Deeming Did it Sir

Frank and Jenny relaxing at home

Down in Sydney watching my good friend Frank Gauntlett’s new play, Deeming, I couldn’t help but wonder if the 19^th century serial killer had simply had a poxy childhood?

I was consumed with all the contemporary fixations about diabolical characters – real and imagined – until Frank began to explain that the murders weren’t really central to his work.

Frank is - was and always will be – fascinated with theatre and drama from the complexity of a truly layered text to the frivolity of anecdotes about the men and women who populate this exotic world.

You only have to look around Frank – and good wife always-laughing-and- smiling wife Jenny Brown's home chock-a-block with pictures and memorbilia – to see that the world of theatre is central to their sometimes seemingly chaotic lives.

So Deeming is as much – if not more – about  stage-manager Alfred Dampier and his company who, in the tradition of a modern TV reality show, capitalised on the infamous Deeming case.

In real history terms, Dampier wrote a piece called Wilful Murder! as Frederick Deeming faced the hangman’s nose back in 1892 and made an absolute pile thanks to Old Sydney Town’s fascination with the case.

Frank’s story, eloquently written with what one reviewer called ‘Victorian ornateness’ takes the concept a step further and has Dampier, desperate for a success, turning it into a theatrical reality piece.

Although set in colonial Australia, this fascinating black comedy parallels our contemporary craze in ‘reality’ shows.

Overall I enjoyed the show – and was suitable impressed with the venue, the Kings Street Theatre, - but a Kennedy review is not appropriate.

Instead, I’ll post a link to a review which impressed me – and I think Frank was fairly happy with it – and another on Deeming for those fascinated with ‘orrible murders.

The review from Gareth Beal appears in artsHub.

The run ends on Sunday, but I am confident that Deeming will one day return from the shadows and haunt some suitably atmospheric theatrical stage.

In the meantime, Frank’s next production will be the return of his earlier successful adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine starring Mark Lee who co-starred in the movie Gallipoli with Mel Gibson.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/deeming-frederick-bailey-5940
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Dampier

http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news-article/reviews/performing-arts/deeming-189533

Plus this new review from Crickey's Lloyd Bradford Skye.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/curtaincall/2012/05/29/review-deeming-king-street-theatre-sydney/

Cinema: Meet me at the Movies

Audrey Hepburn

Being looking for an opportunity to kick-start something on the movies and along comes an 11-film package from Dendy Portside running two sessions each Monday at 10am and 6pm.

The cinema, were the cruise ships dock, is calling its June, July and August line-up Winter Wonderland, and covering a period from the Oscar winning drama Citizen Kane (1941) to Bob Fosse’s 1972 pre-war Berlin musical Cabaret starring Liza Minnelli.

I recall in the dim dark past mum hauling me along to the cinema as a kid, growing up in the 1950s, as she reckoned it was the only place she could get some rest from my antics.

The other boys and girls would be running all over the shop, but I was glued to the big screen watching anything from Gregory Peck in The Big Country to Norman Wisdom in one of those classic British comedies such as The Square Peg.

The movie didn’t have to be a classic, and it didn’t have to be Hollywood, in fact I remember seeing a British comedy, Very Important Person, with a swag of home-grown comics, Eric Sykes, James Robinson Justice, Stanley Baxter and Leslie Phillips, somewhere between 17 and 20 times in one week!

Nowadays, I have quite an extensive DVD collection and access to TV movies, but there’s something about seeing a movie on the big screen’s that is different to any other movie experience.

The big screen season opens with Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) on Monday, June 4, and continues with:

My Fair Lady (1964) (June 18), Citizen Kane (1941) (June 25), Cabaret (1972)  (July 2), To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) (July 9), Dr Zhivago (1965) (July 16), It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) (July 23), Calamity Jane(1953) (July 30), The African Queen (1951) (August 6), Meet In St Louis (1944) (August 13) and (1959)Ben Hur (August 20).

