Thoughts on: God/pool (no water) /Midsummer Nights Scenes /Ngapartji Ngapartji /South
Pacific /The Memory of Water.
by Alanna Maclean
Seen a lot in the last few
weeks and feel the need to comment on a few shows.
Everyman Theatre’s sharp and funny double bill was a ‘letting
the hair down’ kind of night with directors Duncan Driver and Duncan Ley having
a lot of theatrical fun, first of all with Woody Allen then with the rather
nastier humour of English playwright Mark Ravenhill.
God is a piece of anarchy with a Woody Allen-type character
at the centre of it. Philosophy and history and Classical Greek theatre come
into it, but basically it’s a bemused look at existence and theatre with the
poor old Actor (Jarred West) in the middle. He has to cope with the ego of Hepatitis
(The Writer) (Duncan Ley) as they try to put on a play that involves some of
the usual suspects – The Fates (Euan Bowan and Amy Dunham). The Guard (Zac
Drury) and The King (Euan Bowan) while the ‘know nothing/know it all’ Chorus
(Wayne Shepherd) lurks around (mostly upstage avoiding trouble).
This got the fast and furious treatment with clever updates
and local references making it a good warm up for the real meat of the evening,
Ravenhill’s pool (no water), an absorbing, funny yet repellent exploration of
morality. A group of friends reunite with a friend who is a much more
successful artist than any of them, despite ambition, can hope to be. Are they
her friends? Is she theirs? Jarred West, Steph Roberts Amy Dunham and Zach
Raffan worked as a tight team, almost at times as one entity, as the play
twisted its way through complex viewpoints. All of this was done on a very
spare set with multiple locations often suggested by the movement and position
of the actors themselves. Their movement was sometimes as convoluted as the
twisting plot.
There’s always a sense of assured theatrical polish and
intelligence in an Everyman show.
CYT’s A Midsummer Nights Scenes worked in a rougher, more
risk taking way but left a similar sense of intelligence. For two nights only the
Teen Ensemble set Shakespeare against the screen, running pieces of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream against an intriguing selection of recent film takes on love. A
cunning set put characters like Hermia, Helena, Lysander, Demetrius and Oberon,
Titania and Puck into the local multiplex where their forest struggles with
love and jealousies and misunderstandings were played among the vocal popcorn
eating audiences for films like Titanic and Ever After and Four Weddings and a
Funeral. As should be the case the whole lovely tangle was topped by a grand
Pyramus and Thisbe, with a stalwart female Pyramus offset by a Thisbe who
brought the theatre to a hush when he took off his wig and reverted to his
usual voice partway through the finding of the dead Pyramus. The boy actor
became the boy and the tragedy struck home.
Big hART’s Ngapartji
Ngapartji has had notice before in this blog but it sat beautifully in the
Canberra Playhouse, reminding audiences not to forget what was done at
Maralinga. (I used to feel very reassured that the British had ‘tested an
atomic device’. At least it wasn’t an atomic bomb, I would tell myself.) Trevor
Jamieson is an unforgettable storyteller, as he was in Namatjira. Poetic,
important, unmissable work.
South
Pacific has had enthusiastic reviews and as a child audience for the first
Australian production where father was driving a follow spot in Sydney I
certainly found myself absorbed. I was struck back then by two things, Bloody
Mary (Virginia Paris) being hypnotic in Bali Hai and the bloody great
brooding volcano of Bali Hai on the backdrop.
Opera
Australia opted for much less brooding and a rather visually pallid approach to
the robust light and vegetation of places like Vanuatu but I suppose this is a
post modern approach. At least it was uncluttered and the set changes went with
a speed that ought to be studied by any theatre group still in the throes of
the black out and the black clad holding up the action. Yes, the Opera House
does have quite a deal of stage machinery that helps but there are ways.
However,
Teddy Tahu Rhodes’ deep and effortless voice as Emile was worth the trip to
Bennelong Point and the sections of typescript MSS from James Michener’s Tales
from the South Pacific which were on the opening and closing act drops were
grand and moving. I kept wishing the audience would stop to read them. But no,
it was musical comedy time at the preview and they were mostly chatting to
their neighbours and singing along with the overture and even applauding at
various points in it. I also wish our audiences would learn to wait until a
number has actually finished before clapping. As for the disastrous practice of
clapping along with the music, yes, it surfaced in South Pacific (bet Teddy
Tahu Rhodes never gets that in Don Giovanni). I know the male chorus encouraged
it in a bit of pre act two business and it was not happening during the singing,
but it is an intrusion even during curtain calls.
As
musician and humorist Martin Pearson once said while ticking off a Canberra
audience with similar proclivities, ‘I might try it without your kind
assistance…’
Everyman Theatre’s Two Comedies: God by Woody Allen directed
by Duncan Driver /pool (no water) by Mark Ravenhill directed by Duncan Ley at
The Courtyard Studio Canberra Theatre Centre, July 19-28.
Midsummer Nights Scenes Directed by Alister Emerson and Craig Higgs. C-Block
Theatre, Canberra Youth Theatre. Gorman House, August 24 -25.
Ngapartji
Ngapartji http://www.ngapartji.org/
South
Pacific http://www.southpacificmusical.com.au/?gclid=CNTZ-vzhi7ICFbBUpgoddlgAIA
And here’s a link to my Canberra Times review of another
recent excellent production, Canberra Rep’s Memory of Water.
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