DEATH AND GLORY

The ANU Choral Society

Conducted by Leonard Weiss

Wesley Uniting Church, Forrest, November 6

Reviewed by Len Power

Conducted by Leonard Weiss, the ANU Choral Society’s 'Death And Glory' concert presented Handel's Coronation Anthems and Mozart's Requiem.

Handel's Coronation Anthems were commissioned for George II's coronation which took place on 11 October 1727.  Three of the anthems were performed in this concert.

Beginning with “Zadok the Priest”, the choir handled the dynamic opening of this anthem with great confidence and there was a good balance between the choir and the orchestra.

The choir’s singing of the quiet passages of the second anthem, “Let Thy Hand be Strengthened” was impressive in its sensitivity and the third anthem presented, “The King Shall Rejoice”, was passionately sung.  The trumpet playing by Farzana Choudhury, Keydan Bruce and Sam Hutchinson, so important to this work, was excellent.

Mozart’s Requiem, uncompleted at the time of his death in 1791, is a work that never fails to stir the emotions.  In this concert, the choir sang the version completed by Richard Maunder.

From the spectacular opening to the optimistic ending, the audience is treated to one of the most involving and memorable works ever.  The choir sang it really well from start to finish.

Soloists Rachael Duncan, Janene Broere, Charles Hudson and Andrew Fysh sang impressively and, again, the blend of voices in the quieter passages of the work was especially fine.  The combination of orchestra and voices in the “Lacrymosa” was intensely moving.

Leonard Weiss conducted these works with great assurance and everyone involved provided the audience with an evening of music to remember.

Photos by Peter Hislop

 

Len Power's reviews can also be heard on Artsound FM 92.7 'Artcetera' program from 9.00am on Saturdays.

THE MERRY WIDOW FROM BLUEGUM CREEK

Music by Franz Lehar - New book and lyrics by Frank Hatherley

Directed by Peter Smith - Musical Direction by Jennifer Groom

Choreographed by Belinda Hassall - Set Design by Thompson Quan Wing

Costumes designed by Janetta McRae - Presented by Queanbeyan Players

The Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre until 19^th November 2016

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

Despite its bumpy, under-rehearsed opening night performance, Queanbeyan Players production of “The Merry Widow from Bluegum Creek” still managed to charm, not the least because of Frank Hatherley’s entertaining new book and lyrics.

Hatherley has set his version of “The Merry Widow” in the Australian Embassy in Paris in 1901. The storyline follows closely on previous versions, but many of the characters have been australianised to create some very funny comic situations. He has managed this without either bowdlerising the characters or compromising the integrity of Lehar’s music.

 In fact, Lehar’s glorious score remains largely intact, and is the great strength of this production, being  very well performed by Jennifer Groom’s large orchestra, and generally well sung by the cast.

Director, Peter Smith, has assembled a cast of impressive singers, led by Louise Keast, who charms as the widow, Anna Gladstone, and provides the vocal highlight of the evening with her superb rendition of “Vilia” (in this version called “Bluegum”).  Charles Hudson is also very well cast as her reluctant love interest, Danny Macquarie.

Fine singing also from Ken Goodge and Stephanie McAlister, obviously relishing their roles as the lecherous Count Camille de Rosillon and his flirtatious paramour, Lady Valerie Wentworth, from Matt Greenwood, nailing every laugh with a fine comic performance as the embassy’s only Frenchman, Michelin, and from Thompson Quan Wing, who not only designed the attractive setting, but also slyly flaunts an impeccable French accent to great effect.

Robert Grice earns his fair share of laughs as the bumbling Australian Ambassador, and Janene Broere shines as the doyen of the Embassy wives, leading them with gusto through a display of unsuspected talents, as French can-can dancers.

Hopefully, blemishes which took the gloss off opening night, like remembering to switch body-mics on and off; smartening up responses to line cues, and mastering Belinda Hassall’s very basic choreography, will be attended to so that Lehar’s glorious music, and Hatherley's very funny script can shine through, without distraction.

Photo: Louise Keast  as Anna Gladstone (Centre) 

L to R: Jono Windsor, Thompson Quan Wing, Tony Betts, Adrian Van Prooyen, Peter Smith.

