On Stage (and walls) Melbourne: June 2009

June 26, 2009

Happy Birthday Hugues Cuénod

Hughes-Adhémar Cuénod (born Vevey Switzerland, 26 June 1902) is 107 today.

His ancestry is Swiss, with links to the English - the Marlboroughs no less - nobility. Cuénod lived his entire life at his family residence, Château de Lully. In later years he shared the home with his sister, who tended the estate orchards which provided fruit for a well known local liqueur.

Cuénod still resides there, supported by his life partner, Alfred Augustin (41 years his junior, you cradle snatcher Hughes!). In 2007, at the age of 104, Cuénod and Augustin signed a civil union after the changes in Swiss law giving same-sex couples legal recognition.

Cuénod made very famous Metropolitan Opera debut at the age of 80 (as the Emperor in Turandot) and continued to perform, more often as narrator of works like Poulenc's Histoire de Babar.

Cuénod can also be glimpsed here as the Emperor in his Metropolitan Opera debut in the 'riddle' scene between Eva Marton (Turandot) and Placido Domingo (Calaf).

Monteverdi's chaconne for two voices Zefiro Torna is sung by Paul Derenne and Cuénod, when he was a mere 35 years old. Cuénod's young voice is so free and responsive to this music, and already shows the interest in early music he carried his entire life. The famous composition teacher Nadia Boulanger is the pianist (!) in this endearingly inauthentic performance (notice that Derenne comes in too early at one point). Recorded in 1937 it comes from a set of 78 rpm recordings of Monteverdi madrigals and vocal ensembles that regenerated interest in his music. Cuénod continued to perform and record early music. One of most famous recordings was of the Couperin Leçons de Ténèbres (Stravinsky owned a copy of the recording and wrote his Cantata specifically for Cuénod's voice).

June 12, 2009

Review - The Man from Mukinupin - Melbourne Theatre Company

A Friend of Dorothy's

I first saw The Man from Mukinupin when it was new in the late 1970s and everyone in the cast was white. Since then I don't recall seeing another play by Dorothy Hewett and, like so many other playwrites whose names are not David or Williamson, her work seems to vanished from the boards.

Hewett’s 1979 musical play was an unlikely way of celebrating Western Australia’s 150th birthday. Set around the time of the First World War it shows the ugly side of the Anzac legacy, with the local war hero Harry Tuesday (Craig Annis) becoming a shell-shocked and public disgrace. Even more controversial is Hewett’s inclusion of the worst aspect of colonial behaviour toward Aboriginals. Hewett evokes this mythical town by referencing Dylan Thomas’s own celebration of town life Under Milk Wood and like Thomas’s her dialogue is richly poetic so that even sudden outbursts of song seem logical. Mukinupin has a nocturnal, subconscious, counterpart and in that nether-world the characters have alter-egos played by the same actors. The righteous Eek Perkins (Max Gillies) alternates with a crazy hermit dwelling in the bush. Eek’s pious wife Edie (Kerry Walker) wanders as her community’s guilty conscience. Hewett brilliantly adapts the sleepwalking scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth making Edie guiltily lament, instead, the slaughter of the local Aboriginal community by the townsfolk.

Director Wesley Enoch begins this almost surreal play in a highly artificial manner, all the characters wear clown-white make up and act in front of a false curtain. Within this artifice indigenous actors Suzannah Bayes-Morton and David Page also play the white townsfolk, Bayes-Morton as Perkins’s daughter Polly and Page as her suitor Cecil Brunner (ironically, the name of a variety of pale pink rose!), emphasising the black-white relationships more successfully than in previous productions.

I seem to be a lone voice in saying that I really enjoyed this play and production. What a great piece of theatre it is. It's steeped in references to other writers and never quite declares what form it really is, play with songs, musical, vaudeville or even Brechtian Epic thingy. Its also steeped in Theatre references, the spectral spinsters Hummer sisters are former theatre workers - one was a high wire artist the other a costumer. A faded and actress dominates the subplot, the hero Jack Tuesday has showbiz ambitions and even the righteous Mrs Perkins has a penchant for recitations (inspired no doubt by Under Milk Wood's Reverend Eli Jenkins). Director and designer emphasise the plays theatricality in the opening scene. The gaping stage of the Sumner Theatre is masked by false curtain forcing the action downstage. The cast sport clown white faces and appear and disappear behind the curtain until it opens on the second scene, revealing a false stage complete with velvet curtain and old-style footlights, where the 'celebrated' Montebellos perform "The Strangling of Desdemona" to the townsfolk. Jim Cotter’s songs in creepy new arrangements have the subtle but savage bite of The Threepenny Opera and perfectly match Hewett’s subtle but equally savage satire.

