SandSong

 

SandSong – Stories from the Great Sandy Desert.  Bangarra Dance Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre July 15 – 17, 2021.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 15


SandSong is a major work of celebration tinged with sadness, the four seasons representing the history of the people.  

The dance is a drama of the establishment of ancient Indigenous culture, seemingly against the odds in cold and dry Makurra when “Time and space collide in a cloud of black collective consciousness”;
 
of new cultural understanding in the hot and dry Parranga – a “meditation on fragility, survival, balance, knowledge, life and death;
 
of the strength of culture needed in the time of Kartiya – the invasion of the land and the “lawlessness of a new frontier and the whims of station owners” when “people begin their new life…in servitude”;

of the determination in Yitilal, the Wet Season, by which “the spirit of people and place endures to stand strong in their kinship and belonging”.

The sadness?  “SandSong is our way of honouring and paying respect to our sister Ningali, to her People and Country” who “passed peacefully, surrounded by family and friends” in 2019 when “seriously ill in an Edinburgh hospital while on tour with Sydney Theatre Company’s production of The Secret River.”  Stephen Page and Frances Ring describe in their essay “Caring for Story” how they were able to “travel with Ningali’s family to Edinburgh to farewell and bring home our beautiful and irreplaceable friend.”

You may remember the impact of Ningali Lawford, as I do particularly for Solid,  a Black N'2 production for Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theatre by Ningali Lawford, Kelton Pell, Phil Thomson.  Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, 2001. (Review: Canberra Times, and available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au).

Solid ended in ironic humour with "How would you like your tea?  Black n'2 like you and me."

SandSong in dance is like the picture that hangs on my study wall: Wild Yam Dreaming by Annette Pitjara.  Just as dot painting and non-representational symbolic figures are ancient Australian forms of art which seem to be ‘modern art’ in the eyes of non-Indigenous viewers, so Bangarra’s dance – firmly based in the traditions of the Wangkatjungka and Walmajarri peoples of the Kimberley and Great Sandy Desert regions, the Lawford family’s people – integrates the ancient and ‘modern dance’ forms.

The effect then is not a focus on plot, not on linear story-line.  Each scene creates a mood, from images and movement, which take us along through experiencing living on this Country.  As in the painting, there are often small details of shape or action in the dance which an outsider may recognise as Aboriginal linked in with modern dance style.  Watching is to absorb the whole as an atmosphere.

Steve Francis’ sound is an eclectic gathering of songs, musique concrète and spoken word which makes an aural space for the dancers to perform in.

Following Bangarra’s 30 years of sixty five thousand, I see SandSong as a powerful symbolic representation of what it means to be Aboriginal – of the importance and place of Australia’s First Nations in the formation of our total culture, and therefore of central importance to us all.


Choreographers:
Stephen Page, Frances Rings and the Dancers of Bangarra Dance Theatre –

Rika Hamaguchi, Glory Tuohy-Daniell, Lillian Banks, Courtney Radford, Kassidy Waters, Maddison Paluch, Emily Flannery

Beau Dean Riley Smith, Rikki Mason, Baden Hitchcock, Ryan Pearson, Bradley Smith, Kallum Goolagong, Gusta Mara, Kiarn Doyle, Daniel Mateo

Cultural Consultants:
Putuparri Tom Lawford, Eva Nargoodah

Cultural Consultancy:
Wangkatjungka & Walmajarri Elders

Composer:
Steve Francis

Set Designer – Jacob Nash; Costume Designer – Jennifer Irwin; Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper; AV Designer – David Bergman; Rehearsal Director – Daniel Roberts; Aerial Movement Consultant – Joshua Thomson; Rigging Consultant – David Jackson; Lighting Realiser – Chris Twynam; Sound Recordist – Brendon Boney

Kimberley Country

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE PENELOPIAD

The Penelopiad 

Adapted from the novella and play by Margaret Atwood. Directed by Kate Blackhurst. Original music by Glenn Gore Phillips. Choreography by Brooke Thomas. Vocal coach Tony Turner. Set design by Cate Clelland. Costume design by Annie Kay. Sound design Neville Pye. Lighting design Stephen Still. Stage manager Imogen Thomas. A Crouching Giraffe Production in association with Papermoon Theatre. Courtyard Theatre. Canberra Theatre Centre. July 7 – 17 2021. 

