Face to Face adapted for the stage from the film by Ingmar Bergman, by Andrew Upton and Simon Stone

Kerry Fox as Jenny

Face to Face adapted for the stage from the film by Ingmar Bergman, by Andrew Upton and Simon Stone.  Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Theatre, August 7 – September 8, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 18

For this show my review must be split into two parts – the success of the adaptation and the quality of the production.

When I saw Bergman’s film some 30 years ago, I had doubts about the question of psychological truth.  I had no doubts about Liv Ullman’s capacity to act with the sense of internal intensity which Bergman’s use of close up and lengthy shots of her facial expression required. 

But I was never quite comfortable with the seemingly interminable “dream” sequence of Jenny’s fantasies, growing out of her close relationship with her father, tragically cut off at the age of 9 when he, driving home drunk from a party, crashed and killed himself and Jenny’s mother, who, Jenny believed, had never loved her.

At the time I saw too much of Freud’s unsupportable theory of the Oedipus complex in this.  Because film makes one feel that you are watching reality, these doubts left me appreciative of Liv Ullman, the actor, but not of Jenny, the character created by Bergman.

This adaptation resolves the problem for me.  Theatre is necessarily artificial, and, if done artfully, can reflect experience not as in a simple mirror but as if we, watching, can gradually identify with the character’s experience as we get to know her through her physical presence.  This requires not only an actor to appreciate, in this case Kerry Fox, but staging techniques which create symbolically a context, within the black box of a theatre, for us to accept the character’s mental life as hers and for us to respond emotionally.

Especially, Simon Stone and Andrew Upton (who, by the way, will continue as artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company for another 3 years) made the hospital scene, as Jenny recovers from her attempted suicide, absolutely entirely brilliant white as she sleeps and dreams, but just slightly warmer off-white as she wakes into normal reality.  It’s a simple theatrical device, done with delicacy, which allows us to see that Jenny believed, being the psychiatrist of her day, in the Oedipus complex, but comes through to realising that it is childhood trauma and others’ uneducated reactions to her expression of the resulting feelings that led to her adult feelings of inadequacy and her need to block out her capacity for love.

And, in addition, Upton and Stone have Jenny and her 14 year-old daughter, who not surprisingly thinks her mother doesn’t love her, play out the final scene – where Jenny tells Anna (Jessica Nash) of her attempted suicide – as a tentative game, kicking a ball to each other, unlikely in reality but symbolically representing both Jenny’s and Anna’s state of play, and Jenny’s now normal understanding of her self-harming behaviour.

So the adaptation works very well indeed.  It is not Bergman’s film on stage; it is better than Bergman’s film, because it is on stage.

Then it is not surprising that the production – acting, set design, scene changes, lighting and sound – are up to the best, as we have come to expect from the STC.  Kerry Fox was getting much praise in the foyer, as she should, but all the actors gave her the ensemble platform on which to perform.  Because most of their characters are memory/fantasy figures it could have been too easy to go over the top, but even the most extreme characters, like Queenie van de Zandt’s socialite Elizabeth and John Gaden’s demented Uncle, were played precisely within the right disciplinary bounds; while Tomas, the character we see as right on the borderline of Jenny’s reality, is played so discreetly by Mitchell Butel that we all understand why Jenny responds to him as she returns to being able to love.

The set design and lighting, starting from the traditional rule of ‘less is more’, is surprising, exciting and exactly right, supported by music nicely chosen. Everything technical went without a hitch with scene shifting (a complete restaurant setting at one point), a whole ceiling on the fly, a physical transparent fourth wall and front apron action becoming a performance in itself – yet always supporting the drama, never taking focus away.

Bookings for the rest of the season at this point are not up to the full house mark that this production deserves.  It’s more than an interesting experiment in adapting a film to the stage.  It’s a great production of a fascinating drama.  Do your best not to miss it.
 

MOTHERHOOD THE MUSICAL

By Sue Fabisch

The Q until 19^th August.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

Ziggy Clements (Brooke), Sophie Weiss (Amy), Lara Thew (Barb), Sophie Carter (Trisha)
MOTHERHOOD THE MUSICAL

Entertainment Alert !!! . Perhaps you’ve decided that you’ve already seen enough shows based around  women’s body parts and functions like menopause, breasts and  vaginas, and  expect “Motherhood The Musical” to be yet another show in which the characters complain about being over worked, underpaid, under-appreciated,  and how they  cope with demanding kids, boorish husbands , sagging breasts and incontinence. Then you’d be right. It is! 

