Kevin Jackson's Theatre Diary

In This Light

2022-11-11T11:54:00.019+11:00

Photo by Robert Catto

Ca Va Productions presents, IN THIS LIGHT, by Noel Hodda, at the Flight Path Theatre, Addison Road, Marrickville, November 1st - November 19th.

IN THIS LIGHT, is a new Australian play by actor, Noel Hodda. This play has been "around the traps" as they say, for several years and at last arrives for audiences in the Flight Path Theatre, at Addison Rd Community Precinct, in Marrickville.

The play is in two acts, set in Paris, France and Canberra, Australia, late in the last century (there is no such thing as the internet or iPhone!) In the first act a very young Peter (Tom Cossettini), decides to leave country Queensland and travel, backpack, his way across Europe. We meet him in Paris at the Louvre Museum, in front of a Van Gogh art work, with a family camera heirloom in one hand whilst searching for the Mona Lisa. He crosses paths with a young Parisian, Camille (Omray Kupeli), and with a dated French phrase word book in the other hand, begins a whirlwind acquaintance. It is most amusing, awkward and yet, attractive.

Meanwhile, in Canberra brother Chris (David Adam), a parliamentary assistant, and his sister composer Sandra (Sophie Gregg), in a moment of shared grief make a pact with a handshake promising to care for each other to the end, even to euthanasia, if necessary.

One couple falls in love. The other pair is shattered when one has a severe medical occurrence and is hospitalised.

Time passes. Years pass.

In the second act, Peter, now an older reclusive sculptor, in country Queensland, is visited (invaded) by a young French woman, Clare. Clare arrives unannounced with photographs and an old camera and with much opposition and misgivings from Peter unpacks a possible history that could connect these two strangers intimately. For, Clare is, possibly, Peter's daughter - a being of whom he had had no idea of her existence.

Whilst in Canberra, Sophie has watched her brother deteriorate into such a state that she feels obliged to honour a long past handshake promise and with conflicting states of mind euthanises him. Chris's nurse (Kate Bookallil) is placed in a dilemma that forces a confrontation with her sense of duty and her personal compassion for what Sophie has done.

Two continents, seven lives and twenty years meld into one transforming experience. IN THIS LIGHT, is a celebration of love, loss and reconciliation.

The first act of this play is constructed with the usage of many, many short scenes and, unfortunately, the Director, Des James, has unimaginatively decided that these scenes will be created by the exit and entry into light spotted areas. The Scenes can have dialogue or, on occasion, otherwise, simply visual statements of the character's journey. Mr James's direction requires the actors, even the actor playing the incapacitated Chris to walk onto the stage, lay down on a bench and cover himself with a light rug, to then have to stand and walk off into the wings of the space when the scene location changes.

My memory, and my companion's memory of the first act, is one of a bewildering, clattering 'dance' of entry and exit with the actors accompanied by a flurry of Sound (Jeremy Ghali) and the raising and fading of Lighting states (Grant Fraser), that reveal a pragmatic set of 'shapes' that may signify a bed, chair or table (Designer, Angelina Meany), with which the actor then must establish character, space identity, and the emotional state of the character with the responsibility of telling the story. That is, to tell us who they are, where they are, when it is (both the literal and, more importantly, the emotional when), in the arc of the journey of each of the characters, to reveal: what they want, why they want it and how they get it (the six basic Stanislavski questions that elucidate for the audience what is happening).

In Shakespeare's play, Hamlet in his instructions to the actors whom he has employed to present the play, THE MOUSETRAP, to help him decide what he should do concerning his Uncle, the new King, Claudius, at the Ghost, his father's bequest, says "Let the words suit the action and the action suit the word" so that the playing by the actors has maximum clarity. Mr James with his decision for the actors to enter and exit for every scene, in the first act, perforce, creates too much physical action for the audience to be able to read comfortably what he has given them to see, and inhibits their ability to believe what they are seeing, as it has become muffled, even sometimes, opaque. Alternately, having the actors always present in their place on the stage with just the rise and fade of the lighting the dramaturgical demands that the writer, Mr Hodda, has made for his storytelling needs could be clearer - the text in this act seemed to be more a screenplay than a theatre play. The first act was bewildering.

In contrast, the second act had longer concentrated scenes of dialogue and dramatic development and therefore was more fluid in its storytelling reveals and, on the whole, was much more available to our having a comfortable and enlightening 'read' of the complexities of the characters. The play became a much more interesting experience because there was less physical action, less entering and exiting, less 'noise' to distract us from the intentions of the writer. For, there is an interesting experiment of form that Mr Hodda in the construction of his play is investigating : the games of the usage of TIME, as the two stories in each act are intertwined over the actual twenty years that the characters live through.

The company of actors are uniform in their ability and have a committed and shared energy to the characters, the narrative and the stylistic demands that the playwright offers and the director demands.

Di Smith, the co-producer of this production, in a prologue before the audience entered the theatre, reminded us of the sacrifices all of the artists presenting this work have made - no one is paid - it is all a labour of love to present an Australian play that speaks with a national resonance, a national mirror for us to read, to see and take lessons from. Watching IN THIS LIGHT was another indication of the Cultural Leadership that is made in this city by the industry at large, the unemployed, the underemployed. Recently a community based theatre company: Endangered Productions presented a production of Ibsen's PEER GYNT with a cast of 90 performers onstage, including an orchestra of 30 musicians. Believe it or not, at the Paddington RSL Club! It was a moving experience. Not just for the impact of the greatness of the text of the play PEER GYNT, translated by Australian May-Britt Ackerholt, but, also, for the commitment of all those artists, doing it for NOTHING. Only 4 performances but all sold out with many luminaries of the

industry in the audience attending this premiere season. It was the first time in Australia where the play by Ibsen and the score by Greig was played live, together. An extraordinary achievement.

Ms Smith pointed out, this company, CA VA, has six actors on stage, unlike the major professional company of this state: The Sydney Theatre Company (STC) - funded by our State and Federal Governments - who have more often than not, only one actor or two or three on stage (thereby, perhaps, signalling to the acting profession in this city - that has suffered untold loss of opportunity because of the pandemic demands and restrictions - that they are dispensable). It seems the STC is a Director's and Designer's theatre - for and by Auteurs. The writer and the actor are subject to manipulation by these two other elements (even employing film techniques - Cine-theatre, the Artistic Director of the STC, Kip Williams, has styled it in a recent 'magazine' feature - to edit out some of the actor's offers). I've always believed the Writer is God and the Actor the Sacrifice supported for clarity in the storytelling by the Director and the Designer.

By the bye, I have often wondered at the size and budget cost of the administration of the STC, its staff, and of the expense of the Design and Lighting elements of the recent STC Productions (just the cost of the electrical bill - of the carbon foot-print - for a single performance of the much lauded THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, for example, or STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE), that can then only employ ONE or TWO actors. (Actors that, contractually, are employed per production - with no holiday pay or holiday benefits etc. in contrast to the administrative and artistic permanent staff?) There does not appear to be a sense of Cultural Leadership emanating from the STC Administration or, importantly, from the STC BOARD Members, towards the acting profession. Less set Design and more actors on stage, please. I mean, 3 actors serving Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR. Really? In a city with a large pool of actors available. Even if you were paying Equity minimum there are actors galore, available, waiting to explore their skills in the service of the audience in Sydney to join together to tell Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR. How embarrassing it is to see the National Theatre Broadcasts at the Dendy Cinema and see 20-30 actors taking a curtain call compared to our 1 or 3 or 6 or perhaps 10! on the STC stage.

On opening nights, the STC having stacked the house with free tickets, I often wonder how many actors are invited as compared to how many administrative staff or the Influencers on the Internet, dressed to the nines and not really concerned with the Art of the Theatre at all - the stand-up and applaud every production at the STC (as if it was a cultural requirement), like the 19th Century 'bribed' theatre claques, no matter the actual quality of the performance? It drives me CRAZY. I'm, also, certain those actors sitting in the theatre with the free ticket, generously given by the STC Administration, would much prefer to be on the stage.

Therefore, I recommend a night at the modest Flight Path Theatre in Marrickville, to see the modest but determined production of a new Australian play by one of Sydney's striving artists, Noel Hodda. Take a friend and thank, by your support, the artists of Sydney, attempting through self sacrifice, to give you a broader experience in the theatre than the, generally, moribund work that the STC gives.

"IN THIS LIGHT, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE."

The Caretaker

2022-11-06T10:47:00.031+11:00

Photo by Prudence Upton

Ensemble Theatre presents THE CARETAKER, by Harold Pinter, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 14th October - 19th November.

The Ensemble Theatre has asked director Iain Sinclair, who brought Arthur Miller's play A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, a little while ago, to the Ensemble Theatre, after its initial 'life' at the Old Fitz in Woolloomooloo, to a vivid rendering, to revive THE CARETAKER, by Harold Pinter, for us.

THE CARETAKER had its first production in 1960 at the Arts Theatre Club, in London, and was transferred to the Duchess Theatre in the West End and ran for 444 performances. This play was Pinter's 6th play but his first significant commercial success. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, written earlier in 1958, after withering reviews had closed after only 8 performances. However, an influential critic, Harold Hobson, stood out on his own against the other London critics of the time and enthusiastically praised the writing and predicted a great future for the writer. This review gave Pinter the grit to persist.

Over 50 years Pinter wrote 29 plays as well as screenplays, teleplays, radio plays, short stories, theatre sketches, essays and poetry and was awarded in 2005 the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Legion d'honneur, in 2007. He also directed or acted in radio, television and film productions of his own and other people's works. He was a fierce, controversial social activist and his speech at the Nobel Prize giving is worth visiting. Despite debilitating illness he persisted performing and in a wheelchair gave a short season of Samuel Beckett's KRAPP'S LAST TAPE in 2006. He died in 2009.

THE CARETAKER is set in West London in the winter of 1960. Aston (Anthony Gooley) has invited an older homeless man, Davies (Darren Gilshenan), into his attic room flat. Soon Aston's brother, Mick (Henry Nixon), turns up and a power struggle, a tussle of personalities, begins. These three men have navigated a life path in post war London with different degrees of success. We are invited to witness three damaged and lonely men in truly bleak circumstances attempt to develop opportunities for survival over three acts.

Surprisingly, the experience of the play has room for comedy despite the pessimism that emanates from the vision of the distressed junk filled room (Set and Costume Design, by Veronique Benett) and the costuming of the actors. Davies, as played by Darren Gilshenan, dressed in hand-me-down, found clothing, with no shoes (rather sandals), carries physical tics of nervous stress with an observant and cunning mind - he seems to be constantly looking for the main chance and quickly and relentlessly attempts to assert his dominance over his host, Aston. Aston, contrastingly to Davies, is dressed in a tidy manner and has a living tempo that seems to be artificially becalmed, though benign, patient and generous. He tells us late in the play of an operation that has had a tremendous influence on his life. Mick, Aston's brother, is the sharpest of the three and appears to be a canny street operator with a sense of responsibility for his brother. He reveals in his actions to have a sense of being the caretaker of the "kingdom" that he and his brother have and of the life long relationship they have made. An intruder who attempts to unbalance that world of the brothers may find themselves caught in a 'conspiratorial' fix. When danger of an acquisitive Davies asserts itself, the two brothers glance at each other and stare and smile, before turning to the hostile visitor, together. Who is caretaking who?

(I've always imagined Pinter's Aston and Mick could be inspired by the Kray twins - Reggie and Ronnie, gangsters in the London East End in the late '50's and early '60's. Those two 'crims' especially celebrated by Pinter's audience members - the rich and famous {some Royalty, we read - naughty Princess Margaret} by keeping up to date with them in the gossip pages of their evening papers, or visiting "The Firm's" nightclub in Soho. On meeting Henry Nixon's Mick, at the Ensemble the other night, it became a real possibility I thought [without the murdering, of course], he been laden with latent violence and a wicked sense of menace. Tom Hardy's performance playing both twins in a very under-rated film called LEGEND [2015], is worth catching. Can you read Mick and Aston, into Mr Hardy's on screen magic? A titillating thought - Pinter inspired by the London life about himself).

Pinter's early plays are regarded as 'Plays of Comic Menace' - a label that Pinter eschewed vigorously - plays that begin in apparently innocent situations that escalate into both a threatening and absurd place. Plays that reveal recognisable individuals in physical circumstances that we can know of, that invite us to relax and enjoy the idiosyncratic fun. We find ourselves gently smiling, even chuckling on acquaintance. We do, indeed, find ourselves even laughing. Though we laugh because of the safety we have in the distanced space between the 'life on stage' and our audience seat, for a creeping atmosphere of uncomfortable tension has subtly grown between our new friends. Pinter seemed to enjoy writing in his early plays [e.g. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY (1958), THE DUMB WAITER (1959),THE CARETAKER (1960),THE HOMECOMING (1964)] in this creeping unease laced with comedy, much like Alfred Hitchcock did in his films of suspense.

The dramaturgical construction of the emotional pressures of the worlds of the plays are carefully laid - brick by brick - with the witty use of language suited to the class of the participants that permits both enlightenment and entertainment. He gives an opportunity for the theatre artists to create a sense of danger in the midst of comic gestures. They need, however, to be careful of playing his works too earnestly or portentously but rather to find as much humour and humanity as possible. Balancing the heartache and laughter. Pinter warns in his notes to production of his play: "THE CARETAKER is funny up to a point. Beyond that point it ceases to be funny and it is because of that point that I wrote it." This note is applicable for all his work.

Audiences on seeing these plays on the stage for the first time, fifty years ago, did find themselves in much confusion in their observance of the complex intentions of the writer. Pinter was much influenced by Samuel Beckett and in the movement known as The Theatre of The Absurd led by Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Edward Albee, Arthur Adamov, Slawomir Mrozek, Alejandro Jodorowsky, N.F. Simpson, among others, and focused on ideas of existentialism and what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and communication breaks down (a PTSD symptom) - it was a movement emanating, mostly from Europe, in the post World War II environment. Pinter reflecting on his 'growing up' in post-War Great Britain wrote plays in search of establishing the restoration and the dignity of man. Pinter did not write plays like Terence Rattigan, or Noel Coward, or John Osborne, or even Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller. He wrote differently - he was the leader of a pack in the "modern" times of the 1960's in the English speaking world.

In the 'sophistication' of living through 50 years these plays, in the hindsight of much knowledge, are no longer as complex a puzzlement that they once were (at least for me) and the pleasure of the revival of Pinter's play for today is in the appreciation of the 'genius' of Harold Pinter exhibited in the quality of the writing, especially, when given in such a highly respectful production approach as these artists give.

Each of the actors in Iain Sinclair's production at the Ensemble, give meticulously observed externalisations of character and are wonderfully adept in their handling of the language of the play and have a keen sense of the mechanics of the dramaturgical construction. I, however, was not completely moved. I felt a disconnect between the characters that prevented me from surrendering to an alarmed empathy for the battle between each of the men as they attempted to claim the role of being the caretaker of this flat, of this 'tribe' of survivors. What I felt lacking was a sense of the backstory of these men. I understood their place in the 1960 setting of the play, on the Ensemble stage, but I could not 'read' their past that had brought them to this impasse. I never felt that the actors had really 'lived' the character's lives up to the point to their existence when the play begins.

Davies', for instance, has lived through two World Wars and huge national economic challenges, Pinter says, "An old man" and in the world of 1960 Britain, I couldn't read the reason for his accumulated motivation. Nor of the other men (in their thirties) as to why they were struggling to find a security for their future. I admired the characteristics that Mr Gilshenan had invented but I had no sense of the actual past hardships that had resulted in the physical actions for the character. It seemed to be a wonderful detailed observation but it was a display rather than a lived result of social survival/conditioning. This was less true of the work of Mr Gooley and Nixon, but they were, for me, still, mere physical portraits of great observational skill but not connected or motivated from their character's lived history. The actors giving us externalised 'tics' rather than defensive growths developed from an internalised life to assist in their day-to-day survival in a post-war London environment.

As well the actors appeared to be disconnected from each other on the stage: three satellites whirling in their separate spaces but not necessarily in the same play. Oddly, they were isolated individuals rather than an ensemble of living humanity, of actual cause and affect, of not knowing their future together, as yet. They were not in the moment of living beings but rather actors of skilled artifice knowing and 'playing' to the ending of the play.

This production is still a worthwhile experience for there is much to enjoy. The production appeared to be a deliberate revisionist read of the play. It hurtled at speed through the text and I felt an absence of the proper observance - time length - of the famous "Pinter Pauses" scattered throughout the text which, then, prevented us from having the proper space/time to enter the thoughts and dilemmas of the characters that, then, undercut our unconscious (or conscious) identification and empathy for these men - I was prevented from having a catharsis at the men's difficulties. I looked at them, watched them, but in an objective state, not ever in a proper, truly concerned subjective state of moral concern. Maybe this was why I felt disconnected? Because the "Pinter pauses" were elided and not used. The sub-text of the play was not easily made available for me and the prevention of that 'entry point' is why I felt the production was a literal read rather than a deeply researched and owned, an alive, in the moment, journey. There was only one layer of experience going on, we were not invited into the sub-textual layer. (The reviews of Pinter's memory play BETRAYAL, on Broadway in New York, 2019, also seemed to indicate a revisionist textual speed and the loss of the timing of the "Pinter Pause" - a 90 minute, no interval race through).

I recommend you catch THE CARETAKER (even if it is to see if I am delusional, again).

N.B. Just a little History. John Clark, once Director of NIDA, in his new book AN EYE FOR TALENT, remembers his time in Bristol and working on Pinter's first play, THE ROOM. He was the Set Designer. It was Directed by Henry Woolf - a fellow student, friend, rival.

End Of.

2022-10-22T19:42:00.010+11:00

Photo by Brett Boardman

Griffin Theatre presents END OF. , by Ash Flanders, at the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross. 13th October - 5th November.

END OF. is a new monologue written and performed by Ash Flanders, Directed by Nicholas Nicolazzo. Here is what you can expect to see after you have climbed the stairs at the SBW Stables Theatre

Says the publicity blurb:

OUTRAGEOUS.
CONFESSIONAL.
UNEXPECTED.

"There's no crueler thing you can say to an actor than 'Don't give up your day job'. Fortunately, thanks to cover bands and theatre restaurants, ASH FLANDERS never needed one. But after years of glittering appearances on stages and school gyms across the country, Ash unceremoniously finds himself seated at a computer terminal in a decidedly un-sparkly corporate office. No longer an acclaimed playwright, Ash is now a legal transcriptionist - typing the words of suspected criminals who are not nearly as fascinating as TV suggested.

As Ash painstakingly types out the narratives of petty crims, he begins to interrogate his own poor choices. That thing he did in an abandoned carpark. The visit to the horse knackery. Those people at the old folks home. All of it in the service of one thing: making people laugh.

But as his own transcript unravels, Ash realises it's about making her laugh. His toughest audience. A heavy-drinking, chain-smoking behemoth named Heather Flanders. And her health is so dire it's, well ... laughable".

"ASH FLANDERS (Black Blackie Brown) is a consummate showman - an awarded writer, actor, and elder millennial shaman. But in END OF. he is stripped uncommonly bare. Under the dreamy direction of Stephen Nicolazzo (The Happy Prince) Ash has created an honest hilarious gut punch of a one man show. ... END OF."

End Of. is an hour long standup comic turn in the theatre. It is all of the above, delivered with a

'campy' demeanour and bitchy, bitter wit. Musically the content is delivered in a loud piercing high pitched voice without much sophistication in variety of choice either in volume or range and is further accompanied with seriously limited physical gestural offers. What this artist asks us to 'read' from all of his craftsman's offers is a trial to endure. The expressive skills of voice and body are so narrowly limited. The comedy is mainly tiresomely arch - "OUTRAGEOUS" - in delivery, and with the promised "UNEXPECTED" turn in the latter part of the monologue as he approached the "CONFESSIONAL" part of the night he took us into passages of almost embarrassing bathos, deeply committed to a capital A for Acting style as THE METHOD might have invited at the recall of emotional memories for a year one study exercise at a drama school. The emotional life as Ash presented it seemed to be absolute pretence. It was difficult to believe. Difficult, in fact, to watch. Was it a deliberate facetious act, one that was in harmony with the self-conscious comedy of the earlier part of the performance style of END OF.?

The Set Design by Nathan Burmeister is rather dour in colour palette and choice of 'furnishings', except for a puzzling set of curtain drapes at the back of the raised platform that Director Stephen Nicolazzo has Mr Flanders at different moments tying back - I wondered if it was a signal for us to endow as moments of emotional character/mood reveal? The Lighting by Rachel Burke changing colour throughout, too: suggesting dramatic 'dreamy' change by the director, perhaps?

