Written worlds

The Letter Writer
Circa Theatre, Wellington, 7 – 21 March 2010

Courtesy is a dying art. During the production, four phones went off (one twice) and there were two latecomers who shuffled noisily in after the play (one hour and forty minutes with no interval) had started. Apparently the art of letter-writing is also moribund. Mr Rouvesquen (Peter Hambleton) is a professional who helps people become more erudite although, with world-weary cynicism, he also tries to dissuade them from using his services.

From the beginning the tone is unsettled – comedy sits alongside something infinitely more sinister. The sliding doors and panels form a cosy and well-appointed office but they also create hiding places and darkened corners for fraught departures; the mood heightened by dramatic music (Stephen Gallagher) and tight lighting (Jennifer Lal). The scenes flow seamlessly into one another and techincal cues are often taken from musical notes rather than lines of dialogue, negating the importance of the spoken word.

Rouvesquen has a number of customers to whom he explains that words can both clarify and obfuscate. Asked to write speeches and letters for all occasions he has a price list in which ‘weddings are situated between baptisms and funerals, just above love letters – those are obsolete’.

With wonderful indecision Tim Gordon plays Mr Ralph who wants a father-of-the-bride speech, afraid that he will shame his daughter because he hasn’t mastered the words. Rouvesquen asks Ralph to speak naturally so that he can see the sort of man he is. “I need to assess your oratory abilities so that I don’t render you a Socrates in gumboots.” He is instructed to stop rambling, to eliminate gestures, and cut to the witty stuff without waffling. Clearly this is great advice for playwrights too, and Juliet O’Brien has taken it to heart with dialogue that is both precise and loaded with meaning.

Another client, Mrs Balia (a delightfully uptight Helen Moulder) requests an erudite codicil to her will, setting out the ‘whys and wherefores’ of who gets what. She is concerned that ‘unexplained wills create misunderstanding’, which she is anxious to avoid. It seems that ritual is very important and words are part of procedure. However, Rouvesquen abhors the absurdities of polite language – phatic communication – and speech patterns, pronunciation and grammar.

He likes poetry, wine and music; hedonistic pleasures. When he is asked, “Are you alcoholic?” he replies complacently, “It’s possible.” He listens to music, which “enthuses your thoughts”, but it is always the same piece performed by different artists as he searches for perfection as the author imagined it. When he later descends into an alcohol-induced insanity, it is both chilling and seductive.

Into this slightly ridiculous and aesthetic world intrudes the refreshingly earnest Lansko, (Benoit Blanc), a refugee from a totalitarian state who wants to express his love for Leila (Anne Bardot), the girl he left behind and apply for political asylum and citizenship. To help with his powers of description, Rouvesquen gives Lansko a wine appreciation lesson; he explains that if you describe something with your imagination and your words, it gives you a new appreciation of the thing. While trying to explain the appeal to the senses, the dialogue revels caustically in humorous humbug.

Words may be what we use to explain, but they are poor substitutes for emotion. The clearest indication of Rouvesquen’s feelings is when he guides Lansko’s hand, tenderly holding a pen to shape his signature. The scene between Lansko and Leila is touching and wordless as they huddle and snuggle beneath a tarpaulin. Fear is evoked through glances and movement that have nothing to do with words. Gordon also plays Enrix, a postman with cipplingly crude Tourette's. He cannot speak to others without swearing, but he can deliver their words in silence.

But words can also lie, pretend and hide things you would rather not see. When Rouvesquen learns something that he attempts to conceal from Lansko, you wonder at his motives, which can only have disastrous consequences. There is much that these characters would rather not face squarely and the denouement comes sideways from out of the shadows; harsh and unexpected. Some things will simply not remain hidden.

Who's Your Doctor?

I’m a Tom Baker girl myself. He was the one I grew up with. I felt reassured by his avuncular charm, and I hid behind the sofa and was terrified of the monsters who attacked him (even if they were made out of egg-boxes with  plungers and whisks for appendages). Before he made me laugh as the pompous voice (over) of Little Britain, he was saving the galaxy one planet at a time and haunting my dreams with K-9, his scruffy perm and his ridiculously long scarf.

Like James Bond, there are the ones you fancy (Daniel Craig/Paul McGann); the ones that make you laugh (Roger Moore/Peter Davidson); the ones that are just plain wrong (Timothy Dalton/Colin Baker) and the ones who define the character (Sean Connery/Patrick Troughton).

Him Outdoors is a fan of Jon Pertwee – personally, I can’t see past Worzel Gummidge. Of course, this is a problem and the reason why some who you think brilliantly embody the role, leave before they become typecast.

