2016: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht, trans. by George Tabori.  Daramalan Theatre Company at McCowage Hall, Daramalan College, October 12-15, 2016.

Directed and designed by Joe Woodward; Musical director – Damien Foley; Choreography by Miri Slater.

Original music by Damien Foley, Christopher Walsh and Bartholomew Bunk; Costumes, masks and set pieces by Joanna Howard.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 12

Joe Woodward is the head Drama teacher at Daramalan College, a Years 7-12 Roman Catholic co-educational secondary school in Canberra.

Government secondary schools in Canberra are separated into High Schools to the end of Year 10 and Secondary Colleges for Years 11-12, leading to the Year 12 Certificate at Accredited level or matriculation at Tertiary Accredited level.  Non-Government schools, though generally retaining their Year 11-12 students in the same school as their 7-10 students, provide Accredited and Tertiary Accredited programs after Year 10.

In keeping with the approach taken in other Secondary Colleges in Canberra, stage productions are mounted in a theatre company model as an education device to teach an understanding of how professional theatre works, especially (but not only) for those students who aim to become arts practitioners in their adult lives.

To provide a context for this review, this is Woodward’s description of Daramalan’s approach:

The Daramalan Theatre Company was formed in 1998 to give a professional structure to the theatrical performances presented by Daramalan College students and staff. It acknowledges Daramalan’s very fine prior record in the Performing Arts while developing a formal rationale for the development and presentation of theatre.

The Company explores theatrical processes and subject matter of particular relevance for younger people, the Daramalan community and the wider society. Its program varies from group devised productions, classic and contemporary scripts, in-house scripted works and musicals. Each production is given a fresh treatment that will be of benefit to the participants and audiences. The range of productions is illustrated by the devised joint production of “Installation Ark” presented with the Visual Arts Department (2013), Disney’s The Little Mermaid Jr (2014), Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew (2014) and CLONE (2015).

The chosen themes are often spiritual in nature while acknowledging the contemporary reality of contemporary experience: ennui, rampant materialism, the abandonment of spiritual values, the reduction of life and existence to commodities, the havoc caused by drugs and addictions, the growing violence between competing belief systems. Focusing on these issues gives greater leverage and support to curricula and pastoral care programs offered within the school. It also gives the wider community a focus for artistic relevance for everyday existence.

In presenting Brecht, in a design very much in the tradition of expressionism and using documentary film (much as Erwin Piscator, Brecht’s early mentor, had done from the mid-1920s), Woodward has given his students and their audience a clear picture of the parallels between the rise of Ui’s control of the fictional cauliflower market in Chicago and the next door town of Cicero and the real history of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and Austria in 1933, as well as how to perform in this style.

In the final slides, Hitler’s image is replaced by many others since that time, from Stalin, through Pol Pot, even unto Donald Trump.  Woodward succeeds very well in developing his program note, Whatever one thinks of Brecht’s politics and personality, there is no doubting that Brecht’s theatrical concepts and approaches have advanced theatre’s potential for challenging stereotypes and for linking art with serious trends in society and culture.

To quote one student’s response to their work with the Daramalan staff: “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” is a bold statement.  It’s a statement saying that, I individually, as well as us (as a cast), will not stand for tyranny and dictatorship in our world.  We will not stand for the egomaniac demagogue.  As the Barker says: “Great Murderers, and that’s a well-known fact, still do command from us too much respect”.  So we are taking away that respect.  We’re unveiling these monsters for who they truly are.  All of my characters [The Barker, The Old Actor, The Pastor, Gun Man, Court Physician, Ensemble Member] are quite comical, and I believe that comedy is the best platform to make fun of a demagogue as it demolishes the fear and respect we have for them as people.  So, here’s the show to end all gangsters shows.  Enjoy it folks, before the siren blows... (Oliver Durbidge)

I couldn’t say it better.





© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Boys in the Band by David Malek and Dale Burridge

Boys in the Band by David Malek and Dale Burridge.  Produced by SMA Productions at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, October 13-15, 2016.

Performers: Mat Verevis, Simon McLachlan, Nana Matapule and Tom Struik.
Band: The Players

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 13

At first I thought I was not appropriately qualified to judge the quality of these four singers’ performances of songs by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, The Beatles, Jackson 5, Bee Gees, Righteous Bros, Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, Take That, Human Nature, and Backstreet Boys, ranging from the 1950s to the 1990s.  I’ve been around all that time and more, but this kind of pop music in concert was never my ‘thing’.  The point of presenting the show was made, though, since I recognised quite a large proportion of the songs which I must have absorbed by osmosis. 

Then I realised that Boys in the Band is a scripted piece of theatre, not just four guys singing for our enjoyment.  The banter between themselves and with us in the audience was memorised dialogue with a little improvisation.  Each set of songs from each decade included some interspersed history.  After the 1980s, the show was apparently going to finish, but the performers reappeared as if in response to our applause to offer more – the 1990s.  When that ended, it seemed to be the end, but then they appeared again, asking if we wanted more.  Cynically working the crowd, I would call it.

They then performed The Beatles’ Imagine and Let It Be as a finale of significant work – which to my mind proved that Lennon and McCartney were the masters of social conscience, beyond even Simon and Garfunkel, and well beyond most of the others from Smoke Gets In Your Eyes to You Should be Dancing.  And it was interesting to note that the Beach Boys never surfed.

This realisation meant I can make some comments on the technical aspects and the dramatic nature of the ‘play’.

I had the impression that there had not been much in the way of tech rehearsal.  Lighting was a bit erratic throughout the show, especially fixed spots and follow spot.  But I was more concerned in the first half that the audio balance between the band and the singers’ mikes meant that the voices were drowned – yet to hear them sing was the main reason we were there.  I guess somebody got to work in the bio-box over interval, because this problem was much improved in the second half.

Then I had to conclude that the purpose of the show was not made out.  If our focus was to be on the musical skills of the singers (and band) in a concert, then that could be sufficient in itself for a satisfying night in the theatre.  And the singers were good enough to do this, I think, even if they couldn’t match the original No 1’s, while the band was also up to the mark.

On the other hand, if we were meant to come to a new understanding of the qualities and value of the boys in their bands over those five decades, then the rather banal banter and tricks to make us laugh or think the show was ended were cheap distractions from what could have been a strong story of this element of popular culture.  As the impressive finale of the Beatles’ songs proved, and the different feeling behind the 1990s songs compared with those of previous decades suggested, this quite entertaining but otherwise rather shallow show could be made into a drama of considerable depth.

On the third hand, perhaps the show could have been a fun-spoof of this kind of show.  The tightly choreographed synchronised movements (not exactly but almost dance) that the Boys displayed were funny at the beginning, but gradually became rather ho-hum, even though I recognised that each song from a different original group had its own dance routine.  If this aspect of the show had been worked up to, for example, become more and more extreme as the decades rolled by, including the ‘now we’re going, now we’re not’ comic business, the show could have become a gentle satire of all the Boys in their Bands, until a contrasting selection of important songs as a finale to show the worthwhile impact of this tradition.

So, though I enjoyed the performances by these Boys, I think an opportunity has been missed drama-wise.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Henry Five written by James Scott and William Shakespeare

Henry Five written by James Scott and William Shakespeare.  Honest Puck Theatre Company at CADA Theatre, 1/9 Lithgow St, Fyshwick, October 7-16, 2016.

Directed by James Scott; Sound and Lighting by James Scott; Original Music by Annie Liana Scott.