The Artistic Director of the Griffin Theatre Company, Declan Greene, a long time friend and collaborator of Mr Flanders (We have seen some of their work under the banner/guise of the SISTERS GRIMM either at the Sydney Theatre Company or the Griffin: SUMMERTIME IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN: LITTLE MERCY; CALPURNIA DESCENDING in years past):

From Declan:

At the age of [redacted], Ash is the youngest grand dame of the Australian stage. He can bring an audience to side-splitting laughter with the raise of an eyebrow, the flick of a wrist. But in END OF. he refocuses his comic gifts to offer up a tender meditation on ageing, parenthood, and the big "end" we all face.

This may be an explanation of the curation of this work as an offer on the SBW Stage from the Griffin, for up till reading this in the company's online notes about this production I was unsure what this work was saying. On the night I attended this production I perceived little of the supposed "tender meditation" either in the content or, particularly, (I do mean "particularly") in the performance style of the performer - this was hardly a meditation but rather a standup Comedy routine for a cabaret type space. I noticed END OF. was presented at Darebin Speakeasy, a year round independent performance development program offered at Northcote Town Hall in Melbourne and was nominated for a Green Room Award as an Independent Theatre for Best Production and Performer.

It may be a cultural thing as to why I found END OF. an unrewarding hour. You know, the oft rumoured different given circumstances of the social/political/cultural zeitgeist in the city of Melbourne as compared to that of Sydney.

Maybe. That's it!

The dramaturgical mode of END OF. is not an unfamiliar one in Sydney. One act, one person monologues are not rare in our city.

For instance I have watched on this stage a one act, one person monologue called PRIMA FACIE, by Australian writer Suzie Miller and had an invaluable, profound meditation about the injustice of our law system and the treatment of women within that system. Recently, at the Darlinghurst Theatre Company's Eternity Theatre I had experienced a profoundly moving one act, one person work OVERFLOW by a British black Trans artist, Travis Alabanza, revealing the dreadful hurdles facing our brothers and sisters struggling in our society with a different sexual orientation. GROUNDED, by George Brandt, a one act, one person monologue gave us the story of a woman who because of her pregnancy is removed from her position as a fighter jet pilot, permanently, and faced with the knowledge of the tragic employment of drone bombers, which she launches remotely in a 'shed' in the desert of LasVegas and witnesses the actual devastation she has inflicted on innocent passer-by's - the moral dilemma excruciating. (The Russian/Ukrainian conflict flashes in my memory banks). Tom Campbell performing a self-written work, a musical, concerning the performing arts and disability called ONE HANDER. All these works NOT presented (bar One) at the Griffin Theatre. All these works that stand head and shoulder in content and performance above END OF.

Would END OF. get a go at the Royal Court in its program of new work? One can only look at their cultural/social/political writings occupying their stages with envy, even despair. It is tragic to hanker over the next screening of the National Theatre Broadcast in our local cinema to find quality writing and performance in the theatre. And at only $27.00 a pop so much better value for money. One can wonder why our theatres are half empty or less. It is not Covid alone that has changed the habits of the Sydney audience. It is as well the mediocrity of the work we are offered. The new criteria is word-of-mouth recommendation from friend's we can trust. Time and Money cannot be wasted. The Griffin Artistic team ought to be more responsible as to the quality of the work we are invited to pay to attend.

After daily watching flood devastation; Climate change; drought; food shortage; supply obstruction; homelessness; violence against women and children; Government corruption and scandal; corporate corruption and scandal; religious institutional prejudice and discrimination, corruption and scandal; the tragedy of the Ukraine invasion; the people's voting swing to the right; the continuation of "fake news" and the threat of civli war in the United States; the Covid response; the Indigenous First Nation struggle for their Voice in our constitution - all this and more, and yet the Griffin can only find the content of END OF. to occupy their stage.

One wonders after this night in the theatre whether anybody at the Griffin reads (or attends) other people's works. Or, is it all it takes to get one's work (and self) exposed on one of the most influential spaces in Sydney (supposedly), is to be a friend of the Artistic management? The text tells us of Ash's good friend Declan and reminds us of his own performance as HEDDA GABLER, (oh, my) at the Belvoir a few years ago. Ash Flanders "a consummate showman", "a millennial shaman", "the youngest grand old dame of the Australian stage"? The rigour employed to vet the quality of work, the writing and the performance, seems to be very odd indeed. Indeed!

Am I the only odd one out?

Possibly.

See for yourself.

Go.

Our response is, I know, made up of the sum total of our experiences (and expectations) in the theatre - a totally subjective thing. You mat find it an end of year relief.

Let The Right One In

2022-10-22T19:30:00.006+11:00

Photo by Robert Cato

Darlinghurst Theatre Company presents, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, in a theatrical adaptation by Jack Thorne, at the Eternity Theatre, Burton St. Darlinghurst. 7th October - 20th November.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Lat den ratte komma in), is a Gothic Horror novel by Swedish writer, John Ajivide Lindquist, published in 2004. The novel re-enlivened the Vampire mythology, such that the artistic rights were swiftly bought for a film and brought it into the modern scene. The screenplay was written by Lindquist and Directed by Tomas Alfredson and released in 2008. It was an international success, praised for its writing, ravishing cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema and Musical score by Johan Soderqvist.

The principal casting was lauded as well. The central characters are required to be played by two young actors (12-13 year old in appearance) and the history of the extensive search for the 'right' actors to create, inhabit, these characters is now part of the legendary history of the making of the film. A young, bullied boy, Oskar, in his loneliness meets his new next door neighbour, Eli, who in appearance seems to be a 13 year old girl. Kare Helelbratt played Oskar and Lina Andedersson played Eli. The pairing of these two young actors produced a miraculous chemistry that carried the story and created an indelible memory for any who have seen the film. The angelic and touching innocent beauty of these two actors against the startling white snowed foreground in the forest-park of the early scenes of the film are unforgettable and were (are) an incredible tool that drew the audience into the magic and growing tension of the development of the relationship of this pair, surrounded by the bloody presence of a suspected serial killer in the western Stockholm suburb of Balckenberg in 1982.

The memory of this cinematic experience was a draw card to want to engage, once more, in the storytelling of the novel in the Eternity Theatre. Preparing for the evening I researched the reviews of the theatre adaptation in the UK, by highly credentialed Jack Thorne, and had most doubts swept away. I was eager to see it.

I noted, as well, that local 'star' Alexander Berlage was Directing this Darlinghurst Theatre Company production and it also seemed to augur well, for he has amassed a very positive success rate in the Sydney Theatre scene in the past few years. Though, mostly working in the Musical theatre realm - this ought to have registered some 'red flags' (although, his production of GLORIA [Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins], in the Reginald Theatre at the Seymour Theatre was a success).

Alas, this play text and its demands has resulted on the Eternity stage for fans of Mr Berlage's artistic sureness, an immense disappointment. The Director seems to have made so many missteps in the collaboration to succeed with LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, that little pleasure, or even the desire to stay beyond the Act One curtain was experienced. It was a slow torture. A growing disappointment.

The Set Design by a regular member of Mr Berlage's creative team, Isabel Hudson, (she is also the Costume Designer) has produced a silver columned and overhead beamed structure that sits with an immense factory or deserted medical laboratory presence on the wide stage, partly shrouded with opaque plastic sheeting. It has a weightiness that does not easily identify, for the audience, the many locations required for the many shifting scenes of the text in its storytelling plot - it remains throughout the course of the night a monolithic static blight for the imagination of the audience that became, visually, an obstacle but, also, created sound muffling in some of the enclosed and distanced spaces that made the auditory offers of the company difficult and unattractive. (The actors were also burdened with the unnecessary task of maintaining a Swedish dialect (Linda Nicholls-Gidley) - some actors were successful some were distractingly inconsistent). The lighting from the usually reliable Trent Suidgeest was generalised and just as ineffective in helping us to locate the environments of the plot. The hurting throw of the blinding white light into the auditorium as a prologue to the action and as an interval cover was not an invite to enjoy the Lighting Design at all.

The 'architecture' of this Set design is a colossal failure as it also required time to be spent in setting up each of the locations as well as to accommodate the changing of costumes (because of the doubling up of the roles played by the small company), into a time consuming hurdle that interfered with the musical structure - the rhythm of the piece - in building the tension of the storytelling. The design caused the production to idle in long waits of organisation that dissipated the energy of the playing.

This problem is covered by Mr Berlage in his collaboration with the Composer, James Peter Brown (a usually sensitive and impressive talent), and the Sound designer Daniel Herten, to distract us with a highly theatrical score that intrudes at a noisey bombastic level. With no action on stage for many, many significant lengths of time over this near 3 hour sitting, we become increasingly aware of their offers that lead one to an anticipation of a follow-on in atmosphere and storytelling manifestation of an epic LORD OF THE RINGS scaled adventure - quite the opposite to the almost naturalistic suburban creep of the writer's original novel and film.

The principal success of this production is a chemistry between the two leading actors, that is achieved, mostly, by the generous and enigmatic presence, beautifully constructed, subtle physical movement of Sebrina Thornton-Walker as the vampire Eli. This is despite the forced Acting (with a capital A) of 24 year old Will McDonald who strains to create a 13 year old. Mr McDonald is cute but not believable. Endearing but not believable. The lack of sophistication of his acting offers underwhelms the plot of the play's romantic and terrifying seduction of the innocent by a creature some hundreds of years old in pursuit of a new partner to kill and supply the blood necessary for her (his!), Eli's continued survival. The ugly, tragic storytelling of the final scenes are muffled and made opaque by the inability of the actor to create a truthful boy/man. The horror of Oskar's future is blunted or made unknown to the audience.

"What happened?", I heard many people asking as we descended the stairs to the exit doors.

"Well, in the film ... blah, blah, blah"

."Oh. Really?"

"Yair. Watch the movie - It's great."

None of the other actors are convincing either, playing character solutions that are shallow representations of character types with next to no backstories to clarify their motivations. They appear to be invested in 'bad' Musical Theatre shallowness - in obvious cliche. They merely fulfil the scripted functions of the many characters that they have been asked to play and Mr Berlage seems not to be able to assist them. Most of these actors have a solid history of skilful performance, so, what went wrong?

I am noticing that I am protesting that the usual standard of excellence from most of the experienced professionals involved in this stage production of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is lacking. Is this adaptation too difficult for this producing body? When reading of the UK production it seems there was a budget that could accommodate the demands of Mr Thorne's vision. Was lack of budget a crueling factor? or, was it lack of time?

The audience I saw this work with were enthusiastic in response. My partner and I were underwhelmed and unpersuaded. Relievedly, other friends agreed with us. It was not just a jaded old gal and bloke response. Phew!

We thoroughly recommend that if you have not seen the Swedish film, seek it out on one of your platforms. Do note the original translated title for the Swedish book (2004) and film (2008) is LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. There is an inferior American film version called LET THEM IN (2010) and a television series will be released on October 9th 2022.

It is a great story.

No need to see this production except out of loyalty to the new management of the Darlinghurst Theatre Company. Give them some rope. Not to hang themselves, of course. Rather it is to give them some 'slack' to get back onto a more considered choice. There has been a wooing of a younger audience in this venue of late. I hope the standard set up through the splendid Play and Production of SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER***, in May 2021, is appreciated by the 'youngsters' and can be sustained by the Artistic company management. ... KYLIE JENNER was certainly a high benchmark for myself, and I hope it has become a bench mark of excellence for those relatively new to the theatre. The theatre's future depends on it!

Overflow

2022-10-22T19:19:00.008+11:00

Photo by Robert Cato

Darlinghurst Theatre Company presents OVERFLOW, by Travis Alabanza, at the Eternity Theatre, Burton Street, Darlinghurst. 9th - 25th September.

The Darlinghurst Theatre Company has curated a play written by a black British writer - playwright, poet -/performance artist/theatre maker, Travis Alabanza (they/them) called OVERFLOW (2020). Set in a fashionable gleaming night club bathroom we meet a trans femme, Rosie (Janet Aderson (she/her), who has locked herself in the bathroom and begins talking of 'the joy of the pre-emptive piss' that leads to many further anecdotal recall of the personal distress she has experienced in such spaces - this politically sensitive liminal space - that emotionally triggers a reaction that causes her to block the sinks, toilet and floor drain with paper and turn on the taps that over the 60 minutes or so of the monologue flood the room in an overflow that releases her to acts of further vandalism by throwing sodden paper onto the walls and leaving lipstick graffiti messages on the mirrors.

Whilst cribbed in this luxurious space Rosie illustrates the human cost of the daily difficulties of confronting a sexual identity that is different from our society's binary norms when revealing oneself as a transitional being in her community. Rosie's stories gradually shares with us that she is not defined by trauma and she is not defined by victimhood alone, but actually, is also defined by joy and friendship. Overflowing with the catharsis of emotional release reacting against the intrusive outside thumping of the night club music and the persistent battering of the door (Sound design and Music by Danni A Esposito), Rosie, splashing in her boots in the rising waters, exits.

Then, a blackout follows.

A silence.

The anger, and its polar opposite: the ironic laughter that Rosie has shared with us has led us into a place of the echoing knowledge of our own careless and shameful inhumanity that only the act of SILENCE seems to be the acceptable response. A shocking, confronting response.

Recently, I had watched a television program on ABC iView, an AUSTRALIA STORY from 2014 with Georgie Stone, an Australian actor, writer and transgender rights advocate, who at the age of 10 was the youngest person to receive hormone blockers in Australia, which set a precedent that eventually changed the law that compelled transgender children and their families the necessity to apply to the Family Court of Australia to access stage one treatment. I was moved by the courage and power of that young woman. That she was awarded, in 2020, a Medal of the Order of Australia, it gave me a fillip of excited hope for the future. This award was one of many observing her deserving recognition.

OVERFLOW, then, is a contribution in our theatres to encourage us to open our hearts, our minds, to a just and compassionate modern community. The Darlinghurst Theatre Company has embraced under the behest and excited 'pitch' of Director, Dino Dimitriades (They/them) to present this one act play with a company of trans artists (and their supporting comrades, Benjamin Brockman (he/they). The foyer, the public toilets, the whole of the public Eternity Theatre spaces had been prepared by trans artists of Sydney to welcome the audience into an immersive experience that was enlightening and positively hopeful in anticipation of the main event.

The political acumen of this production house is relevant and exciting. There is no denying that and is applauded.

The Company had made an online call for trans actors to audition for the role of Rosie. I was disappointed then that the performer chosen was a third year Acting Student at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. Out of all Sydney's trans talent pool the best applicant was a student actor still engaged in training. (I am surprised.) For, as courageous as Janet Anderson was, there was a weakness of vocal skill that denied the poetry of the Travis Alabanza play to 'sing' to the audience. The voice in this hour long work lacked range and variety of action and ceased to hold one's attention to the source inspiration. One heard the content but not, consistently, the poetic language choices that the poet/author had laboured to create. (This actor's CV in the program told us that she had played HAMLET!). As well, I felt neither the actor nor director had the wherewithal, the dramaturgical skill, to shape the work into a completely satisfying experience for the audience. Without the active assistance of the Director the actor plodded from one anecdote to the next, in a simplistic chronological order but did not clarify the artistic objective of the work - shape it as part of her craftsmanship as an actor - did not build the accumulation of the emotional state of the storyteller. I did not come away from the performance with a shaping of the writer's intention. What, other than the shocking anecdotes do I take away from the performance of this play? I was puzzled and let down. The actor seemed to give each anecdote/episode the same emphasis and the same weight. Rosie was, relatively, as placid at the conclusion of the monologue as she was when we first met her, teasingly defining the pleasure of the pre-emptive piss.

I am surprised that Dino Dimitriades was not able to find a more able, experienced performer in all of Sydney. I could mention, for instance, that Georgie Stone is a working actor. And, though Rosie written by a black queer trans woman was played in the premiere of this play at the Bush Theatre in London by a white trans actor, Reece Lyons, I could name several black actors in Sydney who could probably honour the work at hand (maybe, availability was the problem).

The best work given by Dino Director was the Set Design and the engineering/plumbing of it - this Design pre-occupation, was also true, in my observation of their work on LADY TABOULI (for the National Theatre of Parramatta). A skilful Set Design but an underwhelming ability to dramaturgically serve the writer's play and to assist the actor.

This production of OVERFLOW, for me, was a political necessity at last confronted, however, was an underwhelming artistic experience.

Disappointing. Disappointed.

The Soprano: Australian Brandenburg Orchestra With Samuel Mariño

2022-09-17T15:33:00.050+10:00

AUSTRALIAN BRANDENBURG ORCHESTRA, presents, THE SOPRANO : Samuel Marino, at Sydney City Recital Hall, in Angel Place. Thursday,1st September. Tuesday, 6th September. Wednesday, 14th September. Friday, 16th September. Saturday, 17th September Matinee at 2.00pm and night, 7.00pm.

Life is full of plans with "twists and turns' unexpectedly pointing one to adventures that can be either a positive or negative event. Recently, two acquaintances were unable to take up their Subscription Tickets to a concert at the Sydney City Recital Hall in Angel Place, and gave them to another friend who, then, been rebuffed by a 'gentleman caller' asked if I would like to accompany her instead. Indeed, I could. I had no knowledge of the program I was to attend but really chuffed to meet and greet my friend and hear some music with a live orchestra. A special bonus was that the concert featured the Baroque repertoire.

My friend and I sat in the stalls fairly close to the stage - how exciting! I learnt in the pre-concert gossip that we were to hear a male Soprano voice - yes, a MALE SOPRANO voice - curious. We were to hear Samuel Mariño, a 28 year old Venezuelan who began his training at the National Conservatory of Music of Venezuela with piano and voice, where with his extraordinary vocal gift first performed operatic repertoire with the Camerata Barroca in Caracas. This awoke a passion for the baroque repertoire and inspired him to further his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris. Two months ago he released a new CD on Decca Records, and it has sold, already, 3 million copies. Mr Mariño's career has ignited. He has a plan to perform in the coming months in Canada, the USA; and make his UK opera debut at the Glyndebourne Festival as Iris (Semele - Handel, 1744).

The Artistic Director of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Paul Dwyer, had invited Mr Mariño to Australia several years ago but Covid-19 interfered with the planned schedule. Persistence and the confluence of the Musical Gods arranged that fate would allow him to travel, at last, and here he is.

The audience gathered, the orchestra entered, the musicians played, under the spell of an enthusiastic conductor, Mr Dyer, a work by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). During, quietly, Samuel Mariño entered in a spectacular tartan skirt with shirt, jacket and other dressy accoutrements - e.g. a very bright red shoulder bag - as well as fingerless black gloves (leather?) and high, high heels. He was coiffed beautifully, subtly make-uped, with a youth-filled, youthful smile that was as flirtatious as one could be. I'm certain it was I he was flirting with but my companion differed and told me that it was she that he was shining at. I grasped, competitively, that each of us and all of us in the Recital hall were being touched by this flirt. And then....

Then, he began to sing.

THEN, he began to sing, sing an aria from Vivaldi: In furore iustissimae irae (translation:in a fury of righteous anger) :

In a fury of righteous anger
You are divinely powerful.
When you can punish me in my guilt
The very crime you bear is merciful.

Fury.
Righteous Anger.
Divinely Powerful.
Punish.
Guilt.
Crime.
Merciful.

All flagellant sounds making poetic welts, almost indecently, but, in recovery, we observe, not indecently, but with a musical sensitivity that reaches out to our vulnerability that he has given cause to be awakened within us. He held the key to our awestruck presence and turned it on, oh, so quickly and generously. His openness caused us to mirror his sacrifice, and together we revealed our mutual usually shy truths at the command of the music and the sounds of a foreign and ancient language of a long time ago. He awoke us to the music of the spheres - timeless - to the other worldly, via the pleasure of good/great musicianship of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and their guest, Samuel Marino.

A miraculous soprano sound swept us with a passionate exposure that could only induce in each of us an awe and a joy. We were his surprised slaves. Slaves, so quickly. Surrendering, so quickly. And definitely not looking for mercy, for if this were a punishment: BRING IT ON!

