C. In case you want to know, the real Gladys Moncrieff had no children and died in hospital in 1976 at the age of 83, having retired from the stage with her husband Tom Moore to the Isle of Capri in 1968.
Livermore’s author’s note says ‘Turns is a broad reflection on show business, matters of identity, of family and dependency, of the memory, and the commonality of an experience that lies ahead for most of us.’ This refers, presumably, not to death, since that lies ahead for all of us, but to dementia – although European studies show incident rates of 2.5 per 1000 at age 65, growing to 85.6 per 1000 at age 90. In other words most of us will not suffer from dementia, but 95 year old Marjorie Joy certainly does, and I begin to suspect that her son Alistair (who I suppose is about the same age as me and Reg Livermore) is headed in the same direction.
I should calm any fears by noting that on stage and at the pre-show talk hosted by Helen Musa on June 21, neither Reg (72) nor Nancye (67) showed the slightest signs of any forms of dementia that I could detect – but of course that may merely reflect my own shortcomings now I am 70. What I do know is that there is no way I could hoof, sing, mime, speak, shout, and hold an audience with anything like the verve and discipline of these two. Or remember my lines. So I’ll stick to criticism, thank you very much.
I guess what Livermore, as author, has shown is that not only is theatre all a matter of illusion, but that life itself is largely illusory. When we see Alistair attempting to cope with caring for his impossible mother, he appears to be normal. He feels duty bound even while her behaviour is frustrating. We find her funny even as we sympathise with him.
When Alistair speaks to us after his mother’s death, we begin by assuming that he is normal, but the twist is that he reveals to us his own need for illusion to sustain a sense of personal integrity. Like his mother, he must use dress-ups as a way to create a life for himself. We are back in the world of theatre, where fiction can be made to seem real, even including a story about the death of Gladys Moncrieff.
What does it all mean? Well, I suggest that Hayes and Livermore, who have both been named among Australia’s Top 100 Entertainers of the 20th Century, in the musical theatre tradition, can be seen as the children of Gladys Moncrieff. Hayes’ career began as a dancer in the JC Williamson 1961 production of My Fair Lady, while Livermore’s got under way at the Phillip Street Theatre in 1957. I had arrived in Australia in 1955 and was certainly made well aware of the Queen of Song – though I have to admit that my 1957 highlight was Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, sitting up in the Gods at the Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown. Gladys Moncrieff was a pleasant radio voice for me, but one who didn’t often make it among AE Floyd’s Music Lovers’ Hour on the ABC each week. Maybe even then I was too pretentious for my own good.
So I guess I have to conclude that although Turns and Reg Livermore as a writer can’t match O’Neill and Long Day’s Journey, this is an entertainment with something more than mere enjoyment – a ‘broad reflection on show business’ as the author has claimed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
The story of Turns – a pantomime with a twist – is entirely fictional. Gladys Moncrieff, Australia’s ‘Queen of Song’ is claimed to be the mother of Nancye Hayes’ character, Marjorie Joy. Marjorie’s son, Alistair Moncrieff, claims his mother shot Gladys on stage as she opened wide to sing high C. In case you want to know, the real Gladys Moncrieff had no children and died in hospital in 1976 at the age of 83, having retired from the stage with her husband Tom Moore to the Isle of Capri in 1968.
Livermore’s author’s note says ‘Turns is a broad reflection on show business, matters of identity, of family and dependency, of the memory, and the commonality of an experience that lies ahead for most of us.’ This refers, presumably, not to death, since that lies ahead for all of us, but to dementia – although European studies show incident rates of 2.5 per 1000 at age 65, growing to 85.6 per 1000 at age 90. In other words most of us will not suffer from dementia, but 95 year old Marjorie Joy certainly does, and I begin to suspect that her son Alistair (who I suppose is about the same age as me and Reg Livermore) is headed in the same direction.
I should calm any fears by noting that on stage and at the pre-show talk hosted by Helen Musa on June 21, neither Reg (72) nor Nancye (67) showed the slightest signs of any forms of dementia that I could detect – but of course that may merely reflect my own shortcomings now I am 70. What I do know is that there is no way I could hoof, sing, mime, speak, shout, and hold an audience with anything like the verve and discipline of these two. Or remember my lines. So I’ll stick to criticism, thank you very much.
I guess what Livermore, as author, has shown is that not only is theatre all a matter of illusion, but that life itself is largely illusory. When we see Alistair attempting to cope with caring for his impossible mother, he appears to be normal. He feels duty bound even while her behaviour is frustrating. We find her funny even as we sympathise with him.
When Alistair speaks to us after his mother’s death, we begin by assuming that he is normal, but the twist is that he reveals to us his own need for illusion to sustain a sense of personal integrity. Like his mother, he must use dress-ups as a way to create a life for himself. We are back in the world of theatre, where fiction can be made to seem real, even including a story about the death of Gladys Moncrieff.
What does it all mean? Well, I suggest that Hayes and Livermore, who have both been named among Australia’s Top 100 Entertainers of the 20th Century, in the musical theatre tradition, can be seen as the children of Gladys Moncrieff. Hayes’ career began as a dancer in the JC Williamson 1961 production of My Fair Lady, while Livermore’s got under way at the Phillip Street Theatre in 1957. I had arrived in Australia in 1955 and was certainly made well aware of the Queen of Song – though I have to admit that my 1957 highlight was Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, sitting up in the Gods at the Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown. Gladys Moncrieff was a pleasant radio voice for me, but one who didn’t often make it among AE Floyd’s Music Lovers’ Hour on the ABC each week. Maybe even then I was too pretentious for my own good.
So I guess I have to conclude that although Turns and Reg Livermore as a writer can’t match O’Neill and Long Day’s Journey, this is an entertainment with something more than mere enjoyment – a ‘broad reflection on show business’ as the author has claimed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
2011: In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl. Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Playhouse, directed by Pamela Rabe. June 8-11, 2011
Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 8
Only two years after its first production at Berkeley Rep, it’s good to see Sydney put on a play described by one of its first commentators (Rachel Swan in the East Bay Express) as ‘a pretty progressive play, even by 2009 standards’. I am sure that most of the Canberra audience last night was much more sophisticated than I am, and their delight in this rare kind of comedy suggests they are pretty progressive too. At interval a friend asked if I had “learnt anything new”. It was a trap question, of course, so I mumbled vaguely rather than reveal my ignorance.
I’ll return later to the play and its writer, because there’s lots there to think about.
But I want to begin by praising Pamela Rabe, and her cast Jacqueline McKenzie (Catherine Givings – the vibrator’s wife), David Roberts (Dr Givings – the vibrator), Helen Thomson (Sabrina Daldry – the first to be vibrated), Marshall Napier (Mr Daldry – her non-vibrant husband), Mandy McElhinney (Annie – the vibrator’s assistant and a vibrator in her own right), Sara Zwangobani (Elizabeth – the wet nurse who understands) and Josh McConville (Leo Irving – the artist and the second to be vibrated).
Equally praiseworthy is the designer, Tracy Grant Lord and her team led by Hartley T A Kemp (Lighting Designer), Iain Grandage (Composer/Sound Designer), Laura A. Proietti (Wigs, Hair & Make Up Supervisor), and Charmian Gradwell (Voice & Text Coach). A large part of the particular success of this production was how the set, costumes, hair-dos, lights and sound gave the actors exactly the environment to allow their characters to spark.
And spark they certainly did, in more ways than one. Being a bit too much like Dr Givings myself, I loved the moment when he sees that Mrs Daldry needs an extra boost, turns the vibrator up to maximum and blows every Edison light in the house. Isn’t it great to be a technician?
Each actor had strengths with no noticeable weak points, so none can be honestly awarded more praise than any other in such a tight ensemble, but there were special moments for me.
One was the depth of character expressed by Sara Zwangobani as Elizabeth announces her decision to leave Catherine’s employ as a wet nurse – such bitterness held in check by her maturity of understanding took this role far beyond a matter of simple racist discrimination. Her speech opened up the whole issue of universal human rights.
At the other end of the scale was the brief exit of Marshall Napier’s Mr Daldry as he realises that he has to walk out to see Catherine’s garden and leave her and his wife alone together. Perhaps he is mainly responding to Catherine’s vivacity, but he also recognises Sabrina’s new-found sense of authority. Probably he can’t explain to himself why he should go, but he knows he must.
These are only two examples which show why I am so pleased to see a modern play offer the actors the opportunity for such finesse. This brings me to the play itself.
One commentator mentioned that the set is deliberately similar to that of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and I found myself thinking of another playwright also influenced by Ibsen: George Bernard Shaw, still famous in the popular mind today for Pygmalion and its musical version My Fair Lady. Shaw was a progressive playwright in his day. He didn’t mention vibrators but he wrote about attitudes towards women’s sexuality in 1892 only a decade or so after the technically advanced Americans in Ruhl’s play were discovering how to treat hysteria with ‘paroxysms’. In Mrs Warren’s Profession Shaw wrote a comedy about Mrs Warren’s Cambridge educated daughter being horrified to find that her mother financed her daughter’s education by running a brothel.
Mrs Warren’s Profession was banned by the Lord Chamberlain because of its ‘frank discussion and portrayal of prostitution’, getting its first production after 10 years in the members-only New Lyric Club in 1902 and waiting for its first public performance in London until 1925. Interestingly, ‘it had a performance in New York, this time on a public stage in 1905, [which] was interrupted by the police who arrested the cast and crew, although it appears only the house manager of the theatre was actually charged.[citation needed] The play has been revived on Broadway five times since, most recently in 2010.’ [Wikipedia accessed 9 June 2011]
Well, how does Ruhl compare to Shaw? First, however progressive she may be, it seems that the re-enactment of orgasms on stage has not caused the arrest of the cast and crew, despite present-day public concerns about pornography. Maybe this is because Ruhl has set her play in the prudish Victorian era in the past (now 130 years ago), whereas Shaw’s play was set in his own time – the actual prudish Victorian era. In the official 1912 Constable edition, Shaw’s preface, called The Author’s Apology, made no apology at all for refusing to write a conventional sentimental romantic comedy and having his characters speak and behave as real people would.
Ruhl, in re-creating the language of the past era, has written at least as cleverly as the famous wordsmith Shaw. Her comedy grows from the fact that her characters avoid direct description, yet we know today exactly what they mean. Shaw’s comedy drew on characters saying exactly what they mean in a society that wishes they didn’t. The one quote, of course, which has come down to us from Shaw is Eliza’s innocent exclamation in Pygmalion: ‘Not bloody likely.’
So one thing I learnt from In the Next Room or the vibrator play is that Sarah Ruhl well deserves the prizes she has been awarded (Glickman Prize and finalist for Pulizter Prize), and that she is writing in a tradition which I find thoroughly satisfying.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 8
Only two years after its first production at Berkeley Rep, it’s good to see Sydney put on a play described by one of its first commentators (Rachel Swan in the East Bay Express) as ‘a pretty progressive play, even by 2009 standards’. I am sure that most of the Canberra audience last night was much more sophisticated than I am, and their delight in this rare kind of comedy suggests they are pretty progressive too. At interval a friend asked if I had “learnt anything new”. It was a trap question, of course, so I mumbled vaguely rather than reveal my ignorance.
