2012: Widowbird by Emma Gibson

Widowbird by Emma Gibson, directed by Joanne Schultz at The Street Theatre, September 8-16, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 8

An epic play of mythical proportions, Widowbird is interesting for its ancient Greek tragedy sensibility.  It is still a work in progress, coming out of the Street Theatre’s Hive Development Program.  Emma Gibson is surely a busy bee.  There’s enough honey here to make the presentation of the work worthwhile at this stage, but the royal jelly will take some more buzzing.

The meaning of the title eluded me – until I looked up Percy Bysshe Shelley.  I didn’t understand what he meant either.  But he gave me a clue to the sort of buzzing Emma Gibson might need to make.  Shelley’s rhymes can sometimes be execrable, but Emma needs poetry to give her work regal quality.

Her entirely original folk tale of a woman whose sympathetic tears instantly heal anyone’s illness or injury is exactly on the money in modern times.  Just send $13 a month and the world will be saved.  But what would happen if your charitable tears really worked?  Gibson’s mediaeval-style King just uses the woman’s tears to repair his battalions and keep his wars going until ... well, until he chooses to stop being King, which he will never do.  Political parties of all modern stripes, from Al Qaeda and the Taliban to the ALP or the LNP are not so different in their desire to be in, or stay in, power.

That’s some of the honey – the symbolism which allows you much metaphorical interpretation – but in the second act, where the now blinded woman tries to protect her daughter from the world by blinding her so that she cannot produce tears, we see dramatic quality beginning to gel.  In Act 1 the story is told and acted out with accompaniment on drums and xylophone, all a bit too illustrative rather than emotionally engaging.  In Act 2, the action becomes more central, while the story-telling becomes more explanatory, so we understand and identify with the implications for ourselves and our family relations.  A bit more like Sophocles’ Oedipus and Antigone.

But the heightened effect of the Greek tragedies was achieved by the dialogue being in verse, not ordinary prose, and sung by the Chorus, with music to which the actors danced.   If Gibson can turn her play into a total poetic work, in words, movement and music, then her symbols and metaphors will begin to vibrate with meaning.  Experiencing a performance will then be a real buzz.

At this point praise must be awarded to Caroline Stacey, The Street’s director and originator of the Hive.  Canberra’s role has long been the incubator of original new work, hiving off performers, writers and directors from myriad small companies to the big cities which think of themselves as the real Australia.  Despite many attempts previously to coordinate our theatrical creativity – think Carol Woodrow (Fool’s Gallery and Wildwood), Camilla Blunden (Women on a Shoestring), David Atfield (BITS Theatre) or the CIA (Canberra Innovative Arts) and maverick David Branson – only recently have we begun to get our act together.

Stacey brings in solid professional help for new writers, like Peter Matheson, one of Australia’s best recognised  dramaturgs, who has worked with Emma Gibson to turn an idea – “For me, this play really began as an exploration of how far a person must be pushed before their goodness is corrupted” – into a story on stage.  Stacey’s abiding purpose is to provide the theatrical “infrastructure” for the writers to transport themselves to a place where they find their “voice”, and thus their confidence, learning the skills of playwriting along the way.

But rather than a linear journey, it’s all about collaboration and networking – buzzing and dancing like bees in a hive – all supported by government through artsACT, the Australia Council through the Local Stages program, and Canberra 100, as well as the ACT Government supporting Gibson to attend the recent Women Playwrights International Conference in Stockholm, where Widowbird was first presented as a reading.

May Stacey’s work continue and grow to match the extensions of The Street Theatre, coming soon.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Australia Day by Jonathan Biggins

Australia Day by Jonathan Biggins.  Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company co-production at Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, August 29 – September 1, 2012.

Review by Frank McKone
August 29

It’s a bit weird, I know, but Biggins’ name always reminds me of Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.Tolkien and English culture.  So watching Australia Day reminded me of an English comic playwright, famous for The Norman Conquests, Alan Ayckbourn.

In 1974, critic Eric Shorter wrote “The latest [Ayckbourn play] is called Confusions and consists of five sketches in a typically jaunty manner which have no bearing on each other but which again exhibit the author's delicious sense of humour in droll abundance.”  In fact, in my view, the second last of the five, Gosforth’s Fête, is not as frothy as this sounds, just as Australia Day is more than a witty spoof of country town incompetency.

The odd thing is that the plot of Gosforth’s Fête is almost the same as the second act of Australia Day (was Biggin’s channelling his English heritage, or borrowing from Ayckbourn?), but the social satire says that Australia is indeed very different from the Mother Country.

Both plays involve a conservative politician, a public occasion in a village/country town, speaking over a public address system which is accidentally left turned on to reveal dastardly behaviour as a tremendous thunderstorm explodes all around.  The details of the two plays are, of course, a little different, but the comic elements work beautifully in both.  The difference is how the central characters – Gordon Gosforth and Brian, the mayor of Coriole (all the Australian characters have only first names) – end up as the forces of nature and human failure reach their last gasp, and the audience’s last laugh.

The English Gosforth turns into a Hitlerian dictator, or at least would like to.  Brian, on the other hand, realises his ambition to micromanage and manipulate everything and everybody is justifiably washed away in the final downpour. 

Ayckbourn effectively warns of the dictator at the core of English whimsy.  And I suspect the Lord of the Rings makes the same point, though Tolkien and Ayckbourn were personally on opposite sides politically (Ayckbourn still is, though Tolkien died in 1973).

But, the Australian Liberal Party Mayor, Brian (played by Geoff Morell) , seeking preselection for a Federal seat, and his political opponent  Australian Greens Party, Helen (Alison Whyte), reach an understanding on two levels as the roof of the marquee caves in: respect and empathy are the keys to a workable community,  and honesty in politics is preferable.

After the laughter, Ayckbourn leaves a nasty taste about English life, which ironically our ex-pat Rupert Murdoch has tapped into since Gosforth’s Fête was written.

Biggins recognises our political game-playing, but leaves us with the good taste of common sense and compromise which can be distilled from the Australian culture.

Theatrically, Biggins’ Act 1 doesn’t match up to Ayckbourn’s playlets which lead up to Gosforth’s Fête in Confusions.  Eric Shorter seemed critical of their having “no bearing on each other”, but Ayckbourn was writing in the days when absurdism had moved on from an esoteric theatre form after World War II to the popularity of The Goons, The Goodies and Monty Python.  When I directed Confusions each of the first three playlets built the mood of impending disaster which came crashing down upon Gosforth, which is followed by a reflective Talk in the Park.

The short scenes in Act 1 of Australia Day, as the Committee meets over the months before 26th January  (or 25th March, or October – who knows?), the characters are introduced and divisions between them are laid out, but there need to be more clues, like an Agatha Christie mystery, which would lead us to talk during interval about the possible developments.  But without enough direction in the plot, we found ourselves over coffee and champagne without much to talk about, though much to laugh over. 