For, as well, the beat of this more than 400 year old music was absorbed by his body, invading him, taking, unequivocally, possession of him, so that it registered in expression as if he were in the centre of the Disco Beat at the greatest dance club in the contemporary world. We learnt from conversation later that Ballet was Mr Mariño's early inclination, and evidently he can move, but fortunately his Doctors on examining his vocal equipment recognised the possibility of a modern phenomenon. The voice, the body and the passionate, controlled dexterity, reveals a great actor bringing the character of his music vividly to life.

Phenomenon, undoubtedly. Samuel Marino, in his youthful time ought not to be missed. And that's whether you are classical music fan or a popular primal music fan.

He is clearly a humourist. Considering his extraordinary gift, the uniqueness of it, one can imagine the passage of his 'growing up': The pain of the bullying, the prejudices, the aggressive fears which the ordinary has thrown at him. Humour became his way of surviving. For that pain has been turned by this artist into a gift for his audience. The conclusion of the first act in a work by George Frideric Handel (1685-1750): Quella fiamma from opera ARMINIO, Act 2 Scene 8, HWV 36 :

That flame, which ignites in my breast,
nourishes itself in my heart's blood.
May that fire shine so brightly,
that it becomes the fuse that feeds my passion.

And, indeed, the fuse that has (historically) ignited Samuel Marino to feed his passion, bursts onto this platform/stage, so that the furious heat of the lyrics are smelted, counterpointed with a comedy act of almost burlesque greatness as he sings in a fiercely contested musical duel with the Baroque Oboe played by Adam Masters. Each of these artists challenging and lifting the stakes of the encounter. Tit for Tat. Thrilling! The laughter they create together, also, brings tears, that one young man could have so much to give. An unforgettable performance.

It is apparent that Samuel, if I may be so bold is, or, could be, a handful of brilliant temperament. Fiercely, humorously, his costume changes are a provocation of wonder. Following the full-length tartan 'frock' the second costume is teetering on heels once again, beneath tight white patterned 'stretch' pants, with a sheer, almost see through long sleeved top with a necklace of silver glimmer that has one distracted in moments as to wondering about the body beneath the clothing. Which is answered, perhaps, in the next set of 'vestments' that he dons to close the concert.

With the extraordinary power and dexterity of his vocalisations he supports it with intelligence and political wit. The courage that Mr Marino required to accept and grow into his gift, the patience he has had to endure the pain, is employed with the sure action of positive intelligence and wit to master all of his obstacles - personal and societal - is a wonder to contemplate. He is a cause for honest wonder and gratitude. A kind of beacon in the darkness of our contemporary life. An artist to celebrate.

Paul Dwyer and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra ought to be congratulated for the recognition and pursuit of this artist at the beginning of his career. One can only hope that he will visit again. He says he has an ambition to sing Lucia. With what his will and training have so far achieved it is a possibility, maybe, a probability. Who would have thought that this might be a possible path for such an artist - a Male Soprano? Not too many years ago, Samuel Marino may have been seen on a stage as a sensation in an underground cabaret. Today, in 2022, he stands on major concert platforms around the world and may be seen on the major opera stages around the world creating with the same passions Verdi's great and tragic hero: Lucia de Lammermoor.

I wept with awe and jealousy a great deal of the night at the gifts that Samuel Marino gave me, us. I wished that I had had them. Even one eighth of his courage to begin with. Not since the Audra McDonald Concert a few years ago have I been so emotionally breached.

The gift that my friends gave me is an instance of wonder, of chance, and provokes in me once again a comprehension as to why life is worth living. I can not thank them enough.

If you could go. I would. If not just check Youtube or Google to see what you missed. A little OTP, Kevin? No one iota, I promise.

P.S. Thanks, Richard, John, (Terry) and Maggie.

Photograph 51

2022-09-17T15:29:00.004+10:00

Photo by Teniola Komolafe

Ensemble Theatre presents PHOTOGRAPH 51, by Anna Ziegler, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 13th September - 8th October.

PHOTOGRAPH 51, is an American play by Anna Ziegler (2008). It is a one act work of about 90 minutes length and it focuses on a remarkable scientist Dr Rosalind Franklin (Amber McMahon), leading a team of male comrades in the investigation into the "secret of life" using x-ray crystallography to reveal the atomic structure of DNA - the famed Double Helix.

This discovery happened in 1951 in the King's College laboratory in the city of London which was still recovering from the collateral destruction of that city via the second World War. This discovery won the Nobel Prize of 1962 for three of the male collaborators. Doctor Rosalind Franklin had been forgotten, relatively, and probably, because she had died in 1958, at the age of 37 of ovarian cancer, which may have been contracted during her research developments. This play attempts to bring this woman into the light - to tell HERSTORY rather than history alone.

It may have been her manner :

As a girl I prided myself on always being right. Because I was always right, I drove my family near mad by relentlessly proposing games to play that I'd win every time [...] And when I was at University, and it was becoming clear to my parents, as it always had been for me that I would pursue science, I left Cambridge to meet my father for a hiking weekend. And atop a mountain in the Lake District, when I was eighteen years old he said to me, "Rosalind, if you go forward with this life ... you must never be wrong.

And in her lifetime behaviour she believed she never was - and this was an irksome trait for a woman (and especially a Jew) to have in the British halls of science in the 1950's.

Reports of her brilliant research work in Paris caused an invitation for her to join a team of fellow scientists in London, working in the same territory of investigation, only to discover that she was invited not as the leader of the research but as just one of a team. Considering the contextual. social and political mores of the period she experienced outrageous chauvinism, misogyny and 'casual' sentiments that amounted to anti-semitism. This was not news to her and because of a lifetime of negative experience she had donned a personal defence mechanism (armour) that courted no such permission for it to be seen and heard and she shame-faced her fellow scientists to respect her and to do as she suggested. Her manner was a shock and caused her to be declared, steely, demanding and cold - not to be trifled with.

The science in this play is handled by Ms Ziegler so that it never becomes an issue or a reason to not to attend. Be not afraid, it is handled with a simple clarity that is never condescending but often full of comprehensible humour. In a dramaturgical structure that unravels with interactive engagements between the characters and, as well, as a fourth wall breakdown where each of the characters narrate, explain, comment straight to us, the audience. it is a disarming and clever range of choice in the otherwise complicated landscape of the play.

The 'objective' coolness of the behaviour of the scientists in the competitive, passionate pursuit of the step-by-step advancement of research and experimentation is lightly handled, it has no heavy burden of didactic detail or explanation. It has, instead, a lucidity and a 'joyful' feel in the pursuit to prove that there is a Double Helix of DNA - the secret of life - proved in a photographic image taken by the laboratory assistant, the humorous Ray Gosling (Gareth Yuen) : the famous Photograph 51.

As well, throughout the play of the scientific interactions there is a subtle reveal of the 'subjective' obstacles, behavioural quirks of each of the scientists that gives another dimension to the pursuit of the 'meaning of life' : the breakdown of marriage and personal relationships and struggles of doubt, or of the love that our driven heroine has for nature that is the flora and fauna, the rise and setting of the sun, as seen on a hiking trip to mountain tops, or in a theatre watching actors in the guise of being Leontes and Hermione, bring Shakespeare's THE WINTER'S TALE to life, presenting us with another 'double helix' - the double helix of the scientist's joy and the simplicity of each humane individual who are part of a species that consciously pursues meaning in just enduring the length of our lives. This play by Anna Ziegler has a creeping reveal that brings an observational and experiential warmth to take home : The complications of understanding the biological key to the formation of life - the first helix - and in the just living our lives - the second helix. The double helix of the objective approach and the subjective one. The 'thinking' one and the 'feeling' one.

The characters are carefully brought to life by this team of actors with great joyful accuracy in the crisp, astringent verbal comedy of each: Garth Holcombe creating Maurice Wilkins, the old fashioned stiff-upper-lipped English scientist boffin, attempting to move in the new post-war world where the old 'ways' are been harassed and superseded. The telling of the witnessing of THE WINTER'S TALE at the same performance that Doctor Franklin attended is moving in all the repeated restraint and unacted-upon passion that the two sexes have in the famously painful David Lean film, BRIEF ENCOUNTER, by Noel Coward. The clumsy confession of this experience by Wilkins is agonising in its telling - it is, we all know, too late.

Gareth Yuen playing Ray Gosling, the laboratory assistant, is delightfully nimble, utterly charming in his verbal comic timing as the 'gofer' for this team of demanding scientists - not least Doctor Franklin, herself. No burden is too much! No temper is revealed. Good will shines in this man.

The double act of the young American scientist, James Watson, inhabited as a juvenile patriarchal 'pig' with a skull of remarkable hair, by Toby Blome, in the most light hearted manner, alongside Robert Jago, as Francis Crick, a curiously mischievous observer of the 'manners' of Doctor Franklin, who, he believes, needs to be brought down from off her perch, create both cruel, stealthy and yet gradually human specimens of humanity - foolish and yet oddly, innocent, as a trait of male myopia domination.

Whilst, on the other hand, the gentle and love struck American scientist, Don Caspar, made by Jake Speer, has the beautiful arc of the 'husband-who-might-have been' if illness had not intervened. Mr Speer's warmth made us feel the sadness of Casper's loss before it could be declared fully in action.

Amber MacMahon is externally steely and defensive, and yet alerts us to the depth of this woman in her winning, comic verbal 'battles' for survival in this masculine room, and by employing the subtle and swift flashes of character vulnerability that unless you have been attentive you may have missed. It is the most intricate and disciplined performance that shows an actor of great insight with a 'tool box' of skills to pull it off.

Directed surely, helming this team of artists, is Anna Lednvich, on a Set Design that creates a comfortable (and practical) world of abstracted scientific apparatus and in a Costume Design of studied character detail, by Emma Vine, supported by the Music and sound design of Jessica Dunn, and the ever reliable lighting by Ensemble regular, Trudy Dalgleish.

PHOTOGRAPH 51, is the best theatre I have seen for ages. The talents and skills of all the artists serve the Writer well and the Audience spectacularly. Do go. It is a terrific night in the theatre and culturally, a great relief in the overwhelming mediocrity that one so often spends one's money on and, unfortunately, wastes one's time with in Sydney.

P.S. It was so stimulating to attend the National Theatre Broadcast last weekend of the Bridge Theatre production of David Hare's latest play STRAIGHT LINE CRAZY. It was not a perfect night in the cinema (theatre) but, by gosh it provoked a stimulating discussion afterwards. There was much to criticise and much to admire, that made that experience a wealthy time gained. Unlike most of the Sydney work, where one wants to flee quickly home, to that book or series to binge. What was there to discuss?

Six, The Musical (2022)

2022-09-02T08:33:00.002+10:00

Photo by James D Morgan, Getty Images

SIX, The Musical. Book, Lyrics and Music by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, at the Theatre Royal, Sydney. Originally Produced by Kenny Wax, Wendy & Andy Barnes, and George Stiles. Produced in Australia by Louise Withers, Michael Coppe, and Linda Berwick. 26th August-1st October, 2022.

SIX The Musical is back.

I first saw it in February, 2019, a few years ago (review here), in the Studio at the Sydney Opera House. It has, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, survived the battering and postponements of cancellations of performances to bounce back here in Sydney and to some of the rest of Australia. It has swept back into the West End in London and all round the UK and onto New York, Broadway, where it won two Tony Awards for Best Original Score (Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss) and Best Costume Design (Gabriella Slade). 4 Drama Desk Awards and three Outer Critics Circle Awards including Outstanding New Musical.

SIX, The Musical has book, lyrics and music by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. It is Directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage and choreographed by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille. Set Design is by Emma Bailey, Costume Design is by Gabrielle Slade, Lighting Design by Tim Deiling and Sound Design is by Paul Gatehouse. The Orchestrator is Tom Curranad Musical Supervisor is Joe Beighton.

Last night at the Theatre Royal an excited audience, some dressed in costume, some in cutting edge fashion, the rest of us in 'daggy' support, witnessed an audience cheer and shout throughout the performance of SIX, giving evidence that the theatre is not dead, it is alive to the contemporary pulse of the young, swept to a roaring thanks and noisy standing ovation and encore as the final explosion of gold 'rain' fell into the auditorium.

Six, The Musical tells the stories of the six wives of the Tudor King Henry VIII. It is told without a man in sight. Henry and all the other men have been expelled, for this is HERstory, not HIStory. Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.

Six 'glorious' women appear on a contemporary Set design that is a hyper replica of a Pop Concert stage, with all of its attendant Lighting options (tricks!) of flashing and pulsing pay-attention distractions to ensure that we, the audience, are never left to dream-off. This is a 75-minute, no-interval romping race to its end and we are magnificently manipulated to chase what is happening - no sleeping possible. Besides, the Musical Score is inspired by the canon of music divas, such as the likes of Adele, Lily Allen and Ariana Grande. Music that permits the lyrics the aural space, with microphones in hand, to tell of the dilemmas of each woman. Music that is still a bombastic blast that will certainly prevent sleep is directed from the stage in back-up, by Claire Healey with Heidi Maguire, Kathryn Stammers, Debbie Yap and Ann Metry. It is ever present in its support and contribution.

These six women are dressed "to kill" in costumes that are a flashy steam-punk adaption of the historical Tudor look, combined with the contemporary rock concert expectation, merely but wittily, referencing some of the iconic dress of the 16th century Queens. These costumes give room, flexibility, for these "Queens" to be able to fit the relentlessly demanding energetic choreography, that are both ensemble and character compilations, visual clues, to illustrate the temperament and place of origin of each of these women: the Spanish Queen Catherine of Aragon (Phoenix Jackson Mendoza), the first English Queen Anne Boleyn (Kala Gare), the second English Queen Jane Seymour (Loren Hunter), the German Queen Anne of Cleves (Kiana Daniele), the third English Queen Katherine Howard (Chelsea Dawson), and the last English Queen Catherine Parr (Vidya Makan).

All of the performances seem effortlessly to capture the audience and career it into an ecstatic response. Take the young and know that the theatre experience will become a part of their inheritance. It's look, it's sound, its tongue -in- cheek humour, it's storytelling, it's unflagging energy makes SIX a Ten. Do go.

Peer Gynt

2022-08-10T09:49:00.004+10:00

Photo by Marion Wheeler

Endangered Productions presents PEER GYNT, Play By Hendrik Ibsen, Music by Edvard Grieg at the Paddington RSL CLub, Oxford St, Paddington. 30th June - 3rd July.

A month and a few more weeks ago at the RSL Club in Paddington, Endangered Productions under the Direction of Christine Logan, 80, or so, performers took a curtain call which was enthusiastically given by an audience who had just witnessed an Australian first: a presentation of a performance (edited) of the play PEER GYNT (1867), by Hendrick Ibsen, Translated by May-Brit Akerholt, with the incidental music by Edvard Greig (1876) under the Direction of Peter Alexander. Meanwhile, the Sydney Theatre Company (STC), Sydney's Leading company and, arguably, Australia's leading theatre company, were showing their adaptation of Anne Bronte's only novel, THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL, adapted by Emme Hoy, and another Australian first, a new play, TOP COAT, by Michelle Law, with a combined cast of, perhaps, 20 actors (only). Both these plays it seems, were needing more time for more drafts (I've been told) to make them ready for the spotlight of the lavish budget of a heavily resourced STC main stage presentation. The contrast between the plans and objectives of these two 'production houses' and the result on the stages could not be more clear.

As I experienced the audience's excited response to the evening's events and watching the gathered artists joy at the reception they were given, I could only wonder at the power of a community that determines that the discipline of the performing arts is a necessary thread in the fabric of our civilisation and so, sacrifice time to a physical, vocal, mental and emotional demand to create a neglected and powerful philosophical work an airing, that in Australian terms is an endangered 'animal' as it disappears from performance memory because of the neglect of the major professional companies.

In this audience there were in attendance a crowd of professional people who had seen or performed in this work in times past, alongside a well read audience and their friends who were seeing and hearing this great piece (of almost impossible staging demands) of. entertainment and confronting intellectual provocations for the first time. A combination of poetic drama, dance and music, shifting through realism, social satire and surrealism, across the landscapes of the Norwegian woods, into the deserts of the Middle East - through the palaces of the mythical and historic residences via the witnessing of weddings, births and deaths, corporate greed and madness to predictions in pursuit of the meaning of existence through Peer Gynt's pilgrimage of self discovery.

Under the aegis of the Creative Director of Endangered Productions, Karen Lambert and her partner (in crime) Christin Logan, who is also the Director of PEER GYNT, the performing company is led by Philipe Klaus, as Peer, and Elaine Hudson, as his mother, Aase. Both these actors shoulder the demands of leading this company of mixed experience and gifts by committed example through this work. The clarity and sprightly energy of Ms Hudson charges the narrative with energy and a peerless perception of the dreadful circumstances of this specimen of humanity, of a single parent having to struggle in a judgemental world to grow a man, a possible pillar of her community. Ms Hudson sparks, in the scenes with her son, lived by Mr Klaus, into a handsome and beguiling promise of leadership and courage in his telling of the hunting of the deer, who then shamefacedly dwindles into a rascal in the early acts of the play - that sets up the tender and grief filled farewell on Aase's deathbed (assisted by the beautiful offer of Greig's Death of Aase) - and to propel his focus as he takes hold of the late scenes of the text, supported by a huge collection of other artists playing multiple roles, especially Alan Faulkner (Troll King), Jack Elliot Mitchell (The Thin Man), Katherine Munro (Woman in Green and Anitra), with a singer Emily Turner (Solveig) and the ebullient joy of Wei Jang in all of her character explorations, as stand-outs for me.

The task of bringing all the parts of Ibsen's anti-hero to life and balance, through writing of comedy, satire, confronting realism and melodramatic, melancholic tragedy, to find the multiple facets of a complex human begging for the enlightening solution to the timeless riddle of the Sphinx, both unconsciously and consciously, so as to be able to comprehend the meaning of life and the philosophic landscape that Peer Gynt finds himself in, is a monumental one and Mr Klaus stretching and finding his artistic muscles maps for us clues that Ibsen himself seems to be just finding clarity for as he puts pen to paper, to embody a man, even if it is belatedly, in heroic manner and action. As with Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ibsen's Peer Gynt only finds a truth at the end of a long physical and emotional journey. Each challenge, each success and especially each failure maketh this man. Mr Klaus actor's intelligence and growing grasp of the greatness of his challenge was awakening gorgeously in front of us and will undoubtedly manifest itself more clearly every time he embarks and completes this enormous journey that Ibsen has given us. (Alas, there were only four performances.)

This production has been edited down to a three hour meeting that in the original is some five and a half hours long! What is not shown on stage at the Paddo RSL Club, may make a whole for the sense to reveal more easily Ibsen's intentions. However, this company to realise Ibsen's intentions has chosen a contemporary Australian translation by a Norwegian born writer, May-Brit Akerholt, who now lives, has lived, in Sydney's Blue Mountains. Fortunately for this Company Ms Akerholt has acted as Dramaturg as well as translator and was present throughout the whole process (at every rehearsal) to shape and edit and guide the Director in her choices that had to be made for this production to tell the story and thematics in a curtailed time frame. This translation is wonderfully funny (cheeky). Contemporary funny with all its social critique and wisdom still intact. (Ms Akerholt has had more than twenty of her translations produced by leading companies around Australia and some overseas. Ibsen, Strindberg, Jon Fosse have had her skill and devotion.)

Says Ms Akerholt:

You cannot translate a piece of literature. You rewrite a work of fiction written in one language to another, with the aim of creating a new language that has the same effect on audiences or readers as it has in its original form. Ibsen's power lies to a large extent in his language, and in the way he manipulates it. ... Peer Gynt is written in a variety of verse forms ...

One of the most striking aspects of Ibsen's modernity was his mixture of the comic and the tragic. Peer Gynt is written with contagious exuberance and vitality. ... However, it is also a highly political and serious dramatisation of a life wasted in pursuing dreams, fleeing from responsibility, seeking power instead of love. ... (Peer Gynt is) a play full of metaphors and fairy tales and symbols. ...

We accept the dream-like figures entering Peer's life, because the play creates strong worlds with their own 'inner logic', where characters and action become the logic. When the Button Moulder comes to fetch Peer's soul (to melt it down to start again), we go with the play into the world of legends, and in the whole of the last act, into the worlds in which folklore, myth, fairy tale and reality jostle for space. The trolls in Dovre Mountain are dramatisations of famous fairy tales and stories, but to Peer they are both alluring in his search for the princess and her fortune, and frightening because they become the barriers to his search for himself.

... what Henrik Ibsen's drama did (was to transform) drama and theatre at a time when the western stage still flourished with melodrama, French farces and romantic comedies into an art that laid bare a society based on hypocrisy and double standards."