Photographer: Ali Newhouse

This review first published in the digital edition of CITY NEWS on 6th November 2016

   

SMOOTH TRANSLATION

Devised by James Batchelor

Performed by James Batchelor and Madeline Beckett

National Portrait Gallery 5th& 6th November 2016

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

"Smooth Translation"
Madeline Beckett (l) - James Batchelor (c) 
Photo: Jane Duong

James Batchelor’s latest work, “Smooth Translation” was devised as an ode to British sculptor, Barbara Hepworth, and commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery as part of the Design Canberra Festival. It’s a fascinating and intriguing work from a young choreographer who is fast building an International reputation for his highly intellectual, often site-specific, creations.

Batchelor’s program notes describe “Smooth Translation” as “a process of receiving and transmitting form. The work examines carving as an entry point to the interiority of matter -   a choreography of sculpting, building and forming a landscape; a moment of translation from one body to another”.

The individual viewer will make of that explanation what they will, for, as with most of Bachelor’s work, that is part of the fascination.

  

“Smooth Translation” begins with the tantalising sounds of Bellini, Verdi and Puccini wafting through Gordon Darling Hall. In one corner is a pile of large cloth beanbags. Slowing a hand appears from within the bags, and then another, until eventually, two bodies emerge.

 Batchelor and his collaborator, Madeline Beckett, proceed to attach the tiny sound-sources to their bodies, and then crawl around and through the beanbags, re-arranging them constantly. Then, as if in deep contemplation, they each select a large beanbag, lay back in it, and slowly and deliberately propel themselves, in different directions, around the smooth granite floor.

Abandoning the beanbags they each extend arms, perhaps measuring spaces, then connect from either sides of the marble pillars, occasionally trapping unwary audience members in their sequences. An episode in which Batchelor moves across the floor creating grotesque and beautiful shapes with his body is particularly absorbing.

The relentless pacing of the work, together with the confident demeanour of the two performers, often mirroring each other’s movements with remarkable accuracy, tantalises individual audience members to seek their own answers to the abstractions being performed.

Their final sequence involved Batchelor and Beckett ceremoniously pouring four piles of black stones onto clear plastic sheeting rolled out across the performing area. Lying on their chests, they slowly propelled themselves through the stones, neatly returning the work to where it had begun, in the centre of the stones.

This is a clever and beautifully resolved work, which hopefully will travel beyond the National Portrait Gallery. If it comes your way, don’t miss it.

This review also appears in Australian Arts Review. www.artsreview.com.au

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Cathy Craigie: 2016 NSW Aboriginal Arts Fellowship

Posted by Frank McKone

 

A Life in the Theatre by David Mamet

A Life in the Theatre by David Mamet.  Darlinghurst Theatre Company at Eternity Playhouse, November 4 – December 4, 2016.

Director – Helen Dallimore

Designers: Production – Hugh O’Connor; Sound – Jed Silver; Lighting – Christopher Page
Performed by Akos Armont and John Gaden

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 5

I bet David Mamet has forgotten The Art of Coarse Acting (by Michael Green, 1964), but I haven’t.  It has a section on how to dominate a scene while hidden behind a sofa, which I actually used when acting in a British farce of that era.

But I bet John Gaden knew it well.  He applies several Coarse Acting devices, but in this play seen from the backstage viewpoint, which makes them even funnier.  The scene where Robert (Gaden) and John (Armont) are in a small boat expecting to die a horrible death, while the stage hand crawls behind to wave a cardboard cutout seagull at the inappropriate moment and steals the scene (from their audience’s point of view) was a great demonstration of the Green Principle.

Yet, though supposedly based on Mamet’s own experience in Repertory, where actors are forever changing costumes, props and whole acting styles, this very funny play is not a mere farce. 

Armont’s John is a young actor learning the game as the constant colleague of old-timer Robert.  As we see them in their horribly cramped dressing room manically change costumes, do make-up, rehearse, answer the phone on the stage manager’s desk in the Opposite Prompt corner, talk about anything and everything, shift props and perform bits of any number of shows (not real ones but imitations by Mamet) and leave to go ‘out’, or go home late at night, and arrive next day, the theatrical genre certainly looks like farce.

But what the play is about is the changing nature of the relationship between Robert and John, as Robert grows older, even towards frailty, and John grows into maturity.

