2023: Tim by Colleen McCullough, adapted by Tim McGarry

 

 

Tim by Colleen McCullough (1974), adapted for the stage by Tim McGarry (Currency Press 2023).  Presented by Christine Dunstan Productions, at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 25-26 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 25

Director – Darren Yap
Set Designer – James Browne; Costume Designer – Lucy M Scott
Lighting Designer – Ben Hughes; Composer – Max Lambert
Sound Designer – Zac Saric; Movement Director – Nigel Poulton
Stage Manager – Kirsty Walker

Cast in order of appearance:
Ben Goss – Tim Melville; Andrew McFarlane – Harry / Ron Melville
Akkshey Caplash – Jim / Nate / Raj
Valerie Bader – Emily Parker / Joy Melville
Jeanette Cronin – Mary Horton; Julia Robertson – Dee Melville
_________________________________________________________________________________

Tim was Colleen McCulloch’s first novel, 1974.  I have not read it, nor seen the 1979 movie, so I can only judge the play as it stands now, clearly updated to our era of smart phones and Google, though still locked in to on-course and TAB betting on the dogs and gee-gees, and an old-fashioned tradie working-class style.

The production of the play is excellent, both in the energy and focus in the acting by an expert team and in the originality of the set design, lighting and sound design.  The use of the classical music of Percy Grainger, Chopin, Schubert and Scriabin brilliantly illuminated the role of the upmarket Mary Horton.

Assuming, though, that the storyline is not changed from the original, the play is clever but not great.  Despite Darren Yap’s careful delineation of the characters – and each actor’s success in creating them – the play is a contrived piece rather than presenting characters developing their understanding of themselves and each other (as McCullough might have seen in, say, an Ibsen play).

The intention of raising the issue about the rights, and especially the sexual rights, of people with disabilities, still comes through as I suppose McCullough was aiming for; but the marriage, including legal arguments about powers of attorney, is certainly unlikely.  I’m probably onside with Tim’s lawyer-sister Dee on that point.

I can’t compare Tim McGarry’s work with how the novel feels on reading, but to say that it has been ‘sensitively’ adapted, as Currency’s blurb says, is not what I felt when seeing the play on stage.

Because it does raise important issues and because it is skilfully presented, this production of Tim is certainly well worth seeing.  Ben Goss does an excellent job of showing Tim’s particular kind of autism, in physical movement and in his ‘literal’ reactions.  But for depth of character and storyline development, if they are there in McCullough’s original work, perhaps another adaptation may be needed for a little less theatricality and rather more believable emotional drama.

Above: Jeanette Cronin and Ben Goss
Below: Valerie Bader, Julia Robertson, Ben Goss, Akkshey Caplash and Andrew McFarlane
teaching Tim to read
in Tim adapted from the Colleen McCullough novel by Tim McGarry

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Miss Peony by Michelle Law

 

Image: Dan Boud

 Miss Peony by Michelle Law.  Belvoir St Theatre (Sydney) at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, August 23-26, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 24

CREATIVES

Writer - Michelle Law; Director - Courtney Stewart; Set & Costume - Jonathan Hindmarsh

Asst Set & Costume - Keerthi Subramanyam; Lighting Designer - Trent Suidgeest

Composer - Dr Nicholas Ng; Sound Designer - Julian Starr; Assoc. Des. Sound - Zac Saric

Choreographer - Kristina Chan; Singing Teacher - Sheena Crouch

Vocal Coaches - Laura Farrell, Amy Hume

Fight & Intimacy Director - Nigel Poulton

CAST  
Gabrielle Chan 陳金燕 Adeline; Deborah Faye Lee 李淑菲 Marcy; Stephanie Jack 盧恩典 Lily

Mabel Li 李美宝 Sabrina; Shirong Wu 吴士容 Joy; Jeffrey Liu (JËVA) Zhen Hua

____________________________________________________________________________

If you imagine that serious satire must be sharp and essentially cold-hearted, you will be surprised – pleasantly – by this warm-hearted satire of Chinese-Australian culture about the Miss Peony Competition, modelled on Miss Australia, Miss World and even Miss Universe competitions, which began in this country “from humble beginnings” as the Miss Australia Quest, as a charity fundraiser – according to the National Museum of Australia – in  1907.

China Global Television Network tells us [ https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-07-25/Peony  ] in “Peony wins national flower vote”, how “The peony originated in China, and has been planted since 4,000 years ago. It was considered a symbol of the country during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907), and was the favorite flower of the people at that time. In Chinese culture, the peony represents prosperity, elegance, solemnity, and is nicknamed the ‘monarch of the flowers’”.

