2012: I Am Eora by Wesley Enoch with co-writer Anita Heiss

I Am Eora written and directed by Wesley Enoch with co-writer Anita Heiss, presented by the Balnaves Foundation for the Sydney Festival at Carriageworks, Redfern.  January 8, 10-14, 2012.

Photos by Prudence Upton

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 12

Described in the program as World Premiere, I have to say that I Am Eora is a show still in need of further development before I would give it such an impressive introduction.

The theme of a new way of finding reconciliation between Aboriginal and the European cultures, of Sydney in particular, is of very great importance.  The essential point is to understand that the land of the Eora is still here – Aboriginal land was, is, and always will be.  Time – the past, present and future – changes, and the stories of the people living change with it.  But the land is permanent.  In this sense we are all Eora.

Wesley Enoch has put this in the program notes as “the most provocative thing we could do was to issue an invitation …How could we create a world where everyone living in Sydney could say I Am Eora…I am from this place?”

However, I found the presentation of three well-known stories of Eora heroes from the invasion period – Pemulwuy, The Warrior, who died in action; Barangaroo, The Nurturer, who stood for maintaining culture, stood up for political and economic rights, and died soon after childbirth; and Bennelong, The Interpreter, who sought to create understanding across the cultural divide – was powerful only in patches.  As  I am currently reading Kim Scott’s novel That Deadman Dance I can’t help seeing the strength of his oblique poetic writing which creates imagery and feeling from his Aboriginal characters’ perspective as a great contrast to the often too literal representation of Pemulwuy and Barangaroo in I Am Eora, though it is true that there is strength in the old Bennelong’s philosophy and death.

On the other hand, Enoch has written “I Am Eora has broken the mould in so many ways.  It pioneers new ways of making Indigenous theatre [and] hopes to redefine Indigenous theatre and celebrates the resilience of a community.”  It does this by using music and songs in non-Aboriginal forms, such as rap, rock, blues, some almost Pacific Island style, most of which works well as individual items.  Dance, often in mimetic form, is also used extensively to illustrate in movement the words spoken and sung.  Speeches were also used, such as the Inaugural Speech of the first Indigenous (also a woman) to serve in the New South Wales Parliament, Linda Burney.  The skillion stage design, as the photo shows, was simple in concept and very effective for projections of images and text on both the floor space and the backdrop, which seemed to me to represent the overhanging caves in which I have seen many examples of magnificent art work.

My concern though is that it seemed the story–line of this history was that Aboriginal people survive, even after disease, genocidal massacres and the removal of their children, by being adaptable and taking on features of the European culture; while for the Europeans (or rather, in today’s Sydney, people from dozens of non-Indigenous cultures) there was little of Aboriginal culture for them to adapt to.

I sensed, especially from the audience reaction, that the main point of real contact between the two sides was the presentation of the gutsy strength of Aboriginal women in dealing with men.  Elaine Crombie’s piece as The Bride was the point when people were stirred into real excitement.   This was the moment of the WOW factor which the show needed as a whole rather than only in parts.  There was nothing, for example, quite like Gurrumul Yunupingu’s songs and singing style in English and in language which would have been the show-stopper I Am Eora needs, nor dance which creates meaning beyond illustration, such as we often see from Bangarra.

So, although the house was full the night I attended, the audience response at the end was more muted than the theme of this work deserves.  I think this Festival presentation should be seen as a trial run, and I hope the Balnaves Foundation can see its way to continuing its support for development to the point of a new World Premiere which might take Sydney and the world by storm.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Never Did Me Any Harm by Force Majeure

Never Did Me Any Harm dance theatre devised by Force Majeure, directed by Kate Champion. Sydney Festival and Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1, January 11 – February 12 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 11

Initially stimulated by her reading of Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap, Kate Champion’s work on child rearing / parenting leaves me – a parent and grandparent – unable to suggest any advice beyond ‘Do what you can; don’t feel guilty (when you find yourself disliking your feral three-year-old); and don’t harbour any expectations that your child will turn out as you thought / hoped they might, whatever form your parenting takes’.

You might find, however, as a mother, that you are more in love with the little boy who smiles so directly at you than you ever loved any other man.

Using material from some 60 hours of interviews, and therefore quoting real people’s thoughts rather than creating purely fictional dialogue, Force Majeure have made what I suppose must be called factional dance theatre.  The result is impressive for its strength of feeling and its reversal of theatrical convention.  I have always seen movement as the core of drama, though emphasis is traditionally placed on the text.  Here Champion shows that indeed words are superficial, while action, down to the choreographed flicking of a wrist, the placing of a hand or lifting of an eyebrow, is where the depth of emotion, communication and meaning is expressed.

This is the essence of what some are now calling a new genre – dance theatre.

The great thing about a Festival is being able to see such a difference in dance theatre one night – Babel (words) – and dance theatre the next night – Never Did Me Any Harm.

Speed, rhythm, structured design, speeches one night; slow, gradual building of intensity, naturalistic mess with highly original lighting and projections,  and ordinary people’s talk the next.  Theatricality one night; drama the next.  Standing ovation with cheering one night; measured applause for three curtain calls with heightened sense of having learned from the experience the next.

Force Majeure certainly never did me any harm.  May its honest facing up to reality do all of us some good.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Babel(words) Dance theatre (Antwerp)

Babel(words) Dance theatre by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet and Antony Gormley.  Eastman vzw (Antwerp) and Theatre Royal de la Monnaie for Sydney Festival at Sydney Theatre, January 9-11 and 13-14, 8pm.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 10

Two main elements make this show a success, justifying the standing ovation Babel received on Tuesday.

First, the quality of the dance work by individuals and by the group in ensemble was outstanding, indeed quite frighteningly good, including especially the occasion when it seemed that a speeding performer had crashed into the constantly moving metallic frame set.  It was a Pirandello moment – remember Six Characters in Search of an Author – and worked beautifully.

Alongside the movement was percussion, instrumental work and singing which would have made the evening exciting on their own.

The second main element was one of surprise for me.  Over several Sydney Festivals I have seen “important” continental European works which failed by being essentially pretentious, sometimes overloaded with grand ideas, sometimes self-consciously post-modern in style but with little new to say.  When I read how Babel came about I thought uh-oh, another “Let’s get everyone together from all over the world and show how we can overcome the babble of languages and conflicting cultures.”  A good multicultural theme for Sydney, of course, but ripe for overloading.

But this show works, with “18 performers from 13 countries, with 15 languages, seven religious backgrounds and numerous performance modes between them” as dramaturge Lou Cope writes, because the basic structure – bringing disparate people together – is kept simple and in the end is grounded in the experience of the group itself rather than trying to make too much of the implications for the world.  These ideas are played out – and even given as lectures – but what comes through to the audience is not that conflict will be resolved in a fantasy “real” world of politics and commercialism.  We see a group of highly talented and individual people working together across all their differences as dancers, to produce a powerful ending which just made people stand up and cheer.

What a contrast this was with a determinedly modern piece some years ago repetitively showing us boring images of social failure for two and a quarter hours.  Those audience members who had not walked out finally got to experience one more self-regurgitating movement sequence which, for no apparent reason, just stopped, and the lights just went out, with absolutely no emotional response possible except to be glad that it stopped.

Mind you Babel did need to stop after 1 hour 40 minutes.  Some of the ideas in some episodes were too shallow, needing development or cutting; some images – though meant to be satirical – were too cliché; and there was a sense that, just as a jazz band has to give every member a solo, all 18 performers had to have their day on display.  But then, their talent and skills would have made it hard to cut.

So, whatever God did to the Tower of Babel,  the result for Sydney has been well worth the trip.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: INDIG-CURIOUS Who can play Aboriginal Roles? by Jane Harrison. Platform Papers No 30.

Jane Harrison

Photo by permission of Currency House

INDIG-CURIOUS Who can play Aboriginal Roles? by Jane Harrison.  Currency House: Platform Papers No 30, January 2012

Review by Frank McKone

Way back in my innocent youth I played the part of Lick Jimmy in the stage version of Ruth Park’s novel Harp in the South.  (If you would like to see the evidence, click
http://www.smithnts.com/Repertory-Harp-In-The-South.htm )

Self-aggrandisement is not my desire nowadays, but Jane Harrison’s essay in the Currency House quarterly Platform Papers has raised an embarrassing question.  Who gave me permission to play a Chinese character, presumably entirely fictional, with all my cultural assumptions about his mannerisms which I mimed (or rather mined, since it was a Broken Hill Rep production) for comic effect?