I’ll return later to the play and its writer, because there’s lots there to think about.
But I want to begin by praising Pamela Rabe, and her cast Jacqueline McKenzie (Catherine Givings – the vibrator’s wife), David Roberts (Dr Givings – the vibrator), Helen Thomson (Sabrina Daldry – the first to be vibrated), Marshall Napier (Mr Daldry – her non-vibrant husband), Mandy McElhinney (Annie – the vibrator’s assistant and a vibrator in her own right), Sara Zwangobani (Elizabeth – the wet nurse who understands) and Josh McConville (Leo Irving – the artist and the second to be vibrated).
Equally praiseworthy is the designer, Tracy Grant Lord and her team led by Hartley T A Kemp (Lighting Designer), Iain Grandage (Composer/Sound Designer), Laura A. Proietti (Wigs, Hair & Make Up Supervisor), and Charmian Gradwell (Voice & Text Coach). A large part of the particular success of this production was how the set, costumes, hair-dos, lights and sound gave the actors exactly the environment to allow their characters to spark.
And spark they certainly did, in more ways than one. Being a bit too much like Dr Givings myself, I loved the moment when he sees that Mrs Daldry needs an extra boost, turns the vibrator up to maximum and blows every Edison light in the house. Isn’t it great to be a technician?
Each actor had strengths with no noticeable weak points, so none can be honestly awarded more praise than any other in such a tight ensemble, but there were special moments for me.
One was the depth of character expressed by Sara Zwangobani as Elizabeth announces her decision to leave Catherine’s employ as a wet nurse – such bitterness held in check by her maturity of understanding took this role far beyond a matter of simple racist discrimination. Her speech opened up the whole issue of universal human rights.
At the other end of the scale was the brief exit of Marshall Napier’s Mr Daldry as he realises that he has to walk out to see Catherine’s garden and leave her and his wife alone together. Perhaps he is mainly responding to Catherine’s vivacity, but he also recognises Sabrina’s new-found sense of authority. Probably he can’t explain to himself why he should go, but he knows he must.
These are only two examples which show why I am so pleased to see a modern play offer the actors the opportunity for such finesse. This brings me to the play itself.
One commentator mentioned that the set is deliberately similar to that of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and I found myself thinking of another playwright also influenced by Ibsen: George Bernard Shaw, still famous in the popular mind today for Pygmalion and its musical version My Fair Lady. Shaw was a progressive playwright in his day. He didn’t mention vibrators but he wrote about attitudes towards women’s sexuality in 1892 only a decade or so after the technically advanced Americans in Ruhl’s play were discovering how to treat hysteria with ‘paroxysms’. In Mrs Warren’s Profession Shaw wrote a comedy about Mrs Warren’s Cambridge educated daughter being horrified to find that her mother financed her daughter’s education by running a brothel.
Mrs Warren’s Profession was banned by the Lord Chamberlain because of its ‘frank discussion and portrayal of prostitution’, getting its first production after 10 years in the members-only New Lyric Club in 1902 and waiting for its first public performance in London until 1925. Interestingly, ‘it had a performance in New York, this time on a public stage in 1905, [which] was interrupted by the police who arrested the cast and crew, although it appears only the house manager of the theatre was actually charged.[citation needed] The play has been revived on Broadway five times since, most recently in 2010.’ [Wikipedia accessed 9 June 2011]
Well, how does Ruhl compare to Shaw? First, however progressive she may be, it seems that the re-enactment of orgasms on stage has not caused the arrest of the cast and crew, despite present-day public concerns about pornography. Maybe this is because Ruhl has set her play in the prudish Victorian era in the past (now 130 years ago), whereas Shaw’s play was set in his own time – the actual prudish Victorian era. In the official 1912 Constable edition, Shaw’s preface, called The Author’s Apology, made no apology at all for refusing to write a conventional sentimental romantic comedy and having his characters speak and behave as real people would.
Ruhl, in re-creating the language of the past era, has written at least as cleverly as the famous wordsmith Shaw. Her comedy grows from the fact that her characters avoid direct description, yet we know today exactly what they mean. Shaw’s comedy drew on characters saying exactly what they mean in a society that wishes they didn’t. The one quote, of course, which has come down to us from Shaw is Eliza’s innocent exclamation in Pygmalion: ‘Not bloody likely.’
So one thing I learnt from In the Next Room or the vibrator play is that Sarah Ruhl well deserves the prizes she has been awarded (Glickman Prize and finalist for Pulizter Prize), and that she is writing in a tradition which I find thoroughly satisfying.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 4 June 2011
2011: Magpie Blues by Ursula Yovich
Ursula Yovich: Magpie Blues at The Street Theatre, June 4 2011
Reviewed by Frank McKone
Even though, on her only Canberra performance, Ursula Yovich’s voice was badly affected by a dry throat, she began with something like a Bessie Smith quality of sound that made it clear why she calls this a Blues show. Maybe she also felt a bit blue since this was the very last performance of Magpie Blues after some two years, culminating at the Sydney Opera House in May.
Her voice problems seemed to shake her confidence, making her forget her lines on quite a few occasions, and so I’m not in a position to confirm or deny the strongly positive reviews she has previously received.
I found myself making comparisons and concluding that the show needs a good writer. Other reviewers were keen on the lack of artifice in her telling of her life story, but for me her work was nowhere near the storytelling standard of David Page’s Page 8. Page, of course, had the guidance of Louis Nowra to give the narrative structure, while Yovich relies too much on chronological anecdotes. I felt I wanted the songs to do more of the driving along of the drama, instead of seeming to be illustrations – though the more powerful of these were generally those composed by Yovich herself, rather than the covers of songs she had picked up along the way.
It seemed to me there were two themes. One was about her getting into WAAPA. Her story included just a humorous few words about swimming a croc-infested flood to get to the airport from Maningrida. I wanted to know much more about how she got such a voice, and how this White side of her parentage and experience linked up with the Black side. She sang in her mother’s Brada language, but the form of the music was much more like American ballad than Maningrida song.
This was the second theme – I guess the main theme from Yovich’s point of view. It was about her parents’ breaking up when Ursula was eight and her consequent loss of proper understanding of her Aboriginal language, culture and status. She ended Magpie Blues with Over the Rainbow, her white culture song, asking poignantly “Why can’t I?”. And yet the success of this work, including at the Darwin Festival, the Dreaming Festival in Queensland and the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land, as well as her acting and singing successes in London, New York and Sydney, seem to say that she can.
I guess if the performance I saw had hung together properly, the depth of emotion in her story would have been the focus as other reviewers have said. But perhaps it is time now to bring this show to an end, and maybe work up a more substantial piece in the future using, I would hope, a song cycle of Yovich’s original compositions.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
Even though, on her only Canberra performance, Ursula Yovich’s voice was badly affected by a dry throat, she began with something like a Bessie Smith quality of sound that made it clear why she calls this a Blues show. Maybe she also felt a bit blue since this was the very last performance of Magpie Blues after some two years, culminating at the Sydney Opera House in May.
Her voice problems seemed to shake her confidence, making her forget her lines on quite a few occasions, and so I’m not in a position to confirm or deny the strongly positive reviews she has previously received.
I found myself making comparisons and concluding that the show needs a good writer. Other reviewers were keen on the lack of artifice in her telling of her life story, but for me her work was nowhere near the storytelling standard of David Page’s Page 8. Page, of course, had the guidance of Louis Nowra to give the narrative structure, while Yovich relies too much on chronological anecdotes. I felt I wanted the songs to do more of the driving along of the drama, instead of seeming to be illustrations – though the more powerful of these were generally those composed by Yovich herself, rather than the covers of songs she had picked up along the way.
It seemed to me there were two themes. One was about her getting into WAAPA. Her story included just a humorous few words about swimming a croc-infested flood to get to the airport from Maningrida. I wanted to know much more about how she got such a voice, and how this White side of her parentage and experience linked up with the Black side. She sang in her mother’s Brada language, but the form of the music was much more like American ballad than Maningrida song.
This was the second theme – I guess the main theme from Yovich’s point of view. It was about her parents’ breaking up when Ursula was eight and her consequent loss of proper understanding of her Aboriginal language, culture and status. She ended Magpie Blues with Over the Rainbow, her white culture song, asking poignantly “Why can’t I?”. And yet the success of this work, including at the Darwin Festival, the Dreaming Festival in Queensland and the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land, as well as her acting and singing successes in London, New York and Sydney, seem to say that she can.
I guess if the performance I saw had hung together properly, the depth of emotion in her story would have been the focus as other reviewers have said. But perhaps it is time now to bring this show to an end, and maybe work up a more substantial piece in the future using, I would hope, a song cycle of Yovich’s original compositions.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
2011: I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright
I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright. Performed by Robert Jarman. Tasmanian Theatre Company at The Street 2, May 18-28 2011.Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 25
Charlotte von Mahsldorf, 1994
http://en.wikipedia.org
Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde, replied Ich bin meine eigene Frau to Mrs Gretchen Berfelde when she asked her cross-dressing son “Don’t you think it’s time to get married?”
It has been used as the title for a German language film (Rosa von Praunheim, 1992) and a play (Peter Süß, 2006). Though “I am my own wife” is the translation which has been used by Doug Wright for this play, it may also be translated as “I am my own woman.” Seeing Robert Jarman’s performance I think I prefer “woman” to “wife”. It’s Charlotte’s independence – as a person facing the forces of humiliation throughout her life from her Nazi father, through the SS, the East German Stasi, to neo-Nazi skinheads and her treatment as a celebrity transvestite in later life – that forms the central thread of this production.
The final twist – not represented in the play – is that her family refused to accept "Ich bin meine eigene Frau - Charlotte von Mahlsdorf - 18. März 1928 - 30. April 2002" as the inscription on a memorial at the Gründerzeit Museum which she founded. Despite money for the memorial being raised in a public appeal, the inscription reads "Lothar Berfelde, 1928 - 2002, genannt Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. Dem Museumsgründer zur Erinnerung" – Lothar Berfelde, 1928 - 2002, known as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. In memory of the (male) founder of the museum – denying her courage in public as a transvestite and exposing the persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich and in Communist East Germany.
Wright’s play is a potential nightmare for the solo actor who plays not only Charlotte, but some 40 characters, including Wright himself in the process of interviewing and corresponding with Charlotte from 1993 until her death. Jarman successfully carries off the transitions between one character and another, almost entirely in the one costume representing Charlotte in black dress, headscarf, heeled shoes and a row of pearls. His skill is not only in mime as he speaks to a space as one character and then turns to reply from the other direction, but in representing each character’s specific body movement, facial expression and especially voice – both in accent and tonal quality in English and in German.
It took me a little while to get used to what seemed to be a rather slow beginning, but it was the right approach not to hurry us. It wasn’t long before Charlotte, Wright and each of the lesser characters seemed real, and at curtain call there was a genuine sense of appreciation from the audience for the quality of Jarman’s work.
