The Legend of King O’Malley

1 Dec

The Faust myth is oddly enduring.

It’s fascinating how we’ll repeat stories in which people sell their soul to the devil for earthly rewards; fascinating because who actually believes in the devil? Or, indeed, the soul?

So what’s its meaning? That if you achieve anything (knowledge, influence, sexual allure) you must pay an enormous cost? A cost so disproportionate that you’d have to be mad with self importance to agree to it in the first place?

Nietzsche might call it a slave philosophy. It seems to suggest that anyone who succeeds in this world is inherently evil, and evil will inevitably come to them. A philosophy like that can only be of comfort to the powerless. (Or those wishing to pretend they are more powerless than they actually are – which I usually argue is pretty much anyone who has the time and money to attend theatre in Australia. Myself included.)

In The Legend of King O’Malley the titular character sells his soul for wealth and power. It’s a particularly strange take on the myth because O’Malley was a real person, an American preacher who migrated to Australia and was elected to our fledgling federal parliament.

As O’Malley was a real person, I think it’s safe to assume that the writers, Michael Boddy and Bob Ellis, have invented the whole ‘deal with the devil’ bit. I’m not sure why. (I’m also not sure why the first act, which deals with O’Malley’s time as a preacher, is as long as it is.)

Photo by Afshar Hodar

Photo by Afshar Hodar

Director Phil Rouse’s production is a relentlessly raucous ragtag rat bag revue. (OK, despite being wonderfully high energy, it’s not actually relentlessly raucous. I just got on a roll with the alliteration.) There are beautifully vibrant performances from the entire cast, but there are also some moments of stillness and emotional impact.

James Cook as King O’Malley and Matt Hickey as Billy Hughes do terrific work in the playful scenes, but they change gear magnificently to provide the dramatic heart of the piece.  (Spoiler Alert) It’s during World War One. Prime Minister Hughes supports conscription, but O’Malley does not. O’Malley resigns from Hughes’ cabinet, and then fails to win his seat at the next election. Or indeed any election after that. (O’Malley lived till 1953, and at the time of his death was the last surviving member of our first national parliament.)

When the play was written, in 1970, conscription was Australian policy. We were sending our young men to fight in Vietnam. I suspect this is what led Boddy and Ellis to choose O’Malley’s story. As a piece of political propaganda, arguing that the state exists for the individual and not the opposite, it’s effective and intensely moving.

And perhaps, despite my earlier questioning, the play’s form serves a purpose. Boddy and Ellis’ O’Malley is a shyster and raconteur – so much so that only an appropriation of a grand myth could make sense of him. But he still put us “lazy, dumb” Australians to shame.

Or at least shook us up.

Of course, the Australian people never did vote ‘Yes’ to conscription in the First War. And in 1972, two years after this play was originally presented, we finally voted in a government that ended conscription’s most recent incarnation.

This production is a timely reminder of the power of our elected representatives, and how it’s our responsibility to continue to push them to create a more just society.

Veronica Kaye

The Legend Of King O’Malley by Michael Boddy and Bob Ellis

Seymour Centre til 13 Dec

http://www.seymourcentre.com/events/event/the-legend-of-king-omalley/

 

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The Les Robinson Story and Belle of the Cross

25 Nov

Double bills are intriguing things. Two works that were created independently are suddenly placed together, resonating in unforeseen ways.

This is not a bad thing. To complain about it would be the equivalent of complaining about friendship. In friendship we become different. Our friends draw out certain of our qualities and suppress others.  In fact, it could be asked, what are we before friendship, or indeed before any of our relationships? How much sense does it really make to talk of our own self, independent of the world? Where would this self exist?

‘Oh, if only he/she/they knew the real me.’

The ‘real me’ is a fabrication.

Both of the plays in this double bill are (in essence) one-person shows about a person; which is what started me thinking about the above issue.

Photo by Katy Green Loughrey

Photo by Katy Green Loughrey

The Les Robinson Story written by Kieran Carroll and directed by Ron Hadley tells the story of one of Sydney’s iconic story tellers. I’d never heard of him.

Apparently, Les wrote prose in the modernist style, lived in caves, and was under-appreciated by the Great World. The first two aspects make him a character (more on this in a moment) and the last grants him universal appeal. Hasn’t everyone, at sometime, felt they’re under-appreciated? ‘If only they knew the real me.’

When I say Les is a character, I don’t mean the performance by Martin Portus isn’t rich or subtle. Rather what’s offered to us by this play is Les’ difference; how he was different from his world, and from ours. It’s nostalgic and sentimental, and many people will warm to it.

