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John Bell, Shakespeare and the Quest for a New Australian Theatre Australian Playwrights Series editor Peta Tait Founded by Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt Developed by Veronica Kelly VOLUME 16 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ap John Bell, Shakespeare and the Quest for a New Australian Theatre By Adrian Kiernander LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Measure for Measure, directed by John Bell, Bell Shakespeare Company, 2005. Photographer: Andrew de la Rue. Permission granted by agent. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930704 ISSN 0921-2531 ISBN 978-90-42-03933-9 (paperback) ISBN 978-94-01-21215-1 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Series Editor’s Preface 7 Acknowledgments 9 Note on References 15 Abbreviations 16 Introduction 17 Chapter One: A National Theatre 33 The Guthrie Report 33 What constitutes an Australian national theatre? 35 Nationhood and gender 36 National belonging 38 The Sydney University Players 42 Bell at the (new) Old Tote 44 Henry in a tent 47 Chapter Two: Acting Against Tradition 53 Old Tote, new Nimrod 53 Not just a matinee idol: Arturo Ui 56 Exploring Australian Shakespeare: Petruchio and Hamlet 58 Nimrod expanding 67 Richard III and the Dismissal 68 Two great roles and an Australian “Theatre of Panache” 72 Volpone at the Nimrod 76 Playing on regardless 77 Intermission 80 The Bell Shakespeare Company 83 Irreverent Shakespeares 85 Settling in and branching out 88 Chapter Three: Directing New Australian Plays 95 Australian history and The Legend of King O’Malley 95 An Australian venue: Nimrod and Biggles 105 6 John Bell, Shakespeare and the Quest for a New Australian Theatre Two new Australian playwrights: Ron Blair and David Williamson 107 Reclaiming the past: Peter Kenna 112 A bigger theatre for Australian plays 117 Contentious realisms: Jim McNeil 118 Sexuality and celibacy: Mates and Brothers 120 Playing away and at home: Nowra’s Inner Voices and Williamson’s The Club and Travelling North 124 The Sydney Opera House and The Venetian Twins 129 Staging the history of Australia 131 Chapter Four: Entrepreneur and Teacher 135 Australian venues, companies, styles and identities 135 The decline of the Nimrod 141 A new start 143 Chapter Five: Australian Shakespeares 149 Local Shakespeare 149 Ritual and supernatural Shakespeare 153 Carnivalesque Shakespeare 154 Merry and tragical: inverting genres 163 Kingdoms and republics: the Henriad and the referendum 168 Epilogue 179 Australian Shakespeare in the new millennium 179 Appendix: Table of Productions 187 Bibliography 193 Index 203 Series Editor’s Preface John Bell, Shakespeare and the Quest for a New Australian Theatre is about actor-director John Bell’s work on new plays and classic Shakespearean drama, and reveals how Australian theatre developed a distinctive national style and yet remained part of theatre internationally. The complex theatre that emerges from Adrian Kiernander’s very readable, celebratory exploration of Bell’s oeuvre also confirms the importance of scholarship offering comparative perspectives over decades for the recognition of what has been achieved in theatre nationally. A comprehensive study of this type facilitates appreciation of how theatre contributes to society and its values. Volume 16 marks the end of a decade for me as the ‘hands-on’ Series Editor for the Rodopi Australian Playwrights and Performance series. This series remains the only ongoing list on Australian theatre and drama scholarship, and I pass on the role as its editor as the reputation of Rodopi strengthens further. It has been my privilege to work with such wonderful authors and editors on volumes 11 to 16 in the series, and to nurture the publication of these important books, usually the first in an area. I am very proud of what has been achieved with this series. Professor Peta Tait FAHA La Trobe University May 2014 Acknowledgments The idea for this book first came to me when I had the privilege of working with John Bell in the beginning of 1992, during rehearsals for the second season of the Bell Shakespeare Company. I made a suggestion to John, which he graciously accepted, to write something about his work as an actor and director. His career had already been extensive, and when some of the most important developments in Australian theatre happened, he was there, often making a significant contribution. Even though I lived in New Zealand in the 1970s and early 1980s, I knew that something interesting was happening in Australian theatre – knowledge derived from several visits of my own to Sydney and Melbourne; from