Apparently That’s What Happened…
by Bryan Lewis
…though exactly what it was, well, I’ll leave that for you to decide. Jo Lloyd’s latest work is an intriguing exploration of the nature of witnessing and perceiving, observing and partaking, affecting and being affected by. As soon as the audience is invited in to the vast space of the Meat Market in North Melbourne we begin to observe each other. Jenny Hector’s superb set comprises of a vast crimson circular floor around which we sit. Upon the floor are several man size cut out figures in various states of revelling. These figures suggest that what we are about to witness takes place at a public event, a party perhaps, or some night club? The soundscape by Duane Morrison and JDFranzke alludes to similar territory, a contemporary blend of ambient electronics and thumping beats, the sort of music contemporary party goers are familiar with, suggesting vast warehouse parties or underground alternative clubs. It’s a fantastic score, providing a solid backbone for the dance work itself, offering plenty of rhythms and tones for the dancers to play with and deliberately work against. Having the audience in the round further reiterates the exploration of the retelling of incidents, we become a continuation of the cut out figures, we are therefore implicated in whatever will follow. Throughout the piece the lights always spill onto the audience, faces are aglow on the peripheries of stage in various states of observing. But exactly what is the event we are seeing? Are we at a party, a nightclub, the streets of some disturbed suburban estate? And is it a murder, a rape, a fight, a drug induced scenario of seduction? Of course this remains unclear, as it must, and it is this uncertainty the work attempts to examine.
The choreography itself at times frustrated me, and at times gave me deep pleasure. I am always struck by how bizarre and abstract contemporary dance can be, how obtuse and impenetrable for an audience member not in familiar territory. It is probably because my date for the evening had quietly confided to me that he had never been to a dance show in his life before that I kept viewing the piece through his eyes. I could tell something was being told to me, something was being said, but exactly what it was eluded me. My eyes kept shifting from the dancers to the audience surrounding them, I was amused by the stern and querulous expressions I saw, the searching gaze as people tried to make sense of what they were seeing. It’s an intriguing art form, contemporary dance; I’m always aware of trying to ascertain that place where the audience and the work meet and how comfortable that meeting is.
Jo Lloyd is evidently a choreographer of talent and intelligence. The work is intricate and precise, frenetic and fractured, held and free flowing, dictated by the sound scape and working to a rhythm of it’s own all at once. However, for me I took a while to warm to it. With such an abstract movement vocabulary the human bodies in front of me transform into something robotic, vacant, absent of feeling. The ominous sense I begin to experience is a result of the sound, the lights, the atmosphere created, but not necessarily from the dance itself. I found moments repetitive and too obscure, and the scene and costume changes felt messy and unnecessary, breaking the flow and preventing me from being immersed too deeply. Saying that, the second last sequence, the three dancers dressed in puffy white suits, was wonderful; a satisfying blend of solo and acutely timed group work that I found very satisfying. As to was Luke Georges solo, always a dancer of immense precision and connection to the material, which for me hinted strongly towards what the work was trying to communicate.
Overall it’s a strong and well executed dance work, but I’m not sure how accessible I found it. My date commented that he was mostly entertained if entirely baffled, not in itself a bad summary at all. There were a few heated discussions in the foyer about the merits of the work, which is perfectly fitting for a piece that deals with perception as it’s subject matter, though for the most part the appreciative first night audience were in agreement that it was a work of skill and intelligence. I still yearn though for something more human in the work, something more heart felt and emotionally connected. The work and I never fully met, it kept me at arms length and denied me the experience of being fully involved and affected. Perhaps just like a party goer who witnesses some terrible event but continues to party on regardless, the night a continuation of drink and dancing, the event merely a conversation piece for some other, later, party.
The Arts House
Meat Market, 5 Blackwood Street, North Melbourne,
until Sunday June 29.
Bookings: 9369 0096 or www.easytix.com.au/artshouse
MIFF 2008 Media Launch
by Brendan McCallum
Its almost that time of year again, when Melbourne’s (and, indeed, the world’s) cinephile population take it upon themselves to leave the warm confines of their homes, hotels, hovels and editing suites, and brave the winter cold to taste the flavours of grand celluloid conconctions from the world over. The Melbourne International Film Festival is coming up, launching tonight at the Sofitel. Compared to last year’s intimate Toff in Town setting, the 2008 launch seemed a bit corporate-box in its filmfest meets five-star surrounds; even so, such events are not measured by their sponsors, but by their content, and Richard Moore stepped up to the podium looking and sounding supremely relaxed and assured about this year’s programme. It was, he casually remarked, ‘an antidote to more commercial cinema - not that we mind being commercial.’
