Which Old Time Musical reaches its "Olympiad" in 2001? The answer is, of course, Canberra Rep's well regarded romp which raises its writhing hoary Hydra head for the 27th time next year - surely an Olympic feat of gold (sponsored by Oasis for Hair at Rydges).
Rod Quinn of ABC Local Radio fame asked much more obtuse quizz questions of Rep members at their 2001 Launch last Friday at Happy Hour, and it was Sue Richards, daughter of Joan and with her own daughter Katherine by her side, who put the clues together for the first production: the Turkish bath play Steaming by Nell Dunn, to be directed by Liz Bradley and sponsored by Coralie Wood Publicity.
Through the generations Rep has survived where professional companies have been short-lived, and will present theatre of quality and interest to Canberra audiences with a series designed in 2001 to attract a new range of people to audition, as well as appreciate from the audience perspective.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, directed by Walter Learning, sponsored by Rocksalt Restaurant), Wait Until Dark (Frederick Knott, directed by Geoffrey Borny, sponsored by Mazet's Restaurant at Hotel Heritage) and Black Comedy (Peter Shaffer, directed by Aarne Neeme, sponsored by Class-Inn Restaurant at CIT) complete a program that should give everybody, new and old, a great chance of a part on stage or backstage which will both challenge and satisfy.
A new arrangement for subscribers is that the sponsors offer discount deals on presentation of the ticket stub, so the variety of the shows is not all that people will remember. If you want 2 meals for the price of 1, or scintillating scissor work and sensational setting for your next hair-do, then you can choose your play accordingly.
But seriously, Canberra Repertory Theatre Society at Theatre 3 offers a suitable and even exciting array of plays, from farce to tragedy and all in between, for the coming year - the kind of program which should be just right for Rep and will maintain its place in the Canberra community through to at least the next Olympiad.
It's been a concern for some time that the membership of Rep is growing older on the average each year, while the younger keen actors around town have set themselves up in small companies rather than join Rep. This may well be a sign of the times a'changing - young people in general are more inclined to do their own thing rather than join established clubs. This program for next year, however, ought to encourage auditions from actors who want to work in plays of established writers and often with directors of good standing, including people like Aarne Neeme.
Theatre 3 also has an excellent performing space and technical possibilities for new people to take up and consolidate their backstage experience. Rep should not be left to the old guard: it's time now for a new generation to work the repertoire of established plays.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 21 October 2000
Friday, 20 October 2000
2000: Return to the Forbidden Planet by Bob Carlton
Return to the Forbidden Planet by Bob Carlton. Phoenix Players directed by Janine O'Dwyer. Musical director, Steve Herczeg. Belconnen Community Centre October 20 - November 4, 8pm.
Great Balls of Fire is the theme of this blend of The Tempest and the 1950's sci fi movie The Forbidden Planet, with a set designed by Kelda McManus drawing on Metropolis, Star Trek, Lost in Space, Dr Who and Alien. Could anyone ask for more? Not much, if the applause and clapping in time with Great Balls at the end on opening night was anything to go by.
It's a complex show technically, with live rock and roll, acoustic trumpets, wired and radio mikes, video of strange planets, creatures from Dr Prospero's subconscious id, and George Huitker as a Puckish Newsreader who closed the show asking that the critics be kind. Well, I'm certainly inclined that way, though it was unfortunate that Science Officer/Gloria had to sing her romantic farewell without amplification. Kelda McManus, in Gloria's role, will get that fixed pronto.
The cast was an effective ensemble: no weak points, but some special strengths in Matt Kelly as Cookie, Luke Barron as the robot Ariel, with some nice work from Melissa Franks as Miranda. The band was strong and together, and the audio mixing good most of the time, except occasionally when mikes came up a bit late. Lighting was both well designed and well executed. The technical side of this kind of show in a Community Centre is always a nightmare, but Chris Neal and Paul Cortese put it together well.
It was particularly pleasing to hear all the actors handle Shakespeare's lines clearly and meaningfully. Of course, the show wouldn't work without lines like "To beep or not to beep, that's the question", but there are many speeches which I've heard mangled in their original contexts, let alone when they are dragged out and deliberately dumped into the weird situations in this space odyssey. Phoenix rose to the occasion, and got the laughs they deserved.
Timing is all in comedy, and the first night pacing was a little slow. I'm sure this will pick up, so drop in to Belconnen for a fun night out.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Great Balls of Fire is the theme of this blend of The Tempest and the 1950's sci fi movie The Forbidden Planet, with a set designed by Kelda McManus drawing on Metropolis, Star Trek, Lost in Space, Dr Who and Alien. Could anyone ask for more? Not much, if the applause and clapping in time with Great Balls at the end on opening night was anything to go by.
It's a complex show technically, with live rock and roll, acoustic trumpets, wired and radio mikes, video of strange planets, creatures from Dr Prospero's subconscious id, and George Huitker as a Puckish Newsreader who closed the show asking that the critics be kind. Well, I'm certainly inclined that way, though it was unfortunate that Science Officer/Gloria had to sing her romantic farewell without amplification. Kelda McManus, in Gloria's role, will get that fixed pronto.
The cast was an effective ensemble: no weak points, but some special strengths in Matt Kelly as Cookie, Luke Barron as the robot Ariel, with some nice work from Melissa Franks as Miranda. The band was strong and together, and the audio mixing good most of the time, except occasionally when mikes came up a bit late. Lighting was both well designed and well executed. The technical side of this kind of show in a Community Centre is always a nightmare, but Chris Neal and Paul Cortese put it together well.
It was particularly pleasing to hear all the actors handle Shakespeare's lines clearly and meaningfully. Of course, the show wouldn't work without lines like "To beep or not to beep, that's the question", but there are many speeches which I've heard mangled in their original contexts, let alone when they are dragged out and deliberately dumped into the weird situations in this space odyssey. Phoenix rose to the occasion, and got the laughs they deserved.
Timing is all in comedy, and the first night pacing was a little slow. I'm sure this will pick up, so drop in to Belconnen for a fun night out.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 19 October 2000
2000: Gnat's Nightmare by George Huitker
Gnat's Nightmare written and directed by George Huitker. Free Rain Theatre Company at Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, 8pm. Until October 28. Bookings 6257 1077.
And book you should, especially considering how small the Courtyard Theatre is. It's an intimate space for a nightmare, and you ought not to miss Huitker's work. It's original, whimsical and telling - at times a light, humorous drama movement workshop, and then something else again as a young boy's image of himself is shattered with twists and turns of incomprehensible flashes of reality from the world of older children and adults.
Fortunately, as the real little boy on the video tells us, you can end the nightmare: "You just open your eyes." And indeed that's what Huitker does for us all - opens our eyes to the way the news and the fictions of adult society become mixed, refracted and reflected in the minds of our children. Huitker's young Gnat (pronounce the G, if you please) even has to face the nightmare of his own parents - in a house of carpets which eat you, taps which deliberately spray you with hot water and other unpleasantries - fail him when he calls for help.
Though we are relieved when Gnat at last finds peace in slumber, and Huitker allows us a happy ending, his surreal pictures of computer games, war games, aliens from somewhere else in the universe, the classroom "blah, blah", playground hate and rejection, a shadow which turns against us, mysterious physical sensations and the mother of all red-back spiders, leave us knowing that it is not just little Gnat who faces terror every night. Too often we humans create worse terrors in such real places as the Middle East, and replay them nightly on TV.
For a small scale theatre company in a tiny performing space, I was amazed by the high quality production values in a piece which welds sound scapes and videos with complex lighting, colours and lots of movement by a cast of 18. Everything fitted together, everything worked, every detail was right. Even if you feel dubious about nightmares, just go for the theatricality. It's worth it.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
And book you should, especially considering how small the Courtyard Theatre is. It's an intimate space for a nightmare, and you ought not to miss Huitker's work. It's original, whimsical and telling - at times a light, humorous drama movement workshop, and then something else again as a young boy's image of himself is shattered with twists and turns of incomprehensible flashes of reality from the world of older children and adults.
Fortunately, as the real little boy on the video tells us, you can end the nightmare: "You just open your eyes." And indeed that's what Huitker does for us all - opens our eyes to the way the news and the fictions of adult society become mixed, refracted and reflected in the minds of our children. Huitker's young Gnat (pronounce the G, if you please) even has to face the nightmare of his own parents - in a house of carpets which eat you, taps which deliberately spray you with hot water and other unpleasantries - fail him when he calls for help.
Though we are relieved when Gnat at last finds peace in slumber, and Huitker allows us a happy ending, his surreal pictures of computer games, war games, aliens from somewhere else in the universe, the classroom "blah, blah", playground hate and rejection, a shadow which turns against us, mysterious physical sensations and the mother of all red-back spiders, leave us knowing that it is not just little Gnat who faces terror every night. Too often we humans create worse terrors in such real places as the Middle East, and replay them nightly on TV.
For a small scale theatre company in a tiny performing space, I was amazed by the high quality production values in a piece which welds sound scapes and videos with complex lighting, colours and lots of movement by a cast of 18. Everything fitted together, everything worked, every detail was right. Even if you feel dubious about nightmares, just go for the theatricality. It's worth it.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 25 September 2000
2000: Ship of Fools by Andrew Bovell
Ship of Fools by Andrew Bovell. Directed by David Atfield for Season at The Street, September 20-30 8pm. Professional. Book at The Street Theatre 6247 1223.
With a strong team of well-known local actors - Mary Rachel Brown, Tim Wood, Lenore McGregor, Iain Sinclair, Clara Witheridge and Stephen Barker - some will like this production while others will feel less enthusiastic. I began on the less-than side, felt positive at interval, and found myself swinging quite violently through the second half. I've ended up ambivalent.
The play is an intriguing parallel between two stories: how the medieval city of Basle removed its "problem" misfits by launching them in a rudderless leaky boat on the River Rhine; and how Centrelink sends our modern problematicals to Work for the Dole, with equally indefinite expectations, especially for the participants.
The result is daunting for the actors, each playing some quite strongly developed characters interspersed with brief cameos, in both modern and medieval periods. There was a tentative feel about the opening night, as if the production needed to build self-confidence, like many of the characters. Hopefully, a smoother flow will come through the season, especially because the stage design by Phil Rolfe works very well.
Alongside the plots is a philosophical examination - a fool is a person who is a fool but doesn't know it, while a wise person is a fool who knows it. The Pope's inquisitor into the Basle debacle faces his own hypocrisy and ends up in the image of Christ crucified. But the Fool, who knows he is a fool, ends up confused like the rest of us.
I think this degree of complexity needs a Shakespeare to make it work on stage. Bovell makes a brave attempt, but Shakespeare he is not, and it would be difficult to succeed in the modern abbreviated style. Bits work - like McGregor's Mother Superior, Brown's old woman Margery Clermont, and where the modern women discover the rapist on the bus - but the parts remain less than the dramatic whole we know we need.
Maybe the problem is simply that we really have no solution for the misfits and misbegottens of society, and the play provides no answer for us.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
With a strong team of well-known local actors - Mary Rachel Brown, Tim Wood, Lenore McGregor, Iain Sinclair, Clara Witheridge and Stephen Barker - some will like this production while others will feel less enthusiastic. I began on the less-than side, felt positive at interval, and found myself swinging quite violently through the second half. I've ended up ambivalent.
The play is an intriguing parallel between two stories: how the medieval city of Basle removed its "problem" misfits by launching them in a rudderless leaky boat on the River Rhine; and how Centrelink sends our modern problematicals to Work for the Dole, with equally indefinite expectations, especially for the participants.
The result is daunting for the actors, each playing some quite strongly developed characters interspersed with brief cameos, in both modern and medieval periods. There was a tentative feel about the opening night, as if the production needed to build self-confidence, like many of the characters. Hopefully, a smoother flow will come through the season, especially because the stage design by Phil Rolfe works very well.
Alongside the plots is a philosophical examination - a fool is a person who is a fool but doesn't know it, while a wise person is a fool who knows it. The Pope's inquisitor into the Basle debacle faces his own hypocrisy and ends up in the image of Christ crucified. But the Fool, who knows he is a fool, ends up confused like the rest of us.
I think this degree of complexity needs a Shakespeare to make it work on stage. Bovell makes a brave attempt, but Shakespeare he is not, and it would be difficult to succeed in the modern abbreviated style. Bits work - like McGregor's Mother Superior, Brown's old woman Margery Clermont, and where the modern women discover the rapist on the bus - but the parts remain less than the dramatic whole we know we need.
Maybe the problem is simply that we really have no solution for the misfits and misbegottens of society, and the play provides no answer for us.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 17 August 2000
2000: The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh. Sydney Theatre Company at The Playhouse, August 16 - 24.
This play, McDonagh's first, for which he received the English Evening Standard's Most Promising Playwright Award in 1996, comes to us with a very long pedigree going back to J.M.Synge's Playboy of the Western World (1907). Unfortunately, despite excellent design and an interesting use of slow motion in re-enacting moments of dramatic tension, and an especially compelling performance by Tracy Mann as Maureen, the play fails at its core where it is sentimental and predictable.
The story of a mother (Mag, played with horrible guile by Maggie Kirkpatrick) who does everything possible to prevent her only unmarried 40 year old daughter, Maureen, from escaping an obligation to provide her with full-time nursing care is potentially tragic. Maureen has one chance of getting out not only of the domestic situation but of Ireland entirely, if she can marry Pato Dooley (played without guile by Greg Saunders) and go to Boston; her failure leaves her insane, a mirror-image of her mother. Yet the play is too contrived, too neat, to match the horror of Synge and later Irish playwrights like Sean O'Casey and Brendan Behan. It has an old-fashioned feel compared with these writers' works - which belong to the first half of last century.
Too much is made of the traditional comic Irish loquaciousness - the very stereotyping of the Irish that Bernard Shaw complained of a century ago. It is only in the very last scene - where the comedy of Pato's younger brother Ray (almost a caricature by Ryan Johnson) rabbiting on about inconsequential inanities, is set against the tragic turning inwards towards mental breakdown which Maureen endures silently sitting in her mother's rocking chair - that a real strength of feeling is created. So much so, indeed, that Tracy Mann was still visibly affected during curtain call on Wednesday, where applause was enthusiastic for the performers, even if uncertain for the play.
Through most of the production, laughs were too shallow for the depths the play should have plumbed, while stylised devices - used to point the significant moments - were too obvious, leaving us floating on the surface instead of being drawn down into the undercurrents of emotion where we would have fully shared Maureen's sense of horror at the end, and would have felt more satisfied with our theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This play, McDonagh's first, for which he received the English Evening Standard's Most Promising Playwright Award in 1996, comes to us with a very long pedigree going back to J.M.Synge's Playboy of the Western World (1907). Unfortunately, despite excellent design and an interesting use of slow motion in re-enacting moments of dramatic tension, and an especially compelling performance by Tracy Mann as Maureen, the play fails at its core where it is sentimental and predictable.
The story of a mother (Mag, played with horrible guile by Maggie Kirkpatrick) who does everything possible to prevent her only unmarried 40 year old daughter, Maureen, from escaping an obligation to provide her with full-time nursing care is potentially tragic. Maureen has one chance of getting out not only of the domestic situation but of Ireland entirely, if she can marry Pato Dooley (played without guile by Greg Saunders) and go to Boston; her failure leaves her insane, a mirror-image of her mother. Yet the play is too contrived, too neat, to match the horror of Synge and later Irish playwrights like Sean O'Casey and Brendan Behan. It has an old-fashioned feel compared with these writers' works - which belong to the first half of last century.
Too much is made of the traditional comic Irish loquaciousness - the very stereotyping of the Irish that Bernard Shaw complained of a century ago. It is only in the very last scene - where the comedy of Pato's younger brother Ray (almost a caricature by Ryan Johnson) rabbiting on about inconsequential inanities, is set against the tragic turning inwards towards mental breakdown which Maureen endures silently sitting in her mother's rocking chair - that a real strength of feeling is created. So much so, indeed, that Tracy Mann was still visibly affected during curtain call on Wednesday, where applause was enthusiastic for the performers, even if uncertain for the play.
Through most of the production, laughs were too shallow for the depths the play should have plumbed, while stylised devices - used to point the significant moments - were too obvious, leaving us floating on the surface instead of being drawn down into the undercurrents of emotion where we would have fully shared Maureen's sense of horror at the end, and would have felt more satisfied with our theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 25 July 2000
2000: Elbow Room by Elbow Theatre
Elbow Room - wild variety and kooky stuff. Elbow Theatre at The Currong Theatre, Gorman House July 25-29. Bookings 6249 7377. Professional.
Elbow's program offers " live music, stand up comedy, sock puppetry, serious dwama, new writing, skits, faux rudeness, talent, 'art' etc", and the only thing I missed were the socks. That's OK, though: if you go on another night you might see them. Or maybe they got lost in the washing machine - which in the imaginary and imaginative theatrical space of the Elbow Room would certainly be a metaphor for Life. Life, unadorned, was a strong poignant moment on opening night.
Iain Sinclair, gently holding Timothy Wood's elbow, guiding him (eyes closed) through the blue door into all that Iain ever knew, seemed to me like a Clark Kent turned the S-man, holding the universe together. Though probably Lenore McGregor, who "produced and curated" the evening, was Elbow's S-woman extraordinaire.
If you are young and sexually active (or old...), you can't afford to miss this show's diversity of advice on the subject of love, from the neat, dry, even wistful songs of Jordan Best, through Jonothan Gavin's Shmaltz [sic], Clara Witheridge's Blanche from Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, Alexis Beebe's giving of gifts to Mr Spielberg, Peter Robinson's description of John and Janet Howard past the point of epiphany, to Timothy Wood's sort-of love for his dog (in "Dog" by Steven Berkoff).