His acting was supported by a touring set which seemed huge in the Street 2 Studio – achieving exactly what was required to establish the Museum location. The properties department excelled in providing full-scale items like the horn phonograph with original Edison cylinders and especially in the beautiful small-scale replicas of items from the Museum revealed one by one from a silk-lined padded display box. On the technical side, the lighting was evocative and precisely designed and managed for each situation and mood, while the audio was particularly effective when, for example, we seemed to hear original 1890’s wax cylinders being played on the phonograph which morphed into surround sound.
I particularly appreciated Lotte Lenya singing Pirate Jenny from The Threepenny Opera and other Weill / Brecht songs as background sound, placing Charlotte and her story into the context of criticism of authoritarianism and corruption. I might have added:
VOICE:
What keeps a man alive?
CHORUS AND MACHEATH:
What keeps a man alive if not the hours
He spends devouring, tearing, killing all that he can?
That’s how man lives his life, he has the power
To make himself forget that he’s a man.
I can only say finally that the value of the play in exposing the awful nature of the regimes Charlotte managed to survive through, and the warning her experiences provide for us – that civil society is a delicate flower which can all too easily be turned into a grisly thistle by the violent and power-hungry – was well-matched by the quality of this production.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 23 May 2011
2011: Statespeare – Studying Shakespeare Suckeths by Nelle Lee
Statespeare – Studying Shakespeare Suckeths by Nelle Lee (& William Shakespeare). shake&stir theatre co at Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, May 23-24 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 23
The context for this review needs to be made clear, as follows:
http://www.ourbrisbane.com/businesses/1691434.shake-stir-theatre-co
From an educational point of view there are positives and negatives in this show. As a production put on for the general public rather than in a school context, there are different positives and negatives. In Queanbeyan it was presented for the general public without its theatre-in-education purpose being made explicit. At the same time quite a large proportion of the opening night crowd were young and possibly students.
The Q publicity says it is a “fast-paced, hilarious and eye-opening experience for all theatre lovers.” The performance is certainly fast and physical – a positive, though I did hear some middle-aged people comment that they hadn’t been able to pick up all the dialogue. As a later than middle-age person I had the same problem, but it was obvious from the laughter of recognition from the young people that they had no difficulty following every nuance of the latest patois. No-one seemed to lose concentration listening to the Shakespeare and following the action.
It’s on the issues of being “hilarious” and “eye-opening” that the divide between the educational and potentially general audience purposes pops up. The script is clever. It was obvious that the two pairs of teenage drama students (played by Ross Balbuziente who also directed, Nelle Lee, Judy Hainsworth and Nick Skubij) were parallel to Benedick, Beatrice, Claudio and Hero who I had just seen in Bell Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. They bicker, joke, play and expose themselves to emotional risks as they try out possible scenes from different Shakespeare plays to present for drama class assessment. Unintended revelations stop the fun but in the end conflicts are resolved and love is confirmed. Out of my ex-drama teacher role, it was all just too predictable.
There were quite hilarious moments, such as the matter of Macbeth’s nipples which Lady Macbeth sexily pinches. There was even a rather shocked laugh when Macbeth pinches her nipple in return. I thought this represented a highlight of reality about the young characters’ relationships. But as a play for an adult general audience, only Jay, written and played by Nelle Lee, approached the kind of complexity and depth of character needed. The other three characters, all played with professional clarity, were too close to the sorts of conventional stereotypes seen in something like High School Musical or Fame. Lachlan is the standard nerd boy, Nerys the standard nerd girl, and Rob the standard girl-mad boy. Jay is much more complicated, rejecting the conventional tall poppies Lachlan and Nerys but showing real originality and maturity in how she plays with the Shakespeare, even though Rob is her man in the end. I think Shakespeare had the same problem in Much Ado – Claudio and Hero never match Beatrice and Benedick – but Statespeare needs much stronger characters and a darker side to work as an adult drama, particularly because the teenagers do perform scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. The acting here is very good, but Shakespeare’s characters stand out as real against even Jay, and especially against Rob, Nerys and Lachlan. Shakespeare is the writer who is an eye-opener, not Nelle Lee, yet.
Back in my ex-drama teacher’s role, I might still question whether school students deserve better characterisation and complexity of relationships (I don’t remember a real Lachlan, Nerys or Rob among my 20 years’ worth of senior drama students). But the educational purpose surely focussed on exposing students, probably in about Year 10, to Shakespeare’s work in a form that they would find enjoyable. This works.
From a Year 10 perspective, the play makes fun of the Year 12 drama students but also shows them growing up. It also shows professional actors playing Shakespeare in a variety of ways which demonstrates very clearly how theatre is action, not just boring old-fashioned words. Even the similarities to High School Musical work here to tune into ordinary students doing Shakespeare in an English class.
The up-to-date dialogue between the characters outside the Shakespeare scenes obviously kept up the interest of the younger members of The Q audience, and, I suspect, the hilarity and the eye-opening among Year 10s would be highly emotional. I can see how easily students would be drawn into talk about Jay, about how the characters’ relationships in real life today are like Shakespeare’s experiences 400 years ago. Probably the key to this talk would be the murder of Desdemona scene, played “straight” with a submissive Desdemona accepting death and then, by Jay, as a woman pissed off by Othello’s cruelty who storms off in a flurry of swearing.
This also opens up for drama students the real work of experimenting with different ways of presenting scenes, not just in Shakespeare but in any drama. The trick at high school is to start where the students are – perhaps at High School Musical – and shift them up towards adulthood. An important point in Statespeare is that the apparently corny drama teacher who does an audience warm-up at the beginning deliberately leaves her students to get on with the work on their own. Of course, in fact, she has already done lots of guiding and setting up expectations, for these Year 12s over perhaps several years, and she knows that to put the less academic (even anti-academic) pair in with the nerds and leave them to discover how to come up with the goods will force the conventional to become more original. Though not many of the Year 10s will recognise this aspect of the play, there is a message there for the teachers who supervise them.
So my conclusion is that shake & stir theatre can justifiably build a reputation performing this entertaining and engaging work for the general public, but I hope this doesn’t mean they reduce their school-based performances where the work is of most value.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 23
The context for this review needs to be made clear, as follows:
http://www.ourbrisbane.com/businesses/1691434.shake-stir-theatre-co
From an educational point of view there are positives and negatives in this show. As a production put on for the general public rather than in a school context, there are different positives and negatives. In Queanbeyan it was presented for the general public without its theatre-in-education purpose being made explicit. At the same time quite a large proportion of the opening night crowd were young and possibly students.
The Q publicity says it is a “fast-paced, hilarious and eye-opening experience for all theatre lovers.” The performance is certainly fast and physical – a positive, though I did hear some middle-aged people comment that they hadn’t been able to pick up all the dialogue. As a later than middle-age person I had the same problem, but it was obvious from the laughter of recognition from the young people that they had no difficulty following every nuance of the latest patois. No-one seemed to lose concentration listening to the Shakespeare and following the action.
It’s on the issues of being “hilarious” and “eye-opening” that the divide between the educational and potentially general audience purposes pops up. The script is clever. It was obvious that the two pairs of teenage drama students (played by Ross Balbuziente who also directed, Nelle Lee, Judy Hainsworth and Nick Skubij) were parallel to Benedick, Beatrice, Claudio and Hero who I had just seen in Bell Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. They bicker, joke, play and expose themselves to emotional risks as they try out possible scenes from different Shakespeare plays to present for drama class assessment. Unintended revelations stop the fun but in the end conflicts are resolved and love is confirmed. Out of my ex-drama teacher role, it was all just too predictable.
There were quite hilarious moments, such as the matter of Macbeth’s nipples which Lady Macbeth sexily pinches. There was even a rather shocked laugh when Macbeth pinches her nipple in return. I thought this represented a highlight of reality about the young characters’ relationships. But as a play for an adult general audience, only Jay, written and played by Nelle Lee, approached the kind of complexity and depth of character needed. The other three characters, all played with professional clarity, were too close to the sorts of conventional stereotypes seen in something like High School Musical or Fame. Lachlan is the standard nerd boy, Nerys the standard nerd girl, and Rob the standard girl-mad boy. Jay is much more complicated, rejecting the conventional tall poppies Lachlan and Nerys but showing real originality and maturity in how she plays with the Shakespeare, even though Rob is her man in the end. I think Shakespeare had the same problem in Much Ado – Claudio and Hero never match Beatrice and Benedick – but Statespeare needs much stronger characters and a darker side to work as an adult drama, particularly because the teenagers do perform scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. The acting here is very good, but Shakespeare’s characters stand out as real against even Jay, and especially against Rob, Nerys and Lachlan. Shakespeare is the writer who is an eye-opener, not Nelle Lee, yet.
Back in my ex-drama teacher’s role, I might still question whether school students deserve better characterisation and complexity of relationships (I don’t remember a real Lachlan, Nerys or Rob among my 20 years’ worth of senior drama students). But the educational purpose surely focussed on exposing students, probably in about Year 10, to Shakespeare’s work in a form that they would find enjoyable. This works.
From a Year 10 perspective, the play makes fun of the Year 12 drama students but also shows them growing up. It also shows professional actors playing Shakespeare in a variety of ways which demonstrates very clearly how theatre is action, not just boring old-fashioned words. Even the similarities to High School Musical work here to tune into ordinary students doing Shakespeare in an English class.
The up-to-date dialogue between the characters outside the Shakespeare scenes obviously kept up the interest of the younger members of The Q audience, and, I suspect, the hilarity and the eye-opening among Year 10s would be highly emotional. I can see how easily students would be drawn into talk about Jay, about how the characters’ relationships in real life today are like Shakespeare’s experiences 400 years ago. Probably the key to this talk would be the murder of Desdemona scene, played “straight” with a submissive Desdemona accepting death and then, by Jay, as a woman pissed off by Othello’s cruelty who storms off in a flurry of swearing.
This also opens up for drama students the real work of experimenting with different ways of presenting scenes, not just in Shakespeare but in any drama. The trick at high school is to start where the students are – perhaps at High School Musical – and shift them up towards adulthood. An important point in Statespeare is that the apparently corny drama teacher who does an audience warm-up at the beginning deliberately leaves her students to get on with the work on their own. Of course, in fact, she has already done lots of guiding and setting up expectations, for these Year 12s over perhaps several years, and she knows that to put the less academic (even anti-academic) pair in with the nerds and leave them to discover how to come up with the goods will force the conventional to become more original. Though not many of the Year 10s will recognise this aspect of the play, there is a message there for the teachers who supervise them.
So my conclusion is that shake & stir theatre can justifiably build a reputation performing this entertaining and engaging work for the general public, but I hope this doesn’t mean they reduce their school-based performances where the work is of most value.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 20 May 2011
2011: Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. Bell Shakespeare at Canberra Playhouse, May 20 to June 4 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 20
Usually I write immediately after seeing a show, but this performance (following a five week season at Sydney Opera House) caught me a bit by surprise. I decided to give myself a day to think a bit longer before writing, since Bell has treated Canberra, as they traditionally do, to a run of a reasonable length for this city of 330,000 people.
I have always been amazed at the emergence of Shakespeare the writer, with such wit, humour, sense of tragedy and ability to stage everything from naturalistic speech to ceremonial ritual – all in one play. In his early thirties, living in a society riven by religious conflict and controlled by monarchs who had, and used, power over people’s life and death, William Shakespeare’s brilliance stands out against, above and beyond those who destroy rather than create. Much Ado is certainly not about nothing.