Considering the treatment of Chinese people in Australian history, was my performance an insult rather than a light-hearted touch in a warm-hearted drama (actually about Irish Catholics in down-at-heel Surry Hills)?

Jane Harrison is a playwright, a descendant of the Muruwari people of NSW, who describes herself as “light-skinned”.  Her plays, Stolen, Rainbow’s End, Blakvelvet and Custody have variously won significant prizes, have been produced in Australia and overseas, and been placed on English syllabi in Victoria and NSW.  This essay was based on the thesis which gained her an MA in Playwriting at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

In other words, who am I, a one-time British immigrant, to criticise?

Well, here goes….  What I have found is a highly interesting study written from within the experience of a person accepted and identified as Aboriginal, while able to stand outside as a researcher and creative writer coming to terms herself with the fact that “Those [non-Indigenous people] who do know something about Aboriginal culture might assume that everybody shares in that knowledge, but in my experience ‘everybody’ doesn’t.  [I am] regularly asked … maybe because, as a light-skinned Aboriginal person, I am not seen as ‘threatening’…” 

From her interviews and references to almost everyone one can think of involved in Aboriginal theatre, before as well as since Kevin Gilbert’s The Cherry Pickers (1968), and even including careful use of Germaine Greer’s Quarterly Essay 11 Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood, Harrison reveals the complexity involved in the apparently simple question Who can play Aboriginal roles?

I represent the people she curiously calls ‘Indig-curious’.  She writes: “We need Indig-curious audiences and an Indig-curious readership.  No Aboriginal person I know wants to exclude non-Aboriginal people from the mix, or expects to see them excluded, but whether it be in matters of research or writing, Aboriginal people have a set of knowledges that we want to express and don’t want to feel like our intellectual property is there for the taking.  So, right now, at this point in our history, we need Aboriginal people to be in control of the message and the way in which that message is expressed.”

This is Jane Harrison’s message, after following up many issues: What causes offence?; Who is writing about us and why?; Aboriginal themes, can they be defined?; Why are they writing (and painting) like us?; Responsibility, anxiety and guilt: the burdens of the message maker; Can Aboriginality be learnt?; Lessons learnt – no longer ‘blacking up’; Why white girls don’t Dreamtime.

If you are Aboriginal, I think Harrison’s discussion will help clarify how to control your message and how to express it.  If you are Indig-curious like me (and I hope we all are) her work turns our cross-cultural mess into understandable elements which might be mixed with care into a new recipe for an Australian culture in this century.

In the meantime, I had better apologise to the Australian Chinese community for my Lick Jimmy act in 1965.  My only excuse is, as Germaine Greer wrote concerning Aboriginal people: “White Australians are in the main anxious to avoid upsetting black Autralians by referring to them in ways they might find offensive, but at the same time they are so unfamilar with black people that they have no way of knowing what gives offence and what doesn’t.” 

Reading INDIG-CURIOUS Who can play Aboriginal roles? is well worthwhile.

Go to www.currencyhouse.org.au for more info about Platform Papers.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen

Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen Michael Simic and Band at The Street Theatre, Canberra, December 8 and 9, 8pm; Sunday December 11, 6pm, following a Special Tribute to David Branson from 12.30pm.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Life is never predictable, as Mikelangelo himself might sing. Unforeseen circumstances beyond my control meant I had to leave at interval, but the first hour was already showing signs of predictability on the part of the Black Sea Gentlemen.

The disappointment for me was that Michael Simic’s style and songs had seemed so much better when I saw him as the Master of Ceremonies of La Clique in the Famous Spiegeltent at the Sydney Festival 2007. I wrote then of ‘his particular style of jaunty, naughty, funny songs of sex and violence’. This show is a retrospective of, as one song puts it, Ten years in the saddle, waiting for death to come, so it was not surprising that I should see reprises of material I might have seen before.

The difference was that La Clique was a cabaret-circus full of varied, surprising, intrinsically funny and often startling acts, counterpointed by the Mikelangelo droll gruesome humour. Simic’s critical evaluation of life had a special place thematically and dramatically, hanging the total show together on threads of spurious homily.

In this show, the songs, though macabrely clever and twisting conventions, felt repetitive in theme and style – even musically. This effect was surprising when, in later analysis, I could recall Hungarian, Jewish, Russian, Spanish and even some modern ‘classical’ atonal elements in different songs. Yet, listening, it seemed I was hearing one song with some variations rather than discreet and markedly different works. In La Clique the other acts broke the spell of Mikelangelo, but tonight transitional invasions of the audience’s privacy were not enough to carry the show forward, and even by interval were beginning to feel rather tedious.

It would not be fair of me to say more without having seen the second half, especially when there were joyous responses from many in the audience at the deliciously gruesome images, and in recognition of many favourite songs. The success of Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen internationally as well as in Australia over the last ten years must counter my thoughts tonight, but I wonder if it’s possible to maintain a cult style for just a bit too long.

An important aspect of their visit to Canberra is to celebrate the memory of David Branson, the original Black Sea violinist Senor Handsome, with Rufino the Catalan Casanova on violin, The Great Muldavio on clarinet, Guido Libido on piano accordion, Little Ivan on double bass and Mikelangelo himself as lead singer and guitarist. Tragically killed in a car accident on December 11, 2001, David was the heart of iconoclastic theatre and music at the time of the Black Sea Gentlemen’s arising from the deep. If you would like to offer something musical or dramatic on Sunday afternoon that has particular relevance to David's life, please contact pipbranson@hotmail.com to discuss.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Waxing Lyrical by John Shortis and Peter J Casey

Waxing Lyrical written by John Shortis (with segments by Peter J Casey). Directed by Carissa Campbell. Performed by John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Peter J Casey, Ian Blake, Jon Jones and Dave O'Neill at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre Friday 2 December 2011 - 8.00pm, Saturday 3 December 2011 - 8.00pm, Sunday 4 December 2011 - 5.00pm.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Shortis & Simpson are purveyors of a certain kind of Canberra culture: unpretentious, whimsical, research-based mains with critical political commentary on the side. Even though Queanbeyan is a country town in New South Wales, it’s obvious from last night’s audience response that our culture flows over the border like a sweet rasberry coulis. Very tasty, nouveau cuisine, rim-of-fire Canberra kind of cooking.

This show is about writing lyrics – good lyrics, bad lyrics, hilarious history of lyrics, including one-time Prime Minister John Howard’s comment that he liked Bob Dylan's songs but couldn't understand Bob Dylan’s lyrics, and even songs without lyrics.

On the research side I was fascinated to learn about song-writers and how words and music somehow end up suitably in tune with each other, as well as hearing so many songs by famous writers of musicals, popular songs, jazz, blues and blue-grass. Rather than try to enumerate the songs, I just want to praise the range and quality of Moya Simpson’s voice across extraordinary styles from a Paul Robeson Old Man River to Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights.

Peter J Casey’s satirical take on the song with the worst lyrics is quite extraordinary, the band is up to playing in a dozen different styles without hesitation, and John Shortis’ traditional diffidence has blossomed into a new strength of confidence – and quality of singing voice.

It’s now fifteen years since I first reviewed Shortis & Simpson, and the quality of their performances just keeps getting better. It’s such a short run: you only have this weekend to get to The Q, but I would certainly like to see this show go further afield.

Maybe we can think of Queanbeyan as off-Broadway, or like the English provinces. Let’s see Waxing Lyrical in whatever we can call Broadway or the West End.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: In Praise of Nepotism - Philip Parsons 2011 Memorial Lecture by Katharine Brisbane. Feature article.

In Praise of Nepotism, ‘the unfair preferment of nephews’ or To Every Age its Art, to Art its Freedom.

Philip Parsons 2011 Memorial Lecture by Katharine Brisbane founder and chair of the cultural activist association, Currency House, her major activity since 2000, after leaving Currency Press which she also founded, now exactly 40 years ago.



Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney. Sunday November 27.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Although the audience for the doyenne of theatre in Australia was smaller than I had expected, the presence of the high-energy young new playwrights waiting for the annual Young Playwright’s Award which accompanies the Memorial Lecture, made Katharine Brisbane’s theme especially significant.

Though she is, in her words, "on the cusp of 80", she is not afraid of the risk that this may be like standing on a berm on a Sydney beach – a narrow shelf of sand which might suddenly collapse into the oncoming tide. Her speech was a disturbing interpretation of the history and the current state of Australian theatre. Are we all on the cusp of something unpredictable?

You will be able to hear the full speech on the ABC, Radio National: Big Ideas in February 2012 – keep an eye on the ABC website for details in January – but in the meantime I would like to wrap up her surprising theme In Praise of Nepotism for the coming Season of Goodwill and Cheer.

