Low Pay? Don't Pay!

 

Low Pay? Don’t Pay! New translation by Joseph Farrell of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! by Dario Fo.  
Canberra REP November 20 – December 6, 2025

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 21

An uproarious new version of Dario Fo's frenetic farce Can't Pay? Won't Pay! which, although set in Italy, has an all too familiar ring to it. Housewives Antonia and Margherita, fed up with high prices in the supermarket, take matters into their own hands and start shoplifting. Keen to keep their light-fingered antics from their husbands, Giovanni and Luigi - not to mention the police - the women are forced to resort to more and more inventive hiding places, and more and more elaborate cover stories, in this legendary comedy. Nobel prize winner Dario Fo [was] Italy's leading contemporary playwright, renowned for his hilarious satires including Accidental Death of an Anarchist. He has re-written his classic farce Can't Pay? Won't Pay! to take into account the global banking crisis and this translation, by world-leading Fo scholar Joseph Farrell, hints at UK current affairs too, including the credit crunch and MPs' expenses scandal. Although first written in 1970, this updated farce is still very relevant to today's state of affairs. (https://www.amazon.sg/Low-Pay-Dont/dp/140813103X) 

Directed by Cate Clelland
Written by Dario Fo, translation by Joseph Farrell (Hachette 2010)

CAST
Maddie Lee – Toni        Chloe Smith – Maggie
Lachlan Abrahams – Joe    Rowan McMurray – Lou 
Antonia Kitzel – The  Actor 

Ensemble
Ben Zolfaghari - Stephanie van Lieshout - Ariana Barzinpour - Georgie Bianchini Rucha Tathavadkar - Sterling Notley - Rosemary Gibbons - Paul Jackson

CREATIVES
Cate Clelland: Set Designer; Stephen Still: Lighting Design
Neville Pye: Sound Design; Darcy Abrahams: Costume Design
Rosemary Gibbons: Properties Coordinator
Russell Brown OAM I Special properties construction

PRODUCTION
David Goodbody: Stage Manager: John Stead: Production Manager
Lachlan Ruffy: Assistant Director; Russell Brown OAM: Set Coordinator Elizabeth Goodbody: FoH Coordinator & Council liaison
TEAMS
Sets: Russell Brown OAM, Andrew Kay, Brian Moir, Wolfgang Hecker,
Eric Turner, John Klingberg
Wardrobe:Darcy Abrahams, Wardrobe Wenches
Lighting: Anne Gallen, Ashley Pope, Lennard Duck, Liz de Totth Sound: Andrea Garcia, Imogen Holland, John Maguire
Properties & Set Dressing: Rosemary Gibbons
Stage Crew: Emily Backhouse, Julie Barnes, Mae Schembri
Front of House: REP members & volunteers
Artwork & Promotons: Tiana Johannis Design, Helen Drum
Marketing: Victoria Dixon, Helen Drum 
Program: Helen Drum 
Promotional & Foyer Images: Ross Gould, Victoria Dixon


https://socialistworker.co.uk/obituaries/dario-fo-a-committed-revolutionary-who-stood-against-the-state 2016 

Italian dramatist Dario Fo, who has died at the age of 90, was one of the great artistic and political revolutionaries of the 20th and 21st centuries.

His death has prompted hollow eulogies from some members of the Italian ruling class. Make no mistake, however, the bourgeoisie despised Fo and the feeling was entirely mutual.

Fo’s great plays, such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! and Mistero Buffo (a one-man piece that confirmed Fo’s brilliance as an actor), are both spectacularly funny and savage in their satire of the rich and powerful.

So what on earth are all these people in the Canberra Repertory Theatre, based in the centre of Australian Government, doing?

Do they really support a Socialist Workers’ Revolution?  

You could certainly think so when the lead actors, Maddie Lee as Toni, Chloe Smith as Maggie, Lachlan Abrahams  as Toni’s husband Joe and Rowan McMurray as Maggie’s husband Lou, actually managed to make us believe in their characters, and even feel sorry for their plight as ordinary workers and wives in our world of continuous inflation, despite the absolutely zany, and therefore very funny, plot.

