Walt Disney's World on Ice. Written and directed by Jerry Bilik. Skating Director and Choreographer: Bob Paul. At the StarDome, Exhibition Park. June 20 - 23, 1996 (5 matinee performances).
At my keyboard sits a young boy, hair all awry and with sticking-out ears. This is his e-mail message -
To: mickeymouse@disney.com
From: bruce@canberra.au
Subject: World Wide Web on Ice
cc: minniemouse, donaldduck, goofie, rogerrabbitt@disney.com
This is not a flame, unless you want to take it the wrong way. On the Internet everyone's equal, like you don't know how old I am, or what colour I am. So I just want to know did you have any black people hidden in your costumes, because all the people who had bits of skin I could see were white. And why did you and Minnie have to stand on top of that wobbly tower at the end as if you are more important than the rest of us? And why did you let Goofy make fun of shooting people? It's not funny where I live. Is it funny in America? And then you used the music from Deliverance - and that was a really horrible film. In fact Mr Bilik didn't really write any music at all - he just pinched it from Bach, or other dead composers, or from out of date TV shows like Naked City. And that reminds me, what was Donald doing with a heap of gangsters, pretending that violence and robbing jewellery shops and mistreating girlfriends is funny. That was twisted. Girls I know really would flame you for that.
You know, the only bits that were really brilliant were the clowns, specially in the last scene with the water. Oh, and the bumblebee who jumped through a flaming hoop (though I didn't really know why he did it). And the people who danced on skates on their own (you know what I mean, without the big crowd all around them) - they were pretty impressive. And singing along at the end was all right, I suppose.
I thought the story was a bit weak - skating on thin ice :-) :-). Just my joke, but really King Louie's Fabulous Film Fest was a worse excuse for a story than the ones I tell my teacher when I haven't done my homework. It took a while for people to cotton on, specially when crowds were still coming in because of how long it took to park their cars and they kept standing in the way so we couldn't see much of the first scene. And Minnie looked really silly when they played "Love is a Many Splendoured Thing". Yeah, and all this love in misty purple lights (more like foggy actually) didn't mean much to me, though I s'pose the grown ups might have gone a bit gooey. (My grandad told me about when he saw Rose Marie on Ice about 40 years ago and he said that was really romantic. He called your love scene, Strictly Ballroom on Ice).
And you forgot to tell people to bring cushions! Those seats are verrrry cold and hard. But it wasn't all a bad show, even if you did seem to want us to rush out and buy anything we wanted, like Roger Rabbit's video machine - you obviously haven't been to our school and learned about environmental problems and rampant consumerism. Anyway, definitely the best bits were the clowns because they got everyone watching and listening and laughing.
Bruce - NERDS FOREVER!
©Frank McKone
Thursday 20 June 1996
Wednesday 19 June 1996
1996: ThoughtProcess by Chris Skene
ThoughtProcess written and produced by Chris Skene. Directed by Chris Skene and Catherine Jean-Krista. Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre. June 19 - 22 and 26 - 29, 1996. Amateur. A Jigsaw Theatre Company Sponsored Production.
Jigsaw's Sponsored Productions Program is for young theatre practitioners who aspire to professionalism. The space, administration and technical backup for new writers like Chris Skene, recently out of secondary college, are provided in a relatively low-risk and supportive environment.
ThoughtProcess explores the idea that there are many different realities. Harmony in the music of the spheres is represented by David (played by Skene) finding a relationship with a woman, Vanessa, (an excellent performance by Desiree Bandle) which enhances his creativity as a composer of techno-music. I was surprised that modern youth would respond to such a post-Romantic theme: maybe Beethoven is what Canberra's intelligentsia need, techno-music notwithstanding.
My problem is not with the concept - that's the writer's prerogative - but with the dialogue, direction and production values. A few flashes of wit and perhaps unintentional irony left the audience tentative about how to respond. What seemed like several dozen short scenes needed smooth and creative entrances, exits and light changes to make them work. Much of the acting was lack-lustre: perhaps, I thought, this was a deliberate device to represent the ennui and unrelatedness that young people feel - but it made for static theatre.