And much to appreciate in the performances.  But we were concerned that the role played by Kaeng Chan as Chester, an Australian born teacher of Vietnamese refugee parents, appeared, in the first Act, as token rather than of equal value.  But when it came to Act 2, Chester comes through as the most rational, the best organised, with the least personal issues and certainly incorruptible (after all, he is a teacher), alongside the rough-mouthed dogmatic, but truthful and practical Wally (powerfully played by Peter Kowitz),  the old-fashioned but genuinely caring CWA lady Marie (Valerie Bader, bravely wearing a “numbat dreaming” costume, who reconciles Wally and the Green feminist Helen), and finally the honest Robert (David James) who stands up to the culture of political manipulation (revealed over the public address system via CB radios which he thoughtfully imagined would make things go more smoothly), and who makes it clear that he is happy being a deputy rather than being corruptly made mayor.

The Coriole Australia Day Committee being democratic meant that all the actors were equal, and they certainly performed as an exemplary team.  The plot, as the Day itself turns to mud, flood, thunder and lightning, enlightens us about the Greens’ agenda.  Helen outmanoeuvres Brian, as Alison Whyte matches Geoff Morrell.  It is fair to say that here is where Biggins goes one better than Alan Ayckbourn, just as Baggins wins honourably against the Lord of the Rings.  (I won’t try to push this envelope too far!)

Rather than the sense of deep absurdity in English life leading to a simple, if horrific, conclusion – the final cynical words, in Talk in the Park, are “Might as well talk to yourself” – Australia Day brings the complex inanities of Australian life to a positive conclusion where we have seen professional give-and-take among the actors, between the actors and us in the audience, and finally among the characters of Coriole.  The play, more subtly than Gosforth’s Fête, represents the life of its culture.  This Australia Day is certainly not a disaster, whatever the forces of nature – human and atmospheric – bring to bear.

Footnote: Alan Ayckbourn went on to write 74 plays so far; this is Jonathan Biggins’ first ‘proper’ play, but he is already famous for the annual Wharf Revue.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: David Page Talks. Feature article.

David Page Talks- at Canberra Theatre Centre in the series Take Part: Artist Talk, August 25, 2012, 12:30pm

by Frank McKone

Bangarra Dance Theatre are touring their new work, Terrain – the timeless wonder and spiritual resonance of Lake Eyre to Canberra Theatre, September 13-15, with a pre-show forum at 6:30pm on the 13th.

Artistic director Stephen Page commissioned Frances Rings to choreograph work representing her mother’s country where Lake Eyre, Kati Thanda, has a powerful story of a giant kangaroo being hunted and injured in the area to the south around Maree, where Frances was brought up by her mother and German father.  The kangaroo escaped the hunters but died and turned to salt where the lake is now.

Canberra Theatre Centre are to be congratulated for establishing a new tradition, Take Part: Artist Talk.   In July, Scott Rankin talked about Ngapartji Ngapartji one, Trevor Jamieson’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara story.  Today Stephen Page’s elder brother, David, in keeping with his tradition, gave a talk in the form of a story – of the formation and growth of Bangarra and his role as composer.

When I went to a talk and demonstration of dance given by Yolgnu man Wandjuk Marika and a young nephew in Melbourne back in the late 1970s, it was difficult to believe that Marika’s desire to bring his culture to the non-Indigenous world would succeed.  He explained then why his nephew was so nervous when asked to dance stories when Marika had been given a hard time by other elders who wanted to keep their culture inviolate. He was a brave young man indeed. And, of course, how could people from the mainstream commercial culture ever learn to appreciate Aboriginal culture, so different from their own, especially concerning our relationship to the land?  But Marika was determined to try because, as he said that day, Aboriginal culture will die unless it is taken out to the rest of the world.

I thought of all this as David Page spoke, not just of the tradition that it is the land that owns us, not we who own and can buy and sell the land, but because the Marika family had been an important part of Stephen Page’s learning traditional dance when he first went from Sydney's National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA) to Arnhem Land early in the 1980s.

In Bangarra, Wandjuk Marika’s hope has been fulfilled.  The Page family boys, as David explained, came to fill the traditional roles, despite their urban childhood in Mt Gravatt in Brisbane, of storyteller – Stephen, the choreographer; dancer – Russell; and song man – David himself, Bangarra’s resident composer.  Founded in 1989 by Carole Johnson, founding director of NAISDA, Bangarra has achieved what Marika desired – keeping the integrity of their traditional culture while creating connections between those stories, with the proper permissions from the owners of those stories, with the feelings and ideas of people beyond traditional boundaries through the mediums of dance and music.

To see how what we like to call ‘modern dance’ and the styles that are true to the ancient Australian heritage, can creatively become one, and to do the same with musical expression, is to appreciate that the work of Stephen and David Page is unique.  And David even began to talk today of retirement!  Never, I hope – or at least there must be a new Bangarra, a continuing ‘making of fire’, long into the future.

Frances Rings, among others encouraged to take on this responsibility by today’s elders, will surely continue to make Aboriginal – and everybody else’s – culture live on.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Boy Girl Wall by Matthew Ryan and Lucas Stibbard

Boy Girl Wall by Matthew Ryan and Lucas Stibbard.  The Escapists in association with Critical Stages, at The Street Theatre August 22 – September 1.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

It’s just wonderful to see theatre pure and simple, in the ancient story-telling tradition from the bush camp, the jongleurs and jesters, through commedia to today’s stand up comedians.  Boy Girl Wall can only be called larrikin theatre, turning conventions upside down, spoofing everything including itself, laughing with us at ourselves.

It is, of course, a love story – of Thom and Alitha – and the Wall between them that just wants to bring them together, surely a theme that begins for most of us with the Midsummer Night’s Dream story of Pyramus and Thisbe and the Wall with its chink (Shakespeare).  But, in our workaday world, they are not rude mechanicals but an IT worker who should have been a supernova astronomer and a writer and illustrator of children’s books, whose monsters make the children cry.

No matter that the Narrator, played by Lucas Stibbard (he plays all the other characters too), will tell you that “This is not a love story...This is a story about love”, don’t you worry about that (these are Queenslanders, so I thought I should put a bit of dear old Jo Bjelke-Petersen in here) – Love Conquers All (Chaucer) in the end even though neither Thom or Alitha have any idea it’s going to happen.  Nor does the Wall.

The script comes and goes in between improvised back-chatting with the audience, but Stibbard remarkably never loses track of the non-sequiturs.  With high quality mime, split-second transformations from character to character, including all sorts of inanimate objects, giving swooping magpies their well-deserved come-uppance, and all done with nothing more than a swish of his hair, Stibbard tells us the history of the universe via the ruminations of an electricity swtichboard – and shows us how it all leads to a kiss in the dark.

He doesn’t quite do it all on his own.  Visibly on the side is Nerida Waters, doing what used to be done in the BBC radio studios for the live audience of the Goon Show – sound effects and music (which she also composed) as required.  And in the bio-box were Matthew Ryan and Sarah Winter, working lighting designed by Keith Clark.

In the best of those ancient traditions, satire rules, as it should.  Fun is fun, and never the twain shall meet (Rabbie Burns?), but that kiss was greeted with a satisfied sigh, and very enthusiastic applause in appreciation of enjoyable, skilful, intelligent theatre – pure and simple.  

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: The Flood by Jackie Smith

The Flood by Jackie Smith, directed by Laurence Strangio.  Critical Stages and Finucane and Smith at The Street, August 15-25, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 21

Because this play is sincere in its intention, genuine in its conception, directed and acted with clarity, and its subject is of great importance, I almost feel that I have no right to criticise.

