Friday Five: My Week in Theatre

This has been a busy week. Theatres are back and I'm thrilled! It does mean that all the shows are coming along at once, so here are some brief notes on the things I have seen in the last six days.

1. In Their Footsteps - Ashley Adelman and Infinite Variety Productions, Courtyard Studio: The blurb for this play reads, ‘Based on the true accounts of five extraordinary women, In Their Footsteps explores the experiences of women working in war zones, their struggles to be recognised heroes, their loss of faith, and the friendships they forget in the face of trauma. More than anything, it reminds us of the histories we hear… and importantly, the ones we don’t.’ The five women are engaging and sympathetic with their verbatim accounts of their service in different capacities from nursing to morale boosting (donut dollies) to intelligence work and librarians. Even though the accents are greatly variable (I'm pretty sure one of them isn't even trying), it is still poignant and powerful. We will remember them.
2. Fly By Night - ANU Musical Theatre Collective, Kambri Drama Theatre: I’ve never even heard of it before, but, due to a friends' involvement, I went along to see it. The musical is set around the incident of the mass black-out on the northeast of the USA and Canada in 1965. The structure is based on a narrator who makes several false starts with the story and skips back and forth through time to tell the tale of a love triangle within a circular orbit. It's quite cute and charming and achingly self-aware with songs about becoming a star... or not. Of course I'm biased but my friend (Samuel Farr) was superb and his number, Cecily Smith, about how he met his dear departed wife is a highlight of the show. "Life is not the things that we do; it's who we're doing them with."

3. Keating! - Queanbeyan Players, Belconnen Community Theatre: So, I don't particularly like musicals and I don't know a lot about Australian politics, having moved here in 2012 (all I knew about Paul Keating was that he 'inappropriately' touched the Queen in 1992), so I'm probably not the target market for this. But I loved it. Sarah Hull directs a deceptively simple character-driven cabaret-style show with each performer hitting all the right notes, and my goodness, I could even hear all the words, which is rare enough in a play these days, let alone a musical. From rock to rap, jazz to hip-hop and tango to calypso, the band plays to perfection and the genres and styles are all delivered with respect and ridicule in equal measure. Steven O'Mara oozes charisma and miasma as the titular role, and all the rest of the cast play the supporting and undermining ensemble with chutzpah and panache. This is bloody brilliant!
4. Swansong - Canberra Theatre Centre, Courtyard Studio: Andre de Vanny delivers a powerful performance as Austin 'Occi' Byrne, the illegitimate child of a single mother in the Catholic west of 1960s Ireland. The one-man show draws the audience into his world of explosive emotion and violence. Written by Conor McDermottroe and directed by Greg Carroll, the drama reeks of misplaced testosterone. It is deeply uncomfortable as the audience is encouraged to side with Occi, a man who stalks and punches women, and callously commits murder because he doesn't like a name he is called. The brutal bravado is tempered with charm, humour, and severe undiagnosed mental health issues. Andre de Vanny is excellent at telling his story, but it's not one that should have any excuses.

5. Ruthless! - Echo Theatre Company, The Q, Queanbeyan: What a delight to see a musical featuring six strong roles for women, who each get to shine and compete for the limelight. Eight-year-old Tina Denmark (Jessy Heath) has talent and she is desperate to use it. Her mother Judy (Jenna Roberts) is horrified when she discovers the lengths to which her daughter will go to secure a part in the school play (aided by talent-spotter Sylvia St. Croix played by Dee Farnell), until she discovers it's not just a part; it's the lead! Director Jordan Best brings out the high camp and stereotypical bitchiness of musical theatre performance in this dark comedy homage which is as fun as it is twisted. The vibrant set design by Ian Croker makes us feel like we're in a 1950/60s pop art/ TV sitcom, but there is nothing canned about this laughter. The vocals are stunning; the choreography humorously self-aware; the harmonies are on point; and the Bechdel Test is passed with flying colours.
6. The Wider Earth - Dead Puppet Society, Trish Wadley Production and Glass Half Full Productions, The Playhouse: Charles Darwin's voyage of biological and self discovery aboard HMS Beagle (begun in 1831) is stunningly portrayed in this outstanding production. The ensemble cast moves the story and the scenery forward with aplomb as offices, ships, jungles and downs are conjured up with projections and simple on-stage effects. Finches, giant Galapagos tortoises, fireflies, butterflies, iguanas, turtles, sharks, shoals of fish and a scene-stealing armadillo are represented by skeleton puppets with incredible personality. Tom Conroy leads the cast as the young Charles Darwin full of questioning wonder and wrestling with the science and/or faith dichotomy which still continues to trouble civilization. This is a thoroughly engaging and immersive theatrical experience: highly recommended as a spectacle for all ages to enjoy. 

