2021: One Man In His Time by John Bell

 

 

One Man In His Time by John Bell and Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, Wednesday and Thursday, April 14-15, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 14

Conceived and performed by John Bell

Lighting Designer: Ben Cisterne
Stage Manager: Eva Tandy

__________________________________________________________________________________
Actors are the only people who can be trusted, because we all know they are pretending.  But, said the actor John Bell, I wouldn’t trust an actor.

I’m not quoting his words exactly – my 80-year-old memory, two months younger than Bell’s, is a disgrace in comparison.  Not only can he give us many of Shakespeare’s most significant speeches, he makes One Man In His Time a masterclass study of that other actor/writer’s universal truths.  

His audience ‘got it’ when it came to issues like political leadership in modern times,  well before the ‘T’ word was spoken.  Manipulative advertising men as Prime Ministers didn’t even need to be mentioned by name.

Trust in Shakespeare is the message, as Bell has done throughout his life in acting roles, as a director and founder of the Bell Shakespeare theatre company, “Thanks to an innate love of theatre and the inspiration provided by two wonderful high school teachers.”  His show was devised to celebrate Bell Shakespeare’s first 30 years as arguably the longest-lasting and only truly national Australian theatre company.

I found myself feeling inspired by John’s elucidation of that other writer/ performer/ director man in his own time (probably b. April 23rd 1564 – definitely d. April 23rd, 1616); but I also felt that I would love to understand more about our own famous theatre man in his time (November 1940 – 2021 ongoing…, or at least since about 1955 when those teachers grabbed his attention).  

His illustrations from the History plays, the Roman plays and especially Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest – and his demonstrations of how to play the enormous variety of Shakespeare’s characters –  revealed, with the immediacy of an actor we undoubtedly could trust, exactly the attributes Bell has described in his note “From John Bell”:

“In putting together this meditative piece about Shakespeare I avoided structuring it around any one theme in case it got too academic.  Instead I have chosen to focus on just a few of his attributes: his compassion, empathy, shrewd understanding of politics and power structures, his earthy humour and, of course, his peerless poetic language which,” he says, “will go on living only if we go on speaking it and listening to it.”

My interest in knowing more about the real John Bell has been stirred in recent times by reviewing what I have seen as a new genre which  I have named Personal Theatre.

The most recent is Stop Girl, a 90 minute piece at Belvoir, Sydney, written by foreign correspondent journalist Sally Sara.  Her central character, “Suzie”, is a true representation of Sally’s personal reaction, post traumatic stress disorder, following years of war-zone reporting.  Her play is double-edged, showing the horror of war for others as well as for herself, even as a professional objective reporter.

Another extraordinary piece, by Canberra dance artist Liz Lea reveals her lifetime experience, through a solo dance with spoken word, Red, of suffering from endometriosis.

An experience of a quite different kind, but again effecting a change of life, is shown in My Urrwai, in which Ghenoa Gela, again in dance and voice, tells her story of re-engaging with her original culture in the Torres Strait after a childhood in Brisbane.  This is a story of gaining new appreciation and personal strength, in life and as a performer.

I would look forward to, perhaps, something called When the Bell Rings.

I first saw John Bell when “In 1964 he was a sensational Henry V, with Anna Volska as Katherine, in an innovative Adelaide Festival tent presentation. The Sydney Morning Herald called him ‘a possible Olivier of the future’”.  Since then I have maintained an interest in his career before and after establishing Bell Shakespeare, and since my retirement from drama teaching in 1996 I have reviewed his work as performer and/or director of 9 shows, from King Lear to Carmen; from the Bell Shakespeare art exhibition The Art of Shakespeare to Christopher Hampton’s translation of The Father by Florian Zeller.
[https://liveperformance.com.au/hof-profile/john-bell-ao-am-obe/ ]
[https://frankmckone2.blogspot.com/search?q=John+Bell ]

Of The Father, I recorded “Of course, especially for John Bell playing Anne’s father André, the short scenes are not so simple.  As he has said ‘I find this text particularly tricky to learn – and I think I speak for the other actors as well – because it’s very fractured and you need to make your own links between phrases.  It’s just short grabs of text, which are hard to learn.  It’s easy to learn a slab of Shakespeare, for instance, or Chekhov.  They write these long passages that have an internal logic, that might even rhyme’.”  

Watching The Father, I also found myself, already in 2017, beginning to worry about how I might cope with the onset of dementia “when you, if you are unlucky, reach a late stage of dementia where memory becomes completely unreliable but your feelings in reaction to others – who are by now caring for you full-time – are just as strong as ever, even though you are misinterpreting reality.  It’s even worse when you realise that you don’t actually understand things at all.”  I was amazed at Bell’s performance, considering questions like what will John Bell do when his memory gets as bad as mine, and how does an actor know when s/he is acting or not; or knows, as my mentor Ton Witsel put it, when you are only ‘acting acting’?  

