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Theatre Australia

6-1980 Theatre Australia: Australia's magazine of the Performing Arts 4(11) June 1980 Robert Page Editor

Lucy Wagner Editor

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Recommended Citation Page, Robert and Wagner, Lucy, (1980), Theatre Australia: Australia's magazine of the Performing Arts 4(11) June 1980, Theatre Publications Ltd., New Lambton Heights, 50p. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theatreaustralia/43

Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Theatre Australia: Australia's magazine of the Performing Arts 4(11) June 1980

Publisher Theatre Publications Ltd., New Lambton Heights, 50p

This serial is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/theatreaustralia/43 Australia’s magazine of the performing arts. June 1980 $1.95* Theatre Australia Circuz Oz Colin George Departs His Majesty’s Perth Open Tasmanian Puppets Closed 1 1 1 8 1 1 : m m

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NEIL MOORE^ Theatre Australia JUNE 1980, VOLUME 4, NO. 11.

DEPARTMENTS 3/COMMENT 4/INFO 9/WHISPERS, RUMOURS AND F ACTS /Norman Kessell 45/GUIDE (THEATRE, DANCE, OPERA, CONCERTS) SPOTLIGHT 10/CIRCUS OZ/Lucy Wagner 12/COLIN GEORGE DEPARTS/J?o/i Blair 13/TASMANIAN PUPPET THEATRE/Cathryn Robinson FEATURES 14/SYDNEY DANCE COMPANY/.//// 16/HIS MAJESTY’S PERTH INTERNATIONAL 18/UK: IN FAVOUR OF THE OLD SCHOOL//rvi/i£ Wardle 19/USA: LATE OF TENNESSEE/ATar/Leve« 20/ITI FUTURE EVENTS DANCE 21/BERLIN BALLET, PRAGUE BALLET, RAYMONDA/^iV/wm Shoubridge FILM 25/BREAKER MOR ANT/Elizabeth Riddell OPERA 26/THREEPENNY OPERA AND DON GIOVANNI/DaW*/ Gyger REVIEWS 29/ACT/STRAWBERRY FIELDS, OUT AT SEA /Kyle Wilson 30/NSW/CLOUDS/Robert Page NO NAMES... NO PACKDRILL/Lhcf Wagner ABSENT FRIENDS, MEASURE FOR MEASURE/fla/vy O'Connor HAPPY FAMILY /Michele Field 34/QLD/VANITIES, ANGEL CITY/ Veronica Kelly PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST/Jeremy Ridgman 36/SA/THE ONE DAY OF THE YEAR, BODIES /Michael M or ley 38/VIC/COMEDIANS/Swza/me Spunner BANANA BENDER, MANSON/Catherine Peake 41/WA/THE TAMING OF THE SHREW/Co//m O'Brien 42/TAS/GLASS MENAGERIE, MINSTREL SHOW /Bruce Cornelius BOOKS 44/CANADA: EXPRESSION OF A COUNTRY/John McCollum

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 I Three companions to the British Theatre: EDWARD BOND, A COMPANION TO THE PLAYS Malcolm Hay and Philip Roberts______$ 7.00 BERTOLT BRECHT IN BRITAIN Introduced by John Willett______J&SDO" $ 4.25 PINTER: A BIBLIOGRAPHY Rudiger Imhof $ 3.50

Sale prices include postage to all States The following reading sets (number of characters plus two) are on offer at cost during June only. Further copies may be purchased at unit cost. MAKASSAR REEF Buzo 10 @ $1.50 $15.00 THE CHAPEL PERILOUS Hewett $ 3^ (r 15 @ $1.00 $15.00 A HARD GOD Kenna $ 9 @ $1.50 $13.50 THE DOLL TRILOGY Lawler _$T3^5O' 9 @ $5.00 $45.00 THE CHOCOLATE FROG, THE OLD FAMILIAR JUICE McNeil 53^5" 5 @ $1.60 $ 8.00 THE CAKE MAN Merritt 10 @ $1.50 $15.00 INNER VOICES Nowra 16 @ $1.50 $24.00 BEDFELLOWS Oakley 5 @ $1.50 $ 7.00 FOR VALOUR Throssell 18 @ $1.50 $27.00

Send orders with remittance before June 30 to: Currency Press Pty. Ltd. 87 Jersey Road, Woollahra, NSW 2025 Hieaf re Australia Editor: Robert Page Executive Editor: Lucy Wagner COMMENT Publishing Consultant: Philip Mason Art Director: Jack Jagtenberg FROM THEATRE TO FILM currently in hand. Subscriptions Manager: Anne Campbell Seven of our top theatre directors, Such an ambitious venture has not been ADVISORY BOARD: Richard Wherrett, Rex Cramphorn, without its problems. Rumblings from John Bell. Graeme Blundell. Brett Casben. George Whaley, Kerry Dwyer, Malcolm those already established in the industry Katharine Brisbane, Vivian Chalwyn, Michael Robertson, Mick Rodger and Aarne were suggesting that the whole exercise Crosby. W A Enright. Jack Hibberd, Ken Neeme, are facing their first real test in was a waste of money. Or that if these Horler. Carrie Hutchinson. Jake Newby. Phil film. theatre directors really wanted to try their Noyce. Raymond Omodei. Philip Parsons, Now the shorts that have been a hand they should have been put through Diana Sharpe. Ken Southgate. Raymond culmination of a crash course at the Film the full three year course at the School; Stanley. Elizabeth Sweeting. Marlis Thiersch, impossible for people with such heavy John Timlin. Tony Trench. Guthrie Worby. and Television School are at preview stage. Richard Wherrett. From the start of this baptism by fire it was commitments to the stage. envisaged, with investment from the Commercial release itself throws up ADVERTISING: Australian Film Commission and Greater such problems as extra money for the well Sole Advertising Representatives Union, that at least some of them should known actors involved — Kate The Globe-Bridge Company go on commercial release. Fitzpatrick, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Anna I la Euroka Street Waverton NSW 2060 Telephone: (02) 92 1249 Despite the nervousness of having their Volska, John Clayton to name but a few — first efforts immortalised on celluloid, the who worked for minimal AFTVS STATE REPRESENTATIVES: directors have found the experience, in educational rates. ACT: Kyle Wilson (062) 49 511 I Mick Rodger’s word, "marvellous''. Julia Despite criticisms and problems, the N.S.W.: Editors (049) 67 44/0 Overton of AFTVS somehow managed the idea, initiated by Gil Brealey, recently Vic.: Suzanne Spunner (03) 387 2651 nightmare logistics of finding free time in appointed head of the Tasmanian Film Qld.: Don Batchelor (07) 269 3018 Commission, has paid off. Many of the W.A.: Joan Ambrose (09) 299 6639 seven very heavy schedules and the films S.A.: Sue Vile (08) 269 2038 themselves were overseen by Tony directors, their appetites whetted, want to Buckley, one of the best producers in the continue, though are humble enough not Theatre Australia gratefully acknowledges the country. to see one short as indicating fully fledged financial assistance of the Theatre Board of the At the time of writing only four films status as film makers. Mick Rodger, for Australia Council, the Literature Board of the were available for preview, but already instance, has secured script development Australia Council, the New South Wales Cultural Grants Advisory Council, the Arts John Reid, the General Manager of GUO money from the ADC and is looking to return for the backing to direct the film Grants Adv isory Committee of South Austrlia. Film Distributors, is "very thrilled". He the Queensland Cultural Activities Department, and I both agree that in terms of polish, himself. the Victorian Ministry of the Arts, the Western interest and performances, Richard His suggestion, thinking of people like Australian Arts Council and the assistance of Wherrett’s film The Girl Who Mel Simone Jim Sharman alone in this country, and the University of Newcastle. de Beauvoir in Paris, based on a short story Peter Brook and Lyndsay Anderson in MANUSCRIPTS: by Frank Moorhouse, is of the four the Europe, is that the exchange should Manuscripts and editorial correspondence most outstanding so far. A daunting title continue. Now, he says, the AFTVS (or should be forwarded to the editorial office. 80 belies a wry and urbane study of what perhaps NIDA) should find the money for Elizabeth Street. Mayfield. NSW' 2304. might loosely be described as the war of the film directors to try their hand in theatre. A Telephone (049) 67 4470 late night conversation with Fred Schepisi Whilst every care is taken of manuscripts and sexes. visual material supplied for this magazine, the In that film, and George Whaley’s revealed that he felt as inadequate and publishers and their agents accept no liability for moving and perceptive view of a migrant daunted by stage work as Mick Rodger by loss of damage which may occur. Unsolicited adolescent, Dancing, the hoped for film. manuscripts and visual material will not be strength that theatre people would bring to Perhaps this is the beginning of a whole returned unless accompanied by a stamped film making, evoking fuller performances, new cross-fertilisation of film and theatre, addressed envelope. Opinions expressed in has obviously paid off. with directors moving between the two signed articles are not necessarily those of the Kerry Dwyer has skillfully managed to with the same ease that actors have from editors. bring an air of Melbourne’s zanily rough the very beginning. SUBSCRIPTIONS: The subscription rate is $21.00 post free within theatre to the screen, in her surrealist film Australia. Cheques should be made payable to The Wedding. Rex Cramphorn once again Theatre Australia and posted to Theatre worked with writer Louis Nowra on the Publications Ltd. 80 Elizabeth Street, Mayfield. supernatural tale By Night. NSW 2304. With an Alex Buzo scripted film by For institutional and overseas subscription rates Aarne Neeme, an Alan Hopgood comedy see page 61. by Malcolm Robertson and Mick Theatre Australia is published by Theatre Publications Rodger’s Buckley's Chance, a historical ltd., 80 Elizabeth Street, Mayfield, NSW 2304. drama which he has uniquely written and Telephone (049) 67 4470. Distributed by subscription and through theatre foy ers etc. by Theatre Publications directed himself, yet to come, an obvious l td., and to newsagents throughout Australia by range and diversity of product has resulted Allan Rodney-Wright. from the experiment. Theatre Australia is produced by Soundtracts Though it is still early days John Reid is Publishing Pty. Ltd. (Telephone(02) 31 8006)on behalf of Theatre Publications Ltd. Typesetting by Get Set predicting that commercial release will go Typesetting Pty. l td. (Telephone (02) 31 8007). The ahead. Already screenings are arranged for magazine is printed by ADM Paramac. Alexandria. the Sydney Film Festival, with Theatre Publications Ltd. All rights reserved except negotiations for the Melbourne Festival where specified. The cover price is maximum Robert Page, Editor recommended retail price only. Registered for posting as a periodical - category B.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 3 I N PRAM FACTORY a need for original material HANGING ON... On to fill them, but that can Monday May 5 Sir Billy only come out of such places Sneddon launched the as the APG. Friends of the Pram John Timlin, Co­ Factory’s public fund­ ordinator of the Friends of raising Appeal to save the the Pram, is optimistic building — and hence the about eventual private company — from the sector support. The auctioneer’s hammer. They Australia Council Theatre need (at the time of writing) Board and Victorian to raise $60,000 by May 29, Ministry of the Arts are auction day, to be able to sympathetic, but do not put a deposit on the building have capital funds; however, and so gain another forty the APG is firmly on both five days to come up with the bodies’ list of continuing rest of the cash. grant organisations. Timlin One of the arguments does not anticipate any used by Sir Billy Sneddon in direct Government inter­ support of the Pram was vention to save the building. that the more Opera Houses If it can be bought, the John Timlin also has plans been enormous support and Art Centres that are plan is to build a 400-seat to move community radio from members and com­ built, the more need there is theatre within it to be used station 3RRR, of which he is panies of the theatre for the rougher spaces too. as an income-generating a director, into the Pram as a profession. The cultural centres are source. The APG itself further source of rent The money is still wonderful places for lavish would only use it for income. He feels that desperately needed. All displays and very necessary extended seasons of such $70,000 cash flow per year cheques should be made out as such, but it is not highly popular shows as T h e needs to be generated from to Friends of the Pram and expected that any inno­ Hills Family Show, but use of the property. sent to The Pram Factory, vatory work should come other producers and theatre So far the Appeal is going 325 Drummond Street, out of them; the more we put companies would be invited well; the first three days saw Carlton, Vic 3053. up edifices, the more there is to rent it as a touring venue. $5,000 roll in and there has

Sydney with a committee of Alchemist; The Triumph of ten headed by Bill Honour by Peter Cook for Passmore; at the moment the Opera; four from the they have about sixty five Sydney Theatre Company members — designers from — Arthur Dicks’ Devil’s all round the country. Disciple, Yoshi Toas’s Long In May ’78 DAPAheld its Day’s Journey Into Night, first exhibition, entitled Wendy Dickson’s Lady o f Designing Minds in the the Camélias and Vicki Exhibition Hall of the Feitscher’s Sunny South. Opera House, to which Nimrod will be represented some 25,000 viewers went. by Bullie’s House designs by Now they have a second one Michael Pierce and the coming up which will open audio-visual show on on August 15 in the same Travelling North. venue. From television, Roger It will be divided into Cook’s A Toast To Melba three sections, theatre, designs will be on view and television and film and the Andrew Blaxland’s Time- James Ridewood major aim will be to show lapse. Bill Passmore is once DESIGNING MINDS of the designer in theatre, the process of design, from more designing the whole II . . . The Designers television and film and to drawings to models through exhibition, which is Association in the Per­ heighten both professional to actual costumes. Some of rumoured to be even more forming Arts aims to and public appreciation of those on show will be James splendid than the last one. promote and protect the role their work. It is based in Ridewood’s for MTC’s

4 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 AUSTRALIAN SILENT incomplete print it has been other locations in Tasmania. EPIC FOUND... A print holding for fifteen years. The film’s stars, Eva of the only silent movie Some of the most dramatic Novak and George Fisher, "epic" made in Australia, the scenes, including the and its director Norman 1927 production of For The burning of a convict ship Dawn were imported from Term o f His Natural Life, and the suicide of two boy America; they are virtually has been found in the USA convicts, were among those forgotten today, but Dawn and given to the National missing, but are contained in was responsible for Library. The film, whose the American print. introducing a number of producers boasted of its cast Based on the Marcus new techniques into the of thousands, was the Clark novel about an Australian film industry. longest, most expensive and Englishman wrongly The Term... was an one of the most successful convicted of murder and instant success in Australia, films made in this country. transported to the Tas­ but in America its release The print was found by manian penal settlement of clashed with the advent of the American Film Institute Port Arthur, The T erm ... the talkies. It had its in Washington. Although it was made by Australasian premiere screening at the is of a shortened version Films Ltd. It cost £60,000, Theatre Royal, Newcastle made for the American required a special tramway on June 22, 1927 and there Kenneth Evans and market, it will enable the to be built in Tasmania and was a song of the same name Helen Rickards Library to reconstruct an took six months to produce. written to accompany its HANDSPAN THEATRE almost complete copy of the It was filmed in Sydney, release. is a Melbourne based full length film, using also an Newcastle, Port Arthur and performing company. It is actively involved in presenting to both children and adults new and original works using mask, mime and music, and most importantly, puppetry. Handspan administrators and designers Helen Rickards and Kenneth Evans will be attending 1980 World Puppetry Festival in Washington DC this month, organised by the American branch of UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionette). The Washing­ ton Conference will provide the venue for the first international performance by Handspan of The Bunyip o f Berkeley’s Creek, a two- hander by Jenny Wagner. The Handspan contingent will then go on to a study tour of three months duration (courtesy of the Myer Foundation), looking at puppetry in Europe and England. The seven remaining members of the company will continue to present the two shows currently in repoertoire here; The M outh Show and The B unyip... The two pieces are performed in kinder­ gartens, schools, libraries, The cast of thousands for The Term... included many now anonymous parks, streets and for special actors and actresses playing character roles. occasions.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 5 OVERSEAS PRODUCT­ similar in style to Hardy bu IONS... 1980 seems to about a less well known be the year for Australian (especially to English plays in Britain, though not audiences) character. with any resounding success Dreamers will be the first so far. For the story of The Australian export under the Club in London, see World Theatre Exchange Norman Kessell’s column Programme since the Trust on page 9. The Nottingham and Cladan combined to Playhouse put on a product­ administer the programme. ion of David Allen’s Gone The production will tour With Hardy in March, provincial centres in which had a critically good England with performances reception, but sadly the at both the Edinburgh and audiences stayed away in Dublin Festivals and will droves. also give a couple in Let’s hope this is not the Amsterdam on the way fate of the Ensemble-at-the back. Perhaps they’ll meet Stables production of up with Circus Oz who are George Hutchinson’s No also off to Edinburgh and Room For Dreamers, a play Amsterdam.

LA BOITES NEW From Muckinupin. SEASON is given over As the first producer of a exclusively to Australian Stephen Sewell play it’s plays, and very propitious fitting that they should be box-office wise they have all putting on his now highly proved. Two musicals are popular Traitors, and the the Boddy/Ellis Legend o f season is completed with two King O ’Malley, which hasn’t South Australian pieces, been seen on a stage for Rob George’s L et’s Twist some years; and Dorothy Again and David Allen’s Hewett’s latest and most Dickinson. popular work The Man

Mick Rodger MAD DOG GOES its four year history, taking HOME... RTC The in the southern and central Riverina Trucking Com­ regions of NSW. pany — in association with Barclay elaborates: "It has the Arts Council of NSW, is been fascinating to rehearse presently touring its world at such places as Morgan’s premiere production of lookout to get a sense of the Mick Rodger’s The Pariah country as he must have seen Dog. Directed by Peter it. Though 1 don’t want to Barclay and Ken Moffat, the suggest that The Pariah Dog play traces the life of the is mere documentary, rather infamous bushranger it uses the historical context Daniel "Mad Dog" Morgan. to focus on the perennial The unique aspect of this conflict between the undertaking is that the individual and authority." production will tour many The Pariah Dog is the of the areas in which the second play in the RTC’s action of the play is set. It is 1980 season; the first. Boys the most extensive tour yet Own McBeth played to Stephen Sewell undertaken by the RTC in capacity houses.

6 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 PROMCON ... After work- PLAYSCRIPTS AT THE posters and the souvenir ing in the world of OPERA HOUSE... The 1980 Opera Diary. subsidised theatre for the Friends of the Australian All published playtexts of past few years, two new Opera have just opened a plays in the Sydney Theatre faces have stepped into the shop in the booking foyer of Company’s current season commercial jungle to form the Opera House, not just are on sale, together with their own entrepreneurial for opera goers but for all recordings of the AO’s 1980 company. Jon Nicholls, who theatre patrons. It carries a repertoire on record and worked as Director of wide range of books on cassette. The shop is open Activities with the Arts music, opera, drama, dance till 9.30pm on all per­ Council of SA and Adrian and other performing arts, formance nights, and for Bohm, Publicity Officer along with postcards, Saturday matinees. with the State Theatre Company, are the founders of the Promcon Corp­ oration. Based in Adelaide, Prom- con’s main business is to mount and promote concert and theatrical attractions Jon Nicholls both in South Australia and promoted a number of other states, in some cases visiting companies and acting as entrepreneur and artists such as Blossom in others publicising for Dearie, Cleo Laine, the Old other interstate or overseas Vic Company’s Hamlet, impressarios. George and Mildred, Keith Nicholls and Bohm are Jarrett, Pam Ayres and not new to the business of Flexitime. promoting the arts. Jon Promcon began officially Nicholls worked with the in February and their first Arts Council for four years presentation was a one-man and was responsible for comedy show with world Doris Moore bringing to Australia Pam famous cricket personality SALAMANCA SCRIPT Ayres, Nola Rae, The Information about scripts Freddie Trueman. They will RESOURCE CENTRE... received, such as content, Spinners, Richard Stilgoe, be following this with With terms like "co­ the Argentinian Dance area, number of characters, national tours of Welsh ordination" and "rationali­ age suitability, length etc, Company, Malambo Latino comedian Max Boyce and sation of resources" jostling and later this year Hinge and will be compiled bi-monthly Jasper Carrott, as well as strongly for space alongside and made available to Bracket and Mike Harding. presenting musical concerts "excellence" and "inno­ Together they have interested companies, and stage productions. vation" in the arts these organisations and in­ days, the establishment of a dividuals for a $20 annual national script resource subscription fee. AYPAA TO ADELAIDE... performing arts and the centre in Australia this year The Centre will act as a The Australian Youth extra resources and support is something of a happy vital link between script Performing Arts Asso­ available will enable venture from any writers and users in the area ciation, a national infor­ AYPAA to more effectively perspective. of youth performing arts - mation and resource centre serve and stimulate this kind Funded by the Literature where the complaint has for youth performing arts, is of activity throughout the and Theatre Boards of the always been that not enough moving its headquarters country. Australian Council, the scripts exist, despite the from the Seymour Centre, "Performing Arts acti­ Centre, entitled the suspicion that they probably Sydney, toSAtoestablishan vities for young people have Salamanca Script Resource could with a little expanded national base in often been neglected in Centre, has just begun to encouragement to authors. Adelaide. Australia, but there is now a operate out of 79 Salamanca To date seven scripts have AYPAA will be based at growing interest and Place, Hobart, home of been received and all the Carclew Arts Centre and enthusiasm which will Salamanca Theatre Com­ forthcoming will be Executive Officer Geoffrey continue to expand. We are pany, and will seek out, welcomed. Playwrights with Brown is looking forward to looking forward to store and catalogue scripts to offer and anyone the benefits of this developing AYPAA as a unpublished scripts, seeking further information expansion: "In South backbone of support, primarily suitable for should contact Doris Moore Australia there is a very information and resources performing to or by young at the above address or supportive atmosphere for for these activities." people, from Australian phone (002) 234 259. the development of youth authors.