But in this particular production, these all too familiar topics prove remarkably diverting with lots of funny topical references spicing up Sue Fabisch’s already witty script.

The threadbare storyline involves three friends who call on their pregnant girlfriend to regale her with their own individual experiences of motherhood. These are presented in a series of well-crafted songs that are catchy, even occasionally moving, cleverly choreographed and superbly delivered by a quartet of accomplished actors who manage to invest their characters with warmth and humour.

The centre of attention is the heavily pregnant, Amy, and in this role, gamin-faced Sophie Weiss is a delight. Blissfully happy at the beginning as she over-plans her forthcoming pregnancy, she experiences the full gamut of emotions as she endeavours to cope with the deluge of information bestowed on her by her three friends, Barb (Lara Thew), Brooke (Ziggy Clements) and Trisha (Sophie Carter).  All of whom offer engaging performances as the stereotypical friends.

 Terrence O’Connell’s inventive  direction insures that the carefully detailed  action moves  along a fast bat on Shaun Gurton’s cheerful, colourful setting for which the sound and lighting are also excellent.  

It is a shame that printed programs were not provided for this production, as the actors and creative associated with it have excellent credentials.  Most theatre-goers like to know who they are looking at, and seek this information from their programs once they are seated; therefore it is a shame that production companies so undervalue their actors by not providing this information in a printed program.

True, there was a notice providing this information displayed in the foyer, but most patrons would have missed this, and also it is of little use for identifying actors while watching a performance.

Off With Youth Arts and Down Among the Bellbirds…

Last month Young People and the Arts Australia (YPAA) ran an engrossing symposium called Speaking in Tongues at the Casula Powerhouse in south western Sydney. This lovely venue, with its wonderfully graffiti covered towers that have scandalised some local councillors, came complete with a river, a terrifying railway crossing, Polyglot Theatre’s Paper Planet filling up the foyer for the Way Out West children’s festival and bellbirds Henry Kendalling on the river banks.

Leverage and language were the theme, with youth arts practitioners and administrators from all over Australia and beyond concentrating on questions of communicating what the arts are about for the young. And communicating not just in a vague ‘arts are good for you’sense but in ways that would have potential audiences, funders, governments, schools, parents and the young understanding how vital this area is and how it changes perspectives and lives. There’s a search on for the right language that positively communicates the worth of the arts for the young. As Jim Lawson, Director and CEO for YPAA (Vic) said when he quoted Cathy Hunt of Positive Solutions (www.positive-solutions.com.au) in the Symposium’s programme, ‘…the question arises for the arts sector: How do we articulate the value of what we do?’

Suzanne Lebeau, playwright and artistic director of Le Carrousel Theatre (www.lecarrousel.net) in Quebec, Canada discussed the need for toughness in youth arts, raising questions of censorship and self-censorship for a playwright yet placing against this evidence of the great capacity of children to understand difficult ethical questions. One of her recent plays (Le bruit des os qui craquent/The Sound of Cracking Bones 2006) concerns the matter of child soldiers, not the first time for Lebeau to tackle challenging subject matter.

Melbourne’s Platform Youth Theatre challenged by presenting a dark double bill called Tenderness (Ugly by Christos Tsolkias/Slut by Patricia Cornelius) drawn from the grimmer sides of life for young people in the northern suburbs of that city: self image, sexuality, love and friendship and the power of labelling.

Out in the centre of the Powerhouse dozens of younger kids were absorbed in building their Paper Planets, in a smaller space Maysa Abouhzheid performed Nest, a piece about her perceptions of the world, with her guide dog nestled quietly at her feet and in an even tinier space The Plastic Bag Ladies of the Sea introduced miniscule audiences to the knitted underwater world of Spinning a Yarn.

Outside the performances there was a sea of talk with much in the way of positive suggestions for broadening the youth arts sector’s communication of what it does coming from people like Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education’s Arnold Aprill.

(Time and time again he would drop an eminently sensible viewpoint or tactic into the discussions.)

(http://www.capeconsults.org/from-the-road/opening-up-our-language-new-ways-of-conceptualizing-arts-education/)

(http://www.capeweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/artist.pdf)

There was also a very healthy approach to the use of media in youth arts going on. ATYP’s Fresh Ink – Writers Online Tel It Like It Isn’t showcased on film a couple of tough monologues by writers under 26, all revolving around a dire teenage driving scenario. (http://www.freshink.com.au/the-voices-project/) There was even a rather exciting live cross to Manchester and Baba Israel, artistic director of Manchester’s CONTACT where the Contacting the World Festival involved youth companies from the UK, Trinidad/Tobago, Thailand and Nigeria. (http://contactmcr.com/) It’s clear from their web site that they have a strong on line presence full of powerful up to the moment work.

