Michael Hurst’s ‘Bard Day’s Night’ ~ a theatre review

Michael Hurst’s ‘Bard Day’s Night’

(Premiered at the NZ International Festival of the Arts as ‘Frequently Asked Questions’)

Produced by Royale Productions

Written by Michael Hurst, Natalie Medlock and Dan Musgrave

Directed by Natalie Medlock & Associate Director Dan Musgrave

Designed by John Verryt

Lighting Design by Sean Lynch & Operated by Nik Janiurek

Costume by Lesley Burkes-Harding

Stunt Design by Glen Levy

At The Basement, Auckland

21 – 26 May 2012

Reviewed on 21 May, 2012.

Published at www.theatreview.org.nz

 

It’s May, 2012.

Who would have expected to wake this morning to the sound of right wing councillors Sharon Stewart and George Wood bleating on about the Auckland City Council’s plan to provide ASB with a $10m loan guarantee for Auckland Theatre Company’s proposed theatre in the Wynyard Quarter.

Stewart, given a D grade for her performance in Bernard Orsman’s recent report card, ranted on her Facebook page ‘I won’t be supporting them. They’re not Core business. I will not be supporting such an irresponsible decision. Arts and theatre are not priority. Tourists visit for a short time – we live here and we cannot have the situation where residents of Auckland are being flooded out of their homes while someone watches a play at Auckland Theatre.’

Yep, it’s May 2012 but it sounds like 1990.

Does anyone remember the Mercury?

Would it help to cry ‘Hark! Who’s there?’

Probably not.

I would give Stewart and Wood an E for vision – and just about everything else – but that’s not my core business. My core business is to talk about A+ performances and last night I saw one of the very best, a performance that would grace any stage in the world (except in Auckland where they’re like hen’s teeth).

Having said that The Basement venue is perfect for Hurst’s opus, as much for John Verryt’s splendidly downmarket set as for any other reason – but there are others.

Loads of them.

The thrust staging allows for an intimacy that is both absorbing and, at times, terrifying. It is an actor’s venue, so much so that being engaged by a work that explores – among many other things – the actor’s, post-performance state of mind seems singularly appropriate. Verryt’s garret-like set with its tactically placed grunge furniture and dull hues could be any actor’s digs anywhere in the world, the perfect place to reflect, have a drink and go quietly mad chitchatting with the voices in your head.

Supporting Verryt’s excellent setting is Sean Lynch’s clever lighting, admirably operated by Nik Janiurek.

Again, no frills but smart and subtle, and as sinister as could be imagined when required.

As we waited for the show to start, most of the audience realised that no frills were needed as the actor they were about to see was Michael Hurst.

I’ll say now that this is a solo show but, Hurst being Hurst, it never seems as though it is. The marketing tag for the show is ‘absurdity, schizophrenia and blank verse’ and there’s enough of each to satisfy the most discerning needs.

The plot, like the set and the lighting, is deceptively simple.

An actor playing Hamlet and still dressed in his ‘customary suit of solemn black’ returns home to his whisky bottle, his revolver, his hotplate and his solitude. His acrylic periwig – a cross between that of Olivier’s third Richard and a lifeless cat – is soon discarded and the beautifully spoken voices in his head begin. There’s a feral Macbeth, Dizzee Rascal Othello and a languidly loopy Lear and they link up with our melancholy Dane for an hour’s sublimely texted gambol through the canon’s tragic masterpieces, cul de sacs included.

There’s a point to it all so it’s not just fun and games though there are plenty of those. Deeply embedded in the comedy and pathos of Shakespeare’s magnificence and animated by Hurst’s substantial genius there lies an ominous exploration of mortality, the mortality of the characters Hurst invents of course, but the gloomy transience of the actor, alone and stripped of his guise, is in there as well. Here Hurst is Everyman as he examines himself and his universe via the medium of that most poignant toast ‘Here’s to a good story, eh’.

It’s deadly serious, but never for long, for this is a show that takes the Mickey out of itself and everything else. It’s mercifully mature stuff, for which we should all be thankful.

For it’s a rollicking good story that Hurst and his mates tell. There are moments when the stage seems as littered with idiosyncratic folks as a public bar on a Saturday night, other moments of aching solitude and yet more of deeply sinister menace.

It’s outrageous too.

There’s smoking (heaven forbid) and swearing (my God!) and a wonderful racist goading the like of which I haven’t heard since 1950 (Hurst wasn’t born then).

But always at the heart of this wonderfully jubilant piece is Hurst himself, mangling the text as Shakespeare would have wanted, eating it up, chewing it roundly, spitting it out with venom, passion, anger, lust and love. Where lesser mortals might have raged – ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks’ – Hurst whispers; he tears our hearts out when he plays it straight for ‘life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, (he pronounces it ‘eejit’) full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ before quietly reminding us, Paul Henry-like, that ‘you should never trust a woman with a beard.’

Hurst makes images sing and sometimes twang ‘like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh’ – the picture his Macbeth paints of Hamlet poncing around the castle with both thumbs up his arse is both physically challenging, riotously funny and more than a tad disturbing.

There is a simple egoless beauty in Hurst’s performance, a simplicity that defies description so I won’t even try. Suffice to say that it has all Shakespeare’s magnificence, his crudity, his wild radiant insanity, his love of life, his eternal search for spiritual peace – and more.

Hurst embodies each character with a subtle eccentricity that is unexpected yet oddly obvious, Macbeth’s unkempt impudence and graceless swagger, Hamlet’s mundane ordinariness, Lear’s wraithlike delicacy and Othello’s colossal physique (very clever this!) set each apart from the other while allowing space for his remarkable vocal fluency to bond them inseparably together. This is very smart work and not to be undertaken by the faint of heart.

The script is a cracker, and not just the bard’s bits. The rest is beautifully interwoven, funny, poignant and tailored to Hurst’s many talents. It provides a full range of vocal and physical challenges and allows him to give vent to his astonishing emotional depth. There are sections that Stoppard would be envious off – smart, intelligent and quirky – but unique, too, always unique. Underlying the whole experience is a magnificently contrived spontaneity and a deep and profound understanding of just what Shakespeare was about.

