Friday Five: More Theatre

Lexi Sekuless as the prosecutor in Terror

1. Terror - Lexi Sekuless Productions, Mill Theatre on Dairy Road - This is a really interesting and interactive piece with audience voting on a jury decision. A pilot (played by Mark Lee, who can stand looking inscrutable for a long time) has shot down a plane full of hijacked passengers, on his own initiative and contrary to an official order. The lawyers arguing for the prosecution and defence (Lexi Sekuless and Tim Sekuless respectively) deliver convincing arguments and appeal to the audience directly. As the judge, Tracy Noble is inimitable in her summing up and control of the situation. Director Kim Beamish has a tight rein on the cast and the raw, industrial set, with expertly choregraphed moments representing the dramatic events and the claustrophobic atmosphere both of a targeted plane and a tense courtroom. 
2. Streetcar Named Desire - Free-Rain, ACT Hub - This is known as a vehicle for female actors to shine, and there is, indeed, great acting from the female leads, although the men have a little more issue being authentically oafish, and the ensemble is uneven, with some of the muttering being distracting rather than supportive of the main cast. Amy Kowalczuk as Blanche DuBois is one of the best Blanches I've ever seen. It's a vile role but she approaches it with depth and nuance. Fluttery hand gestures and quick movements highlight her stressed (bordering on neurotic) attitude. Her playful sister moment with Stella (Meaghan Stewart) is beautiful as a glimpse of what could have been. The switch to flirtation and girlishness powerfully shifts to predatory, and the moment when she realises she has lost everything and has no autonomy is frightening and heartbreaking. Alex Hoskison as Stanley Kowalski is powerful and wounded with an inner strength and plenty of charisma, but not brutish or disgusting enough. He doesn't play ignorant and always looks as though he has a plan, making him defensive rather than cruel. Meaghan Stewart as Stella is charming and convincingly caught between her man and her sister, wanting to do right by both and failing to please either. Her compassion and need shine through on stage with only occasional slips into the actor instead of the character, with accent and mannerisms. Lachlan Ruffy gives the character of Harold Mitchell more nuance than it often receives, wanting to be the gentleman and look after the vulnerable, but fiercely wounded when he thinks he has been duped. He is the real toxic male of this production. Sarah Hull's Eunice is a perfect antidote to the heightened situation of the downstairs flat - she is earthy and sensual, putting up with the situation and trying to find positives where she can, providing sympathy, understanding and compassion as a real good Southern neighbour should. The tight, cramped set implies the situation and environment well, although there are some issues with sightlines. The bathroom is such a large presence in the play that it could have been incorporated, and there is no obvious indication where Blanche is actually sleeping. Tennessee Williams has a very specific attitude to light expressing truth in his plays, which can be intrusive but works well here. Blanche says, 'I don't want realism. I want magic' and this is reflected in the chase light scene and the abrupt changes. As she is afraid of bright lights and prefers the softening glow, more shade and contrast could have been provided. Sound is very clear and obvious - perhaps too much so, as it comes in single chunks rather than spread throughout - but the nightmare tune ending in a gunshot is well played. 





3. American Idiot - Queanbeyan Players, The Q - It's a juke box musical with privileged young people trying desparately hard to be desparate and hard. Three wannabe incel lads (Johnny, Tunny and Will, played by John Whinfield, Darcy Kinsella and Zac Izzard) want to get out of town and have adventures, seeing women as handbrakes to their careering egos. As it is sung through, there are some strong songs (Holiday, Know Your Enemy, She's a Rebel, We Are the Waiting, and the titular track) but not a lot in between. The choreography seems very out of place and era (there is a lot of jumping, hand flicking and weird lurching, which is more reminiscent of Michael Jackson's Thriller than post-punk angst), whereas the inclusion of some older, steadying hands in the ensemble (I'm looking at you, David Cannell), may bring experience to the stage but their presence is questionable. A standout is Declan Pigram in the role of St Jimmy, a creepy, sunglasses-wearing dealer who is revealed to be a drug-addled manifestation of Johnny's subconscious (occasionally portrayed by Green Day's lead singer and guitarist, Billie Joe Armstrong). It doesn't really matter what the audience feel as this is paean to the fans and the friends; the cast all have a fantastic time (and I'm sure they all think they look cute in their costumes - they do), as is exemplified by them draping their arms around each other in the high-school-esque final number/ curtain call, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). This is a passion project for director, Bradley McDowell, and I like the laughably faux-punk Green Day just fine, but this doesn't add anything to my appreciation of the band or their music.
4. Crime and Punishment - The Street, Street Two - In this claustrophobic production, Christopher Samuel Carroll plays the anti-hero of Dostoyevsky's novel with a range of emotion that compels the audience to side with him at times despite his heinous deed. His vocal and physical presentations cover a gamut of feelings and experiences that are quite exquisite. PJ Williams is remarkably phlegmatic as the inspector who goads his friend/ confidant/ suspect into a confession (come on - no one can accuse this of spoilers since the seminal work of psychological fiction was first published in 1866). Josephine Gazzard is perhaps the weak link as she plays all the female characters, some with a lack of focus and a listlessness that threatens to derail the play. The adaptation by Marilyn Campbell-Lowe and Curt Columbus condenses the towering novel into a mere 90 minutes, which could have been even more taut if Sonia, the street-walker character, had more impetus and energy. Designer Kathleen Kershaw has given us levels and surfaces to consider, with the idea of self-reflection never far from the surafce.
5. The Woman in Black - PW Productions, Woodward Productions & Neil Gooding Productions, Canberra Theatre Centre - The play relies upon actors who elicit empathy and technical elements that create suspense. Fortunately, this production has all that in spades. John Waters plays Arthur Kipps, the narrator of the story, complete with framing device, and proceeds to assume all the other parts with aplomb. Daniel Macpherson acts out the story that Waters narrates, as the young Arthur Kipps, and the unreliable narrator trope weaves in and out of the production with fascinating and thoroughly engaging stagecraft. The set is sparse (designer - Michael Holt), allowing the audience to picture the scenes as described in their imagination, the lighting is effective (Kevin Sleep) and the sound dramatic (Sebastian Frost). The rocking chair that rocks by itself; the door that opens with no-one there; the galloping horse and the sudden jump scares are all genuinely scary. Director, Robin Herford has given us a wonderfully atmospheric piece of theatre, which is worth going out in the cold to experience.