I’ll be there……

Hungry for Love? Breakfast at Tiffany’s



Breakfast at Tiffany's poster

‘She’s a phony, all right, but a real phony,’ is the way Holly Golighty’s agent,  O.J. Bergman (Martin Balsam), sums up the classic big screen character in the 1961 adaptation of the Truman Capote novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Naturally, the elegant and sophisticated Audrey Hepburn, who played the role, was no phony, but rather Hollywood royalty, whose mother was a real-life Baroness.

Hepburn, born Edda Kathleen van Heemstra Heburn-Ruston, was the daughter of right wing banker, Joseph Hepburn-Ruston and Dutch aristocrat Baroness Ella van Heemstra.

When the parents divorced in 1935, Audrey went to school in London, became a ballerina in Holland and later a chorus girl and model, before landing a series of small roles in British movies such as Chiquita in the Lavender Hill Mob (1951).

In contrast, Holly Golightly was a ‘socialite,’ living the ‘high life’, in keeping with the sensitivities of the times as the concept of a high-class call girl selling herself was strictly taboo.

The Blake Edwards movie was billed as a romantic comedy as the eccentric Golightly takes the 115 minutes to connect with her bemused neighbour played by George Peppard.

Breakfast was a landmark film for both actors – Aubrey liked it because the naturally introverted actress had to play an extrovert and received an Oscar nomination for her trouble - but there are other notable features.

Screenwriter George Axelrod took out an Oscar nomination for his screenplay, but it was the music which took out the big gong with Henry Mancini winning an Oscar for music score and Moon River being named best song.

Audrey crooned Moon River in Breakfast and later recorded all Eliza Doolittle’s songs in My Fair Lady, but during filming Fair Lady director George Cukor inserted Marni Nixon’s singing voice.

The story goes that Audrey was furious and stomped off the set when she found out, but later, being the trouper she was, returned, apologised and got on with the job.

Back to Breakfast, watch out for Buddy Ebsen as Doc Golightly and Mickey Rooney as a racial stereotype, and Audrey’s Japanese neighbour, I Y Yunioshi. Later Rooney copped heaps for this performance.

The Queensland Ballet: A Rose Coloured World

Don Quixote with Blair Wood (top) as The Don and Keian Langdon as Sancho. Photo Ken Sparrow

 Don Quixote. Choreographed by Francois Klaus. Queensland Ballet. Playhouse House Theatre. Continues till June 2 Don Quixote (Blair Wood), Sancho (Keian Langdon/Gareth Belling). Dulcinea (Lisa Stewart).

It’s time to go a tad highbrow with the Australia Opera staging, The Magic Flute, and the Queensland Ballet presenting a new production of the perennial favourite, Don Quixote.

Let’s start with the Don, as it only runs till Saturday (June 2), and I have been away in Sydney checking out friend Frank Guantlett’s new play, Deeming,  teaming 19^th century serial killer, Frederick Deeming, and actor- manager- cum- playwright Alfred Dampier.

More on Deeming later.

The Don. QB’s artistic director Francois Klaus is having a whip cracker of a final year in the role of AD, first with a thoroughly entertaining outing of Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, and now Cervantes’ Renaissance classic.

The production – which features music from a potpourri of composers including Minkus (Excerpts from Don Quixote) and Dvorak’s final movement from the New World Symphony and Cello Concerto in B - brings the Don wham-bang into the 21^st century.

In this telling, a dancer (Blair Wood) is playing the Don in a movie when he becomes so obsessed with the character, the errant knight begins to have a detrimental effect on his work and life.

Klaus has created an enchanting narrative, about the eternal importance of dreaming, as the story shifts in time between the Renaissance world of the Don and his servant Sancho, and the challenges facing the young dancer in his contemporary waking life.

This results is a clean and sharp narrative, which has an added bonus of some wonderful male dancing as well as the delicate contribution of Lisa Edwards as Dulcinea.

The show is packed with rustic charm as the Don and Sancho create their own distinctive dance style, humour  and a powerful central message about the importance of dreams.

The humour and rustic charm are particularly evident in The Don’s attack on the poor monks and a further encounter with bunch of innocent sheep. This all demonstrate that’s the Don’s mind is well and truly addled.

The world should always accommodate the true eccentric, although, of course, individuals have responsibilities to their fellow men and women and, must live with accountability.