Yet something about the play points me at a word that I shudder to use, perhaps even more so when I read the write-up about the author and director in the program.  It is “unsophisticated”.

The point about what Smith describes in her Playwright’s Notes as “a terrible reality that faces too many people, city folk and country folk” comes through strongly as the younger sister Catherine (Caroline Lee) pushes her elder sister Dorothy (Maude Davey) to explain why their mother Janet (Shirley Cattunar), whom Dorothy lives with, won’t accept her visit after twenty two years away from the family.

The truth about their father’s abuse of his daughters and his “death” and the role Dorothy played in protecting Catherine becomes apparent bit by bit, but I think the structure of the play is the source of my feeling that theatrically things didn’t quite ring true.

Reading again from her Notes, Smith says “The play explores the interface between the monstrous and the mundane – a hallmark of the vast internal world of Gothic literature – and the genuine horror when we realise that the monstrous can be part of our every day, imbedded deep within our society”.  This heavy-weight thinking has led her into the play’s step by step revelation of the mystery at its core becoming too close to a Gothic melodrama. 

Fortunately the performances by all three actors, and direction which made sure that characters’ intentions (in the Stanislavsky sense) were clearly established, covered up the ‘mystery melodrama’ underlay, and strong performances were achieved – most especially, I thought, by Davey in reacting to Dorothy’s memories of what her father had done, and finally telling Catherine that he was not dead. 

This was in the second last scene, and produced a powerful moment as Lee said simply “He’s dead!”

I would have been satisfied if the play had ended at that point, instead of bringing back the mother for a messy ending about her going to a nursing home.  Or maybe just the magpies carolling the morning, the mother going back to her decoupage as if nothing had changed and the two sisters silently watching her.  We would have understood what they would be thinking about what they would have to do with her.  Fade to blackout and curtain call.

Though I can see (even though I wonder a little about the language) why Cattunar, “in 2009 ... won universal acclaim for her role as the mother ... and since that time has scarcely had a day off” and I can agree that Smith may have “turned heads from the very beginning” of her writing, “so particularly Australian – with language often so sparse, dry, humorous and disturbing”, because these were two strong points in this production, yet I must conclude that The Flood is not a great play, but is certainly worthwhile seeing for its theme.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Face to Face adapted from the film by Ingmar Bergman

Kerry Fox as Jenny

Face to Face adapted for the stage from the film by Ingmar Bergman, by Andrew Upton and Simon Stone.  Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Theatre, August 7 – September 8, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 18

For this show my review must be split into two parts – the success of the adaptation and the quality of the production.

When I saw Bergman’s film some 30 years ago, I had doubts about the question of psychological truth.  I had no doubts about Liv Ullman’s capacity to act with the sense of internal intensity which Bergman’s use of close up and lengthy shots of her facial expression required. 

But I was never quite comfortable with the seemingly interminable “dream” sequence of Jenny’s fantasies, growing out of her close relationship with her father, tragically cut off at the age of 9 when he, driving home drunk from a party, crashed and killed himself and Jenny’s mother, who, Jenny believed, had never loved her.

At the time I saw too much of Freud’s unsupportable theory of the Oedipus complex in this.  Because film makes one feel that you are watching reality, these doubts left me appreciative of Liv Ullman, the actor, but not of Jenny, the character created by Bergman.

This adaptation resolves the problem for me.  Theatre is necessarily artificial, and, if done artfully, can reflect experience not as in a simple mirror but as if we, watching, can gradually identify with the character’s experience as we get to know her through her physical presence.  This requires not only an actor to appreciate, in this case Kerry Fox, but staging techniques which create symbolically a context, within the black box of a theatre, for us to accept the character’s mental life as hers and for us to respond emotionally.

Especially, Simon Stone and Andrew Upton (who, by the way, will continue as artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company for another 3 years) made the hospital scene, as Jenny recovers from her attempted suicide, absolutely entirely brilliant white as she sleeps and dreams, but just slightly warmer off-white as she wakes into normal reality.  It’s a simple theatrical device, done with delicacy, which allows us to see that Jenny believed, being the psychiatrist of her day, in the Oedipus complex, but comes through to realising that it is childhood trauma and others’ uneducated reactions to her expression of the resulting feelings that led to her adult feelings of inadequacy and her need to block out her capacity for love.

And, in addition, Upton and Stone have Jenny and her 14 year-old daughter, who not surprisingly thinks her mother doesn’t love her, play out the final scene – where Jenny tells Anna (Jessica Nash) of her attempted suicide – as a tentative game, kicking a ball to each other, unlikely in reality but symbolically representing both Jenny’s and Anna’s state of play, and Jenny’s now normal understanding of her self-harming behaviour.

So the adaptation works very well indeed.  It is not Bergman’s film on stage; it is better than Bergman’s film, because it is on stage.

Then it is not surprising that the production – acting, set design, scene changes, lighting and sound – are up to the best, as we have come to expect from the STC.  Kerry Fox was getting much praise in the foyer, as she should, but all the actors gave her the ensemble platform on which to perform.  Because most of their characters are memory/fantasy figures it could have been too easy to go over the top, but even the most extreme characters, like Queenie van de Zandt’s socialite Elizabeth and John Gaden’s demented Uncle, were played precisely within the right disciplinary bounds; while Tomas, the character we see as right on the borderline of Jenny’s reality, is played so discreetly by Mitchell Butel that we all understand why Jenny responds to him as she returns to being able to love.

The set design and lighting, starting from the traditional rule of ‘less is more’, is surprising, exciting and exactly right, supported by music nicely chosen. Everything technical went without a hitch with scene shifting (a complete restaurant setting at one point), a whole ceiling on the fly, a physical transparent fourth wall and front apron action becoming a performance in itself – yet always supporting the drama, never taking focus away.

Bookings for the rest of the season at this point are not up to the full house mark that this production deserves.  It’s more than an interesting experiment in adapting a film to the stage.  It’s a great production of a fascinating drama.  Do your best not to miss it.
 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: The Splinter by Hilary Bell

The Splinter by Hilary Bell.  Sydney Theatre Company directed by Sarah Goodes at Wharf 1, August 10 – September 15, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 18

Helen Thomson as Mother       Erik Thomson as Father

The title has a symbolic meaning, though not made explicit as far as I could see in this piece of imagist theatre.  I take it to mean that if a splinter is lost from a finished piece of timber, and it is later recovered, the original piece can never be made good again.

The plot is simple.  A four year-old girl disappears from her bedroom.  Nothing can be found to explain what has happened to her.  Nine months later, now aged 5, she returns, alone.  She will not talk.  There is no information about what has happened, except that a doctor says she has not been injured or violated.

But the original family of three can never be made good again.  Laura’s mother (Helen Thomson) and father (Erik Thomson) have irrevocably changed because of having to survive their daughter’s loss, and change again as they try to cope with her re-appearance.

The drama is an exploration of ghostly imagery derived from the doubts the parents imagine – about the new Laura, whom they are not sure they recognise, and about each other as they find themselves telling each other truths that they had previously kept to themselves to protect the other’s feelings, and as they blame each other for what happened and how they behaved during the nine months’ of loss, how they are behaving now and into the future.