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins 

Elaine Noon (Penelope) and cast of "The Penelopiad"

 

The Penelopiad, produced by Crouching Giraffe Productions in association with Papermoon Theatre and directed by Kate Blackhurst is in my opinion the most significant production that I have seen on a Canberra stage for quite some time. This may seem a grand claim, but Margaret Atwood’s retelling of Homer’s Iliad from the perspective of Odysseus’s deserted wife, Penelope, is a scathing attack on the treatment of women in a patriarchal society. Atwood sagaciously assails her audience with antithetical themes that resound with deafening universality. Justice and injustice, power and powerlessness, authority and servitude play out their universal conflict.

Penelope and her maids in The Penelopiad

 

Some may regard Penelope’s account of her experience during Odysseus’s long absence at the Trojan War as a feminist tract. Others may regard it as an indictment of gender politics that disadvantages the woman in a male dominated society. It is simply the story of Penelope’s life told from her afterlife existence in Hades. In the telling, Atwood entices her audience to consider, judge and reflect on the circumstances and fates of her characters, until we are left in no doubt that the innocent have been wronged and that power is manifest in the omnipotent men, including Penelope’s father who would have her drowned, the hero Odysseus, and the rapacious suitors. Atwood and Blackhurst observe the exception – the beauteous, vain Helen with the power to launch a thousand ships, perfectly played by Victoria Dixon, the sternly authoritative and manipulative Euryclea ( a thoroughly convincing performance byCarolyn Eccles ) and Penelope (Elaine Noon), who must eventually be compelled to use her wits and innate cunning to survive the suitors’ advances.

 

Kate Blackhurst’s direction is as tightly woven as the Grecian style tapestry hangings suspended as a striking atmospheric backdrop to Cate Clelland’s design. Blackhurst’s direction is sensitive, intelligent and imaginative and she is ably supported by Brooke Thomas’s ritualistic choreography , Glenn Gore Phillips’s original choral music and Neville Pye’s effective sound design. The production evokes the authentic feel of a Greek drama with a central character as narrator to the story and a chorus of women who comment on the action. Theirs is largely the commentary of gender politics perceived through the eyes of the twelve maids, cruelly hanged by Odysseus. Blackhurst and Thomas create a wonderful ensemble, expressing the power of Atwood’s tale through excellent choral work, carefully coached by Tony Turner and dythiramb song and dance in the tradition of Greek theatre. Also evoking the spirit of the Greek drama is the thespian-like emergence of the maids as principal characters in the drama. There are fine performances from Heidi Silberman as the heroic Odysseus, Carolyn Eccles as the domineering nurse, Eurycleia and Martha Russell as the arrogant young son Telemachus. Every aspect of this intelligently performed production of Atwood’s alternative perspectives is firmly rooted in research which informs the authenticity of the Greek art of storytelling. 

Martha Russell as Telemachus and

Carolyn Eccles as Eurycleia

 

Central to the success of the production is Elaine Noon’s performance as Penelope. Her Penelope is real, her recounting natural and appealing. From the naïve fifteen year old bride to the sexually awakened wife, the loving mother, the outsider in a foreign kingdom and the cunning survivor she unfolds her version of her unhappy plight. Noon’s performance is disarmingly natural. She presents a character, reflecting on her life with the awareness of hindsight. Noon relates Penelope’s narrative simply and with the emotional detachment made possible by reflection, until she becomes the protagonist, playing out Atwood’s reconstructed scenes. It is a balance that Noon convincingly commands, so that we are absorbed by her story and moved by her experience. The Three Fates have spun a tangled and unjust web for women, forced to construct their own art of survival. 

Atwood’s The Penelopiad casts the tale of heroes in a very different light, illuminated insightfully by Crouching Giraffe and Papermoon’s challenging and theatrically engrossing performance of this important alternative myth. This is theatre that confronts, challenges preconception and entertains. It would make Bertolt Brecht proud! 

Postscript: At the time of this production, America and Australia are considering the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, relinquishing their protection and the fate of women and children to the Taliban while opening the way to fearful consequence. Atwood’s call for gender equity and justice in The Penelopiad continues to reverberate through the ages to our present time.