This is because of the clever way director Cate Clelland has combined an absurdist style of choreographed group work for the workers like police, council workers and so on – led by Antonia Kitzel – with the desperate attempts by the two couples to make sense of it all.

Then the moment finally comes where we understand the point of it all as our set of characters meld back in time with the backdrop picture of the Italian workers Dario Fo originally presented in 1976.

In other words, the message is, nothing has changed.  We can’t forget the intensity of people’s struggle to find toilet paper in 2007.

I don’t know how many REP members are public servants.  Enough I hope to cause more than a laugh or two in the appropriate policy departments in working out ways not only to better balance economic inequality, but also to manage zero damaging emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere before our world becomes even more impossible to live in than Dario Fo imagined.

Low Pay? Don’t Pay! is the kind of ‘comedy’ which must not be missed.

LOW PAY? DON'T PAY!

Written by Dario Fo

Translated by Joseph Farrell

Directed by Cate Clelland

Canberra Rep Production

Canberra Rep Theatre, Acton to 6 December

 

Reviewed by Len Power 21 November 2025

 

It’s a night of total lunacy as the cast of “Low Pay? Don’t Pay!” tackle Dario Fo’s 1974 Italian farcical comedy about a consumer backlash to ever-increasing prices. While it’s all madness on the surface, Fo was unrelenting and unapologetic in his criticism of political and social issues. His style might be crazy, noisy and non-realistic, but the influences of commedia dell’arte, farce and medieval traveling theatre are clearly apparent in his work.

Fo’s work was ferociously attacked at the time, but he was eventually the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature. His plays have been translated into many languages and performed internationally. The title of the original English translation of his play in 1975 by Lino Pertile, “Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!” has passed into the English language.

Fo encouraged producers and directors of his plays to change the setting to suit their circumstances, so, although the original setting for the play was Milan, Italy, the director of this production, Cate Clelland, has set it in Canberra, which works fine.

From the opening noisy demonstration in front of a supermarket, the action is broadly played by two couples, Joe and Toni, Maggie and Lou and an eight-member ensemble. There is also The Actor, a rather mysterious character.

The whole cast are clearly having fun playing the high-speed, farcical elements of the plot. If it seems a bit uneven at times, it really doesn’t matter. It’s the ideas and messages being presented that matter most in this play. Antonia Kitzel, though, gave a clever performance as the various characters of The Actor.

This production provides an opportunity to experience the work of one of the most influential playwrights of his time. It’s knockabout fun with strong messages underneath. I wonder what Fo would be saying about grocery prices now?

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

 

The Almighty Sometimes

 

The Almighty Sometimes by Kendall Feaver. Off the Ledge Theatre co-presented by The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, 19-22 November 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 20

Cast and Creative Team

Anna – Winsome Ogilvie
Renee – Elaine Noon
Oliver – Robert Kjellgren
Vivienne – Steph Roberts

Director/Lighting Designer – Lachlan Houen
Stage Manager – Lucy van Dooren
Set/Costume Designer – Caitlin Baker
Sound Designer/Composer – Marlene Radice
Movement Director – Kristy Griffin
Costuming & Marketing Assistant – Liv Boddington
Voice & Text Coach - Sarah Chalmers


Theatre off the ledge is exactly the right way of thinking about this remarkable production of The Almighty Sometimes.  Winsome Ogilvie enacts Anna’s continuous likelihood of emotional collapse in such detail in action, voice and expression of her feelings that one is amazed at her capacity and flexibility as an actor – while also feeling so sorry for Anna caught in the impossible confusion of her mother’s doing everything “right” and maybe even more than might be expected, for her child’s benefit.

Now, legally an adult, what will become of Anna?  What was was her “illness” in the first place.  Something we call ADHD I suspect.  As a young child she became an irrepressible story writer, but after her encouraging father died, her mother sought help to, essentially, calm her down and have treatment so that Anna’s obvious intelligence could be directed into her education.  As a teacher herself, this seemed sensible to Renee.

