Monday 13 March 2017

2017: The Bleeding Tree by Angus Cerini

Airlie Dodds, Paula Arundell and Shari Sebbens
in The Bleeding Tree
Photo by Brett Boardman
The Bleeding Tree by Angus Cerini.  Griffin Theatre Company production presented by Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, March 9 – April 8, 2017.

Director – Lee Lewis
Designers: Set – Renee Mulder; Lighting – Verity Hampson; Composer – Steve Toulmin.

Cast
Paula Arundell, Airlie Dodds and Shari Sebbens
 
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 13

When last I stayed at Lightning Ridge, a bushman’s tales brightened my day,
Ridgy-didge.
Tales of old, of men made of gold, all strength and warmth in the family way.
But here’s a tale of a real right bastard, from somewhere maybe down Wagga Wagga way,
Apparently with a bitch of a sister who lives somewhere else, ‘up north’, instead,
At least that was what was ‘discovered’ after the bastard was dead.
Well ... that’s what all the locals said.
Pissed down the pub, never got home to bed,
Gone to visit his sis.  Everyone knew, but, yeah, that’s all good.
Of course, his wife had shot him, as you would
After years and years of his bashings, tongue lashings
And violent sex on wife and daughters, was all our belief.
Stringing him up was a just relief.
There’s always some humour in the worst of life, but,
And so it was that the postman-cum-policeman’s mutt
Got her revenge, never forgot the smell of the bloke
Who stomped on her pups and made them all croak.
And he certainly smelt after days numbered three,
Hung with block and tackle up in that tree,
Now down on the ground, chooks gobbling maggoty muck,
The copper calls Bluey out of his truck.
He gives the command: Chomp up those bones, Blue!
And this is all true, as I say to you,
Absolutely True Blue.
For yourself go and see
The Bleeding Tree.

Thanks to Angus Cerini for the inspiration, to Lee Lewis for precise directing of what can be seen as powerful ‘performance’ poetry, to Renee Mulder for such a simple looking but very effective stage design, and to all three actors, led by Paula Arundell as the mother – survivor of the worst kind of family violence.

© Frank McKone, Canberra



Sunday 12 March 2017

2017: Mark Colvin's Kidney by Tommy Murphy


Mark Colvin’s Kidney by Tommy Murphy.  Belvoir at Belvoir Street Theatre Upstairs, Sydney, February 25 – April 2, 2017.

Director – David Berthold
Designers: Set – Michael Hankin; Costumes – Julie Lynch; Lighting – Damien Cooper; Composer and Sound – Nate Edmondson; Projection – Vexran Productions; Movement – Scott Witt.

Cast:
Sarah Peirse – Mary-Ellen Field;
John Howard – Mark Colvin;
Peter Carroll – Bruce Field / Senior Physician / David / Priest / Iranian Officer;
Kit Esuruoso – William Colvin / Junior Physician / Martin / BBC Radio Journalist / Tom / Charon / Kane;
Christopher Stollery – Professor Zoltan Endre / John Colvin / Carl / Lucas / BBC Radio Studio Guest / Emad;
Helen Thomson – Elle Macpherson / Michele / Cassandra / BBC Radio Journalist / Nurse Sunita / French Parishioner / American Operator / Waitress.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 12

This virtual documentary of how Australian Mary-Ellen Field, one-time ‘brand manager’ for famous Australian model Elle Macpherson, came to donate her kidney to Mark Colvin, highly-respected radio journalist and long-time presenter of ABC Radio’s daily PM, is rather like a two-hour version of ABC TV’s weekly Australian Story

That’s not a complaint.  On stage, with projections that look as good as the best high definition tv and full-on (far better than home) theatre sound, and where the participants live and breathe right before us, this is one of the best Australian stories around.

Like Australian Story on tv, it’s a good story because not many people knew about it, and also because it has a good ending.  Like the doctors querying Mary-Ellen’s motives, or her husband’s querying Mark Colvin’s motives, we ask ourselves what each of them would gain from this donation.  If the play were merely fiction, we might suspect the author of Pollyanna-ism, but the truth is Mary-Ellen gained no more than regained self-worth and Mark Colvin simply regained his life.

