I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts.  Presented by Queanbeyan City Council at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, directed by Stephen Pike; musical director: Lucy Bermingham; choreographer: Annette Sharpe; set designer: Brian Sudding; costume designer: Christine Pawlicki; lighting: Hamish McConchie; sound: Evan Wythes.  Wednesday – Sunday April 24 – May 5, 2013-04-25

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 24

This is an up-front musical, quite explicit on matters sexual (and a few other bodily functions), very American culturally speaking, mostly very funny and occasionally touching.

It’s also very well-known, having reached Queanbeyan after productions in more than 400 other cities in at least USA, Britain, Israel, Mexico, Spain, Holland, Hungary, Czech Republic, South Korea, Italy, Brazil, South Africa, Ireland, Argentina, Germany, Hong Kong, mainland China and Taipei, as well as Sydney and its original run of 5003 performances in the off-Broadway Westside Theatre.  This production certainly stands up very well in this company, if the various You Tube efforts I’ve viewed represent the standard.

First is the music.  Lucy Bermingham on the grand, Vanessa Driver, violin, and Jason Henderson, bass, captured each of the American musical styles perfectly for each song, and for the interludes as scenes shifted from one vignette to the next.  Quality here gave the edge to the singing, lifting the performers – Dave Evans, Jenna Roberts, Christine Forbes, Krystle Innes, Nick Valois and Greg Sollis – often to an operatic level, which gave the stereotyped characters in many scenes an extra dimension.

Add to the music a wonderful sense of comedy in Annette Sharpe’s choreography, and precision in the timing which showed Stephen Pike’s strong direction, and we ended up with a show better than might be expected from what is, after all, not much more than a series of revue sketches.  The greatest depth, though, welled up unexpectedly – but wonderfully – in the non-singing scene “The Very First Dating Video of Rose Ritz”.  Jenna Roberts was awarded a special round of applause for her characterisation showing guts and integrity in a very vulnerable Rose.

At a different end of the spectrum was the performance of Ted, the bear, as he cheerfully but in a certain sense rather sadly waved us goodbye, manipulated by Nick Valois, as the father reverting to childhood.  Very nice work.

I think a reason behind the success of this Australian production is that we are not Americans.  There was some discussion during interval about the decision to use American accents, but in the second half the culture, perhaps especially of the American Jewish characters, is so specific that Australian voices just would not do.  What we have to offer, instead, is a view of these characters from the outside looking in, and a picture of the absurdity of their behaviour against what we would expect in our culture.

The result is more than a humorous reflection on love and marriage, but a more biting level of comedy approaching satire.  In other words, more satisfying theatre rather than mere light-hearted entertainment.  Some of those You Tube videos seem to present the latter and miss out on the former.  Much of the script and the libretto can easily fall into the guffaw laughter trap, but scenes in this production – such as Christine Forbes’ country and western “Always a Bridesmaid” and Dave Evans’ and Jenna Roberts’ “Marriage Tango” – showed what an Australian perspective could bring to this American life.

So gird your loins and see for yourself at The Q.

Pea! by David Finnigan

Pea! by David Finnigan.  Serious Theatre – director: barb barnett; designer:Gillian Schwab; audio designer: Seth Edwards-Ellis.  At The Street Theatre, April 20-27, 2013, 10am and 2pm.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 24

If there is one lesson which should be taught to all young Australian children, surely it must be irreverence.  Pea! does it nicely.

On the other hand, children’s theatre must treat its trusting audience with respect – as indeed should all theatre.  Pea! does this too.

The Hive Program at The Street Theatre encourages new writing and, with dramaturgical assistance, offers a season on stage.  David Finnigan’s work in Pea! is perhaps the most assured and sophisticated product that I have seen so far from The Hive.

He has taken the moral behind the Hans Christian Andersen fable of the princess and the pea – that those absorbed in their own self-importance should be brought down to earth – and turned it on its head.  “Princess” is no more than the name given Gwendoline by the wolves who kindly brought her up when her parents had abandoned her in the Wild Wood of the West.  Gwen satisfies Prince Gregor’s pea-brained mother’s Princess Test, which she learned from daytime Royal Weddings television, precisely because Gwen is not full of self-importance but only wishes to save everyone from the Dragon-with-One-Nostrilled-Snout.