To quote Off the Ledge Theatre: Winner of the Judges’ Award in the prestigious Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting (UK) and the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Prizes for Drama, Kendall Feaver’s captivating play is a profound and compelling study of a young woman trying to discover where her illness ends and her identity begins.
 
As a teacher myself, I wondered if the issue of classifying some behaviours as illnesses, justifying drug treatments as the psychiatrist Vivienne – played very straight by Steph Roberts – does, was from the author’s personal experience.  

A fascinating interview in The Saturday Paper in 2020 (at https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/theatre/2020/11/28/playwright-kendall-feaver/160648200010780) doesn’t reveal the answer, but the importance of the play being presented – which I am sure The Q recognises – is that Anne’s experience, through to what seems to be no more than an isolated life in a ‘home’ from the age of 20, is that it makes a medical/political issue become real.  Made worse by how her blunt behaviour has ruined her possible relationship with old school friend Oliver.

Presenting The Almighty Sometimes is a valuable community contribution by the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre and Off The Ledge Theatre to the Australian Capital region.  Canberra has often led new developments in education.  With the expansion of social media on the internet, parent, teacher and children relationships are changing, and creating new and fraught issues, with attempts at control by banning phones in the classroom and even at school at all, and limiting social media accounts to over 16s.

I hope that this production’s short run can be followed by presentation on tour, hopefully with a secondary school program component.  

Establishing one’s identity, always the central concern for teenagers, is what this play is about, and it should not be missed.  I have my own memories as a 7-year-old boy who wrote poetry, and how I was treated - though long before modern psychiatry, no-one thought to class me as ill.  I got my own back when I got into Uni - the only one in my all boys' school class to choose to answer the poetry question.  So there!

Photos supplied:

Psychiatry session with Vivienne

Meeting up again with Oliver

Fraught lunchtime episode

 

One of the worst moments with mother
The Almighty Sometimes
by Kendall Feaver. Off the Ledge Theatre 2025

 

 

 

 

THE ALMIGHTY SOMETIMES

Written by Kendall Feaver

Directed by Lachlan Houen

Off the Ledge Theatre and Q The Locals production

Q Theatre, Queanbeyan to 22 November

 

Reviewed by Len Power 19 November 2025

 

Being an adolescent is hard enough without also dealing with a cocktail of pills that were prescribed to treat a severe childhood mental illness. Would life be better and maybe more exciting and fulfilling without the medication?

That is the question that eighteen year old Anna is grappling with in the play by Australian playwright, Kendall Feaver. This award-winning play looks at this young woman’s struggle to find the true identity which her medication may be masking. The effect on her, and those around her, raises serious issues in this thought-provoking play.

Winsome Ogilvie as Anna

Winsome Ogilvie gives a fine performance in the central and demanding role of Anna. The highs and lows of her character’s struggle are carefully judged and always believable. It’s a compelling and memorable study of a young woman trying to find herself.

Elaine Noon as Renee, the mother

Elaine Noon is very effective as the protective mother, Renee, who has difficulty in relating to her daughter as an adult. Steph Roberts gives a nicely edgy performance of Anna’s long-term doctor who keeps her distance professionally. As Anna’s tentative boyfriend, Robert Kjellgren deftly plays the confusion of youth as well someone trying to understand and deal with Anna’s behaviour.

 Director, Lachlan Houen, has obtained fine, in-depth performances from his cast in this highly emotional drama. It is thoughtfully staged and well-paced. The set by Caitlin Baker simply but effectively fills the large stage at the Q Theatre and her costumes for the cast have been well-chosen.

This is a good production of a compelling play. It’s confronting and makes you think but it’s also a play with humour, heart and a sense of optimism.

 

Photos by PHOTOX

 

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

 

  

The Dingo’s Noctuary

 Illustrated Verse Novel Book Review : Brian Rope

The Dingo’s Noctuary - an illustrated verse novel : Judith Nangala Crispin

Published by Puncher & Wattmann, 18 November 2025

Hardcover (88 colour plates)

ISBN: 9781923099715

COVER IMAGE: Ascending Being 1 - Martin dreams a barn owl into being, over Mt Jillamatong, on a night of flying saucers and stars.