So, a brave foray into some interesting metaphysics. Skene must study theatrical forms to find much more original ways of engaging his audience's emotions. He could learn much from Jigsaw's excellent Mercury about using the interplay between television and live performers. His choice of music, including his own compositions, held dramatic possibilities which were only partially realised. I call this "representational theatre" - a representation of ideas on stage. Skene writes of a scale of realities from "mineral" to "human" to "beyond human". As yet, his play is a theatrical rock with all its limitations of feeling and communication. I hope he will keep working until his theatre becomes at least fully human. "Beyond human" is the ultimate level of artistic attainment, of course. And, after all, this is only for those who dare.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Jigsaw's Sponsored Productions Program is for young theatre practitioners who aspire to professionalism. The space, administration and technical backup for new writers like Chris Skene, recently out of secondary college, are provided in a relatively low-risk and supportive environment.
ThoughtProcess explores the idea that there are many different realities. Harmony in the music of the spheres is represented by David (played by Skene) finding a relationship with a woman, Vanessa, (an excellent performance by Desiree Bandle) which enhances his creativity as a composer of techno-music. I was surprised that modern youth would respond to such a post-Romantic theme: maybe Beethoven is what Canberra's intelligentsia need, techno-music notwithstanding.
My problem is not with the concept - that's the writer's prerogative - but with the dialogue, direction and production values. A few flashes of wit and perhaps unintentional irony left the audience tentative about how to respond. What seemed like several dozen short scenes needed smooth and creative entrances, exits and light changes to make them work. Much of the acting was lack-lustre: perhaps, I thought, this was a deliberate device to represent the ennui and unrelatedness that young people feel - but it made for static theatre.
So, a brave foray into some interesting metaphysics. Skene must study theatrical forms to find much more original ways of engaging his audience's emotions. He could learn much from Jigsaw's excellent Mercury about using the interplay between television and live performers. His choice of music, including his own compositions, held dramatic possibilities which were only partially realised. I call this "representational theatre" - a representation of ideas on stage. Skene writes of a scale of realities from "mineral" to "human" to "beyond human". As yet, his play is a theatrical rock with all its limitations of feeling and communication. I hope he will keep working until his theatre becomes at least fully human. "Beyond human" is the ultimate level of artistic attainment, of course. And, after all, this is only for those who dare.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday 13 June 1996
1996: Move Over Mrs Markham by Ray Cooney & John Chapman
Move Over Mrs Markham by Ray Cooney & John Chapman. Canberra Star Comedy Company at Belconnen Community Centre Theatre, June 13. Director: Roy Scamp. Season: Thursdays to Saturdays till June 22, 1996. Amateur.
This new theatre group (Canberra breeds them faster than bilbies!) "was formed as a result of the members' affection for comedy". Mrs Markham, they promise, is "So funny... that it hurts". In fact, their real interest is not comedy, but farce. Roy Scamp is on his third Ray Cooney play - "he finds them addictive". But I suppose to call themselves Canberra Star Farcical Company would not do.
They have the wit to note the dictionary definition of farce as "dramatic work meant merely to cause laughter", and so undermine any attempt on my behalf to question the relevance of highly sentimental upper middle class non-politically-correct British West End farce on the Canberra theatre scene. I can only ask, was it really funny?
For a first night amateur production it had its moments. In Act 2 there was a scene of genuine farce as what seemed to be several dozen different characters (this was because they all called themselves some other character's name and confusion reigned) appeared and disappeared in and out of six different entrances and exits at high speed and with great precision of timing. Generally the acting has the basics right and there were some strong moments of silence as a character tried to work out what was going on, came to a conclusion and then said entirely the wrong thing.