There is a Marvellous Melbourne feel about an Elbow Room evening, like a satire of a comedy festival, and indeed I discovered that the Elbows will be performing Deviations by Allen O'Leary at The Store Room in Melbourne this December, in some kind of relationship with La Mama. We will get to see Deviations here at The Currong in November.
On the other hand Mary Rachel Brown (A Streetcar Named Datsun 120Y, Pig Biting Mad), nowadays a Sydney connection, has a new play, Lounge-room Culture, which Elbow will present next February.
In the looming space of theatre in Canberra, Elbow is a point source of light beaming out to the edges of the universe. You might need your sunnies on to filter the brilliance of the language, mime and black humour - this is a warning you should take very seriously.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Elbow's program offers " live music, stand up comedy, sock puppetry, serious dwama, new writing, skits, faux rudeness, talent, 'art' etc", and the only thing I missed were the socks. That's OK, though: if you go on another night you might see them. Or maybe they got lost in the washing machine - which in the imaginary and imaginative theatrical space of the Elbow Room would certainly be a metaphor for Life. Life, unadorned, was a strong poignant moment on opening night.
Iain Sinclair, gently holding Timothy Wood's elbow, guiding him (eyes closed) through the blue door into all that Iain ever knew, seemed to me like a Clark Kent turned the S-man, holding the universe together. Though probably Lenore McGregor, who "produced and curated" the evening, was Elbow's S-woman extraordinaire.
If you are young and sexually active (or old...), you can't afford to miss this show's diversity of advice on the subject of love, from the neat, dry, even wistful songs of Jordan Best, through Jonothan Gavin's Shmaltz [sic], Clara Witheridge's Blanche from Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, Alexis Beebe's giving of gifts to Mr Spielberg, Peter Robinson's description of John and Janet Howard past the point of epiphany, to Timothy Wood's sort-of love for his dog (in "Dog" by Steven Berkoff).
There is a Marvellous Melbourne feel about an Elbow Room evening, like a satire of a comedy festival, and indeed I discovered that the Elbows will be performing Deviations by Allen O'Leary at The Store Room in Melbourne this December, in some kind of relationship with La Mama. We will get to see Deviations here at The Currong in November.
On the other hand Mary Rachel Brown (A Streetcar Named Datsun 120Y, Pig Biting Mad), nowadays a Sydney connection, has a new play, Lounge-room Culture, which Elbow will present next February.
In the looming space of theatre in Canberra, Elbow is a point source of light beaming out to the edges of the universe. You might need your sunnies on to filter the brilliance of the language, mime and black humour - this is a warning you should take very seriously.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 27 April 2000
2000: Winnie the Pooh by A.A.Milne
Winnie the Pooh by A.A.Milne, a Garry Ginivan Attraction at Canberra Theatre April 27-28.
For me, this Pooh was a slick lick at the money honey pot, not the whimsical hums of Pooh that I remember from my tiny days. If there is anything we should keep from our erstwhile colonial masters, it should be not just the words of A.A.Milne but the sense of gentle humour, irony and comradeship which are exemplified in the Rescue of Piglet from a Wetting. What we got was a tightly timed performance which seemed to be controlled by a pre-recorded tape.
The effect was exemplified 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. Of course, when Pooh says to Owl, "Eeyore's lost his tail, hasn't he children?", all the children yelled "Yes!" but the show had a mechanical feel instead of the warmth of real contact between the actors and the children that performers like Monica Trapaga achieve.
It is disappointing indeed to find myself so critical, because the costumes and set were excellent (based on the original E.H.Shepherd illustrations, not the Disney abominations), the singing was harmonious and the basics of the characters were strong, especially Tom Blair's Eeyore. The attraction of the Bear with Very Little Brain is so powerful that Canberra Theatre was full at the opening performance. Michael Lindner gave a generally sympathetic portrayal of Pooh, except that he fell occasionally into the trap of getting a laugh by making Pooh just a little too stupid.
The English pantomime tradition, perhaps, led to Christopher Robin being played by a woman, Laura Hamilton, who was a clear and precise actor - yet I felt that Christopher Robin being a boy is a strong point in favour of helping males appreciate sensitivity to emotions. Little boys in this audience probably missed the point.
The program reveals that three prominent songs have both words and music by Julian Slade, rather than being originals by Milne and H.Fraser-Simson. These were what Pooh might call bumptious songs - not his style at all. And one small girl near me wanted to go home when Tigger appeared in unimpressive pin stripes. Tigger has to be orange with big stripes, she informed her mother. So there! And, in Australia indeed, where were Kanga and Roo?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
For me, this Pooh was a slick lick at the money honey pot, not the whimsical hums of Pooh that I remember from my tiny days. If there is anything we should keep from our erstwhile colonial masters, it should be not just the words of A.A.Milne but the sense of gentle humour, irony and comradeship which are exemplified in the Rescue of Piglet from a Wetting. What we got was a tightly timed performance which seemed to be controlled by a pre-recorded tape.
The effect was exemplified 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. Of course, when Pooh says to Owl, "Eeyore's lost his tail, hasn't he children?", all the children yelled "Yes!" but the show had a mechanical feel instead of the warmth of real contact between the actors and the children that performers like Monica Trapaga achieve.
It is disappointing indeed to find myself so critical, because the costumes and set were excellent (based on the original E.H.Shepherd illustrations, not the Disney abominations), the singing was harmonious and the basics of the characters were strong, especially Tom Blair's Eeyore. The attraction of the Bear with Very Little Brain is so powerful that Canberra Theatre was full at the opening performance. Michael Lindner gave a generally sympathetic portrayal of Pooh, except that he fell occasionally into the trap of getting a laugh by making Pooh just a little too stupid.
The English pantomime tradition, perhaps, led to Christopher Robin being played by a woman, Laura Hamilton, who was a clear and precise actor - yet I felt that Christopher Robin being a boy is a strong point in favour of helping males appreciate sensitivity to emotions. Little boys in this audience probably missed the point.
The program reveals that three prominent songs have both words and music by Julian Slade, rather than being originals by Milne and H.Fraser-Simson. These were what Pooh might call bumptious songs - not his style at all. And one small girl near me wanted to go home when Tigger appeared in unimpressive pin stripes. Tigger has to be orange with big stripes, she informed her mother. So there! And, in Australia indeed, where were Kanga and Roo?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 17 April 2000
2000: Within the Walls Exhibition - The Garden by Estelle Muspratt. Short feature article.
King's Hall in Old Parliament House has echoed to many a political intrigue in the past, but rarely to such an affecting moment as when students from Narrabundah College sang In This Heart by Sinead O'Connor to conclude The Garden, a 50 minute play about the children taken to the Theresienstadt Ghetto 1941 - 1945.
Some 140,000 Jews were transported to this holding camp near Prague which the German SS falsely represented as a 'model Jewish settlement': most inmates were sent on to their deaths in places like Auschwitz, while 33,500 died in Theresienstadt. Of 10,500 children under 15, only a few hundred survived.
In A Glance and a Kiss, one inmate, Jiri Pribramsky, wrote:
Kiss me...
So I might forget
The meadows between woods
and the purple heather
And everything else that
used to move me.
It's an awful irony that Within the Walls, the exhibition of the history of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, brought to Old Parliament House from the Sydney Jewish Museum, is so moving to us looking back after nearly 60 years.
Estelle Muspratt, a young Canberra actor, director and writer, created The Garden - a brief image of life in the ghetto of death - through workshops with the Narrabundah drama students, whose ownership is measured by the final script being directed by a student: Anna Nekvapil. Muspratt had considered a range of possible themes, and was struck by the parallels between the false picture of the Jewish ghetto presented by the German government and the placement of Aboriginal people in missions during the same period of history in this country. However, though she writes "I am not Jewish and I cannot even begin to tell this story with a whole element of truth", she felt even less that she had any right, being non-indigenous, to attempt to tell the Australian story.
In the end her play represents an indictment of all oppression, especially in the story of the special performance in the ghetto for the International Red Cross, to deceive the world about conditions there: all the performers, including the children in the choir, were killed. One of Muspratt's characters, realising it was "all a lie" cries out "Forgive us God, for we know not what we do!" Yet as Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel wrote to the President of the Sydney Jewish Museum from Prague on December 10, 1998 - the 50th Anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights - "[The Theresienstadt story]is not merely a history of suffering and oppression, but a testimony of human strength."
Within the Walls continues until July 30, including The Garden and painting workshops for children till Wednesday this week; a series of public lectures through May and June; Brundibar in late May, a children's opera originally performed in Theresienstadt in 1943; the Sydney Jewish Choral Society in mid-June; and the Emanuel Quintet in mid-July. Ring 6270 8222 for details and bookings.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Some 140,000 Jews were transported to this holding camp near Prague which the German SS falsely represented as a 'model Jewish settlement': most inmates were sent on to their deaths in places like Auschwitz, while 33,500 died in Theresienstadt. Of 10,500 children under 15, only a few hundred survived.
In A Glance and a Kiss, one inmate, Jiri Pribramsky, wrote:
Kiss me...
So I might forget
The meadows between woods
and the purple heather
And everything else that
used to move me.
It's an awful irony that Within the Walls, the exhibition of the history of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, brought to Old Parliament House from the Sydney Jewish Museum, is so moving to us looking back after nearly 60 years.
Estelle Muspratt, a young Canberra actor, director and writer, created The Garden - a brief image of life in the ghetto of death - through workshops with the Narrabundah drama students, whose ownership is measured by the final script being directed by a student: Anna Nekvapil. Muspratt had considered a range of possible themes, and was struck by the parallels between the false picture of the Jewish ghetto presented by the German government and the placement of Aboriginal people in missions during the same period of history in this country. However, though she writes "I am not Jewish and I cannot even begin to tell this story with a whole element of truth", she felt even less that she had any right, being non-indigenous, to attempt to tell the Australian story.
In the end her play represents an indictment of all oppression, especially in the story of the special performance in the ghetto for the International Red Cross, to deceive the world about conditions there: all the performers, including the children in the choir, were killed. One of Muspratt's characters, realising it was "all a lie" cries out "Forgive us God, for we know not what we do!" Yet as Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel wrote to the President of the Sydney Jewish Museum from Prague on December 10, 1998 - the 50th Anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights - "[The Theresienstadt story]is not merely a history of suffering and oppression, but a testimony of human strength."
Within the Walls continues until July 30, including The Garden and painting workshops for children till Wednesday this week; a series of public lectures through May and June; Brundibar in late May, a children's opera originally performed in Theresienstadt in 1943; the Sydney Jewish Choral Society in mid-June; and the Emanuel Quintet in mid-July. Ring 6270 8222 for details and bookings.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 2 April 2000
2000: Troy's House by Tommy Murphy. Preview feature article.
Queanbeyan playwright Tommy Murphy gave himself seven years to become a "theatre professional" when he spoke philosophically to The Canberra Times over chips and gravy in the Central Café back in 1998.
Already the Cultural Centre Queanbeyan (CCQ) protégé had had a successful production of his first play For God, Queen and Country, directed by Garry Fry, after winning the Sydney Theatre Company 1997 Young Playwright award, which also took him to the Australian National Playwrights Conference as a youth observer. With introductions from CCQ Director Gunnar Isaacson, Murphy had met with enthusiastic responses from film and theatre people in Scandinavia and New York. As Young Shakespearean Actor of the Year 1997, he mixed with other young award winners from around the world in an intensive two-week training session at the Globe Theatre, London, in the northern summer of 1998.
Murphy's second play, Troy's House, has progressed from a fascinating 1998 draft with gravy stains into a wild sort of satire of modern teenage angst, set in Canberra, "a suburban town that as far as I can see is an ideal setting for a romantic sexy story." "I am never entirely happy with the show," says Murphy, now a mature 20-year-old. "It's an encouraging discontent that excites me about the next night's run and the next project." It's his drive to keep working and re-working the play that has taken him through a production last year at Sydney University which was picked up by the Australian Theatre for Young People for a season at The Wharf Studio 1, followed by an offer from Tamarama Rock Surfers artistic director Jeremy Cumpston to include Troy's House in this year's Theatre Hydra Season at the Old Fitzroy Hotel.
But discontent rules. Faced with moving into the real world of Sydney pub theatre, though "I had made close friendships [and] had a cast with whom I was very happy ... I decided that I should open auditions for all the roles, to reconsider my direction and interpretation as well as providing fresh ideas from a new cast and to test myself and the script."
The new production, currently (till April 8)in Sydney and coming to the Queanbeyan Bicentennial Centre April 13-15, has been compared with the Australian icon film Muriel's Wedding for its zany picture of suburban dysfunction. The connection with the film is close, perhaps, because Gabby Millgate - who played Muriel's sister - fell in love with the role of Troy's mother Diane and now has the part. Lucy Wirth, the original Diane, now plays Felicity, the main character in the play whose experiences become much more surreal than anything in Muriel's Wedding. Her alter ego, Teree (Anna Barry) takes her on what Murphy calls "a tour from a point of view accelerated 1000 years. She reminds Felicity that human history can remember a lot of unremarkable people."
His character Felicity's anxiety about whether she will be remembered shouldn't be a worry for her author, judging by Murphy's progress so far. His next project is under way, a script being developed with his film-maker elder brother Marty, which remains a mystery at this early stage. It's unlikely that the return of Queanbeyan's ex-patriot will be forgotten, though how the transition will work from the tiny claustrophobic stage and close-encounter audience of the Old Fitzroy Hotel to the clean cool aircraft hangar of the Bicentennial Centre will be a wonder to behold.
Maybe the School of Arts Café should consider a shift from cabaret to what one Sydney reviewer, Colin Rose, delightedly described as "an obscene, trash-talking send-up of dead-end youth and their blighted existence in the nation's capital." Changing the menu to suit might be a problem, however.
Murphy's 1998 seven-year program seems a mite pessimistic now, after only two years running with Troy's House and his theatre group Your Mum already with money in the bank. The Queanbeyan season is a credit to the CCQ and Gunnar Isaacson's work in encouraging young people to make their own way in theatre and media. We will keep watching Murphy's progress.
Your Mum presents Troy's House by Tommy Murphy. Bicentennial Centre, Queanbeyan, Thurs April 13 - Sat April 15, 8pm. Thursday Matinee 12 noon. Bookings: 6298 0298.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Already the Cultural Centre Queanbeyan (CCQ) protégé had had a successful production of his first play For God, Queen and Country, directed by Garry Fry, after winning the Sydney Theatre Company 1997 Young Playwright award, which also took him to the Australian National Playwrights Conference as a youth observer. With introductions from CCQ Director Gunnar Isaacson, Murphy had met with enthusiastic responses from film and theatre people in Scandinavia and New York. As Young Shakespearean Actor of the Year 1997, he mixed with other young award winners from around the world in an intensive two-week training session at the Globe Theatre, London, in the northern summer of 1998.
Murphy's second play, Troy's House, has progressed from a fascinating 1998 draft with gravy stains into a wild sort of satire of modern teenage angst, set in Canberra, "a suburban town that as far as I can see is an ideal setting for a romantic sexy story." "I am never entirely happy with the show," says Murphy, now a mature 20-year-old. "It's an encouraging discontent that excites me about the next night's run and the next project." It's his drive to keep working and re-working the play that has taken him through a production last year at Sydney University which was picked up by the Australian Theatre for Young People for a season at The Wharf Studio 1, followed by an offer from Tamarama Rock Surfers artistic director Jeremy Cumpston to include Troy's House in this year's Theatre Hydra Season at the Old Fitzroy Hotel.
But discontent rules. Faced with moving into the real world of Sydney pub theatre, though "I had made close friendships [and] had a cast with whom I was very happy ... I decided that I should open auditions for all the roles, to reconsider my direction and interpretation as well as providing fresh ideas from a new cast and to test myself and the script."
The new production, currently (till April 8)in Sydney and coming to the Queanbeyan Bicentennial Centre April 13-15, has been compared with the Australian icon film Muriel's Wedding for its zany picture of suburban dysfunction. The connection with the film is close, perhaps, because Gabby Millgate - who played Muriel's sister - fell in love with the role of Troy's mother Diane and now has the part. Lucy Wirth, the original Diane, now plays Felicity, the main character in the play whose experiences become much more surreal than anything in Muriel's Wedding. Her alter ego, Teree (Anna Barry) takes her on what Murphy calls "a tour from a point of view accelerated 1000 years. She reminds Felicity that human history can remember a lot of unremarkable people."
His character Felicity's anxiety about whether she will be remembered shouldn't be a worry for her author, judging by Murphy's progress so far. His next project is under way, a script being developed with his film-maker elder brother Marty, which remains a mystery at this early stage. It's unlikely that the return of Queanbeyan's ex-patriot will be forgotten, though how the transition will work from the tiny claustrophobic stage and close-encounter audience of the Old Fitzroy Hotel to the clean cool aircraft hangar of the Bicentennial Centre will be a wonder to behold.
Maybe the School of Arts Café should consider a shift from cabaret to what one Sydney reviewer, Colin Rose, delightedly described as "an obscene, trash-talking send-up of dead-end youth and their blighted existence in the nation's capital." Changing the menu to suit might be a problem, however.
Murphy's 1998 seven-year program seems a mite pessimistic now, after only two years running with Troy's House and his theatre group Your Mum already with money in the bank. The Queanbeyan season is a credit to the CCQ and Gunnar Isaacson's work in encouraging young people to make their own way in theatre and media. We will keep watching Murphy's progress.
Your Mum presents Troy's House by Tommy Murphy. Bicentennial Centre, Queanbeyan, Thurs April 13 - Sat April 15, 8pm. Thursday Matinee 12 noon. Bookings: 6298 0298.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 22 March 2000
2000: Face to Face by David Williamson
Face to Face by David Williamson. Ensemble Theatre directed by Sandra Bates at The Playhouse, March 21-23 8pm, March 24-25 6pm and 9pm. Professional.
