'Powerhouse' at the Canberra Glassworks

By Yolande Norris

Site specific artworks, and exhibitions that exist outside of a gallery context, are fickle beasts. When they work, they are fantastic, thrilling – a revelation. The trouble is, they often don’t.

This conundrum is currently being brought to light by the Canberra Glassworks, who have handed the reins to independent curator Narelle Phillips for their latest exhibition Powerhouse. Phillips has invited eight artists (not all necessarily of the glass persuasion) to respond to the Glassworks building – the antiquated Kingston Power House.

The building truly is something to behold – particularly in the context of the history-hungry Canberra sprawl. The cavernous structure, with its industrial fixtures and nonsensical collage of windows, doors and corridors has a wonderfully imposing, and perhaps slightly whimsical presence. Herein lies a problem.  READ MORE...

Theatre by Frank McKone: Codgers by Don Reid

Codgers by Don Reid. A Steady Lad and Christine Dunstan production, directed by Wayne Harrison at Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, The Q, March 24-27, 2010

Even though the performances by a cast of luminaries like Ron Haddrick and Shane Porteous made for an enjoyable evening, the play is too lightweight for the themes the author introduces: racial and social prejudice, fear of change, the legacy of The Great War and the Second World War, what it means to be Australian.

The good idea behind the comedy is undermined by crude sexual innuendo, fart jokes and, most unfortunately, by the completely gratuitous use of a device – the sudden death of the youngest “codger” – to bring the play to a sentimental end. Harrison obviously worked hard to produce laughs from “business” like expressions of the men’s faces as they were put through their physical exercises, and the actors played the clown for everything it was worth. But nothing could cover up the basic superficiality of the characters and the relationships between them.

If it had been played as a true stylised farce, with speed and rapid pacing, it may have worked better. The mawkish sentiment and the unrealistic conflicts might then have become integrated into a consistent work, all of which could be taken as an ironic comic commentary on a certain kind of older Anglo-Australian male. In this production, stylisation was used to begin the play and to introduce some scenes, while slapstick took over in many scenes and in others we were expected to take characters and their reactions for real. This mix doesn’t hang together.

In the end, having done their best with a script which needs much more original use of language, a set of more complex characters and a less predictable plot, and working very well as an ensemble, the cast save the play. It reminded me of a rather old-fashioned theatre-in-education piece about multicultural harmony (it was Harmony Day last Sunday) – not for children, but rather for men in their second childhood. At my age, 69, I found I felt quite out of touch with the world of these “codgers”. If there was a point where I felt at home, it was in the character (and the portrayal by Jon Lam) of Stanley Chang. He made the evening worthwhile for me.

Theatre by Frank McKone: Toy Symphony by Michael Gow

Toy Symphony by Michael Gow. Queensland Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia, directed by Geordie Brookman at Canberra Theatre Playhouse, March 16-20 2010. Reviewed March 18.

First the play. Going along with my critic’s monocle firmly screwed in my eye socket was a big mistake. When Alexander the Great conquered the stage as well as the world, I knew the game was up. Michael Gow could see right through me. He’s not the one with the writer’s …., er, um, what? What about me? Leave me alone, Michael, please, stop invading my space.

So when I got home I read Scientific American from cover to cover, but stuff about dark matter didn’t help, especially the article called The Brain’s Dark Energy. “Mysterious brain activity holds clues to disorders and maybe even to consciousness.” I needed sleep. And it came, supported by an after-image of Barbara Lowing’s broad-hipped brilliant yellow dress as Mrs Walkham, Roland Hemming’s warm and perspicacious teacher. I felt just like Chris Pitman looked, scared as the young Roland of his head full of rough-and-tumble images made real, and so grateful for Mrs Walkham’s offer of pencil and paper. Write it all down, she advised, and it will go away. And I slept, but now I must write it down. Just let me put my 3-D glasses on. Thank you.

So, the production. The play is about the nature of playwrighting. When I previously read commentary about what the play is about, my preconceptions leapt in: self-indulgence, incestuous writing about writing, capital R Romanticism (if serious), capital F Farce (if not).

But no, Toy Symphony is capital O Original. It impresses me in the same way as Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age did – as a new direction in Australian theatre. It excites me like Andrew Bovell’s Holy Day, or Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead. But it sets an additional challenge. Because it is about theatre, the acting style and set design must make this theatre on the night into a symbol of theatre in any time and place. It’s a bit like Chorus Line being about auditioning for a chorus line, except that Gow works far deeper into the complexity of Roland Hemming’s psychology, builds in theatrical elements which demonstrate how theatre works, and places the Sydney suburb of Como into its real social, historical and even literary context.

Who would have thought the Woronora River had glinted in the eyes of Henry Lawson, Mary Gilmore and D.H.Lawrence? Or that Lake Como in Italy was a reminder of home for the Italians who built the railway? Facts and imagination are all intertwined in Roland’s mind, as a child and adult, but how can everything be linked on stage with the clarity which his psychologist Nina (Lizzy Falkland) knows he needs?