actor friends who travelled there; from Australian actors who moved to Auckland; and from tours to Auckland by the Old Tote Theatre of The Legend of King O’Malley in Richard Wherrett’s production in 1972, and by the Australian Performing Group in 1975 with John Romeril’s Mrs Thally F and Jack Hibberd’s The Les Darcy Show. Some of the New Wave plays were given local productions; Mary Amoore, the director of Auckland’s Central Theatre, scheduled several of these. I remember productions of Biggles by Ron Blair, Michael Boddy and Ray Cooney in 1973, and Peter Kenna’s A Hard God and Alex Buzo’s Coralie Lansdowne Says No in 1975. The idea of writing something like this had occurred to me already – books about Australian theatre were very helpful in recording aspects of theatre history, but for reasons to do with the available technologies, most of this history was based around the work of playwrights, and this practice continues today. There was little written about and from the point of view of directors and actors, and I wanted to write about theatre in performance. I naively thought that I would be able to write the book quite quickly, but for many reasons, including the distraction of other projects funded by the Australian Research Council, this was not to be 10 John Bell, Shakespeare and the Quest for a New Australian Theatre the case. I have been able to publish articles and conference presentations about John Bell’s work, but the broader scope of the book required more clear air than I have often been able to find. The delay has been frustrating, but there is a silver lining: twenty-one years later, I have written the kind of book which I could hardly have imagined when I started. Some of this is due to being able to watch at least reasonable-quality video of many productions, variously in the Bell Shakespeare Company offices, in the television archives of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and in the Stage on Screen Collection at the University of New England (UNE). An even more recent research tool has been the web – useful for finding information, both factual and interpretative – especially via the AusStage database of theatre in Australia. Sunday Gullifer and Leigh Travers have been particularly helpful in accessing photographs and obtaining permission to reproduce them, as has Judith Seeff, the Sydney Theatre Company archivist, and Julia Mant at the archives of the National Institute of Dramatic Art. However, more traditional forms of historiography have been essential, and I am grateful to those many people who agreed to be interviewed, and who have lent me their collections of press clippings. Even though some of these have, frustratingly, been clipped and collected without bibliographical references, they have been invaluable and will continue to be so until the major Australian newspapers comprehensively digitise their archives for the second half of the twentieth century. In the early part of the project, valuable research assistance was provided by Lynne Bradley, Lynn Everett, Jeremy Gadd, Paul Galloway, Delyse Ryan, Graham Seaman and Ruth Thompson, who scoured archival newspapers, magazines and microfilm to find missing bibliographic details for newspaper clippings of articles and reviews (usually, but not always, successfully). I thank Robert Love for his eagle-eyed proof-reading and copy-editing. I should also note the help of the staff of several libraries who have gone out of their way to answer difficult questions – the Mayne Library, including the Hanger Collection, at the University of Queensland; the Mitchell Library, which is part of the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney; the Fisher Library at Sydney University; the Dixson Library at UNE. I am deeply indebted to Sylvia Ransom from the Dixson Library for making house-calls to help with new techniques of Acknowledgments 11 referencing, and for saving me on occasion from scrambling the entire text. Matthew Fernance has generously helped with computer issues, and Gill Willis in the UNE School of Arts has, as always, been a wonderful resource in solving urgent problems with software. I am also indebted to current colleagues, including Dr Anne Pender, Dr Elizabeth Hale and Professor Darryl Poulsen at UNE, and Dr Jonathan Bollen and Dr Bruce Parr, all of whom have given me much-needed support and scholarly advice. Similarly, my gratitude goes to former colleagues at the University of Queensland, Professor Richard Fotheringham and Professor Veronica Kelly, who helped me to establish myself as a researcher in theatre history when I arrived in Brisbane in 1986.

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