THEATRE AUSTRAl.lA JUNE 1980 7 STATE THEATRE COMPANY

WORLD PREMIERE ALAN SEYMOUR

Directed by Kevin Palmer Designed by Vicki Feitscher Lighting designed by Nigel Levings with Daphne Grey, Robert Grubb, Edwin Hodgeman, James Laurie, Audine Leith, Betty Lucas, Susan Lyons and Kevin Miles. THE PLAYHOUSE Adelaide Festival Centre JUNE 1 3 - 2 8

8 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 iences, which were conditioned to an Lane". Formed to maintain oil and gas WHISPERS unresponsive appraisal of play and lamps in theatres, the company was a performance. They were surprised, pioneer experimenter with an incan­ RUMOURS therefore, in the first few minutes to descent lamp and in 1881 made hear a titter, then a shout of laughter, London’s Savoy the world’s first then a roar that persisted throughout. theatre lit entirely by electricity. In "Well, if that’s non-reactive, what does 1882, the firm was consultant on the a real audience going to do?" they building of Eddystone Lighthouse and asked. in 1887 Cosby was knighted by Queen Haddrick reasoned the audience Victoria for his services to lighting. had become so accustomed to the That prolific playwright Alan Ayck­ apathetic fare now generally on offer bourn is determined to be different. by Norman Kessel! that when Barry Lovett made his first His newest comedy, Sisterly Feelings, No wonder entrepreneurs think explosive entrance it was shocked into is written to be staged in four ways. twice these days about investing in realisation that here, for once, some­ Start and finish are fixed, but the two large scale musicals. Some theatre thing was really happening. middle scenes are changeable. More­ accountants, I’m told, estimate the The cast was never quite sure why over, the actors decide which scenes to Australian production of Evita must The Club was moved into the play on any given night by the toss of a run nineteen months at 83 per cent unsuitable location and image of the coin! cent capacity before the more than Old Vic instead of the West End’s It’s happened before and it will $1,000,000 production costs are re­ Ambassadors, which was also nibbl­ again. When Ringling Bros Circus covered. ing. But when, after the Old Vic opened its 1980 season at Maddison There are, of course, many ways of season, the Ambassadors came up Square Garden, the high wire act losing money in the theatre, some with a firm offer, the actors declined, could not appear because of lighting unpredictable and beyond control, saying they could get plenty of work at difficulties, but one New York daily such as Robert Morley’s unfortunate home at much better money. report went ahead and reviewed the mishap. Cancellation of The Old Eleanor Witcomb, Australia’s most act as if it had played. As Variety Country, I hear, meant a loss to the successful woman scriptwriter, is as commented: "Perhaps he was clair­ Elizabethan Theatre Trust, Wilton busy as ever. Among the items voyant — or just wanted to leave Morley and their associates of some­ cluttering her drawing board at the early". thing like $100,000. After Brisbane moment are a new dramatisation of The Australian Elizabethan Theatre had made up the losses in Melbourne, Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding; a new Trust now has the rights to Eduardo de the show had been reasonably certain children’s play for the Nimrod’s 1981 Fillippo’s Filumena, which Peter to break even in Sydney. Christmas season (she expects them to Williams originally had hoped to stage However, money, as they say, is repeat her Pirates at the Barn this year) here. Approaches have been made to only money. The real loss is that such a and a one-woman show for Patricia Gina Lollabrigida to star. Helen fine actor and well-liked man as Kennedy with the 1982 Adelaide Montagu, who staged the play in Morley will almost certainly never Festival in mind. Meanwhile, Eleanor London, thinks there’s a good chance appear on stage again. He had been set has accepted an invitation to Los Gina will accept. At fifty three, she to play this month in William Douglas Angeles where, among other attract­ adds, Gina still looks twenty three. Home’s new comedy, After The Ball Is ions, there’s a lucrative film script offer The Trust also has the rights to Stage Over, at the Theatre Royal in she is trying to persuade herself she can Struck and approached Michael York Norwich, but has been forbidden to do afford to refuse! to play the Alan Bates role. Other anything at all before the end of the Australian-born London producer possible Trust attractions are Am a­ year. Helen Montagu, here again last month deus, Peter Shaffer’s play about Ron Haddrick, on his return from on family business, told me she is Mozart, and a tour by Roy Dotrice as the successful London season of David planning ^to- begin production in Abe Lincoln. Williamson’s The Club, told how America where, despite managerial As I speculated here last month, astonished he and his colleagues were rip-offs and union featherbedding, however, the Trust did drop plans to at the lack of vitality and almost total working conditions for the entre­ tour Alex Buzo’s Big River. Instead, it absence of ensemble playing in Lon­ preneur are more attractive than those is likely to back a return season at the don theatre today. Shows had one, in London. Theatre Royal of Bob Herbert’s No two or perhaps three "names", with the The centenary issue of Britain’s Names... No PackdrilL It will also rest of the cast mediocre or worse. theatrical trade newspaper, The Stage remount Peter Williams’ production Haddrick said that for the small — it preceded America’s Variety by of The Gin Game, with Leonard Teale Hampstead theatre at which they twenty five years — is full of nostalgia in the Ron Haddrick part,foratourof opened, the Australians had to con­ and wonderful early-days photo­ North Queensland and Williams’ tract their performances to the point graphs. I enjoyed especially an ad by Crown Matrimonial for the offical re­ where Barry Lovett said he felt he was the lighting firm, Cosby Controls, opening of Perth’s His Majesty’s doing nothing to earn his money. The founded in 1872 by Sir Cornelius Theatre. The Trust will also handle a cast was told not to be perturbed by Cosby who, it states, "started his Queensland tour by the Sydney Dance lack of reaction from preview aud­ career as a candle snuffer at Drury Company.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 9 SPOTLIGHT

by Lucy Wagner Circus Oz is now two and a half years old, and after extensive performing within Australia is about to take off for a four month international tour. Circus Australia Ltd was incorp­ orated in January 1978 and the company came together from the fusion of two other well-established groups. New Circus from Adelaide specialised in aerial and clowning work; they got together in 1974 and toured in vintage trucks and sidewalls (tent sides without the top). Two years later Soapbox Circus emerged from the Australian Performing Group; an eccentric mixture of rock’n’roll, jug band, acrobatics, juggling and socio­ political satire, they set up as a roadshow and played a wide variety of venues in every State. When, in 1977, New Ensemble Circus arrived in Melbourne and created Waiter There’s A Circus In My Soup for the Last Laugh — Australia’s first hard-top circus event, which ran for five months — and Soapbox returned home after touring, discussions began about amalgamat­ ing the two groups and resulted in the new company. Oz claims to be the first truly Australian circus, and indeed its whole style is marked by that peculiarly Australian mixture of serious, skilled performance presented as a send-up of itself. They are "committed to creating a circus responsive to contemporary trends in popular entertainment" and their success is due in no small part to Jack Daniel plaie balancing. Photo: Pouch Hau kes.

10 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 the theatrical form of their show. Like the immensely popular Hills Family Show, also APG spawned, the form of Circus Oz is that of a company of actors performing a circus. A troupe of fourteen make up the band, crew and (in their latest season at the Paris Theatre, Sydney) fourteen acts, all with differently named performers. They allow an audience to experience the excitement and wonder of traditional circus while at the same time sending up aspects like the trad

Stephen Champion. Jon Hawkes, Robin Lau rie and Jack Daniel in "Group Juggle Photo: Poneh Hawkes. literally at the centre of things as the circus strong man — he also juggles, sings and does the company accounts; and Sue Broadway who, with remarkable versatility, appears in almost every act from trapeze and rope Jon Haw lies and his three hall juggling. aerobatics, to a delightful whistle­ Photo: Porteli Hau kes. speaking clown, to juggling, commentary, showbiz names and balancing, playing a roo and also the personae and ludicrous animal acts. horns and ukelele. Far preferable to poodles in skirts But it is contrary to the ensemble jumping through hoops is set-up of Circus Oz to allow any kind "Kangaroos", where four human big of hierarchy to develop, so no one reds and a libidinous Queensland cane member acts as director with an toad are made to perform bizarre overall vision for the production. animal acts "live on stage" by Alfonso Though the theatrical concept is a and Joanie Spagoni. And rather than a bonus for the circus it is also in itself, spangled lovely, it is a bad-tempered the weakest area of performance. Dalek who holds the crockery, Their circus skills are impeccable Stephen Champion and Jane Mullet on dishwasher style, for the plate and original, but though most of them trapeze. Photo: Poneh Hawkes. balancing act. have had acting experience they go season has been slow to build, but its The main area in which the nowhere near fulfilling the theatrical steady improvement has led the company has brought the circus form potential of the situation, as did The producers to take up the option of an up to date is the music; Andrew Bell, Hills Family Show. Personae need extended six weeks there, which ends Celeste Howden, Geoff Toll and other developing, clowns and performers, in mid June. members of the troupe replace the big the back-up stage comedy could be It is then that the company will test band circus sound with especially worked up to greater effect, audiences reaction out of the country, first at the composed rock music. This is 'involved more and the whole show South Pacific Festival in Port creatively integrated particularly with, could be given both more structure Moresby from June 23, and after in for instance, the juggling acts and and variation — without loosing its Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Bonn, "Roof Walk" where Geoff Toll leaves gutsy quality that it takes a Brussells, Paris, the Round House, his earthbound kit to perambulate up directorial eye to elicit. London and finishing up in October at the wall and along the ceiling where he These criticisms notwithstanding, the Edinburgh Festival. plays an extended drum break hanging Circus Oz has proved itself through If all goes well and they aren’t upside down. enormous popularity with audiences. snapped up for further overseas tours, Although Circus Oz is very much an After the outstandingly successful we should see Circus Oz back for a ensemble, two performers stand out as season at the Last Laugh thirty two return season at the Paris in in some way dominant; Jon Hawkes is weeks in all! — the Sydney Paris November.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 have 1 to make of his directorate? Only world where there is still a small one: 1 felt he plunged from one but healthy choice of establishment Colin production to the next too hard and theatre which is questioning, challeng­ too fast. In three years he did twenty ing and experimenting." one productions! What did he think were the George "1 work at my best capacity under company’s weaknesses at the moment? pressure," he told me when 1 asked him "If the company’s strength is its vitality about this. "There’s no doubt when 1 and youth, then the converse is that we Departs started in Adelaide 1 was determined haven’t got a large number of mature to take the reins very firmly myself actors such as you would find at the because 1 wanted to form a company RSC or the National in London. This his time in Adelaide reviewed by where we could forge a style between is a surface disadvantage only. Good RON BLAIR us, an approach to plays. In this way I theatre doesn’t depend on slavish very deliberately took on most of the naturalism: we don’t have to have old "Not another Pom" they groaned — directorial work the first year. 1 enjoy men played by elderly actors. Theatre those who didn’t know him, those who is often at its best, as in Shakespeare, had never md1 him. That was when where the language and the imagina­ Colin George was appointed the tion of the actor and audience are the Artistic Director of the South Aust­ deciding factors and not just the eye, as ralian Theatre Company in 1977. say in TV where there is a lot of type Contrary to general belief, he was not casting. Nevertheless, 1 am sure that in "brought cut" to fill the post. He was twenty years, when this generation of already here as the Head of Drama at young actors is middle-aged, a com­ the University of New England. 1 had pany such as ours will be stronger." worked with him there when he What difficulties were facing the commissioned a play from me and had Australian theatre? "I think the enjoyed the experience enormously. distance separating the companies and He’s an unusual man with energy to the performers in each city is some­ match his ambition and a passion for thing that has to be worked at. work tempered by warmth and Keeping in touch w'ith one another’s humour. work is the only way to avoid the Now, after three years with the parochialism which is death to any Company in Adelaide, he is returning artistic endeavour. Television offers to the UK leaving a fine and vigorous immediate rewards to young actors company in the hands of his successors and actresses but more importantly, Kevin Palmer and Nick Enright, both, they need theatre experience if they are you will be relieved to learn, native to develop. It’s important then that sons. there are enough theatres in Australia, Artistic Directors can be excellent given the few cities which support stage directors or good planners who them." flourish in both conferences and board What had he got out of working in rooms: they are rarely both. Colin Australia? "I have no doubt that I’ve George is both. There is not another been more daring here in my own w ork director in the country who has his than I ever would have been in meticulous visual precision and gift for England. Here one is aware that both moving actors on a stage. It’s not setting the pace and being an Artistic the public and one’s colleagues the surprising that his best work is done Director encourages it." actors and the technicians — were only with the classics. The highlights of his He himself feels that an Artistic too happy to try something new. I felt time in Adelaide would include his Director should stay with a company that whatever challenge I offered the productions of Macbeth, Peer Gvnt, between three and five years. I asked company, it would rise to it without Oedipus, Hamlet and the five hour him why he was going. "I feel it’s time the sort of bitchy debate one might Wakefield Mystery plays. for me to move. I have a particular have encountered in some places in Neither does he hide in the rehearsal spur in that my family is in London England. I shall remember the good room. After a full day with the actors, that’s where 1 want to live and where I weather, the pleasure with which one he can meet an agenda as if he had just want them to grow up. Naturally, I has introduced plays like Peer Gvnt or finished breakfast. Red tape and hope to come back to Australia indeed Hamlet to audiences which budget limitations are all turned to sometime to do a production but haven’t seen the play before and I’ve advantage. He delights in artful I’m happy to make London my home. also learnt much about Australia from circumvention. I’m well aware of the rubbish that working on Australian plays. And I He directed three of my plays, so goes on there in the name of value the friendships I’ve made here, you might say 1 am biased and you theatre, but it remains one of the people’s energy, their sense of humour would be right. What criticism then. few cities in the English speaking and their commitment."

12 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 six years the company found a permanent home. Even though the Tasmanian State Government did not respond to their appeal for assistance in purchas­ ing the bulding, the company’s board Puppets R.I.P. decided to buy 81 Salamanca Place, a three-storeyed Georgian warehouse, Golden Nugget Show, Rub A Dub situated next to the community arts by Cathryn Robinson Dub and Kidstuff. complex, and the Salamanca Theatre his determination to explore inno­ Company. The building afforded The Tasmanian Puppet Theatre, vations was perhaps Momma’s Little adequate space for a workshop, which closed its doors and ceased Horror Show, directed by Nigel rehearsals, offices, a gallery and small productions this March, preparatory Triffet, which packed out in Hobart theatre. to easing out of existence altogether, Adelaide and Melbourne and proved However, promised funds from the leaves behind the memories and that puppet theatre could offer excit­ then Division of Recreation did not physical remnants of more than sixty ing adult theatre. eventuate and although the State productions; a sense of untapped In the meantime the Tasmanian Government eventually provided a potential in a medium yet to be fully Puppet Theatre toured infant and guarantee and a loan, annual mort­ realised; and an enormous vacuum in primary schools throughout the state gage repayments of $20,000 now had the genre of puppet theatre in annually; established children’s work­ to be met — from a theatre whose Australia. shops, adult education programmes income derived largely from perform­ Ten years ago, two gifted Tasman­ ances to children. ian puppeteers, Peter Wilson and Thus, from 1977 until 1980, the Peter Oldham, returned from England Tasmanian Puppet Theatre began to to float the idea of starting a small suffer from this financial burden. It puppet theatre in their home state. was never adequately resolved; it They received lots of moral support crippled the board; it ate into and some financial backing through company morale; it beleagured artistic the efforts of teachers, friends and policy. With no real injection of funds parents — enough moral support for from private industry or the State Peter Wilson to continue when Government in Tasmania, to match Oldham left Tasmania for the main­ the Commonwealth Government’s land, and enough financial support to consistent support, the puppet theatre mount a first production in 1971 Rub A Dub Dub 1976. was fighting a losing battle in tryingto involving four puppeteers. This was and in-service teacher’s courses in maintain a small company with some Hansel A nd G ret el — a traditional tale puppetry; began to tour Victoria and artistic integrity whilst facing a new presented traditional puppet style. South Australia each year as part of decade of spiralling costs and financial Aware of the need to also develop the Australia Council’s policy of three austerity. It was a losing battle on the indigenous drama Peter devised The regional puppet theatres developing to level of budgets only. The Tasmanian Tales Of The Bushland, four tales service the country; and continued to Puppet Theatre did not fade out or based loosely on Aboriginal myth for co-ordinate the talents of local com­ lose its vitality or strong presence in the major 1972 production — using posers, writers, designers and direct­ the market place. There was merely an Australian and local source material ors. Overseas directors, such as John enormous discrepancy between the was to become another characteristic Blundal from England and Takeshi praise the State Government gave it of the company’s work. Hoshino from Japan, were also and the funds they gave it. Tales O f The Bushland ushered in brought in for production. I don’t believe Tasmania is fully another characteristic of the embryo What developed in Tasmania then aware of what a unique state theatre company that was to dominate its was a truly indigenous community has been allowed to die. Nationally, artistic development a willingness theatre that reached out to the public the field of puppetry has also suffered to experiment and explore new on a multiplicity of levels yet neverthe­ — the rare physical resources of a techniques of presentation in puppet less managed to acquire the respect workshop honed for puppet product­ theatre. In this production, enormous and attention of overseas artists. In ions over ten years are to be dispersed; string puppets operated by manipulat­ 1978 the company toured Indonesia, a tradition of vigorous experiment­ ors on stage dressed in black were followed by Japan in 1979. Also, in ation is lost; a company that intro­ taken out of the "puppet box". It was a 1979, it provided the focal point for the duced artists in other fields to dramatic departure from the previous highly popular international puppet puppetry and yoked their talents to the year’s traditional puppet fare, more festival in Hobart. If this is not success medium is gone; and excellent training fully realised in the use of huge red for a small company from a small ground for young puppeteers also puppets in the later The North Wind state, what is? gone; and gone the only yardstick for And The Sun, and developments in What went wrong? the one puppet theatre company left in such productions as Once A Jolly Well, in 1976, after shuffling from Australia, the Marionette Theatre, Swagman, Click Go The Shears, The one temporary premise to another for based in Sydney.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 13 By Jill Sykes