(Ton worked at the Old Tote as Mime and Movement Director in the 1970s with John, who had been the original Director, and was then Associate Director for the later tour to the South Pacific Festival of Arts in Suva, Fiji, of the iconic new wave Australian play, The Legend of King O’Malley by Michael Boddy and Bob Ellis).  [https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu ]


So, maybe I was hoping for Two Men In Their Times – William Shakespeare and John Bell, but perhaps that’s an unfair expectation.  One Man In His Time at a time is surely enough.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The Tempest by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare directed by John Bell; set and costume designer, Julie Lynch; lighting designer, Damien Cooper; composer, Alan John; sound designer, Nate Edmondson; movement director, Scott Witt.  The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, August 19 – September 18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 29

Only one other production of The Tempest has inspired me as much as John Bell’s farewell to his career as artistic director and founder of Bell Shakespeare.  This was Rex Cramphorn’s “1972 Performance Syndicate production of The Tempest [which] received critical and popular acclaim, being remounted and taken on tour until 1974.”   It’s an irony of history that  Cramphorn’s later production of The Tempest in 1991 was his last show before his untimely death in November that year.

There seems to be something magical in the divergences and points of contact in the histories not only of John Bell and Rex Cramphorn, but even for me.  Our births were very close (1 November 1940, 10 January 1941 and 9 January 1941 respectively), though far apart in Maitland, Brisbane and the UK.  We each were influenced by choreographer and dance-drama teacher, the inimitable Margaret Barr, briefly in my case at summer schools, as his teacher at NIDA for Rex and as his colleague when John taught at NIDA. 

I attempted a few dance classes with Margaret Barr, and remember her home as light, white, almost bare of furniture, spotless, pure and simple.  I began my 20 year drama teaching career at Hawker College, Canberra, in 1976, with a production of The Tempest, keeping in mind my image of Margaret Barr and Rex Cramphorn’s production, keeping the action within a circle, enclosed only by loose unadorned material.  And so it is for John Bell’s production all these years later.

In the tradition of Margaret Barr’s teaching, both Cramphorn and Bell focus on movement of the actors in open space, creating an island of dancing magic – sometimes heavy on the ground, sometimes up and light yet powerful, often ethereal and invisible, yet audible – or, in contrast, silent.  This is The Tempest that was also William Shakespeare’s most original and last major work. 

It was the creation of a spirit world that had inspired me about Cramphorn’s work.  It was a world of philosophic enquiry, where the island became the universe, a place of wonder and mystery.  It was this theme that my late teenage students took up enthusiastically, with an image of a huge eye painted high on the rough hessian backdrop, observing all silently, as if from a different universe.

Bell’s production keeps the same feel and the same philosophical implications, but blends in the complexity of ordinary reality.  Though Cramphorn (and I) had kept all our actors in the circle on stage throughout, as if there were no other place to be, even for those not active in the scene, Bell used the circle as an ever-changing space into and out of which characters come and go, as if the rest of the island is concretely out there somewhere, while the spot we see shifts from place to place – entirely in our imaginations, with nothing more than wind moving the surrounding material drops, a rope or a log, or no more than the characters’ costumes to tell us where we are.

The effect is to add a layer of understanding to those previous productions, anchored as they were in the 1970s.  For me, and I suspect for Rex Cramphorn, influenced so much by Jerzy Grotowski, the freedom of the magical world to explore the unknown was where we needed to go.  We were escaping philosophically, perhaps.  But the new world order today requires us to come to grips with strategic thinking – as indeed it was in Shakespeare’s time as absolute monarchy was beginning to be taken down, at first by extremist Puritans, until over the next centuries a reasonable form of democracy could evolve.  Shakespeare is described in John Bell’s director’s notes as “to have been a remarkably competent businessman and one celebrated by those close to him for his witty, mild and affable companionship”.  The very kind of democrat we would all hope to see – and to be.

So in Bell’s production, Prospero is realistically getting a bit past it, and at times is aware that he can’t keep his powers up to the mark.  At 74 I find I have the same problem, and perhaps John Bell feels a bit the same way.  I asked him if leaving the task of directing Bell Shakespeare, the Company, was to be free in particular of Responsibility (though he is continuing to work, as an actor in Ivanov with Belvoir next month).  “No more applications for funding grants,” was his reply.  And there he was, as director of The Tempest, in the second week of the run, still watching and making notes for cast and crew.

