LES MISERABLES

Canberra Philharmonic Society

Erindale Theatre until March 16^th.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

 “Les Miserables” is an epic musical of operatic proportions and with their stunning new staging at the Erindale Theatre, The Canberra Philharmonic Society does justice to Boubil and Schonberg’s masterful adaptation of Victor Hugo’s stirring saga, with a thrillingly sung production that crackles with energy, and occasionally bursts off the stage to engulf the audience..  

Director Jim McMullen, has gathered a huge  cast and orchestra  and  harnessed significant resources for this production which with the help of an  impressively flexible setting,  brilliantly captures the sweep and excitement of the story with  imaginatively staged  and choreographed set pieces balancing touching moments of genuine pathos.

At the heart of the show is the superbly modulated, beautifully sung performance of Dave Smith, as Jean Valjean who manages to capture the passion, strength and dignity of a man struggling with his ideals.  Cast against type, as the hateful Javert, Adrian Flor matches him with an equally powerful performance, revealing an unexpectedly fine baritone voice in a show-stopping version of “Stars”. 

Vanessa de Jager is heart breaking as the feisty Eponine. Mat Chardon O’Dea and Laura Dawson are beautifully matched and haunting as the young lovers, Marius and Cosette. Ian Crocker and Kate Tricks are wonderfully awful as the Thenadiers, while Kelly Roberts as the tragic Fantine, and Grant Pegg, the heroic Enjolras, both provide stand-out performances in an ensemble production rich in excellent cameos.  Not to be missed.

 

           An edited version of this review appears in CITY NEWS Feb.28th March 6. edition.

West Side Story

Free-Rain Theatre Company

The Q

Season closed

Reviewed by Samara Purnell

West Side story opened to frantic dialogue delivered at such pace and with accents which seemed to range all over Australia and America. This meant that chunks of dialogue were missed, but luckily they were not essential to the plot, and also improved dramatically later in the performance.

The leads were fantastic – Lachlan Whan as Tony has a warm, pleasant voice and a likeable stage presence. His voice sounded a little hoarse, perhaps week three of performance taking its toll. A little more confidence will also help his performance, as he seemed more at ease and “stronger” when performing duets. Once he really nails it, the audience will be allowed to relax into his singing, and enjoy his lovely falsetto and lilting vibrato.

As Maria - verging on womanhood and eager to experience life and romance, Nicola Hall was practically perfect for the role. She embodied the right combination of petulance and innocence. Hall has a wonderfully pretty and pure voice and also performed with a convincing Puerto Rican accent, sustained throughout her singing. Even during long periods of earnest gazing at Tony, she was truly captivating and you found yourself really rooting for the couple, despite knowing that their Romeo and Juliet romance is fraught with everything but a happy ending. The couple’s rendition of One Heart was moving and tender and their voices blended beautifully.

Amy Dunham was particularly impressive as Anita and completely convincing as she pleaded with Maria during their duet, A boy like that. Her flirtatious interactions with Bernardo (Jordan Kelly) were lots of fun. It is always good to see a strong singer who can also act, as Dunham can, providing fun and laughs all round in her rendition of America.

Riff, played by Zach Drury, snarled his way through a good performance as leader of the Jets. His singing was at times a little flat yet he had a good physicality in this role that drew the eye to him during ensemble pieces.

Well choreographed nuances added credibility to ensemble scenes and choreographer Lisa Buckley has successfully replicated a crowded dance hall with a blend of styles from latin to rock n roll. The rumble was well choreographed and executed between a very sleek looking Puerto Rican Sharks outfit and the American Jets.  

It would have been nice to see Somewhere danced with just the strongest dancers and really showcase them. Also because some of the pairings looked awkward and in faster numbers many of the girls didn't look completely relaxed and some of the timing (both male and female) was right out.

Somewhere, possibly the signature song from West Side Story, was brilliantly sung by Linda Gledhill, Sarah-Darnley Stuart and Max Gambale, who oversaw the Jets and Sharks dancing together in a dream-like sequence, with Tony and Maria in the middle. To perform it this way was a bold decision that begged the question “Why?” But it worked. And very well indeed.