raeme Murphy, in his creativity. Impossible is a word that brought to a full flowering in fourth year as its artistic rarely finds its way into his vocabulary. performance. director and chief Janet Vernon, his assistant and creative The dancers work in an extra­ choreographer, follows partner, does thedemandingfollow-up ordinary milieu of trust and disbelief, Ghis instinct and flair for work that ensures Murphy’s ideas are courage and rebellion, exhilarating 14 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 challenge and deadening exhaustion. Daphnis and Chloe. To expect people includes Murphy, Janet Vernon and Murphy constantly asks them for today to believe that young love could the ballet master, Robert Olup. more, stretching their performing develop so slowly and painfully ... It is The strength of its artistic director’s abilities until they think they can go no a ballet about naivety." creativity must be measured by the fact further. Until next time, of course. Daphnis and Chloe stars a young that four of the ballets are his — the Murphy’s dancers have to be strong dancer who has grown with the first in the season, I note! But also, that individuals and ambitious for them­ company, Victoria Taylor, and an he has invited outstanding young selves. He quotes Miss Jean Brodie’s experienced performer who joined the dance creators to contribute their marvellous line about Anna Pavlova: company only this year after seven individual ideas to the company, and is "If she had believed in team spirit, she years with the Stuttgart Ballet, Carl excited by what they can bring to his would have stayed in the corps de Morrow. dancers. The company’s technical ballet." At the same time, as a small scope is illustrated by their tackling a The sensual Sheherazade, already a company, they need a spirit of performing range from pure dance to comradeship and the ability to work favourite with Sydney audiences, completes the first programme. the dance drama of the third section of closely as an ensemble, "to be Rumours, much of which could be harnessed through their individuality urphy is having an described as mime. Equally, there is a into something rare," as M urphy puts interesting time breadth of vision that extends from the it. As a regular observer, I can report bringing Rumours peculiarly Australian themes of the company gives every impression of together again. He Rumours (with music by Barry answering all these qualifications. thinks he has Conyngham and design by Alan "We are working at a rate of strengthened the firstOldfield, section both with Australians), to the physical pressure that we have never Mminor choreographic changes and mythical Greek source of Daphnis and equalled. The ballets I am doing this increasing the number of dancers at Chloe. year are much more demanding," he some points. The second and third It’s no wonder that so many people says of the works being shown in the sections — nude bathing at Lady Bay, find the Sydney Dance Company the Sydney Dance Company’s season at and the old people — are shaping up most exciting and original con­ the Opera House Drama Theatre in temporary dance group in Australia. May, June and July. The three slightly differently with new people in some of the roles for which Murphy With any luck, people overseas will programmes have an exciting selection soon have the chance to add their of new works as well as the return of always left a certain amount of freedom for the individual interpretation. opinions. Negotiations are going the full-length Rumours, Murphy’s Three contrasting works by other ahead for the company’s season in dance portrait of Sydney which was New York later this year, a tour that first seen in April 1979. choreographers make up the third programme. Barry Moreland has would also take them to Italy and 'The first programme is a romantic several other European countries. In one, with two new ballets that have choreographed Dialogues to music by Mahler for Janet Vernon and Jennifer 1981, they are looking at a season in been done at a time when so many London followed by appearances at awful things are happening in the Barry. Paul Saliba, who joined the company after several years overseas, festivals in Paris and West Berlin. world that there seems a great need for They also have exciting plans for some has used music by Honegger for his romance." He describes Veridian, unusual events in Australia. created for a new musical work of the Interiors. Joseph Scoglio, of the same name by the Australian com­ Australian Dance Theatre, has he company has grown poser Richard Meale, as romantic and choreographed a big company work to to a point where it can lush but a hard-hitting con­ Debussy. be confident of having a temporary dance work at the same "One can sense the influence of Joe’s varied and individual time. "John Rayment has done this development through Ballet Rambert, repertoire to offer — extraordinary lighting that makes it and it is interesting to see this coming and to where it would benefit from the seem as though the dancers are out on the company. He uses two impetusT of travelling beyond Australia performing in a black hole. It’s terribly pieces of music, one of which is and getting outside opinions by hard for them, poor darlings, but it repeated with such completely dif­ playing to totally unknown audiences. looks fabulous." ferent choreography that you would I have no doubt that Murphy’s The other new work in this all- hardly relate it to the first hearing." inventive choreography, the freshness Murphy programme is Daphnis and The content of these programmes of his ideas and the assurance with Chloe, choreographed to Ravel’s says a lot about the company itself. which the dancers put them across, symphonic poem. "A 55-minute dance Overwhelmingly, its creativity comes would delight as broad a range of epic that will be the death of us all," to the fore. Five major new works in a people abroad as they do here: not says Murphy dramatically. 'There is season of seven ballets is a garguan- only dance aficionados but simply something magical about workingtoa tuan task to take on in a company of people who like to be entertained and story of such divine innocence as only eighteen dancers — a figure that stimulated.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 15 In January 1977, after the JC ideas for the theatre’s interior. pot." The infamous doric columns Williamsons’ crash, the State Govern­ What has resulted is housed in the have now been resited and other seats ment of Western Australia bought the old theatre plus the hotel next door have been lost to the orchestra pit. beautiful Edwardian His Majesty’s and a new building constructed In large part it is the decor that Theatre — a valuable piece of city real alongside, which contains all the back­ maintains the period flavour of His estate — for $2 million, in response to up facilities: dressing rooms for a Majesty’s, and much care has gone pleas from all over the state to save it hundred-odd people, three major into preserving as much as possible. from demolition. sprung-floor rehearsal rooms (of All the mouldings were made of Once saved the question was what to which an upper one could be used as a pressed metal and difficult to do do with the Maj: obviously it needed green room theatre), insulated practice anything with; "the bits that were rehabilitating and it seemed at first rooms, offices for the two resident damaged we just had to paint over and that only its rococo facade might be companies (the WA Opera Company leave, as you can’t get a panel beater to preserved as the frontage to a and the WA Ballet Company) and the do anything with them. We have completely new theatre. air conditioning plant. The old hotel managed to get a great deal of it Peter Parkinson was appointed has become the foyer space, of which copied, and we went to the extent of project architect in 1977 and spent the there was originally none, and also getting mouldings made, so if it fell to first three months thinking about it houses a replica of an Edwardian bar. pieces we could replace it. You could and making a quick tour of Edwardian The old central marble staircase, say we’re doing an Edwardian theatres of similar vintage in Britain. which used to be a bottleneck, has pastiche, but I prefer to look on it as a When he decided to opt for a been moved to the right of the entrance restoration job." restoration job inside as well as out he and now continues on up to the The theatre’s original colour scheme knew it was no easy way out, but as he gallery; there is also a lift that will of gold, bronze, turquoise, silver and said 'The old girl had something." accommodate wheel chairs. crimson was decided "too rich for our The "something" was originally And what of the changes to the effete 1980’s tastes", and there was no created by Polish architect William theatre itself? The original stage was at chance of getting similar materials Wolf, who built the theatre for Perth the same level as the new one, but — as today, so Parkinson "went back to the businessman TG Molloy at the turn of was common then — had a one in sort of colours that Edwardian HIS MAJESTY’S PERTH THE P R I C E O F SENTIMENT the century. The doors were first twenty five slope. Below it was a theatres had in England; relatively opened on Pollard’s visiting Adult cavern that would have been an light creams, browns and pinks. There Comic Opera Company (with top seat excellent fire-trap and some poky little have been cries of red plush and gilt, prices at 7/6) and has since housed dressing rooms. Peter Parkinson and which is fine, but this theatre is about performances by George Musgrove, his team have levelled the stage (now ten years too late for that." It now Nellie Melba, Moiseiwitch, Harry twenty one metres square) and divided stands as a gingerbread delight in Lauder, Galli Curci, Pavlova, Eric the below-stage cavern in two, so the russets, creams and golds, with the Edgley and Clem Dawe, Sybil Thorn­ stage chamber is four metres high from curtain in heavy bronze velvet and dike, Vivien Leigh and Margot the basement, with space above to surmounted by a replacement of the Fonteyn. accommodate an orchestra of seventy long lost mural of Day and Night, It was first estimated that reno­ There has been some complaint repainted by two Perth artists. vations would cost $4.6 million, but about the number the renovated That curtain went up for the first even at the final reckoning of $10 auditorium can seat; where the old time on May 28 on the opening concert million, Parkinson feels it has been Maj could hold some 1,800, it now presented by individual performers somewhat less costly than a new only takes 1,247 — a source of and artists from a number of West building would have been. It is in some annoyance to entrepreneurs needing Australian companies. Following that ways a compromise, being now a larger box office returns. They may the WA Opera and Ballet Companies partly modern, partly Edwardian have squeezed more'in before," says have moved into residence there, and theatre, but it has kept its Edwardian Parkinson "but about five hundred of as well as their seasons the theatre will feel and it is one of the few of its kind those couldn’t see and we’re very be available to other companies and left. There is a price you pay for sensitive about restricted seating. If all producers. sentiment, but if you give up sentiment the people who told me they’d sat Summing up just over three years of you die", said Parkinson. behind pillars in the Maj had, it would work, Peter Parkinson said "I’d like On March 1, 1978 he and his team seem that almost every seat was people to come into the theatre and say moved in, armed with only a few early restricted. The size was worked out by ‘Well here’s the old Maj, spick and photos, some historical notes and the Steering Committee and theatre span, bright and comfortable, just like press clippings, a plan for a back-up consultant Tom Brown; we could have it once was. What can they have spent building to go at the rear of the south had 1,400, but it would have been like all that money on?’ Then I think we west wing, and some pencil sketches of trying to squeeze two quarts into a pint can say our job’s been well done." 16 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 The Maj’s renovated exterior, April 1980. Inset/The team: Linton Rule, Peter Parkinson, Dai Johns, Carolyn Marshall and Wendy Dali in the new Maj. rhetoric. A splendid piece of work. If any further argument in favour of the In favour of the old school were needed, the National Theatre supplies it in Peter Hall’s old school production of Othello, played mercilessly uncut and with no trace of a ruling idea by Irving Wardle aside from giving maximum prominence to Paul Scofield’s Moor, whose yodelling Britain’s actor-managers, from as far line-delivery and detachment from direct back as 1 can remember, have been a emotion leave you pining for the modest standing joke of metropolitan reviewers: naturalism of Wolfit and the rest of the old megalomaniac bullies, herding sub­ barnstorming gang. standard companies around the provinces However, post actor-managerial on miserly salaries, and butchering classicism has been magnificently upheld Shakespeare on the altar of self-esteem and in a low-budget studio production of "bardic" delivery — such was the legend up Marlow's Dr Faustus which has deservedly to the death of Donald Wolfit, the last of found a West End berth. The work of the line, in 1968. Tat rick Magee (Mephisiophilis) and Simon Cutter (Helen) in Fortune Theatre's Dr Faustus. Christopher Fcttes, this is an all-male, It was Wolfit’s good luck to have heavily doubled non-representative engaged a dresser called Ronald Harwood Photo: Christopher Harris. being his job to rouse the inertly version, which ama/ingly succeeds in H who commemorated him in one of the unifying the piece by presenting Faustus demoralised hulk in the makeup chair into finest theatrical biographies of the century; (James Aubrey) as a Wit ten bu rg H’under- I a semblance of kingship, take him through a book which also defended the whole kind who is just the man to fall for all the ■ "unfashionable" tradition to which Wolfit his forgotten opening lines, and protect him from the discontented wife, irate stage trashy amusements that separate the play’s H belonged, and made the unarguable point sublime opening and closing scenes. "La that from the early eighteenth-century to manager, and seductive ingenue who jeunesse?" runs the show’s Sartrean ■ the late 1930s, the actor-manager was the besiege the No 1 dressing room door. epigraph: "C’est une maladie bourgeoise." ?lj English theatre. He played from one end of The role offers a superb springboard fo' Patrick Magee’s Mephistophilis. a yj the ugly-duckling tenacity of Tom the country to the other, usually in dire grave, inwardly tormented devil who It. Courtenay, standing old-maidishly on physical conditions, and maintained an squires his prey around like an indulgent JP unshakeable belief in the theatre "as a guard over his chief; sulking, cajoling, tutor, while also making it clear that he is | cultural and educative force." fighting off intruders, and keeping himself going with a half bottle of Scotch in the getting this soul on the cheap, further | Mr Harwood has now renewed his underscores the line of the production, h campaign in a piece called The Dresser back pocket of his baggy wartime trousers. which delivers its masterstroke with the 9 It is also through Courtenay’s per­ which arrives in the West End from apparition of Helen of Troy as a boy. At 9 Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. In formance that the play’s last penny drops. Simon Cutter’s entrance, like Pygmalion’s Not only does the dresser suggest a fool; he spite of its title, this is a salute to the actor- statue come to life, the cast shield thejr managerial breed at large, rather than a is the Fool: one of the multiple references dazzled eyes. You can believe it. reconstruction of the author’s life with the with which the events of Sir’s farewell boss. engagement mirror those of King Lear. The time is 1942 and the place some god­ The air raid parallels the storm. Lear’s forsaken Midlands touring date. Sir has depleted retinue is reflected in wartime collapsed in the street leaving his dresser, casting ("I'm reduced to old men, cripples, Late of Tennessee Norman, and the rest of the stage crew and nancy boys"); and Sir goes through the wringing their hands in the midst of an air night trying to discover who loves him best by Karl Levett raid awaiting the first cancellation in the as a prelude to making an autobio­ company’s history. Of course, the gallant graphical partition of his kingdom. In a recent New York Times article old monster lumbers in just in time to be In Manchester, Michael Elliott’s pro­ Tennessee Williams made the statement: coaxed into his Lear costume and stride duction was split between the hovel­ "I’ve gone through a period of eclipse in on, braving the bombs, to give the final dressing room and a scaffolded wing area recent years, and maybe I am too old to performance of his career. (loud with timps and thundersheets) write anymore, but you have to go on with Among other things. The Dresser is just leading to an optic slice of the King Lear it because — well, it’s your life." the kind of melodramatic suspense story in performance in the arena’s outer peri­ You cannot help but admire the which the old actors excelled. It also meter. Courtenay is partnered by Freddie persistence of the man; for a playwright accommodates quantities of backstage Jones, a specialist in old-actor and a poet he is remarkably dogged. This lore, superstition, actors'jokes ("What mannerisms, who compasses the panic, season in New York we have had the fifty of my followers with the clap?") and exhaustion, booming authority, and bursts opportunity to witness two new works, one the routine tensions of getting a show on. It of charm and lechery without ever on Broadway, Clothes For A Summer is here that Norman earns his title role — it succumbing to the character’s own Hotel, and one for an Off-Off Broadway

18 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 group, Kir che, Kut chert And Kinder. The Off-Off Broadway company, The Jean Cocteau Repertory has featured two Tennessee Williams’ plays in their current season, In The Bar Of A Tokyo Hotel and Kir che, Kutchen And Kinder. Kir che etc has that suspicious title of "a work-in­ progress" as well as carrying the subtitle "An outrage for the stage". All this excess baggage means is that Mr Williams is attempting to write an absurdist play. The only previous effort in this genre that I can recall was the 1960’s Slapstick Tragedy, when Zoe Caldwell was wonderfully funny as a Southern gossip columnist. Kir che is set in M anhattan’s Soho where we meet your atypical American family: Father’s a retired male hustler, Mother wields a hatchet, and the two children, having failed in school are sent uptown to seek their fortune literally on the streets of New York. Add to this a lecherous Lutheran minister and an old fraulein in grotesque drag. Her name is Fraulein Haussmitzenschlogger and that title is, unfortunately, characteristic of the whole piece. This is a dumpling that is as heavy as lead and as totally indigestible. Two Absurdist essentials, lightness and logic, are nowhere to be seen and the whole style seems alien to Mr Williams. Furthermore, the production underlines what is already painfully obvious, making this work-in- progress one that has no place to go. Clothes For A Summer Hotel is another matter. It is an amibitious attempt to examine the mysteries of two personalities that, down the years, continue to fascinate: Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The curtain reveals Oliver Smith’s evocative setting that immediately registers as some kind of waystation to Hell. There is a facade of an asylum that abruptly ends in a jagged line, to show us low, dark hills beyond. A blazing flamebush symbolically glows; the wind howls. Two nuns in fantastic wimples and trailing black gowns stand like guardian vultures at the door of the asylum. Scott Fitzgerald (Kenneth Haigh) paces outside, awaiting his wife. He is inappropriately dressed for the scene, in the white ducks and sports jacket of his Hollywood life — hence, the play’s title. Zelda (Geraldine Page) rushes on in complete disarray; torn pink ballet dress, dancer’s warm-up (Continued over page)

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 19 leggings, pink ballet shoes. A promising beginning for what Mr Williams has called "A Ghost Play." From this windy hill in North Carolina, we dip back consistently to the past to the young Scott and Zelda and their friends, as the Fitzgeralds confront the ghosts of their youth. In presenting these personalities — Zelda’s aviator lover, Hemingway, the Gerald Murphys, Mrs Patrick Campbell — Mr Williams is immediately placed in a straightjacket of retelling a tale thrice told. We see Zelda’s bedding the aviator, Hemingway baiting Scott sexually, Mrs Patrick Campbell telling a joke. This necessity to provide literary history in the plainest terms creates a basic flaw in the play that Mr Williams cannot begin to surmount. Perhaps because this play was for Broadway Mr Williams believed that lots of explanations were needed. A pity. For in the later scenes we catch glimpses of another play that is struggling to emerge from this one. It is a play that is without explanations, taking knowledge Kenneth Haigh and Geraldine Page in Clothes for a Summer Hotel. for granted and moving on to fly free in a Photo: Jack Buxbaum. poetic form that truly suggests a "ghost rewriting, there is something valuable here Haigh’s puffy and none-too-sympathetic play". Williams’ handling of time in these just waiting to be worked again in a much Scott does better, but this is Zelda’s play later scenes is fascinating, as past, present, more adventurous manner. and Mr Williams would do well to give a future tumble over each other. We see The play brings together Mr Williams, more consistent spotlight to his heroine. Zelda become a tormented Cassandra as director Jose Quintero and Geraldine Page Clothes as it stands is a disappointment, she contemplates her fiery death. Scott who all three worked together in 1952 on an attempt at a major theme that fails. We takes a present pill for his heart that Summer And Smoke and probably each have to remember Tennessee William’s becomes incorporated into the past. Fire had ghosts of their own to confront. Ms recent quote — "Work is the loveliest four- bells of Zelda’s future sound in the past and Page, with her eccentric delivery, is a letter word there is" — and hope that he present. vibrant if over-aged Zelda, but plays past has the courage to tell the Fitzgeralds’ Given Mr Williams’ persistence for and present on the same note. Kenneth story just one more time.

13TH W ORLD PUPPET FESTIVAL Denmark, July 14 to 30, 1980, coinciding This will be held by UNIMA, the with the World Conference of the UN Future Theatre international puppet organisation, in Decade for Women. Readings, perfor­ Washington, DC from J une 10 to 13, 1980. mances, panel discussions, and films will Delegates from 55 member nations will demonstrate the achievements of women Happenings attend and 35 companies will perform. in art. Women are invited to participate in Puppeteers, actors, technicians, librarians, the slide presentation, publications dis­ Abroad artists, students, educators will attend play, and international postcard exhibi­ seminars, events, meetings at Georgetown tion. For information contact: Helen Lait University, performances at Kennedy Kluge, Gl. Hareskovvej 333, 3500 Vaer- AUSTRALIAN Centre Center, and exhibits and shows at the loese, Denmark. INTERNATIONAL THEATRE Smithsonian. The event, hosted by the INSTITUTE Puppeteers of America, is co-sponsored by INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF 153 Dowling Street, Potts Point, NSW. the US National Commission for LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS OF THE Telephone: 357 1200 UNESCO, UNIMA-USA (Jim Henson, PERFORMING ARTS Director: Marlis Thiersch creator of the Muppets, president), and SIBM AS will hold its 14th International Secretary: Glenda Linscott Puppeteers of America Inc. Congress from September 15 to 20 in THIRD WORLD THEATRE Belgrade. Yugoslavia. The theme is The HELP WITH THEATRE SEATS The ITI’s South Korean centre will hold Use of Theatrical and other Records for Through the generosity of the "League an international third world theatre Artistic and Technical Purposes: Metho­ of New York Theatres" and 'Theatre festival in Seoul in March 1981. dology." Workshops will cover: 1. Development Fund", the US Centre of the The ITI’s Cyprus centre will hold a third Museums of the Performing Arts and ITI at 1860 Broadway, can once again world conference on the theme Theatre Theatres, 2. Documentation and Theatre assist visiting international theatre pro­ and the defence of freedom” from October Criticism, 3. Lexicography of the Per­ fessionals with the purchase of theatre 20 to 26, 1980. forming Arts. Contact the Secretary: tickets while in New York city. Upon FIRST INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL Sinisa Janie, Musej Pozorishe Umetnosti arrival, visitors should telephone ITI/US OF WOMEN ARTISTS SR SRB1JE, 19 Gospodar Jevremova, to set up an appointment: (212) 245 3950. This will be held in Copenhagen, 11000 Beograd, Jugoslavia.

20 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 DANCE groups, so please, let’s see the next that it allowed us to look at a complete Festival’s attractions demonstrate a bit of ensemble company and to listen to the wit and knowledge on the subject. complete music to Swan Lake as its composer wrote it, but neither of those PRAGUE CHAMBER BALLET gifts, as it turned out, were sufficient to The Prague Chamber Ballet looked justify bringing it to this country. As a sadly lacking in group cohesion, verve and ballet company the Berlin Ballet is not of intelligent design in nearly everything it major importance and the choreographic did. They probably thought it terribly content of Swan Lake, at least, was rarely daring to do some of the things they did above that of the commonplace. back in Prague but those affected dramatic The main reason why the Ur-Suw7 Lake poses and etoliated eurythmics gave out of 1877 was a failure was that the Berlin and Prague trying to communicate anything very early choreography of Reisinger was dismal. on in the piece and stayed that way through The so-called charge that the music was Ballets and everything they performed. Perhaps it was "too symphonic" was merely a pretext some sort of macabre joke of the Festival trumped up by the dancers and Reisinger Raymonda Trust’s, in that they would put this because it gave too few chances for the company side by side with the Australian principals to have an extended sequence to Dance Theatre so that our audiences themselves; as far as Tchaikovsky was would witness the home company’s On the strength of the dance companies concerned the drama was all important not undoubted superiority and not be so the vanity of the primadonnas. from overseas brought to Australia for this parochial in future. Whatever the reason, years Adelaide Arts Festival, 1 can only It was due to all the ammendations and the Prague Chamber Ballet was a major changes brought about by the musical hope that Jim Sharman (if allowed to run embarrassment to the Sydney Opera his course as director) will give con­ director of the 1895 revival, Riccardo House Trust and the dance critics of all Drigo, that the score is such a wild mess of sideration to the suggestions of people in persuasions. the dance scene in Australia as to what to Tchaikovsky as the latterday hack, not so much the wonderful and inspired choreo­ bring out next time in the way of dance BERLIN BALLET graphy of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. groups. The Ballet of the Berlin Komische Oper The Ballet of the Berlin Komische Oper on the other hand was at least interesting in If only we could have had a present day and the Prague Chamber Ballet were a couple of the most flacid, inept and diffuse companies ever seen in this country. Neither of these imported groups could honestly pass muster in the way of originality of vision or uniqueness of content. On the face of it, one can agree that musically speaking both of the imported ballet companies (along with the Mabou Mines group from New York) were of considerable interest. Prague Chamber Ballet had scores by Dvorak and various "avant guard" Chekoslovakian composers. The Berlin Ballet had the draw of Tchiakovsky’s Swan Lake in its complete and original form as well as music by Debussy, Schubert and Stravinsky. It is a shame for the Adelaide Festival that neither company had any real impact in terms of dance values. Undoubtedly it was an expensive enter­ prise bringing out the Berlin Ballet to Australia, but in my opinion it was money wasted (apart from anything else the seasons in each capital city have hardly been sell outs). For the same amount of money we could have had at least two top notch groups from America, Paul Taylor’s Company say, or Twyla Tharp and dancers. America is the scene for in­ teresting and exciting dance now in the world, it no longer lies with these superannuated, third-class Iron Curtain 1 he Berlin Ballet in Debussy's la Mer.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 21 choreographer with as much inspiration For all their much vaunted fidelity to Swan Lake alone. So too. those deep and genius as these two to reset the original Tchaikovsky’s original intentions (and let reverences of Siegfried partake of a work as it was envisaged. Tom Schilling is it be remembered, he was a musician and meaning beyond mere balletic chivalry, far from approaching such ability. demonstrably did not know much about portraying rather a wonderment and Both in his Swart Lake and in the 2nd what worked on the stage, especially the infatuation at the embodiment of an ideal. programme works, one was always con­ ballet stage), Tom Schilling and his It is that, as much as romantic attraction, scious of a veritable encyclopedia of bits librettist have seen fit to disregard the that brings Siegfried and Odette together. and pieces from modern classical choreo­ impulse and demand of the music itself. Swan Lake in its old form created by graphers. We have Bejartesque movements They have also dispensed with any sense of Petipa and Ivanov is not a "fairytale about in the Act 2 Lake scene, cohorts of tragedy and poetry in the Act 2 Lake scene birds" as only the deliberately myopic Grigorovich men in the court scenes, (though in this production it could be the would claim, it is a drama about freedom goosestepping their way along as if they surface of the moon for all the "designs"tell revealed in movement of dazzling variety had wandered out of the Bolshoi Spartacus us). and clarity. The finale is so exciting and a weird concoction of Jiri Kylian, There is no reason for Siegfried to be because that final escape from bondage is Balanchine, Cranko and God knows who there for a start. At least in the "old truly cathartic and has been prepared for else in the "ethnic" dances and so forth of fashioned" version there was enough throughout the duration of the work. Act 3. dramatic realism for him to be there, he In Schilling’s version, there was no But even this would have been endurable release because there was no cogent if the whole work had been tied together presentation of struggle, merely threats. dramatically with the music and the idea When that huge sheet of silk came behind Tchaikovsky’s original, but cascading down at the end of the ballet it Schilling, in collaboration with his meant nothing in relation to what had gone General Manager Bernd Kollinger, has before and therefore meant nothing in its managed to construct a thematic and own terms. schematic directorial concept on the whole The Berlin Komische Oper Ballet tried ballet that robs it of any natural life, to dance Swan Lake not as the lyric diversity or magic. tragedy it is but rather as a vast tone While the music may be a "revelation" , poem... all in tones of grey. Let it be an the storyline itself is singleminded in abject example to those tempted to thumping home its ideas about political "politicise" a masterpiece of the Romantic systems, corruption in high places and the tradition, especially when they can’t dilemma of the individual of conscience in portray either the dialectic of politics or the a vile system. Time after time is this point manner of Romance on the stage hammered home at the expense of any convincingly. growing, cumulative drama or characteri­ PROGRAMME TWO sation or poetry, contrast or Things didn’t improve much in the choreographic growth. ballets on the Second Programme. La HAMLET TERRITORY Mer, Youth Symphony and Evening With a Siegfried glimpsed at the very Dances were all out of the same earnest opening of the ballet, lying prostrate on the Schilling mould. ground, and looking very sickled o’er with Youth Symphony was a compote of the pale cast of thought we know we are Petit and Balanchine and only revealed the very deep into Hamlet territory. Fine, Michaela Kirkaldie in Raymonda. Photo: fuzzy and lumpish Soviet trained tech­ Branco Gait a. point made, but we still get it when nique of the dancers. If one is going to Siegfried dances a series of tangled, was out hunting, but in this "stunning" compose a ballet without plot (even if it has confused duets and trios with his mother version he just happens to appear there ... a theme like Youth), one must make sure (the Queen,/Gertrude) and the court like a genie. And look what doesn't happen that the line and design of those exposed adviser cum sorceror (Rothbart/ when he gets there. No discovery, no bodies on stage is linear, clear and self Claudius). If these literary illusions weren’t passion, no poetry. Dramatically and explanatory as well as logical in ex­ enough we get a flash of Oedipus in Act 3 choreographically speaking the Lake scene position. when the duets with the Queen get rather is nowhere. The Bride o f Dracula swans But Youth Symphony was full of pauses, heated, and a smidgin of Othello with our are given movements as flat and insipid as ruminations and unsettling swerves of hero wandering around with a white scarf, those that characterised the court, so choreographic progression. It was only for no discernable reason. there’s not even a movement contrast. made worse by the matter of fact All of these impressions have to come It is here that the "old fashioned" version performance. The woman seemed edgy through the mind’s eye though, since there has it all over this modernistic proletarian and brittle while the men had nothing in is precious little in the way of scenery or mishmash. Lev Ivanov was a master- the way of ballon, elevation or sufficient costume to give one any sense of time, craftsman and he knew how to pace and follow through in their port de bras and all place or social mileu. build his big scenes so that they made sense of them direly need to clean up their The court dances in Acts I and 3 are in dance terms as well as elucidating the footwork and placement so that they can uniformly dull, robotic and undefinitive, dramatic thread. Even more important be seen to phrase an enchaînement there is a grim, nervous waltz to the Act I was his ability to translate the love and properly rather than fall from one into music that has not a glimmer of the sheen exhilaration of the first encounter in another. and glow of the music. The same again choreographic motifs throughout the The same faults were well illustrated in happens in Act 3 with the mazurka, surely lamous White Swan pas de deux. Evening Dances although they didn’t a place where the stage and choreography Although sissones-en-avant and winged spread quite so wide here simply because should mirror the full Tsarist grandeur of arabesques happen in hundreds of ballets, there were really only two main pro­ the music, but no. the images of struggle in bondage occur in tagonists on the stage, that is after all those

