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Legend!

4 Feb

‘Slips’ Cordon is a top bloke. By his own admission.

Some other Australian legends are admitted to the pantheon. But others are not, and these others are quickly dismissed as sniveling pricks and the like.

One of the irresistible charms of Slips Cordon, the great raconteur, is his indubitable judgements. By sheer strength of personality, he inexorably divides the world into the wheat and the chaff.

Photo by Katy Green Loughrey

Photo by Katy Green Loughrey

This magnificent teller of tall tales shares with us his part in some of the seemingly seminal events of a very Australian twentieth century. The key aspect of each story is that he’s always the hero.

John Derum’s performance is a true delight. Pat Sheil’s script is comic brilliance.

Lex Marinos’ direction is simple and highly effective – the ambiance of a fire side reminisce, an evening of the gentle look backwards, generates hilarity by the absurdity of the contrast with Slips’ truly outrageous stories.

Like Forest Gump, but without the innocence, Slips seems to have been everywhere. And known everyone: Bradman, Phar Lap, Melba, Errol Flynn, Simpson, his donkey. Everyone. And Slips out shines them all.

So Legend is a satire on the big talker? The wanker?

Perhaps.  It’s difficult not to love Slips for his colossal exuberance.

The night is a roll call of Aussie icons. And Slips’  involvement in their famous lives is invariable. The fun is who’ll be next.

And that’s the point. Why are these people (and assorted members of the equine family) our heroes? And, indeed, why have heroes at all? That these names are so very familiar is indicative of a culture beguiled by the simplicity of judgement, and seduced by the safety of the indulgent backward gaze.

Veronica Kaye

Legend! by Pat Sheil

The Old Fitzroy til 15 Feb

http://www.sitco.net.au/

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Hotel Sorrento

21 Jan

Australia Day is controversial, especially because of the date we choose to celebrate it.  Are we being patriotic, or just parochial?

It’s curious that the people most keen on Australia Day are often the very people most cynical about the only thing that actually makes us Australians. And that is? The fact we vote, pay taxes and are under the legal jurisdiction of the federal government. Australia is a political entity.

Hannie Rayson’s play is not about Australia Day, but it is about being Australian.

Rayson’s characters argue about Australians; their attitudes to art and artists, and their supposed inability for emotional sophistication.

Meg is the Booker nominated expat. On one level, she has little time for what she sees as Australian smallness. Dick, a leftist journalist, argues passionately against her. How would you know? he says. You haven’t been here for 10 years!

Of course, the play itself is 24 years old. Are Meg and Dick both wrong? Have we changed as a nation?

Or are Meg and Dick both guilty of a simple category error? Is ‘Australia’, as a cultural entity, merely a generalization? How useful is the word ‘Australian’ at all?

This is far from a criticism of the production. It’s what the play made me think about. And if I’d paid for a ticket I would’ve said it was money well spent.

Photo by Mark Banks

Photo by Mark Banks

It’s a funny, moving and very thought-provoking night of theatre. Director Shane Bates has elicited some good performances from her cast. I especially enjoyed Melanie Robinson as Meg, Martin Bell as Edwin, her husband, and Rob White as Dick.

The play also made me think about representational art. Marge paints ‘still life’. At one point, she praises the ability of good art to capture the essence of things. Meg’s novel does this, we are told. As does the work of Helen Garner; it showed Marge something she had always been aware of, but had been unable to articulate or even acknowledge.  In the words of T S Eliot (quoted in the play):  “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”. And, in the middle of this paean to representational art, Dick grabs an apple and bites into it, unaware that it’s part of the ‘still life’ Marge is trying to paint. It’s a cheeky symbol from Rayson.

Is representation what art should attain to? It would be churlish to suggest it wouldn’t be a magnificent achievement. I’m just not sure art can show us the Truth.

A vision of art as Truth is conservative, an always looking backwards, an approach that can inadvertently deny Life, and its possibilities.

Art might be a microscope or a telescope, but it’s also a kaleidoscope. Representational art takes elements of what previously existed and plays with them. Like the Uncertainty Principle in nuclear physics, when we describe the world, we affect it. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s empowering.

There is not an Australia to represent. Australia is not a thing, it’s a happening.*

Let’s see what we can make happen.

Veronica Kaye

*Apologies to E P Thompson, a writer Dick would be quite familiar with.

Hotel Sorrento

til 22nd Febuary at the Genesian Theatre

http://www.genesiantheatre.com.au/

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Wittenberg

10 Jan

Wittenberg has all the ingredients for a good night out –  allusions to Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, a scholarly awareness of the German Sturm und Drang movement, all topped off with in depth references to sixteenth century theological debate!

