This is fast-talking, wise-cracking American comedy, of the style brought to a world audience during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
First produced in 1928, The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur is the play that became the film His Girl Friday, starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant.
Set in a Chicago courthouse newsroom at the eve of an execution, it’s satire of cynical journalists, police officers and politicians is nothing new now (though still it rings true.)
This production, directed and adapted by Nicholas Papademetriou, has a beautiful bouncy, brassy spirit. Except for the opening scene, which on the night I attended lost necessary pace because of line stumbles and awkward props, the show honours the grand comic tradition of which it is part.
Papademetriou follows the lead of the writers of His Girl Friday and makes the play’s protagonist a woman. Hildy has worked for The Examiner for years, and though it’s a man’s world, she is clearly their ace reporter. However, with the offer of marriage to a respectable man, she’s tempted by the quiet of domesticity.
Can she leave the game behind? Her boss, Walter, wants her to stay, for more reasons than one.
Rose Treloar as Hildy is extraordinary. Rosalind Russell would be proud. From the moment she enters, Treloar’s energy is stellar, and she drives the production with a gloriously assured exuberance.
Andrew Waldin as Walter is brisk and nimble, and achieves that most difficult of comic tasks: the portrayal of a charming con-man.
The large supporting cast generally does good work. Let me cherry pick just a few favourite performances. Diego Retamales as the man on death row is superb, his physical comedy top class. Callum Stephen slips into the shoes of the ex-gangster with such laughter-inducing ease that we readily believe the character has helped many a chump slip on shoes of the concrete variety. Braydon May, as a messenger in the Governor’s employ, works the classic trope of the pedant in a world of action with hilarious effect. Georgia Nicholas as the only other female reporter in the newsroom has a wonderful stage presence, positioned perfectly in regard to Hildy’s energy, and establishing with tight rope precision the competing needs created by a patriarchal environment, the requirement for both female feistiness and sisterly support.
Brash, buoyant, confident, this is comic theatre with old school swagger.
Paul Gilchrist
The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur (adapted by Nicholas Papademetriou)
I’d be terrified to direct this one. It runs 105 minutes straight through. It’s made up of an enormous number of rather short scenes. The majority of these scenes are played solely by the same two actors. The scenes are not in chronological order. They’re set in a small number of locations (which might appear to make things easier, but actually robs you of the opportunity for variety). And it being New York 2016, it’s all played in accent. Oh, and there’s sizable chunks of overlapping dialogue. It’s a director and performer’s nightmare.
Director Alex Kendall Robson and his cast are to be congratulated for making it work, creating an engaging evening of theatre.
Homos, or Everyone in America by Jordan Seavey presents the relationship between a “Writer” and an “Academic” over a handful of years. But by referencing events both from their childhood and before, and events contemporary to the writing of the play, their relationship evokes the gay male experience in America over the last fifty years.
Except for an absolutely show stealing scene in which Sonya Kerr creates both humour and pathos as a sale assistant at Lush, the play revolves entirely around the discussions between the two gay male lovers, and with their gay male single friend, Dan. Reuben Solomon as “The Writer” and Eddie O’Leary as “The Academic” are on stage for an extraordinary amount of time and they’re gloriously vibrant. With a performance that effectively suggests both the desire for inclusion and the awareness of exclusion, and as such is less vocally intense, Axel Berecry’s Dan gives the production a pleasing texture.
The lovers either flirt or bicker. You might think that a depressing image of romance. But is it actually possible to present the reality of romance on stage? Can romance, in itself, in its odd smallness, in its reduction of the wide world to one person, be the stuff of drama? We like to say Love is blind, but it’s actually just myopic. Romcoms employ humour because without the laughs, and the predictable beauty of the youthful characters, no one would be interested.