Belle of the Cross written by Angelika Fremd and directed by David Richie presents us with a woman slipping into homelessness. Gertraud Ingeborg’s performance is moving and engaging. Belle’s situation is not easy. She didn’t choose it. And, so we’re told, she dies without anyone knowing who she really was…….

Photo by Katy Green Loughrey

Photo by Katy Green Loughrey

This idea begins the play and ends it.

The beauty of this piece, and what resonates so magically and thought-provokingly with the first of the double bill, is this:

The second time* we’re told that Belle died unknown, we’re asked ‘Who hasn’t? Who won’t?’ And Ingeborg poses the question with a magnificent and mischievous twinkle in her eye, one encompassing both the pity and the glory of the human condition.

Veronica Kaye

 

The Les Robinson Story by Kieran Carroll

Belle of the Cross by Angelika Fremd

at The Old Fitz, until 29 Nov

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

 

* Apologies to Angelika Fremd for a quote which is probably a paraphrasing, and hopefully not wildly inaccurate.

 

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“Approval and Validation”

25 Nov

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that whenever a playwright writes a good play, she will be vigorously pursued by prestigious theatre companies.

“My dear Mr Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Prestigious Theatre Company has a new artistic director?”

Mr Bennet replied he had not.

“Apparently,” returned she, “he is very interested in new Australian work.”

Mr Bennet remained silent. His wife took this as invitation to continue.

“Interested in new Australian work! What a fine thing for our girls!”

“How so? How can it affect them?”

“Mr Bennet, how can you be so tiresome? You know they are all playwrights. This new artistic director will no doubt want to produce their plays.”

Mr Bennet returned to his book.

“Now I’m the first to admit,” continued Mrs Bennet, “I find Lizzy’s plays a little confusing. Other people find them amusing, but to my mind, she never seems to be saying what she really means.”

“It’s referred to as irony,” Mr Bennet stated flatly.

“I know that!” replied Mrs Bennett.

“Of course you do, dear” said Mr Bennet, even more flatly.

Satisfied, Mrs Bennet continued. “And Mary’s plays are so wordy, and I can’t quite understand them, but they’re very clever, I’m sure. And Lydia’s plays are skittish, the work of an immature artist, but they were good enough for Short and Sweet. And Jane, quiet unassuming Jane; she’s always done the right thing. Who wouldn’t want to produce her plays?”

– from the manuscript of the (unpublished) Jane Austen novel Approval and Validation 

JaneAustenCassandraWatercolour

Sometimes you just gotta to do it yourself .

You can write a damn good play and it still mightn’t get produced.

Maybe it’s political. And I don’t mean who owes who, or who’s competing with who, or even who’s sleeping with who. I mean political.

Every play is an attempt to convince the audience to see the world in a particular way. Every play is an attempt to affect the world. Your plays will be put on by people who share your vision of the world. And, if there already are a whole lot of people who share your vision, you probably wouldn’t have bothered writing the play in the first place.

So be prepared to do it yourself. And be proud of it.

Veronica Kaye

Leaves

24 Nov

The title could be part of some meta-theatrical stage direction:

(End of Act One. Lights come up on stunned theatre reviewer. She Leaves.)

I didn’t. I stayed for the whole performance. And found it quite fascinating.

Recently, however, I have fallen into the dreadful habit of avoiding writing about shows. (And it’s not that I’m just following my mother’s advice: if you can’t say anything nice…….)

I even received an email from a publicist, who politely asked whether I was ever Ever EVER going to write about the show I’d attended.

I ignored her email. I went to other shows. I didn’t write about them either.

Eventually I wrote this reply:

“Dear Polite Publicist,

I’ve thought a lot about your show. 

To be honest, it wasn’t my cup of tea, so I would prefer not to write about it. 

I appreciate my response is utterly subjective, and as you might know from my previous writings, somewhat idiosyncratic. 

I wish the artists involved all the best.

I try to write about all the work I’m invited to, but occasionally I think it’s best to remain silent. As a working dramatist myself, there have been several occasions where I have wished a critic simply hadn’t written, rather than allowing their alienation from (or incomprehension of) the play’s themes to be expressed as shallow negativity about the production and the writing.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Yours, V”

But I don’t do traditional criticism. (You know the type: Armed with cliches, and addicted to hyperbole, you relentlessly evaluate. Evaluate the acting. Evaluate the script. Evaluate the lighting. Evaluate the costumes. Hey, evaluate the seats if you’re on a roll.)

I don’t do that type of writing, so my excuse won’t cut it.

