According to Shakespeare, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. In Alan Ayckbourn’s Flatspin, it’s not a rose, but a Rosie, who changes names – and with amusing, if not necessarily surprising, results.
In Canberra Repertory’s production directed by Geoffrey Borny, Rosie (Lainie Hart) is having a very bad day. An out-of-work actress, Rosie takes on the job of cleaner and plant-waterer for a trendy Docklands apartment block whose residents are often out of town. Rosie is watering plants in one of the flats when the doorbell rings: enter toothsome neighbour Sam (Ross Walker). Rosie, wishing she were somebody else, pretends to be. She introduces herself as the flat’s owner, Joanna Rupleford. Sam asks ‘Joanna’ to share dinner with him that night, in ‘her’ flat. Oh, as they say, dear.
Hart and Walker have great stage presence and the gentle back-and-forth between them fizzles along nicely throughout Act 1. Just before they close the deal (and the Act), Maurice (Jerry Hearn) enters, the play gets a lot more complicated, and this reviewer can no longer mention any plot points because that would spoil the whole thing.
Borny has directed his players with supreme confidence. Hart is excellent as Rosie, while Walker turns in a fine performance in what is a rather thankless role. The English accents are somewhat patchy - disappointing in an otherwise-solid production. The real treats, as always, come from the supporting players – Rob de Vries as the testosterone-fuelled Tommy and Steph Roberts as the awful Annette run away with all the best laughs.
A simple case of assumed identity is the basis for many a romantic comedy – and the enjoyment comes from the audience’s recognition of a shared impulse. We’ve all wanted to be somebody else, just for a change – more glamorous, more successful, more mysterious. Ayckbourn’s play works like many a rom-com before it – will they get together? Will Rosie give the game away? Why do the saucepans still have their tags on them?
It is, as the tagline suggests, very much like Bridget Jones’ Diary (the film. The book, I might say, is a great deal sharper in its comedy and its depiction of relationships). Good, if not exactly ground-breaking stuff. Flatspin won’t change the world – but it offers an enjoyable night out with some good, old-fashioned, English comic writing.
You might remember The Snow Queen from your childhood. If you do, then prepare to be delighted by theater simple’s enchanting performance of the Hans Christian Andersen classic. If you don’t know the story, this is the perfect way to discover it.
Hailing from Seattle, theater simple is an award-winning company founded in 1990 by actors Llysa Holland and Andrew Litzky.
Holland says theater simple is about stripping the performance back, and placing an emphasis on the imagination of the actor and audience.
"Simple doesn't mean easy—it can actually be incredibly difficult and complicated. It's about removing the 'wiz bang' which sometimes brings more difficult things to life and there's a lot more different layers to it,” Holland says. “The type of stuff we do is imagination based. Your imagination is always going to be more elastic and generous than anything we could do on stage so we suggest one part of the costume and let you imagine the rest.”
And it seems like this is the perfect approach to tell this fairy tale. After rave reviews in Seattle, across Canada and the US and the Adelaide Fringe, The Snow Queen visits the Street Theatre for two nights only. The story of Gerda and her journey to find her missing friend Kai is told by five actors who play 55 characters, from flowers to birds, to robbers and princesses. Holland says the use of costume is minimal and that most of the character changes are shown through the physicality of the actors.
“We all know how to play when we're kids. There's something about getting older that makes us shut out our physicality. But in our performance we try to model this physicality,” she says.
“We're all pretty flexible—literally as well as in terms of our acting. We have a lot of fun. I think that's the biggest thing. We want to do theatre that engages you and makes you want to play with us. It's been interesting to watch kids watch the show—especially if they're never seen theatre before and only know TV and video. You can see them watching, trying to figure out what’s going on and what’s going to happen next,” Holland says.
The theater simple production of The Snow Queen will sweep parents and children alike away in a magical world. Holland says that children take one play away from it, and adults another. So it really is a show for everybody, whether a child, or a child at heart.
“People always think fairytales are for the girls, but we did a show on Friday and the people laughing the hardest were the dads!”
The Snow Queen shows for three performances only at the Street Theatre on Wednesday 31 March and Thursday 1 April. For tickets and info call 6247 1223.
“It’s going to be a big year for us,” says Chris Frazer, who plays John Lennon in BEATLEMANIA ON TOUR. Damn straight. The man’s only tripping around the world as part of a tribute show to the best band in the world. I was recently searching for a birthday present when I happened across a set of coasters cut from 72” records. On the back was a spiel from a guy who was about to have a lady friend over for the first time, and he was stressing about first impressions and which coaster to offer. He settles for The Beatles, saying “I’ve got good taste to acknowledge the greatest band in history”. And there we have it, even on this set of coasters, The Beatles’ status as the best band in the world remains clear. No buts about it.
After we’ve finished gushing about our introduction to them (Frazer’s was in primary school when his class sang Octopus’ Garden; mine when I was given their entire collection on mint condition vinyl as an anniversary present a few years back), we get to talking about tributes, and whether audiences expect imitation or interpretation. “It’s a funny thing,” muses Frazer. “Tribute can be anything, like a guy with a wig playing to karaoke backing, but what we do is so far removed from that.”
It certainly sounds like it. “We start in Hamburg at The Star Club and it’s all leather and we act a little drunk. It’s a bit volatile and we’ve got Pete Best on drums and basically we have a bit of a fight with him every night.” From here it’s on to Liverpool and the Cabin shows of ’63, and then the BBC tour of the UK and Scotland. “The second half kicks off with The Ed Sullivan Show and we do a bit where it’s like a scene change between live segments and we talk to the audience like they’re the live audience.” I’m hoping like hell my comp tix are down the front.