The Choreography by Alison Lee brought thrills in the Company Dance of the Hall of the Mountain (Troll) King and in the sinuous Arabian scene featuring Anitra - the seductress of the desert - and throughout the rest of the long journey of Peer, all supported by the 30 strong orchestra led by Peter Alexander gifting the audience with Edvard Greig's famous, romantic score, coloured further by the opportunity that Grieg gives the human voice, the Coro Austral Chorus - a chamber choir - led by Margot McLaughlin There are 26 seperate numbers, short and long, interspersed throughout the sprawling epic play. "In every instance", says the conductor, Peter Alexander, "(the music) intensify and magnify the dramatic situations." The inspiration of Ibsen's characters and story, struck a deep chord of emotional cultural identity in Greig and he ultimately wrote some ninety minutes of music. He, subsequently, organised some of it into two Suites that have become a staple for international orchestras and a part of my musical education in primary school.

The Scenic design on a tiny temporary forestage by Sandy Gray is more than just suggestible clues to location and is supported by the lighting of Michael Schell to create vivid atmosphere, that is, as well, sympathetic to the Visual Images created by Andrew Mill, with the Video and Projection provided by Wayne Richmond. There was a huge team resource of craftspeople to help realise the design of costume led by Miriam Lohmann

This production of PEER GYNT is significant for what it has achieved with little to no budget to reveal the great challenge of this play. It is even more significant as an example of Artistic leadership. The Leadership of a collection of mostly women, who decided to stage, to resurrect, a giant of a play, by one of the giants of dramatic literature, Henrik Ibsen, and a musical score of one of the giants of classical music, Edvard Greig. A unique presentation, a first in Australian history, a play with music that is capable of entertaining an audience and also through legend, myth and fairy story as touchstones for an entry point to provide a poetic critique of a society riven by hypocrisy, greed for wealth and power, that one hundred and fifty years later is still poetically able to be embraced and still found to be exhaustedly relevant in its societal present day boundaries.

Whereas, what has the leadership down at the kingdom of Kip Williams, down at the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) elected to present us as the best contemporary work available? Have you already forgotten?

The contrast of leadership values could not be more stark.

The Professionals that were in attendance at the PaddIngton RSL Club at PEER GYNT's opening night was stacked with the great and interested. Subsequent performances (only 4) were also attended by the wise and thoughtful theatre audiences. Those of us who watch the National Theatre Broadcasts at the DENDY or the PALACE Cinemas (the Orpheum and the Ritz, as well) for $25-$27, to get our legitimate stage experiences were at the PADDO RSL CLUB. We were there less we forget what good theatre is. Lest We Forget.

Congratulations to the ironically titled ENDANGERED PRODUCTIONS, in their choice of play and courage to do it.

P.S. When I was a student at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), my year of study performed the whole of PEER GYNT, under the Direction of Alexander Hay, our Head of Acting (1971). It began at 8.00pm and finished at 1.30am. There were five actors that played a portion of Peer. Tony Llwellyn-Jones carried an early Peer, that included the Deer Hunting speech. I got to play the whole of Act Five Peer Gynt. I began that responsibility at midnight after playing much else before and finished at 1.30am. Tony and I attended, together, the RSL opening performance, retrieving the pleasures of this play. (We also presented on the same set Dylan Thomas' play/poem: UNDER MILK WOOD (1954), to ensure that the full company of actors (in all 16 of us) got a fuller share of acting challenges.

Alex, a few years later presented with another year of students the whole of the cycle of five plays in G.B. Shaw's BACK TO METHUSELAH (1922) up in the Jane Street Theatre. Those were the days. When training was training. Indeed. By DOING.

John Clark, through Coach House Books (A new imprint of Currency Press), has just published his book: AN EYE FOR TALENT: A LIFE AT NIDA, which is a recollection of the History of NIDA (PEER GYNT is mentioned) and the SydneyTheatre scene. It is a comprehensive and informative work, which I highly recommend for any serious theatre person.

Gods And Little Fishes

2022-06-16T11:14:00.004+10:00

Photo by Bob Seary

New Theatre presents GODS AND LITTLE FISHES, by Richard Sydenham and Jamie Oxenbould, at the New Theatre, 420 King St. Newtown, 31st May - 25th June.

GODS AND LITTLE FISHES, is a beautiful gem of a play that the writers control with unerring sensitivity.

It is a play about Grief.

Its narrative wrapping/content is the recall of a terrible set of circumstances of 1960 that disturbed the provincial blanket of protection that Sydney wore - perhaps, Australia, as well - when an ordinary, suburban Bondi family won the Sydney 0pera House Lottery of $100,000 - a fantasy dreamt by all of us a big cheer - only to have a stranger call on the telephone a month later with a demand of extortion in exchange for the safe return of their kidnapped son, Graeme. A huge panic. Then, following, a time of nightmare suspense until the body of a child was found in the sand dunes of Seaforth. Then the confronting recognition in the morgue. The reality is the notorious Graeme Thorne Case, that along with the Wanda Beach Murders and the Beaumont Childrens' Disappearance brought Australia into the age of "stranger danger" and to the Police using forensic science as a tool of investigation, success of conviction.

The setting of this production by Hannah Tayler, has the grief performed on a central platform of furniture with a backdrop of blue and clouds where Frank, the dad, a travelling salesman (Jamie Oxenbould), meets some companions in a surreal dream, a man dressed as a bear (Andy McDonell), a small clown (Eloise Snape), and a strongman (Arky Michael), allowing the facts of a new emotional landscape to be revealed whilst on the outer perimeter edges the true life ordeal is told with Frank, his wife Kate (Katie Fitchett) and his son, Jeffrey (Sarah-Jane Kelly).

The balance between the zones of experience are delicately achieved by this team of artists with dignity and a sense of mission - an ensemble wholly involved with every element that each of them contribute to the gently unfolding "lesson" for its audience. This includes the subtle Sound design by Lloyd Allison-Young and the Lighting support by Grant Fraser. We are smoothly coaxed through difficult terrain and become bewitched, charmed and only slightly bewildered by the adventure of this play.

Harsh reality and the astonishing reservoir of resilience that we have as witnesses of this unspeakable family ordeal, which is illustrated and illuminated for us from this modest stage - which then rebounds for us while and when we regard the pile-on, as we sit in this New Theatre building, of these times of pandemic and war and the perfect storm of climate change and world-wide economic crisis, with a gentle story-telling technique and bravura that inspires not anger and a sense of depression but rather an offer of a small light of hope, even though the glimmerings are far away (All the world's a stage) of our humanness - that we are not only vulnerable but also are resourceful, that we can be survivors however we evolve or mutate as a species. Hope.

GODS AND LITTLE FISHES, and this performance Directed by Richard Sydenham took me to a place of contemplation that elicited comfort and a little joy, despite the darkness of the play's actual content, which I vividly remember actually happening around me when I was a 12 year old living in North Ryde with the newspapers of The Truth and The Daily Mirror, the virulent tabloids of our time, stirring us to a frenzy of cultural fear. But, I'm still here - in fact, we're all still here.

Gentle, almost unremarkable, but a privilege to have experienced. GODS AND LITTLE FISHES.

Do go.

GODS AND LITTLE FISHES won the 2020 The Silver Gull Award, as an unpublished and unproduced new full-length play.

An American in Paris, A New Musical

2022-05-13T17:26:00.007+10:00

The Australian Ballet, GWB Enterprises present, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, A NEW MUSICAL under the Direction of Christopher Wheeldon, adapted from the MGM Vincent Minnelli Musical Film, with a new Book by Craig Lucas, Music by George Gershwin and Lyrics by Ira Gershwin, at the Theatre Royal, Sydney. 20th April - 20th June.

The MGM Musical film of 1951, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, Directed by Vincent Minnelli, made famous by the dancing of Gene Kelly with a famous film debut performance from Leslie Caron and a Musical Score with Lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, is the inspiration for this stage Musical.

This stage work has been adapted with a new Book by American playwright, Craig Lucas, under the direction of British Choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon. The first significant change is the Setting of the time it sits in, originally in the film a more comfortable early, gradually resurgent late 1940's, early 1950's Paris, now, at the opening of this show at the Theatre Royal, we begin on the actual liberation day in 1945, when in a war torn, exhausted Paris the Nazi flag is torn/brought down and the triumphant Tri-colours of France are hoisted into the air, claiming at the same time its history and of the aspiration of the restoration of Paris to be, once again, the beating artistic heart of Europe.

The backdrop of the stage design by Bob Crowley, takes advantage of contemporary technology and uses digital projection, organised by 59 Production, to have the stage wide collapse and rise of the two opposing flags of Germany and France, with a thrilling and triumphant statement. The Bob Crowley 'magic' continues spectacularly throughout the production employing the colour palette and shape contents of famous artists of this time: Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Mondrian, to back the striving modern dance choreography and cabaret scenes of the City of Paris. That colour resource is apparent in the Lighting Design of Natasha Katz, and in the costume of the performers as well. The costuming of this production appears to be immense and the ensemble are mightily tested in the elaborate swift changes that they must make to continue this production without a wrinkle to its technique in achieving a sleek smoothness in its storytelling journey.

With the change of date, the fears and weariness of war, are inserted by Mr Lucas, into the stories of a few of the victorious American armed forces in Paris meeting and mingling with the French survivors, introducing the poisonous and ruthless, insidious political monstrosity of anti-semitism that still persisted in the psychological abuse present in a supposed liberated world, post 1945. The name of our Narrator/composer American soldier figure is changed from Adam Cook to Adam Hotchby to underline his Jewish heritage (out of respect to the Gershwin family Jewish heritage, I suppose) and with the introduction of a French Jewish family, Madame and Monsieur Baurel and their son, Henri, who reveal their resistance activity during the German (Nazi) occupation of France. It attempts to bring a layer of serious contemplation to the world of this musical. This conceit works more or less, depending entirely on your own disposition.

The other thematic gesture is the careful layering in of the development in Art: painting, music and dance. Of the quiet battle between rigorous classicism and the exploration of the modernist stretch into the abstract image on painting, sculpture and the choreographic shifts of other types of dance movement, with the accompanying explosion of Jazz as a means to express life in modern times, adopting the sounds of the machinery of war and industry, into musical composition for both classical and popular contemporary stages, in the Concert Houses, the Cabaret and radio platforms! This conceit works a treat.

The structure of this Musical book is, unfortunately, formulaic. The classic romantic-comedy leads, supported by the second-banana buddies, and pushing against traditions represented by the older and supposedly wiser Elders of the tribe. Jerry Mulligan (Robbie Fairchild) and Lise Dassin (Leanne Cofe), Adam Hotchby (Jonathan Hickey) the romantic leads; Henri (Sam Ward) and Milo (Ashleigh Rubenach) as the second-bananas, he an aspiring Cabaret performer, she an enthusiastic American art philanthropist; with Anne Wood and David Whitney as the resistant Elders, Madame and Monsieur Baurel.

The conformity of the Book, however is created and sustained by the expertise of the performers. The dance drives the production; the ballet world and the cabaret/musical theatre world. Robbie Fairchild (once a member of the New York City Ballet) and Leanne Cofe (once of the Royal Ballet, London) are wonderfully skilled to act as both soloists and partners of the Christopher Wheeldon choreography, Mr Fairchild is particularly brilliant. Both can also sing quite well. In the Cabaret world, Sam Wood, and Ashleigh Rubenach are delightful both as singers and dancers of that world. Mr Wood a bit of a scene stealer - in a good way, I mean. While the entire ensemble are required to dance in the ballet and cabaret mode - the tap dance, particularly rousing. They are impressive. Some 33 performers I read!!!!

The ingredients of this AN AMERICAN IN PARIS is first rate, and yet the sum of the experience is a trifle dull. The long 17-minute dance sequence - the climax of the intentions of the work - does not quite achieve its focus or our hold attention - true, for me, in the film, as well - and one felt that there were too many endings to the show. It just kept going on and on. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, perhaps a firmer editing was what was called for. I saw the New York Production as well, and it had a much larger space and, certainly, the 'pool' of high quality artists to choose from much, much larger. There, too, on Broadway, the time palled.

Is it the lack of genuine Gershwin songs that defeated the experience? We had: "I got Rhythm"; "S 'Wonderful"; "They Can't take That Away from Me","Stairway To Paradise"; and a few others, and when the orchestra lighted into full swing, led by Victoria Scammell, we were transported to a kind of Heaven but it seemed to me (and I am no expert), the other adaptations and orchestrations by Rob Fisher were less than impressive. When I recognised phrases from other Gershwin material I lit up with empathic recognition, only to be disappointed that we didn't get more of it. Was it that the Gershwin was relatively light on in the two hours twenty minutes? Is that the explanation for the disappointed feeling at the end of the night?

Go see.

North by North West

2022-03-21T09:53:00.035+11:00

By special arrangement with Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures and the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), NORTH BY NORTHWEST, adapted by Carolyn Burns, based on the Alfred Hitchcock film, written by Ernest Lehman, at the Lyric Theatre in the Star Casino complex. 9th March - 3rd April.

Alfred Hitchcock had decided he needed a change of style and, particularly, after the twisted Freudian themes and motifs of his then disparaged VERTIGO - released in 1958 (it, belatedly has become regarded as a Hitchcockian Masterpiece) - he began a treatment of THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, based on a novel by Hammond Innes with screenwriter Ernest Lehman. It didn't work out. They quit on it. Being under contract they had to produce something for M.G.M. , so the Cold War suspense thriller, romantic-comedy, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, gradually crystallised.

It seems that Hitchcock had collected in his spare time a glad-bag of scenes and images he would love to see filmed. Taking that cue from their creative conversations Lehman went on a field trip to pick up some location colour from Hitchcock's 'dreams' and after visiting the UN headquarters in New York, taking a trip on the Twentieth Century Limited to Chicago, checking in at the Ambassador East Hotel, with a park carer taking a scramble up the side of Mt Rushmore, among other adventures. He returned home and at their first re-meeting sat down with Hitchcock to put a screenplay together with what amounted to be an itinerary without a plot.

Together they put their hero into a predicament and worked out how to get him out of the trouble he found himself in. Then he was dropped into new trouble and once again they had to solve how to extricate him. On and on it went with the question "Now what?" always being posed and explored to solve. "I never knew where I was going,' said Lehman.

'As a result ," Mr Lehman tells us, "Everything was written in increments: moving a little bit forward, then a little bit more, a page at a time. "Okay, you've got him out of Grand Central Station. Now he's on the train, now what? Well, there's no female character in it yet. I better put Eve on the train. But what should I do with her? ..." Always asking, "What do I do next?" So, in the end, the audience never knows what's coming next, because (we) didn't either."

NORTH BY NORTHWEST is one of Hitchcock's most successful films: in fact, an instant success that has been maintained over 60 years of cinematic life: a suspense thriller of misidentification of an innocent bystander, Roger O. Thornhill - a classic Cold War paranoia, which Hitchcock had used many times before, (the two versions of THE MAN THAT KNEW TOO MUCH, for instance - 1934 & 1956) - that ensures a chase across the United States unravelling a double, double spy plot engaging with knives, planes and guns, bullets both live and blanks, resulting, of course, with the reveal of a micro-film that both sides want, hidden in the rounded tummy of an expensive art piece!

Add to the spine of this narrative adventure fantasy a script that instead of straight dialogue is mostly, really, repartee, or if you prefer, foreplay - a long verbal flirtation with lots of meaningful looks - and you have a mixture of genre that is irresistible. Physical adventure, intrigue and lots of humour, of innuendo laden with charm - charm and deliberate restraint. The original filmic casting was Cary Grant, the greatest of the Hollywood comic charmers at this time and under his spell Eva Marie Saint, his co-star, rose to the occasion to be his equal, being provocatively charming, right back. The audience no matter their sexual identification swooned as these two handsome figures 'battled' it out. This film has always been a favourite and hasn't aged one bit in its ability to tantalise and please its audience. Suspense and longing smiles. NORTH BY NORTHWEST is critically regarded as Hitchcock's lightest film.

Most of us in this Opening Night audience knew the film and so we arrived at the Lyric Theatre knowing what happens to the innocent Roger Thornhill (David Campbell), and how he and the other characters are extricated from one trouble spot to another. The "What next?' we already knew. So, the "HOW" in the Lyric theatre is not so much the thrill of the plot twists of escape but rather the "HOW" are they going to bring certain famous sequences in the film to life on stage. You know, HOW are they going to solve the extraordinary stalking and chase of the hero by a crop duster plane, spitting bullets at him. The climb and chase across the Mount Rushmore sculptures. This is the the thrill tension of the anticipated stage version of NORTH BY NORTHWEST for us fans of Hitchcock. For the audience seeing the story for the first time they are having a double wonder of a production. The Lehman adventure story and the cleverness of the playful storytelling techniques - the respectful, stylish mashing of actor with Audio-Visual tools., it turns out. Of the genius of Hitchcock and of the team of creatives working with Simon Phillips.

In this production the physical solution of the HOW are they going to do it is where laughter of surprise and wonder at the audacious theatricality of the methods employed becomes an assured source of holding this night together for all the audience: those who are familiar and those who are not. This staged version of NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a rich night of fun and joy.

The adaptation of this screenplay by Carolyn Burns under the direction of Simon Philips, from the resources of the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), is adroit in managing all of the main events. The play text is a true adaptation of the original - it is respectfully faithful. It begins with a set Design (Simon Phillips and Nick Schlieper), of a ghostly white skeletal cage-like structure of parallel lines both horizontal and vertical across the back of the stage and coming down both sides, 'wings', of the stage - left and right. The production begins with a boldly tongue-in-cheek recreation of the Saul Bass opening credits offering an inventive solution that in doing so, announces a restrained comic tone, right from the start, that is then, remarkably sustained throughout the entire of the production.

The wonderful comic balance that Simon Phillips achieves is one that has a cosy period identification that never pushes into farce or vulgarity. There is no Sydney Oxford Street Camp going on in this production and the respect given the source material never wavers into parody and one trusts, instinctively, that there is not going to be a musical 'drag' interpolation going to be featured in this storytelling creation, unlike the Kip Williams' offers in works like his CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF***, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY or, believe it or not, DEATH OF A SALESMAN***. Anything Goes when Mr Williams or his Assistant Artists takes hold of the Classic repertoire - Sydney's audiences' penchant to demand superficial style over substance - to celebrate it with standing ovations and applause - seems to give the Sydney Theatre Company (STC), Mr Williams and his assistants licence to indulge its audiences (and themselves, it seems.)

The colour palette of the Lighting (Nick Schlieper), is that slightly underlit warmth that Francis Ford Coppola and his cinematographer, Gordon Willis, captured so beautifully in THE GODFATHER trilogy - and is cosy, safe, 'homey'. Further, sonically, the famous Bernard Herrmann score from the original film has been given permission to be used and its familiar, propulsive Spanish dance rhythm known as the fandango is awoken, recalled, and our, probably, subliminal memory, unconsciously use it to support Mr Phillips' imaginative solutions, joyfully, to assist in accepting the manner of the choices made by the production artists. Other Composition and Soundscape are harmoniously created by Ian McDonald.

On the Set, there are in each of the wing branches two cubicles where the cast using a pointed, live camera 'play' with toys - tools - to project images on a large screen on the back wall. The images are made up of comic toys and child-like illustrations that ground the feel of the 'art' into the games some of us have created in our bedrooms, as kids, getting out our crayons or paint brushes with a tone colour of the Hollywood technicolour of the '50's to make the background images of our own stories, whilst we also built/organised: toy planes on a stick that will crash into a toy bus and catch fire, or a train set moved on tracks past the camera to be projected in real time onto a screen. (Memories of the work of the Australian company, MY DARLING PATRICIA'S came to call.) And, just wait until you see the solution to creating the climatic scramble of our heroes across the Mount Rushmore monument. It is MTC artistic integrity, not STC vulgarity holding it all together. Ingenious and amusing in its wonderous cheeky concept. The Audio Visual design of newspaper headlines etc by Josh Burns also uses techniques of the old Hollywood studios that ramps up the visual support for the storytelling.

On the floor of the stage, chairs and some prop lounges (on wheels) are wheeled about to create images of a car, taxi, a train carriage, the interior of an art auction, bedrooms and foyers of hotels etc. The very busy choreographic control by the company of actors of the props for the scenes have a tight rein of efficiency and balletic elan.