Brisbane concludes by saying “… we, the public and the artists at the centre, need more than just goodwill. We need curiosity.” And her very last words are “Our Indigenous artists must have the last word. They understand this. While we are arguing about economic imperatives, the imperative of Aboriginal artists is community culture, its interpretation, appropriation and preservation. This is just as contentious a task as it is in the white community. But they know that if they let it go, it will be gone forever. We need to learn that lesson too.”

Nepotism, she explains, is about “the creation of an in-group to achieve a common purpose, defend itself from outside attack and directly contravene our democratic belief in a fair go for all.” Nepotism showed its good profile in Melbourne’s Australian Performing Group, beginning with Marvellous Melbourne, in the graduates of early NIDA (The Legend of King O’Malley) and through to the establishment of the Victorian College of the Arts (before it was absorbed into Melbourne University) and the creation of Sydney’s Performance Syndicate by “the only real philosopher our theatre has produced”, Rex Cramphorn.

But she laments the huge government subsidies from the mid-1970s which, though they have led to state theatre companies and high-quality training, have taken audiences away from ‘dingo’ theatre (Jack Hibberd’s description) into safe territory according to the still “fundamental influence of our respectable [British colonial] emancipist classes”, avoiding our “[Irish] convict stain”. This has been done, she says, as “Commerce was now in conflict with culture. The 70s was, remember, the time when the Nobel prizewinner Friedrich von Hayek was leading a movement to replace our former measures of cultural value – on the ground that we humans were unstable creatures – with the more reliable face value imposed by the economy.”

The dark side of nepotism, Brisbane says, is that “Security in your own arts sector is what enables work to flow. But if timidity and arrogance is a consequence … then it is anti-art. That arrogance is bred by the old order of received opinion, which leads to tired revivals and preservation of one’s territory. But because our pursuit of excellence from the start excluded from government funding that whole layer of popular entertainment, amateur groups, private studios, end of year concerts and regional extravaganzas which once engaged people in the making of art, our artists have become a collection of specialists for whom communication outside their art has become more and more difficult. The less they try to break through this barrier the more they are misunderstood. It seems that only for artists is the word ‘elite’ a pejorative. In the sports world they are heroes. Why is this? Because, when the opportunities came in the 70s, the arts sector did not take their audiences with them."

The reason I go to Belvoir St is because it is the grandchild of Nimrod, the child of Jane St and the early NIDA graduates. I can only hope that Belvoir’s annual hosting of the Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture, this year presented by his wife Katharine Brisbane – former critic, publisher with him of Currency Press, and long-time cultural activist – will generate the curiosity our culture needs to survive among the new writers like Zoe Coombs Marr, who won the 2011 Young Playwright’s Award, and that they take their audiences with them. The electric energy that sparked around the theatre as the announcement was made augurs well for a collapse of the old berm and the creation of the new.

Thanks to Katharine Brisbane for such a highly stimulating address – and listen to Radio National to hear the full story, or read the final version of Katharine's speech now on the Currency House website at:

http://www.currencyhouse.org.au/sites/default/files/transcripts/In%20Praise%20of%20Nepotism%20final_0.pdf


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: The Fall of the City by Archibald MacLeish

The Fall of the City by Archibald MacLeish, directed by Andrew Holmes. ANU School of Cultural Inquiry, College of the Arts and Social Sciences at ANU Arts Centre Drama Lab October 26-29, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 29

Following Andrew Holmes’ production of MacLeish’s Panic (on the blog August 25, 2011), The Fall of the City is his next research project. Holmes writes “I am currently undertaking a PhD in Drama, with a focus on revaluing Archibald MacLeish’s early achievements in the genre of verse drama. However, rather than focussing on the more traditional methods of analysis that have accompanied much discourse around MacLeish’s career as a playwright, I am seeking to understand how his plays work in their performance context rather than, as MacLeish himself would have put it, how they read as ‘thin little books to lie on front parlor tables.’”

Holmes states that The Fall of the City was the first American verse play written for broadcast radio, in 1937, which places it in context as an early example of work such as Australian poet Douglas Stewart’s Fire on the Snow (1941) and Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood (1954). The latter will be staged in May 2012 by Sydney Theatre Company as a “play with voices” rather than as a “play for voices” on radio.

Perhaps taking a cue from the original 1953 presentation at the YMHA New York of Under Milk Wood before it was broadcast by the BBC, where five actors stood on stage without moving, except for Thomas himself who stepped forward for the Reverend Eli Jenkins’ morning prayer, Holmes had his audience seated on the flat stage of the Drama Lab looking up at figures with white masks in the raked seating. Only Duncan Ley, as the radio reporter, was without a mask, speaking into his microphone.

In this role, Ley found just the right degree of precision of voice and clarity of descriptive expression for an announcer giving the radio audience a detailed mental picture of the scene in the city square, the flurries of movement and silences among the crowd (perhaps of 10,000, he tells us) as the Conqueror approaches. His commentary is interspersed with speeches, such as from a woman in the crowd expressing her fear for the future, a state minister on a podium seeking a peaceful response rather than violence in the face of terrorism, ‘messengers’ who report what has happened in a nearby city through which the Conqueror has just passed, a man in the crowd expressing the need to defend freedom. While each individual speaks s/he removes the mask, and the whole crowd (of 20 actors) move in stylised unison in response to the changing moods until the Conqueror arrives. Despite what has to be a deep apprehension, the crowd succumbs to the charisma of the Conqueror and cheer him as if he is a hero rather than a controlling dictator taking their freedom away from them.

This simple visual representation of the scene seemed to me to enhance the effect that the play would have if it were presented on radio today. Whereas radio in the 1930s had nation-wide sway (Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds proving a highly disturbing example, apart from Hitler’s speeches), today perhaps only the talkback shock-jocks can claim to have anything like the same impact. I guess that MacLeish’s poetry would quickly fade into the ether, while Holmes’ stage treatment, though for a small audience, had strength in a message that is a warning that today we are not far from the dangers that developed in the 1930s. Only an hour or so before seeing The Fall of the City tonight, I saw the breaking news intrude across the ABC website that Alan Joyce had just announced the complete shutdown of Qantas indefinitely, until the unions ‘come to agreement’.

I certainly think that Holmes’ approach to taking MacLeish’s work out of ‘thin little books’ and onto the stage has worked effectively to show the quality of MacLeish’s writing. Since it would not be practical to take so many actors on tour, it could be worthwhile videoing this production of The Fall of the City. Even a limited television or YouTube distribution could bring MacLeish’s warning to the fore, at the very time we need it. After all, PhDs in the sciences have direct impacts in the real world. Why shouldn’t a Drama PhD?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Four Flat Whites in Italy by Roger Hall

Four Flat Whites in Italy by Roger Hall. Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre at The Street, Canberra. October 25-29, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 25

It’s a nice play, like Mrs Worthington’s daughter, “But,” as Noel Coward sang, “Mrs Worthington, dear Mrs Worthington, don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington.” I don’t mean the actors shouldn’t have been on the stage last night, but the author has some questions to answer.

Every play has a context within which it might be judged. Having just seen the so much cleverer Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, I can’t help thinking Roger Hall needs some critical advice. However worthy, he’s a Kiwi who shouldn’t go out in the midday sun without a proper pith helmet.

My reason for taking such a critical position – rather than simply saying that this production is as entertaining as one would normally expect from Ensemble Theatre – is reading commentary in NZ Herald TV like ‘Rather than batting away the question of whether he sees himself as New Zealand's greatest playwright, he considers it through a rational commercial lens. "The merit or otherwise of my plays aside, I've written more plays and fed more into the box office than any other New Zealand playwright."’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlfVahGfutE, while elsewhere the idea has been put around that Roger Hall is New Zealand’s David Williamson.

Though I have at times been critical of Williamson’s penchant for one liner comedies, Four Flat Whites in Italy can’t be compared with, say, Travelling North, which also deals with an older couple rediscovering the truth in their relationship in making a change. On the other hand, if Four Flat Whites is meant to be no more than light comedy, it hasn’t the delicate touch of a Noel Coward play like, say, Private Lives which has a similar pair of couples format.

Hall makes his themes – nowadays called ‘tropes’, I guess – far too explicit by using the husband Adrian as both commentator on and participant in the action. Sandra Bates as director and Michael Ross, the actor, handle this as well as the script allows, but you only have to look at Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie to see how it should be done. The problem here is that Adrian’s action in the past (falling asleep at the wheel and causing his and Alison’s daughter’s paraplegia and early death) is so central to the serious side of the play that it is embarrassing to have Adrian speak directly to the audience in comedy mode.