There are many surprises too and none more so than Hurst’s interpretation of that most famous of soliloquies. Most of us have grown up believing that the ‘to be or not to be’ speech was simply Hamlet talking to himself so it came as a shock to find that he was in fact talking to Macbeth, a shock, I must say, I have yet to recover from. It was fascinating, and in Hurst’s hands, disturbingly real.

Hurst has always had an incredible physicality. As a young man he was stunning, an athlete in fact, and a fine young leading man. Now, slightly later in life, he’s developed a rugged handsomeness that is also very attractive indeed – and, it’s good to report, the athlete is alive and well too.

In this production he takes his physicality to a new level and gives fresh meaning to the phrase ‘beating oneself up’. All credit for this goes to stunt designer Glen Levy, to Hurst himself – and probably to his physiotherapist – as the all-in brawl between the characters is utterly sublime.

So how does this extraordinary journey end?

I’m not going to tell you. Suffice to say that ‘there’s special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come – the readiness is all.’

I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t want it to end – like life, I guess – but the wheel of fire had to go full circle and so end it did.

A couple of self-effacing curtain calls and it was over.

‘Bard Day’s Night’ is performance art at its very, very best

Arthur Schopenhauer said ‘Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see’. In Michael Hurst, I believe we have a talented genius, as fine an actor as any in the world. Maybe I’ll have a chat with Sharon Stewart and George Wood. Perhaps it’s time they, and their ilk, went to the theatre again.

 

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream ~ a theatre review

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Produced by Auckland Theatre Company

Co directed by Colin McColl and Ben Crowder

Set and lighting design by Tony Rabbit

Costumes by Nic Smillie

Music by John Gibson and performed by Brett Adams

Saturday 5 May, 2012,

Maidment Theatre

Published at www.theatreview.org.nz

The opening night of Auckland Theatre Company’s fine production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream coincided with the largest full moon in a long time and an absolutely cloudless, star-filled sky.

Somehow the two went magically together.

The moon – its appearance, non appearance and re-appearance – are, of course, at the heart of the play’s discourse, and the ‘stars’ were certainly out at the Maidment as well, both on stage and in the audience.

A Midsummer Night Dream is without doubt Shakespeare’s best known and most studied play. Children are introduced to it at a young age, students of all ages study it, films have been made of it and it’s difficult to imagine a venue worth its salt that hasn’t housed a production or two over the years. It’s done indoors, outdoors and, no doubt, in some ladies chamber. Possibly even the chamber of Queen Elizabeth the First herself as the play has a full running time of two hours which suggests it may have been written for the court but we have no proof of this. It would seem from the topical references within the text that the bard wrote it somewhere in the early to mid 1590’s but again we have no proof so ‘let that go’.

Unlike many of his plays A Midsummer Night Dream has no known source but it’s pretty clear Shakespeare had a finger on the pulse of European folklore when it came to fairies – in particular woodland sprites – and had read Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale where he would have encountered Theseus and Hippolyta in guise similar to that which he would use himself.

An appreciative opening night full house and the fact that 2,500 students are already booked to see this production should confirm that the play has lost none of its original charm.

Colin McColl, Artistic Director of Auckland Theatre Company and co-director of this production with Ben Crowder, reminds us in his programme note that Sir Peter Brook said ‘play is play’. He goes on to add that this philosophy has underpinned the rehearsal process used in this production. Brook should know as his seminal, 1970, Sally Jacobs designed production changed the course of English theatre and, as New York Times theatre critic Clive Barnes noted, would ‘exert a major influence on the contemporary stage’.

It’s clearly still doing so – and more strength to its collective, and aging, arm.

In the current economic climate – who said climate change isn’t real – Auckland could be considered fortunate to have a professional theatre company at all let alone one capable of staging an amalgam of exciting modern works and great classical plays. For many modern companies staging a Shakespeare is too great a challenge so having a company with the courage and the vision to have a bash at The Bard is really rather special and we would be wise to appreciate it.

Auckland is doubly fortunate in that this admirably lead company seems to go from strength to strength which is not to say that everything they do pleases – nor should it -or is pleasing – thank goodness – but that their hit rate must definitely be applauded.

It could be said that McColl, in co directing with the inventive Ben Crowder, was taking a risk but it was a calculated risk as there is no better play to ‘play’ with than Shakespeare’s immortal Dream and many of us remember that Crowder had explored it’s possibilities before. So while it might have been seen as risky it was less so than it might have seemed.

The success of ‘playful’ productions lies only in part with the directors because, if the actors aren’t able to engage with the process, then the results can be dire. Crowder gives credit to his actors in the informative programme and well he might because they were mighty good. There was an equanimity that was palpable even when the experience of the performers might have been a tad uneven and this is very hard to achieve.

At the heart of this production – and giving it heart – is the inimitable Raymond Hawthorne as Robin Goodfellow, the Puck.

This is sublime casting.

Hawthorne is described in the programme as ‘the doyen of Auckland’s theatre professionals.’  His ‘decades of experience’ are also mentioned.

I first saw Hawthorne in Ngaio Marsh’s A Unicorn for Christmas staged by the New Zealand Players when I was a child in the mid 1950’s.

Well, it did say decades!

Hawthorne was in his late teens and preparing to leave New Zealand to study at RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on a New Zealand Government Bursary.

I wonder if such a thing still exists today?

My next meeting with Hawthorne was in 1976 when I attended a breathtaking performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by his Theatre Corporate company in their Galatos Street Theatre. This was followed on the same evening by a second Hawthorne production, an equally dazzling pastiche of Beatles material entitled Another Side of the Beatles’.

Does anyone remember late night theatre?

I was fortunate enough to tour with the company that year and, as a wide-eyed groupie, I saw these productions many times. They remain in my memory – along with The Beggar’s Opera - as among the best works I have ever seen.

It doesn’t seem to matter what facet of the performing arts Hawthorne is engaged in he manages, through his passion and his craft, to create magical art, and his Puck is no exception.

Excellent though Hawthorne is, it’s not all about him. Nor would he ever say it was.