These are the very qualities in this very Australian-Chinese comedy which are ripe for satire. Yet the story behind the writing is one of warmth and respect for ancestors, specifically dedicated by Michelle Law to her Ma Ma, Law Wong Ching Lan.  An Australian Born Chinese (ABC), in her Writer’s Note, Michelle describes her visit to Hong Kong, aged 11, where she watched the Miss Hong Kong Pageant on tv.

“It was incredible witnessing so many women who looked like me being celebrated for their appearance and connection to culture when I’d learnt to dislike these things about myself and assimilate in order to survive living in a western country.

“One contestant stood out for me: a woman struggling to answer interview questions in Cantonese before ultimately giving up and speaking in English.  She had an Australian accent.  I remember sitting straighter on the couch as I watched her.  She sounded like an ABC and a banana, just like me – yellow on the outside, white on the inside.  She gave me hope that maybe there was finally a place where I belonged.  And then she was eliminated from the Pageant.”

And so began the story of Lily’s grandmother, having felt the “unique sense of displacement experienced by diasporic peoples” on coming to Australia, becoming famous two generations later for having won the Miss Peony Pageant which was still funded by a sexual predator businessman, Lam.

Being young Australian women today, accepting such behaviour is not on for Marcy, Sabrina, Joy and Lily as it was necessary in her grandmother’s day, perhaps to win – as they discover from Adeline.  Though she has died, Adeline’s ghost cannot rest until Lily has played her part in the Miss Peony Pageant with integrity and honesty.

And, being Australian in today’s social media world, the show becomes like an extreme Youtube influencer event with fantastic dancing, speaking (translated into the three languages Cantonese, Mandarin and Aussie English surtitled on a screen above the action) and (sometimes almost literally) stunning technical effects in sound and light.  LaughOutLoud is the mood, with individual moments clapped and cheered throughout the show, especially by the many young women in the audience.

But it was not only about sexist men and patriarchy.  Zhen Hua, the Pageant MC, comes to understand himself as Lily gives the most powerful speech in the Pageant, and true romance begins as the show ends.  La commedia è finita on a note of respect.

You have only one more day to see Miss Peony in Canberra, but you can catch it at Merrigong Theatre Company: 30 Aug – 2 Sep 2023; and Geelong Arts Centre: 6 – 9 Sep 2023.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: You Can't Tell Anyone by Joanna Richards

 

 

You Can’t Tell Anyone by Joanna Richards.  Canberra Youth Theatre, at Canberra Theatre Centre, Courtyard Studio, August 10-20 2023.
Playscript published by Currency Press 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 12

Cast:
Gwen – Ella Buckley; Tilly – Emily O’Mahoney; Jeremy – Jake Robinson
Willa – Jessi Gooding; Luke – Isaiah Prichard; Kat – Paris Scharkie
Benny – Lachlan Houen; Nicole – Breanna Kelly

Creatives:
Director – Caitline Baker
Set & Costume Designer – Kathleen Kershaw; Lighting Designer – Ethan Hamill
Sound Designer & Composer – Patrick Haesler
Stage Manager – Rhiley Winnett


https://canberrayouththeatre.com.au/emerging-playwright-commission-2021/?fbclid=IwAR1vKwThmqbdcKqwh2ypZMBhNB5IL0CiHxv2TPV3v21Cb9rp_FZVsWhk1iY

 
Canberra Youth Theatre’s Emerging Playwright Commission was a new initiative in 2021, “offering a professional commission for an emerging Australian playwright to create a new full-length work that brings young voices and stories to the stage.”  

With a background as an actor, comedian, and writer who has studied with the Moscow Art Theatre School, the American Repertory Theatre Institute, and The Groundlings Theatre School in Los Angeles, Canberran  Joanna Richards was awarded the commission of $16,200 for You Can’t Tell Anyone after being selected from over 50 applications from across the country.

In response, Richards said “The opportunity to write material for young people – about what is arguably one of the most formative times in any person’s life – is such a gift. I am excited to create a work that is intellectually meaty and performatively fun for an ensemble to work on. I am indebted to the Canberra Youth Theatre for giving me this opportunity.”

“Being a teenager is all about discovering who you are and where you fit in the world. I am interested in writing a work that speaks to the complicated process of becoming yourself, and how much more complicated that is in a world where we are constantly on display. Taking place at a high school party, “You Can’t Tell Anyone” explores what it means to be yourself and what it means to be a friend. Drawing on philosophical concepts, the piece will challenge our understandings of truth and deception, empathy and selfishness, and the extent to which we have control over how we are seen.”

