Turbine - whatever turns you on

Turbine, SEEyD Theatre Company
Downstage Theatre, February 13 – March 7

‘We’re the Saudi Arabia of wind!’ is a pretty appealing tag-line for anyone who lives in Wellington. Turbine presents the ‘for and against’ opinions about wind-power, which is meant to represent all the angles and spark heated debate among theatre patrons.

SEEyD Theatre Company is known for this approach and has previously brought their ‘issues based theatre’ style to many a topic including immunisation, poaching, genetic modification and spiritualism.

You either like this style or you don’t – there are bare bones of plot on which to hang the flesh of the arguments and you are meant to make up your own mind about the resolution because the play won’t provide one for you. Some consider this a provocative challenge; others deem it to be a lazy cop-out.

The problem with Turbine is that there seems to be no counter argument. The people who protest against wind power are simply Nimbys and are made to look ridiculous through speech impediments, or inadequate internet-based research. They worry about things that might never happen and, in personalising their concerns, they try to preserve something that has already gone. Nostalgia is not always a good thing.

There are myriad possibilities as to what the unleashed power sources could provide, but for ease of viewing they are distilled into two potential outcomes. In a great piece of theatrical interpretation we are allowed a glimpse of good and bad future – exactly the same lines spoken by the same characters but with a very different inflection resulting in disparate meaning.

One of the highlights of the staging is the white board walls on which members of the cast draw and erase various energy related paraphernalia. Trees are cut down (with power tools) to make way for the wind turbines. While some consider these to be blots on the landscape, I think they are beautiful. The ones gracefully emerging Venus-like from the water off the Danish and Norwegian coasts are fabulous.

But the toasters, kettles, computers, microwaves and ovens that we use in our daily are all ugly. So will we abandon them; of course not. We want these things, but we don’t want to have to think about the moral implications of their presence. We need power. (I expect a future SEEyD production to focus on the necessity and availability of fresh water.) Individual wants are pitted against the common good in an almost capitalism vs. socialism debate.

The main characters are a mother named Gail (Emma Kinane) struggling to look after her autistic son Ariel (Tim Spite) while her irascible daughter, Susan (Lee Smith-Gibbons) also lives at home. Into the not-so-happy-home comes Mark (Nick Dunbar) who works for the power company responsible for the proposed turbines and takes a shine to Susan. The actors also play various other peripheral characters, and they do it very well, but there is no cohesive story.

If it is meant to be a love-story, it is highly implausible that the suave Mark (who is neither a hero nor a villain, which he could so easily have become) should be interested in the narrow-minded Susan. Smith-Gibbons plays her perfectly, hiding her insecurity and lack of substance (the type who gets a tattoo in the small of her back as a substitute for personality) behind a façade of constant confrontation, and thinks she’s tough because she writes erotic fiction. Incidentally her characterisation of the more rational and intellectual judge is very good and helps demonstrate her acting range.

If it’s a study of parenting under trying circumstances, then I would have liked this to be further explored. Emma Kinane does an excellent job of portraying the long-suffering mother with a warmth and compassion verging on frustration. I wanted to know about this exasperated character trying to pursue her own life amidst the love and pain involved with raising a demanding son who doesn’t adapt well to change.

Tim Spite plays the autistic young man with a range of personality tics and physical twitches. In a demanding juxtaposition he also plays his own father with a hard and brutally rebuffing edge. The balance could be in his favour as a disability is thrown in so we are automatically on his side, or are we? He is an unpleasant character with his verbal and physical attacks and his excessive horniness – it’s never comfortable watching someone dry hump a cushion.

Spite the writer is as unafraid to push boundaries as Spite the actor. One of Smith-Gibbons’ characters is Maggie, a glasses-wearing, lisping, epileptic protestor. Ariel causes her to have a seizure on stage by repeatedly flicking the light switch on and off due to some element of compulsive disorder. Judging by the laughter from the auditorium, this is comic, but who decides that epilepsy is funny?

Apparently we, the audience, do, as we decide everything else about this play, and consequently our futures. Good, challenging stuff. There is a role for trial by theatre, and if SEEyD Theatre Company are judge and jury, we are executioner.

Books read in November

The following are short reviews of the books that I read in November. The marks I have given them in the brackets are out of five.

The Deposition of Father McGreevy – Brian O’Doherty (3.2)

I love stories about cities under siege, whether through disease, warfare or weather; the resentments and relationships; the gossip and the rumours; the isolation and ignorance are all fascinating. Short listed for the Booker Prize in 2000, The Deposition of Father McGreevy has all these ingredients.