Some of the ensemble struggled to give rounded performances as singers/dancers/actors, but as a group the boys really hit their straps with Gee, Officer Krupke and it would have been good to see that level of polish from the boys for the entire show.

The set needed a little more to it, as bare scaffolding sets might work in the Musical “Rent”, but here it didn't quite, and at times it made the dance space a bit tight.

Musical director John Yoon and conductor Major Geoff Grey endeavoured to maintain the integrity of Bernstein’s original score and the orchestra sounded great.

Maria was left standing in her bra and petticoat for so long in the opening scenes of Act Two, including during an interview with Detective Shrank which was both distracting and unrealistic. That said, the entire second act of this production was incredibly tense, dramatic and emotional, leaving many an audience member teary eyed.

Free-Rain’s West Side Story is a credit to the acting and singing of the cast and to Director Anne Somes, who has produced a high quality and thoroughly enjoyable show. 

MORNING STAR

Mirramu Dance Company in association with artists from Arnhem Land
John Fairfax Theatre, National Gallery Of Australia
1 March to 3 March, 2013

Review by Len Power

It’s particularly stimulating to experience an indigenous dance production that leaves you wanting to know more about the culture you’ve just had a glimpse of. Mirramu Dance Company’s current production certainly does that.

According to the program, ‘Morning Star’ follows one sacred song line of the Yolngu people of North East Arnhem Land.  Between sunset and sunrise powerful songs and dances of ancestral spirits, the butterfly, the brolga, the praying mantis and the little bat are danced and sung in this age-old ceremony, which affirms the complex and intricate cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth.

Eight dancers draw us into this fascinating and mysterious world through a program consisting of seventeen separate songs and dances.  There are solo, duo and trio items as well as others with the full cast.

All eight performers introduce themselves directly to the audience early in the show in a section called ‘Kinship’.  Learning of their relationship to each other gives us a greater understanding of the dances and songs about the cycle of life that follow.  Particularly memorable items included ‘Layers’, danced by Albert David, Miranda Wheen and Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal, the traditional brolga dance – Mulung, Mulung – by the whole cast followed by the contemporary brolga dance by Jade which combined traditional movement with modern dance techniques.  The finale – Gunaro – crying for the Morning Star as it returns back to the promised land, performed by the whole cast, was especially moving.

Composer, Airi Ingram in collaboration with Albert David, provided a fascinating fusion of traditional and electronic music to provide a haunting atmosphere that enhanced each item in the show.  The costumes designed by Peta Strachan were a highlight of the production especially those signifying animals and birds.  I liked the fact that there was just a suggestion of a particular creature in the costumes and the rest was provided by the performer and our imaginations.  The lighting design by Rodney Bates complemented the whole production.  Particularly effective were the pools of light provided for some of the items.

Artistic Director, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, who also dances in the show, has produced an excellent production in collaboration with her artists.  Do buy the informative and attractive program as it provides a lot of interesting background detail.

Mirramu Dance Company’s ‘Morning Star’ is an electrifying and very entertaining production.

Also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 ‘Dress Circle’ program on Sunday 3 March 2013

Henry 4 adapted by John Bell from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 by William Shakespeare

David Whitney as Henry IV

Arky Michael, Felix Joseps, Yalin Ozucelik, Matthew Moore, John Bell, Terry Bader, Wendy Strehlow

Jason Klarwein as Hotspur, Matthew Moor as Prince Hal

John Bell as Fir John Falstaff

Matthew Moore as Prince Hal

Yalin Ozucelik, Matthew Moore, John Bell, Felix Joseps, Wendy Strehlow, Terry Bader, Arky Michael

All photos by Lisa Tomasetti

Henry 4 adapted by John Bell from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare Company, co-directed by John Bell and Damien Ryan, at Canberra Playhouse, February 26 – March 9, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 26

If this version of the Henry IV plays were a game of soccer (I’ve read that the Romans brought football to Britain, and it has flourished there ever since), I think the score would be Sir John Falstaff 7, Prince Hal 2.  Or maybe, sympathy for The People 5, appreciation of The Royals 0.