22 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 fey Robbinsesque gatherings had been however, it’s a wonder that more of them have that room on the Opera Theatre stage dispensed with. didn’t defect. and therefore looked fussy, clumsy and out It (the pas de deux) was another of character. I don’t think that anyone on patchwork unfortunately but at least one AUSTRALIAN BALLETS the artistic side of the Australian Ballet, could relax with the two excellent dancers RAYMONDA likes or even has the remotest interest in Dieter Hulse and Jutta Deuschland. It was The important thing to remember about Raymonda as a full length ballet, and I a wide, blossoming duet, the energy always Raymonda is not to go to it looking for a wouldn’t blame then because it just isn't a arising from the attraction/repulsion story line; it hasn’t got one. It also hasn’t ballet, especially in this ridiculous in­ theme, flowing out and upward only to got very good music (Stravinsky called carnation, but if it is going to have any life contract back into a tight hold or adhesive Glavunov a "Carl Phillip Emmanuel on stage, some one, at least the lead parts, lift. It was also much more musically keen Rimsky Korsakov" which is hard if apt). must have some interest. than La Mer. In the Australian Ballet’s version, the Michaela Kirkaldie and Kelvin Coe had Masses and masses of pirouettes, runs, work is also nobbled by the interference of a fair command of the technical necessities archings and unfurling extensions remini­ Nureyev’s bits and pieces as well as the but no atmospheric aura about them; the scent of Bejart at his worst, don’t make up hideous designs of Ralph Koltai (pray tell second cast of Gary Norman and Lois for a representation of Love, they merely me what huge mirrors and Romanoff bi­ Strike didn’t seem to give a damm and just show an overworked imagination and cephalous eagles have to do with medieval walked their way through it; the third cast underdeveloped invention, no matter how Provence?). of Sheree da Costa and Dale Baker much the audiences or the critics may When one scrubs all this away, what one staggered their way through with tons of revel in their own emotions. does have is some of the finest Russian atmosphere, bravado and stage tricks, but Cranko’s acidic and nervy Jeu de Cartes Maryinsky choreography of Marius no assurance of style. didn’t get a good treatment at the hands of Petipa. Raymonda is in fact three of the The corps de ballet was woeful through­ the East Germans either. No sparkle, no finest crafted "plotless" abstract ballets on out; it just goes to show that when one gets tongue in cheek zap and an unforgivably the classical stage. The work as a whole down to the nitty gritty, the Australian sloppy ensemble made me wonder if this and especially the central role is a Ballet has no awareness or interest in the was the same work as that I had seen by the technician’s part. The Australian Ballet is rigours or mannerisms of a pure classical Stuttgart Ballet. not up to the technical demands of the or Romantic style, it gets through these Anyway, at least Australia can say it is work, niether is the Opera Theatre stage works purely by bluff and stage manner. the only country in the West that has seen big enough to contain the work. The Australian audiences are seeing not a the Berlin Ballet, and the Berlin people can Raymonda is a large, grand expansive first rate internationally acclaimed com­ say that they have a guage of how the West work. It does not develop from cramped pany, but rather a provincial company, sees Dance. If this is what the dancers in surroundings. The large corps de ballet that, in pieces like this, is first rate at being East Germany have as a continual diet moments need room to breathe; they didn’t third rate.

Kelvin Coe and Michaela Kirkaldie in the A B’s Raymonda. Photo: Branco (laica.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 23 THE LIEDER UNION SOUTHERN THEATRE REGIONAL University of Sydney Union THEATRE University of Sydney 2006

GOLDSMITH STREET, GOULBURN. Situated in Parramatta Road, (buses stop at Resident Artistic Director. John Spicer. theatre entrance) just a few kilometres from Phone (048) 21 5868 the centre of Sydney. July 2nd to 5th & 9th to 12th Previously for predominantly student use, THE REMOVAL1STS the theatre is now available all year round by DAVID WILLIAMSON for outside hirers. Aug. 6th to 9th & 13th to 16th Fully functional, for live theatre or film, or as a seminar/lecture theatre. Comedy to be announced. Modern, stadium type auditorium is fully air- Sept. 17th to 20th & 24th to 27th conditioned and seats 624. THE CRUCIBLE Rates compare favourably with other by ARTHUR MILLER theatres in Sydney. Hire rates and further particulars are available on request by calling the Theatre The Lieder S.R.T. receives support from the Australia Advisor on 660 1355, ext. 279. Council Theatre Board.

Producers, Theatre Companies, NIMROD THEATRE Entrepreneurs... WORKSHOP ALL V0UR SUPERVISOR/ PROGRAMME HEAD CARPENTER NEEDS SOLVED Nimrod Theatre is looking for a first rate Carpenter/Joiner capable of supervising and leading two other tradesmen Are you looking for a good deal on your and an apprentice, to take charge of our scenery construction workshop in Glebe from mid-July. programmes? Nimrod's unconventional scenery incorporates working We can offer you with metal and plastics. The Head Carpenter should be * A high quality publication knowledgeable enough and enthusiastic about working in * Efficient service these mediums. Ingenuity and a mechanical mind would * A good percentage certainly be an asset as well. * We can provide programmes/ The workshop services our two Theatres in Surry Hills, as well as numerous transfers to other Theatres in Sydney catalogues/brochures for any event: and on tour. The Head Carpenter will oversee the fit ups for plays, entertainments, concerts, these venues. Demands and pressure or work will at times festivals... be great, but in return we offer well above award wages, If you’re interested contact: generous holidays, and the opportunity to be involved in Australia's leading and most exciting Theatre Company. Programme Publishing Pty Ltd If this challenge appeals and rouses a spark of interest, at 200 Crown Street, write to The Production Manager, Nimrod Theatre, P.O. Darlinghurst NSW 2010 Box M93, Sydney Mail Exchange, 2012, NSW, giving or ring (049) 67.4470. details of past employment.

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THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE I980 25 OPERA all but impossible to assemble; the latter it is clear that the venue has considerable for the fantastic nature of its plot, its problems and this seemed an admirable incredible vocal demands and the near­ way to get round at least some of them. impossibility of bringing off its denoue­ What was generally lacking among the ment in purely theatrical terms. performers in this Threepenny Opera was The two recent Threepenny Operas, raw guts: not only in the singing, where just viewed together in retrospect, provide a about nobody had enough sheer vocal near-perfect illustration of the problem of power to project satisfyingly even half way the piece. The first, put on by Brisbane’s up a moderate-sized theatre to where I was T.N. Company, was by and large drama­ sitting, but also in the delivery of the tically excellent but fell down in the singing spoken dialogue. It was all just a shadetoo voice department. The second, presented genteel, whereas it all ought to be rough as 2 Threepenny by Canberra Opera, was vocally much guts. better but lacked dramatic punch. It was It was just not in keeping with the quite Operas and far from as simple as that, of course; but marvellous sleaziness of the context into that generalisation will do for starters. which the action was hurled. Most of the Giovanni on film The problem of The Threepenny Opera, individual performances were quite good, of course, is complicated by Brecht’s in particular the Mac the Knife of Harry iconoclastic orientation: to play it to Scott and the Tiger Brown of Duncan maximum effect, a team of performers Two well-known but problematical Wass. must be possessed, preferably individually I was also quite impressed by the works — Mozart’s Don Giovanni and as well as collectively, by a gut-distrust of smarmy Peachum of Michael McCaffrey Brecht,/Weill’s Threepenny Opera — dom­ human nature not to mention the integrity as well as the Mrs Peachum of Milson inated my opera-going during the month of human institutions. himself, standing in at the last moment for under review. It requires the sort of raw anger and In quick succession, 1 saw live but highly the lady who was scheduled to play the frustration at the status quo that seldom part. At no stage did he camp it up; and he contrasting productions of The Three­ survive adolescence and very rarely indeed came across very well indeed in one of the penny Opera in Brisbane and Canberra; flowers anywhere in Ockerland, even in the and 1 had an opportunity to preview work’s pivotal roles. ultra-conservative confines of Bjelke- In fact, Milson sang as well as anybody Joseph Losey’s film version of Don Petersenland or the hothouse atmosphere Giovanni which opens late this month in the cast — with one notable exception — of public service-oriented Canberra. and a good deal better than most, for there (June) in Sydney and will be seen later in was an alarming paucity of vocal talent in the year in other capital cities. the cast despite its considerable dramatic Meanwhile, as I mentioned last month, BRISBANE’S THREEPENNY strengths. the Australian Opera was touring the OPERA Judith Anderson’s Polly looked abso­ provinces — playing The Magic Flute La , lutely marvellous, but failed to convince Traviala and Falstaff in Melbourne and The recent Brisbane production had a dramatically because it was woefully small Brisbane before reviving The Abduction lot going for it to start with, in terms of a production team highly experienced in of spoken voice and just about inaudible from the Seraglio and its spectacularly when required to sing. successful John Cox production of Gilber exactly the right quarters. One could hardly fault the credentials either of John The one outstanding vocal performance and Sullivan’s Patience in Melbourne of the night was turned in by Sally during May. Milson, a thoroughly experienced opera director with a good deal of straight McKenzie as Jenny Diver: here was a lady Treading water in a sea of revivals, as it who could act with conviction, project her were, before launching its demanding dramatic work to his credit as well; or those of his musical director, George lines to me and beyond, and sing robustly winter season at the Sydney Opera House yet pleasingly. early in June with a return season of its Tintner, who some years ago demonstrat­ 1974 Tales of Hoffmann featuring Joan ed his special affinity for the Brecht Weill Carden as the four heroines followed, a idiom when the Australian Opera present­ AND CANBERRA’S mere two days later, by the premiere of a ed The Rise and Fall of the City of brand new production of Puccini’s Manon Mahagonnv at the Sydney Opera House in The Canberra production, emanating as Lescaut featuring Leona Mitchell in the 1975. it did from the local opera company, was title role. Occasionally, Milson admittedly perm­ predictably stronger on the vocal front The only other live productions during itted the action to drift too far upstage for though not as satisfying as it ought to have the period under review were a very good comfort; but by and large I found the set an been due to an unfortunate staging excursion into the 17th-century repertory admirable one for an opera peopled by as problem arising from James Ridewood’s by the State Opera of South Australia, and motley a collection of rogues, no-hopers set design. a couple of minor Sydney seasons devoted and downright nasty types as has ever been In itself Ridewood’s set was quite to Gilbert and Sullivan, on the one hand, assembled in the one stage situation. intriguing visually, consisting as it did of a and a pastiche spanning no less than 300 It also seemed to make particularly good bare scaffolding centre stage on top of years, on the other. use of an awkward theatre and pit which the orchestra was positioned in full Both The Threepenny Opera and Don arrangement by placing some of the action view of the audience. Thus the action Giovanni are problem pieces for anyone on a catwalk between pit and audience. ebbed and flowed under and around the who tackles them: the former, because it This was my first experience of Brisbane’s orchestra, with some entrances and exits requires a team of actor/singers which is Twelfth N ight Theatre, but even at a glance taking place over the top of the scaffolding.

26 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 and the performers occasionally strolling certain amount of wariness. Could it really You see them both, those mystical round behind it in full view of the audience. be as good, 1 asked myself, as these reports elements of fire and water, even before the But of course this meant that the claimed, or was it just that we were being overture is finished: a dumb show takes conductor, Donald Hollier, was behind fed a carefully filtered sampling of the place in which Don Giovanni shows many and above most of the performers most of actual reactions of the overseas critics by of the principals in the drama-about-to- the time, with the inevitable result there the Hoyts’ publicity machine? unfold over his glassworks, where red-hot could be no visual communication be­ I could not help thinking back to the fired objects sizzle into open vats to tween him and them. Such positioning ecstatic advance publicity about the produce marvellously scenic clouds of would, of course, be disastrous for most Bergman film version of The Magic Flute, steam; then you are shown a gondola operas, but admittedly is much less of a which in the event impressed me only gliding toward a landing with the Don problem with a piece so innately rhythm­ moderately; and to a fairly deep personal himself erect near the bow floating through ical as The Threepenny Opera. disinclination to accept without reservat­ space in the instant before the drama Even so, there were moments when ion that film is really an ideal medium for proper commences. things got marginally out of kilter, and conveying opera. A veiled Kiri Te Kanawa (as Donna there was nothing Hollier could do except Clearly, such an inherently expensive art Elvira) pacing furiously about a green rescue things by following the singers. No form as grand opera must make use one carpet of lawn, fulminating at her disasters resulted, but things were a good way or another of the impersonal media if desertion by the Don. The marvellous deal less precise than it would have been it is to survive; but I have always tended to close-up of her face when he approaches nice for them to be. prefer the frankness and honesty of and she unveils and they recognise each Dramatically, there was nothing to recorded opera, which starts off by other, she with fury, he with the specially complain ofin John Tasker’s direction; but ditching altogether the visual element in acute embarrassment of the philanderer unfortunately there was quite a lot to favour of concentrating on the ravishing caught with his pants down, as it were. complain of in the performances he was fullness of sound that can be achieved in The way a lackey produces the list of the able to draw out of his principals. the modern studio but seldom if ever seen Don’s conquests for Leporello during the Everybody seemed just plain too nice, too in the actual theatre. catalogue aria, folded and stacked like a civilised, to suit the work. The players Film and television must obviously be mammoth computer print-out; and the didn’t merely need to intensify their persevered with, but the problems would way Leporello drags one end of it down a characterisation, as by and large had been seem to be almost insurmountable: unless long flight of open-air steps as he sings, and the case in Brisbane; they actually seemed you prerecord and mime, in itself a the way Te Kanawa picks up a few feet of it not to grasp the essence of the characters dangerous procedure, you are inclined to and reads the odd name or two and they were playing. get less than the best sound; there is an registers her disgust. This even applied to Doug Williams’ ever-present danger of too many close-,ins Zerlina dragged into a corner by the Mac, early in the piece; though he grew of vibrating tonsils; if a director becomes hotblooded Don with rape in mind, the quite palpably as the evening wore on, and too innovative he risks doing severe whole sordid near-seduction witnessed was quite pleasingly strong by the third act. disservice to the integrity of a work only by a huge dog lying just out of focus in The same could almost be said of Elizabeth designed to communicate in the inevitably the near background. Lord’s Polly, though of course that is far distanced context of the opera theatre, Leporello and Don Giovanni discussing less of a flaw in her role than in with the gulf — if not always the yawning the day’s agenda over the nude body of the Macheath’s. abyss — of an orchestra pit always Don’s latest conquest curled up on a bed. And she coped quite magnificently with intervening between tonsils and the nearest It all adds up to as good filmed opera as the instantaneous transformation required spectators. With TV, spectacle is all but you’re ever likely to see, and infinitely of her midway through Act II when impossible, at least in live opera product­ better than most. Lorin Maazel and the Macheath hands the business over to her ion terms, because of the postage stamp Orchestra and Chorus of the National when he is forced to go into hiding: it was dimensions of the medium itself. Theatre of the Paris Opera turn in a fine not hard at all to believe that she was now But all they say about the Losey Don reading of the score which is superbly fierce and assertive enough to keep the Giovanni proves in the event to be true: for recorded and reproduced at least at Hoyts band of crooks in their place. the first time, when observing a filmed Entertainment Centre, Sydney. Of the rest, I find myself thinking back opera, I at no stage winced or squirmed or Ruggero Raimondi, in the title role, over and over again to Mildred Travers’ felt moved even momentarily to drowse. captures perfectly the mixture of bastard, oddly effective Mrs Peachum —thin, frail, And with Don Giovanni such a triumph is rogue, lecher and nobleman that is the almost the essence of timidity at first far more difficult to achieve in prodcution Don; Jose Van Dam is equally fine as glance, but gradually proving as the drama than with most operas; for it is filled with Leporello. unfolds how tough and unfeeling the lady potentially deadly static arias and places Edda Moser is a marvellously doleful is under the surface. There was no doubt such emphasis on the supernatural and the Donna Anna, Te Kanawa turns in the most she knew what The Threepenny Opera was fantastic that there is always a danger that convincing dramatic performance 1 have all about; had everyone else been as good, any performance will end up degenerating yet to see from her as Donna Elvira, and this would have been a marvellous into downright absurdity. sings ravishingly as always. realisation of a piece very often performed, But there are very few tonsils in this film Even if you hate opera, this Don but only very rarely performed with version, and it has a dramatic unity and Giovanni is well worth seeing as cinema. If distinction. credibility which is probably impossible to you like or?ra, but hate filmed opera, you achieve in the live theatre — aided by the may be pleasantly surprised. Likewise if brilliant master stroke of filming it in the you like opera but find Don Giovanni a DON GIOVANNI marvellously photogenic city of Vicenza, tough pill to digest. near Venice; a city possessed not only of The only people who will hate this fil;m Some quite extraordinary advance exactly the sort of real-life architecture are those who detest both opera and The publicity from overseas about Joseph required as sets for Don Giovanni but also, Film. They're excused; but nobody else. Losey’s film version of Don Giovanni led apparently, laced by canals equipped with me to approach a preview screening with a gondolas. * David Gyger is editor of Opera Australia.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 27 FILM BY ELIZABETH empire, except for George Witton, whose The camera picks up the extreme RIDDELL father had taught him to believe in it. discomfort of the proceedings, as the Morant, Handock and Witton were sound picks up the creak of leather belts, charged before a court martial with killing the rustle of papers and the pounding of Boer prisoners and murdering a German army boots every time someone leaves or missionary. The war was petering out, the enters. A good rendition of military British wanted to keep on side with behaviour in its full rigidity is always Germany, the "colonials" were seen to be impressive, and I have never been more irritating, undisciplined, and impressed by it than in Breaker. embarrassing. I wondered at times at the The cast is perfectly assembled for what free use of the word "colonial" complete it has to do: Edward Woodward is an actor Breaker Morant: a with sneer, by the officers of the British who is able to convince an audience that he corps, but 1 have to assume that the film understands the pains and pleasures of real triumph has been researched enough to make it life; he can convey obsession, belief in his valid. 1 also wondered if Major Thomas own rightness, hardiness, yet the whole is would have made such a performance of modified by a kind of melancholy induced snapping salute and right-turning when he by the knowledge that everything will end Bruce Beresford and his producer. Matt entered the court each time. 1 would have badly, as indeed it does. Carroll, have gone for broke with Breaker thought that was a sergeant-major’s kind Bryan Brown’s Lt Peter Handcock has a Morant — taken what is already a of thing. But again, 1 have to believe the hard eye, a hard wit, and a hard way with melodramatic story right up to the brink of researcher and writers. women — there are plenty of him around bathos and sentimentality and backed off The courtroom scenes are beautifully in Australia and Brown plays him with in time, and the result is a triumph. Even to presented. The room itself is a bleak place, dash. Lewis Fitz-Gerald’s George Witton, take on this strange, old-fashioned quirky with the judges at one end, prisoners and who believed in the rightness of the British story of events that seemed at the time to be prosecuting officer facing each other, cause, is an endearing figure, and the one simple but have been demonstrated to be defense counsel hovering at the edge, and to be most sorry for, the survivor. extremely complex was risk enough, in the centre a kitchen chair for the witness. Jack Thompson’s role as Major Thomas especially when the film had to include a is a difficult one; it allows him to prove for long courtroom scene, as much the bane of the first time since Caddie and The Chant directors and actors as working with Of Jimmy Blacksmith, what a good actor children and dogs is said to be. he is. He has most of the big speeches. In There is also the fact that it is hard to fact, the address to the judges on behalf of make a hero of Morant, or of Peter his three clients should be cut by half, not Handcock or George Witton, or really of because Thompson does not deliver it well, anybody concerned, either side of the because he does, but because Beresford is political or military line. If anybody comes telling us what the film, and especially the clean out of the Breaker Morant story, in legal proceedings have already told us. the Beresford version, it is the defense This is a mistake often made by writers of counsel for the three men, the in every stage and screen with reputations rather sense bush lawyer. Major J F Thomas, more inflated than Beresford’s. played by Jack Thompson. However, the Many other actors appearing nightly on perceptive, subtle script gives the audience television or in less attractive local films a chance to be sorry for almost everyone, can be seen to their advantage in Breaker as it can be sorry for everyone in John Waters as a disillusioned captain Apocalypse Now, difficult as it would be in Intelligence; Rod Mullinar as the for some of the characters to see prosecuting major from a British regiment, themselves as objects of pity. the Royal Field Artillery; Terence It may be that the opening is a bit Donovan as Captain Hunt, whose tentative, but the crash into recurring mutilation after an encounter with the action is intensely exciting, not on the Boers was revenged by Morant; Charles grand scale of engaged armies but in a man Tingwell as a stuffy Lt Colonel, the to man. gun to gun, horse to horse collision presiding judge; Chris Haywood as a that is over and done with in a minute or witness against Morant; Vincent Ball as two, leaving the squalor of death in a dry Colonel Ian Hamilton, aide to Kitchener hostile country terribly apparent. In (and later, as General Sir Ian Hamilton, to whatever orderly state the British troops command "colonials" in the Great War). may have lived while fighting Thirty three people are mentioned in the conventionally against the Boers, credits, among them Don McAlpine, for Morant's lot, the Bushveldt Carbineers, the distinguished photography. It is a lived like stockmen driving cattle in a South Australian Film Commission drought in search of pasture. The BVC motion picture made in association with were there for many reasons, but certainly the Australian Film Commission and the not strongly actuated by love of the lidward Woodward as Breaker Morant. Seven Network.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE I9K0 THEATRE/ACT propagandist core is so effectively conceal­ invest it with a greater logic and clarity ed by absurdist devices and eccentric than its author has achieved. humour that few can understand what the Poliakoff’s theme is also fascism, but his playwright is expressing: the two percept­ expression of it is unequivocal, ever ive academics sitting next to me were doctrinaire and far more conventional. He baffled by it. Nonetheless, they greatly creates two negative characters, reposit­ enjoyed it, for its cryptic, dense texture lit ories of the ideas and attitudes he is by Hashes of wit and spectacular theatric­ condemning — these associated with the ality. odious National Front - to whom he As I understood it: on an oil-tanker juxtaposes a positive character, the artic­ somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle (the ulator of "our" sane, humanistic attitudes. tanker symbolising the Ships of State), a He attempts to avoid schématisation by Daring attempts generalised neofascist megalomaniac, Ret- making the latter initially unattractive, but saat, is engaged in an obsessive search and ultimately characterisation is coloured by destroy mission. His quarry is the ideology. THE GLAD HAND Antichrist, ie the bogeyman of capitalism, Charlotte, an ample, repressed and STRAWBERRY FIELDS communism. frustrated middle-class bigot, all starch by Kyle Wilson and decorum, is travelling north from The Glad Hand by Snoo Wilson. Australian Theatre London with Kevin, an amiable, dim- Workshop, Childers Street Hall. Opened March 12, witted, alienated and schizoid youth. They 1980. are distributing agitational pamphlets to Director. Warwick Baxter. various contacts in their semi-clandestine (A mateur) Strawberry Fields by Stephen Poliakoff. Canberra organisation. A disagreeable, cocksure Repertory Society at Theatre Three. Opened April 12, young hitchhiker (Nick) attaches himself 1980. to them and by means of his probing we Director. Designer. Ken Boucher learn of their ultra-naturalistic xeno­ (Pro I Am) phobia. Apparently morbidly fascinated, The new wave of British plays of Nick remains with them until Charlotte political purpose arrived in Canberra murders a too-inquisitive policeman at thanks to the atraditional tastes of a new which point he becomes their prisoner. generation of directors. Warwick Baxter The revelation of Charlotte's and and Ken Boucher are to be applauded for Kevin’s attitudes is skilfully retarded, but their daring attempts to raise the political we are unprepared for the murder. 1 he awareness of Canberra's staid audiences by David Bennett as Kevin in Canberra Rep's fault may lie with the playwright, but one varying their regimen of anaesthetising Strawberry Fields. suspected that Trish Williams’ interpret­ entertainment-theatre with the Australian In Act 11 we watch a decoy action, the ation so assiduously avoided cliched fascist premieres of Snoo Wilson’s bizarre play-within-the-play, while Restaat grows stigmata that her abrupt metamorphosis satirico-political charade and Stephen increasingly tense, sensing the imminent into murderess seemed arbitrary: we had Poliakoff’s sombre, violent vision of appearance of his quarry. In a quirky and perceived no suppressed propensity for nascent British fascism. mystifying resolution the latter arrives in violence. David Bennett’s bewildered Both plays are avowedly agitational the person of Umberto, the ship’s Spanish youth did achieve this quality and indeed propaganda and ultimately political dia­ cook, who rapes one of the Hooley women, dominated the production. tribes, but Snoo Wilson’s is the more shoots Lazarus and finally despatches Ken Boucher’s mise-en-scene was a most successful reconciliation of the opposed Restaat, cutting short the latter’s crazed skilful use of the Theatre Three stage and values of tendentiousness and artistic peroration on the nature of reality. 1 his set revealed him as a designer of the first quality, largely because he eschews any remained puzzled as to what statement was rank: three rampart like Hats loomed over attempt to mask his ideological position being made, but the whole was so a bare platform, empty save for a few with a camouflage of traditional stage intriguing and entertaining that it didn't eloquent symbols of the urban wasteland. realism; indeed he buries his message in seem to matter. He failed to fully exploit the power latent such a potpouri ot ideas, characters, Director Warwick Baxter obviously has in the two execution scenes, which should symbolism and allegory that we forget we a feel for political theatre and fully be really shattering in their brutality if the are being propagandised. Poliakoff, on the exploited the plays’ absurdist humour and author’s demonology is to convince us. other hand, seeks to convince us that his farcical action. He was aided by a series of The play itself is marred by a subtle variety view of socio-political developments in arresting performances, in particular of distortion: the neo-fascist attitude is Britain is reality, by expressing it in the Geoff Edwards’ polished, canny and presented as the aberration of sick minds, form of slice-of-life documentary. This powerful interpretation of Restaat; bullish and no counter arguments are offered. All means that audiences will be acutely yet dynamic, obdurate yet taunted by we are given is Nick’s incredulity and sensitive to any distortions or discrep­ demons. moral outrage, hence the playwright’s ancies between their perceptions and his. However, an audience can only take so tendentiousness seems overt. Nevertheless, so when he schematises his characters and much obscurantism and cryptic encoding: it is a powerful and provocative piece presents a one-sided argument we perceive ultimately theatricality was not enough intelligently realised, certainly the finest a moralist behind his mask of narrative. and Act II sagged. The director of this production of Theatre Three of the last tew Wilson’s play is also Hawed, for its oddly remarkable play must somehow years.