A company of 12 actors create to what appears to be a cast of hundreds. Berynn Schwerdt, Dorje Swallow, Kaen Chan, Lachlan Woods, Nicholas Bell, Sharon Millerchip, Wadih Dona, Alex Rathgeber, Caroline Craig and Douglas Hansell. David Campbell as the hero, Roger Thornhill, is the only actor with one character to maintain. Everybody else swiftly shape shift with the assistance of Costume (Esther Marie Hayes) and wig, make-up. It seemed to me that Ms Hayes work is exemplary in solving the quick changes that are necessary for the production's fluidity but it is at the expense of a good consistent period look. There is however no real excuse for the fit and cut of Mr Campbell's suit that more often than not looks like 'a bag of fruit' than the tailored serenity of the original. This Thornhill looks flustered and baggy in the suit he dons rather than in neat control. This Thornhill does not support the 'coolness' the confidence of the original by a long, long shot. (I read that Cary Grant had seven identical versions of his suit to maintain the character's temperament visually throughout the shoot of the film. Not so, alas, for Mr Campbell. The film went way over budget to complete! - that set of suits, perhaps?! The MTC, probably did not have the budget.)

Amber McMahon, plays the heroine, Eve, with a wig that looks like the blonde straw that appeared in M.G.M.'s THE WIZARD OF OZ, perched on the top of her head, hair-sprayed to what looked like a lethal stiffness of curled sharp edges. Ms McMahon, as well, never quite manages to make her Grace-Kelly period 'costumes' look like 'clothes' that her character has chosen to wear. The suits are okay but the 'cocktail' look not so well accomplished. Fortunately, Ms McMahon has a personal style that almost excuses the uncomfortable look in those required petticoats.

All of the actors have the difficulty of playing roles meant to be captured by a camera and hence there is a need to theatrically illustrate the subtleties at a scale that can reach into the back rows of the theatre. It can add a coarsening to the comedy of Lehmann and Hitchcock's screenplay, none more, for instance, than in the famous train repartee between Thornhill and Eve Kendall. Ms McMahon mostly succeeds with this problem though sometimes she treads to the very edge of vulgarity with choices like the throw of her legs in the bed scene in the train. It gets a laugh but almost prostitutes Eve's character. It is on the edge and one can see the temptation that Ms McMahon is resisting - for the bigger comic gesture to score a laugh is a fairly familiar choice employed by Ms McMahon in her past work offers. It is an admirable "battle' that we can gauge Ms McMahon is having to subdue that usual comic reflex trait, to have us identify her Eve Kendall as a saintly sophisticated operator.

Bert LaBonte is a smooth operator, seductive as the villain Phillip Van Damm. He is all that we could wish for, with the memory of James Mason oozing into our consciousness of recognition in some of the Labonte stylish body language and a capacity to wear his clothing as if it were tailored just for him.

Genevieve Lemon is consummate in her comic invention of Roger's mother, Mrs Dinah Thornhill, and manages to create a mordant wit for her many other minor tasks.

Tony Llwellyn-Jones pulls out his usual fussy physical choices to make the 'Professor', they are hardly distinguishable from his performance as Pickering in the Julie Andrews production of MY FAIR LADY***of a few years ago.

Dorje Swallow and Lachlan Woods (Leonard) make an impression in the ensemble work.

The vocal work of the company, employing a familiar '50's mid-Atlantic Hollywood dialect to create period and consistency helps enormously for us to enter the game of the theatre with them. It's a fake Studio dialect, but it is instantly recognisable and fun.

David Campbell who is more often seen in Musicals on stage (or, as a host on daytime television), plays straight down the line in this play, with some subdued comic flair and a genuine truth with his own pleasant aura of a nice guy projecting a dignified restraint necessary for us to believe the dilemmas and interactions of his beleaguered hero, Roger Thornhill.

Cary Grant began his career as a comic acrobat in the Music Halls of London and Vaudeville Theatres in New York and once he began making strides in the film industry in Hollywood it was his well trained physical body language that assisted him to create a musical rhythm for all his work. Watch his physical timing in the Screwball Comedies of the 30's and 40's to see what I mean expressly. (Charles Chaplain and Burt Lancaster are two other athletic bodies that made distinctive physical impressions on screen) Bernard Herrmann of his choice of the Spanish fandango for the main thematics of his score for NORTH BY NORTHWEST, didn't seem to make sense for a movie that takes place entirely in America, but Herrmann had a genius for music embodying a movie's psychological DNA. Herrmann's inspiration became clear when he explained that his use of the fandango was inspired by Grant's "Astaire-like agility," which was never more apparent than in the crop-dusting sequence, where he sprints through the cornfield like an Olympic athlete. It is this physical agility, the suave movement of the body, the instinctive body memory reach that seduces us, along with his turn-of-phrase, the witty quip, the musical cadence and timing that distinguishes Grant's Thornhill.

Throughout the huge responsibility of this very big role - Thornhill is in in almost every scene of the play - the wit of the text is assiduously available within Mr Campbell's 'tool box' and he seems to have worked hard to require the disciplines to make it work, but his characterisation is undermined, relatively, in the lack of consistent strength of skill in the physical life. Mr Campbell, does not persuade us, of his Olympic stamina, he does not seem to appear to have the "Astaire physical agility," or an apt state of physical fitness to employ as part of his characterisation. Mr Campbell is pleasantly charming, and it is that identification of his own inimitable self that we identify, (his morning television hosting) that helps us to carry him over the line and make his Thornhill work. We like David Campbell and we want to make his performance as Roger Thornhill to work as well. It does.

When I was a kid one of my passions was collecting the editions of a comic book called CLASSIC COMICS. These comics were coloured illustrated versions of Classic movies e.g. ROB ROY, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH. I used to hang out for the publication of each one in the local newspaper store, along with my Disney Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comics. This Simon Phillips' production has the coloured illustrated warmth of those childhood memories of the 1950's comic. NORTH BY NORTHWEST in the Lyric Theatre, has the same visual radiating comfort as those Classic Comic books, with the added bonus of a restrained tongue-in-cheek humour of the knowingly theatrical solutions used to bring us, on the stage, this Cold War Chase Thriller.

This production is a cartoon for adults and for their children as well, I suspect. Nothing offensive here, but a clever and advantageous use of 'oldie-worldie' Audio-Visual techniques that tells a story with clarity of drama and wit. The storytelling is front and centre here, unlike the STC's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, where the Audio-Visuals and the Director are the star of the evening, burying the one actor so that the storytelling of Oscar Wilde's story becomes lost in the self-conscious employment of modern techniques of image making.

The actors in this Melbourne Theatre Company production are permitted to be the storytellers of Ernest Lehman and Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

The actors are primary.

Under the behest of Simon Phillips they reveal respect and trust in the original work and triumph in a most delightful way.

N.B. A resource for this post:

1. CARY GRANT : A Brilliant Disguise, by Scott Eyman - Simon and Schuster - 2020.

2. The very good notes in the program - unusually interesting and informative.

Hand to God

2022-03-07T09:42:00.017+11:00

Red Line Productions present, HAND TO GOD, by Robert Askins at the Old Fitz Theatre, Woolloomooloo. 24Th February - 26th March.

Because of mitigating circumstances in my little personal life I have pulled back from attending the theatre (The contemporary cinema seems to be more rewarding!) The last time I went to the theatre was to see DEATH OF A SALESMAN at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in December.

So, I ventured out as the Pandemic seemed to have quietened and my medical adventures, too, have become more manageable if not "cured'. I have a loyalty for the Red Line and Old Fitz and as well admire the work of the director of this production of HAND TO GOD, by Robert Askins: Alexander Berlage.

In between the deluge of rainfall that Sydney has been enduring I got myself to the theatre with a young acting student as my guest. By Public Transport as I have never driven!

The Set Design, is what we see on entering the theatre, by Jeremy Allen and Emma White, and is at first, in the back halls of a minor Christian church in Cypress, Texas, where a recent widow, Margery (Merridy Eastman), holds classes in a self-created Ministry of Puppetry, to spread the stories of Jesus and his gospel. The walls of the hall are painted with many stirring missionary images of Jesus, including one wrapped in the Stars and Stripes of the good old USA. There are several other locations we travel to which the Designers have facilitated with deft choices for speed and identification.

Margery's teenaged son, Jason (Philip Lynch), is in trauma and has created a hand-sock puppet called 'Tyrone' in class that has begun to help him divest his grief and anger at the loss of his father and at the 'bewilderment' his mother seems to have adopted as a way of being. To say 'Tyrone' is an angry puppet is an understatement and he becomes more and more uninhibited - foul-mouthed and gross - in expressing his rage. It appears that Jason has become 'possessed' by the devil and has developed a split personality: SPLIT!

Pastor Gregg (Gerard Carroll) who has a passion for his parishioner, Margery, (and it is fairly 'muscular' in expression), has conceived Jason is in need of a good old-fashioned exorcism - his wooden crucifix in its leather holster - which in misadventure compounds to make a most tumultuous resolution. Sometimes satirically funny.

Whilst Jessica (Michelle Ny), another church-goer having a crush on her friend Jason has developed a puppet of her own, 'Jolene', who exhibits free-wheeling sexual fantasies and breasts stuffed in the sock-puppet to rival, in scale, those of Dolly Parton! The scenario that Jessica has imagined for 'Jolene' is creepy and disturbing to the extreme - with what 'Jolene' offers 'Tyrone', laughter may be the only sensible way to receive it in the theatre.

Teenager, schoolfriend, of Jason, Timothy (Ryan Morgan), does not need a puppet persona to assuage his teenage psychological developments, he simply declares his sexual attraction and fantasies to Margery and in her own emotional turmoil, she is grateful and throws all inhibitions to the wind and indulges in gratifying and addictive sexual adventures up to and including a dominatrix S&M fashion with this eager minor - a pederasty that is more than comically icky. It is inappropriate to say the least.

The play purports to talk of faith, morality, religious hypocrisy, and the frailties of trauma in a family visited by 'death'. In production it is more interested in making us laugh no matter the appropriatness of technique or content. HAND TO GOD, first appeared off-Broadway in 2011, returned to a larger off-Broadway theatre in 2014, and then migrated to Broadway proper for a ten month season in 2015.

Twenty minutes into this very good production, I just felt that the content and concerns of this play had been made radically outdated since the pressures of world climate change and the epidemiological traumas in our lives that has confronted us. This play now just seemed trivial and ultimately vulgar and a horrifying example of the gross hedonism that we as a cultural community had evolved in accepting HAND TO GOD as a normality.

I became swiftly objective in this experience and brooded that if this is what the gate-keepers of Red Line believe is the play we need in our lives, in 2022, today, I had better take more care about what I decide to spend my precious time watching. The content of HAND TO GOD, and its contemporary appropriateness turned this night and my effort to attend as a total waste of my time. And, this is no matter the very clever work by all the actors, elicited by Alexander Berlage, supported by all the other artists, including the contributions of the Lighting Design by Phoebe Pilcher and, especially, the technicalities of the Sound Design by Daniel Herten to finding the way to tell this story by American, Robert Askins to us.

For, it is wonderful to welcome Merridy Eastman back to the theatre, who gives a nuanced performance of wonderfully gauged choices in comic technique married to a moving - heart-on-sleeve emotional sensibility. Her Margery a three dimensional woman in an hysterical farce. Her Margery is in desperate need of rescue, and it is so palpable that one wants to reach out to hug her and quieten her life grief. Ms Eastman's is a standout performance, one so complex and so vulnerable.

Philip Lynch is striking in his energies in inhabiting Jason with 'Tyrone' grafted to his right arm, but, it is a performance in action that seems to beggar us to admire Mr Lynch's work - the actor's consciousness dominates the story offers, preventing us from identifying sympathetically with the back-story quandries of Mr Askins' character, Jason. Mr Lynch whilst relishing his opportunity to play this split personality lets his personal satisfaction with what he is doing show.

Ryan Morgan, Michelle Ny and Gerrard Carroll, with writing that is relatively threadbare for their characters' backstory and journey, still manage to triumph with full on commitment, even when they are grossly larger than life. They definitely keep us in the loop of this genre's technicalities.

HAND TO GOD, then, despite the professionalism of all the artists involved has dated considerably since its first appearance, 11 years ago. It is a long time ago. In the cultural climate of 2022 this play is a hollow relic of another time and value sensibility. Mind you, on the Opening Night, some of the audience were whooping it up - friends of the theatre and actors or general public? Who knows? My companion and I were not so easily pleased. It will be a personal decision to 'give in' or decline, push away.

There are recent plays out there that have surfaced elsewhere and deserve to be seen in Sydney. Red Line ought to check out the resources of a competing Sydney company: OUTHOUSE. OUTHOUSE seem with every work they bring to us to find theatre experiences that are pertinent, challenging and entertaining. e.g. ULSTER AMERICAN, GLORIA, JOHN. All three of these contemporary plays (and others) changed its audience point-of-view of the world that they and we live in. The writers having the courage and the intelligence of wit to entertain us as well. It all begins with the quality of the writing, the writer.

Death of a Salesman

2021-12-21T08:22:00.025+11:00

Sydney Theatre Company presents DEATH OF A SALESMAN, by Arthur Miller, in the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Hickson Rd The Rocks. 3rd December to 22 December, 2021.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN, written by Arthur Miller in 1948, produced in 1949, tells the story of an ordinary American family : the Loman family. Father/husband Willy (Jacek Koman), Mother/wife Linda (Helen Thomson), Sons Biff (Josh McConville) and Happy (Callan Colley). Biff is 34 and has returned home to Brooklyn, after an adventure in the cowboy world of the horse for dog meat Misfits, in a dilemma of disillusionment, seeking confession with his socially degraded brother before confronting his father with a shared secret that has eaten up half of his life, that will devastate his mother and push Willy to a decision that is at once criminal and yet, possibly, a salvation.

This is the story of an ordinary family that has lived through the war to end all wars: the First World War, then the monetary boom of the Jazz Age of the false hope of the possibility of the American Dream, busting in the stock market crash of 1929 and flattening out through almost a decade of what is called The Great Depression, a time of cruelty and terror, rescued by the industry of another great war with a cynical cause of optimism for saving the world, concluding with the exploding of two Atomic bombs to demonstrate power leading to the bleak cold war politics of fear rustled up by their President Harry F. Truman who had a finger not far from the next button, the Nuclear Button. Why is the bland domesticity of the Loman family find itself on the edge of a tremulous emotional abyss? Because History will out. Terror, fear, cynicism, greed, poverty, distress and depression. Depression that leads to the act of Suicide. And, oh, this is a family of Jewish immigrant origin.

Does not this play reverberate for us in its titanic truth telling, whilst sitting in a token of good citizenship, the Roslyn Packer Theatre, during an enduring pandemic? Is not the Loman family a fair representative of families I know, today? My own family, perhaps? Sitting on the edge of another tremulous abyss?

This is why DEATH OF A SALESMAN is regarded as a Great Classic play. The ONE of the 20th Century, I say. And, this is why we get to see it revived in our theatre spaces time and time again, Nationally and Internationally.

This is not my first encounter with the Loman family. There have been many, many others.

Christopher Bigsby, an academic devoted to the study of Miller/s work recorded Miller saying in his book of conversations ARTHUR MILLER AND COMPANY(1990):

All these years later I see a play of mine that I wrote thirty-five years ago, and I see that the audience is screwed into it in the way that they were in the first place, I like to believe that the feeling they have is that man is worth something. That you care that much about him is a miracle, I mean considering the numbers of ourselves that we have destroyed in the last century. I think art imputes value to human beings and if I did that it would be the most pleasant thought I could depart with, apart from the fact that it entertains people, keeps them amused for a while. If I left behind that much value, it would be great. I have a weakness for actors and when they are transformed, or seem to be, by something I wrote, it's a miracle to me. When they become somebody I imagined it moves me very much. I guess the other thing is the wonder of it all, that I'm still here, that so much of it did work, that the people are so open to it, and that we sort of clasped hands somehow, in many places and many languages. It gives me a glimpse of the idea that there is one humanity, there's just one homo sapiens. Underneath all the different etiquette and the incomprehensible languages we are one. And I think it is a sort of miracle. What does a writer want? He wants to have left his thumbprint on the world. (That sounds like Willy Loman.) That's right. Who does not want that?

So it seemed, last night in 2021, that the audience was "screwed into it ... " Time, almost 3 hours flew past, for some. This play still holds its thrall on an audience. Even one as far away as Sydney, 71 years after its first performance.

This was, probably, my tenth experience of Willy Loman. I, sitting in my seat, remembered my first : Ben Gabriel at the Old Parade Theatre for the Old Tote Theatre Company. He was the described small man Miller had wanted. I've seen more statuesque individuals give the work, and it works best when Willy is a feisty, diminutive individual. I've seen Warren Mitchell give it at the Seymour Centre, and of course the filmed version with Dustin Hoffman, a small but robustly dynamic figure (both, much admired by Arthur Miller), and last night when Jacek Koman exhaustedly entered to lay down his bags and remove his coat to begin the marathon journey of Willy Loman, we saw a small man that was to be writ large.

The Director, Paige Rattray, has presented with a Set design by David Fleischer, with an open curtain to allow us to digest the picture : a striking image of a huge architectural art piece that has a decaying proscenium arch, slightly off-centred, upstage, flanked by a towering set of ware house windows that reveal a 'warehouse' wall of bricks; to our left a height exaggerated white doorway surrounded by drab green coloured walls, with a five pronged chandelier of period bulb design hanging from the roof, as if of a period dance hall; an abandoned white refrigerator, a card-sized table and a few chairs litter the space as the audience gathers it self together. It is a puzzle to solve. Where are we? What does this image mean?

Enter, when all is ready, a group of actors dressed in costume of the late nineteen forties manner, organised by Teresa Negroponte, to have a figure called The Woman (Brigid Zengeni) make verbal selection of Arthur Miller's description of the Set Design he had imagined. Our imaginations are asked to imaginatively produce the time and place of the actual play via the verbal descriptive recitation inside a vastly looming real image that, in my case, defied understanding. It seemed to be a grandiose solution! Why not build Mr Miller's solution? As an old actor, I fumed at the STC Budget costs for such a design - which is the usual artistic solution that Mr Fleischer presents: an expensive Art piece that gives little aid to the explication of the play for us plebs sitting in the auditorium whatever the patricians, he and Ms Rattray, know of its intention and symbols. The waste was exampled in the gigantic chandelier hanging from the roof, which was only once functionally lit, for the curtain call, and at no other time in the playing. An arrogant gesture of gratuitous design. Cost? Mr Fleischer's work on Terrence Rattigan's THE DEEP BLUE SEA was also an expensive, curious and useless solution to the demands of that play. Beautiful? Perhaps. USEFUL TO THE STORYTELLING? NO! It was extremely informative to see the Design solution that the National Theatre in London employed to present a contemporary read of the same play. Throw Mr Fleischer, the designer, into the Museum of Contemporary Art with his images, and employ some more actors, with the money saved, for God's sake!

Jacek Koman is fully informed of the opportunity of this iconic role, and there is an actor's intelligence of selection at work and the physical life of the character is vividly impressive throughout the night, peaking in his growing madness of helpless depression, in the night club scene. In quiet moments his vocal efforts can be intelligible, but in moments of emotional demand the injured raspy voice grates - is ugly and jarring - and obfuscates the content of the line, and any musical pleasure in presenting the lyric prose/poetry of the writing. The performance is physically masterful, undermined in its achievement by a vocally inadequate sound. It is the Physical life that burns indelibly in my memory of Mr Koman's Willy. However, Mr Miller wrote in a form of prose/poetry, honed with this work to a perfection, and such that it becomes a hallmark of all his subsequent work - each text scripted with a craftman's exquisite pain - an achievement that is not possible to hear here. Here, Mr Koman reveals a mis-casting by Ms Rattray. His voice is an injured instrument. Willy requires an actor that can 'sing', subtly, with the beauty of the English language, to reveal the text. You will understand what I mean when you listen to the cadent beauty of Philip Quast's musical sensibilities as Ben, in this production, using an instrument that is primed to deliver content whilst simultaneously revealing the beauties of the sound of the English language shaped by a major mid-century American poet. Miller has picked up the baton from Odets, O'Neill, which he passed to Albee, and then onto Shepard.

The original title of the play was THE INSIDE OF HIS HEAD, the play conceived as taking place in Willy's head, conjured on this desperate night of reckoning, conjuring the other figures to help him justify his determinations. Willy draws the Biff he needs and the crisis that brings Biff home is the catalyst that organises Biff to an agonising climatic confrontation, in the third act of the play, with his father that is resolved in the revelation that Biff LOVES his father. It is what Willy needs, conjures : the revelation that gives Willy a confirmed sense of worth despite his failings that ushers him to his final sacrifice to provide for his wife and son(s). So, he hopes!

