Sir Hulway Barrack-Jones is coming to this site. Here's a picture of him in happier times. I have agreed to allow him to use this site to promote his new show The Universial Actor. Sir Hulway (pronounced Hallway) is the eternal actor  who has been with us for all time. He has a wealth of stories, a confidence much above his capabiltiities and the ability to comment on the past, present and future of our great industry without worrying too much about detail. His first theatrical outing was Calvary and his most recent included Hairspray. He says the simularities were striking. This will become his site in the new week, and thereafter, and he will offer a smorgasbord of offerings which he one day hopes to shape into something which sounds remotely intelligent. Between times he has agreed to comment on local productions in his own distinctive style.

Theatre: Going To-and-Fro Between the Fo and Flu.

Carol Burns as Elizabeth points the way to the 16th Century satirical tradition known as Commedia dell'arte

Elizabeth almost by chance a woman. Stars Carol Burns, Eugene Gilfedder, SarahKennedy, Jason Klarwein, Dash Kruck, John Rodgers.  Directed by Wesley Enoch. Queensland Theatre Company. Powerhouse. Continues till June 24.

It has been more than a week since my last posting and, thanks to a bout of

the flue, I am now in catch-up mode as I try to make-up for lost time.

However, the one thing about life is that it doesn’t stand still for anyone – not even royalty as I noticed the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert went ahead as Prince Phillip was carted off to hospital – so it’s up to us all to keep dancing as fast as we can for as long as we can.

Last week I was talking about Opera Australia staging The Magic Flue – and describing it as a tad highbrow – and this week it might appear, at first, that I have gone a little lowbrow with Dario Fo.

The Italian Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is still rattling around the planet somewhere, was born March 24, 1926, which makes him a month older then the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II.

While shows such as Elizabeth, almost by chance a woman, appear vulgar, outspoken and absurdist, they are actually well crafted examples of a satirical theatre tradition that goes back centuries.

Elizabeth, which features esteemed British actress Carols Burns in the title role and centres on England’s Elizabeth I, affectionately known as Good Queen Bess, draws on the Italian Commedia dell’arte as a starting point.

One only has to look at Fo’s history – within the theatre and elsewhere – to see that his life has been a rich political experience beginning with his work with his father in the anti-fascist Resistance in World War II.

It would seem - and my confirming source is that sometimes vulnerable cyber reference Wikipedia -  Fo and Son were instrumental in helping various individuals, including allied soldiers and Jewish scientists, escape to Switzerland.

Even in the post war era, Fo was walking a thin line turning Biblical stories into political satire – an extreme thing to do in Catholic Italy –  writing plays from the 1950s.

However, I was first introduced to his work decades later in Brisbane.

For a while in the 1980s,  Fo’s work was extremely popular with the TN Company, which at that time was a major ‘serious’ dramatic force within the Brisbane arts community.

I recall productions of Raspberries and Trumpets and the Accidental Death of an Anarchist among others. His most successful play, Buffo, translated into 30 languages, never made Brisbane to my knowledge.

Naturally, serious theatre students have always embraced the Commedia dell’arte, with its references to stock characters, social and political satire, improvisation and a chance to connect with western theatre’s first tentative professional outing.

What I particularly liked about this revamped version of Fo, freely adapted and translated by Luke Devenish and Louise Fox, is the language plucked from the past and made into contemporary relevance.

However, I do concede that the two hour show –  revolving around absurdist goings on between Elizabeth and her various courtiers whom in real life would have been flung (or worse) into the tower – does wear a trifle thin in the narrative department.

The basic idea is that Elizabeth, whom Flo asserts was no virgin but rather waiting for her lover, the  treacherous Earl of Essex, is old and dying and doing it in a loud and boisterous, bawdy way.

(What a way to go if you still have the strength)

Throw in William Shakespeare (whom the Queen believes is really writing about her), a wordy bureaucrat, a patronising maid, a transvestite and a tiresome boy and you’re got a spicy mix of seemingly outrageous nonsense.

But the language – and some notable theatrical antics from the likes of Carol Burns, Dash Kruck Eugene Gilfedder, Sarah Kennedy and Jason Klarwein along with musical help and added contributions from John Rodgers  – made it first brilliant, then bearable and then, well, it’s time to go.

The last 15 minutes are a bit wearisome.

There’s been a bit of twitter chatter lately – believe it or not – about the viability of political satire, but I reckon, like all forms of theatre, it has its place.

Like most things in life, as John Lennon once wrote, whatever gets you through the night.