John Bell has selected material, directed the action and played the role himself so that the play seems to owe too much to Falstaff’s grandiose sense of his own importance.

This is not to say that Bell’s interpretation of Falstaff is at fault: in fact, I would say it is probably the best I can recall.  We see the full flowering of Falstaff, the con man, who uses all and sundry for his own benefit – and finally faces his justified come-uppance as the new king rejects his fawning attempt to gain high office. 

But the focus on the ordinary people weakened the importance – and the audience’s understanding – of the internecine warfare among the nobility, which in the end was Shakespeare’s real concern. 

It is the speech by Rumour, “painted full of tongues” – which opens The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth – which links the two parts.  The whole society is torn apart by Rumour which “is a pipe / Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, / And of so easy and so plain a stop / That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, / The still-discordant wavering multitude, / Can play upon it.”

I can see Bell’s intention and some reasoning behind the setting of the play in a kind of modern England torn by the social strife of the recent riots, but Shakespeare set his play at a specific point in history, some 200 years before his own time, as a warning, I suggest, to those taking revenge on the basis of the rumour mill.  It’s probably more appropriate to see the parallel with our current parliament and the upcoming election, than to see much connection with the street-level destructive behaviour of the modern riots, just because Shakespeare used low-life scenes as comic contrast.

The most significant failure, to me, of this production was that the playing of Prince Hal lost the charisma, intelligence and strategic thinking which is central to his character.  Either Matthew Moore was not up to the part – and indeed much of his dialogue was not even to be clearly heard – or it was not considered necessary in the play’s direction to make sure that his words came through to us not as mere banter or drug-induced mish-mash. 

For example, when his father is ill, Hal says to Poins “By this hand, though thinkest me as far in the devil’s book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man.  But I tell thee my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick; and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.”  He goes on to make clear that he has to think strategically about how “every man would think me an hypocrite indeed”. 

I can only fairly report that none of this text was delivered powerfully, so that we would understand how it could be that this apparently dissolute young man could turn around when necessary to defeat the Percy opposition, could face up to the responsibility his father’s illness and subsequent demise would place upon him, and show the kind of strength of character that would be seen by his brother John of Lancaster, now the Lord Chief Justice, when he says, as the play concludes, “I like this fair proceeding of the king’s. / He hath intent his wonted followers / Shall all be very well provided for; / But all are banish’d till their conversations / Appear more wise and modest to the world.”

Where was this strength of character and Hal’s ability to see through the “devil’s book” of Poins and Falstaff, while also understanding their humanity, which takes him on to become the Henry the Fifth of Agincourt?  I’m afraid it just wasn’t there. 

So, despite the success of the playing of Falstaff, the failure of Prince Hal to score left me disappointed with Henry 4.
 

Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw

Mr Praed (pronounced 'prayed') - gentleman caller

 All photos by Brett Boardman

Frank Gardner - the son next door

Rev Samuel Gardner - the father next door

An innocent introduction: Mrs Warren, Crofts, Vivie Warren

Sir George Crofts (who ought to be kicked),  Vivie

Decision

Reconciliation?

Truth

Reality

 Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw.  Sydney Theatre Company directed by Sarah Giles, Wharf 1 February 19 – April 6 and July 4-20, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 27 (matinee)

This is a brilliant production which makes me acutely aware of the skills of the author, the cast and designers.  It is especially a triumph for Sarah Giles in her first mainstage production for Sydney Theatre Company.

The actors played exquisitely. While it is understandable, especially because of her final-scene speech and exit, that Helen Thomson receives star recognition as Mrs Warren, which she absolutely deserves, every other actor – Lizzie Schebesta (Vivie Warren), Simon Burke (Praed), Eamon Farren (Frank Gardner), Drew Forsythe (Rev Samuel Gardner) and Martin Jacobs (Sir George Crofts) – matched her precision of expression and language.  This is a perfect team for a play which still rings true after 120 years.

The basic designs for set and costumes seem to be based on the photos of the 1902 production by the Theatre of the New Lyric Club, when the official censor finally agreed – to a private club production, as Shaw wrote, “at last, after a delay of only eight years”.  (These photos appear in the 1912 Constable publication.)

