Kevin Jackson's Theatre Diary

Thyestes

2012-01-29T13:11:00.001+11:00

Belvoir and Sydney Festival 2012, in association with Carriageworks, present THYESTES by Thomas Henning, Chris Ryan, Simon Stone & Mark Winter after Seneca in Bay 20 at Carriageworks. Originally created by The Hayloft Project.

This production of THYESTES playing at Carriageworks is the most perfect piece of dramatic work that I have seen for some time. To be a regular and interested theatre goer and not have seen it will be a great loss to your Sydney theatre experience. Make no excuses. And even if you are an occasional theatre goer or one who through other strictures (lack of lots of funds, being one) have to choose carefully what you decide to see, ensure you see this work.

The play-wrighting is astounding. The acting is magnificent. The design elements are all of a whole and faultless.The stage management is breathtaking. The direction, taut, intelligent and complete. Theatrical Intelligence and sheer bloody bravura permeates every element of this production. Do not miss it.

My reaction sounds almost Senecan in its hyperbole! Then trick me, stab me, cut me up and serve me to your friends in a blood red sauce if what I say is not so.

THYESTES created by The Hayloft Project first appeared in September 2010 at the Tower Theatre, Malthouse, Melbourne. In the Co-Writer and Director's notes in the program, Simon Stone tells us of the intense process that he, Chris Ryan, Thomas Henning and Mark Winter took to find "a framework for our new version of the Ancient Greek myth of Thyestes and his brother Atreus…" sprung from a reading of Seneca's Roman play of the myth. They studied their original sources and examined examples of other "various tyrants, dictators, serial killers and psychopaths… We became fascinated by the psychology, of both perpetrator and victim, underlying the horrific acts in the myth.We weren't content to accept the characters or the events in the story as fabulous inventions of the past. We wanted to explore the aspects of Greek mythology that drove Freud to use these stories as clues to our own more modern but no less brutal instincts. ..."

This is what they have done. "Eventually we were ready to write and we divided the scenes between each actor, wrote a draft, then handed it on for redrafting by one of the others. We rehearsed the scenes as we wrote them, improvised on their basic structure, documented this new text, rewrote the scenes, re-rehearsed them, improvised again, rewrote and so on into previews and throughout the season. Often we would discard a whole scene, begin from a new improvisation, approach from a different angle or replace dialogue with action or music until we felt that the whole production was rhythmically and tonally in tune with the source material." 16 months later the performances that Sydney are seeing is a production that has found its balances and needs not, to my eye, in need of any further improvisation or changes. Reading the text, after my viewing, it was much as published. The thoroughness of the process and time served, has stewed this work into a perfect dish.

Seneca's plays are famously influential in the development of the English theatre traditions, particularly in the Late Elizabethan and all of the Jacobean period ('TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE, a late example). Seneca's plays are suspected not to have been written to be performed - there is no record of performances - rather to be read or recited. Written by Seneca living close to the Roman Emperor Caligula, and becoming teacher/poet/philosopher and adviser to Nero, there was plenty "bad behaviour' for him to have seen and recorded.

The Thyestes/Atreus story is truly terrifying in the translation that I have read. Seneca is famous for his detail of description and it is heaped with language of great and terrible imagery: the play's "language, flamboyant with rhetorical ornament, (remain) as a compost-heap to enrich the soil of the English dramatic verse for a couple of generations"!! The language found by Hayloft for the contemporary rendering of the Ancient Greek characters is vitally and muscularly apt. And this language is not only verbal, but stunningly physical.

We sit in front of a raised black curtained box frame the width of the stage. The scene (and each following) is announced in red text, illuminating for us the action of the scene we are about to witness. It is the formal breakdown of the Senecan context .With an accompaniment of either classical or heavy metal rock music a curtain rises on a white box, the back wall of which is another section of the audience, who sit opposite us- mirror like. The performance is played in a traverse mode. There are no doors, no windows, no exits from this white space, floor and roof, it, having fluorescents of variable intensity. Across the space are three contemporary, variously dressed hip men, standing, seated on the floor, sipping wine, with an iPhone connected to the sound system having a wastrel conversation of no great consequence but studded with pop references that distinguish the cultural milieu of their lives with comic accuracy.

We have read the context of the Seneca scene and we are given the puzzle to 'fit' that to what is happening in front of us. If you have paid attention and are paying attention it is a very macabre, amusing adventure to do so, whose tensions multiply to a final moment of shocking surprise and brutality. The music returns, the curtain drops, a new scene is announced and the curtain rises again. A new cryptic puzzle has been set. This, is the modus operandi of the production.

What is intriguing is that in the drop of curtain there are costume changes and, some times, elaborate furniture arrangements revealed. That there are no doors, and seemingly next to no wing space and no fly tower, how does it happen? A baby grand piano appears on stage and disappears! Last time I was tricked like that was at a Sigfried and Roy Show in Las Vegas - a happy conceit. Add to the intrigue and understand, there are only three actors, all male. One, Thyestes (Thomas Henning); Two, Atreus (Mark Winter) and Three, Chris Ryan who plays all others, of both genders. Remembering this and solving this in the heat of the scene action is part of the cryptic and cultural shocks. This is inclusive, interactive theatre on many, many levels.

Performed without an interval the scenes are at first in chronological order, and just when you think you have got the hang of it and kind of take a rest, the scenes go to the end of the play and play in reverse. No rest for the keen and no fun for the lazy.There is an intellectual exhilaration about been part of the puzzle and an experience of roller coaster emotional dimension, as the horrors and comic grand guignol toll mounts.

The bounce from the 1st Century version of the Greek mythical figures in the red text scene announcements at the start of every scene to the contemporary reality of the stage action, of such people existing in the world around us today, is underlined passionately for us by these actors, and the growing knowledge that evolution is slow and that humanity is basically stupid and some times in the control of the psychopaths is brought home with full force. Where Cheek by Jowl fails with 'TiS PITY SHE'S A WHORE, The Hayloft Project THYESTES, succeeds.

Certainly the contemporary violence and the depravity of these men we have seen culturally re-enforced seemingly endlessly in film, terrifyingly on almost every news bulletin, and I have to admit in circumstances I sometimes find myself in, by simply catching public transport or drinking in a pub. The world of Senca is here, made potently relevant and all to terribly, flesh and blood.

Mark Winter gives a tour de force performance of shattering psychopathic mania. In the past year I have seen three actors give there all to their work for us in roles that make Olympian demands of them - they and he did not baulk: Anthony Gooley in THE LIBERTINE and recently, Josh McConville in THE BOYS. This is simply great acting of commitment and well-judged craft. The physical, mental and emotional toll of scene six in which he deals with the captured Aerope is startling in its thorough evil mania - the staging daring and shocking. He still had six scenes to complete. His exhausted curtain call says a great deal. Thomas Henning is no less impressive in the victim role: rhythm differences, soft, sly feints of behaviour in counterpoint to the erratic brother twin of Mr Winter are underplayed with wisdom and sensibility. While Chris Ryan demonstrates a versatility and sound judgement of his craft to make Art of some impression. His performance in cross gender roles is distinguished and cleverly observed and crafted, crowned with a beautiful masterly musical rendition, at the piano, of Schubert's 'Der Doppelganger"- awesome, indeed.

The Set and Costume design, Claude Marcos, impeccable. Every choice exactly right. A great visual collaborator. Lighting design, by Govin Ruben is fabulous and amazing considering his options in this tight space and traverse arrangement. Stefan Gregory as the Composer and Sound designer reveals the artistry that binds the vision of the production as a completed statement. It is wonderfully thought out and executed. Congratulations to the stage management for the miraculous (and soundless) scene changes. They help create a great part of the surprise and visual tension of the production and it is flawlessly done (Eva Tandy, Rebecca Poulter and Neil Fisher).

Lastly, Simon Stone as the director of this collaboration has created a masterpiece that reflects his intentions as a theatre maker, as clearly as I thought POPPEA, the Monteverdi Opera that Barrie Kosky presented with his Vienna Schauspielhaus in August, 2009 at the Drama Theatre at the Sydney opera House, did. The intelligence in his approach to the literature of the text is great and when that is supported by a theatrical intelligence that can produce the final sequences of the production with the terrifying rise and drop of the curtain, revealing image after image of mounting narrative power with overwhelming musical rapport one is left dumbfounded with admiration.

What is important to note is the deep preparation and process he encouraged and shared. It is a model. The work shows the 16 month gestation. For this is a great new Australian play script, astoundingly present and of its time. There is more here than the beauty of this production, an extant play, for others to consider. The production, unfortunately, is ephemeral, and will soon disappear into the mists and myths of history.

Make sure it is part of your theatre history.

Now, for the record, this was a Festival event. Deeply prepared. Well rehearsed, and of fearless theatrical risk. Worth every cent.

A History of Everything

2012-01-28T19:10:00.003+11:00

A HISTORY OF EVERYTHING. Presented by Sydney Theatre Company and Ontroerend Goed in association with the Sydney Festival at Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company. Presented in association with Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, Drum Theatre Plymouth and Richard Jordan Productions Ltd.

Ontroerend Goed first appeared in a Sydney Festival (2009) with an absolutely impressive work of sheer joy: THE SMILE OFF YOUR FACE. It followed later in that year with a touring company of teenage youth in a very cleverly devised product called ONCE AND FOR ALL WE'RE GONNA TELL YOU WHO WE ARE SO SHUT UP AND LISTEN.

For THE HISTORY OF EVERYTHING, the director and co-writer of this text, Alexander Devriendt (Co-writer is Joeri Smet) has worked in collaboration with four actors from his company and three from The Sydney Theatre Company, to tell the history of everything, beginning in the present and moving backwards to the Big Bang. The actors dressed in practical blacks, with lots of pockets in the jacket for prop holding (Costume Design, Sophie De Somere), reveal a white map of the world on the flat floor. Then using small props and cards, indicating such things as WAR, the company have chosen short sentence, catchcalls to take us through a history."I did not have sex with that woman". "My baby son was born on this day". Towards the end of the charted history, I thought that Tasmanians, New Zealanders and New Guineans, must have felt conflicted because as the rest of the world shrunk and rolled into a ball they were left on the floor (poor Tasmania left out again). There is no acting here, some painful high sounding gravity now and again, but mostly just a chronological vocal non-de-script rendering of very personal choices by the company. That they have learnt the order is a feat of some skill.

The point of view of these collaborators is dominated by Euro-Western World apprehensions with an occasional nod to China, Japan. Hardly any at all to South America or even to Africa - except as a European colonial war zone. There are blinks to a lot of popular culture icons and even to the personal histories of the actors. Rather than it being a history of everything it is driven by personal bias and/or personal education limitations, rather than by researched significant developments: the invention of language, for instance, tools, fire, grain, cooking!!! (in this era of the Super Chefs how did food and cooking escape these collaborators attention). The technique employed by the company is dull and not much more than organised presenting-skills. It is cute, rather like watching an educational production in your school hall. Though at one hour forty minutes the school kids would have had less patience than what we had to muster. It is all rather boring and for sure as a school-ed show would have had to big bang much quicker to keep their attention or presence.

I tired of this work quickly as I saw it was mostly gratuitously moved by a shallow history preparation and worse still I was being manipulated by an exceedingly cheesy music score of vulgar sentimentality (A history of Sound and Music would have been a useful adjunct?) that seemed to be from a very small range of interest - including a forbiddingly awful folk song towards the end. After the two earlier works by this company this appears to be a work in draft form, or at the moment it belies its title. Or should it be called THE HISTORY OF SOMETHINGS WE KNOW.

Every evening on Channel 9 at 7pm there is a twenty to thirty second compilation montage of the history of everything from the big bang to the present day, finally catapulting us into one of those idiot situation comedies, this one called THE BIG BANG THEORY. The montage however is genius and I would rather watch it over and over for one hour forty than recommend this stage production. And whether they screened it backwards or forwards it would still be more interesting. At $45 A ticket, may I recommend that, instead you purchase Neil MacGregor's A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 100 OBJECTS for only $35 (or free as a podcast) and have coffee money to spare and a permanent history of the world, where each chapter is more moving and inspiring than any of this work.

The collaborating actors are Karolien De Bleser, Charlotte de Bruyne, Cameron Goodall, Zindzi Okenyo, Tahki Saul, Joeri Smet, Nathalie Verbeke.

The Wizard of Oz

2012-01-28T19:00:00.000+11:00

SLIDE presents Daniel Scott in THE WIZARD OF OZ.

Daniel Scott one of the stars of the musical PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT and more recently THE JERSEY BOYS is a performer in his own solo right. THE WIZARD OF OZ, a cabaret selection of song,sets out to reveal the wide and wild diversity of his talent, range and skills.

Dressed in a glamourous suit with a beautiful white shirt, sparkling with the most dazzling set of shirt studs, breast and sleeves, Mr Scott greeted us in his very 'Ozzie' demeanour and told us, tonight, not to expect a single song from the music theatre repertoire. And that, rather, we reach into our own shirts and find our nipples, tweak them hard to find our "inner bogan", which when tweaked properly, will transport us, like Dorothy once was, albeit, she,with a click of her red ruby shoes, to a place no longer "Kansas", and enjoy a trip down some memory lane of songs that he grew up with in "bogan land", and gave him the courage to find the life path of a performer.

Supported by a musical trio: Guitar: Tim Martwig; Percussion Paul Whitely and a Piano player Mark Chamberlain. We had guest song from Mr Whitely and from Lisa Adam as well. Mr Scott took us on a totally unexpected performance of raunch and sentiment that touched his famous wildness at one side of his range, right across a landscape of music styles and genres, to the other side of that range, tender and deep felt passion.

Mr Scott is mostly known to me as a performer of musical theatre so to hear this choice of song and to, perforce, embrace the range of his passions was a steep and exciting learning curve.

He chatted and interacted with his audience and easily had them on side. For me, the most amazing moments were in those songs which he was able to really own, not only as a wonderful musician but especially as an actor. In a beautiful rendition of AND THE BAND PLAYED WALTZING MATILDA, dedicated to an aunt, present in the house, in memory of an uncle, singing a Capella, he sealed a memory for me of captivating beauty. Truly moving.

Thus, a singer and especially actor (he admits he can move but has too much respect for the discipline of the dancer to claim to be one), Daniel Scott gave of himself with an almighty bogan passion and a tender temperamental insight and expression. Somebody to catch up with in his cabaret mode.

Thanks to SLIDE once again. A welcomed change to my theatre going habit. A beautiful venue, great atmosphere.

'Tis Pity She's A Whore

2012-01-28T18:51:00.000+11:00

Sydney Festival in association with Sydney Theatre presents 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE by Cheek by Jowl, from the play by John Ford at the Sydney Theatre.

'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE by John Ford is calculated to have been written somewhere between 1629-1633. It was published, definitely, we know, in 1633. It was written in the Kingship of Charles I, a period of English history, sat between the glories of Elizabeth II and the Revolution led by Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. The arrival on the English throne by the Scottish, Stuart heir, James I, (1603-25) marks a time of resplendent venal corruption., from the Elizabethan Age to the terrors of Commonwealth.

Following on, from what appeared to be the Golden Age of Elizabeth, James I, ''was weak, effete, vain, extravagant,corrupt with homosexual tendencies that led him into misjudged favouritism and made him many enemies. James ruled a court rotten with graft and corruption." In this period (1603-25) the theatre artists responded with works which now have the collective appellation of The Jacobean Tragedies. They are often concerned with Bloody Revenge and Tragedy. They are mostly set in Italy, too dangerous to set in the English realm, and have the influence, firstly, of the Roman poet / philosopher , Seneca , usually swathed in bloody revenge and gore, and, secondarily, the machinations of Machiavelli, exposed in his book THE PRINCE, and through the accidents of dramatic history, having his name mistakenly synonymous with death and intrigue, particularly as the fame of the Borgias spread throughout Europe. HAMLET, THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY, THE CHANGLING, THE DUCHESS OF MALFI (to be seen as part of the Bell Shakespeare season, later this year) are part of that dramatic inheritance.

Charles I was no less a foolish King but his blunders were about war, religion and monies, not so much sex, but the political intrigues were just as intense. The power of money - the source of the agitations of the times. The playwrights of this later period, carried on the tradition of their recent forebears, for the audience still wandered from the fields of a public hanging, drawing and quartering or bear pit battle to the theatre and relished the sensation of horrible crime enacted for them with all the blood and steaming innards that the acting companies could muster.

I have always connected Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET (1594) as a duo, with the life of Ford's 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE. Both set in Italy- one in Verona the other in Parma. Both with two sets of young lovers, with a religious adviser, the Friars' Lawrence and Bonaventura, and a vulgarly secular advisor, the Nurse to Juliet and Putana, the tut'ress to Annabella. Both set in a world where the young woman is at the centre of marriage bargains with pressing suitors, both set in a world of ambition of upward mobility: materialistic, affluent, acquisitive, bourgeois and with moral values to match. In such a society only the shrewd and rich survive. Love and violence and that interaction - the theme, for both.

Romeo and Juliet, members of two different warring families, fatally fall in love. A cultural taboo. Tragedy does ensue. In 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE, Giovanni and Annabella fatally fall in love. They are brother and sister. A cultural taboo. Tragedy does ensue. A cultural taboo of Incest. INCEST. Incest was not an unfamiliar source of dramatic conflict in this period, but never had such a rendering of this taboo been so empathetic.The power of the actions on all societies , the present may be more violently revolted than other times, is such, that the persons who commit it are tainted and marked out for some terrible retribution.

What the Cheek by Jowl company under the direction of Declan Donnellan and design vision of Nick Omerod have done is make this story sit powerfully in the present world of moral instabilities and hypocrisies of government and church, of rampant materialism and a loss of guiding principles and values. The original is not set in the palaces of rulers but in the house of the mobile bourgeoise. This could be the Italy of Berlusconi and with the 'dancing' friar and Cardinal, of Benedict "Bunga"- parties and indulgences to the fore of life. But the specificity of Italy is not necessary to see the broader application to, particularly, Western World values. Even to our very own suburbs of ambitious wealth. To families of children with senses of entitlement and being "rulers of the world." Where their pleasure is their will.

The original play has three plots spinning throughout the text, in this version, the comic plot (the supposed weakest one) concerning a suitor Bergetto and his servant Poggio, has been excised. We are concerned with the incest plot of the two siblings, Giovanni (Jack Gordon) and Annabella (Lydia Wilson) and the marriage ambitions of Soranzo (Jack Hawkins) with the help of his servant Vasques (Laurence Spellman), dully focused on the heiress Annabella, despite a spurned other woman, Hippolita (Suzanne Burden).

Set in a large room/suite of a large house. A tawdry armoire with carelessly open and clothes-draped doors, let us see a young girl's excessive wardrobe of clothes. Along the extensive back wall there is an entrance door and another, to a functioning white tiled bathroom- shower stall and tub.On this wall are a collection of popular culture posters tacked/stuck conveniently to the wall. Annabella, i.e." Anna the Beauty" has a series of icons to inspire her : Scarlett from GONE WITH THE WIND; Alexandro del Largo from SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH; Holly Goligtly from BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S; Sookie Stackhouse from TRUE BLOOD. There are other images from Manga cartoons. Role models for the young and the vapid, perhaps. No classical art here just disposable, cheap images of a pop culture. Even the Madonna with a bleeding heart, hanging in a corner, is a nasty copy. In the centre of the room, front, a free standing bed covered in less than fresh red laundry, harbours a casually dressed young woman,with a partially shaved hair style, grooving with head sets, to her private, silent disco. She moves to the beat of a different drummer. The visual impact of this space and the behaviour of Annabella suggests a young woman indulged, spoilt and bored.

Giovanni, her brother is no less a louche figure , though more aware, empowered, maybe drug deluded, with a sense of the right of his will as he shrugs off the moralising admonitions of his confessor, and pursues his lust for his sister. That she is similarly attracted, is of no surprise, considering the design clues set up in this production by Mr Donnellan, and is simply told by Ford :

"The love of thee, my sister, and the view
Of thy immortal beauty hath untuned
All harmony both of my rest and life."

Annabella's response is in the same simple key and their sense of undisturbed entitlement to their desires is captured in a delicate, unflowered ritual which follows :

ANNABELLA:
On my knees, She kneels
Brother, even by our mother's dust, I charge you,
Do not betray me to your mirth or hate,
Love me, or kill me, brother.

GIOVANNI:
On my knees, He kneels.
Sister, even by my mother's dust, I charge you,
Do not betray me to your mirth or hate,
Love me, or kill me, sister.

They thus seal their fate (killing is assured) and face the social obligation intrusions of the real world. Annabella is sought in marriage by many suitors but Soranzo is the selected one. That Soranzo is an exemplar of the contriving hedonistic, ambitious lout, considering his relationship with the widow Hippolita, who he has seduced with promises of marriage, and his part in the death of her husband, he, now, finding better and younger pickings, rejects her with hypocritical casuistry :

The vows I made, if you remember well,
Were wicked and unlawful: 'twere more sin
To keep them than to break them.