My notes say that the casting is excellent, the set and costumes brilliant, the lighting, sound and music composition wonderful, and the movement exciting and telling: the balance between fantasy and reality, or rather the fact that both exist at one and the same time, is made in the movement design and the capacity of the actors to work as dancers – and singers – while completely grounded in their characters. 

You may not think you are seeing dance for the most part, since the choreography is of symbolic or natural seeming movement.  But watch this perfect apparition of Ariel, played with such grace and strength by Matthew Backer.  Watch the two drunken clowns, Trinculo and  Stephano – Arky Michael and Hazem Shammas, who also amazingly play Sebastian and Antonio – to see what I mean about choreography.  But especially watch the one and only woman in the cast (the others – Caliban's mother Sycorax and Prospero’s wife – die before the play begins). 

Eloise Winestock shows us Miranda as the girl brought up in the wild – she hisses at Caliban with animal ferocity.  Now the hormones of developing sexuality lock her onto the quite proper young man, Ferdinand.  Felix Gentle is exactly the right name for this actor, and his Ferdinand is just as amazed at Winestock’s Miranda as she is by him.

I would have presented Caliban, I think, as much more ugly or wild-looking, but I can see why Damien Strouthos was given a less animal-like hair cut, but one still representing rebellion.  It makes him a genuinely serious threat to Miranda’s safety, which Prospero must defend, while we also realise that Caliban is justified in hating Prospero, in parallel to Ariel’s position – though Ariel is more like an indentured labourer, while Caliban is enslaved.

Finally, Prospero’s awareness of his own ageing frailty explains how he can step out of the fantasy and speak directly to us, asking us to free him from his responsibility as an actor.  This speech, especially under Bell’s direction, places Shakespeare centuries ahead of his time in theatre history – beyond Bertolt Brecht even.  We see this level of sophistication currently in the ABC’s The Weekly, in the relationships between Charlie Pickering, Tom Gleeson, Kitty Flanagan and the studio audience, as well as with us watching our screen at home.  If we thought Shakespeare is no longer relevant after 400 years, think again on Prospero’s final speech.

Which ends “Let your indulgence set me free.”  And so be it for John Bell, except that it’s no indulgence on my part.  Bell writes in his program notes “Prospero is a dreamer and is a disastrously ineffective leader.  He prides himself on being a humanist scholar, but in fact governs through terror, tyranny and the employment of dark forces.  Shakespeare, on the other hand, seems to have been....”  I think the evidence, in this production of The Tempest, proves that John Bell is more like Shakespeare than Prospero, and so thoroughly deserves his freedom.


Links:
Ian Maxwell in Australian Dictionary of Biography, at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cramphorn-rex-roy-15453

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_%28Australian_actor%29

Garry Lester in Australian Dictionary of Biography, at
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barr-margaret-14855

Photos by Prudence Upton

Matthew Backer as Ariel, Brian Lipson as Prospero

Brian Lipson as Prospero, Eloise Winestock as Miranda, Damien Strouthos as Caliban

Damien Strouthos as Caliban

Eloise Winestock as Miranda, Brian Lipson as Prospero

Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel, like a harpy

Eloise Winestock, Arky Michael, Haxem Shammas as Spirit Shapes
Brian Lipson as Prospero

Felix Gentle (Ferdinand) and Eloise Winestock (Miranda) in rehearsal

The Drunks in rehearsal
Arky Michael as Trinculo, Hazem Shammas as Stephano, Damien Strouthos as Caliban

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2019: The Miser by Molière, in a new version by Justin Fleming

The son, Cleante.  The father, Harpagon.  The daughter, Élise.

The Miser by Molière – a new version by Justin Fleming.  Bell Shakespeare at  Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse April 11-20, 2019.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 12 (opening night)

Let me reveal my personal bias to begin: I am jealous of John Bell.  Having first seen him perform (as King Henry V) in a tent at the 3rd Adelaide Festival of Arts 1964, I wish I had his capacity for characterisation (which I never had) and his loose physical flexibility – which he still has, but I have lost forever.  He’s only two months older than me, dammit.

And for him to be able to return to such quality acting in ‘retirement’ from his own Bell Shakespeare Company is just awesome.

But, to this version of Molière’s 16th Century play by 21st Century writer Fleming. 

Four doors onto any set says ‘Farce’.  By interval I found myself wondering if farce was enough. 

But, in the final scene, John Bell’s representation of Harpagon’s loneliness and bewilderment as the lives of all those around him achieve a positive conclusion – all four doors have nothing behind them for The Miser – leaves us unexpectedly feeling for him. 