Gregor is certainly lucky to be taken in hand by a woman who can look after herself and sleep as comfortably on the ground as on 40 mattresses – and can solve the problem of how to use the pea to stop up the One-Nostrilled Snout.  The whole kingdom is saved as the fiery Dragon’s internal gas pressure forces explosive farts from his other end, and he flies home in shame to his mother.  It wasn’t just the children who could not contain themselves at this point in the story.  I’m sure the laughing adults around me were thinking of a number of figures of seeming social importance whose snouts they might like to stop up with a pea, or three….

But the respect and care for the children was there from the beginning, as the actors – Cathy Petöcz and Josh Wiseman – made sure they had found out just about every child’s name and engaged them in conversation – about the other theme of the play: what’s your favourite vegetable?  The Pea becomes the narrator, from his pedestal in the Museum of Famous Vegetables, and is even rather boastful of having saved the kingdom – except that everyone soon learns that it was really Gwendoline with a little help from Gregor.  But, significantly, when there is thunder and lightning as the Dragon approaches, Pea stops the action to check if anyone is scared – because he or she (according to which actor is puppeteering at the time) is a bit scared too.  “No, of course not,” the children reply.  “We’re not afraid of the Dragon!” – and on we go to the explosive farts.

Carefully thought-out touches such as this were in themselves educational – for the children and even perhaps for parents.  The script, and I suspect work done during the workshop and rehearsal process, shows how theatre can manipulate an audience’s reactions, but good theatre does this ethically.  It’s this, the irreverence of the script, and the originality of the set design and use of puppetry, that I would like to praise the whole team for, in Pea!

Michael Edgley"s GREAT MOSCOW CIRCUS

on

Majura Park – Canberra Airport until 27^th April

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

There’s something completely irresistible about a circus, with its promise of death-defying feats, corny clowns, cute animals, and freshly cooked pop-corn. Michael Edgley’s Great Moscow Circus certainly lives up to that promise in spades, plus some. Staged in an immaculately presented, state-of-the-art big-top, resplendent with striped minarets and multi-coloured lights, this 2013 edition of the circus which has been touring the country for nearly 50 years, may not be as all-new as promised, but each act is certainly a top class example of its genre. What is new certainly are the pageant-type connecting scenes which may be a bit dodgy as historical context, but certainly add to the overall spectacle.

Some of the most impressive acts are not your usual circus fare. There’s a remarkable quick-change dance duo whose rapid costume changes leaves the audience gasping in amazement, and Albert Roubaud’s “Statue Act” which is equally as intriguing.  Then there’s the terrifying knife throwing skills of Alfredo Silva and his brave, (some might say foolhardy) assistant Anna, who allows Alfredo to throw knives at her while she is strapped to a spinning wheel

Oxana Zinchenko

Oxana Zinchenko

Among the more traditional acts, the gorgeous Oxana Zinchenko, suspended high above the audience on spectacular red, white and blue silks, performs graceful heart-stopping manoeuvres minus the security of a safety- net, and Olksandr and Natalia Gerasymenko whose skilful, captivating routine is performed on a single trapeze.

Among the larger acts, the eight-person Romashov double Russian swing act provides high-flying thrills as its members perform daring mid-air stunts while propelled high above the heads of the audience, and another spectacularly costumed troupe with the rather prophetic name of “Group of Risk”, who perform amazing and amusing feats bouncing and prancing above and around a huge piece of apparatus called a wall trampoline.

 

The Romashov Troupe

All the kids loved the cute little well-fed ponies who performed prettily, particularly the tiny one who managed to steal the limelight at every opportunity, and the larger pony who sat in a lounge chair, before retiring in a real bed, and especially the clowns, young and fresh, whose genuinely funny new routines include a marvellous sequence when one of them manages to get himself trapped inside a huge yellow balloon with hilarious results.

