Theatre Red

Breaker Morant is a very rich myth. Gareth Boylan’s production of Kenneth G Ross’ play tells it simply and effectively. 

Breaker Morant is a myth about authority. During the Boer War, Harry Morant and Peter Handcock were charged with shooting prisoners of war. A surface reading is that Morant and Handcock were let down by those in power. This is a seductive reading. It makes life easier for anyone who chooses to see themselves as small.

Another reading is that we expect authority to absolve us of personal responsibility.  Morant and Handcock were real people and judgements on their decisions are way beyond my brief. But the play gets dreadfully close to offering the Nuremburg defence – “I was told to do it”. It’s a testament to the strength of this play and production that we can like the characters. Boylan has elicited strong performances from the entire cast, bringing to the fore the question that charges this piece: are the defendants heroes?  

Breaker Morant is a courtroom drama based on real events. I would argue all theatre is – but it’s the audience’s values that are in the dock.

Veronica Kaye

Breaker Morant

Seymour Centre til 21 April

http://sydney.edu.au/seymour/boxoffice/program_breakermorant.shtml

It’s not difficult to make theatre. After all, what is it? Just a bunch of people pretending to be other than they are. Easy. The audience wants it that way.

What is theatre? A seriously silly thing.

No, it’s not difficult to make theatre. What’s difficult is making a difference…. when there’s a bunch of people pretending to be other than they are, and the audience most definitely wants it that way.

Such is the story of The Temperamentals. Jon Marans’ play explores the challenge of political engagement when everyone would prefer that pretence continue.

The Temperamentals speaks of gay rights and responsibilities. It’s about coming out and being counted. It’s about not pretending. 

This is a political play, as all plays are; though some are more honest. Plays that suggest engagement can be avoided, that we can lead lives separate from each other, form a far too large sub-genre – best referred to as “political tragedy”.

Both moving and funny, The Temperamentals is the story of a very brave group of men, and director Kevin Jackson has elicited powerful performances from his entire ensemble.

And as the ensemble “pretend” to be these brave men, we might consider our pretence – that we are satisfied living in a society that does not yet share all rights with all of its citizens.

So what is theatre?

A serious silly thing.

 Veronica Kaye

The Temperamentals

 New Theatre til 3 March

http://newtheatre.org.au/

There’s something funny about comedy that deals with murder. Or maybe something inappropriate. Telling the tale of the entire human historical experience, it takes the authors of Genesis four whole chapters to get to murder. Maddy Butler, the writer of To The Death, gets there much quicker. But then, the Genesis authors were laying deep foundational myths that explore our greatest hopes and our darkest desires, while Butler is writing about share housing in Sydney.

This is not a criticism. Stick with me. We judge art so it does not judge us.

To the Death is a thought-provoking piece. Butler is well aware of the tendency of fiction to devalue the seriousness of murder. The script plays with the concept and it is the source of  much of the best humour. The play is satisfyingly self-referential. The members of this share household hide their murder plans by the pretence of writing a novel. Making a story out of something horrible, Butler has her characters make something horrible out of a story. And as director, she has elicited amusing sit-com style performances from her entire ensemble.

In a world where children starve needlessly, it is tempting to dismiss black comedy as glib. It is tempting to accuse it of not taking things seriously enough. But we are only delivered from that temptation when we ask ourselves how serious are we about the things that matter. Leaving a darkened theatre and re-entering a darkening world, it is we who face judgement. And, hopefully, from the joy of laughter we will find the strength to face the challenge.  

Veronica Kaye

To the Death

til 11 December
Wednesdays – Saturdays at 8pm & Sundays at 2pm

www.newtowntheatre.com.au

One of the characters asks “Does Art make us virtuous?”  The play answers “No.” Clearly.

At least three of the four characters have claims to being literary men, but Art has not helped them. They bully, they threaten, they ignore; they are not good. [Though they are certainly engaging, and wonderfully played by Andrew Buchanan, Peter Carroll, John Gaden and Steven Rooke.]

It’s not the ‘virtuous’ in “Does Art make us virtuous?” that Pinter is exploring. It is the ‘us’.