But it wasn't an "evening of continuous mirth" as the Company claimed it would be. For this to happen, Mrs Markham's very first entrance and line - wondering where her husband is - must be funny. Caricature - to the point of absurdity - of the upper middle class is required (Peter Benisch as Philip Markham was the only actor who came close), and of course this also needs the complete setting of the obscenely wealthy British ruling class (a friend working as a servant in the 1970's was once told to go to Harrod's to pick up a £10,000 dress for her mistress). This is possible in the West End of London, but is a little difficult for an amateur lower middle class company at Belconnen Community Centre.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
This new theatre group (Canberra breeds them faster than bilbies!) "was formed as a result of the members' affection for comedy". Mrs Markham, they promise, is "So funny... that it hurts". In fact, their real interest is not comedy, but farce. Roy Scamp is on his third Ray Cooney play - "he finds them addictive". But I suppose to call themselves Canberra Star Farcical Company would not do.
They have the wit to note the dictionary definition of farce as "dramatic work meant merely to cause laughter", and so undermine any attempt on my behalf to question the relevance of highly sentimental upper middle class non-politically-correct British West End farce on the Canberra theatre scene. I can only ask, was it really funny?
For a first night amateur production it had its moments. In Act 2 there was a scene of genuine farce as what seemed to be several dozen different characters (this was because they all called themselves some other character's name and confusion reigned) appeared and disappeared in and out of six different entrances and exits at high speed and with great precision of timing. Generally the acting has the basics right and there were some strong moments of silence as a character tried to work out what was going on, came to a conclusion and then said entirely the wrong thing.
But it wasn't an "evening of continuous mirth" as the Company claimed it would be. For this to happen, Mrs Markham's very first entrance and line - wondering where her husband is - must be funny. Caricature - to the point of absurdity - of the upper middle class is required (Peter Benisch as Philip Markham was the only actor who came close), and of course this also needs the complete setting of the obscenely wealthy British ruling class (a friend working as a servant in the 1970's was once told to go to Harrod's to pick up a £10,000 dress for her mistress). This is possible in the West End of London, but is a little difficult for an amateur lower middle class company at Belconnen Community Centre.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
1996: The Shooga Shoogie Show
The Shooga Shoogie Show. George Spartels with Elliott Wiltshier and Michelle Ellard. Albert Hall 10 am Thursday June 13, 1996. Professional.
George's central purpose is entertainment. This is a value in its own right, but in the context of the ACT Playgroups Association's role in organising live performances for parents and young children, I was a little disappointed. The morning was entirely successful in bringing together many mums and dads and an audience of littlies who comfortably filled the Albert Hall - though comfortable is not really the word I should use for a huge chilly ballroom in June. (I hear by the way that the Albert Hall is shortly to go to private contract management - what this will do for community users is not pleasant to contemplate.)
The performances were tight and small-child friendly. There is none of the gratuitous aggression coming from the American culture which I saw represented on a child's Looney Tunes backpack: "This bag will self-destruct in five seconds". Looney indeed - what parent could buy such negative images for a pre-schooler? Spartels' material is consistently positive; its limitation is its failure to develop a clearly motivated dramatic story.
One useful way of understanding children's learning is to look for four elements: imitation, repetition, creating symbols and exploring new ways of thinking. From Shooga Shoogie the children learn enjoyment and excitement; they hear music used to support the action; they experience motor co-ordination in their wobbling, surfing, hopping and so on. But why do they search for the Sugar Glider?
They become acculturated, learning the conventions of theatrical anticipation, tension and release. The story, however, is fragmented and does not coherently develop thinking and imaginative understanding, because the material is conventional rather than thoroughly creative.
George has his stardom in ABC TV's Playschool to provide an audience, so I think parents should expect more than his excellent entertainment; more than his positivity; more than his lively music. They should demand the same strength of dramatic development that would satisfy them as adults. Shooga Shoogie depends too much on imitation and repetition, and not enough on helping children to explore their lives and culture imaginatively.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
George's central purpose is entertainment. This is a value in its own right, but in the context of the ACT Playgroups Association's role in organising live performances for parents and young children, I was a little disappointed. The morning was entirely successful in bringing together many mums and dads and an audience of littlies who comfortably filled the Albert Hall - though comfortable is not really the word I should use for a huge chilly ballroom in June. (I hear by the way that the Albert Hall is shortly to go to private contract management - what this will do for community users is not pleasant to contemplate.)