Take a note.

In the meantime, I have picked out a review of the Don that I particularly like to share in the link below.

This time I have opted for Denise Richardson’s review in Dance Australia, which admittedly contradicts some of the observations spelled out in my opening pars.

Francois Klaus and the Queensland Ballet’s passion for working with creative storytelling in its main house productions has always created challenges, and sometimes major problems.

I had problems with the QB’s storytelling in Fonteyn Remembered – combining actors and dancers in a tribute to Dame Margot back in 2010 – but others loved it.

Such is life and cultural democracy.

I personally think The Don is one of the better ones, but I am (as always) open to alternative critiques and I enjoy reading commentary which takes an alternative view.

This Dance Australian review  is a stimulating and informative one, well worth a view, and I particularly like the use of the photos.

http://www.danceaustralia.com.au/review/queensland-ballet-don-quixote

Francois Klaus

The Prince of Wits

Miguel de Cervantes

Now I’d like to touch on the man who gave us The Don and some comments made by Francois Klaus on opening night.

Miguel de Cervantes, who lived largely in the second half of the 16^th century and died 68 in 1616, had a full life as a valet, soldier, grocer, tax collector, and, of course wit and writer.

But as Klaus said in his remarks for all Cervantes’ adventures – and they included being held hostage by Algerian Corsairs for five years and as a purveyor (that’s a grocer) to the Spanish Armada - it’s his storytelling which  immortalised him.

Don Quixote was considered the first great European novel and Cervantes was known in his lifetime as a man of letters and El Principe de Los Ingenios (The Princes of Wits).

Here are some examples of his quotes:

. A closed mouth catches no flies

. A proverb is a short sentence based on a long experience

. A private sin is not so prejudiced in the world, as a public indecency

. Fair and softly goes far

. Every man is the son of his own works

. Good actions ennoble us and we are the sons of our deeds

And lastly this extract from Don Quixote:

“Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body.

 That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man.

And when we focus our attention upon that beauty, not upon the physical, love generally arises with great violence and intensity.

 I am well aware that I am not handsome, but I also know that I am not deformed, and it is enough for a man of worth not to be a monster for him to be dearly loved, provided he has those spiritual endowments I have spoken of.”

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote Part 1 Of 2

And so say all of us….

Let me talk to Snow White



Snow White Audition : My agent insisted Vlad the Impaler was one of the Seven Drawfs and the kids wouldn't be frightened. Has anyone got a problem with that?



Overview: Hooray for Hollywood and Now Broadway Bound

Do I need to write anything more?

There’s a cynical line in the fun 1930s Hollywood Hotel’s hit song, Hooray for Hollywood, that goes Hooray for Hollywood, Where You’re Fantastic if You’re Even Good.

That might be the case for off-the-peg, easy on the eye, American idols, but over there would-be-star imports have had to prove themselves in the big playpen.

In the last decade or so Australian actors of the calibre of Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackson, Heath Ledger, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Guy Pearce and Geoffrey Rush, among others, have done it in spades.

They’ve won industry adulation, a popular fan following and a swag of Oscars and Emmys to demonstrate that, when it comes to punching above their weight, Aussies can go the distance.

The conquering heroes flash across our TV screens on award nights and, more often than not, walk away with some glittering prize or at least the echo of winsome superlatives ringing in their ears.

That’s all part of the Hollywood hype – which is an integral part of this  zillion, dollar business – but what about Broadway which has its own brand of razzamatazz?

There’s a Give My Regards to Broadway, Broadway Bound, Strike up the Band streak running along the Big White Way, but, compared to Hooray for Hollywood, seems more subtle.

 

There’s a sense – and maybe it’s not altogether fair – that actors and performers need something a little more special to get up night after night and win over an audience that’s right there in front.

There’s no second take, studio stand-in, action double or technological enhancement for the trouper facing his or her destiny in the long Broadway night between curtain up and taking a bow.

There’s a Broadway buzz and, in recent times, its embraced a handful of Aussies and imported shows and plays such as  Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Tony Sheldon, Exit the King, Geoffrey Rush, Hugh Jackson, Back on Broadway and Rachel Griffith (Other Desert Cities) and the play Honour by kingpin Aussie wordsmith Joanna Murray-Smith.