Cast: Brendan Kelly (Peter Figg/Westmoreland/Bedford); James Scott (Nick Topp/Henry); Katherine Berry (Hermione/Katherine/Exeter); Annie Liana Scott (Paris/Montjoy/Alice); Scott Bowcher (Tom/The Dauphin/Archbishop)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 7

A bit of a theatrical oddity, this Henry Five is essentially a demonstration of the theatre training courses offered by CADA – Canberra Academy of Dramatic Art – which is a privately owned registered VET (Vocational Education and Training) organisation.  James Scott and his wife Elizabeth Avery Scott saw a gap in Canberra between the Drama courses offered in the secondary school and university programs, and after some years’ operation currently employ some 18 theatre, film and TV professionals as teachers of 600 students, 65 of whom are enrolled in accredited programs and the rest in classes for children and young people or adults' leisure programs .

Honest Puck Theatre Company puts graduated or near-graduation students on show as they seek to move on into professional employment following their training covering subjects such as Vocal Arts, Into the Space, Actor-to-Actor, Character from Text, On Screen, On Stage, The Audition: Keys to Success and The Actor: Then and Now, which make up the course 10197 National Certificate IV in Acting for Stage and Screen. 

Or they may have taken Cert IV in Musical Theatre, or a Diploma of Musical Theatre, or an Advanced Diploma of Performance as Brendan Kelly, Scott Bowcher and Katherine Berry have done.

So Henry Five has been put together by Head of Studies James Scott around a story of Figg and Topp’s attempt to succeed in a local Shakespeare Festival, presenting Henry V, after their previous disastrous attempt at Coriolanus five years ago.  Topp prefers to drink himself into oblivion than face up to Figg’s insistence they carry on with no money, sets or props; Paris is from Berlin and doesn’t speak the French needed for Henry V despite Figg’s assumption from her name that she would; Hermione has arrived under orders from a magistrate to redeem herself from a life of petty crime; while Tom is suspiciously from a rival theatre group, where in fact he has become disaffected and is now committed to Figg.

Scott’s writing is cleverly done, highly reminiscent of the ‘rude mechanicals’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Figg’s role as a sort-of Peter Quince and Topp nodding towards Bottom the Weaver.  Despite the present day setting, lines subtly remind us of Shakespeare’s stress patterns, rhymes and famous phrases.  I imagine the often quite ludicrous Figg and Topp scenes might have happened in preparations for the summer Thredbo Ski Resort Shakespeare Festival which I remember reviewing some years ago.  Here, of course, Scott has provided his cast with the opportunity to play something like those English village television comedies like the Vicar of Dibley.

But then the severe trimming and reworking of Henry V for five actors is well done.  Scott as Topp takes the lead in playing Henry, and provides a model for his less experienced colleagues in his careful strong characterisation of this king with a genuine conscience, yet in a position where it is essential, because he is king, that he must win the day.  In some 50 minutes, we get the essence of Shakespeare’s artistry and social philosophy, through very effective sound effects, use of ‘presentational style’ in speeches directly to the audience, and particularly in the relationship set up between Henry and the French spokesman Montjoy, played with precise characterisation by Annie Liana Scott.

It turns out that Annie, as Princess Katherine’s maid, speaks French rather well, and Katherine Berry is highly adaptable in swapping from the raffish petty thief Hermione, through her roles as a soldier in battle, to a quite delightful scene as the Princess trying to learn to speak English.  It may be Shakespeare rather than James Scott who made it difficult to seriously accept Henry’s demand for marriage to Katherine as essential to the French submission to England while he also claims he loves her, and she is supposed to return his affection.

Of the men, I thought Brendan Kelly needed more variety of tone as Figg, while he handled the Shakespeare roles well; but in some contrast, I thought Scott Bowcher played the modern character Tom nicely, but his clarity of diction and phrasing needed improving for the Shakespeare.

So, though I wouldn’t see this production as entirely up to the full professional standard that I’ve seen recently in Sydney (see my reviews this year on this blog), it is entertaining and has elements of an effective presentation of Shakespeare which makes it very worthwhile for young people to see especially if they are seeking to understand what they would need to learn to do as prospective theatre students.






© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Remembering Pirates by Christopher Harley

Remembering Pirates by Christopher Harley.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Theatre, Sydney, September 16 – October 16, 2016.

Directed by Iain Sinclair
Q&A Author and Cast

Designers: Production – Alicia Clements; Lighting – Daniel Barber; Sound – Katelyn Shaw; Composer – Nate Edmondson

Cast:  Robert Alexander (Mr Darling); Fraser Crane (Peter); Emma Palmer (Wendy); Simon London (John); Stephen Multari (Richard)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 2

When is a play complete?  Darlinghurst Theatre Company is proud – as it should be – to focus on presenting new writing, such as  Remembering Pirates.  In the Q&A session after the performance I saw, there was much discussion about the development and rehearsal process, and the fact that major changes were made shortly before the season opened, and minor changes continued well into the run – and maybe there are still more to come.

My role as critic, of course, is to report on the performance I saw.  Usually I’m inclined not to report too much about the plot of a new play, to retain the surprise element at least for the first-run audiences.  But sometimes I see the need to distinguish between the quality of the production and that of the writing to explain my response on the night.

The great strength of the show was in the directing, the designing and the acting.  The cast is listed in the program without naming their individual roles, so it may be unfair to say that I was very impressed by all the performers, but most impressed by Emma Palmer as Wendy (whose off-stage photo I am sure of).

The set design with its wind-blown shadows behind the window’s curtains was genuinely magical.  Like the characters, I found myself obsessed with thinking there were figures out there – until there really was one.  With eerie lighting, sound effects, and thunder and lightning, dramatic tension built – until the whole wall and window finally came crashing down in a symbolic collapse of childhood memory into harsh adult reality.

This is where the plot comes in.  In J M Barrie’s Peter Pan story, which over the past century has become ingrained into the minds at least of English-speaking children around the world, the children of the Darling family – the sensible Wendy and her two much younger brothers, the elder John and the younger Michael – escape the confines of their bedroom by flying through the window to the treetops at the instigation of a sort of fairy, Peter – the boy who never grows up.  High up in the tree, they are attacked by pirates.  One might wonder about Barrie’s state of mind when writing this story for children, but his imagination has shone through the generations.

These children are fictional, of course, but what if we were to imagine them as grown-ups.  And what about Mr Darling, when his children are in their thirties?  Christopher Harley wonders what they would remember, and reveals a story of what ‘really’ happened.  Though I have some doubts about the psychological truths of his story – which is why I need to tell you about it – the play raises an important question.  How reliable are any of our memories, and are we actually out of our minds when we feel we would like to go back to a previous time when things were ‘better’?

From a political point of view, I think about conservatives who seem to want to take us all back to the 1950s, for example.  And get themselves elected to parliament, what’s more.

In Harley’s play we find out little about Mrs Darling who I presume has died, but Mr Darling is now in a dementia unit, regularly rattling at the door and looking out the window.  Radio news voice-overs are about a missing boy, and Mr Darling seems to want to get out to search for him.  Wendy has brought him slippers, but he insists on waving them about, making demented semaphore signals.  She cannot calm him down, but when John visits he accepts his father’s delusions – and his father loves him, but not his daughter who wants him to recognise normal reality.