"Sorry to interrupt," said the Year 11 Drama student while I was asking Sandra Bates about how she achieved such realism from her actors, "but I have to do an assignment on the importance of David Williamson in Australian theatre." "Absolutely important," said Bates, "because he writes for the audience right now without caring about how important he is."
Diversionary conferencing is a right-now issue not just because it's having an extensive trial here and elsewhere but because it is the opposite end of the line which leads to mandatory sentencing. Should Glen go to jail for deliberately ramming his boss's Mercedes, when he's just been dismissed for his uncontrollable temper? Fortunately you can watch an expert convenor deal with an explosive situation - and you'll find yourself laughing, and maybe weeping - from the safety of your theatre seat.
Did Bates make the play work so well, or has Williamson at last really stopped caring about his importance? Actor Amos Szeps told me Bates gave the cast freedom to develop their characters but Bates explained that she rehearsed the play as if it were a real conference. Geoff Cartwright, playing the convenor as it really happens, separately interviewed each actor in role before full rehearsals began to get their agreement to attend the conference. So he knows things about each character that the other actors don't know he knows. This gives him the power to challenge each character/actor differently in each performance to create the spark of reality which this issue needs.
It certainly worked in the 104th performance which opened the Canberra season on Tuesday, so I can be confident of its ongoing success. But it wouldn't work without Williamson's tight writing, the best he has done since The Removalists 30 years ago. In 90 minutes 10 characters reveal themselves, their personal relationships, their class and cultural conflicts - a concentrated three-dimensional model of Australians at work.
Face to Face raises David Williamson's level of importance as a playwright. The Ensemble team is excellent. Justice is done. With discretion. It's mandatory to attend.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"Sorry to interrupt," said the Year 11 Drama student while I was asking Sandra Bates about how she achieved such realism from her actors, "but I have to do an assignment on the importance of David Williamson in Australian theatre." "Absolutely important," said Bates, "because he writes for the audience right now without caring about how important he is."
Diversionary conferencing is a right-now issue not just because it's having an extensive trial here and elsewhere but because it is the opposite end of the line which leads to mandatory sentencing. Should Glen go to jail for deliberately ramming his boss's Mercedes, when he's just been dismissed for his uncontrollable temper? Fortunately you can watch an expert convenor deal with an explosive situation - and you'll find yourself laughing, and maybe weeping - from the safety of your theatre seat.
Did Bates make the play work so well, or has Williamson at last really stopped caring about his importance? Actor Amos Szeps told me Bates gave the cast freedom to develop their characters but Bates explained that she rehearsed the play as if it were a real conference. Geoff Cartwright, playing the convenor as it really happens, separately interviewed each actor in role before full rehearsals began to get their agreement to attend the conference. So he knows things about each character that the other actors don't know he knows. This gives him the power to challenge each character/actor differently in each performance to create the spark of reality which this issue needs.
It certainly worked in the 104th performance which opened the Canberra season on Tuesday, so I can be confident of its ongoing success. But it wouldn't work without Williamson's tight writing, the best he has done since The Removalists 30 years ago. In 90 minutes 10 characters reveal themselves, their personal relationships, their class and cultural conflicts - a concentrated three-dimensional model of Australians at work.
Face to Face raises David Williamson's level of importance as a playwright. The Ensemble team is excellent. Justice is done. With discretion. It's mandatory to attend.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 16 March 2000
2000: Canberra Dreaming
Canberra Dreaming. Images by Tim Brook, original music by Arne Hanna, choreography by Nicole Nerveu. Canberra National Multicultural Festival, Old Bus Depot, Kingston. March 16-18, 8pm.
My daughter won't come to dinner if I'm going to show slides. Now I know how she feels. At the bare, unadulterated Old Bus Depot you stand around on grey concrete under rigid girders waiting before the Dreaming, but you don't even get dinner. You are inexplicably escorted by young people on roller blades through a dark expanse to hard plastic chairs for an hour and a half watching slides of Canberra.
The slides are impeccably composed, each one aching to be used in a tourist promotion. They glide imperceptibly in slow cross-fades which sometimes produce unexpected overlaid images. You wake from your dream at dawn over Lake B-G, notice all sorts of long-shots, medium shots and occasionally quirky close-ups of a year around the city, returning at sunset to the dark once again. I had a nap about lunchtime and awoke to some odd underwater scenes: maybe someone was drowning?
The surround sound-scape was a mighty effort but became like the ultimate Phillip Glass repetition with shifts and variations which sometimes seemed to make sense but often didn't.
In front of the screen, with the images projected on them, a male and female did balletic/gymnastic exercises during the "Extended Overture" and the "Extended Coda". Each repeated a cycle of movements many times before walking, at the beginning forwards off stage, at the end backwards on stage. What their movements were supposed to mean I have no idea. Later during the "day" a group of small girls walked across, presumably to school, and teenagers mimed skateboarding and kick-boxing when the Civic Youth Centre appeared.
Despite my aching plastic behind, one photo really did wake me up: a close-up of autumn leaves, still on the tree, which had an amazing resemblance to Blue Poles. At last something of dramatic resonance, a bit of Canberra Dreaming - but alas this is the only meaningful experience I can offer. Or you can take it as an opportunity for a long meditation. Oh, and make sure you sit in the centre of the front row to avoid heads.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
My daughter won't come to dinner if I'm going to show slides. Now I know how she feels. At the bare, unadulterated Old Bus Depot you stand around on grey concrete under rigid girders waiting before the Dreaming, but you don't even get dinner. You are inexplicably escorted by young people on roller blades through a dark expanse to hard plastic chairs for an hour and a half watching slides of Canberra.
The slides are impeccably composed, each one aching to be used in a tourist promotion. They glide imperceptibly in slow cross-fades which sometimes produce unexpected overlaid images. You wake from your dream at dawn over Lake B-G, notice all sorts of long-shots, medium shots and occasionally quirky close-ups of a year around the city, returning at sunset to the dark once again. I had a nap about lunchtime and awoke to some odd underwater scenes: maybe someone was drowning?
The surround sound-scape was a mighty effort but became like the ultimate Phillip Glass repetition with shifts and variations which sometimes seemed to make sense but often didn't.
In front of the screen, with the images projected on them, a male and female did balletic/gymnastic exercises during the "Extended Overture" and the "Extended Coda". Each repeated a cycle of movements many times before walking, at the beginning forwards off stage, at the end backwards on stage. What their movements were supposed to mean I have no idea. Later during the "day" a group of small girls walked across, presumably to school, and teenagers mimed skateboarding and kick-boxing when the Civic Youth Centre appeared.
Despite my aching plastic behind, one photo really did wake me up: a close-up of autumn leaves, still on the tree, which had an amazing resemblance to Blue Poles. At last something of dramatic resonance, a bit of Canberra Dreaming - but alas this is the only meaningful experience I can offer. Or you can take it as an opportunity for a long meditation. Oh, and make sure you sit in the centre of the front row to avoid heads.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 10 March 2000
2000: Pink Triangles by David Atfield
Pink Triangles written and directed by David Atfield. BITS Theatre Company at The Street Theatre Studio, March 9 - 18, 8pm.
Three years ago I reviewed the early workshop version of this play, which presents us with an unimpeachable moral theme. The story of the treatment of homosexuals during, and horrifyingly long after, the Nazi regime in Germany was only able to be published in 1972 (The Men with the Pink Triangles by Heinz Heger) when anti-gay laws were changed. It took rather longer in Tasmania, and one of the sources of stories in this play, who survived the holocaust and lives in Perth, still cannot come out for fear of violence or, at the least, social ostracism.
The play has been fleshed out since its first showing, but I found it disappointing that the first half is not more successful theatrically. It remains a set of brief vignettes, now linked with devices which belong to the theatre-in-education school (spurious TV interviews, advertisements, fashion shows) which create some humour but are out of place stylistically for dealing with such serious subject matter. The problem is the famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who escaped Germany the day after the Reichstag burned in 1933, set the standard (in Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle) for epic theatre which Atfield cannot match.
The second half largely drops theatrical pretence, becoming a simple story-telling session with slides, a documentary rather than a play. The result is strongly focussed dramatic journalism, moving us out of apparent fiction into inescapable reality.
Probably if you read Heger's book or saw the documentary on ABC television recently, you don't need to see the play to learn more about this awful abuse of human rights. On the other hand it is a joy to watch four excellent actors - Jonathan Gavin, Peter Robinson, Iain Sinclair and Clara Witheridge - working together in a strong ensemble as they switch from role to role, backed by precision technical work backstage.
I suspect if this play goes further than this brief season it will be because of the importance of the message, supported by the relative strength of the second half, rather than the more desirable total theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Three years ago I reviewed the early workshop version of this play, which presents us with an unimpeachable moral theme. The story of the treatment of homosexuals during, and horrifyingly long after, the Nazi regime in Germany was only able to be published in 1972 (The Men with the Pink Triangles by Heinz Heger) when anti-gay laws were changed. It took rather longer in Tasmania, and one of the sources of stories in this play, who survived the holocaust and lives in Perth, still cannot come out for fear of violence or, at the least, social ostracism.
The play has been fleshed out since its first showing, but I found it disappointing that the first half is not more successful theatrically. It remains a set of brief vignettes, now linked with devices which belong to the theatre-in-education school (spurious TV interviews, advertisements, fashion shows) which create some humour but are out of place stylistically for dealing with such serious subject matter. The problem is the famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who escaped Germany the day after the Reichstag burned in 1933, set the standard (in Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle) for epic theatre which Atfield cannot match.
The second half largely drops theatrical pretence, becoming a simple story-telling session with slides, a documentary rather than a play. The result is strongly focussed dramatic journalism, moving us out of apparent fiction into inescapable reality.
Probably if you read Heger's book or saw the documentary on ABC television recently, you don't need to see the play to learn more about this awful abuse of human rights. On the other hand it is a joy to watch four excellent actors - Jonathan Gavin, Peter Robinson, Iain Sinclair and Clara Witheridge - working together in a strong ensemble as they switch from role to role, backed by precision technical work backstage.
I suspect if this play goes further than this brief season it will be because of the importance of the message, supported by the relative strength of the second half, rather than the more desirable total theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 7 March 2000
2000: The Director and the Doll by Jane Bradhurst
The Director and the Doll by Jane Bradhurst. Gallery Players directed by Cathie Clelland at the Canberra Museum and Gallery March 7,8,9 & 21,22,23 at 12.30pm and March 10, 24 at 5.30pm. A Canberra Multicultural Festival premiere.
This new one-act play is a good idea which is only partly realised - an interesting twist on the Pygmalion myth. The Director's creative abilities are applied to his actors while his Doll, waiting for him in lonely digs, critically reflects on him, a ventriloquist's doll who answers back.
The young actors Nielsen Gordon and Rebecca Clifford are clear and effective in their characterisations:in this tiny theatre - despite its technical limitations - and with excellent costumes, Cathie Clelland has produced a small success. "Enjoyable" and "gentle" were the words of one audience member.
For me, however, it is the script which held back the play, which should not be so gentle. The author explained to me before the show that the Director was "very good with actors but could not cope with real life". In her script I could see the failure to cope - and his need for the Doll to talk to - but I found it hard to believe that this Director would ever be very good with actors. Of course, we only get to see him talking to his Doll about the actors: we never know what they really think of him. He blames his frustrations on the amateur committees who employ him, but the Doll is surely right when she tells him that in fact he is not very good.
It is really only after this point that the play livens up as the Director uses the Doll to play the roles of his unworthy father and mother and reverts to his childhood, and it becomes clear that his mental instability is beyond control. The writing needs much more emotional subtlety in the early scenes, rather than exposition of the situation, to give depth and a full sense of the Director's tragedy at the end. Or a longer play could be made to show the Director in action as well as reflection: are the actors he directs another set of dolls, and do they answer back?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This new one-act play is a good idea which is only partly realised - an interesting twist on the Pygmalion myth. The Director's creative abilities are applied to his actors while his Doll, waiting for him in lonely digs, critically reflects on him, a ventriloquist's doll who answers back.
The young actors Nielsen Gordon and Rebecca Clifford are clear and effective in their characterisations:in this tiny theatre - despite its technical limitations - and with excellent costumes, Cathie Clelland has produced a small success. "Enjoyable" and "gentle" were the words of one audience member.
For me, however, it is the script which held back the play, which should not be so gentle. The author explained to me before the show that the Director was "very good with actors but could not cope with real life". In her script I could see the failure to cope - and his need for the Doll to talk to - but I found it hard to believe that this Director would ever be very good with actors. Of course, we only get to see him talking to his Doll about the actors: we never know what they really think of him. He blames his frustrations on the amateur committees who employ him, but the Doll is surely right when she tells him that in fact he is not very good.
It is really only after this point that the play livens up as the Director uses the Doll to play the roles of his unworthy father and mother and reverts to his childhood, and it becomes clear that his mental instability is beyond control. The writing needs much more emotional subtlety in the early scenes, rather than exposition of the situation, to give depth and a full sense of the Director's tragedy at the end. Or a longer play could be made to show the Director in action as well as reflection: are the actors he directs another set of dolls, and do they answer back?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 20 January 2000
2000: Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. The Looking Glass directed by Cathie Clelland for National Shakespeare Festival, Gorman House Arts Centre January 18 to February 20, 7pm.
In its early days The Looking Glass was rather narcissistic, but this production of Much Ado reflects a growing maturity.
I liked Clelland's direct approach to the text, set in beautifully colour-coordinated costumes, movement nicely choreographed by Vivienne Rogis, making a virtue of the courtyard space at Gorman House, and accompanied by quality music and song. I might call this a production divine - but "honest" and "sensible" come more to mind. Especially sensible: meaning you can make sense of everything that is said.
All the actors are effective, characters well delineated and voices sufficiently audible in the open air. The use of Gorman House rather than Aspen Island, though regretted by many, is the right choice for this play.
Sally Hendrie, as Beatrice, and Lachlan Abrahams, as Benedick, were notable for their rounding out of these characters, achieving, as Shakespeare surely intended, the self-awareness which lifts them out of the ordinary. When Beatrice paused and then told Benedick to "Kill Claudio", we felt horrified at her demand, with Benedick, but knew he had no choice. Here was the reality behind the sophisticated banter and wit. Equally strong was Phil Roberts' Dogberry, who showed us that justice is a constant, for the unsophisticated as much as for the verbally unchallenged.
In our world we face the same array of "clever" wits, political snakes, and men who assume a "natural right" to power. We also have intelligent women and genuine men. Shakespeare shows us models for living, and this production brings the models to life.
Particularly interesting was the calm assurance of Simon Lissaman's playing of Don Pedro - a prince we could easily believe was the epitome of the good prime minister. But see how easily he could be fooled into enforcing injustice - the error only revealed by the determination of ordinary people to report the truth, and bring the perpetrators of lies before the court.
Much Ado About Nothing is clearly about a very great deal, and I thank The Looking Glass for showing us so clear an image of ourselves.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
In its early days The Looking Glass was rather narcissistic, but this production of Much Ado reflects a growing maturity.
I liked Clelland's direct approach to the text, set in beautifully colour-coordinated costumes, movement nicely choreographed by Vivienne Rogis, making a virtue of the courtyard space at Gorman House, and accompanied by quality music and song. I might call this a production divine - but "honest" and "sensible" come more to mind. Especially sensible: meaning you can make sense of everything that is said.
All the actors are effective, characters well delineated and voices sufficiently audible in the open air. The use of Gorman House rather than Aspen Island, though regretted by many, is the right choice for this play.
Sally Hendrie, as Beatrice, and Lachlan Abrahams, as Benedick, were notable for their rounding out of these characters, achieving, as Shakespeare surely intended, the self-awareness which lifts them out of the ordinary. When Beatrice paused and then told Benedick to "Kill Claudio", we felt horrified at her demand, with Benedick, but knew he had no choice. Here was the reality behind the sophisticated banter and wit. Equally strong was Phil Roberts' Dogberry, who showed us that justice is a constant, for the unsophisticated as much as for the verbally unchallenged.
In our world we face the same array of "clever" wits, political snakes, and men who assume a "natural right" to power. We also have intelligent women and genuine men. Shakespeare shows us models for living, and this production brings the models to life.
Particularly interesting was the calm assurance of Simon Lissaman's playing of Don Pedro - a prince we could easily believe was the epitome of the good prime minister. But see how easily he could be fooled into enforcing injustice - the error only revealed by the determination of ordinary people to report the truth, and bring the perpetrators of lies before the court.
Much Ado About Nothing is clearly about a very great deal, and I thank The Looking Glass for showing us so clear an image of ourselves.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2000: A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. The Looking Glass directed by Catherine Jean-Krista. National Shakespeare Festival at Gorman House Arts Centre January 18 - February 20, 7pm.
An interesting design idea, in 1920's style all in black and white, is the successful original spark in this production. However, though there is well-played comedy among the four lovers, there is not the real magic which the topsy-turvey nature of midsummer's night should create.
Jean-Krista and The Looking Glass's Artistic Director, Nicholas Bolonkin, have cut the play for touring, removing the rude mechanicals to "focus this production on the epic, natural, and supernatural themes". The effect, to my mind, has been to reduce the lovers to the mechanicals' level of rudeness - often very funny, indeed; while the Oberon/Theseus - Titania/Hyppolyta conflict left me cold rather than disturbed at the cosmic level.