For his second festival, Moore appears to have displayed all the light touch and deep insight present in his first effort last year. His eye for the diversity of style among film makers and the tastes of audiences has been reflected somewhat in the byline of this year’s festival: Everyone’s a critic. There’ll certainly be a lot of discussion, with 277 films and 100 shorts brought together from around the globe.
This article continues, click here to read on…
2008 Australian Dance Awards: The Winners
by Spark
The State Hall of the Arts Centre was the venue for the 2008 Australian Dance Awards last Sunday evening, and a massive night it was too for the industry - the inaugral night for Melbourne as home to the award ceremony (confirmed until 2010).
Shaun Parker, interviewed previously here on Spark, was a winner, as were Garry Stewart and Paul White for their creative work on Honour Bound in choreography and dance. The proverbial Everyman was also present amongst the winners, (as he proverbially is Everywhere) with the unstoppable Hugh Jackman securing a gong - but here, without further ado, is the full list…
The Winners of the 2008 Australian Dance Awards
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE IN A STAGE MUSICAL
Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz, Choreographer: Kenny Ortega and Kelley Abbey
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A COMPANY
Lucy Guerin Inc for Structure & Sadness, Choreographer: Lucy Guerin
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN INDEPENDENT DANCE
Shaun Parker for This Show Is About People, Producer: Marguerite Pepper Productions
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE DANCER
Lucinda Dunn in Don Quixote, The Australian Ballet
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE DANCER
Paul White in Honour Bound, Choreographer: Garry Stewart
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN CHOREOGRAPHY
Garry Stewart for Honour Bound, Commissioned by Sydney Opera House & Malthouse Theatre
AWARD FOR DANCE ON FILM
Sue Healey for Will Time Tell, Producer: Sue Healey
AWARD FOR SERVICES TO DANCE
Dally Messenger & Karen van Ulzen
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN DANCE EDUCATION
Helen Cameron
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
Paul Hammond OAM
Jerome Robbins: A Celebration
by Lesley Chow
Australian Ballet
Arts Centre, State Theatre
5-16 June
Anticipation is something the Australian Ballet does well. Every time the curtain goes up, we’re guaranteed an image of sharpness and surprise, as if we’re closing in on a Hitchcock still. In The Cage, the surprise doesn’t end; what we’re seeing is a race of female insects bent on destroying a single male. This piece introduces us to a different sort of ballet woman: spiky and agitated. The insect women are little more than flesh-covered sticks, yet strangely alluring – as their queen, the exceptionally tall and sinuous Olivia Bell makes the concept work. Recently promoted to principal artist, Bell was magic in Balanchine’s Apollo last year; she made that static piece come alive for me. What seems like closed choreography on another dancer looks utterly smooth and effortless on her – her long body seems to go through an extra series of revolutions.
This tribute to choreographer Jerome Robbins covers a range of styles; Robbins’ talent was always hard to classify, given his work in Broadway, film, musical comedy and ballet. The late work A Suite of Dances gives us a master-class in the classic Robbins moves, from the slow turn and the jubilant arms-up (which we know from Gene Kelly), to moments of introspection. What’s distinctive about Robbins is that even his most exhilarating scenes tend to be grounded in a satire of everyday movement – from carrying an umbrella to looking at one’s own reflection. Despite its fantastic premise, The Cage ends on a note of cocktail melodrama, as two women toast their success at expelling an intruder.
Madeleine Eastoe is perhaps the company’s best actor – always animated, always expressively in character. Earlier this year, in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, our attention was fixed on the smallest flick of her finger and wrist – or the way she’d suddenly change tone mid-move, leaving us emotionally suspended. She makes a case for the petite dancer as mischievous life force (Bart Cook, the Robbins repetiteur, deliberately cast tall and short women for whimsy.) In The Concert, Robbins’ pantomime of social relations, Eastoe plays a debutante with total emotional consistency – even as the entire cast turn into butterflies, floating around the stage.
The Australian Ballet is flying right now; along with Kirsty Martin and Rachel Rawlins, they have a suite of extraordinary female dancers, and I’d love to see more of Bell. Perhaps the key is the opening image: marking every scene with a composition that’s tight and alarming – starting on a dramatic high then never letting us down.