The Australian Broadway story, however, has both a past and, of course, a future of which the above standard bearers represent only a handful of stations along the Great White Way to US Theatrical glory.

Then there’s the scribes who tell our stories and take them to the world risking all the positive stock they’ve earned at home.

Adelaide-born playwright Malcolm ‘Max’ Afford was among the first home-grown playwrights to be seen on Broadway, when his comedy thriller Lady in Danger played the Broadhurst Theatre in 1945.

The play had been a hit in Sydney, under the direction of Doris Fitton, but could only manage a three and half week run in post-war New York City before closing.

Ray Lawler’s seminal Summer of the 17^th Doll went to New York City in 1958, following crackerjack seasons in Australian and later London, where the darlings of the British stage, Laurence Oliver and Vivien Leigh championed the production.

The Lawler play found NYC a much harder nut to crack, despite certain tweaks, such as dropping the very home-based terms and references, which had warmed Australian hearts.

The Australian presence on Broadway wasn’t really felt until the late 1980s, ‘90s and the initial years of the millennium, when writers such as David Williamson went off-Broadway with Emerald City and then in 1992 Brisbane playwright Jill Shearer’s Shimada put her in the record books.

Jill Shearer and Shimada star Ben Gazzara on Broadway 



The popular Brisbane playwright and theatre identity was the first Australian female playwright to be seen on Broadway – once again at the Broadhurst Theatre- with her no holds barred  powerful account of Japanese-Australian relations during and after World War II.

Jill’s Broadway experience was what the Australian media like to call a roller-coaster ride as the production, starring Ben Gazzara, Ellen Burstyn, Mako and Estelle Parsons, had to contend with Broadway at its must belligerent.

There were, it has been reported many times, mistakes.

The final nail in the coffin coming from the wrath of Frank – The Butcher of Broadway – Rich whose scathing attack completely derailed the whole project
 within days of opening.

Jill, who had been ill for sometime, died on May 6 and at her Brisbane funeral on May 14 at St Paul’s Anglican Church, Ashgrove, Edith Piaf’s No Regrets was among the songs played.

That amply sums up Jill’s good natured response to what was both undoubtedly ‘the best and worst’ of times alhough the playwright never looked back in anger.

Indeed, Jill was always happy to talk about her brush with Broadway and even wrote a warts and all book, Nowhere But Broadway, which told her story with humour and a big heart.

As Shimada player and good friend, Estelle Parsons said in her introduction to the book, describing Broadway as the ‘ultimate game of chance’, “the consolation is that it (the event) makes a good story and Jill is a good storyteller.”

Jill Shearer was a pioneer and those who lead the way into new territory often have to face the slings and arrows of the adventurer, but eventually others follow and with tenacity so does success.

That was Jill’s American adventure but I would like to conclude with a line or two about her outstanding record in Australia, where she wrote, and had staged, more than 20 plays, earned a swag of awards and the respect and love of admirers and friends both within and outside the business.

Jill Shearer, like so many who lead so that other might follow and try something outside their comfort zone, was both an inspiration and a true trail blazer.

I saw Shimada in Brisbane nearly a quarter of a century ago and I still remember it as a work with more to recommend it than Rich credited it.

But then I go to the theatre with an open mind rather than a closed agenda.

The new century has seen the first Australian musical performed on Broadway – back in 2003 The Boy from Oz earned Hugh Jackman a Tony Award- more award winning success with Geoffrey Rush in Exit the King, the success of playwright Joanna Murray-Smith and most successful producer John Frost.

The entrepreneurial guru has more tentacles in more US and Australian projects than an octopus – he’s won Tonys for productions of The King and I and Hairspray – but I’ll leave his story for another posting.

(Note: Nowhere but Broadway by Jill Sheaer was published by the author in 2002 and there are several copies available at the Brisbane City Library.)

Bernadette Robinson: A Show for Somebody.

The past and present inevitably leads to the future and that in turn takes this diarist onto a new show, which is winning hearts and minds in Australia and maybe America soon.