My surprise – not at all an unpleasant one – began to strike me early on, when Benedick’s facility with a stand-up comedian’s flow of words was not less in understanding than Beatrice’s sharpness of riposte. This Benedick was not even just the equal of this Beatrice, but had far more humanity than she could muster. Hallo, I began to think, is this because Blazey Best was overplaying her role and becoming too much the shrew? Is Toby Schmitz simply the better actor?
Or was something going on here to turn my previous view of this play on its head? Beatrice had always seemed to me to be a modern feminist – a woman of natural maturity in contrast to the incapacities of men of her age, and a significant role model for the easily infatuated Hero. For me, she did go to an ideological extreme in demanding that Benedick kill Claudio, but in realising this when Don John’s evil perfidy is revealed, she understood that she should back down and accept Benedick for the honest man he is, even if he might not be all that exciting.
But in John Bell’s interpretation, the play belongs to Schmitz’s Benedick. He becomes the central character through whose eyes we see the issues. As he bit by bit realises the truth about his own feelings, not only for Beatrice but about all the other players, and sees that Beatrice has not the strength of character that she pretends to have, it is he, Benedick, who sees the danger and rescues her from the likely dire results of her immaturity. He does indeed challenge Claudio, but takes his time to check things out and go through the proper motions of agreeing on a time and place for the action. Why does he not challenge and kill Claudio as soon as he meets up with him? Or even stab him without warning? To do so would be as thoughtless as Beatrice’s demand.
Unfortunately, for me, the quality of Schmitz’s performance made Best’s performance of Beatrice seem a bit too mundane – except, ironically, for the scene in which she makes her demand of Benedick. Though what Beatrice expects Benedick to do is, in today’s terms, unacceptable, Blazey Best came up to Toby Schmitz in the making of it. “If I were a man…” showed a Beatrice absolutely equal to the man Schmitz had created in his Benedick. And so I could be satisfied that their marriage was right, but probably with Benedick offering more to Beatrice than she might at first realise she needs. This left me with the question, was Best’s performance exactly right for John Bell’s interpretation, or was the sharpness of her delivery a simplification, a lesser quality in her acting?
I can only recommend, dear reader, that you make sure you see Much Ado About Nothing to make up your own mind. Of course, I wouldn’t do this unless the rest of the cast are up to your expectations. Caparisons are unfair, but I have to mention Max Gillies as Dogberry – malapropisms galore, and wonderfully impressed. Design, movement and music all combine to make something a lot more than mere RomCom, with an especially cleverly staged ending. Not to be missed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 20
Usually I write immediately after seeing a show, but this performance (following a five week season at Sydney Opera House) caught me a bit by surprise. I decided to give myself a day to think a bit longer before writing, since Bell has treated Canberra, as they traditionally do, to a run of a reasonable length for this city of 330,000 people.
I have always been amazed at the emergence of Shakespeare the writer, with such wit, humour, sense of tragedy and ability to stage everything from naturalistic speech to ceremonial ritual – all in one play. In his early thirties, living in a society riven by religious conflict and controlled by monarchs who had, and used, power over people’s life and death, William Shakespeare’s brilliance stands out against, above and beyond those who destroy rather than create. Much Ado is certainly not about nothing.
My surprise – not at all an unpleasant one – began to strike me early on, when Benedick’s facility with a stand-up comedian’s flow of words was not less in understanding than Beatrice’s sharpness of riposte. This Benedick was not even just the equal of this Beatrice, but had far more humanity than she could muster. Hallo, I began to think, is this because Blazey Best was overplaying her role and becoming too much the shrew? Is Toby Schmitz simply the better actor?
Or was something going on here to turn my previous view of this play on its head? Beatrice had always seemed to me to be a modern feminist – a woman of natural maturity in contrast to the incapacities of men of her age, and a significant role model for the easily infatuated Hero. For me, she did go to an ideological extreme in demanding that Benedick kill Claudio, but in realising this when Don John’s evil perfidy is revealed, she understood that she should back down and accept Benedick for the honest man he is, even if he might not be all that exciting.
But in John Bell’s interpretation, the play belongs to Schmitz’s Benedick. He becomes the central character through whose eyes we see the issues. As he bit by bit realises the truth about his own feelings, not only for Beatrice but about all the other players, and sees that Beatrice has not the strength of character that she pretends to have, it is he, Benedick, who sees the danger and rescues her from the likely dire results of her immaturity. He does indeed challenge Claudio, but takes his time to check things out and go through the proper motions of agreeing on a time and place for the action. Why does he not challenge and kill Claudio as soon as he meets up with him? Or even stab him without warning? To do so would be as thoughtless as Beatrice’s demand.
Unfortunately, for me, the quality of Schmitz’s performance made Best’s performance of Beatrice seem a bit too mundane – except, ironically, for the scene in which she makes her demand of Benedick. Though what Beatrice expects Benedick to do is, in today’s terms, unacceptable, Blazey Best came up to Toby Schmitz in the making of it. “If I were a man…” showed a Beatrice absolutely equal to the man Schmitz had created in his Benedick. And so I could be satisfied that their marriage was right, but probably with Benedick offering more to Beatrice than she might at first realise she needs. This left me with the question, was Best’s performance exactly right for John Bell’s interpretation, or was the sharpness of her delivery a simplification, a lesser quality in her acting?
I can only recommend, dear reader, that you make sure you see Much Ado About Nothing to make up your own mind. Of course, I wouldn’t do this unless the rest of the cast are up to your expectations. Caparisons are unfair, but I have to mention Max Gillies as Dogberry – malapropisms galore, and wonderfully impressed. Design, movement and music all combine to make something a lot more than mere RomCom, with an especially cleverly staged ending. Not to be missed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
2011: The Night Zoo by Michael Barlow
The Night Zoo written and directed by Michael Barlow, designed
by Iona McAuley, music composed by Lee Buddle. Spare Parts Puppet
Theatre at The Street Theatre, April 26-30, 2011 (Wednesday – Saturday
10am and 2pm).
Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 26
I had always thought of the company name, Spare Parts, as a whimsical joke, perhaps even a little sad originally when financial support was a struggle. Perhaps it still is. But this production, skilfully performed by Katya Shevtsov and Jacob Lehrer (who were ‘phantasmagorical’ according to my five-year-old companion), was spare in the sense of being ‘poor theatre’. Less complexity on stage meant more opportunity for our imaginations to fill in the links which create the theatrical illusion.
The story is traditional in form. Jamie cannot have pets in the high rise flat where she lives, dreams of the animals in the zoo who at first take no notice of her, but dreams again of becoming friends and playing with them. Later in the park with her parents she plays with a dog who has no home, and her parents agree to let her keep him as a pet. There is, of course romance and some sentimentality, since it seems that the parents will be breaking the no-pet rule, but for young isolated children the purpose is to encourage forming positive relationships. Jamie’s dream not only stimulates enjoyment and empathy with the animals, but also changes her parents’ standard ‘sorry, but no’ approach to realising that their lonely child needs a companion.
Some of the stage ‘business’ which might have made the production less spare if it had all been physically represented, such as the time and locality transitions, were neatly done by video projection. The result was a layering of dramatic frames from two-dimensional story-book format to three-dimensional ‘reality’. The mode-shifting involved the performers acting as people, in costume as animals and as puppeteers, with transitions from one kind of role to another smoothly done.
Though from the children’s point of view The Night Zoo is engaging and directly accessible – apparently simple – the show is a nice example of modern performance puppetry – not so simple as it looks.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 26
I had always thought of the company name, Spare Parts, as a whimsical joke, perhaps even a little sad originally when financial support was a struggle. Perhaps it still is. But this production, skilfully performed by Katya Shevtsov and Jacob Lehrer (who were ‘phantasmagorical’ according to my five-year-old companion), was spare in the sense of being ‘poor theatre’. Less complexity on stage meant more opportunity for our imaginations to fill in the links which create the theatrical illusion.
The story is traditional in form. Jamie cannot have pets in the high rise flat where she lives, dreams of the animals in the zoo who at first take no notice of her, but dreams again of becoming friends and playing with them. Later in the park with her parents she plays with a dog who has no home, and her parents agree to let her keep him as a pet. There is, of course romance and some sentimentality, since it seems that the parents will be breaking the no-pet rule, but for young isolated children the purpose is to encourage forming positive relationships. Jamie’s dream not only stimulates enjoyment and empathy with the animals, but also changes her parents’ standard ‘sorry, but no’ approach to realising that their lonely child needs a companion.
Some of the stage ‘business’ which might have made the production less spare if it had all been physically represented, such as the time and locality transitions, were neatly done by video projection. The result was a layering of dramatic frames from two-dimensional story-book format to three-dimensional ‘reality’. The mode-shifting involved the performers acting as people, in costume as animals and as puppeteers, with transitions from one kind of role to another smoothly done.
Though from the children’s point of view The Night Zoo is engaging and directly accessible – apparently simple – the show is a nice example of modern performance puppetry – not so simple as it looks.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2011: Geese by Joe Woodward
Geese written and directed by Joe Woodward. Shadow House PITS
at Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 26, 8pm and April
28-29, 1pm, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 26
While I drove home from Geese in the middle lane equidistant from either verge on a dark section of three-lane freeway, a stationary white car appeared to my left. As the image grew I could see its bonnet was up like a wing suspended. Then I made out a dark formally dressed figure peering into the black hole seeming to be attempting to manipulate something impossible to see. All four emergency lights were flashing. As the image faded into my left rear vision mirror I found myself contemplating this person’s belief in do-it-yourself action without even tools, light or working clothes. Why not just wait patiently for Road Service to arrive? I thought.
Before my thought was finished, in my right peripheral vision movement caught my eye. An athletic figure in white was running, as if in training for some long-distance event, against the flow of traffic on the very edge of the right lane, on a right-hand bend. I was thankful to be in the middle lane as he disappeared in my right rear vision mirror, and could only hope that drivers in the right lane would miss him as he would appear suddenly to them out of the darkness, just in front of them, unexpectedly to their right.
Then it struck me that Joe Woodward had at last succeeded in making me understand Antonin Artaud. The images held briefly in my headlights were not part of my life as far as those other figures are concerned, but because I saw them they are now in my memory and I have pejorative thoughts and fears about them. I impose my conventions and expectations upon them.
Artaud’s conceit that we are only free when we escape from the hell of convention is not a philosophy to which I can subscribe. In Woodward’s previous works that I have seen, it seems to me that he wanted to embrace Artaud’s position, but the result was that what appeared on stage remained hidden in an impenetrable cloud of mystery, becoming sound and fury apparently signifying not very much.
Though in Geese many long speeches are soporific as characters expound their particular philosophical positions, in the end there is a structured storyline. There is a young girl who saw and briefly spoke to a disturbed man at a railway station in the beginning. When she reappears at the end, she switches on a radio news broadcast which neither she nor the others she meets listen to, but we hear as background noise words like Libya, Yemen and Syria. Suddenly the ‘Artaud’ characters’ views in the possible memories of the disturbed man, and his possible experiences, become relevant today. How much conflict, death, destruction and madness is the result of people’s obsessive insistence on carrying out the dictates of conventions like religious beliefs, unbending political positions – even perhaps being totally enamoured, speaking only in French, of the theatre of Antonin Artaud.