His loss of control, though we may see this as his own fault, is a modern experience.  Perhaps Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, by 1668, foresaw his own end: he collapsed and died after just four more plays, during the fourth performance of  Le Malade imaginaire, aged 51, in 1673.  Like so many of us today from a middle-class background, he worked in a ‘gig’ economy struggling against insecurity of employment, trying to innovate and facing official and political intransigence. 

No wonder his Harpagon was desperate to hang onto his ten thousand crowns.  Maybe even John Bell, after establishing and running a theatre company all his adult life, understands Harpagon / Poquelin – and shows us what he feels in that final scene.

So it was right of Fleming to insert into Molière’s script jokes from today’s Australia, from the squawking of cockatoos to cooking shows on tv – and including same-sex marriage.  And it was right on the part of Peter Evans to direct the acting way over the top to the point of absurdity – all picked up on, with consummate skill, by the whole acting ensemble.

And, as the pictures show, Anna Tregloan’s costumes, hair and make-up designs were right up there, though these don't show the wonderful La Fleche nor the full-frontal Signor Anselm, both played by Sean O'Shea.

Damien Strouthos, Harriet Gordon-Anderson, Jessica Tovey, Jamie Oxenbould
as Cleante, Élise, Valère and Master Jacques

John Bell and Damien Strouthos
as the miser Harpagon and his son Cleante

Michelle Doak and John Bell
as matchmaker Frosine and Harpagon

While, underneath, Max Lyandvert provided a soundscape surruptitiously simple – looking for a grounding in a nicer humanity.

Bell Shakespeare, with John Bell, makes for a night of satire in a farce with a human touch.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Moliere-French-dramatist#ref12112
Images: https://www.facebook.com/pg/BellShakespeareCo/posts/
Photos © Prudence Upton

Surprise revelation in The MiserStanding:      Sean O'Shea (Signor Anselm); John Bell (Harpagon);
Michelle Doak (Frosine); Russell Smith (Commissioner of Police)
Seated: Harriet Gordon-Anderson (Élise); Jessica Tovey (Valère); Elizabeth Nabben (Mariane)

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: Henry 4 adapted by John Bell

David Whitney as Henry IV

Arky Michael, Felix Joseps, Yalin Ozucelik, Matthew Moore, John Bell, Terry Bader, Wendy Strehlow

Jason Klarwein as Hotspur, Matthew Moor as Prince Hal

John Bell as Fir John Falstaff

Matthew Moore as Prince Hal

Yalin Ozucelik, Matthew Moore, John Bell, Felix Joseps, Wendy Strehlow, Terry Bader, Arky Michael

All photos by Lisa Tomasetti

Henry 4 adapted by John Bell from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare Company, co-directed by John Bell and Damien Ryan, at Canberra Playhouse, February 26 – March 9, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 26

If this version of the Henry IV plays were a game of soccer (I’ve read that the Romans brought football to Britain, and it has flourished there ever since), I think the score would be Sir John Falstaff 7, Prince Hal 2.  Or maybe, sympathy for The People 5, appreciation of The Royals 0.

John Bell has selected material, directed the action and played the role himself so that the play seems to owe too much to Falstaff’s grandiose sense of his own importance.

This is not to say that Bell’s interpretation of Falstaff is at fault: in fact, I would say it is probably the best I can recall.  We see the full flowering of Falstaff, the con man, who uses all and sundry for his own benefit – and finally faces his justified come-uppance as the new king rejects his fawning attempt to gain high office. 

But the focus on the ordinary people weakened the importance – and the audience’s understanding – of the internecine warfare among the nobility, which in the end was Shakespeare’s real concern. 

It is the speech by Rumour, “painted full of tongues” – which opens The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth – which links the two parts.  The whole society is torn apart by Rumour which “is a pipe / Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, / And of so easy and so plain a stop / That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, / The still-discordant wavering multitude, / Can play upon it.”

I can see Bell’s intention and some reasoning behind the setting of the play in a kind of modern England torn by the social strife of the recent riots, but Shakespeare set his play at a specific point in history, some 200 years before his own time, as a warning, I suggest, to those taking revenge on the basis of the rumour mill.  It’s probably more appropriate to see the parallel with our current parliament and the upcoming election, than to see much connection with the street-level destructive behaviour of the modern riots, just because Shakespeare used low-life scenes as comic contrast.

The most significant failure, to me, of this production was that the playing of Prince Hal lost the charisma, intelligence and strategic thinking which is central to his character.  Either Matthew Moore was not up to the part – and indeed much of his dialogue was not even to be clearly heard – or it was not considered necessary in the play’s direction to make sure that his words came through to us not as mere banter or drug-induced mish-mash. 