There’s no such thing as certainly, but singer and actress Bernadette Robinson’s remarkable performance in Joanna Murray-Smith’s Songs for Nobodies comes close to being positively Broadway Bound.

The series of monologues, which features five divas and the ordinary women whose lives they touched, is presently having a Brisbane re-run till June 3 (2012).

However, the industry’s chattering class is already marking it down for Broadway following what sounds like one of the most extra ordinary New York City previews in living memory.

Playwright Murray-Smith (Honour) wrote Songs for Nobodies – apparently after some persuasion – to give Robinson’s outstanding gift for vocal and performing mimicry some gravitas.

The result is five superbly crafted intimate monologues sandwiched between Robinson’s uncanny tributes to Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday and Maria Callas.

This show has been blowing away Australian audiences for the past couple of years, and winning accolades from star names such as Geoffrey Rush and Barry Humphries, but now it appears that international acclaim and fame is beckoning.

The story goes that Robinson and Murray-Smith, along with director Simon Phillips and producer Harley Medcalf, jetted to New York to stage a pared-back performance in a relatively bare space.

Robinson presented the 90-minute show with only a piano accompaniment, and minimal costuming, but still managed to secure a standing ovation and more praise than you’d find at St Paul’s Cathedral on a Sunday morning.

The standing ovation is tribute enough, but the names of some of this collection from a who’s who of Broadway notables and Australian expatriates make the anecdote a whiz-bang.

This cheer squad included Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber, director Fred Schepisi,  Aussie comic Judy Morris, Priscilla Queen of the Desert star Tony Sheldon and Broadway producer of The Producers and Hairspray fame Richard Frankel.

Nobodies producer Medcalf, who admittedly has a vested interest in the show, said he had never seen such a spontaneous display like this at the end of  a performance.

Frankel, who is more likely to be instrumental in taking Robinson to Broadway, described the scene as ‘jaw dropping’ and the artist’s talent as ‘truly unique.’

“That has kick-started some serious discussions around town,” he confirmed.

Murray-Smith described the experience as ‘exhilarating’ and the response to   Robinson as ‘ecstatic’.

“Here was proof positive that her talent is not simply local, but global: in the standing ovation that she received from the seen-it-all Broadway folk who came somewhat skeptically to see her and who left utterly astonished at her performance.

In the past week or so I have heard both seasoned professionals and occasional theatre goers and more in-between extol Bernadette Robinson and Songs for Nobodies and read a myriad of reviews like this one from the Melbourne season.

http://australianstage.com.au/201112305042/reviews/melbourne/songs-for-nobodies-%7C-melbourne-theatre-company.html

Carolyn: They’re Dancing for You

Carolyn Rappel with Robert Helpmann in Facade for the Australian Ballet 1972 . Doesn't she look just great. My friend. (courtesy: National Library of Australia)

Can never catch the Don Quixote ballet without thinking of someone who meant so much to me in the 1980s.

While I was loving the Queensland Ballet’s new production of the Don Q–    wonderfully reconceived by AD Francois Klaus – could not help but think of Carolyn Rappel being there.

She had danced with the Australian Ballet – notably the Rudolf Nureyev film of the Australian Don Q – and then  reinvented herself as an more than able arts administer at the Queensland Performing Arts Complex (QPAC).

Carolyn helped pioneer the children’s festival at QPAC, Out of the Box, but from a purely personal point of view was a great friend to me.  I miss those conversations. Carolyn was born 1947, but died 2010 too young.
Out of the Box performance festival for children http://www.outoftheboxfestival.com.au/

Frankly, it’s Time to throw down the Gauntlett

Spot the crazed killer? Top actor-manager Alfred Dampier, Frederick Deeming (middle) and mild-mannered Sydney actor Patrick Trumper. If you thought Mr Trumper was Deeming I imagine he would be more than happy.

Old chum Francis A. Gauntlett sat in the court of public opinion at the Three Blackbirds as Old Father Time donned a black cap he had bought from the Army and Navy stores for a fiver.

Heaving a Guinness, that someone else had bought, the judge read out the charges, which included being over-the-top (OTT) with malice of forethought and pinching all the verbal space.