Lumachrome glass print, chemigram, cliche-verre and drawing. Road-killed Eastern Barn Owl, sand, graphite, wax and ink on fibre paper. Exposed 32 hours in a geodesic dome.

In 2021 I read that Judith Nangala Crispin was a successful poet and lens-based visual artist working between Yuendumu in Australia’s Northern Territory and regional New South Wales. Her photography was centred on Lumachrome Glass printing, a cameraless method she developed using elements of early photochemistry. She has two published poetry collections. Her visual art has been exhibited and published internationally.

Prior to that, Crispin also had a stellar academic career in music, winning international prizes for composition, and teaching internationally. Much of her writing is centred around the experience of searching for her Bpangerang ancestry.

Her new novel, The Dingo’s Noctuary, explores themes of identity, belonging, and the fragile threads that connect all living beings. “At the heart of the tale is a soul’s dark night, the flight of a lady motorcyclist, in the prime of her invisibility, and her mongrel Lajamanu dingo Moon (found alone in the desert at four weeks old and infested with mange), into the Tanami desert. She’s searching for a caravan of miraculous dog-headed beings, glimpsed in dreams and the dementia tales of an old desert lady.”

It was written over thirty-seven desert crossings, sometimes on the motorcycle with the dog on the back. The entire second half of the book was written on a typewriter after a motorcycle crash (the unsuccessful 37th crossing) left Crispin unable to use a computer.

Warlpiri jarntu/warnapari, dingo-dog, wild born on Warlpiri lands,

Kirndangi Jampijinpa, or “Moon”, on the motorcycle pillion (in K9 moto-cockpit)

 

Work from The Dingo’s Noctuary has already received prizes, including the 2023 Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the 2020 Blake Prize for Poetry. Images and texts from the book were included in a Lunar Codex time-capsule which was deposited on the moon in 2024.

The list of Contents indicates there will be 43 Noctuary entries, interspersed with 10 Visions and 2 poems on a Murder at Wave Hill. All are set within three sections – Wormwood (which explains this is not a fairy story), Abyss of the Birds and Astreides.

There are many quotes throughout this book. An early one – in the First Noctuary (journal) Entry – sets a wonderful scenario for anyone investigating their family connections: “There are spider-strings”, she told me. In a strange arachnid lisp, “connecting us to everyone we’ve ever loved.” The author proceeds to tell us “When the lie unravels it takes your breath away.” The entry closes by telling us the journal will be a Noctuary, a record of things passing by night. Now we know what we have commenced reading – hopefully exploring the contents.

Ascending Being 18 - All the dead night spiders, flying around in new bodies, over a bioluminescent sea.

 

Lumachrome glass print and chemigram. Eight dead huntsman spiders with copper chloride and acid on fibre paper. Exposed 24 hours with electric current.

The story unfolds through combinations of poetry and prose, alongside beautiful visual images - accurate hand drawn maps of the Australian central deserts, numerous pressings of rare plants, and forty-seven of the artist’s extraordinary lumachrome glass print creations, afterlife portraits of animals and birds, which many have already enjoyed in galleries, or her social media and website.

Cassini - Star Map 1

Ascending Being 5 -  After the highway, the lights, the cool dark wind that moved him, Murat, somewhere in that gigantic night, discovered a door.

Lumachrome glass print, cliche-verre, chemigram. Road-killed Quokka, with ochre, wax, vegemite, pollen, bark, seeds and sand. Exposed 2 hours in WA, 26 hours in NSW in a perspex box.

 

Land Map 2 (Duck Ponds to Newmont Mine)

 

Ascending Being 23  - Mother lost to trucks, it was cold, and the night raining stars. Henry left the

highway, following songlines across the great dividing range, to the sky country of kangaroos.

Lumachrome glass print, chemigram. Frozen newborn joey on fibre paper, 36 hours in very cold conditions, mist and winter light.

All of this sets the pace of reading, causes us to pause, reread, review, consider the words or image or both – before resuming, continuing to absorb the story, recalling what we have previously read or heard about major events such as the Wave Hill walk-off. Sometimes a few dots or dashes - or a dividing line between sections of the story - cause us to review what we have just explored or to ask ourselves what else might have been included there. This is all good - pausing and contemplating should ensure we read meanings, not just words.

