Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.  WildVoicesmusictheatre, directed by Dianna Nixon, composer Vanessay Nimmo, at The Street Theatre, Canberra, November 14-17, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 14

Since Dianna Nixon chose to present Under Milk Wood in a quite similar way on the stage to the very first performance of the Play for Voices (at the YMHA Poetry Centre, New York, May 14, 1953), I thought I should listen to my still serviceable vinyl recording as a comparison.

Different, but in some ways equal.  Dylan Thomas was commissioned by the BBC, and the “Y” performance was still a work-in-progress.  According to the sleeve notes, “The final scene was typed as the audience was being seated”!  And it was, of course, intended for and performed by adults.

Dianna Nixon has written “WildVoicesmusictheatre has been established to create and present music theatre events and activities with a commitment to cross-curricular arts pedagogy – alongside professional practice – and celebrating multiskilling.  Vocal and physical skills are central to our work.  Our pedagogy eschews the concept of talent, and instead we focus on relationships, process and long-term skills development – and on sharing our passion for the heritage on which performing arts practice is based.”

Like the “Y”, Nixon could never have afforded or found volunteers to present one actor per character, which would – as the sleeve notes say – “have given the impression of a local Philharmonic”.  As chance would have it the “Y” had only five professional actors available, plus Thomas who significantly played the 1st Voice and the Reverend Eli Jenkins.  Each one stood, still throughout except for when Thomas, on the advice of the actors, took two steps forward for Eli Jenkins’ morning prayer.  Nixon, on the other hand had her Voices for the main part seated, but with some movement carefully devised to add to the drama visually.

In her production, Nixon plays the 1st Voice and piano – she has a B.A., Music (piano) from VCA – while the other parts are played by six adult professional singer/actor/musicians: Nick Byrne, Tobias Cole, Dene Kermond, Kate Hosking, Zsuzsi Soboslay and PJ Williams, as well as 20 children.  Three teenagers, Bethany Stoney, Aidan Pierlot and Felicity Ward were the “Foley Team”, producing all the necessary sound effects devised by Vanessa Nimmo.  In the original recording there was a bare minimum of sounds beyond those heard in the imagination in response to Thomas’ poetic descriptions.

Watching this WildVoices performance I was reminded of the Goon Show.  This is in no way a derogatory thought, because it was quite fascinating, as it was for the Goon Show’s BBC studio audiences, to see the sounds being made live as the actors spoke.  In using a live foley team, Nixon has fulfilled her pedagogical aim.  The youngsters were learning the “heritage on which performing arts practice is based” – so much better than googling YouTube or downloading iTunes.

In taking this approach, and setting appropriate parts to music, Nixon has equalled Thomas.  At the same time, his more spare presentation did some things that Nixon’s softer more mellifluous approach doesn’t.  Partly because of time passing and Under Milk Wood now being a familar classic instead of a case of the shock of the new as it was in 1953, Nixon’s visit to Llareggub is almost a romantic trip.  For Thomas, as you hear in the recording, there is a hard edge behind the quaintness.  As the sleeve notes say (written by someone unfortunately unacknowledged) “Why the audience finds the motley crew of variously henpecked, overbearing, drunken, promiscuous townspeople so funny might be a study for psychologists, had psychologists not long ago determined that misfortune at this remove is cause for self-congratulation and laughter .... But the laughter is cathartic, too.”

Our applause on November 14, 2012 could not match that of  May 14, 1953 when Dylan Thomas’ “shy and stammered ‘Thank you, thank you very much’ is lost in the shouts of the audience.  The bravos come from people close enough to the stage to see the tears that rolled down his cheeks.”  But we justifiably applauded a quality production, beautiful, and a great learning experience especially for the children taking part.

Vinyl LP Recording: original recording by Caedmon; my recording by Philips B 94022 L / B 94023 L (2 records)

BARE WITNESS

Written by Mauri Lourey
Directed by Nadja Kostich
The Street Theatre 6th - 10th November

Review by Len Power

The world of photo-journalists in war zones is a good idea for a play.  We can find out who these people are and why they do what they do often at great personal cost, physically and mentally.