Christopher Eccleston was great with his gritty Salford accent but he wanted to do other things; mainly stage, which makes me yearn for England. He will always be DCI Bilborough from Cracker to me – murdered by the stunningly charismatic Albie; the first time I ever saw Robert Carlyle, but that’s another story…

I went off Dr Who – it was a kid’s series, right? – and although I kept an eye on the latest incarnation, it wasn’t until David Tennant assumed the mantel (with aplomb – is it possible to assume one without?) that I fell back in love with the franchise.

Of course, it’s Christianity 101 (a being that looks like us, but isn’t one of us, spans time and saves our souls over and over again – sound familiar?) but I love the simple storylines where nothing gets too complicated and it will work out alright in the end. And I love David Tennant; the man can act!

The baddies are excellent as well – along with the sexy sidekicks, that’s another James Bond parallel – and the other brightest star before he fell (classmates and equals in everything except the path they chose; again, I'm sure I've heard of that before somewhere...) is The Master. I must admit I would willingly go over to the dark side if John Simm were his embodiment.

Him Outdoors doesn’t like Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) – I’m not quite sure why (maybe he’s still pining for Billie) but he says she fancies herself far too much; she’s young.

So, what do we think of Matt Smith? On the evidence so far, I like him. His first episode in which he goes through a range of foods before finding that he likes fish fingers and custard reminds me of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh and his penchant for malt extract.

He wears a tweed jacket and a bow tie. He is arrogant and dismissive while still being compassionate and slightly naïve – he’s young, in other words. His scripts are good and he delivers the lines confidently. He has a floppy fringe and an edge, and no, I wouldn’t invite him home to mum; she’d fancy him too (she likes Johnny Depp. I told her to stick to her own… Paul Newman for example – she can have him – oh, and dad).

So far; so Gallifrey – but is he just what the doctor ordered? Only time will tell…

Thrillingly threatening art

Séraphine Pick

Wellington City Art Gallery, 20 February – 16 May 2010

If I had to use one word to describe the art of Séraphine Pick, it would be ‘disturbing’. Her paintings illustrate several stages of her development but the themes are constant. She includes spectral dresses, leaky baths and teetering suitcases in her psychologically charged dreamscapes.

I like the barely-there white paintings such as A Place of Passage and High Rise, both from 1995. They are like sketches but deliberately so. Domestic objects hold powerful memories: bandages, bags, beds, ladders, trees, balloons, shoeboxes, colanders, cheese graters; their perforated sides and leaking forms suggest the past that slips through your fingers.

Speak (1996) features two tiny central figures overwhelmed by their background. A year later, Insomnia suggests images of past relationships fraught with uncertainty, misunderstanding and emotional tension by positing half-erased doodles on a classroom blackboard.

Things become altogether more surreal with the half-forms of Room. The people with wings, skewed perspectives, and man with a rabbit head deliberately confuse and disconnect us. Pick deliberately undoes our expectations of hierarchy and perspective, piling vignette views on top of one another and causing our focus to shift restlessly from scene to scene.

Huntress with Wall Flowers (2004) has a pre-Raphaelite/William Morris style beauty with a cruel edge of hauteur. He (disappeared into Silence) (2004) references Henri Rousseau, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and Victorian styling. Sensuality, violence and unfurling imagination combine in this lush, exotic and erotic, make-believe and fairytale world of the eternal feminine.

The flowers, plants and birds (including NZ native ferns and toetoe along with large tropical orchids and a pair of huia) reclaim the landscape. The women look sideways and shifty in full-length ball gowns while the solitary male is naked; his genitals prudishly covered and he holds a limp lily in his hand. The entire affect is thrillingly threatening.

Meanwhile there are hints of Dali in Girl (with offered eyes) (2004). A dishevelled blonde in beaded flapper underwear stands holding one shoe in a desert with random images of a married couple, poodle, cowgirl, dead bird scattered about. Is there a meaning in these emblems?

Looking Like Someone Else also defies interpretation: the succession of portraits is either blurred or the face is obscured in some way; hiding behind their hair, superimposed one atop another, or revealing only the back of the head.

Pick moves on to the influence of Francisco Goya’s nightmarish malevolence with Phantom Limb (2007), Devil’s Music (2009) and Hole in the Sky (2009). The human figures look like zombies or clamouring demons. The crowd at a concert or children around a bonfire are profoundly unsettling. The colours and composition draw out their potential for violence and malignancy.

Once again Pick resumes the theme of domestic warfare with Burning the Furniture (2007). She seems to ask if there is any point in preserving symbols of the past. Personal effects are piled on the ground like a marital funeral pyre or a carefully-balanced arrangement while the figures positioned beside them seem disturbingly detached.

Her art is certainly confronting – if you like things that make you feel warm and content you should steer well clear, but if you fancy an artistic thrill, you could do a lot worse.

Cream on top?

I used to think that whether you spread your scones with jam then cream or cream then jam was a North/South divide thing. According to this Guardian article, it's actually a Cornwall/Devon thing. It turns out, I am a Devon devotee - it's got to be cream then jam for me.