Frost/Nixon
by Bryan Lewis
“Success in America is better than success anywhere else…” says the character of David Frost (John Adam) towards the end of Act I and it’s easy to feel writer Peter Morgan feels the same. His play Frost/Nixon has had a sterling reception worldwide, premiering in London and followed by a hit season in New York. It’s easy to see why. The script is sharp, witty, insightful and at times surprisingly tender; making easily watch-able what could have been a dry piece of docudrama. As a writer he has beautifully covered similar areas with his screenplays for The Queen and The Last King of Scotland, and he has a wonderful knack for fleshing out and humanising well known figures, taking artistic liberties with well documented meetings and fashioning from them believable theatrical scenes that entertain and intrigue in equal measure.
His script is the real star of this latest production by the MTC, which is by no means not good, it’s just not great. Rodger Hodgman’s direction seems perfunctory as apposed to inspired, though I’ll admit it’s not an easy production to stage. It’s definitely a “talking heads” piece, quite literally. Most of the second act is made up of the infamous interview between Frost and Nixon (Marshall Napier), an interview charged with the intensity of a bullfighter and his bull. Not easy to achieve said intensity with two actors sitting on chairs staring at each other. Richard Robert’s set goes some way in helping this theatrical conundrum, by providing a long screen that stretches along the width of the stage above all the action. During the crucial interview we get to watch the actors faces in close up on the screen, a device which allows the actors to give wonderfully nuanced and subtle television performances in these moments, but the problem is that you only watch the screens. What is occurring live on the stage in front of us is made somehow redundant. This screen device also means that it needs to be made sense of during the rest of the play, and so we get lame projections signifying the various other locations we visit during the piece, i.e. roads when we are in a car, close up of plates when we are in a restaurant and, for some reason, intergalactic space when we are in an aeroplane. This large screen dominates the set, literally slicing the stage in half vertically, under which a black revolving stage is put to predictable use. It’s a tricky one. The script dives and dances from location to conversation in a very filmic way, apart from the many direct audience address monologues. Perhaps I feel that the director and designer took a rather obvious and easy approach, robbing the play of the staunch theatrical tension this production needs.
It’s a great story though, a foppish, humorous, popular TV host getting a formidable American ex-president to confess to his part in the largest government scandal in America’s history when no court of law or high-paid lawyer could. It would be akin to Rove MacManus getting Bill Clinton to finally admit that “Yes, I had sex with Monica Lewinsky,” on his Sunday show. As Frost, John Adam presents a cross between British TV host Jonathan Ross and Mike Walsh. It is a warm, humorous, delicate performance, and very easy to watch. Marshall Napier is very good as Nixon, a role that could too easily become a mimicry of this well-documented figure. Instead we get to glimpse something of the complex man himself, and Napier succeeds in not allowing us to judge him too quickly or too harshly The rest of the performances are fine too, David Tredinnick in particular as David Zelnick, a researcher and producer for the show.
However, there is something slightly lazy about the whole production. The stakes never feel quite high enough, the tension never really mounts to a fully satisfying denouement. It is a story and script full of passion and an earnest exploration of the nature of power and the flawed human beings we, through democracy, give power to. It also examines the power of television as a tool and weapon in politics. Both Frost and Nixon are presented at a time when their entire professional futures rested on this one interview, this one moment, this one question that brought down a king and made him admit to the criminal inside. I can’t help but feel that this is another adequate production by the MTC of a script that could have been dealt with more adventurously, more passionately and with more theatrical vigour than it has been. Still, it’s a great story and a very enjoyable theatrical experience, though more akin to a considered editorial in a newspaper than the fiery street protest the idealist character of Jim Reston (Teague Rook), a long time Nixon researcher, wishes it was.
Exit
by Carl Nilsson-Polias
When people think of Swedish cinema they tend, depending on their tendencies, to think either of steamy sauna porn or the collected works of the recently departed Ingmar Bergman. But between these opposite poles of cinematic expression lie a whole range of movies that range from the compelling tragedies of Lukas Moodysson to the sweet comedies of Colin Nutley. Yet foreign-language genre films don’t usually make their ways onto our screens so Exit is in rather rare company. Starring the cheekbones-from-hell of Mads Mikkelsen, this film rips across a blistering 97 minutes of twisting plot and run-n-punch action. In a Fugitive-like set up, Thomas (Mikkelsen) has to clear his name by escaping from custody and dispatching the real villain himself. Along the way are more speedboats than I thought any family would need, thick-necked Arab and Danish thugs, secret compartments and a fiery climax. It aint The Seventh Seal and it aint Uppsala Girls Go Crazy but it is Swedish, it is thrilling and even if you caught it at MIFF last year, the DVD is worth grabbing.
Available now through Madman Entertainment.