“Then there’s a section where we skip off to India and then we come back and do the psychadelia and then the Sergeant Pepper’s bit at the end.” Phew. Frazer insists the show kicks along at such a cracking pace the excitement is never lost. But are there screaming girls? “There are occasional times when we get pockets of 17-year-olds girls who know their job and scream in all the right moments. Those nights are amazing but predominantly our audiences are respectful of what we’re doing and erupt when the time comes.”
Other authenticities include costumes made by a US Beatles fanatic who owns many of the originals. “He recreates them down to the stitch,” enthuses Frazer. Scott MacFarlane, who plays McCartney, even switched from a right-handed bassist to a leftie, and Michael Brady, who plays Ringo, has watched heaps of Thomas the Tank Engine to perfect his accent. What appears to be most authentic, however, from our garrulous half hour fan gab, is Frazer’s love of The Beatles. “That’s what it’s all about, the absolute joy of their music.”
Beatlemania On Tour is at the Canberra Theatre Centre for one night only on Sunday March 21. For bookings call 6275 2700 or head to canberratheatrecentre.org.au.
National Portrait Gallery Director Andrew Sayers is the first to admit that this year, in its third instalment, the National Photographic Portrait Prize (NPPP) has really come into its own. Art prizes can take a few years to hit their stride, and now, as interest and profile has increased, the entries into the NPPP have, quite accordingly, exploded in quality.
The annual exhibition receives plenty of national attention, not in the least because it comes hand in hand with one of the most generous cash prizes in the country. A whopping great $25,000 is the award up for grabs, courtesy of an ongoing sponsorship from VISA.
Portrait prizes, and particularly photographic ones, will always get a running start in the popularity stakes, because people will always love photographs of other people. Human curiosity and our predisposition to voyeurism means that audiences soak up these images with unbridled enthusiasm, regardless of who the subjects are and the reasons for having their portraits taken.
This year’s exhibition of NPPP finalists looks to be more popular than ever. What in previous years has been a hit-and-miss, at times cliché heavy affair, is now a consistent and surprisingly revealing exhibition, relentless in its emotional intensity.
Curator Christopher Chapman believes many of this year’s finalists “evoke moments of defining self realisation and powerful self awareness”, and upon seeing the show it’s easy to see how he’s drawn this conclusion. Many of the selected works exude either a vulnerability, a defiance or an intriguing mix of both. In stark contrast to the largely forgettable fare in the 2009 exhibition, some images are so striking I find them difficult to shake from my mind even days later.
One of these is the commanding, goose-bump inducing ‘Gori, Bougainville’ by Stuart Miller, the subject staring down the camera as he stands in the ocean under a blackened, storm torn sky. Softer but no less powerful is ‘James’, Nicole Marie’s sensitive and understated portrait of a dedicated Dungeons and Dragons player. Simultaneously gritty and ethereal, her sitter’s face is bathed in an otherworldly computer-screen glow.
Unlike other more established portraiture prizes there is refreshingly little in the way of celebrity here. Even in works that do portray well known faces, including entertainment personalities Chris Lilley, Paul Capsis and Julia Zemiro, we are treated to a far less guarded and manufactured view (Zemiro nearly unrecognisable). These few familiar faces aside, the exhibition acts as a survey of a more realistic Australia, as the forty-three finalists neatly sidestep portraiture stereotypes and the tendency of these occasions to try to depict a nation of heroes (the Aussie battler, the sporting superstar).
Instead this is a salon of people living quietly and otherwise unnoticed, going about their business, and caught up in the banality of everyday life. A waitress takes a moment’s break in a downtown Melbourne café, while a migrant family poses proudly in front of their red brick suburban home. Two sisters sunbathe unceremoniously in their backyard, and a young man at boarding school shaves, bathed in golden morning light.
Many of the subjects are caught up in difficult circumstances, but the resulting portraits remain dignified and honest, rather than romanticising or overly politicising their situations. Perhaps the most poignant of these, and certainly the closest to home, is the cuttingly titled ‘Master chef’ by Canberra’s own Andrew Sheargold. The portrait illustrates the reality of life for award-winning apprentice chef John Campbell, forced to live at government housing facility Havelock House in the face of the rental crisis - a world away from the glamorous existence portrayed by dozens of food-focused reality TV shows.
Not only are the sitters from all walks of life, but the artists themselves are too. The winner of this year’s prize is Scott Bycroft, a high-school art teacher from Perth and self-taught photographer who has only been experimenting with the medium for a few years. His striking black and white portrait ‘Zareth’ captures one of the students from the school with what the NPPP judges recognised as an “immediacy and power”. As with many of the subjects in this year’s collection of finalists, Zareth regards the camera with an intense, almost unnerving gaze.
Moments like these occur throughout the exhibition – a testament not only to the power of photography to capture these definitive snatches in time, but also to the keen eye of the artist behind the lens. It is, after all, the artist who seeks out these split seconds instances, managing to capture the essence of a personality and identity in a single image.
Now, as it comes of age, the National Photographic Portrait Prize is finally succeeding to deliver on the core aims of the National Portrait Gallery: “to increase the understanding of the Australian people – their identity, history, creativity and culture – through portraiture.” By creating portraits of the people around them, both amateur and professional photographers across the country are taking control of this understanding.
The exhibition of NPPP finalists is on show at the National Portrait Gallery until the May 2 before it begins a tour of regional galleries. Keen snappers should bear in mind that a call for entries in the 2011 National Photographic Portrait Prize will take place from August this year.
