Tag Archives: shakespeare

Gia Ophelia

16 Feb

I’m twice as old as the protagonist of this piece, but I can still relate to the story because it’s about a failed artist and I’m a reviewer.

(Incidentally, the protagonist claims that the reviewers in Sydney are dogs. The more sensitive among us might find this offensive, but fortunately no dogs were in the audience.)

But seriously, I found Gia Ophelia, written by Grace Wilson and directed by Jo Bradley, very intriguing, vastly entertaining and quite disturbing (in a good way.)

Despite obstacles possibly unjust but entirely predictable, Gia desperately wants to play the role of Ophelia.

It can be difficult to care whether someone (else) succeeds in the arts. It’s a small story, even for those who love art (or perhaps even more so for people who love art and are familiar with Stanislavski’s exhortation Love the Art, and not yourself in the Art.) And, anyway, success is what we pursue until we realise there are more important things to work for.

In Gia Ophelia, I’m not sure we’re not being gifted a portrait of a sort of madness. There are parallels to Ophelia’s famous mad scene from Shakespeare’s play, with Gia handing random audience members books just as Ophelia distributes flowers. (And, just like Laertes, it lit in me a burning desire to find out who had done this to her.)

Somewhere, I’d heard that this was a story about ageism and sexism in the arts. Such evils clearly exist – they exist throughout our society – but this story seems far too idiosyncratic to be a serious attempt to take them on. It does riff on the societal privileging of youthful looks and of motherhood. But if it does operate as an indictment of ageism, it does this most provocatively by presenting Gia as having internalised the very prejudice she rails against. And curiously, in regard to sexism, it’s Gia who reduces Shakespeare’s Gertrude to the mother. Ironically, this diminution of Gertrude is in direct contrast with Hamlet’s response, who is upset that his mother is refusing to fulfill the conventional female role. (I know Gia’s dismissal of Gertrude as the mother is also fed by the bitter irony of her own situation but, as I’ve suggested, there’s also a stimulating lack of self-awareness. More on that later.)

Rather than a social justice piece, the play most fascinatingly operates as a Saturn returns story. Characters in stories of this type often ask Is this all Life offers? Or have I settled too early? But here, Gia’s quarter life crisis is about confronting the question If this is what Life has dealt me, can I really go on pretending otherwise? Gia must cope with the closing of two of Life’s opportunities, one rather specific and small (the opportunity to play Ophelia), the other much closer to universal (a situation which Gia refers to most of the play as my secret, and concerns her fertility.)

I found Gia a difficult character to like – she’s too-cool-for-school, oddly obsessed with the Ophelia role, and dangerously dishonest. Despite the enormous dissonance between the characters’ personalities, we’re tempted to view both Ophelia and Gia as mainly sinned against. It’s a temptation to which Gia seems to succumb. But she’s also perfectly capable of doing the sinning herself – the keeping of her secret being the prime example – but Gia never seems to consider her choice problematic.  

All this is not a criticism of the writing; it’s a rich, complex, very human portrait. And it’s not a criticism of the performance; actor Annie Stafford is magnificent. A droll but fierce intelligence simmers through the first two-thirds of her performance, textured beautifully by brief but very skilful embodiments of other characters. And when Gia’s exterior cool is finally broken, Stafford presents her grief with a heart-rending power.

Grief. Is this the key to the connection between Gia and Ophelia? Shakespeare’s play is often read as suggesting Ophelia goes mad with grief. Is this what has happened to Gia? But what, exactly, is she grieving? The obvious answer, one that relates to her secret, her fertility, is mooted. But Gia seems unwilling to own that plainly, to state that her other obsession is just a type of psychological smokescreen, conjured to hide a more fundamental pain. But, then again, maybe it’s not…. Thrillingly, the play resists simple answers.

Early on, I suggested I found this play disturbing (in a good way.) Here’s why.

In Shakespeare’s play, in a moment of lucidity despite her madness, Ophelia says Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. In Wilson’s play, Gia could be accurately described by an inversion of this famous observation. It’s as though Gia imagines she knows all she needs to know about her future, whilst not knowing herself.

If that’s a type of madness, it’s one many of us suffer.

I find this piece thrilling and disturbing (in a good way) because it represents the incomplete messiness of very human Truths.

Paul Gilchrist

Gia Ophelia by Grace Wilson,

presented by JB Theatre Co. in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre,

at KXT on Broadway until Feb 15

kingsxtheatre.com

Image by Phil Erbacher

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Othello

26 Jul

There’s currently another company in Sydney producing another play by Shakespeare – and they’re employing the slogan All Bard, No Bull.

In contrast, the marketing for this production of Othello led me to expect something somewhat closer to the bull end of that imagined spectrum.

And, yes, bold choices are made – but, at heart, what we’re given is an engaging presentation of Shakespeare’s classic script.

As for most modern productions, that script has been slightly abbreviated. I’ll admit, some of my favourite lines and speeches are missing, but all the key elements of the story remain.

The cast is all female. Some might think this an usual choice, but it’s worth noting that each of the characters retains the gender Shakespeare originally gave them.

Casting is also colour blind. Some might think this an even more unusual choice, as a common reading of the play is that Othello is susceptible to Iago’s deceit and manipulation because of his outsider status. (There’s plenty of textual evidence to suggest Iago takes advantage of Othello’s potential vulnerability as the only black man in a white society.)