I write responses. I write about what the play made me think about.

Leaves by Steve McGrath is about three men hitting fifty. That’s the story – if that’s the right word for this extended sitcom.

Yes, they’re hitting the ‘Big Five  O’.

That phrase – ‘the Big Five O’ – was used fifty times in the play. (OK, I’m falling back on traditional critical methods). But at least I didn’t say the phrase was used ‘Five O’ times. I just said the word.

Which is my point. Diversion.

Earlier, I used the term meta-theatrical, and it’s this very element that made this piece so intriguing.

Steve McGrath’s character at one moment avoids a difficult topic with a quip. He does it a lot. But this time he openly acknowledges it’s exactly what he’s just done.

Which seems to me what the whole play does. Avoids serious issues.

I turn fifty this week. (Seriously.) The issues of the characters are not mine. Unless it be the inability to honestly face what really matters.

Leaves

I grew up wanting to believe humour was subversive. I wanted to think it mocked the grown-ups, indicted the power holders, toppled the pompous.

But I’ve come to realize that the opposite, and many would say the obvious, is also true.

As well as subversion, humour can be diversion. Don’t think about this, don’t address that, just look over there!

The play has some excellent one liners and it’s thought provoking for that reason.

Ironically (or not), the stand out performance moment is McGrath on film. (I can’t tell you more, because of the spoiler rule.) The film projections that are peppered through out this production have the effect of making what happens on stage appear even less real, even more off the point.

There’s also inordinate talk of women. None of whom are present. But then none of the three male characters really are either. These characters are overgrown children. A question: Does comedy require that?

But the more pressing question is, at fifty, or indeed at any age, have we acknowledged what matters, and are we engaging with it?

In its paradoxical and playful way, this production left me with some serious thoughts about being funny. (And so inspired the following bad pun.)

Humour as diversion. Entertainment. Come in to the theatre. Leave your troubles outside. Enjoy.

Humour as subversion. Exittainment. You’ve seen the show. You’ve been empowered. Now leave. And change the world.

Veronica Kaye

 

Leaves by Steve McGrath

King Street Theatre til Nov 29

http://www.kingstreettheatre.com.au/

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The Way Things Work

12 Nov

Ever since Dorothy Parker quipped of The House Beautiful that it was the Play Lousy, the more attention seeking of the critical fraternity have dreamed of such gift titles.

And so, if I was of this infantile nature, I would pounce on The Way Things Work and say that it’s Not The Way Plays Work.

But Aidan Fennessy’s play is intriguingly nontraditional in its structure. Two actors play six separate characters in three distinct scenes. The satisfaction of character development is sacrificed for the pleasure of discovering plot connections.

Leland Kean’s cast has fun with the comedy. On opening night there were fluency issues, but these will iron out.

In the first of the triptych, Nicholas Papademetriou is a state minister accused of corruption. He claims that corruption is endemic and systematic whenever there’s a hierarchical power structure.

Photo by Zak Kaczmarek

Photo by Zak Kaczmarek

Without denying the need to explore other possible power structures, the minister’s argument is rather absolutist. A little like saying that human beings will inevitably suffer disease so why bother looking after your health? Or I’ll be tired tonight so why get out of bed this morning?

Corruption is real. But cynicism merely justifies it. It’s one of the ideologies that enables it.

In the final scene, in a deliciously provocative moment, Ashley Lyons plays a hit man searching for a type of honour. The character refers to the Anzacs. ‘They did what was right.’ Does he clearly connect this with what actually happened to them? If this is honour, who’d want it?

A play like this sends you off into the night (a night perhaps both literal and metaphorical) asking whether we have developed the ethical tools to build an honourable society?

Veronica Kaye

 

The Way Things Work by Aidan Fennessy

A Rock Surfers Theatre Company production

Bondi Pavilion til Nov 29

http://rocksurfers.org/

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Platonov

10 Nov

People desiring but never acting.

Chekhov’s plays usually have me thinking about cowardice.

And one evening I will finally muster the courage to just get up half way through the first act and walk out.

Of course, I’m joking.

Platonov is early Chekhov, and more happens in it than usual for the master. (Perhaps too much. And there’s an atypical focus on one character; a young man and his relationships with women. Which I could patronizingly and erroneously suggest is typical of young male heterosexual writers.)

But I don’t want to overstate any of this. This is fascinating theatre, and not just because it offers an insight into the masterpieces that were to come later.

The language of Anthony Skuse’s adaptation is beautifully pitched. Grounded in the late nineteenth century origins of the play, it still speaks with a contemporary living voice.