The performances were tight and small-child friendly. There is none of the gratuitous aggression coming from the American culture which I saw represented on a child's Looney Tunes backpack: "This bag will self-destruct in five seconds". Looney indeed - what parent could buy such negative images for a pre-schooler? Spartels' material is consistently positive; its limitation is its failure to develop a clearly motivated dramatic story.
One useful way of understanding children's learning is to look for four elements: imitation, repetition, creating symbols and exploring new ways of thinking. From Shooga Shoogie the children learn enjoyment and excitement; they hear music used to support the action; they experience motor co-ordination in their wobbling, surfing, hopping and so on. But why do they search for the Sugar Glider?
They become acculturated, learning the conventions of theatrical anticipation, tension and release. The story, however, is fragmented and does not coherently develop thinking and imaginative understanding, because the material is conventional rather than thoroughly creative.
George has his stardom in ABC TV's Playschool to provide an audience, so I think parents should expect more than his excellent entertainment; more than his positivity; more than his lively music. They should demand the same strength of dramatic development that would satisfy them as adults. Shooga Shoogie depends too much on imitation and repetition, and not enough on helping children to explore their lives and culture imaginatively.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday 12 June 1996
1996: Heretic by David Williamson
Heretic by David Williamson. Sydney Theatre Company at the Canberra Theatre Centre, Wednesday June 12. Directed by Wayne Harrison. Designer: John Fenczuk. Cast includes Robin Ramsay, Paul Goddard, Elizabeth Alexander, Peter Carroll, Jane Harders with Henri Szeps. Season: Wednesday June 12 - Saturday June 15, 1996.
We Canberrans may come to regret Heretic. We took the jokes about Canberra not merely in good part, but as a celebration of our existence. Even if Deakin was dull in the liberated 60's, at last we of the city-without-a-heart could recognise our suburban selves on stage - in a play which has national and indeed international resonances. This play places Canberra on the map of our imaginations just as The Golden Age by Louis Nowra put Tasmania there. But where Nowra gave us a new empathy for Tasmania, Williamson may have unwittingly been complicit in encouraging Canberra-bashing among audiences in other places who may laugh at the jokes differently.
This apparently trivial matter has parallels in the play, where the ultimate issue is the nature of truth. Derek Freeman, by arguing that genetics play an important part (but not the whole) in human behaviour, finds himself accused of racism - the opposite of his intention. Margaret Mead defends herself against Freeman's accusation that she did not tell the truth, only to discover (in the play after her death!) that Freeman never believed that she deliberately told lies. Monica Freeman discovers that Derek really does love her only when she is apparently at death's door, but must say "I wouldn't quite have put it that way" when Derek, trying to make a loving joke, says "Do you mean that you only know I love you when you are apparently at death's door?"
Monica, in determining to choose her own life, is to me the most interesting character in the play: where Derek and Margaret play out their hierarchical socially competitive roles, it is Monica who breaks her bounds and makes a real choice.
This is strong dramatic meat, but to bring it all together Williamson has made a paradigm shift from the narrative form to fantasy. The play is therefore represented as Derek's dream - but there is a weakness here. Williamson, having Derek actually fall sleep before our eyes and wake up at the end, is not willing to let the narrative completely go. The problem is that everything that Williamson wants to say about history from the 1920's to the 1980's can't realistically all be in Derek's dream. So the better trick is to create an illusion of a dream-state from start to finish. It's a risk, but oddly enough this will allow us, the audience, to take the issues on board for real: this is the contrary nature of the illusion of theatre. In this play I think this happens only in our feelings for Monica, who seems to step out of Derek's dream.
I sense that because Williamson is not completely in control of his new-found medium, Wayne Harrison has tried to make it work for him, creating what the real Derek Freeman at a reception after opening night called "a post-post-modern intellectual cabaret". Some of the devices work very well - Margaret Mead incarnated as Marilyn Monroe singing and dancing with an Aquarius crowd is both funny and makes a point about her sexuality. "Beam me up, Scotty", however, belongs to somebody else's fantasy, not this one.