The Man from Mukinupin (1979) by Dorothy Hewett A co-production with Company B
Jack Tuesday / Harry Tuesday - Craig Annis
Polly Perkins / Lily - Suzannah Bayes-Morton
Eek Perkins / Zeek Perkins - Max Gillies
Edie Perkins - Kerry Walker
Mercy Montebello - Amanda Muggleton
Cecil Brunner / Max Montebello - David Page
Clarry Hummer - Valentina Levkowicz
Clemmy Hummer - Melodie Reynolds
Director - Wesley Enoch
Set Designer - Richard Roberts
Lighting Designer - Rachel Burke
Original Music - Jim Cotter, arranged by Alan John
Musical Director - Alan John
Choreographer - Jack Webster
Sound Designer - Steve Francis
Sumner Theatre
6 June - 19 July 2009

June 10, 2009

Review - Lobby Hero - Red Stitch Actors Theatre

Foyer Pleasure

As with Kenneth Lonergan’s earlier success This Is Our Youth, his Lobby Hero is another affectionate comedy about a nerd who, despite the odds, overcomes his nerdiness, scores a moral triumph and even impresses a girl. Set in the lobby of a Manhattan apartment building, wherein resides Mrs. Heinvald, a woman of generous affection beloved of the local cop Bill (Daniel Frederiksen), who visits her each night while doing his beat. The apartment security guard Jeff (Tim Potter) is the most insecure security guard ever! A would-be conversationalist Jeff only stops talking long enough to put his foot in his mouth. Try as he may, he only says the wrong thing, putting Bill’s rookie assistant Dawn (Eryn-Jean Norvill), who Jeff fancies, offside during one of Bill’s nocturnal calls to the Heinvald apartment. Jeff also blabbers his way into the confidence of his boss William (Christopher Kirby) and uncovers some potentially embarrassing secrets.

Jeff's innocent attempts at winning people's admiration and confidence lead to moral dilemma for everyone in the play. William, despite his officiousness and constant proclaiming of his fair-mindedness commits an act of dishonesty as does his buddy Bill. Their juniors, Jeff and Dawn, see things more plainly. Jeff wrestles with the potentially disastrous information while Dawn wrestles it out of him.

Not strictly laugh-out-loud comedy, the play derives its humour from exposing the hidden motives in the situation rather than the situation itself. The scenes are not particularly funny in themselves. Potter flinches like a scalded puppy each time his attempts at camaraderie backfire and suffers agonies of self-consciousness. Denis Moore’s production mixes the table-turning farce with more serious comedy. The scenes between Jeff and William as Jeff's jokes backfire build up the pathos of the poor schlemiel and are intensified when Jeff is intimidated by Bill. The faint glimmer of romance between Jeff and Dawn brings a feeling of relief as well as an actually funny scene.

Dropping his voice half an octave and appearing ten years older Frederiksen is amazing as the gruff, old cop hiding his duplicity behind his badge. Norvill gives the impression, by often avoiding eye-contact with Bill, of insecurity different from Jeff''s and creates with Potter some convincingly 'low-voltage' sexual tension between the anxious pair. Lobby Hero poses a few problems in genre definition, how much of a comedy is it intending to be? The production, however, was highly polished and cleanly focused - of the the case with Red Stitch due to the intimacy of the acting space.

picture: Jodie Hutchinson

Lobby Hero (2004) by Kenneth Lonergan
Jeff - Tim Potter
William - Christopher Kirby
Bill - Daniel Frederiksen
Dawn - Eryn-Jean Norvill
Director - Denis Moore
Designer - Shaun Gurton

Red Stitch Actors Theatre, St Kilda
10 June - 11 July 2009
130 minutes (including 1 interval)

Q: What is the future of arts criticism, in your view?A: Blogs.
Anne Midgette, critic for The New York Times (The Washington Post as of February 2008)

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: They know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
Brendan Behan

A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.
George Bernard Shaw

Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out of yourself; in reviewing you take it out of other people.
George Bernard Shaw

To a professional critic theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.
George Bernard Shaw

Nothing makes me angrier than critics imputing motives to artists when they cannot know what those motives are. A critic's job is to be interesting about why he or she likes or dislikes something.
Peter Hall

A dramatic critic ought to have an eye for detail. If he has no eye for detail, he will never make a dramatic historian, for it is the detail that gives life. If he cannot distinguish the significant detail from the insignificant, he will be only a gossip-writer. But if he can recreate on the page what he has seen and heard on stage, and at the same time convey the emotional impression it has made on him, he will, in my opinion, be discharging his functions in a just and honourable manner.
Harold Hobson

