Ink - Review

Little Theatre
Fri Oct 13 2023

There’s a sadness about this work from James Graham. Many of the ideas behind Rupert Murdoch’s first newspaper seemed quite acceptable.  Socialist even. “Give the people what they want. “ “A newspaper for the people” “Tell stories of normal people”. In retrospect Murdoch’s Sun may well have been a kind of forerunner of social media where the humdrum activities of the rank and file were deemed sufficient to fill a newspaper.

Murdoch was also out to break the hold of the establishment on Fleet Street. He saw himself as a new broom that would sweep old and dusty entrenched attitudes aside. The rest of course is history. From there the local Adelaide boy would take on New York and the world and eventually become an entrenched stalwart of right-wing values, and one of the most insidious influences on contemporary life.

But Ink only takes us through to the end of the first chapter in this remarkable story, when Murdoch’s remodelled Sun outsells its nemesis on the back of the introduction of the page 3 model. And it is a wonderful emotional roller coaster of a ride.  Directors Robert Bell and Rebecca Kemp, together with an extremely capable and large ensemble cast manage to brilliantly convey the manic stress behind the scenes of newspaper production, the exhilarating highs shared when brainstorming ideas for a new approach to journalism, and celebrating success when the ratings come in all good news.  The buzz around these scenes is infectious, and delivered with authenticity and a great sense of fun. Just one of several scenes in this play that are really very funny.

The success of this production is undoubtedly a team effort, but it rests safely on the shoulders of two stellar acting performances by Joshua Coldwell and Bart Csoba.  Coldwell is suitably brash and provocative as Murdoch. He has just enough nerve to ruffle feathers while still maintaining a sense of decency and likeability that allows him to get away with the outrageous. But hats off to Bart Csorba as the real hero of this story, Larry Lamb – the editor Murdoch entrusted to translate his vision into reality. Larry Lamb is the stereotypical newspaper guy. Most of the time he seems just shy of breaking point as he chides, encourages, and berates his staff to deliver the goods – hyper-enthusiastic, hyper-critical, hyper-anxious but always ready to celebrate success. His is a remarkable performance.

Such an entertaining show. As ever the Little Theatre’s split level and multiple entry/exit points were beautifully exploited. The audience loved the scenes where Larry cajoled fellow journos to come along on a risky crazy ride, and the hilarious group creation of the masthead, motto, and the new paper’s first edition.

Things become quite a bit more sober later in the show with the kidnapping of Muriel McKay, the wife of Murdoch’s deputy, and as reports start to filter in of people in high places being offended by this rambunctious new kid on the block. But despite the offence and the ruffled feathers the ratings continued to soar.

As they should for this production of Ink!

This review also published on The Clothesline.

Dictionary of Lost Words

The Dictionary of Lost Words

Dunstan Playhouse
Wed 27 Sep 2023

At first pass the tale of a young woman growing up dreaming of being a lexicographer may not present as a ripping yarn.  But courtesy of some astute direction, wonderfully creative use of an eye-catching set, and uniformly excellent performances from the whole cast The Dictionary of Lost Words is totally engrossing.

We meet Esme as a four year old hanging around in her father’s ‘scrippy’ or scriptorium (a place for writing).  Her father works for an eminent scholar who is compiling a dictionary. With that kind of upbringing Esme was always going to grow up either loving or hating words, and fortunately she realises words can be an escape, a path to alternative realities, and collecting new words and quotations to show their use becomes something of an obsession.

The story unfolds in the late nineteenth century as the suffragette movement is gaining momentum in Britain. Wanting a more independent life than most women, Esme had already decided that marriage was not for her and was potentially a suitable candidate to help further the suffragette cause.

As Esme grows older she begins to accompany her maid to the local market. This turns out to be a surprising entry point to another universe for Esme when she strikes up a friendship with a woman selling hand-made trinkets. Their first meeting was hilarious and quite a shocking exposure to another world for Esme.