The Wider Earth

Friday Five: Gems from The Sapphires

The Sapphires (2012)

Dir: Wayne Blair

This is what every review will say about this film: ‘feel-good Australian version of Dreamgirls, loosely based on a true story’. That’s because it’s actually quite accurate. Four girls (three sisters and their cousin) sing cute harmonies in 1958 at a concert in the Cummeragunja Mission, a remote outback station. Cut to 1968 (via images of the times – protest marches; JFK; Muhammad Ali) and they are a poor aboriginal family living in a shack, but clean and loved, and singing around the house.

They want to go to the local town to sing in a talent quest, although Julie (Jessica Mauboy) isn’t allowed to go because she’s too young, although she’s the best singer. The other sisters try to hitch a lift but end up walking. “It’s because we’re black” says the oldest, Gail (Deborah Mailman) matter-of-factly. “No, it’s because you’re ugly” replies Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell), setting the tone. There is no self-pity, but there is plenty of attitude.

 

The talent quest is a joke, compèred by the fabulous Chris O’Dowd as drunken Irish soul devotee, Dave Lovelace. Julie joins the girls on stage as they are about to sing and they perform a Merle Haggard song – beautifully. But half of the audience leave. Overt racism ensures the winner is a woman with a woeful rendition of a Carpenters number. Lovelace knows this is a travesty – “Country music is not my thing, but those girls can sing!” He’s sacked for his dissent and drunkenness; he needs a job; they need a manager; it’s a match made in Cummeragunja.

The Cummeragunja Songbirds

The girls see an advert for singers wanted to perform for the forces in Vietnam and they want to audition but they need their cousin Kay (Shari Sebbens) to complete them, so they go to the city to recruit her. She is at a Tupperware party with her white friends who shut the door in Aboriginal faces, but she breaks away from them to rejoin her old group. They begin to practice, and it’s all about the singing.

Chris O’Dowd steals the show as he has great delivery and he gets all the best lines. He persuades the girls they need him – “Without me, there’s no you” – and he gets them the gig through an unscrupulous promoter, Myron (Don Battee). He teaches the girls about soul, and if it seems odd that a white Irish man is preaching soul music to black women who aren’t even included in their national census, the irony is entirely intentional.

Chris O'Dowd as Dave Lovelace - he's a soul man!

They get the gig; they change their name to The Sapphires (from the Cummeragunja Songbirds); they go to Vietnam; they sing. The music is good and the playlist includes fantastic numbers such as Hold On, I’m Coming, Who’s Loving You?, I Heard it Through the Grapevine, I’ll Take You There, and What a Man. The comic contrast between their natural accents and the poignant numbers they belt out is reminiscent of the regional dissonance in The Commitments.

 

One, Two, Three, Four!

Dave wants them to ‘entertain’ the troops: the costumes must be “classy with cleavage”. Sexy Cynthia takes the diversion a little too far, a charming but clumsy Marine falls (literally) for Kay, and Julie just soaks up all the experience and reflects it in her amazing voice. The attitude is sensuous and compassionate (skinniness is dull and distant) and when Martin Luther King is shot, the girls perform their most soulful show ever after Dave tells them, “Tell me how a black marine feels tonight. I know you’re hurting but I need you to sing.”

 

Relationships are formed and broken, but this is the weaker part of the film. Kay and Gail fight, and we learn the source of their difference when Gail accuses her pale-skinned cousin of only being black now there’s money in it. We realise how unfair this is when a flashback to 1958 shows the government cars pulling up at that original concert. Kay is taken as part of the Stolen Generation because she can “pass as white”.

 

Gail failed in her duty to look after her and suffers regret and bitterness, accusing Kay of turning from them, although she was raised independently and only allowed to see them at her mother’s funeral. When the military escort pulls out of Vietnam abandoning the girls to the violence, Gail again feels the burden of being in charge.

 

 

What is really unbelievable is the relationship between Gail and Dave. They spar verbally from the start, but no sparks fly. He describes her as a “mouth on legs – a defensive, argumentative old witch”, but this is understandable because she’s a “momma bear looking after baby cubs”. Yes, it’s understandable, but it doesn’t make her loveable and the improbable romance is unconvincing, appearing tacked on to the end for a cheesy finish.

 

Indeed, the entire ending is cheesy, as the girls return to perform in their home town and we see the four stars of the Southern Cross in the sky above. The four stars turn into the ‘original’ Sapphires (in case we missed the point): sisters Laurel Robinson and Lois Peeler, and their cousins Beverley Briggs and Naomi Mayers. The film is a lighthearted fluff piece with a few deeper issues and a great soundtrack which probably worked better in its original theatre form. As all the other reviews have already said.

 

5 Great Lines from Dave Lovelace:

1. "Do you sing anything other than that country and western shite?"
2. "This may have escaped your notice, but you’re black, and you’re singing country and western. It’s just wrong."
3. “90% of recorded music is shite. The rest is soul.”
4. “When I met you, you were doing that country and western thing, and that’s fine; we all make mistakes.”
5. “Country and Western is about loss. So is Soul. But In Country and Western you’ve lost, given up, and are sitting at home whining about it. Soul is about struggling with everything you’ve got to get it back.”