Shakespeare deliberately contrasted the foolish but warm-hearted lower class with the foolish but basically selfish upper class, linked by Puck the intelligent "fool" from the other world, which is equally at the mercy of the failure of love to run smooth. With one of these dramatic elements missing (Bottom is represented but out of his proper context) other creative sparks were intermittent. Ritualised movement and tableaux were sometimes effective, especially in the final scene. Puck's fluid and often sexual movement worked well in general but at times Peter Hansen had to work a bit too hard to get effect. The recorded sound represented the action, but I feel would have been more telling if it had been in keeping with the 1920's visual style, and preferably played live.
In the final analysis I enjoyed the lovers most, perhaps giving the edge to Hermia (Claire Bocking) and Demetrius (James Inabinet) who picked up and ran with their characters - a seriously sophisticated flapper, and a dotty plus-fours flappy twit. And the supernatural did appear, in the guise of the sulphur-crested cockatoo who joined in the dialogue, and the wind-gust which ended the action and introduced "If we shadows have offended..."
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream are on different nights each week, so ring Looking Glass on 6257 7973 for details.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
An interesting design idea, in 1920's style all in black and white, is the successful original spark in this production. However, though there is well-played comedy among the four lovers, there is not the real magic which the topsy-turvey nature of midsummer's night should create.
Jean-Krista and The Looking Glass's Artistic Director, Nicholas Bolonkin, have cut the play for touring, removing the rude mechanicals to "focus this production on the epic, natural, and supernatural themes". The effect, to my mind, has been to reduce the lovers to the mechanicals' level of rudeness - often very funny, indeed; while the Oberon/Theseus - Titania/Hyppolyta conflict left me cold rather than disturbed at the cosmic level.
Shakespeare deliberately contrasted the foolish but warm-hearted lower class with the foolish but basically selfish upper class, linked by Puck the intelligent "fool" from the other world, which is equally at the mercy of the failure of love to run smooth. With one of these dramatic elements missing (Bottom is represented but out of his proper context) other creative sparks were intermittent. Ritualised movement and tableaux were sometimes effective, especially in the final scene. Puck's fluid and often sexual movement worked well in general but at times Peter Hansen had to work a bit too hard to get effect. The recorded sound represented the action, but I feel would have been more telling if it had been in keeping with the 1920's visual style, and preferably played live.
In the final analysis I enjoyed the lovers most, perhaps giving the edge to Hermia (Claire Bocking) and Demetrius (James Inabinet) who picked up and ran with their characters - a seriously sophisticated flapper, and a dotty plus-fours flappy twit. And the supernatural did appear, in the guise of the sulphur-crested cockatoo who joined in the dialogue, and the wind-gust which ended the action and introduced "If we shadows have offended..."
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream are on different nights each week, so ring Looking Glass on 6257 7973 for details.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 17 January 2000
2000: The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate adapted from the book by Margaret Mahy
The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate adapted from the book by Margaret Mahy. Jigsaw Theatre Company at Tuggeranong Community Arts Centre. Adapted and directed by Greg Lissaman. Music: John Shortis. Design: Matthew Aberline. January 17-22 11am and 2pm daily. Phone 6293 9099.
2 and 3 year olds dancing in the aisles is enough to say "Go and see this show with your littlies". But the strength of the miming, singing and dancing of well-known actors Chrissie Shaw and Tim Wood - in telling the story of the uptight unknown accountant in the neat brown suit who makes a break against all the good sense of his pencil and ruler to take his ex-pirate mother to the seaside and discovers "the weave and the wave" of the sea - was demonstrated by how both the adults and a group of intellectually handicapped people (from The Warehouse, Belconnen Youth Centre) were equally engaged. Warehouse Coordinator, Dylan Shaw was as pleased as any parent could be with this mythic drama of "letting go and taking on a life".
This play, using much of the text from the original story, has a gentle, quite intriguing quality, supported by Shortis's whimsical music and especially by recorded sound which is neatly moved around the stage in stereo. Jigsaw's new stage manager, Catherine Wright, is a strong addition to their excellent design and technical team.
Jigsaw has made the right move out of Gorman House (now perhaps too much in the "contemporary arts" pigeonhole), like the man in the story, to the Tuggeranong Community Arts Centre (by the lake if not the seaside) where there seems to be a special sense of freedom of access for Jigsaw's natural audience. TCA also brings a new bright office with a view, and close contact with ACT Department of Education which funds the core program for schools. As well, with Australia Council and other sponsorship, Jigsaw is setting up a 3-4 year repertory program of local, national and international early childhood, school-age and adult productions: The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate will complete its school and pre-school program in the ACT this year, and is expected to be seen in Sydney and Tasmania in 2001. Email: jigsaw@dynamite.com.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2 and 3 year olds dancing in the aisles is enough to say "Go and see this show with your littlies". But the strength of the miming, singing and dancing of well-known actors Chrissie Shaw and Tim Wood - in telling the story of the uptight unknown accountant in the neat brown suit who makes a break against all the good sense of his pencil and ruler to take his ex-pirate mother to the seaside and discovers "the weave and the wave" of the sea - was demonstrated by how both the adults and a group of intellectually handicapped people (from The Warehouse, Belconnen Youth Centre) were equally engaged. Warehouse Coordinator, Dylan Shaw was as pleased as any parent could be with this mythic drama of "letting go and taking on a life".
This play, using much of the text from the original story, has a gentle, quite intriguing quality, supported by Shortis's whimsical music and especially by recorded sound which is neatly moved around the stage in stereo. Jigsaw's new stage manager, Catherine Wright, is a strong addition to their excellent design and technical team.
Jigsaw has made the right move out of Gorman House (now perhaps too much in the "contemporary arts" pigeonhole), like the man in the story, to the Tuggeranong Community Arts Centre (by the lake if not the seaside) where there seems to be a special sense of freedom of access for Jigsaw's natural audience. TCA also brings a new bright office with a view, and close contact with ACT Department of Education which funds the core program for schools. As well, with Australia Council and other sponsorship, Jigsaw is setting up a 3-4 year repertory program of local, national and international early childhood, school-age and adult productions: The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate will complete its school and pre-school program in the ACT this year, and is expected to be seen in Sydney and Tasmania in 2001. Email: jigsaw@dynamite.com.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 21 November 1999
1999: International PEN commemoration for Larisa Yudina and Galina Starovoitova. News feature article.
Darkening skies and cold were perhaps reminiscent last Sunday morning of a Russia where "the Tsar exiled both Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Osip Mandelstam died in a camp in eastern Siberia after satirising 'the Georgian mountaineer' and his cockroach moustaches" and in 1998 the editor of Sovietskaya Kalmykia Segodnya, Larisa Yudina, and the human rights advocate and Parliamentarian, Galina Starovoitova, were both killed in apparently politically motivated attacks.
At a ceremony in Lennox Gardens, conducted by International PEN, to plant a tree to commemorate these two women's deaths, Peter Fuller noted that "Russia has changed since Soviet times, but life is no less perilous in the new Russia, which has gone from being a police state to being a lawless state."
ACT Chief Minister Kate Carnell spoke movingly of the need for this memorial to remind us that it is easy in Australia to take our freedom of speech for granted. Larisa Yudina was the co-chairperson of the local branch of the pro-reform Yabloko party in Kalmykia and was investigating reports of corrupt business practices by regional officials when on June 8 1998 she was found dead with multiple knife wounds and a fractured skull. Amnesty International has called on Russian authorities to take urgent measures to stop the persecution of journalists and government opponents in the Republic of Kalmykia and to bring to justice those responsible for the murder of Larisa Yudina.
The murder of Galina Starovoitova received wide publicity in the western news media when on November 20 1998 two gunmen shot her as she walked up the steps to her apartment, also seriously wounding her press secretary, and casually left their weapons behind in perhaps the most brazen political assassination in the bloody 7-year history of the new Russia.
International PEN, founded in London in 1921, brings together poets, novelists, essayists, historians, critics, translators, editors, journalists, theatre and screenwriters "who share a common concern for the craft and art of writing and who are committed to freedom of expression through the written word". Since November 15 1998 PEN has recorded the murder of 21 writers in Iran, Sierra Leone, Turkey, Serbia, Nigeria, Kosovo, Angola, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Ivory Coast and East Timor.
Murder is the "ultimate form of censorship", but PEN's records show another 17 writers who since 1991 are still detained, exiled or have 'disappeared' in Burma, Guatemala, Slovenia, Syria, Bangladesh, Turkey, Ecuador, Russia, Mexico, Egypt, Peru, Cuba and Ethiopia.
The rain held off for the brief memorial ceremony, but fell steadily for the rest of the day.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
At a ceremony in Lennox Gardens, conducted by International PEN, to plant a tree to commemorate these two women's deaths, Peter Fuller noted that "Russia has changed since Soviet times, but life is no less perilous in the new Russia, which has gone from being a police state to being a lawless state."
ACT Chief Minister Kate Carnell spoke movingly of the need for this memorial to remind us that it is easy in Australia to take our freedom of speech for granted. Larisa Yudina was the co-chairperson of the local branch of the pro-reform Yabloko party in Kalmykia and was investigating reports of corrupt business practices by regional officials when on June 8 1998 she was found dead with multiple knife wounds and a fractured skull. Amnesty International has called on Russian authorities to take urgent measures to stop the persecution of journalists and government opponents in the Republic of Kalmykia and to bring to justice those responsible for the murder of Larisa Yudina.
The murder of Galina Starovoitova received wide publicity in the western news media when on November 20 1998 two gunmen shot her as she walked up the steps to her apartment, also seriously wounding her press secretary, and casually left their weapons behind in perhaps the most brazen political assassination in the bloody 7-year history of the new Russia.
International PEN, founded in London in 1921, brings together poets, novelists, essayists, historians, critics, translators, editors, journalists, theatre and screenwriters "who share a common concern for the craft and art of writing and who are committed to freedom of expression through the written word". Since November 15 1998 PEN has recorded the murder of 21 writers in Iran, Sierra Leone, Turkey, Serbia, Nigeria, Kosovo, Angola, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Ivory Coast and East Timor.
Murder is the "ultimate form of censorship", but PEN's records show another 17 writers who since 1991 are still detained, exiled or have 'disappeared' in Burma, Guatemala, Slovenia, Syria, Bangladesh, Turkey, Ecuador, Russia, Mexico, Egypt, Peru, Cuba and Ethiopia.
The rain held off for the brief memorial ceremony, but fell steadily for the rest of the day.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 10 November 1999
1999: Of Sex and Violets & The Death of Culture by Joe Woodward
Of Sex and Violets & The Death of Culture, written and directed by Joe Woodward. Shadow House Pits at the Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, November 10-13 and 16-20, 8pm.
If I write in an academic tone about this production, it's because it seems at this end of the century to belong in a university setting. In 1932-33 the French avant-garde playwright and director, Antonin Artaud, published a manifesto "Le Theatre de la Cruaute" (The Theatre of Cruelty). He was a major influence in European, and to some extent American, theatre well into the 1970's.
Joe Woodward has attempted to follow Artaud's philosophic theme - that art is not reality, and therefore can only touch reality at the moment of self-destruction of the artist - beyond the theatre which Artaud wrote about and into the new imaginary world of cyberspace. Here, Collie Rae (Claire Bocking), like the famous Jenni, runs her "cam" in real time on the internet, so the world has seen her violent love-making with Artaud Lamont (James Lanyon). We see replays on screen while the pair meet a year later, both also manipulating their creations Thora Ainslie (Liliana Bogatko) and Stafford Myers (Gregory Poke) - theatrical characters who believe they are real but only become so when Artaud is destroyed.
Should you see it? Artaud would vilify me for offering advice, and maybe others will too.
If you already appreciate theatre based on pure Verfremdungseffekte (alienation effect), you will understand Woodward's style and find the performances of all four actors purposeful and skilled. However Woodward is not a Bertolt Brecht, and I found the play too wordy and pacing too measured. Artaud said that the director is the author of the play: that is, dialogue should be subordinate to action. Woodward succeeds in these terms only in the final scene.
If you want a new play with an original approach to the Wide World of the Web, I don't think this is it. Pre-war European post-Romantic theatrical philosophy about art and reality just doesn't have the bounce-back energy of email flames and realtime cams. Collie Rae's computer crashes as Artaud Lamont dies - but despite its inevitable social shadows, the Web is a new form of culture, not its death.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
If I write in an academic tone about this production, it's because it seems at this end of the century to belong in a university setting. In 1932-33 the French avant-garde playwright and director, Antonin Artaud, published a manifesto "Le Theatre de la Cruaute" (The Theatre of Cruelty). He was a major influence in European, and to some extent American, theatre well into the 1970's.
Joe Woodward has attempted to follow Artaud's philosophic theme - that art is not reality, and therefore can only touch reality at the moment of self-destruction of the artist - beyond the theatre which Artaud wrote about and into the new imaginary world of cyberspace. Here, Collie Rae (Claire Bocking), like the famous Jenni, runs her "cam" in real time on the internet, so the world has seen her violent love-making with Artaud Lamont (James Lanyon). We see replays on screen while the pair meet a year later, both also manipulating their creations Thora Ainslie (Liliana Bogatko) and Stafford Myers (Gregory Poke) - theatrical characters who believe they are real but only become so when Artaud is destroyed.
Should you see it? Artaud would vilify me for offering advice, and maybe others will too.
If you already appreciate theatre based on pure Verfremdungseffekte (alienation effect), you will understand Woodward's style and find the performances of all four actors purposeful and skilled. However Woodward is not a Bertolt Brecht, and I found the play too wordy and pacing too measured. Artaud said that the director is the author of the play: that is, dialogue should be subordinate to action. Woodward succeeds in these terms only in the final scene.
If you want a new play with an original approach to the Wide World of the Web, I don't think this is it. Pre-war European post-Romantic theatrical philosophy about art and reality just doesn't have the bounce-back energy of email flames and realtime cams. Collie Rae's computer crashes as Artaud Lamont dies - but despite its inevitable social shadows, the Web is a new form of culture, not its death.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 3 November 1999
1999: Women on a Shoestring: Camilla Blunden, Julie Ross and Chrissie Shaw. Feature article.
"The play is set at the crossroads in the middle of nowhere. There will be a fifteen minute interval."
At the Crossroads, reviewed in The Canberra Times at its first presentation in February 1998, was described as "polished theatre from a longstanding, very experienced team, designed to be toured to city and country venues around Australia". Based on stories gathered from people in the bush, the play tempered an examination of racist attitudes - through the experience of a middle-class country woman whose mother is Aboriginal - with clever use of humour, movement and song. How has the tour gone, I wondered, as I sat down at the café in Gorman House to talk with the Women on a Shoestring: Camilla Blunden, Julie Ross and Chrissie Shaw.
"One man, you could call him a red-neck farmer," said Chrissie, "came up after the show and told us we were 'right on the edge', but he also said he enjoyed it." "It's treading a fine line," explained Julie, "between entertainment and being hard-hitting." "It depends on the writer - Jan Cornall, in this case - being able to get to the difficult thing with humour," said Camilla.
In between travelling, Shaw is well known for her accordion playing and came to Canberra (after teaching English to new migrants and working at New Theatre and with Pipi Storm in Sydney) as a Bombshell in the International Year of Peace, performing at TAU Theatre in 1986. Ross is a mother of two who did a project on Australia in Year 7 at school in Canada, came as an exchange student to Queensland, studied theatre at Studio 58 in Vancouver and settled in Canberra in 1991. Blunden is a Canberra institution by now, an actor and director who won a special ACT MEAA Green Room Award in 1997 for her contribution to theatre.
These women might be on shoestrings, but something remarkable is going on. After touring, just in 1999, throughout South-Western NSW, the Southern Tablelands, Cobar, Dubbo, Grenfell, Richmond, Katoomba and Uralla, as well as Tasmania and Victoria - ending in Melbourne on October 24 - the team, which includes Maria De Marco from Sydney and the outstanding Aboriginal actor Justine Saunders, have a strengthened 'family' feel as they discuss the development of Women on a Shoestring since its beginnings in the Womens Theatre Workshop in 1979, performing in the now demolished Reid House and Childers Street venues.
That's 20 years of professional theatre, in Canberra - and yet unsung perhaps because so much of their work has been designed to tour, with usually a short opening season at home and a return season after some months away. There are surely more people - from Adelaide to Alice Springs, Darwin to Devonport, Warrnambool to Wudinna - who remember Over the Hill, Empty Suitcases and now At the Crossroads than in Canberra. In fact these shows have been seen by an audience something close to 100,000 in the touring years since 1990. Yet we have come to believe that a professional theatre company never seems to last more than a year or two in this city.
Maybe funding is part of the answer to how Women on a Shoestring has survived: tours are supported by Playing Australia and the Australia Council and artsACT supports the work at home. Yet it is not just money that keeps this theatre going. I think it's a matter of principle.
The company plans productions by selecting themes derived from research into stories told by the very women who will form half the audience in the country towns. Rather than looking for quantity, the keys to the success of Women on a Shoestring are focus and relevance. Once a show is up and running, it may stay in the repertoire for several years - more than 6 years for Over the Hill. The government funding is used to guarantee that all the women in the company receive proper payment for their work.
In fact the need for women to take a fully professional role in theatre was a strong motivation back in the 1970's: the only compromise has been during the development phase of At The Crossroads when the company agreed to take a cut because of insufficient funding, except that the special grant from the Australia Council's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fund enabled full support for Justine Saunders' position. This play was clearly so important to country women, and men, of all backgrounds that one principle was broken for the sake of the integrity of the work. This has proved, of course, to have been the right decision, in the end financially as well as artistically.
