Keating!
Keating!
November 7 - December 13
York Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney
One of the best things about Keating! has to be the presence of its super-vigorous band, who jam behind the caricatures of politicians. This is a group committed to one-off gestures; each member is free to flash his individual expressions of gusto, approval, and occasionally, bewilderment to the crowd. It’s a cheeky, laddish young band - sitting up eagerly like kids on election night - but with strong voices that leap up to reinforce every message they agree with. Far from apathetic, they are active participants in the political process: an electric guitarist leaps out from the stand to rouse the energy of a falling Keating. They reminded me of the musicians in Peter Hall’s London staging of Lenny, which also had a prominent band, but not nearly as inventive or raucous as this one. Depending on the skits performed, the group can be a macho cohort, or a pack of cautionary angels - at any rate, they’re too mercurial to represent any one set. Does the band stand for “the people” - or are they a core demographic? Are they a young passionate constituency fired (then and now) by Keating’s idealism? Or could they be - just possibly - the dreaded “elite”? The fact that most of the actors and musicians juggle dual roles and multiple rhythms allows Casey Bennetto’s Keating! to come across as a makeshift epic, rather than a formal attempt at satire.
The first major figure we meet is Bob Hawke (Terry Serio), seen here as a crinkly-eyed “people’s politician”, deliciously shameless and criminally lucky - at first, I mistook him for a Les Patterson-style narrator. Paul Keating (Mike McLeish), on the other hand, has a familiar brashness, but the occasional instance of self-doubt: as a young idealist, he agonises before forming a resolution. The clash of styles is inevitable. One of the curious things about Bennetto’s depiction of political power is that each time a leader is vanquished, he is forced to literally raise and build the platform for his successor. When Hawke is challenged by Keating, there’s a moment of initial resistance, but pretty soon he appears willing to cede the stage; he assists in directing the spotlight towards the younger man, happily singing in unison with him. Whenever two characters harmonize, it seems to indicate that one is playing into the hands of another; the political mood has shifted, and the loser is reduced to mimicking the rhythm of the incoming leader. When Hewson (Eddie Perfect) is subdued during the ‘93 election, he ends up being hopelessly in sync with his opponent. Rather than establishing his own beat, he finds his hips swaying along with the movements of his rival - giving way to an ’80s-style duet of mature love. The only player who doesn’t need any help being “mastered” is a coquettish, white-fleshed Alexander Downer (Perfect), who is more than willing to dig his own grave. Nevertheless, this recurring pattern is ominous: will Keating wind up dancing to the stiff, rickety little steps of Howard (Serio)? Fortunately, the show spares us the prospect of seeing Keating’s legacy dismantled via musical routines. What Bennetto does reveal is that, even at their peak, politicians are always dancing as fast as they can: they must keep tapping and “needlessly” showing their panache just to stay afloat. Even the hapless Hewson recognizes the need to be dexterous, trying to execute quick steps and remain on point.
We get this sense of rhythm thanks to the immensely adaptable yet cohesive band, who are always “on.” Each musician contributes his individual flair: electric guitarist/saxophonist Mick Stuart is endlessly inventive and dynamic in response to the acting, whipping up and pointing his guitar to salute the leading man. This is no chorus of yes-men, but a contingent whose weighty and vocal support any leader would want. Bennetto and the group’s arrangements are responsible for the songs transcending the status of mild parody; political messages are perfectly matched to genre - reggae, blues, mambo. Each song mixes melodic surprises with just enough cliché; it sounds as if each track has started from a basic structure, with bright ideas progressively added until it becomes a flexible, vibrant entity. The GST face-off, in which Keating vies with Hewson, is a display of awesome tight rapping; the song actually shows an understanding of how hip-hop works, and McLeish has the super-charge of an artist like Ludacris (”Fight back/Fight back from that!”), giving the staggered sucker punch which is the rapper’s trademark.
Those of us eager to relive the beats of Keating’s iconic Redfern speech are surprised when this turns out to be a bluesy number with whispered, Fosse-like asides - which seems appropriate and moving. Still, we can feel the end approaching. As previous songs have shown, Keating - under the counsel of Gough Whitlam’s ghost - is a man to rush through policies, rather than implement slow change. He’s soon fazed by the appearance of Howard, whose mild chanting of the word “mate” seems to send the electorate into a hypnotic spell. When Keating and Howard woo the public (as if it were a woman) during the ‘96 election, Keating leads with a suave dance, and Howard nearly displaces a hip in keeping up, valiantly trying out a jazz step - although his attempt at cracking a smile is reminiscent of Dick Cheney’s “warm and accessible” phase, as parodied on US talk shows. However, as the votes roll in, McLeish shows us a different Keating: nakedly boyish and nearly an “ordinary” Australian in defeat. He’s almost a little battler, as he faces giving the country something they apparently didn’t want, and the devastating rejection of his legacy.