The creative team of Tony Rabbit (set and lighting designer) Nic Smillie (costume design) and John Gibson (composition and sound design) have manufactured a platform from which Shakespeare’s play can live and breathe. Its simplicity belies a deep understanding of the journey this production takes and allows for McColl and Crowder to deviate from the traditional in their search for truth.

The set, reminiscent of a Swedish sauna with its smooth, vertical timber slats and raised horizon, is both attractive and effective and the actors use it with imagination and ease.

The costumes are wonderful, clever and purposeful, funny and functional.

Gibson’s music is, as always, challenging and rich and he and Brett Adams, who delivers some splendid guitar and quirky special effects, work sublimely well together.

Shakespeare was pretty good at saying what he wanted to say so cutting and repositioning his text to serve another end is always laden with complexity.  The cuts and rearrangements in this production are judicious and they mostly work.

As already noted Hawthorne was fabulous as the Puck.

Also, as already noted, he’s no spring chicken.

Casting a mature actor, one of Hawthorne’s years, could be seen as a risk. Puck might seem to be young, dynamic. He does, after all, have to credibly put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. He does more than a smidgen of coming and going, all said and done and this might well suggest a youngish, speedy sort of dude, but wait, cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Hawthorne is superb.

In a performance full of chirpy naughtiness and magic, Hawthorne plays bare-chested. Looking for all the world like a 1960’s bovver boy, thumb hooked into trouser pocket, arms akimbo, he zips through the play like a slightly sinister dervish.

There are delicious elements of this production that ache to be mentioned but I will resist the temptation out of a desire not to spoil the experience for you.

And there are world class performances.

Hawthorne, of course, but also Stuart Devenie’s particularly curmudgeonly Egeus whose exceptional delivery of the text at times took my breath away. Devenie is the master of laughs and he got them all with this exquisitely drawn portrait.

Andrew Grainger’s munificent Bottom is well worth a second look.  Like Hawthorne and Devenie, Grainger has a fine grip on the language and his comic timing throughout is quite simply brilliant.  Grainger’s performance, first Bottom the Weaver and then as Pyramus the lover is a masterclass in slapstick and as good as you’ll see anywhere.

In some ways it’s unfair to pick anyone out because this is truly an ensemble production but the lovers, the delectable Laurel Devenie (Helena) and the equally gorgeous Brooke Williams (Hermia) are skilfully matched up with the scrumptious Josh McKenzie (Lysander) and the striking Jono Kenyon (Demetrius). Opening night saw this quartet of darlings a trifle slow to start but once they hit their straps they were as sexy, as funny and as physically articulate as anyone could wish.

Rima Te Wiata, always a favourite, etched out a subtle and supportive Peta Quince and provided a powerhouse component to the vocals.

It seems fair to say that Crowder and McColl have consciously stayed away from the dark side in producing this work. They flag this in the programme with talk about keeping things playful, inventive and fluid for as long as possible and they have trimmed the text accordingly.  It works a treat and achieves the goal of playfulness but tends to short-change the roles of Oberon (Xavier Horan) and Titania (Alison Bruce) by removing some of the sinister symmetry that exists between them and their mortal counterparts Theseus (Peter Daube) and his bride Hippolyta (Goretti Chadwick).

Highlights of the evening – and there were plenty – were the wonderfully physical fights between the lovers, Bottom’s Dream, the lunacy of Pyramus and Thisbe (Brett O’Gorman) and the play within the play culminating, as it always does, with the riotously funny death of Pyramus.

For me, though, the evening belonged to Hawthorne the magician, with special mention of two wonderful moments: the first when Puck crushes the herb onto the sleeping lover’s eyes with Jack shall have Jill; nought shall go ill and the second when he asks the audience to give me your hands, if we be friends and the theatre erupts.

I suspect these moments will resonate with me for long enough.

Experience this production if, for no other reason than it achieves what it sets out to achieve. No hempen home-spuns here. It’s playful, heart-warming, riddled with excellence and at the centre of it all is a man who can create real moments of theatrical magic.

CHUB ~ a theatre review

Written and directed by Thomas Sainsbury

Produced by Fingerprints and Teeth Productions

The Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland

April 22^nd, 23^rd & 24^th at 8pm

This is a ‘pay what you think it’s worth after the performance’ show.

Door Sales Only

If you decide to see Chub take money because it is worth it.

Thomas Sainsbury is prolific yada yada yada, blah blah blah.

Just thought I’d get that bit out of the way. He writes a lot of plays and a lot of the plays he writes are very good. Not all, but many are and this is certainly one of the best yet.

He’s won awards, written for TV and, yes, he’s a success. He’s provocative, funny, contemporary and challenging and Chub is all of these – and more.

He’s also working in Aotearoa New Zealand which is ranked 47^th out of 46 OECD countries on ‘The Biggest Philistine’ rating which suggests he also likes making life hard for himself. I made those stats up but I doubt anyone working in the performing arts in Kiwiland would challenge them. It’s my view that if Thomas was writing in the UK his work would feature regularly upstairs at the Royal Court, at the Donmar or even at the more conservative Young Vic alongside works by Mark Ravenhill, Joe Penhall, April De Angelis, Simon Stephens and Chris Goode.

Here, at home, he trucks it out at The Basement which, while no one could question the venue’s authenticity or the values espoused, leaves a bit to be desired as a location to be visited by society folks prepared to pay what Thomas and his actors are worth and, dare I say it, need to hear what they have to say.

This is no discredit to the mainly young people (under 30’s by my estimate) who filled the house on opening night and who chittered and chatted, twittered and tweeted and clearly, by their engagement throughout, enjoyed the 50 minute journey through the play.

Sainsbury informs us in his minimalist programme that he has always been fascinated by extreme obesity and themes of ‘isolation and hiding away from the world’, each of which he explores in Chub.

Ann van Veen (Janelle Bish in a fat suit) is morbidly obese and lives alone. She has her TV and the internet and a visit from a caregiver every couple of days but apart from these distractions life is totally about gorging. Into her life comes Stacey (Steven Anthony Maxwell), her new caregiver who, just by chance, happens to be anorexic, ambitious and obsessed with cosmetic surgery, in particular rhinoplasty and apronectomy (a mini tummy tuck). Stacey coerces Ann into using her obesity via the internet to attract ‘chubby chasers’ who will pay her for a variety of pseudo-sexual, fat-related services and through this medium she meets Winston (Roberto Nascimento) who works at Mitre 10.