Rather than attempting any kind of naturalism, the designer Renee Mulder working with puppetry and movement director Alice Osborne, uses a kind of Gothic mystery format, with a Banraku style puppet to represent the silent Laura, operated by Kate Worsley and Julia Ohanessian, who each also play Laura in live form.  Gusts of wind, swirling curtains and rustling dry leaves emphasise the fears of the frightened parents as they speak to each other and Laura in apparently ‘normal’ dialogue.

Mulder has written The setting begins as interior, it’s minimal and changeable, a space where absence has a presence.  Eventually the interior is invaded and overpowered by external forces that turn the space inside out.  For this kind of effect, the play went through three stages of development. 

Hilary Bell was commissioned to present an idea, originally for a ‘spooky’ story for young people, but came up with a study of adult fears which suited the mainstage rather than STC’s education program.  Next came a ‘Rough Draft’ workshop stage with the puppeteer Alice Osborne finding ways with performers to put Bell’s ideas into physical form.  Then Bell wrote the dialogue, with the space for visual action and further interpretation and expansion of her ideas in the rehearsal process directed by Sarah Goodes.

The result is a great demonstration of STC’s commitment to new writing.  In previous times, now long ago,  this kind of workshop development process was done annually at the now defunct National Playwrights’ Conference.  It’s important to support this work as part of the natural function of the Sydney Theatre Company.

The ending of The Splinter remains a mystery, spooky and with the equal possibility of new life or death.  Walking to the train station, each unexpected sound – of a security guard slamming a door, of the swish of a passing car in the dark street – made me jump as if the wind which brought Laura’s ghostly figure into being would make her suddenly appear before me.

The theatrical illusion had worked its power on me. 

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Capital Jazz Project and The Next Gen

Capital Jazz Project and The Next Gen – an afternoon of critical conversations at The Street Theatre and Belconnen Arts Centre, Sunday August 5 at 1.30pm and 3pm respectively.

by Frank McKone

These two events, staged independently, formed an interesting afternoon of thinking about the business of being a critic.

At The Street Theatre, as part of a 10-day program ‘of all things jazz’, Miriam Zolin, managing editor and publisher at extempore publishing (www.extempore.com.au) conducted a seminar discussion with four writers/broadcasters: freelancer Jasmine Crittenden, blogger Eric Pozza, Sydney Morning Herald reviewer John Shand and ABC presenter of The Music Show, Andrew Ford.

At Belconnen Arts Centre, Yolande Norris, independent arts writer, curator and producer, moderated four presentations by local young artists:

Reuben Ingall – musician (acoustic and electronic), composer and contemporary dance collaborator who has worked with Quantum Leap Youth Choreographic Ensemble and currently works with independent dancer Adelina Larsson;

Jamie Winbank – dancer and choreographer, working in interactive theatre, as well as teaching dance;

George Rose – multi-disciplinary graphic artist and designer, coordinator of You Are Here, a curated festival of the best of Canberra’s independent and experimental arts and culture;

Michael Bailey – creative member of Boho Interactive, a theatre company whose aim is to spread understanding of concepts from complex systems science (Game Theory and Network Theory) via interactive theatre projects.

Each discussion had its own key question.  At The Street it was, Is the best music criticism a description or an opinion?  At Belconnen it was, Why would anyone in their right mind be an artist?  For me, the key question became, What is the key question I should ask myself as a critic?

Some of the erudite speakers at The Street had seemed to give me sensible answers, yet my confidence in knowing my role was challenged by these young experimental artists.  How do you judge people’s work when they are testing out new ideas, new combinations of genres, new technologies?

All four at The Street were in agreement on basic principles, but it was John Shand who most clearly articulated two central points: the judgement is about how well the artist has achieved what they intended to do; and the critic must be honest in making that judgement.

On the way to and from these points, there was discussion of how much a review should analyse technical matters, and therefore reach conclusions, or how much it should be about the reviewer’s emotional or intellectual responses to the work.  In music, and improvised jazz in particular, this raised perhaps the most division between the speakers, because the political and social history of jazz could justify focussing on the effect on the audience rather than on the technical skill.

In the end I concluded that the best work must integrate the technical with the emotional, and so create the greatest quality.

But my own rather intellectualised metacognitive approach was rather blown apart when the young artists’ presentations of videos of snatches of their works, and their attempts to explain what they were doing, raised a question about the principle of judging whether the artist has achieved what they intended to do.  In fact, it had been Andrew Ford who had talked about interviewing musicians who were quite inarticulate verbally when asked about their playing, and had put the view that many artists actually don’t know what they are doing while they are doing it.

Ford and others had backed this position by quoting composers, including Ford himself, whose work had come to mean completely different things to other people than the composer had thought he meant.  In other words, as I thought while watching and listening to the young people, how can I know what their intentions are, or were when I see a finished work, and be able to say if they achieved their aims?

Indeed, it had seemed easier to do this for a jazz performance, however improvised, because a tradition has grown up over the last century of what jazz is which has allowed even for the shift from trad jazz to modern jazz.  A language for talking about jazz has grown up alongside the performance of jazz.

But when the young are deliberately challenging previous conventions and experimenting with new forms, am I right to say I found Reuben Ingall’s work less than enthralling, Jamie Winbank rather superficial, Michael Bailey’s concepts intellectually interesting but seemingly a bit too much like Questacon, while, in the range and skills she showed, George Rose seemed the most together and likely to produce the best art in the long term?

What would I have said about jazz in its early years?  That it wasn’t what I understood to be real music?  While in fact, as a youngster in the 1950s I played Pee Wee Hunt’s trad Twelfth Street Rag on my mouth organ, and later became fascinated by the Modern Jazz Quartet, despite my father’s objection that they were just tip-toeing about, instead of playing real jazz. 

The Street Theatre’s speakers also made the point that at times a reviewer can be useful to a composer or performer by criticising their work honestly – sometimes helping the creative to understand what they have created, or sometimes to help them improve a work – and I have had feedback occasionally to support this.  Of course, I have also endured brickbats as well.  But in the end it may be that John Shand has the last word.

He suggested that, when it comes to placing a value on the work of the artist compared with the work of a critic, we critics are essentially parasites on the body of performance.  So there!




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: W.A.Mozart e il Corno di Bassetto at Palazzo dei Capitani, Malcesine, Italy

W.A.Mozart e il Corno di Bassetto.  Delta Wind Consort at Palazzo dei Capitani, Malcesine, Italy, Tuesday 19 giugno 2012 – ore 21:00

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Though I am not a technical expert in acoustics, nor qualified to properly analyse the Delta Wind Consort’s interpretation of Mozart’s music, I felt I could not pass up the opportunity to say that I have surely found a solution to the Fitters’ Workshop dilemma.  Import, holus bolus, the 17th Century Palazzo dei Capitani from Malcesine.

At ground level is a great hall which opens onto a neat French style garden with steps providing access to boarding boats, admittedly on a 350 metre deep glacial Lake Garda, rather than a rather less impressive Kingston Foreshore – but you can’t have everything.

Upstairs, with floor to ceiling windows looking out across the lake to the high mountains just a bit bigger than Monte Ainslie, the concert hall has huge timbers breaking up the ceiling to create what seemed to me to be just the right acoustic for the wide register of sound generated by the three corni di bassetto led by Ferrante Casellato, with Raffaele Magosso and Antonio Pozzato.