Geese is for the most part too heavy (rather than weighty) theatrically for my liking, but now it is openly about Artaud, the cloud of mystery comes but also goes, and the ending makes a valuable observation about the real world. “No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell” according to Antonin Artaud, but perhaps Geese is a step in the right direction for Woodward.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 26
While I drove home from Geese in the middle lane equidistant from either verge on a dark section of three-lane freeway, a stationary white car appeared to my left. As the image grew I could see its bonnet was up like a wing suspended. Then I made out a dark formally dressed figure peering into the black hole seeming to be attempting to manipulate something impossible to see. All four emergency lights were flashing. As the image faded into my left rear vision mirror I found myself contemplating this person’s belief in do-it-yourself action without even tools, light or working clothes. Why not just wait patiently for Road Service to arrive? I thought.
Before my thought was finished, in my right peripheral vision movement caught my eye. An athletic figure in white was running, as if in training for some long-distance event, against the flow of traffic on the very edge of the right lane, on a right-hand bend. I was thankful to be in the middle lane as he disappeared in my right rear vision mirror, and could only hope that drivers in the right lane would miss him as he would appear suddenly to them out of the darkness, just in front of them, unexpectedly to their right.
Then it struck me that Joe Woodward had at last succeeded in making me understand Antonin Artaud. The images held briefly in my headlights were not part of my life as far as those other figures are concerned, but because I saw them they are now in my memory and I have pejorative thoughts and fears about them. I impose my conventions and expectations upon them.
Artaud’s conceit that we are only free when we escape from the hell of convention is not a philosophy to which I can subscribe. In Woodward’s previous works that I have seen, it seems to me that he wanted to embrace Artaud’s position, but the result was that what appeared on stage remained hidden in an impenetrable cloud of mystery, becoming sound and fury apparently signifying not very much.
Though in Geese many long speeches are soporific as characters expound their particular philosophical positions, in the end there is a structured storyline. There is a young girl who saw and briefly spoke to a disturbed man at a railway station in the beginning. When she reappears at the end, she switches on a radio news broadcast which neither she nor the others she meets listen to, but we hear as background noise words like Libya, Yemen and Syria. Suddenly the ‘Artaud’ characters’ views in the possible memories of the disturbed man, and his possible experiences, become relevant today. How much conflict, death, destruction and madness is the result of people’s obsessive insistence on carrying out the dictates of conventions like religious beliefs, unbending political positions – even perhaps being totally enamoured, speaking only in French, of the theatre of Antonin Artaud.
Geese is for the most part too heavy (rather than weighty) theatrically for my liking, but now it is openly about Artaud, the cloud of mystery comes but also goes, and the ending makes a valuable observation about the real world. “No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell” according to Antonin Artaud, but perhaps Geese is a step in the right direction for Woodward.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 14 April 2011
2011: The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik – Deep Sea Explorer byTim Watts
The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik – Deep Sea Explorer written and performed byTim Watts. Perth Theatre Company and Weeping Spoon Productions at The Street Two, April 12-16, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 14
RomTragCom for young adults is how I saw Alvin Sputnik. But the primary age brother and sister sitting in front of me, after a little anxiety at early death and fright at the loud demand to be a superhero, settled in to the whimsy and said it was “great” at the end. My (older) generation responded empathetically to the death and perhaps expected more depth of feeling to focus Alvin’s search for his wife’s soul.
For the modern-style bright young things who composed most of those present, Watts’ shifting relationship with his audience – from technician to puppetry and mime artist, computer graphics artist to singer-songwriter, in-role narrator to in-role character, actor keeping to pre-programmed visuals and sound to actor interacting with the audience and thanking them after a second round of applause – was the kind of spark of originality they look for in theatre. For this generation, mode shifting is a natural part of technological life.
The romance of this story lies in Alvin’s response to the untimely death of his soulmate. He is attracted to the idea of heroically acting, even to the point of accepting the possibility of his own death, to save the world from environmental destruction. Global warming is taken to an extreme – the world is completely inundated as the seas rise even above the peak of Everest – and so Alvin must dive beyond the drowned remains of civilisation in the hope of entering the hollow core of the earth where the environment is said to be perfect for human life.
Though his wife’s death was tragic, there is unexpected comedy in his adventures, during which he sees, or fancies that he sees his wife’s soul, a soft luminosity which he follows until he sees, or fancies he sees the beauty of the inner core – except that, as he had been warned, his oxygen is on the point of exhaustion and the entrance is through a violent volcano which kills him. Only then can his soul meet with his wife’s, and the luminous images mingle, looking like dividing cells reuniting. The world has not been saved, but their love is undying.
What I found fascinating was to see how Watts’ design produced a distancing effect which allowed him to present to his own age group a romance without sentimentality, with light touches of comedy, which is a tragedy not because of the protagonists’ deaths but because of the implication that we humans have failed to sustain the earth.
This is a small step into a new form of mixed-media theatre which, I expect, foreshadows greater works to come.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 14
RomTragCom for young adults is how I saw Alvin Sputnik. But the primary age brother and sister sitting in front of me, after a little anxiety at early death and fright at the loud demand to be a superhero, settled in to the whimsy and said it was “great” at the end. My (older) generation responded empathetically to the death and perhaps expected more depth of feeling to focus Alvin’s search for his wife’s soul.
For the modern-style bright young things who composed most of those present, Watts’ shifting relationship with his audience – from technician to puppetry and mime artist, computer graphics artist to singer-songwriter, in-role narrator to in-role character, actor keeping to pre-programmed visuals and sound to actor interacting with the audience and thanking them after a second round of applause – was the kind of spark of originality they look for in theatre. For this generation, mode shifting is a natural part of technological life.
The romance of this story lies in Alvin’s response to the untimely death of his soulmate. He is attracted to the idea of heroically acting, even to the point of accepting the possibility of his own death, to save the world from environmental destruction. Global warming is taken to an extreme – the world is completely inundated as the seas rise even above the peak of Everest – and so Alvin must dive beyond the drowned remains of civilisation in the hope of entering the hollow core of the earth where the environment is said to be perfect for human life.
Though his wife’s death was tragic, there is unexpected comedy in his adventures, during which he sees, or fancies that he sees his wife’s soul, a soft luminosity which he follows until he sees, or fancies he sees the beauty of the inner core – except that, as he had been warned, his oxygen is on the point of exhaustion and the entrance is through a violent volcano which kills him. Only then can his soul meet with his wife’s, and the luminous images mingle, looking like dividing cells reuniting. The world has not been saved, but their love is undying.
What I found fascinating was to see how Watts’ design produced a distancing effect which allowed him to present to his own age group a romance without sentimentality, with light touches of comedy, which is a tragedy not because of the protagonists’ deaths but because of the implication that we humans have failed to sustain the earth.
This is a small step into a new form of mixed-media theatre which, I expect, foreshadows greater works to come.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
2011: The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart / Da Ponte
The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart / Da Ponte. Co-Opera
directed by Tessa Bremner, Musical Director Brian Chatterton at The
Street Theatre, Canberra, March 29-30, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 29
“Co-Opera was formed in 1990 with the express purpose of presenting opera in new and imaginative ways….” Their aim is admirably achieved in this production of Figaro, passing through Canberra on its east coast 30 performance tour from Adelaide to Port Douglas.
The singing and acting was excellent throughout, though I make no bones about being home-town biassed in praising the performance of Karen Fitz-Gibbon. She has just last year completed her Honours year at the Australian National University School of Music, and her Susanna was close to perfect. Hers is the central role in Bremner’s approach to Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto: Fitz-Gibbon’s timing and characterisation made the whole play work dramatically.
Now, of course, I’m forced to admit that Tessa Bremner is a one-time Canberra Critics’ Circle Award winner – for a production of Amadeus. All I can say is that it is good to see that our award predicted continuing success, especially since the value of critics is being questioned in the blogosphere. (Follow this up in the current Currency House Platform Papers No. 27, April 2011: HELLO WORLD! Promoting the Arts on the Web by Robert Reid, and Alison Croggon’s blog ‘The return of the amateur critic’ at http://www.abc.net,au/unleashed/20038.html)
My reason for mentioning Bremner is that she was a successful stage play director who clearly sees this opera production not as a series of platforms for singers but as a drama of plot, thinking characters and emotion. She has integrated all these elements into the wonderful effects that Mozart’s music creates, and presented the work on a smallish scale so that her audience can all feel personally part of the theatrical illusion. The result is that all the social criticism inherent in the original libretto is made apparent.
And, it is important to say, Bremner is served very well by a small band, in this case spread across the auditorium floor in front of Row A, conducted in the traditional way by Chatterton at the continuo.
My only thought about the originality of the show concerns the following WikiLeak – sorry, Wikipedia entry: “It was Mozart who originally selected Beaumarchais' play and brought it to Da Ponte, who turned it into a libretto in six weeks, rewriting it in poetic Italian and removing all of the original's political references. In particular, Da Ponte replaced Figaro's climactic speech against inherited nobility with an equally angry aria against unfaithful wives. Contrary to the popular myth, the libretto was approved by the Emperor, Joseph II, before any music was written by Mozart.”
Watching the performance it is obvious that Joseph II didn’t realise that the satire was too subtle for all the political references to be removed, fortunately for us for it is indeed the way that the servants Figaro and Susanna treat their ‘noble’ bosses that makes the show relevant today (as of course it was especially when Beaumarchais’ original play was banned in France in the mid-1770s). What Co-Opera might have done is to reinstate Beaumarchais’ ‘climactic speech against inherited nobility’, which could be done especially because Da Ponte’s Italian has already been translated into English for most of this production.
For me, Figaro’s tirade against unfaithful wives seemed very much out of place against the self-confidence and sensibility of the women, who take such a modern approach to the practicalities of dealing with rampant males. Though it is true that at this point Figaro has misunderstood what Susanna has done, the good humour and loving nature of their relationship from the beginning is far too easily blighted in his attack. It would make much more sense for him to take the nobility to task as they deserve at this point, and as Beaumarchais intended.
Otherwise originality was to the fore. The use of Germanic English for all of the skulduggery and Romance Italian for the love songs was a beautiful way to make even more of the music than Mozart’s Austrian audience would have heard. The costumes, with beehive head-dresses, exaggerated commedia make-up and a dress sense appropriate for each class of character made for the intelligent comedy that this opera is. At the same time the use of clear plastic costume overlays, dressing room walls and ‘mirrors’ was an exciting modern touch which worked very well to make the meaning of the play transparent.
I wish this production well on its journey travelling north.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 29
“Co-Opera was formed in 1990 with the express purpose of presenting opera in new and imaginative ways….” Their aim is admirably achieved in this production of Figaro, passing through Canberra on its east coast 30 performance tour from Adelaide to Port Douglas.
The singing and acting was excellent throughout, though I make no bones about being home-town biassed in praising the performance of Karen Fitz-Gibbon. She has just last year completed her Honours year at the Australian National University School of Music, and her Susanna was close to perfect. Hers is the central role in Bremner’s approach to Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto: Fitz-Gibbon’s timing and characterisation made the whole play work dramatically.