John has become a history teacher, rather mysteriously considering his peculiar behaviour: seeking out other men, but undermining any hope of establishing a long-term relationship by complaining when they make a move in his direction.  He sees Wendy’s attempts to help him as trying to mother him, as she did when he was young; yet he insists on staying overnight in the original Darling family home, where she now lives with her husband Richard.  John has his own house to go to; Richard is not impressed by John’s interference.

John still believes that Michael and he did fly.  How he became a teacher, I’d love to know.  But there’s more to the story.

Richard, for some reason with no explanation, has a loaded pistol in the house, with which he scares Wendy (and us) nearly ‘out of our skins’ (an expression used often by old Mr Darling).  When the pistol reappears in John’s possession later, we realise its presence is a simple device by the author to create expectations of disastrous events to come.  But why should John come close to suicide?

The back story is that when John and Michael had flown up in the tree and the pirates were attacking, John had pushed Michael off the branch, telling him to fly and get help (presumably from Peter Pan).  Wendy, on the ground under the real tree, saw the push, saw Michael fall to his death, dragged his body into the lake because she didn’t know (as a child) what else to do, lied to John that she had seen Michael fly, and kept her secret not only through the four months’ police search for Michael but even until the point in the play when her relationship with Richard is under stress from John’s behaviour.

John still believes that Michael is simply missing because he flew away.  Wendy’s now telling him the truth, including that she lied to him to protect him (as a child) from seeing the death of his brother, takes him to the original bedroom in the family home with the gun to kill himself.  At the last – very long moment – before he pulls the trigger, an apparently real boy bursts through the window.  John believes it to be Peter, who wants John to fly with him to Michael, except that Peter sees John’s eyes no longer are bright as in childhood.  He is an adult now, and can no longer fly.  As Peter goes to leave through the window, John shoots him.

In the final scene, Wendy and Richard say that John has shot a real boy – but no-one explains how he could have got to a 3rd storey window.  Then the whole wall crashes down over John who remains standing in the space which had been the window as the stage lights go down.

I can understand Mr Darling’s descending into dementia and being deluded about finding his long-lost son Michael (I’ve seen this kind of delusion in my real life), but I think the extended belief in flying in John is unlikely, unless he actually had some form of schizoid psychosis.  To suggest, as the play seems to, that the Peter Pan story, like belief in Father Christmas, might not be amenable to a more realistic understanding as children grow up, is a bit far-fetched.

So in the end I found that though there is a logic to the storyline, despite Richard’s unexplained gun and the unlikely claim that the Peter who came through the window was a real boy, the play turned out to be essentially a kind of murder mystery with Agatha Christie-like motivations. 

The idea of going back to an earlier happier time was certainly talked about, by Wendy and Richard as John’s behaviour became an intolerable interference in their current life.  It was also implicit in Mr Darling’s dementia: if he could find Michael everything would be all right again.  And the same is true for John.  But it is still a thought we might get from seeing the play, rather than one on which we focus while watching. 

So, though our one-time Canberran, the director Iain Sinclair could not be present for the Q&A, I can quote his thoughts about taking on this task:

The magic in Christopher Harley’s
writing is elusive but beautiful. When
you read the script dry, something
makes sense in your heart as you
are reading it then the moment you
disassemble it, it becomes impossible
to reassemble according to known
dramaturgical laws. He has a stage
language that is his own. The idea of
staging this script strikes me with an
equal measure of terror and fascination
– and that’s a good reason for any
director to put on a new play. It feels
like unknown territory and that’s the
most rewarding place for any artist.

http://www.darlinghursttheatre.com/pdf/dtc_online_program_remembering_pirates.pdf



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: The Drover’s Wife by Leah Purcell

Photo by Brett Boardman

The Drover’s Wife by Leah Purcell.  Belvoir in associastion with Oombarra Productions at Belvoir St Theatre, September 17 - October 16, 2016.

Directed by Leticia Cáceres
Designers: Set by Stephen Curtis; Costume by Tess Schofield; Lighting by Verity Hampson; Composer / Sound – THE SWEATS
Dramaturg – Anthea Williams
Movement – Scott Witt
Traditional Movement and Language Consultant / Spear Maker – Sean Choolburra

Cast: Leah Purcell – Drover’s Wife; Mark Coles Smith – Yadaka; Will McDonald – Danny; Benedict Hardie – Merchant / Leslie / McPharlen; Tony Cogin – McNealy / Parsen

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 1

It’s some time since I have been so directly affected by a play that I feel incompetent to make the conventional kind of critical judgement about the production.  The first occasion was when I was just 18.  Watching the first performance in Australia, with Frank Waters as Tyrone and Dinah Shearing as Mary Tyrone, of Long Day’s Journey Into Night was an awful experience in 1969 as I was drawn in to Eugene O’Neill’s self-destructing family. 

Conversations with the Dead by Richard Frankland, in August 2003, was a more recent play of this highly personal kind of response to life experience (my review is available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au ).  And now another, like Frankland’s coming from an Aboriginal writer, in Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife.

The title, of course, is of Henry Lawson’s perhaps most famous story, published in 1893, of which Leah Purcell writes: Like many Australians, I’ve grown up with this story and love it.  My mother would read or recite it to me, but before she got to that famous last line, I would stop her and say, ‘Mother, I won’t ever go a drovin’.

Purcell’s story starts from the lonely wife whose husband goes away droving sheep for months on end, leaving her in 1893 … Alpine country, southern New South Wales, but she incorporates into her version the experiences of her Aboriginal great grandfather.  So Lawson’s white drover’s wife waiting for the opportunity to shoot a snake discovers her own Aboriginal identity as Yadaka appears in her gun sights.  It seemed to me that the writing, the development, the rehearsing and finally her performing of this role is so close to Leah's self that I don’t want to interfere with her feelings, even though she has termed the result an “Australian western for the stage”, as if the American western gun-toting cowboy is from a genre suited to our bush way of life in the days when the wars against Aboriginals were real, although never acknowledged as such.

In any case Purcell’s story develops into a level of hard reality way beyond any Hollywood heroics, or even of Tarantino who she references in her Director’s Note.

All I can say is that Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife is a remarkable piece of theatre which, even this far in its run, was treated by the audience as a great community event, an expression not only of Leah’s personal work as an artist but also as a celebration of making Indigenous and women’s rights central in our history, and by implication in our present time.

Purcell’s words make her feelings clear:  A massive thank you to the Balnaves Foundation for the 2014 award I received to help bring this play to fruition.  I also want to thank Mr [Eamon] Flack for commissioning my play.  It was the first play he programmed as Artistic Director, allowing me to continue my 20 year working relationship as actor, writer and director for Belvoir St Theatre… It means a lot.  Such a lot.  Thank you.





© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Photo by Hon Boey

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare.  Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Opera House, September 12 – October 22, 2016.

Directed by Kip Williams.
Designers: Set by Robert Cousins; Costume by Alice Babidge; Lighting by Damien Cooper; Composer – Chris Williams; Sound by Nate Edmondson.

Cast: Paula Arundell (Hippolyta/Titania); Matthew Backer (Puck); Rob Collins (Lysander); Honey Debelle (Helena); Emma Harvie (Robin Starveling/Cobweb); Jay James-Moody (Francis Flute/Peaseblossom); Brandon McClelland (Demetrius); Josh McConville (Nick Bottom); Robert Menzies (Theseus/Oberon); Susan Prior (Peter Quince); Rose Riley (Hermia); Rahel Romahn (Snug/Moth); Bruce Spence (Egeus/Tom Snout/Mustard Seed).