THEATRE AUSTRAE1A JUNE 1980 29 THEATRE/NSW STATE REP. LUCY WAGNER, EXEC. EDITOR

Up in the air

CLOUDS by Robert Page Clouds by Michael Frayn. Nimrod Upstairs, Sydney. NSW. Opened April 23. 1980. Director. Neil Armfield; Designer, Eamon D'Arcy; Lighting. Grahame Murray; Stage Manager. Michael Manuell. Owen, Paul Bertram: Mara, Jennifer Hagan; Ed. Max Gillies; Angel. John McTernan; Hilberto, Bob Maza ( Professional) A solid run of strong local, and locally set, productions has been the fare at Nimrod since Neil Armfield made his Paul Bertram (Owen) s hack. Max Gillies (Ed). John McTernan (Angel), Jennifer professional debut with Upside Down at Hagan (Mara) and Boh Maza (Hdherto) in Nimrod's Clouds. Photo: Sven U/sa. the Bottom o f the World. Audiences have setting, but occurs in apparent mid-sky on at the height of a storm (don’t be misled, been treated to that classic version of rural a cross between a trampoline and cinema this is not the heat and passion of settlement On Our Selection, moved by a screen with endless cloud formations Tennessee Williams) and subside into an compelling portrait of a twilight love affair projected thereupon, so the issues of the implied consumation — at last — but with in Travelling North (at the Theatre Royal) play remain up in the air. the chauffeur. and arrested by the extent of the black/ Is the play to enlighten us along the way I can imagine that Frayn’s urbanity and white cultural rift of Bullies House. about post-revolutionary Cuba; Frayn has lightness of touch (the blurb describes him Most recently, though, the company has after all been there as a journalist on as a "purveyor of high comedy and moved into the cosmopolitan realms, with assignment? Not really, for early on his sophisticated farce"!) may have appealed many of our writers; David Allen brought persona, Owen, tells us "they’re all the to the English sense of reserve, and at least Lawrence to the "bottom of the world", but same these places. Guided tour of risen to the level of the engaging with Tom Steve Sewell was content to leave his collective farms and irrigation projects" Courtenay and Felicity Kendal in its West Traitors in mid-twenties Russia and John (etc) and so it turns out to be. End airing; this production never moved Anthony King The House o f the Deaf M an Do we get an insight into journalism? beyond the merely wry. in Goya’s Spain. And now Clouds, written Well there is a pontificating diatribe, again Jennifer Hagan did manage wonders, by English journalist Michael Frayn, has by Owen, on the "meticulous skills" alternating melancholia with an infectious drifted into the theatre. required, though when any of the joie de vivre, her dark eyes like shafts into a Perhaps it was chosen to leven the characters puts fingertip to typewriter key rich mine of creative temperament. But season after two intense pieces and before the result is diaristic drivelling, not hard Paul Bertram as the priggish yet suscept­ we are plunged into the tragedy of the copy. Place and profession add colour but ible Owen and Max Gillies as the House of Atreus, but it does not seem to be are apparently not of the essence. enthusiastic American, seemed to have as of sufficient stature to be a "modern What we are left with are the inter­ much trouble getting a line on their adrift classic" (Penguin terminology) or to stand relationships between the various charact­ characters as 1 did with the play as a whole. up to the local product, which two, along ers. A full blooded affair between the two With John McTernan as the Cuban with the true classics, make up Nimrod journalists Mara and Owen, they are after interpreter struggling to look better than a policy so far as it discernibly has one. all of opposite sexes? Deep stirrings in the take-off of Manuel from Fawltv Towers, it Its subject matter is fairly straight­ clash of lifestyle between sophisticated took Bob Maza’s near mute chauffeur to forward; a part of people, two journal­ Europeans and the representatives of an earn any marks in the men’s department. ists on assignment, a committed American emergent nation? Neil Armfield crisply realised the academic, an official interpreter and Not quite, but at least shapes are deployment of actors called for in the stage a Spanish-speaking chauffeur, are follow­ emerging in the mist. For the play does plot directions, but otherwise let the play Boat ed through their brief tour of Cuba. the meanderings of the lady, actually a in its own rarified atmosphere. Fifth The themes of this play, though, are manic depressive novelist, through the Century BC Greece, with its seers, furies maddeningly nebulous. attentions of the men. The flirtations with and Olympian gods suddenly seems much Just as the action is nowhere tied to a Owen culminate in a three-way punch-up closer to home.

30 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 itiated into the ways of the world; and Ron Hazlehurst makes it impossible for Rebel, Falk's Detective Sgt Browning has old and the audience, not to "get fond of" Given depth by fashioned values which will develop into Kathy, and Brandon Bourke plays the the attitudes of today’s police when the small-time, black-market operator straight performers______deserter escapes by betraying his kindly down the fine line between send-up and trust. self-send-up that the character requires. If But the story of the three major the audience are left unsure whether or not NO NAMES... NO PACKDR1LL characters is not one which requires the to sympathise with Rebel’s philosophy of wartime setting, nor does it sound any watching out for Number One, it is not the by Lucy Wagner reverberations of relationships orattitudes fault of Mel Gibson, but of theauthor who No Nam es... No Packdrill by Bob Herbert. Sydney changed by the tensions of such a situation. has written in some horrible cliches for Theatre Company, Drama Theatre, NSW. Opened family background in an apparent attempt April 15. 1980. Just as it is the minor characters who Director. George Ogilvie; Set Designer. Kristian reflect the era, so the era is only peripheral to explain away the marine’s cowardice. In Frederikson: Costume Designer, Anna French. to the main action. the pacifist 80's, however, such conduct Rebel. Mel Gibson; Kathy, Noni Hazlehurst; PFC A young widow living alone harbours a hardly needs explanation and Rebel’s plan Wood, Jon Blake; Tiger. Brandon Bourke; Det Sgt to return to the States to wage a personal Browning, Ron Falk; Mrs Palmer, Janice Finn;Joycie. man on the run; they fall in love but Julie Hamilton; Corp Lambert. John Sheerin; Bernie. inevitably must part, and she and her war on his repressive father only indicates Al Thomas; Det Webb. Andrew Tighe. petty criminal acquaintance engineer his a narrow rather than broadened outlook. ( Professional) escape. The triteness of their drama is The audience’s perspective on No given depth only by the skill and sincerity Names... is a physically narrowed one, as Following the success of Close Of Play, Kristian Frederkson’s tiny, living room set No Names... No Packdrill is likely to be of its players; Noni Hazlehurst, Mel Gibson and Brandon Bourke are all at the perches at an angle in the centre of the the second STC production, within the Drama Theatre stage, emphasising the fact space of a few weeks, to transfer to a top of a new generation of Australian actors whose strength is a warm profess­ that this play would be better suited to the commercial season at the Theatre Royal. television screen where such technicalities Richard Wherrett’s season to date has ionalism and a versatility inter and intra media. It is to be hoped that their work on as the opening dream sequence, limited been, apparently, on the pulse of the interior setting and close-up performances Sydney audience. While the productions the screen will afford them a deserved star- appeal for the theatre-going public. would no doubt come into their own. If the have been fresh, tough and of a high medium is the message, the slightness of standard, they have also done what must If the first act drags somewhat, the thriller aspect takes hold in the second and this one would be appropriate to the small be expected of the premier state company screen, whereas the theatre can demand and provided entertainment for a broad third — will Rebel get away before the M P's find him; will Rebel and Kathy fall in drama which is more on a par with its life- spectrum audience. In doing this Wherrett size proportions. has managed to run a series of plays which love; will Tiger find a boat for Rebel? Noni make an excellent complement to the more innovatory and comparatively esoteric work of Nimrod: compare The Sunny South to On Our Selection; Close Of Play to Nimrod’s Clouds; Getting My Act Together... to Burlesco and Clown- eroonies\ and No Names... No Packdrill to Bullies House and Traitors. The latter two plays were major new Australian works which explored theme and style in a way which No Names... No Packdrill makes no pretence at doing. While both Bullies House and Traitors move back in time in their settings, they deal with subjects that are very much at issue today and tomorrow. The yesteryear of No Names... is little more than a nostalgic setting for a romantic story which could have been localised in any year or country. The return to Second World War Sydney, though, makes an evening of humorous memories for those who re­ member it, with the young American deserter from Guadalcanal providing an outsider’s reaction to the period Australian customs and slang. George Ogilvie’s production draws an evocative picture of a naive and provincial Australia in the early 40’s, only beginning to be tainted with American commercialism. Julie Hamilton’s gawky Jovcie, squired b\ middle-aged American soldier Bernie ("God. he's a dag") during his leave, is an Mel Gihson (Rebel) and Noni Hazlehurst (Kathy) in the STC's No Names... No appealingly appalling innocent being in­ Packdrill. Photo: Branco Gaica.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 31 biggest joke of all is that Colin is better off other than the icy deputy. with his memories and snaps of Carol, But this is no ordinary Measure for Enterprise and whom he knew for only a year or so, than Measure. Brooks’ "concept" production is any of his present friends. They are all in very intelligent and should prove valuable accomplishment the shabby twilight of their relationships, to the largely school audiences it will putting up with friendships, boredom, dull attract. sex, neuroticism, and all those other The scene is still Vienna, where ABSENT FRIENDS benefits of the new society. Shakespeare originally set his sombre MEASURE FOR MEASURE In a generally very good ensemble, comedy, but the year is 1900. This is by Barry O’Connor Kevin Jackson and Malcolm Keith are nothing new. Robin Phillips used Franz outstanding. It was therefore very in­ Joseph’s decaying empire to update the Absent Friends by Alan Ayckbourn. Q Theatre, teresting to follow these actors, along with Penrith NSW. Opened March 1980. play some years ago at Stratford, Ontario. Director, Designer, Arthur Dicks; Stage Manager, some others from Absent Friends, into the I thought that was a definitive production, Libby Higgin. Shakespeare. In Measure for Measure, to a clever interpretation of an intractable Cast: Paul, Kevin Jackson; Diana. Gae Anderson; my surprise, Richard Brooks had counter­ play. The Q presents new and interesting John, Alan Brel; Evelyn, Deborah Masters; Colin, cast Messrs Jackson and Keith. 1 would Malcolm Keith; Marge, Clare Woodward. facets of the play, having to accept (Professional) have thought Jackson’s gaunt, eagle- sacrifices in text and theme to do so. But intensity would have qualified him for the losses are almost outweighed by the Measure For Measure by William Shakespeare. Q Angelo, while Keith’s labrador-puppy gains. Theatre, Penrith NSW. Opened 2 May. charm would have suited him to someone Director, Richard Brooks; Designer, Arthur Dicks; The metaphor is that of a high society Stage Manager. Iain Young Landel. Cast: Duke of Vienna, Don Mamouney; Pompey, Alan Brel; Escalus, Ben Gabriel; Angelo, Malcolm Keith; Lucio. Kevin Jackson; Isabella, Kerry Robinson; Claudio, Simon Burke; Mariana, Deborah Masters; Mistress Overdone, Elaine Hudson. ( Professional)

I’ve been trekking out to Bankstown and Penrith, catching up with the Q’s latest activities. Their productions of Ayck­ bourn’s Absent Friends and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure offer further proof of the enterprise and accomplishment of this remarkable company. Absent Friends is the Q’s third Ayck­ bourn — How the Other Half Loves and Absurd Person Singular were featured in previous seasons — and it was in the last leg of its Western tour, having already played Penrith and Orange, when I saw it in Bankstown. However, it still had the sparkle and elan which designer-director Arthur Dicks had infused originally into his production. It’s an hilariously funny show even though Absent Friends isn’t Ayckbourn’s funniest play. It doesn’t play with theatrical conventions as do The Norman Conquests and Bedroom Farce. But Absent Friends shares with these other Ayckbourns his knack of exposing petty social rituals and the middle class’s sense of duty, even if it is a reluctant one. The occasion of the play is an afternoon tea at which a bunch of friends gather to cheer up an absent friend. This is Colin who had lost his fiance in a drowning accident; now he is ready to be brought back into the fold. There is little enthusiasm for the undertaking, however, except on the part of the hostess, Gae Anderson’s enigmatic Diana, and Clare Woodward’s professional sympathiser, Marge — the Jeannie Little of the North. They all vow not to mention death or drowning, which leads to the usual jokes including the rather novel one of a Colin who won’t shut up about the subject. The Gave Anderson and Deborah Masters in the Q's Absent Friends. Photo: Trevor Connell.

32 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 masque-ball. The actors enter formally dressed, and they are introduced to us by name and role. This theatricalistic note is further sounded by the selection of hats and props from a large hamper which also serves as a prison when necessary. The setting in effect never changes; we stay in Arthur Dicks’ grand ballroom — a major achievement in the cosy Q space at Penrith. We soon learn that the play is being presented as a game, a charade in which everybody gets a part, and some, notably Angelo and Isabella, become more realistically involved in theirs than do the others. One is never sure when the knowing smile should give way to serious appre­ hension. The fine line between witty pretense and harsh reality is delicately walked by the production, but I think much of the relationship between Angelo and Isabella is lost. Hedonism and low life provide a constant background to the piece, with Kevin Jackson’s fine Lucio there as a Lord of Misrule. All in all, this is a very exciting production.

Good on television______

HAPPY FAMILY______by Michele Field Hilary Larkum, Jill Floyd, John Clayton and Michael Ross in the Ensemble's Happy Happy Family by Giles Cooper. Ensemble Theatre, Family. Photo: Branco Gaica Sydney, NSW. Opened April, 1980. great deal like Lord of the Flies without the Director, Brian Young; Designer, Yoshi Tosa; Lighting give us "live" what is done more Designer, Hayes Gordon; Stage Manager, Glenda professionally on television and which we bigger action. Johnson. can watch more comfortably there. The actors exert themselves to make Deborah Solstice, Jill Floyd; Mark Solstice, John The premise of Happy Family is that these stupid games look fun. They try to be Clayton; Susan Solstice, Hilary Larkum; Gregory siblings, in their relationships with one believably smarty-pants, petulant, silly Butler, Michael Ross. ( Professional) another, never grow up — a true enough and winsome — in short, they try to make The incessant perkiness of Flappv premise as anyone with slow-maturing childishness interesting. The trouble is that Family created a small brick of pain sibling relationships of his own knows. The a child’s range of expression, however far squarely above my eyes. Each line was three siblings have the surname Solstice, one stretches for adjectives, is limited. snapped off, as though it were a fresh not a common English name so it became Unquestionably, emotionally limited celery rib, and like good greengrocers the pregnant with suggestion. The solstice is characters are one type of characterisation, audience chuckled approvingly. 1 can take the crisis, the turning point, and at the along with the Lears and the Cyranos, that kind of timing in a television comedy, same time it is the point where things stand which playwrights should give us, but it is a say Fawlty Towers or The Goodies, but still. In Happy Family it is the point when type of characterisation that actors handle not at arm’s length. Because I left at the two sisters and the brother meet again, clumsily. I recently read an article which interval, almost anyone else in the in order to expunge or to absorb into the argued that the hardest task for small audience — an audience of thirty, maybe a family a fourth would-be sibling — the musical ensembles is the selection of the quarter of the Ensemble’s capacity — young man who intends to marry the elder music they’re to play: it’s harder to select it could explain more about the story than I sister. wisely than to play it well. Any director of will. The interesting part of the reunion is the amateur actors who has tried to produce a I wish 1 could explain why we were all siblings own definition of their "closeness". Pinter play, for instance, will appreciate there. Giles Cooper, the playwright, was a "Closeness" consists in nicknames, in that a steady tone, lines spoken in level BBC TV writer, and perhaps in that fact games of tickling and squealing and voices, is much harder to actors than lies the secret of his rapport with the chasing, and especially in the ritual of Owl ‘histrionics’. Tuesday night audience, most of whom Eyes (foreheads pressed against together Happy Family would have been a good would have been home with ABC with eyes squeezed closed, then eyes widely play on television: the dirty jokes are just at television if the ABC had been offering opened). Each game provides a little that Are You Being Served? level. It would anything from the BBC that night. My own dramatic sequence which rescues the writer have been a good play to play down, conviction is that theatre is not one of the from the responsibility of carrying along a instead of playing it up as the Ensemble has "media" and it should not exist in order to bigger action. In fact, Happy Family is a done.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 33 THEATRE /OLD STATE REP. DON BATCHELOR