Mauri Lourey’s play, ‘Bare Witness’, is primarily the story of one individual, Dannie, who struggles to make sense of her life through her memories of experiences while working as a photojournalist.  Recalling eleven of her photographs, which are described but not actually shown, she relives those moments and events and remembers others who were part of the story at the time.  Those memories build a picture of the impact her work has had on her, personally, and the insight she has gained about herself, for better or worse.

Nadja Kostich, the director, has staged a visually clever and very physical production.  The set design by Marg Horwell dispenses with the wings in the theatre, so there are stark walls instead of curtains.  The atmospheric lighting design by Emma Valente is highly original with banks of neon tubes on one side of the stage casting unusual lighting effects at various moments in the play.  This is complemented by portable lights which are picked up and used by the actors in creative and interesting ways.  Video design by Michael Carmody is quite haunting at times and in harmony with the other technical aspects.

Music was composed and played onstage by Kristin Rule on cello.  Her music was particularly effective in underlining the action throughout the play, creating and sustaining various moods.

As Danii, Daniela Farinacci gave a heartfelt and very believable performance of a woman struggling to make sense of her past.  Eugenia Fragos was also very effective as another photojournalist, Violetta.  The men in the company, Adam McConvell, Todd MacDonald and Ray Chong Nee, gave strong performances but their roles seemed not as sharply defined as those of the two women.  All cast members met the physical and emotional demands of the production very well.

While the production is visually exciting with good performances, the detail of the play was often obscure.  It was hard to know at times where you were and what was happening.  Maybe this wasn’t meant to be as important as the ideas the play was presenting, but it made it difficult to feel any real concern for Danii’s mental turmoil.  I wasn’t drawn into this play and I felt I should be.

The world of photojournalism is a good subject for a play, but in spite of a very original style of production and committed performances by the cast, ‘Bare Witness’ was ultimately a cold and unmoving experience.

Originally broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 ‘Dress Circle’ program on Sunday 11 November 2012

BRIGADOON

The Queanbeyan Players,

The Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre until 17^th November

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

Charles Hudson as Charlie
Photo: Rebecca Doyle Photography

Queanbeyan Players have built their reputation in presenting unsophisticated, proudly amateur productions of popular musicals and operettas. So if you’re expecting magical transformations and misty glens, forget it. This “Brigadoon”, directed by Greg Wallace, is a rather Spartan affair presented mostly in front of a backdrop depicting Canadian redwood pines, with other scenes performed in front of black drapes with basic set-pieces.

This most delicate of musicals is a fantasy about two young Americans who, while hiking in the Scottish highlands,  discover a mystical village called Brigadoon which appears for just one day every hundred years.

For this, their third production of “Brigadoon” over the years, Queanbeyan Players have assembled a large cast headed by Gerard Ninnes and Paul Jackson, both excellent as the two Americans. Among the inhabitants of Brigadoon, Alyssa Morse is a lovely Fiona singing prettily and acting with sincerity, and Janet Tweedie is delightfully feisty as Meg. Playing Charlie, handsome Charles Hudson was inexplicably un-amplified for his important tenor solos. Phil Perman is excellent as Mr Murdoch, and Peter Smith and Rob Grice add gravitas to the other senior roles.    

The gorgeous Lerner and Lowe score, is , for the main, well sung by the company, accompanied by an impressive 28 piece orchestra conducted by Jennifer Groom,. Even if your preference is towards a more ethereal presentation, this production still provides a welcome opportunity to revisit this classic Lerner and Lowe musical.