It’s difficult to imagine a better set up for both comedy and pathos and the three actors are quite splendid. Spindly Stacey walking a tightrope between pragmatism and caricature without once disintegrating, sweet-natured Ann balanced on the couch like Jabba the Hutt smiling and nodding and the monosyllabic, somewhat sinister Winston interact and disconnect their way through Sainsbury’s vibrant and uncompromising text with nary a flicker of uncertainty which is credit to the rapport that exists between all members of this excellent team.

Laughter abounds throughout as the cast wring every last ounce of hilarity from their hapless characters and their captive audience. There is laughter of recognition, situational laughter, laughter at truly funny lines, laughter anchored in smart timing, narrative laughter and that horrible laughter we hate to engage in when we guffaw at someone else’s short comings.  Sainsbury has no fear when it comes to humiliating his characters and he allows us no opportunity to escape our own inner freakshow as he thrusts each poignant point home.

Chub is very good work on everyone’s part. The direction is slick and undetectable, the acting finely tuned, the pace immaculate, the context wicked and the text honed and economic. The overall feeling is of a work in progress but a work that, should it reach its full potential, might well achieve commercial success. Maybe not in Aotearoa New Zealand, land of the wrong white crowd, but further afield where such things are better valued.

Chub is more than a play about a morbidly obese woman living alone. Chub is about you and me and living in today’s terror-ridden world. It’s a big play in every way with a cast and crew fully up to the task of presenting a work of this magnitude.

It’s a must see in my opinion, for very important theatre-going reasons, and deserves a full season.

It’ll make you laugh, it will make you think – but then it will make you laugh again anyway.

Great stuff, all round.

The Bench or Hello for Dummies – a theatre review

The Bench or Hello for Dummies

Conceived, written, edited and spoken by Ant Hampton and Glen Neath

Booked by Alterations who organised the locations etc

Experienced on Wednesday 18 April, 2012

Auckland Art Gallery (but don’t be fooled by this)

Co-commissioned by Norfolk and Norwich Festival (UK), Derby Festé (UK) and Fusebox Festival (USA) and supported in New Zealand by St Paul Gallery and Auckland City Council.

Reviewed by Lexie Matheson

I like random stuff.

The more random the better, truth be told.

Theatre is life.

Isn’t it?

It reflects real life, anyway.

Well, it should.

Shouldn’t it?

You don’t need to know much more than that.

The Bench or Hello for Dummies is pretty random in a constructivist sort of way so you can guess I liked it. Loved it, in fact.

I’m not going to tell you much about it though because, should you have the courage and the opportunity to engage with this unique experience, to tell you what happens in advance would be to spoil it completely. However, if you do want to know what it’s like in advance then experience it – then experience it again. Others have – and it apparently works. Any desire you may have to be in control of your theatre experience may well be satisfied by this.

Perhaps.

So what is The Bench or Hello for Dummies?

To quote the rather enigmatic press release ‘The Bench or Hello for Dummies is an intimate and lasting encounter that reflects on the experience of meeting strangers.’

It goes on to add that ‘in signing up for this play you will be guided to a specific park bench in central Auckland and paired up with a stranger.’

And so I was.

My park bench was on the observation deck of the Auckland Art Gallery overlooking AUT University and Albert Park. It was a beautiful, warm, sun-shiny autumn day. The ‘stranger’ I was paired up with was an attractive, beautifully dressed, intelligent and articulate young woman. I didn’t know this of course because I couldn’t see her – I just made it up – because, as usual, I filled in all the gaps as I wanted them filled on this gorgeous day.

What I didn’t know – but wanted to know and didn’t – I simply created for myself.

Much as politicians do.

Much as we all do.

To explain this I need to return, yet again, to the press release which told me that, through voicing a scripted conversation delivered to me via headphones I would inevitably build an experience of the play to be shared only with this partner who was, in turn, repeating her voiced script delivered to her by headphones, which interacted with mine and without ever seeing her face – or she mine.

Pretty clear instructions really, and that pretty much describes the process.

It won’t be like that for you though because your venue will be different and your partner different also – and you’re not me and the day may be cold, dark and overcast, your bench less comfortable and more accessible to random passersby than mine was, your partner nowhere near as nice – and so it goes on. On the day I engaged with this extraordinary piece of theatre at the Auckland Art Gallery it was also available at Western Park (Ponsonby Road Entrance) at 6.30am, Symonds Street Cemetery at 8.30am, and twice at the Auckland Central Library in the late afternoon. I can’t imagine the experience I had being replicated in the Symonds Street Cemetery for example. It just wouldn’t happen.

The Bench or Hello for Dummies is based on a technique that British-based artist Ant Hampton calls autoteatro and which involves giving pre-recorded instructions to unrehearsed but willing members of the general public, a general public which can, of course, include actors, directors, students, academics, techies and, on occasion, reviewers disguised (loosely) as everyday folks. The work is ‘managed’ by Alterations, a curatorial agency focussed on art and research, lead by the highly personable Amit Charan, Joel Cocks and Laura Preston.

This work involves meeting someone for the first time, someone who is chosen for you and with whom you may have nothing to otherwise connect you apart from a mutual desire to engage with the work. This can be daunting so it’s fair to say that this experience may not be for everyone but your personal power lies in whether or not you say yes to the idea and if you don’t no-one else will ever know. If you do say yes then it’s all on for young and old – quite literally.

The process has a wonderful theatrical integrity. There are actors of course and there is a script but there is also an audience – the casual passerby who simply comes across this delicate passion play – and there is a sense of rehearsal and the recreating of spontaneity. It’s real yet unreal, has a beginning, middle and end, lasts well beyond its formal ending and of course starts with the moment each participant begins their travel through their lives. Everything that happens is influenced by everything else. It takes place in a designated performance space where the public are, unwittingly, both active and passive participants. It has a director and a production team. Peter Brook would be impressed as here is the theatre experience at is most economical, at its most real.