Before said judge could dip his lid, and call time on around another round of the black gold, the dark hairy fellow had done a hop, skip and jump of Olympian proportions and landed in the colonies.

The blaggard had shaken off the shackles of the Old Country, without so much as a ticket of leave, and found a journalistic bolt hole at a time when hacking was still thought to be a type of persistent cough.

Gauntlett and wife, Pirate Jenny, now call Old Sydney Town home as long-suffering spouse combs the country searching for new ideas and Frank dips his quill into the fountain of strewth.

The results over the past couple of decades have included books, plays and strange little doodles on beer mats his probation officer puts down to some malfunction in his early toilet training.

Among the most lasting contributions to the human cannon of misfired shots in the literary dark are a musical adaptation of the story of the little boy who wouldn’t grow up, Peter Pan, a salute with Bunny Gibson to veteran Australian actor and occasional abstainer, John Meillon, and a theatrical fine tuning of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.

Now Frank, with whom I have shared the occasional Bacchanal, is having a go at reality, which is something that thus far has tended to elude him in this life-time.

The result is a recreation of a magically theatrical time in the history of the colony, when the celebrated actor-manager, Alfred Dampier (For the Term of His Natural Life) walked the boards looking for a curtain raiser at the Alexandra Theatre (later Her Majesty’s).

Dampier couldn’t fail to notice that one Frederick Bailey Deeming was drawing huge crowds for his 1892 production of ‘How I Murdered the Wife and Kids.’

Deeming was a serial killer, who made sinners feel like saints as his evil deeds came to light, and we do know that in true Victorian Underbelly style that inspired the Dampier melodrama Willful Murder!

See more on Deeming : http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/deeming-frederick-bailey-5940

Gauntlett- the cunning old fox – has weaved a tale of the past and present as ‘orrible murders morph into TV’s modern assault on our sensibilities as in the world of Big Brother, The Block and Masterchef.

Gauntlett’s play Deeming paints a picture of Dampier as a reality pioneer, creating theatre out of tragedy, as horrific facts come to light on a day to day basis.

I’m popping down to Old Sydney Town to catch the play – and hopefully a cup of Guinness kindness for the sake of Old Lang Syne - when it opens at the King Street Theatre, Newtown, next week.

The production, which features Patrick Trumper (The Magic Pudding), Emily Stewart (Cops LAC) and Anthony Hunt (Woyzeck) under the direction of Steven Hopley (Theatre of Blood and The Sydney Shakespeare Company) runs May 22-June 3 Tues-Sat.

Dog Day Afternoon

There were open auditions for Hound of the Baskervilles and Rogie thought he was in with a chance



A Hoax: Fascinating Fake or Factious Fiction?



A Little White Lie.



A Hoax: Stars Shari Sebbens, Glenn Hazeldine, Sally McKenzie, Charles Allen. Directed by Lee Lewis. La Boite. Runs till May 26.

                                         

The writing genre known as Misery Memoirs or Inspirational Lit - depending on how sensitive your cynicism gauge – has spawned its own fake sub-culture.

For the uninitiated, or unconcerned, this is the area of biography which allows the troubled individual to seek solace, and mass media therapy, through the lucrative medium of a best seller.

There’s been heaps of genuine storytelling stories successes, where early suffering has been expunged through letting it all hang out in colourful literary form.

However, award-winning Australian’s playwright Rick Viede’s second major work, A Hoax, which had its world premiere at Brisbane’s La Boite last week, deals with the even darker side of this public self-analysis.

A Hoax, as the play’s title suggests, takes a fictional microscopic view of fact fakery, through the story of young indigenous girl recruited to be a ‘classic victim’ of hideous child abuse.

The idea is that naïve Miri Smith becomes the ‘real-life’ author Currah (Shari Sebbens), while white social worker and genuine author, Anthony ‘Ant’ Dooley (Glenn Hazeldine), stands behind the façade of this dirty little secret.

Dooley, who is such an insignificant character he can’t get anyone to use his nickname-moniker Ant, has penned Nobody’s Girl, but the world is not to know that significant guilty fact.