The company operates in an interesting fashion, growing out of the cooperative group theatre structures of its early days. Blunden has provided the core of the company throughout, seeking out actors and writers who are happy to work in what I describe as "structured cooperation". As Director, Blunden's role is clearly defined: she sets up the workshops to explore the research material. The writers (Merrilee Moss previously and currently Cornall) observe and sometimes initiate workshops as they turn action into script. The actors, like the writers and director, all undertake extensive research, seeking out women's stories around the central theme, including their own experiences, creating in the workshops the characters and the scenes which are re-worked and scripted. In this way the actors, even some who have been auditioned for roles in what superficially seems a conventional way, work within bounds yet with a sense of freedom and commitment to the work.
Working this way has created a company which is continuously flexible, seeking out new people, new themes and new forms of theatrical expression, and within which people feel part of a strong network, which extends out to all the women who have provided their stories and who live in all parts of Australia.
At the Crossroads is booked for extensive touring again next year and Australia Council and artsACT funding has arrived for development of a new project on women in film.
This doesn't sound like the middle of nowhere to me, or an interval of fifteen minutes.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
At the Crossroads, reviewed in The Canberra Times at its first presentation in February 1998, was described as "polished theatre from a longstanding, very experienced team, designed to be toured to city and country venues around Australia". Based on stories gathered from people in the bush, the play tempered an examination of racist attitudes - through the experience of a middle-class country woman whose mother is Aboriginal - with clever use of humour, movement and song. How has the tour gone, I wondered, as I sat down at the café in Gorman House to talk with the Women on a Shoestring: Camilla Blunden, Julie Ross and Chrissie Shaw.
"One man, you could call him a red-neck farmer," said Chrissie, "came up after the show and told us we were 'right on the edge', but he also said he enjoyed it." "It's treading a fine line," explained Julie, "between entertainment and being hard-hitting." "It depends on the writer - Jan Cornall, in this case - being able to get to the difficult thing with humour," said Camilla.
In between travelling, Shaw is well known for her accordion playing and came to Canberra (after teaching English to new migrants and working at New Theatre and with Pipi Storm in Sydney) as a Bombshell in the International Year of Peace, performing at TAU Theatre in 1986. Ross is a mother of two who did a project on Australia in Year 7 at school in Canada, came as an exchange student to Queensland, studied theatre at Studio 58 in Vancouver and settled in Canberra in 1991. Blunden is a Canberra institution by now, an actor and director who won a special ACT MEAA Green Room Award in 1997 for her contribution to theatre.
These women might be on shoestrings, but something remarkable is going on. After touring, just in 1999, throughout South-Western NSW, the Southern Tablelands, Cobar, Dubbo, Grenfell, Richmond, Katoomba and Uralla, as well as Tasmania and Victoria - ending in Melbourne on October 24 - the team, which includes Maria De Marco from Sydney and the outstanding Aboriginal actor Justine Saunders, have a strengthened 'family' feel as they discuss the development of Women on a Shoestring since its beginnings in the Womens Theatre Workshop in 1979, performing in the now demolished Reid House and Childers Street venues.
That's 20 years of professional theatre, in Canberra - and yet unsung perhaps because so much of their work has been designed to tour, with usually a short opening season at home and a return season after some months away. There are surely more people - from Adelaide to Alice Springs, Darwin to Devonport, Warrnambool to Wudinna - who remember Over the Hill, Empty Suitcases and now At the Crossroads than in Canberra. In fact these shows have been seen by an audience something close to 100,000 in the touring years since 1990. Yet we have come to believe that a professional theatre company never seems to last more than a year or two in this city.
Maybe funding is part of the answer to how Women on a Shoestring has survived: tours are supported by Playing Australia and the Australia Council and artsACT supports the work at home. Yet it is not just money that keeps this theatre going. I think it's a matter of principle.
The company plans productions by selecting themes derived from research into stories told by the very women who will form half the audience in the country towns. Rather than looking for quantity, the keys to the success of Women on a Shoestring are focus and relevance. Once a show is up and running, it may stay in the repertoire for several years - more than 6 years for Over the Hill. The government funding is used to guarantee that all the women in the company receive proper payment for their work.
In fact the need for women to take a fully professional role in theatre was a strong motivation back in the 1970's: the only compromise has been during the development phase of At The Crossroads when the company agreed to take a cut because of insufficient funding, except that the special grant from the Australia Council's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fund enabled full support for Justine Saunders' position. This play was clearly so important to country women, and men, of all backgrounds that one principle was broken for the sake of the integrity of the work. This has proved, of course, to have been the right decision, in the end financially as well as artistically.
The company operates in an interesting fashion, growing out of the cooperative group theatre structures of its early days. Blunden has provided the core of the company throughout, seeking out actors and writers who are happy to work in what I describe as "structured cooperation". As Director, Blunden's role is clearly defined: she sets up the workshops to explore the research material. The writers (Merrilee Moss previously and currently Cornall) observe and sometimes initiate workshops as they turn action into script. The actors, like the writers and director, all undertake extensive research, seeking out women's stories around the central theme, including their own experiences, creating in the workshops the characters and the scenes which are re-worked and scripted. In this way the actors, even some who have been auditioned for roles in what superficially seems a conventional way, work within bounds yet with a sense of freedom and commitment to the work.
Working this way has created a company which is continuously flexible, seeking out new people, new themes and new forms of theatrical expression, and within which people feel part of a strong network, which extends out to all the women who have provided their stories and who live in all parts of Australia.
At the Crossroads is booked for extensive touring again next year and Australia Council and artsACT funding has arrived for development of a new project on women in film.
This doesn't sound like the middle of nowhere to me, or an interval of fifteen minutes.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
1999: Last Tango in Little Grimley by David Tristram
Last Tango in Little Grimley by David Tristram. the players company directed by Liz Bradley. UCU Theatre, The Hub, University of Canberra, October 3 - 4, 12.40 and 5.40pm.
This was a tits and wiggles show in which, in the strict tradition of very light English farce, we never got to see any tits, but there was an inconsequential wiggle right at the end. Written on the premiss that provincial English people are still as immature about secondary sexual signals as they have always pretended to be, this production was no more than the brief lunchtime interlude between glasses of wine that it pretended to be - at least the wine on offer in the foyer was real.
Liz Bradley's direction was effective in principle, but I have to say that it was only Marie Carroll as Joyce who had the required apparently natural timing in the opening performance. Her forte Oh What a Beautiful Morning lying in a putative bath exposed to the inevitable Vicar was just the right unbearable length to get the audience thoroughly laughing, rather than "smiling internally" like Little Grimleyites.
The twists in the plot of the players company playing the failing Little Grimley Amateur Dramatic Society rehearsing Last Tango in Little Grimley are fairly predictable, with just a little dig at making money - for the first time in the Society's history - when all the respectable locals turn up to see a breast revealed. I think it's fair to say that the players company has not followed their founder's precept in choosing this play, even for a light lunchtime entertainment.
Charles Glyn-Daniel sadly died before this year's major productions were completed - R.C.Sherriff's Journey's End and Shelagh Stephenson's The Memory of Water. He had a clear policy of presenting less well-known but worthwhile works by British playwrights, even for the brief filler events at The Hub, choosing John Mortimer's Lunch Hour and Knightsbridge.
David Tristram is not well-known, and doesn't deserve to be. I think if the players company wants to maintain its good early reputation, especially in the university scene, it must choose short comedies for lunchtime with much more bite than Last Tango in Little Grimley.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
This was a tits and wiggles show in which, in the strict tradition of very light English farce, we never got to see any tits, but there was an inconsequential wiggle right at the end. Written on the premiss that provincial English people are still as immature about secondary sexual signals as they have always pretended to be, this production was no more than the brief lunchtime interlude between glasses of wine that it pretended to be - at least the wine on offer in the foyer was real.
Liz Bradley's direction was effective in principle, but I have to say that it was only Marie Carroll as Joyce who had the required apparently natural timing in the opening performance. Her forte Oh What a Beautiful Morning lying in a putative bath exposed to the inevitable Vicar was just the right unbearable length to get the audience thoroughly laughing, rather than "smiling internally" like Little Grimleyites.
The twists in the plot of the players company playing the failing Little Grimley Amateur Dramatic Society rehearsing Last Tango in Little Grimley are fairly predictable, with just a little dig at making money - for the first time in the Society's history - when all the respectable locals turn up to see a breast revealed. I think it's fair to say that the players company has not followed their founder's precept in choosing this play, even for a light lunchtime entertainment.
Charles Glyn-Daniel sadly died before this year's major productions were completed - R.C.Sherriff's Journey's End and Shelagh Stephenson's The Memory of Water. He had a clear policy of presenting less well-known but worthwhile works by British playwrights, even for the brief filler events at The Hub, choosing John Mortimer's Lunch Hour and Knightsbridge.
David Tristram is not well-known, and doesn't deserve to be. I think if the players company wants to maintain its good early reputation, especially in the university scene, it must choose short comedies for lunchtime with much more bite than Last Tango in Little Grimley.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 26 October 1999
1999: Spurboard, by Nick Enright. Preview brief news article
Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) opens a season of a new play, Spurboard, by Nick Enright next week in Sydney. Well known for Blackrock, the play and film based on the murder of Leigh Leigh, Enright has turned his attention to rural young people. Should Mitchell escape from Burradin for 8-second thrills on the rodeo circuit? Will his brother Greg find direction by staring at the stars? Is it right for Karen, with or without Amy, to go to Mardi Gras?
Commissioned by ATYP, and directed by their new Artistic Director, David Berthold, the play is inspired by stories told by young people during ATYP regional workshops in Murrurundi early this year. Berthold has already directed Blackrock and Enright's Chasing the Dragon for Sydney Theatre Company. He has 16 young actors and a professional support team working in association with Pulse 10, which is STC's youth and education wing.
The venue is Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company, with previews November 4 and 5. Opening night is Saturday November 6 and there are weekday and Saturday matinees especially for school groups, with discounts available. Ring 9251 3900 for details.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Commissioned by ATYP, and directed by their new Artistic Director, David Berthold, the play is inspired by stories told by young people during ATYP regional workshops in Murrurundi early this year. Berthold has already directed Blackrock and Enright's Chasing the Dragon for Sydney Theatre Company. He has 16 young actors and a professional support team working in association with Pulse 10, which is STC's youth and education wing.
The venue is Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company, with previews November 4 and 5. Opening night is Saturday November 6 and there are weekday and Saturday matinees especially for school groups, with discounts available. Ring 9251 3900 for details.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 20 October 1999
1999: Tommy Murphy - Troy's House. Report.
I can only say "I told you so" about Queanbeyan's Tom Murphy. Young Shakespearean of 1997, in many eyes a potential actor, Murphy showed me his script, then called The House on the Hill. Interviewing him for The Canberra Times in May 1998 I concluded: "Murphy is, to my mind, at core a writer. He is excited by writing. He is worried about the writing."
Now called Troy's House, Murphy's play has been picked up by the new Artistic Director of Australian Theatre for Young People, David Berthold, and was presented at A.T.Y.P Studio 1 at The Wharf in Sydney for a 5-night season October 12 - 16.
Murphy rewrote and directed Troy's House for a Sydney University Dramatic Society (SUDS) season in September this year "greeted with full houses and rave reviews". David Berthold, currently directing Spurboard, a new play by Nick Enright (author of Blackrock), for a November season at The Wharf for Sydney Theatre Company, said "I saw [Troy's House] at the Cellar Theatre at Sydney Uni and there spent one of the most thoroughly entertaining, funny and heart warming nights I've had in theatre. I had to enable this wonderful production to extend its life. It's exactly the kind of production you long for: warm, witty, intelligent and generous."
SUDS has been producing theatre continuously since 1889, and lays claim to Neil Armfield, John Bell, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Gough Whitlam. Now known as Tommy, Murphy is among illustrious company. We shall watch his career with interest.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Now called Troy's House, Murphy's play has been picked up by the new Artistic Director of Australian Theatre for Young People, David Berthold, and was presented at A.T.Y.P Studio 1 at The Wharf in Sydney for a 5-night season October 12 - 16.
Murphy rewrote and directed Troy's House for a Sydney University Dramatic Society (SUDS) season in September this year "greeted with full houses and rave reviews". David Berthold, currently directing Spurboard, a new play by Nick Enright (author of Blackrock), for a November season at The Wharf for Sydney Theatre Company, said "I saw [Troy's House] at the Cellar Theatre at Sydney Uni and there spent one of the most thoroughly entertaining, funny and heart warming nights I've had in theatre. I had to enable this wonderful production to extend its life. It's exactly the kind of production you long for: warm, witty, intelligent and generous."
SUDS has been producing theatre continuously since 1889, and lays claim to Neil Armfield, John Bell, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Gough Whitlam. Now known as Tommy, Murphy is among illustrious company. We shall watch his career with interest.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
1999: Tell her that I love her... Somebody's Daughter Theatre Company
Tell her that I love her... Somebody's Daughter Theatre Company directed by Maud Clark. Tuggeranong Arts Centre: Performances and Workshops October 19 to Sunday October 24, 1999. Phone 6293 9099 for details.
The essence of tragedy is that we learn - too late to save the most vulnerable - that we are each responsible for ourselves. We are indeed alone in the universe.
The key to good drama is for the writer, designer, director and performers to work sincerely. Everyone must believe in what they are doing for the audience to believe in the drama. One false note and the trust is broken.
Tragedy sincerely dramatised is both deeply sad and simultaneously uplifting: Tuesday dies knowing that only she can stop herself taking drugs; Jess could not help her, but learns the truth from Tuesday's death. Jess will survive. Every character, like the actresses in this play - Debbie Murray, Donna King, Tara Watson, Sam Davis and Kharen Harper - has been locked up in prison for the crime of needing to block out the pain of abuse. Like Tuesday, many, far too many, real women have died.
Somebody's Daughter helps more survive. Tell her that I love her... helps the rest of us understand, through good scripting and song writing, strong directing, a visually exciting set and acting full of energy.
These brave people invited questions afterwards, saying that by acting out their own stories they felt the message was getting through: they have the same ambitions, the same fears, the same strengths and make the same mistakes as we all do. There, but for the luck of the draw, go we all.
The play made me angry that we "protect" children but deny them love and their right to self-worth; and then jail them when they fail to cope as adults, denying them their freedom instead of helping them to regain the freedom we all deserve - from the violence, sexual abuse, emotional manipulation, financial pressure which we do too little to restrain.
One audience member suggested they perform in Federal and State Parliaments so the lawmakers understand the real impact of their deliberations. I, along with the rest of audience, hope this will be done.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
The essence of tragedy is that we learn - too late to save the most vulnerable - that we are each responsible for ourselves. We are indeed alone in the universe.
The key to good drama is for the writer, designer, director and performers to work sincerely. Everyone must believe in what they are doing for the audience to believe in the drama. One false note and the trust is broken.
Tragedy sincerely dramatised is both deeply sad and simultaneously uplifting: Tuesday dies knowing that only she can stop herself taking drugs; Jess could not help her, but learns the truth from Tuesday's death. Jess will survive. Every character, like the actresses in this play - Debbie Murray, Donna King, Tara Watson, Sam Davis and Kharen Harper - has been locked up in prison for the crime of needing to block out the pain of abuse. Like Tuesday, many, far too many, real women have died.
Somebody's Daughter helps more survive. Tell her that I love her... helps the rest of us understand, through good scripting and song writing, strong directing, a visually exciting set and acting full of energy.
These brave people invited questions afterwards, saying that by acting out their own stories they felt the message was getting through: they have the same ambitions, the same fears, the same strengths and make the same mistakes as we all do. There, but for the luck of the draw, go we all.
The play made me angry that we "protect" children but deny them love and their right to self-worth; and then jail them when they fail to cope as adults, denying them their freedom instead of helping them to regain the freedom we all deserve - from the violence, sexual abuse, emotional manipulation, financial pressure which we do too little to restrain.
One audience member suggested they perform in Federal and State Parliaments so the lawmakers understand the real impact of their deliberations. I, along with the rest of audience, hope this will be done.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 15 October 1999
1999: Pipeline - Works in Progress. Presented by The Jigsaw Company
Pipeline - Works in Progress: The Nameless Dead by Judith Crispin Cresswell; The Count by Emma Newman, Dora Kordakis, David Michel and Mary Sutherland; "Dualities of dance" improvisation by Trevor Patrick and Peter Trotman; The Mechanics of Love by Neil Roach; Performance Art "ACME in the Dining Hall". Presented by The Jigsaw Company in association with the Festival of Contemporary Arts and the Choreographic Centre, Gorman House, October 15, 1999.
These five pieces "in the pipeline" were very uneven packets of information travelling in quite different directions down the optic fibre of life. My modem connected but my software couldn't unscramble all the code.
The Count was too easy to understand. If it's going to develop into substantial theatre, the text needs to be much more original for successful satire of the way love is ruled by technology - yet bits of the movement, when close to real dance, showed some strength of imagination.
Neil Roach, on the other hand, has an excellent text - Flacco-esque in its actors playing mechanics in industrial gear, manipulating our idea of love via carrots, celery, steam trains and a film projector. He intends to turn it into live action, but I felt happier for the script to remain a storytelling experience which stimulates the listener's imagination more than concrete realisation.
ACME's restaurant, full of obsessive compulsives - woman with household cleansers, violinist with unfinished variations, girl who must keep off the floor (and becomes an angel), drunkard building a tower of champagne glasses, lovers focussed on the kiss, poet who spouts, woman in tutu, waiter who grinds the roses, real people from the audience who eat a pizza (delivered by a real pizza deliverer) and the ultimate builder of a ten-foot sponge cake tower with real cream, chocolate sauce and candles - was often very funny. But not very original, or new in theatrical terms.
I found Trotman and Patrick's improvisation of independent yet oddly parallel existences either side of a wall, with brief contact at the end, too predictable. It might the basis of a fuller choreography, but I also could not discern a definitive style or complexity of relationships to build on. Clarity and toughness are missing as yet.
