Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, Frank McGuinness, MTC, March 23, 1994

Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

 By Frank McGuinness

MTC Russell Street Theatre

March 23 to April 23, 1994

Published in The Melbourne Times, April 1994

Reviewed by Kate Herbert, March 23, 1994

An Englishman, an Irishman and an American walked into a cell. No, it's not a bad joke but the framework for Irish playwright Frank McGuinness's play, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me: a passionate, stirring, torturous and hilarious piece of near-documentary theatre. The play is set in the terrifyingly claustrophobic atmosphere of a Beirut prison cell in the 80's during a period when Arab terrorist groups were picking foreign workers off the street and incarcerating them to publicise their cause or to hasten release of their members.

First two, then three men, are incarcerated in a tiny cell. In Sartre's No Exit, Hell was living in a room with people you hate. McGuinness throws three men together to survive incarceration, torture, beating and each other. The play is a celebration of the human spirit; our capacity to overcome adversity, to rise above suffering, torture and degradation. These men survive by jogging, fighting, caring for each other, nursing their delicate psyches, checking their sanity against each others' and drifting into flights of fancy.

McGuinness throws three men together to survive incarceration, torture, beating and each other. The play is a celebration of the human spirit; our capacity to overcome adversity, to rise above suffering, torture and degradation. These men survive by jogging, fighting, caring for each other, nursing their delicate psyches, checking their sanity against each others' and drifting into flights of fancy. There is little "action" but much dramatic tension, emotional intensity and hilarity. It is episodic, covering a period of months, perhaps years. Moods vary. Wills waver. Strength fails. They sing, play games, "shoot movies", "write" letters, relive memories and create experiences at home and with their loved ones to create lives outside this nightmare.

The Irish boozing journo, Edward, loathes Michael, the wimpy lecturer in obscure Old English poetry just as his real life counterpart, Brian Keenan took exception to his cell-mate John McCarthy. Adam, the Californian Christian psychiatrist, based on Dr. David Jacobsen, could drive a man to drink if he could get near some. All the action take place within the cell. The guards are a constant but invisible threat outside the single door. Trina Parker's extraordinary design manages to fill the stage but confine the actors' space giving a sense of restriction without narrowing their capacity to perform.

There is little "action" but much dramatic tension, emotional intensity and hilarity. It is episodic, covering a period of months, perhaps years. Moods vary. Wills waver. Strength fails. They sing, play games, "shoot movies", "write" letters, relive memories and create experiences at home and with their loved ones to create lives outside this nightmare.

 The play is a gift for actors. It is directed simply and stylishly by Bruce Myles with magnificent performances. Gallacher takes us on a roller-coaster ride in his passionate and loving portrayal of the volatile and maddening Irish wit, Edward. We squirm at Richard Piper's foppish Brit, until he reveals his strength as he supports Edward in his grief. Melvin J. Carroll as Adam has a gentleness which makes his journey more painful to witness. His Amazing Grace was achingly beautiful.

There is a wrenching, existential pain in Frank McGuinness' play which can only come from such deprivation, isolation and terror as that experienced by political hostages. We are voyeurs on the psychic torment of these men. Every observer knows that it could be he or she in that cell. How would we survive? What resources can we draw upon and would we want to live anyway?

 KATE HERBERT 25.3.94

Telemachus by David Lander, La Mama - REVIEW- 20 March 1994

THEATRE

Written and performed by David Lander

At La Mama, Carlton, until April 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around March 20, 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after March 20, 1994

 

The ancient art of storytelling is not very fashionable in this era of physical and non-narrative theatre. A linear narrative with a single actor's voice is a rare bird indeed in our theatres.

 

Telemachus, the late show at La Mama, is such a theatrical piece. It is written and performed by David Lander who, until Telemachus has concentrated his attention on writing and teaching in recent years after a career in improvisational performance and storytelling.

 

This adaptation of Homer's Odyssey concentrates its attention on Telemachus, son of Odysseus. While his father is away fighting the Trojan War with Menelaus and Agamemnon, Telemachus, from the age of three, lives in abandonment with his mother Penelope who is constantly fending off unwanted suitors.  At twenty-three, the now adult son decides to fight back, attempts to evict the suitors from the family home they have invaded and seek his lost father.

 

This is a coming-of-age story, a rites of passage tale of manhood not unlike that of Parsifal in search of the Holy Grail. This story is particularly pertinent at present, given that our book shops are riddled with new literature on fatherhood and the making of the man.