I'm left, then, with mixed feelings. The performances were excellent, of course, as one would expect from such a cast. The design is stage-wise and very clever visually. Costumes are often startling and complement much humorous stage business in the acting. The result is a show which everyone in the audience enjoyed: people's faces were literally quite radiant as they clapped along with the encore reprise, warmly celebrating the skills of the actors. Yet perhaps we were applauding the director's skills in creating exciting theatre more than the writer's wit and sensibility. Williamson's work is not at heart light-weight - there's a sense for me that a sort of modern George Bernard Shaw is in the offing: but the best recipe for mixing comedy with intellectual rigour is still a few whirrs of the processor away.
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
We Canberrans may come to regret Heretic. We took the jokes about Canberra not merely in good part, but as a celebration of our existence. Even if Deakin was dull in the liberated 60's, at last we of the city-without-a-heart could recognise our suburban selves on stage - in a play which has national and indeed international resonances. This play places Canberra on the map of our imaginations just as The Golden Age by Louis Nowra put Tasmania there. But where Nowra gave us a new empathy for Tasmania, Williamson may have unwittingly been complicit in encouraging Canberra-bashing among audiences in other places who may laugh at the jokes differently.
This apparently trivial matter has parallels in the play, where the ultimate issue is the nature of truth. Derek Freeman, by arguing that genetics play an important part (but not the whole) in human behaviour, finds himself accused of racism - the opposite of his intention. Margaret Mead defends herself against Freeman's accusation that she did not tell the truth, only to discover (in the play after her death!) that Freeman never believed that she deliberately told lies. Monica Freeman discovers that Derek really does love her only when she is apparently at death's door, but must say "I wouldn't quite have put it that way" when Derek, trying to make a loving joke, says "Do you mean that you only know I love you when you are apparently at death's door?"
Monica, in determining to choose her own life, is to me the most interesting character in the play: where Derek and Margaret play out their hierarchical socially competitive roles, it is Monica who breaks her bounds and makes a real choice.
This is strong dramatic meat, but to bring it all together Williamson has made a paradigm shift from the narrative form to fantasy. The play is therefore represented as Derek's dream - but there is a weakness here. Williamson, having Derek actually fall sleep before our eyes and wake up at the end, is not willing to let the narrative completely go. The problem is that everything that Williamson wants to say about history from the 1920's to the 1980's can't realistically all be in Derek's dream. So the better trick is to create an illusion of a dream-state from start to finish. It's a risk, but oddly enough this will allow us, the audience, to take the issues on board for real: this is the contrary nature of the illusion of theatre. In this play I think this happens only in our feelings for Monica, who seems to step out of Derek's dream.
I sense that because Williamson is not completely in control of his new-found medium, Wayne Harrison has tried to make it work for him, creating what the real Derek Freeman at a reception after opening night called "a post-post-modern intellectual cabaret". Some of the devices work very well - Margaret Mead incarnated as Marilyn Monroe singing and dancing with an Aquarius crowd is both funny and makes a point about her sexuality. "Beam me up, Scotty", however, belongs to somebody else's fantasy, not this one.
I'm left, then, with mixed feelings. The performances were excellent, of course, as one would expect from such a cast. The design is stage-wise and very clever visually. Costumes are often startling and complement much humorous stage business in the acting. The result is a show which everyone in the audience enjoyed: people's faces were literally quite radiant as they clapped along with the encore reprise, warmly celebrating the skills of the actors. Yet perhaps we were applauding the director's skills in creating exciting theatre more than the writer's wit and sensibility. Williamson's work is not at heart light-weight - there's a sense for me that a sort of modern George Bernard Shaw is in the offing: but the best recipe for mixing comedy with intellectual rigour is still a few whirrs of the processor away.
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
Friday 7 June 1996
1996: Shortis & Curlies by John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Andrew Bissett
Shortis & Curlies John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Andrew Bissett at The School of Arts Cafe, 108 Monaro Street, Queanbeyan. Season: Thursdays to Saturdays till June 29, 1996. Bookings: Phone 297 6857. Professional.