So, though there are many moments of dramatic tension, and there is a happy ending, this is no romance.  The focus is essentially on what happened to Mary-Ellen Field as a result of a British News of the World journalist secretly hacking into Elle Macpherson’s mobile phone and publishing sensationalist revelations from a private conversation, destroying Field’s relationship with Macpherson and ruining her professional career.  A chance interview with Colvin as he followed up the News Corp phone hacking story, even while on almost continuous dialysis and frequent hospitalisation, led to respect and concern for him from Mary-Ellen, who kept secret from her husband Bruce her plan until all mental and physical tests proved she was the right donor for Mark – even having the same rare blood group and markers which made them the equivalent of siblings.

The most dramatic scene, I think, was in a restaurant in London (where the Field family lived and worked) when Mary-Ellen had to present the unsuspecting Bruce with her intention to donate ‘my left kidney’ to Mark.  If we had not known the ending (as I suppose may be the case for audiences in the more distant future), we could have expected Bruce to find it impossible to accept the risk to his wife’s health and even life in major surgery, despite his respect for her altruism and her right to make her own decisions.

She says, “It is my body, Bruce.  It’s mine.”  He says, “You’re making this my choice whether he lives or dies.  I don’t want it put to me like that, Mary-Ellen.  It’s you I am married to.  It’s you I love. You.”  But in the end it is his religious sensibility which allows him to send her this email as she is being prepared for surgery in Sydney, which the projected surtitle tells us was sent on '16 March 2013 at 15:54:41 GMT’:

‘This is your big week darling for you and Mark.  I am praying for you and just wish I could be at your side.  God is watching over you.for Ever my love. XXX…X.  Bruce’

And then, as Mary-Ellen comes to, we see projected the damning evidence of Rupert Murdoch talking about cash payments to police which had been ‘secretly recorded by a Sun journalist in the newspaper’s headquarters’ on ‘March 6, 2013’.  But before the ‘happy end’, we find that Mary-Ellen’s years-long court costs have been found against her.

“They’re taking a charge out on my house.  News owns half my home….  People claim things changed at the Leveson and the Senate Select Committees.  They didn’t.  Rupert won.”

And that’s not fiction.

© Frank McKone, Canberra


Saturday 11 March 2017

2017: Away by Michael Gow

Liam Nunan as Tom and Naomi Rukavina as Meg
in Away by Michael Gow


Photo by Prudence Upton

Away by Michael Gow.  Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre Production at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre,  February 18 – March 25,  2017.

Director – Matthew Lutton
Designers: Set – Dale Ferguson; Lighting – Paul Jackson; Composer and Sound – J. David Franzke; Choreography – Stephanie Lake.

Cast:
Marco Chiappi – Jim; Julia Davis – Vic; Wadih Dona – Harry; Glenn Hazeldine – Roy; Natasha Herbert – Coral; Heather Mitchell – Gwen; Liam Nunan – Tom/Rick; Naomi Rukavina – Meg/Leonie

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 11

Memories are entirely untrustworthy. I saw Away sometime quite early in its history, which began with its first production at the Stables in 1986, directed by Richard Wherrett, but I can’t remember where or when.  It certainly was before I began publishing reviews in 1996.  Weirdly, all I recall is that I wasn’t very impressed, with vague images of a kind of beachy road movie.

After seeing this production, I now understand the play and why it has become ‘iconic’ Australian theatre.  I see, I’m sure, the influence of Richard Wherrett in the writing (considering his production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and remembering a workshop of his which I attended way, way back).  Matthew Lutton and, especially, Stephanie Lake, have wiped my false memory, thank goodness.

I wish I had read Wherrett’s introduction to the Currency Press published script in 1988 (why on earth didn’t I?) where he explains the “essential qualities of Away” as “its lyricism, the simplicity of its staging demands, and the economy of its line and form….  While the play begins apparently naturalistically, the ‘away’ to which the three families go for their summer break is a world where anything can happen – a dreamscape (as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), a sanctuary (as in As You Like It), and a danger zone (as in The Tempest).

Maybe the director of the show I saw previously hadn’t read Wherrett either, or maybe I was unreceptive  - not dreamy enough at the time.  But I’m very glad indeed to have been taken under Malthouse’s wing and flown away at the Opera House in 2017.

Not that designer Dale Ferguson kept strictly to the notion of a simple stage.  It looked that way until the final scene near the idyllic beach accidentally discovered by all three families.  Our whole vision was turned upside down as the whole stage – the earthbound world of petty argument, secrets kept and revealed – lifted up its front edge to become a pure unadulterated sky, with a narrow lit doorway upstage centre for entrances – like the eye of the needle to enter heaven.