One of the most characteristic sounds of the English Sunday morning is Harold Hobson barking up the wrong tree.
Penelope Gilliatt

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
Kenneth Tynan

No theatre could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.
Kenneth Tynan

The greatest films are those which show how society shapes man. The greatest plays are those which show how man shapes society.
Kenneth Tynan

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.
Kenneth Tynan

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan

Western man, especially the Western critic, still finds it very hard to go into print and say: 'I recommend you to go and see this because it gave me an erection'.
Kenneth Tynan

The critic ... has done his job if he evokes, precisely and with his prejudices clearly charted, the state of his mind after the performance has impinged on it ... He will find readers if, and only if, he writes clearly and gaily and truly; if he regards himself as a specially treated mirror recording a unique and unrepeatable event.
Kenneth Tynan

Has anyone ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
P G Wodehouse

You cannot have critics with standards; you can only have music with standards which critics may observe.
Alan Walker An Anatomy of Musical Criticism (1968)

Although he never read them, Gustav Mahler used the word 'superiors' when referring to critics.

I try to keep an open mind, even when viewing the dreariest efforts, that the people involved are not criminals ... Even an IBM machine blows a gasket now and then.
John McClain

I don’t think a critic needs to have written a play or to have acted. I do think he should appreciate the niceties of theatrical technique, the dramatist’s, the actor’s, the producer’s. He should be able, during any performance, to separate the strands of which it is made.
J C Trewin

To appreciate, in the best sense, is harder, more rewarding. Enjoy yourself, said C E Montague. “To make people like a thing you must delight in it first.” But (some argue) should not the critic be the ‘Keep Out’ notice, the growling dog, the speck of ratsbane? I feel that any writer perpetually cynical, perpetually displeased, should find work more congenial. It is possible to keep standards high, to be selective, to do the reader service without being ashamed of decent courtesy (‘softness’ is, I fear the cant phrase) or regretting that a notice has not been inscribed upon asbestos.
J C Trewin

When an impecunious music critic died in Vienna, his colleagues made a round of local musicians to raise money for the funeral."How much is my share?" asked one of them."Thirty kronen," was the reply."Here's sixty kronen," said the musician, "bury two music critics."
Quoted by Nicolas Slonimsky in A Thing or Two about Music (1948)

Critics are a dissembling, dishonest, contemptible race of men. Asking a working writer what he thinks of critics is like asking a lampost what it feels about dogs.
John Osborne

For the most part men without intellect, perception, sensitivity, or background, they pander to the tastes of the empty-headed, the bored, the insensitive, the complacent, who constitute the bulk of the agency trade and supply the golden stream upon which the Broadway theatre feeds.
Elmer Rice

There are two types of criticism, subjective criticism and bad criticism.
George Jean Nathan

Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.
George Jean Nathan

No chronically happy man is a trustworthy critic.
George Jean Nathan

The dramatic critic who is without prejudice is on a plane with the general who does not believe in taking human life.
George Jean Nathan

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.
Dustin Hoffman

I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.
Max Reger, responding to a music critic

I do not wish to suggest that Australians are not natural theatregoers, merely that they look curiously relieved once on their way back to to their cars.
Sheridan Morley

I would as soon have the opinion of a stagehand as to the likelihood of a play's success as that of the drama's ablest observer.
Arthur Hopkins

The critic leaves at curtain fall
To find, in starting to review it,
He scarcely saw the play at all
For watching his reaction to it.
E B White

Sing a lament for the plays that fail -A dirge for the shows that fold.
A tear on the bier of the flops of the year
And the tickets that couldn't be sold.
Requiem sound for the overly ribald -The "ball in the air" that was faultily dribbled - And the play that had little to say.
Wringing of hands for the major fiascos,
The Saturday sundown of would-be Belascos
And the scenery carted away.
Sing a lament.
Sing for the actors who practiced in vain
Lines that were labeled inept and inane.
Sing for the orchestras down in the pits
Playing the numbers that sounded like hits.
Sing for the authors who wrote in the dawn,
The 'doctors" who came when the patient was gone.
Sing for the backers who put up the dough -One for backer and the two for the show.
Sing with your faces way down on the floor
The dancers, directors, the deans of decor.
Sing a lament.
Sing a lament for the plays that will fail
For Sullivan and McBride
But make it a wake for the critics' mistake -The Beautiful One that died.
Howard Dietz

...if one gives a concert that costs, say, 1000 marks, then one finds, some days later, according to the usual procedure, the 'review'. It usually runs as follows: "Herr X or Fräulein Y played Chopin in a very gifted fashion. Yet the final refinement of touch was lacking. A talent capable of development, which one would like to encounter more often."
Hanns Eisler On the Bourgeois Concert Business