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 1

Kip Williams, I’m sure, decided that anything Eddie Perfect could do, Kip could do perfecter.  If you thought as I did (on this blog 31st July 2016) that The Beast had the most extraordinarily funny ending to a first half ever, then Titania and Bottom (note the double meanings) are well up to the same mark in this version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Just bloody brilliant!  Literally.  Where Eddie had his cast totally bloodied before interval, Kip left us at that point with the Queen of the Fairies having a sexual encounter of a very interesting kind with the Bottom of an Ass, and saved the massive blood spatter for the deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe, creating the funniest ‘tragical comedy’ I could imagine.

On the serious side of critical commentary, this production makes clear – perhaps for the first time in several centuries (like the four since Shakespeare died) – why this unlikely story of sensible, tolerant government in the face of extreme authoritarianism remains a regular in the theatrical canon.  Shakespeare artfully parallels three tragical comedies:

     the egregious Egeus’ demand that he has absolute right over his daughter’s decision about who she loves and will marry in a story which becomes terribly frantic and therefore funny;

     the power struggle between the Fairy King and Queen over the changeling boy which also turns funny for a while but, to my mind, remains a tragedy of family conflict (which is also implied in the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta who are played with the same attitudes, by the same actors);

     and of course the story of the ‘rude mechanicals’, in which Bottom the weaver is tragically funny in his overbearing manner – but the success of their performance, which depends on him, makes for a happy community, which Theseus recognises (as he does in overriding Egeus' complaint) while Hyppolita is scathing about their silliness. 

But in the end what makes the play so worthwhile is Shakespeare explicitly explaining how it is the artist – and only the artist – who keeps the madness of the real world in perspective.  By reprising at the very end the scene where the lovers wake up in the forest after Oberon has got Puck to apply the potion correctly, Kip Williams has placed the focus on Shakespeare’s message.  Demetrius asks are we still asleep and dreaming, or are we awake and is this reality? 

Puck repeats the question in his final speech, asking us in the real audience to be his friends and give him applause.  In doing so, Shakespeare is playing out the ‘tragical comedy’ that I see around us every day, from the family violence game, through politicians playing games with same-sex marriage plebiscites, to the end-game of warfare in the name of religious belief or democratic freedom.

Or arts ministers undermining artists in the name of ‘excellence’.

I think the clarity of purpose in this production has been carried through in the stage design, lighting and use of music, making all these elements into an integrated artistic work.  Shakespeare might be surprised at some modern devices, like the smart phone which answers a crucial question, or Puck singing ‘Summertime, and the living is easy…’, but I’m sure Shakespeare would be pleased that what he hoped to do for his audience in the days of the Queen’s lover being executed among all the other excruciating behaviours of his times, has been faithfully translated for our modern yet still so unchanging times.  This is Shakespeare, the artist of great intellect.

And speaking of unchanging times, amongst all the terrrific performances, it was great to see Bruce Spence, after all these years since his oyster-up-the-nose trick in that early David Williamson play, Stork, glorying in playing the most marvellous Wall with chinks in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This production is a real dream, and not be missed.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Mother by Daniel Keene

Mother by Daniel Keene.  Presented by If Theatre and Regional Arts Victoria at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, Tuesday September 27 to Saturday October 1, 2016.

Directed by Matt Scholten; Set, Costume and Props by Kat Chan; Lighting Design by Tom Willis; Sound Design by Darius Kedros.

Performed by Noni Hazlehurst.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 27

Noni Hazlehurst in Mother is not to be missed – and what a contrast to her wonderful reputation as arguably the best-remembered and loved presenter of ABC Playschool.

On one level, Daniel Keene’s solo character Christy in Mother took my mind back to the beginning of this Melbourne tradition: Jack Hibberd’s existential Monk O’Neill in A Stretch of the Imagination (at The Pram Factory, 1972, played by another Australian acting icon, Max Gillies).

But there’s a big difference.  Where Monk was a  representation of the Australian misogynist male recalling his memories (a la Samuel Beckett), for whom one can have very little empathetic feeling, Christy is the epitome of sadness.  Her memories may be confused by turps and early onset dementia, but the story of her marriage and the birth and death of her only child, the son she secretly names ‘Beau’, cannot fail to touch our hearts.

We did not care about Monk O’Neill as he approached death, except for its wider meaning that it was time for what we now call sexism to die. 

For Christy we still feel hope as she glories in the fact of her continuing existence in spite of all that life has thrown at her.  Mother is a play of personal experience, and so seemingly less of an iconic drama of national identity, as A Stretch of the Imagination is regarded.  Yet Keene’s play balances Hibberd’s from a woman’s point of view.  Sexism still needs to die in 2016 as it should have done in 1972.

And in performing this woman, Noni Hazlehurst invites us in to Christy’s complex personality with the skills of a great actor.  Bit by bit we find ourselves putting into proper context Christy’s behaviour which ‘normal’people (like us) would think of as unacceptable.  Hazlehurst has such control of the detail of how Christy speaks, how she moves, how she responds to sounds (especially of the birds which have become so significant to her psychological state), and how she thinks, that our understanding grows from a conventional negative first impression to our joining her in celebrating “I’m here!  I’m here!” – even as we recognise the tragedy of her human condition.

Though I think that some parts of Keene’s 70-minute script need tidying up to keep the drama moving along more clearly, this play is a brave piece of writing with a highly significant theme about the experience and treatment of motherhood. 






©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Simon’s Final Sound by Finegan Kruckemeyer

Simon’s Final Sound by Finegan Kruckemeyer.  Blue Cow Theatre Company (Tasmania) directed and designed by Robert Jarman.  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 11-13, 2016.

Cast: Mel King – Ginny; Guy Hopper – Simon;  John Xintavelonis – Michael;  Andrew Casey – Claude.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 11

This is a play written supposedly for adults by a successful writer for young children 5 to 8 years old.  A review (unacknowledged) published in The Brag (http://www.thebrag.com/arts/those-who-fall-love-anchors-dropped-upon-ocean-floor) of another play by this author, also supposedly for adults, which I haven’t seen but which was recently presented at the SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney, sums up my response to Simon’s Final Sound:

“There are both amusing and heartfelt moments, but ultimately, Those Who Fall In Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon The Ocean Floor is a light piece of theatre. Diluted between comedy and romantic drama, it’s a murky mix that isn’t particularly strong on either front.”

I can only add that in Simon’s Final Sound there is very little comedy, a lot which has to be called farcical, quite a bit of entirely irrelevant slapstick, and an ending which would be tragic if the apparently important issue – of the sudden onset of deafness – had been developed in any serious way over the two hours leading up to this point. 

What point? was the issue for me.

I thought very seriously of not publishing a review, because at least the actors should not feel that they are to blame.  Director and designer Robert Jarman has asked his actors to take on the task of turning an impossible script into worthwhile theatre.  I felt for them as they very professionally overplayed such thinly written characters, and managed to get some laughs from skilful clowning.

Though I don’t wish to deny Finegan Kruckemeyer’s success as a children’s playwright – his bio emphasises he has “had 79 commissioned plays performed on five continents and translated into six languages” and 7 “at the Sydney Opera House” (Shakespeare wrote only 37 for comparison) – he has clearly written a 50 minute children’s piece into a 2 hour long fantasy made ‘adult’ by crude sexual unfunny funny-bits which placed the lone woman character well down the scale of acceptable human rights.