It was a delight to hear these instruments of the clarinet family work so well together in selected pieces, mainly arias, from Le nozze di Figaro KV 492, Il Flauto magico KV 620, Così fan tutte KV 588 and Don Giovanni KV527.  Of course, the encore just had to be a whimsical Pa pa pa from the Magic Flute, but the piece I felt brought out the sense of musical history was the complete Divertimento in Fa magg. KV 229.

It was here that the description of the Delta Wind Consort as un gruppo cameristico came to the fore.  The light surface of the divertimento was underlaid by touches of dark colouring, and it was easy to imagine Wolfgang and Constanza testing out the music ready to perform in places like this small palazzo in Malcesine.

Behind the presentation by the Delta Wind Consort was the Benacus Chamber Orchestra Association, formed in 2009 to provide opportunities for young professional players to perform in venues around northern Italy, working in cooperation with the local organisations, in this case the Commune di Malcesine Assessorato all cultura, and under the patronage of the Provincia di Verona. The link is www.benacuschamberorchestra.com/ .

And the Palazzo, at least in its current manifestation in Malcesine, even has a built-in English pub and café, run by a north country English couple who provide huge pots of Tetley tea – something wonderful indeed in 30 degree summer temperatures.  Perhaps we should import the lot as a going concern.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Pearl Verses The World by Sally Murphy

Pearl Verses The World by Sally Murphy.  Jigsaw Theatre Company directed by Justine Campbell, performed by Kate Hosking and Chrissie Shaw.  At The Courtyard Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre, May 19 – June 3, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
assisted by Stephen McKone Hassell
May 19

“If we say there is a mystery, then that might mean people would want to see the show,” suggested Stephen, age 6½. 

But there’s more than one mystery, I suggest.  What about what happened to Pearl’s Dad?  “And, how Granny got back stage after disappearing!”  And why is it that Pearl is in a ‘group of only one’?  “And why Mrs Brough, Pearl’s teacher makes Pearl write rhyming poetry even though she doesn’t rhyme?”

“And also,” asked Stephen, “Why is Granny in a plastic tube?  That was such an odd show!”

It was a good show, says Stephen, but it was a bit late starting and it had one boring bit in the middle when you could hear footsteps and nothing else.  “And it was a good show because they had lots of nice poetry in it and lots of good songs.”

I think it is a good show, from a grandfather’s point of view, because it may help children to appreciate their elders.  Even the teachers, who at first Pearl thinks are a bit batty, come through in the end as they respond sensitively to Grandma’s death.

And finally, though he doesn’t want it to be published here, the proof of the value of the show is that Stephen has just made up a ‘spinnetry’ poem, “just like Pearl loved to spin and make poetry at the same time.” 

Highly recommended.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Macbeth by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare directed by Peter Evans.  Canberra Theatre Centre: The Playhouse May 18-June 2, 2012 (Melbourne Arts Centre: Playhouse June 7-23)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 18

In keeping with Macbeth’s early 17th Century origins, Peter Evans’ production is full of ‘conceit’.  It makes the play intellectually interesting, opening up ideas about the psychology of a developing dictator, rather than presenting the more usual simplistic murder story.  For the first time in my experience, we see Macbeth as a character in keeping with the same author’s Hamlet.

Peter Evans’ conceit is not cleverness for its own sake, though not all of his ideas work.  I assume, too, that my comments also go to Kate Mulvaney, dramaturg for this production, as well as for Evans’ 2011 production of Julius Caesar. 

Where style and habitual conventions or devices take over from internally felt images and actions, the drama loses its impact.  In this production, part of the conceit is about the illusion of theatre.

As in his Caesar, Evans wanted to make clear when an actor is entering the performing space, and leaving it.  His habit is to have actors briefly visibly freeze as they cross the line of demarcation.  In Macbeth this is done only occasionally, in favour of more often having actors freeze in situ at the completion of a scene, then rise and walk purposefully, perhaps as if partially still in character, to the rear, and exit left or right in half light.

I was fortunate to see the play in the company of an old friend, always willing to tell me what he thought and felt, but not a literary or theatre ‘buff’.  For him, these entrance and exit devices broke the illusion, were confusing, and seemed pointless.  I could see the point – that what we are seeing is a fiction, a work of art – but I understood my friend’s reaction.  He saw artifice.

The character of the Witch (Lizzie Schebesta) was interesting to me as a link between artifice and art.  Her black line dividing her physical form, and her appearance in roles like the Boy, became intriguing and gradually established that witchcraft was reality in the life and times of Macbeth.  The highlight of this device for me was at Banquo’s banquet, where the ghost disappeared as he sat on the Witch’s knee, then rose horribly to confront Macbeth.  Here was the degree of melding of intellectual conceit with emotional effect that I found myself looking for in this production.

The cutting, trimming and therefore shaping of the play to focus on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth gave Dan Spielman and Kate Mulvaney every opportunity for bravura performances, and they both thoroughly fulfilled my expectations. 

The reprise of Lady Macbeth’s hiccups in her final desperate scene must have been one of the hardest things to act, but it worked.  Here was the signal to remind us of her deeply felt insecurity, in fact panic, which had driven her sexually and through the horrors of murder.  This was an extraordinary performance by Mulvaney.

And for me the later part of the play – the murder of Macduff’s wife and children, the turnaround of Macduff’s decision to confront Macbeth, and the final swordfight – has previously seemed to be almost gratuitous.  The play really ends when Lady Macbeth dies. 

But here, Ivan Donato used the deliberately styled movement which characterised all the characters in this production very effectively to make us believe in the horrifying mistaken judgement he had made in leaving his castle at the mercy of the now completely uncontrollable Macbeth.  And, though earlier I had found Macbeth’s twisted body shapes too artificial, in these last scenes Spielman showed us how his wife and lover’s failure to hold things together, for him as much as for herself, left him grasping at every imaginable straw, unable to stop the inevitable.  It was quite extraordinary to feel almost sorry for this murderous dictator when he finally received his just deserts.  It reminded me of the obvious modern case – Muamar Gaddafi – murdered in the street without the trial which might have revealed something of his belief in witchcraft.

If not Bell Shakespeare’s greatest presentation of the Bard’s consummate art (I preferred Much Ado About Nothing for example), this Macbeth is a strong contender.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: When Dad Married Fury by David Williamson

When Dad Married Fury by David Williamson.  Directed by Sandra Bates.  Designer: Marissa Dale-Johnson; Lighting Designer: Peter Neufeld.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, May 9-June 16, 2012

Cheree Cassidy as Fury

and

Nick Tate as Alan (Dad)

Photos: Steve Lunam

Warren Jones, Lenore Smith, Jamie Oxenbould, Di Adams

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 10

The key to Williamson’s latest play, from which both the comedy and the philosophy grow, is about the irrational way we human animals are each capable of maintaining quite diverse and even opposite beliefs all at once. 

One would think from the simple rostra-block set, stage floor and backdrop completely covered in colourful banknotes, with a back projection in dangerous-looking red of a tumbling graph, that we would see another Williamson comedy, this time of money matters and manners.  And so we do, but, I think, with a new empathetic understanding.  I have often felt previously, except perhaps in Heretic and the trio of ‘Conferencing’ plays, that Williamson has stood strictly apart from his characters.  This is good for neat well-made plays which satirise social foibles, the success of which is obvious from Williamson’s long career.