Now, of course, I’m forced to admit that Tessa Bremner is a one-time Canberra Critics’ Circle Award winner – for a production of Amadeus. All I can say is that it is good to see that our award predicted continuing success, especially since the value of critics is being questioned in the blogosphere. (Follow this up in the current Currency House Platform Papers No. 27, April 2011: HELLO WORLD! Promoting the Arts on the Web by Robert Reid, and Alison Croggon’s blog ‘The return of the amateur critic’ at http://www.abc.net,au/unleashed/20038.html)
My reason for mentioning Bremner is that she was a successful stage play director who clearly sees this opera production not as a series of platforms for singers but as a drama of plot, thinking characters and emotion. She has integrated all these elements into the wonderful effects that Mozart’s music creates, and presented the work on a smallish scale so that her audience can all feel personally part of the theatrical illusion. The result is that all the social criticism inherent in the original libretto is made apparent.
And, it is important to say, Bremner is served very well by a small band, in this case spread across the auditorium floor in front of Row A, conducted in the traditional way by Chatterton at the continuo.
My only thought about the originality of the show concerns the following WikiLeak – sorry, Wikipedia entry: “It was Mozart who originally selected Beaumarchais' play and brought it to Da Ponte, who turned it into a libretto in six weeks, rewriting it in poetic Italian and removing all of the original's political references. In particular, Da Ponte replaced Figaro's climactic speech against inherited nobility with an equally angry aria against unfaithful wives. Contrary to the popular myth, the libretto was approved by the Emperor, Joseph II, before any music was written by Mozart.”
Watching the performance it is obvious that Joseph II didn’t realise that the satire was too subtle for all the political references to be removed, fortunately for us for it is indeed the way that the servants Figaro and Susanna treat their ‘noble’ bosses that makes the show relevant today (as of course it was especially when Beaumarchais’ original play was banned in France in the mid-1770s). What Co-Opera might have done is to reinstate Beaumarchais’ ‘climactic speech against inherited nobility’, which could be done especially because Da Ponte’s Italian has already been translated into English for most of this production.
For me, Figaro’s tirade against unfaithful wives seemed very much out of place against the self-confidence and sensibility of the women, who take such a modern approach to the practicalities of dealing with rampant males. Though it is true that at this point Figaro has misunderstood what Susanna has done, the good humour and loving nature of their relationship from the beginning is far too easily blighted in his attack. It would make much more sense for him to take the nobility to task as they deserve at this point, and as Beaumarchais intended.
Otherwise originality was to the fore. The use of Germanic English for all of the skulduggery and Romance Italian for the love songs was a beautiful way to make even more of the music than Mozart’s Austrian audience would have heard. The costumes, with beehive head-dresses, exaggerated commedia make-up and a dress sense appropriate for each class of character made for the intelligent comedy that this opera is. At the same time the use of clear plastic costume overlays, dressing room walls and ‘mirrors’ was an exciting modern touch which worked very well to make the meaning of the play transparent.
I wish this production well on its journey travelling north.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 13 March 2011
2011: A Chatroom of Critics with Mark Shenton
A Chatroom of Critics with Mark Shenton, at ACT Writers’ Centre, March 13, 2011
An Unreview by Frank McKone
Mark Shenton is a full-time theatre critic and journalist, writing a weekly review column for the Sunday Express and daily blog for The Stage. He has hosted regular platforms at the National Theatre, including an onstage interview with Stephen Sondheim. He has written liner notes for a number of original cast albums, including the West End recording of Chicago. Mark was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, came to London when he was 16 and has never looked back. He read law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and now lives in Borough, five minutes from the South Bank
guardian.co.uk (accessed 13 March 2011)
Mark is also Chair of the Drama Section of The Critics’ Circle, based in London but with members from all over the UK. He has a special passion for cabaret, in common with Canberra’s Bill Stephens who invited him to call in for an informal chat with the Canberra Critics’ Circle en his route between Melbourne and Sydney.
Though we reviewers give awards to the best artists, which means in London that the Drama Awards are presented in a major theatre and attract “everyone” in the theatre industry, there was consensus that the best critics, whoever they are, should not receive awards. This is why my report of a very entertaining couple of hours is not a review.
In fact it became clear that critics may not receive any rewards in the near future. Mark commented on the decline in newspaper sales as blogging and tweeting become the new outlets for critical commentary. Unless the Murdoch paywall approach is taken up by many other publishers, who will pay professional critics to blog?
Indeed, what is a professional critic? To be accepted as a member of The Critics’ Circle you must have a history of paid-for reviews over at least the previous two years. But when even a London newspaper reviewer writes, as Mark reported to us, about “blacking up” Iago in an argument against “political correctness”, I had to wonder who killed Othello? As newspapers struggle financially who will they pay to write reviews? Not the writers with experience and detailed knowledge of their specialist art forms, apparently.
Should reviews be mere entertainments? And therefore short? Of course not, but we discussed the difficult skill of writing briefly to the point, rather than boringly too long. Which means I will cut the several dozen other topics we discussed, even though this is an Unreview, and thank Mark Shenton for giving us a sense of what it is like to be a freelance reviewer in a city where 55 new shows opened in January, a low season in London’s theatrical year.
The success of this evening suggests finding further visitors for future Canberra Critics’ Circle self-improvement occasions. Please contact Helen Musa at CityNews with ideas: helen@citynews.com.au .
To catch up with Mark Shenton, check his blog in The Stage at
http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/shenton/2011/03/oz-connections/index.html
© Frank McKone, Canberra
An Unreview by Frank McKone
Mark Shenton is a full-time theatre critic and journalist, writing a weekly review column for the Sunday Express and daily blog for The Stage. He has hosted regular platforms at the National Theatre, including an onstage interview with Stephen Sondheim. He has written liner notes for a number of original cast albums, including the West End recording of Chicago. Mark was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, came to London when he was 16 and has never looked back. He read law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and now lives in Borough, five minutes from the South Bank
guardian.co.uk (accessed 13 March 2011)
Mark is also Chair of the Drama Section of The Critics’ Circle, based in London but with members from all over the UK. He has a special passion for cabaret, in common with Canberra’s Bill Stephens who invited him to call in for an informal chat with the Canberra Critics’ Circle en his route between Melbourne and Sydney.
Though we reviewers give awards to the best artists, which means in London that the Drama Awards are presented in a major theatre and attract “everyone” in the theatre industry, there was consensus that the best critics, whoever they are, should not receive awards. This is why my report of a very entertaining couple of hours is not a review.
In fact it became clear that critics may not receive any rewards in the near future. Mark commented on the decline in newspaper sales as blogging and tweeting become the new outlets for critical commentary. Unless the Murdoch paywall approach is taken up by many other publishers, who will pay professional critics to blog?
Indeed, what is a professional critic? To be accepted as a member of The Critics’ Circle you must have a history of paid-for reviews over at least the previous two years. But when even a London newspaper reviewer writes, as Mark reported to us, about “blacking up” Iago in an argument against “political correctness”, I had to wonder who killed Othello? As newspapers struggle financially who will they pay to write reviews? Not the writers with experience and detailed knowledge of their specialist art forms, apparently.
Should reviews be mere entertainments? And therefore short? Of course not, but we discussed the difficult skill of writing briefly to the point, rather than boringly too long. Which means I will cut the several dozen other topics we discussed, even though this is an Unreview, and thank Mark Shenton for giving us a sense of what it is like to be a freelance reviewer in a city where 55 new shows opened in January, a low season in London’s theatrical year.
The success of this evening suggests finding further visitors for future Canberra Critics’ Circle self-improvement occasions. Please contact Helen Musa at CityNews with ideas: helen@citynews.com.au .
To catch up with Mark Shenton, check his blog in The Stage at
http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/shenton/2011/03/oz-connections/index.html
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 10 March 2011
2011: Tuesdays with Morrie by Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom
Tuesdays with Morrie by Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom.
Ensemble Theatre directed by Mark Kilmurry at The Q, Queanbeyan
Performing Arts Centre, March 10-12, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 10
I have to eat humble pie tonight. Each of us responds to what we see from our own different perspectives.
Watching this play in my role as theatre critic, I saw a predictable moralistic sentimental story using the death of Professor Morrie Schwartz from Lou Gehrig’s disease as a contrived device, sugar-coated with carefully managed laughs.
I also saw a production highly skilfully designed, directed and acted. Daniel Mitchell faced a difficult task to avoid over-playing the Professor, but maintained a disciplined balance between making the inevitable one-liners into cartoon jokes and playing the physical horror of the disease for the horror rather than empathy. Glenn Hazeldine, as Mitch Albom, who wrote the original story that the play was developed from, had to switch regularly between playing Mitch as if in a realistic relationship with Morrie – every Tuesday – and playing Albom, the narrator of his story. By using stylised posture, movement and voice, Hazeldine clearly delineated each role. What otherwise might have been a repetitive series of question and answer in a lesser actor became a dramatic dialectic, giving the play more appearance of depth than the content of the text deserves.
However, for most of the audience – senior students from the two Canberra Grammar Schools – my perspective was well outside of the range of their radar. Their attention was focussed in the immediate heat of the emotion, not the distant cool of criticism. They were bubbling with excitement in the foyer beforehand anticipating seeing Sydney actors perform the play they had been working on. The actors’ skills did not disappoint. The young absorbed the performance as if it were music, directly responding with laughter, shock and tears, as well as a resounding standing ovation for the actors at curtain call. For them this was great theatre, and who am I to deny their experience?
Like Mitch, who failed to “keep in touch” with his favourite professor for 16 years, I have not taught College students for 16 years and realised tonight how much I have become out of touch with the immediacy of people’s feelings at that transition from teenage to adulthood. Tuesdays with Morrie may not be my play, but this production certainly made it this audience’s dramatic experience. The Q is to be congratulated for including it in this year’s program, and I hope it foreshadows more Ensemble productions in future.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 10
I have to eat humble pie tonight. Each of us responds to what we see from our own different perspectives.
Watching this play in my role as theatre critic, I saw a predictable moralistic sentimental story using the death of Professor Morrie Schwartz from Lou Gehrig’s disease as a contrived device, sugar-coated with carefully managed laughs.
I also saw a production highly skilfully designed, directed and acted. Daniel Mitchell faced a difficult task to avoid over-playing the Professor, but maintained a disciplined balance between making the inevitable one-liners into cartoon jokes and playing the physical horror of the disease for the horror rather than empathy. Glenn Hazeldine, as Mitch Albom, who wrote the original story that the play was developed from, had to switch regularly between playing Mitch as if in a realistic relationship with Morrie – every Tuesday – and playing Albom, the narrator of his story. By using stylised posture, movement and voice, Hazeldine clearly delineated each role. What otherwise might have been a repetitive series of question and answer in a lesser actor became a dramatic dialectic, giving the play more appearance of depth than the content of the text deserves.
