It’s not that I started musing on the art of keeping it
moving during Bruce Hoogendorn’s funny and insightful Warts and All.* I’ve been
grumbling about the need for shows to not hold up the action for some
considerable time now. Years, in
fact.
But a couple of things triggered further reverie. One was
Warts and All. The other was the sublime Sitkovetsky Trio in concert for Musica
Viva.
In classical music there are pauses between the movements of
a symphony or a concerto. It’s not over yet and everyone knows it but the
pauses are always marked by discrete shifting in seats and dealing with a
cough. Not, as a general rule, talking. It’s a pause but not the end. The
instruments might get a little bit of adjusting but the thread is held.
The Sitkovetsky Trio signalled both the end of the movement
and the end of the whole piece with particularly fine sweeping flourishes of
the bow. (This was particularly
handy in the Carl Vine piece as it was new.) The audience, well trained in the
conventions of the concert hall, responded with equal grace and did not let go
of the line until the piece was properly finished.
Theatre can be rather different.
Now Warts and All certainly shows Hoogendoorn’s growing
adroitness with a particular brand of wry local comedy.
Simon (Will Huang) is laid up with osteoarthritis of the
knees at his granny’s house in Queensland, contemplating the ruin of a
promising running career. He hasn’t done too well with year 12 in Canberra
either, so he’s staying with his grandmother (Helen Vaughan-Roberts) while he
regroups. Enter (via an impressive trick wardrobe) a truculent whistle blowing
ghost of uncertain identity from the family’s past (Rob de Fries).
Grandma Margaret is trying to get Simon interested in family
history so this is a helpful if alarming turn of events. Also alarming is the
arrival of her overbearing cousin Alice (Oliver Baudert) and Kirsty (Adellene Fitzsimmons), her
granddaughter with eye rolling attitude. There are clearly family secrets and
local historian Dotty (Elaine Noon) may know more than she’s letting on.
The twists in the plot were pleasingly not predictable and
the dialogue was often snappily funny, particularly in the deft hands of
Vaughan-Roberts and De Fries. Baudert did a bravura turn as Alice, Noon bumbled
well as Dotty (the name tells all), Fitzsimmons was sharp as Kirsty and Huang
made a likable Simon, in the end well on his way to a necessary resilience concerning
life.
But staging needs to keep the audience focussed and the
bugbear of the blackout, complete with long moments while stagehands in black
reposition furniture and props persists round Canberra’s shows. Here the
blackouts were many and threatened to hold up the action of what should have
been be a swift comedy.
The audience was being let off the hook to the point where
some of my neighbours actually started conversations. Sotto voce to be sure and
of course according to polite Western audience conventions they should not really
have been doing it. But the blackouts were allowing that level of relaxation
and a drop in audience energy.
A shame because the play was funny and local and perceptive
about the complications of families.
Solutions? Keep it tight. Minimise what has to be shifted. Minimise
what is on stage. Some shows use characters to move things. Some dress the
stagehands in appropriate costume. I once saw a student Importance of Being
Earnest where the set changes were choreographed and done with a flourish by
the servants. (Stage hands in
costume. Now there’s a thought. But probably better in a musical.)
Above all, give some thought to minimalism when it comes to
props and furniture. The long lists of both at the back of all of those
French’s Acting Editions have much to answer for in forming ideas of how
staging can be made to work and in any case are often based on a West End or
Broadway premiere with resources like revolves and fly towers.
Start the next scene as soon as the previous one finishes. Think
film. Think Shakespeare. If the action does require a snap black out then move
on as fast as possible into what happens next, perhaps by putting it on another
part of the stage. Use the lighting device of the cross fade to pull the
audience’s attention elsewhere, preferably to where the next scene is starting. Anything to stop the action being held up. And anything to
stop those in the audience who suddenly feel obliged to chat.
(Upon which last point I was intrigued to find The Canberra
Theatre has guides to theatre etiquette on its web site.
Of course if you go to foreign parts and sample some kinds
of performance you will find all bets are off in terms of the above. Love the
hill tribe shows in Chiang Mai where a piece will just suddenly stop dead for
no apparent reason, leaving a couple of hundred Spanish, German, English and
Australian tourists not knowing when to applaud. Or if.
The Sitkovetsky Trio was secure in the power of the concert
hall’s conventions. Warts and All was
very secure in the writing and the acting but needed to do more with its
staging by doing less. As for the hill tribe performers, I do not yet presume
to know.
*Warts and All. Written and directed by Bruce Hoogendoorn.
The Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre. April 2-12 2014.
An update of links to
recent Canberra Times reviews:
*Please note that Liza One Note in Forbidden Broadway was
performed by Halimah Kyrgios. This was the
reviewer’s error.
Alanna Maclean