The only work with excellent stamped on it is The Nameless Dead. When this Mahler / Richard Strauss / Brechtian / Japanese opera - very powerfully presented by Stopera (with no funding support!) in this oratorio preview - comes to full production next year, don't miss it. Judith Crispin Cresswell tells me Larry Sitsky accused her of writing too much Verdi, so this is her answer: an unsentimental representation of a Buddhist dream of death, percussive yet strangely tuneful, with delicate cadences and silences which will translate on stage into an inescapable drama.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
These five pieces "in the pipeline" were very uneven packets of information travelling in quite different directions down the optic fibre of life. My modem connected but my software couldn't unscramble all the code.
The Count was too easy to understand. If it's going to develop into substantial theatre, the text needs to be much more original for successful satire of the way love is ruled by technology - yet bits of the movement, when close to real dance, showed some strength of imagination.
Neil Roach, on the other hand, has an excellent text - Flacco-esque in its actors playing mechanics in industrial gear, manipulating our idea of love via carrots, celery, steam trains and a film projector. He intends to turn it into live action, but I felt happier for the script to remain a storytelling experience which stimulates the listener's imagination more than concrete realisation.
ACME's restaurant, full of obsessive compulsives - woman with household cleansers, violinist with unfinished variations, girl who must keep off the floor (and becomes an angel), drunkard building a tower of champagne glasses, lovers focussed on the kiss, poet who spouts, woman in tutu, waiter who grinds the roses, real people from the audience who eat a pizza (delivered by a real pizza deliverer) and the ultimate builder of a ten-foot sponge cake tower with real cream, chocolate sauce and candles - was often very funny. But not very original, or new in theatrical terms.
I found Trotman and Patrick's improvisation of independent yet oddly parallel existences either side of a wall, with brief contact at the end, too predictable. It might the basis of a fuller choreography, but I also could not discern a definitive style or complexity of relationships to build on. Clarity and toughness are missing as yet.
The only work with excellent stamped on it is The Nameless Dead. When this Mahler / Richard Strauss / Brechtian / Japanese opera - very powerfully presented by Stopera (with no funding support!) in this oratorio preview - comes to full production next year, don't miss it. Judith Crispin Cresswell tells me Larry Sitsky accused her of writing too much Verdi, so this is her answer: an unsentimental representation of a Buddhist dream of death, percussive yet strangely tuneful, with delicate cadences and silences which will translate on stage into an inescapable drama.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 9 October 1999
1999: Summer of the Aliens by Louis Nowra
Summer of the Aliens by Louis Nowra. Rep Fringe directed by Nina Stevenson at Theatre 3, Wed - Sat October 8 - 23, 1999 (matinee October 16, 2pm).
I was pleasantly surprised by a light whimsical presentation of Aliens, which I have previously seen done as hard-nosed social criticism. The adult Nowra looks back on himself as a 14-year-old in 1962, parading the sad working class characters of Singapore Street, fringe-dwelling where outer suburbs meet the paddocks. Young Lewis (Toby Wilkins) lives with the news that World War 3 is about to begin and the belief that aliens in UFO's abduct people - except that it never happens to him. He discovers too late, but never forgets, that he really did love Dulcie, played by Cally Robinson with an accurate and therefore almost shocking sexuality.
Rep Fringe has grown from presenting $5 readings to $10 productions with the special intention of encouraging young people on stage and backstage.
It was brave to cast young actors at the ages of the characters, but maybe this is why the play is so much lighter in tone that it might be. The Director's Notes talk of "important themes", "the struggle to understand the world" and claim that the play "is caustic", but her cast is not up to investing such depth into the work. Yet they were directed well to form an effective ensemble and so I found myself responding to a more gentle Leunig-like humour.
Because Rep Fringe is low budget, the set is simple, but I must say the backside of a Housing Commission redbrick with concrete apron was exactly right. Technically the production runs smoothly with lighting used to move from scene to scene. However I did find that the older Lewis, who narrates his story and occasionally interrogates his younger self, would have been better left on stage throughout rather than entering and exiting each time he speaks. This was a distraction and, thematically, I wondered where he went to when he disappeared. I was reminded of Tom in The Glass Menagerie who stays visible and moves into and out of the action, making it clear that this is a memory play, like Summer of the Aliens.
A value-for-money evening at Rep.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
I was pleasantly surprised by a light whimsical presentation of Aliens, which I have previously seen done as hard-nosed social criticism. The adult Nowra looks back on himself as a 14-year-old in 1962, parading the sad working class characters of Singapore Street, fringe-dwelling where outer suburbs meet the paddocks. Young Lewis (Toby Wilkins) lives with the news that World War 3 is about to begin and the belief that aliens in UFO's abduct people - except that it never happens to him. He discovers too late, but never forgets, that he really did love Dulcie, played by Cally Robinson with an accurate and therefore almost shocking sexuality.
Rep Fringe has grown from presenting $5 readings to $10 productions with the special intention of encouraging young people on stage and backstage.
It was brave to cast young actors at the ages of the characters, but maybe this is why the play is so much lighter in tone that it might be. The Director's Notes talk of "important themes", "the struggle to understand the world" and claim that the play "is caustic", but her cast is not up to investing such depth into the work. Yet they were directed well to form an effective ensemble and so I found myself responding to a more gentle Leunig-like humour.
Because Rep Fringe is low budget, the set is simple, but I must say the backside of a Housing Commission redbrick with concrete apron was exactly right. Technically the production runs smoothly with lighting used to move from scene to scene. However I did find that the older Lewis, who narrates his story and occasionally interrogates his younger self, would have been better left on stage throughout rather than entering and exiting each time he speaks. This was a distraction and, thematically, I wondered where he went to when he disappeared. I was reminded of Tom in The Glass Menagerie who stays visible and moves into and out of the action, making it clear that this is a memory play, like Summer of the Aliens.
A value-for-money evening at Rep.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 8 October 1999
1999: Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Miss Julie by August Strindberg. Translation by Michael Meyer, directed by Eulea Kiraly in a double bill (with Elektra a.d. by Christos Tsiolkas). The Street Theatre Thurs 7 - Sat 9 and Wed 13 - Sat 16 October, 1999. 8pm. Matinee Sat 16 Oct, 2pm.
"We'll go to another country, to a republic" says the servant Jean to his lady Miss Julie. Why a republic? Because now they have made love across the rigid divide of 19th Century social class, neither can be free in a monarchy - even Sweden. Strindberg switched this little spotlight on, and see it now glint even on our very own referendum on November 6 a century later.
Some have thought this play an early naturalistic drama, but Eulea Kiraly has directed it precisely for its symbolism - and her actors have met her high expectations. Each twist and turn of seduction in the triangle of Christine (Alexis Beebe) - the servant who knows her place; Jean (Lachlan Abrahams) - the ambitious servant seeking entrée to the nobility; and Miss Julie (Lenore McGregor) - the unstable lady who falls from grace, is marked by a movement, a look and a silence which leaves us in no doubt about what is happening. These people are trapped in a social hierarchy about to collapse around them.
Of course, the Republic of Indonesia has shown us that the trappings of monarchy are not so easily disposed of: Miss Julie, effectively penniless, kindly commits suicide in Strindberg's black optimism, rather than thrashing the living daylights out of the lower orders in her death throes.
This production is worth seeing not just for its messages, but because the cast have invested emotional integrity into a script that could too easily be merely melodramatic, despite the author's intentions, just because it is a 19th Century play. Their timing is excellent, often deliberately paced to allow the intensity of the moment to grow but without going over the top. An audience on opening night of theatre buffs, easily critical if not cynical, found humour and horror in the lights and shades, and audibly felt relief at the end.
The Season at The Street is enhanced by this production. Highly recommended.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
"We'll go to another country, to a republic" says the servant Jean to his lady Miss Julie. Why a republic? Because now they have made love across the rigid divide of 19th Century social class, neither can be free in a monarchy - even Sweden. Strindberg switched this little spotlight on, and see it now glint even on our very own referendum on November 6 a century later.
Some have thought this play an early naturalistic drama, but Eulea Kiraly has directed it precisely for its symbolism - and her actors have met her high expectations. Each twist and turn of seduction in the triangle of Christine (Alexis Beebe) - the servant who knows her place; Jean (Lachlan Abrahams) - the ambitious servant seeking entrée to the nobility; and Miss Julie (Lenore McGregor) - the unstable lady who falls from grace, is marked by a movement, a look and a silence which leaves us in no doubt about what is happening. These people are trapped in a social hierarchy about to collapse around them.
Of course, the Republic of Indonesia has shown us that the trappings of monarchy are not so easily disposed of: Miss Julie, effectively penniless, kindly commits suicide in Strindberg's black optimism, rather than thrashing the living daylights out of the lower orders in her death throes.
This production is worth seeing not just for its messages, but because the cast have invested emotional integrity into a script that could too easily be merely melodramatic, despite the author's intentions, just because it is a 19th Century play. Their timing is excellent, often deliberately paced to allow the intensity of the moment to grow but without going over the top. An audience on opening night of theatre buffs, easily critical if not cynical, found humour and horror in the lights and shades, and audibly felt relief at the end.
The Season at The Street is enhanced by this production. Highly recommended.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
1999: Elektra a.d. by Christos Tsiolkas
Elektra a.d. by Christos Tsiolkas. Directed by David Branson in a double bill (with Miss Julie by August Strindberg). Music by Greg Raymond and Pip Branson. The Street Theatre Thurs 7 - Sat 9 and Wed 13 - Sat 16 October, 8pm. Matinee Sat 16 Oct, 1999. 2pm.
This play is an intriguing modern tragedy of enduring hatred, using the ancient Greek story of Electra to tell the modern story of the division of Cyprus and the Cypriot Christian/Moslem refugee experience in Australia. The parallels are drawn in the play with the Sarajevo conflict, and it takes little imagination on our part to see Kosovars and East Timorese in these roles.
In the original Oresteian plays by Aeschylus, centred on Electra's brother Orestes, Electra is the force for justice through retribution, for death in the name of her family's traditional rights. American writer Eugene O'Neill translated this story to the Civil War in the famous play Mourning Becomes Electra, in which her tragedy is never to give in but to turn away from society, entering the family's cold stone mansion to eke out the remains of her life alone.
Tsiokas has similarly made his Elektra isolated in her factory job, refusing to learn the hated harsh language, English, watching the news of war in Europe on a tacky television in a tiny Melbourne flat. Her elder brother, Orestes, is missing in action; her mother has married a Moslem, and produces a new cross-breed half-brother, whom Elektra murders.
The strength of the play is in Tsiolkas' writing, paralleling the language of the ancient Sophocles' version of Electra - the "Elektra b.c." presumably. All the actors use the language well, but special praise goes to Louise Morris (Elektra), Estelle Muspratt (Elektra's sister Chrysothemis) and Joe Woodward (her mother's new husband, Aegisthus). David Branson notes that the play is still in development, and I expect the script to be trimmed and added to in time, and transitions between scenes to become better integrated. The visuals are relevant but at times distract from the action, and the live music - excellent as it is - can be knitted into the play much more.
The Greek tragedy form, where characters objectively describe their thoughts, works powerfully here: well worth the experience.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
This play is an intriguing modern tragedy of enduring hatred, using the ancient Greek story of Electra to tell the modern story of the division of Cyprus and the Cypriot Christian/Moslem refugee experience in Australia. The parallels are drawn in the play with the Sarajevo conflict, and it takes little imagination on our part to see Kosovars and East Timorese in these roles.
In the original Oresteian plays by Aeschylus, centred on Electra's brother Orestes, Electra is the force for justice through retribution, for death in the name of her family's traditional rights. American writer Eugene O'Neill translated this story to the Civil War in the famous play Mourning Becomes Electra, in which her tragedy is never to give in but to turn away from society, entering the family's cold stone mansion to eke out the remains of her life alone.
Tsiokas has similarly made his Elektra isolated in her factory job, refusing to learn the hated harsh language, English, watching the news of war in Europe on a tacky television in a tiny Melbourne flat. Her elder brother, Orestes, is missing in action; her mother has married a Moslem, and produces a new cross-breed half-brother, whom Elektra murders.
The strength of the play is in Tsiolkas' writing, paralleling the language of the ancient Sophocles' version of Electra - the "Elektra b.c." presumably. All the actors use the language well, but special praise goes to Louise Morris (Elektra), Estelle Muspratt (Elektra's sister Chrysothemis) and Joe Woodward (her mother's new husband, Aegisthus). David Branson notes that the play is still in development, and I expect the script to be trimmed and added to in time, and transitions between scenes to become better integrated. The visuals are relevant but at times distract from the action, and the live music - excellent as it is - can be knitted into the play much more.
The Greek tragedy form, where characters objectively describe their thoughts, works powerfully here: well worth the experience.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 6 October 1999
1999: Snow White and Rose Red by Anna Simic and Cristy Gilbert
Snow White and Rose Red, written and performed by Anna Simic and Cristy Gilbert. Festival of Contemporary Arts at Canberra Museum And Gallery Theatrette, October 6-9, 1999. 7pm.
It's not usual for members of the audience to instruct this reviewer, but "generosity of spirit" was the order of the evening - not so difficult in view of the champagne flowing down the tower of wine glasses in the foyer to bring us back to adult sophistication after an hour of childhood fantasy.
We knew reality was in for a dose of emetic when we discovered that Snow White has black hair, white lips and "skin as red as blood", and I'm sure I detected Anna's brother Mikal's band P.Harness playing the grunge/spew part in the sound track. And we were not disappointed. I will always find it difficult to consume chicken with equanimity from now on. These innocent little flower girls turned smilingly cannibalistic after consorting with a black bear, a witchetty step mother, a vicious rabbit, a thieving dwarf and a prince in cloth of gold.
What did the Little Golden Book, Old May Gibb and maybe a touch of Roald Dahl do to the imaginations of these highly presentable young women who could persuade artsACT to give them a grant?
In fact with little money, Simic and Gilbert have experimented with multi-media and produced a new reflection on reality, in which the little girls in the video clips watch themselves perform their fantasies, and watch us, while we watch them simultaneously on screen and stage - and before long find ourselves watching ourselves.
Of course, strict technical standards were impossible to meet, but I found that the fuzzy home-video result blended in, perhaps accidentally but certainly fortuitously, with the fuzzy mime and deliberate slow action of the "real" characters. Somehow we saw the children re-presenting themselves through a filmy filter of adult experience. They became "wyrd sisters" and for a moment I thought I saw Jean Genet's The Maids when very young.
Experiment is what FOCA is for, and CMAG's Theatrette is the right intimate venue for this production - but small, so get there early.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
It's not usual for members of the audience to instruct this reviewer, but "generosity of spirit" was the order of the evening - not so difficult in view of the champagne flowing down the tower of wine glasses in the foyer to bring us back to adult sophistication after an hour of childhood fantasy.
We knew reality was in for a dose of emetic when we discovered that Snow White has black hair, white lips and "skin as red as blood", and I'm sure I detected Anna's brother Mikal's band P.Harness playing the grunge/spew part in the sound track. And we were not disappointed. I will always find it difficult to consume chicken with equanimity from now on. These innocent little flower girls turned smilingly cannibalistic after consorting with a black bear, a witchetty step mother, a vicious rabbit, a thieving dwarf and a prince in cloth of gold.
What did the Little Golden Book, Old May Gibb and maybe a touch of Roald Dahl do to the imaginations of these highly presentable young women who could persuade artsACT to give them a grant?
In fact with little money, Simic and Gilbert have experimented with multi-media and produced a new reflection on reality, in which the little girls in the video clips watch themselves perform their fantasies, and watch us, while we watch them simultaneously on screen and stage - and before long find ourselves watching ourselves.
Of course, strict technical standards were impossible to meet, but I found that the fuzzy home-video result blended in, perhaps accidentally but certainly fortuitously, with the fuzzy mime and deliberate slow action of the "real" characters. Somehow we saw the children re-presenting themselves through a filmy filter of adult experience. They became "wyrd sisters" and for a moment I thought I saw Jean Genet's The Maids when very young.
Experiment is what FOCA is for, and CMAG's Theatrette is the right intimate venue for this production - but small, so get there early.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 3 October 1999
1999: Shakespeare Globe Centre Australia awards - news report
This year's Shakespeare Globe Centre Australia awards were announced last Saturday at the conclusion of No Holds Bard, devised and performed by 30 secondary school finalists from across Australia including 3 Canberrans: Tessa Keenan, Leah Kimball and Sarah La Brooy.
Led by Hugh O'Keefe, Sydney University director of the Shakespeare Globe Centre's National Education Program, a team of theatre professionals and teachers worked with the students for 6 days at Theatre 3, providing their services voluntarily to an organisation which receives no government funding and little sponsorship, relying mainly on entry fees from participating schools. This year some 15,000 students took part in the regional and state festivals leading to the selection of the 30 finalists.
The Abbey's Bookshop Awards for Shakespeare Expertise, presented by Sydney choreographer Jonathan Rosten and 1997 Shakespearean Teacher of the Year Wendy Dowd, went to Ben Harrison (Sydney), Kallista Kaval (Ballarat), Morgan Tucker (Armidale, NSW) and Anthony Ulijn (Perth).
Deidre Burges (Marian Street Theatre, Sydney) presented the Roger Barratt Award for Design to Julia McNamee (Upwey, Vic).
The Roger Woodward Award for Music, presented by musical director Peter Pitcher, was given jointly for excellent composition and teamwork to Tessa Keenan (Canberra), Liz Gunner and Bridget Gurry (both of Adelaide).