No, seriously, it’s all very accessible. And, yes, it’s terrific fun.

Hamlet is at uni, and his two tutors, John Faustus and Martin Luther, battle for his soul. The mixing of characters derived from both fiction and fact is a sure signal that we’re in for some wackiness.

It’s a game of intellectual tennis with some top class verbal athletes shooting sharp, hilarious volleys back and forth across the net. (Admittedly, it’s a rather loose net. The play is built on what I feel is a false, or at least exaggerated, dichotomy; that between faith and reason. In this way, it’s very much an American play, part of that nation’s culture wars between the Right and the Left. But I’m far from suggesting it’s parochial. Much of the discourse about spiritual experience in the West has long been skewed towards epistemology – by the extraordinary success of the Scientific Revolution.)

David Woodland; photo by Katy Green Loughrey

David Woodland; photo by Katy Green Loughrey

It’s a very watchable game, even if one player is given a tennis racquet and the other only a ping pong bat. The play clearly favours Faustus. He’s presented as the voice of reason and skepticism. David Woodland does a wonderful job of bringing this likable and passionate rogue alive. And Nick Curnow does well to make Luther a marvelously enjoyable prig.

Director Richard Hilliar has elicited fine performances from the whole cast, and writer David Davalos’ brilliant language is a joy to hear.

Articulate, erudite, and a damn good night!

(Though you don’t, in the foyer, want to meet a bore like me,                               who’ll bang on about the privileging of epistemology!)

Veronica Kaye

Wittenberg by David Davalos

at The Old Fitzroy til 25 Jan

http://www.sitco.net.au/

 

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Short and Sweet Cabaret

9 Jan

I realized sometime ago that Life was, in fact, not a cabaret.

At times, I’ve felt Life should lift its game, and would greatly benefit from adopting some of cabaret’s virtues – its sense of mischief, its playfulness, its exuberance.

And last night’s Short and Sweet Cabaret was overflowing with these very qualities.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t like competitions. Winning is for losers. But the competition that is Short and Sweet is easily ignored, overwhelmed by the vitality of the performances.

Festival director Kate Gaul has assembled a great night of entertainment. And Daryl Wallis as musical director, and spending much of the night on the keyboard, has created magic.

I’m not going to attempt to discuss all thirteen acts, but rather focus on several that especially spoke to me.

Oh, My Shattered Illusions, performed by Kelly Young, is delightfully naughty, and deals with copulation and its two most challenging consequences – STIs and children.

Cienda McNamara’s Hardly The Portrait of a Lady is cleverly written and beautifully sung. It’s a very funny tale of the character’s rivalry with Nicole Kidman, and an insight into the dangers of competition.

Harry + Liv, performed by Charlotte and Evan Kerr, is a perfect vehicle for the artists’ considerable talents, both vocally and on the piano. A simple but charming at home moment between brother and sister is brought alive by two wonderful voices.

Maryann Wright. Photo by Diana Popovska

Maryann Wright. Photo by Diana Popovska

Nuts, performed by Maryann Wright, is a playful presentation of some of history’s eccentrics, and Wright has a brilliant voice.

Another brilliant voice belongs to Josipa Draisma. Her Keep Moving was a marvelously presented collection of songs about the power of dreams.

Brendan Hay "Dance with DeVil"

Brendan Hay “Dance with DeVil”

Also in possession of an amazing voice is Brendan Hay. His Dance with DeVil was polished and witty, and performed with great stage presence.

Jade Yeong’s appropriation of some classic Australian anthems in her Wok Off to Where You Came From is both inspiring and subversive.

Similarly, Bali Padda’s Token Brown Guy raises vital questions about our society’s values. His Hindi rendition of a classic Aussie TV theme is riotous in all the right ways.

I usually make much of the fact that I don’t write ‘reviews’ but rather what I call ‘responses’. A night like this beats my best intentions because there is just so much – a deluge of surprises and spectacles, a torrent of wonders and revelations.

Like the annual flood of the old Nile, it overwhelms Life, and it feeds Life. Of course, it is Life. (Old Chum)

Veronica Kaye

Short and Sweet Cabaret Week 1

til Sat 11 Jan at New Theatre

The cabaret element of the Short and Sweet festival runs til Jan 19

http://www.shortandsweet.org/festivals/shortsweet-cabaret-sydney

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The Dreamer Examines His Pillow

15 Dec

‘What is sex for?’ adult Donna asks her father.