No Man’s Land is about continuity in character. Its argument is that we’re not all of a piece. Who we are depends on who we are with. Character is fluid. It is formed by power relations.

Once Pinter was asked by an actor about the back history of  a character.  He replied, ‘Mind your own fucking business!’ Not that the past is unimportant. It is – vitally – but as an extension of the battleground that is the present.

This present is dismaying, but oddly uplifting. For if character is not fixed – and Michael Gow leads his extraordinary ensemble through a tour de force of possibilities – than the future could be a different place than both the disputed past and the menacing present.

 The play begins with the down and out Spooner [Peter Carroll] telling Hirst [John Gaden]  “You are too kind.” He repeats it, several times. It remains a lie.

Pinter’s work will not make us any kinder. No Art will. But No Man’s Land reminds us that it’s an option.

 Veronica Kaye

No Man’s Land

Sydney Theatre Company, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Until 11/12

“Playwrights are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Percy B Shelley.

Ok, Shelley actually wrote “poets”, not “playwrights”, but then he wasn’t at New Theatre last night for the opening of Ben Elton’s Gasping. [Though, with the plethora of penis jokes, and a first name like his, he would’ve been right at home.]

Elton’s play is a powerful satire on greed, and its ostensible target is Big Business.

Director Helen Tonkin elicits engaging performances from her entire cast, with Oliver Wenn, Julia Kennedy Scott and Natalie Rees the comic standouts.

Comedy empowers. When someone laughs, as J M Barrie would have it, a fairy is born. And those little fuckers are magic, and they’re going to fix up the mess we’ve made of this world.

Ok, I don’t actually believe in fairies. Because we are the fairies, and when we laugh, the dead weight of habit is lifted from us, and we can fly.

Elton’s satire brings in to full focus not just imagined injustices, but also very real ones, and targets not just Big Business, but all those complicit in the society that fosters it. Comedy makes us feel we’re strong enough to change this world.

Now, have we got the will?

 Veronica Kaye

Gasping

New Theatre

16 Nov to 10 Dec

http://newtheatre.org.au/

Generally, I try not to call out at the theatre. Over time, I’ve come to appreciate that there are some rules: The actors get to talk. I don’t.

But there was a moment in Justin Fleming’s Coup d’Etat when I was sorely tempted to stop playing this game. Set in Malaysia at a time of legal crisis, and peopled by characters of various ethnicities, one scene features an argument about the way different cultures treat women. After accusing each other of wilful exaggeration and gross simplification, the characters suddenly all accept a wilful exaggeration and gross simplification.

This is not a criticism. Stick with me.

I’m a sucker for a good ending. This play has one. By way of explanation:

My Indulgent Analogy No. 1. Enter the last digit of the combination. The door of the safe finally swings open. The treasure inside is revealed. The treasure of Coup d’Etat is its powerful final image, encapsulating the idea explored by the play. That idea is laws [and all other human made tools, such as culture] are beautifully brave attempts to do the impossible – to impose structure on the wildness of life.

 My Indulgent Analogy No. 2. When the holiday cruise ship of childhood, SS Certainty, finally sinks, we are all left to swim. Some of us try our best to imagine we’re actually doing laps in a pool. There are lanes. We can always touch bottom. It may be dull, but there’s a purpose, and it’s good for us, and, anyway, soon we’ll be out of the water and in the change room having a warm shower. Others accept it’s more like swimming in the open ocean. We have no idea which direction to go. There are unfathomable depths below. The sharks are gathering, and if they are don’t take us, exhaustion or the cold inevitably will.

Director Suzanne Millar elicits engaging performances from the entire cast, especially Cat Martin’s perfectly pitched portrayal of a woman who carries the fear of the ocean swim.

So why do I like a good ending? They’re beautifully brave attempts to do the impossible. And why, at that moment of wilful exaggeration and gross simplification, didn’t I call out? Because Fleming knows what he’s doing. He’s reminding us there may not be a warm shower waiting after all.

 Veronica Kaye

Coup d’Etat

November 8 – 13, Parramatta Riverside Theatres.

November 14 – 21, NIDA Parade Playhouse.

http://www.bakehousetheatresydney.com/coupdetat.htm