Photo by Matthew Neville

Photo by Matthew Neville

But the primary joy of this production is the performances. Skuse has gathered an extraordinary group of actors and has created a space in which the entire cast create mesmerizing work.

I’ll mention only four. (It’s a fourteen hander. See it for a master class in acting.)

Charlie Garber gives us a thoroughly watchable Platonov. Part charisma, part moral outrage, part self loathing, it’s all leavened with just a sprinkle of humour. Many of the female characters love him, and I suspect so will the audience. As his simple, gentle wife, Matilda Ridgway is heartbreakingly phenomenal. Suzanne Pereira as Anna gives us dignity at odds with desire, and it’s a deeply moving portrait. Geraldine Hakewill plays Sofya with a tense stillness, an intriguing balance between empowerment and bewilderment.

It’s a big play, but I’ll end with reference to a single moment.

Platonov snaps “What God do you serve? What God do any of us serve?” It’s Chekhov’s challenge. Is this (and the plays that follow) an indictment of particular individuals or of an entire society?

We are flawed. The world is flawed. But do we make the world or does the world make us? This is the gloriously humane tension in Chekhov’s vision. It’s what makes him such a compelling dramatist. And it’s what this production captures so wonderfully.

Veronica Kaye

 

Platonov by Anton Chekhov

directed & adapted by Anthony Skuse

presented by Mophead & Catnip Productions

ATYP, Studio One til 22 Nov

http://www.atyp.com.au/

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Daylight Saving

10 Nov

Sometimes I wish I was one of those writers who confuse mean-spiritedness with wit, and word games with truth. If I was, I could have begun my response like this:

“Daylight savings; it’s so confusing! Do you gain an hour? Or do you lose an hour? See this production for the definitive answer. You lose two hours twenty.”

What critics forget, when they write this sort of nonsense, is that these jokes have no doubt already been made in the rehearsal room.

Daylight Saving by Nick Enright is simply a good bit of fun. And Adam Cook’s production is deliberately and delightfully daggy.

Photo by Helen White

Photo by Helen White

At the end of the show you do have to put your watch forward 25 years – because the play’s sensibly been left in its late eighties setting.

A light weight meditation on fidelity, loneliness and lost time, it’s peppered with crazy characters. A celebrity chef, a Wimbledon champion, a Stanford professor, and a host of others sit down to dinner around a table in Pittwater.

The cast have appropriate larks with all this. Rachel Gordon and Christopher Stollery get both laughs and sympathy as the troubled couple. Ian Stenlake is suitably charming and repulsive at turns as the visiting Yank. Belinda Giblin is a wonderfully audacious lady who lunches. (Diana Simmonds deserves a special mention as the voice of the interviewer. The ungenerous might say her performance was such that she was hardly present, but my tip is watch for her name at the next Sydney Theatre Awards.)

Enright’s play is conservatively structured, but shot through with giggle lines. And he gets the last playful laugh. Sitting in the middle of this (now) nostalgic extended sitcom is a thought-provoking exchange:

‘The play’s a crock of shit isn’t it?’

‘Yes. It’s a national classic.’

Veronica Kaye

 

Daylight Saving by Nick Enright

A Darlinghurst Theatre Production

Eternity Playhouse til 30 Nov

http://www.darlinghursttheatre.com/

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Are literary awards evil?

4 Nov

I was recently asked this question by a close friend, Paul Gilchrist of subtlenuance.

Well-meaning but naïve, Paul shares the qualities of many dramatists. He has a taste for hyperbole, exacerbated by a lack of a consistent moral compass.

Apparently, subtlenuance is soon to administer the inaugural Silver Gull Play Award. This award will recognize a play by a local writer that explores philosophical and political themes. It will be sponsored by the wonderful Buzz from Sydney.

In the hope of intelligent conversation, I asked Paul why the idea of an award bothered him.

He said it didn’t.

And then he referred me to my previously published comments about competition in art.

(Which can be found here https://theatrered.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/the-dreadful-legacy-of-the-greeks/ and here https://theatrered.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/by-way-of-a-manifesto-or-theatre-is-not-olympic-diving/ )

Contemplating evil

Contemplating evil

Most working writers are ambivalent about awards. For them, competition is at best a distraction and at worse destructive. Yet they’ll take the prestige, and the money. They know there’s little danger of being spoilt.

To me, it’s blatantlyobvious why subtlenuance would administer such an award. (See what I did then?)

subtlenuance focuses on political and philosophical theatre.

A clear-eyed pragmatist would say they’re simply attempting to raise the status of their preferred genre.