The facts about his past are well known, and yet this is the man who is generally accepted as the fittest claimant of Annabella's hand by the family and society. Which world should be more condemned, that of the brother and sister or that of the suitor? "From one point of view the wooing of Soranzo and Annabella is the confrontation between an adulterous attempted murderer an incest participant; from another it is the meeting of an eligible nobleman and the daughter of a bourgeois gentleman." We as an audience are placed in a foul dilemma. That we recognise it as the way of the world, then and now, is a gravely unsettling thing.

Culturally, the bloody doings of this play, even to the appearance of Giovanni "trimmed in reeking blood" with a bloody heart impaled on the end of a dagger, or in this production, the engorged penis of Soranzo as he leaves the bed of Annabella, or the naked sights of the shower cubicle, are not overly sensational, our present cultural arts: theatre, movie going and television having desensitized us to a degree of minimal shock. This, too, becomes a source of disturbance. As, surely, there is decadence here, of impressive proportions. The production sound design (by Composer and Sound Designer, Nick Powell) pumps out the thumping noise of popular culture with an emphatic beat so that the tribal hysteria, the chorus dancing, about bloody doings, become part of an hysterical ease of embracement , even mild excitement, one was careful to the curb one's own stamp of foot. It blends us to blandishments of appreciation. Of acceptance of the moral compass of this giddy world. We applaud amazedly. Perhaps, blasé, dazzedly.

But for my $100 or more, including program ($10), I was not overly impressed."Blood", "Heart" and "Confusion" are the three iconic words of this text. No doubt there was blood, but really little heart in the playing. Confusion was the word that stuck me to summarise this performance of this edit of the John Ford play. It seemed to be a less than engaged and disciplined cast, at my performance, a bit of a walk through, with a wide range of varying quality of skills present, that did not seem to establish , why Cheek by Jowl is so esteemed. The OTHELLO that I saw, by this company, in this same theatre a few years ago, also lacked intellectual and playing cogency. A Festival production on holiday in the antipodes?!! The voices of the actors were worn and ragged, the use of the language seemed to me an imitation of contemporary sms text reading - it came either in bursts of tumbling words or at a word by word delivery. No music in these sounds and not always cogent good sense. It was sometimes useful, though mostly distracting, to be able to read the text jerked onto the side screens in the auditorium, just to check what they had actually said. The directorial decisions of the actors on stage as chorus observers, interesting, but unresolved in aesthetics or theatrical clarity.The design concept, messy and not necessarily useful.

I know lots of friends who enjoyed it. I did not.

I like the play. I liked the concept, but not much else. When paying, in these stringent times, $100, I can demand more than this.

Babel

2012-01-18T19:18:00.001+11:00

Sydney Festival 2012 in association with Sydney Theatre presents BABEL (words) - Sidi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet and Anthony Gormley.

Sidi Cherkaoui has been a recent visitor, twice, to our theatres. I first saw him in an astounding duet with Akram Khan in a piece called ZERO DEGREES (also featuring an Anthony Gormley design) and later in the Concert Hall showing a work called SUTRA a project in collaboration with Anthony Gormley, Syzmon Brzoska and monks from the Shaolin Temple in China.

This work BABEL was co-commissioned by the Dash Arts 2010 programme on Arabic Arts. Eastman vzw is company in residence at Toneelhuis (Antwerp) works in association with international arts campus deSingel (Antwerp) and is supported by Asano Taiko (Japanese drums). With the support of Garrick Charitable Trust and the Flemish authorities.

BABEL is the third part of a trilogy, that includes FOI (2003), and MYTH (2007). BABEL begins at the pivotal point in the bible story "when God punishes the people who dared build a tower in his name by creating linguistic, ethnic and geographical chaos among them." [1]

"On Day 1 of rehearsal, a microcosm of 18 performers from 13 countries, with 15 languages, seven religious backgrounds and numerous performance modes between them, joined choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, as well as visual artist Anthony Gormley, to embark upon a new journey."[1]

The language of this work is both verbal and physical and the integration works smoothly and constructively throughout the piece. Anthony Gormley has created six giant three-dimensional metal frames that work as the cities (the towers of Babel) that man builds, spaces "where wanderers wander blindly, making decisions by the millisecond, not knowing what they do, or why they do it, what it means or where it will lead. People stumble into choices of belief, community and identity that, as well as giving support, closes doors, build boundaries and set limits." [1] The metal cubes are managed, dragged, carried, interleaved and spun throughout the weave of the work. Images of shape, meaning and imaginative action are constantly offered.

The live musical 'language' uses Indian and Japanese rhythms as well as some medieval polyphony. The musicians also move from their heightened platforms, at the back of the stage, and join the dancers in the spaces and like a huge human caravan of wanderers traverse the many landscapes that Mr Cherkaoui and Jalet propose for us to endow the space and time of the work with. The foolishness of our species in its inability to exist in harmony is related over and over again. The grasping needs of individuals and groups to be the power seat is sadly re-iterated across the multi-cultural political 'boxes' of our civilization.

Duets and group dynamics using the sculpture forms from Mr Gormley burst out and retire, burst out again and again. The individual scenes are what I take from the work: the ecstatic whirl of the group running pell mell in circles around the space, spinning the metal cubes dangerously, especially for us in the front rows - exhilaration galore; the witty interaction between man and woman from ape to cave man and 'robot'; the endearing exploration of the mechanics of invention by the two entranced Asian explorers; are some of my remembered highlights. The dancing-movement by all the company is athletic and astonishing. Dressed in ordinary street-looking habiliments (although, obviously cannily designed, Alexandra Gilbert), the expertise of the physical prowess of the dancers is, in form, less clearly apprehended in physical details but certainly engaged with by the wow factor of the wonderment of extraordinary ability. These inhabitants of the work interestingly keep our attention without being highly sexualised - next to no nakedness - unusual in my contemporary dance experience.

Lou Cope, the dramaturg of this work, tells us in her notes, "During the (rehearsal) process, the show revealed to its makers that what they were doing was turning the Tower of Babel upside down: what mattered was not the external multiplicity of our (regional, linguistic, physical ...) differences, but the underlying bond of what unites rather than divides us, and therefore the responsibilities we all share. ... That we are left with each other. Chained together .... entirely, literally by our neurons and separated only by our skins."

The work is almost two hours long, extremely generous in its offer to the audience, caught in the thrill of wonderfully controlled bodies in motion. But it is the length and the many different modes of communication that needs editing and tidying. Some times the joking usage of the creation of Ulrika Kinn Svenson, seemed to be over indulged, for instance. Like the SUTRA experience of Mr Cherkaoui, editorial discipline would perhaps streamline the work into a more satisfying , more readable 'intellectual' statement. The whole of the work is not nearly as satisfying as the pieces within it. The answers to understanding this world, these journeys are not always clear, it is a jumble of pleasing work that the artists just can't let go of. The individual pleasure of the result of physical creativity kept at the expense of edited intellectual shaping?

Despite the overall lack of intellectual clarity, the exhilaration of the performers and the obvious delight that they demonstrated combined with all the other creative elements in the doing of the work is impressive and infectious and we, on the night I saw the work, responded loudly and enthusiastically.

[1] Quotes are from the essay notes of Lou Cope, April 2010: ABOUT BABLE (words) in the Festival program.

Sunburnt Country

2012-01-15T14:44:00.002+11:00

Marney McQueen presents SUNBURNT COUNTRY starring Rosa the Russian Beautician and Friends, written by Marney McQueen and Tim Bain, at Slide, Oxford St. Darlinghurst.

Friday night I was whisked off by Daniel Scott to see a one night stand at the Slide Cabaret venue in Oxford Street – Marney McQueen in a show called SUNBURNT COUNTRY. I had not planned it, but it was a great way to finish the week.

Marney McQueen has been seen in the musical PRISCILLA, QUEEN of the DESERT and recently in HAIRSPRAY in Sydney and elsewhere. This triple threat, actor-singer-dancer has, however, not sat on her laurels there, but developed a collection of cabaret, satirical characters that take deeply humorous and sometimes penetrating bites into the country we live in. It seems Ms McQueen was inspired by Barry Humphries and there is a similar fearless razor sharp x-ray eye with the right turn of phrase and observed characteristics that could make some of us shudder. Fortunately, most of us just break out in great big guffaws.

We meet Karen Barnes, a security officer who loves her frisky job. Damo, an Aussie bogan backpacker doing his duty at the dawn service for the ANZACS at Gallipoli draped in the flag and fondly remembering his storming of a beach, Cronulla. Carbon Neutral Bride Annabel Sarah Victoria Winters Smythe, a devoted greenie giving her wedding reception speech. Gold Coast cougar Raelene Dreggs raising funds for her incarcerated daughter. And, after the interval, the major persona of the night, Rosa the Russian Beautician to the stars.

In hilarious stand-up routines that interact alarmingly well with invasions into the audience, accompanied with filmed sequences of recommendation from actual luminaries (for the Rosa beautician skills) such as Jackie Weaver, Bert Newton and Ian Healey, Ms McQueen also produces a musical theatre voice of immense range and flexibility, with a witty turn of lyric that bears a stick to the funny bone with resounding reward. On this particular night the musical accompaniment is supplied by a guest performer, the great Trevor Ashley, who subdues his own inimitable style to work as a perfect foil, stooge as Master of the Organ Sergei Longschlongadonski and others, for Ms McQueen's bravura strokes.

Recently I talked of the talents of Trevor Ashley (FAT SWAN), iota, Paul Capsis, Eddie Perfect, Meow Meow and newcomer Sheridan Harbridge in the cabaret scene in Sydney and now I am adding Marney McQueen as a "watch out for her" next show (check her web site). A hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Melbourne Comedy Festival - she is worth catching.

Many thanks then to Daniel Scott then, who just happens to have his own cabaret performance on Thursday, 19th January at the same venue: SLIDE. Seems to be a happening place. Might be worth catching, too.

The Boys

2012-01-12T15:40:00.000+11:00

Griffin Theatre Company, in association with Sydney Festival, presents THE BOYS by Gordon Graham at the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross.

If, for no other reason, a very good reason to decide to see THE BOYS at the Griffin Theatre, is to see the acting. There maybe other reasons to go as well, but, if in doubt about going, for this play we all know, is not easy, overcome your reluctance.

The front of House team took our tickets and wished us 'a lovely night' as we climbed the stairs to our seats. A lovely night was not to be expected if one knew the play, for it deals with a very grim subject and it is famously told by Gordon Graham, fiercely, with little compromise, to reveal a confronting view of the animals known as homo sapiens. Us, and other humans like us. There but for the grace of God go I? Sandra, the mother, advises "...people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

The Sprague family and their spouses under what seem to be unrelenting socio-economic pressures are barely surviving. Their ability to break out of the circle of poverty seems remote and all they have is 'the family ' that they know, to rely on. The form of love that they have evolved amongst themselves is their absolute solace. The rest of the world is a challenge and needs to be made to respect them and to co-operate on their desperate terms.

The boys of the play title, Brett the elder (Josh McConville), Glenn (Johnny Carr), and Stevie, the youngest (Anthony Gee) have been nurtured by a protective 'lioness' of a mother, Sandra (Jeanette Cronin). A single parent, the husband/father is never referred to, Sandra has supervised the lives of these men with unrelenting love: "That's the greatest love there is, between a mum and her children. It's a love that never dies".

In encouraging her boys to find a way to live Sandra has vetted and attempted to train their women partners, Michelle (Cheree Cassidy), Jackie (Louisa Mignone) and Nola (Eryn Jean Norvill), to accept the patterns of the needs of the male Sprague animal. "You know, you cant help thinking, maybe when a bloke first gets out (of prison), and he's all screwed up about sex, you'd be better keeping right out of his hair, just packing him straight off to King's Cross to get it over with, with some girl he doesn't know. Better for all concerned." As the new women in this world begin to see the true nature/nurture of the boys, they start, in their own small way, to try to change things (especially the ambitious Jackie),causing frictions that ignite a gentle combustion with the boys, that will ultimately rage into a frustrated and terrifying inflammation - a bushfire of hellish destruction.

This play first appeared, on this stage in 1991, and the notorious trial around the tragic Anita Cobby case, had recently percolated corrosively into the Australian everyday psyche. The play, then, caused moral dilemma, and today, sad to say, still does. It is a glowering, cruel view of the possibility of the human being. The truth of the terror that man has the capability of inflicting on others of his kind, we constantly read about in the press and watch on our screens, and not just in history or in war zones. And when it is revealed to possibly be next door and so on our neighbourbour watch, only separated from us by a flimsy, rusting, corrugated fence, it delivers a confrontation, that is powerfully numbing.

Sam Strong, the director of this production, believes that it is not just the 'intellectual' aftermath that makes this play important and the reason to see, but the power of the visceral experience of witnessing it together as a community. Mr Strong with his designer, Renee Mulder, have invented a claustrophobic space that makes the Stables Theatre appear to be even smaller than usual. Up the two walls of the space, not only on the stage, but scaled into the audience surround, corrugated iron and rotting wooden fence loom around us. The floor of the stage is the brown desolation of real, but worn out grass, with just sufficient greenery on edges to suggest the flicker of surviving life. Sitting centre is the ubiquitous symbol of Australian suburbia, the Hills hoist clothes line (remember the burnt desolation of the family backyard in MURIEL'S WEDDING), which metaphorically spins around and around, on and on, just like the tiny planet we sit on. Furniture of human decrepitude cowers on the fringes of the space.

The Lighting Design by Verity Hampson covering indoor and outdoor locations and different time frames, besides the poetry of artistic metaphor, adds pricelessly to the atmosphere and rhetoric of the production's aesthetic and intention. The Sound Design/Composition of Kelly Ryall is complex and almost permanent, but for my experience, just occasionally over emphatic in it's affect.

The dynamite that ignites Mr Graham's grim world vision is the acting of this cast. Josh McConville as Brett is a frightening force of enraged primal machismo, with a slow fuse burning throughout the play to ultimately reveal a reckless ruthlessness and torment driven to lash out at anything to satiate his feeling, his innate knowledge of his own puny qualities. Mr McConville appears before us in a terrifying transformation of character embodiment. Every inch of him, seemingly every fibre, is quivering with transformed belief. This performance is a life force of contemptible blind evil. Mr McConville has not shied away in any capacity to reveal the power of real human ugliness. For the aesthetes of the actors craft, Mr McConville as Brett Sprague is an exemplar par excellence (consider his bewildered patient, this time last year in the STC's IN THE NEXT ROOM, OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY. The contrast is astounding).

Anthony Gee as Stevie, has also found a character to completely identify with and has broken through his usual self-consciousness into a fierce ownership of all the fragile and clueless idiocy of the indulged runt of the litter. Mr Gee's sense of possession is a reward for his relentless practice at his craft - his constant efforts on the fringe productions (check his bio) has paid off, in this instance. It is exciting to watch actors blooming. This is what Mr Strong demonstrates in his direction of all these actors, a sense of trusting them as fellow collaborators with a sublime confidence in the writer as the source of his and their artistry for the primal need of telling story to the collective tribe in this corroboree space called the Griffin SBW Stables Theatre. Mr Carr as the middle brother, Glenn, too, finds the gathering power of his character in the opportunities of the second act, under the eye of Mr Strong.It grows to an impressive and sad statement of a character collapsing under peer pressure from the possibility of escape with Jackie from the Sprague web.

The play despite been called THE BOYS is really an alarming study of the women that surround these men. The complexity of the reasons the women are with these men at all is pitiably evoked with deft and subtle gestures of the acting craft signalled from a close reading of Mr Graham's text. The second act of the play reveals the acute sociological observations of Mr Graham's writing and Ms Cronin, Mignone, Cassidy and Norvill bravely layer the work with painfully gained insight and empathy for their characters. The hideous poignancy of the concluding lines of act one from Sandra: " All you can do is be patient, that's all. Take comfort from knowing that while they're out there doing what their doing, they're probably thinking about you. At least some of the time." is chillingly absorbed by us, retrospectively, as we imagine what they have actually done out there. (All of the action, as in the classic Greek theatre mode, happens off stage.)The gratefulness we have when Nola, reclaims her son from the arms of Sandra, the BOYS' mother is palpable. Though, as we sit in the Griffin Theatre today, we have recollections of Jackie Weaver’s "Lady Macbeth in stretch pants" in ANIMAL KINGDOM and we know that not a lot has changed in our world.

It is chilling, is it not, how vicariously interested we are in this world as Australians? In our recent mainstream popular entertainment: WOLF CREEK, ANIMAL KINGDOM, SNOWTOWN, THE LOVED ONES, and UNDERBELLY, for starters. The cultural, sociological politics of the relationship between the sexes in Australia, interesting to contemplate, in how our fictional constructs stay occupied, mesmerized there. The recent revival of another Australian classic, Ray Lawler's THE SUMMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL kept underling the sexual politics of this play as I watched last night. Gentler, for sure, but how much different?

A good play, a wonderful design, exemplary ensemble and individual acting, and a director's hand that guides actors through a text without the necessity to auteur himself, makes this a challenging but a not to be missed theatre experience. It should, as well, grow more and more confident in its taut control of the space and audience.

I am Eora

2012-01-12T11:00:00.001+11:00

BLACK CAPITAL DAY and I AM EORA, World Premiere, presented by Sydney Festival 2012 in association with The Balnaves Foundation in Bay 17 at Carriageworks.

According to the stylish corporate brochure and publicity material for the Sydney Festival 2012 :

Carriageworks in the heart of Redfern is the place to be for our FAMILY AND CULTURE DAY on Sunday, January 8. The official opening ceremonies for BLACK CAPITAL start at midday with a Welcome to Country, kicking off a colourful and fun-filled program of storytelling, music, art performance and food. The doors open on Brook Andrew's TRAVELLING COLONY of caravans as well as 181REGENT ST, a milestone exhibition celebrating 40 years of black theatre making. Be entertained by highlights from ERTH's latest puppet and multimedia spectacle, I BUNYIP. Discover the latest music sensations from the Gadigal Music label - Marcus Corowa, Jess Beck and Duke Box. Sample delicious Indigenous fusion cuisine from Yaama Dhiyaan and keep your eyes peeled for members of the South Sydney Rabbitohs who'll be around on the day. To everyone, that's a big BLACK CAPITAL welcome to Redfern.

We arrived at about 3pm. There was a milling crowd of mostly young families wandering about the space foyer of Carriageworks. They clambered in and out of the colourfully, hand-painted caravans of Brook Andrew, parked across the immense space of Carriageworks. This art installation is called TRAVELLING COLONY. Beneath the colourful, hand-painted 'skins ' of the caravans, which have been left, under the 'skin', as archaeological assets/survivors of another age, the intact caravan furniture, we are invited to watch video interviews of Indigenous citizens of the local area, answering a series of prepared questions, about their past, present and future experiences and aspirations/hopes. Some are more interesting than others. Some are inspiring as verbatim interviews can sometimes be. It is, though, a fairly tame and perfunctory experience. The care by the artist and his team about the editing of the gathered material is not of the best skill. In fact, the best of TRAVELLING COLONY is the fun of watching and negotiating around the 'kids' climbing in and out of the vans, and it is that that gives, for me, the work, life and meaning. These caravans with other relevant localised interviews (Vietnamese for Cabramatta, for instance) would have much the same impact in a corporate Shopping Mall in Cabramatta, Neutral Bay or Penrith, let alone in this significant space.

We wandered into the exhibition addressing some history of Black Theatre. It is 181 REGENT ST, curated by Rhoda Roberts:

The pervading legacy of 181 Regent St and this extraordinary time is explored in a special anniversary exhibition that draws on personal archives, films and photographs to tell the story of the National Black Theatre and the people who were involved. Covering pioneering works such as THE CHERRY PICKERS and THE CAKE MAN the exhibition considers where it all began and the ongoing influence of the National Black Theatre on contemporary Aboriginal theatre today.

1972-1977 - a sadly meaningful date/year for the theatre to disappear, I thought, later.

The exhibition is beautifully mounted and easy to negotiate. Some of the names and photographs gratefully connect to important memories, for me (I have memories of Bob Mazza, Zac Martin, Justine Saunders, Jack Charles, David Gulpilil and especially, Brian Syron). The material we see is fairly interesting but, seemingly, is very limited. The sources for the exhibited material are indeed, from viewing, clearly, mostly, personal and not at all comprehensive. It is an appetiser for one's curiosity only. I left, vaguely re-informed but hugely disappointed. There was a nostalgic gratuitous thanks for the opportunity to go back to a time in White and Black artistic interaction which was a kind of revolutionary action, complimenting the politics of the times - hugely contentious and fraught, but exciting and necessary. What someone, not of that volatile era, would gain from this exhibition is interesting to contemplate. Not enough, I fear. There is a symposium on January 14, 10am -4.30pm that might be invigorating to see and hear. It will need more rigour to ignite the history and contemporary issues, given the pervasive veneer of hagiolatry presented in this exhibition.