Pressed Plant 7 (Bats Wing Coral Tree, Erythrina Vespertilio)

Ascending Being 39 - Lily returns to Altair, the brightest of Aquila’s stars, wearing the body of a crow.

Lumachrome glass print, cliché-verre. Roadkill crow, ochres & dandelion seeds on fibre paper. Exposed 32 hours in autumn light under brushed perspex.

 

Following the final journal entry, there is additional material - more pressed plant images, a list of desert birds, and chapter notes. The enormous task is completed - assembled comprehensively into a superb volume.

A longer version of this review, plus information about a way to support the community that supported her whilst she was writing the book, is available on the author’s blog here.

BROADWAY - National Capital Orchestra

 

Louis Sharpe and the National Capital Orchestra in Snow Concert Hall

Snow Concert Hall, November 16^th, 2025 - Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

Having just been awarded by the Canberra Critics Circle for its consistent quality of performance in presenting challenging repertoire and playing new Australian compositions, the National Capital Orchestra rounded out a successful year by presenting a dazzling concert in the Snow Concert Hall.

Although it didn’t include any Australian compositions, Sunday’s concert certainly demonstrated the orchestra’s mastery of challenging repertoire.

Louis Sharpe conducting the National Capital Orchestra in Snow Concert Hall

Under the enthusiastic baton of its musical director, Louis Sharpe, who also doubled as a jovial compere, the orchestra of nearly 80 musicians was a spectacular sight as it launched into a lush arrangement by Robert Russell Bennett of the overture from the Jule Styne musical, Funny Girl.

Then followed a feast of music from landmark musicals commencing with a rousing rendition by guest artists Joe Dinn and Jared Newall of "Agony" from the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods and followed with a delightful rendition of Harold Arlen’s "Over the Rainbow" by Alira Prideaux.

Joe Dinn  - Alira Predeaux - Jared Newall - performing "Do-Re-Mi" in Broadway".

It was interesting to hear songs written for female artists but performed by male singers for this concert when Jared Newall offered,"You’ll Never Walk Alone" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, and Joe Dinn sang "Memory" from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.

Compositions by Leonard Bernstein ended the first half of the program in sensational style when Alira Prideaux took the stage in a dazzling red sequined gown to perform a virtuosic rendition of "Glitter and Be Gay" from Candide; following which the National Capital Orchestra thrilled with a stunning performance of selections from Bernstein’s West Side Story arranged by Jack Mason, which left the auditorium abuzz.

How did they top that? Well may you ask.  

Selections from Lerner & Loewe’s, My Fair Lady, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s, Phantom of the Opera and Schonberg & Boublil’s, Les Misérables, superbly sung by the three guest artists, is part of the answer.

But Louis Sharpe still had some aces up his sleeve in the form of brilliant orchestral arrangements of music from the Stephen Schwartz musical, Wicked, arranged by Ted Ricketts, and a gorgeous new arrangement by Marcus Martin of the spectacular "Waltz" from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, Carousel, both thrillingly performed by the orchestra.

Apart from the sheer pleasure of hearing the orchestral items so stylishly performed with thrilling precision and attention to detail by an orchestra of this size, there was also pleasure in marvelling at how sensitively the orchestra accompanied the vocal items, and the care taken by Sharpe to insure that the soloists lyrics were not lost in the orchestral sound, particularly evident in Jared Newall’s beautifully nuanced rendition of "The Music of the Night", and the lovely duet, "All I Ask of You", sung by Alira Prideaux, and both from Phantom of the Opera.  

Zahra Zulkapli performing "On My Own"

For the penultimate act of the concert Sharpe introduced a final guest artist in the form of fourteen-year-old Zahra Zulkapli who wowed the audience with her flawless rendition of "On My Own" from Les Misérables. She then joined the rest of the cast, the orchestra, and the audience, in a heartfelt rendition of "Do You Hear the People Sing", from the same musical, which brought a memorable concert to its rousing conclusion.