                       This review appears in City News November 8 - 14 issue

 

 

Empire by Graham Jones and Jepke Goudsmit

Empire by Graham Jones and Jepke Goudsmit.  Kinetic Energy Theatre Company at the Drama Lab, Australian National University Arts Centre, Canberra, November 8-10, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 9

The evening’s program, put together by Kinetic Energy based in Sydney, began with poems of social criticism – Poetry with a Punch – by local Canberra poets, Fiona McIlroy, Sandra Renew, Jill Sutton, Laurie MacDonald and Hazel Hall.

Though, as an introduction to the presentation of what was advertised as a “gritty play”, the staging of the poetry was very ordinary, with Jones popping on and off to adjust the microphone and no special lighting, MacDonald’s and Hall’s works particularly engaged the small mainly academic audience with humanity and art.

Following the poetry, in what might have been an effective lead-in to the play, the well-known A Chorus of Women sang the Lament by Glenda Cloughley and Judith Clingan, an anthem for peace which was first sung in the foyer of the Australian Parliament as the news was being broadcast of Australia’s decision to join the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in invading Iraq.

Lament begins with the line “Open the doors of the chambers of your hearts”, but unfortunately at this point the doors of the Drama Lab were shut behind us for some half an hour while the stage was set for Empire.  Though this was an opportunity for coffee and cake and a preparatory visit to the toilets, the momentum was lost, as people stood about waiting in an unprepossessing back corridor in the bowels of the Arts Centre.

If the poetry and song had been staged well and incorporated into the total presentation, as Act 1, then the audience would have been warmed up to face the cold hard agit-prop approach of the main event, Empire, an indictment of the role the United States plays in the modern world as a democratic equivalent of imperial dictatorships of the past.

Unfortunately, dramatically speaking, polemical theatre of this most uncompromising kind is its own worst enemy.  This is not to say that the information presented was unbelievable – in fact I would assume that especially among this ANU audience there would be few who had not known the critical works of Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky, or had not understood the importance of the revelations of  the whistle-blower Bradley Manning, or of the horror of the helicopter gunship’s murder of Reuters journalists in Baghdad.

As a history presentation, however, and including the taped conversations of US Air Force pilots during the Vietnam War and the sermons of John Winthrop, a founding father of the attitudes of Americans as he brought ‘civilisation’ to Massachusetts in the 17th Century, Empire might be a useful education piece for teenage students.

As a theatre production for a modern adult audience it was simplistic, lacking in subtlety, poorly structured, often basically boring.  The only highlights for me were the fact that I got to see the whole of the footage of the helicopter gunship episode, and I enjoyed the quality of the musicianship of the young student wind instrument players.

I can’t say I enjoyed very much of the acting performances, except for the spirited young woman who confronted Noam Chomsky.  This was almost the only occasion when something like real drama was happening – but only for a brief moment, as she left the scene in frustration and Chomsky remained in control of the intellectual battlefield.

The central conception of the play, with Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky as talking heads, espousing their political positions – quoting from their public writings and interviews – was not a bad idea in itself, but without any development of their personalities and how they may have dealt with the personal challenges they must, in real life, face, we are left with no more than cardboard cutouts.

It was disappointing, considering the artistic sensitivity and dramatic structure which characterised Graham Jones’ work in his earlier days as director and choreographer of the Kinetic Energy Dance Company, to see him decades later associated with such amateurish writing.  The art of expression through dance demands subtlety in movement without words, which was once Jones’ strength.  A drama with speaking characters demands a wholly different set of skills, to write and to perform.  Technically, too, the use of video, on a screen sometimes masked by the actors, and with confusing text above and below the image, or with far too lengthy slabs of chatroom text, showed a surprising failure in stage design.  I miss the dance Jones might have created, and would rather not have seen this quite embarrassing attempt at a play.

Bringing back A Chorus of Women to conclude the program might have worked better as the other bookend, if their first performance had been given its proper place.  But their entrance was disorganised, where it could have moved us smoothly on into a more positive note, as was clearly intended by encouraging us to sing along to When People Start to Sing (by Janet Salisbury and Johanna McBride) with the words “When people start to sing / Things are changing”.  The Women’s voices were strong and harmonious but there was no strength in the audience participation.