In his fictional memoir, Father McGreevy recalls the transformation of a once thriving Irish mountain village into a deserted ghost town. It begins with the mysterious deaths of six women in the winter of 1939. The bodies are buried in the hard, frozen ground but when the town, and the deaths are scrutinized, they are exhumed for analysis, which is a double sorrow for the family.

Young folk leave the village, never to return, and Father McGreevy sees households torn apart by death and poverty, but he holds fast to his faith in human nature. For a celibate, childless man, he has great insight into familial behaviour.

He is keen to preserve the community and the customs, but at what cost? Father McGreevy maintains that “The life of a language is in its poetry and there’s great poetry in Irish.” The argument over tradition versus progress as symbolised by the language is familiar: think Welsh; Māori; Latin.

Father McGreevy believes that everything has a reason and is ordained, even the great suffering through the long, hard winter. He embodies the belief that if you cast your burdens onto Him, God will help shoulder your responsibilities and fault.

He spends a lot of time alone and observing his flock – there are ovine images everywhere as the Lamb of God becomes a scapegoat. The mixture of Catholic theology, Irish history and folklore and poetic language make this a haunting, lyrical novel, rich in local colour and pathos, but strangely lacking in impact.

Tennyson’s Gift – Lynne Truss (3.2)

This novel featuring famous people in farcical situations is a world away from the bestselling grammatical treatise, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. As photographers, authors, painters and actors frolic on the Isle of Wight in July 1864, the novel has more in common with Sue Townsend than Noam Chomsky. It is easy and de rigueur to make fun of Victorians and their values, but she does it mainly in an amusing way.

George Watts, the painter, is on holiday with his new bride, Ellen Terry, the actress. Julia Cameron is a photographer who likes to do ‘abstracts’ and she needs sitters for her compositions. She is in love with Alfred Tennyson who bores everyone at dinner parties by droning on about his poetry. His wife hides bad reviews in various places such as teapots or the rose bed. And then there is Charles L Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll, who wants to dedicate his novel to Tennyson but needs his approval. Between knock-backs he roams the beaches looking for young girls and telling them they have inspired his stories.

Into this cultural cacophony come Lorenzo Fowler, a travelling American phrenologist, and his precocious daughter, Jessie. When Ellen dresses as a man to try and gain information from Lorenzo about Watts, it becomes full of Shakespearean references and ludicrous situations.

Tennyson’s Gift is half Victorian drama; half French farce, all dosed in post-modern irony. It is too clever to be compelling and although everything is sorted out by the end, you just wish it had come sooner. It’s like one of those scientific experiments that simply doesn’t work – much better in theory than it is in practice.

The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite – Beatrice Colin (3.7)

Lilly Aphrodite’s tale is one of tragedy heaped upon tragedy. She is brought up in convent orphanage in Berlin; she works as a maid where she is raped by the master of the house when working as a maid and has a backstreet abortion; is sacked from her job at a bar for not ‘doing extras’ for clients; she works in a hostel cleaning excrement-splattered latrines; she marries a man just before he goes to fight in the First World War and is missing presumed dead, and she falls in love with a man who is already married. The novel is full of coincidences and the grimmest things that can’t break her spirit, as though Catherine Cookson combined with Paullina Simons.

Berlin has a starring role in this novel and Colin captures the atmosphere with a telescopic style which is light on detail and can be confusing, but she illuminates each period in time and place, from the Kaiser’s pre-WWI constraints to the decadent aftermath that was the Weimar Republic.

Lilly learns to reinvent herself and the lines between reality and fiction become blurred. Of course she happens to be beautiful, because she is a heroine and they always are in this type of novel. In fact she is “the face, if you can imagine it, of Berlin at that particular moment in history.” She never had the talent for stage, but her face suits the screen and she becomes an icon of silent movies. The novel is interspersed with celluloid history, snippets from faux interviews conducted later in her career, clumsy foreshadowing.

To be honest, I don’t much care for Lilly. She is a vacuous character – an empty vessel to be filled with whatever will make her solid and give her form. She morphs into the creation that someone wants her to be, rather than having any strength herself. But perhaps this is what was needed to survive the war. It may be a love story but it lacks the emotion of a Casablana or more recently The Bronze Horseman which seems to be the market it is trying to capture.

The Beloved Son – Jay Quinn (2.6)

This reads like a debut novel (although it’s not) about how to cope with your ageing relatives, drinking coffee, and the nature of faith. Karl is worried about his trip to see his family in Florida because he might have to display some emotion; as a town planner who designs ways to control traffic, Karl dislikes mess.