The idea that we should be amused by 40-year-old unmarried Simon’s struggle to deal with a diagnosis that he will go deaf within a year, be elated when he seems to find the musical island from the story which his aunt had told him to help him go to sleep at the age of eight, and then be .... what?  Sorry for him?  Devastated by the tragedy?  Ecstatically happy for him because he heard the music after all?  ... when all the sound and lights are cruelly switched off.  That’s the end, folks!  Lights up, and clap, because wasn’t it all good fun?

Sorry, Finegan, but whatever your reputation, Simon’s Last Sound is a bummer of a play for adults – and my word is nothing like as offensive as the fucks, penises and tits you thought would make an adult audience laugh.  Some did laugh at the Yoga on the Boatdeck scene, admirably performed by Andrew Casey, and they laughed at the joke about making a Bungee Jumper think the rope was not tied on after they were on their way down.  And sliding around on the deck in the storm where each of the four came to hug, or at least grab onto, each of the other three with implications about their relationships, was mildly amusing. 

But in the end it’s more suited to a ten-year-old boy’s idea of funny.  And nowadays even he would think the language and the treatment of the girl was just too gross, and the storyline more suited to a five-year-old!

Mr Kruckemeyer should take a leaf out of Eddie Perfect’s notebook and go and see The Beast at the Sydney Opera House (reviewed here July 31, 2016), where he will learn how to write a really funny adult comedy.



©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Letters to Lindy by Alana Valentine

Letters to Lindy by Alana Valentine.  Merrigong Theatre Company: Artistic Director, Simon Hinton.  At Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, August 9-13, 2016.

Director: Darren Yap

Designers: Production – James Browne; Lighting – Toby Knyvett; Co-Composers / Co-Sound Design – Max Lambert and Roger Lock

Cast: Jeanette Cronin as Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton (Lindy), with Glenn Hazeldine, Phillip Hinton and Jane Phegan

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 9

Letters to Lindy is both a moving commemoration of the short life and tragic death of Azaria, and a celebration of the remarkable steadfast resilience and human understanding of her mother, Lindy. 

The opening night here in Canberra was a significant social and cultural event, with both the author and the play’s real life protagonist present and appearing on stage for the curtain call.  This was not just a performance of a play, but a happy/sad recognition of the proper conclusion concerning Azaria’s death and her mother’s terrible treatment by the Northern Territory’s legal system – and by the Australian media and so many individuals over such a long period since 1980.

There was at last a sense of relief when we heard the words of Coroner Elizabeth Morris on 12th June 2012: "Azaria Chamberlain died at Uluru, then known as Ayers Rock, on the 17th of August 1980.  The cause of her death was as the result of being attacked and taken by a dingo.  It is clear that there is evidence that a dingo is capable of attacking, taking and causing the death of young children."

As the ABC reported, the finding ended “decades of public speculation over the nine-week-old's disappearance”.  There were “four coronial inquiries, a murder trial and a royal commission into the case.”  And thousands of letters written to Lindy, ranging from the vicious and threatening to those of support, fellow-feeling, understanding and love.  The letters began almost immediately after the first publication of news reports, and were already so many by the time Lindy was jailed for murder, from 1982 to 1986, that a team of inmates formed to help her categorise and store them – until she finally sent 199 boxes to the National Library of Australia where staff awarded Alana Valentine a Harold White Fellowship in 2013, which resulted in this play.

(Wikipedia tells the detailed story at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Azaria_Chamberlain)

The play was set as if in the lounge room in Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton’s home, where she is reading letters and stacking them in large cardboard boxes.  As she read silently, the letter-writers appeared saying out loud to her, with the voice, actions, body-language, looks and facial expressions to suit, why they are writing, what they think and feel about her, and telling stories of their own – including, among the more weird ones, of seeing her face represented in the branches of a leafless tree against the moon.  And then there was the one setting up a religious revival campaign at Ayers Rock where Azaria died.

Scenes, such as the original coroner’s decision, the prosecution and defence cross-examination of a witness, the judge’s summing up to the jury (which effectively led them to convict despite evidence that could in no way have supported that verdict ‘beyond reasonable doubt’) were played without set changes, as we understood we were seeing into Lindy’s memory of these events.

The first few letters we heard were horrible nasty accusations by people who assumed Lindy had murdered her daughter.  Then we were surprised as Lindy turned to us laughing to say she thought she should start with comic relief.  Immediately we responded, laughing along with her and beginning to realise that we were meeting a woman of great strength in adversity.

Jeanette Cronin’s performance showed her great strengths as an actor, representing a real life person present in the audience, and playing the subtleties of Lindy’s personality at all the critical points of her life, including the break down of her first marriage and the beginning of her second.  Cronin was equally strongly supported by her colleagues being so capable of shifting from character to character around her.  Lighting and especially the sound design nicely underpinned the symbolic moments, leading us to a warm ending.  Of all Alana Valentine’s research and selection of material, her choice to use a letter-writer’s lullaby for Azaria was the perfect way to leave us feeling both the sorrow for what was lost and a quiet pride in having understood Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton as she really is.

I hope this play will continue to be performed all over Australia so that all those letter-writers and their families down the generations will get to know and seek the truth rather than accept and attack on the basis of prejudicial beliefs; and all people will be confirmed for their empathy and desire to give support to those who are mistreated.




©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: When the Goalposts Move by Ben Eltham

When the Goalposts Move by Ben Eltham.  Currency House Platform Paper No 48.
Media enquiries to Martin Portus at mportus@optusnet.com.au or 0401 360 806


Commentary by Frank McKone
August 9, 2016.

There is an aching need for symbolic belonging in the hearts of all of us.  This is Ben Eltham’s foundation observation concluding his argument for the arts to be enthusiastically supported by governments. 

Using Australian Bureau of Statistics information on attendance and involvement in arts activities, and the key example of the Centenary of Anzac project as a “long-running cultural program of events…[which] was an explicit government policy, endorsed and re-endorsed by successive federal governments, planned for several years, and supported to the tune of more than half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money…with no expectation of economic outcome”,  Eltham backs up his major point:

The fact that the majority of the citizens of the Australian State share a vivid and rich cultural involvement, means that culture is not some way-station on the road to the good life.  It is the good life, a vision of a modern society where much of the meaning and value derived by individuals and families is expressed through cultural and artistic participation and creation.

I read this looking around my lounge room.  We are not a wealthy family, retired on a part-aged pension.  But the room is full of art – photos, paintings, pottery, statuettes, books and even the furniture – each piece with a story to tell from our past of family, hobbies, work and travels.  Each is a symbol, full of meaning to us beyond what it may have meant to the painter, potter, sculptor, writer or furniture maker.  (The photos are ours, except for the one of us at the Taj Mahal, one of the greatest artworks in the world.)

So I am sure that Ben Eltham is right.  But how do we deal with the political history which he has written up so clearly, under the headings

False Dawn: March 2013,
 
‘The capacity of the Minister to give directions…’: September 2013,

 ‘Vicious ingratitude’: The Biennale boycott,
 
The origins of ‘excellence’: 1974,

The power of ministers: May 2015,

The long shadow of neoliberalism,

How to fight taxes and change prime ministers,

The silence of the Australia Council, and

Getting political: Free the Arts and the anti-Brandis resistance.

You can see where the overall title When the Goalposts Move fits in.  Without this context, even more relevant now that the Liberal / Nationals have managed a one-seat majority in the July 2 election, we might continue forever to ‘waffle’ about the heARTS of all of us. 