I could at this point launch into a lengthy essay on the tradition of agit-prop theatre, from  Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Schweik, through to Erwin Piscator’s success in 1920s Germany in having his middle-class audiences enthusiastically singing revolutionary songs after shows including film of war-time atrocities, and on, of course, to the famous Bertolt Brecht in plays such as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

I have no doubts about the sincerity and honesty of Graham Jones and Jepke Goudsmit.  These are necessary but unfortunately not sufficient conditions for the production of successful theatre.  Like mercy, the quality of good theatre is not to be “strain’d, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven...”  In doing so it enlightens and persuades, as some of the poetry and singing did last night, but the raging storm of Empire certainly left me cold.

Diva Sheila, the Eco Diva: Takin’ it to The Street by Kate Hosking

Diva Sheila, the Eco Diva: Takin’ it to The Street by Kate Hosking.  Lighting by Kelly McGannon.  At The Street 2, Canberra, November 8-10, 2012.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 8

Brave and honest are my keywords tonight: brave because she is honest.  In her story-telling sequences, Kate Hosking leaves herself with few of the protections (and none of the pretensions) of an actor playing a role defined by a script, since her words are her own about herself; while in singing her own songs and interpreting songs by others, her arrangements and accompaniment on double bass make her performance highly personal – and original.

Takin’ it to The Street is intimate theatre, chamber theatre, almost boudoir theatre.  The Street 2, small as it is, was rather too cavernous for this work.  So it took a little while for us to come to terms with the intimacy.  It was, I think, the quiet, angry-sad quality of her rendition of I was only 19 (by John Schumann) that drew us in to Hosking’s depth of feelings about the world she has grown up in – our world, of course.

I last reviewed Kate Hosking in The Jigsaw Company’s play for children Pearl Verses the World (May 19, 2012) where her performance was very effective within the conventional frame of acting.  As Diva Sheila, she has created a role which hovers on the tight-rope between acting and reality.  Her balance is impressive.  Her voice has a great range, in this show concentrated on a blues style which allows her feelings to play out through the lyrics.  There is a maturity in this work which augurs well for a continuing career already backed by a decade of international world music performances.

In her program, as a kind of subtitle to her work, she has written “Sometimes it takes a character bigger than yourself to say what’s on your mind”.  Diva Sheila is never too big for Kate Hosking’s high-heeled shoes.  They fit very well together. 

Diva Sheila is another success of The Hive, The Street Theatre’s writers’ development program.

MELISSA MANCHESTER

 

 

 

Canberra Southern Cross Club,

3rd November 2012.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

“I’m a singer who writes songs”, Melissa Manchester told me before she arrived back in Australia for her current tour, and what a superb singer she turned out to be.

 For her concert at The Canberra Southern Cross Club Melissa Manchester offered a fascinatingly eclectic program which paid homage to her many collaborators, among them Carole Bayer Sager, Burt Bacharach, Marvin Hamlish, Kenny Logins and Peter Allen.

Though at her peak as a hit-maker in the 70’s and 80’s, Manchester is still a very fine singer, with a warm, throaty voice, and the ability to make every song an intimate conversation between singer and audience. It came, therefore, as little surprise when she confided that, between tours, she lectures in “The Art of Conversational Singing” at the University of Southern California.  Her mastery of the lyric was immediately obvious from her very opening number, a gently, welcoming rendition of “I’ll Know You by Your Heart”.

This was  followed with one of her best known songs, the Academy Award nominated theme from  the film “Ice Castles”, “Looking Through the Eyes of Love”, sung against a filmed background of edited shots from the movie, together with some footage of her singing it accompanied by Marvin Hamlish and a symphony orchestra. The effect was both magical and moving.