However, when Keating is literally resuscitated by the attentions of the public (”I can feel my heart start beating”), he’s like a lover given a last-minute reprieve: McLeish plays him as a man warming to renewed and belated affection. One issue with musical stage performers is that they have to be careful not to sound too ingratiating or hearty; they need to address the audience forcefully without seeming to “hail” every line and seek approval. Even the best musical actors occasionally sound like breathless slaves to rhyme and metre, inhibited by the strictures of the verse (or as the judges on Australian Idol like to say, “the song was singing you.”) Miraculously, this trait is only slightly evident in the first two songs; once warmed up, McLeish moves on seamlessly and gives an outstanding performance - he even approximates Keating’s sharky smile of gratitude during the encore.
Hola Mexico Film Festival
Occupying the Palace Westgarth Cinema from November 22-28 will be the Hola Mexico Film Festival. With the likes of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron in the line-up, there’s every reason to go. And, to make it that little bit easier on the post-graduation pocket, Spark Online has 4 double passes to give away. Email us your name, email and postal address to comps”at”vcasu.org.au and we’ll post them out to you. Check out their mental website for more details: http://www.holamexicoff.com/
A Nocturne
A Nocturne
Winner of Best Film at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival Awards.
Check the film’s website for future screenings
What kind of madness is it to sit chatting in an urban café, or to stand loitering on a city street? In A Nocturne, Bill Mousoulis takes on the difficult project of creating a mythic Melbourne: one whose everyday actions and circumstances matter to movies as well as real life. The opening scenes show commuters rushing to work, as metal music piles on top of them: corporate daylight Melbourne, it seems, is about to get its comeuppance. When a goth couple in a warehouse wake up to “another day in hell”, it becomes apparent that this sensible, “cosmopolitan” city contains a number of underground networks: hubs of vampires, graphic artists and addicts, with designs on the rest of us.
One of these is a young woman, Vee (Haiha Lee), whose goth underside is explored through a series of disturbing drawings, as well as a blood-sucking episode. However, this girl - who lives with her pleasant, not particularly repressive Vietnamese family - has a delicate, fawn-like intelligence; Lee is dignified throughout her vampiric scenes, and mesmerizing as she idly stirs a spoon through a bowl of blood. Mousoulis uses the gothic theme to underwrite the everyday and the subcultural: for instance, to link the middle-aged drunkenness of a poet with a pre-existing youth culture, or to re-animate the characters and residents of Melbourne. Inner-city Melbourne is full of “familiars”: people who register each other knowingly, through patterns of eye contact, and seem to form a plan of action. These people may come in a recognized “alternative” mode, such as the fox-eyed goth bride, X (Vanessa de Largis); they can be card-carrying members of a graffiti or heroin scene; or they can be as quiet and exquisitely individual as Vee.
Melbourne is instantly invigorated by being tracked under these genre circumstances; ordinary desperation is read as a gothic condition as well as a symptom of drug abuse or poverty. In addition, Mousoulis regards the city’s café culture with some bewilderment. Whether it’s hanging out at the bus stop or lounging with a drink in Fitzroy, it seems like insanity for people to stand around calmly, while vampirism and hunger rage at night. Female city workers in bars, socializing after hours, seem ready to be “taken”, or purloined: removed from the run of comfortable, senseless activity.
As its title indicates, this film is a night movement; the serene, disquieting piano opening - reminiscent of the start of Murnau’s Journey into Night - presents the film as a dark, even surface which immerses us. Even at the end, when the pianist (Magda Zappi) re-appears in a sunlit conservatorium, we’re still in an evening mood. Zappi is seen dozing off as her hands work the keys; the gallant goth couple marches off as the dreaming artist is left to play.
Inland Empire
Inland Empire
by David Lynch
At Nova from November 15
At the start, a man and a woman move around the corridors of a hotel, their features blotted by a black cloud. Characters in David Lynch often undergo some kind of physical distortion - even when the face is intact, its expression tends to be unreadably inert. When a sinister Polish woman (Grace Zabriskie) visits the home of an actress, Nikki (Laura Dern), her bones are pressed so close to the screen that they seem to contort.
All this blurring of the head leaves the body a strangely amorphous “empire” - a space where different personalities co-habit within the same form. The opening sequence of Lynch’s previous feature, Mulholland Drive, had a series of identities momentarily inhabiting a group of dancing figures, then switching as the music changed. In this film, the shifts between narratives are performed more starkly: we move between a string of foreign financiers, several blank-faced young prostitutes, and TV actors wearing bunny masks.
The nominal plot concerns Nikki’s appearance in a film, where she becomes disoriented on set and confused about which script she’s playing. Hollywood has been a recent source of fascination for Lynch; he casts his surreal gaze on celebrity entourages and palatial homes as if they were objects of mystery. During a chat show interview, the camera becomes transfixed, hovering between Nikki and her co-star (Justin Theroux) as they’re interrogated about their relationship. Los Angeles appears to be a bed for the kind of unearthly transformations Lynch enjoys; actors experience slippage in role-playing, and have trouble staying within their designated outlines.
None of this is delivered in the lushly tranquil style of Mulholland Drive, yet the atmosphere here is just as enveloping. No other director has quite the same ability to suggest something hidden, or locked, within a story: a feeling of dread released only through performance.