The central device is Roland’s rediscovery, in his dead mother’s box of papers, of the play he wrote at the age of 12, which he believed had been destroyed by a vicious school principal and was never staged. One suspects that the young Michael Gow had something like this experience. The set ostensibly is a simple box – an office for the psychologist, or for the principal, or a classroom for Class 5A, or a hospital corridor, or even a seafront walkway where Anton Chekov takes an evening constitutional.

But the box is full of tricks. It’s a three dimensional jack-in-the-box sort of set, where Roland’s characters can enter and exit in highly surprising ways, even reaching the heights of a rocket ship exploding in space. The set demonstrates that theatre is imaginative play, just as real and funny and sad for the adult audience as for the young child. Gow creates the mental gymnastics of Roland’s imagination, and designers Jonathon Oxlade, Nigel Levings (lighting), and Brett Collery (sound) make Roland’s internal world manifest in wood, colour, light and shade, sound and silence.

Director Geordie Brookman takes up the same jack-in-the-box style in the way lines are delivered, actors set body positions, bodies move in the space (Scott Witt consultant), voices are accented (Melissa Agnew consultant), with costume and make-up almost clown-like. But when we see the adult Roland speaking in gaps, looking down and only fleetingly directly at others, moving away from risk, hiding exposed against a blank wall, we feel with him the depth of his childhood experiences. Theatre plays with him as much as he plays with theatre. Only after his rocketship explodes do we see him, visibly in posture and voice, come to a sensible understanding of himself as Chekov quietly and politely walks past.

The actors, Lizzy Falkland, Daniel Mulvihill and Ed Wightman, play a constantly surprising array of roles as Roland remembers his past and experiences his present, while only Mrs Walkham remains a stable point of reference for him. All have clearly understood the discipline and skills needed to exhibit a child’s imaginative play. There is a comic book element which when played in concrete form before our very eyes reveals that being a writer, a playwright especially, is to lead a life of terror.

I would like to thank Michael Gow for his bravery in deciding to stop managing theatre and to go back to creating it despite the risk. The risk was well worth taking. And having written, now once more I shall sleep.

Richard III, Everyman Theatre

Richard III by William Shakespeare: Everyman Theatre, 12-20 March 2010
By Stella Wilkie
I am fairly sure that Richard III is the play most hung about with labels, apocryphal stories, extreme opinions and prejudices more than any other of the Shakespeare folio – but I could be wrong. It is certainly a rite of passage for directors, one that Duncan Driver passes with credit. There may be a small hole here and there to pick at, but I had a good evening and was happy to emerge two hours and ten minutes later with a lot to think about and enjoy.
Driver has set the play in a corridor between two rows of seats – not ‘in-the-round’ or ‘in the square’, and for this play it works with great effect. The actors are dressed in white, modern dress, which provides a basis for jackets, hats, etc. Lucky Catesby has a smart white martial arts uniform, which near the close of the play suddenly becomes black. Duncan Ley, as Richard, wears the white pants and shirt, a naevus or scar on part of his face, and uses a stick and an apparently paralysed hand rammed into his pocket – an interesting change from the humpback etc.
Lighting, music and voice-overs are used with very effective timing (the Tudor radio was rather fun and non-intrusive). The cuts in the script (much welcomed by this audience member) contracted the story without sacrificing the poetry.
Performances were very good. Ley as Richard showed us the nuances , both endearing and repellent, of his character; the women – for once- had a ball and I enjoyed Hannah Ley as Anne, Helen Macfarlane as Elizabeth and, most of all Alice Ferguson as the old Queen Margaret , a lovely chilling performance. I also liked Adrian Flor, as Richmond. This is one of those difficult parts for actors, coming as it does in the last moments of the play, and I was impressed at how he made his presence and personality felt – his killing of Richard can get dangerously near farce, but Flor was totally believable.
I look forward to more from this company (still reeling from the miraculous ‘Musical of Musicals, The Musical’. Still to come, ‘The Laramie Project’ in May and ‘Kiss of the Spiderwoman’ in October .
Stella Wilkie

Richard III: Everyman Theatre

Richard III by William Shakespeare: Everyman Theatre, 12-20 March 2010

By Stella Wilkie

I am fairly sure that Richard III is the play most hung about with labels, apocryphal stories, extreme opinions and prejudices more than any other of the Shakespeare folio – but I could be wrong. It is certainly a rite of passage for directors, one that Duncan Driver passes with credit.  There may be a small hole here and there to pick at, but I had a good evening and was happy to emerge two hours and ten minutes later with a lot to think about and enjoy.

Driver has set the play in a corridor between two rows of seats – not ‘in-the-round’ or ‘in the square’, and for this play it works with great effect. The actors are dressed in white, modern dress, which provides a basis for jackets, hats, etc. Lucky Catesby has a smart white martial arts uniform, which near the close of the play suddenly becomes black. Duncan Ley, as Richard, wears the white pants and shirt, a naevus or  scar on part of his face, and uses a stick and an apparently paralysed hand rammed into his pocket – an interesting change from the humpback etc.