Her aim in writing sets up a substantial challenge for young performers playing essentially themselves at the stage of finishing secondary school, looking back a little way to playing truth games as a mixed-sex group of younger teenagers, while now dealing with the new reality as young adults facing up to individual independent responsibility.  

I certainly still remember camping out on Mt Solitary in the Blue Mountains talking about the state of the world all night in 1960, and picking up my own daughter from an Aranda house (at her request) in the early hours in 1985.  “I only drank milk,” she told me.

Canberra Youth Theatre - You Can't Tell Anyone
Canberra CityNews

 

So, is the play and its performance a success, considering among the goals of Canberra Youth Theatre is to “Deliver opportunities for young people to collaborate, be creative, and develop their own artistic practice.”?

The performance I saw yesterday afternoon absolutely said ‘Yes”.

The play is indeed ‘intellectually meaty and performatively fun’, and also emotionally complex as the eight characters play the Paranoia Game.  “Who is the meanest person in the group?”  “Who is the creepy one?”  Seems innocent enough when you play it age 12, but at age 18, in a world of social media and education in history (“You really don’t understand what holocaust means, do you?”), the very room – where they all had partied before and is now full of memories and significances – takes on a life of its own.

They are held there by their reflections in the mirrors.  They can’t escape.  The fantasy becomes real, just as they can’t escape responsibility in the real world.

What impresses me is to see how creating the performance of the art – which shows intellectually how the world is falling apart – so successfully brings the performers together as a bonded group.  The great success of the play-writing and the play-acting is to make us feel so strongly with and for the young people – those represented in the characters and those creating those characters – as we understand how daunting their future is at the personal and the world-wide level, and how there is great hope as they “collaborate, be creative, and develop their own artistic practice.”

Let us not let the young people down.  Just tell everyone.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Hay Fever by Noel Coward

 

Hay Fever by Noel Coward.  ACT Hub at Causeway Hall, Kingston, Canberra.  August 2-12, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 8

Creatives:
Direction – Joel Horwood; Assistant to the Director – Steph Roberts
Sound Design – Neville Pye & Scarlett Coster; Lighting Design – Craig Muller
Costume Design – Fiona Leach & Tanya Taylor; Set Design – Joel Horwood
Stage Manager – Lucy van Dooren

Cast:
Judith Bliss – Andrea Close; Frances Bliss – Steph Roberts
Sorel Bliss – Holly Ross; Simon Bliss – Glenn Brighenti
Myra Arundel – Tracy Noble; Richard Greatham – Joe Dinn
Sandy Tyrell – Meaghan Stewart; Jackie Coryton – Robbie Haltiner
Clara – Alice Ferguson



It’s very hard to take Noel Coward seriously.  Especially when, to add to the 1924 flapper era absurdity, an audience member’s smartphone rang just as Richard pulled the cord to call the recalcitrant servant Clara, and Jackie said “I don’t suppose it rings” – which it wasn’t supposed to, of course.  (I don’t think this happens every night).

But it is a serious matter to decide to stage this 99-year-old post World War I “light comedy”; while the designing, directing and acting of an apparently very silly play is very serious business.

ACT Hub does Hay Fever brilliantly.  

The Bliss Family – being oh-so modern – no longer have a conventional father, the novelist David.  After all, you could say that Noel Coward himself was an instigator of the gay revolution, so the Two for Tea family in the song (a boy for you and a girl for me) means that Sorel and Simon Bliss have two mothers, Judith and her wife Frances Bliss, played very husbandly by Steph Roberts.

And, what’s more, as you would expect in today’s gay world, the Sandy who Judith invites for the weekend is not “he” who “loves anything Japanese”, but “she”, played manfully by Meaghan Stewart.

So the mix-up of sexual relationships when the invited men flirt with the wrong women in Coward’s still patriarchal play, in Act Two becomes even more funny (they all speak the same words and behave in the same way) in this differently gendered version – in which all the characters, including the men, Richard and  the now male Jackie (in a touching performance by Robbie Haltiner), accept the fact of these relationships as normal (and Jackie denies that he will marry Simon, after all, as does Coward’s original).

In modern employment terms, then, this is a more diverse production.  However awfully funny the performances are – and they are, I assure you – on this point we can take Noel Coward seriously.  It was a good decision, 99 years late some might say, though it wouldn’t be fair to imagine Coward should have done it in his day when “Throughout the eighteenth century and up until 1861, all penetrative homosexual acts committed by men were punishable by death. Following this date, hanging was replaced by life imprisonment, and after the passage of the Labouchere Amendment in 1885, by up to two years' incarceration”.  [ https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Gay.jsp ]

There was talk recently among theatre practitioners that Canberra should perhaps see itself as ‘Off Broadway’, with productions that would then go ‘On  Broadway’.  I suggest, for a start, that ACT Hub’s Hay Fever should at least go on to the Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Theatre in Sydney, and then on tour nationally.