However, for most of the audience – senior students from the two Canberra Grammar Schools – my perspective was well outside of the range of their radar. Their attention was focussed in the immediate heat of the emotion, not the distant cool of criticism. They were bubbling with excitement in the foyer beforehand anticipating seeing Sydney actors perform the play they had been working on. The actors’ skills did not disappoint. The young absorbed the performance as if it were music, directly responding with laughter, shock and tears, as well as a resounding standing ovation for the actors at curtain call. For them this was great theatre, and who am I to deny their experience?
Like Mitch, who failed to “keep in touch” with his favourite professor for 16 years, I have not taught College students for 16 years and realised tonight how much I have become out of touch with the immediacy of people’s feelings at that transition from teenage to adulthood. Tuesdays with Morrie may not be my play, but this production certainly made it this audience’s dramatic experience. The Q is to be congratulated for including it in this year’s program, and I hope it foreshadows more Ensemble productions in future.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 4 March 2011
2011: My Imaginary Family by Grahame Bond
My Imaginary Family written and performed by Grahame Bond. Directed by Maurice Murphy at The Street Theatre, March 4 – 26, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 4
After he presented the eulogy at his mother’s funeral, Bond says, his doctor approached him saying, “I think you need help.” Bond’s unspoken response, he tells us, was to reject criticism, as if the doctor were about to be a critic of his performance. In fact, it was an offer of grief counselling, which Bond accepted and found of great value.
This story, about his real family – not the family of imaginary characters he has created as a writer-performer – makes my task as a critic of his show one of a delicate balance. For the creator of characters, like Aunty Jack and Kev Kavanagh, to perform himself is like jumping off a real cliff and trusting that his imagination will make him fly. It’s a risk that most actors only take in the company of a Michael Parkinson. In this single hander, Bond plays himself, tells stories about himself, sings songs he wrote (often in company with Rory O’Donahue and Jim Burnett), moving in and out of roles he created, while also filling the Parkinson “interviewer” role of linking us watching with the person being “interviewed.”
Being Grahame Bond also inevitably meant a tendency to interact directly with his audience, so I was not surprised that keeping all these balls juggling in the intimate space of The Street 2 led him to lose his scripted lines at one point early in the show. This was, I believe, the very first performance, and trajectories came into better unison as the 90 minute show progressed. There were strong moments of both satire and emotion, both integrated in the horrifying highlight story of the 1980 New Year’s Eve at the Opera House.
For my generation whose adult lives have run alongside Grahame Bond’s, the stories behind the creation of Aunty Jack et al are of genuine interest. I was always aware of the satire, but the characters and style seemed to appear out of thin air with Thin Arthur around 1970. There was nothing quite like them in the Australian tradition, yet Aunty Jack, Flash Nick from Jindavick and Wollongong the Brave were as Australian as all get out. Perhaps they were parallel to the British Not the Nine O’Clock News, Monty Python, and The Goodies, and indeed Bond did take his work to London Weekend Television in Not the Aunty Jack Show.
I’m not sure what young people today will make of My Imaginary Family but it runs through the Canberra Festival and bookings are already going well. It will be a good test for “The stories of a ‘Jack of all Trades’ and the backing songs of his life.”
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 4
After he presented the eulogy at his mother’s funeral, Bond says, his doctor approached him saying, “I think you need help.” Bond’s unspoken response, he tells us, was to reject criticism, as if the doctor were about to be a critic of his performance. In fact, it was an offer of grief counselling, which Bond accepted and found of great value.
This story, about his real family – not the family of imaginary characters he has created as a writer-performer – makes my task as a critic of his show one of a delicate balance. For the creator of characters, like Aunty Jack and Kev Kavanagh, to perform himself is like jumping off a real cliff and trusting that his imagination will make him fly. It’s a risk that most actors only take in the company of a Michael Parkinson. In this single hander, Bond plays himself, tells stories about himself, sings songs he wrote (often in company with Rory O’Donahue and Jim Burnett), moving in and out of roles he created, while also filling the Parkinson “interviewer” role of linking us watching with the person being “interviewed.”
Being Grahame Bond also inevitably meant a tendency to interact directly with his audience, so I was not surprised that keeping all these balls juggling in the intimate space of The Street 2 led him to lose his scripted lines at one point early in the show. This was, I believe, the very first performance, and trajectories came into better unison as the 90 minute show progressed. There were strong moments of both satire and emotion, both integrated in the horrifying highlight story of the 1980 New Year’s Eve at the Opera House.
For my generation whose adult lives have run alongside Grahame Bond’s, the stories behind the creation of Aunty Jack et al are of genuine interest. I was always aware of the satire, but the characters and style seemed to appear out of thin air with Thin Arthur around 1970. There was nothing quite like them in the Australian tradition, yet Aunty Jack, Flash Nick from Jindavick and Wollongong the Brave were as Australian as all get out. Perhaps they were parallel to the British Not the Nine O’Clock News, Monty Python, and The Goodies, and indeed Bond did take his work to London Weekend Television in Not the Aunty Jack Show.
I’m not sure what young people today will make of My Imaginary Family but it runs through the Canberra Festival and bookings are already going well. It will be a good test for “The stories of a ‘Jack of all Trades’ and the backing songs of his life.”
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
2011: Smoke and Mirrors by Craig Ilott and iOTA
Smoke and Mirrors by Craig Ilott and iOTA. Directed by Craig
Ilott for the Sydney Festival at The Famous Spiegeltent, January 6 –
February 6, 2011
Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 19
This is the second time around for Smoke and Mirrors at the Sydney Festival. It is definitely worth a return visit. Refreshments served at the open-air bar from 5pm for a 9.30pm start, and queueing to get the best GA seats (be there by 8.45pm), ensures that the whole of Hyde Park buzzes with anticipation even while the band inside tunes up and rehearses. It feels exactly like a Festival – just as it should.
The mix of circus and song is held together in the story of a surreal dreamer – SS – whose fantasies of escape – running away to the circus – become smoke and mirrors, hiding reality as much as revealing, reflecting the mask that is ‘slipping from your face’.
The musicians, led by Tina Harris, are outstanding as composers and performers – not surprising when you see their training, qualifications and experience in theatre and film productions. iOTA, playing SS, brings a certain Rocky Horror Show style to the character in his ringmaster role, but never in an imitative way. Smoke and Mirrors is original work. The tumbling, balancing and trapeze episodes are often surprising, even at times startling.
I think two women performers were the standouts of the night – Queenie van de Zandt as an ultimately sad seducer and Kali Retallack on the trapeze.
By developing a character and using timing and mood, working closely with the band, Kali turned what otherwise might have seemed the usual kind of solo trapeze act into an expression of the show’s theme. Her work was not fantasy – there was no safety net – but would we all imagine we would dare to emulate her skills?
Queenie’s final appearance, and especially the quality of her singing, was absolutely stunning. Her last long note actually silenced the Spiegeltent briefly before a great outburst of spontaneous cheering and applause.
And yet, at the end of the night as we walked across a balmy Hyde Park, my wife and I recalled La Clique at the Sydney Festival in 2007. It was more surreal, more original in concepts, the circus acts were more sophisticated, and Mikelangelo brought a greater ironic humour to the same basic idea – running away to the circus – than iOTA. But of course it’s only critics like me that worry about such things. Just enjoy!
If you haven’t got tickets yet, The Tix for Next to Nix booth is located at the bottom of Martin Place, near George Street.
When is it open?
January 9-30
Daily from 8am to 12 noon.
The booth will close early if tickets sell out before closing times.
www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2010/Plan-Your-Festival/Tix-for-Next-to-Nix/
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 19
This is the second time around for Smoke and Mirrors at the Sydney Festival. It is definitely worth a return visit. Refreshments served at the open-air bar from 5pm for a 9.30pm start, and queueing to get the best GA seats (be there by 8.45pm), ensures that the whole of Hyde Park buzzes with anticipation even while the band inside tunes up and rehearses. It feels exactly like a Festival – just as it should.
The mix of circus and song is held together in the story of a surreal dreamer – SS – whose fantasies of escape – running away to the circus – become smoke and mirrors, hiding reality as much as revealing, reflecting the mask that is ‘slipping from your face’.
The musicians, led by Tina Harris, are outstanding as composers and performers – not surprising when you see their training, qualifications and experience in theatre and film productions. iOTA, playing SS, brings a certain Rocky Horror Show style to the character in his ringmaster role, but never in an imitative way. Smoke and Mirrors is original work. The tumbling, balancing and trapeze episodes are often surprising, even at times startling.
I think two women performers were the standouts of the night – Queenie van de Zandt as an ultimately sad seducer and Kali Retallack on the trapeze.
By developing a character and using timing and mood, working closely with the band, Kali turned what otherwise might have seemed the usual kind of solo trapeze act into an expression of the show’s theme. Her work was not fantasy – there was no safety net – but would we all imagine we would dare to emulate her skills?
Queenie’s final appearance, and especially the quality of her singing, was absolutely stunning. Her last long note actually silenced the Spiegeltent briefly before a great outburst of spontaneous cheering and applause.
And yet, at the end of the night as we walked across a balmy Hyde Park, my wife and I recalled La Clique at the Sydney Festival in 2007. It was more surreal, more original in concepts, the circus acts were more sophisticated, and Mikelangelo brought a greater ironic humour to the same basic idea – running away to the circus – than iOTA. But of course it’s only critics like me that worry about such things. Just enjoy!
If you haven’t got tickets yet, The Tix for Next to Nix booth is located at the bottom of Martin Place, near George Street.
When is it open?
January 9-30
Daily from 8am to 12 noon.
The booth will close early if tickets sell out before closing times.
www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2010/Plan-Your-Festival/Tix-for-Next-to-Nix/
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
2011: Bigger Than Jesus by Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks
Bigger Than Jesus by Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks. WYRD
Productions, Canada, presented by Sydney Festival and Sydney Theatre
Company. Performed by Rick Miller at Wharf 1, January 18-29 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 18
As a confirmed atheist, I think the god-botherers who were demonstrating outside the theatre when I arrived have nothing to fear from Rick Miller. For me, however, his attempt to enlighten us about the truth of the Jesus story is disappointingly shallow. The show is a great example of how cleverly devised theatre and skilful performance can impress and excite positive responses from an audience, even though the material is inconsistently developed. I heard Canadian accents in the audience on opening night. Maybe the most enthusiastic applause contained some degree of cultural bias.
Theatrically, the way Miller and Brooks (as director) incorporated live video, pre-recorded screen images, recorded sound, live amplification and unamplified voice was especially inviting. Perhaps the most original device was to use three cameras set up in what looked like a laptop (really a box of props). Miller could present himself as one character on screen front-on when facing the centre camera, talking to a different character when he turned slightly side-on towards another camera, while what we saw was both ends of a Skype session in real time. Another very funny sequence was his presentation of the Last Supper, videoed live as Miller manipulated models of the characters. It was like watching the makers of Wallace and Gromit at work and seeing the end result on screen at the same time.
Miller’s voice and movement work was also highly expert, enabling him to play a considerable array of characters from an unassuming Jesus according to John’s Gospel, a fascinating post-modern hot-gospeller (probably as mad as the John who wrote Revelations), through to singing the sentimental Jesus we know so well from Jesus Christ Superstar. Seen from this point of view, Bigger Than Jesus, including the reference to John Lennon – another charismatic John – was consistently entertaining.