‘For making babies!’ he replies; an answer so shockingly and refreshingly obvious that it hides the very strangeness of the question.

‘What is sex for?’

What is it for?

What’s being expressed here is a powerful desire for structure, an overwhelming need for certainty. Donna is asking someone with supposed authority to tell her how the world is organized. She wants her father to say that things are this way, and not that way, or that way, or that….

John Patrick Shanley’s play is rich and thought provoking. His characters speak with a street poetry that overflows with gloriously fresh imagery. The play bristles and sparkles with the contrast between plain speaking and magical attempts to capture the unknowable.

Donna and Tommy are trying to work it out.  Should they be together or not? It would probably be easier if Tommy knew who he was and what he was responsible for. (Another strand of Shanley’s intriguing exploration of certainty.) It would also be easier if Tommy wasn’t sleeping with Donna’s younger sister.

Photo by Tom Bannerman

Photo by Tom Bannerman

Ainslie Clouston and Scott Lee give brilliant performances as the lovers, and Peter McAllum is wonderful as Donna’s father.

Tom Bannerman’s clever set brings the TAP alive.

Director Vashti Pontaks’ production is funny and deeply stimulating. (And not just because of the discussions of sex, though they’re interesting. Shanley’s vision of sex and romantic love is a controversial one. Of course, the play doesn’t really reduce desire to a mere component in biological reproduction. Indeed, to my taste, Shanley actually overstates the power and importance of sex in our lives. And yes, I know, that’s a bold claim to hide away in a set of parentheses.)

But the play is an exhilarating reminder of the danger of reducing anything to something else.

For when we rob Life of its richness, it is we who are poorer.

Veronica Kaye

 

The Dreamer Examines His Pillow by John Patrick Shanley

at TAP Gallery til 21st Dec

http://www.unpathed.com.au/

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Measure for Measure

11 Dec

Hypocrisy is my least favourite vice.

I don’t mean that I abhor it more than other vices.  Rather, of all the supposed vices, it’s one of those I think least warrants the title.

My problem with hypocrisy is this:  it’s too easily seconded in to attempts to shut down discussions of ethical behaviour.

For example, consider the criticisms aimed at so called ‘chardonnay drinking socialists’. According to some public commentators,  if you drink chardonnay, you’re no longer qualified to discuss the redistribution of wealth in our society. (Have you drunk some of the gawd awful chardonnays out there? I attend the opening nights of small indie theatre companies; I have.* Believe me, quaffing chardonnay doesn’t automatically rocket you into the privileged classes. Unless, of course, you remember that there are a billion people on the planet who don’t have access to clean water.)

Which brings me back to my point. (And, yes, there’ll be talk of theatre soon enough.) If you bemoan the fact that there are children who don’t have clean water and yet afford yourself a glass of wine occasionally you are a hypocrite. But how is that possibly worse than drinking and not mentioning that there are people worse off than you?

I believe we should have ethical aspirations. I believe we should say ‘We could all do better’. Because we could. But hypocrisy is often so shallowly conceived, and flatly presented, that these vital conversations don’t occur.

In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare presents a very simple hypocrite. Angelo is given sovereignty over Vienna while the Duke is absent. He then precedes to prosecute citizens who contravene regulations about sexuality morality, regulations that previously, under the Duke, were not enforced. (To a modern eye, fornication is not a crime, but it’s not too difficult to find contemporary parallels.) Angelo’s hypocrisy springs from the fact he’s guilty of the ‘crime’ but does not acknowledge it.

Nick Hunter plays Angelo with a fair sense of humour, and it’s a good choice. The meat in this play, as I will argue, is elsewhere.

Danielle Baynes2

Danielle Baynes plays Isabella the novitiate, who faces a tough moral dilemma (well, once again, probably not to modern eyes, and possibly not to most Elizabethans). She must decide whether to save her brother’s life at the cost of her virginity. I won’t describe what happens (though I’m not sure if you can be guilty of a spoiler in a Shakespearean play), but suffice to say it leaves one considering justice and mercy and the true nature of love.** Baynes’ performance is powerful. Her response when Angelo tries to force himself on her is heart wrenching. And her final action of the play will ignite many a post-show discussion.

Director Richard Hilliar draws some delightful performances from his cast.  Hailey McQueen is terrific fun as a nun. James Townsend is wonderful as the big talker who doesn’t know when to stop.  (In fact, as this piece is being played in rep with King Lear as part of the Sydney Shakespeare Festival, it’s fascinating to witness such an enormous versatility of performance from the entire cast.)