Yet the choreography of characters extracting the faerie focus from the play of Puck, Oberon, Titania, Bottom and the intoxicated lovers from Shakespeare’s imagination kept us aware of the psychological pitfalls of the human condition.  Tom’s cancerous condition means that finally his demand for sexual satisfaction before he dies has to receive the realistic answer “I can’t” from Meg.  The adults may have found themselves away for a break on the beach, but boys have to grow up and understand love and the truth of a woman’s reality.

Perhaps years ago I wasn’t ready for that understanding.  This is a grown-up production which, through laughter as much as fascinating imagery, makes understanding so much easier.



© Frank McKone, Canberra






2017: Chimerica by Lucy Kirkwood

Jason Chong as Zhang Lin
Mark Leonard Winter as Joe Schofield
Geraldine Hakewill
in rehearsal as Tessa Kendrick
Photos by Hon Boey / Brett Boardman

 Chimerica by  Lucy Kirkwood.  Sydney Theatre Company at Roslyn Packer Theatre, March 6 – April 3, 2017.
Artistic Director – Kip  Williams.
Designers: Set – David Fleischer; Costumes – Renee Mulder; Lighting – Nick Schlieper; Composer and Sound – The Sweats; Assistant Director – Jessica Arthur; Voice and Text – Charmian Gradwell.
Cast (alphabetical order):
Matthew Backer – David Barker/Peter Rourke/Paul Kramer/Officer Hyte; Gabrielle Chan – Feng Mehui/Ming Xiaoli; Jason Chong – Zhang Lin; Tony Cogin – Frank/Herb/Drug Dealer; Geraldine Hakewill – Tessa Kendrick; Brent Hill – Mel Stanwyck; Rebecca Massey – Barb/Doreen/Maria Dubiecki/Kate/Judy; Monica Sayers – Michelle/Mary Chang/Deng/Dawn/Nurse/Pengsi’s Wife; Mark Leonard Winter – Joe Schofield; Anthony Brandon Wong – Zhang Wei/Wang Pengsi/Guard; Charles Wu – Young Zhang Lin/Benny; Jenny Wu – Liuli/Jennifer.
With Ensemble of 20 NIDA Diploma of Musical Theatre students.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 11

First, a major play must be written by an author of integrity with a complex and original imagination.  British writer Lucy Kirkwood more than fits the bill with her story of the search in 2012 by ‘Joe Schofield’, supposedly one of the photojournalists who captured the shot of the ‘tank man’ in Tiananmen Square on 4th June 1989, to find out what happened to him after the student protest was so violently broken up.  This event has special significance for Australians, whose Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, broke down in tears – and announced that Chinese students studying here could remain in Australia permanently, breaking the standard rules for student visas.  This play reminds us how rarely such human sympathy is expressed, let alone put into practice by Governments of any persuasion in any nation state.

Second, the right artistic decisions must be made by the theatre company to bring forth the meaning of the drama.  Sydney Theatre Company’s Kip Williams and the design team were right on, writing in Kip’s program Message: “Kirkwood sets a complex challenge with her plethora of scenes and settings [over three hours in five acts], her cinematic writing style, and her near surgical detail regarding character, plot, prop and location.  We decided very early on that in meeting this challenge we would use no wizardry (no video, no projection or the like).  We wanted this story to be delivered to you by and through the actors.  We wanted Kirkwood’s story about people power to be one brought to life through flesh and blood.”

Their decisions were perfect for this playscript.  On a bare stage, the scenes including the fast and smooth rolling on and off of furniture and props were choreographed into a continuous dance, with the same kind of seemingly natural internal logic of a major dance work.  Complex as it is, showing us parallels and linkages developing in the plot side by side in Beijing and New York, I felt as though I was watching an artistic work grow.

Chimerica, pronounced Tchai-merica, is a major work indeed.

Did  Joe Schofield succeed in his quest to find Tank Man?  Did TM survive, perhaps even escape to America?  Of course I can’t reveal the answer, except to say that nothing in this play is simple.  No relationship, between individuals personally or between individuals and the State, follow predictable expectations – just as in real life.

That’s what makes this play great!  Even though it was written Before Trump.  It helps if you remember Obama’s elections and the possibility of Hillary for President.  In the end, though, knowing the particular politics is not necessary.  It’s the humanity of the play you will not forget.