Just before the election, Eltham wrote: In the run-up to the 2016 election, the Australia Council now finds itself in a dangerous place.  There is little love on the Coalition backbench for the organisation, and the election of a second-term Turnbull Government could well signal the beginning of the end for the agency.  It is not a good sign that so many of the arts administrators I regularly talk to appear to be convinced that the Australia Council will be abolished altogether should Turnbull win.

Well, he has won, even if only just.  So it’s time to take action. 

One political move which was not mentioned in Eltham’s Platform Paper was the rise of the Arts Party.  Although no electorate, House or Senate, yet has an Arts Party member of Parliament, the first preference count on July 2 showed a substantial vote for the Arts Party across the country.  Go to www.artsparty.org/ to find information and to join.  The Arts Party makes the specific point that it is independent of any other party, sending its policy platform to all of them “in the hope they will consider new creative ideas to improving the future of Australia.”

Their policy summaries are headed:

    ARTS & HERITAGE
    FILM, TV & RADIO INDUSTRY
    MUSIC INDUSTRY
    EDUCATION POLICY
    VENUES & LIVE PERFORMANCE
    DIGITAL ARTS & VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY

and anyone is invited to make new suggestions to comms@theartsparty.org

To give more of an idea of where The Arts Party might go now that it has become more than an almost one-person-band led by PJ Collins (The Arts Party · PO Box 114, Kingsford, New South Wales 2032, Australia):

OUR PRINCIPLES:

 ACCESS TO ARTS & CULTURE

    ABC & SBS Funding
    Australia Council & Arts Sector Support
    Trove
    AMPAG Funding and SM Funding
    Demand Not Supply
    National Arts Week
    National Ensemble of Theatre Actors (NETA)
    Regional Cultural Support
    Public Museums, Galleries and Community Centres
    Digital Cultural Access

SUPPORT OUR CREATIVE INDUSTRY

    Expanding The R&D Tax Incentive
    Supporting The Film & TV Industry
    Supporting The Book Publishing Industry
    Supporting The Games Industry
    Supporting The Music Industry
    Creating a Space Industry

EDUCATION ACCESS FOR EVERYONE

    STEAM not STEM
    We Give A Gonski
    Visual Arts and Music in Primary Schools
    Drama and Dance Education in Schools
    Teacher's Pay
    National School Cultural Engagement Program (NSCEP)
    HECS & Lifelong Learning
    National Touring

IMPROVE OUR COMMUNITY

    Marriage Equality
    Healthcare
    Disability Support
    Climate Change
    Refugees
    Indigenous
    Vaccination

REVENUE RAISING

    Corporate Community Tax
    Legalise Cannabis
    Reform Negative Gearing
    Superannuation Tax Concessions
    Super Profits Tax on Banks

I suggest you read Ben Eltham’s detailed history and discussion of the meaning of ‘culture’, and as a result you may conclude as I have that The Arts needs its own political presence rather than supinely relying on the whim of the Minister of the Day in the Government of the Day.  We were lucky in the days of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam when the Australia Council was set up at some degree of arm’s length from political interference, but terribly unlucky to have Arts Minister George Brandis show how his arm was more than long enough to stick his finger up the pie.

Next election let’s aim to do at least a Xenophon, if not a Hanson, a Bob Day, or a Derryn Hinch.  Vote 1 in the Senate for The Arts Party, and let’s have a ball!



©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: The Hanging by Angela Betzien

The Hanging by Angela Betzien.  Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, August 3 – September 10, 2016.

Directed by Sarah Goodes.

Designers: Set and Costume – Elizabeth Gadsby; Lighting – Nicholas Rayment; Composer and Sound – Steve Francis; Video – David Bergman.

Rehearsal Photographer – Hon Boey

Cast: Luke Carroll – Detective Flint; Ashleigh Cummings – Iris Hocking; Genevieve Lemon – Ms Corrossi.

Final Preview reviewed by Frank McKone
August 1

Ashleigh Cummings in rehearsal as Iris

If you are keen to be in the debate about education – and how could you not be this week? – apart from podcasting Life Matters on ABC Radio National this morning (August 3, 9am), you could not do better than see a different twist at Wharf 1 tonight.

The Hanging is a theatrical fiction derived from a literary fiction.  The play explores the effect that teaching a particular novel might have on fourteen-year-old girls, boarders in a private girls’ school, supposedly in Melbourne.

The author has created a powerful dramatic constraint by reducing the action to just three characters.  Two students of a tightly bonded threesome cannot be found.  The third has appeared at a police station.  Her English teacher is nominated to be her ‘friend’ while she is interviewed by a detective.

In an hour and a quarter we discover the real story behind the mysterious disappearances.  On the way, we learn a lot about being a teacher, being a daughter especially of split parents who pay $30,000 a year for her schooling, and about such girls’ imaginations and sexual drive.

The script is excellent – tightly focussed and emotionally engaging.  The three performers get everything right, and Ashleigh Cummings deserves special commendation for presenting so well both Iris’ childishness and desire to be seen as an adult.  While Genevieve Lemon is a good example, she explained to me, of the daughter told by her parents not to become an actor without backing up with a degree.  So she trained as an English teacher, but never actually taught.  In his role as Detective Flint, Luke Carroll presents a very un-Flint like character, very concerned for the well-being of his interview subject while searching out the right way to find the information he needs.

The use of video to provide the bush setting, outside the city where the interview takes place in Iris' father's flat, works very well.  The role of the bush is to raise the deepest theme in the play: how do we know reality from fantasy?

From my career as a teacher of both literature and practical drama, I can confirm how central this concern is for teenagers on the border – physically represented by a diagonal wall in the very simple but effective set design – between childhood and adulthood, for all sexual orientations and people of all different cultures.

Genevieve Lemon also spoke of the process of bringing the work to production, where the actors began familiarising themselves with the script some 18 months ago, and then following all the amendments as Sarah Goodes and designer Elizabeth Gadsby worked with Angela Betzien through to the final six weeks’ rehearsal.  And, she pointed out, the three actors parallel the characters in age and stages of their own lives and careers, giving the performance another layer of reality.  From her point of view, since she has been playing comedy so much, acting in this kind of psychological drama is very satisfying.

So, after my also having seen Belvoir’s Twelfth Night this weekend, I must misquote Shakespeare and say: If scriptwriting and development of this quality be the food of the Sydney Theatre Company, then play on, I say – play on.

Luke Carroll, Ashleigh Cummings and Genevieve Lemon
in rehearsal as Dtective Flint, Iris Hocking and Ms Corrossi

Ashleigh Cummings as Iris Hocking
in rehearsal for The Hanging

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: The Beast by Eddie Perfect

The Beast by Eddie Perfect.  Presented by Ambassador Theatre Group Asia Pacific and Red Live at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, July 27 – August 21, 2016.

Directed by Simon Phillips.

Designers: Set and Costume by Dale Ferguson; Lighting by Trent Suidgeest; Composer – Alan John.

Cast: Heidi Arena – Sue; Alison Bell – Marge; Christie Whelan Browne – Gen; Peter Houghton – Skipper / Mansitter / Vigeron / Farmer Brown; Rohan Nichol – Simon; Eddie Perfect – Baird; Toby Truslove – Rob.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 31

I shouldn’t read the Director’s Note before the show, especially when he writes of “acute social comedy” as if it’s a disease, and goes on to “add to it a sense of iconclastic extremity which puts [Eddie Perfect] in the company of Joe Orton, Martin McDonagh or even Ionesco.”  How pretentious!