His brother (Sven) is gay and may be separating from his partner (Rob). Their mother (Annike) has the beginnings of dementia, and their father (Frank) resents her attention to Sven. Karl has his own family dynamics to deal with – his own daughter (Melanie) sounds like the worst kind of precocious American brat with no sensitivity to others’ feelings and a conviction that her own thoughts are right. His wife (Caroline) is simply bland. With a gay son, Catholic Swedish mother, and right-wing father, the stage is obviously set for family disharmony.

Control is a big theme in this novel, whether it relates to relationships, world politics, faith, or mental capacity. As there is Catholicism, there is of course, guilt. Annike assures Karl that she doesn’t want him to visit her when she is senile and has forgotten who he is, which absolves him from any cluttered responsibilities. Life is not as tidy as this wish fulfillment.

Jay Quinn is not a natural writer. He corrals his characters with stereotypes; as Sven and Rob are gay, they must have a decorating/design business while Karl has a perfect nuclear family. Politics are introduced in a totally unnatural way; everyone has the right to an opinion and the so-called liberals are as bigoted as anyone else. Frank debates rationally with his granddaughter and things never get personal as they would in any normal family.

The novel swings between the vague and the precise. We read about every aspect of their domestic habits in tedious detail. Quinn frequently repeats himself and overdoes the adverbs. There is nothing to it and it leaves an impression like candy floss – it looks as though there might be something there, but it all just evaporates into sickly sweet wisps of nothingness.

Opening Night

Tonight is the opening night of Necessary Targets. Naturally, I am nervous. Hence this is a very short post. If you're in Wellington, come and see it; if you're not then you won't be able to. I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, I manged to take a night out from rehearsals last week and went to see Strange Resting Places at Downstage, which combines Māori and Italian culture and song. It was well-worth seeing and is going on tour around the country - it's been up in Auckland and is heading to the Festival of Colour. I would recommend catching that too, if you can.

Dare we believe?

Eight games to go, one point behind, the dreaded 'game-in-hand'; dare we believe? Are we back in the race? I had set my sights on the Champions League, but I must admit, I would not say no to the premier.

This morning's game was incredible for a number of reasons - not least Stevie's hat-trick of course. But it came on a day when he didn't actually play all that well, and nor did Torres. It's a sign of their influence that they were marked so heavily, leaving other players to run free - and didn't Riera make the most of it?

That goal was fantastic. It will have critics complaining - indeed Him Outdoors did mutter the words 'Wimbledon' and 'hoof' before I glared at him (I have a pretty mean glare at 5.30am) - but it was inspired. And I love seeing keepers play a decisive part in scoring goals, rather than conceeding them. Reina seemed pretty happy about it too.

Generally I have a soft spot for Villa (it's a long story and involves Andy Townsend) but right now, to mix sporting metaphors, the gloves are off. It's 19 years since I saw my team brandish the league trophy aloft, and I would love to see them do it again. But can they? Will they stand firm, or will they fall at the last hurdle? You can't say I didn't warn you about those metaphors.

In the infuriating words of my mother, 'We'll just have to wait and see'. Whatever happens, it will be exciting. And in the words of an even more infuriating cheerleading debacle (now, that can't even be called sport!), bring it on!

Chopping down the trees

What is it with Kiwis and trees? We had a beautiful tree outside our house. It provided privacy, shelter, birdsong and greenery - with a blast of red when the flowers were in bloom. The next-door neighbours didn't like it. They have a BMW convertible which they park beneath it and the birds shat through their roof onto the leather upholstery.










I came home the other day to find it completely razed to the ground. The landlord did it. Obviously the neighbours had complained, although we weren't consulted about our thoughts. Now everyone from the cafe opposite can see directly into our bedroom window, and I can hear their screaming children with no shelter or protection.

My sister tells me there is a row of trees at the playcentre her child attends. The committee wants them chopped down because a stray branch might fall off and hit a child. My sister - bolshy little madam that she is - said she told them she would have nothing to do with their arboreal massacre. 'I simply cannot condone the chopping down of trees' she said, which may be slightly grandiose, but good for her!

Trees have history and dignity. They are romantic and poetic with gnarled roots and spreading branches. They have evocative names and curious seeds - whirling sycamore wings and glossy horse chestnuts. I love their leaves and blossoms - the colour, shelter, fruit and tranquility they provide. I'd rather have a tree than a parking-lot anyday. I just can't understand people who wouldn't. And it seems there are a lot of them in this country.