New Zealand Dance
by Lesley Chow
Terrain and You are Not Alone…You are Just in New Zealand
at Dancehouse, Melbourne, 4-8 June 2008
The opening of Terrain shows choreographers Guy Ryan and Malia Johnston surrounded by a miniature city of their own making. Johnston lies on a set of wooden blocks, while Ryan bustles around her with a conscientious air - manipulating tiny cars attached to threads, planting trees, and occasionally removing a block to create a skyscraper. Sometimes he ignores the sleeping giantess; occasionally he calls on her assistance to, say, guide the path of a car, or build a freeway around her form.
The concept of this show was suggestive on many levels. These dancers don’t move freely - they’re hamstrung for fear of disrupting the architecture of their Lilliputian world. So there’s the idea that bodies operate according to the laws of an invisible city. Rather than focusing on the life-size dancers, we’re whimsically concentrated on the model town beneath them. When formal dancing does occur, it seems to take place on an improbably giant scale. Most of all, in the swings between play and exhaustion, there was the sense of a paradise of two people, endlessly recreating their own universe.
The four pieces in You Are Not Alone…, a showcase of New Zealand dance, were less satisfying overall. While each dance had a promising premise, the performers’ moves were generally not striking enough to arrest attention. Broken by Design II (directed by Johnston and choreographed by the four dancers) had the potentially great idea of creating several duets, removing one partner from each duo, and then fusing the “broken” parts together - yet this structurally ingenious notion wasn’t visible in the performance. It would have been more interesting if we’d had the sense of a missing term during each solo.
The most innovative piece was INK, where Maria Dabrowska allowed smoke and obscurity to cloud most of the stage, using the light to direct and reveal actions; at times, we could feel the impetus of dance moves in total darkness. The lighting created shapes both eerie and absurd - for instance, a series of extravagant postures was rendered moody and grandiose by the low-key light. This kind of inventive thinking about dance as a language of effects - as seen in Terrain - was the strongest aspect of the evening.
Rick Amor: A Single Mind
by Lesley Chow
Rick Amor occupies an odd, canonical position in the art world - it’s as if a Symbolist or Nabi of the 1890s had been plucked out of context, and relieved of his surrounding movement and history. His “timeless” pictures relate to dreams and imagination in the most literal sense - they are landscapes set in deserted cities, or subterranean future-worlds. In terms of mood and mystery, Amor could be compared with the abstract painter Shivalee Lees, but his pictures are less formally innovative than hers; when you look at her canvases, the surfaces seem flat one moment, upright and hazy the next. In addition, Amor’s fondness for hulking, sphinx-like forms reminds me of the English artist Richard Billingham, who also shows beautiful and noble beasts in desolate settings. Yet in Amor, the desiccated tusks are less descriptive of pain than a generalized melancholy: looming heads pasted over a wasteland.
So the question remains: why is this brand of “timelessness” being produced today? Does Amor’s work offer more than the basic premise of space travel? In his most persuasive pictures, Amor manages to evoke a consistent set of myths behind everyday experience. The Call (1998-9) shows a banker in a lofty room, hunkering down to close a deal, while a cityscape of rooftops and figureheads unfolds beneath him. In this case, the mythology works because it feeds into our sense of a world controlled by strange demands from bureaucrats: the exotic and the fabulous are all in line with the executive’s power to summon.
The Ante Room (1993) anticipates the style of the David Lynch films Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. In a dark chamber, three people anxiously await news - perhaps news of ruin, since one man strikes a resigned pose and the other is locked in an attitude of despair. The third character is a blonde woman, who sits forward a little more calmly - expectantly, as if she has a part to play rather than a verdict to hear. The light is minimal, but it falls across her legs and curtain of hair. Despite their predicament, the men must be wondering: do all waiting rooms - and narratives - come equipped with such women? For all we know, she too may be awaiting an audience with a judge, yet her placement suggests that she is not discreetly sexual for nothing.
However, it’s revealing that in his portrait of contemporary novelist Shane Maloney, Amor doesn’t acknowledge that his subject is a creator of hard-boiled, specialist fiction. The Crime Writer (2004) doesn’t touch on Maloney’s own talents, but simply places him in the artist’s house style of mystery. Similarly, Celestial Lane (1989) re-imagines Melbourne’s Chinatown as something close to the set of Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai. Burning Car under the Bridge (1997), though set in a presumably modern city, serves up a daily spectacle in terms of neo-noir.