With national curriculum for the arts thundering down on the country’s education systems none of this is any bad thing. But there still seems to be a bit of a chasm between all this gorgeous stuff and education systems. YPAA is aware of this and ran an educators’ seminar at the Opera House on the Monday following the Symposium which might have opened a few doors. Putting arts squarely to the fore in busy and complex education systems remains, however, a challenge. Deep training for specialist performing arts teachers and a hard look at the reality of facilities in schools might be achieved if decision makers were as versed in the language of the arts as YPAA would like them to be.

Meanwhile, back in Canberra, the July break contained some good examples of theatre by children and for children. Child Players’ ACT ‘s The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of C.S.Lewis’ Narnia stories was a sensibly unfussy and unsentimental version with good brisk playing and excellently clear voices, well directed by B.J.Anyos. Child Players have an intriguing set up in which the participants rotate through backstage and onstage roles, giving them a chance at a broad and realistic theatrical experience that resists the temptation to only nourish ‘stars’.

Although William Walton’s Funeral March for Olivier’s Hamlet was an odd aural choice to introduce the White Witch (who would seem to be more of an Oriental despot than a Danish royal) the rest of the show mostly hit a very satisfactory mixture of clear approaches to characters and straightforward imagery. The set changes used the ubiquitous Rock Eisteddfod rotating triangle flats that is occasionally a slow way of doing things but no bad idea if approached with style. It certainly solves the problem of a wardrobe that has to contain a whole world.

CYT, who were ably represented at the YPAA Symposium by artistic director Karla Conway, put on Insomniac Attack, a lovely dark piece about the terrors of the night complete with Genty style illusions supported by neatly selective lighting by Michael Foley and lots of IPods floating around in the dark with little films of eyes running on them in a delicious visual pun. Director Cathy Petocz had the CYT Junior Ensemble deeply immersed in a world of bedclothes that come to life and the faint lights of the IPads and IPods that shine underneath them just as years ago the late night readers would use their torches. Only now it might be technology that’s evoking the nightmares. Which the young insomniacs in this piece overcome in a brusquely practical manner.

Does the draft National Arts Curriculum (high on rhetoric but low as yet on vital matters like teacher training and school facilities) have the capacity to ensure that students in schools can be actively part of similar good performing arts experiences?

Alanna Maclean

GIAN SLATER'S INVENIO - 'GONE WITHOUT SAYING'

Part of the ‘Capital Jazz Project’ at The Street Theatre, Gian Slater’s Invenio presented ‘Gone Without Saying’, the winner of the MIFF APRA Composer’s Commission.  It’s a musical presentation by fourteen singers advertised as ‘exploring the notion of communication between and without words for those that love voice’.

It’s certainly a unique presentation.  All fourteen singers are excellent musicians able to harmonise accurately with each other in what may have started as improvising around a set piece of music in rehearsal and then has been highly polished for performance.  I may be completely wrong about that, but in the absence of a program, it’s my best guess.

Most of the items were performed by the whole group without individuals taking the lead.  Sound variations were achieved with changing placement on the stage of the various voices and with the imaginative use of some props that added a unique sound into the mix.  In a couple of items with lyrics, Gian Slater’s clear and appealing voice led the group.  It was certainly unusual and I admire the musicianship of the singers.

How much you enjoy the performance will, however, depend on personal taste.  While acknowledging the cleverness of the concept and the ability of the singers, I found the musical items were not varied enough to sustain my interest.  I would have liked to know what to look for in each item.  This could have been announced from the stage or included in a program.  As a presentation, more variation is needed visually, maybe in costumes and movement on the stage.

Part of the fun of attending performances at the ‘Capital Jazz Project’ is to see something new and stimulating, even if the music doesn’t always match your personal taste.  I’m looking forward to next year’s program!