Against All Odds: In Memoriam

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Viking (2023)

Pp. 375

In Memoriam is reminiscent of Atonement and Testament of Youth as it covers the doomed generation of young men who went to war and never returned, either because they were killed or changed irrevocably. Also discernible are elements of Pat Barker’s Ghost Road novel, wherein, like the WWI poetry we all studied in school with the benefit of hindsight and distance, we can plot the way innocence, ideology and excitement turned to disgust, betrayal, anger and frustration. Our characters transform from schoolboys worried about their families and duty to wounded and embittered cynics whose promise was destroyed by a class system into which they had no input. And at its heart it is a love story between Gaunt and Ellwood, two young men coming of age in a time when homosexuality was still illegal.

Winn writes in linear style, with sharp, clear sentences, avoiding excessive adjectives, but with a profoundly moving poetry. Beginning in a public school, the use of last names and lack of sentiment suggests a world of staunch young classically educated men with notions of empire and glory. Word of the deaths begins to reach the schoolboys back in England – those who hadn’t lied about their age to sign up – and are reported in their school newspaper, The Preshutian. The reports begin cheerily: every man killed dies ‘gallantly in battle’ with a smile and a quip, proud to serve his country. Later, after The Somme, there are just lists of the dead, and the commentary becomes much more sombre. “After the calamity of the past four years, we look to the future with hope, determined to make Cyril’s sacrifice, and that of a thousand others, count towards a lasting harmony in Europe. Let us, like the soldiers of Waterloo, have our century of peace and prosperity, for we have paid for it in blood.”

The irony of hindsight brings poignancy to scenes and situations. “Loos hung over them, a word he felt sure would someday have black meaning, but now was only a whisper of dread in his stomach.” There are echoes of Blackadder Goes Forth in the trench talk, where there is resentment of the upper class automatically being made officers and promoted to captains, having authority over men much older and more experienced than them. One character exclaims bitterly, “My school didn’t train me to rule an empire”, and when he is told they are more realistically losing an empire, another character interjects, “What rot! Losing the empire – look at how the Gurkhas fight! They love England just as much as we do, anyone can see that.” Meanwhile the men are falling without class distinction in a horrifically mundane manner. “At nine, they went over the top. West’s head was shot off before they had gone two feet. Elwood paused to look at his brains. Pritchard had always said he didn’t have any, but there they were, grey and throbbing and clotted with blood.”

Poetry is present in the straightforward descriptions of the terrain, “The rain came down in ropes. They climbed quietly out of the trenches and crawled through the poisonous, corpse-studded No Man’s Land. It was usually silent, but tonight, the thousands of wounded groaned like a ship in a storm.” The situation becomes so surreal that there is no equivalent behaviour. “They did not even run, but plodded to their deaths, like – There was no comparison. No animal on earth would have suffered it. No creature would walk so knowingly, so hopelessly into the jaws of death.”

The section set in a prisoner of war camp is almost a comic diversion. “It’s astonishing how well an English boarding school prepares one for prison.” All the prisoners are bored, chatty and trying to escape, while the guards are generally good-natured and long-suffering. “The men spent their time galloping around the dining hall, antagonising the guards, reading and rereading Adam Bede, and, most notably, plotting elaborate escapes.” They are happy to assist each other, as Gaunt notes, “It was much easier to be brave for your friends than for yourself.”

After years of erotically-charged friendship, Gaunt and Ellwood finally admit their love for each other. “A sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.” Gaunt and Ellwood are subsequently separated and assume each other’s death, yet love persists despite all, in a romance like that in The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. As in The Imitation Game, men who fought for their country are not accepted there due to their sexuality, so many of them leave and go to Brazil. “Gaunt thought of the darkling plain, of skating in the winter, of crunching over frosted grass early in the morning, of bluebell meadows in spring. There was nothing he wanted more than to spend the rest of his life on Wiltshire country lanes, Elwood at his side. It was what he had fought for, what his friends had died for.”

In Memoriam is Alice Winn’s debut novel. It may not be an original topic, but it is excellently written. She writes captivatingly about things of which she can have no first-hand experience: life in the trenches, male sex, and English public schools with a ring of authenticity. I look forward to her next offering.