Glenn Brighenti, Andrea Close, Holly Ross
as Simon, Judith and Sorel Bliss
in Hay Fever by Noel Coward
ACT Hub, Canberra 2023

Canberra CityNews - Photo by Ben Appleton

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Mr Bailey's Minder by Debra Oswald

 

 

Mr Bailey’s Minder by Debra Oswald.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, August 5 – September 2, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 5

Creatives:

Director – Damien Ryan; Assistant Director – Margaret Thanos
Set & Costume Designer – Soham Apte; Lighting Designer – Morgan Moroney
Composer & Sound Designer – Daryl Wallis
Intimacy, Movement & Fight Director – Scott Witt
Stage Manager – Lauren Tulloh; Costume Supervisor – Renata Beslik
Costume Art Finisher – Sasha Wisniowski

Cast:
Leo – John Gaden AO
Margo – Rachel Gordon
Karl / Gavin – Albert Mwangi
Therese – Claudi Ware


Debra Oswald has an impressive career history, writing for stage and television as well as novels.  Mr Bailey’s Minder first appeared at Griffin Theatre in Sydney, touring nationally in 2006.  Among the play readings in 2020 to celebrate their 50 Years of the Stables, Griffin described this play as a ‘seminal work’ for the company, saying “Leo Bailey is Australia’s greatest living artist. He lives in a fabulous hovel, built into a cliff over-looking Sydney Harbour, where his genius battles to survive the effects of alcohol, cynicism and self-loathing. His resentful daughter has been through a succession of carers until she finds Therese, who is down to her last job and determined to make a go of it.

This is a tough and funny play about friendship, forgiveness, ego and the secret longing for a better life."

Ensemble’s production has given the play a new lease of life, way beyond a reading.  Scott Witt’s work with Claudi Ware has produced an extraordinary physically wild character for Therese that makes her absolutely fascinating to watch.  

Yet Ware invests in her Therese a depth of emotion and growing understanding of herself  that makes the play work.  It really is about what being a ‘minder’ means.  It’s about minding about, minding for and minding with another person for their sake.  Ware’s Therese, against her own expectations, comes to see what is needed and discovers she has it within her to do what is needed.  

That’s enough on its own to want to see Mr Bailey’s Minder.  But when you have an 81-year-old of John Gaden’s theatrical stature playing an 81-year-old paranoid dementia sufferer, made worse by continually drinking straight spirits, to display – yet to cover up – his anger at himself, I found myself – only a few months older than him,  amazed at the quality of his acting, physically and emotionally, in this demanding, complex role.  There, even with the Grace of God, I fear I will never be.

Gaden has the comic timing down to the ‘t’, the shock of his aggression well up to the ‘a’, and the seriousness of his sense of shame precisely on the ‘s’, so though we can often laugh at Leo, we are surprised to find we can learn to laugh a little with him.  By the end we find we don’t mind him so much after all.

And that’s the measure of Therese’s success as Mr Bailey’s minder.  Mind you, we must not forgot the other two successes: Albert Mwangi as the understanding tradie Karl – not the Nazi that Leo at first sees; and Rachel Gordon as the rational daughter of an artist whose ‘money won’t last, you know’, but has to decide to put him in professional care when he violently rejects an offer of a reverse mortgage because he is certain that Margo will steal his house – which has something special in it for her which we find out about just before he dies.

And that’s when we recognise the skill in Debra Oswald’s writing.  Mr Bailey’s Minder is not only a ‘tough and funny play’ but a smart play, a clever theatrical work.  

I do mind if you miss it.

And, by the way, the famous Leo Bailey probably didn’t paint pictures quite like Brett Whiteley; or did he?

Albert Mwangi as Karl, Claudi Ware as Therese
in Mr Bailey's Minder, Ensemble Theatre 2023

 

John Gaden as Leo
in Mr Bailey's Minder, Ensemble Theatre 2023

 

Rachel Gordon (Margo), John Gaden (Leo), Claudi Ware (Therese)
in Mr Bailey's Minder, Ensemble Theatre 2023

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Legacies by Rachel Pengilly

 

 

The young stowaways and the First Mate
in Legacies by Rachel Pengilly

Legacies by Rachel Pengilly.  Ribix Productions and Q The Locals, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, August 2-5, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 2