For example, when his father is ill, Hal says to Poins “By this hand, though thinkest me as far in the devil’s book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man.  But I tell thee my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick; and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.”  He goes on to make clear that he has to think strategically about how “every man would think me an hypocrite indeed”. 

I can only fairly report that none of this text was delivered powerfully, so that we would understand how it could be that this apparently dissolute young man could turn around when necessary to defeat the Percy opposition, could face up to the responsibility his father’s illness and subsequent demise would place upon him, and show the kind of strength of character that would be seen by his brother John of Lancaster, now the Lord Chief Justice, when he says, as the play concludes, “I like this fair proceeding of the king’s. / He hath intent his wonted followers / Shall all be very well provided for; / But all are banish’d till their conversations / Appear more wise and modest to the world.”

Where was this strength of character and Hal’s ability to see through the “devil’s book” of Poins and Falstaff, while also understanding their humanity, which takes him on to become the Henry the Fifth of Agincourt?  I’m afraid it just wasn’t there. 

So, despite the success of the playing of Falstaff, the failure of Prince Hal to score left me disappointed with Henry 4.
 
© 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

2010: King Lear by William Shakespeare

King Lear by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare Company directed by Marion Potts at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre April 15 – May 1, 2010.

If there is one thing King Lear makes clear, it is that kings can’t expect to comfortably retire on a super pension, even if it is backed by 100 knights. What about an actor/director?  John Bell’s constitution is more than impressive.  It’s amazing to me that he can go on putting out such energy night after night (and present himself for the public at the opening night cast party).  Can he keep going?

Considering the historical significance of this play and this production, there is as much to say about Marion Potts’ directing, the design and execution, as there is about the acting.  In King Lear and The Tempest, though their earthly political plots look superficially familiar, Shakespeare took flight creatively into an ethereal theatre of symbolism.

Because this production marks the 20th anniversary of the Bell Shakespeare Company as well as the year in which John Bell turns three score and ten (and the $15 Anniversary Edition Souvenir Program includes a Wesfarmers advert titled “Presenting the Extraordinary”), I cannot avoid the question, does Bell Shakespeare reach the heights of William Shakespeare?

BHPBilliton quotes Ben Johnson: He was not of an age, but for all time.  They go on “This comment was made about Shakespeare but we think it also holds true for John Bell.”  It’s nice of the biggest mining company in the world to pay for the privilege of saying so, but I think it’s not entirely true.  John, indeed,  has placed himself in a more realistic relationship with William in his note as Artistic Director, writing "It is incontestable that, to some extent, Shakespeare invented us; and through constant engagement with his work, we go on re-inventing ourselves."

So, to the performance I saw on April 16, 2010 just ten days short of William’s 446th birthday. 

The beginning was extraordinary as a circular white curtain rose to reveal the Lear family isolated in an island of light.  Off to the side, but made visible, the instruments of emotion interplayed with the action of the sculptural figures in the centre of our attention.  Here was King Lear prefiguring The Tempest.  Shakespeare’s words were as clear as we might expect from Bell, and the scene was set for “Nothing will come of nothing.”  Much, in theatre, will come of simplicity.  The open stage with no more than a central raised revolve, with light and sound, was all that was needed.  Stage design held the play in place.

For this we must thank Marion Potts, designer Dale Ferguson, lighting designer Nick Schlieper, sound designer Stefan Gregory, and composer Bree van Reyk: seen and heard, even though largely mysterious to us spectators. 

But the edge was taken off the imaginative intensity, at various points and in various ways.  I found it difficult to feel the purity of truth in the naïve Cordelia, dressed as she was in a mess of clothing, in which she reappeared, with the addition of a cloak, years later as the mature Queen of France.  She needed clean lines, simple in style in Scene 1 to contrast with her overblown sisters, an idealistic 15 year old who naturally would entrance the King of France, with or without a dowry.  As grown-up strategic leader of the rescue invasion, she should more than match her sisters for wealth in a costume of plain elegance. 

Cordelia was always my favourite Shakespeare character, and I was disappointed, even though I could not fault the quality of any of the acting.  The characters seemed to be speaking just as themselves, even when speaking directly to the audience.  Whatever they symbolise, there was never a hint of “speaking Shakespeare”.  Perhaps the audience responded to three actors in particular (though their parts also help) – Peter Carroll as The Fool, Tim Walter as Edmund and Leah Purcell as Regan, especially when she makes her move on Edmund.  So spiteful towards her rival, her sister Goneril , a ferocious Jane Montgomery Griffiths.