Best of all, it’s art.

Personally, I found the experience invigorating, exciting and emotionally challenging. It took me out of my comfort zone and put me on my mettle. No sitting comfortably in the dark voyeuristically watching other people live distant lives in funny clothes, this was an ‘in-your-face’ –  well, not quite because you can’t look at each other – incident that, like all participatory activity, has the potential to change lives. In the 40 minutes this sublime intertaction took to evolve I experienced emotions ranging from acute anxiety to deep affection, from bewilderment to lucidity, from awkward embarrassment to personal buoyancy and all within the framework of an evolving and thrilling truthfulness.

That doyen of Kiwi grumpiness Mervyn Thompson railed against ‘plays in rooms’ throughout his working life and applauded anyone who set their sights on creating work that rummaged around in the jumble and confusion beyond the fourth wall. He would have lovedThe Bench for its courage, its minimalism, its ‘outside the box’ thinking and its disturbing intimate immediacy. He would also have liked that the cast was small, management invisible, the emotional interaction intense and that it was free.

I liked it for all the same reasons.

Thompson also assessed the effectiveness of any theatre work in terms of the resonances left, the ‘aftertaste’, so to speak. I can only speak for myself of course but the journey has stayed with me, my fascination with the process is intense and my liking for my fellow traveller far greater than I could ever have imagined. I guess that means it worked, both as a piece of theatre and as a slice of life.

My desire to talk about the experience is such that, should my fellow traveller contact me here or on Facebook I’d happily return to the gallery, buy her a coffee and try to positively deconstruct the experience, to understand it better. It was that good!

So, would I do it again?

In an instant!

Do I recommend it to you?

I certainly do!

It’s exciting, it’s different – and it’s painless, too.

The Santa Claus Show ~ a theatre review

The Santa Claus Show

By Tim Bray

Songs by Christine White

Produced by Tim Bray Productions

(10th anniversary production)

Pumphouse Theatre

5 – 23 December 2011

Published at www.theatreview.org.nz

There’s a rumour doing the rounds that Santa Claus aka Father Christmas isn’t real.

Well, here’s the truth of it: he is ~ and if you want proof you need go no further than The Pumphouse Theatre on any day except Sunday between now and 23 December and you’ll find the jolly gentleman in residence sharing his version of the Christmas story. His BMI (Body Mass Index) might suggest a touch of unfashionable obesity and his ruddy and somewhat vasodilated cheeks imply he likes nothing better after a hard day at the work bench than the odd dram but it’s him alright – and the programme itself gives the show away.

It says ‘Santa Claus – Himself’.

Mind you, the programme also says ‘Santa Claus’ stunt double – Tim Raby’ but I never laid eyes on Raby at all.

So there you have it: Tim Raby is a myth … and Santa’s real!

Seriously though, Tim Raby is the perfect Santa. He’s jolly, funny, hard-working and looks and sounds just like everyone’s idea of the real thing. It’s great casting and Raby’s is a very satisfying performance.

I get ahead of myself, however, so let’s get something else straight: whilst Bray and Raby are anagramatically the same, the Tim’s are certainly not ‘smoke-and-mirrors, now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t’ versions of the same dude.

Oh, dear no!

They are as different as – well, Santa and Rudolph.

Tim Bray is tall and slim and Tim Raby is … well … Santa.

The Santa Claus Show is something of an institution in Auckland and this is Tim Bray Productions 10th Anniversary presentation of the work – and Raby has chubbied-up for the title role in eight of them.

That’s a labour of love to say the very least.

So, well done Tim … and Tim … if you know what I mean.

Playwright Bray has cleverly woven the central story of Christmas into his far more complex Santa scenes by means of some clever business involving two children, a set of stairs and a rather unfortunate cat.  By involving kids in the telling of the story of ‘no room at the inn’ he cleverly avoids any of the potential brick bats that might hurtle his way were he to politicise the nativity or, heaven forbid, leave it out all together.  After all, who’d choose to be an inn keeper if it involved being vilified throughout history or a shepherd if it meant wearing a tea towel on your head in a school hall for eternity?

John Parker’s clever set doubles as the interior of a modern house and a snowy grotto at the North Pole and any Santa would be thrilled to have such a crisp, pristine home.  Excellent use is made of plastic corrugations onto which is projected a gobo of stars, falling snow and a delightful array of moveable boxes and props.

Bray’s plot orbits around Kelly (Kura Forrester), a superbly confident young woman with the longest list of Christmas wants anyone could ever imagine.  Her journey is a simple one as she moves from an unwitting and self-centred world view to one of gregarious generosity.

Excellent use is made of tab scenes and Elfie (Lori Dungey) drives the action with madcap abandon and a freedom from restraint that is most refreshing. She introduces us to a Santa for the 21st century, a Santa fully equipped with email, a Facebook page and, without doubt, an iPhone4.

Through Elfie’s wiles Kelly becomes Santa’s annual helper and truly and effortlessly learns her lesson.

Children’s theatre – and in particular theatre for the Christmas season – requires endless transportation scenes and Bray and his team manage to adroitly avoid historical repetition with a new assortment of means whereby unsuspecting bodies can be transported through time, space and credibility. Santa’s arrival at the North Pole to meet with his annual helper is a sublime bit of trickery.

On arrival, as might be expected, Santa has a song and Himself is fortunate to have the song written especially for him by the wonderful Christine White. Who could ask for anything more? It’s simply charm personified!

There’s some clever use of shadow puppets, a delightful and fresh display of verbal repetition and, out of the blue, we meet an impressive assemblage of Santa’s out-sized toys created especially for the 2011 Festive Season. We are introduced to Cool Glam Rockstar (Becky Kuek), Woody from Toy Story (Seamus Ford), a sensational Barbie anyone would want to take home (Laura Penswick) and a traditional, cuddly Teddy Bear (Maya Lamb). Each has a funky song (Christine White) and much mileage is gained from the delight kids have in screaming ‘he’s behind you’ at the top of their raucous voices.