The wonderful thing about this production is that Akos Armond is young, and already is in reality the mature highly professional actor that John becomes; while John Gaden is in reality Robert’s age – but in no way is Gaden showing Robert’s tendencies, not only to pontificate, or to lose his lines, or to fly off the handle in contradiction to his pontifications; and certainly not to become slightly Alzheimic and lose his bearings.  The details of Gaden’s characterisation in movement, voice, facial expression, and the chemistry of his acting relationship with Armond is as precise and fascinating as it ever was when I first saw him perform many decades ago.

The production design, lighting and sound are hugely complicated – backstage is just so full of bits and pieces in typical grotty wings which the actors have to negotiate at speed to meet their cues.  Once, when they forget their lines, they miss a cue – what horror!  While the jaunty music we hear is always just on the edge of comedy.  How well I remember the night when, somehow, a gust of wind got in backstage nearly toppling a 12 foot painted flat onto the actors on stage.  Only our quick-thinking fast-moving stage manager managed to grab it from behind, how I’ll never know, and hold it up for the rest of the scene.  Didn’t we laugh as we tied it in place during interval!

So the only disappointments I have are that the program does not acknowledge the costume designer, unless the supply of myriad costumes was done by the excellent set construction team of Brett Wilbe and Emily Polson; and nor is the role of stage manager named – after all he was a crucial actor, and certainly had his own personality while constantly flitting about, yet obviously always in control backstage.  Perhaps it was assistant stage manager Sunil Chandra we saw, since I don’t think the women Amy Morcom (stage manager) or Angela Atkinson (the other assistant stage manager) appeared.

I note that director Helen Dallimore has at one point in her career been assistant director to Jonathan Biggins (of Wharf Revue fame) on Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Michael Frayn’s famous backstage play, Noises Off.  I’ve no doubt she put that experience to very good use in this show.

And, mentioning the women in passing, I wonder a little why Mamet wrote only men into his play.  Perhaps the ‘business’ with props, costume changing and lack of space might have taken our attention onto issues beyond his key philosophical concern – is this play “Absurd Theatre”, or is theatre essentially just absurd?  Either way, the relationship between John and Robert grows as they work together and come to respect each other.  We in the audience in turn feel for them, and in our applause express our respect for all those engaged in great theatre – the actors, directors, designers and crew.

This season of A Life in the Theatre has only just begun.  Eternity Playhouse is at 39 Burton Street (just off Crown Street, opposite the now defunct TAP Theatre), with a program well worth the trip to Sydney.

Title and Deed by Will Eno

Title and Deed by Will Eno.  Presented by Belvoir at Belvoir St Theatre Downstairs, Sydney, October 13 – November 6, 2016.

Director – Jada Alberts

Designers: Set and Costume – Anna Gardiner; Lighting – Ross Graham; Composer and Sound – Kelly Ryall.

Performed by Jimi Bani

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 5

Jimi Bani, a Torres Strait Islander of Mabuiag and Darnley Islands heritage, gives a moving performance, directed by Larrakia woman Jada Alberts, of a quite unusual American play by Will Eno.  Title and Deed  was included in the New York Times and The New Yorker’s Top 10 Plays of the Year 2012.

Bani’s role is The Traveller – away from ‘home’ and recently arrived ‘here’.  He speaks to us, surprised and thankful for our willingness to listen.  What he says is an internal conversation with himself in which he imagines us to be his audience.  Except that we are real.  Perhaps the weirdest moment theatrically was when the stage lights had faded on him in character and the house lights came up for applause.  It really felt as if we were applauding this engaging but ultimately worrying stranger rather than this highly accomplished actor.  Only on his exit (through the audience in the tiny Belvoir Downstairs) and reappearance did we feel that now we were applauding Jimi Bani rather than this rather strange but thoroughly recognisable character, The Traveller.

What was worrying was that he clearly had something out of kilter emotionally because of his occasional stammer when he would find himself unable to say the words he was searching for, because of his hearing things in his head that we couldn’t hear, because of his swinging from outgoing confidence to obsequious thanking us, with sudden retreats physically into moments of unexplainable despair – as he had seemed, leaning against the dirty brick wall, slightly twisted with head down, when we had arrived to take our seats.

We were clearly ‘here’, but he was, as he said at one point, not exactly ‘there’ – which might have been ‘home’ – but he was perhaps ‘somewhere’, which made him think he might be ‘nowhere’, leading him to think about how we have invented all our words to try to help ourselves understand life and death.  He looked into our eyes – actually into the eyes of one of us – and then quoted “The eyes are the window into our eyes” – not from some famous person, but from Brian, with whom he had painted a house. Later he thought perhaps he was quoting Shakespeare, but then remembered it was Brian.