If you are a Liberal politician confident that cutting government spending is the only way to go; or a Labour politician feeling sorry for yourself after 100 days of the new regime; or a veterinary surgeon operating out of Woden Valley; or someone who thinks that a national gun register is not a good idea; or Princess Diana; or Jeff Kennett; or even a frozen embryo who hopes to inherit your dead father's estate: then you shouldn't see this show because you probably won't laugh.
Everyone else will enjoy the spoofing and the political commentary which aids the digestion between courses of very nice food (remember it's BYO wine). This is a cabaret which Canberra needs - except that it's in that naif country town, Queanbeyan.
Mind you, in comfortable Queanbeyan, as in the whole of Australia where most people believe they belong to the middle class, only a few of this revue's items come close to the unkindest cuts of real political cabaret. The fashion industry's outworkers' song; the song of the failed political leaders; and especially Moya Simpson's presentation of the song of the Northern Territory's first candidate for euthanasia hint of the possibility that political satire has an essential role in social revolution.
And do we not need such art, described by the great theorist of political theatre Erwin Piscator as "activistic, combative, political" in a time when conservative politicians are elected on false promises; and Jeff Kennett can get away with throwing sand literally in the faces and cameras of a "free" press? I suspect that Shortis and the two "Curlies", by which we were promised to be grabbed, have done some self-censorship for the School of Arts audience. They offer to "satirise...terrorise...every famous ignoramus, the celebrated, the over-rated, the inglorious and notorious" and they are certainly humorous on a wide range of topics; but I don't think any of those people I suggested should not go would really feel terrorised at the end of the evening.
But maybe I expect too much of Queanbeyan: terror on Monaro Street is not something we can seriously contemplate. As has been suggested recently, the place for the realpolitik is the Drama Department at ANU - and haven't they got enough reason to go for the social jugular!
So don't be afraid - you'll thoroughly enjoy Shortis & Curlies. You'll sing along with the new politically correct national anthem; you'll squirm a little deliciously at the Nip and Tuck Song; and you'll have no trouble joining the final rousing chorus of the Twentieth Century. Go for it at the School of Arts Cafe!
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
Wednesday 5 June 1996
1996: Preview of Heretic by David Williamson
Preview:
Heretic by David Williamson. Sydney Theatre Company at the Canberra Theatre Centre. Directed by Wayne Harrison. Designer: John Fenczuk. Cast includes Robin Ramsay, Paul Goddard, Elizabeth Alexander, Peter Carroll, Jane Harders with Henri Szeps. Season: Wednesday June 12 - Saturday June 15, 1996.
Heretic comes to town next Wednesday June 12. This is David Williamson's newest play, about the personal and intellectual relationship between ANU's very much alive Derek Freeman and the now long dead but not forgotten doyenne of social anthropology, Margaret Mead.
Professor Freeman appears on stage both as a young man and as the older and wiser man he now is, so we will see played out the frustrations which we all experience - sometimes comic, sometimes sad - when we reflect upon our past actions. Margaret Mead created a guru response, especially in her book Coming of Age in Samoa, which became the bible of the view that human behaviour is essentially socially constructed.
In contrast to her Western society where "Adolescence was characterized as the period in which idealism flowered and rebellion against authority waxed strong, a period during which difficulties and conflicts were absolutely inevitable", she found "The Samoan background which makes growing up so easy, so simple a matter, is the general casualness of the whole society" and asks the obvious question: "What is there in Samoa which is absent in America, what is there in America which is absent in Samoa, which will account for this difference?"
Mead's description of the sexual freedoms of the Samoan adolescent girls has certainly had its effect on all of us. But was her picture of teenage promiscuity the truth? Derek Freeman fell for the guru until his own research showed Mead's study to have been at fault. Her work became the ideology against which Freeman appears to be a heretic.
Williamson plays not just with the academic issue, but with the nature of the personalities involved. Margaret Mead, according to Williamson, saw herself in a spiritual plane - perhaps she believed in herself as a guru - and her clash with Freeman, the rational man, on the one occasion they met face to face is a moment of dramatic force central to Heretic.