Because we see Alison – played very well by Sharon Flanagan with the full depth of the emotions resulting from her reaction to her life as Joanna’s carer – as a realistic character coming to terms with tragedy, it is difficult to know how to respond to the revival of her love for Adrian who, to us, has been outside the story as much as inside. The dance under the stars at the end, to me at least, became a simplistic sentimental romance conclusion which undermined the reality of Alison’s experience, while apparently her forgiving Adrian simply lifted all guilt and emotional weight from his shoulders. All too easy, for my liking.

The other themes, of wealth, of political positioning, of being Kiwi, of realising that someone else needs a bit of help when life has treated them unfairly, are all embedded in the other two characters. Henri Szeps and Mary Regan play Harry and his second wife Judy skilfully and to great comic effect as well as neatly handling the change of attitude towards Alison and Adrian as they discover more about Joanna’s life and death.

Yet these characters are there as ciphers, obviously symbolising points that the author wants to include in the play that New Zealanders will respond to. The success of the play at home, and the recognition by the audience on opening night here of the right times to laugh, showed that Hall has found his marks.

It was a bit problematical last night, though, that in real life the All Blacks had just beaten France and won the World Cup, when in the play, set in 2007, France had just beaten the All Blacks in a quarter-final and the Kiwis were in mourning for the loss. Perhaps this affected my response to the scene watching the rugby. Though the actors did it all very well, it went on far too long for me, watching their reactions to a screen I couldn’t see. Maybe this was a case where multi-media could have been used and we could all have seen famous footballers flailing in the face of French infallibility.

So though the night was enjoyable, I can’t say it was fully satisfying. Perhaps it’s being too harsh to say that, like Mrs Worthington’s daughter, it shouldn’t be on the stage. But it does seem to me not to be a play of the same standing as Neil Simon or David Williamson who have been a standard for Ensemble Theatre over the years.

____________________________________________________________________


Those readers who are probably much younger than me (or perhaps you’ve just lost your memory) can see a fair representation of Mrs Worthington by Fenton Gray at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=RA8XKb8OFfA (Uploaded by FentonGray on 16 May 2010)

and, though I think you will have to buy Coward’s original recording of this song, you can watch him singing others (like Mad Dogs and Englishmen) in his inimitable impeccable style at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=1ccGh8-Ipww (Noel Coward's first television appearance! Uploaded by kitschbitch on 4 Feb 2007).

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Debt Defying Acts – The Wharf Revue

Debt Defying Acts – The Wharf Revue by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott, with Amanda Bishop. Sydney Theatre Company at The Playhouse, Canberra, October 18-22, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 18

At the urinal, conversation flowed, fulsome and pithy:

“They really are clever.”
“They are! They are!”

Taking the piss out of politicians certainly worked on Canberra’s public servants.

Powers must have been specially delegated from DFAT considering the inordinate responses not only to the present Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd in the guise of the Phantom of the Opera, but also the mysterious appearance in the downstairs disabled toilet of ex-Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who didn’t want to be told anything about anything. The Phantom, of course, was holding his ambition (i.e. the Prime Minister Julia Gillard) incognito, insisting in magnificent song on his undying love for her.

Why is the disabled toilet downstairs where disabled people can’t get to it? – exactly. Just the place for a quiet read (Alexander had come to recover a forgotten tome), or for holding someone incognito, and indeed for a final stab in the back. As Julia made clear, this time she will do it properly, while Kevin slumped across the piano keyboard – I could say, “dead, buried and cremated”.

Which reminds me of the other phantom of this circus: a clown who appeared only briefly at the beginning as a shadow figure with big ears – Tony Abbott, the evil Dr No with his Invisible Mandate. Julia, Queen of the High Wire Balancing Act, was there, though actually riding a nameless (faceless?) pony. Wild Barry O’Farrell (or was it Farry O’Barrel?) got his gun with the help of the religious right. Even the Faded Rose of Yesteryear, Miss Kittie Keneally, had her day. The Tragedy of King Rupert played out to its inevitable conclusion as his favourite seeming daughter Rebekah took nothing, while his Crouching Tiger wife took everything. But no show for Tony Abbott.

Was the problem that there is simply nothing funny to write about an Opposition in a political revue? Or just about this Opposition?

Getting a bit more serious, a good revue should edge towards satire. If it’s edgy enough it should reach some kind of horrible truth. This was achieved in this year’s Wharf Revue in a shadow puppet presentation of the shock-jock horror, Alan Jones and those he has spawned. Using recordings of their broadcasts, including the ring-ins, this segment was parallel to wayang puppetry which might bring down a dictator in another country. If only, in our case.

And getting very serious, this production is magnificent. The action is fast-paced with great timing throughout, in a circus-tent set which incorporates its own lighting, sound and visual media, reminding me of the amazing Famous Spiegeltent. We are used to the annual Wharf Revue, of course, but this year I thought Amanda Bishop’s singing, dancing and athleticism stood out (upside down at the very end), as did Drew Forsythe’s Rupert Murdoch as King Lear. Switching so many roles – and some very complicated costumes – in short order, with each new character instantly recognisable, was a strength in all four performers.

My conclusion is that the Canberra Theatre Centre should have employed this team to launch its 2012 Program (see Love Song blog posted October 6) as well as including The Wharf Revue again next year (as they have).

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Bloodland by Kathy Balngayngu, Stephen Page (director) and Wayne Blair

Bloodland by Kathy Balngayngu, Stephen Page (director) and Wayne Blair. Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, October 7 – November 13, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 12

We need patience for Bloodland just as the Yolgnu need it in their own culture and to survive in “Australia Fair”. Be patient, allow yourself to gradually become absorbed into the twists and turns of cross-cultural existence, and you will be rewarded with a new understanding at the end.

There is humour in this drama – Mrs White, who teaches the children Advance Australia Fair and kills them if they speak language, Donkey the Dog who howls when AAF is sung, and Cherish who collects mobile phones, including ones whose service has been disconnected. But laughter is relief from tragedy in the Shakespearian sense.

In Romeo and Juliet tragedy derives from the opposing families, the Montagues and the Capulets whose children must not cross an unnecessary boundary. It is a romantic tragedy, because the deaths force the issue of the moral imperative of peace upon us. For the Yolgnu life is much more complicated because there are clans based in different parts of Yolgnu country, while a person in any clan may be Dhuwa or Yirritja and is forbidden to marry a person from their own group.

So the opportunities for conflict over romantic attachments which cross boundaries are rife. Whereas the Duke could lay down the law, which would have made it clear that Romeo and Juliet should have been allowed to come together in peace, and that Juliet’s father’s choice of who she must marry had no standing, Yolgnu law says that the man Billy, although having been away for years while gaining an education in the city, remains the only correct husband for Gapu. She makes the proper decision despite her feelings for Runu and his for her. There is no romance in this tragic ending, for Runu or Gapu. The law has been fulfilled, as it has been established over thousands of years for the survival of the people as a whole.

Add to all of this the imposition and the attractions of a culture of individual demands for freedoms, and conflicts become irreconcilable, even when elders try to maintain the proper ceremonies. For those of us whose forebears have come to these shores in very recent times, the best – in fact the only – offer we can make is patience, respect and proper treatment of those who came here so long before us. Advance Australia fair is what this brave drama says to all of us.

Looking at this production from a theatrical point of view, it is impressive to see such a range of Indigenous performers working at top quality level. For me the concluding ceremony represents a major shift in drama – which of course Stephen Page’s Bangarra Dance Company has made in pure dance – from the attempts to imitate non-Indigenous naturalistic plays, which I remember from the beginnings of Black Theatre in the early 1970s, to work where scenes both display Yolgnu practice and create symbolic meaning for a non-Indigenous audience, even including performance in Yolgnu language. This takes Indigenous theatre beyond even work such as Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead which in my view was a major development – and was performed by Wayne Blair.

From a practical point of view, if it is difficult to get to Sydney for 8pm performances, take advantage of STC’s matinees at 1pm on Wednesdays or Mondays at 6.30pm. Try not to miss Bloodland.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Little Day Out by Justine Clarke

Little Day Out. Justine Clarke and her three-piece band at Canberra Theatre, October 6, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

As a theatre experience for littlies on an imaginary day out – when they are actually on a real littlies’ day out to the theatre – Justine Clarke’s show is not to be missed. But you will have to try to squeeze your way in to the Sydney Opera House on Saturday October 8. The original Canberra tour publicity mentioned only the 10am show that I saw today, but this was followed by a 12 noon performance as well, so I can only assume that bookings for Saturday will be overflowing.