 

Lander's performance is powerful and intense, accentuating the violence and darkness of the story. On opening night it lacked the dynamic range which could have plumbed the depths of both the tragedy and joy of the myth but was eminently watchable. It is a tale rich in imagery, symbolism and characters.

 

The simplicity of the staging and direction were refreshing with Lander using only a single chair as set although the slightly overstated lighting was intrusive and perhaps unnecessary. The style felt physically restrained, evidently more by nervousness than design. The added looseness and physicality would enrich this fascinating quest for revenge, lust, blood and discovery of manhood.

 

By Kate Herbert 20 March 1994

Interview with Toni Smith from Circus Oz, March 16, 1994

 CIRCUS - ARTICLE

Interview with Toni Smith from Circus Oz

Writer: Kate Herbert March 16, 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after March 16, 1994

 

"I'm doing a double head trapeze" says Toni Smith blithely. "Lu balances on his head and I hang off him." Lu is Chinese master acrobat Lu Guong Rong and Smith is describing her work in the Circus Oz show opening in the Melbourne City Square on April Fool's Day.

 

This acrobat is no April Fool. Her circus career began in 1979 at the age of seven as a member of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus in Albury. She performed in their second season and stayed until 1988. She joined the Oz in December '93 just in time for successful seasons at the Sydney Festival and in Hobart and just after its tours to Columbia, Northern Territory and Queensland. Almost in her acrobatic dotage at twenty-two, Smith has had a fifteen-year circus career.

 

According to Smith, most acrobats in Australia begin their careers as adults when they no longer have the requisite flexibility or strength.  Smith believes that early training, as well as harnessing the obvious physical assets of youth, implants positive behavioural habits in the mind. "It's like learning to ride bike." The skills will be automatic.

 

Training of our acrobats is not as rigorous as the Chinese who have visited here to teach. "We are nowhere near as disciplined. It's not in our nature," she quips. "The Chinese start at some ungodly hour in the morning. Their first hand-stand is for thirty minutes. The longest we would do would be four or five minutes." Evidently, the Chinese rather hedonistically break for a nap in the afternoon then continue into the evening.

 

Smith and other local acrobats have learnt a great deal from Lu Guong Rong who came here with the Nanking Acrobats in 1983 to teach in Albury. The visit was a remarkable artistic and cultural experience for our performers, the locals, the Fruit Flies and the Chinese. The Australians learnt something about rigour and the Chinese about laying back.

 

After the Chinese visitors left, our circus training improved considerably. In addition to their skills, the Chinese had brought volumes of equipment. With increased funds, the Fruit Flies could purchase mats and safety equipment which, in this industry, are imperative.

 

The profile of Circus has changed dramatically with the rise of Circus Oz. Its parent group of the 70's, Soapbox Circus, was big on entertainment, music and politics, but light on skills. These days the more radical, political Circus Oz has been superseded by a younger more physically skilful company with members graduating from the Fruit Flies.

 

Circus Oz, after years in an inadequate space in Flemington, has found a new home - an ironic thought for an institution which one imagines lives on the road in tents and caravans. "It's fantastic," Smith effuses over the Port Melbourne building. "It's huge. Really high ceilings so we can rig everything in the one room. Everybody's in the same building," which was evidently impossible in Flemington.

 

Smith prefers Oz to traditional circus like Sonelli’s with whom she toured for 18 months. "They (trad circuses) thrive on spontaneity” which is a characteristic of Australian entertainment. Routines and running order are constantly changing which Smith says keeps things interesting.

 

 "It tends to get a bit tedious after a while, doing the same thing day after day." The Chinese combine both skill and glamour. "They work a lot on their presentation."

 

In addition to the enormous working space, the Bay Street building has a second rehearsal room and props store upstairs with an additional music room and workshop. It is owned by the Department of Defence and you can bet your U-Boats this old Navy Drill Hall has never seen such a peaceful purpose.

 

The company will visit Washington DC in October this year as part of a group of Australian performance groups including the Australian Ballet.

 

We have a new breed of circus performer in Australia now. They are younger, stronger and more flexible, perhaps with less broad theatrical experience but nonetheless skilful. Circus Oz is in the vanguard of the new wave of Physical Performance which is defining Australian companies overseas.

 

Washington will love them. LA did in the 80's.