Playwright & Director - Rachel Pengilly
Composer, Sound Designer & Production Manager - Shannon Parnell
Set Design & Construction - Mel Davies, Lachlan Davies
Costume Design - Helen Wojtas; Lighting Design - Jacob Aquilina
Movement Director & Stage Manager - Hannah Pengilly
Fight Director - Jim Punnett
Assistant Stage Manager & Props Master - Dania Anderson
Dramaturg - Jordan Best
Cast (in alphabetical order) - Tamara Brammall, Tom Bryson, Christopher Samuel Carroll, Tom Cullen, Joshua James, Chips, Jack Morton, Zoë Ross, Heidi Silberman, Phoebe Silberman, Tabby Silberman

RIBIX Productions, pre-professional theatre company, was founded around the idea of giving a voice to young people in the performing arts industry, placing them at the centre of the story.

With this in mind, I found strengths and weaknesses in the production of Legacies, although it was clear from the enthusiastic response of a large proportion of the audience on opening night that Ribix has built a keen community of young people and parents for whom Legacies is seen as a major achievement.

The dialogue and characterisation in retelling her personal family story from her great-great-great-grandfather David ‘Jollie’ Brand about “six Scottish stowaways who stole away on a ship chasing dreams of adventure” have led Rachel Pengilly to adopt a simplistic theatre approach.

The captain and first mate on the ship, for instance, say things that the author wants them to say forcefully, and without any subtlety in the relationship which good drama needs between these two men in such difficult circumstances.

There is a telling point to the story, since they received short jail terms for their actions which resulted in the deaths of three stowaways, but their characters are presented in too shallow a way for us to genuinely feel for and against them.

For the young members of the cast, it would have been important to work with adult professional actors to guide them, but in Legacies, only the mothers expressing their loss of their sons in short monologues provided models for the young to work towards and it was particularly surprisingly to see Christopher Samuel Carroll as a bombastic cruel first mate shouting with no apparent reason except that was what he does. The story about him may be true, but the drama on stage needs to round out his character.

It is evident in the writing that the author seems to have decided on her theme then acts out scenes to demonstrate the theme of decisions made which seem to be the only choice at the time.

This was clear enough when the captain agreed with his first mate to make the decision to send the children off the ship and to walk across the ice 12 miles to unlikely rescue.

But then the play  had young boys talking about how it was necessary to make difficult decisions, like leaving someone behind to die. The theme was clear, but despite a sad sound track, mood lighting, and the intense effort the actors put into miming and Scots accents, the excruciating miming of walking in bare feet could not be felt to be real by those watching.

The young actors did an excellent job of demonstrating physical theatre, but were not given the experience of working with a script that took them and us into real emotion.

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2023: Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

 

 

Amadeus by Peter Shaffer.  Canberra REP Theatre July 27 – August 12, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night July 28

CREDITS

Director • Cate Clelland
Assistant Director • Ian Hart; Assistant to the Director • Rosemary Gibbons

Stage Manager • Ewan; Stage Crew • Kristen Seal

Set Designer • Cate Clelland; Set Coordinator • Russell Brown OAM
Set Construction & Painting • Russell Brown OAM, Gordon Dickens, Andrew Kay, John Klingberg, Brian Moir, Eric Turner; Properties • Brenton Warren

Costume Designer • Deborah Huff-Horwood
Wardrobe Coordinator • Jeanette Brown OAM
Costume Makers • Cheryll Bowyer, Jeanette Brown OAM, Suzan Cooper, Anne Dickens, Helen Drum, Ros Engledow, Rosemary Gibbons, Rhana Good, Deborah Huff-Horwood, Jenny Kemp, Ann Moloney, Kristen Seal, Anna Senior OAM, Anne Turner, Joan White
Lighting Designer • Nathan Sciberras; Lighting Operators • Leeann Galloway, Deanna Gifford, Leanne van der Merwe, Ashley Pope
Sound Designer • Neville Pye; Fortepiano recordings • Christine Faron, Justin Mullins
Ghosts of the Future original composition • Ewan
Sound Operators • Leo Mansur, Lawrence Mays, Neville Pye, Disa Swifte

CAST

Antonio Salieri • Jim Adamik
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • Jack Shanahan
Constanze Weber, wife to Mozart • Sienna Curnow
Joseph II, Emperor of Austria • Neil McLeod
Count Johann Killian von Strack • David H Bennett
Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg • Tony Falla
Baron Gottfried van Swieten • Ian Russell
The 'Venticelli' • Michael J. Smith, Justice-Noah Malfitano
Katherina Cavalieri • Harriet Allen

Citizens of Vienna • Charlotte Edlington, Grace Jasinski
Blair Liu, Kelly McInnes, John Whinfield, Joan White
 
The list is long, emphasising the value of having our Canberra Repertory Theatre Society, putting on such a quality production of Amadeus 'loved by God' – Peter Shaffer’s historical fiction study of what may have been the relationship between two composers: Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, (actually baptized without ‘Amadeus’), born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, died December 5, 1791, Vienna; and Antonio Salieri, born August 18, 1750, Legnago, Republic of Venice, died May 7, 1825, Vienna.