A Santa story wouldn’t be complete without Rudolph and this Rudolph (Seamus Ford) is a lollopy, flashing delight and the song ‘It’s a Magic Night for Giving’ contains all the great classical Christmas images. In fact the show answers most of the imponderable questions that children ask about Christmas, questions such as ‘if the toys are made by the elves at the North Pole why has this one got a price tag from Westfield, Newmarket on it?’ and ‘what does Santa do if you don’t have a chimney?’

Stumped for a comeback? Don’t be. See the show that has more nimble answers than Dr Oz!

There’s lots to marvel at – as there should be, it’s Christmas, after all –  more than a few surprises, plenty of audience involvement and a deeply satisfying resolution

We learn that giving is better than getting, that Santa is real if you want him to be and that, ultimately, there is a gift for everyone.

There certainly is in Tim Bray Production’s The Santa Claus Show and I have no hesitation in recommending it to everyone. You’ll adore Santa Claus as himself (and be pretty satisfied with Tim Raby’s Santa stunt double as well … shhh!)

It’s fun, heart-warming stuff, and a haven away from the lunacy that is the modern corporate Christmas in a sticky suburban mall.

Thanks Tim, you’ve had a big year. Kids all over the Auckland region benefit from your work and none more-so than the kids from the decile one schools that you bring in to see your shows for free.

Time for you and your team to enjoy the summer and take a well earned break. You’ve more than earned it.

The Waste Land ~ a theatre review

The Waste Land

By T.S Eliot

Directed by Michael Hurst

Musical Director John Gibson

Produced by Auckland Theatre Company

ATC Dominion Road Rehearsal Rooms

7 – 11 December 2011 at 8pm

Reviewed on Sunday 11 December

Published at www.theatreview.org.nz

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain

So it begins, and so it shall be …

Friedrich Schiller, the German playwright, poet, philosopher, historian, aesthete and critical cog in the development of Weimar Classicism, had quite a bit to say about the role of the theatre in society. He expounded his views in On the Use of the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (1803) – written as a prologue to his play The Bride of Messina – and The Stage as a Moral Institution (1784) and much of what he says relates to the presentation of ‘the truth’ in a satisfyingly didactic manner. He rather pompously added that the theatre was ‘a great school of practical wisdom, a guide to civil life, and a key to the mind’, that a mimetic theatrical presentation should be an exact representation of society, a depiction that involved each audience member receiving the play’s message in the same way and thereby agreeing on what moral changes needed to be made in the society of the time.

Shakespeare said it simpler when he suggested that the purpose of playing is to hold a mirror up to nature.

In choosing to present a theatrical staging of TS Eliot’s influential poem The Waste Land (1922 ) in the new Dominion Road rehearsal room with a cast of community volunteers all of whom were over the age of 65, Auckland Theatre Company has done more than pay homage to Shakespeare and lip service to Schiller, it has come up with what it calls ‘a new programme of community engagement’ which is, in fact, a stroke of contemporary genius.

By adding a couple of young’uns in Michael Hurst and John Gibson to the mix and providing this wonderful cast with a delectable venue, success was almost guaranteed.

On paper, only Eliot and his often incomprehensible work stood in the way.

Hurst’s must also be applauded for his choice of material. Eliot is difficult stuff for any actor let alone the inexperienced and The Waste Land is possibly even more so but it’s to Hurst’s credit that he hasn’t patronised his cast by down-playing his expectations and he has been duly rewarded.

We, his audience, are the beneficiaries.

It’s not stretching it too much to say that Eliot had an obsession with aging.

In 1920, when still only thirty two, he pondered (in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock):

I grow old … I grow old …      

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.  

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

Like Eliot, our present government has an equally disturbing obsession with aging.

How often do we hear that the baby-boomers have become a burden on society simply by having the temerity to live longer than their forebears. Older people have inadvertently become a contemporary dilemma, an election issue, a yoke on the economy and a crisis is looming with the ‘elderly’ at the eye of the hurricane.

‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’ as they say and, in this case, it’s Colin McColl and Auckland Theatre Company.

ATC has begun a process that places value on the elderly and which clearly sees them as a wonderful resource to be treasured and utilised in a manner that is both respectful and enriching.

If this production is anything to go by the repayment is hundredfold.

So ATC is holding the mirror up to nature in a Schilleresque way and this is a ‘first’ to be applauded – mutually rewarding community outreach at its very best. This was dignified, intelligent, worldly, articulate with not a creaky joint in evidence anywhere.

It’s rude to ask someone’s age so suffice it to say that, to have been born when Eliot was penning his masterpiece, the actor would need to be at least 89 years old. By 1946 – the low-end cut off date for actors to qualify to participate in this work, The Waste Land was already considered one of the great poetic works of the 20th century and Eliot’s status as one of the greats was guaranteed. Without prior knowledge I suspect most of this cast would have encountered Eliot first while at university in the 50’s and 60’s when Eliot’s flame burned brightest.

The Waste Land is an epic work though markedly reduced from the original draft by pre-publication editing largely by Eliot himself but also by friend, confidante and fellow intellectual Ezra Pound.

The five part dramatic monologue form is well suited to performance and Hurst’s clever – and accurate – interpretation makes even the densest and most convoluted passages – and there are plenty of them – clear.

There are sections evocative of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses, literally dozens of often obscure literary references and his use of multiple languages, while cocking a snook at Pound, doesn’t make things any easier for the generalist reader either. Eliot was, after all, nothing if not a Modernist, whatever that might mean!

It’s probably worth noting that those of us who claim lineage from the love generation – and I’m sure at least some of this cast did – adored Eliot. Not Eliot alone of course, also Emily Dickenson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost, J.D.Salinger, Gerard Manly Hopkins, the Beat poets, Jack Kerouac and Kingsley Amis to name but a few.

We were, we thought, an insightful, expressive and literate bunch.

Hurst’s actors, sourced from an advertisement which read ‘No experience necessary and no audition – the only requirement is to be over 65 years of age and willing to join us on a challenging journey of discovery’ appeared to come primarily from that generation and articulate they certainly were.