I was brought up in a British satirical tradition and recall, as a young man, dipping into a broad range of absurd comic traditions including playwright NF Simpson,  radio’s The Goons and later TV’s Monty Python Flying Circus.

I think the British tradition was more easy-going, more socially-driven and less a reaction to politics as, I believe, the country in the later part of the 20^th century displayed an even political temper.

Of course, individuals who believe they were the victims of injustice would disagree with that point of view, but once again it falls back on personal experience.

For once, I haven’t come across any reviews of Elizabeth, which I would particularly recommend, but then I haven’t been looking too closely.

However, those looking for a review in a sentence – they have their place as well – might describe it as Ab Fab meets Black Adder with a dash of the Goons and Monty Python (all English comic references, I know) thrown in for good measure.

Opera Australia: Right, Everyone Join In On The Chorus.



Milica Illic (left) as Queen of the Night and Taryn Fiebig as Pamina in The Magic Flute. Photo Justin Nicholas.


I remember an opera comedienne who would hit a high note, then catch her breath and shout at the audience, ‘come on everyone join in on the chorus,’ or something to that effect.

There’s something about opera with its divas, unlikely overweight soprano and tenor lovers, stodgy performances and general pomposity, which encourages the spoof, the send-up and a certain amount of derision.

Or at least that used to be the case, when opera was at the top of the mountain of high art and sponsors and supporters were perceived to be an elite group of precious patrons, but the world is changing.

Nowadays, a new wave of artistic directors, working with theatrically aware directors, is bringing the art form from  those rarified peaks of artistic endeavor and into the people’s paddock.

In short, OA aspires to live in the love of the common people.

There was nowhere that was more obvious then in Brisbane the past couple of weeks, when audiences were treated to Opera Australia’s two most recent success stories.

OA’s artistic director, Lyndon Terracini, is bringing the company back to the Queensland capital for the time first in more than two decades – the last visit was 1988 – with two state-of-art productions designed with mainstream appeal in mind.

The key to the productions’ success is as much in the direction as the versatility of the performers, who can sing as well as act, dance and in some cases engage in breathtaking gymnastics.

I am talking about ‘directing stars’ from the world stage in the shape of The Lion King’s Julie Taymor and Australia’s own behind-the-camera matinee idol Baz Luhrmann. 

Today old Alfred Hitchcok would have had to share the spotlight among the living stars of the director's chair.

The first in this double-header was a completely overhauled Mozart classic, The Magic Flute, which was trimmed down to two hours – with interval – and could easily hold its own in the highly competitive Broadway market place.

This magical piece of spin, which saw Mozart’s 1791 masterpiece morph into a slice of family entertainment which would look quite comfortable next to The Lion King or even Mary Poppins, was the brainchild of Julie Taymor (pictured).

The work came to life at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and was given its Australian renaissance by Matthew Barclay and as they say in the ‘op-biz’ it’s sure to irritate the purists.

This work is a theatrical cavalcade of colour, whimsy and joy as the troupe winds its way through a shortened version of Mozart’s mysterious work with its links to Masonic traditions.

Julie Taymor is well equipped to create this achievement as she has what cricket followers call, ‘ the runs on the board’,  with The Lion King breaking records at the Broadway box office, to the tune of more than $853 million, and now the seventh most successful show on Broadway.

(The most successful is still The Phantom of the Opera.)

The director, who also brought us The Beatles inspired movie love story, Across the Universe, also has a swag of awards including Tony Awards for direction and costume design with The Lion King.

While The Magic Flute runs a crisp and to-the-point 120 minutes, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Summer Night’s Dream takes a more meandering route.

The show runs for more than three hours – with two intervals – but once again the cast demonstrates a broad sweep of performance skills.

Baz Luhrmann (pictured), who set his Dream in India around 1923, coaxed some wonderful acting performances out of his singing cast and draped his production in eye-catching fashion both in the set and costume departments.

The designers were Bill Marron and his wife and long-term professional partner Catherin Martin.

Once again stage and film director, Baz Luhrmann, is the very model of a modern operatic practitioner and brings a great sense of skill, crafts and originality to the medium.

His big screen credits, for those who need reminding, include Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge and Australia, but he’s also had a good track record with the OA.

His La Boheme on Broadway back in 2002 won three Tony Awards.

The OA is back in Brisbane with a bang.

The double header season runs until Friday and Saturday (June 8 and 9) but there’s talk of more to come.

Here’s a sample from A Midsummer Night’s Dream http://vimeo.com/9542385

A scene from the Dream. Photo Branco Garcia

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