POTTED POTTER - The Unauthorized Harry Experience

 

Tama Jarman and Adam Brown in "Potted Potter"

Written by Daniel Clarkson and Jeff Turner

Produced by James Seabright - Directed by Daniel Clarkson

Designed by Simon Scullion – Lighting designed by Tim Mascall

Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse – July 13^th to 18^th.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens.

Adam Brown and Tama Jarman in "Potted Potter"

This show could save you months of ploughing through J.K. Rowling’s books. On the other hand, it could inspire you to dig out those Harry Potter books and actually read them. However In the event that you actually have read them all, you might find yourself convulsing in paroxysms of laughter, as was the young man sitting beside your reviewer who looked hardly old enough to read, but happily confided at the end that he had read all seven books, and that the show was wonderful, thereby trumping this review.

This delightfully silly concoction, the brainchild of British writers, Daniel Clarkson and Jeff Turner, and directed by Clarkson for this 15^th Anniversary tour, and performed with obvious relish and unflagging enthusiasm by  talented New Zealanders, Adam Brown and Tama Jarman, takes on the challenge of condensing the storylines of all seven Harry Potter books into seventy-five minutes.

It’s a tall order, and only the most devoted Potterphiles (and there seemed to be a lot of them in the audience) would be able to make head or tail of the madcap antics of Brown and Jarman as they assumed a myriad of characters utilising an endless stream of ridiculous costumes and props, references to Broadway musicals and enthusiastic audience participation as they skated through the convoluted plots.

The audience was up for the challenge however and happily split into opposing camps of Slytherins and Gryffinders for an energetic bout of Quidditch, cheered on Draco Malfoy and actually recognised Albus Dumbledore and Hermione Granger among the weird assortment of characters.

Tama Jarman and Adam Brown in "Potted Potter"

Whether you’re a Harry Potter tragic or simply Potter-curios, you’ll find it hard to resist this inspired lunacy guaranteed to tickle the fancy from tiny’s to Dumbledore’s (who are very old indeed).

                                                                Photos supplied.

    This review also appears in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au.

POTTED POTTER

 

Created by Daniel Clarkson and Jeff Turner

Directed by Daniel Clarkson

Centrepoint Productions

The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre to 18 July

 

Reviewed by Len Power 13 July 2021

 

If you’re concerned that not having read the Harry Potter books will affect your enjoyment of “Potted Potter”, don’t worry.

Back in Canberra for a second season, this crazy show takes on the challenge of condensing all seven very big books of the Harry Potter series into 70 minutes.  Impossible?  Well, yes it is, of course, but that doesn’t stop the two very busy New Zealand actors, Adam Brown and Tama Jarman, from giving it their best shot and entertaining us in the process.

I have read the books and seen the movies so I did know the difference between a horcrux and a Hufflepuff.  There’s only one joke late in the play involving book six that works best if you know what’s about to happen in the story.  The apparently well-read audience I saw it with were on to the joke immediately, clueing the rest of the audience in.

Tama Jarman and Adam Brown

 

The two performers are both expert and appealing comedians with a highly developed sense of comic timing and the ability to involve an audience directly.  Adam Brown plays Harry Potter for most of the time and Tama Jarman plays nearly all of the other characters using a myriad of costumes and props changed with dizzying speed.

Jarman’s maniacal delivery is hilarious and he won the audience over immediately with his crazy antics and comical interactions with us.  Brown is equally amusing as Harry Potter and in his exasperation as the straight man dealing with Jarman’s whirlwind gallery of colourful characters from the books.  With dialogue delivered at such high speed, clarity of diction is very important and both actors can be heard clearly at all times.

The set, props and costumes have been well-designed by Simon Scullion.  The costume for the Golden Snitch is worth the price of the ticket alone!

The advertising for the show says it is suitable for all ages from six to Dumbledore (who is very old indeed).  Several children around me were clearly enthralled by the show and especially enjoyed the fast and furious game of Quidditch that the audience was invited to play along with the actors.  I think our team won.

 

This review was first published in the Canberra City News digital edition of 14 July 2021.

 

Len Power’s reviews are also broadcast on the Artsound FM 92.7 ‘In the Foyer’ program on Mondays and Wednesdays at 3.30pm.