A Kiwi friend pointed out that in New Zealand it is always jam then cream, because they don't have clotted cream (even double cream is hard to find), and if you just use whipped single cream, the jam will slide off if you put that on top.

This is why Devonshire teas should be trademarked. It's a divisive issue, but one of great importnace!

Levelling the playing field

Today I went for a run along the Kelvin Heights Track. I used to love this track; with its dips and twists and tricky terrain it gave me something on which to focus (other than tired legs and burning lungs). When I rode my mountain bike along it, there were three points where I had to dismount – I knew when I was getting fitter and my technical ability was improving when I could negotiate the steps, rocks and narrow hairpins with more ease.

Admittedly I once took a corner too fast and went flying over the handlebars, chipping my front teeth as I fell. It’s actually a good job I did (come off that is) as the bike itself ended up in the lake. That was part of it – it was exciting and exhilarating and you had to concentrate on what you were doing.

Now the track is practically unrecognisable. It has been widened and levelled and smoothed out. There are no more rocks, steps, streams or light corners to negotiate. Toddlers on tricycles, parents with pushchairs and women in stilettos can amble along it. They scenery is still as stunning as ever, but you might as well stick it on a video and run on a treadmill. It’s boring. I suppose the only good thing about it is that it is now accessible to people in wheelchairs. It is accessible to everyone. And that’s the problem.

These days it seems that to avoid the charge of being elitist (apparently a heinous crime), we have to make everything available to everyone. Which brings me to tertiary education. There was a time in Britain when the top 2% of students went to university. Those wanting something slightly less academic and more vocational went to polytechnic (this was approximately the next 5%). If they passed all their exams and fulfilled their course requirements, they got degrees.

There were no fees involved because the government could afford to subsidise the brightest (by which I mean most academic in this instance) 7% of the populace. Now anyone can go as long as they can afford it – no one fails but most get hefty debts with which to begin their adult life. Of course the government can no longer afford to pay everyone’s fees but never mind – it keeps folk off the unemployment figures for a few more years.

Where there used to be diplomas, certificates and apprenticeships for those wanting to pursue a career in the trades, now there are wall-to-wall degrees. We want everyone to have one because it ‘proves’ we are becoming more educated. So, you can get a degree in golf management, pet psychology, food and drink design, e-bay, and Klingon. I’m not kidding. A degree used to carry some weight; now it’s not worth the piece of paper it’s written on.

By banning elitism, we are encouraging mediocrity, and it starts at school-level, both in the classroom and in the playground. Everyone who enters the race gets a certificate and spot prizes are more valued than performance – it really is the participation and not the winning that counts. This is all well and good, but don’t expect honour and glory, or medals and awards.

In allowing everyone to achieve, have we not simply lowered the standard of achievement?

Oliver! It's a fine show

After the glut of (admittedly well-deserved) self congratulation that surrounded last year’s bombastic production of Les Misérables, Showbiz Queenstown have triumphed with their bright and breezy interpretation of Oliver!

Director Stephen Robertson is a stickler for detail, which is evident in the overall look of the show. Costumes, set and lighting combine to create the effect of a Bruegel painting in which splashes of colour illuminate a highly-styled background. Colourful silk handkerchiefs are judiciously used for everything from set-dressing, dancing props and the pickpocket scene.

The music (under the direction of Cheryl Collie) is befittingly bold as brass. It is a delight to hear the bassoon, although the French horn occasionally drowns the singers and there are a few technical issues with the balance of sound. Choreography is handled expertly (also by Stephen Robertson) with strong moves that engage the children and fill the stage. Both the workhouse 'boys' and Fagin's gang are charmingly proficient.

The adult company assist in the slick scene changes that allow few pauses for breath, and their ensemble numbers are vibrant highlights. Who Will Buy can be a difficult and messy number but this is a huge success – the soloists add a piquant edge to the forthright professionalism of the morning’s traders. Often standing at convergent angles and with sweeping side-to-side movements familiar from the Ascot Gavotte, the company bring the bright shiny morning bustlingly to life.

The Artful Dodger (Caleb Dawson-Swale) is full of nervous energy and rapid gestures like an out-of-control tic-tac bookie – I would definitely want to be in his gang. Energy bursts off the stage as he leads the company in the remarkable Consider Yourself, enhancing the Wurlitzer fairground attraction atmosphere. The dance itself is three parts Lambeth Walk to two parts Macarena and has everyone in the audience tapping their feet. The reprise also makes a fantastic ending, my only quibble being that this should come after the bows, leaving an overwhelming impression of music and company rather than figures shuffling off the stage in the half-light.

Most satisfying of all in this production are the solid outbreaks of acting, seldom seen in amateur musicals. Fagin (Marty McLay) praises Nancy’s acting but he is obviously the consummate performer here, always trying to ‘win friends and influence people’ by whatever means possible. Desperate to please or persuade, he acts many roles with rolling eyes and waggling fingers but never crosses the line into pantomime.