But how clever and effective it was to make the garden backdrop into a curtain representing a full-height manicured hedge, and to change scenes using a slow-revolving stage which gave us not just a sense of time passing, but time to absorb the effects of the scene just ended.  So we were treated to the preservation of the period to which the play belongs, in a frame of modern staging technique.

Despite my long association with the work of Bernard Shaw I had never seen Mrs Warren’s Profession on stage and had wondered how it would work to construct the set as Shaw described it in considerable realistic detail.  The creative team of Renée Mulder (designer), with lighting designer Nigel Levings and composer/sound designer Max Lyandvert took the key elements from Shaw, playing with them in the open space of the Wharf 1 theatre and, in doing so, illuminated the relationships between characters more clearly, I believe, than Shaw’s original description would have allowed.

Finally I must explain my enthusiasm for the quality of expression and language in this production.  As Alex Lalak states, in one of the excellent essays in the program, “For George Bernard Shaw, the most important things in life were words.”  For many directors and actors over the past century, Shaw’s words have seemed a bête noir.  There are just so many of them!  So much philosophy!  How do we act these words?

The answer is to understand that Shaw was using words to both express ideas (of the characters) and expose the relationships between the characters, within a frame of social criticism.  Each laugh makes us think; each word tells us how the speaker is thinking and how the receiver of the words is thinking – and feeling – in response.

This is complex work for each actor.  This is not ordinary “naturalism”, where a Stanislavsky-style technique of recalled feelings can work.  This is writing by an author who is in charge of the effects on us in the audience – on both our thoughts and our feelings.  Shaw wrote, in “The Author’s Apology” for Mrs Warren’s Profession, “Give me the critic who has just rushed from my play to declare furiously that Sir George Crofts ought to be kicked.”

And, indeed, this was exactly the effect that these actors and this director achieved for this critic, at least.  Further than this, I felt proud that we have in the Sydney Theatre Company practitioners who do such good service to one of the greatest dramatic writers in English since William Shakespeare. 

And if you would like to know the source of the director’s note that Shaw stole the play from the famous actress with whom he had worked on Ibsen’s plays, check out A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama: 1880 – 2005 edited by Mary Luckhurst: “A New Woman Drama” and Mrs Daintree’s Daughter by Janet Achurch – who was a remarkable woman indeed.

Our Roots Right Now. The Research Forum and Festival of Thai/ASEAN Contemporary Theatre. Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. Bangkok, January 19 – 28, 2013.

Fire Fire Fire

This was a huge, ambitious and thoroughly well run undertaking by Chulalongkorn University’s Drama Department in the Faculty of Arts, aimed not only at reviewing and validating research projects but also at involving their students in a range of issues, performances and workshops.

Here’s how it was advertised:

’33 performances

13 workshops

27 panels

10 days’

Facebook led me there and I took on the challenge of the full ten days. Chulalongkorn University Drama Department staff and students were very welcoming to a visitor; I thank them for their friendly hospitality and the hours of translation of Thai into English (sometimes by staff but mostly by a tribe of highly skilled students).

The title of the forum/festival hinted at the perils of translation; it might not have sat so well in an Australian context but in Bangkok it nailed the issues of tradition and change that concern people analysing and making performance in South East Asia.

The pulse of the Ramayana (Thai Ramakien) ran right through it, as did the intrinsic nature of culture and movement. I had to scramble to keep up with shows and workshops that referenced the stories of Rama and Sita and Thotsakan rather than Shakespeare and the Bible (although the new and splendidly flexible black box theatre at Chulalongkorn opened with Macbeth and an upcoming Brecht – Fear and Misery in the Third Reich was being advertised). I’d just decide I had a handle on all this with Surapone Virulrak’s elegant dance drama The Tragedy of Ravana and the Ramayana characters would turn up in a beauty parlour in the style of a Thai TV soap (Femmes Fatales in Lanka by Parida Manomaiphibul) or they would be so grungy and street wise it was hard to tell who was of high rank (Dangkamon Na-pombejra’s Ravanasura).  Or the whole setting would be so abstract (18 Monkeys’ Muet, directed by Jitti Chompee) that it was hard for those of us not fluent in the culture to see the old story’s patterns.