Perhaps we avoid a realistic portrayal of romance in theatre because, understandably, the audience thinks they already know enough about it. It is, after all, a rather garden variety human experience. When some Shakespearean character says nonsense like “The sun doth rule the heavens”, the rest of the cast don’t point flaming torches at the stage in the hope of suggesting something about the nature of sunshine. The audience knows what it is – and so the play gets on with its real business.
So what is actually happening when we purport to put romance on stage? What is the real business? Plays that represent gay romances tend to do so for two reasons.
Firstly, they remind us that they’re an everyday occurrence. And, yes, in a heteronormative society, that’s still desperately needed.
Secondly, they present the gay political experience. (Any decent play about heterosexual romance is also about politics. Name one well known play that’s actually about the romance itself, the personal experience of the lovers? To clarify, let me shift focus to another artform. All those nineteenth century novels ending with Dear Reader, I married him are bildungsromans, stories of young people growing up and either accepting their role in society or actively challenging it. They’re about politics.)
In this play, politics are particularly highlighted because that’s what the lovers bicker about. They fight about whether closet gays should be outed, about the gendering of language, about intersectionality and objectification, about the perpetuation of stereotypes, about homophobic violence, about the gay community. (What exactly is a community? There’s an entire play just in that. And like all good plays, it wouldn’t give an answer, only elucidate how complex is the issue.)
It’s a modern day cliché that the personal is the political, and the phrase’s popularity can be partly attributed to its nebulous nature, to the ambiguity of its terms. Many people use the phrase to express nothing more than their refusal to be alienated from sources of power: I will not be told that my actions are without influence. Other people use it to police the lives of those closest to them: You will behave this way because your actions have an impact you can’t see (though I can.)
Of course, the phrase the personal is the political could be simply read as what rhetorically it is: a paradox constructed from the juxtaposition of opposites. The personal is what we can do alone. The political is what we can do together. Viewed this way, every relationship belongs in the political sphere, and the much quoted phrase is, in effect, the denial of the very existence of the personal sphere.
This denial serves theatre well. As an artistic form, it’s never been particularly good at representing the personal sphere of life. That’s why it naturally privileges the presentation of individuals in their dealings with other individuals. It struggles to show us the inner world.
Perhaps that’s why Homos, or Everyone in America is fascinating. It’s very lack of ambition, its focus on a single romantic relationship, might be its strength. Theatre might glory in representing relationships, but what if romance is the most personal of relationships? Might we be getting somewhere new?
Or perhaps, as a cynic might say, romance is actually the least personal of relationships. It’s just blind biology that drives us together, rather indiscriminately, and the most positive thing we can say is that desire unconsciously creates one of the great glues that holds together …. community. Ah, that word again.
Homos, or Everyone in America is a beautiful acknowledgement of the experience of romance, and a teasing invitation to thought.
Not to be told what to think … how wonderfully refreshing!
It’s pure relief to see a play that doesn’t have a blatant message. It’s a burst of cool, clean air – one which the Sydney theatre scene badly needs. All too often our audiences are offered productions in which the artists have something to say, and boy are you going to hear that something good and hard.
I’m not such a nihilist that I object to a message per se. It’s just that the message is often either painfully obvious, bereft of any complexity, or simply utterly lacking originality. You don’t need to go to the theatre for this sort of thing; you could go to your local church. The performance there has every chance of being more entertaining. And, honestly, the message might be richer. And I guarantee you’ll need to throw far less into the collection plate.
Artists, if you can say it in a slogan, maybe you don’t need a story. You certainly don’t need the dramatic form, whose particular magic is multiplicity. Yes, I’m being harsh, but we really must re-explore theatre’s potential. All justice and no joy makes theatre a deathly dull and dangerous toy.
Directed by Patrick Kennedy, Richard Foreman’s Sophia = (Wisdom): The Cliffs is a wondrous gift of a piece. It playfully invites us to think: about wisdom, about theatre, about being an audience. Or perhaps it’s more tongue in cheek than that. Perhaps it’s allowing us to not think at all.