When 'Dad' married 'Fury', however, his children’s monetary shock is to be expected, but the disjunctions of personal and political assumptions turn this into less satire and more substantial comedy.  It certainly makes a great evening out, and with a lasting effect.

The character, and the actor, who epitomises lasting effect is Cheree Cassidy playing Fury.  I won’t say too much about the plot, considering this is early in the first run of a new play, and surprise is an important element of its success on stage, but it’s hard to go past an anti-government American Tea Party profitable business woman who takes her religion seriously.  Her  belief in the ethics of Jesus brings what otherwise is no more than a cynical absurdist chaos to a satisfactory conclusion.

As a callow youth I wondered how Bernard Shaw could have written the characters of Major Barbara and Saint Joan with such sympathetic understanding when he was an avowed atheist, and now I see David Williamson, in his Fury, showing the same appreciation of his character’s sincerity.  As the play shows, and as Cheree Cassidy’s acting quality demonstrates, sincerity is nothing to do with simple determination.  It is about following through ethically, however surprising that may turn out to be even to yourself.

Sandra Bates’ directing of the play made for a too-slow beginning, in my view, although in an odd way the result of this was that the sudden surprise just before interval had maybe even more shock value than it might have had with a smoother start. 

The characters of Dad’s two sons were not immediately well established by Warren Jones (Ian) and Jamie Oxenbould (Ben) and so their wives, Sue – Lenore Smith – and Laura – Di Adams – seemed for too long to be cardboard cutouts of a financial lawyer and a social activist.  This was particularly unfortunate when Laura’s Mum, played by Lorraine Bayly, was left out, literally up against the wall, as Laura tried to help her mother through her father’s suicide.  We needed this scene to be played close up in the intimate almost in-the-round Ensemble Theatre to give Bayly the position of strength as a character which matches her role at the end.

When Dad  (Alan) appeared,  it took Nick Tate a little while to generate the required spark, but we had no doubt, theatrically at least, that we were in for an exciting ride from then on, even if we didn’t know where we were going.  Cheree Cassidy’s entrance jumped us up several staircases, laughing all the way while wondering if we might not fall off.  The quietness of the last scene then became not just a neat ending, but the right mood to give depth to the feeling that these characters, and maybe even ourselves, can be better people if we work to put ourselves together properly.

Conclusion?  David Williamson is still a force to be reckoned with and When Dad Married Fury is well worth seeing.  And it should be interesting to see what ‘lasting effect’ it might have if it plays in New York.

Di Adams and Lorraine Bayly

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Speaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell

L-R Helen McFarlane as Sonja, Duncan Ley as Pete
Rob de Fries as Leon, Lainie Hart as Jane

Speaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell.  Canberra Repertory Theatre directed by Ross McGregor, May 4-19, 2012

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 4

I’ve spent some time working out why this production is very good but not better.  Of course, Bovell’s writing is, in itself, quite fascinating and, I think, better in this original stage play than in the later adaptation as the film Lantana.  On stage the work is more focussed and concentrated, without the distractions of realistic filming.

From this thinking comes the explanation I’m looking for.  Ross McGregor, in an interview in the Canberra Times, said that his intention was to use only four actors, as was done in the original production (1996) and again in the 2011 revival at Griffin Theatre (at The Stables, Kings Cross, Sydney).  However, and I guess perhaps because Canberra Rep is a community theatre group, McGregor’s auditions attracted enough good actors for him to decide to use separate actors for the ‘extra’ parts in Act 2.

So we have the two married couples in Act 1 – Rob de Fries as Leon with Helen McFarlane as Sonja, and Lainie Hart as Jane with Duncan Ley as Pete.  Guess what happened from the picture above.  All were excellent in their roles, using the stylisation of the set, the symbolic use of dance and the techniques of storytelling to great effect.

In Act 2, Ley appears briefly as the innocent man in the bar whom Valerie – Bridgette Black – insanely screams at, while de Fries is in Leon’s professional role as the policeman who interviews Valerie’s husband John after she disappears.  John is played by Zach Raffan.  Jane and Pete’s next-door neighbour Nick, who threw the missing Valerie’s shoe into the vacant block opposite, is played by Sam Hannan-Morrow, under police interrogation.  The other two characters, originally from Leon’s story of the man, Neil, who left his brogue shoes on the beach before apparently drowning himself, and the girl he believed would marry him, Sarah, are played by Raoul Cramer and Eliza Bell.  To complete the plot, of course, Sarah is the patient with relationship problems being treated by clinical psychologist Valerie, who has her own psychological problem, being afraid of men because of childhood abuse – at least according to John.

If you consider the cast of Lantana, all 32 of them playing many roles that are not even mentioned in Speaking in Tongues, you can see that McGregor’s version of Act 2 is more like the film version, while Act 1 is played closer to Bovell’s original conception on stage.  Using only four actors, in Act 2 the story told by Leon to Sonja (about the story told to Leon by Neil when they met on the beach) and the story told by Jane to Pete (about what she saw Nick do and what she did in response) are explored and interpreted as if each of these four are trying to imagine what really happened. 

So, for example, we have an actor playing Leon, and Leon interviewing John.  After all, Leon has told Pete that he is a policeman, but is he really and does he actually interview John, or is it Pete who imagines Leon interviewing the husband of the woman who has disappeared (which apparently did really happen, because Pete has seen the newspaper report, not just heard about it in Jane’s story)?  Or again, perhaps Pete just imagines that the woman who screamed at him in the bar was the woman who disappeared.  There are questions of this kind about all the stories told in Act 2.

I wasn’t conscious of all this thinking while watching the play last night, but I felt that the intensity and the grip of the drama which was so strong in the first Act seemed to dissipate in the second.  And an odd thing was that when Ley appeared, and de Fries appeared, my attention was suddenly grabbed again.  And it was a disappointment that McFarlane and Hart only reappeared for the curtain call after such a strong showing in Act 1.

So, though I certainly recommend this production, with its interesting set design (you can watch the video of its development in the foyer during interval), I wonder if it might still have been better to have kept to Bovell’s original use of only four actors.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Food by Steve Rodgers

Emma Jackson as Nancy and Kate Box as Elma

Food by Steve Rodgers.  Directed by Kate Champion (Force Majeure) and Steve Rodgers at Belvoir Downstairs, Sydney, April 28 – May 20, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 29

Kate Champion - Co-director

Steve Rodgers - Writer and Co-director

Kate Box as Elma and Fayssal Bazzi as Hakan

Elma, of the sharp knives, looking into the eyes of Hakan, peripatetic Turk, as he looks into hers, making her decision to give him permission to kiss her, thinks aloud these words: Between the words!

This is the thematic climax of this new play, down-to-earth Australian in content, character and style.  It seems to me to settle into this century’s tradition set by Andrew Bovell and Christos Tsiolkas in its dialogue, yet takes off into the new form of dance theatre which Force Majeure has created.

The result is at times terrifying, funny and deeply saddening.  In this work, as in all good drama, it is what is happening, has happened and might happen, between the words, that catches our imagination and rings bells of truth about our lives.