The central thread of the story revolves around American Joe Schofield, young roving news photographer; the student he befriends in Beijing at the time of the student protest, Zhang Lin; and the young British woman he meets on his flight to Beijing, Tessa Kendrick, a ‘market profiler’ for an international  corporation planning to begin operations in China.  The fine characterisation and sustained intensity of these three actors – Mark Leonard Winter, Jason Chong and Geraldine Hakewill – maintain the strength of the drama extraordinarily well.

Perhaps it was Hakewill’s solo scene giving her presentation to world business leaders, i.e. us in the audience, that was the greatest demonstration of acting at the many levels of her character as Tessa began to realise the enormity of the social control of the individual not only in China by the government but in the assumptions of big business.

But it is the story and strength of Zhang Lin which is equally horrifying, played out in a frightening representation of the attack by army tanks on the students on 4th June 1989 in Beijing.  Lest we forget.




 
© Frank McKone, Canberra


Saturday 4 March 2017

2017: The Addams Family Musical


The Addams Family Musical.  Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice.  Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa.  Based on characters created by Charles Addams.

The Q – Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, March 3 – 19, 2017-03-05.

Director: Stephen Pike; Musical Director – Matthew Webster; Choreographer – Annette Sharpe; Set Designer – Brian Sudding; Lighting Designer – Hamish McConchie; Sound Designer – Jesse Sewell; Costume Designers – Christine Pawlicki and Barbara Denham; Make-up Designer – Emily Geyer.

Cast:
Gordon Nicholson – Gomez Addams; Lainie Hart – Morticia Addams; Rachel Thornton – Wednesday Addams; Callum Doherty – Pugsley Addams; Barbara Denham – Grandma Addams; Tim Stiles – Uncle Fester; Nathan Rutups – Lurch; Liam Downing – Lucas Beineke; Joseph McGrail-Bateup – Mal Beineke; Deanna Gibbs – Alice Beineke.

Ancestors:  Lachy Agett – Conquistador; Tristan Davies – American Indian; Andrew Howes – Egyptian; Sophie Hopkins – Queen Elizabeth; Liam Jackson – Ships Captain; Miriam Miley-Read – Suffragette (Morticia understudy); Casey Minns – Bride; Caitlin Schilg – Flapper; Madelyn White – Flight Attendant.

Pit Singers: Conor Beaumont; Fiona Hale; Michelle Klempke; Maureen Read (Grandma Addams understudy); Lydia Milosavijevic; Karen Noble; Janny Tabur.



Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 3

Though there are pedants who complain that the Addams Family Musical has less dark satirical bite than the television series (and even less than the original New Yorker cartoons), I can’t deny the enjoyment and sense of country town Queanbeyan camaraderie of this opening night. 

In fact, though the characters sing about the darkness, I thought there was an extra twist to the satirical pen in making a reversed-role romantic comedy musical which follows all the traditional rules, with everyone in love at the end – even including Uncle Fester, rocketing his way to meet up with the Moon.

Indeed, his falling-in-love scene was a positive tear-jerker, though I was a bit worried for the future of normal Lucas marrying Wednesday, who at 16 has turned out just like her mother Morticia.  And it was sad to think of young Pugsley having to face the real normal world without an elder sister to torture him for relief on a regular basis.

Of course it was an eyeopener to see how dark the normal relationship was between Mr and Mrs Beineke, when Alice is accidentally given Grandma’s full disclosure potion.  I’m dying to love you is the perverse theme of this romance, and Deanna Gibbs made the experience her own.

Lainie Hart plays Morticia like a pro, but I think it was Gordon Nicholson’s Gomez which was the kingpin performance, more than ably supported by everybody else, including the band in the pit whose music sounded like a great spoof of Sondheim’s discordant rhythms and tonal leaps in Into the Woods by being so much more harmonious.

The choreography, costumes and make-up – in fact, all the design work – was terrific: there’s too much to praise in this production, so I’ll end on Nathan Rutup’s amazing (and absolutely surprising) bass voice, when Lurch finally sings.  It was a laugh, but demanded respect for the art.

And that’s my conclusion on The Q’s Addams Family Musical.

PS  How amazing is it to realise that the creator of these characters was Mr Addams himself.  I just wonder, was Charles Addams normal, or was his family really like this?




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Cold Light by Alana Valentine

Cold Light adapted by Alana Valentine, based on the novel by Frank Moorhouse.  The Street Theatre, Canberra, March 4-18, 2017.

Director: Caroline Stacey
Designers: Set – Maria T Reginato; Costumes – Imogen Keen; Lighting – Linda Buck; Sound – Kimmo Vennonen; Movement – Zsuzsi Soboslay; Voice Coach – Dianna Nixon.