There were some rappers finishing up in one of the Tracks - missed them (at least, presently). The biggest buzz and queues of parents, prams and strollers, however, were coming from the I BUNYIP highlights presented by ERTH. In fact, they added a performance to try to help satisfy the demand. We couldn't get in - damn and blast.

Couldn't find the "Indigenous fusion cuisine", unless that was a sausage on white bread swathed copiously in sauces. If it were an example of the promised delicious, then it was, if not completely delicious, welcome, to a hungry visitor. But worse and woe, we didn't spy a single South Sydney Rabbitoh footballer - a sense of mission unaccomplished settled on us as we waited to enter the performance of I AM EORA.

The vast foyer of Carriageworks gradually filled with a lot of well dressed citizenry with the added buzz of fellow artists and politicians, some of whom were commenting, I overheard, that this was their first visit to the place!!!! Just where have they been and what is their essential interests in the arts, that such is the case? I was kind of shocked, considering the important and relevant work I have seen here over the past recent years. Years !!!

Some of us had paid to see this significant opening festival event and had been here before.

The organisers had us entering the biggest of the performance spaces, Bay 17, legendarily or mythologically, supposedly inspired by the famed Ariane Mnouchkine's Theatre de Soliel and then, taken up by the enthusiastic NSW Premier, especially sophisticated for the arts, Bob Carr. They had a conversation in the space about the space and some say: et voila! Whether, the invited audience were lost in getting here, to Redfern, at Carriageworks, or, just a schmozzle at the front of house, the VIP's were not brought into their reserved seats until about 5.15 pm and we didn't begin til almost 5.25pm for a 5 o'clock start. Considering my grumble about the Old Fitzroy, recently (see, THE HORSE'S MOUTH) I thought, in all fairness, I should mention the late time start here as well. Especially discommoding for some making a dash to other, later performance dates, that night.

What it did give us, however, was time to read the program notes. It was quite appetite whetting to read the three introductory biographical notes on the featured historical figures of the work: The Warrior - Pemulwuy; The Nurturer - Barangaroo; The Interpreter - Bennelong. I knew of Bennelong, and was excited to see a work using the Pemulwuy story, at last, and deeply curious about the female figure, Barangaroo.

Stephen Curtis the Designer for this production (Set, Projection and Costume Design), takes advantage of the immense width of the space, and has constructed an immense raked performance floor of white/ blue tinge with an angled mirror image back board cyclo-rama, upon which, are projected text and images. Whilst we waited a message of welcome was in sms-like type scrolling across the upper 'sky' panel. The technological effort and crafting of the projected texts and visuals was certainly one of the more impressive elements in this show. It was often a welcome distraction.

On the stage there is the paraphernalia necessary for a rock band and singers, spread across the upper horizontal. An aboriginal figure in traditional appearance smokes the space in welcome. Finally, a contemporary suited aboriginal male arrives on stage and very deliberately undresses and places, neatly, the clothes on the floor, and stands before us, pridefully, naked and ceremonially painted white.

What the next hour and twenty minutes are, is the presentation of a community-pride rock music concert. We are regaled by Radical Son representing The Warrior in raucous rock lyrics and music. He is answered by a contemporary rapper, Nooky. The boredom is that the music is ordinary and the lyrics by both men are also ordinary: FIST IN THE AIR!!! from Nooky - for goodness sake, especially after we have had a Performer (Jack Charles) abuse the cast for antiquated ideas and politics to start the show rolling.

Kaleena Briggs in full sparkly-dress-mode, sang for the second episode based around Barangaroo, her performance rollicking but ordinary. This representation of aboriginal woman is complemented by a pretty young pregnant, white pinafored Young Woman (Miranda Tapsell) fishing blithely and finally mopping the floor, and an expletive enforced duped aboriginal bride (Elaine Crombie), balanced by the actual Inaugural Speech of Linda Burney to the parliament, read by the real Linda Burney, on stage. The program notes gave us a far more arresting image of Indigenous woman. Barangaroo seemed to be a steadfastly feisty and principled individual - refusing even to dress to suit the white man's conventions (all our indigenous women, here, stayed dressed within the convention of this audience -what would Barangaroo have done?).

The third section, featuring Bennelong, is mainly a long spoken melancholic and grief stricken dirge, delivered in the vocally rich and life-worn tones of Jack Charles. What I find especially moving and ironic, in my contemplations during this section, is that Jack Charles once played Bennelong in the Old Tote commissioned play, CRADLE OF HERCULES (1974) by Michael Boddy and directed by George Whaley, in the Drama theatre at the Opera House on Bennelong Point. It told of the first settlement and the interaction between the indigenous people and the white invaders, colonists, led by Governor Philip (John Gaden). Besides Jack Charles, Zac Martin, David Gulpilil and Justine Saunders were members of the cast. I wonder what that play reads like today?

Wesley Enoch and Anita Heiss are credited with the writing of I AM EORA, and it and the dramaturgy are less than ordinary, when discernible at all. The stage craft demonstrated by the Director Wesley Enoch, in the management of this huge cast in this big space, is ordinary. The choreography of the dancers, by Associate Director/Choreographer, Yolande Brown, is ordinary. This community pride concert is ordinary, no matter the stirring intentions and the sight of so many indigenous artists up on centre stage. And there is nothing wrong with a community pride concert (check out the David Edgar Guardian Weekly essay cited in James Waites recent blog-post) but, as the centre piece to the inaugural BLACK CAPITAL space and a cornerstone to the Sydney Festival I have my doubts. This work long conceived by Wesley Enoch after initial discussions with Lindy Hume in 2008, is ordinary beyond contemporary expectation.

This past year (2011) in Sydney, there has been, in my estimation, some groundbreaking and progressive Indigenous works in performance. BULLY BEEF STEW at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists. Bangara's BELONG at the Sydney Opera House. BLOODLAND for the Sydney Theatre Company and the Adelaide Arts Festival. POSTS IN THE PADDOCK at Performance Space, created by Moogahlin Performing Arts with My Darling Patricia. This Sydney Festival project (I AM EORA) directed by Wesley Enoch, is a work out of period, out of date. Maybe Mr Enoch has been too occupied with the Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane to keep up to date with developments in the Sydney scene? It is a case where the line in the sand has been advanced magnificently by the above artists and that this work is considerably a mile behind the new markers. Two steps forward, a gigantic leap back. It is staggering ineptness. So much money, so much effort, and so little rigour and acknowledgement of what has gone on in the last year. It takes me back to my experience at Belvoir, this year of WINDMILL BABY (please read). That the Balnaves Foundation has been a source of support for this expensive looking corporate exercise is deeply saddening for them, I reckon. Who is advising them? Impressed by the surface gloss of the presentation, with no in-depth interrogation or investigation of the method of production? I find it curious that not one artist from above mentiond works that I regard as truly exciting e.g. Andrea James and her team; the Page family (not one representative, hardly believable, considering their ubiquitous influence in almost everything theatrical in Indigenous Sydney), nor the farsighted and talented Wayne Blair, is involved here. They could have commissioned or curated work for BLACK CAPITAL this year that would have been a sensation for the Festival, and the "this is my first visit to Carriageworks" audiences. I could have curated better and I just go to the theatre. Doesn't the Sydney Festival have any talent scouts out there going to watch shows by independent performers? Or, is it just a short cut to be dazzled by the glamour of well known names, or just lazy producing?

I estimate the money spent on the 16 page brochure for BLACK CAPITAL promotion could have built a work at Pact, by Andrea James. History will archive these brochures and our heirs will think how wonderfully prescient of the Sydney Festival to begin this initiative. But the work actually experienced here, does not, cannot, really bear too close a scrutiny. Just look at some of the corporate friendly annual reports produced by some of our subsidised organisations, and see how an effect of glamour and ‘edge’ is achieved with the use of spectacular photography and graphic art direction - what can be spun out of truly awful or medicre experiences. All surface, no depth. Our arts managers do need to be kept real, really. It is the quality of all the elements of the product not the look of the brochures and posters, that ought to be the crux of our valuation of these projects. I AM EORA, is not an especially interesting experience. Experience it for what it is: a local, community-pride rock concert.

I read in the program notes that the new C.E.O. of Carriageworks, Lisa Havilah, has begun a plan for the future with the Redfern urban Aboriginal cultural authorities, to present an on-going involvement at this venue in the years to come. This is an important and timely vision.

An under-achievement to begin the festival and the year. If only Ms Mnouchkine, or someone of her creative vision and professional experience with such large-scale productions (Nigel Jamieson?) had been given the brief to use this space.

Oh, well, C' est la vie.

Happy New Year - 2012

2012-01-03T20:32:00.002+11:00

This is not to be a normal post, but rather an update of the circumstances in which I will continue to write. I graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in the Acting Course (NIDA) in 1971 - yikes 41 years ago. Since then, I have worked as an actor, director and teacher of acting, both in Australia and Internationally - Principally, the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. I worked as a teacher at NIDA, part time and full time for 28 years.

I have just finished a ten year stint as a full-time staff member, working with Tony Knight and his exciting, evolving and stimulating course and staff (let me not forget the gifted student artists from whom I was constantly learning, as well). I was offered a further one-year contract for 2012, but felt I could not accept its terms and since there was no offer of any negotiation, and considering the 'times' there, it was time to begin again. So, here I am free lancing alongside the rest of the performing arts community, again, as I once did. It feels familiar but re-leasing!! Daunting but exciting. I am up to acting again, directing and, of course, teaching.

I have been lucky and grateful that the New Theatre, a long time encourager of my development over nearly three decades have offered and given me a project to engage in: THE TEMPERAMENTALS by Jon Marans, as part of the 2012, Mardi Gras Festival. It opens with an exciting young cast of professionals: Doug Hansell, Daniel Scott, Mark Dessaix, Ben McIvor and Brett Rogers. February 7th to 3rd March, 2012. My talent will be up for the scrutiny by the scene that I have written about in the last four years. Really, 4 years? I, like they, can only try to do it well, my best!!!

To follow, Clare Grant, along with Su Goldfish, Paul Mattews and Mark Mitchell have invited me to work with students at the Creative Practice and Research Unit (CPRU) of the School of English, Media and Performing Arts (EMPA), in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sceiences, UNSW on a project: Staging the Text. Clare invited me to choose something, anything that I had wanted to do - but had never had the opportunity to do. So, a project that I had, dreamt of, and only dreamed about - the Nobel Prize Winner Gao Xingjian's THE OTHER SHORE - surfaced in my consciousness. I chose this play for several reasons: A) It is a Chinese play and, really, that close and important culture is hardly ever seen in the theatre in Australia; B): It has a form that I have had very little practice at - hmmmm!!!. C): Jump, and see what happens. It begins rehearsal in early February for a March showing. In truth, as I have told my invitees, I do not know what or how to do this work - a great big leap into the unknown (Aubrey Mellor is excited that I am having a go). "25 non-actors, non-dancers but with infinite (I hope) passion", I have been assured to be let loose on this territory with me and the others. The other shore indeed. I wonder what it will be.

One of my post-NIDA expeditions will be to follow on from my intense background of recent years, in discovering the way to extend to the working profession the means to continue the development and honing of their skills. In recent years, outside of the aegis of NIDA, graduate students, particularly those who have been to the BIG, CRAZY LA LA LAND of film and television, and returning to Australia, have begun to seek CLASSES. Acting Classes that they got used to attending in Los Angeles and New York to keep themselves primed and stimulated as artists. I was asked to take some of these classes. They were made up of graduates from all schools in Australia (WAPPA, QUT, VCA, ACA, NIDA etc.) and young artists from the television world who had amassed great experience but who felt not confident enough technically (or, so they thought).

Oliver Wenn, an ex-student of mine has felt the need for this stimulation and we, together have begun a fledgling idea, to try to provide an opportunity where the professional actor can have a space to meet and access to the refreshment and refurbishing of their craft and possibly art. Check out his site at www.thehubstudio.com.au. We are having a season of classes beginning in January.

Similarly, Sam Strong and the Griffin Theatre Company have asked me to run a series of scenework masterclasses as part of their far sighted program for the profession in March 2012.

No longer a complete luddite (I even have a mobile phone and can send texts!), I have also set up a website http://kevinjacksonactingstudio.com where you can find out about my acting classes (individual and group) and directing work. This is a self serving blog as I am up for it. Whatever it may be. I hope you have a good New Year. I hope to very much.

I shall be back to usual business as soon as I go to the theatre next. Wish you luck. Wish me some, too?

Sincerely, Kevin Jackson.

Looking Back 2011

2011-12-28T21:21:00.001+11:00

Let's begin with the theatre that I have seen this year that has given me good reason to KEEP going.

By far and away the most satisfying production I saw this year was: THE LIBERTINE by Stephen Jeffreys at the Darlinghurst Theatre by SPORT FOR JOVE. Every aspect of this presentation was informed by theatrical intelligence and committed passion, beginning with the writing right through to the Acting: Danielle King - amazingly gifted and giving, present; Anthony Gooley - it looked like a self sacrifce of himself to create the performance of Rochester, exciting to see auch a young actor give so much of himself, emotional risk taking of tthe highest order; Susan Prior - being modestly great with her integrity as an artist, as usual; Sean O'Shea - outrageously relaxed and comically brilliant. But then the whole company was truly focused and fused. A flawless team. The Costume and Set Design by Lucilla Smith - a breakthrough of thorougness and beauty; Lighting Design - Matt Cox enhancing every visual aspect. Composition and Sound Design by Simon Van Doornum and Mary Rapp- integrated and supportive without intrusion. The Direction by Damien Ryan and Terry Karabelas insightful and colaborative.

THE NEDERLANDS DANS THEATRE 1 which I saw at the Arts Centre Melbourne was the next thrilling theatre I saw. So moved and excited that I saw it twice, on two consecutive days. DOUBLE YOU by Jiri Kylian, THE SECON PERSON by Crystal Pite - brilliant! SILENT SCREEN - by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon.

THE ADVENTURES OF ALVIN SPUTNIK: DEEP SEA EXPLORER written, designed, performed and directed by Tim Watts - a miraculous creation for children and adults. A creation once more coming from a truly impassioned artist with his skills in brillaint form. Also at the Darlinghurst Theatre.

Two works by My Darling Patricia: AFRICA at Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 2 and POSTS IN THE PADDOCK at Performance Space, Carriageworks. Claire Britton, Halcyon MacCleod and Sam Routledge artistic visionaries leading an amazing creative team.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS from DV8 led by Lloyd Newson at the Sydney Opera House. Dance Theatre, verbals and politics, such that the audience were still in the foyer ages after it finished truly engaged in discussion. What theatre can and should do to help us see our worlds in confronting distillations.

THE BROTHERS SIZE by Tarell Alvin McCraney. A contemporary African-American play, an exciting new voice for Sydney to hear, with a wonderful cast of Australian actors: Marcus Johnston, Anthony Taufa and especially Meyne Wyatt. Design by David Fleischer. Imara Savage directed.

CUT by Duncan Graham in the Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir St. directed tautly and with contol of every creative input by Sarah John with a simply great performance from Anita Hegh.

THE WILD DUCK - by Simon Stone and Chris Ryan after Henrik Ibsen in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St.. Although not anything but a shadow of the Ibsen play, the company of actors were magnificent in grappling with a contemorary style of acting that was fairly daring: Anita Hegh; Ewen Leslie; Toby Schmitz; Anthony Phelan; Eloise mignon and of course an actual Wild Duck, whose presence cannot be underestimated in creating the theatrical dynamic of this production.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra continued to enthrall me:

GLITTERING FROST with Martin Frost and his clarinet.
SCHUBERT STRING QUINTET with guest cellist, Jan-Erik Gustafsson.
VIENNESE SERENADE with guest Benjamin Schmid.

I observed this year an exciting trend in new writing in Sydney emmanating from the Women Writers. The voices are arresting for their style and contemplations:

DIRTYLAND by Eloise Hearst presented at the New Theatre SPAREROOM, directed by Paige Rattray.
PICTURES OF BRIGHT LIGHTS by Maree Freeman at the Bondi Pavillion, directed by Caroline Craig.
A QUIET NIGHT IN RANGOON by Katie Pollock at the New Theatre SPAREROOM, directed by Paul Gilchrist.
SPROUT by Jessica Bellamy directed by Gin Savage.

The other exciting debvelopment was the maturing of the Indigenous Story in Sydney's contemporary theatre scene. Modern stories focusing on the contemporary predicaments of the Indigenous Community:

BULLY BEEF STEW - Developed and directed by Andrea James with Sonny Dallas Law, Colin Kinchella, and Bjorn Stewart at the Pact Theatre for Emerging Artists.
BELONG - from Bangarra. ABOUT by Elma Kris. ID by Stephen Page. Complimented by a beautiful Design by Jacob Nash at the Sydney Opera House.
BLOODLAND - a co-production by the Sydney Theatre Company and Bangarra at Wharf 1by Kathy Balngaynga, Stephen Page and Wayne Blair.
POSTS IN THE PADDOCK from My Darling Patricia in association with Moogahlin Performing Arts at Performance Space, Carriageworks.

An exciting development was the launching of the SYDNEY CHAMBER OPERA. Led by Musical Director, Jack Symonds and Artsistic Director, Louis Carrick. The company presented three works with their premiere effort NOTES FROM UNDERRGROUND directed by Netta yashchin being especially propitious.

My two favourite new Australian plays were:

SILENT DISCO by Lachlan Phillpot at the Griffin SBW Theatre.
THIS YEAR'S ASHES by Jane Bodie at the Griffin SBW Theatre.

Other performances I am glad to have seen:

Lucy Bell in SPEAKING IN TONGUES by Andrew Bovell.
Meyne Wyatt in THE BROTHERS SIZE by Tarell Alvin McCraney and SILENT DISCO by Lachlan Philpott.
Jacqueline McKenzie in IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY by Sarah Ruhl.
Anita Hegh in THE WILD DUCK by Simon Stone and Chris Ryan, after Henrik Ibsen, CUT by Duncan Graham, THE SEAGULL, by Anton Chekov, translated by Benedict Andrews, and GROSS UND KLEIN by Botho Strauss,translated by Martin Crimp.
Kate Box in THE BUSINESS by Jonathan Gavin, after Vassa Zheleznova by Maxim Gorky.
Miranda Otto in THE WHITE GUARD by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Andrew Upton.
Linda Cropper in AND NO MORE SHALL WE PART by Tom Holloway.
Vashti Hughes in MUM'S IN - STORIES FROM THE RAZORHURST by Vashti Hughes.
Robyn Nevin and Kris McQuade in NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH by Lally Katz.
Cate Blanchett in GROSS UND KLEIN by Botho Strauss, translated by Martin Crimp.
Judy Davis and Billie Brown in THE SEAGULL by Anton Chekhov, translated by Benedict Andrews.
Cheree Cassidy and Ian Meadows in THE COMING WORLD by Christopher Shinn.
Geoffrey Rush and Yael Stone in THE DIARY OF A MAD MAN by Nikolai Gogol adapted by David Holman and Neil Armfield and Geoffrey Rush.
Glenn Hazeldine in TRANSPARENCY by Suzie Miller.
Nathan Lovejoy in THIS YEAR'S ASHES by Jane Bodie and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING by William Shakespeare.
Toby Schmitz in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING by William Shakespeare.
Dan Wylie in THE SUMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL by Ray Lawler.
Julian Garner in GOD'S EAR by Jenny Schwartz.

The other work that I have especially relished are the Broadcasts from the National Theatre of Great Britain and The Metropolitan Opera. Recently the opportunity to see Arnold Wesker's THE KITCHEN was great, a huge, wonderful company of actors.

SATYAGRAHA by Philip Glass directed by the British team from Improbable Theatre Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch for the Metropolitan was a fesat of theatre invention and design The same team are presenting a mash up of baroque music called THE ENCHANTED ISLAND , I expect the same kind of genius. The fact that 30 odd people were at the Chauvel the mornings I went to see the two earlier works reflects for me a great sadness about the contemporary Australian audience for the arts. I can assure you , even though filmed, the quality of the work is mind blowingly great. Go.
THE RING CYCLE directed Robert Le Page - come on, we pack him out when he visits and fall over ourselves to hail his greatness and yet...

2011 an Ok year in my theatre going experiences. Not great.

As You Like It

2011-12-28T20:45:00.001+11:00

Belvoir St. Theatre present AS YOU LIKE IT by William Shakespeare in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St. Surry Hills.

Eamon Flack follows on from his 2009 production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in the Downstairs Theatre at Belvoir Street, with AS YOU LIKE IT in the Upstairs Theatre - a promotion (?)

In the program notes to the 2009, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Mr Flack tells us that he and his company had "…embraced the spirit of Shakespeare's play and therefore not the letter." Two years later, Mr Flack and his company in presenting AS YOU LIKE IT similarly, embracing the spirit of AS YOU LIKE IT and definitely not the letter. There are similar achievements and losses in this latest venture into the Shakespearean world, as there were in the earlier production. On the night I attended, there were no programs available, so what the company intentions were with this play of Shakespeare for its audience this time, are what I can only conjecture - probably as it should be. The production, the work of art, ought to speak clearly for itself.