John Grinston plays the Duke, and does an admirable job.  There’s a suitable mix of gravitas and humour. But the Duke as written is a bizarre character, and it’s hard to know if Shakespeare thought of him as anything but a plot device. But he has a lot of stage time, and ultimately, despite avowing that he has all the other character’s best interests at heart, ends up treating them as little more than puppets.

A cautionary for playwrights, and other omnipotent beings? Or an insight into true hypocrisy?

Veronica Kaye

* For what my opinion is worth, Sydney Independent Theatre Company does not serve gawd awful chardonnay at their openings.

** I never do get round to discussing this in detail. See the play, then discuss it yourself in the bar afterwards, with some good chardonnay.

Measure for Measure

playing with King Lear as part of the Sydney Shakespeare Festival til 21st Dec

http://www.sitco.net.au/

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King Lear

6 Dec

King Lear is a brilliant play. And much discussed.

I’ve always been intrigued by Simone Weil’s reading. She saw a tussle between power and honesty, and concluded they were mutually exclusive. The opening sequence certainly prepares us for this view. Regan and Goneril sing their father’s praises in exchange for property. Cordelia is discreet, and is punished for it.

Orwell has a famous essay about Shakespeare and Tolstoy. He reminds us that Tolstoy didn’t especially warm to Shakespeare and had a particular dislike for this play. The story, it would seem, was too close to the bone for the great Russian writer.

I, too, find the story confronting. It’s the tragedy of the great moral gesture.

The play begins with Lear’s grand renunciation. The problem is he can’t maintain the grandness. Leof Kingsford-Smith’s portrayal is wonderfully and heartrendingly accurate. There’s a pomposity to the early Lear. We don’t dislike Lear for it – it’s common enough in older men. In fact, it awakens our pity. As the Fool later says, aren’t we supposed to grow wise before we grow old? Lear hasn’t. Will we?

But like us all, Lear doesn’t understand himself. Having made the grand gesture he wants gratitude, and is devastated when he doesn’t receive it. Who hasn’t been in the same situation? You are kind, and then you’re not acknowledged for that kindness, and so you become bitter. If you choose kindness (or any other moral gesture) perhaps it’s best to stick with it all the way.  (A lonely path, I suspect. But to what vistas might it lead?)

Lear

Director Richard Hilliar’s production is moving and engaging. Kingsford-Smith’s marvelous Lear is amply supported by some strong performances. Amy Scott-Smith presents an admirably icy Regan. This is nicely balanced by Hailey McQueen’s Goneril; a beautiful portrait of a small soul, troubled by inklings of self knowledge, but lacking the courage to confront them. Danielle Baynes as Cordelia is dignity and honesty personified.

And, in the world of the play, there’s no place for a character like Cordelia.

Many eighteenth century productions rewrote the final scenes. In their original form they were deemed too painful.

Or were they just too honest?

Is virtue really so little rewarded in this world?

Who knows? For most of us, it’s too hard to stick to, to find out.

And that’s the tragedy.

Veronica Kaye

 

King Lear

at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, as part of the Sydney Shakespeare Festival with Measure for Measure

until 21 Dec

for program dates http://www.sitco.net.au/

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Triune

28 Nov

The myth I grew up with was that younger people were more radical than older people. As people ‘grew up’, they settled. They collaborated. They became the problem.

As I have grown older myself I’ve come to realise how self-serving this myth is.

More and more I’ve come to feel that many young people are actually conservative. It shows itself most clearly in the extraordinary snobbery of youth. Life (as well as everything else smaller on the scale) must be done a particular way. To use a trivial example, it’s in the small-mindedness of someone who says,  if you’re not performing at Griffin by 30, you’ve failed.

But snobbery can be forgiven. After all,  it’s just fear.

Triune by Brave New Word is an intriguing exploration of our changing expectations of Life.

It’s based on the conceit of one character having a three-way conversation with the younger and older versions of themselves. It asks, how do our values change and how do they stay the same?

I’ll admit I had trouble relating to any of the values held by the character at any stage in his life (too much interest in sex, drugs and travel, and as a result of the chosen structure, too much interest in himself.) But it’s the nature and worth of drama that it presents different world views, and it would be to fall into the very error of parochialism, that I began this article criticizing, to complain that the character on stage was not living Life as I think it should be lived.

Photo by David Hooley

Photo by David Hooley

This piece was devised by the company and there are some wonderful moments. It’s a quick one hour show, and I would’ve loved to see a little more stage time to develop some variations in pace.