The rapid set transformation from scriptorium to market was also a wonderful surprise for the audience. In a trice we move from a stuffy office with desks, paper, people in suits, shelves, to a lively joyous scene with vendors, beggars, flowers, fruit, colour, and noise on streets heaving with life.

However the scriptorium itself held plenty of visual interest. A wall of shelves served as bookshelves, letterboxes, pigeon-holes, library catalogue compartments, and gateways to secret passages. An ingenious projection device variously displayed information about date, locations, words with definitions, abstract backgrounds, visual metaphors to reinforce the messages – it provided another separate but connected filter on events taking place and added depth and mystique to many scenes – brilliant!

Tilda Cobham-Harvey’s performance as Esme was faultless and inspiring – as a child, teenager, and young woman. Her ability to grow – literally – in this role and share her frustrations, joy, love and enthusiasm was authentic and endearing.

Ksenja Logos as Mabel the market tramp deserves special mention for her earthy comic touch and entertaining revelations about the language of the lower classes, but really – all characters played their roles to perfection. And despite their sometimes pompous façade they all had a warmth and humanity about them.

Sometimes it can be subtle, almost unnoticeable moments that elevate a play to another level. There were two occasions when unspoken lyrics from The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond were implied and totally in synch with the events on stage. This production is littered with such metaphorical moments reinforcing the narrative.

A great show. So good to see so many elements of theatre blended into an impressive whole!

This review also published on The Clothesline.

Lady Day

The Space Theatre, Festival Centre, Tue 29 Aug

Billie Holiday is often associated with the tag ‘the lady sings the blues’ after the film depicting her life from 1972. Holiday herself saw things as more nuanced: “I sing the blues with a jazz beat”. This is just one of many insights about Billie Holiday revealed in the marvellous new production from the State Theatre Company. “Singing is living for me” was another.  Lady Day is in fact just as much about the person that was Billie Holiday as it is about her music. And it succeeds admirably in both realms.

Lady Day was one of Holiday’s nicknames and the show takes place at one of her favourite venues – the Emerson Bar and Grill in Philadelphia in 1959. It was to be one of her last performances. Holiday died later that same year. In retrospect, Lady Day becomes a memorial to an icon, and a harrowing first person account of the trauma she endured. Deeply entwined in this trauma was the shocking level of racism she experienced. Add to this drug and alcohol addiction, time in prison, and being raped as a young woman and you have a recipe for desperation. Thankfully for us, and Holiday herself, she chose music to express and exorcise these torments. It is quite likely that it was music that enabled her to live as long as she did. She died a young 44 but along the way left a legacy of soulful, bluesy songs that drew on every ounce of emotion.

The Space Theatre has never looked better. It’s rare to feel that just being in a performance space, even before the show begins, was a real treat. Decked out as a 1950’s bar with colourful lamp shades on each table and a waiter in white showing patrons to their seats and offering them drinks was just brilliant to observe. The place was alive with expectation and looked gorgeous.

At one point the recorded music seamlessly morphed into a live band and it was time for Jimmy Powers (of the Jimmy Powers Quartet) to introduce the star of the show. Billie Holiday took the stage looking resplendent and after a deliciously long pause bursts into song. Drinking as she goes it gets harder and harder for her to focus on the songs, and she starts sharing anecdotes of her life. If she gets too maudlin or dangerously close to saying something that may land her back in prison Jimmy Powers lovingly suggests a song on the piano. Sometimes she follows him; sometimes she doesn’t. She needs to feel which songs to sing she tells us. This delicate, beautiful relationship between Powers (played by Kym Purling) and Holiday was really touching, and beautifully played by both parties.

The musical accompaniment was wonderful – full of class and nuance, the setting magnificent, and then there was Zahra Newman. What a performance. Not only did she deliver the songs with eloquent passion and exquisite phrasing, her portrayal of the human side of a star unravelling before your eyes was extraordinary. Bravado, vulnerability, wit, charm, grace and poise – all in appropriate measure. It felt like she was Billie Holiday.

A magnificent concert; magnificent theatre. Music and theatre combined to tell a compelling story with class and style.