Peppered with a few seasoned professionals like Margaret Blay, Sunny Morete and Maggie Maxwell, the 33 strong cast ensured that The Waste Land zinged along at a perfect pace, creating beautifully a world of intelligence, splendour and elegance.

Better even than that was the dreamlike quality sustained throughout which allowed Eliot’s often mystical forays into the classical worlds of Dante, Ovid, Homer, Petronius, Shakespeare, Verlaine, Whitman and Sophocles to work effectively while never impeding or bewildering the forward movement of Eliot’s deeply personal and often elaborate journey.

Hurst’s lucid and unambiguous direction ensured that this 50 minute, in-the-round – or more correctly ‘in the oval’ – production was always visible, audible and accessible to the Sunday evening full house who may seemingly, to a casual observer, have gathered for a late afternoon high tea at the Savoy such was the sumptuousness of the setting and rich accuracy of the costumes (Jessika Verryt).

At the end of the day however, Eliot is all about the narrative, the imagery, the interrogatory, the classical provocations and the language and this is where Hurst’s production truly shone.

Lead by an austere and imposing Madame Sostoris (Pat Quirke) the funereal Sibyls, replete with clicking knitting needles and an old school Victorian menace, provided an impressive backdrop and a non-vocal commentary that was at once chilling and unsettlingly eloquent.

The use of sounds created by the actors was impressive throughout and enhanced an already rich aural texture.

Plaudits also go to John Gibson for his excellent musical vignettes. As always they’re subtle, appropriate and seamlessly woven into the whole.

Of Eliot’s five parts the third, The Fire Sermon, was the most effective with Hurst’s ensemble managing to separate and elucidate all of the intellectual complexities of the work without losing any of its innate eroticism and reference to increasingly decadent sexual dalliances. The almost indecipherable bickering between St Augustine (his Confessions is, of course, the source) and Buddha, whose sermon of the same name provides the title to the piece, is cleverly managed and the prevailing image of Tiresias, the wheelchair-bound blind seer who has ‘foresuffered all’ and who witnesses the deeply unsatisfying sexual experience of the young woman, will lurk in the psyche for a very long time.

No ecstasy here, merely another of Eliot’s sad whimpers.

It’s difficult not to be drawn into the profound intimacy of Eliot’s own life via this fine production as it’s presented warts and all with no attempt made to pull a shade on the turbulence of Eliot’s tortured journey. It’s very powerful stuff and the question needs to be asked whether a younger cast with less life experience could have explored this path with the same degree of openness and candour that these fine people with their three score years and five (minimum) travel on this earth brought to the venture. I suspect not, and it is to the credit of McColl, Hurst and Gibson that they’ve recognised this extraordinary community resource and had the courage to stage a work of this nature. No discredit to modern playwrights and their foibles but there are few in-depth roles for older folk and the side-by-side cults of youth and celebrity often preclude our being able to share the richness of lives lived that still have a good way to travel and a place in our theatrical tradition.

It’s to be hoped this is a trend that will be explored fully, not just by the innovative Auckland Theatre Company but by other companies as well. After all, there’s a resource such as this in every community. There’s an audience too, for the stories of those in what must now be called ‘mid life’ because 65 has to be the new 40 and I’ll gird my pensioner’s loins and fight anyone who says otherwise!

And so it ends …

Shantih! Shantih! Shantih!

The Pitmen Painters ~ a theatre review

The Pitmen Painters

By Lee Hall

Produced by (potent pause) Productions

Directed by Paul Gittins

Designed by John Verryt

Lighting Design by Nik Janiurek

Costumes by Kristen Sorrenson

At The Loft, Q Theatre

17 November to 10 December 2011

Published at www.theatreview.org.nz

At the end of the interval of this 2 hour 30 minute production a man from the row in front of me leaned back in his seat and told me he’d made the costume rack. I think he meant the attractive wooden coat stand.

He’d made more than that for this was Michael Lawrence who founded (potent pause) Productions in 2001 and who has had a major hand in the more than a dozen fine works created since that date. The company name references Lawrence’s love of Pinter (or – long pause – beat – pause – maybe not) yet somehow manages to embody the arcane programme choices made by him since the first production of Berkoff’s Decadence at the Maidment Studio, now the Musgrove, way back in 2001. The journey so far has included works by Pinter, Strindberg, Mamet, Ionesco, Stephanie Johnston, Pam Gems, Joe Penhall and Peter Schaffer, the only common factor being that they’re all serious and uncompromising works, a bit like Lawrence himself of whom I am unashamedly a big fan.

Lee Hall’s The Pitmen Painters continues in this mould both in style and quality.

Hall’s narrative, inspired by William Feaver’s 1988 book Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934-1984, is fact-based and begins in Ashington, Northumberland, a working class mining community, during a vivid period of change in England’s social history. It’s fair to say that there are a number of parallels between Hall’s 1930’s Britain and the Aotearoa/New Zealand today as Hall’s play is steeped in massive ideological and political change, namely the rise of socialism, which is perhaps paralleled today by the appearance of the revolutionary Occupy movement.

Hall underpins his text with frequent references to the writings of Karl Marx and has characters deeply entrenched in the paranoia of the time.  Dental ‘technician’ Harry Wilson (Stephen Papps) is the Marxian mouth piece and George Blessed (Geoffrey Snell) neatly sums up the all-consuming fear, rampant at the time, of an invisible management hierarchy with regular references to being ‘had up before the regional committee’ of the Workers Educational Association (WEA). I can recall my father expressing similar somewhat irrational fears.

The plot revolves around five men, three of whom are pitmen from Ashington in Northumberland, the fourth a dental ‘technician’ and the fifth, an unemployed youth.

These characters, based on the core group of original artists of the Ashington Group, come together as part of a WEA art appreciation class in 1934. Art appreciation as a subject of study for miners may seem incongruous but the truth is clearly stated: they would have preferred an introductory class in economics but no teacher was available.  Add to the mix Robert Lyon (Edward Newborn), a lecturer at Armstrong College in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (then part of Durham University), who, having failed with a chalk-and-talk approach to the classics, opted to get the men to try their hand at making their own art.

Thank goodness he did!

Lyon and the men find an immediate rapport and in no time Lyon has his students creating lino cut prints and daubing away prettily about what they know best.