Dead Wood

As a woman of a certain age,

I am invisible to all

But advertising agencies who see me

As fertile soil for creams, treatments and poisons

To reduce wrinkles; enhance elasticity;

Stop sagging, drooping and dribbling;

Promote lustrous hair and shiny teeth,

So I can pretend I am not

The woman I am.

If I were a tree, I would be

Marked with a pink cross, spraypainted

On my spreading trunk so that

I can be removed; chopped down to size;

Cleared with the dead wood and sacrificed

On a pyre, to make way for the

Young thrusting saplings, because

I am blocking their light and

Stealing their nutrients.

Friendship is...

If love is never having to say you're sorry (which I actually don't believe), then perhaps friendship is not having to say anything at all. I think of this because one of my favourite ways to spend time with friends and loved ones is in companionable silence.

The day we left America, Our Gracious Hostess and I sat at her dining room table drinking herbal tea, she looking up scrapbooking websites and me writing my diary. We hadn't seen each other for a long time and didn't know when we would see each other next - it could be years - but there was no need to babble on.

It reminded me of those times during our childhood when we sat quietly for hours flipping through magazines, painting our nails, drawing pictures, reading books... Occasionally we would look up and share a snippet of information, but most of the time we just worked quietly together.

There is a type of person who you know so well that there is no need for words. A look, a smile, a sigh or a gesture says it all. When I was a child I would often take a book into my brother or sisters' room and just sit on the floor or propped on the bed reading while they did their homework or listened to their records. It wasn't that I wanted to say anything, but I did want company. My cat is really good at this. He comes and sits near me, flicking an ear every now and then to let me know he's aware of my presence, but he doesn't say a lot. I like it.

Often we fill this silence with empty chatter - almost overcome by a need to say something, to prove our wit or our existence. We are almost afraid of silence as though it is somehow impolitie to be with someone and not talk to them. But when you have grown up with someone or shared so many experiences, there is no need for phatic communication.

I'm not good at small talk and I hate 'networking' or going to parties where I don't know anyone (this picture is not typical of what happens to me at such events) and I have to pretend I'm interested in what they've got to say. Sometimes I am, but often (especially it involves their children - which it invariably does with women over the age of 30 - or their salary to mortgage ratio) I'm not, and I can't bear the whole 'smile, nod, interject' routine.

This becomes even harder as I get older, and I fear I don't make new friends as well as I might. I miss being around my old friends and family - people who know where I went to school and what's my favourite colour and the terrible relationship mistakes I made. They know all that and accept it, so we don't have to go over it all again.

We can talk about things we really want to talk about, have pointless conversations, such as the definition of a sit-com; why religion and politics mix in America but not Britain; how easy is it to live without seasons; or we can simply say nothing at all.

My Newest Favourtie Thing: Bliss Super Minty Soap n' Scrub

It’s been a while since I’ve had a new favourite thing. That’s not strictly true, but it’s been a while since I’ve written about one. So, my newest favourite thing – discovered while visiting Our Gracious Host & Hostess – is Bliss super minty soap n’ scrub energizing exfoliator for the body.

Wow! This stuff knocks your socks off – that is, if you are wearing socks in the shower, which would be a little odd. It zings (but not stings), taking your breath away and leaving you feel ‘clean to the extreme’. The website suggests it is good for a post-workout wash, and while I can attest to this, it is also fabulous simply for getting up in the morning if, like me, early mornings are not your best time.

It’s a jet-lag beater and you just feel fresh and ready to cope with anything once you’ve bathed with the ‘jojoba bead packed and peppermint cooling soap scrub paste’. Breathing in the fumes is like standing on the side of the coolest glacier – you feel pristine and glowing once you step out of the shower. The pale blue and white tubes carry a warning to use sparingly around ‘intimate areas’, which is advice worth noting.

The website (www.blissworld.com) has a range of other enticingly named products including lemon and sage soapy sap, blood orange and white pepper body butter, and vanilla and bergamot bubbling bath and shower gel. There’s a cute ‘tried and blue travel kit’ and a handy ‘sinkside six-pack’. Incidentally, why are all miniature things considered cute? That’s just a random aside.

You may well feel this is going a bit over the top for what is effectively soap, but try it! I had to bring some back with me in my already over-stuffed suitcase as I didn’t know if it was available in New Zealand. It’s not. I’ve been looking for a new favourite bath product since The Body Shop sold out to L’Oreal and I may just have found one. Now I just have to find people to go to the US, Canada, UK and Ireland to bring me the stuff!