The speed and ease of entrances and exits made the set work wonderfully.  The transitions from scene to scene are so often a major point of weakness in other productions, but never in Bell Shakespeare.  However, I was surprised that the on-stage musical instruments disappeared after interval and sound became distant and only electronic.  It was an emotional loss, especially because in the first half, characters used the instruments to comment on themselves.  It was an imaginative master stroke, for example, to have Lear strike a cymbal and use his stick to strike an inferior character.

But the major disappointment for me was the staging of the ending of the play.  Why were Lear and Cordelia left grovelling on the floor downstage left, where I could not see them except by wriggling about trying to peer between the audience’s heads in front of me?  Why were they not taken to the central circle?  Why didn’t the ending reprise the opening, with Lear and Cordelia isolated on the island, delicately enclosed again in the white curtain while Kent and Edgar spoke the words which reinforced what Cordelia had said in Scene 1?  Am I being too obvious?  Shouldn’t the symbolism be made this clear?

And, returning at last to the constitution of John Bell, I have found, over perhaps the last ten years or so, that the quality of his voice has often become restricted to a flat, rather thin sounding tone.  This could work, for example, when he played Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, but it left me cold in King Lear.  On the night, there was much strength and range of tone in Scene 1, but by the storm scene I lost feeling for this huge old man facing up to the elements as if he might defeat whatever they could throw at him, and in the final scene I could not feel the loss that this father felt, realising that his failing was the cause of his true daughter’s death.

Perhaps it is the clarity of meaning which John Bell has brought to the performance of Shakespeare, (which I still remember being impressed by when I first saw him in a tent in Adelaide in 1964, and still today is a great achievement), that has taken the focus off the creation of emotion in those of us watching.  So I conclude that this production is in many ways a very good presentation of  King Lear, but it does not reach the heady heights of Shakespeare’s imagination.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: The Art of Shakespeare Exhibition

The Art of Shakespeare Exhibition of artworks in response to William Shakespeare’s dramatic works, presented by Bell Shakespeare.  Original concept: Gill Perkins.  Artists invited by John Bell.  Exhibition curated by Nick Vickers.

Previewed by Frank McKone
Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
August 11, 2015.

Touring to
Melbourne
Sofitel Melbourne on Collins, September 2 – October 1
Canberra
Australian Parliament House, October 8 – 25
Sydney
Sydney Opera House, November 2 – 15

Artists:

Sophie Cape I Am In Blood Stepp’d In So Far (Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Lucy Culliton My Kingdom For A Horse (Reno) (The Hughes Gallery)
Tamara Dean A Midsummer Night’s Dreamscape (Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Ken Done A Woman Is A Dish For The Gods (Ken Done Gallery)
Joe Furlonger Unto These Yellow Sands (The Hughes Gallery)
Peter Godwin Where Be Your Gibes Now? (Defiance Gallery)
Nicholas Harding It’s The Same With Men (Wildflower, Cactus And Dogs) Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Alan Jones Leave The Rest To Me (Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Mathew Lynn Unmannerly Breech’d With Gore (Lady Macbeth) (Independent artist)
Euan Macleod Storm/King Lear Watters Gallery)
Luke Sciberras Bottom! (Olsen Irwin Gallery)
Wendy Sharpe The Witches (King Street Gallery on William)
Garry Shead Romeo And Juliet (Australian Galleries)
Ann Thomson La Sonnambula (Olsen Irwin Gallery)

©Wendy Sharpe The Witches

Art is about creation, intent, response and interpretation.  

As David Malouf writes in the Foreword to the exhibition catalogue What interests Shakespeare is the working of the mind, an inner state.  When, on the other hand, painters and illustrators turn to his characters, what they tend to present is their external attributes….  This exhibition presents artists working as Shakespeare himself does, in the realm of atmosphere and suggestion.

Each work is thus an original creation in its own right, in response to a moment – often just a line – chosen by the artist in answer to John Bell’s invitation.  As you would expect from artists of this quality, not one work is a simple illustration, even if some titles quote the quote.

As they create in response to Shakespeare, each with their own idea of his intent, and showing the viewer their interpretation, so I found myself facing their creations, wondering about their intentions, and interpreting the ideas and emotions I felt in response.

Nick Vickers has hung the works in such a way that some brashly stand out, others are more discreetly hidden for you to come upon them unexpectedly close up, while the three Lady Macbeths form a triptych which build from her personal horror in Lynn’s Unmannerly Breech’d, through the evil intent of Jones’ Leave The Rest To Me and culminating in an abstract explosion of feeling in Cape’s I Am In Blood Stepp’d In So Far.  And then you see Lady Macbeth’s final mental collapse in Thomson’s sleepwalking scene, La Sonnambula.