And so they should be. Justine (I’m sure I can use first names like all the ABC Playschool viewers do) is not just multi-talented but speaks personally to every child in the audience, fully justifying her claim “If you imagine there’s one child sitting on the floor watching, and you might actually get that child up on her feet, spark her imagination, that’s really everything you want to do as an actor. You want to tell a story and for that to ignite something.”

She certainly ignited a toddler’s mosh pit in the Canberra Theatre and absolutely nobody cried despite the crush. Good training for when they become teenagers. Adulation training – but without the negative overtones they will have to learn to watch for in later years.

Acculturation training is another way of looking at this show, and others like it. Over the years I’ve seen a few. They are not all so alike when I look back.

The Playschool tradition, stretching at least from Justine Clarke back to Monica Trapaga clearly stands out because these performers are experienced actors and musicians who are expert at communicating, through the tv screen and on stage.

Shows not in this league that I recall are the Gary Ginivan style in Pooh (2000) when I heard a parent explain to her 3-year-old after the show, "A movie's on a big screen. This was a play." It was hard to tell the difference. Much the same was true of the Dora the Explorer Live! show Dora’s Pirate Adventure (2008) where the whole performance was in lock-step with a pre-recorded sound track and everything from eye-flashing to emotional expression was pure formula. Even Humphrey B Bear, which perhaps ironically began Justine’s career when she appeared as a littlie in an Arnott’s biscuit advertisement, never matched Playschool for personality and quality contact with children.

Learning to appreciate good theatre is one aspect of acculturation which I think children can never get enough of. And I could never complain about the wide range of musical styles, as well as the basics of singing, rhythm and dancing in Justine’s work. But there are aspects of the content of the songs which had me thinking.

Almost everything in the show is colonial white and British. Although it is secular, as it should be to maintain independence from religious affiliation, one would think that Australia is absolutely monocultural except for one feature: the music, which varied from jazz, reggae, country and western, and even Aussie 70’s to a smidgeon of Beatles in the pre-show intro. This was reinforced when under the sea Justine found a yellow submarine.

Otherwise the only non-British bit was in the Gum Tree Family song, where we find in and around the tree a kookaburra, a koala, a platypus and a kangaroo. But soon after we are back hopping with bunnies as if we don’t have an Australian hopping mouse – or a bilby. Even the sun is merely ‘yellow’ shining mildly through – on the big screen – English green oak leaves (though I could be mistaken – perhaps they were Canadian maple). And, despite the range of people in the audience, there was nothing to discover on this Little Day Out about all the different coloured people who live in Australia, or the people who live in dry red country and have never built a sandcastle at the seaside or even seen the sea.

So, educationally speaking, I would dearly love to see Justine’s wonderful theatrical skills turned more towards our children’s lives in this country. Even Dora the Explorer teaches American children the Spanish they will need when Latinos outnumber Europeans in many areas, though I’m sure Justine could do similar teaching much more subtly than Dora. Let’s take our littlies on an imaginary day out in a more Australian land. After all, how British are the Teletubbies, and how American is Sesame Street?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Love Song by John Kolvenbach (after Canberra Theatre Centre’s program for 2012)

Love Song by John Kolvenbach. Centrepiece Theatre directed by Jordan Best at The Q, Queanbyean Performing Arts Centre, October 5-9 and 12-15, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

My evening began with a rather boring and certainly unsophisticated presentation of the Canberra Theatre Centre’s program for 2012. That doesn’t mean that the program contains no shows of interest. Just the unfunny ‘humour’ of the on-stage presenters between talking heads videos was terribly anti-dramatic, in unfortunate contrast, I should say, to the excellent modern dance item by Charmene Yap and Richard Cilli from Sydney Dance Company. Even the aria and duet from Don Giovanni, though sung quite well, were not staged or acted to the standard one might expect for this theatre.

The 2012 season is an eclectic and quite varied set of ‘Collected Works’ which you can check out at canberratheatrecentre.com.au/season2012 .

What a relief, then, to dash over to Queanbeyan for Love Song. Jordan Best’s Centrepiece Theatre have done good work since their inception six years ago, and have become one of the region’s reliably worthwhile small independent companies. The Q stage, also small and worthwhile, with good sightlines and acoustics, was a nice choice of venue for this production.

Direction and design are right for this play, and all the actors – Tim Sekuless as Beane, Jenna Roberts as his sister Joan, Jim Adamik as her husband Harry and Sophie Benassi as Beane’s ‘lover’ Molly – have captured the absurdity of the situation, timed the comedy very well and created a genuine sense of empathy at the right moments.

The tricky thing about this play is that it can easily appear that Beane represents a realistic character with a mental illness. Some reviewers of other productions seem to assume this, but what is his illness? Is it an extreme form of autism? No, autistic people are normally rational, despite their problems with making social connections. Is it depression? It certainly seems bi-polar, but Beane’s kind of fantasy is out of place. Is it schizophrenia, since Beane seems to have illusions which seem real to him? Perhaps. But in the end this play is not derived from the author’s research into actual mental health states.

His characters are metaphors for types of people. The play is a purely fictional dramatic construct, designed to make us think about ourselves in comparison to his characters. It seems a very modern play (first produced in 2006) but the technology, the language and the jobs characters have are merely superstructure.

Beane represents no more than a character who is unable to understand the world he lives in, and creates a fantasy (Molly) of sexual success. Only when he comes to recognise what he has done does he begin to come to terms with reality. This is Hamlet – though Ophelia is real, it is her role as his fantasy which he has to come to terms with: a tragedy because she really dies before he reaches understanding. Kolvenbach plays something of a game with us by making Molly appear to be real to us, as well as to Beane, and she appears to us to really leave him at the point of his realisation that she is no more than his fantasy. This makes for a happy ending – making the play a comedy.

Because the play is an imaginary construct, the production needs to make that clear to us. The provenance of this play is more like the absurdism of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros or Beckett’s Waiting for Godot than even Albee’s The Zoo Story which at first sight it seems to be similar to. On the other hand all these authors were much more stringent, and never produced a neat OK conclusion like Kolvenbach, where Joan and Harry find love while Beane finds himself. Nor did Shakespeare. Maybe Kolvenbach has not honestly come to terms with the reality of the human condition.

Yet, despite Kolvenbach not being quite the great playwright, Jordan Best and her team have done his script proud. In fact they have made the play seem better than it is. What that says about coming to terms with reality, I’ll leave to you, the reader and hopefully the viewer of Love Song at The Q.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: MP by Alana Valentine

MP by Alana Valentine. Commissioned by The Street Theatre, directed by Caroline Stacey, designed by Imogen Keen. At The Street October 1-15, 2011

Reviewed by Frank McKone

There is something Shakespearean about Alana Valentine’s latest play. I’m thinking about Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and, on the more political level, of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. I’m also thinking of the style of performance, which some would call ‘representational’, with its switching between inter-character speech and direct address to the audience – the soliloquies which Shakespeare made famous. And I’m thinking about the setting at the seat of central government and the issue of the nature of government. Is something rotten in the state of representative democracy in Canberra?

It also felt to me, as a citizen of Canberra, like what citizens of London, the seat of English government, must have felt in Shakespeare’s day. So many people – including politicians and bureaucrats I noted among the audience – responded so spontaneously to the experiences of the characters on stage that I’m sure this is how those in the political know in London would have laughed while watching the machinations play out.

Groundlings, like me, would have been empathising with the personalities of the politician Ava Turner, her supportive partner Raymond, her ambitious adviser Nadia, her terribly disabled son Cliff, her political party nemesis Drew, the astute journalist Tracey, the head of department Bonnie, and the couple Gary and Laura Robbins whose disabled daughter was raped and committed suicide. Watching how they all treated each other was a bit like watching Othello, except that the play is a political comedy with a kind of happy ending.

In other words, this is a play well worth watching for its content, plot and characters.

But, of course, a good script must be presented well – and this one is.

Geraldine Turner, billed as ‘starring’ in the role of Ava, fits the bill. She plays the twists and turns of emotion and power-play in Ava’s intimate and public relations with focus and strength of acting which holds the play together until the final surprising moment.