Josh McConville creates a Biff that cries like a baby, at the age of 17, at the event of his discovery of his father's fallibility and betrayal of his mother, Linda, in the highway motel, that festers into a disease of awkwardness after a brooding on it for a further 17 years to a volcanic eruption of grief and rage in that climatic scene between father and son. McConville exploded into physical expression that had the bravura of an actor rather than the passions of the character in the given circumstances offered, it was as if the physical gestures of the actor were being pumped to generate the emotional force, instead of using the considered intellectual emotional construct in the information of the text - to which he should be listening, vibrating from. These moments, towards the end of the play, undermined Mr McConville's wonderful choices of frustration we saw in the nightclub scene and caused me to withhold my full admiration of his passionate fury.

Whereas, Callan Colley gives a marvellous controlled muscularity to his lunkheaded Happy determined for mediocrity when his youthful bloom begins to set - the arc of Mr Colley's work was consistent and buried in the character/man he was charged to bring to life. The work felt full and deliberately purposeful, beat by beat.

Helen Thomson creates her Linda from a place of exhausted empathy imbued with the effort of holding her world together, as it is her duty to do. Miller gives this woman no feisty objection but instead a saintly devotion to her allotted role in this family of masculine demands. Washing, cleaning, repairing, making do, anticipating her men and offering advice, begging for change. Linda is part of the memory, vision, that Miller has with all his Mother roles, taking, as a poet does, from the three dimensional construct of his own mother, revealed to us in his magnificent autobiography TIMEBENDS, so that he can employ the poetic licence of selection to suit his artistic purposes. From his knowledge of his mother Augusta, Linda becomes the Good Woman of this play, as the Mother is as ROSE in THE AMERICAN CLOCK, and not as the Mother figure in AFTER THE FALL, for instance. It is a praiseworthy performance from Ms Thomson until we come to the all important and hotly (historically) debated Epilogue : the scene at the graveside. It was Arthur Miller's insistence that the scene remained in the first production. In the published text for all consequent productions.

Says Miller to Christopher Bigsby

The key (to the play) is in the requiem at the end, which everybody wanted me to cut out. They said the audience were never going to stay there because Willy Loman is dead; there's nothing to say. Of course they did want to stay there, just as you do want to go to a funeral. And what is the point of a funeral? You want to think over the life of the departed and it's in there, really, that it's nailed down : he won't accept this life.

The difficulty for Ms Thompson is the indecisive staging of the scene, by Ms Rattray. Unfortunately, the gathering is spread, initially, upstage and gives the actors obstacles to prevent a muffling of the dialogue and, similarly, when the circle is brought closer downstage around the seated, on the floor, Linda Loman. The scene is rushed and the sense of the word by word importance of the contribution of each speaker and, as importantly, the active listening, the attention that must be paid to what is happening, the conscious construct by the play's writer, for the audience to pick up the clues of the subtext, was not made meaningful. Instead of this scene being the climax of Mr Miller's intention it seemed to be treated as an unnecessary adjunct to the play. A play, any of Mr Miller's plays particularly, do not ever finish until the final point of syntax is expressed: that famous full stop. The casual staging and direction of the Epilogue dispersed the focus and reduced the opportunity for the story of Mrs Linda Loman to truly count. She is the last one standing. Is it, therefore, her play? Is the death of this salesman Willy her tragedy? Her playing arc for the audience to embrace finishes with the final full stop. In Mr Miller's life, as his autobiography testify's, his mother counted. Linda in the daily sacrifice of herself as the wife to Willy Loman, and mother to Biff and Happy, always knew that Willy could never accept his life. She knew this and she knew it was the inheritance that her boys would be forced to live with and out. All that she has left at the end of the play is the materialistic gain of the decaying house. Her husband dead, her boys ruined, that house is all she has left of the promises of the American dream. The irony of her line to be, at last, "Free and Clear", repeated twice, is a punch to our gut. Ms Thomson's Linda under the direction of the scene by Ms Rattray is unable to make a satisfactory conclusion to her story. The epilogue we see is sentimental and lacking in the objectivity of the ruthless eye of Miller as he strips Linda bare and bereft in the aftermath of Willy's actions. She sits in the crucible having her 'fat' burnt away, and we are meant to watch and feel her terrors just as in a later play, THE CRUCIBLE, John Proctor, is shorn of all of his delusions and stands near naked with all his strengths and weaknesses revealed.

(By the way, FREE AND CLEAR, was also once considered a possible title to this play.)

Bruce Spence as cousin Charlie gives a measured and masterful construct to a role that floats between the naturalism of the period writing style and the Miller experimentation with the surreal tendencies of Eugene O'Neill and some of the more interesting European writers of the time (Eugene O'Neill, Miller and especially Edward Albee and then Sam Shepard outriders of the mainstream American dramatic literature style?). Later, Mr Spence blots his contribution with a set of gratuitous choices as a drunken waiter, even to his elbow slipping on the curve of the refrigerator door, gaining laughs but undermining his integrity of choice.

Philip Quast takes on the role of Ben, a huge and dynamic construct of Willy's mind, a giant of a figure 'sailing' across the stage in white suit, panama hat and umbrella, cane, declaiming in an ultra poetic/prose of journeys to the fabulous wealth of Alaska and Africa. Mr Quast meticulous in his handling of his text making a delicious moment in managing to reveal the internal rhyme of AlaskA and AfricA wittily exaggerating Willy's dreamy delusion of what is a successful life. The exaggerations conjured by Willy a tragic exposition of his state of mind on this precarious night in the Loman house is manifested in Mr Quast's performance. (His song and dance act, introducing the Nightclub scene, is not his fault and is not part of Arthur Miller's plan!).

Other members of the cast provide function to the machinations of the play's wheels if not always making impressions of considered understanding of Miller's dramaturgical intention for their presence on the stage in their scene. Little intellectual interrogation, I thought. Vulgar comic opportunism instead. The nightclub scene for instance begins in Ms Rattray's production with a vulgar musical interpolation to the text as something "delightful, delicious" via Cole Porter, instead of the tragic loosening of Willy's mind - the two louche women played for vulgar laughs instead of the ghost train conjuring of Willy's mental breakdown - so that the scene becomes a diversion of comic release rather than the cruel, deliberate dismembering of our 'hero's' state of mind - "in my own head." Instead of forcing the audience to brace itself into the gradual, tragic burning away of Willy's self in the crucible of the action of the play, Ms Rattray provides a comic distraction as if the play was merely a series of vaudeville sketches, with a dark ending!

I could go on and on in this deconstruct forever.

The play, DEATH OF A SALESMAN, is a 5 Star rating.

The Sydney Theatre Company's production of Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN is a 2 star bust.

It begins with that design by Mr Fleischer, which has nothing much to do to reveal the actual action of the play (where his grandiose chandelier is lit only in the curtain call), through to a poverty in the interrogation of all the elements of every scene by the Director and the actors in them. This maybe my tenth production and so, in my experience, this production has the same function as Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare for Shakespeare - a cursory introduction to Arthur Miller's work simplified for easy digestion if not always an accurate exposition of the actual play.

That the Sydney Theatre Company continues to produce work of such interrogative poverty is indeed a tragedy for Arthur Miller's reputation and for the quality of theatre going in this city/this country. Thank God for the regular National Theatre Broadcast in our local cinemas that show us why the plays are in their repertoire - old or brand new - and deserve to be seen.

Every time I see an NT production I count the number of actors on the stage and weep for the Australian actor's opportunities on their main stages. Hire more actors. THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, about to have its second showing in Sydney and a tour, has ONE actor, and TWELVE technicians onstage to assist her - "wtf", as they say. Our actors have been mostly unemployed for 18 months -2 years. While the administration of this leading company took home pay every single day of the disaster. EMPLOY SOME MORE ACTORS. Save money with simpler, economic design!

Merrily We Roll Along

2021-11-01T09:01:00.028+11:00


Photo by Phil Erbacher

Luckiest Productions and Hayes Theatre Co present, MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and Book by George Furth, based on the original play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. At the Hayes Theatre, Potts Point. From 21st October - 27th November, 2021.

Going off to the Hayes Theatre in the expectation of once more (I have seen at least three other productions in Sydney) engaging with Stephen Sondheim's 1981 musical MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. I had a palpable sense of excitement.

Stephen Sondheim is one of the Greats of contemporary theatre. I have rated him alongside Edward Albee, a writer and figure of the same generation - Albee born in 1928 and Sondheim in 1930. Albee passed away in 2016 at the age of 88 and Sondheim in March celebrated his 91st birthday. Two Great American geniuses spanning two centuries with a body of work of great note. I would include Tom Stoppard, who is a contemporary English writer and is only 84 as another Theatre Elder Genius whose work one approaches with anticipation and respect. Both these latter men are still writing, Stoppard having in the West End his latest play, LEOPOLDSTADT, on stage (It has been announced that the National Theatre Broadcast will screen performances of it in early 2022 in selected Sydney cinemas - a don't miss opportunity), and Mr Sondheim is working with writer David Ives on a new musical called SQUARE ONE. Interestingly, this work explores a romance between a couple that is told backwards in time. Sondheim had been working with Terrence McNally on another romance moving backward in time. That work lost impetus some time ago. Well before Mr McNally's passing. This time exploration is a constant challenge it seems

The range of work, both in content and explorations of form, from Mr Sondheim, is staggering - he is regarded as having "reinvented the American Musical". One of the bio-graphical tit-bits I have always held close is the fact that Mr Sondheim has always enjoyed the creation and solving of puzzles. MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, was just such a task that Hal Prince, a regular collaborator, a theatre Director, proposed to Sondheim (via an introduction to the original play by Prince's wife Judy). The original play (1934) on which the musical is based (of the same name), by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, tells the history of three friends in reverse time order - from older to young; from bitterness to innocent ambitions/appetites. Sondheim shifts the time zones and creates relationships differently to the original.

Sondheim in his book, FINISHING THE HAT (2010), reviewing and investigating his body of work, tells us he took, when tackling MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG,

The Notion: Franklin Shepard, a successful songwriter and movie producer in his forties, reviews his life, both professional and personal, especially his relationships with his best friends, Mary Flynn and Charley Kringas (his song writing collaborator), and two wives Beth and Gussie. The action moves backward in time from 1981 to 1957.

The fact that the work ends in 1957 - the year of Sputnik moving through space - requires that he reflect the musical traditions of the period - the thirty-two-bar song - and working through the standard musical structures. He uses an example of the problem solving he had: "The structure of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG suggested to me that the reprises could come first : the songs that had been important in the lives of the characters when they were younger would have different resonances as they aged; thus, for example, "Not A Day Goes By," a love song by a hopeful young couple getting married, becomes a bitter tirade from the wife when they get a divorce, but the bitter version comes first in the musical's topsy-turvy chronology." This kind of puzzle was part of the attraction to this particular project for this artist. "In addition", he adds, "the show gave me the chance to revert to the sharp urban feeling of the songs in COMPANY and FOLLIES."

Indeed, as this production reveals itself on the Hayes Theatre stage the bitterness, anger and pain in the opening sequences that the major characters meet us with, makes this show not necessarily a happy night of escapism, which, especially, as we had all just come through stringent times in our Pandemic lives (and still are in), whether MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG was an appropriate demand of us - "Give us laughter and escapism, some songs to hum at home tomorrow morning!" - Of course, the optimism of youthful dreams in the midst of early attachments, does come and takes us out of the Hayes Theatre to the streets in a relatively hopeful state with songs such as OPENING DOORS and OUR TIME, having given us a chance of 'rapture'. It is, though, in the last half hour of the two and half journey that we are allowed to wallow in sentimental optimisms about the potential of our futures both professionally and personally. MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG is quite a demand.

This difficulty of not having easily attractive individuals to want to identify with for such a long time in the structure of the playscript may be part (there were other possible artistic choices) of the reason that the original Broadway production failed with only 16 performances and 52 previews before closing. However, Sondheim continued to develop the script, tinkering with it in a production at La Jolla in California at the invitation of James Lapine in 1985, and further working on it for a production in Seattle in 1990, and an Off-Broadway revival in 1994. Each time making decisions that helped the audiences to 'get on board' with the show were introduced it seems.

Then came British productions, the first notable one in the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester in 1992. It was the Donmar Warehouse production in December in 2000, Directed by Michael Grandage, that received the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Like a dog with a bone, Sondheim with positive collaborators ensured that MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG would become a work as interesting and exciting a challenge for artists and audience. A work that not only entertained but asked you to participate as a thrilling puzzle-solver. A work, like all of Stephen Sondheim's offers, that pleased you with affected feelings and intellectual challenges, involving both music and language. Content and form wrapped together and with an exhilarating energy that all Artists reach for.

When MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG begins, arrive with all your senses alert and invested in the thrill to be treated by an artist that respects and trusts that you are not a comatose but an intelligent sentient being. Someone PRESENT in the MOMENT. It is a work that has not only the basic ambitions of a work such as the musical COME FROM AWAY, that reopened in the huge commercial theatre space of the Capitol Theatre the night before, but, also a challenge to ask you to 'act' with the artists to be able to have a complete night in the theatre. All of Stephen Sondheim's body of work have this aura, and it is why I include him as a genius, who, as with Edward Albee and Tom Stoppard lift the theatre experience into something more than a good night out. (That he not only writes his lyrics but creates in the mysteries of the musical language as its partner, he may be the superior of the three)

Directed, by Dean Bryant, and with a longer rehearsal experience than usual, that has included not only the practical needs of staging and re-staging to employ the growing gifts of his small cast of only eight, he has had an invaluable extended dreaming time with all as the show was faulted to the necessary closures perforce of the Covid-19 virus Pandemic.

The Set Design (Jeremy Allen) is a static warm brown wooden box surround (good for acoustic) that intimates, in some of its details, of an art deco radio broadcast theatre space which envelops a raised platform that allows the necessary furniture to inhabit the space alongside a permanent straight backed piano. Behind is a curtained space where the band/orchestra of four is situated, guided by the versatile Musical Director for each performance, Andrew Warboys. The work has been scored, traditionally, for a 13-piece orchestra, but Mr Warboys says in the program notes:

I felt it important to be able to emulate the big Broadway orchestra sound and also access the intimacy of a tight jazz quintet.

My response to Mr Warboys' orchestration is that it errs in a definite flavour to the sound of a jazz quintet. The 'intimacy', that Mr Warboys suggests is diminished with a Sound Design (Dave Bergman) that enjoys a bombast of volume that is discomforting to hear in the small space of the theatre and, maybe, reduces the personality of each of the songs, plotted and woven particularly through the cultural aural profile (sounds of the popular music) of each of the musical decades, beginning in 1975, through to the sounds of the 60's to the late 1950's - a challenge that Sondheim talks about as one of the thrills of creativity that he had to solve. However, the microphoned actors are balanced extremely well to make the important lyric content as clear as a bell. The Stage Design also accommodates cameras and screens that is both pre-recorded (image and musical sound - Dave Bergman) as well as live throughout the night, that prescribes the lighting design to not 'flood' the image (Veronique Bennett) and causes more a need for a generic style rather than a sophisticated spot one.

Among the actors the performance to relish is that of Ainsley Melham, as the lyricist/writer character, Charley Kringas (Mr Melham gave us the Disney Aladdin - which he subsequently gave on Broadway and in the Stage filming of it in London for the Disney Company!). He exudes intelligence, wit and a physical and vocal confidence that appears effortless. He takes charge of the 'patter' song: FRANK SHEPARD INC., in the middle of the first act and hauls this production into focus, (and an enthusiastic and grateful break for applause), that in the hands of the other artists, in the first half-hour or so of the show, has meandered entertainingly, but without clear direction of communication of Sondheim's sophistication of intent. It is not fair to say right out, but Mr Melham has the famous "IT" quality - just look at his video imagery beside the other members of the company. They all individually can shine but Mr Melham glows. It's a gift which he has no control over (Monroe and Dean had it. Judy Davis has it. Kristen Stewart, Sarah Snook and Adam Driver, Ryan Cor have it), and when harnessed with instinctual gifts and brightening skills (and good luck) is a launching pad to the A-list.

Part of the difficulty of this production includes the gifted but technically immature performance by our leading character Frank Shepard, impersonated by Andrew Coshan, who uncomfortably 'pretends' that he understands what it is to be 40, and a commercial success who has knowingly sold his creative soul to the devils of money and power, while deserting his first wife, Beth, (Tiarne Sue Yek) and family, to ruin two other women, his other besotted best friend, Mary Flynn (Elise McCann) and a conniving woman, Gussie Carnegie (Georgina Hopson), she, too, besotted, but besotted as only an emotional narcissist can be. Mr Cosham becomes more comfortable as his character youthens and gradually moves into his power that, at last, reaches out to our empathetic buttons. Life might bake Mr Coshan's gifts to permit his talent the opportunities to grow, for there are grace and obvious vocal and physical skills. Is Mr Coshan shy? Or, is he surprised by this opportunity? I hope his courage grows to help to risk failure (I would not have thought that this Frank was either a composer or a film director).

Tiarne Sue Yek, gives a very moving performance as Beth and reveals the complications of living, in her rendition of her bitter iteration of NOT A DAY GOES BY. What follows is a well thought out sub-textual motivation for Beth's survival and the character and actor become immersed in each other. And as Ms Sue Yek begins to move into the younger, and more familiar emotional territory, the characterisation grows. What I saw, as well, was a sturdy ensemble actor in the MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG company.

Similarly, with less writing of sophistication in his given tasks (Joe), Aaron Tsindos, is a great support to the ensemble, although there are instances when he reaches for the temptation of receiving response rather than choosing subtlety of a truthful characterisation. Although playing function without building a person, Mr Tsindos is almost always an asset to the production.

Vidya Makan, playing a variety of roles is a very sophisticated member of this ensemble, enough to have me read her biography in the program, only to be reminded of her offers as Catherine Parr in the musical SIX. I hope she is returning to that production if, and when it resurrects. Evan Lever appears in the ensemble as well.

The acting in the company for the first third of the show was generally strained - tentative - unsure to commit.

Elise McCann, playing the bitter Mary Flynn is more caricature than character and while scoring the laughs (and how - a la Elaine Stritch) lacks visible character motivation - and, once again it is only in the last youthful section that Ms McCann reveals to us clearly the yearning for Frank's attention that is the lynchpin for her character's action - it was too late. This Mary was not funny she was a withering hostile.

Georgina Hopson given the 'peachy' role of mendacious Gussie to create, decides to truly belt it, and bat it she does with the decision to go for the camp - High Camp, chew the furniture and walls of the set Camp - to belt it into the stratosphere of our universe - searching for 'star' rather than for the ordinary human truths and the revealing realism that that demands of an actor creating character. Like any canny actor Ms Hopson recognises the gift that Mr Sondheim has written for Gussie at the opening of Act Two, NOW YOU KNOW, and it has become the apotheosis of her performance. She chooses to throw out sub-textual subtleties for over-the-top energies that literally obfuscates the lyrics with demonstrations of "I love it"-explosive emotional states. Her acting choices for a very wonderfully written character is lazily all too dependent on extravagant physical gestures and face pulling - bent at knee and jutting chin - to achieve her characterisation. It needs directional aid for an approach to the Sondheim repertoire that demands naturalism and observational truths. Truth is required for MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, not a classic musical theatre caricature - Sondheim doesn't write those kind of people unless he is indulging himself with the crazy merriment of say: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, where he wrote the Music and Lyrics for a Roman farce by Plautus.

Mr Bryant, as part of his responsibility has neglected to help the actors solve the acting of the older iterations of these characters or calm the grotesques. With his choreographer, Andrew Hallsworth, simple physical adjustments coupled with psychological investigation and observational skills could help the actors find a way to a more truthful possession.

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, has become one of the 'sleepers' in the Sondheim repertoire and although this Musical is not a match for the best of his work, it is still true to life and full of challenges that can test the best of the singers/actors in our industry. I left The Hayes Theatre pleased and stimulated with a growing admiration for the subtleties of the challenge of this work as an actor, director, both musically and as a character driven work. It is a worthwhile time in the theatre.

There are some who will choose COME FROM AWAY, as their musical theatre experience. Some will choose MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.

I choose both, enthusiastically.

Horses for courses, of course.

Welcome back to the theatre.