 

Too quickly the night comes to a climax with the truly impressive Globe of Death, which we’ve certainly seen before, but this year, five motorcyclists (count ‘em) roar around inside a 4 mtr. metal sphere, which disconcertingly parts in the middle while all this is happening.

The Globe of Death 

Michael Edgley’s Great Moscow Circus has always been synonymous with all that’s best in modern circus, and this latest edition definitely upholds that tradition.

35º 17 South

35º 17 South created by Karla Conway.  Canberra Youth Theatre at the National Gallery of Australia Sculpture Garden, Saturday April 13 to Saturday April 20, 2013.

Commentary by Frank McKone

Drama games as I used to know them are being taken to a new space by this CYT experiment.  From the drama workshop studio to an outdoor venue, like the Sculpture Garden at the NGA, is one thing.  Setting up a kind of treasure hunt, with clues to be discovered and directions to be understood and followed, is another.  But to have all this set in the context of a semi-scripted scenario which can only be understood via an up-to-date tablet device is one step further than I had previously imagined.

Computer, keyboard and mouse I can cope with, but a blank screen on a tablet is pure mystery to me.  Fortunately a one-time student from my days at Hawker College spontaneously appeared to save my reputation as a drama expert.  Catherine Prosser is now CEO and Co-Founder of stagebitz.com, (http://stagebitz.com/)  providing software which can make running all the technical side of theatre a whizz.  She had no trouble tapping the right bits on the tablet provided by CYT’s front of house coordinator Jim Adamik, and off we went to find the first of those other little mysteries (at least to me) – the black and white squares which look like miniature maps of mazes, stuck on the wall near the Diamond sculpture (Neil Dawson, Aotearoa New Zealand born 1948: Diamonds 2002).  The tablet read the coded maze, only to tell us that we couldn’t go further until we had correctly counted the number of bolts which hold the sculpture together.

After four goes we got it right (37 in case you’d like to know), typed it in and then began the game for real – well, sort of real, except that at that stage we only knew that we had to find clean water.  Why?  Because the only safe place to be was in the Skyspace (James Turrell: 'Within without' 2010) on the other side of the Gallery.  We knew this because we had been there with others who were desperate to get in because they were starving and had travelled so far and for so long to find a safe haven.  We were now in their situation, but we didn’t know why.  But we had not been allowed in until we could find resources like food and water to bring with us.  We couldn’t eat the tablets, but we needed them to find what we needed for entry to the only place of safety.

Catherine and I collected some useful resources like toilet paper and chocolate, and discovered with help from CYT writer Morgan Little that there were not only actors as desperate refugees, but others such as a trader who might exchange our chocolate for a weapon which we would need to help defend the community.  Not all the game concentrated on the immediate objective of survival: there are some codes which are games in themselves, like one which showed insects flying around in the Sculpture Garden which needed to be sprayed to prevent people being bitten by them.

After an hour or more, we had got nowhere near completing the game – we hadn’t even found the clean water – but as responsible adults we had to leave.  The younger members of Youth Theatre were by this time absolutely engrossed in the activity: if they didn’t complete the game on Saturday, they could continue each day next week!  This is one very big school holiday activity.

But is it as ground-breaking an experiment as it seems?  Is it a worthwhile way of teaching drama?  Is it suitably educational more broadly?

I think the answer to the last question depends on the content of the game.The story assumes a “Lucas Heights incident” in 2032 which means the east coast has become unliveable.  The refugees are escaping to Canberra as the only safe haven.  The refugee theme is, of course, entirely relevant in considering the position of those who recently arrived at Geraldton, after some 44 days in a small boat, from Sri Lanka.

However, there is a further assumption that in 2032, those managing the place of safety, the actors refusing entry to the refugees at the beginning of the game, would be openly aggressive with defensive weapons, and would arbitrarily lay out their demands to be satisfied by starving refugees.  Of course, there is a parallel with the way refugees are being treated by officialdom.