American dreams

VANITIES ANGEL CITY by Veronica Kelly Vanities by Jack Heifner. Brisbane Actors’ Company, Cement Box. Opened March 26, 1980. Director. Bruce Parr; Designer, David Clendinning Cast: Kathy, Elizabeth Falconer: Joanne. Jennifer Flowers; Mary, Kay Perry. ( Professional) Angel City by Sam Shepard. La Boite Theatre, Brisbane Qld. Opened April 1980. Director, Designer, David Bell; Lighting. Rodney Therkelsen; Stage Manager, Rowan Pryor. Cast: Tympani. Stephen Prentiss; Lanx, Tony Phelan; Rabbit Brown, Patrick Reed; Miss Scoons, Rainee Skinner; Sax, Mark Ford; Wheeler, Michael McCaffrey. (Pro/Am) Brisbane audiences have recently been presented with two American plays dealing with national identity, one treating its material as formula comedy and one as Rainee Skinner (Miss Scoons) and Tony Phelan (Lanx) in La Boites Angel City. poetic myth. BAC’s production of Jack Photo: Greg Wilson. Heifner’s 1976 Off-Broadway hit Vanities the dominant image is the actresses’ assumptions of the past hollow and is, whichever way you take it, a thoroughly continual primping, preening, making up irrecoverable, theatrical assumptions in­ professional endeavour. The play is a and generally titivating. All-American cluded. Vanities ("a comedy of manicured three-hander for women doubtless pro­ consumer oriented sexual oppression lives") relies on some very old formulae, grammed for a vigorous stage life as a linked with conformist tyranny and not about women but about "women", the showcase for so frequently under-used achievement worship render the characters Eternal Eve variety in the crushed blossom female acting talent. Sadly, Vanities is a as female spriants of the species Willie variation, repackaged at a competitive women’s play only in the sense that Bette Loman; Joanne, the least secure, confesses price. David vehicles are dubbed "women’s "You two are beautiful; I’m just, well, BAC’s Vanities combines an occasion movies"; indeed, the play could as easily attractive." for irritation with Heifner’s cop-out have been written in 1936 as in 1976. The Yet — and this is what makes the play commercial handling of the material with plot follows the careers of three co-ed complacent and commercial — no realisa­ the fascination of being given a chance to cheerleaders in the ten years from 1963, tion is discernable of the interaction of see where the dream projection industry is charting their progress from high school, personal lives and social and historical now heading. Providing one can overcome through college towards whatever per­ trends. The focus is kept, soapie-style, on the irritation, the production provides sonal future their past has prepared for rigged crises and tinny ironies (the play has many theatrical treats; crisp, stylishly them as they apprehensively approach the generated a TV spin-off) such that one visualised, and played with comic flair and ultimate annihilation of turning thirty. could assume that the emptiness of the play precision. The cast holds to a fine line Middle-American assumptions about lies essentially within the characters. between sympathy and comic distancing, group conformity, competition and the Women are vain, aren’t they, and empty avoiding the invitation to render the esprit of the elite overgovern the characters and trivial, so what do you expect? former by soapie-weepie hysterics and the seemingly moulding them beyond hope of Kennedy’s assassination, Vietnam, the rise latter by pat Broadway formula comedy. individual self-development. As such, of the Women’s Liberation Movement The balanced, nuanced performances are a Vanities incidentally displays the price of pass these characters by, while a new shade triumph for the cast, notably in the work of the American dream of success; image of nail polish is a major event. This is no the wonderfully gifted Jennifer Flowers, projection, physical and mental narcissism doubt true to the reality of many, and as whose interpretation of the life-fearing and self-admiring exclusiveness make such worth attention, but the play displays Joanne shows a Shirley Temple character these women as empty and fragile as dolls no awareness that history makes the given the respect due to a great naturalistic

34 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 heroine. business of life and the minutiae of comedy Sam Shepard’s Angel City at La Boite is abound. Food is cooked, straw flutters also distinguished by impressive visual Fresh life in comic whispering from the loft, Christy sits stylishness, appropriate to a play dealing triumphantly naked in an iron hip bath with the Hollywood head office of the classics and Shawn Keogh stands despondently at American dream factory. But instead of the window, his feet in the midden. being a play patched up from theatrical Through this world bustles Vivien Davies’ scraps, Angel City goes straight out for THE PLAYBOY OF THE small, busy Pegeen, the potential for self- theatre poetry and achieves stunning WESTERN WORLD realisation swamped by the daily round; results. A bare black playing area is backed THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING and as her final cry of despair hits the rafters, it is answered by laughter of the by a vast blank screen of ever-changing EARNEST______colours, seen through a blue neon picture menfolk as they relive their adventure — window or movie screen border; the screen by Jeremy Ridgman even as the events are fading into myth, so is the visual metaphor of the collective The Playboy of the Western World by J M Synge. Pegeen’s fate is sharpening painfully into national dream, a projective area for the Queensland Theatre Company. Brisbane. Opened focus. April 18. 1980. In this beautifully rendered composition character’s fantasies, needs and mythic Director. Mick Rodger; Designer. Mike Bridges. conflicts. The cast mutate through a series Cast: Christy Mahon, Geoff Carwright; Old Mahon. individual performances are perfectly of surreally linked personae, evolving Errol O’Neill; Michael Flaherty, Laurence Hodge; pitched and evoke memorable images; through the logic of humour, satire, self­ Pegeen Mike, Vivien Davies; Widow Quin, Judith Judith Anderson’s Widow Quin for Anderson; Shaun Keogh. John Bowman; Philly example, a smouldering enigma, shrouded projection and mythic compulsion. The Cullen. Alan Tobin; Jimmy Farrell, Leo Wachner; consciousness of all the characters is Village girls. Vikki Gibson-Miller. Kate Richter, Fiona in pipe smoke, Errol O’Neil’s Old Mahon, attuned to the historical past of the City of Murphy, Dale Murison. wincing with painful indignation as his hat the Angels and obliquely connected within ( Professional) is clapped for the fifth time onto his The Importance o f Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. TN bleeding pate and Geoff Cartwright as its poisoned, smog-laden present; national Company, Brisbane, Qld. Opened April 1980. and Hollywood-derived strata of myth- Director, John Milson; Designer, Beverly Hill. Christy, swaggering confidently in a quite association surface, intertwine and con­ Cast: Algernon, Harry Scott; John Worthing, Duncan ridiculous "Sunday Best" outfit pressed on flict. The action sinks downwards into the Wass; Lane. Malcolm Cork; Gwendolyn, Sally him by Keogh. Rarely has Synge’s wild but McKenzie; Lady Bracknell, Kaye Stevenson; Cecily, somewhat intractable comedy been given city’s own mind; from its congested present Rosemary Ricketts: Miss Prism, Lyn Treadgold; coloured with chemically lurid beauty, Chasuble, Bruce Parr; Merriman, Steven Hamilton. the lift it gets here. past fruit orchards, Spanish conquest, (Professional) The Importance o f Being Earnest is Indian ritual wisdom, beyond to the anything but intractable. It is an audience’s unifying ultimate fear or knowledge, Two turn of the century comic classics in play; their familiarity tends to be displayed assigned by the latter to the West, which the city at the same time, both by Irish in the form of knowing, sometimes pre­ lives on in the city’s unconscious. It is a writers, constitutes more than a emptive, guffaws which greet each theatrical expression of a community's coincidence. There is irony in the fact that, aphorism, each revelation. More than any Dreaming, in the sense in which I of the two major subsidised companies, it other comic character. Lady Bracknell has understand Aboriginals use the word. should be the TN Company, ostensibly suffered from appropriation by audiences, financed to present "alternative" fare, that David Bell’s production lucidly points one is grateful to Milson and the has sought refuge in the commercial haven technically brilliant Kaye Stevenson for a Shepard's evocative language through of Wilde, leaving the QTC to risk Synge’s music, clean movement and dream- subtle but quite unmistakable re-reading. notoriously difficult extravaganza. Her face bleached and cadaverous as a evoking light and colour values, such that Mick Rodger and John Milson are both the action acquires the surreal blend of deaths head, her nasal intonation as inventive directors and have breathed fresh detached otherness and interiorised super­ chilling as a scalpel, this Lady B is a true life into familiar material with subtly presence typical of the dream, whether harpy. And how cleverly the hurdle of the innovative productions. Rodger goes all peronal or cinematic. The action builds in handbag is negotiated; the infamous line is out for heightened naturalism. In a a series of images and ritualised exchanges never actually uttered, but is mouthed in a to a simply achieved conclusion of magnificent cut-away shebeen, intricately silent retch of disgust. If it has been done recreated by Mike Bridges, both the immense poetic power, and 1 wouldn’t before, 1 hope it was as effective. consider prejudicing anyone’s chances of Harry Scott and Duncan Wass, as the experiencing its pristine impact by reveal­ pair of Jacks, strike sparks off each other ing it. La Boite’s Angel City is an in a smooth double act. The pace of the Australian premiere and as such a brilliant production is very much their respons­ capture, the play being first shown in San ibility and it rarely falters. Francisco in the same year, 1976, which Above all, this Earnest is the first I have saw the beginning of the still continuing encountered that acknowledges the play’s New York run of Vanities. origins in 1890s Decadence and thus Though both plays will doubtless suggests a hinterland of allusions more surface again for various reasons, Angel poignant and daring than the "high City is the one which 1 find potentially comedy" tag betokens. Beverly Hill’s more suggestive and exciting for Aust­ beautiful art nouveau design works well in ralian drama, or for that strand involved in the first act, though the effect disintegrates the seeking out of theatrical images by with the move to scenes of rustic gentility. which a community may understand and Algernon languishes among cushions and communicate with itself and its dreaming. swans around in silken gown, for once the For the rest, the manipulation of coloured sybaritic dandy rather than the jovial man lights on the glittering surface, there's Bruce Parr. Lyn Treadgold and Rosemary about town. The end of Bunburying, the always Vanities. Which will be showing Ricketts in TN’s The Importance of Being forsaken "secret life" and the submission to first at vour local theatre? Earnest. conformity at last make sense.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 35 THEATRE/SA STATE REP., for his audience. What he does is she splays her legs and presents an SUSAN VILE completely appropriate to the play: to call unflattering behind to the audience as she it a period piece is not to patronise or bends to pick something up, we know that neutralise it, but to accept it — to this character is firmly rooted in obser­ understand that, like The Doll, it has a vation, understanding and a refusal to place in Australian theatrical tradition for flatter either herself or the audience. reasons both intrinsic and extrinsic. The Instead of the caricature she could so easily latter have to do with the social context to have opted for, she gives us a woman who which it referred at the time and which it may be half-dead within, but who also has accurately reflected in its language and half-realises that, with what’s left, she has view of character: the former are the play’s held this family together and will go on Relevance and real and obvious strengths, which certainly doing so. She stands apart from the other receive due weight in this production — males — or, rather, acts as a surrogate fruitfulness closely observed characters, the author’s male when the occasion demands: a accurate ear for speech, his sense of the disturbing and even sad fate, but never, in family battlefield. her own eyes, either pathetic or bathetic. THE ONE DAY OF THE YEAR If this production is an indication of the Similar strengths distinguish Peter BODIES directions to be taken after Colin George’s Cummins’ Alf, together with a relishing of By Michael Morley departure, then there are promising signs Seymour’s idiomatic writing and his gift for the company — not least in the casting. for viewing characters through, and in, The One Day of the Year by Alan Seymour. State There is no doubt in my mind that the what they say. If Cummins’ portrayal Theatre Company of SA, Adelaide. Opened April 1980. major reason for the play’s vitality and seems to miss out on the sense of loss and Director. Kevin Palmer. sense of reality is the presence of new (if not the struggle to maintain dignity that the Cast: Dot. Maggie Kirkpatrick; Alf. Peter Cummins; Hughie. Tom Burlinson; Wacka. Bill Austin. unfamiliar) faces on the stage. Maggie character should display, this may be ( Professional) Kirkpatrick’s Dot in particular is a partly due to Seymour’s depiction of splendid characterisation — the best character, and partly due to a director’s (or Bodies by James Saunders. Stage Company, Adelaide, SA. performance from an actress on this stage actor’s) decision. I frequently had the Director. Brian Debnam. since Patricia Kennedy’s memorable role impression that both writing and per­ Cast: Mervyn, Wayne Bell; David, John Noble; Anne. Barbara West; Helen. Pam Western. in AH My Sons. Right from the moment formance reinforced Alfs role in the family (Professional)

'Take the saving lie from the average man and you take away his happiness" says Relling in The Wild Duck: and for all their obvious differences of setting, character and style, both The One Day o f the Year and Bodies are convincing demonstrations of the enduring relevance and fruitfulness of that theme that Ibsen can fairly be said to have bequeathed to European drama. Alan Seymour’s play shows us the younger, 1960’s generation struggling to convince its elders (and betters?) of the hollowness of the Anzac myth, and with it, the clinging to past attitudes considered (rightly?) to be no longer appropriate. James Saunders’ drawing-room comedy is both a satirical demolition of the genre as well as a presentation of two couples in search of a character — or rather, one couple trying to dismantle the other’s newly acquired and superficially un­ assailable identity. Past and present, youth and middle age, nostalgia for lost experience, the insistence on "acting in the living present" — both plays are explora­ tions of these areas as well as of the less definable middle ground. Although The One Day o f The Tew can be seen as a period piece, Kevin Palmer’s production does not seek to enshrine it in the past, nor does he strive to make it Bill Austin (W acka), Maggie Kirkpatrick (Dot). Tom Burlinson (Hughie) and Peter Cummins emphatically "meaningful" or "relatable" (Alf) in STC's One Day of the Year. Photo: David Wilson.

36 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 much more than Pinter does in Betrayal? The answer is an emphatic yes. By the end of the evening you feel these four people are worth knowing, that their struggles and defenses are real, that we have learnt about them and ourselves. Admittedly, Saun­ ders’ monologues and his distribution of them are beautifully managed: but the performers do them full justice. I’ve already mentioned Wayne Bell’s towering performance as Mervyn: even at his most aggressive and overpowering he still suggests the hurt and uncertainty at the character’s centre, without ever sliding into sentimentality. John Noble’s David offers a splendid foil with his low-pitched line in benevolent reasonableness, the sense that he has only to look at a problem for it to smile apologetically for having bothered him and go off for a likelier target. Barbara West’s Anne manages to steer the fine dividing line between neurosis and impatience, while displaying all the character’s dissatisfaction with both as a grandfather, rather than father: if Alf made of the production, it would be that herself and Mervyn. At the same time, she, was a boy in the Depression, he could the actors seemed somewhat compart­ like all the others, shows that Anne cannot hardly be more than mid-forties (if that) at mentalised: rather as if they were giving be reduced to a simple set of label the time of the play. Yet Cummins’ their set pieces when called on, and definitions: she may be edgy, argu­ physical and vocal mannerisms were more otherwise not really reacting to each other. mentative, tired of Mervyn’s perfor­ those of a man well into his fifties; and this The play demands finely tuned ensemble mances, but she is also alive and intends to surely tends to lessen the tension between playing: and this was certainly provided in go on kicking — even (or especially) if him and his son Hughie in their Brian Debnam’s production of Bodies. anyone gets in the way. confrontations, as well as edging the This was ensemble playing of the highest And Pam Western’s Helen is equally character towards caricature. This may calibre, carefully and imaginatively persuasive: she too, like David, has had sound niggling in the face of a performance directed, beautifully gauged, crackling "the therapy" that enables her to view the which, in five minutes, had more energy with wit and tension, and underneath it all, world with an apparent bland placidity and life than most actors in this company real emotions rising and falling. that is not simply unconcern but a hard- manage in the space of a year: but it was a won sense of selecting priorities. The part Superlatives can sound awfully tedious, could so easily be faceless, one dimen­ feeling which persisted — without de­ especially if they’re unrelievedly positive. tracting in any way from the richness of the sional: the quiet wife, as opposed to the So the envious, the cynical or the unlikely- noisier Anne. Yet Ms. Western makes her characterisation. to-be-convinced can stop here. But if there Tom Burlinson’s Hughie was also a both touching and strong: and in the first is anyone else out there — spend the rest of act she has two splendid monologues, in breath of fresh air: adolescence finding the year regretting you missed four itself can be a tedious game of hide and one of which she conveys the character’s remarkable performances. Centre piece recalled sensuality with sudden radiance, seek for an audience. Yet Burlinson was undoubtedly Wayne Bell’s voluble, delivered even Seymour’s most over­ while in the second, she describes with real sparkling and aggressive Mervyn, a role pain an uncontrollable fit of crying. written sections with a conviction and which, in lesser hands, would have seemed directness that almost persuaded one the Saunders’ writing at this point is merely blustering and over the top; this marvellously vivid yet restrained: the writing was better than it really is; and the was a fascinating display of sustained scenes with Cummins fairly crackled picture of Helen confronted by an energy and technical skill. Saunders gives insensitive American matron, so soon after along. Bill Austin’s elderly digger Wacka the character speeches that recall was the fourth member of a strong quartet, the falling apart of the various relation­ Stoppard’s prestidigitations in their sweep ships within the group, and breaking though at times one felt that the character’s and linguistic complexity — yet without stolid imperturbability verged on the down, is moving and disturbing and the self-indulgent and patronising in­ matched by the actress’s delivery. studied. BJ Cole, in what is clearly the tellectualisations. The play is just as much poorest-written part in the play, seemed, Brian Debnam’s direction of the piece about words as is Jumpers or Travesties: allows the characters space to relate to like the character, to have wandered in but in its central situation — that of two from somewhere else (Coward, Maugham, each other and to the audience: and his couples individually and together retelling pacing of the monologues as well as the Rattigan?) Unrewarding the part may be, the account of a past menage a quatre (Act but to try for "actorly" gestures (hand to overall rhythm is precise and absolutely One) and confronting each other again right. Allowing for a slightly misjudged throat, eyes averted) instead of simple after a lapse of eight years (Act Two), it directness is at best dangerous, and worst opening on the night 1 saw it, this offers more emotions and compassion production showed that there are per­ mannered and distracting. 1 hope it doesn’t than does Stoppard. sound sexist to say that, with her voice and formers in Adelaide who can take a play appearance, Ms Cole has a lot going for On the face of it, it’s an unpromising and shake it and the audience to life. Ifthis her a better part may provide a fairer subject: the Bob and Carol and Ted and sort of ensemble playing can be coaxed opportunity to assess her qualities. Alice scene was boring enough in the from the Stage Company for their Unde If there was one overall criticism to be sixties. And, after all, can Saunders give us Vanya, then we’re in for a treat indeed.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 37 THEÄTRE/VIC STATE REP. SUZANNE SPINNER

ir*

No laughing matter_____

THE COMEDIANS by Suzanne Spunner The Comedians by Trevor Griffiths. Hoopla Down­ stairs at The Playbox. Opened April 10. 1980. Director, Malcolm Robertson; Designer. Sandra Matlock; Lighting Design. Peter Harvey and Yvonne Hockey; Stage Manager, Brian Gibbons Cast: Caretaker, Cliff Ellen. Gethin Price. William Zappa; Phil Murray. Stephen Clark; George McBrain. Shane Bourne; Sammy Samuels. Rob Harrison; Mick Connor. Ron Challinor; Ged Murray. John Wood; Eddie Waters, Charles Tingwell; Mr Patel. Sean Myers; Bert Challenor, Carl Carmichael; Club Shane Bourne as George McBrain in Hoopla’s The Comedians. Photo: Jeff Bushy. Secretary, John Heywood; Pianist, Ian Mawson. ( Professional) in particular, have a moral responsibility quite possibly become as successful as he, Trevor Griffiths’ The Comedians was to their audiences and themselves. For but according to Griffiths either horn will written in 1975 and it is his first work to Waters a real comedian, "dares to see what impale them and prevent them expressing have been performed in Australia. his audiences shy away from, fear to themselves. Only Price has discovered his Griffiths’ standpoint as a writer is express", and therefore a real joke has a power of self expression; what he will expressly Marxist; he is committed to liberating power and can change the ultimately do with it is an open question at theatre as a vehicle for, and agent of, social situation it describes. In the middle of these the end of the play. change — "I don’t want to live better than two men is the class a motley collection Just as Price’s performance is compell­ other people. 1 want everybody to live of working class lads on the make, for ing and confronting and only incidentally well". In Comedians his approach is to whom the chance of making it as a funny, a similar inversion of expectation pose moral questions in a dialectical way professional comic represents their best, if works in the play as a w hole. I know of no about the purpose of comedy and the role not their only, possible means of escaping play which retails as many jokes as and responsibility of a comedian. These their mundane jobs. Comedians and yet the overwhelming issues are explored within a thoroughly Faced with the task of performing feeling you are left with is one of sombre naturalistic framework, right down to the before Challenor, each man chooses the and relentless probing of the underbelly of clock on the wall showing the passing of cost of his own success and in Challenor’s humour. It is rare to see a play as intellect­ the real time of the play. terms fixes his own price. Waters has ually demanding as Comedians let alone Comedians opens in a seedy evening offered them a criteria for integrity but his one so engrossing to watch. Like Gethin class for aspiring comedians in the heart of own life as a has-been comic does not offer Price’s performance it is almost seductively Manchester; in the second act we follow the possibility of a recipe for success. disturbing. the class to their first try-out at a local club Rather they must make their own It demanded exceptionally agile per­ before an out-of-town talent spotter; and resolution of form and content and of the formances from its cast in order for the in the final act we return to the classroom six aspirants only one, Gethin Price argument to remain taut and in control where their performances that evening are achieves this synthesis. He does so in a through the play the audience must be assessed by the agent and their teacher. spectacular tour de force performance in driven to laughter and pulled back from it The London agent, Bert Challenor which he totally expresses himself — his with great rapidity. It is imperative that the personifies Griffiths’ thesis. Challenor is personal pain, his rage and his class hatred argument is punched home as hard as the the company man, the professional whose with such mastery of art that Challenor jokes. Malcolm Robertson’s direction held approbation could be the passport to cannot afford to overlook him and Waters this balance overall, but within individual success. In his view a "good comic" gives cannot reproach him. performances control varied. William audiences what they want — escape; "a Around him the other five fall in varying Zappa as Gethin Price and Charles comic is not a missionary but rather a degrees for the traps set by Challenor and Tingwell as Eddie Waters gave sustained supplier of laughter". Opposing Challenor Waters. Some are destined to remain like performances which were frequently start­ is the teacher. Eddie Waters, who believes Waters unsuccessful good men. while ling in the density of feelings they drew that entertainers generally, and comedians others are chosen by Challenor and will upon.