The major awards, enabling a teacher and a student to travel to the Shakespeare Globe Centre in London and to undertake further training and professional development, were presented by Catherine Dunn, 1998 Shakespeare Teacher of the Year, and the founder of Shakespeare Globe Centre Australia, Diana Denley.
Shakespearean Teacher of the Year is Deborah Field Farago of MLC, Melbourne, and Young Shakespearean Artist of the Year is Gordon Hamilton of Newcastle, NSW, who was chosen unanimously for "exceptional talent in composing songs and instrumental pieces" and "his ability to coach and enthuse his fellow performers". This award is given to the student seen to be most ready for the transition from school theatre to the adult experience offered in a two week intensive program next northern summer at the Shakespeare Globe in London for young people from around the world.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Led by Hugh O'Keefe, Sydney University director of the Shakespeare Globe Centre's National Education Program, a team of theatre professionals and teachers worked with the students for 6 days at Theatre 3, providing their services voluntarily to an organisation which receives no government funding and little sponsorship, relying mainly on entry fees from participating schools. This year some 15,000 students took part in the regional and state festivals leading to the selection of the 30 finalists.
The Abbey's Bookshop Awards for Shakespeare Expertise, presented by Sydney choreographer Jonathan Rosten and 1997 Shakespearean Teacher of the Year Wendy Dowd, went to Ben Harrison (Sydney), Kallista Kaval (Ballarat), Morgan Tucker (Armidale, NSW) and Anthony Ulijn (Perth).
Deidre Burges (Marian Street Theatre, Sydney) presented the Roger Barratt Award for Design to Julia McNamee (Upwey, Vic).
The Roger Woodward Award for Music, presented by musical director Peter Pitcher, was given jointly for excellent composition and teamwork to Tessa Keenan (Canberra), Liz Gunner and Bridget Gurry (both of Adelaide).
The major awards, enabling a teacher and a student to travel to the Shakespeare Globe Centre in London and to undertake further training and professional development, were presented by Catherine Dunn, 1998 Shakespeare Teacher of the Year, and the founder of Shakespeare Globe Centre Australia, Diana Denley.
Shakespearean Teacher of the Year is Deborah Field Farago of MLC, Melbourne, and Young Shakespearean Artist of the Year is Gordon Hamilton of Newcastle, NSW, who was chosen unanimously for "exceptional talent in composing songs and instrumental pieces" and "his ability to coach and enthuse his fellow performers". This award is given to the student seen to be most ready for the transition from school theatre to the adult experience offered in a two week intensive program next northern summer at the Shakespeare Globe in London for young people from around the world.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 2 October 1999
1999: In Her Own Flame. Dance theatre directed by Niki Shepherd
In Her Own Flame. Dance theatre directed by Niki Shepherd. Festival of Contemporary Arts, at the Choreographic Centre, Gorman House October 1-3, 1999.
In the same way that World Music draws on traditional folk music forms from many cultures and has developed a new identity, Niki Shepherd with dancer Jennie White and musicians Cris Clucas and Andrew Purdam, narrate an ancient Greek myth in the language of classical Indian dance - and in the process have begun to create a new exciting form of dance theatre - World Dance, perhaps.
The story of the conception and birth of Dionysos, the Greek god of theatre and intoxication, told through the experiences of his mortal mother Semele in her relationship with the god Zeus and his wife Hera, is about ecstasy and its tragic consequences.
Hera persuades Semele, already pregnant from her first encounter with Zeus in human form, to encourage him to make love in his divine form. Hera knows this will destroy Semele - but the god Hermes rescues the unborn Dionysos. Later Dionysos leads his mother out of Hades to become goddess of ecstatic rage, akin to the Indian goddess Kali.
Working out of her Indian Kuchipudi dance training, originally with Padma Menon and now with Anandavalli Sivanathan, Shepherd has collaborated with Jennie White (trained by Mrs Nandana Chellapah in Bharata Natyam style, and also now with Anandavalli) in exploring the Greek myth from the perspective of Siva, the Indian god of dance and ecstatic experience. The live music grew in concert with the choreography: Andrew Purdam's percussion and especially the voice of Cris Clucas are quite extraordinary. The result is a "modern dance" creation of women's experience of love, betrayal, survival and finding a new internal strength.
Each performer is so secure in their newly created form that much of the work is improvised rather than strictly notated, giving the work a living tension which draws the audience into the experience. This is a product of time and space made available by the Choreographic Centre, directed by Mark Gordon, and proof of the value of this resource to Canberra.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
In the same way that World Music draws on traditional folk music forms from many cultures and has developed a new identity, Niki Shepherd with dancer Jennie White and musicians Cris Clucas and Andrew Purdam, narrate an ancient Greek myth in the language of classical Indian dance - and in the process have begun to create a new exciting form of dance theatre - World Dance, perhaps.
The story of the conception and birth of Dionysos, the Greek god of theatre and intoxication, told through the experiences of his mortal mother Semele in her relationship with the god Zeus and his wife Hera, is about ecstasy and its tragic consequences.
Hera persuades Semele, already pregnant from her first encounter with Zeus in human form, to encourage him to make love in his divine form. Hera knows this will destroy Semele - but the god Hermes rescues the unborn Dionysos. Later Dionysos leads his mother out of Hades to become goddess of ecstatic rage, akin to the Indian goddess Kali.
Working out of her Indian Kuchipudi dance training, originally with Padma Menon and now with Anandavalli Sivanathan, Shepherd has collaborated with Jennie White (trained by Mrs Nandana Chellapah in Bharata Natyam style, and also now with Anandavalli) in exploring the Greek myth from the perspective of Siva, the Indian god of dance and ecstatic experience. The live music grew in concert with the choreography: Andrew Purdam's percussion and especially the voice of Cris Clucas are quite extraordinary. The result is a "modern dance" creation of women's experience of love, betrayal, survival and finding a new internal strength.
Each performer is so secure in their newly created form that much of the work is improvised rather than strictly notated, giving the work a living tension which draws the audience into the experience. This is a product of time and space made available by the Choreographic Centre, directed by Mark Gordon, and proof of the value of this resource to Canberra.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 25 September 1999
1999: Family Matters by Dave Christner
Family Matters by Dave Christner. Phoenix Players: Director Margaret Forster. Supported by the International Year of Older Persons. Belconnen Community Centre 8pm September 24, 25, 30 and October 1, 2; 2pm September 25, 26 and October 2, 1999. Seniors Card concession $9.
America's minor playwrights produce a continuing stream of light comedies with sincere themes, and this one will have older persons (I'm nearly one myself) rooting for our rights - to independent lives, freedom from rules laid down by our children, freedom from society's ageist assumptions.
Margaret Forster has a clear conception of the directing style this play needs, adjusting the references to politics and places to suit Australia and underplaying the characters to suit our sensibilities. On opening night this meant that pacing was a little slow, but there were some effective comic highlights such as the stylised statements of despair from Abby and her husband Dan about their respective mothers, Claudia and Sarah, and the mothers' drunken homecoming at 3am - to the announcement from their middle-aged children that they are "grounded". Janine O'Dwyer, Paul Mullins, Margery Ehnhuus and Fay Butcher formed an effective central ensemble who will surely spark as the season warms up.
An interesting element of the play is the weight given to the women, particularly widows needing to recreate themselves as separate individuals after conventional marriages - and the learning required by the middle-aged Dan in discovering in his mother's childhood experiences the cause of his need to escape her cloying attention and his limitations in loving his wife. Though the play is not well enough written to cope thoroughly with such deep matters, it certainly touched the first-night audience visibly if briefly.
Unfortunately the cameo suitor roles, played by Graham Bauerle, John Alsford and John McKinlay, are not well developed in the script but were adequately delineated to make the play work.
"Theatre is for everyone, young and old" writes Phoenix President Richard Niven, and this production lives up to the Players' ambition very well after many shows which have given young people enjoyment and opportunities to perform. Phoenix, now 10 years old, has settled nicely into its community theatre niche - look for The Wizard of Oz and Half a Sixpence in January and May 2000.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
America's minor playwrights produce a continuing stream of light comedies with sincere themes, and this one will have older persons (I'm nearly one myself) rooting for our rights - to independent lives, freedom from rules laid down by our children, freedom from society's ageist assumptions.
Margaret Forster has a clear conception of the directing style this play needs, adjusting the references to politics and places to suit Australia and underplaying the characters to suit our sensibilities. On opening night this meant that pacing was a little slow, but there were some effective comic highlights such as the stylised statements of despair from Abby and her husband Dan about their respective mothers, Claudia and Sarah, and the mothers' drunken homecoming at 3am - to the announcement from their middle-aged children that they are "grounded". Janine O'Dwyer, Paul Mullins, Margery Ehnhuus and Fay Butcher formed an effective central ensemble who will surely spark as the season warms up.
An interesting element of the play is the weight given to the women, particularly widows needing to recreate themselves as separate individuals after conventional marriages - and the learning required by the middle-aged Dan in discovering in his mother's childhood experiences the cause of his need to escape her cloying attention and his limitations in loving his wife. Though the play is not well enough written to cope thoroughly with such deep matters, it certainly touched the first-night audience visibly if briefly.
Unfortunately the cameo suitor roles, played by Graham Bauerle, John Alsford and John McKinlay, are not well developed in the script but were adequately delineated to make the play work.
"Theatre is for everyone, young and old" writes Phoenix President Richard Niven, and this production lives up to the Players' ambition very well after many shows which have given young people enjoyment and opportunities to perform. Phoenix, now 10 years old, has settled nicely into its community theatre niche - look for The Wizard of Oz and Half a Sixpence in January and May 2000.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 21 August 1999
1999: Shakespeare Globe Centre Australia
Shakespeare Globe Centre Australia Youth Festival, ACT Final. Murranji Theatre, Hawker College, Friday August 20, 1999. ACT and North Side Coordinator, Stephen Brown (Hawker College); South Side Coordinator, Helen Parker (CCEGGS).
The goodwill of an estimated 50-60 teachers who voluntarily support this Festival representing government and non-government secondary schools has once again produced an excellent standard in the ACT finals. This year students from all the finalists - Telopea Park School, Marist College, St Clare's College, and Merici College - received commendations from judges Maureen Bettle (University of Canberra), Tina van Raay (Chief Minister's Office - Community Liaison) and myself - for the high quality of their work.
Awards went to Telopea Park for music composed for Much Ado About Nothing and duologues from Henry V; and to St Clare's College for costume designs for Macbeth. Commended scene and duologue presentations from Marist, Merici and St Clare's from As You Like It and Twelfth Night kept the audience laughing as they have for 400 years, while St Clare's movement/dance group showed us the Macbeth story from the witches' perspective as they take control of human ambitions and as a struggle between elemental positives and negatives after Macbeth's death.
Four special personal awards are given, not necessarily chosen only from award winning presentations but rather for individuals who the judges believe are ready for a taste of professional training. These young people, in company with those selected in the other states, go on to attend a week of intensive work with theatre professionals, here in Canberra, leading to two performances on October 1 and 2 at Theatre 3. One of these performers will be selected as Young Shakespearean Artist of the Year, and will visit and study at Stratford-upon-Avon and The Globe Theatre in London.
Composer Tessa Keenan, designer Sarah la Brooy, and actors Caroline Pryor and Leah Kimball were the chosen four, though the judges had a difficult task distinguishing among the best 6 or 7.
Difficulties with administering the Festival and maintaining corporate sponsorships will not make the Shakespeare Globe Centre's task any easier in the future, but standards are rising if this year's performances are any guide.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
The goodwill of an estimated 50-60 teachers who voluntarily support this Festival representing government and non-government secondary schools has once again produced an excellent standard in the ACT finals. This year students from all the finalists - Telopea Park School, Marist College, St Clare's College, and Merici College - received commendations from judges Maureen Bettle (University of Canberra), Tina van Raay (Chief Minister's Office - Community Liaison) and myself - for the high quality of their work.
Awards went to Telopea Park for music composed for Much Ado About Nothing and duologues from Henry V; and to St Clare's College for costume designs for Macbeth. Commended scene and duologue presentations from Marist, Merici and St Clare's from As You Like It and Twelfth Night kept the audience laughing as they have for 400 years, while St Clare's movement/dance group showed us the Macbeth story from the witches' perspective as they take control of human ambitions and as a struggle between elemental positives and negatives after Macbeth's death.
Four special personal awards are given, not necessarily chosen only from award winning presentations but rather for individuals who the judges believe are ready for a taste of professional training. These young people, in company with those selected in the other states, go on to attend a week of intensive work with theatre professionals, here in Canberra, leading to two performances on October 1 and 2 at Theatre 3. One of these performers will be selected as Young Shakespearean Artist of the Year, and will visit and study at Stratford-upon-Avon and The Globe Theatre in London.
Composer Tessa Keenan, designer Sarah la Brooy, and actors Caroline Pryor and Leah Kimball were the chosen four, though the judges had a difficult task distinguishing among the best 6 or 7.
Difficulties with administering the Festival and maintaining corporate sponsorships will not make the Shakespeare Globe Centre's task any easier in the future, but standards are rising if this year's performances are any guide.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 13 August 1999
1999: Six Actors in a Room by Lachlan Abrahams, Rohini Sharma, Estelle Muspratt
Six Actors in a Room. Written by Lachlan Abrahams, Rohini Sharma, Estelle Muspratt. The Acting Company directed by Estelle Muspratt. Currong Theatre Wed - Sat until August 2, 1999. 8pm.
Jean-Louis Barrault famously said "Theatre is Illusion". Estelle Muspratt et al say "Theatre is Bullshit". Though one experienced director on opening night laughed throughout this satire - in company with the many other doyens of theatre present - she was overheard expressing heartfelt nervousness about how she might be greeted in her next rehearsal. Could she even say "Please find your own space" without a howl of merriment!
An admitted first draft, Six Actors shows promise. It is certainly very funny, except for the finale on video which would have been better done live. It is a confident piece written by Canberra's theatrical young turks - and theatre in our town will only mature through such satirical self-examination. It is very well acted by the whole ensemble, though I think I should give special mention to Tim Wood's Earnest Mutton, born and bred in Albury and afraid his father will send him back - maybe to (pause) Wodonga. When Earnest takes control, sparks really fly.
But there's lots more to do with this script. It's been written and workshopped by a committee, and the humps show. The references to Pirandello, Brecht, Stanislawski, Bell Shakespeare, and rehearsal techniques like finding the lion within yourself, need development - satirical, of course - to a point where the absurdity of theatrical hypocrisy turns to face us with the stark quality of the child's death in Six Characters in Search of an Author, or the horror of Mother Courage's final song.
The fictional Barely Coping Theatre Company is forced to work without funding, just like the real Acting Company (though Muspratt's residency at The Currong and the support especially of The Jigsaw Company must not be forgotten). Exposing the black quality of this situation - of the ridiculous position in which professional theatre, and the arts in general, are left dangling on jangled nerve strings by socially immature governments - is what needs fuller development in this script. Then, ironically, the Australia Council might come to the party and we can all celebrate.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Jean-Louis Barrault famously said "Theatre is Illusion". Estelle Muspratt et al say "Theatre is Bullshit". Though one experienced director on opening night laughed throughout this satire - in company with the many other doyens of theatre present - she was overheard expressing heartfelt nervousness about how she might be greeted in her next rehearsal. Could she even say "Please find your own space" without a howl of merriment!
An admitted first draft, Six Actors shows promise. It is certainly very funny, except for the finale on video which would have been better done live. It is a confident piece written by Canberra's theatrical young turks - and theatre in our town will only mature through such satirical self-examination. It is very well acted by the whole ensemble, though I think I should give special mention to Tim Wood's Earnest Mutton, born and bred in Albury and afraid his father will send him back - maybe to (pause) Wodonga. When Earnest takes control, sparks really fly.
But there's lots more to do with this script. It's been written and workshopped by a committee, and the humps show. The references to Pirandello, Brecht, Stanislawski, Bell Shakespeare, and rehearsal techniques like finding the lion within yourself, need development - satirical, of course - to a point where the absurdity of theatrical hypocrisy turns to face us with the stark quality of the child's death in Six Characters in Search of an Author, or the horror of Mother Courage's final song.
The fictional Barely Coping Theatre Company is forced to work without funding, just like the real Acting Company (though Muspratt's residency at The Currong and the support especially of The Jigsaw Company must not be forgotten). Exposing the black quality of this situation - of the ridiculous position in which professional theatre, and the arts in general, are left dangling on jangled nerve strings by socially immature governments - is what needs fuller development in this script. Then, ironically, the Australia Council might come to the party and we can all celebrate.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 21 March 1999
1999: Rhythms of Mother Earth - Classical Indian and Contemporary Dance
Rhythms of Mother Earth - Classical Indian and Contemporary Dance presented by the Australian Tamil Foundation Canberra for Canberra National Multicultural Festival. ANU Arts Centre March 20, 1999.
The ATFC has done multiculturalism, the Indian community and the broader Australian community a valuable service in asking three companies to make dances in response to the theme Rhythms of Mother Earth. A new blending of classical Indian and contemporary styles was presented, as migrants from India and SE Asia come to terms with the Australian landscape while descendants of European migrants discover the power of the Indian dance language.
Bharatam Dance Company (Melbourne) presented a strongly focussed Bhumanjali - Homage to Mother Earth, choreographed and performed by Thamilvanan Veshnu under the direction of Dr Chandrabhanu, who after 25 years has clearly established a major inspirational role. This work shows why. Beginning in classical style to represent the Earth as Goddess, and progressing through stages towards an international "modern" style, representing Earth as Mystery and finally as Destruction, the Hindu understanding of the universe is brought to bear on present-day reality. The mystery and beauty of Australia, evoked in a rhythmic soundscape of bird calls, does not survive in this tragic view.