The marketing states the production has a “movement-based performance style”, but don’t fear, Shakespeare’s incomparable poetry is not sacrificed to an undue focus on physicality. Director Diana Paola Alvarado’s interest in movement mainly manifests itself in the rearrangement of the set between and within scenes. Designed by Jason Lowe and Leandro Sanchez, and consisting of four industrial-style pillars, the set is moved by the performers with a beautifully fluent choreography, and complemented by Theo Carroll’s wonderfully evocative haze-tinted chiaroscuro lighting design, as the play moves to its climax, the mood becomes increasingly and disturbingly claustrophobic. This perfectly captures the tragedy of Othello and Desdemona: a man who has been through so much, whose life story of “most disastrous chances, of moving accidents … of hair-breadth scape(s)” has elicited from Desdemona “a world of sighs”; a tale that “in faith, ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange; ’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful” is what wins her love – and the ultimate pity of the play is that the lives of two such great souls as these should end in a horror of pettiness.

Sometimes the performers deliver the verse at too great a pace, but intriguing choices are made regarding characterisation. Cassio, played with suitable sophistication and charm by Chloe Schwank, may seem recognisable to audiences, as will be Lucinda Jurd’s delightfully foolish Roderigo, but other choices are less expected. Doubling, Jurd’s Emilia is less earthy than usual, Lisa Hanssens’ Iago is less hail-fellow-well-met in his duplicity than usual, Sedem Banini’s Desdemona is less refined and demure, and Natasha Cheng’s Othello, in the play’s initial acts, less calmly commanding. I’ve deliberately phrased my descriptions of these performances to highlight what they don’t do – and I’m sure that’s frustrating –  but I’d rather not spoil the surprising freshness of the choices.   

Paul Gilchrist

Othello by William Shakespeare

Presented by La Fábrica de Microbios and Gente Perdida

At Flight Path Theatre until August 9

flightpaththeatre.org

Image by Felipe Godoy

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Hamlet Camp

17 Jan

This is a fun night of theatre, one we’re privileged to share with three contemporary legends as they muse on the dramatic form.

It’s also a tantalising potpourri.

It begins with Toby Schmitz, Brendan Cowell and Ewen Leslie each performing a self-written monologue. Schmitz’s monologue is about an actor currently working in a second-hand book store in Newtown; still a purveyor of art, but in rather reduced circumstances: tale teller now retailer. Cowell’s monologue explores how the actor’s life of perpetual rootlessness impacts their relationship with material objects. Leslie’s presents the journey of an out-of-his-depth child TV actor to maturity as a lover of the craft. Each monologue is richly poetic and very funny.

Are they autobiographical? Sort of. I guess. I don’t know. Truth is certainly tempered by poetic licence and the hyperbolic needs of humour. I did take away the sense that the character being presented in each piece was a moderately successful actor. What a disparate, contradictory, explosive mix of words that is! It also operates as a suitable tonal introduction to the madcap comedy that follows.

That’s because – after Claudia Haines-Cappeau’s beautifully evocative dance as Ophelia – there comes the title piece, an extended skit in which three actors who’ve played Hamlet are now going through rehab. It’s written by Schmitz, Cowell and Leslie, three actors who’ve played Hamlet and are now…

If the monologues might be autobiographical, the skit certainly isn’t – at least not if read as realism. It is, however, a puckish peep into the weirdly overwhelming experience that playing the Dane apparently is. As suggested, the play’s the thing.

Or can rehab help them realise that it’s just a thing? One thing among many.

The skit is terrifically amusing, a wonderful opportunity for three great comic actors to strut their stuff. It sparkles with insights into what it is to be a performer. (There are plenty of in-jokes about particular past productions, and these are marvellously mischievous, but they don’t dominate.) Frustration is expressed at directors and their determination to own a play by imposing some bizarre idiosyncratic vision. As one recovering Hamlet says, I’d love a director to say ‘Let’s just do the play.’ Also grumbled about are reviewers. Cowell’s character is disturbed that one reviewer described his Hamlet as mercurial. This observation hints at the sensitivity of performers, but it also left me wondering if the greatest tragedy in theatre is not Hamlet, but that reviews are taken seriously.

Another provocative observation is that we romanticise Hamlet, which I took to mean we overvalue both the character and the performance of that character. One of the sessions at the rehab centre is entitled Offstage Women. It seems to refer to the play’s representation of women and how Hamlet himself mistreats them. It also refers, I think, to how male actors lost in the role mistreat the women in their own lives. I make no comment about the impact playing the famous protagonist might have on an actor’s personal relationships, but I find fascinating the suggestion that audiences are asked to admire Hamlet. Perhaps an actor needs to find that connection, but as an audience member I’m more than happy to dislike a protagonist or, more precisely, to hold such a personal response to a character in abeyance. (Perhaps, like the suspension of disbelief, it’s the key to a mature appreciation of fiction.) Take Macbeth and, to a lesser degree, Lear: the achievement of these tragedies is that we’re presented a monster yet, beneath all, we still see their humanity. (I admit this probably doesn’t accurately describe what’s happening in, say, Othello or Romeo & Juliet – so perhaps there are audience members out there who do actually like Hamlet as a person.)

That’s the joy of Hamlet Camp, it’s a deliciously playful invitation to thought.  

Paul Gilchrist

Hamlet Camp by Brendan Cowell, Ewen Leslie and Toby Schmitz

Presented by Carriageworks and Modern Convict

At Carriageworks until 25 Jan

carriageworks.com.au

Image by Daniel Boud

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