38 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 Co-authors and co-directors Garry with a document of psychopathology. McKecknie and Ian Campbell — who The twin themes of Barry Dickins new Psychopathology perform the main parts on alternate nights play The Banana Bender are God and — assembled their text from the transcript bananas. Launched by the playwright as and guilt of the trial, plus additional material "the ultimate Easter play", the work is set from other sources. The result is a spare among icons, crucifixes, banana skins and and lucid text, delivered as a low-key pictures of exquisite religious suffering. MANSON monologue and encumbered by only the One of these latter has an intravenous THE BANANA BENDER most minimal stage business in the form of transfusion set neatly plugged into a debating-style glasses of water, and a taped painted vein, the other end terminating in a by Catherine Peake version of 60’s rock. boot, and some Tweed Head Banana Co- M a n .so n — The Defence Testimony, by Garry They bathe the entire theatre in bright Op boxes are scattered here and there. McKecknie and Ian Campbell. Back Theatre Pram light, strengthening Manson’s own claim Backstage, a large bust is illuminated by Factory. Opened April I, 1980. that his audience, too, is under interro­ Directed and performed by Garry McKecknie and Ian a flashling light and bears on its base the Campbell. Presented by the Backstreets Theatre Co. gation. But, most strikingly, they present message "Guilt is love". ( Professional) Manson as victim rather than criminal, In the confines of La Mama, all this left The Banana Bender by Barry Dickins. La Mama. and their "testimony" details the life of a Melbourne. Vic. Opened April 3, 1980. room for a tiny two-deck stage and placed Director, Barry Dickins; Designers. Ross Dixon and man forcibly removed from the normal a high premium on the agility of the cast. Robert Dickins; Lighting, Ross Dixon. bonds and obligations of society. But then, so did the script. Cast: The Banana Bender - Lenny Jackson, Roderick Manson, we learn, spent much of his Lenny, brilliantly played by Rod Williams; Kath, Ruth, Julien McDonald. youth in prisons and reformatories. His (Professional) Williams, is a banana bender who also sees extreme convictions about the "family", himself as the Messiah of the Northern Manson — The Defence Testimon about "cosmic love", and the uses of NSW coast. In type he belongs to that makes for intriguing theatre. At the Back violence have been elaborated duringyears growing band of Dickins’characters whose Theatre of the Pram Factory, it is of solitary confinement. His facility with lives are conducted along the lines of a fast- presented with programme notes urging us the art of persuasion and manipulation is, I talking experimental farce. He is working to see the testimony as a "document of suspect, supposed to be seen as the reaction class, he is eloquent, isolated and prey to modern life" as able to shed some light of an articulate and "idealistic" man to a the most extravagant hallucinations. on the deep alienation and the manipul­ world that has rejected him. The exercise Lenny lives in a deserted hut with his ative power of the twentieth century of his personal power has become his communist mother Kath (played by Julien "charismatic" leader and prophet. compensation. McDonald — who later doubles as the At that level it struggles very hard for So far so good. But too much of the Tart from Tweed Heads) and the thematics credibility. The prevailing image of context for the original testimony is left of the piece see-saw between his twin pre­ Manson as monster, and the indelible out, and one is constantly forced to rely on occupations with religion and sex. popular memory of his barbarious crimes hazy ten year old memories for any sense of Unlike those other plays by Dickins constantly threaten to tip his carefully the magnitude of the crimes. which also tap the "absurd" pretensions worded case over into the pathological, the Though the mirror-image of Manson’s and dreams stimulated by poverty, the paranoid and the Gothic. dilemma does supply McKecknie and main axis of The Banana Bender is welded In general, their production is one which Campbell with a subtle dramatic device, to the terror, guilt and confusion which tried to reinforce the refrain echoing and, no doubt, finds a sympathetic ear spring from Lenny’s religious mania. through the testimony... "I’m just a among audiences well versed in Laingian If the play loses some tension in the reflection of every one of you"... "I am theory; it is never adequate as an second half when the Tweed Head Tart whoever you make me"... "You want a explanation for his role in those events. In leaves, and mother returns, it is almost a sadistic fiend, because that’s what you the end, the ambitious intentions for this relief, for the whole script tends to be are", and so on. It is only partly successful. production tend to fizzle and we are left played as a kind of window dressing for the performance. Rod Williams’ portrayal of Lenny is exhausting to watch, but it is also a prodigious feat of timing and concen­ tration. On opening night he hardly seemed to miss a cue. Julien McDonald’s work is more uneven. She is rather better at the sluttish Tart than as mother, and in the opening scenes she seemed to have some trouble finding the energy and the resilience which are buried in the character of the older woman. In the end. The Banana Bender is florid, entertaining and colourful theatre. If at one level it is also a serious examination of the mainsprings of religious guilt, it is also messy, charming and deliriously funny. But direction by its author is probably not a good idea. It could benefit from a more disciplined hand, for it is a play where the sub-text is easily lost in the glittering Garry McKecknie and Ian Campbell in Manson The Defence Testimony surface of gags and absurdities.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 39

THEATRE/WA. ation of the faculties, cruelty camouflaged Melbourne. Rowena Wallace, of Cop as kindness to see that the Gestapo, the Shop face; and young local actor Michael KGB or the British Army in Northern Loney. Ireland could take the Bard’s correspond­ Rattle has more pretension to being ence course. other than straight entertainment then the usual Regal fare. It has survived the If one is not to ignore the play passage of time reasonably well, princi­ completely or rewrite it (as M arowitz does) pally because it is a soundly contrived piece to point the inherent aberrant morality of of theatrical writing. Down in London the piece, the only thing left is to turn it into from Manchester (and t’ mill) to see a Cup an enjoyable romp. This Jenny McNae has Final, shy, fortyish scoutmaster Percy Worthwhile done in the current Playhouse production finds himself in the flat of prostitute by setting the play in the context of the Cyrenne, on a fifty-dollar bet that he will revivals Western myth. It thus has all the male not break his duck, so to speak. Apart chauvinist overtones of John Wayne from a brief appearance of the girl's territory, with swinging batwing saloon brother (mainy a device to fill in some of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW doors and a phallic symbol on every male her background) the play is a two-hander, RATTLE OF A SIMPLE MAN hip. and it is to Dyer’s credit that he can ringthe Here the choice of characters have been changes with sufficient skill to keep us by Colin O’Brien inventive indeed: Katherine (Judy Nunn) a interested. The play moves beyond the The Taming Of The Shrew by William Shakespeare. Calamity Jane, Petruchio (Edgar Met­ mere curiousity value of "Will Percy get his National Theatre Co. Playhouse, Perth WA. Opened calfe) a Davy Crockett, Biondello (Gerald oats?" (and, indeed, would he be capable April 17. 19X0. Hitchcock) a come-to-life cigarstore Ind­ Director. Jenny McNae; Designer. Tony Tripp; of, shall we say, consuming said oats) to Costumes. Sue Russell; l ighting. Duncan Ord; Stage ian. Grumio (Glenn Hitchcock) an un­ explore the loneliness and need for Manager. Christine Randall shaven Mexican, to name but a few. The comfort, and the toughing it out and Cast: Minóla. Leslie Wright; Katherine, Judy Nunn; cast works well together, and in such an fantasising, which turns out to be Bianca. Jenny Davis; Gremio. Ivan King: Lucentio. ensemble effort it would be invidious to pin Alan Fletcher; Tranio. Colin Borgonon; Tranio, Cyrenne’s lot quite as much as Percy's. Gerald Hitchcock; Hortcnsio. Vic Hawkins; Petruchio. medals on anyone. Whether Percy actually gets the nosebag Edgar Metcalfe; Grumio. Glenn Hitchcock; Curtis Full marks to Jenny McNae’s inventive on (to strain an unfortunate metaphor) is Michael van Schoor; Tailor, Barry Screaigh; Vincentio not revealed, but it is the revelation of the Phillip Edgley; Pedant. James Beattie; Widow. Gillian direction, Tony Tripp’s workable setting I.omberg; Sarah. Orrena Elder; Barman. Barry and the cast’s enthusiastic playing. I can characters’ inner lives which interests us, Screaigh. pay no better tribute to the company than not the outcome. ( Professional) to say my mind went back to an equally Trevor Bannister comes to Perth from a The Rattle of a Simple Man by Charles Dyer. Regal Theatre. Perth WA. Opened May I. 19X0. enjoyable romp by one of the world’s four-month tour playing Percy in England. Director. Producer. John Manford; Designer, Robert leading companies: the Royal Shakespeare His is an assured and skilful performance, Olmanis; Costumes. Phillip O’Brien; Lighting. David Company’s Greek tourist island version of leaning neither to the oversentimental nor Ashton. The Comedy o f Errors, which likewise the easy laugh. My minor criticism would Cast: Percy. Trevor Bannister; Cyrenne. Rowena Wallace; Richard, Michael Loney. turned potentially boring doublet and hose be that there might be just a shade too ( Professional) situation comedy into a riot of comic much Frank Spencerish fumbling, but this invention. is a slight blemish on an otherwise I suppose even the most fervent 1 was sorry tos ee the Regal theatre go excellent performance. Rowena Wallace Bard ophile - and 1 account myself one also performs very creditably, but 1 suspect has at least one play he wishes Will had dark at the end of the Spike M illigan show in February. As the main commercial that her playing as yet lacks the variable passed on to Michael Drayton or one of rhythm and variation between humour house in recent years the Regal has both the other hacks. For Coleridge it was and pathos which w ill come increasingly as Measure For Measure, which he described given occasional jobs to local actors and technicians, and has also allowed us to see the play is "run in". Michael Loney’s as "painful"; Alexander Pope banished the Richard is a little stiff and lacking in bulk of Lore's Labour Lost to footnotes, the work of actors imported from the East and England. A thriving commercial assurance and the full degree of menace on the grounds that such tedious appren­ called for, but it too will mature with time. theatre expands the theatre audience by tice playwriting would be of interest only John Manford’s directing is assured and catering for a wider public than do the to antiquarians. 1 go along with Charles authoritative. He takes seriously the subsidised theatres, and is of benefit both Marowitz (choosing my company care­ playwright’s instruction that Cyrenne to "the business" and the public at large. fully) in finding The Taming o f the Shrew should not be played as either "a pretty insufferable and indefensible. Even So it was good to see producer John Lamplight Lil or a golden-hearted tart"; he before the recent feminist raising of our Manford reopen the Regal with Charles also eschews the temptation to caricature consciousness to the inbuilt debasement of Dyer’s early sixties success Rattle of a Percy as a stock Northcountry Englishman women to an inferior role, the idea that a Simple Man, directed by Manford himself. eating black pudding and slurping his soup woman of spirit should be crushed into a It is the first of what he hopes will be a still wearing his cloth cap. The play is well willing domestic servant of her husband 1 season of plays to be presented over the worth reviving, and it is to the manage­ found offensive. Without getting too heavy year. The cast is almost a paradigm of the ment’s credit that they are touring it to a about it, you just have to look at range of actors referred to above: from number of country centres, so that a good Petruchio’s brainwashing techniques England Trevor Bannister (best known as performance of a show of wide interest is deprivation of food and sleep, disorient­ Mr Lucas in Are You Being Served?)', from not confined to city dwellers.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 19X0 41 THEATRE/TAS interior to exterior scenes and from room As Tom, Christopher Harvey is engaging to room); all calculated within the and honest, sympathetic even at his most conventions of a large, proscenium-arch self-righteous. More than the other actors, Restraint and theatre. Polygon's director Don Gay has he has to cope with Williams' transition opted instead for an effectively- from the poetry of prologue and epilogue extravagance simply directly-honest approach to the to the biting dialogue ol the drama proper. play. To some extent this decision must be Restraint of performance is matched bv dictated by the fact that after its Hobart discrete musical reinforcement and a v isual GLASS MENAGERIE season this production will be transported picture ot muted colourings and evocative MINSTREL SHOW to Launceston, Devonport and Burnie. lighting. by Bruce Cornelius where it will be playing in a variety of 11 Polygon’s Glass Menagerie tends acting spaces. Thus sets are minimal, toward understatement, the same could The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. Polygon lighting portable; and emphasis placed not possibly be said of TRLOC’s 19X0 Theatre Company. University of Tasmania (Hobart), later touring to Launceston. Burnie and Devonport. squarely on the play's human content. production, a variety show based on the Opened April 9. 1980. In employing a small acting platform black and white minstrel format. Lasting Director Designer. Don Gay; Stage Manager. Nancy (withtheaudiencein Hobart between three five minutes short of three hours at the Giblin. and thirty feet from the action) this second performance (cut from VA hours Tom Wingfield. Christopher Harvey; Amanda Wingfield. Hazel Alger; Laura Wingfield. Rosemary production naturally omits large-scale on opening night). The Black and White Mazengarb; Jim O’Connor. Don Gay. effects. One result of this enforced Minstrel Show features a (seemingly) (Professional) intimacy is a diminution of the stylised, endless array of songs and dances, of The Black anil White M instrel Show Theatre Royal non-naturalistic concept of "memory- brightly (often garishly) coloured Light Opera Company. Theatre Royal. Hobart. play" discussed in the play's prologue, costumes and featherweight but rather Opened April II. 1980. which gives way instead to a very vivid tedious comedy sketches. Director. Sonny Jose; Musical Director. Gwynneth Dixon; Designer. Dorothy Sherry; Stage Director. domestic drama of considerable Submerged in this abundance of Mappie Bootsman. naturalistic intensity. material some excellent performances pass ( Professional IA tnateur) Amanda Wingfield is conventionally almost unremembered. The superb considered to be one of the 'meaty' roles in dancing of Angela Westbury and the Reinterpretations of "classics" have modern theatre, but (like the other roles in presence of some of Hobart’s most constituted Hobart’s theatrical fare for the play) requires more than observance of experienced musical-comediennes such as April, with the opening of Polygon’s the letter of the script to pull off. On paper Jean Bartlett. Sonia Johnson and Judith touring production of The Glass she is merely irrational, querulous, garru­ Shaw tend to be swamped in retrospect by Menagerie, and TRLOC’s Black and lous; Laura is spineless and vapid; Tom memories of the determined efforts ofthe White Minstrel Show at the Theatre petulant and intolerant (strangely so troupe of baton twirlers (looking rather Royal. considering the wisdom and under­ bemused by the whole thing) or the Over the past few years Polygon has standing of his latter-day persona who formation dancers who twirl around the established a solid reputation in Tasmania, introduces the play); Jim a crass braggard. stage at regular intervals in a frenzy of and is now the only company in the state To translate them from this abnormal retina-burstingly-acidic frills and glitter. staging legitimate theatre on a regular freakishness into sympathetic characters At its most extravagant, Latin- professional basis. Their most recent requires reading and building beyond Americanesque moments the show verges production is evidence of the standards the the limitations ofthe script. Ultimately this on becoming a high-camp parody of itself company is achieving, and has elicited an does not happen in the present production, but never quite gets there. enthusiastic response from audiences. and except for the final minutes ofthe play This may suggest a totally negative In his stage directions to The Glass this odd family does not really engage the reaction to the show, but this is far from Menagerie, Tennessee Williams demands a audience's response at a fully human level. being the case. 1 suspect that I'm still (very heavy-handed) succession of sound This is not to deny the honesty and skill smarting from the effect of three hours of effects, projections and other visual effects ot individual performances. Ha/el Alger variety show which could have been pared (such as transparent walls which allow consistently and finally, very movingly to a maximum of two without anyone instantaneous transformation from depicts the instinctive maternal love feeling cheated. 3y this process we mav which is at the basis of Amanda’s have been spared the tedium ofthe same irrationality. If the sheer strength of the group of singers dancers sw inging into the character is rather swamped by the twentieth number in a bracket, or more agitations and neuroses, the tender serious charge the embarrassing results nobility established in the play’s last ot letting everyone in the company have a moments does much to redress the solo spot, whatever their limitation or FOR YOUR balance. ability. Rosemary Mazengarb plays Laura with It IRLOC is intending to retain the SUBSCRIPTION a sense ot urgency and genuine bewilder­ variety format for future productions, it is COUPON ment; although the performance is on a to be hoped that brev itv and selectiv itv will very muted level until the climactic be added to the company's present SEE PAGE 25 confrontation w ith the "gentleman caller", strengths. I alented and experienced where the strength behind her delicacy is entertainers they have in abundance, and revealed in strong contrast to the con­ in Sonnv Jose a choreographer able to drill descending brashness of Don Gay’s Jim. the group into an efficient ensemble.

42 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 BOOKS read. Salutin shows the Canadiens becom­ ing "just a hockey team" when the Parti Québécois won power on November 15, 1976 the people had at last transferred their nationalism from sport to political action. The interest in social pressures also manifests itself in a number of more conventional family dramas of the sort with which we are familiar here. Ann Henry’s Lulu Street (1967) shows life in Canadian plays — Winnipeg during a General Strike in 1919. Tom Hendrey’s Fifteen Miles O f Broken Glass ( 1966), apart from the strength of the expression of a title image, deals in a fairly ordinary way with a young man about to leave his country adolescence behind and embark on life in post-World War II Canada. James It has long been a credo in Australian Reaney’s Listen to the Wind ( 1966) reads drama that plays, in an important way, like an excuse to recount the plot of Rider express a country they are a means of Haggard’s Dawn a steamy dark self-analysis and self-identification. So society treats the Eskimos. Deceptively melodrama but the play-within-the- when a, to me, largely unknown country gentle and comic in tone at first, it builds to play. and the strong use of simple like Canada sends over a batch of more a chilling combination as it shows the theatrical gesture, in the style of Peking than thirty of what are presumably its best horrific ends to which the characters are Opera, may make it a strong theatrical plays it is an exciting opportunity. With driven by the social and natural harshness statement about living creatively and few preconceptions of what Canada is like, of their lives. "dreaming it out". it is a great chance to see what drama can The social interest begins as an interest Marie-Claire Blais’ The Execution say. One day I suppose I will discover in the past, and particularly in the (1968) is much stronger stuff, a nasty and whether the impressions of Canada got destruction of the great Indian Nations of sensationalist story of schoolboy murder from the plays are accurate, but certainly the prairies by military and commercial made powerful by the integrity with which they are vivid. callousness and self interest. There is the action becomes an image for nastiness, Two strong impressions are the influ­ nothing in our drama about our aborigines and, indeed, evil in the world outside the ence of the landscape, and the importance, to equal the epic scope, the passion and the walls of a boys’ boarding school. Christian to the playwrights, of social and political clear Brechtian narrative of Hardin’s The Bruyere's Walls (1978) is a fictionalised forces rather than individual human ones. Great Wave o f Civilization (1962), which documentary of a prison riot in 1975, and They’ve got a hell of a lot of nature over shows the splendid irony of its title as the undoubtedly the best prison play I’ve there. Not only the famous snow and ice whisky traders destroy the Blackfoot encountered. Brilliantly structured, com­ (two of the plays contain a central image of Nation. Sharon Pollack's Walsh( 1973) is a mitted but analytical, complex but with a hell which is not of fire but of bitter cold) conventional but very well executed fast clear central action, it gives a but also wild prairies, great forests, rugged documentary about the betrayal of the profoundly disturbing view of how society mountains and rough stormy seas. George Sioux Nation, led into exile by Sitting Bull, copes with prisoners. It is the most Ryan’s Ploughmen o f the Glacier ( 1976) is when they took refuge in Canada from the convincing argument in any form for a strong wild play about an old prospector American Army. At the centre of the play prison reform 1 have read or seen. and an old newspaperman who confront is the dignity and sad lost strength of The social analysis becomes political in each other in a pioneer mountain society Sitting Bull himself. George Woodcock’s the 70s. George Ryga attempts to explore ("examining the myth of the men who Six Dry Cakes For The Hunted (in Two the human side of political conflicts in The made the West"). They rant and argue Plays) (1977) shows the unsuccessful Captives o f the Faceless Drummer ( 1972) about their dreams, their struggling and rebellion and subsequent destruction of and Seven Hours to Sundown ( 1976). The their dying while the mountain they live the Metis National by central government first shows the conflict between a revolut­ and work on stands waiting to destroy indifference to the activities of rapacious ionary and his hostage in an imaginary them. Michael Cook’s Jacob’s Wake frontier opportunists — a breed with Canadian near-future. The collision be­ (1975) might be a conventional "strong" which we are familiar in this country. In tween them is worked out partly in terms of domestic drama were it not for the this play the rather overblown rhetorical their different attitudes to women; which powerfully atmospheric use of the hostile style sometimes stands in the way, but it is makes for "effective" theatre but odd seas off the Newfoundland coast. The still a fine subject. In a different vein Rick political drama. Seven Hours to Sundown storm which builds throughout the play, Salutin and Ken Dryden’s Les Canadiens explores small town politics and again and which sinks the house as if it were a (1977) uses the world’s greatest ice hockey explains it largely in terms of the personal ship, becomes an elemental force of team as a symbol for the nationalist relationships between the antagonists. metaphysical power. Herschel Hardin’s aspirations of Quebec. It is given particular Another play by Ryga, Sunrise on Sarah Esker Mike and his Wife Agiluk (1969) in relevance now by the referendum on presents a poetic, dream-like confront­ fact seems to use the snow and ice of the separation, held on May 20, the results of ation between Sarah and an unplaced North as an image for the way southern which will be known by the time this is (Continued over page)

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 43 Man, with various characters from her life nasty, no doubt deliberately. At least for seen through her eyes becoming vehicles an Australian reader, the play does not Mona Workman for anxiety. All these plays are political in quite have the strength to resonate as social their original viewpoint but their action allegory or an image for lovelessness in the Makers of fine quality centres on personalities and on the world. You’re Gonna Be Alright, Jamie wigs, hairpieces, beards, characters’ own crises of conscience and Boy, although much funnier and showing a attitudes to political process and political much surer touch in guiding the domestic moustaches, side levers. commitment. Made to Order. squabbling interestingly, must also rely on David Fennario is a writer with very Canadian recognition to transcend what strong roots in a working class district of come across as a rather pointless string of • Wigs for hire for commercials Montreal, Point Saint Charles, and his revelations. at reasonable rates. work demonstrates what strength and Robert Gurik’s API 2967 is a futuristic • For Film, Stage & TV. energy such roots can bring to the theatre. science-fantasy allegory of modern society, On The Job (1975) and Nothing To Lose Tel. (02) 33-6628 (1976) are robust, energetic, ballsy pictures 1 st Floor, 108 Oxford Street, of working class culture in Montreal, with Paddington N.S.W. 2021 an outstanding fresh use of idiom and a great punk shout of anger and disgust at the society which wastes the talents and potential of so many of its members. On The Job deals with an impromptu strike by three young punks and an old worker who work in the stock room of a dress factory. It is Christmas Eve and their anger and violence stem as much from whisky as from any ideologically based, conscious revolutionary spirit. A different sort of subculture is examined in a Country and Western musical, based on Othello, called Cruel Tears (1975), by Ken Mitchell with songs and music by a group called Humphrey and the Dumptrucks. The characters are all young truckies and their bosses, molls and wives. The Othello story, particularly THE PERFORMING ARTS of the sort which Rob Inglis used to do the business with the handkerchief, sits a here. It shows a society which has lost its BOOKSHOP little oddly in such a setting, and without life-force by becoming too preoccupied 232 Castlereagh Street, the music an enormous part of the appeal with living long and not enough with living Sydney. 2000. of the play must be lost, but it is certainly well. API 2967 itself is an object from the Telephone: Patrick Carr fresh and lively. past discovered by these people and which [02] 2331658 Rod Langley’s Bethune (1974) is a they do not understand. It is in fact an straightforward and effective account of apple, and the scene in which a couple of the astonishing career of Dr Norman researchers discover the effects of eating Bethune — following him from Detroit, to this forbidden fruit is very funny. a tuberculosis sanitorium, to the Spanish Even a catalogue such as this indicates Civil War and ending in China where he the range of subject and style of these seems single-handedly to have organised plays. This review can only offer first We have movedthe medical services for the revolution­ impressions but there is no doubt that the But there’s still no business like ... aries during the war with Japan. It is a Canadians have a distinctive theatrical stirring tale, well told, and with a very voice of their own which is not heard SHOWBUSINESS BOOKSHOP strong central part. enough over here. A recent issue of now at our new enlarged premises Betty Lambert’s Sqrieux-de-Dieu(1975) Canadian Theatre Review which arrived (the title is a meaningless but pleasantly with the books refers, in all too familiar a 1ST FLOOR, 20-22 McKILLOP ST., tone, to the influence of "Neo-Nationalism" MELBOURNE 3000. suggestive bit of franglais) is a sharp-edged PHONE (03) 67 5391 • 4 LINES racy domestic comedy of modern suburb­ and "Neo-Naturalism", but it is hard to see, an trendy manners. It is very funny, the on the basis of these plays, that this is a real Huge selection of scripts from: English Theatre action is clever and surprising, and utterly problem. Next month I will continue this Guild, Dramatists Play Service, Evans Bros. innocuous. There is some satire and a lot of review with the work of three writers Samuel French, Faber, Currency Methuen. farcical romping. whose formal approach is very interesting: Dramatic Pub. Co. We carry Theatre Australia. After Dark, Dance Magazine. Plays & Players, David Freeman also explores suburban Timothy Findley, Michel Tremblay and Dance & Dancers, Films & Filming. Stein's family life, albeit of a very different kind, in Beverly Simons, as well as a few other Theatrical Make-up, Leichner Make-up. Special Battering Ram (1972) and You're Gonna plays which did not find their way into this attention to Mail Order Customers. Be Alright, Jamie Boy (1974). The first is a column. rather prurient, loveless play about a All these plays, as well as some of Israel CONTACT VIN FOSTER FOR PROMPT mother and daughter who bring home a Horovitz, Sam Shepherd and David ATTENTION young good-looking paraplegic. They are Rudkin, are published by Talon Books, all supposedly "looking for love and and distributed in Australia by Currency finding something less". The effect is very Press.