In fact, there are many similarities, the filleting of the original play to narrative basics; a doff of respectful cap to some poetic hall marks of the original - too famous and or good to lose - although the famous Rosalind Epilogue speech is here rejected; the substitution with the Australian habit of the comic "piss-take" bonhomie for laughter balance (refer to my post on piss-take vs risk-take in STC's NO MAN'S LAND); some casting faithfulness (Gareth Davies, Charlie Garber - oh, ominous!); other creative loyalties (Design by Alistair Watts - oh, felicitous), even to the publicity photographs for both productions - so more than less, there appears to be a creative stasis here, or a passionate belief in the commercial aphorism for an insect killer "When you're onto a good thing, stick to it". The audience I saw this production with, loved it, and gave it a rapturous applause in the thanksgiving at the curtain call, and if that is the bellwether of artistic success, than this was a signal to "stick to it".

First, to the spirit of the play and the not keeping to the letter of Shakespeare. I would hazard a guess that maybe 40% (less?) of the text as been expunged. So, what we heard, experienced was edited Bard, often replaced/substituted with clownish, sometimes boorishly banal explanations of text, deprecating self-referencing and in-jokes that were on the schematic level of knock about vaudeville, low gimmickry (a sheep ballet !), where the performers persona's were of more significance for laughs than any use of the original script or witty, writerly contemporary observation.

In truth I did warm to the first half of Mr Flack's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in 2009, I did warm to the first half of AS YOU LIKE IT. The text, though severely edited was handled well (filleted to the bare bones of the narrative - a necessary need to keep some audiences engaged, perhaps, as too much poetry might put them off or just plain confuse them , better to dumb Shakespeare down, just like Charles and Mary Lamb, did of yore for the kiddies, than to lose these adults? Company discussion, I presume?) and even where some of the Shakespearean textual flourishes were left intact, had a mind and tongue, from all the actors, to a clarity that was rewarding to hear and relish.

The conceit of performing/staging this edited first act of exposition of the play in the auditorium worked well for me. I was seated in G Row and so had a good raked overview of the action and the actors. How well it served the audience in the lower part of the auditorium, who had to twist about in their limiting seats or just close their eyes and try to concentrate, as if they were listening to voices from a radio play, I am unsure (Is this another Belvoir Design concept that supersedes the ability of the audience to see the play - e.g. THE SEAGULL?). Even the famous Charles and Orlando wrestling match was given, briefly, at the end of the vomitory passage, off stage. The stage itself, during this necessary set up of the circumstances of the play, was a black hole, a maw of menace, like the forests of folk and fairy tales - blackly curtained walls and a faintly glowing prismatic gloss of floor reflecting dimly, devouring any lighting available. And, when finally the exiles from the Court of Frederick, the usurper, flee into the Forest of Arden, an arid expanse, except for one lonely, lowly flower, bluish tinged surround with a neon sign giving location, ARDEN, reveals itself.

There are some Shakespearean verbal jousts kept in tact and famous speeches, from the play, honoured, "All the World's a stage…" for instance, and there is a glorious visual and musical coup at the end of this part one, when the forest magically translates into a gossamer of flying petals as a signifier of the blossoming of love. Love and the games and misconstructions about it, being the principal preoccupation of Shakespeare's play.

Part two soon dwindled from the thematics and the multiple character love story drive and the shadowing melancholy of the Jacques plot, of Shakespeare's play, into the Gareth Davies and Charlie Garber Show, reminiscent of those famous sketches using Shakespeare as the frame work on the Morecambe and Wise Show in the olden days of what is now regarded as an era of Classic British television comedy. I remember one starring Glenda Jackson, in an ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA travesty. This is the same path of the previous Flack Shakespeare (hence my ominous vibes when seeing the casting). Please understand that these two men are in my estimation immensely talented. The performance of Mr Davies giving Phebe's most difficult speech ("Think not I love him...") was one of the clearest and sincerest readings I have heard. But why the sex reversal with Davies as Phebe and Shelly Lauman as Silvius? What was the directorial idea? I couldn't solve it, except as another fop to Mr Gareth's sense of a need to get into a dress for comic travesty hairy shoulders and all -very funny. Similarly, Mr Garber has a tremendous vocal dexterity that can keep time with his nimble way and wit with words. But what did the lip-synching of an Italian Opera, led by Mr Garber and some of the company, have to do with AS YOU LIKE? It seemed to be a big stretch of taste and style and a big ask of credulity from the audience who had come to see one of the great comedies in the Shakespeare canon, in the canon of romantic comedy. In this production each time these two comics appeared in their many guises and interludes, in this second part, the play came to a grinding halt for the exhibition of these men's talents and sometimes misguided sense of comic proprietary. How or why or what they were doing, other than creating broad generalised entertainment, of the Gong Show, Red Faces on "Hey, Hey It's Saturday" variety, and how it was part of the intellectual integrity of Mr Flack's view of AS YOU LIKE IT seemed extraneously peculiar and ultimately puerile and puny. Not any of it was threaded to any cogent directorial view of the play. Rather it was all a dismantling distraction for a lack of one.

That Alison Bell (Rosalind), Billie Brown (Jacques), Hamish Michael (Oliver et al),and especially Ashley Zuckerman, who gave the best Orlando, I have ever seen, managed to keep this production of this play, as mostly writ by Shakespeare, afloat, is a testament to their will for their time in the sun and security of continuity.

Ms Bell has the wit and incisive intelligence to handle the tricks of Rosalind that mark this role as a test case of greatness for the actors who have the opportunity to play her (it made Vanessa Redgrave a star in 1961 at Stratford and distinguished Angela Punch-McGregor in her transcendent reading for NIDA/Jane Street in the Aubrey Mellor production in 1978). That Ms Bell is good but not great is partly because of the kind of production she is in, where the director is keener on gaining cheap laughs than revealing the play (or if he is revealing the play, failing to find the right disciplined balance) and her vocal habit of stretching the vowels of early words in her sentences in a loud blare of trumpeted noise and following in up with a deliberate drop of pitch whilst picking up the tempo of the rest of the sentence so that it is hard to hear accurately what she is saying. That I knew the text allowed me some sense of what she was saying - it is vocal habit that I have heard her practice from play to play and it is as predictable as it is ultimately irritating and boring. It draws attention away from the belief to the character to the foibles of the actor. Ms Bell has the potential that should not be thwarted by silly, correctable habits.

Mr Brown as Duke Frederick, gives a fine impersonation of Frank Thring and saves his great skill for the speeches and scenes of Jacques that Mr Flack has kept. Hamish Michael in various responsibilities shows intelligence and theatrical skill, judgement that this edited text does not give him full flight to demonstrate. His comic turn as a sheep is delightful, but not necessarily compensation for the textual emendations that Mr Flack thought were necessary for his other tasks - I would be unhappy, indeed, if I were Mr Michael.

Mr Zuckerman as Orlando has the swaggering masculine presence married with the vulnerable grace of a love sick youth and vocal wit and skills equal, more than equal, to the opportunities of the role. His generous partnership with Ms Bell sparks and maintains one's interest in the love-sick game play of the couple. He is riveting and the lodestone of this AS YOU LIKE IT.

One of the other disappointments of this production is the musical side (Composer and Sound Designer, Stefan Gregory). In pre-publicity we were promised a new musical feast to the many songs of the Shakespeare play, but neither the lyrics or the music created here, despite the presence of Casey Donovan (I cannot see any other reason to have cast her) make any real memorable impact at all.

I guess we are going through here in Sydney, a period of theatrical production of Shakespeare that is similar, to the Nineteenth century bowdlerisations of the original. Where the texts of Shakespeare are simply appropriated, plundered for Company Branding style or celebrity creation that kind of ended with Henry Irving's productions, and petered out with the last of the actor managers, Donald Wolfit in early mid last century (honoured, remembered in the play and film THE DRESSER); to be gradually replaced by the Shakespearean scholarship of Harley Granville-Barker and various scholars at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, culminating into a gradual restoration of Shakespeare's plays as writ with the work of Gielgud, Olivier and Richardson, and the establishment of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre seasons at Stratford with Anthony Quayle and then the zeal of Peter Hall, followed by Trevor Nunn up to the modern era.

This production by Eamon Flack of AS YOU LIKE IT brings back memories of the famous excerpt of the Vincent Crummles Company's ROMEO AND JULIET seen at the end of Part One of THE LIFE AND TIMES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, adapted from the novel of Charles Dickens by David Edgar. It is ridiculously funny. It is a great crowd pleaser. It excites the 'groundlings' to inordinate mirth and appreciation but it is not Shakespeare as intended. The interpolations are outrageous. This company of actors led by Mr Flack have taken hold of this great play and dwindled it to a popular Christmas party piece of the party pieces of the actor's naughty talents. The 'Infant Phenomenas' reigning supreme. There is much to be gained from seeing this silly version of the play, but it is at a cost to the great art and craft and challenge of the original text of William Shakespeare. To get it to work as writ is the dream of every artist and it is surely the objective challenge for any acting company and any director with an integral sense of responsibility to the author.

This is the second production of Shakespeare by Mr Flack for Belvoir St and I long to see him do a play without gratuitous gags, at the expense of the play which are masterpieces that have stood the test of time. And will stand the test of Mr Flack and his bent to avoid the possibilities of doing the plays as writ. Those of us with memories of the Old Tote production in 1970 by the enfant terrible of that period, Jim Sharman, can remember the comic tricks and liberties he took to popularise this play (Peter Rowley as Touchstone on roller skates!), but can also remember the magic wholeness of the play as one written by Shakespeare (Darlene Johnson was the Rosalind). Cheek, invention, discipline, respect and scholarship. All these gifts created art worthy of the writer. That was Mr Sharman.

Like the experience of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in 2009, at Belvoir, AS YOU LIKE IT began with all the promise of interest and contemporary integrity one could wish for, but dwindled ultimately to a carefree abandon to, from my point of view, a kind of cultural vandalism. It was fun and a success for most of my audience, but not for me. And not for all.

No Man's Land

2011-12-26T13:50:00.000+11:00

Sydney Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company and Bank of America Merrill Lynch present NO MAN'S LAND by Harold Pinter at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House.

NO MAN'S LAND by Harold Pinter written in 1974, especially for John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, at the National Theatre of Great Britain, under the direction of Peter Hall (it later transferred to the West End and Broadway), is, surprisingly, having it's first professional production in Australia. It is directed by Michael Gow and has Peter Carroll and John Gaden creating these two demanding and tantalising, inexplicable characters: Spooner and Hirst.

In a room with a vast wall of books (Set Design, Robert Kemp), books that hold the record of human memory and aspiration, that surround a large and well stocked bar of alcohol - a kind of altar equipped with the fermented potions that distort and/or obliterate memory and, perhaps, prevaricates aspirations; sparsely furnished and warmly, atmospherically lit (Lighting Design, Nick Schlieper), with a huge heavily curtained window - not much natural light allowed here - and secret door, we meet two old men. Hirst (John Gaden), slightly aristocratic and imperial, but, we discover, pleasantly, unpleasantly 'pickled' , seated, enthroned, in a comfortable armchair, attending to a loquacious and decidedly raffishly dressed visitor, Spooner (Peter Carroll). Spooner, stands. He is not invited to sit, although he is encouraged to drink and to serve drinks to the other.

After a chance meeting on Hamstead Heath, a parkland, next door to this house, known since the 18th century as a gay cruising area, the two gentlemen have a long duet of conversation. We observe. We mostly listen. Both men are feeling out the other's identity and attempting to refresh their memories of a possible shared past. The past veiled in the fumes of vaporous, vague memory. "Have another drink". The conversation is mysterious and circumlocutory. It is sophisticated, witty, full of sophistry. It is dazzling. It is beguiling, teasing. It is besotted, however, not with clear meaning, but, with clues, of a kind. Clues, to what? There is a secret. (Pause). Isn't there?

Hirst has two servants. Briggs (Andrew Buchanan) and Foster (Steven Rooke). Both working class 'toughs'. Both, incongruous to the reality of this world, this situation. Both of them earthed in a way, in this cultural memory box, this library, that exudes a kind of patina of menace into the world of these two old aesthetes, these two writers. As time and conversation passes, more than an exudation of a patina, rather an opaque atmosphere of highly charged danger envelopes the room. One is a flamboyant 'queen' in elegant, fashionable white suited attire, the other an ambiguous representative of what one could describe as 'rough trade', dressed well, but sexily understated, casual. Sexual innuendo hangs heavy. This quartet of lubricated and ambiguously libidinous 'talkers' spin a tangled web of possibilities, indeed. Indeed. What is the secret that is going on, here?

Just what is this play about? That question becomes the essential pleasure or frustration for any audience watching it. Having read it before seeing it, this is the enigmatic quest that keeps one engaged.I was deeply curious, full fathom deep curious, for, even with the leisure of time, with the book in my lap, I was baffled, puzzled. But excited. The text ,for the alert, is a kind of thriller to decipher, and depending on the sophistication of one's own cultural referencing, one can, as a reader spin multiple solutions. But, what Mr Pinter has constructed is a beautiful, contradictory, tangled web of possibilities that seated in a library with some drinks might encourage stimulating conversation, much like that of this babble of Hirst, Spooner, Briggs and Foster (N.B. Mr Pinter was a cricket enthusiast and these characters all carry the names of four of the greats of county cricket. Is that a clue or one of Alfred Hitchcock's famous McGuffins?). There is perhaps no real answer. Just a never ending puzzle of delighted intellectual pursuit, for those of us who do not need guaranteed answers. Like an Escher drawing, the play's explanation may just go round and round or for the tormented, appear nothing more, than abstracted expressionism.

Pinter, like Shakespeare, being also an actor (unlike Shakespeare, a Director, as well), knew the powerful influence that any actor has when he speaks and moves the writer's text - as he inhabits it. The words on the page when interrogated by other minds become even more complex in possibility, even in the most mundanely proficient play writing, when challenged and then embodied by actors. And, Pinter, in the case of NO MAN'S LAND, knew he had two of the world's great actors, who had demonstrated over decades of practice, a protean ability to create with quicksilver deftness, language pleasures and ambiguities, with clever minds and magical voices. The writing, then as read on the page, produces characters of polyhistoric learning, but actors especially two geniuses of the theatre such as John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson had also in their possession, expressive physical tools of unmatchable ability. Why not set them a problem. Let us play, together.

Peter Hall, the original director of this play, tells us that, these actors were both Shakespearean. "They believed in text... and their real strength was their verbal dexterity, their telling quality, in the sense of what they told an audience. They had fine voices and they had wit." Humour. The ability to take a word and fully interrogate it, "mint it and make it happen" with layers of possible meaning. Their honed polyphonic gifts endowing possible nuance in every sound that made the words. Both actors, says Mr Hall, but especially Gielgud, could cast a spell on his audience with his mind and tongue and have them chase him "saying: no no no no, please wait for us, please give us more; and he is gone." That both actors were well known and loved by their audience was an asset - one famously heterosexual and the other infamously, at one time notoriously, homosexual, so the ambiguous sexual innuendo, the tensions in this text, became even more exquisite for the audience, of the time, to gambol in. Clearly it worked, for the original production gave some 378 performances.

Here at the Sydney Opera House, Peter Carroll, especially, demonstrated a vocal and verbal virtuosity of great skill. John Gaden, too, but with not as much 'trained' vocal pyrotechnics, layered his verbal demands with transcendent wit. The second act duet, between Hirst and Spooner was, particularly, dazzling in the hands of these two actors. Certainly, these two veterans of the theatre stage, and familiar sparring partners, had great obvious 'fun' in playing (improvising) with each other. But, and there is nearly always a BUT for me, as those of you who read me regularly know (it is hard to have perfect ART, no matter how hard we endeavour, and that is part of the fascination of any artistic craft pursuit, surely. Surely?), no matter the dazzle of the technical homogeneity of these two artists, I felt that they were showing us this - that this was the objective of the sparring-game: a demonstration of craft, and little to no revelation of character. The achievement of vocal technique and the vicarious demonstration of it was the be-all, the end-game of this performance work, not the progress of the rivalry, struggle, between Hirst and Spooner. Virtuosity for virtuosic sake. An inadvertent masking of what the characters were doing? There was, for my money, a lack of ambiguous sexual motivation to these men, neither of these actors sufficiently daring in self-revelation about the possible complexities of the writer's characters. The great Mr Carroll and Gaden SHOWED me stuff but did not REVEAL much beyond highly sophisticated actorly mechanisms of craft. Did they, were they baulking from the famed tensions of Harold Pinter's writing content and style? Of the sexual and violent tensions that existed between the original two actors that was part of the astounding success of the first production?

The deliberate physical 'clowning', unrealistic stylisation of the drunkedness of Hirst and the finding of his chair, and the simply astonishing athletic demonstrations of physical agility by a remarkably fit Mr Carroll as Spooner, seemed to indulge a propensity of the actors rather than elucidate anything meaningful to the drama of the characters or their interactions with each other. It was most distracting and derailing for the interpreting audience. Confusing. What world are we in? Who are these men as represented by these relatively grotesque physical offers in the storytelling. A lapse of judgement to allow this, by Mr Gow?

Richard Eyre interviewing Peter Hall in preparation of the television series CHANGING STAGES for the BBC suggests that Harold Pinter is a singular voice, "as with all great writers". Mr Hall, a long familiar, nay, historic champion of Mr Pinter's work, says, "Harold Pinter's voice is rooted in cockney and in Jewish cockney. And that's what it is. And even when he moves out of it, it's still there as a point of reference in some strange and peculiar sense. The basis of Harold's drama ... is piss-taking, the cockney phrase. "Piss-taking" is me mocking you. The essential thing about piss-taking is that, as I mock you, you should not be sure that I am mocking you, because if you can see I'm mocking you then I have lost. The whole of Harold's drama is based on that in one form or another". It is the classic English comic technique of using language as weaponry in the tradition of the 'Dandy's', stiff upper lip wounding with words, vitally indulged from the time of the Restoration repertoire, reaching a kind of apotheosis with Oscar Wilde's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, inherited further, later, by Joe Orton and, of course, Tom Stoppard and Pinter.

There is no doubt that the Australian actor has a firm grip on the piss-take (maybe a hang over from our convict heritage and our cultural problem with authority figures?). The piss-take is, generally speaking, the dominant choice for the Australian actor, when confronted with big emotional exposures (the new Belvoir production of AS YOU LIKE IT is a cultural exemplar of that habit - go for the piss-take in replacement of the emotional risk-take. Self revelation for the sake of emotional truth and confrontationally dealing with the vulnerabilities of that, for the pinnacle of craft and art in performing, is not always easily embraced in our cultural armoury. It does save, truth speak and revelations, and possible awkward embarrassments.). Both, Mr Carroll and Mr Gaden are prepared for the piss-take, and brilliantly so, but not, perhaps, for the risk-take required to make Hirst and Spooner indelible icons of theatre life reflecting real life.

Mr Hall goes on: "And the piss-take actually hides violent emotions. Underneath every Pinter play there is a very strong melodrama, very basic and full of hate and hostility." He goes on to say: "When I'm directing Pinter I often rehearse with all the inner feelings made overt and the actors all scream at each other. Then they know what they're bottling, what they're hiding, what they're containing". This element of the elemental violent struggle for supremacy over each other, motivated by hate and hostility, is what I felt was, relatively, absent from the performances in this production. A kind of condescending cultural caricaturing of our English forebears.

An aside: I remember as a member of the Sydney Theatre Company production of THE LIFE AND TIMES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, of us, the company, approaching the characterisations in the play based more certainly about the images of the David Lean films of Dickens, friendly caricaturesof the English. Much time, after our highly esteemed performances had finished, I remember seeing the televised capture of the original Royal Shakespeare Company production. The striking difference was that the English company were playing affectionately, their great, great grandparents, relatives of their near blood heritage, whereas we were more often than not tempted to 'piss-take' the characters as cartoonish, and score laughs rather than deeply felt truths that were redolent with pathos - pathetic rather than comic, if the truth be told. This is what I sensed in the playing by Mr Carroll and Gaden as well. An unconscious, but culturally embedded disrespect for the characters as real life representations of a culture, rather, comic distillations of a kind of Englishman, that we Aussies find amusingly daft.

Mr Buchanan as Briggs, one of the east-ender toughs, seemed to be more interested in pulling off the stylistic brilliance of Mr Pinter's text within, what I felt was an over gratuitous exhibition of a certain kind of homosexual stylistic behaviour, then engaging convincingly in the violent predatory action for power and status. Piss-take over risk-take. That Mr Rooke,as the other tough, Foster, so effortlessly, from his look, body language, through to his textual and vocal skills, revealed all the typical Pinteresque menace and motivation that is requisite for the convincing playing of these plays, threw clearer light onto what the other actors were not doing, for me.