But what I wanted to know was, where in the game will the audience/participants have an opportunity to be debriefed and to reflect on the storyline, its implications and truthfulness.  This game, by having an “audience” attending, is different from a large group improvisation workshop where everyone participating takes part in the devising, the role-playing, and the reflective debriefing.  In this case, only the CYT actors and staff are in the know.  Of course, it is true that when an audience leaves a standard theatre production, they are not debriefed but have to sort out what they think about what they have seen for themselves.  This game, though, is more like some of the audience participation experiments of the late 1960s / early 1970s such as New York’s Open Theatre (Robert Pasolli: A Book on the Open Theatre.  Discus Books, 1970) where the actors imposed themselves on the audience members in an undifferentiated space.  These experiments lasted for only a few years, because audiences preferred enough degree of separation from the action to feel they were safe.

Because 35º 17 South is a pre-programmed game, there is a degree of safety for participants, since they have to follow the rules to complete the task.  Usually, of course, electronic games are entirely on screen, while this one involves interaction with real actors in a large relatively unconfined space where immediate supervision by CYT staff is problematic.  Though things like the weapons are no more than images on the tablet screen, what if a non-prepared participant (as opposed to the partially scripted and rehearsed actors) – a member of the public – were to take on the role of a desperate refugee to the point of a physical argument, say, with the trader of weapons who refused to accept chocolate in payment?  What would be the learning, on either side, from this experience?  And what are the safeguards?

At this stage I’m willing to keep an open mind until the conclusion of the game, next Saturday.   But I would be interested to know how the follow-up, what used to be called the backstage post-mortem, will be done – not only for the young adults and late teenagers in the acting roles, and of course for the CYT staff and the people from the Academy of Interactive Entertainment who wrote the computer code, but also for all those people, and perhaps their parents, who were audience/participants.

Since Karla Conway, the CYT Artistic Director, has invited us to “experiment alongside us and embrace the possibilities that technology can play in the evolution of our artform”, I think it should be encumbent on CYT to see the “experiment” as the lab research, requiring a careful analysis of the results and a public report of the findings.

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.  Canberra Rep directed by Duncan Ley at Theatre 3, Canberra, April 12-27, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 13

For 50 years I have heard the words of Under Milk Wood and allowed them to fill the spaces in my mind with a myriad of images – of the characters and even of their dreams.  Now I have a new set of visual and audio memories, created by Duncan Ley and his designers Anne Kay (set), Heather Spong (costumes), Chris Ellyard (lighting), and Neil McRitchie (sound) to add to and renew my old imagination.

This is a great achievement on Rep’s part, and a great joy to me.

Ley’s directing is exquisite.  Using Duncan Driver as 1st Voice, physically present but unseen by the village dwellers, as the close-up observer on our behalf, he has created for us a solid personality in place of the traditional disembodied voice of the original radio play.  Having an experienced and skilled ensemble cast of 10 – Geoffrey Borny, Alice Ferguson, Sian Harrington, Peter Holland, Terry Johnson, Adele Lewin, David McNamara, Erin Pugh, Steph Roberts and Graham Robertson – enabled Ley and his design team to work out a highly complex scheme to present just about all the characters physically, including the children (the “kiss me for a penny” scene was especially wonderful) and even more detail in the daily life in the street than Thomas’s words describe.

This is done so well because Ley has a clear concept of the theatrical form he is using.  Essentially it is expressionist in style, with all that tradition of black, light and shadow, but given what I might call a gentle touch.  The only harshness was to throw the main switch to shock us out of the reality of seeing actors out of role and into the black of night to begin the action; and to do the same in reverse at the end.  Yet this risky device worked perfectly.

I should also add the properties person, Helen Vaughan-Roberts, to the list of credits because the collecting of all those props hung on the moveable scene sections, representing characters’ kitchens, bedrooms, shops and so on must have been a daunting task.  They made the set a visual feast in its own right.

A completely new thought for me was to use recordings of the Welsh crowd singing at  a rugby match, and of the traditional Welsh male voice choir at significant points.  I wondered about this at first, but the ending especially took any of my doubts away.  The sound track put the play into its proper context, and gave it extra strength on stage.