44 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 production of The Pariah-Dog by Mick Billbar Puppefwl heat re production of Rodger; directed by Peter Barclay. I The Frog Prince for infants and primary; Riverina and Central West until June 14. North West from June 23. AXIS THEATRE PRODUCTIONS ■ MARIAN STREET THEATRE ACT (969 8202) , Court House Hotel, Taylor Square Rum for your Money, a new Australian The Billie Baeos Show by Tonyj Harvey musical based on the book by David THEATRE and Malcolm Frawley. Directed by Nettheim and music by John Kingsmill Peter Meredith with music by Gary and John McKellar; directed by Alistair Smith. Commences June 13. Duncan; with Peter Whitford, Ray du ANU ARTS CENTRE (49.4787) Agincourt Hotel, Broadway. Parc, Rod Dunbar, Stephen Thomas, CAVS: Inner Voices by Louis Nowra. Tinsel and Grot tel by Rick Maier and Sally Baden and Carman Tanti. Until June 4-7, I 1-14. Malcolm Frawley; directed by Malcolm June 21. CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE Frawley; music by Sandra Ridgewell. Into Shock by Brian Clemens; directed by Canberra Theatre (49.7600): Pyjama Tops June. New show commences late June. alistair Duncan; with Olive Bodill. with John Inman. June 9-14. Bondi Pavilion Theatre Commences June 27. The Playhouse (49.6488): Festival of Mother's Club written and directed MUSIC HALL THEATRE RESTAU­ Australian Drama. June 8-22. by Malcolm Frawlev. Commences June 4. RANT (909 8222) Canberra Gang Show. June 27-July 5. ENSEMBLE THEATRE (929 8877) East Lynne by Mrs Henry Wood; CANBERRA REPERTORY SOCIETY New production starting in June. directed by Alton Harvey; with Alton (47.4222) FIRST STAGE THEATRE COMPANY Harvey, Bernadette Houghsen, Mai Music Hall. Wed-Sat. To July 12. (821603) Carmont and Christine Cameron. FORTUNE THEATRE COMPANY The History o f Theatre in Dramatic Throughout June. (49.4488) Form by Gary Baxter; directed by MUSIC LOFT THEATRE (977 6585) Ring 49.3726 for current programme. Chris Lewis; with Angela Bennie, Anthony At the Loft, a new musical review with Martin and Gary Baxter. Touring to The Toppano family and Lorrae Des­ DANCE schools throughout June. mond. Throughout June. CANBERRA THEATRE (49.7600) FRANK STRAIN’S BULL N’ BUSH NEW THEATRE (519 3403) The Australian Ballet presents The Dan­ THEATRE RESTAURANT (357 4627) Oh, What a Lovely War, Mate, Joan cers. To June 7. That's Rich a musical review from the Littlewoodrs musical entertainment com­ turn of the century to toSay; with Noel posed with her fellow artists in Theatre OPERA Brophy, Barbara Wyndon. Garth Meade, Workshop, London; directed by Frank CANBERRA THEATRE (49.7600) Neil Bryant and Helen Lorain; directed Barnes. Until June 14. Canberra Philharmonic Society: Pirates o f by George Carden. Throughout June. We Can't Pay? We Won’t Pay! by Penzance. June 26-July 5. HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE (212 3411) Dario Fo; directed by John Armstrong. Son o f Betty; directed by Peter Batey; Opens late June. NIMROD THEATRE (699 5003) For entries contact Kyle H ilson on with Reg Livermore and the Wellington Bewts Band. Throughout June. The Oresteia of Aeschylus, translated HUNTER VALLEY THEATRE COM­ by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth PANY Newcastle (26 2526) McLeish, directed by John Bell; with Playhouse: Travelling North by David Carol Burns, Ralph Cottrill, Colin Friels, Williamson; director Aarne Neemjr with A riant he Galani, Kris McQuade and Anna Carol Ray and Vic Rooney. To June 14. Volska. Commences June 18. NSW University Drama Theatre; Henry IV Downstairs: The Case o f Katherine Part / by Shakespeare; director Aarre Mansfield, one woman show composed, Neeme; in association with University edited and played by Cathy Downes. THEATRE Drama Dept. June 19-July*J2. Throughout June. KIRR1B1LL.1 PUB THEATRE (92 1415) NSW THEATRE OF THE DEAF THE ACTION THEATRE COMPANY Kirribilli Hotel, Milson’s Point (357 1200) (357 1200) The Robin Hood Show by Perry Quinton The "Shhh" Journey for primary schools Cell Block Theatre & Paul Chubb; directed by Perry Quinton. and The Unheard World of Jasper Lawson The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and LES CURRIE PRESENTATIONS for secondary schools; both directed by lan Weill adapted by lan Watson; directed (358 5676) Watson; with Nola Colefax, David Lon­ by lan Watson. June 5-8 and 12-15. Colony, a programme of folk songs and don, Colin Allen, Bryan Jones and Rose­ ARTS COUNCIL OF NEW SOUTH sketches describing colonial Australia mary Lenzo. Metropolitan area through­ WALES (357 6611) devised and performed by Colin Douglas out June. School Tours: Blink r Bill, a children's and Tony Suttor for infants, primary and Q THEATRE (047) 21 5735 play for infants and primary; North Coast secondary; NSW country throughout Measure for Measure by William Shakes­ from June 2. M a V . peare; Orange June 3-7, Bankstown June Pinoeehio, drama for infants and primary; Mike Jackson, traditional bush music; I 1-14. metropolitan areas from June 2. Sydney metropolitan areas throughout Travelling North by David Williamson; Ijpook Book Theatre Company, drama for J une. commences June 20 at Penrith infants, primary and secondary; North Agnes Warrington Shapes and Styles RIVERINA TRUCKING COMPANY West and Hunter from June 2. (costumes through the centuries) and A (069) 25 2052) The Ban dels, world of music for infants History of Theatre; secondary schools in The Pariah-Dog by Mick Rodger; on and primary; Central West from June 2. Sydney metropolitan and Hunter. Until regional tour until June 15. The Bushranger, Australian folklore for June 13. Lute by Joe Orton; directed by Peter primary and secondary; Riverina from Alexandra Moreno, Spanish dancer for Barclay. Commences June 20. June 2. infants and primary; Riverina and South SEYMOUR CENTRE (692 0555) Adult Tours: RiverinaTruckingCompany Coast until June 6. York Theatre THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 45 A Star is Torn by Robyn Archer and On tour: Programme of modern and Rodney Fisher; directed by Rodney Fisher contemporary works b\ Bcv Nevin. with Robyn Archer. Until June 14. ! or entries eontaet Don Batehelor on An Evening with Hinge and Braeket 35 ó 9311. commences June 25. QLD Everest Theatre; Flexitime by Roger Hall; directed by Don Mackay; with Terry McDermott and Anne Phelan. Com­ THEATRE mences J une 23. SA SHOPFRONT THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE (588 3948) ARTS THEATRE (36 2344) Free drama workshops on weekend; And The Big Men Fly by Alan Hopgood; includes playbuilding, mime, dance, pup­ director, designer, Paul Sherman. June 12 THEATRE petry, design, radio and video. Shop­ - 26. front Caravan touring country towns Belongalonga by Rome Warren; director, ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY and schools with The Tempest by Irma Vandenberg. Saturdays, 2pm. THEA TRE (223 8610) William Shakespeare and Childmyth and LA BOITE (36 1622) Community Theatre Weekend. The Parks The Tale Play created by the cast and The Man From Muekinupin by Dorothy Community Centre at Angle Park. June directed by Errol Bray. Youth Theatre Hewett; director, Graeme Johnstone. To 14, 15, 16 all dav. Showcase; What Are Two Niee Kids J une 21. FESTIVAL THEATRE (51 0121) Doing in a Rotten Show Like This'.’??June Diekinson by David Allen; director, Fvita by Rice and Lloyd Webber; with 6 and 7. Short Plays by students from Uni Malcolm Blaylock. June 27 - July 19. Jennifer Murphy, Peter Carroll. John of NSW School of Drama June 13 and 14. POPULAR THEATRE TROUPE O'Day. Until June 14. Kids Kaharet goes to Rio devised and Ring 36 1745 for current programme. STAfE THEATRE COMPANY performed by Pippi Storm. J une 20 and 21. QUEENSLAND ARTS COUNCIL (51 5151) A Midsummer Night's Dream performed (221 5900) Playhouse: The Three Sisters by Anton by PACT Youth Theatre. June 27 and 28. On tour: QTC Secondary Drama Co: Checkhov; director, Colin George; SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY Aeeommodations by Nick Hall; director, designer, Hugh Coleman. To June 7. (231 6111) Lloyd Nickson. The Float by Alan Seymour (world Theatre Royal Jack Glatzer (violinist) Paganni and The premiere); director, Kevin Palmer; de­ No Names... No Paek Drill by Bob Devil. signer, Vicki Feitscher. Sat, June 13-28. Herbert; directed by George Ogilvie; w'ith Toni and Royce The Dream Time. Q THEATRE (223 5651) Mel Gibson and Noni Hazelhurst. June 9- Wayne Roland Browne Sounds Terrifie. 89 Halifax Street. 28. QUEENSLAND THEATRE COM­ The Murder Game by Constance Cox; THEATRE ROYAL (231 61 11) PANY (221 3861) director, Frank Gargro. June 14 - July Diversions and Delights (from the works SGIO Theatre: Riehard III by Shakes­ 12 Wed-Sat. of Oscar Wilde) with Vincent Price. peare; director, Alan Edwards; designer, SPACE THEATRE (51 0121) Commences June 30. Graham Mclean; with John Krummel. To Festival Centre: DDS Holdings presents June 14. Rattle of a Simple Man by Charles TN COMPANY (52 5880) Dyer. June 4-21. Saturday at 1.30 pm. DANCE Cement Box Theatre: Summit Conferenee THEATRE GUILD (22 3433) by Robert David MacDonald; director, Union Hall: The House o f Otents by Geschyuls; director, Jim Vile. June 1 1-28, SYDNEY DANCE COMPANY (2 0588) John Milson; designer, Stephen Amos; with Judith Anderson. To June 7. Wed-Sat. Drama Theatre, SOH. Unley Town Hall Theatre: The Absurdists Programme 1 — Daphnis and Chloe by Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett; director. Rick Billinghurst; designer, (short Pinter pieces) 2pm and 8pm June Graeme Murphy to Ravel; Viridian by 17-19, 24-26. July 1-3. Graeme Murphy to Richard Meale; and Stephen Amos; with Geoff Cartwright and Sheherazade by Graeme Murphy. Pro­ Duncan Wass. June 1 1 - July 5. gramme II Rumours by Graeme Murphy. Programme III Dialogues by Barry More­ OPERA land; Interiors by Paul Saliba and Animus DANCE by Joseph Scoglio. In repertory through­ STATE OPERA (352 3788) out June. Opera Theatre: Don Pasquale, director/ AUSTRALIAN YOUTH BALLET designer Tom Lingwood; conductor Myer (38 5059) Fredman and Jon Draper. June 26-28. OPERA On tour: Grande Tarantelle, La Paris and July 1,3,5,8,10,12. The Rehearsal. For entries eontaet Edwin Relf on HER MAJESTY’S (221 2777) 223 8610. THE AUSTRALIAN OPERA (2 0588) The Australian Ballet: Schools Per­ Opera Theatre, SOH. formances. June 16-28. Manon Leseaut by Puccini; conducted by QUEENSLAND BALLET COMPANY Carolo Felice Cillario and produced by (229 3355) John Copley. From June 9. The Tales o f On tour with Qld Arts Council. Carmen, Hoffman by Offenbach; conducted by TAS choreography, Harold Collins; design, William Reid and produced by Tito Mike Bridges, Jennifer Carseldine. Capobianco. From June 16. QUEENSLAND MODERN AND CON­ For entries eontaet Carole Long on TEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY THEATRE 909 3010/357 1200. (38 5059).

46 THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 ILLUSION CIRCUS THEATRE With Rod Quantock and Company. COMPANY (003 63.5178) COMEDY THEATRE (663 4993) The Truce, (a Warsaw play). Shut Your Eyes And Think Of England. 8 John Caroll Theatre, Devonport, June pm nightly through June. 7-14. CREATIVE ARTS THEATRE WA Launceston TCAE, June 20 Touring Schools programme. Burnie Civic Theatre, June 28 FLYING TRAPEZE CAFE (413 727) Rosny College, Hobart, July 3,4,5. Some seven shows are planned for June THEATRE POL YOON THE A TRE (34 3013) but programme as yet unannounced. Rehearsal throughout June for Rosen­ HOOPLA THEATRE FOUNDATION HAYMAN THEATRE (350 7026) erantz anil Guildenstern Are Dead by (634 888) A Doll's House by Ibsen; director, Denise Tom Stoppard. Playbox Upstairs: Hosannah by Canadian SALAMANCA (23 5259) playwright Michel Tremblay. Director Young. A Theatre-Go-Round production. June 17-28. Company in rehearsal with playwright Murray Copeland; with Robert Essex and THE WHOLE IN THE WALL(381 2403) in residence John Lonie and guest Vernon Wells. Tues-Sat 8.15pm, June 5- director Richard Davey, working on 28. Mirandolna by Carlo Goldini; director, museum programmes for Scores and Playbox Downstairs: Outside Edge by Raymond Omodei. May 28-June 21. Community. Richard Harris. Director Carillo Gantner; The Misanthrope by Moliere; director, THEATRE ROYAL (34 6226) with Kirsty Child, Julia Blake and John Edgar Metcalfe. June 25-July 19. Gilbert and Sullivan Society: Pirates Wood. Mon-Sat 8.30pm through June. THE MAGIC MIRROR THEATRE COMPANY o f Penzance June 18-21. HER MAJESTYS THEATRE (663 3211) Pyjama Tops with John Inman. 8.30pm Ruhbedy Dub. Pub show directed by For entries contact Anne Campbell on John Aitken. On tour North West and (049) 67 4470. nightly through June. LAST LAUGH THEATRE Darwin. May 28-June 13. RESTAURANT (419 6226) PLAYHOUSE (325 3500) Bent Brass from America with Jane National Theatre Company: Piqf by Pam Clifton as compere. Gems; director, Stephen Barry; with Judy LA MAMA (350 4593) (380 9646) Davis and Joan Sydney. May 29-June 21. Pieties: by Michael Heath; directed by Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas; VIC Colin McColl. May 22-June 8. director, John Milson. June 26-July 19. The Door by David Porter; directed by T.l.E. Team: Doolan by Richard Tulloch. THEATRE Jean-Pierre Mignon; with Bruce Keller. For lower primary. June 12-29. Thursday-Sunday 8.30pm. Middleton Market by Richard Tulloch. MELBOURNE THEATRE COMPANY For upper primary. ALEXANDER THEATRE (543 2828) (654 4000) Coward on Coward by the Monash Russell Street Theatre: Bent by Martin Musical Theatre Company. 8pm June 3-8, Sherman; directed by Bruce Myles June 4- 1 1-14. Saturday Club — different series of August 2. DANCE plays suitable for school children. Atheneum Theatre: Rosenerantz and ARENA THEATRE (24 9667) Gui/derstern Are Dead and Hamlet in HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE (335 6188) Schools Programme: Where To Turelu?; repertory June 2-7 (Ros), June 9-14 WA Ballet Company at Gala opening of The Whale — The Biggest Thing That Ever (Ham), June 16-21 (Ros), June 23-28 the theatre. Four ballets: Spirals by Barry Died — suitable for Upper Primary and (Ham) and on June 14, 18, Hamlet 2pm Moreland, We Are Together by Don Lower Secondary students. Extensive followed by Rosenerantz . . ,8.30pm. Asher, The Visitor by Garth Welch, Community access drama classes. Atheneum 2: Bremen Coffee and The Concerto Grosso by Charles Czarni; ARTS COUNCIL OF VICTORIA Sadist, two new German plays by Rainer artistic director. Garth Welch with the (529 4355) Werner Fassbinder, May 5-June 28. Arensky Quartet and the Wigmore Flexitime by Roger'Hall; directed by Don Schools Days: June 4, II, 18 — Hamlet Ensemble. Mackay. Touring Brisbane (Twelfth Night (Atheneum), June 26 Poetry Reading o f WA ARTS COUNCIL (322 6766) Theatre) through June. Poetry o f World War One(Russell Street). WA Ballet Company North West tour. Carboni by John Romeril; with Bruce PILGRIM PUPPET THEATRE June 16-28. Spence. (818 6650) WA BALLET COMPANY Australian Dance Theatre. Circus Strings and Things by Bert Cooper. Workshop Wanneroo in residence. June As We Are by Beverley Dunn. On tour THE MILL COMMUNITY THEATRE: 9-14. through June. (052) 22 2318 Modern Mime Theatre, Michael Freeland. Race Across The Desert - a version of On tour through June to primary and Brecht’s Exception and The Rule; directed OPERA secondary schools. by James McCaughey - available for tour Franx by Alan Hopgood. to schools etc in June. AUSTRALIAN PERFORMING Coming in August - The Clyde Company WA OPERA COMPANY GROUP (347 7133) Papers; an historical documentary theatre His Majesty’s Theatre (328 4512) Back Theatre: The Governor’s Pleasure play about Geelong. La Traviata by Verdi; musical director, Theatre Group under the direction of Ray Mill Nights - community theatre activities Gerald Krug; designer, Graham McLean; Mooney are presenting three short plays in every Thursday Night (7.30-l0pm) at The producer, Guiseeppe Bertinazzo; with June. Mill, Pakington Street, Newtown, Margaret Haggart, Gino Zancnaro and Front Theatre: APG Ensemble use (not Geelong. Cornelius de Munk. June 13-28. programmed). For entries contact Suzanne Spunner on For entries contact Joan Ambrose on COMEDY CAFE 387 2651. 299 6639.

THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1980 47 s Australia* magazine of ihe perfuming arts i------Theatre Australia SUBSCRIPTION RATES

FORTUNE THEATRE, Australia: DUNEDIN $21.00 Post Free for twelve issues. Give a gift subscription — and SAVE $36.00 for two subscriptions. Director $25.00 for institutions. The Fortune Theatre Trust Board invites early appli­ Overseas: cations for the post of Director Surface mail AS30.00 for its small professional Institutions AS35.00 company. By air The Fortune, under its original New Zealand, New Guinea AS50.00 Director, has made steady U.K., U.S.A., Europe AS55.00 All other countries progress in its first six years, is AS70.00 • Dance Theatre of Harlem Add $ 12.00 for institutions to air mail rates. now solidly based in its own • Graeme Blundell on Bank drafts in Australian currency 240 seat theatre and receives should be Melbourne to Sydney forwarded to Theatre Publications Ltd., 80 excellent community support. • Freddie Gibson & the Elizabeth Street, Mayfield, N.S.W. 2304, The position offers unrivalled, Theatre Royal Australia. but challenging, creative and administrative opportunities. Initial salary depends on ex­ 17. By the by. Father frenziedly left the child’s top behind (15) perience, future salary on 18. Large, returned wager will land you on the results. gallows (6) 20. "But this eternal... must not be To ears of Responsibility is to the Board flesh and blood" (Hamlet) (6) for all aspects - budgets, 21. Push along, led astray by peculiar runt (7) 22. See him in one roistering with a fiddle (4) programmes, productions, 25. ‘is match (sic) is strangely divisive (I0) tours, schools, administration 26. Fifty abandon their sin in a church (4) 27. Racine? Corneille? Certainly not Griffiths’ etc. funny men (I0) Applicants should have New Down: Zealand experience in all 1. Rosy instrument, by the sound of it (4) these - particularly working 2. Consumes a headless poet (4) 3. Drink that brings the timid round to sin (6) within limited budgets and 4. Failing to grasp international under­ should preferably be available standing (15) 5. Old flame of 22? (6) to work with the outgoing THESPIA S PRIZE CROSSWORD 7. Feel around the round, golden girl, and Director by June, 1980. Later No. 24. enjoy voluptuously (10) availability will not disqualify. 8. Putting down the crazed, stringy doe (I0) 11. Advertisement for a prim fowl, we hear( 10) Further details from and appli­ 12. Petrels attack females (5,5) Name _ 13. The Germans drink, and the French have cations to: little value . . . (7) The Chairman, Address 14. ... so cou the French with this stream (7) Fortune Theatre Trust, 19. He follows the path of a mad president (6) 20. Accused the uproar in bedlam (6) P.O. Box 6001, 23. Bring down before the volcano (4) DUNEDIN. 24. Performs deeds (4) (New Zealand) Across: Last month’s answers. I. Purest stem somehow found in a forest (4,6) The first correct entry 6. Employed the volatile Duse (4) drawn on June 25 will 9. You’ll get flowers if you knock 'erchinaf I0) receive one year’s free I0. Legal locals? (4) subscription to Theatre 13. Relation of l down’s leaving the prostitute A ustralia. (7) 15. Circular the lad sent round the pitch (6) 16. Dissenter can give one a right royal fever(6)

48 THEM RE AUSTRALIA JUNE I980