Lighting, music and voice-overs are used with very effective timing (the Tudor radio was rather fun and non-intrusive).  The cuts in the script (much welcomed by this audience member) contracted the story without sacrificing the poetry.

Performances were very good. Ley as Richard showed us the nuances , both endearing and repellent, of his character; the women – for once- had a ball and I enjoyed Hannah Ley  as Anne, Helen Macfarlane as Elizabeth and, most of all Margaret Ferguson as the old Queen Margaret , a lovely chilling performance. I also liked Adrian Flor, as Richmond. This is one of those difficult parts for actors, coming as it does in the last moments of the play, and I was impressed at how he made his presence and personality felt – his killing of Richard can get dangerously near farce, but Flor was totally believable.

I look forward to more from this company (still reeling from the miraculous ‘Musical of Musicals, The Musical’.) Still to come, ‘The Laramie Project’ in May and ‘Kiss of the Spiderwoman’ in October .

Theatre by Frank McKone: Ninety by Joanna Murray-Smith

Ninety by Joanna Murray-Smith.  Directed by Sandra Bates, Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, February 4 – April 3, 2010.  Reviewed Tuesday March 9.

The three theatres I visited on this trip to Sydney have quite different atmospheres and clientele.

B Sharp means what it says.  Be ready to be bluntly confronted Downstairs at Belvoir St by pointed expertise.

Wharf 2 is like a well-bred show pony.  Its audiences expect nothing less than the professional best, and all the jumps are cleared.

The Ensemble …?  Well, it’s North Shore, suspended over gently lapping sailing boat water, moored in a bay of quietude.  It’s about humanity, intimacy, warmth of feeling, and sense of local community.  It still belongs to its audience as it has since Hayes Gordon set up Australia’s first theatre-in-the-round in the Kirribilli boatshed just 50 years ago.

Kate Raison and Brian Meegan could have performed Ninety as technically well in a bigger space, but even in Wharf 2 they would not have seemingly looked us directly in the eyes and we would not have seen our reflections in theirs.  If Ninety were done in a proscenium, end-on or even side-on theatre like Belvoir Downstairs, it would seem no better than a slick David Williamson comedy from the days before his community conferencing trilogy.

In the round, even in the three-quarters round as The Ensemble is nowadays,  Joanna Murray-Smith’s ninety minutes of post-ex-marital experience is quite rivetting.  It’s the right play for this theatre.

It’s always a good drama exercise to place an external limitation on what may happen.  There is no plot to Ninety except for Isabel’s intention.  She knows her ex-husband William so much better than the young actress he is about to marry, from the time of her inveigling him into her bed in the beginning, through their young couple financial struggles, his becoming successful and finally rich-and-famous, with the memories joyful and tragic of their only daughter who died so young. 

Isabel has phoned him and persuaded William to see her before he is off to Paris for the wedding – just as she had phoned him in the beginning.  He can only afford 90 minutes of his time.  The play lasts exactly 90 minutes.  Will Isabel break through to William’s real feelings in this short time?  Will he change his mind about marrying again?  Does she really expect him to come back to her?  Would she really want him to?

Of course, I cannot reveal such mysteries.  But I can say that, though the details of these two people’s lives are so different from my own, almost everything that was spoken and left unspoken rang silent bells within me.  If one can say there is no plot in this play, there is a fiendish plot at work to make us in the audience recognise ourselves as we are and as we have been.  If you are up for it, there is still time to make a booking.  02 9929 0644 or www.ensemble.com.au

JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAM

Presented by the Canberra Philharmonic Society
Erindale Theatre 4th - 20th March 2010

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

Philo's spectactular new production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice over-familiar musical certainly ticks all the right boxes. Imaginative direction, inventive choreography, glittering costumes, spectacular lighting, excellent sound, a charismatic leading man and an enthusiastic and talented ensemble, all contribute to make this a memorable production.

Jeff Van de Zandt, with his good looks, attractive singing voice, and self-affacing charm, is well cast as Joseph, the young man who survives bullying by his brothers to become the the most powerful man in Egypt. However "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" is a director's show, and in his first production for the Canberra Philharmonic Society, Gordon Nicholson has set himself a high bench-mark. He crams this production with spectacle and movement while still insuring that the story-telling is clear throughout.

His device of sharing the role of the narrator between a Greek chorus of 12 women works brilliantly, balances the ensemble, and provides opportunity for Musical Director, Leisa Keen, to write some lovely additional vocal arrangements to highlight several fine voices in the ensemble. Excellent amplification and clear diction from the whole ensemble add to the pleasures of this production.

Choreographer Jordan Kelly has a flair for devising interesting ways of moving large numbers of people around a stage. His production numbers, which involve a large children's choir and adult ensemble, are truly spectacular, and contribute greatly to a production to be relished for its imagination, flair and superb execution. Don't miss it!


(An edited version of this review appears in "CityNews" published 10th -16th March )