Len Power

As broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 ‘Dress Circle’ program on Sunday 12 August 2012

CAPITAL JAZZ PROJECT

The Street Theatre. Saturday 4^th August

Continuing until 12^th August 2012.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

Canberra’s hot-house of creativity, The Street Theatre, was alive with adventurous and bemused music lovers on Saturday night eager to sample some of the one-off performances included in this year’s ten-day feast of contemporary jazz that is the Capital Jazz Project. As expected of The Street these days, the presentation of this event is superb, with excellent sound and atmospheric lighting to enhance the performances

More than ninety players are participating in this year’s event, with the emphasis on reed instruments and composition,   and although such trend-setters as Paul Capsis, Christa Hughes and Gian Slater will perform during the festival, there was not a vocalist to be heard on Saturday night. Instead contrasting programs by three world-class ensembles were on offer in the two theatres.

 Internationally renowned saxophonist, Sandy Evans commenced the evening in Street Two, transformed into a glamorous, cosy jazz club for the festival, with table candles, gold wall frames and chandeliers. Working with long time collaborators, bassist Brett Hirst and drummer Toby Hall, Evans also included charismatic Indian tabla player, Bobby Singh, to present a series of new compositions that latest of which, she announced, had been completed “twenty minutes ago”, and which commenced with Evans on clarinet setting the theme and mood for a series of exotic, mesmerising improvisations.

Uber-cool combo, Albare, was the attraction in Street One. Fronted by Moroccan-born jazz guitarist and composer, Albert Dadon and including Cuban drummer Ignacio Berroa, pianist Phil Torcio, bassist Evri Evripedou, and German harmonica virtuoso Hendrik Meurkens who, in the words of Dadon, was a “German who played like a Brazilian”, Albare presented a series of silky smooth, Latin-American-inspired compositions. Lost in their music-making, the musicians played with eyes downcast, studiously ignoring their audience, who, nevertheless, dutifully clapped every improvisation, the experience of luscious music at this level, reward enough.

Back to Street Two for a performance by tenor saxophonist and composer, John Mackey who premiered an eleven- section suite which he confided was “only completed today”. With titles including “Insurrection” and “Emotional Valour” the music had a very New York jazz club feel, dense, atmospheric, and emotionally involving with its complex progressions and improvisations, providing a satisfying conclusion to a fascinating evening.


An edited version of this review appears in the August 9 - 15 edition of CITY NEWS and in the CITY NEWS digital edition.

Capital Jazz Project and The Next Gen

Capital Jazz Project and The Next Gen – an afternoon of critical conversations at The Street Theatre and Belconnen Arts Centre, Sunday August 5 at 1.30pm and 3pm respectively.

by Frank McKone

These two events, staged independently, formed an interesting afternoon of thinking about the business of being a critic.

At The Street Theatre, as part of a 10-day program ‘of all things jazz’, Miriam Zolin, managing editor and publisher at extempore publishing (www.extempore.com.au) conducted a seminar discussion with four writers/broadcasters: freelancer Jasmine Crittenden, blogger Eric Pozza, Sydney Morning Herald reviewer John Shand and ABC presenter of The Music Show, Andrew Ford.

At Belconnen Arts Centre, Yolande Norris, independent arts writer, curator and producer, moderated four presentations by local young artists:

Reuben Ingall – musician (acoustic and electronic), composer and contemporary dance collaborator who has worked with Quantum Leap Youth Choreographic Ensemble and currently works with independent dancer Adelina Larsson;

Jamie Winbank – dancer and choreographer, working in interactive theatre, as well as teaching dance;

George Rose – multi-disciplinary graphic artist and designer, coordinator of You Are Here, a curated festival of the best of Canberra’s independent and experimental arts and culture;

Michael Bailey – creative member of Boho Interactive, a theatre company whose aim is to spread understanding of concepts from complex systems science (Game Theory and Network Theory) via interactive theatre projects.

Each discussion had its own key question.  At The Street it was, Is the best music criticism a description or an opinion?  At Belconnen it was, Why would anyone in their right mind be an artist?  For me, the key question became, What is the key question I should ask myself as a critic?

Some of the erudite speakers at The Street had seemed to give me sensible answers, yet my confidence in knowing my role was challenged by these young experimental artists.  How do you judge people’s work when they are testing out new ideas, new combinations of genres, new technologies?

All four at The Street were in agreement on basic principles, but it was John Shand who most clearly articulated two central points: the judgement is about how well the artist has achieved what they intended to do; and the critic must be honest in making that judgement.

On the way to and from these points, there was discussion of how much a review should analyse technical matters, and therefore reach conclusions, or how much it should be about the reviewer’s emotional or intellectual responses to the work.  In music, and improvised jazz in particular, this raised perhaps the most division between the speakers, because the political and social history of jazz could justify focussing on the effect on the audience rather than on the technical skill.