I am a late comer in my admiration of Harold Pinter's work. It was my own fear of the characters and their oh, so explicable motivation and actions, that I recognised in the working class roots of my own background that caused me to close myself off and shun appreciation. It was too alpha-masculine and confrontingly violent in its undertow, for me to deal with. Pinter's early plays THE BIRTHDAY PARTY(1957), THE CARETAKER (1959), THE HOMECOMING (1964) reverberated with the tensions of my own experienced environment, dinky-di Australian as it was (I, of course, was not aware of the plays until a decade or so after their writing, but in my Australian upbringing still terrifyingly relevant). Too much even, at that time, for me to bear in the theatre which was my refuge, my principal place to escape from my real life. Later, however, with more education and life jostling, I began to be intrigued by the work, then attractively engaged by OLD TIMES (1970) and BETRAYAL (1978): the tragic depth of the heartbreak of the living in intimate personal interaction, more essentially, middle class, was some how more romantically easy for me to participate in - though far from my own life journey. Besides, there was a sophistication of obtuse structure that drew me - a pleasure in the inexplicable, the mysterious deliberate obfuscation of the writing puzzles, style.

IN Harold Pinter's Nobel Speech: ART, TRUTH and POLITICS (2005), he wrote,

In 1958 I wrote the following: 'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. This is what they said. This what they did.

That NO MAN'S LAND ( 1974) sits centrally, in creative and literal time, between OLD TIMES and BETRAYAL is arresting. Pinter in an unhappy marriage with Vivien Merchant, began an affair with Antonia Fraser, later his new wife, may account for the thematics of OLD TIMES and BETRAYAL, but the writing of this obtuse work, NO MAN'S LAND, sitting between those two great plays, comes from what psychic need? It was after the opening night of NO MAN'S LAND that Pinter finally terminated his marriage to Ms Merchant. This play, then, was written in turbulent personal times for the writer, in a no man's land of unlove and love for two women. A kind of hell that only death may solve? Certainly a time for depression. This urging psychic need by the writer to express himself, is, for the thinker, possibly, an entrancing, entangling pre-occupation.

My pre-occupation has led me to these thoughts of attempting comprehension: No man's land is that space on the battlefield between the two enemy trenches or positions in warring times. It was often that place where the wounded were left to cry out for aid but dwindled to death. It was a place, that in the memory of the survivors, was a causation for great depression. Depression registered and survived with dulling memory with excessive drug-taking, drinking, of one kind or an another (Vivien merchant died later of alcoholism). Is this library, this room of memory and alcoholic 'bliss', Hirst's 'no man's land' where he drinks himself into kinds of oblivion and ultimately to death? Is Spooner an angel of death or as he says early in act one "the ferryman" to take Hirst to the next stage of mysterious existence - non-existence - to that "undiscovered country"? (it interests me - that four years later, as almost simultaneously Edward Albee was writing his great surreal death play, THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE (1977-78) that has an angel of death called Elizabeth and a companion, guard arriving, in an otherwise naturalistic convention, to take Jo, Albee's dying heroine, to the after life). Are Briggs and Foster, protectors, guardians hired to fend off this inevitable visitor, guest? Could the temporal expanse of the actual entire play, be providing us with a represention of the surreal last seconds of consciousness, of Hirst's life flashing past him in this pickled, bias state? Is this the secret of this play? Is this the truth of it?

Did you have a suggestion?

The parallel author in my mind, to the work and style, in the same time frame, of Harold Pinter, as indicated above, is Edward Albee. Both these writers are literate, wordsmiths and great composers of the musical texts. Both these writers, were mistakenly categorised, by me, in my youth and general Australian ignorance, as naturalistic writers. But now I see them as fearless experimenters in surreal or expressionistic abstracted style. Remembering the bewildering experience of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLF/ (1961-62) in John Clark's famous Old Tote production, 1964-65, (what's happening?), being flummoxed by the 'weirdness' of TINY ALICE (1964), (I still am), or in awe to works like BOX and QUOTATIONS from CHAIRMAN MAO TSE-TUNG (1968) and SEASCAPE - 1974 [3], the exact same year as the writing of NO MAN'S LAND - where a middle-aged couple encounter on the beach shore two talking lizards, and one is forced to reflect and acknowledge the subtleties and daring of these men. Undoubtedly, influenced by Samuel Beckett (the character of Hamm, the hero of Beckett's ENDGAME is a sort of tyrant (Hirst) who's dominated by his domestic staff) and Eugene Ionesco, among others, these writers were what we might say 'out there' in form and content. 'In your face', sharp, elliptical, conceding nothing to anything other than itself... 'This is it, sort it out for yourself'.

Considering the history of most Australian play writing, then and now, we would still say 'Out There' or 'In your face'. Patrick White, Dorothy Hewett are the best known writers of experimental form in the Australian scene that I can significantly recognise. And they were hardly praised for their visions. That this is the first professional production of NO MAN'S LAND is also sad reason to give me pause about our cultural maturity (as Australian's).

Michael Gow's production is a very welcome adventure. That not all the elements are secure is the way of the world of creative effort. I am better off, for having seen it, than not to have, I reckon. Thanks. It has been an immense feast for thought. It has elicited a deeper appreciation of one of the great writers of the 20th century. I enjoyed immensely the hearing of the text. The language of the writer a refreshing bath of challenge. The 'musical scoring' of the writer, mostly achieved, here, was wondrous. The unavailable intent, and meaning, of the play a great joy. Not frustration at all. Provocative, and, possibly, of infinite dimensions. I would look forward to another artistic enterprise using this text. And, knowing the direction of Mr Pinter in the late life of his writing output, and acknowledging it as formidable, should I regard NO MAN'S LAND as the greatest of Pinter's achievements? Certainly, although immensely esoteric, compared to the learnt understanding of OLD TIMES and BETRAYAL, I believe it is the one I would like to see again before I die. Awful to know that this is this play's first outing on the professional stage, at least here in Sydney.

P.S. I think the decision of playing Pinter's Two Act play as One Act, without an interval, does the music and, possibly, the comprehension of this work some harm. A respite, discussion over coffee or drink in my experience, in the interval,often prepares the audience for the second half advantageously. Antonia Fraser in her memoir of her time with Pinter: MUST YOU GO? - MY LIFE WITH HAROLD PINTER (2010) remarks "Nothing causes Harold more pain than unlawful interference with his text".

References:
TALKING THEATRE - Interviews with Theatre People - Richard Eyre. Nick Hern Books, 2009.

POWER PLAY - The Life and Times of PETER HALL - Stephen Fay. Hodder and Stoughton,1995.

EDWARD ALBEE - A Singular Journey. A Biography - Mel Gussow. Simon and Schuster, 1999.

CHANGING STAGES -A View of British and American Theatre in the Twentieth Century - Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright. Alfred A. Knopf, New York -2001.

The program notes from the Sydney Theatre program.

The Birthday Boys

2011-12-15T06:13:00.001+11:00

ION NIBIRU supported by The NIDA Springboard program present THE BIRTHDAY BOYS. A play by Aaron Kozak in the Parade Studio, Parade Theatres, Kensington.

THE BIRTHDAY BOYS is a new USA play (2010) by a young writer, Aaron Kozak. It's preoccupation deals with the hyper boredom of a group of soldiers on an army base. Three soldiers are dragged into a room, blindfolded and bound, hand and foot. We see these young men in a dazed and dangerous imprisonment act-out a scenario of personal blame, reprisal and fantasy whilst awaiting the outcome of their capture. Finally they meet an interrogator and his henchmen, they are filmed for propaganda purposes and then a threatening cross examination and actions of torture begin. What follows is a turn about of a most dramatic kind.

The first half of the play with the three blindfolded soldiers wresting out their personal relationships under high stakes pressure (Chris Galletti, Matt Hardie, Anthony Taufa), does not move forward arrestingly enough. Little really happens dramatically or thematically, and the fact that the actors are virtually faceless (blind folded) and incapacitated with binding, does not permit a clear enough dramatic identification and empathy for any of the men from the audience, despite some sense of the gallows humour of panic of frightened young men in a gruesome circumstance. A torpor of interest in the narrative and characters descends.

The interval could sorely tempt you to go home.

Don't.

Do come back, for in the second half, with the arrival of the leader of the interrogating team (James Elliott), some gripping dramatic tension begins and nerve-rackingly, if narratively, slightly to familiarly, builds to a really wonderful surprise of events. Three other men reveal themselves (Nigel Turner-Carroll, Zac Drayson, Geordie Robinson) and a wonderful twist to one's expectations ensues.

The play reflects the core concerns, themes of the Sam Mendes film JARHEAD - The boredom and the danger of it, prolonged, in an unpredictable war zone.

The performances are uniformly good, with Mr Robinson and Drayson particularly convincing in their 'dorngo' characterisations. Mr Elliott is earnestly subtle in the duplicitous role of The Leader. There is a cursory design of wooden platforms and boxes, the costumes are mostly army uniform and the lighting modest in its input to the atmospherics of the production - reflecting a shoe string budget. Darren Gilshenan has directed with an invisible hand and lets the play speak its tale without any need or temptation of a personal stamp.

This play and production for ION NIBIRU is the second for this fledgling company. SOMEONE WHO'LL WATCH OVER ME (Frank MacGuinness) presented in 2010, at the Pact Theatre, also reflected upon the behaviour of incarcerated prisoners of war. The company plans a third play to complete a trilogy of variant perspective on this exploration of the human spirit under duress. Certainly, this production represents a maturing of approach under the hand of Mr Gilshenan and one looks forward to the further flowering of the intentions and skills of this ambitious and sincere group of artists.

Maybe a commission to an Australian writer for a contemporary war play might be of interest. The absence of this subject matter from the Australian repertoire is staggering, considering the continued presence of our soldiers overseas and the family tragedies that our press-media briefly mention. After a relatively contemporary Irish and American perspective on war and its affect, the Australian experience would be an interesting conclusion to ION NIBIRU's trilogy (see blog THE WHITE GUARD).

Fat Swan

2011-12-14T01:01:00.002+11:00

Showqueen Productions presents FAT SWAN - An Adults Only Christmas Panto at the Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre.

"Showqueen", "Fat Swan", "Adults Only Christmas Panto" are all clues and concepts to the boisterous, ridiculous, rough and ready, vulgarity that one can catch at the Seymour Centre in FAT SWAN.

Trevor Ashley and Phil Scott found inspiration from the psychological thriller film event of this/last year, BLACK SWAN, by Darren Aronofsky, starring Natalie Portman, and have gleefully, but, for my expectation and money, too superficially, parodied and crammed into the form of the classic Christmas Panto format a show called FAT SWAN.

Mr Ashley as Natalie Portly a ballerina, doubling in the trad panto widow function, leads his cast of brave and intrepid actors: Tara Morice, Lisa Adam and Reality TV Showhunk, Brendan Moar through the trials and tribulations of most of the high moments of the film in the high style of travesty. (Some of us might call the style just "over-the-top-campery"). For added to that scenario are famous show tunes, that some of us know, with new lyrics (Musical Director, Daniel Edmonds), dance numbers (Choreography, Cameron Mitchell) and panto interactions with the audience,(be prepared if you are seated around the the cabaret-style tables), including showers of lollies, and a plethora of entertainment industry in-jokes, that some may need a glossary to get. And do take good heed of the warning that "FAT SWAN contains strong language and adult themes." You might need to consider, who you take to this show, for not a lot of the humour is P.C. (but then, you wouldn't be going if you expected something else, like good taste, would you?).

The audience, the fans, generally, had a raucously good time. The closer you sit, probably the better. It is a steeply raked auditorium and one could feel, as we did, even in Row G, just slightly out of the realm of infectious surrender to the vibe.If you indulge in the diplomacy of bibulation before and during (and after) it might also aid your enjoyment.

FAT SWAN is Mr Ashley and C.o under the direction of Garry Scale, kicking up thir heels or on their toes for this end of year "concert". It certainly still needs work, tinkering with, but even in its present knock-about-state is capable of keeping you amused.

Two years ago, prior to Mr Ashley's performance tour in HAIRSPRAY, I fell under the admiring spell of his talent when I saw him in I'M EVERY WOMAN at the Sydney Opera House. FAT SWAN does not give an inkling of his real gifts and talent (His voice slightly 'ragged' on Saturday night) and I look forward to his return in Cabaret format next year - he plugs that promised offering shamelessly, all through the night. Book for that.

Paul Capsis and iota were present on the night I went to see the show. If you add Eddie Perfect, Miaow Miaow and the up and coming Sheridan Harbridge (See blog, SLOWBOAT TO CHINAMANS) there is a staggering wealth of talent available to scintillate and confront around on our cabaret circuit.

The Horses Mouth: "'Hell For Leather"

2011-12-12T21:40:00.001+11:00

Bambina Borracha Productions in association with Tamarama Rock Surfers Theatre Company presents THE HORSE'S MOUTH - A Festival of Autobiographical Performance at the Old Fitzroy Theatre.

THE HORSE'S MOUTH - A Festival of Autobiographical Performance , is made up of three programs: Bolted, Hell For Leather & One Trick Pony. 10 writers, 11 actors and directors have been curated and present essentially a collection of monologues.

I attended the second program, 'Hell For Leather': THIS IS NOT A POSSUM written and performed by Zoe Norton Lodge and HOME written and performed by Jono Burns. Both of these pieces are extended monologues, almost, short one man (woman), one act plays.

THIS IS NOT A POSSUM is a very interesting long prose/poem that is whimsical, amusing and very, very absorbing. Ms Lodge performs the piece with a very serious and slightly neurotic energy. The acting skills are relatively limited (with shouting an option often elected for emphasis), but totally attractive and cleverly, communicative. It has a modest confidence and inspires surrender to the world and incidents created. Accompanied by a musician (Emily Irvine) with small but well placed percussive supports and mood settings the language of the carefully written piece are arresting and intriguing. The video-media offers (Vanessa Hughes) seemed to be really extraneous and ultimately distracting - unnecessary, really. The text and the performance stand on their own very, very well. I enjoyed it enormously. It could perhaps be slightly pruned. My concentration wavered a little in the last two thirds.

HOME by Jono Burns is a long 60 minute piece that is definitely autobiographical. Based around Mr Burns New York Acting Training Course, we are taken on a journey of encounter with the diverse members of his class and teachers and other wild denizens of the city. The writing follows a well worn path of actors telling stories of their training and crises of living in a strange place and although the subject matter is over familiar the structure of the piece, intruded by an emotional connection to affairs way back at home in Australia gives the monologue an equilibrium of comedy and an arresting emotional maturing of the storyteller. One is pleasantly teased to stay 'hooked' to the experience. The writing is clear and well observed. The skill of Mr Burns as a performer adds enormously to the pleasure of this storytelling - he creates swiftly and convincingly a wide range of characters and manages, mostly to remain 'plugged' into the swift emotional and technical adjustments demanded by the writing. Two innocuous but charmingly innocent musicians create musical interlude and brief character observers- interactors during the action. Neither are credited in the program. A delightful and unpretentious sophistication about the whole piece. Is it slightly too long, Jono?

Tim Spencer, Phil Spencer, Zoe Coombs Marr make up the first program: BOLTED.

Scarlett Mcglynn, Betty Grumble, Alex Vaughan, Nick Coyle and Lucinda Gleeson make up the third program: One Trick Pony.

Playing alternate nights until 17th December.

Grumble to the producers: I just hate a show beginning late. I hate it even more when a show begins late without any explanations. The night we went, it was almost 8.20pm before it began. What, the actor was not available or what? We were all there on time and we didn't have to be there to start with. No explanation and worse, no apology! Just plain discourteous to your paying public. 8pm means 8pm in the real world. If the Ms Lodge had not been so winning, so quickly I would have been ropeable and not too sympathetic to their efforts.

It is about the pre-show vibe as well, you know?

Games in the Backyard

2011-12-12T21:32:00.001+11:00

Netta Yashchin and ATYP Under the Wharf present GAMES IN THE BACKYARD by Edna Mazya. Translated by Hani Furstenberg & Naom Shmuel at ATPY, Wharf 4.

GAMES IN THE BACKYARD is an Israeli play written in 1993, by Edna Mazya and is based on an infamous, true story of the rape of a young girl by a group of young boys. It juxtaposes the life style and motivations of the youth living in Kibbutz Shalom, Israel in 1988, and that of the male legal system that dealt with the aftermath of this crime in the courts.

The rampant and blatant male chauvinism of the culture is examined in a very confronting manner. The roles of the boys and the young female victim are alternated, by the actors, with the adult roles of the Defence Counselllors and the Prosecutor. The switch from one character to the other by the actors underlines, dynamically, the savage ironies of the culture: what you learn as a child you practice as an adult and where pursuit of the law and its victories overrides any reality of justice. The theme, thus becomes universal and hits home penetratingly. The passion of the writer Edna Mazya is obvious.

No doubt Netta Yashcin, the director and co-producer of this production, also carries the passion and sense of outrage at the male chauvinism and sexual discrimination of the world of the play. Ms Yashchin has the capacity, as she demonstrated in her earlier work on the Sydney Chamber Opera première: NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, to organise and present images, pictures of 'post-dramatic' interest for an keen, interpretative audience. The visual contol of her work with the actors and her lighting designer Sara Swersky is arresting, as is the spare design solution of the space by Lisa Mimmocchi - simply, an equipped children's playground for one world, alternated with isolating light positions for the courtroom.

However, what Ms Yashchin does not have, is the ability to help the actors create characters that are believable. No matter the passion of the writing it is all undermined if the performances are not acceptably convincing. Cast in the pivotal role of the young female victim, Dvori Machnes, and the female prosecutor, Jessica Palyga appears to be way out of her depth - miscast, massively. The work, in both characterisations is posed, performed, pretended - the 'ego' of the actor's confidence dominates the work. Ms Palyga has no capacity to centre her voice for believable ownership of either characterisation, or convincingly physically inhabit her dual tasks. There is no doubt Ms Palyga has a good intellectual conceptual comprehension of who the people she is playing are, but did not reveal any sophisticated craft to truthfully embody either of them. The use of her actor's instrument is immature and as the role is central and also partly culpable to the crimes, a charisma of great empathy is required for the audience to sympathise. This actor must, truthfullly, convincingly drive the play, and as Ms Palgya cannot, it leaves the other performers in an invidious position of embarrassment. The men of the company, most of whom I have seen perform before, creditably: Carl Batchelor, Joseph Del Re, Michael Rebetzke and Dorje Swallow, have no reality to convincingly play opposite to create with and from, so, also fail, to engage us to any convincing capacity.

Put simply, the acting was not good. For instance, the deliberate 'dance' of the rape was conceptually highly stylised by Ms Yashchin and excruciatingly painful to watch, but not because of the emotional confrontation, which was intended, but because of the patent lack of the organic belief of the actors who intellectually pretended their way through the demands of the scene. The audience was placed in an uncomfortable position of detachment and critical objectivity of the craft of the company. The passion behind the writing, and probably behind the reason for choosing this play for Sydney audiences to witness by Ms Yashchin, was completely undermined by the actors contribution. There is a line in the play from the Prosecutor that was approximately: "Whoever is in control is also responsible." This resonated with me enormously and one must seriously question the dirctor's capacity to assist the actors she has been responsible in casting to tell this story. A basic skill I would reckon for a director.

This gulf, between the ability of many of the contemporary directors to wonderfully, intellectually, conceive a production, contrasted with their ability to deal with the "nuts and bolts" of the craft of directing the actors and other artists to a successful resolution of those concepts for an audience, is boringly, a regular and catastrophic experience, on our stages. It is a palpable trend of a lot of our theatre in Sydney where young intellectuals given a directorial opportunity, ignore the initiator of their creative impulses - the writer - and reach for the 'post-dramatic' solution (See blog on GROSS UND KLEIN) - but are then underequipped to use the other collaborative artists, to achieve a satisfying experience for the audience. It is as if the 'kids' have been given the 'car' to drive but only understand how it works, and driven, theoretically. It is the difference between an academic thesis and a performing/performer's artist skill, intuitive and learned or refined or all of the aforementioned. The over extended use of the Sound Design by Guy Vincent French, usually accompanying and covering very clumsy scene and costume changes was often inappropriate and noisy. Ms Yashchin seemed oblivious to the actors standing quietly waiting for the sound cue to disappear before continuing with the next scene. The audience was not. Impetus and the rhythm of the play were disjointed by this willful wrongheadedness.

Ms Yashchin's production of WOYZECK, too, suffered from her tendency to conceptualise and see the installation images of the work and have no real ability to help her actors to realise it with her. That work fell between the vivid image or dynamic physical gestures that rendered a 'feeling' and an vague understanding of the textual language that rendered a confused understanding of character and narrative. The audience were given a series of partly rendered realisations and the actors were caught in the awkward no man's land of having to perform a production that was unable to communicate consistently. Ms Yashchin, there, as here, with GAMES IN THE BACKYARD, failed to facilitate a believeable enactment of the story and its issues.