Before going further, I should declare my potential for bias, since I taught Steve Rodgers drama in his senior secondary school years and trained him for the audition which took him to his tertiary training at University of Western Sydney, Nepean.

I also broke what I’m told is a cardinal rule for a critic, never to talk to the author or director after the show.  After 25 years I couldn’t miss the opportunity.  But I guarantee my reaction to the play, thoroughly confirmed by the excited response from the rest of the audience, was absolutely established in the last moment of silence before the lights came up for curtain call.

Because I have previously favourably reviewed two of Kate Champion’s works, The Age I’m In (2010) and Never Did Me Any Harm (Sydney Festival 2012) and seen the development from pure dance toward dance theatre, I wanted to ask Rodgers about the process he and Champion had gone through.  In this play I saw the choreographed movement working to reveal the feelings and meanings behind the everyday actions and words, integrating the text and plot in a new way.

Interestingly, Rodgers said that his original text was much longer, but as he and the actors worked with Champion, and she choreographed movement which ‘illustrated’ the text, it was often the case that the text should be cut and the movement stand in its own right.  In Never Did Me Any Harm which I saw only last January, words were used but seemed to me to be an expressive layer often exploding out from the feelings established in movement, which itself was choreographed closer to pure dance than in Food.  Now the words, movement and feelings come to us as a three-dimensional whole. 

It really is exciting to see new developments in theatrical form happening literally before my very eyes, only a metre or so from my front row seat.  It was also satisfying, talking about past times with Steve, to realise that he recognised the value of the educational drama processes of group improvisation, giving students the power to lead their own work, allowing creative writing to be assessed on the same terms as critical or analytic writing, and basing drama work on relationships in action rather than studying text isolated from action.

So what does happen in Food?  Elma (Kate Box) is in the kitchen of the small country town café she has set up with her sister Nancy (Emma Jackson).  The whole set is made up of pots and pans of every imaginable size.  Elma is already busy with the knives preparing for the men who will soon be there for breakfast, but Nancy is still in the shower, moving and singing to dance music.

At first she moves gently and in sync with the rhythm, but gradually becomes more and more agitated and out of time before at last coming out angrily responding to her sister’s increasingly autocratic demands.  Half-spoken words and looks – every turn of a face, twist of a wrist, sideways glance of an eye is choreographed, with the same kind of skill as in a traditional Indian dance – begin to reveal a dark family history for these two sisters.  It’s not my place to tell you of it here.  You need to experience the revelations for yourself.

The plot lightens when the sisters advertise for help, and Hakan (Fayssal Bazzi) steps off the bus. He’s a joker but essentially sincere, nothing like the Aussie boys and men who have wreaked havoc, physical and emotional, in the growing-up time of the two sisters.

He offers something that Nancy understands her elder sister needs.  He also is crucial in making the business grow, including indeed all of us in a kind of loaves-and-fishes audience participation.  I’ve seen real cooking on stage before, but this was a great degustation event not to be missed.

It was while celebrating the wonderful success that the scene is set for that kiss and more “between the words”.  Of course, Hakan has gone in the morning, knowing his role in Elma’s new understanding, and, I guess, recognising the conflict he would cause between the sisters if he stayed.  As they prepare the food for the coming day there is a brief mini-reprise of the tensions we saw at the beginning of the play, a sort of sadness at Hakan’s departure, then an understanding in their eye-contact, and a calm silence as they settle to the work and the lights dim to black.

The sensitivity and skills which each actor showed was quite extraordinary, supported in every detail by Anna Tregloan’s set and costume design, Martin Langthorne’s lighting and audio visual effects, and Ekrem Mülayim’s sound and music composition.  This production is literally and metaphorically a brilliant reflection of life in this country of contrasts of the best and the worst kind.  It is theatre you should not miss.

Kate Box

Emma Jackson

Fayssal Bazzi

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Let the Sunshine by David Williamson

Let the Sunshine by David Williamson.  Presented by Christine Harris & HIT Productions at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, directed by Denis Moore, April 26-29, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 26

This is a comedy of very good manners, on the part of the cast and crew especially. 

Even the characters finally work their way through their prejudices, self-centredness and argumentativeness to a neat rom-com happy ending, as the parents finally learn to accept the reality of their 30 and 33 year old children’s love of the “inward smile” kind.

What I liked about this production, reviving the success of the original 2009 Ensemble Theatre show, was the high energy level of all the performances, the nicely managed twists and turns and timing which showed excellent directing, the design of a simple set which kept the action constantly on its toes, and the live and recorded sound design.  Williamson’s best comedies of manners are traditionally ‘well-made plays’ and this production is well made on all fronts.

Reviving the play, and touring around the country, is also a well-worthwhile exercise. 

It reflects on the Great Financial Crisis which began in 2007, and looked forward to the likelihood of things getting worse rather than better.  In 2012 we can reach our own conclusions about Williamson’s perspicacity.

It also shows us the ‘issues’ of Gen X, Y or Z (wherever we are up to by now), especially letting us come to terms with the fact that while all things change, all things stay the same, as each new generation has to deal with its parents.  Both sides may look for rational and reasonable deals, but the human condition is not actually of that kind.  The best we can do is look for the kindness of the inward smile.

In other words, I was more than entertained by the comedy.  It was a satisfying night out at a serious level too, and makes me keen to see the next Williamson play in a couple of weeks’ time, When Dad Married Fury, which Sandra Bates is directing at The Ensemble.  The idea that Williamson’s move to Noosa was into retirement has been knocked on the head, especially as, in Let the Sunshine, he seems to reflect through film-maker Toby and his musician-turning-producer son Rick on something of his own experiences since the 1960s.

I have one gripe, though, about the Christine Harris & HIT management, as I did about the management of the previous The Q presentation I reviewed, Syncopation by Critical Stages & The Follies Company.  Can’t touring companies at least provide the audience with a record for them to take home of the cast and crew?  I think it’s an insult to the actors especially, and unfair in terms of their careers, as well as unfair to The Q, that I had to stand in front of a single poster, while others had to read over my shoulder, in order to write down the names of seriously praiseworthy theatre practitioners.

Here the actors are:  Toni Scanlan as the musician’s mother Ros, Dennis Coard as his father Toby, Peter Phelps as millionaire developer Ron, Alexandra Fowler as his big-spending wife Natasha.  Their daughter, feral lawyer and partner in love, Emma was played ferociously at first and warmly at last by Hannah Norris, and Ryan Hayward transformed from wafty musician to business-like husband Rick.

With director Denis Moore were Shaun Gurton (set design), Adrienne Chisholm (costumes – Ron’s changes got great laughs), Nick Merrylees (lighting – spot on) and Peter Farnan (sound).  But without a program, I haven’t all the pictures I would like to show here.  This is a shame.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Punch and the Magic Box by Hunky Dory Puppets

Punch and the Magic Box  Hunky Dory Puppets at Belconnen Arts Centre, Tuesday April 17, 2012, 3pm.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

What would you want a chainsaw for?  To open a milk carton, says Mr Punch.  But it makes such a mess.  I don’t know what to do.  What should I do with a chainsaw? 

The littlies say, Cut wood.  What kind of wood?  Tree wood, they say.  Like those trees outside my house?   Should I cut down the trees?  No, say the kids.