You’d think a performance was strictly traditional and afterwards people would be explaining just what they had to do to revive or recreate or even freshly introduce ‘traditions’ such as Thai shadow puppets (Bhanbhassa Dhubthien directing the young performers of The Nang Yai Players of Wat Bandon, Rayong in the fabulous monkeys versus demons battle in Yok Rob) or the cool Lanna dancers showing in Fawn Leb/Identity the ironically humorous realities of dress and behaviour behind the lovely controlled dances of Thailand’s independently minded north or Pornrat Damrhung’s work with student performers in  the Tai-Lue Lanka Sip Ho ((Ten Headed Ravana) on preserving the warmth and inspiration of ancestral traditions in story and performance.

Kecak master I Wayan Dibia , while giving a large workshop group an exhilarating experience of actually doing it, explained that the famous kecak (‘monkey dance’) of Bali was actually recreated for tourism in the early 1930s by the German Walter Spies. 

Then the Cambodian Amrita Performing Arts confounded expectations by performing traditional male masked dance to the music of extracts from Bach’s Cello Concertos and the nang yai (shadow puppets) started khon classical dance moves in front of the screen so they were no longer shadows and the Pichet Klunchun Dance company showed in Tam Kai  (Hunting the Rooster) how abstract and yet humorous some Thai contemporary dance is prepared to be; even though it was based on a poem with a story line it felt more like a piece that played around not so much with performance as with warm up.

Danny Yung Ning-Tsun, chair of the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture pointed out in his paper that the creativity of performing arts practitioners is what keeps ‘living arts’ alive, not putting them in a museum. Pichet Klunchun was more forthright, saying in his workshop that Thai classical dance is dead because it is not developing; it does not change.

There were debates on the need for arts education, the varying difficulties of censorship and approvals and the positive social uses to which performing can be put.

What was the core of it for a non Thai? That the world doesn't revolve around the western theatre tradition is one thing. South East Asian countries are aware of that tradition and use it (as was shown in the brief but fascinating presentation on the history of Thai staging by designer and academic Ritirong Jiwakanon) but there are other forces from their own traditions.

The language of much that was happening was what we would term dance and the language of movement was not the Western ‘reach for the sky’ idiom but a much more earth bound language where the fingers are bent back repeatedly from infancy and the knees are bent and workshops become very difficult even for anyone who has had exposure to ballet and Western contemporary dance. We were doing workshops mostly up on the 9^th floor where huge blinds meant silhouettes and time and time again it was the hands and the turned out knees that I saw. Mainly those lively bent back hands. The few Westerners in the classes have learned a different performance aesthetic and we clearly struggle.

Yok Rob

I mostly sat down, shut my mouth, opened my eyes and ears and tried to absorb as much as possible during this part of a month long journey in Thailand that also included seeing B-Flor’s amiable and whimsical Survival Games at Pridi Banomyong Institute, a lively touring play about littering created by Sue Milne and her Akha students at Baan Ayui hostel in Chiang Rai and a huge likhe evening at the National Theatre.

I found myself in workshops with superb practitioners and teachers. Chinese kunqu master Ke Jun, director of the Jiangsu Kunqu Opera troupe, showed he was equally at home in traditional and contemporary forms. I relished watching the teaching skills of choreographer Agnes Locsin from the Philippines and the Champa Lao Puppet Theatre, where everyone was tearing up newspaper and making puppets.  The crouching elegant swan dance moves of the Nora Thummanit troupe from Songkhla were beyond me but the enthusiams of teacher Nora Thummanit Nikomrat were not and the Nora song in English raised the roof on the 9^th floor.

In fact there was a whole evening of performances about birds and animals; the stately Mon Hong Thong swan dance, the Tai Kinnara Dance (with peacocks and the slender pantomime horse that is the mythical deer-like lucky To) and the Nora Thummanit Thaksin University Group troupe dignified and stylized as the swans  of the south.

ASWARA Dance Company from Malaysia performed Rooted in Silat, a contemporary piece that drew with skill and good humour on Malay martial arts and classical dances, the Champa Lao Theatre told the story of prince Sinxai and had an elephant puppet that was most impressive and Sujita Goel from India presented a riveting contemporary piece called Dancing Girl, where the lighting cleverly only let the audience see a little of her journey at a time.