Light on both narrative and characterisation, it’s constructed from a deliciously beautiful use of space (some of the most brilliant I’ve ever seen), a glorious use of colour and costume, and an extraordinarily eclectic and evocative soundscape. All design is by Kennedy and it’s a magnificent achievement. Foreman has created a marvellously mischievous meta-theatrical template and Kennedy makes the most of its wild potential.
The cast do terrific work, inhabiting a performative world in which flat realism is almost entirely replaced by near mechanically-precise movement and vocal work. This joyfully jolts us from any risk of deadening complacency, reminding us we’re not passive witnesses and that what occurs on the far side of the fourth wall can’t (in itself alone) be Life.
And, every now and then, the lights dim and the house lights come up. We become witnesses to ourselves, and we might recall, that despite all the fabulous work on stage, it’s our response that’s crucial. We’re not mere recipients of a message. We’re co-creators of the magic.
And what magic it is!
Paul Gilchrist
Sophia = (Wisdom): The Cliffs by Richard Foreman
Produced by Patrick Kennedy Phenomenological Theatre
We know Maria is dead from the beginning. She tells us. We’re going to be shown how it happened. It’s an interesting creative choice, especially considering that the dead Maria accuses us of coming along just to see her murder (a crime I was previously unaware of, and a crime that it wasn’t me who chose to write a play about.)
But, apparently, Maria’s terrible fate is well-known, and has been the subject of ballad and theatrical treatment many times before.
The poor woman was murdered by her male lover in Suffolk in 1827.
Here playwright Beth Flintoff presents it as the story of a woman who suffers from gaslighting and coercive control.
There are other intriguing decisions being made: the key one being that men are substantially written out of the tale. In the first act, the only two male characters who appear are played by women. Rhiannon Jean and Olivia Bartha create these two wonderfully: Jean’s Thomas encapsulates small obtuse selfishness, and Bartha’s Peter is a terrific portrait of genuine personal affection battling social expectation.
In the second act, no male character appears on stage at all. It’s a brave decision. By privileging the female experience, the risk is run of making it less comprehensible – considering the topic is the relation between the sexes. Maria drives the play, and Naomi Belet’s performance is eminently watchable, a pathos inducing mixture of glorious exuberance and traumatised doubt. The script’s decision to exclude the culpable male character effectively centres the victim’s torment, but does so at the cost of making it less certain. The gaslighting and coercion are not shown, and so perhaps Maria really is a fool or mad – though I’m pretty sure that’s not the tale’s conscious purpose. In addition, choosing not to show men behaving badly can have the unintended consequence of imply their agency is irrelevant, and that the problem of violence against women is solely, and unfairly, up to women to solve.
Such a tale as this is indicative of the ambiguity in our current use of the word “story”. We constantly say things like “our stories should be told”, meaning our lived experience should be acknowledged or seen. But that isn’t the only meaning of the word “story”. A good story is not simply a true one. The feminist assertion that most stories have expressed male lived experience is entirely valid, but in the pain of exclusion, to conclude that is all stories do is to miss their potential. Stories are not merely records of experience; they are invitations to judgement. Representation is not approval or assent; audiences can, and do, judge the actions of characters. Human beings delight in discernment; it’s the basis of our agency in the moral universe. In its invitation to judge, theatre is a type of enjoyable work out, a necessary training for the real thing.
Director Louise Fischer’s female ensemble do some great work, but the conclusion of the piece also prodded me into thought. I’ll be wary of spoilers, but the play’s presentation of female solidarity is fascinatingly indicative of the current zeitgeist. Is the freedom of throwing off the dominance of one group only to be found by being subsumed into another? And is political action always to be symbolic?
My vagueness is no doubt frustrating, but see this work – and then read about the historical events on which its based – and you’ll see that it is burningly relevant, both in its powerful indictment of misogyny, and in its thought-teasing presentation of contemporary political assumptions.
What would you call this? A reportage play? A recent history play? Whatever you call it, it’s a happening genre. Recent events, covered by the media, become a work of theatre.