Amor’s work is unusual because it makes no attempt to question the myths of noir or symbolism. There’s no investigation of why certain objects complicate the eyeline, or how something would attract our gaze, if placed a little differently. He deals in subjects that occupy natural narrative space, things that would invariably stimulate our interest in real life: a lit window, a locked room, a woman with a hidden expression. The one picture in this retrospective that relates to the process of looking is Roman Life (2001). Unlike most of his pictures, this one flushes us with light; we’re in an upscale museum, with white-on-white sculptures. A woman, who appears middle-aged in silhouette, wears a chicly outsize garment: it’s the perfect gallery-going outfit, distinct and Japanese in cut. As she stops to inspect the credits on the wall, a black space opens up beside her. It leads to what might be an older, wood-panelled section of the museum: an area, perhaps, with works that are less pristinely edited - less obviously designed for intellectual attention. Knowing Amor, it’s probably a place where eggs, dinosaurs and frescoes still hold sway. There couldn’t be a clearer marking of an artist’s territory.
Rick Amor: A Single Mind
Heide Museum of Modern Art
22 March - 13 July 2008
Yes
by Spark
There’s a new theatrical kid on the Melbourne block. OpticNerve Performance Group are revving up to present their first work, Yes, an adaptation for the stage of Sally Potter’s film of the same name at fortyfivedownstairs from Thurs May 29th to Sunday June 8th.
Yes is a tale of cross-cultural love, where erotically charged desire meets politics and faith. Bodies collide in a dance of lust and violence, and in haunting visuals manifest a dreamily surreal timelessness, as the driving energy to understand ‘the other’ propels these lovers to go ‘to war’. Check out the trailer below.
Director, Tanya Gerstle, is the current head of acting at VCA and the new company is bred out of that crucible of exciting talent. OpticNerve is “committed to theatrical research; the investigation of performance-making processes and the re-visioning of non theatrical text”. For a sense of the theatrical research that’s gone into Yes, click here.
“When I saw Yes I was astounded by the breadth of ideas economically conveyed and at the same time the emotional impact of the narrative,” says Director Tanya Gerstle. “The dance of the personal and the political was exquisite as was the integrity of the story that needed to be told. I knew at once that we could do something very exciting with this on stage.”
RealTime critic Matthew Clayfield witnessed the development work done on Yes at the end of last year: “Gerstle and her collaborators not only understood the unique and not entirely complimentary powers of theatre and cinema, but also, rather than hamstringing the former by too strictly applying the forms of the latter, found something new and vital in the text by imagining it theatrically.” Read his whole article here.
YES by Sally Potter (Australian Premiere)
Dates/times: 29 May - 8 June, Tues - Sat 8pm, Sat/Sun 5pm
Cost: $25 Full / $20 Concession
Bookings: 03 9662 9966 or www.fortyfivedownstairs.com
Location: fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.
Disclaimer: Several contributors to Spark Online are cast members of Yes.
Michael Brennan: Me (at the …)
by Lesley Chow
The “me” of the title is artist Michael Brennan, who has depicted himself standing in front of Tokyo’s leading art institutions: as a tourist, but also as a kind of a test case. The subject in Me (at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo) has no hope of impacting the huge monument behind him, with its perfect geometry and iconic design of floating circles. However, while the protagonist of Me (at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum) stands confidently beside his landmark, the building plays havoc with his identity. A giant, reflective sculpture has taken his image and ballooned it into the distance - so that an active subject in the foreground turns into a slight figure in front of looming architecture. Is this what institutions do? In this show, they tend to be quite mischievous - they grab your self-image and run off with it, installing it somewhere unexpected.
In Me (at the Mori Art Museum), Brennan stands with mock grandeur at a junction of skyscrapers, which soar behind him. We could think of this gallivanting “me” in terms of, say, “Eloise at the Plaza” - in the sense of a miniature protagonist being lost in a series of funhouses. We might envision the same “me” being reconstituted at different times and locations. Or we could share the regret of most tourists who go abroad, hoping to be visibly altered by travel - that “me” is the only constant in these pictures. What do we do to landmarks - and what do they do to us? Not a lot, perhaps.
This exhibition is showing at Shifted, a wonderful space in Richmond which combines a gallery with multiple studio spaces and an artist-run initiative. The results of having all these artistic interests - which are often segregated - grouped together should be interesting to watch.
Michael Brennan: Me (at the …)
30 April - 17 May
Shifted
Ollie and the Minotaur
by Spark
Plenty of people have already said very nice things about Ollie and the Minotaur, currently playing at fortyfive downstairs, so suffice to say that the team at Spark concur en masse. They’re only on for two more nights, Friday and Saturday (May 9-10), but tickets are still available and they deserve to be seen by hordes.