Anatta Theatre gave the elegantly elegiac ghost story The Return of Wanthong. with Duangjai Hirunsri as the vengeful mother ghost writer/director Pradit Prasartthong as her soldier son. Apparently every time it is performed it has a different ending – we were treated to a very Buddhist version where the mother is able to let go of vengeance and leave this world.

Noor Effendy Ibrahim from Singapore performed Dancing with The Ghost of My Child, a deeply mature, moving and challenging piece that played with gender roles and the longing for a child. And the performances concluded with the celebratory Fire Fire Fire, where the vastly differing individual responses of choreographers Eko Supryanto (Indonesia) Cambodia’s Sophiline Cheam Shapiro and Pichet Klunchun to the Ramayana episode of the testing of Sita by fire were contrasted, so that the festival ended where it had begun, with a contemplation of the place of tradition.

Perhaps the last word should go, however, to Singapore’s Daniel K, who in his strongly contemporary piece Q& A had the temerity to conduct and present research on the audience, complete with shirt, tie and PowerPoint but missing his trousers. He asked them the question ‘What do you want to see?’

Muet

Those lucky enough to take part in this forum and festival are rather hoping that they can see more of what this event had to offer.

 By Alanna Maclean

LES MISERABLES

Based on the novel by Victor Hugo
Original French Text by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel
Additional Material by James Fenton
Music by Claude-Michel Schonberg
Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer

Directed by Jim McMullan for Canberra Philharmonic Society
Erindale Centre February 21 to March 16

Review by Len Power

Mention ‘Les Miserables’ and the famous poster image of young Cosette with the flowing hair comes instantly to mind.  Such is the power of advertising, even people who’ve never been to a musical know of this one.  A phenomenon ever since its English premiere in 1985, the musical based on Victor Hugo’s 1861 epic novel has now become the second longest running musical in the world.  Directed by Jim McMullen with a cast of over sixty, every aspect of Philo’s new production has come together to create a memorable experience.

Heading the cast is Dave Smith as Jean Valjean.  He gives a powerful performance in the role and sings the difficult score with great precision and feeling.  His ‘Bring Him Home’ is one of the highlights of the evening.  Adrian Flor, as the obsessed Javert, sings the role superbly and gives, arguably, his best performance yet on the Canberra stage.  There had been talk around town that, regardless of their acknowledged skills, both of these performers were too young to be convincing in these roles.  Those concerns happily proved to be groundless.  Both actors employ effective ageing makeup as the show progresses and their body language and performances thoughtfully take into account the passage of time.

Marius, Mat Chardon O’Dea, Eponine, Vanessa de Jager and Cosette, Laura Dawson, are in great voice and give very moving performances in their roles.  Kelly Roberts tears your heart out with her wonderful Fantine and the roguish Thenardiers are played and sung delightfully by Kate Tricks and Ian Croker.  Grant Pegg sings thrillingly and is very real as the fanatical student leader, Enjolras.  Everyone else in the cast does an excellent job to bring this period of history to life.

The substantial set with lots of interesting nooks and crannies, designed by Jim McMullan and Ian Croker, works very well and is complemented by the atmospheric lighting design of Carl Makin and audio design by Eclipse Sound and Lighting.  The balance of sound between orchestra and performers was just right.  The costumes (over 200 of them), designed by Anne Mewburn-Grey, capture the period of the show and the clever choreography is by Miranda Cookman.  The Wedding Chorale sequence becomes a highlight of the show where costumes and choreography complement each other perfectly.

A sung-through musical like this one needs a very skilful musical director.  Casey White produced an excellent sound from the orchestra, bringing out all the subtleties, colour and grandness in this massive score.  The unseen orchestra deserves a special mention – they must be exhausted by the end of the performance.

This was the fourth stage production of ‘Les Miserables’ I’ve seen, but I was still moved to tears at the end of the show.  Don’t miss it!

Originally broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 ‘Dress Circle’ program on Sunday 24 February 2013