 

This review is also published in Len Power’s blog ‘Just Power Writing’ at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

 

 

 

POTTED POTTER

Potted Potter The Unauthorized Harry Potter experience.

 Written and created by Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner. Performed by Adam Brown and Tama Jarman. Directed by Richard Hurst. Line Producer  Jared Harford. Resident director  Lizzie Tollemache. Company stage manager. Jenny Ainsworth. Production relighter. Andrew Haden. Designer Simon Scullion. Lighting designer Tim Mascall. Composer Phil Innes. Producer James Seabright. The Playhouse. Canberra Theatre Centre. July 13-18. Bookings: www.canberratheatre.org.au

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

You’d have to be potty not to split your sides laughing at Potted Potter. Olivier Award nominated writers and creators Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner have achieved a cleverly compacted seventy minute parody of JK Rowling’s seven Harry Potter books. Like its popular predecessor The Complete Reduced Works of Shakespeare, Potted Potter began its life as a Fringe show, and retains much of that playful Fringe exuberance and high octane fun. To attempt to encapsulate JK Rowling’s densely packed adventures of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger at Hogwarts School for Wizards and Wizardry is scaling the heights of absurdity but Clarkson and Turner have made magic with their artful adaption. There is enough of the essential storyline to keep the Potter tragics in the audience enthralled and swept along by the sheer momentum of the production. Even those among us who have not been bewitched by Rowling’s series of   books from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to the final Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows  could follow the clearly described narrative and be captivated by the performances of actors Adam Brown and Tama Jarman.

Brown and Jarman take on the stock comedy team of straight man and fall guy in the tradition of Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, Morecombe and Wise and Abbott and Costello. Brown is the straight man, taking on the role of Harry Potter, which admittedly has none of the fun and foolishness of Jarman’s madcap clowning characters from a mop-haired Weasley, to a benign Dumbledore and hairy Hagrid as well as many more minor characters and the villainous Severus Snape and devilish Voldemort. With mercurial changes of funny hats, wigs and silly voices Jarman dashes in and out and roundabout like an actor on yuppie beans, while Brown struggles to keep the action on track. Together they are the perfect team, slick on timing, quick on cue, bouncing off each other and keeping the audience glued to the stage as Harry battles Voldemort’s snake and Jarman rattles off Harry’s confrontation with the Dementors depicted in an animated video.

 No performance would be complete without a Quidditch match with the audience divided into the Gryffindors and the Slytherins and Brown making an hilarious entrance as the Golden Snitch. Shouts and cheers are banned in a Covid conscious theatre, but loud clapping and foot stomping keep the audience hyped. After all, this is parody – a grossly exaggerated jibe at the most popular children’s books of all time. There is no point in being reverential when two excellent actors can be let loose on a stage to revel in their mockery while sending the most devoted Potter fans into fits of laughter

To bring the parody full circle, Brown and Jarman close with twisted lyrics for Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and Frank Sinatra’s My Way. They certainly did their madcap romp through the Harry Potter Books their way, and judging by the audience’s enthusiastic response, kids and grownups alike, they wouldn’t have had it any other way. Potted Potter is a wiz of a show!

 

 

 

 

 

  

Potted Potter

 

 POTTED POTTER – The Unauthorized Harry Experience – A Parody by Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner (writers and creators).  Canberra Theatre Centre July 13 – 18, 2021.

Director – Richard Hurst; Designer – Simon Scullion; Lighting Designer – Tim Mascall; Composer – Phil Innes

Performed by Adam Brown (Harry) and Tama Jarman (Everybody Else)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 13



Fortunately, I have not read the seven volumes of Harry Potter, and now – after an hour’s entertaining clowning – I will never need to.  As they demonstrated, the character of Harry Potter is essentially boring, and the only relationship of any real interest – between Hermione Granger and the red-haired guy Ron Weasley – gets a passing mention right at the end.

What horrified me most was how much I recognised.  What is it about ludicrous pretend mediaeval witchcraft fantasy that, in the modern rational world, can become an essential element in our consciousness?  The value of this absurdist parody is that at least the young aficionados in the audience thoroughly enjoyed laughing at it.  Potty Potter, I call it.