If Dylan Thomas, high up in Rev Eli Jenkins’ idea of heaven, is watching this production, I’m certain he would not be saying the village’s name backwards.  He may be wishing he could be here to take part in an exciting improvement on the limited first performance he was able to offer at the YMHA Poetry Centre, New York, May 14, 1953, with only five actors and himself standing stock still, except for when he stepped forward two paces to deliver Rev Eli Jenkins’ morning poem.  I now have that recording and Ley’s staging to keep my imagination going for another, perhaps not 50, years.

Wulamanayuwi / Once and Future Landscape Care

 

 Wulamanayuwi and the Seven Pamanui by Jason De Santis.  Presented by Centenary of Canberra as Northern Territory’s contribution, from Darwin Festival, directed by Eamon Flack at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 10-13, 2013.

Once and Future Landscape Care forum with Bill Gammage, Bruce Pascoe and Ben Gleeson at Two Fires Festival, Braidwood, April 12-14, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 12

What a wonderful day was Friday April 12, 2013.

In the evening, Canberra Playhouse became a centre of Australian cultural life, as Jason De Santis – of Tiwi Islander and Italian heritage – presented his often amusing yet emotionally engaging version of the traditional story of Wulamanayuwi, the daughter of Jipmarpuwajuwa.  Though superficially De Santis has made a connection with the European story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, there is even more significance behind the myth of how death first happened to humans.

Here we see how universal – from Genesis in the Bible to this even nowadays remote community – is the fear of evil and death, and the determination to live and to love.  For an audience in the National Capital, representing a wide range of cultural traditions, responding with great warmth and communal laughter to the originality of this first Tiwi play, and to its author speaking to us in the foyer afterwards, came naturally.  Just as in the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, there is tragedy and a recognition of human failings in this Tiwi story – but I must say I felt more positive about the future of humanity as Wulamanayuwi finally came through her troubling times, making her own decision to begin her adult life with her chosen husband, Awarrajimi.   Her seven brothers, the Panamui, are mischievous but ultimately spirits of family support, rather than competitive and murderous as in the ancient Middle Eastern Biblical story.

Natasha Wanganeen as Jirrakilala and Kylie Farmer as Wulamanayuwi

 If you would like to read more about “Tiwi Art and Culture and the First Old Lady”, Pedro Wonaeamirri (puppet maker and set maker, with John Peter Pilaukui and Linus Warlapinni) has written his version of the story: of Purrukuparli, his wife Waiyai, and of his brother and her lover, the moon man, Taparra, and its importance in his life – available at

http://site.jilamara.com/~jilamara//images/articles/kitty_pedro_1_mar.pdf

The program notes describe the production, saying “The approach is to embrace the classic traditions of Western theatricality to excess, and to allow the clash between Western theatre and Tiwi culture to energise the work....brightness and colour, sound and movement, character-doubling, live music, minimal “acting” and lots of performing and storytelling, things popping out from behind corners, drop-cloths, shadow-puppetry, scrolling landscapes etc.  Everything we can possibly achieve with very few resources – Tiwi style.”  All I can add is to say that they achieved everything!

The actors – Kylie Farmer as Wulamanayuwi; Natasha Wanganeen as her evil stepmother Jirrakilala; Kamahi Djordan King as her father Jipmarpuwajuwa; Jaxon De Santis as her husband Awarrajimi; and Jason De Santis as the Narrator and Evil Spirit of the Water – were hardly “minimal” in effect.  It took no time for connection to be established firmly with the audience, and not a beat was missed from then on.

Then more connections were made for me as, in the foyer, Ngambri father Paul House, with his children, welcomed us all to his country (noting that he was born in the centre of his country, at the old Canberra Hospital – did he mean that was why it was blown up, to be replaced by the National Museum?)  and Jason De Santis spoke, thanking the Ngambri elders for permission for him to tell his Tiwi story here.

All at once it came home to me again that we are living in Aboriginal land, just as it had that very afternoon, in Braidwood, an hour’s drive to the east.

The Two Fires Festival – Fanning the Flames of Arts and Activism – included three speakers, in the presence of Yuin Elder, Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, on the topic Once and Future Landscape Care. 