McLay eschews the stereotypes to make his Fagin uniquely human. He uses the street urchins for private gain, unconcerned with their welfare, and his attitude to Nancy is despicable. He is pleasant when he can afford to be but ultimately selfish and greedy, caring for no one but himself; John Key would be so proud.

Nancy (Fiona Stephenson) is also excellent. She brings extra vigour and authenticity, a natural compassion for the children, and a sense of fun. Earthy and gruff, she sings guttural songs which suit her gutter origins and has natural interjections, although some are a little modern (‘Listen up?’).

The compact stage works in the show’s favour making the action up close and personal. Empathy with the characters is encouraged so there is an intimacy often absent from musical theatre. When Nancy briefly regrets her errant lifestyle ‘Not for me the happy home, happy husband, happy wife’ it is profoundly touching.

There is no honour among these thieves; they may play games and be jovial but they won’t stand up for each other. A nice subplot hints at Dodger’s affection for Nancy, but he won’t take on Bill Sikes (a brutish and menacing David Oakley). They are all afraid of being alone and friendless – Fagin keeps a caged bird for company, and Dodger admits with a touch of sadness, that he “ain’t got no ‘hintimate’ friends.”

Oliver (Angus Reid) avoids the mawkish sentiment that mars many orphan Olivers, as he is presented with a succession of patently unsuitable parent substitutes. At the workhouse he suffers the wonderfully manipulative Widow Corney (Kathleen Brentwood) and the suitably pompous and disturbingly lecherous Mr Bumble (Mark Ferguson).

After causing a disturbance (committing the heinous crime of asking for more gruel) he is sold to the Sowerberrys (Nick Hughes and Amy Taylor) with their sneering disdain and unfoundedly high opinion of themselves. Their duet, That’s Your Funeral, cuts and thrusts with barbed comments, making Mr Bumble’s well delivered, ‘I don’t think this song is funny’ all the more entertaining.

Oliver fits most suitably with Mr Brownlow (David John) and Mrs Bedwin (Jane Robertson whose calm understanding contrasts delightfully with Nancy’s fiercer instincts). The cameo roles are all generally strong, although a couple of the males are teetering on the cusp of caricature – if they plunge over that precipice as the season persists it will be to the detriment of the show.

The ending is always problematic in this musical as all the loose ends are hastily tied up and the implausible explanations offered, but the cheeky Cockney character (and yes, it does help if you have the accent) shines through. Whereas some productions are epic and grandiose, this one is cheerfully engaging – consider yourself well in, indeed.

The Red Cross - will be there

“When I needed a neighbour were you there, were you there?

When I needed a neighbour were you there?”

This used to be one of my favourite hymns at school. I loved the idea of global benevolence; the thought that someone could give without judgement and without expecting to receive. I liked to think that was a basic tenet of society and that compassion for one’s fellow man was what raised us above beasts (that and an appreciation of art in all its forms).

When I was a child I joined the Red Cross. My sisters and I (although, strangely not my brother from memory) went to a hall every week and were taught first aid, basic hygiene and survival techniques. Some of the things I learned there – how to find clean water or tie a tourniquet – have never left me.

There were many occasions where we helped make up care-parcels; sometimes we sent hand-knitted socks and scarves to people in cold countries far away; sometimes we sent tins of baked beans and canned fish to the old folk’s home down the road. We laid a wreath at the cenotaph in memory of all the dead soldiers who fought for our freedom and we helped collect money to send to disaster-ravaged communities. The aim of the red cross is to help people in crisis, whoever and wherever they are.

The Red Cross is still one of the charities to which I give money through a monthly donation. I admire their egalitarian principles and their universal humanity. I am not alone – the movement has 97 million volunteers worldwide. As an example of what they do, you can’t go past the ‘Boxing Day Tsunami’ in which aprroximately 230,000 people lost their lives across 14 countries.

Since December 2004, The Red Cross has built over 51,000 homes, 289 hospitals and clinics, and 161 schools in tsunami-affected areas such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and India. Regardless of faith or ethnicity, over 680,000 people now have access to an improved water source, 340,000 people have access to improved waste management facilities, and over 277,000 people have been certified or skilled in community-based first aid and psychosocial support.

Whether they are providing transport to make sure elderly patients keep their hospital appointments on the Kapiti Coast, providing facilities to collect essential blood donations, or providing shelter to those devastated by earthquake in Haiti, Red Cross volunteers are donating their time and skills to help those less fortunate than themselves. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s a credo worth following.

"Wherever you travel I'll be there, I'll be there,

Wherever you travel I'll be there.

And the creed and the colour and the name won't matter, I'll be there."

If you want to make a difference, start by making a donation.