The reasoning is simple: what the media provides is problematic. The media throws information at us helter skelter, bit by bit, hour by hour, and then moves on. The media isn’t trying to help us make sense of the world; it’s simply trying to get our attention. It treats us like children; it shakes a rattle, it plays peek a boo. For those of us who have achieved object permanence, this can feel a little dissatisfying. I’m informed that such and such happened, but I often don’t know what happened before such and such, and I rarely find out what happens after. A lack of understanding of how motivations, actions and consequences interconnect is a recipe for disempowerment. The media purports to offer information, but often is only selling passivity and impotence.
Dramatists, and writers of other forms, have realised there’s a place for an extended narrative that makes sense of the helter skelter of the media, joining the before and after of an event into a coherent whole.
In 2017, Luke Harding wrote A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia’s War with the West. In 2019, dramatist Lucy Prebble adapted it, presenting the story of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by Russian agents in London in 2006.
Of course, the challenge of this type of writing for theatre is that some of it will naturally be invention. Did Putin really say that? Fiction can be taken as fact. Prebble guards against this through the use of a playful meta-theatricality, reminding us to remain alert, that the passivity endemic to television viewing is no option.
The point of all this – apart from entertainment, and this play and this production are hugely entertaining – is to impart political insight. Sure, some of these insights may appear too obvious to earn that title. That expediency often trumps justice, that determination is necessary if justice is to be ultimately achieved, are assertions unlikely to enlighten anyone – but in any seriously engaged political life they bear repetition.
Other insights offered are more drama-ish. (Yes, a made up word.) By it I mean the insights that drama is particularly suited to give. These are often of the giving-voice-to-the-devil type. Several men whose ethics we might find reprehensible are given voice in this piece. One tells of Russia’s history of suffering, suggesting that our moral objections might, from another perspective, seem merely irrelevant self-indulgent scruples. Not for a moment does Prebble suggest that Litvinenko deserved to be murdered; her intention is clearly to indict a Russian regime capable of such an atrocity, and to critique Britain’s reluctance to seek justice. But it remains a valid point, that despite our deepest wishes, moral systems are not universal. To successfully live with others (other countries, other individuals) and to retain the hope that we might nudge the world a little closer to the ideal we desire, we need to know this.
Have I made all this seem rather heavy? It’s not. Prebble’s script is brilliant, and director Margaret Thanos’ production allows it to shine. With movement director Diana Paola Alvarado, Thanos gives a show brimming with pace, energy and pizazz.
Performances are excellent. Richard Cox as Alexander Litvinenko gives a moving portrait of the relationship between moral exertion and woe. Chloe Schwank as Marina Litvinenko beautifully portrays a journey from fear and frustration to strength and resoluteness. Tasha O’Brien as Putin is absolutely marvellous; she gloriously embraces the comic possibilities of the role while simultaneously presenting a character whose personal awkwardness and deep mistrust make a truly dangerous enemy.
Chris Aronsten’s Off The Record was shortlisted for the 2021 Silver Gull Play Award and here it is on New’s stage. (New Theatre deserves congratulations for continuing this award – as does whoever initially established it.)
Off The Record is a fun comedy that deals with serious issues.
In some ways, it’s a curious example of contemporary Australian writing; for instance, it’s set in contemporary England.
There are laughs aplenty, but there’s also a powerful exploration of what it takes to blow the whistle.
Corporate heavyweight Tony has done wrong. Employee Janine and TV journalist Jenny seek justice for the victims. But Jenny is an alcoholic and Janine is … well, eccentric. (Tony complains – and perhaps I paraphrase – “You can’t call a woman crazy anymore.”)
Director Jess Davis’ cast deliver wonderful performances. Michela Noonan as Jenny magically blends sass and vulnerability. Suzann James’ Janine is both very funny and very moving. Belinda Hoare as Jenny’s AA sponsor has a magnificently truthful delivery; simple, honest and raw. Joe Clements as Tony gives a suitably disturbing portrait of pompous privilege.