Just their names suggest fascinating differences between an over-the-top bumptious scatter-brain child prodigy German and a standard career oriented God-bothering Italian court composer – or at least that’s how Shaffer’s Salieri sees Mozart.  

His problem was true to history.  Though Salieri’s operas were solidly supported in official European circles in his lifetime, Shaffer says Salieri knew in his heart that Mozart’s upstart brilliance was God-given.  The point was that Salieri lived long enough after Mozart’s early 1791 death to see that brilliance grow into the musical force that we understand still today; while Salieri’s music was already outshone, even by Rossini(!), by 1825.

But the play is not simply a story of 18th Century court intrigue and competition between composers.  Jim Adamik creates perhaps his best in-depth character yet, in a tour de force charismatic presentation of Salieri.  The production depends on his commanding leadership in the role, and he leads with an assured strength – making us able to believe, in a truly empathetic way, in the sense of injustice and confusion in Salieri’s mind.  God should have known better, and made sure his work would shine eternally, rather than Mozart’s – yet he could not avoid the truth.  Though he was duplicitous in keeping up his social standing at court, we can almost feel sorry for him.

And herein is the strength of Shaffer’s play.  The truth is the truth, whatever else we personally would like it to be.  If only people in power around the world today could accept that, we might even save the Earth, from ourselves.

Canberra REP has done us proud, in Cate Clelland’s directing and in everyone’s obvious enthusiasm in the often amusing yet telling acting style, the set design (including terrific backdrop photos), the music recording, lighting and sound, with special mention of Jack Shanahan and Sienna Curnow in their wonderfully uninhibited playing of Mozart and his wife Constanze, as well for the amazing beautiful 18th Century costumes and hairstyling.

Here’s another REP production not to be missed.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: On the Beach by Nevil Shute, adapted by Tommy Murphy

 

 

On the Beach - by Nevil Shute, adapted for the stage by Tommy Murphy
Sydney Theatre Company at Roslyn Packer Theatre, July 18 – August 12, 2023.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 24


Director: Kip Williams
Set Designer: Michael Hankin; Costume Designer: Mel Page
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper; Composer: Grace Ferguson
Sound Designer: Jessica Dunn; Dramaturg: Ruth Little
Associate Costume Designer: Emma White; Assistant Director: Kenneth Moraleda
Fight & Movement Director: Nigel Poulton; Intimacy Coordinator: Chloë Dallimore
Voice & Accent Coach: Jennifer White

With
Matthew Backer, Tony Cogin, Michelle Lim Davidson, Emma Diaz, Vanessa Downing, Tai Hara, Genevieve Lee, Ben O’Toole, Contessa Treffone, Kiki Wales, Elijah Williams, Alan Zhu

Opening scene
radiation cloud backdrop

 

Mary is planting daffodils.
 
“They should be flowering by the end of August,” Mary said.  “Of course, they won’t be much this year, but they should be lovely next year and the year after. They sort of multiply, you know.”

Moira says:

“Well, of course it’s sensible to put them in.  You’ll see them anyway, and you’ll sort of feel you’ve done something.”

Mary looked at her gratefully.  “Well, that’s what I think.  I mean, I couldn’t bear to – to just stop doing things and do nothing.  You might as well die now and get it over.”

Page 191 On the Beach by Nevil Shute, 1957, available at
www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20131214

In 1961, as the Cuban crisis was developing, I remember talking with my newly arrived English Literature lecturer at Sydney University, Peter Davison – later to become a renowned expert on George Orwell and his novel of the future 1984, and writing in 2020
“starting to teach ‘Scholarship’ to the fourth-year honours class immediately (in which Germaine Greer and Clive James, both far more intellectually distinguished than their alleged teacher, loomed large)”
https://orwellsociety.com/peter-davison-3-meetings-with-remarkable-minds  – about where we would go west of the Blue Mountains to avoid the atom bomb which we seriously expected could be dropped on Sydney.

This novel in its time and Murphy’s stage adaptation in our time is no joke.  By 1963 I was teaching in the Far West at Broken Hill.  