Intact

2021-07-01T10:39:00.004+10:00

FUSER Production present INTACT, Devised work by Cecile Payet, Emily Yalli, Sabrina Muszynski, at the Woodburn Creatives Redfern, 1 Woodburn St. Redfern. 26th May - 27th June.

Cecile Payet is a young French artist I came into contact through an acting class situation. It is several years since we last crossed paths. Recently I was invited to attend a performance of INTACT, the debut work of this company: Fuser Production. Cecile was always an artist one thought had the determination and vision to make a contribution to the arts scene in Sydney.

INTACT, is a solo movement piece built on the physical skills of Olivia Hadley with input from Steve Lu, Cecile Payet, Emily Yalli, Sabrina Muszynski - fellow devisors. A young woman dons a uniform and wielding a weapon, she explores the physical power necessary to be an active military soldier - we witness physical shifts of some beauty and exhilarated confidence that belie the coming horrors of war and the devolving into disability - with legs that are paralyzed, demanding a whole new perspective on life and movement. The potential of a 'new' body movement is explored.

The arc of this journey uses the Set Design (Sam Wylie), a focus on a gleaming hospital gurney that with its mobility and shelving facilitates the transitions of the work from episode to episode. The confidence and trust that the performer has in the evolving characterisations is never more evident than in the propulsive Sound Design (Martin Gallagher) that vibrates an energetic force, illustrated in the intense and flexible Lighting Design, by Travis Kecek.

This debut work can be found in a little 'hole-in-the-wall' venture, access easy from Cleveland St, with seating for 20 or 25 people, cosied up on these winter nights with teas/or coffee. INTACT is modest in budget but aesthetically beautiful and intriguing in its posed ideas - driven by a passion that is engaging and makes one curious with what this company might follow up with.

FUSER Production and Cecile Payet, keep your eyes peeled.

Once

2021-07-01T10:35:00.003+10:00

Photo by Robert Catto

Darlinghurst Theatre Company present, ONCE, Book by Enda Walsh, Music and Lyrics, by Songwriters, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, based on the film (2007), Written and Directed by John Carney, at the Eternity Theatre, Burton St Darlinghurst. 4th June - 18th July.

A few years ago on a Saturday afternoon in New York I took myself to a matinee performance of an Irish musical, ONCE, staged by the New York Theatre Workshop mostly, because it was Directed by John Tiffany. Mr Tiffany had, also, that season (2013-14) Directed a production of THE GLASS MENAGERIE, and I had been very excited by it. Alas, his production of ONCE, with the same artistic team was an irritating disappointment. The production was on a Broadway scale, even to a working bar on the theatre stage where you could imbibe and meet your neighbours, before the show and in the interval before been ushered to your seat. It was an Irish work that was deeply rooted in its Irishness - maudlin unrequited love with a growing mystery of attraction and encouragement going on, and going on, and on, and on. It was raining outside, on the Broadway streets, a depressing cold rain, and, in contrast, my fellow audience members were boisterously excited. I was, sadly, not. Not. Not.

A week or so ago, in Sydney, on a wet winter afternoon I went to a Saturday matinee of ONCE at the Eternity Theatre. This theatre is, in contrast to the Broadway experience, an intimate exchange between the audience and the cast. The budget covers pieces of furniture surrounding the walls to create an impression of a drinking pub somewhere in Dublin which facilitates the company to sit, stand on it and even move it about. center stage etc. Too, there are a couple of doors that allow the actors to move on and off the stage to facilitate intimate exchanges between characters and fullon company songs of joy and hope. It is all a much more pleasant environment, even without the working bar on the stage.

Production Design is by Hugh O'Connor assisted by a sympathetic and useful Lighting Design by Peter Rubis. The work is Directed by Richard Carroll, aided by a Movement Director, Amy Campbell and they create a clarity and fluidity for the performance that was easy to sit through. The Musical Director, Victoria Falconer, has guided the artists to produce a handsome and empathetic sound, with Sound Designer, Dylan Robinson, balancing the orchestra instruments which are present on stage with some of the performers, costumed as 'characters' in the bar.

Guy (Toby Francis), a street singer has said goodbye to his girlfriend who has gone to find a life in the United States (New York) that her family and Dublin cannot do for her. He will follow her when he can 'make' the money. A Czech Girl (Stefanie Caccamo), who carries an enigmatic and charismatic energy, bumps into the street busking that Guy gives and has an instinct that his music should be nurtured. Girl has her family in this Pub 'tribe' and they all facilitate the evolving talent of Guy, building a musical band around him, resulting in a recording. Over the arc of the play Guy becomes torn with his relationship to the woman in New York and with the mysterious Girl. We have never met the mysterious girl in New York and don't until almost the last beat of the work, whereas we have 'travelled' through the growing tendrils enveloping the two on stage: the Guy and the Girl. The Girl was whom we were favouring - but that favouring results only in another unrequited love.

The ensemble inhabiting this Dublin Pub all look and feel comfortable, supporting the arc and ache of most of the journey of the protagonists with the songs of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, though I drift off and remember the afternoon as a long blur of songs of unrequited lamentations of love. However, this production, in contrast to my other encounters with this work, was comfortable and not one of agitation, as the others have been. Something was working at the Eternity. Toby Francis being especially attractive in his character of Guy.

This production was warmly embraced by the audience around me. In fact, this season has been extended to meet the demands for seats. Meanwhile, I had seen COME FROM AWAY at the Capitol Theatre earlier that week. Both works are driven by the 'folk' origins of the given circumstances of the story telling, Ireland or Newfoudland. However, the personal love life of Guy in ONCE is overwhelmed, in contrast, to the relative vastness of the lives of the visiting passengers and the citizens of the city of Gander of COME FROM AWAY. The humanity of both works make ONCE a 'micro' or 'COME FROM AWAY a 'maxo' illustration of an optimistic possibility for the homo sapien, as a species, in places and times of significant stress.

I can thoroughly recommend COME FROM AWAY as a pertinent contemporary conversation in contrast to the 'siren' calls of the over familiar dilemmas of ONCE.

See both, if you have the time and money.

Grand Horizons

2021-06-17T09:18:00.007+10:00

Photo by Prudence Upton

Sydney Theatre Company presents, GRAND HORIZONS, by Bess Wohl, at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Hickson Rd The Rocks. 7th June - 3rd July.

I thought, as I sat in the Roslyn Packer Theatre on the Opening Night that GRAND HORIZONS, has a set of characters mirroring the highly successful 9 seasons, 210 episodes, television sitcom, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND (1996-2005 : two elder parents who are abusive and abused - in our case 80 year old Nancy (Linda Cropper) and husband Bill (John Bell), two competitive brothers - in our case married, harried Ben (Johnny Nasser) and hysteric gay son Brian (Guy Simon), and a wife - in our case a very pregnant, patient one called Jess (Zindzi Okenyo). The play has two guest spots to enliven the family interactions, in our case a young gay pickup (James Majoos) for our uptight Brian who is taught a few surprising things about his internalised homophobia and the 'girlfriend', 'floozy' (Vanessa Downing), that Bill has met at his Standup comedy class who is in much sympathy with Nancy who has weathered Bill all this time. Ms Wohl's company of characters are familiar and very comfortable to be with.

Nancy and Bill go through the habit/ritual of preparing to eat the evening meal - a choreographic dance for the huma-trons. After chewing, 80-year old Nancy asks for a divorce, Bill chomps, and, calmly, gives it. Divorce ON. The sons are just panicked-spare at the news while Jess offers stock new age guides to calm them down. The big woofs of laughter come from the revelations of 80-year old mum's sex life and her flagrant use of 'potty' language to talk about cunnilingus and the use of clittorial vibrators - "How shocking - how hilarious!" - and Bill's woeful standup comic jokes about 4 nuns and St Peter and curmudgeon sling-off's at everybody around him, at the over-the-top whinings of Brian, the grossly grotesque gay hysteric Drama teacher son, Brian, backed up by a similar overworked lawyer brother, Ben, who feels massively under-appreciated (they could be the Crane brothers from Frasier - two closeted 'straight'/gay men!)

Now, I'm not denying that there are regular laughs going-on, some of the audience were highly entertained. But why they would pay $89 or $67 to watch this down there on Hickson Rd when they can see it free to air every day on Channel 11 Bold, I don't know. Director Jessica Arthur has encouraged an enlarged facsimile of the Broadway Helen Hayes Design, more or less, from Renee Mulder - this retirement apartment in the Grand Horizons building for the STC is sooo large - the floor plan is huge, the height to the ceiling is gigantic and every nook and cranny is visible in the white blaze of light ( bright light for comedy, so they tell me) from Verity Hampson. One wonders the Budget cost for such extravagance - it could probably cover the costs of 5 or 6 independent theatre productions! Ms Arthur has adapted the play to a Sydney location and employed the Australian accent to deliver the American rhythms and word sounds (I assume the author Ms Wohl has given permission, and not just a gross appropriation of another artist's work or culture) and deftly moves the actors across the space and manages the sensational act one curtain with great aplomb.

Linda Cropper is astonishing. Her characterisation is marvellously observed and delivered and seems to be able to make so much TV dialogue dross, a kind of verbal Gold.

Is there not an Australian comedy out there? I recently attended the reading of Joanna Murray-Smith's THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, which I don't believe has been professionally seen in Sydney. And if we are going international, I might encourage the curators of our season repertoire at the STC contact the people at the local Outhouse Theatre Company and get a few tips for they seem to read the international reviews and the new pertinent plays: GLORIA, THE FLICK, JOHN, ULSTER AMERICAN, a recent choice. THE SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER, is another contemporary play produced at the Eternity Theatre, Darlinghurst, by The Darlinghurst Theatre Company and Green Door Theatre Company, that seems to have escaped the door keepers at the STC who curate their season/s work

If the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) regards itself as the leading theatre company in Australia, can you imagine its equivalents in London: The National Theatre of Great Britain (or Scotland, for that matter), or The Royal Court, can you imagine these leading National Theatre companies presenting GRAND HORIZONS on their stages?

I meditate - agitate - that QUESTION: ... ... Not bloody likely!

Come on STC, leave this play to the Genesians, the amateur theatre down in Kent St. Become what the present sparks may call AWOKE!

GRAND HORIZONS, is a slick professional production of a play for the comatose.

Come From Away

2021-06-17T09:07:00.007+10:00

Photo by Jeff Busby

Junkyard Dog Productions and Rodney Rigby present COME FROM AWAY, with Book, Music, and Lyrics David Hein and Irene Sankoff, at the Capitol Theatre, Campbell St Haymarket. 3rd June…

On September 11, 2001, the world stopped when two planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York and in some targets in Washington. As recalled in the program notes for this performance:

In a heartbeat 38 planes with 6,579 passengers were stranded in a remote town in Newfoundland and the locals opened their hearts and homes hosting this international community of strangers - spurring unexpected camaraderie in extraordinary circumstances. On September 12, 2001, their stories moved us all.

COME FROM AWAY, uses 12 actors in a no-interval production to tell the stories of the passengers on a plane landing at Gander in Newfoundland, and also playing the people of Gander who associate and befriend these unexpected visitors. Using the theatre traditions/techniques of the theatre-in education (TIE) passed down and re-configured from the traditions of German practitioners of early last century such as Erwin Piscator and Bertold Brecht, Director, Christopher Ashley, and Choreographer in charge of the Musical Staging, Kelly Devine, manages the techniques and the actors into a very slick ensemble that as well reveal through detail-packed gesture of voice and body to create many different characters, swiftly and accurately. Add the contribution of the Musical Supervision, Ian Eisendrath, for this sung-through musical theatre with the colour of folk music and we have a concentrated entertainment that tells us of the basic 'goodness' of some humans facing shattering events of contemporary history.

COME FROM AWAY, is a deserving winner of many theatre Awards and this Australian production is a first rate heart warming time spent in the Capitol Theatre. Zoe Gertz, Sharrrriese Hamilton, Douglas Hansell, Kolbe Kindle, Philip Lowe, Simon Maiden, Sarah Morrison, Ash Roussety, Alana Tranter, Kathleen Moore and Jasmine Vaughns were the artists that delivered a knock-out ensemble work.

The Set Design is simply designed for general visual support for all the locations required, it is by Beowulf Boritt, supported by the Lighting design of Howell Brinkley. Costume Design is by Toni-Leslie James.

I can recommend COME FROM AWAY with enthusiasm and encourage parents and family of a sophisticated age to GO see it.

Ulster American

2021-06-14T21:13:00.004+10:00

Photo by Richard Farland

Outhouse Theatre Company and the Seymour Centre present, ULSTER AMERICAN, by David Ireland, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, City Rd Chippendale. 13th May - 2nd - 9th June (extended season).

ULSTER AMERICAN (2018) is a play by Irishman, David Ieland. Another of his plays : CYPRUS AVENUE (2016), was presented at the Old Fitz by Redline and Empress Theatre in 2019.

In ULSTER AMERICAN, an ambitious English Theatre Director, Leigh Carver (Brian Meegan) has nurtured a promising young Irish (identifies as British) woman writer, Ruth Davenport (Harriet Gordon-Anderson), who has now presented an astonishing new play about "The Troubles" of Ireland. It is so arresting that Leigh has been able to contract one of the 'hottest' American (who recognises his Irish American origins) Academy Award winning actors, Jay Conray (Jeremy Waters), to play the lead. It is the night before rehearsals commence and Leigh has organised a meeting between himself, the writer and the lead actor, as a social courtesy for each of them.

For the Director the success of this production will be an obvious boost to his standing as an artist of influence, as well as a fairly rich man, as the production has been fully Sold Out, on the reputation of his famous leading actor. For the actor, Jay, this role presents an opportunity to reveal his true Acting Chops to the world, on stage - an opportunity to justify his Academy Award status, in a role that he believes, as well, will give him positive 'glory' as an Irish American in the world political sphere. For the writer, Ruth, this production of her play will draw the attention of the film industry, such as the illustrious Quentin Tarrantino, and give her access to the Hollywood 'machine' and great monetary, if not artistic, opportunity.

The stakes for each of the characters are high. The Director presents as a modest soft spoken intellectual but reveals in the tumult of the conflict that arises to be a calculating and ruthless 'animal' of masterful manipulative skill - he will take no prisoners! The Actor presents as an artist of volatile ambition which quickly collapses when his arguments for 'status' reveal a pseudo-intellect fuelled by an arrogance of grandiosity and an ego of monumental proportion that aspires to much more than mere social and political reputation. He carries his Oscar in his bag as the touch assurance of his abilities! The Writer presents as a modest, near helpless woman grateful for the power that these men can wield for her advancement, until they begin to interrogate her play script and attempt to introduce changes and edits and re-writes that will disfigure and 'destroy' her creation, her 'child' - she becomes a 'superhero' of Marvel Comic proportions, a force of physical wrath, the reflex of the defensive mother creator to combat her predators. The stakes for each of the characters become DESPERATELY high, that demand, from each, desperate actions!

ULSTER AMERICAN is a satire. The play is full of subtly clever jokes, as well as shocking causes of huge stomach laughter response, for the comedy of satire allows the writer to put into the mouths of his characters statements of argument of exhilarating inappropriateness, to passionately pursue their objectives, that can create a physical punch that a gasp of disbelief (Did she/he say that?) as the spontaneous reaction that, then, demands the noise of big laughter to cover the shock.

ULSTER AMERICAN is an hilarious verbal farce of temperament for most of its 80 minutes, that I thought, unfortunately, devolved into a physical escapade that had the woman murdering (at the least in bloodily assaulting the two men to a pulp) using the actual phallic Oscar figure as a bludgeoning weapon.

Mr Ireland had drafted this play before the #metoo movement began but the sight of the bloodily smeared Ruth collapsing, in this play, trying to regain her breath, as a cue for the lights to fade to black and on the night I went, a cheering cabal of support for justice done to the sexist, racist male egotists, Leigh and Jay, rang out from the audience : wolf whistling and stamping!!!

Now, the tradition of farce, has more often than not, usually just 'blacked out - curtain down' to finish a play, as the tying up of bows to bring a naturalism to a "lunar' situation is nigh-near impossible : consider the Aldwych Farces of Ben Travers to the Whitehall Farces of Brian Rix; to the Carry on films even to the television creations of Fawlty Towers and Absolutely Fabulous, the episodes just stop. However, I felt that Mr Ireland had just stopped and reached for an ending that appeared as a tack-on - i.e. the physical brawling. It may have been the actors relative lack of skill with the choreography, but , for me, it felt a squib considering the blistering verbal dynamics that had buoyed and dominated most of the night's drive to another 'planet' of mounting hilarity - the physical life of character or the action of the play was not a major part of this play's tool box, until those final beats! Mr Ireland,in my estimation,fails his climax by resolving to physical dumb-show instead of arguing consistently with his clever verbal intellect. Brawn called in, abandoning the use of brains to conclude this play.

Shane Anthony, the Director of this production from Outhouse, had had a steady hand up till those added physical beats, with Jeremy Waters producing the crazy Over-the-Top red-blush hilarity as Jay, which we have seen him give before (great casting), balanced by a dexterous contrast of style by Brian Meegan, giving the performance of the night as Leigh, the low-keyed 'villain'. Harriet Gordon-Anderson arrives late and floats an intelligent energy in the room that slowly combusts into the woman (worm) that finally turns in the power dynamic she and her 'child', the play, finds themselves in - Ms Gordon-Anderson was, on my night,I felt, a little under charged. This trio of actors build an ensemble of control over the very enriched comic bravura of the subtle reference-joke writing to the full outrage of daring to articulate the culturally inappropriate, articulating, maybe, what we have often thought, but have never had the courage to say.

This production by Outhouse Theatre Company has an impeccable Set and Lighting Design by Veronique Bennett, Costume Design by Claudia Kryszkiewicz, with Mary Rapp backing up the production with the Sound Design.

The Outhouse Theatre Company, under the Direction of Jeremy Waters, have constantly had their fingers on the pulse of contemporary international writing and have produced works of quality in all of its artistic choices. For instance, Branden Jacob-Jenkins's GLORIA, many of the Annie Baker plays ; THE FLICK and JOHN. Now, ULSTER AMERICAN, a contemporary play that delivers satiric comment in the form of comic farce that attacks the solar plexus with powerful punches. Someone is reading Contemporary World Dramatic Literature at the Outhouse (this is sometimes true at the New Theatre, as well).

The Sydney Theatre Company has caught up, this year, with giving us Mr Jacob-Jenkins' APPROPRIATE (at last, the leading company in Sydney finds and presents GOLD) - an extraordinary comic theatrical experience but then, follows up with mere competent writing such as HOME, I'M DARLING, by Laura Wade or the grizzily comedy of a television sitcom on the Roslyn Packer stage called GRAND HORIZONS, by Bess Wohl. Both plays, I reckon, for the comatose.

Thank God for companies such as Outhouse that keep Sydney theatre audiences in the international conversation loop. I was given a late tip to catch it, I was so pleased. Much as I was at the Eternity Theatre with their production of SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER by Jasmine Lee-Jones. A relevant crash into the Dramatic Theatre Literature of the NOW.

7 Stages of Grieving

2021-06-14T21:03:00.003+10:00

Sydney Theatre Company presents, 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING, by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman, at the Wharf Theatre, Hickson Rd.Sydney. 21st May - 17th June.

This production of 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING, written in 1994 - 1995, by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman, is the fourth one devised by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC). The first production was performed by Deborah Mailman and directed by Wesley Enoch. This new production is performed by Elaine Crombie and Directed by Shari Sebbens,

In the 26 years since the original production Time and History has happened. In the reading of the content of the original play, based (built) around the structure from the profoundly influential book by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross : ON DEATH AND DYING (1969), certainly Time has passed if not much pertinent History, too. The grieving of the Indigenous artists involved in this new production (and of their brothers and sisters in their everyday experiences in 2021) is still as deeply felt now as then. What has changed? Not much, this production reveals.

It seemed to me that Ms Sebbens and Crombie had been working with one of the original writers, Wesley Enoch, in making subtle changes to the original scene text to make its telling a truly contemporary one. With permission, these artists have made changes, and also added an 'epilogue', which pierces the fourth wall of the theatre-stage and collapses it into a definite conversation in the last section of the performance - between those doing and those that have been watching and listening, the performers and the audience.