By Kate Herbert 16 March 1994

 

Disturbing the Dust text by Luke Devenish, Adelaide FEstival_REVIEW_March 6 1994

 

THEATRE

At Scott Theatre, Adelaide

Adelaide International Arts Festival 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around March 6, 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after March 6, 1994

 

 

Memory is a trickster. As we age, we remember the distant past perfectly and our recent experiences are muddy.

 

Disturbing the Dust, directed by Ariette Taylor with text by Luke Devenish, deals with the last hours of Miss Nina, a faded grand dame of the ballet played with verve and charm by Patricia Kennedy. At seventy-four, she is now re-fabricating her past in a home for the aged, accompanied by other confused and shaken elderly folk.

 

Nina, who was born Alice Pike in London, prefers the exotic and passionate memories of the Greek woman Sophia and the Italian, Maria. This obsession creates the most extraordinary theatrical moment of the production in which actors, stories and characters from Calabria, Greece, London and Australia merge and become interchangeable.

 

The play is charming and impressionistic. Characters appear and disappear from Nina's vision. Action is stylised, almost choreographic, displaying Taylor's own dance background.

 

There are moments when the abstraction is overdone. Balletic movement, romantic watery lighting, cosmic music pall at times. A most effective scene, however, is the recurrent rush to the Underground in the London blitz.

 

Kennedy is supported by a strong and versatile ensemble which justifiably allows her the limelight.  Mary Sitarenos has a quiet dignity as Sophia, Malcolm Robertson is delightfully offensive as the "slurper" and David Tredinnick demonstrates his range in several roles.

 

In memories as in dreams we are often observers of the action. Significant others are stronger presences than the self. This has created problems theatrically because the protagonist, Alice/ Miss Nina, is sketchily drawn and so never really gains our sympathy. She is rather a narrator who, unlike the authorial voice of a novel gives little detail of herself.

 

We could afford to see more of Nina's own passion for dance. We should care more about her predicament, her past and her struggle with the dramatically awkward image of the Angel of Death.

 

Devenish's project to write a vehicle for Patricia Kennedy has been largely successful despite some structural problems with the text.

 

It is a joy to see a play with an older woman as a central character. 

KATE HERBERT   6.3.94  

350 wds

Hotspur by Jeffrey Atherden_ MTC_REVIEW_ March 13, 1994

 THEATRE

By Melbourne Theatre Company

At Playhouse, Melbourne Arts Centre

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around March 13, 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after March 13, 1994

 

Major theatre companies need commercially successful productions to support their enormous overheads. In Hotspur the Melbourne Theatre Company may have one.

 

This is not a play which pushes the boundaries of taste, style, form, politics or content. It is, however, superbly performed, wittily written and extremely enjoyable. Ruth Cracknell portrays with wit and subtlety the abrasive Fiona McPherson's journey from spritely but pernicious sticky-beak to elderly lovelorn victim and back again.

 

Garry McDonald, cast deliciously against type as entrepreneur Freddy Brown, is vivid and obnoxious. Brown is a conniving, manipulative, expensive con man who reeks of Alan Bond. He unashamedly buys up Australia's art, land and its people. In his own words he is "a sleezy bag of shit" whom we would like to see fail, put in gaol or impaled. He makes one's flesh crawl.

 

Brown takes a flat in Fiona's dilapidated, pseudo-English home, Hotspur. He is evidently in abject bankruptcy, facing a well-publicised divorce from his equally dreadful wife, Julie, played with relish by Val Levkowicz.

 

The narrative relies on the conflict between the two arrogant characters of Freddy and Fiona and the evolution of their relationship as Freddy appears to assist Fiona to save her estate from massive real estate development.

 

The characters are more interesting than the plot, which is amusing but thin and, at times, clumsy. Marisia, the Polish viola-player, is played passionately by Celia de Burgh and Dennis Moore as Vern the devious little councillor, is a delightful, cowardly weasel. Emotional moments were fleeting, being dispelled by the light comic style which falls somewhere between melodrama and farse.

 

Tony Tripp's design is a perfect naturalistic replica of the interior of a stately home. It is perhaps too elaborate, with a model of the exterior of the house unnecessarily poised above the stage to depict the exterior of the building.

 

The performances are definitely the highlight of this production and they are enhanced by the brisk direction of Simon Phillips who gives these consummate actors their heads.

Kate Herbert