To deal with these characters, David Williamson has become a heretic, too. He set the tradition of the Australian middle-class naturalistic narrative play spiced with verbal wit which has kept him commercially successful for decades. But in his recent Dead White Males he allowed William Shakespeare to confront today's academics in a comic shoot-out. This, he claims, has freed his inhibitions, so we will see Derek the Younger and Derek the Elder, and also Margaret the Dead in what should be a fascinating spiritual contretemps. Williamson, in breaking the unity and thread of his own form of theatre, believes now that he can create what he has described as a greater density in the stage interactions.
So Heretic becomes a new challenge for director Wayne Harrison and designer John Fenczuk. Characters can now be represented in new exciting ways, the success of which we will be able to judge for ourselves next week. As Margaret Mead wrote about the Samoans, as she thought she knew them in 1925, "The attitude towards virginity is a curious one". We will discover what Derek Freeman found out about this, while my curiosity will be focussed as well on the birth of a new kind of play. I wonder how the older David Williamson looks at the plays of his youth. Will this be a second coming?
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
Heretic by David Williamson. Sydney Theatre Company at the Canberra Theatre Centre. Directed by Wayne Harrison. Designer: John Fenczuk. Cast includes Robin Ramsay, Paul Goddard, Elizabeth Alexander, Peter Carroll, Jane Harders with Henri Szeps. Season: Wednesday June 12 - Saturday June 15, 1996.
Heretic comes to town next Wednesday June 12. This is David Williamson's newest play, about the personal and intellectual relationship between ANU's very much alive Derek Freeman and the now long dead but not forgotten doyenne of social anthropology, Margaret Mead.
Professor Freeman appears on stage both as a young man and as the older and wiser man he now is, so we will see played out the frustrations which we all experience - sometimes comic, sometimes sad - when we reflect upon our past actions. Margaret Mead created a guru response, especially in her book Coming of Age in Samoa, which became the bible of the view that human behaviour is essentially socially constructed.
In contrast to her Western society where "Adolescence was characterized as the period in which idealism flowered and rebellion against authority waxed strong, a period during which difficulties and conflicts were absolutely inevitable", she found "The Samoan background which makes growing up so easy, so simple a matter, is the general casualness of the whole society" and asks the obvious question: "What is there in Samoa which is absent in America, what is there in America which is absent in Samoa, which will account for this difference?"
Mead's description of the sexual freedoms of the Samoan adolescent girls has certainly had its effect on all of us. But was her picture of teenage promiscuity the truth? Derek Freeman fell for the guru until his own research showed Mead's study to have been at fault. Her work became the ideology against which Freeman appears to be a heretic.
Williamson plays not just with the academic issue, but with the nature of the personalities involved. Margaret Mead, according to Williamson, saw herself in a spiritual plane - perhaps she believed in herself as a guru - and her clash with Freeman, the rational man, on the one occasion they met face to face is a moment of dramatic force central to Heretic.
To deal with these characters, David Williamson has become a heretic, too. He set the tradition of the Australian middle-class naturalistic narrative play spiced with verbal wit which has kept him commercially successful for decades. But in his recent Dead White Males he allowed William Shakespeare to confront today's academics in a comic shoot-out. This, he claims, has freed his inhibitions, so we will see Derek the Younger and Derek the Elder, and also Margaret the Dead in what should be a fascinating spiritual contretemps. Williamson, in breaking the unity and thread of his own form of theatre, believes now that he can create what he has described as a greater density in the stage interactions.
So Heretic becomes a new challenge for director Wayne Harrison and designer John Fenczuk. Characters can now be represented in new exciting ways, the success of which we will be able to judge for ourselves next week. As Margaret Mead wrote about the Samoans, as she thought she knew them in 1925, "The attitude towards virginity is a curious one". We will discover what Derek Freeman found out about this, while my curiosity will be focussed as well on the birth of a new kind of play. I wonder how the older David Williamson looks at the plays of his youth. Will this be a second coming?
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
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