Click here for tickets, or check out these reviews: theatrenotes, aussietheatre
Next Wave Festival
by Spark
This year, Next Wave adopts the Newtonian theme of Closer Together. Always one of the year’s most exciting and enticingly lo-fi performing arts events, Next Wave presents a massive program of new dance, music and theatre performances at its Festival this May. Next Wave performances can be experienced in Melbourne’s theatres both traditional and new, including down a phone line; over the internet; in seedy hotel rooms; beneath the Tullamarine Freeway; at the Meat Market; in the Black Box at the Arts Centre; in nightclub toilets; and three light years into outer space.
Dates: 15th – 31st May Venues: Various venues around Melbourne, regional Victoria and beyond Tickets: Most events are free. For the few ticketed shows check the Next Wave website for details. Bookings info, show details and everything else: www.nextwave.org.au
The Counterfeiters
by Lesley Chow
Stefan Ruzowitzky’s film takes a fairly old-fashioned approach to its complex subject: the enlisting of Jewish prisoners to forge currency during World War II. In exchange for relative comfort and a chance of survival, a workshop of concentration camp inmates sets about aiding the Nazi war effort, flooding the foreign market with fake pounds and dollars. Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a master counterfeiter before the war, participates with apparent willingness, believing you “either adapt or die.” Yet even before his imprisonment, he’s already a closed, guarded man - little more than a cypher, with the odd craving for food or sexual company.
More interesting, if a little camp, is the baby-faced German officer Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow). A ripe figure with apple cheeks and a receding hairline, he’s another man who believes in adapting his principles during wartime: after a certain point, he can’t afford the “luxury” of anti-Semiticism or Communism. On the opposing side is Burger (August Diehl), a young anti-Nazi activist who retains a handsome dignity in the face of threats.
No-one could miss the obvious themes of selling out versus survival. There should have been more investigation of the way that portraying Jews as tricky or industrious leads to the breakdown of identity - in particular, Sorowitsch’s willingness to adopt craven mannerisms in response to his captors. Still, the movie maintains its impassive style and is cautious about over-dramatising, resisting the “feel-good” ending of last year’s The Lives of Others.
Free Anzac Day Gallipoli Screening
by Spark
This year the Australian Film Institute is popping corks for its 50th Anniversary. To celebrate, the AFI’s putting on its showbiz glad rags and hosting events throughout the year, kicking off with a free screening of Peter Weir’s 1981 award-winning film Gallipoli on Anzac Day, 25th April at 1pm and 7pm at Federation Square, Melbourne. Arrive early to reserve your Federation Square deckchair.
For more information on these screenings and other AFI 50th celebration events visit afi.org.au.
The Scoundrel That You Need (Interview)
by Lesley Chow
The Scoundrel That You Need, directed by James McCaughey, is a rare staging of a play by Alexandr Ostrovsky, the founder of Russian national theatre. Unlike his contemporaries Tolstoy and Turgenev, Ostrovsky focused on the merchant middle class, with its bewildering array of rituals and standards. I spoke with Ben Pfeiffer, who plays the lead role of Glumov - a young schemer who charms his way up the social ladder. Pfeiffer is a graduate of the VCA, and appeared in last year’s productions of The Perjured City and A Dollhouse.
Ostrovsky is considered a giant of Russian theatre, but his work is rarely performed outside Europe. What makes him interesting?
He’s kind of the forefather to Chekhov. There’s something extraordinary in his writing, a certain clunkiness to the language, the way the words fall out of the mouth. It’s very hard to pinpoint how one thought leads to another, which leaves massive gaps for you to fill in as an actor. He uses visual metaphors that are almost a bit ugly - this play would have been received with great distaste in society. He looks at the hypocrisy within social ranks, he’s really brutal.
What sort of scoundrel is your character?
He comes from a peasant background, where’s he discovered the essence of hatred for the upper classes. Then he suddenly realizes he has this chameleon quality, and can actually use his skills with language to ease his way into society and manipulate it all to his advantage.
Is the audience supposed to “see through” his charm? How do you play that?
It’s such an easy thing to see this character as calculating. He sees an opportunity to use the skills that he has. He woos the older woman, he lands the pretty girl with the $200,000 dowry, he lands the best position he can, he starts rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty. But I really tried to remain true to his character, the desperation and reality of being a peasant in Russia in the 1860s.
I worked from an empathetic position, as in: “Yeah, this kid does deserve a break!” I think the things he does are slightly immoral.
The title of this play is usually “Diary of a Scoundrel”, but here it’s “The Scoundrel That You Need”, which almost implies “The Scoundrel You Deserve”, or “The Scoundrel You’ve Been Waiting For.” Does it imply that, no matter how cunning this guy thinks he is, he performs a service everyone wants?