The script has some intriguing absences. Tony’s sin is outlined but (fortunately) not shown. His guilt is never really up for question, but is what he’s done a crime? Or is it an abuse of power? Abuses of power are not automatically illegal. (Perhaps this was all clarified and I simply missed it.)
The other absence is the victims. They remain off stage.
The result of these creative choices is that the whistleblowers, flaws and all, are placed front and centre. And what we get is a beautiful portrait of what it is to do right, to try to do right. To make a better world, saints are not required. We’ll do.
Arthur Miller’s All My Sons premiered in 1947 (yes, over seventy five years ago) but this American standard is still searingly relevant and utterly engaging.
It was originally an antidote to American triumphalism. Following victory in the greatest conflict in human history, Miller was determined his nation didn’t slip into self-satisfied complacency.
The scenario is simple. Chris has invited Anne back to her hometown. She was the girl-next-door, and he wants her and she wants him. But the problem is this: she was once his brother’s sweetheart. Larry has gone missing in the war and his mother, Kate, still awaits his return. To this domestic drama – the universal tension between the way things were and the way they might be, dreadful enough in itself – Miller adds an ethical dimension. The fathers of both lovers were convicted of supplying faulty aircraft components that resulted in the deaths of twenty-one American pilots. Chris’s father, Joe, has since been exonerated, and is now a wealthy man. Anne’s father is still in gaol.
Joe can claim to have been simply “practical”, getting ahead when the opportunity arose, and this might conflict with his son’s “principles”, but Miller suggests this tension is not merely academic. The worm at the heart of capitalism spoils everything.
This is intensely emotional theatre, and director Saro Lusty-Cavallari elicits brilliant performances from his cast. Kath Gordon’s Kate is a deeply moving portrait of obsessive denial. Kyle Barrett’s Chris encapsulates both the inspirational strength of the morally engaged individual and the bewilderment that comes with the realisation that his lone efforts may not be enough. Bridget Haberecht’s Anne is beautifully rich, capturing both the wild hope for a happiness she thought had passed her by and her growing fear at the enormity of the obstacles that remain. Her pain is palpable; it’s an extraordinary performance.
This is a wonderfully powerful production of a classic play, a necessary indictment of any society in which getting ahead matters more than those that might be left behind.
We all know the photo. A lone man stands before a line of tanks. Incongruously, he holds two shopping bags.
It is immediately after the events of 15 April 1989, the day the People’s Liberation Army of China turned its guns on protesters in Tiananmen Square.
Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica tells the story of the American photographer who took one of the original photos and of his search for the man immortalised in the image. Did he flee to America? Is he still alive?
Kirkwood’s story is fiction, but it’s a brilliant exploration of heroism. In an age in which our vision of the hero too often reduces to someone who can deliver a cutting comeback on social media, a reminder that it might take a little more than that is invaluable.
And the power of Kirkwood’s play is that it reminds us that little more might manifest itself in many ways. We can be heroic in both what we choose to do, and what we choose not to do. The virtue of restraint, for example, might be harder to photograph, but is no less real for that.
On the night I saw this production at New Theatre, there were technical difficulties, but this didn’t hide the brilliant performances that director Louise Fischer has elicited from her cast. Oliver Burton as the American photographer powerfully portrays both the man’s charisma and his disturbing myopia. As Zhang Lin, a Chinese teacher of English in contemporary Beijing, Jon-Claire Lee is magnificent, presenting a rich emotional palette, ranging through light-hearted resilience, and seemingly infinite patience, to chronic despair. Enoch Li and Liz Lin play Zhang Lin’s younger self and his wife with engaging charm. Jasmin Certoma’s English woman abroad is a wonderful study in the challenges of genuine engagement in a world that can seem far too big for the individual to make an impact. Alice Livingstone shines in several cameos, as a prickly secretary to assured elected representative. Similarly, Katrina Chan splendidly inhabits several roles, portraying both vulnerability and an inspiring feistiness. Les Asmussen’s newspaper boss is beautifully rich, with space enough for both parody of media moguls and genuine insight into the complexities of the business of selling the truth.