But I came away dissatisfied because Miller himself, or at least Miller in his role of Jesus watching all that has been done “in my name” since his birth in the year 4 Before Christ and the writing of the gospels by biassed supporters “between 40 to 60 years” after he died, appears to present Christ as if he is still around today. As an atheist humanist I have no problem with agreeing with the message that we should love one another and behave towards others as we would wish them to behave towards us. But Miller’s ending takes us back to the Catholic mass and the Eucharist ceremony with such feeling that I could not escape the idea that I was meant to put aside all the critical commentary in favour of simple faith in Christ and his message, as if this will carry the day.
I felt cheated because the work began by seriously criticising the likelihood of the Jesus story ever having happened in reality, setting us up for an argument which was never properly followed through. It was as if Miller and Brooks had never understood George Bernard Shaw, whose St Joan proved that an atheist can appreciate the value of genuine religious belief. Bigger Than Jesus is a philosophical mess in comparison.
Interestingly, since the placards of invocations against the Sydney Theatre Company for presenting this work of the devil had gone from Hickson Road when I left the Wharf after an hour and a half, I can only assume those so bothered had either found out the truth about the ending, or, being post-modern themselves, had given up trying to insist on the absolute truth of anything any more.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 18
As a confirmed atheist, I think the god-botherers who were demonstrating outside the theatre when I arrived have nothing to fear from Rick Miller. For me, however, his attempt to enlighten us about the truth of the Jesus story is disappointingly shallow. The show is a great example of how cleverly devised theatre and skilful performance can impress and excite positive responses from an audience, even though the material is inconsistently developed. I heard Canadian accents in the audience on opening night. Maybe the most enthusiastic applause contained some degree of cultural bias.
Theatrically, the way Miller and Brooks (as director) incorporated live video, pre-recorded screen images, recorded sound, live amplification and unamplified voice was especially inviting. Perhaps the most original device was to use three cameras set up in what looked like a laptop (really a box of props). Miller could present himself as one character on screen front-on when facing the centre camera, talking to a different character when he turned slightly side-on towards another camera, while what we saw was both ends of a Skype session in real time. Another very funny sequence was his presentation of the Last Supper, videoed live as Miller manipulated models of the characters. It was like watching the makers of Wallace and Gromit at work and seeing the end result on screen at the same time.
Miller’s voice and movement work was also highly expert, enabling him to play a considerable array of characters from an unassuming Jesus according to John’s Gospel, a fascinating post-modern hot-gospeller (probably as mad as the John who wrote Revelations), through to singing the sentimental Jesus we know so well from Jesus Christ Superstar. Seen from this point of view, Bigger Than Jesus, including the reference to John Lennon – another charismatic John – was consistently entertaining.
But I came away dissatisfied because Miller himself, or at least Miller in his role of Jesus watching all that has been done “in my name” since his birth in the year 4 Before Christ and the writing of the gospels by biassed supporters “between 40 to 60 years” after he died, appears to present Christ as if he is still around today. As an atheist humanist I have no problem with agreeing with the message that we should love one another and behave towards others as we would wish them to behave towards us. But Miller’s ending takes us back to the Catholic mass and the Eucharist ceremony with such feeling that I could not escape the idea that I was meant to put aside all the critical commentary in favour of simple faith in Christ and his message, as if this will carry the day.
I felt cheated because the work began by seriously criticising the likelihood of the Jesus story ever having happened in reality, setting us up for an argument which was never properly followed through. It was as if Miller and Brooks had never understood George Bernard Shaw, whose St Joan proved that an atheist can appreciate the value of genuine religious belief. Bigger Than Jesus is a philosophical mess in comparison.
Interestingly, since the placards of invocations against the Sydney Theatre Company for presenting this work of the devil had gone from Hickson Road when I left the Wharf after an hour and a half, I can only assume those so bothered had either found out the truth about the ending, or, being post-modern themselves, had given up trying to insist on the absolute truth of anything any more.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
2010: Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov. Adapted by Andrew Upton,
directed by Tamás Ascher. Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Theatre,
November 9 – December 23, 2010.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 24
Despite the success of the first production by Moscow Art Theatre of Uncle Vanya in 1899, I like to imagine that Konstantin Stanislavsky was troubled. He had not wanted to play the role of the doctor, Mihail Lvovich Astrov “for I had always dreamt of another part – the title role. But [director] Vladimir Ivanovich managed to break my will and even got me to like Astrov.”
In Ascher’s production, I think Stanislavski’s troubles are over. Considering he died in 1938, you may think it’s a bit late. But there’s 111 years of theatrical history behind Ascher’s and Upton’s work, and it shows to perfection in the performances of top-class actors Hugo Weaving (today’s Astrov), Richard Roxburgh (Vanya), Cate Blanchett (Yelena), Hayley McElhinney (Sonya), John Bell (Serebryakov), Jacki Weaver (Nanny), Sandy Gore (Maria), Anthony Phelan (Telegin) and Andrew Tighe (Labourer).
Stanislavski also directed Chekov’s works and in the 1920s and 30s focussed on training actors to perform ‘naturalism’. His work was the key to making the break from melodrama to the form of drama the 20th Century needed. But that doesn’t mean that everyone got his ‘system’ right. I think we were lucky in Australia, from the time of the early NIDA classes and Hayes Gordon, to eschew the ‘American Method’ of Lee Strasbourg.
Australians, being perhaps less sentimental than Americans, knew that when Stanislavski said act ‘as if’ you were the character, he never meant ‘become’ the character. This cast, with this director, backed by their Australian training and experience, demonstrated exactly what Stanislavski meant. I suspect, too, they also ‘got’ Chekov better than Stanislavski himself had achieved in 1899.
The clue is the fun in this presentation. Here is the humourist Chekov we know from his short stories and plays like The Proposal. Weaving skips and even Russian dances about the stage. Roxburgh swings and sways from gloom to fury, from lust to murderous intent. The two of them reminded me of Ian McKellen (Estragon) and Roger Rees (Vladimir) in the recent production of Waiting for Godot – the same understanding of the absurdity of the social condition.
One might imagine that the young wife of the old fart professor, so imbued in boredom, would be waspish or merely sad. Not this Yelena. Blanchett collapses into unbridled laughter as often as she is the worst manipulator. And who would have thought that the professor’s horribly put-upon daughter could lose herself so freely in laughter and take the audience along with her, especially in McElhinney’s marvellous scene with Blanchett in Act Two.
And John Bell at last is free of the constraints he seems to have laid upon himself in recent years. Compare his Lear with this pretentious old Serebyakov, and Chekov looks better than Shakespeare.
But how is this not mere farce or melodrama? Because every actor plays their character’s intention behind every facial twitch, every loose movement, every eye contact, every incomprehensible vocalisation, every word which means the opposite of its apparent meaning, or diverts attention away from reality. As Stanislavsky taught, nothing must happen on stage without the audience being aware of each character’s intention. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was missed in this production.
A simple demonstration, but a most exciting moment in the play, was the silence after Yelena and Astrov realise that Vanya, bringing roses for her, has seen them kissing. Such wonderful theatre in which no-one says anything for minutes on end. My copy of the script has just four dots to indicate no more than a pause before Astrov says [with bravado] ‘The weather is not too bad today.’ On this stage, with this director and these actors, what tension was there – and what laughter from us watching this embarrassed triangle. What a creation of the illusion of natural reality! What honour to a master playwright. What grateful thanks on my part for the skill and artistry of this company.
What a pity for so many of you that the season is fully booked.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 24
Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya
© Lisa Tomasetti 2010
Despite the success of the first production by Moscow Art Theatre of Uncle Vanya in 1899, I like to imagine that Konstantin Stanislavsky was troubled. He had not wanted to play the role of the doctor, Mihail Lvovich Astrov “for I had always dreamt of another part – the title role. But [director] Vladimir Ivanovich managed to break my will and even got me to like Astrov.”
In Ascher’s production, I think Stanislavski’s troubles are over. Considering he died in 1938, you may think it’s a bit late. But there’s 111 years of theatrical history behind Ascher’s and Upton’s work, and it shows to perfection in the performances of top-class actors Hugo Weaving (today’s Astrov), Richard Roxburgh (Vanya), Cate Blanchett (Yelena), Hayley McElhinney (Sonya), John Bell (Serebryakov), Jacki Weaver (Nanny), Sandy Gore (Maria), Anthony Phelan (Telegin) and Andrew Tighe (Labourer).
Stanislavski also directed Chekov’s works and in the 1920s and 30s focussed on training actors to perform ‘naturalism’. His work was the key to making the break from melodrama to the form of drama the 20th Century needed. But that doesn’t mean that everyone got his ‘system’ right. I think we were lucky in Australia, from the time of the early NIDA classes and Hayes Gordon, to eschew the ‘American Method’ of Lee Strasbourg.
 |
| Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya © Lisa Tomasetti 2010 |
Australians, being perhaps less sentimental than Americans, knew that when Stanislavski said act ‘as if’ you were the character, he never meant ‘become’ the character. This cast, with this director, backed by their Australian training and experience, demonstrated exactly what Stanislavski meant. I suspect, too, they also ‘got’ Chekov better than Stanislavski himself had achieved in 1899.
The clue is the fun in this presentation. Here is the humourist Chekov we know from his short stories and plays like The Proposal. Weaving skips and even Russian dances about the stage. Roxburgh swings and sways from gloom to fury, from lust to murderous intent. The two of them reminded me of Ian McKellen (Estragon) and Roger Rees (Vladimir) in the recent production of Waiting for Godot – the same understanding of the absurdity of the social condition.
One might imagine that the young wife of the old fart professor, so imbued in boredom, would be waspish or merely sad. Not this Yelena. Blanchett collapses into unbridled laughter as often as she is the worst manipulator. And who would have thought that the professor’s horribly put-upon daughter could lose herself so freely in laughter and take the audience along with her, especially in McElhinney’s marvellous scene with Blanchett in Act Two.
And John Bell at last is free of the constraints he seems to have laid upon himself in recent years. Compare his Lear with this pretentious old Serebyakov, and Chekov looks better than Shakespeare.
But how is this not mere farce or melodrama? Because every actor plays their character’s intention behind every facial twitch, every loose movement, every eye contact, every incomprehensible vocalisation, every word which means the opposite of its apparent meaning, or diverts attention away from reality. As Stanislavsky taught, nothing must happen on stage without the audience being aware of each character’s intention. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was missed in this production.
A simple demonstration, but a most exciting moment in the play, was the silence after Yelena and Astrov realise that Vanya, bringing roses for her, has seen them kissing. Such wonderful theatre in which no-one says anything for minutes on end. My copy of the script has just four dots to indicate no more than a pause before Astrov says [with bravado] ‘The weather is not too bad today.’ On this stage, with this director and these actors, what tension was there – and what laughter from us watching this embarrassed triangle. What a creation of the illusion of natural reality! What honour to a master playwright. What grateful thanks on my part for the skill and artistry of this company.
What a pity for so many of you that the season is fully booked.
 |
| Sandy Gore and Richard Roxburgh in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya © Lisa Tomasetti 2010 |
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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