Bruce Pascoe, of Bunurong and Tasmanian heritage, a novelist, short story writer and researcher into indigenous history and language revival, spoke of the invisibility, in conventional histories, of Aboriginal technology, such as in house construction, river flow and fishery management, crop growing, and maintaining a surplus of goods for trading – the very activities that showed traditional Aboriginal culture to be “civilised”.  The refusal to recognise these activities – despite their being described in great detail by well-known European explorers – was the basis for Australia to be treated as “terra nullius”, and the people already living here as so “primitive” they did not count.

Bill Gammage, an academic historian at the Humanities Research Centre at ANU, spoke about his recent publication The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, filling out – for me, at least – this study of the careful and precise use of fire management by Aboriginal people all over Australia, prior to the intervention of Europeans from 1788, with an understanding of the complementary religious beliefs and ceremonial practice developed over many tens of thousands of years.  Once again, here was evidence of a civilisation, rather than an haphazard existence.

Ben Gleeson lives locally, with a degree in Ecological Agriculture and doing honours in Restoration Ecology.  He put together the previous speakers’ themes in emphasising that the essential difference between traditional Aboriginal culture, beliefs and practice and the more recent European approach is that in the one, all forms of life, including us humans, are intimately related; while in the other we humans pretend we are separate from all other forms of life – and try to control everything else.  His most telling example, perhaps, is the development of industrial monoculture agriculture, and his main concern for the future is that greater and greater urbanisation means that our chance of people recognising the imperatives of our interdependence may not come in time to save our species. 

Yet it is the understanding of evolution that Charles Darwin’s theory gave us, and that modern science is beginning to put into practice, which gives us the chance after all.

When Uncle Max spoke, in concluding the session, he praised the young men, like Johnny Huckle, of Wiradjuri heritage, who participated in the earlier welcome to country ceremony with his song to honour the Festival – Two Fires Light our Hearts.  This represented for me the theme of the day: respect the ancient culture, study history honestly, connect science to our humanity in harmony with all the rest of nature.

What a day was Friday April 12, 2013!

EUROBEAT -ALMOST EUROVISION

NORWAY
Max Gambale,Anthony Simeonovic, Calen Robinson, Tim Stiles

Presented by Supa Productions Inc.

ANU Arts Centre until 20^th April.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

 

What’s not to like about “Eurobeat Amost Eurovision”?   This evening of seriously silly fun embraces everything that’s fabulous about the Eurovision Song Contest, while sending it up sky high, resulting in a gloriously trashy, irresistibly entertaining production ideal for sharing with a party of your besties. 

The premise is brilliantly simple. Fifteen countries compete, with each act more excruciating than the last. During interval the audience vote, either by iPhone or on voting coupons supplied. During the second act the voting is counted, and the winner announced. On opening night it was the obsequious Irish entrant, Ronan Corr (Cameron Gill) who won over the audience with his fog-bound rendition of “La-La-La”.   

Lachlan Ruffy (Sergei) Sarah Golding (Boyka) 

Utilising vast amounts of sequins, glitter, paper flitter flutter and heavy fog, first time director Emma Tattam gets the tone pitch perfect.  Lachlan Ruffy and Sarah Golding are brilliant as the viperish Sergei, and vapid Boyka, who just manage to maintain an uneasy truce long enough to compere the show.  The large ensemble cast frequently change identities and nationalities. The accents are definitely dodgy, and not all fifteen acts hit their mark, indeed some rather outstay their welcome. But all are well-rehearsed, and enthusiastically performed in clever costumes by Suzan Cooper which range from inspired to outlandish.

Jordan Kelly, surely Canberra’s busiest choreographer, has excelled himself in creating a succession of brilliant laugh-out-loud, high-camp dance routines which are enhanced by Phil Goodwin’s truly dazzling light show.  So what’s not to like about “Eurobeat” ?

                                                                           
                                                              Photos: Mick Deutsch
This review appears in full on the on-line edition of "City News" and an edited version appears in CITY NEWS 11th July Edition.