Tara Rajkumar, researcher and teacher at Monash University - instrumental in reviving the softer Mohinattam classical dance style and popularising the more theatrical form of Kathakali - presented Natya Sudha Dance Company performers Nithya Gopu (as Kali, Mother of the Universe), Prathayana Chandrakumar (an excellent Kathakali drama of Bhima in the Forest) and Tatayana Pozar-Burgar with Nithya Gopu (a contemporary style view of woman as Prakrithi - cosmic energy that is infinite, positive and feminine). For me the classical forms were much more successful than the modern from this company.
From Sydney, Lingalayam Dance Company Director Anandavalli opened the evening with an impressive secular invocation to Bhumadevi - Mother Earth. Earth, Water, Fire and Wind were brought together in a Space full of vibrant energy.
Inspired by Anandavalli, Canberrans Jenny White presented her Orbital Fracture and Niki Shepherd her Resounding Rhythms. Both smoothly blended classical and modern forms: White's piece a clear and pure abstraction on the moment of decisive silence; Shepherd's solo a dramatic mix of Greek myth and Hindu expression. A satisfying and fascinating evening.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
The ATFC has done multiculturalism, the Indian community and the broader Australian community a valuable service in asking three companies to make dances in response to the theme Rhythms of Mother Earth. A new blending of classical Indian and contemporary styles was presented, as migrants from India and SE Asia come to terms with the Australian landscape while descendants of European migrants discover the power of the Indian dance language.
Bharatam Dance Company (Melbourne) presented a strongly focussed Bhumanjali - Homage to Mother Earth, choreographed and performed by Thamilvanan Veshnu under the direction of Dr Chandrabhanu, who after 25 years has clearly established a major inspirational role. This work shows why. Beginning in classical style to represent the Earth as Goddess, and progressing through stages towards an international "modern" style, representing Earth as Mystery and finally as Destruction, the Hindu understanding of the universe is brought to bear on present-day reality. The mystery and beauty of Australia, evoked in a rhythmic soundscape of bird calls, does not survive in this tragic view.
Tara Rajkumar, researcher and teacher at Monash University - instrumental in reviving the softer Mohinattam classical dance style and popularising the more theatrical form of Kathakali - presented Natya Sudha Dance Company performers Nithya Gopu (as Kali, Mother of the Universe), Prathayana Chandrakumar (an excellent Kathakali drama of Bhima in the Forest) and Tatayana Pozar-Burgar with Nithya Gopu (a contemporary style view of woman as Prakrithi - cosmic energy that is infinite, positive and feminine). For me the classical forms were much more successful than the modern from this company.
From Sydney, Lingalayam Dance Company Director Anandavalli opened the evening with an impressive secular invocation to Bhumadevi - Mother Earth. Earth, Water, Fire and Wind were brought together in a Space full of vibrant energy.
Inspired by Anandavalli, Canberrans Jenny White presented her Orbital Fracture and Niki Shepherd her Resounding Rhythms. Both smoothly blended classical and modern forms: White's piece a clear and pure abstraction on the moment of decisive silence; Shepherd's solo a dramatic mix of Greek myth and Hindu expression. A satisfying and fascinating evening.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 19 March 1999
1999: Dormez, Je Le Veux by Georges Feydeau
Dormez, Je Le Veux by Georges Feydeau. Melbourne French Theatre directed by Michael Bula at Belconnen Community Centre. March 19, 1999, 8pm and 20 at 2pm.
La Francophonie is an association of 48 French-speaking countries from 5 continents - from Belgium to Vietnam, Nigeria to Canada, Egypt to France itself. For World Francophonie Day, as part of Canberra National Multicultural Festival, Feydeau's Belle-Epoque farce was an interesting choice.
Michael Bula's direction, and performance of man-about-town Boriquet, showed class befitting the French mime tradition and its historical links to commedia dell'arte. Clearly everyone in the cast - with special mention of the two valets, Justin (Eddy Fatha) and the Belgian accented Eloi (Dominique Gibert) - understood the style and played it for all their worth. It's a pity that there could be only 2 performances in Canberra.
Indeed, I'd go again to see Frederique Fouche, as Boriquet's sister Francine, playing Carmen under hypnosis, with her brother - also hypnotised -acting as a monkey. No wonder Dr Valencourt (Nicholas Panayotis) and his daughter Emilienne (Catherine Pierce) thought them mad, until the Doctor realised that Justin was the hypnotist - and so it was safe for Emilienne to marry Boriquet after all.
It was also appropriate to humiliate Justin by making him say, under hypnosis, "Je suis miserable". In a final twist of farce, Justin was only pretending to be hypnotised: after the upper class people have exited, he raises his fists to declare with great pride, "Je suis miserable". From Bula's notes about giving the play "bite" and emphasising the socio-political context, I guess this is a reference to Hugo and Les Miserables. The problem is that this servant is actually celebrating his continued employment as a servant: Feydeau confirmed the upper classes in their rightful place - no emancipation here.
Feydeau's essential conservatism, clothed in such good humour, makes an interesting comment not just on French society of the fin de (last) siecle but on La Francophonie at the end of this century: not all the old colonies have quite risen to full independence, and it was a bitter struggle for many who have.
Melbourne French Theatre have presented Anhouilh and Sartre in Canberra before: this production reminds us of the diversity within French culture. An interesting choice.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
La Francophonie is an association of 48 French-speaking countries from 5 continents - from Belgium to Vietnam, Nigeria to Canada, Egypt to France itself. For World Francophonie Day, as part of Canberra National Multicultural Festival, Feydeau's Belle-Epoque farce was an interesting choice.
Michael Bula's direction, and performance of man-about-town Boriquet, showed class befitting the French mime tradition and its historical links to commedia dell'arte. Clearly everyone in the cast - with special mention of the two valets, Justin (Eddy Fatha) and the Belgian accented Eloi (Dominique Gibert) - understood the style and played it for all their worth. It's a pity that there could be only 2 performances in Canberra.
Indeed, I'd go again to see Frederique Fouche, as Boriquet's sister Francine, playing Carmen under hypnosis, with her brother - also hypnotised -acting as a monkey. No wonder Dr Valencourt (Nicholas Panayotis) and his daughter Emilienne (Catherine Pierce) thought them mad, until the Doctor realised that Justin was the hypnotist - and so it was safe for Emilienne to marry Boriquet after all.
It was also appropriate to humiliate Justin by making him say, under hypnosis, "Je suis miserable". In a final twist of farce, Justin was only pretending to be hypnotised: after the upper class people have exited, he raises his fists to declare with great pride, "Je suis miserable". From Bula's notes about giving the play "bite" and emphasising the socio-political context, I guess this is a reference to Hugo and Les Miserables. The problem is that this servant is actually celebrating his continued employment as a servant: Feydeau confirmed the upper classes in their rightful place - no emancipation here.
Feydeau's essential conservatism, clothed in such good humour, makes an interesting comment not just on French society of the fin de (last) siecle but on La Francophonie at the end of this century: not all the old colonies have quite risen to full independence, and it was a bitter struggle for many who have.
Melbourne French Theatre have presented Anhouilh and Sartre in Canberra before: this production reminds us of the diversity within French culture. An interesting choice.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 17 March 1999
1999: What Do They Call Me? by Eva Johnson
What Do They Call Me? by Eva Johnson. Canice Productions: performed and directed by Marie Andrews. National Multicultural Festival at The Street Theatre Studio 7.30pm March 17-20, 1999..
It is a great joy and privilege to experience a writer and performer at one with their traditions, their style, their themes and their audience. Make sure you don't miss this short, significant piece of theatre.
Marie Andrews, a Bardi woman and lawyer from Broome, is surely a Kimberley diamond, reflecting brilliantly the three characters of the mother Connie and her two daughters: Regina, taken by "Welfare" and brought up in a middle-class foster family; and Alison, both proud of her Aboriginality and her self-determined role as a lesbian activist.
Connie is in jail on trumped up charges of "abusing the language" - "Can't even swear in my own country," she says. Regina cannot hate her white "mother" who can't accept that her properly married "daughter" finds after 30 years that she must meet and identify with her real mother Connie. Alison, a sophisticated naif, works her intelligence to maintain her relationship with white feminist Sara, while bravely facing her mother with the truth of her sexual orientation.
Eva Johnson, the Malak Malak woman from Daly Waters whom many of us may remember performing in Women of the Sun, has turned playwright and teaches drama in Adelaide. What Do They Call Me? is 10 years old, written before the Stolen Generation report. It is partly autobiographical, and uses the ancient storytelling form with minimal but absolutely effective costume and light changes. Andrews, who was Company Manager for the tour in 1994 of her cousin Jimmy Chi's Bran Nue Day, is entirely at home as director and performer - and as herself in an open forum with the audience to finish the evening.
"I see this as a healing process between indigenous and white people, and hope that we can move forward as a whole people," says Andrews. Canice Cox, whose mother was Aboriginal and father was the white policeman at Fitzroy Crossing, and who married Japanese pearl diver James Ishiguchi, was Andrews' adoptive grandmother. Her name is honoured in Canice Productions. She believes it's this multicultural Kimberley history which fires creativity not to be missed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
It is a great joy and privilege to experience a writer and performer at one with their traditions, their style, their themes and their audience. Make sure you don't miss this short, significant piece of theatre.
Marie Andrews, a Bardi woman and lawyer from Broome, is surely a Kimberley diamond, reflecting brilliantly the three characters of the mother Connie and her two daughters: Regina, taken by "Welfare" and brought up in a middle-class foster family; and Alison, both proud of her Aboriginality and her self-determined role as a lesbian activist.
Connie is in jail on trumped up charges of "abusing the language" - "Can't even swear in my own country," she says. Regina cannot hate her white "mother" who can't accept that her properly married "daughter" finds after 30 years that she must meet and identify with her real mother Connie. Alison, a sophisticated naif, works her intelligence to maintain her relationship with white feminist Sara, while bravely facing her mother with the truth of her sexual orientation.
Eva Johnson, the Malak Malak woman from Daly Waters whom many of us may remember performing in Women of the Sun, has turned playwright and teaches drama in Adelaide. What Do They Call Me? is 10 years old, written before the Stolen Generation report. It is partly autobiographical, and uses the ancient storytelling form with minimal but absolutely effective costume and light changes. Andrews, who was Company Manager for the tour in 1994 of her cousin Jimmy Chi's Bran Nue Day, is entirely at home as director and performer - and as herself in an open forum with the audience to finish the evening.
"I see this as a healing process between indigenous and white people, and hope that we can move forward as a whole people," says Andrews. Canice Cox, whose mother was Aboriginal and father was the white policeman at Fitzroy Crossing, and who married Japanese pearl diver James Ishiguchi, was Andrews' adoptive grandmother. Her name is honoured in Canice Productions. She believes it's this multicultural Kimberley history which fires creativity not to be missed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 10 March 1999
1999: Grushenka adapted by Rodney Fisher
Grushenka adapted by Rodney Fisher from F.Dostoyevski's novel The Brothers Karamazov. Kropka Theatre: solo performer Jolanta Juszkiewicz directed by Rodney Fisher. Canberra National Multicultural Festival at The Street Theatre Studio March 10-13, 1999, 7.30pm.
In this brief 30 minute etude polonaise, Polish actress Jolanta Juszkiewicz plays on the white keys of anger and the black keys of despair with equal precision, but I found that Rodney Fisher's attempt to encapsulate Dostoyevski's character Grushenka fails to match the drama of a Chopin study.
Without the full context of the novel and without Dostoyevski's objective slightly sardonic authorial tone, this snippet of Grushenka's conflicted feelings as she waits to face again the man who has seduced her - Does she love him? Or might she kill him? - leaves not only her situation unresolved, but ours in the audience as well. We wanted to thank the performer for her undoubtedly sincere and skilful effort, yet hesitated because the script did not give us a frame for clearly understanding the picture of this woman.
If Chopin's etudes are complete within themselves, then this script seems to need an image of Dostoyevski watching his misogynist creation with the contempt that one imagines he had for his real-life admirer Apollinaria Suslova, who refused to accept that "Women have but one calling in life - to be housewives and mothers." This would give us a context within which we could see the relevance of presenting Grushenka. Reading matter in the program cannot replace the necessary theatrical device.
Mind you, the crowd in The Street foyer waiting to go into the main theatre meant Juszkiewicz and her audience had to cope with considerable background noise - not conducive to such intimate theatre. The acting held me, nevertheless (but bright spotlights on the audience before and after the performance were a serious distraction). Re-read The Brothers Karamazov today, then go to see this meticulously presented character study by Kropka Theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
In this brief 30 minute etude polonaise, Polish actress Jolanta Juszkiewicz plays on the white keys of anger and the black keys of despair with equal precision, but I found that Rodney Fisher's attempt to encapsulate Dostoyevski's character Grushenka fails to match the drama of a Chopin study.
Without the full context of the novel and without Dostoyevski's objective slightly sardonic authorial tone, this snippet of Grushenka's conflicted feelings as she waits to face again the man who has seduced her - Does she love him? Or might she kill him? - leaves not only her situation unresolved, but ours in the audience as well. We wanted to thank the performer for her undoubtedly sincere and skilful effort, yet hesitated because the script did not give us a frame for clearly understanding the picture of this woman.
If Chopin's etudes are complete within themselves, then this script seems to need an image of Dostoyevski watching his misogynist creation with the contempt that one imagines he had for his real-life admirer Apollinaria Suslova, who refused to accept that "Women have but one calling in life - to be housewives and mothers." This would give us a context within which we could see the relevance of presenting Grushenka. Reading matter in the program cannot replace the necessary theatrical device.
Mind you, the crowd in The Street foyer waiting to go into the main theatre meant Juszkiewicz and her audience had to cope with considerable background noise - not conducive to such intimate theatre. The acting held me, nevertheless (but bright spotlights on the audience before and after the performance were a serious distraction). Re-read The Brothers Karamazov today, then go to see this meticulously presented character study by Kropka Theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 6 March 1999
1999: Time of My Life by Alan Ayckbourn
Time of My Life by Alan Ayckbourn. Canberra Repertory directed by Corille Fraser at Theatre 3, March 5-27, 1999, Wed to Sat 8pm.
This is English middle class comedy about upward and downward mobility hung on a hallstand peg, next to the wet mackintoshes, labelled "Let's make fun of marriage." And, it is true, several members of the opening night glitterati recognised certain infidelities, brazen affairs, new-found boldness and admissions of failure among the usual Ayckbourn misunderstandings, some drunkenness and chucking up, financial mismanagement, lateness for lunch and several dogs, generally linked together by a series of incomprehensibly funny foreign (i.e. not British) waiters.
I'm going to have to praise all three men - Ian Carcary(Gerry, the father), Duncan Ley (elder son Glyn) and Luke Cutting (younger son Adam) - for effectively playing the straight men for the even more praiseworthy women - Jenny Ongley-Houston (Laura, the mother), Melissa Planten (Stephanie, married to Glyn) and Fiona Gregory (not married to Adam). Though the first act took some warming up on opening night, the second moved along with the women's development as characters.
And the five waiters played by David Bennett, Bevan Tiddent, Teddi van Bent, Dettev Bandin and Dave Tendbint deserve mention not only for their accents, but their romantic singing and rhythmic dance, and silver service hospitality.
Don't expect anything deep from Ayckbourn. His couple of attempts at pathos drown somewhere in a watery bathysphere. But at least his is a well-made play which starts in the middle, stretches out in opposite directions and ends where it began. And though one unnamable critic claimed that he slept through the first half, and one woman driver left her several passengers to find their own way home after interval, most of the audience laughed at lots of deliberately exaggerated severely prejudicial attitudes - including me.
Of course, it would be condescending of me to say that this is the sort of play that Repertory ought to be doing - since none of the professionals would touch it - but surely there has to be a place for a relaxing insignificant night of laughter after a hard and serious day's work in academia, consultancy and politics. Bob McMullan thought so - I saw him there - so why shouldn't you?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is English middle class comedy about upward and downward mobility hung on a hallstand peg, next to the wet mackintoshes, labelled "Let's make fun of marriage." And, it is true, several members of the opening night glitterati recognised certain infidelities, brazen affairs, new-found boldness and admissions of failure among the usual Ayckbourn misunderstandings, some drunkenness and chucking up, financial mismanagement, lateness for lunch and several dogs, generally linked together by a series of incomprehensibly funny foreign (i.e. not British) waiters.
I'm going to have to praise all three men - Ian Carcary(Gerry, the father), Duncan Ley (elder son Glyn) and Luke Cutting (younger son Adam) - for effectively playing the straight men for the even more praiseworthy women - Jenny Ongley-Houston (Laura, the mother), Melissa Planten (Stephanie, married to Glyn) and Fiona Gregory (not married to Adam). Though the first act took some warming up on opening night, the second moved along with the women's development as characters.
And the five waiters played by David Bennett, Bevan Tiddent, Teddi van Bent, Dettev Bandin and Dave Tendbint deserve mention not only for their accents, but their romantic singing and rhythmic dance, and silver service hospitality.
Don't expect anything deep from Ayckbourn. His couple of attempts at pathos drown somewhere in a watery bathysphere. But at least his is a well-made play which starts in the middle, stretches out in opposite directions and ends where it began. And though one unnamable critic claimed that he slept through the first half, and one woman driver left her several passengers to find their own way home after interval, most of the audience laughed at lots of deliberately exaggerated severely prejudicial attitudes - including me.
Of course, it would be condescending of me to say that this is the sort of play that Repertory ought to be doing - since none of the professionals would touch it - but surely there has to be a place for a relaxing insignificant night of laughter after a hard and serious day's work in academia, consultancy and politics. Bob McMullan thought so - I saw him there - so why shouldn't you?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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