Vladimir Putin has placed his stock of nuclear missiles in Belorus; his mercenaries are training very close to the border with Poland, now patrolled by Polish forces; Ukraine will not give in; and China is vacillating (Shute had China and Russia bombing NATO).  Why would a nuclear World War III  as Shute predicted in 1957 to have happened by 1963, not be in the offing now?  Fortunately for Peter Davison, Germaine Greer, Clive James and me, John F Kennedy ‘quarantined’ Cuba to keep the Russian missiles out and Nikita Khrushchev reached a compromise, as Wikipedia records:

After several days of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev: publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement to not invade Cuba again. Secretly, the United States agreed with the Soviets that it would dismantle all of the Jupiter MRBMs which had been deployed to Turkey against the Soviet Union. There has been debate on whether or not Italy was included in the agreement as well. While the Soviets dismantled their missiles, some Soviet bombers remained in Cuba, and the United States kept the naval quarantine in place until November 20, 1962.

In Shute’s novel, the radiation cloud resulting from massive numbers of bombs deployed in his WW III in the northern hemisphere, gradually floats south of the equator.  Mary’s flowers may bloom by the end of August, but the (AUKUS?) submarine surveying the radiation’s progress reckons no-one in Melbourne will be alive to see them by the end of September.  As radiation sickness takes hold, the novel ends as people take pills to ease the pain of dying.

The periscope used under water for safety from radiation cloud
searching for living human activity on sea and onshore

Tommy Murphy has made the dialogue in the play true to the words spoken in the novel,  maintaining the characters as Shute imagined them and tells the story in Melbourne and on the submarine on its impossibly hopeful journeys, switching back and forth in a series of scenes.

Michael Hankin has created a stage design of great flexibility, representing the ever-threatening cloud in a fine white all-encompassing floating material – until the very end.

What would Peter and Mary’s baby daughter, Jennifer, see if it were possible for her to have grown up?  Mary had planted a tree with those flowers.  In Murphy’s final scene a teenage Jennifer slowly approaches, circles and touches the now grown up tree.  We all know that if she were real, she would be entirely alone on the whole of the earth.

The novel’s end is uncompromisingly bleak as Moira, on the beach, “put the tablets in her mouth and swallowed them down with a mouthful of brandy, sitting behind the wheel of her big car.”

The play, however,  leaves us with just a faint hope that we, meaning all of us the whole world over, will not let our children be left alone to die.  It’s a worry, of course, that burning fossil fuels and overheating the earth may cause our demise instead.

But an important aspect of Tommy Murphy’s adaptation is that he allows Kip Williams, as Director, to expand and develop the humour and strength of the characters – especially and very effectively in the women.  The novel is written in a plain narrative style, recording what a character does and what they say.  Shute’s language is descriptive but quite unemotional in effect – I suppose because his purpose in writing is essentially polemical, about the issue.

Williams has turned this into a slightly over-the top style, which to my mind works well to make us understand the anxiety which underlies these characters’ words and behaviour.  

And so I find the staging of On the Beach, while staying true to the novelist’s intention, brings out better our feelings about the stupidity of warfare and the absolute insanity of ultimate war with nuclear weapons.  Not to be missed.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2023: Good Works by Nick Enright

 

 Good Works by Nick Enright. Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra, July 21 – August 12, 2023

Book at https://events.humanitix.com/good-works-july-2023-theatre-at-dairy-road

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 21

Production Team

Playwright: Nick Enright
Director: Julian Meyrick; Designer: Kathleen Kershaw
Sound Designer: Damien Ashcroft; Lighting Designer: Jennifer Wright
Choreographer: Belynda Buck; Stage Manager: Jess Morris

Cast

Tim/Eddie: Oliver Bailey; Shane/Neil: Martin Everett; Rita: Adele Querol
Mary Margaret: Lexi Sekuless;
Alan/Brother Clement/Barry/Mr Donovan: Neil Pigot
Mother John/Mrs Kennedy/Mrs Donovan: Helen McFarlane

I find the layout of Mill Theatre difficult for sight-lines, especially from the longer side back row, even with an empty up-aisle in front,                                                                           

My seat: back row 5 from left

because the entrances/exits are a bit like watching a tennis match from the sideline.

However, Kathleen Kershaw and Belynda Buck successfully choreographed the six performers, playing in short scenes with their characters constantly shifting their ages, in this play which spans 60 years, leaping back and forth between the 1920s, ’50s and ’80s, telling the tangled story of two Australian Irish Catholic families.

Next time I think I’ll try a front row end or side seat next to the entrance – I suppose what would be downstage left, in a conventional setup.  From there I would have easily seen where the switch-blade knife was hidden ‘under the house’ behind that end of the piano, and had a full view of all the action, including on the floor far downstage right

And there, I wouldn’t have been quite so close to the sound and violence of the strop, banged horribly by Neil Pigot as Brother Clement, on the aisle step just in front of me, while Oliver Bailey as Tim cried out “I can’t” hop.