Later in the concert she again featured a cleverly edited filmed backing as she sang an arrangement of “Memories” and “You’ve Got a Friend”, accompanied on film by Barry Manilow, with whom she engaged in friendly banter as they sang.

For the rest of the program she was accompanied by a four-piece instrumental combo of two guitars, drums and keyboards, plus an excellent backing singer, which she joined on occasion, as for her rocky arrangement of “Just Too Many People”, to play and sing from the piano.

She didn’t feature only her own songs though, and among the surprises was the original Ella Fitzgerald up-tempo arrangement of “Lady Be Good” complete with scat chorus, and a sultry, tongue-in-cheek version of the song made popular by The Ronettes, “Be My Baby”.   

However it was her own catalogue that the audience had come to hear and  she didn’t disappoint, offering  gloriously heartfelt versions  of Carole Bayer Sager’s “Come In From The Rain” and “Don’t Cry Out Loud”, and  a song which she wrote with Kenny Loggins, “Whenever I  Call You Friend”. There were also definitive versions of her two biggest hits “Midnight Blue” and “You Should See How She Talks About You”. 

Of course the audience screamed for an encore, and again she surprised. This time with a tribute to singer Dusty Springfield, with a delightfully raunchy version of “Son of a Preacher Man”.

Melissa Manchester has promised to return to Australia in the not-too-distant future. If she does, don’t miss the opportunity to hear her sing her songs in person. It’s a truly memorable experience.

Bare Witness by Mari Lourey

Bare Witness by Mari Lourey.  Performing Lines and the Bare Witness Company, directed by Nadja Kostich, designed by Marg Horwell, soundscape and music composed and played by Kristin Rule, lighting by Emma Valente, video by Michael Carmody, at The Street Theatre, Canberra, November 6-10, 2012.


Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 6

Immediately outside the auditorium is a small colourful sign saying “Thank you.  We hope you enjoyed the show”.  Ironic, even shocking, on this occasion.  Bare Witness is not meant to be ‘enjoyed’, but appreciated – for its theatrical inventiveness and for its theme, questioning the role of the war-zone photojournalist.

The structure of the play is simple in concept: we are watching a slide show in reverse, from Photograph 011 to Photograph 001, of pictures taken by photojournalist Dannie as she recalls and reacts to the memories surrounding each shot, from places and wartimes like Bosnia, Chechnya, East Timor.

Her picture of a blinded woman who did not know she was being photographed sells worldwide, establishing Dannie’s career, leading to international awards, while keeping her on the move.  Despite calls home to Australia when Dannie can squeeze them in, her mother keeps the seriousness of her illness secret.  When Dannie discovers her mother has died, she has been away from home for five years, obsessed with seeking out the best shot.

The ultimate photo is probably based on the execution by the Taliban of Daniel Pearl in 2002.

In the background, the video material is not straight documentary, but imagery obliquely relevant, such as of dogs – the dogs of war.  The soundscape is created amazingly by Kristin Rule using an amplified cello for both music and sound effects which complement each situation and mood.  The action is tightly choreographed stylised movement and voice, in a set and lighting which re-creates the image of photographing in war conditions.

The result is ‘total theatre’ – imagist in form, creating moods all the way from excitement (at winning prizes or selling pics to news agencies), wild release (when photojournalists meet together in some remote hotel), love (even in the midst of terror), respect (for each other’s professionalism), despair (in the face of impossible dilemma).

Australia is justly proud of its tradition of physical theatre, and this recent play is an excellent example.  For me some of the imagery was a bit too obscure, and I found the women (Daniela Farinacci as Dannie, and Eugenia Fragos as Violetta) much clearer to understand compared to the men whose diction was not as definite as my hearing needed.  But all the cast (the men were Adam McConvell as Jack, Todd MacDonald as Jacek and Ray Chong Nee as Jose) worked perfectly together in what was often as much a dance company as an acting company.

This is original work, coming out of the long-standing Melbourne theatrical culture, and very much appreciated – a very worthwhile inclusion in The Street’s program.