Her skill and standing as an actor might have dominated the production when working with a largely local cast with less experience, but it was clear that Leah Baulch (Nadia), Stephen Barker (Gary Robbins / Raymond), Soren Jensen (Cliff / Drew) and Andrea Close (Canberra Critics’ Circle Award 2007) in the multiple roles of Laura Robbins, Bonnie, Tracey, a waitress and Madeleine (another constituent from Ava’s electorate whose appearance concludes the play) had all been welded together to form a team of equals. This is to the credit, of course, of an expert director in Caroline Stacey, whose understanding of the style needed was also made clear in the technical aspects of the acting, movement, set design, lighting (by Nick Merrylees) and sound (by Liberty Kerr).

The set design – shaky towers of balancing plates representing a Member of Parliament’s massive correspondence load – was complemented by the sounds of smashing crockery and made a surprising but very effective metaphor for the fragility of the political life, and of life in general. Simple in form but imaginative, the design and directing allowed the themes of the play to stand out against the background of complex day-to-day government and the personal interplay of the people involved.

Author Alana Valentine, on opening night, took a curtain call with the cast and thoroughly deserved the applause. If this is the standard we can expect from the Street Theatre’s commissioning program in future, then Canberra may at last achieve the permanent local professional theatre company it has long deserved.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Avenue Q the Musical

Avenue Q the Musical Music & Lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx. Supa Productions directed by Garrick Smith. Music directed by Rose Shorney, choreography by Jordan Kelly, costumes designed by Suzan Cooper. ANU Arts Centre September 16 – October 1, 2011

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 30

Isn’t it great? Isn’t it fun? Isn’t it just a relief to see a light-hearted satirical American musical! I nearly missed it, and I’m glad I didn’t. It’s a show I thought I’d heard of, but it had never entered my consciousness – perhaps because of my lack of enthusiasm for conventional American musicals. I guess the song Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist puts me in my place.

Several things about Supa’s production impressed me.

The puppets worked as characters in their own right, but this could only be achieved by the singers who also had to be dancers and puppeteers. Getting this right was a major plus, because the puppets’ characters became the focus instead of the show being just a display of singing and dancing.

The Velvet Underground Glove Puppet Modern Jazz Sextet played magnificently, although sometimes they could have been softened a little to bring out the voices more clearly.

The set designer Jeremy Bailey-Smith doesn’t get special mention in the program, but he should for a clever arrangement of movable units which kept our interest at each set change, all smoothly done.

Characters, within the limits deliberately set as spoofs of Sesame Street and of traditional musical romances, are not all this show requires. Fortunately Supa maintained its usual precision in movement and singing. Timing makes this show, not just as a comedy but as a satire, and I think no-one missed a beat. But I must add that Sarah Golding’s It’s A Fine, Fine Line brought the first half to a beautiful end, at a level beyond satire.

The result was enthusiastically received by the very age group it was aimed at in just the right venue at ANU. I even overhead people saying I Wish I Could Go Back To College as they faced the reality of the cold night air. In fact even this 70-year-old found himself wondering wouldn’t it be great, wouldn’t it be fun?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011:Get Back: The Lennon & McCartney Songbook

Get Back: The Lennon & McCartney Songbook. Produced and performed by: Melissa Langton, Libby O'Donovan and Mark Jones at The Q, Queanbeyan, September 15-17, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 15

In the spirit of a willing suspension of disbelief, especially in view of this image and the exhortation to “expect highbrow harmony and lowbrow comedy - and the occasional joke about one-legged ex-models”, I allowed myself to enjoy the singing, piano playing and some of the arrangements of Lennon and McCartney songs. There’s no doubt about the technical musicianship skills of all three performers.

But I found myself unsure of what kind of show I was watching and how I should respond. Cabaret can mean anything from the dark and sultry to stand-up comedy, and there were bits of both here, but the linking material – the patter – was too much and often too puerile for the Lennon and McCartney quality, and indeed for the Qeanbeyan audience. Odious comparisons, for example, with the possibly fictional worst audience in Mt Isa were quite unnecessary and set up an atmosphere completely at odds with songs like Help, Let It Be and Imagine which were performed with seriousness of intent, as they should be.

Despite the manner of John Lennon’s passing and perhaps because of Paul McCartney’s subsequent career, marital as well as on stage, it is fair that they should not be treated with undue reverence. I could accept Ob La Di Ob La Da in the style of an old-fashioned American square-dancing hoe down as a humorous take that I can suspect Paul might have had fun with in the studio. I wasn’t so sure, though, about a Southern Baptist religiosity approach to Let It Be. This arrangement seemed to be more about don’t let your ideology go, no matter what. But the right mood was captured for the medley based on the feelings of depression living in an oppressive society expressed in Help (even though this segment was the cause, apparently, of a Mt Isa yobbo crying “bullshit” because it wasn’t rock’n’roll).

Of course the weakest moment, but for us in Canberra-Queanbeyan the funniest, was when the obligatory audience participation call went out for a volunteer to face a quiz on their knowledge of Lennon and McCartney songs. Though the quiz turned out to be a spoof, no-one put their hand up for some embarrassing minutes until finally a certain Moya Simpson held up her partner’s hand and John Shortis took the stage. Despite the performers’ previous praising of the great experience of being in Queanbeyan, their research had not discovered Shortis and Simpson, our very own political cabaret team. The secret was never revealed, while John was renamed ‘Paul’ and gave his answers almost shyly as is his wont, to great cheers from we who were in the know.

In the end, it was good to hear Mark Jones’ version of Imagine. This really was the dreamer speaking, and he was not alone. And the a capella encore of Live and Let Die was a strong and worthy conclusion to the show.

The quality of these items showed up the need for less patter – especially about themselves and their show – and more sophisticated linking of the items with Beatles history and how the medleys were put together, to put the good work, and humour, into the right context.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill

The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, adapted by Raimondo Cortese. Malthouse Theatre and Victorian Opera, directed by Michael Kantor, conductor Richard Gill, at Sydney Theatre, September 3-24, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 5

Baz Luhrman, à la Moulin Rouge, meets Bertolt Brecht in Michael Kantor’s vision of The Threepenny Opera. As Phillip Adams commented on Late Night Live as I drove home from Sydney, it’s a ten dollar set for a threepenny opera. Quite a few thousands of dollars, in reality. Is it Entertainment or Polemic, Underbelly or Over the Top?

Whatever – it works. Cortese writes “My aim in adapting the text has been to honour the original, while updating it to a modern Australian context” which means in Sydney the setting is in a kind of Kings Cross, Campbell Street, Palmer Street, Darlinghurst Road, Oxford Street sort of Sydney, in something like the Brigadier Spry era that I remember when policemen were known to accidentally fall on prisoners (as if they still don’t occasionally on Palm Island, Queensland).

At the same time the costumes, designed brilliantly by Anna Cordingley, are exaggerated circus, the singing is a howling parody of opera which extracts every bit of meaning out of Weill’s amazing music, the characters are colourful cut-outs – puppets manipulated by the strings of society. If you have an image of 1928 German style like this from http://threepennyopera.org/histChron.php

you’ll need to think again for this:

An important point for me in seeing this production is to realise how much the daring of Brecht/Weill in their twenties in the nineteen-twenties stimulated theatrical freedom for us in our twenty-tens. It’s an interesting exercise to compare the language, for example in Macheath’s Pardon song, of Eric Bentley’s 1960 official translation:

“The wenches with their bosoms showing / To catch the eye of men with yearnings”

with Hugh MacDiarmid’s official 1973 version:

“Those painted girls who show their breasts off / To lure the men who stand about them”

with the raunchiness and fucks of Cortese’s version. The relaxed and comfortable Sydney middle class audience remained so throughout, and were clearly entertained.

But the directness of the language also meant that there is no more hedging about the polemics. This version makes even more plain than the previous translations that each one of us is guilty for, as MacDiarmid wrote it:

“You gentlemen, don’t you be taken in / What keeps a man alive is hate and sin.”

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to buy Cortese’s text immediately after the show, so you’ll have to go to check out his version to get the details.

As usual in good productions it is difficult to isolate particular performers. Paul Capsis as Jenny, who also plays the Narrator, certainly takes the stage – for some commentators s/he goes too far and becomes the central character of the play. I’m not unhappy about that, since I always felt that Jenny is the one genuinely tragic character. Capsis certainly got the audience response he deserves.

The other actor I would mention, in the Sydney production, is Amanda Muggleton playing Mrs Peachum (played by Judi Connelly previously in Melbourne). This Mrs Peachum is knowing and horrible to the absolute core, as Muggleton captures the quality of voice and accuracy of tone and pitch which Weill’s music requires.