But I must say, Martin Everett’s Shane, stabbing the Brother, and Tim’s kicking to complete the murder, was a truly shocking sight down that empty up-aisle.

I believe the last time Good Works was presented, directed for Darlinghurst Theatre Copmany at Eternity Theatre, Sydney by Canberra Critics’ Award winner Iain Sinclair (BA Hons Australian National University) was in 2015, when Daily Review’s Ben Neutze remarked “Good Works is a beautiful play. Let’s hope it’s not another 20 years before it’s revived again.”  So it is pleasing to see Canberra’s Lexi Sekuless Productions coming in early after 8 years, and working with the highly regarded theatre historian Julian Meyrick as director.

Canberra Weekly [  https://canberraweekly.com.au/mill-theatre-leads-revival-of-aussie-stories-in-canberra  ]  reports Meyrick as saying Enright possesses the special ability of being a male playwright who could capture convincing women, something that only someone who cares about women could do. The female characters in the play followed the same timeline and arc as Meyrick’s mother.

“Nick would have grown up in this time and so when you read the play, you’re aware of a number of factors. One is the kind of Catholicism and the wowserism of Australia at the time; the second is the way the small communities cook up and the way they gossip; and then the third is this kind of yearning for something different, the beginnings of a kind of a desire to be freer.”

And as I remember Nick Enright, his interest – and concerns – about young people were clear from his play and film Black Rock about the murder of teenage girl Leigh Leigh, as well as his work in setting up the original Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) with director David Berthold.  His later 1999 work Spurboard was presented at Wharf 2 with “16 young actors and a professional support team working in association with Pulse 10, which is STC's youth and education wing
[ https://frankmckone2.blogspot.com/1999/10/1999-spurboard-by-nick-enright-preview.html ] - Canberra Times), while his influence has gone on to the theatre industry more widely, for example at the 2018 Industry Forum held at the ATYP Young People and The Arts: The child as cultural citizen
[ https://frankmckone2.blogspot.com/2018/06/2018-young-people-and-arts-child-as.html ]

It’s awful to remember that Enright contracted melanoma cancer about 1988, around the same time as I did, but surgery was kind to me; while after 15 years in remission Nick died at 52 in 2003.  So for me this production of Good Works is in memory of Nick Enright OAM.  The Sydney Morning Herald published a tribute on 25 March 2023:

Writer and teacher, died 20 years ago on March the 30th, 2003. He was a man of singular grace, intelligence and charm.

As long as memory, itself a dying thing, survives, we hold dear our friendship with him and regret his early leaving.

~JH & RB
https://tributes.smh.com.au/obituaries/474871/nick-enright/?r=https://tributes.smh.com.au/obituaries/smh-au

Good Works, with Meyrick’s directing and an excellent cast, works very well in this small theatre space.  From an actor’s point of view the switching of costumes is nothing compared with reappearing every few minutes at a different stage, from maybe 5-year-old to grandparent, of the same character, let alone as a different character as the men and Helen McFarlane are required to do.   Would it have been better to use more actors?  Eight men and five women?

It is true that I found myself sometimes having to stop to think about who were the characters on stage at that moment, but the play often moved on so quickly, leaving me to realise that I did not need to remember every detail about everyone because what the play as a whole was really about was impressionistic.

With its ironic title, the play was not  specifically about this or that character, nor even about this or that particular family, but about the nature of the culture of the society to which these families belonged.  Does this society work?  Does it work well?  Is it true to our real society?  Or some part of it?

This production works better with fewer actors in a kind of maelstrom of flurries with occasional moments of seemingly unlikely stillness, especially in this small space.  Interestingly, on that point, in a more conventional small in-the-round theatre, such as my favourite Ensemble Theatre in Sydney, warmth, connection and intimacy give the drama strength.  In the rectangular flat space of the Mill Theatre, empathy and identifying with the characters is not the point.  It’s almost Brechtian in keeping our minds working as we put together, as far as we can, the unexpected bits and pieces of these families’ lives.

The result, in my view, is a play which encapsulates the thinking of the author about at least this part of Australian life – apparently informed by Enright’s experience growing up in the country industrial coal mining town, Maitland, where St Joseph’s was established in 1835 and Case 43 of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse says it all:
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-studies/case-study-43-catholic-church-authorities-maitland-newcastle

Good Works indeed!

 

The cast in rehearsal for Good Works by Nick Enright
Lexi Sekuless Productions, 2023

© Frank McKone, Canberra