One of my lines is, “You all need me, ladies and gentlemen, you can’t get on without a man like me.” He’s the only one who tells the truth - he’s the first to admit he’s bought into the corruption, the hypocrisy. You get to the point where you think, “This little bastard’s going to get found out,” but then suddenly the play exhales and it completely turns on its head.
There are a lot of farce and slapstick scenes in the play. How do you make sure the satire still has a fair amount of bite to it?
I think the stylistic nature has been invested in fully, that riotous Restoration style. There’s the whole relationship with his mother as well. In the opening scene, she thinks that his scheme is flawed, but then he says, “Mother, I’m smart, I’m crafty and I’m envious - I’m just like you.” They’re this classic vaudevillian duo of villains.
How was your experience at the VCA?
My perception is that they choose a vast variety of students, with different and interesting approaches to acting. It’s not so much about beaten down and re-built. There’s a fundamental focus on theatre-making, putting actors out there who can contribute to change and further the industry.
Can you tell me about your upcoming projects?
I’m working with Bryan Derrick’s company Theatre of the Oppressed. He works with a range of groups - autistic children and adults, the mentally ill, Somali taxi drivers. They talk about their life stories and experiences, with actors who facilitate the project. I’m also working on a solo project, a version of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, which is written for three actors: two men and one woman. I’m looking at playing all three.
The Scoundrel That You Need
Gasworks Arts Park, 7-24 May
In the City of Sylvia
by Lesley Chow
It’s difficult to get a handle on this film, and the unusual eye it casts on people and cities. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re so close to everything: if the film’s world is a fish-tank, then the camera places us right at the water’s edge, on a high stool in front of the action. It’s as if our heads are stuck inside a living diorama, a box of objects which might be re-arranged to our liking.
The film’s protagonist (Xavier Lafitte) is a young man in pursuit of a woman named Sylvia, whom he encountered six years ago in Strasbourg. He has a very specific impression of her, although he can’t quite recall her face. So this city is fascinating on the condition that Sylvia is in it: no matter how meandering his journey is, desire lurks somewhere around the corner. His over-intense gaze turns on every stranger; he seizes on each sound as if it were a clue to his obsession. This gothically pale and love-sick youth is reminiscent of the hero of Hilaire Belloc’s poem, Juliet (How did the party go in Portman Square?/I cannot tell you: Juliet was not there./And how did Lady Gaster’s party go?/Juliet was next to me and I do not know.) If a missing Juliet is the key to our interest, then the entire city is being scanned for what it isn’t - but also for what it is. Being viewed in the context of an imaginary desire causes everything to be pored over minutely.
Nevertheless, all the people in this film are fantastically indifferent to being watched. A woman with the jagged profile of a cartoon faces us with a “knowing” look - but is it for us, or the sullen man sitting next to her? There are several very pretty, large-eyed girls, whom the camera observes absent-mindedly. A young woman with a bouffant and a small, proper face - who looks English to my eye - keeps popping up in the crowd. Each of these strangers is idly revealing or inscrutable, with a gaze that’s seemingly half-directed at us. Sunk in her own thoughts, absorbed in reading or remembering, each woman is no more aware of us than a figure in a painting. This article continues, click here to read on…
Un Secret
by Carl Nilsson-Polias
How does the authenticity of a story affect our reception of it? Consider that novelists in time gone by referred to their fictions as “histories”, even “true histories”. Meanwhile, today, fraudulent memoirs are held up for bitter condemnation and their authors made into pariahs. In Un Secret, we have a story based on fact — remarkable, brutal fact that has more in common with Greek tragedies than is healthy. In fact, authenticity is thankfully beside the point because the story itself is such a riveting tragedy that one need never excuse it.
Claude Miller’s adaptation relies heavily on flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks. The structure is deftly handled, insofar as it reveals the story with a teasing suspense, but it also adds a sentimentality that is misplaced. There is nothing here to get misty about; the effect should be hollowing for the audience. The performances are strong: Cecile de France is immaculately alluring, Patrick Bruel is aptly built like one of Notre Dame’s buttresses and the fraught eroticism of their relationship is handled with a bristling mix of desire and pain. Ludivine Sagnier touches lightly on the shadow of Medea and Julie Depardieu turns up just to make sure at least one of the family gets a trot. The score is by Zbigniew Preisner, who brings his trademark haunting flute along just in case anyone missed it in Three Colours Blue, and Jacqueline Bouchard’s costumes are beautifully spot on. In the end, the story is extraordinary, the elements quite fine, but the result somewhat prosaic.