The other two characters in the play, as we fellow Currah’s remarkable transformation, are the over-the-top, champagne swilling, self-seeking agent Ronnie Lowe (Sally McKenzie) and her camp and rather sometimes scary assistant Tyrelle Parks (Charlie Allen).

The play, which has been brilliantly written and plotted, moves between high farce and frightening overtones of threatening behaviour, but still managed to polarise opinion within the Brisbane theatre community.

While I’ll be reviewing A Hoax on Brisbane’s 612ABC on Friday (May 18) with Spencer Howson, I thought today I’d publish links to two very different Brisbane views of the production.

The reviews, at the bottom of this story, from Absolute Theatre’s Eric Scott and David Burton in the Greenroom, both make entertaining reading and an engaging contrast.

Being a great believer in cultural democracy, I love Vive la Difference in critical surfing. I believe it’s the differences between things which truly defines them.

And my view?

I had a great night going on this bewildering journey, following a quartet of colourful and sometimes over-the-top characters, although at times it all seemed a little confusing.

That’s not so much fence sitting as simply acknowledging that art, like life, is never black and white, and even the most brilliant diamonds are flawed.

Incidentally, this already award-winning play is a joint production with the Griffin Theatre Company and will be opening at the Stables Theatre July 20.

          http://actorsgreenroom.net/archives/6732

http://www.absolutetheatre.com.au/

What Makes the World Go Around?




Maria Monk (courtesy of Faculty staff vwc.edu)

 



A Hoax’s promotional build-up here has, naturally, focused on some of the real-life autobiographical fakes, such as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces (2003) picked as an Oprah’s Book Club selection.

That created an impression, in my mind at least, that the fake fact literally tradition – particularly in the misery memoir genre - was a modern phenomenon.

That’s far from the case, as would be writers, like painters, have been fabricating and masquerading lies as truth before the façade of their own talent for decades or even centuries.

The Holocaust was a rich source of this kind of expose and, going back even further, there have been several suspect accounts of evil goings on within religious institutions.

One of the most famous confessions featured a Canadian woman, Maria Monk (1816-1849), who’s Awful Discourses (that’s a short for the long-winded title of the book) were published in 1836.

The book had sold 300, 000 copies by the beginning of the US Civil War, there was a fellow-up, although Monk was comprehensively discredited.

She claimed to have lived in a Montreal convent within an order known as The Black Nuns, where the Brides of Christ were frequently abused and raped by neighbouring priests.

The work is full of sensational horror stories with references to secret tunnels, nightly orgies and ‘terrible doings,’ culminating in the most terrible acts of brutality.

The worst includes accounts of unwanted bastard babies being born as a result of the unions and then, after being baptized, murdered and thrown into a lime pit.

Fact fakery, horrible accusations, politically motivated exposes and horrific flights of the human imagination, like so many more aspects of the human condition, are not exclusive to the 21^st century.

For more on Maria Monk read:

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~traister/hughes.html  

   

    

     

    

Shari’s Shining Sapphires.

La Boite’s world premiere A Hoax coincides with a terrific break for young actress Shari Sebbens.

The proud Bardi, Jabirr-Jabirr women – who hails from Darwin – is leaving the show to be at the special Cannes Film Festival screening of her new movie The Sapphires.

The Australian movie, which also stars Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy and Miranda Tapsell, is the only Australian feature to be selected as part of this year’s official selection outside competition at the Palais.

In a magnificent gesture, La Boite has cancelled four shows so Sebbens can wing her way to France and bask in the movie’s success with her co-stars.

The Sapphires, which also stars Chris O’Dowd, is a 1960s period flick which tells the story of four indigenous women who form a Supremes-style singing group and go to entertain the troops in Vietnam.

 

The film, which will open the Melbourne International Film Festival, is being hailed as one of the year's most anticipated Aussie movies.

This comes as Sebbens has been selected as one of 13 finalists in the fourth annual Heath Ledger Scholarship, designed to help the winner achieve Hollywood success.

                                 

                                             Good luck Shari.

The Sapphires from left Shari Sebbens, Miranda Tapsell, Jessica Mauboy and Deborah Mailman