From the publicity notes: "This is an emotionally charged, dramatic, strong and chilling play promising you versatility and an electric vibe from a young and dynamic group of virtuoso performers and artists."
True about the play but unfortunately not true about the production.

The great and only asset of this production was the introduction to a well regarded Israeli writer I had not seen before, Edna Mazya.

N.B. That while Ms Yashchin has a full page, extensive biographical note of her career in the program, there is no information provided on the writer, Edna Mazya, the inspiration for all this work. Neither are the translators given a background record. This is not a unique occurrence in contemporary Sydney Theatre. This double omission was true for The Griffin Independent production of THE UGLY ONE as well. The writer totally ignored in appreciation. Is there some Freudian 'twitch' going on here, or just a kind of belief of the director as auteur?

Gross und Klein

2011-12-11T09:31:00.001+11:00

Sydney Theatre Company presents GROSS UND KLEIN by Botho Strauss at the Sydney Theatre (BIG AND SMALL, English Text by Martin Crimp).

GROSS UND KLEIN (Big and Small) by Botho Strauss premièred at the Schaubhne am, Halleschen Ufer, Berlin in December, 1978, directed by Peter Stein. In 1988 the Sydney Theatre Company presented BIG AND LITTLE under the guest direction of German, Harald Clemen, with Robyn Nevin in the lead role of Lotte (the play has also been produced at the National Institute of Dramatic Art). GROSS UND KLEIN directed by Benedict Andrews (replacing Luc Bondy) and starring Cate Blanchett has been, for this production, for the Sydney Theatre Company, translated by Martin Crimp.

Botho Strauss was one of the theatre artists that Peter Stein gathered around himself at the Schaubuhne in what was then West Berlin, during that period when he was "establishing the dominance of avant-garde, director-led theatre for which Germany" has become famous (today the Schbaubuhne is dominated by the work of Thomas Ostermeier, a favourite of Australian Art Festivals - Benedict Andrews and Simon Stone and several other young Australian artists are acolytes of this director and company). In 'the mid-1960's "...German playwrights were concerned with the failings of society and a realistic form of drama rooted in everyday life began to emerge ... Leading this tradition was Marxist writer Franz-Xaver Kroetz (STALLERHOF; DAS NEST). ... Others who were highly critical of contemporary life yet apolitical in their outlook included Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (HELDENPLATZ) and Botho Strauss."

Botho Stauss "inspired by philosopher Theodor Adorno, and collaborating with prominent theatrical figures including Bernhard and Kroetz... sought to develop his playwriting and its engagement within the complexities of daily life. He became interested in notions of materialism and alienation, and in the representation of characters struggling with their subconsciousness. GROSS UND KLEIN was one of Strauss' early successes, and follows the character Lotte as she journeys from location to location, through ten scenes, seeking to understand modern life and her place within it."

Lotte (Cate Blanchett) is found, abandoned, alone, in a hotel room in Morocco, who in the infernal heat cannot find the sleep of the just and so listens eagerly to the conversation of two men, two other guests, on the verandah outside her room, her window. Her husband, Paul, has disappeared and is in her home city, Saarbrucken - and she sees "a life of separation" spooling out in front of her.

She has: "Eleven more days in Agadir.
               Time passes.
               All I've done so far is gain weight.
               Everything is very simple : nothing's right.
               Time passes, but not the way it should."

She feels: "Greed, envy, disinterest,
                 avarice, and zeal-
                 these are the passions
                 that have afflicted our Siesta Tour the worst.
                 And drinking.
                 ...Eleven more days in Agadir.
                 Vaale-of-tears."

She struggles with the beautiful voices of the men.
she overhears and is moved by the voice :
                      " Yes ! ... Yes!"

She becomes: "A fraid.
                       A fraid fraid fraid".

She has vision:
                      "Behold , man will
                       depart from this earth
                       and be done in all his works.
                       After him the earth will redden with
                       shame and fruitfulness.
                       The gardens and the fields will
                       enter into the empty cities;
                       the antelopes will browse in the rooms
                       and the wind will gently leaf through open books.
                       The earth will be unmanned and will bloom.
                       Freed from all its prophets, fettered hope
                       will be redeemed and will grow rich in the silence.
                       Freightless the sea lulls itself,
                       the land wanders untrodden and the air plays in tall flowers.
                       And it will be so for one thousand two hundred and sixty days ...
                       what does that mean? How did I arrive at
                       one thousand two hundred and sixty days?
                       That adds up to about four years.
                       Four years, not quite. Four years of what?"

She ponders:    "Nice voices.
                        Can you hear?
                        Forever.
                        Better now than then."

She smiles:       "Crazy."

Deserted, her world balance askew, crazy, from emotional loss and the dreary heat, Lotte returns home and begins an odyssey across the landscape of her Germany, in the urgency of her knowledge of the future coming. She is not going to wait, she will not be waiting, like Vladimir and Estragon, for Godot, but will be found searching, more and more desperately searching, as the play moves through a further nine scenes, for Godot.

GROSS UND KLEIN: Lotte searching for Godot !!??

In 1978 this was a Germany still divided, as Mr Andrews in the program notes says - "in a country which no longer exists ...(but) now, the Germany Lotte wanders through might be thought of as a fairytale of the West. …a place haunted by social imbalance, mass layoffs, deregulated markets and a worldwide ecological crisis. The inhabitants of this country (this world) suffer from a kind of mental exhaustion ... The possibility of the extinction of the species hovers over the entire play." And as the conference of the European Union (the Euro Zone) countries convenes over concerns of the present monetary collapse; the Arab Spring - Libya, Syria, Iran, Israel; the Russian election protests over the United Russia party and Putin; the selling of uranium by Australia to India, and the tit for tat demands of Pakistan, the uncertainties of Coal Seam Gas mining on our environment, makes this play dramatically urgent and heartbreakingly distressing. Botho Strauss writing in a country that within his life experience stands between the absolute of the Holocaust and the absolute of the Bomb (consequently, the Nuclear Cold War Race) is still a frightening prophet for our more jaded and fragile times - 2011. GROSS UND KLEIN is still relevant, frighteningly so.

Frightening, for after this journey, and witnessing a world where the people: family, friends and strangers, are venal, sterile and empty, blind, hollow and selfish, Lotte finishes the play in the room of an internist, in the company of patients. Gradually the patients are called, one by one, into the surgery, they return and leave, and so the room clears, and Lotte sits alone in that waiting room.

The Doctor enters and sees her -

Doctor: Haven't you been called?

Lotte:   No.
            I'm just sitting here.

Doctor: Did you have an appointment for this morning?

Lotte: No. I'm just sitting here.
            There's nothing wrong with me.

Doctor: Please leave.

Lotte:   Yes.

And so Lotte leaves and walks off into an infinite darkness. An infinite darkness. She has not found her Godot.

We applaud, shuffle from our seats and walk out into the darkness of a strangely cold summer night. Strange and cold. Odd, strange and cold. Crazy weather. Crazy! And as I climb up the concrete stairs beside the theatre, up the facaded cliff face, to the bus terminus at the base of historic Observatory Hill, I wonder is that Lotte I observe ahead of me? Hey! Hey! Lotte wandering off ahead of me into the strange, cold darkness of this late November night somewhere before midnight ? As I stand, holding the play in my hands, in the enveloping darkness, both real and metaphoric, the world of Botho Strauss' prophetising, declares, it may be closer to midnight than I know. "Afraid." The 339 to Clovelly whisks me through the city sites, sights, sights of varying disrepair and despair,in fluorescent light, to a view of the lulled Pacific Ocean - a sighing collective unconsciousness (???).

Cate Blanchett as Lotte gives a tour de force performance. For the qualities that Ms Blanchett gave us, in the recent past, in tantalisingly disciplined creations as HEDDA GABLER, Richard II in THE WAR OF THE ROSES, Blanche Dubois in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and Yeliena in last year's UNCLE VANYA, are unleashed here, in a torrent of continuous and grand gesture, rarely leaving the stage, riding delectably, the boundaries of her creative intelligence, as applied to the opportunities of this enormous role, and demonstrating the glorious technical range of her actor's instrument. The vocal work is an inspiration for all other artists (see my blog on JULIUS CAESAR) and the physical dexterity is awesome in its seeming ease and daring. Drama, pathos, comedy all covered and all managed with the greatest aplomb. Artistry and an artist of great standing.

The set design by guest, Johannes Schutz, of movable pieces of location realities in exquisite selective visual suggestions, surrounded by an enormous blacked walled box, expertly and brilliantly lit by Nick Schliepper, and decorated with carefully and ingeniously dressed actors, both in style and colour pallet, by Alice Babidge, encased in a throbbing and extravagant sound design by Max Lyandvert creates a showcase for this work that is apt and attractive.

The supporting company are, despite their relative under use (dramatically, some are seen shifting furniture and props more often than actually acting) are committed and true. Lynette Curran, Anita Hegh manage to stand out in this company, in the work they have to give.

And, yet.

Yet? My summary experience of the play as performance,on the night, is uncomfortably underwhelming. In retrospect, too. Whilst watching, I was entranced, enraptured by the magic of the artist, Cate Blanchett. This is now over a week ago, I've had to sort out, to find, a clearer circumspection, there is an element of contiguity, a sense, a state, that the work of Botho Strauss is only in close proximity, it is not actually touching us, coalescing. It is near but not there. It is not one. I needed to re-read the play to grasp the reasoning for its place in the Sydney theatre cultural landscape. There is this remarkable performance by Ms Blanchett , and, then, there is this potentially devastating play, enshrouded in this production by Mr Andrews. Indeed, some of my friends loved her, but couldn't understand why the play was been done at all. It didn't connect or mean a thing to them. And, as I have intimated above, it should. It really should.

Whoever is in control must carry the responsibility, I guess. Benedict Andrews is the director, and, I suggest must bear the responsibility of this miss.

The text by Martin Crimp, used (commissioned?) by the Sydney Theatre Company, is not available and so the quotations above are from an earlier translation by Anne Cattaneo for Farrar/Straus/Giroux (New York), 1979. The production on the stage, using the Crimp, is really more an adaptation than a translation when compared, and, I felt to the detriment of the playwright's intentions.

One of the features of the Cattaneo version is that Lotte's journey reveals the 'desolate' world around her in much detail, not just the observation of Lotte's experience. Mr Crimp and Andrews have filleted the play down to a focus on Lotte. Whole sequences in the 1979 version are absent from this production (For instance, the last episode (16) in the Catteano, of the remarkable third sequence of TEN ROOMS, involving a slide night in the room of the Old Man and Woman (Martin Vaughan and Lynette Curran), witnessed by some of the house with a conspicuous empty chair, that one assumes is for Lotte, and, significantly, she does not appear, to use it, has been removed). Other characters have had their presence, 'voices', severely edited so that they barely exist as living entities of worthy observation, simply, set dressing background e.g. the Guitar Player (Josh McConville) and the Research Assistants; The Turk (Yalin Ozucelik).

This editing shifts the focus from the observed society around Lotte, the world that is been painfully and minutely examined by Botho Strauss. In the Crimp version Lotte alone is of significance to Strauss. The rest of the world of Strauss, has been reduced to representations of mere serviceable tokens, almost visual caricatures of the world, instead of concrete examples of the reality of the environment that Lotte lives in. Instead of a world of some detail of Lotté's journey, we simply have a focus on the gradual disintegration of one person. The power of Botho Strauss' observations and vision of a world where 'corruption'of all kinds is so pervasive,and textually presented, have been undercut. So, what we do have? A virtuosic actress revealing magnificently " an angel, a fool, a clown, (a) hopeless , hapless... soul in isolation ..." And that is only part of the Strauss vision in the Ms Cattaneo translation. Is this why I feel, at the end of this production, bewildered, unmoved by the play? No matter the performance of Ms Blanchett?

I also began to detect an unsure hand from Mr Andrews as to what kind of text, play, he was working with here, and, even, that he had no sure insights or technique to help his actors solve the problems of the scenes that he and Mr Crimp have devised from the original, to communicate the Stauss, or, even Crimp, Andrews intent, to the audience in any consistency.

In a program note, placed beside an enigmatic photograph of Benedict Andrews, looking like some figure in a Renaissance religious painting - (a prophet of his time?) - is a quotation, an excerpt from Hans-Thies Lehmann's POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE, translated by Karen Jurs-Munby (Routledge, London and New York 2006), we may gather some of the aesthetic of the director and an entrance to his vision, (I presume):

…Painters speak of states, the states of images in the process of creation ...Effectively, the category appropriate to the new theatre is not action but states. Theatre here deliberately negates, or at least relegates to the background, the possibility of developing a narrative - a possibility that is after all peculiar to it as a time based art. The state is an aesthetic configuration of the theatre, showing a formation rather than a story, even though living actors play in it. It is no coincidence that many practitioners of postdramatic theatre started out in the visual arts. Postdramatic theatre is a theatre of states and of scenically dynamic formations.

On reflection, back to Mr Andrews production of THE WAR OF THE ROSES, which was a radical evisceration of Shakespeare's texts by Mr Andrews and Tom Wright, it was the visual images that were the dynamic thrust of the experience and indeed, for me, is the principal memory I have of the production: The visual artistry at the beginning of the STC epic, in a rain of gold leaf, and finishing many, many hours later, through many, many other "scenic dynamic formations", in a rain of ash. It was "a production of states and of scenically dynamic formations." That Mr Andrews had manipulated the text for his postdramatic exploration was a convenient asset for his intentions. The purpose of this post dramatic gesturing is "striving to produce an effect amongst the spectators rather than to remain true to the text". This, with this work, Mr Andrews achieved controversially among the patrons of the Sydney theatre audience. Heiner Muller and Heiner Goebbels are champions of this technique of exploration. That they write their own material to do this, is a considerable part of their achievement.

In this production of GROSS UND KLEIN, however, the textual manipulation has not been radical at all and in the schematic comparisons with THE WAR OF THE ROSES is rather slight. The form structure and narrative of this altered version from the original by Mr Crimp, has not been easily adulterated to achieve the art-school visual summaries of the episodes of this play, to negate, or even relegate to the background, the narrative. The production, then, falls between two stools of intent - the writer's (Botho Strauss) original, and the director's, (Benedict Andrews) inclinations as an artist. This play by Botho Strauss seems to me an inheritance of the work of Bertold Brecht rather than anything of say, a postdramatic artist like Muller. I see, Brecht's narrative techniques influence and shadowing the shape and intentions of GROSS UND KLEIN. Lotte on her terrifying journey of quest and scene meetings as a parallel to that of Grusha and her flight across another world in cultural turmoil in THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE (1943-45/1948). And although the scenic decisions made by Mr Andrews and Mr Schutz are attractive they do not hold the same dynamic force of the ROSES and is dominated, rather, by the narrative and linear expression of the text. The visuals are in service much more to the dramatic text rather than any postdramatic assertion in the program.

Mr Andrews' handling of some of the elements of the textural narrative are often opaque and fail to communicate the point of the episodes. Scene 6, "Family in a Garden", is an instance in point. The actors seem to be texturally, stylistically at odds with each other, the physical staging clumsy and incoherent, and the time spent with it, became for me, more concerned with the image of the furniture anchored in concrete 'feet'. The textural density of the scene as it still exists in this version of the play remains a puzzlement in the hands of Mr Andrews.

Is there a tentativeness in Mr Andrews handling of Ms Blanchett? For although she claims that Mr Andrews made big and new demands on her in rehearsal, such is the choice of some of the work on the stage, one wonders did he ever suggest that less may be more? Was he in awe? For although it is not the job of a director to tell an actor what to do - a cliché, indeed - it is the job of the director to do more than to offer a proposition of exploration. It is his job to encourage the actor to "connect the dots", but also to be the outside eye to advise the actor when there is a superfluity of "dots". The latter scene choices of Lotte as "a comedienne dancing on the edge of an abyss" seemed in the physical demonstrations by Ms Blanchett, although virtuosic and astounding, to overstate the Strauss intentions. In an interview with Elissa Blake in The Sydney Morning Herald (November 12-13, 2011), Cate Blanchett and Benedict Andrews both laugh at the 'smelly' idea that playing Lotte could be perceived as a "vanity project". Some might proffer that this could indeed be a possibility here, given the permissive choices encouraged by Mr Andrews, and in the light of the editing of the original text at the expense of the Strauss world-picture (and the other actors textual opportunities).

An amazing performance from Cate Blanchett of a very interesting play in a flawed production by Benedict Andrews. One is glad to have seen Ms Blanchett once again exploring for the Sydney audience her great gifts but bewildered as to why this play is the vehicle of this recent, annual event (alas, not next year).

GROSS UND KLEIN is co-commissioned by Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Barbican London and London 2012 Festival using funds from the National Lottery, Theatre de la Ville and Wiener Festwochen.

I am curious as to the choice of play for the London 2012 Festival, part of the London Cultural Olympiad program. It is featured in the general advertising of the Festival as a chance to see Cate Blanchett on the London stage for the first time in 13 years. In a German play, with a German Designer, and, originally a German Director. Could the Sydney Theatre Company not have had the foresight to commission an Australian playwright and full Australian artistic company to represent the Sydney Theatre Company, to be part of the Cultural Olympiad?

I would have thought a revival of Nigel Jameison's STC production of GALLIPOLI would have been a more appropriate choice (perhaps they are keeping that in reserve for the 2015, the Centenary observance of that war?). I simply seek information as to the where and why for, of this decision. I guess funding of such a journey might be part of the answer. If so, let us hope the Australian Government takes more interest in the Arts as an ambassadorial tool if that is the case. Yes?

Julius Caesar

2011-12-02T10:00:00.001+11:00

Bell Shakespeare present JULIUS CAESAR by William Shakespeare at the Playhouse, Sydney Opera House.

Dear Diary,

I am going to fulminate.

William Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR has been adapted for the Bell Shakespeare Company by playwright/actress Kate Mulvany with the Director, Peter Evans.

Ms Mulvany makes a confession in her program notes that "Until this time last year, JULIUS CAESAR was not a play that I held close. Like many others, it was 'that play about war and men and togas and speeches' ". Well to be pedantic, there are only three others like it, in the Shakespeare canon, that fit the above criteria of war, men, togas and speeches: TITUS ANDRONICUS (1592), ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1606), and CORIOLANUS (1608). JULIUS CAESAR was written in 1599 following on from HENRY V (1598-9) and just before AS YOU LIKE IT (1599 - 1600), and the greatest of them all, HAMLET (1600-1601). Shakespeare, then, at the height of his powers (arguably).

JULIUS CAESAR is a favourite English study in high schools, still. A legacy, perhaps, of a time when the classic languages of Greek and Latin were generally part of the curricula, and the principal source material of this play being Plutarch's PARALLEL LIVES would be a study tool in the Latin classes. That, besides the attractive macho charismatics of men at war and the Machiavellian intrigues of ambition and the dicing with the virtues of Honour and Loyalty that youth of a certain stage of development, physically, sexually and emotionally might find tantalising, makes JULIUS CAESAR a very male-friendly school text and subject indeed.

What Ms Mulvany has sliced and diced, and adapted Shakespeare's play to, is a focused study of the psychological, internal struggles of the principals: Brutus (Colin Moody), Mark Antony (Daniel Frederiksen), Casca (Kate Mulvany), Julius Caesar (Alex Menglet) and latterly (in this adaptation, briefly) Octavius (Rebecca Bower). Shakespeare in his great rhetorical verse flourishes, in monologue and scene exchanges, deftly manages his burgeoning craft skills for his pre-Freudian revelations. There is much to brood upon and seemingly, oppositionally, to flourish. Much for actors of quality to pounce upon with relish. The internal life - inner monologue at one boundary edge of the challenge (20th Century, Stanislavski Technique!!) to communicate, and on the further, other boundary, the use of language as the imaginative, in the moment tool, of revelation (16th Century traditions of verse rhetoric). Here is an attempt to underline the tragic insights into the humanity of these men in a thoroughly contemporary manner, alongside the histrionics of the era of the playwright's theatrical world of "words, words, words."

What Ms Mulvany, and her accomplice in this adaptation, Mr Evans, is not interested in is the war scenes on the Plains of Philippi. They have been heavily edited and one of the delicious directorial problems removed. The final acts of the play have been excised, decimated really, and the school boys, probably thwarted in their vicarious pleasure expectations. Or, as in my case, the thrill of how this company will solve this famously towering directorial, story problem. Simple, for this Bell JULIUS CAESAR, don't do it. Shakespeare avoided, some may argue diminished, thereby.

All these actors reveal the grasp of contemporary acting technique. Stanislavski rules. Their inner monologues richly invented, daringly indicated in pause and ellipse, intriguingly suggested with secondary activities, accompanied by great emotional and physical choices. The inner struggles, the inner monological turmoils, are paramount in their performances, and intellectually, they seem to be on top of the parallel journeys of story and emotional narrative. Much was seen to be felt.