Opens May 15 at selected cinemas, check your guides.
The 39 Steps
by Harry Caul
In the MTC’s The 39 Steps four actors throw cartoon mime, clowning, vaudevillian antics and every other ingredient in the theatrical pantry into a spritely concoction of cliché and pastiche. The play is a spoof of the Hitchcock classic from 1935, with beau du jour Marcus Graham replacing the matinee idol lashes of Robert Donat. All the other characters are replaced, with remarkable alacrity, by Grant Piro, Tony Taylor and Helen Christinson.
Patrick Barlow’s adaptation is a crowd-pleaser, no doubt about it. The choice of material is perfect, with the film’s plot already featuring the music hall camp of the London Palladium and the 1930’s naivety of it all making it excellent prey for Barlow’s theatrical slice-and-dice. Maria Aitken’s direction is slick and seamless, as it should be, having been honed on previous productions in London and New York.
Yet, within the fabulous snappiness of it all, it sometimes bends into a kind of slippery cleverness. The inventive theatrical tropes that it makes use of are, in their purest form, meant to entice a joyous naivety out of the audience. But in Barlow’s writing the naivety is, too often, held up for ridicule — and making fun of the naïve can come off as unsporting, even cruel. If the clowning had remained engaged but the subject had darkened or if the show had developed into an ironic fable of theatre and façade there might have been some worth in this. Nevertheless, the showmanship of the actors and the astuteness of the design are worth the price of admission, I simply wished they’d kept playing along, rather than breaking stride to snigger.
The 39 Steps
Presented by Melbourne Theatre Company
At the Arts Centre Playhouse
April 5 - May 10, 2008
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
by Carl Nilsson-Polias
Jacques Demy’s classic film from 1964 launched Catherine Deneuve into that heady stratosphere of aesthetic canonisation that the French do so well. In many ways, Deneuve’s career and name have eclipsed Demy’s, but watching his films reminds you of how bright his penumbra can be.
The Nouvelle Vague pin-ups Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut made their mark with black and white immediacy — you could sense the urge towards youthful street smarts in the bustling cinematography and locations of A Bout de Souffle and Jules et Jim. Demy is similarly reconfiguring the language of cinema but pulls it in the opposite chromatic direction. If you left a four year old alone with a bunch of Crayolas, they’d get pretty darn close to the colour palette in this film. Initially, Demy makes the rainy Cherbourg look like the Fauvists took over Jodphur and added some cobblestones. As the film’s storyline progresses, the palette smooths itself into creams and whites - it is an Expressionistic stylisation that belies the social realism of the plot and yet matches it incomparably well.
Demy’s cinematographer, Jean Rabier, had earned his stripes on Les Quatre Cents Coups with Truffaut, Les Amants with Louis Malle and Cléo de 5 à 7 with Agnès Varda. This was to be Demy’s first colour film and Rabier clearly pulled all the stops out. The lighting is unusually high-key, which makes the surrounding surfaces as luminous as the actors, and by playing with the balance of daylight and tungsten sources, Rabier heightens the contrast of candy-like interiors and blue exteriors.
Working alongside the cinematography in heightening the stylisation of it all is the amazing music by Michel Legrand. The film is less a movie than it is an operetta — the entire script is sung. Indeed, the score and voices were pre-recorded and the filming took place with actors miming to playback. Demy is paying homage to the musicals of the Hollywood studios, the melodramas of the French theatre and the opera of all Europe in one fell swoop. The effect is magical, unsentimental and triumphantly enjoyable.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Available now through Aztec International
$29.95
Also available is Demy’s 1967 follow-up The Young Girls of Rochefort.
El Guincho: Alegranza
by Carl Nilsson-Polias
Alegranza is an album remarkable in its ability to simultaneously invite and dismiss comparison. El Guincho is Pablo Diaz-Reixa and he’s managed to sample half a planet worth of music without it coalescing into a lazy homogeneity. His beats oscillate with wild abandon and yet the album feels tightly sprung, like a jack-in-the-box that’s been teasingly wound up. Born in the Canary Islands and now based in Barcelona, El Guincho kicks off Alegranza with a track that slams doowop honey up against salt-water-summer vocals and backs it up with a track that plucks itself out of the dancehalls of Sub-Saharan Africa. Its effervescent, glorious, lollipop music.
El Guincho: Alegranza out now through Mistletone Records
Get yourself along to see El Guincho’s Australian tour this May. He’s playing along with Architecture in Helsinki as well as solo sideshows, check your guides.