(A mean-spirited pessimist would say that before promoting intelligent theatre to Australian audiences, those audiences need to be made aware that such theatre is actually possible.)

I wish subtlenuance luck.

Veronica Kaye

Amadeus

30 Oct

Envy is a stupid vice.

Perhaps all vice is. Plato certainly thought so. And he’s not alone.

It’s a common belief that reason and virtue are inextricably linked. To this school of thought, vice is simply the result of faulty thinking.

Envy is usually based on the belief that life is a zero sum game. In other words, your gain is my loss. But is this actually the case? Why would your happiness exclude mine? And, really, how happy could I be if I knew you weren’t?

Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus is a brilliant study of envy, and this production by director Stephen Lloyd-Coombs is terrific.

Amadeus Sal and Vent

Salieri, played wonderfully by Nick Hunter, is faced with the phenomenon that is Mozart. To him it is obvious Mozart is the better composer, and it destroys him. The strength of this play is that Salieri is not reduced to mere cattiness. He’s cold and clear. But his envy is convoluted with his concept of justice. Rather than perceiving justice as something human beings must strive to create, Salieri makes the mistake of believing that it’s a quality inherent in the universe. Such a belief is a recipe for tragedy.

Schaffer’s other major theme is genius. Jasper Garner-Gore’s Mozart is eminently watchable, a big likeable child. Salieri can’t help but acknowledge Mozart’s ability, but is shocked to find him so crass. But why? Why should we be all of one piece? (Curiously, it’s the same type of thought structures that won’t separate reason and virtue.)

The concept of ‘genius’ – which is not used in the play – is an intriguing cultural trope. (I call it a trope because it’s not as if there’s a scientific test for it.)

Why do we like the concept of ‘genius’? What is this trope’s purpose? Does it help us relax, by telling us that we can’t possibly compete?

Or is the label an attempt to quarantine our evaluations from the disease of subjectivity? ‘It’s not just my opinion. He was a genius!’

Of course, an important aspect of the story is that Mozart’s ‘genius’ does go unrecognized, except by Salieri. It’s an appealing notion. Who doesn’t want to believe that their own genius has been under-appreciated? (That Mozart’s ‘genius’ did go unrecognized should make us realize that all evaluations are just human, all too human.)

Which leads me to more of my own evaluation.

The leads are supported by great work by the rest of the cast. Nicole Wineberg as Mozart’s wife, Constanze, gives a captivating portrayal of frisky fidelity. Anthony Finch and Claire Stewart-Moore are marvelously flamboyant as Salieri’s spies and representations of malicious triviality. The costumes by Peter Henson and the set by Ashley Bell are a visual delight.

This is a very entertaining and thought-provoking production.

Veronica Kaye

 

Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

Genesian Theatre

til Nov 29

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

 

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Procne & Tereus

21 Oct

In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s parody of the gothic novel, the young heroine sees dark motives and hidden horror in the most mundane occurrences. At the novel’s climax, Catherine is confronted about her riotous suspicions. “What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live!” Catherine is humiliated, realizing she’s let her imagination run wild.

And this is the challenge of contemporizing the ancient Greeks. Are they of our age?

(I’ve written previously of my attitude to this.*)

Procne and Tereus, written and directed by Saro Lusty-Cavallari, is a fascinating piece of theatre. Like Simon Stone’s Thyestes, this play contemporizes the setting and dialogue, and the result is an engaging immediacy that has the freshness of improvisation.

Procne and Tereus

The performances by Christian Byers, Lulu Howes and Victoria Zerbst are strong, creating captivating rhythms of light and dark.

Like Thyestes, the earlier scenes are very effective, but as the play proceeds an interesting thing happens. As the stakes become higher, there’s an intriguing discordance between the world of the play (as created by the setting and dialogue) and the behaviour of the characters. There is a provocative gap between what we think we know about these people and their actions. It reminds us how much we moderns expect rationality in behavior. (And asks us to consider whether this is a rational expectation.)

Foucault in his History of Sexuality asked us to consider the cultural aspects of what we usually reduce to biology. He pointed out that by claiming universality for particular behaviours we were actually making political assertions.

For me, this play did a similar thing with violence. A stimulating theatrical experiment, it led me to question the correspondence between the ancient and modern worlds, and to ask exactly how violence manifests itself in our contemporary society.

Veronica Kaye

* https://theatrered.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/phaedra/

*  https://theatrered.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/electra/

 

Procne & Tereus

Cellar Theatre

15 -17 Oct (This production has closed.)

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