The joy of this piece is its assertion that the older character of the triune is actually the wisest. This is a beautiful affirmation of the process of Life, a declaration that it’s not something to be afraid of. It’s a generous spirited acceptance that Life is always, and gloriously, greater than our vision of it.

Veronica Kaye

 

Triune

Brave New Word

TAP Gallery until 7 Dec

http://www.tapgallery.org.au/2013/09/truine-22-october-7-november/

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Dying For It

26 Nov

To live, it is said, we must have a purpose. And so, it follows, we must die for one. Sort of.

In Dying For It, adapted by Moira Buffini from the original play by Nikolai Erdman,  Semyon is contemplating suicide. Virtually no-one tries to save him. Instead, they try to co-opt him into dying for their own chosen cause.  

In 1920’s Russia, the idea of living for a purpose was in the zeitgeist, and not just on a pop culture level, but as a government directive. You will live for the People’s State. It is this, I suspect, that drove Erdman to write the play. And then earned him time in Siberia.

Photo by Bob Seary

Photo by Bob Seary

It’s an interesting play to choose now. How many of us feel a pressure to live for a cause? Our sad experience, if anything, (and if I can borrow a phrase) is the unbearable lightness of being. The only serious attempt to suggest we live for a purpose comes from the infantile world of advertising. 

So why the popularity of the play? After all, Buffini is not the only modern writer to adapt it. Simon Stone was at it only a few years ago.

Well, it’s certainly funny. And director Peter Talmacs makes this clever farce come alive. Johann Walraven does a brilliant job as the bewildered Semyon, and the entire cast shine with the exuberance that makes this a truly fun night. (And Tom Bannerman’s set deserves a mention. Imposing and appropriately ramshackle, it evokes the claustrophobia of the human spirit oppressed.)

Perhaps the play’s attraction is the contemporary spectre of terrorism; the tragedy, and horror, of dying for a cause when it might have been better lived for.

But there’s also the end of the play.

Stone’s take, I recall, was rather different. Semyon was left in his coffin, inadvertently forced to play dead when he was not – a poignant symbol.

The conclusion of this version is even more powerful. A killer punch. Sure, it may be an ill-judged hope that any ideology could encapsulate the wildness of Life, but this final scene is a reminder that this failure does not give us leave to run from Life.

For we are not in it alone.

It is the true People’s State.

Veronica Kaye

Dying For It

adapted by Moira Buffini, from the original play by Nikolai Erdman

New Theatre til 21 Dec

http://www.newtheatre.org.au/

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Atomic

25 Nov

This is the story of Big History intersecting with individual lives. It’s the story of some of the people responsible for the development of the atomic bomb.

This sounds like weighty stuff (and it is) but this new musical does what the best of the genre does so well – revitalize ways of looking at the world.

The cast are terrific. David Whitney is great fun as a Berlusconi-inspired, philandering, status-obsessed Enrico Fermi. Simon Brook McLachlan almost steals the show as an uber-confident fast-talking Robert Oppenheimer. Christy Sullivan and Lana Nesna are mesmerising as they pinball back and forth between serious scientists, Rockette style dancers and Andrew sisters twins. Blake Erikson creates a fascinatingly morally ambiguous scientist. But the night belongs particularly to Michael Falzon and Bronwyn Mulcahy, who play Leo and Trude Szilard. Their performances are brilliant, and it is they who are the focus of the story.

Atomic

Leo Szilard invented the chain reaction that made the atomic bomb possible. The fear the Nazi’s would complete the bomb first drove he and his comrades to work on the Manhattan Project. When it was obvious that race had been won, Szilard campaigned to limit the use of this weapon in war. We know how successful he was. The opening sequence shows a young couple flirting – just as the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. It’s extraordinarily moving.

The score (Philip Foxman) and lyrics (Foxman, Gregory Bonsignore and Danny Ginges) are top class. And, yes, it’s a fun night, but I began this response by suggesting that it was the story of Big History and the individual. And after the war has finished, and Leo Szilard is no longer working on weaponry, there’s an interesting exploration of the idea of responsibility and recompense. And Trude sings touchingly of the special man she loves.

But I am left with the feeling that Leo is not so special. Not because he wasn’t a brilliant scientist and an avid campaigner, but because I don’t know if his situation is really so different from ours. We like to think we’ve avoided History, that our lives can be lived below the big issues of the day. But that’s just a self serving myth. In possibly the most powerful moment in the show, we see desperate refugees from Hitler’s Germany told to just go home. And so we’re reminded that every generation must face Big History.

Veronica Kaye

Atomic

NIDA Parade Theatre til 30 Nov

www.atomicthemusical.com

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