Then you realise that it is The Witches who you could not avoid as you entered the space.  The works begin to take on lives of their own, like characters in a bizarre drama.

It was at about this point that I thought I should test out my reactions, so I sought out the most expensive artist, Garry Shead, whose Romeo And Juliet I thought I understood.  Having explained that I saw the two families not just shocked by the sensuality of the kiss and bare breast, but that they simply were unable to understand, and certainly not accept, the natural sexuality of the attraction between Romeo and Juliet.

©Garry Shead Romeo And Juliet

Oh, no, explained the artist.  It was just the ballroom scene.  There’s only one family there, except for Romeo, and they are all horrified at his temerity at gatecrashing the ball, discovering Juliet and kissing her.  For Shead, it is a painting of one moment in one scene; I interpreted it as representing the core of the whole play.  We parted on highly amicable terms – that’s what art is all about.

I mentioned expense because all the works are for sale, with – through the goodwill of the artists and their respective galleries – a percentage being donated to Bell Shakespeare to support their outreach programs “looking for new ways to educate, collaborate and recreate”.

This exhibition, I believe, is an original approach, centred in artistic creation, to encourage philanthropy to support the arts.  It is also an Occasion – to mark the 25th Anniversary of the establishment by John Bell of the Bell Shakespeare Company, while it also could be said, to quote Malcolm concerning the traitorous Thane of Cawdor, that “Nothing in his [Bell Shakespeare] life became him like the leaving it”.

Whether that means we should see Peter Evans as an incarnation of Macbeth, who inherited the former thane’s title, I’ll leave to others’ interpretation.  As John Bell retires in the wake of directing the upcoming The Tempest (Sydney Opera House August 19 – September 18), maybe Prospero’s staff will receive more kindly treatment than in the play and be passed on to Evans without being broken.

The Art of Shakespeare will surely make a fitting farewell for the theatrical stalwart whose work I first saw in Henry V at the Adelaide Festival in 1964.  Though he may be leaving the tent – “just going outside and may be some time” – I suspect we’ll see more of John Bell before long, even if it’s only to present the next The Art of Shakespeare in a year’s time – I hope.

©Tamara Dean A Midsummer Night's Dreamscape

©Luke Sciberras Bottom!

©Nicholas Harding It's The Same With Men (Wildflower, Cactus And Dogs)

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: As You Like It by William Shakespeare

All photos by Rush

As You Like It by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare directed by Peter Evans; set design by Michael Hankin; costumes designed by Kate Aubrey-Dunn; lighting by Paul Jackson; musical director and composer, Kelly Ryall.  Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, April 8 – 18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 8

As I liked it very much indeed.  There’s less to write about when there’s little to complain about.  Mind you, I suppose I could take a leaf out of Jaques’ ever-present notebook and do a grumpy philosophical filibuster. 

John Bell could make such speechifying enjoyable, and then made Jaques’ personality come fully to life with his sly laughs in recognition, especially in Zahra Newman’s Rosalind, of a mind to match his own.  For me this was a significant achievement of Peter Evans’ directing.  I had not seen the strength and depth of Rosalind’s character before, and the fact that she is a woman of intellect beyond all of the men except Jaques, equivalent to all those other Shakespearean women like Portia, Kate, Beatrice and even the ever-so-young Juliet.

No wonder Zahra had such a good time playing Rosalind, with wonderful team work with Kelly Paterniti as Celia.  Now it’s clear why Rosalind is so good at (and is the only one capable of) getting everything properly organised for the mass weddings.  And then, what an ending!  I had not realised before that it is Rosalind who speaks the epilogue.  I wondered, did Peter have Zahra do it to make a modern point about the role of women?  But no – there it is in Shakespeare’s script:

Ros.  It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue....

Once again Shakespeare takes me by surprise and shakes common sense into me.  And thanks indeed to a company who have understood how to make Shakespeare’s play still do this after more than 400 years. 

Taking the play far away from ‘naturalism’ into a kind of nether world was a brilliant way to do it.  The set design was both beautiful in an idiosyncratic way and weirdly fantastic.  I kept being reminded of The Tempest on its magical island: here was the younger Shakespeare’s absurdist comedy in the forest, isolated from conventions, where Rosalind plays on the heart and intellectual strings – a precursor to Prospero.

I’ve said enough, I think.  It’s time for me to quietly depart the scene, like Jaques, not a grumpy critic any more but with a satisfying little smile to myself.  A nice way to exit, for me, for Jaques, and for John Bell.