 

                                                          Photos by Peter Hislop

               This review first published in the digital edition of CITY NEWS on 17.11.25

 

Equus by Peter Shaffer - Free Rain Theatre

 

Equus by Peter Shaffer.  Free Rain Theatre Company at The Hub, Kingston, Canberra, 12 - 22 November, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Nov 14

CAST

Martin Dysart – Arran McKenna

Alan Strang – Jack Shanahan

Dora Strang – Janie Lawson

Frank Strang/Harry Dalton – Bruce Hardie

Hesther Salomon – Crystal Mahon

Nugget/Horseman – Sam Thomson

Jill Mason – Lily Welling

Nurse - Caitlin Bissett

Horses – Jamie Johnston, Finlay Forrest, Samara Glesti, Bianca Lawson, Robert Wearden

    

CREATIVES

    Director – Anne Somes
    Associate Director – Crystal Mahon
    Movement Director – Amy Campbell
    Set Design – Cate Clelland
    Director of Marketing – Olivia Wenholz


The drama Equus, based on a true report of a young man stabbing the eyes out of horses, is at its heart about a professional highly-regarded child psychologist becoming doubtful about the legitimacy of his work. 

Anne Somes’ production is top-class in design and acting quality – proof once again of the value of The Hub in our community.

Wikipedia records: The narrative centres on religious and ritual sacrifice themes, as well as the manner in which Strang constructs a personal theology involving the horses and the godhead "Equus". Alan sees the horses as representative of God and confuses his adoration of his "God" with sexual attraction. Also important is Shaffer's examination of the conflict between personal values and satisfaction and societal mores, expectations, and institutions, and between Apollonian and Dionysian values and systems.

For me, now 50 years on from the first production of Equus, personal confusion about one’s “God” and sexual attraction – which makes the play powerfully dramatic – is not the personal issue.  Canberra is replete with professionals, whose doubts about Apollonian and Dionysian values and systems make the character of Martin Dysart the one we can identify with.  

At a more purely bureaucratic level, consider the years of conflict and emotional confusion in the life of whistle-blower Derek Elias, assistant secretary for regional processing contracts in the Department of Home Affairs since 2019, reported in detail this very day as I write, November 15, 2025, in The Saturday Paper.

While the blatant male nudity in the final scene of Equus is no longer surprising and certainly not as controversial as it was in 1973, it brings to light Dysart’s dilemma.  He has engineered his patient into acting out what really did happen when he and the girl who worked with him in the horse stables met, presumably for his first sexual experience.  We experience watching how a young man’s twisted imagination, worshipping his all-knowing “god” named Nuggety, leads to emotional disaster and the blinding of the horse.

This is drama at its most demanding of our sympathy, even empathy if we dare, especially in close-up in the intimate space of The Hub.

So, what does Martin Dysart worship?  Not a horse, but the belief that he can really make a deluded child patient become normal – whatever “being normal” means.

This is where the writing skill of Peter Shaffer comes into play.  The essence of great theatre, as we all know from Shakepeare, is universality.  We all have our Nuggety.

Mine was my worship of the two young lads in autocratic Portugal who publicly raised a toast to freedom, leading to the establishment of Amnesty International in 1961.  In 2004 I represented Amnesty on the Australian Government Working Group responding, as Australia was required to do, at the end of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education.

In the meantime I came to understand the necessity of the Arts – and in my case Drama and Theatre – in education, as basic to the understanding and practice of human rights.  It’s fair to say, I guess, that though my 33 years as a full-time professional teacher, trying often to achieve Martin Dysart’s aims in my own way, ended in 1995 as prostate cancer made its play – I’m still a human rights educator through drama as a nowadays unpaid reviewer.

So Equus means a great deal to me, even if I look around and wonder if Amnesty International is still as great a god for good in the confusing world of self-induced climate change, as I had hoped when I turned 20 in 1961.

See Free Rain’s Equus, find your Nuggety, and open your eyes to world betterment.

 

Lily Welling as Jill Mason – Jack Shanahan as Alan Strang