And so we were engaged intellectually in a philosophical exploration of language, meaning and the impossibility of actually knowing what is in someone else’s mind, while emotionally we gradually became aware of the background to his anxieties derived from very ordinary parental demands like “Where do you think you’re going?” or “What do you think you’re doing?”  We even learned that he had not been breast fed, and after losing the rubber nipple from his bottle had been left to drink from a cup, which his mother had said was not very satisfactory.  And he clearly had been afraid of his father.

No wonder his apparently brief relationship with Lauren – he found a calendar in which she had blacked out all the days they had had together – was not as ‘here’ as he had thought it was.  Now his father had died (first, as Nature decreed, and without his being there) and his mother had also died (he had managed to get ‘there’ for her) his parents ‘are dead for me now’, he explained.  It was surprising what we laughed at, yet it was with sympathy as we now understood why he had to be The Traveller, and with empathy as we realised that like him we are ‘travelling’ until we die.

And so this is why I found it interesting to know how this play, written by a New Yorker, with all its imagery and references centred in a kind of American small town  life, could resonate for a Larrakia woman writer and now director from Darwin and a Torres Strait Islander actor who had travelled all the way to train at WAAPA in Perth, coming together to work at Belvoir in Sydney (with support for Indigenous theatre by the Balnaves Foundation).

As Jada Alberts wrote in her Director’s Note, “I hope you see and forget to see, the skin he’s in.”  And that was exactly what this production achieved – a moving performance of an unusual play, in which we were transported from ‘wherever’ to our immediate ‘here’, seeing as Jada hoped “yourself in the character you meet, or in the least someone you care for”.

Title and Deed travels very well.

THE MERRY WIDOW FROM BLUEGUM CREEK

New book and lyrics by Frank Hatherley

Music by Franz Lehar

Directed by Peter Smith

Musical Direction by Jennifer Groom

Queanbeyan Players at the Q Theatre, Queanbeyan to 19 November

Reviewed by Len Power 4 November 2016

Franz Lehar’s ‘The Merry Widow’ has been an international hit since it first opened in Vienna in 1905 and is frequently revived even though operettas are rarely performed these days.  The story concerns a rich widow and her countrymen trying to keep her money in their principality by finding her the right husband.

In Frank Hatherley’s libretto, the principality becomes Australia and the action occurs in the Australian Embassy in Paris.  The change works very well, creating an opportunity for some fun with Australian dinkum characters.  While the lyrics have been changed to suit the new book, the music score is essentially the same and what a beautiful score it is.

There are some good classical trained cast members who are able to sing the score very well.  Louise Keast sings and acts the Widow very appealingly and Charles Hudson as her intended, Danny Macquarie, also has a fine voice and effortlessly captures the style required for this type of character.  Ken Goodge plays and sings Camille very well and Matt Greenwood as the French translator, Michelin, gives a good comic performance.  Robert Grice is perfect as the ocker Australian Ambassador and Stephanie McAlister is good fun as his wife who flirts with Camille.  The rest of the cast give fine vocal support.

Jennifer Groom’s orchestra took a while to settle down on opening night but then played the score nicely.  Thompson Quan Wing’s simple and practical set design works well and the period costumes by Janetta McRae are fine.  More attention needs to be given to the sound.  There were far too many body mikes not turned on until after the actors began speaking, sound levels were all over the place and lyrics could not be heard clearly.

It was fairly obvious that the choreographer, Belinda Hassall, had to deal with a cast of mostly non-dancers.  The dance that did work fine was ‘The Ladies Of Paree’ number towards the end of the show, which was able to make an amusing feature of the fact that the characters were not really dancers.

Peter Smith’s production appeared to need more rehearsal time.  Many cast members were rather stiff in the delivery of their lines and they were often too slow with their cues.  Their characterizations and the pace of the show suffered accordingly.

The show’s strengths – the music, the funny new book and the fine singing by the principals – manage to outweigh the areas where the production falls short.  The seductive music of ‘The Merry Widow’ is always a joy to hear.

Len Power’s reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 ‘Artcetera’ program on Saturdays from 9.00am.