Zahra Newman as Rosalind is banished on pain of death by
the usurper to the dukedom, Frederick

Abi Tucker as courtier Amiens in song

John Bell as courtier Le Beau, Gareth Davies as clown Touchstone
Kelly Paterniti as Frederick's daughter Celia, Zahra Newman as Rosalind,
daughter of the banished Duke Senior, just before Duke Frederick banishes her.

Charlie Garber as Orlando, Zahra Newman as Rosalind pretending to be Ganymede

Kelly Paterniti as Celia pretending to be Aliena

Tony Taylor as the shepherd Corin, Gareth Davies as Touchstone, Zarah Newman as Rosalind as Ganymede

Zahra Newman as Rosalind as Ganymede

Rosalind has fixed all the marriages.  John Bell as Jaques is about to exit, satisfied.
L to R: George Banders as Silvius, Abi Tucker as Audrey, Emily Eskell as Phebe, Gareth Davies as Touchstone,
John Bell as Jaques, Alan Dukes as Duke Senior,
Zahra Newman as Rosalind, Charlie Garber as Orlando,
Dorje Swallow as the reformed Oliver

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: The Father by Florian Zeller

John Bell

Photography by Christine Messinesi and Philip Erbacher

The Father by Florian Zeller, translated from the French by Christopher Hampton.  Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, August 24 – October 21, 2017.

Director – Damien Ryan; Designer – Alicia Clements; Lighting Designer – Rachel Burke; Composer and Sound Designer – Steve Francis

Cast:  André – John Bell; Anne – Anita Hegh; Laura – Faustina Agolley; Pierre – Marco Chiappi; Man – Glenn Hazeldine; Woman – Natasha Herbert

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 25

The concept behind this play is essentially simple.  Imagine what it will be like when you, if you are unlucky, reach a late stage of dementia where memory becomes completely unreliable but your feelings in reaction to others – who are by now caring for you full-time – are just as strong as ever, even though you are misinterpreting reality.  It’s even worse when you realise that you don’t actually understand things at all.

Then, at least in The Father, you end up in tears, crying for your mother to take you home.

Of course, especially for John Bell playing Anne’s father André, the short scenes are not so simple.  As he has said “I find this text particularly tricky to learn – and I think I speak for the other actors as well – because it’s very fractured and you need to make your own links between phrases.  It’s just short grabs of text, which are hard to learn.  It’s easy to learn a slab of Shakespeare, for instance, or Chekhov.  They write these long passages that have an internal logic, that might even rhyme.”

In fact all the other actors, and especially Anita Gegh as André’s only surviving daughter needing to get on with her own life, and of course John Bell himself, succeeded admirably with the disjointed language.  The fascinating thing about watching the play is that we found ourselves caught up in this mental state, and like André found it hard to know what the true story really was.

On the way to the theatre, I saw in Martin Place that the old traditional pavement message, Eternity, has now been changed to the word Empathy.  That’s what this play is really about.  There is no eternity – all our lives will end – but at least in our kind of society there is provision for empathy…well, there was for André in the full-care nursing home Anne had to admit him to.  The play ends where the author probably began constructing André’s mental world, with a professionally empathetic nurse cradling the crying old man in her arms.

In the Conversation with the Playwright, Florian Zeller, printed in the program (translated from the French by Marie Laubie and Carl Nilsson-Polias), the question is raised, saying “Some have compared the role of André in The Father to King Lear.  Is it, in the end, a tragic role in that sense?”

Zeller replies “It’s always perilous trying to sum things up in one word.  Still, I would say, ‘Yes, I think this is a tragic role’.  The play seems to me to be animated by a destination, its end, which is a tragic destination.” 

Though I recognise the awfulness of dementia, I have also seen the worth of an empathetic caring staff who managed my mother through some 5 years of demanding behaviour (going back to her working life when she ran the office and now expected to run the dementia unit), paranoia like André’s belief that his watch was stolen because he couldn’t find it, incomprehensible but highly imaginative flights of fantasy, and a complete inability to understand what was on the television screen.

At a week short of 93, my mother died peacefully, thanks to carers who were never punitive, nor full of sympathy, but had what I would call a practical empathy.  This is what I saw in the final scene of The Father – not a tragic but a positive end in the acceptance of reality.

And that makes this play worthwhile being produced by the Sydney Theatre Company, justifies the effort and the quality of the actors’ and creatives’ work, and certainly says you should take time out to see it – and help prepare for that time in your life.

Illustration by Nicholas Harding:
John Bell in rehearsal

© Frank McKone, Canberra