The problem for all of these actors (except Ms Bowers,perhaps), is that none have the vocal command to serve this great writer's unique and great achievement: the language. This basic requirement for this form of text responsibility is not present and we only see the feelings and thoughts, and because of the apparent vocal impairments of this company, we don't know why they have these feelings and thoughts, because the text is muffled, strangulated, ugly, unpleasant, and difficult to listen too.

O YE GODS, YE GODS! MUST I ENDURE ALL THIS?

Their instruments, generally lack range and flexibility. A crump horn at their service and not a trumpet. The 16th Century glory of Shakespeare, the great heritage of the English language in the present 21st century, is unable to be delivered in any particularity of harmony. These actors, generally, are able, or, have been encouraged to communicate Shakespeare's verse and prose in welters, blocks of generalised emotional noise, only. The sense of what they are saying is carried by the emotions, the internalised life, instead of the detailed use of sound, the sounds of the individual word that expands to particular phraseology, sentence structure and verse argument. The relish of the sounds and the vital imaginative 'click' of the words does not fuse in their identities and give these actors any 'mouth' sensation. Pleasure. Shakespeare's words are not digested by these actor's and served as gifts to us. The challenge is beyond them. Only half of the requirements that this kind of play presents were on offer. The unique, the rare, the unequalled reason why Shakespeare is a star in the canon of so called classic theatre, is not within most of these actors gambit. A GOOD VOICE.

What is that?

On page 96 of John Bell's new book, ON SHAKESPEARE, published this year, 2011, by Allen and Unwin, Mr Bell gives a list of what he looks for when auditioning actors for his company: "Someone whose voice is compelling and pleasant to listen to. It has range, colour, expression and flexibility…".

The actors are in various contemporary suited clothes of grey and black (Set and Costume Designer: Anna Cordingley). On the set for this production, which looks like a contemporary foyer or meeting room of grey carpet, surrounded by 14 arm rest, black leather chairs, in the far right upstage corner stands a corroded, ruined Roman column, with parasitical flora growing on it and around it, shielded by silver scaffolding (which grows into a tower of protection, by the play's end) - a very trendy interior design. But progressively as the actors revealed the quality of their voices, I twigged that this column was a metaphor for the ruined vocal instruments of this company. An ironic illustration of the sound of the verse speaking quality of these contemporary actors!? The rough, guttural drone of Mr Menglet as a post stroke victim Caesar; the nasal coarseness of Ms Mulvany; the slightly strangled high tenor of Mr Moody and the complete lack of any vocal colour of any imaginative support from Mr Frederiksen's ruined instrument, was encapsulated in this genius stroke of design.

Mr Evans must be held culpable for choosing these voices and/or guiding them to this limited means of expression. Cicely Berry, the Royal Shakespeare Company's Voice Director has written several books, on the voice for the actor, especially for the challenges of the actor of verse - Shakespeare. Her book, FROM WORD TO PLAY (2008), talks most refinedly about the actor's craft in what I would call sound sculpting. The innate need for man to communicate to each other began with sounds. These sounds were gradually shaped into words that expressed needs, emotions and gave those sounds concrete definitions, ultimately by surrounding the vowels with consonants. This was when man was, metaphorically 'a baby' inventing the languages to communicate. It is this sensitivity to the formula constructs of the sounds in each of our words that the actor must be alert to, fully fill out the communicative value of the words, the onomatopoetic qualities of the words. To acknowledge and do the baby steps in speaking and communicating to an audience, this playwright. The body language does follow these impulses. These actors did not demonstrate any such care or approach to skill.

Since seeing this production, several weeks ago, on which I have had considerable struggle to respond too, and this is my second go at it, I attended a screening of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO on the big screen. Alec Guinness, in a small supporting, but key narrative role, used his voice in such a way that every word carried an intelligent emotional, detailed life of its own. One could 'see' and consequently 'feel' what he said as a visceral experience, that added up into sentence and speech information, intention and argument. Sounds, language communicating on many levels. It is, and was thrilling and relaxing, and invited me to participate with him. This sound is what I did not experience with this company - Australia's premiere Shakespearean Company.

Some of you may argue that 1 - Guinness is English, and 2 - of a different theatre value generation, and 3 -that it is no longer necessary. It is a craft technique that is no longer useful. A technique of the past.

But then, that same night I attended the Sydney Theatre Company's production of GROSS UND KLEIN and heard Cate Blanchett do the equivalent of the Guinness brilliance with language - it is not an antiquated concept of craft or contemporary playing choice, it is simply the difference between a fully prepared actor, dedicated to the great challenges of acting and preparing the instrument for flexible impulses of expression and not.

With Shakespeare the better the instrument, the greater likelihood of success.

I wanted to scream out Casca's lines to Brutus in the famous tent scene: "O YE GODS, YE GODS ! MUST I ENDURE THIS?"(Act III Sc IV) ten minutes into this production. Can you imagine my pain in the famous speeches over the body of Caesar as rendered by an intelligent but vocally handicapped Mark Antony. The mob would not have listened to this Antony and our history books would tell a different story.

Like my response to Anthony Skuse's production of JULIUS CAESAR at the New Theatre this year, one can hardly respond to the detailed intentions of Mr Evans and his artistic team, as the key need of the production, the voices, were too great an obstacle to permit more than cursory engagement.

I can recommend a visit to the film THE IDES OF MARCH .The Shakespearean themes well served without the need for the vocal dexterity of the real thing. Do go.

References:
BELL, John., 2011, "On Shakespeare", Unwin & Allen.
BERRY, Cicely, 2008, "From Word to Play", Oberon Books.
CRYSTAL, Ben., 2008, "Shakespeare on Toast" , Icon Book.

I Have Had Enough

2011-12-01T10:31:00.000+11:00

Sydney Chamber Opera presents, I HAVE HAD ENOUGH. J.S. Bach. Jack Symonds. At the Parade Playhouse, Parade Theatres, Kensington.

I HAVE HAD ENOUGH is the third work by this new Sydney Opera Company this year. It has been, then, considering the monumental task of producing opera, a very prolific year. It began with a new work NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND by Jack Symonds and Pierce Wilcox, followed by Leos Janacek's THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN, mid year. I HAVE HAD ENOUGH is the pairing of J.S. Bach's "Ich habe genung..."(1727) with a reply piece, "Nunc dimitis", musically different, by Jack Symonds with a similar text, slightly augmented with several lines from T.S. Eliot's "A CANTICLE FOR SIMEON."

The first half, by J.S. Bach, is a straight forward rendition, given by mezzo-soprano, Anna Dowsley. The second half , the Jack Symonds score, is given by baritone, Mitchell Riley. Both sang well within the experience of two very young singers. The Bach was performed in the German and the Symonds in English, although the clarity of the libretto, by Mr Riley, was fairly poor and could really have been sung in any gibberish for its communicative effect.Nothing was gained with the language contrast as both were baffling to this listener. As to the music, I was not able to focus enough to hear it, as the stage action directed by Kip Williams, tended to muffle the music performance. Whatever Mr Symonds talks about in the program notes concerning his quest and task for this compositional juxtaposition, I could not perceive in the actual hearing of the score or make memory connections to, after reflections, later,on the performance.

In a pre-show state (Lighting Design, Nicholas Rayment), a circular lighting rig echoes a raised circular performing space, covered with thickly layered dark soil (Set and Costume Design, Emma Kingsbury). A character, dressed in black with white faced make-up with emphatic face lines around the lips, wearing a silver blonde wig, taking a cue from the music commencement, carried a black wooden ladder to the back of the stage and exited around another black robed figure carrying a stool. It was more than slightly odd to see the two principal singers labouring as scene dressers and changers in between their singing responsibilities and personas, and that they were consistently demeaned, dramatically, with this directorial decision. Their status deliberately divided between 'rulers' (gods?) and servile lackeys. I could not make head nor tail (tale) of it, dramatically.

Whilst Ms Dowsley sang her way through the Bach cantata, three blonde bewigged, white faced, long white dressed young women (Alexandra Aldrich, Michele Durman, Amanda McGregor), entered from the central passage, leashed, chained to a grotesquely bloated, hatted, 18th century gentleman (Gabriel Fancourt). The indulgence of some of the deadly sins are demonstrated in a dumb show of activity which leads to sexhausted sleep for the keeper and allows the women at last to escape and subsequently disembowel their keeper and stretch the intestines bloodily, in parody of their chains. They have been befouled in rolling in the dirt-mud in their sex enslavement and in the sumptuous gluttony surrounding a huge edible chocolate-mud cake.They are accumulative filthied throughout the action. No one is clean on this earth, I have had enough, indeed.

The women exit the stage and the 21st century Symonds composition, "Nunc dimitis", begins. Mr Riley replaces Ms Dowsley and begins the new and unfamiliar musical journey. The women return, but in this second half of the opera story, imposed on this operatic work, the visuals stay absolutely in the 18th century of Bach. After the relative harmony of the music and visuals of the first half, it was unsatisfactory for the 21st century music to be supported by 18th century visuals. It did not have comprehensible logic, for me. The women simply removed their blonde wigs to reveal brunette bedraggled hair, watched the imprisonment of their keeper in a hanging swathe of black gauze, which gave them further opportunity to indulge and wrestle with each other for more chocolate mud cake. besmeared faces and langorous tongues. The cocoa smell of the cake wafted into the audience.

More happened ........., and the singers continued, puzzingly, to swap in and out of the roles of principal singers and stagehands. The women haunted the dying man , blah, blah.....zzzzz.

Mr Williams in his program notes, tells us, "The early premise for this narrative was a reaction to the interplay between the certainty of Bach's 18th Century Christian work and the existential doubt of Symond's reply. From there, a simple blueprint for the opera's story was taken into the rehearsal room where the cast and creative team, aided by Lizzie Schebesta, embarked on a five week process of development and rehearsing."

It seemed to me in the watching of this production story that it had very little directed underlining support to the musical exploration of the composers or cogency to Mr Symonds intentions. It, frankly, became a tedious invention of gratuitous self indulgence, lacking intellectual rigour and became a fantastical investigation of regurgitated images from past theatrical history. There was an essential disconnect between the music and the 'play'. What of this text did these actors know. It seemed that they were in a completely different world to the singers. having creative fun but not much acknowledgement of the score and the librettos. Mr Williams work became a totally extraneous imposition.

Undoubtedly the design by Ms Kingsbury and Mr Rayment was beautiful. Concentratedly and with glorious detail the actors played their parts. Certainly, Mr Williams was able to conjure images of some power (If pilfered) but they did not reveal the music or the intellectual folderol that this staged double bill initiated by the Sydney Chamber opera had set out to reveal to us , the audience.

The production of NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND by Netta Yashchin by this company was an impressive debut at the commencement of the year. It set a benchmark of expectation that the latter two works have not met, equally. However, all three works were highly creditable and promising to see and experience.

One looks forward to their next work: Peter Maxwell Davies' THE LIGHTHOUSE. It is to be directed by Kip Williams, I see. I hope that the final production work of THE LIGHTHOUSE has the transparent efficacies of the Yashchin conception and that Mr Williams matches his undoubted potential to illuminate the composer's work and not his own imaginative literate indulgences.

It was, in summary, a difficult night to sit through and the musical endeavour of Mr Symonds needs to be heard without the staging for me to comprehend what he and his score were about. I am a relative neophyte in the realm of music theatre and in this case ignorance, perhaps was not bliss.

I had had enough, quite early on in this performance.

The Ugly One

2011-12-01T10:08:00.001+11:00

ARTS RADAR and GRIFFIN INDEPENDENT present the Sydney Premiere of THE UGLY ONE by Marius Von Mayenburg at the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross.

THE UGLY ONE by Marius Von Mayenburg continues the 'trendy' love-in, in Sydney, with the contemporary German theatre or, at least, with the Berliner Schaubuhne and its artists. We have seen Mr Von Mayenburg's FIREFACE at the Sydney Theatre Company; THE COLD CHILD at SBW Stables Theatre; MOVING TARGET at the Opera House. Last year, Pearly Productions gave us David Gieselmann's THE PIGEONS at the SBW, and, of course, the Sydney Theatre Company are presenting GROSS UND KLEIN by Botho Strauss at the Sydney Theatre right now. All German. All Berlin. All the Schaubuhne.

One may feel that one has seen more German theatre than the above - and we have, (I have a slightly OK memory), for the prevailing theatre design look is heavily cadged from the German theatre history visual catalogues of the recent thirty years or so (and what's wrong with that, you may ask). Benedict Andrews has been enamoured, so has Simon Stone and the look is pervasive if not persuasive when reiterated as the consistent contemporary solution to almost every play, we have seen of late.(The NIDA Director's course seems to have that Eurocentric view as a course de rigeur, for certainly we are seeing that influence in regular work at tedium from them).

Sarah Giles, a recent NIDA Director graduate has, with Michael Hankin, a recent NIDA Designer graduate, arrived at a visual, intellectualised 'metaphor' for this production, too. The stage space has simply borrowed the interior design of the SBW Stables black covered seating, and placed it in the playing area surrounded by a black box wall. No more, no less - go figure (some of us try to). The lighting (Tom Willis) is simple and bland, in the right sense.

This fifty-five minute comedy, with an easily perceived social observation, is explosively and finely played by an extremely dexterous ensemble of farceurs: Jacinta Acevski, Gig Clarke, Eden Falk and Jo Turner. Ms Giles has guided and shaped them into a very impressive team. Ms Acevski is particularly winning, particularly clever, particularly hilarious, both physically and vocally, in a stand-out team.

What I don't get is the reason for this play's fame (a production in Melbourne last year was a sell out). It seems to me not much more than an extended sketch that really wears out its reason to occupy us, long before it finishes. It initially has a confronting and funny premise, but it is the comic business invented and executed by this company (the Sound effects by Gig Clarke during the transformational operation of the ugly one are terrific) that sustains a lot of the mirth, of the event in this theatre, not the actual text. The satiric social observations are just regurgitated and little advance is made dramaturgically in this production, after the first thirty or so minutes. It became tiresome. I began to think that this was a German response (a reflection?) to Neil La Bute's, THE SHAPE OF THINGS, only with less complex content.

I certainly preferred Ms Giles choice of David Gieselmann's THE PIGEONS performed at this theatre last year, as a play engagement.

Still, if you have the time and money to spare and you want to watch a crack comic team jumping through Ms Giles hoops, then go. Mr Von Mayenburg is probably over rated,I'm beginning to suspect, at least in this outing of the text.

Beguiled: A performance installation experience

2011-12-01T09:52:00.001+11:00

BEGUILED: A performance installation experience by the PACT ENSEMBLE 2011, at the PACT THEATRE, Erskineville.

A young group of emerging artists: Taryn Brine,Kate Brown, Madison Chippendale, Cameron Ellis, Sam Koh, Annabelle McMillan, Lucille Lehr, Tanya Thaweeskulchai, Emma White and Amber Cox under the direction of Cat Jones & Julie Vulcan have created an ambulatory, interactive experience, entitled BEGUILED.

They ask us, the audience to CHOOSE TO BE LOST, CHOOSE TO BELIEVE. They state, "We share a universal drive to believe in the potential of magic, a desire to explain the inexplicable, to overcome the impossible, to achieve our destiny."

They begin this work in the foyer where, with the only text of the night, we are encouraged by an extravagantly costumed and bewigged host, to surrender our self to their devices. We close our eyes , we listen to what they suggest is the soundtrack of the explosion of the usual theatrical space anticipation (not very convincing on tinny speakers) and are individually given a rock to hold, maybe as a talismanic key to the freeing of ourselves to what is to come. Hold onto it, as I did, and you might be BEGUILED.

The doors squeak open to the interior theatre space and we are greeted by four twitching figures of danced activity and then siphoned off into groups to journey through a series of visual installations (as with the recent BARGAIN GARDEN, the organisation of the audience to give all a view has not been really thought through, and so the affect of the performance will be considerably coloured by your ability or inability to see and hear the installations well enough). They are variously interesting, puzzling, cute or dull and the stroking of one's talisman does not always influence one to an immersive state of delusion/illusion, for the artful tactics of the ensemble are oddly familiar, derivative in their conception and primitive (naive) in their execution. A little too text book guided and so lacking real invention or any profound original point of observation. There is no surprise, challenge or confrontation. This magic is not magic enough, there is nothing too inexplicable going on to strike one into a paralysed state of excitement. One's destiny will not be too altered by this event.

On the other hand, what one does have, is a curious night in possibly another way of experiencing theatre, as an interactive engagement, as a tool for life informing enhancement that is not often explored in Sydney. With deeper cultural confrontation and more daring or sophisticated means of engaging the audience, this young emerging ensemble could develop into a company as provocative and thrilling as La Fura dels Baus (e.g. SUZ/O/SUZ) or the company visiting here as part of the Sydney Festival in 2009, Ontroerend Goed (e.g.THE SMILE OFF YOUR FACE).

If you are unfamiliar with the above companies or works, or even if you are, BEGUILED is an interesting fledgling 'toe in the water' journey. Dress comfortably and hold tight to your rock and you might have a chance to believe and become lost (safely). Without any sense of condescension,here is a young company to look forward to, to see if there is going to be development.

BEGUILED is well done but the content is a little too tame and too self consciously aware of its form as a challenge to the so called mainstream museum theatre experience.

On the other hand,or, is it foot now, I held onto my rock and I have it on my shelf here at home to take hold of when I want to be lost and choose to believe in other possibilities …Hmm.

Four Deaths in the Life of Ronaldo Abok

2011-11-27T17:02:00.000+11:00

small things productions and Riverside Parramatta ("true west theatre") present, FOUR DEATHS IN THE LIFE OF RONALDO ABOK by Ian Meadows, in the Rafferty's Theatre at Riverside, Parramatta.

FOUR DEATHS IN THE LIFE OF RONALDO ABOK by Ian Meadows is the third production of a new program in its first season, under the banner of "true west theatre", experiencing theatre work created in Western Sydney, by artists from that community.

Ian Meadows and Adam Booth and their company: "small things productions", have been working with the Southern Sudanese community in the outer Western suburbs of Sydney. "The goal of this theatre project became to bring some of the journeys of the community (the Southern Sudanese) and its individuals to the stage. To dispel the myths and create a cultural bridge that only storytelling can achieve, fostering understanding through a recognition of another's hopes fears and joys. Sharing the common dreams and desires we all hold dear regardless of ethnicity, colour, location or wealth …After months of workshops sharing stories, thoughts, song, dance and culture (and plenty of time debating African politics and the finer points of the Dinka language!) we (they) emerged with this."

Ronaldo (Johnson Ngor) is studying screen writing and has presented his tutor (Adam Booth) with a derivative version of a Bruce Lee Kung Fu, adventure. Ronaldo is advised to begin again and to reflect on his own life and try to tell that story. As Ronaldo takes on that advice and we, then, are engaged with his extended Sydney family and their 'adventures' and daily confrontations.

We go to a cinema workplace where Ronaldo meets fellow employee, Rachel (Amer Achiek) and begins a courtship that is humorously found to be within traditional expectations and a modern modem. Rachel is a modern girl!!! The course of true love may not run easy for Ronaldo! Ronaldo, also, has an aunt, Mary (Awek Akech), with several children and a sick relative, Atem (Abraham Ajok), in hospital. In this world we are told of the journeys through a war torn and inhospitable landscape to refugee camps to the Australian day to day interactions. The "epic journeys (that) pitted these people against searing hot deserts, frightened locals, government planes and bombs, militia on horseback, famine, thirst and hostile wild animals". It is these stories that brings home the amazing heroics and resilience of these people who we, now, see in our everyday lives around us, either in the living flesh or through the media, and have no inkling of what they know and have survived of the world.

It gave me pause and made me humble in my awakening and appreciation of other people's life journeys as part of my human landscape of "rubbing shoulders". Of people, who now I am sharing my life journey with, this afternoon, in Parramatta. The contextual humour around a minor car accident where Mary attempts to find the other Australian driver's 'baby', which she is hysterically grieving over, only to find that she is grieving her car wreck not an actual baby, highlights the obfuscations of language and cultural values that is part of the everyday obstacles for these refugees. It is an incident both funny but also culturally embarrassing, for me.

This simple and direct storytelling framework and content by Ian Meadows in FOUR DEATHS IN THE LIFE OF RONALDO ABOK, is forceful because of its unsophisticated and straight forward tone of massaged verbatim extrapolations. It is the accumulated minute ordinariness of the telling knowledge of this world experience, by people we come to appreciate as extraordinary survivors of the worst that man can do to each other, that gives the work a dignity and an expansive human embrace however naive the technical gifts of the performers.

The technical support of the Sounds design and audio-visual work by Steve Toulmin, is a seamless and vitally intricate part of the artistic whole. Similarly the modest Lighting design by Tegan Lee. The presence of Wendy Strehlow working as an actor/facilitator, alongside Mr Booth, to assist the Sudanese performers in telling the main thrust of the experience is a pleasure to watch, as they modestly serve and enthusiastically support from the witness chairs on the side of the stage. This is an example of the many roles and responsibilities that true artists in the theatre can engage in. I was very proud, indeed.