Even more ironically absurd is how the show was born as a promotion of J K Rowland’s sixth volume in the series way back in 2005. www.pottedpotter.com.au/ explains: Dan and Jeff are asked to create a five-minute street show recapping the plot of the first five Potter books, for performance to queues of fans waiting for the midnight release of the sixth book.  At least it means that the quality of British humour is not lost, and has even been touring the world, beginning very sensibly with Australia and New Zealand, since 2009.  These are facts of which I was previously completely oblivious.

When you look at sites like https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Hortense_Rowland perhaps it’s best to say that the Harry Potter phenomenon is a diversion away from reality for its fans, while money-making for its creators.  The social structure of J K Rowland’s fantasy is, unfortunately, entirely predictably conservative politically – so there is little of artistic value in her work, which is why it is so easy to parody.

There is one element of Potted Potter of educational value.  Most of the comedy is made out of the interplay between the actors out of their Potter characters, creating a story of their relationship.  Adam is played as the bookish type, seriously concerned with doing things properly (and therefore plays Harry); while Tama is just interested in having fun, and breaks all the rules.  This is what makes the show enjoyable – nothing really to do with Rowland’s books.  The show works because it breaks the conventions of theatre as the actors jump in and out of their Potter roles and their roles of being actors: talking, for one example, about their training in theatre school in New Zealand; and supporting more pay for teachers, at one point (achieving real approval from the audience).

So, now I’ve dragged you out of the fantasy, forget the world around you for an hour – and enjoy!

 

 

 

 

THE PENELOPIAD by Margret Attwood

 

Elaine Noon (Penelope) and cast of "The Penelopiad"

Directed by Kate Blackhurst – Set designed by Cate Clelland

Costumes designed by Annie Kay – Choreographed by Brooke Thomas

Original music by Glenn Gore Phillips – Sound design by Neville Pye

Lighting design by Stephen Still.

Presented by A Crouching Giraffe in association with Papermoon Theatre.

Canberra Theatre Centre Courtyard Studio. 7^th to 17^th July 2021.

Performance on 10^th July reviewed by Bill Stephens

Elaine Noon as Penelope in "The Penelopiad"

Margaret Attwood’s play focusses on Penelope, the wife of Greek hero, Odysseus. According to Attwood, during a 20 year absence while Odysseus was busy fighting battles and carousing, Penelope persuaded twelve of her favourite maids to prostitute themselves to  avoid having to make a decision on a new  suitor to replace her long absent, presumably dead husband. However Odysseus was very much alive, and upon his return, on discovering what Penelope’s maids had been up to, promptly had the suitors, along with Penelope’s maids, put to death, much to Penelope’s disappointment.

Penelope too is dead when the play commences, but from her new home in Hades, she recounts her story to defend her reputation as a perfectly faithful wife.

Two Canberra theatre companies, A Crouching Giraffe and Papermoon Theatre have pooled resources to present an imaginative version  of this epic story, directed with considerable panache by Kate Blackhurst, in which an all-female cast of 13 play all the roles, both male and female.

Apart from the central role of Penelope, given a compelling performance by Elaine Noon, the other twelve cast members each played one of the maids as well as suitors, various ensemble and supporting characters, often differentiated by only a slight change in costume or the addition of a prop. It says much for the performers that the storyline remained clear and easy to follow through-out.

Although the production is very much an ensemble piece, Carolyn Eccles as the scheming servant, Eurycleia, Martha Russell as Penelope’s adolescent son, Telemachus and Victoria Dixon as the beautiful but vacuous Helen of Troy, had the best opportunities to create stand-out characterisations.

Elsewhere Emily Smith, Tijana Kovac, Milena Rafic, Sarah Hull, Emily Ridge, Shauna Priest, Heidi Silberman, Jess Waterhouse and Sue Gore Phillips all had moments to shine, as well as execute Brooke Thomas’ simple, effective  choreography for the attractive songs by  Glenn Gore Phillip which clarified aspects of the story.  

Elaine Noon (Penelope) and some of the cast of "The Penelopiad" 

Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of the production however is Cate Clelland’s impressive macramé setting and Annie Kay’s striking costumes, which while carefully avoiding placing the action in any particular period, provide an appropriate and visually appealing environment to compliment the storyline.

 

                                                             Photos by Pat Gallagher