This production has made some adjustment in the design elements of the original play. First, Elizabeth Gadsby, has created banks of midden featuring shells, bones and other materials across the width of the stage that have washed up over time, to create for Ms Crombie, a space of an ever evolving accumulation of history, that became, she has said, a deeply personalised historical projection: Ms Crombie is not alone on this stage in telling her story anymore, she is surrounded by the visual 'evidence' of her people. The stage visuals, with permission, have been influenced by the Quandamooka artist, Megan Cope - with connection to Stradbroke Island. In Ms Gadsby's design it is an effective set of black 'rises' covered in white shell-like shapes, while other introduced properties are mostly stark contrasts, perhaps, being signs of hope, tokens splashed with colour for the future. Secondly, the Design has a large back wall screen, that presents text messages in white and grey video imagery, managed by Verity Hampson, to great emotional effect. The personalised photographs of Ms Crombie's family are not screened as in the original with Ms Mailman, the audience is invited to endow from their own life history.

Ms Sebbens, helps tell the original play's ambitions in presenting a "Testament of Love, Family and Resilience". However, she and all the gathered artists, involved in the present 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING, go, actively further, in the tradition of the theatre that originated in the known expressed needs of the surviving texts of our Western heritage: the Greek Theatre, and evidenced later in the provocation of the Group Theatre's production of WAITING FOR LEFTY (1935), by Clifford Odets, that uses, as does 7-Stages, a series of related vignettes, illustrating a powerful social grief, to frame a 'meeting' to inspire its audiences into action - to "strike" for change. And, this is in not just the warm pleasure of the joint expression of a group sharing, choir-like, the joys of singing in a group in harmony, but to engage and provoke the audience to DO something, to go into ACTION, using a giant QR code projected on the back wall screen of the stage, that they can capture with the click of their mobile phones: a link to a page on the STC website "The 7 Actions of Healing" - that visitors can use to sign petitions, follow and contribute to conversations social media, and make donations with. We the audience are weaponised. Will you Do something? Will you help facilitate change - to right the social injustice, that rests in the minds and hands of our elected representatives? Your representers?

This production of 7-STAGES OF GRIEVING, becomes an 'agent provocateur'. It becomes what some regard the play by Beaumarchais (1784) and the more influential, the opera, by Mozart: THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (1786) did - it helped create a Revolution in France (1789). It provoked Social Change. It is what Orlando Figes illustrates in his book: THE EUROPEANS (2019), of the power of Opera (Performance Art), in the nineteenth century as a tool of provocation for Change. From Mozart through Wagner, Verdi et al. What Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA (1994-5) helped in the National and State governments of the United States to an awakening in their attitude to the funding for research into the AIDS virus. Who would of thought the STC to be such an agent of change? Not enough of us, I'm afraid!

Whatever the gifts Ms Crombie may have as an actor, in this performance, it is with certainty, her personal charm - despite the need for stage management prompting - that wins the audience into attending to her personal story, her First Nations historical and daily experience. Ms Sebbens has lifted the revival of this important Australian play from just a shared testament of grief of our Indigenous brothers and sisters into an urgent demand for Social Justice and Action. One that asks its audience to have more than a shared warm identification and appreciation of our First Nation Peoples inflicted tragedy, but to encourage by facilitation to switch on their mobile phones and use it as a weapon for social justice. For real change. Not just mouthed homilies of intention. Ms Crombie is a force of charm harnessed to serve a revolution.

Ms Sebbens was also responsible for the cauterising contemporary production of SEVEN METHODS FOR KILLING KYLIE JENNER, by British writer, Jasmine Lee-Jones, at the Eternity Theatre, in Darlinghurst. It was an exciting night in the theatre of brilliant modernity. A production of a play that similarly raised issues of a marginalised culture that called for a demand for Social Justice - for Social Change. Ms Sebbens, there, employed a brilliant and unerring aesthetic eye with her designers to serve the play, and with her actors discovered and employed the different musical tempos for the interludes of the text to best serve the play, while highlighting the content with astute clarity.The actors were encouraged to a safe style of convincing comedy with clear voices in demand for change.

Now, with 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING, Ms Sebbens, with a different set of Designers, again demonstrates a brilliant and unerring visual aesthetic, one that, this time, is black and white with levels of inter-leaving grey, a harmony exquisite in its studied detail even to the type of font used for the screen messages that hung over the action of the play. Her empathy with her actor - in a one person play - seemed to be one that helped the actor to harness her natural gifts to engage the audience with near accuracy to the writers' intentions - while there was high achievement in the musical control over the many changes of tempo and 'colour' of the written word.

The quality of Directorial achievement in these two works is noteworthy not just in the high contrasting visual and aural offers in each work but in the social, and subtle, responsibility that Ms Sebbens presents in the works that have been given her.

Shari Sebbens is an interesting and Promising Young Woman, indeed. An Actor and Director of some convincing quality.

Will the STC production of 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING cause or provoke change? A social change?

Well, its next performance stop is Canberra. Pull out your headphones and get to it.

But Kevin, realistically? This nation is mostly comatosed and are only too content to hear our Prime Minister, boast, Trumpet, that we are the luckiest and best nation in the world , so why change a thing. Revolution? Never?

But thanks, Ms Sebbens, keep it up and at them.

Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner

2021-05-21T08:38:00.010+10:00

Photo by Teniola Komolafe

Darlinghurst Theatre Company and Green Door Theatre Company present SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER, by Jasmine Lee-Jones, at the Eternity Theatre, Darlinghurst. 17th April - 15th May (an extended season).

SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER, is a 2019 play, by Jasmine Lee-Jones. It premiered at the London based ROYAL COURT THEATRE - a theatre company that is a factory (meant in a complimentary way) producing some of the best new work that there is to see. If we are ever are able to get over to London again in our lifetime, this is a theatre that should always be on your list of must attend no matter what is showing. (In fact, I advise, no matter what you have read from the British critics, go. The standard of work is always impressive even if the particular production is regarded as a dud. The Australian stage, rarely, reaches that quality of presentation we see over there. It is always rewarding somewhere, somehow.) With the available National Theatre productions the quality of work one can see in London is immensely impressive and, mostly, awe inspiring.

The National Theatre can be seen on the Net, so, some of the Royal Court repertoire can also be seen. The productions are also screened in the Art House Cinemas: The Palace and the Dendy.

SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER, after reading the London reviews, seemed to be an impossible wish to see in Sydney. It is written for two black female Londonites: Cleo (Moreblessing Maturure) and Kara (Vivienne Awosoga), arguing in a difficult regional dialectical demand debating black politics, and using a youthful cultural entry point of the twittter/internet sphere. All this may have presented as obstacles for attempting to produce this play in Sydney as an Independent Production. Darlinghurst Theatre Company and Green Door Theatre Company were not deterred. Bravo their courage.

A twitter announcement from Kylie of the Kardashian/Jenner cultural juggernaut as the cause of triumphalism as the first self made billionaire infuriates a low earning citizen, Cleo, to retaliate with a reply that burgeons a dynamic lighting up of the 'gadgets' of contemporary communication. Cleo's best friend Kara joins her at Cleo's small flat/home where the 'twitter war' ignites a cauterising battle of political ethics that are at once, universal, and personal, between the two women. Covering, amongst much else then just colour/race, blackness, feminism and queerness, the play becomes a crucible of hot confrontation and telling of truths that flay the two women to the central core of their joint beliefs - challenging their friendship. Kara is forced to leave the friendship, and standing alone, Cleo must confront the pedestal that she has placed herself on. The play is brilliant in its furious argument, a stimulant for intellectual awakenings and compassionate empathies, rawly exposed for the characters and, I believe, for the audience. The play, I must add, is a comedy as well as a confrontation - bracingly funny.

SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER, in this jubilant, bold production by Shari Sebbens is the best theatre that I have sat through in ages. It is a theatrical, intellectual cyclone of energetic thoroughness that makes one feel that the theatre is not dead as a contemporary means to stir an audience to thought, word and hopefully, deed.

Now, reading some other reviews of this production it has been interesting to see the authors declare their cultural age/heritage in assessing this play, to justify their owning and loving the material, treading delicately around the social appropriation, by them, (HA!) for having enjoyed it so much. I have to declare that I'm an elder of the tribe, an old, near dead white guy, who has passionately pursued his life goals and is quietly satisfied, and I wish to declare my identification with the conversation action of this play. I am unequivocal in my love of it.

This text had a third character on the stage : a live action video by Wendy Yu that vitally flashes the internet conversations in their encrypted language and emoji images, above the stage, accompanied by an adept Sound Design by Kim "Busty Beatz" Bowers, both, helping to sustain a flow of energy that ensnared our concentration. It was no matter that I had to 'learn' what was going on above my sight lines, for while I sat there, I became a quick learner - because the energy of this production made me to want to be in the know, not to be left out of it or behind. Nor did the fact that the dialect used by Ms Maturure was almost, to begin with, a foreign language, to my ear, for, similarly, I gradually 'tuned' in, and I used the distinctive contemporary cultural gestural offers that both the women used, as an accompanying tool to assist in my translating. Nothing much was lost in translation - though I saw this production late in its season and I wished - wish - I could see it again.

The Set and Costume Design by Keerthi Subramanyam, fitted this space as best I have seen it used, lit well by Kate Baldwin.

Both Ms Maturure and Ms Awosoga, as individual artists and as a comic duo - ensemble - were brilliant in all their courageous flamboyances. Ms Sebbens should and ought to take great credit for her whip smart, daring Direction. Jasmine Lee-Jones was brought to life with assuredness to bring contemporary theatre life in Sydney into the next age. This production should find a further extension. I, personally, have many, many theatre going friends who missed it in this first showing and I would like them to be able to see it and grow. I, definitely, want to see it again.

It is interesting to see that the Royal Court has announced that a revival of SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER will be the opening production of the Theatre after the long stop hiatus caused by Covid 19.

Bring it back to Sydney. We can learn from its urgency.

Dogged

2021-05-12T17:27:00.002+10:00

Photo by Brett Boardman

Griffin Theatre Company presents, DOGGED, by Andrea James and Catherine Ryan, at the SBW Theatre, Darlinghurst/Kings Cross. 30th April - 3rd June.

DOGGED, by Andrea James and Catherine Ryan, directed by Declan Greene, is a new Australian play. It is set in the 1840's during the colonisation with sheep farmers in the electorate that became McMillan, up in the Alpine district that we know today as Monash, but is Gunaikurnai land.

DOGGED is an Australian Gothic tale of a white farm daughter (Blazey Best) with her dog (Anthony Yangoyan) scrambling in the primitive bush for a living and engaging with a Mother Dingo (Sandy Greenwood), in search of her "little ones", her lost pups. It is a bleak unforgiving land realised in an oppressive black and white envelopment by Designer, Renee Mulder: claustrophobic walls, floor and roof, that is pierced by atmospheres of light created by Verity Hampson, met by the eerie and penetrating musical score by Steve Toulmin. It is the constant aural presence of the Sound that is a pregnant propellant of the tension of the storytelling.

Catherine Ryan has written a poem play with the dialectical grounding of the Gunaikurnai woman Andrea James. The language is for the human and the animals of the story- the dogs and dingo - accompanied by a physical muscularity created on the bodies of Sandy Greenwood and Anthony Yangoyan by Kirk Page.

It is an intense and impressive 80 minute immersion into a dark time past in a territory of bleak scratchings for the means of survival. It is primitive and full of blood, blood and brutal domination, told with a sense of savage time and place, but resonating with the terror and horror of the cycles of life that do reveal, then disappear but, inevitably reappear. Sitting in our seats in the SBW Theatre, 2021, the patterns of nature are still palpable and present - the engagements of the past are the meetings of today.

The production is mostly a visceral confrontation that is physically exciting - breathtaking - if it is not quite as thrilling in the delivery of the vocal work that is often full of noise and blurred content (remember, as a contrast, the poetry of Angus Cerini's 2013 play THE BLEEDING TREE), Problems with text, are its many stagnating repetitions that slow the advancement of the action of the play - though, that is buoyed by the propulsive and incessant score, disguised by the energetic force of the committed actors and their personal belief in the webbing of the play.

I felt the content and protest of the play had been more or less superseded by the Gothic power of the text of the play THE DROVER'S WIFE, by Leah Purcell (2016), and, certainly, in the Screenplay of THE NIGHTINGALE, by Jennifer Kent (2018). The magical realism of the mask and physical possession of the actors in creating the storytellers of this story is a theatrical feat but I felt it landed as a phenomenon for the young adult audience.

DOGGED, may capture the attention of some, but mostly for its theatrical genre and 'tricks', and not for its message that I felt I had heard before and with more adult power of confrontation.

Honour

2021-05-12T17:22:00.004+10:00

Photo by Prudence Upton

Ensemble Theatre presents, HONOUR, by Joanna Murray-Smith, at the Ensemble Theatre Kirribilli. 23rd April - 5th June.

HONOUR, by Joanna Murray-Smith, is a 'war-horse' in the canon of Australian Dramatic Literature, for we have seen several productions of this play over the years since its inaugural production in 1995 at the Playbox in Melbourne. Kate Champion is the Director of this present offering. Ms Murray-Smith in her program notes talks fondly of this play and suggests it may be the best of her work. Certainly, its success in Australia and Internationally might, also, verify that thought.

I have always thought that Ms Murray-Smith was one of Australia's leading playwrights despite an infamous time when Ms Murray-Smith was represented only by this play on our professional stages in Sydney, but times have changed, and despite the fact that much of her repertoire has not appeared in professional production here in Sydney still, plays such as her SWITZERLAND have found honour on Sydney stages and thrilled us with her wit, acuity and sensitive eye and mind for her social and political critique of our times.

This play concerns George (Huw Higginson), a successful literary figure married to Honour (Lucy Bell), who gave up her own literary aspirations as a young poet, to care and facilitate her husband's career, and nurture their daughter, Sophie (Poppy Lynch). And after 32 years of marriage abandons it for a younger woman, Claudia (Ayeesha Ash), a brilliant student of his. It is, as Ms Murray-Smith herself asserts, not a very original story. It is one that we have seen and heard before.

In HONOUR, however Ms Murray-Smith, in a brilliant collection of two-handed scenes allows each of these intimates in this familiar domestic tragedy, to argue passionate points of view that allows us, the audience, to be enthralled by the harrowing verbal thrash for these relatively sophisticated persons in search of reason and survival.

In this small space at the Ensemble Theatre, I found the play was revealed to me with much more clarity than ever before, and this was despite the weakness in the casting of Ms Ash, as Claudia, who seemed to me to lack both the physical and intellectual lust of this recklessly ambitious woman who chameleon-like can shape shift her actions with such blade-sharp accuracies to justify her actions throughout her encounter with this family. A clever family that becomes devastated.

Mr Higginson creates a brilliant, elder man helplessly entranced by a youthful siren who can sing and dance the right tunes of flattery to cause him to abandon easily, ruthlessly, all his good sense and life balance for us to suspect that it was always a veneer that cloaked a cruel streak of cold-hearted selfishness cured in misogyny. Beside him, Ms Bell radiates a woman of much hidden strength and ultimate goodness as she navigates the wreckage of her life to arrive at an end that is independent and heading for blossoming fulfilment. It is a warmly intelligent reading of the role. Too, Sophie, has cause to grow up swiftly in a tempestuous sea of moral challenges, that are wonderfully juggled by Ms Lynch in scenes that are mostly of a fragile delicacy of uncharted discovery.

Higginson, Bell and Lynch, are marvellous, attractive to observe.

The set by Simone Romanuik does not serve the actors comfortably on its different levels that are sharp edged and squashed, nor does it successfully convey a metaphor to enlarge the content or environments of the play with its Ikea-like unfinished chipboard colours, despite the gesture of the tower of shelves of books (that, with thought during the night, appear to be mostly inaccessible). Damien Cooper lights this space as empathetically as this design allows. While the composition of the music and structure of the Sound Design by Nate Edmondson is sensitive and resonant.

HONOUR, at the Ensemble was an okay night, rescued by wonderful acting by Higginson, Bell and Lynch, and despite the weakness in the casting of Claudia the catalyst of the play's raison d'etre.

Stop Girl

2021-04-28T17:37:00.003+10:00

Photo by Brett Boardman

Belvoir present STOP GIRL, by Sally Sara in the Belvoir Street Theatre Upstairs. 20th March - 25th April, 2021.

STOP GIRL, is a new Australian play, by a Wakley-award winning journalist for the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC), Sally Sara. It is her first play and it tackles the story of Suzie who is a journalist working in the world conflict hot spots of Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Suzie could be a doppelgänger of the writer.

On a Set by Robert Cousins, that is virtually an open space with 'symbolic' objects that serve the utilitarian requirements of the action of the 90-minute play without interval, has on the back wall a large screen that facilitates video support for showing images of suffering and the atrocities of war, of the ordinary people of those war torn locations. The images display action that Suzie (Sheridan Harbridge) and a friend and fellow journalist Bec (Amber Mc Mahon), experience while preparing a story on Suzie's career for a Sydney magazine, together - Suzie responds to the present dangers of war shown in images accompanied by a penetrating soundscape, with the coolness of the oblivion of the familiar whilst Bec, in her virgin state, responds with horror and true fear.

Both women return to Australia to live their lives in the safety of that country. Images continue to appear on the screen accompanied by the sound intrusions, but now they are exclusively those of memory for Suzie (and a storytelling gesture for us, the audience). Bec is in contrast divorced from her solo experience of being in a war zone, comfortable with the environs of Sydney, home, and becomes puzzled by Suzie's disintegrating behaviour.

Other contrasting reactions are given via Atal (Mansoor Noor), an aide of Suzie's in war, who now has, as a refugee, brought his family to Australia and reflects, gratefully, the 'oddness' and stress of accommodating to that, in contrast to Suzie's carefree responses to the same familiar Australian occurrences; and, more significantly, the personal dialogues between Suzie and her Mother, Marg (Toni Scanlon). This relationship becomes is the pivot of the play and gradually blends the traumas of war with the traumas of ordinary family life, with Suzie's accumulating paralyzing sense of guilt at her absence of presence during the family's crises, culminating with her sense of guilt over the death of her father and her inability, so far, in dealing with his wishes, his ashes. The play suggests that her father's ashes spread will unblock some of Suzie's mental health issues.

This play brings to the audience a confronting case of Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder (PTSD), made all the more confronting because it is written by a well-acknowledged 'daughter' of our community who has served us as a television journalist in places of conflict around the world over a long career. Sally Sara, has become a member of all our 'families'. This play is stressful in its distant war revelations, but becomes a truly poignant piece of common grief when Suzie's story touches the personal element of what it is to be human, with the death of her father and the dealing with his wishes. It is something which we all must go through.

For me, this production was pleasing especially because most of the actors featured in the event of telling the story are actors who have worked regularly and consistently of quality in the outer fringe of the Sydney acting scene, and I was grateful to see Deborah Galanos (psychiartrist) on a main stage; Mansoor Noor in his usual intelligent, flawless and engaging reveal of the Afghan, Atal; and Toni Scanlon giving a great support with both true comic and dramatic sensibilities as the mother, Marg to the protagonist of the play. All three of these actors are deserving of this opportunity given by the Belvoir Company and Anne-Lousie Sarks, the Director. These actors are welcome on this main stage and have, honestly, earned their 'stripes' to be there. Amber McMahon is a regular on this stage and gives sterling support to the play's dramaturgical responsibilities demanded of her.

Sheridan Harbridge after many years of hard quality work in the fringes of the Sydney Theatre has begun to emerge into focus on our main stages after many years. On the Belvoir stage, THE SUGAR HOUSE*** and the musical CALAMITY JANE***, demonstrating her talented range of versatility in Dramatic work and Comic, which was significantly brought into devastating focus in the recent Griffin production of Suzie Miller's one person play PRIME FACIE*** (which will be reprised at the Seymour Centre, later this year - not to be missed). As in PRIME FACIE, Ms Harbridge takes on a confrontational journey of character as Suzie in STOP GIRL, one that demands an incredible emotional commitment that in actor's parlance and knowledge is a 'risky' and 'scary' one. The performance that Ms Harbridge gave here (at my sitting) was powerful but lacked a consistent depth of 'risk', there were times when one felt that the actor was skimming over the top of the need of the characterisation and so, was 'in and out' of the depth of the demands of the writer. The performance work was impressive but sometimes, relatively, shallow, a 'cheat' of the depth of emotional need. The tragedy of the play 'glowed' rather than 'glowered'.

The audience I was with were generously affected and gave warm applause at the curtain call.

STOP GIRL is an arresting first play dealing with an issue that needs urgent social and political attention .

N.B. Check out MUM, ME AND THE I.E.D*** another devastating account of PTSD in our returning warriors of war.