Simple, direct, entertaining and enlightening. Could there be a more important use of the theatre skills of all involved? From the reaction of the audience I saw this with, NO. All our lives had grown, positively, it seemed.

Congratulations to all involved and to the Riverside True West initiative - a theatre culture involved and serving its community.

Posts In the Paddock

2011-11-21T09:13:00.011+11:00

POSTS IN THE PADDOCK presented by My Darling Patricia, produced by Marguerite Pepper Productions in association with Moogahlin Performing Arts for Performance Space, Carriageworks, as part of the EXCHANGE season.

POSTS IN THE PADDOCK is a profoundly moving experience.

This is the fourth production by My Darling Patricia that I have attended, the others were: POLITELY SAVAGE (2007), NIGHT GARDEN (2009) and AFRICA (2011). Since that first encounter in 2007, with POLITELY SAVAGE at the old Performance Space, I have always anticipated the work with high expectations. All original work, from concept, writing and form exploration, across multi-media usage and exploration, drawing on a wide input of craftsmen and artists from a wide source of disciplines, the works have always been investigations/viewpoints from a highly idiosyncratic set of imaginations, with the highest sense of cultural concern and contemporary integrity. The works always seem to reflect long and deep preparation and a truly collaborative and patient process of finding the best means to tell the story, to communicate the concerns of the artists for both an enlightening and entertaining journey for the audience present to witness.

The initiating artist of POSTS IN THE PADDOCK, Clare Britton, a foundation member of the company, visited the property of her extended family (the O'Brien's) and came across posts in a paddock. One hundred and eleven years ago, relatives of Ms Britton "were murdered by Aboriginal Bushranger, Jimmy Governor, on (this) property in the Hunter Valley. Known as the Breelong Blacks, Jimmy and his brother were on the run for 99 days - the longest manhunt in Australian History. He was executed in 1901."

The work on "POSTS IN THE PADDOCK began with six women sitting at a table together for a week in 2008, discussing the events involving Jimmy Governor and the O'Brien family in 1900. That week, Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor introduced My Darling Patricia to the notion of Didirri - deep listening". This concept of Didirri is the guiding influence to the form of this work for the audience.

Three of the performers, Clare Britton, Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor and LeRoy Parsons have personal histories and connections to the principal characters in this story and it is partly this that infects the work with a sweet melancholy and a sense of a holistic healing through bi-cultural comprehensions.The present generation of both sides of this story look back together at the tragic events of their entwined families and ancestors' story heritages.

One of the very interesting developments, for me, in this past year has been to witness the new approach to the thematics in Australian Aboriginal storytelling on our stages. If you read my blog account of WINDMILL BABY, you will see part of my personal concerns. That NAMATJIRA, BULLY BEEF STEW, BELONG and BLOODLAND have recently begun a theatrical dialogue with Sydney audiences that reflect a growing maturity and spread of storytelling concerns is now crowned with this production of POSTS IN THE PADDOCK.

This is part of the post-apology movement of cultural reconciliation. Lily Shearer, the Cultural Collaborator to this project says: for we that have "inherited 223 years of the IRA (Invasion, Removal and Assimilation), the journey that the POSTS IN THE PADDOCK process (takes) us on is truly healing of spirit, land and families. (That) to reflect on histories of the past together truly demonstrates reconciliation at work in a community, not as a Government directive, but as a human need for (mutual) forgiveness to move forward for a better Australia".

This work begins by inviting the audience to the POSTS INSTALLATION (Design, Fiona Foley collaborating with Clare Britton). We enter into a darkened space onto a black soft flooring and see some erect glowing posts, illuminated internally, reminiscent of Tim Storrier's signature burning fences and ropes. We are surrounded by an environmental soundscape of bush noises, and on approaching each of the posts we, further, hear them 'speak' - recorded stories and interviews, that acquaint us with the possible identity of these disappearing, decaying 'emblems' of a history (Editing, composition,arrangement and Programming by Declan Kelly). This natural returning to the earth of these posts, when given these verbal accretions of murder, grief and loss, through the recorded messages, gather in this artistic remembrance - a pronouncement that "this has happened" and attention can and should be given.

We are gently guided to our seats in the auditorium and the posts glow, now further away, behind a gauze scrim. In front, simple sets of dry grass vegetation create a sense of the virgin land. Trees stand upright in the soil. Indigenous inhabitants, gather and hunt across the land (Set Design:Clare Britton collaborating with Bryony Anderson). Woman (Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor) and Man (LeRoy Parsons). Some white settlers arrive on the land (Clare Britton and a wonderfully silent, Sam Routledge) and begin to shift its profile with the dressing of the Aboriginal people and engaging them in the felling of the trees and creating tall wooden fences and a gate from the timber. All of this done in dumb show and gently mimed activity. It is done deliberately and calmly, the changes efficient and seemingly irresistibly inevitable. This may be Didirri - deep listening, in action. Onto the scrim are projected images of a house (Video Design, Sam James) dominating the landscape on a hill. The empathetic Lighting (Chris Twyman) and a wonderfully apt and 'dense' Sound Design (Phil Downing) envelope the project with atmospherics and contexts leading to a deeply immersive imaginative engagement.

Diary accounts are read or spoken. The mean-spirited cruelties and culturally misguided and misunderstood interactions between the inhabitants are acted in a disarmingly naive style. There is no real acting going on here, just gentle impressions of possibly real people recollecting their lives, casually. The point is made that the murders were probably unplanned and unexpected. There is a simple sense of quietly accrued pains and acts of petty behaviour that accidentally boil over to unsophisticated catastrophe. It is all told in a performance manner deliberately under energised, nontheatrical.

Countering this 'acting' style are demonstrated theatrical skills of a highly sophisticated kind: sculptures, painting, shadow and hand puppetry and film. A Shadow Film (Sam James) using stick puppets and voiced, projected onto a hessian bag hanging over the gate is surprisingly entrancing and the tool for the showing of the climatic,dramatic tragedy of the events. This disarming counterpointing of the melodramatics of the history with these collaborative craftmanships of childlike creativity is where the deliberate choices of pacing and image accumulations gain the shocking power of emotional involvement that draws one in unknowingly and embracingly.

Take the final gestured images invented by this company. It seems the story has ended, we prepare to thank the company, but then in modern dress, the actors carry on a kitchen table, down to the front of the space and they place chairs carefully around it and they begin to sit as if to converse, but, instead the lights fade. Here is where the project began, people sitting at a table telling a story to each other - a cultural circle has completed.

We applauded the company, they shuffled off, the house lights rose and then on a back screen - a slide show - a visual diary/record of the actual site and meetings of this company on its preparatory learning together many years ago - 2 to 3 years ago - is shown to us. One is drawn even deeper into the experience of POSTS IN THE PADDOCK, for these images reflect a shared curiosity and sense of joy, trust and brother/sisterhood that bound all these artists together and have, consequently, wrapped us up in their story telling embrace.

Before the performance, I was standing in the foyer studying a beautiful and childlike painted and annotated map arecording of the district that the events of this Governor and O'Brien family saga took place. I was introduced to Halcyon Macleod, the director of this project. Looking tired and slightly harassed, (artistically harassed, that is), she expressed anxiety about the project.

At the end of the evening in the theatre, myself and several friends waited in the foyer, hoping to catch her. For I wished, as did my companions, to set her anxiety at rest, in my own small way, and tell her that I thought POSTS IN THE PADDOCK was a gentle piece of captivating theatrical 'genius'.

A suitable development of My Darling Patricia's commitment. A distinctly unique company with the vision and patience of real artists.And that this will be a pinnacle moment of accomplishment in their history.

It seemed the personal stakes of the creators in this story of their families had made such specificity, culturally universal for the audience. Wonderful. POSTS IN THE PADDOCK, a wonder.

It will tour to Melbourne. It may be seen again in Sydney. I should wish it was, for it is great.

God's Ear

2011-11-16T20:19:00.002+11:00

God's Ear - Trailer from Anne Brito on Vimeo.

Pursued by a Bear and The Reginald Theatre, The Seymour Centre present GOD'S EAR by Jenny Schwartz in the Downstairs Theatre at the The Seymour Centre, Sydney.

A week, and I have read the very satisfactory new Jeffery Eugenides novel THE MARRIAGE PLOT. Began Gillian Mears' FOAL'S BREAD. Re-read Kenneth Lonnergan's LOBBY HERO - 2001, (The New York times having suggested that it may be the best American play of the first decade of the millennium); David Hare's and Howard Brenton's play PRAVDA - 1984, because the principal character has shadows of Rupert Murdoch, that might make it topical to revive today; SERIOUS MONEY by Caryl Churchill, because I thought the money issues may be still relevant today as we follow the path the history of the 1929 Crash has left for us - beware 2012 ! (but I found too difficult to read - gave up, again!!); and prior to attending the production, re-read Harold Pinter's, NO MAN'S LAND.

And why do I write the above? Because, besides the drudgery, mostly, of newsprint and magazines, it has been a week indulging in language. Well written, deliberate use of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, chapters or scenes or acts of plays. Especially, constructions of word symphonies in the case of the playwright. For, in the playwriting, not only is it the choice and considered order of the words for meaning, it is also for the effect of the cadence of choice of the words for the sound and music effects of communication, beautifully orchestrated with deliberate signals to efforts, speed, rhythms and eloquent silences, for the actor and his voice, that is part of the amazement, when close reading (just as it is in reading poetry).

The power of the master playwrights in pursuit of the laying out of a kind of musical score, a proposition of organised argument, that the poets of the theatre toil over for the director and actor to humbly, solve and complete, with action for an audience in the theatre, maybe part of the wonder that Shakespeare wondered, when he wrote, "What a piece of work is man". And, although, I do not suggest that any of the above works are Masterpieces of the Ideal Play, they are examples of a great tradition and honourable objective of the craftsmanship of the writer of plays.

After a long Saturday of friendly, extended relationship chores, it was with some trepidation that I travelled to the Seymour Centre to attend the theatre. Trepidation because I was tired and knew nothing of this play or anything much of this artistic team and there was a double-bill of Kubrick films on Channel 22.

GOD'S EAR by a young American playwright, Jenny Schwartz, turned out to be an invigorating literary bath - immersive. One, more delightful because it was unexpected. perhaps, and like a bath, the experience became a little tepid by degrees, as the ninety odd minutes passed by, but still exciting to attend to, to discover.

A married couple have lost a child. The play deals with the aftermath that that event has had on them and the surviving sibling. A story, a theme that is not unfamiliar to any regular theatre goer. The David Lindsay - Abaire 2007 play, RABBIT HOLE, filmed with Nicole Kidman this year, being one recent parallel story. But what distinguishes this telling is the startling linguistic inventions of Ms Schwartz in her telling. The grief of this kind of tragedy, may perhaps defy the use of real language to fathom. So she suggests, mostly, convincingly. The grief of these three people, Mel (Natasha Beaumont), Ted (Julian Garner) and their very young daughter, Lanie (Victoria Greiner) is such that language for them has become a tangle of doggerel expressions, utilising rhymes, "catch phrases, banal chatter, non sequitors, puns and cliches", lists and lists of seeming stream-of-consciousness connections. The language spills out of them as if to obfuscate the deep, deep despair of the loss. It makes a noise to cover the empty possibility of all enveloping silence. Long, long streams of noise, for, on the other hand, a silence of hopelessness may never cease its hold.

"His pupils are unreactive, they said.
He doesn't withdraw from pain, they said.
The next two hours will be critical.
Or was it crucial?
Or was it critical?
Or was it crucial?
He's in critical condition, they said.
Survival, they said.
His chances of survival.
They said, low."

or

"And you'll swoop down and save the day.
And I'll bend over backwards and light up the room.
And we'll thank God.
And God will bless America.
And with God as as our witness we'll never be starving again.
And the fog will lift.
And we'll see eye to eye.
And the cows will come home.
And we'll dance cheek to cheek."

With such language it is not surprising to read that Edward Albee, the American Master Playwright would say of GOD'S EAR: "a provocative, adventuresome, beautifully written play." But it is not only in the language but, too, in the surrealistic interpolations of imaginary characters: The Toothfairy (Gael Ballantyne), a Transvestite Stewardess and GI Joe (Kieran Foster), and two free-fall drug (alcohol) assisted beings: Guy (Cameron Knight) and Lenora (Helen O'Leary), areas of exploration that Mr Albee has gamboled in, often and richly.

In a sculptural white set of low walled curves (Jo Lewis) contrasted with colour of stark bleached blues and crispness of colour definition with the lighting (Matt Cox), dressed in clean, clear and crisp costume (again, Jo Lewis) the actors manage the text with admirable accuracy and clarity. The surmounting of this text is no mean feat and it was thrilling to hear it delivered at such musical capacities: Pitch, Pace and Volume. And sense. The technical demands are fiendish indeed. Jonathan Wald, the director has taken great care with the language challenges, and drilled these performers well.

But such is the verbal gymnastics that the high stylistic achievements of the company sometimes supercede the emotional variety. Mr Garner gives a superlative performance in balancing the cerebral necessities of the language demands with the deep emotional pain of Ted and its creeping journey during the storytelling. His arc of storytelling is subtle, but, clearly delineated. On the other hand, although impressive, Ms Beaumont while circumnavigating her way through Ms Swartz's verbiage, pitches her emotional life staggeringly deep at the outset of the play and hammers at it relentlessly, too consistently, with little variation, throughout the night. Her character's journey does not progress much and it is tiresome for the audience to have no release, to have no other emotional observation to make of Mel. Her character is in stasis for most of the night.

This lack of shading by Ms Beaumont, gives Ms O'Leary as the crazy drunk, Lenora, no competition in winning the audience's empathies, as the other major female character and the relief is palpable in the long last act scene, that she shares with Mr Garner. Similarly the comic work of Mr Foster in both his incarnations are first rate in relief contrasts. Mr Knight is intriguing as Guy.

The music, the singing side of the production does not really gel and needs more development. The sound design by Steve Toulmin is suitably ethereal, music-box like and edgy in the field of stream-of-conscious dream scape of the play.

GOD'S EAR is a pleasurable surprise, especially for those of us who love language and hearing actors relishing of it. The play's subject matter is 'heavy' as some may say, and may give you pause. But I had a more than satisfactory evening, although the brain got more massaging than the heart. This balance that Ms Swartz demands is a mean feat to achieve with this remarkably difficult text but worth catching and worth noting.

Slow Reveal

2011-11-14T22:24:00.001+11:00

ArtsLab 11 Performance season SLOW REVEAL - Six New Works In a Timely Fashion. The Shopfront Contemporary Arts and Performance program at Shopfront Theatre, Carlton, Sydney. SLOW REVEAL - Six New Works In a Timely Fashion are part of this year's Shopfront's 5th Artslab season. The new Artistic Director, Caitlin Newton-Broad tells us "from ArtsLab's pilot residency in 2007, this is an intensive program for emerging artists to engage with their own work and also to practice within a community arts co-operative, at every level. I was lucky to work closely with these six young artists this year on Shopfront's integrated project, MACHINE ATLAS and have observed their solo process as each person has travelled from April to November, committing upwards of 20 hours per week to be on site, in research, development and rehearsal". This is indeed a generous residency both in time and opportunity. One to be cherished for its vision and commitment.

This year Erica J Brennan, Grant Moxom, Lucy Watson, Bernice Ong, Rachel Weiner and Rachel Roberts have concluded the laboratory of artistic and craft exploration with performance work for an audience under the directorship of MIchael Pigott, supported by the Shopfront team and some highly esteemed mentors: Tom Bannerman, Barbara Campbell, Katja Handt, Sam Hawker, Stephen Hawker, Jeff Khan, Rowan Marchingo, Chris Ryan, Yana Taylor and Siobhan Waterhouse. I take the effort to name the project participants to underline the high degree of professional mentoring that this program has been supported with.

Liberty to explore and the honour given to the process of art creation seems to be the primary element of the ArtsLab program. The performances, or to use the 'ugly' or cultural anathematic terminology of our corporate funders: OUTPUTS, of this exploration vary in the success that they have in the audience interaction, and although important, is, in the scheme of things, but a small part of the objective of the residency.

The most fascinating work presented, was THE SPACE HAS BEEN LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK created by Grant Moxom. Using volunteers from the audience (and himself) as performers, with personal mp3 players strapped to the arms of the participants and head sets, this 8 person ensemble, incorporate individual, but simultaneous journeys. Movement, choral and solo, spoken text (Shakespeare's MACBETH) is enacted and much else. The volunteers present to the watching audience, as they follow the directions of the individually timed commands, a performance that appears to be improvised both in physical and verbal patterns. Mr Moxom, a near graduate in a Psychology and Performance degree at NSW University says, "Throughout this process I have been examining the tropes of theatre and habits of people in order to generate a theatrical experience with the illusion of true spontaneity while maintaining a precise choreography of action." This he does amusingly, intelligently, with clarity and technical prowess - Mr Moxom, worth taking note of to follow his development in this interactive form. I am curious to know, What next?

Rachel Weiner's project is called HOMUNCULUS and sets out to explore "the areas of movement, light, sound, text and texture, to examine the world through the eyes of a curious and inquisitive one-and-a-half year old child". This piece revealed a wide movement vocabulary and was expressed by Ms Weiner in an absorbing and technical proficiency. The sound/music scape by Ben Garrard was a very useful element in the work. Whether this was an expression of a young girl called Gladys or not, did not seem to be of much concern to the continuity of the work. On that level it lacked consistency and clarity. As a movement/dance piece it was interesting, independent, of those terms: a successful movement/ dance work and not contextually, necessarily, the study of a one-and-a- half year old child.

Erica J. Brennan presented a work: A FEAT INCOMPLETE with fellow performance artist/actor, David Buckley. In two separate areas, Ms Brennan, dressed in a slightly archaic fashion with her head crowned with a set of large 'horns' - Minotaur like - and scooping water from a jar in a space of black desolation with a heap of coal dust that sprouts talking mushrooms, stands beside, in a parallel contemporary room space, a hip young 'scientist' (red jeans and trendy vest and black rimmed glasses), Mr Buckley, who with algebraic formulations and recordings on tape, attempt to illustrate the vital "compulsion to create a true and resonate story". In her artist's notes, Ms Brennan, extrapolates, it is an "attempt to record themselves in time and space...; to say with total clarity 'I am here' and have stories to tell". It is told, unfortunately, with a near total lack of communicative clarity. It is the performance craft, of Ms Brennan, that fails the project and undermines the intellectual conceits. Mr Buckley is decidedly more fascinating and holds the performance elements together. However, the objective 'what' of the piece has no clarity or clear support on 'how' to achieve that, with an audience. A lot of ideas that have not been shaped for audience entry. Have I had other, clearer explorations of this idea? Yes. Does this, at this time, add to my extension of this idea? No.

Bernice Ong has created a performance-installation called REQUIEM: an immersive performance space which we are invited to enter through a white clothed tunnel. A chequer board floor, white walls and roof; a tower of seven flickering static video screens, with occasional dying cockroach images gyrating to death, opposite to which, in a white metal- framed room, a white faced Ms Ong cleans her teeth and sucks white liquid and then languorously conducts with a violin bow a recording of part of Mozart's Requiem in D Minor. There is no dramatic impact to this work and its ideas are absorbed within the first few minutes of arriving in the space. The work lacks persuasive inclusions and is static and lacking in journey curiosity.

I commented to a fellow audience member, that the most famous monologist, Alan Bennett (TALKING HEADS) mostly (he has recorded one, himself, true) has famous artists/ actors deliver them - Maggie Smith, Aileen Atkins, Julie Walters amongst many.

Lucy Watson has written a monologue, SLIPPING, which she also delivers. Ms Watson accompanies her written text with a dexterous movement duet with a large, blue suitcase. The director has crafted a visually attractive set of lighting cues and James Brown, the Sound Designer, has created an intriguing sound scape. The difficulty with the piece as performance art for me was that the movement did not seem to clarify the text and the text did not clarify the movement, they mutually were a distraction to the other. Choice: Do I close my eyes and listen or do I just watch and close my ears to the spoken word? As I debated with myself, the text became buried in the offers of too much activity. Who knows what was written/spoken?

The last piece, EATER by Rachel Roberts, was presented in beautiful images but the inability of the performer to engage me in the sound of the spoken language, let alone in any musical cadence of supportive "music" of the voice to communicate the ideas and narrative of the text left me wallowing in frustration and irritation. Just how much of this work's preparation, was concerned with the actual speaking of the text? However long it took to write, the performance craft of speaking the monologue needed more attention or an artist of some vocal renown: Maggie Smith or......??....

Process is the major task in this residency and the audience interaction, a brief three nights (including a preview), would have clued these artists to the necessary difference between the theoretical and performance demands of the works and what the next steps are to continue to develop the work.

Applications are now open for Artslab 12 - applications close on the 7th December, 2011; contact Saskia on admin@shopfront.com.au

A cultural initiative of some seriousness and success.