Back to those technical difficulties: that they made so little difference suggests, that for theatre to be truly engaging, you simply need a great script and great cast. Easy.
In my many conversations with our greatest playwright we’ve yet to disagree, and I suspect it will be no different when I assert that The Merry Wives of Windsor is not one of Shakespeare’s finest works.
It may be apocryphal, but it’s said the play was written at the request of Queen Elizabeth, who desired to see Falstaff in love. Judging by the outcome, many contemporary playwrights might consider themselves fortunate to never have had a dramatic request from the current Elizabeth.
Of course, this sort of catty criticism is a joy to write, a chore to read, and does nothing for artists or audiences.
The Merry Wives is a fun story of female revenge. Outraged that Sir John Falstaff plans to seduce them – more for their assets financial than physical – Mistresses Page and Ford scheme to humiliate him.
Admittedly, it’s all rather fantastical; Falstaff’s famous physique makes sexual success utterly unlikely, and so the fat knight needs be deceived not only by others but also himself. (And I wouldn’t be the first critic to suggest this foolish Falstaff is not the knight we know from his most well-known outing, Henry IV, Part 1.)
In this production, directed by Victor Kalka, Falstaff is played by Cheryl Ward. This is clever casting, because Ward is a consummate performer, and because our awareness that Falstaff is being played by a woman enhances the fundamental premise of the play – that Falstaff is being played by women. I suspect both the play, and the production, would benefit from positioning Falstaff more centre stage.
Image by Bob Seary
The merry wives are played by Suzann James (with an intelligent poise) and Roslyn Hicks (with playful vivacity) and are supported by an energetic cast. Occasionally, there’s too much energy; perhaps one too many bawdy jokes are signposted by pelvic thrusts. As you count them, think of England.
Shakespeare’s two young lovers, Fenton and Anne Page, are played with an admirable, gentle truthfulness by Olivia Xegas and Jessie Lancaster, and serve as a wonderful contrast to all the surrounding nonsense.
This production is worth seeing for its curiosity, energy and absurdity.
With apologies to L P Hartley, the past is a foreign country (more specifically, one of those obscure, miniscule European states who take Eurovision seriously.)
Historical comedies often function on the premise that we’ll happily laugh at people from the past. The temptation to feel superior is….overwhelming. And, really, who’s being hurt?
Photo by Bob Seary
Set in Bendigo in the late 60’s, The Spook by Melissa Reeves presents the conflict between small time ASIO operatives and the local branch of the Australian Communist Party. Much of the humour – and there’s plenty of it – comes from the skewing of pettiness and posturing in the face of genuine issues.
Laughing at our own irrelevance is an Australian tradition.
Or is it something more sinister? Humility is healthy, until it becomes negligence. The Spook guarantees a lot of fun in its playful mockery of banality and ego-driven myopia, but Reeves makes clear that political action is both necessary and significant. It has to be done, and it has to be done with care.
All politics are local, except when they’re not – and they’re not when our neighbours cease to be people and become types. See those around you as participants in some grand apocalyptic battle and it’s easy to forget they are human beings, fragile and flawed, just like yourself.
The Spook is a Cold War comedy, but only Australian political naivety could explain a failure to recognise the play’s contemporary relevance. The myth of the grand battle is still being told.
(Speaking of forces of darkness: COVID hates theatre. It’s done its evil best to close this production on several occasions. Theatre needs actors to have spent lots of time together beforehand, in the rehearsal room, on the set – and on the first weekend of this production it was apparent that the wicked schemes of the malevolent virus had had some impact. But this is a brilliant team offering some wonderful performances, and I am sure by now the enemy has been vanquished and theatre holds the field. Courageous. Audacious. Exuberant.)
Theatre Red 