And then there is the surprise. When fear, hatred, sin and corruption beggars belief, what might not be the explosive result? However comfortable you are in middle class Australia, go see and find out the truth.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Panic by Archibald MacLeish

Panic by Archibald MacLeish, directed by Andrew Holmes, School of Cultural Inquiry, College of the Arts and Social Sciences, at ANU Arts Centre. August 18-20, 25-27, 2011. Free entry.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 25

The purpose of a doctoral study is to research an original topic in the hope of establishing a new understanding to add to a body of knowledge, and perhaps confirm or change the direction of academic thinking. Since this production is presented as part of Holmes’ PhD studies, my first question is “Is there anything new about it?”

For me there was. I had long been aware of MacLeish as a poet, but I hadn’t thought of him as a significant playwright – or even as a playwright at all, to be honest. Yet he won a Pultizer prize for J.B. in 1958 (my first year at Sydney Uni) which ran for 364 performances on Broadway, directed by the key to American theatre of that time, Elia Kazan. While Martin Esslin calls Panic, with the lead played by Orson Welles in 1935, “a sophisticated agitprop drama of the Wall Street crash” – of 1929, of course; not 2008. What had I missed? And why?

The why is easily explained. My 1950s Anglo-Australian background only took a few American playwrights seriously: Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. If I looked for social criticism I saw Bernard Shaw. For agitprop I thought of Bertolt Brecht. Should I now include Archibald MacLeish?

Perhaps the 1992 advertisement for Archibald MacLeish: An American Life by Scott Donaldson. (Houghton Mifflin; 622 pages; $35) suggests not:

“THIS year marks the centenary of the birth of Archibald MacLeish, one of the most unusual figures in 20th-century American letters and a man who prospered at both poetry and public service. As this massive biography documents, nothing seemed impossible to him: he played football like a demon while at Yale; he was brilliant in debate; he practised law with panache after graduating from Harvard Law School; he wrote some of the finest lyric poetry of the century and he transformed the Library of Congress from a dull but worthy repository….” (www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-12428195.html)

So what was it that made Andrew Holmes want to focus on MacLeish, rather than plays such as O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (1920) or The Great God Brown (1926), or indeed Bernard Shaw’s The Apple Cart (1929) or Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui written in 1941 in Helsinki while waiting for a visa to enter America?

The answer has to be, the poetry.

Verse drama in its modern form goes back to the Romantics: The Cenci by Shelley was written in 1819, but was first presented publicly on stage in London in 1922 (after a private production in 1886 attended by, among others, Bernard Shaw). Shelley’s play was historical, about Beatrice Cenci of the late 1500s. MacLeish’s play is set in his own time, in the Great Depression when, by 1933, 21 US States had closed all their banks and Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a four day Bank Holiday throughout America and began his “fireside chats” to keep the populace calm while the banking system was restored. The new aspect of MacLeish’s work was to take such a prosaic situation and write in the mode of Romanticism. Not exactly the style of a Brecht, nor even a Shaw or O’Neill, though one might see it as a forerunner of Tennessee William’s work.

So my second (and final) question is “Does Andrew Holmes’ production take us in a new direction?”

The poetry begins with words spoken by the common people in chorus with soloists, highlighting words like “closed”, “foreclosed”, “moratorium”, “McGafferty” – the “hero” who claims he will keep his bank open – and finally “death” as McGafferty “tragically” shoots himself. The reference in rhythmic form which goes back to the Ancient Greek – I was particularly reminded of Sophocles’ Antigone – is effectively done. There are references to the future as well. Keeping the American idiom, accent and phrasing must have been a considerable challenge for largely untrained actors, but the effect was almost like some parts of Woody Allen’s Manhattan.

But MacLeish keeps the chorus in its place, concentrating the action on McGafferty and his woman Ione (the relationship is undefined). Tony Turner and Christa Dejager stand out in these roles not just because they are the wealthy elite but because each of them used the verse to create individual characters and timed their interactions with the kind of staccato effect their side of the story required.

The Blind Radical, who I take as a Tiresius sooth-sayer figure, was played very effectively by Simon Thomson, reminding me especially of Lucky in Waiting for Godot.

In the end, as Holmes explained in the follow-up discussion, the story can be interpreted (and was when first staged) by Communists as a vindication of the failure of Capitalism, or by industrialists and bankers as a tragedy of a hero with a fatal flaw. I could not see the play as “sophisticated” nor as true “agitprop” since the story is simplistic, the economic and social issues are not made clear, and the characterisation is minimal, except – interestingly – of Ione, who clearly understands her role as support for the go-getting banker until she recognises the reality that he is done for. She leaves to look for other opportunities, while McGafferty suicides.

But the poetry works. Sound, rhythm and images swirl around, creating their own sense of chaos to suit the theme. There is something here worth attention for modern playwrights: perhaps we have lost the habit of using the sounds and structure of language as integrated elements in theatre, especially in “naturalistic” drama. So, I conclude, writing today does not mean going back to the Romanticism still wafting around MacLeish’s Panic, but we have a model in today’s hip-hop or rap rhyme, rhythm and strength of word choice. Steven Berkoff, do I hear? In the Australian context, Louis Nowra, Dorothy Hewitt and perhaps Stephen Sewell, as well as Richard Frankland as directed by Wesley Enoch in Conversations with the Dead?

And, noting that it is some time since university theatre was a regular feature of the Canberra scene, it is good to see the new ANU structure for Drama teaching providing support for the practical production on stage of work under study, and I trust the performance program will expand once again.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Destination Home by Camilla Blunden, Liliana Bogatko, Raoul Craemer and Noonee Doronila

Destination Home written and performed by Camilla Blunden, Liliana Bogatko, Raoul Craemer and Noonee Doronila. The Threads Collective directed by barb barnett at The Street 2, Canberra, August 23-38, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 23

Four actors come together. Each began life somewhere else. Their stories gradually coalesce as each migrates to Australia. Their words and images are like short sequences from a documentary film which form a coherent picture only at the point where they perform their stories together on stage, in Australia, in Canberra, before this audience. The end.

The idea is interesting – certainly for a migrant like me with my own parallel story – but the writing is for the most part prosaic and the theatrical structure unexciting. Perhaps this is the result of the writers' becoming incorporated bodily and emotionally into Australia’s flat topography and culture.

The four stories represent multicultural reality in today’s Canberra. Camilla from Cornwall via London and Melbourne; Liliana from Poland via Austria and Adelaide; Raoul mixing India and Germany via London; Noonee from Manila via Melbourne. Each arrived in Australia at different ages on different dates in different decades, yet find they have similar experiences, dreams, confusions about their identity, while coming ‘home’ together in this work.

This is the positive value of Destination Home, especially in the face of those who decry multiculturalism as creating racial enclaves. None of these four have lost the ties to their original homelands, but all have stayed here. As Liliana puts it, “In Poland I am Australian; in Australia I am Polish” but there are freedoms here, despite the peculiar contradictions of Australian life, for which she stays. Each of them visit their England, Poland, Germany, India or the Philippines, but each has been changed by Australia and they cannot maintain the old relationships.

Despite sadness at the loss of the past, the final bow is a celebration, which the audience joins in, of simply being here to stay.

So the intention is valid, the motivation is genuine, while the theatrical expression is lacking. Raoul’s story is the most energetically played, while Camilla’s shows the greatest variety, but I see the work as still in progress, needing a good writer to work it up and for it to be performed by other actors. The work needs to be put at some distance from the original storytellers to create a drama with a clear sense of direction from scene to scene. As it stands, for most of the play the scenes seem too random, too amorphous, too evenly paced. I would take the script by the scruff of the neck, shake it about until it cries a bit, hisses back at me and tries to scratch with its claws out. Then I could drop it from a great height and watch it land on all fours and purr to everyone’s satisfaction.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca

Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca, translated and directed by Iain Sinclair.  Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, August 5 – September 11, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 8

Perhaps you expect me to write about Lorca, but this is more than adequately done in the program.  No, it is Iain Sinclair I must write about.

Thanks, Iain, for the poetry, the myth-making, for revivifying my memories of Lorca.  Thanks especially for Leah Purcell in the central role of The Mother.  “I believe very strongly in the Aboriginal spirituality. I believe in my ancestors and I believe that they have given me my ability to be a storyteller, a song woman, a performer.”  (ABC TV Australian Story 2002)

The first Act is the story leading to The Mother’s only surviving son, The Groom (Kenneth Spiteri), marrying The Bride (Sophie Ross) who rides off on The Horse with her first love, now married Leonardo (Yalin Ozucelik) before the wedding reception has ended. 