And so begins the lesson about our natural environment.  Despite Mrs Kangaroo’s objection that she needs the shade, Mr Punch is so excited to rev up his chainsaw that he cuts down the first two rather ordinary looking trees.  After all, Mrs Kangaroo could just wear a hat.  But when he comes to the big old tree with holes in it, leaves on it, and roots under it, Mrs Galah stops him because of her young babies in the hollow, Koala stops him because he only eats that kind of leaves, and Wombat stops him because he depends on eating those roots. 

On the way we learn that birds being born in tree hollows is just like children being born in hospital, koalas eating leaves is just like children eating leaves – like lettuce (I hope your parents give you lettuce to eat, says Koala), and wombats eating roots is just like children eating carrots (the littlies all liked carrots, just as Mr Punch did).  All through the story, Mr Punch asks the kids, Did you know that?  Yes – well you kids are really clever.  He finally puts his chainsaw away under his bed.

As Hunky Dory Puppets say on their website http://www.hunkydorypuppets.com.au/   The stories we use are devised to be educational, non-violent, positive and always have some kind of intrinsic environmental and people friendly flavour. 

In effect, Marcus and Carolyn Goddefroy apply the principle devised by the doyen of educational drama, Dorothy Heathcote, placing on the children – even 3 and 4 year olds – the ‘mantle of the expert’.  Mr Punch doesn’t know and the children tell him what to do, confirming them emotionally, and then extending their knowledge (about lettuce and carrots, for example).  And the children in the audience I observed certainly participated eagerly – though a couple of rather older kids saw through the device and sometimes deliberately challenged with the wrong answer. 

Typical! is what I would say, as a former teacher.  But Marcus, as Mr Punch, was never fazed, taking up the littlies’ responses and moving the story along.

As well as Carolyn and Marcus being puppeteers and puppet makers (of all kinds of puppets), and offering puppet making sessions for the children (at Belconnen Arts Centre this Thursday or by invitation: just email goddefroypuppets@gmail.com), Marcus is also a good magician and musician. 

As a lead-in, he involves the children in the action, in role as Hunky the Clown, giving the child volunteers the magic wand and incantations to make the tricks work, since Hunky causes failures because of his big red nose itching or sneezing.  He builds in constant surprises which keep the children on their toes.  With Marcus playing tin whistle, recorder, button and piano accordion, the magic introduces Dory with the dancing string puppets Angelina Angel (whose wings sprout so she can fly) and the rather thin, in fact skeletal, Pete the Pirate who hasn’t eaten for 300 years.  I hope you eat, says Hunky to the kids.

A community arts centre, I guess, has two key functions.  One is to provide exhibitions and performances which increase people’s appreciation of the arts, while the other is to engage people in the creation of art.  Hunky Dory Puppets covers the field in both directions.  It was good to see what they themselves call an ‘old-fashioned’ approach – not ‘slick’, not glossy, with all live music and sound effects, and with the traditional props and Punchinella style booth.  The children certainly didn’t need or miss the racy formula approach of shows like Dora the Explorer, for example, which are designed for massed audiences (and mass financial exploitation, I suspect).

Marcus and Carolyn Goddefroy are to be respected for their commitment to the small scale, personal and genuine concern for children, and their willingness to maintain ‘old-fashioned’ values in their work.  They work out of old European traditions, especially the Dutch, but apply them to themes suited to today’s children in New Zealand where they began their career, in country Queensland for some 17 years, and now in the ‘country’ city, Canberra.

Belconnen Arts Centre has a wide ranging program, but this is the only piece that involves chainsaws.  Coming up soon is everything from dance, kites, visuals, music (at Live@BAC on Fridays 5.30-7.00pm), and even the celebration of the winter solstice.  Go to

info@belconnenartscentre.com.au or ring +61 (0)2 6173 3300 for information
www.belconnenartscentre.com.au  for bookings

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2012: Doubt: a parable by John Patrick Shanley

Cate Clelland


                

                                                                                                  




Hannah McCann                                                                                          Naoné Carrel

Doubt: a parable by John Patrick Shanley.  Free Rain Theatre Company, directed by Cate Clelland at the Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 13-29, 2012

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 13

It’s a great pleasure to see a risky piece of theatre done well.

You may ask why a Pultizer Prize winner (2005) could be called risky.  When it’s all about two people who have an argument.  You might think an argument would be dramatic, but not unless the characters come to a new understanding and change their position.  In this play only a side character, the young teacher Sister James (Hannah McCann), takes a step towards greater maturity, while the central characters – Sister Aloysius (Naoné Carrel) and Father Flynn (Jarrad West) - remain at the end as they were at the beginning.  The only other character – the mother of the Latino boy at the centre of the story, Mrs Ruiz (Ronnie Flor) – comes to the Principal’s office ready to breathe fire, and leaves in full flame. 

And what’s more challenging is that when we have watched the argument for 90 minutes, we can’t decide who won or what the truth was.  And even worse, there’s absolutely no action.  Just talk – even sermons!

The story behind the talk is quite simple.  The Principal expects the inexperienced teacher to tell her of anything she, the teacher, is not sure about.  The teacher reports that Father Flynn had taken a vulnerable recent arrival – the only boy in this Bronx school who was not Irish or Italian – for a private talk, and the boy had seemed disturbed when he returned to the classroom.  The Principal, suspicious that the boy had been molested, goes outside the rules – the Catholic ‘chain of command’ – which places men in charge of the women.  She confronts Father Flynn directly and uses subterfuge to put him in a position where he has no choice but to resign.  We learn, though, at the very end, that the Bishop not only did not accept the Principal’s accusation, but covered up by promoting Flynn to a higher position in another parish, with its school full of vulnerable boys.

So the story is, as the author has called it, a parable.  A very model of a post-modern parable in which nothing can be proven either way, yet we feel that the Principal was right to take action to protect her pupils despite her admitting finally that she had her doubts.  Any doubts we had about Father Flynn’s behaviour were swept aside by the Bishop’s promoting him – yet the truth could have been that the Bishop was correct to protect his subordinate’s career against unsubstantiated accusations.

So how was this production done well?  By focussing on simplicity, in the stage design and the acting.  By not being afraid to use disciplined silences to allow us to think through the implications of what was being said and how each character was reacting.  The drama was happening in our minds, established by the opening sermon where Father Flynn spoke directly to us in the congregation.  The writing is good, but quality presentation is needed to make it work on stage.

Each of the actors made sure that we were made aware of the motivation they had for saying what they did, for not saying what they might have, and for being silent when nothing might be said.  Each took up the challenge, and took us along with them. 

This made a highly satisfying piece of theatre, a great pleasure to experience, even though it revealed the awful side of the rigid male-dominated religious system.  Set in New York in the 1960s, shortly after the assassination of the Catholic President John F Kennedy, the play is not only still relevant today for the issue in the story (as we are now seeing in Victoria where a full inquiry into the abuse of children by priests is being seriously mooted), but is universal in its concern that we often cannot not take action despite never being able to prove the truth.

Cate Clelland and her team have taken the risk, kept their nerve throughout, focussed on the universal, and succeeded brilliantly.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

              Ronnie Flor                                                                                                                             Jarrad West