Their unique style – and seemingly instant success – leads to exhibitions of their work and an introduction to fine society alongside a less desirable exposure to all the idiosyncrasies and foibles of the urbane fine art world.

The Pitman Painters is a play of ideas – sociological, ideological and deeply personal – at the centre of which is a never-ending debate about the nature and reality of art and of being an artist

The structure of the work is sequentially episodic and each installment is separated, rather conventionally, by apt sound effects, apposite – if rather obvious – musical snippets, bird song, and slides.

Having established the lads as a bunch of working class fellows dabbling with the philosophies of the Independent Labour Party, enter mega-rich heiress and art collector Helen Sutherland (Elizabeth Hawthorne) to skillfully represent the other side of this ideological coin and make devilishly attractive offers to Oliver Kilbourn (John Glass), the most talented member of the group, for not only does she collect art, it seems she may collect artists as well.

One of her current collection, modernist Ben Nicholson (Calum Gittins), engages in conversation with Oliver and attractively illustrates what can happen to a young man who follows the money and gains entrée to the world of the glitterati.

The challenge for Oliver is decide between his unquestionable loyalty to the Ashington Group and the tempting offer of a comfortable life as a full time artist sustained in every way by Sutherland as his rich and influential patron

Interval arrives with the men of the Ashington Group engaged in a beautiful orchestrated vocal litany which is both superbly written, fabulously performed and, as with the entire evening, splendidly directed by Paul Gittins.

The second half of the play devolves into a series of metaphors around war, the war between the pitman and the blacklegs and scabs who threaten their jobs, the ideological war between the rough-hewn, working-class man and the soft, thoughtless snobbery of the middle classes and, of course, the inexorable advance towards World War II.

Each character makes a positioning statement and none stronger than Oliver Kilbourn’s to Helen Sutherland ‘it’s not about the money, I’m a pitman, a bloody good pitman’.

Just in case you were thinking that all this sounds simply like a serious and rather dull paean of ideas, it’s worth noting that it’s quite simply not.

I repeat, it’s not.

The script itself is very funny, has great lines anchoured deep in the character’s Northumberland heritage and delivered magnificently by as strong a cast of men as I have seen in a long time.

Jimmy Floyd (Joseph Rye), for example, is at the centre of a riotous textual flowering that evolves from his showing the group his abstract painting of a blob and includes some of the most enlightening – and hearty – descriptions of the social abyss that exists between these working-class artists and the established art world. The debate rages around the artistic authenticity of a blob as might be painted by a working man compared with the same blob painted by, say, Henry Moore  and contains the wonderfully provocative statement ‘how things are represented doesn’t belong to the working class’.

Great fun, all this is, man!

We’ve had this debate since, of course, and it surrounds John Cage’s composition ‘Four minutes, thirty-three seconds’. Is ‘Four minutes, thirty-three seconds’ of silence played by Vladimir Ashkenazy more artistically satisfying and ‘better’ than the same piece played by me who simply can’t play the piano. It’s generally considered by the intelligentsia that Ashkenazy’s version would be better but I would dispute this hotly!

As does Jimmy Floyd when talking about his blob.

One of the most effective scenes in the play ends with the line ‘where’s the anger in this, where’s the fucking anger?’ It’s a question worth asking about art – and there’s plenty of anger in The Pitman Painters, albeit much of it powerfully suppressed.

As the play winds to its conclusion – and time passes – we are lead from innovation to the ordinary via the blunt instrument of fashion as wielded by Helen Sutherland. What is, in 1934, innovative and novel, has become, by 1943, mundane and commonplace and the lads are on the scrapheap.

It’s not all over but you’ll have to see this excellent production if you want to know the rest.

The success of this production of Hall’s fine play lies in the quality of the performances and the excellence of the supporting cast of director, set, lighting and costume designers. These are some of our most experienced and skilled theatre people working at their best on a complex and difficult play and its unqualified success is down to the quality of the ensemble teamwork and individual commitment.

The cast of men is quite simply outstanding. The Northern English accent is often fiendishly difficult for New Zealand actors but not in this case. Accents are true and accurate and allow us access to these culturally complex characters. Geoffrey Snell, John Glass, Joseph Rye, Calum Gittins and Stephen Papps looked and sounded like the real deal and that’s saying a lot!

Balancing the Northern lads both culturally and linguistically, Elizabeth Hawthorne and Edward Newborn (Robert Lyon) are excellent with Newborn in particular creating a vulnerable, insecure and not especially talented art teacher with bona fide style.

Josephine Stewart-Tewhiu (Susan Parks) makes the most of her small but important role.

Sitting astride the cultural divide is Calum Gittins who plays the pairing of the unemployed Northern lad who trips off to the war and the archetypical, oft-married Brit Ben Nicholson. Gittins Jnr is a prodigious young talent and it’s great to see the future of the theatre profession in New Zealand in such capable hands.

More please.

Much more.

John Verryt’s excellent set consists of three projection screens in front of a series of layered hangings that provide a classy, gallery-like perspective, a wooden refectory table, a number of stacked, Broadback Bentwood chairs and a coat stand all of which is lit with the subtlety and class we have come to expect of lighting designs by Nik Janiurek.

Kristen Sorrenson’s costumes are deliciously accurate to the period  and are created in a close-knit range of sepias, tans, chocolate browns, and mahogany. Karen Newborn’s hates are a delight.

Throughout the production a running narrative is projected on the three screens and this informs and guides us through what is in fact a simple enough historical narrative, a narrative which seems to end in failure when the Ashington group breaks up and the mining industry collapses but all this takes place on the eve of nationalization and the unity expressed by the cast in the final stanza mirrors that brief period in British history where the world seemed stable and the balance between capitalism and socialism was carefully weighed.

It didn’t last long but nothing does really.

The paintings have outlived their creators though – I guess there’s a message in that – and, thanks to the vision of Oliver Kilbourn, are to be found in the Woodhorn Colliery Museum where they have been on display since 1993.

The Pitman Painters is a great night at the theatre for a myriad of reasons.

It’s a performing arts connoisseur’s delight.