Act 2 is the search for the eloping couple in the forest.  The Groom and Leonardo stab each other to death, while The Bride, still a virgin, returns, expecting retribution and death.  But it is men who kill, not women, and the play ends leaving The Wife of Leonardo (Zindzi Okenyo), The Bride and The Mother all tragically bereft with no future beyond the “thick walls” of their peasant farmhouses.

The story has the epic proportions of Greek tragedy, and has a parallel in the Aboriginal story of the Two Wise Men and the Seven Sisters (A creation story from the WONG-GU-THA, people of the desert near Ooldea, South Australia, as told by Josie Boyle  http://www.kitezh.com/sevensisters/7sisters.htm#A12 ). 

It has the metaphorical and sexual implications of blood, reminiscent of D H Lawrence.  It has the eerie faerie presence of death like the Irish playwright J M Synge’s Riders to the Sea and Deirdre of the Sorrows.  Lorca was clearly conscious of being one among the artists of his time, writing in 1933 of “Duende … This ‘mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained’ is, in sum, the spirit of the earth, the same duende that scorched Nietzche’s heart as he searched for its outer form on the Rialto Bridge and in Bizet’s music, without finding it, and without seeing that the duende he pursued had leapt from the Greek mysteries to the dancers of Cadiz and the headless Dionysiac scream of Silverio’s siguiriya.”

So, true to Lorca’s art, Iain Sinclair’s production of Blood Wedding is not a dramatic retelling of the plot but an original creation of the mystery in the translation from the Spanish into Australian English, in the imagery of the Andalucian peasant farmers, in their music, rhythm and dance, and in the mysterious spirit figures of the forest.  The play takes on the mantle of all the ancient rituals of death and transfiguration, written only a few short years before Lorca’s own execution in 1936 by fascists as Franco’s regime re-established dictatorship after a brief period of a democratic Spanish republic.

Go to this production not as a spectator but to absorb all the feelings – of terror, of joy, of tragedy – that Sinclair makes available to you.  You may come away from Leah Purcell’s final scene shaken, out of complacency and into new understanding of the human condition.  Thanks, Iain Sinclair, for making my kind of theatre.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Life x 3 by Yasmina Reza

Life x 3 by Yasmina Reza.  Canberra Repertory directed by Garry Fry.  Theatre 3, August 5-20.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 6

It was interesting to find, even in a translation by noted British writer Christopher Hampton, how very French this play is.  Though at first blush it seems naturalistic, before long it becomes reminiscent of French-style absurdism in the manner of Eugene Ionesco.  It’s a comedy of the human condition, epitomised by drunk Ines in Act 2 insisting to her astronomer husband, “We are not insignificant!”

Reza’s writing is demanding.  The same scene is played three times: a couple arrive for dinner with another couple, a day early.  Their hosts are completely unprepared.  Each replay is not an exact replica, because each of the four characters start from and end up at different points in trajectories which their personalities could have followed.

Scene 1 and Scene 2 end in emotional disaster.  In Scene 3 the characters make valiant attempts to be more civilised and reach what, at least superficially, seems an OK compromise.  After Scene 1, a psychologist friend was ready to be called in for marriage counselling.  By the end of the play, she thought she wouldn’t be needed.

For the actors, Peter Holland (Henri, whose academic career makes demands he is afraid he cannot meet), Megs Skillicorn (Henri’s wife Sonia, who has a law degree but works for a finance company), Sam Hanna-Morrow (Hubert, a successful academic who delights in putting Henri down while flirting with Sonia) and Debbie Newboult (Hubert’s wife Ines, faced with a husband she depends on for his social status) and for the director there is a great deal of fine detail to be worked through as each character is interpreted surprisingly differently in each appearance.

In the program notes, we are reminded that Garry Fry developed Replay Theatre in educational settings, in which “Actors explore themes with short semi-improvised plays derived from interaction with a target group; eg, homeless young people.  During replay of scenes, audiences are invited to change the action according to how they think these life situations could be improved.” 

It seems to me that Fry’s highly successful community work over many years has provided him with the skill in Reza’s version of Replay to direct his cast to seek the nuances of characterisation needed here, and each actor has succeeded well. 

I was particularly impressed by Debbie Newboult’s work: she added an extra dimension in her strong stage presence.

Life x 3 is very appropriate for a Canberra audience.  Academics audibly cringed at times when they were not laughing in recognition of their experiences, while couples who have tried to bring up children were equally amused in a squirmy sort of way, as Henri and Sonia’s 6 year old (Michael Spong’s voice off-stage) made demand after demand when he should have been asleep. 

The play, and this production of it, is both enjoyable and worthwhile.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2011: Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, adapted by Peter Evans and Kate Mulvaney for touring by Bell Shakespeare.  Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, August 2-13, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
2 August

Shakespeare is as constant as the Northern Star, and this production proves it. 

Working in generic modern dress, Peter Evans directs this neatly trimmed adaptation so that we see, by implication, the effects not so much of the non-violent Julia Gillard removal of Kevin Rudd (despite the usual claims of political stabbing-in-the-back) but more closely what the effects of Tony Abbott and the Barnaby Joyce Tea Party are likely to be.

The question for me about Julius Caesar has always been what to do with the second half.  Up to the murder and Antony’s ears speech there’s no problem with dramatic tension – in fact, up to Cinna’s mistaken slaughter by the maddened crowd.  But armies wandering around Philippi – all a bit ho-hum.

But not in this production.  The touring company has grown from Bell Shakespeare’s education component.  With only ten actors to do all the parts and everything else from set manoeuvering to an amazing scaffold construction, the old theatrical dictum that constraints lead to discipline is played out before our very eyes.  I trust they had the correct rigger’s tickets!

They certainly had the right stylistic ticket.  Combining acting the text with fully developed Stanislavski intentions with a choreographed design in movement, set within a Brechtian conception to alienate us from sentimental emotion was exactly right for this play. 

Actors came on stage, then signalled the moment that they walked into the acting space, and out again.  So simple – but so effective.  Actors could switch roles when they spoke through a standing microphone; or could make part of a private conversation suddenly public.

The result was a close-knit ensemble of performers each equally playing their parts in a complex jigsaw puzzle.  Placing the interval at precisely the halfway point, freezing the action as the first murderous blows were happening, gave us the motivation to return after champagne and coffee to find out how everything would fit together after this.

And what an ending. “Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, While I do run upon it ….  Caesar, now be still: I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.”  Fade to black.  None of Shakespeare’s “Who is this man” etc etc.  We don’t need to see Brutus fall.  We know what he will do and our imaginations fill in the blank, in silence.  This is real theatre, leaving the audience to applaud in a peculiarly muted kind of way, even through two curtain calls.  There is a humility here, on the part of the performers and flowing over the audience, in recognising what Shakespeare has done.

He has shown us the inevitable unintended consequences of extreme destructive political action.  In Shakespeare’s day, Anthony Burgess suggests, the 1599 banning – indeed the burning “in good Nazi style” – of books about English history gave Will good reason to turn to more ancient times for a cautionary tale.  Then ironically, only 23 years after his death, republicans murdered a king in England.  They did things in reverse, having the civil war first,  then executing the king, with Oliver Cromwell the “Lord Protector” in Parliament until he died in 1658.  The monarchy was restored (and Cromwell’s body was dug up, hung in chains and beheaded) – and it must be said in the following century a compromise was reached to begin the establishment of today’s limited monarchy.

As I write, I am reading Jack Waterford in today’s Canberra Times (The Tony Abbott Tea Party, August 3, 2011 p.11).  Of the US Tea Party, he writes “For this anti-party, the mission is not seeking the best possible outcome in the circumstances, but resistance and purity….For Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott must seem much the same.  As she complains, he simply won’t accept the verdict of the umpire – the electorate – last year.  He acts as if he was cheated from his rightful place at the head of government…. Like the Tea Party his campaigning style has been focused on the extremes and on massive oversimplification.”

Waterford concludes, though, that if Gillard can get the carbon tax up and running, as she has the power to do with a majority in both houses, “There’s a very good chance that this would expose Abbott’s hollowness, his opportunism, and even some of the extremism of his remarks.  Tea Parties, as with their American predecessor Know-Nothing Parties, never win."  http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/waterford-the-tony-abbott-tea-party/2246566.aspx

Just as Cassius and even the honest patriot Brutus could never win.  And just consider the parlous state the Roman polity ended up in, as Antony worked to make Octavius become the emperor Augustus.  What damage will the Tea Parties inflict on us all?
 
So, in my view, Shakespeare’s star still shines, lighting up our understanding, and I thank Bell Shakespeare for it.

© Frank McKone, Canberra