Presented by the State Theatre Company in association with Belvoir St Theatre, and the Melbourne Theatre Company
Directed by Mitchell Butel
Musical Arrangements by Danny Holgate

This review also published on The Clothesline.

I Quit!

 

Quitting jobs is not my style – or so I’d like to think. I know I did it once when I was still at university. I took on a factory job for the holidays and lasted 7 or 8 days. It involved mindless feeding of sheets of metal into a machine that cut them into the required size. And stacking the cut sheets. Hour after hour. I guess I was doing it for extra travel money but at some point in the middle of the working day I realised I was not enjoying it and that I didn’t need to do it. In my memory I simply walked off the job and out the door and never returned.

Fast forward 50 years. I have been working on a fascinating project assisting in the deployment of technology solutions for remote locations in the Pacific. I loved the work, and the project’s aims, but I was working with a project manager who eventually made the job a misery.

It started out OK. We met mostly online but did spend a whole day face to face early in the project that was pleasant and productive. Things started to go adrift when this project manager – let’s call her Joy – didn’t seem to have a grasp of some of the basics of the technology we were working with. This was fair enough as she had only recently started working with it whereas I’d had twenty years’ experience using this technology. She wasn’t much interested in hearing what I might know about it. Rather she launched herself on a crash course and impressively learnt a great deal about the technology in a very short time. The problem was she then started to behave as if she was the expert on it, disagreeing with me about how it might be employed and using different terminology to the standard ways of referring to various processes. In short, it wasn’t long before I started to feel like she was always right and I was always wrong. In addition, I felt like she was unilaterally making wrong decisions and rising roughshod over whatever I thought should happen.

I began to drift away on my own and do things the way I preferred to do them. I was a little unfair to Joy as I let her think I agreed with her about certain things but then went ahead and ignored her. This I see now was foolish. She was however very hard to reason with because as I said, she was always right.

This project had many stakeholders. The company we worked for, the relevant education department of the country concerned, and the users/owners of the technology in various locations around the world. My preferred method would have been to enter discussions with these various stakeholders and together craft a plan of action and implementation. I was however effectively blocked from communicating with any of these third parties. Joy did all the negotiations and I was fed dribs and drabs of relevant information in haphazard fashion. I was very uncomfortable about this – I did not think it was appropriate for me to be parachuted in after all these discussions to help deploy the technology when I had not been party to any of the lead-up discussions. I felt sidelined.

So, because I had been over-ruled on many issues,  barred from any meaningful discussion with stakeholders, micromanaged by a project manager who just seemed to think I was there to do her bidding, and feeling very much undervalued I was already quite stressed about the job and no longer enjoying it. As I saw it, I had been employed to perform a task that she had taken over.

And then came the bombshell. “Michael” - as a friend she said – “do you think it’s possible that you might be forgetting things?”  I couldn’t believe my ears. She thinks I’m old and forgetful! I can see why she’d think that – that was a consequence of me ignoring things she said and just going my own way. But the dam wall had burst. Bottom line? She didn’t trust me, and I could no longer feel sure about anything I said around her.

I have always prided myself on the fact that I am not afraid to admit mistakes; I don’t mind admitting I don’t know things; I don’t mind coming across as imperfect – I have often forgotten things over the years, or have needed others to point out where I have gone wrong. That is part of working successfully with others – being able to learn from and with others. But now I had to be perfect. No mistakes, slips of the tongue, lost emails, wrong dates, getting someone’s name wrong – none of this could happen or I’d be written off as old and forgetful.

So I quit. I quit what was potentially a really exciting and rewarding project. I just couldn’t work with her anymore. Frankly I don’t think she wanted to work with me anymore either because she seemed to think she knew it all and I just got in her way.

It must be said that after having worked as a leader in my field with quite a lot of responsibility – I had project managed several national projects with groups of up to 20 people over the years – I found it very difficult to be play second fiddle to someone half my age, who was a new kid on the technology block, and who did not appear to respect my experience or judgement.

So – am I forgetting things? Probably. But that’s not new. And besides, that’s for others to tell  …..