In the end I concluded that the best work must integrate the technical with the emotional, and so create the greatest quality.

But my own rather intellectualised metacognitive approach was rather blown apart when the young artists’ presentations of videos of snatches of their works, and their attempts to explain what they were doing, raised a question about the principle of judging whether the artist has achieved what they intended to do.  In fact, it had been Andrew Ford who had talked about interviewing musicians who were quite inarticulate verbally when asked about their playing, and had put the view that many artists actually don’t know what they are doing while they are doing it.

Ford and others had backed this position by quoting composers, including Ford himself, whose work had come to mean completely different things to other people than the composer had thought he meant.  In other words, as I thought while watching and listening to the young people, how can I know what their intentions are, or were when I see a finished work, and be able to say if they achieved their aims?

Indeed, it had seemed easier to do this for a jazz performance, however improvised, because a tradition has grown up over the last century of what jazz is which has allowed even for the shift from trad jazz to modern jazz.  A language for talking about jazz has grown up alongside the performance of jazz.

But when the young are deliberately challenging previous conventions and experimenting with new forms, am I right to say I found Reuben Ingall’s work less than enthralling, Jamie Winbank rather superficial, Michael Bailey’s concepts intellectually interesting but seemingly a bit too much like Questacon, while, in the range and skills she showed, George Rose seemed the most together and likely to produce the best art in the long term?

What would I have said about jazz in its early years?  That it wasn’t what I understood to be real music?  While in fact, as a youngster in the 1950s I played Pee Wee Hunt’s trad Twelfth Street Rag on my mouth organ, and later became fascinated by the Modern Jazz Quartet, despite my father’s objection that they were just tip-toeing about, instead of playing real jazz. 

The Street Theatre’s speakers also made the point that at times a reviewer can be useful to a composer or performer by criticising their work honestly – sometimes helping the creative to understand what they have created, or sometimes to help them improve a work – and I have had feedback occasionally to support this.  Of course, I have also endured brickbats as well.  But in the end it may be that John Shand has the last word.

He suggested that, when it comes to placing a value on the work of the artist compared with the work of a critic, we critics are essentially parasites on the body of performance.  So there!

Carlier Makigawa: Contained: Defining Space

Carlier Makigawa: Contained: Defining Space

2011Brooch Blackened Silver, Coral 50cm wide

At Bilk, Palmerston Lane, Manuka, until August 18, 2012.  Open Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 5pm.

Carlier Makigawa, who lives and works in Melbourne, is one of Australia’s leading silversmiths and jewellers.  This is her first solo show in Canberra, although she is known nationally and internationally.

A consistent theme in Carlier’s work is the frame: the volume it creates and is contained by it.  Whether the pieces are necklaces, bangles, rings or small table sculptures, they appear as three dimensional line drawings in space.  Many contain nothing but hint at the possibility.  They are full of form and feeling and have a fragile appearance.

2012 Necklace 2012, sterling silver 24cm

Small, pod-like forms are clustered – often seemingly unbalanced – to form the jewellery.  These elements are based on gum nuts, seed pods and other flora from Western Australia, where the artist was born and trained.  Other works are more angular and are joined to form more geometrical objects.

Makigawa uses silver – often blackened – and frequently combines this precious metal with polished coral twigs which add colour and contrast, attracting the viewer’s eye. 

A loosely circular blackened silver brooch is punctuated around its uneven circle with small pieces of red polished choral, projecting from the apertures of the pods.  A similar work in matt silver holds pale, creamy pink pieces of choral. 

 

The angular frames of two brooches titled Nature and Structure contain larger branches of pale choral and appear to be constructed around them.  On one or two brooches, one or two elements are painted with bright colours, highlighting the volume.

Three bracelets, one in matt silver, one in blackened silver and one incorporating both colours, lightly circle the wrist.  While they appear to be fragile, they are strong.

Two blackened silver necklaces are made from straighter, slightly longer elements, linked together.  These sit comfortably around the neck and move gently as the wearer moves.  A matt silver necklace is slightly shorter, sitting higher on the wearer.  The simplicity belies the detailed construction process used by Makigawa.

Carlier Makigawa 2012 Brooch Blackened Silver, Coral

 

In addition to the jewellery, the artist is showing three small table sculptures.  The elements are angular and blackened silver frames sit inside matt silver frames.  They too hint at what might be contained.  The shadows cast by strong lighting add a fourth dimension to the whole. 

©  Meredith Hinchliffe

August 4, 2012