Cast:
Sonia Todd as Edith

Tobias Cole as Ambrose / ASIO man / Party Goer 3

Gerard Carroll as Richard / Thomas / John Latham / Victor Hall / Party Goer 1

Craig Alexander as Trevor Gibson / Fred Berry / Tock / Eisenhower

Kiki Skountzos as Janice Linnett / Amelia / Woman

Nick Byrne as Robert Menzies PM / Scraper / Gough Whitlam / Waiter / George T. McDowell, Yihzar, Party Goer 2



Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 4

This production is a bravura attempt at a very difficult task.  On opening night, in contrast with the conventional whoops and whistles at curtain call (a quite recently developed Australian de rigeur tradition even for straight plays), for large chunks of time during the performance the audience paid close attention but without too much emotional engagement, except for an occasional laugh. 

The play begins in 1950 Canberra, a greenfields location selected before World War I for the nation’s capital, deliberately distant from both the competing major state capitals – Melbourne and Sydney – and still hardly developed.  I first visited in 1956 and watched cows being herded along Northbourne Avenue between the Melbourne and Sydney Buildings.  As Edith quipped, on Page 3 of the script, “...in Canberra one can enjoy the privileges and discomfort of three modes of living in one place – the capital, the rural life and exile.”  That got arguably the biggest laugh of the night, from an audience perhaps including a number of experienced DFAT people.  [That’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which in the play was still known as External Affairs – a title with appropriate innuendoes, according to Edith’s experiences.]

The character, Edith, appears to be entirely fictional, in this last part of her life until her death, shot by a sniper in Beirut in 1974. 

To understand the play, and appreciate the complexity of Alana Valentine’s task in adapting Moorhouse’s 719 page novel (which I’ve never read), here is a neat intro from

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13056789-cold-light

It is 1950, the League of Nations has collapsed and the newly formed United Nations has rejected all those who worked and fought for the League. Edith Campbell Berry, who joined the League in Geneva before the war, is out of a job, her vision shattered. With her sexually unconventional husband, Ambrose [posted to the British Embassy], she comes back to Australia to live in Canberra.

Edith now has ambitions to become Australia's first female ambassador, but while she waits for a Call from On High, she finds herself caught up in the planning of the national capital and the dream that it should be 'a city like no other'. [In the play, the design by Walter Burley and Marion Mahoney Griffin, which won the 1912 competition, plays a major role.  Edith supports PM Menzies to include the Griffins’ plan for a lake – now Lake Burley Griffin.]

When her communist brother, Frederick, turns up out of the blue after many years of absence, she becomes concerned that he may jeopardise her chances of becoming a diplomat. It is not a safe time to be a communist in Australia or to be related to one, but she refuses to be cowed by the anti-communist sentiment sweeping the country. [Menzies was forced constitutionally in 1951 to hold a referendum which sought approval for the federal government to ban the Communist Party of Australia. It was not carried. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_referendum,_1951_(Communists_and_Communism)]

It is also not a safe time or place to be 'a wife with a lavender husband'. After pursuing the Bloomsbury life for many years, Edith finds herself fearful of being exposed. Unexpectedly, in mid-life she also realises that she yearns for children. When she meets a man who could offer not only security but a ready-made family, she consults the Book of Crossroads and the answer changes the course of her life.

It’s the details of how her life changes that makes the play seem interminable as Edith leaves the cross-dresser but sexually amusing Ambrose after he is recalled to London, marries Richard (whose sexual behaviour is conventional, but gross), and bit by bit over 24 years works her way up through the Conservative Prime Ministerships of Anglophile and Canberra town planner Robert Menzies (1949-1966);
Harold Holt who drowned ‘in accidental circumstances on 17 December 1967’ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt] (1966-1967);
John McEwen (1967); John Gorton (1968-1970); William [Billy] McMahon (1971-72);
and finally Labour's Gough Whitlam (1972-1975), who recognises Edith’s competence in international affairs, makes her an ‘eminent person’ and sends her off with Victor Hall to find out “whether we can trust the Non-Proliferation Treaty”.

On this trip, Hall, faced with the fact that ‘Secrecy about their nuclear weapons is part of the Israeli military and diplomatic strategy’, arranges as a ‘guest of the Israeli Defence Force’ to visit Beirut, during the ‘First Lebanese War’ called ‘Operation Peace for Galilee’ (1972-75) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War .