Except that it’s sort of true.  The killing of the fatted calf, which provides the completely over the top funniest end of Act 1 of any play I’ve ever seen, does have a weird connection to Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.  In that play, everyone turns into green rhinoceroses, except Berenger who bravely stands against the trend.  “I am not capitulating!” are his last words.

The Beast also deals with conforming to norms, or refusing to do so, or being too weak not to, and there are political implications when it comes to the question of ethical farming, just as people turning into rhinoceroses represented those who had gone along with Nazism.  But Perfect’s play is more complicated than Ionesco’s as he brings three married couples together, exposing their middle-class predilections, hypocrises, secrets, and politically correct naivety.

Perfect’s work is also more absurd than Ionesco’s in the sense that Ionesco has a single through-line, even though it takes a little while to become apparent after the first rhinoceros inexplicably kicks up the dust in the French village square.  In The Beast there are bits of throughlines going all over the mental landscape until the very end, when Farmer Brown puts everything into its proper context and they all eat carrots.

The Beast is also equivalent to Rhinoceros in another way. Ionesco’s play is very specifically French, in location and culture.  Perfect is Melbourne through and  through and his play is specifically Australian, in location and culture.  Specificity is a strength in both plays, oddly enough, because it makes for universality of significance.  Even though extreme comic acting exaggerates characters, Perfect’s are each recognisably Australian, as Ionesco’s are French.  This works as in the dictum “act local, think global”.

I’m writing maybe a bit too globally here, but I can promise that even though I haven’t told you much about what actually happens in The Beast, that’s because it’s better for you not to know too much.  The comedy is over-the-top extremely funny because of the unpredictable surprises that Eddie has perfected as a stand-up comedian.  So get stuck into The Beast and you’ll see what I mean.

The Calf

Eating carrots

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare

In rehearsal L to R:
John Howard, Anita Hegh, Peter Carroll, Emele Ugavule, Nikki Shiels, Anthony Phelan, Lucia Mastrantone

Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare.  Belvoir, Sydney, July 27 – September 3, 2016.

Directed by Eamon Flack

Designers: Set by Michael Hankin; Costume by Stephen Curtis; Lighting by Nick Schlieper; Composer – Alan John; Sound by Caitlin Porter; Movement by Scott Witt.

Cast: Peter Carroll; Anita Hegh; John Howard; Lucia Mastrantone; Amber McMahon; Anthony Phelan; Keith Robinson; Damien Ryan; Nikki Shiels; Emele Ugavule.



Photography by Brett Boardman

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 31

For the first time, I feel I now understand Twelfth Night as a unified work.  I’ve tended before to think of the twins, disguises and love story as one element alongside the story of the drunkards and their malicious treatment of Malvolio.  Eamon Flack explains in his Director’s Note and achieves in action on stage a central focus on the observation that Feste, the professional Fool, discusses directly with us: that ‘what is, is not’.

This philosophical conundrum turns Shakespeare’s play into a mad metaphor for what was going on in his society, as the Puritans began to establish their influence (which later led to violent revolution, and the establishment of our modern representative democracy, no less); while we see the same nonsense happening today, such as having people stand for seats in Parliament or even for the Presidency of the United States while claiming they are not politicians.

Most of the time what Olivia calls ‘midsummer madness’ is tremendously funny to watch, and this production takes every opportunity to make us laugh at the enjoyment of acting the absurdities of the plot.  Yet, as the two look-alike brother and sister are seen by everyone together for the first time, laughter changed in tone as we saw a serious state of confusion take over all rational thought.  What they thought was, was not, and what they thought was not, now was.  Though fortunately quickly resolved by the right people kissing each other, the happy ending still had an edge – just a touch of insecurity about the nature of the human condition.

Theatrically this took the play to a higher level of excitement and satisfaction which grabbed the audience who clapped and cheered in sincere appreciation for a job enormously well done.

So having gone to the theatre with some doubts about watching just another Twelfth Night, I left with a joyful feeling and no doubts about this production.  Even any little worries about my human condition have faded into the mental background for now.  That’s the power of good quality art, which certainly is, rather than is not.  






©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Broken by Mary Anne Butler

Broken by Mary Anne Butler.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Playhouse, July 29 – August 28, 2016.

Directed by Shannon Murphy.

Designers: Production – Sophie Fletcher; Lighting – Ben Brockman; Composer and Sound – James Brown.

Cast: Ivan Donato – Ham; Sarah Enright – Mia; Rarriwuy Hick – Ash.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 30

The story of Broken is simple. 

Ash rolls her Troopie into scrub in Central Australia, at night. 

Ham, a mining engineer on his way home to his wife, Mia, near Alice Springs, sees the skid marks and the rolled vehicle, calls for an ambulance on his CB radio, rescues and comforts Ash for the hours it takes for the medical team to arrive.  He arrives home with Ash’s dog, killed in the crash, at dawn.

But the full story is much more complex.  It is revealed as each of the three describe what they feel, physically and mentally, from the moment of the crash through to the day a year later when Ash has recovered and goes to find Ham. 

The telling is done in about an hour over microphones incorporating sound effects made by the actors, and with a background distant soundscape.  The speaking is often quiet and intense.

The most fascinating aspect of the storytelling is how the three voices are separate strands which are woven together until their three stories become one.  The effect is mesmerising, especially because of the voicing skills that these three actors display.  And the writing slowly establishes not just a plot of what has happened but an interweaving of three personalities and how they deal with their experiences.

Broken could perhaps be performed on radio, but I found watching the physical process of the speaking and the making of the sound effects live took on a theatrical life of its own and intensified the emotional strength of the work.

I have also seen an earlier play by this author, Highway of Lost Hearts, (reviewed on this blog August 29, 2014) which she has adapted for radio, and her writing has now won significant awards.  Broken  confirms  Mary Anne Butler’s valued place as an Australian playwright finding new ways of telling our stories.






©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Betrayal by Harold Pinter

Guy Edmonds as Robert, Ursula Mills as Emma, Matthew Zeremes as Jerry

Betrayal by Harold Pinter.  Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, July 16 – August 20, 2016.

Directed by Mark Kilmurry.
Designers: Set and Costumes by Anna Gardiner; Lighting by Christopher Page; AV by Tim Hope.

Performers: Guy Edmonds – Robert; Ursula Mills – Emma; Matthew Zeremes – Jerry.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 30

Harold is famous for the Pinter Pause, but the important question is What Happens when no-one is speaking because to do so might cause a speechless reaction?

The measure of the success of Kilmurry’s directing and, of course, the quality of the acting, lay for me in the reactions of the early middle-aged couple next to me.  They were about the age of the characters in the first scenes in 1977, and I suspect from overhearing some of their conversation that they were innocents in the woods of this kind of theatre.

They took their breaths in audibly at each moment of extreme embarrassment, laughed nervously as they began to cotton on to the layers on layers of betrayal.  Then there were silences of recognition as we finally watched Jerry’s drunken play for his best friend Robert’s wife, Emma, on their wedding day – way back in 1968.

Of course, they must have thought, all three really had known that they all had known in those earlier scenes, later dated, in the play.

Being at the Ensemble helped.  In another production of Betrayal, on an old-fashioned proscenium stage with a longish table in Jerry/Emma’s afternoons-affair flat (to display the tablecloth she bought in Venice with Robert), with a largish bar-counter for the pub scenes, as well as a round restaurant table and a full size bed for the Venice hotel and Robert/Emma’s newly-married bedroom, the play came over as very clever, almost too clever-clever.  The characters remained rather distant with all this clutter in a distant space.

In the close-up intimacy of the in-the-round small Ensemble, one felt with and for each of the three.  The reversal of time was not just a clever theatrical trick – it explained how the marriage of Robert and Emma could not continue, but also how Jerry was in the same boat – or fantasy gondola.

What I felt was really clever in this performance were the little signals. 

Jerry, later the writers’ agent, spoke poetically with real flair when drunk in 1968. Good writing on Pinter’s part, of course, but equally good acting by Matthew Zeremes.

Robert, the later hard-nosed book publisher, had always been tight and aggressive – even on the edge of violence, in playing squash and worse towards his wife.

Emma, who later escaped to run her own art gallery, was too easily taken in by these clever Oxbridge men and spent her life trying to maintain her personal strength and reasonable control of her life.

Three signals were given: when Robert made her afraid he would use violence (telling us that he really had even before Venice); when Emma briefly acted as a waitress clearing a restaurant table and then appeared in the flat with Jerry in the same apron-dress (which Jerry noted, showing how he was seeing her as a wife); and one which seemed to pass unnoticed when Jerry spoke to Emma but calling her Judith, his wife’s name.

It was this fine detail, and playing in a small space with minimal shifting of props as the scenes changed to the times and places projected on the wall, that made this production a success that I’m sure would have given even Pinter pause for thought.




©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Carmen by Georges Bizet, directed by John Bell

Carmen by Georges Bizet.  Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.  Opera Australia directed by John Bell.  Sydney Opera House, June 16 – August 12, 2016. 

Designers: Set by Michael Scott-Mitchell; Costumes by Teresa Negroponte; Lighting by Trent Suidgeest; Choreography by Kelley Abbey; Fight Choreography by Nigel Poulton.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 29

I wanted to see Carmen as directed by John Bell.  Could he, after such a wonderful Shakespeare’s The Tempest a year ago, strike the right note in this opera, which I have either thought of as an artificially ‘tragic’ love story or, as in one production I saw, a superficial concert of popular music.

Well, Carmen’s plot and libretto nowhere match Shakespeare, but Bell has done the trick.  Bizet’s music is far better than the libretto deserves.  Bell has clearly taken the music as his cue to finding the motivations for the characters and the emotional tone of each scene.  And so we are taken from the light to the dark; from the light-weight to the heavy.  His final scene entirely concentrates on José’s overwhelming obsession, stalking Carmen until he feels he has ‘no choice’ but to kill her. 

We only have to read the Canberra news of the recent axe murder to recognise the reality behind Bizet’s ‘romance’.  Awful though it is, Bell’s work shows how clearly this ultimate violence is never the woman’s fault.  Carmen demands her independence as all women should.  It’s the men who cannot accept women’s rights – as is too often still the situation in too many countries around the world today.

So, thank you, John Bell.  I’m glad I went to see your Carmen.

As the curtain dropped on José’s seeming attempt to rape the body, it was moot whether we should stay silent or applaud in the conventionally operatic manner.  We were not left long in suspense as the curtain rose for the call – and the applause was heartfelt and it seemed would never end in appreciation for the cast, the orchestra, the stage design: for a show that was never artifically tragic and certainly never a superficial concert.

Bell’s Director’s Note, handed out to everyone who had not spent $20 on the complete very glossy program, explains his reasoning for his updating elements of this 1875 original setting in Spain to a mythical Cuba with its down-at-heel buildings and motor vehicles - and also with the feel for the music, dance and colour of Havana.  Shifting to this imagined world of soldiers, villagers, popular heroes, criminals and rebels made me see Carmen not as some kind of romantic celebration of Spain, with Carmen an exponent of exciting flamenco. As the program explains, this became the de rigeur approach only in the 1890s, well after Bizet’s untimely death at the age of 36, only three months after Carmen opened.

But just think of what happened in the Spain of General Franco from the 1930s to his death so recently in 1975 to see how prescient were Bizet and his librettists; and then think of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan today.  Though Bell kept to the original story of gypsies fighting for their freedom in the mountains, and the fascination with bullfighting, in his setting the story becomes a modern metaphor for the struggle for genuine democracy and human rights over the forces of terror and dictatorship.  Think of Turkey and President Erdogan right now.

So thanks again, John Bell.

Jane Ede as Frasquita, Clémentine Margaine as Carmen, Margaret Trubiano as Mercedes

Clémentine Margain as Carmen

Natalie Aroyan as Micaëla

Michael Honeyman as bullfighter Escamillo

Village Scene

Clémentine as Carmen

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2016: Our Land People Stories: Bangarra Dance Theatre

Our Land People Stories:  Bangarra Dance Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre, July 28-30, 2016.
National Tour dedicated to David Page.

Choreographers:
Macq by Jasmin Sheppard  Music by David Page
Miyagan by Beau Dean Riley Smith and Daniel Riley  Music by Paul Mac
Nyapanyapa by Stephen Page  Music by Steve Francis
Sets designed by Jacob Nash
Costume Design by Jennifer Irwin
Lighting Design by Matt Cox

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 28

Bangarra belongs to this country in a way that I know I never fully can.  I arrived here a mere 61 years ago, invited by Australia’s non-Indigenous government as a £10 Pom with little knowledge of the country’s short history since 1788, and absolutely no idea of its true history since its First People began arriving after their long trip from Africa about 50,000 years ago.

Tonight I feel privileged to have been invited into our country by Bangarra, perhaps our only truly national theatre, whose work is as modern as today while it stretches our culture back in time, almost immemorial. 

While I might refer back to Shakespeare or Chaucer, or even with a lot of imagination back to Ancient Greece, a mere couple of thousand years, the three dances performed tonight take us first via Governor Macquarie’s declaration of war in the Appin massacre of 1816 in Jasmin Sheppard’s Macq.  Then we go on a great learning curve of understanding of the matrilineal totemic kinship system of the Wiradjuri nation still in place today right here surrounding Canberra, in the Riley family’s Miyagan.

Finally, after such powerful works by the younger choreographers, Bangarra’s Artistic Director since the company’s inception 25 years ago, Stephen Page, presents his new work derived from the art of Yolngu woman Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, in a creative exchange where her paintings are danced into our consciousness a world away from Yirrkala in far North-East Arnhem Land.  As Nyapanyapa pictures the changes over time of new experiences, such as the arrival of buffalo and the young generation’s modern music and dance, so she becomes the central figure in Stephen Page’s dances.  Like her, at my 75 years, I identify with the shock of sometimes frightening change.

But Macq brought me to tears as it made me think of the teenagers in the Northern Territory’s Don Dale Juvenile Detention centre, seen being violently ill-treated even to the point of torture on ABC TV’s Four Corners last Monday night.  The words spoken by the NT Chief Minister back in 2010 about putting juvenile ‘criminals’ in a ‘concrete hole’ and actions of the detention guards were no improvement on Governor Macquarie’s diary record of 1816 justifying killing all who failed to obey his soldiers’ orders.

Miyagan in contrast was a wonderful positive experience to watch, as the dancers played for real, in their very dancing, the theme of the work: ‘Wiradjuri culture, language and customs are alive; our heartbeat is resilient and strong’.

It’s that heartbeat, knowing that Bangarra dances are for real, danced with knowledge and understanding of their history and culture, that makes this company unique and essential for all of us Johnny-come-latelies to learn from.  May we learn to mind our ways.



©Frank McKone, Canberra