Edith:  “Oh, I’d love to come to see Beirut again.  I was there before the war, the Second World War.  Back then I spent many nights in the Kit Kat Club.”  As they drive “even though we are in a non-military vehicle”, four shots are fired.  Edith dances in turn, between shots, with the communists Fred and Janice, and then with her first husband Ambrose, saying after the third shot:

“...It’s not what the world hands you, but what you try to wrest from it.  That is all that is valuable.  To act, to speak, to make.  To live, to live, to live it.  Your allegiance must be to the republic of the mind, not to any country or state.  The republic of the mind is worth ...

A final shot.

... everything.”

This should be, and to some extent was, a powerful ending.  The production, in terms of the set design, costume design, sound design and acting of the key roles by Sonia Todd and Tobias Cole as Edith and Ambrose was top class. Lighting was over-fussy, and as a result sometimes missed its mark; while set changes – for the 9 scenes in Act One and 11 scenes in Act Two – slowed the action down far too much, and were often quite confusing as actors apparently in role moved sections of the backdrop and brought furniture and props on and off, some times in dimmed pauses but often while other action was going on.

The script ($10 with the full production details, published by Currency Press) states “This production runs for approximately 140 minutes including an interval” while The Street's web page says 2 hours 40 minutes.  But opening night started a little after the advertised time of 7.30pm and finished close to 10.30pm.  That’s about 3 hours rather than 2 hours 40 minutes.  By then the potential power had been dissipated.

Was this just first night?  Will the run see a 20 minute speed improvement?  Or are there questions about the directing and/or the writing?

This is where things get difficult for a reviewer.  Interestingly, the original novel seems to have attracted a wide range of opinions.  Most are encouraged by a rare Australian novel making the attempt to cover our history in this way.  Some make a great deal out of the story of a woman taking such an initiative in the League of Nations, and bemoaning her treatment in the Public Service back home in Australia. 

But, of course, we all have biasses in making judgements on artistic work.  Since reviewing Alana Valentine’s Letters to Lindy (August 2016) and her MP (October 2011), I am naturally biassed in her favour.  At the same time, not having read Frank Moorhouse, I am a bit concerned about the quality of Alana’s source material, particularly after finding this comment on the goodreads website by Karen Leopoldina (I hope she doesn’t mind me quoting):

an impressive opening, and the ending still lingers, but what about those 700 odd pages in between? weight is what i think of with this book: its physical mass matched by the weight of all that research which mired the narrative into a sludge that was almost inert at times. i love history, and i love books which use invented characters and places them in the midst of a real historical context. but research needs to be worn lightly, and this indeed mr moorhouse does not do. oh not indeed. this reader, at least, felt bludgeoned at times as his characters seemed merely mouthpieces for various ideas that concerned its author. but despite my qualms about narrative pace, and whether i was engaged by any of the characters – the central character of Edith Berry was particularly unconvincing, least of all as a woman – i was still impressed by the intellectual scope and ambition of this book. it is so rare in australia to read a book of ideas: even rarer to find a writer who dares to write one.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13056789-cold-light

I had similar thoughts after 3 hours rather than ‘700 odd pages’, so I wonder if the play needed to find a better way to limit its scope and focus.  Maybe, though the surrounding set design was visually terrific, the staging could have been done much more simply, with, say, three lit areas on an open stage where Edith would move between – a cafe table, a desk, a lounge – with little other furniture (except the cumquats, I guess).  Then there would be no need for physical set changes, characters would appear from upstage centre, left or right to interact with Edith and depart.  The sound track would tell us what we needed to know – such as the sound of the car driving into Beirut and the gun shots.

Instead of what seemed to be a mix of naturalism and stylisation, a minimal setting would opt for consistent stylisation, which the dialogue as I read it in the text seems to require.  The action would flow more smoothly (and quickly).

And perhaps then my feeling that some lengthy speeches and drawn out sequences needed cutting (such as Ambrose’s too long mime in drag), might have been allayed.  Then, too, the sections of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poem, spoken from a fixed microphone (without it needing to be mysteriously moved about the stage by other characters) could have been used with a clearer purpose.  Since it began the play, it could be used to bookend each Act – perhaps in Brechtian or Tennessee Williams style, with the words and the author’s name projected for us to read as Edith spoke.  Not everyone nowadays has read, or maybe even heard of Adam Lindsay Gordon.

The idea of presenting Cold Light is well worthwhile and even an important contribution to Australian theatre, so I would like to see it better focussed and structured dramatically.

© Frank McKone, Canberra